Monthly Archives: July 2021

DevOps and Cloud InfoQ Trends Report – July 2021 – InfoQ.com

Posted: July 21, 2021 at 12:44 am

Key Takeaways

This article summarizes how we currently see the "cloud computing and DevOps" space, which focuses on fundamental infrastructure and operational patterns, the realization of patterns in technology frameworks, and the design processes and skills that a software architect or engineer must cultivate.

Both InfoQ and the QCon conference series focus on topics that we believe fall into the "innovator, early adopter, and early majority stages" of the diffusion of technology, as defined in Geoffrey Moores book "Crossing the Chasm." What we try to do is identify ideas that fit into what Moore referred to as the early market, where "the customer base is made up of technology enthusiasts and visionaries who are looking to get ahead of either an opportunity or a looming problem." We are also looking for ideas that are likely to "cross the chasm" to broader adoption. It is perhaps worth saying, in this context, that a technology's exact position on the adoption curve can vary. For example, microservices are widely adopted amongst Bay Area companies but maybe less widely adopted and perhaps less appropriate elsewhere.

In this edition of the cloud computing and DevOps trend report, we believe that hybrid cloud approaches have evolved to become more "cloud native". In late 2019 all the three prominent public cloud vendors brought new hybrid cloud products to the market and over the last two years they have continued to invest heavily in them - Google with Anthos, Microsoft with the Azure Arc and Stack offerings, AWS with Outposts, and more recently, Amazon ECS Anywhere. For enterprises, for instance, it is about not only bringing workloads to the Cloud but also running them on-premise or both, or on multiple clouds. Thus, managing the infrastructure for the workloads centrally with a service like Arc or Anthos delivers value. Furthermore, these products allow enterprises to extend their platform.

There has been increasing adoption (and technological evolution) in the space of "edge cloud" and "edge computing", and so we believe this topic should move to the early adopter stage of our graph. There is a fair amount of traction here from specific vendor tools, such as Cloudflare Workers, Fastlys Compute@Edge, and Amazon CloudFronts Lambda@Edge.

The participants of this report have also identified an emerging trend named "no copy data sharing." This can be seen in data management services such as Snowflake, which do not copy or move data, yet enable users to share data at its source. Another example is the Azure Synapse service, which supports no-copy data sharing from Azure Cosmos DB via Azure Synapse Link. The recently announced Delta Sharing open standard is also contributing to the upward trajectory of the no-copy data sharing tendency.

Observability continues to be a popular topic within DevOps and SRE. While most organizations have begun to implement some form of observability stack, as Holly Cummins notes, the term is overloaded and therefore should be broken down into its various components. Ideas such as centralized log aggregation are currently commonplace in most organizations, however, logs only make up one of the three pillars of observability.

The increasingly popular OpenTelemetry project provides a consistent framework for capturing not just logs, but also traces and metrics. The consistency provided by adopting a single framework helps with capturing data across hybrid and heterogeneous environments and also monitoring tooling. The use of service level objectives (SLOs) as a tool to communicate the desired outcome of monitoring and observability is also gaining popularity as seen with the first ever SLOConf earlier this year.

"DevOps for Data" has seen increasing adoption over the past year with the rise of both MLOps and DataOps. MLOps focuses on using DevOps style practices (such as CI and CD) to implement continuous training for machine learning models. Open source tooling and commercial services exist to help in this area, such as KubeFlow for deploying ML models on Kubernetes, and Amazon SageMaker Model Monitor for automating monitoring of ML models. DataOps looks to shorten the cycle time of data analytics by applying similar concepts used by DevOps teams to reduce their own cycle times.

In the people and organisational space of DevOps we have seen the Team Topologies book, from Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais, become the de facto reference for arranging teams within an organization to enable effective software delivery. Team Topologies describes four fundamental team types and three team interaction patterns, and dives into the responsibility boundaries of teams and how teams can communicate or interact with other teams.

There is also increasing focus on post-incident "blameless postmortems" in becoming more akin to "healthy retrospectives", from which the entire organisation can learn from. Key leaders in the computing domain of resilience engineering and the "Learning From Incidents" community have been influential in driving this discussion.

For context, here is what the topic graph looked like for the first half of 2019. The 2021 version is at the top of the article.

The following is a lightly edited copy of the corresponding internal chat log between several InfoQ cloud computing DevOps topic editors and InfoQ contributors, which provides more context for our recommended positioning on the adoption graph.

Lena Hall - Director, Large-Scale Systems @ Microsoft, who contributed the recent 'Can We Trust the Cloud Not to Fail?' and 'Evolution of Azure Synapse: Apache Spark 3.0, GPU Acceleration, Delta Lake, Dataverse Support' articles:

Moving to Early Majority

Moving to early adopters

New topics in early innovators

Furthermore, Hall discussed the evolution of the hybrid cloud model with InfoQ:

Cloud-Native Hybrid Approaches (e.g., Azure Arc, Google Anthos). In its traditional understanding, a hybrid cloud means using on-premises infrastructure for parts of the company's workloads and using the public cloud for other parts of it, where relevant. For example, a hybrid cloud strategy could mean running some applications in the cloud (e.g., serverless processing) and some applications on local infrastructure (e.g., business ERP system). The hybrid data approach could look as simple as storing backups of data in the cloud, or using more advanced cloud gateways and precisely-tuned data sync, caching, or movement patterns.

In the recent months and years, hybrid options have evolved beyond the traditional definition. They have expanded to enable the functionality of cloud services to run outside of the cloud, allowing for a much more seamless and smooth experience. We can think of the new cloud-native hybrid options as an extension of cloud services to our on-premises or multi-cloud environments. Azure Arc and Google Anthos are perfect examples. One of the ideal examples is Azure Arc. It allows the running of Azure SQL Managed Instance and Azure Database for PostgreSQL Hyperscale in hybrid and multi-cloud environments. It also provides the management of applications consistently on-premises and in the cloud with Azure App Service, Functions, Logic Apps, and more. Another fantastic example is Google Anthos powering BigQuery Omni, enabling its query engine to be deployed and managed on multiple clouds.

It's important to note that these new cloud-native hybrid approaches like Azure Arc and Google Anthos are different from more standard hybrid cloud approaches, such as Azure Stack or Amazon Outposts. To understand it more clearly, both Azure Arc and Azure Stack offer hybrid solutions (and can be used together). Azure Stack is a hardware approach to run Azure environment on-premises. On the other hand, Azure Arc is a software approach treating the on-premises and multi-cloud resources, consisting of virtual or physical servers and Kubernetes clusters, as something natively managed and accessible by Azure Resource Manager. Similarly, we can make a distinction between Google Anthos/Azure Arc and AWS Outposts. Even though AWS Outposts extends the AWS cloud platform to on-premises, it has specific hardware requirements and only works with hardware devices designed and supported by AWS.

Hall also shared an interesting insight into the emerging trend of "no copy data sharing":

No Copy Data Sharing (Snowflake,Google BigQuery, Azure Synapse, Presto/Starburst, etc.)There are quite a few approaches to working with data when the same data needs to be accessed or shared between different services or different environments. There might be a variety of scenarios when it comes to data sharing.One scenario could be storing the same data (or parts of the same data) in several services running in the same cloud. Often, the compute and storage of such services aren't independent. To work with the data from another service, we'd have to copy or move it.

In the emerging no-copy data-sharing approach, and with separation of compute and storage, it's not necessary to move or replicate the data to be able to access it from different services. As a result, it enables better scalability, cost-efficiency, and direct access to data. As an example, this can be enabled by features such as Azure Synapse Link for Azure Cosmos DB, BigQuery external data sources, or Snowflake data sharing.

Recently announced Delta Sharing is an open standard, contributing to the upward trajectory of no-copy data sharing tendency. According to its website, "Delta Sharing is the industry's first open protocol for secure data sharing, making it simple to share data with other organizations regardless of which computing platforms they use."

Holly Cummins, an innovation leader in IBM Corporate Strategy who has spent several years as a consultant in the IBM Garage, shared and contributed the "Cloud-Native Is about Culture, Not Container" talk and article shared with InfoQ:

Wow, some things in tech change so fast, and some hardly change at all. Most of the introduction of the 2019 DevOps and Cloud InfoQ Trends Report feels like it could have been written now.

I don't think there's been any progress on undoing the confusion between continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD) tooling and CI/CD practices, and I don't think there's been progress on adopting CI and CD practices.

One thing which seems to be missing in the discussion is observability. Like "AIOps", it's overloaded and buzz-wordy, but it feels a bit like how "cloud-native" was in 2018. So if your product is anywhere remotely in this space, you have to throw in the word 'observability.' Then other people will point out that it's not really observability because observability means something distinct, and then there's an extensive discussion. 🙂

In the chart itself, breaking it down into things like "centralized log aggregation" seems wise because then it avoids the argument, but it would be worth mentioning in the discussion. Another subcategory to include might be OpenTelemetry, in the innovator section.

I feel like service meshes have slipped out of the conversation a bit.

FinOps should be in the innovator section. A related topic is cloud cost optimization. There's an exciting conversation started by James Governor from the RedMonk team "Shifting cost optimisation left: Spotify Backstage Cost Insights" where he makes a distinction between FinOps (real-time information flow for cost analysis, aimed at finance team) and "shifting cloud cost optimization left" (aimed at engineering team).

Sustainability accounting is another innovator category. Again, it's very early - I can't think of many products with enough maturity in this area - but the conversations are happening, and I think it's coming.

I think DevOps for data and ML at the edge have moved to early adopters. DevOps for Data has two subcategories, MLOps and DataOps.

I'd say site reliability engineering (SRE) is now the early majority. I'm seeing a lot of banks adopting it.

I see a lot of conversation around GitOps, but I'm not sure that's translating into implementation in prod, or at least not enough to push it to the early majority. Likewise, I feel like momentum around ChatOps has slowed, and it hasn't pushed into Early Majority.

Renato Losio, Cloud architect, remote work enthusiast, and speaker:

Jared Ruckle, Cloud Editor @ InfoQ; Product Marketing @HashiCorp:

Changes in the Innovator bucket

Changes in the Early Adopter bucket

Changes in the Early Majority bucket

Aditya Kulkarni, Blogger, Reader, and Iteration Manager at Tenerity:

Moving to Early Majority

Moving to early adopters

New topics in early innovators

Steef-Jan Wiggers, Technical Integration Architect at HSO and Microsoft Azure MVP:

Moving to Early Majority

New topics in early innovators

Daniel Byrant, Director of DevRel @ Ambassador Labs | InfoQ News Manager | QCon PC:

Innovators

Early Adopters

Early Majority

Late Majority

Helen Beal, DevOps speaker, writer, and strategic advisor:

1)

2)

Rupert Field, Delivery Lead @Duffle-bag Consulting and DevOps Editor @InfoQ:

Shaaron A Alvares, Editor at InfoQ for DevOps, Culture & Methods | Agile Coach

Is Continuous Verification contained in "Shift left on Sec/InfoSec"?

Add to Innovators: Sociotechnical architecture DevOps value stream management platforms Developer Velocity (or it can be contained in DevEx?)

Add to Innovators or to Early Adopters: Low Code No Code (LCNC) Hybrid Cloud

Move: AIOps and MLOps move to Early Adopters

Matt Campbell, Lead Editor, DevOps | Engineering Director @ D2L

Observability practices and tooling continue to mature. I think we should be looking at splitting the topic of observability into some newer sub-topics such as OpenTelemetry and service level objectives (SLOs). As noted by others, the logging portion of the three pillars of observability is a relatively well-adopted piece. Monitoring of metrics is probably close to the same level of adoption at this point so I'd say EM for that. The tracing pillar of observability is still a less adopted portion and there are new advancements recently, especially with the more widespread adoption of OpenTelemetry.

SLOs as a tool for communicating outcomes and goals have started to see a resurgence with the recent SLOConf leading the way. I expect to see the various observability platforms start to add SLO-creation and tracking tooling soon. I would put this in late innovator/early EA.

Security continues to be a hot topic as more and more high-profile attacks make the news. While infrastructure as code is probably within EM or later, tooling and techniques to automate IaC vulnerability scanning are not as well utilized (maybe EA). Newer approaches such as Policy as Code (as promoted by Open Policy Agent (OPA)) and remote access management tooling (such as HashiCorp's Boundary) are pushing forward identity as code and privacy as code, so these are probably within the innovator space. These trends are a continuation of the "shift left for security" approach or the newer DevSecOps ideas. With the continued push for early security practices I think we will see more tools and processes introduced in the upcoming year.

The InfoQ editorial team is built by recruiting and training expert practitioners to write news items and articles, and to analyze current and future trends. Apply to become an editor or to contribute articles and get involved with the conversation.

Lena Hall - Director of Engineering: Big Data at Microsoft. She is leading a team and technical strategy for product improvement efforts across Big Data services at Microsoft. Lena is the driver behind engineering initiatives and strategies to advance, facilitate and push forward further acceleration of cloud services. Lena has more than 10 years of experience in solution architecture and software engineering with a focus on distributed cloud programming, real-time system design, highly scalable and performant systems, big data analysis, data science, functional programming, and machine learning. Previously, she was a Senior Software Engineer at Microsoft Research.

Holly Cummins - Innovation Leader, Corporate Strategy SPEED @IBM and spent several years as a consultant in the IBM Garage. As part of the Garage, she delivers technology-enabled innovation to clients across various industries, from banking to catering to retail to NGOs. Holly is an Oracle Java Champion, IBM Q Ambassador, and JavaOne Rock Star. She co-authored Manning's Enterprise OSGi in Action.

Renato Losio - Cloud architect, remote work enthusiast, speaker, and Cloud Editor @InfoQ. Renato has many years of experience as a software engineer, tech lead and cloud services specialist in Italy, UK, Portugal and Germany. He lives in Berlin and works remotely as principal cloud architect for Funambol. Location-based services and relational databases are his main working interests. He is a AWS Data Hero.

Jared Ruckle - Cloud Editor @ InfoQ; Product Marketing @HashiCorp. Jared has over 20 years experience in product marketing and product management. He has worked at numerous IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS companies, including VMware, Pivotal, and CenturyLink. Currently, Jared is director of product marketing at HashiCorp.

Aditya Kulkarni - Blogger, Reader, Iteration Manager at Tenerity, and DevOps Editor @InfoQ. Starting from the developer role, Aditya has evolved into the management domain. Having worked with organization on their journey of agility, Aditya has kept in touch with the technical side of things.

Steef-Jan Wiggers - Technical Integration Architect at HSO, Microsoft Azure MVP and Cloud Lead Editor @InfoQ. His current technical expertise focuses on integration platform implementations, Azure DevOps, and Azure Platform Solution Architectures. Steef-Jan is a board member of the Dutch Azure User Group, a regular speaker at conferences and user groups, writes for InfoQ, and Serverless Notes. Furthermore, Microsoft has recognized him as Microsoft Azure MVP for the past eleven years.

Daniel Byrant - DevRel @ Ambassador Labs | InfoQ News Manager | QCon PC. His current technical expertise focuses on DevOps tooling, cloud/container platforms and microservice implementations. Daniel is a leader within the London Java Community (LJC), contributes to several open source projects, writes for well-known technical websites such as InfoQ, O'Reilly, and DZone, and regularly presents at international conferences such as QCon, JavaOne, and Devoxx.

Helen Beal - DevOps speaker, writer, strategic advisor, and InfoQ DevOps Editor. Herfocus is on helping organisations optimise the flow from idea to value realisation through behavioural, interaction based and technology improvements.

Rupert Field - Delivery Lead @Duffle-bag Consulting and DevOps Editor @InfoQ. He loves learning about technology and helping people harness it to fix problems. His experience includes defining, designing and delivering technology team strategy. This includes delivering coaching, training, operating model design and business transformation.

Shaaron A Alvares - Editor at InfoQ for DevOps, Culture & Methods | Agile Coach. She is Certified Agile Leadership, Certified Agile Coach from the International Consortium for Agile, and Agile Certified Practitioner, with a global work experience in technology and organizational transformation. She introduced lean agile product and software development practices within various global Fortune 500 companies in Europe, such as BNP-Paribas, NYSE-Euronext, ALCOA Inc. and has led significant lean agile and DevOps practice adoptions and transformations at Amazon.com, Expedia, Microsoft, T-Mobile. Shaaron published her MPhil and PhD theses with the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS)

Matt Campbell - Lead Editor, DevOps | Engineering Director @ D2L, an education technology company, responsible for their Infrastructure and Cloud platform teams. His area of focus is DevOps and SRE and implementing these at enterprise scale. He also instructs programming courses with Conestoga College.

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DevOps and Cloud InfoQ Trends Report - July 2021 - InfoQ.com

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GOOGL: 3 Top Cloud Stocks to Buy This Summer. – StockNews.com

Posted: at 12:44 am

Cloud computing has been in the limelight since last year, aided by the worldwide adoption of remote working and learning. The significant increase in employee productivity and relatively lower overhead costs delivered by remote working structures have incentivized major businesses to adapt to these structures, which are underpinned by cloud computing technologies. A recent CNBC survey revealed that 45% of the companies are planning to adopt a hybrid working model in the second half of 2021.

Furthermore, the threatening Delta variant of COVID-19 is expected to further delay the reopening of offices, keeping fully remote or hybrid working structures as the norm in the coming months. This, coupled with the gradual 5G rollout, should drive spending on cloud services. Worldwide spending on public cloud services is expected to increase 23.1% year-over-year to $332.30 billion in 2021.

Given this backdrop, we think established cloud computing companies Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL), Salesforce.com, inc. (CRM) and Workday, Inc. (WDAY) could be ideal bets now.

Click here to check out our Cloud Computing Industry Report for 2021

Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL)

GOOGL is one of the most popular technology companies in the world. Ranked #9 on the Fortune 500 list, the company operates through three segmentsGoogle Services, Google Cloud, and Other Bets.

On July 8, GOOGL announced plans to acquire Japanese smartphone start-up, Pring. Valued at more than 20 billion ($181.66 million), the acquisition will help GOOGL gain access to the Japanese smartphone market.

GOOGLs cloud segment this month unveiled new solutions developed alongside AT&T, Inc. (T). Ts 5G solutions combined with Google Cloud technologies are expected to facilitate new customer experiences and business services, which should make it highly demanded.

On June 30, GOOGLs cloud services segment partnered with one of Belgiums largest retailers, Carrefour Belgium, to support the latters digital transformation. This demonstrated GOOGLs immense market reach in the cloud computing segment.

GOOGLs revenues increased 34% year-over-year to $55.31 billion in its fiscal first quarter, ended March 31. Its operating profit grew 106.1% from its year-ago value to $16.44 billion, while its net income improved 162.3% year-over-year to $17.93 billion. Its EPS increased 166.4% from its year-ago value to $26.29.

A $19.21 consensus EPS estimate for the fiscal second quarter (ended June 2021) represents an 89.6% improvement year-over-year. The company has an impressive earnings surprise history; it beat the Streets EPS estimates in each of the trailing four quarters. In addition, analysts expect its revenues to come in at $56.02 billion in the about-to-be-reported quarter, indicating a 46.3% rise from the same period last year. Over the past year, the stock has gained 63.63% to close Fridays trading session at $2,539.40.

GOOGLs POWR Ratings reflect this promising outlook. The stock has an overall B rating, which translates to Buy in our proprietary rating system. The POWR Ratings are calculated considering 118 different factors, with each factor weighted to an optimal degree.

GOOGL has an A grade for Sentiment, and B for quality. Of the 74 stocks in the Internet industry, it is ranked #1.

To see additional GOOGL ratings for Growth, Value, Momentum, and Stability, click here.

Salesforce.com, inc. (CRM)

CRM primarily develops customer relationship management-related cloud computing services. Its popular software includes Sales Cloud, Services Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and Customer 360 platform. The companys primary supply channels involve direct sales, systems integrators, and consulting firms.

On July 14, CRM launched a new industry-specific applicationAdvertising Sales Management for Media Cloud. It is designed to help companies manage their advertising revenues through a consolidated platform, thereby eliminating the hassles of managing multiple databases.

On June 29, CRM announced an offering of $8 billion of senior notes in multiple tranches. The company plans to use the offerings proceeds to fund its acquisition of Slack Technologies and finance its sustainability projects.

On June 23, CRM expanded its partnership with Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) to integrate CRM and Amazon Web Services (AWS) capabilities to develop and deploy new business applications that aid digital transformation. Regarding this, CRM Chair and CEO Marc Benioff said, This is a milestone partnership for the technology industry and one that will enable our customers to experience an even more powerful Salesforce Customer 360 and achieve a new level of success in their business.

In its fiscal first quarter, ended April 30, 2021, CRMs net sales increased 23% year-over-year to $5.96 billion. This can be attributed to a 21% rise in subscription and support revenues and a 47% rise in professional services and other revenues. Its gross profit stood at $4.41 billion, up 22.1% from its year-ago value. Its net income and EPS increased 373.7% and 354.5%, respectively, from the same period last year to $469 million and $0.50.

The Street expects CRMs revenues to rise 22.3% year-over-year to $26 billion in the current year. The companys EPS is expected to increase at a 10.1% CAGR per annum over the next five years. Furthermore, CRM beat the consensus EPS estimates in each of the trailing four quarters. Shares of CRM have gained 28.5% over the past year and 11.9% over the past six months.

CRM has an overall B rating, which equates to Buy in our POWR Ratings system. In addition, it has a B grade for Quality and Sentiment. CRM is ranked #25 of 132 stocks in the Software Application industry.

In total, we rate CRM on eight different levels. Beyond what weve stated above, we have also given CRM grades for Momentum, Value, Stability, and Growth. Click here to view all CRM ratings.

Workday, Inc.(WDAY)

WDAY enterprise delivers cloud applications mainly for financial and human capital management. It offers Workday Financial Management, Workday Human Capital Management, and Other Applications. The companys cloud computing software is highly demanded in the healthcare, financial and higher education industries.

On June 8, WDAY announced its plans to offer Workday Payroll for Australia and Germany. The rising demand for payroll across the EMEA and Asia-Pacific regions should boost WDAYs market reach substantially.

On July 14, WDAY inked a partnership with the countrys fifth-largest accounting firm (by revenues) RSM US LLP, to scale the latters rapidly growing business and improve customer satisfaction. This demonstrates WDAYs standing as a leading cloud financial management service provider.

WDAYs revenues increased 15.4% year-over-year to $1.18 billion in its fiscal first quarter ended April 30. This can be attributed to a 17% rise in subscription revenues over this period. Its operating cash flow increased 71.6% from the same period last year to $452.40 million.

Analysts expect WDAYs revenues to increase 16.5% in the current year and 18.1% next year. The companys EPS is expected to rise at a 16.3% CAGR over the next five years. Also, WDAY has an impressive earnings surprise history; it beat the Streets EPS estimates in each of the trailing four quarters. WDAY has gained 25.2% over the past year to close Fridays trading session at $227.53.

WDAYs strong fundamentals are reflected in its POWR Ratings. The stock has an overall B rating, which equates to Buy in our POWR Ratings system. WDAY has an A grade for Growth and a B for Sentiment. It is ranked #27 in the Software Application industry.

View additional WDAY ratings for Value, Momentum, Stability, and Quality here.

Click here to check out our Cloud Computing Industry Report for 2021

GOOGL shares were trading at $2,484.64 per share on Monday afternoon, down $54.76 (-2.16%). Year-to-date, GOOGL has gained 41.77%, versus a 13.80% rise in the benchmark S&P 500 index during the same period.

Aditi is an experienced content developer and financial writer who is passionate about helping investors understand the dos and don'ts of investing. She has a keen interest in the stock market and has a fundamental approach when analyzing equities. More...

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Rep. Connolly Hopeful FedRAMP Bill Will ‘Finally’ Pass in 2021 – MeriTalk

Posted: at 12:44 am

The FedRAMP Authorization Act sponsored by Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., has been nearly four years in the making without crossing the goal line. But after the House approved the bill earlier this year, Rep. Connolly said today that the House is working in lockstep with Senate colleagues to hopefully pass the bill in 2021.

While this has been a long journey, Im happy to say that with new leadership in the Senate, were now working in lockstep with our colleagues over there to try and finally get this bill on a markup in the Senate or attached to this years National Defense Authorization Act, Rep. Connolly said today during a GovForward event.

The FedRAMP Authorization Act was the first bill on the floor of the House of Representatives in the 117th Congress, and it passed unanimously. However, the measure has yet to gain much traction in the Senate. The House-approved bill was sent to the Senate in early January, and referred to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Rep. Connolly noted the legislation is the product of years of working with the General Services Administration (GSA), Office of Management and Budget, industry stakeholders, and his colleagues on the other side of the aisle to ensure the bill makes needed improvements to the FedRAMP program, and gives the program flexibility to grow and adapt to myriad future changes in cloud technologies.

This bill is essential, and will demonstrate a universal commitment to FedRAMP and the accelerated adoption of secure cloud computing technologies a vital component of the broader Federal IT modernization effort, Rep. Connolly said during the event.

Specifically, the bill would reduce duplication of security assessments and avoid unnecessary costs by establishing a presumption of adequacy for cloud technologies that have already received FedRAMP certification, Rep. Connolly said.

Service providers will no longer have to start from scratch at each and every Federal agency to demonstrate the viability of their products and services, he explained. The bill would also facilitate agency reuse of cloud technologies that have already received an authorization to operate by requiring agencies to check a centralized and secure repository and to the extent practicable, reuse any existing assessment before conducting an independent one of their own.

Additionally, the bill would require GSA to automate security assessments and reviews. It would also establish a Federal Secure Cloud Advisory Committee for effective and ongoing coordination in acquisition and adoption of cloud products by the Federal government.

Finally, Connolly said the bill would authorize $20 million annually for the FedRAMP program, which would go towards resources to increase the number of secure cloud technologies.

This bill supports a critical need to keep our nations information secure in cloud environments, Rep. Connolly said. Its an improvement for agencies, for our private sector partners, and for taxpayers.

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Healthcare Cloud Computing Market Research Report, Size, Share, Trends, Growth, Top Key Players, Applications, Types, Product and Industry Analysis…

Posted: at 12:44 am

The global healthcare cloud computing market is estimated to reach USD 90.46 Billion by 2027, according to a current analysis by Emergen Research.

The study on the Healthcare Cloud Computing market applies research methodologies including the investigation and interview techniques to weigh up on the product price, revenue, import and export status and prouction capability of the manufacturers operating in the Healthcare Cloud Computing market for the forecast period, 2020 2027. The market intelligence report focuses primarily on the market size, share and growth rate of the industry during the estimated period with the aim to help business owners make a wise investment decision and chalk out a blueprint of profitable business strategies.

Key questions answered in the report

What will be the market size in terms of value and volume in the next five years?

Which segment is currently leading the market?

In which region will the market find its highest growth?

Which players will take the lead in the market?

What are the key drivers and restraints of the markets growth?

You Can Download Free Sample PDF Copy of Healthcare Cloud Computing Market at https://www.emergenresearch.com/request-sample/425

Research Methodology

Data triangulation and market breakdown

Research assumptions Research data including primary and secondary data

Primary data includes breakdown of primaries and key industry insights

Secondary data includes key data from secondary sources

Key Highlights of Report

In November 2020, Cisco Systems Inc. declared to acquire Banzai Cloud Ltd. The acquisition would help Cisco build a cloud-native networking solution with the support from Banzai in terms of teams and assets.

The private cloud segment is projected to lead the global healthcare cloud computing market, with a market share of 18.0% during the forecast period. In private clouds, the capacity to track and preserve sensitive patient data persists within the organization. This would drive the segment in the near future.

The Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) segment is expected to expand substantially during the forecast period. Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) services in cloud are easily featured as well as interpreted by users through a web browser.

The pay-as-you-go model segment is expected to hold the largest market share during the forecast period. The most significant benefit of this model is that facilities or equipment are accessible and the expense is calculated within the reservation phase.

The North America region is expected to hold the largest share of the global healthcare cloud computing market during the forecast period. The continuing developments in technologies in cloud computing applications for healthcare also bolstered the growth of healthcare providers.

Key market participants are Koninklijke Philips NV, Microsoft Corporation, Cisco Systems Inc., Infosys Limited, Omnicell, Inc., CitiusTech Inc., Salesforce.com, Inc., Sectra AB, Allscripts Healthcare Solutions, Inc., and International Business Machines Corporation (IBM).

Get access to FREE Sample PDF Copy of Healthcare Cloud Computing Market at https://www.emergenresearch.com/request-sample/425

Regional scope- North America; Europe; Asia Pacific; Central & South America; MEA

Cloud Type Outlook (Revenue, USD Billion; 20172027)

Hybrid Cloud

Private Cloud

Public Cloud

Service Outlook (Revenue, USD Billion; 20172027)

Platform-as-a-Service

Infrastructure-as-a-Service

Software-as-a-Service

Application Outlook (Revenue, USD Billion; 20172027)

Non-clinical Information Systems

Clinical Information Systems

Price Model Outlook (Revenue, USD Billion; 20172027)

Pay-as-you-go

Spot Pricing

End-user Outlook (Revenue, USD Billion; 20172027)

Healthcare Payers

Healthcare Providers

The industry experts have left no stone unturned to identify the major factors influencing the development rate of the Healthcare Cloud Computing industry including various opportunities and gaps. A thorough analysis of the micro markets with regards to the growth trends in each category makes the overall study interesting. When studying the micro markets the researchers also dig deep into their future prospect and contribution to the Healthcare Cloud Computing industry.

Read more@ https://www.emergenresearch.com/industry-report/healthcare-cloud-computing-market

Table of Content

Chapter 1. Methodology & Sources

1.1. Market Definition

1.2. Research Scope

1.3. Methodology

1.4. Research Sources

1.4.1. Primary

1.4.2. Secondary

1.4.3. Paid Sources

1.5. Market Estimation Technique

Chapter 2. Executive Summary

2.1. Summary Snapshot, 2019-2027

Chapter 3. Key Insights

Chapter 4. Healthcare Cloud Computing Market Segmentation & Impact Analysis

4.1. Healthcare Cloud Computing Market Material Segmentation Analysis

4.2. Industrial Outlook

4.2.1. Market indicators analysis

4.2.2. Market drivers analysis

4.2.2.1. Stringent environmental regulations

4.2.2.2. Rising need to reduce bacterial or algal contamination in water systems

4.2.2.3. Increasing demand for biocides for municipal water treatment

4.2.3. Market restraints analysis

4.2.3.1. Fluctuating prices of raw material

4.2.3.2. Present challenging economic conditions due to the pandemic

4.3. Technological Insights

4.4. Regulatory Framework

4.5. Porters Five Forces Analysis

4.6. Competitive Metric Space Analysis

4.7. Price trend Analysis

4.8. Covid-19 Impact Analysis

Chapter 5. Healthcare Cloud Computing Market By Application Insights & Trends, Revenue (USD Million), Volume (Kilo Tons)

Chapter 6. Healthcare Cloud Computing Market By Product type Insights & Trends Revenue (USD Million), Volume (Kilo Tons)

Chapter 7. Healthcare Cloud Computing Market Regional Outlook

Chapter 8. Competitive Landscape

Continued

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Mars . Signs of Life on Mars? NASA’s Perseverance Rover Begins the Hunt – Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Posted: at 12:43 am

The Science Team

While the rover has significant autonomous capabilities, such as driving itself across the Martian landscape, hundreds of earthbound scientists are still involved in analyzing results and planning further investigations.

There are almost 500 people on the science team, Beegle said. The number of participants in any given action by the rover is on the order of 100. Its great to see these scientists come to agreement in analyzing the clues, prioritizing each step, and putting together the pieces of the Jezero science puzzle.

That will be critical when the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover collects its first samples for eventual return to Earth. Theyll be sealed in superclean metallic tubes on the Martian surface so that a future mission could collect them and send back to the home planet for further analysis.

Despite decades of investigation on the question of potential life, the Red Planet has stubbornly kept its secrets.

Mars 2020, in my view, is the best opportunity we will have in our lifetime to address that question, said Kenneth Williford, the deputy project scientist for Perseverance.

The geological details are critical, Allwood said, to place any indication of possible life in context, and to check scientists ideas about how a second example of lifes origin could come about.

Combined with other instruments on the rover, the detectors on the arm, including SHERLOC and WATSON, could make humanitys first discovery of life beyond Earth.

More About the Mission

A key objective for Perseverances mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planets geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust).

Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.

The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASAs Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.

JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.

For more about Perseverance:

mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/

and

nasa.gov/perseverance

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News . Journey to the Center of Mars With the InSight Lander Team – Jet Propulsion Laboratory

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More About the Mission

JPL manages InSight for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. InSight is part of NASA's Discovery Program, managed by the agency's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built the InSight spacecraft, including its cruise stage and lander, and supports spacecraft operations for the mission.

A number of European partners, including France's Centre National d'tudes Spatiales (CNES) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR), are supporting the InSight mission. CNES provided the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) instrument to NASA, with the principal investigator at IPGP (Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris). Significant contributions for SEIS came from IPGP; the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany; the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) in Switzerland; Imperial College London and Oxford University in the United Kingdom; and JPL. DLR provided the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3) instrument, with significant contributions from the Space Research Center (CBK) of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Astronika in Poland. Spain's Centro de Astrobiologa (CAB) supplied the temperature and wind sensors.

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New Images of Mars From Chinas Zhurong Rover – SciTechDaily

Posted: at 12:43 am

On May 14th, 2021, the China National Space Agency (CNSA) achieved another major milestone when the Tianwen-1 lander successfully soft-landed on Mars, making China the second nation in the world to land a mission on Mars and establish communications from the surface. Shortly thereafter, China National Space Agency (CNSA) shared the first images taken by the Tianwen-1 lander.

By May 22nd, 2021, the Zhurong rover descended from its lander and drove on the Martian surface for the first time. Since then, the rover has spent 63 Earth days conducting science operations on the surface of Mars and has traveled over 450 meters (1475 feet). On Friday, July 9th, and again on July 15th, the CNSA released new images of the Red Planet that were taken by the rover as it made its way across the surface.

Since the rover deployed to the surface of Mars, it has been traveling southward to explore and inspect the terrain and has taken daily images of rocks, sand dunes, and other features using its Navigation and Topography Cameras (NaTeCam). Meanwhile, other instruments like the Mars Rover Penetrating Radar (RoPeR), Mars Rover Magnetometer (RoMAG), Mars Climate Station (MCS) have also been collecting data on Mars magnetic field, weather, and subsurface.

Whenever the rover came across notable landforms, it relied on its Mars Surface Compound Detector (MarSCoDe) and Multispectral Camera (MSCam) to carry out fixed-point scans to determine their composition. Among the new images are the two Martian rocks shown above (courtesy of CNSA via Xinhuanet) that revealed the rocks texture features, the thick layers of dust covering them, and impressions left by the ruts of the rover.

Other images (shown below, also from CNSA via Xinhuanet) include a landscape shot that was taken by Zhurong on June 26th, the rovers 42nd day on the Martian surface (Sol 42). On this day, the rover arrived in a sandy area and took images of a red dune located roughly 6 meters (~20 ft) away. As you can see (top gallery image), the dune has several rocks strewn about it, the one directly ahead of Zhurong measuring 34 cm (13.4 inches) wide.

The next image (bottom left) was taken on July 4th, Zhurongs 50th day on the Martian surface (Sol 50), after the rover drove to the south side of the dune which measures 40 m (~130 ft) long, 8 m (26.25 ft) wide and 0.6 m high (2 ft). The fifth and final landscape image (bottom right) was taken when the Zhurong rover was at a distance of 210 m (690 ft) from its landing site and 130 m (~425 ft) from the landers back cover and parachute.

These components were part of the Tianwen-1 missions Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL) module. Whereas the back cover ensured that the rover and lander safely made it through deep-space and survived the turbulent ride through Mars atmosphere, the parachute was what allowed for their controlled descent through the atmosphere so they could make a soft landing.

These components are just visible in the upper right corner of the top image while a cluster of stones of various shapes is visible on the left. More recent images acquired by the rover were released on July 15th, 2021, which showed the rover inspecting the back cover and parachute more closely (see below). The first image (top left) was acquired three days prior and shows these two components on the rovers left side as it continued on its southbound patrol.

As the CNSA indicated in a press statement that was released along with the images:

The picture shows the full view of the parachute and the complete back after aerodynamic ablation. Cover structure, the attitude control engine diversion hole on the back cover is clearly identifiable, the rover is about 30 meters away from the back cover and about 350 meters away from the landing site during imaging.

The second and third images (black and white) were taken by the front and rear obstacle avoidance cameras as the rover made its approach and departure from the back cover and chute. The fourth image shows the parachute after it was deployed during the landers descent over Utopia Planitia (where it landed) on May 15th. Yet another image was released by the CNSA the following day, which shows Tianwen-1s landing site.

This image was taken by the orbiter element of the mission on June 2nd, days after the lander and rover element safely landed. The locations of the lander, the rover, the parachute, and back cover, and the heat shield are all indicated in white. The two white dots at the top right corner are the lander and rover, the parachute and back cover are almost directly beneath it (the elongated white mark being the chute) while the heat shield is at the bottom right.

The Tianwen-1 mission was quite the feather in the cap of the CNSA, and not just because it was Chinas first mission to Mars. By successfully deploying this mission, China became the first nation to reach Mars with a mission that included an orbiter, lander, and rover element. Prior to this, every space agency that successfully sent a robotic mission to Mars began with orbiters, followed by surface missions landers first, then landers with rovers.

On top of that, the Zhurong rover makes China the second nation in the world (after the US) to land and operate a rover on the Martian surface. This will be followed in the near future by the Rosalind Franklin rover (part of the ESA-Roscosmos ExoMars program) which will launch from Baikonur Cosmodrome sometime this September and is expected to arrive at Mars on June 10th, 2023.

These missions will help pave the way for human exploration, which China is now hoping to do (alongside NASA) during the 2030s. Much like all the crewed lunar missions planned for the near future, the human exploration of Mars is expected to be a multinational affair!

Originally published on Universe Today.

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WeatherTalk: There is a new space race to Mars and beyond – The Dickinson Press

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"That's one small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind," said Neil Armstrong on this date in 1969 in the gender biased language of the era. There is a new space race today. A Chinese rocket has landed on Mars and deposited a rover vehicle capable of doing all sorts of exciting science. This means that the Americans are no longer the only nation to have sent a vehicle to another planet. More significantly, the Chinese have announced their plan to send people to the Martian surface in the year 2033 and to eventually build a base there.

Meanwhile, NASA, in conjunction with Elon Musk and other contemporary space cowboys, have plans to build an inhabited base on the Moon and, eventually, on Mars. At stake in this new space race: space mining rights, being the first to discover new science, and just being first; one thing that has not changed since the 60s.

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Curiosity rover might be sitting near microbe ‘burps’ on Mars – Engadget

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NASA's Curiosity rover might be sitting near a wealth of information that might hint at signs of life on Mars. New Scientist and Space.com note that Caltech researchers have identified six locations for methane "burps" (that is, emissions blips) on the planet, including one just a few dozen miles west southwest from Curiosity. Ideally, the rover could investigate the emissions and determine their true nature.

Curiosity has detected the methane spurts six times since landing on Mars in 2012, but scientists haven't had success locating their sources until now. Europe's Trace Gas Orbiter has also failed to spot methane at atmospheric levels. The Caltech team narrowed down the on-the-ground sources by modelling methane particles as packets and tracing their routes based on historical wind velocity.

The research hasn't yet been peer-reviewed, so we'd take it with a grain of caution. It's also entirely possible that the gas has non-organic origins. Even if that's the case, though, the burps could be tied to geological activity linked to liquid water. Early Mars reportedly held massive amounts of water even if there's no active water at these sources, a close-up study could help illustrate Mars' history.

All products recommended by Engadget are selected by our editorial team, independent of our parent company. Some of our stories include affiliate links. If you buy something through one of these links, we may earn an affiliate commission.

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We can put a vehicle on Mars. Can’t we fix voting integrity? – theday.com

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We have a Rover driving around Mars sending us sights and sounds of an alien world that is truly a technical marvel. So why, with this level of technology,cant we devise a hi-tech voting system?

Instead of expanding a stone-age, paper mail-in voter system presently, asnowunder consideration, why not voter ID cards with multiple security features similar to credit cards thathave been protecting untold trillions of transactions securely for years? Voters could cast their ballots securely and then also be able to check their ballots integrity throughout the election process.

A secure, digital, and transparent voting system could eliminate our present-day, divisive suspicions of voter fraud and conspiracies born out of archaic, paper ballots. Or do we want to retain our ancient, stone-age, mail-in systems with their inherent risks of suspicious, smoke-and-mirrors, behind-the-curtain fraud and nefarious activities that can further inflame, weaken, and split our nation apart?

We are preparing to spend trillions on infrastructure and national security, but we are unable or unwilling to address and develop a more secure and transparent voting system that is absolutely vital to our precious democracy?!

John Weiglhofer

Hadlyme

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