Monthly Archives: May 2022

‘It’s because he took us out of EU!’ Labour baroness says Brexit bashing behind Boris coup – Express

Posted: May 27, 2022 at 2:18 am

Baroness Hoey has robustly defended Boris Johnson in the House of Lords in the midst of the Partygate storm threatening to sweep the Prime Minister out of Number 10. The Brexit supporting peer took a firm stand against the lockdown breaching parties in Whitehall and the behaviour of the Prime Minister himself, but also delivered a clear slap down on critics of the Prime Minister who she believed held a grudge over Mr Johnson's leading role in Brexit.

Ms Hoey told the House of Lords: "The public were clearly very, very angry when they first heard about what had been going on in Whitehall.

"Now we've had to Sue Gray report and I commend her diligence, we've had the full apology from the Prime Minister, we've had the Metropolitan Police Report, and we've seen changes in Downing Street.

"I think outside this place and perhaps some elements for the media, many, many elements of the public, probably the majority of the public not really do want to draw a line under all of this so that we can get on with the issues that are really affecting the country."

She then turned to the Government Minister and asked: "Does she agree with me that there will be some people who will never ever give up criticising the Prime Minister because they don't like the fact that the Prime Minister took us out of the European Union, and that is still underplaying a huge amount of now, particularly in some elements of the media?"

Mr Johnson's hopes of drawing a line under the partygate row suffered a blow on Thursday after a string of Tory MPs called for him to quit in the wake of Sue Gray's report.

Four Tories have gone public since the publication of the damning report which laid bare the extent of raucous behaviour in No 10 at a time when millions were forced to cut off contact with loved ones during coronavirus lockdowns.

Former minister Stephen Hammond and fellow MPs David Simmonds and John Baron spoke out on Thursday, following Julian Sturdy who demanded MrJohnson's exit on Wednesday.

Mr Hammond said he "cannot and will not defend the indefensible" and indicated he had sent a letter of no confidence to the Tory backbench 1922 Committee.

Mr Simmonds, the MP for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner - his constituency is next to MrJohnson's - said: "It is clear that while the Government and our policies enjoy the confidence of the public, the Prime Minister does not.

"Accordingly, it is time for him to step down so that new leadership can take forward the important work of the Government in ensuring that our people and country prosper."

The publication of Ms Gray's report followed the conclusion of the Metropolitan Police's Operation Hillman investigation into parties in No 10 and Whitehall.

The force handed out 126 fines for rule breaches in No 10 and Whitehall, with the Prime Minister receiving a single fixed-penalty notice for his birthday party in June 2020.

Read this article:

'It's because he took us out of EU!' Labour baroness says Brexit bashing behind Boris coup - Express

Posted in Brexit | Comments Off on ‘It’s because he took us out of EU!’ Labour baroness says Brexit bashing behind Boris coup – Express

Ex-Brexit chief David Davis boasts he forced previous PM out: "I knew my resignation would be the end for May" – City A.M.

Posted: at 2:18 am

Thursday 26 May 2022 9:57 am

Former Brexit secretary David David claimed when he resigned from the cabinet in July 2018, I knew that it would be the end for Theresa May as PM.

The veteran politician and Brexiteer hit out at the former leader, while also taking a swipe at the current resident of Number 10, reiterating his call for Boris Johnson to quit over lockdown breaches.

Speaking to former MP Gloria De Piero on GB News, Davis said he stepped down as Brexit secretary after the former PM conceded ground to the EU during negotiations over the north and Republic of Ireland.

Her plans promoted a UK-EU free trade area and closely-linked customs relationship, and at the time, he said she was giving away too much and too easily in talks.

What she conceded, in my view, wasnt the first thing she did to undermine our negotiations, but this one would cripple our negotiations.

It would mean wed have to keep Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland on a par, which meant we couldnt do all the things we wanted to do elsewhere. It handicapped everything.

And I very nearly resigned on the spot, there and then. But I thought no, Im going to try, I owe her the duty of loyalty and the country the duty of loyalty to try at all costs to make it work.

The six months between that point and when I actually did resign was the hardest struggle of my life, he said. Trying to pull the policy back, you know.

In the extended interview, he spoke about his decision to quit in 2018, which was shortly followed by resignations of Boris Johnson and Steve Baker.

I won the first two rounds of arguments in January and February, so much so that then she and Number Ten started doing a completely separate policy from me which, when I discovered it, I thought that that was it, that I could do no more, and I resigned.

When I resigned, Im afraid I knew that it would be the end of her Prime Ministership.

In fact, it took longer than I thought, it took two years.

But it was obvious: the moment I went, she was going to fall. And that was a necessary part because we would not have delivered Brexit if I had stayed.

Davis also stood by his infamous decision to tell the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, In the name of God, go, during Prime Ministers questions.

Asked if he regretted his words in January amid the Partygate scandal, he said: No, not at all.

When he appeared to blame his subordinates. All this they didnt tell me, all that sort of stuff, he decided to call him out publicly.

Davis also hit out at Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnsons former right-hand-man, who quit Number 10 before becoming a whistleblower about rule-breaking.

He called Cummings jibe that he was thick as mince and lazy as a toad was not very original.

Read more from the original source:

Ex-Brexit chief David Davis boasts he forced previous PM out: "I knew my resignation would be the end for May" - City A.M.

Posted in Brexit | Comments Off on Ex-Brexit chief David Davis boasts he forced previous PM out: "I knew my resignation would be the end for May" – City A.M.

Boris Johnson Vows to Solve Northern Ireland’s Brexit-related Kosher Food Shortages – Jewish Exponent

Posted: at 2:18 am

By Cnaan Liphshiz

During a visit to a synagogue in Belfast, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson promised to fix bureaucratic complications connected to Brexit that have caused kosher food shortages in Northern Ireland.

There is no need for laborious checks on products uniquely important to the Jewish community being moved from Great Britain into Northern Ireland, Johnson said on Monday. We will see this situation resolved.

Northern Ireland has remained in the European Unions single market despite the fact that the United Kingdom, of which Northern Ireland is a part, pulled out of the bloc in 2020. This fact hascomplicated shipments of food and other products from the United Kingdom to Northern Ireland, resulting in kosher food shortages, among other issues.

The Jewish community of Manchester in England is the main kosher food supplier for the Belfast Jewish Community Synagogue, which services that community of a few hundred people.

Continue reading here:

Boris Johnson Vows to Solve Northern Ireland's Brexit-related Kosher Food Shortages - Jewish Exponent

Posted in Brexit | Comments Off on Boris Johnson Vows to Solve Northern Ireland’s Brexit-related Kosher Food Shortages – Jewish Exponent

Brexit contributes to 36% drop in imports of food and live animals from GB – Agriland

Posted: at 2:17 am

Brexit contributed to a reduction in the import of food and live animals from Great Britain, valued at about 1.2 billion in 2021, according to a recently published report from the Irish Maritime Development Office (IMDO).

This represents a decline of 36% in such imports, when compared to the previous year.

The report revealed that Great Britain was the only major import partner to record a decline in import value in 2021.

It noted that the imposition of customs controls on trade between Great Britain and members of the EU Single Market, as a result of Brexit constitute barriers to trade, making it more difficult for Ireland to trade with its largest importing partner. These barriers contributed to the significant decline in imports from Great Britain in 2021.

And it was case of Great Britains loss is Canada and the Netherlands gain.Image source: The Irish Maritime Transport Economist

A closer look at the import categories and from where they came revealed that, in the case of cereals, there was a 36% drop in imports from Great Britain in 2021 when compared to 2020. However, imports of cereals from Canada grew by 34% in the same period.

Imports of vegetables and fruit from Great Britain dropped by 52% from 2020 to 2021, but went up by 42% from the Netherlands.

Food and live animals what is the composition?According to the report, in the food-and-live-animals category, five products consistently make up 90% of the overall grouping: animal feeds; cereals; vegetables and fruit; dairy products and eggs; and sugar products.

According to the report, the value of imports, generally, from Great Britain fell by 13%, or approximately 2.4 billion.

This decline came, predominantly, from categories such as food and live animals, and manufactured goods.Image source: The Irish Maritime Transport Economist

In 2021, imports of food and live animals declined by 8%, generally, equivalent to 740,000 tonnes.

The largest decline was in cereals, which fell by 13%, or 313,000 tonnes.

Imports of vegetables and fruit fell by 9%, or 100,000 tonnes, while imports of dairy products and eggs fell by 15%, or 140,000 tonnes.

When combined, these three products accounted for 75% of the overall decline in this category in 2021.

In all, this is the lowest volume of food and live animal imports since 2016.

Much of this decline was driven by fewer imports of these products from Great Britain in 2021.

Northern Ireland

Outside of construction materials, imports of animal feed increased by 17%from Northern Ireland equivalent to an additional 97,000 tonnes in 2021.

Alongside the significant decline in imports from Great Britain, imports from Northern Ireland in 2021 rose at their fastest pace, however, in more than a decade by 25% or 572,000 tonnes.

This raised the question as to whether some Irish imports from Great Britain were indirectly transiting through Northern Ireland, via Northern Irish ports, the report stated.

Under the Northern Ireland protocol, goods entering Northern Ireland must continue to follow EU product standards, which means Northern Ireland, effectively, remains in the EU Single Market for goods.

Goods arriving in Northern Ireland from Great Britain must submit declarations for those goods and pay an EU tariff/duty, if applicable.

USImports of non-energy products from the US were driven predominantly by animal feed, which grew by over 160,000 tonnes.

The volume of Irish merchandise imports has fluctuated in recent years, according to the report.

In 2018, import volumes rose to record levels, due mainly to a national fodder crisis that necessitated agricultural stockpiling of bulk products such as animal feed.

In 2019, volumes underwent a correction and declined by 5%.

Dry bulk refers to raw materials for industrial or agricultural purposes, such as fertiliser, animal feeds and iron ores.

In the dry bulk sector, one million additional tonnes were handled in 2021 compared to 2007 an increase of 7%.

This has been driven in part by the increase in Irelands population, which accordingto the CSO, is estimated to have increased by 15% between 2007 and 2021.

A larger population will increase the countrys need for essential raw materials in the dry bulk market, such as grains and fertiliser for food production.

Originally posted here:

Brexit contributes to 36% drop in imports of food and live animals from GB - Agriland

Posted in Brexit | Comments Off on Brexit contributes to 36% drop in imports of food and live animals from GB – Agriland

Energy, security, and climate: rethinking the UK’s place within Europe – British Politics and Policy at LSE

Posted: at 2:17 am

Molly Scott Cato discusses the link between post-Brexit energy and security policy, especially in the context of the war in Ukraine.

In the light of Russias war in Ukraine, we are all searching our consciences to ask what we could have done differently to take European history onto a different path. We can find many mistakes made by both the UK and the EU. Merkels policy of peace through trade, though laudable and understandable, underestimated Putins barbarity. Meanwhile, the UK accepted Russian gold and provided a comfortable home for oligarchs, including some of those who were at the centre of the Putin regime.

It was no coincidence that Putin supported Brexit. He rightly saw the EU as a union of independent democratic nations, united in a collaborative project to defend peace in our continent. And he quite rightly saw that as a threat to his authoritarian instincts. We may get frustrated at times about the legalistic nature of EU institutions, but this process makes it simply impossible for leaders to flout their constitutional obligations. And how important it is that the standards are defended strongly now that they are under threat within EUs borders.

Loss of foreign policy cooperation

Brexit makes it clear that we have forgotten that peace in Europe up until now has not been a happy coincidence but was built consciously and deliberately by the founding fathers of the European Union. Foreign policy, external security, and defence cooperation was not explicitly covered by the Trade and Cooperation Agreement. Hence, in the words of the European Commission, since 1 January 2021 there has been no framework in place between the UK and the EU to develop and coordinate joint responses to foreign policy challenges, for instance the imposition of sanctions on third country nationals or economies.

The Withdrawal Agreement came with a Political Declaration setting out an agreed framework for the future UK-EU relationship. In it, both sides committed to establish a broad, comprehensive and balanced security partnership that would allow them to work together on evolving threats, including serious international crime, terrorism, cyber-attacks, disinformation campaigns, hybrid threats, the erosion of the rules-based international order and the resurgence of state-based threats. It provided for both sides to coordinate on sanctions, to share intelligence, to work jointly on a number of issues, andeven for Britain to attend some EU ministerial meetings.But Johnson reneged on that commitment once Brexit was ratified, which is why the Trade and Cooperation Agreement contains no provisions on a security partnership. This is another example of how the ideological narrowness of Brexit has been so damaging since such provisions would have been tailor-made for the situation we are now facing.

We shouldnt exaggerate the situation because some important aspects of foreign and security cooperation did survive into the Trade and Cooperation Agreement, including provisions supporting democracy and the rule of law, others concerning human rights and war crimes, climate change and nuclear non-proflieration. But it is clear that the UK is no longer involved in the formal structures of cooperation. Rather than a treaty-based or institutional framework we are left with informal and ad hoc arrangements.

Of course, much of the narrow defence coordination has always been undertaken by NATO. But I cant be alone in suffering distress to see the UK Foreign Minister travelling to Brussels to visit NATO headquarters but not being part of the Council meeting where the future of our own continent was being shaped. And the emphasis on the role of NATO to the exclusion of the EU is an example of the continuing bias against EU institutions in our media. Because most of the tools actually used in response to the Ukraine crisis have beenEU rather than NATO mechanisms: the successiverounds of sanctions, waiving import duties on Ukrainianproducts, financial assistance, cooperation on welcoming refugees, and so on.The view in some British circles that only NATO matters is plain wrong.

Instead of this detailed and conscientious policy framework that was torched by Brexit, we have the fantasy of Global Britain, with Johnson seeking allies, any allies, who are willing to fill the gap left by his policy of burning bridges with European friends. Given his own willingness to play fast and loose with the constitution and the rule of law, perhaps we should not be surprised that this means cosying up to authoritarian leaders. Indias Prime Minister Modhi is the latest, a leader who shares our own Prime Ministers willingness to shut down opposition and sow division to bolster his own position.

Given that our foreign policy has been rooted in our EU membership for the past 40 years it was always going to be difficult to reimagine it outside that framework. But at least in terms of trade and investment, the world has already delivered its verdict.At an event organised by UK in a Changing Europe, former member of the Bank of Englands Monetary Policy Committee Adam Posen presented some very disturbing statistics:Brexit has reduced UK trade openness indeed it was intended to do just that (see Figure 2 here). Posen also presented data that Brexit has significantly and suddenly reduced FDI inflows and immigration growth. There are really no surprises here and all the economists who had not taken the Brexit shilling predicted this. It was inevitable that deliberately introduced border frictions and higher transport costs would pose new barriers to trade. Posen predicts that FDI inflows are unlikely to return to levels reached in the 1990s and 2000s. That means ever. We have shot ourselves in the foot at just the time when there is increasing competition from Asian countries.

Energy security

The link between this and the war in Ukraine is obvious: our addiction to fossil fuels left us dependent on Putin and gave him the confidence to defy NATO. And of course, we have been funding both his kleptocratic regime and his war in Ukraine. In the first two months of the year, EU countries have sent about a billion euros per day to Russian coffers. In the UK, the failure of energy policy has led to us repeatedly missing climate targets and to domestic consumers facing unpayable bills or even dying as a result of living in cold homes.

But here I think we do have more of a positive future to sketch out. Because making ourselves independent of Russian energy as rapidly as possible gives us another incentive (if one were needed) to rapidly eliminate fossil fuels from our economies. Simon Evans of Carbon Brief has calculated that there are 649 onshore wind and solar projects in the UK that already have planning permission, meaning they could be built rapidly. If they all went ahead, theyd save more gas than we currently import from Russia. He also calculated that Camerons decision to cut green crap now costs each household in England 150 a year: ending onshore wind projects, solar subsidies and energy efficiency schemes has added to inflated bills.

The German Greens negotiated an energy transition as part of the demands from the coalition deal, and Robert Habeck is establishing a super-ministry within the finance ministry to enable Europes largest economy to go fossil free. But war in Ukraine has massively boosted ambition to go much further much faster. The revised German package announced this spring doubles the target for renewable energy from 40% to 80% of the electricity generation mix with renewables being explicitly acknowledged as being a public security requirement for the first time. The countrys Renewable Energy Sources Act also includes a goal for offshore wind energy to reach at least 30 GW by 2030 equivalent to the capacity of 10 nuclear plants and at least 70 GW by 2045.

The European Green Deal is similarly ambitious and has also been given a boost by the Ukraine War. The nature of renewable energy means that cooperation between neighbours with interconnectors to Norway, Belgium, and Ireland already supplying a significant portion of our electricity and us repaying in kind as the souwesterlies cross the continent.

Lets compare this with the flimsy series of UK announcements I hesitate to call an energy strategy. Nothing for people struggling with fuel bills; no wind-farms because Tory backbenchers find them unsightly; and a fake 120m support for nuclear power which will leave us with a big hole in our electricity supply when private finance fails to fill the gaps. This is a political failure.

Meanwhile, in Germany, the super-ministry is now working on legislation to raise the energy efficiency requirement of buildings and reduce emissions from transport. The government has already announced a proposal to introduce a flat-rate public transport fare to address rising cost of living as encourage people away from private transport and towards public transport. For me, the most exciting aspect of Habecks department is that he is taking charge of the transition of not just energy efficiency, energy supply and transport but also Germanys massive and energy-intensive industry. We are going to watch as Germany leads Europe into the green economy of the future while we are languishing in the past.

We have to find a way to build a similar government with similar ambition in the UK. There is a bright future here:

The cheapest energy bill is the one you dont have to pay because your home is so well-insulated that it needs little or no heating.The public agrees: insulating homes is the top public priority with 84% of those surveyed saying this was the best way to reduce the use of Russian gas.

Conclusion

Although it is frightening to be living through a climate emergency, I think this is hopeful note to conclude on. Because tackling the climate crisis makes cooperation inevitable. And it is closely aligned to resist the authoritarian power of those who control fossil fuels, whether in Moscow or Riyadh. But we need to recognise these connections and recognise that our failure to address this crisis is a sign of the malaise of democracy. Without revitalising democracy we cannot address the crises facing us.

___________________

Note: the above is an edited version of the authors Julian Priestley Memorial Lecture.The author wishes to pay tribute to Julian Priestley and the many other British public servants who contributed to shaping the EU and sends thanks to Richard Corbett, Jan Royall, Mike Shackleton and Belinda Pike for their support for the Julian Priestley lectures.

About the Author

Molly Scott Cato is Professor of Green Economics at the University of Roehampton. She was a Green MEP for South West England and Gibraltar from May 2014 until January 2020.

Photo by Andrew Stutesman on Unsplash.

See more here:

Energy, security, and climate: rethinking the UK's place within Europe - British Politics and Policy at LSE

Posted in Brexit | Comments Off on Energy, security, and climate: rethinking the UK’s place within Europe – British Politics and Policy at LSE

What is Cloud Computing? – Security Boulevard

Posted: at 2:17 am

Admit it, youve heard the term cloud computing numerous times, and most of us arent sure about it.

Cloud computing can be defined as the availability of several on-demand computing resources, including servers, data storage devices, computing devices, networking, etc., over the internet that helps businesses reinforce innovation without any hassle.

The concept of cloud computing has offered endless possibilities to businesses since enterprises can avoid several upfront costs, security challenges and can quickly rent access to any application or storage from a cloud provider.

Lets dig deeper into this and understand the role of cloud computing in shaping the future of a digitally-advanced modern world.

The concept of cloud computing is simple you only need to rent and pay for the services you need to run your platform, application, software, or program.

Gone are the days when enterprises invested heavily in building infrastructure, and they had to spend vast sums of money on maintaining those infrastructures. Businesses now prefer renting storage or systems rather than owning them in-house.

Also, cloud providers offer different services that meet the demands of businesses of every size. For instance, an enterprise can choose a storage capacity per their requirements or a computational capacity depending on their computing needs.

An enterprise need not invest in infrastructure; they just need to finalize a cloud vendor and deploy their applications or software programs on the cloud.

In an era where rich consumer experiences backed with robust security are all that a user needs, delivering these kinds of up-to-snuff experiences becomes an uphill battle for businesses.

High maintenance costs of in-house infrastructures and changing demands of services have also contributed to the need for a better flexible way to leverage resources.

Hence, cloud computing seems to be the best option for businesses embarking on a digital transformation journey by renting essential services from cloud vendors that save money and resources and help strengthen overall security.

As a result, more and more businesses are deploying their services and platforms on the cloud as it offers stringent data security and ensures a great user experience at minimum costs compared to in-house deployments.

When we talk about cloud computing architectures, there are mainly four types:

Public clouds are the cloud environments created from information technology infrastructure and not owned by the users. This model offers on-demand infrastructure and computing services managed by a third-party vendor and shared with multiple enterprises. Amazon Web Services (AWS), IBM Cloud, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, etc., are some examples of public clouds.

The cloud environments are dedicated to only a single end-user group or a user offered over the internet or an internal private network for selected users instead of the public.

Multi-cloud can be referred to as using multiple cloud services from various vendors within a single architecture that eventually improves cloud infrastructure capabilities. It can be defined as the distribution of various cloud assets, including software, programs, applications, etc., across various cloud environments.

A hybrid cloud is the cloud architecture in which applications or programs run as a combination of various other environments. These environments are connected through VPNs, LANs, WANs, or APIs.

There are three main types of cloud services:

Platform as a service (PaaS) describes the complete development and deployment environment in the cloud that allows businesses to deliver cloud-based services and applications.

Software as a service (SaaS) is the modern way of offering applications and software programs over the internet like a service. SaaS allows zero maintenance and infrastructure costs since businesses can access services via the internet without having to maintain hardware and software.

Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) can be defined as a type of cloud computing service offering on-demand computational, storage, or network services to businesses based on their diverse needs.

Enterprises can choose any of the services mentioned above based on their unique business requirements.

A single-tenant cloud runs on a dedicated infrastructure. This means that the hardware, storage, and network are dedicated to a single client, and there are no neighbors to share hosted resources with. They may reside in a dedicated offsite data center or with a managed private cloud provider.

In a single-tenancy architecture, each tenant gets their own database. This way, data from each tenant remains separated from the other. Furthermore, the architecture is built such that only one software instance per SaaS server is allowed.

Multi-tenant cloud architecture is a single cloud infrastructure built to serve multiple businesses. The entire system may cover multiple servers and data centers, incorporated into a single database.

Cloud providers offer multi-tenancy as a gateway to share the same application with multiple businesses, on the same hardware, in the same operating environment, and with the same storage mechanism.

Although relying on cloud servers and systems have its own perks; some security risks cant be overlooked.

Businesses need to understand the importance of incorporating a stringent security policy to ensure their sensitive business information remains safe and their crucial consumer data isnt compromised.

Using cloud identity management solutions like LoginRadius CIAM helps businesses stay ahead of the competition by incorporating cutting-edge technologies like multi-factor authentication (MFA), risk-based authentication (RBA), single sign-on (SSO) and more.

Cloud computing has offered endless opportunities to businesses and is becoming the preferred mode of deployment for applications and software services.

The above-mentioned aspects describe how cloud computing could be leveraged by business organizations depending on their diverse needs.

However, when it comes to secure cloud computing, businesses shouldnt forget to incorporate stringent security mechanisms that can handle security vulnerabilities to ensure maximum safety for businesses and end users.

If youre concerned about your clouds security, you can reach us out to find how LoginRadius cloud services can help you secure your business and consumer data.

See the original post:

What is Cloud Computing? - Security Boulevard

Posted in Cloud Computing | Comments Off on What is Cloud Computing? – Security Boulevard

3 Reasons Why We’ve Stopped Talking About Private Cloud Computing – ITPro Today

Posted: at 2:17 am

If you were to list the buzzwords dominating the cloud computing industry today, terms like "multicloud," "hybrid cloud," and "alternative cloud" would probably top it.

But here's one term that may not even make the list: "private cloud."

Related: A Guide to Cloud Architectures: Single Cloud, Multicloud, Poly Cloud and Beyond

Although private cloud architectures were once all the rage, you hear very little about them today. Likewise, major private cloud computing platforms, like OpenStack, don't tend to make many headlines these days.

That's interesting because it's not as if private clouds have gone away. On the contrary, they are alive and well. Platforms such as OpenStack also remain under quite active development, with new features being unveiled regularly.

Related: Lines Between Public, Private, Hybrid Cloud Architectures Are Blurring

So, if the lack of buzz surrounding private cloud isn't due to the death of the private cloud ecosystem, what does explain it? Why have we suddenly stopped talking very much about private cloud computing?

A few factors are likely at play. Let's take a look at each one to gain perspective on the state of private cloud computing as of 2022.

One reason why you hear less and less about private cloud computing today is that the big public clouds haven't found a way to sell private cloud services and so they haven't promoted private cloud in the way they promote other third-party solutions.

It wouldn't make much sense, for example, for public cloud providers to offer something like OpenStack as a service. And, although you can install OpenStack in a public cloud if you want, there are few use cases where you would want to do so. You'd be losing out on many of the privacy and cost benefits of running a private cloud on your own infrastructure, and you'd be duplicating a lot of the features that you could get by using the public cloud directly.

Compare OpenStack in this sense to, say, Kubernetes an open source platform that the public clouds have monetized quite successfully using an SaaS service model and it's easy to see why there is so much hype surrounding Kubernetes in the modern cloud computing industry, but little attention to classic private cloud solutions.

A second major reason why there is not a lot of buzz around private cloud computing at present, I suspect, is that private cloud platforms never really went head-first into the cloud-native computing realm.

What I mean by this is that most private cloud platforms were designed, and remain, solutions primarily for running workloads on bare-metal or virtual servers. They don't target containers, serverless functions, or other more "modern" types of workloads.

To be fair, this is probably because private clouds were conceived before containerization really took off. At the time that systems such as OpenStack were being designed, it was hard to envision a world where so many things would run as microservices and containers.

You certainly can run containers on a private cloud if you want via approaches like Kubernetes integration with OpenStack. But like running OpenStack in a public cloud, there are few obvious use cases for this practice. It would make more sense in most situations just to set up a Kubernetes cluster on its own, without OpenStack.

To put all of this another way, private cloud computing has sort of been left behind as the cloud computing industry as a whole has pivoted toward cloud-native architectures which means containerized, microservices-based architectures over the past several years. That's not due to any fault of the private cloud ecosystem. It's just what happened.

Ten or so years ago, the major talking points for running a private cloud instead of using a public cloud were that public clouds were less secure and they gave users less control.

Those points were mostly valid in the earlier 2010s. Since then, however, public clouds have evolved to become much more secure and flexible. They have built more extensive networking services, enhanced their access control frameworks, rolled out data privacy and compliance, and created sophisticated monitoring and auditing solutions, all of which help secure public cloud workloads. They have also introduced many more types of cloud services, and have given users many more configuration options, than they had in the days when public clouds mostly consisted of VMs, databases, and storage as a service.

Relatedly, the public clouds have also gone head-first into the hybrid cloud world, providing even more possibilities for users to build highly secure and flexible cloud environments using public cloud services and infrastructure.

In these ways, public cloud has become a much more obvious choice even for use cases with high security requirements or bespoke configuration needs. As a result, private cloud is no longer at the center of conversations about cloud security and control.

Private cloud computing is by no means dead. But the days are over when it's a major source of discussion, or when choosing between "private cloud versus public cloud" is a key issue for many businesses. That's mostly because private cloud just hasn't kept up with the other trends dominating the cloud computing industry, and it's hard to see that changing.

See the rest here:

3 Reasons Why We've Stopped Talking About Private Cloud Computing - ITPro Today

Posted in Cloud Computing | Comments Off on 3 Reasons Why We’ve Stopped Talking About Private Cloud Computing – ITPro Today

Cloud computing to unveil the enigmas of our galaxy – EurekAlert

Posted: at 2:17 am

The Galactic RainCloudS project, an initiative led by members of the Faculty of Physics, the Institute of Cosmos Sciences (ICCUB) of the University of Barcelona and the Institute for Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC), was awarded the first position in the framework of the Cloud Funding for Research call of the European project Open Clouds For Research Environments (OCRE).

The project competed against 27 proposals from twelve countries in a wide range of research disciplines. This first edition of Cloud Funding For Research funds the use of commercial computational cloud resources for research. The project counts on the collaboration from the private sector, and specifically from Pervasive Technologies, which brings experience in artificial intelligence and cloud computing; Google, and the computing infrastructure from Google Cloud and Telefnica, which offers experience on cloud resource management.

Professor Xavier Luri, director of ICCUB and principal researcher of the project, highlights that The Galactic RainCloudS project is a pioneer one in Europe in the use of commercial cloud infrastructures for research on astronomy, and results from the will to show the benefits of cloud resource uses for the scientific community.

The key of the project lies in interdisciplinarity: combining the extraordinary volumes of data from the European Space Agency Gaia Satellite with the great computational power and the flexibility of cloud infrastructures, and with the data mining techniques, it will enable the team of the University of Barcelona to study the existing links between past galaxy collisions and star formation in a holistic way, a study in which the Milky Way and satellite galaxies will be an experimental laboratory. Cloud computing is like renting powerful customized computers, for a certain period of time, which will enable us to make the necessary calculations to study the interaction between galaxies, notes Merc Romero, researcher at ICCUB.

The project also includes the development of a system to detect traces of past small galaxy collisions with the halo of our galaxy. Teresa Antoja, researcher at ICCUB, notes that the existence of granularities in the galactic halos is a prediction of the current cosmological model of the formation of our Universe: the active search for substructures of this type in the Gaia data can provide vital information on the history of the Milky Way and on the nature of dark matter.

Artificial intelligence and cloud computing

The participation of the private sector in this project shows the closeness between research and companies in the use of cutting-edge technologies as well as their shared interests. In Pervasive Technologies, we are glad to offer our knowledge on artificial intelligence and cloud computing to a pioneer project in the field of research. We will work to get the highest performance of the cloud infrastructures and artificial intelligence for this project, notes Rodolfo Lomascolo, CEO of Pervasive Technologies.

In order to be successful, the Galactic RainCloudS project must have, among other features, big data infrastructures. The Gaia satellite data hide the answer to many questions we want to solve, but we need the right tools to retrieve them, notes Roger Mor, data scientist at Pervasive Technologies and ICCUB collaborator. He adds: The available big data platforms in the commercial cloud and artificial intelligence services are fundamental tools to find, for instance, whether the interaction of Sagittarius with the Milky Way caused the reignition of the star formation in our galaxy between 5 and 7billion years ago, as stated in some studies.

Enrique Gonzlez Lezana, head of cloud sales specialist at Telefnica Tech, says that Telefnica has accompanied the University of Barcelona in the definition and unfolding of the Google Cloud architecture, where the required hypercomputing solution to work on the Galactic RainCloudS project will be hosted. The unfolded infrastructure he adds will enable the processing and analysis of big data in a flexible, scalable way, adjusted to the required needs of the researchers of the University of Barcelona. Telefnica will work with the UB during the entire process to guarantee the successful implementation of the project with teams specialized on Google Cloud services and technologies.

The project launched this May and will last a year. Galactic RainCLoudS is a necessary step in the transition of the world of research toward the efficient use of cloud computing resources. In this sense, we are pioneers in its use at the University of Barcelona and we hope our experience serves to encourage its use. The research teams needs are becoming more specific, and we are making an effort for this project to open the doors of commercial cloud computing in future projects for all research disciplines, concludes Xavier Luri.

Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.

Read the original:

Cloud computing to unveil the enigmas of our galaxy - EurekAlert

Posted in Cloud Computing | Comments Off on Cloud computing to unveil the enigmas of our galaxy – EurekAlert

FogROS brings robotic cloud computing to the Robot Operating System – TechCrunch

Posted: at 2:17 am

On a recent trip to the Bay Area, I took a few hours to pay a visit to Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research Lab (BAIR). Professor Ken Goldberg walked me around the lab and introduced me to a couple of projects the students have been working on. FogROS immediately grabbed my attention and not just because it sports a name similar to a problematic French cuisine.

Image Credits: Open Robotics

The offering arrives as part of the latest version of the open source Robotic Operating System, ROS 2 Humble Hawksbill the eight release of ROS 2. In a nutshell, it offers a method for offloading robotic tasks to a remote server, using a cloud computing platform like Amazon Web Services. Advances to server-side computing that have made things like cloud gaming possible with minimal latency can also be applied to robotics operations.

Robots are often limited in their onboard computing capabilities due to weight and power requirements, Jeff Ichnowski, a Berkeley post-doc student who headed up the project, told TechCrunch. They also rarely have hardware accelerators like GPUs, TPUS or FPGAs. But many robot algorithms and recent advances (e.g. deep learning) benefit from high-end computers and hardware accelerators. We envision that using cloud computing to speed up slow computations can enable robots to do more things in the same amount of time.

The platform being announced today as part of the new version of ROS is actually FogROS 2. Version one, which was introduced last summer, was an early proof-of-concept. This March, the teams quietly made a preview of FogROS 2 available through GitHub, and today it goes live for all, sporting a number of improvements designed to optimize cloud-based performance.

Image Credits: ROS

Much like playing Xbox games on a smartphone, the basic principle here is supplying a method to execute complex tasks on a robot that doesnt require equally complex on-board processing. If you can complete the task via a remote server, you can save on size, weight and perhaps most importantly cost. The team notes in a recently published paper:

We demonstrate in example applications that the performance gained by using cloud computers can overcome the network latency to significantly speed up robot performance. In examples, FogROS 2 reduces SLAM latency by 50%, reduces grasp planning time from 14s to 1.2s, and speeds up motion planning 28x. When compared to alternatives, FogROS 2 reduces network utilization by up to 3.8x.

Goldberg notes that such a platform could open up even more possibilities for robotics than those listed above. It can potentially benefit other compute-intensive tasks for robots such as stochastic planning and facilitate supervised and unsupervised deep learning of tasks from multiple robots.

Future versions of the program could open things up to additional platforms, including Google Cloud and Azure. The team notes:

In future work, we will continue to add support for additional cloud computing providers and services. We will explore additional models of computing, such as serverless, spot instances, and more. We will also explore extending the networking capabilities of FogROS 2 to allow robots to communicate, collaborate, and share data more easily.

Humble Hawskbill includes a number of additional features a number of additions beyond the cloud computing platform. Per Open Robotics, which is tasked with maintaining ROS, updates include,

The Robot Operating System made its debut at ICRA thirteen years ago this month and Open Robotics celebrated its ten-year company anniversary in March, Open Robotics CEO said in a release tied to the news, so the release of ROS 2 Humble Hawksbill is the perfect opportunity to thank the global community of thousands of developers and millions of users who contribute to and improve the platform.

Go here to read the rest:

FogROS brings robotic cloud computing to the Robot Operating System - TechCrunch

Posted in Cloud Computing | Comments Off on FogROS brings robotic cloud computing to the Robot Operating System – TechCrunch

Cloud computing concentration and systemic risk – Security Boulevard

Posted: at 2:17 am

I came across an interesting blog post over at Finextra which got me thinking about a topic that has been in the back of my mind for a while now the systemic risks of cloud computing concentration. It seems like everyone has made or is making the move from maintaining big, expensive data centers to letting Amazon, Microsoft, or Google worry about the buildings, infrastructure and hardware. I cant say I blame them, especially since getting new servers and other hardware has become a much more difficult and time consuming process now that all of our supply chains seem to have been broken.

But there is a downside as well when one of the big cloud providers is having a bad day, people notice most of the web sites and services we depend on depend on at least one of these providers being up and running. And there have been some major outages in the past year. So far, these outages have not had a systemic impact on the financial system. So far.

While the big cloud providers have all sorts of options to make systems within their perimeters fault tolerant to a degree, we have seen provider level outages which disrupted the Internet. In order to achieve true resilience when one of these events happens, organizations need to be thinking about true multi cloud solutions and there are some significant hurdles which need to be surmounted to do this.

The biggest hurdle is the cloud vendors tempting managed offerings managed Kubernetes clusters, databases, serverless services these are great for standing up new services quickly, but make multi cloud operation difficult, if not impossible. Even if another vendor has the same kind of managed database, it is going to be just different enough from your primary vendor to make porting your systems over expensive and time consuming. This is not a bug it is a feature. Vendors want to lock customers into their product (and who can blame them?).

In the financial world, regulators are taking notice, and institutions and their service providers (as well as cloud providers) need to be thinking about true multi cloud resilience solutions before the next big outage hits.

If you are at the beginning of your cloud journey and your application is critical, design it to be multi cloud from day one this will be waaaaaay less expensive and complex than trying to address the issue after you have a million customers.

When making architectural decisions, consider the benefits and the costs of adopting core services which are specific to your primary cloud provider. Think about how you would/could replicate them in another providers environment BEFORE you get locked in.

Given the increasing automation and speed we are seeing in financial services, it is only a matter of time before there is an event which really galvanizes regulators attention; the time to be thinking about diversifying your cloud infrastructure is now.

*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Al Berg's Paranoid Prose authored by Al Berg. Read the original post at: https://paranoidprose.blog/2022/05/21/cloud-computing-concentration-and-systemic-risk/

More:

Cloud computing concentration and systemic risk - Security Boulevard

Posted in Cloud Computing | Comments Off on Cloud computing concentration and systemic risk – Security Boulevard