Azure

Microsoft has updated the Universal License Terms for Online Services that apply to Azure to indicate that the service cannot be used to mine cryptocurrency.

The change appears in the Acceptable Use Policy section of the license terms that apply to all Microsoft Online Services, but the ban is not an outright one. While the criteria have not been revealed, it seems that there are circumstances in which the company may be willing to lift the ban on cryptomining.

The public cloud has been widely adopted by organizations of all sizes, but a new report from Orca Security reveals some alarming shortcomings in security.

Among the key findings, 72 percent of organizations have at least one Amazon S3 bucket that allows public read access, and 70 percent have a Kubernetes API server that is publicly accessible.

Hyperscale cloud providers continue to dominate the market, with Azure and AWS in use as the major public cloud provider by 82 percent of businesses.

But new research from Civo shows that 34 percent of users feel locked into the services these major providers deliver, with 65 percent of these saying that data transfer costs are too expensive for them to move off their current cloud.

Cloud costs are a measure of the services businesses are using, but they also reflect the wider market and the pricing strategies of providers.

Cloud native service provider Civo has carried out a survey into what businesses are spending on cloud and finds that enterprise cloud costs have risen by 93 percent on average in the past year.

As enterprises have moved to make their systems more accessible to hybrid working during the pandemic, they have increasingly been turning to cloud-based solutions.

But this rapid growth of cloud infrastructure leads to problems managing and optimizing cloud resources. Which is why cloud networking company Alkira is launching a free tool to expose shadow IT and recommend ways to secure, optimize, and boost cloud deployments.

Over 50 percent of DevOps professionals and leaders say their cloud service provider is already a competitive threat to their B2B or B2C business or is expected to become one according to new research.

The study, carried out for cloud provider Linode, by Techstrong Research surveyed over 500 development professionals, managers and senior managers across 20 industries, and finds 75 percent say that their IT infrastructure will be cloud-based by the end of this year.

Microsoft is increasing the support it offers to startups by reducing the eligibility criteria for the Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub as the platform is made generally available. With the move, the company is looking to eliminate the boundaries that stand in the way of getting ideas off the ground.

Now billed as being "open to anyone with an idea", the Founders Hub is a startup ecosystem can be used by innovators regardless of whether they have funding or not. The platform gives users access to up to $150,000 in free Azure credits, free access to GitHub and Microsoft 365 as well as potential for mentorship and guidance from experts. There is also $1,000 of credit and more available with OpenAI.

Developers are increasingly relying on multiple cloud providers for their infrastructure needs. According to a new study though, 27 percent now use an alternative cloud provider like Linode, DigitalOcean, or OVHcloud.

The research, carried out by SlashData as part of its 21st Developer Nation survey, also shows that usage of alternative cloud providers has nearly doubled over the past four years, while usage of the three largest hyperscalers, AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP), has only grown by 18 percent.

A survey of 1,000 developers at businesses of all sizes finds that 37 percent have been stung by unexpected cloud costs in the last 12 months.

The study by cloud-native service provider Civo finds that half of those affected say it was a mistake or configuration change that led to the unexpected cost as opaque and complicated cloud billing hinders proper cost planning.

The majority of businesses believe that large 'hyperscale cloud' providers are overcharging while also pursuing a narrative that their cloud offerings are low cost.

New research from cloud native provider Civo, based on responses from over 1,000 businesses, finds that 82 percent believe large public cloud providers like Amazon AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure overcharge their customers.

Cloud adoption is still rising across all industries but managing costs and regulatory requirements remain top concerns for organizations worldwide.

A new report from O'Reilly finds that 30 percent of all respondents in almost every industry cite managing cost as the most important initiative their company is undertaking related to public cloud adoption.

Going green is driving technology choices, with 68 percent of IT leaders saying they take a cloud vendor's sustainability initiatives into consideration when deciding whether to do business with that vendor.

The latest research from CloudBolt Software used the Pulse platform to survey over 250 tech leaders globally and finds 79 percent of them say they are 'on the hook' to help their companies achieve specific sustainability goals.

It is a couple of weeks since Microsoft almost silently released Windows Server 2022, and now the company has officially announced that the operating system is generally available.

The release comes just over a month before the rollout of Windows 11 begins, and there is a strong focus on security. In particular, there is the addition of encrypted hypertext transfer protocol secure (HTTPS) and AES-256 encryption with support for server message block (SMB) protocol. The latest version of Windows Server also greatly increases hardware support.

Multi-cloud strategies are emerging as a dominant part of the long-term IT roadmap and Microsoft Azure is the most-often commonly cited public cloud vendor among respondents to a new survey.

Hybrid IT services provider Ensono surveyed 500 cloud procurement decision makers across the US and UK and finds that Azure ranks as the most popular public cloud provider among respondents (58 percent), followed by Google Cloud (41 percent), IBM (40 percent) and AWS (38 percent).

Security specialist One Identity is launching its Active Roles and Password Manager products in a software-as-a-service format.

Retaining the full capabilities of One Identity's on-premises solutions, the SaaS offerings are hosted, managed and operated within the One Identity Cloud. There's also a new SaaS-delivered solution, Starling CertAccess, which delivers access request and certification Active Directory (AD) and Azure Active Directory (AAD) in the enterprise.