Articles about Cloud

Salesforce has released new updates for its core products that allow users to use the work collaboration app Quip right from within its own service.

The company purchased Quip for $750 million in August for its collaborative word processing and spreadsheet apps that also include messaging features similar to those offered by Slack.

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Microsoft has announced that its investments in cloud computing in Europe exceeded $3 billion, as it plans to open a new data center in the country next year. Besides making this announcement, Microsoft has also released a new book, entitled A Cloud for Global Good, containing policy recommendations for things like data protection.

The company’s CEO, Satya Nadella, says the investment comes as a result of a "growing demand" from both European customers and partners. "Building a global, trusted, intelligent cloud platform is core to our mission to empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more. There’s never been a better time for organizations across Europe to seize new growth and opportunity with the Microsoft Cloud".

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SAP has officially announced that it has acquired the startup Altiscale, which offers cloud based versions of the Hadoop and Spark open source software for storing, processing and analyzing many different kinds of data.

Rumors of the acquisition began to circulate a month ago when it was believed that SAP intended to purchase the company for over $125 million. Neither company though would confirm or deny the rumors, but during the course of the next few weeks, SAP executives began to comment on the deal.

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Just over half of enterprises (51 percent), which decide to deploy a cloud solution, opt for Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), over Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) or Software-as-a-Service (Saas).

This is according to a new report by Intel DCM, based on a survey of 204 US-based IT managers, directors, software engineers and DevOps responsible for overseeing their enterprise cloud strategy. The report also states that DevOps teams spend most of their time monitoring complex environments in their organization.

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At the Microsoft Ignite event, the Redmond, Wash.-based software giant announced a new cloud partnership with none other than Adobe.  This one works both ways. On one side, Microsoft "will make Adobe Marketing Cloud its preferred marketing service for Dynamics 365 Enterprise edition", and, on the other side, Adobe will "make Microsoft Azure its preferred cloud platform for the Adobe Marketing Cloud, Adobe Creative Cloud and Adobe Document Cloud".

Interestingly enough, Adobe has so far used Amazon Web Services, but it was left unclear if this means Amazon is getting the boot or not.

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Enterprise use of the public cloud is taking off in a big way and it's estimated that by 2018, half of the applications running in public cloud environments will be considered mission-critical by the organizations that use them.

But migrating legacy applications to the cloud can lead to new security risks as how the application is used and hosted could differ from the original deployment.

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Every business is aware that cloud computing has become a globally dominating market. Some estimates have the cloud worth $75 billion, perhaps even more. It is expected to continue growing well beyond that. Still, the growing cloud market faces several challenges in staying competitive.

With exponential growth comes a plethora of challenges. Cloud computing organizations must be able to keep up, as companies, governments, and even business-minded individuals from all over the world represent current and potential customers. Cloud consumers are relying heavily on infrastructure services. According to Gartner, the forecast in 2016 for IaaS alone represented over $22 billion in cash flow. The growing demands and customers’ expectations are in a tight juggling act with the forces that promise to challenge cloud service providers.

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While there is huge interest in data analytics among the business community many organizations are struggling with failed projects according to a new study which reveals 88 percent of respondents have suffered failures with recent initiatives.

Reasons for the failure of analytics projects include low end-user adoption, projects going over budget, systems not providing the analytics users were expecting, and too many initiatives evolving into 'zombie' projects that were almost completed but not ready for end-users.

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Next month I return from my first—and hopefully last—summer sabbatical. I resume writing with a question for you: "When is stupidity fraud?" I ask because someone is using my gmail address to sign up for a humungous number of newsletters and websites. At first, I presumed someone trolled me. But that no longer appears to be the case. This guy, presumably living in North Carolina, either uses my address randomly to hide his identity, or he mistypes one that is similar. Given many of the services are for an unidentified widower looking for love, I assume the latter.

Behind my question are real concerns about identity and privacy that do not just apply to me. The email address gives me the ability to change the passwords and even cancel accounts—both of which I have done, treating his misuse of my email address as identity theft and violations of my privacy; after years of careful cultivation that reduced spam, crap is on the rise as this misuse spreads my gmail identity across dating and discount sites and sex webcams. Who knows on what mailing lists it will appear next.

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There have been numerous cases of iCloud accounts being hacked over the years, but it's the celebrity ones that hit the headlines. Well, that and things like the Fappening. The latest celebrity account to fall victim to hackers is Pippa Middleton, sister of British royal Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge.

A reported 3,000 images have been stolen from Pippa's account, and these are said to include photographs of Kate and her children. Leaked images also show photos from private parties, and shots of wedding dresses.

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British telecommunications company BT has announced  a new offering, expanding the cloud choice for its customers. BT Computer for Microsoft Azure allows BT’s customers to order Microsoft Azure together with BT’s cloud.

With the new offering, according to BT, customers will be able to create hybrid cloud infrastructure with a single service wrap, on a single bill.

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Deploying software and updates to computers across a global enterprise from the cloud can be slow and expensive using traditional methods.

Systems management specialist Adaptiva is launching OneSite 6.0, a serverless option for distributing software from the cloud using Microsoft System Center Configuration (ConfigMgr) and Microsoft Azure.

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Oracle has announced that it will purchase the cloud access security broker (CASB) Palerra, making this the company's eight acquisition in 2016.

The deal was announced at the beginning of Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco and the amount which the company is paying for Palerra has yet to be disclosed. Oracle made the decision to purchase the company for its Loric software product as it "protects and assures compliance of applications, workloads and sensitive data stored across cloud services".

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Businesses are increasingly recognizing that passwords are no longer an adequate way of protecting systems. But users still need a means of access that is easy to use, secure and doesn't get in the way.

Cloud-based access provider Duo Security is today announcing that it's combined its flagship two-factor authentication and device insight with single sign-on (SSO) capabilities to create a trusted access platform.

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Salesforce has announced the launch of its new Einstein artificial intelligence (AI) platform that has already been implemented into a number of the company's existing cloud services including Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Analytics Cloud, App Cloud, Commerce Cloud, Community Cloud and IoT Cloud.

The company has also announced that it has formed a new unit called Salesforce Research that will be exploring deep learning, natural language processing and computer vision. The new unit's aim is to improve Salesforce products and it will be led by the company's chief scientist Richard Socher, who is responsible for co-founding the A.I. startup MetaMind which Salesforce acquired earlier this year.

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