Microsoft to donate '$1 billion' worth of cloud computing resources
With great profits, comes great responsibility. Nowadays, being profitable, creating jobs and selling quality products isn't enough from a publicity perspective. Take Microsoft, for example. Windows and Office has powered countless successful businesses, while the company employs thousands of folks globally. Yet, despite those things, in order to be seen as a friendly company, the Windows-maker -- and other corporations -- must be philanthropic too. You know what though? Regardless of motivation, its donations are much appreciated.
Today, Microsoft announces that it is donating "$1 billion" worth of cloud computing resources, which it claims is "measured at fair market value". True, this is not the same as donating $1 billion to the homeless or hungry, but it is still something for which to be thankful. With that said, the dollar figure is arguably subjective, as Microsoft is pretty much setting the value. Still, the potential for this donation is immense.
Birst expands its networked BI platform
Cloud analytics specialist Birst is releasing new capabilities for its Networked BI Platform aimed at empowering end users in the enterprise to work with data effectively.
New features include Birst Mobile for Android, Collaboration, and End-User Data Preparation. The networked BI Platform is aimed at creating a network of interwoven BI instances that share a common analytical fabric, eliminating data silos to ensure collaboration and accelerate the delivery of BI across the enterprise.
61 percent of new organizations are born in the cloud
The cloud is changing the way businesses and IT teams operate and a new survey from industry specialist BetterCloud reveals the extent of the shift.
Based on a survey of 1,500 IT professionals it shows that of organizations started in the last two years 61 percent have begun their operations in the cloud. In addition 59 percent of IT professionals say the cloud has changed the structure and responsibilities of their team in the past year.
Almost a quarter of companies are willing to pay $1m ransom to hackers
We all know that cyber attacks can be enormously disruptive, but how far would companies go to prevent an attack?
A new survey by the Cloud Security Alliance and Skyhigh Networks reveals that 24.6 percent of companies would be willing to pay a ransom to hackers to prevent a cyber attack and 14 percent would pay more than $1 million.
Microsoft Azure now lets you backup VMware instances
Microsoft has launched an enhanced version of its Azure Site Recovery (ASR) targeted especially for VMware customers.
The ASR concept allows you to backup virtual machines into the Azure storage, update them and then run the VMs in Azure as a disaster recovery option. Microsoft charges $54 a month per VM instance stored in Azure, but doesn’t pay any compute or storage costs until you run the VM, which would make sense as it is only a file until the VM is spun up.
IaaS and PaaS see 51 percent revenue growth
The cloud sector’s revenues, both IaaS (Infrastructure as a service) and PaaS (platform as a service) have grown 51 percent in the last year, a new research by Synergy says. It has had the strongest growth out of all cloud services.
Private and hybrid cloud infrastructure services grew 45 percent, while operator and vendor revenues grew 28 percent.
The future of enterprise storage [Q&A]
Storage has undergone some major changes in recent years. The growth of cloud usage, the Internet of Things and the exploitation of big data have all meant increased demand and a shift towards different solutions. But how has this affected the storage industry and and what further changes can we expect to see?
We spoke to Mark Lewis, Chairman and CEO of storage specialist Formation Data Systems to get his view on how the industry is evolving.
Hybrid IT systems hinder innovation
Research from Sungard Availability Services, a provider of information availability through managed IT, cloud and recovery services, has revealed a dark side to hybrid IT systems.
Sungard’s findings based on a study which questioned 150 senior IT decision makers in UK organizations with more than 500 employees with an average IT spend of around £36m per year, found that over half of UK organizations believe that the complexity of their IT environment is hindering their ability to innovate.
The challenge of managing the cloud in the enterprise [Q&A]
It's an increasingly rare business today that has all of its IT on its own premises. The cloud has led to many systems being moved off site and also contributed to the growth of shadow systems.
How can business manage these challenges and make sure that they're not putting their information at risk? We spoke to John Purrier, cloud visionary and CTO of business automation company Automic Software to find out.
Is your data integrated across platforms?
The lifeblood of any application is the data it uses to make decisions. It used to be that all data and applications resided within the confines of the corporate firewall, but public cloud platforms like Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure provide elasticity and cutting-edge features to today’s organizations. Because of that, more and more companies are challenging the conventional thinking that all corporate data should always be stored on premises.
But when is it appropriate to silo data, versus integrating it across different cloud platforms?
Adoption of cloud computing in the enterprise: The progress in 2015
In general, cloud penetration across the enterprise in terms of workloads being completed continues to be at a relatively low level, with many analysts firms reporting that penetration is at rates of less than 10 percent.
That said, the journey has begun in most organizations and Ovum has identified that nearly 75 percent of organizations will adopt some hybrid cloud strategy by 2016.
Google+ is too much ghost town for me
As the New Year approaches, and I contemplate 2016, my online social space surely will change; my like-affair with Google+ draws close to an end. Nearly six weeks ago, the service "reimagined", as a "fully redesigned Google+ that puts Communities and Collections front and center".
Since then, my Google+ engagement has dropped by more than 90 percent. I don't find as many posts to Plus-one, to share with others, or on which to comment. Similarly, I see shocking decline in the number of responses to my posts—not something I actively seek so much as by which to judge interest in what I write and also to interact with other Plusers. After years of misguided critics calling Google+ a ghost town, the tumbleweeds roll.
Expect faster adoption and more localization in a cloudy 2016
The growing maturity of the cloud has been one of the major trends of the past year and this is something that looks set to continue into next year.
There will be new challenges, however, and we've looked at what some of the industry's experts think the cloud will have in store for 2016.
Here are the system requirements for Microsoft Azure Stack
Microsoft has announced the hardware requirements needed to run its Azure Stack – the upcoming on-premise hybrid version of the Azure cloud.
The Azure Stack first gets installed on a server and delivers Azure services in a customer’s datacentre, enabling developers and IT professionals to build, deploy and operate cloud applications using consistent tools, processes and artifacts.
The enterprise trends of 2015
Businesses tend to be quite conservative in their approach to technology, so it's always interesting to look at what's been sparking their interest.
Identity and mobility management specialist Okta has released a new report, based on analysis of its customers, looking at the big winners and losers in the enterprise over the past year.
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