Category Archives: Cloud Computing
EMBL-EBI Selects Google Cloud as Strategic Partner to Accelerate the Pace of Research – PRNewswire
SUNNYVALE, Calif. and CAMBRIDGE, U.K., Dec. 2, 2021 /PRNewswire/ --Hosting the world's most comprehensive set of freely available and up-to-date molecular data resources, EMBL's European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) announced today it has chosen Google Cloud as a strategic cloud partner.
As part of a new, comprehensive, five-year partnership, EMBL-EBI will tap Google Cloud's innovative technologies and global infrastructure to accelerate the pace of service delivery to its global user community, which includes research labs, pharmaceutical companies, academic institutions, and more.
EMBL-EBI hosts a range of open data resources for the life sciences community, spanning genomics, proteins, chemical data, and more. These data resources are freely and openly available for anyone to use, similar to a digital public library. This approach supports open science and speeds up scientific discovery on a global scale.
EMBL-EBI will use Google Cloud's cloud infrastructure and services to accelerate the processing of data from the community, providing more value for researchers and stakeholders, and delivering new insights through EMBL-EBI's data resources.
The partnership between Google Cloud and EMBL-EBI aims to:
The use of cloud infrastructure will support EMBL-EBI's goals, and will not change researchers' access to EMBL-EBI data. The global research community will continue to have open access to the institute's data resources and tools. The data hosted by EMBL-EBI will continue to be stored in the institute's data centres and will remain accessible via existing methods indefinitely. Over time, copies of selected data may be stored and processed in Google Cloud, in compliance with EMBL's internal data classification and data protection policies, and leveraging Google Cloud's advanced data protection capabilities. All data stored on Google Cloud by EMBL-EBI remains under EMBL-EBI control and delivery.
Steven Newhouse, Head of Technical Services, EMBL-EBI said: "Google has an incredible network of life science expertise as well as infrastructure services that provide a tremendous opportunity to work together to help speed up scientific discovery. We're excited about the possibilities that Google Cloud's secure, flexible, and connected infrastructure can provide to EMBL-EBI to enable our services to be accessed globally."
Mark Palmer, Head of Public Sector, EMEA, Google Cloud, commented: "As we continue our work with customers in the research space, the impact of cloud computing becomes increasingly clear. As part of this new partnership, we have the opportunity to accelerate research by providing EMBL-EBI with high performance computing solutions that will provide researchers with the tools and compute to drive more effective and efficient research."
About Google CloudGoogle Cloud accelerates organizations' ability to digitally transform their business with the best infrastructure, platform, industry solutions and expertise. We deliver enterprise-grade solutions that leverage Google's cutting-edge technology all on the cleanest cloud in the industry. Customers in more than 200 countries and territories turn to Google Cloud as their trusted partner to enable growth and solve their most critical business problems.
About EMBL's European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI)The European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) is a global leader in the storage, analysis and dissemination of large biological datasets. We help scientists realise the potential of big data by enhancing their ability to exploit complex information to make discoveries that benefit humankind.
We are at the forefront of computational biology research, with work spanning sequence analysis methods, multi-dimensional statistical analysis and data-driven biological discovery, from plant biology to mammalian development and disease.
We are part of EMBL and are located on the Wellcome Genome Campus, Cambridge UK, one of the world's largest concentrations of scientific and technical expertise in genomics.
FundingAs part of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), the majority of EMBL-EBI's funding comes from the governments of EMBL's member states. EMBL-EBI'stechnical infrastructure development is also supported by capital investment from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). EMBL-EBI is extremely grateful to its funders for their continued support in helping the institute develop its technical infrastructure, which is crucial for making biological data freely and openly available to the international scientific community.
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EMBL-EBI Selects Google Cloud as Strategic Partner to Accelerate the Pace of Research - PRNewswire
Varcoe: Amazon ‘bet the right way’ choosing Calgary for new data hub and tech training – Calgary Herald
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Last months announcement that AWS will create a regional hub in Calgary sent a buzz through the local tech sector
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It only took a few hours for the applications to start flooding in.
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After Amazon Web Services announced in early November it will build a new cloud-computing hub in Calgary and team up with Mount Royal University on a local training program response from hopeful employees and would-be students was immediate.
Three weeks later, it continues to expand.
We had dozens of applicants (for training) within 24 hours, and within a week, hundreds of applicants, which is great, AWS country manager Rejean Bourgault said in an interview Thursday from Montreal.
(Were) getting hundreds of resumes, too. So were very pleased by the demand . . . by the talent were getting.
Last months announcement that AWS will create a regional hub in Calgary, building three data centres in the region, has sent a buzz through the local tech sector, another sign of its evolution.
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It underscores the potential to expand the industry, but also the need to develop digital skills for workers to fill new jobs.
As local and provincial authorities are ramping up training for the sector, Calgary Economic Development says more than 2,000 technology positions remain open in the city.
Its not just a Calgary issue, its happening globally, said Brad Parry, CEDs interim president.
There will always be a bit of a crunch for that senior talent, which is what people are really looking to bring in, but we are starting to see that turn the corner a little bit.
Seattle-based AWS expects it will create 871 jobs locally by 2037, as well as positions outside the province.
Construction has started on the three data centres, although AWS doesnt disclose where theyre being built for security reasons.
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The hub wont start operating until late 2023 or early 2024, but AWS is already advertising for about 30 positions, from data centre technicians and logistics specialists to a regional environmental engineer, Bourgault said.
We have to pick the right place and also we have to make sure we have the right talent, he said.
We are very confident that we will have the right talent, especially with the resumes were getting. So we know now that we bet the right way we basically decided on the right region.
Other international tech companies are moving into the city, while a number of startup firms are quickly scaling up and adding staff during the pandemic.
The Council of Canadian Innovators, a technology industry group, said Thursday that finding and hiring new staff will be the No. 1 challenge for homegrown tech firms, and the biggest barrier to growth in 2022.
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Yet, companies are expanding, with many training staff internally.
Childrens streaming service Kidoodle.TV, a Calgary-based firm, has expanded its workforce to about 100 employees from 40 in the past year, mainly in Alberta. Chief technology officer Daniel Riddell said he wouldnt be surprised if staffing doubles again next year.
Kidoodle, which reported a 3,200 per cent increase in customers last year, uses AWS for storing and delivering video files to customers, for data analysis, inter-company communications and advertising.
Skills in cloud computing are critical for the future and hiring people with those abilities has been challenging in the province, he said.
Its been very difficult, I would say, because that skill set generally comes later in a career and those people have tended to move south of the border and are employed down there, Riddell said.
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The solution is, quite honestly, starting the exposure and training much earlier. This is the kind of thing that should be taught in junior high school, because this is how the world works today.
While Alberta faces a tech talent shortage, it is still grappling with high unemployment, with the jobless rate expected to average 7.1 per cent next year, according to the provinces new fiscal update.
Programs to help Albertans obtain necessary digital skills will pay off over the longer term, but multinationals moving into the province will exacerbate the existing labour shortage for technology firms, said Bronte Valk of the Council of Canadian Innovators.
We do have zero unemployment in tech right now, she said.
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Thats why training initiatives are so important.
When CED began operating a program to re-skill displaced oil and gas professionals looking to pivot into IT a couple of years ago, demand was enormous, with 1,200 people applying for 100 training seats, Parry said.
Other post-secondary programs at the University of Calgary and SAIT have added student positions, while some companies are coming to the province with their own internal training programs.
Multinational IT company Infosys announced last spring it will create up to 500 new jobs in Calgary within three years, and signalled it will make the city an innovation hub where it works with post-secondaries to create a steady talent pool.
AWS will team up with Mount Royal University, along with support from CED, to offer a free 12-week skills development program. The initiative is intended to help unemployed or underemployed individuals acquire the necessary skills for entry-level cloud positions.
More than 100 people signed up for information about the classes within a day of the announcement (for 40 available spots in the first class) and the list now tops 325, said Brad Mahon, dean of MRUs faculty of continuing education.
The program is expected to launch in late February.
It really addresses a need here in the province, Mahon said.
Not only do we have a displaced workforce that needs to re-skill, but we also have this emerging sector. And what this program does is connect those two.
Chris Varcoe is a Calgary Herald columnist.
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Joint Cloud Computing: How Can Organizations Benefit From This New Trend? – Toolbox
When the demands of a cloud-dependent company exceed the capacity of a single cloud, several cloud providers may be required. The arrival of Cloud 1.0 introduced lower IT costs and on-demand service availability. However, it is fair to say that the globalisation of cloud services has not been without its fair share of difficulties. To lessen the challenges and reduce cost, Joint Cloud can be the way forward. Lets see what exactly it is and how organizations can absorb the benefits offered by this technology.
Cloud technology behemoths have begun to collaborate in order to expedite the go-to-market cycle and capitalize on each others unique selling points. Its a partnership between cloud service providers that will help joint clients with their migration capabilities and application operations across various cloud platforms. Competitors Oracle and Microsoft recently formed a partnership that combines their strengths and provides the best of both worlds. Similarly, tech company Avaya recently announced a collaboration with Microsoft to develop a joint cloud communication solution.
Joint Cloud is a modern computing platform that encourages developers to design cross-cloud services through software-defined interaction and cooperation across different cloud service organizations. Furthermore, container platform automation capabilities handle multi-cloud access, providing enterprises with a compelling solution to work with various cloud providers, infrastructure, and cloud types.
Aron Brand, the CTO of CTERA, explained this new age phenomenon as a new generation of computing model which facilitates providing cross-cloud services through integration and cooperation among different cloud providers. While this term is currently used mostly by academia, some of the required components of joint cloud computing already exist in the commercial sector, said Brand.
Take for example the concept of a global file system, which creates a single namespace, globally accessible file system, overlayed on multiple object storage providers which can be located in different clouds, regions and operated by different service entities. A global file system eliminates vendor lock-in by allowing transparent data movement across cloud providers; enables boundless storage capacity, while providing comprehensive control over and visibility into this global distributed data. Using the global file system as a foundation, service organizations can develop federated applications that span heterogeneous clouds and data centers, including edge devices, he added.
From our point of view Joint Cloud Computing is an extension of what we would call a multi-cloud strategy, commented Sathya Sankaran, COO of Catalogic Software. The current discussion around joint cloud computing/multi-cloud is all about building infrastructure that makes it easier to communicate between applications running on different clouds, migrate loads (data and applications) between various clouds, and manage loads in various clouds, he said.
See More: AI Summit Silicon Valley 2021: Top Highlights & Insights from AI Experts
Even though its a decade-old phenomenon, the year 2021 has further accelerated the growth of Joint Cloud computing, helping it become one of the most trending cloud computing technologies of the year. Lets look at some of the recent developments in this space.
Thales and Google Cloud have partnered up to establish Joint Cloud offering in France together
Thales and Google Cloud collaborated in October to co-develop a French hyperscale cloud product. With this new service, French businesses and government agencies will have access to all of the capacity, security, agility, and autonomy that the two entities respective technologies have to offer.
Google Cloud and Genesys expand their Joint Cloud Contact Center
The two companies recently announced their partnership on new AI, deep learning, and data analytics applications. They have a number of objectives in mind. Automating customer service, providing predicted customer satisfaction, and AI-driven verification are just a few examples. Besides, the plans include creating new conversational routes that use Google Search, Maps, and other tools.
Woori Financial modified Joint Cloud platform to speed up their digital transformation
The joint cloud infrastructure has supposedly assisted in advancing the companys digital innovation since its deployment in February. It optimally manages the groups IT assets and cloud space, enhancing the divisions synergy in digital-based companies.
At times, cloud-dependent organizations require more than just one cloud provider as the needs surpass the capacity of a single cloud. We see events like Black Friday that demand tens of thousands of times more resources than normal days, straining a solitary cloud vendor, which is either unable to provide the requested resources or must provide IT resources based on access demand. This might result in higher costs and lower IT resource use, which contradicts cloud computings primary purpose of increasing IT resource utilization.
The advent of Cloud 1.0 has enabled reduced IT costs and on-demand availability of services. But, it wont be wrong to state that there have also been certain challenges with the globalization of cloud services. In a research conducted by IEEE on JointCloud, a few challenges associated with Cloud 1.0 were identified. These were:
See More: Top Security Considerations for Transitioning from Private to Public Cloud
Both academia and industry have begun to examine partnerships amongst independent public cloud providers to overcome these difficulties. Cloud 2.0s core element is cooperative cloud computing, which removes the barrier between numerous clouds. Lets look at some of the benefits that make Joint Cloud a perfect fit for organizations.
With the increasing expansion of data buffers and the heterogeneity of customer tastes, one cloud provider can scarcely meet all of their needs. Joint Cloud is an effective way to coordinate autonomous cloud peers to deliver a high-level of storage service. However, the storage services must strike global balances between accuracy and consistency under various conditions and needs by exploiting resources that are scattered across diverse cloud peers.
Paul Repice, VP of sales, Datadobi said, Gone are the days where enterprises rely on one single storage vendor for their data. Today, 92% of organizations either have a multi-cloud strategy in place or are moving in that direction, and over 80% of large enterprises have already adopted a hybrid cloud infrastructure. These trends make sense because the pandemic encouraged global enterprise companies to adopt effective, proven cloud technologies offered by market-leading brands due to the lack of need for sudden infrastructure spending. The availability of cloud-based file storage offered a cost-effective, quick fix and an apparent win-win for businesses under pressure to adapt on the fly.
To make the change back to the office smoother, organizations must work with vendor-neutral solutions that can handle the scale and complexity of large storage environments in 2022. When evaluating a particular vendor, IT teams need to check the compatibility with hyperscalers, preserve data integrity throughout any data management projects, and make sure that the vendors offer access to a comprehensive support team. With these building blocks in place, organizations can make the best use of cloud and on-premises storage in the long term.
Joint Cloud computing is a new research project spearheaded by Chinese institutes to address the computing challenges associated with various clouds. Customers diversified and changing cloud resource needs are fulfilled by Joint Cloud through delivering virtual cloud resources (VC). The Joint Cloud users may use an internet browser to write, debug, and execute activities in their work environment without worrying about minimal issues like framework deployment, setup, and parameterization. This working environment is based on a customized VC that offers the most appropriate resources from the underlying clouds. This architecture might smoothly traverse different clouds, allowing apps to elastically scale out and utilize fresh resources from third parties to deal with load demand issues.
Over the last several years, there has been a tremendous surge in corporate investment and expanding research interest in the Internet of Things. The synergy between traditional cloud and edge cloud is already underway to give quality service to varied consumers, spurred by the application demand from the Internet of Everything in the future. However, because of the high marginal operating and maintenance expenses, traditional clouds must continue to collaborate. JointCloud computing is a new computing paradigm that supports collaboration within heterogeneous clouds. JointCloud intends to make it easier for many cloud vendors to work together to deliver effective cross-cloud services. Also, it is cost-effective because it focuses on vertical cloud resource integration and horizontal cloud vendor collaboration.
The first edition of cloud computing (Cloud 1.0) is gradually being phased out in favor of the second (Cloud 2.0). The novel JointCloud efforts, which were lately financially backed by Chinas Ministry of Science and Technology as part of the National Key Program for Cloud Computing and Big Data, is the latest generation of computing paradigm for Cloud 2.0 that enables businesses to customize cross-cloud services.
JointCloud aspires to bring together key cloud providers in China and those from across the world to create a joint cloud network. Unlike previous Cloud 2.0 projects such as SuperCloud and InterCloud, JointCloud is the initial stride toward creating an expanding community where all cloud providers may utilize the specified service infrastructure to deliver deep cooperation, and customers can design services above the virtualized cloud.
There are plenty of opportunities for vendors to help multi-cloud customers, but we dont see the big managed cloud providers doing much to help customers, other than enabling their management consoles to manage infrastructure in other clouds (thus putting their management tools on top), says Sankaran from Catalogic Software.
We do note that its in their interest to keep customers locked in rather than have their services totally commoditized. We dont see enthusiasm for a push on standards and tools for joint cloud computing. Although thats not to say that some industry standards couldnt eventually help here. We think Kubernetes and containerized workloads will also help to some extent, because it provides somewhat of a standard platform layer.
Do you think Joint Cloud computing will become commonplace in the coming years? Let us know on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook. Wed love to hear from you!
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Joint Cloud Computing: How Can Organizations Benefit From This New Trend? - Toolbox
AI and Machine Learning, Cloud Computing, and 5G Will Dominate in 2022 – IBL News
IBL News | New York
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning, cloud computing, and 5G will be the most important technologies in 2022, according to a survey to global technology leaders from the U.S., U.K., China, India, and Brasil, conducted by IEEE.
These 350 chief technology and information officers and IT directors agreed that the pandemic accelerated the adoption of those tools.
The survey, titled The Impact of Technology in 2022 and Beyond: an IEEE Global Study, stated that 95% of tech leaders said that AI will drive the majority of innovation across nearly every industry sector in the next 1 to 5 years.
These surveyed executives consider eight areas as most benefited from 5G:
As for industry sectors impacted by technology in 2022, technology leaders cited manufacturing (25%), financial services (19%), healthcare (16%), and energy (13%).
In terms of workplace strategies and technologies, respondents say that their companies are working closely with Human Resources to implement tools for office check-in, space usage data and analytics, COVID and health protocols, employee productivity, engagement, and mental health.
Looking ahead, 81% agree that in the next five years, one-quarter of what they do will be enhanced by robots, and 77% agree that in the same time frame, robots will be deployed across their organization to enhance nearly every business function from sales and human resources to marketing and IT.
A majority of respondents agree (78%) that in the next ten years, half, or more, of what they do will be enhanced by robots. As for the deployments of robots that will most benefit humanity, according to the survey, those are manufacturing and assembly (33%), hospital and patient care (26%), and earth and space exploration (13%).
Regarding blockchain technology, the most important uses in the next year will be:
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AI and Machine Learning, Cloud Computing, and 5G Will Dominate in 2022 - IBL News
One of the world’s largest supercomputers lived for only 10 minutes – TechRadar
There was a time when supercomputers were available only to a handful of organizations, mostly governments, public research facilities and scientific bodies. The rise of cloud computing and the widespread availability of sophisticated cloud workload management (CWM) tools have reduced the barrier of entry considerably.
Only last week, YellowDog, a CWM specialist based in Bristol, United Kingdom, assembled a virtual supercomputer using its proprietary platform - and at its peak, which lasted about 10 minutes, the system had mustered an army of more than 3.2 million vCPUs.
While it was nowhere as powerful as Fugaku, that was enough to propel it into the top 10 of the world's fastest supercomputers, at least for a few minutes.
(PSA: by the way, we are going to update our Black Friday web hosting deals and Black Friday website builder deals page at least once per day till Cyber Monday)
The provisioning, which was done on behalf of a pharmaceutical company, helped run a popular drug discovery application as a single cluster. Back of the envelope calculation puts the raw cost of the project at about $65,000.
That's accounting for 33,333 AWS 96-core c5.24xlarge instances. This is one of a number of instances used during the run (essentially similar to bare metal servers or dedicated servers) and it costs $1.6013 per hour. So that's $53,376 per hour or $57,824 to account for the entire length of the session (65 minutes in all).
"With access to this on-demand supercomputer, the researchers were able to analyze and screen 337 million compounds in 7 hours. To replicate that using their on-premises systems would have taken two months," said Colin Bridger from AWS.
What's extraordinary is that this sort of firepower is available to anybody who can afford it. And it is based on the sort of hardware that runs our cloud computing world: web hosting, website builders, cloud storage, email services among others.
CWM platforms have evolved over the years to develop algorithms and machine learning capabilities to choose the best source of compute, regardless of its origin or type.
For example, one cloud provider may have the cheapest spot compute, but the algorithm wouldn't select it if it were unavailable in the territory set by the customer, or if there weren't actually a sufficient number of servers of the required instance type available within that cloud provider. In this case another source of compute would be chosen. Clever indeed!
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One of the world's largest supercomputers lived for only 10 minutes - TechRadar
EU companies issue formal complaint against Microsoft OneDrive Windows integration – ZDNet
Remember how Microsoft spent years in hot water in the late '90s and early '00s by forcing Internet Explorer on its customers? European open-source cloud company Nextcloud does.
Now, with a coalition of other European Union (EU) software and cloud organizations and companies called the "Coalition for a Level Playing Field," Nextcloud has formally complained to the European Commission (EC) about Microsoft's anti-competitive behavior by aggressively bundling its OneDrive cloud, Teams, and other services with Windows 10 and 11.
Nextcloud claims that by pushing consumers to sign up and hand over their data to Microsoft, the Windows giant is limiting consumer choice and creating an unfair barrier for other companies offering competing services.
Specifically, Microsoft has grown its EU market share to 66%, while local providers' market share declined from 26% to 16%. Microsoft has done this not by any technical advantage or sales benefits, but by heavily favoring its own products and services, self-preferencing over other services. While self-preferencing is not illegal per se under EU competition laws, if a company abuses its dominant market position, it can break the law.
Nextcloud states that Microsoft has outright blocked other cloud service vendors by leveraging its position as gatekeeper to extend its reach in neighboring markets, pushing users deeper into its ecosystems. Thus, more specialized EU companies can't compete on merit, as the key to success is not a good product but the ability to distort competition and block market access.
Frank Karlitschek, Nextloud's CEO and founder, goes so far as to say:
This is quite similar to what Microsoft did when it killed the competition in the browser market, stopping nearly all browser innovations for over a decade. Copy an innovators' product, bundle it with your own dominant product, and kill their business, then stop innovating. This kind of behavior is bad for the consumer, for the market, and, of course, for local businesses in the EU. Together with the other members of the coalition, we are asking the antitrust authorities in Europe to enforce a level playing field, giving customers a free choice and giving the competition a fair chance.
Nextcloud is not the only company to make such complaints. Slack has filed an antitrust complaint against Microsoft in the European Union (EU) about Microsoft's integrating Teams with Office. This case is now proceeding.
So, Nextcloud is asking the European Commission's Directorate-General for Competition to prevent this kind of abusive behavior and keep the market competitive and fair for all players. Nextcloud is doing this by filing an official complaint with this body. In addition, Nextcloud has also filed a request with the German antitrust authorities, the Bundeskartellamt, for an investigation against Microsoft. With its partners, it's also discussing filing a similar complaint in France.
Nextcloud is being joined in its complaint by several open-source, non-profit organizations. These include the European DIGITAL SME Alliance; the Document Foundation, LibreOffice's backing organization; and the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE).
Lothar Becker, the Document Foundation chairman, said, "European citizens should be able to decide by themselves about the digital tools they use to create, store and share contents, including an open document format for their files. Big Tech's actions, based on their monopoly power in the operating system area, force consumers to use proprietary software, thus reducing their freedom and digital rights. We support the complaint about this anti-competitive behavior and urge the EU to take action immediately."
Heiki Lhmus, the FSFE's VP, added, "Proprietary "Software as a Service" offers seriously threaten the freedom of European computer users and their ability to maintain effective control over their devices and data.... We will continue to support them to ensure that markets remain fair and proprietary competitors do not engage in illegal anti-competitive efforts to snuff out competitors who empower their users."
Numerous businesses are also supporting Nextcloud's legal action. This includes Abilian, an open-source software publisher; DAASI, an open-source identity management company; and Mailfence.
Stefane Fermigier, founder and CEO, frankly doesn't think that the Microsoft leopard has changed its spots no matter how much Microsoft now says that it loves Linux. Fermigier explained, "The '90s have just called and they see that nothing has changed. Microsoft's anti-competitive practices remain a major concern for the competitiveness of the European software and cloud industry. As it has done in the past in similar cases, the European Commission must put an end to these practices."
Therefore, Nextcloud and its allies are asking the European Commission to ensure that there is:
No abuse of Microsoft's dominant position in the OS and related markets (e.g. by bundling, pre-installing, or leveraging additional Microsoft services) while preserving a level playing field.
And that Microsoft must support open standards and interoperability. This would give European consumers a free choice among service offerings that should compete fairly on their merits.
Will this effort come to anything? Stay tuned. The EC, has in the past, as Google can attest, rule that American companies have engaged in anti-competitive behavior in the EU.
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EU companies issue formal complaint against Microsoft OneDrive Windows integration - ZDNet
3 Reasons to Buy Ankr – Motley Fool
For cryptocurrency investors thinking long term, Ankr (CRYPTO:ANKR) may be one of the best crypto plays in the market right now. An emerging force in decentralized finance (DeFi), Ankr has been making some serious gains lately. In fact, ANKR is up about 40% during the past month.
Ankr has a great deal to offer investors. This blockchain network allows cloud-computing providers to offer underutilized resources to users requiring cloud infrastructure.Cloud-computing providers are rewarded in ANKR tokensas compensation.
Additionally, there are other greatbenefits users receive on the Ankr network. Let's dive into why this is a top cryptocurrency on my watch list right now.
Image source: Getty Images.
The cloud-computing world is relatively well-defined, and just a handful of large players dominate the market. With such an oligopolistic structure, pricing power resides mainly with cloud-computing providers. This is great for someone who owns Amazonstock, but not so great for companies or users requiring cloud infrastructure.
Ankr seeks to change all that. This network takes existing underutilized hardware from cloud-computing providers and rents it out. In exchange for ANKR tokens, cloud-computing companies can maximize the use of their computing power. Wastage is a big deal in every sector, and Ankr helps minimize this issue to a great extent.
The idea of maximizing underutilized assets happens to be a very eco-friendly endeavor. Of course, not all blockchains are environmentally progressive. Much has been made about how much energy Bitcoin consumes every year. (Hint: almost as much power as the entire country of Thailand.)
Ankr has found a way to create utility for end users. This blockchain network aims to do so by using what already exists, rather than adding to the energy-consumption problems plaguing this sector.
Back to the decentralized piece of the equation. Decentralization is a buzz word in crypto for a reason. By cutting into the centralized market power of a few companies controlling any one sector, blockchain projects like Ankr aim to democratize pockets of the economy (and maybe the whole economy, one day).
At a high level, these goals sound idealistic and unattainable. However, the implications of Ankr's cloud-computing potential are immense.
Most centralized cloud-computing services have a single or just a few points of failure if various central locations lose power. For decentralized cloud-computing players like Ankr, this risk is minimized. By using a decentralized network of providers, Ankr can offer network stability and relatively low-cost cloud-computing services to companies looking for decentralized options.
As demand for decentralized solutions increases, Ankr could see increased adoption drive the value of its network higher. Therefore, those banking on the value of ANKR tokens as representative of the value its ecosystem creates may consider ANKR an intriguing growth option.
After all, this is a network that's looking to find novel solutions to modern problems. There's a lot investors should like about that.
Besides the cloud-computing angle (which I think is really something), Ankr also provides unique value in how investors stake tokens. Staking refers to putting up ones tokens or locking them into a given blockchain protocol to allow validation of transactions. People who stake their tokens typically receive interest in the form of additional tokens.Accordingly, this is a passive income opportunity many crypto investors are looking to get into.
However, Ankr provides an intriguing way for investors to stake tokens while putting up much smaller capital investments to do so. How?
Ankr's StakeFi product lets investors put up as little as 0.5 Ether to earn staking rewards. Currently, 32 ETH are required to stake on Ethereum's (CRYPTO:ETH) beacon chain. This would require the equivalent of more than $125,000, at present.
The platform does this by utilizing synthetic derivatives to essentially limit the amount of initial capital investors need to put up. Similar to options in the stock market, Ankr is becoming a revolutionary force in this growing area of decentralized finance.
Sure, Ethereum is moving toward Ethereum 2.0, which is likely to streamline its staking process substantially. However, delays in the move to Ethereum 2.0 have persisted. For now, Ankr has an opportunity to expand its market share in this emerging DeFi category.
Cryptocurrency investing is inherently risky, and Ankr is no exception. This crypto network faces the same systemic risks and competitive environment as its peers.
However, Ankr is creating some real-world value with its network. The fact that companies can utilize Ankr's protocol to maximize their return on assets while providing decentralized cloud-computing services to users is impressive. Additionally, I think there's a lot to like about Ankr's DeFi potential.
The ANKR token is one that represents a blockchain with a tremendous (and growing) value right now. Accordingly, I'm watching this is token closely.
This article represents the opinion of the writer, who may disagree with the official recommendation position of a Motley Fool premium advisory service. Were motley! Questioning an investing thesis -- even one of our own -- helps us all think critically about investing and make decisions that help us become smarter, happier, and richer.
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Tencent and Green Packet firm up cloud deal – The Star Online
Petaling Jaya: Green Packet Bhd and Tencent Cloud have jointly committed to building a cloud computing business that will utilise a minimum of 2,000 servers by the end of the third year of operations.
In a filing with Bursa Malaysia, Green Packet said that Tencent will leverage on its global customer base while Green Packet will leverage on its local Malaysian customer base to build the cloud computing services business.
Last August, Green Packet announced an exclusive collaboration with Tencent Cloud to set up a jointly built cloud ecosystem in Malaysia.
Green Packet had said then that it had initially committed to investing RM100mil on infrastructure for a total of 600 servers and the provision of software solutions.
Last August, Green Packet announced an exclusive collaboration with Tencent Cloud to set up a jointly built cloud ecosystem in Malaysia.
It also said that the total investment in this collaboration could add up to between RM300mil and RM500mil over the next three years.
Green Packet will be responsible for the setting up of the infrastructure in Malaysia and promoting Tencent Clouds ecosystem of software solutions, while Tencent Cloud will be providing the actual cloud computing service from its global reach of customers.
Green Packet had also said then that the collaboration comes with a joint revenue model for 10 years and it is expected to contribute significantly to Green Packets bottom line over the coming years.
Malaysias cloud market is growing rapidly with an estimated compounded annual growth rate of 13% from 2020 to 2024.
The growth in the cloud computing market has been fuelled by the Covid-19 pandemic as more businesses sought to digitalise their operations.
Tencent Cloud is the fifth largest player worldwide in the cloud computing space.
It is well known for its social media platforms, online video streaming and broadcasting technologies, mobile payments and gaming platforms.
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Tencent and Green Packet firm up cloud deal - The Star Online
Attackers are using AWS instances to launch attacks on WordPress sites – Techradar
Cybersecurity researchers have noticed an increase in attacks against WordPress websites, with more than a quarter originating from EC2 cloud computing instances of Amazon Web Services (AWS).
WordPress security experts Wordfence share that of 77,000 IP addresses that have sent out malicious login attempts on WordPress installations, about 5,000 have come from EC2 instances.
Interestingly, Wordfence's QA engineer and threat analyst Ram Gall notes most of the IP addresses used by the attackers only started exhibiting malicious behaviour last week, post which theyve been added to their blocklist.
While AWS makes it easy for businesses to move to the cloud, attackers are also utilizing the scale provided by cloud services, including AWS, in increasing numbers, shares Gall.
Gall shareed a list of 40 IP addresses that have each made over one million malicious login attempts since November 17, 2021. Surprisingly, these IPs have been on Wordfences blocklist for almost a year now.
Gall believes the persistence of these IPs is perhaps indicative of the fact that attackers have paid for them. Banking on this assumption he asserts that its high time that websites ensure they have the right mitigations in place since it has never been easier to inexpensively attack millions of sites at once.
He points to breaches such as the recent GoDaddy attack, which give attackers hordes of compromised passwords that they then employ to attempt to login to even more sites and services. Thanks to the habit of reusing passwords, credentials gleaned from breaches enables attackers to break into more websites, sometimes on the very first attempt.
In addition to adopting sensible password practices, Gall also recommends users to switch to two-factor authentication (2FA), which he says is an incredibly effective method of protecting websites even if the attacker has access to your login credentials.
Protect your computers with the help of the best endpoint protection tools and use these best security keys to add another layer to safeguard your accounts
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Attackers are using AWS instances to launch attacks on WordPress sites - Techradar
Microsoft Partners With the Global Manufacturing and Industrialisation Summit To Fast-track Digital Manufacturing Through Cloud Computing – Al-Bawaba
The Global Manufacturing and Industrialisation Summit (GMIS) and Microsoft have announced a partnership to help digitally transform the manufacturing sector by harnessing the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI), cloud technologies, and the Internet of Things (IoT).
The partnership will explore end-to-end manufacturing solutions in the digital era, including capabilities that seamlessly connect people, assets, workflow, and business processes, empowering organisations to be more resilient. It will also highlight security, as investments are increasingly being made in building risk management and compliance solutions.
As a strategic partner to the Global Manufacturing and Industrialisation Summit, Microsoft will participate in the fourth edition of the Summit (#GMIS2021) to share best practices as a global leader in digital transformation and cloud computing to support organisations in upgrading their businesses, increasing their productivity, driving innovation, and evolving ecosystems.
Sayed Hashish, General Manager of Microsoft UAE, said: The rapid transition to remote work caused a spike in adoption of cloud-based productivity and collaboration tools. Manufacturing companies have been gradually moving toward data-driven automation, IoT, machine learning and AI, and 2020 has shown just how critical those capabilities are. At Microsoft, we are fully committed to empowering manufacturers in making these transitions to digital, through cutting edge offerings such as Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing as well as our focus on research through initiatives such as Manufacturing Core, which focuses on innovative ideas and technological solutions to make manufacturing more efficient and competitive.
Following the launch of its data centres in June 2019, Microsoft has accelerated digital transformation in numerous ways in the UAE. The availability of local cloud regions has enabled every organisation to address data residency and governance requirements, while cloud regions, based in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, have accelerated the UAEs digital agendas by enabling job creation, entrepreneurship and economic growth across the country and the wider region. The spread of cloud computing would not be possible without data centres, which store and connect vast amounts of data points around the globe.
A pre-pandemic study by PwC has revealed that 91% of industrial companies are investing in digital factories, but only 6% of all respondents describe their factories as fully digitised. However, the potential opportunity is immense, with an expected annual growth rate of 17.9%, the cloud computing market is projected to reach USD791.48 billion by 2028. As companies around the world continue to transition from remote work to hybrid solutions, security remains a number one concern that can be addressed through a comprehensive cloud security strategy before transitioning to cloud services.
#GMIS2021 will explore the significance of digital transformation as a springboard to prosperity, as well as industrialisation in a post-pandemic world and the role of digital technologies amid the challenges and opportunities within the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The Summit will organise a special session on digital mobility, with a focus on the shift from working from home to working from anywhere.
Badr Al-Olama, Head of the GMIS Organising Committee said: Cloud storage and file-sharing services are increasingly offering tremendous value to enterprises as they bring flexibility, scalability and cost savings. In an ever-changing digital landscape, such technological advancements are crucial. We are delighted to welcome Microsoft as a partner and look forward to jointly highlight solutions and opportunities in the field for businesses to continue to grow in a safe and digitally-savvy environment.
#GMIS2021 was part of the six-day GMIS Week that runs from 22 to 27 November. The GMIS Week includes the Global Prosperity Conference and the Green Chain Conference exploring alternative and renewable energy on 24 November, and country-focused conferences in partnership with the UK, Australia, and Italy on 24 and 25 November. Throughout the week, the Summit is also running an exhibition to highlight the UAE governments Make it in the Emirates campaign, a first-of-its-kind initiative to encourage local and international investors, developers and innovators to benefit from the facilities and incentives offered by the countrys industrial sector.
Participants can register to attend the GMIS Week at https://gmisummit.com/registration. The programme agenda is available at https://gmisummit.com.