Category Archives: Cloud Computing
Multi-cloud environments: Explore the pros and cons – TechTarget
The one-size-fits-all cloud model is no longer feasible for most enterprises. They want to optimize overall performance and application agility, while cutting cost and bolstering security -- and many organizations are turning to a multi-cloud strategy to do so.
Multi-cloud computing boasts a number of intriguing advantages, as well as notable drawbacks that users must weigh before adopting this type of architecture. Daryl Plummer, VP and distinguished analyst at Gartner, is a believer in the multi-cloud movement.
"Multi-cloud is necessary, and I believe multi-cloud will get better and better," he said. "There's a lot of great things going on [in the cloud market] despite the potential problems people might run into."
But before organizations go all in on multi-cloud, they must evaluate every aspect of this architecture -- good and bad -- so they know whether to implement this cloud strategy.
Organizations want it all -- flexibility, scalability, and cost and performance optimization. Multi-cloud can often address those demands better than on-premises infrastructure or single-cloud computing.
Plummer attributes three main advantages to this type of cloud infrastructure.
Different cloud providers have different strengths. This can be limiting when you use a single provider, but you can use it to your advantage with multi-cloud computing, Plummer said.
For example, Google Cloud is known for its containerization and AI services. "If you're in the Google developer ecosystem, then you've been in Kubernetes from the beginning -- because they basically came up with [the idea]. The same thing with AI, you get advantages by being associated with their particular ecosystem," said Plummer.
Developers who work with different clouds will have a deeper knowledge of each platform as well as earlier access to tools from those providers. Being up to date on offerings from multiple clouds enables users to optimize performance and management on all their clouds.
In order to attract and retain customers, cloud providers must compete on price, functionality, discounts, consulting and more. If an enterprise can viably use multiple clouds to create its cloud infrastructure, it has the power to negotiate and force vendors to compete for its business.
"Your ability to get the right deal for [your company] is measurably impacted by your willingness to work with different cloud providers."
Cloud providers must constantly evolve and expand their services and capabilities to remain competitive. And to attract new users, they often have to leapfrog their competitors to make it worth the effort to switch providers.
Your ability to get the right deal is measurably impacted by your willingness to work with different cloud providers. Daryl Plummer
If your enterprise wants to advance its IT capabilities in a continuous and seamless manner, it needs to take advantage of this vendor competition, while avoiding excess disruption, Plummer said.
Organizations can then create business value by utilizing the best of what's available across cloud platforms. "That turns into money [and] into new opportunity much quicker than you might imagine," Plummer said.
Multi-cloud is not the end-all, be-all of IT infrastructures. While it is a great choice for many organizations, it's not without its flaws. While acknowledging the benefits of multi-cloud, Plummer also highlights three drawbacks associated with this cloud strategy.
Deploying multiple clouds is complex. IT teams can struggle to configure services on one cloud, let alone configuring services on two or three clouds, Plummer said.
Multi-cloud architectures are not for everyone, especially if developers and administrators aren't prepared for the complicated management required by running more than one cloud.
It's a myth that organizations can uniformly optimize costs with a multi-cloud strategy. While it is possible, it is more complicated than you might think.
"If you do it across multiple cloud players, [you] usually wind up spending more initially, and it takes a lot longer to figure out how to optimize costs in that new model, even with better negotiation," Plummer said. This is not to say that if you adopt a multi-cloud strategy you won't be able to optimize your cost, but there is a learning curve to the process.
If you're overeager to go multi-cloud, you run the risk of picking the wrong clouds for your enterprise.
"If you think spending money, people and time to get deeply embedded in one cloud is hard, what if you pick the second or third one and it's the wrong one, so you have to pick and choose again?" Plummer said.
Enterprises do face a potential downside to cloud providers' constantly evolving platforms. Even if one cloud is a good choice for your workloads now, it doesn't necessarily mean it will continue to be.
Still, even if you pick the wrong cloud, it doesn't mean you should give up, Plummer said. A good multi-cloud strategy will involve some degree of trial and error as you try to identify the best fit for your organization.
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Multi-cloud environments: Explore the pros and cons - TechTarget
Online Gaming: The Rise of a Multi-Billion Dollar Industry – Visual Capitalist
View the high resolution of this infographic by clicking here.
Cloud computing continues to be on the rise, and for good reason. Its transformed our digital experience in numerous ways, from how we store data to the way we share information online with others.
Growth in cloud services is showing no signs of slowing down, particularly in the data storage realmby 2025, almost half of the worlds stored data will reside in public cloud environments. Yet, despite its increasing popularity among consumers and businesses alike, do people really understand what the cloud fully entails? Or better yet, what the cloud even is?
Todays infographic from Raconteur provides an overview of the fast-changing cloud computing landscape, showcasing the industrys growth and its evolution in scale. It also touches on whats next for the cloud.
Put simply, cloud computing is a network of remote servers that provides customers with a number of offerings, including data storage, processing power, and apps. Its usually delivered on a pay-per-use basis.
Cloud computing can be broken down into three categories:
Cloud computing has its obstacles, such as security and privacy risks. Yet, the cloud continues to entice consumers by offering a new level of accessibility to their online experience.
This accessibility has also drastically changed the working world. The cloud allows users to access company servers from anywhere globally, and to share documents and information with colleagues quickly. Because of this, its become a key part of remote work.
Cloud services are seeing significant growth, and the big tech companies are its backbone.
In fact, four major players combine to dominate almost 60% of the clouds infrastructure. Heres a look at the cloud market breakdown in 2019, and annual growth compared to 2018:
Its no surprise that U.S. companies dominate the cloud service market since the country currently has the largest share of global cloud storage worldwide. Yet, the concentration of cloud storage is predicted to even out in the next few yearsby 2025, the U.S. portion of public cloud storage will drop from 51% to 31%, while Chinas will increase from just 6% to 13%.
The cloud has changed the way we use the internet. It has influenced the way we share information, our ability to work remotely, and how we store our data.
And these services are much needed, as our use of data and the internet continues to scale up. By 2025, an average internet user will have around 4,909 data interactions per day, an increase from 1,426 in the year 2020.
At the same time, the scale of global datasphere is expected to be five times bigger in 2025 than it was in 2018, growing from 33 zettabytes to 175 zettabytes. Each zettabyte, by the way, is equal to 1 trillion gigabytes.
With data taking an ever more important role in our lives, the cloud is becoming an indispensable part of business, technology, and society as a whole.
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Online Gaming: The Rise of a Multi-Billion Dollar Industry - Visual Capitalist
Leverage Mega-Trends With This ETF – ETF Trends
Multiple mega-trends are emerging as the technology sector rapidly evolves, but that can make it difficult for investors to which trends fit their portfolio needs. The ALPS Disruptive Technologies ETF (CBOE: DTEC) solves that conundrum by providing equal-weight exposure to 10 disruptive themes.
DTEC tracks the Indxx Disruptive Technologies Index, which identifies companies using disruptive technologies across ten thematic areas, including Healthcare Innovation, Internet of Things, Clean Energy and Smart Grid, Cloud Computing, Data and Analytics, FinTech, Robotics, and Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity, 3D Printing, and Mobile Payments.
Thats an effective methodology for investors that want the convenience of leveraging multiple disruptive themes under one umbrella and that could prove to be an ideal way of doing things in the current environment.
A number of megatrends are driving some of the better-performing themes and find a number of stocks that are likely to outperform, being exposed to multiple themes at the same time,SimonPowell, Jefferies equity strategist, said in a note.
Several of the themes favored by Jefferies are accessible via DTEC, including artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and fintech.
Artificial intelligence is increasingly being used in many sectors including health care, finance, and education, Jefferies said, reports CNBC.
Tech continues to thrive in a world fueled by innovation as Covid-19 continues to permeate into business processes. Financial technology is one of those areas that will see further strength and an industry that could scale up to $22.6 billion by 2025.
Fintech companies are shifting financial services and economic transactions to technology infrastructure platforms, ultimately revolutionizing financial services by creating simplicity and accessibility while driving down costs.
These companies also play an important part in the transformation of finance and banking or fintech, reports CNBC, citing Jefferies.
The cloud computing arms race isnt relegated to the tech giants like Google and Amazon. Organizations around the world are opening up their wallets and spending more on cloud computing technology to fortify their core businesses, resulting in record spending in 2019 and those spending records could be shattered this year, a theme DTEC is heavily levered to. The themes are benefiting DTEC as the fund is higher by 11.39% year-to-date.
Other technology funds to consider include the Technology Select Sector SPDR ETF (NYSEArca: XLK) and the Fidelity MSCI Information Technology Index ETF (FTEC).
For more on cornerstone strategies, visit our ETF Building Blocks Channel.
The opinions and forecasts expressed herein are solely those of Tom Lydon, and may not actually come to pass. Information on this site should not be used or construed as an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy, or a recommendation for any product.
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Leverage Mega-Trends With This ETF - ETF Trends
COVID-19 is driving IBM, IT industry to deliver faster ‘edge’ computing – WRAL Tech Wire
Editors note:Nicole Catchpole is Senior Analyst at Technology Business Research.
HAMPTON, N.H. The use cases for edge computing were already vast and varied prior to the pandemic. Self-driving cars, heartmonitoring devices, crop-sensing machinery and inventory-management sensors are examples that scratch the surface of how the low latency, bandwidth management and advanced analytics afforded by edge computing are valuable in a variety of industries.
Edge computings core value proposition of low latency for immediate real-time insights is amplified even more in essential industries like healthcare, especially during a crisis.
As COVID-19 began to emerge as a threat in the United States and Europe, TBR analysts anticipated a potential acceleration in the use of telemedicine brought on by the concern among doctors that they might infect their patients, an obstacle seemingly inconsequential prior to the pandemic. Since March, the predictions have proved true as telemedicine has quickly risen to the forefront as healthcare workers are becoming more efficient and avoiding the risk of overcrowded hospitals by urging more of their patients to wear devices that track basic vitals.
Countries such as China have experimented with edge technology, deploying drones and robots and relying on their efficiency and accuracy to help identify and treat COVID-19 patients. In addition, while factories have always been one of the most compelling use cases for edge computing, this trend has accelerated given the populations incredible reliance on ecommerce. In factories, edge technology not only enables efficiency and provides cost savings but also promotes safety as sensors and devices can perform many of the tasks previously handled by people.
IBM, Verizon team up for 5G effort aiming to accelerate business solutions
Along with social distancing and remote work, edge technology is enabling these factories and healthcare facilities to safely stay up and running while the rest of us have had to stay home.
Unprecedented times require organizations to reconfigure previously established strategies to meet unforeseen demands. Leading cloud vendors prior to the pandemic were already investing in edge computing as critical to address challenges around bandwidth, data analytics and latency. While officials around the world are now wrestling with what safe and effective re-entry should look like as the pandemic subsides in many areas, there is a great deal of uncertainty as to how to go about this.
While advancements such as smart cities seemed to be a thing of the future, certain smart solutions will be implemented sooner than predicted to assist in the transition to the new normal, and the technological enablement will be powered in many cases at the edge.
For example, edge devices strategically placed around high-traffic areas can monitor foot-traffic patterns, influence the timing around loosening or tightening regulations, and facilitate better safety measures to protect populations.
IBM Worker Insights is one such example that addresses these concerns as the world reacclimates, enabling monitoring and management of occupancy while aggregating and analyzing data to ensure the implementation of effective safety measures.
Rob High, CTO of Edge Computing for IBM (NYSE: IBM), introduced the solution as building on the IBM Maximo Worker Insights product for aggregating alerts to worker safety concerns, mashing those alerts to a 2D site map to create a heat map, and notifying supervisors via a smartphone app to enable them to address those issues.
The product has been extended to leverage analytics on the edge that is able to draw inferences about whether employees and clients are wearing their face masks properly, are breaking social distance guidelines, whether too many people are congregating in a confined area for too long. The inferences created at the edge and enabled by IBM Worker Insights are a prime example of how more vendors are using the pandemic to create new use cases for edge deployment and funneling their investment dollars into furthering the adoption of this technology.
On enterprise, societal and consumer levels, edge technology will undoubtedly play a major role in tandem with migration to the cloud. The distributed nature of edge computing is largely symbolic of the dispersed workforce and speaks volumes about the worlds new reliance on devices and related technologies.
Data-driven insights, low latency in mission-critical situations, and advanced analytics are increasingly important and are all factors that highlight edge computings increasing relevancy. While the focus in the short term is on keeping people safe and businesses in mission-critical industries running, it is also important to note the extent to which edge computing is becoming entrenched in our day-to-day lives. As the world starts to move toward the new normal, edge technology will only become more central to supporting the way we live.
(C) TBR
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COVID-19 is driving IBM, IT industry to deliver faster 'edge' computing - WRAL Tech Wire
Google Teams With NVIDIA on New Cloud Computing Offerings – The Motley Fool
NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) announced on Tuesday that just weeks after its release, the A100 Tensor Core graphics processing unit (GPU) has been adopted by Google Cloud, a division of Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) (NASDAQ:GOOG).
The Accelerator-Optimized VM (A2) family, available on Google Compute Engine, is designed specifically to handle some of the most demanding applications out there, including artificial intelligence (AI) workloads and high performance computing (HPC). This makes Google the first cloud service provider to offer the new NVIDIA GPUs.
The NVIDIA A100 GPU. Image source: NVIDIA.
For the most demanding workloads, Google Cloud will offer users up to 16 GPUs on a single VM (or virtual machine). The cloud provider will also offer the A2 VMs in smaller configurations to match the individual user's computing needs. The system will be available via a private alpha program to start, before opening up to the general public later this year.
In a blog, NVIDIA said the A100 can also power a broad range of compute-intensive applications in cloud data centers, including "data analytics, scientific computing, genomics, edge video analytics, 5G services, and more."
Based on NVIDIA's new Ampere architecture, the A100 represents the "greatest generational leap" in performance in the company's history, boosting both machine-learning training and inference computing performance by 20 times compared with its predecessors. Previous versions of the technology required separate processors for training and inference. The A100 also offers a 10-fold increase in speed versus the previous generation technology.
Google plans to roll out access to additional instances in the near future, with the NVIDIA A100 coming soon to Google Kubernetes Engine, Cloud AI Platform, and other Google Cloud services.
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Google Teams With NVIDIA on New Cloud Computing Offerings - The Motley Fool
How will the cloud strengthen business continuity? | EC-Council Official Blog – EC-Council Blog
Cloud-based computing and the whole notion of SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) is becoming the most critical expertise for this era. Due to this,business continuity experts should be seeking what this development means for them and its potential impact.
According to a survey, 73% of organizations fall victim to natural disasters and human-made disasters, including malicious hacking and malware. This negatively impacts business operations. It isnt just enough to back up your data with traditional software packages; you need the cloud.
EC-Council Disaster Recovery Professional (EDRP) certification certifies IT professionals, cybersecurity experts, BC/DR experts, CISOs, IT directors, and other cybersecurity enthusiasts in the field of business continuity and disaster recovery. Having an EDRP certification is a logical next step for those who want to further their career in the field of business continuity and disaster recovery.
The cloud means different things for different occasions. Cloud computing is a word used to generally define data centers accessible to several people via the internet, delivered on-demand basis to users. Put simply;cloud computing describes the process of storing and retrieving programs and data through the internet rather than using your systems hard drive. The cloud is a metaphoric description of the internet.
Different forms of cloud computing services exist, including infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and software as a service (SaaS). Internet users can benefit a lot from using cloud-based services. These benefits include reduced spending on IT and IT infrastructure, speedy implementation, flexible pricing, and elevated scalability.
Disaster recovery and business continuity planning are procedures that assist organizations in preparing for natural and human-made disasters or incidents. These incidents could be a hurricane, tornado, or merely a power outage. The role of an EDRP in this scenario can range from supervising the business continuity and disaster recovery plan to offering input and backing, to executing the plan during an incident or emergency.
While no degree of preparation can avert an incident, however, when a disaster, capable of completely halting the complete business operations occurs, having a disaster recovery program and a business continuity plan can mitigate the attack and keep the business running again.
Although disaster recovery programs and business continuity plans appear similar, they are not the same thing. Disaster recovery programs are procedures that enable an organization to get all its critical IT infrastructure and business operations running after a disruptive event.
The event may be as catastrophic as an earthquake, Hurricane Katrina, terrorist attacks, or something as minute as a computer virus, supply chain partner problems, or power outage. Most business executives often tend to overlook their cybersecurity disaster recovery programs since disasters are seemingly improbable.
On the other hand, a business continuity plan is a more inclusive process that ensures that the entire organization is fully functioning following a catastrophic event. The aim is to ensure that the organization continues to make money, regardless of the size of the incident. This ensures that HR can easily access vital information about their works, so that customer service representatives can access their CRM applications, and the marketing department can gain authentication to their stored graphics.
While these two concepts are not the same, they are often used interchangeably. The label BC/DR is the umbrella term for these concepts due to their shared considerations. To learn more about BC/DR, visit our webpage on EDRP courses.
Disaster recovery professionals (DRP) are often responsible for the creation and sustenance of a business continuity plan. They work directly with significant business units to know their business procedures, detect, and assess their risks, and offer technologies or software that will assist in managing and mitigating these potential risks.
Whether your company wants to take up cloud-based disaster recovery programs or cloud-based business continuity solutions, it is more logical to collaborate with business continuity and disaster recovery service provider. A DRP has the needed knowledge to perform a correct business impact analysis, vulnerability assessments, formulate policies, and plans that are most suitable for the organization.
To learn more about the business continuity plan and the role of a DRP, sign up for our EDRP certification program.
Since cloud computing services profoundly depend on hardware virtualization tools, it helps organizations to speedily back up their sensitive information and data, operating systems, and applications to the cloud. With quicker uploads and downloads of significant computing features, comes quicker recovery times and business continuity for the organization.
When it comes to business continuity planning, most organizations perceive SaaS as the available option. Most organizations can benefit from cloud-based business continuity programs, even in remote locations. Members of your IT department can select the suitable services that meet their unique business demands with a wide variety of services that cloud computing offers.
When an incident occurs or in an emergency, it is easy to restore and recover your data from the cloud. This ensures business continuity due to the robust response from your cloud computing services. Likewise, traditional business continuity and disaster recovery plans can be burdensome. With cloud computing service, you can ask your service provider to replicate your file to a new location. An EDRP knows to evaluate the specifications of the SaaS provider to familiarize themselves with and get comfortable with the conveniences delivered.
Traditional BC/DC solutions are extremely expensive to manage. They usually involve purchasing and sustaining a comprehensive set of hardware that harmonizes or reflects the critical systems of a business, such as adequate storage to accommodate a broad duplicate of the entire organizations business data.
However, cloud-based business continuity plans or strategies are affordable, lucrative, and economical for all business sizes. Business continuity planning that is cloud-based eliminates the requirement for costly remote production centers. Similarly, organizations are given the choice of tailoring their business continuity plan, since they can subscribe solely to necessary services. Companies can then decide to modify their subscription plans as they expand their business operations.CLOUD AND DISASTER RECOVERY: THE 5 WS
When you use the services of unauthorized cloud providers, it could compromise your network or devices through data exfiltration and malware infections, since the enterprise cannot secure resources with which it is not conversant. Using unlicensed cloud providers might also compromise your networks visibility and administration of business data and networks.
One of the major recognized potential risks for cloud computing, which affects not just the organization but also the cloud providers, includes compliance and jurisdictional risks, lack of data security and privacy, availability risks, unauthorized access.
Some industries are highly regulated, including banking, auditing, healthcare, and government organizations. Several business information security regulations and compliance are needed to safeguard specific data. Cloud providers are bound by these regulations and required to not only secure the data of their consumers but also to know how the data is defended, who has authorized access, and the location of the data. A company without suitable legal protections, suffer the consequences when there is a breach at the cloud.
In a way, you place the entirety of your business in the hands of the cloud providers. You supply them with access to sensitive information, including mailing lists, payment data, user ID, and so on. Most people are unaware of who their cloud providers are, their integrity, the data access they have, and the type of security solution being used. Can you vouch for the reputation of your client?
There is no complete uptime guarantee from any provider. When you depend on your cloud providers for essential business operations, then you entrust your business sustainability to your ISP and cloud providers. When you suffer a downtime, your cloud provider also suffers. Your cloud providers can also suffer downtime from DDoS and DoS attacks, SQL injection attacks, or even bad weather. Availability risks are less severe but still detrimental.
Internal threats and external threats aggregate cloud computing risks. When you outsource your business tasks to other cloud vendors, not only should you be worried about your staff but also the staff of your vendors. Government intrusion risks also intensify when you use the services of cloud providers.
From Hurricane Katrina to the WannaCry debacle and currently, to the COVID-19 pandemic, the business landscape has been battered by one form of disaster or the other. The frightening aspect of all this is that the rate of recurrence is growing aggressively in the past few years, owing to the mounting volumes of cyberattacks.
It is even more amazing when statistics demonstrate that, at most, 2 out of every 5 business lacks a solid disaster recovery and business continuity plan. Even out of those that do have this, only a handful test the plan regularly for flaws and relevance. This is what disaster recovery certification courses are created for.
EC-Council Disaster Recovery Professional (EDRP) certification is designed to educate and validate an applicants proficiency to strategize, plan, execute, and sustain viable business continuity and disaster recovery plan. Regardless of the size of your organization, you need an EDRP to stay relevant in this age. This dearth can be remedied by BC/DR experts who do not only recognize the significance of cloud services as a business continuity and disaster recovery plan but are also proficient to guarantee that your business incurs minimal costs when an incident occurs.
EDRP courses offer IT professionals, cybersecurity professionals, BC/DR consultants, CISOs and IT Directors, and other cybersecurity enthusiasts, with a robust understanding of business continuity and disaster recovery ideologies such a, developing policies and procedures, formulating risk assessments, conducting business impact analysis, and executing an effective plan. EDRP has four training options designed for your convenience, including, iLearn (Self-Study), iWeek (Live Online), Master Class, and Training Partner (In Person) training. EDRP courses are updated with a restructured curriculum that attempts the BC/DR domain with the newest trends and technologies, best practices, and encompasses modern industry gaps. To begin your certification journey with EC-Council, click here.
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How will the cloud strengthen business continuity? | EC-Council Official Blog - EC-Council Blog
How is Cloud Computing Transforming the Businesses of Consumer Electronics? – Embedded Computing Design
With upcoming technologies, economic instability, and increasing regulation applying pressure on the consumer electronics industry, companies will face more complex supply chains, shrinking product life cycles, uncertain demand, and decreasing revenues. Within this dynamic scenario, cloud computing offers a new path for sustainable, efficient, and flexible growth. Gartner forecasts that the cloud services market will grow 16.6% in 2020 ($249.8 billion) and by 2022, 90% of organizations across industries will be using cloud services.
Consumer electronics leaders share their top reasons to adopt cloud computing as improved internal business-process efficiency, increased customer demand, and expanded sales channels. Using a combination of cloud based services, DevOps services and analytics, companies can accelerate time-to-market and enhance their customers experience as well.
For the electronics industry, cloud computing services offer the potential to redefine customer relationships management, improve governance and transparency, transform operations and expand business agility. Let us see how cloud can stimulate benefits for the consumer electronics industry.
The development of cloud computing, web services, and service oriented architecture, is the key to providing the integration that will open up the field to improved collaboration and operational efficiency. Cloud computing service providers allow companies (big or small) to move a part or all of their operations from a local network to the cloud platform, thereby making it easier for them to access a host of facilities such as data storage, processing, and much more.
To illustrate, managing content deployment and OTA for 70K+ on-field connected devices for a leading electronics manufacturer of touch screen displays and POS devices would not have been easy without cloud device management Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). Cloud based portal enabled their user subscription & management, content upload, add/update devices, and configurations all on single portal within a click, thus, simplifying processes and improving operational efficiency with anytime anywhere access.
Also, a standard transition of business applications to cloud is seen where organizations deploy SAP/ CRM on the cloud providing flexible accessibility and simplified setup for servers/software.
Moreover, applying DevOps methodology in the cloud enhances collaboration between teams, boosts the efficiency of the application development cycle, optimizes product quality and saves time. DevOps practices and tools that help the businesses run faster and smoother by automating key steps with standardization.
In addition to bringing buyers and sellers together on the online marketplace, consumer electronics companies can add value by generating personalized product recommendations for buyers with the help of cloud computing and analytics. Because of the clouds expanded computing power and capacity, it can store information about user preferences, its location, and run algorithms to derive intelligent insights enabling product or service customization. For example, a leading consumer electronics brand inferred their user preferences from buying behavior and usage patterns, and used that analytics to offer customized advertisements, offers and suggestions. Ultimately, this paradigm facilitates a host of possibilities, from radically improving the performance of current devices and services that benefits the companies, to delivering improved customer satisfaction ensuring customer loyalty.
Benefits of cloud computing to consumer electronics
Competitive advantage created by going to market first with innovative new products, be it feature-rich or value-driven is critically important in the electronics industry. Electronics OEMs have made dramatic reductions in the product development cycle time with product life cycle management (PLM) systems, but the development process still remains inefficient and time consuming. Multiple ready to use development and managed services like AWS IoT core, EC2, API gateway, Cognito, S3, Azure Blob Storage, Virtual Machines, and many more from leading cloud providers helps expedite collaborative product development by reducing developers work.
With cloud, companies can enforce standardized protocols, synchronize information between systems and access a centralized database provided by infrastructure-as-a-service. With automation and standardization, OEMs can improve development efficiency and avoid costly downstream errors. This helps to speed time to market and time to value, which in turn yields a critical competitive advantage.
Also, organizations adapting to serverless cloud architecture, on-demand database connectivity and pay as you go model enables to shift their IT capital cost to an operational or variable cost.
One of the major business enablers powered by cloud is ecosystem connectivity. Cloud facilitates collaboration with value chain partners and customers, which can lead to improvements in productivity and increased innovation. Cloud-based platforms can bring together disparate groups of people who can collaborate and share resources, information and processes. The recent trend of open innovation is powered via cloud-based software solutions that connect parties (companies, partners, distributors) and facilitate the sharing of ideas. There are also cloud based deal management platforms streamlining the presentation, negotiation, invoicing, and reconciliation of trade promotions received from companys vendors, distributors in a secure, cloud environment. This put an end to the numerous emails, faxes and spreadsheets that are typically exchanged, reducing errors that are often associated with this kind of communication.
Efficient management of inventory is one of the common challenges faced in the Consumer Electronics industry. It is difficult for giant consumer electronics that manufacture multiple products and manage large distribution channels at different locations to check or manage their stock in real-time and predict future demands. With cloud computing and data analytics, they can have wide visibility of their stocks, market, consumer preferences and competition at global level.
Cloud offers access to real-time data, cloud architecture and analytics platforms to build both predictive and prescriptive inventory forecasting that significantly decreases their issues such as stocks shortage or surplus, enabling better decision making and managed inventories. Moreover, company executives can access data and stocks at any time and from anywhere to check the real-time stock availability.
To succeed with cloud, consumer electronics companies have to assess its impact on the operating model and determine successive actions for more effective cloud adoption. Cloud computing services including architecture, development, deployment, migration, optimization of cloud solutions and cloud data analytics helps consumer companies transform their business model and operations with enhanced flexibility, scalability and efficiency elevating their businesses to the next level.
Dhruvesh Soni is associated withVOLANSYS Technologiesas Principle Engineer for over 6 years. He has diversified experience of developing solutions for domains like Cloud, Internet of Things (IoT), Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), and more across multiple industries bringing in value to our client's solutions.
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How is Cloud Computing Transforming the Businesses of Consumer Electronics? - Embedded Computing Design
Google Cloud and Renault partner for Industry 4.0 optimisation – Cloud Tech
James is editor in chief of TechForge Media, with a passion for how technologies influence business and several Mobile World Congress events under his belt. James has interviewed a variety of leading figures in his career, from former Mafia boss Michael Franzese, to Steve Wozniak, and Jean Michel Jarre. James can be found tweeting at @James_T_Bourne.
Google Cloud has announced a new partnership with Groupe Renault to accelerate the digitisation of the automotive manufacturers industrial system.
Renault, which has been developing its own digital platform to aggregate industrial data since 2016, will utilise Google Cloud for analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence to improve its supply chain, production quality, as well as reducing environmental impact.
The move is being touted as a milestone for Googles industrial capabilities. It is an area which had seen little traction previously, with the companys primary customer targets focusing around retail, healthcare, and financial services.
This collaboration is a perfect illustration of Groupe Renault digital strategy, applied here to the industrial field, said Jose Vicente de los Mozos, Renault director of manufacturing and logistics in a statement. This agreement and the commitment of our IT, manufacturing and supply chain management teams will allow us to accelerate the deployment of our Industry 4.0 plan designed to transform and connect our production sites and logistics processes around the world to improve our standards of excellence and performance.
The partnership, as can be evinced in similar deals such as Microsofts $1 billion Poland digital investment plan, also includes employee training. Google will train Renault workers across engineering, manufacturing, and IT to enhance the companys data-driven culture. de los Mozos added Renault employees will benefit from high-level training in digital data management.
While Google Cloud has seen various recent customer successes the company secured a contract with Deutsche Bank earlier this week other areas have seen a downturn. According to a Bloomberg report, the company has scrapped plans to offer a major new cloud service in China. The initiative, known as Isolated Region, was reportedly shut down due to global political divisions exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Photo byAdrian DascalonUnsplash
Interested in hearing industry leaders discuss subjects like this and sharing their experiences and use-cases? Attend theCyber Security & Cloud Expo World Serieswith upcoming events in Silicon Valley, London and Amsterdam to learn more.
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Google Cloud and Renault partner for Industry 4.0 optimisation - Cloud Tech
Star2Star Wins 2020 Cloud Computing Product of the Year Award – Yahoo Finance
SARASOTA, Fla., July 07, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Star2Star, a global leader in cloud-native collaboration for the enterprise, announced today that TMC, a global, integrated media company helping clients build communities in print, in person and online, has named Star2Star as a 2020 Cloud Computing Product of the Year Awards winner, presented by Cloud Computing magazine. This is the third consecutive year Star2Star has received this award.
The Cloud Computing Product of the Year Award honors vendors with the most innovative, useful, and beneficial cloud products and services that have been available to deploy within the past year. Winners represent prominent players in the market who consistently demonstrate the advancement of technologies. Each recipient is a verifiable leader in the marketplace.
Star2Stars cloud-native platform offers businesses end-to-end communications and collaboration solutions. Their comprehensive portfolio includes pure and on-premises cloud deployments, exceptional business VoIP, cutting-edge video meetings technology, team collaboration tools, and more solutions designed for the modern enterprise. Star2Star recently launched the industrys most comprehensive and cost-effective solution sets for remote work and range of business needs. Their bundles include Business Continuity, Professional, Collaboration, Customer Service, and Contact Center solution sets.
We are thrilled to be recognized with this prestigious award, said Michelle Accardi, President and Chief Revenue Officer at Star2Star. We have been working diligently to provide the best services and solutions to meet the needs of businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic that can also prepare them for the future. I am incredibly proud of the hard work and dedication my team has demonstrated to make this possible.
Congratulations to the winners of the 2020 Cloud Computing Product of the Year Award, said Rich Tehrani, CEO, TMC. These innovative products and services are leaders within the cloud computing space and deserve this recognition. As the Cloud market evolves and enables more and more powerful computing options, we look forward to seeing their future successes.
About Star2Star
In an increasingly complex world, businesses need to simplify the way they communicate, collaborate, and seamlessly integrate third-party applications into their operations and processes. Star2Star meets that need with its patented cloud-native collaboration platform designed for the modern enterprise that extends the company's record of success in maintaining a 99.4% customer retention rate.
Star2Star has delivered consistently innovative solutions to enterprise communication and collaboration challenges since 2006. Throughout its history, it has demonstrated a commitment to the continuous upgrading of cutting-edge technology to anticipate and address rapidly evolving enterprise needs. The company entered the market as the only UCaaS provider with an on-premises cloud platform that combined cloud flexibility with an ultra-reliable proprietary network. Today, its suite of enterprise communication and collaboration solutions offers unparalleled value, reliability, quality, scalability, and capacity to unify people and processes within an intuitive, cloud-native environment.
Star2Star has been named to such prestigious lists as the Deloitte Technology Fast 500, Inc. 500|5000, Omdia Top 10 UCaaS Service Provider, and Forbes Most Promising Companies. Recognition of its pioneering innovation in the enterprise cloud market extends to major industry analyst indicators such as inclusion in the Frost Radar North American Hosted IP Telephony and UCaaS Industry reports and the Gartner Magic Quadrant for UCaaS, Worldwide.
Casey OLoughlincoloughlin@star2star.com
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Star2Star Wins 2020 Cloud Computing Product of the Year Award - Yahoo Finance
In cloud computing, SMEs have the magic wand to disruption of supply chain – The Standard
The global impact occasioned by the Covid-19 pandemic not only on public health, but on business, cannot be underestimated.Due to their size and lack of resources, small and medium businesses (SMES) are often the most vulnerable to unforeseen events and threats and often do not have a plan in place to deal with supply chain disruptions. Yet, in Africa, SMEs are important drivers of economic growth, accounting for up to 90 per cent of businesses in sub-Saharan Africa, the International Finance Corporation reports.Regrettably, one thing clearly emerging from the pandemic is that SMEs supply chains from hub regions across the globe have been severely disrupted on an unprecedented level. SMEs are unable to continue with business as usual because of trade disruptions. So, the question we must ask is, how do these SMEs make their supply chain anti-fragile?
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In cloud computing, SMEs have the magic wand to disruption of supply chain - The Standard