Category Archives: Cloud Computing
Chinese giant Huawei to build cloud computing data centre in NZ – Stuff.co.nz
TOM PULLAR-STRECKER
Last updated15:45, March 21 2017
RUBEN SPRICH/REUTERS
Huawei CEO and founder Ren Zhengfei met with Prime Minister Bill English in Wellington to discuss its New Zealand investment plans on Tuesday. Wellington is also where Ren gave his first ever press conference in 2013.
Chinese technology juggernaut Huawei plans to splash out hundreds of millions of dollars in New Zealand after praising the country's approach to global business.
Founder and chief executive Ren Zhengfei met with Prime Minister Bill English in Wellington on Tuesdayto discuss its plans, which the company said would see itspend $400 million in New Zealand over the next five years.
Worldwide, Huaweiemploys more than 170,000 staff almost as manyas Apple and Google combined.
Spokesman Andrew Bowater said its spendingplans werein part "aspirational". $250m of the spendingwould be accounted for by itsintentionto source more products and services locally.
But he said the company also intended to build a cloud-computing data centre possibly in connection with a localpartner in New Zealand in about two years, and would expand its research centre in Wellington while opening another in Christchurch.
READ MORE: *Huawei founder's NZ interview carefully chosen *Huawei controversy flares up again
Huaweiemploys about 150 staff in New Zealand.
Ren said in a statement that "New Zealand's open and fair trade environment" and its emphasis on developing new technology had facilitatedHuawei'songoing commitment.
Economic Development Minister Simon Bridges said the investment would"touch many areas of the economy and open up global opportunities for New Zealand".
The expanded Wellingtonresearch lab, based at Victoria University, will investigatetechnologies such as 5G cellphonenetworks, "big data" and the potential of internet-connected devices, or the so-called "internet of things".
Huawei said it would offer 100 undergraduatesthe opportunity to travel to China fortechnologyand cultural exchanges over the next five years, and would also open a regional office in Wellington.
Huaweihas become aposter boyfor China's modernising economy, despite efforts by the United States and Australia to constrain the company's growth in their markets, citingnational securityconcerns.
Those concerns came to a head in 2012 when theUSHouse of Representatives' Intelligence Committee urged American firms to stop doing business with Huawei and fellow Chinese firm ZTE, sayingChinacould use their equipment to spy and for cyber attacks.
The same year, the Australian government barred Huawei from involvement in itsA$37billion National Broadband Network initiative.
Theobstacleshave not been mirrored in New Zealand, where Huawei has been a supplier to Spark, Vodafone and2degrees. It has also suppliedEnable and UltrafastFibre, the companies that are building the ultrafast broadbandnetwork in Christchurch and the lower North Island.
Huawei supplied and partly-financed 2degrees' mobile network.
In 2015,it also provided the technology for Vodafone's$22 million cable broadbandupgrades in Wellington and Christchurch.
Last year, Spark began trials in Christchurch of4.5Gcellsitetechnology using equipment supplied by Huawei. Chorus buys a small amount of Huaweiequipment for its rural networks.
Nor have the overseas blocks stopped Huawei's stellar growth.
Huawei is expected to report its 2016 revenues jumped by almost a third to just underUS$75 billion when it reports its annual results at the end of the month.
The company has set its sights on overtaking Apple to become the world's second-largest smartphone company behind Samsung in 2018.
But it has not all been plain sailing in recent months.
Huawei's smartphone unitis understood to have missed its internalprofit targetfor 2016 despite achieving higher-than-expected sales.
ThatpromptedRento send a memo to staff last month saying the company wouldn't pay for thosewho didn't work hard and who wanted to "just count money in bed".
Huawei is moving into cloud computing, challenging players such as Amazon and Microsoft.
Bowater said the initialfocus of its New Zealand data centre would be toserve the local market, but it could also "be a bit of a regional hub".
"There is an opportunityfor 'NZ Inc' to position itself as a safe haven for data."
The obvious location for the data centre was Auckland but it "could be anywhere", he said.
-Stuff
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Chinese giant Huawei to build cloud computing data centre in NZ - Stuff.co.nz
Step aside cloud computing, ‘fog computing’ is here – TechRadar
Cloud computing performing tasks on external servers and sending the results back to your machine is rather popular, it's safe to say.
Going all the way back to the 1970s, firms have relied on remotely located computing clusters to solve hardware-intensive problems. Today, it's the dominant way of doing business for many companies.
But there's a problem. While hosting computer power on a remote server is handy, it's kind of a security risk; if that server is compromised, then the data of thousands even millions of users can be exposed in one fell swoop.
So computer scientists at the University of Camerino have developed a new concept that spreads data across many servers, with no single location. It uses virtual buffers to endlessly relocate data packets without a file ever being complete in one place. They're calling it 'fog computing'.
"Our proposal is based on this idea of a service which renders information completely immaterial in the sense that for a given period of time there is no place on earth that contains information complete in its entirety," said Rosario Culmone and Maria Concetta De Vivo, who developed the concept.
"We want to realise a fog of files rather than a cloud."
They compare the system to a letter with a secure tracking device that gets sent continuously between different post offices and is never delivered. It would be hard for a thief to find it, but when you need it again you simply activate the tracking device, and it can then be easily located.
"The inaccessibility by others, the non-location, and the dynamics of the system offer significant advantages in terms of security, but raise some legal problems. the pair said.
The full details of Culmone and De Vivo's "fog computing" system were published in the International Journal of Electronic Security and Digital Forensics.
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Step aside cloud computing, 'fog computing' is here - TechRadar
Exploring the cloud laboratory: biotechnology and cloud computing – Information Age
Cloud computing within the biotech sector can take big data analysis to the next level by means of performance, connectivity, on-demand infrastructure and flexible provisioning
The continued drive for innovation puts immense pressure on IT departments to develop new technologies at speed, while also making sure that they do this cost effectively.
Add to this the fact that, more so than other industries, biotech firms are extremely tightly regulated. As a result, IT groups within this industry are often reluctant to introduce more complexity into what is already a very complex environment.
To them, expanding a data centre can often feel a whole lot easier than navigating the regulations of the cloud. Despite this, growth in the demand for cloud computing in life sciences research and development is escalating due to the benefits it brings to the industry benefits like exceeding regulatory requirements, for example.
iland haveworked with many companies in the healthcare, life sciences and biotech industries. Therefore, it knowsfrom experience that the implementation of cloud computing in biotechnology empowers organisations with the control and flexibility needed to lead the way in both the research world as well as the businesses world.
>See also:10 trends that will influence cloud computing in 2017
For example, ilandrecently worked with a US based biotechnology organisation on their backup and disaster recovery (DR) strategy, and were able to drive global data centre consolidation with host-based replication to the cloud. As a result, itsDR testing and auditing processes were greatly simplified and streamlined which drove significant cost savings as well as compliance assurance.
If you still need convincing here are three additional key benefits that cloud brings to biotech organisations.
When the Human Genome Project began it was one of the most extensive research projects in the field to date costing billions of pounds and lasting over a decade.
These days, thanks largely to cloud technology, it can be done in just 26 hours. Things such as drug R&D, clinical research as well as a whole host of other areas have benefited just as much from the rapid growth of computational power. The better your technology is at crunching huge sets of data, the quicker you can innovate.
Cloud computing within the biotech sector can take big data analysis to the next level by means of performance, connectivity, on-demand infrastructure and flexible provisioning.
Labs can also benefit from immense computing power without the cost and complexity of running big onsite server rooms. They can also scale up at will in order to make use of new research and ideas almost instantly.
Concerns have been voiced that so called scientific computing in the cloud may make results less reproducible. One concern is that cloud computing will be a computing black box that obscures details needed to accurately interpret the results of computational analyses.
>See also:How cloud computing can transform the pharmaceutical industry
In actual fact, by leveraging the application program interfaces (APIs) in the iland cloud, biotech customers are able to integrate cloud data back into on-premises IT systems to ensure that data analyses done in the cloud can be easily shared and consumed by other applications.
Essentially, cloud computing services bring more players to the table to solve the giant puzzle. Its a win-win situation from an economic and patient standpoint, and several big name companies are jumping on the biotech cloud bandwagon.
Biotech companies need to maintain strong access and authentication controls, while also being able to collaborate easily. For this reason audit trails and other measures are often required to verify that information has not been improperly altered, and that good experimental and manufacturing procedures have been followed.
At the same time bio-technologists need to be able to access and share data across multiple departments or even multiple companies.
Cloud computing in biotechnology makes this all possible it centralises data, ensuring security and data sovereignty while facilitating collaboration.
It supports extensive user and role based access control, two-factor authentication and integrity monitoring to prevent improper access and changes. In addition to data encryption, vulnerability scanning and intrusion detection, these measures facilitate security and compliance, without disrupting the internal workflow.
Complex regulatory requirements and logistics combined with niche markets make efficiency paramount within biotechnology. Even minor mistakes as a result of sloppy process management can easily result in major issues.
Real-time operational reporting dramatically improves efficiency, quality control and decision making, allowing organisations to react instantly to challenges and opportunities, both internal and external.
>See also:Managed cloud: making the most out of public cloud computing
As well as enhanced billing visibility and resource management functions, the release of the vendors secure cloud services means that the itscloud now includes on-demand security and compliance reports.
This advanced cloud management functionality is designed to foster strategic, self-sufficient control of a cloud environment, optimising overall cloud usage and costs to drive business initiatives and growth.
Without a shadow of a doubt, cloud technology can help biotechnology companies build the future. From research and development to marketing, computing affects everything an organisation does.
Sourced by Monica Brink, director of marketing, iland
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Exploring the cloud laboratory: biotechnology and cloud computing - Information Age
IBM and Wanda form China cloud computing partnership – Reuters
SHANGHAI IBM and a unit of China's Dalian Wanda Group, a property and entertainment conglomerate, agreed on Sunday to team up to provide cloud services to Chinese companies, the U.S. technology provider said.
Through a newly formed venture, Wanda Cloud Company, they will offer select IBM cloud infrastructure and platform as a service (IaaS and PaaS) technologies in China, IBM said.
The venture between IBM and Wanda Internet Technology Group will be "responsible for distributing, building and operating the IBM cloud platform in China", an IBM spokeswoman said.
In November, Alibaba Holdings Ltd's cloud unit announced plans to open four new data facilities outside China in a bid to grab market share from leading players Amazon.com and Microsoft.
Research firm Canalys expects the global market for cloud computing, defined as the storage of data on remote networks rather than local servers, to reach $135 billion by 2020.
(Reporting by Alexandra Harney; editing by Jason Neely)
JERUSALEM/BEIJING China's economy may be 35 times larger than Israel's, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is hoping to use that to advantage during a three-day visit to Beijing as he looks to reorient Israel's economy toward Asia over Europe and the United States.
MUMBAI Britain's Vodafone Group and Idea Cellular agreed on Monday to merge their Indian operations in a $23 billion deal, creating the country's biggest telecoms business after the entry of a new rival sparked a brutal price war.
TAIPEI Taiwan's TSMC, the world's largest contract chipmaker and a major Apple Inc supplier, on Monday said it would take a decision next year on whether to build a U.S. chip plant.
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IBM and Wanda form China cloud computing partnership - Reuters
IBM and Red Hat aim to boost hybrid cloud computing, OpenStack usage – ZDNet
IBM has signed two alliances aimed at encouraging use of hybrid cloud computing.
IBM and Red Hat are working together to encourage the use of OpenStack and make it easier for to companies to shift their Linux workloads into private clouds.
IBM said that Red Hat OpenStack Platform and Red Hat Ceph Storage on IBM Private Cloud will be generally available at the end of March, ahead of which IBM has become a Red Hat Certified Cloud and Service Provider. Big Blue said this would help "enterprises benefit from the OpenStack Platform's speed and economics".
Also as part of the agreement, Red Hat Cloud Access will become available for IBM Cloud by the end of the second quarter, allowing Red Hat customers to move unused Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscriptions from their data centers into IBM Cloud data centers worldwide.
Red Hat Cloud Access allows Linux customers to retain services and support while moving workloads into the cloud.
"Our collaboration with IBM is aimed at helping enterprise customers more quickly and easily embrace hybrid cloud," said Radhesh Balakrishnan, general manager of OpenStack at Red Hat. "Now, customers who don't have in-house expertise to manage an OpenStack infrastructure can more confidently consume Red Hat OpenStack Platform and Red Hat Ceph Storage on IBM Private Cloud."
IBM and Red Hat said they will provide the hybrid cloud infrastructure to help customers more efficiently run cloud applications using OpenStack APIs. Customers will be able to provision cloud infrastructure faster and, using Red Hat Cloud Access, migrate existing workloads and Red Hat subscriptions to IBM Cloud, or use the software and infrastructure on a pay-as-you-go basis.
IBM and Red Hat said they will jointly sell new offerings for private cloud deployments, including workload migrations, disaster recovery, capacity expansion and data center consolidation.
IBM has also signed a deal with Veritas, also around hybrid cloud, to help enterprises working with increasing data volumes better manage, optimize and protect data across hybrid cloud environments.
Veritas has certified the IBM Cloud Object Storage family of software and cloud services for use with Veritas NetBackup 8.0, making it easier for customers to migrate data from on-premises systems to the cloud for greater storage capabilities.
In turn, IBM has certified NetBackup 8.0 to run on the IBM Cloud to offer clients additional data protection for cloud-based workloads. NetBackup 8.0 is due to be available in the second quarter and will be available for order from the IBM Bluemix Catalog of services.
Cloud computing: Are these the hurdles that trip you up?
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IBM and Red Hat aim to boost hybrid cloud computing, OpenStack usage - ZDNet
Star2Star Wins 2016 Cloud Computing Excellence Award – Marketwired (press release)
SARASOTA, FL--(Marketwired - March 20, 2017) - Star2Star Communications, the World's Leading Hybrid Cloud Communications Solution, today announced that the company is a winner of the 2016 Cloud Computing Excellence Award.
The Cloud Computing Excellence Award, presented by Cloud Computing magazine, honors vendors who have most effectively leveraged cloud computing in their efforts to bring new, differentiated offerings to market.
"We are the pioneers of hybrid cloud communications, and we're pleased that the industry is acknowledging it as a superior architecture" said David Portnowitz, Chief Marketing Officer at Star2Star. "We started off ahead of the curve with our innovative hybrid cloud-based unified communications solution, and we've never looked back," he continued.
Star2Star launched the concept of Hybrid Architecture more than ten years ago. The Star2Star architecture combines the best aspects of both cloud-based and premise-based Unified Communications systems. Since its introduction, the company has continually improved and expanded their product portfolio as part of their complete, end-to-end solution.
About Star2Star:
Founded in 2006 in Sarasota, Florida, Star2Star Communications delivers the World's Leading Hybrid Cloud Communications Solution. Star2Star's award-winning, patented Constellation Network overcomes the reliability and quality limitations of other communications technologies.
Star2Star unifies customers' voice, video, fax, instant messaging, and presence management into a single, easy-to-use system. The company has one of the highest long-term customer retention rates in the industry at 99.85% and has been recently recognized by numerous leading analysts.
In the past six years, Star2Star was named to the Forbes Most Promising Companies list, the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 five times, and the Inc. 500|5000 six times. The company was also named by Infonetics as a Top 10 Hosted Business VoIP/UC Provider, as well as in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications as a Service, Worldwide.
Star2Star Communications solutions are sold globally through a diversified network of partners that includes distributors, master agents, managed service providers and certified installing dealers. Star2Star systems are used by hundreds of thousands of business users, including many large national chains with multi-location footprints.
Image Available: http://www.marketwire.com/library/MwGo/2017/3/15/11G133205/Images/cloud-comm-excel-award-2016-73a283f6d191bdd19058cdaea800473e.jpg
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Star2Star Wins 2016 Cloud Computing Excellence Award - Marketwired (press release)
Words to go: Containers in cloud computing – SearchCloudComputing – TechTarget
With the popularity of containers in cloud computing, more organizations are choosing to not think outside the box.
Containers have been around for a while, but Docker recently helped bring them into the spotlight for enterprise use. As the cloud evolves, more enterprises see the benefits of adopting hybrid and multicloud models, but it's a challenge to ensure software runs reliably when moved from one environment to another. Containers have come to the rescue by wrapping an application and all its components into a single, more portable package.
And, with the growing popularity of containers in cloud computing, major providers, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure and Google, offer container services and orchestration tools to manage container creation and deployment.
But before you start to box up your processes, get familiar with these key terms for containers:
Application containerization: Containerization -- also known as container-based virtualization -- is a distributed application deployment model that offers an alternative to launching a VM for each application. Isolated environments, called containers, instead run on a single control host and share the same OS kernel. Compared to traditional virtualization, containerization allows for greater efficiency for memory, CPU and storage.
Because organizations can create containers more quickly than they could hypervisor-based instances, containers also encourage a more agile environment, promoting continuous delivery methods as well as the use of microservices.
Containers as a service (CaaS): Cloud providers, such as AWS, Azure and Google, offer container-based virtualization as a service, providing orchestration, management and compute resources for containerized applications. This model, known as CaaS, typically consists of a Linux-based OS, a container runtime, a container orchestration tool and a container registry.
Docker: Docker is an open source platform that enables the deployment of Linux applications as containers. Docker containers can run in multiple locations including VMs, bare-metal servers, and public cloud instances. Major cloud providers, including AWS, Azure and Google, support Docker containers.
Google Kubernetes: Kubernetes is Google's container management system for public, private and hybrid clouds. The open source system manages deployment and scaling for Docker and Rocket containers, and also has tools for orchestration and load balancing tools. Like they support Docker, AWS, Google and Azure support the Kubernetes system. Developers can move Kubernetes container workloads across cloud platforms without having to alter the code.
Google Container Engine (GKE): GKE is an orchestration and cluster management system for Docker containers in cloud computing. The clusters consist of a group of Google Compute Engine instances that run Kubernetes. GKE provides access to the Google Container Registry to store and access private Docker images. Stackdriver Logging and Stackdriver Monitoring are also available to monitor the health of the applications.
Microsoft Windows Containers: Microsoft Windows Containers are isolated container environments in Windows Server 2016. Two types of containers are supported: Windows Server Containers and Hyper-V Containers. Organizations can manage these containers with Docker, PowerShell or Azure, and integrate them with existing Windows technologies.
Azure Container Service (ACS): ACS is an open source orchestration system based on Apache Mesos that can manage fleets of containers in cloud computing. The service supports DC/OS, Docker Swarm and Kubernetes to scale and orchestrate. Because of open source components in the orchestration layers, applications are fully portable.
Amazon EC2 Container Service (ECS): Amazon ECS is a container management service that supports Docker containers and runs applications on a managed cluster of Amazon EC2 instances. Users create and manage Docker containers through a set of APIs. The service evaluates and monitors CPU usage and supports its own open source scheduler, AWS Blox, as well as third-party schedulers. Users also have access to other Amazon EC2 features through API calls, such as Elastic Load Balancing, security groups and identity and access management roles. Amazon EC2 Container Registry is integrated with Amazon ECS to manage, store and deploy Docker container images.
Open Container Initiative (OCI): OCI is a collaborative project to establish common standards for containers. The project is hosted under the Linux Foundation, and is independent from commercial organizations. Currently, OCI has two specifications: the Runtime Specification and the Image Specification. Members of the OCI include vendors such as AWS, Google, Microsoft and IBM.
Five drawbacks of using container technology
Explore the relationship between containers and cloud
Discover the benefits and challenges of CaaS
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Words to go: Containers in cloud computing - SearchCloudComputing - TechTarget
Enterprises Are Sharing More Data Securely in the Cloud – CIO Today
A new report by Symantec on the state of enterprise cloud security shows that employees are sharing more data more securely through the cloud than ever before. On the other hand, the number of unsanctioned applications running on network cloud infrastructures, known as "shadow IT," has also continued to rise.
The findings were published in Symantecs 2H 2016 Shadow Data Report, which covers the second half of 2016. The report is based on anonymized meta data analysis of over 20,000 cloud apps, 175 million cloud documents, and 1.3 billion emails, according to Symantec.
More Data Sharing, But More Security, Too
On the whole, things seem to be looking up for enterprise cloud security. While companies are increasing their uses of cloud applications and file sharing, they are also doing so more responsibly. Research shows a significant reduction in the percentage of broadly shared files in the cloud that contain confidential or compliance related content, the company wrote in a blog post about the report.
Symantec said that in the second half of the year, 25 percent of all files stored in the cloud were broadly shared, with just 3 percent of these files containing compliance-related data.
To be classified as "broadly shared," a file is shared to the public, the entire organization, or an external third party. In the past, Symantec said that it was normal to find that 10 percent or more of broadly shared files contained sensitive data.
Still Room for Improvement
But the news is not all good, Symantec warned. "We are still not out of the woods because while it looks like a lower percentage of files in cloud file sharing contain compliance data than before, a surprising percentage of files with Protected Health Information (PHI), Personally Identifiable Information (PII), and Payment Card Information (PCI) data that make it to the cloud are potentially exposed, the company reported.
In file sharing applications, PHI data led the pack with 82 percent of all files at risk of exposure, followed by 43 percent of files containing PII and 42 percent of files containing PCI data, according to Symantec. Email risk exposure was generally higher than file sharing exposure. Meanwhile, 27 percent of emails and attachments were broadly shared and 8 percent of emails contained compliance-related data.
Meanwhile, the rise of shadow IT continued to be a challenge for most enterprises. Employees were using many more cloud applications than what IT professionals typically assumed they were using, according to the reports findings. Shadow IT discovery research indicated that organizations used 928 different cloud applications on average in the second half of 2016, a 10 percent increase over the first half of the year, according to Symantec.
And there were still plenty of attempts to penetrate network security. Symantec said that 66 percent of risky user activity that it analyzed represented attempts to extract data from an organization.
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Enterprises Are Sharing More Data Securely in the Cloud - CIO Today
Societe Generale to adopt cloud computing – Here Is The City – HITC
Vic Daniels @vicdanielsHITC Published now
Societe Generale is embracing the cloud.
Bloomberg News reports that the Paris-based bank is working with Microsoft Corp. and Amazon.com Inc. to become one of the first large European banks to adopt cloud computing for the bulk of its operations.
Societe Generale will start using external cloud services by June for some non-client content, such as financial research and marketing data, said Carlos Goncalves, the head of global technology services. By 2020, the bank intends to have 80 percent of its infrastructure on internal and external cloud networks.
We are ready to go to scale, Goncalves said. According to the European Central Bank, we have put in place the benchmark for the industry.
French bank is among the first large financial firms on the continent getting ready to shift most of its operations to the cloud. The decision signals an accelerating evolution in how banks handle one of their most valuable and sensitive assets: information.
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SocGen Floats Toward the Cloud as European Banks Target Costs
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And the Best Place to Work in the global financial markets 2016 is...
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Societe Generale to adopt cloud computing - Here Is The City - HITC
Star2Star Wins 2016 Cloud Computing Excellence Award – Telecom Reseller (press release)
March 16, 2017 Star2Star Communications, the Worlds Leading Hybrid Cloud Communications Solution, today announced that the company is a winner of the 2016 Cloud Computing Excellence Award.
The Cloud Computing Excellence Award, presented by Cloud Computing magazine, honors vendors who have most effectively leveraged cloud computing in their efforts to bring new, differentiated offerings to market.
We are the pioneers of hybrid cloud communications, and were pleased that the industry is acknowledging it as a superior architecture said David Portnowitz, Chief Marketing Officer at Star2Star. We started off ahead of the curve with our innovative hybrid cloud-based unified communications solution, and weve never looked back, he continued.
Star2Star launched the concept of Hybrid Architecture more than ten years ago. The Star2Star architecture combines the best aspects of both cloud-based and premise-based Unified Communications systems. Since its introduction, the company has continually improved and expanded their product portfolio as part of their complete, end-to-end solution.
More at http://www.star2star.com/.
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Star2Star Wins 2016 Cloud Computing Excellence Award - Telecom Reseller (press release)