Find out what cloud computing architecture truly means in this super easy beginners guide. The cloud is now the de facto way for companies to expand their operations. This quick video guide explains what cloud computing is all about and provides easy to understand answers to your questions, which includes what is cloud computing architecture, components of front end architecture, backend architecture and its framework, cloud deployment models and the future of cloud computing.

Watch the complete video here:

-Timestamps

0:00 What is cloud computing architecture?

0:24 What is front end architecture and its key components?

1:57 What is backend architecture?

3:47 What are the key elements of cloud security?

4:33 What is a delivery system?

5:06 Types of cloud deployment models

5:54 Why is cloud computing architecture relevant today?

How is cloud computing shaping IT decision making at your organization today? Share your thoughts with us onLinkedIn,Facebook,Twitter.

The rest is here:
Cloud Computing Architecture: Frontend and Backend Explained - Spiceworks News and Insights

|

Chances are that youve moved all your important documents, photos and other digital files to the cloud. So we cant ignore the significance of cloud cybersecurity moving forward as we continue to go completely digital in so many aspects of our lives.

Cybersecurity companies are fighting for market share as data breaches and ransomware attacks become more common, more damaging and more expensive. With many companies turning towards cloud technology, its no secret that companies like Google, Amazon and Microsoft are going to increase focus on this business sector.

That said, Googles recent acquisition of the cyber security company, Mandiant, has stirred up a lot of conversation about the future of cloud cybersecurity and the highly competitive landscape therein. Were going to look at this space to see how much money the big players are making.

It was announced on September 12 that Googles $5.4 billion bid to acquire the cybersecurity firm Mandiant was completed. Mandiant will be joining Googles cloud computing division so Google can attempt to compete with Amazons AWS and Microsofts Azure. This is Googles second-largest acquisition as the company aims to focus on enhancing its security operations suite and advisory services.

With companies worldwide facing cyberattacks, the cloud cybersecurity space is expanding, and fast. With over 17 years of experience, Mandiant is a publicly-traded cybersecurity company that rose to prominence by discovering the SolarWinds attack where 18,000 clients unknowingly downloaded malware. Due to the detection, less than 100 customers ended up getting hacked. The companys specialization in threat detection is what helped them stand out in the market.

Google is investing heavily in its cloud cybersecurity business sector. While Google still has a long way to go to catch up with AWS and Azure, the company is willing to invest its financial resources into growth, even to the detriment of short term profit.

When Google first announced the deal, they brought up how combining Mandiant with Google Clouds security offerings will help Cloud customers with increased protection in five key areas:

The company is also hopeful that the combination of Google Cloud and Mandiant will encourage further collaboration and innovation in the cybersecurity sector while increasing threat research capabilities. As cyber-attacks become more sophisticated, its clear that organizations, governments and individuals need further protection. Theres also significant money to be made in storage as more streaming services emerge.

We looked at the earnings report for Alphabet, the parent company of Google, to see how much the cloud business brings in. During the Q2 earnings report for 2022, the CEO of Alphabet and Google, Sundar Pichai, declared that performance for the quarter was driven by search and cloud functionality. The company has invested plenty of resources into the AI and computing thats needed to grow cloud services for businesses of all sizes.

Google brought in $21 billion in revenue from cloud services in 2021, which accounted for 7.5% of the companys total revenue. However, cloud services still ended up with a net loss of $3.1 billion in 2021.

For the second quarter of 2022, Google Cloud brought in $6.3 billion in revenue, which was a 35% year-over-year increase compared to the second quarter of 2021, when they brought in $4.6 billion in revenue. However, the company also lost $858 million for cloud services in the second quarter of 2022.

Many experts have observed that Google isnt profitable with its cloud services because they continue to invest in the growth of this sector. Amazon, on the other hand, has remained profitable in its cloud business.

Google executives continue to point to the growth potential of cloud services, highlighting that many companies are still in the early stages of a digital transformation.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) had an operating profit of $18.5 billion in 2021. AWS was also 74% of Amazons total operating profit in 2021. On an interesting note, AWS contributed 14% to the companys overall revenue while generating almost three-quarters of the profits.

For the second quarter of 2022, Amazon reported earnings of $19.74 billion in revenue with $5.72 billion in operating income for AWS. The revenue from the cloud services increased 33% during the quarter.

When you take a closer look at the earnings from Amazon, its clear that the cloud business is bringing in a majority of the profit, despite the e-commerce side bringing in more revenue. The cloud business simply operates atop higher margins.

AWS is the cloud computing service that provides data storage and networking for regular customers and big enterprise clients like Twitter and Netflix. Netflix uses AWS for almost all of its storage and computing needs. This includes everything from databases to analytics and even video transcoding. Amazon also has many other large companies that rely on AWS, which ensures that this sector will remain profitable.

Microsoft has remained competitive in the cloud cybersecurity space with Azure and other cloud services. According to the companys earning report for the second quarter in 2022, revenue from Intelligent Cloud was $20.9 billion. Microsofts Intelligent Cloud business sector includes Azure (the public cloud for application hosting), SQL Server, Windows Server and enterprise services. They dont list what revenues they bring in solely from Azure.

Revenue from Azure and cloud services went up by 40% in the last quarter, which is slightly lower than the 46% growth during the previous quarter.

Microsoft also invested in the cloud sector in 2021 with a few major acquisitions. They acquired CloudKnow and ReFirm labsboth major players in cloud security and internet of things (IoT) security, respectively.

The recent acquisitions by Google and Microsoft indicate that these giant companies plan to invest heavily in this business sector. With unprecedented levels of global cyberattacks, there will be more demand for increased cyber security.

Adam Selipsky, the CEO of Amazons AWS, recently remarked in an interview that he believes theres more room to grow in this space since cloud computing is still in its infancy. Selpisky told CNBCs Jim Cramer, Essentially, IT is going to move to the cloud. And its going to take a while. Youve seen maybe only, call it 10% of IT today move. So its still day 1. Its still early Most of its still yet to come.

He also mentioned that despite the steep competition, demand is still increasing for AWS. It will be interesting to observe how Googles acquisition of Mandiant performs and if this newly expanded business could increase Googles market share. Its currently estimated that Amazon has a 39% market share in the cloud cybersecurity space. Theres no telling how many more individuals and corporations are yet to make the complete digital transformation.

Its also worth mentioning that cybersecurity stocks were a rare bright spot earlier in the year when the stock market tumbled due to global conflict and rising inflation. Companies like Telos and CyberStrike remained strong as cybersecurity threats increased worldwide. This sector remained strong until worries of rising inflation and increasing interest rates led to further sell-offs.

From a business perspective, its going to be fascinating to see how Amazon and Microsoft react to Googles acquisition and if the giants decide to participate in additional mergers or acquisitions as well.

If youre looking to invest in cloud technology and cybersecurity, you have many companies to choose from. Cyber security companies will continue to do well as individual users, organizations and governments continue to rely on threat detection for safety. There will also be further demand for cloud storage as streaming services and others continue to put content online.

If you want to invest in tech without the hassle of sifting through hours of research and hype, Q.ai can help you out. With our Emerging Tech Kit, you can take advantage of data-based, AI-backed investment strategies.

Download Q.ai today for access to AI-powered investment strategies. When you deposit $100, well add an additional $100 to your account.

More here:
Mandiant, Google, And The Future Of Cloud Cybersecurity - Forbes

For a startup in hyper-growth mode like Figma, scaling up its cybersecurity defenses as fast as the rest of the company has been a top concern.

To pull off that feat, the company has come to rely on Snowflake, a company well known for its cloud data lake and data warehouse technology, but much less so for what it brings to the table for cybersecurity. As it turns out, though, "the same reason everyone else is using Snowflake and finds its capabilities so powerful also applies to security," said Devdatta Akhawe, head of security at Figma.

Snowflakes technology is primarily used for cloud-based data analytics and data science, but it is now looking to prove it has a lot to offer when it comes to cybersecurity, which is increasingly being recognized as a data problem at its core.

Figma which offers browser-based, collaboration-oriented design software, and is on tap to be acquired by Adobe for $20 billion believes Snowflake has already arrived in the cybersecurity market given its unique ability to combine security feeds with data from the rest of the business. Having a single data lake for the whole company has allowed for analysis of cybersecurity data in a broader context, enabling a better understanding of security risks, according to Akhawe.

"Being able to correlate across a large number of disparate data sources is what makes a strong security program," he said.

Snowflake executives told Protocol that while cybersecurity is just one of the cloud data opportunities the company is pursuing right now, it's clearly among the biggest. The company's emphasis in the space comes amid intensifying cyberthreats facing enterprises and a growing priority placed on cybersecurity in the C-suite and boardroom.

The relevance of Snowflake for security teams is "the best-kept secret in cybersecurity," said Omer Singer, the companys head of cybersecurity strategy.

Many of the initial customers using Snowflake for cybersecurity which include Dropbox, DoorDash, TripActions, and CSAA Insurance Group have been "using Snowflake for a long time, but the cybersecurity team wasn't," Singer said. "What's changed is, now the cybersecurity team is using it as part of their overall strategy."

Founded in 2012 by two veterans of Oracle Benoit Dageville (now president of product) and Thierry Cruanes (now CTO) Snowflake has homed in on cybersecurity in the three years since Frank Slootman joined as CEO, said Christian Kleinerman, senior vice president of product at Snowflake.

Early on at Snowflake, Slootman, who was formerly the CEO of ServiceNow, had a decisive meeting with a customer, according to Kleinerman. "The customer was telling him, 'We are doing cybersecurity with Snowflake why are you guys not pitching it as such?'"

In June, Snowflake announced its new cybersecurity category, aiming to offer an easier way for customers to combine their security data with other business and contextual data.

Doing so can enable better-informed threat detections and breach investigations, according to Snowflake executives. For instance, correlating human resources data with email-forwarding events to outside parties could help detect if an employee is trying to leak sensitive information.

The more signals you have, the more patterns you can find.

Meanwhile, combining data feeds from code repository GitHub and identity platform Okta could provide a view into who's logging into privileged accounts, what they're doing, and whether permissions violations are taking place, according to Snowflake executives. Typically, however, suspicious developer behavior would be missed, because GitHub data isn't usually leveraged by security operations tools or staff members.

"The more signals you have, the more patterns you can find," Kleinerman said.

That's not something you can easily do with traditional data warehousing technology, however. For one thing, cybersecurity is different from other parts of a business in that it generates way more data a nonstop stream of logs and events. For customers, storing security data for any period of time has often been costly and required tough choices about what to keep.

Snowflake's separation of pricing between storage and compute, however, "works very well for security," said Uri May, co-founder and CEO of cybersecurity vendor Hunters. In security, you want to store a lot of data for potential review later on, he said, but you probably won't need to have access to all of your data all of the time.

Using Snowflake, though, an organization only pays for compute time on its security data when an incident has actually occurred and the stored data needs to be queried, May said. The rest of the time, you're just paying the "relatively low" price for the storage itself.

By contrast, customers that try to store security data using a system that predated the cloud which doesn't separate storage from compute, and doesn't leverage cloud-native storage architecture will be forced to get choosy about what data they collect and how long they keep it, Singer said.

That's not great for security, said Figma's Akhawe. As occurred with the widely felt SolarWinds attack, many high-impact breaches are only discovered nine months to a year after they first began, he said.

Deleting security data after a few months "is just illogical. You're flying blind when the actual breach is disclosed," Akhawe said. Snowflake, on the other hand, "gives us the ability to scale to gigantic amounts of [security] data."

Snowflake executives said that the company is encouraging third-party software vendors to provide the security features around its data platform. "Instead of taking the data to applications, let's bring the applications to the data," Kleinerman said.

Vendor partners include Hunters, which provides security analytics and correlation for data in Snowflake; Immuta, which offers access control and privacy management; and Lacework, which focuses on enabling threat detection, investigations and measurement of security, and compliance posture.

Providing customers with a way to have all of their data in one place "gives them a holistic view of what's happening in their business, with security becoming more and more important to every business," said David Hatfield, co-CEO at Lacework, which has received an investment from Snowflake and was incubated at the same private equity firm, Sutter Hill Ventures.

In the case of Dropbox, the company has transitioned from using a traditional platform for security information and event management to using a cloud-native SIEM from Panther Labs. "They have completely decommissioned their traditional SIEM," Singer said.

The use of Snowflake for cybersecurity is just starting to move from early adopters to more mainstream usage, executives said. Cybersecurity is one of the eight categories currently being promoted for the platform, but it is the first to target a specific audience within an enterprise.

Two other new categories, planned to be announced in 2023, will similarly target a more specific audience, though details aren't being disclosed for now, Singer said. Previously, Snowflake categories have been more general in nature, targeting uses such as data science and data engineering.

In terms of the cybersecurity push, "I think our opportunity to do something meaningful in this space is massive," Kleinerman said.

Snowflake's emerging focus on security comes up in his discussions with customers on a weekly basis, he said. "I can tell you, it's a conversation changer."

Without a doubt, it's easier for younger companies that can start fresh with their data architecture, like Figma, to adopt Snowflake for their cybersecurity needs, Akhawe said.

"I think for a lot of other companies that have legacy architecture, it is harder to migrate," he said.

But while it will take time for companies to make the shift, Akhawe believes that 10 years from now, most will have transitioned to this type of architecture for their security data.

"We know attacks are getting more sophisticated and more complicated. And very often, they take longer than three or four months to detect," he said. As a result, using a large-scale, cloud-based data lake "where you don't have to worry about deleting data I do think this will become the default."

Read more from the original source:
Cybersecurity is a data problem. Snowflake wants to be part of the answer. - Protocol

With stocks looking like they're taking another dive down this year, it might be a good time to consider one of the few remaining areas that's still growing -- the cloud. Cloud revenue, that is, not cloud stocks. Cloud stocks are down across the board. For instance, the Global X Cloud Computing ETF, which tracks cloud stocks, has cratered 36% this year.

Despite the declining share prices, cloud companies are still growing their revenues and profits. This makes for a compelling opportunity to take advantage of the cloud megatrend. However, not all cloud stocks are created equal. Oracle (ORCL -2.24%) is a company that has a few advantages that other cloud players don't. It's also taking cloud business from the cloud's early market share leader, Amazon.

For decades, Oracle has been a market share leader in ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software. ERP software handles huge corporate functions like accounting, project management, and supply chain management for enterprise-sized companies around the globe.

Oracle was a relative latecomer to the cloud transition. Still, it has been moving its expansive customer base from its on-premise server farms to Oracle's Cloud infrastructure and software to its cloud-based version over the last several years. Oracle's competitive advantage remains in its ERP software. The company's software is so hard to duplicate that Microsofthas formed a multi-cloud partnership with Oracle to make it available to its Azure users. Amazon has also made it available to AWS users.

Image source: Getty Images.

Its margin profile is perhaps the most attractive feature of Oracle's cloud-based business model. Because the cloud-based software business is digital, there is very little cost associated with adding a new customer or selling additional software to an existing customer. That gives Oracle the advantage of bundling its software and cloud infrastructure services at a lower price than the competition.

In a Q&A session with investors during Oracle's second-quarter earnings announcement, founder and chairman Larry Ellison made some interesting comments. He said that because of its cost advantages and stellar functionality, he expects that cloud customers will be moving from Amazon to Oracle by next quarter -- and some of those companies "will shock you."

Some AWS customers are already on the move. Oracle recently closed its acquisition of Cerner, a healthcare information company. The acquired expertise may have lured Bionexo, a healthcare business serving 15,000 hospitals, to move its data warehouse from AWS to Oracle during the second quarter. In addition, the largest telecom in Chile is also taking its workloads from AWS to Oracle.

One aspect of cloud stocks is that many cloud players are conglomerates that investors must account for. Amazon has its namesake e-commerce platform, which experienced a revenue decline last quarter due to a slowing U.S. economy. Alphabetmakes most of its money from advertising, which could suffer for the same reason.

Oracle, on the other hand, is focused on its cloud business. As the company continues to move its current customers to the cloud, its margins should improve accordingly. The same can be said about customers switching to Oracle's cost-advantaged cloud platform. Oracle investors have the added benefit of not having additional businesses hiding the growth of its cloud platform.

The trend toward cloud computing is firmly entrenched and has plenty of room for growth over the next several years. Industry analysts expect cloud computing to grow 15.8% annually through 2028. Because of Oracle's ERP software dominance and cost advantages, the company should capture an above-average share of the growth.

Numbers from its first fiscal quarter ending Aug. 31 may be evidence. Oracle grew its cloud infrastructure revenue by 58% in constant currency (after adjusting for fluctuations in foreign currency) and its Cloud Application revenue by 48% in constant currency. Those numbers bested revenue growth at AWS for the quarter and significantly increased from Oracle's fiscal fourth quarter.

ORCL PE Ratio (Forward) data by YCharts

If you're looking for a stock that can take full advantage of the cloud growth megatrend without the additional baggage, Oracle is a great bet. It has the twofold advantage of ERP software supremacy and cost advantage over other cloud companies.

Like other cloud stocks, Oracle shares are down this year. Now, investors may also find the stock's valuation enticing. Wall Street expects Oracle to generate $4.95 in earnings per share for this fiscal year. That implies a favorable forward price-to-earnings ratio (based on forecasted earnings per share) of under 14 times, nearly its lowest in over a year. Tune in to Oracle's next-quarter earnings, and you might see the shocking AWS customer wins that Ellison predicted.

Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fools board of directors. John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fools board of directors. BJ Cook has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet (A shares), Alphabet (C shares), Amazon, and Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Go here to read the rest:
This Company Is Taking Cloud Customers From Amazon - The Motley Fool

COMPANY NEWS: Nutanix, a leader in hybrid multi-cloud computing, today announced the next era of Elevate, a global partner program designed to re-define the partner engagement journey. Nutanix has evolved the Elevate program focus to provide a better experience for the entire partner ecosystem and customers throughout the customer lifecycle, while staying true to the programs unified framework. This includes an expanded benefits package to build a partner profit continuum.

The IT industry is at an inflection point in how customers want to procure and consume technology, said Nutanix senior vice president of worldwide channel sales Christian Alvarez.

With our updates to the Elevate program, weve addressed many of our partners needs to engage with customers through their lifecycle not just selling the technology, but enabling them to adopt, perform, expand and ultimately renew. Elevate now supports and rewards partners along this entire journey through purpose-built benefits and incentives.

In the past year, Nutanix has re-architected its go-to-market strategy, programs, and tools to provide partners more control, insights, and efficiency over sales cycles. New updates to the Elevate Partner Program include:

Enhanced and expanded incentives framework to reward partner ecosystem throughout the customer lifecycle For the first time in Elevates history, Nutanix has extended program incentives to include not only partner organisations, but individual sellers and SEs to ignite new customer acquisition growth. The New Business Individual Incentive will reward individual sellers and systems engineers at eligible resellers and services providers each time they sell Nutanix into net-new accounts. In the coming months, Nutanix will begin to roll out a pilot program for an Elevate Program incentive designed to reward select partners for the delivery of consistent, on-time renewal rates with their Nutanix customers.New incentive for partners that lead sales cycles autonomously Nutanix launched a Channel Led Selling Rebate Incentive for Elevate, built to reward resellers who drive deals through the entire sales cycle autonomously. Nutanix is enabling partners to realise this selling motion through new tool sets like the recently revamped Sizer 6.0 capacity planning tool and enhancements to Nutanixs Performance + Deal Registration program.A continued focus on building partner competencies through education and certificationsThe Elevate program requirements introduced a new Sizing Associate accreditation requirement for all levels, designed to enable partners to speed up sales cycles through rapid capacity planning, quoting and order fulfilment using Nutanix Sizer.

For more information about the new updates to Elevate and how to join the Nutanix partner program, click here.

About NutanixNutanix is a global leader in cloud software and a pioneer in hyperconverged infrastructure solutions, making clouds invisible, freeing customers to focus on their business outcomes. Organisations around the world use Nutanix software to leverage a single platform to manage any app at any location for their hybrid multicloud environments. Follow us on social media @nutanix.

In its fifth year, XConf is our annual technology event created by technologists for technologists.

Participate in a robust agenda of talks as local thought leaders and Thoughtworks technologists share first-hand experiences and exchange new ways to empower teams, deliver quality software and drive innovation for responsible tech.

Explore how at Thoughtworks, we are making tech better, together.

Tickets are now available and all proceeds will be donated to Indigitek, a not-for-profit organisation that aims to create technology employment pathways for First Nations Peoples.

Click the button below to register and get your ticket for the Melbourne, Sydney or Brisbane event

GET YOUR TICKET!

Marketing budgets are now focused on Webinars combined with Lead Generation.

If you wish to promote a Webinar we recommend at least a 3 to 4 week campaign prior to your event.

The iTWire campaign will include extensive adverts on our News Site itwire.com and prominent Newsletter promotion https://itwire.com/itwire-update.html and Promotional News & Editorial. Plus a video interview of the key speaker on iTWire TV https://www.youtube.com/c/iTWireTV/videos which will be used in Promotional Posts on the iTWire Home Page.

Now we are coming out of Lockdown iTWire will be focussed to assisting with your webinars and campaigns and assistance via part payments and extended terms, a Webinar Business Booster Pack and other supportive programs. We can also create your adverts and written content plus coordinate your video interview.

We look forward to discussing your campaign goals with you. Please click the button below.

MORE INFO HERE!

Original post:
Nutanix unveils Partner Program updates and incentives - iTWire