Category Archives: Cloud Hosting
Tech pitches in to fight COVID-19 pandemic – Computerworld
As IT pros around the world go all-out to support a workforce that's suddenly fully remote, many technology workers and companies are also joining efforts to alleviate the COVID-19 crisis in various ways, including developing products to combat the virus, tracking and predicting its spread, and protecting hospitals from cyberattacks.
Google on Tuesday unveiled a COVID-19 Public Datasets program designed "to make data more accessible to researchers, data scientists and analysts," the company said. "The program will host a repository of public datasets that relate to the COVID-19 crisis and make them free to access and analyze. These include the Johns Hopkins Center for Systems Science and Engineering (JHU CSSE) dataset, Global Health Data from the World Bank, and OpenStreetMap data.
"As with all data in the Google Cloud Public Datasets Program, Google pays for storage of datasets in the program. BigQuery also provides free queries over certain COVID-related datasets to support the response to COVID-19. Queries on COVID datasets will not count against the BigQuery sandbox free tier, where you can query up to 1TB free each month."
In terms of limits and duration, the company pledged that the datasets will remain free until Sept. 15, and said queries of COVID data are free. But if "you join COVID datasets with non-COVID datasets, the bytes processed in the non-COVID datasets will be counted against the free tier, then charged accordingly to prevent abuse.
The datasets will be updated daily.
For non-profit groups working against the COVID-19 pandemic, DigitalOcean is offering $100,000 in infrastructure credits for new projects and up to $50,000 in cash donations to the company's COVID-19 Relief Fund. (The company gives $100 for each proposed project that meets DigitalOcean requirements.)
The kinds of efforts it's backing include:
"Our community is full of innovators and technologists who are leveraging their skills to create tools, resources, and events with missions focused on the COVID-19 pandemic," the company said on its website. "As always, were inspired by our community ... and were committed to helping bring your impactful ideas to life."
Cloud-based communications firm Kaleyra is supporting the Italian Red Cross (Croce Rossa Italiana, CRI) with a free text-message service for volunteers and citizens dealing with the spread of COVID-19. By texting 4353535, the CRI can recruit health workers in affected areas, manage questions from citizens, and communicate quickly with volunteers, Kaleyra said. The toll-free number can be reached by all local operators to help direct essential medical services through text messages.
"The Coronavirus pandemic has forced all of us to change our habits the way we travel, the way we live, and the way we work," the company said in a March 26 blog post. "Work from home has become the new norm. Like many other businesses, we, too, are working remotely. We are doing our best to equip our employees and other stakeholders to work remotely as far as possible. Work from home however, does not mean the end of teamwork or business...."
The service for the CRI hasseen more than 7,500 text messages since it went into operation in mid-March.
Ping Identity, which provides cloud-basedsign-on (SSO) and multi-factor authentication (MFA) security options, is offering six month of its services for free to new customersfor unlimited apps and identities, or six months of free MFA for existing customers. The move comes in response to the rush by companies to have their employees work from home as the COVID-19 outbreak worsens worldwide.
"People around the world are being encouraged or required to work from home to stay healthy and do their part to slow the spread of COVID-19," the company said on its website. "We want to do our part to help....That's why we're providing enterprises with fast, free SSO and MFA for unlimited applications."
According to Ping, customers who use its service get:
Ping provides identity security services to a wide variety of companies across numerous industries, including HP, Netflix, Chevron, Intuit and BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee, among others.
Neo4j is offering free access to commercial versions of its Graph Data Platform and other assistance todevelopers, researchers and data scientists working on COVID-19-related projects. "The goal is to help data scientists and researchers analyze the massive amounts of connected data about people, infections, locations, drugs, and more," the company said in a statement.
COVID-19 project submissions should be made online using this Google Doc.
The company is also hosting a virtual Graphs4Good Hackathonthrough April 14 for those looking to "contribute their energy towards a meaningful graph project." On April 15, Neo4j plans to invite project leads and contributors to present in a Graphs4Good Project Showcase. (The hackathon, announced March 26, already has more than 150 sign-ups.)
Neo4j highlighted theCOVID graph a knowledge graph by researchers, developers and volunteers that integrates various COVID-19 public datasets to help researchers and scientists more efficiently find their way through relevant publications, case statistics, genes and functions, molecular data and more.
A Palo Alto, Calif. AI company, Aisera, is offering its software free for 60 days to help healthcare organizations and government agencies manage a crush of queries and phone calls from people woried about the COVID-19 outbreak.
Specifically, the company said its remote working virtual assistant and collaboration app can bolster "customer service during a time of need during the global pandemic. The Aisera Virtual Assistant will help hospitals and government agencies deliver COVID-19-related responses to the high volume of questions, concerns, and inquiries caused by this pandemic," the company said in a statement.
The overwhelming amount of inquiries [is] beyond what staff and current tools can handle, said Aisera CEO Muddu Sudhakar. We know this tool can help save lives and slow the spread of this disease by providing timely response to urgent public inquiries."
"Hospitals are setting up chatbots, symptom checkers, and telemedicine tools virtually overnight to triage patients, so that healthy people can stay home," the company said. "Aiseras self-learning [service] employs the key components of AI NLU and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to enable unsupervised learning and astatefulflow of dialogue...."
Aisera's software works with a number ofservice desk offerings, including those from Salesforce, ServiceNow, Atlassian and BMC.
London-based infrastructure provider Heficed said Monday it will offer its services for free to companies working on the front lines to end the COVID-19 pandemic.
"Heficed can provide organizations in need with servers for data storage and processing, secure cloud hosting to protect mission-critical data and a fast and reliable internet connection that would help maintain operational stability," the company said in a statement.
Founded in 2008, Heficed aims to helpcompanies and government organizations order, lease, deploy, and manage IP addresses. Its platform automates what can be a time-consuming process, lowering the costs associated with provisioning IPs to physical and virtual infrastructure.
The company said organizationsshould contact it via hello@heficed.com and provide information "about the project they are currently working on and details on the required resources. Heficed believes that joining forces with the organizations standing in the front lines of this crisis will accelerate the development of solutions that will help combat the pandemic."
Apple on Friday unveiled a screening tool and set of resources designed to help people stay updated on the ongoing pandemic and take steps to protect their health. The information provided is based on the latest Centers for Disease Control guidance.
The new COVID-19 websiteand theCOVID-19 app(now available in the company's App Store), were created jointly with the CDC, the White House Coronavirus Task Forceand the Federal Emergency management Agency.
The app and website allow users to answer a series of questions involving risk factors, recent exposure and symptoms of the coronavirus. In turn, users will get CDC recommendations on next steps, including guidance on social distancing and self-isolating, how to monitor symptoms, whether or not a test is recommended, and when to contact a medical provider. This screening tools are not designed to replace instructions from healthcare providers or guidance from state and local health authorities, the company said.
A health-tech startup that matches healthcare professionals with healthcare organizations and facilities seeking immediate shift coverage has relaunched its platform in light of an expected nationwide shortage of nurses, physicians, healthcare workers, and volunteers due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The online tool from Apollo is intended to reduce the strain on the U.S. healthcare system; Apollo has waived any fees for using its platform for the next four weeks.
Using the platform, hospitals can post jobs and job-seeking professionals can create profiles. An algorithm then matches those institutions needing immediate assistance with potential employees to address staffing challenges. Apollo has more than 90 physicians enrolled from several major health systems.
"As medical professionals, we understand the desperate need of the healthcare community right now," said Apollo Founder and CEO Jon Lensing. "We believe that this shift in our original plans better serves our hurting nation. Our mission has always been to help save lives, and it will forever remain that."
"COVID-19 has rapidly changed life in the United States in ways that few thought possible just weeks ago," the company said in a statement. "While we adapt to these changes, there may be even more changes to come including increased strain and demand on our healthcare facilities and healthcare providers. At Apollo, we want to help mitigate the stress endured by both healthcare facilities and healthcare providers."
A number of major tech players, government agencies and universities has joined forces to create a COVID-19 High Performance Computing Consortium that hopes to speed up the fight against the spread of the COVID-19 virus.
The group includes IBM, AWS, Google, HPE, Microsoft, NASA, the U.S. National Labs, NASA, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the U.S. Department of Energy, among others.
The idea is to meld the high-performance computing (HPC) systems supported by consortium members to help researchers run massive amounts of epidemiology, bioinformatics, and molecular modeling calculations. The experiments would take years to complete if done by hand, or months if handled on slower, traditional computing platforms, according to IBM.
New York officials are pulling together "Technology SWAT teams" as the state struggles to deal with COVID-19 outbreak.
"New York State is launching technology driven products with leading global tech companies to accelerate and amplify our response to COVID-19," the state said on its official website. "We are looking for impactful solutions and skilled tech employees to help. Individuals from leading global technology companies are being deployed across high-impact and urgent coronavirus response activities."
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Tech pitches in to fight COVID-19 pandemic - Computerworld
Transitioning Your Enterprise Workload? Read This First – Forbes
It's a familiar story: IT leaders are desperately trying to solve the complex problems of their workloads. They are pressured to deliver better, faster performance and are scrambling to manage their workloads within budget. As they do this, IT departments must consider whether they want to fully transition their workloads to the public cloud or adopt a hybrid IT strategy. Before going one way or the other, understanding the differences will eliminate the common "boomerang" back and forth between both worlds.
Workload Data Storage: Which Location Is Best?
Every IT workload has different needs, costs and complexity profiles, meaning there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all solution. As an organization begins to consider migrating its data to cloud-hosting environments, it should first conduct a formal, objective IT assessment to understand which workloads would be best hosted in private, public, hybrid or multicloud environments. Factors to consider when determining which workloads should go where include security and compliance, latency, cost and performance.
The factors that play into this decision will be different for every business. Companies that are planning to go or have already gone all-in on public cloud should ensure they have thoroughly evaluated the elements that will determine which workloads are best to remain in hyperscale environments and which can succeed in public atmospheres. Subject to enterprise needs, the benefits and drawbacks of both public cloud and hybrid include the following.
Public Cloud Pros
Collaboration: For businesses seeking a collaborative environment that provides continuous new workload service offerings, a multitenant managed public cloud environment may be the best option. The high capacity of these environments means this is an ideal environment for applications like web servers and websites, which are continually being modified.
Complex Capabilities: Performance needs will always be based on the type of workload you are storing. High-touch and mission-critical applications can thrive in public community clouds.
Seasonal Workloads (Scalability): With public cloud environments, it is easy to provide additional compute space for ever-growing workloads.
Flexibility: For environments where there is a need for rapid build and teardown of VMs in other words, short life cycle workloads public cloud provides great flexibility to customers without much lead time.
New Features And Functionality: Often, a customer would benefit from the constant influx of new and improved features in the public cloud.
Public Cloud Cons
High Cost: Public cloud structures often mean low front-end costs, but given their workload requirements high levels of compute, memory, bandwidth and storage required these costs can rise quickly. The failure to understand how these needs affect cost frequently results in monthly invoices that are higher than initially anticipated.
Low Privacy: Anytime you are storing private information, sensitivity is paramount. With public cloud infrastructure, the level of privacy desired is not always available.
Resource-Intensive Workarounds: Legacy systems often cannot run in cloud environments. If a business is looking to host a legacy system here, it will probably mean that it needs to implement intricate workarounds.
Low Control: Public cloud offerings can make it more challenging for businesses to maintain full administrative control of new and existing workloads in their IT environment.
Hybrid IT Pros
Low Cost: A business's success, at the end of the day, comes down to its bottom line. For companies that have a tighter budget, hybrid IT will likely be more beneficial than public cloud. The right hybrid IT application mix enables businesses to scale their infrastructure solutions and match the right cost model to each workload.
High Control: For companies that want to maintain control and have the option to integrate new tools as well as monitor and troubleshoot their workloads, they should turn to a hybrid approach.
Performance Management And Scalability: For workloads that require extremely low latency, hybrid IT is more beneficial given the higher performance management and edge computing capabilities provided, especially for individuals who need direct access. Moreover, with hybrid IT, businesses can make quick resource additions or adjustments based on demand.
Flexible Compliance Options: Because of regulations like GDPR and HIPAA, it's critical for organizations to be ultra-aware of how and where they are storing their data so they can ensure compliance. Businesses often return to hybrid IT infrastructure because it offers them the flexibility to move and manage the data they want protected.
Hybrid IT Cons
Long Lead Time: Due to the nature of the solution, it may take a bit longer to procure, provision and provide the answer in hybrid IT environments.
Complexity: With interwoven solutions comes complexity. With so many moving parts, finding a solution to an issue can sometimes be tricky.
Looking To The Future
Storing data at the edge is becoming increasingly important. Businesses realize the importance of decentralizing their workloads to get users the data that they need quickly and efficiently. From streaming content to processing data from IoT devices, ensuring that workloads are strategically located is essential. This can be best achieved through the flexibility of a hybrid IT environment, where workload storage is matched to location based on individualized needs.
But still, hybrid IT environments don't work for all workloads, especially those that can benefit from the extensive product catalogs and service offerings of public cloud environments.
Hybrid IT is best for enterprises looking for value, solution, low tolerance to downtime, long life cycle, mission-critical platforms and cross-product integrations, all with utmost attention to security and compliance. These require multiple teams to work in harmony and have a standard set of tools and processes to follow something that is resolved using best practices and continuous improvement.
As organizations look to implement their infrastructure environments, taking the time first to identify their workload needs will enable them to create an environment that best fits their business.
Continued here:
Transitioning Your Enterprise Workload? Read This First - Forbes
Hybrid cloud – The business infrastructure of tomorrow – Techerati
Senior Vice President EMEA at Nutanix, Sammy Zoghlami explores recent research into multi-cloud and hybrid cloud adoption
Technology has become a core component of a customers experience with an organisation, no matter the vertical market. As a result, businesses require technology that provides flexibility and security, and that cost effectively allows the organisation to change according to altering customer behaviour. A recent study, the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Index 2019, reveals that hybrid cloud is becoming business infrastructure; indeed, hybrid cloud is providing the necessary security and agility that businesses in 2020 require.
Poor customer experience will damage 30% of digital business projects, according to analyst house Gartner, placing the technology team and its infrastructure choices right at the heart of the bottom line and brand perception of every business, every day. Your business results depend on your brands ability to retain and add customers, says Olive Huang, Research Director at Gartner.
Against a backdrop of an increased demand to meet the expectations of customers and to deliver new digital products and services, it is not surprising that the Enterprise Cloud Index 2019 shows that there will be significant adoption of hybrid cloud across the EMEA region over the next three to five years. Indeed, 53% of respondents stated a plan to adopt hybrid cloud by 2024 and 84% of EMEA respondents cited hybrid cloud as the ideal IT operating model.
With businesses requiring increasing levels of flexibility, the portability of hybrid cloud can deliver the same level of flexibility to an organisations infrastructure. The Enterprise Cloud Index further demonstrates that customer-centric technology teams realise and value this portability. Nearly 20% of respondents cited interoperability as a key benefit of hybrid cloud and 16% said application mobility was a major benefit. As organisations require applications to scale up and down according to customer demands, the business requires an infrastructure that can move an application back and forth between private and public cloud with ease.
Promotions, major events and partnerships require an infrastructure that can scale up significantly to meet a marketing programme or scale back and reduce operational costs during a national holiday, for example. Over 10% of respondents therefore cited the ability to match the right cloud to the right application and the right use case as one of the benefits they were seeking from adopting hybrid cloud.
This same need for flexible and customer friendly infrastructure is driving a shift from multi-cloud to hybrid cloud, according to the respondents to the Enterprise Cloud Index. Over nine per cent of respondents are currently using multi-cloud environments and over 22% plan to be using multi-cloud in the next 12 to 24 months. However, as digital customer services mature, the study reveals that in three to five years, more than half (52%) of respondents will have moved to hybrid cloud and only 19% will continue with multi-cloud environments.
Interestingly, the Enterprise Cloud Index reveals a drop in hybrid cloud adoption during 2019 compared to what the same study for 2018 said was going to happen. 2019 witnessed an increase in traditional datacentre usage for desktop application hosting, CRM and ERP applications, databases, analytics, as well as backup and recovery. There was also a corresponding drop in the use of private cloud during this period. 2019 was the year that saw regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) come into force and some corresponding major changes in operating models, which may be behind this trend.
The Enterprise Cloud Index reveals challenging approaches to security when it comes to the adoption of hybrid cloud, as well as some real business and, therefore, customer concerns.
Security was cited as one of the main ways hybrid cloud can benefit an organisation, but interestingly there remains a high level of concern that hybrid cloud decreases the security of an organisation. Nearly 20% of respondents believe hybrid cloud will increase data security and compliance in the organisation.
Hybrid cloud was said to be inherently secure by 26.5% of respondents in EMEA, two per cent lower than respondents in the Americas and three per cent lower than their peers in the Asia Pacific and Japan market. Hybrid cloud is seen as significantly more secure than public cloud (8.7%) of respondents and multi-cloud (7.7%), but not significantly more secure than an on-premise private cloud, which was backed by 20.4% of respondents.
The Enterprise Cloud Index highlighted the common concern of business technology leaders towards access to cloud and cybersecurity skills. Across all markets, organisations are finding these skills scarce.
Across EMEA, the Enterprise Cloud Index demonstrates that public cloud budgets are over exceeding limitations, according to 31.7% of respondents and five per cent are majorly over budget. That said, it is clear that organisations looking for an infrastructure that gives them customer-centricity are looking at hybrid cloud as the method that will enable the flexibility they require.
As the Enterprise Cloud Index reveals, hybrid cloud is seen by business technology leaders as the way to provide organisations with the flexibility they require for todays ever changing market dynamics. The results reveal that organisations expect agility and interoperability as customer demands flex. Old rigid forms of infrastructure fail to meet the needs of businesses that are focused on their customers. Security remains a topic of debate in the modern enterprise, but as the Enterprise Cloud Index demonstrates, the infrastructure of tomorrow will be both secure and adaptable.
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Hybrid cloud - The business infrastructure of tomorrow - Techerati
On the horizon: 57 meetups, conferences & networking events across NC in April – WRAL Tech Wire
Plenty of technology and life science events and deadlines are on tap for April, despite the spreading coronavirus. The schedule follows as of March 23.
If youre interested in events coming up in the immediate future, check out our two-part list of:
Also, check out our list of over 100 meetups in the Triangle.
These columns accompany our interactive calendar, along with a comprehensive resource package for startups in the Triangle.
Keeping up with WRAL TechWires continued initiative to track events happening across North Carolina, heres a look at whats to come in April:
Held every month, 1 Million Cups Charlotte features a presentation from a local startup followed by a Q&A from the community. Free coffee is included.
Ashevilles startup community meets weekly to hear presentations and support one another in continuing to grow.
1 Million Cups, presented by Kauffman, is a weekly informal pitch event for the startup community. Join for free coffee and entrepreneurial support as local startups deliver their presentations.
Bunker Labs Wilmington is celebrating the growth of the chapter over the past year. Join for food, drinks, prizes and networking with the local military community.
The Charlotte chapter of the Ellevate network is hosting a casual social for both members and non-members in Matthews.
This free event features six hardware startups pitching to local VCs and investors. The winner gets $3,000 cash and prizes, as well as a chance to win the $50,000 grand prize at the international finals in May.
At this meetup, John Tuders, UNCC professor and executive director at Skookum, will share his research on talent and decision-making in payments innovation.
Join an open tour of the Skookum office to get an introduction to the tech and ideas powering the community. The Skookum team will be available for any questions or comments participants may have. Lunch will be provided.
Held on a weekly basis, this Venture Caf event series provides all sorts of programming for Piedmont Triad entrepreneurs and innovators. Every Thursday evening, the community gathers for networking, panel talks, workshops, presentations, product demos, interviews, and more.
This free monthly interactive webinar provides participants with an overview of NC TECHs activities, resources and member offerings.
This weekly meetup brings together developers, IT professionals and tech enthusiasts who are interested in the Google Cloud Platform.
Join this event to see first-hand software demonstrations from the latest cohort of engineers in Project Shifts immersive full-stack development program.
Join the Code for Chapel Hill meetup to network with like-minded individuals and work on civic hacking projects. Meetings are held every two weeks on Tuesdays.
Every month, a handful of Queen City-based companies headline Charlotte PitchBreakfast, pitching their products and services for a total of five minutes, after which they will answer questions from the audience and a panel of entrepreneurs and experts.
Ashevilles startup community meets weekly to hear presentations and support one another in continuing to grow.
1 Million Cups, presented by Kauffman, is a weekly informal pitch event for the startup community. Join for free coffee and entrepreneurial support as local startups deliver their presentations.
Held on a weekly basis, this Venture Caf event series provides all sorts of programming for Piedmont Triad entrepreneurs and innovators. Every Thursday evening, the community gathers for networking, panel talks, workshops, presentations, product demos, interviews, and more.
Bunker Labs Raleigh-Durham is hosting an event to build stronger connections across the veteran community. Hear insights from local entrepreneur Randy H. Nelson on his experience as a leader, mentor and community builder.
The Charlotte chapter of the Ellevate network is hosting a casual social for both members and non-members.
The Charlotte chapter of the Ellevate network is hosting a casual social for both members and non-members in Cornelius.
In this talk, Berryville Institute of Machine Learning Co-Founder Dr. Gary McGraw will use the story of static analysis for code review and its decade-long evolution as a driver for discussion. The presentation will cover startups, big companies, venture capital, research agencies and subject matter expertise.
This free bi-monthly event offers a space for local tech professionals to build connections and find potential job opportunities.
In this Demo Day event, Momentum Learnings seventh cohort of Immersive Web Development students will present the projects theyve created during the 12-week full-stack web development program.
This weekly meetup brings together developers, IT professionals and tech enthusiasts who are interested in the Google Cloud Platform.
During this event, students will gather to pitch their ventures before a panel of judges, receive feedback and celebrate the end of their work at BLUE.
The Duke Incubation Fund provides funding for innovative projects that demonstrate potential for future financial support, company formation licensing and not-for-profit partnering.
Code for Durham brings together technologists, designers, developers, data scientists, map makers and activists to collaborate on civic technology projects. Meetings are held every two weeks on Tuesdays. Pizza will be provided.
All Things Open is now seeking talks from technologists to be featured at the 2020 conference, set for October 18-20 in Raleigh.
This weekly event brings together entrepreneurs in the Wilmington and Cape Fear community to gather for coffee, casual startup pitches and conversation.
Ashevilles startup community meets weekly to hear presentations and support one another in continuing to grow.
1 Million Cups, presented by Kauffman, is a weekly informal pitch event for the startup community. Join for free coffee and entrepreneurial support as local startups deliver their presentations.
On the third Wednesday of every month, the Queen Citys entrepreneurial community joins together for an evening of networking and connections over drinks.
The City of Raleighs Impact Partner Grant program provides funding for new programs and resources that aim to assist entrepreneurs and small businesses.
NC IDEA LABS is a four-week customer discovery program that helps idea-stage entrepreneurs take their first steps toward building a successful startup. The next cohort will run from May 26 to June 19.
In this webinar, the Institute for Emerging Issues is bringing together representatives from Service Year organizations, nonprofits and government agencies to discuss the innovative ways in which communities are using service years to tackle problems and add opportunities.
The Regional Transportation Alliances Innovations and Solutions Forum series will highlight new innovations to improve roads and streets quickly and safely.
Held on a weekly basis, this Venture Caf event series provides all sorts of programming for Piedmont Triad entrepreneurs and innovators. Every Thursday evening, the community gathers for networking, panel talks, workshops, presentations, product demos, interviews, and more.
This free monthly interactive webinar provides participants with an overview of NC TECHs activities, resources and member offerings.
This weekly meetup brings together developers, IT professionals and tech enthusiasts who are interested in the Google Cloud Platform.
NC TECHs Government Vendor Network is a forum for member companies who are interested in doing business with state government.
At Future Fund 10 LIVE, 10 nonprofits will pitch innovative program ideas, competing for over $40,000 grants and cash prizes.
Join the Code for Chapel Hill meetup to network with like-minded individuals and work on civic hacking projects. Meetings are held every two weeks on Tuesdays.
This weekly event brings together entrepreneurs in the Wilmington and Cape Fear community to gather for coffee, casual startup pitches and conversation.
Ashevilles startup community meets weekly to hear presentations and support one another in continuing to grow.
1 Million Cups, presented by Kauffman, is a weekly informal pitch event for the startup community. Join for free coffee and entrepreneurial support as local startups deliver their presentations.
For the third cycle of its Flash Grant program, the North Carolina Biotech Center is searching for innovative projects aiming to address the global coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, precision health, and digital and data-driven life science technologies.
Held on a weekly basis, this Venture Caf event series provides all sorts of programming for Piedmont Triad entrepreneurs and innovators. Every Thursday evening, the community gathers for networking, panel talks, workshops, presentations, product demos, interviews, and more.
The NC Sustainable Energy Association is hosting a discussion on North Carolinas Clean Energy Plan and what it means for the states future.
This free bi-monthly event offers a space for local tech professionals to build connections and find potential job opportunities.
This weekly meetup brings together developers, IT professionals and tech enthusiasts who are interested in the Google Cloud Platform.
Code for Durham brings together technologists, designers, developers, data scientists, map makers and activists to collaborate on civic technology projects. Meetings are held every two weeks on Tuesdays. Pizza will be provided.
Bring your ideas and opinions to the next Midtown Techies meetup. Events are held on the last Tuesday of every month.
This weekly event brings together entrepreneurs in the Wilmington and Cape Fear community to gather for coffee, casual startup pitches and conversation.
Ashevilles startup community meets weekly to hear presentations and support one another in continuing to grow.
1 Million Cups, presented by Kauffman, is a weekly informal pitch event for the startup community. Join for free coffee and entrepreneurial support as local startups deliver their presentations.
Join an open tour of the Skookum office to get an introduction to the tech and ideas powering the community. The Skookum team will be available for any questions or comments participants may have. Lunch will be provided.
Held on a weekly basis, this Venture Caf event series provides all sorts of programming for Piedmont Triad entrepreneurs and innovators. Every Thursday evening, the community gathers for networking, panel talks, workshops, presentations, product demos, interviews, and more.
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On the horizon: 57 meetups, conferences & networking events across NC in April - WRAL Tech Wire
The Four Main Reasons Your Cloud Spending Is Out of Control – Cloud Wars
Editors Note: Were delighted to feature a guest author on Cloud Wars today. Steve Schechter, an IT Director based in Hong Kong, shares the second in his 2-part series on taming runaway cloud costs. You can read Part 1 here.
How much are you spending on cloud every month?
Is it within the budget you set?
Are you able to understand the invoices you receive from your cloud providers? And reliably predict what youll spend in the future?
Its easy enough to answer the first question. But for many companies today, the answer to the others is probably, No.
In my previous article, Taming Runaway Cloud Expenses: How I Cut Cloud-Hosting Costs by 32%, I shared the specific steps I took to cut one clients cloud hosting bill by almost one-third. But every company is different and what worked for one company may not work for another. In order to help you understand how to keep your cloud bill under control, its important to know the reasons why things get out of hand in the first place.
Too many companies today are unaware that public cloud requires a different style of governance than for traditional infrastructure. The lack of proper cloud governance leads to results that are the stuff of nightmares.
More specifically, industry analysts estimate that of the $40 billion spent on public cloud IaaS in 2019, 30% or more is wasted. Gartner estimates that public cloud bills are often two to three times higher than expected and that as many as 80% of companies surveyed report that they consistently go over budget on their IaaS spend.
The situation is bad. Yet the concept of cloud governance isnt receiving the attention it deserves. Plenty of attention is given to cloud architecture, cloud migration, cloud securitybut cloud governance is rarely mentioned at all. The last cloud conference I attended had dozens of break-out sessions covering popular topics like security, hybrid cloud and multi-cloud; and just one poorly attended 45-minute talk on governance.
The main reason that cloud spending gets out of control is the management of resources and approvals. Its a matter of capital expense (CapEx) versus operating expense (OpEx).
Think about how you manage your traditional data-center resources. Buying or leasing almost anything for your data center or colocation service represents a commitment of thousands of dollarsoften many, many thousands of dollars. These are generally viewed as capital expenses and they usually require several layers of approvals. The workflow probably looks like this:
But in the brave new world of public cloud, a compute resource costs just pennies per hour. Pay as you go, right? Just a few dollars here, a few pennies there. So its not a capital expense, its an operating expense (OpEx). So the workflow might look more like this:
However, along with that compute resource theyve also added some disk space, snapshots and backups, perhaps replication for disaster-recovery purposes, perhaps several servers with load balancing, a new Vnet or subnets, new rules for a web application firewall and so on. Before you know it, this person has created cloud resources that will cost thousands of dollars per year all without obtaining any approvals or sign-offs and almost definitely without notifying the CTO or CFO about this new financial commitment.
Cloud governance is a recent paradigm that recognizes that traditional infrastructure governance doesnt work for public cloud. Its a framework that can cover cost optimization, roles and responsibilities, resiliency and possibly security and compliance.
This framework generally strikes a balance between fiscal responsibility and agile innovation. It should recognize that decisions and approvals may no longer be centralized. It may include:
To be effective, cloud governance is best managed using a cloud management platform. While cloud vendors offer increasingly sophisticated tools in this area, third-party solutions are much further ahead in terms of features and, as you might expect, work equally well whether youre using a single cloud vendor or all of them.
The most-important function of such a platform is its ability to provide automated alertsand in some cases automated remediationswhen policy violations occur, as they invariably will.
Another area where you will frequently encounter waste has to do with the sizing of servers. When you buy a physical server, you expect it to last for at least 5 years. You may know how big that server needs to be todaybut do you know how big it will need to be three years from now? Five years? Probably not. So you buy the largest server you can afford, cross your fingers and hope for the best.
To some extent this mindset has carried over to the cloud as well. If no one is watching over this properly, DevOps is probably spinning up huge virtual servers with far more vCPU and vRAM than is needed. It completely overlooks one of the most fundamental tenets of cloud: cloud is elastic. Spin up what you know you need today and its an almost trivial matter to migrate to something larger (or smaller) in the future.
People still dont think cloud. They dont understand the on-demand nature of cloud. As a result, a lot of savings opportunities are missed.
Heres the simplest example. Your developers all go home by 7 PM or midnight or whenever. They dont turn up until 10 AM the next morning. They go home on weekends and holidays. Theyre not working, and their cloud servers arent working. The servers are just sitting there, not gathering dust but gathering charges on your bill.
In the good old days, its just a server sitting in your data center and its only costing you a few pennies extra each month for electricity. But in the brave new world of cloud, its easy to power them down and grab those savings.
I can remember sitting in a clients meeting room with their Cloud Ops team. The client had just published their annual report, a 50-page 4-color glossy booklet that not only reported on the previous years results but also laid out the companys vision for the future. In a nice touch, the report had lots of photos of the companys staff hard at work.
How many people in this room have read the companys latest annual report? I asked. I looked at the 10 other people sitting around at the table, and not a single hand went up. Not one person there had bothered to look at the reportbecause their perception was that it had nothing to do with their daily jobs.
The best system administrators and DevOps people can often operate with blinders on. They know the tasks they have to do and are intensely focused on them, sometimes to the omission of everything else. Butand this is importantthis is not their fault.
You might be the greatest manager in the world, but if all youre doing is assigning tasks, checking progress and putting out status reports, youve only done half your job.
Its the managers job to make people care, to communicate the passion of the companys mission and make every person on the team understand not just the vision but also their role in achieving it.
A big piece of this communication is making teams understand the budget impact of their actions, and how saving money not only benefits the company but will directly benefit them as well. After all, more profits mean higher bonuses and possibly even a greater headcount to share the workload.
Optimizing cloud costs is everyones job. Communicating that consistently to the team, making everyone understand their role and their roles importance, makes it easier for you to do your job, because now everyone around you will make it a priority to contribute to the cost-savings effort.
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The Four Main Reasons Your Cloud Spending Is Out of Control - Cloud Wars
Zoom warns investors they may become a victim of their own success as costs spiral – MSPoweruser – MSPoweruser
The Zoom video conferencing solution has rapidly gained popularity and prominence due to the new Work from Home directives, but it appears all that success is coming at a steep price.
In a new security filling Zoom has warned investors that their rapid growth is forcing them to invest in building out the service faster than they had planned.
We expect our cost of revenue to increase for the foreseeable future, both in absolute dollars and as a percentage of total revenue, as we expand our data centre capacity and third party cloud hosting due to increased usage stemming from the recent outbreak of the COVID-19 virus, Zoom writes in the filing.
Zooms cloud infrastructure is likely powered by Amazons AWS, meaning their costs per user are fixed, even while most of their new customers are using their free plans.
While we have seen increased usage of our service globally, there are no assurances that we will also experience an increase in paying customers or that new or existing users will continue to utilize our services at the same levels after the outbreak has tempered, Zoom said in the filing.
Zoom also warns that there is a price for not investing more in response to the increase in demand.
Any unfavorable publicity or perception of our platform, including any delays or interruptions in service due to capacity constraints stemming from increased usage due to the recent outbreak of the COVID-19 virus, or of the providers of communication and collaboration technologies generally could adversely affect our reputation and our ability to attract and retain hosts, Zoom writes.
Poor reliability could force users back to more mainstream solutions such as Microsoft Teams, which runs its own backend. We have already heard how Microsoft is positioning themselves directly against Zoom, and any weakness on their part will likely rapidly be exploited.
For their part, Zoom has not yet clamped down in free users, and have in fact removed the 40 minute limit on video calls in China and for educational institutions in several countries.
For now, CEO Eric Yuan has said at the moment he is just focused on providing the best product to customers and helping those impacted by the pandemic.
Via BusinessInsider.
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Zoom warns investors they may become a victim of their own success as costs spiral - MSPoweruser - MSPoweruser
Everyone needs the cloud now more than ever. So understand AWS, Azure and more for under $25. – The Next Web
TLDR: The Complete 2020 Cloud Certification Training Bundle will get you ready to manage a companys cloud-based network from anywhere with maximum efficiency.
Weve all quickly adjusted to the fact that working from home is going to be the new normal for a while. But if you step back for a minute, youll see thats a move that workers have been pushing for for quite some time in most industries.
And now that platforms like AWS, Azure and others have helped transport many workplace systems from a physical office to a decentralized, easily-accessible perch in the cloud, its never been easier for employees to do vast majorities of their daily work duties right from home.
Adapting to the cloud isnt a matter of if, its when so IT pros need to understand how to do their jobs in the new environment with instruction like The Complete 2020 Cloud Certification Training Bundle. Right now, its over 90 percent off, just $24, from TNW Deals with promo code: FLASHSAVE40.
Over 12 courses, students get a close look at each of the most popular cloud platforms today, examining how each operates to learn how they can best help your companys tech processes run more smoothly.
Its no surprise the Amazon Web Services (AWS) universe dominates this package. As the cloud markets leading provider, this collection features nine courses digging into the vast assortment of features and options available in their thriving cloud services empire.
The courses here can help even newcomers get familiar with the terminology and processes of managing a system on the AWS platform and start using some of their most popular tools to improve your companys performance and protection.
Students get a complete introduction to proper data storage procedures using Amazon S3, domain hosting with Route 53, and the correct steps for making sure your network is always growing responsible with EC2. And once youve handled the training, theres also a course to get you ready to pass the AWS Solution Architect Certification exam and earn your stripes as a credentialed AWS pro.
Meanwhile, there are also courses offering plenty of opportunity to get to know another huge player in the cloud these days, Microsofts Azure; how to monitor cloud system updates and changes using GIT; and methods to run much of your system automatically with the help of Ansible.
The course package routinely sells for $3,800, but the entire cloud learning collection is on sale now for $2 per course, just $24 while this deal lasts with promo code: FLASHSAVE40.
Prices are subject to change.
Read our daily coverage on how the tech industry is responding to the coronavirus and subscribe to our weekly newsletter Coronavirus in Context.
For tips and tricks on working remotely, check out our Growth Quarters articles here or follow us on Twitter.
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Everyone needs the cloud now more than ever. So understand AWS, Azure and more for under $25. - The Next Web
Leostream to the Remote Access Rescue – Associated Press
Press release content from Newswire. The AP news staff was not involved in its creation.
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WALTHAM, Mass. - March 19, 2020 - ( Newswire.com )
Dewpoint, an Information Technology Services and Solutions Provider ( http://www.dewpoint.com ), leverages the Leostream Platform for their cloud-based virtual desktop infrastructure solution, enabling their customers to save money and improve efficiency by leveraging the cloud as a hosting platform for VDI.
Last week, a call center customer using Dewpoints Next Gen VDI offering was seeking a solution to allow their support and sales staff to work from home in the event their building closed due to COVID-19.
Dewpoint turned to Leostream, specifically the Leostream Gateway and HTML5 viewer that was already included in the customers Leostream Platform.
The Dewpoint team started working on getting the security in place and in just four hours the customers staff were able to remotely log into desktops both as support and sales.That evening the customer had a handful of employees from their sales and support teams successfully test their connections from home and now the call center is operating remotely.
With Leostream, Dewpoints customer is continuing to support their customers from the safety and convenience of their employees homes.
Leostream to the rescue was the literal subject of an email I received the other day,said Karen Gondoly, CEO of Leostream. Leostream has always made it easy for our customers to provide remote access for a roaming workforce. While the circumstances now are far from ideal, were proud that were doing our part to help organizations keep their workforce productive and safe.
Ron Cox, Senior Systems Engineer at Dewpoint said, Leostream helped our customers call center work from home with the virus outbreak. Right now [our customer] is operating their call center sales and support 100% using the Leostream Gateway external HTML5 viewer.
Leostream is a vendor-agnostic platform providing a comprehensive and scalable solution for organizations to securely deliver and manage virtual desktops, remote sessions, and applications hosted on-premises, in a private cloud, public cloud, or hybrid cloud environment. Learn more at https://leostream.com.
Media Contact: Karen Gondoly Phone: 781-890-2019 Email: sales@leostream.com
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Original Source: Leostream to the Remote Access Rescue
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Leostream to the Remote Access Rescue - Associated Press
AMD and Intel have a formidable new foe but youll never guess who it is – TechRadar
An unexpected rival has emerged that could give Intel and AMD a run for their money, at least in the very lucrative server and cloud computing market.
Amazons new Graviton2 CPU has been tested extensively by Andrei Frumusanu from our sister website Anandtech, and the results show this new kid on the block outstrips the incumbents when it comes to performance per dollar.
Graviton2 was tested against two other cloud computing resources offered by Amazon Web Services: the m5a (AMD EPYC 7571) and m5n (Intel Xeon Platinum 8259CL Cascade Lake). Andrei found it could offer savings of up to 54%, which he says represents "a massive shakeup for the AWS and EC2 ecosystem.
So, how did Amazon achieve these results? The chip comes from Annapurna Labs and packs 64 A76 ARM cores - similar to what you can find in a smartphone - with 33MB cache and a high clock speed. Amazon is Annapurna Labs' only customer, which means the processor is extremely fine-tuned for AWS workloads.
According to Andrei, unless you're tied to the x86 platform, you'd be stupid not to switch over to Graviton2 instances once they become more widely available for everything from VPN (AWS VPN) to web hosting (AWS Light Sail).
For now, expect AMDs EPYC2 processors to put up a bit of a fight - at least until Graviton3 lands.
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AMD and Intel have a formidable new foe but youll never guess who it is - TechRadar
Business Process-as-a-Service (BPaaS) Market To Reach USD 120.70 Billion By 2026 Growing at a CAGR of 12.6% – Weather News Point
Business Process-as-a-Service Market Size was USD 46.38 Billion in 2018 and BPaaS Marketis forecast to reach USD 120.70 Billion by 2026 Growing at a CAGR of 12.6%.
Business Process-as-a-Service (BPaaS) refers to the web-delivered or the cloud hosting models, delivered by the business process outsourcing (BPO) companies and serve multiple tenants across most of the industry verticals. The delivered functions might derive from any of cloud-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure-as-a-Services (IaaS) models in general.
The global business process-as-a-service (BPaaS) market is growing predominantly as all the industries are slowly moving towards adopting the cloud-based on-demand BPaaS models. BPaaS, has, in turn, made the traditional process of outsourcing models more flexible, clean, accessible, and affordable by lowering down the up-front additional investment costs. Operation & finance management processes sub-segments in the business application has the highest usage rate and also is calculated to achieve the highest growth rate. The mBPM solutions would like to facilitate and also drive the market broadly.
Key participants include Microsoft Corporation, Tata Consultancy Service, HCL Technologies, Genpact, Accenture plc, Wipro, IBM Corporation, Oracle, Concentrix, and Infosys BPM.
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APAC is forecasted to achieve the fastest growth of about 17.8% in the period 2019 2026, due to an increase in the adoption of the cloud-based back-end business and financial process serviced from the BPOs in both the SMEs and large enterprises across all the industry verticals in the countries like China, Singapore, and India. North America holds the highest market share of about 37.8% in 2018 because of the prodigious rate of adoption and improvisation of the influential business process verticals, especially in the conglomerates.
For the purpose of this report, Reports and Data have segmented the global business process-as-a-service (BPaaS) market on the basis of the business application, component, organization size, end-use industries, and region:
Business Application Outlook (Revenue: USD Billion; 2016-2026)
Component Outlook (Revenue: USD Billion; 2016-2026)
Organization Size Outlook (Revenue: USD Billion; 2016-2026)
End-Use Industries Outlook (Revenue: USD Billion; 2016-2026)
Regional Outlook (Revenue: USD Billion; 2016-2026)
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Further key findings from the report suggest
To identify the key trends in the industry, click on the link below: https://www.reportsanddata.com/report-detail/business-process-as-a-service-bpaas-market
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Business Process-as-a-Service (BPaaS) Market To Reach USD 120.70 Billion By 2026 Growing at a CAGR of 12.6% - Weather News Point