Category Archives: Cloud Hosting
When it comes to cloud computing, the sky’s the limit – FinTech Magazine
Cloud computing has transformed the way businesses operate, allowing them to store and access data on a global scale. Organisations have traded the pain of managing hardware, and on-premises solutions for hosting their solutions on cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Provider (GCP) and Microsoft Azure Cloud (Azure). These providers are not just reliable but provide a host of managed solutions, cutting out what could be months of engineering effort. That being said, to remain competitive, businesses need to understand what challenges they may face as well as how to maximise the value of their cloud-based solutions. This is especially true as new features and tools get launched yearly.
Being successful at the cloud can involve many moving parts, but I believe it can be broken it down in to certain key topics:
Note: As AWS is the most popular cloud platform, our examples will be predominantly with that. But the same logic strategy is applicable to any cloud platform
AWS and Azure have over 200 services while GCP has well over 100. How does one begin to pick? Well there are multiple ways one can choose a series of services to deliver the same thing, but the final selection should be based on business needs. For example, you may want to launch a single page application written in React. One method, using AWS S3 and CloudFront, will ensure your website is delivered quickly to everyone across the globe. But lets say your application gains more and more complicated UI features, making rendering time a pain for users, especially if their computers are slow. In that case, a better solution may be to host a React service with server side rendering on an AWS ECS cluster.
Additionally, one may need to know whether they should use a cloud providers managed service versus an open-source solution which you self host on the cloud. For example, using AWS API Gateway with Lambda contrasts with ECS hosting and API powered by a popular framework like Flask. Both solve the same problems, but come with different costs and benefits. For example, Lambda can be lightweight and cost efficient, but one now has to understand limitations, such as run time and memory, as well as other nuances such as cold starts, and RDS proxies to connect reliably to databases.
That all may come across as very dense information, but it is important to keep in mind that new services are added to the cloud every year, so one must keep up to date with the latest information. Doing so can help organisations adopt newer services that introduce better cost savings and better reliability.
Your organisation grows. There is a big difference in the 100 daily users you may have right now, and 100,000 you will have in the future. Similarly, there is a difference between transforming and moving megabytes of data versus moving it when it grows to gigabytes. One needs to pick tools that not only solve the needs of today, but also the needs of tomorrow. The key is to design your cloud architecture so the performance scales along with your needs along with the cost. Leveraging services and features like load balancing and auto scaling are popular ways to tackle this.
Setting up log collection and monitoring are often great sources of information to help you know when something goes wrong. But, this only gets you so far. As things get bigger, and more critical, you want to know not just if your system has failures, but also why it might be failing. This is called observability. Monitoring is reactive, whereas observability is proactive. This is especially important since in a large cloud architecture, you have multiple resources running and connected to one other. Popular tools like DataDog and Dynatrace, and even Cloud Native ones like AWS X-Ray, can help trace the origins and the reasons behind failures. Another important key here is best practices, such as having Slack and email notifications setup so you know immediately when a key service may be failing, and ideally why. Adopting observability as practice will help your organisation solve bugs quickly.
There may be important data and services you wish not to be public. This means you need to make sure sensitive resources are not open on the public internet by restricting access policies, isolating them in private cloud networks, setting up IP whitelisting and black listing, or even adding Oauth and SSO authentication layers. On top of that you want to make sure that you scan any open-source dependencies for vulnerabilities before they get adopted in production. A great place to put these scans is in your CI/CD pipelines. How you choose to protect things will depend again on the services you decide to use and your business needs.
The final part of your strategy is setting up your system in a way that makes it easier for engineers to focus on building new features rather than worrying about how to deploy them. There are integral concepts in the DevOps worlds that will help you do this. The first is infrastructure as code. This will make it easier for you to spin up new cloud resources and maintain multiple environments such as development, staging and production. The second is continuous integration and deployment. This enables engineers to have deployment of new features automated as soon as they are developed. Aside from these, another key aspect is picking the right cloud technologies that do not add friction in the development process.
Often we see organisations choosing services in a way that adds too much friction in the development process. A common one is using AWS Lambda over something like a simple cron job running in an EC2. Sure, one may be cheaper or easier on initial setup, but there are so many other challenges one may face as we covered previously, and if its set up improperly it will be hard/time consuming for engineers to test it. This ends up meaning that while some services may cost less, you will have to pay more in time and engineering hours, making things more expensive in the long run.
All these challenges should not scare you, but inspire you. Cloud computing is an essential part of modern business operations. It continues to evolve, with new technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and blockchain empowering companies to do more. Organisations must tackle the challenges of implementing cloud applications and improve their cloud performance, and when they do it properly, they will handsomely reap the benefits of this technology.
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When it comes to cloud computing, the sky's the limit - FinTech Magazine
USSOCOM CTO Talks Benefits of Multi-Cloud Hybrid Strategy – MeriTalk
The U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) is pursuing a multi-cloud hybrid strategy that gives users greater choices and changes the portion of computing that remains on-premise which is critical when bringing capabilities to disparate environments the agencys top tech official said on March 21.
During Federal News Networks DoD Cloud Exchange 2023, Mark Taylor, USSOCOMs chief technical officer, said that the agency is creating a multi-cloud hybrid strategy that features a blend of robust cloud capability combined with powerful disconnected and edge computing.
Many of the missions under USSOCOMs purview take place in austere locations where broadband communications, for example, may be unavailable, and which takes reach-back to commercial clouds off the table.
Were normally not operating missions in Malibu or Times Square or someplace nice. Were normally doing it in some part of the world thats not necessarily hospitable, said Taylor. He said he is working to give the commands activities a choice of commercial clouds.
On a practical level, Taylor explained, having just one cloud vendor is just not realistic anymore. He said USSOCOM has organically adopted and has in use several cloud service providers at varying levels of maturity among the commands cloud users.
Cloud services providers, both big and small, each have desirable if differing qualities, he said.
With a multi-cloud hybrid strategy, Taylor explained he can try to provide an enterprise offering or at least corral them to some degree, so that we could offer the different types of clouds at different [security] impact levels. This will result in USSOCOM components consuming cloud services through an organized set of contracts versus half-sanctioned, shadow IT.
In addition, Taylor said that this strategy not only gives users a choice, but it also changes the portion of computing that remains on-premise by adopting a cloud-first mindset.
The data center component must now meet a new definition of hybrid, he said aligning cloud and on-premises services.
While some services do remain in physical data centers, those facilities must operate exactly like the cloud, Taylor said. As you buy new gear, you need to make sure you are buying gear that can look and feel just like your cloud experience. Thats the critical difference.
There are three major benefits associated with aligning cloud and on-premise services. The first is USSOCOM wont have to sustain parallel but different computing skillsets, ensuring the agency has just one operating force that knows how to work, Taylor said.
In turn, this also helps the users. Then everyone has a uniform computing experience, regardless of where they are or what application they are using, he said.
The second benefit is that uniformity enhances the ability to deliver effective computing to austere environments, which is a continual demand for USSOCOM. Additionally, when a field device returns to network connectivity, whatever new data or analysis occurred offline can then sync either with the cloud hosting the original application or with the on-premises computers that look like the cloud, Taylor explained.
Lastly, the alignment of cloud and on-premise service provides quicker value from any capital expenditures USSOCOM does make.
This is because a cloud-first approach strategy means looking at refreshing a traditional data center from the perspective of the full enterprise from the get-go, rather than buying $5 million worth of stuff and then beginning to figure out how to extract value from that bunch of bare metal, Taylor said.
The scale and the flexibility of the cloud relative to an on-prem capability are not news. And while cloud computing is hardly free, it still allows for an organization to better match requirements and therefore costs because of the ability to scale up and scale back with computing, Taylor said.
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USSOCOM CTO Talks Benefits of Multi-Cloud Hybrid Strategy - MeriTalk
Our Spring Digital Blowout makes web hosting more affordable than … – PCWorld
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Our Spring Digital Blowout makes web hosting more affordable than ... - PCWorld
Liquid Web Review Flexible Web Hosting with Outstanding Support – PakWired
Liquid Web has made regular appearances on lists of the best hosting services currently on the market, including PakWireds own.
Consequently, its time to dive deeper into what the company actually provides in terms of hosting, what its stand-out features are, and who can benefit most from its offer.
Keep reading for our in-depth, comprehensive Liquid Web hosting review.
To start with, what exactly is Liquid Web?
Liquid Web is a provider of robust web hosting services. They pride themselves on their lighting fast support, security, speed, and performance.
With good reason, as well discover below.
Speaking to the quality and reliability of their services is that the company has been around since 1997. And the fact that they can count numerous big brands among their clients, including National Geographic, Porsche, Motorola, Audi and Home Depot.
In terms of hosting types, Liquid Web provides managed WordPress, VPS, Cloud, and dedicated server hosting.
While all of their hosting types offer solid services, Liquid Web excels in managed hosting an achievement that earned them PC Worlds Editors Choice status.
With managed hosting, all servers are located in Liquid Webs datacenters. Plus, it handles all the sites administrative aspects, as well as support tasks, no matter their scale and complexity. Especially for bigger businesses, and businesses hoping to scale up in the future, this is a significant advantage.
Liquid Webs premium managed WordPress hosting also includes some additional perks to make users lives easier. These include a WordPress pre-installation as well as automatic updates and backups, free SSL certificates, and free migration.
In addition, users can choose between Liquid Webs native WordPress dashboard, cPanel with WP-CLI/SSH Access, and iThemes Sync Pro. If you opt for the first of these, you also have access to one-click staging sites.
When it comes to cloud hosting, Liquid Webs plans are based on their Storm platform. They include Cloudflare CDN, DDoS protection, enhanced security and SSD drives.
VPS servers offer numerous options for customization in terms of sizes and configurations, depending on the amount of disk space, RAM, and processing power you need.
One of Liquid Webs points of pride is its speed and reliability.
In terms of speed, Liquid Web is actually faster than Amazon Web Services (AWS), Rackspace, and Digital Ocean.
One speed test by Cyber News found its Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) time to lie at only 666 ms way below the 2.5 second threshold of acceptable loading times. Plus, this test was carried out on a bare-bones test website without any of the additional optimizations that can further increase your websites speed.
In terms of reliability, Liquid Web guarantees a 100% uptime backed by SLA. It can boast three datacenters distributed across the US and another one in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. In Cyber News stress test using 50 bots to simulate an abrupt traffic surge, Liquid Web passed with flying colors.
Then theres security. As mentioned above, managed hosting includes a free SSL certificate as well as automatic backups.
But Liquid Webs hosting is also well-protected in and of itself. They offer standard DDoS protection, monitoring traffic and protecting your site from sudden attacks. Another standard package is ServerSecure, which automatically configures the optimal security settings to protect your site from malware attacks. Plus, theres the integrated firewall you can activate on your dashboard to stop malicious traffic.
Beyond the purely technical capabilities of Liquid Web as a hosting provider, the company also has one more trump card: its amazing support team. Liquid Webs Heroic Support is available 24/7 via live chat, phone, and ticketing.
The standard response times are one minute if you reach out by phone, 30 minutes if you submit a ticket, and 59 seconds if you enter a live chat.
Its not just the speed of the companys response thats outstanding, though. By all accounts and customer reviews, customer service agents at Liquid Web are thorough, friendly, and knowledgeable. In short, they have your back.
After this extensive round of accolades, you may well be asking: Hold up, wheres the catch?
In fact, Liquid Web does have a few drawbacks.
For one thing, they dont offer a money-back guarantee, unlike many other web hosts. There is a prorated refund on monthly cloud servers, but apart from that, its services are non-refundable.
This is tricky, especially considering the second significant downside of Liquid Web: Its fairly pricey, as is outlined below.
Overall, that means you need to commit yourself and your budget to Liquid Web from the get-go.
Now, on to the financial side of things. As mentioned above, Liquid Web is a little more expensive than other hosting services at around the same level. However, reviews show that the vast majority of its users find Liquid Webs vast range of functionalities to be well worth their cash.
Managed WordPress hosting starts at $15.83 per month (billed annually) for 1 site, 15 GB storage, 2 TB bandwidth, and 30-day backups. If you need to host more sites or require bigger bandwidth, theres a variety of more advanced plans available.
VPS hosting starts at $25 per month, with 2 vCPU Cores, 40 GB SSD Storage, 10 TB Bandwidth, and your choice of AlmaLinux or CentOS 7.
Dedicated server hosting and cloud hosting options start at $169 and $149, respectively.
One thing to note: Liquid Web offers some pretty sweet introductory discounts in many of its pricing categories.
Overall, Liquid Web is a fantastic hosting option, especially if youre looking for managed WordPress hosting. Though a little pricey, it offers a solid range of services and outstanding customer care, speed, and reliability.
Especially for businesses looking to scale, and website owners needing high-performing servers for mission-critical sites, Liquid Web is an excellent choice.
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Liquid Web Review Flexible Web Hosting with Outstanding Support - PakWired
Cloud Computing Hosting Service Market to Witness Astonishing … – Digital Journal
New Jersey, United States, Jan 15, 2023 /DigitalJournal/ Cloud computing is the technique of processing, storing, and managing data on a network of remote computers hosted on the internet rather than on a personal computer or a local server. It particularly refers to a shared storage area that allows all network devices to access data at the same time. Cloud computing is an IT service delivery approach in which third-party service providers use the internet to supply computing resources and software tools.
The global Cloud Computing Hosting Service Market is expected to grow at a Massive CAGR of 13% during the forecasting period of 2022 to 2029.
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The Cloud Computing Hosting Service Market research report provides all the information related to the industry. It gives the markets outlook by giving authentic data to its client which helps to make essential decisions. It gives an overview of the market which includes its definition, applications and developments, and manufacturing technology. This Cloud Computing Hosting Service market research report tracks all the recent developments and innovations in the market. It gives the data regarding the obstacles while establishing the business and guides to overcome the upcoming challenges and obstacles.
Some of the Top companies Influencing this Market include:
Accenture, Booz Allen Hamilton, Cloudticity, CloudNexa, Cognizant, Connectria Hosting, Datapipe, DLT Solutions, IBM Managed Cloud Services, ICF International, Infosys, Rackspace, Sirius Computer Solutions, Softchoice, Wipro Technologies, Alibaba Cloud
Market Scenario:
Firstly, this Cloud Computing Hosting Service research report introduces the market by providing an overview that includes definitions, applications, product launches, developments, challenges, and regions. The market is forecasted to reveal strong development by driven consumption in various markets. An analysis of the current market designs and other basic characteristics is provided in the Cloud Computing Hosting Service report.
The report also implements primary and secondary research techniques for gathering the most crucial pieces of professional information, and applies a number of industry-best techniques upon the data for projecting the future state of the global Cloud Computing Hosting Service market. Based on current market development, the report includes an analysis of how activities such as mergers and shapes the markets future.
This report studies the global market, analyses and research the Keyword} development status and forecast in North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, the Middle East & Africa and Latin America
Segmentation Analysis of the market
The market is segmented based on the type, product, end users, raw materials, etc. the segmentation helps to deliver a precise explanation of the market
Market Segmentation: By Type
Public CloudPrivate CloudHybrid Cloud
Market Segmentation: By Application
Medical IndustryFinancial InstitutionOthers
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An assessment of the market attractiveness about the competition that new players and products are likely to present to older ones has been provided in the publication. The research report also mentions the innovations, new developments, marketing strategies, branding techniques, and products of the key participants in the global Cloud Computing Hosting Service market. To present a clear vision of the market the competitive landscape has been thoroughly analyzed utilizing the value chain analysis. The opportunities and threats present in the future for the key market players have also been emphasized in the publication.
This report aims to provide:
Table of Contents
Global Cloud Computing Hosting Service Market Research Report 2022 2029
Chapter 1 Cloud Computing Hosting Service Market Overview
Chapter 2 Global Economic Impact on Industry
Chapter 3 Global Market Competition by Manufacturers
Chapter 4 Global Production, Revenue (Value) by Region
Chapter 5 Global Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Regions
Chapter 6 Global Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by Type
Chapter 7 Global Market Analysis by Application
Chapter 8 Manufacturing Cost Analysis
Chapter 9 Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream Buyers
Chapter 10 Marketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/Traders
Chapter 11 Market Effect Factors Analysis
Chapter 12 Global Cloud Computing Hosting Service Market Forecast
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Cloud Computing Hosting Service Market to Witness Astonishing ... - Digital Journal
Cloud Workload Protection Market Projected To Hit USD 26.4 Billion … – GlobeNewswire
New York, US, March 23, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Global Cloud Workload Protection Market Overview
According to a comprehensive research report by Market Research Future (MRFR), "global Cloud Workload Protection Market Analysis by Component, By Service, By Organization Size, By Deployment Model, By Vertical Forecast till 2030. The global cloud workload protection market is likely to garner significant traction during the current decade. The growing demand for these solutions from organizations of all sizes would drive market growth. Market Research Future (MRFR) asserts that the global cloud workload protection market valuation is expected to reach approx. USD 26.4 billion by 2030, growing at a 21.90% CAGR throughout the review period (2022-2030).
Companies are increasingly moving their business-critical workloads to the cloud as it increases employee flexibility and reduces IT costs. However, this raises concerns about security and visibility that can risk an organization's security. In such a scenario, cloud workload protection (CWP) helps to strike the right balance, supporting access while maintaining control to protect critical data.
Data breaches and security concerns are plaguing businesses with the insecurity of data and assets stored on the cloud. Therefore, organizations seek innovative security solutions that can enable them to secure their cloud infrastructure and workloads without compromising the speed/agility of their application development teams. They also look for solutions to enhance visibility, protect cloud workloads, streamline procurement, and simplify deployments.
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Global Cloud Workload Protection Market Report Scope:
Industry Trends
Organizations that have embraced digital transformation & innovative automation solutions to remain competitive utilizing digital technologies and cloud computing create significant demand for cloud workload protection solutions. The proliferation of the cloud computing domain drives the cloud workload protection market, enabling new, complex business models and orchestrating more globally-based integration networks.
Additionally, the penetration of AI, cloud infrastructure, and critical cloud applications boost the cloud workload protection market size. Also, organizations targeting to overcome compliances and maintain strong compliance requirements substantiate the cloud workload protection market shares. Various cloud workload protection solutions, including data protection, cloud application discovery, analytics & reporting, and threat protection, foster the growth of the cloud workload protection market.
Segments
The cloud workload protection market is segmented into components, organization size, deployment models, and regions. The component segment is sub-segmented into solutions (vulnerability assessment, monitoring & logging, policy & compliance management, threat detection & incident response, and other solutions) and services (support & maintenance, training, consulting & integration, managed services, and other services).
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The organization size segment is sub-segmented into large enterprises and small & medium-sized enterprises. The deployment model segment is sub-segmented into public, private, and hybrid clouds. The vertical segment is sub-segmented into IT & telecommunications, banking, financial services & insurance (BFSI), and others. By regions, the market is segmented into the Asia-Pacific, North America, Europe, and the Rest-of-the-World.
Regional Analysis
North America dominates the global cloud workload protection market, headed by the increasing demand and adoption of cloud-enabled security infrastructure. The region offers a favorable platform for cloud workload protection solutions to evolve further due to vast technological advancements.
Besides, the increasing demand for data security solutions in the growing number of enterprises and the growing cloud computing market substantiate the region's cloud workload protection market shares. Also, factors such as the rapid adoption of AI and cloud computing are some of the significant driving forces contributing to the cloud workload protection market revenues in the region.
The cloud workload protection market in the European region accounts for the second-largest share globally. Vast technological advancements and the proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) and intelligent connected devices are some of the major factors positively impacting the cloud workload protection market growth in the region.
Furthermore, the well-established cloud infrastructure in this region propels market rise, allowing faster implementation of advanced technologies. Rising incidences of cyber-attacks in the rapidly growing automotive and IT industry in this region escalate the cloud workload protection market value.
The Asia Pacific cloud workload protection market has emerged as a profitable space globally. The increasing number of businesses in developing countries inclined toward automation and IoT adoption fosters the cloud workload protection market growth. Moreover, the proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI), smart, connected, portable devices, and the burgeoning IT sector are major tailwinds. Also, the increasing number of prominent players in this market drives the growth of the APAC cloud workload protection market.
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Competitive Analysis
Fiercely competitive, the cloud workload protection market appears fragmented due to the strong presence of key market players. Matured players are substantially investing in transforming the business landscape in the future. Key players are incorporating strategic initiatives such as partnership, collaboration, acquisition, product & technology launch, and expansion to gain competitive advantage and thus stay ahead in this market.
Top companies are developing advanced security and data protection technologies to maintain themselves in the market competition. These market leaders are substantially investing in R&D to innovate new cloud-enabled workload security solutions. They invest heavily to support their expansion strategies and acquire small yet promising companies from emerging regions.
For instance, on Mar. 07, 2023, SentinelOne, a leading provider of autonomous cybersecurity platforms, announced a strategic partnership with a cloud security leader, Wiz, to deliver end-to-end cloud security. The partnership will enable SentinelOne to enhance customers' cloud security, combining its expertise in Cloud Workload Protection Platform (CWPP) and Wiz's Cloud Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP).
The collective technology can be offered to organizations of all sizes and equip customers to reduce risk dramatically by detecting, preventing, investigating, and responding to cloud security threats. This best-of-breed cloud security solution can provide them with superior capabilities to solve their most complex security challenges with unprecedented simplicity, speed, and accuracy.
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Global cloud workload protection market Competitive Analysis
Key players leading the global cloud workload protection market include:
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DATA CENTER HOSTING SERVICES
CORPORATE TAX SERVICES
CORPORATE HEALTH AND WELLNESS
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Cloud Workload Protection Market Projected To Hit USD 26.4 Billion ... - GlobeNewswire
Transitioning Clients to ACaaS With Ease – Security Sales & Integration
Here are 4 primary factors to consider when choosing which platform(s) to use.
As integrators, we need to recognize the compelling value proposition for providing hosted or managed access control solutions for the customer and our business. For both stakeholders, the value proposition is largely the cost of acquiring and maintaining an onsite access control server versus the ease of hosting the service. For customers, this generally means their access control system will have a lower up-front cost, better remote access control features, and less IT maintenance and security cost burden. For the integrator, it means recurring cash flow, quicker deployments and a more supportable solution.
These benefits are realized by forgoing the traditional on-premises server that contains the access control software and database, which also requires backups and maintenance. Instead, in a hosted or managed access-control-as-a-service (ACaaS) system, the software and database reside in a Cloud-hosted environment, and the integrator typically serves a larger number of customers from the same platform. The cost for server maintenance is now spread across all customers. It is immediately apparent how this can be more efficient, especially at scale.
As with anything, there are many factors to consider when picking a platform(s) to use. Although picking one and running with it is easier to support, youll find that one size does not fit all, and you may end up with two or even three solutions. Here are the factors to help you make that decision.
Factor 1: Hosted or Managed Access Control After meeting with the customer, the level of control they desire and the service to offer will be considered; this includes adding and removing card holders, access levels, managing calendars, and other day-to-day uses.
If the integrator provides and maintains the server and software in a Cloud environment, this is a hosted access control solution, and the customer fully controls access. If the integrator is hosting the service and providing management of the access control functions, this is a managed access control solution.
Factor 2: Level of Training Required for ACaaS The platform needs to be carefully considered if the integrator is providing a hosted access control solution. An easy-to-use user interface is critical as the integrator may have to train many users on the system. Likewise, a managed access control solution requires training specific to the integrator and considers that the integrator manages multiple customers. Tasks should be easy to perform in a multicustomer environment.
Factor 3: Integrators IT Resources for Hosted Solution The integrators IT resources must be considered based on the level of a hosted solution. Fully hosted solutions such as LenelS2 Elements, Brivo and Alarm.com require minimal resources from the integrator. Whereas LenelS2 servers or AccessNsite require IT expertise to ensure a safe, secure, and highly available environment. While the integrator will need a reliable IT resource if offering its own hosting environment, in the long run, it has even more choices about deploying the hosted environments for its customers.
Many access control software providers offer complete hosting. This is the easiest way to provide the service; however, the integrator has less control and will be committed to a direct monthly cost for every door sold.
Factor 4: Greater Flexibility & Advantages of Hosted Offering When a customer already has an access control product and is seeking better service, the integrator can host the customers server and deliver additional services. The integrator can move the customers server to the designated Cloud location by creating a hosted solution for disaster recovery and support.
Moreover, the integrator should consider hosting a multi-tenant access control product on its Cloud infrastructure. Depending on the solution, this typically means spinning up a single virtual machine as the access control server. Lets delve more into this.
Multitenant means the integrator effectively supports many customers with a single software installation. When supporting this, the integrator must partition between customers on the backend database to ensure the customers data does not impact another customer. This is especially important if you are doing multitenant buildings and all tenants share common areas.
Keep the server separate from your office network and keep it well-maintained. Virtual machines or Cloud infrastructure make disaster recovery easy. If you go with a Cloud solution, ensure your database server licensing is appropriate for hosting. Many are surprised that Microsoft SQL server requires a different license for hosting a clients server than if you were installing it on your infrastructure.
Nathan Chavez is general manager of Alarms Unlimited Professional Security Solutions, a member of the PSA Network.
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Transitioning Clients to ACaaS With Ease - Security Sales & Integration
How To Avoid Costs Going Through The Roof When Moving To The … – iAfrica.com
By Sarthak Rohal, VP IT Services at In2IT Technologies
The world has changed immensely since on-premise infrastructure was considered the best option for company applications. Today, most companies have begun shifting toward off-premise options, such as cloud and co-location. But how do they determine which is best should companies make cost a primary deciding factor when choosing to migrate? Is it fair to make such a cost comparison between on-premise and cloud systems? Before any company switches to cloud computing technology, they need to understand the pros and cons of both options for specific workloads. This is because there is no clear winner between on-premise vs cloud computing solutions, even from a cost perspective.
All costs considered
With on-premise, the company uses in-house dedicated servers, which must be obtained with considerable upfront investment that includes buying servers, licensing software, and hiring a maintenance team. In-house infrastructure is not as flexible when it comes to scaling resources, while not using the full potential of the setup results in undesirable operating costs.
On the other hand, cloud computing has little to no upfront costs. The infrastructure belongs to the provider, and the client pays for usage on a monthly or annual basis, depending on service or units consumed and time used. There is no need to spend money hiring a technical team, because usually the service provider is responsible for maintenance and uptime. In this respect, when it comes to pricing, cloud computing has the upper hand. Not only does it have a pay-as-you-go model with no upfront investment, but it is easier to predict costs over time. On the other hand, in-house hosting is cost-effective when an organisation already has servers and a dedicated IT team. However, cost is not the be-all-and-end-all of decision making, but only one of the many factors which need to be considered before any public cloud migration, such as:
Current infrastructure utilisation
Service accessibility in the region
Application workload analysis
Data protection
Data security and compliance
Advantages over costs
Even with simplified assumptions, calculating hard-dollar cost comparisons between cloud and on-premise infrastructure is complex. Price can vary wildly depending on the specifics of the system being deployed, but for midmarket and enterprise businesses, cloud-based solutions represent a potential cost savings of 30% of the total cost over five years. But if cost is not the ultimate influencing factor, what else should companies be looking at? The advantages of public cloud include faster time to implementation, net present value, flexibility, reliability, security, and scalability.
Risk, value and change management
With this in mind, migration costs must be weighed against value gained and here, change management is critical to unlocking a successful transformation. Moving to the cloud will mean different things depending on the companys journey and business needs and as such, the cost of migration will correlate. In such moves, the human tendency to be apprehensive about change is often a bigger risk to a cloud migration than any technological challenge. A lack of end-user engagement, communications, and training during a cloud transformation adds to these worries. Accordingly, organisations must utilise to change management to ensure that the human side of a digital transformation goes as smoothly as the technological side.
Choosing the migration strategy
Cloud migration is the process of moving some or all the companys digital operations to the cloud. There are three main types of cloud migration that can be performed on-premise to cloud, cloud to cloud, or cloud to on-premise. By analysing the complete IT system, we should identify infrastructure, and application workload, and map these with appropriate cloud migration strategies. Such assessment will determine which strategy to use and which part(s) should be moved to the cloud. Cloud migration strategies were first defined in the Gartner 5 Rs model in 2011, as:
Lift and shiftmoving applications to the cloud as-is.
Refactortweaking applications to better support the cloud environment.
Re-platformshifting without major changes to leverage cloud benefits.
Rebuildrewrite the application from scratch.
Replaceretire the application and replace it with a new cloud-native application.
Beware the hidden costs
The cost of migration depends on what is moved to the cloud, and what remains on-premise. However, companies must be aware of the hidden costs that lurk in cloud migrations, as public cloud is a consumption-based service model that can be difficult to measure at times. These may include:
Careful consumption management
There must be a complete understanding and analysis of IT systems, before making a move on the public cloud. Most importantly, after migration, public cloud services must be carefully managed to achieve specific reliability and availability goals, which include network availability, planning for disaster recovery, testing application, and database stability, and otherwise planning for redundant infrastructure. Without careful management of consumption, the hidden costs of public cloud can cause organisations to regret their choice to migrate.
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How To Avoid Costs Going Through The Roof When Moving To The ... - iAfrica.com
38M tracks on music streaming service were played ZERO times in … – Music Business Worldwide
MBW Reacts is a series of comment pieces from the Music Business Worldwideteam. They are our analytical (and sometimes opinionated) reactions to major recent entertainment news stories.
Its been a curious week for those of us with a blue-tick Twitter account.
When I say us btw, I dont mean me; my personal reasons for fleeing the bully-birds cage were plenty, but can essentially be summed up in two chirps:
So when I say us, I mean us.
As in, Music Business Worldwide, and any other business whose online presence continues to carry Twitters once-prized blue verification shield.
You may have read in the media that Elon Musk is now selling blue-tick verification for a monthly subscription price.
What you might not have read about is Musks stick to this carrot: like a canny gangster, Twitter has begun robbing its users technical security, before, seconds later, offering to replace it for a tidy sum.
On Wednesday (March 22), Team MBW received the following email from Twitter informing us that our Music Business Worldwide profile no longer enjoyed two-factor authentication.
(If you werent aware, two-factor authentication = receiving a unique code each time you log on to a service in order to ensure no one dodgy is hacking into your account.)
Guess how one reinstates mobile two-factor authentication on Twitter? Yup: Start paying Elon for a monthly subscription.
This is Musk playing hardball: How much do you value the security of your Twitter account? Are you willing to risk being hacked and unmentionables being tweeted out in your name? If not, pay up.
So, begrudgingly, weve had to.
Theres a wider business lesson to be learned here: Elon Musks stone-hearted decision to start selling an essential service benefit that weve long grown accustomed to having for free.
That idea, in turn, has brought to mind the Good Ship Spotify, and a fascinating slide from one particular presentation at SXSW in Austin last week.
Said presentation came from Rob Jonas, CEO of Luminate, the entertainment market monitor and insights provider that was once known as MRC Data and Nielsen Music. (You can listen to Jonass full SXSW presentation through here.)
The relevant slide within Jonass presso is the one you can see above, based on Luminate data. It delivers some jaw-dropping information.
First of all, check this: There are 67.1 million tracks sitting on music streaming services today that, in the 2022 calendar year, attracted 10 or fewer streams apiece, globally.
That 67.1 million figure represents just under half (42%) of the entire catalog of tracks available on worldwide music streaming services as you read this (based on ISRCs).
(The entire catalog of music on these streaming platforms is comprised of 158 million tracks in total.)
Prepare yourself for the next statistical haymaker: Nearly a quarter (24%) of the 158 million tracks on music streaming services monitored by Luminate in 2022 attracted ZERO plays that year.
Thats approximately 38 million tracks. 38million! Zero plays!
Not one single sausage finger pressed a forward-facing arrow underneath the artwork of any of these songs, on any streaming service, anywhere, at any time, in the entirety of the 365 days of 2022.
Its almost enough to make you cry.
Not me, though. It made me think of Spotify.
As our regular readers may recall, in November MBW published an article that revealed some startling stats about the amount of money Spotify pays Google each year for use of its cloud storage facilities.
Spotify doesnt publish a precise figure for what this Google cloud storage costs it annually. But SPOT does publish, in its annual SEC-filed report, the monetary yearlyincrease in its company costs for usage of cloud computing services and additional software license fees.
What this means: MBW is able to figure out the minimum amount that Googles cloud storage services (plus other software licenses) are costing Spotify annually.
To repeat that: The below chart represents the minimum amount Spotify is spending on these services each year. The reality is likely far (i.e. multiples) more expensive.
(Weve been able to update the below figures for FY 2022, as Spotify filed its latest annual report, for last year, in Q1 2023.)
Question: If Spotify is now shoveling a handsome nine-figure fee over to Google each year for cloud hosting services, where is the revenue coming from to cover that bill?
Answer: right now, that revenue is coming from Spotifys three sole income streams: (i) Advertising; (ii) Subscriptions; and, to a much lesser extent, (iii) On-service marketing fees paid for by the music industry.
In other words, these hefty cloud hosting costs are directly eating into Spotifys margin at a time when analysts across Wall Street are baying for Spotify to increase its margin.
But what if Spotify was to take a leaf out of Elon Musks book RE: two-factor authentication?
What if Spotify also started ruthlessly passing on the cost of a utilitarian technological benefit to its individual B2B clients (aka artists) but this time, for the cloud hosting costs required to keep music available in its library?
Especially if it started directly billing, under threat of takedown, the millions of artists behind those 38 million tracks (still an unbelievable stat) that attracted ZERO streams in 2022?
And, by extension, the artists behind the 42% of tracks that attracted ten or fewer streams last year?
No pay, no stay (unplay-ed).
As things stand, Spotify cant technically do this, at least directly.
Its monetary relationship with said B2B customers (nine million artists and counting) can only take place via middlemen, in terms of distributors and record companies.
The most important sector, volume-wise, of those middlemen? DIY distributors, whose self-uploading clients are responsible for the majority of new music pushed onto streaming services vast catalog (158 million tracks and counting).
If only there was a way for Spotify to have a direct distribution relationship with artists, so that it could Do An Elon and start billing said acts, one-to-one, for essential B2B services.
Oh yeah, there is: Spotify launched a direct DIY distribution product for artists in 2018, only to shut it down in 2019 under pressure from the major record companies.
Since then, the likes of SoundCloud and amazingly, in recent context TikToks SoundOn have launched their own DIY distribution offerings for music artists.
Four years on from the last time Spotify abandoned its own music distribution operation, is it time for Daniel Ek and co. to have another crack at this market?Music Business Worldwide
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38M tracks on music streaming service were played ZERO times in ... - Music Business Worldwide
Prediction: These Will Be 5 of the Most Valuable Stocks by 2050 – The Motley Fool
History proves the stock market is one of the greatest vehicles for generating long-term wealth, and there's no shortage of spectacular examples.
Apple is currently the world's largest company, with a valuation of $2.4 trillion, and an investment in its initial public offering (IPO) in 1980 has yielded a return of 155,000% to date. Similarly, shares of Microsoft have soared 382,700% since its IPO in 1986.
But where will the next market leaders come from? Companies developing technologies like semiconductors, artificial intelligence (AI), and cybersecurity might be the best candidates. Through that lens, here are five stocks that could be among the world's most valuable by 2050.
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD -2.32%) is one of the world's leading semiconductor companies. Its advanced computer chips power some of the hottest consumer products, from the infotainment systems in Tesla's electric vehicles to gaming consoles like the Microsoft Xbox and Sony PlayStation.
But the data center is the company's most valuable opportunity. AMD is a go-to chipmaker for the top providers of cloud computing services. Moreover, its $49 billion acquisition of Xilinx last year sets it up to lead the high-performance computing industry -- including areas like artificial intelligence.
Xilinx's adaptive technology allows chips to be reconfigured after the manufacturing process, significantly shortening the upgrade cycle, which is exactly what the AI sector needs to speed up its progress.
The semiconductor industry was valued at $573 billion in 2022 with a 12.2% annual growth rate, according to Fortune Business Insights. If it continues to expand at that pace, AMD could be playing in a $14 trillion market by 2050. But that's not all, because the AI sector could absolutely trounce that opportunity (more on that later).
If you've never used one of Meta Platforms' (META 0.85%) social networks, chances are you know someone who has. Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp have a combined 3.7 billion monthly users, which is close to half the population on Earth. Meta is focused on maintaining that advantage and it's doing so in a few ways.
First, it's investing in its Reels feature, which curates short-form video content using AI, primarily to fend off a competitive threat from ByteDance's TikTok. Second, it's pouring billions ($13.7 billion in 2022, to be precise) into building a virtual world called the metaverse.
Meta thinks virtual reality could be the future of social and professional connection, so it's developing both the hardware and the software to cement its leadership position. Some estimates suggest the value of that opportunity could fall between $2 trillion and $30 trillion within the next decade, and it could grow even even more in the long term as the technology improves.
It will be difficult for a competitor to challenge Meta's current dominance, because it has already done the hard part of attracting such an enormous user base. So as long as the company continues to innovate to keep those users engaged, it should maintain its position among the most valuable companies in the world when 2050 rolls around.
Like AMD, Nvidia (NVDA -1.51%) makes some of the world's most advanced semiconductors. But it's focused on becoming a platform computing company, in which it also develops software, especially in segments like artificial intelligence, where it's already a widely recognized leader.
Nvidia's graphics chips are extremely popular in the gaming community, but it's the data center segment that holds the most promise. Its hardware has turned data centers from a place to store information into a training ground for AI and machine learning models -- including OpenAI's ChatGPT. The company's chips also power the most advanced supercomputers on the planet, and for the first time ever, businesses will soon be able to access them online through cloud providers like Microsoft Azure.
The Nvidia Drive platform also holds long-term promise. It's an end-to-end hardware and software solution for car manufacturers wanting to build autonomous self-driving capabilities into their vehicles -- an industry that could generate $14 trillion in value as soon as 2027.
Simply put, Nvidia has inserted itself into almost every aspect of the AI industry. End users will find it difficult to access the technology without an Nvidia hardware or software product, and that is going to drive substantial long-term value creation.
CrowdStrike (CRWD -2.23%) is a cybersecurity industry leader thanks to its continued development of AI to improve accuracy and reduce response times. The corporate world continues to shift its day-to-day operations online using cloud computing technology, and it's leaving organizations more vulnerable than ever.
Hosting valuable assets and applications online leads to a much larger attack surface; hackers can effectively strike from anywhere on the planet. CrowdStrike offers a leading portfolio of solutions to protect the cloud, the endpoint, and user identities, the latter two of which are especially important for organizations with remote workforces.
The company's AI and machine learning models are fed 2 trillion events per day, so they continue to improve at a rapid pace. CrowdStrike currently serves over 23,000 customers, and the more it attracts, the faster its models learn and the better its products become.
A 2022 survey by Morgan Stanleyrevealed cybersecurity is the last expense corporate leaders plan to cut, even in the event of a recession. The fact is, this technology is absolutely critical, and as the world becomes increasingly digital, there's no going back.
Let it be known: C3.ai (AI 1.53%) is my riskiest, most outlandishpick of this bunch, though it's packed with potential. The company is worth just $2.4 billion right now, but it has pioneered a brand-new industry called enterprise artificial intelligence. It sells AI applications to businesses, whether they need ready-made software or an entirely custom solution.
I touched on the potential value of AI earlier in this piece. Ark Investment Management, led by tech investor Cathie Wood, thinks the technology could add $200 trillion in output to the global economy as soon as 2030 through productivity increases in areas like computer programming. If that happens, software providers like C3.ai will have a $14 trillion revenue opportunity.
C3.ai already provides AI applications to the largest organizations in the world from fossil fuel giant Shellto the U.S. Department of Defense. Moreover, the top three cloud computing platforms -- Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Alphabet's Google Cloud -- have partnered with C3.ai to integrate its AI technology into their own services.
Programmers using C3.ai on AWS, for example, can build applications 26 times faster than on AWS alone, with 99% less written code required. C3.ai is already delivering the productivity increases Ark is referring to.
Even if I'm wrong about C3.ai becoming one of the world's most valuable companies by 2050 -- and I very well might be -- there's still room for significant upside in its stock given the disparity between its tiny valuation today and its enormous long-term opportunity.
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Prediction: These Will Be 5 of the Most Valuable Stocks by 2050 - The Motley Fool