Category Archives: Cloud Servers
School phones go on ‘the cloud’ – The Ridgefield Press
Out with the old, in with the new phones.
Thats the motto Ridgefield Public Schools are embracing this summer after suffering 45 outages with its phone system over the last two years.
Dr. Robert Miller, the districts technology director, announced Monday that all nine schools have transitioned onto a cloud system thats hosted by TPX Communications.
Weve heard a lot of very positive thank yous and feedback from the staff here with the first part of the rollout yesterday, he said Tuesday.
Miller told The Press that under the new system which taxpayers approved at a $550,000 price tag this spring every district phone connects out through the Internet over to TPXs cloud-based servers.
The service provider is where it gets all the information to and from, he said. It gets the calls and routes the calls, and it really becomes our service provider for our telephone services.
Miller said that the change decreases the odds of future outages.
Theres always disadvantages, but I wouldnt necessarily say that theyre drawbacks, he said. Theres really a lot less that could go wrong.
On the cloud
The district started the bid process for a cloud-based system in March, distributing a request for proposal online and throughout social media.
Miller received a total of 12 proposals.
We brought the top two vendors in for a product demonstration, he said. When we were all done, our team debated pros and cons of each one.
The district ultimately chose TPX Communications.
We decided that this one best met our needs.
Right timing
Miller said that replacing the old system was inevitable, and would have cost taxpayers more in the long run had the capital item not been approved in May.
When you looked at the cost associated with it, we know that we have to incorporate the cost of upgrading the entire system anyway in a year or two so if we invest anything in a minor upgrade, that upgrade will be wasted, he told The Press.
We were also told that any time we had an outage, that we were rolling the dice, he said. At any point, we may not be able to recover our equipment in the first place. So we wanted to go to a stable system as soon as possible.
Increased mobility
Miller said one of his favorite aspects of being on the cloud-based system is that the district can handle any type of situation.
If we ever had a true emergency and I needed to move a building from one location to another if Central Office is compromised and we have to power for five days, I can pick up our phones and take them over to the town library or another school, as long as theres Internet access, he said. I can re-setup shop wherever we need to go.
Another feature of the cloud-based phone system is that high school teachers will be able to send or receive calls on their Chromebooks.
It allows for more mobility across the district, Miller said.
Making the transfer
The move to the new phone system has two phases.
On Aug. 7, the first phase was incorporated in the offices of each school.
The second phase, slated for Aug. 21, will incorporate the classrooms into the new system.
Miller acknowledged that the process of transferring phone systems is complex.
He has called the vendor at least once a week this summer.
Its a lot of data. Its a lot of looking at each individual room across the district, he said. There are different licenses associated with cloud services, so its figuring out what features each individual room or person needs.
Its been a lot of implementation on the back end, making sure the data is right and that the company can configure everything to our needs.
Training
Over last two weeks, there have been various training sessions held to help administrative staff smoothen the transition to the new system.
The topics range from making phone calls, voicemail, and holds, to switching from paper to digital faxes.
Theres a lot there, he said. You kind of just have to use it and learn it on the fly. If youre using it, thats how you gain experience on it. Some people are more nervous than others, and thats normal. But for the most part, Ive heard very positive feedback.
After classrooms transition to the new system later this month, Miller will adopt the training sessions to meet the needs of teachers.
Well be able to even after school starts get in some revisions and tweaks as we move forward, he said. Every time you have a new system, you have to continuously reflect: How is it going? What are the changes we need to make? Whats going well? Whats not going well?
That cyclical pattern is something we need to make sure thats part of the process.
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School phones go on 'the cloud' - The Ridgefield Press
Datrium Announces Split Provisioning For Simple Private Cloud Consolidation At Rackscale – Markets Insider
SUNNYVALE, Calif., Aug. 15, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --Datrium, the leading provider of Open Converged Infrastructure for private clouds, today announced Datrium DVX 3.0 with Split Provisioning, a fundamentally new and different method of scaling converged infrastructure for private clouds. DVX with Split Provisioning is the industry's first server-powered converged infrastructure system to fully separate scaling of host storage speed and persistent capacity to simply and incrementally match resources to evolving tenant requirements. The new software provides scaling from 1-128 Compute Nodes, or up to 200 gigabytes per second (GB/s) IO bandwidth, and from 1-10 Data Nodes, or up to 1.7 petabytes (PB) of capacity, in a single composable pool. Datrium will demonstrate its DVX platform with Split Provisioning at the VMWorld conference in Las Vegas, Aug. 27-31, booth #618.
Unlike Open Converged Infrastructure, Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) approaches maintain persistent data on every server and are limited to 2 or 3 simultaneous server failures before users experience a data outage. As a result, HCI users tend toward smaller clusters, across which servers and workloads should be homogeneous. According to Gartner, "in today's world, most hyperconverged deployments are in the range of 8 to 16 nodes,"1 so rackscale deployments need multiple clusters, each of which needs configuration and administration. Gartner has concluded that "many mainstream enterprise IT directors do not yet trust SDS in HCIS solutions to deliver multipetabyte capacity at scale for Tier 1 mixed workloads that require low latency."2
10X Greater ConsolidationWith Split Provisioning, Datrium DVX scales compute with both primary and secondary storage resources in a radically new way. Compute Nodes run all workloads in local commodity flash for high performance and low latency. Each Compute Node writes persistent data to network-attached, capacity-optimized Data Nodes, which are similar to purpose-built backup appliances optimized for cost efficiency and sequential IO. Because Compute Nodes are stateless, any number of them can go down for service without affecting data availability.
Until now, Datrium DVX supported a single Data Node. With DVX 3.0 and Split Provisioning, a single Datrium DVX can pool multiple Data Nodes, each of which adds capacity and write bandwidth. While the minimum DVX configuration is one compute node and one data node, Split Provisioning allows scalability up to 128 compute nodes and 10 data nodes in a single system. Adding a Data Node to a pool is a one-command operation, after which the system automatically and non-disruptively rebalances capacity. System-wide performance and capacity increases up to:
"At Parametric, we provide engineered portfolio solutions to institutional investors and private clients built on quantitative, rules-based analysis. Our largest private cloud environment has grown 200-300 percent over the last year, and have received requests for 80 to 100 terabytes for a single project," said Ben Garforth, Parametric Portfolio Systems Engineering Manager. "With Datrium and Split Provisioning, I can now handle our massive data growth cost effectively and non-disruptively within a single resource pool. And better still, I don't need to manage a thingI check in on the Datrium solution once a month and that's about it."
"Datrium's premise has always been that their 'open convergence' method delivers better overall scalability, along with independent scalability of performance and capacity, compared to hyperconverged architectures in essence, private clouds with virtually limitless performance and scale with the ease of public clouds," said Arun Taneja, Founder and Consulting Analyst of Taneja Group. "Split Provisioning delivers further proof point for their claim. With the pace of innovation coming from Datrium, I can't wait to see what comes next."
Converging Compute with Primary and Secondary StorageDatrium DVX converges compute with both primary and secondary storage, and Split Provisioning takes this to an entirely new scale. Compute Nodes write data to low cost, disk-based Data Nodes with always-on global deduplication, inline compression, erasure coding and Blanket Encryption. Data Cloud, Datrium's built-in cloud data management software, can now manage up to 1.2 million snapshots per DVX, replicable to other DVX's or to Amazon Web Services.
For additional data protection, DVX 3.0 now offers application-consistent snapshots for Microsoft Windows-based applications such as MS SQL Server. Datrium Volume Shadow Service Provider leverages instantaneous and scalable DVX Snapshots, eliminating VM stuns and related sluggish application performance for large data sets.
"As specialty appliances decline, the future of private clouds will look like DVX," said Brian Biles, Datrium CEO and Co-founder. "Split Provisioning enables an order of magnitude more application bandwidth than most all-flash arrays, much simpler rackscale consolidation than HCI, and better secondary storage than either. This is tomorrow calling."
[SPEC SHEET] Datrium DVX Specification Sheet[DATA SHEET] Datrium DVX Data Sheet[WHITEPAPER] Split Provisioning Technical Whitepaper[BLOG] And The Third Shoe Drops
Pricing and AvailabilitySplit Provisioning software is available immediately with Datrium DVX Software 3.0 at US list pricing of $12,000 per Compute Node.
1Gartner: Key Differences Between Nutanix, VxRail and SimpliVity HCIS Appliances | 26 April 20172Gartner: Beware the 'Myth-Conceptions' Surrounding Hyperconverged Integrated Systems | 18 February 2016 refreshed 02 June 20173Performance based on Datrium Lab Testing. Bandwidth measured with 64K IO size 100% Read. IOPS measured with 4K IO size, 100% Read | July 20174From XtremIO specifications sheet
Industry RecognitionGartner, Cool Vendors in Storage Technologies, 2016, April 2016 - A Cool Vendor
Gartner DisclaimerGartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
About DatriumDatrium is the leader in Open Converged Infrastructure for private clouds. Datrium converges storage and compute across primary application and data management workloadsmodeled on public cloud IaaS versus traditional converged infrastructure or hyper-convergencefor vastly simpler performance, predictability and protection. The company is led by the founders and early top architects of Data Domain and VMware. For more information, visit http://www.datrium.com and follow @datrium on Twitter.
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Datrium Announces Split Provisioning For Simple Private Cloud Consolidation At Rackscale - Markets Insider
New McAfee virtual network security platform offered as part of free test drive on Amazon Web Services – CTR
McAfee announced over the weekend a limited time free trial to test drive McAfee Virtual Network Security Platform (McAfee vNSP) on Amazon Web Services (AWS) for a hands-on experience running advanced security in the public cloud.
Unlike other solutions, McAfee vNSP protects at the workload level, eliminating the single point of failure created by other solutions for a whole network segment. As part of the test drive, participants can simulate real-world attack use cases, configure policy and review reporting dashboards.
McAfee vNSP has been designed from the ground up to work in highly distributed AWS infrastructure to ease network congestion. Instead of taking a traditional approach, monitoring an entire network segment to effect protection for a single workload, McAfee vNSP protects at the individual workload level. This approach is significantly different from other market solutions, guaranteeing visibility of inter-segment traffic, eliminating a single point of failure for an entire network segment and efficiently using security resources only where directed.
The McAfee vNSP solution built specifically for AWS can also be managed from the same console as on-premises McAfee NSP.
Development teams can integrate security into their application deployment process by using automation frameworks such as Cloud Formation templates, Chef and Puppet to deploy and manage McAfee vNSP in AWS. Network security controls are comprehensive and include inline exploit prevention, with web application protection, zero-day malware detection, and workload isolation through segmentation and east-west attack detection.
McAfee vNSP for AWS builds upon McAfees commitment to enable advanced security for AWS customers. Enterprises are rapidly adopting virtualized IT infrastructuressuch as private and public cloudswhere physical servers can simultaneously host multiple virtual machines (VMs) and even entire virtualized workloads. The resulting inter-VM communication, along with instant migration, replication, and backup of these workloads, have combined to dramatically increase east-west tra c inside private and public cloud as well as SDDCs.
Adding to the chaos, the exibility provided by network virtualization makes these escalating tra c ows dynamic and unpredictable. To keep up, virtualized security solutions must be exible and scalable, and even more importantly, they must function seamlessly with software defined networking (SDN) platforms that orchestrate these often short-lived virtual machines and workloads.
AWS covers a lot of ground, such as security of the cloud, but users are still responsible for their security in the cloudincluding securing their operating systems, applications and data traffic, said Shishir Singh, vice president and general manager of the Network Security business unit, McAfee. While firewall configurations are important, security teams and cloud architects need to address exploit prevention, malware protection and gain visibility into the lateral movement of threats. With McAfee Network Security Platform, users can move beyond the basics to more sophisticated protection of their cloud network.
Advanced malware can reach an organizations AWS workloads through network traffic, along with cross site scripting, botnets and SQL injection attacks. Deploying infrastructure in the cloud can also open the window for new vulnerabilities that fall under the customers responsibilityif one virtual server in AWS is compromised, the malware can potentially roam to other vulnerable servers in the same customer environment. This lateral path is known as east-west network traffic, and often represents the majority of communication within virtualized environments.
McAfee also recently released the new Amazon Machine Image (AMI) for McAfee Public Cloud Server Security Suite (McAfee PCS), which is available on an hourly basis on the AWS Marketplace. This Paid AMI is a flexible option for protecting AWS workloads since theres no need to estimate usage and obtain a license before getting started. Users can access McAfee PCS in AWS Marketplace.
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New McAfee virtual network security platform offered as part of free test drive on Amazon Web Services - CTR
Oracle Makes the Most Powerful Database Platform Available on the Industry’s Most Advanced Cloud Infrastructure – PR Newswire (press release)
"Oracle's next-generation cloud infrastructure is optimized for enterprise workloads and now supports Oracle Exadata, the most powerful database platform," said Kash Iftikhar, vice president of product management, Oracle. "With the power of Oracle Exadata, customers using our infrastructure are able to bring applications to the cloud never previously possible, without the cost of re-architecture, and achieve incredible performance throughout the stack. From front-end application servers to database and storage, we are optimizing our customers' most critical applications."
With the increased levels of speed and availability now possible, high-demand applications such as those utilizing real-time targeting, analytics, or personalization now run in the cloud with extreme performance. Only Oracle Cloud Infrastructure offers: self-provisioning of multiple bare metal servers in less than five minutes with each supporting over 4 million IOPSi, block storage that linearly scales by 60 IOPS per GB, and now Oracle Exadata Cloud on the same low latency Virtual Cloud Networks. This combination of features enables applications to run at unparalleled speed. In addition, only Oracle Cloud Infrastructure offers complete compatibility with Oracle Databases deployed on-premises, helping ensure a smooth transition to the cloud, and an efficient hybrid cloud strategy. Oracle Exadata Cloud has expanded its geographical footprint into the US West (Phoenix, Ariz.) region, further enabling organizations worldwide to experience all the benefits of this high-performance system in the cloud, without the burden of managing and maintaining it internally.
"FICO provides real-time fraud, risk management and compliance software solutions to thousands of banks around the globe," said Doug Clare, vice president for product marketing, FICO. "These clients, including the world's largest financial institutions, demand the highest levels of solution performance, reliability, and security. When we needed to extend the performance of one of our key compliance risk applications to even higher throughput and resiliency standards, we looked to Oracle, who has been a reliable partner to FICO for many years. In our testing, the combination of Oracle Exadata and bare metal compute running on Oracle's next-generation cloud infrastructure allowed us to set a new high water mark in performance for this mission-critical application. We were very impressed with both the collaboration and the results Oracle was able to provide, and look forward to bringing these impressive results to our joint clients."
Read more about bare metal compute performance on the Oracle blog here.
About OracleThe Oracle Cloud offers complete SaaS application suites for ERP, HCM and CX, plus best-in-class database Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service(IaaS) from data centers throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. For more information about Oracle (NYSE: ORCL), please visit us at oracle.com.
TrademarksOracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
i Based on testing with the Gartner Cloud Harmony test suite
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Oracle Makes the Most Powerful Database Platform Available on the Industry's Most Advanced Cloud Infrastructure - PR Newswire (press release)
How to move into a cloud career from traditional IT – InfoWorld
There is a great deal of interest from those with traditional IT skillssuch as enterprise architects, developers, and networking engineersto steer themselves into a cloud computing career that will not only provide job protection, but pay better as well.
However, the path to cloud computing riches is not that clear for most.
The good news: There is a path for many IT pros into the cloud. This article shows you how to map a path to those jobs from your current state if you are an enterprise architect, database admin, application developer, system admin, test-and-acceptance engineer, or networking engineer.
As an example, the role of an enterprise architect is pretty general in terms of technology and platforms, but companies hiring in anticipation of moving to the cloud are looking for more specific skills.
But look at the career map in the figure below. There are two very good paths to follow: public cloud solutions architect and cloud security architect. In many cases, people who are good enterprise architects, accustomed to quickly picking up different types of technologies, can transition into these roles with little training.
There are many paths to cloud jobs from the traditional enterprise architect role.
However, those architecture skills are typically not specific enough for many cloud-based IT shops, and most seek specific subject matter experts (SMEs) familiar with specific cloud brands, such as Amazon Web Services, Google, and Microsoft.
So, if you have held very general roles in IT architecture or security, you now need to now focus on the solution-based use of specific cloud services, including security services. For many enterprise architects, this is a somewhat unnatural act, but its necessary if you want to command higher pay and job security.
The path for a database admin is pretty easy to map. Basically, its a matter of understanding the databases that are likely to be used for cloud-based workloads, and then mapping your skills to those specific databases. For example, Oracle DBAs can certainly continue their career with Oracle running on the public cloud. However, enterprises that move to public clouds usually opt for cheaper and more modern database technology, so it would be good for Oracle database admins to learn how to admin other databases.
For example, Amazons RDS relational database is now a popular cloud option in the enterprise. For data warehousing in the cloud, Redshift makes good economic sense. MySQL shops will consider Aurora running on AWS. There are dozens of object-based databases running in the cloud as well, such as Couchbase and MongoDB for which demand is high right now.
Again, the trick is to look at whats hot in the cloud platform your target enterprises use, and then obtain those specific skills. Database generalists need not apply for most of the newer cloud gigs.
Software development is perhaps the most versatile skill to have, because you can code on pretty much any platform. However, in the cloud, it pays to have a deep understanding of a specific public cloud, because youll need to understand and be able to create cloud-native applications.
Being cloud-native means that youre embedding native cloud platform calls directly into the application, such as security services, queues, I/O services, and the management of provisioning and deprovisioning of resources. The use of these calls requires you to both have a detailed understanding of the programming language you use and understand what native interfaces to use where, how, and why.
System admins will see the most changes in the move to the cloud. If you dont make a move now, you could likely be out of a job in the near future. Sysadmin roles are changing because the systems that reside in data centers are finding their way into public clouds, and public cloud systems dont need as much TLC as on-premises systems do.
For a sysadmin, the cloud career map means moving into cloud operations, aka cloudops. This is a new role in cloud operations, and it includes backup, recovery, performance monitoring, SLA management, and all of the fun stuff that comes along with operating sets of cloud-based virtual servers that youll never lay your hands onand perhaps will never know where they are located.
Test-and-acceptance engineers do not have a clean path to the cloud. So, youll have a lot to learn and relearn if you want to stay marketable. The best map to the cloud is to understand devops as it relates to cloud. This includes continuous testing, and that means creating testing scripts and becoming an SME in automated testing practices and tools.
If youre that type of test-and-acceptance pro who is comfortable with remapping skills to this kind of very different role, youll be fine. However, if youre accustomed to just test and record, and you cant work and play well with new processes and technology, youll be quickly voted off the island.
Networking pros are also difficult map to the cloud. Although networking is still needed, its mostly intercompany rather than intracompany. That means a transition toward WANs (wide area networking) and mobile networking.
The truth is that networking is already in the cloud world. As long as you spend enough money on infrastructure upgrades, it is not that hard of a nut to crack. Gone are the days when networks went down all the time, and thus when dozens of networking professional ran around rebooting and updating routers and hubs. Those keep it running skills will quickly commoditize, so the key value for a network engineer in the cloud is design, optimization, and managementnot rebooting devices.
The best map to the cloud for networking pros is to focus on cloud-based networking for specific clouds. For instance, AWS provides a DNS services, along with the ability to monitor network traffic in and out. Network engineers who can hook into such services from the enterprise, and provide monitoring and resiliency best practices and use of tools, will have the best path for moving forward.
If your role is something else, not to worry. The patterns for getting from traditional IT to cloud It are basically the same for most IT roles: Get smart on specific cloud technology, and do it fast. Take advantage of on-demand training, or spring for the cloud provider-specific certification training.
Whats critical is to reinvent yourself for the cloud. Anyone whos been in IT a log time should already know that, because IT has changed before, and it will change again. That fact will never change.
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How to move into a cloud career from traditional IT - InfoWorld
Frank Dinucci’s Cloud Accounting Workshop Draws Many … – Markets Insider
NEW YORK, Aug. 11, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Millennial entrepreneurs are changing the face of the world with breakthrough innovations across diverse industries. Numerous problems of yesteryear have now galvanized a new age of startups that provide out-of-the-box solutions. Some pressing issues which have plagued entrepreneurs for a long time are the high cost, steep learning curve, and scalability of accounting software. Entrepreneurs are mostly pre-occupied with making their product or service more efficient and are therefore unable to keep up with the latest developments in the field of accounting software. Hiring an accountant or a bookkeeper is often not possible due to budgetary constraints. What one man can think, another man can accomplish. The emergence of cloud-based accounting has filled the bookkeeping needs of entrepreneurs by offering the ability to perform transactions over the Internet without the need for expensive and hard to learn software. Cloud-based accounting services provide remote servers and applications that can be accessed for relatively low fees to manage and maintain one's financial records.
Frank Dinucci, who owns one such accounting service, has been raising awareness about this technological advancement by conducting free workshops for entrepreneurs in the Bay Area. He says, "Cloud computing is not a new concept and has revolutionized the accounting industry. A research study by AICPA last year showed that over 56 percent of accountants used cloud-based accounting, but there's a shockingly low knowledge about it among entrepreneurs, probably due to a lack of exposure. This new technology incorporates high-level complex artificial intelligence and machine learning, which gives one the opportunity to stay ahead of the curve, stay current, and operate their business at their best. The payoff can be huge as cloud-based accounting services require minimal overhead expenses from a user, subscription costs are far lower than what professional accounts or popular softwarelike QuickBooks might charge. It is also readily available for use at any hour of any day, unlike an in-house accountant. The fact that it's stored digitally on remote servers means entrepreneurs don't have to worry about the loss of data in case their hard disks fail or crash."
Frank Dinucci believes that entrepreneurs who take the first step in this path are rewarded handsomely with more freedom, better client relationships and higher efficiency in their work-life. He says, "It does everything a highly trained accounting professional could do, and even more, at a fraction of the cost. This saves the entrepreneurs a lot of worries and lets them focus their minds on doing what they do best instead of dabbling with something they know very little about. Most cloud-accounting services come with CRM capabilities, which creates the potential for developing strong client relationships on top of profitable, flexible and streamlined accounting practices. By holding these workshops, our aim is to encourage these brilliant minds who have equally brilliant ideas to transition to the cloud, which will be hugely beneficial even down the line when they want to grow and scale their businesses. It will also ensure continuity. It's a 3-hour commitment on weekends that can go a long way in bolstering a critical aspect of your business."
Frank Dinucci's workshops have so far been a rage, managing to ironically drawing in more entrepreneurs than they accounted for. He says, "We have had such a tremendous reception that we are now planning to take our workshops to various other top cities across the country, such as Seattle and Los Angeles, which is seeing an ever-increasing number of entrepreneurs." Wade Nodine, a tech-entrepreneur who developed a blockchain solution to airline ticketing, says attending Dinucci's workshops have been massively beneficial. "First of all, I knew zilch about accounting, apart from buzzwords like debit and credit. What Frank introduced to us has been breathtaking: it's as simple as it is efficient.
"I didn't even need to learn all accounting principles, it was like an accounting software for dummies. Just enter simple data and bam, you have financial reports and what not! It's amazing, and I, and many others like me would have never known about cloud-based accounting services had it not been for Frank. I have personally saved so much money that I'm putting to better use with my project instead, and I no longer have to sweat about my accounts and finances situation. Cloud servers also make scaling possible, and no matter how much bigger my business gets, I can rest a little easier knowing there's at least one thing I need not worry about!" With such high praise bestowed upon Dinucci, it is clearly evident that he has significantly influenced and changed the lives of many budding entrepreneurs for the better.
Press Contact: Eric Blankenship 786-332-6554
View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/frank-dinuccis-cloud-accounting-workshop-draws-many-entrepreneurs-300503375.html
SOURCE Frank Dinucci
Originally posted here:
Frank Dinucci's Cloud Accounting Workshop Draws Many ... - Markets Insider
Frank Dinucci’s Cloud Accounting Workshop Draws Many Entrepreneurs – PR Newswire (press release)
NEW YORK, Aug. 11, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Millennial entrepreneurs are changing the face of the world with breakthrough innovations across diverse industries. Numerous problems of yesteryear have now galvanized a new age of startups that provide out-of-the-box solutions. Some pressing issues which have plagued entrepreneurs for a long time are the high cost, steep learning curve, and scalability of accounting software. Entrepreneurs are mostly pre-occupied with making their product or service more efficient and are therefore unable to keep up with the latest developments in the field of accounting software. Hiring an accountant or a bookkeeper is often not possible due to budgetary constraints. What one man can think, another man can accomplish. The emergence of cloud-based accounting has filled the bookkeeping needs of entrepreneurs by offering the ability to perform transactions over the Internet without the need for expensive and hard to learn software. Cloud-based accounting services provide remote servers and applications that can be accessed for relatively low fees to manage and maintain one's financial records.
Frank Dinucci, who owns one such accounting service, has been raising awareness about this technological advancement by conducting free workshops for entrepreneurs in the Bay Area. He says, "Cloud computing is not a new concept and has revolutionized the accounting industry. A research study by AICPA last year showed that over 56 percent of accountants used cloud-based accounting, but there's a shockingly low knowledge about it among entrepreneurs, probably due to a lack of exposure. This new technology incorporates high-level complex artificial intelligence and machine learning, which gives one the opportunity to stay ahead of the curve, stay current, and operate their business at their best. The payoff can be huge as cloud-based accounting services require minimal overhead expenses from a user, subscription costs are far lower than what professional accounts or popular softwarelike QuickBooks might charge. It is also readily available for use at any hour of any day, unlike an in-house accountant. The fact that it's stored digitally on remote servers means entrepreneurs don't have to worry about the loss of data in case their hard disks fail or crash."
Frank Dinucci believes that entrepreneurs who take the first step in this path are rewarded handsomely with more freedom, better client relationships and higher efficiency in their work-life. He says, "It does everything a highly trained accounting professional could do, and even more, at a fraction of the cost. This saves the entrepreneurs a lot of worries and lets them focus their minds on doing what they do best instead of dabbling with something they know very little about. Most cloud-accounting services come with CRM capabilities, which creates the potential for developing strong client relationships on top of profitable, flexible and streamlined accounting practices. By holding these workshops, our aim is to encourage these brilliant minds who have equally brilliant ideas to transition to the cloud, which will be hugely beneficial even down the line when they want to grow and scale their businesses. It will also ensure continuity. It's a 3-hour commitment on weekends that can go a long way in bolstering a critical aspect of your business."
Frank Dinucci's workshops have so far been a rage, managing to ironically draw in more entrepreneurs than they accounted for. He says, "We have had such a tremendous reception that we are now planning to take our workshops to various other top cities across the country, such as Seattle and Los Angeles, which is seeing an ever-increasing number of entrepreneurs." Wade Nodine, a tech-entrepreneur who developed a blockchain solution to airline ticketing, says attending Dinucci's workshops have been massively beneficial. "First of all, I knew zilch about accounting, apart from buzzwords like debit and credit. What Frank introduced to us has been breathtaking: it's as simple as it is efficient.
"I didn't even need to learn all accounting principles, it was like an accounting software for dummies. Just enter simple data and bam, you have financial reports and what not! It's amazing, and I, and many others like me would have never known about cloud-based accounting services had it not been for Frank. I have personally saved so much money that I'm putting to better use with my project instead, and I no longer have to sweat about my accounts and finances situation. Cloud servers also make scaling possible, and no matter how much bigger my business gets, I can rest a little easier knowing there's at least one thing I need not worry about!" With such high praise bestowed upon Dinucci, it is clearly evident that he has significantly influenced and changed the lives of many budding entrepreneurs for the better.
Press Contact: Eric Blankenship 786-332-6554
View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/frank-dinuccis-cloud-accounting-workshop-draws-many-entrepreneurs-300503375.html
SOURCE Frank Dinucci
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Frank Dinucci's Cloud Accounting Workshop Draws Many Entrepreneurs - PR Newswire (press release)
Cryptocurrencies have pulled one of Nvidia’s most sluggish businesses out of the gutter – Quartz
As 747s ship AMD processors to cryptocurrency mines around the world, Nvidia numbers are also flying high.
The companys OEM sector, one of its smallest revenue streams, saw 54% revenue gains year-over-year, up nearly $100 million. Nvidia credited the jump to demand for its dedicated processing board and traditional graphics cards, which miners rushed out to buy as the price of Ethereum and other cyptocurrencies rose.
Cryptocurrency and blockchain are here to stay, Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang. The only thing we can probably expect is that there will be more currencies to comeWe have the ability to rock n roll with this market as it goes.
Meanwhile, datacenter growth is starting to level off, indicating that Nvidia is beginning to hit the peak of its dominance in supplying computing power for AI and deep learning across the industry. Even though Google is and others are trying to develop their own AI hardware, they havent delivered new products to the mass market. Use of Googles Tensor Processing Unit can be rented on its cloud servers, however.
Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang isnt fazed by the prospects of new entrants into the AI hardware ecosystem, saying that GPUs will be still needed in datacenters as social media pushes more towards video.
You have to perform AI on instantly so you can avoid inappropriate video being streamed to large audiences, Huang said, then mentioning Googles hardware by name. A GPU is basically a TPU that does a lot more.
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Cryptocurrencies have pulled one of Nvidia's most sluggish businesses out of the gutter - Quartz
GoDaddy tops Q2 targets, revenue up 22 percent – ZDNet
Small business domain host GoDaddy reported second quarter earnings and revenue Tuesday after the bell.
The Scottsdale, Ariz.-based company reported a net income of $20.8 million, or 10 cents per share, compared to a year-ago loss of $71.3 million. Revenue came in at $557.8 million, up 22 percent year over year. Wall Street was looking for earnings of a penny per share with $551.3 million in revenue.
Overall, the report shows that the company is expanding its customer base and earning more money per user. GoDaddy's average revenue per user was $129, up 2.8 percent. In terms of bookings, GoDaddy saw growth of 22 percent year-over-year to $667.5 million during the three-month period ending June 30.
Elsewhere, domains revenue came in at $263.3 million, up 14.6 percent year over year. Hosting and presence revenue was $214.9 million, up 28.3 percent year over year. GoDaddy said its customer count at the end of the quarter was nearly 17 million, including more than 1.6 million gained from its billion-dollar acquisition of Host Europe Group.
"We are making great progress on our 2017 product and strategic initiatives including growing the adoption of our new mobile-optimized website builder GoCentral, new security offerings and integration of HEG," said GoDaddy CEO Blake Irving. "We remain focused on leveraging our brand and scale to extend our global competitive advantages."
As for the current quarter, GoDaddy expects total revenue in the range of $577 to $582 million. For the full year, GoDaddy raised its revenue guidance to a range of $2.215 to $2.225 billion, representing approximately 20 percent growth.
GoDaddy revealed last month that it will be shuttering its Cloud Servers and Applications business by the end of the year. Launched in March 2016, the cloud portfolio was billed as a suite of Amazon-style cloud computing services to help small businesses build, test and scale cloud solutions on GoDaddy's infrastructure. GoDaddy sold the business for $456 million.
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GoDaddy tops Q2 targets, revenue up 22 percent - ZDNet
Hardware Can Still Make or Break the Cloud – IT Business Edge (blog)
With so much attention paid to building the right virtual and software-defined architectures in the cloud, it is easy to forget that the cloud also needs the right hardware that in most cases is distinctly different from traditional data center infrastructure.
Regardless of whether the enterprise plans to link private clouds to public resources or throw their chips into an all-cloud solution, knowledge of how cloud infrastructure is evolving and why this is important to the data it holds is crucial.
According to CIO Review, cloud architectures are built with scale in mind, and this will almost invariably mean scale-out rather than scale-up. A baseline cloud server usually comprises two 1U servers per rack, such as a dual-processor machine and a twin. Since this often limits cooling capabilities, these servers will most often utilize four to eight low-power cores. Each server will also have appropriate memory to support its core count and the number of virtual machines it can support. A six-core CPU, for example, should provide seamless support for 96 GB of DRAM to service the 96 VMs it can house. But if you plan on implementing containers, you can probably get away with less memory even if the VM count is higher.
Many hardware manufacturers are starting to get the point about building higher-level architectures on bare metal, which is why were seeing increased integration between servers and leading open platforms like OpenStack. Supermicro recently teamed up with SUSE to implement Linux-based cloud workloads on the 1U Superserver. The combo provides a market-ready OpenStack solution that also incorporates hot-swappable NVMe drives to create high-density, high-performance environments. And Server Watchs Sean Michael Kerner points out that this partnership may provide for easier integration into legacy HPE environments given that SUSE was the one that snared the companys OpenStack and CloudFoundry software portfolio last November.
Top cloud providers are also making it easier to incorporate their services into on-premises hybrid clouds using hardware appliances rather than all-software constructs. Microsoft recently unveiled the Azure Stack appliance that acts as an extension of the Azure cloud into the enterprise data center. The company recently started validation tests with Dell EMC, HPE and Lenovo, which means the initial devices should hit the channel next month. ZDnets Mary Jo Foley reports that Azure Stack services will be available on a consumption basis, and users will still be able to use their on-premises Windows Server and SQL Server licenses, which in some cases might cost less than the standard Azure licenses.
Meanwhile, Google is using hardware to make it easier to migrate workloads to its public cloud. The company recently unveiled the Transfer Appliance, which can be loaded up with enterprise data and literally shipped to Google via Fedex. Although it may be low-tech, says Venture Beats Blair Hanley Frank, it can actually deliver workloads quicker, depending on their size. The appliances come in 100 TB and 480 TB versions, which allow organizations to move upwards of 1 PB on a single unit using current compression methods. Amazon has an existing device called SnowBall that ranges from 50 TB to 100 TB in size.
Hardware has always mattered in the cloud, although it is becoming less and less of a daily concern for the enterprise as increasing levels of abstraction separate applications and services from raw infrastructure.
But as mentioned above, whether the goal is to improve the performance of a single cloud or distribute data among multiple clouds, hardware has a way of making these operations very easy or very difficult.
Arthur Colewrites about infrastructure for IT Business Edge. Cole has been covering the high-tech media and computing industries for more than 20 years, having served as editor ofTV Technology, Video Technology News, Internet News and Multimedia Weekly. His contributions have appeared in Communications Today and Enterprise Networking Planet andas web content for numerous high-tech clients like TwinStrata and Carpathia. Follow Art on Twitter @acole602.
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Hardware Can Still Make or Break the Cloud - IT Business Edge (blog)