Category Archives: Cloud Servers

NVIDIA Corporation’s (NVDA) Tesla GPU Accelerators for AI Cloud Computing Adopted by Tencent Cloud – Smarter Analyst

NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) announced that Tencent Cloud will adopt NVIDIA Tesla GPU accelerators to help advance artificial intelligence for enterprise customers.

Tencent Cloud will integrate NVIDIAs GPU computing and deep learning platform into its public cloud computing platform. This will provide users with access to a set of new cloud services powered by Tesla GPU accelerators, including the latest Pascal architecture-based Tesla P100 and P40 GPU accelerators with NVIDIA NVLink technology for connecting multiple GPUs and NVIDIA deep learning software.

NVIDIAs AI computing technology is used worldwide by cloud service providers, enterprises, startups and research organizations for a wide range of applications.

Companies around the world are harnessing their data with our AI computing technology to create breakthrough products and services, said Ian Buck, general manager of Accelerated Computing at NVIDIA. Through Tencent Cloud, more companies will have access to NVIDIAs deep learning platform, the worlds most broadly adopted AI platform.

Tencent Cloud GPU offerings with NVIDIAs deep learning platform will help companies in China rapidly integrate AI capabilities into their products and services, said Sam Xie, vice president of Tencent Cloud. Our customers will gain greater computing flexibility and power, giving them a powerful competitive advantage.

GPU-Based Cloud Offerings for AI

Organizations across many industries are seeking greater access to the core AI technologies required to develop advanced applications, such as facial recognition, natural language processing, traffic analysis, intelligent customer service, and machine learning.

The massively efficient parallel processing capabilities of GPUs make the NVIDIA computing platform highly effective at accelerating a host of other data-intensive workloads, including advanced analytics and high performance computing.

As part of the companies collaboration, Tencent Cloud intends to offer customers a wide range of cloud products based on NVIDIAs AI computing platforms. This will include GPU cloud servers incorporating NVIDIA Tesla P100, P40 and M40 GPU accelerators and NVIDIA deep learning software. Tencent Cloud launched GPU servers based on NVIDIA Tesla M40 GPUs and NVIDIA deep learning software in December.

During the first half of this year, these cloud servers will integrate up to eight GPU accelerators, providing users with superior performance while meeting the requirements for deep learning and algorithms that involve ultra-high data volume and ultra-sized equipment.

Shares of NVIDIA closed yesterday at $107.09, down $0.98 or -0.91%. NVDA has a 1-year high of $120.92 and a 1-year low of $34.38. The stocks 50-day moving average is $106.42 and its 200-day moving average is $90.04.

On the ratings front, NVDAhas been the subject of a number of recent research reports. In a report released yesterday, B. Riley analyst Craig Ellis reiterated a Buy rating on NVDA, with a price target of $135, which implies an upside of 26% from current levels. Separately, on March 20, Goldman Sachs Toshiya Hari reiterated a Buy rating on the stock and has a price target of $130.

According to TipRanks.com, which ranks over 7,500 financial analysts and bloggers to gauge the performance of their past recommendations, Craig Ellis and Toshiya Hari have a yearly average return of 27.6% and 15% respectively. Ellis has a success rate of 73% and is ranked #39 out of 4552 analysts, while Hari has a success rate of 74% and is ranked #802.

Sentiment on the street is mostly bullish on NVDA stock. Out of 27 analysts who cover the stock, 14 suggest a Buy rating , 9 suggest a Hold and 4 recommend to Sell the stock. The 12-month average price target assigned to the stock is $116.95, which implies an upside of 9% from current levels.

NVIDIA Corp. designs and manufactures computer graphics processors, chipsets, and related multimedia software. The company operates through two segments: Graphics Processing Unit and Tegra Processor. The Graphics Processing Unit segment includes sales of the companys GeForce discrete and chipset products that supports desktop and notebook PCs plus license fees from Intel and sales of memory products. The Tegra Processors segment provides processors that deliver superior visual and multimedia experience on tablets, smart phones and gaming devices while consuming minimal power.

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NVIDIA Corporation's (NVDA) Tesla GPU Accelerators for AI Cloud Computing Adopted by Tencent Cloud - Smarter Analyst

Cloud Infrastructure Market Hits $70B in Revenue – ServerWatch – Server Watch

While the public cloud is all about abstracting the physical hardware and servers needed to deliver applications and services, the reality is that hardware is required. The cloud infrastructure equipment market is an increasingly competitive space, with no single clear industry leader at this point.

According to Synergy Research Group's 4Q16 market data report, at the end of 2016 the total market for both public and private cloud hardware and software revenues topped the $70 billion revenue milestone.

Of particular note is the extreme competition in the cloud infrastructure equipment market. The top three vendors are locked in a three-way tie for market share. Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Cisco and Dell EMC each hold approximately 11.5 percent of the total market share.

Each of the top three vendors however has a different area of revenue share leadership. According to Synergy Research Group, HPE is the leader in the cloud servers, Cisco is the leader in the networking segment, and Dell EMC leads in storage.

"Putting to one side the chunk of the market that is now sidelined and controlled by ODMs, the rest of the market is being heavily contested by the three leading IT hardware vendors, John Dinsdale, a Chief Analyst and Research Director at Synergy Research Group, said in a statement. "While spend on cloud services and infrastructure is already huge, it is still relatively early days in the transition of enterprise workloads to the cloud."

Dinsdale added, "that means that success in the cloud infrastructure market is vitally important to IT vendors and they will be fighting long and hard to maximize their market shares."

Analyst firm IDC had forecast a year ago that cloud infrastructure revenue would hit $38.2 billion for 2016. Looking forward, IDC forecasts a projected $57.8 billion will be spent on cloud in 2020.

Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at ServerWatch and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.

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Cloud Infrastructure Market Hits $70B in Revenue - ServerWatch - Server Watch

SU launches masters program for managing Cloud computing – WSYR

SYRACUSE, N.Y. (WSYR-TV) - These days, theres a high chance that youre uploading pictures to the Cloud or streaming movies and TV shows to watch.

The Cloud is just a large room of servers--- something that companies utilize but those working with the servers need to know how to handle the information.

The iSchool at Syracuse University is creating one of the first masters programs in the nation to manage Cloud servers.

SU is looking to become among the first schools to turn out masters students who can help a company like Netflix with storing, processing and networking of their data so we get the best viewing experience.

"So they have to make sure that whatever content people want to view is in the right places at the right time, analyze trends, make predictions of what people need to buy, said associate professor at the SU iSchool, Carlos Caicedo.

Netflix is just one of an endless list of companies worldwide Caicedo says can benefit from understanding storage and handling of data.

He says it will help companies decide if its more cost effective to buy all the equipment to host and manage it themselves or to hire an off site cloud provider. Its the digital world we all live in whether you know it or not.

The iSchool is collaborating with some of its partners, which just happen to be some of the leading companies in this field, to deliver students a hands-on experience.

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SU launches masters program for managing Cloud computing - WSYR

Cloud Servers eta | Host1Plus – International Hosting Provider

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In order to add additional IPv4 addresses, log in to your Client Area and go to your Cloud Server control panel, click on Network tab where you will find Add IPs option. Please note that additional IPv4 addresses are $1.00 each.

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Battle Intensifies for Cloud Infrastructure Leadership as Q4 Sees Three-Way Tie – The Data Center Journal

New Q4 data from Synergy Research Group shows that Dell EMC, Cisco and HPE are essentially tied for leadership of the strategically important cloud infrastructure equipment market. For years HPE and Cisco have been in a closely contested fight for worldwide market share, but in Q4 they were joined by the recently merged Dell EMC. All three had a market share of around 11.5%. Coincidentally, ODMs (contract manufacturers) in aggregate had a similar share of the market, thanks to ongoing heavy investment in own-designed hardware by hyperscale cloud providers. Microsoft and IBM round out the group of top cloud infrastructure vendors. Across the different types of cloud deployment, Cisco continues to hold a commanding lead in public cloud infrastructure while Dell EMC gained a narrow lead over HPE in private cloud.

Total cloud infrastructure equipment revenues, including public and private cloud, hardware and software, passed the $70 billion milestone in 2016 with Q4 revenue accounting for over 27% of the total. While growth in private cloud has slowed down, spend on public cloud continues to grow at a strong double-digit pace. Servers, OS, storage, networking and virtualization software combined accounted for 95% of the Q4 cloud infrastructure market, with the balance comprising cloud security and cloud management. By segment, HPE has a clear lead in the cloud server segment and is a strong challenger in storage, while Cisco is dominant in the networking segment and also has a growing server product line. Dell EMC is the second-ranked server vendor and has a clear lead on storage. Microsoft features heavily in the ranking due to its position in server OS and virtualization applications, while IBM maintains a strong position across a range of cloud technology markets.

Putting to one side the chunk of the market that is now sidelined and controlled by ODMs, the rest of the market is being heavily contested by the three leading IT hardware vendors, said John Dinsdale, a Chief Analyst and Research Director at Synergy Research Group. While spend on cloud services and infrastructure is already huge it is still relatively early days in the transition of enterprise workloads to the cloud. That means that success in the cloud infrastructure market is vitally important to IT vendors and they will be fighting long and hard to maximize their market shares.

Battle Intensifies for Cloud Infrastructure Leadership as Q4 Sees Three-Way Tie was last modified: March 21st, 2017 by Press Release

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Battle Intensifies for Cloud Infrastructure Leadership as Q4 Sees Three-Way Tie - The Data Center Journal

Cisco, Dell EMC, HPE Locked In Cloud Infrastructure Dogfight – CRN

The market for the hardware and software that form the infrastructure for public and private clouds has become a red-hot battleground for the industry's top vendors, and new research suggests Cisco, Dell EMC and Hewlett-Packard Enterprise are in a virtual deadlock atop that strategically important territory.

Cisco holds "a commanding lead" in public cloud infrastructure, Synergy Research Group said, while Dell EMC pulled into the market ahead of HPE in private cloud.

The cloud infrastructure equipment market including servers, storage, networking, operating systems and virtualization software surpassed $70 billion last year, and Cisco, Dell EMC and HPE together claimed more than a third of the total market in the fourth quarter, according to Synergy.

[Related:Dell Boomi CEO: Acquisition Of ManyWho Will Help Partners 'Bring Solutions To Market Very Rapidly']

Dell EMC's ascendance in the cloud infrastructure market is the result of the merger between the two companies, and Stephen Monteros, senior vice president of Sigmanet, an Ontario, Calif., solution provider that works with several vendors, said Synergy's data shows that the blockbuster merger was a smart move. "It looks like a pretty good move for Dell, EMC and customers that are looking for a consolidation of vendors and of approach."

In fact, each of the three vendors claimed an 11.5 percent market share during the quarter, thanks to Dell's September acquisition of EMC. In the years before the Dell EMC merger, the cloud infrastructure equipment market was dominated by Cisco and HPE. The merger brought together server powerhouse Dell and data storage giant EMC and put the combined company on equal footing in the cloud market with cloud server leader HPE and networking giant Cisco, Synergy said.

Since the $58 billion Dell EMC merger, company executives have been pushing solution providers to sell across the firm's portfolio of server, storage and networking products, as well as hyper-convergence products. The cloud market, Dell EMC executives argue, will be a hybrid of public and private for years into the future as customers use public cloud services for some things and private cloud for others.

Contract manufacturers, who make cloud infrastructure equipment sold by other companies, altogether accounted for a share of the market similar to the top three vendor brands, driven by demand from hyper-scale cloud providers.

Strength in server operating systems and virtualization applications gave Microsoft an almost 8 percent market share during the quarter, and IBM registered slightly more than a 6 percent share, Synergy said.

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Cisco, Dell EMC, HPE Locked In Cloud Infrastructure Dogfight - CRN

Qualcomm and Intel come together for faster cloud computing – MustTech News

The shift to cloud computing has seen a boom in server development and market. However, Intel owns 98% of that market which means lack of innovation due to negligible competition.

To enhance cloud computing experience, new entrants must be brought to the market. And that is Intel and Qualcomm come together with Qualcomm wanting a part of the cloud server industry and Microsoft wants a better architecture for their Azure.

Although the two companies have been trying out the ARM-based servers for many years, it is only now that a formal partnership has been announced. It is speculated that this will cause the development of a new line of hardware and software systems for the server market.

Qualcomm has announced their new Windows-based server, the Centriq 2400, and have held a public demonstration. They have also submitted the design to the OCP. Based on Microsofts Project Olympus, the Centriq 2400 will be mated to the latest and most advanced memory and network peripherals do deliver faster computing. The new board will fit into 1U server racks and can be paired to compute accelerators, multi-host network interface controllers and latest storage technologies to tailor it for specific workloads.

Microsoft has been evaluating the ARM-based servers for some time now, comparing it to their current Intel-based servers.

High Instruction per Cycle counts, high core and thread counts, the connectivity options, and the integration that we see across the ARM ecosystem [are] very exciting.

said Leendert van Doom, one of Microsofts Distinguished Engineer, regarding the ARM-based server architecture.

Microsoft wants to obtain the most cost effective way to handle its cloud operations and that is why is willing to collaborate with Qualcomm on this new project. Intel does have almost the entire server market and so isnt the cheapest.

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Qualcomm and Intel come together for faster cloud computing - MustTech News

ARM Servers Can Soon Power Half of Microsoft Data Center Muscle – Data Center Knowledge

Recent years relative quiet on the ARM server front, the scarcity of large-scale IBM Power deployment news, and the consistent growth reported by Intels Data Center Group may in totality create an impression that the data center chip wars have subsided, with Intel enjoying a massive and secure lead. A few announcements that came out of last weeks Open Compute Summit in Santa Clara and the Google Cloud Next conference in San Francisco however showed that while Intels lead may be massive, its under bigger threat than may have appeared.

The biggest news out of the Open Compute event was that Microsoft had been working with ARM chip makers Cavium and Qualcomm on ARM server designs to run many of its cloud services (Qualcomms processors are in a big but reportedly waning share of the worlds smartphones). This was not an announcement like the ones weve heard in the past from Facebook and Google non-committal revelations that they had been testing ARM servers here and there, and that they were really always testing everything on the market, just in case.

Microsoft thinks theres real potential for ARM servers to eventually provide more than half of its cloud data center capacity. Coming from the worlds second-largest cloud provider, that kind of announcement should give Intel a lot to think about. As more and more corporate applications are headed for the cloud, the number of servers traditional hardware vendors sell to enterprises is on a gradual decline, while cloud providers are buying more and more processors to support those migrating workloads. The prospect of ARM servers working out the way Microsoft is picturing they may for its Azure cloud threatens Intels biggest source of revenue growth.

Learnabout Project Olympus,Microsofts pioneering effort to design data center hardware the same way open source software is developed, at Data Center World, which is taking place next month in Los Angeles. Kushagra Vaid, Microsofts general manager for Azure Cloud Hardware Infrastructure, will be giving a keynote titled Open Source Hardware Development at Cloud Speed.

The same week, speaking on stage at Googles big cloud event, Raejeanne Skillern, leader of Intels Cloud Service Provider Group, confirmed what Google had announced earlier, that Intel had sold to Google its latest-generation Skylake server chips before it would let any other company have them, giving Googles cloud platform a temporary performance advantage over its competitors. Timing of both announcements may be a coincidence, but one reason Microsoft has been working with ARM server vendors is to avoid putting all its eggs in one basket, especially if that basket is a supplier thats not required to provide all its customers with a level playing field.

Read more: Google Expands Cloud Data Center Plans, Asserts Hardware, Connectivity Leadership

In order to avoid having to rewrite much of the software that powers its cloud services, Microsoft has ported Windows Server 2016 to ARM, Leendert van Doorn, distinguished engineer for Azure, announced from stage at the summit. The company envisions using ARM servers to power its cloud storage, Big Data, Machine Learning, search, index, and other workloads. Those properties together actually represent over half of our data center capacity, so theres quite a lot of potential for different kinds of servers there, he said, adding that the workload that for now is safely in the x86 corner is running customers cloud VMs, also known as infrastructure-as-a-service.

We work closely with our x86 partners too, so one of the key things here for us is choice, van Doorn said in an interview with Data Center Knowledge. Besides Intel, those x86 partners also include AMD, which is staging a comeback to the data center market, leading with its upcoming high-performance Naples chip. Project Olympus, Microsofts effort to leverage the open source hardware design community of the Open Compute Project to create its next cloud server, includes motherboards for Intel, AMD chips, as well as the ARM variants by Cavium and Qualcomm.

The ARM server ecosystem has to a great extent benefited from the massive scale of the high-end smartphone market, van Doorn wrote in a blog post. The developer ecosystem that has grown around ARM-powered smartphones has significantly helped Microsoft in porting its cloud software to ARM servers.

Van Doorn cited throughput-oriented ARM designs as a key reason Microsoft is getting so heavily involved with the architecture. Those are things with high-performance IO, high IPCs (instructions per cycle), lots of cores and threads, large numbers of them, and lots of interesting connectivity options, especially with some of the newer bus standards, which are very interesting from an accelerator perspective, he said.

Simpler hardware compatibility is another factor. Because ARM chipsets and motherboards are built on open standards, theres absolutely no difference between Cavium and Qualcomm versions of Windows Server 2016 for ARM, van Doorn said. A single generic ARM ACPI driver will enable the OS to discover and onboard peripherals and such instead of different drivers for different chipsets, as explained by The Register.

Another trend thats playing out in Microsofts ARM and AMD announcements is the new opportunity to optimize cloud hardware for specific workloads. That opportunity is in the economies of scale the cloud has made possible. From van Doorns blog post:

Due to the scale required for certain cloud services, i.e. the number of machines allocated to them, it becomes more economically feasible to optimize the hardware to the workload instead of the other way around, even if that means changing the Instruction Set Architecture.

A bigger variety of chipmakers in theory makes that kind of optimization easier.

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ARM Servers Can Soon Power Half of Microsoft Data Center Muscle - Data Center Knowledge

One News Page Joins The European Cloud Alliance – PR Newswire (press release)

Cloud computing, from storage to servers, is yet to become the industry standard. Thousands of businesses worldwide depend upon physical hardware and support that is too often prone to downtime and therefore likely to provide considerable hits to business productivity and customer relations. Cloud computing removes the need for physical dependency, and therefore allows businesses and individuals to manage their own IT infrastructures, data and backups on a remote basis - and completely virtually.

The European Cloud Alliance promotes the many benefits to businesses both big and small that a move to cloud computing can offer.The organisation not only highlights the ways through which cloud computing can directly improve business processes but also highlights case studies where European businesses have seen their fortunes turned around thanks to the technology.

Beyond this, the European Cloud Alliance also aims to educate businesses and governments on the best possible ways to adopt and implement cloud technology - in the aim of helping to make European business run more efficiently and less dependent upon hardware that is in need of maintenance and which can hamper productivity.

One News Page is one such company that has benefited directly from cloud computing - with founder Dr. Marc Pinter-Krainer having adopted the technology for the website in 2015. This move was undertaken to help One News Page to continue operating as a low-maintenance news website benefiting from automated servers - and Dr. Pinter-Krainer's previous experience with physical servers located in the US as well as on the European continent in Germany was one fraught with heavy maintenance and the consumption of valuable time.

Since the website's move to cloud servers two years ago, Dr. Pinter-Krainer has noted a vast improvement in the efficiency of One News Page's operation, removing the long hours of waiting for server maintenance taken out of the equation entirely - as well as the introduction of greater control over backups and unscheduled downtime. You can read more about One News Page's case study published by the European Cloud Alliance here.

"Moving onto the cloud has been a huge benefit," Dr. Pinter-Krainer is quoted in the case study as saying. "Quite a bit of work had to be done at first - the architecture of how One News Page was built had to be updated. But since we did it, I've had not issues at all. I've only seen benefits."

The business benefits unlocked by the move to the cloud has motivated Dr. Pinter-Krainer to help support the ECA as a business consortium and in its efforts to encourage European firms to consider moving to the cloud as well.

"Businesses like Marc's can benefit hugely from adopting cloud solutions" said Kim Gagn, Director of the European Cloud Alliance. "We're delighted that One News Page has joined the ECA and contributed this excellent case study. We look forward to working with Marc and others to show how cloud technologies are supporting business grow across Europe."

One News Page is free to browse and allows its readers to take advantage of its comprehensive repository of over 100 million different news resources from scores of reputable and authoritative sources and journalists. Offering written digests, original content and video news for readers to access and consume at their leisure, One News Page is continuing to tap into the news aggregation market by making it easier and quicker to access with each update.

One News Page was founded in 2008 and services markets in the English, German and Spanish languages across Europe, America, Asia and Australasia. In 2016 it served over 20 million users accessing its news portal websites.

For further information, please visit http://www.onenewspage.com/

About One News Page Ltd

One News Page Ltd is a British media firm which runs a family of news portal websites across the globe. The sites feature original news coverage and syndicated news content including news videos from major trusted news sources.

The One News Page portal is arguably the fastest-access news portal in the world. It provides users with a powerful search engine of more than 100 million news resources, allowing them to discover and locate relevant news coverage easily. Users are referred to the source website directly by clicking on a corresponding link.

Optional free member registration provides access to news archives and live news alerts by email.

Access to all One News Page sites is free of charge.

http://www.onenewspage.com

About the European Cloud Alliance

The European Cloud Alliance brings together businesses across the cloud value chain to promote the advantages of the cloud, and to provide an authoritative voice on cloud-related policy issues. We represent those that use, create, and provide cloud services across Europe.

Cloud technology is driving transformation in every corner of Europe, helping businesses and organisations innovate, grow and compete on a global scale. The Alliance helps enable new ways of working, new products and services, and even new business models.

Home

Enquiries / Media Contact One News Page Ltd Dr Marc Pinter-Krainer Founder & CEO Email: marc@onenewspage.com Tel: +44-(0)-208-1333-700 http://www.onenewspage.com/

SOURCE One News Page Ltd

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One News Page Joins The European Cloud Alliance - PR Newswire (press release)

Microsoft Says Yes to ARM-Based Chips for its Cloud Servers – Yahoo Finance

Reportedly, Microsoft Corporation MSFT in collaboration with Qualcomm QCOM and Cavium. CAVM has developed a Windows-based operating system for its cloud-based servers that will run on ARM-based processors instead of Intels.

Although currently none of the Azure cloud clients use the ARM-based processors in their servers, adoption of the same is expected to pick up going ahead.

Also, Microsofts new server design will be an open source one, available for customizations. It is also free to use and could pave the way for greater adoption.

Why this Move?

The most important reason why Microsoft is making the switch from Intel-based processors to ARM-based processors for its cloud based servers is to cut down on costs and become more flexible.

The company will also gain a competitive edge in the cloud server market dominated by Amazon AMZN and Alphabets Google.

What it Means for Intel?

The server semiconductor market is currently dominated by Intel, which holds over 98% market share. We note that during fourth-quarter 2016, Intels Data Center Group (which includes revenues from server chips)accounted for 28.5% of total revenueof $16.37 billion. Given the declining PC demand worldwide, demand for PC chips is also on a decline.

Server chips were a significant contributor to the companys top line. However, with Microsoft showing preference for ARM-chips, Intels dominance in the server chips market is under threat.

What it Means for Microsoft?

As per an IDC report, worldwide spending on public cloud services is estimated to reach a whopping $203.4 billion in 2020 that is currently growing at a CAGR of 21.5%. Not surprisingly then, competition in the sector is intensifying with the presence of major players such as Amazons AWS, Alphabets Google Cloud Platform.

However, Microsofts decision to switch to ARM-based processors is a strategic one that is expected to help the company remain competitive and relevant.

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Microsoft Says Yes to ARM-Based Chips for its Cloud Servers - Yahoo Finance