Category Archives: Cloud Servers
How Successful Companies Increase Efficiency – The Suit Magazine
Efficiency is one of the biggest benefits of moving to the cloud. Fifty-five percent of IT professionals say increased efficiency is one of the main benefits their company has experienced by moving to the cloud, along with increased employee ability, more ability to innovate and more freedom to shift IT staff to other projects, CDW reports. Here are three examples of successful companies that are increasing their efficiency by using the cloud.
Netflix
One company that has enjoyed explosive growth by moving to the cloud is Netflix. Originally offering physical DVD rentals by mail, in 2008 the company began moving to the cloud following a database problem that prevented DVD shipments for three days. To resolve this, the company decided to move away from an infrastructure with vertically scaled, single failure points in their local datacenter to horizontally distributed, scalable cloud systems. Netflix decided to go with Amazon Web Services (AWS) based on AWS' scalability and range of features and services.
By the time Netflix completed its cloud migration in 2016, the company was enjoying over 1,000 percent growth, with eight times as many members. This rapid growth was facilitated by the AWS cloud's efficiency, which enabled Netflix to scale up at will, adding thousands of virtual servers and storage petabytes within minutes when needed.
AWS' cloud servers are also distributed around the world, enabling Netflix to shift resources where needed in order to efficiently stream videos to users anywhere. This capability allowed Netflix to expand into 130 new countries this year.
Meanwhile, Amazon is also leveraging its success with companies such as Netflix, by launching a new cloud migration service. Amazon reported that more than 1,000 companies used the service during the preview.
Apple
Not all companies migrating to the cloud are necessarily going with Amazon. Apple is reportedly shifting its cloud use away from AWS toward its own private cloud. Since 2011, Apple has reportedly been using AWS and Microsoft Azure to run some of its cloud services, a rumor confirmed in 2014 by a white paper acknowledging that Apple stored encrypted portions of iOS files on AWS and Azure. Morgan Stanley estimates that Apple spends $1 billion annually on AWS.
But earlier this year, Apple began spending $400 to $600 million on Google Cloud Platform services, reducing its dependence on Amazon and Microsoft. Following the disclosure, additional sources came forth to reveal that the move is part of an Apple effort to develop its own in-house cloud infrastructure, an endeavor dubbed Project McQueen.
Project McQueen was prompted by the fact that Apple's growth was running ahead of even Azure's capacity, sources say. The project is intended to bring Apple's massive database of iTunes and iCloud files under one infrastructure in order to more efficiently deliver services to Apple customers.
Findley Davies Other companies are increasing the efficiency of their customer service by moving their contact center infrastructure to a cloud contact center. Human resources consulting firm Findley Davies uses cloud technology at its contact center to answer client questions about benefits packages for health and wellness programs, pensions and 401(k) plans. Using the cloud gives Findley Davies employees the flexibility to log in from anywhere, giving the company an expanded national presence. Meanwhile, the cloud enables efficient information exchange between the company's locations around the country, resulting in faster service to clients.
We recommend:
Personal financial management is a lot like managing your own health and weight. Your net worth is
How to Get Americas Largest Workforce Invested, Retained and Performing to Their Full Potential
5 Super Tips from a Minority Woman on How to Succeed in 2017. LOS ANGELES, California According
We have a greater need now to be highly effective through clear focus on purpose, centered on princ
Read the original here:
How Successful Companies Increase Efficiency - The Suit Magazine
Vapor IO Launches Vapor Edge for Telecom – Business Wire (press release)
AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Vapor IO, the next generation platform for hybrid and edge clouds, today announced Vapor Edge for Telecom, an end-to-end platform for edge computing, now 5G-ready and designed to operate as a self-contained microdatacenter at the base of cell-enabled radio towers.
Mobile operators and landowners are in an ideal position to capitalize on the emerging need for low-latency edge-computing, said Cole Crawford, CEO and founder of Vapor IO. They own the key infrastructure, including tens of thousands of remote tower and base station locations with power and high bandwidth backhaul. These locations are ideal for Vapor Edge technology, and Vapor Edge can help carriers upgrade their infrastructure and business models as they move to a fully virtualized infrastructure with edge computing and 5G capabilities.
Vapor Edge is an end-to-end platform for edge computing that provides wireless telecom companies with a simple way to deploy and manage cloud servers that are co-located with their base station equipment. This makes it easy for carriers and wireless base-station landowners to offer cloud compute capabilities in close proximity to the Radio Access Network (RAN), enabling new low-latency applications and creating new business models for these players as they forge partnerships with public cloud providers, web-scale companies and other OTT providers to deliver edge capabilities.
Vapor Edge for Telecom can also help carriers upgrade and virtualize their networks by providing a way to house and manage their standard rack-mountable equipment, including rack-mountable cloud servers as well as C-RAN, NFV, MEC and other specialized telecom equipment.
Vapor Edge for Telecom offers the following key benefits to wireless operators:
Vapor Edge for Telecom components
Vapor Edge for Telecom consists of patented hardware designs optimized for edge environments and specialized software for remote operation and workload management. Included are:
Product Information and Availability
Vapor Edge for Telecom is available today for deployments in 2017. For more product information, as well as to learn more about how Vapor IO is providing the next generation platform for hybrid and edge clouds, please visit http://www.vapor.io or email info@vapor.io.
Supporting Resources
About Vapor IO
Vapor IO is building the cloud of the future. Working with cloud operators, telcos, real estate holding companies and the worlds most innovative enterprises, Vapor is enabling the next generation hybrid and edge cloud. For additional information, please visit http://www.vapor.io.
Visit link:
Vapor IO Launches Vapor Edge for Telecom - Business Wire (press release)
Could Snapchat Have Saved Money By Building Its Own Cloud Infrastructure Instead Of Paying Google? – Forbes
Forbes | Could Snapchat Have Saved Money By Building Its Own Cloud Infrastructure Instead Of Paying Google? Forbes Scaling isn't just a matter of horizontally adding more servers, it's a matter of identifying bottlenecks that are specific to the behavior of your particular application and then debugging or growing your infrastructure in order to handle that ... Could Snapchat Have Saved Money by Building Its Own Cloud Infrastructure? |
See the original post:
Could Snapchat Have Saved Money By Building Its Own Cloud Infrastructure Instead Of Paying Google? - Forbes
Telco Data Centers Get a New Look at MWC – SDxCentral
Data center gear has become increasingly important to telcos and mobile operators as they adapt to a more fluid world of virtualization and software. For some of the large equipment vendors, the trend has spurred a new angle of conversation at Mobile World Congress (MWC).
Ericsson, in particular, has used the last couple of MWCs to show off its HDS 8000 rack-scalesystem. Plenty of products get showcased at MWC, but this one stands out for being an IT play, a big box of servers and storage.
The HDS 8000, in turn, is based on Intels Rack-Scale Design (RSD, formerly called Rack-Scale Architecture), a new way of building outthe data center. RSD, meant to provide flexible pools of compute and storage forapplications to consume, is sold in rack form. Rather than buy more servers to beef up compute, or more disk drives to amp up storage, the customer buys the stuff one rack at a time, with the option to vary the ration of compute to storagein each rack.
The point isnt raw capacity. This is a different way to build a data center. Compute and storage are disaggregated from one another and can be scaled independently. Top-of-rack, aggregation, and core switches arent necessary; everything is absorbed into RSDsconfigurable network fabric, which handles connectivity within the rack and outward to other RSD racks. Silicon photonics connect all the storage and compute elements, with networking connections configured as necessary.
Ericssons was the first commercial instantiation of RSD. Dell followed last year by launching the RSD-based DSS 9000, a key product offering of the companys Extreme Scale Infrastructure group.
It all comes down to telcos trying to become more cloud-like, as exemplified by the Telecom Infra Project and the open source Central Office Reimagined as a Data Center (CORD) project.
Network functions virtualization (NFV) provides incentive, as it means controlling lots of servers to run these virtualized network functions running a data center, in essence. But theres another angle that is growing thanks tothe Internet of Things (IoT). As IoT threatens to drown out the other noise at MWC (no small feat), it opens the potential need for mobile edge computing, providing another motivation for carriers to get familiar with cutting-edge data center designs.
The HDS 8000 stands out because Ericsson began showing it at MWC long before the product was commercially available. Early versions appearedas early as 2013, when Ericsson showed a prototype at its MWC stand and described the productas a bunch of cloud servers crammed into one box. The formal launch of the HDS 8000 came in 2015.
Some carriers have taken notice. The HDS 8000 scored a customer win with Telefnica at last years MWC. Then,in June, Ericsson and SK Telecom used the rack-scale system at the heart of a new technology initiative called Software-Defined Telecommunications Infrastructure (SDTI), aimed at creating hardware that can adapt quickly to network performance requirements. The companies developed SDTI with 5G deployments in mind.
Ericsson isnt going in alone with the HDS 8000. Quanta is the manufacturer for the system and will also act as a channel partner to offer it to webscale customers.
Pluribus controls the HDS 8000s switching fabric, and Ericsson also acquired NodePrime for $7 million in April, hoping to apply the companys data center management capabilities to the HDS 8000.
One interesting note is that Ericsson uses customized silicon photonics rather than Intels. Ericsson officials say this is because the precise card it wanted wasnt commercially available when the HDS 8000 launched.
As for Dell, its ESI group will likely show the DSS 9000 at MWC but will also be discussingdata-center architectures at other levels of scale. The company offers a design called the modular data center (MDC), which focuses on an entire data center, and last October, Dell introduced the micro MDC, a smaller data center installation that comes in one to five racks worth of gear. Look for Dell to expand on that idea at MWC.
Photo: Jorge Franganillo on Flickr. CC2.0 license. Photo has been cropped.
Craig Matsumoto is managing editor at SDxCentral.com, responsible for the site's content and for covering news. He is a "veteran" of the SDN scene, having started covering it way back in 2010, and his background in technology journalism goes back to 1994. Craig is based in Silicon Valley. He can be reached at craig@sdxcentral.com.
Go here to read the rest:
Telco Data Centers Get a New Look at MWC - SDxCentral
Vapor IO launches edge micro data centre for telcos – Global Telecoms Business
Copying and distributing are prohibited without permission of the publisher Vapor IO launches edge micro data centre for telcos
22 February 2017
Vapor IO has launched Vapor Edge for Telecom, a complete 5G-ready micro data centre for telco edge computing
Read more: Vapor IO micro data center edge data centre
VaporIO, the hybrid and edge cloud specialist, has launchedVaporEdge for Telecom, a complete platform for edge computing. The solution is a self-contained micro data centre in a wireless base station designed as 5G-ready.
Cole Crawford, CEO and founder of Vapor IO, talking toCapacitysaid: The telcos cannot defeat the laws of physics - they can only get so much speed back to the data centre - we are bringing the data centre right to the edge of the network where they need it. You and I have talked extensively before about the fact mobile operators and landowners are in an ideal position to capitalise on the emerging need for low-latency edge-computing. They own the key infrastructure, including tens of thousands of remote tower and base station locations with power and high bandwidth backhaul.
"These locations are ideal forVaporEdge technology, and Vapor Edge can help carriers upgrade their infrastructure and business models as they move to a fullyvirtualisedinfrastructure with edge computing and 5Gcapabilities Crawford said.
VaporEdge is a complete platform for edge computing that provides wireless telecom companies with a simple way to deploy and manage cloud servers that are co-located with their base station equipment.
This makes it easy for carriers and wireless base-station landowners to offer cloud compute capabilities in close proximity to the Radio Access Network (RAN), enabling new low-latency applications and creating new business models for these players as they create partnerships with public cloud providers, web-scale companies, and other over-the-top (OTT) providers to deliver edge capabilities.
VaporEdge for Telecom can also help carriers upgrade their networks by providing a way to house and manage their standard rack-mountable equipment, including rack-mountable cloud servers as well as C-RAN, NFV, Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) and other specialised telecom equipment.VaporEdge for Telecom offers the following to wireless operators:
VaporEdge for Telecom supports todays 2G, 3G and 4G technologies, and is available for the coming 5G technologies that will provide extremely high-bandwidth,highly-reliableand very low latency wireless services.
VaporEdge for Telecom supports the concept of edge computing with or without MEC. Users can add server equipment toVaporEdge without requiring any changes to base station equipment, but also as base station equipment receives MEC upgrades.VaporEdge for Telecom interfaces with MEC APIs to coordinate work as well as expose real-time status of the RF network to cloud applications. Equipment providers can also useVaporEdge for Telecom to extend their MEC capabilities by housing MEC servers in the Vapor Chamber, which will allow for much more expansion capability than exists in standard base station equipment.
As operatorsvirtualisetheir networks and move their networking logic onto commodity off-the-shelf servers, those servers can be incorporated intoVaporEdge for Telecom. NFV servers can be housed in the Vapor Chamber located in a base station and can be instrumented with OpenDCRE for remote management withVaporEdge software.
VaporEdge helps operators move their Radio Access Network logic onto off-the-shelf servers.VaporEdge also allows the operator to incorporate their own private cloud for operating C-RAN at the base station.
VaporEdge allows public and private cloud providers, as well as OTT providers (such as mediacompanies)to have a presence in the base station and run workloads on servers in theVaporEdge environment, which can be used to offload work from centralised data centres.
To continue reading this article, please register for an extended free trial by going to the box below. If you are already a subscriber or a trialist, please log in...
Subscribers have unlimited access to all current and archive content. Start your subscription today - click on the button below.
Taking a free trial will give you access to all of Global Telecoms Business(possibly excluding some surveys and articles). Registration is quick. Start your free extended trial today.
Continue reading here:
Vapor IO launches edge micro data centre for telcos - Global Telecoms Business
Google Rolls Out GPU Cloud Service – TOP500 News
The largest Internet company on the planet has made GPU computing available in its public cloud. Google announced this week that it has added the NVIDIA Tesla K80 to its cloud offering, with more graphics processor options on the way. The search giant follows Amazon, Microsoft and others into the GPU rental business.
According to a blog posted Tuesday, a user can attach up to four K80 boards, each of which houses two Kepler-generation GK210 GPUs and a total of 24GB of GDDR5 memory. The K80 delivers 2.9 teraflops of double precision performance or 8.73 teraflops of single precision performance, the latter of which is the more relevant metric for deep learning applications. Since were talking about a utility computing environment here, a user may choose to rent just a single GPU (half a K80 board) for their application.
The initial service is mainly aimed at AI customers, but other HPC users should take note as well. Although Google has singled out deep learning as a key application category, the company is also targeting other high performance computing applications, including, computational chemistry, seismic analysis, fluid dynamics, molecular modeling, genomics, computational finance, physics simulations, high performance data analysis, video rendering, and visualization
Googles interest in positioning its GPU offering to deep learning is partially the result of the in-house expertise and software the company has built in this area over the last several years. The new cloud-based GPU instance have been integrated with Googles Cloud Machine Learning (Cloud ML), a set of tools for building and managing deep learning codes. Cloud ML uses the TensorFlow deep learning framework, another Google invention, but which is now maintained as an open source project. Cloud ML helps users employ multiple GPUs in a distributed manner so that the applications can be scaled up, the idea being to speed execution.
The Tesla K80 instance is initially available as a public beta release in the Eastern US, Eastern Asia and Western Europe. Initial pricing is $0.70 per GPU/hour in the US, and $0.77 elsewhere. However, that doesnt include any host processors or memory. Depending on what you want, that can add as little as $0.05 per hour (for one core and 3.75 GB of memory), all the way up to more than $2 per hour (for 32 cores and 208 GB of memory). For a more reasonable configuration, say four host cores and 15 GB of memory, an additional $0.20 per hour would be charged.
That would make it roughly equivalent to the GPU instance pricing on Amazon EC2 and Microsoft Azure, which include a handful of CPU cores and memory by default. Both of those companies, which announced GPU instances for their respective clouds in Q4 2016, have set their pricing at $0.90 per GPU/hour. For users willing to make a three-year commitment, Amazon will cut the cost to $0.425 per GPU/hour via its reserved instance pricing.
IBMs SoftLayer cloud also has a number of GPU options, but they rent out complete servers rather than individual graphics processors. A server with a dual-GPU Tesla K80, two eight-core Intel Xeon CPUs, 128 GB of RAM, and a couple of 800GB SSDs will cost $5.30/hour. Other K80 server configurations are available for longer terms, starting at $1,359/month.
At this point, HPC cloud specialist Nimbix has what is probably the best pricing for renting GPU cycles. Theyre offering a K80-equipped server so two GPUs with four host cores and 32 GB of main memory for $1.06/hour. Thats substantially less expensive than any others cloud providers mentioned, assuming your application can utilize more than a single GPU. Nimbix is also the only cloud provider that currently offers a Tesla P100 server configuration, although that will cost you $4.95 per hour.
Even though the initial GPU offering from Google is confined to the Tesla K80 board, the company is promising NVIDIA Tesla P100 and AMD FirePro configuration are coming soon. The specific AMD device is likely to be the FirePro S9300 x2, a dual-GPU board that offers up to 13.9 teraflops of single precision performance. When Google previewed its accelerator rollout last November, it implied the FirePro S9300 x2 would be aimed at cloud customers interested in GPU-based remote workstations. The P100 is NVIDIAs flagship Tesla GPU, delivering 5.3 or 10.6 teraflops of double or single precision performance, respectively.
At this point, Google is in third place in the fast-growing public cloud space, trailing Amazon and Microsoft, in that order. Adding a GPU option is not likely to change that, but it does illustrate that graphics processor-based acceleration is continuing to spread across the IT datacenter landscape. Whereas once GPU acceleration was confined to HPC, with the advent of hyperscale-based machine learning, it quickly became standard equipment for hyperscale web companies involved in training neural networks. Now that more enterprise customers are looking to mine their own data for machine learning purpose, the GPU is getting additional attention. And for traditional HPC, many of the more popular software packages have already been ported to GPUs.
This all might be good news for Google, but its even better news for NVIDIA, and to a lesser extent AMD, which still stands to benefit from the GPU computing boom despite the companys less cohesive strategy. NVIDIA just announced a record revenue of 6.9 billion for fiscal 2017, driven, in part, by the Tesla datacenter business. That can only get better as GPU availability in the cloud becomes more widespread.
Go here to see the original:
Google Rolls Out GPU Cloud Service - TOP500 News
Banks Need to Be Centralized Could Blockchain be the Answer? – Finance Magnates (blog)
The queues in banks have lessened, the digital transformation is progressing, few people are for banks becomingredundant, and few believe banksshould rise and serve as the operating system. However, I vote banks to be centralized! And to some degree, Blockchain could help banks to achieve that.
Unlike the olden days when data/information was maintained in ledgers and files, now data can be digitaland stored on cloud servers. So, if the account information was fed in ABC city, why cant it be accessed from XYZ city?
Thanks to globalization that customer is not in one place now. He might have been born in a town and then moved to xnumber of cities for reasons from studies to job to marriage! And he cannot raise a transfer request each time.
Yes, the services are available online and could be managed. But in a critical situation like demonetization in India where people were asked only to visit their respective home branch, then it gets tough!
Or what about the situation when people need to change their mailing address, and this can only be done from their home branch.
Centralizing banks could help us in the following ways:
Blockchain could assist banks to achieve centralization using their permissioned network technology.
Experts believe that Blockchain has disruptive powers that could transform any process from a simple documentation to a complex cross-country settlement to be automated with just few clicks.
Adoption of Blockchain by banks would not only help people who use bank services but also individuals who are unbanked and looking to figure out what a bank is. Just imagine a person in rural India getting his biometrics done and submitting his eKYC, opening his new bank account and taking a loan for his farming! All this is achieved within a couple of minutes and is a possibility with Blockchain.
This article was written bySamiksha Seth, a research consultant.
Go here to see the original:
Banks Need to Be Centralized Could Blockchain be the Answer? - Finance Magnates (blog)
Now trust in public cloud services outnumbers distrust by more than 2-to-1: Intel Security – The Tech Portal
The Tech Portal | Now trust in public cloud services outnumbers distrust by more than 2-to-1: Intel Security The Tech Portal The report adds that most organizations are of the opinion that public cloud services are as or more secure than private cloud servers, and helps them lower the cost of ownership and overall data visibility. And it might be the first time but people ... Cloud adoption is increasing, but so are the risks, Intel states Security Skills Shortage Hits Cloud Deployment: Study |
Originally posted here:
Now trust in public cloud services outnumbers distrust by more than 2-to-1: Intel Security - The Tech Portal
Lenovo to build and run SAP’s cloud in China – The Register
What China wants, China gets in this case an exception to SAP's usual practice of running its own cloud.
Behind the great firewall that job's just gone to Lenovo, which will deliver a new enterprise cloud solution created exclusively for customers holding licenses for the SAP HANA platform in China. Lenovo will also run and manage the rig for SAP's Chinese HANA customers.
The Lenovo Enterprise Cloud designed for SAP HANA will be a RAM-crammed cloud using the Chinese company's System x3850 and x3950 X6 servers, plus the System x3650 X6 for application servers. So a nice showcase for the company's kit, and a big customer to boot which will be a fillip after recent revenue disappointments in Lenovo's data centre group.
Perhaps more importantly, it will be a mighty symbol of Lenovo's smarts and ability to do big, complex, things for top software companies. SAP has partners elsewhere such as Deloitte and AWS - but The Register is unaware of a whole-of-country deal to rival this Lenovo tie-up.
The too-nauseatingly-confected-to-use canned quotes provided by both parties certainly leave no adjective unturned in pursuit of praising Lenovo's ability to take on this task.
But the back story here is that China doesn't let western tech concerns do business behind the great firewall without making a substantial offering to nourish local players and develop local expertise. Hence the raft of joint ventures and other deals big companies do in China, all with a national security source code review before the fun starts.
But SAP's not having its arm twisted here, because Lenovo can't afford to fail in this role. Who, after all, would want anything to do with the organisation that crocked SAP?
Read the original here:
Lenovo to build and run SAP's cloud in China - The Register
VPSServer.com Expects Rapid Growth in 2017 – Satellite PR News (press release)
Submit the press release
New York, NY (SBWIRE) 02/21/2017 VPSServer.com, a cloud-computing company launched in 2016 by Global Cloud Infrastructure, announces that they are expecting significant growth throughout 2017 on the back of the massive growth analysts are expecting for the industry as a whole over the coming years. Founded in 2015 and based in the United States and Europe, Global Cloud Infrastructure launched the VPSServer.com product in 2016 based on the over 15 years of experience the organizations team has accumulated in the field of cloud computing. Server hardware today is becoming so powerful that it has become both feasible and economical to rent out just a small portion of a servers capacity, rather than the whole physical server itself.
A virtual private server can start at just five dollars per month and can be scaled to accurately meet the specific needs of the customer. Robert Bolder CEO of VPSServer, said: Three-way storage replication is enabled on our cloud hosting platform, which means that our virtual private servers are stored on three different servers at the same time. This is much safer than the approach taken by most of our competitors, who work with a single RAID system stored on just one hosting server. The first datacenter that VPSServer used to deploy cloud servers was located in Miami, Florida (USA). As a sort of hub to the Americas and beyond, Miami is ideally located to serve the growing demands of multiple markets. In order to minimize latency (i.e. the amount of time it takes for a packet of data to travel from the users computer to the datacenter and back again), customers have a preference for cloud servers that are closer to their actual location, as latency is directly related to how close the remote server is.
In response to this need, VPSServer expanded its platform in January 2017 to seven more datacenters based in both the United States and Europe. Erik Jan Visscher, CTO of VPSServer, said: Recently, we conducted some benchmark testing and saw amazing results. To test the server performance, we are using an independent benchmark tool called Serverscope.io. With our high-end processors and fully equipped SSD storage, our VPSs are outperforming all of our competition. Recently, Global Cloud Infrastructure closed a series
A round of funding with a veteran investor. With this second round of funding completed, the investment will ensure that Global Cloud Infrastructure can continue to grow at its current pace while maintaining the same standards of product quality. About Global Cloud Infrastructure Global Cloud Infrastructure (VPSserver.com), a cloud-server company founded in 2015 and with a presence in both the United States and Europe, is specialized in the provision of virtual private servers. VPSserver.com has more than 15 years of experience in the cloud computing industry, and with the organizations worldwide datacenters, high-end processors, and fully equipped SSD storage, VPSserver.com is outperforming all of its competitors.
CONTACT: Jeroen Nijholt Address: 5 Penn Plaza, 19th Floor PMB #19055, New York, NY 10001 Phone: +31614789523 Email: jeroen.nijholt@vpsserver.com Website: https://www.vpsserver.com/
Read the original post:
VPSServer.com Expects Rapid Growth in 2017 - Satellite PR News (press release)