Big data analytics software developer Kyligence this week unveiled Kyligence Cloud 4, the first cloud-native release of the companys AI-enhanced analytics platform that can deliver sub-second response time against petabytes of data.

The company is the latest of a number of database and data analytics companies to offer their software through the cloud. Kyligence Cloud 4 is available on the Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure platforms.

The whole point is sub-second interactive queries against very large datasets. Its about performance for analytics in the cloud, said George Demarest, Kyligence head of marketing, speaking of the companys new software in an interview with CRN.

[Related: 10 Hot Big Data Companies You Should Watch In 2021]

The Kyligence system is based on Apache Kylin, an open-source, distributed analytics engine for performing multi-dimensional analysis on huge datasets. The original Kylin technology was developed by the founders of Kyligence (Kylin plus intelligence) who founded the company to provide a commercial version of the technology with added capabilities and services.

Kyligence, with headquarters in San Jose, Calif., and Shanghai, China, was launched in 2016. The company has raised $48 million in funding.

A key selling point of the Kyligence system is its OLAP functionality that pre-aggregates data in multi-dimensional indexes or cubes, greatly speeding up queries and analysis of data. The system can handle datasets in cloud-based data warehouses and data lakes with hundreds of terabytes and even multiple petabytes of data.

While Kyligence is competing with cloud data warehouse service providers such as Snowflake and AWS, customers are also using the companys software in conjunction with those platforms to pre-aggregate data to cut down on billable computation time with those vendors, said Li Kang, head of Kyligence, North America, in the CRN interview.

The more you run those queries, the more money you save, Li said.

Earlier versions of Kyligence were closely tied to the Hadoop big data platform. But Demarest said later editions, culminating with the Cloud 4 release, have reduced that dependence as Hadoop has become less popular for big data tasks.

The new Kyligence Cloud 4 offers the elasticity that comes with a cloud-native architecture and the separate scaling of compute and storage functions, Li said. It also allows Kyligence to take advantage of cloud clusters and cloud object storage systems.

New in the Cloud 4 release is an AI-augmented engine that uses machine learning algorithms and auto-indexing, leveraging query history and previous user behavior to continually improve performance.

The release also offers data modeling automation to reduce data preparation time for data science and data analysis workloads. Demarest said the new capabilities can reduce data preparation from days or weeks to hours or even minutes.

A new unified semantic service in Cloud 4 creates a single, consolidated view across data sources that can be easily accessed by SQL business analysis tools like Tableau, Excel or custom-built SQL applications. (Kyligence provides its own lightweight data analysis tool for accessing data in the Kyligence system.)

And new Smart Pushdown functionality provides intelligence query routing to improve query performance, even for ad hoc or detailed queries, and eliminates the need to move data for data discovery and exploration.

Kyligence sells both direct and through channel resellers and works with systems integrators (including global systems integrator Cognizant) and other implementation partners. Technology partners include cloud and data management platform vendors and business analysis tool and application developers.

Read more:
Kyligence Launches Cloud-Native Edition Of Its Big Data Platform - CRN

With all the goings-on at Google and people looking for alternate cloud storage options, sometimes its easier to just be your own cloud. I use Resilio Sync for this, but that does usually mean building up a dedicated PC. The Amber X wants to simplify that process with an inexpensive cloud-storage-in-a-box solution that lets you store your data and retrieve it anywhere.

Amber X is currently running on Indiegogo, where its long since passed its goal. It has a couple of days left to go, with pledges starting at $129. But weve got you a special link thatll let you get your hands on one for just $119 about the same cost youd pay for a year of Google Photos or iCloud for the same storage, except theres no subscription with this!

Amber Xs cloud storage system is focused heavily on Privacy. All your data is stored locally on your Amber X device and is never stored on AmberCloud itself and nobody can see your data not even the Amber team, so theres no need to worry about whos looking at your photos and video. AmberCloud is simply a means to let your mobile device see your Amber X sitting at home and to make the connection.

The Amber X unit itself contains 500GB of internal SSD storage, but you can add virtually unlimited storage to the device using external USB SSDs and hard drives. While it will let you back up just about anything, its designed primarily to let you back up your camera roll. Once your device is synced, all your photos and videos are automatically backed up to the devices internal SSD.

Setting up is simple. Just plug in power and add it to your home network. Download the app for either iOS, Android, Windows or macOS and run through the setup process. After that, away you go. Once backed up, your photos and videos are automatically organised by the systems built-in AI, which lets you then filter and view images sorted by location, faces detected, which device they were created with, when and more. And, if you wish, you can share select folders, images and videos with specific people that only you allow.

Overall it looks like a neat, self-contained solution to the cloud backup issue faced by just about anybody who shoots photos or videos with their phone. And when youre at home with your device, youre not limited by Internet speeds, so you can back up quickly. And if you run out of space, you can just add another hard drive.

Amber X is already being manufactured and is currently on Indiegogo with a couple of days left. Heres a secret link for DIYP readers, thatll get you $10 off the normal Super Early Bird price, bringing it down from $129 to $119. Shipping is expected to begin in February 2021.

See more here:
Amber X is a privacy-focused in-home cloud storage for your photos you can access anywhere - DIYphotography

Google Drive has updated its search functionality for mobile users, which should make it quicker and easier for you to find the files you need. The latest changes will see intelligent search suggestions offered within the Android and iOS versions of the Drive app, based on factors like past searches and frequently accessed files.

Were launching new features for the Google Drive mobile apps that will help you search more quickly and efficiently, a Google Workspace update explained. Now, Android and iOS users with the latest versions of the Drive app will be able to: See and re-run recent desktop and mobile searches; [and] view and select intelligent suggestions as they type, including suggestions for people, past searches, and keywords, as well as recently accessed files.

Google notes that the launch of the new search features has been driven by workplace shifts brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic. With more people working away from their desks, it has become increasingly important that they can find files quickly using their smartphone.

The coronavirus pandemic has forced businesses to enable remote working on a mass scale, with social distancing measures being enforced around the world. In this new world of work, cloud computing has become vital in allowing organizations to continue operating while keeping their employees safe.

The pandemic has also heightened competition among cloud solution providers, however, leading many to update their service offerings. In addition to the new search functionality, Google Drive also recently tweaked how Microsoft Office documents were edited on the platform.

Google Drives updated search function will be made available for all Google Workspace and G Suite users over the next couple of weeks, providing they have the latest version of the app installed and have the Web and App Activity privacy option enabled within their Google account.

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Google is finally making it easier to search your Drive cloud storage on mobile - TechRadar

In 2014, data wasdeclaredthe oil of the digital economy, and the analogy remained accurate until recently. In 2020, however, data reflected oil only in the parallels to the2020 oil glut too much production, not enough consumption, and the wholesale commoditization of storage.

Today, the overriding demand is for datas refined end product business insight. And the most crucial link in the data insights supply chain is compute power.

This makes the infrastructure of CPU cycles that enables distillation of value from mountains of data the new oil of the digital economy. And its driving some dramatic changes in the computing hardware ecosystem. Heres what I mean:

Cloud vendors like AWS came to understand that the core differentiation of their offerings had little to do with data itself and everything to do with what customers can get from their data. Yet deriving value from massive datasets spread across multiple cloud storage instances, and leveraging advanced AI and ML-poweredgraphanalytics and other analytics, takes a lot of processing juice.

The exponential growth in demand for processing capacity (and the costs associated with it) was what initially drove organizations to move to the cloud. Yet once the move to the cloud was a fait accompli, cloud vendors could take a long, hard look at their own processing capabilities.

What they saw was that processing was the hands-down biggest variable cost in the cloud environment. And they realized that buy versus build priorities had flipped. Just as Amazon had verticalizeddeliveries lowering costs and competing with UPS and FedEx cloud vendors could verticalize chipmaking, or outsource to competitors other than Intel and AMD.

So they did.

AWS dipped its toes in the silicon watersin 2018, when it began offering services over its first gen Graviton chips, which were designed with technology licensed from Arm (which NVIDIA is in the process of acquiring). This year, AWS dove headfirst into the chip pool, launching services based on Graviton2 which are touted as massively faster and cheaper than its Intel-based offerings. AWS also announced a new ARM-based supercomputing servicetwo weeks ago.

In 2017, Microsoft announced it was committing to use chips based on Arm-based technology for cloud purposes. It was among the first to test the Altra processor from Arm server CPU start-up Ampere in March, actively evaluating the chips capacities in their labs to help bolster Microsofts hyperscale data centers. Two years ago, Google launched its Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) 3.0, a custom application specific processor to accelerate machine learning and model training.

Meanwhile, Appleannounced in Junethat it would gradually transition away from Intel-based chipsets in its personal computers, and more recently stated it was going to produce its owncellular modem chipstoo.

What were seeing is the decoupling of processing power from its traditional members-only club. Like oil, compute power is moving the direction of storage and other commodity services. And just like airlines care deeply about oil prices, inasmuch as oils derivatives are a pillar of their service offering, enterprises will look at computing power as a means to an end.

Cloud vendors will relentlessly pursue ever-cheaper processing power. The entire compute layer will be commoditized, and well see apps routinely running across tens of thousands of CPUs in parallel. Companies that embrace multicloud will be able to split processing intensive tasks between providers, based on highly-competitive and micro-segmented incremental pricing.

Computing power will become a commodity in the full and traditional sense of the word, too. It will betradedon markets like any metal, energy, livestock, or agricultural commodity. Traders will be able toarbitrageprocessing cycles and hedge with processingfutures.

This shift will force cloud vendors to rethink themselves. Differentiation will be based on computing cycle availability and the quality of the algorithms used for AI/ML analysis.

What does all this mean for Intel and AMD? Unless they make some radical changes, I think the expression old soldiers never die, they just fade away may be apt. Considerhigh streetretail, whose demise began with the advent of widespread e-retail and accelerated during the pandemic. With the shift to cloud computing, the demand for CPU power on the desktop and in the data center will continue to shrink. And if cloud vendors make their own processing power, we could see traditional chipmakers go the way ofSears.

The burgeoning demand for insights from the petabytes of data that continues to flood into enterprise cloud storage is completely reshaping the computing ecosystem. As cloud vendors step into new verticals to take control of their computing supply chain, the old order of processors stands before a time of dramatic and fundamental change.

David Richards is co-founder and CEO ofWANdisco.

Read the rest here:
Why cloud vendors are investing in new sources of compute power - VentureBeat

Jessica Haworth16 December 2020 at 14:01 UTC Updated: 17 December 2020 at 14:40 UTC

Ume University research group held sensitive information on insecure cloud storage

A Swedish university has been fined SEK550,000 ($66,000) for storing sensitive personal information in the cloud without sufficiently protecting the data.

Ume University, in mid-northern Sweden, violated the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by failing to properly secure data related to a research study on male sexual health, the Swedish Data Protection Authority has ruled.

A research group had gained access to preliminary police reports concerning cases of male rape, a statement from the regulator reads.

On receiving the files, the university group scanned and stored them digitally in a US cloud storage service, despite the institution informing faculty members via its intranet that such sensitive files should not be stored in this way.

Read more of the latest GRPR news and breaches

The reports contained information on the suspicion of crime, name, personal identity number, and contact details, as well as sensitive data about sexual life and overall health.

In another incident, the research group sent an email to the police requesting further information with one of the scanned reports attached as a reference.

The research group later repeated this action, despite the fact that the police pointed out the inappropriateness in sending sensitive material in unencrypted emails, the report states.

Linda Hamidi, who led the investigation by the Swedish Data Protection Authority, said that the cloud service and the way the university uses it does not provide sufficient protection for this type of personal data.

The report reads: These events show that the university has not taken necessary measures to ensure a level of security appropriate in relation to the risk.

Ume University was also faulted for failing to report the data breach under GDPR laws, which came into effect in May 2018.

The report adds: The Swedish Data Protection Authority also criticizes the university for failing to report the incident as a personal data breach.

The controller is obliged to notify the DPA of data breaches and furthermore to present to us what has been done to mitigate the effects of the incident and to prevent similar incidents from happening in the future.

READ MORE Healthcare security woes: More than 45 million medical images openly accessible online

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Swedish university fined $66,000 for GDPR violations - The Daily Swig