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Storage 2022: Active archiving, ML-enabled volumes on the rise – ZDNet

December 22, 2021 | Author: admin

Add another "certainty in life" to the conventional death and taxes: the continued growth of structured and unstructured data in clouds, data centers, and personal devices.

With the streams of files and data emanating from sensors, cameras, connected machines, and people and with the world's population continuing to increase at an average of 81 million individuals per year the storage business will never lack for customers.

But storage pricing isn't getting cheaper for volume discounts, as it did during the cloud era a decade or so ago.

So people are seeking alternatives for the increasing cost of cloud storage along with affiliated fees for egress and data protection. One of them is active archiving, in which data initially stored in a cloud (or multiple clouds) is automatically shipped to cold-storage tape archives after a set period of time. Digital tape storage is far less expensive than any cloud system, and its security is mostly airtight. New and more efficient connections between cloud and digital tape mark a significant trend for the coming year.

With this in mind, here are storage industry leaders' predictions about the state of storage in 2022:

As data grows both in size and importance on-premises storage use will expand in parallel, growing into indispensable infrastructure for a variety of reasons, including security, performance, regulation, cost, and latency. On-premises storage will serve all these critical needs, while the cold and warm storage move to the cloud.

We will see continuous progress and innovation in the segment of on-prem computing and storage, as well as with innovation on the edge all driven by the need for 5G base stations, autonomous driving, and associated costs. It will be impossible to store all this data in the cloud. Dr. Hao Zhong, Co-founder and CEO,ScaleFlux

Both data crawler technology and AI are not new. But they are both getting extremely quick, and equally, if not more importantly, they are becoming fast and accurate. They can enable organizations to identify optimal storage classes within hours of a creation event, as opposed to days or weeks.

The obvious integration with InfoGov and storage mediums will be apparent with the changing classification of storage: what can be figured out after data is created, and what must be figured out before data is created. This may not reshape the way InfoGov principles are articulated, but it has the immediate capacity to modify the Information Governance Maturity Model (IGMM), where storage and disposition become altered by AI. Plus, with 45TB of storage space (LTO-9) and 3.5TB/hour transfer speeds, large, cyber-nervous storage users may increasingly opt to put active archive data on tape rather than the cloud. Brendan Sullivan, Founder and CEO, SullivanStrickler

In 2022, more organizations will roll out a new cloud class known as "Tape as Object Storage" or "Tape as Cloud." Tape as Cloud allows organizations to archive data to a remote cloud storage provider via a cloud API protocol, such as S3. Data is written to tape remotely, and that media is periodically removed and stored offline as an ultimate disaster recovery copy.

Tape as cloud is very economical and can be used as part of a multi-cloud solution, in which organizations send data to two or more cloud storage providers, or as part of a hybrid cloud solution, where an on-premise cloud storage solution is used with remote Tape as Cloud. Dave Thomson, Senior VP Sales and Marketing, QStar Technologies

In 2020 and 2021, we saw CPU utilization and network bandwidth increases driven into the data center in response to a highly-remote workforce. This increased consumption comes at a cost, with data centers worldwide contributing hundreds of millions of tons of yearly CO2e emissions globally. The IT industry is the focus for this contribution.

In 2022, we will see organizations that provide and utilize data center services challenged to show measurable progress on sustainability. Reusable energy production and usage is just a start. Organizations will be looking at how products support sustainability outcomes. Data storage on tape will lead the sustainability outcomes, providing data storage at scale that reduces CO2e emissions by up to 90% compared to hard disks and flash. Kiyoshi Urabe, Manager, IBM Tape Product Management

For several years, the data storage industry has recognized a need for increased automation in storage systems management. This need is amplified by data growth and by predicted shortages in skilled human resources needed to manage these mountains of data. Industry reports have predicted that storage administrators will have to manage 50 times more data in the next decade but with only a 1.5X increase in the number of skilled personnel.

The integration of AI/MLOps (artificial intelligence and machine-learning operations) into large-scale data storage offerings will increasingly emerge to help administrators offload and automate processes and to find and reduce waste to increase overall storage management efficiency. MLOps can monitor and provide predictive analytics on common manual tasks, such as capacity utilization, pending component failures, and storage inefficiencies. These innovations wouldn't be possible without the application of ML techniques and their ability to consume and "train" from extremely granular system logs and event data during real-time operations. Paul Speciale, CMO, Scality

As IT budgets lag data growth rates, pressure builds for creative ways to cost-effectively store, manage, and extract value from more of this data. Emerging architectures and services blur the lines between cold and warm data, with high-performance access and simpler cost models allowing for more effective use of cold data sets.

Solutions will be deployed within an organization's own data center or colocation facility to maintain data within in-house security parameters and to meet data residency requirements. New erasure coding algorithms optimized specifically for cold storage will enhance data protection and durability for long-term retention, while reducing storage costs significantly versus multi-copy and cloud-based solutions. Tim Sherbak, Enterprise Products and Solutions Manager, Quantum

Organizations with large volumes of unstructured data will continue to find that a tape-based active archive is their most cost-effective option, rather than using a public cloud service. Data tape libraries provide a low TCO (total cost of ownership) due to the low cost per TB of the cartridges themselves and the low system power requirements, which remain an important element, alongside disk and management software, in high-capacity active archive systems.

For users who need remote access to on-premises active archives, solutions that offer an object storage interface will gain traction because they allow the archive to be securely shared by remote users and other facilities. Unlike most public cloud services, tape-based active archives avoid unpredictable and costly egress fees. Philip Storey, CEO, XenData

A big theme of 2022 in database management will be enterprises finding new machine learning-powered paths to optimization. It's an important trend that should help enterprises burst through traditional limitations set by inflexible data design and data usage trends humans can't foresee. Database admins, once saddled with the unenviable task of producing optimized and performant queries based on imperfect knowledge, will get welcome relief from ML solutions that can intuit where data resides using reliably predictive models.

I also expect this capability will go further, with ML creating entirely optimized data indexes and automatically handling reindexing and storage management. Whereas AIOps (similarly ML-powered solutions for operations and predictive maintenance) shows some signs of sputtering as a much-anticipated technology, predictive database management should find the brighter destiny as a crucial component of any database operations strategy once its training sets are appropriately refined. Anil Inamdar, VP & Global Head of Data,Instaclustr

Organizations are challenged with extraordinary data growth that is creating a need to balance the cost of storage and the speed of access literally what data, at what time, should be stored on what storage medium. Cloud is changing the way organizations not only store but use their data.

The question isn't cloud or not, but what data needs to be in the cloud, on-prem, or both, and when. Workflows are getting more complex, and the seamless integration of applications, regardless of location, needs to be supported. Active Archive solutions solve the issue of utilizing a more cost-effective storage tier, making data available and searchable, and taking advantage of cloud and on-prem solutions in a unified platform. Betsy Doughty, VP of Marketing, Spectra Logic

Health-care knowledge and reliance will expand in the active archive space as more and more organizations look to mine data for improved patient safety and use data to improve treatments and patient outcomes. COVID treatments and diagnoses data found in the active archives of health organizations will become extremely valuable for insurance and CMS audits of payments related to the pandemic. -- Dr. Kel Pults, Chief Clinical Officer, MediQuant

As predicted, 2021 saw the introduction of innovative HDD technologies that continue to push the boundaries on capacity, performance, and reliability. We expect the approximately 30% CAGR of data generated will be sustained in 2022 and fuel the ongoing need for long-term retention and the protection of valuable unstructured data assets.

Resource disaggregation and composability will continue to proliferate, along with new standards and methods to make better use of CPU, GPU, memory, storage, and networking resources. With these technology trends in play, large and long-term active archive solutions will leverage the low TCO and cost-effective benefits of disk resource consolidation as well as tape because of its long-term standing in this space. -- Mark Pastor, Director, Platform Product Management, Western Digital

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Storage 2022: Active archiving, ML-enabled volumes on the rise - ZDNet

What schools need to know about data and the cloud – TES News

December 22, 2021 | Author: admin

Schools rely on data for many of their operations, including everything from payroll processing to tracking student performance and progress. Much of this data is personal and sensitive. As such, it needs to be protected.

Ensuring data in schools is being used and kept correctly can seem like a daunting task, so how do you ensure that your data storage is up to scratch?

We spoke to two data protection experts to find out whether cloud storage could be the solution to keeping schools' data secure and what school leaders should consider before making the leap.

GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) came into full effect in May 2018, modernising previous data protection rules. These rules were almost two decades old and struggled for relevance as modern lives went online and became increasingly data-heavy.

"Education is a sector that likes to hold on to data 'just in case' and where teachers often took historical data with them when moving schools to help make their case for pay progression," says Tony Sheppard, former head of services at GDPR in Schools and founder of My Data Protection World.

However, with the arrival of GDPR, that changed - or, at least, it should have.

"We see some very good practice and a lot of common sense prevailing, thankfully, but I would still say that data protection and privacy are the forgotten element of risk within schools," he says.

"If you're a commercial company with a sales database, there's a lot of very clear and specific guidance out there for you to apply. In education, we have to work a bit harder to find those resources and that can make the task intimidating."

Cloud storage can be an effective option for schools looking for a solution to their data issues - but what exactly is it?

"Put simply, cloud storage allows users to store their data remotely on servers run by a specialist provider," says Sarah Lyons, deputy director for economy and society at theNational Cyber Security Centre (NCSC).

"Just as with a physical storage locker, a customer effectively leases storage space from the provider - and then sends their files over via the internet."

Cloud storage offers an additional alternative to storing data locally - for example, on a school computer - and provides a number of benefits when configured properly, such as improving the availability of data when not on-site and supplying a remote backup.

"Storing data remotely can be helpful in the event of a cyber incident, as the data is stored away from any infected computers on site. It can help protect against physical security issues, such as theft or fire, too," Lyons adds.

"There can be a temptation to try to control as much of your IT as possible on-site," says Lyons. "But having physical control of your computers and data is not the same as securing it effectively, and the right cloud storage provider may be able to help do this better."

When configured properly, cloud storage can offer many security advantages to schools, as the service is managed by the provider, which should understand how to keep it secure and have dedicated resources.

However, schools still have a responsibility for keeping the data secure by managing who can access the cloud and configuring settings to prevent sensitive data from being made public accidentally.

Sheppard agrees. "Schools cannot pass off their risk to someone else," he says. "A good provider will be open and transparent about their responsibilities and support the school's data protection officer in fulfilling theirs."

The NCSC also reminds school users that they should continue to follow good cyber security practices, including using strong passwords and having two-factor authentication set up on cloud accounts to prevent unauthorised access.

When considering deploying new technologies, it is important for school leaders to weigh up the benefits and risks, and then discuss this with their IT team or supplier.

A range of cyber security guidance and resources for schools is available on the NCSC's website, including advice aimed at helping governors ask questions to better understand their school's cyber security.

The NCSC's cloud security guidance offers further advice on how to configure, deploy and use cloud services securely, as well as tips on how to gain confidence in suppliers handling cyber security issues.

Lyons explains further. "Every organisation will have different security needs but schools might find it helpful to ask cloud storage providers questions including: is the data encrypted at rest as well as in transit - to reduce the risk of unauthorised access? How is access to the data managed - as this will be the school's responsibility? And what protocols are in place at the provider for accessing data if there is an issue to resolve?"

When looking for a provider, Sheppard encourages schools to seek out helpful online communities and resources for word of mouth recommendations and advice.

"The Information and Records Management Society has also produced a toolkit to help schools manage their data. It's comprehensive and user-friendly, and makes a great starting point," he says.

"Transparency and clarity are vital, as are strong testimonials and plenty of real-world examples of how they've helped schools with their data storage issues," he adds. "And communication is vital, with both parties needing to understand their roles, responsibilities and the operational instructions involved."

Never Lose a File Again With 3 Years of Cloud Backups for $18 – PCMag.com

December 22, 2021 | Author: admin

Many of us have gotten used to simply dumping irreplaceable media and information onto our phone, and we need to stop taking that storage for granted. Luckily, there's an easy way to make sure those files are protected.

Cloud storage is readily available and necessary for folks working online. The trick is finding the right service, and in terms of accessibility and security,G Cloud Mobile Backupstands out in a crowded field.

With this service, there's no cost for extra devices, and you don't even need an app to access your files. Simply sign up for an account using any web browser and start syncing your data. G Cloud keeps all media and documents on Amazon's AWS infrastructure, secured behind military-grade encryption. Once you're signed up, play media files, transfer or share photos directly through your account, and more.

Not only does the platform store your files, it makes for an easy transition from one device to another. With a tap or two, you can restore contacts and other info from an old phone to a new one, whether it's Android or iOS. And with a streamlined file manager, you'll be able to search all your photos chronologically, no matter what folder they were in.

Want to try it for yourself? PCMag readers can get a three-year subscription to the G Cloud Mobile Backup 100GB Plan for $17.9974% off the $71 MSRP.

Prices subject to change.

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Top 5 Ways to Disable OneDrive in Windows 11 – Guiding Tech

December 22, 2021 | Author: admin

Microsofts OneDrive cloud storage is tightly integrated into Windows 11. Its the default choice for Microsoft 365 subscribers out there. However, not everyone is invested in the Microsoft ecosystem, and some might be using Google Drive, Dropbox, or iCloud to keep files safe. If you are among those, you should disable OneDrive in Windows 11.

When you sign in to your Windows computer, OneDrive automatically syncs in the background. It has a high energy impact as well. Before OneDrive starts syncing files to the cloud and eats all your internet bandwidth, you must disable it completely.

This is a temporary and quick solution to the OneDrive service on Windows 11. If you want to pause OneDrive sync for a couple of hours, you can easily do so from the Windows 11 taskbar.

Step 1: Click on the OneDrive icon in Windows 11 taskbar.

Step 2: Click on OneDrive Help & Settings.

Step 3: Select Pause Syncing and click on 2 hours, 8 hours, or 24 hours.

Unfortunately, there are only three timeframes. We hope to see more options to pause OneDrive syncing in future updates 10 hours, 12 hours, 48 hours, etc.

If you are no longer planning to use OneDrive on a specific PC or Windows laptop, you can unlike your Microsoft account from it.

You will continue to remain signed in for other Microsoft services such as Office apps, Microsoft Store, etc., but OneDrive will be unliked from the PC.

Step 1: Select the OneDrive icon from the taskbar.

Step 2: Select Help & Settings.

Step 4: Under the Account menu, select Unlink this PC.

Step 5: Confirm your decision, and OneDrive files will stop syncing. Locally available files will remain on this device, removing online-only files.

This is ideal for those using OneDrive rivals on Windows. Now that Google has got their shit together and released a single Drive for desktop, Google One subscribers might be inclined to give it a try on Windows 11.

In that case, you may no longer need OneDrive on Windows 11. Uninstall the service using the steps below.

Step 1: Open the Windows Settings app (use Windows + I keys).

Step 2: Go to the Apps menu.

Step 3: Select Apps & Features.

Step 4: Scroll down to Microsoft OneDrive.

Step 5: Click on the three-dot menu beside it and select Uninstall.

Confirm your decision and you are good to go without OneDrive on Windows 11.

Click here to see our onedrive articles page

OneDrive has a high energy impact during Windows 11 startup process. If you are no longer using OneDrive in Windows 11, its time to disable OneDrive at startup. Heres how.

Step 1: Open the Windows Settings menu (use Windows + I keys).

Step 2: Select Apps from the left sidebar.

Step 3: Click on Startup.

Step 4: Disable OneDrive from the following menu.

While you are in the Startup menu, check all the services starting automatically during Windows 11 startup. Adobe services, VPN, and apps like Teams, Spotify, Slack, etc., have a habit of starting up during login. It may slow down your computer as well. Disable irrelevant ones and speed up the login process.

Microsoft allows you to disable the OneDrive service from Group Policy Editor. Heres what you need to do.

Step 1: Press the Windows key and type Group policy.

Step 2: You will see an option to Edit group policy, hit Enter, and open Local Group Policy Editor.

Step 3: Navigate to the following path.

Step 4: Double click on Prevent the usage of OneDrive for file storage.

Step 5: Select Enabled from Policy settings.

Step 6: Click on Apply and hit the OK button.

Users have an option to disable OneDrive via Registry Editor as well. But we wont recommend going with that route. A single mistake may lead to messing up core Windows services.

Now that iCloud is officially available from the Microsoft Store, it can be an ideal solution for iPhone users to sync iCloud passwords and media on Windows 11. Which OneDrive rival are you going to use in Windows 11? Share your pick in the comments below.

Last updated on 21 Dec, 2021The above article may contain affiliate links which help support Guiding Tech. However, it does not affect our editorial integrity. The content remains unbiased and authentic.

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Top 5 Ways to Disable OneDrive in Windows 11 - Guiding Tech

Norton 360 Deluxe is the best way to stay secure this holiday season – Tech Advisor

December 22, 2021 | Author: admin

The biggest shopping season of the year is here, although the internet has fundamentally changed the way most of us approach it. Online retail has become the main way to buy Christmas presents or take advantage of a great deal, but there are serious risks associated with it.

Many sites actively track user behaviour in order to provide a more optimised experience, while cybercriminals are primed to exploit any security weaknesses and access your personal data. This is far from limited to web browsing; emails, online banking and gaming are all targeted on a regular basis. Its no coincidence that these are tools many of us use every single day.

Individual websites, apps and operating systems all take steps to reduce this threat, but this is often not enough. Its vital to bolster your online security with dedicated software Norton 360 Deluxe is an excellent option, delivering a comprehensive solution to protect all your devices.

A single subscription gets you access to a wide range of security features, but Norton is probably best known for its antivirus. It consistently ranks as one of the very best services of its type, protecting against 100% of malware according to independent research from AV-Test.

You can help reduce the chances of this happening with other key Norton 360 Deluxe features. The built-in Secure VPN (virtual private network) encrypts the connection between your device and a server on the internet, making it much harder for your online activity to be tracked. This is crucial while using public Wi-Fi, where weak security can leave you vulnerable to attacks.

Cybercriminals often turn to the so-called dark web to make money from the personal information they acquire, as it cant be found using regular search engines. Nortons Dark Web Monitoring constantly checks this area of the internet, alerting you if anything is found that could be used to identify. This can be customised to your liking, ranging from email addresses and phone numbers to physical addresses and official ID.

On PC and Mac, Nortons Smart Firewall helps provide protection at the source. Any time youre connected to the internet, itll keep tabs on all the network traffic your device sends and receives. Should anything suspicious be detected, itll be blocked before you can even access it. This is an effective way to protect your personal files and data, and its rare for a safe website to be mistakenly blocked.

Youve probably heard about the dangers of hackers spying on you via your webcam. Using software known as spyware, cybercriminals can take photos of you without you ever knowing. On Windows, Norton 360s SafeCam feature provides a crucial line of defence against this activity any unauthorised access to your built-in webcam is blocked by default.

The importance of a password manager is also well documented. All Norton subscriptions have an effective included in the cost, providing an easy way to generate, store and enter unique passwords that are almost impossible to guess. These are securely located within an encrypted vault, which just one master password required to access them all.

Norton 360 provides you with a comprehensive set of tools to help you stay safe online. But its security features extend far beyond this. If youre using a Windows machine, you can take advantage of PC Cloud Backup, which securely stores your files in the cloud for remote access from anywhere.

There are also a range of Parental Control tools, which help you monitor and manage childrens screen time. This works alongside a School Time feature, which enables more focused remote work by blocking distractions during usual school hours.

This is an excellent level of functionality within a single subscription, with many features available across all your devices. Norton 360 supports all recent Windows and macOS devices, alongside well as dedicated apps for Android and iOS (known here as Norton Mobile Security). This works alongside a range of browser extensions for the likes of Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Edge.

Apple devices are often considered to be more secure than their Windows or Android counterparts, but effective security software is still vital to stay protected against the wide range of modern security threats.

Norton 360 Deluxe can be installed on up to 5 devices and includes 50GB of cloud storage, while the Premium tier increases this to 10 and 75GB respectively. As well as being limited to 2 devices and 25GB of storage, the Standard plan also misses out on the Parental Control, School Time and Dark Web Monitoring features.

Whichever you choose, Norton 360 is the best way to stay secure online this holiday season and beyond. However, the Deluxe plan hits the sweet spot in terms of features and price for most people. A one-year plan is currently available for just 24.99 (34.99 thereafter), representing excellent value for money.

Get Norton 360 Deluxe from the Norton website now.

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Norton 360 Deluxe is the best way to stay secure this holiday season - Tech Advisor

Why the serverless office is the next phase of cloud computing for banking and finance – Global Banking And Finance Review

December 22, 2021 | Author: admin

By Owen Morris, Operations Director at Doherty Associates, experts in building cloud-based modern workplaces for the finance industry

Before the first UK lockdown, 43% of companies had no intention of migrating to the cloud completely, although many if not most had migrated some services to the cloud. However, spurred on by the rapid digital transformation throughout the pandemic, half of businesses including those in the finance sector, are now streamlining their migration plans amid the growing hybrid workforce, rising cyber-attacks, and the need to drive employee engagement and collaboration.

For most banking and finance firms, we believe that hybrid working is here to stay, and the most common state will be users working partly from home and partly from the office driven both by hard-won experience of this way of working during the pandemic and a realisation that productivity can be maintained or even grown through digital initiatives.

In order to achieve the same employee experience wherever the person physically is, applications and data need to be available identically whether in the office or at home. In many ways, the home worker was treated in the past as a second-class citizen, with those able to contact servers across local networks getting a much better experience to those without. Achieving parity of experience requires solutions that take connectivity to resources away from the office or datacentre. A great way to do this is to move them to the cloud.

It may sound counterintuitive to start with users and devices when reading an article all about getting rid of servers, but the location of our users or those of our partners and suppliers has been the biggest change brought about by the pandemic and the subsequent move to hybrid working. It has been a long while since finance professionals only accessed systems from offices, but we must now assume that our applications and data will mostly be accessed from devices located in insecure locations such as employees homes, while travelling and at public locations without the benefit of corporate firewalls, and at great risk from theft or data loss.

Fortunately, cloud management software and next-generation antivirus products can help finance firms implement strong controls so that we can know that the people accessing our data are who they say they are and are accessing from devices that meet our compliance goals.

Virtual Desktop environments can sometimes provide a more managed experience and can be heavily locked down but do rely on a network connection and will not support offline scenarios (such as travel).

By controlling the device and user we can implement controls that ensure that finance professionals have the right level of access to systems wherever they are. For example, we can mandate that users are using multi-factor authentication, so we can be sure they are the actual person, are running the most recent patches to avoid drive-by attacks or have encrypted disks so that we can be sure our data is safe on the machines.

Different systems and data can also have different sets of controls applied for example, highly sensitive information might be restricted to corporately provided devices, from specific known locations or for a restricted access period with logged actions.

The quickest win for firms in terms of ease of use is often getting unstructured data into cloud storage this means the files and documents that we all generate day to day hosted in cloud storage. Doing this means that employees always have access to the data they need immediately, from financial models to merger and acquisition contracts, across multiple devices and can share and work collaboratively with colleagues no matter where they are through features like multi-user editing. Being able to search quickly across your company data through the platforms search engine is a real productivity benefit.

We find that many finance firms accumulate data such as information about companies, market intelligence and their previous work for clients, without really considering what use the data could be put to later. A cloud migration can be a good opportunity to decide what data should be kept and what is important to the business. When migrating data, consider your retention policies defined under GDPR and enforce them using the capabilities of your cloud storage platform. For cost reasons, think about what data might need to be retained but accessed infrequently and consider whether this could move to a second, cheaper storage platform in the public cloud.

The flip side of the coin to data is the systems and applications in use. A review of the application landscape is a good place to start when looking at these types of projects. A 22 matrix based on the age and business criticality of the system can be a good place to start. Old and business critical applications are often resistant to transformation, and it may be worth looking to make few changes to how the system operates when looking to migrate them to the cloud. Non-critical applications might instead be replaced cost-effectively with commercial Software-as-a-Service systems.

Migrating existing systems to SaaS cloud hosted versions of the same application can be a good method of achieving a quick migration and vendors will often offer a migration as a paid engagement.

Legacy applications are often difficult to transform so one very successful approach is to migrate the applications wholesale into the cloud, using migration tools to quickly setup identical resources in the cloud. This can also be a quick way to add extra resiliency through removing single points of failure for example, replicating servers or databases to standby systems in other locations using public cloud technologies.

Once the application is migrated, there are often ways to improve the way users connect to the application. This can allow the same set of security controls (such as enforcing multi-factor authentication, allow connection from trusted devices, etc) to be applied to older applications that would not support these controls. One common way is by putting an appliance between the user and the application that applies these controls before passing the traffic through (for example a proxy server or using remote desktop technologies).

Once applications are in the cloud, they can be exposed to a wider range of capabilities that are present in cloud platforms or through public cloud services. One example is the use of cloud integration tools can be used to connect seamlessly to the data and move it between systems in order to produce combined data sets. Cloud based data can be extracted and exposed to manage, self-service visualisation products. This allows financial executives to get better insight into how their businesses are working. Lastly, business users (Citizen Developers) can use low-code tools to create new applications operating on the data.

Following these steps will not only ensure that you finance firm can reap the rewards of a serverless office but transition safely, securely and cost effectively to a continuously available and equal employee experience whether working in the office, remotely or a blend of both.

The Global Distributed Cloud Storage Summit has officially opened with the presence of Hoo – Gulf News

December 22, 2021 | Author: admin

Image Credit: Supplied

The Global Distributed Cloud Storage Summit (DCS 2021) was officially opened at the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre in the United Arab Emirates on December 15, 2021. As a contributor and supporter of the underlying blockchain technology, Hoo was invited to attend the summit to discuss the future of the blockchain industry with other participating experts and companies. At the same time, a series of exhibits around the product matrix of Hoo will also be conducted.

This summit is a blockchain festival drawing in the best-in-blockchain industry from around the world, right in the heart of the UAE. It brings together key industry influencers, speakers, experts, and panelists from across the globe for three-day captivating keynote speeches, engaging Ted-Talk-style presentations, and insightful on-stage discussions with the core focus ranging from the enterprise as well as government adoption of Blockchain to its diversity and social impact in a fast-changing world.

Mubarak Al Shamsi, Director at the Abu Dhabi Convention and Exhibition Bureau said: Hosting the first Distributed Cloud Storage event in the UAE and welcoming over 20,000 delegates across three days will position Abu Dhabi firmly at the forefront for innovation in the blockchain and data storage space and will also cement the return of large-scale events to Abu Dhabis calendar. With visitors from all over the world, DCS 2021 will boost tourism and enhance economic development. It will further increase MICE travel out of key markets in Asia and Europe, ultimately contributing to Abu Dhabis goal of establishing itself as a leading global MICE destination.

It reflects the UAE's commitment to becoming a hub of global inclusivity and conveys the values of peace and coexistence in the country and the international community. Dedication, tolerance, fairness, transparency and coincide with the development concepts of blockchain and distributed storage industries. That is also the reason why Hoo has chosen the UAE as the first step in its globalization process.

Back in 2013, the UAE launched the 'Smart Dubai Initiative' in a bid to improve government efficiency using blockchain technology. In 2020, Dubai released Blockchain Strategy 2020, emphasizing the need to make Dubai the 'Blockchain Development Capital of the World'. On 22 September this year, the Dubai Securities and Commodities Authority empowered the Dubai World Trade Centre Authority to grant approvals and licenses for financial activities related to crypto assets in the jurisdiction.

The openness policy towards the crypto economy has allowed Dubai to attract numerous cryptocurrency exchanges. Hoo is one of them. A few months ago, Hoo established a partnership with the Dubai government. Using an entire office building provided by the Dubai government as its global operational center, Hoo is gradually developing its global operations from its base in the Middle East.

In addition to the policy reasons mentioned above, Dubai's geographical advantage was also an important reason for Hoo to choose it. Dubai has a vast market based on its geography and culture that can attract the attention of users from the Arabian Peninsula and Arab countries. Moreover, Dubai's central location in the Middle East, near to countries and regions such as Europe, Southeast Asia, and India, allows Hoo to provide services to compliant countries and regions around the world.

In the face of such a large user base, Hoo is constantly introducing new welfare policies to give its users a better experience. During this summit, Hoo has released a double benefit campaign to better welcome new users and give back to existing users

According to the official announcement, to give more users a better experience, Hoo is launching a double benefit campaign called "VIP Benefits Giveaway" and "Futures Experience Bonus Giveaway" from December 15, which is open to both new and existing users of Hoo. During the campaign period, newly registered users who complete their real name verification on the same day will be entitled to VIP2 benefits on Hoo. Registered users can enjoy Hoo VIP3 benefits by completing top-ups and other tasks. In addition, users can enjoy up to 200 USDT in experience bonus by completing Futures tasks.

Airbyte: Open-source ETL startup goes from zero to unicorn in 2 years Blocks and Files – Blocks and Files

December 22, 2021 | Author: admin

Michael Tricot and John Lafleur must be patting themselves on the back. In just under two years, their Airbyte startup has progressed from nothing to a $1.5 billion valuation and $181.2 million funding to develop its open-source Extract-Transform-and-Load (ETL) data analytics-feeding technology.

Airbyte started up in January 2020 with the aim of building open-source connectors from data sources to data lakes and warehouses. These would replace proprietary tools and also enable feeds from less popular data sources ignored by proprietary suppliers as being of too little value long tail connectors. Progress was rapid; within 17 months, Airbyte claims it caught up with the ETL incumbents with 150 connectors running Docker containers and deployable in minutes on any platform.

Co-founder and CEO Michael Tricot said: With the rise of the modern data warehouses, our mission is to power all the organisations data movement and doesnt end at ELT. By the end of 2022, we will cover more types of data movement, including reverse-ETL and streaming ingestion.

Tricot, a former director of engineering and head of integrations at Liveramp and RideOS, founded Airbyte with John Lafleur. Lafleur is described as a serial entrepreneur of dev tools and B2B technology. A year after starting it up, and in a 12-month period, they took in $6.2 million seed funding, then a $25 million A-round and, such was their progress, have just raised $150 million in a B-round. This B-round was led by Altimeter Capital and Coatue Management, also including Thrive Capital, Salesforce Ventures, Benchmark, Accel, SV Angel.

San Francisco-based Airbyte launched a compute time-based cloud service for its connectors in October. Its software enables businesses to create data pipelines from sources such as PostgreSQL, MySQL, Facebook Ads, Salesforce, Stripe, and connect to destinations that include Redshift, Snowflake, and BigQuery.

It also announced a community-based participative model in which it plans to share revenues with connector contributors. Airbyte expects to have a roster of 500 connectors by the end of 2022.

Jamin Ball, a partner at Altimeter Capital, provided a statement: Airbyte has already made a huge impact in a very short period of time and has more than 1,000 companies lined up to take advantage of its Airbyte Cloud data service that is starting to roll out. There is tremendous market momentum on top of Airbytes disruptive model to involve its users in building the ecosystem around its data integration platform.

Blocks and Files has never come across a startup until now, which, in less than 24 months, has gone from founding to a $1.5 billion valuation, and taken in $181.2 million across seed, A- and B-rounds in its second year.

In September, in the context of Fivetran raising $565 million in a single round, we talked about the notion of a funding frenzy for companies involved in sourcing and storing data for analytics. We calculate that 2021 saw a grand total of $6.3 billion in storage-related startup funding across 30 companies, with $5.0 billion of that going into data preparation and storage for analytics startups quite the funding frenzy.

Here is yet more evidence, with Airbyte, that the investing community is seeing an astoundingly vast opportunity in this field. Soon, it appears, virtually every enterprise on Earth will be gathering data about its sales and operations for analysis.

More here:
Airbyte: Open-source ETL startup goes from zero to unicorn in 2 years Blocks and Files - Blocks and Files

SupChina Have Apparently Raised US$1 Million From Crowd Funding. Is It A Good Investment? – Asia Business News – Asia Briefing

December 22, 2021 | Author: admin

Op-Ed Commentary by Chris Devonshire-Ellis December 20th, 2021

SupChina, yes the guys who borrowed the China Briefing title for a while last year until legal action took place, have apparently raised just slightly over US$1 million in an appeal to raise five times that.

Having obtained revenues of US$515,335 in 2020, they value the company at a jaw-dropping US$45 million. Yes, you read that correctly a multiple of ninety times their actual revenues from their last accounts. Their 2019 figures showed revenues of just US$503,288, meaning their sales shot up by an underwhelming US$12,047 over the year.

Nearly half of SupChinas revenues came from Events promotion, with titles such as Beyond Shang-Chi (about Chinese superheroes), Reading The Red New Deal (about entertainment in what they term Xi Jinpings Nanny State), Landing A Job At A Think Tank (making the most of your China skills), and Is The China Career Dead? and so on. Its not really groundbreaking stuff, and geared more to the low end grad school type of content, although a handful have touched on standard content business issues. None of it is particularly original or essential, nor anything that isnt covered elsewhere on other free access blogs.

The nature of SupChinas primary content is the same, with current headlines reading: A Star Workers Suicide At Tencent, Another Trial For The DOJs Troubled China Initiative and Chinas Cultural Crackdowns indicating that SupChina hasnt really progressed much from being an opinionated outlet for sub-standard writing. So, what does an investment in SupChina and remember they have raised US$1 million from over 100 investors buy them?

The Sup China prospectus, issued in late October this year, can be viewed here.

I make the following points based upon the contents shown in their prospectus:

Risk FactorsSupChina say We are a China-focused news, information, and businesses services platform, we provide nuanced, authentic, and context-based reporting on China without bias. We believe SupChina provides superior information, perspective and analysis about China that is necessary for the time period we are entering one in which Chinas rise will steadily increase its relevance for all of us.

Investors then may be surprised to note the fact that SupChina is blacklisted as a website in China and that they failed to mention this in their investor prospectus.

I discuss other highly problematic issues within their prospectus as follows:

PropertyThe company rented property until August, 2020. Due to COVID limitations, the company decided not to renew the lease and currently conducts its operations virtually.

Read: SupChina has no material assets. We all work from home.

Current Trading SituationWe may not have enough funds to sustain the business until it becomes profitable.

If the company cannot raise sufficient funds, it may not succeed

Read: We may shortly become insolvent.

We are in a reputation-based business

Note: Their earlier 2021 legal dispute with Asia Briefing over their unauthorized use of the trademarked China Briefing brand.

The company is focused on being a China content as well as services provider.

Note: This is hard to almost impossible to accomplish when the SupChina website is China blacklisted.

Our websites and internal networks may be vulnerable to unauthorized persons accessing our systems, which could disrupt our operations.

Read: We do not possess and have not invested in sufficient internal website or security systems.

Our founder has control over all stockholder decisions because she controls a substantial majority of our voting stock. We are selling non-voting shares.

Read: Investors have no say in their investment.

No guarantee of return on investment

Exactly what it says.

You cant easily resell the securities.

Read: No-one is likely to be interested in buying this stock from you.

The companys management has discretion as to use of proceeds. Future fundraising may affect the rights of investors.

Read: You have no say in how we use your money. If we call on you as a shareholder to invest more money into SupChina, should you not do so, we may dilute your equity.

Investors in this Offering may not be entitled to a jury trial with respect to claims

Read: As part of your investment with us you have signed away the easiest opportunity of litigating against us for any reason.

Use Of ProceedsSupChina provide a breakdown of where investors money will be spent, without acknowledging any debt. Interestingly, they state they intend to allocate just 10% of proceeds into their highest revenue earning sector, their Events program, which is responsible for nearly 50% of their total revenues.

Otherwise, 30% of the total investment is allocated to future content, which basically means meeting salary overheads. Over half the proceeds are allocated to future marketing, unspecified product development and administration.

Financial statementsThe companys net revenue for the year ended December 31, 2020 was $515,335. Operating expenses in 2020 amounted to $2,134,761, an 11.7% increase from $1,910,446 in 2019. The companys net loss from operations was $1,595,498 in 2020.

The Company has incurred significant operating losses since inception. As of December 31, 2020, the company had a working capital deficit of $7,206,611 and negative shareholders equity of $7,200,611.

The company had approximately $303,707 cash on hand as of December 31, 2020. Currently, we estimate our burn rate (net cash out) to be on average $120,000 per month.

Meaning: SupChina is operating at a substantial loss. Currently, there was a shortfall of $1,595,498 in 2020, against declared assets of $303,707. Based on the 2020 declared figures, just for that year alone the company was in the red to the tune of $1,291,791.

Interestingly, Anla Cheng, the majority shareholder, issued a thank you email all the 100+ investors SupChina attracted so far last week for a very similar investment sum to the entire 2020 loss. Way to go Anla!

It appears fairly obvious where investors money will go and that is not consistent with the Use of Proceeds statement, which contains no provision for meeting existing debt. That is significant because nowhere in the Prospectus does it state that SupChinas existing shareholders plan to invest. So, who is covering up the losses? SupChina shareholders or their new investors? And if it is the new investors, how will any of the Use of Proceeds allocations be met? These points remain unclear and are not unreasonable questions for any investor to ask.

Employee CostsA 14.5% increase in employee expenses to $963,706

Note SupChina states it employs ten full-time staff, meaning the average employee overheads are about $96,370. That is at a level comparable with journalists employed at the Wall Street Journaland is roughly double that of the average journalists salary in the United States.

Investor PerksSupChina Swag T-shirt or Mug

We kid you not. But there are invitations to future events should there actually be any. So far, they have listed just three for 2022.

DividendsWe have never declared or paid cash dividends on any of our capital stock and currently do not anticipate paying any cash dividends after this offering or in the foreseeable future.

As it says on the box. Investors are highly unlikely to ever receive anything back.

Annual reportsThe company has not filed annual reports to date

There are no company reports publicly available to verify anything.

Current StatusIn June 2021 the company has run into serious financial problems

This is admitted to in a non-finance related clause named Dilution, buried on page 22.

To be fair to SupChina, they have listed with the fairly significant exception of their being China blacklisted, which they must be well aware of all the problems with their business. These can be seen above and are many. However, it is obvious the business model is not working, and it is hard to see how without any significant changes to this that it has any chance of succeeding. Of especial concern are the very high salary overheads and the fact they only expect to reinvest 10% of their prospectus income into their core business their events, which as I noted represented half their 2020 revenues. With just three events scheduled between now and April 2022 the prognosis does not look good.

Is There A Case For SupChina Misrepresentation? What is more problematic however for those people who have already parted with their investments, is SupChinas non-disclosure in their investor prospectus of their true China status.

The SupChina investment round is taking place within the terms of the US Regulation Crowdfunding program, governed ultimately by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Within the rules for this are the following caveats for Disqualifying Events:

Disqualifying events include:

Many disqualifying events include a look-back period (for example, a court injunction that was issued within the last five years or a regulatory order that was issued within the last ten years). The look-back period is measured from the date of the disqualifying event for example, the issuance of the injunction or regulatory order and not the date of the underlying conduct that led to the disqualifying event to the date of the filing of an offering statement.

The SEC does not appear to make any distinction as to applicable jurisdictions under the phrase regulatory order or injunction, suggesting that Chinese injunctions against SupChina and the fact it is blocked in the country could apply. It would be an interesting point to debate should SupChina crowd funding investors feel this information was withheld, and had it not been, they may not have been persuaded to invest.

Within the SupChina prospectus, the name of the company, the term China, Chinese or SupChina appears 122 times. In reference to participation in China itself, the prospectus mentions numerous terms, amongst them:

China-focused news, information, and businesses services platform dedicated to helping the world understand China better by covering all news about the countrybusiness, society, culture, politics, and more.

A China-specific perspective

Featuring local Chinese sources and perspectives

A source of China-related information and insight

Around-the-clock content with contextual analysis

Again, these points can be argued. SupChina has no staff legitimately employed in China and is blacklisted there. If investors feel they should have been made aware of this prior to investing, complaints may be made directly to the SEC.

If I were given such a prospectus under these types of terms, I would view it as a desperate attempt to shore up the red losses and to try and persuade people to invest in an already problematic business model, that in SupChinas own words has serious financial problems.

Additionally, there is nothing in the prospectus that has any remedy for change. If a car is totally broken, theres no reason to keep filling it with gas. Unless you especially want a souvenir Mug or T-Shirt for doing so.

Readers can make up their own minds and view the prospectus themselves. The SupChina investor link is here.

Personally, it has to be one of the most outrageous investment offers Ive ever seen. SupChina, I strongly suspect on their prospectus and offering terms will not be around much longer. As for Jeremy Goldkorn, Kaiser Kuo, and the execrable Anthony Tao, good luck with pacifying those 100 small investors. Youre going to need it. Anla Cheng meanwhile appears set for a serious session with the scissors at her local hairdressers.

As a footnote, China Briefing turned down an offer from Singapore investors just a few weeks ago. Were not looking for investors.

Disclaimer

Any views or opinions represented in this blog are personal commentary, belong solely to the contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Asia Briefing Limited or Dezan Shira & Associates.

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SupChina Have Apparently Raised US$1 Million From Crowd Funding. Is It A Good Investment? - Asia Business News - Asia Briefing

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SupChina Have Apparently Raised US$1 Million From Crowd Funding. Is It A Good Investment? – Asia Business News – Asia Briefing

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