Daily Archives: December 3, 2021

Cloud adoption is booming, with low-code and automation tools having proved extremely popular in the past two years.

Multi-cloud is increasingly winning favour among organizations looking to diversify their technology stacks and pick and choose cloud-computing services from different providers according to their needs.

Managing the Multicloud

It's easier than ever for enterprises to take a multicloud approach, as AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform all share customers. Here's a look at the issues, vendors and tools involved in the management of multiple clouds.

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As businesses increasingly shift their infrastructures, employees will likewise require a broader range of technical skills.

SEE:Remote working jobs row shows how much tech has changed

Milind Govekar, chief of research at Gartner, says one of the biggest changes in the workforce will come as organizations lean harder into automation -- which he calls "the centrepiece" of cloud business strategies.

"Automation changes the entire mindset of the IT organization, particularly the infrastructure and operations organization, where they need to stop being administrators and become programmers -- completely different skillsets," Govekar tells ZDNet.

Automation has spiked in popularity in response to the digital skills gap and businesses' need to launch digital services quickly because of the pandemic.

Low-code and no-code tools, for example, have become a favourite among businesses that need to get products and services onto the cloud quickly. Gartner believes this popularity will continue, and predicts that the use of low-code and no-code tools will triple by 2025.

Low-code and no-code tools may prove to be useful assets for administrators juggling multi-cloud environments, but this doesn't necessarily equate to a downturn in the need for traditional software development and coding skills.

"More than ever there's a huge demand for software skills, especially to solve complex problems -- many of which cannot be solved singlehandedly by low-code tools," says Tracy Woo, senior analyst at Forrester.

Using low-code tools frees up experts on tech teams to focus on more advanced issues and services, says Woo: "This in turn means that skill sets required will focus on expertise or comfort with these tools along with overall comfort and experience with managing and handling cloud environments."

Increased automation as a result of cloud adoption may, however, lead to a reconfiguration of other roles and responsibilities. For instance, as routine tasks increasingly become automated, workers previously charged with administrative, monitoring or maintenance duties may be reskilled, or deployed elsewhere.

According to Pega's November 2021 Future of IT report, automation could also make it more difficult for managers to rise through the ranks. With so many tasks being automated or outsourced to the cloud, IT management as a competency will either disappear or become less relevant, it says. This was the opinion of more than 40% of the 750 IT leaders surveyed by the software company.

The upshot, says Pega, is more time to spend on creative work, while "changes to the nature of their work mean jobs will still feel easier and more streamlined."

The report adds: "Many different technology trends, including intelligent automation and data analytics, are fuelling a reduction in workload. Time saved will be used to make a bigger impact through strategic deployment of tech to solve business problems."

Non-IT employees will also require better knowledge of cloud tools, particularly as remote working becomes commonplace.

A recent report by Amazon Web Services (AWS) found that cloud dominated the list of key digital skills employers say will be most in-demand by 2025. And yet it found that just 45% of workers have trained or are training in cloud skills.

More advanced cloud skills will also be in high demand, such as the ability to move organizations from on-premises facilities to the cloud (cloud migration), as well as cloud architecture expertise. Just 16% and 15% of workers are trained in these areas respectively, AWS found.

"Applications are shifting from monolithic apps to multi-tiered line-of-business apps that use smaller units of code that developers can both scale and modify independently," says Woo.

"As a result, companies are looking for automation skills, familiarity with continuous integration and continuous delivery tooling, knowledge of infrastructure-as-code solutions, and those that can collaborate closely among the app developers and infrastructure teams, as each will need to lean on and learn from each other coding and infrastructure principles."

SEE:Digital transformation is changing what it means to work in tech

Govekar believes the biggest challenge for business leaders now is to anticipate the skills they will need in the future and the roles that will be key to the organization several months, or even years, down the line.

"Recruiters often talk about back filling roles. For cloud, you need to do forward filling," he says.

Forward filling means looking and recruiting for skills that you are going to need in the future.

This requirement is likely to present an exceptional recruitment challenge for companies who are already struggling to fill critical IT and tech roles, particularly as many business leaders appear reluctant to invest in upskilling their existing workforces.

"Very few organizations are putting aside money for that kind of training," Govekar adds. "Many organizations are finding it very difficult to understand what the balance is between doing [training] on the job, versus taking a more systematic approach.

"I was talking to another organization recently who said, 'The moment I upskill and train my person in AWS and Google or Azure, or anything else, they are [offered] more somewhere else -- I am literally training them up for someone to grab."

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Cloud computing is changing everything about IT skills. Here's what that means for your job - ZDNet

Hear from CIOs, CTOs, and other C-level and senior execs on data and AI strategies at the Future of Work Summit this January 12, 2022. Learn more

Amazon held its 10th re:Invent conference this week. The annual event, held this year in Las Vegas as well as online, reveals new technologies designed to support its Amazon Web Services (AWS) arm, one of the leading platforms for cloud computing.

The tech giants first AWS re:Invent in 2012 was a humble affair with only 6,000 attendees, dominated by startups and emerging technology partners. Fast-forward to 2021: Its now a well-attended conference for the industrys top IT execs and technical decision-makers.

The in-person event featured keynote speakers, announcements about its latest tech innovations, as well as training and certification opportunities.

Amazon revealed the latest it has to offer, but a few announcements took center stage. The following is a collective overview of VentureBeats coverage on the top news coming out of AWS re:Invent 2021.

AWSs CEO Adam Selipsky revealed news of accelerated chips, effortless machine learning models, fortified artificial intelligence, robotics technology, data lakes, and more.

were making it even easier to prepare and gather data for machine learning to train models faster and expand machine learning to an even broader audience, Selipsky said. Its really going to enable a whole new group of users to leverage their data and to use machine learning to create new business insights.

The announcements that followed Selipskys keynote would only prove to bolster that statement. AWS re:Invent 2021 largely focused on tools that are both bolstered to provide strong data and analytics infrastructures, and enhance efficiency for those using the many tools across the swath of Amazons cloud computing platform.

As the cloud computing industry is rapidly evolving, so is the demand for faster, more efficient developer-friendly tools. Cybersecurity threats and ransomware are rampant and growing. Against this backdrop, AWS announced automation for the management of vulnerabilities on its platform, to address vital security requirements in the cloud.

The sharp pivot to increased digitization for companies across industries, sparked by the coronavirus pandemic, has increased the use of cloud-native tech and platforms. In an interview, VentureBeat heard the concerns and perspectives from 10 startup companies regarding AWS security. A key takeaway: cloud securitys most notable advantages include lower cost and lower demand on resources than on-premises security.

Amid the rise in popularity of digital twin simulations, the company also announced IoT TwinMaker and IoT FleetWise for AWS. The tools are designed with user accessibility in mind: making it easier and more cost-effective to innovate. Its IoT TwinMaker allows developers to easily create digital twins of real-time systems such as factories, industrial equipment, product lines etc. The IoT FleetWise tool is specifically tailored for automakers to efficiently collect, transform, and transfer vehicle data in the cloud at a faster rate.

In addition, Amazon also announced its dabbling in the quantum computing arena with the announcement of AWSs cloud quantum offering known as Braket.

Bracket allows users to write quantum algorithms and lease time on quantum processors without a commitment. At re:Invent 2021, AWS shared that its Braket service can now run quantum algorithms as hybrid jobs. For now, theres no integration with many other tools, but as quantum computing grows in accessibility and popularity, this integration is likely to be announced at a future conference.

With such rapid growth both in size of its AWS re:Invent conferenceand in the tech featured at it on the past 10 years, looking ahead at the innovation the next 10 years will produce, AWS re:Invent in the year 2032 will undoubtedly pave the way for further transformation in the tech industry transformation that minds have yet to even consider possible.

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re:Invent recap: Amazon showcases cloud computing innovation - VentureBeat

Youre surrounded by it.

You cant send an e-mail without touching it.

You cant watch your favorite streaming series without welcoming it into your home.

You dont know where youre going, but its tracking your every move and telling you to turn left.

It is the cloud, and whether you realize it or not, it has probably taken over your digital life.

But what is the cloud actually?

The cloud is a system of millions of hard drives, computer servers, signal routers and fiber-optic cables.

These elements are, in a way, like the water droplets, ice crystals and aerosols that make up a true cloud.

They are nebulous. They are constantly shifting. But they are in close connection with one another over large distances of space and time.

The clouds true purpose is to float unseen all around us, silently, creating ever present connectivity.

And just like a real cloud, it can bring benefitsand danger. The cloud is making services more affordable and accessible to people all over the world. It helps businesses update products for their customers and enables remote work across industries. But it also opens us up to behavior tracking at each and every Web site we visit. It can put our virtual privacy in the hands of tech giants. And should the cloud ever fail, our increasing, mostly unknowing dependency on it will become painfully clear.

To understand why, lets take a step back to the early days of the cold war with the Soviet Union.

After the Soviets beat the Americans to space in 1957, the U.S. Department of Defense decided it needed to work harder on research and development. The following year, it formed the Advanced Research Projects Agency. That agency would create the rough draft of the Internet a decade later. It was called ARPANET, and it connected four university computers via telephone lines.

ARPANET was the offspring of a novel and controversial view of computers championed by engineer and psychologist J.C.R. Licklider.

In 1962 Licklider, known as Lick, was put in charge of the agencys Information Processing Techniques Office. And with his budget, he advanced a view of these machines that was very different from that of his peers.

Lick didnt believe in building new computers for every project. Instead he wanted to consolidate resources into a network of thinking centers that individuals could access as needed. This vision, which became the basis for ARPANET and later the Internet, is the premise of cloud computing.

When you access data on the Internet, youre actually requesting files from a server. The files are broken into tiny packets of information, which may travel together or take completely different routes back to your device, where theyre reassembled. The particulars may get a bit complicated, but all that really matters is that youre connected to the network.

One of the firstvisual representations of a network as a cloud comes from 1971.

The previous year, telecom giant AT&T introduced Pittsburgh to the Picturephone, a kind of early videoconferencing system. It was meant to run over digital systems and phone lines. In 1971 Irwin Dorros, then at the companys Bell Telephone Laboratories, published a schematic of the system.

It showed a couple of cloudlike shapes that would tie together the hardware neededeven if Dorros didnt know which computers or phone lines would be working together at any one time.

By the early 1990s, engineers had gotten used to referring to the Internet this way. But the idea of cloud computing really went mainstream in the 2000s. In March 2006 Amazon launched its first cloud-based service as part of its Amazon Web Services, or AWS.

Initially, Amazon just planned to build a platform to help other companies set up online shops. But it quickly started to recognize that many of the tools and databases it was building could be useful outside of e-commerce.

Amazon began renting out server space and database tools that allowed companies to launch and maintain applications much more cheaply than starting from scratch. For instance, Zillow, the online real estate Web site, uses AWS to store 100 terabytes of house pictures and data rather than maintaining the necessary servers itself.

Using an outside server can be safer than managing your own, because its much less likely to overload, and many of these servers will back up your files for you. Most cloud computing services also come with optimization tools to handle traffic spikes and lulls, and many have data centers around the world, making sites load faster for international users.

The cloud can also give you access to more computational power than you can easily get on your own, letting you effectively use a supercomputer from your smartphone.

Cloud services generally fall into three categories: software, platforms and infrastructure.

Cloud-based software are just applications that run on the Internet so users dont have to download anything. This category is especially popular for widely used programs such as the instant messaging platform Slack or the file sharing app, Dropbox.

Next, cloud platforms, such as Googles App Engine, are digital environments that developers build their software to run on.

Last, cloud infrastructure provides server space that a customer manages remotely.

Consolidating the digital world onto a few powerful servers is extremely efficient. And the cloud brings us unprecedented connectivity. Its the basis for the Internet of Things, in which embedded sensors connect physical objects such as farm vehicles or building thermostats to the Internet. Once connected to the cloud, all of these things can act autonomouslydoing work for us without human intervention.

But while the cloud can make our jobs more efficient and our lives more flexible, we pay for those privileges with our data and security. With every action we take online, we hand personal information to companies trying to maximize how much they can profit on us. Many Web sites and apps regularly track our digital movements and sell those data to marketers. Cloud service providers can also collect data from applications built on their servers. This is often done to monitor efficiency, but some worry the data could be abused.

As we connect more of our daily lives to the cloud, we become reliant on a network that controls everything from who we meet on dating apps to whether our credit cards work.

We also lose sight of how fragile the system is. The cloud only exists because of physical parts, such as paper-thin fiber-optic wires that are easily damaged and degrade over time. And when software issues from a company youve never heard of can knock huge chunks of the Internet offline, its hard not to wonder if weve made a bad bargain.

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What is 'The Cloud' and How Does it Pervade Our Lives? - Scientific American

The FBI seizes alleged ransomware gang members funds, a cloud computing security report from Google and more malware found in the Android store.

Welcome to Cyber Security Today. Its Wednesday, December 1st. Im Howard Solomon, contributing writer on cybersecurity for ITWorldCanada.com.

The FBI continues to make some progress against ransomware groups. According to the Bleeping Computer news service, the feds seized bitcoin worth just over $2 million in August from a digital wallet in Texas. The money is allegedly traceable to attacks carried out by the REvil ransomware gang. The digital wallet allegedly belongs to a resident of Russia.

Separately, a report from the NCC Group says the use by ransomware gangs of the double extortion tactic is going up. In October there were 314 double-extortion victims around the world, an increase of 65 per cent over September. Double-extortion is stealing some data and threatening to release it to the public or sell it to other crooks in addition to encrypting the rest of an organizations data. The report also notes that one threat actor, dubbed SnapMC, doesnt bother encrypting data. It only steals data and holds it for ransom.

Cloud computing has several advantages for IT departments. One is that they dont have to worry about rushing to install security updates. The cloud application provider Gmail, Salesforce, Microsoft 365 finds bugs and installs updates fast. However, organizations still have to make sure their systems arent vulnerable to misconfigurations and other errors by employees. In its first cloud threat intelligence report Google says many successful attacks on applications are caused by poor cyber hygiene and a lack of basic security controls. What kinds of problems can happen? Looking at its own service, the report says 86 per cent of compromised Google Cloud Platform instances were used for stealing compute cycles for cryptocurrency mining. Other abuses of Google Cloud included using resources to scan targets, to launch cyberattacks and to host malware. Forty-eight per cent of compromises were blamed on customer accounts that had either no password or a weak password. Another 26 per cent of compromises were due to vulnerabilities in third-party software that organizations installed themselves. One piece of advice Google offers for better security of its cloud customers applies to users of any cloud service: Employees should have to use two-factor authentication for logins. Google also provides a range of security services such as web scanning, a security command center and other capabilities. When IT departments look for cloud providers they should ask if similar services are available and what they cover.

Ive said before that Google makes good efforts to keep malware out of the Android Play store. However, cyber crooks try just as hard to squirm past defences. A report this month from a Dutch cybersecurity company called Threat Fabric shows how some groups do it. They create mobile apps that include a dropper. A dropper is a small piece of code that calls back to a crooks server to download malware onto a victims device. The small size of the dropper code makes it hard to detect. Researchers at Threat Fabric recently discovered 11 apps in the Play store able to infect victims Android devices with dozens of pieces of malware aimed at stealing bank login passwords. Threat Fabric believes the malware has been downloaded over 300,000 times. As is often the case these bad apps pretend to be utilities like QR code scanners, PDF scanners, cryptocurrency apps and fitness trainers. Crooks know that many people love finding new apps to play with on their smart phones. Always remember that when you want to download an app. Be sure from reading reviews and talking to people you trust that an app is trustworthy.

Thats it for now Remember links to details about podcast stories are in the text version at ITWorldCanada.com.

Follow Cyber Security Today on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or add us to your Flash Briefing on your smart speaker.

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Cyber Security Today, Dec. 1, 2021 - The FBI seizes alleged ransomware gang member's funds, a cloud computing security report from Google and more -...

We think thatVeeva Systems stock (NYSE: VEEV), a cloud-computing company focused on pharmaceutical and life sciences industry applications, currently is a better pick compared to Boston Scientific stock (NYSE:BSX), despite Veeva being the more expensive of the two. Veeva trades at about 23x trailing revenues, compared to just 5x for Boston Scientific. We are comparing these two companies given their similar operating income levels.

Both the stocks have underperformed with mid-single-digit growth year-to-date, compared to 22% growth for the broader S&P 500. While Boston Scientific saw a fall in demand for medical devices and supplies during the pandemic, due to fewer surgical procedures, Veevas business expanded with increased adoption of digital communication channels. In fact, Boston Scientifics revenue declined 8% during the pandemic, while Veevas revenue expanded a solid 28%. However, there is more to the comparison. Lets step back to look at the fuller picture of the relative valuation of the two companies by looking at historical revenue growth as well as operating margin growth. Our dashboard Boston Scientific vs Veeva:Similar Operating Income; Which Stock Is A Better Bet?has more details on this. Parts of the analysis are summarized below.

1. Veevas Revenue Growth Has Been Better

2. Veeva Is More Profitable

The Net of It All

Now that nearly 60% of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated against Covid-19, with overall economic activity picking up, the demand for medical devices and supplies is likely to rise going forward, boding well for Boston Scientific. For Veeva, a broader shift to digital communication is likely to pave way for continued growth for the company.

That said, Covid-19 is proving more difficult to contain than initially thought, due to the spread of more contagious virus variants and infections in some of the geographies, including Europe, are higher than what they were a few months back. The concerns around Omicron have spooked the markets at large with one confirmed case in the U.S. as well. If there is another large spike in Covid-19 cases from the new variant, it will disrupt economic recovery and impact sales as well as earnings growth of many companies. This may result in pressure on margins in the near term, especially for Boston Scientific.

Wondering how Boston Scientific peers stack up? Check out Boston Scientific Stock Comparison With Peers to see how BSX stock compares against peers on metrics that matter. You can find more such useful comparisons on Peer Comparisons.

What if youre looking for a more balanced portfolio instead? Heres ahigh-quality portfoliothats beaten the market consistently since the end of 2016.

[1] Month-to-date and year-to-date as of 12/2/2021[2] Cumulative total returns since 2017

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This Cloud Computing Company Is A Better Pick Over Boston Scientific Stock - Trefis

Amazon Web Services is considered the market leader in cloud computing because of its dominance in the infrastructure space, such as computing power and storage services that enable other applications.

But it still lags behind its biggest competitors, like Microsoft, Salesforce, and Oracle, in one major piece of cloud computing: business applications, more broadly called software as a service, or SaaS.

In a recent survey of this sector bySynergy Research Group, five companies Microsoft, Salesforce, Adobe, Oracle, and SAP accounted for over 50% of the market. AWS, meanwhile, failed to crack the top 20.

"For SaaS, AWS is more of a channel to market for software vendors rather than a SaaS provider in its own right," John Dinsdale, Synergy's chief analyst and research director, told Insider.

For AWS, it's a big market to miss out on. The market for business applications, including everything from Microsoft Office 365 and Salesforce sales and marketing software to Zoom's videoconferencing app, is forecast to be the largest segment among all cloud services, reaching $145.4 billion in 2022,according to Gartner.

Amazon is aware of this. For years, the company has tried to build and grow its own applications business, across email, word processing, and video conferencing, to name a few. But those efforts have so far failed to gain traction, both internally and externally, as Insider previously reported.

To solve this, Amazon recently discussed the idea of acquiring a more high-profile software company to make a splash. Among the list of companies discussed was HubSpot, the $40 billion marketing software maker, as Insider previously reported.

"We have several applications that are very large successes," Amazon's representative wrote in a statement to Insider, highlighting Amazon WorkSpaces and Amazon AppStream, which support tens of thousands of active customers. "Others are earlier in their journey, but we continue to believe they have meaningful potential."

Do you work at Amazon? Contact the reporter Eugene Kim via the encrypted messaging apps Signal or Telegram (+1-650-942-3061) or email (ekim@insider.com). Reach out using a nonwork device.Check out Insider's source guidefor other tips on sharing information securely.

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Amazon Way Behind Microsoft, Salesforce, and Oracle in Cloud Software - Business Insider

Are You Getting the Most Value from Your Data in the Cloud?

By Marc Linster

It may be tempting to hire a large cloud computing provider that markets itself as a one-stop shop with a huge menu of offerings, including the choice of database. Temptingbut a potentially bad idea.

Although the cloud has become an equalizer giving all users access to the same infrastructure and technology capabilities, it can also flatten out competitive differentiation. This is because youre giving control of your datayour most important business assetto a generalist that specializes in infrastructure, not databases.

The Danger of Giving Up Control

Your database is the information store of your business, and it underpins every asset you want to inspect, analyze, and make better. Its the tool thats essential to informing a smart strategy, developing potential new revenue streams, and maintaining not just infrastructure agility but also business agility so you can react quickly to volatile market conditions.

In an era of increasing digitization of customer interactions, trusting your database to a generalist cloud vendor is risky because youre handing over not just control of your IT infrastructure but also how you manage and extract value from your data. Especially for demanding workloads and digital capabilities that are part of your market differentiation, you must trust that your vendor understands the technology that you need to support the intricacies of your business. Your vendor must also continuously improve the data-management capabilities of its technology to help you maintain your competitive edge and to enable you to move fully to the cloud.

Love Your Data

Data is the new oil. Data is the new gold. Youve heard the clichs, but its true that data offers power. That power doesnt reveal itself easily and needs to be protected. (As the computer scientist Kurt Bollacker has said, Data that is loved tends to survive.) If you really cherish your data and see your organization as being or becoming data-enabled or data-driven, then it makes sense to show your data some love.

You cant treat your database as a commodity line item, so you need to have a high-quality innovative product backed up by immediately accessible experts who know the technology because they built it. That way, any questions, problems, or new needs can be addressed fast. If you work with a specialist database provider, you can expect support for:

In a globalizing economy where technology is lowering barriers to entry and commoditizing products and services, competitive differentiation is becoming ever more reliant on data and how well your company uses it to identify opportunities and engage with customers.

Certainly, this use of data is helping accelerate the move to the cloud. But at EDB, we are seeing companies reconsidering their cloud-migration strategies, especially when it comes to recalibrating which data-management capabilities they require. This reconsideration is not just about reducing infrastructure and IT expenditure costs; it also is about making data in the cloud work harder for business outcomes.

In the days before the cloud, different partners might have supported different aspects of your on-premises data-center infrastructure. Today, if you want to extract the most value from your applications, moving to the cloud does not remove that need. Data is your differentiator, so it is critical for your cloud provider to have the specialized skills and knowledge you need to manage and drive innovation in your database stack. Without such strategic partnerships, you might limit how much you can capitalize on your data to drive competitive advantage.

EDB offers the first fully managed PostgreSQL database in the cloud with compatibility for Oracle database technology. Learn how EDB can help your organization deploy your most demanding applications to the cloud.

Marc Linster is chief technology officer at EDB.

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Are You Getting the Most Value from Your Data in the Cloud? - SPONSOR CONTENT FROM EDB - Harvard Business Review