Daily Archives: January 28, 2022

Industry 4.0 defines our reality today. In todays digital first day and age, virtual environments, online consumer experiences and technology enabled interactions are part of our every day. Maintaining the sanctity of enterprise and consumer driven data, thus, is key to ensure the competitive edge as well as organisational agility in cloud specific contexts. Over the last few years, Zero Trust Security has emerged as the standard protocol that most companies follow and ever since remote working became the new normal in 2020, this has slowly gained more popularity. As cyber-attacks become more sophisticated and vicious in nature, going the zero trust architecture route is not just a matter of choice, but more a necessity.

What is Zero Trust Architecture?

A proactive approach to eradicate malware, security threats and phishings attempts, Zero Trust is an integrated security approach cast over all digital layers of an organisation that explicitly verifies each and every transaction in real time. With the rise of cloud native hybrid working environments and remote working systems, this model has successfully overtaken traditional cybersecurity initiatives. Since cloud networks are hosted publicly and workloads can move outside the confines of corporate networks, accelerating this adoption is critical to ensure secure data deployment. This is a framework, and not a single product or service.

Creating a Zero Trust Strategy for cloud native environments

In very simple terms, one can look at zero trust architecture like a centralised intelligent switchboard in the cloud, where inspection is undertaken at every step of the way. Its main aim is to connect users and networks seamlessly to prevent the risk of lateral data movement. In some cases with extremely confidential information, developers may also be asked to create zero attack surfaces with apps that are invisible. As cloud and IoT become the backbone of digitally transforming enterprises today, IT security teams are facing a unique dilemma: How can we always ensure that legitimate user entities without hampering end consumer experience? The answer is to not rely any longer on static authentication decisions, rather on step-up, adaptive, contextual access security methods that continuously validate the identity of the entity requesting access to corporate data.

Decisions related to cybersecurity are no longer just operational- they directly impact the business bottom and top line. The zero trust architecture market is expected to increase cybersecurity efficacy and reach USD 59.43 billion by 2028, registering a CAGR of 15.2% from 2021 to 2028. Thats a huge growth opportunity! There are some guiding principles that define the concept of a foolproof security strategy, namely:

Least privilege access: Organisation specific risk averse strategies are put into place to limit access to internal users only. Hierarchies may also come into place for compartmentalised access. Only the right users get access to the right data.

Breach assumptions: Networks and company databases are continuously monitored with automated threat detection algorithms to minimise attack blast radius. End to end encryption also ensures responses are generated in real time.

Explicit verification: Things like user identity, device status and health, restoration options, location etc. are verified through multiple factor authentication. Proxy architecture may be used to quarantine files and prevent data loss.

A complete zero trust integration thus requires consistent visibility, enforcement and control that can be delivered directly on the device or through the cloud. This not only provides software driven, secure user access regardless of where the users are, but also takes care of which devices are being used, or where your workloads and data are hosted (i.e. data centres, public clouds or SaaS applications).

Trends to look out for

As the year comes to a close, there are a few cybersecurity trends that will act as the foundation blocks for zero trust cybersecurity:

Enterprise wide proliferation: Integrated extended detection and across all digital pillars will drive organisation wide adoption. Policy unification and the convergence of access between network, controls and user identities has become key, especially in the rising era of co-working, virtual and hybrid workspaces.

DevSecOps and secure software: Routine in house and external testing is critical to mitigate the risk of data loss. This is where DevSecOps processes will come in for native applications and APIs. A DevOps approach to security will cut down not just developer time and effort, but also be cost effective in the longer run

Upskill to scale: Almost every other organisation needs zero trust security today, regardless of the size and scale of their IT departments. Addressing skill shortages, need to upskill specific portfolios and the state of pre-existing security systems will go a long way in supporting secure architecture.

Zero trust is a dynamic model of security that will continue to evolve rapidly. The faster IT teams get onto this bandwagon, the better they will be able to take care of their companys security needs in the longer run!

Views expressed above are the author's own.

END OF ARTICLE

Excerpt from:

Zero trust strategy, state of the art security solution for cloud computing - The Times of India Blog

Photo 179775716 Michal Bednarek | Dreamstime.com

The rise of cloud computing services is set to change the investment criteria for freight and logistics operators.

Increasing numbers of as-a-service options are transforming digitisation from a capex requirement to an operating expense (opex).

A recent report on the top technology trends for 2022 by Transport Intelligence (Ti) argues that market growth is increasingly enabled by high-speed internet access reducing the time delay in business communications.

And ever-faster connections gave rise to cloud computing the ability to store and exchange data with server farms anywhere, rather than companies having to establish their own server and data storage facilities.

The supply chain parallel would be just-in-time delivery, and the technology is lowering entry costs and time-to-market for new businesses.

Ti has termed this trend opex not capex, where software and the processing power required to run it is rented rather than bought or licensed, leading to an explosion in online services and solutions priced similar to the business models of the old phone companies.

Report author Ken Lyon writes: It enables many small companies to enter the market and service customers from a much lower cost base this makes future competition about ideas, innovation and execution.

He adds that hardware has transitioned from the large expensive mainframe units and servers that resided within organisations, into the enormous (and invisible) server farms, operated by the cloud service vendors.

This theoretically enables much more energy-efficient computing as well; a server farm is more likely to have the critical mass to be able to switch to renewable energy, whereas a server cabinet in an office could not.

For a server farm, energy costs are the main consideration, and many have been set up in Iceland, Norway and Sweden, where hydro-electric or geothermal energy sources are plentiful and colder ambient temperatures reduce the load on cooling systems, helping provide low costs and a competitive advantage.

The Loadstar recently reported on FourKites acquisition of German carrier-facing service provider NIC-place, and Ti argues this may be the first of many such developments, as consensus arises on the standards of information-sharing between platforms.

Application programming interfaces (APIs) are now the standard means of sharing information easily between systems and services, this will continue and these gateways will become easier to implement.

Increasingly, these types of communications will be automated via machine-to-machine, frequently referred to as the internet of things (IOT).

The often hysterical universe of cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens mask the usefulness of the technologies behind them: this could be very significant for supply chain visibility. The notion of an intelligent network that can react to alarms or alerts and swiftly replan and reschedule actions without human intervention is compelling, says the report.

This could provide huge opportunities for supply chain providers, but tempered with a need for greater vigilance and cybersecurity.

But, cybercrime notwithstanding, these developments will lead to better access to data for both providers and their customers, as standardisation enables better integration, decreased time to market, as remote servers drive down the cost of computing, and more nimble businesses, as autonomous systems develop the ability to fix themselves.

However, it takes time to adopt new technologies, especially within large organisations, Mr Lyon notes.But the demands to adopt new technology will not diminish, so companies must learn to adapt and become more open minded about the choices that they will need to make.

This is especially difficult for senior staff who have built career paths around expectations which are no longer relevant, he warns.

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Cloud computing and high-speed data transfer the top technology trends for 2022 - theloadstar.com

Cloud computing is a computer system that operates by the joint action of disparate elements brought together regardless of their geographical location and underlying infrastructure. Simply put, it is the delivery of computing services (servers, storage, databases, networking, software, analytics) over the Internet to provide more flexible resources to people and businesses.

The cloud allows you to rent your IT instead of buying it. Instead of investing heavily in databases, software and hardware, companies choose to access this computing power via the Internet and pay for it based on usage. When a company "goes to the cloud," it means that its IT infrastructure is stored offsite in a datacenter managed by the cloud provider. Instead of spending money and resources on legacy IT systems, customers can focus on more strategic tasks. Without making a significant upfront investment, companies can quickly access the IT resources they need and pay only for what they need.

The cost, scaling, performance and reliability advantages of cloud computing over a traditional approach are driving companies around the world, large and small, to migrate to cloud solutions.

A distinction is typically made between a public cloud owned and operated by a third-party cloud service provider that offers compute resources such as servers and storage, and a private cloud used exclusively by a company or organization. The hybrid cloud is a symbiosis of the two powered by technology that allows for data and application sharing.

Solutions as a service

Most cloud services can be classified into four broad categories: IaaS (infrastructure as a service), PaaS (platform as a service), SaaS (software as a service) and serverless computing. IaaS allows you to rent an IT infrastructure from a cloud service provider with a payment based on usage. PaaS are services that provide an on-demand environment for developing, testing, delivering and managing software applications (developers can quickly create web or mobile applications without the need for a server).Developers can quickly create web or mobile applications without having to worry about configuring or managing the server, storage, network and database infrastructure required for development.) With SaaS, cloud service providers host and manage the software applications and underlying infrastructure, and manage maintenance, such as software upgrades and security patches. Users connect to the application via the Internet, typically through a web browser on their phone, tablet or PC. Finally, serverless computing overlaps with PaaS by focusing on building application functionality without the time-consuming and ongoing management of servers and the infrastructure required to do so.

As you can see, cloud computing offers multiple functionalities to individuals but especially to companies, whether it is to create native cloud applications, store, back up and recover data, distribute content, and so on.It can be used to create native cloud applications, store, backup and retrieve data, deliver content or software on demand, test and generate applications, analyze data or incorporate intelligent models to interact with customers.

This market is expected to grow strongly over the next ten years. Ark Invest predicts that this market will be worth nearly $10 trillion by 2030.

Here is a projection of the combined market capitalization of all public cloud services combined (IaaS, SaaS, PaaS, serverless computing) for 2022 :

Source: Statista

A projection of the cumulative market capitalization of cloud applications by 2025:

Source: Statista

The cloud war has already begun:

In this little game, the web giants, including Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft and Apple have already positioned themselves as specialists. Their Chinese counterparts (Alibaba, Tencent, JD.com) have also entered the race. We also find Salesforce, IBM and Oracle well placed in the ranking. They all want to be the first and are investing massively in their infrastructures. Indeed, the effect of scale is important in order to reduce costs and offer a solution that becomes the standard for companies (a bit like Microsoft has managed to do with its Office suite). The most successful solutions are likely to win the largest market share in each industry, as customer retention is the driver of profitability in a scalable business like the cloud. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the competitor to beat so far with 32% market share and still holds a lead over its rivals. The top 8 cloud providers control 80% of the market share.

Source: Synergy Research Group

We can also mention smaller (and riskier) players, each with their own specificities but with great long-term potential, such as ServiceNow and Intuit.

If you wish to consult the thematic list of cloud computing players, MarketScreener experts have identified for you the main cloud computing players on a global scale. This list is limited to 100 companies selected according to fundamental criteria and capitalization filters.

Click here to discover the thematic list

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Cloud Computing: The key players to keep an eye on - Marketscreener.com

As federal agencies move to a hybrid, multi-cloud model of computing, they are moving past virtualization, in search of more elastic methods to manage workloads. The incorporation of edge computing can augment clouds and data centers with lightweight and fully functioning applications.

When the DoD acquires systems in a fixed environment, like a limited-space data center, with limited power and cooling, the lead time is long. And a one-size-fits-all approach should be eschewed.

The problem with essentially copying and pasting into a cloud environment is you may find that you are estimating and therefore being provisioned resources that you will never use, said Paul Puckett, Director of the Army CIOs Enterprise Cloud Management Agency, on Federal Monthly Insights Network and Application Modernization.

This pivot is critical for when it comes to how we buy cloud as a utility. The NDAA called this out, we need to stop buying computing infrastructure, storage infrastructure, like this fixed thing in a data center, Puckett said. We need to start designing systems and services that are intended as a distributed architecture that are intended to leverage elastic scalability.

Puckett, a member of the Senior Executive Service, who has been in his current post since 2019, calls elastic scalability one of the core components of what differentiates cloud computing from typical on-premise compute.

I would push back if someone said, Well, hey, the problem with this model is I have an issue with estimating precisely what the future looks like. Youre right, you do and I dont want you to do that. I want you to come with a design that leverages every single capability of the cloud, to enhance the way that my mission is executed, Puckett said to Federal News Networks Jason Miller.

The evolution for federal agencies now allows for a more economical way of buying cloud infrastructure.

If it was a firm, fixed-price capability, all that investment would be upfront. And whether we were effective or not, with how we consume infrastructure, was almost irrelevant, Puckett said.

I would change the actual metrics of success, we should not be dictating, you need 10 virtual machines. We should be dictating, hey, here are the service-level objectives, the service-level agreements. Here are the actual SLAs. Heres the actual availability and a percentage of these critical services. Heres the time that it needs to be for me to be able to process some data and then execute some decision. By starting to put out parameters of how we want to function and operate what our objectives of a mission are, we actually create space in the room for the technical design that will deliver that service, Puckett said.

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You can't copy-and-paste your way toward IT modernization - Federal News Network

By Anurag Sinha

Cloud has been a game-changer in the digital world, creating an entirely new dimension for business operations and collaboration. By eliminating the scalability, flexibility, and access limitations of on-premises systems, cloud allows computing services to be delivered anytime, anywhere, and to any device. Although Cloud has been a global phenomenon for a while now, there are terms that end up being used interchangeably despite being extremely dissimilar. Two frequently misinterpreted terms are "cloud-native" and "cloud-based" applications. So, what are these applications? How do they work? And what makes them different?

What is a cloud-native app?

Designed from the ground up to operate in the cloud, these apps enable seamless accessibility and scalability and allow developers to deliver new features and services quickly and easily. Because these apps are built specifically for the cloud, they are developed with a mindset that is focused on failure, flexibility, and resilience.

Designed to take full advantage of the intrinsic characteristics of cloud technology, the cloud-native apps are usually built using a microservices architecture, which makes it easy for changes to be made to specific modules without causing performance issues or downtime of the entire application.

Key attributes of cloud-native apps include:

Key attributes of cloud-based applications include:

Lets look at key aspects that make them different:

Cloud applications, whether cloud-native or cloud-based, benefit from the core advantages of cloud computing. What makes them different is the underlying design: while cloud-native apps are developed especially to run in the Cloud; cloud-based applications are traditional applications that have been appropriately adapted for operation in the Cloud.

Although cloud-native applications are extremely sought-after in todays highly volatile era, what makes cloud-based applications a great option for organizations that already have a robust application in place but still want to make the most of Cloud characteristics without completely redesigning them for the cloud.

While neither of the two types of cloud apps is better than the other, what you choose depends entirely on your organizations goals and situation. Since every organizations cloud journey is different, clearly defining your goals and objectives, determining your requirements, creating POCs and roadmaps, and getting expert guidance are recommended to evaluate which model makes more sense for your business.

Irrespective of what type of apps you choose for your business, be aware that switching to a cloud app is bound to result in reduced costs, higher scalability, availability, and performance.

The author is Co-Founder & Managing Director, Wissen Technology

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Cloud-native apps vs cloud-based applicationsyes, theres a difference - ETCIO

Map of global RNA sequencing data that Dr. Babaian and his team analyzed to identify new RNA viruses [Source: Serratus Project]

An international team led by a former UBC postdoctoral fellow in medical genetics has uncovered almost ten times more RNA viruses than were previously knownincluding several new species of coronaviruses.

The team made the discovery by re-analyzing all publicly available RNA sequencing data. The planetary-scale database of RNA viruses they developed could help rapidly identify virus spillover into humans, as well as those viruses that affect livestock, crops, and endangered species.

Dr. Artem Babaian is behind the Serratus Project collaboration, which published stunning results in the prestigious scientific journal Nature this week.

Working with the Cloud Innovation Centre (CIC), a public/private collaboration between UBC and Amazon Web Services (AWS), the Serratus Project was able to build a ridiculously powerful supercomputer equivalent in power to 22,500 CPUs, said Dr. Babaian.

Dr. Artem Babaian

The supercomputer analyzed 20 million gigabytes of publicly available gene sequence data from 5.7 million biological samples around the world, searching for a specific gene that indicated the presence of an RNA virus. The samples have been collected and freely shared within the world research community over 13 years and include everything from ice-core samples to animal dung.

Researchers with the Serratus Project found 132,000 RNA viruses, where just 15,000 were known previously. The discovery included nine new species of coronaviruses.

Dr. Babaian estimates that without the Cloud Innovation Centre, it would take a traditional supercomputer well over a year and hundreds of thousands of dollars to perform the 2,000 years of CPU time necessary for this analysis. Serratus accomplished it in 11 days for $24,000.

Were entering a new era of understanding the genetic and spatial diversity of viruses in nature, and how a wide variety of animals interface with these viruses. The hope is were not caught off guard if something like SARS-CoV-2the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 emerges again. These viruses can be recognized more easily and their natural reservoirs can be found faster. The real goal is these infections are recognized so early that they never become pandemics, said Dr. Babaian, who holds a PhD in medical genetics from UBC and is now a Banting Fellow at the University of Cambridge.

If a patient presents with a fever of unknown origin, once that blood is sequenced, you can now connect that unknown virus in the human to a way bigger database of existing viruses. If a patient, for example, presents with a viral infection of unknown origin in St. Louis, you can now search through the database in about two minutes, and connect that virus to, say, a camel in sub-Saharan Africa sampled in 2012.

Dr. Babaian, 32, had been conducting genetic research into cancer with BC Cancer when the COVID-19 pandemic hit and he switched gears.

The work, which the understated Dr. Babaian says started as a fun side project, began March 3, 2020, when he and his climbing partner friend, UBC engineering student Jeff Taylor, sketched out the idea on the back of a napkin, said Dr. Babaian.

I should have kept that napkin, he noted.

Dr. Babaian approached UBCs Cloud Innovation Centre for help shortly after, and the Serratus project was bornnamed after Serratus Mountain in British Columbia, which he and Taylor viewed during a climb in 2020.

Dr. Babaian recalled he was sitting on his wifes nursing chair when the first results started to flash up on his laptop, indicating that Serratus was not only working, but producing data almost incomprehensibly fast.

The real goal is these infections are recognized so early that they never become pandemics.Dr. Artem Babaian

It was probably the most exciting scientific period of my life, he said. There are two types of fun. Type 1 is smiling and fun. Type 2 is when youre miserable while doing it but the memory shines, like rock climbing. In many ways Serratus is Type 2 fun. You just kind of have to believe its going to work out.

Dr. Babaian said he would not have been able to do this work without the support of the UBC Cloud Innovation Centre.

The Cloud Innovation Centre was really there unlocking the doors for us, he said. We had an idea and they brought in experts from their networks to make it come to life. Now the global community can benefit from all this previously untapped research.

Artem approached us with an innovative vision. The power of the Cloud Innovation Centre is that we pair our in-house innovation and technology teams from UBC with those from Amazon Web Services, said Marianne Schroeder, director of the UBC Cloud Innovation Centre. It was our great privilege to support the realization of this vision; helping to find a technology solution for complex problems is what we do.

The Centre, which launched right before the pandemic in January 2020, supports challenges that focus on community health and wellbeing. To date, the team has published more than 20 projects including reference architecture and deployment guides all available open source.

While the public cloud as we know it has been around for 15 years, the last few years of innovation at Amazon Web Services have really made genomics research possible in a new way, said Coral Kennett, who heads up the Centre for Amazon Web Services. We were able to give Artem access to compute power for pennies a query. We highly encourage the research community to submit their projects and ideas to the Cloud Innovation Centre so that more innovation comes to light benefitting the community.

Find out more about other Cloud Innovation Centre projects here.

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UBC postdoc identifies over 100,000 new RNA viruses using the power of cloud computing - UBC Faculty of Medicine

Jean-Luc Ichard/iStock Editorial via Getty Images

For decades, Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) has been a household name through its Windows operating systems and Flagship gaming console "Xbox." The company has been swiftly moving into the gaming arena and has pioneered leveraging gaming with its "Game Pass" subscription model. With the recent acquisition of Activision, the company may just be planning its biggest move into the Metaverse. I am bullish on the stock because of its continuous forward-looking and long-term strategic moves to create shareholder value and wealth, especially relating to the gaming industry, the Metaverse, and Cloud Computing.

Microsoft's acquisition of Activision (NASDAQ:ATVI) has become an online trending subject, creating a buzz around the company's ambitions in the Gaming market. The deal, which is expected to close in the second half of 2023, will not only be Microsoft's but the gaming industry's biggest all-cash acquisition transaction yet, standing at around $69 billion in enterprise value and $95 per share, dwarfing its previous biggest acquisition, LinkedIn, which stood at about $26 billion.

Obviously, on a relative scale, the acquisition only accounts for 3.3% of Microsoft's total market capitalization of $2.14 trillion, and some may argue that it is insignificant. However, MSFT is already a major player in the gaming sector, and the addition of Activision creates synergies that offer greater operational efficiencies and strategic competitive advantage to capitalize on the untapped metaverse market.

This acquisition highlights the company's serious ambition into the gaming market. It has consistently grown its market share into the gaming segment throughout the previous two decades since the launch of Xbox in 2001. In addition, the company has aggressively expanded its gaming endeavor since the acquisition of Mojang, the creator of Minecraft, in 2015. This was followed by the launch of Xbox Game Pass in 2017 and the acquisition of ZeniMax Media, parent to Bethesda Game Studios, last year.

Microsoft's Growing Gaming Ambitions

statista.com

These investments have captured a significant chunk of the almost $180 billion video gaming industry, leading the company's gaming component to account for almost 11% of total revenue. According to Statista, Microsoft dominates the Gaming Networks market with a whopping 50% market share in the United States. In comparison, Reuters has reported a 10.7% post-Activision-buyout global gaming market share for the tech giant.

Global video game market value from 2020 to 2025

statista.com

Microsoft's Game Pass costs $10 or $15 for subscription per month per user, and the company has over 25 million subscribers, translating to an average revenue of $3.75 billion per year. Additionally, mobile gaming hasn't been one of Microsoft's strong suits, and Activision's hold over King/Candy Crush gives the company a strong gateway into that market as well.

With the company's latest acquisition, Microsoft's market share and the increasing gaming revenue are poised to grow rapidly with Activision's additional 400 million-plus monthly active players. This will make 'the Game Pass one of the most compelling and diverse lineups of gaming content in the industry,' further solidifying the company's strong moats.

Microsoft's 'Mesh' will be released in the first half of 2022. The Azure-powered software will allow people to connect through the HoloLens 2, mixed reality (MR) headsets, smartphones, tablets, or PCs and collaborate as a holographic presence. The Mesh will leverage Microsoft's office-based customer base, as it will be integrated with Office 365, to be used as a virtual project sharing space as an extension of Microsoft Teams. Over time, Microsoft plans to incorporate Mesh into its other applications and make Metaverse mainstream. The financial information relating to Mesh hasn't been made available, so that the precise analysis may be a long shot. Still, the implications of Mesh are expected to resonate throughout the industry.

Quoting Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella,

Gaming is the most dynamic and exciting category in entertainment across all platforms today and will play a key role in the development of metaverse platforms.

He said the above in the press release of the company's Activision acquisition deal which makes it quite apparent that Microsoft plans to leverage Activision's platform for penetrating the Metaverse. Considering that the concept of Metaverse is still not clearly defined, the frontrunners, including Microsoft, will be the pioneers of what Metaverse transcends into.

The direction and vision of the company is evident, as in an interview with Bloomberg, Satya Nadella said,

If you take 'Halo' as a game, it is a metaverse. 'Minecraft' is a metaverse, and so is 'Flight Sim'. In some sense, they're 2D today, and the question is: 'Can you now take that to a fully 3D world?' And we absolutely plan to do so.

Not surprisingly, the collaboration with Activision may do that as the company's "World of Warcraft" role-playing game also encompasses an extensive virtual world where users appear as avatars and buy virtual goods such as pets, etc.

Microsoft Mesh

microsoft.com

Investors give credit to the CEO, who, since he took over in 2014, transformed MSFT into a strong cloud player. The azure segment is now a core segment and has delivered strong growth into 2021, with an impressive 32% YoY growth rate. Azure is much more than just a cloud service and leverages AI, BI, and IoT platforms, which are expected to drive growth in the following years.

Microsoft's Q2-2022 revenue of $51.7 billion and EPS of $2.48 once again beat analyst estimates of $50.88 billion and $2.31, respectively, showing a YoY growth of over 20%. The revenue generated from the company's cloud computing segment accounted for over 35% of the total revenue at $18.3 billion, with a YoY growth of 26%, outpacing the overall YoY revenue growth. In addition, Azure and other cloud services' revenue grew by almost 46% in Q2-2022, 50% in Q1-2022, and 51% in Q4 2021. This signifies a prominent growth in the company's cloud computing business and has been the cause of the post-earnings bull run of the company's stock.

According to Gartner, the global cloud computing market is expected to grow about 19.6%, from $332.2 billion in 2021 to $397.5 billion in 2022. McKinsey reported that the cloud computing market is expected to reach $1 trillion by 2030. This strongly supports the company's future growth and the favorable cloud outlook for the next decade.

Table 1. Worldwide Public Cloud Services End-User Spending Forecast

gartner.com

Microsoft Azure is second only to Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) Web Services (AWS), with a market share of 18% in the global cloud computing market share. However, it stands to be argued that the numbers don't really reflect an objective reality since Microsoft performs in many areas of cloud computing that AWS doesn't, for instance, its SQL segment offers vastly more services which wouldn't be accounted for in case of a head-to-head market share consensus. Therefore, only comparing the two in areas where both go toe-to-toe doesn't portray the complete picture. Over ten years, the Azure segment would be the primary growth driver, and as it captures a larger portion of the overall revenue, operating margins are expected to improve slightly.

Cloud Computing Stats

s.financesonline.com

Wallstreet analysts retain a positive sentiment regarding the stock with a consensus average target price of $372, an upside of almost 30%. The company's cloud computing segment plays a major role in these positive sentiments. According to Brent Bracelin, Piper Sandler analyst, Microsoft Azure has already outperformed Windows and is now positioned to overtake Microsoft Office productivity software as the company's largest source of revenue in 2022.

Similarly, Bank of America's Analyst Brad Sills wrote that:

Microsoft is well-positioned to generate sustained low double-digit growth in the coming 3-5 years, led by continued adoption of Azure cloud infrastructure platform, cloud-based Office 365 productivity suite and more profitable Games and Game Pass revenue in Xbox.

In the wake of the pandemic, the need for cloud computing has rapidly grown. Microsoft already has a vast customer base composed of corporate clients using its productivity software and data management solutions. As these customers migrate toward the cloud, they would prefer to stick with the same provider rather than shift to a new one. Since Microsoft doesn't post its Azure dollar figures separately but rather amalgamates it within the total 'Intelligent Cloud,' it is hard to predict the exact effect this might have on the financial statements. However, the sentiment stays positive.

The stock market correction has put one of the best tech names on sale, and Microsoft remains one of the strongest players in the tech industry, with far-stretching offerings in multiple arenas. My bullish sentiment around the company resonates from the company's future intensive initiatives, mainly surrounding the growing gaming market, the upcoming Metaverse, and the accelerated cloud computing market.

Despite being a runner-up in the cloud computing arena, Microsoft Azure's impressive growth metrics in the recent quarters have highlighted it as a severe threat to the market leader. Moreover, it remains to be seen how the recent acquisition of Activision plays out in the long run, but the overall sentiment regarding the deal remains promising.

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Microsoft: Defining Its Future With Gaming, Metaverse, And Cloud - Seeking Alpha

Photo by Anders Jildn on Unsplash

From the first mention of Cloud Computing in the mid-1990s, there has been a considerable effort by technology vendors and their marketing teams to push organizations to jump head first into cloud computing. Marketing hyperbole aside, there are definite advantages for small businesses in using some as-a-service offerings. Indeed, few companies regardless of size currently host all their applications entirely on-prem or in private data centers.

Conversely, few businesses have pushed their entire IT needs to AWS, Google Cloud Platform, or Azure. In reality, rather than a 100% cloud computing paradigm, 99% of companies are running hybrid a mix of on-premise and multi-cloud deployments.

There are significant reasons why retaining on-premise capabilities makes sound business sense for small to medium-sized businesses. As organizations acquire more data theres the simple issue of cost. Storing terabytes of data to a cloud isnt cheap (especially when it comes to getting that data out of a cloud).

Additionally, most organizations are rightly concerned about data confidentiality and security. Cloud providers security systems protect infrastructure, not content, so companies must look at WAF, SASE, VPNs, and a host of other often-expensive methods to keep sensitive information safe.

To maintain complete control of the critical information thats the lifeblood of the small-to-medium business, using local storage and computing continues to make business and operational sense. However, its worth noting that on-premise infrastructure is not the poorer cousin to that found in todays state of the art data centers.

Whats often not fully appreciated is that theres no difference between the equipment used in cloud architecture in giant server farms, and that of whats available right now for the Small-to-medium business sector. In fact, many of the solutions weve featured on these pages come with big value-adds for the smaller business, often in the form of price breaks, outstanding service and maintenance packages.

Companies like Lenovo know that SMBs/SMEs dont have dedicated in-house personnel to maintain and oversee hardware and software systems, nor do they have on-hand expert advice before procurement. As a global player, Lenovo leverages its economies of scale to offer the small biz sector some of the best values for hybrid solutions on the market today and thats in an environment where silicon shortages are driving prices upwards.

When many companies start out, they source hardware and software as best they can (Best Buy and eBay are common!) and then configure on-the-go. Lenovo builds dedicated solutions that come pre-configured for the exact needs of any small business, with needed services (like single sign on and antivirus) pre-installed. That means close to zero configuration is needed, either for a new fleet of laptops or a rack of data storage and servers, and theres central oversight from the Cloud Management Tool that handles final configuration.

That synergy available between cloud services and Lenovos on-premise offerings is representative of the reality of most businesses technology today: hybrid IT that uses local systems in conjunction with remote cloud systems.

Many smaller businesses rely on third parties for some level of IT support, but getting this direct from vendors provides gold-plated reliability, especially when the supplier is a global name. For continuous dedicated SMB support the LenovoPROthree tier-level program back the small business sector with price breaks, pre-sales advice, and dedicated aftercare. Those features extend from a half-dozen laptops to on-site mass storage, all the way to cloud integration.

In our next article in this series, well be looking at the DE storage range as a prime example of cost-effective and highly secure infrastructure explicitly designed for the smaller organization. Lenovos offerings are scalable so that companies can add processing power, faster networking capability, and more storage as the business requires.

Organizations can therefore choose how they divide on-premise and cloud services based not on cost but business needs data security, storage costs-per-byte, RTO for data backup and restore, and so on. Dont forget theres advice on all this and more from Lenovo at the end of a phone line.

Keep watching these pages for more details on the Lenovo solutions for smaller businesses running hybrid, or to learn more in the meantime, click through to speak to an SMB specialist to discuss your options.

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Bridging the Small Business IT Gap between On-Prem and Cloud, with Lenovo - TechHQ