Category Archives: Cloud Computing

Cloud Computing (2), ridden by Javier Castellano, wins the 142nd Preakness Stakes horse race ahead of Classic Empire, ridden by Julien Leparoux, Saturday, May 20, 2017, at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

Cloud Computing ran down Classic Empire in the final strides Saturday to win the Preakness by a head.

The 13-1 long shot was one of five fresh horses in the Preakness that didn't run two weeks ago in the Kentucky Derby.

Derby winner Always Dreaming and Classic Empire dueled for most of the race before Classic Empire stuck his nose in front midway on the far turn. It looked as if Classic Empire would go on to win, but Cloud Computing ran him down on the outside.

Always Dreaming faded to eighth in the 10-horse field on a cool and cloudy day at Pimlico. A record crowd of 140,327 was on hand.

Ridden by Javier Castellano, Cloud Computing ran 1 3/16 miles in 1:55.98 and paid $28.80, $8.60 and $6. It was just the dark brown colt's second career victory.

Classic Empire returned $4.40 and $4, and 31-1 shot Senior Investment was another 4 3/4 lengths back in third and paid $10.20.

Lookin At Lee, the Derby runner-up, was fourth. Gunnevera was fifth, followed by Multiplier and Conquest Mo Money. Hence was ninth and Term of Art last.

Trainer Chad Brown earned his first victory in a Triple Crown race. Castellano won for the second time. He rode Bernardini to victory in the 2006 Preakness.

Read more:

13-1 shot Cloud Computing edges Classic Empire, springs upset in Preakness - News3LV

Thoroughbred race horses tend to have names ranging from poetic to outright bizarre , but the winner of yesterdays Preakness Stakes had a more utilitarian monikerCloud Computing.

The victory is a well-timed landmark for the technology the horse is named for, which over the last decade or so has gone from a promising idea to an everyday reality. Remotely-hosted services in everything from file storage to tax preparation to publishing now drive serious profits for major firms, particularly Amazon . And while naming a horse after a tech innovation may seem odd, theres a good explanation.

Cloud Computing, a 13-1 longshot to beat a field including Kentucky Derby winner Always Dreaming, is co-owned by hedge fund overachiever Seth Klarman. Klarman grew up near the Pimlico Race Course where the Preakness is held, and followed horseracing closely before building an investing career focused on underdog assets overlooked by other money managers.

That notably included buying heavily into depressed assets after the 2007-2008 financial crisis, and Klarmans Baupost Group is diversified across finance, energy, and health sectors. But its investments have also included tech stocks like Dell, which owns the cloud service VMWare, and Microsoft , whose Azure cloud service is trying to steal market share from Amazon . Klarman reportedly owns several other horses with names related to technology.

Get Data Sheet , Fortunes technology newsletter.

Techies, business leaders, and cloud computing fans, not surprisingly, seized on the occasion to celebrate. Here are some of their tweets:

Werner Vogels, chief technology officer at Amazon since 2005, and one of the primary architects of Amazon Web Services, Amazon's cloud business:

Aaron Levie, CEO of Box, a cloud services company focused on business customers:

Cisco's cloud computing business chimes in about the victory:

Angela Nadeau, CEO of CompuData Inc.:

A Twitter handle focused on cryptocurrency bitcoin that referenced the serendipity of Cloud Computing's win and bitcoin reaching a $2,000 exchange rate:

Chris Urban, a project manager at Acquia:

Curtis Chin, former ambassador, public relations executive, and advisor:

More:

Cloud Computing Wins Preakness Stakes, and Techies Are Stoked - Fortune

190 shares

share

sms

send

email

By: Alysha Tsuji | May 20, 2017 7:18 pm

The Preakness Stakes had a crazy finish on Saturday at Pimlico.

Always Dreaming, the horse that just won the Kentucky Derby, fell behind, and it was looking like Classic Empire was going to take the victory. But then, Cloud Computing pulled ahead for the thrilling win.

It was this close.

Watch the full race here:

And with a name like Cloud Computing, there were some jokes:

cloud computing, Preakness Stakes, Horse Racing

190 shares

share

sms

send

email

Alysha Tsuji is a writer at FTW. She's based in Los Angeles and enjoys writing about all sorts of sports.

Thanks for signing up. You'll be waking up a little more awesome tomorrow.

Something went wrong.

View original post here:

Watch Cloud Computing's thrilling come-from-behind finish at the Preakness Stakes - For The Win

Cloud Computing wins the 142nd Preakness Stakes in front of a record crowd [Photos] Baltimore Business Journal The rain stayed away and talk of Pimlico Race Course's future was pushed to another day as Cloud Computing won the 142nd Preakness Stakes on Saturday in front of yet another record crowd. The Maryland Jockey Club announced an attendance of ... and more »

Read the original post:

Cloud Computing wins the 142nd Preakness Stakes in front of a record crowd [Photos] - Baltimore Business Journal

BALTIMORE Sometimes it pays to have a fresh horse.

Cloud Computing skipped the Kentucky Derby, while eventual winner Always Dreaming and Classic Empire mixed it up in the mud at Churchill Downs.

Two weeks later, Cloud Computing pounced on those two horses in the Preakness, pulling off an upset victory at 13-1 odds Saturday. He became the first horse to skip the Derby and win the second leg of the Triple Crown since filly Rachel Alexandra in 2009.

Some of the reason that we won today was because we were patient and didnt throw an inexperienced horse against a 20-horse field in the Derby on a very difficult track, winning co-owner Seth Klarman said. We made a great call.

Always Dreaming and Classic Empire dueled for most of the race before Classic Empire stuck his nose in front midway on the far turn. It looked as if Classic Empire would go on to win, but Cloud Computing ran him down on the outside.

Always Dreaming faded to eighth in the 10-horse field on a cool and cloudy day at Pimlico. The crowd of 140,327 and wagering total of $94,127,434 were records, bettering the marks set last year.

Ridden by Javier Castellano, Cloud Computing ran 1 3/16 miles in 1:55.98 and paid $28.80, $8.60 and $6. It was just the dark brown colts fourth career start, the fewest of any horse in the race, and only his second win. He didnt run as a 2-year-old because of injury.

Classic Empire returned $4.40 and $4, and 31-1 shot Senior Investment was another 4 3/4 lengths back in third and paid $10.20.

New York-based trainer Chad Brown earned his first victory in a Triple Crown race. Castellano won for the second time. He rode Bernardini to victory in the 2006 Preakness.

Castellano comes from a racing family, with a father, uncle and brother who have been jockeys.

Weve been working for a long time for this moment, he said. Its great for the family.

The 142nd Preakness had been billed as a match race between Always Dreaming and Classic Empire, and it was from the start.

They broke out of the starting gate next to each other and the fight was on. Always Dreaming took a slight lead with Classic Empire on his flank.

Meanwhile, Cloud Computing was back in third as Castellano watched the duel unfold in front of him.

Always Dreaming was the first to throw in the towel, surrendering the lead to Classic Empire midway around the final turn.

We didnt have an excuse, said Todd Pletcher, who trains Always Dreaming. We were in a position we expected to be, and I think the turnaround was a little too quick. He ran so hard in the Derby and today just wasnt his day.

Always Dreaming lost for the first time in five races this year. Hed won his first four by a combined 23 1/4 lengths.

Classic Empire and Julien Leparoux went into the stretch with three-length lead, seemingly on his way to the winners circle.

At that point, trainer Mark Casse thought he was headed there, too.

Of course, he said. But I thought I was going to win a lot of times before, so it doesnt shock me.

But Classic Empire also paid a price for putting away Always Dreaming. Classic Empire fought on to the finish line, but couldnt hold off a fresh horse in Cloud Computing.

Certainly Im not going to dispute the fact that I brought in a fresh horse as part of our strategy, Brown said. Our horse is very talented, too. Classic Empire and Always Dreaming are two outstanding horses, and our strategy was, if we are ever going to beat them lets take them on two weeks rest when we have six (weeks), and it worked.

After Cloud Computing ran third in the Wood Memorial, Brown and the owners decided the colt would benefit from skipping the Derby. He came into the Preakness after a six-week break.

It just didnt work out in the Wood. We just ran out of time, Brown said. We just really zeroed in on this race, and thankfully it worked out.

The victory was especially sweet for Klarman, who grew up a few blocks from Pimlico. He turns 60 on Sunday. He and William Lawrence have been buying and racing horses together since 2006.

This is the culmination of 25 years of hard work and learning and trying to figure this game out, said Klarman, president of the Baupost Group, a hedge fund valued at $31 billion.

In my regular life, Im a long-term value investor. This is gambling. Its really been a thrill and this is the highlight of our career so far as thoroughbred owners.

Klarman, who races as Klaravich Stables, is a minority owner of the Boston Red Sox.

Lookin At Lee, the Derby runner-up, was fourth. Gunnevera was fifth, followed by Multiplier and Conquest Mo Money. Hence was ninth and Term of Art last.

More here:

Rested and ready: 13-1 shot Cloud Computing wins Preakness - Fairfield Daily Republic

Wall Street Journal (subscription)

Microsoft Extends Cloud-Computing Arms Race to Africa Wall Street Journal (subscription) The data centers, which will serve customers of the software giant's Azure cloud-computing business, will be the first of their size built in Africa by one of the three major cloud-infrastructure providersMicrosoft, Amazon.com Inc., and Alphabet Inc ... Microsoft offers cloud computing services to non-profitsETCIO.com Workshop on cloudcomputing for NGOsThe Hindu Microsoft to Open Cloud Data Center in Africa By 2018 | Fortune.comFortune Bloomberg -The Official Microsoft Blog - Microsoft all 77 news articles »

View post:

Microsoft Extends Cloud-Computing Arms Race to Africa - Wall Street Journal (subscription)

Just about every new piece of technology is considered disruptive to the extent that they are expected to replace older technologies. Sometimes as with the cloud, old technology is simply re-branded to make it more appealing to customers and thereby to create the illusion of a new market. Lets remember that cloud computing had previously existed in one shape or form. At one stage it was called on-demand computing, and then it became application service provision.

Now there is edge computing, which some people are also calling fog computing and which some industry commentators feel is going to replace the cloud as an entity. Yet the question has to be: Will it really? The same viewpoint was given when television was invented. Its invention was meant to be the death of radio. Yet people still tune into radio stations by their thousands each and every day of every year.

Of course, there are some technologies that are really disruptive in that they change peoples habits and their way of thinking. Once people enjoyed listening to Sony Walkmans, but today most folk listen to their favourite tunes using smartphones thanks to iPods and the launch of the first iPhone by Steve Jobs in 2007, which put the internet in our pockets and more besides.

So why do people think edge computing will blow away the cloud? This claim is made in many online articles. Clint Boulton, for example, writes about it in his Asia Cloud Forum article, Edge Computing Will Blow Away The Cloud, in March this year. He cites venture capitalist Andrew Levine, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, who believes that more computational and data processing resources will move towards edge devices such as driverless cars and drones which make up at least part of the Internet of Things. Levine prophesises that this will mean the end of the cloud as data processing will move back towards the edge of the network.

In other words, the trend has been up to now to centralise computing within the data centre, while in the past it was often decentralised or localised nearer to the point of use. Levine sees driverless cars as being a data centre; they have more than 200 CPUs working to enable them to operate without going off the road and causing an accident. The nature of autonomous vehicles means that their computing capabilities must be self-contained, and to ensure safety they minimise any reliance they might otherwise have on the cloud. Yet they dont dispense with it.

The two approaches may in fact end up complementing each other. Part of the argument for bringing data computation back to the edge falls down to increasing data volumes, which lead to ever more frustratingly slow networks. Latency is the culprit. Data is becoming ever larger. So there is going to be more data per transaction, more video and sensor data. Virtual and augmented reality are going to play an increasing part in its growth too. With this growth, latency will become more challenging than it was previously. Furthermore, while it might make sense to put data close to a device such as an autonomous vehicle to eliminate latency, a remote way of storing data via the cloud remains critical.

The cloud can still be used to deliver certain services too, such as media and entertainment. It can also be used to back up data and to share data emanating from a vehicle for analysis by a number of disparate stakeholders. From a data centre perspective, and moving beyond autonomous vehicles to a general operational business scenario, creating a number of smaller data centres or disaster recovery sites may reduce economies of scale and make operations more inefficient than efficient. Yes, latency might be mitigated, but the data may also be held within the same circles of disruption with disastrous consequences when disaster strikes; so for the sake of business continuity some data may still have to be stored or processed elsewhere, away from the edge of a network. In the case of autonomous vehicles, and because they must operate whether a network connection exists or not, it makes sense for certain types of computation and analysis to be completed by the vehicle itself. However, much of this data is still backed up via a cloud connection whenever it is available. So, edge and cloud computing are likely to follow more of a hybrid approach than a standalone one.

Saju Skaria, senior director at consulting firm TCS, offers several examples of where edge computing could prove advantageous in his LinkedIn Pulse article, Edge Computing Vs. Cloud Computing: Where Does the Future Lie?. He certainly doesnt think that the cloud is going to blow away.

Edge computing does not replace cloud computingin reality, an analytical model or rules might be created in a cloud then pushed out to edge devices and some [of these] are capable of doing analysis. He then goes on to talk about fog computing, which involves data processing from the edge to a cloud. He is suggesting that people shouldnt forget data warehousing too, because it is used for the massive storage of data and slow analytical queries.

In spite of this argument, Gartners Thomas Bittman, seems to agree that Edge Will Eat The Cloud. Today, cloud computing is eating enterprise datacentres, as more and more workloads are born in the cloud, and some are transforming and moving to the cloud but theres another trend that will shift workloads, data, processing and business value significantly away from the cloud. The edge will eat the cloud and this is perhaps as important as the cloud computing trend ever was.

Later on in his blog, Bittman says: The agility of cloud computing is great but it simply isnt enough. Massive centralisation, economies of scale, self-service and full automation get us most of the way there but it doesnt overcome physics the weight of data, the speed of light. As people need to interact with their digitally-assisted realities in real-time, waiting on a data centre miles (or many miles) away isnt going to work. Latency matters. Im here right now and Im gone in seconds. Put up the right advertising before I look away, point out the store that Ive been looking for as I driver, let me know that a colleague is heading my way, help my self-driving car to avoid other cars through a busy intersection. And do it now.

He makes some valid points, but he falls into the argument that has often been used about latency and data centres: They have to be close together. The truth, however, is that wide area networks will always be the foundation stone of both edge and cloud computing. Secondly, Bittman clearly hasnt come across data acceleration tools such as PORTrockIT and WANrockIT. While physics is certainly a limiting and challenging factor that will always be at play in networks of all kinds including WANs, it is possible today to place your datacentres at a distance from each other without suffering an increase in data and network latency. Latency can be mitigated, and its impact can be significantly reduced no matter where the data processing occurs, and no matter where the data resides.

So lets not see edge computing as a new solution. It is but one solution, and so is the cloud. Together the two technologies can support each other. One commentator says in response to a Quora question about the difference between edge computing and cloud computing that edge computing is a method of accelerating and improving the performance of cloud computing for mobile users. So the argument that edge will replace cloud computing is a very foggy one. Cloud computing may at one stage be re-named for marketing reasons but its still here to stay.

Read the rest here:

Is edge computing set to blow away the cloud? - Cloud Tech

Firms Face Decelerating Cloud Spending: Analyst Investopedia The cloud computing revolution has been one of the most disruptive catalysts for change in the technology sector over the past couple of years. As enterprises move their data centers off premise and migrate to hybrid IT structures, companies such as ...

More:

Firms Face Decelerating Cloud Spending: Analyst - Investopedia

Microsoft Corp. plans to extend the cloud-computing arms race among technology giants into Africa by opening two big data centers there next year.

The data centers, which will serve customers of the software giant's Azure cloud-computing business, will be the first of their size built in Africa by one of the three major cloud-infrastructure providers -- Microsoft, Amazon.com Inc., and Alphabet Inc.'s Google, according to global maps the companies posts online." Microsoft plans to open the centers in Johannesburg and Cape Town.

Microsoft believes the African tech market is "a pretty ripe opportunity, " said corporate vice president Julia White. Microsoft's cloud computing customers in the market include Standard Bank of South Africa and the South African State Information Technology Agency, she said.

Research firm International Data Corp. estimates that total cloud revenue in South Africa last year was just $243 million, but expects it to grow nearly 20% a year through 2021.

Microsoft, Amazon, and Google have been racing to open data centers around the globe. They have been willing to shoulder the costs for such centers, which can run into the hundreds of millions of dollars, to keep pace with one another and create a barrier for would-be rivals to catch up. After the openings, Microsoft will have 40 major data centers globally.

Combined, Microsoft, Amazon and Alphabet spent a combined $31.54 billion in 2016 in capital expenditures and capital leases, up 22% from 2015, according to company filings. Not every dollar of that is spent on data centers that deliver infrastructure as a service, but each company describes the cloud as a major investment area.

Continue Reading Below

ADVERTISEMENT

The new data centers should help Microsoft win over South African business customers who've wanted to move their computing operations to the cloud, but have been unwilling to have that service provided by data centers in Europe, said IDC analyst Jon Tullett. Cloud services can run more slowly when data has to travel such distances. Moreover, recent South African regulations require businesses to keep some customer data on servers in the country.

With the new data centers, Microsoft has taken those issues "off the table completely," said Mr. Tullett, who was briefed by Microsoft on the news. He expects cloud adoption in the country to climb as a result.

Write to Jay Greene at Jay.Greene@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

May 18, 2017 08:44 ET (12:44 GMT)

See the original post:

Microsoft Extends Cloud-Computing Arms Race to Africa - Fox Business

Alphabet after 1Q17 Earnings: Verily, Waymo, and Smart Speakers PART 3 OF 17

Alphabets (GOOGL) Google seems to have changed its approach to its competition in thecloud computing market. The company says it doesnt intend to compete with Amazon (AMZN), Microsoft (MSFT), or Oracle (ORCL) in the cloud computing price wars to attract customers, according to a CNBC report.

Instead of engaging in price competition, Google wants to compete on value. For example, the company wants to pitch to customers that its Google Cloud Platform is the best option for data analytics and artificial intelligence services.

If Alphabet isnt going to try to gain an edge against the competition by pricing its cloud services competitively, then that would be a stark reversal from what the company did last year. In 2016, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google cut prices of some of their cloud services in a bid to attract new customers or in the case of the large providers, to defend their market share

AWS is the worlds largest cloud computing platform, controlling an ~31.0% share of the global market, according to Synergy Research Group. Microsoft holds a distant second place with ~11.0% of the market share. IBM (IBM) and Google appear to be underdogs with market shares of ~8.0% and ~5.0%, respectively.

Although Google is currently subdued by Amazon in terms of the cloud computing market share, the company believes its Google Cloud Platform could overtake AWS as the largest cloud provider by 2022. Googles hopes of becoming the cloud computing king in five years hinge on a research finding by Deutsche Bank showing that only 5.0% of cloud-eligible workloads have migrated to the cloud.

Revenues in Alphabets segment that reports cloud sales grew 49% to ~$3.1 billion in 1Q17, which compares with AWS revenues of $3.6 billion during the same period.

See more here:

How Alphabet Views the Cloud Computing Price Wars - Market Realist