Category Archives: Cloud Computing

A standing ovation that lasted minutes followed Cudos latest announcement at the AIBC summit. The decentralized cloud computing blockchain network will partner with Tingo to tackle the poverty premium through mobile monetization applications.

The announcement happened on stage at AIBC Malta, a global event unifying Ai, UI, IoT and Quantum Tech and hosting thousands of policymakers and thought leaders.

As a growing, scalable computing network, Cudos has over 500,000 business and individual accounts, contributing underutilized resources and earning simultaneously. Like Airbnb for computing, this sustainable model reduces waste and distributes the revenues fairly across the network.

With a focus on sustainability, Cudos is already over two million times more energy-efficient than Ethereum and 100% carbon-neutral. With robust technology delivered ethically, the decentralized cloud provider attracted 22,000+ developers for its ongoing testnet Project Artemis.

The significance of this extends to the whole industry as Cudos will be the first blockchain connecting consumers to scalable computing through smart contracts. These are the foundations for powering the metaverse, and in this case, providing a whole country with decentralized computing.

The impact of the collaboration will initially extend to almost 10 million devices across the Tingo network. As a unique agri-fintech business that has delivered significant impact to rural communities, the partnership will enable the creation of a distributed cloud for Nigerians that is run by and pays Nigerians. Considering that the country is the second-largest Bitcoin market after the United States, the significance is unprecedented. After Nigeria, Tingo will expand across Africa and South America, broadening the positive impact further.

The importance of this collaboration, however, goes beyond financial inclusion and freedom. It unites social and environmental needs focusing on economic empowerment while reducing the environmental impact of computing.

The partnership would enable people to run monetization applications on their smartphones. This would create a fully inclusive digital ecosystem, distributing the Cudos technology to millions of smartphones.

In partnership with Tingo, Cudos has the opportunity to scale a highly distributed smartphone cloud computing network across Nigeria first before expanding into other regions. Ultimately, each community will leverage sustainable, scalable and cost-effective computing resources.

This is a colossal collaboration, as Tingo's model supports farmers in rural Nigeria who would receive single-digit loans rather than the typical microfinance 25%+ interest through the collaboration with DeFi partners MELD. Farmers would use their phones to earn CUDOS.

CUDOS will become more than a currency for payments within this ecosystem. The network will become a computing platform for Nigerian institutes and universities, benefiting those in rural areas with earnings and slowing the rapid migration into cities.

Our vision of a decentralized, sustainable and connected world where no computing is wasted is coming to fruition with this new partnership with Tingo. As Tingo is in the process of listing its subsidiary company, Tingo Inc (OTCQB: IWBB), on the New York Stock Exchange, it is refreshing to share the same ethos of creating technology and business models for the betterment of communities. Positive social impact is the driver behind this deal, providing financial security to millions of users initially. As a partnership, we will build on this, expanding to other regions creating a circular economy of financial inclusion, security and democratized cloud resources. Close to 10 million users able to earn and spend CUDOS is also essential for the growth of our network, commented Pete Hill, vice president of sales at Cudos.

As part of the announcement, Cudos will list on CoinField, a European exchange recently acquired by Tingo International Holdings, increasing the community reach and liquidity for the CUDOS token.

The Cudos Network is a layer one blockchain and layer two computation and oracle network designed to ensure decentralized, permissionless access to high-performance computing at scale and enable the scaling of computing resources to 100,000s of nodes. Once bridged onto Ethereum, Algorand, Polkadot and Cosmos, Cudos will enable scalable computation and layer two Oracles on all of the bridged blockchains.

Learn more: Website, Twitter, Telegram, YouTube, Discord, Medium

Tingo is a unique agri-fintech using smartphones to deliver a marketplace that enables nearly 10 million subscribers to manage their commercial activities of growing and selling their products to market participants. The ecosystem provides a one-stop-shop solution to enable such subscribers to manage everything from airtime top-ups, bill pay services for utilities and other service providers, access to insurance services, and microfinance to support their value chain from seed to sale.

Tingo has two innovative platforms: Nwassa, Africas first digital agriculture ecosystem and Tingo Pay, a mobile payment gateway. Tingo International Holdings is a majority shareholder in Tingo Inc (OTC Markets: IWBB), which owns 100% of Tingo Mobile PLC in Nigeria. The company has acquired Coinfield, a leading European crypto exchange that operates in 198 countries.

Learn more: Website, LinkedIn

This is a paid press release. Cointelegraph does not endorse and is not responsible for or liable for any content, accuracy, quality, advertising, products, or other materials on this page. Readers should do their own research before taking any actions related to the company. Cointelegraph is not responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods, or services mentioned in the press release.

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Cudos and Tingo vow to end the poverty premium with a huge partnership - Cointelegraph

The Cloud Computing for Business Operations Market report provides a detailed analysis of global market size, regional and country-level market size, segmentation market growth, market share, competitive Landscape, sales analysis, impact of domestic and global market players, value chain optimazation, trade regulationns, recent developments, opportunities analysis, strategic market growth analysis, product launches, area marketplace expanding, and technological innovations.

GET FREE SAMPLE PDF :https://www.hnyresearch.us/sample-report/2022-2027-Global-Cloud-Computing-for-Business-Operations-Outlook-Market-Size-ShareTrends-Analysis-Report-By-Player-Type-Application-and-Region/36543

The prime objective of this report is to help the user understand the market in terms of its definition, segmentation, market potential, influential trends, and the challenges that the market is facing with 10 major regions and 50 major countries. Deep researches and analysis were done during the preparation of the report. The readers will find this report very helpful in understanding the market in depth. The data and the information regarding the market are taken from reliable sources such as websites, annual reports of the companies, journals, and others and were checked and validated by the industry experts. The facts and data are represented in the report using diagrams, graphs, pie charts, and other pictorial representations. This enhances the visual representation and also helps in understanding the facts much better.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/endoscopic-camera-market-analysis-historic-data-and-forecast-2022-2027-2021-11-10

By Market Players:Amazon Web ServicesMicrosoft AzureGoogle Cloud PlatformIBM CloudRed HatSAP Cloud PlatformKamateraVMwareOracle CloudSalesforce CloudCisco SystemsVerizon CloudHPE CloudServiceNowAlibaba CloudDigitalOceanCenturyLinkWorkdayCloudSigmaAdobe Cloud

By TypeInfrastructure as a Service (IaaS)Platform as a Service (PaaS)Software as a Service (SaaS)Recovery as a Service (RaaS)

Points Covered in The Report

The points that are discussed within the report are the major market players that are involved in the market such as market players, raw material suppliers, equipment suppliers, end users, traders, distributors and etc.

View full report:https://www.hnyresearch.us/report/2022-2027-Global-Cloud-Computing-for-Business-Operations-Outlook-Market-Size-ShareTrends-Analysis-Report-By-Player-Type-Application-and-Region/36543The complete profile of the companies is mentioned. And the capacity, production, price, revenue, cost, gross, gross margin, sales volume, sales revenue, consumption, growth rate, import, export, supply, future strategies, and the technological developments that they are making are also included within the report. This report analyzed 12 years data history and forecast.

The growth factors of the market is discussed in detail wherein the different end users of the market are explained in detail.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/antithrombotic-drugs-market-analysis-historic-data-and-forecast-2022-2027-2021-11-10

Data and information by market player, by region, by type, by application and etc, and custom research can be added according to specific requirements.

The report contains the SWOT analysis of the market. Finally, the report contains the conclusion part where the opinions of the industrial experts are included.

Market Players & Competitor Analysis: The report covers the key players of the industry including Company Profile, Product Specifications, Production Capacity/Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin 2016-2021 & Sales by Product Types.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/respiratory-therapeutic-devices-market-analysis-historic-data-and-forecast-2022-2027-2021-11-10

Global and Regional Market Analysis: The report includes Global & Regional market status and outlook 2022-2027. Further the report provides break down details about each region & countries covered in the report. Identifying its production, consumption, import & export, sales volume & revenue forecast.

Market Analysis by Product Type: The report covers majority Product Types in the Wood Coatings Industry, including its product specifcations by each key player, volume, sales by Volume and Value (M USD).

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/hemostatic-valves-market-analysis-historic-data-and-forecast-2022-2027-2021-11-10

Market Analysis by Application Type: Based on the Wood Coatings Industry and its applications, the market is further sub-segmented into several major Application of its industry. It provides you with the market size, CAGR & forecast by each industry applications.

Market Trends: Market key trends which include Increased Competition and Continuous Innovations.

Opportunities and Drivers: Identifying the Growing Demands and New TechnologyPorters Five Force Analysis: The report will provide with the state of competition in industry depending on five basic forces: threat of new entrants, bargaining power of suppliers, bargaining power of buyers, threat of substitute products or services, and existing industry rivalry.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/polypectomy-forcep-market-analysis-historic-data-and-forecast-2022-2027-2021-11-10

COVID-19 ImpactReport covers Impact of Coronavirus COVID-19: Since the COVID-19 virus outbreak in December 2019, the disease has spread to almost every country around the globe with the World Health Organization declaring it a public health emergency. The global impacts of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) are already starting to be felt, and will significantly affect the Wood Coatings market in 2021. The outbreak of COVID-19 has brought effects on many aspects, like flight cancellations; travel bans and quarantines; restaurants closed; all indoor/outdoor events restricted; over forty countries state of emergency declared; massive slowing of the supply chain; stock market volatility; falling business confidence, growing panic among the population, and uncertainty about future.

Table Of Content:

1 Report Overview1.1 Study Scope1.2 Key Market Segments1.3 Players Covered: Ranking by Cloud Computing for Business Operations Revenue1.4 Market Analysis by Type1.4.1 Global Cloud Computing for Business Operations Market Size Growth Rate by Type: 2021 VS 20271.4.2 Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)1.4.3 Platform as a Service (PaaS)1.4.4 Software as a Service (SaaS)1.4.5 Recovery as a Service (RaaS)1.5 Market by Application1.5.1 Global Cloud Computing for Business Operations Market Share by Application: 2022-20271.5.2 Private Cloud1.5.3 Hybrid Cloud1.5.4 Others1.6 Study Objectives1.7 Years Considered1.8 Overview of Global Cloud Computing for Business Operations Market1.8.1 Global Cloud Computing for Business Operations Market Status and Outlook (2016-2027)1.8.2 North America1.8.3 East Asia1.8.4 Europe1.8.5 South Asia1.8.6 Southeast Asia1.8.7 Middle East1.8.8 Africa1.8.9 Oceania1.8.10 South America1.8.11 Rest of the World1.9 Global Market Growth Prospects1.9.1 Global Cloud Computing for Business Operations Revenue Estimates and Forecasts (2016-2027)1.9.2 Global Cloud Computing for Business Operations Production Capacity Estimates and Forecasts (2016-2027)1.9.3 Global Cloud Computing for Business Operations Production Estimates and Forecasts (2016-2027)

Continued

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Global Cloud Computing for Business Operations Market Research Report Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2022-2027 Energy...

When historians look back on this period, one of the things that they will find remarkable is that for a quarter of a century, the governments of western democracies slept peacefully while some of the most powerful (and profitable) corporations in history emerged and grew, without let or hindrance, at exponential speeds.

They will wonder at how a small number of these organisations, which came to be called tech giants (Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft), acquired, and began to wield, extraordinary powers. They logged and tracked everything we did online every email, tweet, blog, photograph and social media post we sent, every like we registered, every website we visited, every Google search we made, every product we ordered online, every place we visited, which groups we belonged to and who our closest friends were.

And that was just for starters. Two of these companies even invented a new variant of extractive capitalism. Whereas the standard form appropriated and plundered the Earths natural resources, this new surveillance capitalism appropriated human resources in the shape of comprehensive records of users behaviour, which were algorithmically translated into detailed profiles that could be sold to others. And while the activities of extractive capitalism came ultimately to threaten the planet, those of its surveillance counterpart have turned into a threat to our democracy.

Some of the powers the companies wielded were relatively familiar, basically just contemporary manifestations of older kinds of industrial power: monopolistic domination of certain markets. But future historians will also note that some powers acquired by the tech giants of the early 21st century seemed genuinely novel. They included: the power to transform the public sphere by the algorithmic curation of our information feeds; the ability to silence the most powerful politician in the western world by suddenly banning him from company platforms; and the power effectively to render people invisible by delisting them from Google searches.

Democracys long slumber ended in 2016 when two political earthquakes shook the political world the Brexit vote in the UK and the election of Donald Trump in the US. Although both shocks were indicators of a deep malaise in liberal democracy, they were widely but wrongly attributed to social media. Theres no doubt that technology played a role in the upheavals of 2016, but anyone who attributes such seismic shifts just to the operations of tech companies hasnt been paying attention to the recent history of either capitalism or democracy. In fact, blaming tech provides a convenient way of ignoring the deeper causes of the turbulence.

Key events in the row over the political data analytics firm

December 2015

First hint of the scandal

June 2016

Firm works with Trump campaign

Cambridge Analytica, the political consultancy firm of which Steve Bannon is vice-president, starts working with Trump campaign aide Brad Parscale in San Antonio, alongside employees from Facebook and Google. Two months later, Donald Trump sacks Paul Manafort as his campaign manager and appoints Bannon. The campaign spends $6m on Cambridge Analyticas services

16 March 2018

The first legal action

David Carroll, an American professor, files a case to reclaim his data from Cambridge Analytica under English law.

17 March 2018

Wylie reveals harvest

Christopher Wylie, a co-founder of Cambridge Analytica,claims in the Observerthat the firm used 50 million harvested Facebook profiles in a major data scandal. This number was later revised by Facebook to 87 million. Wylie claimed the data sold to Cambridge Analytica was then used to develop "psychographic" profiles of people and deliver pro-Trump material to them online

19 March 2018

Channel 4's revelations

Channel 4 broadcasts its undercover films of Cambridge Analyticas CEO, Alexander Nix, discussing his role in Trumps 2016 election.

21 March 2018

Zuckerberg apologises

After four days of refusing to comment, Mark Zuckerberg publishes a Facebook post apologising for the data breach.The Facebook CEO responds to the continued fallout over the data scandal, saying: "We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can't then we don't deserve to serve you. I've been working to understand exactly what happened and how to make sure this doesn't happen again"

25 March 2018

The sorry ads

Zuckerberg takes out full-page ads in a number of British and American newspapers to apologise for a "breach of trust"

17 April 2018

Kaiser testifies

Ex-Cambridge Analytica director Brittany Kaiser testifies before the digital, culture, media and sport select committee.

25 April 2018

Facebook revenues rise

Facebook releases its first earnings report since the scandal was reported. The quarterly revenue was its highest for a first quarter and the second highest overall

May 2018

Investigations launched

Cambridge Analytica goes into administration on 3 May. Days later itis reportedthat the FBI and the US Justice Department are investigating the company. On 16 May, Wylie appears before the US congress to answer questions about the scandal. y

6 June 2018

Nix testifies

July 2018

Facebook fined

The UK's Information Commissioners Office announces it intends to fine Facebook 500,000 ($663,000) over the data scandal, saying Facebook "contravened the law by failing to safeguard people's information".

$119bn is knocked off Facebook's stock value when Zuckerberg announces that significant numbers of users are leaving the platform

November 2018

Empty chair

Having refused multiple invitations to appear before the UK parliamentary inquiry into fake news, Mark Zuckerberg is "empty chaired"at a specialcommittee meetingof members of nine national parliaments

18 February 2019

DCMS report published

After Zuckerberg refuses to testify, the DCMS report into fake news is finalised and concludes that the UK's electoral laws are not fit for purpose in the digital age.

March 2019

Criminal inquiry

It is reported that the US Justice Department is conducting a criminal inquiry into Facebook's data-sharing with other technology companies

18 April 2019

High court ruling

The high court rules against appointing new administrators of Cambridge Analytica thwarting Carrolls efforts to retrieve his data.

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Despite that, the focus of media and public attention has largely been on the power and role of tech companies in our societies. The years since 2016 have seen flurries of activity antitrust lawsuits; Senator Elizabeth Warrens presidential campaign; congressional hearings; a major investigation by the US House of Representatives; leaks from inside the companies; sensational media revelations (the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebooks role in facilitating genocide in Myanmar, YouTubes role in radicalising mass shooters etc); probes by competition authorities in the UK, the EU and elsewhere.

By some counts, there are at least 70 such actions under way around the globe at the moment. In the US, for example, nearly 40 states have launched competition lawsuits against Google and the Department of Justice is pursuing one against Facebook. In Europe, the European Commission has filed competition and other charges against Amazon and Google, while a number of other tech companies have been suing Apple over its alleged anti-competitive behaviour in the management of its app store. To date, however, weve seen little in the way of tangible, effective curbs on tech power. Sensational media revelations or political slogans such as Break Them Up may create headlines and engender fevered discussion, but they are not a substitute for radical regulatory intervention or legislative action. And although US congressional hearings have improved of late, they have too often just been yelling matches in which grandstanding legislators summon tech executives for castigation.

Thats not to say that there havent been some serious interventions by various authorities. Whopping fines for corporate transgressions have been levied on Facebook and Google, for example. In Googles case, the European Commission has imposed a total of $9.5bn in fines on the company since 2017. The problem is that theres little evidence that even such massive penalties constitute a serious deterrent for such insanely profitable companies.

To give just one example. In 2012, Facebook was subjected to a consent decree by the US regulator, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), in which it undertook always to obtain its users consent before sharing their information beyond established privacy settings. After the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the FTC ruled that the company had violated that decree and fined it $5bn, the biggest penalty it had ever levied. And the immediate result of this news? Facebooks share price went up from $201 to $205!

The task of bringing these kinds of corporations under public control is a truly gargantuan one. As anyone who has worked in government knows, industrial regulation is hard for liberal democracies. First, it requires political will, which in turn requires public concern and popular support. Second, it needs vision and new ideas about how to extract the benefits of technology for society while minimising the harm that comes from the unrestrained corporate power that controls it. And third, it requires legislative determination and staying power, because structural change in a democracy takes a long time. All of these basic requirements have been absent in the decades when the tech giants were growing into their present dominance. Which means that democracies are now playing catch-up and, at worst, chasing horses that have long since bolted.

In recent times, western governments have belatedly become converts to the idea that something must be done about tech power. Whether they understand the nature and scale of the task is debatable. To those who are sceptical about governments capacity to bring about structural change, the stock riposte is that since democracies have dealt with this kind of challenge before, they can do so again.

After all, in the closing decade of the 19th century and the early years of the 20th the American republic took on the great industrial trusts assembled by the Rockefellers, Morgans, Carnegies and Vanderbilts and brought them under some kind of democratic control. But this was only possible because there was widespread public concern about the trusts manifest abuses of their consolidated power, concern that had been stoked by a formidable amount of investigative reporting by writers and journalists such as Ida Tarbell. This public concern was transmuted into political pressure. Three of the four candidates in the 1912 US presidential election, for example, ran on platforms that were deeply hostile to such accumulated industrial power.

In contemporary democracies, however, no political party campaigns on a platform like that, for the simple reason that voters dont seem to be all that interested in tech power. Thats not entirely surprising: public understanding of digital technology is limited by its formidable complexity. More importantly, because the internet and the services that run on it have become intimately interwoven with peoples everyday lives, they have become dependent on it, a dependence that has been vividly underscored by the pandemic.

So although opinion polls may report that people are concerned about tech power, their behaviour tells a different story that they suffer from what psychologists call cognitive dissonance: the stress that comes from continuing to do something that is contrary to what you believe to be right. This is the source of the privacy paradox that grips social media users, who fear (rightly) that their privacy is undermined by the services, but nevertheless continue to use them.

High-minded disdain for such contradictory behaviour is unfair and counterproductive, because it ignores the power of the network effects that keep people locked into online platforms. Try telling a grandmother who uses Facebook to keep in regular touch with her grandchildren in Australia that her concerns about privacy are hypocritical. What critics of social media conveniently overlook is how much ordinary people value these free services, even as they may harbour suspicions about the ethics of the companies that provide them.

Politicians in liberal democracies, with their gaze permanently fixed on electoral cycles, know this only too well. The Australian government had a sharp reminder of it last February when Facebook blocked news to its users in the country amid a dispute over a proposed law that would force it and Google to pay news publishers for content. After a few days, a settlement was reached, involving changes to the proposed legislation. This was predictably followed by disagreement about who blinked first Facebook or the government? The inescapable conclusion, though, was that the democratically elected prime minister who would ban access to, say, Instagram (a Facebook property) has yet to be born.

Sanctimonious criticism of social media users lack of moral fibre is unfair also because it attributes to them more agency than they actually possess. Most people imagine that if they decide to stop using Gmail or Microsoft Outlook or never buy another book from Amazon then they have liberated themselves from the tentacles of these giants. But the penetration and connectedness of networked technology is such that the only way of avoiding the tentacles of tech power would be to go completely off-grid.

Three years ago, an intrepid journalist named Kashmir Hill conducted an interesting experiment to see if she could avoid using Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft or Apple services. Over six weeks, she reported, I cut them out of my own life and tried to prevent them from knowing about me or monetising me in any way not just by putting my iPhone in a drawer for a week or only buying local, but by really, truly blocking these companies from accessing me and vice versa. I wanted to find out how hard it would be or if I could even do it given that these tech giants dominate the internet in so many invisible ways that its hard to even know them all.

The results of Ms Kashmirs experiment were fascinating. She demonstrated that our lives now run on a technical infrastructure that is owned, operated and controlled by a handful of giant corporations, from which there is currently no escape unless you plan to hibernate. But perhaps the most sobering outcome of the experiment was the extent to which almost every digital service we use is underpinned, in one way or another, by Amazons cloud-computing service, AWS. And in a way this may help to explain why western governments are so chary of taking on tech giants, particularly Amazon.

For it turns out that even the security services of major democracies are using Amazon Web Services (AWS). Just to take a couple of examples, the CIA has been using it since 2014 and recently it was revealed that the UKs spy agencies have given a 500m-plus contract to AWS to host classified material to boost the use of data analytics and AI. GCHQ led the procurement of this high-security cloud system, which will also be used by MI5 and MI6 as well as the Ministry of Defence.

Of course, these arrangements are accompanied by the usual soothing official bromides alles ist in Ordnung and so on. But it does make one wonder how keen a future British government might be to impose stringent competition regulations on its new partner in national security.

The USP of liberal democracies is that they are governed by the rule of law. But legal climates change over time and so it has been with judicial attitudes to monopoly power over the decades. The first anti-monopoly statute was the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, passed by the US Congress in 1890. The act was crafted to prevent the concentration of power into the hands of a few large enterprises to the disadvantage of smaller enterprises. And it gave the US Department of Justice the authority to take action against offenders.

Crudely put, in the view of the act, big equalled bad and this shaped competition enforcement and thinking over the next half century. But, as with most major statutes, consistent action proved increasingly difficult over succeeding decades as new industries evolved and circumstances changed.

Then, in 1978, came a landmark book, The Antitrust Paradox, by a distinguished American jurist, Robert Bork. Bork provided a scathing critique of how the Sherman Act had become dysfunctional: originally aimed at protecting competition, it had increasingly been used to protect weak and uneconomic competitors, a perverse outcome for the US economy. Instead of focusing on corporate consolidation (ie size), Bork proposed that the prime focus of antitrust action should be consumer welfare, which in practice meant protection from unfairly high prices. The fact that over a period a corporation had grown very large was not in itself problematic, so long as there was no evidence that it was harmful to consumers. Big no longer automatically meant bad.

What no one could have known in 1978 was that Borks view would provide a get-out-of-jail card for tech firms that grew into giants but could not be accused of harming consumers by raising prices, because their products were free (Google, Facebook, Twitter) or super-competitive (Amazon). The freedom that this gave to tech companies was memorably articulated by the Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel in his Zero to One manifesto: Monopoly is the condition of every successful business, he wrote, and competition is for losers. The conventional wisdom embodied in The Antitrust Paradox may have explained the somnolence of democratic regulators when the companies were expanding. At any rate, it could have reduced their appetite for action at a time when it might have been more effective.

In that sense, perhaps the most significant development of the past few years came in 2017 when a young graduate student named Lina Khan published a remarkable article in the Yale Law Journal. In a way, its title Amazons Antitrust Paradox with its echo of Borks landmark book, should have given the game away, because it mounted a head-on challenge to the conventional wisdom that regulation should focus on consumer welfare.

Khans argument was that a company shouldnt get a free pass just because it makes its customers happy. Benefiting from the slumber of regulators as it grew, Amazon had amassed structural power over increasing parts of the economy. It had unparalleled amounts of data on its customers, was commercially very aggressive and its massive logistical and warehousing infrastructure enabled it to wield power greatly disproportionate to its actual market share. In that sense, it had come to resemble the railroads that John D Rockefeller and his fellow titans controlled in the 1890s. The thousands of retailers and independent businesses that must ride Amazons rails to reach market, Khan wrote, are increasingly dependent on their biggest competitor. Just like the bad old days in fact.

Her article garnered more than 140,000 hits, which made it a runaway bestseller in the world of legal treatises. The question was, would it, like Borks book four decades earlier, change the conventional wisdom on antitrust?

Early indications are that it has. Khan was one of the leading figures who guided the investigation into monopoly tech power conducted by the US House of Representatives antitrust subcommittee. Then in November 2020 Joe Biden was elected president and in March 2021 he made Khan the chair of the Federal Trade Commission, the federal agency whose principal mission is the enforcement of civil US competition law and the promotion of consumer protection. Other indications of the change in the regulatory climate came with Bidens appointment to powerful positions of tech critics such as the Columbia legal scholar Tim Wu and Meredith Whittaker, the woman who organised the 2018 walkout at Google, when about 20,000 employees protested against how the company handled alleged sexual harassment.

These are important changes because the tech giants are all US companies and the federal government is the only public authority that can make deep structural changes in the industry. Other jurisdictions, most importantly the EU, can force changes in the way the companies operate on their territories, but only the US government can make Google divest itself of YouTube or force Facebook to set Instagram and WhatsApp free.

These changes in the Biden administration are good news because they suggest that the slumbering democratic giant has finally woken up. But theyre only the beginning of what could be a long process. The last big competition case in the US, when the government tried to have Microsoft broken up for abusing its monopoly power over the PC operating system, took more than four years from launch to conclusion and ultimately failed. Theres little in the current plethora of analogous suits and actions to suggest that they will be any quicker to produce results.

Years ago in his book The Confidence Trap, the political theorist David Runciman pointed out that democracies are congenitally complacent, hooked as they are on the dangerous belief that given enough time they can muddle through just about anything. With the climate crisis, the costs of that complacency are now becoming clear. The existential question for liberal democracies is whether that also holds for curbing the power of big tech.

John Naughton is an Observer columnist and co-founder of the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy at Cambridge University and the chair of its advisory board

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Can big tech ever be reined in? - The Guardian

When Cindy Warner joined Amazon Web Services in February 2020, she saw it as an opportunity to increase diversity and reshape the companys strategy. She recalls how AWS aggressively recruited her, offering a quick path to higher-level roles and better pay.

But just over a year after she joined, the promising job had become a nightmare.

Warner, a tech executive with 30 years of experience, said she had faced pay discrimination and an underlying culture of sexism and homophobia. She sued the cloud computing company in May 2021 alleging that male executives at AWS treated her with open contempt, insults, and hostility and upheld a white boys club and claims she was fired shortly after.

I truly would not want my worst enemy to work at Amazon, she told the Guardian, describing the workplace as toxic and alleging she was targeted for her work mentoring women and efforts to increase diversity and inclusion.

Her lawsuit is one of several Amazon is currently facing over allegations of workplace discrimination, and it underscores the challenges women face from the bottom to the top of the tech industry.

This shows at Amazon, it does not matter if you have a lot of power on paper the culture is going to impact you regardless of whether you are a high-powered executive or a lowly software engineer, said Veena Dubal, a labor law professor at the University of California, Hastings. At the end of the day, you are not really protected.

An Amazon spokesperson, Jaci Anderson, said the company disputed Warners account and that it had conducted a thorough investigation and found her allegations to be unsubstantiated. (Warner has criticized the integrity of the AWS investigation.)

Anderson said Warners characterization of the circumstances under which she left AWS was not accurate, saying Warner had been encouraged to find another role within the company before her employment was terminated.

Amazon strives every day to be a top employer for women and historically underrepresented minorities, Anderson said. We continue to make progress in building a more diverse workforce, with a focus on increasing the representation of women in technical roles.

Warner started her role in February 2020 as a global leader in Amazons professional services group, ProServe, which promotes the companys cloud-computing technology to corporate customers.

Amazon, like many tech companies, categorizes workers into tiers of responsibility and pay. Warner was one of few female executives at her level in the department, she said, and according to the lawsuit she was hired at a lower tier than she felt she qualified for.

Warner said she had quickly detected a pervasive culture of sexism. It wasnt just one person, it wasnt just one group it was truly everywhere, she said.

Warner alleges in the lawsuit that although the role was below her level of experience, she was repeatedly blocked from applying for promotions because of her gender, resulting in lost income of millions of dollars.

Amazon disputes that Warner was promised a path to a higher-level role and said employees do not apply for promotions but are instead advanced through an internal review process.

Warner claims that her male peers and colleagues frequently dismissed and harassed her. In one incident named in the suit, a colleague at AWS allegedly called Warner disgusting names such as a bitch, an idiot, and a nobody.

Amazon claims its investigation found the account of derogatory language was untrue, and that the words cited in the suit were not used.

Rather than being disciplined, the lawsuit alleges, the male AWS employee who berated Warner was ultimately promoted into the same role she had been discouraged from pursuing. Warner, meanwhile, remained at a lower position and compensation.

Amazon allows its managers, again seemingly in a misguided effort to protect the bottom line, to run amok and mistreat employees, particularly women and people of color, even when they arrive near the top of the Companys corporate ladder, said Lawrence Pearson, an attorney at Wigdor LLP, the firm behind the suit.

Warner said her misgivings about the company culture had begun to solidify after a former employee, Laudon Williams, published a blogpost on LinkedIn in August 2020 entitled Why I Left AWS.

In the post, he outlined a number of systemic discrimination issues at Amazon Web Services, claiming he had personally heard an [executive-level employee] using homophobic language.

He also cited a well-known incident in professional services in which a leader told a diversity group that they needed to stop making excuses and integrate better. Williams claimed AWS shows no interest in addressing the issues.

Anderson, the Amazon spokeswoman, said the company had investigated and was unable to substantiate issues raised in the post.

The post had prompted quite a blowup internally, Warner said. But instead of reflecting on the allegations, Warner said, the company had gone on the defensive. One Black employee who brought up the blogpost to executives was verbally assaulted for rocking the boat. That woman was ultimately so demoralized she quit the role and relocated to another section of Amazon, Warner said.

Warner described such responses as typical for the company.

I have never in my career seen a company so unwilling to be introspective a company that has such outrage instead of self-reflection in the face of criticism, she said.

Amazon disputes the account of backlash to the LinkedIn post, saying nobody was verbally assaulted when it was brought up to leaders in a workplace meeting, but that the employee in question was discouraged from discussing it at that time.

Warners suit is the latest in a growing number of cases lifting the veil on sexism at all levels of Silicon Valley. It comes just six years after the tech investor Ellen Pao brought a gender discrimination lawsuit against her former employers at the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins one that paved the way for whistleblowing in Silicon Valley, according to Dubal.

As more people whistleblow, they are seeing how these issues are interconnected in many ways, Dubal said. And that could have a lasting impact on whether these companies actually change the culture.

Directly after Paos case, Tina Huang filed a suit against Twitter alleging its promotion system unfairly favored male employees, and the former Facebook employee Chia Hong filed a suit against Facebook alleging sexual and racial discrimination.

In December 2020, Pinterest paid a record $20m settlement in a gender discrimination suit brought by a female executive who alleged rampant discrimination, hostile work environment, and misogyny at the San Francisco company.

And Warner isnt the only one alleging bad behavior at Amazon. The law firm handling her case is currently pursuing lawsuits from five other employees, including Charlotte Newman, an Amazon Web Services senior manager who has alleged both sexism and racist behavior.

Newman, who is Black, claims in her lawsuit that Amazon fails to promote Black employees, and recounts being groped by a director at the company during a work dinner.

Amazon said it had reviewed Newmans career path at the company and determined she was properly placed in her role. Her harassment allegations were immediately investigated and the assailant she identified was fired, according to Anderson.

But lawyers for Newman and Warner said these processes were not swift or thorough enough: Women and employees of color at all levels of Amazon have had their complaints of harassment and discrimination brushed under the rug, Pearson said.

Amazon said this characterization of its processes was not accurate and that its code of conduct and ethics established a zero-tolerance policy regarding discrimination or harassment.

The recent wave of complaints has prompted a backlash within Amazon. The LinkedIn post from Williams, as well as Warners suit, were cited in an internal petition at Amazon Web Services that was signed by more than 1,000 employees in July 2021, demanding an independent investigation to be completed by November.

In response, the AWS chief executive, Adam Selipsky, emailed the petitions authors to confirm the company would investigate the allegations through an outside firm, though he did not commit to a timeframe. Anderson, the Amazon spokesperson, said that investigation was continuing and that a date for completion had not been confirmed.

The scrutiny of Amazon Web Services has put Andy Jassy a former AWS executive who took over for Jeff Bezos as CEO of Amazon in July 2021 - under the microscope.

Warner said she had written Jassy directly about her plight in an attempt to save her job, but the letter was all but ignored. Amazon has said HR leadership responded to her letter and asked her to conduct communication through attorneys as is common practice during active litigation.

The fact that Jassy was promoted from a particular sector at Amazon that was known to have a culture of misogyny and sexism does not speak well for the direction the company is going, Dubal, the law professor, said.

Asked about Jassys leadership, LaDavia Drane, the head of inclusion, diversity and equity at AWS, said that the Amazon division has always operated with the belief that more diverse teams create better outcomes.

Our organization is continuing to push every day to create a more inclusive culture, and that includes us pushing forward to actively invest in and retain women within our organization, she said.

Warner said she continued to receive inquiries from former employees at Amazon and other tech firms asking for advice on similar allegations. Nearly six months after filing the lawsuit, she is still job hunting, saying the experience left her wary of entering similar roles in the tech industry.

After what I would consider has been a very storied career, this has been a horror show, and I relive it every day, Warner said. When you go through something like this, it really changes you. It doesnt go away.

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The executive suing Amazon Web Services: I wouldnt want my worst enemy working there - The Guardian

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In what Premier Jason Kenney is calling the largest tech investment in Albertas history, Amazon officials confirmed Monday theyre investing $4.3 billion in a cloud computing hub in Calgary.

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The move, which will ultimately create 950 full-time jobs across Canada, is only Amazon Web Services (AWS) second such data region in the country, complementing one established in Montreal in 2016.

Kenney, whose UCP government has come under intense fire from critics both inside and outside its ranks for its handling of a number of issues and is struggling in opinion polls, called the announcement an economic watershed for Alberta and a vindication of his partys economic strategy.

This is a game-changer and the largest technology investment in Albertas history, Kenney told a Calgary press conference.

For anybody who thought that all of the great news in the Alberta tech and innovation sector was just a temporary flash in the pan, this is for real, this is big.

Of those new jobs, 837 of them should be created by 2037, said Jobs, Economy and Innovation Minister Doug Schweitzer.

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The Seattle-based company said the hub, with separate locations for each data centre, will allow customers to access a variety of cloud-computing products in Canada. This also means companies with data residency requirements will have the ability to store such information within the country.

Initial ground-breaking work has already begun on one of the local data centres expected to be built locally. Senior AWS officials expect the new region in Western Canada to launch in late 2023 or early 2024.

The companys offerings already serve local tech firms like Benevity and Kidoodle.TV and the Alberta Motor Association, and will build on those partnerships, said AWS Canada general manager Eric Gales.

We have tens of thousands of customers in Canada, many of whom are here in Alberta, said Gales.

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This new region will join 25 other regions around the world for AWS.

He said the company will be investing $21 billion in Canada by 2037 while reaching a 100 per cent renewable energy capacity by 2025.

AWS is also partnering with Mount Royal University to offer free training to candidates for entry-level positions to add to the 100,000 Canadians trained by the company since 2013, said Rejean Bourgault, AWS Canadas country leader.

This is all part of a new age in the Alberta economy it will help to provide folks who are unemployed or underemployed the ability to gain the key skills they need, said Kenney

An executive of one Calgary-based tech start-up said AWS has already been instrumental in the progress of his company.

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It was from the support of AWS that we grew into the company we are today, said Daniel Riddell of Kidoodle TV.

Its important that companies embrace technology, embrace the cloud and embrace change.

Following on Albertas best year in attracting tech investment 2020, with $450 million the AWS announcement shows the province is gaining the critical mass needed for a decisive economic transformation, said Kenney.

Albertas younger, highly-educated workforce, a low corporate tax regime, cheaper cost of living and attractive lifestyle were vital in attracting the data hub, said the premier.

The move comes four years after Calgary Economic Development made an unsuccessful pitch to Amazon to locate its second corporate headquarters in the city.

But the online retail behemoth did open a distribution centre just north of the city limits that same year.

Amazon employs nearly 40,000 people in Canada.

BKaufmann@postmedia.com

Twitter: @BillKaufmannjrn

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Amazon bringing cloud computing hub to Calgary with $4 billion investment - Calgary Herald

during the forecast period. Digital business transformation has entered a more challenging and urgency-driven phase due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Global giants are providing customers with cost-effective and productive digital solutions as every industry is economically hard-hit from the pandemic.

New York, Nov. 05, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Reportlinker.com announces the release of the report "Cloud Computing Market by Service, Deployment Model, Organization Size, Vertical And Region - Global Forecast to 2026" - https://www.reportlinker.com/p05749258/?utm_source=GNW The sudden shutdowns of offices, schools and enterprises have increased the demand for cloud solutions and services. The cloud market in verticals such as IT, telecom, BFSI, and media and entertainment has impacted positively due to the work from home initiative. Employees are using cloud collaboration platforms for communicating and consuming OTT streaming services heavily as they need to stay at home amidst lockdowns.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) to help enterprises in enhancing infrastructure scalability and performanceIaaS enables enterprises to leverage their IT infrastructure without paying for the construction of the physical infrastructure.Moreover, it provides flexibility, mobility, easy, and scalable access to applications, and enhances collaboration to help enterprises focus on their core businesses.

The increasing internet access through smartphones and other devices has spurred the digitalization trend among enterprises that generate large volumes of business data daily.These factors have increased the enterprises concerns over losing the focus on core business operations and meeting the demand for clients.

IaaS helps in reducing the cost of deploying IT infrastructure, hardware, and in hiring skilled resources. These benefits, in turn, are expected to drive the adoption of IaaS.

Retail and consumer goods vertical to grow at the highest rate during the forecast periodThe retail and consumer goods vertical is one of the fastest-growing verticals with respect to the adoption of emerging and innovative technologies, such as cloud computing, big data analytics, DevOps, digital stores, and social networks.Various factors driving this adoption are the rising purchasing power of customers and the need to satisfy customer expectations leading to the existing customer retention and new customer acquisition.

Online retailing and cloud technologies have significantly disrupted the retail and consumer goods vertical leading to the adoption of cloud computing mainly for storage, backup, and security services.

North America to hold the largest market size and Asia Pacific (APAC) to grow at the highest rate during the forecast periodNorth America is the most mature market in terms of cloud computing services adoption, due to several factors, such as the presence of many enterprises with advanced IT infrastructure, and availability of technical expertise.APAC is expected to offer significant growth opportunities for cloud computing vendors during the forecast period.

Rapid advancements in emerging technologies, IT infrastructure services, and the Internet of Things (IoT) have led many organizations to adopt cloud computing services.In the process of determining and verifying the market size for several segments and subsegments gathered through secondary research, extensive primary interviews were conducted with the key people.

The breakup of the profiles of the primary participants as follows: By Company Type: Tier I: 19%, Tier II: 35%, and Tier III: 46% By Designation: C-Level: 33%, D-Level: 26%, and Others: 41% By Region: North America: 38%, Europe: 35%, APAC: 11%, and RoW: 16%

The report profiles the following key vendors:1. AWS (US)2. Microsoft (US)3. Google (US)4. Alibaba (China)5. SAP (Germany)6. IBM (US)7. Oracle (US)8. VMware (US)9. Rackspace (US)10. Salesforce (US)11. Adobe (US)12. CenturyLink (US)13. Fujitsu (Japan)14. Workday (US)15. Infor (US)16. Sage Group (UK)17. Intuit (US)18. Epicor (US)19. IFS (Sweden)20. ServiceNow (US)21. OpenText (US)22. Cisco (US)23. Box (US)24. Zoho (US)25. Citrix (US)26. Upland Software (US)27. DigitalOcean (US)28. Bluelock (US)29. OVH (France)30. Joyent (US)31. Skytap (US)32. Virtuestream (US)33. Tencent (China)34. DXC (US)35. NEC (Japan)36. Navisite (US)

Research CoverageThe report segments the global cloud computing market by service model, the cloud computing market has been segmented into IaaS, SaaS, and PaaS.The IaaS model has been further segmented into primary storage, disaster recovery and backup, archiving, and compute.

The PaaS model has been further segmented into application development and platforms, application testing and quality, analytics and reporting, integration and orchestration, and data management.The SaaS model is further categorized into Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Enterprise Resource Management (ERM), Human Capital Management (HCM), content management, collaboration and productivity suites, Supply Chain Management (SCM), and others.

By the deployment model, the cloud computing market has been segmented into a public cloud and private cloud.Based on organization size, the market has been classified into Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) and large enterprises.

By vertical, the cloud computing market has been classified into Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI); telecommunications; IT and Information Technology-enabled Services (ITeS); government and public sector; retail and consumer goods; manufacturing; healthcare and life sciences; media and entertainment; energy and utilities; and others (education, travel and hospitality, and transportation and logistics). By region, the market has been segmented into North America, Europe, APAC, MEA, and Latin America.

Key Benefits of Buying the ReportThe report will help the market leaders/new entrants in the cloud computing market with information on the closest approximations of the revenue numbers for the overall cloud computing market and the subsegments.The report will help stakeholders understand the competitive landscape and gain more insights to better position their businesses and to plan suitable go-to-market strategies.

The report also helps stakeholders understand the pulse of the market and provides them with information on key market drivers, restraints, challenges, opportunities, and COVID-19 impact.Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05749258/?utm_source=GNW

About ReportlinkerReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place.

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The global cloud computing market size is expected to grow from USD 445.3 billion in 2021 to USD 947.3 billion by 2026, at a Compound Annual Growth...

Makoto Kimura, left, president of Sony Semiconductor Solutions (Shanghai) Ltd, and Joe Bao, president of Microsoft China, shake hands in Shanghai, on Nov 5, 2021. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Microsoft Corp is bullish on the Chinese cloud computing market, as the US tech giant is committed to helping both multinationals come to China and Chinese companies go global, a company executive said.

The comments came as Microsoft is scheduled to bring a new data center online in China in the spring of 2022. Once the expansion is completed, the capacity of Microsoft's cloud computing in China will have been boosted by 12 times since 2014.

Joe Bao, president of Microsoft China, said the company's local cloud computing customers and partners are growing rapidly. "We really think that we have an opportunity to grow faster (in China) than Microsoft in the rest of the world."

On top of laying down a sound cloud infrastructure and perfecting its cloud solutions, Microsoft has also been working hard to build on industry expertise to better serve customers, he said.

The senior executive did not disclose the specific revenue growth target for its cloud computing business in China. But the latest financial report from Microsoft showed that in the September quarter, its global intelligent cloud revenue hit $16.96 billion, up 31 percent year-over-year.

Data from market research company Canalys showed that Microsoft accounted for 21 percent of global cloud infrastructure services spend in the third quarter of 2021. Growing over 50 percent for a fifth consecutive quarter, Microsoft Azure was the second largest cloud service provider, second only to Amazon Web Services.

Charlie Dai, a principal analyst at Forrester, a business strategy and economic consultancy, said Microsoft was the first global vendor to commercialize its public cloud operations in China, and it has sustained its local expansion by efforts that include continuing to focus on industry cloud service customizations.

The intensified push to tap into the cloud computing market is part of a three-year plan unveiled in June by Microsoft China, which sees strong opportunities in accelerated digital transformation in the world's second-largest economy.

"China's swift and determined response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the continued diligence that China has to keep the pandemic in check, have allowed the nation to recover and return to growth faster than other nations in the world," Bao said.

Microsoft is excited about its business in China in areas including remote collaboration and hybrid work, leveraging digital intelligence to boost business resilience and sustainable development, the executive said.

At the fourth China International Import Expo being held offline in Shanghai on Nov 5-10, Microsoft announced its cooperation with SGS China to launch S-Carbon, the world's first-ever dual-standard intelligent cloud carbon management platform, based on Microsoft's cloud computing platform Azure. SGS is a world-renowned company specializing in carbon inventory and audit.

Seeing the big potential of leveraging digital innovation in boosting China's healthcare industry, Microsoft and Johnson & Johnson, a leading world healthcare company, announced over the weekend that they will deepen cooperation in the Chinese market.

Apart from seeing China as an important market, Microsoft is also stepping up its push to help nurture local innovation by hiring more people, and partnering with local universities.

In late October, Microsoft Asia-Pacific Research and Development Group announced it will start constructing the third phase of its research institute in Suzhou Industrial Park in Suzhou, Jiangsu province, in 2022.

The project is expected to be finished by 2025. By then, the number of Microsoft's employees in Suzhou is forecast to reach 5,000, from the current number of more than 2,000, said the Suzhou Industrial Park. "We are committed to fostering local innovation, promoting joint innovation with our partners and helping bring China's homegrown innovation to the outside world," Bao said.

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Microsoft to further expand cloud services in China - Chinadaily USA

The pay-as-you-go cloud model, brought to market by Amazon and later adopted by Microsoft and Google, has long been criticized as creating "vendor lock-in," the scenario where customers can't switch to another provider because of cost or technical barriers.

If companies use those cloud giants' services, they're largely stuck in the giants' respective platforms, giving Amazon, Google, and Microsoft a lot of leverage in the IT market.

But a new trend has created an opening that gives more power to customers and, by extension, the software companies that work across the cloud giants. Specifically, customers are increasingly using multiple cloud providers across their IT infrastructure, in a model commonly called multicloud.

In the analyst firm Gartner's 2020 cloud survey, 76% of respondents said they used more than one cloud, and the trend is likely to grow as companies ask for not only more choice but more cost transparency from cloud providers. That demand is creating opportunity for hot companies like Databricks, Snowflake, and Datadog, execs tell Insider.

"Customers are more and more demanding 'Hey, the software I buy should just work on any cloud," Ali Ghodsi, the cofounder and CEO of Databricks, told Insider, "And that's giving us huge tailwinds."

Christian Kleinerman, Snowflake's senior vice president of product, said customers were asking Snowflake to get them to the cloud faster, making the company a gateway to the cloud giants. "Customers are in the driver's seat these days they're choosing best-of-breed, they're choosing the technology they want to work with," he told Insider in October.

Olivier Pomel, Datadog's CEO and cofounder, told Insider in May that the increase in multicloud and hybrid cloud deployments was helping its business because it worked as a "neutral body." "There is a need for somebody to actually tie together the data from all the different cloud providers," Pomel said. "The cloud providers themselves are not going to do that."

Amazon Web Services did not respond to an inquiry from Insider, and Microsoft declined to comment.

Sudhir Hasbe, a senior director of data analytics at Google Cloud, told Insider that it fully supported multicloud and wanted to be on the right side of the trend. "We don't expect all customers to put everything in one cloud," he said, adding that its partnership with Databricks helped companies that have their data across multiple providers.

As the multicloud model gains steam, companies like Databricks, Snowflake, and Datadog are also taking advantage of the leverage it offers them: Amazon, Microsoft, and Google all need to partner with these software firms to make their own platforms more attractive to customers, analysts say.

Ghodsi said Databricks helps customers move to the cloud and sometimes even choose a cloud provider. "That's made the cloud vendors want to partner closer with us, because they're like, oh, wow, we haven't heard of that customer," he said.

Most of Databricks's customers also use more than one cloud provider, and many are doing so to get their cloud bills under control, Ghodsi said. David Linthicum, Deloitte's chief cloud strategy officer, told Insider that shopping between three or four clouds was a common tactic to find bargains.

Some customers even seek out software companies to use as bargaining chips, telling the cloud giants, "Hey, I can use Databricks on any cloud, so give me a good price, because I can use it over there and over here," Ghodsi said.

Still, analysts like Gartner's Adam Ronthal say that no matter how much leverage those companies may gain by supporting multiple clouds, at the end of the day the cloud giants own the platforms that make their partners' products work.

Indeed, Databricks and its software peers all work with and compete against the Big Three in one way or another. But Ghodsi said he wasn't concerned about where the startup's relationship with them is headed.

"We bring literally billions of dollars of revenue to each of them, and they know that," he said. "They love to get more data into their cloud, so we're important for that too. So for that reason, they want to stay close to us."

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The Balance of Power Is Shifting in the Cloud Computing Industry - Business Insider

Following a long consultation period, qualifying expenditure for R&D tax credits will expand to include data and cloud computing costs, as announced by Chancellor of the exchequer Rishi Sunak at the recent Autumn budget.

This is a positive outcome for innovative UK companies. This addition captures the evolvement in research and development activities since the reliefs inception.

Matthew Jones, managing director at LimestoneGrey commented:

The inclusion of data and cloud computing costs as qualifying expenditure is a welcomed change. Data acquisition costs in particular can be extremely expensive for businesses and can be vital for a favorable R&D result.

Since the reliefs inception, there has been a clear shift in the way in which R&D is performed, and it is only right and fair that the list of qualifying expenditure is brought in line with the modern way.

Further budget announcements affecting R&D tax credits

During his budget speech, Rishi Sunak also touched on the idea of the UK becoming more innovatively, technologically and scientifically competitive in comparison to our OECD counterparts.

Noting that our developmental and private sector investment in research and development levels are not where they should be, the Chancellor announced that the Government will look at ways to encourage domestic spending on R&D.

An issue identified with the current R&D tax credit relief system is that whilst UK companies claimed tax relief on 47.5 billion of R&D expenditure in 2019, the ONS estimates that businesses only carried out 25.9 billion of privately-financed R&D within the UK, with the current system allowing companies to claim for R&D activities taking place overseas. From April 2023, the government will look to refocus the reliefs towards innovation taking place within in the UK.

Originally posted here:

R&D Tax Credits to Include Data and Cloud Computing Costs - Business News Wales

Paper from IoT Working Group highlights the importance of not treating medical device incident response as a one-size-fits-all

SEATTLE, November 09, 2021--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), the worlds leading organization dedicated to defining standards, certifications, and best practices to help ensure a secure cloud computing environment, today released the CSA Medical Device Incident Response Playbook, which establishes a framework to ensure that cybersecurity not only protects critical healthcare systems and data but does so without negatively impacting patient safety.

Aimed at healthcare delivery organizations (HDO) cybersecurity staff and clinical leadership, as well as medical device manufacturers and related service providers who play a role in supporting HDO incident response processes, the paper highlights the importance of not treating medical device incident response as a one-size-fits-all process and of incorporating a tiered approach that takes risks to patient safety into consideration.

Written by the CSA Internet of Thing (IoT) Working Group, the paper provides a way for healthcare delivery organizations (HDO) to initiate conversations on how to incorporate clinical risks into security processes and lays out a roadmap for responding to those cybersecurity incidents that impact medical or patient care devices in such a way that takes into account the clinical risks associated with disconnecting the device from the patient and/or the network.

"Medical devices play an integral role in patient care. There are scenarios where medical devices must remain available to continue treatment even after being compromised," said Brian Russell, co-chair of the IoT Working Group and one of the papers authors. "Hospitals must design their systems to be resilient, and an incident response plan that takes clinical aspects into consideration is a foundational element for resilient health delivery operations."

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"This playbook takes the clinical aspects of medical device operations into account," said Christopher Frenz, co-author of the paper. "The paper identifies seven distinct incident response classifications based on impact to the patient and/or hospital operations. These seven classifications each include distinct handling instructions designed to minimize the impact to patient care."

The CSA Internet of Things (IoT) Working Group focuses on understanding the relevant use cases for IoT deployments and defining actionable guidance for security practitioners to secure their implementations. Those interested in participating in future research and initiatives involving the IoT are invited to join the working group.

Download the CSA Medical Device Incident Response Playbook now.

About Cloud Security AllianceThe Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) is the worlds leading organization dedicated to defining and raising awareness of best practices to help ensure a secure cloud computing environment. CSA harnesses the subject matter expertise of industry practitioners, associations, governments, and its corporate and individual members to offer cloud security-specific research, education, training, certification, events, and products. CSA's activities, knowledge, and extensive network benefit the entire community impacted by cloud from providers and customers to governments, entrepreneurs, and the assurance industry and provide a forum through which different parties can work together to create and maintain a trusted cloud ecosystem. For further information, visit us at http://www.cloudsecurityalliance.org, and follow us on Twitter @cloudsa.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211109005001/en/

Contacts

Kari Walker for the CSAkari@zagcommunications.com

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New Cloud Security Alliance Guidance Provides Framework for Protecting Critical Healthcare Systems While Taking Risk to Patient Safety Into Account -...