Category Archives: Cloud Computing

TOPSHOT - "Yokozuna" or sumo grand champion Hakuho of Mongolia takes part in a traditional ... [+] ring-entering ceremony at Meiji shrine in Tokyo on January 8, 2019. (Photo by Toshifumi KITAMURA / AFP) (Photo credit should read TOSHIFUMI KITAMURA/AFP via Getty Images)

First there was cloud. Then there was public cloud and private cloud which (as we know) spawned hybrid cloud as the much-loved progeny of the two.

Then there was multi-cloud, a coming together of compute resources where an organization uses different cloud services from different Cloud Services Providers (CSPs) to run workloads for different applications, departments, subsidiaries or perhaps even for different specific workflow functions.

Then, after all that, there came the notion of so-called poly-cloud, the separation of different parts of an application or data service workload across different CSPs, an action taken when the price, performance, latency, legislative or other core requirements of a workload can be segmented accurately (and securely enough) to warrant splitting that workload apart over different cloud providers.

What all that creates is a world of many clouds and therefore many concerns this is the world of the multi-cloud poly-hybrid mechanics.

The complexity created here presents a challenge for enterprise organizations seeking to lock down cloud-based resources that now span a hitherto unimaginably complex and interconnected landscape of computing resources.

Aiming to provide a degree of what it likes to brand as continuous intelligence, Sumo Logic has now built a multi-cloud and hybrid threat protection offering powered by Amazon Web Services Inc. (AWS). The Sumo Logic Cloud SIEM Powered by AWS is built on Sumo Logics own branded Continuous Intelligence Platform, with the SIEM denoting Security Information & [software code] Event Management as it does.

This is not anti-virus malware protection at the traditional consumer-level that you might be urged to install when you set up your new laptop; this is software code-centric protection and security intelligence with functions focused on areas like compliance, security analytics and cloud SIEM technologies.

The companies say they have worked together to offer out-of-the-box integration with key AWS security services, plus integrations with cloud-based SaaS and on-premises security services. This is all about creating technology that can perform deep internal inspection of cloud services and eliminate security blind spots across multi-cloud, hybrid (and indeed poly-cloud) environments.

Both Sumo Logic and AWS talk about contextualized data intelligence and, in this case, contextualized threat data. That doesnt mean context surrounding where the source of malware might emanate from, in this case it is contextualized cloud reports to highlight where an enterprises weak spots might be based upon:

For companies that dont have an internal or outsourced Security Operations Center (SOC), the offering will provide security monitoring, visibility and alerting. For organizations modernizing their SOC, the offering will in provide cross-source threat correlation with machine learning detection, automation and orchestration.

Sumo Logic VP Greg Martin claims that his company provides a comprehensive approach to quickly uncover activity that can indicate an early-stage computing event (that could be related to a risk) by identifying spikes and anomalies based on the organizations baseline of historical data.

Unrestricted by the processing power of on-premises hardware, Sumo Logics Cloud SIEM solution addresses the challenges facing todays security practitioners by providing full visibility across their IT, application development and security ecosystem, automating the manual work for security analysts, saving them time and enabling them to be more effective by focusing on higher-value security functions, said Martin and team.

This is another one of those would the CEO actually question this element of company operations in the board meeting questions. Captains of industry may not be familiar with the term security posture today, but as companies spanning a multiplicity of cloud computing supply pipes start to realize the breadth of their own IT footprint, it is arguably among the workable buzzphrases for any self-respecting business manager going forward.

Companies today take in huge amounts of data from their cloud services and applications, because everything tells you what it is doing in immense detail. Its what you can do with that data, is where things get interesting. Security is one area, but this data can be applied to operations and for improving software development. When your business process is digital, you can see the impact of your decisions in real-time, whether that is a software update or IT redesign or something like a marketing project, said Christian Beedgen, chief technology officer at Sumo Logic.

Organizations should know that data coming in can be consolidated and at this point, everyone can make use of it for their own understanding. Beedgen suggests that the smartest companies use this as an opportunity to consolidate their tools and build up their observability approaches across the whole business, as this stops duplication and saves on cost.

The long term trend here is companies have lots of tools gathering data and this can lead to problems around the volume of data coming in over time. Data obviously has a cost to store, so having multiple copies of the same data will lead to more expense and Beedgen reminds us that this can lead to financial challenges

Companies thinking about their data strategy using cloud providers might feel like resources are infinitely scalable, but the reality is that the organization will ultimately run out of budget. Consolidating and cutting duplicate data in different tools reduces that problem, keeps the business on the right side of the data cost curve and ensures that you can carry on innovating, concluded Beedgen.

Many of the resources inside our technology stacks are being exposed (in a positive way) to the benefits of automation and Artificial Intelligence (AI), so that factor needs to be resonated in our cloud operations management layer. In the case of this story, it is. Sumo Logic and AWS have brought together Machine Learning (ML)-driven detection, integrated threat intelligence correlation and deep search-based investigation to look into systems and provide insight. That insight is surfaced through rich data visualization (graphs, dashboards and data speedometers, basically) so that any business manager can see whats happening.

Once we can say we have sorted out our cloud security posture we can perhaps all straighten our backs and work out whether we need a lumbar support pillow. Until then, sit up straight and keep an eye on the multi-hybrid-poly cloud engine room.

Go here to read the rest:

Inside The Multi-Hybrid-Poly Cloud Workshop - Forbes

Amazon's cloud division has rolled out AWS for Health, a set of services and partner solutions for healthcare, genomics and biopharma.

Amazon says the portfolio of solutions will help to accelerate innovation from "benchtop to bedside" as the tech giant pushes further into the healthcare and life sciences markets.

AWS for Health provides "proven and easily accessible capabilities" that help organizations increase the pace of innovation, unlock the potential of health data, and develop more personalized approaches to therapeutic development and care, Patrick Combes, director, head of technology - healthcare and life sciences at Amazon Web Services (AWS), wrote in a blog post.

The services within AWS for Health can help healthcarecustomers create holistic electronic health records to help clinicians make data-driven care plans and power population genomic initiatives to expand precision medicine accessibility, as two examples, Combes wrote.

Microsoft,Google and Amazon Web Services (AWS) are all pushing deeper into healthcare in a battle to provide cloud computing and data storage technologyto hospitals.

RELATED:Amazon launches new tool to help healthcare organizations standardize data

As part of AWS for Health, Amazon announced last week the general availability of Amazon HealthLake, a tool to make it easier for healthcare organizations to search and analyze data.

Healthcare organizations are creating vast volumes of patient information every day, and the majority of this data is unstructured, such as clinical notes, lab reports, insurance claims, medical images, recorded conversations and graphs.

This data must be aggregated, structured and normalized before the data can provide customers with valuable insights, and that is often atime-consuming and error-prone process.

Amazon HealthcareLake,which was announced in December, is a HIPAA-eligible service for healthcare and life sciences organizations that aggregates an organizations complete data across various silos and disparate formats into a centralized AWSdata lake and automatically normalizes this information using machine learning, according to the tech giant.

The service identifies each piece of clinical information, tags and indexes events in a timeline view with standardized labels so it can be easily searched, and structures all of the data into the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) industry-standard format for a complete view of the health of individual patients and entire populations.

More and more of our customers in the healthcare and life sciences space are looking to organize and make sense of their reams of data, but are finding this process challenging and cumbersome, saidSwami Sivasubramanian, vice president ofAmazonMachine Learning for AWS in a statement

We builtAmazonHealthLake to remove this heavy lifting for healthcare organizations so they can transform health data in the cloud in minutes and begin analyzing that information securely at scale. Alongside AWS for Health, were excited about howAmazonHealthLake can help medical providers, health insurers, and pharmaceutical companies provide patients and populations with data-driven, personalized, and predictive care," he said.

RELATED:Microsoft makes big play for healthcare cloud business in competition with Google, Amazon

Rush University Medical Center says that even in preview mode, Amazon HealthLake was an integral part of its COVID-19 response.

"It has enabled us to quickly store disparate data from multiple data sources in FHIR format in order to gain critical insights into the care of COVID-19 patients, said Dr.Bala Hota, vice president and chief analytics officer atRush University Medical Center.

Rush also used HealthLakes natural language processing to extract information such as medication, diagnosis, and previous conditions from doctors clinical notesto examine barriers to healthcare access.

"With the HealthLake API, we created a mobile app to provide insights into care gaps across theWest SideofChicago.AmazonHealthLake enables us to accelerate insights and drive decisions faster to better serve theChicagocommunity," Hota said.

Other organizations using Amazon HealthLake include Cortica, InterSystems andRedox.

Personalized medicine company CureMatch uses the analytics toolsto turn molecular profile data from the EHR into FHIR format to run advanced analytics and algorithms to assist oncologists, according to Philippe Faurie, vice president of professional services at CureMatch.

Continued here:

Amazon rolls out AWS For Health cloud services for healthcare, genomics and biopharma - FierceHealthcare

Are you looking for some great investments where you can park your money and not worry about it for years? Some of the most exciting opportunities right now are in cannabis and cloud computing stocks. Those industries are getting bigger and the companies that dominate in those areas will be sure to produce some great returns for your portfolio.

Even if you aren't sure which individual stocks to invest in, that doesn't mean you can't get exposure to those industries. There are plenty of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) out there that can give you a great group of stocks to hold without needing to commit to any particular company. Two funds that you will definitely want to consider today are the AdvisorShares Pure US Cannabis ETF(NYSEMKT:MSOS) and the WisdomTree Cloud Computing Fund (NASDAQ:WCLD).

Image source: Getty Images.

The growth opportunities in the cannabis sector are undeniable; analysts from MarketsAndMarkets project that the global market will be worth more than $90 billion in just five years and it will grow at a compound annual rate of 28%.

And it wouldn't be surprising if those estimates were upgraded given the rate at which cannabis legalization has been moving. In 2021, several states have passed legislation, including New York, New Mexico, Connecticut, and New Jersey. A total of 19 states have passed legislation to permit recreational marijuana and more than 30 states already allow marijuana for medical use. There is even hope that marijuana will be legal at the federal level soon, with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer recently introducing draft legislation that could pave the way to legalization. Even though it may be a long shot, if it is able to pass, it could open up the floodgates and instantly make the marijuana industry a scorching-hot one to invest in.

The Pure US Cannabis ETF, which launched in September 2020, is an excellent way to gain exposure to the U.S. pot market specifically. Big names like Green Thumb Industries,Curaleaf Holdings, andTrulieve Cannabis each account for more than 10% of the portfolio's total weight. And those are the heavyweights, the pot stocks that are industry leaders and that look to be safe bets to do well. Last year, they combined for more than $1.7 billion in revenue -- accounting for about 10% of the $17.5 billion U.S. pot market.

They will definitely surge in value once legalization takes place if for no other reason than it will allow them to trade on major exchanges like the New York Stock Exchange or Nasdaq, where they aren't permitted today because they are plant-touching businesses and thus operating in violation of federal U.S. laws.

Tech is always a popular place to invest, and there are many different areas you can focus on. One that stands out right now is cloud computing, especially as more businesses do their work in the cloud and workers want to be more remote than ever before. According to ResearchAndMarkets, the cloud computing market will more than double in size by 2025 to $832 billion, growing at a compound annual rate of 17.5%.

The WisdomTree Cloud Computing Fund is another great example of an ETF you can hold while you take advantage of a high-growth sector. Unlike the cannabis ETF, this one is much more diverse simply because there are more companies in the industry -- the largest holding is Asana, a work management platform that accounts for just over 3% of the fund's total weight. Other notable names in the fund are Adobe andDocuSign, two businesses that provide professionals with cloud-based software that they can use anywhere. The top 10 holdings in the fund account for just under one-quarter of its total weight, giving you some excellent diversification.

One of the downsides of that much diversification is that it can lead to underwhelming numbers. But that hasn't been the case for the Cloud Computing Fund, as its 39% returns over the past 12 months are higher than the S&P 500's gains of 35%. If you aren't sure which tech stock will be the big winner from the rising popularity of cloud computing, investing in this ETF can be a safe way to ensure long-term returns that could continue to outperform the markets.

This article represents the opinion of the writer, who may disagree with the official recommendation position of a Motley Fool premium advisory service. Were motley! Questioning an investing thesis -- even one of our own -- helps us all think critically about investing and make decisions that help us become smarter, happier, and richer.

The rest is here:

2 Unstoppable Trends to Invest in for the Long Term - The Motley Fool

Airlines operating aircraft powered by Pratt & Whitney engines, such as the PW1100-GM pictured here, now have access to Teledyne's cloud-based avionics data service under a new partnership between the two OEMs. (Pratt & Whitney)

Pratt & Whitneys new avionics cloud computing partnership will open the aircraft engine manufacturers analytics platform EngineWise to information captured by Teledyne Controls flight data acquisition systems about the health and status of nearly every airframe part and component on a per-flight basis.

The partnership will allow operators using Pratt & Whitney's EngineWise data analytics platform to start feeding their data centers with all of the parameters captured by onboard Quick Access Recorders (QAR), such as Teledynes GroundLink Comm+ wireless cellular connectivity system. By giving EngineWise users access to this data through Teledynes Data Delivery Solution (DDS) Pratt customers now have instant cloud-based post-flight access to the same amount of raw data that is captured by the Flight Data Recorder in a clean actionable format.

Teledyne describes DDS as a cloud computing service that can redact or mask certain data parameters that airlines prefer not to share with OEMs.

"Pratt & Whitneys Geared Turbofan (GTF) engine incorporates significantly more sensors than prior engines and can generate millions of data points per engine per flight, providing significant improvements in avoiding unplanned maintenance. These parameters, when collected via devices on board over the full flight, allow us to develop a very thorough picture of the health of the engine," Joe Sylvestro, vice president of Global Aftermarket Operations at Pratt & Whitney told Avionics International.

EngineWise was first launched by the company in 2017 featuring a suite of web-based software tools that analyze engine data in search of anomalies or trends captured by the sensors mentioned by Sylvestro. As an example, an airline maintenance team can use the system for a sensor configured to monitor how much fuel is required to generate a set amount of thrust or power. As that engine completes more flights, they may assume that the engine's efficiency is degrading if the amount of fuel required to generate that set amount of power continues to increase over time.

An example of the type of engine data parameters and analysis EngineWise provides for operators. (Pratt & Whitney)

"The collaboration with Teledyne Controls will enhance engine health management services offered to Pratt & Whitney-powered aircraft, focused on Teledyne Controls global customers. Teledynes Data Delivery Solution is one option for collecting full-flight data. In any case, our goal is to minimize the data management burden on the customer," Sylvestro said. "With regard to [Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System] ACARS, we continue to use snapshot data to provide customers with analytics services while full-flight data-enabled services capture data throughout the flight."

Teledyne's quick access recorders and GroundLink Comm+ cellular system enable real-time data streaming, cabin and flight crew connectivity, wireless distribution of field-loadable software parts and automated flight operational quality assurance (FOQA) data downloads. The technology is used by more than 200 commercial airlines on more than 14,000 aircraft.

Mike Penta, vice president of Sales and Marketing at Teledyne Controls told Avionics that the partnership opens up access to QAR data for Pratt & Whitney operators, and removes some of the past barriers that have prevented such access.

"Pratt & Whitney operators can now feed EngineWise with any aircraft data captured by Teledyne avionics onboard, predominately digitally distributed by the Teledyne GroundLink Comm+ system. As to what new type of data, it is specific to each airline as some are more e-enabled than others," Penta said. "Teledyne can assist in enabling full flight data to supply the EngineWise platform everything that it needs, in a timely manner, at a more precise, higher resolution level than traditional data feeds such as ACARS messages. Being able to also enable additional data points within the aircraft data frame was part of the attraction of working directly with Teledyne."

According to Penta, airlines operating aircraft powered by Pratt & Whitney engines that do not feature GroundLink Comm+ can still take advantage of the new partnership and DDS without modifying their existing avionics systems.

"Even for airlines who do not have GroundLink Comm+ units onboard but are still using sneaker net to take data from their aircraft data acquisition units, we can still make it work. It technically does not have to be exclusively Teledyne hardware. Teledyne DDS is agnostic and can work with other QAR systems as well as other various OEMs," Penta said.

Penta said other OEMs have also expressed interest in what he describes as an "instant data lake" that can be enabled once their native analytics platforms are digitally linked to Teledyne's flight data cloud computing analytics service. Thus far, the expanded version of EngineWise is being used by one European low-cost carrier and an airline based in the Middle East, both of which requested to remain unnamed.

Read this article:

Pratt & Whitney Engine Operators Get Increased Control Over Flight Data Shared with OEMs - Aviation Today

Key Takeaways

This article summarizes how we currently see the "cloud computing and DevOps" space, which focuses on fundamental infrastructure and operational patterns, the realization of patterns in technology frameworks, and the design processes and skills that a software architect or engineer must cultivate.

Both InfoQ and the QCon conference series focus on topics that we believe fall into the "innovator, early adopter, and early majority stages" of the diffusion of technology, as defined in Geoffrey Moores book "Crossing the Chasm." What we try to do is identify ideas that fit into what Moore referred to as the early market, where "the customer base is made up of technology enthusiasts and visionaries who are looking to get ahead of either an opportunity or a looming problem." We are also looking for ideas that are likely to "cross the chasm" to broader adoption. It is perhaps worth saying, in this context, that a technology's exact position on the adoption curve can vary. For example, microservices are widely adopted amongst Bay Area companies but maybe less widely adopted and perhaps less appropriate elsewhere.

In this edition of the cloud computing and DevOps trend report, we believe that hybrid cloud approaches have evolved to become more "cloud native". In late 2019 all the three prominent public cloud vendors brought new hybrid cloud products to the market and over the last two years they have continued to invest heavily in them - Google with Anthos, Microsoft with the Azure Arc and Stack offerings, AWS with Outposts, and more recently, Amazon ECS Anywhere. For enterprises, for instance, it is about not only bringing workloads to the Cloud but also running them on-premise or both, or on multiple clouds. Thus, managing the infrastructure for the workloads centrally with a service like Arc or Anthos delivers value. Furthermore, these products allow enterprises to extend their platform.

There has been increasing adoption (and technological evolution) in the space of "edge cloud" and "edge computing", and so we believe this topic should move to the early adopter stage of our graph. There is a fair amount of traction here from specific vendor tools, such as Cloudflare Workers, Fastlys Compute@Edge, and Amazon CloudFronts Lambda@Edge.

The participants of this report have also identified an emerging trend named "no copy data sharing." This can be seen in data management services such as Snowflake, which do not copy or move data, yet enable users to share data at its source. Another example is the Azure Synapse service, which supports no-copy data sharing from Azure Cosmos DB via Azure Synapse Link. The recently announced Delta Sharing open standard is also contributing to the upward trajectory of the no-copy data sharing tendency.

Observability continues to be a popular topic within DevOps and SRE. While most organizations have begun to implement some form of observability stack, as Holly Cummins notes, the term is overloaded and therefore should be broken down into its various components. Ideas such as centralized log aggregation are currently commonplace in most organizations, however, logs only make up one of the three pillars of observability.

The increasingly popular OpenTelemetry project provides a consistent framework for capturing not just logs, but also traces and metrics. The consistency provided by adopting a single framework helps with capturing data across hybrid and heterogeneous environments and also monitoring tooling. The use of service level objectives (SLOs) as a tool to communicate the desired outcome of monitoring and observability is also gaining popularity as seen with the first ever SLOConf earlier this year.

"DevOps for Data" has seen increasing adoption over the past year with the rise of both MLOps and DataOps. MLOps focuses on using DevOps style practices (such as CI and CD) to implement continuous training for machine learning models. Open source tooling and commercial services exist to help in this area, such as KubeFlow for deploying ML models on Kubernetes, and Amazon SageMaker Model Monitor for automating monitoring of ML models. DataOps looks to shorten the cycle time of data analytics by applying similar concepts used by DevOps teams to reduce their own cycle times.

In the people and organisational space of DevOps we have seen the Team Topologies book, from Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais, become the de facto reference for arranging teams within an organization to enable effective software delivery. Team Topologies describes four fundamental team types and three team interaction patterns, and dives into the responsibility boundaries of teams and how teams can communicate or interact with other teams.

There is also increasing focus on post-incident "blameless postmortems" in becoming more akin to "healthy retrospectives", from which the entire organisation can learn from. Key leaders in the computing domain of resilience engineering and the "Learning From Incidents" community have been influential in driving this discussion.

For context, here is what the topic graph looked like for the first half of 2019. The 2021 version is at the top of the article.

The following is a lightly edited copy of the corresponding internal chat log between several InfoQ cloud computing DevOps topic editors and InfoQ contributors, which provides more context for our recommended positioning on the adoption graph.

Lena Hall - Director, Large-Scale Systems @ Microsoft, who contributed the recent 'Can We Trust the Cloud Not to Fail?' and 'Evolution of Azure Synapse: Apache Spark 3.0, GPU Acceleration, Delta Lake, Dataverse Support' articles:

Moving to Early Majority

Moving to early adopters

New topics in early innovators

Furthermore, Hall discussed the evolution of the hybrid cloud model with InfoQ:

Cloud-Native Hybrid Approaches (e.g., Azure Arc, Google Anthos). In its traditional understanding, a hybrid cloud means using on-premises infrastructure for parts of the company's workloads and using the public cloud for other parts of it, where relevant. For example, a hybrid cloud strategy could mean running some applications in the cloud (e.g., serverless processing) and some applications on local infrastructure (e.g., business ERP system). The hybrid data approach could look as simple as storing backups of data in the cloud, or using more advanced cloud gateways and precisely-tuned data sync, caching, or movement patterns.

In the recent months and years, hybrid options have evolved beyond the traditional definition. They have expanded to enable the functionality of cloud services to run outside of the cloud, allowing for a much more seamless and smooth experience. We can think of the new cloud-native hybrid options as an extension of cloud services to our on-premises or multi-cloud environments. Azure Arc and Google Anthos are perfect examples. One of the ideal examples is Azure Arc. It allows the running of Azure SQL Managed Instance and Azure Database for PostgreSQL Hyperscale in hybrid and multi-cloud environments. It also provides the management of applications consistently on-premises and in the cloud with Azure App Service, Functions, Logic Apps, and more. Another fantastic example is Google Anthos powering BigQuery Omni, enabling its query engine to be deployed and managed on multiple clouds.

It's important to note that these new cloud-native hybrid approaches like Azure Arc and Google Anthos are different from more standard hybrid cloud approaches, such as Azure Stack or Amazon Outposts. To understand it more clearly, both Azure Arc and Azure Stack offer hybrid solutions (and can be used together). Azure Stack is a hardware approach to run Azure environment on-premises. On the other hand, Azure Arc is a software approach treating the on-premises and multi-cloud resources, consisting of virtual or physical servers and Kubernetes clusters, as something natively managed and accessible by Azure Resource Manager. Similarly, we can make a distinction between Google Anthos/Azure Arc and AWS Outposts. Even though AWS Outposts extends the AWS cloud platform to on-premises, it has specific hardware requirements and only works with hardware devices designed and supported by AWS.

Hall also shared an interesting insight into the emerging trend of "no copy data sharing":

No Copy Data Sharing (Snowflake,Google BigQuery, Azure Synapse, Presto/Starburst, etc.)There are quite a few approaches to working with data when the same data needs to be accessed or shared between different services or different environments. There might be a variety of scenarios when it comes to data sharing.One scenario could be storing the same data (or parts of the same data) in several services running in the same cloud. Often, the compute and storage of such services aren't independent. To work with the data from another service, we'd have to copy or move it.

In the emerging no-copy data-sharing approach, and with separation of compute and storage, it's not necessary to move or replicate the data to be able to access it from different services. As a result, it enables better scalability, cost-efficiency, and direct access to data. As an example, this can be enabled by features such as Azure Synapse Link for Azure Cosmos DB, BigQuery external data sources, or Snowflake data sharing.

Recently announced Delta Sharing is an open standard, contributing to the upward trajectory of no-copy data sharing tendency. According to its website, "Delta Sharing is the industry's first open protocol for secure data sharing, making it simple to share data with other organizations regardless of which computing platforms they use."

Holly Cummins, an innovation leader in IBM Corporate Strategy who has spent several years as a consultant in the IBM Garage, shared and contributed the "Cloud-Native Is about Culture, Not Container" talk and article shared with InfoQ:

Wow, some things in tech change so fast, and some hardly change at all. Most of the introduction of the 2019 DevOps and Cloud InfoQ Trends Report feels like it could have been written now.

I don't think there's been any progress on undoing the confusion between continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD) tooling and CI/CD practices, and I don't think there's been progress on adopting CI and CD practices.

One thing which seems to be missing in the discussion is observability. Like "AIOps", it's overloaded and buzz-wordy, but it feels a bit like how "cloud-native" was in 2018. So if your product is anywhere remotely in this space, you have to throw in the word 'observability.' Then other people will point out that it's not really observability because observability means something distinct, and then there's an extensive discussion. 🙂

In the chart itself, breaking it down into things like "centralized log aggregation" seems wise because then it avoids the argument, but it would be worth mentioning in the discussion. Another subcategory to include might be OpenTelemetry, in the innovator section.

I feel like service meshes have slipped out of the conversation a bit.

FinOps should be in the innovator section. A related topic is cloud cost optimization. There's an exciting conversation started by James Governor from the RedMonk team "Shifting cost optimisation left: Spotify Backstage Cost Insights" where he makes a distinction between FinOps (real-time information flow for cost analysis, aimed at finance team) and "shifting cloud cost optimization left" (aimed at engineering team).

Sustainability accounting is another innovator category. Again, it's very early - I can't think of many products with enough maturity in this area - but the conversations are happening, and I think it's coming.

I think DevOps for data and ML at the edge have moved to early adopters. DevOps for Data has two subcategories, MLOps and DataOps.

I'd say site reliability engineering (SRE) is now the early majority. I'm seeing a lot of banks adopting it.

I see a lot of conversation around GitOps, but I'm not sure that's translating into implementation in prod, or at least not enough to push it to the early majority. Likewise, I feel like momentum around ChatOps has slowed, and it hasn't pushed into Early Majority.

Renato Losio, Cloud architect, remote work enthusiast, and speaker:

Jared Ruckle, Cloud Editor @ InfoQ; Product Marketing @HashiCorp:

Changes in the Innovator bucket

Changes in the Early Adopter bucket

Changes in the Early Majority bucket

Aditya Kulkarni, Blogger, Reader, and Iteration Manager at Tenerity:

Moving to Early Majority

Moving to early adopters

New topics in early innovators

Steef-Jan Wiggers, Technical Integration Architect at HSO and Microsoft Azure MVP:

Moving to Early Majority

New topics in early innovators

Daniel Byrant, Director of DevRel @ Ambassador Labs | InfoQ News Manager | QCon PC:

Innovators

Early Adopters

Early Majority

Late Majority

Helen Beal, DevOps speaker, writer, and strategic advisor:

1)

2)

Rupert Field, Delivery Lead @Duffle-bag Consulting and DevOps Editor @InfoQ:

Shaaron A Alvares, Editor at InfoQ for DevOps, Culture & Methods | Agile Coach

Is Continuous Verification contained in "Shift left on Sec/InfoSec"?

Add to Innovators: Sociotechnical architecture DevOps value stream management platforms Developer Velocity (or it can be contained in DevEx?)

Add to Innovators or to Early Adopters: Low Code No Code (LCNC) Hybrid Cloud

Move: AIOps and MLOps move to Early Adopters

Matt Campbell, Lead Editor, DevOps | Engineering Director @ D2L

Observability practices and tooling continue to mature. I think we should be looking at splitting the topic of observability into some newer sub-topics such as OpenTelemetry and service level objectives (SLOs). As noted by others, the logging portion of the three pillars of observability is a relatively well-adopted piece. Monitoring of metrics is probably close to the same level of adoption at this point so I'd say EM for that. The tracing pillar of observability is still a less adopted portion and there are new advancements recently, especially with the more widespread adoption of OpenTelemetry.

SLOs as a tool for communicating outcomes and goals have started to see a resurgence with the recent SLOConf leading the way. I expect to see the various observability platforms start to add SLO-creation and tracking tooling soon. I would put this in late innovator/early EA.

Security continues to be a hot topic as more and more high-profile attacks make the news. While infrastructure as code is probably within EM or later, tooling and techniques to automate IaC vulnerability scanning are not as well utilized (maybe EA). Newer approaches such as Policy as Code (as promoted by Open Policy Agent (OPA)) and remote access management tooling (such as HashiCorp's Boundary) are pushing forward identity as code and privacy as code, so these are probably within the innovator space. These trends are a continuation of the "shift left for security" approach or the newer DevSecOps ideas. With the continued push for early security practices I think we will see more tools and processes introduced in the upcoming year.

The InfoQ editorial team is built by recruiting and training expert practitioners to write news items and articles, and to analyze current and future trends. Apply to become an editor or to contribute articles and get involved with the conversation.

Lena Hall - Director of Engineering: Big Data at Microsoft. She is leading a team and technical strategy for product improvement efforts across Big Data services at Microsoft. Lena is the driver behind engineering initiatives and strategies to advance, facilitate and push forward further acceleration of cloud services. Lena has more than 10 years of experience in solution architecture and software engineering with a focus on distributed cloud programming, real-time system design, highly scalable and performant systems, big data analysis, data science, functional programming, and machine learning. Previously, she was a Senior Software Engineer at Microsoft Research.

Holly Cummins - Innovation Leader, Corporate Strategy SPEED @IBM and spent several years as a consultant in the IBM Garage. As part of the Garage, she delivers technology-enabled innovation to clients across various industries, from banking to catering to retail to NGOs. Holly is an Oracle Java Champion, IBM Q Ambassador, and JavaOne Rock Star. She co-authored Manning's Enterprise OSGi in Action.

Renato Losio - Cloud architect, remote work enthusiast, speaker, and Cloud Editor @InfoQ. Renato has many years of experience as a software engineer, tech lead and cloud services specialist in Italy, UK, Portugal and Germany. He lives in Berlin and works remotely as principal cloud architect for Funambol. Location-based services and relational databases are his main working interests. He is a AWS Data Hero.

Jared Ruckle - Cloud Editor @ InfoQ; Product Marketing @HashiCorp. Jared has over 20 years experience in product marketing and product management. He has worked at numerous IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS companies, including VMware, Pivotal, and CenturyLink. Currently, Jared is director of product marketing at HashiCorp.

Aditya Kulkarni - Blogger, Reader, Iteration Manager at Tenerity, and DevOps Editor @InfoQ. Starting from the developer role, Aditya has evolved into the management domain. Having worked with organization on their journey of agility, Aditya has kept in touch with the technical side of things.

Steef-Jan Wiggers - Technical Integration Architect at HSO, Microsoft Azure MVP and Cloud Lead Editor @InfoQ. His current technical expertise focuses on integration platform implementations, Azure DevOps, and Azure Platform Solution Architectures. Steef-Jan is a board member of the Dutch Azure User Group, a regular speaker at conferences and user groups, writes for InfoQ, and Serverless Notes. Furthermore, Microsoft has recognized him as Microsoft Azure MVP for the past eleven years.

Daniel Byrant - DevRel @ Ambassador Labs | InfoQ News Manager | QCon PC. His current technical expertise focuses on DevOps tooling, cloud/container platforms and microservice implementations. Daniel is a leader within the London Java Community (LJC), contributes to several open source projects, writes for well-known technical websites such as InfoQ, O'Reilly, and DZone, and regularly presents at international conferences such as QCon, JavaOne, and Devoxx.

Helen Beal - DevOps speaker, writer, strategic advisor, and InfoQ DevOps Editor. Herfocus is on helping organisations optimise the flow from idea to value realisation through behavioural, interaction based and technology improvements.

Rupert Field - Delivery Lead @Duffle-bag Consulting and DevOps Editor @InfoQ. He loves learning about technology and helping people harness it to fix problems. His experience includes defining, designing and delivering technology team strategy. This includes delivering coaching, training, operating model design and business transformation.

Shaaron A Alvares - Editor at InfoQ for DevOps, Culture & Methods | Agile Coach. She is Certified Agile Leadership, Certified Agile Coach from the International Consortium for Agile, and Agile Certified Practitioner, with a global work experience in technology and organizational transformation. She introduced lean agile product and software development practices within various global Fortune 500 companies in Europe, such as BNP-Paribas, NYSE-Euronext, ALCOA Inc. and has led significant lean agile and DevOps practice adoptions and transformations at Amazon.com, Expedia, Microsoft, T-Mobile. Shaaron published her MPhil and PhD theses with the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS)

Matt Campbell - Lead Editor, DevOps | Engineering Director @ D2L, an education technology company, responsible for their Infrastructure and Cloud platform teams. His area of focus is DevOps and SRE and implementing these at enterprise scale. He also instructs programming courses with Conestoga College.

Read the rest here:

DevOps and Cloud InfoQ Trends Report - July 2021 - InfoQ.com

Cloud computing has been in the limelight since last year, aided by the worldwide adoption of remote working and learning. The significant increase in employee productivity and relatively lower overhead costs delivered by remote working structures have incentivized major businesses to adapt to these structures, which are underpinned by cloud computing technologies. A recent CNBC survey revealed that 45% of the companies are planning to adopt a hybrid working model in the second half of 2021.

Furthermore, the threatening Delta variant of COVID-19 is expected to further delay the reopening of offices, keeping fully remote or hybrid working structures as the norm in the coming months. This, coupled with the gradual 5G rollout, should drive spending on cloud services. Worldwide spending on public cloud services is expected to increase 23.1% year-over-year to $332.30 billion in 2021.

Given this backdrop, we think established cloud computing companies Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL), Salesforce.com, inc. (CRM) and Workday, Inc. (WDAY) could be ideal bets now.

Click here to check out our Cloud Computing Industry Report for 2021

Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL)

GOOGL is one of the most popular technology companies in the world. Ranked #9 on the Fortune 500 list, the company operates through three segmentsGoogle Services, Google Cloud, and Other Bets.

On July 8, GOOGL announced plans to acquire Japanese smartphone start-up, Pring. Valued at more than 20 billion ($181.66 million), the acquisition will help GOOGL gain access to the Japanese smartphone market.

GOOGLs cloud segment this month unveiled new solutions developed alongside AT&T, Inc. (T). Ts 5G solutions combined with Google Cloud technologies are expected to facilitate new customer experiences and business services, which should make it highly demanded.

On June 30, GOOGLs cloud services segment partnered with one of Belgiums largest retailers, Carrefour Belgium, to support the latters digital transformation. This demonstrated GOOGLs immense market reach in the cloud computing segment.

GOOGLs revenues increased 34% year-over-year to $55.31 billion in its fiscal first quarter, ended March 31. Its operating profit grew 106.1% from its year-ago value to $16.44 billion, while its net income improved 162.3% year-over-year to $17.93 billion. Its EPS increased 166.4% from its year-ago value to $26.29.

A $19.21 consensus EPS estimate for the fiscal second quarter (ended June 2021) represents an 89.6% improvement year-over-year. The company has an impressive earnings surprise history; it beat the Streets EPS estimates in each of the trailing four quarters. In addition, analysts expect its revenues to come in at $56.02 billion in the about-to-be-reported quarter, indicating a 46.3% rise from the same period last year. Over the past year, the stock has gained 63.63% to close Fridays trading session at $2,539.40.

GOOGLs POWR Ratings reflect this promising outlook. The stock has an overall B rating, which translates to Buy in our proprietary rating system. The POWR Ratings are calculated considering 118 different factors, with each factor weighted to an optimal degree.

GOOGL has an A grade for Sentiment, and B for quality. Of the 74 stocks in the Internet industry, it is ranked #1.

To see additional GOOGL ratings for Growth, Value, Momentum, and Stability, click here.

Salesforce.com, inc. (CRM)

CRM primarily develops customer relationship management-related cloud computing services. Its popular software includes Sales Cloud, Services Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and Customer 360 platform. The companys primary supply channels involve direct sales, systems integrators, and consulting firms.

On July 14, CRM launched a new industry-specific applicationAdvertising Sales Management for Media Cloud. It is designed to help companies manage their advertising revenues through a consolidated platform, thereby eliminating the hassles of managing multiple databases.

On June 29, CRM announced an offering of $8 billion of senior notes in multiple tranches. The company plans to use the offerings proceeds to fund its acquisition of Slack Technologies and finance its sustainability projects.

On June 23, CRM expanded its partnership with Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) to integrate CRM and Amazon Web Services (AWS) capabilities to develop and deploy new business applications that aid digital transformation. Regarding this, CRM Chair and CEO Marc Benioff said, This is a milestone partnership for the technology industry and one that will enable our customers to experience an even more powerful Salesforce Customer 360 and achieve a new level of success in their business.

In its fiscal first quarter, ended April 30, 2021, CRMs net sales increased 23% year-over-year to $5.96 billion. This can be attributed to a 21% rise in subscription and support revenues and a 47% rise in professional services and other revenues. Its gross profit stood at $4.41 billion, up 22.1% from its year-ago value. Its net income and EPS increased 373.7% and 354.5%, respectively, from the same period last year to $469 million and $0.50.

The Street expects CRMs revenues to rise 22.3% year-over-year to $26 billion in the current year. The companys EPS is expected to increase at a 10.1% CAGR per annum over the next five years. Furthermore, CRM beat the consensus EPS estimates in each of the trailing four quarters. Shares of CRM have gained 28.5% over the past year and 11.9% over the past six months.

CRM has an overall B rating, which equates to Buy in our POWR Ratings system. In addition, it has a B grade for Quality and Sentiment. CRM is ranked #25 of 132 stocks in the Software Application industry.

In total, we rate CRM on eight different levels. Beyond what weve stated above, we have also given CRM grades for Momentum, Value, Stability, and Growth. Click here to view all CRM ratings.

Workday, Inc.(WDAY)

WDAY enterprise delivers cloud applications mainly for financial and human capital management. It offers Workday Financial Management, Workday Human Capital Management, and Other Applications. The companys cloud computing software is highly demanded in the healthcare, financial and higher education industries.

On June 8, WDAY announced its plans to offer Workday Payroll for Australia and Germany. The rising demand for payroll across the EMEA and Asia-Pacific regions should boost WDAYs market reach substantially.

On July 14, WDAY inked a partnership with the countrys fifth-largest accounting firm (by revenues) RSM US LLP, to scale the latters rapidly growing business and improve customer satisfaction. This demonstrates WDAYs standing as a leading cloud financial management service provider.

WDAYs revenues increased 15.4% year-over-year to $1.18 billion in its fiscal first quarter ended April 30. This can be attributed to a 17% rise in subscription revenues over this period. Its operating cash flow increased 71.6% from the same period last year to $452.40 million.

Analysts expect WDAYs revenues to increase 16.5% in the current year and 18.1% next year. The companys EPS is expected to rise at a 16.3% CAGR over the next five years. Also, WDAY has an impressive earnings surprise history; it beat the Streets EPS estimates in each of the trailing four quarters. WDAY has gained 25.2% over the past year to close Fridays trading session at $227.53.

WDAYs strong fundamentals are reflected in its POWR Ratings. The stock has an overall B rating, which equates to Buy in our POWR Ratings system. WDAY has an A grade for Growth and a B for Sentiment. It is ranked #27 in the Software Application industry.

View additional WDAY ratings for Value, Momentum, Stability, and Quality here.

Click here to check out our Cloud Computing Industry Report for 2021

GOOGL shares were trading at $2,484.64 per share on Monday afternoon, down $54.76 (-2.16%). Year-to-date, GOOGL has gained 41.77%, versus a 13.80% rise in the benchmark S&P 500 index during the same period.

Aditi is an experienced content developer and financial writer who is passionate about helping investors understand the dos and don'ts of investing. She has a keen interest in the stock market and has a fundamental approach when analyzing equities. More...

See original here:

GOOGL: 3 Top Cloud Stocks to Buy This Summer. - StockNews.com

The FedRAMP Authorization Act sponsored by Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., has been nearly four years in the making without crossing the goal line. But after the House approved the bill earlier this year, Rep. Connolly said today that the House is working in lockstep with Senate colleagues to hopefully pass the bill in 2021.

While this has been a long journey, Im happy to say that with new leadership in the Senate, were now working in lockstep with our colleagues over there to try and finally get this bill on a markup in the Senate or attached to this years National Defense Authorization Act, Rep. Connolly said today during a GovForward event.

The FedRAMP Authorization Act was the first bill on the floor of the House of Representatives in the 117th Congress, and it passed unanimously. However, the measure has yet to gain much traction in the Senate. The House-approved bill was sent to the Senate in early January, and referred to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Rep. Connolly noted the legislation is the product of years of working with the General Services Administration (GSA), Office of Management and Budget, industry stakeholders, and his colleagues on the other side of the aisle to ensure the bill makes needed improvements to the FedRAMP program, and gives the program flexibility to grow and adapt to myriad future changes in cloud technologies.

This bill is essential, and will demonstrate a universal commitment to FedRAMP and the accelerated adoption of secure cloud computing technologies a vital component of the broader Federal IT modernization effort, Rep. Connolly said during the event.

Specifically, the bill would reduce duplication of security assessments and avoid unnecessary costs by establishing a presumption of adequacy for cloud technologies that have already received FedRAMP certification, Rep. Connolly said.

Service providers will no longer have to start from scratch at each and every Federal agency to demonstrate the viability of their products and services, he explained. The bill would also facilitate agency reuse of cloud technologies that have already received an authorization to operate by requiring agencies to check a centralized and secure repository and to the extent practicable, reuse any existing assessment before conducting an independent one of their own.

Additionally, the bill would require GSA to automate security assessments and reviews. It would also establish a Federal Secure Cloud Advisory Committee for effective and ongoing coordination in acquisition and adoption of cloud products by the Federal government.

Finally, Connolly said the bill would authorize $20 million annually for the FedRAMP program, which would go towards resources to increase the number of secure cloud technologies.

This bill supports a critical need to keep our nations information secure in cloud environments, Rep. Connolly said. Its an improvement for agencies, for our private sector partners, and for taxpayers.

Visit link:

Rep. Connolly Hopeful FedRAMP Bill Will 'Finally' Pass in 2021 - MeriTalk

The global healthcare cloud computing market is estimated to reach USD 90.46 Billion by 2027, according to a current analysis by Emergen Research.

The study on the Healthcare Cloud Computing market applies research methodologies including the investigation and interview techniques to weigh up on the product price, revenue, import and export status and prouction capability of the manufacturers operating in the Healthcare Cloud Computing market for the forecast period, 2020 2027. The market intelligence report focuses primarily on the market size, share and growth rate of the industry during the estimated period with the aim to help business owners make a wise investment decision and chalk out a blueprint of profitable business strategies.

Key questions answered in the report

What will be the market size in terms of value and volume in the next five years?

Which segment is currently leading the market?

In which region will the market find its highest growth?

Which players will take the lead in the market?

What are the key drivers and restraints of the markets growth?

You Can Download Free Sample PDF Copy of Healthcare Cloud Computing Market at https://www.emergenresearch.com/request-sample/425

Research Methodology

Data triangulation and market breakdown

Research assumptions Research data including primary and secondary data

Primary data includes breakdown of primaries and key industry insights

Secondary data includes key data from secondary sources

Key Highlights of Report

In November 2020, Cisco Systems Inc. declared to acquire Banzai Cloud Ltd. The acquisition would help Cisco build a cloud-native networking solution with the support from Banzai in terms of teams and assets.

The private cloud segment is projected to lead the global healthcare cloud computing market, with a market share of 18.0% during the forecast period. In private clouds, the capacity to track and preserve sensitive patient data persists within the organization. This would drive the segment in the near future.

The Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) segment is expected to expand substantially during the forecast period. Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) services in cloud are easily featured as well as interpreted by users through a web browser.

The pay-as-you-go model segment is expected to hold the largest market share during the forecast period. The most significant benefit of this model is that facilities or equipment are accessible and the expense is calculated within the reservation phase.

The North America region is expected to hold the largest share of the global healthcare cloud computing market during the forecast period. The continuing developments in technologies in cloud computing applications for healthcare also bolstered the growth of healthcare providers.

Key market participants are Koninklijke Philips NV, Microsoft Corporation, Cisco Systems Inc., Infosys Limited, Omnicell, Inc., CitiusTech Inc., Salesforce.com, Inc., Sectra AB, Allscripts Healthcare Solutions, Inc., and International Business Machines Corporation (IBM).

Get access to FREE Sample PDF Copy of Healthcare Cloud Computing Market at https://www.emergenresearch.com/request-sample/425

Regional scope- North America; Europe; Asia Pacific; Central & South America; MEA

Cloud Type Outlook (Revenue, USD Billion; 20172027)

Hybrid Cloud

Private Cloud

Public Cloud

Service Outlook (Revenue, USD Billion; 20172027)

Platform-as-a-Service

Infrastructure-as-a-Service

Software-as-a-Service

Application Outlook (Revenue, USD Billion; 20172027)

Non-clinical Information Systems

Clinical Information Systems

Price Model Outlook (Revenue, USD Billion; 20172027)

Pay-as-you-go

Spot Pricing

End-user Outlook (Revenue, USD Billion; 20172027)

Healthcare Payers

Healthcare Providers

The industry experts have left no stone unturned to identify the major factors influencing the development rate of the Healthcare Cloud Computing industry including various opportunities and gaps. A thorough analysis of the micro markets with regards to the growth trends in each category makes the overall study interesting. When studying the micro markets the researchers also dig deep into their future prospect and contribution to the Healthcare Cloud Computing industry.

Read more@ https://www.emergenresearch.com/industry-report/healthcare-cloud-computing-market

Table of Content

Chapter 1. Methodology & Sources

1.1. Market Definition

1.2. Research Scope

1.3. Methodology

1.4. Research Sources

1.4.1. Primary

1.4.2. Secondary

1.4.3. Paid Sources

1.5. Market Estimation Technique

Chapter 2. Executive Summary

2.1. Summary Snapshot, 2019-2027

Chapter 3. Key Insights

Chapter 4. Healthcare Cloud Computing Market Segmentation & Impact Analysis

4.1. Healthcare Cloud Computing Market Material Segmentation Analysis

4.2. Industrial Outlook

4.2.1. Market indicators analysis

4.2.2. Market drivers analysis

4.2.2.1. Stringent environmental regulations

4.2.2.2. Rising need to reduce bacterial or algal contamination in water systems

4.2.2.3. Increasing demand for biocides for municipal water treatment

4.2.3. Market restraints analysis

4.2.3.1. Fluctuating prices of raw material

4.2.3.2. Present challenging economic conditions due to the pandemic

4.3. Technological Insights

4.4. Regulatory Framework

4.5. Porters Five Forces Analysis

4.6. Competitive Metric Space Analysis

4.7. Price trend Analysis

4.8. Covid-19 Impact Analysis

Chapter 5. Healthcare Cloud Computing Market By Application Insights & Trends, Revenue (USD Million), Volume (Kilo Tons)

Chapter 6. Healthcare Cloud Computing Market By Product type Insights & Trends Revenue (USD Million), Volume (Kilo Tons)

Chapter 7. Healthcare Cloud Computing Market Regional Outlook

Chapter 8. Competitive Landscape

Continued

See the rest here:

Healthcare Cloud Computing Market Research Report, Size, Share, Trends, Growth, Top Key Players, Applications, Types, Product and Industry Analysis...

What Is Cloud Computing in Education?

Before schools can create effective cloud frameworks, they need to know what theyre getting into. What is the cloud, exactly, and how can it help schools?

Put simply, cloud computing offloads some or all of a schools IT environment to an offsite server cluster that is managed and maintained by a cloud provider. Cloud deployments are governed by what are known as service-level agreements. SLAs spell out what level of reliability schools can expect, what services are included, what they cost and what recompense is offered if cloud services go down.

According to Rob Clyde, executive chair of White Cloud Security and ISACA board director,cloud computing adoption in K12 schoolsis on the rise as IT teams see the advantage of outsourcing specific functions or workloads. Rather than running and owning their own servers, schools use can cloud computing as a utility, says Clyde. All resources are available on demand.

He notes that there are two broad models of cloud adoption, though one is more often used by schools. The most common isSoftware as a Service rather than deploying an app on your own servers, you buy a service that the provider has hosted in the cloud. Its also possible to deploy your own legacy apps in the cloud, but this is less common in K12. Why roll your own when on-demand apps are available?

LEARN MORE:Manage your multicloud environment more effectively with these solutions.

While57 percent of IT staffbelieve their school should prioritize updated software and hardware, 55 percent say existing budgets arent enough to cover these costs. In addition, many school IT teams are understaffed and under-resourced especially when it comes to the deployment and integration of online learning tools. Cloud solutions can help solve this problem by providing schools reliable and repeatable costs for service. But beyond better budgeting, how does adoption help IT admins?

According to Clyde, the cloud lets IT hand off specific tasks to a trusted third party. Youre no longer managing servers, he says, so you can take that off your list. You dont have to worry about buying, maintaining or ensuring you have enough server space, and you arent responsible for security for all of those servers.

The cloud can also help with staffing concerns. Youre standing on the shoulders of experts, says Clyde, so you dont have to hire your own.

KEEP READING:Here are three ways to support understaffed IT departments.

Cloud computing also extends beyond IT infrastructure to offer key benefits to K12 districts. It provides flexibility, accessibility and simplicity for all users, from students to administrators.

Importantly, for education, cloud computing allows schools to access resources on-demand if learning suddenly shifts from in-class to at-home, providing much-needed flexibility to students and educators. The disruptions of the last year have shown the necessity of flexible technology.

The cloud eliminates the need to be physically at school, Clyde says. You can have a single IT admin for many schools where youre located is no longer a barrier. The accessibility component of cloud computing benefits both rural schools, where campuses are spread out across large distances, and urban schools. When it takes just a single IT admin to control the cloud, other IT staff members can focus their attention elsewhere.

More here:

Cloud Computing in Education and the Impact on K12 Classrooms - EdTech Magazine: Focus on K-12

SINGAPORE - Media OutReach - 9 July 2021 - Asia Cloud Computing Association (ACCA) released its 2021 report on the financial services sector, Better on the Cloud Financial Services in Asia Pacific. This is the third iteration of this report, examining the nuances of cloud and technology adoption by the Asia Pacific financial services sector.

The report examines eleven Asia Pacific markets, looking at the digital transformation accrued by jurisdictions which have facilitated greater cloud adoption within their financial sectors. The report reviews developments and policy adjustments made by regulators to work with financial institutions (FIs) and cloud service providers (CSPs) adjustments which unlock the enabling power of cloud as a key support technology for FI business objectives, and risk management.

Digitally Transforming During The COVID-19 Pandemic

This pandemic season has significantly accelerated the need for FIs to transform digitally, with minimal disruption to their business. The financial sector's resilience has been supported and enhanced by the availability of cloud computing technologies, which have supported transactions being enabled online and via mobile apps, allowed for secure means of remote identity verification and other Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements, and have paved a new way forward for managing relationships, balancing limited physical interactions with virtual connections.

"During this intense work-from-home period, cloud-based tools have allowed rapid adoption of new ways to communicate and collaborate all over the world," says Quint Simon, Head of Public Policy, Asia-Pacific & Japan at Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Vice-Chair of the ACCA. "This has improved business efficiency and mitigated the risk of stress on FIs' technology systems with capabilities that would have been far more challenging and costly without adoption of cloud computing."

Enabling a Robust and Resilient Regulatory Environment

The report findings reveal that strong financial regulatory markets are characterized by a policy environment that has continuously updated, adapted, and revised regulations and guidelines to enable FI adoption of cloud computing technologies.

"We are pleased to note that many regulators are taking the step to go beyond accepting cloud adoption in the financial services sector, to actively affirming and encouraging FIs to consider the benefits of cloud," observes Barbara Navarro, Director of Google Cloud Government Affairs and Public Policy, and Treasurer of the ACCA.

Ten Regulatory Recommendations

While there are positive developments within APAC which demonstrate the importance and benefit of continued dialogue between regulators, FIs and CSPs, the report notes that not all regulatory conditions are equally robust. It makes ten recommendations which will further accelerate digital transformation in financial services while mitigating associated risks.

Strengths and Opportunities for Regulatory Improvement

"From the report's analysis, the leading markets have fully achieved most, if not all of our recommendations," said Eric Hui, Chair of the ACCA, noting the improvements in APAC's pro-cloud policies. "Financial regulators in Australia, Philippines, Singapore and Japan have made strong positive statements, or through their guidance, clearly support the adoption of cloud computing by FIs."

However, there are opportunities for regulatory enhancement, to increase clarity and reduce cloud deployment times. "Beyond the leading regulators, there is a group of markets where the shift to cloud is more challenging because some regulatory requirements may tend to impede cloud adoption and technological innovation in the FIs," adds Lim May-Ann, Executive Director of the ACCA. "There are variations on why this is the case for each of these markets, and this report provides a deep dive market analysis to examine market nuances further."

One such nuance is the requirements for a regulatory approval or notice of no-objection from the financial regulator when deploying cloud technology. "In some markets the regulator requires approval or a notice of non-objection for each occasion an FI intends to place a workload on a cloud service, and this process can be highly repetitive, lengthy and opaque, which can impede cloud deployment," observes Bojan Obradovic, Head of Cloud Services, HSBC, a member of the ACCA. "Regulators should consider the FI's risk-based analysis and how the standards, best practices and certifications of a CSP align with objectives."

The report is available for free download at https://www.asiacloudcomputing.org. Markets covered include Australia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand along with two global benchmark jurisdictions markets, the United Kingdom and the United States of America (federal, and New York state.)

The ACCA is the apex industry association for Asia Pacific stakeholders in the cloud computing ecosystem. We represent a vendor-neutral voice of the private sector to government and other stakeholders, with the mission to accelerate the adoption of cloud computing through Asia Pacific by helping to create a trusted and compelling market environment, and a safe and consistent regulatory environment for cloud computing products and services.

#AsiaCloudComputingAssociation #ACCA

See more here:

Asia Cloud Computing Association Releases 2021 New Financial Services and Tech Adoption Report: Better on the Cloud for Financial Services in Asia...