Category Archives: Cloud Computing

A global website crash that occurred in the early hours of Tuesday morning is widely reported to have been caused by issues at Fastly, an internet content delivery network used by many major websites.

Social media erupted with reports of websites, including Amazon, eBay, Reddit, and more, all being down after around 6:00 a.m. EDT.

Users who tried to access affected sites were met with a connection failure notice and an "Error 503" messagea generic error message signaling that the server cannot handle a connection request.

Fastly runs what it calls an "edge cloud," which is essentially a service that speeds up website loading times.

Soon after the website crash issues were reported the company said it was experiencing problems with its content delivery network, or CDNa group of servers spread around the world that work together to provide fast delivery of internet content.

They work by storing website information as physically close to individual internet users as possible, meaning people do not have to fetch data from the original serverwhich might be based on the other side of the planetevery time they access a site.

The majority of web traffic is directed through CDNs, including traffic for major platforms like Facebook and Amazon. A CDN does not actually host the website, but it does improve website performance.

Other providers of CDN services include Cloudflare, Amazon CloudFront, and StackPath.

Shortly after Fastly became aware of an issue with its CDN services it began issuing regular updates every few minutes and within an hour had identified the cause and implemented a fix.

A Fastly update, issued at 7:57 a.m. EDT, stated: "A fix was applied at 10:36 UTC (6:36 EDT). Customers may continue to experience decreased cache hit ratio and increased origin load as global services return."

It said the incident affected Asia/Pacific, South America, North America, South Africa, Europe, and India.

Fastly explained the cause further in a tweet, stating: "We identified a service configuration that triggered disruptions across our POPs globally and have disabled that configuration. Our global network is coming back online."

A POP stands for Point of Presence. It refers to an access point or physical location at which two or more networks or devices share a connection.

In the replies to the tweet some users praised Fastly for what they saw as a quick response.

Shares in Fastly (FSLY) are at time of writing priced at around $49.80 in pre-market trading, down 1.78 percent from Monday's close. The company is valued at around $5.8 billion.

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What Is Fastly? How Outage at Cloud Computing Firm Brought Down the Internet - Newsweek

Zhang Jianfeng, president of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, speaks during the opening ceremony of Alibaba Renhe Cloud Data Center on September 16, 2020 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province of China.

Qian Chenfei | China News Service | Getty Images

GUANGZHOU, China Alibaba has launched a slew of new cloud computing products as the Chinese e-commerce giant looks to expand across Asia.

Cloud computing is seen as a key profit driver for Alibaba over the long term and in the past few years, it has been boosting its presence aggressively outside of China.

On Tuesday, Alibaba announced plans to open a new data center in the Philippines by the end of the year and launched a third data center in Indonesia. Expanding data centers allows cloud providers to boost their capacity in certain countries or regions.

Alibaba also launched a cloud-based livestreaming product designed for online shopping. It will allow e-commerce players to launch a live stream shopping feature on their websites or apps that are hosted on Alibaba's cloud.

Livestream shopping usually involves a host talking about products that customers can buy directly via the live broadcast. It has become very popular in China and is growing in other parts of Asia.

The Chinese e-commerce firm hopes that such a product can help it stand out from U.S. rivals including Microsoft and Amazon in the cloud market.

In the Asia-Pacific region, Alibaba was the biggest public cloud market vendor at the end of 2020 with a 19.2% share, according to IDC, boosted by success in China. Amazon was second with a 10.5% share.

However, in the global market, Alibaba still trails Microsoft, Amazon and Google.

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Alibaba expands cloud products with livestream shopping in its battle against Amazon - CNBC

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Vendia, a multi-party application development platform for sharing code and data in real time, has been recognized as a 2021 Gartner Cool Vendor in the Cool Vendors in Cloud Computing report by Arun Chandrasekaran, Sid Nag, and David Wright on May 13, 2021.

Business critical data is dispersed across both internal and external silos, making it challenging to control and share in real time. Vendias decentralized data platform enables the sharing and synchronizing of data or code across clouds, partners, and tech stacks with immutability and control. It is being used in production today to power multi-party distributed applications for track and trace of goods and services across complex supply chains, financial settlements and transactions, and real-time data analytics for AI/ML and IoT use cases. Vendias serverless implementation makes building distributed applications scalable, cost efficient, and developer friendly.

Coming at a time when we are barely a year past our founding, this recognition by Gartner is an especially great honor, said Tim Wagner, co-founder and CEO of Vendia. Our mission is to simplify the challenges of building applications that span data silos and clouds by creating a single source of truth, while ensuring that each partner retains full control over its data. Were delighted that Gartner recognizes the need for our offering in the market.

This Gartner Cool Vendor in Cloud Computing report states CIOs should assess these Cool Vendors that are disrupting the cloud market through robust multicloud implementation products. The complete report can be accessed on Gartner, or read more about it on the Vendia blog.

Disclaimer

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in our research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartners research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

About Vendia

Vendia provides multi-cloud services that make it easy for organizations to share real time data and code across clouds, companies, and regions for data integration, financial settlement, ML training, transaction processing, supply chain solutions and more. Vendia was founded by Dr. Tim Wagner, formerly General Manager and creator of AWS Lambda at AWS, and Shruthi Rao, formerly Head of Business Development for Amazon Managed Blockchain at AWS. The company is based in San Francisco and has raised $20.6M in funding led by BMW i Ventures, Canvas Ventures, Neotribe Ventures, Sorenson Ventures, and other leading investors. To learn more about Vendia visit http://www.vendia.net.

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Vendia Named a 2021 Gartner Cool Vendor in Cloud Computing - Business Wire

Many mining companies are switching to cloud computing as a greater number of providers offer powerful software and cutting edge technologies.

Listed below are the key trends impacting cloud computing in mining, as identified by GlobalData.

As mining moves into ever more remote areas and less developed countries, greater challenges arise around infrastructure and supply chain efficiency. Access to the essential resources of mining, water and internet connectivity, is becoming increasingly expensive, and building infrastructure is not commercially viable. Miners must find ways to import these assets more cheaply to keep costs down and maintain the running of mines.

The productivity of mines has traditionally been poor due to the ineffective use of inputs and lack of data integration across the mining process. Mining has been reluctant to invest heavily in new technologies, instead opting to focus on volume over efficiency. However, this is changing as increased digitalisation of mining processes and automation are supporting improvements in the productivity and lowering cost per unit output of mines. By harnessing the potential of data resources, mining is beginning to see the vast benefits to all areas of the industry.

As companies have adopted new technologies, the amount of data produced has increased. Data is quickly becoming an asset, as it can help effective decision making. However, if it is to be useful, data must be stored and managed securely and efficiently.

Declining commodity prices, longer haul distances, falling ore grades, and rising material and labour costs place a greater emphasis on cost control to maintain margins. These margins are often squeezed further by lowering exploration funds as investors move away from the industry.

Identifying new viable mines is becoming harder with the backdrop of declining ore grades, rising development costs, and more remote deposits. Declining resource quality has forced miners to drill deeper to find commercially viable ore grades, further increasing cost considerations for new mines.

Sustainable practices are vital to maintaining a mining companys license to operate as societal and investor pressure mounts to transition to a low carbon economy. With sustainability becoming a critical metric that investors now consider, improving mining efficiency and minimising environmental impact is becoming more critical to attract investment.

In recent years, minings reputation has become tarnished after several safety crises and mining asset failures. This reputational damage has led investors to move away from the industry and companies to face the removal of licenses to operate. Mining companies are improving health and safety measures and training through the adoption of new technologies to enhancing the monitoring of mining assets and workers.

As digital and data-driven technology begins to bring vast improvements to mining operations, mining companies must consider the strategic planning of the future workforce. Companies must hire those with data-related skills to help implement and innovate their digital strategy. However, the negative perception of mining and its poor environmental reputation is an obstacle to enticing a younger, more digitally skilled future workforce.

The mining industry is evolving rapidly, with digitisation, automation, and internet of things (IoT) devices fuelling operational productivity. However, these advances have come at a cost. An increasingly connected environment means expanding the threat. Mining operations are more vulnerable to cyberattacks and protecting them represents a significant challenge.

Miners across the world, both local operators and international giants, have taken steps to close down mines or quarantine whole parts of their operations to protect employees and prevent the spread of the virus. This is hugely detrimental to a sector that is heavily reliant on effective and predictable operations within its supply chain.

This is an edited extract from the Cloud Computing in Mining Thematic Research report produced by GlobalData Thematic Research.

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Cloud Computing in Mining: What's Happening - Mining Technology

PARIS, June 13 (Reuters) - French cloud computing services provider OVHcloud is about to set out its plan to list the companys shares on Euronexts Paris stock exchange, a source close to the matter said, confirming an earlier report by weekly JDD.

The announcement will include a timetable for the initial public offering (IPO), which would be one of Frances biggest this year and could value the company at several billion euros, according to several analysts, the source said.

JDD reported that OVHcloud would make the announcement on Monday.

Founded by Octave Klaba in 1999, OVHcloud competes mostly with U.S. firms such as Amazon Web Services, Microsofts Azure and Google Cloud, which dominate the market.

Based in Roubaix near Belgium, OVHcloud employs 2,450 people and has 32 data centres worldwide. It generated 600 million euros ($726 million) in sales in 2019.

In March, a fire destroyed one of OVHclouds four data centres in Strasbourg, in eastern France, disrupting millions of websites, knocking out government agencies portals, banks, shops, news websites and a chunk of the .FR web space, according to internet monitors.

The incident occurred shortly after OVHcloud announced plans for a potential initial public offering of its shares. ($1 = 0.8260 euros) (Reporting by Mathieu Rosemain;Editing by Elaine Hardcastle)

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France's OVHcloud about to announce IPO plan - source - Reuters

Independent Survey Sponsored by Anodot Points to Need for AI-Based Cloud Monitoring and Machine Learning to Reduce Cloud Costs Within 30-60 Days

Anodot, the autonomous business monitoring company, today announced the results of an independent survey that reveals how organizations struggle to control skyrocketing cloud computing costs of the remote workforce, even as business moves to a hybrid model.

In Q2 of 2021, Anodot surveyed more than 100 senior IT, finance, and operations leaders on their experiences managing cloud costs during the pandemic and shortly thereafter as vaccinations became commonplace and more people returned to work. The survey revealed the following:

Cloud costs are skyrocketing, and most organizations are having a hard time controlling these costs

Fewer than 20% of survey respondents stated that they were able to immediately detect spikes in cloud costs

Greater than 25% stated that it can take months or weeks or several days to notice a spike in cloud costs

For 59% of those who spend in excess of $2M monthly on cloud usage, it can take days to detect an anomalous surge; and, on heavy cloud usage days, nearly 50% of respondents reported that cloud costs can surge by as much as 10-19%

Business spending more than $2 million on cloud costs had less insight into cloud costs than companies that spent less than $2 million

Roughly 77% of respondents with more than $2 million in cloud costs said they were surprised by how much they spent

About 60% of respondents admitted that it took them at least a few days to detect anomalous surges, which can easily equate to $100,000s in unnecessary revenue loss

This delay increased cloud costs by a staggering 10%

2020 was a particularly challenging year for managing cloud costs, primarily due to the move to remote work

Nearly 30% of respondents saw a 25-50% jump in cloud costs, month-to-month, during a six-month period

Almost 20% realized a 50-100% increase in cloud costs, month-to-month, during a six-month period

This year, many organizations experienced a challenging or somewhat challenging experience when transitioning business-critical operations to the cloud

For most organizations, cloud services and Software-as-a-Service represent a large and fast-growing share of their budgets. Cloud computing is projected to make up 14% of enterprise IT spending worldwide in 2024 up from 9% in 2020, according to a recent report by research firm Gartner. This will continue a trend. Gartner says that worldwide spending on public cloud services will grow 18% this year alone to a total of $304.9 billion, up from $257.5 billion in 2020.

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"Cloud costs are extremely hard to track" according to Anodot Co-Founder and CEO David Drai, who said this makes it challenging for IT, finance, and operations teams to manage cash flow and set reasonable expectations for cloud usage. "Undetected mistakes often account for rising cloud costs and those glitches are not found by traditional monitoring tools used by most organizations. Given the rise in cloud costs due to digital transformation and a shift to hybrid workforce models, it is incumbent on IT leaders to use the correct tools to monitor their cloud costs."

Using traditional approaches to business monitoring for cloud costs can take days as well as waste valuable time for the engineers who need to review dashboards. Anodots AI and ML tools speed time to detection by 70 percent, and many companies can identify cost-related issues within an hour, saving businesses hundreds of thousands of dollars. As cloud costs take up an increasingly large percentage of companies' IT spending in the move to digitalization, the speed of detection and remediation will be especially critical to financial planning.

AI-Based Cloud Monitoring and Machine Learning Are More Effective

"Within one month of deploying an AI solution, a company can cut cloud costs by 10% and provide long-lasting results that improve IT operations," said Drai. "AI-based cloud monitoring and machine learning are the most effective ways to control cloud costs, offering the ability to detect and resolve spikes in cloud usage before significant expenses are incurred. This is the most accurate technology for problematic usage before they take a toll on revenues."

To further boost cloud cost optimization, AI-based cloud cost monitoring can also forecast future cloud costs so that organizations can conduct better advance planning.

To learn more about how AI-based cloud monitoring and machine learning works, visit here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgIXjUinv54&ab_channel=Anodot

About Anodot

Anodot's Business Monitoring platform uses machine learning to constantly analyze and correlate every business parameter, providing real-time anomaly alerts and forecasts in their context. Fortune 500 companies, from digital business to telecom, trust Anodot's patented technology to reduce time to detection and resolution for revenue-critical issues by as much as 80 percent. Anodot is headquartered in Silicon Valley and Israel, with sales offices worldwide. To learn more, visit http://www.anodot.com and follow them on LinkedIn and Twitter.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210610005569/en/

Contacts

Media Contacts Gail Scibellifama PR for Anodotanodot@famapr.com

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New Survey Reveals that Organizations Struggle with Skyrocketing Cloud Computing Costs Amidst the Move to Remote Work - Yahoo Finance

In the last year, we have seen a number of technological innovations advance in leaps and bounds. To keep up with the pace of change, businesses have taken significant steps to overhaul their digital transformation strategy. Automation and cloud computing have become a crucial part of businesses operating models, helping them to navigate the new normal.

About the author

Alan Prior is VP and Industry Consultant for EuroNorth at Dassault Systmes.

Cloud computing has come out a clear winner among digital transformation tools in 2020: recent findings from PWC identified that cloud spending rose 37% to $29 billion during the first quarter of 2020. And it is predicted that this trend will continue: cloud spending is estimated to rise 19% for the full year.

While many are reaping the benefits of the cloud, for certain industries and industry professionals, such manufacturers and engineers, the question remains whether a cloud enabled future really is the best way forward.

The pandemic has highlighted the importance of collaboration and that having the right set of collaboration tools is important for any industry. For manufacturers and engineers that rely heavily on collaboration and distributed workforces, having the right tools in place is critical. As the sector has traditionally been slow to realize the advantage of Industry 4.0, the pandemic has forced teams to restructure and rethink how they work, and how they design and bring new products to the markets more quickly than ever before.

Cloud-based virtualization and design tools allow engineers and manufacturers to collaborate effectively in remote working environments. With such technology, manufacturers and engineers can manage internal working and design processes all in a virtual environment. For example, our recent survey A sustainable future for business post-COVID revealed that the life sciences sector has adopted digital collaboration tools at a rapid pace in order to innovate in light of COVID-19 (71% of respondents).

This is why have recently made all our software brands and applications suitable for cloud computing via our 3DEXPERIENCE platform. The goal is to help our customers across all markets to accelerate their innovation cycle through the cloud. By connecting all of the tools together in a single collaborative business environment, we aim to help our clients reduce inefficiencies at every step of the engineering and manufacturing chain.

Not only has cloud-based technology helped to speed up the cycle of innovation, it has also enabled organisations to be more cost efficient and sustainable through the implementation of virtual twin technology.

The virtual twin approach encompasses a set of virtual collaborative tools and solutions to create virtual models and simulations of products. Introducing this way of working within teams fosters an environment of knowledge sharing and speeds up time to market for new products. Virtual twin technology also helps manufacturers and engineers quickly adapt to changing consumer needs, whilst also ensuring products are industry compliant. Addressing these challenges in a virtual environment allows manufacturers and engineers to test what if situations, all without any implications on the real world, or without the cost of a physical product.

In addition to industry compliance and business sustainability, companies must also consider their customers, who are becoming increasingly conscious of ecological and sustainability topics. Todays consumer wants to be able to chart the journey their products has taken, from concept to the final product. They demand to know if their product has come from sustainably sourced materials, if it has been designed sustainably and they expect to see details of the carbon footprint associated with the creation and delivery of the product.

By creating one source of truth across the entire development and supply network, virtual twin technology enables companies to immediately assess this information and provide more transparent communication to their clients. In our survey A sustainable future for business post-COVID, one third of respondents even admitted that lack of access to virtual twins is one of the biggest barriers to becoming sustainable in the future.

Cloud computing is the second most requested tech skill for 2021 and as weve seen this technology is radically reshaping the world of work.

As software becomes increasingly more advanced, engineers and manufacturers need to evolve their skill set to adapt to the changing ways products are made, and the ever-changing demands of consumers.

For example, there has been a massive increase in demand for smart products - from smart cars to the likes of Google Home and Alexa. These new must-have smart products need to be consistently updated and upgraded throughout their life-cycle, a challenge that requires a different way of approaching innovation, product design and software engineering. With this in mind, manufacturers and engineers need to develop skills that allow them to design, create and deliver the products and features consumers want.

The simple answer is yes: a cloud-powered world allows companies to innovate faster, be more transparent and sustainable, and up-skill their workers to better meet the governments ambitions for carbon net zero. The clouds modularity also means that it can adapt to any environment and industry to suit the immediate and future needs of businesses large and small.

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Is a cloud enabled future the best way forward? - TechRadar

From mountain peaks and medieval villages to neon-lit cityscapes, the virtual universe created by game developers is as breathtaking for gamers as it is for them.

For game developers, the sheer amount of computing resources needed to bring these virtual worlds to life is just as breathtaking even as hardware performance has improved over time.

Game developers since the dawn of the video game industry have been constrained by the hardware, said Darryl Long, managing director for Singapore at Ubisoft, a publisher of top game titles such as Far cry and Assassins creed.

Our ambitions are to create these huge living worlds, but you cant fit them into memory, or the processors arent strong enough, he added.

The advent of cloud computing has helped to ease the technology constraints, opening the doors for game developers to create even richer and more immersive worlds. The cloud is a scalable platform if you need more processing power or storage, you can get it and you can scale up and down depending on the load, said Long.

For Ubisoft, that means delivering always-on gaming experiences where artificial intelligence powered game environments can keep evolving even after the player leaves the game.

For example, if youre playing Assassins creed and you power down your PlayStation, the game stops, he said. But with the cloud the game can keep running, even when youre not there. In fact, other players could be in your world, playing in a shared environment at the same time, and the cloud enables us to scale up and down based on the number of players.

Against this backdrop, Ubisoft has been shoring up its investments in technology infrastructure, including cloud computing. Besides working with public cloud suppliers, it also acquired i3D, a cloud hosting service provider for the gaming industry.

Were doing this so that we can make sure were an early adopter of these technologies, said Long, adding that Ubisoft is also actively looking to move its big titles onto mobile gaming platforms which have grown in popularity and market share over the years.

To help its developers build game elements in a flexible and automatic manner and speed up the time it takes to create intricate game worlds, Ubisoft also created the proprietary Anvil game engine from scratch over a decade ago.

Taking our game engines that traditionally were designed to work on consoles and PCs and moving them towards new platforms like the cloud is obviously a huge investment and a huge challenge for us, said Long.

While he could not talk about the technologies that Ubisoft is using to make that transition to new gaming platforms, he said the company has been working closely with its partners and cloud providers to ensure it is at the forefront of technology adoption.

Moving forward, Long said games are likely to live on for years, with new content, features and abilities being added over time. These evergreen titles, said Long, require a shift in the way games are built.

Building games has become a lot more about building an infrastructure, Long said. When youre writing the code of a game, you cant cut corners the way you used to, and you really need to build something thats scalable and extensible.

So, you need to build in a plug-and-play manner where you take components, rip them out, replace them and turn on and off features dynamically, he added. The mobile app industry has led the way in that revolution and the video game industry has learned from it.

According to the latest Global games market report by Newzoo, the gaming market is expected to continue its growth amid the pandemic and is forecast to generate $217.9bn by 2023.

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How Ubisoft is embracing the cloud - ComputerWeekly.com

Enterprise technology providers must help telcos embrace cloud platforms, a new IBM study suggests.

Image: TierneyMJ/Shutterstock

Unprecedented hypergrowth as a result of 5G should begin around mid-decade, and to prepare, communications service providers need to ensure they have the right pieces in place to thrive, according to a new IBM study. These include corporate strategy, technological and operational processes and, of course, infrastructure.

Meeting user expectations will more frequently require the integration of connectivity and computing closer to where data resides and decisions are made, according to the study, The end of communications services as we know them.

SEE: Edge computing adoption to increase through 2026; organizations cautious about adding 5G to the mix (TechRepublic Premium)

"The expansion of related physical infrastructure, network functions and software is expected to be so great that by mid-decade it will usher in an entirely new technological era to reduce costs to a level that makes mass adoption and hyper expansion feasible,'' the study said. Then 'network cloud' will follow in the tradition of personal computers and cloud computing as digitization's third wave.

"This wave will converge network and cloud functions, connectivity and computing, infusing data-driven intelligence and automated decision-making into applications, forming what we call 'intelligent connectivity' spread throughout network tiers," the study said.

Integrating connectivity and computing near to where data resides is key, but so is the ability of CSPs to adapt to the changes. The study of 500 telecommunications executives identified a small group (14%) of high performers, which IBM defined as those expected to outperform the rest of the field on 5G and edge computing.

Fifty-nine percent of these high performers agreed they must become secure clouds infused with artificial intelligence and automation, while half of high-performing CSPs agreed they must become strategic cloud platforms blending a diverse partner ecosystem.

SEE: 5G: What it means for edge computing (free PDF) (TechRepublic)

"If CSPs are to thrive, most will need to develop new competencies and assert themselves in new roles in value chains,'' the study said. "CSPs should seek new ways to make money, beyond metering connectivity and access to data, as these traditional mainstays of CSP business models are likely to commoditize."

Additionally, 71% of telco CEOs surveyed said cloud computing is a core technology to help deliver results over the next two to three years, while 61% viewed 5G similarly.

CSPs have much to offer in the burgeoning 5G-driven platform economy: experience, points of presence, enterprise systems, unique data and customer trust, the study said.

The so-called high-performing CSPs "seem to value the strategic importance of digital platforms, automation, emerging partner ecosystems and hybrid cloud,'' the study said.

By 2030, 5G-driven growth will propel the portion of the economy driven by digital platforms to greater than 50% of the overall world economy, the IBM report said. To achieve this, a foundation must be in place by around mid-decade to support exponential growth in physical infrastructure and mobile data traffic for various use cases to support "tens of trillions of dollars in economic activity."

5G is designed to support a 100-times increase in traffic capacity compared with 4G, but doing so will require higher-spectrum bands that do not travel as far as lower-spectrum bands. As a result, this will require many small cells or low-powered cellular radio access nodes with relatively short ranges, the report said.

This is reflected in the global 5G infrastructure market, which is projected to grow from around $2 billion in 2019 to around $500 billion in 2027, including more than $200 billion worth of radio access network technology, the report said.

Another major finding was that most CSPs have not yet developed a 5G business case for 5G use cases. They must evaluate "how they can become essential to achieving the platform economics advantage for their customers, themselves and their surrounding ecosystems by establishing the platforms responsible for compounding value,'' the report said.

Most respondent organizations "are taking a conservative business-case-driven approachwaiting for proof of demand prior to making investments,'' the report said. "This could place many of them on their heels when 5G-related demand arrives in an explosion in around 2024 or 2025."

In two years, respondents reported that only 7% of services will be uniquely enabled by 5G capabilities, and 93% will be enhancements of existing 4G services, the report said.

"Even in five years, respondents expect only 18% of services will be uniquely enabled by 5G. Most CSPs have not yet developed a 5G business case for 5G use cases. Only about half of respondents we identified as high performers have developed a business case for deployment of 5G use cases (49%), yet that's twice as many as other CSPs."

In contrast, the report makes the case that high-performing CSPs are preparing to become essential to value chains by focusing on four key actions:

5G networks and devices, mobile security, remote support, and the latest about phones, tablets, and apps are some of the topics we'll cover. Delivered Tuesdays and Fridays

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5G and edge computing will help define the winners in the digital economy - TechRepublic

From a technology perspective, one of the biggest changes we've seen over the past year has been a dramatic acceleration in cloud computing initiatives. The pandemic has proven once and for all that cloud computing really does work, even in the most challenging of circumstances, providing greater speed, agility and resilience.

And with this new level of trust and appreciation of cloud computing, huge numbers of businesses have gone from running only a handful of applications in the cloud to wanting to shift significant parts of their IT estate over to a cloud environment, as quickly as they possibly can.

Indeed, as organisations have rushed through digital transformation programs to deliver new digital services to both customers and employees during the pandemic, most have relied heavily on the cloud to enable them to move at the required speed and scale.

The pandemic will certainly come to be seen as a tipping point in the transition to cloud computing, speeding up what was already an inevitable switch by several years. Indeed, Gartner has forecast that worldwide end-user spending on public cloud services will grow by 18.4 per cent in 2021, and that the proportion of IT spending on cloud computing will make up 14.2 per cent of the total global enterprise IT spending market in 2024, up from 9.1 per cent in 2020.

This marked shift towards cloud computing is undoubtedly delivering benefits, enabling the digital transformation initiatives organisations have relied on throughout the pandemic. In many cases, the level and speed of innovation that has been achieved simply wouldn't have been possible using legacy technologies.

However, there is always a sting! The rapid acceleration of cloud initiatives has had a profound impact on the IT department, adding huge complexity and even greater pressure onto technologists.

In our latest Agents of Transformation report, Agents of Transformation 2021: The Rise of Full-Stack Observability, we found that 77 per cent of global technologists are experiencing greater levels of complexity as a result of the acceleration of cloud computing initiatives during the pandemic. And 78per cent cited technology sprawl and the need to manage a patchwork of legacy and cloud technologies as an additional source of complexity.

On the back of rapid digital transformation over the past year, technologists have rightly put even more focus on monitoring the entire IT estate, from customer-facing applications through to third party services and core infrastructure like network and storage. But whilst to a large degree their established monitoring approaches and tools have provided them greater visibility across traditional, legacy environments, they have been found wanting within new hybrid cloud environments.

The reason for this is that within a software-defined, cloud environment, nothing is fixed; everything is constantly changing in real-time. And that makes monitoring far more difficult.

Traditional approaches to monitoring were based on physical IT infrastructure - technologists knew they were operating five servers and 10 network wires - they were dealing with constants. This then allowed for fixed dashboards for each layer of the IT stack. But the nature of cloud computing is that organisations are continually scaling their use of IT up and down, according to business need. For instance, a company might be using two servers to support a customer-facing application, but then suddenly increase that to 25 servers to meet a surge in demand in real-time, before dropping back down to five a few hours later while adapting its network and storage infrastructure along the way.

Traditional monitoring solutions simply aren't designed for this dynamic use of infrastructure as code, and that means most technologists can no longer get visibility of their full IT stack health in a single pane of glass. In fact, three-quarters of technologists now report they are being held back because they have multiple, disconnected monitoring solutions, and worryingly, more than two-thirds admit they now waste a lot of time as they can't easily isolate where performance issues are actually happening. The acceleration of cloud computing initiatives is undoubtedly the major driver of this issue.

Looking ahead, technologists are under no illusions: the transition to the cloud is only going to gather pace, as organisations continue to prioritise digital transformation to get through the pandemic and exploit new opportunities in a turbulent marketplace.

Technologists are also fully aware that unless they find a way to gain greater visibility and insight into all IT environments, they will be unable to drive the rapid, sustainable digital transformation their organisations need. Indeed, 79per cent of technologists state that they need to adopt more comprehensive observability tools to achieve their organisations' innovation goals.

Without genuine full-stack observability, technologists simply don't stand a chance of being able to quickly identify and fix technology issues before they impact end users and the business.

IT and business leaders need to recognise that unless they address this issue now, they are jeopardising all of their efforts and investment in digital transformation. Organisations can develop the most innovative, cloud-based applications for their customers and staff, but unless their technologists have the right level of visibility and tools to optimise IT performance in real-time, then they will never be able to deliver faultless digital experiences.

Technologists need to be able to monitor all technical areas across their IT stack, including within cloud environments, and to directly link technology performance to end user experience and business outcomes, so they can prioritise actions and focus on what really matters to the business. Get this right, and then organisations really can start to take full advantage of the cloud.

James Harvey is EMEAR CTO at Cisco AppDynamics

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The acceleration to cloud is causing a monitoring migraine - http://www.computing.co.uk