Apple's Mac future resides in the cloud

Absence makes the mind speculate. At least, that's the case for industry observers waiting to see what happens with Apple's overall Mac strategy this week.

My ZDNet colleague, David Gewirtz, believes that Apple's lack of innovation in Mac product releases over the last several years seems to indicate that the platform is running out of steam -- that effectively, the company has "given up" and has ceded mobile PC computing to its competitors, namely Microsoft.

I think "given up" is a bit too strong of a descriptor. I think the correct term is closer to "transitioning away from".

Apple has, since the rise of the iPhone and the iPad and the App Store ecosystem, been deriving most of its income from mobile device products, not Macs.

IS FOG COMPUTING THE FUTURE OF THE CLOUD?

The IoT already produces massive amounts of data. It’s time to start dealing with it. Is Fog and Edge Computing inevitable?

Hybrid Hosting: The Third-Generation Cloud

It is important to keep perspective when picking technologies to base the future of your company’s IT on. Technologies go through generations of improvements along multiple dimensions before they reach true ubiquity.

Take the disk drive as an example. First built in 1953 by IBM, each new generation of disk drives replaced larger, more sensitive, and more cumbersome devices. The cost also dropped precipitously with every generation. Not many people remember, but the earliest drives were usable only in the protected environment of a data center. Disk diameter was 14 inches and disks were typically mounted in standalone boxes that resembled washing machines. Individual drives often required high-current AC power due to the large motors required to spin the large disks.

This is a far cry from the sleek, quiet, and high performance solid-state drives (SSD) we use today, which can be considered the third generation of hard drives. Third generation technologies are faster, cheaper, and better.

That’s why IT leaders should select third generation technologies for key IT infrastructure.

Similar to hard drives, the cloud is a multi-generational phenomenon. Its story is distinguished by three distinct generations of cloud. With the introduction of each generation, platforms, applications, and companies have been transformed by these emerging technologies and their radical advantages.

The Evolution of Virtualization and How We Approach Computing

The concept of virtualization in computing dates back 50 years. As computing transformed and evolved, server computing has become more affordable than ever. This means virtualization didn’t get a chance to take off; it was economically feasible to have individual servers take on individual workloads.

Urs Holzle, Google's 8th employee and tech guru, thinks the cloud could make more money than ads

Urs Holzle, Google's eighth employee and overall cloud boss, thinks that within the next five years, the company's Google Cloud Platform revenues could surpass Google's advertising revenue in five years.
"The goal is for us to talk about Google as a cloud company by 2020," Holzle said on stage at today's Structure conference in San Francisco.

Google Cloud Platform is generally thought to be lagging Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, the leading players in the exploding cloud computing market, mostly because it's struggled to forge relationships with the major enterprise customers it needs to turn it into revenue.

But today, on stage at the Structure conference in San Francisco, Holzle said that while "we're clearly coming from behind," he defended Google's place in the cloud computing market, and said that there's only room to get bigger.

"Our cloud growth rate is probably industry-leading...and we have lots of enterprise customers, happy enterprise customers," Holzle said.

He says that the cloud game is a little bit like the rise of the smartphone: The iPhone was first in 2007, basically creating the demand for smartphones. But despite a later start, Android has become the single most popular operating system in the world.

Read More : http://www.businessinsider.in/Urs-Holzle-Googles-8th-employee-and-tech-guru-thinks-the-cloud-could-make-more-money-than-ads/articleshow/49838765.cms

Stats are wrong: The public cloud is already the norm

It's no longer new or odd for enterprises to use the cloud. The cloud is now a reliable workhorse, and it brings a great deal of value to the business.

A recent Verizon report shows what everyone already knows: Use of the cloud is no longer new or specialized; it's become a solid part of our IT arsenal that most enterprises have already established as a core resource.

If the cloud is not so strange anymore, why isn't everyone doing it? The use of public cloud makes up less than 2 or 3 percent of total enterprise workloads, the major analyst firms concur.

Some enterprises are still holding out on the move to the public cloud by citing security, control, and regulatory rationales. But many of them are starting the transition with a private cloud or two. They're not counted in the analyst figures.

A much bigger undercount involves so-called shadow IT, where employees and even entire departments have bought into public cloud computing. They have SaaS or IaaS cloud assets that will eventually find their way back into corporate IT, which will reluctantly accept the use of public cloud resources. This has already occurred at most Global 2000 companies. But until these unofficial deployments work their way back to IT, these public cloud uses aren't counted either in analyst stats.

Those unofficial deployments will help corporate IT see that the sky doesn't fall when users deploy the public cloud. Indeed, agility goes up and costs drop. Moreover, if the right security approaches and technologies are applied, security actually improves.

Read More : http://www.infoworld.com/article/3005457/cloud-computing/stats-are-wrong-public-cloud-is-already-the-norm.html

Cloud computing reshaping the industry

Ashley Porter of superannuation advisory firm Mclowd told an audience of fund management platform providers earlier this year he had bad news for them – their revenue models had been disrupted and were heading for extinction.

"I am here on behalf of your clients … I am here to disrupt you … much of what I want to say, you do not want to hear," says Porter in his IO&C (Investments Operations and Custody) conference address, How zero marginal cost will shape business.

The so-called disruption is driven by consumers' realisation that many of the financial products and services they have traditionally paid thousands of dollars in fees for are now free, thanks to cloud computing.

Porter says it is just a matter of time before superannuation fund members question why their providers are passing on the high costs of expensive software licences when cut-price and even free IT platforms are available.

"We are not talking about buying a mousetrap that is 20 per cent cheaper. We are talking about a mousetrap that is free," Porter told The Australian Financial Review.

In future, fund managers will have to reduce their 100 basis point fees to 10 basis points if they want to survive in a world where consumers are waking up to the fact that the cost of managing assets has become negligible, he says.

Andrew Godfrey, Mercer financial services business leader, Pacific, agrees that costs linked to managing superannuation funds need to be cut.

"(We) are looking at how do we make super cheaper? We need to reduce the amount that it costs providers such as Mercer … while at the same time designing new user experiences using digital technology," Godfrey says.


Read more : http://www.afr.com/news/special-reports/cloud-computing-reshaping-the-industry-20151115-gkzc86

Dark Cloud Hovers Over Rackspace

The sky isn’t always the limit. Rackspace Hosting Inc. is finding that out the hard way.

Shares in the cloud-services provider have lost nearly half their value over the past six months as revenue growth has slowed and competition has picked up. While it may be tempting to think the worst is over for Rackspace as it reports third-quarter results Monday, it probably isn’t.

Rackspace, a pioneer in the cloud market, has transitioned its business model in recent years to become more of a services provider, one that offers bundled computing and support. To combat rising competition and a price war from the likes of Microsoft Corp.,Alphabet Inc.’s Google unit and International Business Machines Corp., Rackspaceannounced a partnership last month with Amazon.com Inc.’s cloud-computing platform, Amazon Web Services.

Yet the deal didn’t do much to juice Rackspace’s flagging stock price. Skepticism rightly remains over how beneficial the partnership will be for Rackspace’s top line, particularly because it is entering an already crowded market for Amazon’s support services.

Analysts at Evercore ISI reckon leading providers in that market generate roughly $100 million of annual revenue from supporting Amazon’s Web services unit. With Rackspace expected to generate $2 billion in revenue in 2015, that wouldn’t move the needle all that much.

Read More : http://www.wsj.com/articles/dark-cloud-hovers-over-rackspace-1447008964

The Amazon boss who conquered the cloud

Selling porcelain figurines and starting a cloud computing company may seem like rather different skills. But Andy Jassy, who founded and now leads Amazon Web Services, says one experience deeply informed the other.
“It was an unbelievable crash course in general management,” he says, referring to his time in the collectibles business, where he worked right after college for Danbury Mint, seller of dolls, coins, ornaments and keepsakes.

“The products weren’t long-term interesting to me, but the general management training and the business training were fantastic.” After that he started his own project, eventually going back to business school and then ending up at Amazon where he worked as Jeff Bezos’s “shadow”, a position that is somewhere between chief of staff and technical assistant.
Now Mr Jassy has his own shadow, a salt-and-pepper-haired engineer named Eric Docktor, who follows him into the room for our interview.
Seattle-based AWS has become the most closely watched division of Amazon after it was broken out as its own business segment in April. AWS, which rents out computing power and data storage, accounted for half of group profits in the most recent quarter. It is also the fastest-growing part of the company, accounting for one-fifth of revenue growth even though it is just one 20th of overall sales.

When AWS started, its success looked anything but inevitable. When Mr Jassy wrote the “vision document” that laid out the idea for AWS in 2003, he wrestled with every word, going through 31 drafts. Amazon’s policy, then and now, is that these proposals be no longer than six pages, to force the writer to clarify his thinking (and to save the reader time).
Through the revisions, the outline of AWS emerged with many of the key features it has today. Unlike its competitors at the time, it was to be pay-as-you-go, sparing users expensive monthly subscription plans. The computing platform was to be self-service — anyone with a credit card and an Amazon account could sign up.

Read More : http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f19dbe5e-7d7b-11e5-a1fe-567b37f80b64.html#axzz3qc6yPtap

Amazon’s cloud monopoly

Earlier this year two different research reports came out describing the overall cloud computing market and Amazon’s role in it. Synergy Research Group saw Amazon as by far the biggest player (bigger in fact than the next four companies combined) with about 30 percent market share. But Gartner, taking perhaps a more focused view of just the public cloud, claimed Amazon holds 82 percent of the market with cloud capacity that’s 10 times greater than all the other public cloud providers combined. I wonder how these disparate views can be possible describing the same company? And I wonder, further, whether this means Amazon actually has a cloud monopoly?

Yup, it’s a monopoly.

Amazon has monopoly power over the public cloud because it clearly sets the price (ever downward) and has the capacity to enforce that price. Amazon is the OPEC of cloud computing and both studies actually show that because both show Amazon gaining share in a market that is simply exploding.

The way you gain share in an exploding market is by exploding more than all the other guys and we can see that at work by comparing IBM’s statement that it would (notice it is speaking about future events) invest $1 billion in cloud infrastructure in the current fiscal year, versus Amazon’s statement that it had (notice is is speaking of events that had already happened) spent $5 billion on cloud infrastructure in the past fiscal year.

Maybe $1 billion against definitely $5 billion isn’t even a contest. At this rate Amazon’s cloud will continue to grow faster than IBM’s cloud.

Read More : http://betanews.com/2015/11/02/amazons-cloud-monopoly/

Cloud Really Is the Future According to Latest R&D Spending Numbers

Large technology firms that offer enterprise cloud computing services are among the world’s biggest R&D spenders, according to a new PricewaterhouseCoopers LLC study.

Microsoft Corp., Google Inc. and Amazon.com Inc.AMZN +0.39%, Cisco Systems Inc.CSCO +0.34%, and Apple Inc. all ranked in the top 20 of firms worldwide for R&D spending last year. The study analyzed financial statements by 1,000 public companies across all industries that spent the most on R&D in the past fiscal year, as of June 30, 2015.

Microsoft ranked highest at No. 4, having spent $11.4 billion, putting it behind Intel Corp.INTC -0.35%, Samsung Electronics Co. and Volkswagen AGVOW.XE -2.60%.

Google and Amazon and Cisco all moved up in the rankings from last year. Apple Inc., which supports its own iCloud, broke into the Top 20 for the first time, reaching No. 18.

Together, the 1,000 biggest spenders identified by the study invested some $680 billion in R&D over the past year.

But companies in the computing and electronics, and software and Internet industries accounted for $242 billion, or about 35%, of that total, the study found. Spending by firms in the software and Internet industry alone grew by 27% over last year, far outpacing growth in any other industry. By contrast, spending by companies in industrials, the next biggest growth category, increased by just 8.9%.

Software and Internet firms have led other industries in spending gains for nine of the past 11 years, but that growth is accelerating – driven in part by the “advent of wider acceptance of the cloud,” said Barry Jaruzelski, principal with Strategy&, PwC’s global strategy consulting business.

Read More : http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2015/10/27/cloud-really-is-the-future-according-to-latest-rd-spending-numbers/

Oracle’s Ellison says cloud industry still in early days

Oracle Corp. Executive Chairman Larry Ellison said his company will continue its push into the cloud while noting the industry still has much room to grow.
Leadership in the field remains up for grabs with the biggest cloud-only businesses still relatively small — none at around $100 billion, Ellison said, probably referring to annual sales. Redwood City’s Oracle now counts relatively newer entrants such as Amazon.com, Workday Inc. and Microsoft Corp. among its most formidable competitors, the company’s billionaire founder said on Sunday.
“This is how much our world has changed,” Ellison said during a keynote at Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco. “We no longer pay any attention” to traditional competitors SAP SE and IBM Corp. “It is quite a shock.”
Oracle is investing in the cloud as the company comes under growing pressure from rivals that deliver software via connections over the Internet. It is now rolling out products that touch many different parts of its lineup, including applications and tools for customers in e-commerce and manufacturing.
While this shift helps the company break into new markets, it’s also hampering Oracle’s traditional business of selling licenses for software installed on corporate systems.

“We are in the middle — and I really do mean in the middle — of a general shift in computing that is no less important than shift onto personal computing,” he said. “It seems like early days.”
In recent years, Oracle had battled Salesforce.com in the cloud and raced to beat SAP and IBM. Oracle has been redesigning its products so that they can be sold and delivered over the Internet to keep up with the transformation in the broader enterprise technology industry, where companies are increasing spending on cloud services from providers such as Amazon, Workday and Microsoft.
Revenue however has come under pressure during the company’s transition. In the period that ended Aug. 31, sales fell 1.7 percent to $8.45 billion. Analysts on average had forecast sales of $8.53 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Read More : http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Oracle-s-Ellison-says-cloud-industry-still-in-6591754.php

Investing In The Cloud Is Starting To Pay Off For Tech

The future of computing is in the cloud, and right now the top three companies benefiting are names we're all familiar with: Amazon, Google and Microsoft.

Each of these tech giants invested a lot of money into the infrastructure necessary to make its cloud business boom. Last week, each company's earnings report showed that the investments paid off in terms of money and marketshare.

Amazon Web Services brought home $2.1 billion in revenue for Amazon.com — that's up 78 percent year-over-year. The service hosts IT infrastructure mainly for corporate accounts. (Video via Amazon)

Microsoft has also snagged a ton of enterprise cloud users. Revenue in the company's Intelligent Cloud segment, which tracks some of Microsoft's business products, was $5.9 billion. (Video via Microsoft)

But the company can also thank all those Office and One Drive users out there for its cloud gains.

"There are now more that 18 million consumer Office 365 subscribers. ... More than half a billion people manage their documents and photos in One Drive. ... Of note: Commercial Office 365 monthly active users grew to 60 million," CEO Satya Nadella said on the company's earnings call.

Read More : http://www.kivitv.com/newsy/investing-in-the-cloud-is-starting-to-pay-off-for-tech-firms

Cloud Industry Forum and Bloor help you navigate your cloud route

Analyst outfit Bloor and Cloud Industry Forum (CIF) have teamed up to help companies map out their routes to the cloud.

The pair will focus on educating end users about the potential of the cloud for businesses, hosting a series of events, guides, e-learning courses and workshops to help them.

Bloor will help develop online learning modules to complement CIF’s Individual Membership Programmes, a recently launched accreditation programme for people who want to get to grips with adopting cloud computing.

The programme provides best practice guidance for organisations trying to migrate applications to the cloud, helping them do it in the most risk-free way possible.

Bloor experts will be available for end user master classes and events designed to support CIF’s programmes, while the analyst house will also give access to research papers and discounted consultancy services.

Alex Hilton, CEO of CIF, said in a statement: “The rapid rise of cloud computing has created a new imperative for CIOs and IT departments to ensure that they have the correct knowledge and skills to manage their migrations.

To read More : http://www.cloudpro.co.uk/leadership/risks/5459/cloud-industry-forum-and-bloor-help-you-navigate-your-cloud-route