TECHNOLOGY
Avanade launches cloud insights platform that identifies risks and unlocks cloud spend
![Avanade launches cloud insights platform that identifies risks and unlocks cloud spend Cloud Computing News](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Akamai-launches-new-sites-services-and-capabilities.jpg)
Microsoft solution provider Avanade has launched a platform to help businesses establish an AI-ready digital core and unlock funding to reinvest in innovation.
‘Avanade Cloud Impact’ is a data platform that uses the latest in AI and machine learning to integrate and analyse industry, business and technical data sources and generate rich, tailored modernisation for companies in their cloud journey. The platform is already saving Avanade clients up to 50% of their cloud spend and even higher savings for specific applications.
With cloud consumption growing exponentially, the enterprise digital core is transforming quickly with impressive agility and flexibility returns. At the same time, many companies are struggling to realise the full value of their cloud journey because that increased consumption generates redundancy, technical debt, and hidden spending on legacy applications. Over time, this results in an environment that is weighed down and consumes resources that could be better spent on developing new innovative capabilities – like AI.
Avanade Cloud Impact works by analysing cloud consumption patterns and comparing them with a range of data sources like application business attributes in ITSM (IT Service Management) and CMBD (Configuration Management Database) systems, customer defined architectural standards to generate insights on a wide range of risks and opportunities across an IT estate. Insights range from observations to modernisation recommendations and in some cases includes cost-benefit analysis for the recommendation. With this platform, CIOs can be confident that their team is running business-critical applications securely. Avanade Cloud Impact can also deliver information about data egress cost spikes, application redesign options, and achieve up to 50% cloud cost savings while quantifying sustainability benefits, all without the need to make any code changes.
“Originally, choosing the best cloud adoption strategy was the main challenge facing businesses. Now though, optimising the run cost of cloud environments has become more strategically important,” explains Craig Gorsline, Avanade’s chief growth officer and global technology business group lead.
“Through improved cost optimisation, today’s leaders can manage their cloud infrastructure more effectively, build a competitive edge, mitigate risks, and ultimately drive long-term sustainability and growth through AI innovation.
“With the increased use of IaaS and PaaS, organisations are facing substantial and ongoing costs that could be reduced if they take a more considered and proactive approach to managing their cloud environments. Our Avanade Cloud Impact platform is like a digital adviser that can inform, educate and empower organisations to optimise their Azure cloud environments, manage costs and prepare for the AI-powered future.”
Merrie Williamson, CVP, Azure infrastructure, digital and app innovation, said: “We’re very excited about this new platform, Avanade Cloud Impact, from our partners at Avanade and how this powers deep insights and recommendations that accelerate value for our Azure customers.”
As part of its commitment to helping clients adopt an AI-first business approach, Avanade is offering qualifying clients a free introductory cost optimisation workshop.
Want to learn more about cybersecurity and the cloud from industry leaders? Check out Cyber Security & Cloud Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here.
TECHNOLOGY
Next-gen chips, Amazon Q, and speedy S3
![Next-gen chips, Amazon Q, and speedy S3 Cloud Computing News](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Next-gen-chips-Amazon-Q-and-speedy-S3.png)
AWS re:Invent, which has been taking place from November 27 and runs to December 1, has had its usual plethora of announcements: a total of 21 at time of print.
Perhaps not surprisingly, given the huge potential impact of generative AI – ChatGPT officially turns one year old today – a lot of focus has been on the AI side for AWS’ announcements, including a major partnership inked with NVIDIA across infrastructure, software, and services.
Yet there has been plenty more announced at the Las Vegas jamboree besides. Here, CloudTech rounds up the best of the rest:
Next-generation chips
This was the other major AI-focused announcement at re:Invent: the launch of two new chips, AWS Graviton4 and AWS Trainium2, for training and running AI and machine learning (ML) models, among other customer workloads. Graviton4 shapes up against its predecessor with 30% better compute performance, 50% more cores and 75% more memory bandwidth, while Trainium2 delivers up to four times faster training than before and will be able to be deployed in EC2 UltraClusters of up to 100,000 chips.
The EC2 UltraClusters are designed to ‘deliver the highest performance, most energy efficient AI model training infrastructure in the cloud’, as AWS puts it. With it, customers will be able to train large language models in ‘a fraction of the time’, as well as double energy efficiency.
As ever, AWS offers customers who are already utilising these tools. Databricks, Epic and SAP are among the companies cited as using the new AWS-designed chips.
Zero-ETL integrations
AWS announced new Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL, Amazon DynamoDB, and Amazon Relational Database Services (Amazon RDS) for MySQL integrations with Amazon Redshift, AWS’ cloud data warehouse. The zero-ETL integrations – eliminating the need to build ETL (extract, transform, load) data pipelines – make it easier to connect and analyse transactional data across various relational and non-relational databases in Amazon Redshift.
A simple example of how zero-ETL functions can be seen is in a hypothetical company which stores transactional data – time of transaction, items bought, where the transaction occurred – in a relational database, but use another analytics tool to analyse data in a non-relational database. To connect it all up, companies would previously have to construct ETL data pipelines which are a time and money sink.
The latest integrations “build on AWS’s zero-ETL foundation… so customers can quickly and easily connect all of their data, no matter where it lives,” the company said.
Amazon S3 Express One Zone
AWS announced the general availability of Amazon S3 Express One Zone, a new storage class purpose-built for customers’ most frequently-accessed data. Data access speed is up to 10 times faster and request costs up to 50% lower than standard S3. Companies can also opt to collocate their Amazon S3 Express One Zone data in the same availability zone as their compute resources.
Companies and partners who are using Amazon S3 Express One Zone include ChaosSearch, Cloudera, and Pinterest.
Amazon Q
A new product, and an interesting pivot, again with generative AI at its core. Amazon Q was announced as a ‘new type of generative AI-powered assistant’ which can be tailored to a customer’s business. “Customers can get fast, relevant answers to pressing questions, generate content, and take actions – all informed by a customer’s information repositories, code, and enterprise systems,” AWS added. The service also can assist companies building on AWS, as well as companies using AWS applications for business intelligence, contact centres, and supply chain management.
Customers cited as early adopters include Accenture, BMW and Wunderkind.
Want to learn more about cybersecurity and the cloud from industry leaders? Check out Cyber Security & Cloud Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here.
TECHNOLOGY
HCLTech and Cisco create collaborative hybrid workplaces
![HCLTech and Cisco create collaborative hybrid workplaces Cloud Computing News](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Cisco-updates-aim-to-simplify-networking-and-securely-connect-the.jpg)
Digital comms specialist Cisco and global tech firm HCLTech have teamed up to launch Meeting-Rooms-as-a-Service (MRaaS).
Available on a subscription model, this solution modernises legacy meeting rooms and enables users to join meetings from any meeting solution provider using Webex devices.
The MRaaS solution helps enterprises simplify the design, implementation and maintenance of integrated meeting rooms, enabling seamless collaboration for their globally distributed hybrid workforces.
Rakshit Ghura, senior VP and Global head of digital workplace services, HCLTech, said: “MRaaS combines our consulting and managed services expertise with Cisco’s proficiency in Webex devices to change the way employees conceptualise, organise and interact in a collaborative environment for a modern hybrid work model.
“The common vision of our partnership is to elevate the collaboration experience at work and drive productivity through modern meeting rooms.”
Alexandra Zagury, VP of partner managed and as-a-Service Sales at Cisco, said: “Our partnership with HCLTech helps our clients transform their offices through cost-effective managed services that support the ongoing evolution of workspaces.
“As we reimagine the modern office, we are making it easier to support collaboration and productivity among workers, whether they are in the office or elsewhere.”
Cisco’s Webex collaboration devices harness the power of artificial intelligence to offer intuitive, seamless collaboration experiences, enabling meeting rooms with smart features such as meeting zones, intelligent people framing, optimised attendee audio and background noise removal, among others.
Want to learn more about cybersecurity and the cloud from industry leaders? Check out Cyber Security & Cloud Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here.
TECHNOLOGY
Canonical releases low-touch private cloud MicroCloud
![Canonical releases low-touch private cloud MicroCloud Cloud Computing News](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Canonical-releases-low-touch-private-cloud-MicroCloud.jpg)
Canonical has announced the general availability of MicroCloud, a low-touch, open source cloud solution. MicroCloud is part of Canonical’s growing cloud infrastructure portfolio.
It is purpose-built for scalable clusters and edge deployments for all types of enterprises. It is designed with simplicity, security and automation in mind, minimising the time and effort to both deploy and maintain it. Conveniently, enterprise support for MicroCloud is offered as part of Canonical’s Ubuntu Pro subscription, with several support tiers available, and priced per node.
MicroClouds are optimised for repeatable and reliable remote deployments. A single command initiates the orchestration and clustering of various components with minimal involvement by the user, resulting in a fully functional cloud within minutes. This simplified deployment process significantly reduces the barrier to entry, putting a production-grade cloud at everyone’s fingertips.
Juan Manuel Ventura, head of architectures & technologies at Spindox, said: “Cloud computing is not only about technology, it’s the beating heart of any modern industrial transformation, driving agility and innovation. Our mission is to provide our customers with the most effective ways to innovate and bring value; having a complexity-free cloud infrastructure is one important piece of that puzzle. With MicroCloud, the focus shifts away from struggling with cloud operations to solving real business challenges” says
In addition to seamless deployment, MicroCloud prioritises security and ease of maintenance. All MicroCloud components are built with strict confinement for increased security, with over-the-air transactional updates that preserve data and roll back on errors automatically. Upgrades to newer versions are handled automatically and without downtime, with the mechanisms to hold or schedule them as needed.
With this approach, MicroCloud caters to both on-premise clouds but also edge deployments at remote locations, allowing organisations to use the same infrastructure primitives and services wherever they are needed. It is suitable for business-in-branch office locations or industrial use inside a factory, as well as distributed locations where the focus is on replicability and unattended operations.
Cedric Gegout, VP of product at Canonical, said: “As data becomes more distributed, the infrastructure has to follow. Cloud computing is now distributed, spanning across data centres, far and near edge computing appliances. MicroCloud is our answer to that.
“By packaging known infrastructure primitives in a portable and unattended way, we are delivering a simpler, more prescriptive cloud experience that makes zero-ops a reality for many Industries.“
MicroCloud’s lightweight architecture makes it usable on both commodity and high-end hardware, with several ways to further reduce its footprint depending on your workload needs. In addition to the standard Ubuntu Server or Desktop, MicroClouds can be run on Ubuntu Core – a lightweight OS optimised for the edge. With Ubuntu Core, MicroClouds are a perfect solution for far-edge locations with limited computing capabilities. Users can choose to run their workloads using Kubernetes or via system containers. System containers based on LXD behave similarly to traditional VMs but consume fewer resources while providing bare-metal performance.
Coupled with Canonical’s Ubuntu Pro + Support subscription, MicroCloud users can benefit from an enterprise-grade open source cloud solution that is fully supported and with better economics. An Ubuntu Pro subscription offers security maintenance for the broadest collection of open-source software available from a single vendor today. It covers over 30k packages with a consistent security maintenance commitment, and additional features such as kernel livepatch, systems management at scale, certified compliance and hardening profiles enabling easy adoption for enterprises. With per-node pricing and no hidden fees, customers can rest assured that their environment is secure and supported without the expensive price tag typically associated with cloud solutions.
Want to learn more about cybersecurity and the cloud from industry leaders? Check out Cyber Security & Cloud Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here.
-
SEO7 days ago
Google’s Revamped Documentation Shows 4 Reasons To Refresh Content
-
SEARCHENGINES5 days ago
Daily Search Forum Recap: August 26, 2024
-
SEARCHENGINES4 days ago
Daily Search Forum Recap: August 27, 2024
-
WORDPRESS7 days ago
How to Secure Your WordPress Store
-
AFFILIATE MARKETING7 days ago
Business Owners are Batting 1,000 With This All-in-One Management Hub
-
SEARCHENGINES6 days ago
Google Migrating All To Google Merchant Center Next By September
-
WORDPRESS5 days ago
9 Best Elementor Alternatives 2024 (Faster Page Builders)
-
WORDPRESS6 days ago
10 Best StudioPress Alternatives (Genesis Framework)