Cloud

Abdul Latif Jameel teams up with AWS to power digital transformation

Amazon Web Services has announced that Abdul Latif Jameel has selected AWS as its preferred cloud provider to power its digital transformation and drive innovation across its core sectors — mobility, energy, health, and financial services. In addition to its agreement with AWS, Fotowatio Renewable Ventures (FRV) will provide clean energy capacity to power Amazon’s operations. Abdul Latif Jameel is building a companywide analytics, machine learning, and generative AI program, powered by AWS, to rapidly develop and introduce new applications across a wide range of industries. The company will use AWS services such as Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and AWS Lake Formation to ingest, catalogue and secure financial data, making it available to all of its business units to help drive customer enhancements and process improvements. It will also use Amazon Bedrock, a service that makes foundational models available via an API, to develop generative AI applications that will help car manufacturers offer digital showroom experiences for customers and enhance in-car experiences, while reducing development costs. As part of its focus on environmental responsibility, Abdul Latif Jameel is making progress on its decarbonisation goals by migrating its on-premises IT workloads to AWS, further reducing its carbon footprint. In a second agreement with Amazon, FRV, part of Abdul Latif Jameel Energy, will provide renewable energy from five solar projects in Spain to power Amazon’s operations. With one plant already operational and the remaining four projects due for completion in 2024, the solar farms are expected to generate more than 1.5TWh of clean energy each year, which is enough to power the equivalent of more than 400,000 European homes.

Busting cloud myths and embracing the advantages

By Josh Boer, Vice President of Sales at VeUP The modern workforce is swiftly embracing digitisation, driven in large part by the pandemic's influence on remote work adoption and the demand for streamlined supply chains. As we move forward, worldwide public cloud end-user spending, forecasted by Gartner, is set to soar to nearly $600bn in 2023, surpassing the $491bn spent in 2022. From global corporations to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the adoption of cloud computing is becoming a cornerstone for operational modernisation and securing a competitive edge. However, in the midst of this transformative journey, some concerns about cloud security have risen. In fact, over half of IT and security leaders admit to lacking confidence in their organisations' ability to verify cloud environment security, while others express fears of exposing critical data to cyber threats. Is the cloud secure for SMEs? Clearing the fog of uncertainty around cloud security is pivotal to instil confidence in businesses. SMEs often worry that storing data in the cloud sacrifices their control over its management and security. Contrary to this notion, cloud providers offer 24/7 data access and provide scalable tools for protection. Security features, including comprehensive monitoring systems and data safeguarding, are fundamental aspects of cloud security. The truth is, businesses retain control over their data even after migration to the cloud. While the choice of a cloud provider doesn't dictate all aspects of data storage and security, customers have full access to their information and the autonomy to make decisions regarding its protection. Depending on specific features and services employed, encryption methods and data classification can be tailored to individual needs. Cloud maturity: trusting the evolution The belief that cloud computing is too new to trust is another misconception. While AWS debuted in 2004, nearly two decades of evolution have transformed it into a global cloud leader, boasting an array of over 200 comprehensive services accessible through data centres worldwide. Serving clients from startups to government entities, AWS has nurtured a user base that relies on its platform to enhance agility, drive down costs, and expedite innovation. In this context, SMEs can tap into a suite of tailored services catering to their unique organisational requirements. Estimates from Synergy Research Group revealed that Amazon’s market share in the worldwide cloud infrastructure market stood at 32% in the second quarter of 2023, down from 34% a year ago, but still above its rivals Microsoft and Google. While short-term economic challenges and belt-tightening measures may impact spending on cloud services, the resilience and customer-centric approach of AWS provides assurance. Its proven track record of commitment to building strong customer relationships also highlights its ability to weather economic downturns and thrive in the long run. Harnessing cloud benefits for SMEs Amplifying business agility: Cloud technology empowers SMEs to swiftly navigate market shifts through scalable resources. Leveraging cloud solutions, SMEs can pivot operations, seize new opportunities, and employ cloud-enabled disaster recovery and backup strategies to weather disruptions with minimal downtime. Trimming legacy IT expenses: Contrary to the misconception that cloud migration is costly and unnecessary, cloud computing dramatically reduces IT infrastructure costs. By eliminating the need for physical hardware and infrastructure management, cloud computing shifts costs to the cloud service provider, enabling businesses to pay only for the resources they use. Empowering remote accessibility: Cloud solutions facilitate remote work by providing seamless access to applications and data from anywhere with an internet connection. This not only fosters a culture of remote collaboration, but also reduces the necessity for physical office spaces, utilities, and commuting expenses, yielding additional cost savings. As the world emerges from the pandemic and businesses ponder the return to physical workplaces, cloud computing, which proved instrumental in enabling remote work during the crisis, continues to be pivotal. Facilitating hybrid work models, cloud computing ensures consistent access to collaborative tools, documents, and data, striking a balance between productivity, collaboration, and employee preferences. Fostering an evergreen technology landscape: Cloud services enable SMEs to maintain an evergreen technology stack by harnessing continuous updates and innovations without the burdens of costly and time-consuming hardware upgrades. This transformative approach keeps technology consistently cutting-edge, fostering resilient and forward-looking IT infrastructures free from the constraints of physical hardware's lifecycle. Closing thoughts As discussions of the return to physical offices grow louder, and the impending news that cloud costs are expected to increase by 10% this year, it's critical to address these concerns and shed light on the truths of cloud security. The shift to the cloud remains more than a trend - it's a seismic transformation affording SMEs capabilities to enhance their overall competitiveness and efficiency, facilitating unified communications across the board and cutting down expenses over the likes of IT infrastructure maintenance costs. Click here for more latest news.

The critical role of cloud strategy in driving business innovation

HCLTech has launched a new report providing compelling insights into how organisations can overcome key obstacles like security concerns, talent gaps and company culture to maximise the business impact of their cloud investments. Titled 'Cloud Evolution: Make Innovation a Habit', the report is based on a survey of 500 senior business and technology leaders across industries. The report revealed that while 73% of executives believe their companies are only beginning to leverage the potential of cloud, over 90% recognise cloud’s vital role in enabling rapid response to critical business events, strategic pivots and adopting leading-edge technologies like AI. Cloud continues to enable businesses to pivot when faced with new and unforeseen challenges. As high as 87% of the respondents in the survey said that they would not have been able to make significant pivots last year without cloud. Businesses are relying on cloud to meet sustainability goals (91%), to work through pandemic-related staffing and supply chain issues (87%) and mitigate the impact of rising inflation (77%), showed the survey. “Cloud is rapidly becoming the optimal business platform for innovation at scale,” says Kalyan Kumar, Global Chief Technology Officer and Head – Ecosystems, HCLTech. “However, many companies have yet to fully tap into its potential. This report offers a blueprint for developing the right cloud strategy to drive competitive advantage.” The respondents agreed that innovative technologies like Gen AI and cloud go hand-in-hand. Of the respondents, 58% noted that businesses have increased or are planning to increase investments in Gen AI and 85% believe it is only possible with the right cloud strategy. Both IT leaders (86%) and business leaders (81%) agree that they closely collaborate with one another to discuss cloud strategy to unlock their potential to innovate. However, 73% of the survey participants said that their business is only just beginning to unlock the potential of cloud. Nearly a third of the senior executives (32%) said that a lack of alignment and collaboration between business and technology departments is an obstacle to achieving their business goals. “Forward-thinking leaders recognise that cloud is no longer just an infrastructure play but rather a transformational business platform,” says Siki Giunta, Executive Vice President, CloudSMART and Industry Consulting, HCLTech. “By following the recommendations in this report, organisations can truly unleash cloud’s potential to accelerate growth and resilience.” To make innovation through cloud a norm, the report advises companies to leverage cloud’s agility, shape their organisation’s culture around cloud, break down departmental barriers, increase cloud literacy and tightly align cloud strategy with AI and other emerging technology adoption plans. HCLTech’s CloudSMART strategy ensures meaningful business outcomes from clients’ cloud investments. Industry expertise across all segments forms the HCLTech cloud offering and highly automated services increase agile implementation of modern cloud best practices. Readers can view the full research report here: https://www.hcltech.com/cloud-research.

Nasuni and Presidio expand partnership and sign multi-year agreement

Presidio has announced an extensive partnership with Nasuni. Nasuni is optimising AWS Cloud use and reducing OpEX with Presidio’s proactive recapture into savings management (PRISM) program. In addition, Nasuni has signed a multi-year business agreement to simplify how companies store, protect and manage file data in hybrid cloud environments. A top concern of CIOs is cost optimisation according to industry analysts. To better monitor cloud spending, reduce financial risk and operational burden for its cloud and finance teams, Nasuni is leveraging Presidio’s fully managed PRISM program. Presidio manages cost optimisation and uses proprietary data science models to automatically scale cloud commitments up or down on behalf of customers at no risk to them. With its managed services taking care of operational management of Nasuni’s file data cloud environment, its team is saving time and able to focus on enhancing the Nasuni product and new innovative features. Organisations are looking to move their legacy file storage infrastructure to the cloud to centralise control of and make files easily accessible on premises or in the cloud globally to strategically use data and optimise productivity. With the Nasuni File Data Platform’s intelligent edge caching, customers can leverage the power of cloud object storage while maintaining local performance, which can translate into reduced storage costs by 60% over legacy storage as well as the ability to recover from ransomware attacks in minutes. Presidio’s team of technical experts can help customers better manage their file data environment with Nasuni in a hybrid cloud environment through any or multiple cloud providers. Click here for more latest news.

Building resilience for hybrid cloud environments

Anthony Webb, Vice President, A10 International, A10 Networks In today’s modern business landscape, outside of any macro issues or economic uncertainty, there are two significant technology challenges that enterprises are grappling with. The first challenge is around the constantly evolving threat landscape, and the growing sophistication of cyber criminals and their techniques. This means the risk of an application attack and a data breach is an ever-present threat that enterprises must contend with.  The other key challenge is around the effectiveness and economics of cloud operating models. Without a doubt, over the last decade digital transformation has catapulted many businesses forward, many of whom can now claim to be ‘true’ digital businesses servicing their customers in new and exciting ways. However, in this new digital and hybrid cloud environment, enterprises are highly concerned about how they can best secure, optimise, and automate their infrastructure in the most effective and cost-efficient way. Applications must be consistently available  Today, organisations must guarantee their applications are consistently and securely accessible, no matter the location, to ensure the best end-user experience and productivity. This includes ensuring workloads are efficiently distributed across all servers, monitoring application health, and maintaining operational integrity around the clock. However, when you add in the need to protect against a rise in application attacks and an ever-increasing number of bad actors targeting the organisation, the scale of these challenges starts to become clearer. Likewise, complex deployments coupled with regular maintenance and often limited resources dedicated to cyber security are exacerbating the risk to organisations further. In this environment, with cyber criminals constantly evolving their tactics to exploit vulnerabilities in systems, a layered defence strategy that provides comprehensive protection against a wide range of threats is essential. At the same time, a solution that also helps to deliver better business outcomes, enabling organisations to optimise the customer experience, and ensure business continuity, is highly desirable.  Combining ADC with next-gen web application firewall Combining an application delivery controller (ADC) and a next-gen web application firewall (WAF) creates a robust security solution that supports the principles of a zero trust security framework. As organisations seek to establish a more efficient, effective, and secure cloud operating model, these two combined technologies enable a highly performant security solution at a strategic application ingress point that reduces false positives and automates security, empowering agility and effectiveness. The ADC efficiently sifts through the myriad of threats, while the next-gen WAF efficiently provides defence against more sophisticated web attacks. How does this layered defence approach work It is important to start with ADCs to understand how layered defence works. ADCs can provide load balancing and transport layer security (TLS) offloading, which can help reduce the attack surface by minimising the number of entry points into the system. This mitigates the impact of volume-based attacks, such as DDoS or brute-force attacks. On the other hand, next-gen WAFs can provide deep packet inspection and advanced threat detection capabilities, enabling them to identify and block attacks such as account takeover (ATO), known CVEs, injections, cross-site scripting (XSS), and other OWASP Top 10 attacks. Earlier in the year, A10 partnered with Fastly to offer its next-gen WAF with its Thunder ADCs to provide its customers with a premier next-generation web application firewall solution running on high-performance hardware and virtual platforms for businesses operating in a competitive market. This enables organisations to protect their apps against advanced threats with greater accuracy while gaining superior application availability and accelerating content delivery. Digital transformation initiatives will continue to evolve Unfortunately, digital transformation is not a one and done initiative. Moving forward, enterprises will continue to evolve their environments as new technologies inevitably emerge. Likewise, the cyber threat landscape will undoubtedly continue to expand. Organisations must, therefore, stay vigilant, never compromise and make sure that they have a layered defence approach to protect their business. Click here for more latest news.

InterCloud simplifies challenges with network complexity

While the growth of cloud has been instrumental to the evolution of modern business, its increased sophistication also brings complexity. There is no hard-and-fast method to deal with every cloud management challenge, but figuring out how to simplify network complexity is key to ensuring organisations reap the full benefits of multicloud, according to InterCloud. There are many factors contributing to this complexity. The very fact that organisations are holding increasing amounts of data, coupled with the need to store this in a safe, easily accessible location, means more companies are migrating to cloud to improve IT performance and innovation. According to the Cloud Industry Forum, 95% of organisations have at least one cloud-based service in place, while data commissioned by Oracle shows that 98% of cloud users have embraced a multicloud strategy.   Luc Imbert, CPO at InterCloud, adds, “Ensuring adequate connectivity across an ever-expanding cloud ecosystem is complex. The prevalence of multicloud shows that leaders are seeking the best possible combination of cloud environments to enhance efficiency and enable them to focus more heavily on innovation. While the motivations for embracing multicloud are clear, the complexity of managing network connectivity across many different clouds makes it a double-edged sword, if it is not handled well. “In addition, tightening regulatory requirements means businesses need much greater clarity on where their data and applications are held and how they are connecting to different clouds across different regions. Combined with ever-present security threats, there are a lot of things for organisations to think about. This is especially pertinent in large enterprises, where the company might be managing data and workloads in up to 100 cloud regions.”  According to Luc Imbert, solving the problem of network complexity requires a considerable degree of expertise, which may not be available to businesses in-house. Luc says, “The key goal for any business operating in a multicloud environment should be to transform their networks from being a burden into a critical business asset. “The first step is to assess what the organisation wants to achieve with the cloud, and from there, work out how to manage migrations, choose the right cloud partners, and gain full visibility of their critical data traffic. Partnering with end-to-end managed network connectivity specialists can help enterprises meet these challenges by delivering a comprehensive, holistic approach that isn’t wedded to one particular vendor, ensuring the organisation has complete control to choose what is right for the business.”   He concludes, “Specialists can also deliver in-depth knowledge of the differing data sovereignty requirements across different countries and regions, helping organisations get to grips with the vast and varied web of international regulation and ensuring their cloud activities are fully compliant. All of this can be done while keeping security very much front of mind with techniques such as traffic segmentation and isolation minimising the chances of compromise.”

Servecentric to reach €5 million turnover and double its cloud capacity

Servecentric has announced that it is on track to reach €5 million in turnover by the end of 2023 after doubling its cloud capacity. Making a significant contribution to this increase in turnover is its cloud business which looks set to grow 300% since 2021. The cloud, data centre and connectivity services provider has invested over €100,000 in the last year on increased compute capacity and HPE enterprise class hardware to meet the increasing demand for its cloud and colocation services, with further investment planned in 2023. As well as this investment and allocating its own additional resources, Servecentric’s cloud partner, Cloudsigma are also increasing operations staff by 50% to meet cloud requirements across the global network. The company’s expanded cloud capacity and capability means it can strengthen its portfolio for customers, including scalable data compute resources and storage options. It has also enabled the company to develop and deliver a new PaaS offering, which offers developers ready to go platforms and compliments the existing IaaS solution. Moreover, it will soon be able to provide single sign on for over 16 geographic locations for customers, which will also benefit from increased redundancy and resilience across the cloud platform as a result of the investment and expansion. The company expects its increasing cloud capacity to further grow its customer base over the coming months, with a particular focus on managed service providers, mid-sized software companies, startups and growing technology companies. In terms of existing clients in the area of cloud, it currently works with a wide range of organisations such as Dmac Media, Procuro, Profitsflow, CupPrint and Infinite Technology. To further meet the growing demand for cloud and colocation services among its increasing customer base, Servecentric has applied for planning for a new data centre facility which will significantly increase the company’s workforce, including its engineering team. The organisation is also developing a number of strategic partnerships to provide full cloud infrastructure services, including managed IT and security providers. Click here for latest data centre news.

G42 Cloud and VAST Data to build a data cloud for AI

G42 Cloud and VAST Data have joined forces in an ambitious strategic partnership to reimagine the future of data-intensive AI computing. G42 Cloud has selected the VAST Data Platform to build a central data foundation for a global network of AI supercomputers and to store and learn from hundreds of petabytes of data.  With a strong focus on harnessing the potential of high-performance computing, G42 Cloud is at the forefront of driving transformative advancements in the UAE and beyond. Leveraging the power of AI to deliver superior performance, it is furthering the development of a powerful AI-optimised cloud infrastructure, designed to make organisations more intuitive, agile and effective in addressing real world challenges.  The strategic partnership demonstrates the scale and power of VAST Data's new approach to building distributed data systems for enterprises and AI service providers. As part of this partnership, the VAST Data Platform will serve as a central multi-tenant and secure data platform that scales capacity and performance to power a multi-architecture high performance computing system as well as the recently announced world’s largest AI supercomputer, Condor Galaxy. In total, a single VAST Data cluster will support multiple ExaFLOPs of AI supercomputing capability. G42 Cloud chose to partner with VAST Data due to its simplicity, scalability, resilience, and overall cost of ownership benefits. The platform, built on VAST’s Disaggregated Shared-Everything Architecture (DASE), offers G42 Cloud the scalability in both performance and size needed for exascale AI and high performance computing (HPC). Additionally, it provides a global namespace and the multi-tenancy features essential for zero-trust cloud environments.  Click here for latest data centre news

DigiCert expands its certificate management platform

DigiCert has announced the expansion of its certificate management platform, DigiCert Trust Lifecycle Manager, to provide full lifecycle support for multiple CAs, including Microsoft CA and AWS Private CA, as well as integration with ServiceNow, to support existing IT service workflows. The platform additionally supports enrolment to a broad range of Microsoft and AWS technologies, providing organisations a unified approach to managing public and private trust for use cases such as biometric authentication, device authentication, WiFi/VPN provisioning, cloud workloads and infrastructure management. “DigiCert customers place high priority on ensuring continuity of security across diverse IT infrastructure, as data and processes cut across clouds and environments,” says DigiCert’s Chief Product Officer, Deepika Chauhan. “Trust Lifecycle Manager provides organisations a centralised way to secure users, servers and devices across all these environments.” With support for Microsoft CA and AWS Private CA, it enables discovery, issuance, automation and revocation, including the ability to tag, filter and apply policy to imported and discovered third-party digital certificates. Certificates can be enrolled to a broad set of technologies through ACME, SCEP, EST and other enrolment methods. Its native integration reduces the effort and expertise needed to extend the value of internal CAs, with embedded, pre-built capability that accelerates time to value and eliminates human error.   Additional Microsoft technologies supported with native integration include: Active Directory, for autoenrollment of certificates and zero-touch provisioning using DigiCert Autoenrollment Server Windows Hello for Business, for support for certificate-mediated biometric authentication Microsoft Intune, for management of certificates provisioned to end-entity devices Azure Cloud Services, for deployment of DigiCert ONE solutions on Azure cloud infrastructure Additional AWS technologies supported with native integration include: Amazon Elastic Load Balancer, for governing certificate-mediated authentication to multiple targets Amazon Cloudfront, for securing CDN-networked domains Click here for latest data centre news.

Epsilon and ExodusClouds to boost global enterprise connectivity

ExodusClouds has partnered with Epsilon Telecommunications to boost its global connectivity offering for enterprises across multiple industry verticals. ExodusClouds will serve enterprise customers across the telecommunications, finance, healthcare, education and manufacturing sectors with a white-labelled version of Epsilon’s NaaS platform, Infiny. Infiny will help connect enterprise customers to Epsilon’s ecosystem of 300+ data centres and 600+ leading cloud, IX, network and technology partners. The company is utilising Epsilon’s global last mile capabilities to level up its solutions including SD-WAN. It is also helping its enterprise customers to grow beyond its existing markets of Turkey, the Middle East and Africa, with a global reach. ExodusClouds aims to simplify the increasingly complex cloud networking ecosystem with software-driven solutions based on automation, orchestration and on-demand scalability. It provides high-performance infrastructure and connectivity to 150+ cloud service providers. Epsilon is helping ExodusClouds to extend its global reach via its MEF-certified network and suite of connectivity solutions, all within a single platform. By partnering with Epsilon, ExodusClouds can access a suite of solutions on Infiny in addition to cloud connect, including high performance data centre interconnection, access to internet exchanges and global inbound numbers. Infiny makes it simple for ExodusClouds to quickly pivot and scale its offerings in response to changing enterprise demands across multiple industries. Click here for latest data centre news.