How Cloud Computing became a Big Tech Battleground

Big tech firms are investing in data centers as they compete for the $214 billion cloud computing market. WSJ explains what cloud computing is, why big tech is betting big on future contracts.

Credit Wall Street Journal

The End of Silicon & Future of Computing

We are finally getting to the end of progression in silicon technology. What will replace silicon? This video covers some of the potentials of future computing architecture.

Business 4.0 – Intelligent, Agile, Automated, and on the Cloud

The Fourth Industrial revolution is materially underway, driving confluence of the physical, digital and biological worlds. Agile organizations are now embracing automation, robotics and artificial intelligence. Leaders are going beyond the regular digital strategies and re-imagining every aspect of their enterprise. Welcome to Business 4.0.

How can Business start to fully adopt and embrace Cloud Technology?

Listen to our CIO talking about how to get the whole business to embrace cloud, starting at the top.

The Marketplace for Trading Cloud Computing as a Commodity

iExec at Blockshow Europe 2018 for the official launch of iExec V2: a new paradigm for cloud computing. iExec CEO Gilles Fedak gives a demo of the release, demonstrating how computing resources can now be traded as a commodity on a dedicated marketplace.

Securing Your Cloud: What You Really Need To Know

Almost every company is moving to the cloud in some way, whether through planned action or because employees are adopting unsanctioned cloud services. Workers typically adopt cloud services to more efficiently do their job, but they do it without considering the security implications—a concern for business management. Unfortunately, companies often worry about the wrong issues when it comes to cloud security. Cloud providers, on the whole, do a much better job of securing their services than the average business, so you should not be overly worried about cloud provider security or whether your cloud provider will be hacked.

From our very good friends over at forbes.com

Click here for full article

The Strategic Value of Cloud Computing

In an increasingly digital world, the cloud — and big data, mobile, social and the internet of things — are enabling companies to attain Competitive Advantage.

Speaker:
Joe Weinman — Author, Cloudonomics, and Chairman, IEEE Intercloud Testbed Executive Committee

Want a basic overview of the cloud and cloud services? Curious how to move from old-school, traditional IT to today’s cloud?, An interesting Video on the subject.

Growth in online computer storage and other online services available through
remote servers is expected to reach $180 billion in end-user spending by 2015.

Many businesses are already embracing the cloud and all it has to offer and the financial
industry is no different. But our Wall Street wizards and other professionals in the
financial sector face different challenges when it comes to utilizing this kind of technology.

They are governed by a myriad of rules and regulations that hinder them from
posting their investment and other money-related content online or anywhere else for that matter.

Legal and Compliance Issues
Several key issues are recognized by IT departments before cloud computing becomes a viable solution. These include:

• Data privacy
• Systems security
• Business continuity and contingency planning
• Liability and risk management

Overall, financial regulatory agencies have indicated that they will apply the same requirements and standards to cloud computing activities that apply to technological outsourcing activities in general.

Security Concerns
Many are worried that cloud-based technologies are a hacker’s dream come true and this sensitive financial information would be more vulnerable if shared on these servers. However, the fact of the matter is that with proper planning, the majority of cloud platforms are actually quite safer than the device-to-device communications that many of us utilize on a daily basis, including smartphones.

Furthermore, 63% of businesses in financial services are already using cloud computing technologies. Figures like these are likely to rise in the future with the global popularity of this growing technology.

Benefits of Moving to the Cloud
While the general rewards to cloud computing storage are many, including reduced spending on technological infrastructures, streamlining processes, increased accessibility and improved flexibility, there are many specific benefits that apply to the financial sector in a unique way.

Here are a few less understood and hidden values to this technology available for this particular industry:

• Agility – Most companies already understand that cloud computing provides better agility for businesses, but many don’t factor this into their ROI thinking when it comes to this technology.  Agility through the use of cloud computing comes via the ability to move quickly into new markets, adapt core business processes around new business opportunities in a timely manner, and/or grow financial services through acquisition.

• Procurement – When building systems in the world of financial services, you have to deal with different budgetary issues when it comes to buying hardware, software, and even obtaining space in the datacenter.  Cloud computing allows you to wire around those issues, giving businesses the opportunity to go directly to the provider for all the infrastructure resources required to operate a system.

• Improvement – In many cases, the transition to cloud-based technology means a system migration from one platform to another.  Take the time to improve the code and database as the application moves to the cloud.  Most changeovers to cloud platforms will at least drive some platform-specific changes anyway. This is a common benefit for financial services firms that move to cloud computing.

Moving Forward
Those in the financial IT departments should already be familiar and literate with the risks and rewards associated with the types of services that cloud technology has to offer. Although the use of these resources may still be new for most financial service firms, utilizing cloud-based technology is the clear direction for the future.

72% of these companies virtualized substantial proportions
of their servers. This increasing trend of cloud computing
clearly shows that this growth is only expected
to increase over the next coming years.

A  list out major cloud computing trends in the industry in 2014:

1: Hybrid Clouds
The merits of private and public cloud models have stirred an ongoing debate for quite some time. Solving the endless discussion, Hybrid Cloud features a unique infrastructure, where it combines private cloud security with powerful, scalable and cost-effective public cloud attributes.

IT executives will get more choices for their personalized solutions, while the security experts and big data advocates are fairly satisfied. As hybrid models become “mainstream” it is likely that more cloud computing companies in Singapore are going to adopt this model and drop out the old debate.

2: BYOD
As majority of consumer electronics in the world today are mobile devices, “bring your own device” is becoming more relevant in the world of cloud computing than ever before. End users are persistently using their mobile devices to secure more and more data into their personal cloud services for streaming, storing and syncing.

This invariable means that IT departments must find ways for their employees to integrate personal cloud spaces in a BYOD environment by making effective use of tools like Mobile Device Management.

3: Platform-as-a-service (PaaS)
Platform-as-a-Service helps in reducing the IT costs of businesses while enhancing application development via more efficient development and testing methods. According to a report released by the International Data Corporation (IDC), an eminent analyst firm, the PaaS market is anticipated to expand up to $14 billion from $3.7 billion worldwide by the year 2017.

4: Big Data Analysis
Similar to the private and public cloud model debates, numerous organizations are now realizing that it can be more beneficial and easy to combine cloud computing solutions and big data analytics rather than choosing one over the other. Big data analytics as service will offer the businesses of every size access to an easily attainable and scalable tool to compete in global markets.

5: Graphics as a service
Running high-end graphic applications generally requires substantial investment in hardware infrastructure. Cloud computing on the other hand is gradually changing this veracity. A number of prominent graphic companies such as AMD and NVIDIA are now coming up with numerous cloud-based graphic technologies which allow end users to run high-end graphic applications from basic HTML5 web browsers.

Author Bio:
A Singapore based IT consultancy company, APIXEL ITServices, has been operational for over 8 years from now. Apixel provides fixed price IT support services with unlimited packages that includes small business server setup, cloud solution configuration, network management and data security & theft prevention. The company also provides expert IT consultancy to SMEs in Singapore.