On the heals of a survey showing Microsoft making significant inroads in the cloud industry, Morgan Stanley has even worse news for the company’s competitors, according to Business Insider.
In the previous survey by Goldman Sachs—despite AWS taking in the lion’s share of cloud revenue—97% of companies said they currently use Azure, compared with 58% for AWS and 25% for Google Cloud. Even more concerning, the survey showed that far more companies were planning to use Microsoft’s platform within the next three years compared to its competitors.
Morgan Stanley’s research provides more validation for Microsoft’s current strategy, predicting the company will “gain the largest percentage of IT budgets over the next three years, while VMware, Cisco, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Oracle, and Dell stand to lose the most.”
Further complicating things is an expected slowdown in IT budgets in 2020. The slowdown will negatively impact the above companies as more and more businesses move to the cloud. This move signals more good news for Microsoft, however, as it is expected to see gains “driven by an increasing proportion of customers citing Microsoft as their preferred hybrid cloud vendor,” according to the survey.
After years of telling customers onsite hardware was antiquated and unnecessary, even Amazon recently joined the hybrid market. As Business Insider points out, with Microsoft’s lead in this particular segment, Amazon may regret ignoring the hybrid cloud market for so long.
Light Reading is reporting that Huawei is renewing its focus on the cloud and artificial intelligence, establishing it as a fourth business group, alongside the consumer, enterprise and operator business groups.
According to Light Reading’s Robert Clark, details are sparse but “it seems the new unit will be primarily a product and technology division, developing the underlying public and private cloud platforms, big data, smart computing and other solutions for the customer-facing units.
“The focus on these key emerging technologies of cloud and AI is another sign of Huawei diversifying away from its core telecom equipment business. Last year the handset business eclipsed the carrier business to become the biggest source of revenue.”
Reporting on the same story, Business Insider compares Huawei’s latest ambitions with Google and says the Chinese company may be trying to duplicate Google’s success.
According to BI, “by focusing its cloud ambitions on the general cloud market as well as in support of its growing smartphone OS, Huawei can follow a strategy similar to Google. Google Cloud has become a major player in the large US cloud market, on course to generate $8 billion in revenue per year as the US’s third-largest cloud purveyor.”
What BI fails to take into account, however, is the ongoing allegations of Huawei being a conduit for spying by the Chinese government. The U.S. has already banned the company and pressured its allies to do the same. Given the sensitive data businesses store in the cloud, it’s likely Huawei will face an uphill battle convincing companies to trust it as a cloud provider. With a mere 8% of the Chinese cloud market, according to Light Reading, its efforts on the home front may be similarly stymied.
Google has announced a partnership with IBM to bring IBM Power Systems to Google Cloud, providing businesses with “a truly hybrid environment.”
For many businesses, moving to a cloud-based solution can be difficult, especially if the business relies on legacy infrastructure or workflows. As Google’s announcement says, “at one end of the spectrum, some organizations are replatforming entire legacy systems to adopt the cloud. Many others, however, want to continue leveraging their existing infrastructure while still benefiting from the cloud’s flexible consumption model, scalability, and new advancements in areas like artificial intelligence, machine learning, and analytics.”
By partnering with IBM, Google can offers customers the ability to run “IBM Power Systems as a service on Google Cloud—whether you’re using AIX, IBM i, or Linux on IBM Power.
“For organizations using a hybrid cloud strategy, especially, IBM Power Systems are an important tool. Because of their performance and ability to support mission critical workloads—such as SAP applications and Oracle databases—enterprise customers have been consistently looking for options to run IBM Power Systems in the cloud. IBM Power Systems for Google Cloud offers a path to do just that, providing the best of both the cloud and on-premise worlds. You can run enterprise workloads like SAP and Oracle on the IBM Power servers that you’ve come to trust, while starting to take advantage of all the technical capabilities and favorable economics that Google Cloud offers.”
Some 80% of Fortune 100 companies rely on IBM Power Systems, with the platform especially popular in finance, retail, insurance and healthcare. These are also industries where even minimal disruption can be disastrous. Google’s announcement provides Power Systems users with another option to move towards a cloud-based architecture, while at the same time giving Google one more way to continue growing its cloud business.
Google has announced the launch of Google Cloud Premium Support in the company’s ongoing bid to gain ground in the cloud market.
Google is currently a distant third among U.S. cloud providers, with a mere 4% market share. In spite of that, Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian has set the goal of becoming the number two cloud provider within five years. Some analysts predict that could prompt Google to purchase Salesforce in an effort to leapfrog the current number two, Microsoft.
In the meantime, to help organically grow market share, Google is launching personalized Premium Support “to serve the enterprise and mission-critical needs of Google Cloud customers.” The company’s blog post states: “We know that our customers need Google Cloud Support to be available in seamless, simple, and straightforward ways. We’re building upon our current technical account manager (TAM) service and 15-minute SLOs to add a more proactive approach and an improved overall experience.”
Google is working to make sure customers received specialized support unique to their needs.
“As a Premium Support customer, you’ll have your cases handled directly by context-aware experts who understand your unique application stack, architecture, and implementation details. This team will work hand-in-hand with your Technical Account Manager to deliver a customer-centric support experience with faster case resolution, more personalized service, and higher customer satisfaction.”
The new Premium Support is available now and the company says it will continue to rollout new features throughout the year. Cloud customers can also keep up-to-date via the Cloud Customer Care portfolio.
Adobe has been moving its software to the cloud for years, but the company announced it is finally brining one of its last holdouts to the cloud: Adobe Experience Manager.
Adobe Experience Manager is a content management system that helps companies design, build and manage websites. Unlike much of Adobe’s software, however, Experience Manager was still based on legacy software that required large monolithic updates and slow patch times, rather than the benefits of cloud-based software and its continuous delivery approach.
“Adobe Experience Manager as a Cloud Service supercharges organizations’ abilities to create, manage and deliver more campaigns, digital assets and experiences faster than ever before,” said Loni Stark, senior director of strategy and product marketing. “It creates a compelling offer for mid-size companies and enterprises that are increasingly transforming to adopt advanced digital tools but need more simplicity and flexibility to support their changing business models.”
The move to the cloud is already paying off for Adobe’s early adopters.
“Early results from mid-market to large enterprise companies using the application show a 50% faster ingestion time, a 40% increase in administrative efficiency, zero downtime resulting from regularly scheduled updates and an over 20% surge in author productivity.”
According to a report by Bloomberg, Microsoft is increasingly positioning itself as the cloud vendor of choice for retailers seeking to avoid Amazon, as well as more generalized software vendors.
The software giant has been rolling out a number of cloud tools and services designed specifically for the retail market. Microsoft has had tremendous success in this market, as many retailers want to avoid relying on software made by their primary competitor, Amazon.
“A key part of our offering is that we partner and we don’t compete,” Shelley Bransten, Corporate Vice President, Global Retail & Consumer Goods, told Bloomberg.
One such feature that has come from that partnership is one that allows Teams users to use their phones as walkie-talkies for in-store communication. Microsoft is quick to point out, however, that features such as this one have value far beyond the retail environment.
The end result of this focus has been some large, high-profile defections from competing products to Microsoft. Ikea, for example, has already moved 70,000 employees from Slack to Teams and “plans to have the rest of its 165,000-person workforce on Office 365 cloud software and Teams by the end of spring.”
As Bloomberg points out, Microsoft’s stature in this market is turning heads. CEO Satya Nadella is scheduled to speak at the National Retail Federation’s annual show next week, “underscoring how significant the industry is to Amazon’s biggest cloud competitors.”
Business Insider is reporting Google Cloud is taking the unprecedented step of inviting partners to its annual Accelerate sales event.
The move underscores how important Google’s cloud business is, as it seeks to gain ground against Amazon and Microsoft. Latest estimates place Amazon’s AWS at 47.8% market share, Microsoft Azure at 15.5%, while Google Cloud holds a distant 4%. There has even been speculation Google may purchase Salesforce in an effort to bolster its cloud business and leapfrog Microsoft.
As Business Insider points out, partners are an invaluable part of the cloud business and Google is looking to Accelerate as a way to help bring partners “deeper into the fold.”
Tony Safoian, president and CEO of Google Cloud partner SADA Systems, told Business Insider: “It delivers on the promise of the journey with Google Cloud, to treat partners as an extension of themselves by inviting them to their sales kickoff, which has never been allowed before.”
As Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian pursues the stated goal of Google becoming the number two cloud vendor within five years, it’s a safe bet this Accelerate is only the beginning as Google continues to cultivate strong partner relationships.
BizJournal is reporting that CloudFlare, after recently raising $525 million in its IPO, has purchased S2 Systems.
CloudFlare is a web infrastructure and security company and “is one of the world’s largest networks.” The CloudFlare service “protects websites from all manner of attacks, while simultaneously optimizing performance.” CloudFlare allows websites to scale with demand and ensures high performance with data centers in 200 cities around the world.
S2 creates browser isolation technology. This is a relatively new approach to browser security “that allows customers to launch browser code in the cloud rather than users’ devices. This technology is designed to be more secure.” As a result, if there is malicious code, the customer’s computers are insulated from the potential attack.
The purchase is a logical addition to CloudFlare’s suite of security tools, and the company had been looking for some time at adding the capability. According to BizJournal, the company had approached a number of startups, as well as Symantec, to explore different options. S2 was the only one that the right blend of performance and security.
“They have a similar culture and outlook as us. We have an engineering-driven culture where we like to tackle big hard tasks. I think that resonated with S2. We also are interested in making the Internet more accessible to the other half of the world who does not have it. This is part of our larger vision that we share,” CEO Matthew Prince told BizJournal’s Dawn Kawamoto.
In spite of this acquisition, Prince said the company does not plan to go on a purchasing spree, preferring home-grown solutions.
According to Business Insider, RBC Capital Markets believes Google may purchase Salesforce and use it to better take on Amazon and Microsoft.
Google is currently a distant third among U.S. cloud providers. As of 2019, Gartner estimates Amazon’s AWS has some 47.8% of the market, Microsoft Azure accounted for 15.5% and Google Cloud brought up the rear with a mere 4%.
Even worse, a recent report shows that 97 percent of companies polled are using Azure to some degree, and far more companies are planning to deploy Microsoft’s cloud platform than are planning to use AWS or Google. While Amazon has room to lose market share, Google Cloud does not.
According to Business Insider, a source said Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian has the goal of Google becoming “at least the No. 2 cloud.” For that to happen, however, the company will need to gain significant ground. RBC doesn’t see that happening without making a major move.
“We don’t see a viable organic way to get there,” said the RBC note.
If Google does purchase Salesforce, RBC estimates the deal could be worth as much as $250 billion. While expensive, it would catapult the company into the No. 2 spot.
According to Business Insider, a recent Goldman Sachs poll shows Microsoft making significant inroads into the cloud market at Amazon and especially Google’s expense.
Goldman Sachs polled 100 IT executives from Global 2000 companies to see what cloud platforms were in the best position moving forward. The results showed that while Amazon’s “AWS still gets the largest share of cloud revenue, a ‘significantly higher number of respondents’ indicated they use Microsoft Azure and plan to in the next three years.” In fact, “97 respondents said they are currently using Microsoft Azure, compared to 58 using AWS and 25 using Google Cloud Platform.”
This should be deeply worrying to Amazon and Google. Amazon recently lost out to Microsoft in the bid for a Pentagon contract valued at $10 billion. Microsoft is also the second company to achieve the coveted Impact Level 6 security clearance—behind Amazon—allowing it to store sensitive government data in the cloud. Achieving that clearance will only improve the company’s odds of scoring other major contracts in the future.
With Microsoft currently being used in so many companies, and the inherent advantage it has due to its established software ecosystem, Amazon and Google will have their work cut out trying to avoid losing any more market share.
Workona has announced “the launch of their cloud desktop, a work management platform that allows users to access and manage resources across more than 75 popular cloud apps from a single unified system.”
The company recently completed “a $6 million seed funding round, led by K9 Ventures and August Capital, to accelerate its product development and user acquisition.”
Recognizing that “modern teams run on cloud software,” Workona is trying to bring the disparate pieces of a cloud-based workflow together in a productive, intuitive manner. Workona’s cloud-based desktop connects to the most popular cloud apps in use today, such as Amazon, Asana, Basecamp, Box, Dropbox, Evernote, Google Docs, Outlook, Zoom and more. Each app can be accessed and worked with inside Workona. Shared workspaces take collaboration up a notch, increasing productivity even more.
“So many people spend their days working in the cloud, but there was no platform to manage that work. That’s what Workona does,” said Quinn Morgan, Workona co-founder and CEO. “Previously, all of your cloud apps, projects, and documents were scattered across the web. Workona’s cloud desktop pulls them together into one powerful system.”
Having a central location to access different tools and platforms significantly increases a user’s efficiency.
“Workona is a force multiplier because it impacts every level of your work,” Morgan said. “Your apps and projects are at your fingertips, so every action you take is significantly faster.”
“Workona solves a problem that is staring us in the face, but we haven’t noticed it yet,” said Manu Kumar, Workona board member and K9 Ventures investor. “Microsoft and Apple used to put an enormous amount of engineering power into optimizing the desktop, but all that was forgotten when we transitioned to working in the browser. Workona has picked up where they left off by bringing the best features of a desktop to the cloud.”
The company says that early users come “from both startups and Fortune 500 companies, and include industry leaders like Twitter, Salesforce, Amazon, and NASA.” It’s a safe bet that list will continue to grow.
After years of convincing customers they should rent server space and computing power, Amazon is in the business of selling rack servers. It’s a major shift in strategy for the company, as it bows to market realities and embraces a hybrid approach.
Hybrid cloud options contain a mixture of onsite and cloud servers, giving customers options and flexibility that one alone would not provide. In an effort to stay ahead of Google and Microsoft, Amazon is embracing the idea.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced AWS Outposts at the AWS re:Invent 2019 conference.
“Over the past several years, AWS has delivered services like Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC), AWS Direct Connect, and Amazon Storage Gateway to make it easier for customers who want to run their on-premises datacenters alongside AWS. In 2017, AWS collaborated with VMware to introduce VMware Cloud on AWS, giving the vast majority of companies who are virtualized on VMware the ability to use the same on-premises VMware tools that they had been using for years to manage their infrastructure on AWS. Still, some customers have certain workloads that will likely need to remain on-premises for several years such as applications that are latency sensitive and need to be in close proximity to on-premises assets. These customers would like to be able to run AWS compute and storage on-premises, and also easily and seamlessly integrate these on-premises workloads with the rest of their applications in the AWS Cloud. Early attempts by other vendors have fallen short – unable to provide the ability to use the same APIs, the same tools, the same hardware, and the same functionality across on-premises and the cloud, therefore unable to deliver a truly consistent hybrid experience to customers.
“AWS Outposts solves these challenges by delivering racks of AWS compute and storage, with the ability to run services like Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) and Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) on this AWS-designed infrastructure. AWS Outposts will initially come in two variants:
For customers who want to use the same VMware control plane and APIs they’ve been using to run their infrastructure, they will be able to run VMware Cloud on AWS locally on AWS Outposts. This variant, called VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts, delivers the entire VMware Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) – compute, storage, and networking infrastructure – to run on-premises and managed as a Service from the same console as VMware Cloud on AWS, using AWS Outposts and enables customers to take advantage of the ease of management and integration with AWS services that they enjoy today.
For customers who prefer the same exact APIs and control plane they’re used to running in AWS’s cloud, but on-premises, they can use the AWS native variant of AWS Outposts. These customers will have the opportunity to run other software with native AWS Outposts, starting with a new integrated offering from VMware called VMware Cloud Foundation for EC2, which will feature popular VMware technologies and services that work across VMware and Amazon EC2 environments, like NSX (to help bridge AWS Outposts to local data center networks), VMware AppDefense (to protect known good applications), and VMware vRealize Automation (for workload provisioning).
“In both cases, AWS will deliver the racks to customers, install them (if customers prefer), and handle all maintenance and replacement of racks. These AWS Outposts will be an extension of a customer’s Amazon VPC (in the closest AWS Region to each customer), and customers can seamlessly connect from their AWS Outposts to the rest of their applications in AWS or any other AWS service.”
At AWS re:Invent, Verizon and AWS announced a 5G cloud partnership combining the benefits of 5G edge computing and AWS Wavelength.
AWS Wavelength helps developers create applications with single-digit millisecond latency.
“AWS developers can deploy their applications to Wavelength Zones, AWS infrastructure deployments that embed AWS compute and storage services within the telecommunications providers’ datacenters at the edge of the 5G networks, and seamlessly access the breadth of AWS services in the region.”
Now, Verizon becomes the first company to provide 5G edge computing with AWS Wavelength.
“By utilizing AWS Wavelength and Verizon 5G Edge, developers will be able to deliver a wide range of transformative, latency-sensitive use cases like machine learning inference at the edge, autonomous industrial equipment, smart cars and cities, Internet of Things (IoT), and augmented and virtual reality. To accomplish this, Verizon 5G Edge provides mobile edge computing and an efficient high-volume connection between users, devices, and applications. AWS Wavelength lets customers deploy the parts of an application that require ultra-low latency to the edge of the network and then seamlessly connect back to the full range of cloud services running in AWS.
“Verizon 5G Ultra Wideband technology enables a wide range of new capabilities and diverse use cases with download speeds many times faster than typical 4G networks. 5G will also dramatically increase the number of devices that can be supported within the same geographic areas and greatly reduce network latency to mobile devices. Mobile edge compute (MEC) technology further reduces latency. Currently, application data has to travel from the device, to the mobile network, to networking devices at the mobile edge, and then to the Internet to get to the application servers in remote locations, which can result in longer latency. This prevents developers from realizing the full potential of 5G in addressing lower latency use-cases. For example, game streaming requires less than 20 millisecond latency for a truly immersive experience.
“In placing AWS compute and storage services at the edge of Verizon’s 5G Ultra Wideband network with AWS Wavelength, AWS and Verizon bring processing power and storage physically closer to 5G mobile users and wireless devices, and enable developers to build applications that can deliver enhanced user experiences like near real-time analytics for instant decision-making, immersive game streaming, and automated robotic systems in manufacturing facilities.”
This new partnership underscores the importance of 5G technology and the transformative impact it will have on a variety of industries.
Polte has announced its Internet of Things (IoT) Cloud is now available on the AWS Marketplace. Polte is a Cloud Location over Cellular (C-LoC) provider, offering a patented Location-as-a-Service (LaaS) solution as an alternative to traditional GPS.
According to the company website, “the Polte Cloud provides seamless indoor and outdoor coverage leveraging cloud computing and existing 4G and 5G cellular networks. No need to deploy thousands of Bluetooth beacons, hundreds of Wi-Fi access points, or launch more GPS/GNSS satellites – Polte uses global IoT mobile networks, which already reach 99% of the population.”
Not only is the Polte Location API available on the AWS Marketplace, but the company has also been invited to demo its API at AWS re:Invent 2019.
“Polte’s Cloud Software enhances Amazon’s ecosystem with an easy to use, secure and affordable geolocation offering,” said Ed Chao, Polte chief executive officer. “Polte delivers simply better location, and we are creating new and different opportunities never thought possible. If you make things, sell things or own things, Polte locates all those things.”
“Polte’s disruptive C-LoC technology is a software-only solution that makes it simple for developers to add indoor and outdoor location capability to their IoT applications for supply chain, asset and inventory management. Polte-enabled IoT devices listen to 4G and 5G cellular networks, the tracker sends the data via the open Polte Location API to the Polte Location Engine. The Polte Location Engine uses patented algorithms to determine and provide location data with building, block, neighborhood and city granularity. Polte’s simple implementation process allows developers and programmers to easily access Polte’s API after programming an AT command in an embedded module.
“Polte’s positioning technology can be integrated for use in a variety of industries, including aerospace, appliances, automotive, energy, food & beverage, government, healthcare, hospitality, industrial, manufacturing, retail, smart buildings, smart cities, and transportation-as-a-service for supply chain, asset, and inventory management. Whether tracking containers, pallets, machines, or components, Polte makes finding them easy, affordable and secure.”
“People are going to really give a hard look at cloud security,” says Darktrace CEO Nicole Eagan. “At the end of the day, it also says when you have something of this scale why not use some artificial intelligence or something that could have spotted this. Actually what was done was pretty blatant. It was 30 gigabytes of data moving to unusual storage locations. So there were a lot of ways that something like an AI system could have detected this and also prevented it from becoming an issue.”
People Are Going To Really Give a Hard Look At Cloud Security
There is so much positive momentum around cloud and so many benefits that I don’t anticipate seeing a pendulum swing back to on-prem data centers (because of the Capital One cyber hack). What I do think it means is people are going to really give a hard look at cloud security. This attack was a result of a vulnerability known as a configuration error in a Web Application Firewall that was specific to Capital One. What it does show is these configuration errors are actually really very commonplace. They’re commonplace in on-prem data centers and in cloud.
This does highlight a few things. It does highlight insider threats, someone who had some insider knowledge. It also highlights supply chain level security. At the end of the day, it also says when you have something of this scale why not use some artificial intelligence or something that could have spotted this. Actually what was done was pretty blatant. It was 30 gigabytes of data moving to unusual storage locations. So there were a lot of ways that something like an AI system could have detected this and also prevented it from becoming an issue.
Capital One Attack Was Human Error
Configuration errors are basically a human error. Somebody somewhere made a human error, a mistake. We have to expect that humans are fallible and we’re going to see those type of errors. What’s so strange about this one is how public the disclosure was by the attacker on Twitter and GitHub and other places. That was what made it so unusual but also meant that the investigation moved very quickly. It seems like there’s been quite a bit of transparency as well.
It’s interesting timing because we’re actually going into Back Hat and DEF CON, which is often known as a summer camp for hackers. There will be literally tens of thousands of people in Las Vegas next week. All of this is going to change the conversation. We’re going to see a lot about cloud security, about 5G security, about encryption and decrypting data, and of course, the evolution towards AI-based attacks.
What’s interesting is that people want to kind of say let’s make sure we prevent the kind of attacks we saw in 2016 (regarding the election). The reality is the way the cybersecurity industry works the attackers keep moving on. They keep changing what’s called threat vectors. I do think we’ll see plenty of threats for 2020 but they may not look anything like the ones we saw in 2016.
People Are Going To Give a Hard Look At Cloud Security – Darktrace CEO Nicole Eagan
“VMWare allows the datacenter to act like a public cloud,” says VMWare COO Sanjay Poonen. “It is a multicloud world. While AWS will be first and preferred for us, we want every customer that has VMWare in the private cloud but AWS, Azure, Google, IBM, and Alibaba, those are the top five hyperscalers, and all of them have embraced VMWare.”
Sanjay Poonen, COO of VMWare, discusses the incredible growth of VMWare which is driven by their ability to connect companies to any and every cloud in an interview with Jim Cramer on CNBC:
Software Is Defining Everything
We had a great quarter. You have to put the bigger picture in perspective. We’re in the golden age of software where software is defining everything. Software companies, in general, are doing well. What we have done as a company is focus on making the datacenter software-driven and we think there is a bright future there. We showed some examples of that in hyperconverged (HCI) and in software-defined networking (SDN).
We also showed some incredible momentum with our partnerships in the hybrid-cloud. Amazon is obviously first and preferred there. We announced a partnership with Azure. There is also the digital workspace which is all of the devices. We think our future is bright and we just have to keep executing. Our view is always the long-run.
In This Software Future We Are Not Tethered To One Company
I think there is a little bit of a misperception that we should nip in the bud (regarding correlating Dell’s earnings with VMWare). First off, VMWare’s business with Dell in these areas like hyperconverged, we’ve now surpassed companies like Nutanix who are number one in hyper-converged infrastructure, and in the digital workspace where we are partnering with Dell Laptops, those are going very well. We want Dell and VMWare to do well together. In the datacenter we work with Dell, HPE, Cisco, Lenovo, etc. There is no one hardware player that is the majority of our business.
In cloud we work with AWS, Azure, Google, Alibaba, and IBM. You won’t find another company that has got as many hybrid-cloud partners. In the digital workspace, we work with Apple, Google, and Microsoft. In this software future, we are not tethered to one company. We are optimized to Dell, we are not tethered to them. You need a software-based solution for any of these areas, the datacenter, the cloud, or the digital workspace during tough times and in good times.
It Is a Multi-Cloud World
You should think about applications like mobile homes. They’re going to move from the datacenter to the cloud on this freeway called VMWare. The mobile home could go to one cloud and may come back. VMWare allows the datacenter to act like a public cloud. We make the hardware datacenter look like Amazon. Now if you are an Amazon customer, and they have 30-35 percent market share, number one in the market for cloud, they are our preferred cloud partner, we can help customers. We have many customers who are adopting VMWare cloud in AWS.
For those customers who said we are not an Amazon shop, for example, we quoted Walmart in our earnings announcement, they are using Azure. They have an option now because we announced a partnership with Azure. There are some customers that are going to have some other clouds. It is a multicloud world. While AWS will be first and preferred for us, we want every customer that has VMWare in the private cloud but AWS, Azure, Google, IBM, and Alibaba, those are the top five hyperscalers, and all of them have embraced VMWare.
IBM is a great partner of VMWare. We love their services business. IBM Cloud has 2,000+ customers. We are going to partner really well with Ginni Rometty and the team. We compete with a small part of Red Hat’s business in containers. Over 80 percent of Red Hat’s business is Linux, a good part of their business which is OpenShift and JBoss, is not doing so well. The future of containers is a small part of the business. We can walk and chew gum. We can partner with IBM and compete with that small part of Red Hat and that’s our focus. We want a big tent at VMWare. We want to partner with as many people as possible and compete with as few people as possible.
Make Your Story Sesame Street Simple
First off, if you want to serve your customers well start by serving your employees. One of my professors at the Harvard Business School, Len Schlesinger, wrote an article and book on service profit chain. What he talked about is if you want to create shareholder value focus not just on customer satisfaction but satisfied employees. Hug your start. Take care of the best and brightest who come in there.
The second one is something that all of us can do which is make your story Sesame Street simple. All too often, I see product managers and account executives blabbering on with PowerPoints. Let’s tell the story just like you are telling the story to your mother or to your kids. Ironically, when you make things simple you’re going back to the basic principals of Steven Covey, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, or Dale Carnegie, How To Win Friends and Influence People. It’s not that complicated. Have customer empathy.
It Is a Multi-Cloud World, Says VMWare COO Sanjay Poonen
While football may not be the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, the Seattle Seahawks are the latest team to invest heavily in it, according to an Amazon press release.
The Seahawks have chosen Amazon to be their cloud, AI and machine learning provider, moving the vast majority of their infrastructure to AWS.
In addition, “the National Football League (NFL) team will use the breadth and depth of AWS’s services, including compute, storage, database, analytics, and ML to drive deep analysis of game footage to inform game strategy, improve operational efficiencies, and accelerate decision-making to advance team performance game-to-game. The Seahawks will combine the weekly NFL Next Gen Stats player tracking data, which tracks the position of the ball and every player 10 times per second, with its own player and club data to develop custom analytics and proprietary statistics.
“The Seattle Seahawks are relying on AWS’s unmatched portfolio of services to discover actionable outcomes from its vast amount of player, team, and business data, enabling them to continue to compete at a championship caliber level. The Seahawks are building a data lake on Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) that will combine team stats and NFL data, such as Next Gen Stats player tracking, player health and wellness data, and scouting information to provide deeper visibility into player capabilities, as well as give the coaching staff a single, real-time view of player and team performance. By applying AWS analytics services to the data, the Seahawks will be able to quickly uncover insights to better evaluate talent and develop game plans that take advantage of the team’s strengths.”
The Seahawks are just another example of how AI and machine learning are revolutionizing countless industries, giving organizations the ability to process data and gain insights that otherwise wouldn’t be possible.
Cloud backup provider Clumio has announced that it has secured $135 million in Series C funding.
Clumio was founded by serial entrepreneur Poojan Kumar to provide cloud companies with a suite of cloud-based backup tools. The company’s approach is someone unique in that, “unlike legacy backup vendors, Clumio SaaS is born in the cloud,” says Kumar. “This round of investment allows us to push that advantage as we accelerate our development and go to market strategy while continuing to meet customer requirements for backup, regardless of where the data is.”
As an added benefit of the service, customers do not need to install—or even purchase—any specialized hardware or software to take advantage of Clumio SaaS. The service allows a company the ability to rewind and go back to a point before something went wrong, such as a cyberattack or data loss event.
“Similar to Snowflake disrupting the data warehousing market by leveraging the scale, elasticity and economics of the public cloud, Clumio is building a globally consolidated data protection service the right way,” said Mike Speiser, Managing Director, Sutter Hill Ventures. “Harnessing the full power of the public cloud, they are reimagining the backup experience for the enterprise paying particular attention to security, predictable costs and simplicity for their customers.”
The company plans to put the funding to good use, growing its engineering team and expanding its U.S. operations.
“This new funding will help Clumio execute in the following areas:
Accelerate the growth of its engineering team, both at the company’s headquarters in Santa Clara, CA and in its new development center in Bangalore, India
Expand go to market and service operations in the U.S.
Add more support for its 100% channel strategy with additional partner resources and programs and build upon momentum in technology partner programs with AWS, VMware and others
Introduce support for new workloads as Clumio continues to execute against its vision for a globally consolidated data protection service
“Clumio is a secure, backup as a service that consolidates the protection of an enterprise data center and any remote sites with no hardware or software to size, configure, manage – or even buy at all. As enterprises move aggressively to cloud, they can use Clumio to protect workloads like VMware Cloud on AWS and native AWS services. Authentic SaaS protects data regardless of where it resides and delivers critical benefits to the enterprise.”
Microsoft has announced an update to its cloud contract terms, one that brings it into greater compliance with EU privacy laws.
In October, Reuters reported that an EU probe voiced serious concerns that Microsoft’s contract terms violated the GDPR, the comprehensive privacy laws the EU adopted last year.
“Though the investigation is still ongoing, preliminary results reveal serious concerns over compliance of the relevant contractual terms with data protection rules and the role of Microsoft as a processor for EU institutions using its products and services,” said the EU watchdog EDPS in a statement.
To address those concerns, as well as respond to customer feedback, Microsoft has updated its terms, bringing them inline with the GDPR.
“At Microsoft, we listen to our customers and strive to address their questions and feedback, because one of our foundational principles is to help our customers succeed. Today Microsoft is announcing an update to the privacy provisions in the Microsoft Online Services Terms (OST) in our commercial cloud contracts that stems from additional feedback we’ve heard from our customers.
“Our updated OST will reflect contractual changes we have developed with one of our public sector customers, the Dutch Ministry of Justice and Security (Dutch MoJ). The changes we are making will provide more transparency for our customers over data processing in the Microsoft cloud.
“Microsoft is currently the only major cloud provider to offer such terms in the European Economic Area (EEA) and beyond.
“We are also announcing that we will offer the new contractual terms to all our commercial customers – public sector and private sector, large enterprises and small and medium businesses – globally. At Microsoft we consider privacy a fundamental right, and we believe stronger privacy protections through greater transparency and accountability should benefit our customers everywhere.
“Before and after GDPR became law in the EU, Microsoft has taken steps to ensure that we protect the privacy of all who use our products and services. We continue to work on behalf of customers to remain aligned with the evolving legal interpretations of GDPR.”
Google announced in a blog post today that it has acquired CloudSimple, a company once central to Microsoft’s cloud ambitions.
CloudSimple is a “secure, high performance, dedicated environment in Public Clouds to run VMware workloads.” Google struck a partnership with CloudSimple in August, following a convoluted series of events.
Microsoft, in an effort to catch up with AWS, needed to bring on as many VMware customers as possible to its cloud solutions. CloudSimple was created by Guru Pangal, an entrepreneur who spent four years working for Microsoft on Azure. Microsoft and VMware had been rivals for some time. As a result, Microsoft’s plan was to use the newly created CloudSimple—also a VMware partner—as a conduit to migrate VMware workloads to Azure.
Michael Dell, CEO of the company bearing his name, stepped in to help smooth things out between the two companies, helping Microsoft secure formal permission to run VMware on Azure. As part of the deal, however, Dell-owned Virtustream became the recommended method of migrating VMware to Azure, leaving CloudSimple out in the cold.
Google saw an opportunity and formed a partnership with CloudSimple in August with the aim of helping companies migrate onsite VMware workloads to Google Cloud VMware Solution by CloudSimple.
“Through our existing partnership with CloudSimple, our customers can migrate their VMware workloads from on-premises datacenters directly into Google Cloud VMware Solution by CloudSimple, while also creating new VMware workloads as needed. Their apps can run exactly the same as they have been on-premises, but with all the benefits of the cloud, like performance, elasticity, and integration with key cloud services and technologies. And best of all, customers can do all this without having to re-architect existing VMware-based applications and workloads, which helps them operate more efficiently and reduce costs, while also allowing IT staff to maintain consistency and use their existing VMware tools, workflows and support. To that end, we believe in a multi-cloud world and will continue to provide choice for our customers to use the best technology in their journey to the cloud.”
Now that Google has acquired CloudSimple, it will be interesting to see if it can makeup lost ground against rivals Microsoft and Amazon.
Oracle is boosting its cloud efforts with an announcement that it is hiring some 2,000 new employees. While Amazon, Microsoft and, to some extent, Google have dominated the cloud market, Oracle sees ongoing opportunity to expand.
Oracle has been making moves to take on the leaders, including opening offices in Microsoft’s back yard. Even more surprising, earlier this year Oracle announced a cloud partnership with Microsoft, working to ensure their products work seamlessly across each other’s cloud platforms.
As Oracle continues its cloud expansion, the company is counting on the relative infancy of the market, along with the overall lack of penetration. In addition, Oracle is uniquely positioned to deliver the entire range of cloud service.
“Cloud is still in its early days with less than 20 percent penetration today, and enterprises are just beginning to use cloud for mission-critical workloads,” said Don Johnson, executive vice president, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. “Our aggressive hiring and growth plans are mapped to meet the needs of our customers, providing them reliability, high performance, and robust security as they continue to move to the cloud.”
Oracle currently operates 16 cloud regions globally, with 12 of those being added in the past year. The company plans to add an additional 20 regions by the end of 2020, no doubt with the help of the 2,000 additional hires. By focusing on adding more regions, Oracle stands to gain strong footholds in regional and niche markets that the Big Three haven’t wrapped up.
“Eleven countries or jurisdictions will have region pairs that facilitate enterprise-class, multi-region, disaster-recovery strategies to better support those customers who want to store their data in-country or in-region.
“Today, Oracle is the only company delivering a complete and integrated set of cloud services and building intelligence into every layer of the cloud. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure’s growing talent base will ensure customers continue to benefit from best-in-class security, consistent high performance, simple predictable pricing, and the tools and expertise needed to bring enterprise workloads to cloud quickly and efficiently.
“In addition to rapid hiring, Oracle will make additional real estate investments to support the expanded Oracle Cloud Infrastructure workforce.”
