Amazon Web Services (AWS) may have lost out on a lucrative Pentagon contract, but it has scored a major deal to oversee trading in the U.S. securities market.
According to a press release, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) selected AWS to be its cloud provider for the Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT).
“The CAT will allow regulators to improve securities market surveillance by creating an extensive audit trail of order information for all U.S. equity securities and listed options across U.S. markets and trading venues. Leveraging AWS’s storage, compute, database, analytics, and security services, CAT ingests more than 100 billion market events per day, pulling together data from 22 stock exchanges and 1,500 broker dealer firms, enabling the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and Self-Regulatory Organizations (SROs) to analyze CAT data.”
Past experience with AWS, as well as its reputation for reliability were major factors in the decision.
“We are responsible for providing regulators with a consolidated view of the markets, so security, scalability, and resiliency are at the forefront of the design for the CAT platform,” said Scott Donaldson, FINRA CAT Chief Technology Officer. “FINRA has deep and tested experience in creating such an environment on AWS, and in view of that track record, FINRA CAT is pleased to select AWS for this major project.”
“The CAT will provide a single comprehensive view of U.S equities and listed options markets, as well as new tools to reconstruct market activity and maintain fair and orderly trading systems,” said Teresa Carlson, Vice President, Worldwide Public Sector at AWS. “To implement this important regulatory initiative, FINRA CAT chose AWS to deliver a highly scalable, robust, and secure system that will enable regulators to improve securities market analysis. We are collaborating to ensure that FINRA CAT can deliver an industry leading platform that provides accessibility and transparency of capital markets data to protect investors and the integrity of the financial market.”
The contract is a huge win for the company, which is still smarting over its loss to Microsoft in the bid for the Pentagon contract. Amazon has maintained it only lost out on that deal due to interference from the White House, and that its platform is far superior to Microsoft Azure.
Whether AWS is better or not depends more on the needs and requirements of any given project. But, at least for FINRA, AWS is the best choice to help oversee “100 billion market events per day.”
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.”
Reuters is reporting that German logistics company DHL is planning on debuting an all-electric delivery van in the United States next year.
DHL will debut the Work L delivery van through its electric vehicle subsidiary StreetScooter beginning Spring 2020. The company will initially use the van in two U.S. markets, one on each coast, with full deployment coming in 2022 or 2023.
According to the Centre for Alternative Technology, cities around the world are working to significantly reduce emissions, with “cities such as Oslo, Antwerp, Melbourne and Copenhagen have risen to this bigger ambition and are pushing for 100 per cent greenhouse gas reductions by at least 2050.”
Companies such as DHL, Amazon and others are working to reduce their impact when making deliveries, especially when considering that the transportation industry was responsible for 14 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2010.
DHL already has a significant head start in this arena, thanks to StreetScooter. According an interview with Ulrich Stuhec, StreetScooter’s chief technology officer, StreetScooter has “the most experience on the road while others are still working on their first prototypes.”
In Amsterdam, Vienna and Germany, “roughly 10,000 of the 12,000 StreetScooter electric vehicles on the road make DHL deliveries.”
StreetScooter estimates their vehicles already save roughly 36,000 metric tons of CO2 per year, per truck.
In the battle for smart speaker dominance, estimates show that Amazon’s Alexa has a dominating lead with 70 percent of the market. Based on Amazon’s recent announcement, that market share may increase even more.
The company recently announced Alexa Voice Service (AVS), an effort to bring Alexa to Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Previously, Alexa-enabled devices required an application-class processor with at least 50MB of memory, making it difficult to integrate Alexa with IoT devices.
With the new AVS, Amazon will offload most of the processing to the cloud, rather than the actual device, significantly reducing its footprint and requirements. As a result, AVS can be used with microcontroller-class processors with less than 1MB of embedded memory.
“With the reduction in the engineering bill of materials (eBoM) cost, device makers can now cost-effectively build new categories of differentiated voice-enabled products such as light switches, thermostats, small appliances and more. This allows end-consumers to talk directly to Alexa in new parts of their home, office, or hotel rooms for a truly ambient experience.”
Amazon is also working to make sure AVS is as easy as possible for developers to hit the ground running with.
“To make the AVS Integration for AWS IoT Core as simple as possible, APN partners have launched AVS qualified hardware development kits enabled by real time operating systems for microcontrollers like Amazon FreeRTOS that connect to AWS IoT Core by default. This helps device makers go to market quickly without worrying about writing complex security and connectivity firmware or managing the large device footprint previously associated with building Alexa Built-in devices with the AVS Device SDK.”
Google, Facebook and Apple will need to up their game if they intend to compete with Amazon’s new offensive.
There’s no doubt that virtual assistants and AI-based voice services are one of the next big things in the technology industry. Long the stuff of science fiction, voice-based computing represents the next leap in computer interface and usability paradigms. As a result, virtually all the major players are pushing ahead with development.
It should come as no surprise that Amazon, one of the biggest players in the voice-enabled market, has announced the Voice Interoperability Initiative. The initiative is an effort to standardize how voice-enabled products work and “is built around a shared belief that voice services should work seamlessly alongside one another on a single device, and that voice-enabled products should be designed to support multiple simultaneous wake words.”
Already, more than 30 companies have signed on to the initiative, including the likes of Microsoft, Salesforce, Logitech, Qualcomm, Libre, Intel, Spotify and others.
“Multiple simultaneous wake words provide the best option for customers,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO. “Utterance by utterance, customers can choose which voice service will best support a particular interaction. It’s exciting to see these companies come together in pursuit of that vision.”
While the initiative’s goals look good on paper, there are some challenges. Notably, the idea of having multiple voice services working on a single device may not fly with some of Amazon’s competitors. Indeed, Apple, Google and Samsung are noticeably absent from the initiative.
In the case of Apple, given their strong pro-privacy stance, it’s unlikely they will want to put Siri on hardware made by a competitor. Similarly, Google may be hesitant to give up the control that comes with their Google Home hardware.
Whatever the outcome, one thing is clear: Voice-enabled services is shaping up to be another technological battleground between some of the biggest names in the industry.
Reuters is reporting that Amazon’s cloud computing unit has designed a more powerful, second-generation chip for its Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centers.
The new chip is based on designs by Arm Holdings. Arm does not manufacture processors like Intel or AMD. Instead, the company designs chips and licenses their intellectual property (IP) to companies that want to use them. Client companies can even customize them, much as Apple has done, to meet specific needs or increase performance even more.
Sources told Reuters the new chip “will be at least 20% faster than Amazon’s first Arm-based chip, named Graviton, which was released last year as a low-cost option for easier computing tasks.
“The forthcoming Amazon chip is expected to use newer Arm technology, most likely Arm’s Neoverse N1 technology, one of the sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. Another source familiar with the matter said the chip is expected to have at least 32 cores versus the Graviton’s 16.
“The new chip will also use a technology called a ‘fabric’ that will allow it to connect with other chips to speed up tasks like image recognition, one of the people familiar with the matter said.
“To take advantage of the new chip, cloud customers likely will need to use software written for Arm-based chips, which is less common than software for Intel and AMD chips.”
While it may be a challenge for Amazon to get cloud customers to switch software, if successful the move could improve Amazon’s bottom line. While Arm processors are generally not as fast as traditional chips, such as Intel’s or AMD’s, they provide much better power consumption and run cooler. These qualities are especially important in a data center, where tens of thousands of servers are housed. An Arm-based server can also be several times cheaper than a single Intel chip.
As Amazon continues developing their own custom chips, based on Arm’s IP, they will likely be able to customize them even more to meet their needs, much as Apple as down with iPhones and iPads.
“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.
Business Insider is reporting that Microsoft is building out a new team of technical trainers to help customers at all levels of proficiency.
Microsoft and Amazon are locked in a bitter rivalry in the cloud computing business. While Amazon’s market share was three times that of Microsoft in 2018, Microsoft is making impressive headway. Most recently, the company beat out Amazon for a Pentagon contract with $10 billion.
One area where Azure can continue to take market share away from AWS is by appealing to non-technical audiences. AWS is widely viewed as more complicated than Azure, with a much higher barrier-to-entry. If Microsoft can successfully appeal to non-technical users, including those just looking to migrate to the cloud, they will continue to chip away at AWS’ lead.
The new team of trainers is a significant step toward that goal, as it will help Microsoft educate and train customers at every stage of their journey with Azure. This is especially important as the company appeals to non-developers, or casual developers, in addition to professionals. Microsoft’s ultimate goal appears to be enabling non-developers to take full advantage of the platform with minimal, or even no, coding required.
Individuals who rely on iOS or Android Cortana apps will have to find a different option. On January 31, 2020, Microsoft will be shutting down the Cortana apps for iOS and Android.
Instead of dedicated apps, Microsoft will be integrating Cortana into the Microsoft 365 productivity apps. As a result, any content created on Cortana, such as lists and reminders, will not be available on the iOS and Android versions, although it will be accessible via the Windows version.
In addition, according to the Microsoft support article, “Cortana reminders, lists, and tasks are automatically synced to the Microsoft To Do app, which you can download to your phone for free.
“After January 31st, 2020, the Cortana mobile app on your phone will no longer be supported and there will be an updated version of Microsoft Launcher with Cortana removed.”
Cortana has been lagging behind its rivals from Apple, Google and Amazon and Microsoft has been working to close the gap. These changes, while disappointing for iOS and Android users, will likely help Microsoft streamline its efforts and make Cortana more competitive.
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.
Microsoft made headlines several weeks ago when it beat out Amazon for a lucrative Pentagon contract worth some $10 billion. Now, according to ABC News, Amazon is protesting the decision, saying there was “unmistakable bias” in the selection process.
Oracle and IBM were both eliminated during an earlier phase of the process, leaving only Microsoft and Amazon. Amazon was widely considered to be the front-runner to receive the Pentagon contract, in large part because of how far ahead it is in the overall cloud market. After President Trump, as well as its rivals, criticized Amazon, Microsoft won the bid.
In response, Amazon has filed a protest with the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, citing what it described as “clear deficiencies, errors, and unmistakable bias.” By filing with the Court of Federal Claims, Amazon will have access to government documents in an effort to make its case.
Whether Amazon will be able to change the outcome of the decision remains to be seen, although experts are not optimistic. While Amazon has nothing to lose by challenging the results, and President Trumps comments have been labeled “inappropriate and improvident,” experts believe it will be difficult to make a case that the White House applied enough pressure to sway the final outcome.
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.”
Once the darling of the U.S. economy, big tech has increasingly come under scrutiny, with some politicians—most notably Senator Elizabeth Warren—even calling for the breakup of big tech companies.
According to a report by Business Insider, EU Commissioner Margrethe Vestager doesn’t share that opinion. Commissioner Vestager has made a name for herself going after big tech companies like Google, Amazon and Apple, in some cases imposing record fines. In spite of the reputation she’s built, Commissioner Vestager believes breaking up big tech will only result in more problems.
“From a competition point of view, you would have to do something that breaking up the company was the only solution to the illegal behavior, to the damage,” Vestager said. “And we don’t have that kind of case right now. We don’t have a problem that big where breaking up could be the solution.”
Instead, Vestager believes big tech companies—especially those that dominate a particular segment—should be held to a higher standard.
“When you get that big, you get a special responsibility, because you are the de factor the ruler in the sector that you own.”
While scrutiny and fines are certainly not welcome, it’s safe to say most tech companies would welcome Vestager’s approach, especially when compared with the possibility of a breakup.
At its Ignite 2019 conference, Microsoft announced the release of Azure Arc, a tool designed to allow developers to deploy Azure programs to Amazon and Google clouds.
Since Satya Nadella took over as CEO in 2014, Microsoft has taken a completely different approach to competitors. Rather than viewing other companies as the enemy and doing everything possible to keep users locked into the Windows ecosystem, the company has focused on making the best software possible and deploying it as widely as possible.
This approach has led to a renewed focus on Office for the Mac, industry-leading versions of the productivity suite for iOS and Android, not to mention the company reaching out to Linux developers for help in porting Edge. Now, as the cloud wars heat up, it appears Microsoft is taking that same all-embracing approach to competing cloud platforms. Azure Arc will not only help companies deploy their Azure programs, but also help them manage them regardless of where they are run from.
“Azure Arc enables Azure services anywhere and extends Azure management to any infrastructure for unified management, governance and control across clouds, datacenters and edge. They look and feel just like Azure resources, and they provide unified auditing, compliance, and role-based access control across multiple environments and at scale.
“As a result, customers can modernize any infrastructure with cloud management and security protection. With cloud practices that work anywhere, Microsoft is delivering these resources, from cloud to datacenter to edge, and enabling cloud security anywhere.
“Millions of Azure resources are managed, governed, and secured daily by thousands of customers. With Azure Arc, customers can now take advantage of Azure’s robust cloud management experience for their own servers (Linux and Windows Server) and Kubernetes clusters by extending Azure management across environments. Customers can seamlessly inventory, organize, and govern their own resources at-scale through a consistent and unified experience through the Azure Portal.”
On the heels of news that Microsoft beat out Amazon for a lucrative defense contract, the Azure Arc announcement is further evidence the company is firing on all cylinders in its execution of Nadella’s strategy.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced it is planning on opening data centers in Spain, making it AWS’ seventh infrastructure region in Europe.
Having a local infrastructure region will be a boon to Spanish companies, giving them the ability to address data residency issues and keep complete control over sensitive data. Similarly, the new data centers will provide customers creating applications that comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) another EU-based, secure infrastructure region.
“Cloud computing is already powering innovation within businesses, educational institutions, public administrations, and government agencies across Spain, and with this AWS infrastructure region, we look forward to helping accelerate this transformation,” said Peter DeSantis, Vice President of Global Infrastructure and Customer Support, Amazon Web Services. “Opening an AWS Region in Spain will drive more technology jobs and businesses, boosting the local economy, while enabling organizations across all industries to lower costs, increase security, and improve agility. We’re excited to have AWS contribute to the future growth of Spain.”
The announcement follows years of AWS investing in Spain, with their first in-country presence dating back to 2012. In the intervening years, AWS has continued to build its presence in the country, reflecting the growth it has experienced in the region.
The announcement was welcomed as great news for the country by Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez. “This investment from AWS will allow Spain to fully adapt to the digital transformation and develop as an international center of innovation and technology. Cloud computing, in addition to promoting technological progress in the private sector, will enable the Public Administration to improve the services it provides to citizens. A secure cloud is an essential tool for the development of our economy, as well as for the generation of jobs in our country. We highly value AWS’s commitment to the technological development of Spain and the upskilling of our citizens.”
Microsoft pulled off an upset, beating Amazon for a defense contract valued as high as $10 billion.
According to a statement by the U.S. Department of Defense, Microsoft emerged the winner of the JEDI Cloud contract. The win is a major step in Microsoft’s attempts to take on Amazon, widely regarded as the industry leader. It’s also a testament to how far the Azure platform has matured to become a viable competitor to AWS.
“The JEDI Cloud contract will provide enterprise level, commercial Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) to support Department of Defense business and mission operations. Work performance will take place at the awardee’s place of performance. Fiscal 2020 operations and maintenance funds in the amount of $1,000,000 are being obligated on a task order against this award to cover the minimum guarantee. The expected completion date is Oct. 24, 2029, if all options are exercised.”
Since CEO Satya Nadella took the reins from Steve Ballmer, he has increased the company’s focus on cloud computing and cross-platform interoperability, a strategy that has paid off as Microsoft navigates a more mobile, cloud-based industry. These kind of gains will likely lead more companies to take note of Microsoft’s offerings, further putting pressure on Amazon.
Business Insider is reporting that Google has hired Javier Soltero, a former head of strategy for Microsoft Office. Soltero had left Microsoft in late 2018 amid internal reorganization.
In his new role with Google, Soltero will take over as Vice President of G Suite. Google’s suite of programs includes Gmail, Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides, Google Drive and more. The company has made inroads in the productivity market dominated by Microsoft. While G Suite is available for free, a more robust version is offered to business customers for a monthly subscription. As of Q4 2018, Google reported having some five million paying G Suite customers.
Soltero brings much to the table for Google. After several years at VMware, he joined Microsoft when the company bought his startup Acompli, turning it into Outlook Mobile. He spent his first year at Microsoft as Corporate Vice President of Outlook, followed by two years as Corporate Vice President of the Office Product Group. His final role was as Corporate Vice President of Cortana.
Google has been hiring a string of executives as it tries to compete with Microsoft and Amazon in the cloud industry. At Google, Soltero will report directly to Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian.
Few technologies are more controversial and divisive as facial recognition. Customers have come to rely on it to log into their phones and tablets, police and government agencies are increasingly using it to identify suspects and privacy advocates decry it as an unconstitutional invasion of people’s rights.
Amazon has established itself as a leader in the field of facial recognition with its Rekognition software. While the software is widely used by police, as well as government agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), it has not escaped controversy. The ACLU has twice used Rekognition on photos of politicians, each time with dozens of false matches. In both instances, however, Amazon responded by pointing out that the ACLU left the confidence setting at the default 80 percent threshold, instead of the 99 percent threshold Amazon recommends for law enforcement.
Nonetheless, Amazon can see the writing on the wall and knows it’s only a matter of time before facial recognition is regulated. Needless to say, it’s in Amazon’s best interests for those regulations to favor companies who profit off of the technology. To that end, Vox is reporting that Amazon is drafting laws to regulate facial recognition, which they plan on pitching to lawmakers.
According to Vox, CEO Jeff Bezos told reporters that the company’s “public policy team is actually working on facial recognition regulations; it makes a lot of sense to regulate that.
“It’s a perfect example of something that has really positive uses, so you don’t want to put the brakes on it. But, at the same time, there’s also potential for abuses of that kind of technology, so you do want regulations. It’s a classic dual-use kind of technology.”
While skeptics are understandably concerned that Amazon’s foray into legislation may do little to nothing to protect the rights of everyday citizens, only time will tell if Amazon’s efforts are sincere or just another step toward a more Orwellian outcome.
