The convergence of public cloud providers and artificial intelligence (AI) innovation is responsible for the development of powerful new applications and services. Some of these products, such as personal assistants Siri or Alexa, are designed to be used by individuals to streamline daily activities. They demonstrate some of the power inherent in AI in apps backed by the big data resources available in the cloud.

More complex AI solutions are appropriate for use by data-driven businesses intent on increasing productivity and thriving in a competitive market. Several factors make the cloud a logical choice for the development and implementation of these products and services. These factors are driving growth for both cloud and AI solutions. 

• Availability of affordable hardware resources - Cloud service providers (CSPs) have the storage, compute, and network capacity required by data-intensive AI applications. Training machine learning systems requires extensive resources not available at most companies. An example is the use of the Graphical Processing Units (GPUs) which are necessary for deep learning solutions. These expensive items may be difficult to justify in the IT budgets of many businesses that can benefit from machine learning solutions.  

• Scaleability - The availability of virtually unlimited resources without capital expenditures is appealing to businesses interested in taking advantage of AI. Companies can test solutions on a limited basis and rapidly scale them up after determining if they address business objectives. Cloud vendors provide fertile ground for developing business-oriented AI applications. 

• Experienced technical resources - Many companies lack the in-house technical expertise to implement productive AI systems. Using the CSP’s personnel enables companies of any size to investigate the benefits of AI for their business.  

AI as a Service (AIaaS)

Cloud providers are interested in technical innovation as well as increasing their profitability. Vendors have flourished by offering customer-tailored solutions that effectively address business issues. AI as a Service (AIaaS) is one way CSPs are bringing the power of AI to anyone. 

Following are a few AIaaS offerings currently available from major cloud providers. 

• Google Cloud Machine Learning offers a variety of AI solutions designed to enable customers to quickly build, deploy, and scale effective models. The company recently introduce Vertex AI which offers a unified machine learning platform that includes all the tools organizations needed to develop productive applications. 

• Microsoft Cognitive Services provides users with customizable, pre-trained models that put AI within reach of every developer and data scientist. Advanced decision-making capabilities can be embedded in customer applications via an API call. 

• Amazon Machine Learning provides the support necessary for small businesses to reap the benefits of machine learning solutions. Industry-specific solutions are available to personalize and enhance the customer experience. 

• Alibaba’s Machine Learning Platform for AI makes AI accessible to any customer by providing end-to-end machine learning services. Some uses of the platform include the ability to perform news classification, product recommendation, and financial risk management.  

The emergence of AIaaS allows virtually any organization to reap the benefits of AI, democratizing the technology and paving the way for accelerated innovation. As more users become familiar with the potential of AI, we can expect a steady flow of new products and services built around machine learning and artificial intelligence. 

Disaster recovery (DR) is an essential activity necessary to protect the viability of modern information technology (IT) environments. Organizations need to have verifiable plans for addressing sudden outages so they can quickly restore and maintain access to business-critical systems. Failure to conduct proper disaster recovery planning and testing puts a company at significant and unnecessary risk.

In the IT world, disasters are caused by a variety of natural and manmade factors. Extreme weather events, floods, fires, and ransomware attacks are a few of the most likely reasons a company will be forced to implement its disaster recovery plan. Taking advantage of the characteristics of cloud computing enables organizations to better protect themselves from any kind of disaster.  

Benefits of Cloud-Based Disaster Recovery 

A cloud-based disaster recovery strategy provides customers with substantial benefits in comparison to more traditional plans that recover systems to an alternate on-premises location. These advantages can be the differentiating factors in a business’s ability to successfully recover in the wake of a disaster.  

Availability

One of the overriding benefits of the cloud is its universal availability. All that is needed to access cloud resources is an Internet connection. This fact enables companies to recover their systems anywhere in the world and is a huge advantage over relying on a specific terrestrial data center.  

Extreme weather events and sophisticated ransomware attacks can make it impossible to recover to the physical data center outlined in a traditional DR plan. Companies may have to take radical steps and use cloud resources to recover to a physically distant location or virtual environment. 

Scalability

The ability to scale resources up and down to address fluctuating business requirements is a major advantage of cloud computing. Companies can tailor their cloud infrastructure and services to reflect current needs without over or under-provisioning expensive solutions. Extending this mindset to encompass disaster recovery affords organizations with increased protection and streamlined restoration procedures.  

As primary cloud resources are scaled up or down, the changes can easily be reflected in the disaster recovery plans. When the inevitable disaster hits, the DR plan can be executed with confidence that all critical systems are covered.  

Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) 

Many cloud providers offer disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) as part of their solution portfolio. DRaaS involves the replication and hosting of physical or virtual servers by a third-party cloud provider. These systems are available for failover if a business is impacted by a disaster.  

Three DRaaS models enable customers to select the right amount of assistance from the provider. 

• Self-service DRaaS - In this model, the customer is responsible for planning, testing, and managing disaster recovery. The vendor provides remotely located software and hardware resources for the customer’s use. 

• Assisted DRaaS - The customer and provider share responsibility for the recovery in this model. This allows the customer to control the recovery of custom applications that may be difficult for the provider to perform. 

• Managed DRaaS - Customers allow third-party providers to assume full responsibility for disaster recovery in this model. This is a good solution for organizations that lack the in-house technical resources required to perform a recovery. 

The availability of DRaaS solutions makes it possible for businesses of any size to protect their computing environment. There’s no longer any excuse for getting caught unprepared when disaster strikes. 

Infection with ransomware is a problem that can impact any type of computing environment. With more companies opting to house major infrastructure components in the cloud, protecting these resources from infection with ransomware has become a high priority for IT security teams. 

The malicious actors behind ransomware have refined their methods to concentrate on high-value systems when choosing a victim. Attacks are often customized in an attempt to increase the chance of success. Phishing emails, one of the most common methods of injecting ransomware into an environment, are tailored to appeal to the prospective victim and tempt them into clicking on an infected link.  

 Cloud resources are an attractive target for ransomware gangs for several reasons. 

• The tremendous volume of information stored in the cloud means there is the potential to hold valuable data for ransom, forcing the victim to pay.
• The business-critical nature of many cloud services means that companies cannot afford to be without them for an extended amount of time.
• Cloud resources are often shared by clients, making it possible to carry out attacks on multiple entities with a single incursion. 

Strengthening Defenses Against Ransomware

Major cloud providers are providing resources to help their customers avoid the perils of a ransomware attack. An example is a recent security blog post by Amazon Web Services (AWS) that offers the following suggestions for protecting data in the cloud. 

• Ensure you can recover data and applications promptly. This entails a robust backup strategy and a vetted and tested disaster recovery plan. Cloud providers have multiple backup and disaster recovery solutions available that can be customized to meet the business objectives of any company. 

• Encrypt data to protect it in the event that a company is successfully attacked with ransomware. In addition to holding data for ransom, the malicious actors often threaten to exfiltrate sensitive data and release it on the web. If the data is encrypted, this tactic will not work, as no usable information will be available to be released by the cybercriminals. 

• Automate the installation of critical security patches to avoid gaps that can be utilized to gain access to enterprise systems. It may not be enough to simply install patches on a weekly or monthly schedule. Cybercriminals can act quickly when a common vulnerability exposure (CVE) is announced and take advantage of any delay in addressing the issues with the appropriate patches.  

• Implement a strong security standard that includes industry best practices like enforcing least privilege policies regarding access to enterprise data. This will minimize the potential damage caused by an employee who gets tricked by a phishing email. 

• Monitor your environment and automate responses to discovered issues. For instance, failed backup jobs need to be identified and rerun to provide the necessary protection in case systems are compromised. The environment should also be monitored for any suspicious activity that may indicate an intrusion has already occurred. 

It is virtually impossible to eliminate the possibility of a ransomware attack on cloud resources. Fortunately, with the right defensive strategy in place, the damage can be minimized. Take advantage of the resources available from your provider which are designed to help you protect your valuable data in the cloud.

Cloud computing is growing exponentially. It continues to get into many industries without signs of slowing down. With the pandemic, the global public cloud infrastructure has grown even faster than initially expected. As predicted by Forrester research, the global COVID-19 pandemic has led to increased uptake of cloud computing by about 35% in 2021 alone. Companies are seeking to invest more in this new paradigm in 2021 and beyond. Here are some cloud computing trends you should expect in 2021.

1. Edge computing will continue gaining momentum

Edge computing is indeed the new cloud, and as we advance, it will become increasingly popular with the rising demand for decentralization. It allows cloud users to store data and perform computing closer to where it is generated and used, unlike the centralized approach where data is store far away. This new approach reduces latency and enables faster responsiveness and optimization of bandwidth. In 2021, we will see more adoption of edge computing to enable faster storage and retrieval. We have already seen effort being made by large edge computing vendors like IBM and Intel to double down deployable cloud-like edge solutions. This is a sign of better things to come.

2. Artificial intelligence

AI is fast becoming an important part of cloud computing and 2021 is likely to see this technology merged with cloud services more than before. Organizations will be looking for a strong AI engineering strategy to ensure their projects remain relevant. According to Gartner, the lack of the right investment in AI projects will lead to performance, scalability, and reliability issues. However, with the right cloud technologies such as containers, Kubernetes and ML frameworks, organizations will establish responsible DevOps, DataOps and ModelOps.

3. Serverless cloud is the new marvel

2021 will see increased adoption of serverless computing. According to a 2020 State of the Cloud report by Flexera, serverless is one of the fastest-growing platform-as-a-service (PaaS) cloud services. This paradigm will help developers code freely while allowing infrastructure management to be performed online by the PaaS infrastructure provider. The market is expected to grow by over 25% between now and 2026. The ease with which the serverless architecture allows organizations to come up with and deploy applications within a short time is the main reason behind its increased adoption. Startups that have little resources will find this very attractive.

4. Containerization

This is another area that is growing rapidly. Containers are simply software packages with code and the necessary components that are needed to run an application. Applications in containers can run anywhere, whether in a private data center, personal computer, or cloud. A report by Gartner projects that more than 75% of all big organizations will be running containerized applications by 2022, giving a glimpse of how fast this trend is being adopted. The popularity of containerization has been made possible by its potential to allow more rapid delivery, agility, easy life-cycle management and scalability, all of which are desired by organizations that want better service delivery. 

5. Many organizations will deploy Multi-cloud

We cannot end the list of trends without talking about multi-cloud. As private clouds continue coming up, 2021 is a year we should expect more of it than ever. Many organizations will deploy a combination of on-premise, public and private clouds as they look for better ways of becoming efficient due to the disruptions caused by the pandemic. Due to the flexibility and improved disaster recovery that this combination promises, you should expect investment in multi-cloud to reach a new high this year.

Cloud migration is an important activity, which entails moving things from the on-premises to the cloud. It may also refer to moving from one cloud to the other and can involve moving all or just a few assets. Although these are the main activities in cloud migration, it sometimes consists of many other things. Regardless of the things involved in cloud migration, it requires an in-depth understanding and strategy to be done successfully. Here are some strategies that you may use in your cloud migration.

1. Re-hosting

As implied by the name, re-hosting entails lifting the stack and moving it from the on-premises hosting to the cloud. Also called lift and shift, this approach is cheap and requires minor refactoring compared to other approaches. It involves transporting the exact copy of the current hosting environment without making changes for a fast return on investment. This strategy is suitable for companies that have conservative culture or those that have no long-term strategy to harness the advanced cloud capabilities. This approach, however, has some downsides. One of these disadvantages is that you can miss out on the benefits because lifting and shifting require bare minimum changes.

2. Replatforming

Unlike re-hosting, re-platforming involves making some adjustments that optimize the cloud. The core architecture in this strategy, however, remains the same. This is a good strategy for conservative organizations that require building trust in the cloud while at the same time achieving benefits such as increased performance. It is also called move-and-improve because it involves moving the stack and making some updates to the application. An example is introducing scaling or automation without overhauling the whole thing. This strategy is a superior option to re-hosting.

3. Repurchasing

This strategy involves moving applications to a new cloud-native product. In most cases, it entails moving applications to a SaaS platform, such as moving a CRM to Salesforce. The challenge that this approach has is losing the familiarity of the existing code and the need to train the team on the new platform. Even though it entails the movement of applications to a new cloud, it can be cost-effective in the end if you are moving from a highly customized legacy system.

4. Refactoring

Also called rearchitecting, this strategy means rebuilding applications from scratch. This strategy is often used when there is a need for a business to leverage cloud capabilities that are not available in the current environment. It is an expensive option but is also compatible with future versions. This approach requires an investment in skills development and time, but its benefits after proper application are unique.

5. Retiring

Retiring involves turning applications off after they are no longer needed. This is done after assessing the portfolio of applications for cloud readiness, after which the applications that are no longer needed are turned off. This is often done to cut costs and boost the case for the need to migrate applications.

6. Retaining

For some organizations, adopting the cloud makes no sense. This is mostly due to compliance challenges that force them to keep data on-premises. Another reason can be a lack of preparedness to prioritize an app that was recently upgraded. In such instances, the existing storage can be retained and cloud computing revisited at a later date. Migration is only good if it makes sense to your organization.

At a basic level, migrating to the cloud has various advantages. Some of the key reasons you might benefit from include decreased hosting costs, agility, improved disaster recovery, and decreased footprint. Regardless of the benefits, you are looking to attain, implement the right cloud adoption strategy that suits you.

COVID-19 has changed how we do business and the way consumers approach the market. The burden is increasingly on business leaders to adjust to the demands of the market and consumer behavior. How? Besides embracing cloud computing, it’s important to question whether things are actually working - if your tools and processes align with delivering for the customer.

Be an Iconoclast

Technology is only one component of business growth. Attitude is everything. We need to keep leveling up our value to the customer by enhancing how we deliver brand values. We do this by continually seeking to improve the organization. This involves assessing what’s actually working, what tech is effective, or at least what can improve key processes.

COVID-19, more than any other event, forced us to question how we work. It’s made us re-evaluate the framework for success, and how we accomplish our goals. Success during the pandemic required leaders to adopt an iconoclast mindset to adapt and succeed. Despite COVID-19 causing standstills and even drops in sales or activity in some industries, business kept moving.

Organizations pivoted their strategies and harnessed the could to remain active and even prosper during the pandemic. They were iconoclasts because they had to break traditions and even alter the way they functioned or were supposed to run their business. An iconoclast is an individual who challenges the prescribed way of doing things, designs a better way, and executes a plan for change. When it comes to harnessing the best technology to speedtrack your growth past COVID-19, these are critical steps.

Question Your Tech

Are your current tools really doing what you need them to do? Or are you struggling to manage too many apps?  Is your automation sufficient or is your team struggling to make deadlines and must reconcile data more than interact with customers? These are all essential questions to ask about your IT tools. Assess what’s working, what isn’t, and what you need. This is how you can begin to fill the technology gap. This is done by using reliable technology and a tailored approach to fulfill business objectives. You can’t just look for an immediate fix, but an investment for your future. Adaptability is the way of the future, so this must be a core staple in your IT.

Define Your Digital Workplace

The idea of ‘an app for that’ just doesn’t cut it anymore - despite it being a long-standing accepted idea. There are too many! Lack of flexibility and customization features will inhibit your ability to adapt to changes and new business goals. Consider how technology will scale and enable you to build on top of it as you pivot and grow.

This is why IT platforms are a stronger investment than one-off applications. IT platforms provide high-level flexibility and a host of other interconnected solutions equipped to work together to consolidate data and increase efficiency. This also eliminates the problems and costs of IT integration. Quality over quantity, remains a strong virtue in the iconoclast mindset.

Define and Execute Your Solution

Cloud computing technology on its own is not the answer. Business leaders must take ownership of said technology and use it to create their own solutions. Being an iconoclast doesn’t just mean questioning how things are working or whether they’re working. You must engineer your own means of success. When it comes to business tools, prioritize flexibility, consolidation, and scalability. If the tech is sufficient with these, you can pivot and adjust however you need.

Tony Zorc is an Iconoclast, Founder and CEO of Accounting Seed, technology entrepreneur, ForbesBooks author, and CPA for 20+ years. He embodies iconoclasm, the idea of challenging the prescribed way of doing things and coming up with a better, more innovative solution. Accounting Seed – the world’s first accounting platform – is disrupting the cloud accounting industry and has over one thousand customers and fourteen thousand users, and has sustained double digit growth for over ten consecutive years. A father, leader, person of faith, and avid CrossFitter, Tony brings a rare mix of personal and professional experience to the table and seeks to inspire other leaders to create innovation in places where innovation is scarce. Tony has a degree in accounting from Hope College. His new book, Iconoclasm: A Survival Guide in the Post-Pandemic Economy, is available on Amazon, and through all major booksellers.

You can connect with Tony via TonyZorc.com, or on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

As the internet of things (IoT) and smart home devices become increasingly popular, the number of security issues and attacks on IoT devices are also on the rise. Over the recent years, there are many incidences involving consumer IoT devices that have seen malicious actors gaining access to home networks by taking advantage of vulnerabilities in devices. According to analysts, IoT devices will be over 20 billion by 2025. That is an awful lot of devices. This means that these devices will be everywhere around us. With this large number of devices, the security incidences will be high. Here are a few tips that will help you keep your IoT connections safe.

• Be careful of on devices you buy

Although smart devices are helpful, they collect large amounts of personal data. Before purchasing any smart device, learn many things about the device, including what type of data it collects, how the data is stored and protected, and who it is shared with. Also, understand what it will be used for and if it is shared with a third party or parties. In short, do thorough research before buying devices to see the protections you have and possible data breaches.

• Understand your data and apply protection measures

According to Zscaler, 91.5% of transactional data from IoT devices is plaintext. This means it is easy for hackers to intercept, read and manipulate data and send it back without you even noticing it. As such, you must protect the physical devices that collect, store, and process data and protect data at rest, in transit, or in use across the IoT ecosystem. The parties involved in the value chain must ensure data is safe and cannot be manipulated to avoid the possibility of being hacked. The process involves understanding the data, encrypting it, and tracking and tracing data to protect networks and identify changes.

• Ensure you have the latest firmware

Firmware updates are an important aspect of the security of any system. For the IoT devices, make sure you have the latest security patches to reduce the chances of attackers breaching the systems successfully. Keep your firmware fully updated by making sure you are aware of new updates and updating it as soon as possible. Updates will fix vulnerabilities as they emerge. Therefore, IoT devices and your home routers need to be regularly updated. Wherever possible, automate updates or set a schedule such as every three months or so.

• Take a holistic security approach

To secure IoT solutions, companies must have a holistic approach to security which entails the technologies, people, and processes. Begin by considering some key approaches, including end-to-end ecosystem security and aligning the organization to IoT security. The security must be managed from device to end-user service (horizontally) or hardware to applications (vertically). Also, the IoT ecosystem, which is made up of manufacturers, app developers, network service providers, and end-users, must be adequately managed and involved in securing IoT devices.

• Avoid device defaults

Just like the routers and other devices, do not use a device with its default settings. Hackers know these defaults and easily access your devices if it is not reconfigured with strong security measures. The default settings in IoT devices and networks make you a soft target for malicious individuals. Therefore, change the defaults as soon as you purchase a smart device to reduce the risk.

To sum it up, if you are dealing with sensitive data, you might need to take more stringent measures. Have a look at the IoT devices you are considering, the security protocols they support, and the ease of securing them. One thing that you should keep in mind is that you should never assume that you are safe.

Digital technologies have played a crucial role in keeping things working during the COVID-19 pandemic. It has ensured the economy and society are running through remote working and contactless payment while at the same time supporting communication and ecommerce. In 2020 alone, many businesses suffered because most of them were not prepared to handle a massive disruption occasioned by the coronavirus. However, many responded by accelerating digital transformation and ensuring operations are running and production ongoing thanks to remote work and online collaboration tools.  

Cloud computing was a true game-changer during the pandemic. It enabled ecommerce and collaboration to thrive. The cloud-based platforms allowed billions of ecommerce purchases and teleconferences each day to be held. This has been a critical element that has fueled the survival of many businesses.

According to research by Global Data, more than 80 percent of business executives say that cloud computing and networks are crucial in aiding businesses to withstand the effects of the pandemic. For those in retail, for example, the cloud, whose adoption accelerated during the pandemic, has helped them bring together customers and their businesses when no in-store purchases were allowed. According to Deloitte, the online sales of grocery rose by 233 percent during the pandemic in March 2020 compared to back to the same month in 2019.

The need to respond to the coronavirus pandemic with agility has renewed the emphasis on adopting cloud-based applications. These applications will support modern technologies such as robotics, big data, and digital channels of distribution. It will also support the increased adoption of digitization post-pandemic. Expect crucial aspects of workplaces such as communications and core business applications to be moved to the cloud to help improve availability, reliability, and resilience, all of which are critical in keeping operations running in changing times post-COVID. With the computational needs expected to fluctuate from one time to another, the cloud will immediately scale to adjust to the increase or reduction in business requirements every day, which will minimize losses.

For healthcare, cloud computing and AI have become famous in the past two years in research and in helping medical professionals and researchers fight the pandemic. Researchers have resorted to cloud computing-based AI technologies to analyze vaccines and find potential cures for the disease. In the US, Europe, and Asia, these efforts have succeeded in shortening the vaccine development process. This has saved millions of dollars in time that would have been wasted and investments that would have been used in research. The advanced communication technologies will help patients to access the healthcare cloud anytime, regardless of the location. In short, cloud computing is helping build value-driven and patient-centric care.

The transport industry is also benefiting immensely from cloud computing. The rise of connected cars or buses requires massive storage of data. This means that things such as traffic management will depend on the cloud, which would have been difficult for the traditional methods to solve. The cloud-based traffic management systems will ease the coordination of traffic signals and tracking of emergency traffic cases.

Besides helping in medical, transport, and commerce, cloud computing will be beneficial for small and medium-sized businesses. It promotes operational efficiency, improves innovation, and expands financing and markets. Digital transformation is helping SMEs bring significant benefits, which are critical for local economic development.

After the pandemic, businesses will have to strictly focus on digitizing their operations because that is the right thing to do in this era. Technologies such as cloud computing will help companies become independent, reduce cost of operations, and ensure intelligent and effective service delivery.

According to Yahoo Finance, Canada’s banks are making the migration to the cloud.

Canada's big banks are undergoing a migration. Faced with rising competition from startups, higher expectations from consumers and the increased digital demands of COVID-19, experts say banks are speeding up a monumental shift of operations to the cloud from legacy computer systems.

Read the article Yahoo Finance

Upbound gets 60$ million in funding for its multi-cloud management tool, reports TechCrunch.

Companies today want to avoid the lock-in they faced in the past with a single vendor. As a result, they are hedging their bets with a multi-cloud strategy, but this creates a new problem around finding a single tool for managing it all. 

Read the article TechCrunch

According to Harvard Business Review, the cloud is changing research and development. 

While the cloud is now ubiquitous in enterprise computing, there is one area where the shift to cloud has only just quietly begun: supercomputing.

Read the article Harvard Business Review

The Swedish software company Zebware and Wasabi Technologies, the hot cloud storage company, join forces to enable low-cost, scalable, and ultra-performant cloud-based data lakes.    

Zebware’s cloud data memory bridge, ZebClient, delivers an outstanding boost to cloud data access speeds. ZebClient uniquely disaggregates storage from compute and maximizes the utilization of local persistent memory to provide an exceptional performance where up to 500 times faster access speeds were demonstrated in tests performed at Intel’s 5G Innovation Center in Stockholm, Sweden.

Wasabi provides low-cost, fast, and reliable cloud storage on- demand. Its high-performance storage is 80% less expensive than traditional cloud providers with no fees for egress or API requests. The combination of ZebClient and Wasabi cloud storage is a perfect match for data lakes as data access speeds, availability and scalability are all significantly accelerated.              

With its proprietary erasure code at its core, ZebClient increases the speed of reads and writes by maximizing and optimizing the utilization of PMEM/NVMe/SSD. The built-in tiering algorithms safeguards the performance. ZebClient also provides a unified access for object and file data and is available for deployments on bare metal, hypervisors, Docker and in a beta version for Kubernetes. For businesses, this enables placing data including data used for advanced operations, such as AI, ML and Analytics applications in the cloud and maximizing the potential of a hybrid strategy – maintaining high performance at a lower cost, and with the unlimited scalability the cloud offers.         

“Applications being served data via ZebClient can operate as if the cloud data were present on-prem,” said Richard Czech, VP of EMEA Sales for Wasabi. “The joint ZebClient and Wasabi solution truly provides the best of the two worlds of on-prem and cloud to secure a high-performance, cost-efficient, durable and scalable IT infrastructure solution.”

“Traditionally, boosting performance is a matter of chasing and removing bottlenecks in the infrastructure. Our product eliminates the need for this and what ZebClient also does is to facilitate a new type of data management architecture resulting in radically improved performance, cost cuts, flexibility and scalability”, says Zebware CEO Marie Johansson.                         

“We see Wasabi as a perfect match for us, with a pioneering offering that is superbly created to capture the opportunities that our joint ultrahigh performance hybrid-cloud solutions offer. We look forward to opening the ability to use the low-cost and durable cloud storage to serve data to advanced applications on-prem. Together, we can make an even greater difference in boosting the adoption of cloud-based data lakes, concludes Marie Johansson.                                               

ZebClient is available for download and is offered on a subscription basis where the price is based on the actual usage of the product.              

The big cloud providers all want your business and are constantly rolling out new offerings designed to attract and retain customers. In this article, we are going to look at some of the flagship products and services available from the largest public cloud vendors ranked by revenue in mid-2021 as determined by Statista. 

Microsoft Azure

Azure is the leading cloud vendor based on revenue and offers a wide variety of products and services addressing the needs of small, medium, and large businesses. The company has capitalized on the installed Windows operating system customer base and prioritizes integration with legacy systems.  

The combination of legacy support and cutting-edge tech logic make Azure a viable choice for enterprises migrating workloads to the cloud or operating hybrid environments. Cloud-managed instances of the popular SQL Server relational database provide just one example of the specific solutions available from Azure.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Amazon may lack the enterprise relationship onramp enjoyed by Azure but makes up for it with its constant innovation and quality of its products and services. Some of its distinctive offerings include its analytics and data lakes, machine learning, and extensive storage options for everything from disaster recovery to long-term archiving.  

Amazon offers free trials of many solutions such as Amazon Lightsail, used to launch and manage virtual private servers, Amazon EC2, providing virtual cloud servers, and SageMaker, to build and train machine learning models. AWS is also the only major cloud provider to offer macOS virtual server support. 

IBM Cloud

The offerings of the IBM cloud are tailored to meet the needs of the company’s large and medium-sized enterprise clients. IBM concentrates on PaaS and IaaS solutions. Acquiring Red Hat in 2019 demonstrates a commitment to an open and hybrid approach to cloud infrastructure. 

IBM’s cloud offers extensive analytics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning solutions that make use of the company’s Watson supercomputer.  As hybrid environments continue to propagate throughout the IT world, IBM’s migration and management tools provide customers with a viable path when moving from on-premises data centers to the cloud.   

Salesforce

Some readers may be surprised at Salesforce’s inclusion in the top cloud vendors, but the company’s array of SaaS solutions is impressive. From its beginnings as primarily a customer relationship management (CRM) solution, Salesforce has expanded its offerings to encompass many cloud-based enterprise software solutions.  

Its Slack-first Customer 360 combines sales, service, marketing, commerce, IT, and analytics solutions to provide small and large businesses with an innovative way to work while employing digital workflows. Salesforce concentrates on SaaS offerings and is not the right cloud vendor if you are looking for cloud storage or infrastructure solutions.  

Google Cloud Platform

Google’s cloud strategy strongly supports cloud-native solutions based on open source and open systems. This makes it attractive to companies looking to add specific capabilities to multi-cloud environments. Google offers machine learning support with vision, speech, and natural language APIs. Google’s advanced technical capabilities make it a viable choice for solutions in the field of data analytics, AI, and machine learning. 

This is just a sampling of the incredible diversity of cloud offerings available to customers in 2021. Virtually any organization can find a solution that helps them meet their business objectives. It’s just a matter of selecting the right cloud.

According to the Register, Microsoft testified to a House Committee that it receives numerous secrecy orders per day.

The US House Committee on the Judiciary met on Wednesday to hear testimony on the government's practice of secretly subpoenaing cloud service providers, and Microsoft was happy to oblige.

Read the article on The Register

Organizations that choose to take advantage of public cloud services often find themselves with their resources spread amongst multiple vendors. This situation can arise for several reasons including:

• The evolution of enterprise workloads and the search for the most cost-effective solutions;
• Sprawl resulting from the ease with which departments can migrate systems;
• New offerings not available from current vendors;
• Simply being dissatisfied with a service or vendor and riding out the length of the contract.

Regardless of the underlying factors that led to a multi-vendor cloud environment, its management presents decision-makers and technical support staff with additional layers of complexity. Adopting a set of best practices will help organizations successfully implement a hybrid and multi-vendor computing environment. 

The following best practices will assist in the successful management of a multi-cloud environment.

• Use hybrid cloud management tools - Make use of hybrid cloud management tools to address multi-cloud environments. These tools can provide features such as self-service functionality for end users, service aggregation, deployment orchestration, and cost management. 

• Optimize costs across vendors - Companies should regularly review the comparative costs of their various vendors and be willing to migrate if a move is dictated by the economics. Cloud service brokers may be able to evaluate resources and suggest ways to optimize spending. 

• Focus on disaster recovery and reliability - Recovering a diverse multi-cloud environment in a disaster scenario demands a well-planned and documented strategy. Leveraging cloud vendors may be possible by backing up resources from one to the other. 

• Prioritize security and compliance - Ensuring data security and compliance is more challenging in multi-cloud implementations. Identity and access management (IAM) tools are necessary to ensure only authorized users can get to data resources. Customer and vendor roles regarding maintaining regulatory requirements need to be fully understood to avoid gaps and failed audits.  

Concentrating on these four areas will help organizations manage their multi-cloud environments.  

Using the Right Tools Matters

Commercial and open source software tools are available to assist in the management of multi-cloud environments. These applications focus on big picture items that affect the entire cloud infrastructure and help decision-makers identify the right solution from among the alternatives and keep the complex environment running smoothly. 

Morpheus is a commercial product providing integration and automation functionality across multiple clouds and on-premises environments. It is designed to facilitate compliance, cost optimization, and application modernization.  

OpenStack is an open source solution that offers a set of software components providing common services for cloud infrastructures. It enables large pools of cloud resources to be managed centrally through dashboards or APIs. 

On a more granular scale, dedicated tools can help minimize the strain on technical support teams when systems are spread across multiple on-premises and cloud platforms. A case in point is an application like Idera’s SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server. It employs a unified interface from which to monitor SQL Server performance on physical and virtual machines located on-premises or housed with major cloud vendors. 

The potential benefits of multi-cloud environments can outweigh the challenges of dealing with their complexity. Following some basic best practices and deploying the right tools will enable organizations to take advantage of the offerings of multiple cloud vendors without incurring any undue risks. 

Taking advantage of the benefits of cloud computing is not restricted to organizations operating in the private sector. In the United States, local, state, and federal governments make extensive use of public cloud resources. As is customary for all types of government contracts, some assessments and approvals must be obtained before the offerings of a cloud service provider (CSP) can be used by specific agencies. Government contracts can be very lucrative and service providers who want a piece of the business need to demonstrate that their products meet all requirements surrounding security and functionality.

All CSPs that wish to do business with the U.S. federal government need to be assessed and approved by the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP). The program’s goal is to protect the data of U.S. citizens when it is in the cloud and is the most rigorous security framework in use by the government. 

FedRAMP was created to address the problem of different and potentially conflicting requirements for each agency working with cloud providers. FedRAMP provides standard security baselines and processes that simplify the process of obtaining cloud services for both providers and government agencies. Once a CSP achieves FedRAMP approval for an offering, it is listed in the FedRAMP Marketplace to gain visibility across the government.

Navigating the FedRAMP Authorization Process

CSPs that want authorization to provide services to federal agencies need to follow a process comprised of three complementary phases.

In the pre-authorization phase, CSPs should complete FedRAMP training which includes modules that define the baseline security plan. Education can be accessed via online courses, webinars, or in-person training events. A request from the CSP will result in a consultation with government subject matter experts set up by the FedRAMP Program Management Office (PMO). To successfully get through this phase of the authorization process, a CSP needs to: 

• Document agency interest in their offering and establish partnerships with agency customers.
• Establish a partnership with an approved third-party assessment organization. 
• Ensure that the service implements the required security controls.

During authorization, a CSP is responsible for developing a package that includes the completion of the System Security Plan. The plan is then assessed by the third-party assessment organization and findings are presented to the CSP for remediation. When all risks have been successfully addressed, the CSP attains authorization and status as a FedRAMP authorized vendor.

In the post-authorization phase of the process, the CSP is required to provide monthly monitoring deliverables to the agency using its service. Failure to provide these documents can result in the service losing its authorization.

The purpose of FedRAMP is to eliminate any confusion regarding the ability of individual agencies to use cloud services. By publishing authorized services on the FedRAMP Marketplace, the authorization process only needs to be done once for each offering. Once approved, it can be used with confidence by any federal agency that wants to use the service. 

This appears to be an example of government working efficiently by reducing the duplicate work that would ensue from individual agencies or departments authorizing CSPs. In a subsequent post, we will take a closer look at the FedRAMP Marketplace and the agencies that use its authorized services.