industryterm:cloud services

Cloud cost hacking
▻https://hackernoon.com/cloud-cost-hacking-fc35fd19985d?source=rss----3a8144eabfe3---4

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One of the primary motivations for using the cloud are flexibility and cost saving. The problem is that without ongoing management and oversight, the cloud budget can grow to dimensions that eliminate profitability.A recent study on the cost of using the cloud has shown that companies pay an average of 35% more on cloud services than they really should. A total of over $60 billion is being wasted on cloud services that are not in use.In this article, I will share my conclusions from recent cloud cost optimization processes and review a number of ways and tools to significantly reduce cloud costs 30–50%, without sacrificing performance. The recommendations in this article are valid for all cloud vendors unless otherwise specified.Tools for managing cloud costsBefore you start saving it is (...)

#devops #google-cloud-platform #cloud-computing #azure #aws

#serverless Computing with #swift
▻https://hackernoon.com/serverless-computing-with-swift-4fa27ab36161?source=rss----3a8144eabfe3-

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Part 2: Apache OpenWhisk and IBM CloudYou’d Think I’d Worry About Baking Bread…Recall from Part 1 of this post — Serverless Computing with Swift: Swift and AWS Lambda — that I have decided to form a startup, It’s The Yeast I Can Do, an online bakery specializing in gourmet bread. My CLO (Chief Leavening Officer) is willing to go along with my prioritizing cloud infrastructure over actually baking product. But she’s concerned that we haven’t fully explored our options. In this article, I’ll re-write the code from Part 1 to run under Apache OpenWhisk.OpenWhisk is an open source platform for serverless computing. You can host it on your own servers, with or without containers (such as Docker). You can even run it on AWS. For this article, I will use IBM Cloud, the cloud services infrastructure formerly (...)

#cloud-computing #mobile-app-development #swift-programming

KEI letter to US DOJ, opposing IBM acquisition of Red Hat | Knowledge Ecology International
▻https://www.keionline.org/30093

Très intéressant sur les relations Logiciels libres et grandes entreprises. Utiliser le LL comme cheval de Troie pour renforcer des services spécifiques... brisant la confiance et la neutralité du libre. L’inverse de ce que décrit « Des routes et des ponts » sur les partenariats communs-privés.

The following was sent to US DOJ today, to express KEI’s opposition to the IBM acquisition of Red Hat.

13 March 2019

Bindi R. Bhagat
U.S. Department of Justice
Antitrust Division
Technology and Financial Services Section

Dear Ms. Bhagat,

Thank you for taking our call today, regarding the International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) effort to buy Red Hat, Inc. As discussed, Knowledge Ecology International (KEI) is opposed to IBM acquiring Red Hat.

At present, Red Hat controls the most important Linux distribution for Internet and cloud servers.

The important metrics in this area include, but are not limited to, the share of Internet traffic supported by Red Hat server installations, as well as the revenue that Red Hat realizes for maintaining and customizing Linux server software, compared to other Linux server distribution companies or organizations.

Red Hat is an important contributor to the Linux kernel and to the code that is used in many elements in the broader GNU/Linux platform of free software programs that are used by server platforms, including the many non-Red Hat Linux distributions.

IBM is proposing to pay a large premium for Red Hat. Prior to the acquisition offer, Red Hat was valued at approximately $20.5 billion. IBM is proposing to buy Red Hat for $34 billion, a premium of about 67 percent of the previous value.

IBM could have invested in Red Hat stock at a much lower price, if the objective was simply to share in the expected profits of Red Hat, continuing its current business offerings. What IBM gains from its acquisition of Red Hat is control, and the ability to shape the direction of its software development efforts, to favor IBM’s own cloud services.

Today Red Hat is considered a neutral partner for many companies offering or developing cloud services. If IBM acquires Red Hat, the trust in Red Hat will be eroded, and IBM will have powerful incentives to influence Red Hat’s software development efforts towards providing special functionality and benefits to IBM and the IBM cloud services, and even to degrade the functionality of services to companies that compete directly with IBM, or fail to buy services from IBM.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) should consider the impact of the merger on the incentives that Red Hat will have, post merger, to undermine competition and degrade the benefits of a more level playing field, for this critical Internet resource and platform.

Our concerns are shaped to some degree by the detrimental decision made by the DOJ in approving the Oracle acquisition of Sun Computer’s open source assets, including the MySQL database program. At the time, DOJ viewed the MySQL software as unimportant, because the revenues were small, relative to other database programs. Most users of MySQL did not pay any fees to use the software. Our organization, KEI, used MySQL to support our Joomla, Drupal and WordPress content management systems, and did not pay fees to Sun Computer, along with countless other businesses, non-profit organizations and individuals who also used the free version. We were concerned, at the time, that Oracle would degrade and slow the development of the capacities of MySQL, in order to protect Oracle’s very expensive proprietary database services. We believe that our concerns about Oracle have unfortunately been borne out, by the blunting of the rate of innovation and ambition for MySQL, the fact that Open Office (another program gained in the acquisition of Sun Computers) is no longer an important free software client for office productivity, and Oracle’s aggressive litigation over copyright and patent claims related to Java.

The DOJ might consider conditions on the merger that would provide greater assurances that Red Hat will not be used to create an unlevel playing field that favors IBM’s own cloud services. We are willing to suggest such conditions, relating to governance, licensing and other issues. For example, the DOJ could require IBM to show how it will ensure the continued policy of ensuring that Red Hat’s patents are only used for defensive purposes. Conditions on this issue should be durable, and avoid predictable loopholes.

IBM’s competitors and existing customers of Red Hat will have more informed suggestions as to specific conditions that would protect IBM’s competitors. But overall, the best decision would be to reject the merger, on the grounds that is is fundamentally designed to create an unlevel playing field.

Red Hat is not just another technology company. It is one of the main reasons the Internet functions as well as it does.

Sincerely,

James Love
Knowledge Ecology International (KEI)
1621 Connecticut Avenue, Suite 500
Washington, DC 20009
▻https://keionline.org

#Communs #Logiciels_libres #Red_Hat #IBM

Xbox Live is coming to iOS and Android, but not Switch (yet)
▻https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-03-14-xbox-live-is-coming-to-ios-and-android-but-not-switch-yet

GDC 2019: Microsoft reveals new cloud services and packages for games studios

#Development #GDC_2019

Your Kid Can Code a Fruit Detector with This MIT App Inventor #aws #ai Services Extension
▻https://hackernoon.com/your-kid-can-code-a-fruit-detector-with-this-mit-app-inventor-aws-ai-ser

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I am using Amazon Web Services (AWS) for more than 2 years. I have always been thinking about finding ways for enabling anyone to use AWS cloud services. Especially I am trying to encourage kids to learn simple AI services that AWS provides.This easy to use AI services includes a chat-bot generation service called Amazon Lex, a text-to-speech service called Amazon Polly, an image and video recognition service called Amazon Rekognition and a language translation service called Amazon Translate.Visual block based programming tools are an important tool for teaching coding to kids. One of the most popular block based programming environment is Scratch. Scratch is a joint project between Google and MIT Media Lab and based on a Google project called Blockly, declared in 2012.In my previous (...)

#amazon-translate #amazon-rekognition #amazon-polly

#analytics services. #serverless analytics
▻https://hackernoon.com/analytics-services-part-3-e3981e694f99?source=rss----3a8144eabfe3---4

Serverless and AWS Lambda how-toThis is the second part of our three-part story about analytical systems. Here you can find Part 1 which answers the questions about client analytics and Part 2 about classical server-side analytics implementation.In this part, we will continue telling you about server-side analytics, particularly about the implementation entirely based on cloud services. In the previous part we have listed the main steps of the implementation. These are:Data queryStream processingDatabaseAggregation serviceFront-endThe same applies here with the only difference in that each step is transferred to cloud services to the greatest extent possible. So, we will follow the main steps listed above in their original order trying to describe potential cloud option properties and (...)

#clickhouse #aws-kinesis #aws-lambda

The Great #serverless Cost Debate(Serverless! = Costless)
▻https://hackernoon.com/the-great-serverless-cost-debate-serverless-costless-1a0b6c07cacb?source

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Source: skitterphoto.comIf you’re worried about switching to a serverless framework being too expensive for your business, you’re not alone. Total spending on cloud services will top $411 billion by 2020. The good news is there are many ways to track and lower the costs of your serverless operation without slowing down your business.So what is AWS Lambda and how can it help your business? Find out more by reading these frequently asked questions.Working with AmazonAWS meaning Amazon Web Services is Amazon’s cloud computing business. AWS serverless is just going into its fifth year in use.Because outsourcing computing power is still so new, it still has many tech workers asking, “What is serverless?” How could using someone else’s servers be efficient or cost effective? Let’s talk about the (...)

#serverless-costless #aws-lambda #analysis #serverless-cost-debate

#Netflix finishes its massive migration to the Amazon cloud | Ars Technica (article de février 2016)
▻https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/02/netflix-finishes-its-massive-migration-to-the-amazon-cloud

Netflix declined to say how much it pays Amazon, but says it expects to “spend over $800 million on technology and development in 2016,” up from $651 million in 2015. Netflix spends less on technology than it does on marketing, according to its latest earnings report.

Netflix’s Simian Army

The big question on your mind might be this: What happens if the #Amazon cloud fails?

That’s one reason it took Netflix seven years to make the shift to Amazon. Instead of moving existing systems intact to the cloud, Netflix rebuilt nearly all of its software to take advantage of a cloud network that “allows one to build highly reliable services out of fundamentally unreliable but redundant components,” the company says. To minimize the risk of disruption, Netflix has built a series of tools with names like “Chaos Monkey,” which randomly takes virtual machines offline to make sure Netflix can survive failures without harming customers. Netflix’s “Simian Army” ramped up with Chaos Gorilla (which disables an entire Amazon availability zone) and Chaos Kong (which simulates an outage affecting an entire Amazon region and shifts workloads to other regions).

Amazon’s cloud network is spread across 12 regions worldwide, each of which has availability zones consisting of one or more data centers. Netflix operates primarily in the Northern Virginia, Oregon, and Dublin regions, but if an entire region goes down, “we can instantaneously redirect the traffic to the other available ones,” Izrailevsky said. “It’s not that uncommon for us to fail over across regions for various reasons.”

Years ago, Netflix wasn’t able to do that, and the company suffered a streaming failure on Christmas Eve in 2012, when it was operating in just one Amazon region. “We’ve invested a lot of effort in disaster recovery and making sure no matter how big a failure that we’re able to bring things back from backups,” he said.

Netflix has multiple backups of all data within Amazon.

“Customer data or production data of any sort, we put it in distributed databases such as Cassandra, where each data element is replicated multiple times in production, and then we generate primary backups of all the data into S3 [Amazon’s Simple Storage Service],” he said. “All the logical errors, operator errors, or software bugs, many kinds of corruptions—we would be able to deal with them just from those S3 backups.”

What if all of Netflix’s systems in Amazon went down? Netflix keeps backups of everything in Google Cloud Storage in case of a natural disaster, a self-inflicted failure that somehow takes all of Netflix’s systems down, or a “catastrophic security breach that might affect our entire AWS deployment,” Izrailevsky said. “We’ve never seen a situation like this and we hope we never will.”

But Netflix would be ready in part thanks to a system it calls “Armageddon Monkey,” which simulates failure of all of Netflix’s systems on Amazon. It could take hours or even a few days to recover from an Amazon-wide failure, but Netflix says it can do it. Netflix pointed out that Amazon isolates its regions from each other, making it difficult for all of them to go out simultaneously.

“So that’s not the scenario we’re planning for. Rather it’s a catastrophic bug or data corruption that would cause us to wipe the slate clean and start fresh from the latest good back-up,” a Netflix spokesperson said. “We hope we will never need to rely on Armageddon Monkey in real life, but going through the drill helps us ensure we back up all of our production data, manage dependencies properly, and have a clean, modular architecture; all this puts us in a better position to deal with smaller outages as well.”

Netflix declined to say where it would operate its systems during an emergency that forced it to move off Amazon. “From a security perspective, it’d be better not to say,” a spokesperson said.

Netflix has released a lot of its software as open source, saying it prefers to collaborate with other companies than keep secret the methods for making cloud networks more reliable. “While of course cloud is important for us, we’re not very protective of the technology and the best practices, we really hope to build the community,” Izrailevsky said.

IBM Just Bought Red Hat for $34 Billion
▻https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2018/10/ibm-just-bought-red-hat-for-34-billion

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IBM is to buy open source software company Red Hat in a $34 billion deal — the biggest in Linux and open-source history. And both companies are already talking up the major cloud computing benefits the partnership will provide. IBM is currently one of the biggest providers of cloud services, siting third behind market leaders Microsoft […] This post, IBM Just Bought Red Hat for $34 Billion, was written by Joey Sneddon and first appeared on OMG! Ubuntu!.

Getting started with Manifold
▻https://hackernoon.com/getting-started-with-manifold-f0c2c5ab9e95?source=rss----3a8144eabfe3---

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Originally posted at blog.manifold.co. This is story is brought to you by Hacker Noon’s weekly sponsor, Manifold. Find, manage and share all of your developer services with 1 account on Manifold. Use code HACKERNOON2018 to get $10 off any service.Manifold is the marketplace for independent developer services. A place for you to find, organize, and connect the best cloud services directly to your team’s workflow, under a single account, with one bill at the end of the month.We offer two different methods of creating a Manifold account: connect your GitHub account, or enter your email address and a password. If you sign up by email, you’ll need to verify your address to continue.Create a project, add a resource or start a new team from the Manifold Dashboard.Create a team and (...)

#developer-marketplace #docker #developer-services #getting-started-manifold #weekly-sponsor

The ultimate guide to defining, writing, and implementing OKRs
▻https://hackernoon.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-defining-writing-and-implementing-okrs-3b2671e7b01

How to Use Objectives & Key Results for Planning (and Achieving) Your Company GoalsHow did Google grow from 40 to 88,000 employees and $100+ billion in global revenue? Sure, their killer products, ubiquitous search engine, and cloud services played a huge role. But they also had a not-so-secret, secret weapon at their disposal: OKRs.First developed by legendary Intel CEO Andy Grove, Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) is a collaborative goal-setting system that was adopted by Google in 1999. Since then, OKRs have helped Google (and countless other companies) not just build products rapidly, but also stay focused, engaged, and aligned with their company goals.OKRs translate your company strategy into a digestible way that allows every team member to know they’re working on the right (...)

#okr #writing-okrs #implementing-okrs #defining-okrs #management

#microservices for Startups: An Interview with Nick Zadrozny of One More Cloud
▻https://hackernoon.com/microservices-for-startups-an-interview-with-nick-zadrozny-of-one-more-c

This interview was done for our Microservices for Startups ebook. Be sure to check it out for practical advice on microservices. Thanks to Nick for his time and input!Nick Zadrozny is the founder and CEO of One More Cloud, a company that provides specialized hosted cloud services. Nick is the creator of OMC’s two hosted search as a service products, Bonsai and Websolr.For context, how big is your engineering team?We are kind of a small team. We’re eight people full time and, I don’t know, three to five contractors part time at any given point depending on the projects.Are you using microservices and can you give a general overview of how you’re using them?I think I would say we started off as a monolith but that’s not entirely true. We’ve always kind of had Microservices from day one and this (...)

#one-more-cloud #startup-interviews #nick-zadrozny #startup-microservices

Global #security in an Age of Rising Cyber Threats
▻https://hackernoon.com/global-security-in-an-age-of-rising-cyber-threats-d3006c2d7e7b?source=rs

Ransomware is here to stay. With the rise of IoT connected devices that have deficient security, the fact that every business big and small is collecting data, and how easy it’s becoming to trick people online, the next few years are likely to be marked by more cyber security threats.Data is increasingly becoming vital to the core of business success. More specifically, this involves the use of cloud services to collect and analyze data. Larger companies have better security, but it’s been proven that even major health organizations, tech companies, and governments are not completely immune from cyber attacks.Who is Performing Cyber Attacks?To the likely relief of many, one of the biggest reasons people seem to be performing cyber attacks is for money. Hackers are stealing data, and (...)

#ransomware #global-security #cyber-threat #cybersecurity

MAREA: Microsoft and Facebook to build submarine cable across Atlantic : 160Tbps over 6600km

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▻https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/server-cloud/2016/05/26/microsoft-and-facebook-to-build-subsea-cable-across-atlanti

The new MAREA [Spanish for “tide”] cable will help meet the growing customer demand for high speed, reliable connections for cloud and online services for Microsoft, Facebook and their customers. The parties have cleared conditions to go “Contract-In-Force” with their plans, and construction of the cable will commence in August 2016 with completion expected in October 2017.

[...]

MAREA will be the highest-capacity subsea cable to ever cross the Atlantic – featuring eight finer pairs and an initial estimated design capacity of 160Tbps. The new 6,600 km submarine cable system, to be operated and managed by Telxius [part of Telefónica], will also be the first to connect the United States to southern Europe: from Virginia Beach, Virginia to Bilbao, Spain and then beyond to network hubs in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. This route is south of existing transatlantic cable systems that primarily land in the New York/New Jersey region. Being physically separate from these other cables helps ensure more resilient and reliable connections for our customers in the United States, Europe, and beyond.

►http://www.wired.com/2016/05/facebook-microsoft-laying-giant-cable-across-atlantic

Microsoft offers Bing, Office365, and its Azure cloud services. Facebook has its social network along with Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram. The data moved by just a few online giants now dwarfs that of most others, so much so that, according to telecommunications research firm Telegeography, more than two thirds of the digital data moving across the Atlantic is traveling on private networks—namely networks operated by the likes of Google, Microsoft, and Facebook.

#submarine_cable #câble_sous-marin #câbles_sous-marins
#câble #câbles #personnellement_je_préfère_le_singulier_parce_que_plus_facile_pour_les_recherches

The Next Era of Designers Will Use Data as Their Medium | WIRED

▻http://www.wired.com/2014/11/rise-of-data-artists

Data has become a rich medium.

New systems are using rich data, and big data. This is data acquired from the larger world. It is our movement patterns, buying habits, associations, and travel routines. It comes from a network of cloud services, traffic sensors, weather sensors, social networks, public and personal cameras. It is real-time as well as historical. And it exists in volume. Massive volume.

The new design challenge is to use this data for the same humanistic outcomes that we have in mind when we shape products through the user interface or physical form. Even conceding that many interfaces are not changing much—we still use PCs, and the mobile experience still mirrors traditional PC software tropes—we can see the data that moves through these systems is becoming more interesting. Just having this data affords the possibility of exciting new products. And the kind of data we choose to acquire can begin to humanize our experiences with technology.

#cartographie #visualisation #data #statistiques #données

Amazon gets clearance to provide more cloud services to Pentagon
FT.com By Barney Jopson 26/03/14
▻http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/22a91a08-b504-11e3-9166-00144feabdc0.html

Amazon’s cloud computing business has received high-level security clearance from the Pentagon, paving the way for it to provide more services to the US government.

#Cloud computing is a growing part of the online retailer’s services business and #Amazon is making a big push to persuade government clients to switch their systems from old-fashioned in-house servers to its own data centres.

Amazon said on Wednesday that the Department of Defense had granted its eight-year old cloud computing business new authorisations after concluding that it met the Pentagon’s “stringent security and compliance requirements”.

(...) Some Department of Defense agencies, including the US air force and the navy, already use the Amazon cloud, but the latest authorisations will make it easier for other agencies to approve its use. Across the US government Amazon says more than 600 agencies use AWS services.

(...) Amazon faces competition in the cloud computing market from Google’s cloud platform, Microsoft Azure, Rackspace and others.
This month the Pentagon rolled out a private cloud computing service of its own called MilCloud. It does not compete against commercial cloud providers and provides an extra level of security for sensitive and classified information, according to the Defense Information Systems Agency, which developed it.

#silicon_army

git-annex assistant
►http://git-annex.branchable.com/assistant

The #git-annex assistant creates a synchronised folder on each of your OSX and Linux computers, Android devices, removable drives, and cloud services. The contents of the folder are the same everywhere. It’s very easy to use, and has all the power of #git and git-annex.

Encore une alternative à #dropbox

Le FBI fait de la surveillance en continu de GMail et des différentes offres de Cloud grand public sa priorité stratégique pour 2013 :

“a 1994 surveillance law called the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act only allows the government to force Internet providers and phone companies to install surveillance equipment within their networks. But it doesn’t cover email, cloud services, or online chat providers like Skype. Weissmann said that the FBI wants the power to mandate real-time surveillance of everything from Dropbox and online games (“the chat feature in Scrabble”) to Gmail and Google Voice. “Those communications are being used for criminal conversations,” he said.”

►http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/03/26/andrew_weissmann_fbi_wants_real_time_gmail_dropbox_spying_power.html

Le FBI fait de la surveillance en continu de GMail et des différentes offres de Cloud grand public sa priorité stratégique pour 2013 :

“a 1994 surveillance law called the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act only allows the government to force Internet providers and phone companies to install surveillance equipment within their networks. But it doesn’t cover email, cloud services, or online chat providers like Skype. Weissmann said that the FBI wants the power to mandate real-time surveillance of everything from Dropbox and online games (“the chat feature in Scrabble”) to Gmail and Google Voice. “Those communications are being used for criminal conversations,” he said.”

►http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/03/26/andrew_weissmann_fbi_wants_real_time_gmail_dropbox_spying_power.html

Amazon rumored to be building private cloud service for CIA
▻http://www.slashgear.com/amazon-rumored-to-be-building-private-cloud-service-for-cia-20274774

Amazon powers a variety of websites on the internet, including several popular services like Netflix and Instagram. However, it looks like Amazon is digging deeper into partnerships, as it’s rumored that the e-tailer giant and the Central Intelligence Agency have made a deal for Amazon to provide cloud services to the government organization …

Source: SlashGear - Feeding Your Gadget and Tech Obsessions - Craig Lloyd

A Cloud over Ownership - Technology Review
►http://www.technologyreview.com/web/38391/?nlid=nlweb&nld=2011-08-24

When those belongings reside in Netflix’s video service, Amazon’s Kindle bookstore, or Apple’s coming iCloud service, they become impossible to misplace, and easier to organize and access than before. They also gain new powers over us, and slip free of powers we once held over them—powers that have shaped our thinking and behavior for centuries. One consequence is to give the companies that provide cloud services tremendous amounts of unchecked control over these possessions. In some cases, that control has already been abused.

#Amazon’s #WikiLeaks Response Threatens #Cloud_Computing - Tech Europe - WSJ
►http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2010/12/13/amazons-wikileaks-response-threatens-cloud-computing

La décision d’Amazon de couper l’hébergement de WikiLeaks est très mauvaise pour l’image du business des « nuages », dit Joseph Reger, le CTO de Fujitsu :

The provider [Amazon] simply cut off cloud services for WikiLeaks—that is, its server capacity, which made WikiLeaks inaccessible on the internet.
(...) Many potential customers for cloud computing services will, I fear, have been paying attention and will now be forced to reconsider whether they can afford to make their IT that dependent on a third party. Cloud-computing’s reputation has been damaged. For IT, this is the real tragedy.