Two years ago, Microsoft officials began talking up the company’s plan to bring a bunch of Azure platform-as-a-service capabilities to the infrastructure-as-a-service side of the Microsoft Azure cloud.

In March 2016, Microsoft rolled out one piece of this strategy via its delivery of Virtual Machine Scale Sets. Virtual Machine Scale Sets allow users to create thousands of identical virtual machines so as to be able to scale big compute and big data applications quickly.

Microsoft’s motto for Virtual Machine Scale Sets: "Control it like IaaS, scale it like PaaS."

Telecommunication experts estimate the amount of data stored "in the cloud" or in remote data centers around the world, will quintuple in the next five years. Whether it’s streaming video or business’ database content drawn from distant servers, all of this data is – and will continue in the foreseeable future to be – accessed and transmitted by lasers sending pulses of light along long bundles of flexible optical fibers.

Traditionally, the rate information is transmitted does not consider the distance that data must travel, despite the fact that shorter distances can support higher rates. Yet as the traffic grows in volume and uses increasingly more of the available bandwidth, or capacity to transfer bits of data, researchers have become increasingly aware of some of the limitations of this mode of transmission.

New research from Nokia Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey may offer a way to capitalize on this notion and offer improved data transfer rates for cloud computing based traffic. The results of this work will be presented at the Optical Fiber Communications Conference and Exhibition (OFC), held 19-23 March in Los Angeles, California, USA.

Today, Right Move Storage, LLC and VaultDrop, LLC announced the implementation of their new Free Unlimited Cloud Storage product for all customers at properties operated by Right Move Storage. By combining traditional self storage with free unlimited cloud storage, Right Move Storage is accommodating all of their customers’ needs by providing safe, secure cloud and physical storage.

"This is a ground-breaking idea," said Darren Kelley, President of Right Move Storage. "It was first presented to me by A.J. Esmailzadeh, Co-Founder of VaultDrop, LLC. We began working together to offer storage owners a unique product which creates incremental revenue and profit for the owner, while also providing an amenity to help them gain and retain customers."

Zyxel Communications, a leading provider of secure broadband networking, Internet access and connected home products, today announced that it has begun shipping the NSG100 Nebula Cloud Managed Security Gateway. The NSG100 supports remote management and provides an extensive suite of security features to provide ironclad network security for small- and medium-sized businesses with distributed networks.

The addition of the NSG100 to the existing Nebula family of high-performance wireless access points and managed Gigabit Ethernet switches, gives users a complete network infrastructure solution that allows users to easily monitor and manage multiple distributed networks through a single, intuitive dashboard. The NSG100 provides deep, extensive protection of the network and its connected assets through a robust security feature set that includes an ICSA-certified firewall, IPsec VPN connectivity, Intrusion Detection and Prevention (IDP), and Application Patrol.

Benefits of the Nebula Cloud Managed Security Gateway

In a world where meeting attendees are often not in the same city, much less the same office building, unified communications has become increasingly more important. Arguably the most prevalent form of unified communications is meetings. Most meetings solutions are disappointing. They’re clunky and hard to use, the video is grainy and disconnects frequently, the audio quality is poor, there’s constant background noise and it’s impossible to know who’s causing it, they require long PINs to enter and join a call, and have second-rate mobile features and apps. Further, most are only good at one thing (e.g. voice calls, video conferencing, screen sharing, or instant messaging), so users often have to toggle between several different tools, none of which really solve their problem.

As a part of SecureWorks’ advanced endpoint security solutions, SecureWorks will offer Advanced Endpoint Threat Prevention (AETP), a next-generation antivirus service powered by Carbon Black’s Cb Defense. Using a combination of endpoint and cloud-based technologies, Cb Defense delivers a breakthrough security model known as "streaming prevention" to block malware as well as increasingly common attacks that exploit memory and scripting languages, such as PowerShell.

By leveraging Cb Defense, SecureWorks’ AETP service will offer enterprises and SMB clients:

Grazed from Zscaler, Inc.

Zscaler, Inc., the leading cloud security company, today announced its presence at the upcoming RSA Conference 2017 in San Francisco at the Moscone Center, South Hall booth #1207. Through a series of in-booth displays, product demonstrations, and partner presentations, Zscaler^TM will showcase its industry-recognized solutions architected from the ground up as part of a multi-tenant, distributed cloud security platform for the new, cloud-centric world of IT.

Also featured at the exhibit will be the Zscaler "smash booth," in which visitors are invited to take out their frustrations with the expensive, complex security appliances of the past. Many of the traditional appliance-based approaches to enterprise security have changed little over the years, even as users have become mobile and applications have moved to the cloud. With their outdated architectures, designed to protect a security perimeter that no longer exists, such appliances have become relics. For InfoSec professionals who — in the face of software issues, firewall rules, CVEs, and more — have ever wished for a sledgehammer, Zscaler is happy to offer them one, along with a pair of safety goggles.

All Zscaler activities at RSA, including its smash booth, continue to center on the company’s "break free" message, encouraging visitors to break free from architectures of the past that are preventing them from fully embracing the agility, productivity, and efficiencies of cloud enablement.

Intel Security today announced its second annual cloud security report, "Building Trust in a Cloudy Sky." The report outlines the current state of cloud adoption, the primary concerns with private and public cloud services, security implications, and the evolving impact of Shadow IT of the more than 2,000 IT professionals surveyed.

"The ‘Cloud First’ strategy is now well and truly ensconced into the architecture of many organizations across the world," said Raj Samani, EMEA chief technology officer, Intel Security. "The desire to move quickly toward cloud computing appears to be on the agenda for most organizations. This year, the average time before respondents thought their IT budgets would be 80 percent cloud-based was 15 months, indicating that Cloud First for many companies is progressing and remains the objective."

Trust in the Cloud on the Rise

Grazed from DataEconomy. Author: Joao Marques Lima.

Global cloud IT market revenues are set to more than double by 2020 with both public and private cloud hardware, software and services set to generate $390bn in revenues by the end of this decade. According to Bain & Company’s “The Changing Faces of the Cloud” report, market revenues accounted to ‘only’ $180bn in 2015 and are now set to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17% until 2020.

Of the $390bn estimated cloud market, public cloud services are set to represent the largest part of the sector, with Software as a Service (SaaS) predicted to grow at a CAGR of 18%. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) are tipped for a 27% CAGR. Public cloud infrastructure and enabling services are predicted to increase at a 12% CAGR while private cloud services, including managed private clouds (MPC) and dedicated private clouds (DPC), are predicted to grow at a 25% CAGR…

Read more from the source @ https://data-economy.com/iaas-paas-saas-lead-390bn-cloud-economy/

Grazed from MotleyFool. Author: Adam Levy.

It didn’t take long for Google’s biggest cloud customer to split its allegiances. Just a week after Snap (NYSE:SNAP) announced it signed a $2 billion five-year contract with the Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) company, it signed a $1 billion contract with Google’s biggest cloud competitor — Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN).

Snap will continue to use Google Cloud for the core Snapchat functionality. The Amazon Web Services contract is for "redundant infrastructure support of our business operations," according to Snap’s amended S-1 filing. The new filing also revealed Snap has been using Amazon for nearly a year, so not much will change in the near term…