Grazed from FederalNewsRadio. Author: Jason Miller.

Sometimes covering the federal IT community is like a bad roller coaster. The buildup when going up the big hill is exciting and stomach churning. But when the downhill falls flat, you feel a little cheated. That’s the feeling today when it comes to cloud computing. You can’t shake a stick at a conference without someone mentioning the need to the cloud. The crucial role software-, platform-, infrastructure-as-a-service play and will continue to play in the future of federal IT always is hot topic.

But then Deltek’s GovWin puts out a report that is like that flat roller coaster ride. GovWin, a market research firm, looked at preliminary federal procurement data for fiscal 2016 that shows spending on cloud computing hasn’t lived up to its hype. GovWin found civilian agencies have awarded $75.4 million in cloud contracts in 2016 and the Defense Department, its services and agencies awarded $45.3 million in 2016…

Grazed from CXOToday. Author: Sohini Bagchi.

Cloud robotics is gaining significant momentum in recent times. Experts believe increasing investments in cloud-based technology will fuel innovations in the robotics sector, which in turn can have a profound impact on the enterprise – leading to cutting edge innovation and increased efficiency at a much lower cost.

Simply put, cloud robotics is about empowering a robot to work beyond its physical ability. In an interaction with the New York Times, Ken Goldberg, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, defines Cloud robotics as a new way of thinking about robots. “For a long time, we thought that robots were off by themselves, with their own processing power…

Grazed from NetworksAsia. Author: Editorial Staff.

Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing arm of Alibaba Group, announced recently at its Computing Conference that it will provide its artificial intelligence (AI), deep learning and data analytics capabilities to two new cutting-edge developments in China, demonstrating its role as a leading driver of the country’s technological advancements.

Initiated by the Hangzhou government, the “Hangzhou City Brain” is set to address the city’s urban living challenges. As the hub to consolidate data and provide real-time analysis, the “Hangzhou City Brain” will rely on Alibaba Cloud’s AI program “ET” and big data analytics capabilities to perform real-time traffic prediction with its video and image recognition technologies…

This Cherwell Service Management Orchestration Pack for Azure enables customers to automate and streamline the service request, provisioning, and change processes for Azure virtual machines (VMs). Users can easily procure and modify Azure VMs using an intuitive self-service portal, and IT departments can apply policies and processes for creating and maintaining VMs. Plus, because requests and changes live within Cherwell Service Management as the system of record, IT teams can track and document the path of work, improving governance while enhancing communications and services to their business users.

Tips for Your Cloud Architecture Design

These days, it seems like companies are migrating to the cloud. The cloud offers some amazing benefits to companies by creating a way for data and applications to be shared and accessed remotely. However, it’s helpful to evaluate the needs of your company prior to making such a large transition. As with most things in life, it’s important to make a plan before getting started with your migration.

With OpenStack quickly gaining traction as an open source software platform of choice for public and private clouds, storage management and support for enterprise production workloads is becoming critical for the successful adoption of OpenStack. Announced in September at the Veritas Vision 2016 conference, both HyperScale for OpenStack and Veritas Access help ensure reliability, accessibility and high workload performance within OpenStack environments—no matter the scale.

"The world’s fastest hypervisor, LXD, and the world’s best cloud operating system, Ubuntu, together with the latest OpenStack and Kubernetes make for the world’s fastest and best private cloud infrastructure" said Mark Shuttleworth, who leads Canonical’s product team and the Ubuntu project. "Our focus is to enable true hybrid cloud operations, and this release further enhances the tools and platform that most companies depend on to operate effectively across all major public clouds and in one’s own data center, from bare metal to cloud container."

Grazed from Bloomberg. Author: Editorial Staff.

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. expects pure e-commerce operators to face ‘tremendous challenges’ as the web giant seeks to tap more growth from transforming China’s $4.5 trillion traditional retail industry. China’s largest e-commerce company plans to upgrade retail businesses and improve efficiency across product manufacturing, distribution and service, Chief Executive Officer Daniel Zhang said in an e-mailed letter to shareholders on Thursday. The company is working with partly-owned Suning Commerce Group Co. and Intime Retail Group Co. to integrate the online experience with brick-and-mortar shopping.

Alibaba has highlighted trillions of dollars in Chinese household savings as a key driver of growth, with the company pledging to keep investing in business and geographical expansion, even if it drags on earnings in the short-term. The company is also looking overseas for growth, as Chairman Jack Ma targets serving 2 billion consumers and supporting 10 million profitable business around the world in 20 years…

Read more from the source @ http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-13/alibaba-sees-tremendous-challenge-for-pure-e-commerce-business

Grazed from Tech.co. Author: Boris Dzhingarov.

Everyone knows that technology can help raise your business to the next level. The use of cloud computing and the availability of supporting softwares are making businesses – from small startups to large corporations – strive in the face of evolution. There are so many solutions to choose from as well, particular when it comes to its enterprise-level ERP softwares. These ERP systems can do so much to improve your internal workflows. And if you are wondering how, check out a few reasons why ERP softwares can improve productivity.

Enhanced Clarity

A lot of important business decisions must be made with good, clear information in hand. In the old days, getting the necessary information to make strategic decisions meant gathering paper documents and conduct arduous meetings. Today, however, you can access all the information you need from any internet-enabled device…

Read more from the source @ http://tech.co/good-erp-software-productivity-2016-10

Grazed from NetworkAsia. Author: Editorial Staff.

Ericsson and Equinix have developed a joint offering for enterprises to deliver the “true benefits” of hybrid cloud and multi cloud adoption. The offering leverages the Equinix Cloud Exchange (ECX) and Apcera platform from Ericsson. The initial target enterprises will be finance and insurance companies in South East Asia and Oceania to help solve their challenges on data compliance and regulation and at the same time give the agility that enterprises need.

The finance and insurance industry have strict compliance regulations on data and this brings limitations for them to deploy a multi-cloud strategy. Ericsson and Equinix’s joint offering will address this challenge by enabling enterprises to deploy any application on any cloud infrastructure with high performance and secure connections that meet compliance regulations…