“We all get together once a week, we share and discuss and debate,” she said. “It wasn’t possible before I came because sales and marketing were in a different division than cloud. And cloud was in a different division than Apps. I feel like the structure is in place now and we’re hiring very aggressively.”

SEE ALSO: Diane Greene: Google is “Dead Serious” about Enterprise Cloud

Key to that shift has been understanding the transforming relationship between vendor and customer: For many of Google’s clients, they come not just for the pure power, but also the expertise in how to build and sell cloud services of their own.

Greene highlighted Google’s deal with Land O’Lakes:

It took crop and weather data from Google and worked with Google to build an app hosted on Google’s cloud. The app helps its farm and dairy co-op members improve their crop yields.

“It’s fun for us to help them do that,” she says. Unlike the old days, where an IT company would be the one to build the app and sell it to agriculture companies, “we don’t have to do it ourselves.”

Greene also said that the industry, particularly Amazon’s AWS, has been following Google’s aggressive price cuts, good news for Google and customers, and signs that the war for cloud supremacy is only heating up.

Source: TheWHIR

The FCC on July 14 will consider steps to identify and open up “vast amounts of spectrum” for so-called 5G wireless systems that are 10 to 100 times faster than current mobile networks, Wheeler said in a speech in Washington. 5G stands for fifth generation; today’s smartphone technology is considered 4G.

“The FCC will have the opportunity to take an historic step to open up yet another frontier that promises to propel our nation — and the world — forward,” Wheeler said. He sketched a vision that included pill bottles, devices to water plants, and uses yet to be imagined.

The FCC deserves credit for acting quickly, said Meredith Attwell Baker, president of CTIA, a trade group with members including AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. “All five FCC commissioners and Congress — on a bipartisan basis — support this expedited process,” Baker said in a blog post.

Source: TheWHIR

So with the deadline looming, cloud services providers may consider applying to sell services through Digital Marketplace. But at least one G-Cloud provider is cautioning would-be participants about some of the frustrations of providing cloud services to government agencies through the G-Cloud framework.

Memset co-founder and managing director Kate Craig-Wood wrote a blog post recently sharing her experience with the program, and the WHIR caught up with her over email to learn more about her thoughts on G-Cloud.

Kate Craig-Wood, co-founder and managing director, Memset

The WHIR: You’ve been involved with G-Cloud since 2009, and been a vocal supporter of the initiative. What was the last straw so to speak that led to you to write this blog post suggesting that the “dream is dying”?

Kate Craig-Wood: The deadline for GCloud 8 is looming and preparing the entries and also forecasting pricing for the next 8-9 months together with speccing up products that we think the government might like to buy (due to the way the reiteration process works) involves a lot of resource. This prompted me to review where we are at in terms of the amount of ROI, and as I said in the blog post, I had been pondering for some time why we weren’t doing so well in government.

WHIR: How realistic is it that the UK, or other governments for that matter, will ever truly abide by a cloud-first mandate?

Craig-Wood: If they were enforced and monitored then government departments would need to truly abide by the mandates.

Look at the open standards mandate, first published back in 2012. It underlined the government’s commitment to the wider use of open standards across government, yet here we are four years later and most G-Cloud sales have gone through just 30 suppliers, and the majority of infrastructure spend has been on proprietary systems, despite the ‘open standard’ mandate.

AWS is already overwhelmingly dominant in private sector IaaS and within just two years being on GCloud they have secured over £800K in revenue. If we want to avoid a situation where government is having to do all this (G-Cloud) again in 10 years time to break away from a new oligopoly (potentially AWS), suppliers and the public sector, actually need to get together as a community. We need to start truly collaborating around open standards and open source technology.

Its also worth noting while OpenStack’s adoption and maturity grows by the day, it will become increasingly hard for government to justify defying the mandate.

WHIR: What impact does the slow growth of G-Cloud have on service providers like Memset? In the blog you mention that the ROI has been disappointing to say the least.

Craig-Wood: We have made massive investments in pursuit of government business via the G-Cloud Framework:

• £2m on a high-security data center, originally specced out to IL4 in preparation for “data aggregation” – a subsequently abandoned requirement.
• £300k + £200k/year enhancing and upgrading our security and compliance stance for IL3, again a requirement subsequently relaxed.
• £250k + £120k/year on a PSN-Protected connection, which has only just started working and nobody seems to actually use.

These investments, while affordable, have stolen investment from other areas of our business. Our growth over the last few years has slowed as a result. Our faith in the G-Cloud dream has caused us to innovate less and create fewer jobs.

WHIR: Recent research has suggested that cost isn’t as much a factor when choosing a cloud provider as it once was. Do you think the same is true when we talk about the public sector?

Craig-Wood: To an extent, yes. Consider AWS. They are actually very expensive compared to their competition, especially when you factor in having to pay for storage, bandwidth and even disk IOps with some solutions. That has not stopped them securing a dominant position.

For most government buyers the potential saving offered by an IaaS provider is likely huge whichever they choose, because of being so over-charged for IT in the past, so price is probably a smaller factor. However, the G-Cloud buyer’s guide clearly states that price should be a major factor in the decision making. Just because the difference between choosing a “you won’t get fired for buying” supplier like AWS or a SME is an 80 percent saving or an 85 percent saving doesn’t mean you should squander the extra 5 percent of taxpayer’s money.

WHIR: You mention Memset’s sales approach as a possible factor that may have contributed to some of the issues. Can you elaborate on that?

Craig-Wood: We come from a web hosting background, addressing a mass-market. Everything from our highly-automated systems to our pricing to our sales approach has been driven by that pedigree. We spend money on marketing (raising awareness) and our sales team mostly just do education, lead conversion and account management. We don’t do “little black book” type selling.

Although we were aware that government selling used to be all about who you knew our expectation was that G-Cloud would change it to make it more appropriate for mass-market suppliers. That was the stated desire by the Cabinet Office; that they wanted buyers to be able to procure IT services at the sorts of prices available in the private sector.

Instead we have found that we are at a huge disadvantage in G-Cloud because we don’t have a “proactive”/network-based sales approach. We don’t have a small army of Rolex-toting salesmen to schmooze government buyers, and nor can we afford one. We price on a strict cost-plus model which does not allow for such overheads, which is exactly what we were told we should keep doing – ie. that government didn’t want to be funding the aforementioned Rolexes anymore.

WHIR: It seems that part of the issue is that the buyers on the government-side may not have the proper training or education and may be relying on the old-way of IT procurement into the new way (you suggest some buyers already know who they’re going to buy from before they even get to the App Store). Do you have some suggestions for improving this model?

Craig-Wood: In the buyer’s guide there was a requirement to give feedback to suppliers that were shortlisted but didn’t win business. [GDS] never actually did that, but it’s really important for us as a supplier to find out why we’ve lost out.

There is also a lack of transparency about G-Cloud call off contracts – suppliers do not know when opportunities arise, or when contracts have been let (figures published are for suppliers and customers, not individual contracts).

By contrast, information about individual OJEU contracts is published on the Contracts Finder website – G-Cloud call-off contracts should also be published on Contracts Finder.

Read Craig-Wood’s blog post.

Source: TheWHIR

READ MORE: U.S. Closely Eyeing China’s Corporate Hacking Vow, Official Says

“It’s not based on an existing architecture. They built it themselves,” said Jack Dongarra, a professor at the University of Tennessee and creator of the measurement method used by TOP500. “This is a system that has Chinese processors.”

The new machine shows China’s determination to build its domestic chip industry and replace its dependence on imports that cost as much as oil. The world’s most populous country may also try to lessen its reliance on U.S. companies for defense technology and security infrastructure. Supercomputers aren’t major consumers of chips. But being at the heart of the world’s most powerful machines helps processor makers persuade the broader market to consider their technology.

“This is the first time that the Chinese have more systems than the U.S., so that, I think, is a striking accomplishment,” said Dongarra. The Chinese had no machines in the 2001 list, he noted. In the latest, China has 167 entries compared with 165 for the U.S.

Previous supercomputer winners have had processors built on U.S. technology from Intel Corp. — the world’s largest chipmaker — International Business Machines Corp. or a derivative of Sun Microsystems designs.

SEE ALSO: Intel: World Will Switch to “Scale” Data Centers by 2025

The top position was previously occupied by Tianhe-2, built on Intel chips by China’s National Supercomputer Center in Guangzhou. That system is now second, according to TOP500.

Sunway TaihuLight’s victory is a particular challenge to Intel’s dominance in computer servers, where it currently controls about 96 percent of the market. It announced a joint venture with a Chinese organization to domesticate some of its technology earlier this year.

Supercomputers are multiple server computers linked together in a way that allows them to process huge data sets and run the most complex calculations. While they’re hugely expensive and relatively rare, they showcase new technologies that often make their way into corporate data centers.

An Intel spokesman declined to comment on the new rankings.

Other chipmakers such as Qualcomm Inc. are working with Chinese organizations to build processors in the country. Technology provider ARM Holdings Plc, whose products are at the heart of most smartphones, is also trying to grab a slice of the Chinese market.

Source: TheWHIR

Peak is seeking bankruptcy protection while it undergoes restructuring as well as financing to pay for its lawsuit with Machine Zone. It recently hired a chief restructuring officer and let go most of its staff, according to the report.

Peak’s bankruptcy is likely to have an adverse effect on its own data center providers, who are its biggest creditors. According to its website, they include Digital Realty Trust, with whom it recently contracted for space in the Dallas and Silicon Valley markets, as well as Equinix, CoreSite, and Interxion.

The managed hosting company has five data centers in the US and one in Europe.

Machine Zone has a $14-million-per-month contract with Peak through next October, but it stopped paying for services starting three months ago, Peak said in the bankruptcy filing. Peak is suing the customer for $100 million, saying the agreement between the two companies does not allow for a premature cancelation.

Peak says it invested $35 million in equipment to host Machine Zone’s applications and that the customer has been using some of Peak’s proprietary technology.

The data center provider has attributed last fall’s outage to a bug in Cisco Systems software.

Original article appeared here: Report: Data Center Provider Peak Hosting Files for Bankruptcy

Source: TheWHIR

RELATED: LinkedIn Deal Means More Microsoft in Digital Realty Data Centers

“We’ve done that kind of analysis in the past and it’s something we’re generally paying a lot of attention to,” she said in an interview in Copenhagen Friday.

The Dane, who took office at the end of 2014, has signaled a willingness to delve more into how merging companies leverage the treasure trove of data at their disposal. Data was one of the key considerations in the review of Facebook Inc.’s takeover of messaging service WhatsApp Inc., even though her predecessor in the end concluded there were no data-usage concerns.

No Problems Yet

Vestager warned earlier this year that even though the regulator hasn’t found a data competition problem yet, “this doesn’t mean we never will.”

James Cakmak, an analyst at Monness Crespi Hardt & Co., said that from a data standpoint, the WhatsApp purchase “warranted greater scrutiny” than the LinkedIn deal.

“LinkedIn has roughly 100 million members in Europe, compared to about 350 million Facebook users in Europe,” he said. “The trajectory of growth of WhatsApp was significantly different to that of LinkedIn.”

Microsoft will acquire LinkedIn for about $26.2 billion, one of the largest technology-industry deals on record, as the maker of Windows and Office software attempts to put itself at the center of people’s business lives. The deal is a way for Microsoft, which largely missed out on the consumer web boom dominated by the likes of Google and Facebook, to sprint ahead in social tools — in this case, for professionals.

READ MORE: Microsoft to Acquire LinkedIn: What You Need to Know

When it announced the deal, Microsoft outlined a vision in which a person’s LinkedIn profile resides at the middle of other pieces of their work life, connecting with Windows, Outlook, Skype, Office productivity tools like Excel and PowerPoint, and other Microsoft products.

Microsoft said on June 13 its bid for LinkedIn will require regulatory approval in the EU, U.S., Canada and Brazil and that it’s confident of closing the transaction before the end of the year. The company’s press office had no further comment Friday.

LinkedIn’s analytics will help power data tools for Microsoft’s Dynamics, which competes with Salesforce.com Inc. in helping companies manage relationships with their customers.

Salesforce.com was a rival potential bidder for LinkedIn in the process leading up to the acquisition by Microsoft, according to people familiar with the matter.

Source: TheWHIR

The Big Picture

Oracle has been trying to shift more sales to cloud-based products increasingly demanded by corporate customers. The new cloud services made up about 8 percent of the company’s total sales during the quarter.

The Detail

Core cloud revenue is projected to increase 75 percent to 80 percent in the current quarter, Oracle Co-Chief Executive Officer Safra Catz said in a statement. Oracle has a “fighting chance” to be first cloud company to reach $10 billion in core cloud revenue, Chairman Larry Ellison said. Adjusted earnings in the current quarter are forecast at 56 cents to 60 cents a share. Revenue projected to increase 2 percent to 5 percent. All company forecasts are in constant currency. Currency headwinds weighed on results; revenue would have been unchanged with constant currency in fiscal fourth quarter. Net income rose 2 percent to $2.8 billion in the quarter from the year-ago period. New software license revenue in the quarter was $2.8 billion, down 12 percent.

Street Takeaways

“The company’s made a lot of progress in the last two years, and it’s starting to bear fruit. But the cloud still represents less than 10 percent of this company. So, there’s a lot of heavy lifting to go,” said Bill Kreher, an analyst at Edward Jones & Co. “All the metrics seem fairly better than we had expected across the board. I think this is one of the cleanest quarters they’ve put up in a long time,” said Joel Fishbein, an analyst at BTIG.

Source: TheWHIR

The integration with Apple News is available to all customers, and Squarespace said customers can create their own branded Apple News channel that is discoverable in-app.

As hosting becomes an increasingly competitive landscape, features like this integration which help customers’ websites get found can be a selling point for an individual or small or medium-sized business user.

Squarespace said this is the first of more Apple News integrations to come. Initially, users can publish images and galleries, videos, audio, text, Twitter and Instagram embedded content and a link back to their Squarespace site.

In April, Squarespace launched Squarespace Domains as a way for it to offer 200 top-level domains to users, competing with other SMB-focused hosting providers.

Source: TheWHIR