Category Archives: Cloud Providers

Carbon Reduction, Cloud Providers, News

TÜV Rheinland certifies carbon emissions for Alibaba Cloud’s customers

TÜV Rheinland and Alibaba Cloud, the digital technology and intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group, have launched a new initiative to support Alibaba Cloud‘s customers in achieving their sustainability goals. Both companies have now signed a memorandum of understanding to this effect. As a result, companies that use Alibaba Cloud’s ‘Energy Expert’ service will be able to have their carbon emissions verified and certified by TÜV Rheinland experts in the future. For the certification, experts from TÜV Rheinland will verify the actual carbon emissions from a company’s daily business activities – from procurement and supply chain management to the manufacture and distribution of products. The new offering is scheduled to launch in March 2023.

Energy Expert is a solution from Alibaba Cloud that helps companies manage their carbon emissions and other sustainability indicators. The Energy Expert solution uses Big Data computing and AI technologies to do so. Since its launch last year, Energy Expert has helped more than 2,300 companies achieve energy savings of more than 2 million kilowatt hours per day calculated and stated by Alibaba Cloud.

“We want to provide opportunities for small and medium-sized businesses in particular to achieve their sustainability goals in a cost-effective manner. Through our certification, Alibaba Cloud’s customers can transparently and credibly demonstrate the progress they have already made in terms of their carbon emissions and how they plan to further reduce their energy consumption and emissions,” explains Frank Dorssers, responsible for the customised certification standards business at TÜV Rheinland.

“We hope to develop comprehensive energy saving solutions together with our global partners. This will enable our customers, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, to achieve their net-zero goals in a cost-effective and time-saving manner and through a sound sustainability strategy,” said Raymond Ma, General Manager of Europe, Alibaba Cloud Intelligence. “We are pleased to work with experienced industry partners such as TÜV Rheinland, and we look forward to expanding our global partnership ecosystem and bringing more advanced technologies and digital solutions to our customers in the near future.” 

 

Cloud Platforms, Cloud Providers, News

A Majority of Asia Businesses Expect to Increase Cloud Investment in 2023

  • Four in five businesses in Asia are planning a full cloud migration by 2024
  • Security, local support and pricing continue to drive public cloud adoption

Eighty-four percent of existing users of cloud services are expecting to increase their investment in cloud technology in 2023, while more than four in five (84%) are planning a full cloud migration in two years, as stated in a new survey report entitled “The Next-Generation Cloud Strategy in Asia“, commissioned by Alibaba Cloud, the digital technology and intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group.

An increasing investment in the cloud

As more companies move their critical businesses online to efficiently handle their workloads in the post pandemic world, businesses in Asia that are already using cloud services plan to increase their investment across various cloud strategies over the coming year.

The increase will most likely come from Thailand (95%), Indonesia (94%), the Philippines (91%), Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (S.A.R.) (83%), and Singapore (83%), while a larger percentage of the surveyed businesses in Japan and South Korea indicate that they will maintain their current levels of investment. Among the key industries, the gaming sector is expected to see the sharpest increase in cloud investment, followed by Media & Telecommunications, Internet & Technology and Financial Services.

In terms of investment priorities, a larger share of businesses in Asia will focus on data analytics & AI (53%), cloud computing (52%), and automation (46%). The fact that more than half of the businesses plan to increase investment in cloud computing underscores the importance of cloud infrastructure in supporting business growth.

“The latest research reveals important insights for businesses and cloud services providers in Asia. Cloud adoption has become a prerequisite for businesses to succeed and our customers are adopting a diverse cloud strategy to drive business growth in the digital era. With cloud infrastructure being the ultimate foundation for many cutting-edge innovations such as generative AI, we are as committed as ever to providing proven cloud-based solutions for businesses in different industries and supporting their seamless migration to the cloud services,” said Selina Yuan, Vice President of Alibaba Group and President of International Business for Alibaba Cloud Intelligence.

While more than two-thirds (69%) of the overall surveyed businesses have used cloud for at least three years, those in Hong Kong S.A.R., Japan and Singapore are the earliest adopters with only one in five (20%) having less than three years of experience using cloud services. Industry-wise, Internet & Technology, Manufacturing and Financial Services show the highest level of cloud maturity.

Alibaba Cloud commissioned global market research firm NielsenIQ to conduct the survey, with an aim to better understand the state of adoption of the prevailing cloud strategies – private, public and hybrid – across Asia

Full migration to the cloud by 2024

The research also reveals that 84% of the surveyed businesses expect to fully migrate to the cloud within the next two years, partly driven by new needs that emerged during the pandemic. More than a third (36%) of respondents even anticipate a complete cloud migration within the next six months.

Among the surveyed businesses, the impact of COVID-19 has led to significant changes in their use of IT, with 54% reporting an increased use of cloud-based software and 41% reporting acceleration with their cloud migration.

A strategy towards more diverse cloud adoption

At the time of the survey, private cloud (40%) was the most popular strategy in Asia, followed by public cloud (27%). Strong reputation for security, reliable local support and attractive pricing are the main reasons for businesses to choose public cloud, in which 38% of the surveyed businesses are expecting to boost investment by more than one fifth in the coming year.

In the Asian markets surveyed, South Korea has the highest public cloud adoption rate (43%). The top sectors currently using public cloud are Gaming, the Public Sector, Retail, and Internet & Technology.

Meanwhile, hybrid cloud adoption is on the rise, with the survey recording a 7 percentage-point net increase in current adoption rate compared to the respondents’ initial cloud strategy adoption. Moreover, of the respondents who have changed their cloud strategy, the highest proportion of 39% have switched to hybrid cloud. In addition to security, businesses tend to choose hybrid cloud for customised cloud services.

“The variety of cloud strategies adopted in Asia indicates that more businesses are looking for robust, resilient, secure and flexible infrastructures to digitalise their business. As a leading provider of cloud services, we will continue to introduce innovative and secure public cloud services to satisfy this demand,” Yuan added.

About the survey

The survey was conducted between the end of September and early October 2022, collecting feedback through online questionnaires from 1,000 cloud strategy decision-makers in small to large-sized businesses that are currently using cloud services in eight markets in Asia: Hong Kong S.A.R., Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Japan and South Korea. The respondents represented a wide range of industries, including Financial Services, Gaming, Internet & Technology, Manufacturing, Media & Telecommunications, Public Sector and Retail.

Cloud Providers, News, Technology

Alibaba Cloud Named a Leader in Cloud Database Management Systems for the Third Consecutive Year

Alibaba Cloud, the digital technology and intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group, has been named a Leader in the Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Cloud Database Management Systems (DBMS) for the third consecutive year in 2022, as well as a Challenger in its Magic Quadrant™ for Network Firewalls for the second consecutive year.

Alibaba Cloud believes the recognition shows its strengths in Cloud DBMS and Network Firewall offerings. The reports identified the most relevant providers in particular markets and evaluated their Completeness of Vision and Ability to Execute based on a variety of factors.

 

Delivering cloud database management systems

The diversity of Alibaba Cloud’s DBMS provides versatile support that can handle operational, analytical, multimodal and real-time use cases. Alibaba Cloud’s DBMS business has grown significantly on the back of these strengths, supported by success stories across a wide range of industries and organisations. Core database products such as the cloud-native relational database PolarDB also stood out for their ability to handle extremely high concurrency and elasticity scenarios, such as the world’s biggest shopping festival 11.11.

“As the global demand for public and hybrid cloud solutions has grown, the need for reliable solutions to manage data has also increased. We’re delighted to be recognised as a Leader by Gartner in Cloud Database Management Systems, and believe the inclusion reflects our commitment to innovating scalable and accessible solutions for our customers.” said Selina Yuan, Vice President of Alibaba Group and President of International Business for Alibaba Cloud Intelligence. “We will continue to expand our partner ecosystem and look forward to further working with our global customers to meet their evolving cloud needs.”

Alibaba Cloud provides a range of cloud database offerings, including PolarDB and PolarDB-X for operational use cases, and AnalyticDB and MaxCompute for analytical use cases. For non-relational and real-time use cases, Alibaba Cloud provides the multi-model database Lindorm and cloud-native in-memory database Tair.

 

Building network firewalls

The cloud service provider has a comprehensive security product portfolio, while the ability to centrally manage these products via the Alibaba Security Center has made network management and vendor consolidation easier.

“Network security has always been a priority for us, especially now as cyber threats have become increasingly sophisticated. Our continuous work in the area of Network Firewalls shows our commitment to helping clients to stay ahead of these threats and continue to use cloud solutions confidently,” Yuan said.

Alibaba Cloud Firewall is one of the first Software-as-a-Service firewalls deployed on the public cloud. It can be activated without complex network configurations or installation, acting as an all-in-one solution capable of managing various security features. These include inbound and outbound traffic from IP addresses, access control between VPC networks and a visualisation of traffic between security groups for customers to secure the traffic and meet compliance requirements.

 

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Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organisation and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Gartner and Magic Quadrant are registered trademarks and service marks of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

 

 

Cloud Providers, News, Tech, Technology

Aptum Announces Multi-Tenant Cloud Solution Providing Data Residency, Effective Cost Management and High Performance for Businesses of All Sizes

Available in US, UK and Canada, new private cloud service solution helps organisations address compliance and data sovereignty needs

Aptum, a hybrid multi-cloud managed service provider, today announced the launch of Multi-Tenant Cloud (MTC), a powerful virtual data center solution providing the ability to deploy virtual machines, virtual appliances, and other services in a multi-tenant environment using a consumption-based billing model.

Aptum’s MTC was designed with today’s businesses’ needs in mind, regardless of their size. Available in the US, UK, and Canada, the new private cloud service ensures an organisation’s data is stored in the region where they’ve deployed it, thereby meeting compliance and data sovereignty requirements. Additionally, it offers high levels of resiliency and assists with controlling costs.

“For many organisations on a path to digital transformation, compliance and data residency requirements have been problematic,” said Susan Bowen, CEO and President of Aptum Group. “Additionally, running workloads in a public infrastructure isn’t simple; organisations need to consider performance, cost predictability, data security, among other areas. Our MTC solution directly addresses those needs and offers our customers a secure, cost-effective cloud solution. By combining Aptum’s MTC with public cloud or traditional hosting models, organisations will have the ability to develop a truly robust hybrid multi-cloud strategy. We’re excited about this new solution as we continue to support organisations through their cloud journey, ensuring their deployments support their business needs.”

Aptum’s MTC portal enables customers to deploy virtual data centers, appliances and machines, as well as services, all through one simple-to use-interface.

Aptum leverages industry-leading technology solutions from VMware and enterprise-grade hardware from Dell to ensure continuous availability by building redundancies of critical components in the MTC cloud environment. Other key features of the solution include:

 

  • Control of the cloud infrastructure: Aptum’s MTC enables customers to provision and deploy virtual machines to build an IT environment tailored to their specific business and operational requirements
  • Effective cost management: Analytical insight provides organisations with the opportunity to optimise costs based on usage patterns, while reducing operating expenses
  • Flexibility and scalability: Organisations are able to rapidly scale through automation — leveraging APIs ­­— in order to meet demand as business needs and the market fluctuates
  • High reliability: With multiple redundancies included in the MTC environment — including at the network, hypervisor, and storage subsystem levels — organisations are provided with a highly reliable infrastructure with low latency
  • 24/7/365 live support: Aptum’s accredited experts are available live at any time ­to speak with customers live to immediately provide support and address any issues

 

In addition to supporting Aptum customers, MTC is a new opportunity for the company’s partners who can now offer this high-performance cloud solution under their own brand to clients. This provides Aptum partners the opportunity to expand their business with existing and new customers.

Aptum’s MTC is available now in the US, UK, and Canada. For more details about the solution, please visit https://aptum.com/services/private-cloud/multi-tenant-cloud/.


About Aptum

Aptum is a hybrid multi-cloud managed service provider delivering complex, high-performance cloud solutions with an integrated secure network. Using its Data As Infrastructure™ approach, Aptum solves complex technology challenges with total solutions and tailored options that drive tangible business outcomes and maximize the value of its clients’ technology investments. Aptum’s cloud and global network solutions, underpinned with expert managed and professional services, offer genuine choice and adaptability with an international reach spanning North America, Latin America, Europe and the United Kingdom. Aptum is a portfolio company of DigitalBridge, a global investment firm dedicated to strategic opportunities in digital infrastructure. For more information, visit www.aptum.com.

 

Cloud Providers, Cybersecurity, News, Technology

Colt launches VMware Cloud Web Security and Secure Access expanding its SASE portfolio and existing VMware SD WAN services

Tech partners help better protect enterprises against threats and boost network performance with a new set of SASE features 

Colt Technology Services, the digital infrastructure company, today announced the expansion of the company’s VMware-based SD WAN solution with a comprehensive, robust set of new VMware Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) features that include VMware Cloud Web Security and VMware Secure Access. Announced as enterprises face growing security threats, the new features help to bolster the popular SD WAN service so businesses can foster a more secure hybrid workforce, protect apps and data and further optimise  network performance.

The solution combines Colt’s award-winning digital infrastructure and customer experience with VMware’s leading cloud-based SD WAN platform and security capabilities. Offered as optional add-ons, the new features include URL filtering, SSL inspection, Antivirus, Content Filtering, and Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) Visibility – and an environment to test zero-day threats.  VMware’s security features including Data Loss Prevention (DLP), CASB Control and Advanced Sandbox functions are also offered as enhancements to the service. Additionally, the Secure Access solution includes Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) based remote access to connect users at home or on the move to enterprise applications. Businesses may benefit from improved network performance, simplified strategy and design, together with always-on threat monitoring and remediation, available directly from Colt as a single market-leading vendor.

The SASE market is experiencing rapid growth as businesses understand how digital transformation strategies such as cloud migration and hybrid working are impacting network performance, expanding their attack surface and leaving them increasingly vulnerable to risk. Gartner® forecasts that total worldwide end-user spending on SASE will reach $9.2 billion in 2023, a 39% increase from 20221.

The enhancement to the Colt SD WAN is the latest extension of Colt’s leading SASE portfolio. The set of solutions helps businesses regain control, better secure and help futureproof their digital infrastructure to improve application performance, improve data security and better protect their businesses from sophisticated and damaging security threats.

“After the frenetic pace of digital transformation of the last few years, businesses finally have the breathing space to step back and understand the wider impact of digitalisation, but they’re experiencing new challenges and huge pressure on their infrastructure,” said Peter Coppens, Vice President – Products, Colt Technology Services. “Hybrid working and cloud migration are prompting a rethink around network security, and cyberattacks are more pervasive and devastating than ever before. The SASE security features we’re launching with VMware aim to give businesses the peace of mind that comes from working with two industry-leading technology companies”.

VMware’s Global Incident Response Threat Report 2022 revealed that nearly 60% of survey respondents experienced a ransomware attack in the 12 months to June 2022.

Craig Connors, vice president and general manager for VMware’s SASE business, said, “Leading service providers like Colt are delivering a new category of services to enterprise customers so they can help simplify their multi-cloud journey. SASE has emerged as the blueprint for modern networking and security, and we are pleased Colt is expanding its VMware SASE solutions with VMware Cloud Web Security and VMware Secure Access.”

1 Gartner Press Release, “Gartner Identifies the Top Trends Impacting Infrastructure and Operations for 2023,” December 8, 2022.

GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved..

Cloud Providers, News, SaaS, Tech

Adoption of Cohesity-Managed SaaS Offerings Skyrockets

Cohesity has announced at Amazon Web Services (AWS) re:Invent 2022 that it’s seeing exceptional growth and uptake in the adoption of Cohesity Cloud Services. Cohesity Cloud Services, previously called Data Management as a Service, is a portfolio of data management and security software as a service (SaaS) products that are managed by Cohesity and run on AWS.

Cohesity also announced support for new business-critical workloads, including Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), that can be protected and secured via Cohesity SaaS offerings. And, in an era of escalating cyber threats, Cohesity is offering customers access to more Amazon S3 storage options for its popular cyber vaulting security SaaS offering, Cohesity FortKnox, that can help customers lower costs.

This announcement showcases the momentum and key advancements Cohesity continues to make after announcing a strategic collaboration with AWS to bring to market a set of data security and management SaaS offerings that are designed to provide customers with exceptional agility, security, scalability, flexibility, cost efficiencies, and reliability.

Customers Adopting Cohesity SaaS at a Rapid Pace 

Cohesity has seen a significant increase in the number of customers that have deployed Cohesity SaaS offerings, catapulting from under 60 customers at the end of Q4 FY21 (July 2021) to over 500 customers  at the end of Q1 FY23 (October 2022). Additionally, nearly 60% of Cohesity’s Cloud Services revenue comes from enterprises with $1B or more in revenue, indicating that large enterprises are embracing the company’s SaaS solutions.*

Cohesity is driving innovation with Cohesity Cloud Services in three areas that are critical in business today: security — inclusive of ransomware protection, cloud, and data management.

Protecting the World’s Most Critical Cloud Workloads

Much of the world’s critical apps and data reside in the cloud and must be protected. With Cohesity’s Cloud Services, customers can further secure and protect their Amazon S3 data as well as Salesforce (SFDC) data via Cohesity’s backup as a service offering.** This complements Cohesity’s data protection already available for Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS), and other cloud service providers.

Cyber Vaulting as a Service That Meets RTO and Budget Requirements in the Ransomware Era  

In an age of growing ransomware threats, companies know they need to deploy a 3-2-1 strategy, where a copy of an organisation’s critical apps and data are kept in a separate, ‘air gapped’ environment. Many customers rely on Cohesity’s popular cloud-based cyber vaulting service, Cohesity FortKnox, for data isolation and ransomware protection. However, budgets vary and so do recovery time objectives (RTO). Cohesity will provide customers with options to help address these critical needs:

  • Cohesity FortKnox on Amazon S3 Standard-Infrequent Access Storage Class (Amazon S3 Standard-IA): for data that is not accessed frequently but requires rapid access when needed. This option is already offered by Cohesity and includes immediate data recovery, with a minimum 30-day retention period.
  • Cohesity FortKnox on Amazon S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval (FR): a new, cost-effective cold storage option that provides SaaS cyber vaulting capabilities with recovery times ranging from minutes to hours, with a retention period of 90 days or longer.**

With both options, customers benefit from enhanced security including virtual air gapping, immutability with Amazon S3 Object Lock, role-based access control (RBAC), quorum, multi-factor authentication (MFA,) and a Cohesity key management system (KMS).

Defeating Cyber Criminals with ML-based Threat Protection and Data Classification

Providing protection, detection, and recovery from ransomware or other cyberattacks is key to keeping businesses safe and enabling them to recover quickly with confidence. Announced at Cohesity’s ReConnect virtual conference, which can be viewed here, Cohesity DataHawk is a comprehensive SaaS-based data security solution that includes threat detection and scanning for ransomware attacks, automated data classification with machine learning (ML)-based pattern matching — to identify sensitive or critical data, as well as FortKnox cyber vaulting, all in one solution that’s simple to deploy.

Customer Quotes Endorsing Cohesity Cloud Services 

“We are the fifth largest school district in the state of Georgia, serving over 50,000 students in the Atlanta area. We wanted to update our 3-2-1 backup strategy with a modern SaaS offering to improve our cyber resiliency and protect against ransomware attacks,” said Kurt Pritchett, senior network engineer, Clayton County Public Schools. “The simplicity and convenience of the Cohesity FortKnox SaaS offering was just what we needed to achieve this. Cohesity FortKnox also enabled the district to qualify for cyber insurance, while realising greater efficiencies, time, and cost savings.”

“Hospitals, labs, and doctors’ offices around the world rely on Beckman Coulter’s diagnostic equipment to provide better healthcare, and secure, reliable data management is critical,” said Kevin Chi, IT Systems Engineer, Beckman Coulter Life Sciences. “We have a cloud-first policy and utilize Cohesity’s backup as a service offering, which has empowered us to reduce our on-prem infrastructure, meet strict SLAs, comply with long-term retention policies, and improve our overall data security posture.”

“In order to back up on-prem servers and other cloud services, we wanted one cloud-based solution that would also provide ransomware protection. We found our answer with Cohesity’s backup as a service offering that runs on AWS,” said Michael Stegall, IT Director, Eurecat. “Now, we can monitor and manage backups and restores of all workloads, on-prem and on the cloud, from a single user interface, which also helps free up time to focus on other tasks. We also benefit from fast restores and great ransomware protection that is vital in today’s environment.”

Cohesity / AWS Quotes on Momentum with Cohesity Cloud Services 

“We’re seeing rapid adoption of Cohesity’s SaaS offerings running on AWS as customers want to win the war against ransomware, accelerate hybrid cloud adoption, and enable over-stretched IT staff to focus on other business-critical tasks,” said Sanjay Poonen, CEO and President, Cohesity. “Customers also want flexibility in how to secure and manage their data — in the cloud, on-prem, at the edge, or hybrid — and with Cohesity, everything can be managed on one platform, via one UI. That’s simplification defined.”

“More customers are embracing SaaS offerings from Cohesity that run on AWS to further bolster data security and management,” said Ruba Borno, vice president, Worldwide Channels and Alliances, AWS. “We engaged in a strategic collaboration with Cohesity with the common goal of helping customers be more agile, innovate faster, and do more with data. We’ve made great progress, and we’re just getting started.”

Cloud Providers, News

A More Efficient, Innovative and Greener 11.11 Runs Wholly on Alibaba Cloud

Global leading cloud provider achieving more with less whilst doubling the use of clean energy at key data centres during the world’s largest global shopping festival

 

Alibaba Cloud, the digital technology and intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group, has once again excelled in its mission of supporting the group’s 11.11 Global Shopping Festival, thanks to its high-performance computing and innovative technology. Drawing on self-developed infrastructure upgrades, the group saw an 8% year-on-year saving in computing cost per resource unit from April 1 to November 11.

“The breadth and depth of cloud technology deployment during this year’s 11.11 has once again showcased Alibaba’s best cloud and technology practice; be it through fundamental architecture like self-proprietary technology powering high-performance computing and database products, or consumer-facing XR (extended reality) and livestreaming technologies. We intend to continue applying these proven capabilities to even better serve our customers and help them to be more efficient, innovative and greener in their own digital transformation journeys,” said Li Cheng, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Alibaba Group.

Doing more with less through cloud-native and serverless innovations 

This year’s 11.11 was powered by Alibaba Cloud’s dedicated processing unit for the Apsara Cloud operating system. The upgraded infrastructure system significantly improved efficiency of computing, storage and network in data centres supporting the event, while also reducing network latency. For example, with this new upgrade supported by cloud-native technology, ordering, pre-sale balance payment and refunding could be launched simultaneously with an enhanced scalability and lower latency.

During this year’s 11.11, the front page of Taobao, one of Alibaba’s e-commerce platforms, was upgraded by the latest serverless technology, allowing for automatic scaling with extreme elasticity based on actual workloads.

Alibaba Cloud’s cloud-native database products also significantly expanded the capacity of consumers’ shopping carts by more than double, from 120 items to 300. The ApsaraDB for Redis Enhanced Edition (Tair), a cloud-based in-memory database service for enterprises, supports new functions such as product grouping and sorting, enabling consumers to organise their shopping cart according to their own preferences. They could also make use of the ‘select’ function to enjoy cross-merchant discounts, to pre-order goods and use vouchers for a more rewarding shopping experience.

Innovative technology delivers more immersive consumer experience 

A more immersive shopping experience was created this year thanks to Alibaba’s proprietary technology in supporting extended reality. Alibaba’s technology in 3D modeling leverages a neural radiance field (NeRF), a neural network technology for generating novel views of complex 3D scenes. During this year’s 11.11, it assisted luxurious retail and furniture brands, like Burberry, Estee Lauder and SK-II, to build virtual stores on the e-commerce platform Tmall.

Through self-developed 3D renderings that realistically represent natural light, flames and natural flowing water, an outdoor nature scene was built for sportswear brands including Descente (Japan), to showcase its latest products in a vibrant and invigorating environment. Consumers can also view the products in three dimensions, enabling them to inspect details up close, or try on their chosen watches and accessories virtually thanks to AR technologies. Consumers are also free to arrange different items of furniture indoors, or tents for outdoor camping.

Another new expressive interaction came from an XR-powered marketplace on Tmall and Taobao. Using the automatic 3D space creation technology from Alibaba’s research institute DAMO Academy, a virtual shopping street was built, featuring over 700 products from 70 brands including 30 internationally-recognised franchises, such as Sanrio’s iconic Hello Kitty, and Hollywood’s franchise Minions. Shoppers can choose their own avatars, check out the products and place them in their virtual shopping carts.

During this year’s 12-day festival from October 31 to November 11, nearly two million packages were delivered by Xiaomanlv vehicles, Alibaba’s last-mile logistics vehicle. This is double the package delivery volume from the same period last year. The logistics robot was deployed in over 400 campuses across China, which has greatly reduced the time of queuing for package deliveries during peak hours.

A greener 11.11 powered by clean energy

In addition to its cloud computing solutions helping to reduce energy consumption, Alibaba Cloud’s five hyper-scale data centres across China alsodoubled the amount of clean energy used to support this year’s 11.11 compared to last year. More than 32 million kilowatt-hours of electricity used by Alibaba Cloud to support 11.11 this year came from renewable energy, up by 30% on a daily basis average compared to last year. Additionally, Alibaba Cloud’s Heyuan data center, the cloud company’s largest hyper-scale data centre in South China, now runs entirely on clean energy. Alibaba Cloud’s self-developed immersion cooling technology has reduced the energy consumption of the data centres, with power usage effectiveness (PUE) reaching as low as 1.09 – a world-leading level.

Alibaba Cloud has also worked with Tmall to leverage the carbon management platform, Energy Expert. It provided online carbon footprint modelling, calculations and certifications for more than 40 brands in various sectors, including paper & pulp, food and personal care, to help them categorise low-carbon products, identify carbon emission resources and conduct informed sustainability practices to reduce carbon emissions.

Cloud Providers, Hyperconvergence, News, Technology

Nutanix Unveils New Cloud Bundles to Strengthen EMEA Channel

Nutanix has today announced the introduction of its New Cloud Bundles. These build on its channel initiative for the commercial market segment launched in 2020. The next generation of bundles enable customers to standardise on Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) while offering channel partners streamlined options to integrate with their value propositions and grow their share of the market.

Highlighting its ongoing leadership position in cloud computing and Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) technologies, Nutanix recently announced it was named a Customers’ Choice in the 2022 Gartner Peer Insights ‘Voice of the Customer’ for HCI software for the fourth consecutive year. When HCI is coupled with intelligent software, we see the evolution of solutions like our NCI platform, which creates flexible building blocks that replace legacy infrastructure previously consisting of separate servers, storage networks, and storage arrays.

“Our NCI solution is known for simplifying IT environments with a server-based software-defined model. The New Cloud Bundles extend this to make it easier for our channel network across EMEA to order hybrid cloud infrastructure, multicloud management, unified storage, database, and desktop services solutions. Nutanix is a partner-driven organisation, and we want to equip our extensive channel base with innovative solutions on which they can deliver their own value-added services to ensure their end-user customers are ready to scale in an increasingly cloud-based world,” says Adam Tarbox, Vice President of EMEA Channel Sales at Nutanix.

Organisations are increasingly reliant on technology ecosystems that enable innovation at scale. The New Nutanix Cloud Bundles integrate a diverse stack of Nutanix solutions to equip channel partners with the means to deliver demonstrable business returns in the cloud for their customers.

“Business and technology leaders must undergo an intensive process to identify which cloud environment is right for their organisation. Nutanix channel partners have the skills and experience across industry verticals to ensure business deliverables are aligned with cloud-driven innovation. Our New Cloud Bundles simplifies this process and delivers an integrated environment while still offering the flexibility and scalability of NCI,” adds Tarbox.

 

The New Cloud Bundles for the commercial market are available in three versions:

  • The Starter Bundle provides commercial customers with the core components of a hyperconverged environment with NCI Starter, which converges the entire data centre stack, including compute, storage, networking, and virtualisation.
  • The Pro Bundle sees NCI Pro and Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) Starter both on cores. NCM provides coverage for Nutanix and VMware private clouds. NCM can also be tailored to create an ‘invisible cloud’ by having developers access hybrid multicloud resources through a marketplace-like platform, controlling what is visible to them, or having governance policies around resource consumption.
  • The Ultimate Bundle comprises NCI Ultimate and NCM Starter. It delivers hyperconverged performance at scale across a varied application environment. The solutions deliver the highest performance and SAN features that organisations use daily.

 

The three bundles are available with production-level support. Any of the offerings can be quoted for a core capacity of between 72 and 192 cores. This means that unlike previously, the new bundles do not have a fixed configuration but are only limited based on the minimum and a maximum number of cores. A promotional NUS Pro bundle can also be added to any of the three versions. This bundle can be quoted for a capacity of between 5 to 10 TiBs.

Any existing Nutanix Cloud Bundles offers are valid until the end of December 2022, when the transition to New Cloud Bundles will be complete. For legacy bundle customers, Nutanix is working on the process of selling them the New Cloud Bundles at the time of renewal.

Nutanix partners benefit from the same level of marketing support that they would otherwise receive when addressing the enterprise market. New partners interested in the Nutanix commercial packages must first register for the Nutanix Partner Program.

 

Cloud Providers, News

11:11 Systems Completes Acquisitions of Sungard Availability Services’ Recovery Business and Cloud Managed Services Business

Merged Businesses Add to 11:11’s Suite of Market Leading Cloud, Connectivity and Security Solutions

11:11 Systems (“11:11”), a managed infrastructure solutions provider, today announced the completion of both the acquisition of Sungard Availability Services’ (“Sungard AS”) Recovery Services business and Sungard AS’ Cloud and Managed Services (CMS) business. Bringing 11:11’s total acquisitions to seven in the past year, the combined offerings and consulting team capabilities establish 11:11 as a market leader in cloud, connectivity and security with nearly 5,000 customers and over 60 global cloud points of presence.

Research from Gartner® found that “75% of organisations are pursuing security vendor consolidation in 2022, up from 29% in 2020.” 11:11 is meeting this growing demand by combining strategic offerings into one solution suite that addresses a range of complex customer use cases. Once the integration is complete, all of the acquired brands will eventually operate as 11:11 Systems.

“Over this past year, we had the opportunity to bring together expertise, solutions and services from leading companies, including these two Sungard AS businesses, to form the foundation of 11:11 Systems,” said Brett Diamond, CEO, 11:11. “With the strong building blocks of subject matter expertise, established products and services, and exceptional customer and partner relationships, we are thrilled to combine entities under the 11:11 brand. Combining the best of each of the cloud, connectivity and security experts, our interconnected team is equipped to handle a wide spectrum of customer challenges – from the simple to the complex – now giving customers more options, speed and efficiency.”

Learn more about 11:11 and its offerings at: https://1111systems.com/

11:11 is backed by Tiger Infrastructure Partners, a middle-market private equity firm that invests in growing infrastructure platforms.

Q Advisors, a global TMT investment banking boutique, acted as exclusive financial advisor to 11:11 in connection with this transaction. Perkins Coie acted as legal advisor to 11:11. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

 

Cloud Providers, News, Tech, Technology

Creative ITC Launches New Channel Partner Strategy

Creative ITC, the multi award winning cloud services provider, has launched a new channel partner programme as the business embarks on a new phase of its growth journey.

The company has launched a new partner-focused arm to support other channel businesses, enabling them to extend their current portfolios with new solutions and services delivered by Creative. Service providers and resellers will also be able to supplement their own teams with Creative’s technical support and cloud expertise.

The new Creative ITC partner programme will be headed up by channel business development specialist, Stephen Call. Stephen brings many years’ technology sales and business development experience to the role, having held senior positions in global technology companies, distributors and managed service providers, most recently at ITEC Exclusive Global Services and Westcon.

 

“Launching our new channel partner programme marks the latest milestone in Creative’s growth,” said Creative Group MD, Keith Ali. “Bucking industry trends, we’ve enjoyed phenomenal success, tripling in size over the past five years. Our new division, headed up by Stephen, will now see us support other IT businesses on their own journeys, while we continue to go from strength to strength as a privately-owned UK business flourishing on a global stage. I’m very much looking forward to working alongside new partners to take the business to the next level.”

 

The Creative channel programme will give partners flexible access to Creative ITC’s extensive networking, infrastructure, cloud and technical support capabilities, as well as enabling them to offer award-winning, purpose-built technology solutions and tap into the company’s global service capabilities.

“Businesses are facing mounting financial pressures and turbulent market conditions, putting pressure on IT providers to develop new solutions to keep pace,” said Call. “Our new channel partner solutions will help IT providers to meet these fast-evolving business needs, making it easier and quicker for them to deliver new services for their clients, boost their own resources, increase revenue and strengthen relationships.”

For further information on partnering with Creative ITC, please visit https://www.creative-itc.com/partner-with-us/