Items tagged with Cloud
Amazon has secured a lucrative contract dubbed 'WildandStormy' to supply its Amazon Web Services (AWS) to the United States National Security Agency (NSA), in a deal that could be worth as much as $10 billion when all is said and done. However, it might be premature for Amazon to celebrate the contract win—it's under legal dispute by Microsoft. If this situation sounds familiar, it's because Amazon and Microsoft already fought over a similarly massive contract to supply their respective cloud services to the government. Back in 2019, the US Department of Justice awarded Microsoft Azure for its Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, with the JEDI contract having a ceiling of $10 billion...
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Back in July, Microsoft announced a cloud-based Windows experience called Windows 365 that would allow anyone on any device to work with Windows. As reported, the service launched on August 2nd, and now pricing is available, ranging from $20 to $162 per user per month, depending on specifications. Windows 365 sits somewhere between full infrastructure as a service, like AWS, and platform as a service, like Microsoft’s Azure cloud service. It allows businesses to easily deploy and scale a Windows environment up to 300 seats in Windows 365 Business and from 300 users to infinity with Windows 365 Enterprise. For each end-user, as Christiaan Brinkhoff explains in a blog post, “It...
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Everything is going to the cloud, it seems, and that now includes Windows with Windows 365. Windows 365 will allow people to stream their Windows experience so you can continue where you left off anywhere on any device starting August 2. Though virtualization, remote access, and cloud-based devices have been commonplace for several years now, Microsoft’s Windows 365 offering is taking a stab at the new market that has been born out of the pandemic. The goal is to combine “the power and security of the cloud with the versatility and simplicity of the PC,” to enable “a variety of new scenarios for the new world of work.” Windows 365 will work through any browser...
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In October of 2019, the Department of Defense awarded Microsoft the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract, which could have been worth upwards of $10 billion over the next decade. Afterward, Amazon, which lost the bid, filed a lawsuit with allegations that former President Donald Trump influenced the decision over his dislike for former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. Now, in an incredible turn of events, the Pentagon has canceled the JEDI cloud contract with Microsoft after reporting it wanted to reconsider the contract last year. As reported by the Associated Press, the Pentagon has come out explaining that it is now canceling the JEDI contract to pursue a deal with both Microsoft...
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Recently, Facebook-owned WhatsApp has been on the hook for privacy and data tracking concerns. While the company is not backing down on the new policy, it is implementing new features which help with other concerns, such as cloud backups. At present, users can backup their conversations to the cloud, but they are not encrypted. This may be changing soon. Though we do not yet have an official announcement from WhatsApp, app beta-tester @WABetaInfo on Twitter has posted screenshots of the possible new feature for both Android and iOS. In both mobile OSs, a phone number and password are required to encrypt the data sent to the cloud. Moreover, the password will not be sent to WhatsApp and will remain...
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Several years ago, Microsoft succinctly explained why it was making big investments in quantum computing, saying the short answer is "quantum computing will change everything." The longer answer is a bit more complex, but the general takeaway is that Microsoft wants to deliver quantum computing solutions to its customers. As part of that effort, Microsoft today has made available a public preview of its Azure Quantum platform . Microsoft pitches Azure Quantum as the "world's first full-stack, public cloud ecosystem for quantum solutions." It's a unified ecosystem that puts the power of quantum computing within reach of customers who need the kind of complex problem solving that quantum bits—or...
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VMWare and NVIDIA announced at VMWorld 2020 that the two companies are teaming up in the datacenter market and in the cloud. The duo is combining their strengths to provide AI software integrations with GPU-accelerated solutions suited for AI and machine learning in conjunction with VMWare's Project Monterey. VMWare CEO Pat Gelsinger states that VMWare is “partnering with NVIDIA to bring AI to every enterprise.” The available AI software NVIDIA offers through the NVIDIA GPU Cloud (NGC) hub will be brought into VMware vSphere, VMware Cloud Foundation, and VMware Tanzu. This integration will make AI adoption, use, and deployment much easier for customers in any industry. All the...
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While COVID-19 can claim some credit for more workers than ever performing their job duties remotely over the course of this year, the fact is the corporate world has been moving in that direction for a long time. At the same time, more businesses are trusting their data with private datacenters or public cloud hosting solutions. The two-fold struggle for IT departments has been how to securely give employees access to cloud apps, in-house data servers, and applications, while also managing a fleet of PCs when that fleet is outside of the corporate firewall. VPNs can help but there's a lot more to it than that. In fact, VPNs are just another variable that has to be considered, and often...
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There has been a sharp rise in the number of people who are working at home as of late, because of the Coronavirus outbreak. Social distancing is the recommended course of action to prevent the spread of COVID-19 (along with frequent hand washing). Fortunately, the Internet infrastructure is mostly passing the test of this unique time we find ourselves in, and yes, parts of it are being strained, such as Microsoft's Azure cloud services. In a recent update to its Azure blog, Microsoft revealed that it has seen a massive 775 percent increase in its cloud services in regions where social distancing and/or stay-at-home orders are being enforced. It has also seen a big spike in Teams usage—it...
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More people are working from home to social distance themselves, as recommended by numerous health organizations in light of the coronavirus pandemic. Can the Internet infrastructure hold up? It's an interesting question—several streaming video services, for example, have cut the quality of feeds in Europe. In light of these "new and unique challenges," Microsoft says it is prioritizing its cloud infrastructure to first responders and certain government bodies. "As companies operationalize to address new and unique challenges, we have mobilized our global response plan to help customers stay up and running during this critical time. We are actively monitoring performance and usage trends...
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Cloud gaming is quickly becoming a high stakes affair, and companies both big and small are figuring out how to navigate the landscape. We have seen Google make big promises with its Stadia platform, NVIDIA roll its GeForce NOW service out of beta and into the public spectrum, and now Shadow is announcing some key changes to its own platform, including a significant price cut for its entry-level tier. Shadow now starts at $11.99 per month in the United States, if paying annually ($14.99 per month otherwise). That is down from $24.99 per month previously. This gets subscribers into the French-startup's Boost tier, which provides cloud access to a GeForce GTX 1080 GPU, a quad-core CPU clocked at...
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This will come as little consolation to early GeForce NOW adopters, but that whole messy situation with Activision-Blizzard abruptly pulling its titles from the game streaming service right after its public launch? Well aw shucks, folks, it was just a simple "misunderstanding." In short, NVIDIA thought the agreement it had with Activision during the GeForce NOW beta period extended into the public launch. NVIDIA was wrong. So, what does this mean for gamers? Nothing has really changed—GeForce NOW is still devoid of Activision games, and there is absolutely no clarity on when or even if they will return to the service at a later date. "Activision Blizzard has been a fantastic partner during...
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After all of the hype and anticipation—and there was plenty of both—Google's cloud gaming Stadia service has arrived, and some early adopters are pretty pissed at what has been delivered versus what was advertised. Part of it boils down to the usual growing pains, especially for a project this ambitious. Still, the annoyances are starting to pile up. One of the big complaints has nothing to do with gameplay or performance, but missing access codes. Some of the people who preordered Stadia—a group referred to as founders, because they purchased the Stadia Founder's Edition—are still without their access codes days after the service launched. "We're aware that some of you...
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It as seems as Google is getting its ducks in a row in preparation for its Stadia cloud gaming service going live later this month. Ahead of Stadia's launch on November 19, Google has made available a Stadia app for Android in the Play Store. Anyone who owns a compatible handset can head over there right now and download it. Stadia will enable to gamers to play titles like Red Dead Redemption 2, Borderlands 3, and Cyberpunk 2077 (to name just a few of the bigger hits arriving on the platform) on desktops and laptops, on Chrome OS devices, and on televisions through a Chromecast Ultra dongle. It can also be played on Pixel 2 and later handsets. In its current form, the Stadia app is listed at...
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We already knew Google was planning to launch its Stadia cloud gaming service in November, and now we have an exact release date—mark your calendars for November 19. That is when the Stadia Founder's Edition packages will arrive on doorsteps, with servers set to open up to the public at 12:00 pm EST (9:00 am PST). Stadia is not a game console, but there is some hardware involved. The Founder's Edition package, which is still available to preorder for $129.99, contains a Chormecast Ultra streaming dongle, limited edition Night Blue controller, a pair of 3-month Stadia Pro subscriptions—one for yourself and one of the form of a "Buddy Pass" to hand out to a friend. Though Stadia is...
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AMD is on a roll with its Zen CPU and Navi GPU architectures, the former of which is proving particularly compelling to customers across the board. Intel still dominates in overall semiconductor sales, but AMD is not exactly playing second fiddle, or at least it's trying not to. In what could be a major boost to AMD's bottom line, there is speculation that Google may migrate its cloud data centers to EPYC hardware. Bear in mind that the data center is the real high stakes battlefield for AMD and Intel, where margins are much higher compared to desktop and laptop products. AMD is on the cusp of introducing the world's first 7-nanometer x86 data center CPU, a next-gen EPYC product line based on...
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Google's G Suite has been around for a long time now, and one of the features that users have wanted since its inception was an offline mode. Google has now announced that users can work anywhere with a new offline mode for Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides. The offline mode makes it easy for G Suite users to continue to work when they are offline or when they have a bad internet connection within Google Drive. A new offline preview mode allows users to see which files are available for offline. The preview mode is accessible by hovering over the circle with the check inside on the right upper corner of the Drive menu and click enable offline preview. To make documents available offline, right...
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It is easy to imagine that all of the engineers and everyone else involved in Sony's PlayStation division saw the pact between Sony and Microsoft in the cloud gaming space coming. After all, the collaboration had been in the works for over a year. However, that is apparently not how it went down. The agreement between Sony and Microsoft was not just a surprise to the press and public at large, but also to most of the people involved in the development of the PlayStation console and related services. In case you missed the announcement last week, Sony and Microsoft have entered into a vague partnership on "direct-to-consumer entertainment platforms and AI solutions," one that is centered around...
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Intel is facing increasingly fierce competition from AMD in many facets of the CPU market today. Retailer metrics show that the AMD Ryzen consumer parts are chipping away at Intel's dominance in the consumer market. At the same time, AMD is slowly encroaching on Intel share of the server market. However, Intel has its fingers into many pies, with one of them being cloud computing. Today, Intel and Google have made a new announcement concerning acceleration of hybrid cloud architectures. Intel says that it has long believed that cloud architectures are a foundation for data-centric computing, while underscoring that a multi-cloud foundation is required for ideal growth of a business. To that end,...
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As has been warned in the past, if your company uses Box to share files and is employing a custom domain, you might be exposing confidential data. That is not because of a bug or vulnerability in Box. Instead, it's due to improperly configured settings that could allow a snoop to find your files. Security firm Adversis said it was able to identify thousands of Box customer sub-domains through standard intelligence gathering techniques, and via brute force using a relatively large word list. This led to the discovery of hundreds of thousands documents adding up to several terabytes of data. "Companies using Box Enterprise get their own sub-domain, and documents saved on Box can be shared to anyone...
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Microsoft Research and its cloud engineers are busy building a cloud network that promises to deliver console-quality game streaming on any device, the company's Phil Spencer said on stage at E3. While details are light at the moment, Microsoft did say that the upcoming service is rooted in its artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies. To what extent remains to be seen, as does everything else about the new service. Spencer did not elaborate on when the service might launch or what pricing will look like. Still, it's an interesting path that Microsoft is embarking on, and not exactly an easy one. Microsoft is not the first company to see the potential in rolling out a streaming...
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Microsoft is looking to the future, where it wants to be the Netflix of the gaming world. The goal is to create a game streaming service where gamers never have to buy a physical or digital game again; they simply stream whatever they want to play from the cloud. Analysts on Wall Street reckon that this is exactly what Microsoft needs to become a $1 trillion company. "We see Microsoft building out the 'Netflix of Gaming,'" Morgan Stanley analyst Keith Weiss wrote in an investor note. "We think that gaming has historically been largely ignored, misunderstood, and undervalued by analysts and investors." Weiss isn’t the only analyst that thinks streaming gaming is the next big thing for Microsoft,...
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