Tag: Google

Google Cloud changes its prices

Posted on March 16, 2022 by - News

Google Cloud has changed its prices to allow “more flexibility for customers” which basically means low-cost options for some but increases for others.

The main changes will come to Google’s cloud storage pricing for data mobility, including replication of data written to a dual- or multi-region storage bucket, and inter-region data access.

It will also include the introduction of a new lower-cost archive snapshot option for Persistent Disk (PD), new outbound data processing pricing for cloud load balancing and new pricing for network topology.

The pricing changes are due to come into effect on 1 October this year.

Writing on the company bog, a spokesGoogle said: “We are announcing we will adjust our infrastructure product and pricing structure to give customers more choice in how they pay for what they use alongside new, flexible SKUs with new product options and capabilities. These changes are designed to help ensure better product fit for our customers’ use cases across a wider array of workloads.”

Google signs off on Mandiant deal

Posted on March 10, 2022 by - News

Google has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Mandiant, which will join Google Cloud. The deal is worth about $5.4 billion.

Google said the acquisition of Mandiant will complement Google Cloud’s existing security. Mandiant enables Google to enhance its offerings to deliver end-to-end security operations with even greater capabilities to support customers across their cloud and on-premise environments.

The tech giant underlined that Mandiant brings real-time and in-depth threat intelligence gained on the frontlines of cyber security with the largest organisations in the world.

Google cloud snaps up Mandiant

Posted on March 9, 2022 by - News

Google has seen off rival Microsoft to acquire cybersecurity vendor Mandiant for $5.4 billion.

For those not in the know, Mandiant provides threat intelligence to protect against cyber-attacks and will.  Google claims it will play nicely with Google Cloud’s “existing security strengths”.

Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian said that organisations around the world were facing unprecedented cybersecurity challenges as the sophistication and severity of attacks that were previously used to target major governments are now being used to target companies in every industry.

“We look forward to welcoming Mandiant to Google Cloud to further enhance our security operations suite and advisory services, and help customers address their most important security challenges.”

Google says the cybersecurity firm’s offering will now be used to “enhance” its existing cloud security capabilities – including BeyondCorp Enterprise for Zero Trust, VirusTotal for malicious content and software vulnerabilities and Chronicle’s planet-scale security analytics and automation.

Tech companies crack down on Russia

Posted on March 2, 2022 by - News

UK tech companies with Russian links or finance might find themselves in hot water with US big tech.

As Tsar Putin’s Russian troops push into Ukraine US tech firms are doing their best to make sure that they are not seen as having anything to do with it.

Some of it is obvious.  Big Tech is under pressure to use its influence over the world’s most popular social networks, apps and phones to take tough action.

Since Russia’s first strike nearly a week ago, Meta, Twitter, Google and other companies have announced a slew of measures such as revoking ads for Russian state media websites, monitoring disinformation and utilising tools to increase the privacy of Ukrainian citizens.

Rubrik hires Ghazal Asif

Posted on February 9, 2022 by - Moving People, News

Data security vendor Rubrik has poached Google’s former customer solutions channel partnerships boss as its new vice president of global partners and alliances.

Ghazal Asif joins from Google where she was head of channel partners in EMEA for Google Customer Solutions, leading channel go-to-market strategy and execution for the region.

She has been senior vice president of worldwide channels at Cybereason, vice president of worldwide channels for GSP & cloud providers at AppDynamics, and director of global channel sales at Cisco Meraki.

Rubrik chief revenue office Brian McCarthy said: “We keep investing in the success of our extensive partner strategy and Ghazal’s leadership and channel experience will continue to fuel our data security growth. She will act as a catalyst for scaling our partner enablement and accelerating our go-to-market channel strategy around the world.”

 

Tablet and Chromebook sales have peaked

Posted on February 8, 2022 by - News

Global tablet shipments reached 46 million units during the fourth quarter of 2021, posting a decline for the second time since the pandemic began in 2020, according to IDC beancounters.

Shipments dropped 11.9 percent year on year as demand slowed. For the full year 2021, total tablet shipments were up 3.2 percent, reaching 168.8 million units, the market’s highest level since 2016.

Chromebook shipments plummeted 63.6 percent year on year in fourth quarter, but managed to grow 13.5 per cent for the full year.

IDC Mobility and Consumer Device Trackers senior research analyst, Anuroopa Nataraj said that  2021 was a great year for tablets but shipments have begun to decelerate as the market has moved past peak demand.

Google Cloud helped by partners

Posted on February 3, 2022 by - News

Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai claimed his outfit’s cloud business was in the position it is today due to the hard work by the company partners.

Google Cloud’s sales surged 45 percent year-on-year in the fourth quarter despite the public cloud giant making an operating loss.

Revenues for the fourth quarter of 2021 hit $5.5 billion for Google Cloud, parent company Alphabet’s results show, but it racked up losses of $890 million – cut from $1.2 billion compared with the fourth quarter of 2020.

Cloud first makes the UK grade

Posted on December 1, 2021 by - News

An Information Services Group report claims that enterprises are increasingly embracing a cloud-first approach to their IT investments.

The “2021 ISG Provider Lens Public Cloud – Services & Solutions Report for the UK” said that enterprises are looking to service providers to help them migrate more of their workloads to the public cloud.

It finds many large UK enterprises interested in hybrid cloud environments, which enable continued use of legacy IT systems, even though an increasing number of companies anticipate a time when they would migrate all of their IT assets to the cloud. Small and medium-sized enterprises, meanwhile, are looking at infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) options to replace their depreciated hardware assets.

ISG partner Jan Erik Aase said that the move to the cloud is expected to be the primary driver of IT market growth in the UK in the coming years.

Ensono signs up for Google’s cloud partner programme

Posted on August 23, 2021 by - News

Cloudy Ensono has joined Google Cloud’s partner programme in a bid to improve its multi-cloud products.

Cloud MSP Ensono says joining Google’s Partner Advantage Programme will enable it to offer new cloud capabilities to its clients and access technologies such as BigQuery and Anthos.

The move seems linked to Ensono’s buying of UK cloud consultants Amido in April.  Amido was part of Google Cloud’s Partner Advantage programme prior to its acquisition by Ensono.

Ensono now provides cloud services across Google Cloud, AWS and Microsoft Azure, it claims.

The US-based firm has been transforming itself from a mainframe services company to a fully-fledged hybrid IT provider over recent years.

Ensono CTO Gordon McKenna said that being able to provide multicloud solutions across platforms is a key strategy that our clients are looking for.

“Our mission is to provide organisations with the best management of hybrid environments while migrating applications to the cloud. By working with Google Cloud, Ensono has the expertise to aid clients in achieving their multi-cloud goals by adopting Google Cloud applications within their existing infrastructure.”

Apple and Google app stores in trouble over the pond

Posted on August 13, 2021 by - News

There is mounting political opposition to the way that Apple and Google distribute apps through their various stores.

Three US senators introduced a bill to promote competition in the app store space, which Apple and Google currently dominate.

The Open App Markets Act, sponsored by Democratic Senators Amy Klobuchar and Richard Blumenthal, as well as Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn, aims to set “fair, clear, and enforceable rules” to protect competition within the app market, and to strengthen customer protection.

If the Bill gets through the Senate it will prevent large app stores (with 50 million+ US users) from requiring developers to use their own payment system. It will also prevent them from punishing developers that offer different conditions or prices through alternative app stores.

Ingram partners with Google

Posted on January 22, 2021 by - News

Ingram Micro Cloud UK has announced a new partnership with Google Cloud.

Google Workspace is billed as a secure, easy to use business collaboration and productivity platform that incorporates a wide range of programs – including Gmail, Docs and Drive.

Ingram Micro Cloud UK said the addition brings greater choice to its partners and resellers and reinforces its commitment to delivering “the most robust ecosystem to build successful cloud businesses”.

Scott Murphy, Cloud Director at Ingram Micro Cloud UK said Google and Ingram were focused on providing resellers with the portfolio breadth they require to grow, with Ingram Micro Cloud being a key player in ensuring they reach their full market potential.

US cloud is strangling European rivals

Posted on January 19, 2021 by - News

Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and Google are killing off European Cloud provider according to new data from Synergy Research.

The European cloud market tripled since the beginning of 2017, hitting €5.9 billion in Q3 of 2020. But European cloud providers have seen market share decline from 26 percent to 16 percent.

WS, Google and Microsoft now account for two-thirds of the regional market, with the remainder of the market made up of smaller US and Asian providers, who are also losing market share.

Synergy also estimated that the full-year European cloud infrastructure services revenue for 2020 will be over €23 billion, a 31 percent increase on the previous year. IaaS and PaaS services makeup nearly 80 percent of that market and are growing much faster than the smaller hosted or managed private cloud segment, it revealed.

Microsoft’s commercial cloud revenue up by 30 percent

Posted on September 14, 2020 by - News

Software king of the world Microsoft appears to be doing better than Amazon and Google in the cloud stakes.

According to the research data analysed and published by StockApps.com, during the fourth quarter of its fiscal year 2020 which ended on June 30, 2020, Microsoft had an increase of 30 percent in commercial cloud revenue.

While commercial cloud revenue totalled $14.3 billion, Intelligent Cloud revenue was $13.37 billion. This marked an increase of 17 percent year on year and surpassed analysts’ expectations of $13.11 billion according to FactSet. The Intelligent Cloud segment includes such products as Azure, Windows Server and GitHub among others. More Personal Computing, which includes Xbox and Surface, was up 14 percent. Productivity and Business Processes, whose products include Office and Dynamics, was up six per cent. Overall revenue increased 13 percent year on year to $38.0 billion.

Five cloud services providers took more than a third of the market

Posted on August 21, 2020 by - News

Beancounters at IDC claimed that the global public cloud services market totalled $233.4 billion (£176 billion) in 2019, representing a 26 percent increase year on year.

The report claims that the top five public cloud service providers – Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google, Microsoft, Oracle and Salesforce.com – accounted for more than a third of the worldwide total, growing a combined 35 percent year over year.

Software as a service (SaaS) remained the largest segment of public cloud spending with revenues of more than $122 billion in 2019, an increase of 20 percent year-over-year. IDC expects SaaS growth to continue as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, as businesses shift to subscription-based models and look to software collaboration tools to facilitate remote working.

IDC’s Rick Villars said that the cloud is expanding far beyond niche e-commerce and online ad-sponsored search and underpinned digital activities that individuals and enterprises depend upon as we navigate and move beyond the pandemic.

Pip White is Google’s UK and Ireland cloud queen

Posted on June 5, 2020 by - News

Google Cloud has appointed Pip White as the company’s Managing Director of UK and Ireland.

White will join Google Cloud in September this year and will lead the UK and Ireland business and the company’s development of its “go-to-market” sales operations across the region. She will spearhead and scale Google Cloud’s sales strategy across the UK and Ireland, a market which has seen a number of recent high-profile customer wins such as Lloyds Banking Group, Vodafone and The Football Association.

White  has about two decades of sales leadership experience, driving enterprise cloud solution sales strategies, strategic alliances, inside sales, and technical team management.