Tag: Amazon

Cloud rains profits

Posted on January 25, 2023 by - News

Public cloud service and infrastructure markets, operators and vendors’ revenue jumped 21 per cent to $544 billion in 2022.

New data from Synergy Research Group claims that the biggest growth was seen in infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS).

Annual revenue from these services grew 29 per cent to reach more than $195 billion, despite some headwinds from the strengthening US dollar and problems in the Chinese market.

In the other main segments, managed private cloud services, enterprise SaaS and CDN added another $229 billion in service revenues, having grown by an average 19 per cent from 2021.

Synergy said public cloud providers spent $120 billion on building, leasing and equipping their datacentre infrastructure, which was up 13 per cent from the previous year.

Vendor job kill continues

Posted on January 23, 2023 by - News

Never mind any skills gap, Vendors are firing staff who they may never see again to make a short-term cut in costs.

Google handed six per cent of its global workforce pink slips apparently to refocus on its priorities, including AI.

CEO Sundar Pichai said: “We’ve decided to reduce our workforce by approximately 12,000 roles. We’ve already sent a separate email to employees in the US who are affected. In other countries, this process will take longer due to local laws and practices.”

Pichai said the company will be reviewing its current operations in order to make the most of its early investments in AI.

Big tech owns most of the cloud

Posted on November 16, 2022 by - News

Amazon, Microsoft and Google own more than 76 percent of the enterprise cloud services market in the United States and that anti-competitive state is likely to deteriorate,

IT market research firm Synergy Research Group said American enterprises’ annual spend on cloud infrastructure services was now approaching a significant milestone.

Synergy Research Group chief analyst John Dinsdale said that US spending on cloud services was approaching a $100 billion annual run rate and continues to grow by 30 percent per year, which was unusual for such a large IT market.

Over the past 14 quarters, the US year-over-year growth rate for cloud services has been between 27 percent to 34 percent and the growth is being led by Microsoft, Amazon’s cloud business—Amazon Web Services (AWS)—and Google’s cloud arm Google Cloud, he said.

Broadcom wants to speed up VMware approval

Posted on October 19, 2022 by - News

Broadcom wants to speed up antitrust approval from the European Union on its $61 billion VMware acquisition.

Apparently, it is using market rivals Amazon, Microsoft and Google dominance to claim that the move is necessary to create more competition in the cloud market.

The European Commission’s four-month-long second phase investigation and for it to go to phase two, there has to be a real competition problem – horizontal, vertical, foreclosure risk.  Broadcom argues that with the big names in the market, its buy out is nothing to worry about.

After the news broke it was met with uncertainty among some VMware partners who were left with mixed feelings and were concerned it might harm the UK channel.

Watchdog puts Amazon, Microsoft and Google under microscope

Posted on September 23, 2022 by - News

The UK regulator Ofcom is to have a look under the bonnets of Amazon, Microsoft and Google in the cloud services market.

Ofcom announced the launch of a market study into the £15 billon UK cloud services market. In particular, Ofcom will focus on the hyperscalers which between them account for approximately 81 percent of UK public cloud service revenues.

The study will check how well the market is working and the nature of competition in cloud services.

Ofcom wants to think about any market features that might limit innovation and growth in the cloud services sector by creating barriers to entry for smaller companies and preventing them from effectively competing and growing their market share.

Global smart home market set to slow until 2023

Posted on August 16, 2022 by - News

Big snail in Old TaipeiThe global smart home market is expected to experience consecutive years of softening growth before an upward trajectory starts in 2023 according to researchers at Omdia.

The downward trend is attributed to a combination of factors including wage stagnation, increased unemployment, and a large decline in projected retail sales, especially in 2022.

Strong growth, on par with pre-pandemic levels, is expected to return starting in 2023, driven by increased demand in energy management solutions and the impending release of the Matter standard.

Amazon brands Microsoft as anti-competitive

Posted on July 25, 2022 by - News

Tenniel's illustration of Tweedledum and Tweedledee - Wikimedia CommonsAn Amazon Web Services executive took a swipe at Microsoft licensing, dubbing it  anti-competitive.

AWS’ senior vice president of sales and marketing Matt Garman, wrote on LinkedIn that Microsoft’s “recent licensing rhetoric” is “a troubling admission of the same anti-competitive tactics that many companies have been raising with them for years, but went unheeded until they were put before the European Commission.”

Solace signs up for Amazon

Posted on July 18, 2022 by - News

Data enabler Solace has joined AWS’ Independent Software Vendor Accelerate Programme

Solace hopes its involvement in the programme will help AWS customers globally to better integrate real-time data capabilities.

Solace already works with the likes of NASA, the London Stock Exchange and Barclays to deliver and enable event-driven architecture for real-time enterprises: a comprehensive way to create, document, discover and stream events.

Solace  Chief Technology Solutions Officer Sumeet Puri said: “We value our multi-year relationship with AWS as an important element of how we help customers implement real-time event streaming across their critical business operations: “We’re excited to now offer our customers even more value by taking our work with AWS to the next level as part of the AWS ISV Accelerate Programme.”

 

Amazon signs green deal with AES

Posted on May 10, 2022 by - News

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has signed a deal with green energy storage firm AES as part of its move to be powered by renewable energy by 2025.

In a statement, AES said the PPAs are part of a number of projects that will help Amazon achieve its goal of having its global operations powered by 100 per cent renewable energy by 2025, which is five years ahead of its original schedule.

AES CEO Andrés Gluski said: “Together with Amazon, we are showing how customised energy solutions and innovative thinking can help organisations of all kinds to decarbonise their operations and the grid.”

Digital Markets Unit watchdog gets statutory powers

Posted on May 9, 2022 by - News

The Digital Markets Unit (DMU) will get statutory powers to enforce a “pro-competition” regime, under a new government plan.

The goal will be to rebalance the relationship tech giants have with consumers and businesses and will allow the DMU to designate firms light Meta, Google, Amazon and Apple as having “strategic market status.” These firms will be forced to adhere to binding codes of conduct.

Failure to comply with the DMU and its rules could result in fines of up to 10 per cent of annual global turnover for tech companies, with additional penalties of five per cent of daily global turnover for each day the offence continues. Senior managers could face civil penalties if their firms fail to engage properly with the DMU’s requests for information.

AWS launches billion dollar partner support programme

Posted on April 26, 2022 by - News

AWS is launching a billion dollar investment programme to support partners in customer fulfilment, logistics, and the supply chain.

Dubbed the Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund (AIIF), the programme will invest in those that increase delivery speed and further improve employees’ experience working in the warehousing and logistics fields.

Initially, AWS will focus on wearable technology enhancing safety in fulfilment buildings and robotics designed to complement and coexist with people’s lives.

Outfits which look likely to collect are Modjoul, Vimaan, Agility Robotics, BionicHIVE and Mantis Robotics.

EU not too worried about giant cloud monopolies

Posted on March 30, 2022 by - News

EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager said that Amazon and Microsoft have not raised cloud competition concerns in the European Union.

Last year, Amazon Web Services (AWS) accounted for 13 percent of Amazon’s revenue but 37 percent of its operating profit ($5.3 billion out of $14.3 billion). At the same time, Microsoft’s Q2’22 (ended 31st December) profit rose to a better-than-expected $18.8 billion, with overall cloud revenue climbing 32 percent and Azure cloud revenue up 46 percent.

These firms’ dominance in the European cloud market has caused concern among smaller competitors. French cloud computing company OVHcloud and German software provider NextCloud filed an antitrust case against Microsoft. They claim the tech giant has been stifling competition in the market and making it harder for consumers to choose services from rival firms.

The complaint focuses on Microsoft’s licensing operations, alleging that the company has made it more expensive for users to switch from Azure to a competing cloud provider.

AWS Cloud use slashes energy, claims AWS

Posted on November 11, 2021 by - News

Amazon seems to have worked out that everyone wants a carbon-reducing reason to buy its products.  That”s the fashion these daze (sic).

The outfit has just released a report claiming that shifting to its cloud product slashes European business energy use by 80 percent instead of operating their own data centres.

UK spooks look to the cloud to boost AI

Posted on October 27, 2021 by - News

The UK’s spooks are working with Amazon to boost the use AI, using cloud analytics and other technologies

GCHQ has signed a deal with AWS that will see the agency’s most classified material stored in a high-security cloud system.

The deal is worth up to £1 billion. It will let GCHQ, MI5, and MI6 – the UK’s three spy agencies – to use AWS’ cloud to boost the use of AI, data analytics, speech recognition and other technologies for espionage.

British agents can share information from overseas more easily and carry out faster searches on each other’s databases.

Amazon boosts UK staff by 2,500

Posted on September 3, 2021 by - News

Online bookseller Amazon is about to create 2,500 new staff in the UK as part of its move to hire 55,000 new staff to technology and corporate roles globally,

Andy Jassy, who took over from Jeff Bezos in July, highlighted the growth of cloud and Project Kuiper, the firm’s initiative to launch satellites into space to improve broadband access, as two areas that would need more staff.

The bulk of the positions will be in the US, where the firm plans to create 40,000 roles, while about 2,500 will be created in the UK, according to the Guardian.

It also reports that Amazon will hire the new UK staff for its offices in London and Manchester, as well as its “tech hubs” in Cambridge and Edinburgh.