Tag: Google

Euro clouds missing from the sky

Posted on February 20, 2023 by - News

European players are virtually absent from the cloud market, thanks largely to bureaucracy and squabbling.

While companies have been moving to the cloud in great numbers, it has been mostly products made by US big tech. Azure was top, followed by AWS and then Google Cloud – the “big three”.

This is the last thing which should have happened. When GDPR came out in 2018 and with the collapse of the US-EU Safe Harbour and Privacy Shield data transfer regulations, many predicted a golden age for European cloud companies.

Microsoft winning the AI race

Posted on February 13, 2023 by - News

Microsoft and OpenAI have a first-move advantage in the exploding market for AI chatbots, according to Daniel Ives, managing director and senior equity research analyst at Wedbush Securities.

Through its early and continued backing of ChatGPT developer OpenAI, Microsoft is “leading so far” in the “Al arms race,” he wrote

Last week, Vole and Google held product events this week about their respective chatbot plans, Google’s event for its forthcoming Bard chatbot was “underwhelming,” according to Ives. Additionally, a Google ad for Bard, which featured an inaccurate piece of information served up by the chatbot, was “an absolute near-term gut punch to Google’s Al credibility,” Ives wrote.

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.

Google’s bid to save its targeted adverts hits snag

Posted on January 16, 2023 by - News

Google’s cunning plan to save targeted advertising on the web once it kills off third-party tracking cookies in  Chrome browser is in trouble after a key web standards body rejected the idea.

The online ad industry is racing toward a 2024 deadline when Google intends to phase out third-party cookies from Chrome, the world’s most popular web browser. Since 2020, Google has been testing several cookieless proposals as part of its Privacy Sandbox initiative, which are designed to allow targeted advertising to continue to work on the web but in ways that better preserve user privacy.

Onecom snaps up IMS

Posted on January 13, 2023 by - News

Onecom has snapped up IT services provider IMS Technology Services.

The deal adds more than 600 customers to Onecom’s books, the Vodafone, Microsoft, Google, Mitel, Samsung, Apple, Gamma and Five9 partner said.

Onecom’s revenues increased by over 80 per cent to reach £169 million in calendar 2021 primarily due to its aggressive M&A strategy. Founded in 2002, it has been backed by mid-market private equity firm LDC since 2019.

OneCom CEO Martin Flick said the acquisition builds on OneCom’s mission to extend its geographic footprint and technical capabilities.

Big tech traffic tax could create traffic jam

Posted on January 5, 2023 by - News

A European Community cunning plan which would make tech giants contribute to the cost of telecommunications infrastructure is finding a lot of opposition from internet exchange bodies and net neutrality advocates.

The European Union wants Big Tech firms to pay for telecom operators’ network costs. However, the European Internet Exchange Association (Euro-IX) claims the move could lead to systemic weakness in critical infrastructure and a “traffic jam”.

Euro-IX was established in June 2001 to grow, bolster and enhance the IXP community. It has 69 IXPs as members from different parts of the globe.

Europe’s digital chief Margrethe Vestager said in May that tech giants should be required to contribute to the cost of telecommunications infrastructure, something that telecoms operators have been lobbying for a long time.

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.

Kyndryl helps customers get onto public clouds

Posted on October 14, 2022 by - News

Global infrastructure services provider Kyndryl has expanded its ability to help customers run or migrate their mainframe workloads to public clouds.

There are two ways that Kyndryl can do this. The first uses its Microsoft Ignite presence and create a new cloud product which mixes its managed services expertise with Microsoft Azure Stack HCI software and Dell Technologies hardware.

The idea is to help businesses with on-premises, remote or third-party data centre workloads accelerate their cloud transformation projects. The Microsoft Azure Stack HCI supports mainframe modernisation by connecting to on-premises mainframe or distributed computing infrastructures.

The second idea sees Kyndryl working with Google Dual Run, a service introduced Wednesday by Google as a way to migrate workloads off mainframes and onto the Google Cloud by letting the workloads work on both the cloud and on the mainframe until customers feel the time is right to take them off the mainframe altogether.

Google wants more cloudbusters

Posted on September 27, 2022 by - News

After announcing a freeze on staff hiring, Google now says it wants more to join its cloud teams.

According to a recent internal memo sent to employees, the cloud operations are going to be exempt from the staff freeze which was implemented across parent company Google in July.

It would appear that Google’s cloud business would not feel too big of an impact in terms of the companywide hiring freeze as Google would still be hiring technical talent and it is “focused on hiring engineering, technical and other critical roles.”

Google also “on-boarded” thousands of new employees from Mandiant, which the company officially acquired in September for $5.4 billion in a blockbuster security move.

 

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.

Google rains on Microsoft’s cloud licensing plans

Posted on August 31, 2022 by - News

Google is unimpressed with Microsoft’s plans to change its licensing on its cloud products.

Microsoft’s licensing changes, going into effect on 1 October claim to enable more expansive software rights and lower-cost customer solutions.

However, its rival Google claims the changes ignore the crux of the company’s most anti-competitive cloud practices.

Google Cloud switches off IoT services

Posted on August 22, 2022 by - News

Google Cloud is giving its customers with less than a year to find alternative IoT services.

Google Cloud told its customers: “We’re writing to let you know that Google Cloud IoT Core Service will be discontinued on August 15 2023 at which point your access to the IoT Core Device Manager API will no longer be available.”

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.

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.