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Tag: Azure

  • Console Connect Partners With Master Concept to Deliver Cloud Networking Solutions to Businesses Across APAC

    Console Connect Partners With Master Concept to Deliver Cloud Networking Solutions to Businesses Across APAC

    Console Connect by PCCW Global has today entered into a distribution agreement with Master Concept, an award-winning cloud technology advisor, to deliver agile cloud networking solutions to businesses across the Asia Pacific region.

    Master Concept provides cloud strategy, implementation and integration support, as well as training and platform enhancements to thousands of businesses across Asia Pacific. By integrating the Console Connect Software Defined Interconnection® platform within its cloud solutions portfolio, Master Concept can deliver further value to major cloud platforms and SaaS providers worldwide with higher levels of network security and performance for its enterprise customers.

    Through a single management portal, Master Concept can provision a range of cloud connectivity services for its customers, including direct Layer 2 connections to hyper-scale cloud providers, such as AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure, and Layer 3 mesh connectivity between and among different cloud providers and cloud regions.

    The platform, which can be integrated via API, is underpinned by PCCW Global’s high-performance network, offering comprehensive end-to-end SLAs that make it suitable for accessing mission-critical and latency-sensitive applications and workloads.

    Mr Michael Glynn, Senior Vice President, Digital Automated Innovation, PCCW Global, said, “Secure and flexible connectivity is fundamental to any cloud transformation project. We are excited to be working alongside Master Concept to enhance their cloud solutions portfolio and make it easier for enterprises to connect to the cloud across Asia Pacific and worldwide.”

    Mr Dennis Wong, Director and Co-founder, Master Concept, said, “Through Console Connect, we have been able to quickly bring new cloud connectivity solutions to market and help our enterprise customers get closer to the cloud. We look forward to growing our collaboration further through the new PartnerConnect program.”

    Mr Derek Chan, Director and Co-founder, Master Concept, said, “We are delighted to be one of the launch partners for Console Connect’s new global PartnerConnect program which enables Master Concept to deliver secure and agile cloud capabilities to our enterprise customers.”

    Console Connect’s PartnerConnect program is designed to drive revenue growth and customer success through the Console Connect Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) platform. The program helps managed services providers, systems integrators, value added resellers, and application providers extend their service portfolio, and securely connect their customers, clouds, and applications worldwide.

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  • AT&T to move its 5G mobile network to Microsoft’s Azure cloud

    AT&T to move its 5G mobile network to Microsoft’s Azure cloud

    Microsoft and AT&T announced they inked a deal to provide the carrier with increased productivity and cost-efficiency of its 5G network services. Under the new partnership, AT&T will move its 5G mobile network to the Microsoft Azure cloud, while the Redmond-based company will gain access to the carrier’s intellectual property and technical expertise to grow Azure for Operators, its top-tier telecom offering.

    Furthermore, Microsoft confirmed that it will purchase AT&T’s Network Cloud platform technology, which the carrier’s 5G core network runs on. Furthermore, Microsoft will buy AT&T’s engineering and lifecycle management software that is typically used to design and deploy network cloud platforms specifically made for carriers.

    Regardless of the acquisitions announced today, AT&T will continue to operate its network and manage customer relationships, it’s just that it will now use Microsoft’s infrastructure.

    Naturally, Microsoft will be responsible for deploying both the software development and the carrier’s Network Cloud, as well as for bringing AT&T’s existing network cloud to Azure over the next three years. The announcement mentions that neither company is disclosing details on financial terms.

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  • China Mobile International launches iSolutions

    China Mobile International launches iSolutions

    China Mobile International has launched a new cloud network integration solution in Hong Kong designed to provide multinational enterprise customers with self-service deployment capabilities.

    The new iSolutions offering will also allow customers to manage all their cloud and network products on a single platform for enhanced visibility, accessibility and manageability.

    It will allow customers to self-deploy and manage cloud network products from major providers including Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Alibaba Cloud, Huawei Cloud, Tencent Cloud, Baidu Cloud Engine and UCloud.

    The solution initially covers 60 Cloud Connect points of presence across 47 cities worldwide to enable the management of global cloud and network products from the one platform.

    Customers will be able to use the platform to purchase new cloud services and deploy them within seconds, track and monitor service status and usage, troubleshoot problems and manage the product lifecycle.

    The iSolutions Cloud Network Service leverages China Mobile International’s global footprint to provide 99.99% guaranteed uptime, and the operator’s fiber infrastructure in China to provide value-added services.

    “Our cloud service provider partners represent the highest level of service in the global cloud market. CMI has recently increased its investment in cable systems, PoPs and data centers,” China Mobile International CEO Dr Li Feng said at the launch event in Hong Kong.

    “In collaboration with the world’s finest cloud service providers, we will leverage our combined advantages to provide global enterprises with a one-stop carrier-grade cloud-network solution and customizable attentive professional services.”

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  • Huawei taps Infosys to help its build cloud ecosystem

    Huawei taps Infosys to help its build cloud ecosystem

    Huawei’s continued quest to be one of the world’s largest cloud players took a small step forward with the announcement of a new partnership with Infosys.

    Huawei Cloud has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with India-based IT firm Infosys in order to help enterprises transition to the digital cloud. As part of the MOU, Infosys will join the Huawei Cloud Partner Network (HCPN) in order to better blend Infosys’ products with Huawei Cloud’s offerings.

    “Combining Huawei Cloud’s product innovation and Infosys’ strengths in next-generation digital services, we will help our clients accelerate their transition to the cloud,” said Infosys President Ravi Kumar, in a prepared statement. “As part of this engagement, we will provide a suite of technologies hosted on Huawei Cloud, such as workload migration solutions including SAP and other enterprise workloads.”

    Over the past several years, Huawei has made a determined effort to become one of the world’s largest cloud providers, but it faces stiff competition from Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. Closer to home, Huawei also competes with China-based Alibaba. Alibaba has been making a concerted effort to expand its cloud business into Europe.

    According to a February report by Synergy Research Group, Amazon Web Services increased its market share at the end of last year to the point where it is equivalent in size to the next four competitors combined. In order, Microsoft, Google, IBM and Alibaba held the top spots after AWS, according to Synergy Research Group.

    While Huawei wasn’t mentioned among the top cloud providers in the report, it has been trying to build a cloud ecosystem since at least 2016 when it first launched its “All Cloud” strategy for ICT infrastructure. A year later, Huawei announced it was seeking cloud computing partners to become the world’s fifth largest cloud provider behind AWS, Azure, Google and Alibaba.

    Given its size, Huawei Cloud may be able to muscle its way into cloud markets that are currently underserved by the top four companies, but there are also a host of medium and regional cloud companies.

    In this week’s first quarter earnings report, which was the company’s first, Huawei touted the artificial intelligence capabilities that are in Huawei Cloud.

    “Huawei CLOUD remains committed to innovation. It aims to build the best possible hybrid cloud, provide full-stack AI solutions for intelligent industries, and make inclusive AI a reality,” the company said in its earnings report. “More than one million enterprise users and developers have chosen to work with Huawei Cloud. In Q1, Huawei Cloud services were launched in Singapore, and Huawei Cloud released its AI model market.”

    In yesterday’s press release, Huawei said the number of HCPN partners had exceeded 6,000. Working with those partners, Huawei Cloud has added 2,800 applications that are available in 23 regions around the world.

  • LG to utilize Azure for autonomous systems

    LG to utilize Azure for autonomous systems

    LG Electronics will be utilizing a Microsoft product in the development of autonomous vehicle systems, LG said Wednesday. Under the agreement between the two companies, LG has gained access to Microsoft’s Azure cloud-computing platform for its self-driving car systems. Apart from storing vast amounts of data, the Azure platform also offers immense computing power for data-based applications and services.

    The two companies met Monday to sign a memorandum of understanding at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. LG will connect with Azure in developing driver-support systems, cameras and a virtual assistant that can answer vocal commands.

    “Developing software for self-driving car components – whether it’s for navigation or infotainment – requires an enormous amount of data processing,” explained an LG spokesperson.

    “The agreement with Microsoft Azure is basically aimed at helping our software save and utilize as much data as possible in the shortest amount of time.”

    LG plans to use Azure’s high-performance computing and graphics processing units. According to the company, these tools can slash the time required to learn roads and traffic patterns from more than a full day to a few minutes. Higher processing speeds will also help the software learn patterns gathered from cameras regarding the driver, pedestrians and other objects on the streets.

    Another tool offered on the Azure platform is a voice assistant. LG plans to incorporate this into its infotainment system so that the car’s software can answer questions and receive commands.

    It could, for example, check traffic conditions, search for a restaurant nearby or call up favorite songs.

    The large amounts of data LG collects from self-driving cars will be saved in the Azure system, including photos of roads, obstacles and road signs collected from all over the world. LG will be able to utilize the data collected for further development. In the past, before cloud services existed, international data had to be shipped to Korea in hard drives.

    LG Electronics has been supplying components to self-driving carmakers since late 2016. The field is considered a future growth engine for the company.

    “In the upcoming age of autonomous vehicles, LG Electronics will shift the definition of cars from a means of transportation to a mobile space, which can turn into a conference room, a theater or a shopping mall,” said the company’s chief technology officer, Park Il-pyung, during a pre-show keynote speech on Monday.

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  • Finastra to host payments solutions on Azure

    Finastra to host payments solutions on Azure

    Finastra has arranged to bring its next-generation payments solutions to the cloud over Microsoft Azure.

    The move enables Finastra to deploy value-added services to clients more efficiently. Banks will benefit from streamlined onboarding, as well as faster access to new products and upgrades.

    The move part of an ongoing broadening of its relationship with the cloud provider that started in 2016 for the US and Canadian markets.

    “This collaboration allows us to change how we deliver software to our customers and partners in a fundamental way,” Finastra CEO Nadeem Syed said.

    “It will enable us to bring new products to market faster and more frequently, with stability and with the highest levels of data security for which Microsoft is known. It also allows us to take a significant step forward in the creation of a platform for innovation and collaboration in financial services.”

    The strategic move to work with Microsoft Azure enables Finastra to optimize existing business processes and functions, while expediting development with stability and sophistication.

    Today banks are seeking ways that evolve with their needs while also fulfilling the ability to scale at a lower overall cost. The migration of payments solutions to Azure will accelerate Finastra’s ability to easily and effectively deploy value-added services onto its platforms and continue to meet customer demands.

    “Generally in the market both payment hubs and cloud have come of age – and this announcement will mean even greater benefits, with the two coming together here. Modern technology, running on modern architecture, gives not only means for greater performance at much lower running costs, but also the potential for new business models altogether, for all involved,” Celent senior analyst Gareth Lodge commented.

    Startups have at their disposal multiple options for delivering their service via infrastructure as a service (IaaS) business model.

    “As enterprises look at the spectrum of options available, careful consideration of internal IT strategy and detailed evaluation of provider portfolios will maximize the benefits delivered to the enterprise through cloud adoption,” commented Deepak Mohan, IDC’s research director for Public Cloud Infrastructure as a Service.

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  • VMware to integrate Horizon Cloud with Azure

    VMware to integrate Horizon Cloud with Azure

    Virtualization company VMware has announced plans to deliver VMware Horizon Cloud on the Microsoft Azure public cloud platform.

    The integration is designed to help customers accelerate the move to Windows 10 and brings VMware virtual desktops and applications to the increasing global presence of Azure in the enterprise – available in 38 regions globally.

    “The addition of VMware Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure puts VMware in a unique position to offer customers several infrastructure options for virtual desktops and applications with the flexibility to move between different platforms,” said Sumit Dhawan, senior vice president and general manager for end-user computing at VMware.

    “This is an example of VMware executing against its cross-cloud strategy and bringing innovation to the desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) category it pioneered in 2009.”

    Horizon Cloud uses a single cloud control plane to let customers choose their preferred infrastructure for delivering and managing virtual desktops and applications.

    Customers can choose from several deployment options and can dynamically switch options if use cases change, employees move or economics shift. The options include fully managed public cloud infrastructure from either VMware or Microsoft, as well as bring your own on premise infrastructure.

    VMware Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure is expected to be available in the second half of 2017.

  • New Zealand’s Ministry of Health approves MS cloud services

    New Zealand’s Ministry of Health approves MS cloud services

    New Zealand’s Ministry of Health has officially approved the use of cloud services for advancing the country’s electronic health service capabilities.

    Specifically, Microsoft’s core cloud services Azure, Office 365 and Dynamics CRM Online have been deemed to meet the ministry’s requirements for storage of personal health information.

    Barrie Sheers, Managing Director for Microsoft New Zealand, said the government’s decision to use Microsoft’s Trusted Public Cloud services will be transformative for the eHealth agenda in New Zealand.

    “New Zealand’s health tech industry is today worth $1.3 billion to the local economy, and our country significantly punches above its weight on the international stage with health tech innovation,” he said.

    “With leading exporters like Orion Health and more than a hundred other smaller independent software vendors, the health tech sector in New Zealand is one that continues to grow and provide a burgeoning opportunity for export to the fast growing global health market.”

    With the advent of personalized medicine, genomics, intelligent sensors, advanced diagnostics and laboratory tests, data usage by health organizations will also increase as the sector builds ever more advanced models of the human body, according to Gabe Rijpma, senior director of health and social services Asia at Microsoft.

    “Being able to process all this data, store it, analyze it and make intelligent predictions on the results will usher in a new era of healthcare that will radically transform the way care is both diagnosed and delivered,” he said.

    Rijpma who is based at Microsoft NZ’s Christchurch office, said the local health tech sector has already been rapidly adopting the public cloud to develop futuristic solutions, but they have not been able to sell those solutions in international markets until now.

    “Now the local health tech sector will be able to use New Zealand as a fertile ground for new innovation and also deliver their world firsts here, too,” he added.

  • Cloud computing can help firms cut costs

    Cloud computing can help firms cut costs

    With the rise of cloud computing in business practices worldwide, Microsoft is encouraging Indonesian industries and businesses to take advantage of this technology in their day-to-day operations, mainly due to the cost-cutting advantages that it offers.

    Microsoft Indonesia’s national technology officer Tony Seno Hartono explained that by using public cloud services, such as the ones Microsoft offers through its Azure service, Indonesia’s businesses could significantly increase their operational efficiency, by 25 to 50 percent.

    This is due to the fact that cloud services provide many streamlined features such as server management, data storage and even the electricity to keep the data-storing servers alive. “It can help businesses decrease their operational costs, because using cloud services is basically like outsourcing. Microsoft has a huge data center, capable of storing data and managing it for you. Why not utilize our services?” he said on Monday.

    Microsoft, he continued, is in talks with an unspecified telecom operator to build a data center in Indonesia, but says the negotiations are still ongoing. Indonesian users of Azure currently have their data stored in Microsoft’s data centers abroad, such as in Singapore and the US.

    Adding to the virtues of cloud computing, Tony elaborated that the local creative industry could also harness the benefits of Microsoft’s multiple data centers for creating works of art. One example is in the animation industry, where higher quality animations require massive amounts of time and data to be rendered.

    During the making of James Cameron’s blockbuster film Avatar, Cameron collaborated with Microsoft to render the CGI animations using their public cloud services, thus saving the film production time and costs.

    Tony said that if Cameron had not utilized Microsoft’s multiple data centers, the animations from Avatar would have taken many years to render properly due to the film’s scale and size.

    Within the film industry in Indonesia, many have expressed interest in using Microsoft servers but none have used them so far, because the industry still remains small, and large-scale animation jobs in Indonesia tend to be taken to foreign animation studios to be worked on, Tony added.

    From the perspective of Winastwan Gora, chief operating officer of tech education start-up Kelase, the usage of Azure cloud services has benefitted his company’s operations and has helped cut costs.

    Kelase signed up for Microsoft’s BizSpark service, for three years of Azure usage with a usage cost limit of US$150 per month. The move guaranteed them space on Microsoft’s data centers abroad for storing and processing their information.

    “By utilizing the Azure cloud, we were able to improve our communications and marketing efforts and also, our analytical and source control mechanisms became easier to carry out compared with other means. In other words, it’s now easier for the company to be run digitally,” Gora said.

  • Microsoft launches Azure IoT Hub

    Microsoft launches Azure IoT Hub

    Microsoft has announced the wide-scale launch of the  Azure IoT Hub, which allows users to connect, provision and manage billions of IoT devices.

    Microsoft says Azure IoT Hub acts as the bridge between customers’ devices and solutions in the cloud enabling storage, analyzing and acting on data in real time.

    The hub also enables secure two-way communication over open protocols such as MQTT, HTTPS and AMQPS, and is designed to make it easy to connect with other Azure services such as Azure Machine Learning and Azure Stream Analytics.

    In addition to the launch, Microsoft also announced the expansion of Microsoft Azure Certified for IoT program. The program was launched to ensure IoT solutions from global technology leaders are fully interoperable from the start.

    By offering trusted solutions from verified partners that work with multiple operating systems, including Linux, mbed, ROTS and Windows, Azure Certified for IoT accelerates IoT deployments.

    Over the past three-plus months, nearly 30 industry leaders have joined the program, said Microsoft. Now even more have announced their participation, including: Advantech, Dell, HPE and Libelium. Previous certified partners include: Arduino, Beagleboard, Freescale, Intel, Raspberry Pi, Samsung, Texas Instruments and others.

    “IoT is poised for dramatic growth in 2016 and we can’t wait to see what our customers and partners will continue to build on our offerings. We’re just getting started and will have much more to share in the coming months,” said a Microsoft blog post.