The United States’ federal government is a major consumer of computing services. Previous articles have talked about the FedRAMP approval process used to ensure the security and functionality of cloud services before they can be adopted by any federal agencies. This time, we are going to look at how cloud services are being used by the civilian arm of the Federal Government.

The  Federal Cloud Computing Strategy

Cloud Smart is the name given to the updated 2019 Federal Cloud Computing Strategy. The document presents a path that agencies can follow to migrate safely and securely to a cloud infrastructure. Cloud Smart’s goal is to provide agencies with the tools, knowledge, and flexibility to use the cloud to address their specific needs. The strategy focuses on three key areas related to the migration from on-premises computing environments to the cloud.

• Security policies have been modernized to address risk-based decision-making, automation, and enforcing tighter security on data resources.

• Procurement has been streamlined to enable agencies to benefit from shared knowledge and repeatable processes when purchasing cloud solutions.

• Workforce issues will be addressed by a drive to retrain and recruit the appropriate personnel in disciplines such as cybersecurity and cloud engineering.

The Chief Information Officers Council has created a list of 22 actions that speak to these three areas and that will pave the way for agencies to accelerate the adoption of cloud technologies. Some highlights of the actions include:

• Creating a centralized repository to share knowledge and best practices regarding the transition to cloud technologies;
• Developing a policy that covers infrastructure optimization;
• Updating the Identity, Credential, and Access Management (ICAM) Policy;
• Implementing FedRAMP effectively to expedite the adoption of low-risk Software-as-a-Service offerings;
• Providing direction to agencies to facilitate the security and visibility of data managed in the cloud;
• Developing a pay scale and compensation strategy to ensure that top technical talent can be recruited and retained.

Agencies that are interested in migrating to cloud services can avail themselves of the resources developed through these actions to ease their transition. The Cloud Smart strategy ensures that all federal agencies approach cloud computing from the same perspective.

The Current Federal Cloud Computing Market

The demand for cloud solutions from federal agencies is estimated to be $6.8 billion in 2020 with expected growth to $7.8 billion in 2022. Key findings from the GovWin Federal Market Analysis team describe several trends in the use of cloud offerings by the federal government.

• Spending is up on Software-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service solutions while decreasing on Infrastructure-as-a-Service. This may indicate that the majority of agencies have obtained sufficient cloud infrastructure which will now be used to modernize their software portfolios.

• A new Trusted Internet Connection (TIC) policy has removed impediments to the adoption of cloud connectivity solutions.

• Concerns about data management and security are influencing agencies to use cloud services that are more secure than their legacy data centers.

COVID-19 has contributed to the need for cloud solutions that address a remote workforce in many federal agencies just as it has impacted society as a whole. The future looks bright for providers who can meet the requirements of the federal government as its migration continues to pick up speed.

Cloud computing has matured significantly in 2020 than it was the case in the past decade. This has been true in different areas such as pricing, technology and availability of many cloud options. With the increased number of players, picking the best provider has become a challenge which is hard to address because the options you choose depends on the platform and the pricing. Although initial prices are what many people focus on, there is much more in running a cloud than the subscription costs and server capacity. If organizations fail to take charge, the cost of operating cloud can spiral fast and out of control.

Before moving any service to the cloud, there is need for a deeper understanding of some aspects such as the amount of data that flow between servers and between applications, dependencies, and security, access and authentication requirements. Also, understand the services that are offered by the cloud services and the pricing models of providers.

The public cloud is one of the options that you are likely to consider when migrating. One thing you should know is that before anything, a public cloud is like an empty house that you can live in, but you must buy some utilities and install some things if your life is to be good. Unlike private clouds or on-premise services, you share many things with other organizations in the public cloud. In such a shared environment, security is an area of major concern because it is provided just for the data centre. With this in mind, be aware of the cost of running cloud applications such as network costs, firewalls time that the application will be running. Also, take into consideration the cost of migration, disaster recovery plans and staff who are needed to operate the new systems. With all these aspects, what might have appeared as a low-cost system might become too expensive for your organization.

Understanding the characteristics of your service is also crucial. This is the first step before migrating to the cloud. Ensure that you know the features and requirements of the applications that you want to migrate and their design. Although some things might be straightforward, you must always try to understand how applications function before moving them to avoid unnecessary hassles along the way. The best way you can attain this is by ensuring that your internal IT personnel classify data and ask ever department the importance of data.

It would also help if you learned how to calculate charges. Doing this will reveal additional costs for miscellaneous requirements such as IP address, data transfer costs, domain resilience and other things and add to the cost of servers and storage. Always try as much as possible to understand the additional costs and calculate whatever you believe will make migration expensive. Include things such as resilience and service recovery, that are all needed for a safe and secure data migration strategy. For unnecessary cost to be avoided, look closely at the different types of services that are in the market and match your workload and requirements with these options. Consider keeping some applications in-house if migrating to the cloud cannot change things much.

Although everyone looks for services with low cost, it is also important to also compare the quality of service with the prices. A choice might appear less costly, but the services offered may be bad and may cost you in the long run. Never overlook essential elements, such as service delivery and proper risk management strategies. You can run some services in the public cloud, while you can decide to run others on private cloud and leave others in on-premise.

As the coronavirus pandemic continues biting, many industries have suffered untold losses while some businesses have been forced to close for good. The virus has affected almost every sector leaving a trail of destruction and losses that are hard to recover any time soon. Difficult as it is for many people and industries, the pandemic has become a source of profit for others. With the technology that was already there, cloud companies are reaping big from the COVID-19 pandemic, that has forced millions of people to work remotely. The pandemic came when companies were already moving their applications and their activities to the cloud.

Although businesses had already started adopting cloud solutions, the pandemic has significantly increased opportunities for the cloud applications market this year. The growth of this market is linked majorly with the increased adoption of cloud applications. These apps will enable remote working and sustained service delivery. After the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, all businesses in different sectors of the economy were forced to adopt remote working solutions. Thus the cloud gave these organizations remote application access. This has allowed employees and partners to do their work efficiently and deliver services to customers even as this has never been experienced anywhere before.

According to a recent survey by the International Data Corporation (IDC), there will be an increase in technology-based infrastructure this year. Accordingly, one of the areas that have increased investment based on this research is cloud computing, that has been pushed by the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent work-from-home policy. IDC research found that the cloud demand will continue to increase while cloud software purchases will become a new normal even after the pandemic. Research Dive, on the other hand, posits that the cloud computing application market will grow at a CAGR of about 18%, with projected revenue of $437 billion between 2019 and 2026. This could be more because the time the study projected started in 2019 before the pandemic changed everything. The majority of those embracing the cloud are large enterprises and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), all of that are expected to increase at a CAGR of about 19% between now and 2026. The adoption of cloud-based applications by SMEs is also an advantage in many ways. One of the reasons is that it reduces the cost associated with setting up a data center and allowing employees to access applications from wherever they are during these difficult moments.

Cloud adoption is no longer a preserve of businesses alone. Media companies, educational institutions are also moving their activities to the cloud during this period. Cloud applications are used by students to study at home as learning becomes virtual across the world. Media companies such as Netflix are also increasingly investing in the content delivery systems when many people are stuck at home due to the pandemic. These platforms are slowly killing the mailing of DVDs. Communication platforms such as Skype and Zoom are increasingly being adopted. This eliminates traditional face-to-face meetings.

With the rise of new technologies such as artificial intelligence and big data and the increased competition in the business landscape, then the unprecedented entry of the pandemic, clouds promises to bring together the needs of a business. More companies are fast coming to terms with the valuable advantages provided by the cloud due to the restrictions that have been caused by the pandemic. Perhaps it is now the time the world embraces the new normal and start offering services such as telemedicine, virtual learning, and work-from-home, some of that we have increasingly been adopted during the coronavirus period.

One of the reasons that many organizations are attracted to cloud computing solutions is the promise of cost savings. But simply shifting an on-premises computing environment to a public cloud provider may not achieve the desired economic benefits. A move that was intended to save money can end up being more expensive if not done carefully.

Cloud cost optimization is the process of reducing cloud spend with a methodical approach that eliminates waste, identifies mismanaged resources, and takes advantage of provider services that are designed to reduce overall expenses. You need to remember that a cloud provider is charging you for the contracted resources whether or not they are being used. 

Methods of Saving on Cloud Resources

One methodology that can be used to control cloud costs is the six pillar approach. It identifies six aspects that go into obtaining and using cloud resources cost-effectively. We are going to look at three of them. 

• Reserved instances (RIs) are offered by the major cloud providers and allow an enterprise to more accurately estimate usage and acquire resources at substantially reduced rates. A factor that needs to be considered is the percentage of your cloud presence you want to be covered with reserved instances. Exploring the RIs that are available and managing them centrally across the organization is an excellent starting point when looking for ways to trim cloud computing costs.  

• Auto-parking addresses the problem of terminating cloud services or instances when they are no longer in use. The practice of auto-parking shuts down resources during off-hours. You need to identify resources that can be parked, such as test and development systems over the weekend. Only paying for systems and services when they are needed can substantially reduce cloud costs.  

• Storage requirements can fluctuate wildly depending on the organization and the savings anticipated by eliminating on-premises hardware can quickly evaporate. It’s easy to just provision more storage as needed but that can result in exorbitant and unexpected bills. You will likely be charged based on the amount of storage you need, the bandwidth required for data transfers, how often data is retrieved, and the time constraints on retrieval requests. Understanding your data lifecycle policy can help reduce the costs while still providing the space to satisfy enterprise demands.  

Tools for Optimization 

There are vendor-specific and third-party tools that can help organizations optimize cloud costs. The major cloud providers want your business and understand the complications that selecting the right services poses for the decision-makers in the average company. They are willing to help you find the best way to use their products. As an example, the Azure Advisor is one of the offerings from Microsoft intended to help control the cost of using their cloud platform. Some of its features include: 

• Best practices designed to optimize Azure workloads;
• Recommendations and guidance to quickly remediate problems;
• Alerts that notify you that new recommendations are available.

If your enterprise makes use of cloud services, it is in your best financial interests to optimize the costs. As with many of the benefits of our digital society, using something and using it properly can be two very different things. The savings that you originally envisioned when engaging a public cloud provider can still be achieved, even if finding them takes some extra effort.

Whether you are a techie or a professional in a different area that is not related to IT, cloud computing is impacting your job one way or another. This technology has been praised by tech evangelists as a solution to many business problems. It has been tipped to possess the capabilities of turning fortunes of many organizations, both small and big around. Since this technology will impact work in different ways, knowing more about it and becoming savvy can advance your career and may earn you more salary and respect.

Here is what you need to know about cloud computing if you want to land our dream job.

1. Skills of innovation and vision

This is the most critical and often overlooked area by cloud computing enthusiasts and experts. Unlike what many people believe, cloud computing is more than simply changing storage from in-house to a remote location or monthly charges that come with doing so. Instead, it starts with understanding the needs of the business and the potential of this technology on your operations. You need to understand how to embrace this technology and run simulations on new promotions to find out what suits you. Compare what the technology brings and how it compares with using on-site methods.

2. Possess business communication, project management, and leadership skills

The primary reason for choosing cloud over on-site is to enhance operations and improve the business in general. For this reason, anyone working in a cloud company must learn and understand critical business communication skills needed to run operations in an organizational setup. Also, you should have leadership and management skills because these are crucial in pitching and selling cloud services to the customers and managing projects across the organization. Leadership skills allow you to handle projects, both simple and complex, and provide direction in high priority and special projects. With the right business skills, you will be able to recommend the best technological alternatives to clients and evaluate developments in the cloud in comparison with the changes in the business landscape.

3. Have negotiation skills

In the modern business landscape where the customer has the final say, negotiation skills are no longer an option. This is also the case in the cloud computing world where customers must be convinced into accepting to use the services of a given vendor. As an enthusiast who would like to join the industry, you must have the right skills. As an employee, you will be responsible for negotiations, managing relationships with the customers, tracking issues, troubleshooting, and reporting various things. These skills are crucial in explaining to the customer service-level agreements, answering questions on service interruptions, and asserting the advantages of investing in your company’s solutions.

4. Planning skills, and be analytical

Cloud computing solutions are always required to address the needs of each business. This can be achieved by developing flexible solutions that will fit into the needs of each customer regardless of the industry. As a person planning to find a job in a cloud service providing firm, you must have analytical, planning skills and architectural skills, which will enable you to understand problems that a customer needs to be addressed and come up with a viable solution. The same skills will allow understanding of the business needs and translate them into technical requirements.

5. Be technically proficient

This is the last and the most critical skill you should possess to land a job in a cloud company of your choice. Every professional who consumes, manages, or provides cloud services must be technically savvy. You must be proficient in areas such as software engineering and specifically in the development of cloud applications. You must also be knowledgeable in network administration and management and, at the same time, possess cybersecurity skills.

Though only in its nascent stages, the value of cloud infrastructure to robots is key for both deployment (encompassing development, configuration, and installment) and operation (maintenance, analytics, and control). With the popularization of mobile robotics in a wide range of verticals, it will become necessary to utilize the computing power of cloud infrastructure to store and manage the vast troves of collected data as well as to train more advanced algorithms used to power robot cognition.  ABI Research, a global tech market advisory firm, forecasts the robot-related services powered by cloud computing will reach US$157.8 billion in annual revenue by 2030.

“Since 1961, most commercial robots have been wired or tied to external infrastructure for movement. The next generation of robot deployments will be increasingly mobile, tied to cellular and WIFI connectivity, will consume vast troves of data in order to operate autonomously, and will need effective management through real-time measurements for performance, status and operability,” said Rian Whitton, Senior Analyst at ABI Research. Several cloud service providers, including AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, have begun collaborating with robotics developers, while start-ups like InOrbit target cloud-enabled operations for the first major deployment of mobile service robots.

“The journey of the robot industry from one of individual vehicles and units, to fleets and larger systems, is being driven by its wider incorporation into the IoT ecosystem. However, it would be a mistake to suggest robots will simply fit in with devices, individual sensors, and stationary machines as part of the wider IoT ecosystem,” Whitton points out. Robots are increasingly sophisticated systems themselves, with multiple sensors and highly advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI)/Machine Learning (ML) competencies, and are also expected to move around and act within the world, generating huge amounts of data relative to other machines. “To suggest the cloud alone can provide the computing power to operate these machines is naïve, especially during the slow transition to 5G. Onlookers should instead conceive of adaptable edge-cloud systems that focus on quality over quantity when it comes to robotics operation, data processing, and analysis,” Whitton adds.

The cloud robotics opportunity, defined as Robotics-as-a-Service (RaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) revenue for robotics operations combined, will grow from US$3.3 billion in 2019 to US$157.8 billion in 2030, accounting for 30% of the robotic industry’s total worth. On its own, this represents a huge opportunity for start-ups, many of which are beginning to expand on their mission to enable developers to accelerate their go-to-market strategy and to help end-users and operators’ access and manage the ever-increasing fleets of robots. This new robotics ecosystem will be dominated by three subcategories of companies, namely robot developers that move up the value chain and become solution providers, third-party IoT and cloud platform providers focused on best-in-class software solutions, and Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) like Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Google Cloud. Those focusing strictly on hardware will lose relative worth and will require partnerships or bold strategies to become solution providers. This can be exemplified by companies like Universal Robots and Fetch Robotics, who have incorporated software and maintenance services into their offering.

“The market is incredibly nascent at present. ABI Research expects consolidation with the most successful robot solution providers and the CSPs expanding their relative influence on the market to take place within the next decade,” says Whitton. The cloud robotics technology is split between vertical innovations, such as developing superior navigation systems, which increase the possibility of what robots can do, and horizontal innovations that expand access and scalability. “Cloud computing represents the most important horizontal innovation for the robotics industry, to date, and will further enable vertical innovations like swarm-based intelligence, autonomous mobility, and advanced manipulation to be deployed at scale,” Whitton concludes.

These findings are from ABI Research’s Cloud Robotics application analysis report. This report is part of the company’s Industrial, Collaborative & Commercial Robotics research service, which includes research, data, and ABI Insights. Based on extensive primary interviews, Application Analysis reports present in-depth analysis on key market trends and factors for a specific technology.

As businesses continue discovering the benefits that cloud computing can present with regard to efficiency and profitability, the use of cloud technologies continues to skyrocket. In the US for example, at least 70 percent of companies, whether public, private, or hybrid use cloud computing according to research done by IDG in 2016.

Owing to the evidence of the impact of cloud computing which has been seen over time, people are no longer talking about why cloud computing should be adopted. Rather, they now talk about how they can move operations and services to the cloud. These are the issues you need to consider before migrating to the cloud:

1. Make sure your cloud applications are an improvement to the on-premise applications you already have

Every business’ intention is to have systems that are better than what they already have in order to compete favorably in a highly competitive business landscape. This is no exception when migrating to the cloud. Your new cloud systems must give you the competitive edge you need as you cannot afford to lose anything when migrating to the cloud.  Ensure that you only pay for what you will use to avoid duplication and costs. You should ensure that you change everything to meet the shifting demands by improving the efficiency of your systems.

2. Decide where and what processes to start with

Moving to a cloud is not something you start and finish once. Rather, you need to have a concrete plan that involves moving operations in phases to avoid total disaster in case of a failure. Since it is new technology, it requires a phased approach where simple business processes are moved first and lessons learned from the previous phase applied to the next one. For a company that has subsidiaries or branches, you can start with one branch and scale your deployment to other branches.

3. Manage compatibility and interoperability with other vendors

Interoperability is perhaps one of the leading areas of concern when migrating to the cloud. As you select your cloud vendors, one of the leading areas you should investigate is compatibility of architecture and applications with other vendors. Incompatibility can cost your business a lot and can be the cause of problems when you want to migrate to another cloud service provider. You should also address integration issues that can create separate silos and affect operations.

4. Ensure the strategy of your vendor aligns to your company’s business strategy

Failure to align cloud strategy to business strategy remains the single most challenging area for many organizations and ends up jeopardizing everything. Before you commit to a cloud vendor, take your time to acquaint yourself with the architectural requirements of the service provider. Ensure that the service provider you choose offers all the capabilities that a company needs such as reporting options, budgeting features, and planning options as well as regulatory compliance. Most importantly, ensure that the vendor has integration and security strategies that can be verified by other businesses. Furthermore, inquire the investment of the vendor on future technologies such as blockchain, machine learning and IoT all of which signify intentions of the company to adapt to the future as you would always want your company to do.

IT departments responsible for facilitating the migration of companies’ cloud-based infrastructure often find themselves struggling due to the many issues they face. Most of these challenges are due to the complexity of managing different environments. The issues have been made even more difficult by the growing number of the new cloud initiatives which increases complexity therefore leaving the IT teams wondering about how they are going to update legacy IT environments and processes into a state that befits the prevailing digital space.

Mistakes are common in many IT projects. However, any project management professional will tell you that some mistakes are just too risky and some can even keep you from moving forward and succeeding. The same can be said about cloud migration. Cloud migration mistakes can be costly and companies can lose not only money but also time. If the company fails to identify these mistakes early, chances are that the mistakes can end up badly impacting not only the performance but may also damage confidence in your company’s cloud strategy. It may also lead to loss of confidence in the company’s IT team leaders which may hamper adoption of cloud strategy. As an IT team leader therefore, you should identify the potential issues that you can encounter while implementing cloud strategy and address them to ensure that your cloud deployment is successful. Here are three crucial issues that you need to watch in migrating to the cloud.

1. Failure to analyze your apps before the migration

Failure to analyze the company’s applications before migrating to the cloud is an issue that has bungled many cloud strategies. Before any kind of movement, you will need to do an analysis of applications to determine whether they are good for migration or not. For instance, you can do this by splitting the apps into two groups of apps – one listing the apps which will be replaced and the other of those which will be migrated. For example, you can replace on-premise email application with a cloud app like Microsoft’s Office 365. As an IT manager, you should consider checking how sensitive the application is to compliance. Companies on the other hand should be aware of apps which are sensitive to workloads. Initial app analysis enables a company to identify the attributes of all apps and enables one to avoid potential issues during the migration phase.

2. Not carrying out business analysis before migration

Embarking on migration without a clear business case is another issue which sees companies trying unsuccessfully to migrate to the cloud without understanding the benefits of it. Although some may think that migrating to the cloud is as easy as picking an application and moving it, the truth actually is that lack of business analysis may jeopardize everything. The analysis should include financial implications of migration, requirements, space required and the benefits that migrating to the cloud brings.

3. Inadequate training

 Although you might be in charge of many IT personnel, there are chances that most of them don’t know a lot about the cloud. This might be worse when it comes to cloud migration which makes the whole thing more complex. Since finding cloud-savvy employees can be expensive, you will have to train your personnel to reduce problems that are encountered and increase speed. You might need to find some consultants who are experienced in this area to train employees on the correct cloud migration strategies and how the it can be used in general. Inadequate training may cause legacy knowledge to be brought into the cloud which in the end may impact productivity and strategy in general. This has been one of the biggest challenges that many companies encounter during cloud migration.

According to Tech Radar Pro, Cloudflare has a new browser isolation service. 

Cloudflare has announced that its new “browser isolation” service, which runs a web browser in the cloud, is now available in beta.

Read the article on  Tech Radar Pro

The Defense Department wants to keep their data safe by building a cloud based internet isolation system, reports Federal News Network.

The Defense Information Systems Agency’s idea of protecting agency networks at the internet browser took four years to go from concept to reality. DISA recently awarded a five-year, $199 million deal to now go from prototype to full production across the Defense Department.

Read the article on Federal News Network

Encryption is just one way to keep data secure in the cloud, reports CPO Magazine. 

Enterprises are dealing with explosive growth of unstructured file data, and, to cope, they’re turning to the cloud to more cost-effectively store and collaborate on that data across the globe.

Read the article on CPO Magazine

IBM splits into two companies to focus on the cloud, reports New York Times.

IBM, throughout its 109-year history, hasn’t often led technology trends. But it has adapted and eventually prospered time and again. 

Read the article on New York Times

Taking advantage of the benefits of cloud computing is not restricted to organizations operating in the private sector. In the United States, local, state, and federal governments make extensive use of public cloud resources. As is customary for all types of government contracts, some assessments and approvals must be obtained before the offerings of a cloud service provider (CSP) can be used by specific agencies. Government contracts can be very lucrative and service providers who want a piece of the business need to demonstrate that their products meet all requirements surrounding security and functionality.

All CSPs that wish to do business with the U.S. federal government need to be assessed and approved by the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP). The program’s goal is to protect the data of U.S. citizens when it is in the cloud and is the most rigorous security framework in use by the government. 

FedRAMP was created to address the problem of different and potentially conflicting requirements for each agency working with cloud providers. FedRAMP provides standard security baselines and processes that simplify the process of obtaining cloud services for both providers and government agencies. Once a CSP achieves FedRAMP approval for an offering, it is listed in the FedRAMP Marketplace to gain visibility across the government.

Navigating the FedRAMP Authorization Process

CSPs that want authorization to provide services to federal agencies need to follow a process comprised of three complementary phases.

In the pre-authorization phase, CSPs should complete FedRAMP training which includes modules that define the baseline security plan. Education can be accessed via online courses, webinars, or in-person training events. A request from the CSP will result in a consultation with government subject matter experts set up by the FedRAMP Program Management Office (PMO). To successfully get through this phase of the authorization process, a CSP needs to: 

• Document agency interest in their offering and establish partnerships with agency customers.
• Establish a partnership with an approved third-party assessment organization. 
• Ensure that the service implements the required security controls.

During authorization, a CSP is responsible for developing a package that includes the completion of the System Security Plan. The plan is then assessed by the third-party assessment organization and findings are presented to the CSP for remediation. When all risks have been successfully addressed, the CSP attains authorization and status as a FedRAMP authorized vendor.

In the post-authorization phase of the process, the CSP is required to provide monthly monitoring deliverables to the agency using its service. Failure to provide these documents can result in the service losing its authorization.

The purpose of FedRAMP is to eliminate any confusion regarding the ability of individual agencies to use cloud services. By publishing authorized services on the FedRAMP Marketplace, the authorization process only needs to be done once for each offering. Once approved, it can be used with confidence by any federal agency that wants to use the service. 

This appears to be an example of government working efficiently by reducing the duplicate work that would ensue from individual agencies or departments authorizing CSPs. In a subsequent post, we will take a closer look at the FedRAMP Marketplace and the agencies that use its authorized services. 

The thirst for convenient and scalable computing power has led many organizations to make use of cloud delivery models. This has resulted in a booming worldwide market for cloud computing that is expected to top $350 billion by 2022. With this kind of money in play, the competition to attract customers among cloud providers is fierce. 

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are two transformative technologies that are gaining traction in many areas of scientific research and business analytics. The cloud offers a platform from which organizations of all sizes can access the level of computing power necessary to conduct research and make effective use of these disciplines. Consequently, major cloud providers have bolstered their portfolios with cutting-edge products designed to attract companies interested in AI and ML.

Developing new solutions or delivering advanced functionality to popular platforms is one way a vendor can stand out against its rivals. A method of gaining a competitive advantage that is enjoying increased popularity among large providers is the use of custom-built hardware that is designed to optimize their software offerings. Let’s take a look at some of the hardware solutions and innovations that cloud vendors are employing to provide enhanced capabilities to their customers. 

Google’s tensor processing units (TPUs) are a prime example of hardware dedicated to processing the workloads demanded by AI applications. These are custom-built chips designed specifically to provide the power required by AI systems. The chips are often favored over more traditional graphics cards for the higher speeds they offer. 

Google has developed an infrastructure option called Cloud TPU Pods that use server racks packed with TPUs. They are configured with either 256 or 1,024 TPUs and the larger configurations offer speeds that approach those of supercomputers. The company powers its popular search engine and Google Translate with TPU pods. 

Amazon Web Services’ Graviton processors are custom built by the company using 64-bit ARM Neoverse cores. The processors offer cost-efficient scalability for general-purpose, compute-optimized, and memory-optimized EC2 instances. Second-generation Graviton processors provide an improved price-performance ratio over x86 chips for diverse workloads such as video encoding and CPU-based machine learning. Security is enhanced with always-on 256-bit DRAM encryption, allowing developers to run native cloud applications securely.

Microsoft’s Project Olympus is an open-source solution that incorporates hardware and software modules to create a holistic rack architecture. Project Olympus is part of the Open Compute Project which is releasing technical information to the developer community that may help even the playing field in the server industry. 

The schematics offer a well-defined starting point upon which manufacturers can build custom hardware solutions. Servers built under the auspices of Project Olympus will be infused with high debugging and testing capabilities that will help isolate intermittent and hard to duplicate problems. 

As the computing world’s requirements for faster and more efficient processing continues to grow, the cloud-tech giants will continue to evolve their solutions to meet the demand. The immense resources they wield ensure that when the need calls for it, the financial cost of employing custom hardware will not be an obstacle.

The coronavirus pandemic has altered the strategies of many companies, including their spending. This change has tipped the scale in favor of remote technologies, that are now being adopted massively as work turns from office to working from home. With the revenues of many businesses now suffering from the virus, many organizations are trying their best to limit costs as much as possible. This has seen most of them opting for remote work solutions, changing shifts, and putting some staff on unpaid leave to reduce the cost of business. With all these, the cloud appears to be seeing an increase in expenditure as the acquisition of cloud-based solutions increases. Cost is always a major driver for many migrations, but most companies poorly understand it in the beginning.

For startups, it is okay for them to see the value of cloud when they have used non in the past, but when they are still using old systems and legacy software, finding out the potential cost of moving to the cloud is not that easy. However, with the speed of modern business and the rapid response to the coronavirus pandemic, that is aimed at enabling millions of employees to work remotely, it is now clear that living in the world without cloud technology will not be easy in the modern era.

No time in history has exposed many industries than what we are experiencing today. The pandemic has shown the need for IT resources, that are always available led by the cloud. Even with the virus affecting most operations, the cloud has continued to show the reason why people are finding it useful for businesses. As the damage of coronavirus continues affecting office-based operations in different companies, cloud computing is turning out to be the refuge that these businesses look for at such a time of need. Companies are now relying heavily on technology to keep going. According to a report by Flexera, more than 20 percent of companies spend more than $1 million every month on the cloud. This is expected to double in the next 12 months, where projections found that companies will spend up to 47% on average to grow cloud. The report by Flexera based on a survey of 750 decision-makers and users also point out that companies are 23% over the budget. The respondents, however, noted that they are wasting 30% of their cloud expenditure.

Even with the pressure from the coronavirus, companies must devise a way of managing their cloud expenditure. There is a need for a balance between responding to the effects of the pandemic and keeping the expenditure reasonable. Although spending on all other IT categories will go down this year due to the suspension of operations, cloud technologies will still make the most. Companies will need a way of supporting their on-premise resources and improve the working experience of remote employees. The problem, however, is what is needed, and for how long since the time that the pandemic is expected to be over is not known. However, companies must use data from mid-March up to now and project what is required and what is not. Also, this information can help the forecast of what goes up and what will go down.

With the costs going up, companies must employ new tactics to stay on top of the expenses, most of that are unpredictable. Despite the cost management being challenging, as shown by Flexera because of the complexity and difficulty in usage forecasting, businesses should consider monitoring their spending usage and spending daily. They should also ensure that unused workloads are taken down to reduce the cost of operations in such a time when spending needs to be limited as much as possible.

As many industries reevaluate their go-to-market strategies amid the pandemic - not every business is suffering. Take for instance streaming video on-demand (SVOD) subscriptions like Netflix and Disney+ who have seen an increase in viewership as people are mandated to stay home due to Covid-19. But will streaming services see a depletion of subscribers once people venture outdoors again and are all SVODs doing well in this time of uncertainty?

Where other SVOD services have failed to grow (I’m looking at you Quibi), Disney+ wasted no time -amassing nearly 55 million subscribers in just six months. The streaming service that rolled out in November already has more subscribers than Hulu who clocks in at around 32 million.

Netflix which is still the leader in streaming services has a whopping 182.8 million subscribers. During their earnings call in April- Netflix reported that they had 23% more subscribers than this time last year earning $5.7 billion dollars in revenue. While many analysts wonder if these new subscribers will stay once the pandemic is over – at least one Bank of America analyst doesn’t think they should be worried. Nat Schindler told Yahoo Finance,  “We anticipate the step-up will result in a permanent increase in penetration for Netflix's subscriber model and see its low price-point and staple nature supporting healthy fundamentals performance in a recession, even after stay-home orders are lifted.”

While many SVOD services have seen a rise in viewership – what happens when the pandemic is over? Does it really make sense for a family of four to keep subscriptions to all of the available services? The market is getting tight and eventually families will have to make sacrifices as to which streaming services to keep.

In a survey of 1,000 viewers who have more than two SVOD subscriptions, FLIXED found that out of the main streaming services (Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, and Apple TV+), viewers would most likely drop Apple TV+ over any of their other memberships. Like Disney+ - Apple TV+ debuted in November 2019 but unlike Disney+ met little to no fanfare. The platform that costs just $4.99 doesn’t seem to resonate with viewers as 36% of those surveyed said that they would most likely not renew their subscription to Apple TV+. While Apple has yet to reveal how many subscribers they actually have – analysts put the number at around 30 million – but many of those subscribers are getting it free for the first year. Analyst Toni Sacconaghi of Berstein told the Financial Post that one of the reasons Apple TV+ has fallen short is because it was "failing to resonate with customers, perhaps due to its limited content offerings."

Like Apple TV+ - Quibi – a much hyped streaming services that delivers shows that are 10 minutes or less to a subscriber’s phone has also failed to resonate with audiences. Debuting in March- Quibi only has 3.5 million subscribers (1.7 million who are considered “active”). While many could blame the series of blunders (not allowing users to share clips online, only available for Android phones)-  owner Jeffrey Katzenberg blames the pandemic – the same pandemic that is helping other SVOD services excel. "I attribute everything that has gone wrong to coronavirus,” he told The New York Times. 

As Covid-19 continues to keep people at home – subscribers will flock to Streaming Video On-Demand services for entertainment. In a convoluted market – not all streaming services will succeed. If the current number of subscribers are any indication - Netflix will continue to reign while SVODs like Apple TV+ and Quibi could be in big trouble.