You might think Amazon Web Services would have chilled out in the month before its big Re:Invent conference. After all, that show, which takes place at the end of November, is when the cloud provider typically shows off a bonanza of new products and features.But Christmas has come early in October, at least for people who are looking to run hybrid cloud deployments with AWS. Here's the rundown of important news you may have missed. VMware and Amazon team up
The big bombshell for the month was a partnership between AWS and VMware. The latter company is going to launch a managed service that will make it easy for people to migrate workloads from on-premises hardware to the public cloud and back again, using VMware's vSphere management software.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Put away the Halloween candy, and dust off your stuffed turkeys, folks. October is long gone, as are a fresh set of announcements from Microsoft about changes to its Azure cloud platform. Here's the important news you might have missed.Price drops for a bunch of Azure compute instances
If there's one constant in the public cloud, it's the back-and-forth between competing providers over who gets to claim that they have the cheapest services. Microsoft fired another shot in that war in October, dropping prices for its A1, A2, Dv2 and F series compute instances. Here's how that breaks down, straight from a blog post by Microsoft Corporate Vice President Takeshi Numoto:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
There's no love lost between Google and Microsoft. The two companies have been fiercely competitive with one another in the public cloud, productivity and operating system markets, at times leaving users in the lurch.
There's one small glimmer of hope in the relationship between the two companies: Google has joined the .NET Foundation, to help drive forward the programming language framework Microsoft originated.
Google will be a part of the technical steering group for the foundation, which helps guide the future of the platform and consults on changes to the .NET roadmap and project release schedule. The foundation oversees projects including .NET Core and the Roslyn .NET compiler.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
After a long campaign against open source and Linux, Microsoft has for the past few been pushing its love of the popular operating system. On Wednesday, the company made that even more official by joining the Linux Foundation, an organization that shepherds development of the operating system's kernel and provides funding for open source projects.Microsoft also launched the public beta of SQL Server on Linux, the much-anticipated port of the relational database software that was first announced in March. Linux developers can also start working with a beta of Azure App Service, which is designed to take away the work of managing infrastructure for cloud-based apps.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
There's an arms race among public cloud providers to provide businesses with the best machine learning capabilities. Enterprises are increasingly interested in creating intelligent applications, and companies like Amazon, Microsoft and Google are rushing to help meet their needs.Google fired its latest salvo on Tuesday, announcing a set of enhancements to its existing suite of cloud machine-learning capabilities. The first was a new Jobs API aimed at helping match job applicants with the right openings. In addition, the company is slashing the prices on its Cloud Vision API and launching an enhanced version of its translation API.On top of that, Google is offering GPUs in its cloud both through the company's managed services and its infrastructure-as-a-service product. Companies that want to roll their own machine learning systems and algorithms can now take advantage of the new hardware.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft's continued investment in artificial intelligence and machine learning technology is paying dividends. The company has partnered with OpenAI, a non-profit company founded earlier this year to advance the field of machine intelligence for the benefit of humanity. As part of the deal, announced Tuesday, OpenAI will use Microsoft Azure as its primary cloud provider, an important win for Microsoft as it competes with the likes of Amazon, Google, and IBM to power the next generation of intelligent applications. OpenAI is backed by the likes of Tesla CEO Elon Musk, controversial investor Peter Thiel, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, and Y Combinator Partner Jessica Livingston. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Small businesses that need a tool to track their relationships with customers now have a new weapon from Microsoft in their arsenal.On Monday, the company launched Outlook Customer Manager, a lightweight customer relationship management (CRM) system. It allows users to track their customers, manage deals in progress, track tasks and more, all from their Outlook email client.The launch builds on Microsoft's ongoing push to capture the small business market. Earlier this year, the company launched Bookings, a service designed to help service-focused businesses manage customer appointments.It's a move by Microsoft to further compete with Salesforce and other players in the cloud CRM space. Companies that already have an Office 365 Business Premium subscription may not want to choose one of the competing CRM systems, if they can get OCM for free.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Earlier this year, Microsoft made a splash at its Ignite conference for IT professionals when it announced that it has been racking cards of programmable chips together with servers in its cloud data centers.
The chips, called field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), can be reconfigured after being deployed to optimize them for particular applications such as networking and machine learning.
Now, Microsoft is investing in tools that would allow customers to program the FPGAs, said Scott Guthrie, the executive vice president in charge of Microsoft's cloud and enterprise division, during a talk at the Structure conference in San Francisco.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google infrastructure czar Urs Hölzle is focused on a cloud future where customers don't think about the infrastructure underlying all of the workloads they're running.In his view, one of the key advantages of the cloud is that customers can get the benefits of new hardware without having to completely rework their software."So that means you can have a million customers who move to that new hardware platform, not knowing they did," he said Tuesday at the Structure Conference in San Francisco. "Which means that you can really insert this new technology in a much faster cycle than you could if you did the same thing on-premises."That means companies can get quick, seamless improvements to performance, as opposed to an on-premises deployment. When operating their own data centers, companies must take the time to evaluate new hardware, and take the time to roll it out.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Facebook users will be able to record smartphone videos that ape the style of famous artworks with a new feature unveiled Tuesday. Using a technique called style transfer, the feature takes live video and turns it into something that resembles the work of Van Gogh, Picasso and other artists.That effect is probably familiar to people who have used the app Prisma, which uses similar techniques to change the look of photos. Prisma's app can't perform live filtering, and some filters require a connection to the internet. Facebook's system can work offline and render live.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Architects have a new reason to pick up Microsoft's HoloLens, after the launch of an app aimed at helping them explore 3D models of buildings.Trimble launched its SketchUp Viewer app for Microsoft's headset on Monday, which will allow people to use the HoloLens's augmented reality capabilities for viewing models created in SketchUp. The app will have two modes: one that allows people to view a scaled-down version of the model using the HoloLens, and another that allows them to view what a building modeled in SketchUp would look like from the inside.Deploying a HoloLens with SketchUp Viewer will cost businesses a pretty penny. The app costs US$1,500, on top of the HoloLens's whopping $3,000 price tag. Still, it's a new and different way for people to visualize models in a way they couldn't before.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Containers have become a major fixture of modern application development. Companies are turning to the technology because it helps them more easily create portable, scalable applications that can work in a wide variety of environments, including the public cloud.Microsoft is aiming to further capitalize on that trend with a set of updates announced Monday for its public cloud platform.Azure Container Service, Microsoft’s cloud-optimized container-hosting offering, now supports orchestration using the Kubernetes open-source platform. On top of that, Microsoft has upgraded the service to use DC/OS 1.8.4, which brings improvements like built-in job scheduling.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft has revealed a Unified Update Platform that's designed to make it easier for devices to upgrade from one version of Windows 10 to another. The UUP encompasses a set of behind-the-scenes changes in Windows 10 that reduce the processing power needed to update, shrink the size of update files, and streamline updates on Windows smartphones.These improvements are designed to help Microsoft address user complaints about the update process. Because the company's vision for Windows 10 includes many updates, streamlining those procedures is important.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
One of the biggest issues with high-end virtual reality experiences right now is that they often require people invest thousands of dollars in powerful computers in order to work. One solution to this is the VR arcade, where operators buy machines and then rent time on them to the public.HTC announced a new software platform Thursday that aims to help with the creation of such arcades. Viveport Arcade is designed to help arcade operators find games that are well-suited to the sort of public experience that they're building, while also helping developers better monetize their creations. It's built for the Taiwanese hardware maker's Vive headset, one of the leading offerings in the realm of high-end virtual reality headgear.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
When it comes to enterprise data visualization, IBM Software Engineer Rosstin Murphy thinks augmented reality trumps virtual reality. In his view, VR's "transportational" nature makes it less suited to business applications."It takes you and it sends you to the moon, or to outer space or to or an alien planet," he said. "But augmented reality is transformational. It will transform the world you're already in, and for a business context, that's exactly what you want."Murphy pointed out during a talk at the Virtual Reality Developers Conference in San Francisco that AR headsets let users continue to interact with the objects on their desks, like keyboards and phones. That's important for people who want to get work done while reaping the benefits of new hardware like the Microsoft HoloLens.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Workplace collaboration has become increasingly focused on chat in the past couple of years, and Microsoft is jumping into the new space with both feet, launching a new product it calls Teams.Teams allows groups within a company to divide into subgroups and then set up individual channels to discuss their work. The chat-based workspace is designed to integrate deeply with the rest of Microsoft's Office 365 productivity suite, including OneDrive and Skype, for file sharing, voice and video chat. The application is available in beta starting Thursday on the web, Windows, Mac, iOS and Android.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Discussing salaries at work can be tricky. LinkedIn is trying to take the guesswork out of calculating fair compensation by giving users the ability to view aggregate data about salary trends by profession.
The new LinkedIn Salary service will show users of the enterprise social network a graph of the total compensation for a particular title in a particular location. For example, they could look up how much a software engineer makes in New York City. (Spoiler alert: it's a lot of money.) After that, it's possible to further slice and dice the data, to see differences in pay between different industries, levels of education, and even degree field.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft was quiet about several planned features in the Creators UpdateImage by Blair Hanley FrankMicrosoft showed off a handful of marquee features for next year's Windows 10 update on Wednesday, but the company sneakily hid 11 more new releases in its sizzle reel preview of the Creators Update. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft unleashed a ton of Windows and Surface news on the world from New York on Wednesday, revealing new Windows features and brand new hardware. Here's the run-down on the biggest news from the company's two-hour-long presentation.Surface Studio takes a fresh look at the Desktop PC
There were a ton of rumors about a forthcoming all-in-one Surface desktop, and Microsoft brought the thunder. The Surface Studio is an all-in-one PC with an ultrathin, 28-inch, 4.5K touchscreen. The screen is mounted on a pair of hinges that let it sit up vertically like a traditional desktop computer, and lower down to a drafting position, where the display is only inclined to the desk by 20 degrees.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Amazon is trying to simplify the process of moving legacy applications to the cloud with a new service that it quietly launched this week. The aptly named Server Migration Service is designed to help IT teams set up the incremental replication of virtual machines from their on-premises infrastructure to Amazon's cloud.More companies are adopting the public cloud to take advantage of performance benefits and cost savings. But getting legacy apps into the cloud can be a pain, especially for those applications that require high uptime but take time to migrate. Server Migration Service helps simplify that process and may lead to additional cloud adoption.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Blair Hanley Frank