Tag: Microsoft

Omni Cloud Strategies: The New Digital Frontier – Part 1 Introduction to Omni Cloud & The Rise of Multi-Cloud Environments

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The digital horizon is constantly evolving, and at its forefront is the transformative power of cloud computing. Terms like “multi-cloud” and “omni cloud” are not mere buzzwords but signify strategic shifts in how businesses approach their digital infrastructure. This article demystifies these strategies, placing them under the lens for a clearer understanding.

Tracing the Cloud Evolution

From the dawn of mainframe computers to the advent of internet-based cloud solutions, the narrative of cloud computing has been one of innovation and adaptation. Initially, the focus was singular – one business, one cloud provider. Today, the narrative champions competition, diversity of services and integration.

Defining Multi-Cloud

Multi-Cloud is the strategy of using multiple cloud providers, where each provider handles a separate, distinct workload or application. The motivation is often to avoid vendor lock-in, leverage specific features of each provider, or to ensure redundancy and risk distribution.

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Your Cloud journey and how to balance developer autonomy, platform manageability and security

Ulv Bjørnsson1 Comment

Most companies want to be able to innovate and grow quickly. But the ability to do so depends on the organization’s ability to balance developer autonomy with platform manageability and security. It’s not an easy task, but one that requires careful planning ahead of time. Here are principles every company should follow on their cloud journey:

The cloud is how companies innovate, scale and grow.

The cloud is how companies innovate, scale and grow. As a result, it’s important to balance developer autonomy with manageability of the platform. By allowing developers the freedom to create and innovate, you can get more out of your investment in technology. However, without proper controls and security measures in place, there are risks associated with this approach as well.

The cloud allows for continuous innovation through agile development practices—the ability for teams to rapidly develop new features or products that allow them to move faster than ever before. As a result of this rapid innovation cycle, developers need access to tools that allow them to keep up with changes across multiple programming languages (like Python, Terraform, Cloud Providers Native Languages) while ensuring compliance with industry standards like ISO, GXP, PCI-DSS or NIST regulations

The shift to the cloud can be overwhelming and confusing, especially as many organizations find themselves with a multi-cloud environment, which can lead to it’s own set of challenges.

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What is Azure Governance? Let’s look at the fundamentals

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In this blog post, we will discuss the management and operational principles which underpin enterprise governance in Azure which is a necessity for successful cloud adoption and one of the first rails to enable a culture that facilitates digital innovation.

The core components of Azure management are the challenges of Enterprise Cloud Adoption and the components which make up the full set of governance capabilities in Microsoft Azure.

The Azure governance principles are a continuum of tasks, projects and initiatives, therein you build natively in Cloud and also migrate workloads into Azure, securing and protecting those workloads so that they are robust and resilient. You then proceed to monitoring these workloads, so that you can pick up any problems and ensure that they are consuming resources in a manner which is both performant and cost-effective.

Next, you invest in automated configuration to ensure that any changes to your workloads are holistic but also auditable and immutable. Governance ensures that your workloads and the platform on which they run are compliant with your company’s policies and regulatory obligations. This, in turn, creates a more robust enterprise platform, ready to receive new workloads and in turn, a becomes a hub for innovation with the necessary guard rails in place.

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Hyperscale Cloud in China? Microsoft? Mooncake? Alibaba Cloud? Gotchas, pitfalls and directions to successfully navigate it

Ulv Bjørnsson1 Comment

When Westerners think of hyperscale cloud providers, the usual suspects that come to mind are named Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, Oracle, and IBM Cloud. Seldom do you hear another name, which tends to be odd since it is already the world’s third-biggest cloud service provider according to the numbers: Alibaba Cloud. And with yearly revenue growth between 60 and 140%, they sure are catching up fast.

 

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However, to operate a cloud within China there are some hoops you need to jump and you have to collaborate with the regional administration. Provisioning and relocation times, thus, are fundamentally increased, in no little part since tasks must be directed by the local partners. The truth of the matter is that, while it is conceivable, receiving a cloud foundation that does not have a physical presence in China places organizations that operate in China at a colossal detriment.

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Microsoft’s Coco framework: Enhancing cybersecurity on the Blockchain

Ulv Bjørnsson2 Comments

Article-5-2.jpgCoco Framework, is NOT a blockchain ledger.

Coco is a blockchain ledger framework.

It leverages a combination of trusted execution environments, advanced cryptography and innovative blockchain-focused consensus mechanisms to enable new ways of utilizing the blockchain. Coco stands for Confidential Consortium.

If you want a deeper dive, I suggest you check out the Coco Framework whitepaper, here.

Additionally, Microsoft offers BaaS (Blockchain-as-a-service) and was chosen by Bankchain which is a platform for banks that want to implement blockchain technology; members include State Bank of India, ICICI Bank, DCB Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Federal Bank, Deutsche Bank and UAE Exchange.

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Artificial intelligence and Cloud computing: Real-time fraud detection in online banking application within the cloud

Ulv Bjørnsson4 Comments

Over the last few years, cloud computing has been the buzz. Cloud computing services offer an infrastructure that is highly scalable and supports high-performance computing. With high adoption by businesses of all sizes. Development and deployment of applications within the cloud platform are easy and time to market is done in a fraction of the time.

Artificial intelligence is not a new technology. It has been here for a long time and has helped develop computers and software that perform tasks that are associated with intelligence. Machine learning and deep learning are subsets of artificial intelligence that involve the development of algorithms that learn from data inputs and give intelligent output based on that data and the learned patterns.

A lot of research has been done and still is being done on implementing artificial intelligence into cloud computing. Cloud service providers such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft have already integrated AI into their clouds to improve service delivery. AI brings about capabilities such as machine learning, recognition of patterns and robotics to the cloud. On the other hand, the cloud is able to provide a wide range and large volumes of data since these capabilities are largely dependent on data as input so as to produce the desired output. The cloud also allows the systems to open-access and open-source data which is very crucial in facilitating collaborative learning.

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Microsoft new bug bounty program will pay up to $250,000

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To some it may have passed under the radar, for others it might be of interest.

Microsoft has released a bug bounty program for hackers, white hats, bug hunters and security researchers alike to discover, find and report vulnerabilities to Microsoft to strengthen the Microsoft portfolio.

Microsoft having dominated the market for home users and business computers have long been a favored target for cyber criminals, hobby hackers and other nefarious operatives. Meaning that just a zero-day vulnerability or any breach can cause a crisis like the recent WannaCry ransomware attack.

 

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Microsoft has previously had bug bounty programs, but mostly they have been limited in time, or for specific suites.

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