Globaldata Share Discussion Threads

[littleredrooster] 19/9/2017 21:57

The Cloud allows pop-ups for software distribution

hxxp://www.forbidden.co.uk/2017/09/19/pop-up-cloud-infrastructure/

September 19, 2017

Pop-up cloud infrastructure

As a lover of fine chocolate, and a member of the Chocolate Tasting Club, I notice chocolate shops. They are liberally scattered throughout London.

The run up to Easter is a good time for chocolate, and numerous chocolate outlets appear at this time, either taking over shop sites, or or as pop-ups within shops, only to disappear shortly afterwards. The benefits are clear: it avoids the cost of running a chocolate shop all year round, and customers have access when they most need it.

An even more flexible stall shows up during the Wimbledon Tennis tournament, when numerous tourists arrive to enjoy the spectacle – and sometimes, the English summer sunshine. These tourists flood the local restaurants, where local shops adopt a tennis theme.

Near these 19th century shop fronts, at the top of Wimbledon Hill, you can find a couple of children sitting outside their back gate with a pop-up strawberries and cream stall, with soft drinks options. Based around a simple table, this lucrative set up carries out a brisk trade with those tourists who think that Wimbledon Station is the nearest one to the tournament. A few days later it vanishes without trace.

Pop-up agility contrasts with traditional bricks-and-mortar store inertia. A big infrastructure cost – long term staff, a wide product range – is not needed. Or rather it is passed on the the system as a whole. Short term staff have to be available when the pop-up needs them, and they bear the cost of finding other work the rest of the time. Shop space must also be available – and the landlord has to carry this cost at other times.

Without paying to reserve staff and space, you risk resources not being available when you need them.

The Cloud allows pop-ups for software distribution. Clients can use – and pay for – the resources they need, when they need them. The cloud supplier bears the risk of an under-utilised infrastructure.

But here technology comes to the rescue. Computers are cheap. Storage is cheap. The main cost of a cloud supplier is electricity and cooling, so unused systems are cheap to run. And the internet runs 24/7, so people can “hot desk” computer resources round the clock. This makes much more efficient use of capital than with local computers, unused at night or when people are on holiday or at lunch or just not using them.

Cloud purchase and maintenance costs are lower too, benefiting from economies of scale. The cloud is so cheap to make that cloud suppliers are happy to bear the cost of spare capacity. Unlike people, the computers are happy to be idle or busy. So using pop-up cloud infrastructure, you always have availability of both your “store” and your “staff”.

The cloud provides the flexible infrastructure for scaling usage up and down: money is made duplicating identical software. Software development itself does not benefit much from the cloud – it is more akin to developing the cloud itself. And this is literally true in the case of Forbidden’s Forscene cloud video platform.

By commoditising computer resources, the cloud cuts hardware costs and margins. This moves the value added further towards differentiated software – ever more accessible through pop-up cloud instances.

Stephen B Streater
Founder and Director of R&D

[littleredrooster] 12/9/2017 10:03

companies with high capital spending tend to underperform



New Amazon Headquarters Should Alarm -- WSJ

12/09/2017 8:02am

Dow Jones News

By James Mackintosh

This article is being republished as part of our daily reproduction of WSJ.com articles that also appeared in the U.S. print edition of The Wall Street Journal (September 12, 2017).

The list of warning signals for shareholders includes diversification into new industries, changes of business model, massive hiring programs, unfettered CEO power, distracted management, and high capital spending. But top of the list for many is the construction of a new headquarters. Hubris, meet Amazon.com.

Amazon has achieved extraordinary feats, most notably in speed of expansion. It hired more than 30,000 people in the last quarter alone, and in the past three years has tripled its head count to 382,400. It appears to have managed this without a hitch, even as it spent billions of dollars on Hollywood productions, launched a hit gadget and ramped up its spending on research and development.

Investors are betting that CEO Jeff Bezos will keep his magic touch, and that money plowed into expansion today represents big profits to be made some time in the future.

History and human nature are against Mr. Bezos -- and may eventually prove a headwind for much of the rest of the market too.

The lesson from the long term is that companies with high capital spending tend to underperform. Kenneth French, a professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, calculates that shares in the 30% of U.S. companies with the lowest investment returned six times as much as those with the highest investment since 1963.

Human nature provides a story to back up the findings. CEOs like to expand (not coincidentally, CEOs of bigger companies earn more), like to chase new ideas (putting them on the front of popular magazines) and like to do what shareholders want (boosting the value of their stock options, at least in the short run). The three come together when a company or sector is in vogue, as shareholders give it cheap capital and cheer on plans for growth.

Often it turns out that the premise for the expansion was mistaken, and much capital spending is wasted. Remember peak oil, the race to dig new mines to satisfy forecasts of endless emerging-market growth, or the vast overinvestment in shipping to prepare for global trade's inevitable expansion? Those early in the expansion are right to invest, but as more capital is deployed it can drive down prices and destroy the very opportunity shareholders hoped to exploit.

Other times CEOs just fritter the money away, as in the dot-com bubble. If you exercise little control over management and actively encourage them to spend money as quickly as possible, you shouldn't be surprised if much of it is wasted.

The rise and rise of Amazon has come as the patterns of the past seem to have been suspended. Since the start of 2009 the runaway success of big tech stocks and big dividend payers have helped companies with the most and least investment do well, while middling companies underperformed. Calculations by Goldman Sachs' chief U.S. equity strategist David Kostin suggest shareholders have shifted again in the past 18 months, rewarding capital spending with bigger share-price gains than for dividends and share buybacks. If it continues, CEOs will get the message and corporate investment will pick up.

Amazon shareholders might argue that the company won't fall victim to misplaced capital spending because it is exploiting disruptive technology, investing in growth and spending heavily on R&D.

If the past is any indication, these offer up only a glimmer of a hope. History offers plenty of examples of disruptive technologies leading to investment booms, but those caught up in the spending spree usually lose out horribly. The British "railway mania" of the 1840s is a classic example: money poured in from excited shareholders, railroad companies found ways to spend it and were rewarded with ever-higher share prices, until investors discovered just how much of the capital had been wasted. The winners were the broader economy and those who entered early or sold out in time. But much capital had to be written down as profits were competed away or overestimated.

Investing in growth is more plausible. Academics have shown that higher R&D spending on average is followed by better stock performance than for companies with lower R&D spending.

For this to justify further increases in Amazon's stock price means assuming investors are once again underestimating the future profits from its R&D spending. Given how hard it is even to work out how much the company is spending on R&D -- it is lumped in with "technology and content," where $5.5 billion was spent in total in the second quarter -- it's impossible to come up with a firm view of how well it is spent, or what profits might result. The share price might well be underestimating future products, but might equally be extrapolating the past successes of the web-hosting division or the voice-controlled Alexa device to unknown future products.

Amazon expects to hire another 50,000 staff earning on average more than $100,000 a year at its second HQ over a decade and a half, adding $5 billion a year of pay to the more than $5 billion capital cost of "HQ2."

Amazon shareholders betting on it bucking history have to hope that by the time HQ2 is completed the company has both grown enough to justify its vast scale and found a way to profit from all its capital and R&D spending.

[littleredrooster] 08/9/2017 22:23

I must admit that I have recently been watching quite a lot of Blaze programmes on Freeview (completely independently of the FBT news).



A&E Networks

"On September 19, 2016, A+E launched Viceland. The next day, A+E UK launched Blaze, its global brand free to air channel, in the British Isles, its first market."

[littleredrooster] 08/9/2017 15:59

He is leaving a large media company to join a small technology company (though possibly he just wants to spend more time with his family).

hxxp://www.forbidden.co.uk/2017/09/07/top-broadcast-executive-ian-mcdonough-joins-forbidden-technologies-plc-as-ceo/

Top broadcast executive, Ian McDonough, joins Forbidden Technologies plc as CEO

September 7, 2017

hxxp://www.forbidden.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Ian-McDonough-e1504775858590-672x372.jpg

Forbidden Technologies plc, a media SaaS business, announced the appointment of senior broadcast executive Ian McDonough as CEO.

McDonough will be focused on driving commercial growth and continued development of their cloud video platform and related applications. He previously held board level roles at Turner (part of Time Warner Inc.) where he was the managing director for Northern Europe and BBC Worldwide as EVP and general manager of the CEMA business.

McDonough brings a wealth of experience in media sector commercial innovation and business growth. Examples of his key achievements include directing the development of the Sky Kids app where Turner is a key partner and the company’s presence on Now TV and Virgin Media’s OTT services. He also led development on large scale new products for Turner. At BBC and A&E he launched multiple branded services across EMEA, including BBC World News, CBeebies and History.

Ian McDonough says: “With the exponential growth in video use – rights holders, broadcast and OTT companies need more sophisticated capabilities to increase the use of their content across any device. I am extremely excited to be leading a business with this focus, and its huge potential for growth in this ever-evolving new media landscape.”

Chairman of Forbidden Technologies, David Main, said: “We are delighted that Ian is joining the Board of Forbidden Technologies as the company’s CEO. Ian brings fantastic experience and understanding of our customers. In addition, he brings energy, a strong track record of commercial innovation and a clear ability to drive business performance. “

Forbidden Technologies transforms the capabilities of traditional video production capabilities in line with the growing requirements of the new media world. Uses of their platform include rapidly generating and publishing clips, highlights off live content, viewing, logging, shot selection, editing and captioning remotely.

[littleredrooster] 23/8/2017 19:41

Paris 2024 Olympic programme could include video gamers as the meteoric rise of eSports continues

•eSports has seen a meteoric rise in popularity over the last 12 months
•Discussions will now take place over video gaming taking place at the Olympics
•Paris 2024 could be the first year that eSports players can earn Olympic medals
•Co-president of Paris bid committee Tony Estanguet says they will speak to IOC

By Rob Harris, Associated Press

Published: 10:27, 9 August 2017 |

"Video gamers could be competing for Olympic medals by 2024, according to Tony Estanguet, co-president of the Paris bid committee.

The explosion in popularity of eSports events, drawing large crowds of youngsters to arenas for tournaments, has already seen gaming embraced by the Asian Games, and talks will be held about the possibility of it joining the 2024 programme.

It will become a full sport by the 2022 edition, although details of which games will be contested are yet to be provided."

[littleredrooster] 23/8/2017 15:20

Faster publishing of live events into social media ... is vital for us

hxxp://citywire.co.uk/money/wednesday-papers-britain-softens-brexit-stance-on-eu-court/a1043601

Wednesday Papers: Britain softens Brexit stance on EU court

by Himanshu Singh on Aug 23, 2017 at 04:41

•Daily Mail: Britain’s booming video game industry received a double boost yesterday as two AIM-listed companies announced major partnerships; Cambridge-based Frontier Developments revealed it had struck a deal to make a game based on the Jurassic Park films, with London’s Gfinity also announcing it was set to launch a virtual motor racing championship with Formula One.



hxxp://www.forscene.com/blog/gfinity-chooses-forscene-to-help-grow-their-fan-base

Gfinity chooses Forscene to help grow their eSports fan base

Jovana Posted On May 22, 2017

Forbidden Technologies plc (AIM: FBT) is pleased to announce it has won a contract with Gfinity plc (“Gfinity”), a leading electronic gaming promoter (eSports). Gfinity will use Forscene to help grow their fan base through faster and improved use of video in social media and exploitation of archived video content.

eSports is a sports category that is going through rapid growth. Newzoo, the leading provider of market intelligence covering the eSports market, predicts that in 2017 eSports will generate global revenues of $696 million, up 41 percent from $493 million in 2016, and is expected to have an audience of regular and occasional viewers of 385 million people.

Today, a major eSports event may attract 40,000 people watching live and tens of millions watching over the Web. Beyond its own tournaments, Gfinity provides a full turnkey solution for any brand wanting to create their own eSports tournaments and has staged premium eSports events for leading publishers and brands including ‘Call of Duty’, ‘FIFA’. ‘Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, “Rocket League’, Street Fighter V, and ‘Forza Racing Championship’.

Gfinity plc Chief Gaming Officer, Paul Kent said: “Gfinity requires a solution that will help us grow our fan base and improve our engagement with them. Faster publishing of live events into social media and better overall use of the video content we produce is vital for us. Forscene fills a gap in capabilities that we have been looking to solve.”

Forbidden Technologies Chairman, David Main, said: “The eSports market is an exciting new high growth sports category for us. Our Forscene cloud video platform provides a range of core capabilities, including live clipping for social media and exploiting the value of archive content for this innovative and demanding new sector. Our range of applications helps address the range of video requirements for fan engagement.”

Forbidden Technologies Head of eSports, Sal De Parres said: “Forscene will deliver the fast and flexible workflow that eSports requires. eSports is about worldwide distribution and speed – Forscene provides both.”

[littleredrooster] 20/8/2017 19:26

Sports are the biggest draw on television

hxxp://www.sharecast.com/news/iconic-new-york-venue-extends-agreement-with-forbidden-technologies/26333241.html

Iconic New York venue extends agreement with Forbidden Technologies

Fri, 18 August 2017

(ShareCast News) - Video editing specialist, Forbidden Technologies announced on Friday that it had extended an existing agreement with an "iconic sports, music and entertainment venue in New York".

Forbidden, which had previously signed a deal with Madison Square Garden to help them reduce live sports clips editing and publishing down from 25-55 minutes to under five minutes, said its professional software as a service (SaaS) solution, Forscene was already in use by the unnamed venue to improve its time to market for digital clips.

Chairman of Forbidden Technologies, David Main, said "Expanding the scale of our relationship with this iconic venue is clear validation of the value we can bring into the live sports and entertainment market. Our Forscene cloud video platform provides the venue with the capability to outperform competition in terms of speed to market for the highlights of live events."

As of 1225 BST, shares had moved ahead just 0.83% to 6.05p.

Market Cap (m) £11.05

hxxp://www.forbidden.co.uk/2017/08/15/enabling-vs-restrictive-standards/

"But cloud software blows restrictive standards out of the water."

[littleredrooster] 16/8/2017 15:02

Well, I personally greatly enjoy "the old British TV series of the same name" (it's available most nights on Freeview).

hxxp://www.mesalliance.org/2017/08/14/aws-unveils-machine-learning-powered-security-service-summit-adds-hulu/

By Jeff Berman HITS August 14, 2017

AWS Unveils Machine Learning-Powered Security Service at Summit, Adds Hulu

"Challenges that Hulu faced when developing the new live service included dealing with the huge amount of metadata that accompanied all the new content it was handling, Soltanovich said. Making sure that the correct description of a program or movie is attached to that content is one necessity, he pointed out, noting that it’s important to make sure that, for example, the Marvel movie “The Avengers” is correctly identified as a superhero action movie and has the right accompanying images so that viewers can see it’s that movie rather than the old British TV series of the same name or the movie of the same name that was based on that show."

[littleredrooster] 16/8/2017 14:58

hxxp://www.mesalliance.org/2017/08/15/aws-exec-machine-learnings-undergoing-renaissance/

By Jeff Berman M&E Connections August 15, 2017

AWS Exec: Machine Learning’s Undergoing a ‘Renaissance’

"NEW YORK — Machine learning is undergoing a “renaissance” now thanks to the increasing shift of data storage to the cloud, according to Matt Wood, Amazon Web Services (AWS) GM-artificial intelligence (AI).

That’s because “the cloud has enabled machine learning and customers to overcome the single largest point of friction, which is almost always around scale,” he told the AWS Summit Aug. 14 during a keynote in which AWS also introduced the new machine-learning based security service Amazon Macie and announced new cloud service client wins that included Hulu.

“When you’re working with machine learning and training machine learning models, you need tons and tons of data — the more the merrier,” Wood said. The concept is simple. “The more data you put in, the more likely it is that your model is going to be accurate,” he said.

When you have all that data, you then “need to be able to train it at scale – typically using high-end” graphics processing units (GPUs), he said. “Once you train those models, you need to be able to perform predictions against them, also at scale, both in the cloud” and “at the edge through connected devices or on mobile apps,” he said.

AWS has been “addressing these challenges for customers for over a decade,” he went on to say, noting that its customers have been “aggressively migrating everything out of their data centers up to AWS as quickly as they can,” and nearly all the new data “has been generated in the cloud by default.”

Earlier in the keynote, Wood pointed out that “it’s never been cheaper, easier or more cost-effective for customers to be able to pull data from their program applications, their web applications, their IoT applications – even their data centers – and load it up onto AWS.”

Once that data is in the cloud, “customers typically want to be able to get some value out of that data,” he said, explaining: “They want to be able to analyze and they want to be able to compute against it. They want to be able to ask questions and get answers back in a reasonable time.”

Before, “inside the constrained walls of the data center” on premises, that was “extremely challenging” because companies were “stuck with a fixed set of resources unless” they wanted to make large capital investments, he said. So, customers typically “ended up being crammed inside that same box,” inside the walls of their data centers, he said.

However, he said: “In the cloud, those data center walls – they just disappear. And so, customers can start to collect the data that they need, aggregate it at the right level and ask the questions which are truly important to their data.”"

[littleredrooster] 01/8/2017 14:52

I come to the party via IBG (shares possibly bought when IBG was valued at less than £1m).

hxxp://www.azam.info/tmn-group-buy-ibg-affiliate-future/

IBG (Affiliate Future) sells to TMN for no premium

Posted by Azam Editorial Team as Performance Marketing

Some shareholders in IBG, parent company of AffiliateFuture, have expressed concern about the decision to effectively sell the network to direct marketing company TMN Group (formerly TheMutual.net). The reason is because the acquisition values each IBG share at a miserable 12.75 pence and the whole of IBG at a mere £9.84 million.

This compares to a share price of 28 pence six months ago on 20 June, 2007 and talk of IBG shares looking to hit the 40 pence mark.

“I think what has happened over the past 6 months is a bloody disgrace”, says a shareholder who goes by the name Omlaysause on the ADVFN.com stockmarket forums. “First off we get that ridiculous RNS saying we MAY have a problem with profits and then to say it could be effected for 2 years, which as we all know, killed the share price there and then. Coupled with the strategic review which turned out to be a complete waste of time. We are then told, don’t worry lads, we’ve got some great ideas and you’ll all reap the benefits if you stick around for the next 2 years. Then a few months later, do you know what, we’re just going to sell up with no benefit to the IBG shareholders in the deal, it’s a simple swap of IBG to TMN.”

Most IBG shareholders have expressed similarly negative views on ADVFN.com as they’ve felt that, by selling when the share price is at its lowest point in years, and by selling without a premium, they’ve been let down.

However, some of the biggest losses will be incurred by IBG Directors who hold substantial holdings in the company. As recently as 7 August 2007, Non-Executive Director Nicola Costa and CEO Maziar Darvish bought £99,755.84 of shares between them at around 16.5p.

The buyout/merger ends a year which has seen a number of affiliate networks and what could be more or less described as affiliate companies come together. Examples of notable tie-ups include TradeDoubler and The Search Works, Buy.at and Lightstate, Linkshare and TrafficStrategies.com as well as CauseLoyalty.com and AffiliateFuture and NetFreeStuff.

The two CEOs, Maziar Darvish and Mark Smith, are both astute businessmen and will have made the decision with the best interests of their ‘babies’ at heart: the greater size will bring cost savings and there will be the potential to cross-sell services.

With email marketing companies always hungry for campaigns and with affiliate networks always desperate for means to market their advertisers, this could be the perfect marriage of convenience… even if there is discontent about the amount of dowry paid.

You can read the full buyout/merger statement below:

“TMN – Nil Premium Merger with IBG

14 December 2007

....

•TMN’s services include email and website marketing (TMN Media), full service digital advertising (EDR), online fieldwork solutions (iD Factor) and research analysis (ICD Research). For the year ended 30 April 2007, TMN reported revenue of £16.1 million and operating profit of £3.3 million. For the six months ended 31 October 2007, TMN reported revenue of £9.0 million, and headline profit before tax of £1.4 million..

•IBG’s operations are divided primarily into the following three divisions: AffiliateFuture (a Performance Marketing network), IBG Media (brokering traffic as well as publishing a variety of websites), and E-commerce (websites retailing product lines across several sectors within sports and lifestyle). IBG is today announcing its preliminary results for the financial year ended 31 October 2007, reporting revenue of £16.4 million, profit before share based charges, interest, taxation, depreciation, amortisation IFRS share based charges and movement in investments of £1.6 million, and profit before taxation of £0.92 million."

[davea] 31/7/2017 19:41

Yes, and I started with the mutual.net too :)

[skinny] 31/7/2017 15:15

I'm also here for historic reasons - although my holding is showing +146% - its too small to make a significant difference!

[anusol] 31/7/2017 07:52

Nice steady increases in revenue and a dividend increase too - more than happy with the way this company is managed and future prospects. Assuming it'll be looking for more acquisitions over the next 12 months.Anyone else in Globaldata? (I'm only here from a long history with the mutual.net)

[littleredrooster] 21/7/2017 11:03

"Azure was the primary source of our outperformance in the quarter"



Microsoft Forges Ahead In Cloud -- WSJ

21/07/2017 8:02am
Dow Jones News

By Jay Greene

This article is being republished as part of our daily reproduction of WSJ.com articles that also appeared in the U.S. print edition of The Wall Street Journal (July 21, 2017).

Microsoft Corp. continued its rebirth as a force in cloud-computing, posting stronger-than-expected gains in its business of selling web-based services to corporate customers.

The software giant has been working to expand the business selling web-based services to corporate customers, and now has solidified its spot as the No. 2 provider of on-demand computing processing and storage behind market pioneer Amazon.com Inc. In its fiscal fourth quarter, Microsoft notched gains in its Azure cloud-computing business and Office 365, the online version of its widely used productivity software.

The Redmond, Wash., company said Thursday that its Intelligent Cloud segment, which includes Azure, rose 11% to $7.4 billion. In the Productivity and Business Processes segment, which includes the Office franchise, revenue climbed 21% to $8.4 billion.

Microsoft doesn't disclose revenue figures for its Azure and Office 365 businesses, but it said Azure revenue jumped 97% and Office 365 revenue rose 43%.

"Azure was the primary source of our outperformance in the quarter," Microsoft finance chief Amy Hood said in an interview. "It's higher than I was expecting."

Overall, Microsoft posted $6.51 billion in fourth-quarter net income, or 83 cents a share, compared with a profit of $3.12 billion, or 39 cents a share, a year ago. Excluding the impact of revenue deferrals and other items, adjusted earnings climbed to 98 cents from 69 cents a year earlier. Per-share earnings in the most recent quarter included a 23-cent tax benefit related to Microsoft winding down its mobile-phone business.

Revenue rose 13% to $23.32 billion and was $24.7 billion when adjusted to reflect Windows 10 revenue deferrals.

Analysts surveyed by S&P Global Market Intelligence expected Microsoft to report adjusted per-share earnings of 71 cents, a figure that didn't include the 23-cent tax benefit, on $24.29 billion in adjusted revenue.

Shares rose 3.1% to $76.50 in after-hours trading after results beat expectations. The software giant's shares closed at a record on Thursday, after setting its previous high a day earlier.

Microsoft's growth in the so-called hyperscale public cloud market was faster in the quarter than investors anticipated. The cloud unit is still smaller than Amazon in the market but appears to be pulling away from its nearest rival, Alphabet Inc.'s Google, said Stifel Nicolaus & Co. analyst Brad Reback.

"They are the undisputed No. 2 in the hyperscale public cloud market, and it will be extraordinarily difficult for anyone to catch them," Mr. Reback said.

Two years ago, Microsoft forecast its commercial-cloud run-rate -- the last month of sales of its Azure and Office 365 products, multiplied by 12 -- would top $20 billion in the 2018 fiscal year that began July 1. At the end of the fourth quarter, the run-rate stood at $18.9 billion.

"Obviously, we're feeling pretty confident about hitting" the target, Ms. Hood said.

The strides Microsoft has made in the cloud come as its legacy Windows operating-system business shrinks. Revenue in its More Personal Computing segment, which includes Windows as well as the mobile-phone and gaming businesses, slid 2% to $8.8 billion. Last week, International Data Corp. reported world-wide PC shipments fell 3.3% in the second quarter, while Gartner Inc. estimated the drop at 4.3%.

Revenue for Microsoft's Surface line of computers also fell 2%. Three months ago, that business was hit hard, registering a 26% revenue decline, which the company attributed to older Surface computers in the market, as well as increased price competition.

Since then, Microsoft has introduced a new Surface laptop for the education market and an update to its Surface Pro tablet-laptop hybrid device, though those products made their debut with just a few weeks left in the quarter.

LinkedIn Corp., the professional social network Microsoft acquired last December for $27 billion, added $1.07 billion in revenue and posted a $361 million operating loss. Microsoft is working to connect its business products to LinkedIn, giving sales representatives using its Dynamics software, for example, tools to easily mine the professional social network to prospect for leads.

Like its cloud rivals Amazon and Alphabet Inc.'s Google, Microsoft is spending lavishly to build giant and expensive data centers around the world to deliver its cloud services. In the quarter, Microsoft spent $3.3 billion on capital expenses, with much of that money going toward its data center expansion. A year ago, Microsoft had $3.1 billion in capital expenses.

In the current quarter, Microsoft expects revenue in its Intelligent Cloud business of between $6.9 billion and $7.1 billion, up from $6.38 billion a year earlier. Revenue in its Productivity and Business Processes segment should land between $8.1 billion and $8.3 billion, including about $1.1 billion from LinkedIn. A year earlier, that segment posted $6.66 billion. Microsoft said the More Personal Computing segment's revenue will be between $8.6 billion and $8.9 billion, compared with $9.29 billion a year ago.

[littleredrooster] 15/7/2017 14:33

hxxp://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/news/180862/google-opens-first-london-cloud-data-centre-as-competition-with-amazon-and-microsoft-heats-up-180862.html

Google opens first London cloud data centre as competition with Amazon and Microsoft heats up

Renae Dyer

13 Jul 2017

Google is playing catch up with Amazon and Microsoft in the cloud computing services it offers, according to a study

Google has responded to mounting competition in cloud computing by opening its first data centre to support the internet-based service in London.

The data centre for the cloud computing services it rents to third parties is the second in Europe after Brussels.

The search engine, owned by Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL), is the third most capable cloud computing service provider after Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT), according to a study by Gartner last month.

In terms of sales of cloud infrastructure services Google’s market share is also a “distant third”, the report added.

Most of Google’s cloud platform data centres have until now been based in the US and Asia, including Singapore, Taiwan and Tokyo.

Google to open more cloud data centres in Europe

Responding to the growing demand for cloud computing services, Google announced that it also plans to open facilities in Finland, Netherlands and Frankfurt.

“GCP [Google Cloud Platform] customers throughout the British Isles and Western Europe will see significant reductions in latency when they run their workloads in the London region," said product manager Dave Stiver, referring to processing delays caused by the distances data has to travel.

"In cities like London, Dublin, Edinburgh and Amsterdam, our performance testing shows 40% to 82% reductions in round-trip latency when serving customer from London compared with the Belgium region."

Google says decision to build London centre made before Brexit vote

The new London centre has been built amid speculation that the UK’s data privacy laws may diverge from the European Union’s after Brexit.

But a spokeswoman for Google said the decision to build the centre was taken before the UK voted to leave the EU last June.

The data centre will allow clients to offload processing tasks and information storage to support mobile apps they may offer to the public.

Google charges its customers, who include The Telegraph newspaper and Coca-Cola, for the amount of compute time rather than a flat rate in order to provide cheaper alternative to other cloud computing services.

"Google uses deep discounts and exceptionally flexible contracts to try to win projects from customers that are currently spending significant sums of money with cloud competitors," Gartner said.

Gartner said at the moment Google’s cloud platform offers fewer features than Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure but it is improving.

[littleredrooster] 30/6/2017 13:41

Worth more than £15m?

A good month for broadcast and a new app.



It's been a good month for broadcast :-)

4:19 am - 30 Jun 2017



Jens Wikholm

Hello from our new app

4:06 am - 30 Jun 2017