BigCommerce Migrates to Google Cloud
BigCommerce, an e-commerce Saas provider based right here in Austin, Texas, announced that it is migrating its infrastructure to the Google Cloud Platform. Once the migration is complete, BigCommerce’s more than 60,000 merchants powering online sales will be connected with Google.
The migration move is aimed at competing with Amazon’s e-retail initiatives on AWS. In fact, before beginning the shift to Google Cloud, BigCommerce was using traditionally managed hosting and hybrid cloud, split between IBM’s Softlayer and AWS. Brian Dhatt, CTO for BigCommerce, said in a press release, “The decision to move to Google Cloud further extends our commitment to reliability and scalability, backed by Google Cloud’s reputation in security, performance, and innovation.” The company expects the full migration to be completed by next month.
Also, in recent Google Cloud news, on January 24, SAP National Security Services Inc., or SAPNS2, announced a strategic partnership with the cloud provider. The partnership with SAPNS2, a U.S. independent SAP business, will allow SAPNS2 customers to leverage SAP HANA in-memory databases with Google Cloud platform services. By combining SAP HANA capabilities with GCP services, customers in the public sector will be able to accelerate their digital transformation by converting large datasets into actionable insights, improving business outcomes.
The new offerings will operate under the framework of FedRAMP, a government-wide program created to save time and costs, enabling rapid procurement of information systems and services. This eliminates duplicate assessment efforts and ensures consistent application of information security standards across all government organizations.
AWS Announces Amazon WorkLink
AWS released Amazon WorkLink, a fully managed service that supports single-click access to internal websites and web applications on mobile devices, without compromising security. This service is designed to scale up as end-user demand for internal private clouds grows.
The service is enabled via an app installed on the employee’s phone. It works by supporting virtual private clouds, VPCs, across multiple domains inside an organization. The service is aimed at companies that want their employees to get faster access to their intranet queries and searches in a manner comparable to browsing the web.
Upon launch, WorkLink will only be compatible with iOS devices running iOS 12 and above and only using Safari. Don’t worry. Android support is coming the next few weeks, at which time Chrome support will also be added. The service will initially only be available in North America and Europe; though, it will be released more widely later in the year.
Microsoft Azure Adds New Availability Features
As formerly announced in June of 2018, Microsoft Azure affirmed this week that it is now providing additional Availability Zone support for the Azure Service Bus Premium and the Azure Event Hub Standard in multiple geographic regions. The regions that will gain the new availability features are in the Eastern and Western U.S., Western and Northern Europe, Central France, and Southeast Asia. These service capabilities are designed to enhance the resiliency and availability of Azure services.
Microsoft also recently announced that its Azure DevOps Server 2019 entered the Release Candidate 2 stage. The software was formerly named Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server. This is expected to be the last pre-release before the ultimate release of the DevOps server. Its intended for use by developer teams across the organization. The software can run locally on a company’s enterprise server or on Microsoft Azure cloud service. Interestingly, Microsoft also offers Azure DevOps services, which is a rebranding of Visual Studio Team Services, but intended for developer collaboration hosted only on Microsoft Azure.
IBM’s and Intel’s Earnings Revealed
Earnings reports have officially begun for the new year. IBM reported its earnings last Tuesday, January 22, revealing that cloud revenue drove nearly one-quarter of IBM’s annual revenue of $79.6 billion for CY2018. Their total cloud revenue was $19.2 billion for CY2018, an increase of 12% year-over-year.
That isn’t the only good news for IBM as of late. The company’s acquisition of Red Hat was approved by 99% of shareholders last week. The acquisition is valued at $34 billion and is set to close in the latter half of 2019. According to Liftr Insights, the combination of Red Hat software with IBM analytics and AI on Red Hat OpenShift containers across public cloud platforms will allow their focus to go beyond offering Red Hat software on IBM Cloud services.
Intel’s earnings came in late last week. The company reported a growth rate in cloud of 45% for the first three quarters of the year and 24% in Q4. Communications service providers were up 12% in Q4, with enterprise servers falling 5%. Cloud and communications now account for two-thirds of Intel’s Data Center Group, DCG, business, up from one-third several years ago. The shift from buying on prem servers to renting cloud instances is well underway.
IBM Think, San Francisco, February 12-15, 2019
Liftr Cloud Insights Principal Analyst Paul Teich will be onsite at IBM Think. We’ll provide more insight into IBM Think closer to the event.
KeyBanc Emerging Technology Summit, San Francisco, February 26-27, 2019
Liftr Cloud Insights Principal Analyst Paul Teich will participate in emerging technology discussions at KeyBanc Capital Market’s 14th Annual ETS.
Microsoft will report its earnings this week on January 30, with Alphabet (Google Cloud’s parent company) and Alibaba reporting earnings next week.
That’s a wrap on this week’s Liftr Cloud Look Ahead. Has your business made major strides using cloud? We want to hear from you! Email us at ideas@liftrcloud.com.
See you next week!
