Upcoming Events – SXSW 2019
Principal Analyst Paul Teich along with Social Media and PR Specialist Trent Warren will be attending SXSW Interactive right here in Austin, TX this week. If you would like to meet with them onsite contact publicrelations@liftrcloud.com and check Liftr Cloud Insights Instagram and Twitter for live updates of the event.
Alibaba Cloud Amidst U.S.-China Trade Tensions
Over the past couple of months, trade tensions have been growing between the United States and China, bringing uncertainty and misconceptions about the role Chinese tech firms play. Alibaba is attempting to fight those misconceptions by differentiating themselves and their business model in such a turbulent market.
Much of the trade tension is driven by the U.S. government putting pressure on economic allies on the continent to block the deployment of Chinese firm Huawei’s 5G network, due to cybersecurity concerns. Huawei’s rotating chairman, Guo Ping again negated these claims when speaking at MWC Barcelona a little over two weeks ago.
For Alibaba, the tension could become a barrier to the cloud provider conducting business in Europe and other international markets. The ability to tap into these markets is important for the company to further expand into areas where rival cloud service providers such as AWS and Microsoft are already well established.
Yeming Wang, general manager of Alibaba Cloud for Europe; the Middle East; and Africa, said, “In general, we need some time to let people understand the role that Chinese tech companies play. We need time for mutual understanding.”
Lyft’s Contract with AWS
In their recently filed IPO, Lyft has said it has a commitment to spend at least $300 million on AWS over a 3-year period beginning this year. Based on the number of rides the ride-hailing company completes, that breaks down to approximately 14 cents per ride going to AWS every time someone steps inside a Lyft.
Lyft isn’t the only ride-hailing company that has a partnership with AWS. Rival Uber is also an AWS customer. The filing also said that Lyft must spend a total of at least $80 million on AWS services in each of those years. These terms are an update on a prior deal penned with AWS that was signed in March of 2018. Lyft is the first tech company this year to file to go public.
Google Rolls Out New Cloud Services
Google Cloud had quite the busy week. The cloud provider rolled out TensorFlow Federated, an open source software utilizing AI, allowing developers build AI-powered applications that also respect user privacy, as well as the arrival of the beta version of their new enterprise threat detection service named Web Risk API. The service allows clients to check URLs against Google’s list of unsafe web resources that includes phishing sites and sites that host malware. Google’s list encompasses more than 1 million unsafe URLs that are updated daily.
There was also news that Google is releasing a new book on Big Query; the canonical reference to Google’s Big Query. Big Query is the query engine that lets users conduct an interactive analysis of large datasets. The book explains how to analyze data at scale to derive insights from large datasets efficiently.
The Google Cloud news that really drew Liftr Insight’s attention this past week was the company’s new storage plan, that makes it easier for customers to navigate through their individual potential service needs and determine how to best approach the thorny subject of storage price predictability. The new data storage pricing option will allow customers to set the amount they will spend on cloud storage over a 12-month period; though customers are required to spend at least $10,000 per month.
Microsoft Azure Opens South African Data Center
Microsoft was hard at work this past week by opening new data centers in South Africa to support their global cloud business. The two data centers are in Cape Town and Johannesburg Joe-hannesburg. These are the company’s first data centers in Africa and is a major milestone, marking Azure becoming the first global provider to deliver cloud services from data centers on the continent.
Organizations such as Nedbank, Peace Parks Foundation, and eThekwini eTechwini water are just a few of those in Africa leveraging Microsoft cloud services today. The increased computing resources and connectivity from the new cloud regions will greatly benefit those existing Azure customers, in addition to onboarding new customers on the continent. According to a study from IDC, spending on public cloud services in South Africa will nearly triple over the next five years, and the adoption of cloud services will generate nearly 112,000 net-new jobs in South Africa by the end of 2022.
Microsoft is expanding their global footprint and bringing more capacity to the continent where cloud services are rapidly emerging. In reaction to the news from Microsoft Azure, Huawei announced that it is leasing a data center from a partner in South Africa until it can build its own data center there. Additionally, AWS has also announced plans to build a South Africa regional presence; however, it is not expected to be online until 2020.
That’s a wrap for 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.
