Cloud App Development

One Million USD Invested By Oracle to Support African Tech Startups

Oracle announced a one-million-dollar support for tech startups in Africa to assist them in accelerating their digital activities by leveraging the latest cloud technologies and business tools. Over the next two years, led by Oracle for startups, they will provide additional resources and assistance to technology startups across Africa.

As a part of the initiative, 100 startups will receive cloud credits worth up to USD 10,000. In addition, startups will also receive hands-on technical assistance, CEO coaching, go-to-market materials, and customer engagements. African startups who are eligible can attain more information and apply for this program by accessing the program website.

"At Oracle for Startups, we help startups grow from grassroots through scaling. Africa is a hotbed for tech entrepreneurs, and we have witnessed a 91 percent growth in enrolments from South African startups, and 39 percent growth from over 13 other African countries within the last year. The USD one million investment will further boost the efforts of tech entrepreneurs in Africa to utilise the latest digital technologies for the success of their startups.

Jason Williamson, Vice President at Oracle for Startups

This program follows Oracle's recent announcement that it would create its first cloud region in Africa to fulfill the continent's fast-expanding demand for enterprise cloud services. The Oracle Cloud Johannesburg Region will accelerate cloud adoption in Africa while also assisting businesses in improving their performance and fostering continuous innovation. Oracle has opened its 37th cloud area globally, with aspirations to have at least 44 towards the end of 2022, continuing one of the highest growth rates of any major cloud provider.

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AWS Management

CoreSite Accelerates AWS Direct Connect Hosted Connections on the Open Cloud Exchange

Business Wire | October 17, 2023

CoreSite, a leading hybrid IT solutions provider and subsidiary of American Tower Corporation (NYSE: AMT) (“American Tower”), announced it will launch valuable enhancements to its CoreSite Open Cloud Exchange(OCX), the company’s leading software-defined networking platform, to deliver faster AWS Direct Connect Hosted Connections of up to 50 gigabits per second (Gbps). The new OCX capabilities will further enable businesses to support the next wave of high-bandwidth, low-latency hybrid applications such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and digital media production. AWS Direct Connect is a networking service that provides an alternative to using the internet to connect to Amazon Web Services (AWS). Using AWS Direct Connect, data that would have previously been transported over the internet is delivered through a private network connection between a customer’s facilities and AWS. Leveraging the 25G and 50G Hosted Connections, businesses will be able to ensure smooth and reliable data transfers at massive scale for real-time analysis, rapid data processing or broadcast media processing. Businesses deploying complex, data-intense workloads will also benefit from the simplified process offered through the OCX to rapidly scale network capacity between the enterprise edge and cloud providers. The OCX capabilities will allow clients to effortlessly scale their network to meet current and future business needs while reducing their operating expenses. As businesses look to AI and other data-intense applications to gain competitive edge, they need a platform capable of supporting high-density power, high-performance compute and low-latency cloud interconnection, said Juan Font, President and CEO of CoreSite, SVP of U.S. Tower. We are delighted to be working with AWS to deliver faster virtual connections to our customers to enable them to compete in today’s always-on digital economy. About CoreSite CoreSite, an American Tower company (NYSE: AMT), provides hybrid IT solutions that empower enterprises, cloud, network, and IT service providers to monetize and future-proof their digital business. Our highly interconnected data center campuses offer a native digital supply chain featuring direct cloud onramps to enable our customers to build customized hybrid IT infrastructure and accelerate digital transformation. For more than 20 years, CoreSite’s team of technical experts has partnered with customers to optimize operations, elevate customer experience, dynamically scale, and leverage data to gain competitive edge. For more information, visit CoreSite.com and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

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Cloud App Management

Cohesity Launches Cohesity SmartFiles Integration on the Snowflake Data Cloud

Business Wire | November 01, 2023

Cohesity, a leader in AI-powered data security and management, today announced the launch of Cohesity SmartFiles on the Snowflake Data Cloud. This new integration enables businesses to derive analytical insights from their on-premises and cloud data while maintaining data sovereignty and meeting compliance requirements. Snowflake recognizes the critical importance of providing customers with advanced data security and management while mining their data for strategic insights, said Kit Beall, Chief Revenue Officer, Cohesity. As a leader in AI-powered enterprise data security and management, we seek partners equally dedicated to the secure storage and management of customer data. That is why we are delighted to partner with Snowflake to continue delivering innovative and secure solutions that our customers can confidently rely on. By leveraging the Snowflake Data Cloud, Cohesity is joining Snowflake in mobilizing the world’s data to help organizations reap the benefits of their analytics capabilities without having to move their data to the cloud for analysis. With Cohesity SmartFiles, joint customers can store their data locally in SmartFiles and leverage Snowflake’s analytics capabilities with the flexibility to keep data either on-premises or in the cloud. This integration provides customers with broader access and choice while allowing them to adhere to strict internal policies. Cohesity SmartFiles augments customers’ cloud-native Snowflake Data Cloud to include on-premises repositories and extends secure access to sensitive local data records. Cohesity SmartFiles also provides a secure platform for consolidating application data that is designed to improve storage efficiency and reduce overall cost of ownership for local Snowflake repositories. “Cohesity’s commitment to helping Snowflake mobilize the world’s data can be seen through the launch of the SmartFiles integration,” said Tarik Dwiek, Head of Technology Alliances, Snowflake. “We look forward to partnering with Cohesity to allow access to SmartFiles in the cloud or on-premises through Snowflake’s single, integrated platform.” This collaboration with Snowflake and Cohesity enables joint customers to gain more value from their data while optimizing cost, scale, and efficiency for their Snowflake data. About Cohesity Cohesity is a leader in AI-powered data security and management. Aided by an extensive ecosystem of partners, Cohesity makes it easier to protect, manage, and get value from data – across the data center, edge, and cloud. Cohesity helps organizations defend against cybersecurity threats with comprehensive data security and management capabilities, including immutable backup snapshots, AI-based threat detection, monitoring for malicious behavior, and rapid recovery at scale. Cohesity solutions can be delivered as a service, self-managed, or provided by a Cohesity-powered partner. Cohesity is headquartered in San Jose, CA, and is trusted by the world’s largest enterprises, including six of the Fortune 10 and 42 of the Fortune 100.

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Cloud App Management

dbt Labs Announces Major Enhancements to dbt Cloud to Enable Collaboration at Scale

PR Newswire | October 19, 2023

dbt Labs, the pioneer in analytics engineering, today announced several new product capabilities to its dbt Cloud platform at its annual customer conference, Coalesce 2023. New dbt Cloud capabilities enable customers to adopt dbt at scale and include dbt Explorer, Cloud CLI, new partner adapters, and the next generation of the dbt Semantic Layer. dbt Labs also announced the new dbt Mesh paradigm, which equips teams to collaborate across projects to support a data mesh architecture, enabled by the new capabilities. These announcements provide organizations with a centralized data transformation platform where everyone can contribute to data in a governed manner with increased velocity, quality, consistency, and coordination. "We first introduced dbt Cloud to help data analysts and engineers productionize dbt deployments," said Tristan Handy, CEO and founder of dbt Labs. "With today's announcements, dbt Cloud customers can create a mesh of interconnected, domain-owned, dbt codebases. The developments we've made this year are central to enabling collaboration across multiple projects, a requirement for managing dbt at scale." Centralized, Secure, and Scalable Governance with dbt Mesh Historically, organizations have relied solely on a central data platform and data team to deliver analytics to the entire business, resulting in bottlenecks, overworked teams, shipping delays, and low data quality. Today, dbt Labs has launched dbt Mesh, a new paradigm that makes it possible for domain teams to build and maintain their own data products, without compromising on governance or creating silos. By doing so, data products can quickly and easily build on each other. Instead of centralizing business logic in a monolithic dbt project, central data teams can make platform decisions and set global standards for governance. The dbt Mesh paradigm allows users to: Declare interfaces between contributors inside of dbt, with the use of model access levels, model contracts, and model versions. Natively support dependencies across projects, which allows each domain team to own their own data products. Democratize ownership by allowing every team to own and contribute to their own data products instead of requiring a single, monolithic dbt project for the entire organization. Launched in public preview, the capabilities enabling dbt Mesh are currently available for no additional cost to current dbt Cloud customers. Intuitively Navigate and Discover Data Products with dbt Explorer dbt Labs also announced dbt Explorer, a next generation documentation and lineage visualization experience. In addition to supporting the dbt Mesh paradigm, dbt Explorer allows any organization to more easily discover and understand their dbt assets across teams and projects. dbt Explorer makes it easier for data teams to share context, troubleshoot issues, and reuse assets across different parts of the organization – significantly reducing friction in the data development workflow, and allowing teams to better control their data platform spend at the same time. Develop Anywhere with the Cloud CLI The dbt Cloud platform has been enhanced to now provide data developers more flexibility in how they write dbt code. In addition to its in-browser Integrated Development Environment (IDE), dbt Cloud now offers a dedicated Command Line Interface (CLI), giving more advanced practitioners the flexibility to contribute via any terminal or IDE software of their choosing. This gives data practitioners the best of both worlds: they can eliminate many of the hassles of local development—such as the complexities of manual configuration, authentication, and version upgrades—while enjoying the benefits of a hosted solution, all from the comfort of their preferred development environment. With the introduction of the Cloud CLI, data teams can operate with confidence knowing that the entire organization is collaborating from a consistent platform, while each developer is free to work from wherever they are most comfortable. Expanding the Ecosystem with Microsoft adapters Additionally, dbt Labs is expanding the ecosystem of cloud data platforms that dbt Cloud inter-operates with, announcing upcoming adapters for Microsoft Azure Synapse and Microsoft Fabric. Existing Synapse and Fabric customers will soon be able to leverage dbt Cloud's full-service data transformation capabilities, providing mutual customers even more flexibility into how and where they develop and deliver data products. dbt Cloud support for Fabric is currently in private preview, and Synapse support will be made available before the end of 2023. Power Consistent Metrics with the dbt Semantic Layer dbt Labs also announced the next generation of the dbt Semantic Layer following its acquisition of Transform in February 2023. The dbt Semantic Layer now enables organizations to centrally define business metrics in dbt and then query them from a number of integrated analytics tools including Tableau, Google Sheets, Hex, and Mode. This allows organizations to ensure that critical definitions such as "revenue," "customer count," and "churn rate" are universally consistent, in every downstream application, by every user and team. The new dbt Semantic Layer is accessible to data platforms supported by dbt Cloud, namely BigQuery, Databricks, Redshift, and Snowflake. About dbt Labs Since 2016, dbt Labs has been on a mission to help analysts create and disseminate organizational knowledge. dbt Labs pioneered the practice of analytics engineering, built the primary tool in the analytics engineering toolbox, and has been fortunate enough to see a fantastic community coalesce to help push the boundaries of the analytics engineering workflow. Today there are 30,000 companies using dbt every week, 90,000 dbt Community members, and 3,600 dbt Cloud customers.

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Cloud App Management

Webscale Acquires Section.io to Launch CloudFlow: An AI-Based Platform For Smart Distributed Computing and Cloud Cost Control

GlobeNewswire | October 20, 2023

Webscale, the industry leader in Intelligent CloudOps, proudly announces its acquisition of Section.io, a trailblazer in edge-native computing. This strategic acquisition has paved the way for the launch of CloudFlow, a revolutionary Kubernetes orchestration platform with patented Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) automation at its core. This unprecedented level of smart automation allows organizations to take a zero-ops approach to enhancing operational efficiency, optimizing compute resources, and delivering ultra low-latency performance. In today's economic landscape, where organizations face the constant challenge of balancing cloud cost optimization and surging compute demands driven by increasing user experience expectations, Webscale is pioneering a new course. CloudFlow empowers businesses, from Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) to enterprise organizations, to harness the full potential of AI to drive deep levels of efficiency into their distributed cloud computing strategies. Key Features of CloudFlow: AI-driven Adaptive Edge Engine: CloudFlow enlists patented AI/ML capabilities to ensure efficient resource allocation, dynamic scaling, and cost optimization, reducing cloud infrastructure costs while maximizing performance. One-click Multi-cloud: CloudFlow’s Composable Edge Cloud (CEC) enables one-click multi-cloud integration, allowing users to operate seamlessly across various cloud providers, liberating them from vendor lock-in and providing unparalleled least cost routing. Dynamic Cost Management: CloudFlow continuously monitors all environments, adjusting resource allocation and cluster size in real-time through coordination with Endpoint Controller, HPA, VPA, and HCA. This ensures judicious resource usage, resulting in cost savings without performance compromise. Ironclad Security: The CloudFlow platform is SOC2 Type II, PCI-DSS and HIPAA compliant, ensuring the safety of your customers’ personal and financial data. Zero-Ops Simplicity: By utilizing CloudFlow, zero-ops distributed cloud computing becomes an immediate reality, saving organizations time, effort, and resources. A Seamless Collaboration The acquisition of Section.io by Webscale signifies a pivotal moment in cloud-native computing, said Gary Schofield, CEO of Webscale. Our shared vision led us to create CloudFlow, a platform designed to simplify Kubernetes operations while using AI to efficiently manage workload placement and resource allocation across our clients’ networks. It's a game-changer for businesses seeking control over their margins by keeping inflated cloud infrastructure costs in check without sacrificing performance or security posture. Gary added, "CloudFlow embodies the essence of innovation and is set to revolutionize cloud-agnostic operations for our customers across diverse sectors, including e-commerce, digital experience, ISVs, and enterprises." Former Section.io CTO, Dan Bartholomew, has embarked on an exciting journey as Chief Product Officer within the expansive Webscale organization. In his new role, Dan is leading the Product Development organization, steering the innovation and integration roadmap of cutting-edge technology solutions from Section and Webscale. Under the united Webscale banner, we're poised to redefine the future of digital experiences, setting new standards for smart distributed computing and cloud infrastructure cost control. CloudFlow represents a significant milestone in the cloud edge-native computing landscape. To explore how CloudFlow's AI-based technology can transform your cloud operations, visit www.webscale.com. About Webscale At Webscale, we understand the evolving cloud technology landscape and the challenges that organizations face in harnessing its full potential. That's why we've embarked on a mission to provide ecommerce businesses, digital experience providers, and SaaS vendors AI-rich tooling through our revolutionary CloudFlow platform, powered by the recent acquisition of Section.io. CloudFlow enables businesses to inject intelligence into their Kubernetes operations like never before and reimagine their distributed computing and cloud cost optimization strategies. We believe that intelligence is the future of cloud computing, and CloudFlow represents our vision to empower organizations with the tools they need to thrive in the digital age. The CloudFlow platform has been designed to deeply integrate AI into multiple aspects of cloud management, from optimizing resource allocation to scaling Kubernetes architecture efficiently to meet minute-by-minute demand.

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