Should you consider adopting a cloud data warehouse

Both the data lake and the data warehouse within the cloud have their benefits. While data lakes consist of unorganised lagoons without categories, they are great for data scientists to analyse different kinds of data at once.The two kinds of data storage also differ in the tools that can be accessed.In general, for the likes of Redshift, Snowflake, Azure, SQL Data Warehouse, one of the most important things when you talk about a data warehouse is the accessibility to the tools that are available today and that people are familiar with,” said SnapLogic CTO Craig Stewart.This can be something like Microstrategy or Tableau, or something like AWS Insights or Microsoft Power BI, all of which can talk SQL to that data store.That’s really what differentiates the data warehouse from the data lake. The accessibility to those tools, as well as the query ability in that SQL form makes it democratised so that anybody who can use SQL can use those things, whereas if you were talking about a data lake, you have a much more diverse set of capabilities, the API’s to deal with the files like Parquet, etcetera. That’s much more wide open, and generally tends to require much deeper knowledge.

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Cloud Infrastructure Management

CoreWeave and VAST Data Join Forces to Build the Data Foundation for a Next Generation Public Cloud with NVIDIA AI

GlobeNewswire | September 27, 2023

VAST Data, the AI data platform company and CoreWeave, a specialized cloud provider powering many of the world’s leading generative AI efforts, today announced a strategic partnership that will further CoreWeave’s mission to deliver highly scalable and performant cloud infrastructure for AI and accelerated compute workloads. CoreWeave has selected the VAST Data Platform, the world’s first data platform designed for the AI era, to build a global, NVIDIA-powered accelerated computing cloud for deploying, managing and securing hundreds of petabytes of data for generative AI, high performance computing (HPC) and visual effects (VFX) workloads. CoreWeave did extensive research and testing before selecting VAST Data to power all of its data centers. The VAST Data Platform has the necessary scale, performance, and multi-tenant enterprise AI cloud capabilities required to power the massive AI and LLM training and inference applications that are now transforming everything from business, to science, to society itself. CoreWeave’s customers demand the most secure and scalable solutions on top of the industry’s fastest and most flexible infrastructure to keep their data safe," said Michael Intrator, CEO and co-founder of CoreWeave. We’re delighted to partner with VAST Data to deliver a multi-tenant and zero-trust environment purpose-built for accelerated compute use cases like machine learning, VFX and rendering, Pixel Streaming and batch processing that’s up to 35 times faster and 80 percent less expensive than legacy cloud providers. This partnership is rooted in a deep technical collaboration that will push the boundaries of data-driven accelerated computing to deliver the world’s most optimized AI cloud platform. Through their joint partnership CoreWeave and VAST Data are leveraging NVIDIA technology to engineer a new data platform architecture for large-scale, end-to-end data pipelines and deliver next-generation data services for AI workloads. To support this, the VAST Data Platform boasts an enterprise network attached data store that is certified for use with NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD and eliminates tiers and infrastructure silos to make large scale AI simpler, faster and easier to manage at virtually limitless levels of scale and performance. “Since our earliest days, VAST Data has had a single vision of building an architecture that could power the needs of the most demanding cloud-scale AI applications," said Renen Hallak, Founder and CEO of VAST Data. "We could not imagine a better cloud platform to realize this vision than what we’re creating with CoreWeave. We are humbled and honored to partner with the CoreWeave team to push the boundaries of modern AI computing and to build the infrastructure that will serve as the foundation of tomorrow’s AI-powered discoveries.” About VAST Data VAST Data is the data platform software company for the AI era. Accelerating time-to-insight for workload-intensive applications, the VAST data platform delivers scalable performance, radically simple data management and enhanced productivity. Launched in 2019, VAST is the fastest-growing data infrastructure company in history. For more information, please visit https://vastdata.com and follow VAST Data on Twitter and LinkedIn. About CoreWeave Founded in 2017, CoreWeave is a specialized cloud provider, delivering a massive scale of GPU compute resources on top of the industry's fastest and most flexible infrastructure. CoreWeave builds cloud solutions for compute-intensive use cases — machine learning and AI, VFX and rendering, life sciences, the Metaverse, and real-time streaming — that are up to 35 times faster and 80% less expensive than the large, generalized public clouds. Learn more at www.coreweave.com.

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Cloud Security

Lookout Increases Strategic Investment in Data-centric Cloud Security

Business Wire | October 27, 2023

Lookout, Inc., the data-centric cloud security company, today announced enhancements to its Lookout Cloud Security Platform that are designed to help organizations better discover, assess and protect their data as it moves across any network, from the endpoint to the cloud. These enhancements provide organizations with a unified solution that will expertly secure their data by maximizing visibility and protecting access across all applications. The Lookout Cloud Security Platform, the Company’s Security Service Edge (SSE) offering, continuously monitors the risk posture of users and their devices to provide dynamic and granular zero-trust access based on the sensitivity level of apps and data, enabling organizations to protect their workers, devices, applications and data from unauthorized access and modern-day internet-based threats. Services in the platform include: Secure Private Access (ZTNA), Secure Internet Access (SWG) and Secure Cloud Access (CASB). Lookout’s data-centric cloud security innovation helps safeguard customers’ sensitive information as it moves across networks, clouds, applications and devices: Discover and onboard all private apps with enterprise app discovery:When it comes to protecting sensitive corporate data, ZTNA offers a far more secure approach compared to traditional VPNs.Unlike VPNs that provide access to the entire network for example, ZTNA offers granular access control, which limits users to specific applications. This reduces the overall attack surface and prevents lateral movement of threats, minimizing the risk of compromised accounts or devices compromising the entire infrastructure.Lookout Secure Private Accessdiscovers and helps onboard private applications running on an organization’s network hosted on-prem or in the cloud, and currently being accessed by a VPN. Using this functionality, IT can now see all private applications being accessed by their users and take steps to seamlessly define and enforce access and data protection policies for these apps. Extend zero trust protection with firewall as a service:The Lookout Cloud Security Platform has an integrated cloud firewall that extends inspection of incoming and outgoing traffic across all ports and protocols, enabling granular visibility and access control into non-web traffic to stop zero-day threats. With this enhancement, customers can apply more granular security and access policies across all of their apps (web, TCP, UDP, ICMP) and both internet and intranet traffic. Expand data classification and protection capabilities in Google Drive:Google Labels Classification expands data classification capabilities across the Lookout Cloud Security Platform through an integration with Google Drive labels. This integration helps Lookout customers classify sensitive data with Google Drive labels and enforce security policies based on these labels to protect sensitive data stored in Google Drive’s API mode. Secure traffic and enforce policies on guest networks and IoT devices:Organizations need visibility and control over all endpoints and users within their network in order to reduce the risk of malware infections and data exfiltration through these channels. Lookout has enhanced traffic inspection capabilities, expanding data and threat protection to guest users of company networks and traffic coming from IoT devices. This helps ensure company networks are not compromised from these access points, thereby preventing data exfiltration. Advanced threat protection from phishing and zero-day threats:Lookout has enhanced its integration with remote browser isolation (RBI) and cloud sandboxing to improve the user experience and provide robust threat protection for organizations, preventing users from accessing malicious sites and content. “In today’s digital world, data is the lifeblood of every organization,” said Pete Finalle, Research Manager, IDC. “It is vitally important that organizations protect their data and ensure that it is secure, no matter where it resides or how it is accessed. Lookout's new cloud security features offer greater assurance to IT organizations that their data is safe and their users are protected.” Lookout continues to innovate the Lookout Cloud Security Platform in ways that strengthen the protection of users and data from security threats and enhance the end-user experience, said Aaron Cockerill, Executive Vice President of Product, Lookout. We are the only vendor that unifies cloud and endpoint security into one platform. With this latest release, Lookout continues to build upon our strategic vision to put data security at the intersection of today’s workplace and modern cybersecurity threats. About Lookout Lookout, Inc. is the data-centric cloud security company that delivers zero trust security by reducing risk and protecting data wherever it goes, without boundaries or limits. Our unified, cloud-native platform safeguards corporate data across devices, apps, networks and clouds and is as adaptive and simple as the modern digital world. Lookout is trusted by enterprises and government agencies of all sizes to protect the sensitive data they care about most, enabling them to work and connect freely and safely. To learn more about the Lookout Cloud Security Platform, visit www.lookout.com and follow Lookout on our blog, LinkedIn and Twitter.

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Cloud App Management

CoreStack Unveils New Cloud Assessment Product for MSPs

Business Wire | September 29, 2023

CoreStack, a global multi-cloud governance provider, today announced the release of CoreStack Assessments, a product that simplifies and streamlines multi-cloud assessments for managed services providers and their enterprise customers. CoreStack Assessments equips MSPs and SIs to run multi-cloud assessments at scale against cloud-native Well-Architected Frameworks as well as custom frameworks, enabling them to quickly and easily identify and resolve issues across security and compliance, cost, and operations. As organizations progress their cloud transformation, it’s imperative that they continue to operate in an optimized and well-architected manner, said Cyril Belikoff, GM of Azure and Industry GTM at Microsoft. CoreStack Assessments hits the mark by empowering single and multi-cloud customers with a comprehensive evaluation of architectural alignment with industry best practices. “We are thrilled to introduce CoreStack Assessments to our partners – and to simplify delivery of cloud assessments,” said Saba Arumugam, CoreStack’s Chief Technology Officer. “Armed with these powerful assessment capabilities, our partners will be able to capitalize more quickly on the opportunities that matter and help their customers realize the full potential of their cloud investments. This solution provides our partners a robust, flexible, and streamlined assessment experience so they can help customers embrace cloud best practices in the most efficient way possible.” Purpose-built for partners, CoreStack Assessments provides out-of-the-box support for Microsoft Azure, AWS, and GCP frameworks. Partners can also import existing custom frameworks, create custom assessment frameworks based on hyperscaler frameworks, or create new frameworks from scratch. With multi-level hierarchy and identity isolation, a clear and centralized workflow, and highly automated issue detection and recommendations, CoreStack Assessments provides MSPs new levels of assessment flexibility and scalability. The solution also provides powerful collaboration, evidence tracking, and reporting features. “For Cloudelligent, CoreStack Assessments has been a game changer,” said Dwayne Lyle, Chief Revenue Officer at Cloudelligent. “It has reduced the internal costs to deliver a Well-Architected Review and automated many of our manual activities, accelerating delivery of these assessments by 50% and helping us ensure our customers are always well-architected. Ultimately it has improved the customer experience and differentiated us from other AWS Well-Architected Partners who deliver reviews in a more traditional way.” CoreStack Assessments is offered alongside CoreStack NextGen Cloud Governance, a powerful set of solutions that leverage AI to provide continuous and autonomous governance for FinOps, SecOps, and CloudOps through one unified dashboard. CoreStack NextGen Cloud Governance is designed to help customers leverage best-of-breed cloud platforms with the least friction possible, boosting top-line revenues and bottom-line efficiencies whether they’re running AWS, Microsoft Azure, GCP, OCI, or a combination of cloud providers. CoreStack was recently named one of the fastest-growing private companies in the U.S., ranking 835th on the Inc. 5000 List for 2023. CoreStack's inclusion on this prestigious list underscores its striking growth and transformative influence within the cloud industry. CoreStack comes in 120th in the Software category and is the 10th best performing company in the Seattle area and 12th in Washington State. CoreStack has also been recognized by Frost & Sullivan, Forrester, Gartner, S&P Global, and IDC as an innovator and leader in cloud management. About CoreStack CoreStack provides a NextGen Cloud Governance platform that empowers enterprises to predictably increase top-line revenues, improve bottom-line efficiencies, and gain a competitive edge through AI-powered real-time cloud governance on autopilot. CoreStack's FinOps, SecOps, and CloudOps solutions embrace, enhance, and extend native-cloud capabilities, enabling reporting, recommendation, and remediation and providing single pane-of-glass governance across multi-cloud. Through executive dashboards for comprehensive real-time insights, CoreStack delivers transformative value such as 40% increase in operational efficiencies, 50% decrease in cloud costs, and 100% security assurance and compliance. CoreStack helps 750+ global enterprises govern $2+ billion in annual cloud consumption, and $300 million in cloud cost savings. Frost & Sullivan, Forrester, Gartner, S&P Global, and IDC have recognized CoreStack as an innovator and leader in cloud management. CoreStack is backed by strategic advisors, including the ex-CEO of Wipro and ex-CIO of Microsoft. The company is a Microsoft Azure (Legacy) Gold Partner, Amazon AWS Technology Partner with Cloud Operations Competency, Oracle Cloud Build Partner, and Google Cloud Build Partner. To learn more, visit www.corestack.io

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Cloud App Management

Couchbase Shines: Ranks 9th in Battery Ventures’ Top Cloud Firms 2023

Couchbase | October 09, 2023

Couchbase, Inc. has earned a spot on Battery Ventures' 2023 list of the highest-rated cloud computing companies to work for. Battery Ventures, a technology-focused investment firm, compiled this ranking using feedback from Glassdoor. Couchbase secured the ninth position among the top 25 B2B cloud computing companies, boasting an impressive overall company ranking of 4.45 compared to Glassdoor's broader average of 3.7. The recognition is based on employee-reported satisfaction levels at work, highlighting Couchbase's commitment to fostering a values-driven organization. Fidelma Butler, Chief People Officer at Couchbase, emphasized the company's mission to simplify modern application development and expressed gratitude for the dedicated team that contributes to Couchbase's positive workplace environment. Couchbase has also received other recent workplace awards, including the UK's Best Workplaces in Tech 2022 and Fortune's Best Workplaces in the Bay Area 2022. The company remains dedicated to building an engaged, diverse, and inclusive global team. Neeraj Agrawal, a cloud-computing investor and Battery general partner, commended the companies on the list for maintaining strong corporate cultures during challenging times in the tech industry and shifting workplace norms post-COVID. Brandon Gleklen, a Battery principal, stressed the importance of company culture in attracting top talent and staying competitive. To make the 2023 list, a cloud company had to receive a minimum of 30 company reviews on Glassdoor between July 1, 2022, and June 30, 2023. For public companies, the criteria included being listed on a U.S.-based stock exchange and having a total enterprise value of at least $500 million as of the end of Q2, 2023. About Couchbase Couchbase, founded in 2009 and headquartered in Santa Clara, California, is a software development company specializing in NoSQL, document-oriented, key-value, mobile databases, SQL, cloud databases, and DBaaS. It aims to simplify application development and deployment through its cloud database platform, Capella. Over 30% of Fortune 100 companies trust Couchbase to power their modern applications, delivering exceptional customer experiences.

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