Structure News: Making the case for an independent Amazon Web Services

Your weekly tech news roundup, with a little bit of Structure. Where The Future Was Never Going To Be Vined October 28th, 2016 / by Tom Krazit This week, we'll talk about whether or not Amazon Web Services should fly on its own instead of propping up a bookseller, how GE Transportation is using fog computing to make sure the trains run on time, and why you shouldn't necessarily panic about the insecurity of the internet of things. BIG PICTURE At what point does Amazon Web Services deserve to operate without that big old ecommerce giant dragging it down? Amazon has long played down talk of spinning off AWS, which would definitely be a complicated process and potential distraction for employees as the overall cloud market continues to grow. But maybe CEO Andy Jassy should be thinking about how his organization would be perceived as a standalone entity: a fast-growing, profitable group defining the future of enterprise computing. Earnings report cards were due again this week, and it was the tale of two Amazons: the ecommerce operation's profits plunged, dragging the company's stock down along with it. But revenue and operating profits soared at AWS, with revenue up 55 percent to $3.2 billion while operating income doubled to $861 million. It's never entirely clear how profitable AWS is because some of its costs are spread across Amazon in general, but Amazon's total operating income was only $575 million, meaning that AWS is subsidizing the rest of the company to some extent. At some point, could the remaining part of Amazon actually hurt the growth of AWS? That point is not on the near horizon, but Amazon shareholders would stand to gain quite a bit from the successful spin-off of an already huge and fast-growing enterprise computing company; when does the temptation become too much? An independent AWS would also force cloud computing to be much more transparent about its finances, as Om Malik called for earlier this year (a notion that has Structure's full support). Amazon can hide a lot of details about AWS in its overall earnings report, which is one of the reasons why it prefers things the way they are now. But if cloud is really going to become the engine for the rest of the 21st century, investors and customers need to know more about the finances behind this historic shift. I'm not holding my breath. But I do see a day in which it finally makes too much sense, and AWS and Amazon go their separate ways. STRUCTURE NEWS HOW GENERAL ELECTRIC IS UPGRADING THE RAILROAD INDUSTRY Seth Bodnar of GE Transportation (and Structure 2016 speaker) has a very interesting job; bringing the world of railroads into the 21st century with edge computing techniques. I wrote about some of the work they're doing in Fortune, and those products are helping railways operate faster and safer thanks to real-time data and increased computing power on locomotives themselves. Seth (pictured) is just one of the amazing speakers we have lined up for Structure 2016, scheduled for November 8th and 9th at San Francisco's UCSF Mission Bay conference center. Tickets are still available for one of the best annual events in cloud computing; you can register here, and you can check out the rest of the speakers here. INDUSTRY NEWS MICROSOFT TO RAISE PRICES UP TO 22PC AFTER SLUMP IN THE POUND Brexit is getting real pretty quickly, even though the U.K. government has yet to formally start the process of withdrawing from the E.U. In response to a drop in the value of the pound, Microsoft plans to raise cloud computing prices by 22 percent in the U.K., according to the Telegraph. THE INTERNET OF THINGS ISN'T TRYING TO KILL YOU It's been a troubling few weeks for backers of the internet of things, after several attackers managed to hijack devices and bring down hundreds of websites around the world. However, as Official Friend of Structure and SKT Labs founder Stacey Higginbotham explains in this post on Medium, some perspective is required before lumping all IoT companies in the same boat as the camera manufacturer who shipped millions of devices with hardcoded default passwords. FORMER CISCO EXECS TALK TO MICROSOFT ABOUT A STARTUP Cisco's MLPS team helped the networking company modernize its product line over the last few years, but they were sidelined by a change at the top. Now The Information (subscription required) reports that the four engineers are talking to Microsoft -- which they are already working with on improving Azure's networking -- about a simillar arrangement. We'll try to tease some details out of Microsoft cloud boss Scott Guthrie at Structure. THE STATE OF ENTERPRISE MACHINE LEARNING Check out this great overview from The Next Platform examining how machine learning is changing the design and development of enterprise software. Perhaps most interesting are the specific examples of how Carolinas Health System, Cisco, and Paypal used machine-learning techniques to identify ways to save money on operations. AI PIONEER YOSHUA BENGIO IS LAUNCHING ELEMENT AI, A DEEP-LEARNING INCUBATOR We'll be sure to watch the startups that come out of Element AI, a new creation from University of Montreal professor and artificial intelligence legend Yoshua Bengio. Wired reports that Montreal is about to become an even bigger destination for AI talent, one of the most sought-after skills in 2016. CENTURYLINK IN ADVANCED TALKS TO MERGE WITH LEVEL3 COMMUNICATIONS In what would create a huge new internet service provider, CenturyLink and Level3 are apparently thinking about getting hitched. The Wall Street Journal reports that the deal would allow both companies to better compete against Comcast and AT&T for home and business customers. QUOTE OF THE WEEK Seattle is the cloud. That's the amazing thing about Seattle. There's no other city in the world that has the technical agenda Seattle has." Bob Kelly, Ignition Partners, as told to Geekwire Click here to unsubscribe from this list. Our mailing address is: 405 El Camino Real, #215 Menlo Park, CA 94025 Copyright (C) 2016 StructureSeries All rights reserved.

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Cloud experts converge at Structure We know you've seen our emails for weeks now and are still on the fence about buying your ticket to Structure 2016. We want to assure you it's worth your time and here are our top 4 reasons why. 57 speakers from top companies - and organizations such as Amazon, Microsoft, the FBI, PayPal, and more. Content you won't find anywhere else - Sure, we have companies announcing big news and deals, but were big fans of showcasing real world stories from companies who have helped shape the growth of cloud infrastructure. Your next business venture - With so many people attending, there are boundless opportunities to connect, network and find your next deal-client-customer-partner. You don't want to be left wondering what could've happened... The fabulous extras - What? You thought this was just a run-of-the-mill-conference? Nope. We've included a VIP reception and workshops hosted by Virtustream and Tata Communications. Do those reasons outweigh two average days at work? We thought they might. Join us for the best cloud conference of the year. Claim your seat. SPEAKERS MAC DEVINE IBM SCOTT GUTHRIE Microsoft ARLETTE HART Federal Bureau of Investigation URS HOLZLE Google RAEJEANNE SKILLERN Intel JAY PARIKH Facebook SPONSORS HEADLINE PRIMETIME SHOWTIME HEADLINE MEDIA PARTNER PARTNERS NOVEMBER 8-9, 2016 SAN FRANCISCO, CA REGISTER NOW Click here to unsubscribe from this list. Our mailing address is: 405 El Camino Real, #215 Menlo Park, CA 94025 Copyright (C) 2016 StructureSeries All rights reserved.

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Structure News: Apparently, you need cloud computing to know which way the wind blows

Your weekly tech news roundup, with a little bit of Structure. Where We Think The Cloud Is Bigly October 21st, 2016 / by Tom Krazit This week, we'll talk about how our weather forecasters really need to embrace the cloud, why Intel continues to face a changing landscape of computing, and how Apple is planning to make some serious noise in artificial intelligence research. BIG PICTURE Those of us who have been following the rise of cloud computing for years sometimes forget how far most of the world has to go when it comes to adopting the services that have transformed Silicon Valley. The New York Times Magazine published a very interesting article (if you're a weather nerd) about the current state of the National Weather Service, and why it has had problems accurately predicting the path of huge storms like Hurricane Mathew and Superstorm Sandy, which was correctly predicted by European weather services but missed completely by the National Weather Services models. But if you're a cloud computing nerd, the answer should make you a little crazy: because of budget constraints, the National Weather Service is forced to rely on an aging supercomputer cluster and lacks big data expertise. This is kind of insane. Accurate weather forecasts aren't just important to commuters: they help farmers plan for adverse weather, they help airlines save money, and, of course, they have the potential to save lives. When government weather officials get these forecasts laughably wrong, they encourage the public to scoff at future forecasts, no matter how dangerous an incoming storm might really be. The big three of cloud infrastructure services -- Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud -- should be falling over themselves to sign the National Weather Service as a customer. And IBM, which just bought The Weather Channel, is in a very unique position to address this need. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees the National Weather Service, has signed a technology cooperation deal with some of these companies, but it needs to go further: who is better positioned to accommodate the need for a short-term burst in computing power and data analysis than the worlds leading cloud infrastructure providers? Part of the problem, of course, is that the federal government procurement process is a notorious slog. This is something we'll be sure to talk about at Structure 2016: the federal government needs to find more flexible ways to accommodate cloud computing providers, because the upside -- giving our public agencies state-of-the-art computing power at taxpayer-friendly prices -- is just so obvious. STRUCTURE NEWS FOG COMPUTING: BALANCING THE BEST OF LOCAL COMPUTING WITH THE CLOUD Our good friends (and Structure 2016 media partner) ZDNet granted me some space on their website to talk about one of our key Structure 2016 themes: fog computing. Although the name makes me wince, the trend is real: mobile computing and the internet of things are changing the way that datacenter infrastructure is being built in demanding thatcomputing needs to becloser to the end user, in hopes of providing uninterrupted quality of service and performance. This is something we're going to talk about with several of our Structure 2016 speakers, from people like Urs Hlzle of Google and Jay Parikh of Facebook, who have been doing this kind of edge computing for years, to newer players like SnapRoute CEO Jason Forrester (pictured) who are capitalizing on this need for more intelligence edge hardware. Our flagship show will be held November 8th and 9th in San Francisco at the UCSF Mission Bay conference center, and you can register for tickets here. INDUSTRY NEWS MICROSOFT AZURE REVENUE JUMPED 116 PERCENT IN Q1 2017 Slowly but surely, the cloud is becoming the future of the greatest boxed software company ever. Microsoft is still heavily dependent on sales of Windows and Window Server, but as Venturebeat reports, Azure was the shining star in its Intelligent Cloud division during the last quarter, and there's a long way to go. INTEL POSTS SOLID Q3 WITH RECORD REVENUES IN IOT AND DATA CENTER The other half of the fabled Wintel duo also continues to regain its footing, with revenue from its data center group (led by Structure 2016 speaker Raejeanne Skillern) up strongly year over year, according to ZDNet. But as we're about to discuss, there are potential headwinds on Intel's datacenter chip business that bear watching as the cloud continues to grow. GOOGLE PUTS INTEL ON NOTICE; WHY MICROSOFT IS PUTTING THESE CHIPS AT THE CENTER OF THE CLOUD Intel's chips rule cloud datacetners right now, but that might not last forever. Extremetech reports on Google's renewed interest in the Power architecture for some of its datacenter chips, and Fortune notes a big push by Microsoft to design FPGAs (field programmable gate arrays) for artificial intelligence applications, a chip design outside of Intel's historical strengths. APPLE HAS HIRED A BIG BRAIN IN AI TO MAKE SIRI LESS DUMB Most consumers are being introduced to basic artificial intelligence by mobile assistants like Microsoft's Cortana, Amazon's Echo, and Apple's Siri. Despite Apple's efforts to project a serious tone about artificial intelligence, it has lagged behind competitors, and Recode reports that it has now hired Carnegie Mellon's Russ Salakhutdinov as its new head of artificial intelligence research. IBM IS COUNTING ON ITS BET ON WATSON, AND PAYING BIG MONEY FOR IT It's hard to imagine a computer industry without IBM, but it's obvious to anyone watching that Big Blue has struggled to make its way in growing markets. Steve Lohr of The New York Times has a good update on IBM's big bet on Watson, its cognitive computing powerhouse that might just make it a player in an AI-driven cloud market. CLOUD COMPUTING DISRUPTS SOFTWARE ACCOUNTING RULES On the wonky side this week, the Wall Street Journal checks in on how accounting rules have failed to keep up with changes in the way software is developed and sold. Research and development costs are generally considered hardware or infrastructure costs, and research into software development advances is harder to reconcile on a balance sheet, according to current laws. QUOTE OF THE WEEK It's not just the Silicon Valley startups anymore, it is the core enterprise that is also becoming a digital company." Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, as quoted by The Wall Street Journal Click here to unsubscribe from this list. Our mailing address is: 405 El Camino Real, #215 Menlo Park, CA 94025 Copyright (C) 2016 StructureSeries All rights reserved.