September 26, 2019
News Flashes
IBM has announced enhancements to Cloud Pak for Data that leverage the DataOps methodology to help clients get their data "business-ready" for AI. Improving data preparation, management and automation are pillars of the DataOps (data operations) principle, which outlines methods for automating and streamlining data flows across an enterprise.
InfluxData, creator of InfluxDB, is releasing InfluxDB Cloud 2.0, a serverless time series platform to meet the specialized requirements of today's time-sensitive workloads. The new product includes a free rate-limited tier, transparent usage-based pricing, and advanced analytic capabilities that allow customers to convert data into actionable information.
Oracle has announced Oracle Cloud Free Tier, including new Always Free services for anyone to try its self-driving database and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure for an unlimited time. The services are aimed at encouraging organizations, developers, students, and educators to use the Oracle Autonomous Database and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, including Compute VMs, Block and Object Storage, and Load Balancer—essentials for building complete applications on Oracle Cloud.
Skytap, provider of a global public service purpose-built for migrating and running traditional applications in the cloud, has announced a new collaboration with Microsoft to bring its purpose-built cloud service for legacy applications, including IBM POWER-based solutions, to Microsoft Azure. The service will provide support for heterogeneous application stacks, including native support for POWER workloads running on AIX, IBM i, and Linux. Skytap will preview its service on a new class of Microsoft Azure bare metal this year.
Tamr has announced general availability of the Fall 2019 release of the company's data unification system. The latest release supports Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure and adds geospatial mapping and additional enhancements to make it faster and easier to unify large numbers of heterogeneous sources.
TigerGraph, a provider of a scalable graph database for the enterprise, along with receiving $32 million in Series B funding, is releasing TigerGraph Cloud. The investment, led by SIG, will boost TigerGraph's global expansion, fueled by TigerGraph Cloud and its appeal to companies seeking a fast, easy way to harness the power of the graph.
Think About It
The big cloud vendors tout many reasons for running IT infrastructure in the cloud. A very prominent benefit is "accelerated innovation and delivery." That's a powerful selling point because every IT manager I have ever known wants to deliver better results, faster, and at lower cost. However, it seems that the less IT managers know about doing actual hands-on IT work, the more demanding they are.