Category Archives: Cloud Storage
Proton Drive Brings Automatic Photo Backups to iOS – Lifehacker
When phones also became cameras, many of us started taking photos every day. These photos might be of your pets, your food, or even special events like weddings and birthdays. Or maybe you've got more precious photos, perhaps of a family member who's no longer with you. Lots of photos mean lots of data management, and to protect your snapshots, you'll want to back them up.
But not all cloud storage is created equal, and while Apples built-in iCloud systems are perfectly useable, Proton has now updated the iOS version of its impressive cloud storage service with automatic photo backup, allowing you to protect your most precious memories with complete end-to-end encryption.
This newly released feature, previously only available on Android, comes just weeks after some users reported their old, deleted photos coming back to their iPhones after they updated to a new version of iOS. While Apple has fixed the issue now and does offer options for end-to-end encryption, it still raised some concerns about just how in control Apple users are when it comes to their own photos, and options like Proton Drive can give you a great alternative to iCloud without having to worry about sacrificing your privacy.
There are, of course, other non-Apple cloud storage options on the App Store. Google Photos, which comes pre-installed on Android phones, is probably the most well-known and used iCloud competitor. However, Proton Drive offers something that Google Photos doesntcomplete end-to-end encryption.
Sure, your photos are protected with Google Photos, but Google still has access to your precious memories, as your photos arent encrypted until they are uploaded to Googles servers. With Proton Drive, nobody but you and the people you share your content with have access to those files. Thats because Proton Drive encrypts your photos and their metadata right there on your phone before they transfer to Protons servers. This ensures only you have access to your data, making it one of the best options for users who want to protect their memories and privacy with the utmost care.
Access the menu in the top-left hand corner, then tap Settings and toggle Photos backup to back your photos up to Proton Drive. Credit: Joshua Hawkins
Automatic photo backup is a feature that I've wanted to see in Proton Drive since I started using it several months ago, and Proton says that it has been one of the most requested features from its community, too. The feature rolled out last week, and you can enable the automatic camera uploads in the app by opening the app on your iPhone and accessing the hamburger menu in the upper left-hand corner (the icon that looks like three horizontal lines on top of each other). From there, simply tap on Settings and then toggle Photos Backup to on, and the app will start backing up your photos automatically each time you take a new one.
The addition of photo backup in Proton Drive makes it even easier to completely quit Google, something that privacy-focused individuals may want to consider, as Google and other online cloud services have access to your personal data when it is stored on their servers.
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Proton Drive Brings Automatic Photo Backups to iOS - Lifehacker
Cloud resources top targets for cyber-attacks in 2024 Thales study – IT Brief New Zealand
Cloud resources have emerged as the primary targets for cyber-attacks, according to the 2024 Thales Cloud Security Study. The report, based on a survey of nearly 3,000 IT and security professionals from 18 countries, provides insights into the latest cloud security threats, trends, and risks.
Key findings from the study indicate that nearly half (47%) of all corporate data stored in the cloud is sensitive. Moreover, 44% of the organisations surveyed have experienced a cloud data breach, with 14% reporting an incident within the past year. The study also found that nearly a third (31%) of organisations view digital sovereignty initiatives as crucial for future-proofing their cloud environments.
The report highlights that Software as a Service (SaaS) applications (31%), Cloud Storage (30%), and Cloud Management Infrastructure (26%) are the most frequently targeted areas of attack. With the increasing use of cloud environments, these areas are now a higher priority for security measures than other traditional security disciplines.
Human error and misconfiguration remain the leading causes of cloud data breaches, accounting for 31% of incidents. This is followed by the exploitation of known vulnerabilities (28%) and the failure to use Multi-Factor Authentication (17%). Despite these vulnerabilities, only a small percentage of enterprises encrypt the majority of their sensitive cloud data, with less than 10% encrypting 80% or more of such information.
As cloud usage continues to grow, the potential attack surface expands. The study notes that 66% of organisations use more than 25 SaaS applications, contributing to the increased vulnerability. The need for effective cloud protection is, therefore, more critical than ever for maintaining data security and privacy.
Sebastien Cano, Senior Vice President for Cloud Protection and Licensing activities at Thales, emphasised the importance of managing cloud security: The scalability and flexibility that the cloud offers is highly compelling for organisations, so its no surprise it is central to their security strategies. However, as the cloud attack surface expands, organisations must get a firm grasp on the data they have stored in the cloud, the keys theyre using to encrypt it, and the ability to have complete visibility into who is accessing the data and how its being used. It is vital to solve these challenges now, especially as data sovereignty and privacy have emerged as top concerns in this years research.
The study also reveals that as organisations gain more experience with cloud computing, they are modernising their investments to address new security challenges. For those prioritising digital sovereignty, the primary strategy is refactoring applications to logically separate, secure, store, and process cloud data. This approach is preferred over measures such as repatriating workloads back to on-premises or in-territory data centres. Future-proofing cloud environments was cited as the main driver behind digital sovereignty initiatives by 31% of respondents, with compliance and regulatory adherence coming in second at 22%.
The findings from the 2024 Thales Cloud Security Study underscore the evolving landscape of cloud security and the growing importance of implementing robust measures to protect sensitive data. As organisations continue to adopt and integrate cloud technologies, addressing security challenges remains a critical priority for maintaining information integrity and compliance with emerging digital sovereignty requirements.
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Cloud resources top targets for cyber-attacks in 2024 Thales study - IT Brief New Zealand
Cloud data breaches are becoming a serious threat for businesses everywhere – TechRadar
As the use of cloud among organizations continues to grow, hackers are increasingly targeting cloud resources, wreaking havoc among the victims, new research ahs warned.
The 2024 Thales Cloud Security Study, based on a poll of almost 3,000 IT and security professionals across 18 countries and 37 industries, Tfound almost half (44%) of respondents experienced a cloud data breach, with 14% suffering one in the last 12 months.
SaaS applications are the biggest target (31%), followed by cloud storage (30%), and Cloud Management Infrastructure (26%) categories. This share also makes sense knowing how organizations use the cloud. Two-thirds (66%) are using more than 25 SaaS applications, and almost half (47%) of the data theyre using is labeled sensitive. At the same time, data encryption rates remain low, with less than 10% of enterprises encrypting 80% or more of their sensitive cloud data.
When discussing the causes of these incidents, Thales found human error and misconfiguration continues being the biggest issue with cloud-based solutions (31%), followed by exploiting known vulnerabilities (28%), and failing to use multi-factor authentication (MFA - 17%).
All of this has forced organizations to be more proactive when it comes to defending their cloud premises, and to invest more in cybersecurity. Many are now focused on digital sovereignty, and on refactoring applications to logically separate, secure, store, and process cloud data.
The number one motivation behind digital sovereignty was future-proofing cloud environments (31%), followed by adhering to regulations (22%).
As the cloud attack surface expands, organizations must get a firm grasp on the data they have stored in the cloud, the keys theyre using to encrypt it, and the ability to have complete visibility into who is accessing the data and how it being used, said Sebastien Cano, Senior Vice President for Cloud Protection and Licensing activities at Thales.
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It is vital to solve these challenges now, especially as data sovereignty and privacy have emerged as top concerns in this years research.
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Cloud data breaches are becoming a serious threat for businesses everywhere - TechRadar
Flexential Launches Bilateral Peering with Wasabi Technologies to Further Enhance IP Bandwidth Services – WV News
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Flexential Launches Bilateral Peering with Wasabi Technologies to Further Enhance IP Bandwidth Services - WV News
Pure Accelerate 2024 live: All the news and updates from the day-two keynote – ITPro
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George Fitzmaurice is a staff writer at ITPro, ChannelPro, and CloudPro, with a particular interest in AI regulation, data legislation, and market development.
After graduating from the University of Oxford with a degree in English Language and Literature, he undertook an internship at the New Statesman before starting at ITPro.
Outside of the office, George is both an aspiring musician and an avid reader.
We're up bright and early here at Resorts World, partly due to a touch of jet lag. But there's not long to go now until the opening keynote here at Pure Accelerate 2024.
Across the week, we can expect to hear a lot about cloud storage and how this relates to the ongoing generative AI boom. At last year's event, this was a key talking point, but in the year since then the pace of change has been lightning fast.
Pure Storage firmly believes it's the go-to storage provider for enterprises dabbling in generative AI at the moment, largely due to its all-flash storage offerings providing significant performance benefits for those innovation at scale.
Sustainability was also a key talking point at Pure Accelerate 2023, and we can expect that to continue at this year's event.
While this has been a recurring topic for years now, the emergence of generative AI and the environmental impact of data center operations has very much brought this back into the public eye.
You can read more about Pure's approach to sustainability - and how it plans to fix up the data storage industry - below.
Sustainability is more than a flash-in-the-pan topic for the data storage industry
Pure Storage has had a strong start to 2024, having recently posted strong reports in its Q1 earnings report for fiscal year 2025.
Revenue is up at Pure, reaching $693.5 million - equivalent to an 18% increase year-over-year. Elsewhere, subscription services revenue reached $346.1 million, up 23% year-over-year.
These represent positive figures for Pure given it contends with intense competition in the storage market, butting heads against industry heavyweights such as NetApp, HPE, and Dell EMC.
Channel partners will be eager to see what's in store this week as well. In March, the firm unveiled a revamped channel partner program as part of a sweeping move to facilitate "greater partner empowerment, scale, and preference".
The updated program includes a new pricing model framework, which Pure said is designed to provide partners with a simple product and services MSRP, as well as programmatic discounting based on partner type, tier, and deal registrations.
The company also confirmed updates to its channel quote configuration and pricing models during the update. This, Pure said at the time, aims to give partners the ability to provide quotes independently.
You can read more about the updates below.
Pure Storage unveils revamped channel partner program as firm records strong 2023 performance
There's less than an hour ago until the opening keynote at Pure//Accelerate 2024!
The lobby area is already filling up with eager Pure//Accelerate attendees excited to hear the coming announcements. Why not read up on some more coverage from this year's event to get a jump on the talking points:
Pure Storage looks to 'fundamentally change' cloud storage management with new AI copilot tool
How BT is driving sustainable IT through Pure Storage platforms
Pures gone all out on the decoration this year - check out this branded Connect Four set!
The show floor is empty for now but expect it to fill up after the keynote.
Its filling up in the keynote theatre - theres even a countdown clock letting everyone know how long there is until the event kicks off.
A band of drummers take to the stage to kick off the opening keynote. It's a mesmerizing display and definitely seems to get the crowds attention ahead of the announcements.
Next up its a video from Pure to hype up the crowd, followed by Pure CMO Lynn Lucas. She thanks the audience and talks about the need to rethink data storage, lining up the schedule for the rest of the talk.
Now its time for Charlie Giancarlo, Pures CEO, who also takes a moment to thank the crowd. He outlines some of the new challenges facing businesses - AI, cyber security, applications modernization, and hybrid cloud optimization.
We cant use the same thinking to address these new challenges, Giancarlo says. Users need to start challenging assumptions about storage, such as in areas of IT provisioning and siloed data.
Giancarlo says Pures goal is to build a platform that is consistent, as-a-service, and fit to serve all storage needs. This depends on Pures Evergreen architecture and Pures Purity operating system, both flagship products of the company. Giancarlo calls them foundations.
He also mentions Pure Fusion and the ease of SaaS or, more specifically, Storage-as-a-Service (STaaS). Pure is promising to support all of your workloads, Giancarlo adds.
He goes into some more detail on the Pure Storage platform, outlining, for example, how it can assist in AI training. To this end, Pures platform can access stored data directly. The Pure platform can also automatically tier and balance storage and data.
Giancarlo covers some old ground, even going as far as to reflect on Pures years of experience and leadership in the industry. Pure does, however, want to lead the way to the next era of data.
Now Giancarlo introduces Pure GM Shawn Hansen to the stage who opens by talking about Pures Evergreen platform and the benefits it offers from its ability to be consistently and constantly updated - you can add more seats and a faster engine without stopping the car, he says.
But whats next? Well, Hansen is here to tell us. For example, Pure is introducing Secure Application Workspaces, its AI copilot for storage (which will apparently be magic), and the next generation of Pure Fusion.
This next generation of Pure Fusion (which will also apparently feel like magic) introduces a unified control plane for storage arrays and it will be introduced in three phases.
Hansen then gets Prakash Darji onto the stage, Pures GM of digital experience. Darji hammers home the ease of SaaS and the superior capabilities of Evergreen//One over other on-demand models.
Darji moves on to talking about storage safety - cyber resiliency to be specific. On the back of that, Pure is announcing four new security capabilities, two of which are powered by AI. The other two are service level agreements (SLAs) designed to support customer cyber security.
Next up is Shawn Rosemarin, VP of R&D, customer engineering. Hes outlining application development, citing a Pure Storage report which predicts that 80% of new applications will be built on cloud native platforms.
This shift, however, comes with challenges. Containerization at scale, for example, is an issue, while there is also a significant level of operational complexity apparent in hybrid cloud environments.
While compute and networking issues have been solved in the wider industry, storage has been left behind. Thats where Pure comes in, driving efficiency and modernization as a storage solution at the infrastructure level.
Rosemarin reinforces the simplicity, efficiency, and flexibility of Pures solutions, mentioning both a healthcare provider and a top global bank which were both able to optimize on Pure.
After a quick video its time for a recap, followed swiftly by a customer success story from Jo Drake, CIO at online retailer THG.
After giving us a brief overview of her role and the company, Drake dives into how the firm employs Pure Storages services. She talks about how THG has a challenger mindset and that its always prepped for disruption.
Drake says THG has been in the AI business for a long while and that it has been using it in a number of different ways. The firm built semantic search into its platform, for example.
As AI is driven by data, Drake says, THGs partnership with Pure has been key. Its allowed them to more effectively manage data and operate on a unified data platform.
Drake says THG is working on some really exciting things with Pure at the moment, while she also says THG could more widely converse with Pure to improve the partnership. Rather than just communication with the infrastructure team, she says it would be good to have even more collaboration in different departments.
As a closing note, Pure runs a video celebrating THG and announces that it will be giving THG a breakthrough award. Following that its legendary Pure Storage founder John Coz Colgrove
Coz has brought some props to the stage, including a new flash drive and a 3D model of the flash drive set to come along next year, both set to aid sustainability efforts and combat e-waste.
Now it's time for a demo of the previously mentioned cyber security and anomaly detection tools, supported by another member of Pure (and a spinning stage screen!)
Coz then invites a software engineer from Pure onto the stage to demo Pures copilot for storage offering. The engineer shows off how the copilot can show users a ranking of their business's security posture against other organizations.
Pures copilot certainly seems powerful, allowing customers to diagnose problems that would usually be difficult to find, as well as allowing users to update and improve security as a whole even when theres no specific problem.
Similarly, the copilot tool can help predict the future by analyzing past behavior within individual storage environments. It also offers recommendations based on this analysis.
Next up, it's a run-through Pure Estimate. This platform offers users recommendations for storage updates and capacity expansion, fit with explanations of why recommendations have been made.
Estimate helps to optimize business assets as well. Users can select a particular data center they want to optimize, as well as particular arrays within those data centers which can then be consolidated.
After a couple more awards (and after running a little over its allotted time), its time to wrap up the keynote. The crowd is given a little glimpse at the agenda and thematic focus for tomorrows keynote.
The crowd filters out of the keynote theatre into the rest of the conference area.
Its a bit quieter on the conference floor this morning as Pure//Accelerate attendees look around ahead of today's keynote talks and sessions. Its possible that Pure has already covered its key announcements for the event, though the firm likely still has plenty to talk about.
The firm announced a range of new offerings yesterday, including a new AI copilot tool designed to simplify cloud management and a range of new service level agreements to better serve customer needs. Check out ITPros coverage here:
Pure Storage looks to 'fundamentally change' cloud storage management with new AI copilot tool
Pure Storage tweaks SLAs amid sharpened focus on cyber resilience
Everyone is getting their morning hit of coffee outside the keynote theatre.
The same DJ is back up on the stage, spinning the usual mix of upbeat pop tracks to get everyone going!
Its time to kick the proceedings off, this time with a slick promotional video from Pure. Following that, CMO Lynn Lucas takes to the stage to cheers from the crowd. She reflects a little on the previous day, asking who among the audience
She says that the talking points for the day will be cyber security, AI, and application modernization, continuing on, it seems, from the previous day's main talking points. To dive into these themes further, she introduces Pures CTO Rob Lee to the stage.
He starts of by talking about Pures customers, specifically with regard to the complex pace of change that faces said customers in the current environment. Ultimately, he says, businesses need a solid data storage strategy to tackle these issues.
He mentions the important attributes of such a platform - performance, enterprise readiness, container readiness, and flexibility. He says Pure offers sustained performance, accusing some competitors of not offering the same thing.
From an enterprise readiness perspective, storage solutions need to be secure, efficient, and reliable, while from a container readiness perspective, storage solutions need to be easily scalable.
Next up, its a speaker from Nvidia, Charlie Boyle who is preceded by a rousing, inspirationally scored video about the firm. Boyle is interviewed by Lee on stage, and both talk up the value partnership and collaboration between the two companies.
In line with Pures messaging, Boyle says that data is key in AI development. He also drive home the point that customers need to be flexible in their data use, as well as efficient and sustainable.
Invest in architecture that can grow with your business, Boyle says. After Lee asks him what advice he would give to companies looking to pursue AI, Boyle says that he thinks the importance should be placed on what will unlock the most value. They also discuss the recent SuperPOD certification announcement, unveiled at yesterdays keynote.
Boyle then leaves the stage to be replaced by a video announcing SoftBank as another of Pures breakout winners. Following that, Pure CIO Krithika Bhat jumps on the keynote stage to talk about cyber security.
She then invites Hector Monsegur and Kim LaGrue to the stage. Now working in cyber resilience and security, Monsegur used to himself be a hacker, having been involved in attacks on Sony and government websites. LaGrue is the CIO of the City of New Orleans.
LaGrue talks about cyber resilience within her role, explaining some of the issues she has faced with her department in terms of cyber security. Monsegur then talks more generally about how businesses can improve cyber security posture.
He talks about the disconnect that can exist between executive-level policy decisions on cyber security, also explaining that companies need good cyber hygiene as well as secure and recoverable data.
The discussion finishes off with a question for LaGrue, asking for her advice on risk reduction. She says technology and data resiliency should be top of mind, and that businesses should be prepared for any unexpected scenario.
Next to the stage is a speaker for the electric vehicle company Rivian. Namely, its one of the firm's software engineers, Joshua Crater. He talks about the mission of the company, to make a better world for future generations.
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Pure Accelerate 2024 live: All the news and updates from the day-two keynote - ITPro
Proton Brings Photo and Video Backups to iOS – PetaPixel
Tech privacy company Proton announced new photo and video backup capabilities on iPhones Thursday, giving users a new way to save their memories.
While there are plenty of storage options, par for the course when it comes to online backup options, Proton emphasizes privacy and security specifically.
Smartphones have made us all amateur photographers. Globally we take over five billion photographs every day, the company says in its release. This means photo storage is more crucial than ever. While other cloud storage providers see your photos as just another source of data that can be monitored and monetized, we understand that your photos capture the most precious moments of your life. Whether its a family gathering, a beautiful sunset, or a candid smile, we believe these memories deserve to be preserved securely.
To that end, Proton Drive offers end-to-end encryption. Plus, it allows users to automatically sync new photos and video for backup, making them immediately available on the Proton Drive cloud, which can be accessed via browser. Users can also mark certain photos and videos to be available offline, which stores them both on iPhone and in the cloud.
Proton offers a free tier that includes 5GB in storage and end-to-end encryption for those interested in trying out the service. Its Drive Plus, Proton Unlimited, and Proton Family plans offer 200GB, 500GB, and 3TB, respectively. They cost, in order, $5, $13, and $30 a month at the monthly rate, though there are discounts for 12- and 24-month plans. All three paid options also come with version history, and the Proton Unlimited and Proton Family plans bundle the companys other services, Proton Mail, Calendar, VPN, and Pass (a password manager).
Proton previously brought photos and video backups to Android users back in December, as Engadget notes. But bringing Apple devices up to speed isnt all the company has planned. In its release, Proton hinted at additional features users can anticipate down the line.
Were continuously working to make Proton Drive a true privacy-protecting alternative to Big Techs cloud storage providers, the company said. We plan on adding support for albums and automatic categorization, but the next major update will be a new service for Proton Drive.
Image credits: Proton
See more here:
Proton Brings Photo and Video Backups to iOS - PetaPixel
Ticketmaster’s Snowflake data breach was just one of 165 – The Verge
Security researchers are reporting that a significant volume of data has been stolen from hundreds of Snowflake cloud storage customers via compromised login credentials, with the incident being linked to massive data breaches at Ticketmaster and Santander Bank.
Mandiant, a security firm investigating the data theft alongside Snowflake, announced on Monday that it had tracked the activity to a financially motivated threat actor it identified as UNC5537. The two companies have notified at least 165 Snowflake customer organizations that may have been compromised since the ongoing threat activity was discovered in April, with Mandiant saying its investigation hasnt found any evidence to suggest that Snowflakes enterprise environment was breached.
Recent data breaches at Ticketmaster, Santander Bank, and LendingTree subsidiary QuoteWizard have been linked to Snowflake cloud storage accounts used by the companies. Official details regarding how the accounts were compromised have been slim until this point, with an earlier third-party report being taken offline after Snowflake issued a statement claiming the platform itself isnt at fault.
Following its investigation, Mandiant says the yet unidentified UNC5537 group is systematically compromising Snowflake customers using login credentials stolen via historical infostealer malware infections on non-Snowflake-owned systems. Some of these credentials date back as far as 2020 and enabled UNC5537 to steal data from Snowflake customer instances in an attempt to sell it on cybercriminal forums and extort the victims.
Mandiant says the UNC5537 campaign has resulted in numerous successful compromises because of poor security practices on impacted accounts, which did not update stolen login credentials or utilize multi-factor authentication (MFA) or network allow lists. The list of victims, while largely unidentified, is also expected to grow, according to Mandiant, having assessed that UNC5337 will likely target additional platforms in the near future.
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Ticketmaster's Snowflake data breach was just one of 165 - The Verge
Sustainable AI is key to Pure Storage and Pure//Accelerate 2024 will make that mission clear – ITPro
Its easy to get caught up in the excitement of technology when its still in its infancy. From fossil fuels to the internet, businesses and industries are often liable to put rewards above risks when a new innovation promises to change the world.
The same goes for generative AI, which, ethical and existential concerns aside, has a serious problem with power consumption. To unlock the benefits of AI, many businesses risk putting new technologies ahead of sustainability goals.
Pure Storage has set out to tackle this issue directly. The data storage company is looking to position itself as the sustainable alternative in the AI revolution with its efficient flash storage offerings.
Pures position is as the newcomer in the storage space, navigating its way between the big hitters of Dell and HPE, though the firm seems confident in its ability to offer something both attractive and important: sustainable AI.
Pure//Accelerate 2024, the firms flagship event in Resorts World Las Vegas, is where the firm can make that offering crystal clear. With more than 1,200 set to attend the event from 18-21 June, Pure can double down on its mission to keep the next technological revolution.
Earlier this year, research predicted that data center power consumption is set to double by 2030, constituting almost a tenth (9%) of US power consumption. Microsoft alone saw its carbon emissions surge by 29% on the back of data center development.
In both cases, the unsurprising root cause is generative AI. This is a power-hungry technology, running on demanding compute operations that suck up electricity and necessitate bigger data centers in more numerous locations.
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For Pure Storage, this is a growing concern thats been top of mind for some time. The topic was a key focus at the firms 2023 event, in fact, with CEO Charlie Giancarlo telling audiences that disks are done.
Giancarlo referred here to disk drives, which he sees as the old guard of storage in that they require inefficient cooling systems to keep them operational. Instead Pure Storage, much like its competitor NetApp, offers a more efficient flash storage alternative.
Being Pure Storages core product offerings, these flash storage devices will no doubt be a talking point at the approaching conference.
The firm has been hard at work seeking to prove the value of its offerings in a more sustainability-conscious world since its last conference. Earlier this year, for example, the firm announced that a client was able to reduce its storage rack size by 95% on Pures solutions.
The climate crisis is a key issue for businesses and efficient use of power is only becoming more pertinent as an issue, so we can likely expect to see this as a topic of conversation at this years event.
Despite the efficiency gains offered by flash storage, however, adoption has also been noticeably slow, so it will be interesting to see whether Pure has made significant gains in the data center market as a whole.
With sustainability at the core of Pures strategy, its highly likely to be built into anything the firm looks to unveil, announce, or parade at its approaching conference. Seeing as storage is the firms foundation and AI the unavoidable elephant in the room, we can expect a focus on tying sustainability into both.
Storage as a Service (STaaS) has been a key focus for the firm since its inception. In 2015, Pure introduced its Evergreen architecture which was followed up in 2018 with the release of Evergreen//One.
Following last years Pure//Accelerate, the firm announced the next phase in its STaaS operations by committing to pay for its customers power and rack space costs on their Evergreen platforms to help customers consume less power.
Pure seems similarly committed to sustainable AI, commissioning surveys that show the extent to which the industry needs more preparation for AI power demands - for example, 73% of IT buyers were not completely prepared for the energy requirements of AI.
The firm has also partnered and collaborated with the likes of Nvidia in an effort to help its customers drive AI adoption through a more effective AI architecture and framework.
As a cloud storage provider, Pure puts a lot of its focus on the cloud native community, investing a lot of its time into Kubernetes and cloud native development.
As a result, platform engineering may get a look-in at the approaching conference, being a methodology that aids the cohesion of application deployment on container orchestration systems in the cloud.
In line with this focus, Pure Storage recently released a report looking into cloud native adoption. The report found that the majority (80%) of new applications will be built on cloud native platforms, reaffirming its position as a cloud-first provider.
Similar to its partnership with Nvidia on AI, Pure has also sought to partner up with the big names in cloud computing such as Microsoft. The firm announced recently that it would be bringing its storage solutions to native Microsoft Azure services as part of a new agreement.
Last year, ahead of the firms 2023 conference, the firms most recent earnings call showed a 5% decrease in year-on-year revenue, though the company still exceeded analyst expectations.
This year, the firm is building on strong results in the latter half of 2023, which saw full-year revenue growing by 3% year-over-year to a total of $2.8 billion. Pures subscription services revenue in particular saw a 24% year-over-year increase during fiscal Q4 2024.
Pure Storage is also still outpacing analyst expectations, having exceeded revenue guidance in Q4 2024, according to reporting by Forbes. As of the firm's most recent earnings call for Q1 fiscal 2025, Pure is posting a revenue of $693.5 million, an increase of 18% year-over-year.
Though Pure is still very much the plucky underdog - HPE, for example, posted revenue of over $7 billion at a recent earnings call - it seems to be in a good position. The firm has a lot to be confident about in the storage market, and Pure//Accelerate 2024 is the perfect place to show that confidence off.
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Sustainable AI is key to Pure Storage and Pure//Accelerate 2024 will make that mission clear - ITPro
The best digital notebooks you can buy in 2024: Expert tested – ZDNet
The Kindle Scribe is the perfect example of a smart notebook that doubles as a tablet. It has the same functions you've come to know and love in a Kindle, like a 300ppi glare-free screen, weeks of battery life, and adjustable warm light. It's also compatible with Amazon's Basic or Premium Pen, so you can take handwritten notes or underline important quotations within the book you're reading.
Your notes are automatically organized in one place for every book so that you can browse, review, and export them via email. The Kindle Scribe also comes with preset templates to help you create notebooks, journals, and lists, and you can create sticky notes in Microsoft Word and other compatible Word documents.
Read the review:Amazon Kindle Scribe review: 7 ways it could be even more remarkable
ZDNET's Matthew Miller said the Scribe has "made paper and pen notes obsolete for me." "While I have various other tablets, I've yet to find a pairing that feels natural, both in hardware and software and often end up rarely ever using the stylus that they support," he wrote. "Also, I love that I can highlight text, make notes, and even sign documents with a signature that doesn't look like that of a two-year-old with the Scribe."
In addition, the Kindle Scribe comes with the Basic pen, but for the more advanced features like a dedicated eraser and the shortcut button, you'll need the premium pen, which costs $30 extra. Overall, 93% of customers who have bought the Kindle Scribe at Best Buy said they would recommend it.
Kindle Scribe features: Colors:Black with colored folios |Storage:16GB/32GB, or 64GB |Display:10.2-inch display with 300ppi, 16-level gray scale |Connectivity:Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity
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The best digital notebooks you can buy in 2024: Expert tested - ZDNet
How to ensure public cloud services are used safely and securely – ComputerWeekly.com
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Published: 12 Jun 2024
The public cloud is a cloud computing model that enables resources such as applications, data storage, and virtual machines to be accessed remotely and on demand. While largely a benefit, it also leaves organisations open to public cloud security risks, particularly when they allow users to access on-demand services from various locations using different devices.
Cloud security consists of technology and techniques engineered to prevent and mitigate threats to an organizations cybersecurity. Companies must implement cloud computing security to support both digital transformations and the use of cloud-based tools to protect assets. Cloud security works by combining several technologies, all designed to tighten cyber defences for off-premises data and applications.
Here are some of the core elements that make cloud security work:
A few of the security risks associated with the public cloud are:
Some of the ways to ensure businesses use public cloud services safely and securely include:
Beji Jacob is a member of the ISACA Emerging Trends Working Group.
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How to ensure public cloud services are used safely and securely - ComputerWeekly.com