Cloud Hosting

Healthcare organizations face mounting pressure to adopt innovative approaches to enhance patient care and streamline operations. To address this, the adoption of unified platforms, including hybrid multicloud, is surging among healthcare organizations.

Healthcare technology leaders must balance priorities for security, platform flexibility and data mobility. One way to achieve this is with a platform architecture that integrates computing, storage, virtualization and networking into a single solution.

Simplifying data center management enables healthcare organizations to build and operate powerful private, hybrid and multicloud environments that are flexible and scalable.

Kurt Telep, healthcare field CTO for Nutanix , spoke with HealthTech about how healthcare organizations can use enterprise cloud platforms to achieve operational efficiencies, accelerate innovation and prepare for artificial intelligence adoption.

DISCOVER: Nutanix helps healthcare organizations find simplicity in cloud complexity.

Follow this link:
Q&A: Nutanix IT Leader on Adopting AI and Hosting EHRs and Healthcare Data Management in the Cloud - HealthTech Magazine

IBM has confirmed it has entered into a definitive agreement with HashiCorp in which it will acquire the California-based software company for $35 per share, equating to a $6.4 billion deal.

In its announcement, IBM said the acquisition of HashiCorp is designed to bolster its position in the hybrid cloud and AI markets.

Rather than selling off its business to IBM and closing down, HashiCorp has confirmed that it will continue to build products and services, but operating as a division of IBM Software with the backing of a much bigger company.

Speaking about the deal, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna said: Enterprise clients are wrestling with an unprecedented expansion in infrastructure and applications across public and private clouds, as well as on-prem environments.

Krishna added: HashiCorp has a proven track record of enabling clients to manage the complexity of today's infrastructure and application sprawl. Combining IBM's portfolio and expertise with HashiCorp's capabilities and talent will create a comprehensive hybrid cloud platform designed for the AI era.

IBM likes what it sees in the deal, revealing an attractive financial opportunity and the potential to expand the total addressable market. The deal also aligns with the companys broader strategy.

In IBMs most recent earnings call, CFO Jim Kavanaugh revealed that around 70% of HashiCorps revenue currently comes from US companies, adding that only around one in five of the Forbes Global 2000 are HashiCorp customers, alluding to the potential for scaling the business under the IBM umbrella.

Sign up to the TechRadar Pro newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed!

In the week leading up to the announcement, HashiCorp shares rose by around 34.8%. IBM investors seemed less sure about the deal, with share prices seeing a less impressive 1.6% uptick.

Read the original post:
IBM acquires HashiCorp in multi-billion dollar deal to boost cloud reach - TechRadar

One of the intriguing aspects of the generative AI phenomenon is the vast range of vendors that are offering solutions to leverage the new technology. Companies eager to deploy GenAI face a complex landscape filled with foundation model suppliers, AI platform companies, data management vendors, and model customization tool providers.

Surprisingly, the big cloud computing companies which have dominated the IT landscape for the last decade haven't played as central a role as many initially expected. At least, not yet.

But there are signs that situation could be changing. Google recently held their Cloud Next event where they unveiled a wide range of new AI integrations for Google Workspace, a GenAI tool for video creation and editing, and other enhancements aided by its Gemini Pro 1.5 large language model.

Now it's Amazon AWS taking the wraps off a host of new features and improvements for its Bedrock GenAI managed service, which are designed to make the process of selecting and deploying the right tools for GenAI applications much easier. Amazon is adding the ability to import customized foundation models into the service and then allow companies to leverage the capabilities of Bedrock across those custom models.

For example, companies that have trained an open-source model like Llama or Mistral with their own data, possibly using Amazon's SageMaker, can now integrate that customized model along with the existing standardized models within Bedrock. This integration allows the use of a single API to build applications that utilize both customized and existing Bedrock model options, including those from AI21 Labs, Anthropic, Cohere, Meta, Stability AI, and Amazon's Titan models.

Amazon also introduced version 2 of their Titan Text Embeddings model, which has been specifically optimized for RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) applications and announced the general availability of its Titan Image Generator model.

The ability to import custom models into Bedrock supports the integration of RAG functionalities, facilitating continuous fine-tuning of models with new data. Bedrock's serverless infrastructure also supports scalable performance across AWS instances, which aids in managing real-time demands. Furthermore, Bedrock includes tools for developing AI-powered agents capable of performing multi-step tasks. Agents are currently one of the hottest discussion topics in GenAI, so these kinds of capabilities are bound to be of interest to those organizations that want to stay on the cutting edge.

Additionally, Amazon has introduced new Guardrails for Bedrock, which add enhanced filtering features to prevent the creation and dissemination of inappropriate content and sensitive information. While existing models already incorporate basic content filtering, these new Guardrails offer an extra layer of customizable protection.

Amazon's Model Evaluation tool within Bedrock, now generally available, assists organizations in selecting the most suitable foundation model for their specific needs. This tool compares various models based on accuracy, robustness, and allows customization to evaluate how different models perform with user-specific data and prompts.

As organizations navigate the early stages of GenAI deployments, many are realizing the importance of locating their GenAI software and services near their data sources. With a significant amount of data hosted on AWS, the new features in Bedrock could prove particularly attractive to companies looking to enhance their GenAI capabilities.

We may also witness the emergence of multi-platform GenAI deployments. Just as companies have found benefits in using multiple cloud providers, they are likely to adopt a similar strategy with GenAI platforms, using different platforms for various applications.

The race is still on, but it's clear that all the major cloud computing providers want to be (and will be) important entrants in the GenAI landscape as well.

Bob O'Donnell is the founder and chief analyst of TECHnalysis Research, LLC a technology consulting firm that provides strategic consulting and market research services to the technology industry and professional financial community. You can follow him on Twitter @bobodtech

See original here:
As cloud computing evolves, Amazon's AWS looks for its role in generative AI - TechSpot

Google has fired around 50 employees so far after some of its staff participated in protests against the company's cloud contract with the Israeli government called Project Nimbus.

What is project Nimbus

Project Nimbus is a $1.2 billion contract awarded to Google and Amazon.com in 2021 to supply the Israeli government with cloud services. The aim of the project is to provide Israel with public cloud services in order to address challenges in various sectors of the country like healthcare, transportation, and education.

The execution of this project will allow Israel to perform large-scale data analysis, AI training, database hosting, and other forms of powerful computing using Googles technology as per a report in Business Today.

Meanwhile, the government employees and senior leaders of the country will also get training to enhance their digital skill.

Why are Google employees in the US protesting?

Google employees organised sit-ins at the Google office in New York City, California and Seattle against the company's contract with the Israeli government.

The protests are being led by No Tech For Apartheid which has been organising demonstrations against Project Nimbus since 2021. The employees in Google are opposing the ties of their employer with Israel which is currently in war with Gaza.

The protesting faction says that Project Nimbus supports the development of military tools by the Israeli government.

In a statement on Medium, Google workers affiliated with the No Tech for Apartheid campaign called it a "flagrant act of retaliation" and said that some employees who did not directly participate in the protests were also among those Google fired.

"Google workers have the right to peacefully protest about terms and conditions of our labor," the statement added.

The protesting faction says that Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion contract awarded to Google and Amazon.com in 2021 to supply the Israeli government with cloud services, supports the development of military tools by the Israeli government.

How has Google reacted?

Google CEO Sundar Pichai issued a public warning against those protesting in the company and urged employees not to indulge in any politics.

We have a culture of vibrant, open discussion that enables us to create amazing products and turn great ideas into action. Thats important to preserve. But ultimately we are a workplace and our policies and expectations are clear: this is a business, and not a place to act in a way that disrupts coworkers or makes them feel unsafe, to attempt to use the company as a personal platform, or to fight over disruptive issues or debate politics. This is too important a moment as a company for us to be distracted, he wrote in his blog.

In its statement, Google maintained that the Nimbus contract "is not directed at highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services."

(With Reuters inputs)

(Published 24 April 2024, 13:23 IST)

Go here to read the rest:
Explained | What is Project Nimbus and why are Google employees protesting against it? - Deccan Herald