Page 4,391«..1020..4,3904,3914,3924,393..4,4004,410..»

Top 6 Bitcoin and Blockchain Remittance Companies – The Merkle

Although there are quite a few reasons by bitcoin makes a lot of sense in the remittance sector, we have discussed why these solutions are not necessarily cheaper. That being said, quite a few bitcoin and blockchain startups are trying to make a name for themselves when it comes to transferring money around the world. Below are some of the companies worth keeping an eye on over the coming years.

This particular company is well worth keeping an eye on, only because they offer cash out services at over 100,000 locations around the world, Bitspark prides itself upon servicing the Asian regions, with a strong focus on Indonesia, Pakistan, Vietnam, and the Philippines. The Asian region is home to a large number of remittance transfers, thus more competition can only be beneficial to consumers.

The Bit2Me company has made quite a name for itself over the past few years, as they were the first business to let users convert bitcoin to cash at thousands of ATMs. The company provides an easy to use mobile application which would allow any bitcoin user to convert their BTC funds to cash in Spain. Moreover, users do not need to be a customer of any of the supported banks to receive cash in a friction less manner.

The Philippines are quite an important area for bitcoin and remittance, that much is evident. Rebit is a subsidiary of Satoshi Citadel Industries, a company well-known for their multiple bitcoin-based ventures. Moreover, Rebit provides access to financial services regardless of previous access to bank accounts or other traditional financial tools

Most cryptocurrency users will know what BitPesa has to offer in the first place. The company offers bitcoin-oriented mobile payments to various African countries. As of right now, the service is active in Nigeria, Tanzania, and Uganda, although future expansion is only a matter of time. That said, according to their website BitPesa covers over 85 countries around the world and has processed over 17,000 bitcoin transactions so far.

Coins.ph serves as a mobile blockchain-based platform. The primary market is Southeast Asia, where over 300 million users are looking for access to financial services and products. Coins.ph has a very simple business model: send money around the world and pay bills with bitcoin. Moreover, the Coins.ph services are available at various Southeast Asian 7-eleven stores, giving the company plenty of exposure.

One of the companies getting a lot of attention has recently been Abra, a project that had been in development for quite some time. The concept is simple: users can transfer money around the world with ease, with transactions taking place on the blockchain. Wallets can be funded with bitcoin, bank accounts, or cash. Conversion to cash can be done through local Abra Tellers, yet bitcoin or a bank transfer are other withdrawal options as well.

If you liked this article, follow us on Twitter @themerklenews and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter to receive the latest bitcoin, cryptocurrency, and technology news.

Visit link:
Top 6 Bitcoin and Blockchain Remittance Companies - The Merkle

Read More..

Weekly Round-Up and Cryptocurrency Markets Update – CryptoCoinsNews

Last week saw Bitfury striking a deal with the Ukranian government to put the latters data on a Blockchain platform. The deal will ensure blockchain recordings for areas like public health and services, state registers, energy and social security.

In a twist, High Tech Private Equity Fund SICAV plc is reported to have acquired nChain, a Blockchain company associated with Wright Craig, the man who once claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto. The company plans to make available their intellectual property assets to the blockchain community via royalty-free licensing and open sourcing.

An initial Coin Offer intended for mining activities to support the signaling of Bitcoin Unlimited has been halted as a result of not reaching its goal. The ICO was allegedly linked to Chinese Angel Investor in Bitcoin and Ethereum Classic, Chandler Guo.

On the Bitcoin Network scaling front, the worlds largest Bitcoin mining pool, F2Pool has declared its support for Segwit. Wang Chun, Owner of F2Pool revealed on Friday that 56 percent of his network members are in support of Segwit.

Eventually, the advent toward mainstream adoption of blockchain gets after Mark Carney, Bank of Englands Governor, claimed blockchain technology can save banks tens of billions of dollars a year. The governor was speaking International Fintech Conference last week in London, where he further revealed that the next generation of Britains interbank wire system will be blockchain-compatible.

Bitcoins current price recovery is outstanding despite the fact that the scaling debate is still raging on. Some experts believe it is being driven by mainstream adoption in Japan. As at 22:00 GMT, Bitcoin has appreciated by 0.22 percentage point and its market value was $1180.73 maintaining the number one position on CoinMarketCap.

Ethereum is still holding on to the 2nd spot and has kept the velocity from the current altcoin rally although it lost 0.82 percent today. Its market price was $48.49.

After a stratospheric rise that resulted in Ripple ousting Dash from number three, it has slow down to some degree. The cross-border transfer crypto with KYC was selling at $0.033308 with a 1.33 percent downward adjustment.

The battle for number four is so titanic. For three days now, Litecoin and Dash has been dislodging each other to take over momentarily. However, at the time of filing this report, Dash was reigning with a 0.21 percent depreciation, posting an exchange rate of $75.23.

Litecoin also took a fall of 1.02% and was being sold for $10.71. It must be stated that the decision to implement Segwit has boosted its price and market cap.

Even though Monero was recently indicted in a finding that found out that some of its transactions are traceable, it doesnt seem to be affected much and is still at the 6th position. It scored a negative 1.76 percentage point and the exchanges listed it for $20.38.

Moreso Ethereum didnt have a good time either. At number seven, it could be bought for $2.65 and dip 0.42 percent.

With a market price of $0.024212 and 0.48 percent upward gain, NEM kept its 8th position intact. The consistency for the Smart Contract platform is impressive.

Angur with the selling rate of $11.52 and a 2.55 percent upward adjustment maintained number 9 as well as the biggest gain on top 10.

In a surprising move, PIVX has pushed Maidsafecoin to the 11th position and it is now counted among the top 10 Cryptos on CoinMarketCap. This anon digital currency in a few months has established itself among the elites. It bagged a 0.93 percent growth and its price was $2.01.

On the top 20, Factom rose by a significant 14.37 percent. It is one of the Cryptos below top 10 that must be watched keenly. Sadly Bitconnect which was at top 10 briefly on Wednesday fell negative 26.63 percent to be the biggest loser.

Disclaimer: The above references are an opinion from our Op-Ed. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

Featured image from Shutterstock.

View post:
Weekly Round-Up and Cryptocurrency Markets Update - CryptoCoinsNews

Read More..

CME Group files patent for comprehensive cryptocurrency derivatives system – Brave New Coin

Formerly known as the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Group,CME Group is the largest, most diverse derivatives marketplace in the world, handling an average of 3 billion contracts worth approximately $1 quadrillion annually.

The company recently filed a US Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) application describing a comprehensive system for a derivative contracts system allowing cryptocurrency miners to offset risk.

- CME Group

While mining costs are generally known upfront, estimating income generated by a mining operation can be extremely difficult. There is uncertainty involved in predicting how many bitcoins a given mining computer will mine over time, uncertainty in terms of how much the mined bitcoins will be worth in terms of legal tender (e.g. USD), and uncertainty in trying to predict what the Bitcoin difficulty factor will be in the future.

Derivative contracts allow investors to hedge these risk by providing offsetting compensation in case of an undesired event, and can be used to allow miners to hedge risks associated with a virtual currency's difficulty factor or with the expected yield of a computer performing mining operations.

Because the long-term growth rate of the difficulty factor is impossible to know in advance, by taking a long position in the contract, or being long a call option on the contract, a miner can lock in a projected growth rate of the difficulty factor, the patent filing explains. If the network hash rate grows faster than anticipated, the income from mining may fall, but the variation and settlement of the futures or the funds received by exercising a cash-settled call option contract would cover the loss. On the other hand, if the difficulty factor grows more slowly than anticipated or falls, the contract would lose value or the call option premium would expire as worthless, but a miner would make more money than expected on mining operations.

- CME Group

Derivative contracts described in the patent application can be created to estimate the income that a miner can expect to produce based on the operations and configuration of a selected computer system. The value of these contracts at settlement can be tied to an index value that is determined based on the estimated or actual number of virtual currency rewards granted over a designated time period.

The estimated or actual transaction fees associated with all virtual currency blocks generated during a designated time period can also be accounted for. An expected yield can be calculated based on a hash rate, in order to estimate the amount of virtual currency that a virtual currency miner can expect to produce using a given mining configuration. The expected yield can then be converted to a real currency value using a known conversion factor, and this real currency value can be used to generate a settlement value for the associated contract.

The conversion factor can be included in the definition of the contract to be cleared and can be used to determine how much the contract will pay on settlement. For example, the conversion factor may describe a conversion rate from the received difficulty factor to a predetermined real currency (e.g., USD).

A separate example contract can also be used by mining hardware manufacturers to hedge their product inventory. As the difficulty factor rises, mining computers may become less marketable, so taking a long position in the generated contract, or being long a call option on the generated contract, would allow manufacturers to lock in a projected growth rate of the difficulty factor and hedge against the risk of falling hardware prices.

- CME Group

The patent includes far more than derivatives contracts. The filing describes a financial computer system that also lists the contract, receives, and matches orders, prior to settlement by a clearing computer. The contract may take the form of a futures contract, an option contract, an OTC swap contract, or another financial instrument.

The system may also include an electronic trade engine, while a user database may include information identifying traders and other users of financial computer system. A match engine module may match bid and offer prices for contracts configured in accordance with aspects of the disclosure. Moreover, a trade database may be included to store historical information identifying trades and descriptions of trades. Furthermore, an order book module may be included to compute or otherwise determine current bid and offer prices.

The computer network system is only one example of a suitable system and is not intended to suggest any limitation as to the scope of use or functionality of the various embodiments of the disclosure, the patent application states. Aspects of the present disclosure can be implemented with computing devices and networks for exchanging, transmitting communicating, administering, managing and facilitating trading information including, but not limited to virtual currency spot rates, network hash rates, and virtual currency difficulty factors.

- CME Group

CME Group launched a pair of price indexes in November, for Bitcoin reference rate, while the companys digital securities trading platform, CME Direct, was recently chosen to become the home of trading for RMG digital gold, a blockchain-based security product offered by the UKs Royal Mint. Sandra Ro, CME Groups Head of Digitization headed both the RMB and index projects, and is listed as one of three inventors on the derivatives patent.

Despite Satoshi Nakamoto giving Bitcoin and blockchain technology freely to the world through an MIT Open Source license, Bank of America, R3 CEV, BitGo, and Coinbase are just a few of the many companies filing patents on intellectual property in the Bitcoin and blockchain space.

See the rest here:
CME Group files patent for comprehensive cryptocurrency derivatives system - Brave New Coin

Read More..

BitConnect Coin Blasts Off Faster than Bitcoin in Cryptocurrency – Card Trak

In less than one year, the BitConnect online community has gained over 50,000 members around the world. The most dominant and valuable cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, took over two years to reach the same market price of the new altcoin.

BitConnect Coin is designed to offer financial freedom to the masses by reducing if not eliminating the dependency on centralized banking and financial institutions. In addition, the cryptocurrency is also more secure than conventional financial instruments, eliminating the chances of identity theft and other issues that currently plague fiat based electronic payments infrastructure.

BitConnect Coin offers a new level of empowerment to its community members. Members can connect socially and financially to a secure, protected community of investors and lenders. By connecting with the community, BCC users can increase the value of their coins in the wallets as the cryptocurrencys price increases.

BitConnect has also added a news department, engaged with online leaders like Kim Dotcom, successfully launched its own digital currency, added a proprietary Bitcoin wallet, launched an innovative global Bitcoin lending program, and surged from zero traffic to a top 100k Alexa ranking. It is the worlds fastest growing online Bitcoin community.

BitConnect Coin is a Scrypt (PoW/PoS) consensus algorithm based cryptocurrency with a finite number of tokens. The total number of BCCs are limited to 28 million. The limited number tokens ensure constant appreciation of value in the light of ever increasing demand.

BitConnect Coin facilitates quick transactions between wallets allowing people to make instant transactions between each other or to pay for goods or services. Unlike Bitcoin, the block generation time on BCC platform is 2 minutes. These features prevent transaction backlogs and at the same time also proves to be more rewarding during the PoW phase, where miners stand to receive a block reward of 10 BCCs.

As more people adopt the cryptocurrency, it is only going to get stronger to become one of the top altcoins in the market.

BitConnect is an open source platform for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency users to earn, learn, buy and sell bitcoins to other trusted community members directly.

MORE BITCONNECT

MORE BITCOIN

Continue reading here:
BitConnect Coin Blasts Off Faster than Bitcoin in Cryptocurrency - Card Trak

Read More..

Cryptocurrency Investment Cues From the South Seas Bubble – CoinDesk

Chris DeRose is a software developer, bitcoin evangelist, public speaker and lead developer of Drop Zone.

In this opinion piece, DeRosedraws parallels between the South Seas Bubble of the 1700s and the current craze for ICOs, warning that the parallels between the two are "uncanny".

***

Ye Fools in Great-Britain, repent in your Folly

Bewailing the Loss of your Money and Lands,

Unto your Vexation, 'tis fled from the Nation,

And Blockheads and Ninnies have got it in hand."

The Bubblers Medley, circa 1720 (Yes, really)

***

The Spanish King, Charles the second, was dead. And there were no heirs apparent to his throne. The War of the Spanish Succession had begun.

With Spain's weakened leadership, and unable to defend its territory, a power vacuum formed through which nearly nearly all European nations vied for control of Spain's undefended land.

The war that started in 1701, raged on for nearly nearly 15years and ended by treaty. The war ended without anyone clear victor, but the treaty resulted in significant changes to European and American territorial boundaries.

What was left of the eviscerated Spanish mainland was given to Philip V, a member of the French nobility who held the closest genealogical claim to the Spanish throne. What was received by Britain and France was the title to 'New World' territory in North and South America. What was received by all participants, was debt and the need to build and rebuild trade routes upon the new redistributed land. Enter Britain's 'South Seas Company'.

The South Seas Company was formed via a partnership between the British parliament and the Bank of England in the year 1711.

The structure of this company was like many others in the 17thand 18thcenturies. The company came into existence through a royal charter, and was given a monopoly on part of the monarchy's commerce. In the case of the South Seas company, this monopoly was granted over the trade in the newly conquered Spanish territory.

At the time of commencement, shares in the South Seas Company were primarily issued by conversion of war debt. The debt from the Spanish War, assessed at 10m, was assigned to the South Seas company for repayment. And at the option of an existing bondholder, that debt could instead be converted into equity into the new venture.

It was a good deal for the state, as the debt was removed from its books and import tax revenues could be collected from the company. And for a while, it was a great deal for debt and shareholders. So, when the Treaty of Utrecht was signed in 1713 by all parties involved in the war,the ship that was the South Seas Company was ready to set sail.

It's tough to say just where the South Seas 'bubble' itself started, as the run up was caused by the culmination of many small decisions, each made with the best of intentions for shareholders.

Marketing for the South Seas Company was unusually aggressive out the gates, with fantastic tales being told about the spoils awaiting export from the new land. Further, there was a complex front-running strategy that enabled legislatively privileged insiders to buy government bonds before the announcement, and 'sell into the pump'.

Later accounts of this time would reveal that the marketers of this security knew the tales of wealth were not sustainable at the time, but felt that, with the capital received, surely some profit would follow. Sure enough, as the claims of surefire returns were being propagated, the South Seas Bubble began its ascent.

Unique to the South Seas company's launch, and for the first time in British history, investors were courted from outside those with close ties to the monarchy. The perceived potential to share in the gains of this elite group were too good an offer for the common man to pass down. And, the buying and selling of the stock developed into a new form of gambling in which the country as a whole began to play.

As the South Seas Company's valuation began to grow, and expectations of great wealth compounded, promoters of the South Seas Company started to realize that they too could emulate itssuccessby creating their own companies and issuing stocks. For the ICO speculators of today, this is where the bubble begins to get significantly more interesting.

Initially, these 'bubble companies' (Yep, that's just what they were called) had plausible enough goals. In a time that preceded the invention of the 'white paper', these companies instead drafted marketing literature that was quick to read and high on aspiration.

The initial companies were fairly benign in their focus. And, at first, most companies were focused on insurance, product and utility endeavors. To quote the canon of buttcoin, these companies could fairly be synopsized as having 'but with the new world' goals for their corporate strategy.

Over time, as the public's appetite for extraordinary investment opportunities continued to grow, the claims of these bubble companies grew equally extraordinary. No regulatory oversight or specialist review was needed at the time, so claimants began to pitch companies which claimed they would achieve: "the making iron with pit coal", "the transmutation of quicksilver into a malleable fine metal", "the making of rape-oil" and, of course, "a wheel for perpetual motion".

At the height of the madness, the most famously ethereal company of the bubble promised, without irony, "a company for carrying out an undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is".

As the mania grew, promoters and proto-exchange operators began to appear on the streets of London. 'Stock-jobbers', as they came to be known, began to market their paper on the busy streets between london's coffee houses.

The stock-jobbers would buy and sell the newest schemes to passers-by for a commission on the sale. These promoters were notoriously unscrupulous, and as the front men for many of the unsavory offerings, and they would also become the first to be held responsible by buyers whose investments fell short of the promise.

Adjusted for inflation, at its peak, the South Seas Company's market cap would equal $4tnin 'real' (inflation adjusted) terms. Nearly all the country's bureaucracy, aristocracy and businessmen held significant exposure to the scheme. Even Isaac Newton was heavily invested in the company before its downfall. Oracles, it would seem, were equally unable to predict outcomes in times of manic fervor.

As the South Seas company reached its peak valuation, a confluence of events caused its downfall. In December of 1719, having yet failed to achieve any profit, the South Seas company was unable to pay its year-end dividend to shareholders.

This default started a snowball of action amongst politicians and bankers. Some bankers began to realize that increasing valuations could not continue indefinitely. Meanwhile, politicians began to see that investments in bubble companies, which were still technically illegal, competed with investment stake in their South Seas Company holdings.

In January of 1720, a parliamentary commission was held on what should be done about the fervor. Through a series of compromises and scandals, the commission concluded that only companies with a royal charter could be bought and sold. By June of that year, the Bubble Act reaffirmed the illegality of bubble corporations and put an end to the trading of their stocks.

The final nail in the coffin was due to an investor credit program of which thefirst payments were due in August of 1720. At that time, investors began to sell their holdings to make due on the payment, and this started the initial selloff.

What happened next, should be unsurprising. Bankruptcies began, and within months had reached all time highs. As the losses mounted, then compounded, everyone was affected. Notable bankruptcy included that of Isaac Newton, who upon losing the near entirety of his life savings proclaimed:

"I can calculate the movement of stars, but not the madness of men."

By the end of 1720, the price of the South Seas company stock had fallen 90%.

Investors revolted against the stock-jobbers, the company founders, and the politicians who they blamed for losing their wealth. The mobs formed, and justice was demanded. Extraordinary claims that were once pitched and traded as foregone conclusions, were finally tested. Many of those who were responsible for the extreme claims fled the country. Those that remained faced jail and asset confiscations.

Though many of the stock-jobbers escaped prosecution, they faced an inordinate public backlash in the form of mockery, ridicule, and disdain. Famous amongst this backlash is a lengthy written condemnation of their work by Daniel DeFoe (the author of "Robinson Crusoe"), a popular deck of playing cards commemorating the folly, and numerous plays written to ridicule the stock-jobbing profession.

With the resulting contraction of the entire economy's growth, the South Seas Bubble was the great depression of its century, and the Bubble Act remained in effect thereafter for over 100years, restricting the growth of investment markets until it was finally overturned in 1825.

Unregulated, and without peer review, the investment economy had turned into a perverse and unsustainable Keynesian beauty contest. The South Seas Bubble never returned a profit on its operating expenses during the entirety of the bubble, and what little trade it did attempt (mostly in slaves) wasperformed at a net financial loss.

If it's not clear by now, the parallels between the South Seas Bubble and today's ICO market are... uncanny.

As a new class of investor was given access to a securities market for the first time, and without any regulatory safeguards, this market quickly degenerated into a gambling racket where unscrupulous businessmen catered solely to the speculative markets, without any concern for long-term sustainability and non-speculative capital inflow.

Not only that, these pitchmen starved out investment in modest, but actually profitable endeavors. The burden of this environment resulted in substantial externality costs borne by the entirety of the market.

Given the chance, investors will rationally jump at the opportunity to be the second greatest fool. And to promote long-shot schemes over modest and humble endeavors.

Whether bitcoin itself goes the way of the South Seas Company has yet to be determined. But what is certain is that, if and when the SEC chooses to restrict the growth of this sector, much like British parliament's enactment of the Bubble Act of 1720, prices for these 'undertakings of great advantage' will quickly fall to zero.

Sailing ship image via shutterstock

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, CoinDesk.

ICOsInvestment

Continued here:
Cryptocurrency Investment Cues From the South Seas Bubble - CoinDesk

Read More..

Backblaze drops download pricing for its B2 storage platform by 60% – TechCrunch

Its been just under a year since Backblazes B2 cloud storage service came out of beta. The platforms main selling point at the time was definitely its pricing, which undercut virtually all of its larger competitors (think AWS, Google and Microsoft). Today, its launching a new round of price cuts, this time focused on download cost. Instead of $0.05 per gigabyte, Backblaze will now charge only $0.02.

Typically, when we talk about the price of cloud storage, we talk about how much it costs to store a gigabyte of data on those various platforms. Often, though, the real cost for many companies is actually getting this data out of those services either tomove their backups or to serve their customers.

On Googles cloud platform, this kind of network egress costs $0.12 per gigabyte for the first one terabyte of downloads (with prices dropping after that). As far as network egress goes, Google tends to be pretty pricey. Microsoft and Amazon tend to charge less, but even their pricing starts at $0.09 per gigabyte.

For storage, we spent a decade building our custom Storage Pods and Vault cloud storage file system, and growing a culture that focuses onsqueezing costs out at every layer,Backblaze CEO Gleb Budman told me when I asked him about how his company was able to afford this price drop. For bandwidth, though, it turned out that its just not as expensive as other companies are pricing it at. As soon as we realized that, we lowered the pricing.

Budman also told me that over 50,000 people in 20,000 organizations now actively use B2.

Read more here:
Backblaze drops download pricing for its B2 storage platform by 60% - TechCrunch

Read More..

Global Business Cloud Storage Market Report in terms of its Vendors, Types, Regional Distribution and Applications – PRWire (press release)

Big Market Research has recently added a new report, titled, Global Business Cloud Storage Market Research Report 2017. It provides insights on the historic period and forecast period, 20122017 and 20172022 respectively. The study offers a comprehensive analysis of the current industrial trends, drivers, opportunities, and key market players. The research provides an extensive information about the industry to key vendors and stakeholders and assists them to take necessary steps to achieve growth in future.

The global business cloud storage market report offers an overview and scope of the product. The data provided in the study is represented through tables and figures. It depicts the business cloud storage market through figure. There is a pictorial and tabular illustration of the global production market share based on type in 2015. It shows revenue generated and growth rate of each region during the period, 20122022. The research represents the global storage capacity of each manufacturer in table for the period, 20152016. In addition, it describes average price of the industry by key market players during the period, 20152016. In the report, a figure illustrates the industrial share by the top three vendors and another figure shows the market share by the top five vendors. It mentions the storage capacity by regions in tabular format for the historic period.

Segmentation of the market

The report segments the global business storage market into type, application, and geographical distribution. Based on type, the industry is divided into, more than 5TB, 1TB to 5TB, 100GB to 1TB, and less than 100GB. The market finds its applications in backup storage solution, data access & movement solution, primary storage solution, and cloud storage solution. Based on regions, the study classifies the market into

India,

Southeast Asia,

Japan

China

Europe

North America.

Furthermore, the research depicts this categorization of the industry in tabular and pictorial format. The production and revenue generated by each region during the historic period are also mentioned. The study explores consumption, import, and export by each region during the aforementioned period. The experts also analyzed the industry based on application for the historic period.

Ask For Discount @ https://goo.gl/DTS5CN

Read the original post:
Global Business Cloud Storage Market Report in terms of its Vendors, Types, Regional Distribution and Applications - PRWire (press release)

Read More..

Cloud Computing might skip Kentucky Derby – ESPN

Trainer Chad Brown on Monday said he is "leaning towards passing" the Kentucky Derby with Cloud Computing, a decision that has implications regarding the potential field for the May 6 Derby at Churchill Downs.

Cloud Computing currently sits 20th on the Derby points list, pending a decision by the connections of Conquest Mo Money as to whether to supplement for $200,000 and run.

Cloud Computing most recently finished third in the Wood Memorial, only the third start of a career that began on Feb. 11. Brown said Cloud Computing would have his first work since that race this weekend.

"The horse looks great, but he is lightly raced," Brown said. "We haven't made a final decision yet, but we're leaning towards passing and pointing to the Preakness or even a summertime campaign. We'll see what he's ready for right now."

Brown and the owners of Cloud Computing, Seth Klarman and William Lawrence, have one certain starter in the Derby in Practical Joke, who was second in the Blue Grass in his final prep. Brown said Practical Joke would work this weekend at Keeneland, then move over to Churchill Downs and have his final work there. Joel Rosario has the mount.

Assuming Cloud Computing skips the Derby, that would provide an opportunity for Untrapped, currently 21st on the points list, to get in. He finished sixth in the Arkansas Derby on Saturday.

Currently 22nd on the points list is Lookin At Lee, third in the Arkansas Derby. Steve Asmussen trains both Untrapped and Lookin At Lee and on Monday said both remain under consideration for the Derby.

Several riding assignments are pending for the Derby, most notably runners trained by Asmussen and Todd Pletcher, both of whom potentially will juggle multiple entries. Pletcher's lone confirmed assignment is John Velazquez on Always Dreaming.

One assignment finalized Monday was with Irap, who won the Blue Grass with Julien Leparoux. In light of Classic Empire winning the Arkansas Derby and moving on to the Derby, Leparoux will remain with Classic Empire. Irap will be ridden by Mario Gutierrez, reuniting him with trainer Doug O'Neill and owner Paul Reddam, the team that won the Derby with I'll Have Another in 2012 and Nyquist last year.

* The winning Beyer Speed Figure of the Sunland Derby, won by Hence, has been adjusted to 97 from its original 93, according to Andrew Beyer. Irap and Conquest Mo Money, second in the Arkansas Derby, both exited the Sunland Derby.

View original post here:
Cloud Computing might skip Kentucky Derby - ESPN

Read More..

Microsoft Acquires Deis To Broaden Cloud Computing Scope – Forbes – Forbes


Forbes
Microsoft Acquires Deis To Broaden Cloud Computing Scope - Forbes
Forbes
Microsoft wants more developers to use its platform & tools. Specifically, Microsoft wants more cloud computing developers to come into its fold. With this truth in ...
Microsoft Azure Getting More Serious About Enterprise IT, Latest Cloud Effort Aims At Conquering Enterprise Market ...University Herald

all 4 news articles »

Read more here:
Microsoft Acquires Deis To Broaden Cloud Computing Scope - Forbes - Forbes

Read More..

Sutter Health CTO: Cloud computing offers ‘huge upside’ for big data initiatives – FierceHealthcare

Sutter Health, a 24-hospital system in Northern California, generates a lot of data. Like many other providers, its looking for ways to deploy analytics to generate actionable information for clinicians.

Those big data initiatives are virtually impossible with outdated data centers, Sutter Health Chief Technology Officer Wes Wright told CIO Insight. Cloud computing offers far more flexibility for data analytics software to take on a larger role.

The cloud offers us a level of elasticity that we could never achieve in our own data centers, and that, in turn, gives us the freedom to do things like spin up and spin down Hadoop clusters as demand dictates, Wright said.

RELATED: Health systems ditch data centers in favor of cloud computing

Healthcare was slow to adopt cloud computing because of privacy concerns, but Wright says its clear by now that the upside is huge. Over the next two years, he expects to leverage the cloud to push precision medicine initiatives by combining genomic data with clinical records. And as more health systems show they are having success with cloud computing, the rest of the industry will follow suit.

Its going to allow healthcare IT to experiment with more innovative, cutting-edge projects like big data because scale in the cloud is so elastic, he said.

RELATED: HHS clarifies cloud providers as business associates under new guidance

While cloud computing offers a strong value proposition by improving access to data and reducing the costs tied to running a data center, migrating to the cloud is rife with pitfalls. Analysts and providers recommend a gradual approach that accounts for unanticipated costs and staff training and prioritizes applications that are best suited for the cloud.

Hunterdon Healthcare System in New Jersey is in the midst of eliminating its data center in favor of the cloud, but botched the transition to a cloud-based email and calendar application, Hunterdon CIO Daniel MorrealetoldComputerworld. The new system confused administrative staff members and prompted a weeklong training from outside consultants.

"We did not provide our executive assistants who manage multiple calendars at the same time with the tools they'd need to be efficient," he said. "We recognized that by day two and saw that we had messed up."

After some hesitancy, healthcare is jumping headlong into cloud computing. The Department of Health and Human Services has made a strong push to put more systems on the cloud, and CIO Beth Killoran recently said the agencys goal is to have 30% of its systems on the cloud by the end of the year, up from 18.5% in 2016.

Read this article:
Sutter Health CTO: Cloud computing offers 'huge upside' for big data initiatives - FierceHealthcare

Read More..