Mai 2023 - Seite 29 von 41 - Cloud Computing Köln

Our free webinars are live, interactive, and designed to be accessible and informative for everyone, regardless of your experience level with WordPress. Each session also concludes with a live Q&A with our experts. This month we’ll be hosting three insightful webinar topics, providing you with the tools and knowledge to enhance your WordPress.com skills and improve your website.

This is the final month that we’ll be offering our popular Compelling Homepages webinar, so don’t miss out on this opportunity to learn about creating an attention-grabbing homepage.

Site Editor vs. Page Editor — Editing Your Entire Site in WordPress

Discover the power of the WordPress.com Site Editor, allowing you to edit every aspect of your site — from header to footer — with no coding whatsoever.

Tues May 9 at 9:00pm CEST | 3:00pm EDT | 12:00pm PDT

Wed May 10 at 7:00pm AEST | 2:30pm IST | 11:00am CEST

Thurs May 11 at 9:30pm IST | 6:00pm CEST | 12:00pm EDT | 9:00am PDT

Compelling Homepages — Create a Custom Layout With the WordPress Block Editor

This is your last chance to join our live Compelling Homepages webinar! Your homepage is a critical component of your website, setting the tone for your visitors and directing them to key areas. Our experts will guide you through using the WordPress block editor to create a visually appealing and effective homepage layout without any coding.

Tues May 16 at 9:00pm CEST | 3:00pm EDT | 12:00pm PDT

Wed May 17 at 7:00pm AEST | 2:30pm IST | 11:00am CEST

Thurs May 18 at 9:30pm IST | 6:00pm CEST | 12:00pm EDT | 9:00am PDT

Site Editing — Custom Headers

Your site header is the first thing visitors see and is crucial for establishing your brand while also providing seamless navigation. With our Site Editor tools, customizing your header is now easier than ever. Our experts will show you how to create a unique and professional-looking header that perfectly represents your brand.

Tues May 23 at 9:00pm CEST | 3:00pm EDT | 12:00pm PDT

Wed May 24 at 7:00pm AEST | 2:30pm IST | 11:00am CEST

Thurs May 25 at 9:30pm IST | 6:00pm CEST | 12:00pm EDT | 9:00am PDT

Your go-to resource for all things WordPress.com

We’re passionate about providing all the resources you need to successfully create the website that suits your needs and leads you to your goals. Explore more of our free offerings, including courses, checklists, and recordings of past webinars, at WordPress.com/learn.
Quelle: RedHat Stack

9. Mai 2023

da Agency

Dialing up the impact of digital natives in the MENA region with Google Cloud

Entrepreneurs with the passion to drive positive impact have been selecting the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region as the launchpad for their businesses since 2015, based on insights from Google Cloud’s digital natives unit. Today, the region is taking center stage due to the thousands of startups, digital natives, and web3 companies thriving. With more than 5,500 technology startups in the region, an amicable business climate, ample access to venture capital, and digital transformation being a top priority on government agendas, digital natives in the region have been on the rise.Forbes recently announced the Top 50 most funded startups in the MENA region. Collectively, these companies raised a whopping USD 3.2 billion in 2022, with startups in the region continuing to attract significant funding to date in comparison to other regions. The list also highlighted that UAE-based companies were the most represented for raising USD 964 million in total funding for that year, followed by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) where USD 946.7 million were raised, and Egypt reigning third place for raising USD 508.5 million.On the list, UAE-based fintech Tabby ranked second with USD 275 million in funds, and Sary, a Saudi based online marketplace, came in seventh for securing USD 112 million. Breadfast, an on-demand supermarket and household essentials provider based in Egypt also secured USD 26 million in funds during the same year.Tech-enabled success for digital natives in the MENA regionThe common factor between companies such as Tabby, Sary and Breadfast is that they are all fully tech-enabled businesses running on Google Cloud. These three companies leverage Google Cloud’s scalable, secure and reliable platform, and innovative cloud solutions to create seamless experiences every day for their customers across KSA, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Egypt, Kuwait, and Pakistan.Tabby provides “buy now, pay later” solutions via an online application that has been built on Google Cloud from day one. Tabby has successfully grown a customer base of 2.5 million active shoppers in the region since its start in 2019, with the support of the scalability provided by Google Cloud that provides uninterrupted and secure financial services to customers. With an online retail boom on the horizon for the MENA region, Tabby is poised for a growth trajectory as the volume of active e-shoppers will continue to rise and more markets become activated in the region’s digital economy. Tabby’s development team is able to take several strides ahead of market demand by developing a seamless and innovative product that can accommodate an average of 10 million shoppers per day. By running the entire IT infrastructure on Google Cloud, the team dedicates their time and resources to focus on what is important to the business and that is to provide a product that caters to customer and market requirements, rather than exhaust resources on time consuming tasks such as the daily management of IT assets. Tabby also believes in the power of big data and turns to Google Cloud’s data analytics solutions such as Big Query to roll out new monetary policies for customers. Before a new credit policy is introduced to shoppers, Tabby tests its viability on Big Query and analyzes different implementation scenarios in real-time to test out its effectiveness. This helps the team roll out policies that have been proven to be effective with shoppers.Throughout the year, the MENA region experiences a peak in shopping cycles connected with local festivities such as the holy month of Ramadan, White Friday and Christmas. It is around high peak shopping periods that Tabby’s application experiences significant spikes, as the team manages 140 million requests per day in comparison to 80 million requests on a regular day. Nonetheless, with the support of Google Cloud’s scalable infrastructure Tabby holds a record of zero down-time during peak periods, and can scale operations successfully with low latency — ultimately locking in an excellent service to customers.“From the first day Tabby went live in 2019 to date, we have experienced zero-downtime in our systems during high traffic periods because of Google Cloud’s scalable and flexible infrastructure. We are able to support 2.5 million shoppers across the Middle East because we run on a robust and reliable infrastructure. Scalability is key for the team at Tabby. We are able to build new products very quickly on Google Cloud in comparison to other cloud providers.”A report by eCommerce DB revealed that Saudi Arabia is the 27th largest market globally for e-commerce with a projected revenue of USD 11,977 million by the end of 2023. Mordor Intelligence also revealed that the Saudi e-commerce market is expected to show a compound annual growth rate (CAGR 2023-2027) of 13.9%, resulting in a projected market volume of US$20,155.8 million by 2027. Enter Sary, a Saudi-based B2B marketplace that connects businesses of all sizes to millions of shoppers in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan via mobile and web applications. Sary is not a common marketplace, it aims to support local businesses and empower homegrown names to reach customers at scale via its platform in the countries where it operates.Sary is home to 70,000 businesses from all walks of life and as the company set out to expand its footprint it was time to move away from an unsophisticated cloud setup to a more advanced and robust cloud provider that provides the security and scalability that supports plans to tap into new markets.Sary attributes a big part of its success to running a robust infrastructure on Google Cloud, as it witnessed an 84% increase in operational system throughput since migrating the entire IT infrastructure. This means that businesses relying on the platform as their main marketplace are able to process orders at scale without any down-time or system interruptions, and generate positive revenue streams. Sary also leverages Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) to automatically scale system bandwidth based on the volume of traffic the website or application receives. This solution helps the company manage IT costs effectively, while still delivering an uncompromised service to customers.“The support we receive every day from the Google Cloud team has been phenomenal. They have been with us every step of the way. We are able to free up time to focus on what is important and that is to deliver business value to our customers who depend on Sary for their success.”Egypt is another country that is rising as a strategic player in the MENA digital natives scene over the recent years. The 2022 Egypt Venture Investment Reportrevealed that the startup ecosystem observed a 168% year-on-year increase in capital investments to reach a new all time high record of USD 491 million. Breadfast is one of the companies disrupting the scene in Egypt as an early adopter of operating a cloud-native supply chain, before the arrival of rapid online grocery delivery companies in the country. Now a household name, Breadfast is a cloud native on-demand supermarket and household essentials provider that delivers to over 200,000 homes in Cairo. The team at Breadfast built a fully tech-enabled business across all operational touchpoints that comprises manufacturing facilities, supply fulfillment points, 30 dark stores, 15 specialized coffee outlets and last-mile delivery. Running a tech-driven business generates additional costs that can be optimized when working with a cloud provider. And ever since Breadfast migrated the entire IT infrastructure to Google Cloud in 2022, the company has become more profitable as operating costs were reduced by 35% while improving system throughput with the support of Google Cloud’s scalable and secure infrastructure. To fulfill its brand promise of product delivery within 60 minutes anywhere in Cairo, Breadfast also turns to Google Cloud‘s resilient infrastructure that delivers efficient operational throughput to ensure no interruptions affect server vitality and impact order processing timelines. Breadfast successfully increased system up-time to 99.5 % since it migrated to Google Cloud, and was able to deliver six million orders across the city within a span of 30 minutes in 2022.“In our line of business time is of the essence. Two minutes of downtime in our systems takes 12 hours to fix on ground, which can have a downward impact on our customers. We decided to migrate our IT infrastructure to Google Cloud as the trusted cloud provider because of its resilience and the operational uptime is now at 99.5% ever since we made the move. This enabled Breadfast to deliver millions of orders in 2022.”Build your business with Google CloudGoogle Cloud opened up its secure and scalable infrastructure to businesses in the Middle East and North Africa region, where artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) is embedded in cloud solutions that bring meaning to data and can help automate almost everything. Google Cloud also provides digital natives with the freedom to run applications where they need them with open, hybrid, and multi-cloud solutions. This way, an application is built once and can run anywhere, even on-premises.With no configuration required, digital natives can access limitless data effortlessly with Google Cloud solutions such as Big Query and Looker. These unique data analytics solutions are the single source of truth as they rely on AI and ML to design solutions that provide a deep understanding of customer data. Powered by data-driven understanding of customers, businesses today can preempt customer trends and bring them the right products and solutions based on their needs. Businesses can also accurately track down granular information such as if a driver delivered an order on time, and which item needs to be restocked in a warehouse.Google Cloud provides data loss prevention solutions which help digital natives encrypt critical data like customer information and financial records. Businesses can also discover, classify and protect their most sensitive data and detect customer churn or fraudulent activity using machine learning capabilities embedded in Big Query.To help entrepreneurs in the MENA region supercharge business growth, Google Cloud runs the Google for Startups Cloud Program that offers access to startup experts, cloud cost coverage up to USD 100,000 for each of the first two years, technical training, business support, and Google-wide offers. Sign up here for the program.Note: All customer metrics featured in the blogpost were derived from direct customer interviews with Google Cloud.
Quelle: Google Cloud Platform

9. Mai 2023

da Agency

Insights from the 2023 Open Confidential Computing Conference

I had the opportunity to participate in this year's Open Confidential Computing Conference (OC3), hosted by our software partner, Edgeless Systems. This year's event was particularly noteworthy due to a panel discussion on the impact and future of confidential computing. The panel featured some of the industry's most respected technology leaders including Greg Lavender, Chief Technology Officer at Intel, Ian Buck, Vice President of Hyperscale and HPC at NVIDIA, and Mark Papermaster, Chief Technology Officer at AMD. Felix Schuster, Chief Executive Officer at Edgeless Systems, moderated the panel discussion, which explored topics such as the definition of confidential computing, customer adoption patterns, current challenges, and future developments. The insightful discussion left a lasting impression on me and my colleagues.

What is confidential computing?

When it comes to understanding what exactly confidential computing entails, it all begins with a trusted execution environment (TEE) that is rooted in hardware. This TEE protects any code and data placed inside it, while in use in memory, from threats outside the enclave. These threats include everything from vulnerabilities in the hypervisor and host operating system to other cloud tenants and even cloud operators. In addition to providing protection for the code and data in memory, the TEE also possesses two crucial properties. The first is the ability to measure the code contained within the enclave. The second property is attestation, which allows the enclave to provide a verified signature that confirms the trustworthiness of what is held within it. This feature allows software outside of the enclave to establish trust with the code inside, allowing for the safe exchange of data and keys while protecting the data from the hosting environment. This includes hosting operating systems, hypervisors, management software and services, and even the operators of the environment.

Regarding what is not confidential computing, it is not other privacy enhancing technologies (PETs) like homomorphic encryption or secure multiparty computation. It is hardware rooted, trusted execution environments with attestation.

In Azure, confidential computing is integrated into our overall defense in depth strategy, which includes trusted launch, customer managed keys, Managed HSM, Microsoft Azure Attestation, and confidential virtual machine guest attestation integration with Microsoft Defender for Cloud.

Customer adoption patterns

With regards to customer adoption scenarios for confidential computing, we see customers across regulated industries such as the public sector, healthcare, and financial services ranging from private to public cloud migrations and cloud native workloads. One scenario that I'm really excited about is multi-party computations and analytics where you have multiple parties bringing their data together, in what is now being called data clean rooms, to perform computation on that data and get back insights that are much richer than what they would have gotten off their own data set alone. Confidential computing addresses the regulatory and privacy concerns around sharing this sensitive data with third parties. One of my favorite examples of this is in the advertising industry, where the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) has set up a clean room solution where they take merchant purchasing data and combine it with their information around the consumers credit card transactions to get a full picture of what the consumer is doing. Using these insights, RBC’s credit card merchants can then offer their consumer very precise offers that are tailored to them, all without RBC seeing or revealing any confidential information from the consumers or the merchants. I believe that this architecture is the future of advertising.

Another exciting multi-party use case is BeeKeeperAI’s application of confidential computing and machine learning to accelerate the development of effective drug therapies. Until recently, drug researchers have been hampered by inaccessibility of patient data due to strict regulations applied to the sharing of personal health information (PHI). Confidential computing removes this bottleneck by ensuring that PHI is protected not just at rest and when transmitted, but also while in use, thus eliminating the need for data providers to anonymize this data before sharing it with researchers. And it is not just the data that confidential computing is protecting, but also the AI models themselves. These models can be expensive to train and therefore are valuable pieces of intellectual property that need to be protected.

To allow these valuable AI models to remain confidential yet scale, Azure is collaborating with NVIDIA to deploy confidential graphics processing units (GPUs) on Azure based on NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPU.

Current challenges

Regarding the challenges facing confidential computing, they tended to fall into four broad categories:

Availability, regional, and across services. Newer technologies are in limited supply or still in development, yet Azure has remained a leader in bringing to market services based on Intel® Software Guard Extensions (Intel® SGX) and AMD Secure Encrypted Virtualization-Secure Nested Paging (SEV-SNP). We are the first major cloud provider to offer confidential virtual machines based on Intel® Trust Domain Extensions (Intel® TDX) and we look forward to being one of the first cloud providers to offer confidential NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs. We see availability rapidly improving over the next 12 to 24 months.

Ease of adoption for developers and end users. The first generation of confidential computing services, based on Intel SGX technology, required rewriting of code and working with various open source tools to make applications confidential computing enabled. Microsoft and our partners have collaborated on these open source tools and we have an active community of partners running their Intel SGX solutions on Azure. The newer generation of confidential virtual machines on Azure, using AMD SEV-SNP, a hardware security feature enabled by AMD Infinity Gaurd and and Intel TDX, lets users run off-the-shelf operating systems, lift and shift their sensitive workloads, and run them confidentially. We are also using this technology to offer confidential containers in Azure which allows users to run their existing container images confidentially.

Performance and interoperability. We need to ensure that confidential computing does not mean slower computing. The issue becomes more important with accelerators like GPUs where the data must be protected as it moves between the central processing unit (CPU) and the accelerator. Advances in this area will come from continued collaboration with standards committees such as the PCI-SIG, which has issued the TEE Device Interface Security Protocol (TDISP) for secure PCIe bus communication and the CXL Consortium which has issued the Compute Express Link™ (CXL™) specification for the secure sharing of memory among processors. Open source projects like Caliptra which has created the specification, silicon logic, have read-only memory (ROM), and firmware for implementing a Root of Trust for Measurement (RTM) block inside a system on chip (SoC).

Industry awareness. While confidential computing adoption is growing, awareness among IT and security professionals is still low. There is a tremendous opportunity for all confidential computing vendors to collaborate and participate in events aimed at raising awareness of this technology to key decision-makers such as CISOs, CIOs, and policymakers. This is especially relevant in industries such as government and other regulated sectors where the handling of highly sensitive data is critical. By promoting the benefits of confidential computing and increasing adoption rates, we can establish it as a necessary requirement for handling sensitive data. Through these efforts, we can work together to foster greater trust in the cloud and build a more secure and reliable digital ecosystem for all.

The future of confidential computing

When the discussion turned to the future of confidential computing, I had the opportunity to reinforce Azure's vision for the confidential cloud, where all services will run in trusted execution environments. As this vision becomes a reality, confidential computing will no longer be a specialty feature but rather the standard for all computing tasks. In this way, the concept of confidential computing will simply become synonymous with computing itself.

Finally, all panelists agreed that the biggest advances in confidential computing will be the result of industry collaboration.

Microsoft at OC3

In addition to the panel discussion, Microsoft participated in several other presentations at OC3 that you may find of interest:

Removing our Hyper-V host OS and hypervisor from the Trusted Computing Base (TCB).
Container code and configuration integrity with confidential containers on Azure.
Customer managed and controlled Trusted Computing Base (TCB) with CVMs on Azure.
Enabling faster AI model training in healthcare with Azure confidential computing.
Project Amber—Intel's attestation service.

Finally, I would like to encourage our readers to learn about Greg Lavender’s thoughts on OC3 2023.

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Quelle: Azure