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☆ Technology Chiefs Seek Help Wrangling Cloud Costs
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-03 | by ( Belle Lin | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +6 min

Some chief information officers have turned to cloud management tools and established internal teams to oversee their cloud spending. Mr. Nimboorkar said the company has since built a dedicated team to manage its Amazon Web Services spending and invested in a third-party cloud spending management tool. Executives from all three cloud giants have said customers are optimizing or reining in their cloud spending, citing economic factors. Many of the best practices in cloud spending management have been codified by the nonprofit FinOps Foundation, which promotes cloud financial literacy and accountability, she said. That model allows Mr. Kanchi to wholly manage cloud spending, he said, but was only possible after UST figured out how to tag cloud usage by its various business units.

☆ Nvidia stock jumps on Wall Street praise, bolstering the Club case in the chipmaker
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-23 | by ( Kevin Stankiewicz | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +6 min

Fourteen of those 18 analysts rate the stock a buy, or buy equivalent, compared with four who maintain hold ratings. But Goldman Sachs was the only bank to raise its stock rating on Nvidia, to buy from neutral, making its research note on the chipmaker Thursday's most notable. In addition to now recommending clients buy Nvidia stock, Goldman boosted its 12-month price target to $275 a share from $162. Big picture NVDA 1Y mountain Nvidia's stock performance over the past 12 months. As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade.

Last quarter, Nvidia said tech giant Microsoft was deploying “tens of thousands” of its GPUs in its cloud unit Azure to train and use AI. Microsoft-backed OpenAI's ChatGPT runs entirely on Nvidia chips, Piper Sandler analyst Harsh Kumar said. Revenue from the data center business was $3.62 billion for the fourth quarter, slightly below analyst estimates of $3.84 billion. Gaming chip sales were $1.83 billion, beating analyst estimates of $1.52 billion, according to Refinitiv data. Adjusted profit was 88 cents per share for the fourth quarter, beating analyst estimates of 81 cents.

☆ Amazon Web Services pairs with Hugging Face to target AI developers
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-21 | by ( Stephen Nellis | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Feb 21 (Reuters) - Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud computing arm of Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O), on Tuesday said it is collaborating with startup Hugging Face, a software development hub, to make it easier to carry out artificial intelligence work (AI) in Amazon's cloud. While new generative AI services like chat-based search engines from Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) and Alphabet Inc's Google (GOOGL.O) have captured the public's imagination, tech companies such as AWS are also vying behind the scenes to supply the tools and services that software developers will need to weave similar technology into their own products. On Tuesday, AWS said it will work with Hugging Face, a New York-based company that has become a central place online where AI developers share open-source code and models. "For this product collaboration, we're dedicating significant engineering resources to build our shared products," Delangue told Reuters in interview. Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco Editing by Mark PotterOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Credit Suisse shares plunge again on report of regulatory probe
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-21 | by ( Olesya Dmitracova | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

London CNN —Shares of embattled Swiss bank Credit Suisse fell to a record low Tuesday after a report that regulators are reviewing comments the lender’s chairman made about the health of its finances. The bank’s stock plunged as much as 9% to trade at 2.52 Swiss francs ($2.73), before recovering slightly. Credit Suisse did not respond to a CNN request for comment Tuesday. The Swiss financial regulator, Finma, declined to comment. The rumors, which sparked a selloff in the lender’s shares, followed a series of missteps and compliance failures that cost Credit Suisse billions.

☆ Cable maker Credo slumps on forecast hit as top customer cuts orders
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-15 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Feb 15 (Reuters) - Credo Technology Group Holding (CRDO.O) forecast fourth-quarter revenue well below estimates on Tuesday following a cut in orders from the cable maker's largest customer, sending its shares down as much as 43% on Wednesday. The stock, which fell to $11.07, is set for its worst day since going public in January last year at an issue price of $10. According to a company filing, one of Credo's customers accounted for 44% of its revenue in the second quarter of fiscal 2023. Credo, which makes cables used in data centers, said it was expecting fourth-quarter revenue of $30 million to $32 million, below estimates of $58.3 million, according to Refinitiv data. Credo, which also designs chips, currently outsources all its semiconductor manufacturing to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (2330.TW).

[1/2] AI chip startup Rebellions co-founder and chief executive Park Sunghyun works at the company headquarters in Seongnam, South Korea February 2023. SEOUL Feb 13 (Reuters) - South Korean startup Rebellions Inc launches an artificial intelligence (AI) chip on Monday, racing to win government contracts as Seoul seeks a place for local companies in the exploding AI industry. "But it's not set in stone because AI chips can carry out different functions and there aren't set boundaries or metrics." A100 is the most popular chip for AI workloads, powerful enough to create - in industry lingo, "train" - the AI models. Rebellions declined to give a forecast for its AI chip venture.

Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O), which has the smallest cloud business among the three, said Google Cloud grew 32%, the slowest rise since the company began reporting the measure in 2019. "Once thought as the most defensive revenue stream in tech, we are seeing investors questioning the cyclicality for the (cloud) business," analysts at Bernstein said. Microsoft's revenue in its so-called intelligent cloud business that includes Azure rose 18% to beat expectations for October to December. Amazon finance chief Brian Olsavsky said on Thursday that the company expects slower cloud growth rates for the next few quarters. "Those (AI) advancements and demand for related cloud services will take time to materialize.

☆ We are reassured by AMD CEO's confidence in the chipmaker's data-center business
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-01 | by ( Kevin Stankiewicz | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

In general, investors are relieved that AMD still expects data-center growth in 2023 despite mounting economic pressures. AMD's data-center outlook isn't perfect. For the first quarter, in particular, AMD expects data-center sales to be lower than the $1.7 billion it recorded in the fourth quarter of 2022. The unpleasant PC experience caused AMD's warning about data-center inventory hurdles to raise the Club's eyebrows. AMD expects that continue to again in 2023.

☆ Op-ed: Salesforce appoints ValueAct’s Morfit to its board and a proxy fight may loom ahead
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-27 | by ( Kenneth Squire | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

The firm's principals are generally on the boards of half of ValueAct's core portfolio positions and have had 55 public company board seats over 22 years. Adding Morfit to the board of Salesforce makes a ton of sense regardless of the activist environment. Morfit has experience helping management increase both growth and margins from a board level, and both can be improved at Salesforce. The looming question is whether he will initially be doing this with an activist cloud hanging over the company's head in the form of a proxy fight by one of the other activists involved. It likely had been engaging with Salesforce management for several months, and this appointment may have happened just as a threatened proxy fight was reported.

☆ Microsoft cloud outage hits users around the world
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-25 | by ( Akriti Sharma | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

[1/5] Microsoft Teams app is seen on the smartphone placed on the keyboard in this illustration taken, July 26, 2021. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/IllustrationJan 25 (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) on Wednesday was hit with a networking outage that took down its cloud platform Azure along with services such as Teams and Outlook, potentially affecting millions of users globally. "We've determined the network connectivity issue is occurring with devices across the Microsoft Wide Area Network (WAN)," Microsoft said. During the outage, users faced problems in exchanging messages, join calls or use any features of Teams application. Among the other services affected were Microsoft Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, according to the company's status page.

Microsoft said its third-quarter intelligent cloud revenue would be $21.7 billion to $22 billion, while analysts forecast $22.14 billion. In the second quarter, Microsoft's cloud services business helped offset a slump in the personal computer market. Azure has also steadily grabbed market share from leader Amazon.com Inc's (AMZN.O) Amazon Web Services (AWS). Azure ended 2022 with 30% share in the cloud computing market, up from 20% in 2018, according to estimates from BofA Global Research. Microsoft's revenue rose 2% to $52.7 billion in the three months ended Dec. 31, compared with the average analyst estimate of $52.94 billion, according to Refinitiv IBES.

[1/2] Attendees walk through an expo hall at AWS re:Invent 2022, a conference hosted by Amazon Web Services (AWS), in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S., November 30, 2022. After years of blistering growth, most recently fuelled by remote working and studying during the pandemic, cloud demand has cooled in the past nine months and sales growth may slow further, analysts said. AWS, Amazon's lucrative cloud business from which it gets more than a quarter of its revenue, is expected to post a 24% increase in sales in the quarter. THE FUNDAMENTALS* Microsoft Q2 revenue is expected to rise 2.5% to $53 billion, the slowest increase in six years. * Amazon Q4 revenue is expected to rise 5.8% to $145.40 billion.

☆ Execs from top firms like Morgan Stanley and Vanguard share tips for how to cut costs when moving to the public cloud
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-05 | by ( Carter Johnson | Bianca Chan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

When Vanguard first made a push into the public cloud, Michael Carr, the firm's chief technology officer, knew realizing savings was a key part of the move. Collaboration is keyAs with most technology applications, there's a human behavior element to cloud cost savings. At Capital One, it took years to build a culture of collaboration between technology and finance teams within the bank's centralized cloud expense management division, Johnston said. Before, the finance team would send the tech team an aggregate bill at the end of each month and "that was kind of the end of the story," Johnston said. Speaking the same language has instilled a greater sense of empathy across different teams, like finance, technology, business, and others.

☆ Salesforce Under Its Biggest Cloud Yet
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-04 | by ( Dan Gallagher | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Salesforce is hardly the only tech company to have overshot in its postpandemic planning. But the correction still comes at an especially painful time for the cloud software pioneer. Salesforce announced in a regulatory filing Wednesday morning that it will be laying off about 10% of its employees, which amounts to around 8,000 workers based on the company’s last-reported head count. The company also says it is working to reduce its real estate footprint, though it shared no other details on the latter. Salesforce’s 61-story headquarters completed in 2018 for more than $1 billion has turned into a gleaming landmark among near-empty office spaces in San Francisco’s main business district.

☆ Wall Street's shift to the public cloud hasn't come cheap. From dashboards to automation, here's how firms like Morgan Stanley and Vanguard are keeping costs down while using the tech.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-16 | by ( Carter Johnson | Bianca Chan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

But the pay-as-you-go subscription model associated with the cloud can also lead to higher expenses when usage goes unchecked. Collaboration is keyAs with most technology applications, there's a human behavior element to cloud cost savings. At Capital One, it took years to build a culture of collaboration between technology and finance teams within the bank's centralized cloud expense management division, Johnston said. Before, the finance team would send the tech team an aggregate bill at the end of each month and "that was kind of the end of the story," Johnston said. Speaking the same language has instilled a greater sense of empathy across different teams, like finance, technology, business, and others.

☆ Pentagon Divides Big Cloud-Computing Deal Among 4 Firms
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-07 | by ( Maureen Farrell | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The Defense Department said Wednesday that it had awarded lucrative cloud-computing contracts to four companies: Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Oracle. The contracts run through 2028 and could be valued as high as $9 billion, the Pentagon said in a news release. That contract, for the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, known as JEDI, became part of a legal battle over claims that President Donald J. Trump interfered in a process that favored Microsoft over its rival bidder, Amazon. “This is the biggest cloud Beltway deal in history and was a key deal to win for all the software vendors in this multiyear soap opera,” Dan Ives, a tech analyst with Wedbush Securities, said in an email. “It’s good to finally end this chapter and get a cloud deal finally done for the Pentagon after years of a roller coaster.”

☆ Wall Street's most important consultant might be its cloud provider
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-30 | by ( Dan Defrancesco | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Insider's Bianca Chan explored this trend with a piece on how cloud providers like AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud are reimagining themselves as business consultants. Many of the biggest cloud providers have stood up teams focused on interfacing with the C-suite to advise them on how a move to the cloud can be an opportunity to overhaul things. It's not hard to see how this could end up being big business for the cloud providers. Cloud providers still have a long way to go to be a real threat to consultants, but there is potential there. Click here to read more about how cloud providers are becoming the new-age consultants for Wall Street.

☆ Amazon unveils supply-chain, cloud services drawing on its retail arm
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-29 | by ( Jeffrey Dastin | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

At its annual Las Vegas conference, the cloud unit also showed off AWS Clean Rooms, which allows businesses to tailor ads to customers while maintaining their privacy, among other applications. The services are part of Amazon's long-time strategy to develop functions for its e-commerce arm and then offer them to other companies. At the same time, Amazon's cloud has lost out on sales to brick-and-mortar retailers which are reluctant to hire a company that is also their e-commerce competitor. Other new services it announced include Amazon Omics for genomic analysis and Amazon Security Lake, which helps businesses assemble data from cybersecurity vendors and other sources. Reporting by Jeffrey Dastin in Las Vegas; Editing by Richard ChangOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Amazon touts new data, security services to win cloud business
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-29 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: 1 min

LAS VEGAS, Nov 29 (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) on Tuesday announced data and security services for businesses in an effort to win more sales and stay the largest cloud-computing provider, ahead of rivals Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) and Alphabet Inc's (GOOGL.O) Google. At an annual conference in Las Vegas, its cloud division announced Amazon DataZone to help businesses control access to internal data, with Fox Corp as one of the launch customers, according to a press release. Other new services included Amazon Security Lake helping enterprises aggregate information from cybersecurity vendors and other sources. Reporting By Jeffrey Dastin in Las VegasOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Wall Street analysts put four Club holdings — Apple (AAPL), Amazon (AMZN), Procter & Gamble (PG) and Honeywell (HON) — under the microscope Tuesday. Club take: We continue to see Amazon's cloud business as the industry leader that repeatedly outperforms peers. As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . Analysts have been debating the demand for Apple's iPhone 14 models amid a backdrop of rampant inflation, rising interest rates and fears of a global recession.

☆ Dropbox helped end the physical thumb drive era, but the cloud is getting crowded
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-17 | by ( Barbara Collins | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

In this weekly series, CNBC takes a look at companies that made the inaugural Disruptor 50 list, 10 years later. The result was Dropbox, a company that has now made a name for itself as one of the leading organization and collaboration tools worldwide. Today, Dropbox reports having more than 700 million registered users in more than 180 countries and regions globally. In its most recent quarter, Dropbox reported $591 million in revenue with a net profit of $83.2 million. Over 17.5 million users pay for its services, and the company has said more than 90% of its revenue results from individual consumers buying subscriptions.

Nov 16 (Reuters) - Chip designer and computing firm Nvidia Corp (NVDA.O) beat expectations for third-quarter revenue on Wednesday, thanks to strong demand in its data center business on the back of rising cloud adoption. Data center revenue in the third quarter rose 31% from a year ago, while gaming revenue was down 51% from a year ago. Cloud companies are increasingly using Nvidia chips in their systems. read moreAnd Nvidia Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress said while the export restrictions impacted third-quarter revenue, the decline was "largely offset by sales of alternative products into China." Nvidia forecast current-quarter revenue at $6 billion, plus or minus 2%, versus expectation of $6.09 billion.

Nov 16 (Reuters) - Chip designer and computing firm Nvidia Corp (NVDA.O) beat expectations for third-quarter revenue on Wednesday, thanks to strong demand in its data center business on the back of rising cloud adoption. Nvidia's A100 data center chip and ramp-up in its latest "Hopper" series H100 chip will help the company maintain momentum in the data center space, analysts said. Data center revenue in the third quarter rose 31% from a year ago, while gaming revenue was down 51% from a year ago. Analysts on average expect revenue of $6.09 billion, according to Refinitiv data. Analysts on average had expected revenue of $5.77 billion, according to Refinitiv data.

☆ Fact Check-Images and videos of clouds passing behind the sun are optical illusions, not proof of ‘local sun’ orbiting ‘flat earth’
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-08 | by ( Reuters Fact Check | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

Social media users are sharing images and videos which seemingly show clouds passing behind the sun. The users claim this proves humanity lives on a “flat earth” with a “local sun” floating and orbiting above. One Facebook user uploaded a video to a group named ‘Flat Earth Research’ (here), alongside the caption: “We are told the sun is 93 million miles away. Reuters has debunked other ‘Flat Earth’ theory claims here, here and here. Images and videos of clouds appearing to pass behind the sun are optical illusions.

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