Microsoft announced that it will be permanently reducing the prices for its Dv2 compute instances by up to 17 percent next month, depending on the type of instance and what it’s being used for. Users will see the greatest savings if they’re running higher performance Linux instances — up to 17 percent lower prices than they’ve been paying previously. Windows instance discounts top out at a 13 percent reduction compared to current prices.

Right now, the exact details of the discount are a little bit vague, but Microsoft says that it will publish full pricing details in February when they go into effect. Dv2 instances are designed for applications that require more compute power and temporary disk performance than Microsoft’s A series instances.

They’re the successor to Azure’s D-series VMs, and come with processors that are 35 percent faster than their predecessors. Greater speed also corresponds to a higher price, but these discounts will make Dv2-series instances more price competitive with their predecessors. That’s good news for price-conscious users, who may be more inclined to reach for the higher-performance instances now that they’ll be cheaper.

The price changes come after Amazon earlier this week introduced scheduled compute instances, which let users pick out a particular time for their workloads to run on a regular basis, and get discounts based on when they decide to use the system. It’s a system that’s designed to help businesses that need computing power for routine tasks at non-peak times get a discount.

Microsoft’s announcement builds on the company’s longstanding history of reducing prices for Azure in keeping with Amazon’s price cuts in order to remain competitive.

Source-http://www.thegurureview.net/computing-category/microsoft-to-cut-azure-pricing.html

Google and Microsoft have reached a broad agreement on patent matters, with a legal settlement ending some 20 lawsuits between the companies in the U.S. and Germany. Financial terms weren’t disclosed, but the deal brings a laundry list of lawsuits to a close.

“Microsoft and Google are pleased to announce an agreement on patent issues,” they said in a joint statement. “As part of the agreement, the companies will dismiss all pending patent infringement litigation between them, including cases related to Motorola Mobility.”

They also agreed to collaborate on patent matters and work together “to benefit our customers.”

The suits that have been settled include those related to mobile phones, video encoding and Wi-Fi technologies. That doesn’t mean Microsoft has given up its campaign to collect royalties from Android device makers for the mobile operating system’s alleged infringement of Microsoft patents.

It’s not clear from the statement what patent matters the companies will be working on together in the future, but changes have already begun. The two companies agreed earlier this month to work together (alongside other firms like Netflix and Mozilla) on a royalty-free video codec.

It remains to be seen if the settlement will lead to more work between Microsoft and Google in other areas. A major sticking point for consumers has been the lack of a Google-made YouTube app for smartphones and tablets running Windows.

Source-http://www.thegurureview.net/aroundnet-category/microsoft-google-cease-fire-in-global-patent-deal.html

Apple announced changes to iCloud extra storage pricing earlier this month at the event where it unveiled new iPhones, the larger iPad Pro and a revamped Apple TV.

Although the Cupertino, Calif., company did not boost the amount of free storage space — as Computerworld speculated it might — and instead continued to provide just 5GB of iCloud space gratis, it bumped up the $0.99 per month plan from 20GB to 50GB, lowered the price of the 200GB plan by 25% to $2.99 monthly, and halved the 1TB plan’s price to $9.99.

Apple also ditched last year’s 500GB plan, which had cost $9.99 monthly.

The new prices are in line with the competition; in one case, Apple’s was lower.

Google, for example, hands out 15GB of cloud-based Google Drive storage for free — triple Apple’s allowance — and charges $1.99 monthly for 100GB and $9.99 each month for 1TB. The smaller-sized plan is 33% more per gigabyte than Apple’s 200GB deal, and Google’s 1TB plan is priced the same as Apple’s.

Microsoft also gives away 15GB. Additional storage costs $1.99 monthly for 100GB — the same price as Google Drive — while 200GB runs $3.99 per month, 33% higher than Apple’s same-sized plan.

Microsoft does not sell a separate 1TB OneDrive plan but instead directs customers to Office 365 Personal, the one-user subscription to the Office application suite. As part of the subscription, customers are given 1TB of OneDrive space. Office 365 Personal costs $6.99 monthly or $69.99 annually.

Source-http://www.thegurureview.net/aroundnet-category/apple-drops-icloud-storage-plan-prices.html

Sales are way up for little-known manufacturers that sell directly to big cloud companies like Google and Facebook, while the market for traditional external storage systems is shrinking, according to research company IDC.

Internet giants and service providers typically don’t use specialized storage platforms in their sprawling data centers. Instead, they buy vast amounts of capacity in the form of generic hardware that’s controlled by software. As users flock to cloud-based services, that’s a growing business.

Revenue for original design manufacturers that sell directly to hyperscale data-center operators grew by 25.8 percent to more than US$1 billion in the second quarter, according to the latest global IDC report on enterprise storage systems. Overall industry revenue rose just 2.1 percent from last year’s second quarter, reaching $8.8 billion.

These so-called ODMs are low-profile vendors, many of them based in Taiwan, that do a lot of their business manufacturing hardware that’s sold under better known brand names. Examples include Quanta Computer and Wistron.

General enterprises aren’t buying many systems from these vendors, but the trends at work in hyperscale deployments are growing across the industry. Increasingly, the platform of choice for storage is a standard x86 server dedicated to storing data, according to IDC analyst Eric Sheppard. Sales of server-based storage rose 10 percent in the quarter to reach $2.1 billion.

Traditional external systems like SANs (storage area networks) are still the biggest part of the enterprise storage business, logging $5.7 billion in revenue for the quarter. But sales in this segment were down 3.9 percent.

Overall demand for storage capacity continued to grow strongly, with 37 percent more capacity shipped in the quarter compared with a year earlier.

Source-http://www.thegurureview.net/aroundnet-category/enterprise-storage-needs-driving-cloud-sales-boom.html

The company has seen drops in key parts of the business and an overall drop in GAAP net revenue of eight percent year on year to $25.3bn, compared with $27.6bn in 2014.

The company failed to meet its projected net earnings per share, which it had put at $0.50-$0.52, with an actual figure of $0.47.

The figures reflect a time of deep uncertainty at the company as it moves ever closer to its demerger into HP and Hewlett Packard Enterprise. The latter began filing registration documents in July to assert its existence as a separate entity, while the boards of both companies were announced two weeks ago.

Dell CEO Michael Dell slammed the move in an exclusive interview with The INQUIRER, saying he would never do the same to his company.

The big boss at HP remained upbeat, despite the drop in dividend against expectations. “HP delivered results in the third quarter that reflect very strong performance in our Enterprise Group and substantial progress in turning around Enterprise Services,” said Meg Whitman, chairman, president and chief executive of HP.

“I am very pleased that we have continued to deliver the results we said we would, while remaining on track to execute one of the largest and most complex separations ever undertaken.”

To which we have to ask: “Which figures were you looking at, lady?”

Breaking down the figures by business unit, Personal Systems revenue was down 13 percent year on year, while notebook sales fell three percent and desktops 20 percent.

Printing was down nine percent, but with a 17.8 percent operating margin. HP has been looking at initiatives to create loyalty among print users such as ink subscriptions.

The Enterprise Group, soon to be spun off, was up two percent year on year, but Business Critical system revenue dropped by 21 percent, cancelled out by networking revenue which climbed 22 percent.

Enterprise Services revenue dropped 11 percent with a six percent margin, while software dropped six percent with a 20.6 percent margin. Software-as-a-service revenue dropped by four percent.

HP Financial Services was down six percent, despite a two percent decrease in net portfolio assets and a two percent decrease in financing volume.

Source- http://www.thegurureview.net/computing-category/is-hps-forthcoming-split-a-good-idea.html