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Weekly Roundup: Android Comes to Windows Azure Mobile Services

Here’s a quick summary of cloud happenings over the last week

The cloud world seems to have been received some interesting announcements and offerings over the last week. There were some new feature releases and price offerings from Amazon.

Microsoft has announced some important updates to Windows Azure Mobile Services. Plus, Cloud Foundry has also announced its ‘handshake’ with Pivotal Initiative.

Here’s a quick summary of cloud happenings over the last week:

Beginning with the IaaS leader, Amazon has offered a month long free trial of the AWS Trusted Advisor to all AWS customers. This service inspects the AWS environment and makes recommendations to help users save money, improve performance or close security gaps. Additionally, enhanced the Trusted Advisor’s user interface and added a new suppress feature that allow users to hide the results of certain checks. Next, they have also announced that AWS customers will get a $120 AWS Credit with any new SAP Hana One subscription.

Amazon has reduced the price of Amazon DynamoDB in all AWS regions. The price of indexed data storage has decreased by up to 75%. The price of provisioned throughput capacity has decreased by up to 35%. Also, they have introduced a new Reserved Capacity offering. This offering apparently can save up to 53% with a 1-year term and up to 76% with a 3-year term.

They have also announced the accessibility of log files generated by Amazon RDS DB Instances running MySQL, Oracle Database, or SQL Server via the AWS Management Console and the Amazon RDS APIs. Finally, Amazon has released an AWS Implementation Guide for SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn Availability Groups, to help users deploy the necessary and correctly configured infrastructure.

PaaS player, Microsoft has made some improvements to the identity and access management capabilities in Windows Azure. The three new features that allow users efficiently manage access are:

  • Manage users and their access rights in the Windows Azure Portal.
  • Try out a preview of our new phone based two factor authentications for users who are Global Administrators in Windows Azure AD.
  • Manage the synchronization and federation between your Windows Azure Active Directory and your Windows Server Active Directory from within the Windows Azure Portal.

Another interesting announcement was Windows Azure Mobile Services will now fully support Android apps and Mobile Services are now available in the East Asia region. Cloud Foundry has announced that the open PaaS, joined the Pivotal Initiative, an independent project by VMWare and EMC dedicated to maintain focus on big data and cloud application platforms.

Appcelerator has open-sourced 24 modules on the Appcelerator Marketplace. Hence, allowing the members of the community to contribute, improve and advance these modules. They have also announced that module developers can now publish their own open sourced modules in the Appcelerator Marketplace.

Stay tuned until next week!

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More Stories By Janakiram MSV

Janakiram MSV is the Founder & Principal Analyst at Janakiram & Associates. Through his speaking, writing and consulting, he helps businesses take advantage of the emerging technologies. Founder and driving force of an initiative called www.GetCloudReady.com he enables businesses to be ready for the Cloud. As the CTO of GetCloudReady.com, he leads a highly talented engineering team that focuses on developing and migrating applications to Microsoft Windows Azure, Amazon Web Services and Cloud Foundry. Janakiram is one of the first few Microsoft Certified Professionals on Windows Azure in India. Demystifying The Cloud, an eBook authored by Janakiram is downloaded more than 100,000 times in just few months. He is the Chief Editor of a popular portal on Cloud called www.CloudStory.in where he analyzes the latest trends from the world of Cloud Computing. Janakiram is an analyst with the GigaOM Pro analyst network where he analyzes the Cloud Services landscape. Janakiram is a guest faculty at the International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad (IIIT-H) where he teaches Big Data and Cloud Computing to the students enrolled for the Masters course. Janakiram has worked at world-class product companies including Microsoft Corporation, Amazon Web Services and Alcatel-Lucent. His last role was with Amazon Web Services as the Technology Evangelist where he joined them as the first employee in India. Prior to that, Janakiram spent 10 years at Microsoft Corporation where he was involved in selling, marketing and evangelizing the Microsoft Application Platform and Tools. At the time of leaving Microsoft, he was a Technical Architect, Cloud focusing on Windows Azure.