Podcasts about Alibaba Cloud

The following article of the AI Cloud & Data industry is: 'How AI Agents Are Moving From Efficiency Tools to Growth Engines' by Pedro Lete, BDM Director, Alibaba Cloud Mexico. 

Nesse episódio trouxemos as notícias e novidades do mundo da programação que nos chamaram atenção dos dias 23/05 a 29/05.☕ Café Código FontePrograme sua xícara para o sabor certo!https://cafe.codigofonte.com.br

Nesse episódio trouxemos as notícias e novidades do mundo da programação que nos chamaram atenção dos dias 23/05 a 29/05.☕ Café Código FontePrograme sua xícara para o sabor certo!https://cafe.codigofonte.com.br

Сегодня разбираемся, как Anthropic сорвал куш в $40 млрд от Google и SpaceX, а Claude стал новым стандартом для кодинга и дизайна. Обсуждаем GPT-5.5 Instant от OpenAI, их секретный смартфон и планы заработать $100 млрд на рекламе в чате. Выясняем, зачем Google тайно ставит Gemini Nano в ваш Chrome и зачем вешать дата-центры на стены жилых домов. Также в выпуске: релиз Mistral Medium 3.5, Grok 4.3, мобильный агент Trae Solo и китайские хитрости вокруг Manus. Залетаем в мир ИИ-музыки от Spotify и ElevenLabs, смотрим на завод роботов Figure AI, обсуждаем суд между OpenAI и Маском, и рассказываем про модель, обученную на данных 1930-х годов.

Doug Houghton, director of global channels at Alkira There’s a line from this episode that’s worth leading with: “Networking is not sexy until it doesn’t work.” That’s Doug Houghton, Director of Global Channels at Alkira, and it’s a pretty concise summary of why his company exists. Alkira was founded by the team behind Viptela – the startup that essentially created the SD-WAN category before being acquired by Cisco. The lesson they carried out of that experience is that SD-WAN, for all its promise, still ran into the limits of underlying infrastructure. You ended up with disparate networks, latency constraints, and complexity that didn’t disappear – it just moved somewhere else. What they built in response is Network Infrastructure as a Service (NIaaS) – a cloud-native, consumption-based global backbone that abstracts multi-cloud connectivity into a single managed plane. The pitch to partners is concrete: consolidate 50 physical firewalls into virtualized functions, reduce total cost of ownership by 40-70%, and do it without a rip-and-replace cycle. The timing matters, and Houghton is direct about why. AI workloads – distributed large language models, agentic workflows reaching across multiple clouds simultaneously – demand a level of network elasticity that legacy infrastructure simply wasn’t designed for. Alkira’s argument is that they’re the smooth road that makes AI-driven infrastructure actually work in practice. For Canadian partners, Alkira has real resources on the ground: a solution architect based in Toronto, a dedicated channel account manager, and publicly referenceable Canadian customers including contact center provider ContactPoint 360. The Connect Partner Program, launched in March 2026, puts approximately 20 percent total margin on the table across base discount, rebates, MDF, and POC SPIFFs – with average initial deals around $500,000 USD and typical expansion of 4x in year one. Canadian partners interested in the conversation can reach the team at partners@alkira.com. Read Full Transcript Robert Dutt: Hello and welcome to In The Channel from ChannelBuzz.ca, bringing news and information to the Canadian IT channel community for the last sixteen years. I’m Robert Dutt, editor of ChannelBuzz.ca and your host for the show. If you were around when SD-WAN was the big disruptive idea in networking – the promise of simplifying branch connectivity, cutting costs, getting smarter about traffic – you probably also remember it didn’t quite deliver everything it promised. Not because the technology was bad, but because the underlying network architecture couldn’t keep up. You still ended up with complexity. It just moved somewhere else. That problem is essentially the founding insight behind Alkira. The company was built by Amir Khan and Atif Khan, the same team behind Viptela, the startup widely credited with creating the SD-WAN category before Cisco acquired it. What they learned in that experience is that SD-WAN, without a proper global backbone, just creates a different set of headaches. So they started fresh and built what they call NIaaS – Network Infrastructure as a Service – a cloud-native, consumption-based approach that abstracts the complexity of multi-cloud connectivity into something you could stand up, as my guest today puts it, with just a username and a password. The timing is not accidental, because what AI demands from a network – elasticity, low latency, the ability to reach distributed workloads almost anywhere instantly – is exactly what legacy infrastructure wasn’t built to handle. My guest is Doug Houghton, Director of Global Channels at Alkira. Doug has been in the channel a long time, knows the technology in a way that might genuinely surprise you coming from a channel chief, and has a lot to say about what it all means as a real business opportunity for Canadian VARs and MSPs. Let’s get right into it, my chat with Doug Houghton. Doug, thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it. Doug Houghton: It’s my pleasure. Thank you for having me on today, Robert. Robert Dutt: So you were part of the team that built up the SD-WAN market at Viptela back in the day. What did you learn there that told you the next big thing was going to be NIaaS, and why now? Doug Houghton: First off, that’s a great question. I felt a bit like a passenger in a car racing a thousand miles an hour when we were doing software-defined wide-area networking. What we learned was that without organizing your cloud infrastructure properly, your cloud bill gets ridiculously large – especially if you keep your control element decoupled from your data plane in the cloud with all these workloads churning. But what we really learned, and what’s applicable to what we’re now doing at Alkira, is that SD-WAN truly did deliver on its core promise. It allows customers to influence traffic based on link quality and improve the user experience. If you’re on a phone call and it starts to get goofy, you can move over to a better-performing link in real time without dropping the call. That’s powerful. And the same with data traffic. What I hadn’t fully thought through was what happens as global companies start to adopt SD-WAN and disaggregate across locations in Southeast Asia, China, Latin America, and everywhere else. The latency back to the control element isn’t easy to contend with. So you ended up with organizations making decisions that effectively created four separate, disparate networks for latency purposes. And that was not part of the original promise. What we learned was that you need a global backbone that’s high throughput and low latency. The edge can still be SD-WAN – there are real things in SD-WAN that people still want, whether that’s WAN optimization, deduplication, caching, policy-based routing, forward error correction. All of that still has practical application, and site-to-site communications are still needed in many use cases. But Alkira was built inside the cloud first, employing the same principle of decoupling control plane from data plane for scale. By abstracting the cloud infrastructure, we were able to remediate the latency that those four geographically dispersed networks created. We’re the global backbone – that middle mile with high throughput and low latency – and then you connect these clusters of SD-WAN networks together and all of a sudden the promise of SD-WAN gets a lot more consumable. You have a singular network managed from a singular control plane and element management orchestrator, and you can still get all the benefits of SD-WAN at the local sites. Robert Dutt So in plain language, a Canadian MSP or VAR is used to selling network hardware or managing someone else’s infrastructure. How is selling, deploying, and managing NIaaS different from what they’re already doing, and what makes that distinction important? Doug Houghton: Let’s take a half step back and talk about what NIaaS actually is. It’s Network Infrastructure as a Service. What Alkira does is abstract the cloud infrastructure and build a routed overlay on top of it. We think of it as a virtualized colocation facility that connects and normalizes communications across your entire network. For managed service providers and service providers, our solution accelerates bringing their customers to cloud applications, cloud workloads, storage, and everything else the cloud promises. The way I explain it to my mom – and I’ve told this joke once already today because I’m sitting in a partner’s office right now – is this: if you went to Russia, Japan, Argentina, and San Francisco all in one day and had to transact in each place, and you could speak the native language in each one, that would be ideal. What we focused on was normalizing communications regardless of the cloud service provider, colocation provider, data centre – private or public – or whatever type of router is at the branch office. As an MSP or service provider that comes in, what we give to our customers and partners is a username and a password. That lets you come in and – for your old-school folks in the audience – essentially etch-a-sketch your network together. You can turn a couple of knobs, and it’s not that we’ve cranked the amp up to eleven, we’ve just removed all the numbers and automated everything. It just knows what you want to do. It’s a routed BGP overlay with the control plane abstracted from it, so the forwarding plane can route around things like the CrowdStrike outage, or losing an AWS region – which happens more frequently than AWS would like to admit – or any cloud service provider incident. The multi-cloud reality has accelerated adoption, but it presents a new problem: you’ve got an AWS expert on staff, but you don’t have an Azure, GCP, OCI, or Alibaba Cloud expert. Those are all different languages. When I tell my mom that we normalize the communications between all the assets in the network and make it easy to connect to all of them, she gets that. For the MSP looking to monetize something new or add another revenue stream, we offer a couple of compelling things. In the middle of our stack, we place a solution inside the cloud – sitting in a VPC, VNet, VCN, or Google VPC – right in the middle of all the cloud, SaaS, and WAN workloads. We’ve pleased a lot of customers by lowering total cost of ownership through the consolidation of network services they already have in their environment, in the form of virtualized network functions. Take a Palo Alto firewall deployment – say you have fifty Palos out there, all talking to Panorama, with a security engineer managing policy centrally. Instead of having fifty firewalls on the ground, you consolidate them. You go from the ground – five to ten milliseconds to the nearest public cloud PoP – hop onto the Alkira fabric, and terminate that traffic on a virtual port on our exchange point. In the middle of that exchange point, sitting in a VPC or VNet, you place a Palo Alto virtualized network function. You get the IP address of the Panorama server, and if you didn’t tell the security engineer anything had changed, they would not know. The form factor changes, but not how they interact with Panorama, how they build policy, or anything about how they secure the traffic. That remains exactly the same. We virtualize the instance and place it on a global high-throughput, low-latency backbone inside our exchange point. We deploy exchange points in HA pairs, anywhere from 100 Mbps to 40 Gbps. The customer or service provider consumes one, and we maintain the other on their behalf – because every thirty days we’re fixing bugs and doing maintenance. We swing production workloads to the backup, do the work on the primary, then reverse the order, all while keeping these customers up and running. Because we’re delivering this as a service, it has to always be on. One of the most important architectural decisions we made from the start was ensuring those two exchange points are always running active-active in a full mesh configuration, buttressed by hundreds of other exchange points globally distributed – all synchronized and aware of each other’s states. Robert Dutt: You’ve said that legacy networks can’t handle what AI demands, specifically in terms of elasticity. Can you unpack that a little? When an MSP’s customer starts deploying language models or agentic workflows, what is it that actually breaks? Doug Houghton: Good question, and I’ll give you an honest answer. I’ve started to fall in love with Claude – I think it’s one of the coolest things in the world. I can do all sorts of creative things with it. But Claude isn’t talking only to me. He’s a bit of a flirt – he goes to a lot of different places to get knowledgeable about various things and produce the outcomes I’ve asked for. And those other places are where you run into problems. I used to say the three biggest AI providers are GCP, AWS, and Azure. That’s still largely true. But the likes of Anthropic and other AI labs are distributing LLM workloads everywhere. Without the right network underneath that, it’s like buying the hottest car and driving it down a pothole-filled road. What we offer is a high-throughput, low-latency, elastic network. If you need to turn it up in a heartbeat, you can. We helped complete the S&P Global and IHS Markit merger network integration in about a tenth of the time they expected, because we’re natively segmented. Think about those two networks as large datasets that AI agents need to access. You have to secure the traffic, and you need it to be elastic – able to reach anywhere, instantly, to produce the outcome the agent was asked for. The ability to go anywhere on a road that’s smooth as glass, in the hottest car possible – that’s what we offer. Our network infrastructure solution is an abstraction: a forwarding plane that goes everywhere, and your imagination is really the only limitation. Speed, elasticity, and securing access – even for agentic, self-directed workflows – it’s still a critical element. And nobody – I said this earlier today, so I’ll say it again – networking is not really sexy until it doesn’t work. If I have to get in and route-peer and manually configure transit gateways, I’m going to punch myself in the face repeatedly. I just don’t want to do it. It slows everything down. I can automate it with Terraform, sure. But I want to consume it now. I want to prompt it now. I want the outcome now. Robert Dutt: You’ve launched Alkira NIA, your AI co-pilot and network infrastructure assistant, along with an MCP server last year. It’s interesting – you’re essentially putting AI on top of the infrastructure that’s enabling AI. What does NIA actually do for an MSP’s day-to-day operations? Doug Houghton: Maybe I have a limited imagination, but I still use it like a utility. NIA is great because it allows you to search through all our documentation in a more organized way. We have amazing documentation – there’s a lot of it – and when you’re looking for a specific configuration or something captured in a knowledge base, that tool is really useful. But continuing the utility theme: how do I do something? If I want to create a micro-segment to distribute to a bunch of business units, or build an isolated Layer 3 routing table and get it to various business units, and then set up billing with specific billing tags for each segment – I know how to do that because I’ve done it many times. But a new user may not. You can use the NIA agent to search the documentation, search previous implementation notes, best practices, all of that. That’s real value. But you can also ask it something like “why is the sun bright” and it won’t return the answer you expect. I’ve done that too. Robert Dutt: Let’s talk about the Connect Partner Program and the economics. You’ve got the Partner Profit Stack – tiered margins, quarterly rebates, MDF, SPIFFs, the Connect Pipeline Fund. It’s a full toolkit, and it’s stuff partners have seen before. What’s the real math? What does a Canadian MSP at the Premier tier actually walk away with on a typical deal after they’ve done the work? Doug Houghton: Usually about nineteen percentage points – maybe a little more. On the pre-sale side, when we get into a POC, our Premier partners can earn a $1,000 SPIFF. We close about 85% of our POCs, so there’s real value in that. Add in the rebates and MDF access, and the total haul is closer to 20% on each deal. Worth mentioning: we’ve been a 100% channel company since May 2022. My partner David Klubinoff, my technical counterpart – we worked together at Viptela and we started the Alkira channel together. It took a couple of weeks to convince our CEO that going 100% channel was the right call. I think he’s a believer now. We’ve driven significant revenue for the company, and our partners are our thought leaders – out in the market talking about our solution and solving customer problems. I was in Chicago yesterday doing a technical enablement session with thirty-plus SAs and SEs. We had the classic SD-WAN questions, and a lot of questions about segmentation and M&A. There’s enormous consolidation happening in insurance, healthcare, and other sectors, and the overlapping IP address problem that comes with mergers is something MSPs face all the time. We’ve entirely simplified that. You build a NAT policy right in the solution and the overlapping IP issue is resolved within an hour. In the case of S&P Global and IHS Markit, they thought their merger network integration was going to take a couple of years. The issue was largely the overlapping IP addresses – IHS couldn’t talk to the HR applications at S&P, and vice versa, plus all the other interdependencies. You need a fast way to solve the overlapping IP problem before you can even get to the real work. That’s been a core design element of our solution from the very start: take care of the small things, and people can move faster and get to market faster. Our biggest MSP – and this is a publicly referenceable customer – is CEDA, a French-based organization that provides managed network services to 95% of the world’s airlines. For them, it means being able to turn up a new customer faster, connecting on-premises assets to their control elements so they can begin actually managing that network. Speed, and the efficiencies and cost reductions that come from it – that’s what it does for all MSPs. If you’re consolidating fifty firewalls into virtualized functions, you’re making a good commission, getting MDF support, quarterly rebates, and a SPIFF when you engage us collaboratively on a POC. All of that happens at an accelerated rate. I’ve been screaming from the mountaintop about our solution for about four years. Invariably, you’d walk into a room, say “Hi, I’m Doug Houghton from Alkira,” and they’d say “Who?” That’s starting to happen a lot less, which is a genuinely nice thing. Over the last twelve to twenty-four months, the business has grown exponentially, the diversity of our partner ecosystem has increased, and partner margins have been very healthy. The tiered structure was really about celebrating partners who have invested in us. Honestly, I’m waiting for the day my boss tells me to stop incentivizing partners – because when that happens, I’ll know we’ve hit the apex. Our partners will be generating so much revenue that someone gets uncomfortable with what we’re paying out. I can’t wait for that day. Some of the more interesting things in the program came from actually listening. I went around and talked to a bunch of partners about their ideal partner programs and built from there. And one of the realizations – I thought it was significant – was what we were actually doing on the post-sale side. We white-glove every implementation right now, because it’s critically important to us. We haven’t lost a customer, and we intend to keep it that way. But that doesn’t scale forever. So the question became: why don’t we help our partners productize the post-sale work? We built a product catalog, a pricing calculator, and a new partner portal we’re about to release, with its own AI agent for searching market assets. The product catalog was a light bulb moment. We pay healthy margins on the pre-sale side at every tier of Alkira Connect. But we had never touched the post-sale side at all. We’re largely automated and NIaaS is as simple as possible to consume – a username and a password. My thirteen-year-old could configure a network, and she’s really smart. But there’s still some implementation work. You still need to build policies in Panorama. There’s still DDI work. There are still services that partners can benefit from – and all partner types, MSPs, VARs, master agents, sub-agents, service providers, now have a post-sale commission opportunity. Robert Dutt: You mentioned services – you’ve got services attach plays around modernization assessments, segmentation design, migration sprints. Starting from zero, how long does it realistically take a partner to get their first deal with those services attached through the door, and what does the ramp look like? Doug Houghton: There’s a lot in that question. Let’s take a half step back. We have virtual sales and go-to-market training – three modules – and then five or six technical training modules. We’ve got a lab-in-a-box environment, foundational and advanced technical training, and DDI training. Partners typically start there. Then we run regular in-person and virtual sessions – one partner has regular office hours with me, my SE counterpart David, or our architect Christopher Arenas, and we just invite partners to come and ask questions. Getting partners genuinely comfortable with the technology is the most important thing we do, because nobody goes out and sells anything unless they’re confident they can explain how Alkira solves their customer’s problem. That’s what I’m doing in Chicago today. Our customers tend to be fairly large. We’ve got our first Fortune 10 customer now. The more complex the network, the larger and more global the deployment – multiple countries, security vendors, firewalls, DDI providers, load balancers, service providers, colos. We sit right on top of all of that. The average sales cycle is about 190 days – a little over six months. A newly enabled partner might encounter an M&A overlapping IP use case, recognize the problem, and say “I think we can solve this with Alkira.” They go through a POC together with us, the customer commits, and that first deal closes around 190 days. A little class week: it’s actually 190 and a half. The average deal size is about $500,000 USD. We then see significant expansion: typically 4x growth in the first twelve months after the initial close, and around 8x in the second twelve months. Real incentive to stick with it. We’re loyal – if the customer doesn’t kick the partner out, we go to bat with that partner on every expansion deal. We land, then expand, with the same partner. BNSF, one of our other public references, has expanded several times to address more and more use cases. The solution gets sticky and customers are genuinely surprised by how easy it is. On the post-sale side, we come in and help with implementation, especially early on. But we’re reaching the point where more capable partners can handle it themselves. We’re building a post-sale certification for Alkira right now. In the meantime, we ride shotgun through the first couple of implementations – virtually in Slack or in person – until partners are fully up to speed. All partners have access to our Slack channel, along with our entire solutions architecture and SE staff. One partner working on a Fortune 10 engagement has a great habit of putting a subject header in Slack and starting a conversation. He’s been on services at this customer for three or four months – a significant engagement. He’s the one who originally described the network as a “spaghetti mess,” which I still chuckle about. I actually built the product catalog based on those Slack headers – pulled them together, socialized them with a group of partners, got input, and built from there. To directly answer your question: you’ve got to get through that first deal, and we’re going to ride shotgun with you through the first couple of implementations. The partner learns, gets comfortable, can monetize it, and can deliver independently from there. We have no illusions about going back to being a direct company after May 2022. It’s ride or die – 100% channel, and we enable our partners to solve their customers’ problems and support them while they do it. Because our partners have been our biggest growth engine. Robert Dutt: You’ve talked about a goal of doubling revenue through partners. What does the ecosystem look like when you get there? This sounds like it could primarily be a GSI or large integrator play, given the customer complexity you’re describing. Or do you genuinely see a path for mid-market MSPs and VARs to build a meaningful NIaaS practice? Doug Houghton: Another tough question. Yes, I do have GSIs as partners. We have a fairly robust and diverse partner ecosystem, and we see small shops rising up while larger shops are moving a bit more slowly, honestly. We’re still in that brand awareness honeymoon period – people are realizing our technology is compelling, getting themselves enabled. Some large partners we’ve recently brought on are still ramping. The biggest and most established organizations aren’t yet as capable as they will be, but we’re working diligently on that. Some of our smaller partners, on the other hand – I’m thinking of a friend of mine in Utah who is just an absolute champion. He knows our solution better than almost anyone. He closed six or seven deals in the past year, supported the implementations, did it largely on his own, because he’s curious, motivated, read all the documentation, and has been through full implementation cycles with us. He works at a ten-person shop. They just happen to have really good customers, and he knows the solution cold. So we’re at different stages with different partners in terms of maturity. The answer to your question is genuinely both. The small shop in Utah and the large national partner dedicating more resources as they see more customer problems Alkira can solve – we see wins across both. In the networking space, a six-month sales cycle is about as fast as it gets. I’m giving you a username and a password and you’re going in and connecting all of a customer’s assets together. The path exists for partners of every size. Robert Dutt: You’ve called out Canada specifically in your expansion plans, alongside the UK, EU, and the Middle East. What does that look like operationally – localized support, a Canadian channel team – or is it more of a global platform available to Canadian partners? Doug Houghton: Let’s talk personnel. We have a dedicated rep in eastern Canada, based out of New Hampshire, and a brilliant solutions architect just outside of Toronto. We’ve got a channel account manager – very capable teammate of mine, Savannah Stone – and the entire global solutions architecture staff accessible via Slack. We recently closed a very significant logo in Canada – a large insurance company – and our publicly referenceable Canadian customer is ContactPoint 360, a contact centre and BPO provider. They wanted to connect their Latin American operations back to Canada and couldn’t find an effective way to do it without us. We route them through the US West region, and the results have been excellent. We’ve also added CDW Canada as a partner, and I’ve got a value-added distributor that helps with field events. It’s not a massive footprint yet – it’s a bit of “they come first, then we build” – but there is a tremendous amount of opportunity in Canada and in Latin America that I’m genuinely excited about. Nobody’s told me no yet on spending budget, so here we go. A great story on the Canadian side: a gentleman named Chris Thelosinos, an architect and consultant who works with others in our space, is a member at a wine shop in Toronto. During the Toronto International Film Festival last year, we hosted a wine event right next to TIFF. I don’t drink alcohol, so it was entirely about the conversations for me – and I had the best time. We had significant customers come out, and the demand for simplicity, ease of implementation, and everything Alkira does well was just as strong in Canada as anywhere else. The market need is real. We talk about global backbone as a service all the time. Connecting China to San Francisco carries a distance and time tax, but it’s easy to configure. For organizations navigating geopolitical complexity around China access, or needing GPU connectivity in and out, we just abstract the Azure and AWS mainland China instances. They operate the same way as their Canadian or US equivalents. And you can consume it pay-as-you-go – stop using it, stop paying for it. That’s a compelling model for MSPs looking to grow into different regions. Robert Dutt: Last question then. For that Canadian MSP who’s listened to this and is thinking, “This sounds like a real opportunity” – what’s the one thing you’d want them to take away and act on? Doug Houghton: I’d ask them to go to partners@alkira.com and send us a note. And I will ply them with all sorts of content – videos, learnings, deal registration information, everything they need to get started in the space. Tongue in cheek, and also completely seriously: partners@alkira.com. If you’re looking to grow your business as a managed service provider – managed network, managed security, managed load balancing, managed DDI, managed connectivity – we’re a really great place to start. Because it’s never unpopular to walk into a customer and solve their problem quickly and say, “I can help you with X, Y, and Z, and I can do it in the next couple of hours – and that’s going to drive a total cost of ownership savings of 40 to 70%.” Nobody ever kicks you out of the office when you say something like that. Robert Dutt: Amazing. Doug, I appreciate you taking the time. Thank you very much. Doug Houghton: Robert, thank you for the engaging conversation. I hope your listeners get some good stuff out of it. Robert Dutt: There you have it – Doug Houghton from Alkira. I’d like to thank Doug for his time, and honestly for being one of the more entertaining guests I’ve had on in a while. “Networking is not sexy until it doesn’t work” is a line I’m going to be thinking about for a while. Thanks to you for listening as well. If this conversation sparked something – whether it’s curiosity about NIaaS, the AI infrastructure angle, or what roughly 20% total margin on a $500,000 average deal could do for your business – Doug made it easy for you to take the next step. Drop a note to partners@alkira.com. That’s the front door. And from what I heard today, they will absolutely get back to you. Here’s the thing that stuck with me most in this conversation: the argument that the AI moment isn’t just a software or services play. It’s going to force a reckoning with network infrastructure that a lot of organizations have been deferring for years. The partners who treat that reckoning as an opportunity rather than a fire drill are probably going to look very smart in about three years. If you’re finding the In The Channel podcast from ChannelBuzz.ca useful, the best thing you can do is follow or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. We’re on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and most major directories. And if you’re enjoying the show, ratings and reviews are genuinely appreciated – they help other people in the Canadian channel find us. Until next time, I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, and I’ll see you in the channel.

Hey, Alex here

The following article of the Tech industry is: “The Cloud Revolution: Transforming Olympic Games for the AI Era” by Pedro Lete, BDM Director, Alibaba Cloud Mexico (AA2305)

Welcome to episode 335 of The Cloud Pod, where the forecast is always cloudy! Welcome to the first show of 2026, and it's a full house, too! Justin, Jonathan, Ryan,  and Matt are all here to reflect on 2025, plus bring you their predictions for 2026. Let's get started!  Titles we almost went with this week SQL Me Maybe: AlloyDB Gets Chatty With Your Database **OpenAI SELECT * FROM natural_language WHERE accuracy LIKE ‘100%’ **Anthropic etcd You Were Worried About Database Limits: CloudWatch Has Your Back CSV You Later: Looker Adds Drag-and-Drop Data Uploads AWS Spots an Opportunity to Manage Your Container Costs EKS Network Policies: No More IP Address Whack-a-Mole AWS Security Hub Splits: It’s Not You, It’s CSPM Spot On: ECS Finally Manages Your Cheapest Compute TOON Squad: DigitalOcean’s New Format Makes JSON Look Bloated The Price is Wrong: AWS Breaks Two Decades of Downward Pricing Tradition Show Your Work: Why AI-Generated Code Without Tests is Just Expensive Spam No More Agent Orange: Google Simplifies VM Extension Deployment AWS Discovers Prices Can Go Both Ways, Raises GPU Costs 15 Percent Sovereignty Washing: When Your European Cloud Still Answers to Uncle Sam Agent Builder Gets a Memory Upgrade: Google’s AI Finally Remembers Where It Put Its Keys Ctrl+F for the Future: A year-end Scorecard & Next-Gen Bets AI Agents, GPU Prices, and The best of the Cloud Pod 2025 Beyond the Hype: The Cloud Pods Definitive 2025 Year in Review Apocalypse Now… What? Our 2026 Forecast Follow Up  01:27 RYAN’S PREDICTIONS Prediction Status Notes Quick LLM models for individuals ACCURATE Meta-Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct, GLM-4-9B-0414, and Qwen2.5-VL-7B-Instruct—each chosen for an outstanding balance of performance and computational efficiency, making them ideal for edge AI deployment. A new AI inference application called Inferencer allows even modest Apple Mac computers to run the largest open-source LLMs. AI at the edge natively (Lambda-esque) ACCURATE Akamai launched a new Inference Cloud product for edge AI using Nvidia’s Blackwell 6000 GPUs in 17 cities. AWS IoT Greengrass with Lambda functions for edge logic. “Edge AI allows for instant decision-making where it matters most—close to the data source.” Cloud native security mesh multi-cloud UNCLEAR Service mesh technologies continue to evolve (Istio, Linkerd), but I didn’t find a breakthrough “app-to-app at the edge” security mesh product announcement in 2025. This one needs more specific evidence. Ryan Score: 2/3 02:25 MATTHEW’S PREDICTIONS Prediction Status Notes FOCUS adopted by Snowflake or Databricks ACCURATE FOCUS version 1.2 was ratified on May 29, 2025. Three new providers announced support: Alibaba Cloud, Databricks, and Grafana. Databricks officially adopted FOCUS! AI security/ethical standard (SOC or ISO) ACCURATE ISO 42001 is the first international standard outlining requirements for AI governance. Major companies achieving certification in 2025: Automation Anywhere is among the first 100 companies worldwide to earn ISO/IEC 42001:2023 certification. Anthropic also achieved ISO 42001 certification. Amazon deprecates 5+ services (WorkMail bonus) ACCURATE (no bonus) 19 services are mothballed, four are being sunset, and one is end of its supported life. Deprecated services include CodeCommit, Cloud9, S3 Select, CloudSearch, SimpleDB, Forecast, Data Pipeline, QLDB, Snowball Edge, and more. WorkMail NOT deprecated – WorkDocs was (April 2025), but WorkMail remains active. Matthew Score: 3/3 03:22 JONATHAN’S PREDICTIONS Prediction Status Notes Company claims AGI achieved ACC

S5E12 The Future of AI in Merchandising & Buying with Noah Herschman and Jeff FishIn Season 5, Episode 12 of The Retail Razor Show, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden sit down with Noah Herschman and Jeff Fish of Intelo.ai to explore how agentic AI is revolutionizing retail merchandising and buying. From the art and science of retail merchandising to the persistent challenges of planning and allocation, this episode dives deep into how collaborative intelligence empowers merchandisers, planners, and buyers to make smarter, faster, and more creative decisions.What You'll Learn in This Episode:Why merchandising is the “hub of the wheel” in retail successThe balance between creativity and analytics in buying decisionsHow agentic AI enhances human judgment without replacing itReal-world examples of AI improving in-season planning and merchandising financial plansWhy spreadsheets aren't going away, but AI agents make them smarterThe future of retail technology and how Agentic AI delivers superpowers to retail merchandisersSubscribe to the Retail Razor Podcast Network: https://retailrazor.com/Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.comSubscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTubeAbout our GuestsNoah Herschman. Senior Industry Advisor, Intelo.aiNoah is an ecommerce strategist who's been shaping online retail since the 1990s. He's held leadership roles at Amazon, eBay, and Groupon. As a Microsoft Senior Retail Industry Architect, he has worked with more than 150 global retail & CPG clients. Noah has lived in China for 15 years and fluent in Mandarin, Noah operates out of Hong Kong. He is currently a Senior Industry Advisor for Intelo.aiJeffrey Fish, Co-CEO, Intelo.aiJeffrey Fish Co-Founded the Chatly platform serving global retail & hospitality brands targeting the China market (exited to Salesforce in 2020). He then led Salesforce China in partnership with Alibaba Cloud. Now he's scaling up Intelo's Collaborative Intelligence Agentic Merchandising & Planning Platform.Chapters:00:00 Previews 01:39 Show Intro 04:13 Welcome Noah Herschman & Jeff Fish 04:37 Guest Backgrounds and Expertise 07:33 The Importance of Retail Merchandising 11:41 Challenges and Solutions in Modern Merchandising 16:25 The Role of Agentic AI in Merchandising 23:09 Future of Agentic AI and Merchandising 40:04 Practical Steps for Retailers 41:36 How to Reach Out And Contact 42:10 Show CloseMeet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025 & a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2025. Thinkers 360 has named him a Top 10 Retail, & AGI Thought Leader, a Top 50 Management, Transformation, & Careers Thought Leader, a Top 100 Digital Transformation & Agentic AI Thought Leader, plus a Top Digital Voice for 2024 and 2025. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University's Center for Retail Transformation, and the Retail Cloud Alliance. He was most recently the director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods in the Americas at Microsoft.Casey Golden, is CEO of Luxlock, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2023 - 2025, and a Retail Cloud Allianceadvisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Currently, Casey is the North America Leader for Retail & Consumer Goods at CI&T.Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno.

Flink Forward Barcelona 2025 was not just about streaming. It was about what comes next for enterprise AI. I sat down with Qingsheng Ren, Team Lead, Flink Connectors & Catalogs at Ververica, and Xintong Song, Staff Software Engineer at Alibaba Cloud, to talk about something that could change how enterprises build AI systems in production: Flink Agents.Flink Agents is being introduced as an open source sub-project under Apache Flink. The goal is simple and ambitious at the same time: bring agentic AI into the same reliable, scalable, fault-tolerant world that already powers real-time data infrastructure.We talked about why this matters.First, why Flink Agents and why now?They walked me through the motivation. Most AI agent frameworks today look exciting in a demo, but they break once you try to run them against live data, streaming events, strict SLAs, audit requirements, cost pressure, and real users. There's a big gap between prototypes and reliable operations. That's the gap Flink Agents is aiming to close.Why open source?Both Ververica and Alibaba made it clear that this is not meant to be a proprietary, closed feature. They want this to be a community effort under Apache Flink, not a vendor lock-in story. The belief is that enterprises will only bet on AI agents at scale if the runtime is open, portable, and battle tested.How is building an AI agent different from building a normal Flink job?This part was interesting. A standard Flink job processes streams. An agent has to do more. It has to reason, take actions, call tools, maintain context, react to feedback, and keep doing that continuously. You're not just transforming data. You're orchestrating behavior. Flink Agents is meant to give you those building blocks on top of Flink instead of forcing teams to stitch this together themselves.What kind of companies is this for?We got into enterprise workloads that actually need this. Think about environments where fast decisions matter and you can't afford to go offline:-- Fraud detection and response-- Customer support and workflow automation-- Operational monitoring, alert triage, and remediation-- Real-time personalization and recommendations-- Anywhere you need an autonomous loop, not just a dashboard-- And finally, roadmap.We talked about the next 2 to 3 years. The focus is on deeper runtime primitives for agent behavior, cleaner developer experience, and patterns that large enterprises can trust and repeat.My takeaway:Flink Agents is not just “yet another agent framework.” It's an attempt to operationalize agentic AI on top of a streaming backbone that already runs at massive scale in production.This is the conversation every enterprise AI team needs to be having right now.#FlinkForward #Ververica #Streaming #RealTime #DataEngineering #AI #TheRavitShow

From the BBC World Service: Shares in Alibaba rose after the Chinese e-commerce company reported a 34% increase in revenue for its cloud computing division, as well as triple-digit increases in sales for its AI-related products. Then, in energy news, Iranian authorities plan to scrap generous subsidies for gas, and refiners in India rush to secure Russian oil imports ahead of a U.S. deadline. Plus, more international students turn to Bulgaria to complete their medical degrees.

From the BBC World Service: Shares in Alibaba rose after the Chinese e-commerce company reported a 34% increase in revenue for its cloud computing division, as well as triple-digit increases in sales for its AI-related products. Then, in energy news, Iranian authorities plan to scrap generous subsidies for gas, and refiners in India rush to secure Russian oil imports ahead of a U.S. deadline. Plus, more international students turn to Bulgaria to complete their medical degrees.

Flink Forward Barcelona 2025 was a big week for streaming and the streamhouse.I sat down with Jark Wu, Staff Software Engineer at Alibaba Cloud, and Giannis Polyzos, Staff Streaming Architect at Ververica, to talk about Apache Fluss and what is coming next.First, a quick primer. Fluss is built for real-time data at scale. It sits cleanly in the broader ecosystem, connects to the tools teams already use, and focuses on predictable performance and simple operations.What stood out in our chat:• Enterprise features that matterSecurity, durability, and consistent throughput. Cleaner ops, stronger governance, and a smoother path from POC to production.• Zero-state analyticsThey walked me through how Fluss cuts network hops and lowers latency. Less shuffling. Faster results. More efficient pipelines.• Fluss 0.8 highlightsBetter developer experience, more stable primitives, and upgrades that help teams standardize on one streaming backbone.• AI-ready directionVendors are shifting to AI. Fluss is adapting with functions that support agents, retrieval, and low-latency model workflows without bolting on complexity.• Streamhouse alignmentThe new capabilities strengthen Fluss in a streamhouse architecture. One place to handle fast ingest, storage, and analytics so teams do not stitch together five systems.We also covered the roadmap. Expect continued work on latency, cost control, and easier day-two operations, plus patterns that large teams can repeat with confidence.Want to get involvedJoin the community, review the open issues, try the latest builds, and share feedback from real workloads. That is how this moves forward.The full conversation with Jark and Giannis is live now on The Ravit Show.#data #ai #FlinkForward #Flink #Streaming #Ververica #TheRavitShow

En ,retard sur l'intelligence artificielle, Apple miserait sur Google Gemini pour muscler son assistant Siri. La Chine bannit les puces Nvidia. Microsoft promet un Copilot localisé pour rassurer sur la confidentialité des données.Avec Bruno Guglielminetti (Mon Carnet)Apple mise sur Google pour réinventer SiriApple aurait tranché : plutôt que de tout développer en interne, la firme californienne s'apprêterait à intégrer des modèles d'intelligence artificielle développés par Google dans son assistant vocal Siri. Selon plusieurs fuites concordantes, il s'agirait du modèle Gemini, avec ses 1 200 milliards de paramètres, le tout hébergé sur les serveurs Apple pour préserver la confidentialité des données. Un choix stratégique, signe d'un certain aveu de faiblesse sur l'IA, mais aussi d'un réalisme technologique.Ce partenariat inédit pose aussi la question de la différenciation : comment Siri saura-t-il se démarquer de l'expérience Pixel, propulsée par le même moteur IA ? Réponse attendue dans les prochaines versions d'iOS.Pékin boute Nvidia hors de Chine et crée ses propres microprocesseurs IALa Chine franchit un nouveau cap dans sa stratégie d'indépendance technologique. Pékin a officiellement interdit l'usage des puces IA étrangères dans ses centres de données publics. Nvidia — jusqu'ici très présent sur le marché chinois — est directement visé.Cette décision s'inscrit dans un mouvement entamé depuis plusieurs années : après avoir été privé des technologies américaines, Huawei a réussi à rebondir avec ses propres solutions. Le pays entend désormais faire de même avec les puces IA, en s'appuyant sur des acteurs comme Cambricon, Enflame ou encore Alibaba Cloud. Même le patron de Nvidia, Jensen Huang, reconnaît : « la Chine va gagner la course à l'IA ».Microsoft Copilot veut rassurer sur la souveraineté des donnéesMicrosoft promet que, d'ici fin 2026, son assistant Copilot de Microsoft 365 traitera les requêtes localement dans 15 pays, dont la France, le Canada et l'Allemagne. Une annonce destinée à rassurer les utilisateurs face aux enjeux de souveraineté numérique.Mais dans les faits, les données resteront soumises au Cloud Act, cette loi américaine qui autorise les autorités à accéder aux serveurs des entreprises US, même à l'étranger. En France, le sujet est particulièrement sensible, et le concept de “cloud souverain” a d'ailleurs été discrètement remplacé par celui de cloud de confiance.Au Canada, un budget national tourné vers l'infonuagiqueAu Canada, le nouveau budget fédéral 2025 prévoit d'importants investissements dans l'infrastructure numérique, avec des data centers locaux et une IA “made in Canada”. Une réponse directe aux enjeux géopolitiques et à la dépendance vis-à-vis des géants technologiques américains. Pendant ce temps, en France, l'IA reste (hélas) largement absente du débat budgétaire.-----------♥️ Soutien : https://mondenumerique.info/don

Parce que… c'est l'épisode 0x650! Shameless plug 4 et 5 novembre 2025 - FAIRCON 2025 8 et 9 novembre 2025 - DEATHcon 17 au 20 novembre 2025 - European Cyber Week 25 et 26 février 2026 - SéQCure 2026 Description Introduction Dans cet épisode du podcast Police Secure, Clément Cruchet présente une analyse approfondie de la surface d'attaque de Google Cloud Platform (GCP), un sujet souvent négligé dans la communauté de la cybersécurité. Contrairement à Azure et AWS qui bénéficient d'une documentation abondante sur leurs vulnérabilités et vecteurs d'attaque, GCP reste le “petit frère oublié” du cloud computing. Cette présentation, donnée lors de la conférence Bide, vise à combler cette lacune en explorant les chemins qu'un attaquant pourrait emprunter dans un environnement GCP. Le contexte : pourquoi GCP est moins documenté Clément observe qu'il y a trois ou quatre ans, la documentation sur les vulnérabilités GCP était quasi inexistante. Cette absence de contenu a même conduit certains utilisateurs sur des forums comme Reddit à affirmer de manière erronée que GCP était plus sûr ou exempt de mauvaises configurations. En réalité, ces failles existent bel et bien, mais elles n'avaient simplement pas été explorées en profondeur. Bien que la situation se soit améliorée depuis trois ans avec l'apparition de formations et de certifications, GCP demeure significativement moins couvert que ses concurrents. L'importance de l'IAM (Identity and Access Management) Le cœur de la sécurité dans tous les environnements cloud réside dans la gestion des identités et des accès. Que ce soit Azure, AWS, GCP ou d'autres fournisseurs comme Oracle Cloud ou Alibaba Cloud, chacun possède son propre modèle IAM distinct. Ces modèles constituent la base de toute gestion des permissions, rôles et autorisations dans les environnements cloud. Le paradoxe est clair : sans permissions IAM, on ne peut rien faire, mais avec trop de permissions, on ouvre la porte à des abus et des défauts de configuration. La majorité des vulnérabilités dans les environnements cloud proviennent justement de ces mauvaises configurations au sein de l'IAM. La hiérarchie unique de GCP GCP se distingue par sa structure hiérarchique particulière. Contrairement à AWS qui fonctionne avec des comptes, ou à Azure qui utilise des tenants, des subscriptions et des groupes de ressources, GCP adopte une approche top-down très structurée. Au sommet se trouve l'organisation, généralement liée au nom de domaine de l'entreprise (par exemple company.com). Sous l'organisation, on trouve des folders, comparables aux unités organisationnelles (OU) d'Active Directory. Ces folders contiennent ensuite des projets, qui constituent l'unité administrative la plus importante. Les projets dans GCP peuvent être comparés aux comptes AWS et c'est principalement à ce niveau que se fait la facturation. Pour beaucoup d'utilisateurs, seule la vue du projet est accessible, sans nécessairement avoir besoin d'une organisation complète. Cette flexibilité permet de commencer à travailler directement avec un projet sans passer par la création d'une infrastructure organisationnelle complète. Les rôles et leurs dangers Un point crucial soulevé par Clément concerne les rôles primitifs dans GCP : éditeur, viewer, owner et browser. Ces rôles sont extrêmement dangereux car ils accordent des permissions bien trop larges. Par exemple, un rôle d'éditeur peut avoir accès à 800 permissions différentes, ce qui viole complètement le principe du moindre privilège. Le message clé est de ne jamais utiliser ces rôles primitifs dans une infrastructure GCP. Même les rôles prédéfinis, pourtant plus granulaires, peuvent présenter des risques. Un rôle comme “compute admin”, qui devrait théoriquement se limiter à l'administration des ressources compute, peut en réalité inclure 800 permissions, dont certaines touchent à des services non liés comme BigQuery. La recommandation fondamentale est de créer des rôles personnalisés aussi granulaires que possible et d'appliquer systématiquement le principe du moindre privilège. Domain wide delegation : un vecteur d'exfiltration méconnu L'une des contributions majeures de cette présentation concerne le domain wide delegation, une technique d'exfiltration peu documentée. Cette fonctionnalité permet à un compte de service dans GCP d'interagir avec Google Workspace : accéder à Drive, Gmail, envoyer des emails au nom d'utilisateurs, récupérer des pièces jointes, etc. Clément a développé un outil Python appelé “Delegate” pour démontrer et tester cette technique. Lorsqu'il a écrit son article de blog sur le sujet début 2023, il n'existait pratiquement aucune documentation sur cette vulnérabilité. Ironiquement, Palo Alto Networks a publié un article similaire plusieurs mois après, ce qui témoigne du caractère précurseur de ses recherches. Le scénario d'attaque typique implique un attaquant qui compromet une machine virtuelle possédant un compte de service capable d'effectuer du domain wide delegation. Cette technique peut également servir de mécanisme de persistance, permettant à un attaquant de configurer sa propre délégation pour exfiltrer des données de manière discrète. L'outil Delegate permet de lire des emails, télécharger et uploader des fichiers sur Drive, offrant ainsi une capacité d'exfiltration complète. La matrice d'attaque GCP Pour synthétiser ses recherches, Clément propose une kill chain communautaire spécifique à GCP, disponible sur GitHub (github.com/otendfreed/GCP-attack-matrix). Cette matrice d'attaque représente l'ensemble des tactiques, techniques et procédures (TTP) depuis la reconnaissance jusqu'à l'exfiltration et l'impact. L'objectif est de fournir un outil pour les équipes de sécurité souhaitant effectuer du purple teaming dans des environnements GCP, leur permettant d'évaluer leurs contrôles de sécurité et leur capacité de détection. Conclusion Ce podcast souligne l'importance de ne pas négliger GCP dans les stratégies de sécurité cloud. Bien que moins documenté, ce fournisseur présente des vecteurs d'attaque tout aussi critiques que ses concurrents. La recherche communautaire et le partage de connaissances sont essentiels pour identifier et corriger les vulnérabilités avant que des attaquants malveillants ne les exploitent. Comme le souligne Clément, pour attaquer un système, il faut d'abord le comprendre, et c'est précisément cette compréhension qu'il cherche à transmettre à la communauté de la cybersécurité. Notes À venir Collaborateurs Nicolas-Loïc Fortin Clément Cruchet Crédits Montage par Intrasecure inc Locaux réels par Bsides Montréal

This is a recap of the top 10 posts on Hacker News on October 20, 2025. This podcast was generated by wondercraft.ai (00:30): AWS multiple services outage in us-east-1Original post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45640838&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(01:52): Space ElevatorOriginal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45640226&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(03:15): Major AWS Outage HappeningOriginal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45640772&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(04:38): DeepSeek OCROriginal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45640594&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(06:01): Entire Linux Network stack diagram (2024)Original post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45639995&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(07:24): Servo v0.0.1Original post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45643357&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(08:47): Today is when the Amazon brain drain sent AWS down the spoutOriginal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45649178&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(10:10): Claude Code on the webOriginal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45647166&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(11:33): Alibaba Cloud says it cut Nvidia AI GPU use by 82% with new pooling systemOriginal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45643163&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(12:56): BERT is just a single text diffusion stepOriginal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45644328&utm_source=wondercraft_aiThis is a third-party project, independent from HN and YC. Text and audio generated using AI, by wondercraft.ai. Create your own studio quality podcast with text as the only input in seconds at app.wondercraft.ai. Issues or feedback? We'd love to hear from you: team@wondercraft.ai

En la edición de hoy de Radar Empresarial, ponemos el foco en Louis Vuitton, cuyos resultados recientes impulsaron una de las mayores subidas bursátiles del año: sus acciones repuntaron más de un 12%. Este avance se explica principalmente por el crecimiento en sus ingresos, que aumentaron un 1% hasta superar los 18.000 millones de dólares. Un factor clave ha sido la recuperación del mercado chino, donde la empresa afirmó que las ventas volvieron a ser positivas y que los consumidores han respondido de forma favorable a las nuevas experiencias en tienda. Esta mejora es especialmente relevante tras un 2024 complicado para el sector del lujo, en el que Louis Vuitton cayó un 15% en bolsa, Hermès retrocedió un 20% y Kering perdió un 39% de su valor. China fue uno de los principales focos de preocupación, ya que el mercado del lujo en el país se redujo más del 18% el año pasado, quedando en torno a los 350.000 millones de yuanes (unos 48.000 millones de dólares). Considerando que cerca del 28% de la facturación global de Louis Vuitton (excluyendo Japón) proviene de Asia, la marca decidió reaccionar con rapidez. Según José Manuel Amor, socio director de Afi, el impulso chino ha sido clave en los resultados. Parte de esta recuperación se debe a una estrategia innovadora: en junio abrieron "The Louis", una tienda conceptual que ofrece una experiencia inmersiva, con cafetería y espacios diseñados para redes sociales, reforzando el vínculo con nuevos públicos. Esta nueva apuesta se alinea con la tendencia en el sector del lujo de ofrecer vivencias más exclusivas a sus clientes. Además, Louis Vuitton ha incursionado en la inteligencia artificial. Junto a Alibaba Cloud, organizó un concurso de innovación enfocado en el desarrollo de agentes inteligentes para el comercio minorista, con el objetivo de mejorar la experiencia de compra. No obstante, Alberto Matellán, director general de La Financière Responsable, advierte que estos buenos resultados aún no se pueden extrapolar al conjunto del sector, que sigue enfrentando desafíos importantes. Entre los puntos débiles del balance de Louis Vuitton, destaca la caída del 2% en las ventas de su división estrella: moda y artículos de cuero, si bien muestra una recuperación respecto al segundo trimestre, donde la caída fue del 9%. La presión del entorno sigue pesando: el aumento de aranceles ha encarecido productos y la competencia de Coach, marca perteneciente a Tapestry, ha ganado terreno. Aun así, la firma podría recibir un impulso inesperado desde Italia: en el testamento de Giorgio Armani figuran como posibles compradores de su marca tres grandes nombres, entre ellos Louis Vuitton, junto con L'Oréal y EssilorLuxottica.

Welcome to the CanadianSME Small Business Podcast, hosted by Kripa Anand. In this episode, we explore vector databases and how they are revolutionizing the way organizations manage and gain insights from massive amounts of unstructured data.Our guest today is James Luan, Partner and VP of Engineering at Zilliz and a Technical Advisory Committee member of the LF AI & Data Foundation. James brings experience leading database development at Alibaba Cloud and Oracle, and holds a master's in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Cornell University. At Zilliz, he oversees engineering initiatives for Milvus, an open-source vector database powering semantic search, RAG, and AI-driven data solutions globally.Key Highlights:1. Vector Databases Explained: What vector databases are and why Zilliz built a company around them for scalable unstructured data search.2. Zilliz & Milvus Differentiation: Unique scalability, cost efficiency, open-source leadership, and the fully managed Zilliz Cloud platform with sub-10ms latency.3. Open Source & Company Culture: How open-source strategy drives community engagement and the story behind naming conventions like Milvus and Towhee.4. Real-World AI Applications: How clients use Zilliz for semantic search, intelligent video analysis, recommendations, and RAG.5. Future Directions & Global Reach: Upcoming AI trends, Zilliz Cloud BYOC on Google Cloud, and expectations for the AWS Summit Toronto on September 4th.Special Thanks to Our Partners:RBC: https://www.rbcroyalbank.com/dms/business/accounts/beyond-banking/index.htmlUPS: https://solutions.ups.com/ca-beunstoppable.html?WT.mc_id=BUSMEWAGoogle: https://www.google.ca/A1 Global College: https://a1globalcollege.ca/ADP Canada: https://www.adp.ca/en.aspxFor more expert insights, visit www.canadiansme.ca and subscribe to the CanadianSME Small Business Magazine. Stay innovative, stay informed, and thrive in the digital age!Disclaimer: The information shared in this podcast is for general informational purposes only and should not be considered as direct financial or business advice. Always consult with a qualified professional for advice specific to your situation.

Open Source bi-weekly convo w/ Bill Gurley and Brad Gerstner on all things tech, markets, investing & capitalism. This week, they dive deep into China's explosive innovation across AI and EVs, the rise of open-source models, lessons for U.S. competitiveness, the real story on tariffs and trade—and what America must do to win the global tech race. Enjoy another episode of BG2!Timestamps:(00:00) Intro(01:20) OpenAI, Anthropic, Private Market Overheating(03:30) China's Role in the Global Tech Order(04:50) Why Bill Went to China(06:40) Dan Wang's Breakneck: Engineers vs Lawyers(10:30) Xiaomi, BYD, and Auto Innovation(14:00) Factory Productivity, Automation, and the Jobs Debate(15:20) Open Source Model Culture in China(19:30) Can the US Compete Without Reform?(23:30) Tariffs, Trade Deals, and a Path to Cooperation(28:00) Waymo, Baidu, and Cost Innovation(33:00) Is China Winning Global Trade?(36:30) Debunking the Subsidy Narrative(38:30) What the CEOs Who Visit China Actually Say(41:30) China's AI Ecosystem: DeepSeek, Qwen, Alibaba Cloud(44:00) Open Source in China and the US: Strategic Choices(48:00) VC Pullback from China & What's Still Happening on the Ground(53:00) China's New K-Visa vs US Skilled Immigration Policies(56:30) Gurley: Read Dan Wang's Breakneck, Watch the Ground Game(01:03:00) VC Pullback from ChinaShow Notes:Open Source Development in China https://merics.org/sites/default/files/2021-05/MERICS%20Primer%20Open%20Source%202021_0.pdfLei Jun 2024 Annual Speech: https://www.youtube.com/live/l5f3wvLwLXYProduced by Dan ShevchukMusic by Yung SpielbergAvailable on Apple, Spotify, www.bg2pod.comFollow:Brad Gerstner @altcap https://x.com/altcapBill Gurley @bgurley https://x.com/bgurleyBG2 Pod @bg2pod https://x.com/BG2Pod

En este episodio de TekPulse, nos metemos de lleno en uno de los lanzamientos más esperados en el mundo de la inteligencia artificial: OpenAI presenta GPT-5, un modelo que promete transformar la forma en que interactuamos con la tecnología gracias a su capacidad de actuar como un agente autónomo. Analizamos sus nuevas funciones, su potencial impacto y los riesgos que plantea. También revisamos el panorama tecnológico en México, que se está convirtiendo en un imán para gigantes como Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, Foxconn y más, posicionando al país como un hub estratégico para manufactura y desarrollo tecnológico de alto nivel. Además, en “En Corto Circuito” hablaremos sobre: Alibaba Cloud abre su primer centro de datos en México.TikTok podría destronar en ingresos publicitarios a todo Meta.Samsung Innovation Campus impulsa a jóvenes mexicanos.Una nueva estafa con IA que clona voces para robar millones.Conéctate y descubre por qué este episodio es imperdible para entender el presente y el futuro de la tecnología.________________________________ Este es nuestro programa de Radio que se transmite todos los Viernes a las 10:30am con repetición todos los Domingos a las 8pm por Radio Sinaloa en las frecuencias 94.5 FM de Culiacán, 92.5 FM de Los Mochis y 93.9 FM de Mazatlán. TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tekpulseX: x.com/tekpulsetvFacebook: www.facebook.com/tekpulsetvInstagram: www.instagram.com/tekpulsePodcast: https://tekpulsetv.podomatic.com/rss2.xml

This week Jim welcomes Rah Mahtani, the Head of Commercial Strategy US for Alibaba.com, the Chinese multinational technology company founded in 1999 by Jack Ma and 18 colleagues. Alibaba Group operates as a holding company for a wide array of businesses, including online retail, wholesale through Alibaba.com, logistics (Cainiao), cloud computing (Alibaba Cloud), and financial services (Ant Group). Alibaba.com is the world's largest B2B (business-to-business) platform.Rah has been at Alibaba for about 2.5 years, and was promoted to head of commercial strategy about two months ago. Before Alibaba, Rah had a career deeply grounded in social media and digital communications, with time at Volvo, Jack in the Box, and BMW's Mini brand. A graduate of Syracuse University, where he studied Industrial Design, Rah is a self-described lover of dogs, kids and candy. Tune in for a conversation with a marketer in the middle of the changing global trade landscape!---This week's episode is brought to you byDeloitte and StrawberryFrog.Learn more: https://strawberryfrog.com/jimSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Alibaba CloudとMeltingHackが開催したゲーム開発ハッカソン、Tokyo Game Jam 2025 Spring のイベントリポートをお届けします。

This week's podcast is about my visit to Alibaba Cloud headquarters in Hangzhou.You can listen to this podcast here, which has the slides and graphics mentioned. Also available at iTunes and Google Podcasts.Here is the link to the TechMoat Consulting.Here is the link to our Tech Tours.Here are the main points:1-Social and community platform commerce. Livestreaming (entertaining plus impulse shopping)Community platforms. Interest based social commerce.2-Discovery-driven customer experiences and conversational search. Not keywords. Focus on discovery phase and impulse purchases.AR/VR (image search is easy version)Hyper personalizationAI0driven browsing and conversational search3-Tools to level the playing field Chatbot for CSRLLMsContent generation for marketing  ——–I write, speak and consult about how to win (and not lose) in digital strategy and transformation.I am the founder of TechMoat Consulting, a boutique consulting firm that helps retailers, brands, and technology companies exploit digital change to grow faster, innovate better and build digital moats. Get in touch here.My book series Moats and Marathons is one-of-a-kind framework for building and measuring competitive advantages in digital businesses.Note: This content (articles, podcasts, website info) is not investment advice. The information and opinions from me and any guests may be incorrect. The numbers and information may be wrong. The views expressed may no longer be relevant or accurate. Investing is risky. Do your own research.Support the show

La inteligencia artificial sigue avanzando a gran velocidad, y en este panorama, Qwen emerge como una opción innovadora en modelos de lenguaje. Desarrollado por Alibaba Cloud, este sistema multimodal no solo procesa y genera texto, sino que también maneja imágenes y audio, ofreciendo soluciones avanzadas tanto para usuarios individuales como para empresas. #InteligenciaArtificial #Qwen #Chatgpt #Deepseek #Tecnología

En este episodio, cubrimos las noticias más relevantes que están impactando los mercados financieros, la inteligencia artificial y la industria de la salud: Rebote en los mercados: Tras la venta masiva del lunes, el Nasdaq y el $SPX se recuperan con $NVDA subiendo un 5% en premercado. Analizamos el impacto de DeepSeek-R1 y la expectativa por los reportes de ganancias de $MSFT, $META, $TSLA y $AAPL. Energía e infraestructura en IA: Empresas como $VST, $CEG y $PWR se recuperan tras el sacudón tecnológico de DeepSeek. Exploramos cómo la infraestructura energética está evolucionando para soportar el crecimiento de la IA. $SOUN y su movimiento estratégico: SoundHound AI registra una oferta de valores por $500M, lo que presiona a la baja sus acciones. Discutimos las implicaciones de esta venta en el mercado y su estrategia de financiamiento. Alibaba Cloud compite en IA: $BABA lanza Qwen2.5-VL, un modelo que desafía a GPT-4o de $MSFT y Gemini 2.0 de $GOOG en análisis de texto e imágenes. Examinamos cómo Alibaba está posicionando su tecnología en sectores clave. Revolución en oncología: AstraZeneca ($AZN) y Daiichi Sankyo ($DSKYF) reciben aprobación de la FDA para Enhertu, una terapia innovadora contra el cáncer de mama metastásico. Analizamos su impacto en la industria y su potencial en otros tratamientos. Acompáñanos mientras desglosamos estas historias clave y su impacto en los mercados, la tecnología y la salud. ¡Un episodio lleno de información estratégica para inversionistas y entusiastas del sector!

This week's podcast is about Alibaba.You can listen to this podcast here, which has the slides and graphics mentioned. Also available at iTunes and Google Podcasts.Here is the link to the TechMoat Consulting.Here is the link to our Tech Tours.Here are the 4 engines:Re-Igniting Growth in Their Now Re-Organized Ecommerce BusinessAccelerating the Build Out of their Global Smart Logistics Network – Starting with Cross-Border Express DeliveryBig Investments in Alibaba Cloud. With Price Cuts to Push Adoption.Pioneering New and Game Changing GenAI Services---—I write, speak and consult about how to win (and not lose) in digital strategy and transformation.I am the founder of TechMoat Consulting, a boutique consulting firm that helps retailers, brands, and technology companies exploit digital change to grow faster, innovate better and build digital moats. Get in touch here.My book series Moats and Marathons is one-of-a-kind framework for building and measuring competitive advantages in digital businesses.This content (articles, podcasts, website info) is not investment, legal or tax advice. The information and opinions from me and any guests may be incorrect. The numbers and information may be wrong. The views expressed may no longer be relevant or accurate. This is not investment advice. Investing is risky. Do your own research.Support the show

Shahin is joined by ANZ Regional VP of LogicMonitor, Caerl Murray, to chat about the nuances of developing a go-to-market strategy in ANZ as well as how to approach building a strong, successful team. This episode also covers... How to achieve messaging alignment between marketing and sales teamsHow to stand out to your customersAnd how team sport can help you approach business resilience and motivation About Caerl... Caerl Murray is an accomplished technology leader with over 20 years of experience in IT operations, cloud computing, and sales management across various industry verticals. Currently serving as the ANZ Regional Vice President at LogicMonitor, he is responsible for driving business operations and strategic growth in the region. Under his leadership, LogicMonitor's observability platform empowers organisations to enhance visibility across their technological landscapes, enabling them to focus on innovation rather than troubleshooting. Prior to this role, Caerl was the ANZ Sales Director at Alibaba Cloud, where he led a team dedicated to helping customers navigate the cloud ecosystem, particularly in Asia and China. His extensive experience also includes serving as National Sales Manager at Ricoh IT Services, where he managed a team of 16 sales professionals, focusing on strategic planning and business growth. With a Bachelor of Economics from the University of Sydney and a Graduate Certificate of Management from the Macquarie Graduate School of Management, Caerl combines academic expertise with practical experience. His career is marked by a commitment to customer success and a passion for leveraging technology to drive business results. Resources mentioned in this episode: Mindset - Carol DweckThe Brutal Truth - Brian Burns _________________

This week's podcast is about my interview with Dongliang Guo, Head of International at Alibaba Cloud.You can listen to this podcast here, which has the slides and graphics mentioned. Also available at iTunes and Google Podcasts.Here is the link to the TechMoat Consulting.Here is the link to our Tech Tours.Here are my 3 take-aways:Take-Away 1: Alibaba Cloud is Focused on the Infrastructure and Model Layers. It Is Differentiating its GenAI with an Open-Source Ecosystem (i.e., ModelScope) and Model Building Tools.Take-Away 2: Southeast Asia Cloud Computing is Being “Fixed”. And Also Reshaped for GenAI.Take-Away 3: GenAI Has Surprising High Impact Use Cases Everywhere.Cheers, Jeff-------I write, speak and consult about how to win (and not lose) in digital strategy and transformation.I am the founder of TechMoat Consulting, a boutique consulting firm that helps retailers, brands, and technology companies exploit digital change to grow faster, innovate better and build digital moats. Get in touch here.My book series Moats and Marathons is one-of-a-kind framework for building and measuring competitive advantages in digital businesses.This content (articles, podcasts, website info) is not investment, legal or tax advice. The information and opinions from me and any guests may be incorrect. The numbers and information may be wrong. The views expressed may no longer be relevant or accurate. This is not investment advice. Investing is risky. Do your own research.Support the show

During high-traffic seasons like Black Friday or a much-anticipated product launch, maintaining good digital experiences for customers is vital. We've all heard tales of floods of eager shoppers crashing a website during a major sale—leaving them unable to make their coveted purchases. To guard against a breakdown like this during high-traffic periods, companies sometimes use various traffic management strategies such as digital waiting rooms. In this episode, The Internet Report team discusses the pros and cons of traffic management and looks at the different techniques used by ticketing platforms for the upcoming Oasis reunion tour concerts. They also cover an AT&T issue that impacted Microsoft, as well as disruptions at Akamai, Alibaba Cloud, and Cloudflare. Listen to the full episode now or use the chapters below to skip to the sections that most interest you. CHAPTERS 00:00 Intro 00:54 Oasis Reunion Ticket Issues 10:16 Microsoft Outage 13:00 Akamai Outage 14:40 Alibaba Cloud Outage 16:28 Cloudflare Incident 17:40 Outage Trends: By the Numbers 18:40 Get in Touch ——— Want to get in touch? If you have questions, feedback, or guests you would like to see featured on the show, send us a note at InternetReport@thousandeyes.com. Or follow us on X: @thousandeyes ——— ABOUT THE INTERNET REPORT This is The Internet Report, a podcast uncovering what's working and what's breaking on the Internet—and why. Tune in to hear ThousandEyes' Internet experts dig into some of the most interesting outage events from the past couple weeks, discussing what went awry—was it the Internet, or an application issue? Plus, learn about the latest trends in ISP outages, cloud network outages, collaboration network outages, and more. Catch all the episodes on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform: - Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-internet-report/id1506984526 - Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5ADFvqAtgsbYwk4JiZFqHQ?si=00e9c4b53aff4d08&nd=1&dlsi=eab65c9ea39d4773 - SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/ciscopodcastnetwork/sets/the-internet-report

During high-traffic seasons like Black Friday or a much-anticipated product launch, maintaining good digital experiences for customers is vital. We've all heard tales of floods of eager shoppers crashing a website during a major sale—leaving them unable to make their coveted purchases. To guard against a breakdown like this during high-traffic periods, companies sometimes use various traffic management strategies such as digital waiting rooms.In this episode, The Internet Report team discusses the pros and cons of traffic management and looks at the different techniques used by ticketing platforms for the upcoming Oasis reunion tour concerts. They also cover an AT&T issue that impacted Microsoft, as well as disruptions at Akamai, Alibaba Cloud, and Cloudflare.Listen to the full episode now or use the chapters below to skip to the sections that most interest you.CHAPTERS00:00 Intro00:54 Oasis Reunion Ticket Issues10:16 Microsoft Outage13:00 Akamai Outage14:40 Alibaba Cloud Outage16:28 Cloudflare Incident17:40 Outage Trends: By the Numbers18:40 Get in Touch———Want to get in touch?If you have questions, feedback, or guests you would like to see featured on the show, send us a note at InternetReport@thousandeyes.com. Or follow us on X: @thousandeyes

Key Moments: A journey from intern to CEO (05:10)Encouraging a harmonized relationship between humans and AI (09:58)Why embracing stress can drive urgency and effective change (17:18)Generative AI's impact on the skills landscape (30:39)Fostering a data-driven company culture (36:41)Embrace change, and quickly (40:25)Key Quotes: “AI does amazing things, like summarizations and semantic search. Humans do amazing things like curation of knowledge, making sure it's accurate, connecting the dots, and creating relationships. So bringing the power of humans-in-the loop, especially given a broader trust deficit, felt like the right thing to do at this point in time.”“I think ultimately what guides us is we want to be useful to our users and our customers. That's the guiding light. Because why do we exist as an organization or a community? We should all just go home. If we don't actually have a mission and purpose that adds value, then we don't have a purpose. So the question is, what is that? What is the highest purpose?”“When you think about the future of software development, there's a lot of doomsdayers about job losses. I think it's going to be the opposite. I think AI reduces the barrier to entry. I think a lot of people will be “developers”, even though they may be doing very different things.”Mentions: WeAreDevelopers World Congress 2023 OverflowAIOverflow API Stack Overflow for TeamsAmp It Up Book Bio: Prashanth Chandrasekar is Chief Executive Officer of Stack Overflow and is responsible for driving Stack Overflow's overall strategic direction and results.Prashanth is a proven technology executive with extensive experience leading and scaling high-growth global organizations. Previously, he served as Senior Vice President & General Manager of Rackspace's Cloud & Infrastructure Services portfolio of businesses, including the Managed Public Clouds, Private Clouds, Colocation and Managed Security businesses. Before that, Prashanth held a range of senior leadership roles at Rackspace including Senior Vice President & General Manager of Rackspace's high growth, global business focused on the world's leading Public Clouds including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Alibaba Cloud, which became the fastest growing business in Rackspace's history. Prior to joining Rackspace, Prashanth was a Vice President at Barclays Investment Bank, focused on providing Strategic and Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) advice for clients in the Technology, Media and Telecom (TMT) industries.  Hear more from Cindi Howson here. Sponsored by ThoughtSpot.

This week, we explore the reasons behind the slowdown in DevOps adoption, compare open-source and proprietary foundation models, and discuss how AI might simplify CI/CD implementation. Additionally, Matt takes on an Australian history quiz. Watch the YouTube Live Recording of Episode (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xmarzk5aw8) 474 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xmarzk5aw8) Runner-up Titles No silver bullets If you aspire for nothing, you're done. We can hang out with the boulder at the bottom Who owns the black box You have to want to put in the effort Anyone on the bleeding edge is going to bleed Rundown A Eulogy for DevOps (https://matduggan.com/a-eulogy-for-devops/) DevOps Isn't Dead, but It's Not in Great Health Either (https://thenewstack.io/devops-isnt-dead-but-its-not-in-great-health-either/) The InfraRed Report from Redpoint (https://www.redpoint.com/infrared/report/) Dan Davies Explains Why Accountability Sinks Are Everywhere Now (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-07-01/dan-davies-explains-why-accountability-sinks-are-everywhere-now) Relevant to your Interests Indonesia won't pay an $8 million ransom after a cyberattack compromised its national data center (https://apnews.com/article/indonesia-ransomware-attack-national-data-center-213c14c6cc69d7b66815e58478f64cee) Odaseva raises $54M to secure Salesforce users (https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/27/odasevas-founder-once-solved-a-security-gap-for-saleforces-biggest-customer-now-hes-raised-54m-to-secure-all-of-its-users/) More YouTube Premium plans are coming (https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/27/24187590/youtube-premium-subscription-more-plans) Alibaba Cloud closing Australian and Indian datacenters (https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/01/alibaba_cloud_closes_india_australia/) Apple Poised to Get OpenAI Board Observer Role as Part of AI Pact (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-07-02/apple-to-get-openai-board-observer-role-as-part-of-ai-agreement) How Big Tech is swallowing the AI industry (https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/1/24190060/amazon-adept-ai-acquisition-playbook-microsoft-inflection) Apple Poised to Get OpenAI Board Observer Role as Part of AI Pact (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-07-02/apple-to-get-openai-board-observer-role-as-part-of-ai-agreement) Infrastructure as Code Landscape Overview 2024 (https://medium.com/@bgrant0607/infrastructure-as-code-landscape-overview-2024-a066124e5989) Infrastructure as Code reminds me of “make run-all” (https://medium.com/@bgrant0607/infrastructure-as-code-reminds-me-of-make-run-all-15eb6628f306) Is NVIDIA like Sun from the Dot Com Bubble? / Oxide (https://oxide.computer/podcasts/oxide-and-friends/1973013) “Everything's frozen”: Ransomware locks credit union users out of bank accounts (https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/07/everythings-frozen-ransomware-locks-credit-union-users-out-of-bank-accounts/) Exclusive-Vista Equity in talks to hand over Pluralsight to creditors, sources s (https://finance.yahoo.com/news/exclusive-vista-equity-talks-hand-183356419.html) Nonsense Faces made of living skin make robots smile (https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cedd3208veyo) Mandatory Texas vehicle safety inspections end in six months (https://www.kxan.com/news/texas/mandatory-texas-vehicle-safety-inspections-end-in-six-months/) Costco's bold new plan for the California housing crisis (https://www.sfgate.com/la/article/costco-housing-apartments-south-la-19541521.php?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email) Conferences DevOpsDays Birmingham (https://devopsdays.org/events/2024-birmingham-al/welcome/), August 19–21, 2024 DevOpsDays Antwerp (https://devopsdays.org/events/2024-antwerp/welcome/), 15th anniversary, Sep 4th-5th. SpringOne (https://springone.io/?utm_source=cote&utm_campaign=devrel&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_content=newsletterUpcoming)/VMware Explore US (https://blogs.vmware.com/explore/2024/04/23/want-to-attend-vmware-explore-convince-your-manager-with-these/?utm_source=cote&utm_campaign=devrel&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_content=newsletterUpcoming), August 26–29, 2024 SREday London 2024 (https://sreday.com/2024-london/), September 19th to 20th, Coté speaking. 20% off with the code SRE20DAY (https://sreday.com/2024-london/#tickets) SDT news & hype Join us in Slack (http://www.softwaredefinedtalk.com/slack). Get a SDT Sticker! Send your postal address to stickers@softwaredefinedtalk.com (mailto:stickers@softwaredefinedtalk.com) and we will send you free laptop stickers! Follow us: Twitch (https://www.twitch.tv/sdtpodcast), Twitter (https://twitter.com/softwaredeftalk), Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/softwaredefinedtalk/), Mastodon (https://hachyderm.io/@softwaredefinedtalk), BlueSky (https://bsky.app/profile/softwaredefinedtalk.com), LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/software-defined-talk/), TikTok (https://www.tiktok.com/@softwaredefinedtalk), Threads (https://www.threads.net/@softwaredefinedtalk) and YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi3OJPV6h9tp-hbsGBLGsDQ/featured). Use the code SDT to get $20 off Coté's book, Digital WTF (https://leanpub.com/digitalwtf/c/sdt), so $5 total. Become a sponsor of Software Defined Talk (https://www.softwaredefinedtalk.com/ads)! Recommendations Brandon: House of Dragons Season 2 (https://www.hbo.com/house-of-the-dragon) Cloud News of the Month - June 2024 (https://www.thecloudcast.net/2024/07/cloud-news-of-month-june-2024.html) Photo Credits Header (https://unsplash.com/photos/brown-sail-ship-on-sea-during-sunset-1suNZRcP3AY) Artwork (https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:640/format:webp/1*rQh4nSRu3CV3vqThSKI49A.jpeg)

Alibaba Group Holding Limited continues to make strides in the e-commerce and tech industry, as highlighted in their latest earnings call. The company reported a 7% increase in total consolidated revenue for Q4 2024, reaching RMB 221.9 billion, despite facing challenges such as a decline in non-GAAP net income. Alibaba's financial strategies, including a share repurchase program, demonstrate its ability to navigate complex financial situations and maintain profitability.The company's adaptability and innovation have been crucial to its ongoing success, evident in the double-digit growth of Taobao and Tmall's GMV year-over-year. Alibaba stated its commitment to bolstering SME success by making it easier for them to advertise and ensuring a solid return on investment for their marketing investments. The company acknowledged adjusting algorithms and training models to enhance ROI for merchants.Alibaba's competitive pricing strategies and investments in user experience have increased quarterly buyer numbers and purchase frequency, solidifying its market position. The shift towards refining cloud product offerings, particularly public cloud services, has resulted in robust revenue growth in this sector. The explosive growth in AI-related revenues underscores the strategic significance of Alibaba's investments in technology.Alibaba's ability to align its strategies with consumer behavior changes in the competitive Chinese market has been instrumental in its GMV growth across Taobao and Tmall platforms. This achievement stems from offering a diverse product range, optimizing efficiency, enhancing conversion rates, and attracting customers, reflecting a customer-first philosophy.Looking ahead, Alibaba plans to continue its strategic focus on developing an AI-driven, user-centric approach, including enhancing product supply, maintaining competitive pricing, and improving service quality. Alibaba Cloud will prioritize harnessing technological advancements, with AI exploration being a critical focus area. The company aims to invest in international e-commerce platforms and expand Cainiao's global logistics network to fortify its customer service proposition.While Alibaba's recent financial performance and adherence to core business strategies project resilient and consistent growth, the company's future success will depend on its ability to navigate market shifts through technology adoption and platform growth, as well as its sensitivity to consumer preferences and strategic future planning. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theearningscall.substack.com

This week's podcast is a deep dive into Alibaba Cloud, a leading provider of cloud and intelligence services. They recently had an AI and Big Data Summit in Singapore.You can listen to this podcast here, which has the slides and graphics mentioned. Also available at iTunes and Google Podcasts.Here is the link to the TechMoat Consulting.———–I write, speak and consult about how to win (and not lose) in digital strategy and transformation.I am the founder of TechMoat Consulting, a boutique consulting firm that helps retailers, brands, and technology companies exploit digital change to grow faster, innovate better and build digital moats. Get in touch here.My book series Moats and Marathons is one-of-a-kind framework for building and measuring competitive advantages in digital businesses.This content (articles, podcasts, website info) is not investment, legal or tax advice. The information and opinions from me and any guests may be incorrect. The numbers and information may be wrong. The views expressed may no longer be relevant or accurate. This is not investment advice. Investing is risky. Do your own research.Support the show

The Alibaba Group recently publicized the data from their latest earnings report. During the call, CEO Toby Xu outlined a progress update to investors stating, "We see the early success of the execution of our strategy because as we announced earlier this year, the strategy for Taobao and Tmall is user-centric. We need to build up the supply for all our consumers, particularly for the price-competitive product. This early success shows the effectiveness of our executed strategy." Contrary to their recent attention on Artificial Intelligence (AI), the predominant themes of this earnings call revolved around e-commerce, improvements in customer shopping experiences, advancements in cloud computing, and overall growth strategies. Notably, AI was not significantly addressed during this call, with no specific case studies concerning this latest earnings call being highlighted. Alibaba has continued to show a sound financial performance. As reported during the call, the company's total consolidated revenue has experienced a growth rate of 5%, climbing to RMB260.3 billion. Furthermore, their consolidated adjusted EBITDA grew by 2%, reaching RMB52.8 billion. The company maintains a substantial net cash position of RMB487 billion, reinforcing its strong financial status. A notable contributor to Alibaba's success is the implementation of a user-centric strategy and competitive pricing in the realms of Taobao and Tmall Group. These aspects have been instrumental in driving year-on-year growth in gross merchandise volume (GMV). The International Commerce initiative has also aided in revenue growth through the expansion of cross-border offerings and prominence given to improved shopping experiences. Additionally, developments in the Cainiao smart logistics network and cross-border logistics fulfillment solutions have strengthened Alibaba's performance. In cloud computing, the focus of Alibaba Cloud on public cloud services and the optimization of its business structure has yielded improved profitability. Looking at the company's future undertakings, Alibaba projects continued investment in their core areas of operations such as e-commerce and cloud computing to foster growth. They aim to launch initiatives associated with product supply, competitive pricing, efficiency, and quality service enhancement in Taobao and Tmall Group. Though the company's recent focus on AI does not tie directly with the themes of the Last Quarter Earnings Call Analysis, they are demonstrating solid financial performance, adherence to a user-centric strategy, and committed investments in essential areas. By preserving the focus on e-commerce, cloud computing, and enhancing shareholder value, and responding effectively to evolving consumer trends, Alibaba is positioning itself for long-term growth and profitability. However, this assessment is based on the current status quo and may be subject to change with evolving business and market conditions. As with any business prediction, this projection should be treated as an educated assumption, not an absolute guarantee. BABA Company info: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/BABA/profile For more PSFK research : www.psfk.com  This email has been published and shared for the purpose of business research and is not intended as investment advice.

Join us as we cover some more info on Prisma Cloud and specifically how it can help with Alibaba Container Registry.

Recent changes appeared to trigger a series of events for two peering points internationally—with very different impacts. Tune in to learn more about these incidents, why they differed, and the lessons they leave. Mike Hicks, Principal Solutions Analyst at ThousandEyes, will also cover the latest outage numbers and explore other recent incidents, including an Oracle Cloud outage and a duo of disruptions at Alibaba Cloud. For more insights, check out these links: - The Internet Report: Pulse Update Blog: https://www.thousandeyes.com/blog/internet-report-pulse-update-peering-issues?utm_source=soundcloud&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=na_fy24q2_internetreportpulse24_podcast - Interested in more outage analysis? Check out our Internet Outages Timeline, which covers several notable Internet outages and application issues from the past year, along with the lessons they leave: https://www.thousandeyes.com/resources/internet-outages-timeline?utm_source=soundcloud&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=na_fy24q2_internetreportpulse24_podcast ——— CHAPTERS 00:00 Intro 00:45 Optus Outage 02:07 AMS-IX Outage 06:50 Oracle Cloud Outage 08:39 Duo of Alibaba Cloud Incidents 09:44 By the Numbers 13:13 Get in Touch ——— Want to get in touch? If you have questions, feedback, or guests you would like to see featured on the show, send us a note at InternetReport@thousandeyes.com. Or follow us on X: @thousandeyes ——— ABOUT THE INTERNET REPORT: This is the Internet Report, a podcast uncovering what's working and what's breaking on the Internet—and why. Tune in every other week for the Pulse Update series to hear from the Internet experts at ThousandEyes as they share the latest data on ISP outages, public cloud provider network outages, collaboration app network outages, and more. Then, the hosts dig into the most interesting outage events from the prior week, examining popular service outages and discussing what went awry—was it the Internet, or an application issue?

Recent changes appeared to trigger a series of events for two peering points internationally—with very different impacts. Tune in to learn more about these incidents, why they differed, and the lessons they leave.Mike Hicks, Principal Solutions Analyst at ThousandEyes, will also cover the latest outage numbers and explore other recent incidents, including an Oracle Cloud outage and a duo of disruptions at Alibaba Cloud.Interested in more outage analysis? Check out our Internet Outages Timeline, which covers several notable Internet outages and application issues from the past year, along with the lessons they leave: https://www.thousandeyes.com/resources/internet-outages-timeline?utm_source=transistor&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=na_fy24q2_internetreportpulse24_podcast———CHAPTERS00:00 Intro00:45 Optus Outage02:07 AMS-IX Outage06:50 Oracle Cloud Outage08:39 Duo of Alibaba Cloud Incidents 09:44 By the Numbers13:13 Get in Touch———Want to get in touch?If you have questions, feedback, or guests you would like to see featured on the show, send us a note at InternetReport@thousandeyes.com. Or follow us on X: @thousandeyes

Welcome episode 226 of the Cloud Pod podcast - where the forecast is always cloudy! This week Justin, Matt and Ryan chat about all the news and announcements from Google Next, including - surprise surprise - the hot topic of AI, GKE Enterprise, Duet, Co-Pilot, Code Whisperer and more! There's even some non-Next news thrown into the episode. So whether you're interested in BART or Bard, we've got the news from SF just for you.  Titles we almost went with this week:

Listen to today's top stories, with context, in just 15 minutes. Subscribe and rate our podcast here:Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bloomberg-daybreak-asia/id1663863437Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0Ccfge70zthAgVfm0NVw1bTuneIn: https://tunein.com/podcasts/Asian-Talk/Bloomberg-Daybreak-Asia-Edition-p247557/?lang=es-es See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Drop 1: MAS estende projeto Guardianhttps://asianbankingandfinance.net/news/mas-forms-project-guardian-industry-group-11-fishttps://twitter.com/7gioeth/status/1674046545186938883Drop 2: BIS Projeto Marianahttps://www.bis.org/about/bisih/topics/cbdc/mariana.htmhttps://thedefiant.io/bis-leverages-curve-s-amm-technology-for-cbdc-testDrop 3: Reino Unido formaliza nova lei para o mercado financeiro https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2023/06/29/uk-crypto-stablecoin-rules-receive-royal-assent-passing-into-law/https://www.gov.uk/government/news/rocket-boost-for-uk-economy-as-financial-services-and-markets-bill-receives-royal-assent .. More: MIT Technology Review vai lancar coleção de NFTs para promover as ciências usando a solução da MobiUphttps://blocktrends.com.br/mit-colecao-nfts/HSBC HK oferece ETFs de BTC e ETHhttps://www.theblock.co/post/236325/hsbc-hong-kong-bitcoin-ether-crypto-etfsNear e Alibaba Cloud fecham parceria para crescer presença de web3 na Ásiahttps://www.coindesk.com/business/2023/06/26/embargo-26th-june-7am-bst-near-foundation-partners-with-alibaba-cloud-to-accelerate-web3-growth/Animoca se junta a Celo Blockchain no seu Aliança para Prosperidade https://www.animocabrands.com/animoca-brands-joins-celo-ecosystem-to-accelerate-web3-adoptionBanco Inter inicia trading de cripto via B3 Digitashttps://braziljournal.com/inter-entra-em-cripto-para-fidelizar-clientes/BC Suíço vai lançar piloto de wCBDC na SDXhttps://www.reuters.com/markets/currencies/snb-launch-digital-currency-pilot-chairman-2023-06-26/Ripio recebe aprovação para operar na Espanhahttps://twitter.com/sserrano44/status/1673698527938002947CEx Deribit adota Copper ClearLoop https://copper.co/insights/company-news/deribit-and-copper-bolster-longstanding-clearloop-partnership-with-legalSardine lança consórcio contra fraudes em pagamentos https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230627661327/en/%C2%A0Sardine-Launches-Industry-Wide-Consortium-to-Curb-The-Rapid-Rise-of-Payment-FraudChainlink integra oracle na rede Celohttps://www.coindesk.com/tech/2023/06/28/chainlink-data-feeds-go-live-on-celoWarner e Polygon Labs lançam acelerador web3 para músicahttps://decrypt.co/146533/warner-music-polygon-labs-launch-blockchain-music-acceleratorBialetti lança NFTs para amantes de café https://en.cryptonomist.ch/2023/06/28/web3-bialetti-launches-nft-collection/Laser Digital, braço de crypto da Nomura, adquire Elysium Technology para melhorar a experiência de post tradinghttps://www.theblock.co/post/236961/nomuras-laser-digital-acquires-digital-asset-trading-firm-elysium-technologyPolygon anuncia detalhes de seu plano de upgrade para versão 2.0https://thedefiant.io/polygon-plans-to-merge-pos-chain-with-zkevmPesquisa da Bitso/Blockews/Cantarino traz dados sobre as mulheres em criptohttps://einvestidor.estadao.com.br/comportamento/criptomoedas-investimentos-mulheres-homens-pesquisa/?amp Meu conteúdo em inglês https://bi.11fs.com/Me sigam em blockdrops.lens e na newsletter do linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/build-relation/newsletter-follow?entityUrn=7056680685142454272 --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/blockdropspodcast/message

Today's blockchain and cryptocurrency news Bitcoin is up slightly at $30,364 Eth is down slightly at $1,880 Binance Coin is up slightly at $238 Binance reverses privacy coin decision in EU. Hut8 takes $50M secured loan from Coinbase MAS in Singapore wants to promote the use of digital asset technologies to enhance traditional financial systems Japan tax agency clarifies that issuers will not be required to pay capital gains taxes on unrealized gains Near Foundation teams up with Alibaba Cloud. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the newest episode of The Cloud Pod podcast! Justin, Ryan, Jonathan, Matthew are your hosts this week as we discuss all things cloud and AI, as well as Amazon Detective, SageMaker, AWS Documentation, and Google Workstation.  Titles we almost went with (and there's a lot this week)

"But if you look at Generative AI, that is fundamentally a different way that technology came about and it required a lot of investment without knowing what was going to transpire. So I've talked to a couple of people who are affiliated with various top AI labs in China, and I asked them the same question 'Well, why didn't you guys not create this?' And the universal answer was... honestly OpenAI themselves probably had no idea what was going to happen." - Rui Ma   Fresh out of the studio, Rui Ma, China tech analyst and creator of Tech Buzz China, joined us to discuss how the China tech giants are evolving after the regulatory crackdown in the past three years. We start the conversation by examining why China missed the boat on ChatGPT with the tech giants now chasing after the same technology with their own variations. Next, we start to examine the key questions that everyone from the rest of the world wants to know about China tech from the possibility of a Tik Tok ban in the US to Tencent might follow suit from Alibaba in splitting their current conglomerate structure into different companies.   Podcast Information: The show is hosted and produced by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin) and Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin, LinkedIn). Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by G.Thomas Craig (@gthomascraig, LinkedIn).

Alibaba anunció que su segmento Alibaba Cloud tendrá su propio chatbot similar a ChatGPT, Amazon implementará una nueva tasa para algunas devoluciones en tiendas UPS con el fin de compensar los costos de devolución. El departamento de defensa está investigando lo que podría ser la mayor filtración de datos desde el escándalo de WikiLeaks en 2013. $BABA $AMZN $KMX $NEM

遅くなったディスクをみつける Alibaba Cloud の実験について向井が読みました。

听众朋友你好呀，《创业内幕》第四季终于做到了最后一期，这一季，这一年，我想我们都经历了很多事，感谢有你，陪伴我们度过了这段不平凡的时光，同时也要感谢这四年来、所有听众对《创业内幕》的支持。稍作休整过后，《创业内幕》第五季将在2023年春天上线，敬请期待。如果各位在接下来几个月里依然想要听到来自GGV的高质量创业话题内容，推荐各位收听由GGV纪源资本出品的另一档专题类播客节目《GGV投资笔记》。搜索节目名称即可订阅收听。《创业内幕》第四季收官之作，我们请来了一位重磅嘉宾和我们一起畅谈出海东南亚市场的故事。你了解“云市场”在国内和海外目前的布局吗？企业想要出海至东南亚，应该注意哪些问题？今天的重磅嘉宾就是阿里云新加坡大区的总经理王宇德博士，他将和主持人Lily以及GGV业务拓展总监赵航聊一聊阿里云在东南亚地区的出海之道。【01：55】王宇德介绍自己的个人经历【09：45】2015年国内与新加坡的“云市场”情况【13：31】Alibaba Cloud在东南亚其他国家的布局【14：37】Alibaba Cloud如何适应新加坡的政策要求【16：07】国家之间的区别会带来哪些有趣的故事【19：40】Alibaba Cloud在帮助本地公司出海上有哪些布局【24：18】如何获得第一个大客户的信任【27：15】东南亚云市场的竞争格局里面主要有哪些玩家【28：05】对于中小企业有哪些特殊的服务【30：12】有哪些针对新加坡的本地化服务【33：33】未来云计算的应用需求会发生哪些改变【36：12】对于想要出海至东南亚的公司的建议【41：32】花名文化如何融入东南亚市场【43：48】推荐《从0到1》《创业内幕》粉丝群已经开通在这里，你可以跟节目制作人/主持人直接沟通，也可以第一时间了解到GGV线下活动动态，见到GGV纪源资本的投资人，结交其他互联网圈子里的小伙伴。入群方式：1）添加微信号"cynmxzs"（“创业内幕小助手”首字母）为好友，并在好友请求中标注“创业”2）把你的全名和职称发给创业小助手如果您想约访谈，请添加小助手微信，并附上访谈嘉宾简介，小助手将帮您对接。

This week's podcast is about cloud business models. It's a complicated and evolving subject. But I am trying to identify good cloud business models that aren't obvious (like AWS, Azure and Google Cloud). Alibaba Cloud and Snowflake are examples.You can listen to this podcast here, which has the slides and graphics mentioned. Also available at iTunes and Google Podcasts.Here are four sub-types of Coordination Platforms.Communication. Zoom, Slack, etc.Data Intelligence. Snowflake and Confluent.Team Projects. Manual and complicated projects like architecture, media creation, software development.Operational Automation.Here are cloud business models I like:Innovation platformsCoordination platforms (especially when combined with innovation platforms).Vertical solutions———-Related articles:Why I Really Like Amazon's Strategy, Despite the Crap Consumer Experience (US-Asia Tech Strategy – Daily Article)3 Big Questions for GoTo (Gojek + Tokopedia) Going Forward (2 of 2)(Winning Tech Strategy – Daily Article)Why Netflix and Amazon Prime Don't Have Long-Term Power. (2 of 2) (US-Asia Tech Strategy – Daily Article)From the Concept Library, concepts for this article are:Platforms: CoordinationPlatforms: InnovationCloud servicesFrom the Company Library, companies for this article are:Alibaba CloudSnowflake——–I write, speak and consult about digital strategy and transformation.My book Moats and Marathons details how to measure competitive advantage in digital businesses.I also host Tech Strategy, a podcast and subscription newsletter on the strategies of the best digital companies in the US, China and Asia.This content (articles, podcasts, website info) is not investment advice. The information and opinions from me and any guests may be incorrect. The numbers and information may be wrong. The views expressed may no longer be relevant or accurate. Investing is risky. Do your own research.Support the show

PostgreSQL is a free and open-source relational database management system. Postgres-based databases are widespread and are used by a variety of organizations, from Reddit to the International Space Station, and Postgres databases are a common offering from cloud providers such as AWS, Alibaba Cloud, and Heroku. Neon is a serverless open-source alternative to AWS Aurora The post Open-source Serverless Postgres with Nikita Shamgunov appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.