Microsoft announced the launch of Ethereum Proof-of-Authority on Azure. Proof-of-Authority is another product on top of Ethereum Blockchain as a service offering from Microsoft.

Back in 2015, ConsenSys and Microsoft partnered together to deliver Ethereum Blockchain as a Service (EBaaS) on Microsoft Azure. It allowed enterprises and developers using the Azure cloud to explore blockchain with a single click. Azure already supports Proof-of-Work Ethereum blockchain as a service.

Proof-of-Work is a Sybil-resistance mechanism. It leverages computation costs to self-regulate the network and allow fair participation. Proof-of-Work algorithm helps Ethereum secure its open or public network. However, in private networks on the cloud, the underlying ether has no value. Based on this understanding Microsoft announced Proof-of-Authority protocol for Ethereum blockchain as a service on the Azure cloud platform.

Proof-of-Authority is more suitable for permissioned or private blockchain networks where all consensus participants are known and reputable. Proof-of-Authority is more efficient while still retaining Byzantine fault tolerance. This allows do away with the need for mining on Ethereum blockchain network.

The blog announcement said, "In Proof-of-Authority, each consensus node on the network has its own Ethereum identity. In the case that a node goes down, it’s important that the member doesn’t lose consensus participation. Ideally, each member would run redundant consensus nodes to ensure a highly available network presence. To accomplish this, we’ve built an abstraction which allows each consensus participant to delegate multiple nodes to run on their behalf. Each Azure Proof-of-Authority network comes with our identity leasing system that ensures that no two nodes carry the same identity. In the case of a VM or regional outage, new nodes can quickly spin up and resume the previous nodes’ identities."

Azure blockchain service also enabled Parity’s web-assembly support enabling developers to author smart contracts in familiar languages such as C, C++, and Rust. It eliminates hurdle of Solidity as a sole language for writing smart-contracts on Ethereum. Along with this capability, Azure Monitor will help developers to track node and network statistics thus providing visibility into the underlying blockchain to track block generation statistics.

Proof-of-Authority deployment comes with a Governance DApp. It simplifies voting and validator delegation. Each consortium member has custody over his or her own keys. This will allow them to secure signing with the help of their preferred wallets, such as MetaMask in-browser wallet, Ledger hardware wallet, or Azure Key Vault with ECC signing. The solution leverages Parity’s highly extensible Proof-of-Authority client to build a level of abstraction that allows our users to separate consortium governance from network operation.

According to the blog announcement, features of Governance DApp include:

• Decentralized governance - Changes in network authorities are administered through on-chain voting by select administrators.
• Validator delegation - Authorities can manage their validator nodes that are setup in each PoA deployment.
• Auditable change history - Each change is recorded on the blockchain, providing transparency and auditability.

Amazon AWS has announced General Availability of its Aurora Serverless MySQL RDBMS.

With Amazon Aurora Serverless MySQL, databases running inside can automatically start-up, shut down and scale up or down on capacity depending on the application’s needs.

What is Amazon Aurora?

Amazon Aurora is a MySQL and PostgreSQL compatible relational database built for the cloud and Amazon claims that Aurora is up to five times faster than standard MySQL databases and three times faster than standard PostgreSQL databases. Aurora is distributed, fault-tolerant, self-healing storage system that auto-scales up to 64TB per database instance with continuous backup to Amazon S3 and replication across three availability zones. Aurora takes care of automating administration tasks such as database setup, patching, backups and hardware provisioning.

What is Serverless?

Serverless computing paradigm allows running applications and services without any efforts of provisioning underlying servers, services that scale automatically and helps developers focus on applications and services.

What is AWS Aurora Serverless MySQL?

As of now, AWS Aurora serverless MySQL supports MySQL 5.6 version. Users can select minimum and maximum Aurora Capacity Units (ACU) in the wizard. The Aurora cluster can scale up and down the capacity automatically based on the ACU settings configured. Considering separation of storage and compute layers, when the cluster is paused, only storage cost is charged. For AWS Aurora serverless, customers are charged per second.

According to the blog post, "The service currently has autoscaling thresholds of 1.5 minutes to scale up and 5 minutes to scale down. That means metrics must exceed the limits for 1.5 minutes to trigger a scale up or fall below the limits for 5 minutes to trigger a scale down. The cooldown period between scaling activities is 5 minutes to scale up and 15 minutes to scale down. Before scaling can happen the service has to find a “scaling point” which may take longer than anticipated if you have long-running transactions. Scaling operations are transparent to the connected clients and applications since existing connections and session state are transferred to the new nodes. The only difference with pausing and resuming is a higher latency for the first connection, typically around 25 seconds. "

Amazon Aurora Serverless is available in Aurora MySQL is available now in US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), US West (Oregon), Europe (Ireland), Asia Pacific (Tokyo).

Cisco announced that it plans to acquire privately-held Duo Security. Cisco will pay $2.35 billion in cash and assumed equity awards for Duo Security’s outstanding shares, warrants and equity incentives on a fully-diluted basis.

One of the ways to access enterprise systems is compromising user passwords or devices. The current trend to access such critical enterprise systems remotely is on the rise, by employees, customers, and partners.

Duo security delivers unified access security and multi-factor authentication through the cloud by verifying the identity of users and the health of their devices before granting them access to applications. Acknowledging this, Cisco and Duo Security are closely aligned in the approach of designing infrastructure for the extended enterprise where users, devices, and applications are the center of the modern security architecture, the announcement said.
Cisco customers will able to securely connect to any application on any network, devices and cloud security platforms once Cisco integrates Duo security's zero-trust authentication and access products

Integration of Duo security solution with Cisco's network, device, and cloud security platforms will help,

• Extend intent-based networking into multi-cloud environments. The on-premises network access control capabilities of Identity Services Engine (ISE) will be extended by Duo’s software as a service-based (SaaS) model to provide cloud-delivered application access control.
• Simplify policy for cloud security. Cisco’s Secure Internet Gateway, Cloud Access Security Broker, Enterprise Mobility Management, and several other cloud-delivered products will leverage Duo's trusted identity awareness capabilities.
• Expands endpoint visibility coverage. Duo acquisition will bring visibility into mobile and unmanaged devices in addition to 180 million Cisco managed devices.

Duo Security’s co-founder and chief executive officer, Dug Song, said, “Our partnership is the product of the rapid evolution of the IT landscape alongside a modernizing workforce, which has completely changed how organizations must think about securityCisco created the modern IT infrastructure, and together we will rapidly accelerate our mission of securing access for all users, with any device, connecting to any application, on any network. By joining forces with the world’s largest networking and enterprise security company, we have a unique opportunity to drive change at a massive scale, and reshape the industry.”

Executive vice president and general manager of Cisco’s networking and security business, David Goeckeler, said, “In today’s multicloud world, the modern workforce is connecting to critical business applications both on- and off-premise. IT teams are responsible for protecting hundreds of different perimeters that span anywhere a user makes an access decision. Duo’s zero-trust authentication and access products integrated with our network, device and cloud security platforms will enable our customers to address the complexity and challenges that stem from multi-and hybrid-cloud environments.”

According to the announcement, the acquisition is expected to close during the first quarter of Cisco’s fiscal year 2019.

Digitate announced that it has achieved significant annual growth in both customer acquisition and revenue. The growth is due to increase in adoption of its award-winning cognitive automation product, ignio, helping enterprises dealing with IT to rapidly identify and remediate outages in minutes. According to the Economic Times of India post, the ignio, AI platform delivered $31M to TCS.

According to the press release, CEO, and MD, Tata Consultancy Services, Rajesh Gopinathan, said, “Rapid breakthroughs in digital technologies – such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and automation – are reshaping businesses and fostering creative disruptions. The revenue and customer growth for ignio™ has been over 100% y-o-y. The success and growth of ignio™ reaffirms TCS’ Business 4.0 strategy, helping customers leverage technology to innovate and gain a competitive advantage,”

Digitate is a venture of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). TCS revenue stood at US $19.09 billion for year ended March 31, 2018 and is listed on the BSE (formerly Bombay Stock Exchange) and the NSE (National Stock Exchange) in India.

With its objective to use artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and advanced software engineering to transform enterprise IT services, ignio is adopted by large, complex and global enterprises, mostly Fortune 500 and Global 2000 corporations, who are leaders and innovators in their respective industries. Ignio is used to managed IT infrastructure, ERP environments (SAP), batch workloads, applications and business processes, the announcement said.

Ignio has more than 75 patents filed in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and intelligent automation space and claimed to be developed indigenously at the TCS Research & Innovation Labs.

Ignio currently manages more than 1.5million technology resources for more than 50 clients. The alliance and channel partner program already has more than 10 partners on board.

The announcement claims that ignio delivers value to their customers within weeks of its deployment and resulted in Digitate among the best performing software product companies within the first three years.

Vice President, IT Operations, Loblaw Companies Limited, Ugo Orsi, said, “Loblaw was looking for an AI tool to disrupt its IT Operations. We chose ignio™ for its ready-to-use features and pre-built knowledge of IT and SAP operations. This enabled quick adoption of AI within Loblaw, and laid the foundation for self-healing, machine-managed IT operations. ignio™ is the linchpin of our IT operations transformation program.”

Vice President TCS and Global Head, Digitate, Dr. Harrick Vin, said, “ignio™ pioneered the concept of cognitive automation—by combining the ability to mimic human thinking and decision making, with the ability to perform complex activities autonomously. It achieved this by integrating AI, machine learning, and modern software engineering. ignio™ continues to gain traction in the marketplace, with 7 wins for ignio™ in Q1, and aspires to be one of the fastest software products to achieve $100M in revenue,”

Digitate is headquartered in Santa Clara, California, USA and Pune, India.

Worldwide spending on blockchain solutions forecasted to reach $11.7 billion in 2022, as per Worldwide Semiannual Blockchain Spending Guide from International Data Corporation (IDC).

IDC defines blockchain as - a digital, distributed ledger of transactions or records. The ledger, which stores the information or data, exists across multiple participants in a peer-to-peer network. There is no single, central repository that stores the ledger. Distributed ledgers technology (DLT) allows new transactions to be added to an existing chain of transactions using a secure, digital or cryptographic signature.

The five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) forecasted to reach 73.2% for Worldwide spending on blockchain solutions in the forecasted period of 2017-2022. The overall spending for Worldwide spending on blockchain solutions will be $1.5 billion in 2018. This is twice the amount spent in 2017 on blockchain solutions, as per the report.

Sector-wise, the spending on Blockchain will be primarily driven by the financial sector ($552 million in 2018). This is largely due to rapid adoption of Blockchain technologies in the banking industry. In 2018, the financial services sector will be the driver in Western Europe, Middle East and Africa (MEA), China, and APeJC in 2018.

Common use cases including regulatory compliance, cross-border payments & settlements, custody and asset tracking, and trade finance & post-trade/transaction settlements will be catered by Blockchain technologies.

The largest spending in 2018, around $193 million will be attributed to Cross-border payments & settlements use cases followed by lot/lineage provenance ($160 million) and trade finance & post-trade/transaction settlements ($148 million). These use cases will continue to drive blockchain investment in 2022 as well, according to the report.

The distribution and services sector ($379 million in 2018) will see strong investments from the retail and professional services industries. The United State will see the largest blockchain investment in distribution and services sector. Common use cases including asset/goods management and lot lineage/provenance will be catered by blockchain technologies.

The manufacturing and resources sector ($334 million in 2018) will be driven by the discrete and process manufacturing industries. Among the manufacturing sector blockchain spending will be more towards process manufacturing accounting around 78.8% compound annual growth rate (CAGR), professional services around 77.7% compound annual growth rate (CAGR), and banking around 74.7% compound annual growth rate (CAGR).

Region wise, the United States will see the largest blockchain investments. The 36% of worldwide spending throughout the forecast will be coming from the United States. Western Europe will be the next largest region for blockchain spending. The next region in the line is followed by China and Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan and China) (APeJC). Japan and Canada will the way with CAGRs of 108.7% and 86.7%, respectively. All nine regions in the world in the spending guide will see phenomenal spending growth over the 2018-2022 forecast period.

Technology-wise, IT services, and business services (combined) will account for roughly 70% of all blockchain spending in the forecasted period. Blockchain platform software will be the largest category of spending outside of the services category and one of the fastest growing categories overall, along with security software.

Research manager with IDC's Customer Insights & Analysis team, Stacey Soohoo said,  "Enthusiasm for blockchain continues to be universally shared across regions as businesses and organizations alike continue to explore the technology’s potential business application. Regulatory concerns and industry standards continue to hinder widespread adoption as governments around the globe work with enterprises to formulate policies and governance. As such, cross-business collaboration and blockchain interoperability are emerging as key aspects in the growth of the distributed ledger technology (DLT)."

Program vice president, IDC's Customer Insights and Analysis, Jessica Goepfert said, "We continue to see the greatest spending and growth for blockchain around lot lineage and asset and goods management. Highly visible scandals combined with complex supply chains and incomplete information set the stage for investments and projects in these areas. End to end, the stakeholders have a vested interest in solving these issues. Manufacturers want to ensure products arrive where they are supposed to arrive. Retailers and wholesalers seek assurance around the validity and quality of the products they are selling. And consumers are demanding greater transparency from providers."

A strong demand for cloud services to enable digital transformation is driving cloud service providers business outlook according to International Data Corporation (IDC) survey.

Key outcomes of IDC Service Provider Pulse 1Q18 Quarterly survey are :

• 
Security is the most important consideration for 
• 38% of cloud service providers consider security is most important to achieve their business goals in the next two years.
• Security Services will account for the largest increase (23%) in new cloud service investment.
• Digital Transformation is driving cloud services demand but the trend is outpacing supply.
• Cloud service providers understand this trend and directed their investments in the new cloud offerings to cater new requirements in infrastructure, application, managed and professional services in the cloud.
• Software specialists will transform into Services Specialist in next two years. 
• New offerings will be associated with managed service providers, cloud service providers, hosting firms, telco providers, and outsourcers/systems integrators.

Cloud service providers will increase investments in software, device, and IP development to compete in the highly competitive environment. Overall 64 percent of cloud service providers agreeing to this trend.

Research vice president, Cloud Service Providers at IDC, Rory Duncan said, "Cloud service providers around the world are rapidly changing their business models in response to unprecedented customer demand, offering a mix of new cloud infrastructure, application, and managed services as part of an agile investment strategy. What is striking is not only the pace of transformation, but also the variety of offerings coming to market as a result. From managed cybersecurity to performance optimization, the hosting of complex business applications and hybrid cloud are offering the potential for service integration at point of delivery."

IDC observes that Digital Transformation will help 85% of Cloud Service providers achieve a 19% increase in revenue in 2018.

GXCWorld announced the launch of game blockchain technology suite aiming to disrupt the video game industry.  GXCWorld is a Seoul, South Korea based technology-driven blockchain developer and game cryptocurrency exchange partnering with game developers including Neowiz and XLGame.

The suite consists of the betanet for core blockchain “GXC”, cryptocurrency storage service “GXC Wallet”, a game cryptocurrency exchange “GXC DEX” and 3 demo games. The announcement said that GXC can handle 5000 transactions per seconds claiming it to be ready for real-world gaming applications.

The demo game specifically highlights the capabilities to game developers on how blockchain enabled games can be built with the help of GXC. It also shows about collecting cryptocurrency from game players and how to trade the cryptocurrency with other game players.

The blockchain network is a highly customized version of EOS based blockchain built specifically for GSXworld.

CTO of GXCWorld, Jin Yang said, the “We have modified EOS to improve blockchain governance, resource distribution and the formation of block producers,”

The CEO at GXCWorld, Kai Kim said, “With GXC, game developers can transform any game title into a cryptocurrency-enabled game. This beta launching is the beginning of our effort. We are creating a decentralized game platform where game players can enjoy game contents as well as make money. This paradigm shift introduces a new way of enjoying video games.”

The announcement further added that Gangseok Kim, the co-founder of Bluehole, a global game developer of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, recently joined GXCWorld as their strategic advisor.

The demo and whitepaper can be found on Game X Coin Website: https://www.gamexcoin.io/.

Apparently, XAYA and BitGuild are another two gaming platforms leveraging blockchain technologies at its core.

Investment in Smart City related technologies will be more than $81 billion globally in 2018, and overall spending is set to grow to $158 billion in 2022, as per International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Semiannual Smart Cities Spending Guide

Out of 25 use cases across five strategic priorities, the report list three major use cases for global Smart Cities spending in 2018. These use cases will attract one-quarter of global investment in 2018.

• Fixed visual surveillance
• Advanced public transit  
• Smart outdoor lighting

The Program Manager in IDC's Customer Insights & AnalysisGroup, said Serena Da Rold said, "The new edition of IDC's Worldwide Smart Cities Spending Guide represents a substantial stride towards gaining granular insight into how cities around the world are transforming. We are now delivering detailed sizing of 25 named use cases, as well as the first release of a new database of spending at City level. Intelligent transportation and data-driven public safety remain the largest investment areas, but we are also finding significant pockets of spending and growth in back-office and platform-related use cases, which are less often publicized but increasingly happening behind the scenes in cities around the world."

Out of 9 global regions, about 42% of global spending in 2018 will be contributed by the Asia/Pacific region, including China and Japan. Americas will contribute 33% of global spending followed by Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) contributing around 25% of global spending in Smart Cities technologies. With over $23 billion in 2018, the United States is the largest country market for Smart City spending followed by China.

Additionally below use cases will emerge that will drive large investments in Smart Cities,

• mobile video capture and recording in the United States and Latin America 
• digital permitting, licensing, and inspection in the Middle East and Africa region.

Vice president of IDC's Smart Cities and Communities programs, Ruthbea Yesner said, "IDC expects to see strong, continued investment by the private and public sector in urban areas and in Smart Cities and Communities programs and projectsThis also means that it is a more competitive market. This spending guide offers solution suppliers the ability to take a data-driven approach to developing products and services, and understanding buyer trends."

In 2018, Singapore, Tokyo, New York City, London, and Shanghai are the leading cities driving 15% of global Smart City investments, according to IDC database of 53 cities, the announcement said.

The International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Semiannual Smart Cities Spending Guide can be downloaded at IDC website.

Squirrel Research labs has announced that it is working with Xilinx, Inc for special purpose hardware for blockchain and cryptocurrency technologies.

Squirrels Research Labs (or SQRL) , is a research and development division of Squirrels LLC.  SQRL is building the next generation of cryptocurrency mining hardware by improving overall hash rate and performance at lower power consumption.

Shipment of new devices will begin this summer at its Northeast Ohio facility. These devices will be processed and fitted with customer requested modification before shipping, announcement said.

Squirrels Research Labs president David Stanfill said, “We saw a significant opportunity to enter into the largely unknown FPGA (field programmable gate array) cryptocurrency market by leveraging Xilinx FPGAs. FPGA-based Blockchain solutions are different than standard FPGA uses like satellite deployments and high-frequency trading. Any error with traditional uses would be devastating. However, the distributed nature of blockchain makes it particularly impervious to errors. We were able to take advantage of this to accelerate the blockchain performance with modifications to unlock all of the chip resources.”

FPGA hardware from Xilinx are generally used for applications like live video transcoding, data analytics, genomics and machine learning. These FPGA (Field programmable gate array) are also applicable and highly effective for cryptocurrency mining.

Stanfill said the Xilinx relationship plays a key role in future Squirrels Research Labs plans.

“Our knowledge of the cryptomining space enabled us to work with Xilinx to have a blockchain-optimized product that falls outside of the typical FPGA use case and to invest in making the solution broadly available. We have further plans in the hardware space, and this helps us get there.”,  Stanfill further added.