Mediaboss Marketing

AWS has improved its free tier for data transfer, from 1GB to 100GB per month for transfer to the internet, and from 50GB to 1TB for CloudFront, its content delivery network.

According to AWS chief evangelist Jeff Barr "as a result of this change millions of AWS customers worldwide will no longer see a charge for these two categories of data transfer," which is effective from 1 December.

The free allocation will apply to services such as S3 (Simple Storage Service), web applications on EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) VMs and so on. There is an exclusion for the AWS GovCloud and for China regions.

Other details are that the number of free HTTP and HTTPS requests to CloudFront are to be increased from 2 million to 10 million, and the offer of two million free CloudFront function invocations per month is no longer limited to the first year.

While Barr attributes the change to a "tradition of AWS price reductions" many industry watchers link the price reduction to competition from others, including Cloudflare which in September previewed R2 Storage, which implements Amazon's S3 API but without egress fees.

In July, Cloudflare accused AWS of excessive rates for data egress, stating that customers in North America and Europe pay 80 times what the service costs AWS to operate.

Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince said on Twitter, in response to the AWS news, "Well, that was fast!! I'm doing the dance of joy! Great news for our mutual customers. And the next step toward the inevitable end of cloud egress [fees]."

A customer commented on Hacker News, "I use 500GB1TB per month on Cloudfront, costing about $50100 per month, and I was going to move this over to Cloudflare to take advantage of their savings. However, this AWS change will basically wipe out my entire Cloudfront bill. I should send Cloudflare a Christmas card to say thanks."

It does seem that AWS intends to stop customers bleeding to Cloudflare with this move. There are caveats, though. One is that this is a free tier, so that customers using data transfer beyond these amounts will still pay the high AWS fees. For these users, the free tier becomes a discount. Enterprises for whom content distribution is core to their business will benefit by looking elsewhere. Netflix, for example, built its own CDN connecting to ISPs around the world.

Second, AWS has plenty of other fees to fall back on. S3, for example, charges fees for storage and for API operations such as PUT and GET requests. There are further charges for analytics, Lambda integration, and so on.

Rival storage service Wasabi, which this week announced a new storage region in London, claimed the S3 charges follow a strategy of "make the transaction charges so ridiculously small that customers don't notice, don't care, or can't figure out how to calculate them. Then do this for all of your hundreds of thousands of customers and trillions of objects, and kick back and watch your coffers overflow as time goes by." (Wasabi charges only for storage and claims to be 80 per cent cheaper than S3.)

Cloudflare is not clear on this matter of operation fees, in the context of R2, and said only that "R2 will zero-rate infrequent storage operations under a threshold currently planned to be in the single digit requests per second range. Above this range, R2 will charge significantly less per-operation than the major providers."

Is Prince really celebrating or will Cloudflare worry about R2 losing some of its appeal? Questioned on this matter earlier this month, in an earnings call, Prince said that if AWS were to take egress fees to zero, "it would force us to continue to innovate in that space, just like it would force everyone else to innovate in the space."

Prince also said that interest in R2 was "off the charts". He hopes for Cloudflare to integrate with all the hyperscale public cloud providers and to be "the fabric that connects all of that together."

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AWS chops data transfer fees by massive extension of free tier 2 months after rival previewed R2 Storage - The Register

Nov 25 (Reuters) - British robotics software company Blue Prism (PRSMB.L) has agreed to a 1.22 billion pound ($1.63 billion) final takeover offer from U.S. private equity firm Vista Equity, the parties said on Thursday, topping a proposal from SS&C Technologies (SSNC.O).

The increased 1,250 pence-per-share cash offer from Bali Bidco Ltd, a firm indirectly owned by Vista, comes amid objections from activist investor Coast Capital, which has supported U.S.-based SS&C's proposal.

Bali Bidco said it will fund the deal through existing cash resources.

Register

Blue Prism directors have unanimously recommended shareholders to vote in favour of the Vista deal at meetings scheduled for Dec. 9.

SS&C last week made a 1.16 billion pound takeover approach to the British software firm.

Blue Prism, which counts automaker Daimler (DAIGn.DE), eBay (EBAY.O) and Britain's National Health Service among its customers, initially agreed to be taken over by Vista in September for 1.09 billion pounds. read more

U.S.-based Coast Capital, which holds a stake of around 2.8% in Blue Prism, objected to Vista's proposal, saying the sale process was flawed. Blue Prism defended the deal, saying it was better than continuing as a standalone firm. read more

Shares of Blue Prism ended about 0.6% higher at 1,215 pence on Thursday, before Vista's revised offer was made after the market close.

($1 = 0.7506 pounds)

Register

Reporting by Aby Jose Koilparambil in Bengaluru, Editing by William Maclean, Kirsten Donovan

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Read more here:
UK software firm Blue Prism agrees to Vista's $1.63 bln final takeover offer - Reuters

This story originally appeared on Zacks

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- Zacks

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2 Stocks to Brave the Internet Software & Services Industry - Entrepreneur

Dublin, Nov. 26, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Global HMI Software Market 2021-2025" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The publisher has been monitoring the HMI software market and it is poised to grow by USD 1.47 bn during 2021-2025, progressing at a CAGR of 12.31% during the forecast period. The report on the HMI software market provides a holistic analysis, market size and forecast, trends, growth drivers, and challenges, as well as vendor analysis covering around 25 vendors.

The report offers an up-to-date analysis regarding the current global market scenario, latest trends and drivers, and the overall market environment. The market is driven by technological developments in HMI software and the usage of analytics among end-user industries.

The HMI software market analysis includes end-user, type, and deployment segments and geographic landscape.

The HMI software market is segmented as below:

By End-user

By Type

By Deployment

By Geographical Landscape

This study identifies the increasing need to improve process efficiency in manufacturing plants as one of the prime reasons driving the HMI software market growth during the next few years.

The report on HMI software market covers the following areas:

The robust vendor analysis is designed to help clients improve their market position, and in line with this, this report provides a detailed analysis of several leading HMI software market vendors that include ABB Ltd., Eaton Corporation Plc, Elektrobit Automotive GmbH, Inductive Automation LLC, Ing. Punzenberger COPA-DATA GmbH, National Instruments Corp., Rockwell Automation Inc., Schneider Electric SE, Siemens AG, and Spectris Plc. Also, the HMI software market analysis report includes information on upcoming trends and challenges that will influence market growth. This is to help companies strategize and leverage all forthcoming growth opportunities.

The study was conducted using an objective combination of primary and secondary information including inputs from key participants in the industry. The report contains a comprehensive market and vendor landscape in addition to an analysis of the key vendors.

The publisher presents a detailed picture of the market by the way of study, synthesis, and summation of data from multiple sources by an analysis of key parameters such as profit, pricing, competition, and promotions. It presents various market facets by identifying the key industry influencers. The data presented is comprehensive, reliable, and a result of extensive research - both primary and secondary. The market research reports provide a complete competitive landscape and an in-depth vendor selection methodology and analysis using qualitative and quantitative research to forecast the accurate market growth.

Key Topics Covered:

1. Executive Summary

2. Market Landscape

3. Market Sizing

4. Five Forces Analysis

5. Market Segmentation by End-user

6. Market Segmentation by Type

7. Market Segmentation by Deployment

8. Customer landscape

9. Geographic Landscape

10. Vendor Landscape

11. Vendor Analysis

12. Appendix

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/51mz08

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Global HMI Software Market (2021 to 2025) - Featuring Eaton, Inductive Automation and Siemens Among Others - GlobeNewswire

Apple CEO Tim Cook delivers the keynote address during the 2020 Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) at Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino, California.

Brooks Kraft/Apple Inc/Handout via Reuters

Apple on Tuesday sued NSO Group, an Israeli firm that sells software to government agencies and law enforcement that enables them to hack iPhones and read the data on them, including messages and other communications.

Earlier this year, Amnesty International said it discovered recent-model iPhones belonging to journalists and human rights lawyers that had been infected with NSO Group malware called Pegasus.

Apple is seeking a permanent injunction to ban NSO Group from using Apple software, services or devices. It's also seeking damages over $75,000.

Apple considers the lawsuit to be a warning to other spyware vendors. "The steps Apple is taking today will send a clear message: in a free society, it is unacceptable to weaponize powerful state-sponsored spyware against innocent users and those who seek to make the world a better place," Ivan Krstic, Apple's head of security engineering and architecture, said in a tweet.

NSO Group software permits "attacks, including from sovereign governments that pay hundreds of millions of dollars to target and attack a tiny fraction of users with information of particular interest to NSO's customers," Apple said in the lawsuit filed in federal court in the Northern District of California, saying that it is not "ordinary consumer malware."

Apple also said on Tuesday it has patched the flaws that enabled the NSO Group software to access private data on iPhones using "zero-click" attacks where the malware is delivered through a text message and leaves little trace of infection.

Pegasus' users can remotely surveil the iPhone owner's activities, collect emails, text messages and browsing history, and access the device's microphone and camera, Apple alleged in its lawsuit.

Apple said the attacks were only targeted at a small number of customers, and it said on Tuesday it will inform iPhone users who may have been targeted by Pegasus malware.

"To deliver FORCEDENTRY to Apple devices, attackers created Apple IDs to send malicious data to a victim's device allowing NSO Group or its clients to deliver and install Pegasus spyware without a victim's knowledge," Apple said in its announcement. "Though misused to deliver FORCEDENTRY, Apple servers were not hacked or compromised in the attacks."

The NSO Group created Apple ID accounts and violated the iCloud terms of service to operate its spyware, Apple said.

NSO Group is accused of using "0day" bugs to create its spyware, or flaws that Apple has not yet fixed. Once Apple fixes an exploit, it's no longer a 0day and users can protect themselves by updating their iPhone software.

Earlier this year, Amnesty International said that it found evidence of a hacked iPhone 12 and had obtained a leaked list of 50,000 phone numbers targeted by NSO Group software. NSO Group software is alleged to have been used to monitor relatives and people close to Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist who was killed in Turkey by assassins working on behalf of Saudi Arabia.

Amnesty International also said it discovered NSO Group malware on the iPhones of a French human rights lawyer, a French activist, an Indian journalist and a Rwandan activist.

The U.S. Commerce Department blacklisted NSO Group earlier this month, prohibiting it from using American technology in its operations. Meta, formerly known as Facebook, is also separately suing NSO Group, alleging it helped hack users of Meta subsidiary WhatsApp.

Apple said it would donate $10 million as well as any damages from the lawsuit to organizations focusing on fighting digital surveillance.

"Thousands of lives were saved around the world thanks to NSO Group's technologies used by its customers," an NSO Group spokesperson said in a statement. "Pedophiles and terrorists can freely operate in technological safe-havens, and we provide governments the lawful tools to fight it. NSO Group will continue to advocate for the truth."

Read more from the original source:
Apple sues company known for hacking iPhones on behalf of governments - CNBC