We all live in a world where digital technology is deeply ingrained in our daily life. Can you remember a time when you lasted a day without your cellular phone with you? Probably not, right?

People go to great lengths to maintain their online presence, not only to stay connected with loved ones but to stay abreast with everything that is happening in the world over. We often take for granted the influence that gadgets like computers and laptops have in our lives when the truth is, there is more to them that meets the eye. And it is a multi-billion dollar market where companies implement aggressive marketing efforts to beat each other.

It seems as if Microsoft Corp. is winning the battle against Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Co. in the computer server market, specifically, cloud services among tier-1 service providers – telecom and cloud companies.

Late last year, the Redmond, Washington-based company unveiled a new in-house cloud server design that it will require hardware vendors to follow. This forces HPE and rival Dell Technologies Inc. to compete against lower-cost generic, commodity manufacturers. Already, Microsoft has been using less-expensive gear for its data centers and the new design is set to be fully implemented later this year.

Banking on their understanding of the cloud technology, Microsoft will boost their market through data center capacity expansions and in developing more newer and efficient technologies.

Microsoft’s Azure public cloud business reported a 93 percent revenue surge in the final quarter of 2016 as more businesses opted for the flexibility and ease of accessing computing power and storage over a network instead of building their own data centers. 

HPE has been a leading seller of servers that go in these corporate data centers. But the shift to the public cloud means businesses don’t need to buy their own servers anymore. Selling to the big cloud providers is harder, either because they demand more volume discounts, or increasingly they design their own cheaper servers.

(Via: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-01/microsoft-said-to-cut-purchases-of-hpe-servers-for-cloud-service)

Despite this apparent success against Hewlett-Packard involving computer servers, a small and emerging company is slowly making its way up amidst the big league and enjoy its fair share of profits in this $34 billion market.

Microsoft is losing its software testing market to Tricentis. Unlike the waterfall methodology they have in place that involves manual testing, Tricentis has automated their systems to cut down on cost and speed up testing time. Forbes.com picked up the story:

Through automation, Tricentis reduces the time and cost of testing. As Johri said, “Using our tools, enterprises can reduce the amount of manual testing to 10% to 25%. We promise a 10-fold increase in efficiency compared to manual waterfall testing and can help companies go from monthly code releases to three or four per week.”

While Microsoft may be facing a big threat in the form of Tricentis, the company is busy gearing up for the introduction of Project Olympus, their newest server design, which may set the pace in the data center industry.

In the blog post, Kushagra Vaid,GM, Azure Hardware Infrastructure said: “Project Olympus applies a model of open source collaboration that has been embraced for software but has historically been at odds with the physical demands of developing hardware. We’re taking a very different approach by contributing our next generation cloud hardware designs when they are approx.”

The project will allow the community to contribute to the ecosystem, through downloading, modifying, and also looking at the hardware design just like open source software.

(Via: http://www.cbronline.com/news/data-centre/microsoft-gives-new-data-centre-server-design/)

There is only one thing that is clear in this picture. No matter how big you are, if you do not learn how to innovate and keep up with the competition, you will be unheard of in just a matter of a few years.

The market is continually changing. Learn to adapt and your business will flourish for years to come. And no matter how fancy or superior your computer may be, data loss is a possibility you can’t afford to risk.

Seek the help of the experts to recover crucial data in the case of any RAID hard drive failure. A RAID array is not something that commonly fails, but if it does, an expert like Hard Drive Recovery Group can always help: (https://www.harddriverecovery.org/raid/). This is the kind of service that can save many companies thousands of dollars in both productivity and files.

Do you have a data recovery provider in your contact list? You should.