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Catalyst Cloud teams with Amazee.io to deliver hosting system used in Australian government – Reseller News

Bruno Lago (Catalyst Cloud)

A cloud web-hosting system used by the Australian government'swhole of government digital platform, GovCMS, is now available in New Zealand.

The GovCMS platform hosts almost 400 government-related websites receiving hundreds of millions of hits per month.

Global cloud managed web hosting service provider amazee.io and NZ cloud computing platform Catalyst Cloud are collaborating in the effort to offer a New Zealand based version of the open source hosting platform.

Based on Kubernetes and using amazee.ios open source hosting platform, Lagoon, and Catalyst Clouds hosting infrastructure, the solution is built to autoscale to meet demand (and to help fend off DDoS attacks) while maintaining enterprise-grade security and availability.

The Department of Internal Affairs launched its equivalent to GovCMS, theCommon Web Platform (CWP), in 2013. The contract, which had been due to be renewed this month, has been extended for one more year and now expires next September.

Catalyst Cloud said the partnership offered a compelling alternative to hosting solutions provided by the "big names in the business" without a local presence for organisations concerned about data sovereignty.

Lagoon, which claims to be the only fully open source hosting platform of its kind in the world,comes with a 99.9 per cent-plus up-time guarantee.

The platform also features its own content delivery network, providing both a response to peaking demand and a further defence against DDoS.

Customers can host in a multi-tenant environment or in their own dedicated cluster.

Lagoon supports Drupal, Silverstripe, WordPress, Laravel, Node.JS, and most other content management systems.

Sites hosted by amazee.io maintained their stability through the COVID-19 online surge thanks to Lagoons ability to autoscale their hosting infrastructure, Catalyst Cloud said.

Data privacy, security, speed and platform scalability are undeniably the highest-ranked requirements of today's enterprises and organisations, said Franz Karlsberger, CEO of amazee.io.

Partnering and innovating with Catalyst Cloud in New Zealand gives local companies and government-related agencies the opportunity to host their applications and data in New Zealand on a fully managed, enterprise-grade, highly secure, scalable container- based platform."

New releases of code are made to Lagoon monthly and the full codebase is maintained on GitHub, so developers have complete insight into releases, configuration and architecture, and can contribute to features, discussions and documentation.

This helps with issue debugging, prevents vendor lock-in and provides insight into future development, the partners said. Twenty-four hour monitoring and chat support was available directly from amazee.ios systems engineers.

Catalyst Clouds managing director, Bruno Lago, said amazee.io's expertise and world-leading platform, and Catalyst Cloud's state-of-the-art infrastructure and true cloud services, were a winning combination.

"The web hosting solution also allows data to be stored securely in Aotearoa, protected by New Zealand law and data privacy regulations, in datacentres powered by companies generating renewable energy."

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Tags web hostingcommon web platformGovCMSCatalyst CloudAmazee.ioLagoon

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The Future Is in the Cloud… And There’s No Turning Back – DailyWealth

The Weekend Edition is pulled from the daily Stansberry Digest.

New buildings are appearing in many suburban backyards...

They look something like this...

It's not quite a gardening shed and not quite a pool house, either... It's a home-office pod.

It includes just enough space for a desk and a chair, as well as some walking room and natural light... kind of like those "tiny houses" that became all the rage starting a few years ago.

Except this is a getaway from your house. It's a place to work in our "stay at home" pandemic times.

Construction of these new buildings is a certifiable trend, as the Chicago Tribune noted last month...

Tiny house builders and garden shed manufacturers across the country are pivoting to create home office structures that range from compact, prefabricated deluxe sheds to more elaborate custom designs. And business is booming.

"A soon as the quarantine and having to work from home started, the requests for our sheds doubled," said Brennan Deitsch, online marketing manager for Heartland Sheds. "A lot of people never really had their home set up as an office, so having a quiet place allows them to make the most of the work-from-home lifestyle," he said.

Have you been working at home longer than you thought you would be?

We have. I would be lying if I said I didn't think we'd be back in the office for at least a few days a week by now.

Don't get me wrong, working from home if you can has its perks... starting with the simple fact that I have a regular-paying job that allows me to think big and share what all of our Stansberry Research editors are saying each and every day.

However, productivity and morale considerations aside, it would be nice to simply get out more during the day. Maybe it's just me, but I'd prefer to see the familiar faces of coworkers instead of interacting through e-mails and video chats.

Everyone has their own feelings about our new work world, and there's plenty to discuss on this topic in the months ahead.

We speak from an office-worker perspective today, but the point is... remote work isn't going away anytime soon.

All things considered, we're fortunate at Stansberry Research...

First off, I'm healthy, and I have a job. But not everyone has been so lucky.

More than 190,000 Americans have reportedly died from COVID-19. The disease is the third-largest cause of deaths in the U.S. this year with four months to go... trailing only heart disease and cancer.

And of course, the pandemic and government shutdowns have taken their economic toll as well. They've shuttered many physical businesses like retailers and restaurants for good... and have limited regular business for so many others.

At least 18 million Americans who say they want a job right now don't have one. And nearly half of all work-eligible Americans don't have a job, either by choice or by necessity.

We're hearing all kinds of stories about people and families adjusting to kids going back to school (or not), offices closing (or not), and jobs coming back (or not).

COVID-19 has left a lasting mark on the economy. Life is different.

And of course, none of this has done anything to ease the brick-and-mortar retail "apocalypse"...

We saw it on display at a single shopping center in suburban Baltimore. At one end, home-improvement retailer Home Depot (HD) had giant orange letters We're Hiring! painted on its front windows.

Just a few stores away, Modell's Sporting Goods one of the dozens of nationwide retailers that has filed for bankruptcy over the past few months was selling literally everything in the store for at least an 80% discount.

And when I say it was selling everything, I mean it... down to the cash registers, mannequins, tape dispensers, and employee lockers.

If you're not an "essential" business, you're in trouble...

Why "go to Mo's" when you can buy the same sporting goods online and get free shipping (in many cases)?

Take food as another example... We all need it. But we can eat at home, too.

So online ordering and curbside pickup have become normal... Yet at the same time, more and more restaurants killed by customers' reluctance to sit among strangers during an airborne virus pandemic have been closing down for good.

On the other hand, if you're an "essential" part of these essential businesses, you're doing quite well...

That might sound confusing at first, but here's what we mean...

In today's world, data is the new oil. That means the companies that control data, including cloud-based vendors and storage companies, are the new pipelines and oil fields.

As our colleague Alan Gula wrote in the August issue of our flagship Stansberry's Investment Advisory newsletter, one area of technology that many of our editors love is Software as a Service ("SaaS")...

This type of software lets you order food from a local restaurant... or connect to your company's networks and do business around the world from your house or even a shed in the backyard.

As we've written in the past, DocuSign (DOCU) is one of our favorite SaaS companies. The company, which sells e-signature software, has more than tripled since the Investment Advisory recommendation in November last year.

Not only are SaaS businesses practical for the user, they're incredibly capital-efficient and a "win-win" business model for software vendors and customers. As Alan wrote in August's Investment Advisory issue...

For customers, it lowers costs they don't need to pay a large, upfront perpetual license fee, buy expensive computer hardware, pay to have the software deployed, and then pay a "maintenance" fee on top of all that. Under the SaaS model, there's just one regular subscription fee, and software updates and upgrades are automatic and seamless.

For the software vendors, cloud-based application hosting creates economies of scale. There's also only one software version to support since the upgrades occur behind the scenes on the vendor's servers.

In short, the SaaS model is superior to the perpetual license model. SaaS software is cheaper and easier to get up and running. It attracts many more new customers. And good SaaS businesses tend to have high renewal rates, leading to lots of recurring revenue.

All of these factors have led to explosive revenue growth.

Today, the five biggest tech companies account for 25% of the S&P 500 Index...

By market cap, Microsoft (MSFT), Amazon (AMZN), Google parent Alphabet (GOOGL), Apple (AAPL), and Facebook (FB) constitute roughly one-fourth of the benchmark U.S. index.

Think about that... Overall, the index is just about breakeven for the year. And those five stocks are up an average of 44% in 2020.

This performance surely doesn't say much for the other 495 stocks in the index... But it does prove that tech stocks continue to thrive. And today, a lot of the major tech companies are cloud companies in one way or another.

The biggest SaaS player is Adobe (ADBE), which switched from a license model to a SaaS approach back in 2013... Its stock price is up more than 850% since the move.

But there are dozens of other "pure play" companies in the SaaS world that have outperformed even the biggest tech stocks over the years.

As Alan wrote in the August issue of the Investment Advisory...

We consider 59 public companies "pure play" SaaS businesses. We've created an equal-weight composite of these stocks, called the Stansberry SaaS Composite.

Take a look at how it has performed this year compared with the overall market and the Nasdaq...

The Stansberry SaaS Composite is crushing both. It's up an astounding 64% this year... more than double the Nasdaq. And that's during a global pandemic.

In short, SaaS technology has become "mission critical" for thousands of companies...

And the footprint of the technology will only grow in the years ahead.

Change, especially changing the behavior of so many people, can be hard... But once that change is made, it can be even harder to convince people to go back and do something the way they did before.

In this case, a virus forced massive changes in the way we work and do business...

And now, there's no putting the "genie back in the bottle." People are putting up their own "work sheds" in their backyards. Cloud vendors and SaaS companies are bringing in piles of cash. The future is here. There's no turning back now.

All the best,

Corey McLaughlin

Editor's note: The push for "togetherness while apart" has the SaaS sector riding a wave of wealth... Because of increased work-from-home setups and accelerated demand for technology worldwide, we believe SaaS stocks are set to soar by 1,000% or more. And one stock in particular is positioned to skyrocket 3,000% long term. Get all the details right here.

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Upland Software to Participate in Jefferies Software Virtual Conference – Web Hosting | Cloud Computing | Datacenter | Domain News – Daily Host News

AUSTIN, Texas(BUSINESS WIRE)Upland Software, Inc. (Nasdaq: UPLD), a leader in cloud-based tools for digital transformation, has announced that Jack McDonald, Chairman and CEO, and Mike Hill, CFO, will present at the Jefferies Software Virtual Conference on Tuesday, September 15, 2020.

They will present via webcast at 3:00 PM CT and will be available for one-on-one meetings with investors who are registered to attend the conference that day. To register for the webcast, please visit http://wsw.com/webcast/jeff135/upld/.

For more information on Upland Software, please visit investor.uplandsoftware.com.

About Upland Software

Upland Software (Nasdaq: UPLD) is a leader in cloud-based tools for digital transformation. The Upland Cloud enables thousands of organizations to engage with customers on key digital channels, optimize sales team performance, manage projects and IT costs, and automate critical document workflows. The Upland Cloud is backed by a 100% customer success commitment and the UplandOne platform, which puts customers at the center of everything we do. To learn more, visit http://www.uplandsoftware.com.

Contacts

Investor Relations Contact:Mike Hill

512-960-1031

investor-relations@uplandsoftware.com

Media Contact:Kendell Kelton

833-UPLAND-1

media@uplandsoftware.com

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Nimble In The Cloud The Office Of The Future – Forbes Africa

As Covid continues to disrupt work, more and more businesses are depending on cloud-based services like Dropbox, Google Suite and Flexyforce to add extra layers of security and enable staff to efficiently work from anywhere.

In the Covid-19 context, the cloud is the place to be. And though its not exactly a new tech phenomenon, it is only now that it has gained increased currency, with the number of companies adapting to cloud-based services seeing an upward trend.

CEO and Founder of Flexyforce,Annette Muller, speaks of how she has seen it soar to new levels.

Practically, we originated from looking at these future business models, which is very much on-demand workforces and automating the underlying administration to allow the business to scale within their capacity. And philosophically, the bigger mission is, of course, to bring flexibility to the workplace, Muller says.

Flexyforce is South Africas first female-founded cloud-based supplier management software and it has seen growth during the pandemic.

We signed on a number of new exciting businesses, specifically businesses who realized that with this remote work theyre going to have to take off their business operations into the cloud, Muller says.

Cloud computing, according to Managing Executive of Cloud, Hosting, and Security at Vodacom Business, Kabelo Makwane, is bringing together a pool of shared IT resources. This is done through computing, storage, and networks which allows for the shared resources to be shared anywhere and at any time on a pay-as-you-go metered service.

As opposed to the traditional distributed computed model where everyone, whether you are a large enterprise or working from home, is building their own IT shops, the benefits of cloud computing come from the aggregation and consuming it as a utility in the same way we consume power today, Makwane said at the Future of Work digital summit hosted by CNBC Africa on August 20.

This notion is seconded by Muller who says that cloud computing is a lot more cost-efficient as you have to downscale on some of the costs you were previously using, but this is provided you are using the correct service provider. In addition to that, the cloud can be accessed from anywhere.

So a big benefit is that you can access work from any device anywhere in the world. And I think that is what pushed so much attention to cloud services. Now, specifically with Covid-19, because of the forced remote working that we saw taking place across the whole world. And that just means that youre less dependent on an office environment or specific devices at the office to be able to work, Muller says.

Using a cloud-based service is also a good equalizer for entrepreneurs who may be starting a business or small-to-medium-sized businesses as there are no incurred IT costs to worry about, specifically now during Covid-19, this would be the best time for those businesses to start using cloud-based service providers if they have not already.

The fixed upfront costs are lower because youre essentially just doing a pay-as-you-go model and this could really assist the small-to-medium-sized business, Alison Collier, Managing Director of Endeavor South Africa, said at the Future of Work summit.

I think its absolutely fundamental to small-to-medium businesses and they will not survive this day and age if they do not put those basic systems and processes into place from the word go, Muller adds.

There are still companies who fear having to use cloud-computing as there is a security risk perception, Muller explains. However, most service providers have gone to great lengths to protect companies data by using tools like authenticators.

Furthermore, Muller adds that if Covid-19 has taught companies anything, it is that businesses have to change and adapt to the new world of working.

Theres an interesting analogy that the office of the future isnt getting the printer and the secretary and the desk and the chair. Its not; its opening up your Web browser and having those first seven services that you log into every day, Muller says.

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Not Just in the Cloud: Serverless in Your Own Data Center – Data Center Knowledge

If you follow conversations about trendy DevOps technologies, you have probably heard of serverless functions. But you may not realize that serverless functions arent just something available from public cloud providers. They can run out of on-prem or colocation data centers, using hybrid or private cloud architectures.

If you've wanted to explore serverless functions without having to depend on a public cloud provider, keep reading for an overview of how and why to deploy serverless functions in your own data center or colocation facility.

Related: Explaining Knative, the Project to Liberate Serverless from Cloud Giants

A serverless function is an application or part of an application that runs as part of serverless architecture. Developers can simply load serverless functions into a serverless hosting environment, then configure the conditions that should trigger the functions to execute.

There is no need to configure entire operating system environments or install software in the traditional sense -- hence the "serverless" label, which is somewhat of a misnomer, because the functions are still hosted on servers, even though the server environment is abstracted from end users.

Related: Cloudflare Wants to Eat AWSs Serverless Lunch

The serverless platforms that get the most attention, like Azure Functions and AWS Lambda, are public cloud services. The solutions are sometimes referred to as Functions-as-a-Service, or FaaS, because they enable users to deploy and execute serverless code using a cloud-based architecture that is similar to SaaS.

Although public cloud vendors have dominated the serverless market, there is nothing inherent in the serverless model that requires functions to be hosted in a public cloud. You can just as easily set up an environment within your own data center that allows your developers to deploy functions in a pain-free serverless way and execute them using an event-driven framework.

There are a number of reasons you may want to run serverless functions in your own data center. One is cost. Public cloud vendors charge you each time a serverless function executes, so you have a continuous ongoing expense when you use their services. If you run functions on your own hardware, most of your investment occurs upfront, when you set up the serverless environment. There is no direct cost for each function execution. Your total cost of ownership over the long term may end up being lower than it would be for an equivalent service in a public cloud.

Security is another consideration. By keeping serverless functions in your data center, you can keep all of your data and application code out of the cloud, which could help avoid certain security and compliance challenges.

Performance, too, may be better in certain situations for serverless functions that run in your own data center. For example, if the functions need to access data that is stored in your data center, running the functions in the same data center would eliminate the network bottlenecks you may face if your functions ran in the cloud but had to send or receive data from a private facility.

A final key reason to consider serverless solutions other than those available in the public cloud is that the latter services offer native support only for functions written in certain languages. Functions developed with other languages can typically be executed, but only by using wrappers, which create a performance hit. When you deploy your own serverless solution, you have a greater ability to configure how it operates and which languages it will support.

That said, the various serverless frameworks that are available for data centers have their own limitations in this respect, so you should evaluate which languages and packaging formats they support before selecting an option.

Deploying serverless functions in your own data center (or a colocation data center) is not much more complicated than running them in the public cloud. There are two main approaches to setting up a serverless architecture outside the public cloud.

The first is to run a private cloud within the data center, then deploy a serverless framework on top of it. In an OpenStack cloud, you can do this using Qinling. Kubernetes (which is not exactly a private cloud framework but is similar in that it lets you consolidate a pool of servers into a single software environment) supports Knative, Kubeless, and OpenWhisk, among other serverless frameworks.

The second approach is to use a hybrid cloud framework that allows you to run a public cloud vendor's serverless framework in your own data center. Azure Stack, Microsoft's hybrid cloud solution, supports the Azure serverless platform, and Google Anthos has a serverless integration via Cloud Run. (As for Amazons cloud, AWS Outposts, its hybrid cloud framework, does not currently offer a serverless option.)

The first approach will require more effort to set up, but it yields greater control over which serverless framework you use and how its configured. It may also better position you to achieve lower costs, because many of the serverless solutions for private clouds are open source and free to use.

On the other hand, the second approach, using a hybrid cloud solution from a public cloud vendor, will be simpler to deploy for most teams, because it does not require setting up a private cloud. It also offers the advantage of being able to deploy the same serverless functions in your data center or directly in the public cloud. A serverless function deployed via Azure Stack can be lifted and shifted with minimal effort to run on Azure Functions.

Serverless functions in the public cloud are very easy to deploy, but they do not offer the best cost, performance, or security for all types of workloads. For situations where the public cloud vendors' serverless solutions come up short, consider deploying serverless functions in your own data center or colocation facility.

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Where to Invest $5,000 Right Now – Motley Fool

You probably knew it was coming.

The stock market sank at the end of last week after delivering tremendous gains in July and August. The bad news is that your investment portfolio is likely worth considerably less than it was just a few days ago. The good news, though, is that the pullback presents an opportunity to buy top-notch stocks at a more attractive price.

But which stocks are great picks? Here's where to invest $5,000 right now.

Image source: Getty Images.

Any time is a good time to buy shares of Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN). You don't even have to worry about the potential for a second wave (or intensified first wave) of coronavirus outbreaks in the fall. Amazon has proven that its business will hold up just fine, even amida global pandemic.

But Amazon isn't just a stock to buy for playing defense. Though the company claims a $1.6 trillion market cap, its growth story is far from over.

The COVID-19 pandemic has poured fuel on the fire of an e-commerce market that was already rapidly expanding. Amazon obviously benefits as the biggest e-commerce company on the planet. However, it also profits as organizations beef up their online presence and shift to the cloud. That's music to the ears of Amazon Web Services, the market-leading cloud hosting provider.

Don't overlook Amazon's other growth opportunities. The company is expanding its physical grocery operations. It's making big moves into healthcare. And with the acquisition of Zoox, Amazon just might emerge as a major contender in the self-driving car technology arena.

Intuitive Surgical's (NASDAQ:ISRG) business encountered stiff headwinds with the COVID-19 pandemic. The delays of nonemergency surgeries meant that Intuitive's da Vinci robotic surgical systems were left twiddling their robotic fingers much of the time. Although revenue is bouncing back, CEO Gary Guthart warned in Intuitive's second-quarter conference call that the company "expect[s] a challenging near to midterm environment for future capital placements as COVID-19 wears on and hospital expenditures remain constrained."

So why should you invest in Intuitive Surgical right now? Nothing has changed about the long-term growth prospects for the healthcare stock.

Thanks to the aging baby boomer generation, the number of older Americans is increasing. This trend is also occurring in many Asian and European countries. As a result, the number of surgical procedures commonly performed in older individuals will almost certainly rise, including many of the variety best suited for robotic assistance.

Intuitive Surgical also continues to invest heavily in research and development to expand the types of procedures its systems can handle. Guthart thinks that "high-quality, minimally invasive care will be more important to the future, not less so" after the COVID-19 pandemic is over. He's very likely right, and that's great news for Intuitive's future.

Like Intuitive Surgical, Mastercard (NYSE:MA) felt the sting of the COVID-19 pandemic. With travel largely curtailed, people didn't use their credit cards as much. However, CEO Ajay Banga thinks that the long-term impact of the coronavirus outbreak should be positive. "The COVID crisis has driven an acceleration in the use of electronic forms of payment, with much greater adoption of digital and contactless solutions," Banga said in Mastercard's Q2 conference call.

Mastercard is making solid progress in the contactless solutions that Banga mentioned. The company announced in August that it's launching its Shop Anywhere technology platform, which allows consumers to pay without having to take out their Mastercard credit card. The technology detects the card if it's anywhere on the consumer or stored on their phone.

Even after the pandemic ends, it's easy to see how Mastercard's Shop Anywhere technology will make it easy for consumers to use their credit cards instead of cash. It's yet another innovation that should accelerate the shift from cash and checks to digital payment methods.

Mastercard stands out as one of the best stocks to buy to profit from the move away from cash. The company enjoys a virtual duopoly with Visa in payment processing. Its management team has the vision required for Mastercard to remain a leader in the digital payment arena. It's quite possible that Mastercard could join the club of companies with trillion-dollar market caps by the end of this decade.

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Health Care Cloud and Hosting Market Report, History and Forecast 2015-2025, Breakdown Data by Manufacturers, Key Regions, Types and Application -…

The Global Health Care Cloud and Hosting Market report provides a detailed analysis of global market size, regional and country-level market size, segmentation market growth, market share, competitive Landscape, sales analysis, impact of domestic and Global Health Care Cloud and Hosting Market players, value chain optimization, trade regulations, recent developments, opportunities analysis, strategic market growth analysis, product launches, area marketplace expanding, and technological innovations.

The research study on Health Care Cloud and Hosting market provides significant information such as historical data and major development trends for businesses operating in this industry vertical. The report also helps to understand the current trends as well as prospects of the market which can help in formulating critical business strategies.

The report elaborates on the major growth factors and opportunities defining the profitability ratio of this business sphere over the study duration. It also offers information on challenges & restraints faced by industry participants.

Request Sample Copy of this Report @ https://www.express-journal.com/request-sample/191854

The report delivers a comparative evaluation of the past and the current market scenario, which further helps in deriving the industry growth rate over the analysis timespan. Apart from this, it also highlights the impact of coronavirus outbreak on the remuneration scale of this industry.

Key insights from the Table of Contents:

Product terrain

Application landscape

Regional landscape

Competitive arena

In short, the research report on Health Care Cloud and Hosting market delivers crucial insights pertaining to various industry segmentations, while highlighting the supply chain & sales channel such as raw materials and equipment used, distributors, upstream suppliers, and downstream buyers.

Points Covered in The Report:

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Company Named ‘InductiveHealth Informatics’ Wins Bid For Dept. Of Health Contact Tracing Contract; Cost Is $220040 For 1 Year – VI Consortium

A company named InductiveHealth Informatics, based out of Atlanta, Georgia and formed in 2013, has won the V.I. Department of Health's bid for the coronavirus contact tracing contract, which will last for one year and will cost $220,040 with a 1-year renewal option.

V.I. Department of Health Commissioner Justa Encarnacion confirmed the agreement to the Consortium Thursday evening, with Jahnesta Ritter, a member of D.O.H.'s Epidemiology Division, furnishing further details.

The new agreement comes a month and a half after the Consortium reported that a company named Avera, co-owned by Governor Albert Bryan's daughter, Aliyah Bryan, and friendMichael K. Pemberton who Mr. Bryan said he mentored was selected for the job within 72 hours during a no-bid process that D.O.H. had justified as a matter of exigency under the Covid-19 state of emergency declaration. The Avera deal would have lasted for three years and cost $1 million. Avera does not have experience in contact tracing work.

The matter caused a furor in the community, dominating the news cycle for a while and leading D.O.H. to eventually abandon the deal. Governor Bryan had lashed out at senators and the mediabefore stating he would have recused himself had an agreement arrived to his desk, because his daughter was involved. Instead, Mr. Bryan said he would have deferred to Lieutenant Governor Roach, but Mr. Roach swiftly removed himself from the equation and said Virgin Islands agencies should collaborate on the project.

InductiveHealth has been in business since 2013. Its highest listed revenue haul was in the first quarter of 2019, when it brought in an estimated $2.2 million, according to Zoom Info, which hosts a vast trove of company data and other pertinent information.Zoom Info estimated the company to have 8 employees, though the firm'sofficial websitelists 40, which most likely include contract workers.

(For all VI Consortium breaking news directly to your phone, download our apphere.)

The firm describesitself asbringing "innovation to the public health informatics arena to dramatically lower the costs of integration, operations, and large-scale analysis of health data.

"Our firm was formed in 2013 to deliver public health technology that just works, letting epidemiologists focus on public health action and not worry about maintaining complex, costly technology.

"We are the leaders in NBS Software-as-a-Service, with deep expertise in HL7 integration, secure cloud hosting, and disease surveillance technology. We manage some of the largest information systems in public health for over a dozen clients, delivering more clinical to public health integrations than any other firm," reads the InductiveHealth description.

In July, InductiveHealth hiredAlexis Sulyma as chief growth officer to lead the company's expansion. Ms.Sulyma's duties include leading a team of epidemiologists and technologists who work on national and global health projects, including InductiveHealths work with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention supporting nationwide syndromic surveillance and COVID-19 disease surveillance efforts.

Along with the V.I. Dept. of Health, the firm's clients include the World Health Organization, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services, Nigeria Federal Ministry of Health, Wyoming Dept. of Health, Rhode Island Dept. of Health, Nebraska Dept. of Health and Human Services, and the Association of Public Health Laboratories.

For the territory, InductiveHealth says it "hosts and supports an implementation of StarLIMS, allowing for direct instrument integrations, HL7 lab reporting, and customized lab workflows. As a result, laboratorians can focus on the lab science rather than systems patching, maintenance, HL7 integration, and information security controls."

Relative to the new agreement, Ms. Ritter said, "We are in the final stages of the contract process and the work is expected to begin when the contract is executed. That should happen shortly."

The department said it has always performed contact tracing work, and that the contract with InductiveHealth is for a multifaceted contact tracing app to perform a multitude of functions.

What the Dept. of Health needs out of the agreement (scope of work):

1. Ability to ensure data security and confidentiality of significant volumes of client information, which is critical to maintain community trust in using any case management tool.

2. Interoperability capabilities to receive input from the public health authorities (PHA)(including local, state, tribal, and territorial public health departments), informationsystems and/or laboratory systems, either via import or real-time synchronization.

3. Ability to facilitate identification/elicitation and documentation of known contacts of clients with COVID-19, both through manual entry by the PHA and via self-report fromcases.

4. Ability to send notifications to users (clients and contacts) via manual and/or automated means. These messages will include:

a. Notification to contacts of their exposure and time window when exposure may have occurred.

b. Initial survey about their symptoms and clear instructions on how to regularly monitor their symptoms and health status and report that information every day. (This will ensure their data reaches the contact management team at the PHA and that aggregate data reach relevant state and federal partners.)

c. Public safety messages to identified contacts to educate them about COVID-19, its common signs and symptoms, and reinforcing prevention messages defined by the government, such as self-quarantine and social distancing. (Thismessaging should be repeated daily throughout the contacts self-quarantine period with new information supportive of the evolving stage of isolation.)

5. Ability to send notifications in multiple formats, such as voice messages, emails, and SMS.

6. Capability for contact-generated and system-generated alerts or workflows (e.g., to facilitate appropriate follow-up, presence of symptoms, contact request for information).

7. Ability to produce individual-level and aggregate data supporting worker and PHA- level process metrics as described above.

8. Ability to capture individual laboratory results

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Company Named 'InductiveHealth Informatics' Wins Bid For Dept. Of Health Contact Tracing Contract; Cost Is $220040 For 1 Year - VI Consortium

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AMZN: Buy the Dips in These 3 Internet Stocks – StockNews.com

The Nasdaq Composite Index dipped 10% in the last three trading sessions after surging to its all-time high of 12,074. The FAANG stocks dipped by an average of 4% on Tuesday, September 8th. A 4% dip may not look big, but these stocks together lost hundreds of billions in market capitalization. Dont worry. These stocks are expected to be back to their 52-week highs and might even make new highs, as the growth in demand for their products and services are not expected to slow anytime soon.

Over the last decade, the internet boom, increasing penetration of smartphones, and rising disposable income pushed some internet stocks to trillion-dollar valuations. And the COVID-19 pandemic has triggered the internet adoption even among the untapped population.

Among the tech juggernauts, the pandemic has treated three internet giants Amazon (AMZN), Alphabet (GOOGL), and Facebook (FB) pretty well. These three companies are market leaders in their own space and cater to a large portion of the world population. They are now broadening their horizon to monetize on future demand.

Amazon (AMZN)

AMZN needs no introduction. It is the e-commerce leader and the No. 1 cloud hosting provider in the world. It makes most of its money from its e-commerce platform. Amazon Prime Video, Alexa personal assistant and ecosystem, and Amazon Web Services are the other money streams for the company.

The pandemic has created an e-commerce wave, tapping the segments of the population that were reluctant to adopt digitization. Amazon and Shopify (SHOP) witnessed traffic on the levels of the holiday season in April. This was reflected in their earnings. AMZNs second-quarter revenue surged 40% year-over-year to $88.9 billion, and EPS surged 97% to $10.3. Such high growth drove AMZN stock up 78% year-to-date to its all-time-high of $3,552.25. The pandemic gave AMZN its next trillion-dollar opportunity as its market cap jumped from $1 trillion at the start for the year to as high as $1.77 trillion.

People have realized the advantages of e-commerce while locked in their homes, making this trend sticky. A study by Grand View Research expects the global e-commerce market to increase at a CAGR of 14.7% between 2020 and 2027.

At its three-year high forward price-to-earnings multiple of 95x, AMZN stock might look expensive. Some analysts believe that AMZN has become too big to grow. But it is exploring new areas such as self-driving cars and robotics. It is also expanding in the grocery business and increasing its fulfillment capacity.

How does AMZN stack up for the POWR Ratings?

A for Trade Grade

B for Buy & Hold Grade

A for Industry Rank

A for Peer Grade

B for overall POWR Rating

You cant ask for better. The stock is also ranked #2 stock in the Internet industry.

Alphabet (GOOGL)

While the pandemic unleashed the trillion-dollar opportunity for AMZN, it came as a nightmare for the search engine giant Google. Alphabet earns more than 80% of its revenue from advertising. But it saw a modest decline in ad revenue as many companies cut their ad budget amid the lockdown. However, an uptick in Google Cloud and other non-advertising revenues, such as YouTube, partially offset the weakness in ad revenue.

In the second quarter, GOOGLs revenue fell 1.7% year-over-year to $38.3 billion, while its net income fell 30% to $7.0 billion. The sharp drop in net income was because of a 15% decline in cost-per-click and higher loss from its Other Bets. As the economy reopened, advertising picked up.

GOOGLs stock fell 21% in March but later surged over 60%, resulting in a year-to-date gain of 13.75%. This rally has put it back over the $1 trillion market cap.

GOOGL dominates the search engine space, and its position is attracting antitrust probes. According to The New York Times, the U.S. Department of Justice is planning to launch an antitrust case against GOOGL before the end of September.

The search engine and internet services got GOOGL to its first trillion-dollar. GOOGL stock is trading at a forward price-to-earnings ratio of 30.6x, its highest valuation in over five years. It is using its massive $120 billion cash pile to explore future technologies that can bring in its next trillion dollars. Some of its ventures include DeepMind, which is working on artificial intelligence (AI), and Waymo, which is developing autonomous vehicle technology.

GOOGL is rated a Buy in the POWR Ratings. It holds straight A in Trade Grade, Peer Grade, and Industry Rank and a B in Buy & Hold Grade. It is also the #4 ranked stock in the Internet industry.

Facebook (FB)

FB is younger than AMZN and GOOGL, but it has achieved a remarkable feat in a small time. It has 2.45 billion active users, making it the worlds largest social media platform. FB has reached a market capitalization of $772 million in eight years. The company makes its money from advertising on its social media platforms Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp.

The pandemic-driven lockdown made many people active on social media. Like GOOGL, even FB saw a decline in targeted ad spend by advertisers, but that did not impact its revenue significantly. In the second quarter, FBs revenue surged 11% year-over-year to $18.69 billion, while EPS rose 98% to $1.80. However, the companys ad revenue faces risks from some privacy regulations and new privacy protection measures by Apple (AAPL) that will protect specific customers data from advertisers.

FB is now expanding into the e-commerce segment. It is integrating Shopify to allow merchants to post and sell their offerings on Facebook or Instagram. This initiative will help it earn from ads as well as transactions, and might even unlock a trillion-dollar opportunity.

FB stock is trading at 32 times its forward price-to-earnings multiple. Its no surprise that it is rated a Buy in our POWR Rating system. It also has an A for Trade Grade, Peer Grade, and Industry Rank, and a B for Buy & Hold Grade. In the 57-stock Internet industry, it is ranked #5.

Investor takeaway

Many critics say that the pandemic has created a dot.com-like tech bubble that can burst anytime. But AMZN, GOOGL, and FB will not be severely impacted as their stock prices are backed by fundamentals and new growth opportunities.

There is no perfect price to buy these tech stocks as they keep breaking their records. But the recent correction offers a good time to pick up shares of some of the worlds best companies at cheaper prices.

Want More Great Investing Ideas?

7 Best ETFs for theNEXTBull Market

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AMZN shares fell $25.32 (-0.80%) in after-hours trading Tuesday. Year-to-date, AMZN has gained 70.46%, versus a 4.59% rise in the benchmark S&P 500 index during the same period.

Puja is a seasoned writer working with financial publishing companies like Motley Fool Canada and Market Realist. With over 13 years of experience in the field of fundamental research, she brings a blend of comprehensive, well-researched insights into her articles. More...

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AMZN: Buy the Dips in These 3 Internet Stocks - StockNews.com

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Will the pandemic accelerate the move to public cloud? – DatacenterDynamics

The case for an accelerated move to the public cloud may be summed up in one sentiment: Data centers were difficult enough to run even before the pandemic, and the costs, risks and complexity have all now increased. With the threat of new pandemics in future, it will be easier, even if it isn't cheaper, to move to the cloud.

There is some evidence that many enterprise operators are thinking along these lines but it is not strong. In a July 2020 Uptime Institute survey of 260 operators, a fifth (19 percent) said they are likely to accelerate their move to a public cloud or use public cloud services more as a result of the pandemic. Just one in twenty (5 percent) thought the pandemic would slow their move to a public cloud. (Three-quarters said it would make no difference or that they did not know; see the figure).

What lies behind this? There are many reasons why the use of cloud services has increased or will increase as a result of Covid-19.

First, during the pandemic, many enterprises found they do not have the network infrastructure, or necessarily the applications, to support all their remotely situated staff and all their customer interactions on their networks. As a result, they have rapidly adopted or stepped up their use of cloud and other third-party services. Enterprise use of cloud platform providers (Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform) and of software as a service (Salesforce, Zoom, Teams) has significantly increased in the space of a few months.

Second, many operators foresee that the loss of an entire site due to staffing issues is a possibility in the future and they are planning for this with a range of strategies, including more remote working, greater resiliency and more automation.

The pandemic will also likely increase the use of distributed, active-active-active availability zone approaches. Building and managing the IT infrastructure for this is always challenging and expensive. One of the easier ways, for many applications and services, is to make use of existing infrastructure run by cloud providers, their software infrastructure partners, and some colocation companies.

In spite of all this, it would be simplistic to state that the pandemic will trigger a significantly accelerated decline in enterprise data centers or increase in the migration of existing workloads. One of the reasons for cloud adoption, and certainly for the use of software as a service, is to enable relatively easy adoption of new services, such as teleconferencing. Few organizations have, in recent years, contemplated hosting such services in their own data centers.

The role of the pandemic as a catalyst of change, or an accelerator, has to be put in context. There is already a strong disposition among business and organizational leaders to make more use of the cloud. But migration can be a difficult process, involving re-platforming or rewriting applications, changing security and compliance processes, and foregoing corporate control for limited transparency. Uptime Institutes research shows the balance of workloads shifting gradually, over time, in a cautious fashion.

A further issue: Chief Information Officers are facing cost constraints, with a global slowdown (if not recession) already underway. Cloud adoption usually involves a short-term spending increase, even if costs fall over time (which, depending on scale, they may not).

So, what is the takeaway? Public cloud adoption by enterprise is a strong trend with multiple adoption drivers. The pandemic will add to the rationale but will not make a decisive difference.

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Will the pandemic accelerate the move to public cloud? - DatacenterDynamics

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