Oracle Study Reveals
Businesses in Asia Pacific Rapidly Embracing Cloud Infrastructure
Businesses in Asia Pacific are rapidly embracing cloud infrastructure (IaaS) to boost performance and innovation levels, new research from Oracle has revealed recently. While negative perceptions around security, complexity and loss of control still present barriers to adoption, they are shown to be outdated myths, with those that have moved to IaaS proving the reality is far more positive.
Two thirds (65%) of APAC businesses that are already using IaaS to some extent, say it makes it easier to innovate. The same proportion says moving to IaaS has significantly cut their time to deploy new applications or services. Furthermore, 61% say IaaS has significantly cut on-going maintenance costs and 61% of all respondents believe businesses not investing in IaaS will increasingly find themselves struggling to keep pace with businesses that are.
The research also found that experienced users are almost twice as likely to believe IaaS can provide world class operational performance in terms of availability, uptime and speed, compared to non-adopters. Although some fear the move to IaaS may be complicated, 64% of experienced IaaS users say the move was easier than they expected.
Most APAC respondents agree IaaS will have a role to play in their business within three years, with 43% saying they will run most – or all of their business IT infrastructure – on IaaS. Only 9% of respondents believe IaaS will still have little or no role in their business in three years.
Chris Chelliah, APAC Group Vice President & Chief Architect, Technology & Cloud, at Oracle said: ‘That perception lags reality is no great surprise when it comes to cloud adoption, as a number of outdated perceptions still persist. New services and increased experience in deployed cloud means that we are seeing high levels of success and satisfaction from businesses, as shown by this research. This comes from the financial savings, reduced complexity and increased levels of innovation brought by use of cloud infrastructure. For those that have not yet made a serious move, I would say to them that they need to identify and challenge what is holding them back because while they wait, plenty of others are taking full advantage of the opportunities cloud affords’ w


AMD Quietly Reveals Ryzen 3 Chip Details with Ryzen Pro's Launch
Recently, AMD’s disruptive Ryzen processors stepped out of the mainstream and into the business world with the announcemnt of Ryzen Pro chips loaded with enterprise-friendly features. But the soft launch revealed interesting information for enthusiasts, too: Hard details about AMD’s yet-unreleased Ryzen 3 chips.
The only thing AMD has officially said about Ryzen 3 is that the Core i3 competitors will launch sometime in the third quarter (read: by the end of September). The Ryzen Pro launch reveals two specific chips, the Ryzen 3 Pro 1200 and Ryzen 3 Pro 1300. Both are true quad-core chips without multi-threading, packing identical 65-watt TDPs and 2MB L2/8MB L3 cache sizes. The key difference? Clock speeds. The Ryzen 3 Pro 1200 hovers between 3.1GHz and 3.4GHz, while the faster Ryzen 3 Pro 1300 rocks clocks between 3.5GHz and 3.7GHz.
The impact on you at home: There’s no guarantee that consumer Ryzen 3 chips will mirror their Ryzen 3 Pro counterparts, but since every other announced Ryzen Pro chip has identical speeds and feeds as mainstream Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 7processors, it sure seems likely—though additional models may also appear. We’ll need to wait for Ryzen 3’s official announcement for concrete pricing info as well.
Playing with business-grade power
Beyond the spec reveal, the fact that AMD even offers professional versions of its entry-level Ryzen 3 chips is noteworthy. Every Ryzen Pro chip enhances Ryzen’s base features with enhanced security and encryption functions, longer guaranteed availability and image stability, DASH manageability, a 36-month warranty, and more.
Don’t expect to get Ryzen Pro systems in your hands immediately, despite the announcement. AMD says “The world’s largest suppliers of commercial client desktops are expected to provide Ryzen Pro-based PCs to businesses worldwide in the second half of 2017’ w­­

Samsung to Invest $19 Billion in Chip, Display Plants
Samsung Electronics said recently it will invest 21.4 trillion won ($19 billion) in the next four years in its memory chip and display plants in South Korea.
The South Korean company’s announcement comes as the global memory chip industry enjoys a massive boom thanks to a surge in demand for microchips. Global tech companies have been increasing servers and data centers to handle more data from mobile devices and auto vehicles and also on expectations that adoption of artificial intelligence would create even more demand for handling data.
Samsung said by 2021, it will spend an additional 14.4 trillion won ($12.5 billion) to increase the capacity in its memory chip factory in Pyeongtaek, south of Seoul, which began operating in the day. Samsung said the 15.6 trillion won ($13.6 billion) chip plant, which broke ground two years ago, is one of the largest semiconductor production lines in the world.
Samsung will spend 6 trillion won ($5.2 billion) in its memory chip cluster in Hwaseong as well.
Another 1 trillion won ($871 million) will be spent on its display factory in Asan, which produces OLED screens for mobile phones. Samsung uses OLED screens for its high-end Galaxy smartphones. The advanced displays have allowed Samsung to distinguish its Galaxy phones from rivals with curved forms. Samsung is the dominant supplier and OLED screens for mobile devices are a lucrative business for the company, along with memory chips.
Samsung added that it is considering adding more semiconductor production lines in its factory in Xi’an, China w