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Azure was something that wasn’t on very many developer radars at first. That is, until it teamed up with Mesosphere and Docker to create its own container scheduling and orchestration solution.1 The Azure Container Service entered general availability on April 19th, 2016 with developers able to access features such as Mesosphere’s DC/OS and Docker Swarm. These are particularly useful when working with microservices, running containers at scale in production, or utilizing containers in a testing environment.

Azure has been significantly focusing on its Big Data offerings, spearheaded by its Cortana Intelligence Suite. Azure utilizes elastic scaling in its SQL Data Warehouse, while users processing large-scale data workloads will want to consider signing up for a trial of Azure Data Lake. Data Lake offers users no fixed limits on file size or account size, with the ability to work with structured or unstructured data sets. SQL Data Warehouse offers enterprises looking to set up a hybrid cloud solution for their data flexibility in both storage and security.

For developers focused on building applications, Azure offers the ability to set up VMs with ease, without having to worry about manually scaling them. Azure auto-scales based on actual traffic, ensuring that applications will continue to function even under peak loads. Azure also supports nearly every common programming language, is the clear leader for .NET developers, and offers continuous deployment built into the platform. This means new code can be pushed at any time through GitHub, BitBucket, or Virtual Studio to ensure that crucial deadlines are met without issue.

Amazon AWS has a lot going for it when stacked up against nearly any competitor. Namely, its powerhouse of networking, storage, databases, and delivery/deployment options available to developers. Amazon EMR and Kinesis offer real-time data processing, along with the strength of the Hadoop framework. Developers can control their entire stack with AWS, making it an end-to-end solution ideal for enterprises with teams that are looking to manage and analyze their workflows from start to finish.

AWS offers customers not only EC2 for computing, but large-scale data storage such as S3 and Glacier, an ever-growing variety of databases to choose from, out-of-the-box deployment configuration, and load balancing. The benefit to utilizing AWS for many developers will ultimately be the insights, analytics, and level of control that AWS offers its users. By having access to the inner workings of one’s entire stack, enterprises can quickly drill down to locate problems and resolve them before end users are impacted by an issue, while bottlenecks or underperforming services can be isolated for review.

It goes without saying that the AWS cloud is also massive–Over 10x the size of its competitors. The size doesn’t affect its performance, as AWS has only experienced a handful of outages in its time. Overall, AWS has withstood the test of time, continuing to improve and upgrade its offerings to better serve their users while refusing to cut corners to do so.

Google burst onto the cloud computing scene in a big way with the announcement of theGoogle Container Engine and its own Google Cloud Platform, which have quickly gained a dedicated following. Google Cloud is also one of the more affordable solutions, while offering its users a wealth of tools for working with Big Data, such as Google BigQuery and Cloud DataProc. The Google Container Engine gains a significant boost for those interested in usingKubernetes as their container solution, as Kubernetes is optimized to run on the Google Cloud Platform.

When choosing which cloud provider to work with, you must consider not only the amount of storage required by your applications or the amount of data processed, but the overall goals of your organization. Whether looking for an end-to-end solution, a container orchestration setup, or a way to quickly build and deploy applications, every business will have varying needs.

Ultimately, Amazon AWS is the way to go for enterprises looking for an end-to-end solution to their system management both front-end and back-end. AWS offers not only massive storage capabilities, but is available in the most countries with the least amount of outages, while continuing to make constant improvements toward improving its services.

While the war between AWS, Azure, and Google shows no signs of slowing down, matchingyour organization’s overall goals with the solutions offered by a cloud provider is the first step toward streamlining your development workflow long-term.

Alex Miller is a business analyst at Clutch, a Washington, DC-based professional services and software consulting firm.

The robots were priced at around $8,000, not including electricity and repairs, making them cheaper than human staff. But except for the novelty value, it was a somewhat failed experiment.

However, robots are being used increasingly in customer support and care in a range of capacities. While there are none operating with complete autonomy, there are plenty of examples where robots have a functional purpose which they are successfully delivering.

You’re no doubt familiar with Pepper Robots, who partake a range of tasks including helping people at train stations in France, providing information and direction on trains. In Spain and France, they work in department stores, highlighting products and providing directions.

You may have seen Japan’s Henn na Hotel that is staffed largely by robots in both front desk and customer service tasks. But it’s not merely a one-off. Robotics company Savioke have created a robot called Relay for hotel delivery service. It can navigate autonomously, ride the elevator by itself, and carry items such as toothbrushes, towels, and snacks to guest rooms. It’s currently employed successfully in several US hotels. The robot – which uses Wi-Fi and 3D cameras to navigate around the hotel – doesn’t have arms, so it has to rely on its display screen to communicate with guests.

In Belgium, The Marriott Hotel Ghent employs “Mario” – designed to provide an extra level of client experience. Mario is deployed in the MICE (Meetings, Incentives, Conventions, Exhibitions) market for a welcome or farewell speech. Like many corporate mid-level execs, he also gives classic PowerPoint presentations. Mario sprung from the collection of Nao robots created by Aldebaran – the team behind Pepper, too.

Aldebaran’s Nao family of robots are also utilized at Hilton McLean in Virginia where “Connie,”  the first Watson-enabled robot concierge in the hospitality industry is employed.  Connie draws on domain knowledge from Watson and WayBlazer to inform guests on local tourist attractions, dining recommendations and hotel features and amenities. Using a combination of Watson APIs, including Dialog, Speech to Text, Text to Speech and Natural Language Classifier, Connie greets guests upon arrival and answers questions about hotel amenities, services and hours of operation.

Nao robots also have more serious  functions to serve. In Canada, they come in the form ofMEDi, employed at the Alberta Children’s Hospital. The robots are are specifically programmed with sets of behaviors that match the steps of a medical procedure, providing pain management support during medical procedures.

A study at the hospital involving 57 children between the ages of four and nine found the robots helped ease fears when children came in for flu shots. According to Tanya Beran, a professor of Community Health Sciences at the University of Calgary who helped program the robots, she says among those kids who interacted with the robot, the hospital reduced children’s pain and anxiety by half. MEDi is programmed to interact with kids for a wide range of procedures, starting with flu vaccines and blood draws and since expanding to include IV and catheter removal and brain-activity tests. Beran says they’re looking to add cast-cutting to MEDi’s skills soon.The use of robots in aged-care is also on the rise. Often a poorly paid, thus understaffed, sector, it’s not unreasonable to see a future where basic work and support tasks will be performed by robots or people assisted by robots or exoskeletons.

RIBA in Japan is the first robot that can lift up or set down a real human from or to a bed or wheelchair. RIBA does this using its very strong human-like arms and by novel tactile guidance methods using high-accuracy tactile sensors. RIBA was developed by integrating RIKEN’s control, sensor, and information processing and TRI’s material and structural design technologies.

Robots in hospitals also have a part of play in germ prevention. Xenex “germ zapping robots” are currently operational in a series of hospitals and aged care facilities in the US. The Xenex robot uses pulsed xenon to create broad spectrum, high intensity light covering the entire germicidal spectrum. The light quickly destroys harmful bacteria, viruses, fungi and bacterial spores on surfaces inside the facility.

Clearly the advent of machine learning means that robots are getting smarter. There’s also greater efforts to make robots more lifelike; This month saw the release of Jia Jia, developed at the University of Science and Technology of China, a human-looking robot which can speak, show micro-expressions, move its lips, and move its body.

The robot is not dissimilar in appearance to Chihira Junco, a robot released last year by Toshiba, employed as a greeter at a waterpark and public events. Junko speaks Japanese, English and Chinese and incorporates Toshiba’s speech synthesis technology.

Perhaps the most interesting robot I’ve seen of late comes from Boston Dynamics, who you may recall bought us the big dog robot. “Atlas, The Next Generation” is designed to operate outdoors and inside buildings. It is specialized for mobile manipulation, and electrically powered and hydraulically actuated. It uses sensors in its body and legs to balance and LIDAR and stereo sensors in its head to avoid obstacles, assess the terrain, help with navigation and manipulate objects. This version of Atlas is about 5′ 9″ tall  – about a head shorter than the DRC Atlas – and weighs 180 lbs. It’s not pretty enough to be functional in customer care but it sets an interesting – if a little sinister – look into robots of the future.

A new report from August Home and Comcast’s Xfinity Home includes survey results that indicate as many as 30 million households – about a quarter of the 124 million homes in America – in the U.S. are poised to add home-focused smart tech over the next 12 months.

In this survey, which included nearly 1,300 U.S. consumers, an incredible 18% indicated that they were strongly considering purchasing a new smart home product in the next 12 months. Of that percentage, 56% indicated that they had already installed at least one smart home product.

What about folks that have yet to make the leap to smart home technology? The survey revealed that 12% of respondents that fell into that category were planning on making a smart home product purchase in the next 12 months.

This effectively doubles the number of homes that are running smart home technologies to 30 million by this time next year.

One of the primary motivations behind this surge in home smart tech interest: security.

As many as 63% of the survey’s participants indicated that security was at near the top of the list of motivations behind their interest in smart home technologies.

“Smart home technology is creating a new paradigm for home security,” said Jason Johnson, CEO of August Home Inc. “The new era of smart security and smart home products offer consumers visibility and control over their homes that previously had not been available with traditional security systems.”

These security devices include Internet-enabled streaming cameras with two-way communication and remote recording, alarm systems with app integration, and even electronic doorbells that alert you when someone approaches your front door.

The reasons given for this sudden adoption of smart technologies include news of break-ins in the neighborhood (46%) and new home ownership (26%).

This doesn’t necessarily mean that security is the only reason for homeowners to purchase smart home technologies. In fact, 54% of survey participants indicated that solutions for remotely controlling lights are among their primary motivations for upgrading their home with 19% indicating that they’re interested in individually-controlled light bulbs.

Smart home technologies are also becoming increasingly inexpensive. As we move towards more inexpensive and readily-available smart devices, the barrier for any home to adopt smart tech is quickly fading away.

If there is one thing this survey shed light on, it’s that the Internet of Things is becoming more of a “thing” for homeowners across the country. This is good thing, as it has the potential of igniting a new wave of innovation and technology that consumers are hungry for.

So, whether you’re interested in connecting your home’s security system to your phone, monitoring your front porch through a video doorbell, or simply controlling your home’s lighting from your phone, you’re definitely not alone.