Azure hybrid storage: StorSimple

StorSimple overview | Microsoft

• "Cloud storage is used to offload inactive data from on-premises and for storing backup and archive data
• Inline deduplication and compression reduce storage growth rates and increase storage utilization
• Solid state drives (SSD) deliver low-cost input/output"

StorSimple Documentation | Azure

Introducing Microsoft Azure StorSimple - Microsoft Server and Cloud Platform Blog - Site Home - TechNet Blogs

AI, ML, MI: Toyota $1B, Google TensorFlow, BrainRank (!)

Here's Why Toyota Is Spending $1 Billion On AI In Silicon Valley - Fortune
"Toyota Motor Co is getting serious with its work on autonomous cars and robotics. The world’s largest automaker said Friday it will invest $1 billion over the next five years in a new research center for Artificial Intelligence to be based in Silicon Valley"

Toyota's $1 billion AI company will develop self-driving cars and robot helpers | The Verge

In the meantime Google already has working self-driving cars, as well as Tesla Motors. 

And Google is using AI to enhance its search algorithms and everything else...

The terminology is also shifting slightly, Artificial Intelligence, then Machine Learning,
and now is Machine Intelligence

Home — TensorFlow
"TensorFlow is an Open Source Software Library for Machine Intelligence"
"TensorFlow™ is an open source software library for numerical computation using data flow graphs. Nodes in the graph represent mathematical operations, while the graph edges represent the multidimensional data arrays (tensors) communicated between them. The flexible architecture allows you to deploy computation to one or more CPUs or GPUs in a desktop, server, or mobile device with a single API. TensorFlow was originally developed by researchers and engineers working on the Google Brain Team within Google's Machine Intelligence research organization for the purposes of conducting machine learning and deep neural networks research, but the system is general enough to be applicable in a wide variety of other domains as well."

download.tensorflow.org/paper/whitepaper2015.pdf

Google Just Open Sourced TensorFlow, Its Artificial Intelligence Engine | WIRED

TensorFlow, Google's Open Source AI, Signals Big Changes in Hardware Too | WIRED
"IN OPEN SOURCING its artificial intelligence engine—freely sharing one of its most important creations with the rest of the Internet—Google showed how the world of computer software is changing."

Google Turning Its Lucrative Web Search Over to AI Machines - Bloomberg Business

RankBrain: A Primer on Google’s Artificial Intelligence Technology | WordStream

"RankBrain is the nickname given to the proprietary artificial intelligence (or AI) used by Google to handle search queries. The AI may never be given a formal name, or maybe RankBrain will stick, but for now, it’s the name being used for the artificial intelligence that’s handling 15% of Google’s search volume.
An important distinction to be aware of is that RankBrain is not (currently) a standalone technology at Google – it’s incorporated directly into the existing algorithm that Google uses to rank web pages. "