Oracle refugee replaces Greene on Google’s cloud

Thomas Kurian, former Oracle President of product development and technologist, is going to head Google Cloud from early next year.

The current CEO of Google Cloud Diane Greene will continue through January, working with Mr Kurian to ensure a smooth transition and will remain a Director on the board of Alphabet, Google’s parent company.

Kurian worked at Oracle for 22 years but quit over disagreements with Executive Chairman and CTO Larry Ellison over the future course of the company as the Cloud business gets highly competitive.

“Kurian, a respected technologist and executive, will be joining Google Cloud on November 26 and transitioning into the Google Cloud leadership role in early 2019”, Ms Greene said in a statement on Friday.

UK government falling behind on Cyber Crime

Hacker typing on a laptop

Ministers are not acting with “a meaningful sense of purpose or urgency” in the face of a growing cyber threat to the UK’s critical national infrastructure (CNI), a parliamentary committee has warned.

The joint committee on national security strategy said at a time when states such as Russia were expanding their capability to mount disruptive cyber-attacks, the UK’s level of ministerial oversight was “wholly inadequate”.

It urged Theresa May to appoint a cybersecurity minister in cabinet to take charge of the efforts to build national resilience.

Ciena launches new Ciena Partner Network

Networking systems outfit Ciena launched a new Ciena Partner Network (CPN), as it moves away from a “one-size fits all” model.

The CPN programme is designed to enable and reward all partner business models from a single platform and allows Ciena partners to access resources to deliver training and come up with joint business plans to react to changes in the market and better work with other reseller partners.

It helps partners to reduce time to market, drive incremental sales, expand technical expertise and deliver measurable outcomes, Ciena said.

Ciena’s Partner Academy certification program also offers the same comprehensive training as the firm’s staff, while the Solution Enable Toolkits (SETs) allow businesses to build specialised Data Center Interconnect (DCI) and Ethernet offerings based on Ciena products.

Sandra Glaser Cheek, vice president of Global Partners and Alliances at Ciena, said that the outfit’s new partner programme complements the adaptive Network approach to help Ciena clients and partners adapt to changing market conditions.

“By moving away from the traditional programme structure to a more collaborative, personalised and empowering approach, our CPN programme delivers unprecedented flexibility and customisation that harnesses the unique value of each partner.”

The Ciena Partner Network will include more than 200 specialised, industry partners, including Anycomm, CenturyLink, Comcast, Kapsch, LightRiver, Windstream and Zayo.

 

SolarWinds adds 8MAN

IT management outfit SolarWinds has bought German Access Rights Management outfit 8MAN.

Kevin Thompson, CEO of SolarWinds said that SolarWinds was doing what it has done for almost 20 years—identifying gaps in the solution set for its customers and then working to fill that gap with an “easy-to-use, affordable solution”. The addition of an ARM product will help users deal with internal issues around system and data access.

Oracle snaps up Talari

It seems everyone wants a slice of SD-WAN – now Oracle has bought Talari to spruce up its offering.

For those who came in late the SD-WAN market has become one of those spaces that have the analysts predicting great growth. Now Oracle has acquired Talari. Talari has been actively pitching itself as a channel-friendly SD-WAN option, initially working with networking specialists but then attracting more activity with resellers with unified comms specialisms.Douglas Suriano, senior vice president and general manager, Oracle Communications Global Business Unit, said that the deal would combine the SD-WAN technology with its network management offering.

“Talari’s Failsafe SD-WAN solution complements Oracle’s enterprise communications portfolio by delivering high availability and Quality-of-Experience connectivity and cloud application access across any IP network with the reliability and predictability of private networks,” he said.

CEO of Talari Networks, Patrick Sweeney said that SD-WAN played a significant role in digital transformation projects and it came to Oracle with a 500 enterprise strong customer base across 40 countries.

“When the transaction closes, we’ll serve a vastly expanded landscape with Oracle, Both company’s customers will be the beneficiaries of this transaction.”

Vet-tech start-up brings AI for pets to market

A veterinary research and development company set to revolutionise the UK and global pet market has filed patents for artificial intelligence (AI) technology.

Founded in early 2017 by tech expert Paul Hallett and experienced veterinarian Robert Dawson, Vet-AI is an R&D company developing a number of solutions that focus on supporting pets, vets and giving pet parents the tools to access care more affordably and conveniently when their pets need it most. The company’s flagship brand, Joii, is set to launch in April 2019.

Hybrid Cloud is the ideal

A new report shows that most enterprises plan to increase hybrid cloud usage, with 91 percent stating hybrid cloud as the ideal, even though only 19 percent have that model now.

Nutanix has  shared the findings of its first annual global Enterprise Cloud Index, measuring enterprise plans for adopting private, hybrid and public clouds.

The new report found that application mobility across any cloud is a top priority with 88 percent of respondents saying it would “solve a lot of my problems”.

Getronics opens a new technology and IT services division

Getronics has opened a new technology and IT services division focused exclusively on  private equity and investment banking communities seeking to unlock or create new value from companies.

Getronics’ new Investment Services Group (ISG) will provide a one-stop IT shop for investors, spanning pre-transaction audit, initial integration, transformation and managed service/IT outsourcing propositions from Getronics’ core IT platform.

Robots becoming more popular, claims Gartner

Beancounters at Gartner claim that robotic process automation (RPA) is becoming increasingly popular with large enterprises.

This means that global spend on the software will hit $680 million (£524 million) in 2018  a figure which is a 57 percent year-on-year increase from 2017.

Big G said that those adopting the technology are companies that specialise in insurance, utilities and communications and banks.

Cathy Tornbohm, vice president at Gartner said: “Typically, these organisations struggle to knit together the different elements of their accounting and HR systems,

Anderson Zaks focuses on partner channel with new appointments

UK omni-channel Payment Service Provider (PSP) Anderson Zaks, has announced a new focus on its partner channel, with several new partners signed in recent months.  The company is undergoing an expansion across the board with new appointments in its sales, marketing, development, quality assurance and support teams as it broadens its product and service offering in light of payments industry deregulation associated with the second Payment Services Directive (PSD2).

Rubrik launches Accelerator for Microsoft Azure

Cloud data management company, Rubrik launched its Rubrik Accelerator for Microsoft Azure to offer its enterprise customers what it describes as a “single solution” to protect and manage data from on-premises to Microsoft Azure.

Rubrik Accelerator for Azure adds to the Company’s already popular offering for Microsoft customers which features automated data protection for Microsoft Hyper-V, support for physical Windows, and instant database recoveries with SQL Live Mount.

Mike Tornincasa, Executive Vice President, Worldwide Sales at Rubrik said: ““Every enterprise customer I speak with has cloud ambitions. However, many organizations are held back by complex legacy data management solutions that keep the cloud migration process out of reach. The Rubrik Accelerator for Microsoft Azure makes it easy for enterprises to move to a hybrid cloud model, and in turn, innovate faster, be more productive and unlock cost-savings. Additionally, Rubrik offers customers the ability to manage their entire Microsoft investment on one platform, across on-premises and public cloud environments.”

Microsoft gave it its imprimatur. “Rubrik shares a commitment with Microsoft to drive business results for our customers”, said David Willis, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft’s US Partner Group. “Our deep collaboration with Rubrik is exciting. Together, we enable our mutual customers to accelerate their Digital Transformation with Azure and deliver for their customers.”

Rubrik continues to align with Microsoft on technology and shared go-to-market investments. Rubrik pioneered Live Mount for SQL to deliver near-zero RTOs and introduced cloud instantiation on Azure for “server-less” test/dev and disaster recovery. Rubrik helps customers leverage the full power of Microsoft with integration across Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Office 365, Windows, Hyper-V, Azure Stack, and Azure Data Box. In addition, Rubrik offers support for Azure Government Cloud for customers in the federal space.

The Rubrik Accelerator for Microsoft Azure can be purchased from all Rubrik and Azure channel partners.

 

Armour partners with Global RadioData

Armour Communications has partnered with Global RadioData Communications (GRC) to provide a joint solution with 24/7 support. GRC has already secured its first two customers for the new combined solution that provides additional levels of security.

The new service is available via the UK Government Digital Marketplace G-Cloud 10, under the cloud hosting, software and support framework listed as SCYTALE Armour Comms.

Apple SMEs more vulnerable to Ransomware attacks

SMEs who base their systems around Apple software and hardware are more likely to be taken down in ransomware attacks according to a new study.

Datto Businesses third annual Global State of the Channel Ransomware Report said that there was a fivefold increase in the number of MSPs reporting ransomware attacks on macOS and iOS platforms over the last year.

Cisco spruces up its SD-WAN

Cisco is unifying its security and software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) technologies to help organisations embrace the cloud faster with choice and confidence.

Scott Harrell, senior vice president and general manager, Enterprise Networking at Cisco said the WAN is undergoing a radical transformation. Today, organisations host their applications in multiple clouds – public, private and SaaS.

Distributors see third quarter growth

Beancounters at Context have said that distributors across Europe have done well in the third quarter and should see more growth.

An analysis of how distribution has performed across Europe in the third quarter from Context showed that there was 7.1 percent year-on-year growth in Q3.

That growth can be added to 5.4 percent in the second quarter and the 4.7 percent generated in the first.