Oracle’s Hurd predicts huge cyber-attacks

Posted on October 3, 2017 by - News

oracleOracle CEO Mark Hurd told the assembled throngs at OpenWorld that is becoming an essential resource for customers looking to cut costs and reduce risk.

He warned that the business community hasn’t seen a truly shocking cyberattack just yet. But it certainly will.

“I’m telling you, the next event might be bigger than you think”,  he said. “This thing is going to get more serious, not less serious.”

Oracle wants companies to offload software administration duties onto its cloud.

That’s a facet of a multitude of new products, from an autonomous database to a blockchain service to upgrades across dozens of Software-as-a-Service applications.

Hurd said need cloud providers to cut their IT budgets and take the operational load off their staff, especially when it comes to security problems.

While digital transformation is expected, IT budgets are not increasing, and almost every security upgrade motivated by a high-profile intrusion cuts into the customer’s innovation spend, Hurd said.

 

Bytes buys Phoenix

Posted on October 2, 2017 by - News

Fawkes_WB_F2_FawkesMeetingHarryPotter_Still_100615_LandBytes has acquired York-based Phoenix Software in a bid to get better UK coverage.

Phoenix, which has an annual turnover in the region of £130 million will give it a large slice of action in the North of England as well as ramping up its own revenues to around the £400 million, which is not to be sneezed at.

Neil Murphy, Group MD, Bytes UK said: “The acquisition comes at an opportune time for Bytes UK as it looks to expand much further into the public sector, from where Phoenix derives a significant percentage of its revenue.

“This now makes Bytes UK Microsoft’s largest UK partner, whilst also opening the door to relationships with other global vendors such as EMC and Dell and deepening relationships with VMWare, Checkpoint, Citrix, Mimecast and Sophos to name a few.”

Phoenix Software managing director Sam Mudd,, said that the combination of the two firms would benefit both its staff and customers.

“This is extremely positive news and our announcement has come at the right time for our company and staff, in terms of navigating the fast-changing world of IT in which we operate and the channel consolidation that is taking place. We see plenty of synergies and are excited about working with new complementary offerings, and taking our joint businesses forward with ambitious growth plans across all our vertical sectors”, he said.

Healthcare will be a key market for AI

Posted on October 2, 2017 by - News

Medieval-Doctors-Dissection-of-a-CadaverAllied Market Research claims that healthcare will be a key market for AI resellers.

In a report with a catchy title “Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Healthcare Market: Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2017-2023″Allied Market Research claims that the the global AI in Healthcare market was valued at $1,441 million in 2016. It is projected to reach $22,790 million by 2023.

This is a CAGR growth of 48 percent from 2017 to 2023. The hardware AI for segment is anticipated to grow at the highest rate from 2017 to 2023.

AI involves the science and engineering of intelligent computer programs. It uses various computer functions such reasoning, learning and problem solving based on human intelligence. AI systems can be used in various disciplines such as biology, computer science, mathematics, linguistics, psychology, and engineering to build an intelligent system. Some of the different applications that incorporate the AI systems in healthcare fields are medication management, treatment plans, and drug discovery.

The report said that the global AI in Healthcare market is driven by the ability of the tech to improve “patient outcomes”, an increase in need for coordination between healthcare workforce and patients, the rise in adoption of “precision medicine”, and remarkable growth in venture capital investments. In addition, the significant use of big data in the healthcare sector is expected to fuel market growth. However, lack of standard regulations and guidelines and reluctance among healthcare professionals to adopt AI-based technologies are expected to impede the market growth. The possibility of using AI-based tools for elderly care and untapped potential of emerging markets, such as China and India, are expected to provide various opportunities for the market.

The deep learning segment accounted for the highest share in 2016 and is expected to dominate the market from 2017 to 2023, owing to increase in use of signal reduction, data mining, and image recognition. The natural language processing segment witnessed the highest growth rate in 2016, the report said.

Presently, the healthcare provider segment dominates and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 46.9 percent during the forecast period. Increase in usage & application of AI systems is expected to improve patient outcomes and maintain electronic health records (EHR) & patient records to boost the market growth, it concluded.

High end PCs are money spinners

Posted on October 2, 2017 by - News

3943695341_b497afcbcc_bWhile the rest of the PC market is pretty much pants, the high-end and gamer desktop PC area is doing well for channel partners, according to a study from TECHnalysis

TECHnalysis principal analyst Bob O’Donnell said the high end of the desktop market where enthusiasts like to build their own systems and where businesses will buy custom-built white box systems from companies like Falcon Northwest are doing well.

Gamers and enthusiasts will build their own systems with components – including CPUs from Intel and AMD – bought through the channel, O’Donnell said. Some organisations looking for customised and specialised white box systems also will turn to the channel.

Others will look to their local computer stores for desktops, he said.

“They’re not running out to buy an HP at Best Buy”, O’Donnell said. “They go to the local guy… Small businesses want to work with their local PC partners.”

Those local companies can help organisations optimise the systems for their businesses, from choosing the right CPU and motherboard to configuring the memory, he said.

A reinvigorated AMD emerging as a rival to Intel – which has dominated the PC chip market for years – and the channel has a lot to choose from, O’Donnell said.

O’Donnell added that for the channel, this competition and the innovation that will result will prove beneficial.

“Anything that can spark interest in high-performance desktops and gives [users] the ability to upgrade…gets people fired up and going”, he said.

Dell EMC will offer Azure Stack

Posted on September 29, 2017 by - News

IMG_1049Dell EMC has signed an agreement with Microsoft to provide w Azure Stack through its channel partners.

Dell EMC was announced as one of three hardware vendors launching the Azure Stack, alongside HPE e and Lenovo. Cisco has since been added. The Azure Stack is an extension of Microsoft Azure, bringing the cloud capabilities to on-premise environments. The solution started shipping earlier this month.

Dell EMC also announced a range of services and updates around backup, data protection and hyperconverged infrastructure management.

“Dell EMC values the strong collaboration we have had with Microsoft for more than 30 years, which has resulted in world-class, innovative solutions delivered to customers worldwide”,  said Armughan Ahmad, senior VP at Dell EMC. No surprises there, then.

“The innovations we’re announcing today are evidence of how our work with Microsoft has truly changed how our customers conduct their day-to-day activities, enabling them to gain greater value from their IT infrastructures and, more importantly, develop and deliver services to help achieve their ultimate business goals.”

Eamon Moore, managing director at Dell EMC and Microsoft partner EMIT, said the partnership means partners can offer a solution to customers no matter how they want their infrastructure to look.

“A lot of customers will have been very pro Microsoft and pro Azure but might not have been able to adapt for certain reasons”, he said. “Now companies that partner with both [Dell EMC and Microsoft] can give a solution no matter what the requirements are.

“If you look at the future of cloud, we’re seeing, for various reasons, that customers might need to go with a hybrid approach, so it fits perfectly into that. We all see that hybrid is the future, so this will give all the advantages and solutions available on Azure in a hybrid platform.

“It’s almost the missing piece to now give an overall solution to customers and not be hindered by certain assets [that need to remain on-premise] that you might have been hindered by in the past.”

Sword buys Microsoft Gold Partner Minttulip.

Posted on September 29, 2017 by - News

damoclesSword IT Solutions has written a cheque for the Amersham-based Microsoft Gold Partner Minttulip.

The deal sees Sword bolster its capabilities around Microsoft’s workplace offerings, as it looks to expand the business through both organic growth and acquisitions over the coming years.

Dave Bruce, CEO of Sword IT Solutions, said: “This acquisition sees the coming together of two teams with a clear focus on helping businesses unlock their competitive advantage via deployment of Microsoft technologies to enable the modern digital workplace.

“We will build on their excellent relationship with Microsoft and bring our joint offering to both established Sword clients and to the diverse range of Minttulip customers.

“From a strategic standpoint, we aim to significantly increase the size of our business in the coming years and we’re sure this will prove to be a significant step on that journey. Our management team sees a real opportunity to bring our proven track record for delivering growth to a relatively young yet thriving, modern and exciting business.”

The acquisition adds to Sword’s existing bases in London, Edinburgh and Aberdeen, where it employees a total of around 200 staff.

Silobreaker teams up with Flashpoint

Posted on September 29, 2017 by - News

146254531f573f596c1c55fed91b5fb4Intelligence technology provider Silobreaker has announced a partnership with Business Risk Intelligence outfit Flashpoint.

The big idea is that Silobreaker and Flashpoint will create products which “empower” organisations to predict, detect and mitigate risk of all kinds by turning unstructured data into timely and actionable intelligence.

Silobreaker CEO Kristofer Mansson said the move was a major development for open source intelligence.

“Flashpoint is a market leader in accessing unique data in hard-to-get-to places on the web, while our emphasis is on building technology that makes sense of any kind of unstructured data. Bringing the two together creates a powerful combination that can dramatically improve an organisation’s intelligence efforts, both tactically and strategically.”

Flashpoint’s data is being ingested by Silobreaker’s platform, where it is indexed and fully integrated for use across all analytical tools, visualisations and workflow features. When correlated with Silobreaker’s open source data, this combination empowers customers to move seamlessly between the two data-sets in a single application, expanding their analyses to include both.

Flashpoint CEO and Co-Founder, Josh Lefkowitz, added: “While Silobreaker users can now benefit from access to Flashpoint’s Finished Intelligence and Deep & Dark Web datasets, we can offer our customers access to Silobreaker’s capabilities, namely hundreds of thousands of open sources, powerful analytics and a range of visualisation, reporting and alerting tools. We’re really excited to see where this partnership will take us.”

Access to Flashpoint data in Silobreaker requires licences from both companies.

 

UK firms overloaded with old networking gear

Posted on September 28, 2017 by - News

QUETTA, PAKISTAN, NOV 14: A labor dangerously travels on his overloaded donkey-cart passes through a road which may cause of any serious accident needs the attention of concerned department in Quetta on Monday, November 14, 2011. (Arsalan Naseer/PPI Images).

Research from Ciena has discovered that a fifth of UK firms are still using hardware that is over three years old.

The research showed 27 percent of UK firms using WAN connections of up to five years old. The old kit is unlikely to meet current standards, deliver high-speeds or help those firms that are keen to unlock cost efficiencies across the organisation.

There were also signs that a number of users would invest in site-to-site fibre to make sure they could get better data speeds.

Ciena vice president and general manager Keri Gilder said: “As traffic volumes in both the data centre and in the office environment continue to surge, businesses are looking to extract maximum value from their infrastructure investments. As the study shows, investment in external WAN bandwidth and interconnects is critical, but if it’s being connected to legacy equipment, the potential benefits of better and fluid bandwidth won’t be realised.”

The Ciena research aimed to compare the situation in the UK with that in Germany and businesses here came up short when compared to their continental counterparts.

The mean average spent annually on data centre network infrastructure is £161,000 in the UK, with an additional £86,000 being spent on WAN and interconnects. In Germany, the average spent was €326,000 annually on data centre network infrastructure and €140,000 on WAN and other interconnects.

Huawei launches a mobile cloud

Posted on September 28, 2017 by - News

56f884651f7b35416b9b4ca955d350b3--pom-pom-mobile-cloud-mobileHuawei is launching its own Mobile Cloud service.

The Chinese company promises that the service will allow consumers to backup and restore their data and phone settings wirelessly, synchronise and easily transfer data across Huawei mobile devices, as well as store and access files safely using Cloud Drive. Subscribed users to the Huawei Mobile Cloud will receive 5GB of free cloud storage.

From September onwards, the Huawei Mobile Cloud update will be gradually rolled out on the Huawei P10, P10 Plus, P10 lite and Nova 2, with other models to follow in due course. All photos and videos taken with the camera, screenshots and screen recordings can be automatically backed up to Cloud. Users can simply access them from their browser at cloud.huawei.com or from the Gallery App on their device.

Data can also be automatically synchronised across all Huawei mobile phones, so it’s quick and easy to access Contacts, Calendar, Wi-Fi and Notes using the Huawei ID. This data can also be managed through the Cloud Web Portal. At launch, Huawei Mobile Cloud will offer 5GB of free cloud storage and there will be the option to upgrade and purchase more storage plans from 2018 onwards.

Security conscious consumers will be safe in the knowledge that all data is stored exclusively within the EU on European servers, in compliance with EU Data Protection and Privacy Laws. All the services have been designed with user privacy in mind and the Huawei Mobile Cloud Services are certified by CSA Star.

Huawei Western Europe’s consumer business  president of Walter Ji, said: “The launch of Huawei Mobile Cloud highlights our commitment as a business to creating a more convenient mobile experience for our users, all the while assuring them that their data can easily be backed up and restored, as well as remaining secure. All files and photos stay within EU servers and we have local Legal, Security and Privacy expert teams in EU, to give users complete peace of mind.”

 

Google gets a per-second cloud

Posted on September 28, 2017 by - News

Ominous Clouds over Dublin CityGoogle has extended per-second billing to a range of services on its Cloud Platform, after Amazon Web Services (AWS) moved to the same system last week.

Paul Nash, group product manager of Compute Engine at Google, played down the significance of the new billing model saying that Google has offered per-second billing for its Persistent Disks storage service since 2013. He said that the difference between per-minute and per-second billing is very small anyway.

“On the other hand, changing from per-hour billing to per-minute billing makes a big difference for applications – especially websites, mobile apps and data processing jobs – that get traffic spikes. The ability to scale up and down quickly could come at a significant cost if you had to pay for those machines for the full hour when you only needed them for a few minutes.”

Google said  its per-second model will be available on a range of operating systems including Windows, which AWS said would be excluded from its own per-second offering.

Staff start exiting Tintri

Posted on September 27, 2017 by - News

42BE314500000578-4737070-image-a-47_1501179802781While Tintri has refused to say much about its company wide decimation plans, it appears that some top managers are already clearing out their desks and sticking their personal positions into old photocopy paper boxes.

The vendor said last week that it would be cutting over 10 per cent of its workforce by the end of October to “drive efficiencies” in its sales organisation. The cuts were understood to be worldwide.

Tintri’s former senior channel manager Mark Hughes has since confirmed his departure in a LinkedIn post.

The vendor first confirmed the redundancies in a filing with the US Securities and Exchanges Commission last week, revealing that the board of directors approved the cuts on 18 September.

“The restructuring is part of an overall plan to drive efficiencies in the company’s sale organisation and other business units,” the filing stated.

Tintri’s went public earlier this year and its share price tanked by 50 percent since its first day of trading.

In its most recent quarterly filing Tintri recorded a 27 percent year-on-year revenue jump for the three months ending 31 July, up to $34.9 million. Its operating loss however doubled to $49.1 million.

Tintri shareholders are furious and several law firms have announced plans to take action against Tintri on behalf of shareholders over “possible violations of federal securities laws”.

Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz have filed a class action which alleges that Tintri made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose material information in connection with its IPO.

On September 7, 2017, Tintri announced its second quarter results, reporting revenue at the low end of analysts’ expectations and weaker than expected third quarter guidance. The Company projected revenues to increase just slightly quarter over quarter to $36-$37 million compared to expectations of $42.5 million, the lawyers said.  Following this news, Tintri’s stock price dropped over 31 percent to close at $4.55 per share on September 8, 2017, which caused investors harm.

Microsoft wants AI everywhere

Posted on September 27, 2017 by - News

kinopoisk.ru

kinopoisk.ru

Software King of the World Microsoft has said that you can never have too much AI.  It has been short of ordinary intelligence for years so I guess it could do with a little injection of nous.

CEO Satya Nadella told the assorted throngs at its Ignition event in Florida that “a little bit of machine learning here and there” was not enough.

He said that AI needs to become a more integral element of IT.

“It’s no longer about deploying one AI system or doing a little bit of machine learning here and there,” he said. “It is about, in fact, changing the culture inside our organisations so that we understand very deeply what it means to create these digital feedback loops across all these outcomes.

“These new virtuous cycles between our products, their usage, their creation of data and the business model, that’s what we’ve got to get intuitively.

“In fact even for us at Microsoft, that’s the process of transformation we’re going through as we change the nature of our products, we change the nature of how we engage with you as our customers and partners.”

At Ignition, Vole  introduced a range of AI-driven updates for Dynamic 365, as well as a new set of machine-learning tools for developers working with Microsoft Azure.

 

 

Apple sticks spanner in Toshiba sale

Posted on September 27, 2017 by - News

apple-disney-dreams-snow-white-Favim.com-142405The fruity cargo cult Apple is holding up the sale of Toshiba’s memory chip business.

An agreement worth over $18 billion for Toshiba was announced last week, with the winning bidder a consortium led by Bain Capital and including Apple and Dell.

However Tosh has been telling its banks that Apple is stalling and apparently one of the failed bidders, KKR, is now trying to tempt Apple to switch sides.  Apple had previously opposed KKR’s bid because its consortium included Western Digital, which is a joint investor in TSMC’s flash memory facility.

Apple, which is the biggest consumer of the memory chips, feared that Western Digital’s involvement would consolidate the market too much and lead to less competitive pricing, Bloomberg said.

Western Digital has since pulled out of the consortium and is seeking to block Bain Capital’s bid.

If KKR is able to persuade Apple to switch sides at the last minute, it could upset a deal that had looked like it would end months of twists and turns in finding a buyer for Toshiba’s family jewels.

Tosh needs cash to shore up a balance sheet destroyed by a failed foray into the nuclear power equipment industry and is facing a deadline in March to complete a deal or be delisted from the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

PCM buys a Liverpool cloud

Posted on September 26, 2017 by - News

Liverpool-X2US reseller giant PCM has written a cheque for Liverpool-based cloud service provider Stack Technology.

PCM entered the UK by starting a local operation from scratch in May, but hinted at the time that it may look to back this up with an acquisition.

Stack bills itself as a specialist in cloud, security, virtualisation, data services, unified communications and infrastructure, and has two accredited cloud datacentres.  It is worth about £2.9 million.

PCM said the acquisition will speed its efforts to pick up vendors in the UK and boost its managed services prowess.

PCM CEO Frank Khulusi said: “The acquisition of The Stack Group is a key milestone for our new UK segment to further support our clients’ needs in the services and solutions market.

“As a leading provider in North America, we continue to look for ways to accelerate market share gains and this acquisition will allow us to expand on our offerings not only to new customers in the UK and European markets, but also to our global customers based in North America. We are pleased to welcome The Stack Group team to the rest of the PCM family and look forward to jointly providing world-class services and solutions to our clients across the globe.”

Stack will add the following vendors Cisco, Citrix, Dell EMC, Fortinet Meru, NetApp, Nutanix, Sophos, Veeam, VMware, Ubiquiti Networks and Zerto.

Fintech awareness increasing

Posted on September 26, 2017 by - News

fintech_shutterstock_502994557Fintech awareness is growing among UK businesses, according to a survey by business finance company MarketInvoice.

The survey found that 77 percent of UK businesses are aware of fintech products and services and 65 percent have adopted at least one fintech application, with 19 percent taking on four.

Those who adopt it claim to be saving more than £5,500 a year as a result of using fintech products and services and 23 percent of them are using fintech products and services for banking transactions, while 16 percent are using it for foreign exchange services.

Meanwhile, 24 percent reported using cloud-based software for their accountancy functions and 32 percent used online lenders for business loans or invoice finance.

MarketInvoice claimed the £4.6 billion saving for US businesses is based on FSB statistics which show there are 5.5 million businesses in the UK, of which 1.3 million are employing businesses. The £4.6bn is achieved by multiplying 65 percent of 1.3 million businesses by £5,500 – the average annual savings by adopting fintech services.

Anil Stocker, CEO and co-founder of MarketInvoice said that the expansion of tech-driven digital services has been remarkable over the past five years.

“We know that consumers have been adopting tech applications into all parts of their lives, but our research shows that UK businesses are now also becoming tech-savvy.”

Stocker said fintech applications are revolutionising the way business is being done, from how employees report their expenses to the way businesses report their financial performance.