Author: Nick Farrell

NHS England needs to address bidding process

NHS England needs to address growing public concern about the £480 million contract to operate its Federated Data Platform (FDP), according to the National Data Guardian for Health and Social Care.

Writing in her bog, Dr Nicola Byrne said she wants to address growing public concerns about NHS England’s FDP contract “so that it does not lose public support and so that planning and research do not suffer.”

Byrne said NHS England gave her a high-level communications plan last week and said the Professional Record Standards Body will be engaged to help design the FDP.

Public cloud spending set to increase

Beancounters at IDC have added up some numbers, divided by their collective shoe size, and projected that worldwide expenditure on public cloud services will surge to $1.35 trillion by 2027.

While the pace of annual spending growth in the Public Cloud Services market is anticipated to experience a marginal decline during the period from 2023 to 2027, the market is predicted to achieve an impressive compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19.9 per cent over five years.

IDC Eileen Smith Program Vice President of Data & Analytics  said organisations have widely adopted public cloud solutions as a cost-efficient means of hosting enterprise applications and facilitating the creation and deployment of consumer-centric solutions.

CityFibre connects three million

CityFibre has connected three million premises as it continues its full-fibre network rollout to reach up to a third of the UK.

CityFibre passed 2m homes in September 2022 and is on course to deliver a million Ready For Service premises to ISPs by the end of this year.

CityFibre began the construction of its access network in 2018, commencing mobilisation in its first 12 towns and cities and has since achieved primary build complete status in multiple locations including Milton Keynes, Stirling, Peterborough and Coventry. In its most mature locations, such as Milton Keynes, ISP partners are now approaching 30 per cent take-up with other locations growing on a similar trajectory.

NP Digital opens in France

NP Digital has announced a major expansion in Europe with the opening of its France office under the leadership of Frédéric Joseph.

The company said its French expansion follows growth in Europe, including offices in Italy, Germany, and Spain this year and the UK in 2021.

The new region aims to meet strong demand from French brands eager to benefit from the specialised expertise at NP Digital on an international scale. NP Digital France will focus on providing customized solutions for B2B and B2C brands with a commitment to ethical and sustainable development.

Cloudy company might have been busted by ransomware

A cloud hosting firm lost a “majority” of its customer data after a ransomware attack infected the company’s systems.

“Unfortunately, it has proved impossible to recreate more data, and the majority of our customers have thus lost all data with us,” CloudNordic wrote in a translated post.

CloudNordic supplies servers to host email, websites, and other IT services for its customers. But the attack is so devastating CloudNordic must start from scratch in rebuilding the company’s IT systems.

“In addition to data, we also lost all our systems and servers and have had difficulty communicating,” the company says.

Gamma Communications has acquired MSSP Satisnet.

Unified comms outfit Gamma Communications has acquired MSSP Satisnet.

The acquisition gives Gamma access to an established operation that has been trading since 2004 and comes with 48 staff and 1,000 customers.

The managed security services provider (MSSP) has a track record of helping customers with assessments and vulnerability discovery options, as well as risk mitigation and the deployment of cyber attack defences.

The firm has relationships with a number of leading vendors in the security market, including IBM, Microsoft and Tenable.

Global roaming fraud will reach $8 billion by 2028

A new study from Juniper Research has found losses from global roaming fraud are anticipated to exceed $8 billion by 2028; driven by the increase in bilateral roaming agreements for data-intensive use cases over 5G networks.

The new report: Global Roaming Fraud Market 2023-2028 predicts that fraudulent data traffic will account for 80 per cent of global operator roaming-based losses by 2024.

As 2G and 3G networks are sunsetting, operators are accelerating the transition to 5G and VoLTE roaming services to leverage the high levels of virtualisation and lower operational costs.

However, the highly virtualised nature of 5G networks is creating more opportunities for fraudsters to deploy their attacks; leaving operator networks open to emerging fraud tactics over 5G networks.

Redcentric saw pretax loss

MSP Redcentric reported a swing to fiscal 2023 pretax loss as operating expenses more than doubled and declared a flat dividend payout.

The IT managed-services provider said that pretax loss for the year ended March 31 was £12.5 million compared with a profit of £5.5 million in fiscal 2022.

The company reported an operating expenditure increase to £9.9 million from £53.0 million a year ago. Revenue, however, jumped to £141.7 million from £93.3 million.

Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation–which strips out exceptional and other one-off items–rose 3.3 per cent to £24.5 million.

Watchdog sniffs out the Adobe-Figma merger

The Competition and Markets Authority has found that the proposed Adobe-Figma merger could potentially negatively affect the UK digital economy.
The CMA found that this acquisition is restricting some digital apps, websites and other products in the country, ultimately harming the country’s digital economy as businesses using these tools get affected.

Adobe is well known in the global software industry and specialises in photo editing, video editing, motion designing and other such interactive content tools while the 2012-founded Figma is a leader in screen designing and whiteboarding tools.

Screen designing software is crucial for making digital products and they are extensively used for making websites and applications. In September last year, Adobe announced that they are buying Figma for $20 billion.

Metropolitan Police concerned about supplier breach

London’s Metropolitan Police said it was taking extra security measures after “unauthorised access to the IT system of one of its suppliers”, following data breaches at other forces.

It said the company in question had access to the names, ranks, photos, vetting levels and pay numbers for officers and staff but not addresses, phone numbers or financial details.

The Sun on Sunday newspaper reported that “cyber crooks penetrated the IT systems” of the firm which reportedly prints identity cards and staff passes for the Met, the UK’s biggest police force.

Trend Micro improves its MSSP partner programme

Trend Micro is extending its partner programme to help them build and grow MDR and SOC-as-as-service offerings.

The vendor hopes the new programme will further enable the global ecosystem of MSSP partners that customers rely on amidst a cybersecurity skills shortage.

Dubbed the Trend Vision One for Service Providers, the programme provides turnkey threat detection and response with extended SOAR capabilities, Trend Micro says.

Crayon draws growth of 23 per cent in second quarter

Licensing MSP, Crayon, has reported gross profit growth of 23 per cent in its second-quarter results.

The company saw £110 million in gross profit in the second quarter with its software and cloud its fastest growing business at 30 per cent growth, while its consulting, software and cloud economics businesses followed on at 29 and 28 per cent.

Europe was Crayon’s biggest growing market in the second quarter with 50 per cent gross profit growth, followed by the US at 31 per cent.

GlobalData claims Generative AI will change automotive industry

Generative artificial intelligence (genAI) will combat some of the auto industry’s critical challenges and make operations more efficient, sales more effective, products safer, and customers more satisfied, according to a GlobalData report.

GlobalData Practice Head of Disruptive Tech Kiran Raj said that the next decade will be make-or-break for automakers, requiring them to adopt transformative innovations or risk relinquishing control to major tech companies.

“With sustainability demands, electric revolutions, capacity challenges, and shifting mobility trends, the clock is ticking for automotive leaders,” he said.

Pure Storage expands Microsoft partnership

Pure Storage has announced an expanded, multi-year product and go-to-market partnership with Microsoft to deliver Pure’s storage capabilities to native Microsoft Azure services.

The new product will use  Azure’s new Premium SSD v2 and introduce customers to Azure VMware Solution (AVS) in Preview.

Pure Cloud Block Store for Azure VMware Solutions is in Preview in 16 Azure regions globally.

The company claims that with the joint solution, customers can access enhanced features and functions. Topping the list is Optimising AVS costs. Pure Storage compression and deduplication technology means organisations can achieve a high data reduction ratio on VM workloads in Azure, the company claims.

 

Xalient swallows Integral

Canalys Forum EuropeServices provider Xalient has snapped up digital identity consulting and advisory firm Integral.

Founded in 2013 and focused exclusively on identity and access management, the addition of Integral grows Xalient’s presence in North America.

The deal also adds Integral’s consulting and advisory competencies around digital identity to complement London-HQ Xalient’s existing capabilities in managed services.

This will enable customers of both companies to benefit from a holistic and integrated suite of services, accelerating their zero-trust journeys to the cloud.