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Amazon announces new machine learning tools to help customers monitor machines and worker safety

November 28, 2020

AI-enhanced tools promise safety and efficiency gains in industrial settings, but privacy campaigners fear mission creep Amazon Web Services (AWS) on Tuesday launched five new industrial machine learning services aimed at helping industrial plants and factories to improve safety, operational efficiency, and quality control at their workplace. The company said that companies can use t

Salesforce goes social with Slack acquisition

November 18, 2020

The company is betting $28 billion on remote working Salesforce has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire popular workplace communication tool Slack, for about $27.7 billion. Rumours of the deal had initially surfaced last week, causing a spike in Slack’s stock price. The deal is by far the largest in Salesforce’s history. Under the terms of the agreement, Salesforce will gi

Women in tech: becoming a role model

November 18, 2020

As an under-represented group, there are fewer role models for women to follow and a lack of clear routes to get them to where they might want to be in the world of science and technology, says Anne-Marie Imafidon who co-founded the charity Stemettes in 2013 to help young women and non-binary people to open doors that might appear to be closed to them. Since then, Stemettes has supported 45,000 in

Massive AWS outage was caused by adding new servers to Kinesis

November 2, 2020

Red-faced Amazon says it will apply lessons learned to improve the reliability of its services Amazon Web Services (AWS) has revealed the actual cause of the massive outage that impacted thousands of online sites and services, including Amazon's own services, last week. According to the company, the outage was not driven by any memory issue in the network. Rather, it was triggered by

Five trends well see in 2021 as enterprises accelerate their cloud modernisation journeys

October 31, 2020

With light at the end of the pandemic tunnel, here are the key ways businesses will make the most of their investment in cloud Cloud has been the essential enterprise technology of 2020. It has provided organisations with the flexible and scalable platform they needed to weather the Covid-19 crisis. Now with light at the end of the tunnel for 2021, what trends will emerge in cloud co

UK commits 250 million to diversify 5G equipment sources

October 21, 2020

New investment will include spending on 5G diversification, local fibre networks and Shared Rural Network 4G initiative, government says The UK government will spend 250 million over next few years to diversify its 5G equipment supply chain and to help carriers remove Huawei 5G equipment from their mobile networks. Around 50 million of the sum will be made available next year to help

AWS outage hits companys own services

October 16, 2020

Sites like The Washington Post and Roku, as well as Amazon’s own services, were affected AWS - the backbone of many online services - experienced a major outage last night, with service only restored at 9:18am GMT on Thursday. Although the multi-hour outage only affected one of AWS’s 23 global regions (US-East-1), it affected many services and sites, including Coinbase, Flickr, Glass

Nearly half of UK police forces are using hybrid cloud

October 16, 2020

Police forces' hybrid cloud usage has more than doubled in the last 12 months A Freedom of Information (FoI) request from Citrix has shown that nearly half of police forces in the UK are migrating to a hybrid-cloud model to store, access and manage their data. Forty-seven per cent of police organisations are using the hybrid cloud, compared to just 21 per cent in 2019. Cloud unlocks

Why monitoring is the key ingredient to cloud-native app performance

October 3, 2020

Cloud has saved businesses from collapse, but it can do so much more - including real-time feedback on any and every change you make No one was exempt from the effects of the global pandemic that has rocked businesses over the past year. Technology has emerged as an aid for businesses to get the upper hand, with cloud now a priority for IT leaders and decision makers. However, even i

UK considers Huawei ban by September 2021

October 2, 2020

A draft bill proposes tough penalties on firms that breach the ban on Huawei gear The UK government is considering a ban on installing Huawei's 5G equipment as soon as next year, to pacify politicians who are pressing for tougher restrictions on the Chinese telecom giant. Citing people familiar with the matter, Bloomberg reports that the ban could come as early as September 2021. Con

US Congress passes bipartisan act to improve IoT security

October 1, 2020

And it only took them three years The US Senate has unanimously passed a bipartisan bill that aims to bolster the security of IoT devices for government use. Bill H.R.1668 - the IoT Cybersecurity Improvement Act of 2020 - mandates minimum security requirements for IoT devices purchased by the American federal agencies. Under the new legislation, the National Institute of Standards an

UK government pays $500 million for stake in space startup OneWeb

September 30, 2020

OneWeb’s emergence from bankruptcy means buyout by the UK government and Bharti Global can go ahead. Broadband satellite constellation firm OneWeb announced last week that it had completed all relevant regulatory approvals to allow the sale of the company to a new group led by the UK government and Indian conglomerate Bharti Global. As part of the deal, the British government and Bha

Why the world needs better and more robust ways of measuring time

September 24, 2020

Critical infrastructure and systems such as GPS rely on time-keeping mechanisms that are far too easily subverted or prone to error Time is the hidden and fragile basis of our digital civilisation. The more efficient, integrated and faster our systems become - for communications, energy, transport, financial services - the more dependent they are on ultra-precise timings. With any sl

Style vs substance: how to build an agile digital offering in a post-Covid age

August 28, 2020

Agencies must strike a balance between innovation and durability in creating products that are crisis-resilient, says Andrew Dunbar There's nothing like a global health pandemic to throw your priority list into sharp focus. For medics, that means saving lives on the front line. For agencies, it's the less heroic - but also pivotal - role of sharpening their digital toolkits to withst

Runecast: Work-life balance is key for customers as well as IT teams

August 21, 2020

Computing’s judges described Runecast’s approach to talent retention as “fantastic” The modern world is changing swiftly, and organisations that can call themselves digital technology leaders see clear benefits; particularly those scaling rapidly and looking to strike a balance between growing success and avoiding burnout. Runecast CEO Stan Markov - whose company was a recent winner

AND Digitals people-first culture has driven expansion through the pandemic

August 14, 2020

“People are just as important as technology,” is the mantra of founder Paramjit Uppal Modern businesses must have IT at their heart. For most, understanding how to leverage technology is key to getting a competitive advantage over their competitors; and earlier this year, even firms that had been slow to start their digital transformation saw the need to make the switch. AND Digital

Patch Tuesday: Microsoft addresses Windows zero-day vulnerability and 111 others

August 9, 2020

Patches include one for a zero-day flaw disclosed by Google’s researchers last month Microsoft on Tuesday released its monthly roll-up of security patches, addressing a total of 112 vulnerabilities across a suite of products/platforms. Of the 112 security flaws fixed this month, 17 are listed as ‘critical’, 93 are ‘important’, while two are ‘low’ in severity. This month’s security up

Hotel reservation platform leaks data on millions of guests

July 31, 2020

Prestige Software’s data leak dates back as far as 2013 Hotel reservation platform Prestige Software has exposed the personal data of millions of hotel guests worldwide, after misconfiguring an AWS S3 bucket. That’s according to a new report by Website Planet, which claims that the leaked information dates back as far as 2013 and includes details like customer names, ID numbers and c

British AI chip start-up Graphcore close to adding another $200 million in funding

July 24, 2020

New investment will bring Graphcore’s market valuation to more than $2 billion Bristol-based startup Graphcore, which specialises in creating chips for artificial intelligence (AI), is close to raising around $200 million in a new funding round. Citing people with knowledge of the matter, Bloomberg reported last week that the firm is currently in talks with investors to help raise ne

Why you should look to software-defined infrastructure for container deployments

July 16, 2020

DHL, Accenture and Lloyds are just a few of the firms using StorageOS’s software-defined cloud-native storage Firms around the world are moving away from monoliths and towards more streamlined, agile IT environments leveraging containers and microservices. These new deployments rely on orchestration systems like Kubernetes, as well as experts who know how to make the most of such too

A whistlestop tour of some of the years biggest cyber security stories

July 12, 2020

Bears, scares and ransomware Well, what a year it's been. 2020 kicked off as it meant to go on, with news emerging from China of a new virus which lead to a swiftly imposed lockdown in the city of Wuhan. Looks grim, we thought, but it will probably peter out like previous viruses before it. How wrong we were. To coincide with our Deskflix Cyber Security event, here’s a look back at t

AWS signs three-year cloud deal with the UK government

July 6, 2020

The AWS/government deal will see public sector organisations benefitting from economies o The UK government has signed a new deal with AWS to speed up the adoption of cloud technologies in public sector organisations. On Monday, the government’s procurement agency Crown Commercial Service (CCS) signed a three-year Memorandum of Understating (MoU) with AWS, which treats all participat