Only 40% of SMBs have adopted public cloud offerings or plan to in the next 12 months, according to IDC’s European Tech and Industry Pulse Survey 2019-2020. Cloud boosts customer profits by supporting productivity-enhancing mobile, collaborative or flexible-working tools; the channel should be in pole position to grow this market.

Yet just 46% of respondents in the IDC survey bought their cloud tools through channel partners. What will persuade the other 54%?

Describe how tools improve employee satisfaction and productivity

Research carried out by analyst house Forrester, sponsored by Lenovo and Intel, highlights flexibility and mobility as drivers for the good employee experience that underpins an effective workplace.

Michael Littler, executive director of global SMB marketing in Lenovo’s Intelligent Devices Group,  says it suggests SMBs aren’t supplying the tools that support how people want to work.

«When we drill into why people don’t feel productive, the tech aspect is a huge piece of it. Only 26% of respondents said ‘my company is providing me with access to cloud-based tools’,» he says.

Of employees in the 2019 survey who indicated feeling productive at work, 81% were satisfied with the devices available. The converse is true among those who said they don’t feel productive: 47% of workers who feel unproductive are satisfied with device provision. Only 23% of the group who feel unproductive felt satisfied with their work overall.

74% said they have no flexibility to choose «suitable» technologies to perform their tasks, and 71% rely on desktops as their main device. Only 49% of SMB buyers said, though, that these desktops would be replaced at refresh time, with only 40% promising to invest in laptops instead, for example.

Yet 87% of buyers within these SMBs cite employee productivity as a high or critical priority over the next 12 months, notes Littler.

Offer SMBs access to dynamism and enterprise-grade offerings

The channel should be asking SMBs if their systems are sufficiently flexible and scalable for future agility or new ways of working. 

Steve Joyner, managing director for UK and Ireland at Avaya, says SMBs need more sophisticated offerings. «Once it was assumed that only enterprises needed the connectivity or higher-end use cases, because they had many employees and really worried about how to collaborate.

«Everyone now expects to be able to collaborate and work together and use systems and applications the same way,» Joyner says.

Meanwhile, younger employees who grew up using mobile tools flexibly and collaboratively expect to do so in the workplace as well. 

In response Avaya, like other vendors, has rejigged its offerings, opening up its platforms as well as researching customer needs, offering a full suite of solutions, education and training to all sizes of customer and channel partner, says Joyner.

Devise specific solutions that deal with questions about cost

SMBs that don’t use cloud often perceive it as expensive or insecure – even though moving non-core tech and systems to the cloud can save money.

Avaya’s Joyner thinks this preconception goes back to the days of on-prem, when sophistication, reliability, redundancy and security came at a premium. Cloud can enable complexity to be delivered per user.

«Smaller firms can enjoy the security and encryption that large enterprises do, because the platforms in the cloud are actually large-enterprise platforms,» he says. «And there’s nothing stopping them taking private cloud – still consuming and not having all those up-front costs.»

Demonstrate benefits concretely via proofs-of-concept

Spinning up a proof-of-concept quickly can enable customers to «kick the tyres» and lay concerns to rest. Avaya’s Joyner notes that customers, large or small, typically ask to review their various cloud offerings live, whether they’re public, private or hybrid.

«Demos are far easier to do with cloud. They used to be just for the enterprise, because it was less cost-effective to do proofs-of-concept for smaller customers – but that’s not the case now,» Joyner adds.

It’s the channel’s role, as trusted advisors on cloud and mobile, to ensure it has the skills to communicate these benefits to more SMB customers.

Google will build 11 office and data centres across the US as part of a $10 billion investment plan.

The tech giant announced these new buildings will create thousands of jobs and provide opportunities for local businesses.

It follows on from the company’s ambitious 2019 plan to invest $13 billion in rural states such as South Carolina and Nevada. Along with R&D funding, this made Alphabet the largest investor into the US, according to the Progressive Policy Institute.

The new investment will be used to build on that by adding 11 new sites in Colorado, Georgia, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New York, Oklahoma, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington and California.

As an example of the impact Google’s investments could have, CEO Sundar Pichai pointed to the company’s data centre in Mayes County, Oklahoma.

«Last year, I visited Pryor to announce a $600 million investment, our fourth expansion there since 2007,» Pichai said in a blog post. «It felt like the whole community came out to welcome us, from small business owners to teachers to Google employees.

«Pryor Mayor Larry Lees told the crowd that Google’s investments have helped provide local schools with the resources they need – including the latest textbooks and STEM courses – to offer a world-class education. He talked about the small businesses we have helped train and the mentorship Googlers have provided to Pryor’s students.»

The new offices and data centres will create roles with Google, as well as jobs in construction and renewable energy facilities, the company said.

This is also further evidence of Google’s relentless investment into its cloud business. Recently it announced the $2 billion acquisition of Looker, a data analytics firm and also Cornerstone Technology, a mainframe-to-cloud migration firm.

The joint-Salesforce CEO Keith Block has stepped down from his leadership role after just 18 months in-post, leaving founder Marc Benioff as the sole CEO of the software company.

Block’s resignation has come as a surprise, given the former Oracle VP has come on leaps and bounds since joining Salesforce in 2013, and was widely considered to be a potential successor to Benioff in the future.

The co-CEO first joined the customer relationship management (CRM) company in 2013 as head of sales, before being promoted to COO.

He took up the co-CEO role from August 2018, meaning that he’d only been in the role for little more than 18 months before announcing his intent to step down.

The nature of his departure is also somewhat of a mystery, with no explicit reason offered by the company.

Block will stay on with the company for an extra year to serve as an advisor before moving on, and Benioff will now handle the duties the two had previously shared.

The company revealed Block’s decision on a conference call with analysts in which it shared financial results for the fourth quarter of 2019, according to Business Insider.

The firm’s executives, including Benioff, praised Block for his almost seven-year stint at the company, and wished him well for the future.

“I am his biggest supporter,” Benioff said, adding: “I’m his close friend. You’ll always be part of our Ohana [the Hawaiian word for family].”

On the call, the company reported a net loss of $248 million for the fourth quarter of last year, compared with a net income of $362 million for the same quarter in 2018. Moreover, its total revenues rose by 34.6% to $4.85 billion, which beat analyst estimates of $4.75 billion.

The CRM company has made a series of acquisitions over the last year, the most significant of which is its purchase of data management firm Tableau for approximately $16 billion. This was in addition to its purchase of ClickSoftware for $1.35 billion in August.

Already in 2020, the company has acquired data personalisation company Evergage, and industry-specific cloud provider Vlocity.

​Mozilla has begun the rollout of encrypted DNS over HTTPS (DoH) by default for all its US-based Firefox users after working for years to upgrade the Domain Name System (DNS) protocol.

Over the next few weeks, Firefox users will be able to use the DoH protocol by default while surfing the web, meaning their web traffic will be fully encrypted. This technology blocks third-party interception and also prevents Internet Service Providers from maintaining visibility over users’ activity.

DNS, which remains unchanged since the 80s, has been long-considered an insecure protocol that, while fundamental to the internet’s structure, allows for threats such as man-in-the-middle attacks.

The archaic database links a URL to an IP address, with browsers able to identify the websites for users by matching the two when a query is made. Because there is no encryption, however, other devices may intercept these queries and potentially collect this data.

DNS lookups are often sent to servers that can allow third-parties to gain access to users search and browsing history without their knowledge. It’s one of the key methods that ISPs deploy when implementing tools like web blockers.

“Today, we know that unencrypted DNS is not only vulnerable to spying but is being exploited, and so we are helping the internet to make the shift to more secure alternatives,” Mozilla said

“We do this by performing DNS lookups in an encrypted HTTPS connection. 

“This helps hide your browsing history from attackers on the network, helps prevent data collection by third parties on the network that ties your computer to websites you visit.”

Mozilla’s DoH implementation involves routing users’ web traffic to a DNS server hosted by either Cloudflare or NextDNS depending on their preference, instead of DNS servers hosted by ISPs and networking companies.

The DoH protocol will be configured by default for US users over the next few weeks, although users outside of the US may activate this level of encryption by accessing the settings menu. This is an option in the connection settings menu.

This privacy-focused move typifies the approach Mozilla has taken in recent years to fine-tuning and differentiating its Firefox browser from a host of competing applications, such as Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge.

Chrome, however, also allows users to adopt DoH, although this will have to be manually configured, unlike for US users in Firefox, and soon across the rest of the world, who will enjoy DoH security by default.

Microsoft, similarly, embraced this protocol in November, announcing it would work to implement more secure technology into its products. This would start with plans to upgrade its servers to use the DoH protocol.

The shift to DoH is expected to anger ISPs, who in the UK previously branded the company an ‘internet villain’ for simply considering implementing the protocol.

Service providers, and regulators like Ofcom, or the FCC in the US, have relied on the DNS protocol for a host of functions, such as implementing content blockers. The mass implementation of DoH would render such tools useless as ISPs would lose all visibility over their customers’ web traffic.

Cisco has unveiled a cloud-native security platform called SecureX, which is aimed at giving businesses more visibility across security services with analytics and workflow automation.

SecureX fits into Cisco’s existing security products and those from third-party providers, and analyses data across endpoints, cloud, networks and applications to help identify threats.

What’s more, it can respond to these threats more efficiently, according to Cisco. This is one of the first cloud security services to come out ahead of the RSA conference and another big vendor looking to aid customer security with AI.

Last year, Box announced a similar feature with Box Shield that aimed to protect the customers from outside threats and also their own mistakes. SecureX has a similar protocol that takes an automated approach to cloud security.

«Today we are introducing Cisco SecureX – a new way for users to experience Cisco’s Security portfolio,» said Jeff Reed, SVP of product for Cisco’s security business. «Cisco SecureX streamlines our customers operations with increased visibility across their security portfolio and provides out-of-box integrations, powerful security analytics, and automated workflows to speed threat detection and response.

«SecureX is an open, cloud-native platform that connects Cisco’s integrated security portfolio and customers security portfolios for a simpler, more consistent experience across endpoints, cloud, network, and applications.»

The platform offers a full multi-domain orchestration, with AI capabilities through a low-code approach and drag and drop interface. It uses adaptor models to orchestrate the platform, with more than 50 adaptors for security, networking, IoT, cloud and data centres.

The new service will be bundled into every Cisco security product from June when it becomes generally available.

Unlike the competition, SecureX helps customers get more value quicker, according to Reed. He suggests that users can get up and running in minutes, rather than hours, with its simple homepage that just requires API keys.

Oracle is being sued for allegedly inflating cloud revenues and resorting to «systematically coercing and bribing» existing customers into cloud migrations.

This is according to a 164-page complaint filed to a Federal District Court in California by German-based Union Asset Management AG.

It’s the third time that the company has sort to challenge Oracle in US courts having failed to get beyond the first hurdle in 2018 and 2019.

The report names founder Larry Ellison, CEO Safra Catz, former CEO, the late Mark Hurd. and claims that its top executives were «highly motivated to misleadingly inflate Oracle’s Cloud revenues through the use of engineered deals by virtue of the company’s compensation plan». 

The documents also name Oracle’s former cloud boss, now Google Cloud CEO, Thomas Kurian as a defendant.

In the court filings, it stats that Oracle employed a strategy known as Audit, Bargain, Close that it used to coerce cloud sales. With this Oracle would install its on-premise software in its existing client’s ecosystems with preferences automatically enabled, which, according to the filing, would cause the customer to unknowingly exceed the limits of its license.

«After the customer fell into this trap, Oracle would audit the on-premises customer for violations of its on-premises software license,» the filings said. «When it found violations, Oracle would threaten to impose extremely large penalties. Oracle would then offer to reduce or eliminate those penalties if the customer agreed to accept a short-term cloud subscription that the customer neither desired nor intended to use.»

The documents also quote a 2017 email from Kurain, sent while working at Oracle. In the email, he is critical of the interface for Oracle Human Capital Management Cloud, calling it a «disgrace».

«I continue to get extraordinary pressure from our two CEOs [Mark Hurd and Safra Catz] and LJE [Larry Ellison] himself that the UI is not tenable… the core product UI is awful. Until you all collectively accept the mess you have made and the need to move quickly we are talking past one another.»

In June 2018 the tech giant changed the way it reported cloud revenues every quarter by only putting forward a combined figure for SaaS, PaaS and IaaS. Cloud Pro has approached Oracle for a response.