It used to be the porn industry that led the way in technical innovation – or so I’m told. Nowadays, the games industry is a better barometer. Right now, it’s starting to go through the licensing pains that will soon be felt across the computing spectrum, and you’ll doubtless be shocked to hear that it’s us consumers who will feel that pain most acutely.

I recently wrote a feature in IT Pro’s sister magazine, PC Pro, about the burgeoning games streaming services, one of which was Nvidia GeForce Now. This arguably launched with the most enticing business model – a bring-your-own games service that allows you to play titles you’ve previously purchased on Steam, Uplay or other online games stores. Nvidia provides the streaming infrastructure, for up to £5 per month, you bring the games. 

At least, that was the theory – a theory that upset some of the games publishers, who hadn’t agreed to have their games on GeForce Now and demanded that they were removed.

This brings us to a philosophical dilemma: what constitutes a “PC”? Steam and other stores allow users to install their games library on any PC they own, but it seems some games publishers don’t believe that what Nvidia is offering can reasonably be classed as a PC at all.

I see both sides of the argument. GeForce Now isn’t a PC in any conventional sense. Unlike rival Shadow, which hands users their own Windows instance and lets them install what they like, GeForce Now users never see a Windows desktop. Instead, they pick from a graphical menu of preinstalled games and can play them on demand using a variety of devices, as long as they’ve already purchased the game from a supported stores or direct from the publisher. 

Games publishers, used to being paid afresh every time a customer installs their game on a new platform, are narked that they aren’t getting a cut from Nvidia. And without their games, Nvidia doesn’t have a business. Nvidia, on the other hand, is doing all the heavy lifting. It’s providing the server infrastructure, the bandwidth, and clearly doing all the optimisation work itself, since publishers weren’t even aware their titles were on the service. Why should those publishers expect to be paid yet again when it’s Nvidia that’s bearing all the cost and hard graft?

If your response to that question is a Gallic shrug, a yawn of non-gamer’s ambivalence, don’t be nonchalant: these are the types of questions that will soon have to be dealt with right across the software industry.

Streamed desktops are the future. In ten years’ time, we won’t be buying laptops or desktops with bundles of local processing power and storage, we’ll be buying dumb terminals more akin to Chromebooks. Windows, macOS and even Linux instances will be streamed, and then we’ll have the interesting conundrum of how apps are licensed on such platforms. 

At the moment, for example, if you buy a Microsoft Office subscription or Adobe Creative Cloud, you get to install the client software on as many systems as the licence permits – not very many in Adobe’s case. 

However, what happens when we’re effectively renting our OS from Microsoft or Apple? Will they adopt an Nvidia-like approach where the OS becomes invisible to the end user and you take your pick from a selection of apps in their stores? If that’s the case, you can expect Microsoft and Apple to demand a cut of app subs revenue and the whole licensing model is up in the air. Or will they go for a Shadow-like route, where you stream a Windows/macOS instance and things carry on much like they do today, with you paying for an OS subscription and software subs on top of that?

Last decade saw the demise of the one-off licence – the idea that you buy a piece of software and have the right to use it indefinitely, as long as you can still find a PC to support it. Aside from Serif’s Affinity packages, I can’t think of a piece of software from a major publisher that’s still clinging to that old model. 

The difficult bit is predicting where we’re headed. The squabble between games publishers and Nvidia is just a warm up for what’s to come, with software publishers trying to retain their margins and the OS vendors determined to take a cut. We’re already seeing this with the Windows Store and Mac App Store. 

One thing’s for sure: it won’t be good news for us, the customer. Just as you have to pay twice if you want to play the same game on Windows, Mac or mobile devices, I can well see that happening with the streaming platforms that will emerge. It’s going to be an ugly, expensive fight.

Azure Bastion and Confidential Computing are among ten services Microsoft has launched for UK Azure customers to improve security and allow users to take advantage of technologies like IoT.

Bastion, a managed platform as a service (PaaS), first launched in public preview last June and is designed to protect exposed virtual machines (VMs) from outside threats. The service lets users securely connect to VMs without using public IP addresses, reducing exposure to the public internet and cyber threats such as malware.

Meanwhile, Confidential Computing will allow customers to secure information while it’s being used, as opposed to encrypting data while it’s sitting in a data centre or being moved across a network. This real-time encryption feature means multiple organisations can combine data sets and analyse them without being able to access each other’s data.

A prospective use case for the technology could be banks combining transaction data to detect fraud and money laundering, while hospitals could combine patient records for analysis to improve diagnostics.

Among the services being launched are App Configuration, Bot Service, Consumption Plan Linux, IoT Central, Premium Plan Linux, Time Series Insights, and Virtual Network NAT.

The final service being launched, Private Link, offers a secure connection to Microsoft’s cloud with no public internet access. This can also help users meet the demands of regulations in different markets across the world.

“Microsoft continues to invest in our UK Azure regions to meet the growing needs of our customers,” said Michael Wignall, Azure business lead at Microsoft UK.

“Azure is helping organisations, both large and small, adapt to a new way of working, and our cloud experts continue to help them at this challenging time.”

App Configuration allows customers to centrally manage application settings while the Bot Service gives them the capability to develop Q&A bots to improve the customer experience. Time Series Insights collects, processes, stores and analyses data, as well as giving customers the ability to launch queries.

IoT Central, meanwhile, is a secure app platform for IoT devices and software, which can also scale as businesses grow. The product’s main appeal is the offer of industry-specific app templates for sectors ranging from retail to healthcare.

​Nvidia has forecast its 2021 second-quarter revenue above analysts’ estimates, powered by a surge in demand for data centre components amid the mass shift to remote working.

The company expects its Q2 revenue to be $3.65bn (£3bn), “plus or minus 2 percent”. According to IBES from financial market data provider Refinitiv, analysts were estimating this to be around $3.29bn (£2.70bn), as reported by Reuters.

Nvidia’s Q2 outlook takes into account the company’s $6.9bn acquisition of high-performance networking firm Mellanox, which was finalised last month. Weeks later, it was reported that Nvidia is also set to acquire networking software firm and former Mellanox collaborator Cumulus Networks, in a bid to further enhance its data centre credentials.

NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang said that the company has “had an excellent quarter”.

“The acquisition of Mellanox expands our cloud and data centre opportunity. We raised the bar for AI computing with the launch and shipment of our Ampere GPU,” he said. “And our digital GTC conference attracted a record number of developers, highlighting the accelerating adoption of NVIDIA GPU computing.”

Huang also added that Nvidia’s data centre “achieved a record and its first $1 billion quarter”, an 80% increase from the year before.

“NVIDIA is well-positioned to advance the most powerful technology forces of our time – cloud computing and AI,” he said.

Last month, the company announced that it would join the digital fight against coronavirus by providing the COVID-19 High-Performance Computing Consortium with its expertise in AI and large-scale computing optimisations.

During the course of the coronavirus pandemic, the unprecedented demand for chips, especially the ones used in data centres, has proven to make or break a tech company’s revenues.

In March, HPE reported that its year-on-year revenues for the previous quarter have declined by 8% due to difficulties in its compute business, led primarily by the continued shortage of Intel processors.

​Facebook has announced the launch of a range of new features which aim to help businesses work more effectively from home during the coronavirus lockdown.

The new features include updates to Facebook’s enterprise connectivity platform Workplace as well as the new Oculus for Business unit, which was up until now in closed beta testing.

The tech giant also announced that their Facebook Work Groups, which help coworkers connect for more lightweight tasks, have reached 20 million active monthly users across 170,000 active Work Groups.

One of the newly-launched features is Workplace Rooms, which allows users to host both planned and spontaneous video calls from their desktop, mobile or the Workplace app on Facebook’s video calling device Portal. Just like the recently launched Messenger Rooms, Workplace Rooms allows users to hold video conferences with up to 50 people at a time, regardless of whether they have the Workplace app installed or not.

The launch might mark another attempt by the company to capitalise on the demand for video conferencing as well as take on video call giant Zoom.

Workplace VP Julien Codorniou emphasised that Workplace Rooms users will not face situations similar to ‘Zoom-bombing’. Speaking to IT Pro, he said that in order to share the screen with the rest of the video conference attendees, a user needs to “have the permission of the admin” of the call.

Codorniou also said that in the case of Zoom, “a B2C usage of the product was made with a B2B product”.

“Workplace has all the security and privacy certifications that you would expect from a system of SOC2, SOC3, ISO27, or 108, Privacy Shield, and all of that. Again, we are a B2B business even if Facebook is a B2C company,” he said.

Workplace has also experienced a surge in users during the lockdown: “Two years and a half after the launch of Workplace, we now have five million paid users (…) from three million six months ago,” said Codorniou.

Facebook also issued updates to Workplace’s Live Video feature, adding a live Q&A feature as well as live captions which will translate from six languages – English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, and German – in real-time.

The tech giant also announced the general availability of Oculus for Business, an enterprise platform solution which aims to support large scale virtual reality (VR) deployments in corporate workplace environments. Oculus is currently used for employee-training purposes by Johnson&Johnson and for collaboration by Nestlé Purina.

Earlier this week, Facebook announced the launch of Shops, which allows users to browse and purchase products directly from a business’ Facebook or Instagram profile.

Two of tech’s biggest players have announced sweeping job cuts as the economic effects of COVID-19 continue to take their toll, with IBM and HPE reducing its staff count by potentially thousands.

IBM has already swung the axe, with the number of affected staff thought to be in the thousands, according to people familiar with the company’s plans, speaking to Bloomberg. The publication spoke with a Californian-based worker who lost his job along with his entire team of 12. Job cuts are also being made across sites in other US states including Pennsylvania, Missouri, New York.

The layoffs are thought to affect several divisions across IBM including its Global Technology Services division, which offers IT outsourcing, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) also suggests.

It’s unclear how much of an effect the pandemic has had on IBM’s plans, though the actions represent the first major staffing shakeup since CEO Arvind Krishna took charge in January 2020. Krishna transitioned into the role with an ambition to revive growth at IBM, after recent quarters of declining revenue.

“IBM’s work in a highly competitive marketplace requires flexibility to constantly add high-value skills to our workforce,” an IBM spokesperson told Bloomberg. “While we always consider the current environment, IBM’s workforce decisions are in the interest of the long-term health of our business.”

“Recognizing the unique and difficult situation this business decision may create for some of our employees, IBM is offering subsidized medical coverage to all affected U.S. employees through June 2021.”

HPE, meanwhile, has outlined plans to make severe cost reductions following a collapse in revenue in the latest quarter, falling 16% year-on-year $6 billion. As a result of job cuts, executive pay reductions, and other measures, the company expects to save between $1 billion and $1.3 billion over the next three years.

In an earnings call, the firm announced it would be reducing employees’ base salaries from 1 July through to the end of the year. The CEO and each executive officer at the executive VP level sustaining a 25% pay cut, while the base salaries of each executive officer at the senior VP level will suffer a 20% cut.

HPE will also embark on an immediate “cost optimisation” plan which will involve realigning the workforce to “areas of growth” and implementing measures to simplify the product portfolio, supply chain structures, and digital customer support model.

Each of the company’s divisions suffered losses in the last quarter, with High-Performance Compute & Mission Critical Systems revenue down the sharpest year-on-year, a fall of 18% to $589 million. This was followed by the Storage division which fell 16%, to $1.1 billion. Profit margins in both divisions also declined.

The smallest drop in revenue was in the Intelligence Edge division, which declined 2% to $665 million. This equated with an 11% operating profit margin, however, compared with 5.3% from the prior-year period.

HPE’s recent financial performance, and the resultant cost-saving measures, have been pinned heavily on the coronavirus pandemic, and its effect on demand as well as the supply chain.

As with IBM in recent years, HPE has suffered from consistent falling revenues since splitting from HP in 2015. The firm has, however, made a series of moves in recent years in order to change its fortunes, including the acquisition of supercomputing behemoth Cray last year.

Its CEO Antonio Neri declared in 2019 that his vision for the company is one that champions a “cloudless” future, adding that the cloud wasn’t a destination, rather, an “experience”, where businesses encounter true cloud interoperability.

​The seemingly endless state of isolation we have found ourselves in for the past three months has taken its toll, warping our minds in weird and wonderful ways. For me, this has manifested as a newfound obsession with the bizarre workings of the virtual House of Commons.

Our parliamentarians’ attempt to follow the government’s own advice to work from home has, by all accounts, been a success, barring the occasional sweary glitch. It’s an example of the fascinating dynamics at play, with MPs using Zoom to remote-into parliamentary debates while using a web platform to hold parliamentary votes securely. Surely, in moments like this, therefore, there must be a catch… but none came.

Despite the Palace of Westminster being seen as more old fashioned (and, indeed, just old) than the more modern regional assemblies, the project in London has been by far the most comprehensive. The Scottish Parliament in Holyrood, for example, has implemented video conferencing but hasn’t yet added provision for remote voting.

By all measures, the UK’s virtual parliament has been a success, and our MPs have been able to continue to work and scrutinise the government effectively. Then, scrolling through my Twitter feed for nuggets of news, came the catch. The ‘hybrid’ House of Commons has been such a success that it has been ditched in its entirety.

I’m ashamed to admit, for a moment, that I’d bought into the fantasy that our parliamentarians saw the proverbial light and – in a rare departure from form – embraced the progressive force of digital transformation. In typical fashion, however, as soon as they were given a taste of progress, they agreed to spit it straight back out by 350 votes to 258 – a government majority of 92. 

When the House of Commons returns on 2 June, after a two-week break coinciding with Whitsun, MPs can no longer participate in debates using video conferencing technology, let alone vote remotely using the platform that’s been in place for just a week. This, incidentally, is a system that House of Commons staff have worked tirelessly to build, install and sufficiently test over a short four-week period.

There are myriad reasons why the decision is a travesty; not just for the interests of progress, but the impracticality of asking MPs to travel into London, a COVID-19 hotspot, from across all the constituent parts of the UK. Many of our MPs also fall in the at-risk age groups, while others will have pressing childcare needs due to schools still being shut, not to mention those who should be ‘shielding’ due to medical conditions.

Beyond that, the decision to bin the remote working technology flies in the face of the government’s own advice to “work from home where possible”, based on the false logic that remote working isn’t actually working. This short-sightedness can be neatly summarised by the views of Conservative MP for Crawley, Henry Smith, who tweeted: “Not that I should be surprised by the lazy left but interesting how work-shy socialist and nationalist MPs tried to keep the remote Parliament going beyond 2 June.”

Beyond the sheer incomprehension on display, this also sends a terrible message to many businesses that have embraced the mass shift to remote working and sustained measured benefits as a result. Twitter and OpenText are among companies that will let their staff work from home indefinitely following the pandemic, for example, while workers themselves have also reported feeling more productive as a result of the added flexibility and a lack of commute.

Nevertheless, the fact that our MPs have voted to reject progress doesn’t come as a surprise, despite the fact I readily admit bought into the delusion that they finally turned a corner. British MPs have gained notoriety for neglecting the benefits of technology, best symbolised by the snail-paced rollout of Wi-Fi across the Palaces of Westminster. One former MP, Dr David Drew, for example, was sufficiently moved by the lack of Wi-Fi across the parliamentary estate as near ago as 2018 that he took it on himself to chase up the state of progress on essential works to improve availability and coverage.

Yesterday’s vote to ditch ‘hybrid’ proceedings is a minor hitch, with not even the House of Commons able to escape the inevitability of progress. For MPs to do so now, however, despite the fact it’s proven a success, is like having taken one step forward, only to immediately take two steps back and fall off a cliff.

​Google has announced that it has secured a contract with the United States Department of Defense in order to aid in the detection and countering of cyber threats.

The Google Cloud Console is to manage the applications run by the Defense Innovation Unit across platforms such as Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Microsoft Azure.

Although no specific sum has been disclosed, the contract is valued at “seven figures”, according to Axios.

“Multi-cloud is the future,” Google Cloud VP of public sector Mike Daniels told the publication. “This is now coming to the federal government as well.”

The “seven figure” deal is significantly less than the $10bn JEDI contract which involves almost 80% of the Department of Defence’s IT systems being migrated to the cloud that could last 10 years. The deal had garnered headlines for the past two years, with multiple cloud vendors, including AWS, Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft, battling to be chosen by the US government. 

In December 2018, Google announced that it would “not be bidding on the JEDI contract because first, we couldn’t be assured that it would align with our AI Principles, and second, we determined that there were portions of the contract that were out of scope with our current government certifications”.

However, the announcement of the new deal with the US Department of Defense might signify that Google has since earned those certifications.

The news comes a month after an internal investigation by the Department of Defence (DoD) found that the October 2019 decision to award the JEDI contract to Microsoft was administered fairly, despite widespread reports of political interference.

The JEDI project was halted in February in order to determine whether Department of Defence improperly evaluated a Microsoft storage price scenario. Prior to that, AWS filed an appeal claiming that “political influence” led the Pentagon to award the $10bn contract to Microsoft. Although it was believed at the time that AWS was “likely to succeed” in the court challenge, that was not the case.

Although restrictions on movement are gradually easing in the UK, lockdown is still a claustrophobic experience for many. Confined largely to our houses and local areas, with holidays still currently off the table even within the UK, it’s easy to feel like you’ve lost touch with the outside world.

Thanks to the marvels of the internet, however, it’s possible to reconnect with what’s going on in the wider world. Here are some tracking tools that can help break the monotony of lockdown.

Track the coronavirus pandemic

Scientists have been racing to keep track of the COVID-19 pandemic using self-reporting apps such as Covid Symptom Tracker and Track Together, as well as daily reports from Johns Hopkins University (JHU), the world’s leading medical research institution, which uploads its daily COVID-19 reports here.

The JHU team’s COVID-19 Map turns this raw data into interactive maps, graphs and curves. You can tweak the main map to show different backgrounds and layers (such as an OpenStreetMap layer showing confirmed cases in each country), and click to enlarge the graphs for viewing in a handful of formats.

For more visual detail, visit the 91-Divoc site, which plots the latest JHU data on graphs that you can tweak to show different types of curve (for example logarithmic, also known as exponential). You can see the impact on different countries, including the UK, by selecting from the ‘Highlight:’ drop-down menu.

You can also see a map of the latest self-reported data from the UK’s COVID Symptom Tracker app. The data is anonymous but divided by region, so you can click the map to check your area.

Track the world’s population

Few real-time data trackers are quite as unsettling as World Population Clock’s live ticker. The number is so big (7.8 billion and counting fast) that rival sites can’t agree on it, with World Population Review a few tens of millions behind. But the latter site breaks down the data into more detail, and maps it so you can click to explore individual cities and countries, such as the UK.

Data-mapping site Plumplot has created a population density map for England and Wales that lets you zoom right into your street, then use the drop-down menus to visualise various datasets such as house prices, crime stats, and more. Plumplot’s maps aren’t quite in real-time because they’re aggregated from sources including the Census and the Office for National Statistics (ONS), but they still provide a fascinating insight into the nation’s current population status.

Track the changing weather and climate

See weather systems on the move in real time by zooming and spinning the virtual globe at Earth. You can customise the display by opening the menu, then clicking an element. For example, click Ocean to see today’s tidal currents at work.

If you’d like to zoom in for a closer look, use the Map option on OpenWeather. It’s less impressive to look at than the Earth tool, but it does let you see all kinds of weather systems (wind speed, clouds, temperature and so on) in action anywhere in the world, or just where you live. It also provides live data both as charts and plain old numbers.

The Met Office’s UK rainfall radar map is strangely engaging. Watch the big blue blob move across Ireland and the UK, or zoom in to see how heavily (or not) the rain is falling on your town. You can also see a rainfall playback from the past six hours, and monitor types of weather other than rain by clicking More.

To put the weather into long-term perspective, see the climate tickers at The World Counts. Among other things, these alarming real-time monitors track the average world temperature and how long until the world’s oil runs dry (47 years and counting).

Chase the sun and moon

The full moon is due above our house on 7 May, but what about where you live? The Moon Phases calendar – just one of umpteen real-time monitors at the brilliant TimeandDate.com – detects your location automatically and reveals the moon’s phase, altitude and position over the coming hours and days. Among the site’s other live trackers are the Day and Night World Map and World Time Lookup, which reveals the current time, weather, and sun and moon phases for any location.

The free apps Sun Locator Lite (Android) and Lumos (iOS) let you track the sun and moon by the hour. 

Track stars and satellites

Numerous augmented-reality (AR) apps bring the heavens into your locked-down living room, and the best is Night Sky (iOS). Focus on any flat surface – ceiling, wall, dining table – to see moons, planets, constellations and even the International Space Station (ISS) overlaid in their real-time positions.

A slightly less powerful Android app called SkyView Lite visualises the galaxy and ISS when you hold your device up to the sky.

To turn your browser into a heavenly radar, head for The Sky Live’s Online Planetarium, an interactive real-time map of space that displays the position of planets, moons, asteroids and more. ISS Tracker reveals where the International Space Station is right now, as it zooms around the planet at 17,000mph. The ISS is also monitored by the deceptively simple site N2YO.com, which tracks the details and positions of satellites orbiting the Earth. On the day of writing, N2YO had tracked 20,626 objects. No fewer than 2,261 (a number that’s continually updated) were “crossing our sky” at that moment, which is a lot more than we’d expected!

Track planes, trains and ships

The contrails have gone but there are still planes in the sky, according to web tool Flightradar24 – just not many. Hover over a plane icon to see its flight number, then click for more details, including destination, carrier and altitude. For $9.99 per year (approx. £8, after a seven-day trial), Flightradar24 adds goodies such as 3D views, real-time radar data and live alerts. If you do happen to see an actual plane in the sky, AR Plane Finder (Android and iOS) can reveal its flight details and destination.

Coming back down to earth, Raildar Radar plots tiny trains as they move around the UK network, using live data from UK train operators. In a similar vein but less comprehensive is the “vaguely live” Train Times, whose creator also makes a couple of London-based transport trackers: Live Underground map and Live London Buses, both of which are eerily quiet at the moment.

One of the most intriguing live maps is Vessel Finder, whose seas (and rivers) are sufficiently packed to suggest that ships are more active than planes and trains during lockdown. Pan and zoom around the map, then click a vessel to see more details and a photo. That said, you won’t get much detail if you happen upon a military ship – many of which we found snaking through the rivers of South America and Russia.

Monitor migrating birds and wandering wildlife

The swallows and cuckoos were still enjoying warmer climes at the time

of writing, but they’ll be back over Britain very soon. You can watch them get closer and closer on the live migration map at the Euro Bird Portal, although sadly it doesn’t stretch to include the birds’ African winter homes.

To monitor the creatures of the sea, turn to Ocearch. This opens on the Americas by default but lets you zoom out to track sharks, dolphins, alligators, turtles and more all around the globe. Given that all these animals are tagged and tracked, it’s no surprise to find that the researchers have given them names, too – as you’ll discover when you click each one.

The World Wildlife Fund’s Species Tracker uses data from radio collars on animals such as female polar bears (the males’ necks are too big, apparently) to keep track of them. Click a bear on the zoomable map, then ‘See More’, to explore the latest data – including photos of new cubs – from that area. The zoomable map also lets you monitor populations of jaguars, marine turtles and other endangered creatures.

The biggest wildlife-tracking site is Movebank, which links to hundreds of research projects from a global map. It’s an academic resource, so it’s slower and less easy to navigate than you’d hope, but you can search its database and click the dots to follow the links to relevant studies. You can even contribute to the research using the free Movebank app (Android and iOS). 

Track your pet’s wanderings

Where does your cat go when it exits the cat flap? And where has your dog wandered

off to this time? Pet companies have taken a tip from wildlife scientists and devised lightweight GPS tracking devices that fit onto Kitty or Fido’s collar, so you can monitor their whereabouts using linked apps.

Garmin’s top-of-the-range Atemos 100 can track up to 20 dogs up to 10km away, but at £750 the system is prohibitively pricey. A more sensible £59 buys a Kippy Evo, a dinky 38g waterproof device that fits onto cats’ and dogs’ collars and includes an integrated SIM to locate your four-legged friend via a linked app. You can also use the app to ‘geofence’ risky areas, then receive an alert if your four-legged friend wanders into them. Tractive’s £30 GPS collars for cats and dogs come with extra subscription costs (£3.33 per month), but add features such as location history, so you can log your pet’s favourite spots.

Dell Technologies and Google Cloud Platform have partnered up to launch OneFS for Google Cloud to allow customers to keep massive amounts of data flowing between private clouds and Google Cloud.

Dell OneFS for Google Cloud offers customers a hybrid cloud storage system that can see up to 50 petabytes of data move seamlessly between cloud environments without needing to make adjustments to their applications.

The system offers a native cloud experience that combines Dell’s scalability and performance with Google Cloud’s analytics services. The advancements will allow customers to move workloads across public and private clouds with greater flexibility while adopting a hybrid approach their suits their particular needs.

“Data and workloads exist everywhere – at the edge, in core data centres and public clouds. And, while data and apps are multiplying, IT resources and budgets are not,” said senior vice president and general manager for cloud platforms & solutions with Dell Technologies, Deepak Patil.

“For companies to turn their data into competitive differentiators, they need a way to manage it seamlessly and consistently, no matter where it resides. Dell Technologies Cloud brings the best of the public cloud to the data centre and the best of the data centre to the public cloud, removing complexity so companies can spend less time managing their infrastructure and more time delivering value to their customers.”

The system has been devised to encourage the movement of file data, which accounts for at least half of an organisation’s on-premise data, to public clouds. Very little of this data is stored in public clouds due to performance and scale limitations.

One clear example of businesses that could benefit from OneFS for Google Cloud is those in the media and entertainment industry, which commonly handle massive video files with 4K resolution. These files demand terabytes of storage and high throughput as well as low latency file storage, meaning it’s difficult for production companies to manage large file workloads in the public cloud.

With the joint hybrid system, Dell claims, these companies can work across private and public clouds with consistent operations, with the added flexibility to scale if needed.

“We’re proud to partner with Dell Technologies to deliver high-performance, scalable cloud storage services to our customers with OneFS for Google Cloud,” said vice president of engineering at Google Cloud Rich Sanzi.

“Through this partnership, customers can more quickly and effectively leverage Dell Technologies storage solutions through Google Cloud and have access to the best of breed file storage solutions, across hybrid cloud environments.”

Rancher Labs has announced the launch of Rancher Academy, a new certification program that the open source software firm says will address the growing Kubernetes skills gap.

The initiative arrives as a result of accelerating enterprise adoption of containers, as well as 250% year-on-year growth in Rancher’s training programs, with the initiative aiming to enable “the complete democratisation of Kubernetes”.

A no-cost and zero-obligation programme, users can now take on the five-week Certified Rancher Operator: Level 1 course via Rancher Academy, with new classes to be announced later this year, the company said.

“This Rancher certification is designed to help Kubernetes practitioners demonstrate their knowledge and competence with Kubernetes and Rancher,” commented Adrian Goins (pictured), director of Community and Evangelism at Rancher.

According to a recent Dice Tech Job Report for 2020, there has been an 82% increase in job demand for workers with Kubernetes skills over the last year, with Dice predicting a further 67% growth rate for the decade ahead.

A 250% increase in Rancher’s Rodeo and Master Class registrations over the last 12 months also highlights practitioners’ desire to build competencies in Kubernetes concepts and architectures, the software firm said.

The comprehensive and self-paced Rancher Academy training scheme aims to counter this demand by covering all the key details for deploying and managing Rancher, as well as how to use the platform to deploy and manage Kubernetes clusters from any provider.

Rancher Labs says the course has been built using educational best practices, featuring a mix of passive and active learning, as well as an increasing difficulty as the weeks progress.

More specifically, Rancher Academy offers video introductions, theory work, demonstrations, hands-on labs, quizzes and a final exam.

“Not only do we want all members of our community to have the most relevant and up-to-date skills on the industry’s most widely adopted Kubernetes management platform. But we also want to empower them to be at the forefront of the cloud-native way of doing business, which is agile, open source-oriented and maniacally-focused on fast access to innovation,” Goins explained.