Warner Bros will trial a machine-learning platform to help predict how movies will perform at the box office. 

The iconic film studio said it will use Cinelytics’ AI and cloud-based project management system to inform its decision around talent valuations and release strategies.

Cinelytic is a Hollywood-based business that applies machine-learning models to licensed performance data from the box office, home rentals and even pirated downloads, which it cross-references with information about genres, seasonal release dates and even actors. 

The company claims it can predict the economic value of a film and potentially the total revenues it will have over its lifetime. The deal is only a trial at the moment and will only involve the international side of the studio. 

«Warner Bros is excited to employ Cinelytic’s cutting-edge system,» said Tonis Kiis, Senior VP for international pictures at Warner Bros. «In our industry, we make tough decisions every day that affect what – and how – we produce and deliver films to theatres around the world, and the more precise our data is, the better we will be able to engage our audiences.»

Cinelytics’ platform is a subscription-based interface that works like a questionnaire, similar to an online insurance form. Users can enter information about their projects, such as budget, who is in it, who is directing, when and where it’s being released and the machine learning algorithms match that its dataset. 

The company’s CEO Tobias Queisser spoke to IT Pro last year and used the movie Hellboy as an example. Before its release, Queisser’s team ran the film’s information through the platform and its estimated box office takings were $23.3 million – less than half of its $50 million budget. 

It earned $21.8 million and the reason appeared to be the timing of its release. The film came out in a comic book-heavy spring schedule between DC’s Shazam and  Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame.

Data management firm Veeam has been acquired by software investors Insight Partners in a deal worth approximately $5 billion.

The change will see the Swiss firm become a US company, with an American leadership team take the helm.

Veeam offers backup solutions for cloud data management. According to the latest IDC Software Tracker, it’s the number one market share leader in EMEA and number four in the world, behind Dell, Veritas and IBM.

The deal will be completed by the end of the first quarter of 2020 and will enable Veeam to expand its hybrid cloud platform.

«Veeam’s strong growth, coupled with high customer retention, unparalleled data management solutions and the opportunities to expand services into new markets, make it one of the most exciting software companies in the world today,» said Mike Triplett, Insight Partners managing director.

«We are committed to supporting Veeam’s next phase of leadership and growth in the United States, continued market-share leadership position in EMEA and continued global expansion,» Triplett said. 

As part of the deal, former chief of staff to the VP of the United States, Nick Ayers will join Insight Partners managing director Mike Triplett and Veeam CEO, William H. Largent on the board. Co-Founders Andrei Baronov and Ratmir Timashev will step down. Additionally, Insight Partners managing directors Ryan Hinkle and Ross Devor will each serve on the Board once the acquisition has been completed.

«With the acquisition, we are excited that our current US workforce of more than 1,200 will be expanded and strengthened to acquire and support more customers,» said Largent. «Veeam has one of the highest calibre global workforces of any technology company, and we believe this acquisition will allow us to scale our team and technology at an unrivalled pace.»

Microsoft is the most popular supplier of public cloud services and is continuing to gain on AWS, according to research.

What’s more, the tech giant’s cloud platform, Azure, is expected to dominate the market over the next three years.

This is according to a survey of over 100 IT executives from Global 2000 companies, conducted by financial giant Goldman Sachs. Of the executives surveyed, 56  said they were using Azure for cloud infrastructure, with only 48 saying they used AWS.

The research focused on cloud infrastructure and platform as a service, an area in which Goldman Sachs analysts said Microsoft has been in the lead since December 2017, with its popularity growing with each passing year.

This growth it set to continue, according to the survey, with 66 CIOs suggesting their companies will be using Azure more than any other cloud in the next three years.

«Respondents expect today’s top vendors to continue to dominate the rankings in three years. Microsoft remains the clear leader, with 22% of the votes today and in three years respectively,» the analysts wrote.

Since taking becoming CEO, Satya Nadella has helped to change Microsoft’s focus towards cloud services for business and in recent years the company has made up lots of ground on the overall market leader, AWS.

In April last year, Microsoft briefly hit a $1 trillion market cap for the first time, buoyed by 73% growth in its Azure cloud business. Its strategy has focused on large enterprise companies, business-friendly features and a more collaborative attitude with its cloud platform.

This is in contrast to AWS, which is a favourite of startups and encourages companies to go all-in on its services.

The analysts concluded that about 23% of IT workloads are now on public clouds, which was at 19% in June. They expect the number to rise to 43% in the next three years which could open opportunities for other cloud providers, such as Google.

​Fibre optic cables in two separate areas were cut at the same time on Thursday morning, leaving parts of Eastern Europe, Iran and Turkey without internet access.

The severing of cables belonging to a third-party telecommunications provider resulted in a loss of connectivity for Google between Bulgaria and the rest of its production network. The issue lasted for two hours and took down Google’s services in those regions.

Sadjad Bonabi, a director at Iran’s Communications Infrastructure Company, told the BBC that two cuts happened at once: one between Iran and Bucharest and the other on a line to Munich.

Multiple cuts to fibre optic cables happening at the same time is a very rare occurrence, according to Google, which also said it has now launched an investigation into the incident.

«The issue with multiple simultaneous fibre cuts affecting traffic routed through Google’s network in Bulgaria has been resolved for all affected users as of 2019-12-19 2:36 US/Pacific,» Google Cloud’s status dashboard said. «Google services were not reachable for users who were accessing these Google services primarily through our Bulgaria network point of presence.»

«We have identified the root cause and routed affected traffic around the impacted parts of our network. We are conducting an internal investigation and will provide a detailed public incident summary at a later date.»

The UK has also experienced a number of incidents involving cable theft or damage throughout 2019. In August and September a spate of attacks on broadband cabling in Cambridgeshire left 4,000 homes and businesses without internet access, with 500 metres of copper wiring stolen as a result.

Gather round kids, because AWS Re:Invent is over for another year and this is now a safe space to talk about all those subjects that were off-limits during the cloud conference.

Namely multi-cloud and project JEDI.

Having safely left Las Vegas via McCarran International Airport, I feel I can finally discuss these hot topics. I can say what I want about Microsoft winning the Pentagon’s $10 billion cloud migration project (AWS is appealing that) and also anything about the term for using services from more than one cloud provider.

The multi-cloud discourse had no place at Re:Invent. It was definitely not mentioned by any AWS executives. But it’s so hot right now that it almost burns Amazon because it refuses to acknowledge it.

The very word is banned if recent reports are true. Back in August, the cloud giant released a «co-branding» guide for partners that said it would not approve the term «multi-cloud» or «any other language that implies designing or supporting more than one cloud provider«.

Unfortunately for AWS, that word was brought up in various briefings I attended throughout the event. Such as at the end of a Sophos security roundtable, where journalists were invited to ask questions and clearly took pleasure in asking difficult questions like «what’s your beef with multi-cloud?» and «how much did it suck to lose out to Microsoft?»

Ouch.

Many companies have gone ‘all-in’ on AWS, but many more have merely added a single services or integrated certain products to offer their customers – regardless of their cloud provider(s). This is the case for Sophos, which had to confess to offering cloud security to multi-cloud environments.

It was a strange end to an otherwise brilliant session. Sophos is a great company with a broad range of security expertise, but with AWS trying to quash talk of multi-cloud, it forces partners to tackle the difficult question.

«Our products do – sorry to my AWS brothers – support multiple clouds…» Sophos director Andy Miller said while the room collectively cringed. «We work in AWS and Azure and Google.»

The Seattle Seahawks, which has integrated AWS machine learning algorithms into various parts of its organisation, found itself in the same position. From player performance to business processes, the technology will run throughout the NFL franchise over the next five years. But as its tech lead, Chip Suttles, told me, it also uses Office 365 and Azure.

Similarly, when I asked the platform team lead of Monzo, Chris Evans, why his company uses AWS, he told me it was partly due to Amazon having the technology they needed at the time. If it started now, they could use Azure, Google Cloud and so on… he even used that dirty word ‘multi-cloud’. Evans and co are more than happy with what AWS gives them and it’s also a large part of the fintech company’s success, but nothing suggests that wouldn’t be the same with different providers.

AWS may be the biggest provider of cloud computing, but its massive lead on its rivals is due to it being the first to capitalise when it was an emerging technology. The big trend within that technology now is using multiple providers and AWS is strangely taking a legacy-like approach. It wants you and your company to use it exclusively, but no matter how many great tools and functions you provide you can’t please everyone. In the world of multi-cloud, AWS is fighting a losing battle.

On Thursday, Andy Jassy was pencilled in for a Q and A session. Journalists were asked to submit questions beforehand, presumably to vet them, and the word on the street (or strip) was that JEDI questions had been sent in. Unfortunately, we will never know what these were as Jassy didn’t take any questions and instead conducted an interview with Roger Goodwell, the commissioner of the NFL.

One assumes that after his three-hour keynote and various appearances throughout the week, Jassy saw a list of multi-cloud and JEDI questions and thought, «Nah, I’ll pass».

CEO Andy Jassy announced a barrage of new machine learning capabilities for AWS SageMaker during his Re:Invent keynote on Tuesday.

SageMaker is Amazon’s big machine learning hub that aims to remove most of the heavy lifting for developers and let them use ML more expansively. Launched in 2017, there have been numerous features and capabilities introduced over the years, with more than 50 added to it in 2019 alone.

Of the SageMaker announcements made at the company’s annual conference in Las Vegas, the biggest was AWS SageMaker Studio, an IDE that allows developers and data scientists to build, code, develop, train and tune machine learning workflows all in a single interface. Within it information can be viewed, stored, collected and used to collaborate with others through the studio.

In addition to SageMaker Studio, the company announced a further five new capabilities: Notebooks, Experiment Management, Autopilot, Debugger and Model Monitor.

AWS SageMaker Studio interface

The first of these is described as a ‘one-click’ notebook with elastic compute.

«In the past, Notebooks is frequently where data scientists would work and it was associated with a single EC2 instance,» explained Larry Pizette, the global head of ML solutions Lab. «If a developer or data scientist wanted to switch capabilities, so they wanted more compute capacity, for instance, they had to shut that down and instantiate a whole new notebook.

«This can now be done dynamically, in just seconds, so they can get more compute or GPU capability for doing training or inference, so its a huge improvement over what was done before.»

All of the updates to SageMaker have a specific purpose to simplify the machine learning workflows, like Experiment Management, which enables developers to visualise and compare ML model iterations, training parameters, and outcomes.

Autopilot lets developers submit simple data in CSV files and have ML models automatically generated. SageMaker Debugger provides real-time monitoring for ML models to improve predictive accuracy, reduce training times.

And finally, Amazon SageMaker Model Monitor detects concept drift to discover when the performance of a model running in production begins to deviate from the original trained model.

«We recognised that models get used over time and there can be changes to the underlying assumptions that the models were built with – such as housing prices which inflate,» said Pizette. «If interest rates change it will affect the prediction of whether a person will by a home or not.»

«When the model is initially built to keep statistics, it will notice what we call ‘Concept Drift’ if that concept drift is happening, and the model gets out of sync with the current conditions, it will identify where that’s happening and provide the developer or data scientist with the information to help them retrain and retool that model.»

AWS and Verizon have partnered to deliver cloud computing services at the edge using 5G connectivity.

The deal will see Amazon’s cloud processing brought closer to mobile devices at the edge thanks to Verizon’s 5G Ultra Wideband Network and AWS Wavelength.

Speaking during an AWS keynote on Tuesday, Verizon’s CEO Hans Vestberg said that his company was «the first in the world to offer 5G network edge computing».

However, this announcement comes a week after Microsoft and AT&T revealed their own integrated 5G edge computing service on Azure.

AWS and Verizon are currently piloting AWS Wavelength on Verizon’s edge compute platform, 5G Edge, in Chicago for a select group of customers, including video game publisher Bethesda Softworks and the NFL. Additional deployments are planned in other locations across the US for 2020.

«We’ve worked closely with Verizon to deliver a way for AWS customers to easily take advantage of the ubiquitous connectivity and advanced features of 5G,» said Jassy.

«AWS Wavelength provides the same AWS environment – APIs, management console, and tools – that they’re using today at the edge of the 5G network. Starting with Verizon’s 5G network locations in the US, customers will be able to deploy the latency-sensitive portions of an application at the edge to provide single-digit millisecond latency to mobile and connected devices.»

The aim is to enable developers to deliver a wide range of transformative, latency-sensitive use cases such as smart cars, IoT and augmented and virtual reality, according to AWS. The service will also be coming to Europe via Vodafone sometime in 2020.

«Vodafone is pleased to be the first telco to introduce AWS Wavelength in Europe,» said Vinod Kumar, CEO of Vodafone Business. «Faster speeds and lower latencies have the potential to revolutionise how our customers do business and they can rely on Vodafone’s existing capabilities and security layers within our own network.»

AWS has launched a new tool to help customers avoid data leaks within its simple storage service.

The AWS IAM Access Analyzer is a new function that analyses resource policies to help administrators and security teams protect their resources from unintended access.

It comes from an integration with CloudKnox, a company that specialises in hybrid cloud access management.

It’s a strategic integration designed to protect organisations against unintended access to critical resources and mitigate the risks they face, such as overprivileged identities, according to Balaji Parimi, CEO of CloudKnox.

«Exposed or misconfigured infrastructure resources can lead to a breach or a data leak,» he said. «Combining AWS IAM Access Analyzer’s automated policy monitoring and analysis with CloudKnox’s identity privilege management capabilities will make it easier for CloudKnox customers to gain visibility into and control over the proliferation of resources across AWS environments.»

Amazon S3 is one of the most popular cloud storage services, but because of human error, it’s historically been a bit of a security liability, according to Sean Roberts, GM of Cloud Business Unit at hybrid managed services provider Ensono.

«Over the last few years, hundreds of well-known organisations have suffered data breaches as a direct result of an incorrect S3 configuration — where buckets have been set to public when they should have been private,» he said.

«When sensitive data is unintentionally exposed online, it can damage an organisation’s reputation and lead to serious financial implications. In real terms, this sensitive data is often usernames and passwords, compromising not only the business but its customers too.»

In July, more than 17,000 domains were said to have been compromised in an attack launched by the prolific hacking group Magecart that preyed on leaky S3 buckets. Looking back over the last two years, a number of companies and organisations such as NASA, Dow Jones and even Facebook have been seen breaches from this S3 Buckets.

With the Access Analyzer, there’s a new option in the console for IAM (Identity and Access Management). The toll alerts customers when a bucket is configured to allow public access or access to other AWS accounts. There is also a single-click option that will block public access.

The card tables at las Vegas will have to make way for cloud computing this week, as AWS is in town for Re:Invent 2019.

Last year the conference took place in eight venues, with some 50,000 cloud computing enthusiasts descending on the city of sin. There was a lot to take in too, from new blockchain and machine learning service to even satellite data programs, the announcements came thick and fast.

AWS is the leading provider of public cloud services, so naturally its annual conference is gargantuan. It can’t afford to rest on its laurels, though, as its rivals are building up their own offerings and gaining on Amazon fast. In just the last year Microsoft has invested heavily in Azure with a string of acquisitions for migration services, while IBM has changed focus with its massive Red Hat deal and Google is ploughing so much into its cloud it’s hurting Alphabet earnings.

This is without mentioning the biggest cloud computing deal of the last two years, the Pentagon’s JEDI contract, being awarded to Microsoft, despite AWS being the clear favourite for much of the bidding.

Bearing all this in mind, I do expect to see a slew of new products and services unveiled throughout the week.

Expansive keynotes

AWS tends to do marathon keynotes that run on for three hours and overflow with announcements. Last year CEO Andy Jassy fired through new products and special guest customers with the same stamina that saw Eliud Kipchoge recently break the world record over 26.2 miles.

Jassy is, of course, back again this year, for not one but two keynotes. On Tuesday he will deliver his main opening day presentation, while on Wednesday he will join the head of worldwide channels and alliances, Doug Yeum for a fireside chat.

CTO Werner Vogels will be on stage on Thursday with an in-depth explainer on all the new products. This two hour deep dive is definitely one for the diehard fans of cloud architecture, with all the technical underpinning you crave. For the frugal, get there early — the first 1,000 guests in the keynote line will get a special piece of «swag», according to the website.

Machine Learning

Last year, machine learning and the AWS Marketplace took precedence and 2019’s event should hold more of the same. Recently, the company announced the launch of the AWS Data Exchange, a new hub for partners to share large datasets that customers can use for their machine learning and analytical programmes.

The customer element is key for AWS, as it often integrates and shares these innovations. Last year, head of Formula 1 Ross Brawn joined Jassy on stage keynote and showcased what his sport had done with AWS Sagemaker and other machine learning services. Interestingly, the basic idea for the prediction models they used came from a London-based startup called Vantage Power that developed the technology to predict the lifespan of electric batteries in buses.

Doubtless there will be some kind of machine learning update, but what it is could depend on what AWS customers have innovated. Last year the company announced a partnership with NFL app Next Gen Stats, the automation of NASCAR’s video library and multiple services with US-based ride-hailing firm Lyft. Vegas is all about gambling, but it’s a safe bet that at least one of these companies will be in attendance to talk through case studies.

AWS unveiled its plans to aid and accelerate the research of quantum computing at its Re:Invent conference on Monday.

The cloud giant announced three new services for testing, researching and experimenting with the technology.

The first of which was Amazon Bracket, a service that enables scientists, researchers, and developers to begin experimenting with computers from quantum hardware providers in a single place.

To go with Bracket is the AWS Centre for Quantum Computing which brings together quantum computing experts from Amazon, the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and other academic research institutions to collaborate on the research and development of new quantum computing technologies.

And finally Amazon Quantum Solutions Lab, which is a program that connects customers with quantum computing experts and consulting partners to develop internal expertise aimed at identifying practical uses of quantum computing. The aim is to accelerate the development of quantum applications with meaningful impact.

There has been significant progress in quantum computing this year, particularly from IBM and Google, with both announcing large investments in the technology. The two made headlines in October after IBM discredited claims made by Google that its 53-qubit Sycamore processor had achieved «quantum supremacy».

Quantum computing refers to extremely powerful machines capable of processing massive swathes of data due to a reliance on the theory of quantum mechanics in the way they are constructed. For example, Google suggested its processor was able to perform a complex mathematical problem in 200 seconds, while the world’s most-powerful supercomputer would need 10,000 years to complete.

Despite the work of IBM, Google and now AWS, quantum computing is not quite a mainstream technology just yet, but according to AWS evangelist Jeff Barr, that time is coming.

«I suspect that within 40 or 50 years, many applications will be powered in part using services that run on quantum computers,» he wrote in a blog post. «As such, it is best to think of them like a GPU or a math coprocessor. They will not be used in isolation, but will be an important part of a hybrid classical/quantum solution.»