AWS has unveiled five new EC2 bare metal instances to run high-intensity workloads, such as performance analysis, specialised applications and legacy workloads not supported in virtual environments.

The new instances – m5.metal, m5d.metal, r5.metal, r5d.metal, and z1d.metal – have all been designed to run virtualisation secured containers such as Clear Linux Containers. Each offers its own set of resources, with the m5 variations offering 384 GiB memory, the r5 options 768 GiB ( both up to 3.1GHz all-core turbo power) and z1 with 384 GiB, but with up to 4GHz power across 48 logical processors.

AWS has specified that the different levels of bare metal instances have been created for different scenarios. For example, the m5 instances will be useful for web and application servers, as well as back-end servers for enterprise applications and gaming servers. While the r5 models are best suited to high-performance database applications and real-time analytics.

The company’s z1d are best used for electronic design automation, gaming and relational database workloads because of their high compute and memory offerings.

Any workloads using AWS’s bare metal instances can still take advantage of the cloud firm’s suite of cloud services, such as Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS), Elastic Load Balancer (ELB) and Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), just with more control over the hardware.

AWS is offering the bare metal instances on a number of different plans, including on-demand, as reserved instances on a year, 3-year and convertible plans or as spot instances. They’re available now across the company’s US East, US West, Europe and Asia Pacific regions.

Lenovo has launched TruScale Infrastructure Services, a subscription service for businesses to use and pay for data centre infrastructure and associated hardware without paying upfront.

It’s particularly well-suited to businesses that don’t have the capital to keep paying out for infrastructure as their needs scale up or don’t have the IT resources to procure and manage systems.

TruScale Infrastructure Services covers the entire hardware installation, deployment, management, maintenance and removal processes, as well as the equipment infrastructure they need to run everything.

Businesses essentially loan the resources they need to power their workloads and services via a consumption-based model, so there aren’t any nasty surprises, even if the company needs to rapidly scale.

“Lenovo’s TruScale as-a-Service offering is truly revolutionary, changing how IT departments procure and refresh their data center infrastructure,» said Laura Laltrello, vice president and general manager of services at Lenovo Data Center Group. «With our subscription-based model, customers pay for what they use, eliminating upfront capital purchase risk.”

“Our offering can be applied to any configuration that meets the customer’s needs – whether storage-rich, server-heavy, hyperconverged or high-performance compute – and can be scaled as business dictates.”

Customers can also view their data consumption in real time via a centralised portal so they can keep on top of their predicted costs. They’re also supported by a Customer Success Manager that will offer greater insights into usage and fix any problems they may come across.

IBM is opening up its Watson Assistant and Watson OpenScale to everyone for the first time, enabling businesses to take advantage of conversational AI and smart platform management, even if they’re not using IBM Cloud.

Although the services have been available for IBM cloud customers to use in the past, the move means that enterprises can now use the services within their own data centres too, opening up the tech to a much larger range of businesses.

The company explained it decided to open up parts of its AI ecosystem to enable businesses with data stored across multiple cloud environments to better analyse their information.

«Businesses have largely been limited to experimenting with AI in siloes due to the limitations caused by cloud provider lock-in of their data,» said Rob Thomas, general manager of IBM Data and AI.

«With most large organizations storing data across hybrid cloud environments, they need the freedom and choice to apply AI to their data wherever it is stored. By breaking open that siloed infrastructure we can help businesses accelerate their transformation through AI.»

Rather than businesses having to move their data to the right platform for AI analysis, which can often prove costly, they are now able to take the AI tools to their cloud environment.

To take advantage of IBM’s Watson Assistant and Watson OpenScale tech, firms will first need to use IBM Cloud Private to containerise the data so it can then be supported by Watson services.

The tools can then be deployed to automate business processes, helping customers identify patterns in their data to inform business decisions.

Google has finally unveiled its Google Suite-powered Hire recruitment platform in the UK, more than six months after it was launched in the US.

The platform was first announced at Google I/O in June 2017 and was released a year later in its key markets (ie., the US).

It’s an HR automation platform that allows headhunters and in-house recruiters to easily identify talent to fill job roles, building on the company’s existing collaboration tools.

For example, recruiters can contact potential talent via Gmail, schedule interviews and other tasks, such as induction days using Google Calendar and track candidate progress through Sheets.

But possibly the more useful tool for recruiters is finding talent by trawling through information sources, such as the CVs provided by candidates and past touch points with the company. So if someone wasn’t right for a particular role before they may well be suited second-time around. This is known as Candidate Discovery in the world of Google.

“There’s a huge opportunity for technology—and AI specifically—to help people work faster and therefore focus on uniquely human activities,” said Berit Hoffmann, senior product manager of Hire, when the service was first launched last year.

“Ultimately, that’s what Hire is all about, and the functionality…demonstrates our commitment to help companies focus on people and build their best teams.”

The reason it’s taken so long for Google to launch its Hire platform in the UK is that it had to ensure all of its features were GDPR-compliant. The company explained that its taken a long time coming, but now it ticks all the compliance boxes, Hire’s rollout across Europe will be much smoother.

The healthcare sector is increasingly adopting hybrid cloud environments, although it’s been a slow process so far, with just 19% of healthcare providers currently taking advantage of mixed public and private cloud infrastructure.

Nutanix’s healthcare Enterprise Cloud Index Report predicted that adoption would rise to 37% in the next two years as healthcare organisations realise the benefits hybrid environments can bring, specifically when considering the protection of sensitive patient data and meeting regulatory compliance.

A third of healthcare businesses surveyed said security and compliance were the primary reasons they chose a particular cloud environment, although compatibility across applications was also a priority for more than half of organisations.

“Healthcare organisations especially need the flexibility, ease of management and security that the cloud delivers, and this need will only become more prominent as attacks on systems become more advanced, compliance regulations more stringent, and data storage needs more demanding,” said Chris Kozup, SVP of global marketing at Nutanix.

The report added that clinicians understand the value of taking a hybrid approach to the cloud in order to facilitate digital transformation efforts. Such a strategy means they can take advantage of enhanced services to offer patients, such as automated healthcare tracking, remote monitoring and telehealth.

“As our findings predict, healthcare organisations are bullish on hybrid cloud growth for their core applications and will continue to see it as the ideal solution as we usher in the next era of healthcare,” Kozup added.

“With the cloud giving way to new technologies and tools such as machine learning and automation, we expect to see positive changes leading to better healthcare solutions in the long run.”

Mendix has optimised its platform for IBM Cloud, adding support for Kubernetes and single sign-on onboarding.

Mendix now works with IBM’s Watson AI capabilities, allowing developers to take advantage of its low-code system to create AI-ready applications and services. Developers can integrate a range of services into their creations, including Weather Channel content, App ID, and App Launch on IBM Cloud.

Integrated support for Kubernetes means developers can use containerised infrastructure to build their apps, too, whether a business is deploying apps on private, public, or hybrid cloud services. Mendix explained it will reduce costs associated with cloud app development, with automatic scaling across environments.

All applications businesses built on IBM’s cloud service using Mendix can be monitored from a single dashboard, making it much easier to develop and maintain multiple applications, the company claimed. 

“The goal of the Mendix-IBM Alliance is to place the ease of drag-and-drop, low-code application development into the hands of the Enterprise cloud market, leverage Watson’s AI capabilities for the largest number of users, and vastly accelerate the time-to-value deployment of business innovation,” said Erno Rorive, senior product manager at Mendix.

“The integration of the Mendix platform with IBM Cloud and Watson represents a golden triangle of enterprise-ready solutions that will power the next wave of smart applications to focus the power of AI on vertical industry solutions.”

The final addition to Mendix on IBM Cloud platform is support for integrated billing. Because Mendix is integrated into the IBM Cloud catalogue, businesses can be invoiced for all their IBM services together.

IBM and Smart Energy Water have signed an agreement to boost the global energy and water provider’s cloud platform with the addition of IBM’s cloud infrastructure to host its mobile and web apps.

US-based Smart Energy Water will host various workloads on IBM’s cloud platform, including its customer and mobile workforce apps, online billing, energy efficiency monitoring, reward programmes and data collection tools.

SEW will offer the infrastructure for other energy businesses to build their apps upon IBM’s cloud. The utilities tech provider works with more than 150 energy and water businesses around the world, so this is a noteworthy deal for IBM.

“Consumers are open to new ways of engaging with their utility,» said Harman Sandhu, President at Smart Energy Water. «Together with IBM, we can deliver solutions at large scale that help utilities lower the cost-to-serve by moving customers from the call center to lower-cost digital channels, personalize service to increase overall customer satisfaction, and target customers for the right opportunities for value-added programs and services.»

The five-year deal will help SEW expand its offerings into analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and Internet of Things (IoT), helping clients develop a more diverse set of tools to benefit customers.

“Smart Energy Water is anticipating the major impact connected technologies will have on their customers business,» said Brad Gammons, global managing director, IBM Energy, Environment and Utilities. «By investing in data, their workers can do their job better than ever before and customers will have access to self-service capabilities that can help improve client service.»

IBM has sealed deals with some pretty big businesses of late, including BNP Paribas and Vodafone.

A report by BMC Software has revealed that business success is being impacted by a lack of collaboration between IT departments and business decision makers.

More than four in ten of businesses hold the IT department accountable if something goes wrong during the digital transformation process, despite two-thirds of businesses claiming they don’t ask for advice from the IT department when opting to buy new software to help with their everyday work.

The most common reasons projects fail were listed by the software firm as misaligned objectives between departments and time pressures to get things done or new technology procured.

Because businesses are more focused on increasing revenues or reducing costs rather than integrating the technologies into existing infrastructure, things often go awry.

And because the wider business wants decisions to be made faster than standard procurement processes, they often choose ill-fitting technologies that can be implemented faster, but then are discovered that the wrong software and tools are selected to work alongside existing systems, which means integration actually takes longer.

BMC Software said only 42% of businesses are seeing the positive impact digital transformation has had two years after implementing a strategy.

After three or four years, this rises to 63%, demonstrating the time-to-value is a lot longer than business execs expect it to take. Such considerations should be better taken into account and discussed with the IT department before spending budgets.

“Digital transformation is not a one-off, unique journey that some organisations are experimenting with,” Kevin Plumberg, editor of the report said.

“It has become the norm, and companies where IT teams are working closely with the business rather than in silos are better positioned to manage the challenges that inevitably arise.”

Google is beefing up its Chrome tools to help users ascertain when their data may be at risk.

Password Checkup and Cross Account Protection are the latest efforts from search giant Google to make users feel safe and secure when browsing online.

Password Checkup is a Chrome extension that will detect whether the username and password you’re using to login to an online account or service have been stolen. If either has, an alert will pop up in your browser, advising you of the breach and suggesting you change your password.

Google warns that this is only the first iteration of the tool though and it will be refined in the coming months, suggesting it’s perhaps not as accurate as it should be.

Cross Account Protection has been developed to address security if you use your Google account to login to third-party websites and services. Increasingly, businesses are integrating Google login, meaning you can simply enter your existing Google account username and password (or click a few buttons if you’re already logged in, to gain access to other services.

Although Google can implement protections if you’re using its services and it thinks you’ve been hacked, before the introduction of Cross Account Protection, Google was unable to implement the same security processes. However, now it will share any breach data with the third party, so they can take action, such as forcing you to re-login.

Google said only very limited data is shared with the third party and it’s working with the IETF and Open ID Foundation to allow more services to integrate the extra protection.

“Your privacy and security is of the utmost importance,” said Google spokesperson and security and anti-abuse research scientist Kurt Thomas. “With technologies like Password Checkup and Cross Account Protection, we’re continuing to improve the security of our users across the internet, not just on Google – and we’ll never stop improving our defences to keep you safe online.”

Dell EMC has unveiled updates to its Data Domain and Integrated Data Protection Appliance (IDPA), enabling multi-cloud businesses to take advantage of enhanced data protection.

Targeted at mid-sized companies that have multiple offices or swathes of remote workers, Dell EMC’s updates have made it simpler and more efficient for businesses to run its security appliances.

For example, restores have been given a speed boost to make it 2.5 times faster compared to previous versions of the appliance. Additionally, recalls are now four times faster from the cloud to the hardware for IDPA, although 40,000 IOPS with 20 milliseconds of latency was added to Data Domain last year.

Data Domain OS 6.2 and IDPA 2.3 software’s support is extended to Google Cloud Platform and Alibaba Cloud through Cloud Tier support, adding to its compatibility with AWS, Microsoft Azure, Dell EMC Elastic Cloud Storage, Virtustream, Ceph, IBM Cloud Open Storage, AWS Infrequent Access, Azure Cool Blob storage and Azure Government Cloud. Its Free-space Estimator Tool will also analyse cloud usage and reduce costs of both on-premises and cloud storage costs.

For Data Domain Virtual Edition, AWS GovCloud, Azure Government Cloud, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) have now been tagged on as supported platforms, making it no longer an exclusive for AWS S3 and Azure Hot Blob users.

“As the industry leader in data protection appliances, Dell EMC is committed to delivering continued innovation in our data protection portfolio that supports and improves customers’ adoption of multi-cloud environments,” said Beth Phalen, president of Data Protection at Dell EMC said.

“Our appliances are powerful, simple to manage and make it easy to expand to public clouds with native cloud capabilities.”