Siemens PLM Software has added support for Slack and Microsoft Teams to its Digital Innovation Platform through the Teamcenter Cloud Collaboration Hub.

The update means Slack and Microsoft Teams users are able to post messages and view their conversation history from their Active Workspace using Teamcenter.

Siemens PLM Software explained that it will enable products to be of a higher quality as engineers and other development teams can view each other’s work and provide feedback in real time.

It can be used across departments, with conversations that require cross-team to be decisions easily managed. For example, if engineering and the project management team need to communicate with the supply chain team, those conversations can be open to relevant parties, without cluttering other departments’ Workspace.

As well as allowing for more productive conversation streams with collaborators – whether employees, clients or partners, it also means that it will be much faster for teams to collaborate on projects, with instant communication between employees in the engineering world.

“Gaining real-time access to the information and leveraging collaborative efforts from distinct teams to drive insights from that information have become inevitably essential to design and innovative best-in-class products in today’s globally distributed manufacturing environment,” said Shubhang Tripathi, senior product marketing manager at Siemens PLM Software.

The Slack and Microsoft Teams integration is available across the Active Workspace environments, including in-browser and mobile, whether a smartphone or table, so employees can collaborate whether they’re at their desk or in the field.

As is the case with all Active Workspace integrations, conversations can be filtered and are only presented if they’re relevant to the user’s job role, making it simple to find updates and act upon them quickly.

Twilio has appointed Google Hangouts inventor Chee Chew as chief product officer, helping developers create more immersive experiences for customers.

Chew has more than 25 years of experience helping businesses such as Amazon, Hewlett-Packard, Google and Microsoft improve the ways customers engage with their brands.

For example, in his latest role as vice president of consumer engagement at Amazon, he helped improve its mobile shopping experience.

As vice president of engineering at Google, Chew was instrumental in the development of Google Voice, Google Hangouts Seattle/Kirkland’s Google Chrome, enabling customers to communicate more effectively and be more productive throughout their day.

“As an engineer by trade, I’m extremely passionate about helping Twilio continue to build APIs and SDKs that will empower developers,” said Chew. “I’m excited to join Twilio and help developers and innovative businesses around the world build contextual and intelligent communications that will reinvent how companies engage with their customers.”

Chew will use his experience working with developers to help Twilio focus on customer experience, enabling other businesses to offer enhanced contextual and intelligent communication to their clients.

He will sit on the executive leadership team and report to Twilio co-founder and CEO Jeff Lawson.

“Chee brings an incredibly unique combination of skills and experiences to Twilio – from running customer engagement for the world’s largest e-commerce company to leading the invention of Google Hangouts,” said Lawson.

“Chee’s leadership in building outstanding products, teams and companies will be a great addition to the Twilio executive team.”

Microsoft Azure’s UK South storage region suffered an outage yesterday, just a day after the company debuted its Azure Data Box Disk.

Just after lunchtime, customers started reporting their services were down. Some said their Azure accounts were unavailable, while others said they could only see a spinning wheel when trying to access the cloud service.

The problems began on Azure Storage, but spread to other services, including App and Virtual Machines, with the company’s status page showing a blanket outage for all services after the issue was first reported. Its Azure UK West storage had not been affected at the time of writing. 

“Starting at 13:19 UTC on 10 Jan 2019, a subset of customers leveraging Storage in UK South may experience service availability issues. In addition, resources with dependencies on Storage, may also experience downstream impact in the form of availability issues. Engineers have been engaged and are actively investigating. The next update will be provided in 60 minutes, or as events warrant,” the company’s service status page reported yesterday. An update later confirmed the issue continued until «approximately 05:30 UTC on 11 Jan 2019.»

The Azure Support team used Twitter to confirm that the issue had now been resolved, saying: «Mitigated: Engineers have confirmed that the Storage availability issue in UK South is resolved. Any customers experiencing residual impact will receive communications to their portal. A full Root Cause Analysis will be provided in approximately 72 hours.» 

However, some customers were unhappy that, while services were offline, the company had failed to communicate much since its original message as engineers scrambled to fix the issues.

The support team then followed up with another response two hours later, saying: «Hi there, as continue working to resolve this issue, we are wondering if you have seen any signs of recovery yet?»

In terms of what caused the outage, Microsoft said: «Engineers determined that a number of factors, initially related to a software error, caused several nodes on a single storage scale unit to become temporarily unreachable. This, along with the increase in load on the scale unit caused by the initial issue, resulted in impact to customers with Storage resources located on this scale unit.»

IBM and WANdisco have developed relational database technology to extend IBM Big Replicate (WANdisco Fusion) for customers requiring a hybrid cloud environment solution.

Although WANdisco has previously supported Hadoop to offer a SQL solution on private clouds, this is the first time the company has been in a position to also support relational databases for hybrid set-ups.

IBM Db2 Big SQL, which has been jointly developed with WANdisco, takes IBM Big Replicate one step further, offering a SQL engine for Hadoop, with the added bonus of HDFS, RDBMS, NoSQL databases, object stores and WebHDFS source support.

«This co-engineered SQL solution with IBM is an exciting breakthrough for WANdisco as this is the first time that our technology has been applied to SQL data,» David Richards, chief executive officer and chairman of WANdisco said.

«This launch also represents a significant advancement of our relationship with a key partner and the scope of our addressable market in IBM’s channel. WANdisco’s unique technology presents great opportunity to collaborate with partners to address novel data requirements that previously have not been possible to meet.»

Benefits of IBM Db2 Big SQL include low latency, high security, SQL compatibility, and Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) and federation capabilities, giving data scientists and others with the responsibilities for processing data the tools to access data and scale their business, however many users need to access the information at once.

«Our close relationship with IBM was built upon further in 2018 with an increased royalty percentage and substantial client contracts,» Richards added. «We look forward to growing opportunities with IBM in the year ahead, leveraging our new co-engineered product to address as yet untapped data requirements.»

OThe UK cloud market is growing faster than ever, with vendor revenues swelling by 32% in 2018, passing $250 billion for the first time, according to Synergy Research’s latest figures.

The most accelerated growth happened in the IaaS and PaaS sub-sectors, with 50% growth reported apiece in just 12 months.

Hybrid cloud management software grew by 41% and enterprise SaaS and public cloud infrastructure both increased by 30%. Hosted private cloud infrastructure services weren’t far behind with 29% growth.

“In 2018 cloud started to dominate IT spending in some areas, sucking up potential growth opportunities for non-cloud technologies and services,” said John Dinsdale, a chief analyst and research director at Synergy Research Group.

During 2018, there was a distinct increase on cloud infrastructure spend, overtaking the amount invested in hardware and software on both public and private clouds for the first time. However, total spend on hardware and software wasn’t low and this surpassed $100 billion, evenly split between public and private cloud environments.

Microsoft, Amazon/AWS, Dell EMC, IBM, Salesforce, Cisco, HPE, Adobe, and VMware revenues accounted for half of all cloud-related income.

Cloud service providers, in particular, had a very good year, generating more than $150 billion in revenues from cloud infrastructure services and enterprise SaaS via applications covering search, social networking, email, e-commerce, gaming and mobile apps.

“Cloud technologies are now generating massive revenues for both cloud service providers and technology vendors and our latest forecasts show that while market growth rates will inevitably erode due to the sheer scale of the numbers, the overall market will double in size in under four years,” Dinsdale added.

Huawei has unveiled its 7nm Kunpeng 920 chipset, which it claims is the industry’s highest performance ARM-based CPU.

In addition to boosting the performance of the infrastructure powering big data, distributed storage and AI, the tech giant has its sights set on using the new launch – which will power its TaiShan server – to help it gain a top spot as a cloud player, competing with the likes of Alibaba, Amazon, Google, IBM, and Microsoft. 

«We hope to make our cloud service, together with our partners, one of the top five cloud services in the world,» William Xu, Huawei’s chief strategy marketing officer and director of the board, said in a CNBC article.

The Kunpeng 920 is based on the ARMv8 architecture license and integrates 64 cores at a frequency of 2.6GHz, with support for PCIe 4.0 and CCIX interfaces and 640 Gb/sec total bandwidth provision.

«Huawei has continuously innovated in the computing domain in order to create customer value. We believe that, with the advent of the intelligent society, the computing market will see continuous growth in the future. Currently, the diversity of applications and data is driving heterogeneous computing requirements. Huawei has long partnered with Intel to make great achievements. Together we have contributed to the development of the ICT industry. Huawei and Intel will continue our long-term strategic partnerships and continue to innovate together,»  Xu said. 

«At the same time, the ARM industry is seeing a new development opportunity. The Kunpeng 920 CPU and TaiShan servers newly released by Huawei are primarily used in big data, distributed storage, and ARM-native applications. We will work with global partners in the spirit of openness, collaboration, and shared success to drive the development of the ARM ecosystem and expand the computing space, and embrace a diversified computing era.» 

It will join the company’s other 7nm chipsets,  including the Kirin 980 found in the Chinese manufacturer’s smartphones and the Ascend 910. The latter chip is also designed to power data centre operations, with reports suggesting it could mean that Huawei is about to start producing servers powered entirely by its own processors.

In the past, Huawei has teamed up with Intel to provide its server chips, however, Xu said this latest partnership won’t affect that long-standing relationship.

«Huawei and Intel are long-term strategic partners, in the past, now and will be in the future. The relationship between Huawei and Intel, though we have differences in our CPU structures, our products complement each other. We will keep using Intel CPU in areas where they perform better, and use ARM-based CPU in areas like cloud and servers where they are better,» Xu told CNBC.

The Chinese company has found itself in a tricky spot recently; while it has experienced strong growth both inside and outside its native market, it has also faced a growing backlash. Western governments have voiced concerns over the potential for Huawei’s technology to be used by the Chinese government to spy on foreign countries. In particular, intelligence agencies in the US and UK have warned that the company’s tech could constitute a national security risk if incorporated into critical infrastructure.

Microsoft has unveiled its Clarity analytics tools, designed to run A/B testing of user experiences on a website. It’s going head to head with market leaders such as Optimizely, Google Optimize and Visual Web Optimizer that have been helping businesses test the effectiveness of user experiences.

The suite will not only identify which experiences are the most profitable for an organisation, but it will also help companies identify errors and usability issues, making for a very effective tool in a marketing arsenal.

It doesn’t just tell you how users navigated through your site, but it can accurately replay exactly what potential customers clicked, hovered over, and tapped with their finger if using a touchscreen device. When Clarity is deployed on a website, it “listens” to browser events, network requests and user interactions. This data is then uploaded and stored on the Clarity server running on Microsoft Azure.

During testing, Clarity engineers were also able to uncover browser exploits, such as malware running in the Bing search engine.

Clarity highlighting evidence of malware in a Bing browser window

“Thanks to Clarity, Bing’s engineers were able see what the user actually saw – which wasn’t at all what they expected,” the company explained in a blog launching Clarity. “To diagnose the cause of the strange content, they used Clarity to determine that the content came from malware installed on the end user’s machine, which were hijacking the page and modifying the content. As a result, people did not engage with Bing content and page load performance was also impacted.”

Clarity can operate on any HTML web pages and is deployed using Javascript on the page, although it’s only available on some domains at the moment, including those with two and three letters TLDs, including .com and .uk.

Vue Cinemas and customer engagement platform Urban Airship have teamed up to offer customers the opportunity to queue jump with Google Pay.

Cinema-goers can now purchase tickets in advance in person or via Vue’s website so when they attend a film showing, they can walk straight into the cinema screen without needing to queue at the box office.

“We know that more and more customers are using mobile wallets and we always move quickly to adopt technology that will improve customer experience,” said Dan Green, head of digital at Vue Entertainment.

“Our commitment to launching broad distribution for Google Pay movie tickets is a great example of understanding customer behaviour and reacting quickly to give them what they want. It will also enable us to offer enhanced personalisation which we know customers value.”

Apparently, this will save customers some of the 52 hours a year they spend queuing for various services.

When a customer purchases the ticket using their Google Pay account, the tickets are saved to their digital wallet and added to their lock screen ahead of the showing, so they can flash their phone to the attendants rather than searching through their phone for a confirmation.

As an add-on to the integration, Airship has implemented a personalisation mobile wallet movie experience, offering tailored recommendations and discounts to customers based on their purchases.

“Bringing physical and digital experiences together is more important than ever to streamline both customer interactions and business operations,” said Brett Caine, CEO of Urban Airship.

“Through our close work with Google Pay and Vue, we’re bringing mobile wallet movie tickets to everyone’s smartphone, eliminating the hassle of standing in queues, searching through emails for confirmations or having to first download another app. It’s all about getting guests to the best seats, concessions and the big show more quickly.”

The Vue Google Pay integration will debut in Vue’s paperless venues before being rolled out to other sites across the country.

Salesforce’s IoT Insights platform is now available as part of its Field Service Lightning, allowing businesses to gain a better understanding of the IoT devices operating with their systems.

The addition of IoT Insights means workers out in the field are able to identify and diagnose problems with equipment remotely using the Field Service mobile app, allowing them to quickly isolate a problem and deploy the right engineer to fix any issues.

The new integration will now mean that engineers can access far more detailed information on the devices being used by the company on the edge of their network. Specifically, workers can now identify when a device is going to fail and how to fix the issue ahead of time, so that they arrive at a site equipped with the tools they need.

Because all this data is kept within Salesforce, businesses can stay on top of all the admin associated with field workers and operations. The tool features automated work order processes that are triggered by signals coming from the IoT devices, essentially cutting down the amount of admin work required to support repairs.

For example, as soon as a device starts malfunctioning, the system can autonomously identify what’s wrong and deploy an engineer, rather than the case having to go through a call centre.

“IoT-enabled products give organizations an opportunity to take a proactive approach to customer service, and the potential is limitless, “ Paolo Bergamo, SVP and GM, Salesforce Field Service Lightning said.

“Examples include smart homes that notify service teams when an oven or air conditioning unit is about to fail, so they can fix the issue before the machine breaks; or industrial-scale machines that automatically send performance signals to field technicians in advance of routine maintenance. The promise is a world with zero down-time where everything just works.”

Gartner predicts that there may be as many as 20 billion connected devices across the globe by 2020.

In May the company announced it was extending its data centre footprint in the UK with the opening of its second facility, one that runs entirely on renewable energy.

Thirty-two million Sky Brasil customers have been subject of a data breach caused by an unsecured ElasticSearch server.

The subscription TV provider left one of its servers without a password, meaning the information was indexed by search engine Shodan and exposed on the internet.

The leak was uncovered by Fabio Castro, a Brazilian security researcher, reported ZDNet.

Castro explained he wasn’t sure how long the server had been left open but it had been indexed since mid-October.

He uncovered the ElasticSearch server’s data before identifying who it belonged to using two IP addresses. But after examining the data, he discovered it was one of Sky Brasil’s servers.

The data stored on the device was API information and included 28.7GB of log files and 429.1GB of API data, with the details of both personal and business customers.

Data included names, home addresses, phone numbers, birth dates, billing details, and encrypted passwords.

After telling Sky Brasil about the leak, Castro said the server has now been secured with a password. Although the data is still indexed, no one can view the data.

ElasticSearch servers have been flagged by security researchers as a vulnerable storage option for the last year, following a number of data leaks and breaches.

In the last few months, FitMetrix and an unidentified data analytics firm have both been involved in data leaks because of unsecured servers. On both occasions, the administrators failed to add password protection to their devices so anyone could access and take the data residing on them.

However, Elastic, the company behind ElasticSearch said their servers are only designed for use in internal networks, which is why password protection isn’t a requirement during set up.