Monthly Archives: January 2020

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Veeam to be acquired by Insight Partners in $5 billion deal

Veeam has always been a green company – in terms of its branding and UI at least – and now the Swiss cloud backup and data management provider is getting its Green Card.

Software investor Insight Partners announced it is set to acquire Veeam in a transaction valued at $5 billion (£3.84bn), with Veeam becoming a US-based company with a US leadership team.

Veeam focuses on what it describes as a ‘single platform for cloud, virtual and physical’; integrating cloud backup and disaster recovery, orchestration, mobility, monitoring and analytics. The company has found leadership roles in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for data centre backup and recovery solutions on three occasions, with Insight Partners boasting Veeam as ‘the clear market leader’, with more than $1 billion claimed in annual sales and more than 365,000 global customers.

William H. Largent, previously executive vice president operations, is promoted to CEO as part of the acquisition. “Veeam has enjoyed rapid global growth over the last decade and we see tremendous opportunity for future growth, particularly in the US market,” said Largent in a statement. “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.”

The comment around US expansion is an interesting one, as many will recognise Veeam as a European stronghold offering differentiation through choice and simplicity – and partnering with US companies to help them cross the chasm for European customers. CloudTech spoke with David Friend, CEO of storage provider Wasabi Technologies, in August as the company was in Europe having just announced partnership agreements. Veeam was one of the first partners.

It has been a busy – and expensive – week for Insight. Earlier the company confirmed it was buying Armis for $1.1bn in what was claimed as the largest enterprise Internet of Things (IoT) cybersecurity transaction.

“Veeam’s platform is the most advanced and complete data management solution available to businesses requiring a seamless blend of data backup and recovery, data protection, data security and data availability,” said Insight Partners managing director Mike Triplett in a statement. “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.”

The acquisition is expected to close in the first quarter of 2020.

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Ela Osterberger, Deliveroo: On inspiration, injustice, and building great data science teams

“I’m someone who always has to speak up if there is any injustice,” says Ela Osterberger, director of data science at Deliveroo. “As soon as I see something not being quite right, I have to speak about it.”

Being an experienced data science leader, with Omnicom and The Guardian among others before Deliveroo, means Osterberger has seen her fair share of it over the years. Presenting her Master’s thesis, for instance, it struck Osterberger that she was the only woman in the room. She has also noted fighting against a culture where ‘men solve problems.’

The path to a senior role at a name brand well-known for its tech expertise – as far back as 2017 the company said its ethos had been based entirely on data efficiency – was one not known when Osterberger received her Master’s. Naturally, data science was not an industry in its own right, with business and data analysts in vogue. Yet that was by no means the starting point.

I had to study coding at home secretly so no-one would judge me – and it turned out I’m actually quite good at it

“I always liked mathematics but I couldn’t see myself having a career in it,” Osterberger tells CloudTech. “I think that’s because the way I identified economics – I was interested in the more political and social aspect – but only then did I realise how passionate I was about statistics.” One element for Osterberger, however, stood in her favour. “I didn’t ever care about fitting in,” she says. “I wasn’t quite sure what I was studying for, but I guess I just kept doing the things that I loved which I think really helped me in my career.”

As is becoming increasingly apparent, a maths degree can open doors to virtually any industry. The need for data, and the ability to crunch it and gain insights, is a universal language. Deliveroo has one of the largest groups of data scientists in the UK at around 100, and as of last month was still accepting applications.

The primary languages for success in data science – R, Python, SQL – are also important to the projects Deliveroo is undertaking. But to really impress Osterberger, you have to be made of the right stuff.

“One of the things that is really important is behaviour and cultural fit,” says Osterberger. “For a company that’s growing so quickly, it’s really important to hire people who keep the team culture healthy. Right now, one of the things I’m proudest of is [that] the team is so humble. Everyone is sharing with each other, and people constantly develop each other because they work together.”

Deliveroo’s data scientists are grouped into different areas of the organisation. Some work on market development and strategic initiatives, while there are approximately 25 product teams. It is worth noting the three key stakeholders in Deliveroo’s business; the restaurant, the rider, and the customer. The company has distinct teams which work to improve the experience and efficiency for all three.

Osterberger’s role is now entirely focused on the management side, compared to a more hands-on focus when she started in 2017. This is arguably down to both the expansion and Osterberger’s management style. “I focus a lot on the team and culture,” she says. “I try to hire really brilliant people, from all over the world, and provide them with what they need to be as successful as they can be. I give feedback on their work, make the right conversations happen, introduce them to other people in the company they should talk to, and make sure they have all the skills they need.”

This is translated in hiring more women in data science roles and trying to achieve equality; Osterberger estimates recent hires to be at approximately 50/50. “We’re definitely getting a lot better at attracting women now than we have been,” she notes. “It’s not for the lack of trying – but something actually seems to be changing now.”

The change is highlighted by events such as Women in Data, which ran its latest iteration in London in November. In collaboration with online retailer NBrown, the event saw the publishing of its latest list of 20 inspiring women across the entire data landscape – in which Osterberger placed. Event co-founder Rachel Keane said Osterberger was "another fine ambassador who will be a visible example to inspire women at all stages of their careers."

The event itself was ‘amazing’, Osterberger added. “The energy was amazing and seeing so many women now going into data science and analytics really fills me with hope,” she said. “I think they’re really going to change the industry for the better.”

One of the things I’m proudest of is the data science team is so humble. People constantly develop each other because they are working together

In October, CloudTech spoke with Keane, who noted something of a parallel with getting things up and running. From a recruitment perspective, Keane, and fellow co-founder Roisin McCarthy, found they had placed fewer women for data and analytics roles in 2014 than they had in 2000. This was by no means a negligent act, of course; but both realised that it wasn’t a case of giving women more opportunities, but by helping women maximise the various skills they already have.

Events such as Women in Data are therefore part solidarity and part showing off. Getting greater awareness and more role models in the industry – of which Osterberger is undoubtedly one – will create a snowball effect that will hopefully in the coming years be impossible to stop.

Yet for all the injustice which continues to pervade for women in STEM, moving out of one’s comfort zone will help move things faster. “I think just being really brave and saying yes to opportunities is really important,” says Osterberger. “I remember at university I tried not to take the coding classes because I thought I couldn’t do it, I might fail.

“I had to start studying coding at home secretly, so no-one would judge me – and it turned out I’m actually quite good at it.”

Picture credit: Women in Data/NBrown

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Google adds partners to real-time translation tools


Nicole Kobie

8 Jan, 2020

Google is bringing its real-time translation tools to businesses via Volara and Sonifi. 

Google Assistant’s interpreter mode already translates conversations in 29 different languages in real-time on supported smartphones and smart displays, but Google is now working with the two systems integrator partners to make it easier for businesses to make use of the system. 

The system uses a Google Nest Hub smart display, showing the translations on the screen and speaking them aloud. Volara and Sonifi will help rollout the technology, and offer consulting, training and technical support to customers. 

The aim is to offer instant translations for hotel desks, airports and other places where language challenges occur. Google suggested it was already in use at terminal four at JFK airport in New York, in airport lounges in Los Angeles, at Caesars casinos in Las Vegas, and even used by aid organisations Mercy Corps and Human Rights First. 

Lilian Rincon, Senior Director of Product Management for Google Assistant, explained in a blog post that interpreter mode has been used at JFK airport’s terminal four to help travelers get help finding luggage pickup, navigating the terminal, locating shops, and more, while staff are using the system to communicate more easily with passengers. “Of all customers in T4, 65% are international travelers, many of whom are visiting the US for the first time,” she said. “Flying can be very stressful for passengers, especially when struggling to understand the native language.”

Alongside the systems integrator partnerships for translation, Google announced new features for Google Assistant, including support for scheduled actions — meaning you can finally use Google Home to programme smart home devices for a specific time. 

Announced at CES, Scheduled Actions are one of several new features in Google Assistant, which the company said is now used by half a billion people globally, with support for more brands being added. 

Scheduled Actions means you’ll be able to choose an on/off time for compatible smart home gadgets. “For example, you can say, ‘Hey Google, run the coffee maker at 6 am’,” explained Manuel Bronstein, vice president of product for Google Assistant, in a blog post.

Bronstein added that it’ll now be easier to setup smart home devices using Google Assistant. “When you set up your smart device through the manufacturer’s app, you’ll receive a notification on your Android phone or see a ‘suggestion button’ when you open up the Google Home app that will prompt you to connect the device with your Assistant,” he said. “You’ll then be able to easily complete set-up in just a few taps without needing to re-enter your account credentials.”

Alongside the smart-home features, Google at CES also demonstrated Assistant reading aloud long-form content, such as news articles or short stories. “Unlike traditional screen readers, this experience is built on new voice datasets to create more expressive and more natural sounding voices, so it’s easier to listen for a longer period of time,” said Bronstein. Google is working on automatically translating such documents into different languages, as well as highlighting text as its read aloud.

Google also unveiled tools to share notes with the rest of your household, showing messages on smart displays without anyone needing to sign in — essentially, a digital post-it note — as well as new speed dials to more easily make calls. Both features will arrive later this year.

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Travelex disruption caused by devastating ransomware attack


Keumars Afifi-Sabet

8 Jan, 2020

The foreign exchange company Travelex has confirmed the ongoing disruption to its services, which started on New Year’s Eve, are being caused by a successful ransomware attack.

The outage, which has lasted more than a week, has caused chaos for customers and partners alike who rely on these systems to conduct transactions.

Travelex had previously pinned disruption on a “software virus”, in a statement released three days after the attack. The firm confirmed in an updated statement, however, the incident was indeed caused by a ransomware attack.

Additional reports suggest the perpetrators are demanding millions of dollars in exchange for the return of customer data.

Travelex first detected that a virus had compromised its services on 31 December and took all of its systems offline as a precaution to prevent the malware from spreading across its network any further.

Following days of speculation and media reports, the firm has finally confirmed the “software virus” that hit their systems was the ransomware known as REvil, with the name Sodinokibi also sometimes used.

The attack was a success, and the group behind the attack has demanded a ransom to the tune of $6 million (approximately £4.6 million), according to BBC News.

The attackers also claim they have taken approximately 5GB of customer data, and will only return this should the ransom be paid in full. This data is claimed to comprise dates of birth, national insurance numbers as well as credit card information.

The company says it’s taken steps to contain the spread of the ransomware, suggesting that although there has been some encryption, there remains no evidence that any customer data has been compromised.

Travelex also added in a statement that while it does not have a complete picture of all the data that has been encrypted, but “there is still no evidence to date any data has been exfiltrated”.

These conflicting reports could suggest the attackers may be bluffing in claiming to have downloaded a cache of customer data. Many less well-resourced firms unable to conduct thorough assessments in the wake of such attacks, however, may deem these ‘bluffs’ as too risky to ignore, and pay any ransom demanded to secure safe return regardless.

“Our focus is on communicating directly with our partners and customers to protect them and their information from any further compromise,” said Travelex chief executive Tony D’Souza.

“We take very seriously our responsibility to protect the privacy and security of our partner and customers’ data as well as provide an excellent service to our customers and we sincerely apologise for the inconvenience caused.

“Travelex continues to offer services to its customers on a manual basis and is continuing to provide alternative customer solutions in the interim.”

A forensic analysis of the incident is underway, and the firm is working to fully recover its systems. Some internal systems have been restored, but disruption still remains on the customer and partner-facing side. This is reportedly affecting services of other firms such as HSBC and Tesco Bank.

Travelex says it’s in discussions with the National Crime Agency (NCA) and the Metropolitan Police, who are each conducting their own investigations into the breach.

There’s doubt as to whether Travelex has approached the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), however, despite the potential for data theft. The incident could constitute a violation of the General Data Protection Act (GDPR), should the attackers claims to have made away with customer data prove to be true.

“Organisations must notify the ICO within 72 hours of becoming aware of a personal data breach unless it does not pose a risk to people’s rights and freedoms,” an ICO spokesperson said.

“If an organisation decides that a breach doesn’t need to be reported they should keep their own record of it, and be able to explain why it wasn’t reported if necessary.”

Principal security consultant and head of penetration testing at Bridwell Consulting, James Smith, told IT Pro that Travelex has handled the initial fallout badly. The company should also learn from this incident, as well as past incidents, and build these teachings into a proper cyber resilience plan.

“Transparency is key in maintaining customer trust, especially for firms like Travelex in the financial services industry,” Smith said.

“Travelex has taken a long time to inform customers about what’s taken place, and placing a press statement on the website days after the event simply isn’t enough.

“Financial services firms like Travelex have a responsibility to their customers to keep them informed even if no data has been lost. This is especially important in light of the 2018 breach the company suffered in which the personal details of 17,000 customers were exposed.”

Ransomware is highly common, with this particular form of attack blighting countless numbers of businesses routinely each year.

Many companies and professionals, meanwhile, believe that, actually, paying the ransom is often a cheaper and simpler way to secure data and restore systems.

A Canadian laboratory, for example, was advised in late 2019 to pay hackers in order to retrieve 85,000 stolen data records, despite this action being against the general consensus among security experts.

Asked whether Travelex should pay the ransom, Smith added there is a debate to be had, but the negatives always outweigh the positives.

“If you pay, in theory, you regain access to your data and systems and business can continue. However, there’s no guarantee you’ll actually get access restored.

“There’s also no guarantee that the data hasn’t been stolen already, before it was encrypted. This is happening more and more in the industry and the likelihood that the data will be sold or stored by the hacker is great.

“Then, of course, there are the wider ethical considerations about paying attackers who could use the money to fund other criminal enterprises.

“If organisations have the right plans in place, such as replicating their data, having off-site backups and segregated networks, for example, the likelihood of having to answer the “pay or not pay” question is greatly reduced.”

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Microsoft has an edge on AWS, according to IT executives


Bobby Hellard

8 Jan, 2020

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.

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VMware Cloud on AWS implementation best practice: How to accelerate benefits with upfront planning

By now, most businesses have made or are at least planning to make the shift to the cloud. As the benefits of a hybrid and multi-cloud environment become well-known, organisations are turning to VMware’s hybrid cloud platform: VMware Cloud on AWS.

VMware Cloud on AWS offers organisations scalability, support for strategic initiatives, and cost savings for use cases like data centre extension, disaster recovery (DR), and more. Organisations across varied industries—especially tech services, financial services, education, and healthcare—are prepared to embrace VMware Cloud on AWS.

Moving to VMware Cloud on AWS simplifies cloud adoption and reduces the disruptions associated with other cloud initiatives. By evaluating the fit, identifying organisational benefits, and being mindful of the elements involved in making the move, you’ll further reduce the risks that hinder large IT infrastructure transformation projects.

For any organisation considering VMware Cloud on AWS, think about the following five key aspects. These will help ensure that you leverage all of the benefits and ultimately realise a seamless migration.

Define business objectives and success criteria

Before embarking on your cloud journey, identify the business objectives that cloud will help your business achieve. Organisations across industries turn to the cloud in order to:

  • Deliver consistent global operations
  • Cost-effectively expand their data centre footprints
  • Leverage cloud-native tooling to enhance data analytics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to improve market and business performance
  • Improve business resiliency from natural disasters, cyberattacks, ransomware, and power outages,
  • Reduce costs associated with building and managing data centres
  • Increase elasticity

If your business objective is to deliver consistent global operations, which cloud locations offer your proximity and low latencies between applications, storage, and users? If your business objective is to improve business resiliency, how quickly do business-critical applications need to be restored after a disaster event?

Once you understand your goals for cloud adoption or migration, learn from others who have similar use cases.

Match business objective to primary VMware Cloud on AWS use cases

Organisations are adopting VMware Cloud on AWS to satisfy four primary use cases. The first use case, data centre extension, allows businesses to augment their existing on-prem data centres with cloud resources and add test/dev capabilities without building out a physical data centre. VMware Cloud on AWS offers these companies a cloud environment that’s operationally similar to their on-prem VMware environments.

The second most popular use case is cloud migration. Transition your on-prem data centre into the cloud in an efficient, frictionless manner. Migrating VMware workloads from on-premises to VMware Cloud on AWS avoids the hidden costs of refactoring applications and re-skilling your workforce. Wholly or partially replacing existing on-prem and colo data centres lowers facilities, cooling, and labour costs, freeing up funds for strategic business initiatives.

Another popular use case is leveraging AWS integrated apps to perform early predictive analytics, access artificial intelligence (AI), and utilise machine learning capabilities to develop unstructured and semi-structured data to yield actionable market and business analysis. VMware Cloud in AWS opens up integrations and reduces latency between your applications and Amazon Native services.

Finally, disaster recovery (DR) rounds out this use case quartet. Cloud-based DR can be brought online within seconds or minutes—much faster than traditional DR sites. VMware Cloud on AWS is a perfect fit for companies that want to implement a DR solution for the first time, modernise their DR solution, reduce DR costs, or protect specific application workloads with a cloud-based DR solution.

VMware Cloud on AWS provides a stepping stone to the cloud. Immediately realise benefits from moving VMware workloads into the cloud with minimal retraining, then focus on more intensive applications that require additional time and effort.

Plan your ideal migration

As you plan your move to VMware Cloud on AWS, heed the lessons learned about configuring network, storage, and compute resources from others who have paved the way. First and foremost, use the tools and expertise you already have in-house. You may already have the necessary tools in-house such as site recovery manager (SRM), hybrid cloud extension (HCX), Double-Take, and hybrid linked mode.

Next, choose the right connectivity. Plan, document, iterate, and consult with your experts. It will be worth the up-front investment of time. Know your application’s limitations and abilities when connecting to any other environment (e.g., extending Layer 2, VPNs, direct connect, re-IPing of VMs, and geographical locations).

Phase your migration to reduce risk. Document compliance requirements; implement a corresponding security baseline; and automate the set-up of the environment for running secure, scalable workloads to minimise errors.

Boost your cloud environment

Once you’ve completed the first few phases of your migration, look for opportunities to boost your cloud environment. An organisation that is extending or migrating its data centre could evaluate the powerful AWS services that are now available.

Take advantage of direct integrations of AWS and VMware Cloud on AWS, such as leveraging AWS Key Management Service to store VMware Cloud on AWS encryption keys; CloudFront for CDN; application and network load balancer for traffic flow and SSL offload; and RDS and Dynamo DB or managed SQL and NoSQL databases. Meanwhile, an organisation that implements cloud-based DR could leverage underutilised resources for test/dev activities.

Consider VMware Cloud on AWS for business resiliency

Downtime outages don’t choose convenient times for your business or customers. Traditional DR requires considerable capital and effort to build secondary sites, replicate data, proactively test, and staff the environment.

Cloud-based DR offers multiple advantages, including geographic diversity, rapid scale-up using on-demand services, annual DR testing, and DR software that automates and orchestrates rapid recovery for lower recovery time objectives (RTOs) and less risk.

The five types of cloud-based DR (cold standby, pilot light, warm standby, scaleup active-active, and full active-active) provide a spectrum of services, with many choices. VMware Site Recovery, which is built right into VMware Cloud on AWS, is an integrated option that includes needed on-prem components.

Get measurable, repeatable value from your cloud migration with VMware Cloud on AWS and a clear blueprint that advances from proof of concept to AWS native integrations for DR, test/dev, and production workloads. 

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The decade in cloud: Analysing the ‘remarkable transformation’ through SaaS, IaaS and PaaS rise

The dawn of a new decade represents a good opportunity for a more rounded assessment of cloud computing to take place – and according to industry analyst Synergy Research, the ‘remarkable transformation’ has seen the enterprise data centre hit hardest.

Synergy has kicked off 2020 with a couple of notes looking back at wider enterprise IT spending, as well as the impact of SaaS revenues. As the decade began (below) spending on cloud infrastructure services barely moved the needle; but as data centre hardware and software spend plateaued in the middle half of the decade – only seeing an increase in 2018 – last year’s projections revealed that cloud spending had finally overtaken on-prem.

Over the whole decade, Synergy noted, average annual spending growth for the data centre was 4% – and even the majority of this was due to the first three years of growth. For cloud services, the figure was 56% across the whole decade.

When it came to SaaS revenues, it has been a similar story: annual revenues are now north of $100 million at a growth rate of 39% per year. This compares with a growth in perpetual license software of just 4% per year. Microsoft, the ‘very clear software market leader’ throughout the decade as Synergy puts it, has seen its total software revenues double and SaaS revenue grow from zero to more than $20 million across the decade.

The usual suspects have seen significant growth in terms of organisations moving to SaaS-based models, from customer resource management (CRM) to human capital management (HCM). Yet enterprise resource planning (ERP) is one area which is still somewhat underrepresented, Synergy argues.

As John Dinsdale, a chief analyst at Synergy Research Group, puts it, the emergence of various huge SaaS platforms around enterprise collaboration, from Workday, to Zendesk, to Cloudera, forced the hand of traditional software vendors to push SaaS more strongly.

Analysis

For those who have been involved in the industry over the past decade, the above is by no means new information. Yet it is certainly interesting – and more than a little fun – to look back and assess various growth points and predictions.

At the beginning of the decade SaaS, powered by the explosive growth of Salesforce, was clearly the poster child for cloud computing use cases. Looking at a Gartner market trends report from 2012 focusing on SaaS, as this publication reported at the time, many of their prognostications rang true. Gartner predicted that SaaS-based CRM would grow at three times the rate of on-premise applications, while noting that SaaS-based ERP would take a tougher route to cannibalisation. Each analyst report around the time put SaaS in the biggest bucket, followed by IaaS and then, much lower down, PaaS.

Infrastructure services naturally took a lot longer to earn trust among enterprises and other large organisations. Ovum’s 2013 Trends to Watch report around private and public clouds correctly identified Microsoft and Google as the key pretenders to Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) crown. Gartner’s 2013 Magic Quadrant for IaaS had two leaders; AWS and CSC. The latter merged with HP Enterprise Services in 2017, before Microsoft moved into the leaders’ zone in 2014 and the status quo remained for three years before Google joined the party.

The conversations around public versus private in the first half of the decade were legion. Indeed, exploring an emerging technology, assessing what can be done where and the security concerns are cyclical – take blockchain as a more recent example. Industries with particularly sensitive data concerns were naturally reluctant to move to different infrastructure. It was around the 2013 mark that the first real shoots of hybrid cloud were seen among organisations. A Rackspace study in August of that year found three in five enterprise respondents saw hybrid as the future, with the company affirming that hybrid was ‘enterprise ready’ for CIOs.

As the decade ticked over into its second half, the benefits of multi-cloud became more clearly defined. Assuaging vendor lock-in was one thing, but as the complexity of workloads increased, so did understanding. Some providers will be more efficient than others depending on your organisation’s data needs, be that around backup and disaster recovery, or analytics and insights. As Melissa Di Donato, CEO of SUSE, told this publication just earlier this week, her company’s strategy is to look upon this as a moveable feast.

Ultimately, the maturation and saturation in the cloud software and infrastructure markets in particular – platform may still have a little way to go, although Kubernetes has had an exceptionally strong 24 months – have seen the next wave of cloud services move in. It is all underpinned by data; K8s and containers are a part of that, but so are blockchain and artificial intelligence technologies. The quality and quantity of organisations citing machine learning capability as the primary reason to move mostly or all-in on a hyperscaler – Formula 1, Sainsbury’s and Walt Disney Studios just to name three recent examples – proves that companies are comfortable in the cloud, and want to see what’s next.

It can therefore be seen as a chicken and egg question: to what extent has the past decade been about natural technological advances, and how much has been through vendor strategy? Ultimately, and at risk of this being a cop-out, the answer is a bit of both.

Dinsdale cited ‘dramatic improvements’ in hosting and computational capabilities, leading to increasingly sophisticated enterprise applications and myriad ways of crunching, processing and analysing data both in terms of software and infrastructure. Yet much in the same way that studies show being in a plane is safer than being in a car, enterprises have understood this comparing cloud with on-prem. Breaches still happen, but as this publication has frequently reported, they are often self-inflicted. A lot of hard yards have gone into this from the vendor point of view – and expect this gap to gradually lessen over time.

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Melissa Di Donato, CEO, SUSE: On cloud journeys, hyperscaler complexity, and daring to be different

When Melissa Di Donato joined SAP in 2017, having counted Salesforce, IBM and Oracle among her previous employers, she told this publication it was like ‘coming home.’ Now, as chief executive of Linux enterprise software provider SUSE, it is more a step into the unknown.

Yet it is not a complete step. Working with a proprietary software company means your experience is primarily in selling it, implementing it and aligning it to others’ business needs. With SUSE, Di Donato knows far more acutely what customers want.

“Though I don’t have a whole load of open source experience per se, I’ve got all the detail and all of the understanding of what it is to be a SUSE customer,” Di Donato tells CloudTech. “That’s really important because, as we go to market and look at who we want to be, who we are for, who we are now and who we want to become, it’s really about embracing this collaborative nature of creating software in a community, but pivoting around customer needs.”

Having that portability, regardless of what platform you choose, is becoming very important – what’s good on Azure today may be better on Google tomorrow

Since being named as SUSE CEO in July, Di Donato has been visiting customers and crafting the company’s message around two themes. For the enterprise market, while the buzzwords around containers, software-defined storage, multi-cloud and hybrid cloud remain, solid progress is harder to come by. Add in that every customer has different needs, after all, and the strategy needed to be boiled down somewhat.

Not unlike other organisations, SUSE’s customer base is split into various buckets. You have traditionalists, which comprise about 80% of customers, hybrid beginners, cloud adopters and cloud-native; the latter three all moving in ever decreasing circles. Regardless of where you are in your cloud journey, SUSE argues, the journey itself is the same. You have to simplify, before you modernise, and then accelerate.

Di Donato argues that cloud and containers are ‘very, very overused words’, and that getting to grips with the technology which holds the containers is key – but all journey paths are valid. “Whether cloud means modernising, or container means modernising, VMs, open source… [customers’] version of modernising is really important, and they want to simply and modernise to then get to a point where they can accelerate,” she says. “Regardless of what persona you are, what customer type you are, everyone wants to accelerate.”

These days, pretty much everyone is on one of the hyperscale cloud providers as well. SUSE has healthy relationships with all the major clouds – including AWS, which is a shot in the arm for its occasionally-criticised stance on open source – aiming to offer partnerships and value-adds aplenty.

The problem is that the hyperscalers do little to assist the simplification process. At re:Invent in December, AWS said that at last count it offered more than 175 services. “We’re overwhelmed by the number of services and tools being offered to our customer base,” says Di Donato. “There’s a whole different conversation [before] about how, as a complex enterprise, [you] get to public cloud. If you have one small application on public cloud, [you can] choose from hundreds more.”

So what can SUSE do? Ironically enough, by offering as many options as possible to its customers. “How do I get our natives and traditionalists, at two opposite ends of the spectrum, into an environment where they can move and continually modernise?” says Di Donato. “It’s going to need to be flexible, it’s going to need to be agnostic, it’s going to need no lock-in and be able to simplify the complexity around the various components that hyperscalers have.

“Having that portability, regardless of what platform [customers] choose, is becoming very important,” Di Donato adds. “What’s good on Azure today may be better on Google tomorrow – and we have to have the flexibility and simplicity to be able to move our customers over, the easiest way forward.”

The other message – and arguably an even more important one – is around ‘daring to be different.’ It was the title of an article Di Donato wrote on LinkedIn when she joined SUSE, which focuses on the wider community and message. “I’m fortunate to have a platform from which I can be an activist and an advocate for openness, diversity and inclusion,” Di Donato wrote at the time, adding she particularly advocated opportunities for girls to move into STEM. “I believe we can all give back more than we take.”

The ‘openness’, given SUSE’s heritage, should be a given – but it isn’t across every area. “The company is inherently open and collaborative – in an open source environment you can contribute literally from anywhere – however you don’t see a load of diversity in open source as an industry right now,” says Di Donato. “The need to always have diversity and inclusion on the agenda is really important.”

More than anything else, this was priority number one when Di Donato took over the reins at SUSE. Among other initiatives, an employee network around women in tech was launched. It is now more than 150-strong, for men and women “to ensure we evangelise the brand and get out there and show the world just how diverse we are and can be in open source at SUSE,” as Di Donato puts it.

Di Donato has been discussing greater representation for women in STEM for almost as long as she has been a senior executive. At her first role, at SAP as an R3 developer, she was the only female in her cohort. “10 years ago we stopped talking about women in tech because we were getting bored of it in the UK, right?” she says.

The headlines keep on coming, however. As CloudTech reported in October, the Forbes Cloud 100, an influential list of top privately-held cloud companies, featured a grand total of three firms led by women. The month before, another Forbes list, of America’s 100 most innovative leaders, featured just one woman, drawing opprobrium.

Even in her current role, Di Donato has gone to certain geographies to find herself the only female in the room. “We haven’t come very far,” she says, laughing ironically. “I tend to think that for any network of people that talk this passionately about a particular topic, over decades, you would think the dial would move. Yet we still struggle.”

As a mother of three and newlywed – having previously been widowed when her youngest child was 18 months old – Di Donato is especially concerned at getting more focus for parents, such as not penalising them if a family crisis meant they could not make the office.

Women need to be role models to show young executives the importance of being capable of juggling more than just one or two things

Rachel Keane, co-founder of the Women in Data series of events, previously told this publication of another danger for women: in an industry as fast as cloud computing, a year away means a huge gap of knowledge. Nothing is insurmountable, however. “For most people, they can’t imagine naturally what they’re capable of,” says Di Donato. “You can only understand what you’re capable of at a turning point in your life.

“We need to be role models to show other executives, particularly young talent, the importance of being capable of juggling more than just one or two things.”

More than anything else, however, wherever you are today, it is about being true to one’s self. Di Donato wants to exemplify this with her platform as CEO. “I’m faced with maybe exacerbating the fact that I’m quite loud, I’m quite vocal, I speak to a lot of employees, a lot of customers, and I’m a woman, right?” she says. “That’s a learning experience for me too – try and communicate in a way that people understand and are used to, but at the same time don’t lose myself either.

“I am enthusiastic and I am passionate and focused, and I am opinionated and I am driven,” adds Di Donato. “I don’t want to lose that purely because I’m different than everybody else right now.”

Picture credit: SUSE

Read more: Building confidence and power: Exploring greater female leadership and participation in cloud and data analytics

https://www.cybersecuritycloudexpo.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/cyber-security-world-series-1.pngInterested in hearing industry leaders discuss subjects like this and sharing their experiences and use-cases? Attend the Cyber Security & Cloud Expo World Series with upcoming events in Silicon Valley, London and Amsterdam to learn more.

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Buyer’s guide to cloud file sharing


Dave Mitchell

7 Jan, 2020

Workforces are becoming increasingly mobile, and businesses need to find new ways to help their staff work together. Cloud file sharing is the perfect solution, giving staff a simple and secure way to share documents with colleagues, regardless of where they happen to be located.

Modern sharing services aren’t limited to simple cloud storage, either. In recent years, these services have developed into sophisticated collaboration suites. Users can not only share documents but work interactively with remote colleagues, while background file syncing ensures everyone’s on the same page.

Even if your employees are mostly based in the office, a cloud solution can make a lot of sense. On-premises collaboration suites are expensive to manage and maintain, while a cloud service means you don’t have to invest in servers or storage – and with a huge range of providers and packages to choose from, you need only pay for the services and support you need.

This month, we test cloud file-sharing services from 1&1 Ionos, Box, Citrix and Tresorit. Each one offers a diverse range of file-sharing features, and we put them all through their paces in the lab to help you make the right buying decision.

Master plan

With so many options to choose from, picking a cloud storage plan can seem daunting. It pays to do your research, however – otherwise you could end up spending a lot more than you need.

The majority of cloud storage plans are priced according to a combination of the number of supported users and storage capacity. However, certain plans stipulate a minimum number of users, so the actual cost could be far higher than the headline per-user price would suggest.

Similarly, it’s important to know exactly how much storage you’re paying for. Some plans appear to offer a generous amount of storage per user, when in fact the advertised figure is a total to be shared amongst them all. If the plan doesn’t explicitly state that the quoted allowance is per user, it probably isn’t.

A related issue worth looking into is maximum file size. Most cloud services support multi-gigabyte files, which will be ample for most businesses, but if you need to transfer very large files (such as raw video footage), check that this is permitted.

Another way to save money is by choosing the right payment terms. Monthly subscriptions are convenient if you don’t want to make a long-term commitment, but many providers offer substantial discounts when you sign up for a yearly contract.

Finally, be brutal about who actually requires access to your chosen cloud service. There’s no need to pay for every single person in your company to be included.

Fight for the users

There are numerous free cloud file-sharing solutions out there, but we recommend you steer clear: these have low storage caps and don’t provide proper management for users and shared data. Most business plans, by contrast, include an administrative cloud portal, allowing you to manage access and enforce security measures such as two-factor authentication.

You can often also add users to your sharing roster by sending an email invitation directly from the administrative portal. Once this has been received, the recipient just needs to click on the email link to join the collaboration party. They will then receive access to a personal web portal linked to their account for file management. A desktop agent is also normally offered, which keeps all files in selected local folders in sync, so the latest versions are always to hand. Certain agents let you save hard disk space by storing selected data only in the cloud, but this can leave you stymied if you lose internet access.

Encryption restrictions

If you’re going to entrust your data to a third-party service, you need to think about security. Confidential documents and personal information must be protected so check that your would-be provider encrypts data prior to transmission, and stores it only in encrypted form. For even greater security, consider services that offer zero-knowledge encryption, where the provider has no access to the keys.

Data sovereignty is worth thinking about, too. Regulatory compliance may stipulate that your data has to be stored in a specific jurisdiction: if this applies to you, look for a provider that provides data residency services with a choice of data centre locations.

Then there’s the question of whether your own users might accidentally breach security by sharing links to files stored in the cloud. Look for services that provide access logs and allow users to password-protect shared download links, as well as apply download limits and expiry dates.

While not strictly a security issue, file versioning is worth looking for as well. Cloud storage services shouldn’t be used for primary business backup, but the ability to quickly and easily roll back files to an earlier state can be hugely valuable. Support varies considerably among providers: some will store up to ten previous versions of each file, while others extend this to 50.

Out on the road

The final piece of the puzzle is mobile support, which allows users to access shared files from a phone or tablet. The best providers offer free iOS and Android apps, and some include advanced features such as the ability to use your device’s camera to “scan” documents to your cloud account.

Certain services also offer tight integration with other apps such as Office 365, Slack and Salesforce, so they will fit neatly into your existing workflow. No two business will have exactly the same requirements, however, so read on to see which of the file-sharing services on test this month could be your next cloud collaboration partner.

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Travelex website forced offline by cyber attack


Jane McCallion

3 Jan, 2020

Foreign exchange firm Travelex has taken itself offline after discovering that a “software virus” had compromised its systems.

The incident, which is ongoing at the time of writing, began on New Year’s Eve 2019. The company said in a statement that while there’s no indication any customers’ personal data has been accessed, it took the decision to close down its systems “as a precautionary measure in order to protect data and prevent the spread of the virus”.

It added that its physical branches will continue trading, but foreign exchange services will be carried out manually.

The company has said it has deployed teams of IT specialists as well as external cyber security consultants to “isolate the virus and restore the affected systems”. This, however, is cold comfort for customers, some of whom claim to have been left with no access to money while abroad.

Recommendations to visit Mastercard’s Cash Passport service, which underwrites Travelex’s currency cards, seem to be fruitless as well.

The incident has implications beyond Travelex as well. HSBC and Virgin Money, which both use Travelex for their currency exchange services, are both displaying a notice saying their online services are unavailable due to “planned maintenance”.

Tesco Bank, meanwhile, simply says it can’t offer online foreign currency services and advises users to head into its branches.

The severity of the attack and whether a full data breach has occurred is currently unclear. However, a spokesperson for the UK’s data regulator, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) confirmed to IT Pro this morning that it had not received a report from Travelex.

IT Pro has contacted Travelex for further clarification, but hadn’t received a response at the time of publication.