Cisco has unveiled a ‘business resiliency’ portfolio that offers enterprises the tools to cope with the realities of a post-COVID business landscape, including remote working technologies and workplace systems.

The portfolio combines industry-specific as well as general-purposes services to give customers the means to cope with the new reality of social distancing in the workplace and difficulties in engaging remote workers. 

Cisco is rolling out the portfolio as the effects of COVID-19 continue to take their toll, and challenges such as mass remote working and fragmented IT continue to loom. This is in addition to further updates to WebEx, Cisco’s video conferencing platform, and integration with collaboration platform WebEx Teams and Box.

Industry-specific tools released as part of the business resilience package including a remote learning system, as well as an IT infrastructure kit to allow governments to establish a temporary hospital, in the mould of the NHS Nightingale sites. The temporary connected field hospital, as it’s dubbed, includes wireless networking and the associated technology to establish a temporary facility within five days.  

“Over the past several months we’ve seen major disruption to many industries and organizations at a pace like never before. Businesses that once mapped digital strategy in one to three-year periods have been required to scale their initiatives essentially overnight,” said Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins. 

“Cisco’s new business resiliency portfolio will help customers reevaluate their business strategies and implement solutions more quickly and easily than ever before.”

The remote workforce systems include a remote contact centre system, enabling contact centre agents to work from home using cloud-based systems or the capabilities to securely access their on-premise tech remotely. 

Flexible remote access gives employees the expertise and tools to access the network, endpoints and applications remotely, while the final prong, secure remote worker, offers businesses tools to analyse the effectiveness and security of their VPNs.

Among the workplace technologies being rolled out is remote office connectivity that extends a corporate network to adjacent and remote locations so workers can benefit from increased bandwidth and faster connectivity. 

Finally, social density monitoring and insights gives workplaces a view on how busy their workplace environments might be at any one time. This is in order for facilities teams to plan return-to-work strategies with social distancing in mind.

The WebEx integration with Box, meanwhile, allows workers to use the content management platform’s secure file-sharing capabilities to share documents with colleagues. With regards to WebEx, Cisco has tripled the video conferencing platform’s capacity in light of the surge in users as a result of the pandemic. 

WebEx will also introduce a fully-fledge voice-activated virtual assistant, building on Cisco’s intentions to use voice tools to explore the ‘next frontier’ of data insights, outlined in January this year.   

Dell Technologies has unveiled Dell EMC PowerScale, a new family of storage appliances designed to deal with the “onslaught of data” being faced by organisations today.

The product range is designed for object storage and is underpinned by the company’s OneFS operating system, which is best known from its Isilon range. 

The family forms part of Dell Technologies’ “edge-to-core” strategy, where it seeks to have hardware that can be deployed across an organisation’s estate, whether that’s at remote locations such as commercial or industrial sites or branch offices, as well as primary the data centre.

As such, PowerScale currently features two appliances, the all-flash f200 and the f600, which is an NVMe appliance.

As well as allowing customers to have high-performance storage appliances available at the edge, this diversity allows Dell Technologies to access a new type of client that it couldn’t with the previous Dell EMC Isilon range, the company claims.

Speaking to IT Pro, Stephen Gilderdale, senior director of EMEA presales, said: “In the past, the way in which Isilon started it simply couldn’t start small enough for some of our small-to-medium customers, so therefore they may have needed to take advantage of the services that Isilon would offer, however the starting point was a little bit too high.

“That’s why we’ve got the introduction of the f200, which really helps that smaller starting point. The f600 we expect the media houses, for example, to be using to create the blockbuster movies that we all hope to be able to get to the cinema and watch one day, and the large Isilon all-flash nodes have been used for that in the past.”

PowerScale also features CloudIQ, which can help organisations connect multiple cloud environments to their on-premise systems, be that in the data centre or at the edge, and DataIQ, which offers intelligent data management.

The launch follows on from another big storage announcement from the company in May, PowerStore.

Indeed, this is normally the time of year when CEO Michael Dell would be making all sorts of product announcements live from a stage in Las Vegas during the company’s annual Dell Technologies World conference.

As with so many other organisations, however, the company has turned this into a virtual conference and rescheduled it for this autumn.

HPE has launched a new product to help communications services providers (CSPs) get more value from 5G by offering edge services to enterprises.

Edge Orchestrator is a SaaS-based offering that focuses on situations where low latency is key.

During a press conference, Phil Mottram, vice president and general manager of the HPE’s Communications and Media Solutions business, told reporters that the company believes “the value proposition for 5G will all be firmly rooted in the enterprise space”.

“We believe that consumer customers won’t be paying any more for [telcos’] services just to get a faster download of a video – there’s only so fast you can watch a video,” Mottram said. “But all of the revenue opportunities and upside opportunities for  carriers will firmly come in the enterprise new services space.”

This is far from a unique position – indeed, even before 5G standards were set, many future-gazers predicted it would be more useful in Internet of Things (IoT) scenarios in particular where low latency is key, such as in fully-autonomous cars.

While we wait for such futuristic technology to arrive, however, HPE has decided to make use of existing and emerging technology and needs. Edge Orchestrator, the company says, allows telcos to deliver new services in the form of apps at the edge of the network to enterprise customers and in doing so effectively monetise apps.

Specifically, Edge Orchestrator brings together edge compute, edge communications and edge applications and allows carriers to offer them as a single, self-service proposition to enterprise customers and other service providers that might want to deploy them.

“HPE Edge Orchestrator will be the functionality which actually takes all these components, wraps it up together and makes it available to the enterprises,” said Rolf Eberhardt, head of orchestration at HPE.

“We want to make the CSP able to efficiently allow enterprises to deploy their own applications at their own locations and connect them over connectivity services provided by the CSP back to their … data centres and to deploy these applications close to the end customers,” he continued. 

“We believe there are two benefits to this. First of all, the CSPs have the trust of the customers [and] they provide also the connectivity at the location, and second for the enterprise customers, they are able to, on the one hand, deploy quickly and efficiently in the edge space without having to do a major investment on their own and they can being all the functionality together into a one-stop.”

As it stands, Edge Orchestrator, which will be available from 31 July,  is only being sold to telcos and only as a service – there are no plans to sell through the channel or direct to customers. And while it may be 5G-focused on the surface, for now HPE proposes telcos offer these additional services through more established network technologies like 4G, LTE and Wi-Fi, then introducing 5G later as part of its portfolio.

The announcement, which comes just before the start of the company’s virtual HPE Discover 2020 conference, builds on an earlier announcement, made in March, where the company added “5G as a service” to its GreenLake portfolio. 

It also follows an announcement from the company’s networking business, Aruba, that it’s pivoting towards a more edge-focused approach to business.

HPE has launched a new product to help communications services providers (CSPs) get more value from 5G by offering edge services to enterprises.

Edge Orchestrator is a SaaS-based offering that focuses on situations where low latency is key.

During a press conference, Phil Mottram, vice president and general manager of the HPE’s Communications and Media Solutions business, told reporters that the company believes “the value proposition for 5G will all be firmly rooted in the enterprise space”.

“We believe that consumer customers won’t be paying any more for [telcos’] services just to get a faster download of a video – there’s only so fast you can watch a video,” Mottram said. “But all of the revenue opportunities and upside opportunities for  carriers will firmly come in the enterprise new services space.”

This is far from a unique position – indeed, even before 5G standards were set, many future-gazers predicted it would be more useful in Internet of Things (IoT) scenarios in particular where low latency is key, such as in fully-autonomous cars.

While we wait for such futuristic technology to arrive, however, HPE has decided to make use of existing and emerging technology and needs. Edge Orchestrator, the company says, allows telcos to deliver new services in the form of apps at the edge of the network to enterprise customers and in doing so effectively monetise apps.

Specifically, Edge Orchestrator brings together edge compute, edge communications and edge applications and allows carriers to offer them as a single, self-service proposition to enterprise customers and other service providers that might want to deploy them.

“HPE Edge Orchestrator will be the functionality which actually takes all these components, wraps it up together and makes it available to the enterprises,” said Rolf Eberhardt, head of orchestration at HPE.

“We want to make the CSP able to efficiently allow enterprises to deploy their own applications at their own locations and connect them over connectivity services provided by the CSP back to their … data centres and to deploy these applications close to the end customers,” he continued. 

“We believe there are two benefits to this. First of all, the CSPs have the trust of the customers [and] they provide also the connectivity at the location, and second for the enterprise customers, they are able to, on the one hand, deploy quickly and efficiently in the edge space without having to do a major investment on their own and they can being all the functionality together into a one-stop.”

As it stands, Edge Orchestrator, which will be available from 31 July,  is only being sold to telcos and only as a service – there are no plans to sell through the channel or direct to customers. And while it may be 5G-focused on the surface, for now HPE proposes telcos offer these additional services through more established network technologies like 4G, LTE and Wi-Fi, then introducing 5G later as part of its portfolio.

The announcement, which comes just before the start of the company’s virtual HPE Discover 2020 conference, builds on an earlier announcement, made in March, where the company added “5G as a service” to its GreenLake portfolio. 

It also follows an announcement from the company’s networking business, Aruba, that it’s pivoting towards a more edge-focused approach to business.

Data management platform SAS has chosen Microsoft as its preferred cloud provider and will integrate its analytical products into the Azure portfolio.

The two firms also plan to launch joint services for their customers. 

The partnership will enable customers to run SAS workloads in the cloud, expanding their business operations and accelerating digital transformations, according to SAS. The company’s analytical products, used in areas such as health care, financial services and other industries, will also be migrated into Azure. 

The partnership builds on previous SAS integrations across Microsoft‘s Azure, Dynamics 365, Microsoft 365 and Power Platform and supports the companies shared vision to further “democratise” AI and analytics, according to SAS.

“SAS and Microsoft have a shared vision of helping customers accelerate their digital transformation initiatives,” said Oliver Schabenberger, SAS CTO and COO. “We both understand that it is about the enrichment of data and improving lives through better decisions. 

“Partnering with Microsoft gives customers a more seamless path to the cloud that provides faster, more powerful and easier access to SAS solutions and enables trusted decisions with analytics that everyone – regardless of skill level – can understand.”

SAS is a 44-year-old company based in North Carolina that boasts a wealth of high profile clients, including the likes of Allianz, Honda, HSBC, Lufthansa and Nestlé. It provides a number of different tools and services, but mostly its focus on data management and actionable analytics.

“Through this partnership, Microsoft and SAS will help our customers accelerate growth and find new ways to drive innovation with a broad set of SAS Analytics offerings on Microsoft Azure,” said Scott Guthrie, Microsoft’s executive VP of Cloud and AI. 

“SAS, with its recognised expertise in analytics, data science and machine learning, is a strategic partner for Microsoft, and together we will help customers across dozens of industries and horizontals address their most critical and complex analytical challenges.”

More than a million staff members across the NHS will have access to the Microsoft 365 suite of apps and services as part of a landmark agreement struck between NHS Digital, NHSX and Microsoft.

The productivity and collaboration suite, which includes Microsoft Teams, will be deployed to 1.2 million NHS staff in Trusts, Clinical Commissioning Groups, and health Informatics Services in an effort to create a more joined-up NHS.

GPs, consultants, nurses, therapists, paramedics, and support staff will have access to services within Microsoft 365 as part of the agreement, allowing them to take advantage of the cloud-based services. 

“Adopting the most up to date digital tools and operating systems are crucial for a modern day NHS – allowing staff to work as efficiently as possible which will deliver even better care for patients,” said the health secretary Matt Hancock.

“We have seen incredible, innovative uses of technology throughout the NHS during the Covid-19 pandemic and this new deal with Microsoft will pave the way for that to continue by ensuring we get the basics right.”

Platforms such as Microsoft Teams will allow for quicker and more efficient communication, while the interoperability across the health service with Office 365 apps and Outlook will allow for a much sharing of critical files and documents. 

“This deal with Microsoft represents a saving of hundreds of millions of pounds. This is a direct result of negotiations led jointly by NHSX and NHS Digital,” added NHSX CEO Matthew Gould. “It means staff will have access to the best possible collaboration and productivity tools, and that our cyber defences are as strong as possible.” 

The cost of the agreement hasn’t been disclosed, although the NHS insists the deal will be cost-saving for both individual organisations and the NHS as a whole, as well as improving productivity and boosting collaboration. This isn’t to mention the cyber security benefits, given the rising nature of the threat that the health service faces.

The latest agreement builds on the deal struck in April 2018 that allowed NHS organisations to upgrade to Windows 10 free of charge. Legacy operating systems, such as Windows XP and Windows 7, were widely in-use at the time of the agreement.

The rollout of Microsoft 365 to NHS organisations will also ensure IT systems that haven’t yet been upgraded to Windows 10 will be, in addition to being afforded Microsoft’s Enterprise Mobility and Security platform.

“This agreement ensures NHS organisations across England have access to modern productivity tools and solutions necessary to delivering better patient outcomes now and in the future,” said Microsoft UK CEO Cindy Rose.

“The timing of the agreement coincides with the licence renewal period of a number of NHS organisations in England. It also ensures that those NHS organisations that have already made their own arrangements with Microsoft benefit from the deal and the significant cost savings on offer.”

​A Microsoft 365 learning platform has launched data residencies in the UK and Germany to support new compliance requirements within those regions. 

Learning Management System (LMS365) is a service built into Microsoft 365 that helps organisations to deliver training on the business suite through SharePoint, Teams and mobile devices.

The platform has announced it’s deploying new ‘Azure’ data centres in the UK and Germany. The company said that as the COVID-19 crisis has accelerated cloud-based technologies, businesses in these regions are having to grapple with changing regulatory frameworks and in-country data residency standards.

For the UK, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) combined with country’s exit from the European Union has placed a new focus on data governance and security, according to Travis Campbell, senior business manager at LMS365.

“It’s important for us that customers can choose our platform without having to worry about legal constraints,” he said. “Providing these new data centres is key to supporting our expanding customer base as they rely on LMS365 to successfully implement remote learning and learning in the flow of work via Microsoft 365 and Teams.”

Similarly, at the end of 2019 Slack announced data residencies in Europe, with a UK region launched in April. Its reasoning was that large organisations needed more control over their data to meet tough compliance regulations.

For German businesses, the pandemic and its effect on digitisation have intensified the focus on data governance, according to Robert Nederby, managing director of DACH at LMS365.

“COVID-19 put high pressure on companies to support remote working,” he said. “At the same time, German businesses across industries are fast-tracking their cloud and digitisation journeys. This has raised discussions of data protection and unprecedented demand for trusted cloud infrastructures like Microsoft 365, Teams and Azure.

“This expansion helps us deliver on our continued commitment to serve our fastgrowing customer base of +200 customers in UK and DACH, and to elevate their businesses through the transformative capabilities of the LMS365 platform.”

For the last few weeks, Boris Johnson and his government have floundered under the ruthless examination of the new leader of the Labour Party, Keir Starmer.

The coronavirus has robbed Johnson of his audience and made him look foolish up against the extensively prepared leader of the opposition. This week, Starmer rightly pointed out that the decision to end online voting and the hybrid Parliament was “shameful” as it prevented members from voting.

“If any other employer behaved like this it would be … indirect discrimination under the Equalities Act,” he scolded.

Johnson suggested that it wasn’t “unreasonable” for parliamentarians to come back to Westminster to physically vote, backing the decision made by the Leader of the House, Jacob Rees-Mogg, and completely missing the point that many can’t due to health conditions. 

My own local MP, Conservative, Robert Halfon, suffers from osteoarthritis and was advised by his GP not to go to Westminster and was therefore unable to vote. He told the BBC that Rees-Mogg was “lacking empathy and understanding”. 

As MPs – who are often targets for abuse and violence – queued up for hours on Wednesday, risking both their health and safety, Rees-Mogg addressed the decision to come back to Westminster.

“It is important for votes to be physical because we are coming here together as a single parliament and we are voting on things that have a major effect on people’s lives,” he said. 

The fact the subjects are important to the wider public is irrelevant in this regard. People in the street are not going to dismiss legislation passed over Zoom. It’s just the rule of a man who it seems hasn’t given a moment’s thought to MPs with disabilities, or who are carers, and will always choose tradition over equality. Given that he wrote a whole book on the Victorians, you’d think Rees-Mogg would be a fan of videotelephony (more commonly known as video conferencing), given it was first conceived in 1870. 

This is the thing with the ‘new normal’ and the technology we’re all using during lockdown – none of it is actually new. Some of it’s older than the MPs voting not to use it. And the predicament faced by many MPs is the same as the people they serve. Think of all the people who could have used cloud-based services to do their jobs flexibly from home long before the coronavirus. All those people that spend hours everyday commuting into London for their job. All those people that moved to the smoke, into tiny flats they can’t afford. All because their employer isn’t open to ‘new’ ways of working. 

My father-in-law is in that tragic little bracket. He was a project manager for a government-backed organisation, that shall remain nameless. He has rheumatoid arthritis, so standing for more than 10-minutes is a painful experience. All he ever needed to do his job was a phone, a laptop, an internet connection and some cloud-based services. And yet, he was consistently asked to go into the office, in central London for no reason other than ‘that’s just the way it is’. 

I recall a horrible journey home where I had to meet him at Loughton Tube station where he was too weak to make it all the way to Epping. I’m only five-foot-seven and he’s six-foot-six if you want the humorous mental image of me trying to help him into a car. He took medical retirement at the start of the year, just avoiding the outbreak of COVID-19, yet his former employers are one of the many businesses that have been able to continue operating due to remote technologies. 

Life after the coronavirus can be completely different if we fully embrace cloud computing. It’s an example of how British business can carry on in the face of adversity, how the experience can act as a springboard to transform the way we work for the better. It may even lead to more equality. But with the ‘traditionalists’ calling the shots in government, it seems the country’s leadership is determined to be left in the past.

It feels like a lifetime ago since Mobile World Congress (MWC), one of the biggest events on the tech calendar, was cancelled just as the coronavirus crisis was beginning to escalate. Winding forward to the present day, the prospect of any large events of its stature taking place is unthinkable, with companies either postponing or cancelling their own.

Many have instead pivoted to hosting their events digitally, trialling ways to engage partners and customers online. This also applies to our sister title, IT Pro, with the launch of IT Pro Live, a five-day programme of keynote addresses, panel discussions and Q&As held between 22 and 26 June. Of course, hosting a virtual event is very different from hosting a physical one and even the most experienced of event managers face pitfalls. In this spirit, we’ve compiled guidance for businesses hoping to launch their own virtual events over the coming weeks, months or even years.

Not a like-for-like replacement

Hosting a digital event is an arena ripe for experimentation. Microsoft, for example, launched more than 50 products at its first virtual Build conference, which, like IT Pro Live, took place over the course of a week. Google Cloud Next 2020, on the other hand, will be hosted one day per week for nine weeks, starting 14 July. As such, it’s clear that virtual events can’t be treated as a like-for-like replacement for in-person conferences.

“The challenge is that such conferences are multi-faceted events that are hard to deliver through a virtual window,” nCipher vice president, Peter Carlisle, tells Cloud Pro. In Carlisle’s experience, certain elements of a physical conference can’t be replicated, which may prove challenging. These vary from sharing stories in casual settings like over a meal, to soaking in the buzz generated by thousands of attendees darting around a conference floor. The cyber security firm adopted a different format for its recent virtual Sales Kick-Off, delivering content daily across nine consecutive business days. Sessions ran 60 to 90 minutes, with three of four topics delivered in pieces averaging 20 minutes each. 

There are, however, benefits to hosting virtual events, according to Imperial College Business School’s conference manager, Megan Taylor-Silva. The university recently hosted its fifth annual Imperial Business Conference online, focussing on sustainability, and inviting speakers from Sainsbury’s, Microsoft, Google and BlackRock.

“Gone are the days where bad catering or a gate crasher can ruin your event,” explains Taylor-Silva. “Instead of spending time on choosing the right gluten-free muffin, you’ll have more time to spend on perfecting your event content, building relationships with your speakers, and converting registrants.”

Putting the building blocks in place

Planning is perhaps the most crucial element. One of the biggest mistakes companies can make, explains Virtual Event Company founder and CEO, John Saunders, is not appreciating the difference between planning for a virtual and physical event – with different timescales, disciplines and technologies involved. 

“More often than not, companies have committed to a software they don’t know the full capabilities of, therefore, allowing enough time to plan for your event is critical. During this planning period, it’s critical that the technology and the Wi-Fi strength are tested to avoid poor sound or other issues on the day,” he says. “Speakers should be coached on how to engage with people online and address their audience through a camera. It’s a different skill to physical stage events and practising online before the big event is important to ensure engagement is achieved.”

It’s important to test the systems, run experiments and trial different scenarios. Lining up backup options should things go wrong would also ensure seamless continuity should a worst-case scenario come to fruition. Before the systems are even in place, it’s also key to ensure your organisation uses the right technology. It may, therefore, be useful to look at what your competitors are using, and what your attendees are familiar with, Imperial College Business School’s Taylor-Silva adds. This is in addition to making sure these systems work with the company’s existing platforms.

“Don’t assume that everyone is comfortable with technology,” she elaborates. “Briefing speakers ahead of time and ensuring they know how to use your event platform is incredibly important. Make sure that speakers have a stable internet connection and a good microphone, this could make or break your event.”

Systems and software

From video conferencing to streaming services organisations can adopt a variety of platforms. John Saunders’ Virtual Event Company, for example, recently launched its digital hub for businesses to plan and host digital events, even fitted with Second Life-esque 3D rendering. While buying into flashy platforms might appeal to many, in Saunders’ experience, not fully understanding the technologies being used is a common pitfall.

“As companies navigate this new world by way of new tech solutions, they may choose a platform that doesn’t resonate with their brand or audience, or choose one that doesn’t look professional in the interests of cost,” he tells Cloud Pro. “Taking time to research the best digital solution for your event is key.” 

Database performance platform Percona, for instance, used a variety of simple platforms for its 24-hour virtual event last month, after plans to host Percona Live Austin 2020 fell through. Zoom was used as the main hosting platform to allow organisers to stream directly to attendees, while the event was also live-streamed to YouTube, Twitch and Facebook Live. Workplace collaboration platform Slack was repurposed to serve as a central point of contact for conference-goers.

For Percona’s global events manager, Bronwyn Campbell, the key to success was to keep it simple. “By not over complicating things with fancy broadcasting solutions or too many streaming options,” she explains in a blog post, “it allowed us to make it easier to manage, yet very effective and with a broad reach”.

Catering for the occasion

The experience will differ vastly from that of attending an in-person event, not just in the way that content is consumed, but when. Hosting an event online means you can much more easily cater for audiences from across the world, but this means ensuring your event is as accessible as possible. IT Pro Live, for example, will be broadcast between 1:30pm and 6:30pm BST, which also coincides with the working day in Europe, the Middle East, and most of the Americas. The incorporation of on-demand sessions also means people can access the content as and when it suits them.

Database company Redis Labs hosted its annual RedisConf conference virtually this year, with the company boasting four times the average number of attendees. The company’s CMO, Howard Ting, explains that the experience has given Redis a flavour for what kinds of events work better online, and what might not necessarily translate well to a virtual format. 

“Your event is now more accessible as it’s available to attendees across the globe without the burden of travel,” Ting tells Cloud Pro. “Along with that, your speaker pool just expanded. We also found that virtual events were cheaper overall to run, since you aren’t managing a venue and hotels.”

“We found that attendees appreciated live interview formats that were a little unstructured, like fireside chats. The organic conversations that happened in these interviews drove engagement because they felt more authentic and personal,” he elaborates. “Another tool to maintain interest is to stagger content drops throughout the day or make various elements available at different times – for example, we made training sessions available only on the second day, but dropped them at the previous evening so attendees in India could access them during their morning.”

One of the key challenges, having got your event off the ground, is to sustain interest among conference-goers throughout the programme. After all, it’s much easier to disconnect and switch off than if you’ve booked flights, hotel rooms, and have to physically walk between conference sessions. 

Organisers can boost engagement in several ways, from regular polls to Q&As. One of the key methods Imperial’s Taylor-Silva pitched was to ensure that speakers address the audience throughout the event, and acknowledge their presence. Organisers may also consider appointing a visible event host who guides attendees throughout the day, offering them an element of consistency, while also giving producers a single point of contact to liaise with for time-keeping purposes.

Redis Labs’ Howard Ting, meanwhile, devised an alternative approach, with the company building a gamification system that rewarded engagement. “Those who attended more sessions, asked more questions, and visited more areas in the environment were rewarded. We had small Easter Eggs throughout the conference that added to the depth of the event; for instance, we tied the environment to the attendee’s local time, so if attendees were visiting during their evening the environment transformed to dark mode.”

Minor pitfalls might be unavoidable

Hosting a successful virtual event won’t be easy for any company to pull off, particularly given the variance in structuring, content styles, and even the technologies powering them. It’s also important to bear in mind that the concept will be new to audiences too, so getting things wrong will be forgivable to an extent. 

This is a period of trial-and-error for many, and there will inevitably be things you wish you could’ve done differently after the fact. Percona’s Bronwyn Campbell, for example, says she wishes her event featured shorter talks in some instances, and kept to a single track of events as opposed to a complex multitrack programme, as it runs the risk of audience dropoff, while making things more difficult to manage. Nevertheless, the key for any organisation will lie in rigorous planning, sufficient testing of underlying technologies, and devising ways to keep audiences engaged throughout the duration of the agenda. 

IT Pro Live will take place across five days from 22 to 26 June, featuring an array of panel sessions, Q&As, and roundtables. You can check out the agenda and register for your free ticket now.

​IBM Cloud suffered a global outage last night, heavily impacting users who rely on the company’s cloud computing services such as Kubernetes and Red Hat.

Problems started to arise at around 10:30pm BST on Tuesday when users reported unresponsive websites to DownDetector. 

The company’s own status page was impacted by the outage due to it being hosted on the IBM Cloud. Its internal server error page read: “Sorry, we’ve encountered an error on our end, and our developers are working on clearing this up. Please try reloading the page or following these links back”. 

To the frustration of many users, IBM Cloud did not immediately address the outage. In the early hours of the morning, its Twitter account issued the following statement: “IBM Cloud services are being restored following a reported outage earlier today. We are focused on restoring full services as soon as possible.”

Jay Gilmore, customer success director at MODX Cloud, detailed his experience in reply to IBM Cloud’s tweet: “Communication in a customer crisis is a must. It was extra frustrating because the status page was unavailable, it took two hours for a single tweet about the issue and Notification Center wasn’t available because IAM was down.”

At 2:54am BST, IBM Cloud announced that the entirety of their services had “now been restored”. 

However, its users were not impressed. As one of them pointed out, IBM’s own IT Infrastructure page markets its IBM Z computer with the rhetorical question: “Can you afford even one hour of downtime?”

IBM Cloud’s outage lasted around four hours. At the time of writing, it is not known what caused the outage or how many people were affected by the downtime. 

The outage came only hours after IBM decided to “sunset” its general-purpose facial recognition and analysis software suite over ethical concerns following a fortnight of Black Lives Matter protests.

Despite putting a lot of efforts into developing its AI-powered tools, the cloud giant will no longer distribute these systems for fear that it could be used for purposes that go against the company’s principles of trust and transparency. ​