Microsoft is pursuing major cloud deals with foreign governments in the mould of the highly lucrative Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud infrastructure project that it secured last year.

Although elements of the contract in the JEDI cloud infrastructure project, worth $10 billion over ten years, are still not fully settled, the industry giant is increasingly keen to pursue similar deals outside of the US.

The company is indeed in the process of signing deals similar in shape to the cloud infrastructure project assembled for the US Department of Defense, according to people familiar with the matter speaking with CNBC.

This has come after overseas governments have begun to show an interest in replicating the type of relationship that Microsoft has formed with the Pentagon. Microsoft, specifically, has staffed the project with people who hold security clearances and has committed to delivering existing products and services, as opposed to specifically-built technologies at a customised price.

However, the company’s move to focus on more government contracts comes at a time when its JEDI contract work has been put on hold due to a legal challenge from Amazon. The rival cloud company is especially aggrieved as it feels the contract was awarded unfairly.

This conscious evolution in Microsoft’s cloud strategy will likely be formally announced later this year, a source told CNBC, with overseas intelligence agencies and militaries set to be key customers. Another source said the firm had already established JEDI-like cloud contracts with foreign governments, although it’s not clear which countries are the main focus.

“We’ve worked with governments around the world on a longstanding and reliable basis for four decades,” a Microsoft spokesperson told CNBC.

“We have government customers using our products to enhance their services with the latest in commercial innovations, deeply engage and connect with citizens in powerful ways, and empower government employees with the modern tools they need to be more efficient and effective, and to give them time back to focus on their agency mission.”

The JEDI work is currently on hold while the Pentagon re-examines elements of the contract, which Amazon said were ridden with errors and which a judge suggested may not comply with current standards. The Pentagon was due to finish the examination last week, on 17 August, although it requested a 30-day extension earlier in the month, according to Nextgov.

IBM has announced that it’s reached a new quantum computing milestone, hitting its highest quantum volume to date. 

Using an upgraded 27-qubit client system deployed within the IBM Q Network, the company achieved a quantum volume of 64. The company’s previous milestone, announced in January, was 32, which means IBM has successfully doubled its quantum volume every year for three years running. 

Quantum volume measures the length and complexity of circuits; the higher the volume, the higher the potential for exploring solutions to real-world problems across industry, government, and research.

IBM achieved the latest performance increase by making enhancements to one of the three 27-qubit Falcon chips it announced earlier this year.

The company said it used “hardware-aware” optimisations that unlock more performance from the Falcon chip’s circuits. This includes software improvements to Qiskit, IBM’s compiler for running code on its quantum systems. 

These techniques will be available in upcoming releases and improvements to the IBM Cloud software services and the cross-platform open source software development kit (SDK) Qiskit. 

“We are always finding new ways to push the limits of our systems so that we can run larger, more complex quantum circuits and more quickly achieve a Quantum Advantage,” said Jay Gambetta, IBM fellow and vice president at IBM Quantum.

“IBM’s full-stack approach gives an innovative avenue to develop hardware-aware applications, algorithms and circuits, all running on the most extensive and powerful quantum hardware fleet in the industry.” 

in the last four years, IBM has made 28 quantum computers with eight of them being developed in 2020 alone. 

​Zoom has announced that it is expanding its Zoom for Home programme by making it compatible with assistant-enabled smart displays from Amazon, Facebook, and Google.

Users will be able to access Zoom for Home using their Amazon Echo Show, Portal from Facebook, as well as Google Nest Hub Max devices.

The move comes as a recent Gartner survey found that nearly half (47%) of company leaders said they intend to allow employees to work remotely full time going forward. The extended compatibility for smart displays aims to further facilitate working from home.

The integration will enable users to join meetings with a simple voice command such as “Alexa, join my Zoom meeting” in the case of Amazon Echo Show, or “Hey Google, join my next meeting” with Nest Hub Max.

Oded Gal, chief product officer at Zoom, said that the company is “excited to bring Zoom to these popular devices”.

“It’s more apparent than ever that people are looking for easy-to-use displays for their video communications needs, both professionally and personally,” he added.

In May, Facebook announced the launch of Workplace Rooms, which aimed to compete with Zoom in the thriving video-conferencing market. At the time, Workplace VP Julien Codorniou emphasised that the feature, also accessible through Portal, would not be prone to hijacking scenarios such as ‘Zoom-bombing’.

Brian Oliver, Director of Alexa Communication, said that it’s “more important than ever to offer features like these to help people stay connected with their friends, family, and co-workers,” while Lilian Rincon, senior director of Product Management at Google Assistant said that the company wants “people to be able to use the video calling service of their choice to keep in touch with friends and family”.

Zoom on Facebook’s Portal is the only compatibility to have a set release date at the moment. It is to become widely available in September and will be compatible with Portal Mini, Portal and Portal+, as well as Portal TV in the future.

Zoom for Amazon Echo Show and Google Nest Hub Max are to be rolled out by the end of the year.

Nvidia has laid out plans to topple Intel in the data centre market with some early signs of success coming from its second-quarter revenues.

Chief executive Jensen Huang told the Financial Times that the US firm wants to become the main supplier of the core technologies that power large-scale data centres. He said the company was planning to supply “the full technology stack needed to run data centres”.

Huang believes the company’s future lies in “data centre scale computing”, an area it has made significant investments in. Earlier in the year, it shelled out $7 billion to acquire Mellanox Technologies, a firm that makes critical components for modern data centres, such as high-speed interconnect links between servers and storage.

The company has enjoyed initial signs of success, as data centre revenue has increased by 167% over the year, outperforming its gaming business for the first time. The data centre unit brought in $1.75 billion compared to $1.65 billion for gaming. Mellanox also contributed 14% of Nvidia’s overall revenue for the fiscal second quarter.

The company’s graphics processing units (GPU), originally developed to handle video streams, are widely used as computing engines to training modern AI system, making them a key component in data centres. As a result, the only area Nvidia now falls short in terms of data centre tools is in traditional computing cores (CPUs).

That could be solved with the acquisition of UK chipmaker Arm, which Nvidia has been heavily linked to in recent months. The Cambridge firm’s designs are thought to be a key weapon to compete with Intel in the data centre space.

Huang did not reveal any information regarding a potential acquisition of Arm, but he did go into detail about Nvidia’s “long-term” partnership with the UK chip manufacturer and the many services they collaborate on.

“They’re really great guys, and one of the special [things] about the Arm architecture that you know very well is that it’s incredibly energy-efficient, and because it’s energy-efficient, it has the headroom to scale into very high-performance levels over time,” he said.

Arm is currently owned by SoftBank, which acquired the chipmaker in 2016 for £32 billion, and any sale of the company will be down to its parent companies “bungled business strategy”, according to Arm’s former president. Speaking to the Financial Times, Tudor Brown, who left the firm in 2012, said SoftBank had “spent money on things that clearly weren’t going to make money in the short term”.

The UK government has established a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with HPE that will allow public sector organisations to adopt a pay-per-use model when acquiring hybrid cloud services for digital transformation.

The MoU, agreed between HPE and the government’s Crown Commercial Service (CCS), will allow to public sector bodies to take advantage of preferential rates when seeking a third-party provider for cloud services. 

“Despite the growth of cloud strategies in the public sector, many organizations have struggled to move business-critical applications to the public cloud, due to application entanglement, data gravity, security and compliance, and unpredictable costs,” said vice president and GM UK&A at HPE Pointnext Services, Sue Preston. 

“By leveraging HPE technologies, like HPE GreenLake, public sector organizations can reduce complexity, boost innovation and bring cost efficiency to their digital transformation efforts.”

Qualifying organisations can benefit from minimum agreed discounts on a range of HPE systems and platforms, including HPE GreenLake cloud services, Aruba enterprise networking and security products, as well as HPE’s storage and compute technology. 

The agreement also gives public sector bodies access to HPE’s pay-as-you-use cloud model in their own data centres, at the edge, as well as at facilities such as Crown Hosting Data Centres. Organisations can also use the full extent of GreenLake services, including its pre-integrated configurations of varying sizes.

“CCS provides commercial agreements which help organisations across the entire public sector save time and money on buying everyday goods and services,” said the chief executive of CCS, Simon Tse.

“This Memorandum of Understanding with HPE not only provides great value for public sector organisations, it also allows them to innovate more readily and improve services for the citizens they serve.”

This is the fourth such arrangement that the CCS has struck with cloud service providers over the last few months, as part of the One Government Cloud Strategy. This venture offers public sector bodies comprehensive guidance on pursuing cloud-powered digital transformation projects. 

MoUs have previously been established with Google Cloud, UKCloud, and most recently with IBM to give public sector bodies a number of options when looking for digital transformation services from a third-party provider.

The global public cloud services market totalled $233.4 billion (£176 billion) in 2019, representing a 26% increase year-over-year. 

That’s according to a new report from IDC, which reveals that the top five public cloud service providers – Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google, Microsoft, Oracle and Salesforce.com – accounted for more than a third of the worldwide total, growing a combined 35% year over year.

Software as a service (SaaS) remained the largest segment of public cloud spending with revenues of more than $122 billion in 2019, an increase of 20% year-over-year. IDC expects SaaS growth to continue as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, as businesses shift to subscription-based models and look to software collaboration tools to facilitate remote working. 

“Cloud is expanding far beyond niche e-commerce and online ad-sponsored searches. It underpins all the digital activities that individuals and enterprises depend upon as we navigate and move beyond the pandemic,” says Rick Villars, group vice president, Worldwide Research at IDC. 

“Enterprises talked about cloud journeys of up to ten years. Now they are looking to complete the shift in less than half that time.”

Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) came in second with revenues of $49 billion, up from $35.4 billion in 2018, while platform as a service (PaaS) ranked in third place with revenues of $35.9 billion. 

In the combined IaaS and PaaS market, AWS and Microsoft captured more than half of global revenues.

IDC said it expects spending on IaaS and PaaS to continue growing at a higher rate than the overall cloud market over the next several years as resilience, flexibility, and agility guide IT platform decisions.

“Today’s economic uncertainty draws fresh attention to the core benefits of IaaS – low financial commitment, flexibility to support business agility, and operational resilience,” said Deepak Mohan, research director of Cloud Infrastructure Services at IDC. 

“Cost optimisation and business resilience have emerged as top drivers of IT investment decisions and IaaS offerings are designed to enable both. The COVID-19 disruption has accelerated cloud adoption with both traditional enterprise IT organisations and digital service providers increasing use of IaaS for their technology platforms.”

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is reportedly in preliminary talks to invest in US-based cloud migration specialist Rackspace Technology. 

The deal would see AWS acquire a minority stake in Rackspace, according to Reuters, which cites “sources familiar with the matter”. 

Rackspace helps firms migrate their data to the likes of AWS, Google, Microsoft, VMware and more. The firm is headquartered in Texas but has offices stationed around the world. According to recent estimations, the company is thought to be valued between $5 billion and $9 billion. 

According to Reuters, the deal will have to be negotiated with Apollo Global Management, the parent company of Rackspace, but sources warned that there was no guarantee of an agreement, suggesting it could take months to hash out. 

Shares in Rackspace have soared 15% based on the Reuters report, according to CNBC. It’s claimed that trading was even briefly halted due to its volatility. 

Rackspace leases server space and helps organisations store and access cloud services and data. Apollo acquired the firm in 2016, for a $4.3 billion leveraged buyout. 

AWS, the market leader, has seen a boost from higher demand for cloud services as companies switch to virtual offices amid the coronavirus outbreak. Its revenues climbed almost 30% in the second quarter of 2020, hitting £10.81 billion. 

If a deal is made, it would be the second Apollo-owned company to secure a deal with a major tech company in 2020. Earlier in August, Google purchased a 6.6% stake in ADT for $450 million; Apollo acquired ADT for nearly $7 billion in the same year it snapped up Rackspace. It’s thought that Google is interested in the company’s strong customer base and its security technicians as looks to drive sales of Nest devices. 

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has made its Amazon Braket cloud-based quantum computing service generally available to all customers following a successful trial launch.

Quantum computing power provided by industry leaders including D-Wave, IonQ and Rigetti can be accessed through AWS, with customers able to experiment with quantum algorithms and advanced simulations.

Amazon Braket was first unveiled in December 2019 as the first of three new quantum computing services, with Braket giving scientists, researchers and developers the tools to experiment with quantum computers in a single environment.

Alongside Amazon Braket were the AWS Center for Quantum Computing, which brings together expertise from Amazon and academic institutions to collaborate on research, as well as Amazon Quantum Solutions Lab. This final stream is a programme that connects customers with quantum computing experts and consultants to identify practical uses for the technology.

“Last year I told you about Amazon Braket and explained the basics of quantum computing, starting from qubits and progressing to quantum circuits,” said chief evangelist for AWS, Jeff Barr. “During the preview, AWS customers such as Enel, Fidelity (Exploring Quantum Computing with Amazon Web Services), and Volkswagen have been using Amazon Braket to explore and gain experience with quantum computing.”

“I am happy to announce that Amazon Braket is now generally available and that you can now make use of both the classically-powered circuit simulator and quantum computers from D-Wave, IonQ, and Rigetti.”

Users can access Amazon Braket through a notebook-style user interface (UI), where they can create notebook instances to run processes using quantum hardware. Pricing will be based per-task, with an additional per-shot charge specific to the type of quantum hardware that users take advantage of. Use of the simulator also incurs an hourly charge, billed by the second, with a 15-second minimum. 

Quantum computing, heralded as a major technological breakthrough, is still in its early stages of development and therefore hasn’t yet delivered on its immense promise. The term for when quantum computing overtakes classical computing in terms of power is known as ‘quantum supremacy’, which Google claimed to have achieved earlier in the year.

The significant potential is anchored in the way it relies on qubits to make calculations. These are quantum bits that exist as neither 1 or 0 as in classical computing, but a ‘quantum superposition of 1 and 0’, existing in both states simultaneously. While two bits tied together take the form of 00,01, 10 or 11, two qubits exist in all four states simultaneously. 

Tying several hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of qubits together could therefore offer the potential to perform calculations at lightning speeds, where it may previously have taken a long time.

One of the challenges in reaping the benefits of quantum computing is making it accessible to companies and developers, which is where services like Amazon Braket and IBM Quantum Cloud come in.