​IBM has said it plans to split its business in half by spinning off its infrastructure services unit into a separate public company, bringing to an end a strategy that saw it attempt to shift towards cloud growth while maintaining a foothold in its legacy business.

The aim is to create two separate companies, each with its own strategic focus, in a tax-free deal expected to be completed by the end of 2021.

Announcing plans to create the yet-unnamed company, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna said that “now is the right time to create two market-leading companies focused on what they do best”.

“NewCo will have greater agility to design, run and modernize the infrastructure of the world’s most important organizations. Both companies will be on an improved growth trajectory with greater ability to partner and capture new opportunities – creating value for clients and shareholders,” he added.

Commenting on the announcement, IBM executive chairman Ginni Rometty said that the company’s managed infrastructure services business “has established itself as the industry leader, with unrivaled expertise in complex and mission-critical infrastructure work”.

“As two independent companies, IBM and NewCo will capitalize on their respective strengths,” she said, adding that the NewCo “will accelerate clients’ infrastructure modernization efforts”.

Meanwhile, IBM is to focus entirely on its AI capabilities and the hybrid cloud, which Krishna described as a $1 trillion opportunity.

The company announced that it will accelerate its hybrid cloud growth strategy in order to streamline its clients’ digital transformation processes. 

Rometty said that IBM has been set “for the new era of hybrid cloud” and credited the company’ acceleration of its open hybrid cloud platform to its acquisition of Red Hat, which was snapped up for approximately $34 billion in 2018.

IBM’s open hybrid cloud platform architecture had been based on RedHat containerization software OpenShift.

Last month, Red Hat and IBM co-launched a one-stop-shop marketplace for customers seeking to run OpenShift enterprise applications on their hybrid cloud infrastructures. The marketplace aims to deliver an ecosystem of software from independent vendors so enterprise customers can easily deploy new tools on their hybrid cloud infrastructures. Red Hat Marketplace offers a broad catalogue of more than 50 open-source software, from vendors such as CognitiveScale, MongoDB and StorageOS.

IBM said it expected to hit revenues of $17.6 billion, in line with estimates, in a separate earnings statement issued on Thursday.

Cloud data protection and management company Druva has launched the “industry’s first” cloud-based backup service for network attached storage (NAS) devices.

While NAS devices serve as a great way to create local backups of important data, it’s traditionally not been possible to make an additional backup of that data on the cloud using a dedicated system.

Druva’s system claims to improve backup performance by more than five times, and introduces a feature dubbed intelligent cold-storage tiering. This is in addition to the capacity to diffuse storage growth with integrated storage insights.

The direct-to-cloud architecture also eliminates redundant copies of backed-up files, and the infrastructure allows businesses to safeguard the value of unstructured data and manage their information in a much simpler way than traditional methods.

“Traditional backup providers have treated NAS as an afterthought, at the expense of reliability, security, and cost-efficiency,” said Druva’s chief technologist, Stephen Manley.

“Now, IT teams can augment their data management strategy with a simple and resilient NAS-optimized protection solution that requires no on-premises storage and no cloud management. By reducing data copies and redundant data centrally with our patent global source-side deduplication, Druva’s new offering eliminates storage management headaches while delivering the built-in ransomware protection today’s businesses need.”

The company’s system is targeted at unstructured data, which Druva claims accounts for more than 80% of the total data stored in enterprise storage systems. Managing this quantity of data, however, is becoming increasingly complex and difficult.

Organisations routinely maintain multiple copies of a dataset, the company adds, including versions for short-term recovery and off-site copies for resiliency, long-term retention, compliance and more. This increases the overall cost of storing and managing data. 

Druva’s platform comes as a solution to this conundrum, with the direct-to-cloud nature of the architecture seamlessly backing-up and archiving unstructured data without the need for configuration, integration or managing cloud storage tiers.

The cloud backup and archiving capabilities are already generally available, while infrequent access tier is in early release, with general availability expected in the first half of 2021.

Slack announced a number of security updates for its external chat service Slack Connect during its virtual Slack Frontiers conference this week. 

A new verification feature and a firewall-protected app builder are among the new security updates. Slack also revealed some insights into the company’s future plans with ‘sneak peaks’ at prototypes currently in development. 

The company has been building its email alternative, ‘Slack Connect’, for months, with the service first announced in June. It’s designed to let businesses of all sizes to connect and collaborate with partners, suppliers or other companies in the same way they would internally.

Bringing the outside in can obviously create security risk, but Slack says it builds everything with ‘enterprise-grade security in mind’. As such, organisations will need to be verified and Slack will denote this with a new checkmark feature.

What’s more, verified companies will also be able to Slack users from other organisations directly. ‘Slack Connect Direct Messages’ offers secure direct messaging with just a private invite link sent between a trusted partner, customer or vendor. 

“A channel happens when there is already a project in place, but when you’re just starting out your relationship with a customer or someone you’re about to sell to, or someone you’ve just met at a conference, a DM is much more appropriate,” Ilan Frank, Slack’s VP of product told IT Pro. 

“So this will allow you, in a really lightweight fashion, connect with anyone else that is using Slack.”

For all those that want to build apps on Slack, the firm has launched a secure process that works behind a company’s firewall. ‘Socet Mode’ lets developers securely receive events and interactions from users behind their organisation’s firewall through a WebSockets connection. This means that internal developers can use the full suite of functionality that comes with Slack’s APIs, including building rich interactive apps, without exposing public HTTP endpoints.

Slack said these security features will roll out in “early 2021”, along with the ability for admins to pre-approve channel requests with trusted organisations. 

There was also a surprising feature which Slack revealed. The firm is currently working on a ‘Stories-style’ function – similar to what you might find on Instagram. The company is calling it ‘Asynchronous video updates’ but the name may change as it’s the feature is no more a prototype at the moment. 

Similarly, the firm is also looking into further audio-based features, including instant audio-only meetings. 

Veeam has announced the acquisition of Kasten, a leading Kubernetes container backup and disaster recovery specialist, in a deal worth a reported $150 million.

Announcing the move, Veeam said the takeover comes at a time when businesses using containerised workloads continues to rise, with Gartner predicting that 75% of enterprises will be running containers in production by 2022.

The pair previously announced a collaboration back in May to deliver Kubernetes-native backup and Veeam CTO Danny Allan said this acquisition represents the natural next stage of the company’s Kubernetes journey.

“Veeam’s acquisition of Kasten is the next step in a strong partnership and shared sense of passion for delivering cloud data management,” he commented. “It also represents a testament and critical milestone in our commitment to support our customers’ business transformation to future-ready architectures.”

The acquisition will see Kasten’s K10 Data Management Platform integrated into its Veeam Backup & Replication and Cloud Data Management platforms – but it will also remain available as a standalone product for those that require it.

The application-centric, scalable platform protects Kubernetes containers in the cloud and on-premises, tackling dynamic apps with ease and offers quick and simple deployment. K10 also offers multi-cloud capability for flexibility and seamless movement, as well as support for popular relational and NoSQL databases.

“Longer term, as announced in our partnership earlier this year and like our other cloud-native solutions, you can expect to see capabilities like unified Veeam repositories with the all the value of data movement, tiering and management that comes with it,” Allan said. 

“You can expect to see Kubernetes assets visible and integrated in the Veeam Cloud Data Management Platform. And you can continue to expect to see our continued focus on simplicity, flexibility and reliability.”

Post-purchase, Veeam confirmed that Kasten will continue to operate independently, forming a new business unit under Niraj Tolia, Kasten’s current CEO.

“Our charter is to continue to invest in and build out the Kasten K10 platform,” Tolia said in a blog post. “For our joint customers, we will deliver a single modern data management platform that will protect data across virtual machines, physical servers, SaaS applications, and now, containers. 

“For our Kubernetes-only customers, we will continue to provide the freedom of choice to run K10 wherever they are today and will be tomorrow.”

Oracle NetSuite has announced a slew of new updates for its SMB customers which aim to enhance decision-making and unlock new growth opportunities.

Announced at the company’s Now On Air virtual event, NetSuite’s latest updates are aimed at helping organisations to streamline and enhance financial, supply chain, and operational management, as well as the employee and customer experience.

Finance and Accounting professionals will benefit from new cash management capabilities which aim to connect customers to financial institutions around the world by importing transactions and account balances directly into NetSuite, providing real-time insights into bank activity. Manual efforts will also be reduced by a new digital management of workflows and automated entry of invoices, electronic payment processes, and scheduled payment runs.

Finance and accounting professionals will also receive automation for transactions and invoicing as well as the budgeting process in order to eliminate manual data collection and reduce budgeting cycle time

Those in supply chain and operations will receive automated fulfillment and supply planning capabilities, as well as the Intelligent Predicted Risk, which aims to provide users with greater insight into the potential risks of delayed shipments. 

Project managers will benefit from automated expense management, which will help them reduce data entry errors by populating expense lines directly from American Express corporate credit cards, as well as enhancements into resource planning, which provides a unified view of project budgeting and assignments.

NetSuite also announced Analytics Warehouse, which aims to assist administrators and developers in decision-making. Meanwhile, SuiteAnalytics will be extended through an integration with Oracle Analytics Cloud and Autonomous Data Warehouse, as well as enhanced with Workbook – NetSuite’s analytics toolkit.

Evan Goldberg, EVP of Oracle NetSuite, said that Warehouse is based on Oracle’s advanced analytics cloud.

“It’s really easy to set up and can do snapshotting by looking at the data as it’s being brought in and show you trends over time,” he explained. “It can also analyse NetSuite data along with data from other systems so it’s easy to pull other data into the Warehouse and then connect it up.”

Administrators and developers will also be able to customise SuiteCloud records as well as manage application performance with a new performance health dashboard. 

HR professionals will be able to create role-based onboarding checklists to engage and increase the productivity of new employees, while the new enhancements to SuitePeople aim to make performance management more efficient. SuitePeople users will also be able to better manage retirement plan deductions by facilitating compliance and automating employee and employer match contributions. 

Lastly, organisations will be able to improve their relations with customers with the help of new e-commerce site management capabilities which aim to improve end-user experiences, monitor performance, and deliver more insightful analytics.

Updates to SuitePeople, NetSuite Analytics Warehouse, SuiteCloud, as well as the e-commerce site management and the expenses management automation will become available in future platform releases later this year, while the remaining enhancements are available to customers as of today.

“It’s been an overwhelming year of change and businesses have been forced to build for a new reality,” said Goldberg. “The latest updates will help our customers gain real-time visibility into their entire business so that they have the agility and control required to successfully build for what’s next.”

Oracle-owned NetSuite has announced the general availability of four new features for its cloud-based SuiteSuccess business management solutions. 

First launched in 2017, SuiteSuccess is designed to help financial and wholesale distributers share best practices, insight, and deployment guidance across specific verticals.

The four enhancements, announced he NetSuite Now On Air virtual event, include the addition of SuiteAnalytics Workbooks to its financial and accounting best practices solution Financial First and a Manufacturing Mobile feature for Manufacturing Standard. 

SuiteAnalytics Workbooks aims to help businesses improve their operations using data insights, while Manufacturing Mobile enables manufacturers to remotely manage shop floor tasks.

NetSuite also announced that it now offers one Learning Cloud Support (LCS) pass with each SuiteSuccess edition bought by new as well as renewing customers. Moreover, all SuiteSuccess vertical editions will now include the new 2020 product features as well as adjustments to industry best practices, which were based on user and field experience.

All four are now available to customers.

Commenting on the enhancements, SuiteSuccess EMEA lead Richard Cutler said: “We’ve all had to manage a lot of change this year and that makes it more important than ever for us to share the wisdom we have gained from helping over 22,000+ customers take advantage of the cloud”.

UK companies using SuiteSuccess include wealth management and insurance broker SPF Private Clients (SPF), specialist food supplier Unisnacks, and commission-free investing app Freetrade Limited.

When asked about its strategies for the UK market, NetSuite EMEA VP Nicky Tozer told Cloud Pro that it “remains critical to NetSuite’s success both in EMEA and globally”. 

“NetSuite has helped many UK businesses grow, adapt to change, and build for the future,” she said. 

Tozer described SuiteSuccess as “a great example” which saw the solutions provider develop “best-practice functionality for UK businesses across industries, from wholesale distribution and manufacturing to services and software”. 

“We’re continually investing in our platform and partner ecosystem to bring the benefits of cloud ERP to UK organisations looking to improve operations and increase efficiencies,” she added.

Nvidia has launched a GPU-based video conferencing platform for developers that it claims can fix common issues with video calling.

The service is called Nvidia Maxine, a cloud-based platform that will use AI to realign callers’ faces, improve streaming quality, boost resolution, and more. 

Video conferencing is the number one source of internet traffic, according to Nvidia, with some 30 million web meetings estimated to take place every day. With that in mind, the company has developed a cloud-based suite of ‘GPU-accelerated’ AI enhancements.

With Maxine, service providers running the platform in the cloud can offer users new AI effects, such as ‘gaze correction’, super-resolution, noise cancellation and face relighting. What’s more, because the data is processed in the cloud rather than on local devices, Nvidia suggests that end users can enjoy the new features without any specialised hardware.

“Video conferencing is now a part of everyday life, helping millions of people work, learn and play, and even see the doctor,” said Ian Buck, vice president and general manager of Accelerated Computing at Nvidia. 

“Nvidia Maxine integrates our most advanced video, audio and conversational AI capabilities to bring breakthrough efficiency and new capabilities to the platforms that are keeping us all connected.”

Maxine also includes reduced bandwidth whereby the AI software is used to analyse key facial points of each caller and re-animates the face in the video. This takes away the need to stream every single pixel which in turn requires less data to go back and forth across the internet.

The face alignment feature automatically adjusts users so they appear to be facing each other during a call and gaze correction helps simulate eye contact, even if the camera isn’t aligned with the user’s screen. Nvidia claims these features will help people stay engaged in the conversation rather than looking at their camera.
 
Developers can also add features that allow call participants to choose their own animated avatars with realistic animation automatically driven by their voice and emotional tone, while an auto frame option allows the video feed to follow the speaker even if they move away from the screen.

The new platform follows an announcement that Nvidia is planning to build the UK’s most powerful supercomputer for use in medical research. Dubbed Cambridge-1, the £40 million machine would hypothetically rank as the 29th most powerful supercomputer in the global TOP500 list if it were built today.

Google Cloud has launched a fully integrated workspace productivity platform from which customers can access widely-used G Suite apps including Gmail, Calendar and Drive, among others.

With a new user interface, the desktop-based application will allow users to seamlessly cycle between the entire G Suite portfolio depending on the task at hand, building on the integration of core tools earlier in the year. 

The merging of these core tools, including chat, email, voice and video calling as well as content management, aims to give employees access to all the tools they need in one place. Users have previously needed to endlessly cycle between web browser tabs, or third-party desktop clients, in order to replicate the same experience. 

The launch of Google Workspace essentially overwrites the G Suite, with new branding also launched to coincide with the platform rollout. 

“Now, work itself is transforming in unprecedented ways. For many of us, work is no longer a physical place we go to, and interactions that used to take place in person are being rapidly digitized,” said VP and GM for Google Workspace, Javier Soltero.

“Office workers no longer have impromptu discussions at the coffee machine or while walking to meetings together, and instead have turned their homes into workspaces.

“These are unique challenges, but they also represent a significant opportunity to help people succeed in this highly distributed and increasingly digitized world. With the right solution in place, people are able to collaborate more easily, spend time on what matters most, and foster human connections, no matter where they are.”

Beyond merely serving as a centralised hub, among the uses of Google Workspace, customers can dynamically create and collaborate on a document with guests through a chat room, for example. This means it’s easier to share content and work together with users beyond the confines of your organisation’s network. 

Users can also preview a linked file in Docs, Sheets and Slides without having to open a new tab, meaning, again, less time is spent cycling between web tabs. Google Meet video conferencing sessions, meanwhile, can be seen as picture-in-picture in not only Gmail and Chat, as the firm previously announced, but in Docs, Sheets and Slides as well.  

There are different pricing tiers available with Google Workspace, depending on the needs of any particular organisation, in addition to varying amounts of cloud storage. Subscriptions also include administrative and security tools to manage workforce access to Google’s productivity tools, as well as threat protection.

Cisco has been ordered to pay $1.9 billion (£1.46 billion) to a cyber security firm after a US district judge ruled it had infringed its patents. 

Judge Henry Morgan concluded after a month-long trial that Cisco infringed upon four out of five patents that belonged to Centripetal Networks, according to Reuters.

Virginia-based Centripetal was founded in 2009 and develops threat intelligence software and firewall hardware for cyber networks. The company took legal action against Cisco earlier this year and has successfully challenged the US tech giant. 

In a 167-page decision, Morgan said the case was “not a close call,” pointing out inconsistencies in Cisco‘s evidence and within its own technical documents. Most of these were used by Centripetal during the trial. 

The massive payout reflects $755.8 million in damages suffered by Centripetal, which has been multiplied by 2.5 on account of “willful and egregious” conduct from Cisco. Add to that prejudgment interest and it leaves the final sum at $1.9 billion. 

With regards to the four patents it lost, Morgan said that Cisco did not “advance any objectively reasonable defences at trial”.

“The infringing functionality was added to their accused products post June 20, 2017, and resulted in a dramatic increase in sales which Cisco touted in both technical and marketing documents,” Morgan wrote.

Cisco said it was disappointed with the decision and confirmed it plans to appeal: “Given the substantial evidence of non-infringement, invalidity and that Cisco’s innovations predate the patents by many years.”

In its latest fiscal year, Cisco posted $11.2 billion of net income from $49.3 billion of revenue. 

“With this judgment, the court rejected the primitive doctrine that might makes right,” Paul Andre, a lawyer for Centripetal, said in a statement. “This is a significant win for all small, innovative companies.”

Cisco has revealed plans to acquire Israeli cyber security startup Portshift, in a move the tech firm says will enable its security platform to better deploy and manage Kubernetes container clusters. 

Announcing the acquisition, Cisco said that Portshift aligns to its own approach to providing secure connectivity between users, devices and apps, regardless of where they are based. 

A Kubernetes-native security platform, Portshift enables DevOps, security and operations teams to maintain security of the entire containerised applications life-cycle, from their creation to implementation. 

Portshift’s products are also designed to provide vulnerability and configuration management, network segmentation, data encryption, as well as compliance auditing.

“Today, the application security space is highly fragmented with many vendors addressing only part of the problem,” commented Cisco SVP Liz Centoni said in a blog post. “The Portshift team is building capabilities that span a large portion of the lifecycle of the cloud-native application.

“They bring cloud native application security capabilities and expertise for containers and service meshes for Kubernetes environments to Cisco, which will allow us to move toward the delivery of security for all phases of the application development​ lifecycle.”

Portshift was founded in 2018 by CEO Ran Ilany, the former head of security infrastructure at Check Point Technologies, and vice president of research and development Zohar Kaufman, who also previously co-founded CTERA networks. 

The Tel-Aviv firm has raised around $5.3 million in seed funding from the Team8 cybersecurity foundry and currently has a workforce of 14 employees. 

Cisco said it expects to complete the transaction during the first half of its FY21 but did not reveal any financial details surrounding the move. According to a report from Globes, however, the figure is expected to total around $100 million.