Volkswagen has extended its partnership with Microsoft to further boost the development of its self-driving car software.

The German automotive giant will use Azure services to update the software in its vehicles, as a way of gradually building up automated functions over time.

Volkswagen has developed some driver-assistance features in its current models, such as cruise control, through its software subsidiary Car.Software. However, the new deal with Microsoft is about tapping into the tech giant’s expertise with software updates.

With Volkswagen and Car.Software building the initial layer of software in its cars, it is hoped that Microsoft will be able to add more and more automated functions, in a way similar to the smartphone industry’s approach of adapting new features for older hardware.

“For our phones 15 or 20 years ago, when you bought it, it pretty much never changed. Now, we expected every week or every couple of days that, silently, there’s new features,” Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of cloud and artificial intelligence at Microsoft, told Reuters. “That ability to start to program the vehicle in richer and richer ways, and in a safe way, transforms how the experience works.”

This technique is already used by Tesla and is thought to be one of the main reasons why it was able to take the lead in the industry.

Volkswagen originally signed a deal with Microsoft in 2018 to connect its cars to Azure services, but the new agreement could help the German giant catchup to the likes of Telsa with ‘over-the-air updates’ using the industry’s second-largest cloud infrastructure provider.

“As we transform Volkswagen Group into a digital mobility provider, we are looking to continuously increase the efficiency of our software development,” said Dirk Hilgenberg, CEO of the Car.Software Organisation.

“We are building the Automated Driving Platform with Microsoft to simplify our developers’ work through one scalable and data-based engineering environment. By combining our comprehensive expertise in the development of connected driving solutions with Microsoft’s cloud and software engineering know-how, we will accelerate the delivery of safe and comfortable mobility services.”

Microsoft has reportedly been in talks to acquire the social media firm Pinterest in recent months, although the company has so far been unable to secure a deal.

It’s the second time the tech giant has attempted to buy a large social media platform, with negotiations reportedly ending after Pinterest expressed a wish to remain independent, according to The Financial Times.

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In the summer Microsoft also failed in a bid to take over Chinese video-sharing app TikTok, after the company was put up for sale to avoid a complete ban in the US. Microsoft ultimately lost out to Oracle and Walmart, though that deal is still yet to be completed.

Pinterest, however, is valued at around $51 billion (£36bn), which would not only have resulted in Microsoft’s biggest acquisition ever, but also likely one of the largest tech acquisitions in history – potentially only behind Dell’s $67 billion takeover of EMC in 2015. It would also have been the company’s most notable acquisition since it bought LinkedIn for around $26 billion in 2016.

It’s suggested that Microsoft is interested in amassing a portfolio of active online communities that can run on top of its Azure cloud platform, according to sources with knowledge of the deal, speaking to the Financial Times. Aside from LinkedIn, the other notable ‘community’ acquisitions in Microsoft’s portfolio are GitHub and Minecraft.

Owning a company with large numbers of active users, many of which post frequently, can provide valuable data for a business like Microsoft. LinkedIn data, for example, is used to customise other Microsoft apps and services, such as Outlook, which can show shared LinkedIn connections with your email contacts.

What exact use Microsoft would have had with Pinterest data is unknown, but the firm is rapidly growing with 459 million active users. It is also worth noting that the social media site currently relies on Amazon Web Services (AWS) for its infrastructure.

“In Pinterest and TikTok before it, Microsoft is clearly demonstrating that it wants to build up more consumer-facing assets within its flywheel of operations beyond hardware and its Xbox and PC businesses,” argued Nick McQuire, chief of research for enterprise at CCS Insight, speaking to IT Pro.

“When compared to its cloud competitors, particularly its archrival next door, this is a glaring gap for Microsoft. This matters, but it’s less about increasing the diversity of its revenue in new areas like advertising, which through Bing, is not an insignificant business for Microsoft. It’s about winning cloud customers, particularly in consumer-facing industries where the other clouds have bigger assets to bring to bear to win larger deals.”

He added that this approach, the type of corporate style cloud deal between cloud providers and customers that involve a wider set of assets, is becoming increasingly common.

“Having an online B2C asset within its organisation not only helps it address sentiment that it’s just a sober enterprise play, but it also gives it more credibility with customers addressing the huge shifts in consumer behaviour and brand preferences as well,” said McQuire.

Although Microsoft also failed in its bid for TikTok, Oracle and Walmart’s deal has been put on hold pending a review by US President Biden over the previous administration’s national security policies targeting Chinese firms.

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Salesforce is redesigning its office culture and giving employees more choice around when and where they work.

The cloud giant declared the 9-to-5 workday “dead” in a blog post on Tuesday, claiming its demise would lead to a greater work-life balance and, ultimately, a better business.  

Going forward, Salesforce employees will have the choice of three working models; flex, fully remote and office-based. For those that work under the ‘Flex’ bracket, which Salesforce suggests will be the majority of its employees, their time in the office will be between one and three days a week, mostly for collaborative projects, customer meetings and presentations. Otherwise, they will work remotely.

There will also be an option to work remotely on a permanent basis to accommodate those that do not live in close proximity to a Salesforce office and those who have jobs that are not dependent on office attendance.

For a small group of workers, there is the option to work in the office four to five days a week if they are in roles that require it, potentially in segregated shifts. 

“As we enter a new year, we must continue to go forward with agility, creativity and a beginner’s mind – and that includes how we cultivate our culture,” said Brent Hyder, president and chief people officer. “An immersive workspace is no longer limited to a desk in our towers; the 9-to-5 workday is dead, and the employee experience is about more than ping-pong tables and snacks.

“We have an opportunity to create an even better workplace – one that allows us to be more connected to each other, find more balance between work and home, and advance equality – ultimately leading to increased innovation and better business outcomes.”

Not everyone agrees that remote working is the way forward, however. Both Google and Microsoft have expressed concerns about prolonged working from home and Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins on Tuesday suggested that some people were tired of working from home. It’s worth noting that the only examples Robbins gave were from Cisco employees, which he claimed were longing to get back into the office.

“I think we sort of moved into that phase where people actually struggle mentally, people are – they’re not enjoying it,” Robbins said according to CNBC. “One of our employees said to me the other day, ‘I don’t mind the option of working from home. I don’t like being forced to work from home,'” he said.

Unlike most tech firms, Cisco has struggled during the pandemic. The company this week reported a decline in revenue for the fifth quarter in a row, blaming a slowdown in infrastructure spending. 

Google has warned that its productivity and finances may take a hit due to the new ‘hybrid working’ model necessitated by the global COVID pandemic. 

The firm is concerned that social distancing measures and hybrid work models – a structure whereby employees are given more flexibility to work remotely while others work from a central office – will increase costs and potentially impact its “corporate culture”, according to Google’s annual 10-K report.

The tech giant is well-known for offering employee perks as an incentive. It has over 135,000 full-time workers, but it also offers lots of temporary and freelance work for contracted professionals from third-party firms. 

“As we prepare to return our workforce in more locations back to the office in 2021, we may experience increased costs as we prepare our facilities for a safe return to work environments and experiment with hybrid work models, in addition to potential effects on our ability to compete effectively and maintain our corporate culture,” the company stated.

Google was one of the first firms to order its employees to work from home, but as the year and the pandemic progressed, it issued muddled instructions for its planned return to the office. The company has made a number of announcements about ‘testing’ a hybrid approach, but it’s also still investing in large office spaces around the world. 

In December, it was reported that CEO Sundar Pichai told employees that remote working would be extended to 1 September 2021. However, it also came with the stipulation that they would have to work at least three days in the physical office and remain within a suitable commuting distance. 

These reports suggest that one of the biggest providers of remote working software isn’t so keen on its own staff enjoying the benefits of it. Similarly, rival firm Microsoft has also made concerning remarks about mass remote working – despite also heavily investing in services that facilitate this shift. 

For some, it highlights a concerning lack of progression from the very companies powering the so-called ‘new normal’. 

“Many companies in Silicon Valley have been actively encouraging presenteeism for years now with beds, restaurants and even gyms, but it’s an outdated metric for technical staff productivity,” said Martin Biggs, VP and GM of Spinnaker Support. “Our definition of productivity has to change from clock-watching and time-in-office to actual outputs. The biggest mistake I see is organisations trying to apply old strategies to an entirely new situation.”   

There are also some businesses that find the struggles of a tech giant like Google “refreshing”. The company’s “open and honest assessment” of the time it will take to readjust is a great insight for smaller businesses, according to Dan Harding, the CEO of Sign In App. 
 
“Culture takes years to build and it’s clear that Google is not ‘anti-remote work’, just realistic about how much needs to change and adapt to new ways of working and employee expectations,” said Harding. “Some of Google’s main competitive elements and focuses are its staff, culture and wellbeing so they will certainly be one of the ones to watch how they adapt during 2021 and beyond.”

Users of the original version of Microsoft’s Edge browser have until April to upgrade before the tech giant kills if off completely.  

Support for the desktop application, now dubbed ‘Legacy Edge’, will end on 9 March before it is replaced by the new Microsoft Edge browser a month later. 

This move will not come as a surprise to many, as the to kill off the old browser was originally announced in August 2020.

The original version of Microsoft Edge, which first launched in 2015, failed to persuade users to ditch Chrome and Firefox and struggled to live up to the early success of Internet Explorer, which also lost popularity to rival browsers. 

Edge 2.0, however, is built upon the Chromium open source project – the same web rendering engine that powers Google Chrome, as opposed to EdgeHMTL that underpinned Internet Explorer. The decision to use Chromium was to create a browser with better web compatibility for users and less complexity for developers. 

As such, the Legacy Edge browser will now be put to rest completely, first with an update in March that removes support, before it’s ultimately replaced with the new Chromium-based Edge browser in April.
 
“To replace this out of support application [Legacy Edge], we are announcing that the new Microsoft Edge will be available as part of the Windows 10 cumulative monthly security update – otherwise referred to as the Update Tuesday (or ‘B’) release – on April 13, 2021,” the tech giant said. 
 
“The new Microsoft Edge offers built-in security and our best interoperability with the Microsoft security ecosystem, all while being more secure than Chrome for businesses on Windows 10,” the company added. 
 
Microsoft has stressed that Edge won’t suddenly become the default browser if you’ve set Chrome as the preference, but there is no mention, as yet, about automatically migrating browser-related data, such as history or bookmarks.

Zoom has revealed a number of new updates for its Zoom Rooms video conferencing hardware suite that showcase the company’s idea of the hybrid office. 

The new features are aimed at businesses that will keep a portion of their workforce remote for some time after offices reopen or on a permanent basis. 

Zoom Rooms is a suite of tablets, monitors and webcams that organisations use throughout their place of work to enable staff to schedule, conduct and remotely connect to meetings. The company is now doubling-down on the remote element as businesses look at ways to safely return to workspaces. 

“Many organisations will likely take a gradual, phased approach to bring employees back to the office full time,” Zoom’s senior product manager, Cynthia Lee, wrote in a blog post. “When this happens, IT leaders and line-of-business managers will then face the challenge of supporting in-office and remote workers simultaneously.

“Businesses can use technology to empower workers wherever they are, streamline collaboration between in-office and remote workers, and make the transition back into the office as seamless as possible.” 

To start with, when you come back to the office you could be greeted by a virtual receptionist. This uses Zoom’s ‘Kiosk Mode’ and a touchscreen device that in-office workers and visitors can operate under the guidance of a remote receptionist. 

For meetings themselves, users can now pair iOS and Android mobile devices with Zoom Room meetings. This will include access to room controls and the ability to start and join meetings via the Zoom Rooms Controller app.

Meeting admins will also be able to view more data. They can see how many people are in a room via the dashboard, and both set and police specific social distances measures. There will also be information about the temperature within each room. 

There are also collaboration-focused updates, such a shareable whiteboard that can also be put into the chat function and a new meeting toolbar.

The head of Amazon Web Services (AWS), Andy Jassy, has been announced as the successor to Jeff Bezos, who is stepping down as CEO later in the year. 

Bezos is not leaving the company entirely as he will take on the role of executive chair. 

The decision to hire Jassy, however, is seen as logical, given how long he has been at the company and how well AWS has expanded under his leadership. Jassy joined in 1997, founding AWS in 2002, and he has been at the forefront of cloud computing for nearly two decades. 

For the fourth quarter of 2020, AWS brought in $12.7 billion, adding to the company’s record-breaking revenues. The cloud unit has been a reliable contributor for over a decade with consistent increases in revenue. The success of AWS has led many to suggest that Jassy’s appointment will usher in a new era for Amazon, with even more of a focus on cloud computing.
 
“Andy Jassy taking over signals the importance of not only AWS as the profit driver for its parent but also the role of cloud tech that will drive the growth of Amazon as a digital platform business going forward,” according to Forrester VP Allen Bonde.
 
“While consumer e-commerce is a big market, B2B is an even bigger prize. Picking a leader who is driving their main enterprise offering may indicate the future of Amazon is in fact selling more to businesses, than consumers. In general, a much bigger prize in the long run.”

Forrester’s principal analyst James McQuivey agreed, adding that it was key to avoid a Bill Gates-style handoff. The company struggled to successfully transition Microsoft into a new era following the appointment of Steve Ballmer.  

“By choosing Andy Jassy, Bezos is potentially skipping the Ballmer transition phase and moving right into a Satya Nadella mode, turning to an expert in running a cloud business, someone who understands the long-term role that infrastructure and business services will play for Amazon, even as it tries to maintain its role as a consumer innovator,” said McQuivey.

The most comparable executive change is IBM’s decision to replace CEO Ginni Rometty with Arvind Krishna. The company is splitting into two units, one cloud-focused and another that will take care of its infrastructure business. The cloud arm, which will arguably be more prominent, is built on much of Krishna work, such as the acquisition of Red Hat and its hybrid cloud strategy.

Similarly, Jassy has been the driving force behind AWS since 2002 and is arguably one of the most important figures in the mass adoption of cloud computing and e-commerce across the world. 

Recent Q3 analysis from Canalys put AWS as the top cloud provider by a considerable distance. Between July and September, the firm received more business 32% than Microsoft (19%) and Google Cloud (7%) combined. 

The founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, will step down as the company’s CEO later in the year after almost 30-years at the helm.

Bezos will become the firm’s executive chair and the move will give him the “time and energy” to focus on other ventures, such as space exploration company Blue Origin, fighting against climate change, and overseeing the Washington Post, the newspaper he owns.

He will be replaced by Andy Jassy, who has been at the company since 1997 and is currently serving as CEO of Amazon’s cloud computing arm AWS. The announcement was made to Amazon employees via an internal letter.

“I’m excited to announce that this Q3 I’ll transition to executive chair of the Amazon board and Andy Jassy will become CEO,” Bezos wrote. “In the exec chair role, I intend to focus my energies and attention on new products and early initiatives.

“Andy [Jassy] is well known inside the company and has been at Amazon almost as long as I have. He will be an outstanding leader, and he has my full confidence.”

Some have questioned the timing of the move, with the majority of the world still living under COVID restrictions. 
 
“Every founder, no matter how successful, must eventually hand over the reins and Bezos has curiously chosen the middle of a pandemic to do it,” said Forrester analyst James McQuivey. “Perhaps he had this transition planned earlier and delayed it due to the pandemic or perhaps he realises that whoever leads the company past the pandemic will rightfully be seen as the leader for Amazon’s next phase.”

Whatever the reason for his departure, Bezos is leaving the company in good health. The firm’s fourth-quarter revenues broke the $100 billion mark for the first time, with the company raking in $125.5 billion between October and December 2020. 

Bezos and Amazon have both gained wealth during the pandemic, as more consumers and businesses used its services for retail, e-commerce and cloud computing. The company’s growth runs alongside one of the biggest financial crises of the last 30 years.

Amazon was founded by Bezos in 1994 and went public three years later, shortly before the burst of the dot.com bubble. As one of the few internet-based businesses to survive, it went from strength to strength, continuing to gain market share and revenue throughout the 2008 financial crisis and beyond.  

“This journey began some 27 years ago,” Bezos said in his letter. “Amazon was only an idea, and it had no name. The question I was asked most frequently at that time was, ‘What’s the internet?’ Blessedly, I haven’t had to explain that in a long while.”

A row has reportedly broken out within the government over cloud computing contracts given to Amazon. 

Around £75 million worth of contracts for web hosting, software and support services were awarded to Amazon Web Services (AWS) last year, according to The Telegraph.

That’s reportedly almost double the amount of the next cloud-provider, French firm Capgemini, which was awarded £42 million. This has started to create a divide within the Tory party with some concerned that the government is too dependent on one service.

Speaking at a UKCloud roundtable, Conservative life peer, Lord Holmes, said the tech giant represented  “the latest iteration of the biggest player”, adding that in regards to cloud procurement, it was being allowed to “eat the largest piece of pie”.

Lord Maude, the former minister for the Cabinet Office, also spoke out about the AWS contracts. 

“When it comes to hosting, we’ve regressed into allowing a small group, and one vendor, in particular, to dominate,” he said, according to The Telegraph. “If you take a view of the government as simply as a customer, it makes absolutely no sense for the government to be overly dependent on one supplier. No one would sensibly do that.”

AWS is only directly responsible for less than 1% of what the UK’s public sector spends on IT, but it generates around £8.7 billion in economic value. The firm is the biggest global provider by market share and recent research from Canalys suggested it received more business spend in Q3 of 2020 (32%) than its two closest rivals Microsoft (19%) and Google Cloud (7%). 

Some have pointed out that the likes of AWS are actually helping smaller UK businesses to win government contracts. According to Daniel Korski, co-founder of GovTech firm Public, it is actually helping power some of the most exciting and creative businesses in the country. 
 
“It’s tempting to set up large US cloud providers against small UK startups,” Korski said. “But that totally misses what’s actually going on. Major cloud providers are enabling a new generation of British startups to bid for government contracts as they provide a secure platform to deliver services which government trusts. Before them, startups had few chances of offering products to the government.” 
 
It is also worth noting that AWS recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the government to provide digital skills across the civil service and actually increase the diversity of its suppliers by helping smaller businesses to take part in these types of public sector contract. 
 
The government has also put strategies in place that prevents dependence on one supplier, in the form of a green paper published in December. However, there should also be no “outright protectionism”, according to Robert Colvile, director of the Centre for Policy Studies think tank, where gov isn’t “buying British purely for the sake of it”.  

“When you look at how important cloud computing has been to the rollout of the furlough scheme, or the expansion of Universal Credit, or the NHS’s response to the pandemic, it’s clear that the priority – as with all our procurement – should be to get the best quality at the best price,” he said.

Microsoft brought in revenues of $43.1 billion for the second quarter of fiscal 2021, a 17% year-on-year increase that was fueled by businesses’ continued demand for cloud services. 

The company reported that Office commercial products and cloud service revenues increased by 11%, with Office 365 commercial revenue up 21% and Microsoft 365 consumer subscriptions increasing from 45.3 million to 47.5 million. 

Microsoft has reported impressive growth reported across almost all its services throughout 2020. At the very beginning of the pandemic, the firm reported massive adoption figures for Microsoft Teams which surpassed 44 million daily active users. 

For Q2, cloud computing services took centre stage. Dynamics 365 revenue was up 39%, Intelligent Cloud climbed 23% and Microsoft’s server business recorded growth of 23%. As a result, its Azure cloud platform grew 50% year-over-year, the company said.

“What we have witnessed over the past year is the dawn of a second wave of digital transformation sweeping every company and every industry,” said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. 

“Building their own digital capability is the new currency driving every organisation’s resilience and growth. Microsoft is powering this shift with the world’s largest and most comprehensive cloud platform.”

Elsewhere, Microsoft reported a 23% increase in LinkedIn revenue, and Windows Commercial and Surface growth of 10% and 3$, respectively. The biggest increase, however, was its Xbox content and services revenue, which climbed by 40% during the three-month period. 

The results showcase the breadth of services Microsoft offer and how well it has responded to the outbreak of COVID. Compared to other cloud providers, such as IBM, the company has seen increases in almost every segment of its business. 

The growth in Azure, and cloud services, in particular, suggest that remote working is likely to continue, even beyond a full rollout of the coronavirus vaccine.