Google Cloud has announced the acquisition of Siemplify, an Israeli-based cyber security company that specialises in end-to-end security for enterprises. 

The exact terms of the deal were not announced, though Reuters reports it is worth around $500 million. 

Acquisition rumours were reported in the Israeli press just before Google Cloud made an official announcement on Tuesday. The CEO and co-founder of Siemplify, Amos Stern, also noted that his company is to be integrated into Google Cloud’s Chronicle platform. 

Founded in 2015, Siemplify is another example of the growing tech prowess of Israel, which has become a hotbed for new startups and data-centric businesses. Much like digital footprint tracking service Mine, Siemplify is another Israeli company founded by former members of the country’s military intelligence agencies. 

The company is typically referred to as a security orchestration, automation and response (SOAR) service, which is “the missing piece” for Google’s Chronicle platform, according to Forrester analyst Allie Mellen. 

“Other security analytics platforms began incorporating SOAR as early as 2017,” Mellen said. “This acquisition is an important step in providing a unified offering to practitioners and in being able to compete more directly in the security analytics platform space. Enabling the orchestration of response across multiple tools is an integral part of security operations and has become an integral part of a security analytics platform. This acquisition continues to demonstrate that.” 
 
Chronicle is one of Google’s original moonshots founded within its “X” programme that was migrated to Google Cloud in 2019. It was designed for cyber security telemetry, specifically to track the movement of data across all devices and networks in a bid to prevent breaches. SOAR platforms act as the customer interface for that operation. 
 
“Siemplify was one of the few remaining standalone SOAR offerings, as many others have been picked up by SIEM vendors over the years,” Mellen added.

“Most other standalone SOAR vendors have been acquired or built out their portfolio with other products like threat intelligence platforms. In some ways, that makes this a heady acquisition and signals the end of the standalone SOAR or, frankly, SIEM. We predicted early on that the SOAR market could not stand on its own, and now it has truly come to fruition.”

Enterprise software giant Oracle is reportedly in talks to acquire Cerner, a digital medical records business, for around $30 billion.

The deal could give Oracle massive volumes of health data for its artificial intelligence services, according to The Wall Street Journal, which cites sources familiar with the story.

If it does go through, it will be Oracle’s largest acquistion ever, as well as one of the biggest takeovers of 2021.

Cerner is the second largest provider of electronic health record software in the US, just behind Epic Systems Corp. The company offers full IT services, including hardware, to medical facilities across North America and has over 29,000 employees around the world, with the majority based in Kansas City, Missouri.

Its business is heavily reliant on sales of software and IT services, but it has been looking to move deeper into new technologies and cloud services. The company recently collaborated with the Vaccination Credential Initiative, launching a global digital passport to for international travel to help manage the spread of COVID-19.

The firm is also a known partner of Amazon Web Services; the cloud provider was approached in 2019 to collaborate on AI services for healthcare projects.

The proposed deal is part of a growing trend of software developers and cloud providers finding routes into healthcare. Microsoft announced a similar deal to acquire Nuance Communications for $19.7 billion earlier in the year. That takeover is currently being looked at by the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority over concerns it will give Microsoft an unfair advantage in that particular market.

Other tech giants such as Google, Apple and even Facebook have also made in-roads into healthcare, with large acquisitions and new services. The social network is reportedly investing in a new wearable health tracker.

This was supposed to be the year we discovered what the ‘new normal’ would look like. On reflection, however, 2021 appears to be a near-replica of 2020, with conversations around hybrid working and further mutations of COVID-19 equally rife.  

That being said, we saw a number of significant stories that might yet go on to define the tech world this year. From corporate leadership changes to global security incidents, the industry was as eventful as ever over the last 12 months. 

Microsoft Exchange Server terrorised

The Microsoft Exchange Server exploit has arguably been the longest-running story of 2021. The tech giant was first notified of four zero-day bugs in January, but these weaknesses were still being exploited as late as November. 

Exchange Server is a software suite used by small and large enterprises around the world and includes email, calendar and collaboration services. It quickly became apparent just how many companies use the service when reports began emerging of mass-scale data breaches. By exploiting the four vulnerabilities, hackers were able to launch remote code execution (RCE) attacks to hijack servers, embed backdoors, insert malware and steal data. 

Despite Microsoft releasing patches in March, the exploit was abused throughout the year, with hackers mainly targeting unpatched servers. The US, and other allied countries, have since pointed the finger at a Chinese group known as Hafnium. 

Mixed messaging on remote work 

The UK is ending 2021 as it started; with COVID-19 restrictions in place, this time to fight the spread of the Omicon variant. Specifically, the government has recommended those who can work from home should do, which was the same guidance in place up until July. 

Over the summer, however, the government appeared to be divided on the subject of returning to the workplace. There were concerns, for instance, that shops and restaurants, particularly in town centres, would close down without footfall traffic. In July, Boris Johnson told the House of Commons that remote working would not be the ‘new normal’ because people wanted to get back to in-person meetings and office collaboration. Just a week later, though, Liz Truss, the minister for women and equalities, called for bosses to make flexible working a standard option for all new employees. This mixed messaging on remote work from policymakers stands in stark contrast to tech giants as they strive to define what hybrid work means.

Is the UK government gutting GDPR?

It’s only a matter of time before the UK’s current data protection regime comes to an end. In June, a special taskforce commissioned by the prime minister put forward recommendations to scrap the existing rules. Its report said that the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) “overwhelms people” with too much complexity and also “unnecessarily” restricts the use of data for worthwhile processes. The taskforce, instead, put forth proposals that included implementing a new data protection framework that, vaguely, wouldn’t stifle growth and innovation. 

On that basis, the government opened a consultation on the data protection landscape, with some ministers suggesting a full divergence from GDPR was required. The proposals eventually put forward weren’t as extreme as first billed, though. The plan included removing existing requirements for organisations to designate data protection officers, while also scrapping data protection impact assessments (DPIAs). Plans are also underway to change the remit of the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

The death of John McAfee 

For most of the last decade, the life of John McAfee seemed to be an endless source of crazy headlines and scarcely believable tales. It all came to a tragic end in June, however, when the creator of one of the world’s most famous antivirus softwares was found dead in a Spanish prison at the age of 75. 

At the time of his death, McAfee was wanted by US authorities for alleged tax evasion; he was arrested at Barcelona International airport in October 2020 and held at the Brains 2 penitentiary while awaiting extradition to America. Just hours after Spain’s highest court had approved said extradition, the infamous John McAfee was found dead. 

Judicial staff were dispatched to the prison to investigate and their statement said that “everything points to death by suicide”. Inevitably, a number of conspiracy theories have since disputed this account, claiming, for instance, McAfee was murdered. It’s almost a fitting end for a man who lived such a mythologised life in tech. While his relevance to the industry has waned in recent years, his legacy, nonetheless, will live on.  ​​

Windows 11 launches to great fanfare

Microsoft unveiled a new version of its flagship desktop operating system (OS) in 2021, with the highly anticipated Windows 11 making its debut this Autumn. The tech giant once famously suggested Windows 10 would be the last OS we’d need, which might still hold true given reviews suggest it’s more of a visual refresh on Windows 10 than a wholesale change.

This OS did, however, come with a host of shiny new features, including a central start menu, a dedicated Microsoft Teams buttons and native Android apps. The upgrade also included a new store with significant policy changes for developers. What’s more, it appears the rather annoying virtual assistant Cortana has been demoted, so users aren’t forced to listen to it waffling on during the startup process. 

OS upgrades are a slow process, both for users and providers, and it can take a while for the best features to emerge, and bugs to be fully ironed out. This appears to be the case here, with Windows 11 enduring mixed messaging over compatibility, alongside a number of early patches.

A new era at Amazon

Jeff Bezos stepped down as Amazon CEO at the start of the third quarter of 2021. The announcement was made back in February, with Bezos transitioning to the role of executive chair to free up more time to work on other ventures, such as his commercial space flight startup, Blue Origin. 

Bezos left the company in an extremely healthy financial condition, but there have been growing concerns about the way Amazon treats its workers, as well as its minimal tax contributions. These issues, however, are now at the door of Andy Jassy.

Jassy is the logical successor to Bezos, having been in charge of its cloud computing arm, Amazon Web Services (AWS), for the last 15 years. The appointment highlights the growing importance of cloud computing, particularly in the post-pandemic world, where online services are dominant, while signalling the priorities for one of the biggest companies in the world as we move into 2022.

Facebook enters the Meta-verse

A lot of political pressure came Mark Zuckerberg’s way in 2021; the Facebook chief is fighting regulators, MPs and even whistleblowers.Still, though, the biggest Facebook story of the year was its change of name to Meta, to reflect its newfound focus on the metaverse. 

Bad news can’t be delivered over Zoom; that appears to be the feeling behind a thousand angry tweets directed at Vishal Garg, the CEO of US mortgage startup Better.com, after a video showing him sacking 900 employees in one savage swoop went viral.

“Thank you for joining,” Garg begins. “Erm… I come to you with not great news. If you are on this call, you are part of the unlucky group being laid off. Your employment here is being terminated, effective immediately.”

By his own testimony, this was Garg’s decision, and he wanted those 900 poor souls to hear it straight from the source. As mass sackings go, it’s fairly heartfelt; he let everyone know this wasn’t his first Zoom cull and he even admitted to crying after the previous one. 

Now, those 900 people reportedly make up just 9% of Better.com’s workforce, which is said to be an organisation worth around $7 billion (roughly £5.3 billion). Could it have kept them on till after Christmas, at least? You betcha. But this is, sadly, very common at larger organisations due to ‘market changes’ or whatever corporate jargon suits. 

Garg has received flak for sacking 900 workers over Zoom, but is the alternative really any better?

Last year, IBM announced 10,000 job cuts across Europe as part of the separation of its cloud and infrastructure businesses. Its HR team probably dealt with it a bit more traditionally, likely sending out formal emails or letters, but, it’s also worth noting that no video conferencing service accommodates 10,000 participants. 

Unfortunately, we are creatures of convenience; you can get lattes delivered by underpaid gig economy workers on bikes, so you don’t have to endure a five-minute walk to the coffee shop. It doesn’t seem extra baristas are hired for this, either, they just have to increase their output, essentially. 

This type of convenience is also apparent in the government’s use of WhatsApp for official business, while simultaneously calling for WhatsApp to compromise the integrity of the end-to-end encryption that makes the service what it is. It’s tempting to think the worst; that the Tories are a shady bunch using destructible messages to conveniently hide any evidence of alleged misgivings. 

This is, however, also a government with a terrible track record on technology, and one that probably doesn’t fully understand WhatsApp. That ministers, too, supposedly began using WhatsApp messaging to avoid their communications being caught out by the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act (mistakenly, it turns out) only adds to the confusion.

The problem here is that the convenience of technology is too often confused for insidiousness, and, to be fair, it’s quite tempting to judge Garg harshly because people’s livelihoods are on the line – at Christmas time, no less.

Nicola Sturgeon has asked for people in Scotland to work from home until the middle of January to prevent the “potentially rapid rise” of the Omicron variant of COVID-19. 

A similar announcement is expected to be made by the UK’s prime minister, Boris Johnson, with wide reports of “Plan B” restrictions to be implemented on Thursday, according to Reuters.  

Cases of the Omicron variant have increased in Scotland, shooting up from 28 to 99 in a matter of days, according to the leader of the Scottish National Party. There is also a belief that around 4% of COVID-19 cases north of the border are likely to be the new strain of the virus. 

“If you had staff working from home at the start of the pandemic, please now do so again,” said Sturgeon according to the Independent. “We’re asking you to do this from now until the middle of January when we will review this advice.”

“I know how difficult this is, but I cannot stress enough how much difference we think this could make in helping step transmission and avoiding the need for even more onerous measures.”

The UK government had previously ruled out working from home, suggesting it wasn’t necessary, but the greater transmissibility of Omicron might have forced another U-turn. Sage professor Neil Ferguson told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that the new variant appears to be doubling every two to three days.

“It’s likely to overtake Delta before Christmas at this rate, precisely when is hard to say,” Ferguson said. “We’ll start seeing an impact on overall case numbers – it’s still probably only 2%, 3% of all cases so it’s kind of swamped, but within a week or two we’ll start seeing overall case numbers accelerate quite markedly as well.”

The decision to go back to remote working comes as the government faces intense scrutiny over a Christmas party held at Number 10 during last year’s lockdown. Some Tory MPs are reportedly concerned that the public may be unwilling to follow new restrictions after a video emerged of Downing Street aides laughing about a social gathering in the weeks leading up to Christmas. 

Salesforce announced a change to its leadership structure on Tuesday with Bret Taylor appointed to co-CEO alongside founder Marc Benioff. 

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 Taylor joined the cloud giant in 2016 after his productivity software startup, Quip, was acquired by Salesforce for $142 million.

In just under five years, Taylor has quickly moved up the ranks at Salesforce and has become close with Benioff. Taylor even described the Salesforce boss as a “mentor and trusted friend” and the feeling appears to be mutual.

“Bret is a phenomenal industry leader who has been instrumental in creating incredible success for our customers and driving innovation throughout our company. He has been my trusted friend for years, and I couldn’t be happier to welcome him as co-CEO,” said Marc Benioff, chair and co-CEO of Salesforce. 

“We’re in a new world and Salesforce has never been more relevant or strategic for our customers. Together, Bret and I will lead Salesforce through our next chapter, while living our shared values of trust, customer success, innovation and equality for all.”

Taylor has a varied background. Before starting Quip he helped to create Google Maps and also sold a social networking startup, FriendFeed, to Facebook, where he spent three years as its chief technology officer. He also sits on Twitter’s board of directors and was named chairman shortly after Jack Dorsey’s departure.

The move to having co-CEOs is also not new for Salesforce; in 2018, Benioff shared the role with former Oracle executive Keith Block, but Block stepped down just before the pandemic. 

“Marc has been my mentor, my greatest supporter and my trusted friend for years,” Taylor said. “Partnering with him to lead the company he co-founded 22 years ago is an enormous privilege. I’m thankful for our Salesforce employees, our Trailblazers, our customers, and all of our stakeholders who help us make our company and our world a better place.”

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The new head of Amazon Web Services, Adam Selipsky, made his Re:Invent debut as CEO on Tuesday with a glut of announcements for compute, networking and data. 

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The former Tableau boss returned to the cloud giant earlier in the year to take over from Andy Jassy, who has now taken over the top job of its parent company, Amazon. 

Jassy’s Re:Invent keynotes were notoriously long and always full of new products. Selipsky gave a much shorter presentation than his predecessor, but there was no skimping on the announcements. 

It started with a new in-house processor – Graviton 3 – which will power new Amazon Ec2 C7g instances. Available in preview, EC2 C7g instances will provide the best price performance in Amazon EC2 for compute-intensive workloads such as high-performance computing, gaming, video encoding, and CPU-based machine learning inference, according to Selipsky. 

What’s more, these instances are the first in the cloud to feature cutting edge DDR5 memory technology, which AWS said will provide 50% more bandwidth than DDR4 memory. C7g instances will provide 20% higher networking bandwidth compared to previous generation C6g instances based on the Graviton 2 processors. 

Selipsky also unveiled Inf1 Instances for EC2, also in preview, which is a Trainium-based AWS service. AWS Trainium is the second machine learning chip built by AWS that is optimised for high-performance deep learning training. Selipsky said the Trn1 instances will deliver “best price performance” for training deep learning models in the cloud, which includes use cases such as natural language processing and image recognition. They support up to 16 Trainium accelerators, up to 800 Gbps of EFA networking throughput and ultra-high-speed intra-instance connectivity for the fastest ML training in Amazon EC2.  

Moving on to data, Selipsky announced AWS Mainframe Modernization, a new platform for mainframe migration. This will allow customers to shift and modernise their on-premises mainframe workloads to a managed and highly available runtime environment on AWS. This service currently supports two main migration patterns: re-platforming and automated refactoring.  

The announcements also included 5G, which is becoming increasingly prominent at AWS events. On Tuesday it was a preview of AWS Private 5G, a new managed service that helps enterprises set up and scale private 5G mobile networks in their facilities in just days. It takes just a few clicks in an AWS console for customers to specify where they want to build a mobile network and the network capacity needed for their devices. From there AWS delivers and maintains the small cell radio units, servers, 5G core and radio access network (RAN) software, and subscriber identity modules (SIM cards) required to set up a private 5G network and connect devices.

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Meta has picked Amazon Web Services (AWS) to be its strategic cloud partner as it looks to expand its artificial intelligence capabilities.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, said it will use AWS services to “complement” its on-premise infrastructure and also broaden its use of AWS compute, storage and security services.

Expanding on an existing partnership, Meta will now run third-party collaborations on AWS and use the cloud to support acquisitions of entities that are already powered by AWS. The use of AWS compute services will also be used to accelerate Meta’s AI research and development programmes.

Additionally, the partnership will also include work on PyTorch, which is an open source machine learning library developed by Facebook’s AI Research Lab. It’s based on the Torch library and used for applications such as computer vision and natural language processing. AWS will work on improving performance for building, training, deploying and operating PyTorch AI and ML learning models.

“We are excited to extend our strategic relationship with AWS to help us innovate faster and expand the scale and scope of our research and development work,” said Jason Kalich, vice president of production engineering at Meta. “The global reach and reliability of AWS will help us continue to deliver innovative experiences for the billions of people around the world that use Meta products and services and for customers running PyTorch on AWS.”

The two companies will collaborate on new native tools for PyTorch and simplify the deployment of models in production. This will include enhancements to TorchServe, which is the feeding engine for PyTorch. By working on these open-source contributions, AWS and Meta aim to help organisations bring large-scale deep learning models from research to production faster and easier with optimised performance on AWS.

“With this agreement, AWS will continue to help Meta support research and development, drive innovation, and collaborate with third parties and the open source community at scale,” Kathrin Renz, vice president of business development and industries at AWS. “Customers can rely on Meta and AWS to collaborate on PyTorch, making it easier for them to build, train, and deploy deep learning models on AWS.”

Microsoft has launched a standalone tier of Microsoft Teams specifically aimed at small businesses.

Teams Essentials, which is available now, offers video meetings and chat features for the “lowest price in the market today”, according to Microsoft.

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The Essentials tier offers unlimited group meetings for up to 30 hours and can support up to 300 participants at a cost of $4 (£3) per user, per month. Each user will also have 10GB of cloud storage. On the free tier of Teams, users are only able to host 100 participants for 60 minutes at a time.

The service also includes “existing and new capabilities”, some of which are already available in the free version of Teams, to meet the needs of small businesses, according to Microsoft. This includes a new Google Calendar integration, which Microsoft said will be available “soon”, and in-meeting tools like meeting lobby, virtual backgrounds, Together mode, and live reactions.

Essentials will also have a “Small business group chat template”, which is a collaboration hub where users can manage projects, assign tasks and create polls.

“We know how difficult the past 20 months have been for small businesses. They’ve had to demonstrate extreme flexibility to adapt, often with limited access to tools and technology,” said Jared Spataro, corporate vice president of Modern Work at Microsoft. “Teams Essentials is built specifically to meet the unique needs of small businesses, enabling them to thrive in this new era of work.”

There are small business-focused tiers on other platforms but Microsoft appears to have found a way to undercut rivals by offering better value-for-money than competitor options. The “Pro” version of Zoom, for instance, comes at a monthly cost of £11.99 per user and only accommodates 100 participants per meeting. The video-conferencing giant has also launched an advertising pilot for it’s free package as a way to find more revenue streams, rather than reducing the price on its middle-tier. Workplace from Meta (formally Facebook) offers a “Core” tier for the same price as Teams Essentials, but users need to opt for a number of “add-ons” to match the offerings available on the Microsoft service.

There is a free tier for Google Meets, but all participants need an account to join and the next tier is only available as part of a £7.99 monthly Workspace subscription.

Essentials is also being offered as a standalone service, with no need for users to subscribe to an Office 365 bundle. Invites can also be sent to anyone with an email address, so there is no need to sign in or install Teams to participate in meetings.

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Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced a new IoT-based platform that signals an expansion into robotic fleet management.

IoT RoboRunner, which was revealed on the first day of the company’s annual Re:Invent conference, is designed to help enterprises build and deploy applications so that their robotic fleets all operate as one. 

RoboRunner is an expansion of the RoboMaker cloud-based simulation service launched in 2018. It addressed developer frustrations around the challenge of operating different robot types, such as autonomous guided vehicles (AGV) and robotic manipulators.

“When a new robot is added to an autonomous operation, complex and time-consuming software integration work is required to connect the robot control software to work management systems,” AWS principal developer advocate, Channy Yun said.

“AWS IoT RoboRunner lets you connect your robots and work management systems, thereby enabling you to orchestrate work across your operation through a single system view.”

RoboRunner includes tools to create a programme in the AWS Management Console to build repositories for storing robot and task data. Developers can also integrate codes for connecting robots and systems via RoboRunner’s Fleet Gateway Library and also tools from managed applications services such as AWS Lambda and Greengrass.

Additionally, the cloud giant has also launched the AWS Robotics Startup Accelerator, which will offer mentorship to robotics startups. This accelerator will include a four-week programme with hands-on AWS training and $10,000 in promotional credits for use of AWS services. 

The first day of Re:Invent saw a plethora of new services launched for AI, machine learning, storage and quantum computing.

Amazon Braket Hybrid Jobs, for example, was launched as a new offering to help reduce extensive infrastructure and software management and confidently execute algorithms quickly and predictably, with on-demand priority access to QPUs.

There was also an expansion of CodeGuru Reviewer with an automated tool to help developers detect secrets in source code or configuration files, such as passwords or access tokens.