In 2009, during the most brutal part of the recession caused by the global financial crisis, I found myself unemployed, unqualified and without a laptop. 

For six months, my life was held together through financial support from family, job recommendations from friends and daily trips to the local library for a mere hour on the internet. 

Although I fondly remember it as the year I decided to embark on a career in journalism, I can’t help but think myself extremely lucky to have been able to access cloud services through the library. Because without that my life might have gone in a very grim direction.

With those precious internet hours, I did career research, CV workshops, job applications and even some social media networking. Those were the slow and frustrating initial steps I needed to take to get off the bottom and into a career. The first job was horrendous, but when my first payday came I bought a very basic laptop for £200. It served me well, helping me gradually move up the job ladder over the near decade I owned it, as well as seeing me through a number of online courses. And while I can’t remember the brand, nor would I likely recognise it if I saw it, it will always have a special place in my heart.  

You see, while the cloud is free and you pretty much get all you need to get started when you sign up to a Gmail account, the hardware to access it isn’t. For many, particularly the types of people who make up little library communities, limited access to computers is a barrier to a better life.  

It’s not just job-seekers who face this problem, either. According to research by the National Union of Students (NUS), a third of university students were unable to access online learning during the coronavirus lockdown, with disabled students and those from poor backgrounds being worst affected. Among the reasons for this were insufficient course materials, poor internet connections and (surprise, surprise) a lack of IT equipment and software. 

There used to be a government scheme that acknowledged this problem and sought to remedy it by providing low-income households with £500 to put towards a home computer and broadband access. It was launched in 2008 and reportedly helped around 270,000 families over the course of its existence. But with the arrival of the new Conservative government in 2010 and its focus on austerity, the programme was axed and we’ve seen nothing like it since.

Right now, as we begin a new cycle of recession and the government tries to find ways of getting people back to work in the new normal, a £500 handout could feasibly pay for a laptop and some decent internet access. Hell, it could arguably get you an entry-level or second-hand smartphone, too. With these tools, the possibilities are only limited by the imagination. 

For me, getting the hardware I needed accelerated my route into journalism, for others it can be the first step on the path to becoming an entrepreneur.

Laptops and phones are also essential tools for remote working, which may be a barrier to some businesses right now. The cost of kitting out your small operation might be too much and it can turn into a decision to furlough staff, make them redundant or even close down your business if it can’t operate in these difficult times. However, with a little help from some hardware schemes, the government can accelerate some aspects of digital transformation. 

When I see the almost daily reports of mass job cuts now as a result of COVID-19, I can’t help but reflect on my own experience of unemployment. With the coronavirus still lurking, a trip to the library or an increasingly rare internet cafe might not be safe, but help for people to buy the hardware themselves could do wonders for equality and maybe even the economy.

Schlumberger, IBM and Red Hat have joined forces to accelerate digital transformation across the oil and gas industry. 

The collaboration will initially focus on private, hybrid and multi-cloud deployments for Schlumberger’s own services with Red Hat OpenShift. This will then hopefully lead to the delivery of the first hybrid cloud implementation for the OSDU – an open data standard for the oil and gas industry. 

Schlumberger has committed to exclusively using Red Hat Openshift with the container platform deploying applications across all of its infrastructure, from traditional data centres to multiple clouds – including private and public. 

The organisation’s DELFI cognitive exploration and product (E&P) environment is a secure, cloud-based platform that uses data on all aspects of its value chain. It incorporates data analytics and AI, drawing upon multiple sources and automating workflows for seamless collaboration for its domain teams. 

The collaboration with IBM and Red Hat will allow many more oil and gas operators, suppliers and partners to work from the industry’s digital environment where they can ‘write once and run everywhere’, according to Schlumberger. 

The hope is that this new way of hosting will offer the possibility to use multiple cloud providers, addressing critical issues and facilitating in-country deployments in compliance with local regulations and data residency requirements.

“By expanding market access to the DELFI environment we take a major step forward on the journey to establishing the open and flexible digital environment our industry needs,” said Olivier Le Peuch, CEO of Schlumberger. 
 
“Our collaboration with IBM and Red Hat complements our established digital partnerships to produce an industry-first solution to overcome our customers’ challenges,” he added. “Together, we are enabling seamless access to a hybrid cloud platform in all countries across the globe for deployment in any basin, for any operator.”

​Six apps have been deleted from the Google Play store after it was discovered they were infected with malware that simulates clicks and intercepts SMS messages to commit fraud.

Joker, also known as “Bread”, is a billing-fraud strain of malware that advertises itself as a legitimate app, according to security researchers at Pradeo.

The six apps account for nearly 200,000 installs and, despite confirmation of their removal from Google’s Play Store, researchers have suggested they are still installed on the devices of their users.

The researchers have urged users to immediately delete the apps: Convenient Scanner 2, Separate Doc Scanner, Safety AppLock, Push Message-Texting & SMS, Emoji Wallpaper and Fingertip GameBox.

Often described as ‘fleeceware’, this type of malware is designed to simulate clicks and intercept SMS text messages to trick users into subscribing to unwanted paid premium services. These types of malware generally have a fairly discreet footprint as they tend to use as little code as possible, making their fraudulent activity difficult to spot.

Apps that spread the Joker malware have continued to bypass Google security mechanisms since 2019 as those behind its spread are constantly updating its source code.

“Most apps embedding Joker malware are programmed to load and execute external code after being published on the store,” Pradeo researcher Roxane Suau said, speaking to Threatpost.

“First, these apps are riddled with permission requests and submitted to Google Play by their developers. They get approved, published and installed by users. Once running on users’ devices, they automatically download malicious code. Then, they leverage their numerous permissions to execute the malicious code.”

The malware has “thrived” on Google Play in 2020, according to the team. In January, researchers revealed that Google had removed 17,000 Android apps that had been conduits for the Joker malware, with 11 more removed in July.

A US Court of Appeals has rejected Oracle’s challenge over the awarding of a $10 billion Pentagon cloud computing contract to Microsoft in 2019.

The decision affirmed a lower court ruling that Oracle wasn’t harmed by any errors made by the Pentagon while creating the contract proposal as the company qualify as a legitimate bidder, as reported by Bloomberg.

Oracle raised a number of complaints, including that the Pentagon violated its own rules when it set up the contract to be awarded to a single firm, arguing that by calling for extensive data centre capabilities it unfairly excluded Oracle from the process.

The company also filed a lawsuit against the Department of Defence (DoD) in December, arguing that there were conflicts of interest between former Pentagon and AWS employees.

However, before any decision on the contract was made, Oracle was removed from the bidding process in April 2020, as it failed to meet the requirement of having three data centres with FedRAMP Moderate ‘Authorised’ support – which has now been affirmed by the US Court of Appeal.

The panel did suggest that the conflict of interest allegations raised by Oracle were “troubling” but still ruled that it “had no effect on the JEDI Cloud solicitation”.

“Notwithstanding the extensive array of claims raised by Oracle, we find no reversible error,” circuit judge William Bryson wrote regarding the decision by the US Court of Federal Claims.

Although Microsoft was awarded the $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract in November, work has been on hold following a successful appeal from rival bidder AWS. A Federal Claims judge said that the DoD had improperly evaluated a Microsoft storage price scenario and that the process should be reviewed.

AWS also cited other problems with the bidding, including “political influence” resulting from long-running feud between US President Donald Trump and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. These claims are still being weighed up by the courts with a 30-day extension put in place at the end of August.

Plans for an underwater data cable between LA and Hong Kong have been scrapped after the US government suggested that China could use it to steal data.

The project is run by the Pacific Light Data Company and includes tech firms like Google and Facebook. 

The issue is that the Hong Kong section would have been managed by China’s Dr Peng Group, a firm the US government believes has a relationship with the Chinese intelligence and security services.

The project was first announced in 2016. At that time, Google said the cable would “provide enough capacity for Hong Kong to have 80 million concurrent HD video conference calls with Los Angeles”. To use the cable, however, companies need permission from the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

Around 12,800 km (800 miles) of the cable has already been laid but, according to new plans submitted to the US communication authority, it now only links the US to the Philippines and Taiwan.

“We can confirm that the original application for the PLCN cable system has been withdrawn, and a revised application for the US-Taiwan and US-Philippines portions of the system has been submitted,” a spokeswoman for Google told the BBC. “We continue to work through established channels to obtain cable landing licenses for our undersea cables.”
 
FCC Commissioner Geoffery Stark said in a tweet that he “shared the concerns” of the US Department of Justice, adding that he would “continue to speak out” against China accessing data carried by the cables. 
 
Operation of the cable has been caught in the ongoing US-China trade war, which doesn’t seem to have an end in sight. 
 
A similar fibre-optic cable has been announced between the UK, US and Spain. The ‘Grace Hopper‘ cable will run from New York and split off to Bilbao in Spain and Cornwall in the UK.

Videoconferencing company Zoom reported strong second-quarter earnings with revenue up 355% year on year.

Shares in the firm rose as much as 25% in extended trading after beating analyst expectations for the three months ending 31 July. 

For the first quarter of 2020, just as the pandemic started to spread, Zoom reported revenue growth of 169%. New customer subscriptions brought in 81% of that growth, according to financial chief Kelly Stechleberg. 

In the following three months, however, Q2 revenue is more than double Q1 at £663.5 million, growing 355% compared to the same period in 2019. As such, the company has raised its full-year guidance.

Zoom is arguably one of the biggest beneficiaries of the global lockdown, capitalising on the sudden need to communicate remotely with work, friends and family. The firm averaged 148.4 million monthly active users in the second quarter, an increase of 4,700% year on year, according to CNBC.

At the same time, the firm was also hit by criticism regarding its security capabilities. A number of high-profile organisations, including the FBI, Google, and even the country of Taiwan, banned its use after multiple reports pointed to a lack of end-to-end encryption. There was also the rise of so-called Zoom bombing where third-parties could hack into meetings by accessing the ID number. 

The company has sought to fix these issues by recruiting security experts and tweaking its platform in various ways, but it looks to have avoided any real damage to its reputation. Zoom’s income neared $186 million, up from a mere $5.5 million a year ago. 

However, the company’s gross profit of 71% is still under the 80% range the firm operated at before free users adopted the service at the start of the pandemic. 

On a conference call with investors, Steckelberg said the company’s gross profits will remain in the same range as the fiscal second quarter for the rest of the fiscal year. She also added the company was experiencing slightly higher rates of customer cancellation than normal, but that these new rates had been factored into its forecast.

Dell Technologies beat profit estimates with strong second-quarter earnings boosted by demand for its notebooks and software products for remote and online learning. 

The firm posted second-quarter revenues of $22.7 billion (£17 billion) and operating income of $1.1 billion (£827 billion), a 119% increase year-on-year. 

While the impact of the coronavirus, and the resulting lockdown, hurt other parts of its business, the rapid shift to the cloud spurred demand for hardware and software to enable remote working.

Orders from the education sector jumped 24% in the second quarter period ending 31 July, according to Dell, while government orders also increased by 16%.

“In Q2, we saw strength in the government sector and in education as parents, teachers and school districts prepare for a new frontier in virtual learning,” said Jeff Clarke, chief operating officer at Dell. 

Revenue in the firms biggest segments was also boosted by consumer sales of notebooks and gaming systems hitting double digits. Data centre sales, were down, however, dropping 4.8% to $8.21 billion (£6.18 billion), which Dell said was due to companies redirecting their spending towards remote working.  

Dell’s software unit, VMware, also benefited from the shift to cloud, posting a 9.7% revenue rise at $2.91 billion (£2.18 billion). 

“In light of these uncertain times, we delivered solid execution and financial performance in Q2 FY21,” said Pat Gelsinger, VMware CEO.

“With our Any Cloud, Any Application, Any Device strategy, we are helping customers solve their hardest technology challenges and meet and exceed their business objectives.”

Dell’s stake in VMware is worth almost $50 billion (around £40 billion), but the company is reportedly exploring a potential spinoff of its equity ownership of the software giant. Any potential deal is likely not to occur before September next year, but Dell has confirmed the plans by submitting a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The UK government must do more to get workers back in the office, business leaders have said, as city centres are at risk of becoming “ghost towns”. 

The mass adoption of remote working is having an inadvertent effect on local businesses, robbing them of passing trade, according to Carolyn Fairbairn, the director-general of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI).

The warning comes as recent figures suggest that many of the UK’s major employers have no plans to return staff to offices on a full-time basis in the near future. This is in addition to companies announcing plans to introduce permanent remote working strategies.

Fairbairn, however, has said that getting staff back into the office and the workplace is as important as pupils returning to schools. 

“The UK’s offices are vital drivers of our economy,” Fairbairn wrote in the Daily Mail. “They support thousands of local firms, from dry cleaners to sandwich bars. They help train and develop young people. And they foster better work and productivity for many kinds of business.

“The costs of office closure are becoming clearer by the day. Some of our busiest city centres resemble ghost towns, missing the usual bustle of passing trade. This comes at a high price for local businesses, jobs and communities.”

Fairbairn’s concerns are backed by a recent BBC poll, which questioned 50 employers, ranging from banks to retailers, to get an idea of when they expect staff back in the office. Around 24 firms said they had no plans in place for a return, and one of the main reasons cited by the companies is that they couldn’t see a way to accommodate large workforces under social distancing measures.

A number of tech firms have made remote work an indefinite option for staff, such as Twitter and Fujitsu, while companies like Facebook and Microsoft have extended flexible and remote working strategies into 2021.

While remote working has kept many companies going through the pandemic and has also highlighted a number of work-life balance benefits, it could also have a dramatic effect on other parts of the economy.

“The risk is that people don’t return to offices and tourism doesn’t come back to the city centres that need it, like Edinburgh, Manchester, Birmingham and London,” said Kyle Monk, the British Retail Consortium’s director of insight. 

“People are working from home now and they might not return before Christmas. Some people might not return until halfway through 2021. When they do return, it might be on a lesser schedule, so rebalancing is going to have to happen on the property side and it’s where that cost falls. There’s a sort of looming problem there, which there isn’t an immediate solution to.”

Salesforce is cutting around 1,000 jobs despite the company’s shares reaching all-time record high following a strong second-quarter earnings report. 

Employees affected by the cuts will be given 60 days to find a new role within the company, according to CNBC sources, which could mean the firm lays off significantly less than 1,000 staff. 

Salesforce is reportedly preparing to list 300 new positions next week as it shifts its business model due to the impact of COVID-19. In March, as the pandemic shut down large parts of the economy, CEO Marc Benioff pledged not to lay off employees for 90 days. That period came to an end sometime in June. 

“We’re reallocating resources to position the company for continued growth,” a Salesforce spokesperson said. “This includes continuing to hire and redirecting some employees to fuel our strategic areas, and eliminating some positions that no longer map to our business priorities.”

Employees that don’t manage to land new positions will be offered severance and six months of pay benefits, the company said.

The cuts come just a day after the cloud giant reported a quarterly profit of $2.63 billion on revenue of $5.15 billion. Its revenue has grown 29% compared to the previous year and the firm expects total revenue of $20.7 billion in its current fiscal year, ending 31 Jan.

Shares in the company have also never been higher, with stock surpassing a 19% gain recorded in November 2008.

The impact of the coronavirus pandemic and the subsequent recession has forced a number of companies into mass redundancies and strategic shifts, such as permanent remote working or a greater focus on digital operations. Salesforce’s financial officer Mark Hawkins said the company was making “strategic shifts” that reflected how and where people now work as a result of the pandemic. 

“This means we’ll be redirecting some of our resources to fuel growth and areas that are no longer as aligned with the business priority will be de-emphasised,” he said.

Microsoft is adding an audio transcription feature to the online version of Word that will be free for Office 365 subscribers.

The new service will allow users to import existing audio files or to record conversations directly into Word before having them automatically transcribed.

Microsoft’s transcription feature can capture audio from your PC, which can be MP3 recordings of meetings, phone calls or even YouTube videos. It will also capture audio from your machine’s microphone for direct dictation. It has support for up to 200MB of MP3, WAV, M4A or MP4 files.

Once a conversation is transcribed, Microsoft’s AI will separate different speakers and break the text into easily readable chunks that will be timestamped for easier playback. Users can then edit and insert these text clippings into a Word document.

The playback element is similar to its text-to-audio service, Immersive Reader, which was launched on 25 August and powered by its Azure AI platform.

AI-powered transcription has grown in popularity in recent years, particularly with apps like Otter.ai, Happy Scribe and Trint, all of which boast high degrees of accuracy when transcribing near-perfect audio, but fall short when it comes to non-US accents.

However, it remains to be seen whether Microsoft’s own software is going to be able to draw users away from existing free models, particularly as there’s no way to access it outside of Office 365 and usage is capped at 5 hours worth of uploads per month, which is half the upload allowance available on the free tier of Otter.ai.

Transcribe in Word will be available from today and is free for all Microsoft 365 subscribers. It’s also supported in the new Microsoft Edge and Chrome browsers. A mobile version for iOS and Android is due later in the year.

The service currently only supports English, although Microsoft said more languages will be made available at a later date.

Gif courtesy of Microsoft Blog