Box and Google Cloud have announced a new partnership that involves greater interoperability between the two services.

The partnership will also see Box tap into Google’s cloud platform to enhance its own content management platform.

The company is using Google Cloud as a key provider for data storage, machine learning, security and also its cloud identify service to help customers safeguard sensitive content. The companies say the deal will help improve the services within Box for users that are now working from home.

As more companies embrace flexible working and remote technologies, Box believes it needs to tailor its platform to suit the workforce for the ‘new normal’.

“We’re in the middle of a major transformation in how business gets done. The ability to work from anywhere, leverage global talent and virtual teams, and to collaborate securely with colleagues, partners, and customers is the ‘new normal’ for every business,” said Aaron Levie, co-founder and CEO of Box.

“Google Cloud is an incredibly important partner as we innovate and scale to bring secure collaboration to our customers globally, and we’re excited to continue making the combination of Box and G Suite as intuitive and seamless as possible for our customers.”

The partnership also includes deeper integration with G Suite. Following on from the initial work their pair started in 2018, there will now be a seamless sharing experience within G Suite to simplify sharing Google files stored in Box. User will be able to keep the same access settings and privacy controls they have in Box as they navigate their files and folders.

This includes a function to transfer Google Docs, Sheets and Slides between Box and Google Drive. Box is also developing a new G Suite add-on to enable a “save to Box” option.

HPE has launched a 5G test centre for telcos to develop and integrate 5G network projects and services and get them to market quicker.

The HPE 5G Lab has already gained support from industry leaders such as Affirmed Networks, Intel, Nokia and Red Hat.

This is a part of a growing portfolio of 5G services from HPE, which include core network, edge and enterprise services. The lab will provide a proving ground for telco firms, network equipment providers and independent software vendors (ISVs), according to HPE.

The lab is located in Fort Collins, Colorado, and available worldwide to customers and HPE partners via remote access. This also includes personnel to manage and operate the lab environment, as well as assist with integration and testing. The lab is based on HPE 5G portfolio services and will include multiple 5G related products.

“Governments and telecoms operators around the world are looking to open 5G technologies as an opportunity to move away from a number of vendors which have raised fundamental concerns around security, resilience and market diversification,” said Phil Mottram, VP and GM of communications and media solutions at HPE.

“However, despite multiple successful deployments, doubts still persist about the ability of open 5G technologies to truly replace the old way of building networks. With the launch of the HPE 5G Lab, telcos, solution vendors and national stakeholders can test innovative new solutions with confidence and ensure that they are ready for mass adoption.”

HPE wants to encourage telcos, vendors and platform providers to come together to test, document, and validate their technologies as a single service. It suggests that this open approach will offer the flexibility to work with practically any ISV or best-of-breed provider to create tailored networking services tuned to specific verticals and use cases.

The initial focus of the Lab is to bring innovation to the “monolithic” cellular network core, according to HPE, and enable holistic management and data sharing.

Slack has filed a formal antitrust complaint against Microsoft in Europe over the way it bundles Microsoft Teams with its Office 365 suite.  

The communications platform is accusing Microsoft of “illegally” bundling the Teams app into its market-dominant productivity suite and hampering competition by making it unremovable. 

In its complaint, Slack said it was confident on the “merits” of its own product, but it couldn’t ignore the “illegal behaviour” that deprives customers of access to the tools and services they want. It accuses Microsoft of “force installing” Teams for millions of users and hiding the true cost to enterprise customers.

Slack says it simply wants fair competition and is asking the European Commission (EC) to be a neutral referee in what is the legal culmination of a years-long spat between the two companies. 

“This is much bigger than Slack versus Microsoft – this is a proxy for two very different philosophies for the future of digital ecosystems, gateways versus gatekeepers,” said Jonathan Prince, VP of communications and policy at Slack.

“Slack offers an open, flexible approach that compounds the threat to Microsoft because it is a gateway to innovative, best-in-class technology that competes with the rest of Microsoft’s stack and gives customers the freedom to build solutions that meet their needs.

“We want to be the 2% of your software budget that makes the other 98% more valuable; they want 100% of your budget every time.”

The war between Slack and Microsoft has intensified during the coronavirus pandemic, with remote working surging. Microsoft announced it had surpassed 44 million users at the start of the UK and US lockdown, but Slack disputed the figures citing its 365 bundles.  

“Microsoft is reverting to past behaviour. They created a weak, copycat product and tied it to their dominant Office product, force installing it and blocking its removal, a carbon copy of their illegal behaviour during the ‘browser wars’,” said David Schellhase, Slack’s general counsel. 

“Slack is asking the European Commission to take swift action to ensure Microsoft cannot continue to illegally leverage its power from one market to another by bundling or tying products.”

CloudPro has approached Microsoft for comment. 

London-based financial software firm Finastra has agreed a multi-year cloud deal with Microsoft to help accelerate digital transformation in the financial sector. 

Finastra has more than 8,000 clients around the world and is currently building an open platform that accelerates collaboration and innovation in financial services.

The two companies already support some 3,000 banks and financial organisations across payments, lending, treasury and retail banking on Azure. The aim of the agreement is to reimagine the way banks and credit unions use technology and rethink sustainable, open finance.

Finastra has already used Azure to accelerate its own product road map and migrate 8,500 customers to the cloud.

“This is a truly exciting step-change in the relationship between our two companies,” said Finastra’s CEO Simon Paris. “We believe the future of finance is open. Together with Microsoft, we can provide people, businesses and communities with the solutions and services that fit around their needs and lives, unlocking the power and potential of finance for everyone. 

“As the pandemic has brought the future forward with regard to digitisation, our vision to transform the world of financial services aligns closely with Microsoft’s ambitions and I believe that together we can help accelerate this digital shift.”

The deal is a continuation of an already successful partnership between Microsoft and Finastra, with the financial company heavy into Azure and Office 365. The companies are now focusing on creating a workplace of the future and encouraging “digital-first” mindsets among employees. 

Finastra’s FusionFabric.cloud open innovation platform has been developed on Azure. It allows developers unprecedented access to build on top of Finastra’s core systems and deploy high-value applications at scale.

“Finastra’s open developer platform, built on Microsoft Azure, is leading the way in accelerating collaboration and innovation in financial services. By helping with capabilities such as e-signatory and e-notary, Finastra is able to quickly extend those solutions for more customers,” said Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of cloud and AI at Microsoft. 

IBM’s beat analyst expectations with an almost 30% jump in revenue from its cloud and data platforms in the second quarter.

The company reported earnings of $2.18 per share, which was down 31% from the same period in 2019, along with $18.1 billion in revenue during the three months ending 30 June. Wall Street analysts had predicted slightly less – $2.07 per share and $17.7 billion in revenue.

With the coronavirus pandemic forcing businesses to drastically change digital transformation strategies, IBM’s cloud business has become its big winner for revenue, with sales from its cloud and cognitive software division rising 3% year-on-year to $5.7 billion. About an hour after it released the report, shares in the company were up around 4%.

“The trend we see in the market is clear. Clients want to modernise apps, move more workloads to the cloud and automate IT tasks,” IBM CEO Arvind Krishna said on a post-earnings call with analysts

“Only 20% of the workloads have moved to the cloud. The other 80% are mission-critical workloads that are far more difficult to move. There is a massive opportunity in front of us to capture these workloads.”

Krishna took over from Ginni Rometty in April, just as the coronavirus really began to take hold. But, as the former head of its cloud business, he has proved to be a shrewd choice of leader during this time of mass digitisation.

The firm has abandoned some of its legacy business to focus more on its cloud computing services. However, despite the success of its cloud unit, IBM’s total revenue fell 5.4% to $18.12 billion.

Sales from IBM’s global business services segment fell 7%, for example, while sales from global technology services fell 8%. 

In April, the firm withdrew its full-year guidance for 2020 in light of the coronavirus pandemic. At the time the firm reported a 3.4% drop in revenue for the first quarter of the year but, again, revenue for its cloud business was up 19% to $5.4 billion. 

Slack has launched an online certification programme for administrators to learn more about using the platform at an enterprise level.

There aren’t any real requirements to become ‘Slack Certified’, as the company is encouraging any and all levels of candidates to apply, regardless of experience. Although, it does suggest the most successful applicants will have six to 12 months of “real-world” experience as Slack admins or users.

This is also the entry point for a larger Slack certification, which is an “ecosystem of courses and badges” the firm is offering to help build skillsets for future jobs. A few “selected” candidates can also benefit from a $300 scholarship in Slack administration, which covers two attempts at the final exam.

Slack believes administrators will be a highly desired role for the so-called new normal and sees value in investing in their development. It will be hoping to take advantage of its huge popularity among startups and small businesses by encouraging Slack veterans to build on their existing skills and take these on to larger companies.

“Being a Slack admin is more than rolling out a new tool,” said Christina Kosmowski, the VP of customer success and services at Slack. “It means fearlessly undertaking the process of changing how an organisation works. We’re inspired by our admins and committed to their success – not only in their current organisation but also in their careers.”

For those that apply for the courses, there are a new set of controls to get used to, starting with ‘Message Activity’ which details the reach, impact, and engagement of Slack messages.

The updates also include further tools to drive integrated productivity apps, such as Google Calandar and Microsoft Calendar. This also includes a streamlined tasks manager called ‘Centralised Channel Management’ which is available for Grid plans. With this, admins will have one main dashboard to view and manage channels across their organisation. All it takes is a few clicks on the dashboard to rename, archive, and edit permissions.

Those interested in the course can sign up here.

Google has made changes to Gmail to make the app more holistic for remote working users and reduce their dependency on supporting services like Slack and Zoom.

The company is incorporating more applications into its business version of Gmail, taking away the need to use multiple tabs or switch to other apps.

Following on from Google Meet and Chats being integrated into Gmail, the tech giant is increasing the capabilities of both within the email service. The collaboration features in Chat rooms now include shared files and tasks functions.

This also includes the ability to create chat rooms with people outside of your company, such as contractors or consultants, creating cross-organisational collaboration, similar to the ‘Connect‘ feature Slack introduced in June.

The idea is to give G Suite customers less reason to use services like Slack and make Gmail a one-stop collaboration tool. While the email service has over 1.5 billion active users, G Suite only has six million business customers, less than Microsoft’s more enterprise-focused Office suite.
 
Within a room, users can open and co-edit a document with the rest of their team without leaving Gmail, similar to the functions in Google Docs. Users can also join video calls from Chats, forward a chat message to an inbox and create a task directly from a chat message.

“Virtual meetings, remote collaboration, flexible hours: it’s becoming clear that these new ways of working are here to stay,” said Javier Soltero, VP and GM of G Suite.
 
“Remote working has significantly increased the demands we’re getting from many directions – in both our professional and our personal lives. People tell us they feel overloaded with too much information and too many tasks across too many different tools. Instead of learning another tool, we need the tools we already use to be even more helpful, and work together, in an integrated, intuitive way.”

There are also updates for Meet and Chat security; in the coming weeks, Google Meet hosts will have more control over meetings, where they can assign who can join or collaborate within them. There will also be stronger phishing protections built within Gmail to Google Chat. If a user clicks on a link within the service, it will be scanned in real-time and flagged if it’s found to contain malicious content.

GDPR defines personal data as an ‘asset’, yet despite this modern valuation, most of us have unwittingly – or unthinkingly –  given it away in exchange for online services. As such, the average digital footprint is spread far and wide.

If you can remember all the companies that have bits of your digital info, you can begin approaching each one individually and demand they delete it – but you may be surprised at the quantity of organisations that really is. While the mind may immediately leap to Facebook, Google and the other tech giants, it’s also lots of obscure entities. That time you brought a hat at Disneyland, for example, the shop collected more than just a payment. 

How do you start tracing companies you don’t remember engaging with? The answer is in your inbox and involves a little AI knowhow. This is the basic premise of Mine, an Israeli startup that uses machine learning to make the GDPR’s ‘right to be forgotten’ serviceable.

Gold Mine

Mine was founded by CEO Gal Ringel and CTO Gal Golan, who met in the cyber security unit of the Israeli army, and CPO Kobi Nissan, who previously worked for CandyCrush developer King. While many businesses saw GDPR as a hindrance when it came into force in 2018, for Mine it was an integral part of its inception.

“When we started to research the right to be forgotten, we quickly realised that we couldn’t find one tool that makes the GDPR accessible for the average person,” Ringel tells IT Pro. “Regulations are complex and difficult for the average user to understand. With that goal in mind, we quickly realised that we needed to come up with a really simple app that uncovers what companies have your personal data, to make your digital footprint tangible, for the first time, so you can almost touch it.” 

Ringel estimates that around 350 companies are waiting to be found in the average person’s email. For work accounts, it’s almost half of that falling somewhere between 80 to 100. A staggering 90% of the companies that have your data can be found in your inbox, spam filter or even your trash folder. What’s more, the key to finding out who has your personal details isn’t in the email itself, but rather the subject line.

With Google Cloud’s AI platform, Mine has built machine learning models divided into two datasets. The first is trained on emails that have been tagged as different types of interactions – specifically learning about subject lines. This process has been repeated in 12 different languages so that the service works for users in other parts of the world, not just Israel, and can also spot traces of companies from Germany, France, Italy, Israel, Spain and many more. 

“We search for these traces and then reflect it back to you,” Ringel explains. “So basically the AI understands what the interaction you had with a company was just based on the email’s subject. So for example, ‘Welcome to Air BnB’, that interaction is a sign up, and ‘Your purchase from Amazon’, means you’ve bought something. 

“We worked really hard for almost a year to develop machine learning that is non-intrusive, but basically scans your inbox by only looking at the email subject. So it never actually reads the context of the email, because we don’t want to see the process of how they collect the personal data and we also don’t want to be collecting any email data.”

How Mine understands what data you’ve given to that company is down to the second dataset, which has been trained on thousands of privacy policies. Under the rules of the GDPR, companies have to be transparent with the ‘what’ and ‘why’ of data collection. So for example, Airbnb collects your data for two reasons: Signing up to its service and then for payments. So it will have your name, address, email, mobile phone number, a copy of your passport, plus payment details if you’ve ever used its service. 

Sign up

Naturally, to find all this out, you need to sign up to one more service: Mine’s. It requires your email address to perform its basic function and your first and last name so that it can contact each company on your behalf. Upon registering your email, the company says, the machine learning models get to work and within 30 seconds you’ll be presented with 40 or so companies that have your data – this expands to hundreds after roughly 48 hours and repeatedly notifies you as and when you sign up to more. 

All the usual suspects will be there – Netflix, LinkedIn, Amazon – along with an assortment of unknown and forgettable one time services. Underneath each will be the data you signed up and a button to take action. Click on this and Mine sends a request on your behalf. Some companies, however, will be listed as “action unavailable”. 

“The reason you see action unavailable can be for two reasons,” Ringel explains. “First, these are companies that we still haven’t got round to analysing their privacy policies and learned their data structure. And the second could be that we didn’t find any contact information within their privacy policy. So we don’t know who to approach. When you want to reclaim from a company, we automatically shoot an email to its data protection officer or its privacy officer.” 

As a company turning the GDPR into a service, Mine will come under more scrutiny than most when it comes to compliance. The company’s own privacy policy has no margin for error.  

“The only data we do store is your email address, which you signed up with, and a list of the companies’ names we identified in your footprint,” Ringel confirms. “You can easily request a copy of the data we hold about you to see exactly what we keep. We are fully transparent on everything we are doing and, of course, in line with GDPR regulations.”

Main image copyright: Mine.

HSBC Holdings has selected Amazon Web Services (AWS) as its long-term cloud provider for its planned digital transformation. 

The multi-year agreement will make AWS technology available across the company’s business, starting with customer-facing applications and modernisation of its Global Wealth & Personal Banking arm.

HSBC Holdings, the parent company of HSBC, is headquartered in London and serves customers around the world out of offices in 64 countries across Europe, Asia, North America, Latin America, and the Middle East and North Africa. 

With the migration, HSBC will have access to AWS’s extensive portfolio of cloud services, including compute, containers, storage, database, analytics, machine learning, and security to develop new digital products and support security and compliance standards for millions of its personal banking customers around the worldwide. 

The bank plans to use AWS serverless and analytics services, including Amazon Kinesis, to create a more personalised and customer-centric banking experience, it said. 

“Our work with AWS is an example of how HSBC continues to invest in secure and advanced technologies to make our digital banking experience even better for customers,” said Dinesh Keswani, CTO and CIO for digital at HSBC. 

“Our ambition is to make it easy, safe, and reliable for customers to bank with us, whenever and wherever they are. HSBC’s collaboration with AWS helps us to deliver innovative banking solutions to customers at a faster rate, starting with our Wealth & Personal Banking business.”

According to AWS, HSBC is continuing to expand its use of its cloud services to deliver innovative financial services that help customers grow their wealth in “new and more personalised ways”.

“We look forward to our continued collaboration with HSBC as they leverage AWS’s proven capabilities, reliability, and security to drive efficiency across their business and become a more agile organisation in the cloud,”  said Frank Fallon, VP of financial services at AWS.