IBM Cloud suffered intermittent outages this week, marking the second time this month the service has experienced severe disruption. 

The service was hit by sporadic outages and issues in the UK, the US, Sydney, Tokyo and more for several hours on Wednesday night, according to reports. 

Users have complained of problems logging in to the service, while those already online have had difficulty accessing virtual private cloud services, Kubernetes workloads, Watson AI and other IBM Cloud functions.

IBM’s Cloudant Dashboard and APIs were down for three hours in both London and Frankfurt, with LogDNA Indexing suggesting that processing issues were also seen at the German site and IKS container services suffered 12 hours of disruption in Dallas, US. 

IT Pro has approached IBM for comment, with the firm yet to address the problem. It was a little more forthcoming with the major incident it suffered a fortnight ago, which it blamed on a “third-party network provider”.

That outage took 80 dater centres offline, impacting its cloud computing services including Red Hat. The firms own status page was impacted by the problem with its internal server error page reading: “Sorry, we’ve encountered an error on our end, and our developers are working on clearing this up. Please try reloading the page or following these links back”.

It’s worth noting that IBM did not immediately address the earlier outage but did release a statement on its Twitter account that services were being “restored to full services as soon as possible”. 

The earlier outage was due to an “external network provider flooding the IBM Cloud network with incorrect routing”. That resulted in severe congestion of traffic that impacted IBM Cloud Services and datacentres, according to IBM. 

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced a fully managed service for customers to build apps quickly without having to worry about any coding. 

Amazon Honeycode is a visual application builder that can be used to create interactive web and mobile applications backed by an AWS database. 

​Users can create mobile and web-based apps that range in complexity from a task-tracking application for a small team to a project management system that controls complex workflows for multiple departments. 

The service is aimed at those that need innovative online capabilities, but can’t necessarily hire experienced software engineers. Instead, Honeycode can help companies to build applications to track and manage things like process approvals, event scheduling, customer relationship management, user surveys, to-do lists, and content and inventory tracking.  

“Customers have told us that the need for custom applications far outstrips the capacity of developers to create them,” said Larry Augustin, vice president, AWS. “Now with Amazon Honeycode, almost anyone can create powerful custom mobile and web applications without the need to write code.”

Honeycode customers can select pre-built templates, with data models and pre-defined business applications all ready to go. Alternatively, users can import data into a blank workbook and use a spreadsheet interface to define the data model and design the on-screen applications themselves. Once fully formed, the application can easily be shared with the rest of your organisation.
 
The idea is to enable more and more businesses to build and access cloud-based services to help navigate a more digital future. It follows yesterday’s Amazon announcement to support 200,000 UK startups with digital training and expertise. The Amazon Small Business Accelerator will help startups navigate the ‘new normal’ and along with Honeycode, will aim to further expand the global footprint of the world’s biggest provider of cloud computing. 

Slack has made its pitch for organisations to finally ditch email with the launch of Slack Connect. 

From today, up to 20 organisations can be added to a single Slack channel, enabling businesses to bring more of their external ecosystems, such as an entire supply chain or third-party marketing, into Slack. 

Previously two companies could connect this way via ‘shared channels’, but through trials, Slack has expanded that capability with the aim to add more in the coming years. The communications platform suggests this is a more secure way of communicating with other partners. 

The company also said it would add efficiencies to workflows, taking conversations out of “siloed email inboxes” and into the right channels with the right people. This way, organisations can come together to work and make decisions more quickly with customers, vendors and partners, according to Slack.

“My vision, as the CISO at Slack, is to make Slack the most secure collaboration environment for businesses,” Said Larkin Ryder, CISO of Slack.

“When you think about the things you have to do as a CISO to make your email environment secure, you have layers and layers of products that you’re adding on to address things like spam and phishing on an ongoing basis. 

“Email is an open front door to security threats to an organisation – $12 billion in losses are caused by business email scams, and 90% of data breaches are from phishing. If you want a more secure collaboration solution for your organisation, the first thing you can do is take your employees out of email and into Slack.”

Amazon has revealed that its online cloud fended off what’s considered to be one the largest distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks in history.

The incident happened in February, hitting 2.3 Tbits/sec at its peak, according to a report from AWS Shield, smashing the previous peak record of 1.7 Tbits/sec.

The peak of the attack was 44% larger than anything the services had seen before and led to three-days of “elevated threat” status. Amazon Web Services provides the infrastructure for many websites, but the report doesn’t identify which websites had been targeted by the attack.

“In Q1 2020, a known UDP reflection vector, CLDAP reflection, was observed with a previously unseen volume of 2.3 Tbps,” the report stated. “This is approximately 44% larger than any network volumetric event previously detected on AWS.”

“CLDAP reflection attacks of this magnitude caused 3 days of elevated threat during a single week in February 2020 before subsiding. Despite this observation, smaller network volumetric events are far more common. The 99th percentile event in Q1 2020 was 43 Gbps.”

The attack in February was called a “reflection attack”, which is thought to be an attempt to use a vulnerable third-party server to amplify the amount of data being sent to a victim’s IP address. It relies on exploiting the Connectionless Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (CLDAP), which is often exposed due to configuration issues – though AWS doesn’t suggest this to be the case for the February attack.

Downtime caused by DDoS accounts can have large financial implications. According to a 2019 report from Netscout, the size and scale of DDoS attacks in the UK could cost the country almost £1 billion per year. Part of the problem is that DDoS attacks are cheap and easy to deploy, according to Netscout.

In Q1 of 2020, there was a significant increase in both the quantity and Quality of DDoS attacks, according to Kaspersky. Not only have the number of attacks almost doubled, up by 80% against Q1 2019, these attacks have also become longer, the firm suggests.

Slack has reportedly invested in a US-based recruitment startup without ever meeting its CEO.

Crosschq, a California-based startup founded in 2015, managed to raise $5.5 million in funding during the coronavirus pandemic, according to CNBC, all via video conferencing.

The company’s CEO, Mike Fitzsimmons, held a virtual meeting in early March, where he told the board of directors he was going to make an unexpected call to Slack.

At the time, with the global economy on the verge of shutting down due to the outbreak of COVID-19, Fitzsimmons wanted to make sure his business had enough money to see it through.

Slack had previously shown an interest in the firm, with its head of investment, Jason Spinell, having already made contact with the company at the start of the year, although Crosschq rejected financial-backing at that time. However, following the economic disruption caused by the coronavirus lockdown, Slack’s offer was ultimately reconsidered.

Fitzsimmons began an email correspondence with Spinell to see if they were still interested in Crosschq, despite having never met face-to-face and knowing they would be unable to for some time. Over the next two months, via four video conferencing calls, Slack joined a $5.5 million financing round, alongside other Crosschq investors.

“Having been in the start-up world and having been through this enough times, the mechanics of this process were all different,” Fitzsimmons said, according to CNBC. “You’re accustomed to doing investor presentations and PowerPoints in front of the room and it’s intimidating and you get peppered with questions. It’s a very different game when you’re attacking it this way.”

Speaking to CNBC, Spinell said that Slack has done a number of investments via Zoom, which he said required “extreme conviction in the product and team”.

“What has changed slightly for us due to the pandemic, is that we’re even hungrier for investments that fulfil obvious ‘future of work’ needs that are even more pronounced in our newly remote world,” Spinell said.

The lockdown has forced companies to adapt the way they operate. In May, Norwegian video conferencing startup Pexip was forced to debut on the stock market entirely virtually, using its own software. It’s now said to be valued at $942 million.

Oracle shares fell by 5% on Tuesday after the cloud giant reported mixed fourth-quarter results. 

The company reported that revenues were down 6% from a year ago, missing analysts estimates, due to the impact of COVID-19. 

“Our overall business did remarkably well considering the pandemic, but our results would have been even better except for customers in the hardest-hit industries that we serve such as hospitality, retail, and transportation postponing some of their purchases,” said Oracle CEO, Safra Catz. 

“Still, for the third year in a row, we delivered double-digit constant currency earnings per share growth in FY20.”

Oracle had previously suggested in March that it was expecting flat revenue for the quarter. Its largest category, cloud services and license support delivered $6.85 billion in revenue, with revenue from cloud and on-premises licenses coming in at $1.96 billion.

Oracle also recently announced new cloud business from video communications firms Zoom and 8×8, which has helped to keep the firm in double figures for the quarter and also get one over its fiercest rival. 

“8×8 was very surprised by the extent of their performance gains by moving out of AWS, moving part of their system out of AWS and into OCI [Oracle cloud infrastructure],” Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, said, according to CNBC. 

“They were so surprised by the performance gains they achieved and the cost savings they achieved that they decided to move all of their services out of AWS and into Oracle.”

While the tech industry has done better than most during the pandemic, it hasn’t managed to entirely avoid some financial impact from COVID-19. Last week, the top five firms – Amazon, Google, Apple, Microsoft and Facebook – lost a combined $260 billion in value.

Four of those firms had a combined value of over $5 trillion before the outbreak. Bellow them, the likes of IBM and Cisco all lost significant value with drops in share price. 

Google has partnered with Parallels to bring native Windows applications to Chromebook Enterprise.

Chrome OS already supports Windows desktop apps, but only when streamed through a Parallels Remote Application Server. With the new partnership, apps will now be natively run on Chromebook devices.

A variation of Parallels Desktop will be integrated into Chrome OS, which should improve performance and also enable offline access to applications such as Microsoft Office. The feature will be available later in the year for Chrome Enterprise customers.

The move will likely entice more businesses to consider Chromebooks as alternatives to Windows laptops, particularly as it will now mean they won’t need to invest in services to stream business apps to the devices. 

“Remote work is a new reality, making efficiency, connectivity, speed, reliability, security and undisrupted access essential elements of a successful organisation,” Parallels wrote.

“At this key moment, our two organisations have formed a landmark partnership to equip enterprises with solutions that optimise their businesses and teams to meet the evolving challenges of modern work environments.”

For Google, the post-coronavirus economy will put greater strain on business expenditure, which could become challenging when workforces will need to be equipped for remote working.

The tech giant said it had seen 109% growth in commercial Chromebooks in Q1 2020 compared to the previous year, fueled in part by the cost benefits of deploying these low-cost laptops.  

“The Chrome OS team is working on new ways to make sure every company can benefit from the velocity created by supporting a cloud workforce,” John Solomon, VP of Chrome OS, wrote in a blog post.

“For example, our new partnership with Parallels brings legacy application support – which includes Microsoft Office desktop apps – to Chromebooks, with more to come on this over the coming months.”

Dropbox has unveiled several new features to help users stay organised while they work from home.

The updates include a password manager service called ‘Dropbox Passwords‘ and filing system called ‘Dropbox Vault’ that follows on from the companies acquisition of Valt last year.

As life has become more internet-based, with many people now working remotely, Dropbox suggests that employees’ life/work balance has become strained and “chaotic”. As such, the company is looking to provide services that help organise workflows as well as life at home.

In addition to Dropbox Passwords and Dropbox Vault, the company is also launching an automatic backup service, ‘Computer backup’, which saves Mac and PC folders to Dropbox for secure access on the go. This can be retrieved even when the hardware fails, according to Dropbox.

“The lines between work and home are blurred, and we’re all being pulled in a million directions right now,” said Drew Houston, CEO of Dropbox. “It can feel chaotic and overwhelming.” 

“We’re working quickly to provide new features to help people stay better organised in all aspects of their lives so they can focus on what really matters – like health and family.”

The company also has some new services for businesses, with HelloSign eSignature becoming a native feature within Dropbox following the company’s acquisition of HelloSign last year. With this feature, users will be able to send, receive and sign documents without leaving Dropbox. 

The company is also launching a suite of integrations, which includes tools for Zoom, Slack and Google. The Dropbox App Center is available to a subset of users in beta with over 40 integrated partners and more coming soon.

“According to IDC survey data, 31% of workers are concerned about lost productivity due to shifting to work from home,” said IDC analyst, Holly Muscolino.

“However, a recent poll shows that 70% of organisations would be investing in content sharing and collaboration over the next 12 months to support at-home workers. With today’s announcement, Dropbox has created a single place to help users get better organised at work and at home, to help them stay productive.”

Data management platform SAS has chosen Microsoft as its preferred cloud provider and will integrate its analytical products into the Azure portfolio.

The two firms also plan to launch joint services for their customers. 

The partnership will enable customers to run SAS workloads in the cloud, expanding their business operations and accelerating digital transformations, according to SAS. The company’s analytical products, used in areas such as health care, financial services and other industries, will also be migrated into Azure. 

The partnership builds on previous SAS integrations across Microsoft‘s Azure, Dynamics 365, Microsoft 365 and Power Platform and supports the companies shared vision to further “democratise” AI and analytics, according to SAS.

“SAS and Microsoft have a shared vision of helping customers accelerate their digital transformation initiatives,” said Oliver Schabenberger, SAS CTO and COO. “We both understand that it is about the enrichment of data and improving lives through better decisions. 

“Partnering with Microsoft gives customers a more seamless path to the cloud that provides faster, more powerful and easier access to SAS solutions and enables trusted decisions with analytics that everyone – regardless of skill level – can understand.”

SAS is a 44-year-old company based in North Carolina that boasts a wealth of high profile clients, including the likes of Allianz, Honda, HSBC, Lufthansa and Nestlé. It provides a number of different tools and services, but mostly its focus on data management and actionable analytics.

“Through this partnership, Microsoft and SAS will help our customers accelerate growth and find new ways to drive innovation with a broad set of SAS Analytics offerings on Microsoft Azure,” said Scott Guthrie, Microsoft’s executive VP of Cloud and AI. 

“SAS, with its recognised expertise in analytics, data science and machine learning, is a strategic partner for Microsoft, and together we will help customers across dozens of industries and horizontals address their most critical and complex analytical challenges.”

​A Microsoft 365 learning platform has launched data residencies in the UK and Germany to support new compliance requirements within those regions. 

Learning Management System (LMS365) is a service built into Microsoft 365 that helps organisations to deliver training on the business suite through SharePoint, Teams and mobile devices.

The platform has announced it’s deploying new ‘Azure’ data centres in the UK and Germany. The company said that as the COVID-19 crisis has accelerated cloud-based technologies, businesses in these regions are having to grapple with changing regulatory frameworks and in-country data residency standards.

For the UK, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) combined with country’s exit from the European Union has placed a new focus on data governance and security, according to Travis Campbell, senior business manager at LMS365.

“It’s important for us that customers can choose our platform without having to worry about legal constraints,” he said. “Providing these new data centres is key to supporting our expanding customer base as they rely on LMS365 to successfully implement remote learning and learning in the flow of work via Microsoft 365 and Teams.”

Similarly, at the end of 2019 Slack announced data residencies in Europe, with a UK region launched in April. Its reasoning was that large organisations needed more control over their data to meet tough compliance regulations.

For German businesses, the pandemic and its effect on digitisation have intensified the focus on data governance, according to Robert Nederby, managing director of DACH at LMS365.

“COVID-19 put high pressure on companies to support remote working,” he said. “At the same time, German businesses across industries are fast-tracking their cloud and digitisation journeys. This has raised discussions of data protection and unprecedented demand for trusted cloud infrastructures like Microsoft 365, Teams and Azure.

“This expansion helps us deliver on our continued commitment to serve our fastgrowing customer base of +200 customers in UK and DACH, and to elevate their businesses through the transformative capabilities of the LMS365 platform.”