In one of my favourite episodes of The Simpson, Mr Burns opens a casino in Springfield and locks himself away in a panic room. He watches all the other characters as they gamble on CCTV, zooming in to see the spread of germs. He becomes paranoid, refusing to leave the room and letting his beard and nails grow ridiculously long as he slowly descends into madness. 

Such is the tattered reputation of Facebook, it’s easy to picture Mark Zuckerberg holed up in a panic room watching a crowd of developers cough and spread the outbreak of COVID-19 coronavirus all over San Francisco. Thankfully, the company has put health and safety first and cancelled the F8 conference.

Google has done the same, deciding to “reimagine” Cloud Next 20 as a virtual conference due to the growing concerns over the impact of COVID-19. Currently, the concerns are that it is likely to spread to major cities. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has said it puts the world in “uncharted territory”, but it can be contained with the right measures. 

Cancelling big events is a very good measure, in my opinion, but what’s even better – particularly for technology companies – is that they use the cloud computing they champion to showcase what it can actually do. You don’t need to travel anywhere when you can see it all via the internet – we can all be Monty Burns. 

This is what Google has chosen to do with Cloud Next 20. It’s now a “free, global, digital-first, multi-day event”, the company has announced. This will include streamed keynotes where you won’t have to get dressed and you won’t lose your seat if you go get a cuppa. You can also see the breakout sessions, talk to the experts and check out all the new products and services without leaving your house. 

It probably couldn’t have been set up in such a short time, but this would have also been a perfect opportunity to use virtual and augmented reality technologies. Imagine popping a headset on and your living room turns into one of Google’s breakout sessions. This was done for an Oculus event in 2018, so it is very much possible. There is so much more we can do with cloud computing and it seems that COVID-19 might be the catalyst for us to find out what. 

Anyone who attends the big tech events knows that they are huge. A company usually spreads its keynote and other sessions around a building that’s often too big to see all of it. You need a strict plan to get in, see the whole three hours of what the CEO and their co-presenters have to say and then sprint off to meet with developers, experts or journalists in some far-flung corner. Wouldn’t it be better for all involved if instead, on your laptop in the comfort of your own home, you can just click your way around – or have multiple meetings at once and conserve finger energy. 

This could also be an everyday reality (for some of us) as governments around the world look set to advise people to work from home. People in California have tested positive for COVID-19 and Italy’s Serie A football league has been put on hold as cases have popped up in northern parts of the country. It’s shutdown factories and offices across China and is now wreaking chaos across South Korea. There is a likelihood that it’s coming to a town near you too, with 39 reported cases in the UK, according to Sky. While we can all do our bit and wash our hands and avoid unnecessary travel, working remotely might just be the best solution for containment. 

I would put forward a concern about Wi-Fi speeds, given the UK isn’t exactly leading the way in that area. And, there’s also the likelihood of outages as more and more of us lean on the internet for work, but hey, that probably isn’t as frustrating as spreading a virus that’s potentially deadly to those with existing conditions.

COVID-19 isn’t a pandemic yet – why not log in to the cloud and keep it that way? Open all the platforms and services your laptop can manage, pull-on a VR headset and immerse yourself in work, virtually. You can attend all the technology conferences you want via the internet and, best of all, getting dressed is optional.

Google will build 11 office and data centres across the US as part of a $10 billion investment plan.

The tech giant announced these new buildings will create thousands of jobs and provide opportunities for local businesses.

It follows on from the company’s ambitious 2019 plan to invest $13 billion in rural states such as South Carolina and Nevada. Along with R&D funding, this made Alphabet the largest investor into the US, according to the Progressive Policy Institute.

The new investment will be used to build on that by adding 11 new sites in Colorado, Georgia, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New York, Oklahoma, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington and California.

As an example of the impact Google’s investments could have, CEO Sundar Pichai pointed to the company’s data centre in Mayes County, Oklahoma.

“Last year, I visited Pryor to announce a $600 million investment, our fourth expansion there since 2007,” Pichai said in a blog post. “It felt like the whole community came out to welcome us, from small business owners to teachers to Google employees.

“Pryor Mayor Larry Lees told the crowd that Google’s investments have helped provide local schools with the resources they need – including the latest textbooks and STEM courses – to offer a world-class education. He talked about the small businesses we have helped train and the mentorship Googlers have provided to Pryor’s students.”

The new offices and data centres will create roles with Google, as well as jobs in construction and renewable energy facilities, the company said.

This is also further evidence of Google’s relentless investment into its cloud business. Recently it announced the $2 billion acquisition of Looker, a data analytics firm and also Cornerstone Technology, a mainframe-to-cloud migration firm.

Cisco has unveiled a cloud-native security platform called SecureX, which is aimed at giving businesses more visibility across security services with analytics and workflow automation.

SecureX fits into Cisco’s existing security products and those from third-party providers, and analyses data across endpoints, cloud, networks and applications to help identify threats.

What’s more, it can respond to these threats more efficiently, according to Cisco. This is one of the first cloud security services to come out ahead of the RSA conference and another big vendor looking to aid customer security with AI.

Last year, Box announced a similar feature with Box Shield that aimed to protect the customers from outside threats and also their own mistakes. SecureX has a similar protocol that takes an automated approach to cloud security.

“Today we are introducing Cisco SecureX – a new way for users to experience Cisco’s Security portfolio,” said Jeff Reed, SVP of product for Cisco’s security business. “Cisco SecureX streamlines our customers operations with increased visibility across their security portfolio and provides out-of-box integrations, powerful security analytics, and automated workflows to speed threat detection and response.

“SecureX is an open, cloud-native platform that connects Cisco’s integrated security portfolio and customers security portfolios for a simpler, more consistent experience across endpoints, cloud, network, and applications.”

The platform offers a full multi-domain orchestration, with AI capabilities through a low-code approach and drag and drop interface. It uses adaptor models to orchestrate the platform, with more than 50 adaptors for security, networking, IoT, cloud and data centres.

The new service will be bundled into every Cisco security product from June when it becomes generally available.

Unlike the competition, SecureX helps customers get more value quicker, according to Reed. He suggests that users can get up and running in minutes, rather than hours, with its simple homepage that just requires API keys.

Oracle is being sued for allegedly inflating cloud revenues and resorting to “systematically coercing and bribing” existing customers into cloud migrations.

This is according to a 164-page complaint filed to a Federal District Court in California by German-based Union Asset Management AG.

It’s the third time that the company has sort to challenge Oracle in US courts having failed to get beyond the first hurdle in 2018 and 2019.

The report names founder Larry Ellison, CEO Safra Catz, former CEO, the late Mark Hurd. and claims that its top executives were “highly motivated to misleadingly inflate Oracle’s Cloud revenues through the use of engineered deals by virtue of the company’s compensation plan”. 

The documents also name Oracle’s former cloud boss, now Google Cloud CEO, Thomas Kurian as a defendant.

In the court filings, it stats that Oracle employed a strategy known as Audit, Bargain, Close that it used to coerce cloud sales. With this Oracle would install its on-premise software in its existing client’s ecosystems with preferences automatically enabled, which, according to the filing, would cause the customer to unknowingly exceed the limits of its license.

“After the customer fell into this trap, Oracle would audit the on-premises customer for violations of its on-premises software license,” the filings said. “When it found violations, Oracle would threaten to impose extremely large penalties. Oracle would then offer to reduce or eliminate those penalties if the customer agreed to accept a short-term cloud subscription that the customer neither desired nor intended to use.”

The documents also quote a 2017 email from Kurain, sent while working at Oracle. In the email, he is critical of the interface for Oracle Human Capital Management Cloud, calling it a “disgrace”.

“I continue to get extraordinary pressure from our two CEOs [Mark Hurd and Safra Catz] and LJE [Larry Ellison] himself that the UI is not tenable… the core product UI is awful. Until you all collectively accept the mess you have made and the need to move quickly we are talking past one another.”

In June 2018 the tech giant changed the way it reported cloud revenues every quarter by only putting forward a combined figure for SaaS, PaaS and IaaS. Cloud Pro has approached Oracle for a response. 

Google has acquired a mainframe- and database-migration specialist as it continues to add tools to help enterprise customers move workloads to public clouds.

Dutch-based Cornerstone Technology provides tools and project-management services for application and database migration.

The firm will be incorporated into Google‘s mainframe-to-GCP service, which customers can access through its professional services and partner networks.

There are no details about the cost of the deal as yet, but the move is in keeping with the company’s enterprise strategy that focuses on helping its existing clients move their legacy workloads to the cloud.

“Easy mainframe migration will go a long way as Google attracts large enterprises to its cloud,” said Matt Eastwood, senior VP of enterprise infrastructure at IDC. “Google Cloud is listening to its customers and meeting them where they are, steadily improving its services and attracting businesses across industries.”

This is the second deal Google has announced in February after the firm’s $2.6bn acquisition of Looker, a service for data analytics for multi-cloud customers.

Moving mission-critical workloads to the cloud can be complex and the aim is for Cornerstone’s expertise and hands-on approach to slowly modernise customer stacks without the need to re-architect all of their legacy applications.

The company provides a migration roadmap which conducts a mainframe assessment to find a suitable path for upgrading. It also converts code languages and databases that help prepare applications for modern infrastructure, which also includes automated data migration.

“We’re migrating both our AS/400 and z/OS systems to more modern technologies like Java and SQL databases,” said Ricardo Orlando, CTO of Brazilian financial services company Boa Vista. “Google Cloud is helping us realise new revenue streams and more effectively deploy our resources.”

Mastercard is developing a European cyber security hub as it looks to drive greater collaboration from both the public and private sectors to fight fraud and online threats. 

The European Cyber Resilience Centre will be based at the company’s HQ in Waterloo, Belgium and aims to address the threats facing European payment ecosystems. 

The centre will bring together a number of organisations, banks and law enforcement agencies, including Interpol and the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) and the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC). 

An interim centre will launch in the spring, according to Mastercard, with the official facility expected to be ready in 2021. 
 
“Financial services will always be at the top of the target list for attackers due to the vast pool of customer data and credentials under our responsibility,” said Javier Perez, president Europe at Mastercard. 
 
“Our European Cyber Resilience Centre improves collaboration amongst key organisations, helping to ensure businesses and individuals feel secure when sharing information online.”

The centre will aim to improve prevention and mitigation practices against international cyber crime by bringing together both cyber and physical security experts. As part of its strategy, it will also aim to shorten the lines of communication between internal Mastercard teams and its customers, partners and stakeholders.
 
The Belgium-based centre will also provide a hub of knowledge and best practice sharing for law enforcement agencies and policymakers. 
                                                             
“Fraudsters and hackers know no borders or nationalities, so threats can strike from every corner of the world,” Perez added. “Only a joint effort that involves all parties will be able to place Europe on the frontline of enterprise resilience. 

“This new centre will synchronise our global resources and partners to constantly seek and adopt the best practices for us and our customer network.”

An example of the type of threats faced by European financial institutions was seen a year ago when Malta’s oldest bank took its entire IT system down to counter an active foreign cyber attack in which hackers attempted to steal 13 million. 

American conglomerate 3M is moving its enterprise IT infrastructure to AWS’ cloud infrastructure as part of a digital transformation project.

The firm said it will migrate systems for accounting, manufacturing, e-commerce and more into the tech giant’s cloud platform, in a bid to improve its global operations.

3M, formally the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, is a 100-year-old US corporation that provides a diverse range of services in markets such as healthcare, automotive, manufacturing and a number of other areas.

Its 96,000 global employees use 51 different technology platforms, according to the company. Moving forward, its plans are to tap into AWS’ portfolio of services, such as machine learning, analytics, storage, security and databases to streamline its business processes and meet changing customer demands.

“AWS, with its proven experience and highly performant global infrastructure, will deliver the agility, speed, and scalability 3M needs to launch new business processes and service models,” said John Turner, CIO at 3M.

“We look forward to expanding our use of AWS’s portfolio of services, including analytics and machine learning, to gain greater insights and become an even more agile company in the cloud.”

This is one of a number of large organisations to go all-in on AWS over the last couple of years, following the likes of the NFL and BP. The cloud giant is also locked in a legal battle with the Pentagon over its decision to award its JEDI contract to Microsoft – which is seen as Amazon’s closest rival in the cloud space.

In January, a Goldman Sachs survey suggested that Microsoft had an edge over AWS, with IT executives suggesting cloud win the so-called ‘cloud wars’ over the next three years. However, Amazon’s cloud division is continuing to score heavy with big organisations and its legal challenge has seen Microsoft’s JEDI contract paused.

Google Cloud has acquired businesses intelligence platform Looker for $2.6 billion (£2bn) as it looks to further boost its data analytics services for multi-cloud customers.

Looker will be integrated into Google Cloud‘s analytics and data warehouse services, such as BigQuery and its customers will still be able to use any cloud data management they like, such as Amazon RedShift, Azure SQL or Oracle.

The deal, which was the first major acquisition of Thomas Kurian’s reign as CEO of Google Cloud, was first announced in June, but it couldn’t be completed till now as it was subject to a probe from the UK’s competition watchdog.

The competition and Markets Authority (CMA) reportedly ruled that the deal would not adversely impact competition with regard to the market for data analytics tools and software. As both Google and Looker were not close competitors, the CMA didn’t feel the deal would result in increased prices and affect organisations that use business intelligence tools, according to Reuters.

“Google Cloud and Looker share a common philosophy around delivering open solutions and supporting customers wherever they are – be it on Google Cloud, in other public clouds, or on-premises,” said Kurian.

“As more organisations adopt a multi-cloud strategy, Looker customers and partners can expect continued support of all cloud data management systems like Amazon Redshift, Azure SQL, Snowflake, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server and Teradata.”

The deal is actually the result of a four-year partnership between the two companies, according to Looker CEO Frank Bien, who said that it will give his firm better reach and strengthen its resources.

“Looker partners can expect to continue to work with us as they have before,” Bien wrote in a blog post. “We expect that our award-winning support team will not only continue delivering an exceptional chat support experience but will also be bolstered by the additional resources and global presence of the Google Cloud team.”

The average salary for a UK tech worker increased by 13% in 2019, jumping to £74,000 per annum, according to recruitment site Hired. 

Software developers now earn £37,000 more than the average British worker, according to Hired’s State of Software Engineers report, which looks at 2019’s software engineering roles around the world and the programme languages they use.

UK developers saw a larger wage increase than any other tech hub around the world, even beating San Francisco which saw a 6% jump year-on-year.

Search engineers in the famous Bay Area still get paid the most, though, with an average wage of $157,000 (£122,000).  

The three best-paid developer roles in the UK were for embedded engineers, who earn £82,000 on average, blockchain engineers, who earn £81,000 a year and computer vision engineers who also get paid around £81,000 per annum. 

Global demand for Blockchain engineers has increased by 517%, according to the report, while gaming engineers saw the biggest wage increase in both London and San Francisco. 

Other software developer roles that saw an increase included machine learning engineers, which ranked in the top ten highest-paid jobs for most of the hubs listed, with an average salary of £101,000. 

“While salaries for software engineers continue to rise globally, the UK led the way in 2019, cementing the country’s place as one of the world’s top tech hubs,” said Gordon Smith, European GM at Hired. 

“To continue this unparalleled growth in the UK, employers, aside from offering competitive salaries, need to ensure that understanding what top talent want from their jobs is the main priority for hiring managers.”

Google’s Go is the world’s most in-demand coding language, according to the research, but JavaScript came out on top for most use. Although TypeScript is the most popular programming language in San Francisco, Toronto and London, while Ruby was more favoured in New York and Go in Paris.

AWS has requested testimony from Donald Trump as part of its appeal against the Pentagon’s decision to award its JEDI contract to Microsoft.

This was revealed through court fillings, which were made public on Monday, and state that Amazon’s cloud division has asked a federal court for permission to take testimony from the US president who allegedly used his position to influence the final decision.

AWS was seen as the favourite to win the Pentagon’s $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defence Infrastructure (JEDI) contract, but was left stunned as Microsoft was awarded the 10-year project in October.

The cloud giant announced it was going to appeal the decision a month later and suggested that the US commander and chief, Trump, had interfered with the bidding. Monday’s court filings show that AWS wants the President to explain his involvement in court.

“The clear, public record of the commander-in-chief’s personal animus toward Amazon and Mr Bezos, his campaign pledge to ensure that Amazon would ‘have problems’ if he became president, and his unprecedented interference in the JEDI award process with the DoD leadership team all demand that DoD’s errors be assessed in light of a full record of that bias and pressure,” the company said in the court filing.

“Accordingly, AWS seeks discovery and supplementation that are narrowly tailored to include the public record of bias and to develop facts not currently known or accessible to AWS demonstrating exactly how President Trump’s order to ‘screw Amazon’ was carried out during the decision-making process.”

A year before the final decision was made, it’s alleged that Trump called his Pentagon Secretary James Mattis and directed him to “screw Amazon” out of a chance to bid on the JEDI contract. This is according to Mattis’ book “Holding The Line: Inside Trump’s Pentagon with Secretary Mattis“. The account was written by Guy Snodgrass, who served as a speechwriter for Mattis.