A lack of talent has been cited as the biggest barrier to the adoption of emerging technologies, according to a new Gartner survey. 

According to the analyst outfit’s ‘2021-2023 Emerging Technology Roadmap for Large Enterprises’ report, IT executives expect talent shortages to be a “significant” barrier to 64% of emerging technologies. 

The 2021-2023 survey provides a peer-based view of the adoption plans of over 100 emerging technologies from 437 IT global organisations in North America, EMEA and APAC over a 12- to 24-month-time period.

The availability of talent – or the perceived lack of it – was cited as the leading factor inhibiting adoption for six technology domains: compute infrastructure and platform services, network, security, digital workplace, IT automation and storage and database. For the same report in 2020, IT executives only saw a lack of talent as an issue for 4% of emerging technologies.  

This shortage is also cited as the main adoption risk factor for the majority of IT automation technologies (75%) and nearly half of digital workplace technologies (41%), according to Gartner’s report. 
 
“The ongoing push toward remote work and the acceleration of hiring plans in 2021 has exacerbated IT talent scarcity, especially for sourcing skills that enable cloud and edge, automation and continuous delivery,” said Yinuo Geng, research vice president at Gartner.
 
“As one example, of all the IT automation technologies profiled in the survey, only 20% of them have moved ahead in the adoption cycle since 2020. The issue of talent is to blame here.”

Infrastructure security is a significant priority for organisations, according to the report, with concerns over rising threats, particularly to endpoint devices in hybrid work environments. From 2020 to 2021, the number of security technologies in deployment rose dramatically, and 64% of respondents reported that they have either increased or are planning to increase investments in security technologies, up from just 31% the previous year.

IBM has announced a new Power E1080 server, the first in a new family of servers based on its 7nm-developed Power10 processor that has been specifically designed for hybrid cloud environments.

The IBM E1080 server has been engineered to be one of the most secure server platforms, according to IBM, with an architecture to help users operate a frictionless hybrid cloud experience across their IT infrastructure.  

“When we were designing the E1080, we had to be cognizant of how the pandemic was changing not only consumer behaviour, but also our customer’s behaviour and needs from their IT infrastructure,” said Dylan Boday, VP of product management for AI and hybrid cloud. 

“The E1080 is IBM’s first system designed from the silicon up for hybrid cloud environments, a system tailor-built to serve as the foundation for our vision of a dynamic and secure, frictionless hybrid cloud experience.”

The E1080 has several “key” features, which includes by-the-minute metering of Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat Enterprise Linux with architectural consistency and cloud-like flexibility across the entire hybrid cloud environment.

There are also hardware-driven performance improvements that deliver up to 50% more performance and scalability than its predecessor the IBM Power E980, according to IBM. 

It also features new security tools, such as transparent memory encryption that requires no additional management setup, a robust ecosystem of ISVs, business partners and security software for every level of system stack. IBM is also launching a tiered “Power Expert Care” service to help clients as they protect their systems against the latest cyber security threats.

“Our collaboration with IBM on Power10 will serve as a continuation of this commitment to support a broad range of architectures,” said Stefanie Chiras, senior vice president of Red Hat’s platforms business group.

“As an architectural foundation for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat OpenShift deployments on-premises metering, IBM Power will offer the scale and flexibility to help customers realise the benefits of open hybrid cloud.”

Employer-led training firm, TechSkills, has announced an extension of its Tech Industry Gold accreditation to help tackle the tech industry’s digital skills shortage. 

The training body is a subsidiary of lobby group techUK and its Gold certificates acknowledge intensive digital training programmes that offer “high-quality” pathways into the digital industry. 

The credentials make it easy for employers to understand the skillsets of individuals and match them to job vacancies, according to TechSkills.

Learners themselves can choose Tech Industry Gold accredited programmes and be confident in the relevance of their training for their next career move. It includes an award (Tech Industry Gold Digital Credentials) which proves job-ready skills in a form that is easy to understand and portable across companies, sectors and geographies.

“As the chair of the Tech Industry Gold Steering Group, and on behalf of the TechSkills Employer Board, I am delighted with the extension of Tech Industry Gold accreditation into intensive training programmes,” said Colin Bannister, VP of solution engineering at VMware EMEA.  

“This will make it easier for individuals to choose high-quality pathways into tech, and Tech Industry Gold Credentials will make it easier to secure employment and progress careers. I believe this will make a real contribution to strengthening the talent pipeline and helping individuals realise their potential in our fast-growing digital economy.”

Professional services organisation FDM Group is the first company to achieve ‘Training Programme accreditation’. The company’s Business Analysis training programme has been recognised for its quality and relevance in preparing learners for employment in entry level Business Analysis roles.

“We are very proud to join the Tech Industry Gold community as the first company to achieve industry accreditation for training programmes,” said Rod Flavell, CEO, FDM Group.

“Our people come from all walks of life and all backgrounds, and we want to give each person the best possible start to their career. Ensuring our programmes are independently reviewed and approved helps us to continually deliver the very highest standards of training, focused on job readiness for our employees and value for our clients. 

“These are exciting times for FDM Group. We have big ambitions to increase our new hires this year and help build the tech careers for a whole new generation of candidates.”

Zoom posted its first billion-dollar quarter on Monday but issued a cautious estimate for the rest of the year with demand for the platform expected to slow dramatically.

The company’s Q3 revenues brought in between $1.015 billion and $1.020 billion, a 31.2% rise year-on-year. 

Zoom was one of the biggest success stories of the pandemic, enjoying unparalleled growth and adoption in its business while consumers and companies were forced into multiple lockdowns. By the middle of 2020, the company had seen its daily active users grow by 355%.

However, there has long been a feeling that this would dissipate with the successful rollout of COVID vaccines and the return to the workplace.

“We had expected that (the slowdown) towards the end of the year, but it’s just happened a little bit more quickly than we expected,” chief financial officer Kelly Steckelberg said on an earnings call.

Zoom has also faced stiff competition from the likes of Cisco Webex and Microsoft Teams, both of which have dented its efforts to win bigger contracts from businesses.

Zoom said it expects a decline in revenue from smaller businesses – those with 10 or fewer employees – that pay their subscriptions on a monthly basis. The company has adjusted its earnings for the third quarter, expecting between $1.07 and $1.08 per share, compared to previous estimates of $1.09 a share. 

The company has also pushed ahead with plans to expand its business, essentially moving from a service to a global platform like Google. It recently announced a buyout of call-centre software maker Five9 for $14.7 billion – its largest deal to date – and has also begun to invest in smaller firms to build products and services on its platform. 

Microsoft has warned thousands of its Azure cloud customers that their main databases have been compromised.

The impacted customers included some of the world’s largest companies, according to cyber security researcher Wiz. 

The vulnerability is in Microsoft’s Azure Cosmos database and allows intruders to read, change and even delete customer information, according to Wiz. The researchers were able to find keys that control access to databases held by “thousands” of companies.

The chief technology officer of Wiz, Ami Luttwak, is former CTO of Microsoft’s Cloud Security Group. Her team found the exploit, dubbed ‘ChaosDB’, on 9 August and notified Microsoft on 12 August. 

“This is the worst cloud vulnerability you can imagine. It is a long-lasting secret,” Luttwak told Reuters. “This is the central database of Azure, and we were able to get access to any customer database that we wanted.”

IT Pro has approached Microsoft for comment, but it seems that it cannot change the access keys by itself, according to emails sent by the company to Wiz. The tech giant has reportedly agreed to pay the security researchers $40,000 for finding the flaw and reporting it.

In the email to customers, Microsoft said it has fixed the vulnerability, adding that there was no evidence the flaw had been exploited: “We have no indication that external entities outside the researcher (Wiz) had access to the primary read-write key,” it said. 

This latest disclosure comes just a few months after the SolarWinds hack, where actors suspected to be working for the Russian government stole Microsoft’s source code and caused breaches and issues around the world.

Exchange email flaws were still cropping up last week, with the US government sending out a warning that customers needed to instal patches that were issued months ago because ransomware gangs were now exploiting them. 

Microsoft has reportedly hired former Amazon Web Services (AWS) executive Charlie Bell for an undisclosed position.

Bell, who left AWS earlier in August, has been listed as a ‘corporate vice president’ but assigned to the department led by Kathleen Hogan, Microsoft’s chief human resources officer, according to CNBC sources.

It’s unlikely that Bell will stay within the human resources team at Microsoft, given his 23-year career at AWS was largely spent developing services such as EC2 and S3 computing and storage. He was also reportedly a candidate to succeed Andy Jassy as the cloud giant’s CEO.

The secrecy around his role is thought to be due to a ‘non-compete clause’ he may have signed with AWS. The Information reports that “people familiar with the matter” said Bell is going to take “a few weeks off” while Microsoft and AWS work out what Bell can do in his new role without violating the non-compete agreement.

AWS is well known for using the practice of non-compete agreements, which prevents one party from participating in activities that would directly compete with the other party, and has taken legal action against a number of former employees for breaking these agreements.

In 2019, ex-global director of financial services, Philip Moyer was taken to court after leaving AWS for a similar role at Google. Brian Hall, a former VP of product marketing at AWS, was also hit with legal action after leaving for Google Cloud. In both cases, AWS alleged that it was the terms of the new role that violated the non-compete agreement.

Whatever role Bell eventually takes, he brings extensive leadership experience to Microsoft, having held management roles at Oracle and an engineering position at Boeing in the early 1980s. He also ran his own business, Server Technologies Group, which was acquired by Amazon in 1998, kicking off his career with AWS.

IBM has unveiled its long-awaited ‘Telum’ chip, built with AI inference acceleration that will allow for fraud detection while a transaction is occurring.

The new processor was showcased at the annual Hot Chips conference with the first Telum-based system planned for 2022. 

Telum is IBM’s first processor to contain “on-chip” acceleration for artificial intelligence (AI) inference. The tech giant spent three years developing the “breakthrough” hardware, which is designed to help customers across banking, finance, trading, insurance applications and customer interactions. 

The processor is designed to enable applications to run efficiently where the data resides, differentiating it from traditional enterprise AI approaches that tend to require significant memory and data movement capabilities to handle inferencing. With the accelerator in close proximity to mission-critical data and applications, however, IBM suggests that enterprises can conduct high volume inferencing for real time-sensitive transactions without invoking off-platform AI solutions, which could potentially impact performance. 

“Today, businesses typically apply detection techniques to catch fraud after it occurs, a process that can be time-consuming and compute-intensive due to the limitations of today’s technology, particularly when fraud analysis and detection is conducted far away from mission-critical transactions and data,” IBM said. 

“Due to latency requirements, complex fraud detection often cannot be completed in real-time – meaning a bad actor could have already successfully purchased goods with a stolen credit card before the retailer is aware fraud has taken place.”

The chip was built on 7nm extreme ultraviolet tech, created by Samsung, and features eight processor cores that have a “deep-scalar out-of-order instruction pipeline” running with more than 5GHz clock frequency. IBM said that these were optimised for the demands of heterogeneous enterprise-class workloads.

It features a completely redesigned cache and chip-interconnection infrastructure that provides 32MB cache per core that can scale to 32 Telum chips. The dual-chip module design contains 22 billion transistors and 19 miles of wire on 17 metal layers.

Zoom has announced new services that promise more office-style experiences for remote workers that includes hosting the video conferencing platform on a TV.  

The company has been working with its hardware partners, Amazon and Facebook’s Portal TV, to develop a suite of services that ensure workers have the best experience no matter where they are. The idea is aimed at those who might be tired of using their laptop for all elements of their work and want more options for where in the home they can work. 

“As companies around the world shift toward a hybrid work model, they’ll need to provide remote workers with the same capabilities as on-site workers so they can effectively communicate and collaborate,” Zoom’s head of hardware partner marketing, Gerard Bao, said in a blog post. 

“Last July, we launched our Zoom for Home offering to help organisations make the transition to hybrid work and empower workers. To continue this effort, we’ve worked with our partners to develop solutions that help our users create the ultimate home office setup.”

It starts with Amazon’s second-gen Fire TV Cube, which now has a Zoom app that allows users make calls with the biggest screen in their home (if they also have a compatible webcam). 

For a more immersive experience, Zoom can also be set up through DTEN’s portable console, the DTEN Go. This includes four cameras, 12 microphones and 160 degrees of coverage that can turn your living room into a ‘Zoom Room’. It can also be paired with a DTEN Mate 10-inch tablet that offers more collaborative features, such as a digital whiteboard. 

For those that need to get up and move while working from home, Zoom’s integration with Facebook’s Portal TV could be an ideal solution. The service uses smart camera technology that pans and zooms to keep the user in the frame and also offers the usual features available on normal Zoom services, such as breakout rooms and virtual backgrounds.

Microsoft has announced price increases for both Office 365 and Microsoft 365 services that will come into effect in March next year.  

The changes will apply to its commercial and business services, with consumer and education subscriptions remaining the same. 

The increase will also apply globally, with local market adjustments for certain regions, however only US pricing is available at present: Microsoft 365 Business Basic is going up from $5 to $6 per user and Microsoft 365 Business Premium will increase from $20 to $22. Office 365 E1 will rise from $8 to $10, Office 365 E3 will jump up from $20 to $23, Office 365 E5 will move from $35 to $38 and Microsoft 365 E3 changes from $32 to $36. 

These are the first “substantive” price increases to Office 365 since it was launched a decade ago, according to Microsoft, with only minor changes to the suites coming in over the last ten years. The reasoning for hiking them up now is partly to do with the higher demand for cloud-based services brought about by the pandemic, according to Jared Spataro, the corporate vice president for Microsoft 365.

“As leaders around the world look to empower their people for a more flexible, hybrid world of work, it’s clear that every organisation will need a new operating model across people, places, and processes,” Spataro wrote in a blog post. “We’re committed to building on the value we’ve delivered over the past decade to continuously provide innovation that helps our customers succeed and thrive today and well into the future.”

The changes follow a period of immense growth for Microsoft and its cloud services; the firm recently surpassed the milestone valuation of $2 trillion and it has more than 300 million paid seats for Office 365. The tech giant has also added more than 20 apps to Office 365 since it originally launched, including Microsoft Teams, OneDrive and SharePoint.

A German data protection commissioner has officially warned Hamburg’s Senate Chancellery to avoid using Zoom as it is no longer compatible with GDPR.

Hamburg’s acting Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information, Ulrich Kühn, said in a press release that the on-demand version of the video conferencing platform does not meet the legislation’s criteria when it comes to data transfers.

He cites the European Court of Justice’s (CJEU) Schrems II decision, announced in July 2020, which invalidated the EU-US data transfer mechanism known as Privacy Shield and required alternative mechanisms to be more rigorous.

“All employees have access to a tried and tested video conference tool that is unproblematic with regard to third-country transmission,” Kühn wrote. “As the central service provider, Dataport also provides additional video conference systems in its own data centres. These are used successfully in other countries such as Schleswig-Holstein. It is therefore incomprehensible why the Senate Chancellery insists on an additional and legally highly problematic system.”

The issue appears to relate to a dispute over the way Zoom has used standard contractual clauses (SCCs) to justify its data transfers. On it’s website, Zoom says its services feature “an explicit consent mechanism for EU users” on its platform and that the firm has implemented “zero-load” cookies for users whose IP address show they are visiting the site from an EU member state. Specifically, the firm states: “we ensure that the transfer is governed by the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses (SCC)”.

However, following the Schrems II decision in July 2020, companies are now required to perform additional steps to justify their use of SCCs, including performing additional risk assessments – something that Zoom appears not to have done.

Neil Brown, the director of virtual English law firm decoded.legal, told The Register that the press release was “somewhat oblique” but suggested that the Hamburg Data Protection Authority considers that Zoom does not ensure a level of protection for personal data which is “essentially equivalent” to that afforded by the GDPR.

“Many businesses used to address the international transfers aspect of the GDPR by incorporating the model contract clauses/SCCs into their contracts with organisations in non-adequate jurisdictions,” Brown told The Register. “In Schrems II, the CJEU said that these were not, in themselves, sufficient, and that a transferring controller must do a comprehensive risk assessment, and put appropriate additional measures in place to ensure ‘essentially equivalent’ protection.

“And that came as a shock to a lot of people, since it rather suggested that the model clauses were not fit for purpose. And, lo and behold, there is a new European set, which is a heck of a lot more complicated.”

In a statement, Zoom said it was proud to work with the City of Hamburg and many other leading German organisations, businesses and education institutions.

“The privacy and security of our users are top priorities for Zoom, and we take seriously the trust our users place in us,”  the firm said. “Zoom is committed to complying with all applicable privacy laws, rules, and regulations in the jurisdictions within which it operates, including the GDPR.”