All posts by Business Cloud News

Enterprise IT, Helion, HPE, Managed Cloud Broker, News & Analysis

HPE says new Cloud Service Broker could put IT back in control

HPE office logoHewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has launched a new service to help clients regain control over their increasingly unwieldy cloud estate.

The new HPE Helion Managed Cloud Broker is a managed service that aims to simplify the management of cloud services across multiple workloads and providers. HPE says it allows businesses to provision, access, consolidate and securely control services. It’s necessary, it says, because companies are being over run as easily accessible cloud applications threaten to cause chaos in many IT departments as they bypass all controls.

New systems are increasingly being ordered and set up without the approval of the IT department, so the cloud threatens the security and management of IT estates. Cloud fever also undermines the potential cost savings achievable through a hybrid infrastructure.

The new Helion Managed Cloud Broker will give IT administrators control and instant visibility over their IT assets, be they traditional IT kit, private clouds or public services. The Cloud Broker will orchestrate all these assets and improve responsiveness, financial management and end-user satisfaction, claims HPE.

The Cloud Broker will support HPE’s entire Helion portfolio including the Managed Virtual Private Cloud, CloudSystem and OpenStack, as well VMWare technology and a range of public cloud providers such as Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services. The Cloud Broker service will be generally available in 2016 and charged as a pay per use system.

Features include a self-service portal with a direct interface to service providers. The Broker’s management options cover security, performance, finances, compliance, audits, catalogs, subscriptions and service requests. It also provides monitoring tools, dashboards and reports.

The service was built from HPE Cloud Orchestration Software, ITSM automation software and operations bridge software.

Cloud computing promises speed, agility and costs advantages but they’re soon lost in a sprawl of unmanaged, uncoordinated cloud instances, according to Eugene O’Callaghan, VP of Enterprise Services Workload and Cloud at HPE. “HPE unifies all enterprise cloud resources together, giving our clients a single view,” said O’Callaghan.

CMA, consumer cloud, News & Analysis, Policy and Regulation, UK

UK Competition and Markets Authority to launch legal probe into cloud storage

personal cloudThe UK’s Competitions and Markets Authority (CMA) is to launch a review of how the cloud storage sector may be affected by consumer law, in the wake of rising concerns about pricing and services charges.

With an estimated 40% of consumers now using cloud storage to store music, images and documents, according to the CMA, compliance with consumer law is increasingly critical.  The CMA says that it is taking action as reports emerge of possible breaches of consumer law through rogue practices and terms.

In one case consumers were hit with surprise price increases and reductions to their ‘unlimited’ storage capacity deals after contracts had been agreed. The CMA is also concerned about incidents of loss and deletion of some consumers’ data.

The CMA’s review is to investigate how widespread these practices are, whether they breach consumer law and how they are affecting consumers. The process, which begins on December 1st, is open for responses until 15 January 2016. The CMA says it wants to hear from businesses about their practices and from consumers and industry experts about their experiences.

“We want to assess whether companies understand and comply with consumer law and whether cloud storage services are working well for consumers as a result,” said Nisha Arora, CMA Senior Director.

If the review finds breaches of consumer protection laws it will take action to address these, it says. This could include enforcement action using the CMA’s own consumer law powers, namely Part 2 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 relating to unfair terms and for contracts entered into before 1 October 2015 the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999. It can also invoke the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 (CPRs). Alternatively, it may seek voluntary change from the sector or provide guidance to business or consumers.

The CMA has a general review function under section 5 of the Enterprise Act 2002. Information gathered can help the CMA to determine whether further action is warranted. However the CMA says it has not taken any decisions about what it might do once this review is completed.

BT, Helion, HP, News & Analysis, Telco Cloud, UK

BT offers customers direct connection to HPE’s Helion managed cloud

BT Sevenoaks workstyle buildingBT is to give its IP VPN customers direct connections to Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s (HPE) Helion Managed Cloud Services.

BT’s service currently uses HPE’s Rapid Connect to bypass the public internet when it connects to HPE Helion Managed Cloud Services. Now the new direct connectivity gives BT customers access to HPE’s portfolio of services when they need to build and consume computing workloads. It gives BT customers more reliable and secure access, better performance and lower latency, according to Keith Langridge, VP of the Connect Portfolio at BT Global Services.

It also simplifies the process of using cloud services, when a lot of companies are coming to terms with a mixture of private public and hybrid clouds, said Langridge. “We have already optimised our network to help customers take advantage of multiple cloud services through our Cloud Connect portfolio of services,” said Landgridge. “By adding direct connectivity to HPE Helion through BT’s global network, customers will benefit from a solution that is consistent, secure and reliable, wherever they operate.”

BT’s direct connectivity to HPE Helion Managed Cloud Services via Rapid Connect is already available in Germany, France and the UK. This will be followed by additional connections at key business hubs around the world. The services are managed by customers through a single service catalogue using BT’s Compute Management System.

Customers want high performance from the cloud, but there is an evolving regulatory and threat landscape, said Eugene O’Callaghan, VP of Enterprise Services Workload and Cloud at Hewlett Packard Enterprise. “Our partnership to deliver these services with BT will bring a whole new level of confidence to global organisations,” said O’Callaghan.

developers, Microsoft, News & Analysis, powerapps, Software as a service

Microsoft launches PowerApps for programming in the cloud

Microsoft powerappsMicrosoft has unveiled a new DIY programming system called PowerApps and new features for Office 365 and Dynamics CRM 2016 at its annual Convergence EMEA conference in Barcelona.

The new features in Microsoft Office 365, include meetings and voice services in Skype for Business while there’s a new customer engagement option in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016. Meanwhile Microsoft PowerApps is a new enterprise service that helps employees to create apps and share them with co-workers.

Office 365 now has options for a Skype Meeting Broadcast, Public Switch Telephone Network (PSTN) Conferencing, PSTN Calling and Cloud Private Branch Exchange. In addition Office 365 customers now have one platform for calling, conferencing, video and sharing, Microsoft claims.

There are new analytics and data visualization tools in the cloud package too. Delve Analytics promises interactive dashboards that tell users who they are spending their time with and how. This, says Microsoft, will help employees to prioritise better. The cloud package will have greater levels of security and compliance, it claims, through a new Customer Lockbox feature which allows each user to set access control limits. A new eDiscovery option makes it easier to manage large quantities of data and find information.

These new features, along with new Power BI (business intelligence) and Advanced Threat Protection are available in a new premium enterprise suite, Office 365 E5.

Meanwhile the new Dynamics CRM 2016, Microsoft promises, will be a more intelligent, mobile and productive system, thanks to new data and intelligence components. Among the features is a new ‘intelligent product recommendations’ mode for sales reps to personalize up-selling.

Dynamics CRM 2016 can also simplify everyday jobs, like meeting follow-ups.

On that same theme PowerApps is a system for creating apps for everything from a simple survey to something more ambitious and mission critical, according to Microsoft. These can connect to line-of-business systems and cloud services and run on any device. They can be used by everyone from employees through IT staff to Professional developers.

Black Friday, Content & Applications, Datacentre, News & Analysis

Web companies create their own problems on Black Friday – research

online shopping cartThe artificially created surge in demand for online bargains on Black Friday could be damaging many brands, according to a recent report by hosting giant Rackspace.

Though Black Friday falls on a national holiday in the US, its lack of cultural significance in the UK hasn’t failed to prevent it become an online retail landmark. Companies ranging from Amazon to John Lewis to Orange have created one day, limited offer shopping deals to generate demand surges, with customers flooding both their online and in store outlets on Black Friday.

On Friday traffic analyst Traffic Defender live blogged that the John Lewis online store was unavailable and gave a low down on the performance of a variety of online players.

With e-commerce loyalty at an all time low, according to Rackspace, these artificially engineered spikes in traffic and public interest in cloud computing performance may be counter productive to any cloud based service provider.

In a Rackspace survey of 2,000 consumers, 39% of respondents recognised that websites failure is due to poor construction and maintenance. The vast majority (83%) of UK consumers claim a consistently slow or unavailable websites negatively affects their brand loyalty. Almost one in five consumers (18%) would only wait 10 seconds or less for a website or page to load before they would abandon their search and look elsewhere.

“This Black Friday, ecommerce loyalty is at an all-time low. Consumers now have a vast choice of retailers available to them online, so it’s easy for them to change their mind about which shop to spend their hard earned cash with,” said Paul Bolt, VP of Technology Practices at Rackspace.

The ‘inevitable website traffic spikes’ and ‘uncompromising demand from customers’, however, could contribute to the tarnishing of a brand, warned Bolt, “There really is no place for outages.” If companies are going to risk their brand image for a single day of busy trading they must put the cloud foundations in place, Bolt argued.

Conficker, Malware, News & Analysis, ThreatCloud

Conficker is commonest criminal in the cloud says ThreatCloud report

Secure cloudThree families of malware account for 40% of all the crime on the cloud across the globe, according to a new report from security firm Checkpoint.

The company’s ThreatCloud report looked at statistics drawn from intelligence feeding in from Check Point’s global presence in October 2015. It identified more than 1,500 different malware families globally active in that month alone. The ThreatCloud World Cyber Threat Map uses software agents and monitors to tracks how and where cyberattacks are taking place worldwide in real time.

Three malware families, the Conflickers, Salitys and Cutwails, accounted for 40% of all recorded attacks. The report also uncovered a new trend for criminals to try to assume control of networks by focusing on remote control of infected PCs. Increasingly, these are used to launch distributed denial of service (DDoS) and spamming campaigns against service providers.

Attacks on individuals also rose sharply, though these tended to be concentrated around malware families that are involved in ransomware scams. Identity theft and the stealing of users’ information  also rose sharply. The use of kits, such as the Neutrino ransomware exploit kit Fareit malware, which steals user information from web browsers and emails, increased dramatically. In one month this criminal modus operandum rose from being the 93rd most used scam to the 10th most common form of malware seen in October.

International organisations, such as cloud service operators, are most likely to be targeted by Conficker which accounted for 20% of all attacks globally. The UK experienced a lower number of attacks than many countries European nations and was ranked 110th most vulnerable region out of 133 target countries globally. By comparison Germany ranked 93rd, Switzerland 89th, Spain 57th and France 54th. Italy is home to Europe’s most endangered cloud, being the 40th most likely country to house a victim of an attack.

It’s easy for hackers to make small changes to malware code to enable it to bypass conventional cloud defences, according to Checkpoint’s UK regional director Simon Moor. “Companies should consider deploying advanced technologies,” said Moor.

The ThreatCloud database holds over 250 million addresses analysed for bot discovery, over 11 million malware signatures and over 5.5 million infected websites.

China Telecoms, India, News & Analysis, Telco Cloud

China Telecom launches cloud service to Indian market

business cloud network worldThe Indian subsidiary of China Telecom (China Telecom India) has launched a business cloud service to Chinese businesses operating on the India market. The service, it says, will straddle the public private computing divide and cater to demand for hybrid cloud systems.

The new hybrid cloud service offers professional system management, security and disaster recovery, along with 24-hour, 7 days a week customer service in Chinese.

The launch ceremony took place at the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in New Delhi, India. With over 100 Chinese enterprises among the audience, the launch of the service was overseen by Cheng Guangzhong, Minister Counsellor of the Chinese government.

“We proudly launch this cloud service in India to provide safe, convenient and quality cloud computing services, helping Chinese enterprises to tackle IT deployment problems in the new era. With this cloud service, we can provide new development impetus and create new opportunities for Chinese enterprises in international expansion,” said Alen Wang, Managing Director of China Telecom India.

This service is part of a China Telecom strategy, The Belt and Road Initiative, to invest in cloud-based resources in the core regions and key countries in Asia Pacific, Europe and America, said Wang. “We are committed to building an ecosystem that fosters win-win cooperation and open collaboration, and we partner with world class players in offering cloud computing products and services to the Chinese enterprises expanding overseas,” said Wang.

Hong Kong based China Telecom now has branches in 26 countries across Asia, the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. It is now launching its FD LTE and TD LTE 4G mobile networks across China.

Huawei, migration, Telco Cloud, Telefonica

Telefónica and Huawei team up over cloud migration

Reflections are seen on a logo of Spain's telecommunications giant Telefonica in MadridEquipment maker Huawei and B2B service provider Telefónica Business Solutions are to jointly offer a global service migrating clients’ internal IT systems to the cloud, reports Telecoms.com.

Under the terms of their agreement they will help enterprises to outsource the running of their own computing, storage and backup services to Telefónica’s data centres without making any infrastructure investment. The cloud services offered will be charged on a pay per use basis. According to a Huawei statement, the virtual servers will be run as ‘bare metal’ (i.e. without hypervisors.) Telefónica and Huawei will jointly run a Cloud innovation centre with the aim to contribute to the OpenStack community and help to create new cloud services.

The logistics of the arrangement involve Huawei using Telefónica’s Open Cloud service based on OpenStack in eight Telefónica data centres. Telefónica will use Huawei’s knowledge and experience on its public cloud service in the Chinese market. The first countries targeted for the service are Brazil, Mexico and Chile, where it will be launched in the first quarter of 2016. Five additional locations are planned for the same year.

Telefónica will be in a better position to serve its enterprise customers with an easily scalable system at a competitive cost, according to Juan Carlos Lopez-Vives, CEO Telefónica Business Solutions. “The combination of Telefónica’s and Huawei’s capabilities represents the best guarantee for our customers,” said Lopez-Vives.

cloud datacentre, Datacentre, News & Analysis, Power

Clouds across Europe powered by wood, water and nuclear fission

datacentre cloudTwo differing approaches to powering the cloud with renewable energy have been unveiled this week.

In northern Russia a new datacentre facility in Udomlya is to power the 10,000 racks that support the cloud using nuclear fission, in order to generate the 80 MW needed to power the facility. Meanwhile, Luxembourg-based colocation provider LuxConnect is to power its new Tier IV data centre in Bettembourg with a wood burner.

The two data centres illustrate the differing approaches to powering the cloud. According to LuxConnect business development manager Claude Demuth it is becoming increasingly important for service providers, that use datacentre facilities to host their cloud services, to demonstrate that their electricity is powered by a sustainable source.

Until recently, LuxConnect met this commitment by purchasing credits for power generated from water driven turbines in Norway.  While the power used in their datacentre is not the very same power fed into the grid in Norway, the credits can be exchanged for a local source of power and LuxConnect was still credited as a user of sustainable power. However the Luxembourg government suggested that the new facility should use local renewable energy from biomass.

In response LuxConnect has built its own plant to burn waste wood from pallets, timbers and old furniture. The released energy is converted into electricity which will run the new data centre’s power and cooling. The bio mass burning plant has been built across the road from the data centre and connects via underground pipes.

Meanwhile in Russia, according to news agency Telecom Daily, nuclear power operator

Rosenergoatom, which runs ten nuclear power plants with 33 reactors, is to supply the Udomlya. According to reports it has offered Facebook and Google space on the upcoming campus, in order to help the American companies comply with new data residency laws.

Datacentre, memory, News & Analysis, RAM, Samsung, server

Samsung unveils 128GB DDR4 memory modules for datacentres

Samsung 128GB RAMSamsung Electronics says it is mass producing memory modules for datacentre and enterprise servers that could turbo charge cloud services.

It has published details, in a blog of double data rate-4 (DDR4) memory in 128-gigabyte (GB) modules. These, when installed in enterprise servers and data centres, could significantly speed the rate of processing in cloud computing applications, slashing response times, boosting productivity and raising the quality of service.

The new modules use TSV (which stands for ‘through silicon via’), which is an advanced chip packaging technology that vertically connects DRAM chip dies using electrodes that penetrate the micron-thick dies through microscopic holes. Samsung first used this when it introduced its 3D TSV DDR4 DRAM (64GB) in 2014. TSV is used again in this new dual inline memory module (RDIMM) which, claims Samsung, opens the door for ultra-high capacity memory at the enterprise level.

The 128GB TSV DDR4 RDIMM is comprised of a total of 144 DDR4 chips, arranged into 36 4GB DRAM packages, each containing four 20-nanometer (nm)-based 8-gigabit (Gb) chips assembled with TSV packaging technology.

Unlike conventional chip packages, which interconnect die stacks with wire bonding, the TSV packages interconnect through hundreds of fine holes and vertically connected by electrodes passing through the holes. This creates a massive improvement in signal transmission speeds. In addition the Samsung’s 128GB TSV DDR4 module has a special data buffer function that improves module performance and lowers power consumption.

As a result servers can reach 2,400 megabits per second (Mbps), roughly twice their normal speed at half the power usage. Samsung says it’s now accelerating production of TSV technology to ramp up 20nm 8GB DRAM chips to improve manufacturing productivity.

“We will continue to expand our technical cooperation with global leaders in servers, consumer electronics and emerging markets,” said Joo Sun Choi, executive vice president of Memory Sales and Marketing at Samsung Electronics.