Samsung has announced it’s building a data centre just a mile from the South Korean border with North Korea on an old civilian shooting range called Chuncheon.

The demilitarised zone (DMZ) is pretty close to the site, with military personnel patrolling around 50km away, over the border. But Samsung doesn’t seem to think that’s too concerning and even hopes in the years to come, it’ll be able to open a data centre over the border in North Korea.

The company will use the facility to develop its own cloud computing hub, going head to head with more established rivals Amazon, Google and Microsoft.

The reason Samsung has set its sights on such a dangerous place to build its biggest data centre? The cool air from the mountains surrounding the building will cool the servers, saving on power.

The area is generally a few degrees cooler than capital city Seoul and this, the engineers think, will cut the amount of power needed to keep servers running at their optimum by more than 80%.

“The era of cloud is coming, so if we don’t do it, we’re going to be weeded out of business,” said Kim Ho, vice president of Samsung SDS Co., the division that’s been given the responsibility of developing its cloud business.

Although Samsung already owns data centres around the world, they aren’t designed for customer use – they just house the company’s own data.

“This is not a bad strategy for Samsung, indeed perhaps the only one that they can try right now given the maturity of the market,” David Linthicum, chief cloud strategy officer at Deloitte Consulting told Bloomberg.

“However, they are really in the managed services provider world, with hundreds of companies currently playing in that space. While Samsung should be able to scale better, they need to do some things that are more creative and innovative to stand out.”

Box has revealed smaller than expected losses and managed to substantially grow its user base, despite rather bleak analyst estimates.

The company posted its quarterly results this week, revealing it now has more than 90,000 paying customers – up from 87,000 last quarter and this has had a significant impact on its profits.

The company posted revenues of $155.9 million for the quarter, up 21% year-on-year, with billings for the period at $155.6 million, an increase of 10% compared to the previous quarter. Nevertheless, Box posted a loss of $39.5 million, namely because if is still focussing on growth rather than consolidation, but its losses were less than the same quarter 12 months ago. 

“Our solution selling strategy continues to gain momentum with strong attach rates for add-on products and large deal growth in the third quarter,” Aaron Levie, co-founder and CEO of Box said.

“With more than 90,000 customers, including BBVA Compass, National Bank of Canada, and Shiseido Company, Box continues to expand its role as a strategic technology partner to power digital transformation for enterprises.”

He added that the cloud company is meeting business demand for a single, open platform for cloud content management, coupled with enterprise-grade security and “powerful workflow capabilities.”

Box is predicting its revenues for the full fiscal year will be between $608.2 million to $609.2 million, much higher than analyst predictions of $607.5 million.

“With more than 40% growth in deals worth more than $100K and our attach rate for add-on products increasing to over 80% of these deals, we are capturing our market opportunity while driving continued leverage for long-term growth,” Dylan Smith, co-founder and CFO of Box added.

Three-quarters of small to medium-sized enterprises are missing out because they haven’t deployed basic mobile working tools to their staff.

That’s according to a report commissioned by Crown Workspace and carried out by an independent research firm. Crown Workspace argues that by failing to integrate technologies such as cloud-based apps and services and BYOD policies, SMEs are significantly limiting their success.

The company noted that deploying basic tools to staff, such as the cloud and allowing employees to work from home, use their own devices for work and offering flexible working conditions can have a significant positive impact on innovation and productivity.

“Modern technology has created a new set of rules for the workplace,” Simon Gammell, director at Crown Workspace said.

“Tech such as WiFi, remote storage and mobile are what employees expect, and that’s what SME owners should consider first when designing a workspace to ensure that their people can work and communicate effectively. Design factors such as layout, equipment and furniture are also massively important too but should not come at the detriment of technology.”

Some of the areas highlighted as lacking by the company include voice technologies that are only being adopted by one in five organisations. Only 25% of the businesses questioned feel prepared for mobile working and although technologies such as Li-Fi and heating are becoming buzz technologies for SMEs, few are taking up the opportunity to modernise the workplace.

This is having a knock-on impact on employee productivity, but small businesses are struggling to justify spending on new tech in their offices.

“Landlords are conscious that occupiers need faster broadband speeds and greater access to strong wireless connections, amongst other technological advances,” Hugh Prissick, project manager and owner of Storey added. “Future proofing buildings is difficult but landlords and developers are placing technology at the heart of the design of new buildings.”

HPE has announced it has acquired software provider BlueData to help it boost its AI and analytics efforts.

HPE wants to roll out more software to capture the enterprise’s demand for big data systems and by purchasing BlueData, it hopes it can bring to market the tools that businesses need a whole lot faster than it is able to on its own.

BlueData’s software is available in the cloud, on-premise and on hybrid infrastructure, making it a promising addition to HPE’s acquisition portfolio.

“BlueData has developed an innovative and effective solution to address the pain points all companies face when contemplating, implementing, and deploying AI/ML and big data analytics,” Milan Shetti, SVP and GM, Storage and Big Data Global Business Unit at HPE said.

“Adding BlueData’s complementary software platform to HPE’s market-leading Apollo Systems and professional services is consistent with HPE’s data-first strategy and enables our customers to extract insights from data – whether on-premises, in the cloud, or in a hybrid architecture.”

HPE expects the acquisition to close in January 2019, although it isn’t clear whether the entire BlueData team will join HPE to help with the integration or if HPE’s staff will continue the development of the platform when it is integrated with its Apollo range of machine learning tools and services.

“Growth in the volume and the types of data in the market continues to accelerate, as does the demand for a fast, easy, and unified consumption experience for AI and big data analytics,” said Kumar Sreekanti, Co-founder and CEO of BlueData.

“From our perspective, data is fuel, and BlueData’s software is the engine that helps businesses consume their data and deliver insights in the most effective and efficient way. We’ve had tremendous customer success by providing a turn-key solution that delivers an as-a-service experience for AI and big data, and are excited to reach even more customers as part of HPE.”

Lincolnshire Police has signed a 10-year agreement with Motorola to transform its control room, replacing the constabulary’s legacy contact management, computer-aided dispatch, mapping and call logging system.

This is the first time a UK force has run its entire control room tech stack on the cloud, according to Lincolnshire Police, and it will have significant benefits for the public sector organisation, including lower costs and heightened staff productivity.

Motorola will implement its CommandCentral Control Room Solution (CRS) to handle calls in the £6 million deal. Those overseeing the deal hope that its scalable platform will mean people will be able to get in contact with a call handler far faster than currently possible, even at peak times.

Because the solution scales according to demand, Lincolnshire’s Police Force and IT teams don’t have to manually increase capacity or work out the likely call volumes in advance.

“The new command and control system is one important step in that journey and will allow the chief to get assistance to those in need quicker than ever before – and armed with the right information to handle the situation,” said Marc Jones, police and crime commissioner for Lincolnshire Police.

“It has been a high priority for me to ensure frontline officers can be deployed quickly, with the right equipment, and to spend as much time as possible in the field reassuring communities, preventing and fighting crime.”

The implementation of Motorola’s cloud-based contact centre platform was overseen by G4S Policing Services.

“The G4S strategic partnership with Lincolnshire Police will enable Lincolnshire to be at the forefront of technology, supporting officers and staff to make the best decisions by being better informed,” G4S Policing Services’ managing director, John Whitwam said.

“This is the best of a private and public partnership, with G4S, Motorola Solutions and Lincolnshire Police working together to provide sustainable and effective policing services to the public of Lincolnshire.”

The announcement follows a series of initiatives launched by the UK government to modernise policing and embrace cloud-based technologies. In August the Home Office announced it was seeking partners to help it migrate Police and Public Protection systems over from its own data centres to those operated by Amazon Web Service (AWS).

The Met Police also revealed in September that it had chosen Microsoft Cloud partner New Signature to help it modernise its own infrastructure by moving over to Microsoft Azure, considered to be one of G-Clouds largest procurements.

A new report has unpackaged the elements it thinks a business needs to implement in order to take advantage of the cloud, highlighting the importance of AI, taking on a multi-cloud strategy and using open-source technologies.

Cloud firm Amido said that to have the biggest impact on their business, companies must accept that cloud-native applications will become the new norm and so should be open to the switch from legacy platforms.

They should use cloud-powered mobile apps where possible, build data lakes with the assistance of AI to help with data science projects and adopt a multi-cloud approach – implementing open-source tech where possible, according to the report.

Amido argued that the recent open source push by the largest cloud vendors means that there has never been a better time to adopt more than one cloud vendor, avoiding lock-in and ensuring better uptime as a result.

“What’s fascinating right now is the pace at which open source projects, from the likes of Google and Apache, are being embraced as managed offerings by all the big cloud vendors,” said Simon Evans, CTO of Amido.

“These proven and open technologies are rapidly replacing the pioneering first movers in the cloud; projects like Kubernetes, Apache Kafka and Apache Spark are regularly available “as a service” on the big cloud providers, and this is, without doubt, a good thing for the world. This convergence is the key to avoiding vendor lock-in while still enabling a business to focus on their digital USP. It is the enabler for a multi-cloud strategy.”

Amido’s report revealed that businesses are more readily adopting cloud-native strategies and are fully prepared to leave legacy technologies behind in favour of the rapidly evolving cloud – a standpoint supported by the Cloud Industry Forum.

“[Amido’s] Cloud Futures: 2020 report confirms our recent survey findings that UK businesses are clearly recognising the need for transformation and are gradually leaving legacy technologies behind in favour of next-generation ones to pursue competitive advantage,” said Alex Hilton, CEO of the Cloud Industry Forum.

“Cloud is critical to this shift. Thanks not only to the flexibility of the delivery model, but also the ease with which servers can be provisioned, which reduces financial and business risk. Furthermore, cloud’s ability to explore the value of vast unstructured data sets is next to none, which is essential for AI and IoT.”

Microsoft has acquired app provisioning firm FSLogix to improve the speed of user profile loading in applications including Outlook and OneDrive.

The solution has been engineered for multi-cloud environments and it will significantly improve the user experience, Microsoft’s Brad Anderson, CVP, Microsoft 365 and Julia White, CVP, Microsoft Azure said.

“Through customer engagement, we know that Microsoft Office applications are some of the most highly used and most commonly virtualized applications in any business,” they said in a joint statement.

“Office 365 ProPlus is currently the best Office experience, and, with FSLogix enabling faster load times for user profiles in Outlook and OneDrive, Office 365 ProPlus will become even more performant in multi-user virtual environments (including Windows Virtual Desktop).”

The Atlanta, Georgia-based company is a significant investment for Microsoft. Although the terms of the deal haven’t been revealed, FSLogix has received huge investment before the deal was announced – to the tune of $10.3 million.

“When we launched FSLogix in 2012, our goal was to build software that helped customers reduce the amount of resources, time, and labor required to support virtual desktops,” FSLogix cofounder and CTO Randy Cook said.

“Our first two products, FSLogix Apps and FSLogix Profile Container, focused on addressing critical needs that have existed from the dawn of desktop virtualisation… our most recent product, Office 365 Container, is designed to enhance the Microsoft Office 365 experience in those virtual desktop environments.“

FSLogix will join Microsoft “soon” and the two teams will continue to work together to integrate its platform into Microsoft’s productivity apps and services.

SAP has announced the acquisition of RPA innovator Contextor SAS, which the company says will help with the development of its SAP Leonardo Machine Learning portfolio.

Contextor’s technology makes it easier for businesses to automate repetitive tasks, freeing up resource for employees to develop new products and services instead. It’s based upon bots, with software distributed to key business-as-usual (BAU) tasks and applications, ensuring innovation remains at the heart of everything, they do.

To date, Contextor customers have deployed more than 100,000 bots to save their businesses valuable resources, time and money.

“With intelligent RPA accelerated by Contextor, businesses will be able to achieve the high automation level necessary to become intelligent enterprises,” said Markus Noga, head of machine learning at SAP.

“The acquisition is a big step towards orchestrating process automation and will help SAP inject RPA capabilities into our applications, first and foremost into SAP S/4HANA.”

SAP expects Contextor’s technology to be deployed to customers in the first half of 2019. It’ll first be integrated into the company’s SAP S/4HANA, with other platforms following later in the year. SAP hopes up to half of all its customers’ processes deployed on SAP ERP software will be automated over the next three years.

SAP is investing heavily into AI and machine learning at the moment, making it easier for businesses to gain insights from customers, reduce the manpower needed to keep businesses ahead of the curve and boosting productivity. Last week, it acquired experience management firm Qualtrics for $8 billion and back in January, it bought chatbot business Recast.ai. That’s on top of its other purchases – Coresystems and Callidus Cloud.

Oracle has announced it’s set to buy Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) company Talari Networks to help the company grow its cloud offering with a more robust networking platform.

Talari has developed the Failsafe networking product that manages data flowing across networks. It will work alongside Oracle’s own Session Border Controller (SBC) to offer site-to-site and site-to-cloud connectivity and application access over IP networks, offering businesses greater uptime and reliability.

Oracle explained it wants to offer businesses entering the digital transformation arena with high availability and quality-of-experience (QoE), enabling the partnership to offer the full suite of cloud networking offerings. It will continue to offer Talari’s products to existing customers and Oracle explained it’ll continue to invest in the platform. Neither company has revealed whether Talari’s Failsafe will continue to operate under its own brand name or it will be changed to fit in with Oracle’s products.

“Together, Oracle and Talari will accelerate digital transformation and cloud adoption by providing companies with complete enterprise network solutions that ensure reliability and performance of real-time communications and mission-critical applications over any network,” Douglas Suriano, senior vice president and general manager of Oracle Communications’ Global Business Unit said in a statement to customers and partners.

“We are thrilled to join forces with Talari and welcome their team to Oracle’s Communications Global Business Unit.”

As part of the deal, Oracle will gain access to Talari’s 500 customers in more than 40 countries. It targets industries including public sector, financial services, insurance, retail and manufacturing, fitting perfectly in-line with Oracle’s key business focuses. The deal is expected to close by the end of this year.

Businesses are spending more money on cloud infrastructure compared to legacy, on-premise environments for the first time, according to the Cloud Industry Forum.

The CIF’s study, conducted by Vanson Bourne revealed that firms are more open to multi-cloud environments, with three-quarters of firms adopting the use of more than one cloud service to power their digital transformation process.

“UK businesses clearly recognise the need for transformation and are gradually leaving legacy technologies behind in favour of next generation technologies as they pursue competitive advantage,” Alex Hilton, CEO of CIF said.

“Cloud is critical to this shift, thanks not only to the flexibility of the delivery model, but also the ease with which servers can be provisioned, which reduces financial and business risk. Furthermore, cloud’s ability to explore the value of vast unstructured data sets is next to none, which in turn is essential for IoT and AI.”

UK businesses are spending 19% of their IT budgets on cloud infrastructure, compared to 18% of budgets spent on-premise. Within four years, the CIF thinks the amount of money spent on the cloud will increase to become 22% of budgets. The firm is predicting the gap will widen as more organisations realise the benefits of cloud vs. on-premise architecture.

Although take-up is growing, there’s still a way to go until more businesses can use the cloud to power their digital transformation journey, with the CIF highlighting skills shortages as a major barrier to both cloud and cloud-powered application adoption.

“It’s clear that the majority of UK organisations are right at the start of this journey and many are being prevented from exploiting IoT, blockchain and AI due to skills shortages, a lack of vision, and, indeed, a lack of support from vendors,” Hilton added.

“The research further supports this idea as 15% of respondents reported they would struggle to find the right partner to assist in the implementation process, suggesting that while there’s a willingness to adopt these technologies, businesses are challenged by supply-side issues in the channel.”