IBM’s strategic imperatives division, which includes its cloud, analytics, mobile and security technologies has contributed half of the company’s revenues in the last 12 months, according to Big Blue’s latest financial results – a significant increase compared to previous years.

Security revenues experienced the highest levels of growth in the second quarter of 2018, up 81% year-on-year, but cloud came in second with a 20% rise year-on-year. Analytics revenues increased by 7% and mobile revenues were up 5% during the last quarter.

But it was the cloud part of IBM’s business that experienced mammoth gains over the entire 12 months, growing by 23% and totalling revenues of $18.5 billion. $8.2 billion of this was raked in from the company’s hardware, software and services to offer customers hybrid cloud solutions across multi-cloud, private and public cloud services.

This is a significant step for the tech giant, marking its third consecutive period of growth, before which it suffered losses for a period of five years. Total revenues for the third quarter rose 4% across the company’s entire business, which would suggest IBM’s fortunes are on the up.

“After years of revenue declines, IBM is poised to return to sustainable, if modest, revenue growth and mid-single-digit EPS growth,” analyst firm Stifel wrote in a note earlier this week.

The company has made some intelligent business decisions over the last year, including the purchase of Oniqua and streamlining of its Watson workforce, which saved some costs.

“While this may be anecdotal, we attended a major healthcare IT conference this spring, and informal conversations with Watson Health employees suggested that the business is beginning to feel a lot more cohesive and integrated than previously,” Stifel added.

Google’s Loon internet service that aims to deliver high-speed internet to rural areas has signed its first commercial agreement, partnering with Kenya’s Telkom network.

The connection will be delivered by high altitude balloons that float 20km above sea level. They’re designed to deliver internet connectivity to low density populations, where it’s just not financially viable to install traditional underground cabling and other permanent lines to properties.

The balloons are essentially floating cell towers, utilising a provider’s 4G/LTE service to a user’s existing device. They’re powered by solar panels, so can just float continuously and will rarely need to be taken out of service.

“We are extremely excited to partner with Telkom for our first engagement in Africa,” said Loon CEO Alastair Westgarth. “Their innovative approach to serving their customers makes this collaboration an excellent fit. Loon’s mission is to connect people everywhere by inventing and integrating audacious technologies. We couldn’t be more pleased to start in Kenya.”

However, some critics have suggested the partnership will lead to a monopoly in Kenya, dominating the internet market and warning those most affected will be the consumers.

“Once these networks are in place, and dependency has reached a critical level, users are at the mercy of changes in business strategy, pricing, terms and conditions and so on,” Ken Banks, an expert in African connectivity, and head of social impact at Yoti told the BBC.

“This would perhaps be less of a problem if there’s more than one provider – you can simply switch network – but if Loon and Telkom have monopolies in these areas, that could be a ticking time bomb.”

Loon and Telkom plan to launch the internet service next year (although this is subject to regulatory approval) and Telkom’s boss Aldo Mareuse explained the telecoms business is committed to rolling out the service as quickly as possible.

“Telkom is focused on bringing innovative products and solutions to the Kenyan market,” he said. “With this association with Loon, we will be partnering with a pioneer in the use of high altitude balloons to provide LTE coverage across larger areas in Kenya. We will work very hard with Loon, to deliver the first commercial mobile service, as quickly as possible, using Loon’s balloon-powered Internet in Africa.”

Walmart and Microsoft have formed a strategic partnership that will see Microsoft’s Azure cloud services power Walmart’s digital transformation drive.

Azure becomes Walmart’s “preferred and strategic cloud provider” ahead of other large cloud players like Amazon Web Services (AWS). While the retailer hasn’t categorically shunned Amazon’s cloud service, Amazon has accused Walmart in the past of badmouthing its services to other tech suppliers.

Walmart has denied doing so, but said it has advised its suppliers to use Azure. This new partnership unites Amazon’s biggest rival in the cloud space with its closest competitor in the retail sphere, giving Microsoft another big name customer as it tries to close the gap on its cloud rival.

The strategic partnership builds upon the duo’s existing alliance, tagging on Azure’s machine learning, artificial intelligence, and data platform services to its current critical application and workload management implementation.

“Walmart’s commitment to technology is centered around creating incredibly convenient ways for customers to shop and empowering associates to do their best work,” said Doug McMillon, Walmart CEO.

“Walmart is a people-led, tech-empowered company, and we’re excited about what this technology partnership will bring for our customers and associates. Whether it’s combined with our agile cloud platform or leveraging machine learning and artificial intelligence to work smarter, we believe Microsoft will be a strong partner in driving our ability to innovate even further and faster.”

Microsoft will help Walmart hit its digital transformation goals, such as migrating its walmart.com and samsclub.com to Azure, developing new innovations to benefit customers and improving staff productivity and collaboration using Office 365, including Microsoft Workplace Analytics, Microsoft Stream, and Microsoft OneDrive.

“Walmart is a pioneering retailer, committed to empowering its employees and delivering the best experience for its customers wherever they are,” said Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft. “The world’s leading companies run on our cloud, and I’m thrilled to partner with Walmart to accelerate their digital transformation with Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365.”

Picture: Shutterstock

Orange has taken a huge step in the business cloud market, acquiring cloud infrastructure and critical application services firm Basefarm to help grow its Orange Business Services division.

While Orange is a strong cloud player in France, it’s looking to diversify the services it provides across Europe, strengthening its hold on the cloud sector.

Basefarm already has a strong presence within Europe, particularly Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, Austria and Germany, where it offers a range of cloud-based infrastructure and services, management of critical applications and analytics to help businesses get more insight from their usage data. 

“We are very proud to announce the acquisition of Basefarm, which will mark a major milestone in our international development,” Helmut Reisinger, CEO of Orange Business Services, said. “In particular, the company’s integration will enable us to significantly extend our big data and critical application management services on a rapidly consolidating market.

“In addition to our ability to offer access to public or private cloud infrastructure, it is above all our capacity to propose enriched, automated services to our customers, wherever they are in the world, that will enable us to support companies as they transform onto new, digital models based on cloud computing, big data and artificial intelligence.”

The company hasn’t yet announced whether all 550 of Basearm’s staff will join the 1,600 cloud computing experts at Orange Business Services or whether there will be redundancies. But Orange did explain the acquisition will give Basearm the opportunity to develop its products under the Orange umbrella, focusing on data management, big data and multi-cloud services.

The deal is worth €350 million (£310 million) and is due to complete in the third quarter of this year.

Picture: Bigstock

Amazon Web Services (AWS) could be about to break into the world of data centre switches, helping to boost its presence across the entire cloud infrastructure space.

The public cloud giant reportedly wants a piece of the $14 billion switches pie, taking aim at the business networking market. This would put the company up against hardware bigwigs like Cisco, Arista Networks and Juniper Networks, who currently hold the largest market shares in the sector.

A person with direct knowledge of the cloud unit’s plans, and another source briefed on the project, told The Information that what’s key about AWS’s strategy is that it plans to undercut its mainstream competitors, pricing its switches at 70%-80% less than Cisco’s products.

This could mean serious problems for the networking vendor, especially as AWS’s switches would reportedly link seamlessly with AWS’s cloud services, providing a connection between on-premise networks and the company’s cloud services, sending AWS down a hybrid cloud route – something it’s only begun to embrace.

AWS has actually been making switches for its own data centres for some time. This news, if true, just means it would sell them to provide an extra revenue stream outside of its core cloud services.

The switches would comprise open source software and unbranded hardware, although one source said AWS is working with hardware manufacturers including Celestica, Edgecore Networks and Delta Networks to mass produce its white boxes.

The company is currently testing its innovations with a handful of loyal customers and if a hybrid cloud approach works for them, then it’s likely other won’t have to wait too long until they launch onto the open market.

Netskope has acquired cloud infrastructure security firm Sift to help enhance its Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) offering.

Swift’s Cloud Hunter tech will be integrated into the Netskope portfolio, offering current clients access to the full suite of threat detection, correlation, visualisation and response mechanisms on its own Security Cloud service.

Netskope explained that Sift has managed to build a solution specifically targeted at businesses struggling to keep up with security and compliance requirements, particularly when the jump to the public cloud.

“The market is demanding a new approach to today’s challenging security problems, and the integration of Cloud Hunter into our ‘one cloud’ architecture will accelerate our journey toward making Netskope the next great independent, iconic security company,” Sanjay Beri, founder and CEO of Netskope said.

As part of the acquisition, Sift’s CEO Neil King will join Netskope and ensure that development of Cloud Hunter continues alongside the evolution of Netskope Security Cloud.

He explained that joining Netskope will allow the platform’s capabilities to grow and alongside the functionalities of Netskope Security Cloud, it will present a unique offering to customers via a single interface and across devices.

“Four years ago we set out to build a security solution that could detect, correlate, visualize and automatically respond to threats in infrastructure-as-a-service environments like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform,” said King.

“We’re excited to combine those capabilities into the market-leading Netskope Security Cloud. Sanjay and team have an unmatched vision for the future of the security market, and we could not be happier to partner with Netskope as part of Sift’s next chapter.”

Research by Virtustream and Dell Technologies has revealed multi-cloud businesses are on the rise, with 86% of companies using more than one vendor to help with their digital transformation efforts.

The companies questioned more than 700 businesses with at least 1,000 employees about their cloud usage and it found that the vast majority of firms are employing multiple companies to run cloud-based services because collectively, they present better performance and higher levels of innovation.

“Multi-cloud is a clear reality of the next era in cloud computing,” Deepak Patil, senior vice president of product and technology at Virtustream said. “Whether it is employed to balance risk or to leverage the advantages and use cases of various cloud platforms – enterprises are increasingly moving their workloads to multiple cloud providers.”

The cloud company also said that more than half of businesses have moved their business-critical applications to the cloud, demonstrating a real trust in cloud technology.

That translates into huge revenues for tech firms, with Virtustream calculating those using the cloud are pumping at least $50 million into cloud-based tech. The majority of these businesses plan to keep investment the same or increase spend to reflect the changing technology landscape.

Three-quarters of businesses will revisit their cloud strategy in the next few years or will redevelop their existing plans to ensure they stay competitive and this is motivated by operational efficiency, respondents told the cloud company.

“We will continue our decade-long track record of migrating and managing mission-critical applications in the cloud, but will also provide a flexible solution that accommodates the multi-cloud architecture enterprises require, while improving both the performance of the applications and the overall business by helping customers to realize operational efficiencies and focus on innovation,” Patil added.

Oracle has revealed the startups taking part in its Bristol-based Oracle Startup Cloud Accelerator Programme, including Snap Tech, LettUs Grow We Build Bots, Sauce and GapSquare.

The diverse set of companies will be able to take advantage of collaborations with other businesses in the cloud space, as well as each other. They will be mentored by both Oracle engineers, technical teams and business experts, be able to make use of a co-working space and build their own opportunities by coming into contact with Oracle customers, partners and investors.

Visual search business Snap Tech offers consumers the tools to find exactly what they're looking to buy via visual search, AI, and machine learning, matching searches with the products online retailers have to offer.

LettUs Grow is a completely different kind of technology, helping vertical farms implement irrigation and control technologies, while We Build Bots' IntelAgent has been designed for contact centre agents, offering a collaboration-led customer service platform built upon AI and analytics.

Sauce's cloud-based video collaboration platform is reinventing video content for businesses, encouraging businesses to generate engaging content from a wide variety of sources.

The final business entering Oracle's accelerator programme is Gapsquare, which seeks to eradicate gender pay gaps by analysing data and generating data-driven recommendations for change.

“The startups in Bristol continue to raise the bar for global cloud innovation, and we are proud to welcome a select group of five to our second cohort,” said Reggie Bradford, senior vice president, Startup Ecosystem and Accelerator.

“Following the success of our initial cohort in Bristol, we will continue to leverage our cloud expertise, leading cloud products, and global network to support their rapid growth.”

Previous businesses taking part in Oracle's Startup Cloud Accelerator programme include Interactive Scientific, Duel, GRAKN.AI, iGeolise and Trail. The company also has similar programmes running in Austin, Bangalore, Bristol, Delhi–NCR, Mumbai, Paris, São Paulo, Singapore and Tel Aviv, helping startups around the world develop their cloud-based apps and services with the business and technical support of a tech giant.

<em>Image credit: Unite</em>

The EU Banking Authority (EBA) has warned financial institutions moving to the cloud are risking their freedom by being locked into using particular vendor’s service and being forced to onboard subcontractors from “high risk areas”.

The EBAs report “on the prudential risks and opportunities arising for institutions from fintech” highlighted cloud servces as one of the seven key risks and opportunities to financial institutions, alongside other technologies such as blockchain and Big Data.

The report explained that businesses choosing to use the cloud are putting both their own organisations and others in the sector at risk because “large suppliers of cloud services could become a single point of failure should many institutions rely on them”.

“Additionally, a possible impact on the wider operational risk could arise from issues with data security, systems and banking secrecy, especially when cloud services are hosted in jurisdictions subject to different laws and regulations from the institution,” the report continued.

The EBA advises financial businesses only to use cloud technologies if security is not a primary concern and recommended businesses intent on using cloud services consider a private cloud set-up, rather than public cloud services.

“[Private cloud] allows the most flexibility in data processing and security. On the other hand, private clouds are typically less scalable and more expensive than public clouds,” the report said.

It also warned against financial firms using subcontractors because it poses a risk to the institution. If a business cannot control the technological infrastructure used by a cloud provider, it could affect the ICT outsourcing risk of that business. 

IBM has announced partnerships with six European firms using its cloud services to grow their AI, blockchain and analytics businesses.

It will work closely with Dutch logistics firm Koopman Logistics to build its track and trace solution using IBM’s blockchain technology. Koopman transports consignments across Europe and it needed to implement a secure technology to replace its paper-based tracking process. Now it’s using IBM’s blockchain to track consignments using digital records.

The second partnership IBM announced is with Italian multimedia organisation Gruppo 24 Ore, which is using the company’s IBM Watson AI services hosted on the IBM Cloud to help tax professionals respond to questions about the Italian tax coding system. IBM Watson was implemented to process 1.5 million documents relating to the financial system and glean the data it needs to advise professionals.

French bank Crédit Mutuel is also using IBM Watson on IBM’s Cloud environment in France (with a back up in Germany) to power its virtual assistants that help the company’s 20,000 relationship managers advise their customers.

Digital health company Teckel Medical is running its digital health checker on IBM Cloud, while RS Components is making use of IBM’s Cloud platform, building its peer-to-peer marketplace in IBM’s London Cloud Garage, enabling startups to promote, test and sell their inventions online.

Finally, IBM has announced a partnership with Osram AG, a lighting solutions company that has switched its operation to a digital environment powered by IBM Cloud, resulting in greater operational savings and flexibility.

“Enterprises across Europe are gravitating to the IBM Cloud because it helps them modernize their existing infrastructures by gaining access to exciting technologies like AI, blockchain, IoT, analytics and more,” said Sebastian Krause, general manager IBM Cloud Europe. 

“At the same time, these companies value IBM’s deep industry and business process expertise, along with IBM’s commitment to the responsible management of their enterprise data.”

Image credit: IBM