Alibaba Cloud has launched its EMEA Ecosystem Partner Programme, with the aim of helping to develop the company’s presence in the region.

It’s already onboarded some big industry players, including Accenture, Altran, Ecritel, Hashicorp, Intel, Linkbynet, and Micropole.

Alibaba wants to focus on helping businesses in “targeted industries” with their digital transformation efforts as well as developing talent and boosting innovation across the cloud-powered board. 

“Our goal in EMEA is to bring powerful and elastic cloud services to our customers and create a well-connected, comprehensive ecosystem with our partners to accelerate cloud technology development in the regional cloud industry,” said Yeming Wang, general manager of Alibaba Cloud EMEA.

The company is now looking for more partners to tie up with in order to grow its EMEA business and is seeking startups as well as established companies to help it grow.

The announcement was made at the Ecosystem Summit EMEA 2018 hosted by Alibaba Cloud at Station F in Paris, where 400 people congregated from across the tech industry.

Representatives from private companies, public sector organisations, developers, engineers, channel partners and startups came together to discuss the future of the cloud and joined forces to think about how the industry can “incubate” a wider technology ecosystem and support startups.

“We are committed to foster innovation and nurture local talent, which is why we are excited to have held our Summit today at Station F, a campus which gathers a whole start-up ecosystem under one roof here in Paris. We hope that the Summit has inspired companies of all sizes and demonstrated Alibaba Cloud’s belief in working together for the future of the industry.” Wang added. 

Ensono has completed its acquisition of Wipro’s hosted data centre business, doubling its size and increasing its annual revenue to more than $550 million.

Ensono will use the acquisition to spread its reach in the UK and US markets, creating a new opportunity in India and launching a service in Germany. Clients will experience better support with a 24/7 support centre, more stable infrastructure and Ensono said the acquisition will speed up infrastructure innovation too.

Ensono will take on Wipro’s existing clients and with investment of $55 million from Wipro, Ensono can build upon its hybrid IT portfolio with new innovations to address demand.

“We’re proud to enter into a partnership with a company who has years of IT experience that’s able to fully meet the needs of international hosted data center clients,” said Raj Bagga, vice president of global infrastructure services at Wipro Limited. “Our combined company will bring solutions to clients across industries more quickly and at a larger scale than ever before.”

Ensono has made a number of similar acquisitions over the last three years, including Attenda in 2016 and Microsoft specialist Inframon last year.

“This acquisition is a strategic move to expand our global presence to offer clients more options and access to a larger group of talented associates that will help drive faster transformation and innovation for our clients,“ said Jeff VonDeylen, CEO of Ensono.

“Ensono’s growth over the last three years has been astounding, and this acquisition solidifies our position as a relentless ally to our clients and cements our position as a recognized global leader in hybrid IT.”

More businesses are seeking out qualified Kubernetes developers and engineers as they turn to the tech for building their DevOps environments, a report by security software company CyberArk has found.

The company’s IT Jobs Watch report revealed that demand for Kubernetes skills has grown by 752% over the last two years, making it one of the most in-demand IT industries in terms of growth – rising up 729 places to the top 250 most needed roles in IT.

“Kubernetes has become a massive money word, and these figures show that DevOps teams are seeking more skills to help them manage and deploy applications at scale,” said Josh Kirkwood, DevOps Security Lead at CyberArk said.

“There is a very real danger that the rush to achieve IT and business advantages will outpace awareness of the security risks. If privileged accounts in Kubernetes are left unmanaged, and attackers get inside the control panel, they could gain control of an organisation’s entire IT infrastructure,” Kirkwood said.

However, he warned that if businesses rush to onboard inexperienced Kubernetes staff, they risk opening up their organisation to attack. This is demonstrated in another CyberArk report, which revealed many of the DevOps professionals being employed by organisations have security knowledge gaps – particularly around privileged accounts and secrets and container environments.

“Many organisations simply task the same DevOps hires – often with no security experience – to protect these new Kubernetes environments, in addition to the numerous other responsibilities they have to deliver,” Kirkwood added. “That’s no longer sufficient, and security teams need to get more closely involved to support the platform.”

Kirkwood advised that businesses take advantage of cross-team collaboration to ensure they are able to recruit those needed to fill roles, while also securing their existing infrastructure sufficiently to ensure they can create the safest, secure and effective DevOps environment.

Google has announced the beta rollout of its sole-tenant nodes in Google Compute Engine, allowing businesses to run instances on their own dedicated architecture rather than having to share the host with others.

However, just because a node is only used by one business, that doesn’t mean it’s harder for the firm to set up and manage itself. To solve this issue, Google’s sole-tenant nodes use an algorithm to automatically find the best location to launch the instance. They’re also better at dealing with outages during maintenance, with instances migrated automatically to avoid downtime, according to the cloud giant.

Google claimed the pricing structure is also highly competitive because businesses only need to pay for what they use. Access is charged on a per-second basis, with a one minute minimum charge.

The cloud giant said its sole-tenant nodes will be particularly attractive for highly regulated industries that need to separate their compute resources in the cloud for compliance reasons. They can be used hand-in-hand with virtual machines to offer a flexible, but secure service.

Businesses that aren’t so highly regulated can use these nodes to choose where they want their instances to run using user-defined labels or choosing to have Google select their locations instead.

Google’s sole-tenant nodes are pretty similar to Amazon Web Services’ EC2 Dedicated Hosts, which also gives users keys to their own virtual kingdom, so customers can create multiple instances on physical hardware if they wish. It also appears to be similar to Microsoft’s single-tenanted infrastructure, suggesting Google is a little behind its rivals in launching such an offering.

Picture: Bigstock

The Australian government has presented Dell Virtustream with a place on the Australian Signals Directorate’s (ASD) Certified Cloud Services List (CCSL), meaning it’s now been granted permission to host unclassified dissemination limiting marker (DLM) government information on its cloud service.

The cloud business joins other companies obtaining permission, alongside other tech providers including AWS, IBM, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Sliced Tech and Vault Systems/

However, Dell Virtustream’s Unclassified DLM classification is the second level on the list. Only Dimension Data, Macquarie Government, Microsoft’s Azure and Office 365, Sliced Tech and Vault Systems have “Protected” status, the highest level of accreditation available.

Part of the specification for gaining protected-level status is that data stored within the cloud services is only available to employees in Australia. However, Microsoft’s Azure Cloud service does allow for the transfer of information to other countries.

However, Australia’s Cyber Coordinator Alastair MacGibbon has since reassured doubters that the service does tick all the boxes (although he was non-committal when asked whether the ASD specifies the provider must be based in Australia to be CSSL approved) and no data will be made available outside of the country, as per the rules.

“Data can reside anywhere in the world, you can demand data stay in Australia but it doesn’t always make it more secure that it’s in a particular geography,” he said.

“It’s good that we hold data in Australia, that means that data comes under Australian law, that means that agencies and others have more access to it and other country’s agencies theoretically don’t have access to that data.”

EA has bought video game rental service GameFly’s cloud streaming technology and hired some of its employees in a drive to boost its own games streaming service.

Although the two portions of GameFly’s business are a large chunk of its entire set-up, EA won’t own the company’s streaming division, which will continue to operate independently.

It’s not clear exactly how EA will integrate the technology into its platform, but the company has hinted that it hopes to launch its own games streaming service within three years. This would ensure it can keep up with some of its developer competitors, as well as other games streaming platforms like Sony’s PlayStation Now.

“Cloud gaming is an exciting frontier that will help us to give even more players the ability to experience games on any device from anywhere,” said EA chief technology officer Ken Mosssaid. “We’re thrilled to bring this talented team’s expertise into EA as we continue to innovate and expand the future of games and play.”

Neither company commented on how much the deal is worth or when the acquisition is expected to close.

Although games streaming is a natural progression for the cloud, no one has really managed to make it work yet for consoles because the broadband speeds needed to make it work aren’t widely available yet.

Playstation Now has had a limited amount of success, but only because it was able to buy tech firm OnLive’s patents when it decided not to pursue streaming efforts. OnLive folded just five years after launching in 2015. Microsoft is also looking to launch a games streaming service for its XBox console, which is due to launch by 2020.

Picture: Shutterstock

A quarter of businesses are hesitant about signing up to cloud services because they feel they’re not secure enough, a study by Spiceworks has revealed.

Almost all (97%) of businesses think security is the biggest consideration when selecting a cloud-based file storage and sharing service, suggesting providers have a large role to play in convincing customers of the security benefits of using a cloud-based service.

Digging deeper into customer security concerns, 16% of businesses questioned by Spiceworks said they have experienced a security incident related to their cloud service within the last 12 months, including unauthorised access, stolen credentials or data theft.

What Spiceworks’ study did reveal is that businesses probably haven’t explored all security options to secure data. Although 57% restrict the services available for use by their employees and more than half have implemented user access controls, only 28% have introduced multi-factor authentication and have file sharing policy in place, while 74% don’t encrypt their data while it’s in transit. 78% don’t encrypt data at rest.

“It’s evident organizations are putting more trust into cloud storage services, but some are still hesitant despite the recent growth in adoption,” said Peter Tsai, senior technology analyst at Spiceworks. “Although cloud storage services often include features that help secure sensitive corporate information, there will always be risks involved when entrusting your data to a third party.”

Reliability (96%), cost (93%) and ease of use (93%) are also important factors decision makers look into when picking the right cloud service for their business.

Spiceworks’ study revealed the most popular cloud storage service is Microsoft’s OneDrive with 51% of organisations using it, 34% are using Google Drive and the same percentage have opted to use Dropbox.

Google has revamped its paid-for cloud service, re-launching it as Google One. The plan will enable people to take advantage of storage limits of between 100GB up to 30TB, with support from Google experts to help you choose the right products and services for your business.

This space is now shareable across families, with the ability to add up to five members to one plan, with just one bill every month, simplifying the service for households. Everyone who joins the shared scheme will get their own storage space, so you won’t have to have your son or daughter’s files saved alongside yours, for instance.

The cloud giant said it’ll also offer those who pay for their cloud storage access to other benefits, such as credits on Google Play and deals on hotels when you use Google Search to find them. It says it’ll be adding more deals in the future as the service grows and evolves.

Everyone who currently pays for their Google Drive plan will be automatically moved over to Google One in the coming months, with their storage limits applying to files and folders in Google Drive, Gmail and photos and videos saved through the company’s Photos product. The service will start in the US and will expand over time, but before your plan is moved, you’ll be notified by Google.

Google One will cost less than current Google Cloud plans, too. Only the US pricing structure has been announced so far, but plans will cost from $1.99 (£1.47) a month for the 100GB version, $2.99 (£2.21) a month for the 200GB option or $9.99 (£7.38) per month for the 2TB option. This highest tier previously cost £15 a month.

Anyone on other Google Cloud plans will migrate later in the year, after Google Drive users are switched over. However, G Suite business customers won’t be forced to make the switch just yet.

Image credit: Google 

Salesforce has revealed the steps it’s made to become GDPR compliant, including appointing a data protection officer and putting privacy at the heart of product design.

The company has appointed Lindsey Finch, its current senior vice president of global privacy and product legal as its data protection officer (DPO), overseeing how Salesforce collects, stores and uses customer data.

“The official DPO designation is a natural outgrowth of our existing programme,” Finch said. “My team and I will continue to partner across the company to foster a culture of privacy – designing, implementing, and ensuring compliance with our global privacy programme, including ensuring that privacy is considered throughout the product development lifecycle.”

She explained that Salesforce’s Privacy Working Group, which includes executives from across the company’s privacy, legal, product, engineering, distribution, employee success and security departments, will help make decisions too, ensuring Salesforce remains compliant with the new rules after they come into force on 25 May.

“There is no finish line when it comes to GDPR compliance,” she said. “While Salesforce currently offers the tools for our customers to comply with the GDPR, we will continue to release new innovations that help our customers achieve compliance success.”

Salesforce has launched a GDPR website to help customers become compliant, including the information businesses need to honour data subject access requests, as well as guidance to help customers learn more about GDPR.

The vendor has also developed two new features after reviewing its readiness. A product called Individual Object pulls together a user’s individual privacy preferences across a customer’s entire Salesforce ecosystem, including contacts, leads, personal accounts and custom object records, while Salesforce DMP now features a consumer rights framework, enabling users to track and record consents they’ve received.

Apple has decided not to go ahead with the Irish data centre it wanted to start building in the western town of Athenry because it’s taking too long to obtain planning consent. 

The tech giant wanted to build its latest European data centre in the country because of its proximity to green energy sources – a responsibility it’s taking seriously. However, these plans have been hindered by the slow pace of planning authorities.

“Despite our best efforts, delays in the approval process have forced us to make other plans and we will not be able to move forward with the data centre,” Apple said in a statement. “While disappointing, this setback will not dampen our enthusiasm for future projects in Ireland as our business continues to grow.”

Ireland’s High Court approved the plans to build the data centre, but local residents raised strenuous objections which took the case to the Supreme Court. These repeated appeals have been the primary factor delaying the company’s plans to build a facility in the area.

“There is no disputing that Apple’s decision is very disappointing, particularly for Athenry and the West of Ireland,” Ireland’s Minister for Business and Enterprise Heather Humphreys said. “The Government did everything it could to support this investment… These delays have, if nothing else, underlined our need to make the State’s planning and legal processes more efficient.” 

Ireland’s government wants to make it easier for big businesses like Apple to build new data centres and tech infrastructure in the country as such deals bring in big bucks for the economy. Ireland now wants these structures to be viewed as “strategic infrastructure”, which means they should sail through the planning approvals process.

Apple will now put all of its energy into building a second data centre in Denmark after opening its first facility in the country late last year. The second data centre was announced in July and is due to begin operations in the second half of next year.