Cloud software company Cloudistics has declared its entrance into the Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) region soon after its launch of the Accelerate channel program in the US.

Ignition Ltd, based in the UK, and Securicom IT Solutions, based in Africa, have already made distribution agreements with Cloudistics.

The Accelerate program, which is tailored to each company’s value-added resellers (VARs), Technology Alliance Partners (TAPs), and Managed Service Providers (MSPs), is now available for EMEA partners.

“This is going to radically change how businesses in EMEA approach digital transformation going forward,” said Jay Wilson, sales manager of the VAR 4way Solutions, who was enthusiastic about Cloudisitics’ EMEA expansion, noting it provides the channel with a service that can help address the adoption of technology in the face of stringent budgets.

“With Cloudistics we can offer customers the ability to repatriate workloads from public cloud with its unpredictable costs and the heavy OPEX burden and bring this home where they can enjoy all the benefits of public cloud from behind the security and control of their own firewall,” he said.

Cloudistics touts its services as “turnkey enterprise cloud that breaks the barriers of cloud adoption”, and notes that there has been an emphasis shift from cloud creation and adoption to how cloud functions as a tool to enable businesses to adopt digital transformation doctrines.

Its services are designed to mitigate unanticipated costs and difficulties associated with public cloud adoption by bringing its benefits behind a firewall, essentially transitioning it into a private cloud that is easier for enterprises to implement, deploy and operate.

It fits into the user’s datacenter without hardware-specific dependencies and comes built-in with security. Through its Integration Marketplace, it also offers virtual-machine templates so that companies can tailor applications to their own needs.

“This product brings immense value to any organisation concerned with IT’s ability to instantaneously respond to the fast changing needs of its business with simplified and rapid applications deployment,” said Najaf Husain, CEO and founder of Cloudistics.

Cloudistics looks to be building upon its successes in 2017, with the firm highlighting new customers on its books such as Microstrategy, Massanutten ski resorts and CAE online who joined Cloudistics in 2017 because the company “demonstrated a premium cloud experience where legacy solutions such as VMware fell short”.

Dubai Airports has moved its employees over to the cloud content management platform Box.

Over 2000 employees are now using Box, which has helped the airport spend less time on servicing file servers and increased collaboration between employees and external partners. Dubai Airports owns and manages the operation and development of both of Dubai’s airports – Dubai International (DXB) and Dubai World Central (DWC).

Using Box, Dubai Airports employees can securely access, edit and share information from any device. Through Box Governance, Box Zones and Box KeySafe, they’re also more easily able to comply with EU data protection standards, which was the company’s initial reason for partnering with Box.

The platform also integrates with Microsoft O365 and Okta and there is also centralised internal project management, digital assets and business-critical records on Box.

Employees can also access and edit content from any device, providing mobility anywhere on the airport campuses, greater Dubai metro and internationally.

Abdulrahman Al Hosani, vice president of Dubai Airport’s Infrastructure and Operations, said that around 88.2 million passengers travelled through Dubai Airports in 2017 and the company was looking to use technology to create a “smoother experience for those customers.

“With Box, we spend less time servicing file servers and support desk tickets and can focus on what we specialise in providing premiere passenger experience, baggage processing, and airfield management,” he said.

He added that the decision to select Box was primarily for security and regulatory purposes. “Box KeySafe, Box Governance, and Box Zones allow us to comply with
EU regulations on data protection,” said Al Hosani. “Now with Box, not only do we have greater control of our content with Box, it has simplified access to information resulting in a significant reduction in associated time and costs.”

The migration to Box, which began in 2016, is only the latest part of Dubai Airports’ journey to becoming fully digital. It has sought to update its image and services through other digital platforms like Clipatize, which has formed social media content and developed methods for measuring customer experience and instituting new workplace values.

Microsoft said it has fixed an Office 365 outage across Europe that angered thousands of users last Friday.

The outage hit the UK around 9am BST, creating login and server connection failures that stopped users from signing into the 365 portal and accessing services.

DownDetector, which allows people to log technical issues with various services, said 44% of those reporting problems with 365 said they were unable to log in, with the issue particularly affecting the UK, France, the Netherlands and Belgium. Customers on Twitter said they were unable to send or receive emails and could only log in to certain interfaces – or none at all.

Redmond’s Office 365 Status page on Twitter told followers they should check the preliminary Post Incident Report (PIR) under MO133518, but tweeters quickly pointed out that they could not log in to the admin centre to find out why they couldn’t log in in the first place.

Microsoft said it had “completed all recovery actions related to MO133518 and this issue is fully resolved as of Friday, April 6, 2018, at 11:30 AM UTC [12.30pm BST]. Thanks to everyone who confirmed service restoration.”

However, this stirred up outrage among users on Twitter, who bombarded Microsoft about persisting outages in London, Singapore, Australia, and many other locations.

One commenter said: “Microsoft, please don’t try to sweep this under the carpet and treat the issue as resolved.”

Another complained: “After so many hours no update!!! Please do what you promised to your client next time.”

As Office 365 returned to some businesses, Microsoft added later that day that it was not aware of any other issues with the service. It plans to publish a full report into the issue within five days of the incident. 

Pete Banham, cyber resilience expert at Mimecast, claimed the incident demonstrates that businesses shouldn’t rely on any one cloud.

“Microsoft Office 365 was hit with major downtime on Friday, with customers around the world unable to access their services or admin portals,” he said. “An operational dependency on the Microsoft environment creates business risks that need be addressed. Anyone outsourcing a critical service like email needs to consider who will suffer most from reputational damage, internal operational issues and financial loss. Mimecast is urging organisations to consider a cyber resilience strategy that assures the ability to recover and continue with business as usual.”