MWC Alibaba’s European cloud push continues, with the Chinese provider announcing a series of products for enterprises on the continent around infrastructure, automation, security and more.

The company has announced eight products in total. On the infrastructure side, launching today, are ECS bare metal instances and high performance supercomputing clusters for European customers. While these are both products currently in operation, April will see the new launch of Alibaba’s Cloud Enterprise Network (CEN). The company describes it as a ‘global network for rapidly building a distributed business system and hybrid cloud to help users create a network with enterprise-level scalability and the communication capabilities of a cloud network.’

For big data and AI, Alibaba’s products rolled out to European customers include machine learning-powered image search and a business chatbot – both available today – yet the more intriguing product is Dataphin. Described by the company as a ‘one-stop big data PaaS’, the product offers data integration, warehouse modelling, identity and profile distilling and asset management.

Also included in the launch are a new SaaS-based vulnerability discovery service, as well as Apsara Stack, which offers a scalable and built-in hybrid cloud services platform and launches internationally with adoption from more than 120 enterprise customers.

It has certainly been a long road since July 2015, when the company put in $1 billion in funding to expand its cloud computing operations. In September, Gartner ranked Alibaba as the third player in public cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS), behind AWS and Microsoft – a fact the company now proudly states on its information section on press materials – while the previous month saw the company pass one million paying cloud customers.

The natural reliance towards Asia-based customers – Philips China, Bank of Nanjing and Air Asia to name three – has facilitated a European push. As revealed at the company’s Computing Conference in Hangzhou in October, the company alongside its partners is targeting 10 million customers.

“Alibaba Cloud wants to be an enabler for technology innovation in Europe helping enterprises do business,” said Yeming Wang, general manager of Alibaba Cloud Europe in a statement. “The Mobile World Congress is a great opportunity for us to refresh our European strategy and consider how we can make an increasing contribution to the digital transformation of enterprises in this market from different sectors with our offerings and expertise.”

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MWC Mobile World Congress 2018 will most likely not be overburdened by pure cloud news this year, so anything that does come this publication’s way is worth checking out: Amdocs has announced a deal with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to help cautious communications service providers (CSPs) transform their operations to become cloud-ready.

Amdocs cited a survey from Analysys Mason which found that within five years more than 90% of CSP systems will be on the cloud, with three fifths of those running on hybrid architectures. This publication has more than once mulled over the prospect of increasing cloud complexity – the word multi-cloud may have been mentioned – and so it proves here, with CSPs naturally having their share of legacy infrastructure to deal with.

Amdocs will look to migrate business support systems and third party legacy environments into an ‘optimised, hybrid cloud operational environment.’ Alongside this, support will be provided as customers deploy and migrate new and existing Amdocs products to AWS.

Perhaps anticipating that organisations may not wish to go straight in, Amdocs says it will use ‘cutting edge technologies around open source’ as well as elastic network scaling to create cloud-native AWS environments and ‘help CSPs test new offerings, consumer uptake and disruptive business models for faster time to market and greater business agility.’

Added to this will be Amdocs’ managed service provider (MSP) practice, which will include AWS technologies, leveraging the communication provider’s certification as an AWS advanced technology provider partner in the process.

“The Amdocs and AWS strategic collaboration has been created to support CSPs as they embark on and accelerate their cloud journey to achieve new levels of business agility, innovation, and cost savings,” said Terry Wise, AWS global vice president of channels and alliances. “This collaboration will enable CSPs to rapidly become digital service providers, delivering new and enhanced customer experiences that are simple, personal, contextual and valuable at every point of engagement across all channels.”

Multi-cloud continues to be on the agenda – this time, a collaboration between Cisco and Rackspace whereby the former will provide the latter’s customers with security protection for multi-cloud environments.

Rackspace will deploy high volumes of Cisco’s next-generation firewalls and integrate them directly into its services, according to Cisco. The managed cloud provider had previously served as a testing partner for Cisco’s ASA firewall series.

According to the most recent annual Cisco cybersecurity report, more than half of security professionals polled said they hosted networks in the cloud because of better data security, with scalability and ease of use also highly cited. But with these benefits come extra dangers, with workloads moving to the cloud being at risk from creating new threat vectors.

The multi-cloud angle continues to be a compelling one for service providers as customers become more confident and comfortable with complex cloud environments. In recent weeks, storage firm Cloudian as well as infrastructure provider Juniper Networks have cited it as key for their latest product offerings. Writing for this publication in January, Richard Stinton, solutions architect at iland, noted that “as businesses deploy new applications and move critical workloads to save money and boost agility, it’s safe to say that the trend of mixing and matching cloud environments will only accelerate.”

“The cloud is the future of IT for all businesses, but for many companies, the journey to the cloud can be a challenge,” said Brian Kelly, Rackspace chief security officer in a statement. “One of the biggest hurdles and concerns for these companies is security – customers want to know that their data is protected with the most up-to-date and innovative technologies, even as their cloud needs evolve.

“Through our close collaboration with Cisco in threat protection, we are committed to helping secure our clients’ evolving and expanding journey to the cloud,” Kelly added.

You can find out more about the Cisco and Rackspace partnership here (video).

More companies are leveraging the power of APIs, but only a small minority has found a sustainable way to create and manage them.

That’s the key finding from API platform provider Jitterbit in its latest report. The study, titled ‘2018 State of API Integration’, found that of 450 companies surveyed, two in five (40%) had created APIs to expose internal data ‘as a service’ to both internal departments and external partners. More than half (57%) added that competitors in their industry were also utilising APIs in their business.

What’s more, more than two thirds (67%) say they are experiencing increased return on investment from exposing existing systems through APIs. Half of respondents said they were getting ideas to market faster, while attracting new partners, cited by 46% of those polled, and new revenue channels (42%) also popular.

The problem for organisations arises, however, with how they are coming together. The vast majority of companies polled admit they rely on developers for API creation and management. 60% say their developers do it on-site, 23% said they create APIs managed with AP-M tools, while 7% outsource it.

Alongside this, the research took steps to assess what cloud environments organisations had. An overwhelming 85% of respondents said they ran CRM applications in the cloud, well ahead of support and field service (47%), marketing (43%), and BI/analytics (32%). Around three quarters (74%) of those polled said they have at least three cloud systems deployed, with 11% saying they have more than 16 on the go.

Respondents were also asked how they connected and automated processes between their on-prem and cloud systems. One in three said they used cloud-based integration solutions, while 41% still opt for hand-coded or manual entry and 15% said they had no strategy at all. The report notes the disparity. “With the growing need to connect new cloud systems to existing technology investments, including those on-premise, only a third of companies surveyed appear to be positioned for success with their stack,” the report explains.

“These companies have a competitive advantage, though there is ample opportunity for those that shift their 2018 priorities.”

In terms of the API sustainability problem, however, the report recommends that using integration platform as a service (iPaaS) or similar – as 10% of companies polled already do – is key. “In their rush to leverage modern connected technologies, many companies are falling back on traditional methods for deploying and managing this technology,” the report concludes.

“With a heavy burden already placed on IT and developers, businesses are putting potential gains at risk by leaning on these same teams to develop, deploy and manage so many disparate systems.”

You can read the full report here (email required).

Cloud computing usage continues to grow, but at the expense of security as attackers take advantage, according to the latest Cisco annual cybersecurity report.

The study, now in its 11th iteration, puts together threat intelligence and cybersecurity trends from researchers and six technology partners, and found more than a quarter (27%) of security professionals polled use off-premises private clouds. This is up from 20% this time last year.

Of that number, more than half (57%) say they host networks in the cloud because of better data security, compared to 48% who cite scalability, and 46% for ease of use.

“While cloud offers better data security, attackers are taking advantage of the fact that security teams are having difficulty defending evolving and expanding cloud environments,” the company notes. “The combination of best practices, advanced security techniques like machine learning, and first-line-of-defence tools like cloud security platforms can help protect this environment.”

So what can be done? According to the 2018 Cisco Security Capabilities Benchmark report, a proportion of chief information security officers (CISOs) said they were eager to add tools such as machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) to their technology mix, but were frustrated by issues such as false positives.

The company added that machine learning and AI technologies will over time mature and learn what is ‘normal’ in the network environments they are monitoring.

Elsewhere, the report revealed how while security is getting more complex, the scope of breaches is expanding. Last year a quarter of security professionals said they used products from 11 to 20 vendors, up from 18% in 2016, while a third (32%) of breaches in 2017 affected more than half of systems.

Read more: Hackers ran crypto mining scripts on Tesla's cloud, research reveals

Inbound marketing software provider HubSpot is adopting Google Cloud to expand its international cloud infrastructure.

HubSpot will use the Google Cloud Platform Frankfurt region to provide outage and data protection, as well as support local customer data.

The company has long since been a customer of Google, particularly G Suite, with integrations for Google Calendar, Gmail, AdWords, Docs, and Drive being among the most popular among HubSpot users.

Kerry Munz, director of engineering and platform infrastructure at HubSpot, said the ‘speed and coverage of Google’s global network and strong capabilities in emerging technologies’ were also a factor in HubSpot’s decision.

Google has made various moves this year not only in emerging technologies but in emerging geographical areas. In January, the company expanded its infrastructure plans, opening five new regions this year – in the Netherlands, Montreal, Los Angeles, Finland, and Hong Kong – with three subsea cables commissioned across three continents.

“Our choice to use Google Cloud for our international cloud infrastructure is an investment in best in class technologies to support the rich systems that make up HubSpot’s software,” said Brad Coffey, chief strategy officer at HubSpot in a statement. “Given our existing successful integrations with AdWords and G Suite, this move is another meaningful step forward in our strategic partnership with Google Cloud.

“We look forward to working more closely with the Google team to better serve our customers,” added Coffey.

In July, Google said it had tripled the number of its big cloud deals – worth $500,000 or more – year over year, with CEO Sundar Pichai telling analysts the company’s cloud arm was experiencing “impressive growth across products, sectors and geographies.”

You can read the full HubSpot blog post here.

Hackers have been running crypto mining scripts on unsecured Kubernetes instances owned by Tesla, according to new research from security monitoring provider RedLock.

According to the study, which analysed public cloud environments monitored by RedLock – more than 12 million resources processing petabytes of network traffic – the unsecured Kubernetes pod exposed access credentials to Tesla’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) environment. From there, the environment contained an AWS S3 bucket which held sensitive data, such as telemetry.

While the issue was quickly closed off – it was immediately reported to Tesla by RedLock and rectified before it became public – the more interesting use case is around cryptojacking, whereby unused CPU resources on unwitting users’ machines are targeted to help mine cryptocurrencies.

A blog post from the company explained how the operation was carried out. The hackers, instead of using a ‘mining pool’ – where processing power is shared over a network to split the reward equally dependent on how much work was put in – installed mining pool software which was then configured to an unlisted endpoint. The real IP address was also hidden behind CloudFlare, while the hackers had ‘most likely’ purposely configured the mining software to keep CPU usage low.

All told, the measures meant IP address-based detection of the crypto mining activity was far more difficult. RedLock added that monitoring configurations, user behaviour and network traffic, and correlating the latter with configuration data, could help in tracking similar issues.

While there are some examples of crypto mining which are transparent – US news website Salon asking visitors to go through with the process if they have an ad blocker installed being a case in point – many are much more sinister. “The skyrocketing value of cryptocurrencies is prompting hackers to shift their focus from stealing data to stealing compute power in organisations’ public cloud environments,” the RedLock blog explained. “The nefarious network activity is going completely unnoticed.”

Cloud security best practices

On a wider theme, however, the report once again assesses the importance of the shared responsibility model in cloud computing. Almost three quarters (73%) of organisations analysed use their public cloud root user account to perform activities.

This creates a serious issue with data getting into the wrong hands; and indeed, AWS strongly advises such activity. Think of the AWS account key as like a credit card number and protect it as such, the company says in its best practice guide. As this publication has reported on several occasions, a provider such as AWS has security ‘of’ the cloud – data centre, hypervisor, routers and so on – while the organisation is responsible for security ‘in’ the cloud.

A couple of stories which have broken in the past week shed light on this. Last week, the BBC reported on a service called Buckhacker, which allowed users to trawl S3 buckets for unsecured sensitive data, while yesterday another story found security researchers had posted ‘friendly warnings’ to companies whose private content had been made public.

At the time of the Buckhacker release, Mark Hickman, chief operating officer at WinMagic, said organisations ‘must fulfil their part of the shared responsibility deal’ with regards to cloud security. “Customers should encrypt all data before it is placed in the cloud,” he said. “It is the last line of defence if a hacker gains access to their cloud services.

“Equally important is that encryption is employed where the keys are centrally managed and remain under the customer’s constant control, and the keys never stored on a public cloud service, or servers that could be exposed to a hack,” Hickman added.

The RedLock report shows this is less than common practice – and it is a concern shared by the company.

“In our analysis, cloud service providers such as Amazon, Microsoft and Google are trying to do their part, and none of the major breaches in 2017 was caused by their negligence. However, security is a shared responsibility,” said Gaurav Kumar, CTO of RedLock.

“Organisations of every stripe are fundamentally obliged to monitor their infrastructures for risky configurations, anomalous user activities, suspicious network traffic, and host vulnerabilities,” Kumar added. “Without that, anything the providers do will never be enough.”

You can read the full RedLock report here (email required).

Spending on public cloud services in the Asia Pacific region – excluding Japan – will hit $15 billion in 2018, representing an increase of 35% over the year before, according to IDC.

The findings show that while annual spending growth in the APeJ region will slow between the 2016 and 2021 forecast period, 2021 will see a total of $32.27bn. Spending on public cloud services this year will be driven by banking, with a spend of $1.85bn, ahead of professional services ($1.75bn) and discrete manufacturing ($1.63bn).

Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) will be the largest category of public cloud spending this year, IDC says, as global data centre providers gain more traction in the region. IaaS will contribute almost half (47.6%) to overall cloud spending in the region, just ahead of software as a service (SaaS) on 45.8% and well ahead of platform as a service (PaaS), although application platforms, which are part of the PaaS bucket, will see the quickest spending of all the areas.

Of the countries analysed in the APeJ region, China will be seen as the largest market for public cloud services in 2018 with $5.44bn, or around 36% of the overall spend. Australia, at $2.85bn, and India ($2.12bn), in second and third.

“China and India, the two largest markets in APeJ will account for about 60% of the region’s cloud market size,” said Ashutosh Bisht, IDC Asia Pacific research manager for customer insights and analysis. “The Chinese government has been actively promoting the development of the high-tech industry, and continues to implement its Internet+ strategy is a leading factor for China’s adoption to cloud technology.

“For India, accelerated demand by enterprises and government towards the implementation of new technology like blockchain, AI [and] IoT is making the cloud a bare necessity,” Bisht added.

According to the most recent report from the Asia Cloud Computing Association (ACCA), Hong Kong was seen as the most ‘cloud-ready’ Asia Pacific nation, ahead of Singapore and New Zealand. Australia and Japan finished fourth and fifth respectively, with China down at #13.

Storage provider Cloudian says it has achieved record growth for the third year in a row, with revenues up in every geographic segment and particular expansion in Europe.

The company’s results ‘point to the exploding need for scale-out storage solutions in an era when artificial intelligence, machine learning, IoT, high-resolution video and other data-intensive applications require businesses to manage data that is growing at an unprecedented rate’, in Cloudian’s own words.

Cloudian offers petabyte-scalable object and file storage, with its primary products, HyperStore and HyperFile, being based on object storage and enterprise network attached storage (NAS) file services respectively. Last month, the company issued its most recent update to HyperStore, the most interesting feature being around multi-cloud capability. Users can now employ a single API to access storage assets on-prem and in public clouds, including Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform and Amazon Web Services. Other features include unified data management and scale-out architecture.

Among the list of achievements Cloudian was crowing about in 2017 included growing its customer base by 100%, an extended EMEA presence with new teams in France, Germany and Italy, as well as expanding to 130 employees. On the partnership side, alongside the hyperscalers mentioned above, HP Enterprise, Lenovo and Cisco were mentioned. Cloudian also explored AI use cases and partnerships in 2017, including NVIDIA and Xcompass.

“Throughout 2017, Cloudian delivered record-high revenues in all four quarters by responding to the tsunami of data that modern technologies are creating,” said Michael Tso, CEO of Cloudian in a statement. “This growth was accompanied by an equally remarkable growth in repeat customer revenue, which is a testament to our employees’ and partners’ commitment to solving our customers’ expanding need for innovative storage solutions.”

The company has thus far raised $79 million in capital, the most recent being a $41m series D round in October 2016.

Juniper Networks has announced the launch of an expanded portfolio which includes helping organisations become ‘multi-cloud ready’.

The Sunnyvale-based network and infrastructure provider is including a variety of new offerings in the data centre, campus and branch aspects.

On the campus side – ‘recognising that campus networks will play an integral role in multi-cloud security and operations’, as the company puts it – the features include simplified management as well as new switches. For branch networks, Juniper is launching a new network services platform, while the company is also unveiling a secure cloud connectivity offering.

Each new product is going to be powered by the Juniper Networks Junos operating system, the company added.

“The promise of multi-cloud is to deliver an infrastructure that is secure, ubiquitous, reliable and fungible and where the mitigation of workloads will be a simple and intuitive process,” said Bikash Koley, Juniper chief technology officer. “For IT to be successful in becoming multi-cloud ready, it is critical organisations consider not only the data centre and public cloud, but also the on-ramps of their campus and branch networks.

“Otherwise, enterprises will face fractured security and operations as network boundaries prevent seamless, end to end visibility and control,” added Koley.

The argument around campus networks becoming vital to multi-cloud operations is an interesting one. Writing for this publication back in 2016, Ayu Shah, director of systems and sales engineering at networking provider Pica8, argued that in the coming years campus networks will ‘become far more complex and difficult to manage’ through traditional element and network management systems. “Software-defined networking is an ideal methodology to push policies to campus networks in a systematic and automated way,” wrote Shah.

You can find the full list of Juniper’s announcements here.