Microsoft has outlined provisions for adding capacity to its Azure servers for key public and emergency services across the world as teams fight to contain the escalating COVID-19 crisis.

The company says it has been monitoring its services and usage trends 24/7 to ensure customers are able to stay online as businesses adjust to a sharp rise in remote working. 

However, Microsoft has said a cohort of key customers will be prioritised should there be capacity constraints, which includes retaining priority over new Azure cloud capacity.

With demand rising, higher priority will be afforded to first responders, health and emergency services, critical government infrastructure organisational use, as well as ensuring remote workers are up and running with the core functionality of Teams. 

“Over the past several weeks, all of us have come together to battle the global health pandemic,” the company said in a blog post. “We are working closely with first responder organizations and critical government agencies to ensure we are prioritizing their unique needs and providing them our fullest support.

“We are also partnering with governments around the globe to ensure our local datacenters have on-site staffing and all functions are running properly,” added Microsoft.

The tech giant has stressed there aren’t any cloud constraints at the moment, but concerns remain that the stress on the wider internet will increase as more of the global population moves online.

A host of streaming providers, including Netflix and YouTube, have in the last few days reduced streaming quality as a direct response to these concerns.

Microsoft’s brief warning about potential usage constraints with Azure cloud services may cause concern for businesses currently struggling to grapple with masses of employees adopting flexible and remote working patterns.

It’s currently unclear what these restrictions mean for businesses and organisations not deemed to be a priority, should Azure servers be faced with capacity constraints in any of its regions – it’s likely that some businesses could struggle to secure extra capacity if demand continues to increase.

The industry giant has said, however, that it would communicate any updates as soon as possible through its online resources and blogs.

HPE has added a suite of ‘as a service’ networking capabilities to its GreenLake portfolio designed to give customers the tools to accelerate 5G deployment.

The HP spinoff is aiming to extend its reach with telecoms firms and enterprises with its new 5G tools, which are designed to enhance existing 5G networks and ramp up the scale of infrastructure rollout.

For example, the company’s cloud-native and container-based software platform, dubbed 5G Core Stack, will provide telecoms firms with 5G tech at the core of their mobile networks.

This is to ensure that networks are embedded with 5G technology at their hearts, as well as on the edge, termed standalone 5G networks. This is against non-standalone 5G networks (5G networks running on 4G cores) which is how many operators run their networks today.

HPE hopes that mobile network operators and virtual network operators can adopt the technology at the core and the edge, and repackage these platforms to serve their own enterprise customers.

This is in addition to technology from HPE subsidiary Aruba, which has been used to launch services geared towards raising interoperability and integration between 5G and Wi-Fi 6 networks. These services are dubbed Air Slice and Air Pass.

“Openness is essential to the evolutionary nature of 5G and with HPE 5G Core Stack telcos can reduce operational costs, deploy features faster and keep themselves open to multiple networks and technologies while avoiding being locked-in to a single vendor approach,” said Phil Mottram, VP and GM for HPE’s communications and media solutions division.

“HPE has one of the broadest 5G portfolios in the market and is uniquely positioned to help telcos build an open multi-vendor 5G core, optimise the edge with vRAN, and deliver connectivity and new compute services to the enterprise using MEC and Wi-Fi 6.”

The as a service suite is all-encompassing and includes both hardware and supporting software, as well as cloud-native 5G functions such as Air Slice and Air Pass.

While HPE initially hopes to complement technology offered by the likes of networking giants Huawei and Ericsson, Mottram conceded that smaller customers may opt to replace all services offered by these firms with HPE technology.

This bold move to give network operators and enterprises an alternative has been made possible due to the open nature of 5G standards.

These standards were devised to break the stranglehold that existed previously, and allow enterprises to effectively mix and match elements of their 5G infrastructure in a way that wasn’t possible with previous generations of technology like 3G and 4G.

The technology, which includes the underlying 5G infrastructure, as well as support software at both the core and the edge, will be made available to customers on a consumption-based model through the company’s GreenLake portfolio.

With 50 conversations currently underway with prospective customers, HPE expects larger enterprises to adopt a sample of the 5G as a service portfolio, while smaller firms are more likely to adopt the full capabilities on an end-to-end basis.

In terms of cloud-native 5G functions that can work on top of the underlying 5G infrastructure, meanwhile, HPE launched a couple of enterprise-oriented services powered by Aruba’s 16.5 million hotspots.

Air Slice, for example, allows customers to carve up their networks into segments with dedicated functions to avoid crosstalk. Air Pass, meanwhile, gives individuals the capacity to join Wi-Fi networks without having to manually enter credentials.

Users’ identities are verified using their ties with another entity, such as a bank or a mobile network, in a similar way to one-click social media logins, used by Facebook or Sign in with Apple.

“As part of the foundational capability we’re talking about here is a shared data environment, so having a data model you can utilise across different functions in the capabilities and sharing it across different functions,” HPE’s chief technologist for communications and media, Chris Dando told IT Pro.

He added HPE was looking at how the end experience could be made seamless, with individuals not just tied to a physical SIM or looked on as being a phone number, but retaining their individuality. This is just one aspect of the suite of cloud-native 5G functionality the firm is hoping to build out.

“Those sorts of things are where we’ve led the way and are taking that too the next layer with regards to building out some of these core capabilities,” he continued.

“That’s going to become more and more important if you look to add on more device types for different use cases, as you get into IoT, and being able to identify groups of things as being part of a particular workflow or enterprise-type environment.”

Cisco, incidentally, outlined a similar Wi-Fi hopping technology at its flagship Cisco Live 2020 conference in January, which has already been deployed at the Fira de Barcelona.

It was expected to allow visitors to Mobile World Congress (MWC) hop seamlessly between 4G and 5G networks and the venue’s Wi-Fi networks, before the event was cancelled due to the global coronavirus outbreak.

​WatchGuard Technologies has agreed to purchase Spanish antivirus software developer Panda Security and integrate its systems into its own security platform to service customers and partners of both companies.

WatchGuard aims to provide a complete cyber security portfolio of products and services for its customers, and will, with time, integrate Panda’s technology into its own systems. This is especially true for the firm’s user-centric threat detection and response tools.

Panda launched in 1998 as a security firm specialising in developing IT security services, predominantly antivirus software. Its popular Free Antivirus package has long been a favourite for home-based online security, although Pana has expanded its range of services to offer tools for businesses, as well as technology for preventing cyber crime. 

Beyond providing user-focused security services, WatchGuard is known for producing secure Wi-Fi appliances, such as the recently-reviewed Firebox M670. 

“Businesses today face an increasingly sophisticated and evolving threat landscape, scarcity of trained security professionals, and an increasingly porous perimeter,” said WatchGuard’s CEO Prakash Panjwani.

“As a result, network security, advanced endpoint protection, multi-factor authentication, secure networking, and threat detection and response capabilities are consistently ranked as top security investment areas by IT decision-makers and IT solution providers who serve them.

“By bringing the companies together, we enable our current and future customers and partners to consolidate their fundamental security services under a single brand, backed by the innovation and quality that is a core part of both companies’ DNA.”

Among Panda’s most highly-prized assets is the patented technology TruPrevent, which amounts to proactive capabilities geared towards blocking unknown malware. This is in addition to the Collective Intelligence model it deploys to detect, analyse, and classify viruses in real-time.

The tools Panda is feeding into WatchGuard’s platforms are powered by a combination of automation, AI processes, and analyst-led investigation. The company also recently launched a sophisticated threat hunting service available for enterprises, as well as managed security service providers (MSSPs) who resell Panda services.

“We are thrilled to merge with WatchGuard because of the new scale and portfolio access it provides to Panda Security customers and partners,” said Panda’s CEO Juan Santamaria.

“We are also excited to see our innovative product portfolio be delivered via WatchGuard’s strong global network of partners. Together, we look forward to building a security platform that bridges the network and user perimeter, with capabilities that are unmatched in the cybersecurity market.”

The agreement, the value of which has been undisclosed, is likely to close in the second quarter of 2020.

Hard disk manufacturer Western Digital has appointed David Goeckeler to serve as its new CEO after its former chief Steve Milligan announced his intention to retire late last year.

Goeckeler will leave networking giant Cisco to join the firm as its new leader, having served as executive vice president and general manager for its networking and security business. This division has been valued at $34 billion.

One of his last actions with Cisco was overseeing the release of smart troubleshooting functionality for monitoring applications in January, at the firm’s flagship Cisco Live event.

Western Digital’s former CEO announced he was retiring in October having been with the firm since 2002 and having occupied a leadership role since 2013. He also occupied senior roles with Hitachi from 2007, before rejoining Western Digital in 2012 when it acquired the company.

​Oracle is preparing to cut more than a thousand jobs across locations in Europe as part of a wider restructuring following several turbulent months.

The software giant may slash up to 1,300 staff in Ireland, as well as possibly Amsterdam and Malaga, with employees invited to reapply for their roles, according to the Irish Times.

This comes following its inconsistent financial results, with second-quarter revenues for the 2020 fiscal year, which closed 30 November 2019, falling short of analyst expectations.

Staff based in Ireland were invited to an all-hands meeting with managers on Wednesday afternoon, according to the report, in which they were told about the plans. 

An unnamed spokesperson told the Irish Times that the company would continue to rebalance resources and restructure teams as Oracle’s cloud business grows. IT Pro approached Oracle for confirmation but the company declined to comment.

The company has undergone several staffing fluctuations over the last year or so, with the latest round of layoffs coming almost exactly a year after the company cut approximately 350 roles in order to remain close to AWS’ cloud model.

The wider ambitions meant cutting back staffing in areas such as the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) unit, as well as its infrastructure as a service (IaaS) business aimed at compute, storage and network resources.

The latest round of up-to-1,300 job cuts could affect employees working across its sales, business development and solutions engineering units. 

The firm’s second-quarter 2020 financial results saw revenue from its cloud and on-premise licensing business drop by 7% to $1.1 billion, while cloud services and license support revenue rose 3% to $6.8 billion.

The news comes in contrast with the company’s ambitions set out in October last year, with Oracle’s executive vice president for its OCI unit Don Johnson outlining plans to hire 2,000 additional workers.

The hires were expected to feed into the expansion of its cloud computing services as the company attempts to compete more strongly against the likes of Azure and AWS. These jobs would be added in the US and India at the firm’s software development hubs.

It’s no secret the IT industry is heavily male-dominated, with women traditionally struggling to achieve representation for reasons ranging from implicit bias to discouragement from taking up STEM subjects at school. 

While there are plenty of success stories, important to recognise as we approach International Women’s Day, there are also tales that speak to toxic work cultures, workplace discrimination, and women being overlooked for opportunities.

The last few years have heard a crescendo in the commotion on ‘women in tech’, although it’s hardly translated into concrete improvements. For instance, progress has stalled for the Tech Talent Charter (TTC), an organisation dedicated to raising gender balance in the UK. Women held just 24% of technical roles among TTC signatories last year, a 2% dip against figures from 2018. 

The picture isn’t unified across the entire tech landscape, however. The exciting frontier of cloud computing is challenging the narrative, Ingram Micro Cloud’s Microsoft business manager Violetta Yordanova tells Cloud Pro, with the sector’s rapid expansion opening up new opportunities and roles for women to fill.

“As cloud is a relatively new technology, my experience of being a ‘woman in tech’ may not be typical, as the cloud industry is extremely diverse,” Yordanova says. “In fact, my team has an equal gender split with a real mix of personalities, cultures and strengths from people who grew up with this technology.”

Her experiences are reflected by those of F5 Networks’ principal threat evangelist with the office of the CTO, Lori MacVittie, who feels the cloud industry is more welcoming because there’s less of an ‘establishment’.

“Whether it’s coincidental or not, the rise of cloud was accompanied by a significant drive to recognise and support women ‘in cloud’,” MacVittie explains. “The culture of the cloud industry is very welcoming and cloud as a technology is often credited as democratising the resources needed for women to take their place as entrepreneurs.”

Startups tend to be more progressive because technology has allowed women to more effectively drive their ideas to fruition, she adds. There’s been an explosion of women-led cloud startups, partially fuelled by a rise of flexible working practices.

“The adoption of cloud-based solutions in the workplace has also meant that it’s easier to balance work and life, because the tools you need to work are always accessible from anywhere – even home,” she continues. “I see that accessibility as broadening corporate acceptance of remote work when it’s necessary and alleviates stress on women who struggle with work-life balance.”

While many, including MacVittie and Yordanova, recognise differences, for senior software engineer with Red Hat, Rebecca Simmonds, these are few and far between, despite the fact the growing cloud segment is fed with plenty of resources, she tells Cloud Pro.

“At Red Hat, we have equal opportunities for all of the different sectors in the company, not just cloud. So my experience as I have moved around different companies is that as long as you are willing to work hard then there are similar opportunities in any of the tech sectors,” Simmonds says.

Despite these opportunities, the challenges that women face persist, albeit differing from person-to-person. For Simmonds, as she moved from a startup to a Java EE company, and then to Red Hat, she has felt pressured into always needing to demonstrate her expertise.

“Proving myself and making a great impression when meeting people has been the biggest challenge I had to tackle,” she says. “Women in the tech sector are still stigmatised, and I constantly feel pressured to demonstrate my knowledge. The good thing is that it’s really motivated me to work harder, push my limits, and fight the stereotypes in the industry.”

It’s similar to the experiences of F5 Networks’ MacVittie, meanwhile, who hasn’t come across many roadblocks based on her gender, although there are aspects of workplace relationships with men that have proven frustrating.

“Throughout my career I have experienced male colleagues who wouldn’t take direction from a woman, and also men at conferences who are completely taken aback when they realise I know what I am talking about,” she says. “My question is, what made you assume I didn’t? It’s frustrating but something I try to move past quickly – you can’t let people like that bring you down!”

She also sees wrestling with career progression a major challenge, especially as women become more established in their roles and industries. There are, she adds, fewer options to progress the more established one becomes, with women having to be more strategic about their personal development to ensure they have the skills needed to advance.

“The challenge, in early stages, is to establish yourself in your field of expertise and figure out how to build a reputation that will help you later when you start planning more strategically. Choosing a company that best suits your priorities for your career and life is an important factor in balancing both. If your priority is family, you don’t want to work for a company that doesn’t respect that. If your priority is your career, you want to make sure there are opportunities to [progress] where you work.”

This represents only half of the equation, however, argues head of EMEA and VP of global customer experience with Dropbox, Adrienne Gormley. Effective management plays a critical role in personal development, and women must be empowered to feel at ease with the demands of their work and home lives. 

“I really believe that it’s part of being an effective manager today to help others balance their life at home with work, and to model setting boundaries for your team,” she says. “We can bring empathy for the pressures of home life into the workplace, underlining that we understand the demands on individuals, whether as parents, or carers looking after a relative or other commitments. Looking at how we can make the workplace easier for people is deeply important to me: how we can help alleviate the pressure of trying to do it all.”

Gormley’s biggest piece of advice is for women to set their boundaries early on in their careers, and take an active role in their futures. Moreover, if something isn’t working, take a risk and speak up, or ultimately make a move. 

“Different people will be there for you, but they come and go, ultimately it’s your journey. The sooner you understand that, the sooner you can really be empowered to make choices and changes, and your actions will help shape the workplace at large.”

The joint-Salesforce CEO Keith Block has stepped down from his leadership role after just 18 months in-post, leaving founder Marc Benioff as the sole CEO of the software company.

Block’s resignation has come as a surprise, given the former Oracle VP has come on leaps and bounds since joining Salesforce in 2013, and was widely considered to be a potential successor to Benioff in the future.

The co-CEO first joined the customer relationship management (CRM) company in 2013 as head of sales, before being promoted to COO.

He took up the co-CEO role from August 2018, meaning that he’d only been in the role for little more than 18 months before announcing his intent to step down.

The nature of his departure is also somewhat of a mystery, with no explicit reason offered by the company.

Block will stay on with the company for an extra year to serve as an advisor before moving on, and Benioff will now handle the duties the two had previously shared.

The company revealed Block’s decision on a conference call with analysts in which it shared financial results for the fourth quarter of 2019, according to Business Insider.

The firm’s executives, including Benioff, praised Block for his almost seven-year stint at the company, and wished him well for the future.

“I am his biggest supporter,” Benioff said, adding: “I’m his close friend. You’ll always be part of our Ohana [the Hawaiian word for family].”

On the call, the company reported a net loss of $248 million for the fourth quarter of last year, compared with a net income of $362 million for the same quarter in 2018. Moreover, its total revenues rose by 34.6% to $4.85 billion, which beat analyst estimates of $4.75 billion.

The CRM company has made a series of acquisitions over the last year, the most significant of which is its purchase of data management firm Tableau for approximately $16 billion. This was in addition to its purchase of ClickSoftware for $1.35 billion in August.

Already in 2020, the company has acquired data personalisation company Evergage, and industry-specific cloud provider Vlocity.

​Mozilla has begun the rollout of encrypted DNS over HTTPS (DoH) by default for all its US-based Firefox users after working for years to upgrade the Domain Name System (DNS) protocol.

Over the next few weeks, Firefox users will be able to use the DoH protocol by default while surfing the web, meaning their web traffic will be fully encrypted. This technology blocks third-party interception and also prevents Internet Service Providers from maintaining visibility over users’ activity.

DNS, which remains unchanged since the 80s, has been long-considered an insecure protocol that, while fundamental to the internet’s structure, allows for threats such as man-in-the-middle attacks.

The archaic database links a URL to an IP address, with browsers able to identify the websites for users by matching the two when a query is made. Because there is no encryption, however, other devices may intercept these queries and potentially collect this data.

DNS lookups are often sent to servers that can allow third-parties to gain access to users search and browsing history without their knowledge. It’s one of the key methods that ISPs deploy when implementing tools like web blockers.

“Today, we know that unencrypted DNS is not only vulnerable to spying but is being exploited, and so we are helping the internet to make the shift to more secure alternatives,” Mozilla said

“We do this by performing DNS lookups in an encrypted HTTPS connection. 

“This helps hide your browsing history from attackers on the network, helps prevent data collection by third parties on the network that ties your computer to websites you visit.”

Mozilla’s DoH implementation involves routing users’ web traffic to a DNS server hosted by either Cloudflare or NextDNS depending on their preference, instead of DNS servers hosted by ISPs and networking companies.

The DoH protocol will be configured by default for US users over the next few weeks, although users outside of the US may activate this level of encryption by accessing the settings menu. This is an option in the connection settings menu.

This privacy-focused move typifies the approach Mozilla has taken in recent years to fine-tuning and differentiating its Firefox browser from a host of competing applications, such as Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge.

Chrome, however, also allows users to adopt DoH, although this will have to be manually configured, unlike for US users in Firefox, and soon across the rest of the world, who will enjoy DoH security by default.

Microsoft, similarly, embraced this protocol in November, announcing it would work to implement more secure technology into its products. This would start with plans to upgrade its servers to use the DoH protocol.

The shift to DoH is expected to anger ISPs, who in the UK previously branded the company an ‘internet villain’ for simply considering implementing the protocol.

Service providers, and regulators like Ofcom, or the FCC in the US, have relied on the DNS protocol for a host of functions, such as implementing content blockers. The mass implementation of DoH would render such tools useless as ISPs would lose all visibility over their customers’ web traffic.

Microsoft has unveiled an operations-centric module for its Dynamics 365 suite of enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) applications, on top of enhanced AI capabilities.

Customers are being promised smarter AI-powered business insights in 2020, with additional technology powering new features such as forecasting in Dynamics 365’s Sales and Finance Insights apps. A preview for these features is expected to be released in May.

This is included in a package of 400 new and updated features set to be rolled out over the course of this year as part of Microsoft’s 2020 release wave 1, which spans features touted to be released from April through September.

The Dynamics 365 Project Operations tool, slated for an October 2020 release, is being launched to support project-oriented teams managing data across different data silos to stitch their systems together.

The application connects cross-functional project teams, with Microsoft claiming that it offers the visibility needed to reduce the barriers to efficient working that currently exist.

“The predictive forecasting capabilities enable the proactive decision-making needed to meet sales goals,” Microsoft’s president for business applications James Phillips said, of the suite’s enhanced AI capabilities.

“Dynamics 365 does this by extracting patterns from customer relationship management (CRM) data, current and historical leads, won or lost opportunities, contacts, accounts, customer interactions such as emails and calls, and more data sources, and then projecting these patterns into the future.”

Updates to Microsoft’s customer data platform, meanwhile, aim to help organisations struggling to give their customers a personalised experience. These struggles are largely attributable to disconnected systems and data silos that can’t join together to give a holistic view of the customer journey across websites, purchases, service calls, and app usage.

The company is introducing first and third-party data connections to enrich customer profiles, that can be updated in real-time. These will be laced with insights from third-party data sources, including demographics and personal interest, in order to generate a rich picture of organisations’ customers.

Microsoft is also expanding the availability of customer insights to government cloud computing environments in order to improve the ‘citizen experience’, meaning public sector customers can better interact with employees and citizens.

Fujitsu has agreed on a deal with Thales to integrate the security firm’s cloud and encryption services into its own portfolio to expand its security offerings to customers in Europe.

Thales’ Cloud Hardware Security Modules (HSM) and Key Management services will be adopted by the Japanese tech firm, with a view to bolstering its public key infrastructure (PKI) based services.

The security company’s Cloud HSM service, Data Protection on Demand, will be used by Fujitsu within its core security infrastructure in order to provide businesses with a more secure key management service.

The decision to opt for Thales technology lies in a need for Fujitsu to raise the level of security in its existing customers’ infrastructure and to remain compliant with regulations, the company said.

The security firm’s Cloud HSM service offered a cost-effective way to provide customers access to a Microsoft certification authority-based PKI regime.

“We’re always looking to ensure our customers have access to the very best security solutions on the market and this partnership with Thales offers exactly that,” said Fujitsu’s security offering architect, Petri Heinälä.

“One of our customers, a leading European pharmaceutical company, is already benefitting from our adoption of Data Protection On Demand. The client needed to shore up their key management practices, with increased healthcare regulations related to data protection, data privacy and audit controls.”

The partnership has also been strengthened with the launch of an enterprise data encryption service that uses Thales’ key management platform.

The companies claim this platform ensures effective compliance with data protection legislation while offering a secure means of encrypting sensitive business data.

This new service will form part of Fujitsu’s Data Protection suite of services and will be made available to customers across on-premise, hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

“Data protection is a clear priority for many businesses as they fight to prevent breaches and comply with increasing regulatory requirements,” said Thales’ vice president for encryption solutions, Todd Moore.

“Protecting core assets such as identities and data using encryption and PKI management should now be the minimum security posture for every organisation.

“It’s vital that managed services providers are able to respond to the changes quickly, efficiently and affordably, while meeting the security requirements head on.”