Intel has reportedly acquired Israeli data science startup Cnvrg.io in a bid to strengthen its artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning credentials.

In a statement given to TechCrunch, Intel confirmed the deal and said in a short statement that “Cnvrg will be an independent Intel company and will continue to serve its existing and future customers”. The company did not disclose any terms of the deal. 

Cnvrg.io was started in 2016 and runs a data science platform aimed at helping enterprises to manage and build up AI efforts. It claims that it is a pioneer in building cutting-edge machine learning development solutions to help customers rapidly build machine learning models.

The platform offers paid and free tiers and works in on-premise, cloud and hybrid environments.

Among the Israeli firm’s partners include Red Hat, NetApp and Nvidia, while its customers include Lightricks, ST Unitas and Playtika.

In a recent blog post, co-founder and CEO Yochay Ettun said that its machine learning dashboard could improve visibility and increase machine learning server usage by up to 80%. Its dashboard helps IT teams see allocation and utilisation of different jobs, clusters, by user and by job.

Admins can monitor and compare overall capacity versus allocation and utilisation with graphs to identify gaps in efficiency.

Recently, Cnvrg.io raised $8 million in venture capital funding from investors such as Hanaco Venture Capital and Jerusalem Venture Partners. 

Barely a week ago, Intel made another acquisition in the AI sector with the purchase of SigOpt for an undisclosed amount. The company provides a software platform for research groups such as OpenAI to increase AI model performance.

Smart manufacturing looks set to drive growth in the industrial IoT market over the next five years.

According to a recent study by Jupiter Research, the number of Industrial IoT connections will increase from 17.7 billion in 2020 to 36.8 billion in 2025, representing an overall growth rate of 207%. 

The new research, Industrial IoT: Future Market Outlook, Technology Analysis & Key Players 2020-2025, predicts that 5G and LPWA (Low Power Wide Area) networks will play vital roles in creating service offerings to the manufacturing industry.

These technologies will also enable the realisation of the ‘smart factory’ concept, in which real-time data transmission and high connection densities allow highly autonomous operations for manufacturers, researchers said.

Private 5G services will also be a crucial step in maximising the value of a smart factory to service users, by leveraging the technology to enable superior levels of autonomy amongst operations. These networks should be valuable to manufacturers when used for the transmission of large amounts of data in environments with a high density of connections, Juniper said, and where significant levels of data are generated. 

The report said that this would enable large-scale manufacturers to reduce operational spend through efficiency gains.

The research predicts that over 80% of global Industrial IoT market value will be attributable to software spend by 2025, reaching $216 billion. Software tools leveraging machine learning for enhanced data analysis and the identification of network vulnerabilities are now essential to connected manufacturing operations.

“Manufacturers must exercise caution when implementing IoT technology; resisting the temptation to introduce connectivity to all aspects of operations. Instead, manufacturers must focus on the collection of data on the most valuable areas to drive efficiency gains,” said research author Scarlett Woodford.

Oracle has been forced to issue an out-of-band patch to fix a critical remote code execution (RCE) flaw affecting multiple Oracle WebLogic Server versions.

The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2020-14750, could enable hackers to remotely exploit the server via an HTTP GET through the server’s console component, without any user interaction and may be exploited over a network without the need for a username and password.

“Due to the severity of this vulnerability and the publication of exploit code on various sites, Oracle strongly recommends that customers apply the updates provided by this Security Alert as soon as possible,” Oracle explained in an https://www.oracle.com/security-alerts/alert-cve-2020-14750.html advisory.

The advisory said that the supported Oracle WebLogic Server versions that are affected by CVE-2020-14750 include 10.3.6.0.0, 12.1.3.0.0, 12.2.1.3.0, 12.2.1.4.0, and 14.1.1.0.0.

Proof-of-concept code that could exploit the bug was made public on GitHub. According to security firm Spyse, around 3,300 WebLogic servers are exposed at the moment and could be vulnerable to the flaw.

In a blog post, Eric Maurice, director of Security Assurance at Oracle, shared a link to help users harden affected servers.

He also said that the vulnerability is related to CVE-2020-14882, which was addressed in the October 2020 Critical Patch Update. That particular flaw could enable hackers network access via HTTP to achieve total compromise and takeover of vulnerable Oracle WebLogic Servers.

The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) also warned users about the dangers of the vulnerability and encouraged administrators to apply the patch as soon as possible. 

AWS has announced it will be launching a new Europe region in Zurich, slated for opening in the latter half of 2022.

Zurich will be the firm’s eighth region in Europe, alongside those Dublin, Frankfurt, London, Paris, Stockholm, Milan, and Spain.

AWS currently has 77 Availability Zones across 24 regions worldwide with today’s announcement bringing the total number of global regions (operational and in the works) up to 27. AWS has already announced plans for 12 more Availability Zones and four more AWS Regions in Switzerland, Indonesia, Japan, and Spain.

AWS said that the new region will give Swiss customers the ability to run applications that must comply with strict data sovereignty requirements in Switzerland. It will also enable customers to run apps from data centres in the country, lowering latencies in applications across the region.

“For more than 14 years, AWS has supported organisations across almost every industry in Switzerland to speed up innovation, lower their IT costs, and transform their operations,” said Peter DeSantis, senior vice president of Global Infrastructure and Customer Support at AWS.

“AWS is excited to announce our upcoming region in Switzerland and help Swiss institutions, innovative startups, and world-leading pharma companies deliver cloud-powered applications to fuel economic development across the country.”

AWS opened its first Swiss office in Zurich in April 2016 and in 2017 it announced an Amazon CloudFront Edge Location and Direct Connect location in Zurich as well as a second office in Geneva.

AWS said it would continue to build up a team of account managers, technical account managers, partner managers, systems engineers, solutions architects, professional services to help customers in the country move to the cloud.

Google Chrome is losing its share in the browser market to Microsoft Edge for the first time, according to new stats from NetMarketShare.

In its latest report for October 2020, Chrome usage decreased from 69.94% in September 2020 to 69.25% a month later.

At the same time, Edge increased from 8.84% to 10.22%. It is thought the increase may be because of Microsoft promoting Edge as part of its latest Windows 10 20H2 update with a taskbar ad that urges people to use the browser.

The report also found that Firefox gained a little ground on Chrome, edging up from 7.19% in September to 7.22% a month later.

In its operating systems report NetMarketShare found that Windows 10’s market share increased from 61.26% in September 2020 to 64.04% in October. Unsurprisingly, Windows 7 share also decreased from 22.77% to 20.41% over the same period. Apple’s macOS 10.15 also declined from 5.11% to 4.88%.

Seperately, NetMarketShare signalled that it would be “retiring” its browser market report in its current form as an upcoming change in browsers will “break our device detection technology and will cause inaccuracies for a long period of time”.

It added that as it has focused on bot detection and removal as a key part of the quality control process, but noted that “as time has gone on, it has become increasingly difficult to manage this process. So, instead of accepting increasing levels of inaccuracy, we thought it would be a good time to call it a day.”

It added that Netmarketshare will “re-emerge at some point with a focus on ecommerce trends and verifiable user data”.

Enterprise spending on cloud infrastructure services in the third quarter of this year increased by 33% to $33 billion, according to new research from an analyst firm.

Figures from Synergy Research Group showed that the year-on-year growth rate for Q3 was higher than the 32% growth seen in the previous quarter. This, said analysts, demonstrated the health of the market.

The research found that Amazon and Microsoft continue to account for over half of the global market, with Amazon’s market share staying at around 33%, while Microsoft’s share was over 18%.

Google, Alibaba and Tencent are all growing quicker than the overall market and are increasing market share, Synergy said. Together they account for 17% of the market.

The other cloud providers in the top ten rankings include IBM, Salesforce, Oracle, NTT and SAP. In aggregate, the top ten providers account for 80% of the worldwide market, with the remaining 20% coming from a range of small cloud providers or large companies with only a small position in the market.

“While we were fully expecting continued robust growth in the market, the scale of the growth in Q3 was a little surprising,” said John Dinsdale, chief analyst at Synergy Research Group. “Total revenues were up by $2.5 billion from the previous quarter causing the year-on-year growth rate to nudge upwards, which is unusual for such a large market.”

He added that companies competing for a share of the market have settled into three camps: “Amazon and Microsoft are in a league of their own, while others are either aggressively seeking to grow their position in the market or are more focused on specific services, geographies or customer groupings,” he added.

With most of the major cloud providers having now released their earnings data for Q3, Synergy estimates that quarterly cloud infrastructure service revenues (including IaaS, PaaS and hosted private cloud services) were $32.8 billion, with trailing twelve-month revenues reaching $119 billion.

The research firm also found that Public IaaS and PaaS services account for the bulk of the market and those grew by 35% in Q3.

The dominance of the major cloud providers is even more distinct in public cloud, where the top five control almost 80% of the market. Analysts said that the cloud market continues to grow strongly in all regions of the world.

The NHS, through its Shared Business Services (SBS) arm, has launched a new procurement framework that provides the entire public sector with a simple and legally compliant way to purchase cloud solutions.

The Cloud Solutions Framework is comprised of 24 suppliers and will be available to the NHS, local authorities, police, educational establishments, and any other public sector organisation.

The four lot scheme covering a wide range of cloud support that includes both bespoke and off-the-shelf solutions.

Lot 1 offers solution design and consultancy, Lot 2 covers IaaS, SaaS and PaaS offerings, Lot 3 includes cloud support services, while Lot 4 offers end-to-end cloud that helps organisations find a trusted partner that can offer complete start-to-finish support for its cloud journey.

The framework will run until September 2021, but there is an option to extend this for two more years. It will also encourage suppliers to launch new products and solutions throughout the life of the agreement to benefit the public sector.

The cloud market is a very crowded and complex on, according to Phil Davies, procurement director at NHS SBS who said the aim of the new framework was to remove some of that complexity. 

“To ensure framework users have access to the very best cloud services at the most competitive price, we carried out a rigorous tender process and limited the number of suppliers on the framework to the 10 or 20 most outstanding in each Lot. The result is a specialist pool of 24 leading suppliers, which provide the greatest expertise and value-for-money to the public sector,” he said.

“The framework is structured in a way that includes a full range of cloud support services. It means that regardless of where a public body is on its journey into the cloud, or how straightforward or complex its requirements, purchasing the right support is simple, cost-effective and OJEU-compliant.”

A full list of suppliers on the new NHS SBS Cloud Solutions Framework is available here.

National Express has signed an eight-year IT modernisation deal with IBM and Vodafone Business to help the coach company with its hybrid cloud plans.

Under the agreement, the Vodafone Business and IBM venture will modernise National Express’ IT estate by moving to IBM Cloud and implementing a hybrid cloud strategy, building on the existing connectivity services provided by Vodafone Business.

IBM and Vodafone said that this would allow National Express to manage multiple clouds in different locations and from different vendors, as well as letting it scale up and down to support spikes in usage.

There will also be extra security and risk management to protect National Express’s infrastructure.

The agreement covers the provision of cloud and digital services that will underpin National Express’ ‘digital first’ approach; to use the latest technologies to raise customer and safety standards, drive efficiencies and grow its business. 

The deal will also mean that National Express can start to develop customer-focused innovations, such as personalised passenger experiences, flexible payment options and always-connected vehicles.

The coach firm will also have access to other cloud services and new technologies such as 5G, IoT, edge computing and analytics.

Debbie O’Shea, group chief information officer for National Express said that the partnership enables the company to “move to a cloud environment giving us a future-proofed platform with increased flexibility that will better support our business”.

“It also will provide access to emerging and innovative new technologies,” she added.

Anne Sheehan, business director at Vodafone UK, said that cloud services and connectivity are now “inseparable”.

“We will provide National Express with the holistic solution it requires to drive digital innovation across its business – faster, simpler and at scale,” she said.

Equinix has expanded its partnership with VMware to jointly develop solutions to speed up enterprise hybrid cloud transformations. The partnership will see VMware Cloud on Dell EMC (VCDE) hardware running within Equinix data centres worldwide.

According to an announcement by both companies, enterprises will be able to use hybrid, multicloud infrastructures and network connectivity to address the increasing volume and complexity of their application workload needs.

VMware will support Equinix as a global colocation provider for VMware Cloud on Dell EMC, combining systems and storage in hybrid cloud infrastructures.

With the Equinix Cloud Exchange Fabric (ECX Fabric) interconnection service on Platform Equinix, the colocation firm said enterprises can take advantage of private multicloud connectivity and deploy hybrid cloud infrastructures.

ECX Fabric is an on-demand, SDN-enabled interconnection service that helps meet the digital transformation needs of enterprises today by allowing any business to connect between its own distributed infrastructure and any other company’s distributed infrastructure, including the world’s largest cloud providers, on Platform Equinix.

Users will also gain access to potentially thousands of new global partners they can interconnect with via ECX Fabric.

Pat Gelsinger, CEO of VMware, said that the expanded partnership “will enable our mutual customers to gain the benefit of the Equinix enterprise capabilities and the world-class VMware Cloud on Dell EMC solution”.

Rick Villars, research vice president of Datacenter & Cloud at IDC, said digital businesses require IT transformation and a complete end-to-end workload modernisation plan that enables full automation and continuous optimisation of applications.

“Shifting to an interconnected, hybrid cloud model that enables optimal placement and easy movement of workloads across multiple shared and dedicated cloud environments based on latency, resiliency and data security requirements is the critical first step in this transformation. Solutions like VMware Cloud on Dell EMC, integrated with the Equinix interconnection platform, provide businesses with a well-connected, hybrid cloud-ready foundation to quickly address the increasing complexity and volume of applications in a digital world,” he added.

Oracle and Microsoft have expanded their multicloud alliance to the UK, following the launch of the partnership in June.

Users of both companies’ clouds will be able to interconnect IT environments and applications that span both clouds. Vinay Shivagange Chandrashekar, vice president of product management at Oracle, said that linking cloud regions that are physically close to each other makes the interconnection more useful.

“Closer cloud resources means less latency, which enables better data transfer and application interaction between clouds, and supports a broader spectrum of workloads using resources on both sides. By enabling this interconnection in London, we’re opening the door for usage of this kind on a whole new continent,” he said, adding that London is “one of the most active Oracle Cloud regions”.

“By enabling a preconfigured, dedicated interconnection, common controls, integrated identity management, and support capabilities, we’re giving customers a roster of new services in Azure that they can use with the services that they use in our cloud,” he said.

He added that many customers that run in the UK can now deploy Oracle databases and applications as cloud services, and connect those services to applications on Azure that run the Microsoft stack. Joint customers can create a combination of services from each cloud, matching each part of their workload inventory to the optimal cloud for each, without added complexity or settling for an inferior environment for parts of what they run.

Chandrashekar said that before the cloud Oracle and Microsoft technologies could coexist effectively in customer data centres, with systems running each stack close enough for easy information exchange.

“The move to cloud broke this capability. Each vendor’s cloud was isolated from the others, making interchange between solutions on each difficult or impossible,” he said. “This alliance gives customers the ability to interconnect workloads from multiple vendors as they could in their own data centres.”

Chandrashekar added that more multivendor solutions will be enabled by decoupled application architectures, common management frameworks, and better interconnection of networks.