At least half of Salesforce employees will continue to work from home after the pandemic, according to the CRM services provider’s CEO Marc Benioff.

In an interview with CNBC, Benioff said that “maybe 50%, 60% [of staff] are going to be working at home”, which is considerably more than prior to the pandemic.

“Before this all started, 20% of our workers worked at home,” he said. 

Salesforce has had a notably lax attitude towards its employees returning to the office, with the company’s president and chief people officer Brent Hyder recently stating that “the 9-to-5 workday is dead”. 

In February, the company announced that it would provide its employees with the choice of three working models; flex, fully remote and office-based. Those opting for the ‘flex’ model will spend between one and three days a week in the office, mostly for collaborative projects, customer meetings and presentations.

Although Benioff said that he “won’t be ringing any bell saying: alright everybody get back in the office”, he expects staff to “come back” eventually. However, he noted that the working experience has been inadvertently changed over the course of the pandemic.

“The past is gone,” he said. “We’ve created a whole new world, a new digital future, and you can see it playing out today.”

Other tech companies embracing remote working include Dropbox, Panaseer, HomeHero, and 3RSP, with the latter’s business development director Stuart Melling telling IT Pro that he “can’t imagine why we’d force people to return just for the sake of it”.

However, not all companies seem to agree. Last week, Apple employees received a company memo requesting their presence in the office for at least three days a week from September, which was met with protest. According to an internal letter obtained by The Verge,  staff responded by asking the company to reconsider its stance and let the workers experience the same level of flexibility as during the pandemic.

“We would like to take the opportunity to communicate a growing concern among our colleagues, that Apple’s remote/location-flexible work policy, and the communication around it, have already forced some of our colleagues to quit,” they said in the letter.

“Without the inclusivity that flexibility brings, many of us feel we have to choose between either a combination of our families, our well-being, and being empowered to do our best work, or being a part of Apple.”

Cisco has confirmed that its recent supply chain disruption has been a direct result of the larger global semiconductor shortage.

Chief financial officer Scott Herren estimated during an earnings call on Wednesday that the supply chain issues, which are impacting the forecast for the current quarter’s adjusted gross margins, could last until the end of 2021, with a possibility that they would extend until 2022.

“I think the supply chain issues will stay with us at least through the end of this calendar year,” he told the attendees, adding that Cisco had “locked in both supply and pricing with some of the key component providers”.

Although no specifics were given during the call, a spokesperson for the company has since confirmed to IT Pro that the supply chain issues were related to the global semiconductor shortage, which has been plaguing the tech and automotive industries for the duration of the pandemic.

“Due to material shortages across the semiconductor industry that are outside of our control, Cisco is experiencing extended lead times on select components. While the impacts are not broad-based across all Cisco products, there are some delays to production schedules for certain product families,” the spokesperson told IT Pro.

They added that the situation is expected to last through the end of our current fiscal year and into the next as efforts to expand capacity are realised and demand stabilises.

“Cisco has and will continue to be proactive in mitigating the impacts of these supply constraints and we are working closely with our network of suppliers and manufacturing partners to minimise delays and expedite orders for our customers,” they added.

The confirmation comes weeks after CEO Chuck Robbins told the BBC that it would take “another six months to get through the short term” of the global chip shortage, adding that the crisis is unlikely to be fully resolved until 2022.

“The providers are building out more capacity. And that’ll get better and better over the next 12 to 18 months,” he said, adding that the shortage was caused by unprecedented demand for semiconductors, which “go in virtually everything”.

The shortage is what might have prompted the company to acquire fabless semiconductor company Acacia Communications, the finalisation of which was announced on Wednesday. Cisco also reported a 10% year-on-year growth in total orders, representing the strongest demand in its products for almost a decade.

The company generated $12.8 billion in revenue, up 7% year-over-year, with continued momentum in transforming its business to software and subscriptions. According to the company, 81% of software revenue was sold as a subscription, up from 76% last quarter.

Over 17 million people in the UK lack essential digital skills (EDS) for work, while less than a quarter (23%) of employees reported having received any digital skills training from their employer.

That’s according to a new report released by FutureDotNow, a coalition of companies and civil society groups working in collaboration with the UK government to boost the nation’s digital skills. 

The coalition, which counts BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, Dropbox, CompTIA, and BT among its members, defines EDS as accessing payslips, booking shifts and leave, avoiding social media disasters, basic password practice, using cloud storage, analysing data, synchronising information across multiple devices, as well as basic cyber security skills such as being able to identify suspicious emails. 

All of these are not being addressed by the majority of UK organisations, the report has found. It also warns businesses of the risks presented by the lack of EDS among employees, such as slowing the adoption of digital processes, which negatively impacts business productivity and financial performance. This, in turn, leads to businesses being held back and the UK’s global competitiveness reduced.

FutureDotNow chief executive Liz Williams said that the report “reveals a hidden middle between digital exclusion and advanced digital skills which needs addressing urgently”.

“There’s a significant part of our workforce without the essential digital skills required for the new global digital world we’re competing in. Great businesses are underpowered like smartphones with a flat battery because their workforces lack these essential digital skills.

“FutureDotNow and its members, who are already seeing the power of working together to upskill their employees, will be able to help them take action. And our Playbook, launched today is a practical guide to identifying missing essential digital skills and how to go about upskilling employees,” she said.

According to techUK president Jacqueline de Rojas CBE, the pandemic has revealed “an increase in people wanting and needing to acquire essential digital skills”. 

“This has created positive momentum in driving the UK’s digital adoption which we must maintain in order to address the growing mismatch in the demand and supply of digital skills in the UK. FutureDotNow’s initiative to encourage business leaders to share knowledge and skills is critical to ensure the country and our citizens are ready for what comes next,” she added.

Microsoft’s Azure Blockchain Service is set to be retired on 10 September 2021, with users being asked to migrate their ledger data to an alternative offering.

Although the platform still supports existing deployments, it’s no longer accepting new members or projects.

The decision to sunset Azure Blockchain Service after only two years was confirmed earlier this week, with Microsoft announcing its deprecation on 10 May.

With a deadline for the retirement set for 10 September, users are being requested to opt for an alternative platform.

The tech giant also provided a thorough migration guide which aims to guide customers, including GE, J.P. Morgan, Singapore Airlines, Starbucks, and Xbox, through the process, and recommended that they migrate their data to the ConsenSys Quorum Ethereum service.

“Based on your current development state, you can either opt to use existing ledger data on Azure Blockchain Service or start a new network and use the solution of your choice,” stated Microsoft. “We recommend creating a new consortium based on a solution of your choice in all scenarios where you do not need or intend to use existing ledger data on Azure Blockchain Service.”

Blockchain is a form of distributed ledger technology, made famous because it is the system on which Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are built upon. However, there is more to blockchain than just digital money, with the technology also being used by banks to digitise the transaction records of private placements, or by jewellery companies to help track the origin and ownership of precious gems.

Microsoft first started reselling blockchain as a service (BaaS) in 2015, but only launched the fully-managed consortium network, Azure Blockchain Service, in 2019, allowing users to build, govern, as well as expand blockchain networks at scale.

Microsoft has not provided a succinct reason as to what motivated this decision, although it’s suspected that the platform wasn’t performing as well as its rivals.

The process of the shutdown can also be followed on Twitter through @AzureEndofLife, which was created by Codit Azure architect Tom Kerkhove as a way of monitoring the process.

The news of the sunsetting of Azure Blockchain Service comes months after IBM and R3 announced that they were working together to provide clients with new options to scale blockchain technology while ensuring performance, compliance, and data privacy.

The UK government has unveiled a new policy and funding programme which aims to ensure that all adults have equal opportunities to learn new skills such as coding.

Announced as part of the Queen’s Speech on Tuesday, the legislation is aimed at supporting the UK’s post-pandemic recovery by providing people with the chance to upskill and retrain regardless of their age. This includes facilitating access to student loans, providing employers with a statutory role in planning publicly-funded training programmes, as well as granting the Secretary of State for Education increased influence in monitoring whether colleges meet local needs.

The new policies are part of the recently unveiled ‘Lifetime Skills Guarantee’, which last month launched 400 free qualifications ranging from engineering and digital skills to social care.

Available to any adult who has not already achieved a qualification at Level 3, the digital qualifications offer digital skills boot camps in computer science, software deployment, systems infrastructure, cyber security, and coding. The courses have already managed to train 3,000 people, with another 14,000 signed up to attend later this year.

According to the government, the ‘Lifetime Skills Guarantee’ will allow adults to “change careers, upskill regularly, and stay up to date with changing knowledge and technologies”.

BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT described it as “a significant step in the right direction to address the digital skills gap”.

BCS head of Apprenticeships, Annette Allmark, said that the government’s plans “will allow more people to access the training in digital skills they need for their careers – and to develop the skills the economy needs to flourish and ‘build back better’ after the pandemic”.

“Hopefully, this funding will also increase the diversity of people learning digital skills now and in the future. It’s important that the government continues to build on the many excellent training opportunities already available, such as the wide range of popular digital apprenticeships,” she added.

Allmark also stated that “there’s never been such a significant demand for digital skills – not just for an increasing number of digital occupations, but across all occupations as a result of businesses having to digitally transform during COVID”.

According to a recent study, the majority of surveyed HR decision-makers in the UK said they believed reliance on advanced digital skills was going to increase over the next five years. Despite this, participation in A-Level and further education IT courses has declined, with the number of students taking IT subjects at GCSE level falling by 40% since 2015.

However, there is always time to retrain: the new legislative measures aim to assist adults in gaining the competencies required for better-paid employment, which often require candidates to prove that they have the necessary skills. These jobs were found to be notoriously understaffed, with employers unable to fill a quarter of their vacancies due to a lack of employees with the right skills even prior to the pandemic, according to the government.

Allmark said that the areas dealing with “significant shortages of skilled people” are “vital sectors” including artificial intelligence, cyber security, and software development. 

“In addition, the digital transformation in the NHS has accelerated during the pandemic with technology being widely used across the service,” she added.

Dell has unveiled more details surrounding its Apex services platform as part of the first day of its annual Dell Technologies World event.

First announced by the company in October of last year, the Apex Project aims to consolidate Dell’s ‘as a service’ cloud products as well as facilitate the process of acquiring, managing, maintaining, and servicing physical IT infrastructure by its customers.

Less than three months after launching a private cloud platform, Apex Cloud Services now also includes hybrid cloud and deployment, the latter of which was found to be up to 86% faster than a do-it-yourself hybrid cloud model, according to a recent Storage Review report, commissioned by Dell.

Apart from the addition to its Cloud Services, Dell has also unveiled Apex Data Storage Services, Apex Custom Solutions, as well as the Apex Console.

Apex Data Storage Services offers three performance tiers of block and file enterprise storage, with capacity starting as low as 50 terabytes. Available as one or three-year subscriptions, the new offering lets businesses “focus on data, not drives”, according to Dell CMO Allison Dew.

Apex Custom Solutions, described as “the industry’s broadest infrastructure portfolio to customers as-a-Service”, is comprised of Apex Flex On Demand and Apex Data Center Utility, which allow enterprises to customise their aaS experience based on their “specific technology needs, operational model, and consumption habits,” said Dew. While Flex On Demand provides Dell Technologies servers, storage, data protection, and hyperconverged infrastructure as-a-Service, the Data Center Utility suite supplies custom metering and managed services applied across customers’ data centres.

“You can pick any infrastructure from Dell Technologies, and any level of management you would like. We then deliver it to you on an aaS basis. From storage or server racks, all the way to a complete data centre, APEX custom solutions can help you turn your IT infrastructure into a custom solution to meet your individual needs,” said Dew.

Lastly, Dell unveiled the Apex Console, which lets customers monitor and manage Apex services using actionable insights and predictive analytics. Described by Dew as a “real-time access to system health and performance of your services”, the console provides usage and spending reports which help businesses adjust their Dell services to their needs and budget.

According to the CMO, staying on top of current tech trends and advancements can make managing digital transformation “a complex undertaking” for businesses.

“Enter Dell Technologies Apex, a breakthrough portfolio of aaS offerings that help simplify your digital transformation by increasing IT agility and control,” she said, adding that the new offerings are available starting 5 May.

Speaking at an introductory panel of Dell Technologies EMEA executives, SVP Claire Vyvyan highlighted the differences between Apex and the public cloud.

“It’s very different because we can bring it at scale, we can bring it to the edge of your infrastructure, we can bring it to your data centre, (…) we can work with your preferred service providers rather than in big global data centres,” she told Dell Technologies World attendees. “And I think that’s going to be really important in the future, when the proliferation of data is at the edge.”

IBM has announced plans to acquire Turbonomic, a network and application performance management software provider, for an undisclosed amount.

With the acquisition, which is expected to finalised in the second quarter of 2021, IBM aims to help its customers lower the costs of managing multiple applications within the same hybrid cloud environment.

The announcement follows IBM’s recent acquisition of Instana, as well as the launch of IBM Cloud Pak for Watson AIOps, which automates IT operations with the help of artificial intelligence (AI).

Turbonomic, which was founded in 2008 as VMTurbo, is to provide IBM with unique AI-powered automation tools capable of running on Red Hat OpenShift and across any hybrid cloud environment.

Commenting on the acquisition of Turbonomic, IBM general manager Dinesh Nirmal said that the company believes “that AI-powered automation has become inevitable, helping to make all information-centric jobs more productive”.

“That’s why IBM continues to invest in providing our customers with a one-stop-shop of AI-powered automation capabilities that spans business processes and IT. The addition of Turbonomic now takes our portfolio another major step forward by ensuring customers will have full visibility into what is going on throughout their hybrid cloud infrastructure, and across their entire enterprise,” he added.

The announcement comes just days after IBM unveiled a set of improvements to its storage portfolio designed to give its customers greater access to and management of their data across their complex hybrid cloud environments. The company previously added AI-powered automation and data management to its Cloud Pak for Data and Cloud Pak for Automation platforms, following its October 2020 decision to focus entirely on its AI capabilities and the hybrid cloud.

IBM Cloud and Data Platform senior VP Rob Thomas said that the tech giant “continues to reshape its future as a hybrid cloud and AI company”, adding that the acquisition of Turbonomic is “yet another example” of IBM’s “commitment to making the most impactful investments to advance this strategy and ensure customers find the most innovative ways to fuel their digital transformations”.

Commenting on the news, Turbonomic CEO Ben Nye said that “the combination of IBM and Turbonomic will continuously assure target application response times even during peak demand”.

IBM stated that the transaction with Turbonomic is “subject to customary closing conditions”.

The global semiconductor shortage will last for at least another six months, according to Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins.

Robbins told the BBC that it would take “another six months to get through the short term” of the global chip shortage, adding that the crisis is unlikely to be fully resolved until 2022.

“The providers are building out more capacity. And that’ll get better and better over the next 12 to 18 months,” he said.

According to Robbins, the shortage has been caused by unprecedented demand for semiconductors, which “go in virtually everything”.

“When COVID hit, everyone thought that the demand side was going to decline significantly and in fact we saw the opposite,” Robbins said. “And at the same time demand went up instead which was a complete shock to so many of us.”

The UK’s first national lockdown saw a massive surge in demand for virtual office components such as laptops and network peripherals as companies scrambled to accommodate their employees in the mass shift to working from home. 

Robbins’ statement comes as the European Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton announced plans to hold discussions with Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger and TSMC Europe president Maria Marced on 30 April.

Breton is reportedly looking to secure the EU’s role in chip production by persuading a leading chip manufacturer, most likely TSMC, to open a fabrication plant in the region, with France, Germany, or Poland mentioned as potential locations.

Opening a major factory in Europe would help the continent to become less reliant on shipments coming in from Asia, which has proven increasingly difficult due to pandemic travel and transport restrictions. Breton is seeking to double the EU’s share of global semiconductor production to 20% by 2030.

“Increasing our autonomy does not mean isolating ourselves in a world where supply chains are global,” Breton told Reuters. “In parallel to exploring how we can increase Europe’s capacity…we will continue to build bridges with international partners – but with us in the driving seat,” he added, confirming the meetings.

The UK’s Meteorological Office has signed a multimillion-pound agreement with Microsoft for the provision of a new supercomputing capability designed to protect the public and infrastructure from the effects of severe weather brought on by climate change.

Part of a £1.2 billion investment fund announced last year, the new supercomputer will be built using HPE’s Cray supercomputer hardware and will place it in the top 25 supercomputers in the world, and twice as powerful as any other in the UK.

Apart from providing highly-accurate weather forecasts, it will also be powered entirely by renewable energy and will use market-leading energy efficiencies, saving 7,415 tonnes CO2 in the first year of operational service alone.

With work on the supercomputer already underway, it’s expected to become operational in July 2022.

The liquid-cooled HPE Cray EX supercomputer will be used to create elaborately detailed city-scale simulations, designed to improve the accuracy of localised weather predictions. The data will also be used to improve city design and help reduce risks associated with the rollout of new transport networks.

The deal will see Microsoft provide the Met Office with Azure’s supercomputing as a service platform, including those across its artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance data archive systems.

In order to be able “to make progress with the ecological challenges we face, [this] requires innovation, technology, and partnerships”, according to Microsoft UK CEO Clare Barclay.

“The potential of the deep expertise, data gathering capacity and historical archive of the Met Office, combined with the sheer scale and power of supercomputing on Microsoft Azure will mean we can improve forecasting, help tackle climate change and ensure the UK remains at the forefront of climate science for decades to come,” she said.

Met Office chief executive Penny Endersby said that, by working with Microsoft, the Met Office “will provide the highest quality weather and climate datasets and ever more accurate forecasts that enable decisions to allow people to stay safe and thrive”.

“This will be a unique capability which will keep not just the Met Office, but the UK at the forefront of environmental modelling and high-performance computing,” she added.

The news comes as the UK government signed a new three-year memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Microsoft, which provides public sector organisations with discounts and beneficial terms for Microsoft 365, Azure, and associated consulting services. The new MOU, titled the Digital Transformation Arrangement 2021 (DTA21), is the first to also include Dynamics 365 and Power Platform cloud services.

Zoom has announced a $100 million (£71.5M) venture fund that aims to “stimulate growth” of the video conferencing platform’s ecosystem of Zoom Apps, as well as their integrations, developer platform, and hardware. 

The newly launched fund will invest in developer partners with “an early market traction” who propose viable products with the potential to benefit the experience of Zoom users.

Chosen companies will be awarded initial investments of between $250,000 (£179,000) and $2.5 million (£1.8 million) to develop the new solutions to be used by Zoom customers.

The company announced that, at the time being, “dozens” of Zoom Apps are being developed and are “an important component in building the future of video communications”.

Although the announcement can be seen as an effort by the company to remain relevant in the face of the post-pandemic return to the office, Zoom founder and CEO Eric Yuan hinted that the fund was inspired by his own experience in launching the video conferencing platform back in 2011.

“Without the support of early investors, Zoom would not be what it is today. What I’ve learned over the past year is that we need to keep meetings productive and fun. My hope is that the Zoom Apps Fund will help our customers meet happier and collaborate even more seamlessly, and at the same time help entrepreneurs build new businesses as our platform evolves,” he said.

The announcement of the fund comes less than a month after the company launched new tools for developers to help them build video-based applications and websites with fully customisable, native user interfaces, called Video SDK. Developers can also access APIs, webhooks, chatbots, and even an analytical platform that provide real-time data on their builds, such as customer engagement and performance figures.

As one of the biggest beneficiaries of the pandemic, Zoom experienced a 355% rise in adoption in the second quarter of 2020 as consumers and businesses adopted video conferencing platform following the mass shift to remote working. However, the gradual reopening of working spaces and offices means that Zoom might be cast away in favour of traditional face-to-face meetings.

This has prompted the company to reveal new features aimed at hybrid workforces, including new updates to its Zoom Rooms video conferencing hardware suite.