Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services is set to launch on 1 November to help financial institutions use the Microsoft Cloud.

The new initiative integrates cloud services across Microsoft Azure, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Dynamics 365, and Microsoft Power Platform, with new capabilities and customisations unique to financial services. It also has been designed to address the control frameworks and regulatory requirements facing the industry.

The platform provides financial institutions with a unified customer profile, easier customer onboarding, help with personalising customer interaction, and makes automation and collaboration across front and back-office easier. It also helps to identify and prevent fraud, protects the merchant services arms of financial institutions, carries out risk assurance and support, and helps organisations manage compliance requirements.

Microsoft hopes this will help financial institutions and industry partners to unlock value by optimising business processes through integrated collaboration and omnichannel communication capabilities, and enhance the customer experience through comprehensive customer insights and personalised interactions. It also helps accelerate products to market and removes data silos.

“This industry-specific cloud introduces new capabilities that unlock the power of the Microsoft Cloud to help innovate for responsible and sustainable growth,” said Bill Borden, corporate vice president of Worldwide Financial Services at Microsoft.

“Our industry cloud has a foundation of privacy, security, and regulatory compliance across Microsoft and our partner ecosystem, and it is built on an industry data model that enables interoperability and innovation.”

In September, Atos and IBM teamed up to create a new centre of excellence to help banks and insurance companies improve security and regulatory compliance when moving to the cloud. The platform aims to provide technical and financial services advice and expertise with Atos professionals trained on the IBM Cloud providing local language assistance. Atos will also offer automation services like Robotic Process Automation, AI-driven intelligent workflows, and business processes reengineering.

AWS has revealed plans to open a new data centre region in New Zealand by 2024, investing NZ$7.5 billion (around £3.9 billion) over the next 15 years and creating 1,000 jobs.

The company said that its new Asia Pacific (Auckland) Region will help more of its customers run their applications by serving end users locally, providing even lower latency, and ensuring customers can choose to securely store their data in New Zealand.

The Auckland region, which will be owned and operated by a local AWS entity, will be made up of three availability zones, joining the existing 81 zones across 25 geographic AWS regions at launch.

AWS estimates this will create 1,000 new jobs as part of a NZ$7.5 billion investment, which the company also believes will generate approximately NZ$10.8 billion (around £5.6 billion) over the next 15 years.

“Our investments reflect AWS’ deep and long-term commitment to New Zealand,” said Prasad Kalyanaraman, vice president of Infrastructure Services at AWS. “We are excited to build new world-class infrastructure locally, train New Zealanders with in-demand digital skills, and continue to help local organisations deliver applications that accelerate digital transformation and fuel economic growth.”

Globally, the company said that it has plans to launch 24 additional data centre sites across eight regions in Australia, India, Indonesia, Israel, Spain, Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates, as well as the new AWS Region in New Zealand.

AWS set up its first local entity in New Zealand in 2014 and opened new offices this year in Auckland and Wellington to support a team of over 100 employees. Customers previously had to rely on the AWS region in Sydney, which was launched in 2012, although it announced in December it was going to open its second infrastructure region in Australia in Melbourne by 2022.

In July, Google Cloud announced it would also open a new cloud region in Melbourne, its second in Australia and 11th in the APAC region overall. The company said that cloud customers in Australia and New Zealand are set to benefit from low latency and high performance of their cloud-based workloads and data.

Google also announced that it would open a new Google Cloud Dedicated Interconnect location in New Zealand as part of its new investment in the region. The company has said it hopes both its Melbourne and Auckland sites would deliver geographically distributed and secure infrastructure to customers across New Zealand.

Google Cloud and Wipro have launched the Wipro-Google Cloud Innovation Arena in Bangalore, India, hoping to increase cloud capabilities and build new products across industries.

The cloud collaboration space aims to provide in-house technical expertise, ensure seamless cloud adoption, and accelerate innovation to drive business transformation for customers.

The companies said that by combining Google Cloud with Wipro FullStride Cloud Services, the jointly developed innovation centre will offer a range of people, processes, and platforms to customers around the world. The centre will showcase the talent, tools, and best practices required to develop and deploy applications on Google Cloud.

“Innovation and business differentiation are key drivers of cloud adoption, which is why innovation labs where customers can brainstorm, design, and pilot innovation use cases with the help of industry experts have become increasingly important,” said Kevin Ichhpurani, corporate vice president of Partner Ecosystem at Google Cloud.

“We are pleased to be furthering our partnership with Wipro to provide our customers with the resources they need to take their cloud journey to the next level.”

Jason Eichenholz, senior vice president and global head of Ecosystems & Partnerships at  Wipro, said that the new Innovation Arena was the latest example of the company’s commitment to providing customers with world-class resources and support, and a vision for their cloud future.

“We are excited to strengthen our partnership with Google Cloud, and look forward to leveraging the Wipro-Google Cloud Innovation Arena to increase cloud capabilities, build solutions across industries, and help our customers simplify their processes and workflows,” said Eichenholz.

In August, Wipro added a new studio to its Technology Center in Plano, Texas, to support customers’ digital transformation efforts as part of a collaboration with ServiceNow. The studio, named @now Studio, was set to draw upon ServiceNow’s simplified processes and digital workflows to create custom products. Wipro’s Texas Technology centre houses the firm’s US cyber defence unit and is an incubator for developing advanced analytics and cloud technologies.

Automated hiring systems filter out qualified high skilled workers, according to a Harvard Business School report focused on how leaders can improve hiring practices to uncover missed talent pools and close skills gaps. 

Researchers found that inflexibly configured automated recruiting systems, which are “designed to maximize the efficiency of the process”, tend to hone in on candidates using very specific parameters to minimise the number of applicants that are actively considered by an organisation.

“For example, most use proxies (such as a college degree or possession of precisely described skills) for attributes such as skills, work ethic, and self-efficacy,” researchers stated in the report. “Most also use a failure to meet certain criteria (such as a gap in full-time employment) as a basis for excluding a candidate from consideration irrespective of their other qualifications.”

As a result, this excludes from consideration viable candidates whose resumes do not match the criteria “but who could perform at a high level with training”. 88% of employers who took part in the survey agreed with this statement, admitting that qualified high skilled candidates are vetted out of the process as they don’t match the exact criteria established by the job description. The number rose to 94% in the case of “middle-skill” workers.

Researchers found that automated systems represent the “foundation of the hiring process” in the majority of organisations, with 90% of employers in the survey using automated systems to “initially filter or rank potential middle-skills (94%) and high-skills (92%) candidates”.

The report also found that the rapid pace of change in many occupations, driven in large part by advancing technologies, has made it “extremely difficult for workers to obtain relevant skills”. 

“The evolution in job content has outstripped the capacity of traditional skills providers, such as education systems and other workforce intermediaries, to adapt,” said the report, highlighting that to develop the capabilities employers seek increasingly requires the candidate to be employed.

To deal with these problems, the report recommended refreshing job descriptions, shifting from “negative” to “affirmative” filters in automated recruiting systems, establishing new metrics for evaluating talent acquisition, and enlisting a senior leader to champion, direct, and monitor the evolution of hiring and onboarding practices.

HBS’s global study included a survey of over 8,000 “hidden” workers, those who miss hours, unemployed and seeking work, or those who are not working or seeking employment but are willing to work under the right circumstances, as well as over 2,250 executives across the US, UK, and Germany. Researchers also found that the situation, although it has worsened over the pandemic, has been growing over recent decades.

“A single data point made the intractability of the problem apparent—just under half (44%) of middle-skill “hidden workers” reported that finding work was just as hard pre-COVID-19 as it was during our 2020 survey period,” stated the report.

Microsoft has confirmed that Windows 11 will be released on 5 October, with all eligible devices to be offered the free upgrade by mid-2022.

From 5 October, Microsoft will start rolling out Windows 11 to eligible Windows 10 PCs, while PCs that come preloaded with Windows 11 will start to become available for purchase. The update is set to be rolled out in a phased approach, which means that new eligible devices will be offered the upgrade first. 

For UK customers, the new update will be available “beginning this holiday season”.

“The upgrade will then roll out over time to in-market devices based on intelligence models that consider hardware eligibility, reliability metrics, age of device and other factors that impact the upgrade experience,” the company stated.

Microsoft expects all eligible devices to be offered the free upgrade to Windows 11 by mid-2022. Users that have a Windows 10 PC that’s eligible for the update will be notified by Windows Update when it’s available. Alternatively, users can check to see if it is ready by going to Settings>Windows Update and select “Check for updates”.

New features in Windows 11 include “Start”, which uses the power of the cloud and Microsoft 365 to show users their recent files, no matter what device they were viewing them on. Chat from Microsoft Teams is integrated into the taskbar, a new Microsoft Store will be available, and Snap Layouts, Snap Groups and Desktops will allow users to multitask and optimise their screen space.

One feature that won’t be included at launch is the inclusion of Android apps support in Windows 11 and the Microsoft Store, through the company’s collaboration with Amazon and Intel. Microsoft said that it will start with a preview for this feature for Windows Insiders “over the coming months”.

Microsoft recently provided more details on the reliability of computers that could update to Windows 11, saying that those systems were more reliable in use.

“Those that did not meet the minimum system requirements had 52% more kernel mode crashes (blue screens) than those that did meet the requirements,” Microsoft said. “Additionally, app hangs are 17% more likely, and for first-party apps, we see 43% more crashes on unsupported hardware.”

Microsoft has been accused of making it harder to switch default browsers in Windows 11, prompting complaints from browser competitors like Firefox and Opera.

The tech giant has changed the way users can set default apps on its new operating system, according to The Verge. Similar to Windows 10, a prompt appears when a user installs a new browser or opens a web link for the first time.

The problem lies with a change in the way default browser apps are handled in Windows 11. Where Windows 10 allowed users to change default apps based on a program, Windows 11 requires users to set defaults by file or link type instead, much in the same way that PDFs or image extensions are handled.

For example, in Chrome, this means individually changing the default behaviour for HTM, HTML, PDF, SHTML, SVG, WEBP, XHT, XHTML, FTP, HTTP, and HTTPs, with each having its own drop-down menu.

Rival browsers tend to prompt users to set them as default, forcing them to navigate the default apps part of settings to do this.

Critics have argued that this creates unnecessary complications in what otherwise should be a simple process, causing many users to simply stick with Edge.

“Being able to select your preferred web browser is essential to shaping the internet experience that everyone deserves,” Selena Deckelmann, senior vice president of Firefox said to IT Pro. ”We have been increasingly worried about the trend on Windows. Since Windows 10, users have had to take additional and unnecessary steps to set and retain their default browser settings. These barriers are confusing at best and seem designed to undermine a user’s choice for a non-Microsoft browser.”

Krystian Kolondra, Opera’s EVP and head of desktop browsers, told IT Pro that it is “unfortunate” when a platform vendor is “obscurifying a common use case to improve the standing of their own product”.

“We would like to encourage all platform vendors to respect user choice and allow competition on their platforms. Taking away user choice is a step backwards,” added Kolondra.

IT Pro has contacted Google and Microsoft for comment.

The National Security Agency (NSA) has awarded Amazon a cloud computing contract codenamed ‘WildandStormy’ worth up to $10 billion, prompting an appeal from Microsoft.

Although the specific details of the contract are hidden, the NSA is reportedly looking to move away from its on-premise environment as it looks to bring in commercial cloud computing technology, according to Washington Technology. The security agency is reportedly pursuing a “Hybrid Compute Initiative” to see what data can be stored in a commercial cloud infrastructure.

Following the decision, Microsoft filed a protest with the Government Accountability Office (GAO) on 21 July, claiming that the NSA did not conduct a proper evaluation. The decision is expected back by 29 October.

“NSA recently awarded a contract for cloud computing services to support the Agency. The unsuccessful offerer has filed a protest with the Government Accountability Office. The Agency will respond to the protest in accordance with appropriate federal regulations,” an NSA spokesperson told IT Pro.

A Microsoft spokesperson told Nextgov that the company was filing an administrative protest via the GAO. “We are exercising our legal rights and will do so carefully and responsibly,” said the spokesperson.

IT Pro contacted Amazon for comment, which has referred any questions to the NSA.

Last July, the Department of Defense (DoD) cancelled a $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) project and scrapped its Trump-backed contract with Microsoft. The deal had been challenged by Microsoft’s rival AWS, which alleged that former president Donald Trump had influenced DoD decisions during the bidding process in order to sabotage their chances.

As a replacement for the JEDI project, the DoD announced the Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability (JWCC), which is set to be “a multi-cloud/multi-vendor Indefinite Delivery-Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract” that will consider both AWS and Microsoft. Although there isn’t an estimated value of how much the project would cost, it’s expected the first set of contracts would be awarded by April 2022.

Charlie Bell, one of Amazon’s top executives in its cloud business, is leaving the company after 23 years.

AWS senior vice president Peter DeSantis, who worked on global infrastructure, is set to become the new leader for utility computing which Bell was managing, according to CNBC. Prasad Kalyanaraman, a vice president at the company, will assume responsibility for infrastructure and network services.

Bell’s departure is the latest in a string of high-level personnel moves at AWS. Bell was reportedly considered a candidate to replace AWS CEO Andy Jassy when he became Amazon CEO last month, but Tableau CEO and former Amazon employee Adam Selipsky was chosen instead.

Bell has been with the company since 1998 when his business, Server Technologies Group, was acquired by the company, according to his LinkedIn. Before that, he was a manager at Oracle between 1989 and 1996, and a space shuttle flight interface engineer at Boeing between 1979 and 1989.

In a video posted by Amazon Science, he revealed he started at the company when it was “just selling books”. Bell initially led infrastructure before moving to the AWS business in 2006 as it began developing core EC2 and S3 computing and storage services.

In February, the head of AWS Andy Jassy was announced as the successor to Jeff Bezos – seen as a logical next step given Jassy joined Amazon in 1997 and would go on to found AWS in 2002.

Following this, in March, Salesforce executive Adam Selipsky was appointed AWS CEO. This saw Selipsky return to AWS after leaving the company in 2016 to become the CEO of Tableau. He spent the previous 11 years as AWS vice president of sales, marketing and support.

Selipsky’s time at Tableau saw the company’s value quadruple as he led its move from licenses to subscriptions. It was eventually acquired by Salesforce in 2019, where Selipsky became a member of its executive leadership board in addition to his role as Tableau CEO.

Google is reportedly planning to build a new campus in Silicon Valley which will be situated next to a new facility partly devoted to hardware, at a time where more employees are asking to work from home.

Since 2018, Google has bought $389 million in land in San Jose, California, and recently filed preliminary building proposals show a centre for hardware operations as well as a publicly accessible new tech campus. These will be situated between its current headquarters in Mountain View and its recently approved town-like megacampus in San Jose, as reported by CNBC.

The tech campus, dubbed “Midpoint”, will include five office buildings, reportedly accommodating up to 3,500 employees, and will be built using landscaping and construction updates to existing offices, rather than completely new developments. Currently, there is no timeline for when the project will be completed.

The campus will sit adjacent to three industrial buildings that will house some operations for its hardware division including an “R&D” centre. Google has filed plans to make updates to these buildings, including adding meeting rooms, kitchens, equipment platforms, and a shipping warehouse. The plans reportedly mention “Google Hardware” and “Nest“, and the buildings will also house general supplies and store items like furniture for local campuses, a spokesperson told CNBC.

“The goal of the proposed project is to enhance pedestrian and bicycle safety and connectivity between the buildings and the surrounding community,” Vini Bhargava, a Google real estate and workplace services project executive, said in a preliminary review request.

The campus complies with Google’s aim of opening itself up to its “non-tech” neighbours as concerns of displacement in the San Francisco region continue to grow. The office upgrades also come in line with Google’s plans for more employees to work in offices once the pandemic has ended.

The campus plans also show it will include a new “transit hub” with shuttles, bike parking, and transit passes for employees to reduce single-occupant vehicle trips. It will also contain showers, lockers, and changing rooms to encourage commuting.

There will also be a commuter shuttle service that will cater for employees from the Bay Area, which Bhargava said is “proven to significantly reduce the number of employees that drive alone to work compared to the regional average”.

Last week, Google reportedly approved 85% of 10,000 staff requests to work remotely or relocate when its offices open again. It’s believed the tech giant will ask most of its staff to return to work in their previous office locations but will allow others to carry out their duties elsewhere.

Google has reportedly approved 85% of staff requests to work remotely or relocate when its offices open again, as the firm and other companies try to better accommodate employee demands in a post-pandemic working world.

The tech giant is set to ask most of its staff to return to work in their previous office locations, but will let others carry out their duties elsewhere, according to Bloomberg. An internal email to staff highlighted that around 10,000 employees applied to transfer to a new office or work from home.

Fiona Cicconi, Google’s head of human resources, stated in the email that the company rejected around 15% of applicants as their jobs required specialised equipment or face-time with customers.

“And some organisations have made a commitment to invest in key growth sites and are working to build their teams and critical mass in those particular hubs,” Cicconi added. She also said that applicants who were rejected could reapply for remote work or a transfer.

Google’s return to the office policies have angered some of its employees, with CNET reporting last month that Google executive Urs Hölzle told employees he would be working remotely from New Zealand. This reportedly upset some workers as they claimed he had been unsupportive of remote work in the past.

Last week, Google and Facebook announced their employees in the US would need to be fully vaccinated before they return to the office. Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in an email to employees that the implementation of the policy would vary depending on local conditions and regulations. The new rule is set to be implemented in the US soon before expanding to other regions in the coming months. The company also announced it would push back its office reopening from 1 September to 18 October.

In February, Google warned that the new “hybrid working” model could affect its productivity and finances. The company was concerned that social distancing measures and hybrid work models would increase costs and potentially impact its “corporate culture”.