Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai announced today that the company will be investing a further three billion euros (£2,642,906,834) into European data centres over the next two years.

This additional investment brings Google’s total investment in European digital infrastructure to 15 billion euros (£13,212,675,000) since 2007 – an endeavour which has supported 13,000 jobs, according to a Copenhagen Economics study.

In addition, a further 600 million euros (£528,393,000) will be pumped into the expansion of its data centre operations in Hamina, Finland, which it originally bought in 2009 and transformed it from an old paper mill to a high-tech facility which supports 4,300 jobs.

“The Nordic countries are great examples of how the internet can help drive economic growth,” said Pichai. “Our Hamina data centre is a significant driver of economic growth and opportunity. It also serves as a model of sustainability and energy efficiency for all of our data centres.”

The Hamina facility is situated near to the Russian border and uses seawater taken from the Gulf of Finland to reduce the amount of energy required to cool the hardware.

Google announced yesterday that it has continued on its commitment to using as much green energy as possible by completing the largest corporate purchase of renewable energy in history.

“These deals will increase our worldwide portfolio of wind and solar agreements by more than 40 percent, to 5,500 MW–equivalent to the capacity of a million solar rooftops,” said Pichai. “Once all these projects come online, our carbon-free energy portfolio will produce more electricity than places like Washington D.C. or entire countries like Lithuania or Uruguay use each year.”

Currently, Google’s other European data centres are located in the Netherlands, Ireland and Belgium, but last year it announced plans to build an entirely carbon-neutral data centre in Denmark, adding to its European data centre portfolio and bolstering its green energy drive.

The tech giant plans to invest $700 million (£616,769,017) into the new green site in Frederica, Denmark and use machine learning to ensure ever watt is used effectively.

Europe is somewhat of a hotbed for data centres, particularly for Google’s in Scandinavia which can operate using better energy efficiency than other locations around the world.

90% of organisations have reported a lack of skills in multiple cloud disciplines and that the deficit has doubled over the last three years.

The lack of public cloud platform expertise is also driving organisations towards managed service providers.

While cloud computing has accelerated digital transformation, forcing companies to invest more in IT teams and systems, it’s also created more niche and specialist jobs and functions.

This has resulted in a widening gap where certain cloud roles are not being filled simply because not enough people have the skills for it, according to a report from 451 research.

‘Demystifying cloud transformation: Where enterprises should start‘ is a pathfinder paper, commissioned by Dell’s Virtustream.

“While enterprise companies are astutely aware of the breadth of cloud options available to them today, they are looking to cloud managed services partners to bridge their own in-house skills and resources gaps, and for access to their deep expertise across cloud assessment, planning, migration and domain experience,” says Melanie Posey, research VP and GM for 451 Research’s Voice of the Enterprise.

According to the report, skills shortages in areas related to the cloud are in platform expertise, DevOps, cloud architecture and security. These were seen as challenges to both cloud transformation and adoption as businesses struggled to find skills and resources in-house.

As such, businesses are increasingly looking for outside expertise where managed service providers are filling that gap. Rather than attempting to find and match employees to specific operations within public and private clouds so that they work in a holistic manner, businesses are favouring third-party support to manage the entire lifecycle of their migration and digital transformation.

Nearly two-thirds of organisations that currently use cloud also use some type of managed service, with 71% of respondents suggesting that managed services will be a better use of their money in the future.

What’s more, a strong majority said that managed services free internal IT staff from mundane chores, enabling them to focus on more productive and strategic activities in IT generally.

Oracle claims that its cloud is not only the word’s first autonomous one, but also the only one that’s fully integrated. 

It’s that focus on integration as a key consideration rather than an afterthought that will help organisations navigate their way through the complexity and uncertainty they face in their respective industries. 

So claimed the firm’s CEO Safra Catz during her keynote session at Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco this week. 

“Let me tell you why the Oracle Cloud is unlike any other cloud in the world,” Catz told delegates. 

“At the infrastructure layer – from compute to networking to storage – the Oracle Cloud has been uniquely engineered to be secure and autonomous from the start. No other cloud provider even thinks this way. But, we’ve always thought this way. 

“Your Oracle workloads are the Crown Jewels of your enterprise and we know that. The Oracle Cloud eliminates complexity, manual work and – as you heard last night – most importantly, human error. It delivers a degree of reliability, operational efficiency, and automatic security that other clouds just cannot match.” 

Oracle’s focus on built-in automation and integration also minimises risks and cost, according to Catz.

The opening video prior to the keynote talked about oceans of information being processed in the blink of an eye in the increasingly data-driven world in which we live and work.

And the fact that Oracle has been on the same data-driven journey to the cloud so is perfectly placed to understand and help respond to myriad challenges, Catz said. 

“We needed to be a better service-oriented company. It wasn’t good enough to build a great cloud. We needed to use it. We needed our own cloud to be a platform to enable the business changes we were looking for,” Catz added. 

Oracle’s cloud will help firms maximise efficiency and effectiveness, thanks to enhanced levels of functional integration and embedded AI which, in turn, delivers greater levels of business insight, according to Catz. 

What’s more, Catz said using the Oracle Cloud – which puts the user front and centre – would enable customers to “outpace change” due to new features being provided seamlessly every quarter. She dubbed this “continuous innovation without tedious upgrades.”

“Our goal is to deliver innovation in a way that simplifies IT and business functions. And we believe the best way to do this is to engineer all our products to work together from the beginning, each piece benefiting from the capabilities of its underlying platform,” Catz said. 

“I encourage you to try the Oracle cloud out for yourself – for free. Experience the autonomous cloud and see for yourself what makes Oracle so unique and the best choice to achieve business success.”

IBM has announced the opening of a Quantum Computer Centre in New York that will provide quantum computing over its cloud network.

The centre will be home to the tech giant’s 14th quantum computer, a 53-quantum bit, or qubit, model that will form the data-processing element of the service.

IBM said this will be the single largest quantum computer system available for external access. For context, Google has a 72-qubit computer, but, so far, hasn’t let outsiders run programs on it.

Despite the technology still being largely experimental, IBM has already worked on a number of potential case studies with major clients. According to Dario Gil, director of IBM Research, the firm’s strategy is to move quantum computing beyond isolated lab experiments and into the hands of tens of thousands of users.

“In order to empower an emerging quantum community of educators, researchers, and software developers that share a passion for revolutionising computing, we have built multiple generations of quantum processor platforms that we integrate into high-availability quantum systems,” he said.

“We iterate and improve the performance of our systems multiple times per year and this new 53-qubit system now incorporates the next family of processors on our roadmap.”

To start, ten quantum computer systems have been put online through IBM’s Quantum Computer Center. Its fleet is now composed of five 20-qubit systems, one 14-qubit system and four 5-qubit systems. Five of these systems now have a Quantum Volume of 16 – a measure of the power of a quantum computer – demonstrating a new sustained performance milestone.

In the next month, this portfolio of quantum computers will grow to 14 systems including the new 53-qubit quantum computer.

Earlier this month IBM announced a partnership with applied research organisation Fraunhofer Gesellschaft to study quantum computing in Germany. The tech giant hopes to be a hub in the country as the technology accelerates.

What’s more, IBM is already working on potential use cases with partners, such as bank J.P. Morgan Chase, which has proposed a quadratic speedup algorithm that could allow financial analysts to perform option pricing and risk analysis in near real-time.

The tech giant is also working with Mitsubishi Chemical to develop a quantum computing process to understand the reaction between lithium and oxygen in lithium-air batteries, with the hope that it could lead to more efficient batteries for mobile devices and cars.

Microsoft and The Walt Disney Studios have announced a five-year partnership to pilot new ways to create, produce and distribute content on the Azure cloud platform.

The aim of the partnership is to help accelerate production and post-production processes and bring more Disney content from “scene to screen”.

The current landscape for the film industry is heavily in the shadows of Disney, with it relentlessly releasing Marvel movies and ‘live’ remakes of its own back catalogue.

What’s more, the company is launching a streaming service to take on the likes of Netflix, called Disney+, and now has greater demand to create more of its own TV shows.

“By moving many of our production and postproduction workflows to the cloud, we’re optimistic that we can create content more quickly and efficiently around the world,” said Jamie Voris, CTO, The Walt Disney Studios.

“Through this innovation partnership with Microsoft, we’re able to streamline many of our processes so our talented filmmakers can focus on what they do best.”

Disney’s StudioLAB, a technology hub designed to create and advance the future of storytelling with cutting-edge tools and methods will run with Azure to help speed up content processes.

However, the partnership will also have a third-party supporting it, with global media tech firm Avid working closely with both companies. Avid already has a “strategic alliance” with Microsoft, working on media workflows in Azure, including collaborative editing, content archiving, active-backup and production continuity.

“The cloud has reached a tipping point for the media industry, and it’s not surprising that The Walt Disney Studios, which has its heritage based on a passion for innovation and technology, is at the forefront of this transformation,” said Kate Johnson, president of Microsoft US.

“With Azure as the platform cloud for content, we’re excited to work with the team at StudioLAB to continue to drive innovation across Disney’s broad portfolio of studios.”

Salesforce has launched cloud services targeted at manufacturing and consumer product goods companies as part of its ongoing efforts to take on SAP and Oracle.

The SaaS specialist is aiming to bring ground-level teams, sales and operations, closer together for the benefit of the customer.

In order for manufacturers to provide a seamless customer experience, they need something that helps them better understand customer needs, according to Cindy Bolt, SVP and GM at Salesforce Manufacturing. What’s more, they need to do so while improving visibility across the entire business, from logistics to marketing. 

“In the manufacturing industry, changing customer and market demands can have a devastating effect on the bottom line, so being able to understand what is happening on the ground is imperative for success,” she said.

“Manufacturing Cloud bridges the gap between sales and operations teams while ensuring more predictive and transparent business, so they can build deeper and more trusted relationships with their customers.”

The aim of Manufacturing Cloud is to address challenges around predicting demand and managing warehouse costs. It does this by collating sales agreements and forecasting tools, potentially enabling sales, operations and accounts teams to generate stronger projections.

The Consumer Goods Cloud, though, is aimed at field reps working from more brick and mortar businesses. For this, it is equipped with tools intended to streamline store operations by keeping stock, pricing and promotional information aligned with the business expectations.

“Retail execution remains one of the most important pieces of a consumer goods brands strategy, but so much opportunity is wasted if the field rep doesn’t have the data and technology needed to make smart decisions,” said Salesforce retail and consumer goods GM and SVP John Strain. “Consumer Goods Cloud provides these field reps with the tools they need to be successful on the ground while helping build both business opportunities and stronger relationships with their retail partners.”