Google Cloud has announced a new partnership with analytics firm Databricks to offer data-driven services to enterprise customers. 

The deal means businesses can now use Databricks to create a lakehouse capable of data engineering, data science, machine learning, and analytics on Google Cloud’s elastic network.

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This will include integrations with BigQuery and Google’s Kubernetes Engine (GKE), opening up the chance to deploy Databricks in fully containerised cloud environments for the first time, according to Google. 

The deal is further evidence of Google’s cloud strategy to prioritise analytical tools and processes, which has been a key driver of its most recent acquisitions and new offerings. 

“Businesses with a strong foundation of data and analytics are well-positioned to grow and thrive in the next decade,” the Google Cloud CEO, Thomas Kurian, said. 

“By combining Databricks capabilities in data engineering and analytics with Google Cloud’s global, secure network – and our expertise in analytics and delivering containerised applications – we can help companies transform their businesses through the power of data.”

The pandemic has transformed businesses in ways that most experts thought technologies would do and as such, these technologies are now at the forefront of the so-called new normal. The key is scalability, specifically the ability to increase or reduce the use of certain services depending on the user’s needs. 

Google suggests its deployment of Databricks will offer a customisable service for analytics that can be customised to suit a businesses’ needs. The tight integration with Google BigQuery gives customers the freedom to choose a number of data analytics services in a range of sizes.

Similarly, Databricks for containerised workloads highlights one of the most rapidly evolving ways of working within the cloud. Kubernetes is swiftly becoming the de facto orchestration system for enterprise workloads and most AI and machine learning tools. ​

Samsung has developed a computing architecture that combines memory with artificial intelligence (AI) processing power to double the performance of data centres and high-performance computing (HPC) tasks while reducing power consumption.

Branded an ‘industry first’, this processor-in-memory (PIM) architecture brings AI computing capabilities to systems normally powered by high-bandwidth memory (HBM), such as data centres and supercomputers. HBM is an existing technology developed by companies including AMD and SK Hynix.

The result, according to Samsung, is twice the performance in high-powered systems, and a reduction in power consumption by more than 70%. This is driven largely by the fact the memory and processor components are integrated and no longer separated, vastly reducing the latency in the data transferred between them.

“Our groundbreaking HBM-PIM is the industry’s first programmable PIM solution tailored for diverse AI-driven workloads such as HPC, training and inference,” said Samsungs vice president of memory product planning, Kwangil Park. 

“We plan to build upon this breakthrough by further collaborating with AI solution providers for even more advanced PIM-powered applications.”

Most computing systems today are based on an architecture which uses separate memory and processor units to carry out data processing tasks, known as von Neumann architecture. 

This approach requires data to move back and forth on a constant basis between the two components, which can result in a bottleneck when handling ever-increasing volumes of data, slowing system performance.

HBM-PIM, developed by Samsung, places a DRAM-optimised AI engine within each memory bank, enabling parallel processing and minimising the movement of data.

“I’m delighted to see that Samsung is addressing the memory bandwidth/power challenges for HPC and AI computing,” said Argonne’s associate laboratory director for computing, environment and life sciences, Rick Stevens. Argonne National Laboratory is a US Department of Energy research centre.  

“HBM-PIM design has demonstrated impressive performance and power gains on important classes of AI applications, so we look forward to working together to evaluate its performance on additional problems of interest to Argonne National Laboratory.”

Samsung’s innovation is being tested inside AI accelerators by third-parties in the AI sector, with work expected to be completed within the first half of 2021. Early tests with Samsung’s HBM2 Aquabolt memory system demonstrated the performance improvements and power consumption reduction cited previously.

Trello has completely redesigned its platform with a greater push towards multi-team collaboration and third-party integrations to cater to remote working trends. 

The workflow management service is also getting a refreshed design, but it’s the changes to its boards and cards that will be of most interest to enterprise customers. 

“We are building for an entirely new era of teamwork – where people live in different locations, but work stays connected,” Trello’s head of product, Michael Pryor wrote in a blog post. “This is the beginning of a whole new Trello.”

The cards within Trello have been tweaked to improve workflows and also increase integration with third-party services, such as Dropbox, Google Drive and Salesforce. 

‘Link’ cards can now preview content from sites like YouTube, Dropbox and even Instagram with just a simple copy and paste of a URL. There are also new ‘Board’ cards which can render a direct visual link to another board to connect projects across Trello.

The company has also announced that ‘Mirror’ cards will be coming in the next few months, enabling users to clone one card to appear on a number of other boards. An update to one of those cards then updates on all its copies. 

The wider platform has also been updated with ‘Views’ which adds more collaborative layers to the platform by providing a collection of new dashboards that show projects in a number of different forms. The first is ‘Timeline’, which as the name suggests, lets users see how different projects fit in a workflow. Similarly, ‘Calendar view’ will display start and due dates across a traditional calendar layout. 

If your workflow is too big and spans across multiple teams and boards, Trello’s new ‘Table view’ offers a more simplistic visual. It pulls cards in from selected boards across your team and displays them in a spreadsheet-style list that can be sorted and filtered down to your exact workload. 

For data-driven business, Trello’s new ‘Dashboard’ transforms workloads and projects into tables and charts. It ‘visualises’ key metrics, such as due date, card assignments and cards-per-list to offer a different look at your operation.

All the updates have been ushered in with a refreshed logo and platform design with greater use of pastel colours.

Cyber security specialist Palo Alto Networks has announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Bridgecrew, a developer-first cloud security provider, for $156 million.

The firm said the acquisition will enable “shift-left” security, with its Prisma Cloud offering becoming the first cloud security platform to cover the full application lifecycle. 

The platform will now be able to provide developers with security assessment and enforcement capabilities throughout the DevOps process. Ultimately, Prisma customers will benefit from a single platform that can deliver cloud security from build time to runtime, seamlessly connecting security and DevOps teams, Palo Alto added.

“Shift left security is a must-have in any cloud security platform,” commented Nikesh Arora, chairman and CEO of Palo Alto Networks. “Developers don’t want to wait until runtime to find out their security is not working, and the CISO charged with protecting the entire organisation certainly values higher security from fixing issues earlier in the development lifecycle.

“We are thrilled to welcome Bridgecrew, and its widely adopted and trusted developer security platform, to Palo Alto Networks. When combined, Prisma Cloud customers will benefit from having security embedded in the very foundation of their cloud infrastructure.”

A pioneer in shift-left, Bridgecrew focuses on infrastructure as a code (IaC), which sees infrastructure configuration codified during development. The provider’s IaC platform offers developers and DevOps teams a systematic way to enforce infrastructure security standards throughout the development lifecycle. 

Additionally, Bridgecrew’s open source IaC scanner Checkov has gained significant early traction with developers, surpassing one million downloads in 2020 – its first full year of availability. The firm’s full security platform is also seeing strong early traction across many cloud-first organisations and several industries. 

Palo Alto said it will continue to invest in Bridgecrew’s open-source initiatives as part of its ongoing commitment to DevOps security.

The acquisition will also see Bridgecrew co-founders, Idan Tendler, Barak Schoster and Guy Eisenkot, join Palo Alto Networks along with their teams.

“We have dedicated ourselves to building developer-first tools that bridge the gap between developers and cloud security,” said Idan Tendler, co-founder and CEO of Bridgecrew. “By joining Palo Alto Networks, we will be able to bring codified cloud security to the developer community on a wider scale. We look forward to working together to continue shifting cloud security left.”

The deal is expected to close during Palo Alto Networks’ fiscal third quarter, subject to customary closing conditions. 

Investing in digital technology could increase the UK’s GDP by almost 7%, delivering a £232 billion boost to the economy by 2040.

That’s according to new research from the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr) and Virgin Media Business. 

The study examined how focusing on digital ways of working, which has been magnified by lockdown restrictions, could help the UK recover from the economic effects of the pandemic. The report claims that investing in digital technology could boost the economy by £74 billion in the next four years, and by £127 billion by the end of this decade.

By 2040, if these investments are sustained, digital technology is expected to add £232 billion to the national economy – equivalent to 6.9% of the UK’s GDP.

Digital processes in the public sector will create efficiency gains and cost-savings of £75 billion, according to the report, while investments in digitising health and social care, as well as the justice, central, and local government sectors could add £33 billion and £32 billion to the UK economy, respectively.

Cebr also found that digital investment in private sectors such as retail, professional services, and construction, could be worth an additional £40 billion by 2040, with other parts of the economy also predicted to experience similar gains.

Cebr director of Economic Analysis, Cristian Niculescu-Marcu, said that the economic impacts of the pandemic alone “fall far short of capturing the scale of the pandemic’s toll on people’s lives and wellbeing”. 

“Within this research we have examined the potential economic impact of a wave of digital transformation, driven by the rollout of new ways of working and connecting,” he said, adding that “this could create an economic high road over the coming decades, helping the UK economy to grow while also having the flexibility to deal with future challenges”.

Commenting on the Virgin Media Business managing director Peter Kelly said that “the UK has a £232 billion opportunity ahead of it which we must now grasp with both hands”. 

“By continuing to invest in new digital ways of working, we can seize this moment and help UK businesses to bounce back better. Moves to accelerate digital adoption are driving extraordinary outcomes across private and public sector organisations, helping them to revolutionise how they work, deliver for customers, and provide vital services for our communities,” he added.

The release of Virgin Media’s report comes days after the company announced that it is planning to create more than 400 new graduate, intern, and apprenticeship roles over the course of 2021.

The Post Office has announced plans to launch a free-to-use app that will use biometrics to authenticate customers and prevent fraud.

The new app will be based on software supplied by London-based company Yoti, which launched in 2014 and specialises in digital identity technology. It will take advantage of biometric-face matching and liveness detection in order to ensure the privacy of Post Office customers and prevent potential imposters from obtaining sensitive information.

The app could help to ensure social distancing by enabling customers to be identified for passport and driving licence renewals from the safety of their homes, without the need to attend a post office in-person.

Set to launch in the spring, the app will also enable customers to use their digital identity to carry out a range of online and in-person transactions such as one-click bank account applications, job applications, mortgage applications, picking up parcels and for travel purposes.

Along with this will be new in-branch services for customers who do not have access to a smartphone, or who prefer face-to-face contact when asked to confirm their identity.

As part of this partnership with Yoti in July, a pilot, initially at around 750 Post Offices, will offer these new in-branch services. This will enable those people without a smartphone, secure internet access, or photo ID to complete their identity verification at a Post Office. Those who simply prefer face-to-face transactions will also be able to have their identity verified by a Postmaster in-branch.

Post Office chief executive Nick Read said that he is “delighted that Post Office and Yoti are joining forces” in order to expand the former’s identity services.

“We have an ambitious strategy to deliver a unique offer to the market that integrates digital and physical identity verification at scale benefitting both individuals and businesses,” he added.

“Post Office is embracing new technologies and this partnership will enhance our reputation as the trusted go-to destination for identity solutions. Whether it’s proving your identity on a smartphone or face-to-face with a Postmaster, we will make transactions faster and simpler than ever before.”

Yoti CEO Robin Tombs said that the company had “already invested over £85m creating a world-leading ID platform that removes the friction from outdated ID processes, puts individuals in control of their identity, preserves privacy and helps reduce identity fraud”. 

“Together with the Post Office, we will help drive the UK’s digital transformation, making life simpler and safer for individuals and businesses online, in-branch and on the high street,” he added.

Commenting on the partnership, Cabinet office minister Julia Lopez said that “products that help digitally to verify a person’s identity are becoming increasingly important as more areas of our work and home lives move online”. 

“Creating a common trust framework will give greater clarity and certainty to organisations who want to work in this field about what is expected of them. More importantly, however, it will help to deepen users’ trust and confidence in digital identities and the standards we expect in the safeguarding of their personal data and privacy.”

Dell Technologies Cloud Platform (DTCP) is aiming to offers its customers the capacity to scale up or down their IT infrastructures with its newly-launched private cloud platform.

Released through the firm’s flagship Cloud Console, this private cloud service offers a scalable way for customers to build their cloud without deploying an additional layer of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) software stack.

VCF is a hybrid cloud platform built on a single architecture that serves as a foundational layer for managing virtual machines (VMs) and orchestrating containers. Dell’s launch, however, would allow customers to bypass the need to deploy this architecture and build their own on-prem private cloud, the company says.

This is the second product that Dell has launched as part of its Project Apex cloud pursuit. Project Apex is an initiative the company launched in October 2020 to consolidate its ‘as a service’ cloud offerings – with its Cloud Console hub sitting at the heart of this strategy.

The Cloud Console serves as a provisioning and management platform for cloud and ‘as a service’ products, with Dell hoping that customers can use it to deploy workloads, manage resources and keep eye on costs through a simple interface.

DTCP Private Cloud is packaged with the same features that come with Dell’s existing hybrid cloud offering, with the firm also introducing instance-based offerings for DTCP Hybrid Cloud late last year.

These can be ordered in a self-service manner in quantities of 25, 50, 100, 200 and 500, and can be deployed in customers’ data centres within two weeks and scaled up in roughly five days. They can be combined to run a larger quantity of instances of the same type, or customers can mix and match multiple workloads within the same product.

While the firm’s hybrid cloud service is available for $47 per instance per month, Dell is making its private cloud offering available for $14 per instance per month. 

The release also comes with the option for customers to provide their own rack infrastructure, alongside the integrated rack Dell offers. Customers will be able to use their own rack space in combination with all the equipment required such as power distribution units, cables and switches.

Microsoft researchers are testing a new feature for Teams that aims to provide speakers on calls with a near-real-time assessment of the moods and reactions of their audience.

The ‘AffectiveSpotflight‘ is said to be built from a type of facial recognition algorithm that uses a neural network to capture and assess the expressions of call participants, monitoring for changes in emotions such as happiness, sadness and surprise.

The software is being developed by researchers across a number of Microsoft facilities in Redmond, Boston and Cambridge, MA, with findings expected to be revealed at Japan’s CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in May.

The system is said to be able to spot subtle movements, such as the shake of a head, a furrowed brow, and even a raised eyebrow. Each of these is then rated between 0 and 1, with positive emotions scoring higher. The person with the highest score is highlighted to the presenter, every 15 seconds.

The facial expressions of the participants are also matched to datasets in Microsoft’s Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), which has expression categories for anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise, and neutral.

“Public speaking is often regarded as one of the most stressful daily activities and is heavily influenced by audience responses to the presenter,” the research states. “In fact, studies that seek to reliably induce acute stress on people often involve giving a presentation in front of a neutral-looking audience (a.k.a., Trier social stress test). While research on audience responses in online settings is still nascent, there is prior work considering the impact of in-person audience responses, especially in the context of alleviating public speaking anxiety.”

The feature isn’t available on Microsoft Teams as yet, but it is very much in keeping with recent updates to the platform that focuses on wellbeing and combating so-called ‘video call fatigue‘.

However, this may be seen as a somewhat overly technical solution to a problem that is fairly easily solved with feedback, and it isn’t difficult to imagine how this feature could create further anxiety as it tries to reduce it.​

Volkswagen has extended its partnership with Microsoft to further boost the development of its self-driving car software.

The German automotive giant will use Azure services to update the software in its vehicles, as a way of gradually building up automated functions over time.

Volkswagen has developed some driver-assistance features in its current models, such as cruise control, through its software subsidiary Car.Software. However, the new deal with Microsoft is about tapping into the tech giant’s expertise with software updates.

With Volkswagen and Car.Software building the initial layer of software in its cars, it is hoped that Microsoft will be able to add more and more automated functions, in a way similar to the smartphone industry’s approach of adapting new features for older hardware.

“For our phones 15 or 20 years ago, when you bought it, it pretty much never changed. Now, we expected every week or every couple of days that, silently, there’s new features,” Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of cloud and artificial intelligence at Microsoft, told Reuters. “That ability to start to program the vehicle in richer and richer ways, and in a safe way, transforms how the experience works.”

This technique is already used by Tesla and is thought to be one of the main reasons why it was able to take the lead in the industry.

Volkswagen originally signed a deal with Microsoft in 2018 to connect its cars to Azure services, but the new agreement could help the German giant catchup to the likes of Telsa with ‘over-the-air updates’ using the industry’s second-largest cloud infrastructure provider.

“As we transform Volkswagen Group into a digital mobility provider, we are looking to continuously increase the efficiency of our software development,” said Dirk Hilgenberg, CEO of the Car.Software Organisation.

“We are building the Automated Driving Platform with Microsoft to simplify our developers’ work through one scalable and data-based engineering environment. By combining our comprehensive expertise in the development of connected driving solutions with Microsoft’s cloud and software engineering know-how, we will accelerate the delivery of safe and comfortable mobility services.”

Microsoft has reportedly been in talks to acquire the social media firm Pinterest in recent months, although the company has so far been unable to secure a deal.

It’s the second time the tech giant has attempted to buy a large social media platform, with negotiations reportedly ending after Pinterest expressed a wish to remain independent, according to The Financial Times.

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In the summer Microsoft also failed in a bid to take over Chinese video-sharing app TikTok, after the company was put up for sale to avoid a complete ban in the US. Microsoft ultimately lost out to Oracle and Walmart, though that deal is still yet to be completed.

Pinterest, however, is valued at around $51 billion (£36bn), which would not only have resulted in Microsoft’s biggest acquisition ever, but also likely one of the largest tech acquisitions in history – potentially only behind Dell’s $67 billion takeover of EMC in 2015. It would also have been the company’s most notable acquisition since it bought LinkedIn for around $26 billion in 2016.

It’s suggested that Microsoft is interested in amassing a portfolio of active online communities that can run on top of its Azure cloud platform, according to sources with knowledge of the deal, speaking to the Financial Times. Aside from LinkedIn, the other notable ‘community’ acquisitions in Microsoft’s portfolio are GitHub and Minecraft.

Owning a company with large numbers of active users, many of which post frequently, can provide valuable data for a business like Microsoft. LinkedIn data, for example, is used to customise other Microsoft apps and services, such as Outlook, which can show shared LinkedIn connections with your email contacts.

What exact use Microsoft would have had with Pinterest data is unknown, but the firm is rapidly growing with 459 million active users. It is also worth noting that the social media site currently relies on Amazon Web Services (AWS) for its infrastructure.

“In Pinterest and TikTok before it, Microsoft is clearly demonstrating that it wants to build up more consumer-facing assets within its flywheel of operations beyond hardware and its Xbox and PC businesses,” argued Nick McQuire, chief of research for enterprise at CCS Insight, speaking to IT Pro.

“When compared to its cloud competitors, particularly its archrival next door, this is a glaring gap for Microsoft. This matters, but it’s less about increasing the diversity of its revenue in new areas like advertising, which through Bing, is not an insignificant business for Microsoft. It’s about winning cloud customers, particularly in consumer-facing industries where the other clouds have bigger assets to bring to bear to win larger deals.”

He added that this approach, the type of corporate style cloud deal between cloud providers and customers that involve a wider set of assets, is becoming increasingly common.

“Having an online B2C asset within its organisation not only helps it address sentiment that it’s just a sober enterprise play, but it also gives it more credibility with customers addressing the huge shifts in consumer behaviour and brand preferences as well,” said McQuire.

Although Microsoft also failed in its bid for TikTok, Oracle and Walmart’s deal has been put on hold pending a review by US President Biden over the previous administration’s national security policies targeting Chinese firms.

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