​The UK’s global tech exports are predicted to grow by 35% in the next five years to £31.45 billion, according to a new report by Tech Nation.

The latest findings revealed that the value of tech exports is to increase by an additional £8.15 billion by 2025, despite potential inhibitors such as the coronavirus pandemic or Brexit.

According to the organisation, the UK digital tech services sector currently exports a much greater value of goods than they import, which last year led to a trade surplus of 55%, aproximately 7% more than the average trade surplus among the top 57 countries globally.

Last year, the UK was found to be the fifth largest digital tech services exporter in the world, at £23.3 billion, after India, the US, China, and Germany.

Commenting upon the estimates, Tech Nation’s chief executive Gerard Grech said that the UK «is a natural home for many scaling tech businesses».

«The UK is also third in the world for the number of UK tech unicorns, and number one in Europe. These factors give us a strong conviction that UK founders, government and industry leaders should all be gearing up to double tech exports by 2025, in the aftermath of both the pandemic and Brexit.

«By doubling exports, UK tech could contribute an additional £23bn to the economy per year by 2025 and move up the ranks to become a top global exporter of tech,» he added.

The results mark a steady growth over the last four years, which led to the UK digital tech trade surplus to increase from £8.7bn in 2015 to £12.8bn in 2019 – a growth of 68%. This impressive performance has meant that the industry’s trade surplus is now the third largest in the UK, following Financial Services and the Insurance sector, at £43.4 and £16.9 billion, respectively.

According to Tech Nation’s Global Opportunities Index, a ranking of the best countries in the world for digital tech trading opportunities, the UK takes the second place behind the US – largely the result of the UK’s impressive online retail and e-commerce sales, which are valued at £688.4 billion.

The report argues that UK tech companies should be looking to the US, Israel, Canada, Germany and The Netherlands as the most attractive post-Brexit export markets, while also considering Brazil and Singapore as the fastest rising global opportunities for UK businesses to trade with.

Digital minister Caroline Dinenage described the UK as “Europe’s tech capital”, adding that “these figures reinforce our industry’s reputation as a truly global player”.

«It’s great to see our digital exports booming which will help create more jobs and opportunities for people up and down the country,” she said. «We are investing heavily in the nation’s digital infrastructure as well as in people’s digital skills which puts British firms in an unparalleled position to seize new, global opportunities on the horizon.»

Global Opportunities Index – Top 10

​Welcome to the seventh issue of IT Pro 20/20, our digital magazine that brings all of the previous month’s most important tech issues into clear view.

The A-levels fiasco is by no means the first example of UK leadership woefully misunderstanding technology or viewing it as a panacea. Whether it’s arrogance over the development of a centralised coronavirus contact-tracing app, or senior ministers accidentally leaking Zoom IDs over Twitter, the public sector is not exactly inspiring confidence in its ability to create a tech-savvy society.

As ever with technology, it’s going to be down to the private sector to drive this change. The coronavirus has forced many companies to shrink or close entirely, leaving likely hundreds of thousands of people out of work – although unemployment is notoriously difficult to monitor.

Yet, what we’re also seeing is a surge in the number of schemes offering retraining or courses in highly-sought after skills. In fact, in this month’s issue we argue that the coronavirus pandemic is likely going to create a learning revolution. Whether it’s a surge in the use of coding websites or encouraging veterans into technology, the fractured job market could prove fertile ground for those retraining into STEM-based roles.

The next IT Pro 20/20 will be available on Wednesday 30 September – previous issues can be found here.

If you would like to receive each issue in your inbox as they release, you can subscribe to our mailing list here.​

Plans for an underwater data cable between LA and Hong Kong have been scrapped after the US government suggested that China could use it to steal data.

The project is run by the Pacific Light Data Company and includes tech firms like Google and Facebook. 

The issue is that the Hong Kong section would have been managed by China’s Dr Peng Group, a firm the US government believes has a relationship with the Chinese intelligence and security services.

The project was first announced in 2016. At that time, Google said the cable would «provide enough capacity for Hong Kong to have 80 million concurrent HD video conference calls with Los Angeles». To use the cable, however, companies need permission from the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

Around 12,800 km (800 miles) of the cable has already been laid but, according to new plans submitted to the US communication authority, it now only links the US to the Philippines and Taiwan.

«We can confirm that the original application for the PLCN cable system has been withdrawn, and a revised application for the US-Taiwan and US-Philippines portions of the system has been submitted,» a spokeswoman for Google told the BBC. «We continue to work through established channels to obtain cable landing licenses for our undersea cables.»
 
FCC Commissioner Geoffery Stark said in a tweet that he «shared the concerns» of the US Department of Justice, adding that he would «continue to speak out» against China accessing data carried by the cables. 
 
Operation of the cable has been caught in the ongoing US-China trade war, which doesn’t seem to have an end in sight. 
 
A similar fibre-optic cable has been announced between the UK, US and Spain. The ‘Grace Hopper‘ cable will run from New York and split off to Bilbao in Spain and Cornwall in the UK.

Videoconferencing company Zoom reported strong second-quarter earnings with revenue up 355% year on year.

Shares in the firm rose as much as 25% in extended trading after beating analyst expectations for the three months ending 31 July. 

For the first quarter of 2020, just as the pandemic started to spread, Zoom reported revenue growth of 169%. New customer subscriptions brought in 81% of that growth, according to financial chief Kelly Stechleberg. 

In the following three months, however, Q2 revenue is more than double Q1 at £663.5 million, growing 355% compared to the same period in 2019. As such, the company has raised its full-year guidance.

Zoom is arguably one of the biggest beneficiaries of the global lockdown, capitalising on the sudden need to communicate remotely with work, friends and family. The firm averaged 148.4 million monthly active users in the second quarter, an increase of 4,700% year on year, according to CNBC.

At the same time, the firm was also hit by criticism regarding its security capabilities. A number of high-profile organisations, including the FBI, Google, and even the country of Taiwan, banned its use after multiple reports pointed to a lack of end-to-end encryption. There was also the rise of so-called Zoom bombing where third-parties could hack into meetings by accessing the ID number. 

The company has sought to fix these issues by recruiting security experts and tweaking its platform in various ways, but it looks to have avoided any real damage to its reputation. Zoom’s income neared $186 million, up from a mere $5.5 million a year ago. 

However, the company’s gross profit of 71% is still under the 80% range the firm operated at before free users adopted the service at the start of the pandemic. 

On a conference call with investors, Steckelberg said the company’s gross profits will remain in the same range as the fiscal second quarter for the rest of the fiscal year. She also added the company was experiencing slightly higher rates of customer cancellation than normal, but that these new rates had been factored into its forecast.

Dell Technologies beat profit estimates with strong second-quarter earnings boosted by demand for its notebooks and software products for remote and online learning. 

The firm posted second-quarter revenues of $22.7 billion (£17 billion) and operating income of $1.1 billion (£827 billion), a 119% increase year-on-year. 

While the impact of the coronavirus, and the resulting lockdown, hurt other parts of its business, the rapid shift to the cloud spurred demand for hardware and software to enable remote working.

Orders from the education sector jumped 24% in the second quarter period ending 31 July, according to Dell, while government orders also increased by 16%.

«In Q2, we saw strength in the government sector and in education as parents, teachers and school districts prepare for a new frontier in virtual learning,» said Jeff Clarke, chief operating officer at Dell. 

Revenue in the firms biggest segments was also boosted by consumer sales of notebooks and gaming systems hitting double digits. Data centre sales, were down, however, dropping 4.8% to $8.21 billion (£6.18 billion), which Dell said was due to companies redirecting their spending towards remote working.  

Dell’s software unit, VMware, also benefited from the shift to cloud, posting a 9.7% revenue rise at $2.91 billion (£2.18 billion). 

«In light of these uncertain times, we delivered solid execution and financial performance in Q2 FY21,» said Pat Gelsinger, VMware CEO.

«With our Any Cloud, Any Application, Any Device strategy, we are helping customers solve their hardest technology challenges and meet and exceed their business objectives.»

Dell’s stake in VMware is worth almost $50 billion (around £40 billion), but the company is reportedly exploring a potential spinoff of its equity ownership of the software giant. Any potential deal is likely not to occur before September next year, but Dell has confirmed the plans by submitting a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

A former Cisco employee has pleaded guilty to damaging Cisco’s internal network in an incident during 2018, leading to the deletion of 16,000 Webex Teams accounts belonging to company employees.

Sudhish Kasaba Ramesh was charged with intentionally accessing a protected computer without authorisation and recklessly causing damage after he accessed Cisco’s cloud infrastructure and deleted 456 virtual machines (VMs).

Several months after resigning from the company in April 2018, he concsiously deployed a piece of code from his Google Cloud Project that destroyed these VMs in Cisco’s cloud infrastructure, hosted by Amazon Web Services (AWS). 

These VMs hosted Cisco’ Webex Teams application, which meant that more than 16,000 employees lost access to video conferencing, video messaging, file sharing and other collaboration tools, as their accounts were wiped.

This shutdown lasted two weeks and caused Cisco to spend around $1.4 million in time to restore the damage, as well as more than $1 million in refunds to consumers. No customer data was compromised as a result of these actions, according to the US Attorney’s Office fo the Northern District of California.

“Cisco addressed the issue in September 2018 as quickly as possible, ensured no customer information was lost or compromised, and implemented additional safeguards,” a Cisco spokesperson told IT Pro. 

“We brought this issue directly to law enforcement and appreciate their partnership in bringing this person to justice. We are confident processes are in place to prevent a recurrence.”

Ramesh was charged on 13 July and pled guilty to the single count, admitting that he acted recklessly in deploying the code, and consciously disregarded the substantial risk of his actions harming Cisco. His hearing is scheduled for 9 December 2020. 

The maximum penalty for committing such an offence is five years imprisonment and a fine of $250,000, although Ramesh’s guilty plea is likely to mean the final sentence is much softer than this.

The UK government must do more to get workers back in the office, business leaders have said, as city centres are at risk of becoming «ghost towns». 

The mass adoption of remote working is having an inadvertent effect on local businesses, robbing them of passing trade, according to Carolyn Fairbairn, the director-general of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI).

The warning comes as recent figures suggest that many of the UK’s major employers have no plans to return staff to offices on a full-time basis in the near future. This is in addition to companies announcing plans to introduce permanent remote working strategies.

Fairbairn, however, has said that getting staff back into the office and the workplace is as important as pupils returning to schools. 

«The UK’s offices are vital drivers of our economy,» Fairbairn wrote in the Daily Mail. «They support thousands of local firms, from dry cleaners to sandwich bars. They help train and develop young people. And they foster better work and productivity for many kinds of business.

«The costs of office closure are becoming clearer by the day. Some of our busiest city centres resemble ghost towns, missing the usual bustle of passing trade. This comes at a high price for local businesses, jobs and communities.»

Fairbairn’s concerns are backed by a recent BBC poll, which questioned 50 employers, ranging from banks to retailers, to get an idea of when they expect staff back in the office. Around 24 firms said they had no plans in place for a return, and one of the main reasons cited by the companies is that they couldn’t see a way to accommodate large workforces under social distancing measures.

A number of tech firms have made remote work an indefinite option for staff, such as Twitter and Fujitsu, while companies like Facebook and Microsoft have extended flexible and remote working strategies into 2021.

While remote working has kept many companies going through the pandemic and has also highlighted a number of work-life balance benefits, it could also have a dramatic effect on other parts of the economy.

«The risk is that people don’t return to offices and tourism doesn’t come back to the city centres that need it, like Edinburgh, Manchester, Birmingham and London,» said Kyle Monk, the British Retail Consortium’s director of insight. 

«People are working from home now and they might not return before Christmas. Some people might not return until halfway through 2021. When they do return, it might be on a lesser schedule, so rebalancing is going to have to happen on the property side and it’s where that cost falls. There’s a sort of looming problem there, which there isn’t an immediate solution to.»

Salesforce is cutting around 1,000 jobs despite the company’s shares reaching all-time record high following a strong second-quarter earnings report. 

Employees affected by the cuts will be given 60 days to find a new role within the company, according to CNBC sources, which could mean the firm lays off significantly less than 1,000 staff. 

Salesforce is reportedly preparing to list 300 new positions next week as it shifts its business model due to the impact of COVID-19. In March, as the pandemic shut down large parts of the economy, CEO Marc Benioff pledged not to lay off employees for 90 days. That period came to an end sometime in June. 

«We’re reallocating resources to position the company for continued growth,» a Salesforce spokesperson said. «This includes continuing to hire and redirecting some employees to fuel our strategic areas, and eliminating some positions that no longer map to our business priorities.»

Employees that don’t manage to land new positions will be offered severance and six months of pay benefits, the company said.

The cuts come just a day after the cloud giant reported a quarterly profit of $2.63 billion on revenue of $5.15 billion. Its revenue has grown 29% compared to the previous year and the firm expects total revenue of $20.7 billion in its current fiscal year, ending 31 Jan.

Shares in the company have also never been higher, with stock surpassing a 19% gain recorded in November 2008.

The impact of the coronavirus pandemic and the subsequent recession has forced a number of companies into mass redundancies and strategic shifts, such as permanent remote working or a greater focus on digital operations. Salesforce’s financial officer Mark Hawkins said the company was making «strategic shifts» that reflected how and where people now work as a result of the pandemic. 

«This means we’ll be redirecting some of our resources to fuel growth and areas that are no longer as aligned with the business priority will be de-emphasised,» he said.

Microsoft is adding an audio transcription feature to the online version of Word that will be free for Office 365 subscribers.

The new service will allow users to import existing audio files or to record conversations directly into Word before having them automatically transcribed.

Microsoft’s transcription feature can capture audio from your PC, which can be MP3 recordings of meetings, phone calls or even YouTube videos. It will also capture audio from your machine’s microphone for direct dictation. It has support for up to 200MB of MP3, WAV, M4A or MP4 files.

Once a conversation is transcribed, Microsoft’s AI will separate different speakers and break the text into easily readable chunks that will be timestamped for easier playback. Users can then edit and insert these text clippings into a Word document.

The playback element is similar to its text-to-audio service, Immersive Reader, which was launched on 25 August and powered by its Azure AI platform.

AI-powered transcription has grown in popularity in recent years, particularly with apps like Otter.ai, Happy Scribe and Trint, all of which boast high degrees of accuracy when transcribing near-perfect audio, but fall short when it comes to non-US accents.

However, it remains to be seen whether Microsoft’s own software is going to be able to draw users away from existing free models, particularly as there’s no way to access it outside of Office 365 and usage is capped at 5 hours worth of uploads per month, which is half the upload allowance available on the free tier of Otter.ai.

Transcribe in Word will be available from today and is free for all Microsoft 365 subscribers. It’s also supported in the new Microsoft Edge and Chrome browsers. A mobile version for iOS and Android is due later in the year.

The service currently only supports English, although Microsoft said more languages will be made available at a later date.

Gif courtesy of Microsoft Blog