More than half (60%) of small business employees who are working from home due to the pandemic are using the time they would be spending on their commute as work time, a new study by Vodafone has found.

According to the research, which was conducted by Atomik Research and surveyed 1,003 UK adults from SME companies, 40% of employees who are working from home have put in an average of 642 additional hours, equal to 26 extra days, since lockdown began back in March.

A quarter (25%) of the surveyed homeworkers are also contributing to their local economy on a daily basis by swapping major coffee retailers such as Starbucks or Pret a Manger for smaller cafes and coffee shops.

According to Vodafone UK business director Anne Sheehan, «the Covid-19 pandemic has reshaped the working world, seemingly for the long-term». 

«Workers are now contributing more where they live, and that will be a boost to local businesses during these difficult times,» she said.

The report follows the UK government’s campaign aiming to encourage employees to return to their offices and prevent city centres from becoming «ghost towns«.

However, research conducted by Cardiff and Southampton Universities found that nine in 10 people in the UK who worked remotely during the pandemic want to continue to stay away from the office. Between 6,000 and 7,000 UK residents were questioned in the survey, with 88% saying they would like to continue working remotely in some capacity, with 46% wanting to do so often or all of the time.

According to the Evening Standard, the government might try to convince homeworkers to return to the offices by providing them with free bus and train credit, as using public transport systems and its potential health implications is believed to be one of the main factors driving employees away from coming back into the cities. 

Google wants to make it easier to accelerate digital transformation by «citizen developers» with no-code business apps, automation and API management.

The Business Application Platform, announced today, builds on Google Cloud’s acquisition of Apigee API management, as well as its efforts in AppSheet no-code application development, said Amit Zavery, vice president of Business Application Platform at Google Cloud, in a blog post.

«We’ll be adding new features in these areas that leverage Google Cloud’s expertise in hybrid and multi cloud architectures, artificial intelligence and machine learning, lifecycle management, security, and productivity and collaboration,» said Zavery.

The first of three launches is a beta release of API Gateway, a managed service for Google Cloud workloads and serverless backends that includes authentication, key validation, and rate limiting.

«Serverless workloads are becoming more popular with developers, who are increasingly packaging their serverless applications as APIs, both to share them with other teams and to expose them publicly over the web,» said Zavery. «API Gateway lets developers secure and manage their APIs built on Compute Engine, GKE, App Engine, and serverless backends (Cloud Functions and Cloud Run), all without having to write code for different endpoints or worry about any of the infrastructure configuration or scaling.»

The second launch is an early access release for AppSheet Automation, a tool that lets non-technical users pull in data to automate processes, be they human centric, document based, or something else. Security is built in, and AppSheet Automaton uses natural language inputs and an intuitive interface so anyone in a business can automate a process.

«When business processes rely on manual actions, valuable time is often wasted updating systems instead of focusing on work that drives the enterprise forward,» Zavery said. «Moreover, opportunities for mistakes or communication lapses are abundant. Line-of-business workers are closest to these challenges, so empowering them to optimise and automate processes is an important area of enterprise innovation.»

Google also announced general availability of Apigee as a datasource for AppSheet, so users can pull in data from Apigee APIs for no-code apps. Google AppSheet lets businesses build applications without any coding — hence the name «no-code» — pulling in data from sources such as G Suite, mySQL and Salesforce.

That is now being expanded via a system called Data Source for AppSheet, which will let «citizen developers» pull in a wider range of information to automate business tasks, beginning with Apigee.

«By enabling employees to build apps that leverage Apigee APIs and require no coding, enterprises can both empower line-of-business employees without technical experience to create innovative apps and reduce traditional IT backlog,» said Zavery.

Google pointed to recent figures from analyst firm Gartner showing that by 2023 there will be four times as many active citizen developers at large enterprises than professional developers.

​Microsoft has come out on top after a reevaluation of a US government cloud computing contract following a challenge from rival Amazon.

Following the decision, Amazon said it would «continue to protest this politically corrupted contract award».

Microsoft was awarded the $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract in October last year, which would see ageing computers at the Department of Defense replaced with cloud computing systems.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) filed a complaint in November saying the process should be reviewed, both due to concerns over how the prices were evaluated and potential political interference following reports of negative comments against Amazon from President Donald Trump.

In February, AWS won an injunction preventing work from starting on the contract, with the DoD saying it would review the contract awarding and consider any necessary corrective action. In April, that investigation concluded the contract was fairly awarded to Microsoft.

The Pentagon has now finished its latest review, finding that the Microsoft deal remains the best deal for the work. «The Department has completed its comprehensive re-evaluation of the JEDI Cloud proposals and determined that Microsoft‘s proposal continues to represent the best value to the Government,» the DoD said in a statement.

However, work on the contract won’t start yet as the injunction remains in place, the DoD said, adding it was «eager to begin delivering this capability to our men and women in uniform».

Microsoft naturally welcomed the news. «We appreciate that after careful review, the DoD confirmed that we offered the right technology and the best value,» a spokesperson said. «We’re ready to get to work and make sure that those who serve our country have access to this much needed technology.»

In a post on its website, AWS said the review should have given the DoD an opportunity to address the evaluation errors raised by AWS. «Unfortunately, the DoD rejected that opportunity,» the statement says.

While the thrust of Amazon’s legal argument has centred on how the technology operates and the associated costs, AWS has also complained about political interference. «On JEDI, President Trump reportedly ordered former Secretary Mattis to ‘screw’ Amazon, blatantly interfered in an active procurement, directed his subordinate to conduct an unorthodox ‘review’ prior to a contract award announcement and then stonewalled an investigation into his own political interference,» AWS says.

«‘Corrective action’ was used as a way to halt our litigation, delay further investigations and incorrectly give the appearance that only one issue needed to be fixed while giving the impression that the DoD was actually going to fix something.»

The post added: «The question we continue to ask ourselves is whether the President of the United States should be allowed to use the budget of the Department of Defense to pursue his own personal and political ends?»

AWS said that not all the information around the case has yet been made public, saying it would continue with legal action. «Throughout our protest, we’ve been clear that we won’t allow blatant political interference, or inferior technology, to become an acceptable standard,» the statement continues. «Although these are not easy decisions to make, and we do not take them lightly, we will not back down in the face of targeted political cronyism or illusory corrective actions, and we will continue pursuing a fair, objective, and impartial review.»

The massive contract was subject to intense lobbying from IT industry suppliers — including a lawsuit from IBM and Oracle alleging conflicts of interest between Amazon Web Services (AWS) and the Pentagon.

Oracle also filed suit after being removed from the running over its data centre capabilities, though the court last week found «no reversible error». Google dropped out of the running before the final winner was announced.

​Google has responded to the European Commission’s public consultation regarding the Digital Services Act, submitting a 135-page document which points out the need to clarify the EU’s expectations towards tech companies.

In the submission, Google urged the European Commission to avoid a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach, as well as elaborate on the responsibilities to which the tech industry will have to adhere if the legislation is passed.

The Digital Services Act, which was first unveiled in 2019, is expected to provide the EU with a raft of legal powers to influence how social media platforms govern hate speech, extremist material, and political advertising. 

The legislation would directly impact Google’s video-hosting service YouTube, which has been criticised in the past for spreading harmful conspiracy theories, fake news, and hate speech.

In the document submitted to the European Commission, Google agreed that tech companies should act fast in order to immediately remove or disable access to harmful or illegal content. However, the tech giant also raised the concern that hosting platforms may be forced to prioritise speed over cautious decision-making.

In a blog post announcing the submission, Google’s SVP of Global Affairs Kent Walker said that the Digital Services Act “should reflect the wide range of services offered by the tech industry”, as opposed to adopting a common approach for every company.

“No two services are the same and the new act should be rooted in objectives and principles that can be applied, as appropriate, across this broad, diverse ecosystem.  This will ensure that everyone – platforms regulators, people and businesses –  are responsible for the parts they play,” he said.

Walker added that Google is “committed to providing greater transparency for our users and governments so that they better understand the content they are seeing and how to notify us of concerns”. 

“The DSA should support these kinds of constructive transparency measures while ensuring that platforms can continue to protect user privacy, ensure commercially sensitive information is not revealed and prevent bad actors from gaming the system,” he said.

The consultation period for the Digital Services Act is set to conclude on 8 September.

​Six apps have been deleted from the Google Play store after it was discovered they were infected with malware that simulates clicks and intercepts SMS messages to commit fraud.

Joker, also known as «Bread», is a billing-fraud strain of malware that advertises itself as a legitimate app, according to security researchers at Pradeo.

The six apps account for nearly 200,000 installs and, despite confirmation of their removal from Google’s Play Store, researchers have suggested they are still installed on the devices of their users.

The researchers have urged users to immediately delete the apps: Convenient Scanner 2, Separate Doc Scanner, Safety AppLock, Push Message-Texting & SMS, Emoji Wallpaper and Fingertip GameBox.

Often described as ‘fleeceware’, this type of malware is designed to simulate clicks and intercept SMS text messages to trick users into subscribing to unwanted paid premium services. These types of malware generally have a fairly discreet footprint as they tend to use as little code as possible, making their fraudulent activity difficult to spot.

Apps that spread the Joker malware have continued to bypass Google security mechanisms since 2019 as those behind its spread are constantly updating its source code.

«Most apps embedding Joker malware are programmed to load and execute external code after being published on the store,» Pradeo researcher Roxane Suau said, speaking to Threatpost.

«First, these apps are riddled with permission requests and submitted to Google Play by their developers. They get approved, published and installed by users. Once running on users’ devices, they automatically download malicious code. Then, they leverage their numerous permissions to execute the malicious code.»

The malware has «thrived» on Google Play in 2020, according to the team. In January, researchers revealed that Google had removed 17,000 Android apps that had been conduits for the Joker malware, with 11 more removed in July.

​Dropbox has partnered with Facebook on a digital transfer project which will allow users to import data directly from their social media accounts.

Starting today, the new integration will help users securely transfer photo and video libraries from Facebook, as well as organise the files in any chosen way.

The integration also offers customisable privacy settings, and although the imported files will be set as private by default, users can choose to share the albums with others.

Commenting on the release, Dropbox’s VP of Business Development Jamie Perlman said that the company’s goal was to “provide products and services that make our users’ digital lives easier and less chaotic, so they can really focus on what matters”.

“People no longer accept being locked into one service or product, and want the freedom to use the tools they love. We’ll continue to look for ways to seamlessly integrate with best-in-breed products so that we can serve as the connective platform for all of today’s leading productivity tools and devices,” he added.

The release of the new integration comes weeks after Facebook called for appropriate legislation to be introduced in order to make it easier for users to transfer photos and videos to a competing tech platform.

In comments sent to the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Facebook said it planned to improve on its existing data portability tools “in the coming months”. A hearing on the topic is scheduled for 22 September 2020.

Currently, Facebook already allows users in the US and Canada to transfer photos and videos to Google Photos.

Meanwhile, in June, Dropbox unveiled several other features which aim to help users stay organised while they work from home. The updates included a password manager service called ‘Dropbox Passwords‘ and filing system called ‘Dropbox Vault’, as well as an automatic backup service, ‘Computer backup’, which saves Mac and PC folders to Dropbox for secure access on the go.

A US Court of Appeals has rejected Oracle’s challenge over the awarding of a $10 billion Pentagon cloud computing contract to Microsoft in 2019.

The decision affirmed a lower court ruling that Oracle wasn’t harmed by any errors made by the Pentagon while creating the contract proposal as the company qualify as a legitimate bidder, as reported by Bloomberg.

Oracle raised a number of complaints, including that the Pentagon violated its own rules when it set up the contract to be awarded to a single firm, arguing that by calling for extensive data centre capabilities it unfairly excluded Oracle from the process.

The company also filed a lawsuit against the Department of Defence (DoD) in December, arguing that there were conflicts of interest between former Pentagon and AWS employees.

However, before any decision on the contract was made, Oracle was removed from the bidding process in April 2020, as it failed to meet the requirement of having three data centres with FedRAMP Moderate ‘Authorised’ support – which has now been affirmed by the US Court of Appeal.

The panel did suggest that the conflict of interest allegations raised by Oracle were «troubling» but still ruled that it «had no effect on the JEDI Cloud solicitation».

«Notwithstanding the extensive array of claims raised by Oracle, we find no reversible error,» circuit judge William Bryson wrote regarding the decision by the US Court of Federal Claims.

Although Microsoft was awarded the $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract in November, work has been on hold following a successful appeal from rival bidder AWS. A Federal Claims judge said that the DoD had improperly evaluated a Microsoft storage price scenario and that the process should be reviewed.

AWS also cited other problems with the bidding, including «political influence» resulting from long-running feud between US President Donald Trump and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. These claims are still being weighed up by the courts with a 30-day extension put in place at the end of August.

​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.