Google has partnered with Parallels to bring native Windows applications to Chromebook Enterprise.

Chrome OS already supports Windows desktop apps, but only when streamed through a Parallels Remote Application Server. With the new partnership, apps will now be natively run on Chromebook devices.

A variation of Parallels Desktop will be integrated into Chrome OS, which should improve performance and also enable offline access to applications such as Microsoft Office. The feature will be available later in the year for Chrome Enterprise customers.

The move will likely entice more businesses to consider Chromebooks as alternatives to Windows laptops, particularly as it will now mean they won’t need to invest in services to stream business apps to the devices. 

«Remote work is a new reality, making efficiency, connectivity, speed, reliability, security and undisrupted access essential elements of a successful organisation,» Parallels wrote.

«At this key moment, our two organisations have formed a landmark partnership to equip enterprises with solutions that optimise their businesses and teams to meet the evolving challenges of modern work environments.»

For Google, the post-coronavirus economy will put greater strain on business expenditure, which could become challenging when workforces will need to be equipped for remote working.

The tech giant said it had seen 109% growth in commercial Chromebooks in Q1 2020 compared to the previous year, fueled in part by the cost benefits of deploying these low-cost laptops.  

«The Chrome OS team is working on new ways to make sure every company can benefit from the velocity created by supporting a cloud workforce,» John Solomon, VP of Chrome OS, wrote in a blog post.

«For example, our new partnership with Parallels brings legacy application support – which includes Microsoft Office desktop apps – to Chromebooks, with more to come on this over the coming months.»

Mozilla and the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) have published an open letter to Zoom that urges it to make end-to-end encryption available for all users.

The letter, addressed to Zoom CEO Eric Yuan, criticises the company’s decision to offer end-to-end encryption only to paying users. 

It has been signed by 19,000 internet users and backed by tech organisations and advocacy groups including Fight for the Future and MPower Change.

Earlier this month, the video conferencing platform announced plans to roll out stronger encryption for businesses and institutions that pay for its service. 

Zoom’s security consultant Alex Stamos suggested that stronger security measures may also be rolled out for non-profit organisations or users in need of an extra layer of protection, such as political dissidents, but added that “the current plan is paid customers plus enterprise accounts where the company knows who they are”. 

The decision has garnered criticism from many tech companies and organisations, including Mozilla and the EFF. In the open letter to Yuan, they argued that «best-in-class security should not be something that only the wealthy or businesses can afford».

«Around the world, end-to-end encryption is already an important tool for journalists and activists that are living under repressive regimes and fighting censorship,» wrote Mozilla’s Advocacy and Engagement VP Ashley Boyd and EFF’s associate director of Research Gennie Gebhart.

Boyd and Gebhert also criticised Zoom’s recent decision to suspend three user accounts at the request of the Chinese government for hosting meetings to commemorate the 21st anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

“Tools like Zoom can be critical to help protesters organize and communicate their message widely,” they wrote. “Activists should be able to plan and conduct protest-related activities without fear that these meetings, and the information they include, may be subject to interception. 

«Unfortunately, recent actions from law enforcement – and a long history of discriminatory policing – have legitimized such fears, making end-to-end encryption all the more critical.”

The letter acknowledged Stamos’s argument that full encryption for every meeting would leave Zoom’s trust and safety team unable to tackle child sexual abuse material (CSAM), but added that “restricting end-to-end encryption to paid accounts is not the right solution”.

Organisations such as Fight for the Future, MPower Change, Daily Kos, Kairos, Media Alliance and Jewish Voice for Peace have also launched a petition targeted at the video conferencing platform, arguing that “people who can’t afford Zoom’s services are left vulnerable to cyber-criminals, stalkers, and hackers”. It has been co-signed by 42,000 internet users.

Lau Barrios, campaign manager at MPower Change, said that “end-to-end encryption has always been a racial justice issue”.

“It most directly protects Black, brown, Muslim and poor communities from the disproportionate risk of surveillance, policing, and criminalization,» she said. 

«Zoom has already misled the public once on whether or not they use end-to-end encryption. Openly defending their refusal to provide it to those not wealthy enough to pay to protect themselves and their communities is unconscionable. And it’s a direct refusal to protect activists and organizers from surveillance in this moment.»

Dropbox has unveiled several new features to help users stay organised while they work from home.

The updates include a password manager service called ‘Dropbox Passwords‘ and filing system called ‘Dropbox Vault’ that follows on from the companies acquisition of Valt last year.

As life has become more internet-based, with many people now working remotely, Dropbox suggests that employees’ life/work balance has become strained and «chaotic». As such, the company is looking to provide services that help organise workflows as well as life at home.

In addition to Dropbox Passwords and Dropbox Vault, the company is also launching an automatic backup service, ‘Computer backup’, which saves Mac and PC folders to Dropbox for secure access on the go. This can be retrieved even when the hardware fails, according to Dropbox.

«The lines between work and home are blurred, and we’re all being pulled in a million directions right now,» said Drew Houston, CEO of Dropbox. «It can feel chaotic and overwhelming.» 

«We’re working quickly to provide new features to help people stay better organised in all aspects of their lives so they can focus on what really matters – like health and family.»

The company also has some new services for businesses, with HelloSign eSignature becoming a native feature within Dropbox following the company’s acquisition of HelloSign last year. With this feature, users will be able to send, receive and sign documents without leaving Dropbox. 

The company is also launching a suite of integrations, which includes tools for Zoom, Slack and Google. The Dropbox App Center is available to a subset of users in beta with over 40 integrated partners and more coming soon.

«According to IDC survey data, 31% of workers are concerned about lost productivity due to shifting to work from home,» said IDC analyst, Holly Muscolino.

«However, a recent poll shows that 70% of organisations would be investing in content sharing and collaboration over the next 12 months to support at-home workers. With today’s announcement, Dropbox has created a single place to help users get better organised at work and at home, to help them stay productive.»

Cisco has unveiled a ‘business resiliency’ portfolio that offers enterprises the tools to cope with the realities of a post-COVID business landscape, including remote working technologies and workplace systems.

The portfolio combines industry-specific as well as general-purposes services to give customers the means to cope with the new reality of social distancing in the workplace and difficulties in engaging remote workers. 

Cisco is rolling out the portfolio as the effects of COVID-19 continue to take their toll, and challenges such as mass remote working and fragmented IT continue to loom. This is in addition to further updates to WebEx, Cisco’s video conferencing platform, and integration with collaboration platform WebEx Teams and Box.

Industry-specific tools released as part of the business resilience package including a remote learning system, as well as an IT infrastructure kit to allow governments to establish a temporary hospital, in the mould of the NHS Nightingale sites. The temporary connected field hospital, as it’s dubbed, includes wireless networking and the associated technology to establish a temporary facility within five days.  

«Over the past several months we’ve seen major disruption to many industries and organizations at a pace like never before. Businesses that once mapped digital strategy in one to three-year periods have been required to scale their initiatives essentially overnight,» said Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins. 

«Cisco’s new business resiliency portfolio will help customers reevaluate their business strategies and implement solutions more quickly and easily than ever before.»

The remote workforce systems include a remote contact centre system, enabling contact centre agents to work from home using cloud-based systems or the capabilities to securely access their on-premise tech remotely. 

Flexible remote access gives employees the expertise and tools to access the network, endpoints and applications remotely, while the final prong, secure remote worker, offers businesses tools to analyse the effectiveness and security of their VPNs.

Among the workplace technologies being rolled out is remote office connectivity that extends a corporate network to adjacent and remote locations so workers can benefit from increased bandwidth and faster connectivity. 

Finally, social density monitoring and insights gives workplaces a view on how busy their workplace environments might be at any one time. This is in order for facilities teams to plan return-to-work strategies with social distancing in mind.

The WebEx integration with Box, meanwhile, allows workers to use the content management platform’s secure file-sharing capabilities to share documents with colleagues. With regards to WebEx, Cisco has tripled the video conferencing platform’s capacity in light of the surge in users as a result of the pandemic. 

WebEx will also introduce a fully-fledge voice-activated virtual assistant, building on Cisco’s intentions to use voice tools to explore the ‘next frontier’ of data insights, outlined in January this year.   

Dell Technologies has unveiled Dell EMC PowerScale, a new family of storage appliances designed to deal with the «onslaught of data» being faced by organisations today.

The product range is designed for object storage and is underpinned by the company’s OneFS operating system, which is best known from its Isilon range. 

The family forms part of Dell Technologies’ «edge-to-core» strategy, where it seeks to have hardware that can be deployed across an organisation’s estate, whether that’s at remote locations such as commercial or industrial sites or branch offices, as well as primary the data centre.

As such, PowerScale currently features two appliances, the all-flash f200 and the f600, which is an NVMe appliance.

As well as allowing customers to have high-performance storage appliances available at the edge, this diversity allows Dell Technologies to access a new type of client that it couldn’t with the previous Dell EMC Isilon range, the company claims.

Speaking to IT Pro, Stephen Gilderdale, senior director of EMEA presales, said: «In the past, the way in which Isilon started it simply couldn’t start small enough for some of our small-to-medium customers, so therefore they may have needed to take advantage of the services that Isilon would offer, however the starting point was a little bit too high.

«That’s why we’ve got the introduction of the f200, which really helps that smaller starting point. The f600 we expect the media houses, for example, to be using to create the blockbuster movies that we all hope to be able to get to the cinema and watch one day, and the large Isilon all-flash nodes have been used for that in the past.”

PowerScale also features CloudIQ, which can help organisations connect multiple cloud environments to their on-premise systems, be that in the data centre or at the edge, and DataIQ, which offers intelligent data management.

The launch follows on from another big storage announcement from the company in May, PowerStore.

Indeed, this is normally the time of year when CEO Michael Dell would be making all sorts of product announcements live from a stage in Las Vegas during the company’s annual Dell Technologies World conference.

As with so many other organisations, however, the company has turned this into a virtual conference and rescheduled it for this autumn.

HPE has launched a new product to help communications services providers (CSPs) get more value from 5G by offering edge services to enterprises.

Edge Orchestrator is a SaaS-based offering that focuses on situations where low latency is key.

During a press conference, Phil Mottram, vice president and general manager of the HPE’s Communications and Media Solutions business, told reporters that the company believes «the value proposition for 5G will all be firmly rooted in the enterprise space».

«We believe that consumer customers won’t be paying any more for [telcos’] services just to get a faster download of a video – there’s only so fast you can watch a video,» Mottram said. «But all of the revenue opportunities and upside opportunities for  carriers will firmly come in the enterprise new services space.»

This is far from a unique position – indeed, even before 5G standards were set, many future-gazers predicted it would be more useful in Internet of Things (IoT) scenarios in particular where low latency is key, such as in fully-autonomous cars.

While we wait for such futuristic technology to arrive, however, HPE has decided to make use of existing and emerging technology and needs. Edge Orchestrator, the company says, allows telcos to deliver new services in the form of apps at the edge of the network to enterprise customers and in doing so effectively monetise apps.

Specifically, Edge Orchestrator brings together edge compute, edge communications and edge applications and allows carriers to offer them as a single, self-service proposition to enterprise customers and other service providers that might want to deploy them.

«HPE Edge Orchestrator will be the functionality which actually takes all these components, wraps it up together and makes it available to the enterprises,» said Rolf Eberhardt, head of orchestration at HPE.

«We want to make the CSP able to efficiently allow enterprises to deploy their own applications at their own locations and connect them over connectivity services provided by the CSP back to their … data centres and to deploy these applications close to the end customers,» he continued. 

«We believe there are two benefits to this. First of all, the CSPs have the trust of the customers [and] they provide also the connectivity at the location, and second for the enterprise customers, they are able to, on the one hand, deploy quickly and efficiently in the edge space without having to do a major investment on their own and they can being all the functionality together into a one-stop.»

As it stands, Edge Orchestrator, which will be available from 31 July,  is only being sold to telcos and only as a service – there are no plans to sell through the channel or direct to customers. And while it may be 5G-focused on the surface, for now HPE proposes telcos offer these additional services through more established network technologies like 4G, LTE and Wi-Fi, then introducing 5G later as part of its portfolio.

The announcement, which comes just before the start of the company’s virtual HPE Discover 2020 conference, builds on an earlier announcement, made in March, where the company added «5G as a service» to its GreenLake portfolio. 

It also follows an announcement from the company’s networking business, Aruba, that it’s pivoting towards a more edge-focused approach to business.

HPE has launched a new product to help communications services providers (CSPs) get more value from 5G by offering edge services to enterprises.

Edge Orchestrator is a SaaS-based offering that focuses on situations where low latency is key.

During a press conference, Phil Mottram, vice president and general manager of the HPE’s Communications and Media Solutions business, told reporters that the company believes «the value proposition for 5G will all be firmly rooted in the enterprise space».

«We believe that consumer customers won’t be paying any more for [telcos’] services just to get a faster download of a video – there’s only so fast you can watch a video,» Mottram said. «But all of the revenue opportunities and upside opportunities for  carriers will firmly come in the enterprise new services space.»

This is far from a unique position – indeed, even before 5G standards were set, many future-gazers predicted it would be more useful in Internet of Things (IoT) scenarios in particular where low latency is key, such as in fully-autonomous cars.

While we wait for such futuristic technology to arrive, however, HPE has decided to make use of existing and emerging technology and needs. Edge Orchestrator, the company says, allows telcos to deliver new services in the form of apps at the edge of the network to enterprise customers and in doing so effectively monetise apps.

Specifically, Edge Orchestrator brings together edge compute, edge communications and edge applications and allows carriers to offer them as a single, self-service proposition to enterprise customers and other service providers that might want to deploy them.

«HPE Edge Orchestrator will be the functionality which actually takes all these components, wraps it up together and makes it available to the enterprises,» said Rolf Eberhardt, head of orchestration at HPE.

«We want to make the CSP able to efficiently allow enterprises to deploy their own applications at their own locations and connect them over connectivity services provided by the CSP back to their … data centres and to deploy these applications close to the end customers,» he continued. 

«We believe there are two benefits to this. First of all, the CSPs have the trust of the customers [and] they provide also the connectivity at the location, and second for the enterprise customers, they are able to, on the one hand, deploy quickly and efficiently in the edge space without having to do a major investment on their own and they can being all the functionality together into a one-stop.»

As it stands, Edge Orchestrator, which will be available from 31 July,  is only being sold to telcos and only as a service – there are no plans to sell through the channel or direct to customers. And while it may be 5G-focused on the surface, for now HPE proposes telcos offer these additional services through more established network technologies like 4G, LTE and Wi-Fi, then introducing 5G later as part of its portfolio.

The announcement, which comes just before the start of the company’s virtual HPE Discover 2020 conference, builds on an earlier announcement, made in March, where the company added «5G as a service» to its GreenLake portfolio. 

It also follows an announcement from the company’s networking business, Aruba, that it’s pivoting towards a more edge-focused approach to business.

Data management platform SAS has chosen Microsoft as its preferred cloud provider and will integrate its analytical products into the Azure portfolio.

The two firms also plan to launch joint services for their customers. 

The partnership will enable customers to run SAS workloads in the cloud, expanding their business operations and accelerating digital transformations, according to SAS. The company’s analytical products, used in areas such as health care, financial services and other industries, will also be migrated into Azure. 

The partnership builds on previous SAS integrations across Microsoft‘s Azure, Dynamics 365, Microsoft 365 and Power Platform and supports the companies shared vision to further «democratise» AI and analytics, according to SAS.

«SAS and Microsoft have a shared vision of helping customers accelerate their digital transformation initiatives,» said Oliver Schabenberger, SAS CTO and COO. «We both understand that it is about the enrichment of data and improving lives through better decisions. 

«Partnering with Microsoft gives customers a more seamless path to the cloud that provides faster, more powerful and easier access to SAS solutions and enables trusted decisions with analytics that everyone – regardless of skill level – can understand.»

SAS is a 44-year-old company based in North Carolina that boasts a wealth of high profile clients, including the likes of Allianz, Honda, HSBC, Lufthansa and Nestlé. It provides a number of different tools and services, but mostly its focus on data management and actionable analytics.

«Through this partnership, Microsoft and SAS will help our customers accelerate growth and find new ways to drive innovation with a broad set of SAS Analytics offerings on Microsoft Azure,» said Scott Guthrie, Microsoft’s executive VP of Cloud and AI. 

«SAS, with its recognised expertise in analytics, data science and machine learning, is a strategic partner for Microsoft, and together we will help customers across dozens of industries and horizontals address their most critical and complex analytical challenges.»

More than a million staff members across the NHS will have access to the Microsoft 365 suite of apps and services as part of a landmark agreement struck between NHS Digital, NHSX and Microsoft.

The productivity and collaboration suite, which includes Microsoft Teams, will be deployed to 1.2 million NHS staff in Trusts, Clinical Commissioning Groups, and health Informatics Services in an effort to create a more joined-up NHS.

GPs, consultants, nurses, therapists, paramedics, and support staff will have access to services within Microsoft 365 as part of the agreement, allowing them to take advantage of the cloud-based services. 

“Adopting the most up to date digital tools and operating systems are crucial for a modern day NHS – allowing staff to work as efficiently as possible which will deliver even better care for patients,” said the health secretary Matt Hancock.

“We have seen incredible, innovative uses of technology throughout the NHS during the Covid-19 pandemic and this new deal with Microsoft will pave the way for that to continue by ensuring we get the basics right.”

Platforms such as Microsoft Teams will allow for quicker and more efficient communication, while the interoperability across the health service with Office 365 apps and Outlook will allow for a much sharing of critical files and documents. 

“This deal with Microsoft represents a saving of hundreds of millions of pounds. This is a direct result of negotiations led jointly by NHSX and NHS Digital,” added NHSX CEO Matthew Gould. “It means staff will have access to the best possible collaboration and productivity tools, and that our cyber defences are as strong as possible.” 

The cost of the agreement hasn’t been disclosed, although the NHS insists the deal will be cost-saving for both individual organisations and the NHS as a whole, as well as improving productivity and boosting collaboration. This isn’t to mention the cyber security benefits, given the rising nature of the threat that the health service faces.

The latest agreement builds on the deal struck in April 2018 that allowed NHS organisations to upgrade to Windows 10 free of charge. Legacy operating systems, such as Windows XP and Windows 7, were widely in-use at the time of the agreement.

The rollout of Microsoft 365 to NHS organisations will also ensure IT systems that haven’t yet been upgraded to Windows 10 will be, in addition to being afforded Microsoft’s Enterprise Mobility and Security platform.

“This agreement ensures NHS organisations across England have access to modern productivity tools and solutions necessary to delivering better patient outcomes now and in the future,” said Microsoft UK CEO Cindy Rose.

“The timing of the agreement coincides with the licence renewal period of a number of NHS organisations in England. It also ensures that those NHS organisations that have already made their own arrangements with Microsoft benefit from the deal and the significant cost savings on offer.”

​A Microsoft 365 learning platform has launched data residencies in the UK and Germany to support new compliance requirements within those regions. 

Learning Management System (LMS365) is a service built into Microsoft 365 that helps organisations to deliver training on the business suite through SharePoint, Teams and mobile devices.

The platform has announced it’s deploying new ‘Azure’ data centres in the UK and Germany. The company said that as the COVID-19 crisis has accelerated cloud-based technologies, businesses in these regions are having to grapple with changing regulatory frameworks and in-country data residency standards.

For the UK, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) combined with country’s exit from the European Union has placed a new focus on data governance and security, according to Travis Campbell, senior business manager at LMS365.

«It’s important for us that customers can choose our platform without having to worry about legal constraints,» he said. «Providing these new data centres is key to supporting our expanding customer base as they rely on LMS365 to successfully implement remote learning and learning in the flow of work via Microsoft 365 and Teams.»

Similarly, at the end of 2019 Slack announced data residencies in Europe, with a UK region launched in April. Its reasoning was that large organisations needed more control over their data to meet tough compliance regulations.

For German businesses, the pandemic and its effect on digitisation have intensified the focus on data governance, according to Robert Nederby, managing director of DACH at LMS365.

«COVID-19 put high pressure on companies to support remote working,» he said. «At the same time, German businesses across industries are fast-tracking their cloud and digitisation journeys. This has raised discussions of data protection and unprecedented demand for trusted cloud infrastructures like Microsoft 365, Teams and Azure.

«This expansion helps us deliver on our continued commitment to serve our fastgrowing customer base of +200 customers in UK and DACH, and to elevate their businesses through the transformative capabilities of the LMS365 platform.»