For the last few weeks, Boris Johnson and his government have floundered under the ruthless examination of the new leader of the Labour Party, Keir Starmer.

The coronavirus has robbed Johnson of his audience and made him look foolish up against the extensively prepared leader of the opposition. This week, Starmer rightly pointed out that the decision to end online voting and the hybrid Parliament was “shameful” as it prevented members from voting.

“If any other employer behaved like this it would be … indirect discrimination under the Equalities Act,” he scolded.

Johnson suggested that it wasn’t “unreasonable” for parliamentarians to come back to Westminster to physically vote, backing the decision made by the Leader of the House, Jacob Rees-Mogg, and completely missing the point that many can’t due to health conditions. 

My own local MP, Conservative, Robert Halfon, suffers from osteoarthritis and was advised by his GP not to go to Westminster and was therefore unable to vote. He told the BBC that Rees-Mogg was “lacking empathy and understanding”. 

As MPs – who are often targets for abuse and violence – queued up for hours on Wednesday, risking both their health and safety, Rees-Mogg addressed the decision to come back to Westminster.

“It is important for votes to be physical because we are coming here together as a single parliament and we are voting on things that have a major effect on people’s lives,” he said. 

The fact the subjects are important to the wider public is irrelevant in this regard. People in the street are not going to dismiss legislation passed over Zoom. It’s just the rule of a man who it seems hasn’t given a moment’s thought to MPs with disabilities, or who are carers, and will always choose tradition over equality. Given that he wrote a whole book on the Victorians, you’d think Rees-Mogg would be a fan of videotelephony (more commonly known as video conferencing), given it was first conceived in 1870. 

This is the thing with the ‘new normal’ and the technology we’re all using during lockdown – none of it is actually new. Some of it’s older than the MPs voting not to use it. And the predicament faced by many MPs is the same as the people they serve. Think of all the people who could have used cloud-based services to do their jobs flexibly from home long before the coronavirus. All those people that spend hours everyday commuting into London for their job. All those people that moved to the smoke, into tiny flats they can’t afford. All because their employer isn’t open to ‘new’ ways of working. 

My father-in-law is in that tragic little bracket. He was a project manager for a government-backed organisation, that shall remain nameless. He has rheumatoid arthritis, so standing for more than 10-minutes is a painful experience. All he ever needed to do his job was a phone, a laptop, an internet connection and some cloud-based services. And yet, he was consistently asked to go into the office, in central London for no reason other than ‘that’s just the way it is’. 

I recall a horrible journey home where I had to meet him at Loughton Tube station where he was too weak to make it all the way to Epping. I’m only five-foot-seven and he’s six-foot-six if you want the humorous mental image of me trying to help him into a car. He took medical retirement at the start of the year, just avoiding the outbreak of COVID-19, yet his former employers are one of the many businesses that have been able to continue operating due to remote technologies. 

Life after the coronavirus can be completely different if we fully embrace cloud computing. It’s an example of how British business can carry on in the face of adversity, how the experience can act as a springboard to transform the way we work for the better. It may even lead to more equality. But with the ‘traditionalists’ calling the shots in government, it seems the country’s leadership is determined to be left in the past.

It feels like a lifetime ago since Mobile World Congress (MWC), one of the biggest events on the tech calendar, was cancelled just as the coronavirus crisis was beginning to escalate. Winding forward to the present day, the prospect of any large events of its stature taking place is unthinkable, with companies either postponing or cancelling their own.

Many have instead pivoted to hosting their events digitally, trialling ways to engage partners and customers online. This also applies to our sister title, IT Pro, with the launch of IT Pro Live, a five-day programme of keynote addresses, panel discussions and Q&As held between 22 and 26 June. Of course, hosting a virtual event is very different from hosting a physical one and even the most experienced of event managers face pitfalls. In this spirit, we’ve compiled guidance for businesses hoping to launch their own virtual events over the coming weeks, months or even years.

Not a like-for-like replacement

Hosting a digital event is an arena ripe for experimentation. Microsoft, for example, launched more than 50 products at its first virtual Build conference, which, like IT Pro Live, took place over the course of a week. Google Cloud Next 2020, on the other hand, will be hosted one day per week for nine weeks, starting 14 July. As such, it’s clear that virtual events can’t be treated as a like-for-like replacement for in-person conferences.

“The challenge is that such conferences are multi-faceted events that are hard to deliver through a virtual window,” nCipher vice president, Peter Carlisle, tells Cloud Pro. In Carlisle’s experience, certain elements of a physical conference can’t be replicated, which may prove challenging. These vary from sharing stories in casual settings like over a meal, to soaking in the buzz generated by thousands of attendees darting around a conference floor. The cyber security firm adopted a different format for its recent virtual Sales Kick-Off, delivering content daily across nine consecutive business days. Sessions ran 60 to 90 minutes, with three of four topics delivered in pieces averaging 20 minutes each. 

There are, however, benefits to hosting virtual events, according to Imperial College Business School’s conference manager, Megan Taylor-Silva. The university recently hosted its fifth annual Imperial Business Conference online, focussing on sustainability, and inviting speakers from Sainsbury’s, Microsoft, Google and BlackRock.

“Gone are the days where bad catering or a gate crasher can ruin your event,” explains Taylor-Silva. “Instead of spending time on choosing the right gluten-free muffin, you’ll have more time to spend on perfecting your event content, building relationships with your speakers, and converting registrants.”

Putting the building blocks in place

Planning is perhaps the most crucial element. One of the biggest mistakes companies can make, explains Virtual Event Company founder and CEO, John Saunders, is not appreciating the difference between planning for a virtual and physical event – with different timescales, disciplines and technologies involved. 

“More often than not, companies have committed to a software they don’t know the full capabilities of, therefore, allowing enough time to plan for your event is critical. During this planning period, it’s critical that the technology and the Wi-Fi strength are tested to avoid poor sound or other issues on the day,” he says. “Speakers should be coached on how to engage with people online and address their audience through a camera. It’s a different skill to physical stage events and practising online before the big event is important to ensure engagement is achieved.”

It’s important to test the systems, run experiments and trial different scenarios. Lining up backup options should things go wrong would also ensure seamless continuity should a worst-case scenario come to fruition. Before the systems are even in place, it’s also key to ensure your organisation uses the right technology. It may, therefore, be useful to look at what your competitors are using, and what your attendees are familiar with, Imperial College Business School’s Taylor-Silva adds. This is in addition to making sure these systems work with the company’s existing platforms.

“Don’t assume that everyone is comfortable with technology,” she elaborates. “Briefing speakers ahead of time and ensuring they know how to use your event platform is incredibly important. Make sure that speakers have a stable internet connection and a good microphone, this could make or break your event.”

Systems and software

From video conferencing to streaming services organisations can adopt a variety of platforms. John Saunders’ Virtual Event Company, for example, recently launched its digital hub for businesses to plan and host digital events, even fitted with Second Life-esque 3D rendering. While buying into flashy platforms might appeal to many, in Saunders’ experience, not fully understanding the technologies being used is a common pitfall.

“As companies navigate this new world by way of new tech solutions, they may choose a platform that doesn’t resonate with their brand or audience, or choose one that doesn’t look professional in the interests of cost,” he tells Cloud Pro. “Taking time to research the best digital solution for your event is key.” 

Database performance platform Percona, for instance, used a variety of simple platforms for its 24-hour virtual event last month, after plans to host Percona Live Austin 2020 fell through. Zoom was used as the main hosting platform to allow organisers to stream directly to attendees, while the event was also live-streamed to YouTube, Twitch and Facebook Live. Workplace collaboration platform Slack was repurposed to serve as a central point of contact for conference-goers.

For Percona’s global events manager, Bronwyn Campbell, the key to success was to keep it simple. “By not over complicating things with fancy broadcasting solutions or too many streaming options,” she explains in a blog post, “it allowed us to make it easier to manage, yet very effective and with a broad reach”.

Catering for the occasion

The experience will differ vastly from that of attending an in-person event, not just in the way that content is consumed, but when. Hosting an event online means you can much more easily cater for audiences from across the world, but this means ensuring your event is as accessible as possible. IT Pro Live, for example, will be broadcast between 1:30pm and 6:30pm BST, which also coincides with the working day in Europe, the Middle East, and most of the Americas. The incorporation of on-demand sessions also means people can access the content as and when it suits them.

Database company Redis Labs hosted its annual RedisConf conference virtually this year, with the company boasting four times the average number of attendees. The company’s CMO, Howard Ting, explains that the experience has given Redis a flavour for what kinds of events work better online, and what might not necessarily translate well to a virtual format. 

“Your event is now more accessible as it’s available to attendees across the globe without the burden of travel,” Ting tells Cloud Pro. “Along with that, your speaker pool just expanded. We also found that virtual events were cheaper overall to run, since you aren’t managing a venue and hotels.”

“We found that attendees appreciated live interview formats that were a little unstructured, like fireside chats. The organic conversations that happened in these interviews drove engagement because they felt more authentic and personal,” he elaborates. “Another tool to maintain interest is to stagger content drops throughout the day or make various elements available at different times – for example, we made training sessions available only on the second day, but dropped them at the previous evening so attendees in India could access them during their morning.”

One of the key challenges, having got your event off the ground, is to sustain interest among conference-goers throughout the programme. After all, it’s much easier to disconnect and switch off than if you’ve booked flights, hotel rooms, and have to physically walk between conference sessions. 

Organisers can boost engagement in several ways, from regular polls to Q&As. One of the key methods Imperial’s Taylor-Silva pitched was to ensure that speakers address the audience throughout the event, and acknowledge their presence. Organisers may also consider appointing a visible event host who guides attendees throughout the day, offering them an element of consistency, while also giving producers a single point of contact to liaise with for time-keeping purposes.

Redis Labs’ Howard Ting, meanwhile, devised an alternative approach, with the company building a gamification system that rewarded engagement. “Those who attended more sessions, asked more questions, and visited more areas in the environment were rewarded. We had small Easter Eggs throughout the conference that added to the depth of the event; for instance, we tied the environment to the attendee’s local time, so if attendees were visiting during their evening the environment transformed to dark mode.”

Minor pitfalls might be unavoidable

Hosting a successful virtual event won’t be easy for any company to pull off, particularly given the variance in structuring, content styles, and even the technologies powering them. It’s also important to bear in mind that the concept will be new to audiences too, so getting things wrong will be forgivable to an extent. 

This is a period of trial-and-error for many, and there will inevitably be things you wish you could’ve done differently after the fact. Percona’s Bronwyn Campbell, for example, says she wishes her event featured shorter talks in some instances, and kept to a single track of events as opposed to a complex multitrack programme, as it runs the risk of audience dropoff, while making things more difficult to manage. Nevertheless, the key for any organisation will lie in rigorous planning, sufficient testing of underlying technologies, and devising ways to keep audiences engaged throughout the duration of the agenda. 

IT Pro Live will take place across five days from 22 to 26 June, featuring an array of panel sessions, Q&As, and roundtables. You can check out the agenda and register for your free ticket now.

​IBM Cloud suffered a global outage last night, heavily impacting users who rely on the company’s cloud computing services such as Kubernetes and Red Hat.

Problems started to arise at around 10:30pm BST on Tuesday when users reported unresponsive websites to DownDetector. 

The company’s own status page was impacted by the outage due to it being hosted on the IBM Cloud. Its internal server error page read: «Sorry, we’ve encountered an error on our end, and our developers are working on clearing this up. Please try reloading the page or following these links back». 

To the frustration of many users, IBM Cloud did not immediately address the outage. In the early hours of the morning, its Twitter account issued the following statement: «IBM Cloud services are being restored following a reported outage earlier today. We are focused on restoring full services as soon as possible.»

Jay Gilmore, customer success director at MODX Cloud, detailed his experience in reply to IBM Cloud’s tweet: «Communication in a customer crisis is a must. It was extra frustrating because the status page was unavailable, it took two hours for a single tweet about the issue and Notification Center wasn’t available because IAM was down.»

At 2:54am BST, IBM Cloud announced that the entirety of their services had «now been restored». 

However, its users were not impressed. As one of them pointed out, IBM’s own IT Infrastructure page markets its IBM Z computer with the rhetorical question: «Can you afford even one hour of downtime?»

IBM Cloud’s outage lasted around four hours. At the time of writing, it is not known what caused the outage or how many people were affected by the downtime. 

The outage came only hours after IBM decided to «sunset» its general-purpose facial recognition and analysis software suite over ethical concerns following a fortnight of Black Lives Matter protests.

Despite putting a lot of efforts into developing its AI-powered tools, the cloud giant will no longer distribute these systems for fear that it could be used for purposes that go against the company’s principles of trust and transparency. ​

​Microsoft’s decision to replace journalist with AI on the MSN home page appears to have backfired within just a week. 

As reported by The Guardian, the AI software the company is using to curate stories illustrated an article about racism with an image of the wrong band member of Little Mix.

A story about Jade Thirlwall’s personal reflections on racism was illustrated with a picture of her fellow band member, Leigh-Anne Pinnock. What’s more, despite its human editors correcting the image, the software is also said to be surfacing reports of the mistake on the home page. 

The error, which was first spotted on Friday, couldn’t have come at a worse time as people across the UK and US are taking to the streets to protest racial injustice. It also follows Microsoft’s work to restructure its AI policies, aimed at preventing mishaps of this kind. 

Thirlwall, who has been attending recent Black Lives Matter protests in London, criticised MSN for the post, calling it ignorant, unaware that the error was made by artificial intelligence.  

«@MSN If you’re going to copy and paste articles from other accurate media outlets, you might want to make sure you’re using an image of the correct mixed-race member of the group,» she said. 

At the start of June, contracted journalists were told they would no longer be employed by Microsoft to curate news on the MSN home page. Microsoft doesn’t carry out any original reporting or content creation, but it employs human editors to select, edit and repurpose articles from certain publications which it shares advertising revenue with.

With the coronavirus pandemic hitting media jobs hard, the company began terminating the contracts for dozens of its temporary journalists, according to The Guardian, with the aim of replacing them with AI. A number of those whose contracts were terminated suggested the tech giant had already begun using software to curate stories on the website. 

The human editors are thought to be unable to prevent the robot editor from selecting stories from other sites, according to The Guardian, as such editors have been told to stay alert and delete any version of the Little Mix article that software selects.

IT Pro has approached Microsoft for comment, but a staff member told The Guardian that the company was deeply concerned about reputational damage to its AI product. 

«With all the anti-racism protests at the moment, now is not the time to be making mistakes,» they said. 

​Amazon has filed a lawsuit against former Amazon Web Services (AWS) VP of product marketing Brian Hall, alleging that his new role at Google Cloud fails to comply with the terms of his confidentiality agreement.

Hall signed the contract with Amazon in June 2018, but his lawyers argued that executives at the company, including former AWS VP of worldwide marketing Ariel Kelman, led him to believe the company would not enforce its non-compete provisions. 

According to court filings, Hall slams the clause as «overbroad, unreasonable, and unenforceable», adding that his new role at Google Cloud «will not require him to use or disclose any Amazon confidential information».

«To Hall, that was understandable: as drafted, the clause sweeps far more broadly than necessary to protect Amazon’s legitimate business interests,» the court filings state. 

«Kelman also told Hall that he had never seen Amazon attempt to enforce the clause against a marketing employee, even though several such employees had previously departed for similar positions at Amazon’s rivals. Hall accepted his position with Amazon in reliance on those representations.”

Amazon believes that Hall’s position at Google Cloud, one of AWS’ biggest rivals, could sabotage the confidentiality of Amazon’s competitive information.

The company is planning to enforce the non-compete provisions of Hall’s contract, banning him from working in cloud product marketing for Google, or any other AWS competitor, for 18 months.

According to Amazon, which filed the lawsuit on 18 May, Hall «helped develop and knows the entire confidential Amazon cloud product roadmap for 2020-21».

«Virtually every day, Hall worked with Amazon’s most senior cloud executives to create and execute those plans. As a result, he was entrusted with an unusually broad view into Amazon’s cloud product plans; its priorities; and its competitive strategy», the filing reads.

The case could set a precedent for the treatment of similar non-compete provisions which, until now, most often concerned employees in the engineering sector, and not marketing leaders.

The news of the lawsuit comes days after SpaceX CEO Elon Musk blasted Amazon and its founder, Jeff Bezos, on Twitter, telling the company that «monopolies are wrong»

​IBM has decided to «sunset» its general-purpose facial recognition and analysis software suite over ethical concerns following a fortnight of Black Lives Matter protests.

Despite putting a lot of efforts into developing its AI-powered tools, the cloud giant will no longer distribute these systems for fear that it could be used for purposes that go against the company’s principles of trust and transparency. 

Specifically, there are concerns the technology could be used for mass surveillance, racial profiling and the violations of basic human rights and freedoms. This is in addition to the company now deploring the use of facial recognition in principle, and by rival vendors, for such purposes.

«We believe now is the time to begin a national dialogue on whether and how facial recognition technology should be employed by domestic law enforcement agencies,” CEO Arvind Krishna outlined in a letter to the US Congress.

«Artificial intelligence is a powerful tool that can help law enforcement keep citizens safe. But vendors and users of Al systems have a shared responsibility to ensure that Al is tested for bias, particularity when used in law enforcement, and that such bias testing is audited and reported.»

The announcement represents a major shift, given the company has previously ploughed considerable money and effort into building out its capabilities, and has occasionally courted controversy in the process.

In March 2019, for example, IBM was called out for using almost a million photos from photo-sharing site Flickr to train its facial recognition algorithms without the consent of the subjects. Those in the pictures weren’t advised the firm was going to use their images to help determine gender, race and other identifiable features, such as hair colour.

Several months before that, the company was found to have been secretly using video footage collected by the New York Police Department (NYPD) to develop software that can identify individuals based on distinguishable characteristics.

IBM had created a system that allowed officers to search for potential criminals based upon tags, including facial features, clothing colour, facial hair, skin colour, age, gender and more. Overall, it could identify more than 16,000 data points, rendering it extremely accurate in recognising faces.

While the general use of facial recognition in law enforcement is not entirely uncommon, it has run into legal blockades, with jurisdictions, such as San Francisco, banning its use altogether, for example.

Police forces in the UK, meanwhile, have been trialling such systems, but the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has effectively neutered these plans after urging branches to assess data protection risks and ensure there’s no bias in the software being used.

In addition to permanently withdrawing its facial recognition technology, IBM has called for a national policy that encourages the use of technology to bring greater transparency and accountability to policing. These may include body cameras and data analytics techniques.

Much in step with IBM until now, a number of other major companies have engaged in developing their own AI-powered facial recognition capabilities which have often also courted controversy. 

AWS has come under fire for building its highly sophisticated Rekognition technology with alleged racial and gender bias. The company’s shareholders overturned an internal revolt over the sale of Rekognition to the police by an overwhelming majority of 97% in May 2019, for example.

The claims were based on MIT research that found it mistakenly identified some pictures of woman as men 31% of the time, which was more prevalent when it was shown pictures of darker-skinned women. This was against an error rate of 1.5% with Microsoft’s software.

Rackspace is ushering in a four-point plan to transform its business into a multi-cloud specialist under the name Rackspace Technology. 

The move follows a series of acquisitions and partnerships that have helped bolster the companies’ services. 

The four areas focus on cloud optimisation, security, cloud-native enablement and data modernisation, and the name change is the culmination of the company’s transformation over the past year, led by CEO Kevin Jones. 

«Our technical acumen with the world’s leading cloud technologies – across apps, data and security – empowers our customers to build new revenue streams, increase efficiency, and create incredible experiences,» Jones said. 
 
«Our new name, mission and multi-cloud solutions better represent the full value we bring to market. Our mission is simple. Embrace technology. Empower customers. Deliver the future.»
 
Under its new branding, the company will offer multi-cloud services. These include cloud optimisation that improves cost and performance, cloud security with compliance services for enterprise cloud customers, cloud-native enablement which accelerates multi-cloud transformation with cloud-native application and data, and finally, a data modernisation service that aims to help customers make predictive, data-driven decisions and increase the return of investment with data analytics.
 
In terms of value for money, Rackspace has already shown it can usher in multi-cloud transformations at low costs, according to Wyndham Hotels & Resorts.

«Our first year of savings with Rackspace was in the 40-45% range versus our historical run costs. As we’ve continued to optimise, our second and third year of savings will be more than 60%,» said Scott Strickland, EVP & CIO, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts. 

«Rackspace has been a tremendous partner, and their strategic shift to double down on new multi-cloud solutions addresses our long-term business needs.»

This is also the latest in a string of name changes for the tech firm. It was previously known as Rackspace.com, Rackspace Managed Hosting, Rackspace Hosting and, most recently, simply Rackspace.

A third of people using their home broadband to continuing working during the pandemic say they have seen disruption to their services, according to YouGov. 

2,031 people took part in a survey, with three-quarters (73%) stating that they have been using their household connection more heavily than usual since entering lockdown. 

However, 35% of UK households have revealed that they have experienced worse internet performance since the outbreak of COVID-19. 

According to YouGov data, 52% of those who have experienced poor internet connectivity have also had difficulty doing work activity, with 15% suggesting they’ve experienced «a lot» of disruption. Six in ten (59%) also say they’ve had trouble with video and audio calls, which has become the main method of business communication under lockdown. 

Poor internet performance was cited as a reason for low productivity in remote working in a report from Aternity in April. The COVID-19 Remote Work Productivity Tracker, which was compiled with data from millions of employee devices from over 500 Global 2000 companies, suggested that productivity had declined by 20%. 

Speaking about the findings, Forrester VP of research, Martin Gill suggested the drop in productivity could be simply «user error».

«The primary issue seems to be broadband issues, what I’d categorise as user error, so people not knowing how to switch microphones on, people talking over each other in meetings, people just not used to the whole etiquette of remote working,» he said.

YouGov’s evidence suggests that internet performance is worse for those with more people in their households, which is particularly problematic if more than one person is work from home. 

Four in ten (41%) of those living in homes with three or more people say their connection has deteriorated during the pandemic, increasing to 43% for those in households of four or more. 

Slack has agreed on a multi-year partnership with AWS that will see its voice and video calling features integrated with Amazon Chime.

The partnership announcement comes a day after Slack reported its revenues increased 50% to $201.7 million in its first-quarter earnings. This also included a 28% rise in paid customers.

Its latest paid customer is tech giant Amazon, which has agreed to adopt Slack within its workforce as part of the deal. In the other direction, Slack will use a range of AWS services, including storage, compute, database, security, analytics, and machine learning, to develop new collaboration features.

The agreement will see ‘Slack Calls’, it’s service for all voice and video calling, integrated into Amazon’s video conferencing platform Chime, a service that has similar call functions to Microsoft Teams.

«The future of enterprise software will be driven by the combination of cloud services and workstream collaboration tools,» said Stewart Butterfield, CEO and co-founder of Slack.

«By integrating AWS services with Slack’s channel-based messaging platform, we’re helping teams easily and seamlessly manage their cloud infrastructure projects and launch cloud-based services without ever leaving Slack.»

Slack will also use AWS’s global infrastructure to support enterprise customers adopting its platform, making use of the recently announced data residency. Revealed in May, the updated zones allow Slack customers to select from a greater number of regions in Europe to help them store their data locally and fulfil compliance requirements. The deal will allow Slack to build on this offering by taking advantage of AWS infrastructure.

While Slack’s first-quarter results beat expectations, the 50% jump was in fact lower than many investors had anticipated, according to TechCrunch. Immediately after its earnings report, an investor sell-off resulted in a 4.4% drop in shares.

The firm reported rapid growth following the outbreak of the coronavirus in March. The mass adoption of cloud-based services led some investors to expect a little more than 50%.