LG Electronics has joined the IBM Quantum Network to expand industry applications of quantum computing.

IBM will give LG Electronics access to its quantum computing systems and Qiskit, in addition to the firm’s open source quantum information software development kit.

The resources will help LG electronics augment big data, artificial intelligence (AI), connected cars, digital transformation, the Internet of Things (IoT), and robotics applications.

Further, with IBM Quantum technology, LG can capture the latest advances and applications from quantum computing, in accordance with IBM’s quantum roadmap. 

Using IBM Quantum technology, LG will also train its employees, allowing the company to examine potential breakthroughs for its industry.

“Based on our open innovation strategy, we plan to use IBM Quantum to develop our competency in quantum computing,” said Byoung-Hoon Kim, CTO and executive vice president of LG Electronics. 

“We aim to provide customers with value that they have not experienced so far by leveraging quantum computing technology in future businesses.”

As part of the IBM Quantum Summit in November 2021, IBM unveiled its Eagle quantum computing processor with 127 qubits. Eagle uses IBM’s 3D packaging architecture designed to support advanced quantum processors, including its 1,126-qubit Condor chip scheduled to be released in 2023.

The LG partnership further strengthens IBM’s quest for Quantum Advantage.

“We’re happy to welcome LG Electronics to a growing quantum computing ecosystem in Korea at an exciting time for the region,” said Jay Gambetta, IBM fellow and VP of quantum computing at IBM. 

“The relationship between IBM and LG Electronics will permit LG to explore new types of problems associated with emerging technologies and will help strengthen the quantum capabilities in Korea.”

UK financial regulators are reportedly concerned about the sector’s reliance on a subset of cloud computing providers that leaves banks vulnerable to service outages and hacks. 

The Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) is said to be exploring ways to access more data from the likes of Amazon, Microsoft and Google, according to the Financial Times.

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud are often listed as the three biggest providers in the world, with each company increasingly active in the financial sector.

All three have made extensive deals with UK banks in recent years, offering services to reduce IT costs by migrating firms away from on-premise to the cloud, where they can capitalise on new technologies such as AI.  

The use of cloud computing by UK banks is covered under the PRA’s operational resilience framework, however, the use of just a few larger companies is causing concern, particularly given recent outages. 

While the PRA declined to confirm the FT‘s report, a source with knowledge of the situation told IT Pro financial regulators in the UK are now looking at ways to tackle the financial system’s increasing cloud service providers, which could see the introduction of additional policy measures, some requiring legislative change. 

The PRA is a part of the Bank of England (BoE), which has also expressed concern in this area; in July 2021, the BoE warned that UK banks moving more and more of their administration and account online “could pose a risk to financial stability”. It also argued that the market for cloud services was highly concentrated with AWS, Microsoft and Google all enjoying heavy dominance. 

Sections of the UK’s government have also questioned how much it depends on the likes of AWS. In February 2021, Conservative life peer Lord Holmes said that AWS represented “the latest iteration of the biggest player”, adding that in regards to cloud procurement, it was being allowed to “eat the largest piece of pie”. 

If 2021 was the year businesses adopted a connected enterprise mindset to adapt to new ways of working, 2022 will be the year digital transformation becomes an even more integral part of enterprise planning. 

Global IT expenditure is forecast to grow 5.5% year-on-year to $4.47 trillion (approximately £3.3 trillion) this year, according to Gartner. Digital tech initiatives will remain a top strategic business priority for companies as they continue to reinvent the future of work, said its research vice president John-David Lovelock, in October. This is especially true for those focusing spending on making their infrastructure bulletproof and implementing increasingly complex hybrid work patterns.

IT departments, however, could very well hit a crunch point over the next 12 months. Demand for high-performance computing and data centres, which comprise the infrastructure underpinning remote work, has gone through the roof since the start of the pandemic. This, coupled with poor planning on the part of automakers and a surge in demand for home entertainment electronics, has led to an ongoing chip shortage. Simply, there currently aren’t enough chips to satiate the hunger for silicon.

This shortage is set to continue for some time yet. Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger has warned the shortage will continue to impact production until 2023 at the earliest. Analysts at Deloitte, meanwhile, are slightly more optimistic and believe that the imbalance in supply and demand will normalise towards the end of this year. The shortage will, nevertheless, restrict what businesses can achieve in the coming months.

Delays, delays, delays

Amid the chip crunch, companies may struggle to get their hands on crucial hardware and equipment, says Maynard Williams, a managing director at Accenture Technology. “Businesses may find the nuts and bolts of digital transformation start to become a problem,” he tells IT Pro. “Longer lead times for laptops could mean new employees, or those with broken devices, are left unable to work for extended periods of time.”

There are, nonetheless, effective workaround strategies, such as refurbishing devices and IT equipment, Williams adds. Open dialogue with suppliers and partners around lead times and bottlenecks can help businesses improve forecasting, so they aren’t forced to make last-minute decisions. Some suppliers may be able to build up a buffer of inventory to support businesses if and when their needs suddenly change.

Demand for laptops and personal computers has been strong throughout 2021, but sales slowed towards the end of the year as supply chain constraints snarled production volumes. Some major chip foundries have also been prioritising higher margin product lines, such as CPU servers for data centres. 

A key concern for IT leaders will be if and when delays bleed into digital transformation projects that rely on connected devices, says Williams. “A warehouse automation project, for example, requires robotics and IoT sensors as well as 5G edge solutions to relay data,” he explains.

“This is all powered by chips. Even though a project like this will be planned in advance, though, plans could be threatened as a lack of supply is pushing up the price of certain chips, forcing businesses to pay more. Projects could become more expensive than previously budgeted.”

The world’s leading chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is poised to raise chip prices by as much as 20% in 2022. Prices for the likes of microcontrollers and chips communication technologies could see sharper rises than CPUs and GPUs, which have had less significant availability issues. Forrester research shows the higher costs are likely to hamper IoT device deployment, and it’s forecast the crisis could slash 10% to 15% off the IoT industry’s growth rate this year. 

The security hardware problem

Many digital transformation projects may have to be rethought over the next 12 months. What’s certain, though, is that businesses will want to move their workloads to the cloud. This is especially true for those companies that have had to reduce their cloud infrastructure spending during the pandemic.

Schwaz says adopting a zero trust-based model helps to reduce the attack vector, while providing remote workers with a seamless user experience without hindering performance.

Beyond security, the cloud can drive digital transformation through PaaS and SaaS solutions. It can also help to circumvent any local device capacity issues. Workers may need more powerful laptops with better CPUs, for example, to effectively perform their role. Rather than wait for new hardware to become available, however, much of the processing can be done in the cloud, says Williams. 

“Cloud providers also have stronger buying power,” he adds. “This means they have greater capacity to support businesses with scaling up their digital transformation plans.”

​Google and Facebook have been hit with a combined fine of €210 million (£175 million) over failures in policies that allow users to accept and refuse cookies on their websites.

France’s National Commission for Information Technology and Civil Liberties regulator (CNIL) fined Google €150 million euros, €90 million for Google LLC and €60 million for Google Ireland Limited, while Facebook Ireland Limited was given a fine of €60 million.

CNIL said that the websites facebook.com, google.fr, and youtube.com have all failed to provide an easy way for users to reject cookie collection on their browsers, and that several clicks are required to refuse all cookies, compared with a single click to provide consent.

The regulator argued the fact users are unable to refuse cookies as easily as they can accept them influences their choice in favour of consent, constituting an infringement of Article 82 of the French Data Protection Act.

Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin, head of France’s National Commission for Information Technology and Civil Liberties (CNIL), speaking at CNIL’s headquarters in Paris

The penalties also order the companies to provide internet users in France with a means of refusing cookies that is at least as simple as the existing mechanism for accepting them, within a three month period. If they fail to do so, the companies will have to pay a penalty of €100,000 per day of delay.

“We are reviewing the authority’s decision and remain committed to working with relevant authorities,” a spokesperson from Meta told IT Pro. “Our cookie consent controls provide people with greater control over their data, including a new settings menu on Facebook and Instagram where people can revisit and manage their decisions at any time, and we continue to develop and improve these controls.”

A Google spokesperson said: “People trust us to respect their right to privacy and keep them safe. We understand our responsibility to protect that trust and are committing to further changes and active work with the CNIL in light of this decision under the ePrivacy Directive.”

This isn’t the first time that CNIL has targeted big tech companies over their use of cookies. In December 2020, Amazon and Google were fined £122 million collectively for “insufficient” cookie consent. Google was hit with a €100 million (£90 million) fine while Amazon received one for €35 million (£32 million).

According to the investigation, Google didn’t provide enough information to users in France about why and how cookies are used, whereas Amazon was fined for placing cookies on people’s computers without their consent.

Google challenged this fine at the Council of State in February 2021, according to Euractiv. Politico reported that Google is still fighting this case, and a source said the company is likely to oppose the new fines and go to the French top court again.

Microsoft and Qualcomm are set to collaborate to expand and accelerate the adoption of augmented reality (AR) for the metaverse in both the consumer and enterprise sector, including developing custom AR chips.

The companies stated they were believers in the metaverse and intend to work together across several initiatives to drive the ecosystem. This includes developing custom AR chips to enable a new wave of power-efficient, lightweight AR glasses to deliver rich and immersive experiences.

Microsoft and Qualcomm also plan to integrate software like Microsoft Mesh and Snapdragon Spaces XR Developer Platform. They hope the collaboration will create transformative experiences for the next generation of head-worn AR devices in the metaverse.

“Our goal is to inspire and empower others to collectively work to develop the metaverse future – a future that is grounded in trust and innovation,” said Rubén Caballero, corporate vice president of Mixed Reality at Microsoft.

“With services like Microsoft Mesh, we are committed to delivering the safest and most comprehensive set of capabilities to power metaverses that blend the physical and digital worlds, ultimately delivering a shared sense of presence across devices.”

Hugo Swart, vice president and general manager of extended reality (XR) at Qualcomm added that the collaboration reflects the next step in both companies’ shared commitment to XR and the metaverse. Swart said Qualcomm’s core XR strategy has always been delivering the most cutting-edge technology, purpose-built XR chipsets, and enabling the ecosystem with its software platforms and hardware reference designs.

At the start of November, Microsoft launched Mesh for Microsoft Teams, its pitch for the metaverse. It aims to make remote and hybrid meetings more immersive and is set to roll out in 2022. It is a mixed reality service that allows people in different physical locations to join collaborative and shared holographic environments within Microsoft Teams to allow for chats, virtual meetings, and the sharing of documents and more.

This came after Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Facebook’s name change and its renewed focus on the metaverse. He said the metaverse would feel like a hybrid of today’s online social experiences, sometimes expanded into three dimensions or projected into the physical world to allow people to share immersive experiences, even when you can’t be together. The CEO added that it will be a more immersive social media experience, where virtual and augmented reality will take centre stage.

Google Cloud has announced the acquisition of Siemplify, an Israeli-based cyber security company that specialises in end-to-end security for enterprises. 

The exact terms of the deal were not announced, though Reuters reports it is worth around $500 million. 

Acquisition rumours were reported in the Israeli press just before Google Cloud made an official announcement on Tuesday. The CEO and co-founder of Siemplify, Amos Stern, also noted that his company is to be integrated into Google Cloud’s Chronicle platform. 

Founded in 2015, Siemplify is another example of the growing tech prowess of Israel, which has become a hotbed for new startups and data-centric businesses. Much like digital footprint tracking service Mine, Siemplify is another Israeli company founded by former members of the country’s military intelligence agencies. 

The company is typically referred to as a security orchestration, automation and response (SOAR) service, which is “the missing piece” for Google’s Chronicle platform, according to Forrester analyst Allie Mellen. 

“Other security analytics platforms began incorporating SOAR as early as 2017,” Mellen said. “This acquisition is an important step in providing a unified offering to practitioners and in being able to compete more directly in the security analytics platform space. Enabling the orchestration of response across multiple tools is an integral part of security operations and has become an integral part of a security analytics platform. This acquisition continues to demonstrate that.” 
 
Chronicle is one of Google’s original moonshots founded within its “X” programme that was migrated to Google Cloud in 2019. It was designed for cyber security telemetry, specifically to track the movement of data across all devices and networks in a bid to prevent breaches. SOAR platforms act as the customer interface for that operation. 
 
“Siemplify was one of the few remaining standalone SOAR offerings, as many others have been picked up by SIEM vendors over the years,” Mellen added.

“Most other standalone SOAR vendors have been acquired or built out their portfolio with other products like threat intelligence platforms. In some ways, that makes this a heady acquisition and signals the end of the standalone SOAR or, frankly, SIEM. We predicted early on that the SOAR market could not stand on its own, and now it has truly come to fruition.”

Microsoft has released an emergency patch for a flaw in Microsoft Exchange that prevented emails from sending at the turn of the new year.

Businesses running on-premise Microsoft Exchange environments reported encountering issues whereby emails were stuck in a queue instead of sending after the yearly date changed to 2022.

The issue has been attributed to Exchange’s malware scanning engine which manages dates in the form of 32-bit variables. The variable’s maximum integer value is 2,147,483,647 but a variable of 2,201,010,001 is required to display the date as 1 January 2022 – a value that exceeds the maximum and caused the engine to crash.

Microsoft said the situation is not caused by a fault in either Exchange or its malware-scanning engine that affects the effective running of the products, but rather the engine’s date-checking process. Microsoft also said this is not a cyber security issue.

Customers can check if the issue is affecting their on-premise solutions by checking the Application event log on the Exchange Server for the following errors, specifically event 5300 and 1106 (FIPFS).

Microsoft Exchange customers will need to intervene and apply the patch themselves in order to restore smooth email functionality. Microsoft detailed the step-by-step process customers can follow if they wish to patch manually, and also supplied a downloadable script for customers who want to take the automated solution. 

The script “will take some time to make the necessary changes, download the updated files, and clear the transport queues,” Microsoft said. Whether customers choose the automated or manual steps towards remediation, they must be carried out on every on-premises Exchange 2016 and Exchange 2019 server. The automated script can run on multiple servers in parallel.

Members of the IT community have dubbed the issue the ‘Y2K22’ bug for its similarity between it and the issue that threatened to break all computers at the turn of the millennium. 

Both issues are based on the way computers handle dates and it required millions in investment and lots of work to combat the original Y2K bug.

Oracle has acquired the digital medical records business Cerner for $28.3 billion (£21.4 billion), with plans to use the company as an anchor asset into the healthcare sector.

The enterprise software company made the purchase through an all-cash tender offer for $95 per share and the transaction is expected to close in 2022. Oracle expects Cerner to be a huge additional revenue growth engine for years to come as the company expands the acquired business into many more countries throughout the world. 

Cerner is a leading provider of digital information systems used within hospitals and health systems to enable medical professionals to deliver better healthcare to individual patients and communities. Oracle said the company has over four decades of experience in modernising electronic health records, improving caregiver experience, and streamlining and automating clinical and administrative workflows.

The two companies are hoping to transform healthcare delivery by providing professionals with better information, hoping this will help them make better treatment decisions resulting in better patient outcomes. Cerner systems will run on the Oracle Gen2 Cloud, with the goal being to deliver zero unplanned downtime in the medical environment.

As Cerner systems will run on the Oracle database, only specifically authorised medical professionals will be able to access patient data. IT professionals running the systems will be unable to look at patient data too.

“With this acquisition, Oracle’s corporate mission expands to assume the responsibility to provide our overworked medical professionals with a new generation of easier-to-use digital tools that enable access to information via a hands-free voice interface to secure cloud applications,” said Larry Ellison, chairman and chief technology officer at Oracle.

“This new generation of medical information systems promises to lower the administrative workload burdening our medical professionals, improve patient privacy and outcomes, and lower overall healthcare costs.”

Cerner will be organised as a dedicated Industry Business Unit within Oracle and will be its anchor asset to expand into healthcare. Oracle also intends to maintain and grow Cerner’s community presence in the Kansas City area, while utilising Oracle’s global footprint to reach new geographies faster.

“Joining Oracle as a dedicated Industry Business Unit provides an unprecedented opportunity to accelerate our work modernizing electronic health records (EHR), improving the caregiver experience, and enabling more connected, high-quality and efficient patient care,” said David Feinberg, president and chief executive officer at Cerner. 

Last week there were rumours that Oracle was in talks to acquire Cerner, for around $30 billion. The deal could give Oracle massive volumes of health data for its artificial intelligence services and be Oracle’s largest acquisition ever, as well as one of the biggest takeovers of 2021.

Kyndryl, a spin-off of IBM’s managed infrastructure division, has announced the opening of its new Cloud Innovation Center in Montréal, Quebec.

The facility will create nearly 500 new IT jobs over the next five years while also providing digital transformation services to Canadian organisations.

In particular, the Cloud Innovation Centre will offer certified training in modernizing cloud applications, automating DevOps and service management, analytics and artificial intelligence (AI), and more.

Over 100 new IT positions have already been created at the center, who have been offered training in advanced cloud platforms, automation tools, cyber security, and given access to its vast partner network.

“This centre creates tremendous opportunity in several ways. Our customers and organizations across Canada can now leverage Kyndryl’s world class talent, with the top skills in cloud and technology services, to help them accelerate their digital transformation strategies and achieve their business goals,” said Xerxes Cooper, president of Kyndryl Canada.

“The next-generation workforce from local technical colleges and universities have the opportunity to deliver the technology skills needed to drive business innovation, and this centre positions Quebec as a hub for global businesses.”

Additionally, Kyndryl’s new bilingual technology services center will support industries’ digital transformation efforts and help meet the growing demand for cloud skills. Kyndryl also has expertise in security and resiliency, network and edge, and core enterprise and cloud services, among others.

“Montréal International is proud to support Kyndryl in this project that will offer great career opportunities to young graduates and professionals while growing the local IT talent pool,” said Stéphane Paquet, president and CEO of Montréal International.

“This investment will also provide local businesses with specialized services in an evolving sector where the demand keeps on growing.”