Vodafone has partnered with Google Cloud to build a big data platform as part of its digital transformation programme.

This is a customised data analytics platform called ‘Vodafone Neuron’ that the telecoms giant said will act as a brain and driver for AI and business intelligence for its global business.

Vodafone has been migrating its global data into Google’s public cloud to create this custom platform. The hope is that it provides data performance that lets disparate data from across the organisation be aggregated into a ‘data ocean’ – rather than multiple data lakes.

Once this is complete, the speed with which Vodafone will be able to run queries will enable it to gain real-time insights, providing new levels of agility, scalability and cost-effectiveness, the company said.

Google Cloud tools have been integrated into the ‘Neuron’ platform, which is in the process of rolling out to 11 countries. The insights from Neuron are being used to support a range of applications, such as Vodafone’s ‘Gigabit Networks’.

«Neuron serves as the foundation for Vodafone’s data ocean and the brains of our business as we transform ourselves into a digital tech company,» said Simon Harris, group head of big data delivery at Vodafone.

«Not only will we be able to gain real-time analytics capabilities across Vodafone products and services, but it will also allow us to arrive at insights faster, which can then be used to offer more personalised product offerings to customers and to raise the bar on service.»

The company recently announced an agreement to expand its Gigafast Broadband throughout the UK by building upon Openreach’s infrastructure – namely its fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) network. A key part of the deal is that it’s tied to Openreach’s own expansion and provides the option for further expansion later on.

Microsoft Teams has surpassed 20 million daily active users, an increase of 7 million since July, the company has revealed.

The collaboration suite, available as part of Microsoft’s premium Office 365 brand or as a free version, exceeded the popular Slack platform as being the most used business chat app earlier this year.

In fact, Teams now only sits behind Microsoft’s other chat platform Skype for Business in terms of popularity. However, the company has made it clear in the past that Teams will eventually supersede Skype as its primary tool.

Although Slack has grown to 12 million daily users as of October, that modest growth has been dwarfed by the successes of Microsoft Teams. Slack shares fell as much as 10% following Microsoft’s announcement on Tuesday, and have fallen 18% since the company’s public launch in June.

Meanwhile, Workplace by Facebook reported in October that it had surpassed 3 million subscribers, up one million since February.

Microsoft announced a batch of updates for Teams at its annual Ignite conference earlier this month, including a simple sign-on mechanism for front line workers, new integrations with Yammer and Skype, an expansion of the Advanced Threat Protection suite to cover messages within Teams, and the general availability of private chats.

Microsoft’s Office 365 subscription gives premium access to the Teams app, alongside its traditional productivity software. Commercial Cloud, the division that Teams falls under, is one of the highest performing areas of the company, making up over one-third of its overall revenue, according to third-quarter figures.

Slack hasn’t spent the year idle, having overhauled the underlying technology of its desktop app in July to help reduce RAM usage by 50% and improving loading times by 33%. The company also added new features in August that help admins manage permissions, and a Workflow Builder in October, that allows users to automate routine functions using custom workflows.

Today is what is affectionately known as day zero for cloud giant Salesforce’s annual get together, Dreamforce.

San Francisco will once again play home to more than 171,000 registered attendees, spanning 90 countries, with a wider audience of 10 million expected to tune into proceedings remotely.

The city’s Moscone Centre – and many nearby hotels – will be the main focus of a week of keynotes, more than 2,700 deep-dive sessions and celebrity guest speakers. This year, among others we have former president Barack Obama, David Beckham and – a particular highlight for the writer of this piece – Game of Thrones’ mother of dragons, actor Emilia Clarke, who is also the founder of a SamYou, a charity that supports brain injury recovery.

Apple CEO Tim Cook will also feature, perhaps quite heavily given the two companies have just today announced the launch of two flagship apps.

So, then, what else can we expect from the week ahead?

The link between an array of industries that are using the power of AI, cloud, mobile, voice and other related technologies will likely be high on the agenda. Marco Bizzarri, president and CEO of Gucci is also a keynote speaker, as is Oscar Munoz, CEO of United Airlines. There are myriad sessions featuring other key industry players.

Integration will be another key theme at Dreamforce. We’ ve already seen Salesforce and MuleSoft (a Salesforce-owned company) partner to focus on ‘clicks not code’ to enhance the customer experience so it’s likely we’ll hear more about that this week, too. 

The CEOs of Red Hat and Workday are also on the speaker roster, so we can expect to hear at least a hint of additional further industry collaboration and integration in this respect. Indeed, the cloud giant’s CRM already works with Workday’s HCM in a partnership that goes back many years.

“Come with an open mind, leave with a full heart,” the company says on its ‘Why attend’ page for Dreamforce. I have a feeling given the continued sustainability focus that people will be leaving with anything but closed minds, too.

Indeed, Salesforce today reinforced its commitment to sustainability in a number of ways, particularly when it comes to helping meet Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

«This year we’re bringing our commitment to the SDGs to life at Dreamforce and encouraging all of our attendees to take meaningful action,» said Suzanne DiBianca, Salesforce’s chief impact officer and executive vice president of corporate relations.

«Together, we can push further and faster to effectively address the world’s most pressing challenges.»

The headline figures are $17 million (£15.4 million) investment through grants and more than one million employee volunteer hours over the next year. However, in reality, the intention and commitment goes much deeper.

At Dreamforce this year, the organisation will help save nine million gallons of water by supplying beef-free lunches, and – for the fifth year in a row – Salesforce will also be offsetting on-site carbon emissions, employee travel emissions, and conference water usage.

The waste reduction effort goes further, still. More than 150 onsite volunteers will assist with local waste diversion in a bid to help support San Francisco’s 2020 zero waste goal.

This week is Salesforce’s 17th Dreamforce and the excitement out on the streets has already started to build, with the famous pin badges, stickers, and scout leader/ranger hats in full force. So definitely stay turned to the site in the coming days as we bring you all the news and views from the show.

Ultimately, as we approach the conference proper, we can see many things on the horizon. Not limited to innovative technologies and partnerships doing good for customers and their customers being showcased in San Francisco this week.

We also have the good that technology companies and individuals should be and are doing to lessen the adverse impact on the environment and continue to strive for inclusion rather than exclusion and division.

There’s going to be a lot to take in and digest over the next few days, but if everything I’ve been told thus far rings true, it really will be the biggest and best Dreamforce yet.

While data is the new currency of business, it’s worthless without ensuring individuals and organisations can rely on and trust in the integrity of that data. 

So suggested Salesforce co-founder and co-CEO, Marc Benioff, who used his opening keynote at the company’s annual Dreamforce conference to talk about how we have now entered the so-called trust revolution. 

“It’s a trust revolution. Everything is changing in our industry. Everything is changing in our work. It’s an intelligence revolution. AI is becoming such a pervasive part of our world,” he said, setting the scene to announce the launch of Customer 360 Truth, a set of services designs to aid firms in authenticating, connecting and governing customer data and identity. 

“[But] revolutions are not easy and there are gaps. Those gaps are also between us and our customers. We’re able to heal these gaps and bring these things together. That is also why we are building our Customer 360 platform. We have done this together. We are building this together.”

By better understanding customers, organisations will be able to more easily and comprehensively deliver more personalised and exceptional customer experiences. 

“We love data. Data is an important part of everything we are doing and everything that you are doing,” Benioff added. 

“We have moved from systems of record to systems of engagement. We then moved from systems of engagement to systems of intelligence. Now we have moved from systems of intelligence to a single source of truth. 

“As we pursue the truth, it requires us at Salesforce to transform. That is why we have also enhanced Customer 360.” 

Customer 360 Truth provides a single source of the truth by uniting previously disparate data from commerce, marketing, sales, service, and more, to create one, universal Salesforce ID for every customer. This ID brings together behavioural historical data that can come into play during a customer engagement – whether that’s marketing, problem solving, sales or something else. 

During his keynote address, Benioff used State Farm as case in point of what can be achieved through better and easier access to customer data. 

“We want to be about the customer and the customer experience is absolutely dominant in that, “ said Fawad Ahmad. State Farm’s chief digital officer (CDO). 

“I’m proud to say I work for an organisation that has always focused on the customer. We will always be guided by their needs, their dreams, and aspirations. C360 Truth becomes a single, reliable place we can go -regardless of where in the company – to be able to look at, and then leverage,  the intelligence that comes from the platform.’

Salesforce shone the spotlight on enhancing customer service during the first day of its Dreamforce event in Las Vegas by emphasising how important partnerships are in the equation.

«We have partnered with all of the other major companies,» Founder and co-CEO Marc Benioff told attendees during his opening keynote.

«We realise you do have more than Salesforce. We will not create boundaries between us. We will operate as one community.» 

At the same time, as further evidence and recognition of the importance of working with the right partners, the cloud giant confirmed it is expanding its existing partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS). 

“We have an inclusive partnership strategy at Salesforce. We talk a lot about listening to our customers, but we have to think through what they’re saying. Having an inclusive partnership strategy is very important [to that],” said Ryan Aytay, Co-CEO Quip and Salesforce’s executive vice president of strategic partnerships. 

“Companies are making this big bet and spending a lot of money bringing workloads to pub cloud. Salesforce is the world’s number one CRM and we need to be unified with a public cloud provider. That is a part of our strategy. 

“This is a partnership we’ve been talking about for a while. It’s the world’s number one CRM with world’s number one cloud provider.”

The newest element of the pre-existing alliance will see Amazon Connect integrated with Service Cloud, resulting in something dubbed Service Cloud Voice, which will ensure call centre operatives have the best tools at their disposal to deliver a polished customer experience. 

What’s more, by ensuring agents have access to all the information they need at their fingertips, rather than having to visit multiple sources, organisations will be able to increase satisfaction while also reducing costs. 

AI-powered speech analytics – in preferred languages –  will also be provided through Amazon Connect directly to call centre workers to further assist them in answering customer enquiries expertly and efficiently. 

“We have an inclusive partnership strategy. This is very important when you put the customer at the centre,” added Sarah Franklin, executive vice president and general manger, platform, Trailhead and developers at Salesforce.

Other strands of the extended partnership include the availability of AWS educational content on Trailhead and the exploration of ways to make Einstein Voice Skills compatible with Alexa and other smart speakers and assistants. 

“At John Hancock we are focused on making decisions easier and lives better for our customers, and part of how we achieve this mission is through our interactions with them in the contact center,” said Tracy Kelly, AVP Shared Services Contact Centre, John Hancock. 

“With the integrated Salesforce Service Cloud and Amazon Connect solution we can handle millions of calls annually, delivering the personalised and frictionless service our customers expect.”

Both Amazon and Salesforce, along with other industry players, are part of the Voice Interoperability Initiative, which aims to make use of voice-enabled products to deliver greater choice and flexibility through the use of interoperable voice services. 

The Department of Transport has been working with Google Cloud to modernise its core technology to be a «cloud-first» organisation by 2020. 

The DfT announced that for the past two years, the two organisations have been working to reinventing internal service delivery and introduces new digital capabilities for DfT staff.

Prior to moving to the cloud, it was resource-intensive for DfT to maintain servers, manage backups and ensure the overall health of the IT systems, the organisation said. As a result, simple utilisation and querying tasks often required days to complete.

A part of the problem was that its data centres lacked the scalability to match DfT’s longer-term needs as it looked to undertake bigger and more complex data initiatives.

In an effort to build the capabilities it required, DfT and Google Cloud migrated a large proportion of the former’s applications to the public cloud. Over the course of 12 months, DfT said it has successfully completed the migration of hundreds of virtual machines to the Google Cloud Platform. According to the DfT, this has allowed it to decommission a large chunk of its on-premises infrastructure while improving the reliability, resilience and security of its systems.

Over 100TBs of application data has been migrated from an internal cluster into BigQuery, reducing data search time from up to five days down to mere seconds

The partnership with Google Cloud is helping the DfT to become a more digital and data-driven organisation, according to said Mark Lyons, the interim CIO for DfT. He said the capabilities the platform offers are helping it to use data better to support decision-making, policy-making, reporting and governance, as well as provide new digital services to engage with citizens on transport-related initiatives.

«We’ve been excited to go on this journey with Google Cloud,» said Lyons. «When you have finite resources, having a partner that understands the process of change and can direct your focus to the things that really matter is invaluable. We’ve invested in this as a long-term partnership and are excited for Google Cloud to remain our number one cloud platform provider.»

You’ve doubtless read repeated warnings about how to avoid ransomware, but even the companies we think of as the good guys attempt to take hostages – your cherished email address being one of them.

People cling to their email address like their mobile phone number, because they’ve had it from way back when their computer made screeching noises every time they went online; it’s the one that all their friends have saved in their address books; and they use it for all their online accounts. Moving email address is only marginally less hassle than moving house.

The broadband providers know this all too well, which is why you’ll get stung if you try to retain a provider’s email account after you leave them. BT charges you £7.50 per month for the Premium Email service you need to keep old BT email addresses running, while TalkTalk will fleece you for a fiver each month to keep TalkTalk or Tiscali addresses active. When better-equipped webmail accounts are free, that doesn’t half hurt.

How do you avoid getting caught in this trap? My advice is to steer clear of broadband provider accounts in the first place. Gmail, Outlook and the like will probably remain free forever, and you can access them with whichever broadband provider or device you use.

The other alternative is to buy your own domain (bertjackson.co.uk, for example) and run your own email, which isn’t as expensive as you might think. The brilliant Zen Internet’s basic Bronze hosting package is £5.39 per month and that includes up to 10 email inboxes on your own domain.

A ‘.co.uk’ address costs £8.39 per year from Zen, which all added up is still cheaper than paying for BT Premium Email over the course of a year.

Whether you go down the free webmail route or buy your own domain, moving an email account is not as tricky as you’d expect. The key is preparation: don’t shut off the old account before moving to the new one, and give yourself a couple of months with both running to give you the best chance of a smooth transition.

The first step is to import the messages from your old account to the new one. Most webmail providers offer an import tool somewhere in their settings – Gmail’s can be found by clicking the Settings cog, choosing Settings and then selecting the ‘Accounts and Import’ tab. You may want to spring-clean the old account first, getting rid of any messages with huge attachments that you don’t need.

Next, you need to set up two things on your old account: a forwarder that sends all incoming messages to the new account; and an auto-reply that explains to your correspondents that you’re moving to a new address and to please update their contacts. Obviously, emails from stores such as Amazon and eBay, utility companies and even your bank won’t pay any attention to this, so you’ll have to do the manual drudge work of changing your registered email address with key accounts.

On the plus side, you’ll find you get rid of an awful lot of junk mail and accounts that you didn’t want in the first place when you finally turn the forwarder off and close the old account. And you’ll feel like Liam Neeson, having freed your email account from the hostage takers.

It’s not usually part of our remit, but despite it being a gaming-geared announcement, there’s something about the new Google Stadia gizmo that interests us, specifically its infrastructure which raises questions we can’t quite answer yet.

Codenamed Project Stream before its launch, Google’s game streaming service is far from the first to grace the market, but it might be the most well-timed attempt of them all. It aims to bring console-quality games directly to virtually any screen with no need for a physical console.

Games will be controlled by a new Stadia controller which connects directly to the platform via Wi-Fi. Not the screen, not the Chromecast – directly to the game client residing in the cloud.

It’s important to note this isn’t the first time a cloud streaming of this kind has been attempted. OnLive and PlayStation Now, to name but two, promised so much but then crashed and burned after delivering very little.

OnLive ran into money issues where the cost of running its infrastructure far exceeded the income it made. It’s reported that the service cost millions of dollars to run every month but on launch, and for a few weeks after, the company only received single-digit daily income because of its «try before you buy» policy on games.

PlayStation Now is actually still alive and kicking. The premium service hasn’t been adopted nearly as widely as first thought, probably due to a combination of its reported heavy input lag and poor variety of supported games.

So with that, Stadia must overcome some significant challenges to breathe new life into the platform. With edge computing, it theoretically has an advantage over OnLive and being Google, it has already managed to secure a decent selection of launch titles to ensure day-one success.

What caught our eye is the cloud and edge computing aspects of the service’s infrastructure and streaming strategy. OnLive attempted cloud gaming in the past but the existing support infrastructure, which was unfit for purpose, has been the main blockade in developing a system that actually works. The streaming speed and quality were passable as a proof of concept and just about playable with some games, but to launch Stadia eight years after the failure of OnLive, it must do much better.

So many questions

Google has said it will be using a combination of its highly advanced data centres and edge infrastructure to deliver gaming at low latencies, something that, especially in the online multiplayer space, is of vital importance.

Phil Harrison, VP and GM at Google, leading the Stadia project, said that the measurable latency issues seen in Project Stream are «solved and mitigated».

«There are some investments in the datacentre that will create a much higher experience for more people, and there are some fundamental advances in compression algorithms,» he told Eurogamer.

«One important thing to keep in mind is that we are building our infrastructure at the edge. It’s not just in our central, massive datacentres. We’re building infrastructure as close to the end user, the gamer, as possible – so that helps mitigate some of the historical challenges».

The interaction between the datacentre and the edge is unclear, specifically to what extent both will impact the overall processing and transmission of game data. What’s been said so far seems somewhat confusing and at times contradictory. For example, Harrison spoke about microsecond ping speeds for gamers but 20ms edge to datacentre speeds.

Google’s massive number of datacentres, according to Harrison, will be pivotal in delivering the Stadia experience the tech giant has imagined. Harrison said Google’s datacentres offer the theoretically unlimited compute capacity needed for a cloud-based streaming service to thrive. Gaming developments have, in years gone by, been limited because of hardware and people’s reluctance to upgrade for a few years, or until the next console life cycle starts. In the datacentre, CPU and GPU capacity is as powerful as the developer needs it to be to run its game.

Chris Gardner, senior analyst at Forrester is optimistic about the capability of Google’s infrastructure. «The network configuration is somewhat of a mystery, but clearly Google nailed this because benchmarks have shown perceived input latency to be extremely fast,» he tells Cloud Pro. «Google has experience with network optimisation (all the way down to designing its own protocols) so the performance is not a stretch.»

Take the specified hardware announced by Google and put it into one of Google’s many datacentres and you arguably have a recipe for success, he adds.

Trouble in the network

However, the promises around network speeds proved to be a point of contention for us. Firstly, Harrison told the BBC that 4K gaming can be achieved on download speeds of 25mbps; for reference, the average UK household gets just 18.5mbps speeds from its internet connection, far less in rural areas. The VP said Google expects network demands to improve, but it definitely wasn’t a promise.

Although Google seems to be confident in the fact that its back-end equipment is up to the task, it’s likely to face the problem of internet service provider (ISP) throttling – world-class servers or not. Harrison already confirmed that Google already has relationships within the wider industry, but it’s possible the company could run into the same problems that Netflix faced during its expansion where it started paying ISPs to allow faster speeds on the service but instead users were throttled.

It’s a very real possibility that ISPs would throttle bandwidth as popularity grows and network demands are greater. «[Netflix] had to negotiate with the major players to ensure the customer experience wasn’t dreadful,» says Gardner. «I expect the same experience for game streaming providers, although much more so because now it’s not just a bandwidth negotiation, it’s latency as well».

On the topic of latency, Gardner cited this as his biggest concern of the whole project. «What I expect to see is streaming to be initially successful with casual games, platformers and roleplaying games,» he said. «However, multiplayer games demand low latency and low input lag to stay competitive and enjoyable. This is my biggest concern,» he added. «Shooters, MOBAs and other types of super competitive games – I honestly don’t expect gamers to tolerate the latency.»

Competition is just around the corner

There are only three companies in the world right now that are positioned well enough to feasibly deliver on a cloud-based product like this. Google is one of them, AWS and Microsoft are the others. We just wouldn’t expect any of these to pump so much time and money into something the world isn’t ready for yet.

Google’s main competitor in this area is Microsoft, which is working on Project xCloud, its own game streaming service currently in beta. The company behind the Xbox is certainly lagging compared to Google as its product is currently still in the development stage, but it arguably presents the best case to make this idea of game streaming work. Reports from those selected to test the beta version of xCloud also seem to be unanimously positive.

Couple Microsoft’s prowess in the cloud market with its strong presence in the console sector spanning nearly two decades and that provides an impressive backing for what could potentially be a better product compared to Google’s. It’s possible Microsoft could let Google launch Stadia, learn from its inevitable mistakes, and then blow it out of the water with a far superior service.

Regardless of how all of this plays out, it’s difficult to get excited about something that has failed in so many previous attempts and with so little information about the project disclosed – the kind of information that we need to make educated guesses about its viability as a service – we can’t help but look on with scepticism.

Main image credit: Marco Verch