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What can 80 M&As tell us about the state of IT operations management software?

IT operations management (ITOM) software helps enterprises manage the health, availability, and performance of modern IT environments. Analyst firm Gartner expects the ITOM software market to grow to $37 billion in annual revenues by 2023, with legacy on-prem tools giving way to powerful SaaS solutions for hybrid performance monitoring and management.

August this year saw five significant ITOM tool exits, with Splunk acquiring SignalFx for a cool $1.05 billion, Resolve Systems buying out FixStream, Virtual Instruments purchasing Metricly, VMware splurging on Veriflow, and Park Place Technologies acquiring Entuity. In related news, application performance monitoring provider, Dynatrace, went public at a $6.7 billion valuation while cloud monitoring tool, Datadog, recently announced its $100 million IPO listing.

To better understand ITOM software acquisition patterns, we assembled a dataset of 80+ acquisitions and buyouts of ITOM tool vendors since January 2015. This dataset lets IT buyers analyse and decipher the answers to the following questions:

  • What industry trends are responsible for a new wave of acquisitions?
  • Which ITOM categories have seen the most number of acquisitions and buyouts?
  • Which technology leaders have acquired innovative startups in the last few years?
  • What role has private equity played in fueling market innovation and consolidation?
  • What are the strategic reasons behind an incumbent assembling an acquisition portfolio?

Here are five things we learned from 80+ ITOM software acquisitions over the last five years:

Industry trends fuel new category creation

Research firm IDC expects public cloud spending to grow from $229 billion in 2019 to $500 billion in 2023. The runaway adoption of public cloud infrastructure has unleashed massive disruption in the ITOM software market. Traditional approaches to performance monitoring and cost optimisation are no longer relevant in a world of on-demand, ephemeral, and elastic cloud services. Enterprise cloud consumption has led to several technology acquisitions in the following categories:

  • Cloud monitoring: Cloud monitoring tools deliver visibility and control of business-critical services built on multi-cloud and cloud native architectures.

    IT operations and DevOps teams have heavily invested in cloud monitoring point tools, which explains the purchase of eight cloud monitoring startups (SignalFx, Metricly, Outlyer, Server Density, Unigma, Wavefront, Opsmatic, Boundary, and Librato) by industry incumbents like Splunk, VMware, New Relic, BMC Software, and SolarWinds
     

  • Cloud management platforms: Cloud management platforms (CMPs) help enterprises migrate on-prem workloads to cloud environments with capabilities for discovery, provisioning, orchestration, and workload balancing.

    Technology vendors like Apptio, Flexera, Nutanix, Microsoft, Cisco, ServiceNow, and IBM have made eight CMP acquisitions across startups like FittedCloud, RightScale, Botmetric, Cloudyn, CliQr, ITapp, Gravitant, and FogPanel
     

  • Cloud cost optimisation: Cloud cost optimisation tools let business and IT teams manage public cloud consumption by identifying underutilised and idle cloud instances and delivering real-time recommendations for cloud workload placement. Given the pressing need to avoid cloud sticker shock, industry leaders purchased six cloud cost optimisation tools (Cloudability, ParkMyCloud, StratCloud, CloudHealth Technologies, Cmpute.io, and Cloud Cruiser)
     
  • Network performance monitoring: How do enterprises deliver compelling customer experiences across on-prem, private cloud, and public cloud networks? Network performance monitoring and diagnostics tools offer real-time insight into network traffic utilisation and help troubleshoot problems with multi-layer visibility.

    Industry incumbents and investors capitalised on the demand for network monitoring by snapping up eight different tool providers (Entuity, Veriflow, Corvil, Netfort, Savvius, Performance Vision, Gigamon, and Danaher Communications)
     

  • AIOps: The adoption of hybrid and cloud native architectures has led to endless alert storms, where it is nearly impossible for human operators to extract the signal from the noise. Artificial intelligence for IT operations (AIOps) tools apply machine learning and data science techniques to the age-old problem of IT event correlation and analysis.

    Larger incumbents have swallowed seven AIOps startups (FixStream, SignifAI, Savision, Evanios, Perspica, Event Enrichment HQ, and Metafor), underlining the need for AI/ML approaches to isolate and pinpoint incident root cause(s).

Growth by acquisition

Since 2015, serial acquirers like SolarWinds, Cisco, ServiceNow, Splunk, Datadog, New Relic, Flexera, VMware, and Nutanix have acquired thirty-two diverse startups across performance monitoring, hybrid discovery, IT service management, cloud management platforms, cloud cost optimisation, and AIOps.

SolarWinds leads the pack with seven deals (Samanage, Loggly, Scout, TraceView, LOGICnow, Papertrail, and Librato) followed by Splunk (SignalFx, VictorOps, Rocana, and Metafor), Cisco (Cmpute.io, Perspica, AppDynamics, and Cliqr) and ServiceNow (FriendlyData, Parlo, DxContinuum, and ITapp) with four acquisitions each.

ITOM software leaders have dedicated corporate strategy, business development, and investment teams that are constantly scouting for the next big thing. Acquiring the right startup can ensure competitive parity, market entry, or talent infusion, which is critical for technology incumbents with stale and aging product portfolios.    

Private equity continues to reshape the ITOM software landscape

Private equity (PE) firms like Bain Capital, Insight Partners, KKR, Thoma Bravo, and Vista Equity Partners have had an outsized influence on the ITOM tools market. Companies like Apptio, BMC Software, Cherwell, Connectwise, Continuum Managed Services, Dynatrace, Flexera, Ivanti, Kaseya, LogicMonitor, Optanix, Resolve Systems, Riverbed, and SolarWinds have all benefited from strategic PE investments.

In the managed services software segment, Thoma Bravo alone controls Connectwise, Continuum, and SolarWinds MSP, while Vista Equity Partners engineered a merger between two portfolio companies, Datto and Autotask to create a new managed services leader. Expect PE firms to invest, acquire, and divest portfolio companies, creating new ITOM software winners and losers in the process.

No sign of mega deals slowing down

While Splunk’s billion-dollar deal for SignalFx was astounding, there have been several blockbuster acquisitions and buyouts in the ITOM software market.  In the last five years, Broadcom acquired CA Technologies for $18.9 billion, Thoma Bravo purchased Connectwise for $1.5 billion, KKR bought out BMC Software for $8.5 billion, Elliott Management acquired Gigamon for $1.6 billion, Cisco spent $3.7 billion on AppDynamics, Micro Focus engineered a reverse merger with HPE Software for $8.8 billion, NetScout purchased Danaher Communications for $2.3 billion, and Thoma Bravo took Riverbed private for $3.5 billion.

Just these eight deals generated $47+ billion demonstrating sustained momentum and continued investments in ITOM software firms from leading technology vendors and VC/PE firms.

The elusive quest for a unified ITOM platform

Platform thinking is the motivation behind several recent ITOM acquisitions (Splunk’s takeover of Metafor and VictorOps for modern incident management or SolarWind’s TraceView and Librato acquisitions for real-time observability).

The big four ITOM vendors (BMC, CA, IBM, and HP) famously used acquisitions to build their ITOM minisuites (chasing the ever-popular “single pane of glass”). Unfortunately, inorganic product strategies never resulted in a unified platform that could combine disparate performance and capacity insights in a single place.

It is an open question if current industry leaders like ServiceNow, Splunk, and SolarWinds have learned any lessons from the 'big four' acquisition debacles. Every technology acquisition requires significant engineering resources and product roadmap enhancements for successful integration with an incumbent’s platform. Enterprise IT buyers should carefully verify whether there remains continued focus and commitment to making the acquisition work before writing a big check to an industry leader that touts its recent acquisitions as proof of its innovation DNA.

The bottom line?

Next-generation technology startups are constantly redefining customer expectations with innovative solutions for modern digital operations management. Industry incumbents will continue to use acquisitions as a means to acquire modern technologies, battle-tested talent, and market credibility.

IT buyers should partner with technology startups for emerging use cases as well as evaluate how incumbent vendors are modernising their technology portfolios and truly integrating the acquired technology to achieve the long-sought-after vision of a single pane of glass. Otherwise, they may instead end up with the more common scenario of a single glass of pain.

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Microsoft revs up connected car cloud service with TomTom


Connor Jones

9 Sep, 2019

Satellite navigation giant TomTom has partnered with Microsoft to integrate its technology in the Redmond company’s cloud-based Connected Vehicle Platform (MCVP).

Navigation usage data will be collected and sent back to the platform, which works in tandem with Microsoft Azure, and will allow car manufacturers to make better-informed decisions for tailored services, thanks to being able to tap into the compute power of a large cloud platform. 

Diagnostic data will also be driven back to the platform which will allow car makers to make data-driven decisions for engineering and design changes.

TomTom’s location intelligence which includes traffic information and map services will also be made available to cars’ navigation apps in addition to aiding autonomous driving.

MCVP aims to unify connected cars and the data they collect with its Azure platform so its customers can create improved in-vehicle services, such as traffic alerts and better understand the needs of those with connected cars.

It extends further from just consumers, commercial and industrial vehicles are all compatible with the platform so businesses can harness the data from their fleet of trucks, ships, drones and cranes to help create more efficient processes.

Microsoft has already attracted prominent vehicle manufacturers to its platform; Volkswagen agreed last year to build its automotive cloud platform on Azure.

«Our integration with the Microsoft Connected Vehicle Platform means that automakers can get access to precise and reliable navigation and driving behaviour data easily, while of course adhering to privacy principles,» said Cees van Dok, chief product officer at TomTom.

«This data could, for instance, be used to predict the range of an electric vehicle based on driving behaviour and planned route more accurately; or to work out, based on navigation behaviour, what connectivity package for online navigation would be best suited for a driver. This is a game-changer for OEMs.» 

This TomTom-Microsoft partnership is an extension to its existing relationship, which was bolstered in February after the navigation specialist was selected by Microsoft to be its sole location data for its mapping services. TomTom’s data is used across a variety of Microsoft products including Azure Maps, Bing, Cortana, Windows and will also be used in future releases.

«With Microsoft Connected Vehicle Platform serving as the digital chassis of the car, telematics, infotainment, and data from sensors are all connected to the cloud in the same way, effectively solving the pain point of managing different systems for scale, security, and reliability,» said Tara Prakriya, partner group program manager of Microsoft Connected Vehicle Platform and mobility at Microsoft. «We’re delighted to add navigation intelligence data from TomTom to MCVP.» 

The pair’s partnership hasn’t always been so fruitful, though. Back in 2009, they both sued each other within a month, alleging patent infringements on both sides. The case was later settled with both sides having to pay the other an undisclosed sum.

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New initiative aims to create ‘first ocean-powered data centre’ in Scotland

Remember Project Natick, Microsoft’s experiment last year in placing a data centre underwater off Orkney? A little further down the Scottish coast, another company is looking to use the ocean waves to create sustainability in infrastructure – but through a slightly different method.

SIMEC Atlantis Energy is looking to build the first ‘ocean-powered data centre in the world’ in Caithness, with the aim of attracting a hyperscale cloud infrastructure provider for its hosting needs. The facility will utilise electricity from a private wire network from tidal turbines at MeyGen, an existing project site, as its power supply.

“The MeyGen project has a seabed lease and consents secured for a further 80MW of tidal capacity, in addition to the 6MW operational array which has now generated more than 20,000MWh of electricity for export to the grid,” the company notes in its press materials.

SIMEC Atlantis is looking to partner with engineering firm AECOM to assess the feasibility of the project, with particular regard to connectivity, with the target date for operations set at 2024. The company noted a smaller initial data centre module could be deployed sooner.

“This exciting project represents the marriage of a world-leading renewable energy project in MeyGen with a data centre operator that seeks to provide its clients with a large amount of computing power, powered from a sustainable and reliable source – the ocean,” said Tim Cornelius, SIMEC Atlantis CEO. “At MeyGen we have many of the ingredients to provide clean power to the data centre, including a large grid connection agreement, proximity to international fibre optic connections and persistent cool weather.”

Cornelius added that Scotland can ‘play a key role in the global data centre industry.’ This is based upon the dual advantage of a more temperate climate and access to clean energy. Speaking to the BBC last year around Project Natick, Microsoft confirmed Orkney’s location was chosen primarily because of its renewable energy expertise.

Scandinavia has seen various energy-efficient initiatives taking place, many taking advantage of its suitable geography. Last year, Nordics-based provider DataPlex announced it was reusing wastage from its data centre facilities to heat apartments in Oslo. Last month, the company launched a guide to help businesses solidify their data centre strategies – with sustainability a key message. Various stakeholders are involved; as far back as 2015, this publication reported on a study in Sweden – later passed as legislation – to give tax breaks on electricity for data centre providers.

In terms of the biggest cloud providers, Google announced last April it was running all of its clouds on renewable energy. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is not at that level yet however, announcing in April new projects with the goal of achieving 100% renewable energy for its global infrastructure. A report from Greenpeace at the time however argued some of AWS’ data centres were running off as little as 12% renewable energy.

Writing for this publication in July, Hiren Parakh, senior director of cloud services EMEA at OVH, noted the key trends emerging to create sustainability in the data centre industry. “Through a fully integrated industrial model, providers are capable of building systems that are more energy efficient and should always thrive to optimise the use of data centres and server resources across their customer base,” wrote Parakh. “When it comes to managing and fitting out a data centre, it’s clear that sustainability needs to be top of mind.”

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Five digital transformation tips for HR


Esther Kezia Thorpe

6 Sep, 2019

IT departments have long been the focus of digital transformation efforts, with business leaders expecting them both to innovate themselves, as well as drive transformation across other business departments.

But sometimes, other departments like Finance, HR and Marketing can be left behind in these initiatives, and can risk missing out on time-saving tools and software.

There are ways HR can drive digital transformation themselves without waiting for company-wide initiatives. Here are some tips to help take your HR operations digital, whilst ensuring compliance with company procedures.

What does it take to ‘go digital’ in HR? This whitepaper on ‘7 digital best practices for HR professionals’ takes you through what you need to know to make the transformation.

Download now

Get on board with the cloud

Moving systems and processes to the cloud can be an important first step in an organisation’s digital transformation strategy, and this is certainly true when it comes to HR. It opens the door to enable flexible working, which is increasingly one of the most valued factors when employees are looking for jobs.

The cloud can also help HR and people teams analyse global workforce data to spot trends and issues in advance, as well as understand what employees need.

In fact, there are many complete HR cloud software technologies available, which manage the complete core workflow of the department. Not all businesses require this level of system; sometimes, strategic systems for specific issues are more cost-efficient.

Automate routine processes

Conversations about automation tend to revolve around stealing jobs and making the need for humans redundant. But automation can actually be used to enhance the work we do if implemented in the right way, and may, in fact, end up creating more jobs than it eliminates.

Workload automation and job scheduling of routine tasks and processes frees up HR staff to focus on higher-value tasks. It can improve productivity, efficiency and reliability of staff by removing human errors, and ensuring jobs aren’t forgotten, or run out of sequence.

Using automation in the hiring process can also help with reducing discrimination in HR. Talent insight software can analyse the workforce composition of a company, identifying areas where diversity may be an issue. There are also tools available to sift through applications automatically, identifying the best people to take to interview stage. 

Harness data and analytics

Artificial intelligence and automation are making analytics even more powerful, which in turn has benefits for HR departments. There’s a current trend for IT and HR to work together on data projects, as companies are beginning to realise that growth is reliant on connecting people to the data they need to make decisions.

Cloud human capital management (HCM) software can introduce effective tools, allowing for real-time feedback and deeper understanding with predictive analytics. 

Some of these data and analytics tools are giving rise to ‘people analytics’, which HR teams can use to do things like predict which of a company’s top performers is most likely to leave, so preventative action can be taken.

Smart analytics are even starting to make waves in areas like workplace health. By harnessing the power of big data and smart analytics, some employers are identifying and anticipating the health needs of their employees, and putting the right infrastructure in place to support their continuing productivity.

These examples may seem a little extreme at present, but being able to gather and use good data can improve HR’s understanding of the workforce, and help improve employee engagement by creating better experiences.

Go paperless

A key part of digital transformation is reducing the need for paper documents and workflows. Going paperless has a number of benefits for HR professionals, from reducing the time it takes to get offer and agreement letters signed, to speeding up the onboarding process. 

Demonstrating that you have a technically sophisticated digital workflow from the very start will help with attracting the best candidates who want to work for agile and forward-thinking companies.

However, transformations like this should be done alongside the IT department, as the company will need to evaluate how secure and compliant a new digital workflow is, especially when dealing with personal data.

‘7 digital best practices for HR professionals’ outlines the important ways that HR teams can make progress in their digital transformations. Download it here.

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Collaborate across departments

When it comes to digital transformation, new processes, software and tools can benefit every department in a company. Collaborating with different parts of the business to find out what processes can be made better, and which ones are working well, can be a good way of finding ways of doing things that can work across multiple departments.

Even collaboration and communication within your own HR team can quickly bring to light frustrating tasks that can be improved by introducing digital processes. 

Creating a friendly and collaborative working environment is also important when undergoing digital transformation to ensure that less tech-savvy employees don’t get left behind. If they feel able to ask for help and are encouraged to learn how to work with digital tools, this will be hugely beneficial for staff engagement and retention.

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An analysis of Kubernetes and OpenStack combinations for modern data centres

Editor's note: This article was originally published on OpenStack Superuser. CloudTech has the author's permission to re-publish here.

For many telecom service providers and enterprises who are transforming their data centre to modern infrastructure, moving to containerised workloads has become a priority. However, vendors often do not choose to shift completely to a containerised model.

Data centres have to support virtual machines (VMs) as well to keep up with legacy VMs. Therefore, a model of managing virtual machines with OpenStack and containers using Kubernetes has become popular. In an OpenStack survey conducted in 2018, it was seen that 61% OpenStack deployments are also working with Kubernetes.

Apart from this, some of the recent tie-ups and releases of platforms clearly show this trend. For example:

  • AT&T’s three year deal with Mirantis to develop 5G core backed by Kubernetes and OpenStack
  • Platform9’s Managed OpenStack and Kubernetes – providing required featured sets bundled in solution stack for the service provider as well as developers. They support Kubernetes on VMware platform as well
  • Nokia’s CloudBand release – containing Kubernetes and OpenStack for workload orchestrations
  • OpenStack Foundation’s recently announced Airship project aiming to bring the power of OpenStack and Kubernetes in one framework

The core part of a telecom network or any virtualised core of a data centre has undergone a revolution, shifting from physical network functions to virtual network functions (VNFs). Organisations are now adopting cloud-native network functions (CNFs) to help bring CI/CD-driven agility into the picture.

This journey is shown in one of the slides from the Telecom User Group session at KubeCon Barcelona in May, which was delivered by Dan Kohn, the executive director of CNCF and Cheryl Hund, the director of ecosystem of CNCF. (Image source).

 

According to the slide, presently, application workloads deployed in virtual machines (VNFs) and containers (CNFs) can be managed with OpenStack and Kubernetes, respectively, on top of bare metal or any cloud. The optional part that is ONAP is a containerised MANO framework, which is managed with Kubernetes.

As discussed in birds-of-a-feather (BoF) – telecom user group session delivered by Kohn –  with the progress of Kubernetes for cloud-native movement, it is expected that CNFs will be a key workload type. Kubernetes will be used to orchestrate CNFs as well as VNFs. VNFs will be segregated with KubeVirt or Virtlet or OpenStack on top of Kubernetes.

Approaches for managing workloads using Kubernetes and OpenStack

Let’s understand the approaches of integrating Kubernetes with OpenStack for managing containers and VMs.

The first approach can be a basic approach wherein Kubernetes co-exists with OpenStack to manage containers. It gives a good performance but you cannot manage unified infrastructure resources through a single pane. This causes problems associated with planning and devising policies across workloads. Also, it can be difficult to diagnose any problems affecting the performance of resources in operations.

The second approach can be running a Kubernetes cluster in a VM managed by OpenStack. This enables OpenStack-based infrastructure to leverage the benefits of Kubernetes within a centrally managed OpenStack control system. Also, it allows full-feature multi-tenancy and security benefits for containers in an OpenStack environment. However, this contributes to performance lags and necessitates additional workflows to manage VMs that are hosting Kubernetes.

The third approach is an innovative one, leaning towards a completely cloud-native environment. In this approach, Kubernetes can be replaced with OpenStack to manage containers along with VMs as well. Workloads take complete advantage of hardware accelerators and Smart NICs, among others. With this, it is possible to offer integrated VNS solutions with container workloads for any data centre, but this demands improved networking capabilities like in OpenStack (SFC, provider networks, segmentation).

Kubernetes versus OpenStack –  is it true?

If you looked at the recent VMworld 2019 US event, it was clearly seen that Kubernetes would be everywhere. There were 66 sessions and plenty of hands-on training that will focus only on Kubernetes integration in every aspect of IT infrastructure.

But is that the end of OpenStack? No. As we have already seen, the combination of both systems will be a better bet for any organisation that wants to stick with traditional workloads while gradually moving to a new container-based environment.

How Kubernetes and OpenStack are going to combine

I came across a very decent LinkedIn post by Michiel Manten. He stated that there are downfalls for both containers and VMs. Both have their own use cases and orchestration tools. OpenStack and Kubernetes will complement each other if properly combined to run some of the workloads in VMs to get isolation benefits within a server and some in containers. One way to achieve this combination is to run Kubernetes clusters within VMs in OpenStack, which eliminates the security pitfalls of containers while leveraging the reliability and resiliency of VMs.

What are the benefits?

  • Combining systems will immediately benefit all current workloads so that enterprises can start their modernisation progress, maintaining high speed with much lower cost than commercial solutions
  • Kubernetes and OpenStack can be an ideal and flexible solution for any form of a cloud or new far-edge cloud where automated deployment, orchestration, and latency will be the concern
  • All workloads will be in a single network in a single IT ecosystem. This makes it easier to apply high-level network and security policies
  • OpenStack supports most enterprise storage and networking systems in use today. Running Kubernetes with and on top of OpenStack enables a seamless integration of containers into your IT infrastructure. Whether you want to run containerized applications bare metal or VMs, OpenStack allows you to run containers the best way for your business
  • Kubernetes has self-healing capabilities for infrastructure. As it is integrated into an OpenStack, it can enable easy management and resiliency to failure of core services and compute nodes
  • A recent release of OpenStack software (OpenStack Stein) has several enhancements to support Kubernetes in the stack. A team behind OpenStack Certified Kubernetes installer made it possible to deploy all containers in a cluster within five minutes regardless of the number of nodes. It was previously 10-12 minutes. With this, we can launch a very large-scale Kubernetes environment in 5 minutes

Telecom service providers who have taken steps towards 5G agreed upon the fact that a cloud-native core is imperative for a 5G network. OpenStack and Kubernetes are mature, open-source operating and orchestration frameworks today. Providing agility is the key capability of Kubernetes for data centers and OpenStack has several successful projects for focusing on storage and networking of workloads, and support for myriad applications.

Editor's note: Download the Calsoft eBook – A Deep-Dive On Kubernetes For Edge –  focusing on current scenarios of adoption of Kubernetes for edge use cases, latest Kubernetes and edge case studies, deployment approaches, commercial solutions and efforts by open communities.

The post Analysis of Kubernetes and OpenStack Combination for Modern Data Centers appeared first on Calsoft Inc. Blog.

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Now is the time to embrace remote working


Adam Shepherd

6 Sep, 2019

I’ll be honest; it’s been a little hard to concentrate on writing this month’s column. As I write, Boris Johnson and the Conservative party have lost their parliamentary majority, somehow plunging the Brexit situation into even more chaos.

This latest phase of the debacle has got me thinking about what will happen to businesses in the event of a no-deal Brexit. The potential negative impacts have been well-documented, from a shutdown of data transfers with the EU to severe delays on international shipments, but the issue that keeps playing on my mind is the strong possibility of a resulting skills crunch.

A clampdown on immigration from EU countries has been high on the list of hardcore Brexiteers’ priorities, which will likely reduce the pool of skilled tech workers entering the country. Even if European developers and specialists aren’t barred from entering the country following Brexit, and the ones already here not compelled to return home, one could hardly blame them for choosing to take their talents to a more welcoming and less chaotic nation.

A sudden lack of locally-based technology talent is a real possibility that businesses have to confront, but there are ways around it. One is to focus on upskilling or cross-skilling existing staff, but that takes time – time that organisations may not have if the impact of no deal is as sudden as some are predicting.

A better option is to embrace remote working. The fact is that, when it comes to technical roles, there’s very little need for all your staff to work out of a corporate office. Cloud infrastructure platforms and SaaS tools allow companies to manage and administrate the vast majority of their IT remotely if they so choose, and even when it comes to physical infrastructure or hands-on IT support, you only really need a small in-house team to effect physical changes, while off-site employees handle the configuration. This is even more true when it comes to developers and software engineers, who can be based anywhere in the world and still be just as effective at their jobs.

For many businesses, the biggest worry with moving to remote working is making sure staff remain connected with colleagues and managers, and continue to be engaged with the business. It’s easy for remote workers to feel isolated or ostracised if efforts aren’t made to include them, but collaboration platforms like Slack, Microsoft Teams, Dropbox, Skype and Google Hangouts are all great tools for ensuring they still feel like part of the team.

Rolling out these tools can have benefits for employees outside of IT as well, increasing productivity and efficiency, as well as allowing office-based staff to work flexibly if they want. Ensuring new systems are adopted can be a challenge, of course, but the long-term benefits are worth it.

By making use of these technologies, organisations can make sure they can recruit and retain European tech staff in the event of a no-deal Brexit, but time is of the essence. If the walls go up on 31 October and you don’t already have wheels in motion to implement remote working within your business, you’ll be on the back foot compared to rivals that do. You may be tempted to wait and see how things pan out, but let’s be honest – it’s far better to be prepared.

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Microsoft to acquire cloud migration tool provider Movere

Microsoft is to acquire Movere, a SaaS platform which increases visibility on IT environments, the companies have announced.

Movere – whom industry watchers may remember until last year as Unified Logic – aims to ‘capture, integrate and analyse the data [companies] need to make smart decisions about their IT environment’, as the company puts it.

The company’s dashboard organically scans global environments at a highest rate of 1,000 servers per hour and focuses across multiple parts of the cloud migration journey, as well as cybersecurity.

Movere has been a partner of Microsoft for more than 10 years and will join the Azure team as part of Azure Migrate, according to a Microsoft blog post.

“We’re committed to providing our customers with a comprehensive experience for migrating existing applications and infrastructure to Azure, which include the right tools, processes, and programs,” wrote Jeremy Winter, partner director for Azure management. “As part of that ongoing investment, we’re excited to welcome the leadership, talent, technology, and deep expertise Movere has built in enabling customers’ journey to the cloud over the last 11 years.”

For Kristin Ireland, CEO of Movere, the acquisition was a time of reflection on the company’s journey to date.

“On our journey to cloud, we made mistakes that cost us valuable time and resources that we didn’t have,” Ireland wrote. “As we spread our wings in the cloud, we realised the cloud was the embodiment of Movere – the unleashing of business potential through migration – we knew we had to be part of that journey for as many customers as we could.

“We passionately believe the cloud journey is what opens the door to market disrupting ideas and opportunities; to be part of that journey with customers and partners is a privilege,” added Ireland. “Thank you to our partners and customers for allowing us to be part of that journey thus far; we are so excited to continue to be faster and better for you as part of the Microsoft Azure team.”

The move represents the first cloudy acquisition of 2019 for Microsoft, aside from investing in big data analytics platform Databricks back in February. This year has been relatively quiet thus far on the acquisition front from the big two; Amazon Web Services (AWS) acquired CloudEndure for a reported $250 million at the start of this year, with undisclosed offers for TSO Logic and E8 Storage since.

Google Cloud, meanwhile, has made more of a statement around its enterprise ambitions with three acquisitions. The company bought business intelligence platform Looker for an all-cash $2.6bn transaction in June, alongside deals for Alooma and Elastifile in February and July respectively.

Financial terms of the Microsoft and Movere deal were not disclosed.

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Telstra partners with Microsoft on business-focused data-sharing hub


Keumars Afifi-Sabet

5 Sep, 2019

Telstra has launched a platform to give customers the capacity to seamlessly share data from their Internet of Things (IoT) devices using Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform.

The two companies have teamed up to co-develop the Telstra Data Hub, a modular system which aims to reduce the barriers that businesses face when it comes to sharing data, including the costs involved.

The technology will allow organisations, initially within the connected supply chain, water management and agribusiness industries, to share and exchange data securely.

The thinking is that by allowing businesses to harness their data through the platform, it’ll lead to productivity gains.

«Our heritage is in building national infrastructure that benefits generations,» said Telstra’s group executive for product and technology Christian von Reventlow.

«We see more than $100 billion in incremental value to customers and the economy through digitisation and data-driven collaboration.

«We are excited to be partnering with Microsoft and unveiling this new innovation today at Telstra Vantage and we look forward to sharing further news as we continue to develop this exciting product.»

The telecoms firm outlined a case study centred on the connected supply chain, in which one of Australia’s largest supermarkets has used the system to track and monitor shipping containers to reduce the cost of missing cargo.

The supermarket, and its partners, can in future use data accessed via the hub to respond to ongoing operational problems, as well as understand chokepoints and improve efficiencies within the supply chain.

Telstra identified several problems it aims to solve, including a reluctance to share data for fear of losing control, high costs in setting up platforms, a lack of data standardisation and having to integrate various systems together.

The partnership is part of a wider effort across the industry to give business customers far more power to access and exploit the vast amounts of data gathered.

Salesforce and Amazon Web Services (AWS), for example, bolstered their existing partnership in September last year to simplify data sharing, and give customers better access to data to drive digital transformation.

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NHS launches new cloud procurement framework


Rene Millman

5 Sep, 2019

The NHS, through its Shared Business Services (SBS) arm, has launched a new procurement framework that provides the entire public sector with a simple and legally compliant way to purchase cloud solutions.

The Cloud Solutions Framework is comprised of 24 suppliers and will be available to the NHS, local authorities, police, educational establishments, and any other public sector organisation.

The four lot scheme covering a wide range of cloud support that includes both bespoke and off-the-shelf solutions.

Lot 1 offers solution design and consultancy, Lot 2 covers IaaS, SaaS and PaaS offerings, Lot 3 includes cloud support services, while Lot 4 offers end-to-end cloud that helps organisations find a trusted partner that can offer complete start-to-finish support for its cloud journey.

The framework will run until September 2021, but there is an option to extend this for two more years. It will also encourage suppliers to launch new products and solutions throughout the life of the agreement to benefit the public sector.

The cloud market is a very crowded and complex on, according to Phil Davies, procurement director at NHS SBS who said the aim of the new framework was to remove some of that complexity. 

«To ensure framework users have access to the very best cloud services at the most competitive price, we carried out a rigorous tender process and limited the number of suppliers on the framework to the 10 or 20 most outstanding in each Lot. The result is a specialist pool of 24 leading suppliers, which provide the greatest expertise and value-for-money to the public sector,” he said.

«The framework is structured in a way that includes a full range of cloud support services. It means that regardless of where a public body is on its journey into the cloud, or how straightforward or complex its requirements, purchasing the right support is simple, cost-effective and OJEU-compliant.»

A full list of suppliers on the new NHS SBS Cloud Solutions Framework is available here.

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Microsoft snaps up cloud migration specialist


Bobby Hellard

5 Sep, 2019

Microsoft has acquired Movere, a cloud-migration specialist, for an undisclosed fee.

The Seattle-based company will add its expertise in public cloud business transitions to Azure as Microsoft look to continue to grow its partner ecosystem.

Movere, formerly known as Unified Logic, launched in 2008 as a consulting company, moved into the cloud migration space after undergoing one itself.

«On our journey to cloud, we made mistakes that cost us valuable time and resources that we didn’t have,» CEO Kristin Ireland said in a blog post. «As we spread our wings in the cloud, we realised the cloud was the embodiment of Movere.»

From there, the company became a vehicle for digital transformation, and crucially, of interest to Microsoft.

«There is an enormous amount of energy and enthusiasm about the possibilities for what Movere and Microsoft can do together to continue to bring deeper value (and data!) to customers and partners alike,» Ireland added.

Microsoft has firmly established itself as the number two in the cloud infrastructure market. The tech giant said it was committed to providing its customers with a «comprehensive experience» for migrating their existing applications and infrastructure to Azure.

«Movere’s innovative discovery and assessment capabilities will complement Azure Migrate and our integrated partner solutions, making migration an easier process for our customers,» said Jeremy Winter, partner director for Azure.

«We believe that successful cloud migrations enable business transformation and this acquisition underscores our investments to make that happen.»

This is the third Azure-based acquisition in recent months; in July, Microsoft snapped up BlueTalon, a software company that focuses on data-centric security and hybrid data environments. A month later, it acquired jClarity, a software company that specialises in Java installations.

While it still trails behind AWS, Microsoft’s cloud business is growing fast. The company reported Azure revenue grew 64% in the last quarter, while sales of AWS rose by 37%.