Salesforce has said it’s acquiring field service software firm ClickSoftware for around $1.35 billion as it seeks to maintain growth in its Service Cloud division.

The company reported in June that its Service Cloud unit, which includes its Field Service Lightning product, managed to pass $1 billion in revenue, something it hopes to improve upon over the coming year.

The acquisition comes just days after the signing of a $15.7 billion deal to purchase data visualisation firm Tableau, by far the largest deal in Salesforce’s history.

«Delivering exceptional field service is an increasingly important priority for companies across industries with more than 70 percent of customer service leaders making significant investments to transform their mobile workforce,» said Bill Patterson, EVP and GM at Salesforce Service Cloud.

«Our acquisition of ClickSoftware will not only accelerate the growth of Service Cloud, but drive further innovation with Field Service Lightning to better meet the needs of our customers. We are thrilled to welcome the ClickSoftware team to Salesforce.»

Field Service Lightning was first introduced in 2016 and since then Salesforce has partnered with ClickSoftware to help develop its division. With its current product, if mobile employees find themselves stuck in traffic, a dispatcher is able to use the platform to quickly direct another technician to the job. This data is then updated across the entirety of the Salesforce suite, so that customers, sales, and the service departments have visibility.

The acquisition of ClickSoftware will «create strategic synergies, technological unity and new innovation opportunities for Salesforce to better meet the needs of existing and new customers around the world», according to a company statement.

The deal is said to be a mix of cash and Salesforce common stock, and is expected to close during Salesforce’s fiscal quarter ending in October.

The rapid expansion of cloud-based services and a wealth of choice around the cloud has resulted in more competition than ever before. Increasingly, organisations are now choosing to mix and match cloud solutions, rather than choose between multiple technologies and vendors.

Using more than one cloud service this way is known as multi-cloud; not to be confused with hybrid cloud, which is using both public and private clouds in a business. 

The use of multiple clouds for businesses is growing in popularity and according to a survey from IBM, 85% of organisations are now using multiple clouds in their business.

To complicate things, the majority of these environments are made up of multiple hybrid clouds. 76% of the organisations surveyed reported that they were already using from two to 15 hybrid clouds.

It is also important to note that this only includes the clouds that IT executives are aware of. Shadow IT and cloud services used without official authorisation are a growing issue and mean the actual number of clouds used in businesses may be higher than the IT department reports.

Over the next three years, IBM forecasts that the number of companies using multiple clouds will grow to 98%. At present, however just 41% of these businesses have an active multi-cloud strategy, meaning many are managing multiple clouds on the fly as services are added on. This can put departments at risk of cloud sprawl, where fast and unchecked cloud adoption can cause issues with security and compliance.

Explore the challenges and benefits of a multi-cloud environment, and how to forge a clear path to successful multi-cloud management in ‘A field guide to multi-cloud management’.

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Of the organisations operating in a multi-cloud environment, IBM’s survey found that just under half were establishing a formal multi-cloud architecture in order to enable a more unified management of cloud services. 

Use of formal procedures and tools to operate a multi-cloud environment is also low, but growing. Configuration management tools and multi-cloud management platforms are growing in popularity among enterprises in particular as a way to choreograph workloads and fully embrace the benefits of multiple clouds.

But multi-cloud isn’t just something enterprises can make use of. Many consumers use multiple cloud services in everyday life, and many businesses do so without necessarily realising it. 

Although formal multi-cloud management may be lagging behind adoption, the unlimited choice and flexibility that organisations get with their cloud deployments are proving particularly beneficial to digital transformation efforts.

Slack has introduced a slew of security features to give IT admins more control over which employees use can use the service and how.

These new features will help to implement limits on users and devices, including blocking both from accessing their company’s Slack account if they’re deemed to be suspicious or unsecured. 

The changes follow on from the company’s Enterprise Grid service, which was launched last year and promised more user efficiency and tighter security.

«Without proper controls in place, mobile applications can open your employees up to new security risks,» Slack wrote in a blog post. «To alleviate that, we’re rolling out new functionality to ensure that only the right people and approved devices can access your company’s information in Slack.»

To start, Slack is introducing new secondary authentication controls, allowing admins to implement additional layers of security in the form of Face ID, Touch ID, or generated passcodes. This also comes with a time limit function, after which users have to re-authenticate. There are also session management tools to remotely wipe a user’s mobile or desktop session in the event their device is lost or stolen.

Alongside these, Slack also unveiled data sharing protections. New domain whitelisting tools will be available for admins to control which workspaces can be accessed by its employees. Slack said this not only shores up sensitive company information, but it will also help teams focus on their immediate workloads. Another related feature  blocks users from downloading company information to an unmanaged device.

This is just the beginning, according to Slack. Session management controls will soon be added to the admin dashboards, which will allow them to define the maximum number of devices a single employee can be logged into at one time. What’s more, the company is working on a feature where admins can detect if a device has been jailbroken and then block its access to the app.

Slack said these new features are designed for IT professionals «who want to modernise and improve how their organisations work while maintaining compliance with their industry».

For Jake Moore, cyber security specialist at ESET, it shows that security is slowly becoming important to the normal user, delivering what the people want rather than what the industry thinks the consumer needs.

«With Slack making great steps forward, adding more prominent security functions, it will hopefully make people more aware of the importance of authentication and other protection techniques,» he said. «It might even push other manufacturers into rolling out similar features as default.»

Salesforce has appointed a new leader to help achieve its objectives of increased focus and growth in the UK market.

Dame Jayne-Anne Gadhia, former chief executive of Virgin Money and chairman of the London Stock Exchange, will join the cloud giant in the role of UK and Ireland CEO from October, reporting into Miguel Milano, Salesforce’s international president. Paul Smith, general manager of Salesforce in the UK and Ireland will report into Dame Gadhia.

«I’ve admired Salesforce from afar for a long time. This is a different kind of business, with deeply held values and a true focus on transforming the experience of every customer through cutting edge technology,» she said.

«I’m looking forward to working with the team as we continue to invest and support Salesforce’s growing customer base in UKI.”

Dame Gadhia – who received her damehood at the end of 2018 for her services to the finance industry and more specifically women in the sector – will be responsible for driving the next stage of growth for Salesforce’s UK  and Ireland business.

The appointment follows on from the cloud firm’s pledge at last year’s London Tech Week to invest some $2.5 billion in the region over the next five years. That investment will take many forms, including a recruitment drive, expanded office space and building out its data centre capacity.

«Salesforce is working closely with the government to ensure innovation and technology are at the heart of the UK economy. Our $2.5 billion investment will help British companies drive innovation, boost productivity and build deeper connections with their customers, all key drivers of economic success,» Andrew Lawson – Salesforce’s former executive vice president and general manager for the UK – said at the time.

«We know that financial investment alone won’t do that, and that’s why we’re also focused on driving equality and diversity within the industry. Truly innovative businesses need people from multiple disciplines and different backgrounds to solve problems in the most creative and successful ways.»

Around 900 new employees are expected to be hired and on-boarded as part of the recruitment drive and a second data centre is planned for this year – a site that will run on 100% renewable energy, according to Salesforce. 

«Jayne-Anne is one of the most respected CEOs in the UK and we are thrilled to welcome her to Salesforce,» said Marc Benioff and Keith Block – chairman and co-CEO and co-CEO of Salesforce respectively.

«The UKI is our largest market outside the US and with Jayne-Anne’s leadership we are well-positioned to move into the next stage of growth and success for Salesforce, our customers, partners and communities.»

Cities of the world are buckling. The UN estimates 55% of the planet’s 7 billion people live in urban areas and it’s believed a million people join this list on a daily basis. Infrastructure is feeling the strain, there’s unrest, congestion is polluting our lungs and crime is prevalent. What’s more, if this rise continues as expected, cities will be home to some 6.1 billion people by 2050. Something has to give.

The answer lies in making cities work smarter. Of course, the promise of smart cities isn’t new; it’s a concept that’s been celebrated on screen for decades and has seemingly been on the periphery for years, yet today we’re finally on the verge of achieving this truly connected utopia. Companies across the globe are using technology and analytics to make city life a breeze; preventing traffic jams, solving crimes, boosting tourism and more.

Speed and safety

In the UK, the economy as a whole lost £8 billion due to staff being stuck in traffic jams last year, or 178 hours per driver, according to research by Inrix. As cities become saturated, authorities and industry are turning to big data and tech to ease this load. In London, for instance, Transport for London’s (TfL) Open Data project provides more than 80 data feeds through a free API. These feeds share details about air quality, tube times and delays, the number of passengers flowing through the network as well as data on live traffic disruptions. Some 600 third-party apps are now being powered by these feeds, used by 42% of Londoners, and it’s reported to be putting £130 million a year back into the capital’s economy. On a wider scale, it’s estimated that by using open data effectively, 629 million hours of waiting time could be saved on the EU’s roads and energy consumption could be reduced by 16%.

«Open data is changing our everyday lives and how organisations like TfL work,” said Jeni Tennison, CEO at the Open Data Institute. “Data is becoming as important as other types of infrastructure, such as roads and electricity, which means building strong data infrastructure is vital to economic growth and wellbeing.”

Beyond roads, tracking pedestrians is key in keeping a city moving. In Glasgow and London, mobile phone data can be used to track passenger numbers on public transport, while sensors in lampposts can track footfall. The Netherlands has even begun trialling smart traffic lights that give the elderly extra crossing time or change automatically when they detect an approaching cyclist.

In China and Singapore, authorities are taking things a step further. Through the use of IoT devices and sensors, alongside advanced 4G data networks and AI, not only are they monitoring and improving traffic flow, they use the data to track road violations and even predict crime. Singapore, for instance, uses data from RFID-equipped travel cards, CCTV and anonymised phone data to identify problems before congestion can take hold. Its AI can spot patterns and run algorithms that highlight issues some 10 or 20 steps down the line.

Elsewhere, the Chinese province of Zhejiang is using 1,000 sensors to capture more than a terabyte of data every month. Stored on Intel servers running on Intel Xeon processor E5 series and holding an incredible 198TB, this data is easy to access and analyse by large numbers of users who can search for a licence plate on the network in less than a second, from 2.4 billion records. In particular, products such as those developed as part of Intel’s Vision Accelerator Design use deep neural networks to analyse such video footage quickly and accurately.

It’s not just traffic violations being caught using next-level technology and analytics. CCTV video link-ups, license plate scanning, smart mapping and even real-time facial recognition are also helping save lives, cut down on vandalism and prevent robberies. The London Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) recently partnered with Greater London Authority’s Strategic Crime Analysis team to launch SafeStats. By feeding more than 20 million crime and safety records from the police, ambulance, fire brigade and transport authorities into advanced AI software, emergency services can detect patterns and identify crime hotspots. This AI can even offer solutions and guide authorities on policy. For example, when cross referenced with records from 25 hospitals, it can be used to create heat maps that help steer local policing strategies and funding.

The connected city

Once crime is being tackled, and transport delays are managed, cities become more attractive to tourists; another area in which big data, AI and analytics are playing a significant role. In Manchester, the Beacons for Science app lets tourists use virtual and augmented reality to unlock experiences at landmarks across the city. In London, Mastercard has been hired to produce a series of smart city initiatives including the Visit London Official City Guide app. This app taps into real-time data feeds to help tourists navigate the city, using geolocation to flag nearby places of interest and transport routes.

Elsewhere, the West of England Combined Authority was recently awarded £5 million in funding to trial a 5G network at tourist destinations in Bristol and Bath. This network complements the Bristol Is Open smart city scheme designed as a city-wide private network testbed, powered by an Intel® Xeon® equipped Blue Crystal II supercomputer, on which companies and organisations can test smart city solutions.

«The vision behind Bristol is Open was to see how we could make the city smarter and quicker than any other,» explained Julie Snell, Managing Director of Bristol is Open. «We can offer a test network that’s run on gigabit fibre. It’s got everything from Wi-Fi to 2G, 3G, 4G, massive MIMO (multiple-in multiple-out), LTE and even some 5G. We also have 1,500 Wi-Fi meshed network lamp posts, allowing us to bounce signals around the city without us needing constant fibre connections.»

This network, consisting of hundreds of Internet of Things connections, can help people in areas of poor connectivity get online easily, and cheaply. Data from this network can be fed into a 4K, 180-degree ‘data dome’ and used to track Met Office weather patterns in the region, monitor mobile usage, and record air pollution levels as part of a feasibility study by the University of Bristol. This could see the city become the first to let people identify their individual exposure to pollution, and it’s a similar setup to that used by the Sensing London project which used Intel Galileo-based end-to-end Internet of Things infrastructure to measure local air quality and human activity. Beyond the sensors, Intel and Bosch recently teamed up to develop the Air Quality Micro Climate Monitoring System (MCMS) which takes the data from such sensors and uses software to measure air quality, providing councils with meaningful insight.

Looking to the future, the global rollout of 5G is expected to accelerate not only the adoption of smart city technology but its capabilities. It will exponentially increase the number of sensors, the strength of the connections and the speed at which data can be sent and analysed. Combine this with the ongoing advances in data collection and analysis, and the expansion of the IoT, and it looks like we’re at a critical juncture in the pursuit of a truly connected utopia.

Discover more amazing stories powered by big data and Intel technology

Microsoft is previewing an ‘Azure Dedicated Host’ service for enterprises looking to run their Linux and Windows virtual machines (VMs) on their own physical servers, alongside a set of changes to licensing costs.

The dedicated host service will target enterprise customers which prioritise the security benefits of physical hosting over shared cloud hosting, as well as the isolation of their sensitive information.

These servers will not be shared with any other customer, and businesses which opt for one will retain full control over how services run on the machine.

The Azure Dedicated Host is available in two iterations. The first type is based on the 2.3GHz Intel Xeon E5-2673 v4 processor and has a maximum of 64 virtual CPUs available. This can be chosen in a 256GiB and 448GiB RAM configuration, priced at $4.055 per hour and $4.492 per hour respectively.

The second version, meanwhile, is based on the Intel Xeon Platinum 8168 processor with 72 virtual CPUs available and is priced at $4.039 per hour in a 144GiB configuration.

Moreover, several can be grouped together into larger host groups in a particular region, so businesses can build clusters of physical servers.

The dedicated hosts will be subject to automatic maintenance by default, although administrators can defer host maintenance operations and apply them within a 35-day window. It’s possible, during this window, to retain full control over the server maintenance.

This has been announced in conjunction with a set of key changes to the pricing of software licenses, which sees a separation between on-premise outsourcing services and cloud services. Customers will need an additional ‘software assurance’ to run Microsoft software on public cloud services from 1 October this year.

Businesses using rival cloud providers, like Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Google Cloud Platform (GCP) should, therefore, expect the cost of running Microsoft software to increase.

The introduction of Azure Dedicated Host, on the other hand, has also seen Microsoft roll out an Azure Hybrid Benefit licensing option, which allows customers to use software without the need for a ‘software assurance’.

Both Google and Amazon have launched similar dedicated physical services in recent, years, with Azure the latest major cloud provider to follow suit.

Google, for instance, launched sole-tenant nodes in its Compute Engine last June, which allowed businesses to run instances on their own dedicated architecture as opposed to sharing hosting with other customers. These are similar to AWS’ EC2 dedicated hosts.

Elsewhere, Microsoft has increased the bug bounty rewards as part of a big security push that has also seen the launch of the Azure Security Lab.

The highest bounty will be doubled to $40,000, while those with access to the lab can attempt a set of scenario-based challenges with a maximum award of $300,000.

The new lab itself is a set of dedicated cloud hosts that offers security researchers a secure space to test against Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) attacks.

Organisations are invited to apply to join the new security-focused community by requesting a Windows or Linux VM, with successful applicants given access to campaigns for targeted scenarios and added incentives.

News broke overnight that HPE has made yet another acquisition – its second this year – in the form of MapR’s assets (but not, it seems, MapR itself).

MapR, in case you’re not familiar with the company, is a big data and analytics specialist with a focus on artificial intelligence (AI). Founded 10 years ago, it has some impressive credentials – for example, in 2013 it broke the MinuteSort record on Google Compute Engine. However, it recently found itself in financial trouble, announcing in May 2019 that it would have to close if it couldn’t find additional funding by 3 July.

With HPE acquiring all its assets (existing technology, intellectual property, and expertise in AI and data management), MapR has for all intents and purposes ceased to exist, despite not being acquired as an entity. Given MapR’s money troubles, this isn’t really a surprising move on either part: HPE doesn’t take on any of MapR’s financial baggage and it’s a lot quicker to complete than a full acquisition, which would have taken many months securing approval from the various regulatory authorities around the world.

From a strategic point of view, buying MapR’s assets makes a great deal of sense for HPE. The company is putting huge emphasis on its AI and analytics credentials, as evidenced by the launch of its Primera storage appliance at its annual Discover conference in June this year. It’s also been working with Purdue University to try and solve the problem of world hunger.

In a statement announcing the acquisition, HPE said MapR’s assets will accelerate its Intelligent Data Platform capabilities.

«At HPE, we are working to simplify our customers’ and partners’ adoption of artificial intelligence and machine learning,» said Phil Davis, president of Hybrid IT at HPE.

«MapR’s enterprise-grade file system and cloud-native storage services complement HPE’s BlueData container platform strategy and will allow us to provide a unique value proposition for customers.»

In case the name doesn’t ring a bell, BlueData was a «Big Data-as-a-service» business that was acquired by HPE in November 2018. It, too, focused on analytics and machine learning, albeit in containers, rather than computing clusters as MapR’s technology does.

Speaking of computing clusters and other recent HPE acquisitions, there’s perhaps something going unsaid in last night’s announcement.

A computing cluster can be quite small – small enough for use by SMBs, for example. But the term is more frequently associated with large data centres and, specifically, supercomputers (aka high-performance computing or HPC).

It’s worth noting, then, that while MapR’s being rolled into the Intelligent Data Platform unit and treated very much as a software play, HPE’s most recent acquisition prior to this was Cray – the venerable supercomputing firm. This followed the summer 2016 acquisition of SGI, another big name in HPC.

It’s yet to become completely clear what HPE’s supercomputing strategy is, but it would seem remiss if these two units don’t end up working closely together.

Is this the last purchase of 2019 for HPE? We’re more than halfway through the year, but there’s plenty of AI prospects, in particular, to go around so we may yet see a mid-autumn spending spree.

Google’s Chrome extension store is said to be dominated by just a handful of popular applications, with the majority of its application selection having fewer than 1,000 installs, according to a new study.

Figures released from Extension Monitor show that although Chrome now boasts over 1 billion extension installs, only 13 apps have over 10 million installs each.

Of the 188,000 extensions that make up the store, it’s believed as much as 87% of these have fewer than 1,000 installs, including 24% that have either one or zero installs. The figures also show that around half of all extensions have been installed less than 16 times.

Security was a common theme identified when looking at the most downloaded extensions – adblockers, antivirus applications, password managers and VPNs dominated the list of most popular extensions. Other prominent categories included communications and shopping.

Well-known apps such as Grammarly, Adblock, Honey, Avast Online Security, Skype and Google Translate dominated the top spots. LastPass and Google Hangouts were among the apps just shy of the 10 million mark.

The 10 million club:

• Cisco Webex Extension
• Google Translate
• Avast Online Security
• Adobe Acrobat
• Grammarly for Chrome
• Adblock Plus – free ad blocker
• Pinterest Save Button
• Skype
• AdBlock
• Avast SafePrice
• uBlock Origin
• Honey
• Tampermonkey

Even though a large proportion of extensions have a comparably low install-base, it’s the extensions in this bracket that are often the most malicious, which collectively can still target a large number of users. Last month we reported that some Google Chrome extensions harvest user data as part of a «murky data economy» and then sell that data onto Fortune 500 companies.

The scheme was thought to have affected up to 4 million users across the various extensions, most of which had thousands of installs each, although some exceeded one million. The sensitive data was then accessible by anyone who was willing to pay a fee as small as $49.

In response, Google pointed users to its policy changes made in June 2019 and how it plans to make the Chrome Web Store more secure, a policy that’s since been slammed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

The organisation said that the changes would do nothing to secure the Web Store as they don’t address the APIs used by extensions to aggregate and sell data. Instead, the EFF claims Google should simply enforce existing policy properly.

«Ultimately, users need to have the autonomy to install the extensions of their choice to shape their browsing experience, and the ability to make informed decisions about the risks of using a particular extension,» said the EFF. «Better review of extensions in Chrome Web Store would promote informed choice far better than limiting the capabilities of powerful, legitimate extensions.»