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Enterprises not seeing total fulfilment with cloud strategies – but hybrid remains the way to go

For enterprises looking to migrate to the cloud, with sprawling workloads and data, it can be a long, arduous journey. According to a new survey, more than two thirds of large enterprises are not getting the full benefits of their cloud migration journeys.

The study from Accenture, titled ‘Perspectives on Cloud Outcomes: Expectation vs. Reality” – polled 200 senior IT professionals from large global businesses and identified security and complexity of business and operational change as key barriers to cloud success.

This doesn’t mean enterprises struggle to see any benefits of the cloud – overall satisfaction was at above 90% on average – but when it came to cost, speed, business enablement and service levels, only one in three companies said they were fully satisfied on those metrics.

This breaks down further when looking at specific rollouts (below). Overall, enterprises are seeing greater benefits the more chips they put in; satisfaction levels climb to almost 50% among those with heavy investments, compared to less than 30% for those just starting their journeys.

When it came to public and hybrid cloud, the results showed an evident cost versus speed trade-off. More than half of those with public cloud workloads said they had fully achieved their cost objectives, while for speed it dropped below 30%. Hybrid cloud initiatives, the research noted, saw much more consistent results across the board, if not quite the same cost savings.

This makes for interesting reading when compared with similar research. According to a study from Turbonomic in March, the vast majority of companies ‘expect workloads to move freely across clouds’, with multi-cloud becoming the de facto deployment model for organisations of all sizes.

Yet the Accenture study argued this would not be plain sailing. 42% of those polled said a lack of skills within their organisation hampered their initiatives. Securing cloud skills is of course a subject which continues to concern – but according to Accenture, managed service providers (MSPs) may provide the answer. 87% of those polled said they would be interested in pursuing this initiative.

“Like most new technologies, capturing the intended benefits of cloud takes time; there is a learning curve influenced by many variables and barriers,” said Kishore Durg, senior managing director of Accenture Cloud for Technology Services. “Taking your cloud program to the next level isn’t something anyone can do overnight – clients need to approach it strategically with a trusted partner to access deep expertise, show measurable business value, and expedite digital transformation.

“If IT departments fail to showcase direct business outcomes from their cloud journeys, they risk becoming less relevant and losing out to emerging business functions, like the office of the chief data officer, that are better able to use cloud technologies to enable rapid innovation,” added Durg.

You can read the full report here (pdf, no opt-in required).

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What is cloud-to-cloud backup?


Esther Kezia Thorpe

3 Jun, 2019

Most businesses understand the importance of having a robust backup strategy in place for their on-premises data, but as more companies migrate to the cloud, myths and misunderstandings are beginning to creep in about how to backup data in a cloud environment.

One type of backup that is growing in popularity is cloud-to-cloud backup (or C2C backup). At a basic level, this is where data stored on one cloud service is copied to another cloud.

But if company data is stored in a cloud, why does that data need to be backed up to another cloud?

Many people think that they’re protected from data loss if they use a software as a service (SaaS) platform such as Microsoft Office 365 or G Drive. But although these platforms have robust solutions in place for protecting data in the cloud, they are only designed to protect against losses on their side.

Discover how to keep your cloud data safe from loss with this comprehensive guide to cloud-to-cloud backup for Office 365. Download it here.

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In fact, 77% of IT decision makers reported some form of data loss through SaaS over a 12 month period,  according to an extensive survey from Spanning. That figure is higher than previously reported figures of 58%, suggesting that data loss in the cloud is a growing issue as more organisations experiment with the technologies.

So how is cloud-to-cloud backup solving this issue? Here, we break down what C2C backup is, and how it can help your business.

What is cloud-to-cloud backup?

As the name suggests, cloud-to-cloud backup is where data in the cloud is backed up to another cloud, rather than to an on-site method such as tape or disk backup. It is also sometimes known as SaaS (software as a service) backup.

It adds an extra layer of protection for businesses using cloud services by quite simply keeping a duplicate copy in a separate cloud.

An important distinction here is between backup and archive. When looking for a C2C backup solution, it should specifically be a solution for backing up data, not archiving it. A backup copy exists for the express purpose of making data available and recoverable in the event of the original being inaccessible.

But an archive exists to meet compliance needs or internal policies, and isn’t designed for data recovery. Most archiving systems aren’t able to rapidly restore lost data back into production, and don’t have the functionality needed to automate accurate restores.

How does C2C backup help businesses?

Like on-site backup methods, C2C backup benefits businesses by storing data in multiple locations, enabling easy restoration of data in case of a cyber attack, accidental deletion, data corruption or other incidents.

Many applications that run in the cloud are already protected by the provider from data loss on their side. But there is a common assumption that SaaS providers like Google’s G Suite and Microsoft’s Office 365 have backup completely covered.

Although many providers are geared up to protect data in the cloud from problems on their side, such as disk failures or natural disasters, they can’t do much if the issue occurs on your side.

If a ransomware attack erases your files, or if they’re deleted accidentally or maliciously by an employee, it can be difficult to restore the data. This is one-way cloud-to-cloud backup can be used to help businesses with an extra layer of protection, should the worst happen.

Pros and cons of cloud-to-cloud backup?

The main benefit of cloud-to-cloud backup is cost. Because there’s no investment required in on-site backup infrastructure, C2C backup can be set up quickly and inexpensively. This also applies in the long term; cloud storage can be added or taken away quickly as business needs evolve, and costs are kept predictable on a monthly basis.

However, as with many cloud services, this can also lead to wastage, with dark data or unnecessary data taking up large amounts of storage space and driving up monthly costs.

Due to the nature of C2C backups, availability is a major advantage. Backup copies of data in the cloud can be accessed from anywhere, so IT teams don’t have to come to a physical location to restore business data if anything goes wrong.

C2C is still a relatively new market, and most vendors currently offering cloud-to-cloud backup services also manage the backup and day-to-day management themselves. This makes it a good option for organisations that don’t have their own in-house specialists to do this for them. But larger enterprises may feel more comfortable managing C2C backup themselves, or even keeping backup on-site.

‘The definitive guide to backup for G Suite’ covers why you need a solution for G Suite, what you need to understand about cloud-to-cloud backup, and more. Download it here.

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Another benefit is resilience to cyber attacks. Should an employee accidentally click on a malicious email attachment and open the business up to a ransomware attack, backup data on a cloud generally won’t be affected as it isn’t on the office network.

However, as with all cloud services, data security is an issue. Backup data stored on a cloud opens it up to being hacked or otherwise compromised, and offline hard backups are still considered to be the more secure option.

Any businesses looking at cloud-to-cloud backup services should carefully consider their needs, from how frequently a backup should be run to how the day-to-day management should work, and how much storage is required.

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How cloud computing is changing the laboratory ecosystem

The Human Genome Project, that was declared complete in 2003, took over a decade to run, costing billions of dollars. Using today’s software, the same data analysis can be accomplished in just 26 hours.  

Research has thrived from the rapid growth in computational power. With this, comes increased pressure on labs as data storage facilities need to house the exponentially-increasing quantities of large data sets, as big data becomes an integral part of research. This poses a crucial problem for labs, in which they may require a whole room dedicated to its on-site storage. And with that comes maintenance, leading to hefty up-front IT infrastructure costs.

Cloud computing has helped to alleviate this burden, by removing the need for companies to have their own information silos. Instead, research data can be stored in the cloud, external to their own facility. For laboratories, cloud computing centralises data, ensuring security and data sovereignty whilst facilitating collaboration.

Centralising data

Cloud computing allows labs to partake in immense computing processes without the cost and complexity of running onsite server rooms. Switching from an onsite solution to the cloud alleviates the costs of IT infrastructure, reducing the cost of entry into the industry, while also leveling the playing field for smaller laboratories.

Moreover, cloud computing can allow data to be extracted from laboratory devices to be put in the cloud. Device integration between lab equipment and cloud services allows real-life data from experiments to be collated in a cloud system. One of the most popular products in the market is Cubuslab, a plug-and-play solution that serves as a laboratory execution system and collects instrument data in real time as well as managing devices remotely.

This new collection of high amounts of data requires a centralised system that integrates the scientists protocols and experimental annotations. The electronic lab notebook, is starting to become a common tool in research by allowing users to organise all their different data inputs and retrieve this data at any point. This also allows for large R&D projects to effectively control data over their scalability potential.

Data sovereignty

As the pressure on laboratory practices swells, it is now more crucial than ever to adapt the way labs function. The need for cloud computing in laboratory environments has become increasingly imperative due to exceeding regulatory requirements.

Compliant research, through audit trails and other measures, is required to verify that the data is truthful and unaltered. Good experimental practice makes research more applicative to receive patents. Moreover, cloud computing supports custom access control, so that access to certain information can be allocated dependant on the role. Therefore, the QA/QM department of the lab can govern which members have access to certain levels of data.

In reference to the fear around cloud computing mentioned earlier, the fear of security is not formed from substance. Cloud providers have security protocols and specialised staff that provide majoritively better security than on-site solutions.

However, in light of last year’s GDPR law, the compliance regulations of cloud providers has changed significantly. Some cloud providers use hybrid or multi-cloud approaches, which poses difficulty in the lab as it is much more complex to check GDPR compliance. You would have to check the data protection policies of each cloud provider. A breach in compliance from one provider would sabotage the data-protective infrastructure of the whole system.

Data safety

A lot of the current aversion to cloud computing comes from fear of lost data. It may be easy to think that one is most likely to lose their lab data due to outages or cyber attacks. However, it is more probable to lose data from fires in proximity to on-site data storage facilities. Moreover, paralysis of the electrical grid in the U.S. is mostly caused by squirrels, rather than by cyber-attacks (according to Jon Inglis, former Deputy Director, U.S. National Security Agency). Furthermore, deploying systems in the Cloud escapes the problem of data loss caused by outages that would otherwise handicap smaller laboratory industries. If a cascading failure were to occur in the cloud, the data will not be lost as most files are stored in more than three locations, hence securing data.

What seems to be holding back many labs is the fear of losing data by switching to cloud computing. In reality, it is much safer and reliable than on-site data storage.

Conclusion

Cloud computing has allowed a more balanced playing field with regards to research. Cloud computing is a cost-effective way for smaller laboratories to get a leg up in the research industry, just as long as it pertains to compliance regulations. This is due to the ability to scale-up, as a business doesn’t require excessive data storage facilities – which is especially important as data sets become exceedingly large.

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Google confirms network congestion as contributor to four-hour cloud outage

Google has confirmed a ‘network congestion’ issue which affected various services for more than four hours on Sunday has since been resolved.

A status update at 1225 PT noted the company was investigating an issue with Google Compute Engine, later diagnosed as high levels of network congestion across eastern USA sites. A further update arrived at 1458 to confirm engineering teams were working on the issue before the all-clear was sounded at 1709.

“We will conduct an internal investigation of this issue and make appropriate improvements to our systems to help prevent or minimise future recurrence,” the company wrote in a statement. “We will provide a detailed report of this incident once we have completed our internal investigation.”

The outage predominantly affected users in the US, with some European users also seeing issues. While various Google services, including Google Cloud, YouTube, and G Suite were affected, many companies who run on Google’s cloud also experienced problems. Snapchat – a long-serving Google Cloud customer and considered a flagship client before the company’s major enterprise push – saw downtime, as did gaming messaging service Discord.

According to security provider ThousandEyes, network congestion is a ‘likely root cause’ of the outage. The company spotted services behaving out of sync as early at 1200 PT at sites including Ashburn, Atlanta and Chicago, only beginning to come back at approximately 1530 (below). “For the majority of the duration of the 4+ hour outage, ThousandEyes detected 100% packet loss for certain Google services from 249 of our global vantage points in 170 cities around the world,” said Angelique Medina, product marketing director at ThousandEyes.

Previous Google cloud snafus have shown the company can learn lessons. In November 2015 Google Compute Engine went down for approximately 70 minutes, with the result being the removal of manual link activation for safety checks. The following April, services went down for 18 minutes following a bug in Google Cloud’s network configuration management software.  

According to research from Gartner and Krystallize Technologies published last month, Microsoft is the poor relation among the biggest three cloud providers when it comes to reliability. As reported by GeekWire, 2018 saw Amazon and Google achieve almost identical uptime statistics, at 99.9987% and 99.9982% respectively. Microsoft, meanwhile, trailed with 99.9792% – a ‘small but significant’ amount.

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BT partners with Juniper on unified cloud network platform


Connor Jones

3 Jun, 2019

BT has partnered with Juniper Networks to support with the core infrastructure that will underpin the rollout of its upcoming unified cloud networking platform.

The platform will unify BT’s networks including 5G, Wi-Fi and fixed-line into one virtualised service which will enable more efficient infrastructure management and deployment.

The new unified platform will supposedly allow BT to «create new and exciting converged services bringing mobile, Wi-Fi, and fixed network services together».

The platform’s infrastructure will be build to a common framework, allowing it to be shared across BT’s offices nationally and globally.

The platform will be used by a range of BT’s arms such as voice, mobile core, radio/access, ISP, TV and IT services and deploying the platform company-wide will cut costs and streamline operations.

«This move to a single cloud-driven network infrastructure will enable BT to offer a wider range of services, faster and more efficiently to customers in the UK and around the world,» said Neil McRae, chief architect, BT. «We chose Juniper to be our trusted partner to underpin this Network Cloud infrastructure based on the ability to deliver a proven solution immediately, so we can hit the ground running.»

«Being able to integrate seamlessly with other partners and solutions and aligning with our roadmap to an automated and programmable network is also important,» he added.

We’re told that the project will facilitate the advent of new applications and workloads for the telecoms giant and evolve its existing ones including converged fixed and mobile services and faster time-to-market for internet access delivery.

«By leveraging the ‘beach-front property’ it has in central offices around the globe, BT can optimise the business value that 5G’s bandwidth and connectivity brings,» said Bikash Koley, chief technology officer, Juniper Networks.

«The move to an integrated telco cloud platform brings always-on reliability, along with enhanced automation capabilities, to help improve business continuity and increase time-to-market while doing so in a cost-effective manner,» he added.

BT has undergone a change in leadership this year and faces challenges in almost all areas of its business, according to its annual financial overview.

EE’s business has been carrying the telco, it’s the only arm of the company that is posting profits in an «unfavourable telecoms market». Its revenue slip for the year has been attributed to the decline in traditional landline calls with a seemingly unrelenting shift to voice over IP.

In order to capitalise on new business angles such as IoT, cloud and SD-WAN, BT admits greater investment is needed and this will most likely hinder its short-term revenue targets but it could be pay off in the long term.

«Our aim is to deliver the best converged network and be the leader in fixed ultrafast and mobile 5G networks,» said Jensen. «We are increasingly confident in the environment for investment in the UK.»

EE launched its 5G network last week, becoming the first telecoms company in the UK to do so. It’s available in six major cities and speeds of 1Gbps are promised «for some users».

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Four-hour Google Cloud outage blamed on ‘network congestion’


Jane McCallion

3 Jun, 2019

Google Cloud Platform (GCP) suffered a significant outage on Sunday night that lasted nearly three hours, knocking offline services including G Suite, YouTube and Google Cloud.

The issue was first noted on the company’s cloud status dashboard at 8.25pm BST on 2 June as a Google Compute Engine problem.

Shortly, however, reports of problems with Google Cloud, YouTube and more started hitting Twitter and by 8.59pm, the dashboard acknowledged it was a “wider network issue”.

By 12.09am on 3 June, the issue was resolved but little detail is available as to what happened beyond “high levels of network congestion in the eastern USA, affecting multiple services in Google Cloud, G Suite and YouTube”.

However, someone claiming to work on Google Cloud (but currently on holiday) posted a message on Hacker News saying: “It’s disrupting everything, including unfortunately the tooling we usually use to communicate across the company about outages.”

“There are backup plans, of course, but I wanted to at least come here to say: you’re not crazy, nothing is lost … but there is serious packet loss at the least,» they added. 

In a statement, Google told Cloud Pro: “We will conduct a post mortem and make appropriate improvements to our systems to prevent this from happening again. We sincerely apologise to those that were impacted by [these] issues. Customers can always find the most recent updates on our systems on our status dashboard.”

Some, however, have questioned what exactly Google meant by “high levels of network congestion in the eastern USA”.

Clive Longbottom, co-founder of analyst house Quocirca, told Cloud Pro: “If this was the case, a lot more than GCP would have been impacted: this does not seem to have been the case. As such, it would appear that what Google possibly means is that it was excessive network traffic in its own environment in the Eastern USA.”

He suggested that the excessive network traffic was potentially caused by something internal.

“This could be something like a memory leak on an app going crazy, or (like AWS some time back) human error through a script causing a looping command bringing chaos to the environment.”

This doesn’t mean that organisations should abandon cloud for business-critical workloads, however. Owen Rogers, research director at the digital economics unit of 451 Research, told Cloud Pro: “Four hours is quite a long time … but it’s a tricky issue, because outages are going to happen now and then, and all customers can do is to build resiliency such that if an outage does occur, they have a backup.

“Using multiple availability zones and regions is a must, but if applications are business critical, multi-cloud should be considered. Yes, it’s more complex to manage; yes, you’ll have to train more people. But if your company is going to go bust because of a few hours of outage, it is an investment worth making. It appears some hyperscalers are more resilient than others, but even the best are likely to slip up occasionally.”

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How to improve privileged users’ security experiences with machine learning

Bottom line: One of the primary factors motivating employees to sacrifice security for speed are the many frustrations they face, attempting to re-authenticate who they are so they can get more work done and achieve greater productivity.

How bad security experiences lead to a breach

Every business is facing the paradox of hardening security without sacrificing users’ login and system access experiences. Zero Trust Privilege is emerging as a proven framework for thwarting privileged credential abuse by verifying who is requesting access, the context of the request, and the risk of the access environment across every threat surface an organisation has.

Centrify’s recent survey Privileged Access Management In The Modern Threatscape found that 74% of data breaches start with privileged credential abuse. Forrester estimates that 80% of data breaches have a connection to compromised privileged credentials, such as passwords, tokens, keys, and certificates. On the Dark Web, privileged access credentials are a best-seller because they provide the intruder with “the keys to the kingdom.” By leveraging a “trusted” identity, a hacker can operate undetected and exfiltrate sensitive data sets without raising any red flags.

Frustrated with wasting time responding to the many account lock-outs, re-authentication procedures, and login errors outmoded Privileged Access Management (PAM) systems require, IT Help Desk teams, IT administrators, and admin users freely share privileged credentials, often resulting in them eventually being offered for sale on the Dark Web.

The keys to the kingdom are in high demand

18% of healthcare employees are willing to sell confidential data to unauthorised parties for as little as $500 to $1,000, and 24% of employees know of someone who has sold privileged credentials to outsiders, according to a recent Accenture survey. State-sponsored and organised crime organisations offer to pay bounties in bitcoin for privileged credentials for many of the world’s largest financial institutions on the Dark Web. And with the typical U.S.-based enterprise losing on average $7.91M from a breach, more than double the global average of $3.86M according to IBM’s 2018 Data Breach Study, it’s clear that improving admin user experiences to reduce the incidence of privileged credential sharing needs to happen now.

How machine learning improves admin user experiences and thwarts breaches

Machine learning is making every aspect of security experiences more adaptive, taking into account the risk context of every privileged access attempt across any threat surface, anytime. Machine learning algorithms can continuously learn and generate contextual intelligence that is used to streamline verified privileged user’s access while thwarting many potential threats ― the most common of which is compromised credentials.

The following are a few of the many ways machine learning is improving privileged users’ experiences when they need to log in to secure critical infrastructure resources:

  • Machine learning is making it possible to provide adaptive, personalised login experiences at scale using risk-scoring of every access attempt in real-time, all contributing to improved user experiences: Machine learning is making it possible to implement security strategies that flex or adapt to risk contexts in real-time, assessing every access attempt across every threat surface, and generating a risk score in milliseconds.

    Being able to respond in milliseconds, or real-time is essential for delivering excellent admin user experiences. The “never trust, always verify, enforce least privilege” approach to security is how many enterprises from a broad base of industries including leading financial services and insurance companies are protecting every threat surface from privileged access abuse.

    CIOs at these companies say taking a Zero Trust approach with a strong focus on Zero Trust Privilege corporate-wide is redefining the legacy approach to Privileged Access Management by delivering cloud-architected Zero Trust Privilege to secure access to infrastructure, DevOps, cloud, containers, big data, and other modern enterprise use cases. Taking a Zero Trust approach to security enables their departments to roll out new services across every threat surface their customers prefer to use without having to customise security strategies for each.
     

  • Quantify, track and analyse every potential security threat and attempted breach and apply threat analytics to the aggregated data sets in real-time, thwarting data exfiltration attempts before they begin. One of the tenets or cornerstones of Zero Trust Privilege is adaptive control. Machine learning algorithms continually “learn” by continuously analysing and looking for anomalies in users’ behavior across every threat surface, device, and login attempt.

    When any users’ behavior appears to be outside the threshold of constraints defined for threat analytics and risk scoring, additional authentication is immediately requested, and access denied to requested resources until an identity can be verified. Machine learning makes adaptive preventative controls possible.
     

  • When every identity is a new security perimeter, machine learnings’ ability to provide personalisation at scale for every access attempt on every threat surface is essential for enabling a company to keep growing. Businesses that are growing the fastest often face the greatest challenges when it comes to improving their privileged users’ experiences.

    Getting new employees productive quickly needs to be based on four foundational elements. These include verifying the identity of every admin user, knowing the context of their access request, ensuring it’s coming from a clean source, and limiting access as well as privilege. Taken together, these pillars form the foundation of a Zero Trust Privilege.

Conclusion

Organisations don’t have to sacrifice security for speed when they’re relying on machine learning-based approaches for improving the privileged user experience. Today, a majority of IT Help Desk teams, IT administrators, and admin users are freely sharing privileged credentials to be more productive, which often leads to breaches based on privileged access abuse. By taking a machine learning-based approach to validate every access request, the context of the request, and the risk of the access environment, roadblocks in the way of greater privileged user productivity disappear. Privileged credential abuse is greatly minimised.

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Google Cloud scores FA digital transformation partnership


Connor Jones

31 May, 2019

The English Football Association (The FA) has partnered with Google Cloud to digitally transform its St. George’s Park national training centre used by 28 national teams.

Google Cloud is now the official cloud and data analytics partner to the FA and during the multi-year partnership, Google Cloud aims to put G Suite at the heart of everything. It will see a shift from siloed working to a more collaborative approach between coaches of all the teams.

«The first step in our transformation at St. George’s Park was to unify the way our coaches train and develop our 28 national teams to increase productivity,» says Craig Donald, CIO at the FA. «We needed the ability to collaborate and share across the coaches and team managers. G Suite allowed us to do that and was the first part of our Google Cloud partnership.»

The FA has terabytes of data stored in Google Cloud collected from tracking player activity and the analysis team will use the tools provided by Google Cloud Platform, such as smart analytics tools, machine learning, AI and BigQuery to unearth new insights from the data.

The organisation’s next step will be to build out its Player Profile System (PPS), a proprietary tool built on the platform, to measure performance, fitness, training and form of players at all levels.

The goal is to automate near real-time data analysis which will give the pitchside coaches a better indication as to how the players are performing in training, which could influence decisions such as player selection for matches.

The PPS will be further enhanced by Google Cloud smart analytics, data management systems and machine learning capabilities to analyse even more player data signals.

«Smart analytics and data management play a critical part in our PPS,» said Nick Sewell FA head of application development. «Everything we do at St George’s Park for this workload is built on Google Cloud.»

Over the multi-year partnership The FA aims to tackle three key areas:

  • Success: Preparing both men’s and women’s senior teams for the next World Cups.
  • Diversity: Doubling female participation in the game.
  • Inclusivity: Making football more inclusive and open to all.

«We believe technology is a key area of potential competitive advantage for our 28 teams and everything we do at St George’s Park,» said Dave Reddin, The FA’s head of team strategy and performance.

«We have progressively built a systematic approach to developing winning England teams and through the support of Google Cloud technology we wish to accelerate our ability to translate insight and learning into performance improvements.»

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Salesforce launches blockchain platform for CRM


Keumars Afifi-Sabet

31 May, 2019

Salesforce is connecting a low-code blockchain platform with its customer relationship management (CRM) suite to open up new services and operations for its customers.

The cloud-powered software developer has launched the platform to allow companies to create blockchain networks, workflows and apps, in a way that’s easier and faster than traditional methods.

The Salesforce Blockchain platform is a low-code system built on the open source technology developed by Hyperledger Sawtooth and is customised to fit with the company’s flagship Salesforce Lightning CRM product.

Beyond building networks, users can layer blockchain data above existing sales, service, or marketing workflows, and run artificial intelligence-powered algorithms to integrate this data into sales forecasts and other predictions.

Salesforce says that blockchain’s distributed ledger technology can help with authenticating and sharing data across multiple third parties, where traditionally this process has been clunky and slow. Principally, the company says it streamlines how transactions and documents are created and exchanged.

«Blockchain allows us to upend antiquated processes like these and rebuild them entirely with customers at the centre,» said Salesforce’s senior vice president for emerging technologies Adam Caplan.

«Data can securely flow beyond an organization’s four walls and be extended to partners. Every party in the blockchain network can verify and see each transaction in an open, transparent way.

«The information is secure, trusted, and – if the need arises – can be audited.»

Organisations across several industries can use the technology for conventional business processes like asset tracking, credentialing, and authentication of goods. Salesforce says that combining CRM with blockchain data can see firms devise new business processes and models across sales, marketing, and services.

A real-life application of Salesforce’s blockchain platform involves Arizona State University, which is using the system to design and create an education network that allows universities to verify and share information securely.

S&P Global Ratings, meanwhile, is using the service to reduce the time it takes to review and approve new business bank accounts by bringing together multiple reviews for greater transparency in this process.

The main problem Salesforce is aiming to tackle involves a greater need for businesses to harness and share massive amounts of data with an ever-growing network of partners and third parties – and to do so securely.

The firm, therefore, sees blockchain’s distributed ledger as a means to plugging any ‘trust gap’ that arises if companies fail to manage to increased costs and inefficiencies that it said this process will introduce.

Salesforce is just the latest company to introduce a blockchain service after its CEO Mark Benioff teased such a platform in April last year.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft have both released blockchain-powered services, with the former targeting the healthcare and finance sectors with its Blockchain as a Service (BaaS) templates released last year.

Salesforce Blockchain is currently available to select design partners ahead of its general release in 2020.

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Linksys LAPAC2600C review: Easy cloud networking for small businesses


Dave Mitchell

31 May, 2019

An affordable Wave 2 AP that’s strong on performance and features

Price 
£183 exc VAT

Small businesses that want to move from standalone wireless networks to fully cloud-managed ones will love Linksys’ LAPAC2600C as it doesn’t get any easier. This Wave 2 wireless AP takes everything we like about the standard LAPAC2600 model and teams it up with Linksys’ Cloud Manager web portal. Its price even includes a 5-year subscription.

Signing up for a Cloud Manager account is easy: provide an email address for the designated owner, add a password, choose a domain name and create networks for each geographical location. Adding APs is equally swift. You provide their MAC address and serial number, which are found on the box, under the AP and, if you login to its local web interface, can be copied and pasted from its system status page.

Before going further, we recommend visiting the portal’s main settings page and changing the default local admin password for all managed APs. Most AP settings aren’t available locally, but you can still login and disable cloud management or change the AP’s LAN configuration.

Each AP takes 10 seconds to link up with Cloud Manager and you can change their names to more meaningful ones. The portal’s overview page for the selected network provides a real-time graph of upload and download traffic for all clients or the number of connections and can be swapped to the last hour, day or week.

You can see the busiest clients and APs, wireless channel usage and a Google map showing the AP’s physical location. You can create an unlimited number of SSID profiles and up to eight can be assigned to each AP as ‘slots’.

Along with enabling encryption and SSID masking, you can decide which APs will broadcast the SSID and apply a single limit in Mbits/sec to overall upstream and downstream bandwidth usage. Client isolation stops users on the same SSID from seeing each other, you can restrict the number of clients that can associate and enable 802.1lk for fast roaming as users move around.

Zero-touch provisioning is achieved by creating a new network for the remote site, entering the AP’s details from the box, pre-assigning SSIDs to it and sending it to the remote location. All the user needs do is unbox the AP, connect it to power and the internet and it’ll do the rest.

The LAPAC2600C is a good performer, with real world file copies using a 5GHz 11ac connection on a Windows 10 Pro desktop averaging 56MB/sec at close range dropping to 53MB/sec at 10 metres. Coverage is also good as the SweetSpots app on our iPad only registered a loss of signal after we got 44 metres down the main building corridor.

Each network in your account can have additional members added and allowed to manage all settings or merely view them. There are no options to permit access to specific functions but the account owner can add more users and grant them full portal access to all networks.

Guest wireless networks are swiftly created by enabling a captive portal (or ‘splash page’) on selected SSIDs, which is presented to users when they load a browser after associating. The page can be customised with a small company logo and AUP (acceptable use policy) of up to 1,024 characters, set to request a global password and used to redirect guests to a landing web page – possibly with a promotional message.

The LAPAC2600C delivers good wireless performance and features at a very reasonable price. Linksys’ cloud portal is basic but its extreme ease of use makes it ideal for small businesses that want hassle-free cloud managed wireless networks.