VMware has completed its spin-off from Dell to officially become a standalone company once again, allowing Dell to raise cash to pay off its debts and giving VMware more business flexibility.

Dell shed its 81% equity ownership in the company, which will create an independent company with a stock market value of around $64 billion. VMware has distributed a special cash dividend of $11.5 billion to all VMware shareholders, including Dell which has received $9.3 billion that will be used to pay down debt. Michael Dell will remain chair of the VMware board, and the rest of its directors remain unchanged.

The companies said that they will continue to retain a strong and unique commercial agreement that preserves their relationship, including the co-development of critical solutions and alignment on sales and marketing activities. VMware will also continue to use Dell Financial Services to help its customers finance digital transformation.

Raghu Raghuram, VMware CEO, said that as a standalone company, VMware now has the flexibility to partner even more deeply with all cloud and on-premises infrastructure companies to create a better foundation to drive results for its customers. He added that it will also have increased flexibility to use equity to complete future acquisitions, allowing the company to remain competitive.He said the move will strengthen VMware’s mission to be “the Switzerland of the cloud industry”, uniquely positioned to provide its customers with the best combination of options as it grows its partner ecosystem.

Raghuram added that the company will continue to work closely with Dell, providing products for customers through its new commercial agreement, in particular its channel synergies, partner, and go-to-market programmes.

“I’m confident this next step in the VMware journey will enhance our ability to deliver the trusted foundation that our customers rely on to accelerate innovation,” said Raguram. “That is and will remain our top priority.”

In April this year, Dell was set to spin off its 81% stake in VMware to create two separate entities to generate billions of dollars in cash to pay down its debt. This was a reversal of the move from 2016 in which Dell merged with VMware’s parent company EMC in a $67 billion deal. The merger allowed the hardware giant to branch out when it came to business pursuits but resulted in it taking on substantial debt.

Gaming giant Sega has announced a strategic alliance with Microsoft to develop big-budget titles on the Azure platform. 

The Tokyo-based game maker is looking to develop «super games» as part of a long-term strategy to build titles for a global online community.

Sega and Microsoft have enjoyed a long partnership on the hardware front, but the Japanese firm has had to abandon its own console business after a series of failed products. The latest agreement with Microsoft, however, isn’t about hardware, but rather about cloud technology and software. 

Microsoft’s involvement is essentially about future-proofing the development of these games by utilising its cloud technology. The aim is to «anticipate» accelerating industry trends and optimise the development process with high-quality experiences for Sega users.

The foundations of this alliance also include mutual agreements to develop new technologies, focusing on areas such as network infrastructure and communication tools. 

«Sega has played such an iconic role in the gaming industry and has been a tremendous partner over the years,» said Sarah Bond, Microsoft’s CVP.

«We look forward to working together as they explore new ways to create unique gaming experiences for the future using Microsoft cloud technologies. Together we will reimagine how games get built, hosted, and operated, with a goal of adding more value to players and Sega alike.»

Microsoft has been looking to add more to its gaming portfolio in recent years, with reports that it was initially interested in acquiring Sega fully. The tech giant also reportedly made a £10 billion move for communication platform Discord, though the deal was said to be rejected because Discord preferred its own expansion plans.

«By considering a strategic partnership with Microsoft, we seek to further advance our game development so that our titles can be enjoyed by fans all over the world; in this regard, we aim to build an alliance that utilises both Sega’s powerful game development capabilities and Microsoft’s cutting-edge technology and development environment,» said Yukio Sugino, the president and COO of Sega.
 

​SAP and Qualtrics have joined forces to streamline travel and expense management for hybrid workplaces.

Dubbed Concur Experience Optimizer, the jointly developed solution combines Qualtrics’ employee experience management platform with SAP’s Concur data.

Organisations can also capitalise on the expertise of SAP Concur Experience Management consultants, included within the platform, to implement continuous employee feedback loops.

“Our research shows that demand for business travel is returning to pre-pandemic levels, but getting the employee experience right is more nuanced and complicated than ever before,” said Jay Choi, chief product officer at Qualtrics. 

Choi added, “It’s critical for organisations to understand how employees feel about the new world of travel and use that experience data to meet their evolving health and safety needs.”

Concur Experience Optimizer offers critical insights into employee buying decisions and organisational spending patterns, allowing early detection of potential saving opportunities and better coordination of policies and processes.

Businesses can also track employee sentiment with science-backed feedback templates and analyse the results with simple, intuitive dashboards that correlate sentiment with operational data metrics.

Additionally, the platform aids organisations in identifying risk factors in employee programs, preventing non-compliant and potentially fraudulent expenses.

“People are a company’s greatest asset, and it’s no secret that retaining employees has become even more critical,” said Mike Koetting, area lead of SAP Concur solution at SAP. 

“A company’s travel and expense programs can directly impact an employee’s experience. Concur Experience Optimizer helps organisations understand the reasons behind employee behavior so they can make adjustments that are in line with both employee sentiment and business objectives.”

​LinkedIn has rolled out a new feature designed to help freelancers access new job opportunities, akin to services like Fiver and Upwork.

Service Marketplace, which was previously only available as a beta to select LinkedIn users in the US, can now be accessed by freelancers all over the world, including the UK.

The feature allows users to find freelancers or project providers through a vast variety of 250 job categories, with opportunities ranging from accounting and consulting to information technology and software development.

Freelancers and project providers can find each other through the Search function, or by exploring the project categories, with all projects described in the Details. If interested, freelancers and project providers can then communicate through messages to find out more about the job, and after it’s finalised, they can rate each other through a five-star system.

Service Marketplace is based on LinkedIn’s pre-existing ProFinder tool, with the Microsoft subsidiary having started integrating “the best elements of Profinder into the LinkedIn platform” in 2020, according to LinkedIn senior communications manager Amanda Purvis.

“We’ve begun helping our service providers integrate their Profinder data to Service Pages and this will continue over the coming months. This will be an incredible opportunity for providers to increase their reach and gain more visibility to the LinkedIn community. Providers can expect to get regular updates from us as we evolve our service provider experience,” Purvis told the AIM Group last month.

Service Marketplace can be seen as LinkedIn’s response to freelance-focused platforms such as Fiverr and Upwork, which have capitalised on the growing number of workers joining the so-called gig economy.

Although severely hit by the financial downturn during the pandemic, freelancers constitute approximately 4.3 million out of the 32.4 million people employed in the UK, down from just over 5 million in January 2020, according to Statista.

In the US, where Service Marketplace was first trialled and rolled out, the pandemic fuelled the popularity of the gig economy, with the growth of temporary contracts attributed to the mass shift to remote working. In April 2021, the US saw a 25% increase in the number of gigs completed per day, raising questions about the sustainability of the type of work post-pandemic.

The news follows LinkedIn’s quarterly earnings report, with the company announcing this week that its revenue for Q3 was up 42% year over year.

Google and Microsoft reported their latest quarterly earnings on Tuesday with cloud services and hybrid work proving a boon for both tech giants. 

Microsoft announced that for Q1 2022, it recorded $45.3 billion (£32.9 billion) in revenue, an increase of 22%, while profits were also up an impressive 48% at $20.5 billion (£14.9 billion).

Google’s Q3 2021 earnings revealed a continuation of its long-running track record of smashing revenue figures year after year. It amassed reveue of $65.1 billion (£47.4 billion) for the three month period, which represents a a 41% increase compared to Q3 in 2020 which stood at  $46.1 billion (£33.5 billion).

Following the earnings announcement, Google’s share price soared just shy of 18 points (0.65%) while Microsoft enjoyed a similar increase of 0.64%.

Commenting on the news, Sundar Pichai, CEO at Alphabet and Google, said: “Five years ago, I laid out our vision to become an AI-first company. This quarter’s results show how our investments there are enabling us to build more helpful products for people and our partners.

«Ongoing improvements to Search, and the new Pixel 6, are great examples. And as the digital transformation and shift to hybrid work continue, our Cloud services are helping organisations collaborate and stay secure.”

Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, said: “Digital technology is a deflationary force in an inflationary economy. Businesses – small and large – can improve productivity and the affordability of their products and services by building tech intensity.

“The Microsoft Cloud delivers the end-to-end platforms and tools organisations need to navigate this time of transition and change.”

One commonality from both companies’ earnings is that cloud services drove figures higher, and in Google’s case, much higher than ever before.

Google generated an additional $1.5 billion (£1.09 billion) revenue for Google Cloud this quarter compared to Q3 2020 with a total $4.9 billion (£3.5 billion). That said, Google Cloud is still operating at a loss with income down $644 million (£469.06 million) – quite a considerable drop and a bigger loss than last quarter which stood at $591 million (£430.6 million). Though the figures are improving year-on-year as Q3 2020’s losses stood at $1.2 billion (£874.6 million).

«With more than 40% year over year growth, Google experienced a huge jump, and one that even surpassed Wall Street’s original forecast,» said Anthony Denier, CEO at trading platform Webull.» The company’s earnings per share grew 71% year over year to $27.99 (£20.38) – way past the original estimate of $23.48 (£17.10).»

Microsoft’s cloud revenues continued to impress investors with Intelligent Cloud up 31% to $17 billion (£12.3 billion) while revenue from server products and cloud services increased 35%, driven by a business-leading revenue growth rate of 50% thanks to Azure and other cloud services.

Consumer and business Office services also enjoyed a strong quarter, factoring into rising cloud revenues too. Office Commercial products and cloud services revenue increased 18%, largely driven by the 23% revenue growth of Office 365 Commercial. Office Consumer products and cloud services revenue increased 10% with consumer subscribers increasing to 54.1 million.

Other strong areas for Microsoft included LinkedIn revenue which increased 42% and Windows OEM revenue which increased 10%. Google reported consistently better results across most corners of the business. Search revenue was up to $37.9 billion (£27.6 billion) this quarter, a staggering $11 billion (£8 billion) increase year-on-year. 

Japan’s Digital Agency has selected Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud to run its first nationwide cloud computing project in the country, as the government tries to implement digital transformation across its ministries.

The two providers were chosen as they met around 350 requirements across security, legal issues, and data management, an official from the agency, according to Nikkei Asia. AWS and Google will first be used to run the agency’s website as well as by eight municipalities on a trial basis.

The government cloud project is aiming to unify and standardise digital infrastructure across ministries and approximately 1,700 municipalities, which run their own systems. Domestic system integrators have usually been selected to manage data centres and business applications, which the government believes has led to customised systems with high maintenance costs and overlapping functions.

The vendor lock-in has also prevented the rollout of public services and hampered the country’s COVID-19 response.

It was also revealed that the budget for government cloud computing until next March is around 2 billion yen (£12.3 million) with the budget for upcoming years still to be determined.

The Digital Agency was launched on 1 September and is set to control most of the government’s IT budget. It is aiming to move local governments to the cloud by 2025, which could reduce the annual IT budget of £5 billion by about 30%, according to a government official. 

“As a cloud services provider directly contracted by the Digital Agency, AWS will help the Japanese government to modernize IT by directly offering advanced technologies and global best practices,” an AWS spokesperson said to CloudPro.

“It will also enable us to continue to work with Japanese AWS Partners and startups to accelerate innovation in citizen services, drive local economic growth, and solve some of the biggest challenges in society.”

CloudPro has contacted Google for comment.

The move comes as part of a push by the Japanese government to implement digital transformation across its ministries, which have tended to lag behind.

The government has only just begun to phase out the use of floppy disks, according to a report from Nikkei Asia, as officials saw the outdated tech as ultra-reliable, saying they almost never broke or lost data. Sony stopped producing the disks in 2011 but, thanks to their reusability, there are still plenty to go around. However, various subdivisions of the Tokyo government have already started moving the data from floppy disks to other online storage formats.

Zoom users will now be able to benefit from a new live transcription tool, the video conferencing giant announced today.

The feature, which automatically generates speaker subtitles on Zoom video meetings or webinars, is now available across all free and paid Zoom Meetings and Zoom Video Webinars accounts.

However, the tool is currently only available in English, the company stated, with plans to expand live transcription to other languages in the future. Zoom also supports third-party captioning services which might offer auto-generated captions in other languages.

Zoom’s live transcription can be enabled by users through the Zoom web portal, or privately requested during a meeting session using the toolbar.

The feature not only has the potential to make communication easier but is also a crucial tool in making video conferencing more accessible to those with hearing impairments.

Zoom Meetings and Chat product marketing manager, Theresa Larkin, said that it’s important that “everyone can successfully connect, communicate, and participate” using the video conferencing platform.

“Without the proper accessibility tools, people with disabilities face tremendous barriers when using video communication solutions. That’s why we are focused on building out a platform that is accessible to everyone, and features such as auto-generated captions are an important part of that mission,” she added.

Zoom has also set its sights on enabling real-time, multi-language translation capabilities for its users in an effort “to deliver happiness to our users and improve meeting productivity”. In June, the company announced the acquisition of Karlsruhe Information Technology Solutions (Kites) – a startup focused on the development of real-time AI-powered translation technologies.

Prior to that, Zoom also unveiled a new range of desk phones fit for the office and the home that includes high-definition video as well as built-in collaboration software. The new offerings, with live transcription being the latest, are part of the company’s efforts to retain users as lockdown restrictions are eased and more workers return to the office. 

A leading expert on competition law has published a report illustrating the «unfair» and «anti-competitive» licensing practices enforced by major tech firms on customers globally.

Microsoft and Oracle are the primary targets of the report, which details the alleged long-running anti-competitive practices used by major firms in the software and cloud services industries.

Professor Frédéric Jenny’s research on cloud infrastructure service providers in Europe (CISPE) has been distributed to MEPs, the European Commission (EC) and the European Council as they debate and vote on the Digital Markets Act (DMA).

“Our research has shown that the position of certain large cloud infrastructure providers in the adjacent markets, notably Microsoft and Oracle, has enabled them to engage in potentially anti-competitive strategies to exclude other cloud infrastructure providers from the market,” the report authored by Jenny reads. “Moreover, these strategies have been an engine of growth for those integrated cloud service providers.”

The DMA is a legislative proposal brought forward by the EC to stamp out unfair and anti-competitive practices exhibited by digital platforms, typically those with dominant market positions looking to increase their share in adjacent markets.

It has been proposed following the recent high-profile US antitrust cases brought to the likes of Facebook and Google, but Jenny’s report takes aim at two other tech giants in particular.

Among other industry-wide unfair practices, the report accused Microsoft of enforcing unfair licensing costs and charging customers more to use Office and Server software on third-party cloud platforms, citing the case brought to Microsoft by the Danish Cloud Community and the European Commission in 2018. In this case, Microsoft raised the price for software subscriptions but left them untouched for customers using said software within its own cloud environments, Azure and Windows 365.

The report also accused Oracle of enforcing licensing restrictions which lead to a 10x increase in price when using Oracle software in a third-party cloud platform compared to running it on Oracle Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). Oracle has also been criticised for enforcing technical and billing requirements on a per-CPU basis. 

“If Oracle software is used in Oracle IaaS then companies are only require to pay for the number of actual CPUs used while it used on third-part IaaS equipment, the company is required to pay for a licence for each CPU that could be used to run the software, whether or not it actually is,” the report said.

The researcher also conducted a series of interviews with cloud customers to gather further evidence against the unfair practices in the sector. These revealed additional practices such as limits to interoperability involving technical limitations such as enforcing proprietary languages to make migration more difficult, and switching costs which may be significant both in monetary and time-duration terms, the report notes.

Exclusionary licensing practices were also highlighted in the report with one case study reporting that Microsoft imposed an ‘after-the-fact’ change to its licensing policy after the customer decided to switch to Amazon Web Services (AWS). This saw the customer forced to pay for individual Office licenses on each computing instance, raising the annual cost tens of millions.

These examples of exclusionary licensing can also be found in third-party interfacing – accessing a service through a third-party application. SAP’s Indirect Access was cited as an example of this, whereby users incurred additional surcharges for accessing the SAP ecosystem through a third-party application, effectively creating an active log of ‘indirect usages of SAP software.

Other notable unfair practices include: artificially limiting data portability to make it expensive if not impossible to use competing cloud infrastructure and the removal of Bring Your Own Licence (BYOL) deals whereby customers are forced to pay again to use software they already own on competing cloud infrastructure.

“This independent study by Professor Jenny, a recognised economist, objectifies the observations made consistently by Cigref members over many years,» said Henri d’Agrain, Secretary General of Cigref, the French CIO Association.

«It provides a factual assessment of the economic consequences of the unfair practices that Cigref regularly denounces. It is important to regulate these practices, which are mainly carried out by non-European providers. These practices constitute an illegitimate drain on the European economy and contribute to stifling the digital innovation of European players through killing acquisitions.”

Alban Schmutz, Chairman of CISPE, concluded: “We’d heard from our members, and from their customers, that certain legacy software providers were limiting choice in cloud infrastructure through unfair license terms. We commissioned Professor Jenny to make a study of these practices and their impact, to support the Principle of Fair Software Licensing we crafted with Cigref. The Study clearly demonstrates the need for the Principles, and for the DMA to include them within its provisions. This is a significant issue which requires legislation as well as voluntary adoption of our Principles to ensure compliance and a better deal for European businesses and consumers.”

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has signed what is likely to be a lucrative data deal with the UK’s top intelligence services to store and analyse information for the purposes of espionage.

GCHQ, MI5, and MI6 will store information using AWS’ cloud services, according to the Financial Times, which reports that the deal has been made so the UK spy agencies can harness the data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) tools the AWS platform provides.

AWS will also reportedly equip the agencies with tools that enable easier data sharing between overseas field locations and rapid translation of audio recordings.

Other government departments such as the Ministry of Defence will also use the cloud service offering during joint operations, according to the FT‘s report.

GCHQ was leading the calls for a cloud security platform which could be used across the intelligence services, the report added. The deal was signed this year and all data will be stored in the UK, with Amazon’s main e-commerce company having no access or oversight of the data at all.

IT Pro contacted GCHQ and AWS and both declined to comment on the matter.

GCHQ’s ambition to further embed AI into its intelligence practices was highlighted in a 2020 Royal United Services Institute (Rusi) report in which it claimed UK spies would need to use AI in order to stymie modern-day cyber attackers.

The report claimed there were three key areas in which AI would be able to benefit the GCHQ; analysis of intelligence, cyber security operations, and the automation of administrative tasks.

Echoing this claim, panellists including Moonpig’s head of cyber Tash Norris said during a 2021 IT Pro Panel that the best AI applications for cyber security will be in detection and response tasks like SIEM, SOAR, and EDR. The sentiment is echoed in the Rusi report, which stated that AI will never replace strong human judgement. 

Commenting on an October 2021 claim made by the Pentagon’s former chief software officer that China has won the AI battle with the US, Jeremy Fleming, director at GCHQ, said he doesn’t subscribe to the idea, though he added that «China by more or less any measure is doing well in the development of AI capabilities».

Addressing delegates at The Cipher Brief Annual Threat Conference on Monday, Fleming also claimed the UK saw twice the number of ransomware attacks in 2021 compared to 2020. Attacks are proliferating «because it works; it just pays,» he said.

Microsoft has warned its resellers and managed service providers that the hacking group behind the SolarWinds cyber attack has now turned its attention to the company’s global supply chain.

The tech giant said that it believes the Russian state-backed hacking group, known as Nobelium, ultimately hopes to piggyback on any direct access that resellers may have to their customers’ IT systems and more easily impersonate an organisation’s trusted technology partner to gain access to their downstream customers.

Microsoft said that the attacks used well-known techniques, like password spray and phishing, to steal legitimate credentials and gain privileged access. It began observing Nobelium’s latest campaign in May 2021 and has been notifying affected partners and customers.

So far, the company has notified over 140 resellers and technology service providers currently being targeted by the group. It also believes as many as 14 resellers and service providers have already been compromised.

These attacks have been part of a larger wave of Nobelium activities this summer, the company said. Between 1 July and 19 October, Microsoft believes that 22,868 attacks were conducted by the group against 609 customers, with a success rate in the low single digits. As a comparison, before 1 July, approximately 20,500 attacks from nation-state hackers were recorded over the course of three years.