Security firm Sophos has informed customers it suffered a data breach as a result of a misconfigured database.
According to ZDNet, customers’ personal information was exposed, including names, emails and phone numbers. The company informed impacted customers via email, which ZDNet got a copy of.
On November 24, 2020, Sophos was advised of an access permission issue in a tool used to store information on customers who have contacted Sophos Support.
The company confirmed the breach to ZDNet, saying that only a “small subset” of its customers were impacted. Nonetheless, this is the second major security issue this year for Sophos, a major source of embarrassment for a company in the business of providing computer security to its customers.
The company tried to assure customers it was doing everything it could to address the issue.
At Sophos, customer privacy and security are always our top priority. We are contacting all affected customers,” the company said. “Additionally, we are implementing additional measures to ensure access permission settings are continuously secure.
Vertafore has acknowledge a data breach that has exposed the driver’s license records of some 28 million Texans, thanks to unsecured files.
Vertafore is a company that serves the insurance industry, helping companies keep up with technology and the changing demands of the market. One of Vertafore’s key features is its ability to help agencies “unlock the power of data to drive growth.”
Unfortunately for 28 million Texas drivers, Vertafore didn’t do enough to protect the data it had access to. According to the company’s announcement, three data files were left unsecured on an external storage service and accessed by unauthorized parties.
The information contained pre-February 2019 driver information, including “Texas driver license numbers, as well as names, dates of birth, addresses and vehicle registration histories.” The data files did not contain Social Security numbers or financial information.
Vertafore has since secured the files, launched an investigation, hired an experienced consulting firm and is working with law enforcement. Despite their efforts at damage control, this is just the latest incident that demonstrates the challenges inherent with a data-driven society.
Financial services firm Financial Network, Inc. (FNI) is leaving Oracle’s platform in favor of MariaDB SkySQL.
MariaDB was forked from MySQL when Oracle acquired the database engine in 2009. Developers were concerned about the future of MySQL under Oracle, and wanted a version of the database that would remain independent of Oracle, while at the same time maintaining full compatibility.
MariaDB Corporation pairs the database with SkySQL for “the first and only database-as-a-service (DBaaS) to bring the full power of MariaDB Platform to the cloud, combining powerful enterprise features and world-class support with unrivaled ease of use and groundbreaking innovation.”
SkySQL is offered as a DBaaS on Google Cloud Platform, and MariaDB is used by Google, Mozilla, Deutsche Bank, DBS Bank, Nasdaq, Red Hat, ServiceNow, Verizon and Walgreens. Now, FNI is leaving Oracle in favor of MariaDB and SkySQL.
“MariaDB has been a true collaborative partner for us in our journey to the cloud,” said Bryan Bancroft, lead database administrator at FNI. “With SkySQL, we don’t have to bother with containers or managing the database, that’s left to the database professionals at MariaDB. We also have the option of easily expanding our applications to leverage blended transactions and analytics when the time is right. Moving to MariaDB from Oracle was a key strategic business decision for us and has ultimately saved us up to 80% in database costs – allowing us to reinvest the savings into delivering new, critical solutions for our customers.”
The announcement is a big win for MariaDB and a loss for Oracle, just as the company is doubling down in an effort to take on its bigger cloud rivals.
Voters in Massachusetts have approved a ballot that would force automakers to allow independent shops to access extensive vehicle data and make repairs.
As vehicles have become more complicated, with more functions being controlled by computers and artificial intelligence, automakers have restricted access from third-party shops. Instead, automakers have increasingly required car owners to use dealerships and approved shops.
Massachusetts voters have just dealt one of the first major blows to automakers, requiring them to make their vehicle data available, via an open platform, beginning with the 2022 model year.
“The Auto Care Association is extremely pleased that Massachusetts voters have overwhelmingly supported passage of Question 1 on this year’s ballot,” said Bill Hanvey, president and CEO, Auto Care Association. “Approval of Question 1 ensures that car owners can control the mechanical data that is being transmitted by their vehicle through telematics. This referendum also means that despite advances in technology, owners will be able to have their repair data shared directly with their trusted independent shops. Not only is this a clear win for the Right to Repair Coalition that is comprised of thousands of shops throughout the state, it is also a victory for the car owners of the commonwealth who saw through the scare tactics from the manufacturers. The people of Massachusetts have decidedly favored competition in auto repair. Furthermore, we are greatly appreciative of each and every aftermarket company around the country that stepped up in support of this important campaign.”
Massachusetts’ initiative will likely encourage other states to enact similar measures, potentially changing how vehicles are repaired.
Sweden’s largest insurer, Folksam, has admitted to accidentally leaking the private data of one million of its customers to tech firms.
According to U.S. News & World Report, Folksam insures every second home in Sweden, giving the company access to vast troves of personal and private data on its customers. Unfortunately, the company accidentally shared that data with Facebook, Google, LinkedIn and Microsoft.
Unlike the US, the EU has strict data privacy laws in the form of the GDPR. As a result, data breaches such as this one can result in hefty fines and penalties if not handled correctly. Folksam has assured customers that it does not appear any of the data was used improperly by third-parties, and vowed to do better.
“We take what has happened seriously. We have immediately stopped sharing this personal information and requested that it be deleted,” said Jens Wikstrom, Folksam’s head of marketing.
This data breach is just the latest example demonstrating the risks that come with the current state of the tech industry, and specifically cross-industry interdependencies that have become commonplace.
A Dell Technologies commissioned an independent survey of 4,300 worldwide business leaders indicates a massive shift toward digital transformation in 2020 accelerated by the pandemic. The survey indicates that 80% of organizations globally have fast-tracked some digital transformation programs this year. But just 41% accelerated all or most of their programs. Dell says that this is the third installment of their Digital Transformation Index (DT Index), designed to show how businesses are adapting to unprecedented uncertainty during a global pandemic.
Incredibly, 79% are reinventing their business model as a result of the disruption caused by the pandemic and 50% of international business leaders worry they didn’t transition fast enough. The study notes that digital transformation is not easy, 94% of businesses surveyed say they are facing entrenched barriers spanning across technology, people, and policy.
According to the 2020 DT Index, the following are the top-3 barriers to digital transformation success:
Data privacy and cybersecurity concerns (up from 5th place in 2016)
Lack of budget and resources (#1 in 2016, #2 in 2018)
Unable to extract insights from data and/or information overload (a jump of eight places since 2016)
“We’ve been given a glimpse of the future, and the organizations that are accelerating their digital transformation now will be poised for success in the Data Era that is unfolding before our eyes”, says Michael Dell, Chairman, and CEO, Dell Technologies.
Additionally, the survey reveals a huge shift toward remote work. About 25% of employees worked remotely before the pandemic and today it is more than 50% of all employees are remote. According to the survey, remote work has become the new normal.
Top IT Investments Are For Emerging Technologies
Prior to the pandemic, business investments were strongly focused on foundational technologies, rather than emerging technologies. The vast majority, 89 percent recognizethat as a result of disruption this year, they need a more agile/scalable IT infrastructure to allow of contingencies. The DT Index shows the top technology investments for the next one to three years:
Cybersecurity
Data management tools
5G infrastructure
Privacy software
Multi-Cloud environment
And recognizing the importance of emerging technologies, 82 percent of respondents envision increased usage of Augmented Reality to learn how to do or fix things in an instant; 85 percent foresee organizations using Artificial Intelligence and data models to predict potential disruptions, and 78 percent predict distributed ledgers – such as Blockchain – will make the gig economy fairer (by cutting out the intermediary).
Despite these findings, only 16 percent are planning to invest in Virtual/Augmented Reality, just 32 percent intend to invest in Artificial Intelligence, and a mere 15 percent plan to invest in distributed ledgers in the next one to three years.
IBM and ServiceNow are partnering to provide enterprise solutions that utilize AI to automate IT operations. The new joint solution combines IBM’s AI‑powered hybrid cloud software and professional services to ServiceNow’s intelligent workflow capabilities and IT service and operations management products. The solution raises up deep AI‑driven insights from their data and then recommends actions for IT organizations to take that help them prevent and fix IT issues at scale.
“AI is one of the biggest forces driving change in the IT industry to the extent that every company is swiftly becoming an AI company,” said Arvind Krishna, Chief Executive Officer, IBM. “By partnering with ServiceNow and their market-leading Now Platform, clients will be able to use AI to quickly mitigate unforeseen IT incident costs. Watson AIOps with ServiceNow’s Now Platform is a powerful new way for clients to use automation to transform their IT operations.”
“For every CEO, digital transformation has gone from opportunity to necessity,” said ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott. “As ServiceNow leads the workflow revolution, our partnership with IBM combines the intelligent automation capabilities of the Now Platform with the power of Watson AIOps. We are focused on driving a generational step improvement in productivity, innovation, and growth. ServiceNow and IBM are helping customers meet the digital demands of 21st-century business.”
ServiceNow says that in today’s technology‑driven organization, even the smallest outages can cause massive economic impact for both lost revenue and reputation. They note that this partnership will help customers address these challenges and help avoid unnecessary loss of revenue and reputation by automating old, manual IT processes and increasing IT productivity.
Here is what IBM and ServiceNow are planning:
Joint Solution: IBM and ServiceNow will deliver a first of its kind joint IT solution that marries IBM Watson AIOps with ServiceNow’s intelligent workflow capabilities and market‑leading ITSM and ITOM Visibility products to help customers prevent and fix IT issues at scale. Now, businesses that use ServiceNow ITSM can push historical incident data into the deep machine learning algorithms of Watson AIOps to create a baseline of their normal IT environment, while simultaneously having the ability to help them identify anomalies outside of that normal, which could take a human up to 60% longer to manually identify, according to initial results from specific Watson AIOps early adopter clients. The joint solution will position customers to enhance employee productivity, obtain greater visibility into their operational footprint and respond to incidents and issues faster.
Specific product capabilities will include:
ServiceNow ITSM allows IT to deliver scalable services on a single cloud platform estimated to increase productivity by 20%.
ServiceNow ITOM Visibility automatically delivers near real‑time visibility from a native Configuration Management Database, into all resources and the true operational state of all business services.
IBM Watson AIOps uses AI to automate how enterprises detect, diagnose, and respond to, and remediate IT anomalies in real time. The solution is designed to help CIOs make more informed decisions when predicting and shaping future outcomes, focus resources on higher‑value work and build more responsive and intelligent applications that can stay up and running longer. Using Watson AIOps, the average time to resolve incidents was reduced by 65 percent, according to one recent initial proof of concept project with a client.
Services: IBM is expanding its global ServiceNow business to include additional capabilities that provide advisory, implementation, and managed services on the Now Platform. Highly‑skilled IBM practitioners will apply their expertise to facilitate rapid delivery of valuable insights and innovation to clients. IBM Services professionals also will introduce clients to intelligent workflows to help improve resiliency and reduce IT risk. ServiceNow is co‑investing in training and certification of IBM employees and dedicated staff for customer success.
“Businesses are facing increased pressures to match the digital pace of a cloud‑first market in order to meet the demands of their customers,” said Stephen Elliot, program vice president, DevOps, and Management Software, IDC. “The C‑ suite is transforming workflows to deliver insights and automation for more efficient customer engagement models and cost containment strategies for the business while simplifying IT operations and increasing collaboration between IT and business stakeholders.”
“The next decade looking ahead is going to be the Software Decade,” says Snowflake board member and Altimeter Capital partner Kevin Wang. “Trends of moving more software to the cloud are just persisting. Cloud has completely changed the way that software is built and run. Software itself is being completely transformed. If what you saw over the past decade was exciting I’m even more excited about the next decade.”
The past decade has been a prolific time for technology companies. When you look at what we are set up for in the next decade it’s good to pause right now to see what has happened during the pandemic. We’ve seen that software is an integral part of the global economy. During the pandemic, we’ve found that we couldn’t go through the pandemic without the tools that we have.
Stanford research shows that just during the month of May over two-thirds of US GDP was created in our homes alone. That’s just incredible. These trends of moving more software to the cloud are just persisting. The next decade looking ahead is going to be the Software Decade.
Software Itself Is Being Completely Transformed
When we take a step back we look at how these companies are set up for the next ten years. It’s easy to get focused on what might happen in the short run. These trends are so powerful that they are going to power these companies and adoption for several years. It’s true that the pandemic has accelerated and pulled forward a lot of that demand. But a lot of the trends and behaviors we see are going to persist. For example, people are talking over Zoom and that’s just changed the way we are going to work. We can give a lot of examples of how that’s going to persist over the long run.
Software itself is being completely transformed. If what you saw over the past decade was exciting I’m even more excited about the next decade. What you have to understand is that cloud has completely changed the way that software is built and run. As we know, as business are digitally transforming they themselves are building and running more software. When you think about how to do that cloud has changed that.
Historically, you always had to decide better, faster, cheaper. You could only pick one or two of them. Now you can do all three. When you look at Snowflake, for example, you used to have to manage a cloud data warehouse, and that was a lot of work for your database experts. You don’t have to do any of that anymore. Snowflake will manage all of that for you.
The Software Decade Is Now – Altimeter Capital partner Kevin Wang
“We call our approach Virtual First where most focused and solo work happens at home,” says Dropbox CEO Drew Houston. “Then because in-person collaboration is still critical for building teams and relationships and culture we’re turning our offices into collaborative spaces. We call these spaces Dropbox Studios. I feel as a company that we can only live out our mission if we’re on the leading edge of how we work ourselves.”
“We also hope this Virtual First approach will give us the best of remote and in-person work, balancing flexibility with human connection, and creating a more level playing field for everyone,” notes the Dropbox Team blog. “We’re living through a challenging time. But we believe it brings an opportunity to redesign the way we work for the better.”
Drew Houston, co-founder and CEO of Dropbox, says that starting today, Dropbox is becoming a Virtual First company. Remote work will be the primary experience for all employees and the day-to-day default for individual work:
Virtual First Reinvents Work
I don’t think anyone could have imagined how the entire world went to working from home overnight in the most traumatic and abrupt way possible. We see that the shift to distributed work is going to continue beyond when the lockdown ends. What’s interesting is the vast majority of our employees have said that they don’t want to return to the way things were before. They don’t want to lose the flexibility. They don’t want to go back to commuting. We’ve seen this with a lot of companies.
We saw this as a unique opportunity to reinvent how we work and rethink this completely. It’s a little different from some of the other approaches. We thought about how do we combine the best elements of the remote and in-person experience. We call our approach Virtual First where most focused and solo work happens at home. Then because in-person collaboration is still critical for building teams and relationships and culture we’re turning our offices into collaborative spaces. We call these spaces Dropbox Studios. This is better than going fully remote or just sort of letting people figure it out for themselves.
Fully remote cuts out the in-person experience which we think is critical to work. In a lot of the hybrid models which are saying work from home whenever you want to, we think risks the worst of both worlds situation where you don’t get the sense of community in an office and you don’t get the same level of flexibility.
Shift To Distributed Work Is Massive Opportunity
It’s a transition. Over time we’re not going to need as much physical space. That’s part of the explicit design here. Sure, there are some efficiencies on costs that result from that or result from being able to hire in lower-cost locations or allowing employees to live in lower-cost locations. But you need to solve for more than just costs. The primary factor for us is that the vast majority of our team wanted to preserve a lot of the benefits they were getting from working from home.
There are a lot of issues with remote work but most importantly our customers and all the world have shifted to working in a distributed way. We see this as massively increasing our opportunity because there are all of these pain points and ways that we can improve the remote working experience. I feel as a company that we can only do that and we can only live out our mission if we’re on the leading edge of how we work ourselves.
Dropbox CEO Drew Houston: Virtual First Reinvents Work
Twilio has announced it is acquiring Segment, a leading customer data platform.
Like many communication companies, Twilio has experienced significant growth during the pandemic. The company’s APIs make it easy for developers to add voice, text, video, chat and email communication to their services and products.
The acquisition of Segment will help companies better know their customers and use data to build a complete profile. This, in turn, will help them better meet their customers’ needs.
“Data silos destroy great customer experiences,” said Jeff Lawson, co-founder and CEO of Twilio. “Segment lets developers and companies break down those silos and build a complete picture of their customer. Combined with Twilio’s Customer Engagement Platform, we can create more personalized, timely and impactful engagement across customer service, marketing, analytics, product and sales. We are thrilled to welcome Segment to the Twilio team.”
“Together, Twilio and Segment have an incredible opportunity to build the customer engagement platform of the future,” said Peter Reinhardt, Segment’s co-founder and CEO. “We created Segment to help businesses set themselves apart in the digital age and deliver rich, connected customer experiences built on high-quality data. By joining forces and applying our customer data platform to Twilio’s engagement cloud, we’ll be able to make the entire customer experience seamless from end-to-end.”
The deal is an all-stock deal worth approximately $3.2 billion and is expected to close Q4 2020.
Microsoft’s approach to customer data could help the company make major headway against Salesforce.
Salesforce is one of the leading customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise application software companies in the US. According to Business Insider, Futurum Research analyst Dan Newman believes it could be at a big disadvantage versus Microsoft because of its focus on collecting data primarily from its own tools.
In contrast, Microsoft has moved towards openness in recent years, under the leadership of CEO Satya Nadella. In the past, Microsoft was fiercely territorial about its own products and services. Windows and Office were Microsoft’s two cash cows, and the company was focused on keeping customers locked into that ecosystem.
Under Nadella, however, Microsoft has embraced other platforms and operating systems. Their focus has shifted to providing the best products, apps and services on any platform, rather than fiercely protecting their own.
This approach is serving it well in the CRM market, where Microsoft Dynamics 365 competes with Salesforce. Unlike Salesforce, Microsoft’s products integrate with a wide range of tools and services, including those from competitors. Microsoft seems to be taking the approach of being the central hub where that data comes together.
“We have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of out-of-the-box connectors that allow our customers to connect to the data they already have, wherever it is: Whether it’s sitting in a system 360 mainframe from the 1970s or it’s sitting in the latest-and-greatest SaaS business application,” said James Phillips, President of Microsoft’s Business Applications Group.
Microsoft’s efforts may force Salesforce to adapt in order to stay competitive.
Microsoft and Datadog have announced a partnership that will see Datadog be a first-class service in Azure Portal.
Datadog is a company that specializes in monitoring and securing cloud platforms. The company’s platform is designed to integrate with client infrastructure and provide the necessary monitoring to help companies maintain optimal performance and security.
The new partnership will make Datadog a first-class service for Azure customers, the first partnership of its kind for Datadog.
“Azure is the first cloud to enable a seamless configuration and management experience for customers to use partner solutions like Datadog. Together with Datadog, we are enabling customers to use this experience to monitor their Azure workloads and enable an accelerated transition to the cloud,” said Corey Sanders, Microsoft Corporate Vice President, Azure.
“Observability is a key capability for any successful cloud migration. Through our new partnership with Microsoft Azure, customers will now have access to the Datadog platform directly in the Azure console, enabling them to migrate, optimize and secure new and migrated workloads,” said Amit Agarwal, Chief Product Officer, Datadog.
“What we’re announcing today is the democratization of AI,” says VMWare CEO Pat Gelsinger. “VMWare and Nvidia are coming together to leverage all the work they have done over the last decade and a half in AI. This partnership will put it on the industry-standard VMWare footprint to enable every enterprise to have this game-changing technology of AI. We see it as a game-changer for the AI industry broadly.”
Patrick Gelsinger, CEO of VMWare, announced just before this year’s huge virtual VMworld 2020 conference a partnership with Nvidia that will bring on the democratization of AI:
The Democratization Of AI
Nvidia and VMWare are coming together in a new partnership. Nvidia has been building their capabilities in artificial intelligence are for quite a number of years. But AI is used by only 10 to 15% of enterprises where specialized hardware sits in the corner of the data center and is only available in remote cloud environments. What we’re announcing today is the democratization of AI. VMWare and Nvidia are coming together to leverage all the work they have done over the last decade and a half in AI.
This partnership will put it on the industry-standard VMWare footprint to enable every enterprise to have this game-changing technology of AI. Literally, that software can introspect on data and write software and bring that to every enterprise application. We are quite excited about the partnership. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and I have known each other for several decades and it really is exciting to see us bring the partnership to the next level.
Making AI Broadly Available For Enterprises
We are excited about it. We do see that this idea that we can now make AI broadly available for enterprises. It’s exciting for Nvidia because even as successful as they’ve been, they are still only cracking a small piece of the application workload. For us, this is a major accelerant not just in the data center but also extending to the Edge. As we see 5G and Edge emerge this is a major new area for both companies.
With our Tanzu offerings and virtualization offerings, it really is saying that now every enterprise can start to take availability of these powerful AI capabilities. We see it as a game-changer for the AI industry broadly and cleary an accelerant for us and for Nvidia and for our financials.
The Edge – Next Major Move Of Application Development
Multi-cloud is the core of our Tanzu offerings. We want to help companies take advantage of the most modern CI/CD pipeline DevOps, DevSecOps capabilities. But they need to be able to take advantage of it in their private data centers, across multiple clouds, and to the Edge. For this, clearly, our preferred partnership with Amazon has really taken off. Now with Azure and Google and Oracle and the Alibaba partnership showing up now they can take advantage of that across any cloud and be able to go from their private data centers to the cloud and back.
We now have major customers of which a number of those we are highlighting at VMWorld who really are taking advantage of both to the cloud as well as from the cloud. This hybrid approach enables us to save 30% on average for customers. It’s a big savings but it also enables customers to have consistent developer environments and take advantage of the Edge. The Edge will be the next major move of application development as 5G starts to become broadly available in the industry.
“Today starts a new chapter in our close collaboration with the telecommunications industry to unlock the power of 5G and bring cloud and edge closer than ever,” said Microsoft Azure Executive Vice President Jason Zander in a blog announcement. “We’re building a carrier-grade cloud and bringing more Microsoft technology to the operator’s edge. This, in combination with our developer ecosystem, will help operators to future proof their networks, drive down costs, and create new services and business models.”
Jason Zander, Executive Vice President, Microsoft Azure, announces new collaborations with the telecommunications industry that will unlock the power of 5G and bring cloud and edge closer than ever:
The increasing demand for always-on connectivity, immersive experiences, secure collaboration, and remote human relationships is pushing networks to their limits, while the market is driving down price. The network infrastructure must ensure operators are able to optimize costs and gain efficiencies, while enabling the development of personalized and differentiated services. To address the requirements of rolling out 5G, operators will face strong challenges, including high capital expenditure (CapEx) investments, an increased need for scale, automation, and secure management of the massive volume of data it will generate.
Today starts a new chapter in our close collaboration with the telecommunications industry to unlock the power of 5G and bring cloud and edge closer than ever. We’re building a carrier-grade cloud and bringing more Microsoft technology to the operator’s edge. This, in combination with our developer ecosystem, will help operators to future proof their networks, drive down costs, and create new services and business models.
In Microsoft, operators get a trusted partner who will empower them to unlock the potential of 5G. Enabling them to offer a range of new services such as ultra-reliable low-latency connectivity, mixed reality communications services, network slicing, and highly scalable IoT applications to transform entire industries and communities.
By harnessing the power of Microsoft Azure, on their edge, or in the cloud, operators can transition to a more flexible and scalable model, drive down infrastructure cost, use AI and machine learning (ML) to automate operations and create service differentiation. Furthermore, a hybrid and hyper-scale infrastructure will provide operators with the agility they need to rapidly innovate and experiment with new 5G services on a programmable network.
More specifically, we will further support operators as they evolve their infrastructure and operations using technologies such as software-defined networking, network function virtualization, and service-based architectures. We are bringing to market a carrier-grade platform for edge and cloud to support the operator’s goals to future proof their infrastructure with disaggregated, and containerized network architectures. Recognizing that not everything will move to the public cloud, we will meet operators where they are—whether at the enterprise edge, the network edge, or in the cloud.
Our approach is built on the acquisitions of industry leaders in cloud-native network functions—Affirmed Networks and Metaswitch and on the development of Azure Edge Zones. By bringing together hundreds of engineers with deep experience in the telecommunications space, we are ensuring that our product development process is catering to the most relevant networking needs of the operators. We will leverage the strengths of Microsoft to extend and enhance the current capabilities of industry-leading products such as Affirmed’s 5G core and Metaswitch’s UC portfolio. These capabilities, combined with Microsoft’s broad developer ecosystem and deep business to business partnership programs, provide Microsoft with a unique ability to support the operators as they seek to monetize the capabilities of their networks.
Your customer, your service, powered by our technology
As we build out our partnerships with different operators, it is clear to us that there will be different approaches to technology adoption based on business needs. Some operators may choose to adopt the Azure platform and select a varied mix of virtualized or containerized network function providers. We also have operators that have requested complete end-to-end services as components for their offers. As a part of these discussions, many operators have identified points of control that are important to them, for example:
Control over where a slice, network API, or function is presented to the customer.
Definition of where and how traffic enters and exits their network.
Visibility and control over where key functions are executed for a given customer scenario.
Configuration and performance parameters of core network functions.
As we build out Azure for Operators, we recognize the importance of ensuring operators have the control and visibility they require to manage their unique industry requirements. To that end, here is how our assets come together to provide operators with the platform they need.
Communication Service Providers
Interconnect
It starts with the ability to interconnect deeply with the operator’s network around the globe. We have one of the largest networks that connect with operators at more than 170 points of presence and over 20,000 peering connections around the globe, putting direct connectivity within 25 miles of 85 percent of the world’s GDP. More than 200 operators have already chosen to integrate with the Azure network through our ExpressRoute service, enabling enterprises and partners to link their corporate networks privately and securely to Azure services. We also provide additional routes to connect to the service through options as varied as satellite connectivity and TV White Space spectrum.
Edge platform
This reach helps us to supply operators with cloud computing options that meet the customer wherever those capabilities are needed: at the enterprise edge, the network edge, the network core, or in the cloud. The various form factors, optimized to support the location in which they are deployed, are supported by the Azure platform—providing virtual machine and container services with a common management framework, DevOps support, and security control.
Network functions
We believe in an open platform that leverages the strengths of our partners. Our solutions are a combination of virtualized and containerized services as composable functions, developed by us and by our Network Equipment Provider partners, to support operators’ services such as the Radio Access Network, Mobile Packet Core, Voice and Interconnect services, and other network functions.
Technology from Affirmed and Metaswitch Networks will provide services for Mobile Packet Core, Voice, and Interconnect services.
Cloud solutions and Azure IoT for operators
By exposing these services through the Azure platform, we can combine them with other Azure capabilities such as Azure Cognitive Services (used by more than 1 million developers processing more than 10 billion transaction per day), Azure Machine Learning, and Azure IoT, to bring the power of AI and automation to the delivery of network services. These capabilities, in concert with our partnerships with OSS and BSS providers, enables us to help operators streamline and simplify operations, create new services to monetize the network, and gain greater insights into customer behavior.
In IoT our primary focus is simplifying our solutions to accelerate what we can do together from the edge to the cloud. We’ve done so by creating a platform that provides simple and secure provisioning of applications and devices to Azure cloud solutions through Azure IoT Central, which is the fastest and easiest way to build IoT solutions at scale. IoT Central enables customers to provision an IoT app in seconds, customize it in hours, and go to production the same day. IoT Plug and Play dramatically simplifies all aspects of IoT device support and provides devices that “just work” with any solution and is the perfect complement to achieve speed and simplicity through IoT Central. Azure IoT Central also gives the Mobile Operator the opportunity to monetize more of the IoT solution and puts them in a position to be a re-seller of the IoT Central application platform through their own solutions. Learn more about using Azure IoT for operators here.
Cellular connectivity is increasingly important for IoT solutions and represents a vast and generational shift for mobile operators as the share of devices in market shifts towards the enterprise. We will continue our deep partnership with operators to enable fast and efficient app development and deployment, which is critical to success at the edge. This will help support scenarios such as asset tracking across industries, manufacturing and distribution of smart products, and responsive supply chains. It will also help support scenarios where things are geographically dispersed, such as smart city automation, utility monitoring, and precision agriculture.
Where we go next
Our early engagement with partners such as Telstra and Etisalat helped us shape this path. We joined the 5G Open Innovation Lab as the founding public cloud partner to accelerate enterprise startups and launch new innovations to foster new 5G use cases with even greater access to leading-edge networks. The Lab will create long-term, sustainable developer and commercial ecosystems that will accelerate the delivery of exciting new capabilities at the edge, including pervasive IoT intelligence and immersive mixed reality. And this is just the beginning. I invite you to learn more about our solutions and watch the series of videos we have curated for you.
“There would be no Salesforce without Larry Ellison,” said Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff. “I am absolutely indebted to him. I am very grateful to him. We’re very close friends. Larry has a huge vision for the world. He is an incredible executive. You should never sell Larry Ellison short. Everyone in the world knows that.”
There Would Be No Salesforce Without Larry Ellison
Larry Ellison is my mentor. He was my first investor at Salesforce. He was my first Board member. There would be no Salesforce without Larry Ellison. I am absolutely indebted to him. I am very grateful to him. We’re very close friends. Larry has a huge vision for the world. He is an incredible executive. You should never sell Larry Ellison short. Everyone in the world knows that. I don’t understand everything that’s going on. But wow, I’m so impressed by seeing them and everyone else make these aggressive moves.
I’m mostly worried about the companies that aren’t making aggressive moves. I’m calling CEOs who are friends of mine, who are in paralysis and who aren’t making moves. I’m saying look you’ve got to get into participation. You’ve got to get out of paralysis and into participation. You have to become relevant. Larry Ellison is the master of relevance. This is a move to make him relevant. This is so important. He’s giving you a master class in relevance.
Participation, Relevance, and Enablement
You have to enable your organization in new ways. We’re having weekly all-hands calls with tens of thousands of employees every single week. We haven’t done that since we were a startup because we have to enable people in new ways. These ideas, participation, relevance, and enablement. This is what we have to be focused on if we’re going to accelerate and go forward. Then we have to deliver the tactical plays and success stories to make it happen.
Some companies are making that happen and some companies are just sitting back and being too passive. You’ve got to look at both of these organizations.
Benioff: There Would Be No Salesforce Without Larry Ellison
“Every company is going to need a Data Czar, a data leader, a Chief Data Officer, over time,” says Splunk CEO Doug Merritt. “One of the big points of digitization is you now get a bunch of data that you didn’t have before so that you can actually begin to act in real-time on these different signals. That needs somebody that understands data and guides data across an organization.”
Doug Merritt, CEO of Splunk, discusses how big data has spurred the need for every enterprise company is ultimately going to need a Data Czar:
Big Data Drives Society Forward
Almost everything in the world has got some type of WiFi or network connection so there is a ton of data that is flying around the stratosphere at this moment. The difficulty is being able to capture that data and begin to make sense of it so you can serve customers more effectively, reduce costs, optimize your supply chain, and hear signals from your employee base.
All the different capabilities that if you understand big data, and cloud certainly helps dramatically there, you can actually drive society forward. It’s what we call turning data into action, bringing data to every question, every decision, and ultimately into every action, so that we can keep our organizations and our society moving forward.
Every Company Needs A Data Czar
Every company is going to need a data Czar, a data leader, a Chief Data Officer, over time. One of the big points of digitization is you now get a bunch of data that you didn’t have before so that you can actually begin to act in real-time on these different signals. That needs somebody that understands data and guides data across an organization.
That pull from corporations is what pulls companies like Splunk and others forward to help the technical population within those organizations to actually make sense of data. We also help the sales, marketing, and finance departments, and any people in organizations that are leaning more heavily on data gathering and data science in making sense there.
Splunk CEO Doug Merritt: Every Company Needs A Data Czar
The Financial Times reports that under Oracle’s proposal currently under review by various entities within the US government including Treasury and Homeland Security, TikTok is set to become a standalone US company to satisfy White House conditions. The agreement would keep ByteDance as majority shareholding, with Oracle holding a minority stake. This condition would seem to be at odds with Trump’s mandate for TikTok to become an American owned company to satisfy the terms of his executive order designed to protect the privacy and security of the American public.
However, President Trump told reporters today that he heard that Oracle and TikTok are “very close to a deal.” He said that a decision on the pending deal will be made “pretty soon.” He noted that he has “high respect” Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison. Ellison is a well-known supporter of President Trump. The trust that the President has with Ellison is likely key to making this deal happen.
CNBC’s Jim Cramer who has both tech world sources and is friends with Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said this today:
I think there’s a deal as soon as today. I think that the review is almost complete. They like Oracle. They don’t feel that Oracle has any ties (to China). I think that they are going to get all of TikTok worldwide. They are going to hire 25,000 people in America. Apparently Secretary Mnuchin is very happy about the security concerns. Oracle CEO Safra Catz is saying we are ready. We have a gigantic cloud presence and we are already doing a lot in advertising. This is going to be today or maybe tomorrow.
There are 55 million users at 79 minutes a day and there are 100 million users per month. It is a prize asset. The reason why the deal is going to be done is because Oracle is a trusted company in the White House. It’s not going to be that Oracle owns it. It is going to be owned by these PE firms, some of it Oracle, and that’s why I think the deal is going to be approved.
The Wall Street Journal tonight is reporting that the deal may actually include a piece of the TikTok globally as well:
China’s ByteDance Ltd. would retain a majority ownership stake in its TikTok app as part of a proposal to be reviewed by national-security regulators on Tuesday with an eye toward settling the high-profile deal by a deadline Sunday, according to a person familiar with the situation.
The proposal includes Oracle Corp. ’s bid to become TikTok’s U.S. technology partner as part of an effort to address the administration’s national-security concerns surrounding the Chinese-owned video-sharing app.
Source: Wall Street Journal
“We just got this proposal over the weekend it would be inappropriate for me to comment on it,” said Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin yesterday in an impromptu press gathering this afternoon. “It’s going to go through a national security review in the next couple of days and then we’ll be sitting down and reviewing it with the President. But as we’ve said before a condition of any deal is to make sure that we believe that the code is safe, that U.S .citizens personal data is safe, and that the phones are safe. We have a lot of confidence in Oracle so we’ll be reviewing the technical issues with them.”
This may or may not worry you depending on your point of view. IBM has deployed a super intelligent face mask surveillance system for businesses (or government) to discreetly track face mask usage by employees, customers, and anyone who enters a building where their system is installed. The platform will send alerts to the powers that be if anyone is either not wearing a face mask properly or not wearing one at all.
Presumably, if the tech savvy eye in the sky notices an infraction it will quickly enable management and their enforcement teams to confront the individuals to rectify their face mask violation. How dare they! It will also monitor in real-time crowd density, social distancing, and elevated body temps of those who are entering an establishment.
IBM Cloud released a video narrated by Ian Smalley (below) that explains how their technology works to enable any business or government to surveil and enforce mask usage:
Here is a really cool way that Edge Computing is being used to help businesses reopen and operate safely. We know face masks can substantially reduce the transmission of aerosol borne viruses. But sometimes people forget to wear them properly or at all. IBM Edge Application Manager places analytical workloads with Edge enabled cameras that can recognize face masks and determine if they are being worn effectively.
Since analysis is being performed at the camera the video data and individual privacy are protected. You also avoid the expense of transmitting, storing, or analyzing that image data any further. Alerts are sent every time the camera detects improperly worn or non-existent face masks. Then it sends the aggregated data back to the IBM Maximo Worker Insights platform allowing you to highlight face mask activity in your facilities.
It’s pretty amazing stuff and that’s only scratching the surface. IBM Application Manager is also using Edge Computing to monitor crowd density, social distancing, and elevated body temps of those who are entering an establishment.
Oracle has scored some big wins as it takes on larger cloud rivals.
AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud dominate the US cloud computing market. Oracle, IBM and others continue to fight for market share, leveraging their existing software, services and systems to gain cloud customers.
Oracle has been making significant headway using this strategy. According to Reuters, Oracle has scored contracts with McDonald’s, Albertsons and Humana to move at least some of their business to Oracle’s cloud platform. In addition, Xactly has decided to move the majority of its work to Oracle’s platform.
These are major contracts for one of the underdogs of the industry and should go a long way toward helping Oracle gain ground.
The Department of Justice has announced it is charing Uber’s former Chief Security Officer (CSO) Joseph Sullivan for obstruction of justice.
The charges stem from a data breach Uber suffered in 2016, just days after Sullivan testified before the FTC about a 2014 data breach. In the 2016 data breach, hackers “accessed and downloaded an Uber database containing personally identifying information, or PII, associated with approximately 57 million Uber users and drivers. The database included the drivers’ license numbers for approximately 600,000 people who drove for Uber.”
Rather than report the new breach, Sullivan orchestrated an attempt to pay off the hackers to prevent the FTC from finding out. To cover his tracks, Sullivan funneled the money through a bug bounty program and tried to get the hackers to sign NDAs. To matters worse, the NDAs includes statements falsely indicating that no data had been taken, statements Sullivan insisted remain in the agreements.
“Uber’s new management ultimately discovered the truth and disclosed the breach publicly, and to the FTC, in November 2017,” writes the DOJ. “Since that time, Uber has responded to additional government inquiries.
“The criminal complaint also alleges Sullivan deceived Uber’s new management team about the 2016 breach. Specifically, Sullivan failed to provide the new management team with critical details about the breach. In August of 2017, Uber named a new Chief Executive Officer. In September 2017, Sullivan briefed Uber’s new CEO about the 2016 incident by email. Sullivan asked his team to prepare a summary of the incident, but after he received their draft summary, he edited it. His edits removed details about the data that the hackers had taken and falsely stated that payment had been made only after the hackers had been identified.”
The entire incident is a case study in how not to handle a data breach. At the same time, Uber’s new CEO and management team are to be commended for doing the right thing as soon as they discovered the truth.
A security researcher has been awarded a bug bounty after discovering Instagram was retaining data long after he had deleted it.
According to TechCrunch, security researcher Saugat Pokharel discovered that Instagram’s Download Your Information tool included data he had deleted over a year ago. With any online platform, deleting data on the user’s end doesn’t immediately delete it on the company’s. The information must be deleted from the entire network, including any backups, a process that usually takes a couple of months.
In Pokharel’s case, however, when he downloaded his data, it included private direct messages and photos he had deleted over a year ago, well past any reasonable time it should have taken. He submitted the bug via Instagram’s bug bounty program and the company fixed the issue.
An Instagram spokesperson told TechCrunch: “The researcher reported an issue where someone’s deleted Instagram images and messages would be included in a copy of their information if they used our Download Your Information tool on Instagram. We’ve fixed the issue and have seen no evidence of abuse. We thank the researcher for reporting this issue to us.”
