An Airbnb commissioned survey reveals that the work at home trend will be transforming into the ‘working from any home’ in 2021. The survey conducted by ClearPath Strategies says that 83% of employees are in favor of relocating as part of remote working. Over 25% believe they will be able to ‘live where they want to and work remotely’. This would assume that many companies will not require employees to come into physical locations on a regular basis for group meetings or strategy sessions.
One in five of those surveyed have relocated their living situation during the pandemic either temporarily or permanently, according to the survey. Surprisingly, 60% of parents are very or somewhat likely to consider working remotely and traveling with their children if schools continue to be disrupted.
Not so surprisingly, Airbnb says that from July to September of this year, there has been a 128% increase in guest reviews mentioning “relocation”, “relocate”, “remote work” and “trying a new neighborhood” in comparison to the same time frame last year.
There is also a big trend out of cities and into suburbs and rural areas. Since the pandemic started, 24% of people say they moved to a suburb and 21% to a rural area. Additionally, Airbnb reveals that those that can work from anywhere are booking longer stays of two or more weeks.
One of the ways travelers are taking advantage of this trend is trying before they buy–turning to Airbnb to test new neighborhoods and cities before making a long-term commitment. From July to September this year, there has been a 128 percent increase in guest reviews mentioning “relocation”, “relocate”, “remote work” and “trying a new neighborhood” in comparison to the same time frame last year.
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.”
Microsoft has ended support for Office 2010, as well as Office 2016 for Mac, and is instead pushing users toward Microsoft 365.
Office 2010 is one of the most popular versions of the venerable office suite. In fact, as recently as 2017, a survey showed it was in use among 83% of organizations around the world.
In spite of that, Microsoft has officially ended support for Office 2010, as well as the corresponding Office 2016 for Mac. Jared Spataro, Corporate Vice President for Microsoft 365, explainedthe decision:
As we first announced back in April 2017, this decision aligns with our broader commitment to providing tools and experiences designed for a new world of work. If this year has taught us anything, it’s that we need to help our customers stay agile and connected despite constant change. And that means delivering cloud-connected and always up-to-date versions of our most valuable apps to every person and every organization on the planet. With Microsoft 365 Apps, we do that in three big ways. First, the cloud enables real-time collaboration across apps and within Microsoft Teams, the hub for teamwork. Second, AI and machine learning advance creativity and innovation in everything from PowerPoint design to Excel analysis. And finally, built-in, cloud-powered security protects your data and provides the peace of mind that comes with knowing your business will not only be productive, but also secured.
We understand that everyone is at a different stage of their journey to the cloud, and we’re committed to supporting our customers throughout their transition to Microsoft 365 Apps. For those customers who aren’t ready for the cloud and have a specific need for on-premises or hybrid deployment, such as fully disconnected or restricted environments, we offer Office 2019, the perpetual version of Office that does not receive feature updates. But for everyone else, we’ve created a set of resources to help you transition to the Microsoft 365 Apps and innovations designed to help keep your environment up to date once you’ve made the transition.
As more companies move to the cloud, as well as engage in remote work, Microsoft 365 is increasingly becoming a critical option for many companies. This move will no doubt accelerate its adoption.
Microsoft unveiled a major change as part of its Patch Tuesday yesterday, indicating some drivers may no longer work.
Apple and Microsoft have both been increasing the security of their operating systems. A big part of that is digitally signing software to verify its authenticity. With the latest Patch Tuesday, however, Microsoft may be taking it a step further, blocking any drivers that aren’t signed.
When installing a third-party driver, you might receive the error, “Windows can’t verify the publisher of this driver software”. You might also see the error, “No signature was present in the subject” when attempting to view the signature properties using Windows Explorer.
Microsoft goes on to describe the specific issue, as well as what impacted users should do:
This issue occurs when an improperly formatted catalog file is identified during validation by Windows. Starting with this release, Windows will require the validity of DER encoded PKCS#7 content in catalog files. Catalogs files must be signed per section 11.6 of describing DER-encoding for SET OF members in X.690.
If this happens you should contact the driver vendor or device manufacturer (OEM) and ask them for an updated driver to correct the issue.
While potentially annoying, this should help improve the security of Windows 10.
Microsoft has released an update to Windows 10 in an effort to help prevent some HP laptops from experiencing swollen batteries.
Some HP Business Notebooks began experiencing a number of issues related to HP Battery Health Manager. The problems could include performance issues, reduced battery life and, in the worst cases, swollen batteries.
Microsoft worked with HP to identify the cause of the issue and release a fix. The update changes the battery charging algorithm, which should address the issue.
“To address a configuration settings issue, HP worked with Microsoft to deliver an HP solution that detects if select HP business notebooks have HP Battery Health Manager disabled in their BIOS, and enables it with the recommended setting of Let HP Manage My Battery Charging,” reads the HP Knowledge Base. “With this setting enabled, the notebook dynamically changes how it charges the notebook battery based on usage conditions over time, improving the overall health and life of the battery.”
The update is a targeted fix and will only be available to impacted systems.
AMD is in talks to buy chipmaker Xilinx, with a deal possible as early as next week.
Xilinx is a chipmaker based in San Jose, California, specializing in the programmable chips used in wireless networks. The acquisition, will help AMD better compete with Intel in the datacenter market.
As Bloomberg points out, Xilinx has historically made chips for the telecommunications industry. In recent years, however, it has been branching out to the datacenter market. This market is a high-profit market that has caught the attention of AMD and Nvidia, a factor in the latter’s acquisition of Mellanox Technologies and potentially Arm.
Given Intel’s recent supply chain issues, not to mention bugs that have delayed the move to 7nm chips and Zombieland flaws that some experts have deemed “unfixable,” more options would likely be welcomed within the industry.
IBM is taking a major step to focus on the cloud, announcing plans to split its legacy business into a separate company.
IBM is one of the oldest technology companies in existence and has weathered multiple, monumental changes in the industry. Once known primarily for its mainframe computers, the company has increasingly bet on the cloud as it works to transition away from its legacy business.
Now, under CEO Arvind Krishna, the company is taking drastic action to streamline its focus by spinning off its legacy business into a separate company. Krishna made the announcement in an open letter to IBM employees:
On my first day as CEO, I made a commitment to the growth of IBM. I stated that a maniacal focus on our open hybrid cloud platform and AI capabilities is key to this outcome. Day by day, product by product, project by project—we are dedicated to helping our clients unlock the immense value this represents.
Building on the solid foundation Ginni has put in place, we are focused on accelerating our growth strategy and seizing the $1 trillion hybrid cloud opportunity.
As we work toward this goal, two things are becoming increasingly clear. First, we’re seeing a tremendous increase in client demand for our capabilities and expertise. Second, we’re noticing that client buying needs for application and infrastructure services are diverging.
Because of this, we have decided that the managed infrastructure services business of our GTS segment will become an independent company, which we’re initially referring to as “NewCo.” We expect the new company to be created sometime toward the end of 2021. IBM will sharpen its focus on its open hybrid cloud platform and AI capabilities. And the new company will focus on delivering managed infrastructure services.
Krishna makes the point that NewCo will have the resources it needs to succeed as an independent company. The company will have 4,600 clients and nearly $19 billion in annual revenue. This will make it roughly twice the size of its nearest competitor.
This is a huge move for Krishna and IBM, and underscores the importance of the cloud for the future of the industry.
“Even ahead of COVID, the market for companies who are undergoing digital transformation and who need to use digital technologies to compete and win in the modern economy was enormous,” says Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson. “COVID has been a tailwind to Twilio business but really is an acceleration of the trends that have gone on for the last 10 to 20 years as a result of digital transformation in nearly every kind of company.”
Even ahead of COVID, the market for companies who are undergoing digital transformation and who need to use digital technologies to compete and win in the modern economy was enormous. What COVID did is it accelerated many of the initiatives, many of the use cases, the things that companies needed to build to be competitive in this digital era were accelerated.
They were accelerated because of COVID, because of social distancing, work from home, and migrating a lot of these business processes to software and into the cloud and modernizing all of this. COVID has been a tailwind to Twilio business but really is an acceleration of the trends that have gone on for the last 10 to 20 years as a result of digital transformation in nearly every kind of company.
I’m Not Very Concerned About Microsoft
I’m not very concerned (about new competitors like Microsoft). It’s the same reason that (I wasn’t concerned) when Amazon started building products in the communication space or Facebook or Google or even Blackberry once announced that they were going to compete with Twilio. First of all, we’re no stranger to competition. This is a huge market. It’s no surprise that a wide variety of companies have products in the communications domain.
We compete by focusing on our customers, listening to what they need, and building differentiated APIs, a differentiated platform, and a differentiated super network. We’ve got a 12-year head start on anybody entering the space. The last thing I’ll add is that we are not a company that is very focused on competition. We’re focused on our customers. That focus has driven us for the last 12 years and has served us very well. We will continue to focus on the things our customers need in this enormous market and be able to take a lot of market share.
Digital-Native Companies Want APIs That Work
Strangely, I don’t think Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella wakes up every day thinking about Twilio. But we are also no stranger to pricing competition. In fact, that is how most companies have tried to compete with us through our 12-year history. They come in with an inferior product and they say we’re going to be cheaper. But it turns out that the biggest enterprises on the planet or digital-native companies, what they want are APIs that work, mature, scalable, and that work everywhere around the world.
We’ve invested a tremendous amount of time and money to build the leading platform out there and what we found is that customers value that. So we’re no stranger to people trying to undercut us on price. What we think and what we hear from our customers is that they want quality, they want reliability, and they want HIPAA compliance. They want all sorts of capabilities that let them power their business and that’s what we offer.
Low-Code, No-Code, and Yo-Code
Low-code is a really exciting area. There are three buckets. There’s low-code, no-code, and then yo-code for the people who love to write code, developers. We’ve got products really for that whole spectrum. The typical way a developer might build on top of Twilio is to write code and host it themselves. We have a Twilio Functions product that allows us to host the software for our customers. Then we have Twilio Studio which is a drag and drop designer for the non-developer to be able to build out sophisticated workflows like interactive voice response systems on top of Twilio.
We have embraced really all three of those categories of builders. We do believe that at every enterprise there is a large number of builders with different skill sets who are building the future of how those companies engage with their customers. We want to enable all those people to succeed on Twilio.
Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson: COVID Accelerated Digital Transformation
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.
Microsoft has announced Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 20226 with feature designed to help monitor the health of SSD storage.
SSDs have many benefits over traditional platter hard drives. They’re faster and more energy efficient, since they have no moving parts. Just as important, they’re less prone to damage. When a traditional hard drive is stopped, the head can impact the platters, scoring them and causing major damage. With no moving parts, this is less of a concern with SSDs.
Despite their durability, SSDs do have a failure rate. Corrupt data, weak solder joints, failing chips and other factors can cause an SSD to fail. Once they begin to fail, they tend to go quickly.
Microsoft is looking to give users a heads up when an SSD is about to fail, giving them time to backup before it’s too late. The latest preview release includes the new feature.
“Attempting to recover data after drive failure is both frustrating and expensive,” says Brandon LeBlanc on the company blog. “This feature is designed to detect hardware abnormalities for NVMe SSDs and notify users with enough time to act. It is strongly recommended that users immediately back up their data after receiving a notification.”
We are going to be the most important software company in the world,” says Planatir co-founder and CEO Alex Karp. “We are going to deliver the world’s best software with the most efficient way of delivering it. Well over 90% of our growth in the first half of the year came from our existing clients. Our existing clients, the most important clients in the world, are really happy. Of course, we are going to expand those really happy clients who happen to be the coolest people on the planet.”
Alex Karp, co-founder, and CEO of Palantir Technologies Inc. says his company which initiated a direct listing today on the New York Stock Exchange will become the most important software company in the world:
We are very focused on building software a long time before others build it. We are going to be the most important software company in the world. We are going to deliver the world’s best software with the most efficient way of delivering it.
What’s interesting about our client list that people ask is how can you have this super valuable company when there are only 125 customers? To which I respond, yeah, but they are the 125 most interesting institutions in the world. These aren’t just any institutions. We don’t go out and advertise who uses our product but I would say the list of our clients is the single most impressive list of institutions in the world I’ve ever seen. We want to keep these clients.
Well over 90% of our growth in the first half of the year came from our existing clients. What does that mean? Our existing clients, the most important clients in the world, are really happy. Of course, we are going to expand those really happy clients who happen to be the coolest people on the planet.
We’ve built this product which has gotten very little attention called Apollo. Apollo allows us to maintain and deliver software to any number of clients while essentially not growing our Palantiring force at all. We are planning, now that we have Apollo, to grow the number of super cool customers all over the world. We can do it without raising our headcount. What you are going to see is that we are going to continue building with our clients.
Why, because they are the most interesting clients in the world and they clearly based on our numbers like us and some love us. Now with Apollo, we can deliver the whole stack in six hours. I don’t think any other company I’ve seen in the world can do that and we can do it with efficiencies that I don’t know any other company is going to do. We can do this with a small number of people sitting in one office that we have maintaining, updating, and providing them with new products we build.
They don’t have the Frankenstein monster that takes two years to build and has to be maintained with either human hours, like in the government contracting case, or by purchasing new product or compensating salespeople.
Palantir CEO Alex Karp: The Most Important Software Company In The World
“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.
Microsoft has experienced an embarrassing outage of its premier office suite, right as people are relying on it more than ever.
Microsoft 365 is the cloud-based version of Office. As the pandemic has led to more individuals working from home and engaging in remote learning, Microsoft 365 has become a critical component. This makes the outage all the more devastating for the company’s users.
To make matters worse, Microsoft identified an updated to the Microsoft 365 Admin Dashboard as the culprit. Unfortunately, rolling back the change has not fixed the issue.
We're not observing an increase in successful connections after rolling back a recent change. We're working to evaluate additional mitigation solutions while we investigate the root cause. Please visit https://t.co/AEUj8uAGXl for additional information on this issue.
It appears users already logged into service are not impacted. In the meantime, Microsoft is “rerouting traffic to alternate systems to provide further relief to the affected users.”
The Trump administration is considering imposing export restrictions on China’s biggest chip maker, SMIC.
The US has been increasingly targeting Chinese companies, including Huawei, ZTE, TikTok and WeChat, citing national security concerns. Huawei and ZTE have been banned in the US, with TikTok and WeChat facing imminent bans.
As the trade war heats up, it appears US officials are not slowing down. SMIC is China’s biggest chipmaker, and it appears it is coming under increased scrutiny. According to CNBC, the Department of Defense is analyzing whether it should be placed on the Entity List, a step that would make further restrictions much easier.
“DoD is currently working with the interagency in assessing available information to determine if SMIC’s actions warrant adding them to the Department of Commerce’s Entity List,” said a DoD spokesperson. “Such an action would ensure that all exports to SMIC would undergo a more comprehensive review.”
Should the US proceed with this step, it remains to be seen what retaliatory measures the Chinese government may take.
“We have been thrust into remote work without a lot of the preparation and in some cases underlying infrastructure, data security, or underlying cloud platforms,” says Box CEO Aaron Levie. “What we’re finding, and certainly at least for the organizations that have had the ability to adapt successfully to this environment, is that there are better ways to get work done.”
Aaron Levie, CEO of Box, discusses how the pandemic has thrust companies into remote work and this will move enterprises toward a hybrid workplace:
We Have Been Thrust Into Remote Work
We have been thrust into remote work without a lot of the preparation and in some cases underlying infrastructure, data security, or underlying cloud platforms. What we’re finding, and certainly at least for the organizations that have had the ability to adapt successfully to this environment, is that there are better ways to get work done. Now that we’ve moved to this virtual way of working there are a lot of situations where we used to have to do business travel. Being able to quickly hop on a Webex or a Skype call or a Zoom session is actually much more efficient to be able to have that conversation.
We have a lot of situations that Box internally and with our customers where normally you might be collaborating with five or ten people in a meeting inside of a conference room. Now you can move that to a Slack channel and actually communicate with maybe 50 or 100 people on that same project. You’re actually building a much more inclusive organization with way more people that can be engaged and involved in your ultimate vision and what you’re executing on. We’re seeing actually some really positive ways of working in this environment.
The Future Is A Hybrid Workplace
Any tech company and any company globally really wants to get back to some version of normal. We certainly want offices to open up as quickly as possible. We want to make sure that we can see our colleagues in person. But I do think that there’s no going back from this new virtual way of being able to stay productive. The future is one of a hybrid workplace where you go into the office for some experiences and purposes and then you’re also going to be able to have much more flexibility and be able to work remotely. The digital workplace is what’s going to then bridge those two worlds together.
By and large, cost savings is not the main factor of why you’ve seen so much excitement around remote work or more workplace flexibility. If you can be just as productive from your laptop on a Slack channel and over a Zoom call but you could then be in any place that you desire as opposed to being in a 60 or 90-minute commute each way and paying way too much for real estate. For those of us that live in Silicon Valley, this is a very expensive real estate market. So if you could have better flexibility and be able to have a little bit more space and you can stay just as productive, wouldn’t that be a better way of working?
Lot’s Of Reasons Why Offices Will Still Exist
What companies are realizing is as they want to actually give that choice out to their employees. They can still run very productive organizations. We at Box have been able to drive as much innovation in this environment as we have in an office environment. We want to make sure that we’re creating that type of flexibility for employees. That being said, there are a lot of benefits to being able to work in an office with your colleagues.
For younger employees that are just integrating into the workplace for the first time you want to get to know your colleagues and you want to be able to be a part of maybe a more than just a business community. You may actually want to be able to build your business network through that experience. Also important is mentorship and being able to make sure that you’ve got more camaraderie. There are a lot of reasons why offices are still going to exist in the future. But digital technology is going to afford companies to have way greater flexibility no matter which route they choose.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is warning of a Windows Server bug that can give hackers access to any machine on a network.
Microsoft issued a patch in August that serves as a stopgap measure to prevent the vulnerability from being used. A permanent fix is expected early next year. In the meantime, the vulnerability does not require a hacker to steal authentication information. Instead, a hacker merely has to forge “an authentication token for specific Netlogon functionality,” according to Tom Tervoort, Senior Security Specialist and Ralph Moonen, Technical Director at Secura.
Once the token is used, an attacker is “able to call a function to set the computer password of the Domain Controller to a known value. After that, the attacker can use this new password to take control over the domain controller and steal credentials of a domain admin.” This attack would allow a hacker to take over any computer on the network.
The vulnerability has been given the highest severity rating, a CVSS score of 10.0. As a result, DHS is giving government offices until 11:59 PM, Monday, September 21 to implement the patch. Needless to say, all other organizations should implement Microsoft’s patch immediately, and be on the lookout for the permanent fix early next year.
“There’s a real recognition that digitization and transformation are not doing what you used to do in the physical world,” says Publicis Sapient CEO Nigel Vaz. “Digitizing that and translating that is essentially the journey of going from being a caterpillar to a butterfly. Real transformation. How do you reimagine yourself in the context of a world that now is entirely digital? Customers are thinking very actively about how they actually create products and services that essentially create value for customers entirely digitally.”
Nigel Vaz, CEO of Publicis Sapient, discusses how the current pandemic has forced organizations to reimagine their businesses digitally. Nigel works closely with clients such as McDonald’s, Nationwide, and Unilever to deliver transformative experiences and business models:
https://youtu.be/VOKcTLcxHXw
Businesses Being Reimagined In A World That Is Now Entirely Digital
Digitization Has Become Existential For Business
I think Digital has always been important for business. Now more than ever what’s becoming very clear is this has gone from being something that’s important to something that’s existential. How do you support customers to make orders entirely online when your stores are closed? How do you create mashups with other partners to be able to facilitate deliveries when your own deliveries don’t suffice? How do you try to create experiences online through self-service that minimize the impact of people calling your call centers?
All of these things are things clients are facing on a regular basis. Most CEOs I’m in conversation with are acknowledging the fact that this has now got to be a priority, that they have to be ready more so than they’ve ever thought before.
3 Key Things Happening With the Transformation
There are three things happening here in terms of transformation. The first is the change in human behavior where I think there’s a recognizable shift now. We’re seeing significant accounts of over-70s, for example, ordering from retail and ramping that up. We’re seeing a big shift in institutions like schools and educational institutions, which historically had not thought about transformation as particularly applicable to them.
We’re also seeing a shift in industries like leisure looking at creating virtual experiences since physical experiences are essentially restricted and people can’t use them. The human behavior shift is translating to big investments in technology and technology platforms that enable this.
Businesses Being Reimagined In A World That Is Now Entirely Digital
Then lastly, new business models. There’s a real recognition that digitization and transformation are not doing what you used to do in the physical world. Digitizing that and translating that is essentially the journey of going from being a caterpillar to a butterfly. Real transformation. How do you reimagine yourself in the context of a world that now is entirely digital?
Customers are thinking very actively about how they actually create products and services that essentially create value for customers entirely digitally. There are plenty of examples in this from telemedicine and from the educational space with new courses coming online which can scale faster than traditional courses limited by a classroom and a professor.
“In the most challenging operating environment I’ve ever seen for this team to deliver the strongest comps in our 50 year history is pretty incredible,” says Target CEO Brian Cornell. “This is in an environment where so many Americans are avoiding shopping in physical stores, our store comps were still up almost 11 percent. The investments we made in our team and in creating a safe shopping environment has built trust with the consumer. Certainly, our digital growth is industry leading at almost 200 percent.”
“Our second quarter comparable sales growth of 24.3 percent is the strongest we have ever reported, which is a true testament to the resilience of our team and the durability of our business model,” said Cornell. “Our stores were the key to this unprecedented growth, with in-store comp sales growing 10.9 percent and stores enabling more than three-quarters of Target’s digital sales, which rose nearly 200 percent.”
“We also generated outstanding profitability in the quarter, even as we made significant investments in pay and benefits for our team,” noted Target’s CEO. “We remain steadfast in our focus on investing in a safe and convenient shopping experience for our guests, and their trust has resulted in market share gains of $5 billion in the first six months of the year.”
The Company had comparable stores sales growth of 10.9 percent and digital sales growth of 195 percent. Total revenue of $23.0 billion grew 24.7 percent compared with last year, reflecting sales growth of 24.8 percent and a 16.6 percent increase in other revenue. Operating income was $2.3 billion in second quarter 2020, up 73.8 percent from $1.3 billion in 2019.
Target Delivers Strongest Comps In 50 Year History
I’ve been with Target now going on seven years. Obviously, this is a special moment for the team. It is a beautiful morning here in Minnesota. I’ve got to start by really recognizing our team. In the most challenging operating environment I’ve ever seen for this team to deliver the strongest comps in our 50 year history is pretty incredible. Our EPS was also a record high up over 80 percent. So to the 350,000 team members in the U.S. and in offices around the world these results were all about you.
We continue to see strength across our entire portfolio. The strength that we saw in the second quarter, which we will break down in our earnings call later today, the fact that we saw really consistent strength from May into June and July. May was the strongest month with comps over 30 percent. But in both June and July we saw comps over 20 percent. That strength has continued in August and we are seeing low to mid-teen growth.
Being Agile and Flexible Is Key To Our Success
The biggest adjustment is probably the consumer who is still waiting for a signal around back to school. As you might imagine uniforms, backpacks, and school supplies are a little slower than last year. But the overall momentum and growth in market share continues as we go into the third quarter. The key to our success when I think about the second quarter is one, we’ve been true to our strategy, but our team has really focused on being agile and flexible and adjusting to the current operating environment. We’ve been changing the playbook every week.
As we think about back to school as I’m sitting here today there are 56 million K-12 students that are waiting for direction. As of this week 66 percent of students will start remotely. They don’t know if they are going back into a classroom in September, October or if it’s going to happen in January. So we are going to have to extend the back to school season and make sure that we’ve got the items they need throughout the fall. We can adjust by market. We’ve got to be flexible and adaptable. That’s really been the key to our success so far this year in both the first and the second quarter.
Digital Growth Is Industry Leading – Up 200%
If you look at our results in the second quarter overall comps were up 24.3 percent. These are some of the strongest in retail. Our store performance is really for me a standout and probably one of the biggest surprises. This is in an environment where so many Americans are avoiding shopping in physical stores, our store comps were still up almost 11 percent. The investments we made in our team and in creating a safe shopping environment has built trust with the consumer. Certainly, our digital growth is industry leading at almost 200 percent.
We’ve been taking share on a broad based basis from both specialty and department stores but also some of our traditional competitors including club. Category by category we’re gaining share. In categories like food and beverage and household essentials we were up 20 percent during the quarter. As Americans have been working and learning from home we’ve seen categories like electronics grow by 70 percent in the quarter. We’ve picked up significant market share from our electronic competitors. Our business and home categories were up over 30 percent.
We Are Seeing Significant Market Share Gains
Categories like decor, categories like domestics, what we are seeing with kitchen ware, we are continuing to build momentum and market share. We also saw a big rebound in apparel which was down almost 20 percent in the first quarter. It grew in the low teens in the second quarter. We are seeing significant market share gains. Across our business we are picking up share from our competitors whether they are specialty players, department stores, or our traditional retail competitors.
The market share number of $5 billion is the most important number on the print. It just shows the relevance of our brand, the momentum, and the trust we are building with American consumers.
Target CEO Brian Cornell: Digital Growth Is Industry Leading – Up 200%
Ransomware has been a growing issue for years but, in a first, ransomware appears to have caused the death of a hospital patient.
According to the BBC, a ransomware attack disabled Düsseldorf University Hospital in Germany. A female patient at the hospital was preparing for a life-saving procedure when the ransomware hit, and died when medical personnel were trying to transport her 30km away to the nearest hospital.
It’s possible the hackers mistakenly targeted the hospital. The BBC quotes local reports saying the hackers were trying to hit another university. Those same reports say the hackers turned over the decryption keys without payment once they realized the hospital had been impacted.
Whether the attack was intentional or not, authorities are now investigating it as a negligent homicide. Unfortunately, it also appears the attack could have been averted. The hackers used a well-known vulnerability in Citrix VPN software, a vulnerability that organizations had been warned about as early as January. If prosecutors do make their case, the hospital will likely face penalties for ignoring the danger.
This tragedy should serve as a sobering reminder to companies of all kinds to keep up with security alerts and vulnerabilities, and keep their software and services up-to-date.
“There are huge benefits to collaboration,” says Proofpoint CEO Gary Steele. “However, I do believe fundamentally that this work from home economy that we’re living in is going to change the face of work. You’re going to see a blend. Security leaders and organizations are going to need to figure out how do you defend people when they are sitting at home working from their couch just doing their job and doing it well?”
New AI/ML Innovations Block Bogus Emails
One of the big investments for us in this people-centric framework is to help organizations protect the data that people create. We’re giving companies more visibility and more controls to ensure that when you’re sitting in front of your couch and working from home that you’re not treating data in a way that’s going to ultimately hurt the company. For those individuals that are doing something malicious, we’re going to help companies find those malicious individuals.
We need to block (bogus emails that are supposedly from a trusted source) so that an individual doesn’t actually receive that message (in the first place). That is an impersonation. That’s how we’re applying new innovations in the AI/ML (artificial intelligence & machine learning) space to be able to identify those very sophisticated attacks and block them so that a poor user is not trying to figure out (if it is really) the CEO that asked me to do something that they shouldn’t do.
Proofpoint CEO Gary Steele: Working From Home Changes Face Of Work
