Tuesday 30 June 2020

The first rule of NoSQL DBaaS club is: You must talk about NoSQL DBaaS club. And Couchbase is in

Follows its customers into the cloud

Couchbase's database-as-a-service product has hit general availability – although this is just on Amazon Web Services initially, with Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform soon to follow.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/30/couchbase_joins_nosql_dbaas_club/

MongoDB snares ex-Oracle engineering veep and AWS database guru as new CTO

Big boots to fill as NoSQL company's founder moves on to advisory role

NoSQL database slinger MongoDB has appointed former Oracle and AWS tech leader Mark Porter as its chief technology officer.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/30/mongodb_new_cto/

PA Consulting catches £5.3m to develop web gateway that handles access to UK health data – including on COVID-19

Platform aims to help research into disease prevention and cures

Health Data Research UK has awarded business advisory firm PA Consulting a £5.3m contract to develop a web application to manage researchers and private-sector firms' access to health research data, including that held on the COVID-19 pandemic.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/30/pa_consulting_uk_health_data_contract/

Beijing's tightening grip on Hong Kong could put region's future as an up-and-coming tech hub in jeopardy

But it is American law, not Chinese, that might make all the difference

Feature  When people think about Hong Kong, money usually comes to mind. Over the past two decades, as China beefed up to become the world's second-largest economy, Hong Kong has carved out its role as middleman to the rest of the world.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/30/hong_kong_tech_hub_future/

CIOs will force SaaS vendors to limber up and get more flexible about contracts in the post-pandemic world

No more paying for non-existent employees, users, page views, or transactions, says Forrester

Research group Forrester has predicted Software-as-a-Service providers will have to adapt their commercial models and offer more flexible deals in response to economic changes brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/30/saas_flexibility_forrester/

Stinker, emailer, troller, spy: How an engineer stole top US chip designs, smuggled them to China to set up a rival fab

Chinese chap swiped communications blueprints from what-is-now-Broadcom on behalf of Beijing

An engineer-turned-spy stole confidential blueprints of American wireless electronics on behalf of the Chinese government to run a rival factory churning out the components in the Middle Kingdom.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/30/avago_spying_guilty/

Watch live: The home-working horse has bolted – is your organisation yet to adapt?

This July, explore ways to make our new reality a good one

Webcast  No matter how old-school, there’s unlikely to be an IT desk in the world now that’s not slightly relaxed its grip on the daily lives of its users. Putting down the screwdrivers and moving almost full-time to facilitating 24/7 remote working has become the stock-in-trade of maintaining a business’s digital infrastructure.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/30/is_your_organisation_yet_to_adapt/

Monday 29 June 2020

Google Cloud partially evaporates for hours amid power supply failure: Two US East Coast zones rattled

Networking, Kubernetes, storage, virtual machine systems hit by outage

Google Cloud is having a wobbly Monday. Its Kubernetes platform and networking services were partially unavailable for hours today, and its virtual-machine hosting and in-memory storage systems had a limited outage.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/29/google_cloud_outage/

Oracle opens second Indian cloud region in bid to keep pace in make-or-break market

Big Red's share continues to border on irrelevance compared to big dogs

Oracle is opening its second cloud data centre in India due to "increasing demand for secure and stable" cloud services in the world's largest democracy.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/29/oracle_opens_second_indian_cloud_region/

Spare some change, guv? UK's CCTV regulator pitches for £100k budget increase

8-strong national body asks government for cash to hire 2 more

"A consistent refrain I recite at the many conference speeches, media interviews and workshops I attend is the importance of transparency and openness in the use of public space surveillance," said Surveillance Camera Commissioner (SCC) Tony Porter in his most recent annual report.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/29/surcamcom_annual_report/

UKCloud latest to sign Memorandum of Understanding with UK.gov ahead of cloud mega framework

Google, Microsoft already on board. AWS not far behind. Sources say plucky Brit upstart vows never to practise tax avoidance

UKCloud has agreed specified discounts on a range of fluffy white services - public, private and hybrid - under a framework agreement with Crown Commercial Services (CCS), the procurement agency acting on behalf of British government.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/29/ukcloud_latest_to_sign_memorandum/

Friday 26 June 2020

Wirecard fintech biz folds into insolvency like two pair against a flush. Good luck getting your stake back

Regulators freeze funds, stop affiliated finance apps from functioning

German electronic payment biz Wirecard AG has filed for bankruptcy, three days after the arrest of ex-CEO Markus Braun on fraud charges – and the company's admission that €1.9bn in assets ($2.1bn) were missing and may never have existed.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/26/wirecard_insolvency_freeze/

Huawei wins approval to plonk £1bn optical comms R&D facility in UK's leafy Cambridgeshire

'We want to promote UK tech on a global scale' – aw, nice of you

Chinese comms bogeyman Huawei has won approval to build a £1bn optoelectronics R&D facility in South Cambridgeshire, UK, near the leafy village of Sawston.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/26/huawei_cambridgeshire_rnd_facility/

Singapore awards 5G licences and winning carriers pick anyone but Huawei for nationwide network

Bid that proposed using Chinese vendor’s kit scores only limited network access

Singapore has named two carriers as having won the right to build nationwide 5G networks, and both promptly named tech providers other than Huawei as their network providers of choice.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/26/singapore_5g/

Thursday 25 June 2020

Salesforce plans to write Slack integration out of the equation by rolling its own messaging and collaboration app

Salesforce Anywhere beta due to drop in July, full release in Q4

Salesforce is trying to tweak the nose of Microsoft Teams and Slack by building enterprise collaboration into its applications and platform in a move designed to make it integral to business process workflow.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/25/salesforce_anywhere_collaboration/

US Department of Defense releases list of firms allegedly linked to the Chinese Army. Surprise surprise, Huawei makes an appearance

On a scale of 1 to 10, how shocked are you?

The US Department of Defense (DoD) has confirmed it placed Huawei on a list of organisations with ties to the Chinese military that trade in the US. While this doesn't have an immediate impact on the firm's business, it opens the possibility for further punitive sanctions down the line.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/25/dod_releases_list_of_firms/

Honey, I built the app! Amazon's beta no-code dev platform is great for ad-hoc stuff, but not much else – yet

Little more than online spreadsheets shared with a private team for now

Amazon has unveiled Honeycode, a browser-based tool for building no-code applications that run on the AWS cloud platform, currently in public beta.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/25/amazon_honeycode_nocode/

Working from home on Virgin Media's broadband? Too bad. Outage hits English capital

ISP and London users are both TITSUP* (Too Irritated To Smile at Usual Platitudes)

Updated  Just days after the ISP boasted about its network resilience in the face of spiking post-lockdown broadband usage, Virgin Media's customers across the UK capital are reporting being unable to get online as they attempt to work from home, do their schoolwork and watch Netflix.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/25/virgin_media_outage/

Slack Connect: Hipster chat platform to let different orgs play in the same channel – only for paying users, mind

Teams rival hopes to consign cross-business email ping-pong to history

The tit-for-tat feature race between Slack and its besuited rival Microsoft Teams has resumed with the creation of Slack Connect, allowing 20 organisations into a single Slack channel.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/25/slack_connect/

GitHub redesign goes mobile-friendly – to chagrin of devs who shockingly do a lot of work on proper computers

Code shack is a great place for others to collaborate, but not so strong at collaboration for itself

GitHub has redesigned its web repository layout for an "improved mobile web experience", but developers were quick to find flaws in the new approach.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/25/github_redesign_wins_mixed_reception/

Wobbly Wednesday whacks IBM as 30 cloud services take unplanned naps

All sorts of services all over the world with no word of explanation – but hey, Big Blue’s cloud gets a new Twitter support feed tomorrow

Let’s call it Wobbly Wednesday: 30 services on IBM’s cloud took unplanned naps on June 24th and Big Blue’s offered little or no explanation for the incidents.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/25/ibm_multiple_cloud_outages/

AWS makes cloudy Outposts available across more of Asia

India, Malaysia, Taiwan and Thailand can now bring the Amazonian cloud on-prem

Amazon Web Services has extended the availability of its Outposts to four Asian nations, and New Zealand.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/25/aws_outposts_asian_expansion/

Wednesday 24 June 2020

Internet Society, remember your embarrassing .org flub? The actual internet society would like to talk about it

Non-profits call for independent probe into disastrous effort to sell TLD registry

The non-profit organizations that fought to halt the sale of the .org registry to a newly created private equity firm are demanding an independent review into the fiasco, which pitted charities against domain registrars over the billion-dollar aborted deal.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/24/internet_society_dot_org_probe_demand/

TikTok boom: Brits spent a quarter of their waking hours in lockdown online – Ofcom

A quarter? That's pretty weak

Brits are spending more time than ever online, according to comms watchdog Ofcom's latest Online Nation report, and it's all thanks - surprise, surprise - to coronavirus. In April, at the height of lockdown, the average person was online for four hours and two minutes each day.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/24/brits_lockdown_online_ofcom/

Skype for Windows 10 and Skype for Desktop duke it out: Only Electron left standing

I just can't quit you, Skype. Oh maybe I can... they've tweaked the close function

Hot on the heels of Teams getting personal comes a shake-up for Skype that will see Skype for Windows 10 and Skype for Desktop becoming one.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/24/skype/

Indonesia’s capital city is literally sinking. Google just opened a new cloud region there anyway

Jakarta region is live now. And hopefully high and dry

Indonesia’s capital city, Jakarta, is literally sinking. But Google has just opened a cloud region there anyway.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/24/google_cloud_asia_southeast2_region_live/

Tuesday 23 June 2020

HashiCorp Cloud Platform unveiled – but in private beta for AWS only

Kubernetes? 'A huge set of workloads get excluded' by it, says HashiCorp

HashiCorp unveiled the widely anticipated HashiCorp Cloud Platform at its virtual HashiConf event under way this week, as well as updates to all its core products.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/23/hashicorp_cloud_platform/

Microsoft loosens Teams' necktie as platform courts your forensic accountant relatives

Just look at the time. Looks like I can't attend the family meeting about our calendar!

Microsoft's Teams is getting personal in a preview of the Slack-for-suits platform that is aimed more at consumers than companies.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/23/teams_personal/

While eyes are fixed on Apple announcements, Microsoft's streaming service Mixer goes the way of the Windows Phone

Facebook laps up the leftovers

Mixer has been consigned to the Microsoft graveyard to rot alongside other abortive stablemates like Windows Phone, Zune and Clippy to name just a few.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/23/microsoft_cans_mixer/

Monday 22 June 2020

Email innovator Hey extends an olive branch in standoff with Apple, tweaks code to make the iGiant appier

We did what we think you want, now let it through

A truce is being threatened in the standoff between Apple's App Store and email imagineer Hey.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/22/hey_apple/

Belief in 5G conspiracy theories goes hand-in-hand with small explosions of rage, paranoia and violence, researchers claim

Ironic, because new tech is supposed to solve the micro-burst issue

Psychologists from Northumbria University have published a research paper examining the connection between beliefs in 5G COVID-19 conspiracy theories, and the willingness to act violently upon them. Surprise surprise, if you believe 5G is part of a Soros-backed depopulation plan, you might be tempted to take up a Super Soaker in arms.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/22/5g_conspiracy_theories_rage_violence_paranoia/

China’s cloud spend soared by 67 percent in Q1, but COVID-19 didn't exactly help matters

Country total of $3.9bn is about 40 percent of AWS revenue, but Amazon sells to the world

China’s spend on cloud infrastructure services in Q1 2020 jumped 67 percent year-year, says analyst firm Canalys.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/22/china_cloud_spend_q1_2020/

Internet blackout of Myanmar States that are home to ethnic minorities enters second year

As India’s slowdown to 2G in Kashmir is extended to July

The internet blackout in towns in two states of Myanmar (Burma) has entered a second year.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/22/internet_blackouts_myanmar_india/

Friday 19 June 2020

Huawei going to predict the future? Nope, say company leaders when asked about Joe Biden winning US election

'We don't know what he stands for'

Huawei is uncertain whether a change in leadership in Washington DC will resolve its ongoing woes with the US government, company representatives have told The Register.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/19/huawei_biden_election_win/

Police and NHS urge British public not to call 101 and 111 non-emergency numbers after behind-the-scenes kit failure

Vodafone responsible for maintaining system infrastructure

The UK's 101 and 111 non-emergency telephone numbers are currently inaccessible by the public following a behind-the-scenes failure.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/19/101_111_non_emergency_phone_numbers_outage/

ServiceNow slammed for 'tone deaf' letter telling customers contracts can't be tweaked as COVID-19 batters businesses

'If that is true, that is a horrendous admission' – analyst

ServiceNow, the company that sees itself dominating enterprise software via workflow tools, has told customers contractual arrangements will not be altered as it wrestles with economic stresses accompanying a pandemic.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/19/servicenow_contract_inflexibility_coronavirus/

It's 500 Friday at GitHub as source shack takes an hour-long morning totter

A week of wobbles ends in a good, old fashioned TITSUP*

Code shack GitHub has rounded out the week with "elevated error rates" as developers learned that Friday is a day for bacon sandwiches rather than pull requests.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/19/github_issues/

Netgear was told in January its routers can be hacked and hijacked. This week, first patches released – after exploits, details made public

Two models get hot-fixes, er, looks like 77 more to go?

Netgear has issued patches to squash security vulnerabilities in two router models that can be exploited to, for instance, open a superuser-level telnet backdoor.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/19/netgear_bug_disclosure/

Thursday 18 June 2020

Huawei helps banks improve their digital capabilities

Intelligent finance drives banking opportunities in the post-pandemic era

Sponsored  Before the Coronavirus pandemic interrupted our business and daily lives, banking and financial services had been experiencing a period of strong growth and intense competition, all underpinned by a push to do more business through a digital banking ecosystem.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/18/intelligent_finance_sustaining_transformation/

America's Team Telecom urges FCC to do something about that 120Tbps fiber line between US, Hong Kong

Google, Facebook cable link to China problematic, says oversight body

The White House's Team Telecom advisory committee wants the FCC to put the kibosh on a proposed capacious fiber-optic cable linking America and Hong Kong.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/18/team_telecom_china_us_cable/

BT and Serco among bidders competing to run Britain's unfortunately named Skynet military satellite system

Hollywood was right!

The UK Ministry of Defence has shortlisted BT, Serco, Babcock and Airbus in the bidding for its £6bn Skynet satellite project.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/18/skynet_6_6bn_satellite_bids_shortlist/

IT self-service provisioning and access: Productivity enabler – or huge headache?

Are you happy with staff picking and choosing what they want, when they want it? We'd love to hear your views, please

Reader survey  Ask a bunch of people – users, developers, applications teams – why they went around central IT and just grabbed whatever they needed from the cloud, and they’ll give you all kinds of "justifications."…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/18/it_self_service_survey/

Customers of Brit ISP Virgin Media have downloaded an extra 325GB since March, though we can't think why

That's a lot of... Netflix. Yes, that's it

Virgin Media has published post-lockdown broadband usage figures that, unsurprisingly, point towards massive spikes in data consumption as Brits work from home or look for something to do online.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/18/virgin_media_lockdown_data/

AWS scoops two Intel CPUs and 8TB of storage into new ‘Snowcone’ edge box

Shoebox-sized server is water-resistant and runs EC2 instances and Greengrass

AWS has added a new and very small member to its “Snow Family” of temporarily-on-premises devices.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/18/aws_snowcone/

FCC boss orders probe into 'unacceptable' T-Mobile US outage after carrier plays dog-ate-my-homework card

Yup, the old 'leased fiber line broke' excuse

T-Mobile US is attempting to pin the blame for a massive network outage on Monday on a third-party leased fiber network, though the head of America's communications watchdog has demanded a full investigation into the "unacceptable" blunder.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/17/tmobile_outage_investigation/

Wednesday 17 June 2020

Come for the cloud apps, stay for the ERP? SAP drills into Industry Cloud platform, its latest expansion play

We can't say 'You have to upgrade or nothing' because people will say: 'Well in that case it is nothing'

SAP CEO Christian Klein has admitted the vendor is launching industry-specific applications partly in the hope of luring more customers onto its core ERP platform.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/17/come_for_the_cloud_apps/

Scalability, reliability and availability: Three things the AWS Summit for EMEA struggled to get right

Funny, that

Amazon Web Services' EMEA shindig is under way and, in a masterstroke of irony, viewers found the initial experience a little wobbly.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/17/scalability_reliability_and_availability_aws_summit/

Microsoft snubs Service Fabric as it plots to switch Teams infrastructure to Kubernetes

Plus, a new Detonation Service and other explosive revelations about easing capacity constraints in lockdown

Microsoft's CTO for Azure has opened up on both the company's response to scaling issues with Teams during the COVID-19 pandemic and future plans to switch to "container-based deployments using Azure Kubernetes Service".…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/17/microsoft_plans_to_move_teams/

Hey is trying a new take on email, but maker complains of 'outrageous' demands after Apple rejects iOS app

Downside of requiring a dedicated app rather than a standard email client?

A new email service called Hey aims to solve issues with one of the internet's oldest standards – but Apple will not allow the iOS client into its app store unless the maker pays Cupertino "15-30 per cent of our revenue."…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/17/hey_apple_spat/

'Boringly reliable': Red Hat architect reckons Kubernetes is 'mostly done' – but there are still plenty of bugs

Too complex? Owned by Google? Myth of portability?

Interview  Red Hat architect and Kubernetes contributor Clayton Coleman, who leads development of OpenShift, reckons Kubernetes is "mostly done" – it needs tidying up and bugs fixed but not major new features.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/17/kubernetes_clayton_coleman_interview/

SoftBank to hang up on T-Mobile stake to shore up its balance sheet

What's a flailing investor to do?

SoftBank has begun preparations to offload the bulk of its stake in US mobile carrier T-Mobile as part of the Japanese conglomerate's plan $42bn debt reduction plan.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/17/softbank_to_divest_tmobile/

Nokia China bounces back from 5G flop with hyperscale scores

Tencent and Baidu sign for optical data center interconnect kit

Nokia has scored data centre interconnect wins with Chinese web giants Tencent and Baidu.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/17/nokia_tencent_baidu_wins/

We cross now live to Oracle. Mr Ellison, any thoughts? 'Autonomous self-driving computers eliminate human labor, eliminate human error'

Database giant's Q4 earnings call was quite the ride amid virus-hit revenues

Oracle shares slipped in after-hours trading as the database giant reported fiscal fourth quarter results weighed down by the global coronavirus pandemic.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/17/oracle_q4_fy2020/

Dropbox attempts to muscle into password manager market with passphrase wrangler, document vault

Another set of ideas from storage firm – but can it pull it off this time?

Dropbox is entering the password manager market with a slew of new features and services, including the ability to store and save login details, as well as a vault feature for sensitive documents.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/16/dropbox_password_manager/

Tuesday 16 June 2020

SecureX marks the spot: Cisco vows to make unified security control panel thingy generally available this month

And announces a bunch of other tweaks at today's virtual shindig

Cisco Live  Like pretty much all tech events at the moment, this year's Cisco Live conference was forced online by the coronavirus pandemic. Being a networking giant with Webex up its sleeve, this shift from physical to virtual should have been a cinch for Switchzilla.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/16/cisco_live/

Psst. Hey kid, you want $50 in AWS credit? Great, you just need to fill out this form and sit through these web lectures

Virtual summit sweetener unlikely to mean much to serious customers

Amazon Web Services is offering attendees of its virtual summit for Europe, Middle East and Africa a $50 credit for turning up, watching sessions and submitting feedback.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/16/aws_credit_virtual_summit_incentive/

HPE pushes white label kit for 5G edge computing to tempt all the telcos still crying over WhatsApp and pals

Forget voice calls and SMSes - time to flog edge services and apps

Hewlett Packard Enterprise is trying to grab the attention of telcos that in turn need to make a buck from their pricey 5G infrastructure by selling low-latency edge computing applications to biz customers.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/16/hpe_launches_white_label_kit/

There's no accounting for TITSUP*: Beancounters bemoan Sage cloudy sync software outage

Sage Drive enters its third day of wobbles and woe

Darling of the beancounters, accounting behemoth Sage is having a mid-year wobble as EU customers of Sage Drive enter Day Three of iffy service.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/16/beancounters_bemoan_an_accounting_outsage/

US govt: Huawei is a national security risk and a menace, except, you know, when we need it for 5G standards work

Commerce Department changes rules because... something, something... innovation

The US Commerce Department has confirmed it will publish a rule change to its crackdown on Huawei that will allow US companies to work with the Chinese equipment maker on 5G standards. And artificial intelligence. And autonomous vehicles.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/16/us_government_huawei_is_a/

Living up to its 'un-carrier' slogan, T-Mobile US stops carrying incoming calls, data in nationwide outage

Welp, that's one way to block those annoying spam robots

T-Mobile US is suffering a nationwide technical breakdown, preventing customers from receiving calls and knackering data connections.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/15/tmobile_us_outage/

Monday 15 June 2020

Watchdog snubs General Dynamics' gripe over Navy's $8bn IT network overhaul sub-contract decision

What time is it? Time to pore over contested multibillion-dollar US military tech deals

General Dynamics IT (GDIT) has had its complaint about the handling of the $7.7bn rebuild of the US Navy’s networking infrastructure thrown out by a watchdog.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/15/latest_battle_over_the_navys/

Don't like Mondays? Neither does Microsoft 364's Outlook Exchange Online service

Days without TITSUP: 0

Microsoft 365 started the week off with an early totter in the Oceania region followed by a full-blown European Outlook client TITSUP*.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/15/outlook_down/

Private cloud completes Cloudera's data platform vision, but it has turned a corner into even fiercer competition

Where the big dogs roam

Cloudera has introduced support for the private cloud - built on the Red Hat OpenShift platform and supported by Kubernetes container orchestration - to elbow its way into a whole new world of competition.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/15/private_cloud_cloudera/

Colt Technology UK nixes winding-up order threat from Italian VoIP reseller over £3.8m disputed debt

High Court judgment reveals bizarre contractual goings-on

Colt Technology UK has won a High Court injunction preventing an Italian company allegedly suspected of being involved in a VAT carousel fraud from issuing a winding-up order over an unpaid – and hotly disputed – £3.8m debt.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/15/colt_technology_injunction_voip_reseller/

Philippines government makes cloud-first a post-pandemic ‘new normal’ for all agencies

Revised post-pandemic policy carves out a few exceptions for things clouds are bad at

The Philippines has updated its cloud-first policy and suggested that in a post-pandemic world clouds should be just-about mandatory across government.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/15/philippines_cloud_first_policy/

Office 365 and Azure outage strikes Australia and New Zealand as they arrive at work on Monday

Microsoft acknowledges issues yet status page is a sea of green

Microsoft’s cloud services have a nasty case of Monday-itis.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/15/office_365_outage_australia_new_zealand/

Friday 12 June 2020

Adobe kills off Advertising Cloud, notes pause in enterprise spending, but is weathering COVID-19 crisis

Sales miss Wall Street forecasts by $300m, share price dips 4.7%

If COVID-19 had showed up years before Adobe found the cloud and forced customers into an online subscription model, fortunes at the reassuringly expensive maker of software for creative types might have been very different right about now.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/12/adobe_killing_off_advertising_cloud/

Oh crap: UK's digital overlords moot new rules to help telcos lay fibre in sewer pipes

That's the Department of Fun to you

In order to meet its full-fibre pledges, the UK government is examining the possibility of giving broadband firms access to more than a million kilometres of underground infrastructure owned by other utility firms: including electricity, gas, water, and sewerage networks.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/12/dcms_sewer_fibre/

Microsoft tweaks its 'New Outlook' for Mac – but no support for Exchange on-premises yet

Modern and fluid design: but it will be very different from Outlook on Windows

Microsoft has plugged some key gaps in its "new Outlook" for macOS, currently in preview and given a fresh update just a few days ago, but the product still has puzzling omissions that drive users back to the old version.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/12/microsoft_macos_outlook_changes/

AWS flexes more cloudy Arm CPUs and suggests they'll outpace competition over time

Adds memory-optimised and compute-optimised instance types powered by home-grown silicon

Amazon Web Services has fired up two new EC2 instance types running its home-grown Arm-based Graviton2 CPUs, repeated the claims that they significantly out-perform the x86 silicon on which it built its business, and explained that it thinks Arm will outpace other architectures.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/12/aws_adds_more_graviton_instances/

Thursday 11 June 2020

Earnings up, broadband users (and voice calls) down: TalkTalk posts prelim results for FY 2020

Vendor sheds some 'low-value legacy copper' users

TalkTalk has opened up on a challenging fiscal 2020 which saw revenues decline by 3.9 per cent to £1.518bn, paired with a slight contraction of its broadband business.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/11/etalktalk/

Cold hard cash: Cloud data warehouse spinner Snowflake gains $8bn in nominal value since Feb as IPO nears

Despite everything going on in the world, you can rely on hyped tech stock to be a bit bonkers

Cloud data warehouse specialist Snowflake looks set to file for an IPO valuing the company at $20bn – more than 13 times its valuation of $1.5bn back in January 2018.…



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https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/10/snowflake_ipo/

Red Hot Chili Packets! New submarine cable to land in home of cult Sriracha sauce

Consortium reveals plan to connect seven Asian nations

A consortium of big name Asian tech companies have unveiled plans to build a new submarine cable across seven countries in the region.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/11/new_submarine_cable_to_land/

IBM blames ‘external' network provider, incorrect routing, traffic flood for its two-hour cloud outage

No data loss or attack detected. But aren't hyperscale clouds supposed to be more resilient than this?

IBM has blamed a third party for yesterday’s hours-long outage of its entire cloud. And while it says no data loss or attack was detected, it's still not a good look: major clouds are supposed to be more resilient than this.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/11/ibm_cloud_outage_report/

Count how many times the Feds checked Chinese telcos in America weren't spying. Only one hand needed

US Senate report claims government dropped the ball on routine security

US government agencies were taken to task in a Senate report this week over decades of failing to keep tabs on the American operations of Chinese telcos.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/11/senate_china_security/

Wednesday 10 June 2020

Hosts with the most think and plan ahead for co-lo spaces

Gain the edge you want – clarity precedes every smooth migration

Sponsored  The trend of enterprises relocating data centres (DCs) from their own premises to multi tenant data centre (MTDC) facilities has been accelerating for several years as these co-location spaces add additional services, such as direct fiber links to cloud providers.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/10/planning_colo_spaces/

Remember that backdoor in Juniper gear? Congress sure does – even if networking biz wishes it would all go away

US lawmakers demand answers in quest against Feds-only access points

A backdoor in Juniper's networking gear could provide key evidence in the case against government-mandated Feds-only access – yet the manufacturer has failed to produce a report on the matter, prompting US lawmakers to take action.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/10/congress_juniper_letter/

While Huawei burns, Ericsson lands plush new O2 contract to help push 5G in Britain

Carrier to use Swedish giant's RAN kit to upgrade 3G/4G sites

Swedish infrastructure giant Ericsson today confirmed a new deal with O2 UK for its RAN equipment, which will be used to upgrade existing 3G/4G sites across the West of England and Wales.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/10/while_huawei_burns_ericsson_fiddles/

Rackspace changes name to – drumroll please - ‘Rackspace Technology’

Are company naming consultants paid by the word?

LOGOWATCH  Rackspace has changed its name to “Rackspace Technology”.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/10/rackspace_renamed_rackspace_technology/

Remind us again, why work for AWS? Petty Amazon sues marketing veep after he defects to Google Cloud

Hyperscalers spar in non-compete, NDA spat

Amazon has kicked off a legal challenge to prevent a former AWS product marketing veep from taking a senior role at rival Google Cloud.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/10/aws_sues_marketing_honcho/

From off-prem to just off: IBM Cloud goes down planet-wide so hard even the status page isn't working

Widespread outage has been rolling for two-plus hours, no word on cause

IBM’s cloud has gone down hard across the world.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/09/ibm_cloud_outage/

Tuesday 9 June 2020

As UK Parliament heads back to in-person voting, select committees are told they can continue working via Zoom

Critics worry mass return to House of Commons is unsafe

UK Parliament select committees will continue in a "virtual" format until mid-September, House of Commons speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle has confirmed.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/09/parliament_select_committees_zoom/

Tune in and watch online today: Busting the myths around cloud data protection

Find the savings and security you need when working remotely

Webcast  Working remotely using cloud apps – it’s the new normal, and it’s time to revisit data protection. You need to protect your business data when your users aren’t on-prem, and you need confidence you’ve got continuity if the worst happens.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/09/busting_the_myths_around_cloud/

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes: UK man gets 3 years for torching 4G phone mast over 5G fears

Vodafone confirms to The Reg: Misled Merseyside chap missed his target

A Merseyside man has been sentenced to three years in jail by a beak in Liverpool Crown Court after torching a Vodafone-owned phone mast.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/09/arsonist_sentencing/

Monday 8 June 2020

Ericsson warns of £85.7m inventory hit for Q2 due to carrier handouts in China

One-off cost won't derail financial targets

Ericsson has warned investors that its Q2 results will be dented by SEK 1bn (around £85.7m) in costs after it wrote down the value of its inventory held in mainland China.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/08/ericsson_q2_trading_update/

Saturday 6 June 2020

Franco-German cloud framework floated t protect European's data from foreign tech firms slurpage

Economy Ministers mark official launch of GAIA-X project

The Economy Ministers of Germany and France, Peter Altmaier and Bruno Le Maire, held a media event on Thursday to talk up GAIA-X, an EU data infrastructure initiative aiming to take on Silicon Valley and Chinese behemoths to protect data.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/06/eu_gaiax_cloud/

Friday 5 June 2020

It could be 'five to ten years' before the world finally drags itself away from IPv4

Happy 8th (or 9th) 'launch day' birthday, IPv6. Your daddy ain't dead yet

IPv4 is here to stay with us for a good few years yet, reckons the the Réseaux IP Européens Network Coordination Centre's (RIPE NCC) public policy manager, eight years after IPv6 was supposed to replace it.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/05/ipv4_v_ipv6/

Some Brits reckon broadband got worse after lockdown – but that's just what happens when you're online 12 hours straight

You perceive more faults, and they may not be faults in the first place

A chunk of the UK's broadband users claim their connections worsened in the days following lockdown, according to a YouGov survey of 2,301 adults.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/05/lockdown_broadband_yougov_survey/

Pipped to the post: Google Cloud nabs Salesforce exec to lead UK and Ireland business

Pip White among bunch of new EMEA hires at Chocolate Factory offshoot

Pip White, senior veep and general manager of industry sales at Salesforce, has been nabbed by Google to head up its Cloud business in the UK and Ireland.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/05/google_cloud_nabs_salesforce_exec/

We're number... six. Analysis puts UK behind Switzerland and Kuwait in 5G adoption

There's Samsung to be said for having an in-house 5G vendor, right, Korea?

A new report has put the UK sixth globally for 5G adoption – behind the usual heavyweights of South Korea and Switzerland, as well as the US, Kuwait, and Qatar.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/05/were_number_six_analysis_puts/

If Daddy doesn't want me to touch the buttons, why did they make them so colourful?

The perils of 'bring your child to work' day

On Call  We have stepped into Friday, and the weekend is only a few short hours away. Take a break from wondering what a trip to the park might do to the "R" number and join us for another adventure of those Register readers cursed with the On Call phone.…


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https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/05/on_call/

Thursday 4 June 2020

We have Huawei to make the internet more secure: Dump TCP/IP to make folks safer says Chinese mobe slinger

Chinese telecom companies and authorities want more network control to keep everyone...uh, safe online

Chinese telecom companies and the Middle Kingdom government contend that the TCP/IP protocol stack is ill-suited for future networking needs and have proposed reworking the internet's technical architecture with new, more secure internet protocols.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/04/we_have_huawei_to_make/

Namesco email 'scripting error' has last bastion of Demon Internet holdouts scratching their heads

Let's play 'That's Not My Subdomain'

There was another twist in the long-running Demon subdomain saga yesterday as Namesco accidentally mixed up some customers due to a "scripting error."…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/04/namesco_demon_scripting_error/

GSMA suggests mobile carriers bake contact-tracing into their own apps – if governments ask for it

Working group already probing Bluetooth performance on myriad devices to help developers

The GSM Association, the body that represents mobile carriers and influences the development of standards, has suggested its members bake virus contact-tracing functionality into their own bundled software.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/04/gsma_suggests_mobile_carriers_bake/

IBM powers down POWER-powered virtual private cloud and GPU-assist options

Users given 80 days before instance deletion and the suggested replacement doesn't yet support Linux

IBM has given users of its IBM Cloud Virtual Servers for VPC on POWER 80 days to find a new home.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/04/ibm_vpc_power_shutdown/

Wednesday 3 June 2020

Google signs agreement to offer discounts on cloud services through UK govt's Digital Marketplace

Microsoft already at the trough, IBM and AWS said to be en route

Google has joined Microsoft in signing a framework agreement, or Memorandum of Understanding, with the UK government's centralised procurement agency to set discounts on a range of cloud services.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/03/google_uk_g_cloud/

'5G for Five Eyes!' US senator tells Parliamentarians the world would be better without Huawei

Same chap who wants to ban F-35 fighter jets from Britain

American spy agencies may reduce their “ability to share the most sensitive types of intelligence” with the UK if Huawei continues to be a major presence in British telcos’ networks, a US senator warned Parliament.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/03/defence_committee_5g_huawei_tom_cotton_senator/

Watch live online this week: Learn how to better manage your Office 365 licences

Find out more on optimizing your business – and stop bleeding cash

Webcast  How costly is poor Office 365 license management? We all suspect we either have too many licenses, or those Office 365 licenses are being underused. Either way, it’s the same problem: we’re wasting money. IT spending will go under the microscope in 2020, and Office 365 costs are a great place to start.…



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https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/03/manage_office_365_licences_better/

Watchdog slams Pentagon for failing – for a third time – to migrate US military to IPv6

There’s four checkboxes, auditors point out, and you’ve ticked one of them

The US Department of Defense (DoD) has been shamed for its appalling IPv6 migration efforts in a formal probe by the Government Accountability Office (GAO).…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/03/us_defense_department_slammed_for/

Tuesday 2 June 2020

Monday 1 June 2020

Microsoft hogs limelight at virtual Docker event as friends with benefits get even cosier

Integration with Azure suits both sides

Microsoft was prominent at the virtual Dockercon event last week as the companies extended their agreement to work together on integration between Docker and the Azure cloud.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/01/microsoft_prominent_at_virtual_dockercon/

Black horse down: UK banking giant Lloyds suffers an online wobble

First financial TITSUP* of June goes to...

UK retail banking giant Lloyds Banking Group's online services have rung in June with a wobble.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/01/lloyds_down/