Friday 31 July 2020

How to democratise IT: Tech big four hoover 63% of global cloudy infrastructure spending

No, we have not used the term 'digital transformation'... oh bugger

Continuing to democratise IT, the big four scooped up 63 per cent of the whopping $34.6bn that customers spent globally on cloudy infrastructure services in Q2.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/31/canalys_cloud_market_share/

13 – lucky for some, but not BT because that's how hard pre-tax profits crashed in Q1

COVID-19 ravages former state monopoly as nearly all divisions shrink

While the cloud businesses at Google and AWS are shovelling cash under their mattress and Apple is making bank, back in Britain BT has been left to count the cost of the COVID-19 pandemic.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/31/bt_q1_fiscal_2021/

The future of work is digital-first – but how do you make the very best of that?

Join us and find out more with Box in this German-language online broadcast

Webcast  As the coronavirus crisis has gripped the world for the past few months, it’s become increasingly obvious that remote working can work extremely well with a good many advantages. Collaboration can, in fact, be boosted, with a greater number of remote workers able to work together digitally on projects that may have been, in the past, executed only in an office environment.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/31/the_future_of_work_webcast/

Glum Alphabet execs look up from red-ink ad figures. What will we do, they ask. Ahem, coughs Google Cloud

Chocolate Factory's as-a-service stuff grows as advertising, profit takes a tumble

Google-parent Alphabet saw its bottom line take a tumble this past quarter as the coronavirus pandemic cut into its lucrative advertising business.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/31/google_q2_2020/

Amazon's coronavirus symptoms: Swelling of the profit, large sales deposits, insatiable demand

When the economy's tanking, who ya gonna call? Jeff Bezos!

Amazon on Thursday reported $88.9bn in revenue for its second quarter of 2020, a 40 per cent increase year-on-year that exceeded expectations and lifted the web goliath's already buoyant stock in after-hours trading.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/31/amazon_q2_2020/

Thursday 30 July 2020

Humble-bragging ServiceNow CEO tell anyone who listens: 'Our destiny is to become the defining enterprise software biz of 21st century'

Larry, stop giving Bill ideas

Bill McDermott – the former SAP CEO right now plying his trade at the top of workflow whizkid ServiceNow – has competed hard against Oracle for so long that he seems to have borrowed more than a few lines from Larry Ellison’s playbook.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/30/servicenow_q2_2020_results/

IBM talks up open cloud, downplays vendor lock-in as it signs public cloud framework with UK.gov

Now just AWS waiting in the wings under One Government Cloud policy

As predicted by El Reg, IBM has joined the growing band of mostly American vendors to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with the UK government that defines discounts for public cloud sales to public sector buyers.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/30/ibm_ukgov_cloud_framework_deal/

Firefighters to UK Home Office: Yeah, maybe don't turn off emergency comms network before replacement is ready

Prospects of cursed ESN project still murky for customers-to-be

As if the UK's emergency services didn't have enough on their plate, the troubled plan to replace their communication network appears to be hitting choppy waters once more.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/30/bucks_fire_service_esn_doc/

Community Fibre to splash £400m on FTTP connections as it races to cover a million London properties by 2023

10Gbps upgrade from challenger ISP backed by private equity

London-based ISP Community Fibre has said it will invest £400m to extend its 10Gbps FTTP connections to more premises in the English capital, aiming to reach one million households and businesses by 2023.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/30/community_fibre_400m_london_investment/

Wednesday 29 July 2020

Modem life is rubbish: RootMetrics 5G stats show EE has widest UK coverage, but Three is the speed demon

What do we all need? Next-gen masts. When do we need them? Sooner than they'll be ready

Most UK cities now have some degree of 5G coverage, promising those with capable devices faster internet connections. But how much of a game change is it really? New data from RootMetrics highlight consistently nimble connections, albeit with some major differences between networks.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/29/rootmetrics_uk_5g_stats/

BT: 'Because of the existing underlying supply of the 4G equipment, most of our 5G (NSA) so far is with Huawei'

Vodafone not happy either as telcos complain to defence subcommittee about Huawei removal woes

Stripping Huawei from the UK's telecommunications network presents a daunting challenge, executives from Vodafone and BT told the House of Commons Defence Sub-Committee yesterday afternoon.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/29/vodafone_bt_execs_huawei/

Philippines president threatens local telcos with expropriation

Calls for e-commerce surge and keeps schools closed due to certain virus that's made news lately

Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte has threatened a pair of local telcos with expropriation if they don’t improve services.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/29/duterte_threatens_telcos/

Tuesday 28 July 2020

How Bude: Google's sole-financed private undersea pipe to make a landing in Cornwall

Cable named for compsci legend Grace Hopper to link US, UK, Spain

Cloud and ads behemoth Google is building a subsea internet cable linking the US to the UK and Spain.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/28/google_grace_hopper_cable/

It must have been love, but it's over now: Rockset tries to break up storage and compute, meet transactional, data-warehouse systems in middle

Propositions database land with a 'real-time' system

Rockset has upgraded its main database engine for more efficient scaling and performance gains by separating storage and compute. The outfit said it also separates the cloud compute resources used for ingesting and querying data.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/28/rockset_database_engine_upgrade/

Spending on 5G to double despite the pandemic while legacy network infrastructure sector suffers – Gartner

Also, half of the world's 5G investment currently is spent by China

Worldwide spending on 5G is set to double in 2020, according to analyst house Gartner, in stark contrast to the wider cellular infrastructure sector, which will see revenues plummet overall.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/28/spending_on_5g_doubles/

Rackspace reveals retirement plan behind decision to go public by selling 17% of itself

We can't call it an initial public offering given this is its second time around on the share market

Rackspace Technology has revealed the terms of its planned return to the stock market.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/28/rackspace_ipo_terms/

Green with NVMe: AWS adds more Arm-powered instance types

Local SSD block-level storage comes to EC2 instances powered by home-brew Graviton2 CPUs

Amazon Web Services has created three more EC2 instance types that run its home-grown Graviton2 Arm CPUs.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/28/aws_graviton2_instances_add_nvme/

Battle for 6GHz heats up in America: Broadcasters sue FCC to kill effort to open spectrum for private Wi-Fi

Big Tech pushes back, says band use Hertz no one

The argument over opening up the 6GHz spectrum range, allowing it to be used for things like private indoor Wi-Fi, is heating up with TV broadcasters now suing the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/28/nab_spectrum_fcc/

Monday 27 July 2020

SAP takes a punch to its software licensing revenue but Ellison's promise of customer exodus to Oracle seemingly fails to materialise

Nothing to say, Larry? Makes a change

SAP took a gut-punch in the form of an 18 per cent dive in software licensing revenue to €0.77bn for its Q2 ended June 30, but it also chalked up a 20 per cent jump in contractually committed cloud revenue to €6.65bn.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/27/sap_q2_2020/

Cloudflare's new serverless platform lets its Workers run for 15 minutes before giving them the boot

Instant startup, expanded execution, and more programming languages

Interview  Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince doubts developers care all that much about speed.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/27/cloudflare_serverless/

Friday 24 July 2020

Not-so-paltry towers to float: Vodafone reveals IPO plans for mega European masts biz

Firm to list in Frankfurt, could net €10bn to €20bn

Vodafone will IPO its towers business next year, it told the market this morning, with the global telecommunications giant planning a public offering for early next year on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/24/vodafone_towers_ipo_plans/

UK govt finds £200,000 under sofa to kick off research into improving mobile connectivity on nation's crap railways

Do people still use trains? Anyway, wireless antennas on overhead line equipment looks like the solution

Staying connected on a train in the UK is almost impossible thanks to excruciatingly slow speeds and frequent blackspots. The government hopes to make these gripes a thing of the past by committing £200,000 to research on new track-side antenna technology.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/24/200k_uk_investment_railway_connectivity/

UK weather watcher will make it rain to the tune of $30m for support on new data platform

Met Office has taken a shine to data science

UK weather watcher the Met Office is seeking early interest in a framework deal that could be worth up to £30m for IT services and software development supporting a new data platform and data science activities.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/24/met_office_procurement/

Calm, cool heads in the cloud: Managers get multi-site, converged-network control to beat IoT-spawned complexity and sprawls

Cloud-managed, AI-enabled network management boosts visibility, intelligence and agility

Sponsored  Today’s smart building strategies entail building at least two duplicated networks – one corporate business network and one building management network. Add the sprawl of complex access networks arising from the heterogeneous nature of Internet of Things (IoT) to the mix and the entire ecosystem becomes unmanageable easily.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/23/commscope_cloud_management/

Thursday 23 July 2020

Google forced to defend new trademark foundation as Knative community takes umbrage at 'neutrality' claims

Two directors from Google, no other vendors represented. That's vendor-neutral?

Google's open source director Chris DiBona has defended the web giant's motives in forming a new foundation to manage open-source trademarks during a Knative community meeting.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/23/google_open_usage_commons/

HPE opens 5G kit-testing lab where vendors can play with the toys, see what works best

Tech emphasises interoperability, but here firms will find out if it's ready for the prime time

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has cut the ribbon on a new lab that will allow cellular vendors to test interoperable networking kit.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/23/hpe_5g_lab/

Smoke on the Tyne: Blaze at BT exchange causes major outages across North East England

Flames contained – but expect slow 'staged restoration' of services

Thousands of customers of BT's fixed-line broadband and telephone services are experiencing major disruption in North East England after an exchange in Newcastle caught fire.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/23/bt_fire/

If you want to design and make your own 5nm high-end system-on-chip, Marvell's offering ASIC-as-a-service

Yes, it's going to cost a bob or two, but the option's there

Marvell will today formally open the doors of its bespoke tailor shop, though rather than cutting and sewing cloth, it's crafting custom 5nm semiconductors.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/23/marvell_custom_asics/

Make your public cloud truly secure for you with this one neat trick – no, really

SD-WAN can bump up your network defenses – and our next webcast will show you how

Webcast  Your organisation is probably deploying apps in the public cloud by now, either because you're following the industry norm of general migration into off-prem environments, or perhaps because you're having to support a dispersed workforce as we enter the "new normal" of a world battling COVID-19.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/23/make_your_public_cloud_truly/

Frozen: Bank accounts of suspected Chinese Cisco counterfeiters who exploited pandemic shortages

Cali federal judge admits he can only do so much against businesses based in Middle Kingdom

Three Chinese companies accused by Cisco of selling counterfeit components badged with its logo on have had their US bank accounts frozen by a federal district court judge.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/23/cisco_counterfeiter_accounts_frozen/

Microsoft Q4 sales up, profit down, shares down. More importantly, someone reboot the CEO. He keeps repeating 'tech intensity' over and over

Welcome to the new Digital Transformation, folks?

Microsoft on Wednesday reported $38bn in sales for the fourth quarter of its fiscal 2020, an increase of 13 per cent that failed to impress investors, even though this exceeded Wall Street's expectations.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/23/microsoft_q4_2020/

Wednesday 22 July 2020

After banning Chinese comms bogeyman, UK asks: Huawei in this mess? It was a failure of capitalism, MPs told

Commons tech committee does some soul-searching as costs mount

Excising Huawei from the UK's 5G networks promises to be an expensive task that has ramifications for the nationwide rollout of 5G.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/22/huawei_commons_sci_tech_committee/

About ready to POP3: Day 6 of email wobbles at UK2 after services provider Tucows suffers 'service failure'

15% of customers affected as Canadian partner promises 'full mailbox services' today

Customers of UK2 hosted email services have been complaining of missing emails from clients, as the platform heads into a sixth day of wobbles. Problems appear to have begun on Friday for users connecting via IMAP and POP3 and were said to be due to "a service failure" at the UK company's Canadian service partner Tucows.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/22/uk2_suffers_hosted_email_outage/

Tune in online this week: How to pull off IT modernization in these uncertain times

Move your legacy apps to the cloud in just a matter of days

Webcast  As your business-critical systems get old, operating costs explode and the risk of breakdowns increases dramatically.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/22/modernization_in_uncertain_times/

Nominet shakes up system for expiring .uk domains, just happens to choose one that will make it £millions. Again

Brit registry is the cash cow that keeps on giving. Whether it wants to or not

Analysis  UK internet registry operator Nominet has decided to reform the way in which expired .uk domains are released and, to no one's surprise, has decided that the best solution is one that will result in it receiving millions of pounds in profit.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/22/nominet_uk_addresses/

Microsoft quietly extends Azure reserved instances to five-year term

But only for one HPC-oriented instance type, with steeper exit charges and deeper discounts

Microsoft has quietly added a five-year term to Azure reserved instances, the commit-for-years-and-score-deep-discounts option in its cloud.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/22/azure_reserved_instances_five_years/

Tuesday 21 July 2020

Don'tcha just LOVE meetings? Microsoft does, too, so here are some new Teams features, you lucky, lucky people

Plus: Security tweaks for Microsoft 365

Inspire  Because its customers apparently can't get enough of meetings, Microsoft has added some new Teams capabilities in the form of Standard and Premium Microsoft Teams Rooms.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/21/microsoft_teams_rooms/

Windows Server spotted behind cloudy curtain as Microsoft unveils the next generation of Azure Stack HCI

Use your old-school skills while having native Azure integration

Inspire  Microsoft has announced an update to Azure Stack HCI as it continues to aim at customers who do not fancy a wholesale jump to the public cloud.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/21/azure_stack_hci/

It's a process: Nokia pushes out its first private 5G standalone product, eyes industrial types

Fancy integrating next-gen tech into your IoT, cameras, sensors, and robots? Well do you?

Telecoms giant Nokia has lifted the lid on a fast, low-latency cellular connection for industrial kit – its private 5G SA (standalone) product, with some of it to be plumbed into a test mine near the Finnish city of Tampere.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/21/nokia_announces_first_private_5g/

Networking boffins detect wide abuse of IPv4 addresses bought on secondary market

Suggests poorly-regulated address-marts are favorites of folks who want ‘clean’ addresses that give botnets a break

Malicious actors are abusing the secondary market for IPv4 addresses, according to Lancaster University lecturer Vasileios Giotsas, University College London research and teaching assistant and postdoctoral fellow Ioana Livadariu from Norway's Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/21/ipv4_secondary_market_abuse_research/

IBM profits cratered 46% last quarter. But its share price is up ~5% because Wall Street expected that to be worse

Execs peg Big Blue's big blues to global pandemic recovery

IBM's net income felt the full brunt of the economic downturn last quarter, falling 46 per cent on the year-ago period, though impressing Wall Street.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/21/ibm_q2_2020/

Monday 20 July 2020

Microsoft accused of sharing data of Office 365 business subscribers with Facebook and its app devs

Because that always ends well

Microsoft is being sued for allegedly sharing its Office 365 customers' business data with Facebook app developers, partners, and subcontractors in violation of its data privacy promises.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/20/microsoft_office_data_facebook/

Worldpay stops turning in the UK, leaving trail of thoroughly miffed retailers and customers

Payments provider cops to 'processing issues' caused by 'equipment change'

Global online payment provider Worldpay is experiencing an ongoing outage affecting businesses and organisations in the UK.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/20/worldpay_outage_uk/

Cisco restores evidence of its funniest FAIL – ethernet cable presses switch's reset button

At least it’s a better excuse than Switchzilla’s ‘cosmic radiation errors’

Cisco watchers may recall that the company is infamous for two particularly odd bug reports.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/20/cisco_switch_cabling_error/

Netflix teases desktops-as-a-service offering

Aimed at VFX creators working on shows it has commissioned, not the rest of us sadly

Netflix has teased a desktop-as-service (DaaS) offering.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/20/netflix_netfx_desktop_as_a_service/

Philippines to install 23,000 free public WiFi hotspots

To help plague time working and learning, even though schools are to remain closed until a vaccine is found

The Philippines has revealed plans to install 23,100 free WiFi sites to help adapt the country to remote work and education during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/20/philippines_23000_wifi_hotspot_rollout/

Saturday 18 July 2020

Finally, made it to the weekend, time to breathe, relax, and... Cloudflare's taken down a chunk of the web

DNS provider goes dark amid bad routing, world+dog experiences outage as nine minutes of fear

Global internet glue Cloudflare experienced a brief network outage on Friday that broke multiple apps and websites, including your humble Register.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/17/cloudflare_outage_bgp_dns/

Friday 17 July 2020

Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries says it's built its own 5G kit and hopes to sell to all comers

Seemingly offers Huawei alternative and challenges old-school telco vendors. Now to prove its chops by building an Indian 5G net for Jio Platforms

Indian industrial conglomerate Reliance Industries has announced that it has developed its own 5G network infrastructure and hopes to offer it as a manged service to carriers worldwide.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/17/reliance_jio_to_sell_5g/

Thursday 16 July 2020

Google gives Gmail's collab chops a good buffing to make it the 'home for work' while we're working from home

Chat and Meet rolled into the inbox along with other bells and whistles

Google is to shovel yet more bells and whistles into its Gmail client in an effort to demonstrate its collaborative chops in an increasingly crowded marketplace.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/16/google_gmail_home_for_work/

UK mobile network Vodafone channels its inner stroppy teen, begs government to cancel upcoming 5G auction

Ugggghhhhh, it's so unfair!

Vodafone has urged the UK government to cancel Ofcom's upcoming 5G spectrum auction, where carriers can bid for access to the 700MHz and 3.6-3.8GHz bands.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/16/vodafone_cancel_5g_auction/

US restricts visas for folks working at Huawei and other Chinese tech makers – seemingly over China's human-rights abuses

Staff face being turned away at the border for nation's treatment of Uyghurs

The US government announced on Wednesday it will "restrict" the US visas of foreigners working for Huawei and certain other Chinese technology companies.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/16/us_visa_china/

Wednesday 15 July 2020

Bad news: Your Cisco switch is a fake and an update borked it. Good news: It wasn't designed to spy on you

Autopsy finds rip-off gear is mainly about making coin, not bugging your network

Two types of fake Cisco switches – discovered after a software upgrade hobbled counterfeit gear at an unidentified IT firm – appear to have been designed for profit rather than espionage.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/15/sham_cisco_kit/

We asked. You spoke. Now it's time to reveal how Register IT pros pick and choose their network security gear

What are the upstarts doing right and the market incumbents doing wrong?

Reader survey  With network security increasingly positioned as an enabler of future business success, making the right purchasing decision in this area is more important than ever.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/15/revealed_the_network_security_buying/

Trump gloats, telcos weep, and China is furious: How things stand following UK's decision to rip out Huawei

'Retaliation should be public and painful' says Beijing-approved rag

The ink has scarcely dried on the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport's speech to the House of Commons that confirmed Huawei would be banned from the UK.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/15/huawei_uk_aftermath/

VMware on AWS just got cheaper and gruntier. But you can only choose one

Yet Virtzilla still won't say how many paying punters are actually using its Amazonian cloud

VMware has made some notable tweaks to its AWS-powered cloud service.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/15/vmware_on_aws_update/

Mozilla unveils $4.99/month subscription-based VPN, says it won't hang onto user logs

Sling some dollars Moz's way for that special WireGuard experience

Those wondering how Mozilla plans to plug the holes in its finances were given a clue today in the form of a subscription-based Virtual Private Network (VPN) bearing the company's stamp.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/15/mozilla_unveils_a_subscriptionbased_vpn/

Up your remote-working game with application modernisation and delivery – and more: Watch these virtual sessions

Reduce your mean time-to-resolution with efficient troubleshooting

Promo  There’s still plenty of talk of businesses pivoting to digital-centric approaches as the vast majority of us continue to work from home. If this shift to the "new normal" is on your radar, where should you go for in-depth technical information and discussion on the subject? Answer: Micro Focus’ Virtual Realize event.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/15/polish_your_remote_working_game/

Tuesday 14 July 2020

With a wave of Nokia's wand, behold as your 4G network magically becomes... 5G

Finnish comms biz says it's ready to go on a million radios already, despite what outgoing CEO said previously

Nokia will allow telcos to repurpose existing 4G/LTE radios to support 5G, via an easily-deployed software update. Should we get our hopes up for near-ubiquitous fast mobile internet? Not if previous comments by the company's outgoing CEO are to be believed.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/14/nokia_lte_5g_software_update/

BigQuery analytics goes multi-cloud: Use our service without moving your data, says Google – but there is no magic

Query data in one cloud and export the results to another

Google's virtual Cloud Next event has kicked off with the introduction of BigQuery Omni, letting customers extend the tentacles of the analytics service to probe data across Google Cloud, AWS and Microsoft Azure.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/14/google_bigquery_analytics_goes_multicloud/

UK smacks Huawei with banhammer: Buying firm's 5G gear illegal from year-end, mobile networks ordered to rip out all Huawei next-gen kit by 2027

Country to be hit with £2bn cost, massive tech delay after firm 'materially compromised' by US's latest sanctions

D-day has finally arrived for Huawei in Britain: UK.gov will outlaw the purchase of Huawei gear to build 5G networks by the end of this year, and from 2027 the country's mobile networks must eradicate the Chinese vendor's kit from their 5G infrastructure.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/14/huawei_ban_uk/

A match made in SEV-en: Google touts Confidential VMs using AMD's Epyc on-the-fly memory encryption

A little something to keep determined snoopers out, in theory

Google Cloud will today announce the availability, as a beta, so-called Confidential Virtual Machines that feature on-the-fly RAM encryption using per-VM keys.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/14/google_amd_secure_vm/

Monday 13 July 2020

HPE shifts further out onto the edge, plans to weld $925m Silver Peak buy to Aruba Networks

To SD or not SD-WAN is the question?

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is to wolf down Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) outfit Silver Peak for $925m.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/13/hpe_silver_peak/

UK's University of Manchester has its head in all the clouds as it rains £50m on integrators

Hope is to ease procurement while saving cash

University of Manchester has dished out a contract worth up to £50m to a handful of integrators to provision cloud services from the big three providers and build a tool for "consolidated and managed billing".…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/13/manchester_uni_cloud_contracts/

GitHub is just like all of us: The week has just started but it needed 4 whole hours of downtime

Plus: New availability report highlights database issues

GitHub marked the start of the week with more than four hours of downtime, as GitHub Issues, Actions, Pages, Packages and API requests all reported "degraded performance."…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/13/github_takes_some_downtime_availability/

Watch live right here: Let's figure out your post-pandemic cloud management

Embrace the future – because it’s already here

Webcast  The IT department's evolution from controller to advisor is accelerating as more of us work flexibly, work from home, and collaborate online.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/13/post_pandemic_cloud_management/

Friday 10 July 2020

If at first you don't succeed... Rackspace files IPO papers to go public once again, hopefully with better timing

Private equity looks to cash in on managed cloud services biz

Almost six years after going private, Rackspace is once again dipping its toes into the public market by filing for an IPO in the US.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/10/rackspace_technologies_ipo/

Rip and replace is such a long Huawei to go, UK telcos plead, citing 'blackouts' and 'billion pound' costs: Are Vodafone and BT playing 'Project Fear'?

Not sure they spent that much on 'high risk' kit from ZTE and Huawei, coughs analyst

Analysis  The caution couldn't be more stark. In a meeting with the Commons Science and Technology Select Committee yesterday, execs from BT and Vodafone warned UK lawmakers that a deadline of 2023 to remove Huawei-made equipment from their networks will result in multi-day mobile signal losses for some customers.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/10/huawei_testimony/

Smile? Not bloody likely: Day 6 of wobbly services and still no hint to UK online bank's customers about what's actually wrong

Tech team still 'investigating,' no ETA of fix

If a digital bank is unable to regularly provide online banking services, at what point does it cease to be a digital bank? Some disgruntled customers of Smile, a trading division of the Co-Operative Bank, may be posing this very question after five full days of woe.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/10/smile_uk_outages/

Where do you stand on self-service and automation? Tell us the pros and cons from your viewpoint

The us-versus-them mentality between dev and ops is still alive and well, we see

Reader survey  In an online survey, we asked Register readers for their thoughts on workplace automation and self-service within on-prem environments. That survey is still open, though we took a sneak peek at the data collected so far, and whoa, there are some strong feelings out there.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/10/self_service_automation_survey/

Thursday 9 July 2020

Show a little spine? Nokia whips out SR Linux, a new routing network OS for cloud clients

Finnish firm might do best with telco clouds, says analyst

From enterprise behemoths to those desperately home-schooling, the appetite for cloud-based services shows no sign of faltering. Behind the scenes sit vendors like Nokia, which today unveiled its latest network operating system (NOS), which aims to simplify the process of automating and scaling data centre fabrics.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/09/nokia_sr_linux/

Email seems lost in the post? You might be a Tsohost customer

Print it out, pop a stamp on it, stick it in a pillar box. Might have been quicker

Axe-happy Tsohost has found another way to upset its customers this week. Email, it appears, has taken a bit of a totter.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/09/tsohost_email/

Knock-Nokia... who's there? Also-vRAN Samsung with new open virtualized network antenna kit

Are these the O-RAN-compliant goods you were looking for?

Samsung has made its open, virtualized 5G radio access network (RAN) platform commercially available, allowing carriers to run the external components of a 5G network on off-the-shelf x86-based hardware.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/09/samsung/

Never mind rail and ports, let's help DPD... and, er, Amazon: UK gov and ESA call for ways to slap logistics with 5G stick

Sorry we missed you. Been binging on Netflix in the delivery van

Got an idea on how to use 5G for something useful? ESA and the UK Space Agency want to hear from you.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/09/uk_gov_esa_5g/

Asia’s internet registry APNIC finds about 50 million unused IPv4 addresses behind the sofa

About three /8’s worth is a decent chunk of the total pool and locals unready to go all-in on IPv6 are hungry

APNIC, the regional Internet address registry for India, China, and 54 other Asia-Pacific nations, has found about fifty million IPv4 addresses behind the sofa.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/09/asias_internet_registry_apnic_finds/

Google Cloud cancels planned Chinese venture

Doesn't want to follow Azure and AWS by working with locals

Google has scrapped plans to offer cloud services in China.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/09/google_abandons_china_cloud_plan/

Wednesday 8 July 2020

Oracle tempts users to run its cloud in their own data centres – for a mere '$6 million' commitment

Not for your titchy workloads, Reg sources say

Oracle's new on-premises cloud product has prompted concern among commentators, who've said it requires a strong financial commitment and could shift customers to higher cost deals.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/08/oracle_cloud_on_premises/

Don't make any sudden moves: Huawei urges UK government to wait before declaring it 'unreliable'

Claims 'restrictions by the US will take months to fully understand'

Embattled Chinese tech bogeyman Huawei has decried the UK government's mooted plan to ban it from domestic 5G networks over reliability concerns caused by the imposition of punishing US sanctions.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/08/huawei_uk_govt/

GCHQ's cyber arm report on Huawei said to be burning hole through UK.gov desks

Ban, no ban, trade war, 'useful idiots'... it's a big pie and everyone's grabbing a slice

Britain is all a-tizzy about Huawei again as talk swirls over the imminent release of an unofficial report into the Chinese company’s influence over prominent Britons and a ban on its telco equipment.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/08/huawei_ncsc_report_trade_war_uk_ban_roundup/

Leaving Las Salesforce: Paul Smith fashions a new role at ServiceNow

No, not the Nottingham-born designer of natty suits, the former Proctor & Gamble chap who also spent time in the channel

Salesforce exec veep and UK GM Paul Smith has quit to join cloud platform rival ServiceNow in the same role but for the Europe, Middle East and Africa region.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/08/leaving_salesforce_paul_smith_fashions/

Achieve your financial services digital transformation with advice and insight brought to you by Workday

Watch live online this week – and turn that existential threat into a competitive advantage

Webcast  It’s been a challenging decade in the financial services sector to say the least. From the global financial crisis to environmental, social, and governance regulation, with digital transformation on top. Now the COVID-19 virus outbreak has provided the impetus to accelerate those digital transformation plans.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/08/fs_digital_transformation/

Tuesday 7 July 2020

Microsoft? AWS? Nein und nein. Deutsche Bank signs up with Google Cloud for its latest crack at digital transformation

5 months after request for proposal, Satya and Jeff left to languish on sidelines

Deutsche Bank has snubbed the world's two biggest purveyors of clouds to name Google Cloud in a deal that the German giant said "is as much a revenue story as it is about costs".…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/07/deutsche_bank_google/

Monday 6 July 2020

July? British government could decide to boot Chinese giant Huawei from the UK's networks by this month

NCSC will make the call, says UK digital secretary

After months of dilly dallying, the UK government has said it will finally decide this month whether Huawei should be booted out of Blighty’s nascent 5G network, according to Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/06/huawei_may_get_the_boot/

ITAM Forum asks software giants to stop browbeating customers onto their clouds with threats of licence audits

Pressuring clients into products they're not ready for doesn't benefit anyone, says new chair

The new chair of the ITAM Forum, a body set up in part to help organisations traverse the software licensing minefield, has called on vendors to stop using the prospect of licence audits to influence customers' cloud infrastructure decisions.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/06/itam_forum_calls_on_software/

Friday 3 July 2020

Analogue radio given 10-year stay of execution as the UK U-turns on DAB digital future

Great problem of our time solved: Classic FM won't have to rebrand as Classic DAB

Analogue radio station licences will be extended for another 10 years, the UK government has said – entirely reversing plans to shut off FM and AM radio stations in favour of DAB digital radio.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/03/analogue_commercial_radio_licences_extended_10_years/

AWS attempts to woo devs with new tool aimed at porting .NET applications to Linux

Bezos' bunch beats Microsoft to the punch, though it has limited use for now

Amazon Web Services is trying to lure more to developers to its cloud by creating a tool built for porting .NET applications to Linux, though in its current form we found it to be less useful than hoped.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/03/aws_net_linux_porting_tool/

The good news: Vodafone switches on first full-fat, real-life 5G network in the UK. The bad news: it only got sent to Coventry

Tech stands on own two feet rather than 4G infrastructure

Vodafone has switched on its first 5G SA (standalone) network in the UK.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/03/vodafone_5g_coventry/

Capita Consulting ditches more than a quarter of its workforce 45 days after consultations with consultants

100 people have lost their jobs, COVID-19 blamed

Exclusive  It has been a bad week for the UK jobs market and Capita has just added to the unemployment stats by ditching more than a quarter of its Consulting division, sources close to the company have told The Register.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/03/capita_consulting_redundancies/

Thursday 2 July 2020

Microsoft sees the world has moved on, cranks OneDrive file size upload limit from 15GB to more useful 100GB

Hunting for the right file is the 'bane to anyone's productivity' allegedly

Microsoft is rolling out a swathe of updates to OneDrive, increasing the upload file limit for the cloudy bit barn from 15GB to 100GB.…



via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/02/microsoft_onedrive_upload_limit_100gb/

Wednesday 1 July 2020

I was screwed over by Cisco managers who enforced India's caste hierarchy in US HQ, claims senior engineer

Techie sues, says he was snubbed due to Dalit ancestry, HR ignored complaints

A senior engineer working at Cisco headquarters in Silicon Valley claims he was mistreated by coworkers and managers because of his Indian caste status – and that HR ignored his complaints about the matter.…


via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/01/cisco_caste_discrimination/

US govt warns foreign hackers 'will likely exploit' critical firewall bypass bug in Palo Alto gear – patch now

Bogus signatures may fool your corp network's gatekeeper

Palo Alto Networks has issued a fix for a security hole in its firewall products – one so serious, Uncle Sam urged organizations to patch it ASAP as foreign hackers "will likely attempt to exploit it soon."…


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