Gaia-X ‘like King Canute stopping an incoming tide’ as European clouds struggle, analyst warns

An analyst has warned that efforts from European cloud providers to wrest market share from US-based hyperscalers is 'like King Canute attempting to stop an incoming tide'.

John Dinsdale, a chief analyst at Synergy Research Group, said that initiatives such as Gaia-X, a collaboration between the European Commission (EC), Germany, France, and various organisations within the continent, were 'laudable'.

Yet figures from Synergy show that while, since 2017, the European...

15 January 2021 | Data & Analytics

How the cloud continues to support the ongoing Covid-19 response

The increased use of online services brought by the Covid-19 pandemic has created new technical requirements for organisations. Since the pandemic-imposed hiatus of most in-person activities and the accompanying shift into digital life, websites and applications must now be scalable and able to react to demand in real-time to avoid slow response times and outages. Traditional monolithic architecture simply isn’t cut out for this, and with developer teams forced to build applications and...

13 January 2021 | Applications

Four essential strategies to secure users across all environments: Integration, automation, and more

Today’s distributed networks are increasingly diverse, often spanning multiple environments, each with their own unique requirements and standards. Securing each of those network ecosystems is challenging, especially when the end goal is consistent policy enforcement, centralised visibility, and unified orchestration and response. Organisations not only need to secure and manage both hardware-defined and software-defined perimeters, but also maintain security as those network edges...

6 January 2021 | Data & Analytics

Bringing colocation closer to the edge: A guide to the new paradigm shift

Seamlessly reliable and responsive applications are now expected by consumers and businesses: from video conferencing and content streaming to gaming and software distribution. Furthermore, ultra-low latency in the sub 10ms range, and so well below the current 50 – 150ms of Content Delivery Networks, is seen as essential in delivering future 5G and IoT enabled technologies and applications: from driverless vehicles to remote surgery and automated factories.

Moving data...

18 December 2020 | Data & Analytics

Defining and embracing ModelOps: Scaling up data science

Traditionally, data science teams are full of brilliant people working solo, tapping into their own data sources, running things on behalf of a department, and not the entire business. But a transition is afoot, and it can be seen in the adoption of ModelOps, driven in part by the need for data science teams to be more sophisticated and grown-up, combined with the desire for better, reusable analytics frameworks, that leverage the power of a group versus the power of an...

10 December 2020 | Data & Analytics

AWS secures MGM and BMW customer wins as supply chain use cases reign supreme

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has essentially cornered the market in cloud for three-letter abbreviations - SLA (service level agreement) and GCP (Google Cloud Platform) aside - so it's perhaps fitting that the company's latest tranche of recruits involve two of the world's most recognisible three-letter abbreviated brands.

Continuing the steady stream of news following re:Invent's kick-off last week, AWS announced it had secured partnerships with Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM) and the BMW...

8 December 2020 | AWS

Gartner cloud DBMS Magic Quadrant sees hyperscalers take top spot – but with a caveat

For many sub-genres of cloud technology, the competitive landscape amounts to one decision: hyperscaler or specific player? Cloud database management systems (DBMS) are no different; and according to Gartner's most recent Magic Quadrant, the hyperscalers - mostly - take the spoils.

The report, published earlier this month, finds eight companies in the leaders' zone out of 16 analysed in total. Alibaba Cloud, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP and...

30 November 2020 | Alibaba Cloud

83% of enterprises transformed their cybersecurity in 2020 – accelerated by Covid cloud migration

73% of enterprises (over 500 employees) accelerated their cloud migration plans to support the shift to remote working across their organisations due to the pandemic. 81% of enterprises accelerated their IT modernisation processes due to the pandemic. 48% of all companies surveyed have accelerated their cloud migration plans, 49% have sped up their IT modernisation plans because of Covid-19. 32% of large-scale enterprises, over 500 employees, are implementing more automation using...

13 November 2020 | Data & Analytics

Charting a path toward digital transformation in the face of uncertainty: A guide

Covid-19 has accelerated years-long digital transformation initiatives for enterprise teams into a span of months.

But digital transformation in business today isn’t just about supporting a remote workforce. We can’t continue to rely on in-person engagement for any business processes. Digital-first operations for employees, customers, partners, and suppliers are no longer merely a differentiator; it’s table stakes for surviving during the pandemic economy and...

12 November 2020 | Best Practice

The US trade war extends from 5G to cloud – with more disinformation and distraction

Comment We have already witnessed how the US administration’s campaign against Huawei succeeded in reversing the UK government’s original decision to allow Huawei to participate in the UK 5G rollout. Even as questions are being raised about the necessity and the economic consequences of this ban, the US is now stepping up its campaign by focusing on Huawei’s cloud business as well. This comes as a strangely welcome distraction for US cloud players that have recently been found to all...

5 November 2020 | Data & Analytics