News

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)

• July 26, 2024 26 Jul'24

  CMA cloud licensing: Microsoft accuses Google and AWS of ‘muddying’ anti-trust debate

  Microsoft's response to the Competition and Markets Authority’s investigation into its cloud licensing practices sees it hit out at cloud rivals for claiming its tactics are anti-competitive

• July 24, 2024 24 Jul'24

  CrowdStrike blames outage on content configuration update

  CrowdStrike publishes the preliminary findings of what will be a lengthy investigation into the root causes of the failed 19 July update that caused Windows computers to crash all over the world

• July 24, 2024 24 Jul'24

  Qualtrics CEO: AI can make businesses more human

  Qualtrics CEO Zig Serafin believes AI can democratise experience management and help businesses better understand what matters to both customers and employees

• July 23, 2024 23 Jul'24

  Digital Catapult confirms participants for AI-focused startup accelerator for the creative industry

  Digital Catapult is offering each participant in its latest accelerator programme access to £50,000 in funding so they can use their AI prowess to revamp how the creative industry and economy works

• July 22, 2024 22 Jul'24

  CrowdStrike chaos shows risks of concentrated ‘big IT’

  The concentration of so much mission-critical technology in the hands of a few large suppliers makes incidents like the Microsoft-CrowdStrike outage all the more dangerous

• July 21, 2024 21 Jul'24

  CrowdStrike update snafu affected 8.5 million Windows devices

  About 8.5 million devices globally were hit by the botched CrowdStrike update, with a significant number now back online and operational

• July 19, 2024 19 Jul'24

  Derby City Council eyes £12.25m annual savings with AI and chatbot deployments

  East Midlands-based council has identified 261 tasks where officials believe AI can make improvements and efficiencies to the way it works

• July 19, 2024 19 Jul'24

  Cloud sustainability: Amazon employees question firm’s renewable energy claims

  The contents of Amazon’s annual sustainability report has come in for criticism from both past and present employees of the company, as well as independent IT sustainability experts

• July 17, 2024 17 Jul'24

  Police Digital Service CEO Ian Bell resigns as company director following news of staff arrests

  Two weeks after news emerged that two employees of the Police Digital Service had been arrested on suspicion of bribery, fraud and misconduct, Companies House confirms PDS CEO Ian Bell has resigned as company director

• July 17, 2024 17 Jul'24

  AWS, Microsoft and Google urge datacentre kit suppliers to improve Scope 3 data collection

  AWS, Microsoft and Google put their names to an open letter, calling on third-party datacentre construction and equipment providers to do a better job with helping calculate Scope 3 emissions of cloud platforms

• July 15, 2024 15 Jul'24

  How Snowflake is tackling AI challenges

  Snowflake’s regional leader Sanjay Deshmukh outlines how the company is helping customers to tackle the security, skills and cost challenges of AI implementations

• July 11, 2024 11 Jul'24

  Microsoft and CISPE’s settlement in long-running cloud antitrust dispute proves controversial

  Microsoft and trade body CISPE have reportedly reached a $22m settlement in their long-running antitrust dispute, but cloud market stakeholders are not happy with the outcome

• July 10, 2024 10 Jul'24

  Datacentre market supports Labour government’s review of blocked server farm builds

  New government has wasted no time in lowering planning permission barriers to new datacentre builds, with its disclosure that two previously denied projects are being placed under review

• July 09, 2024 09 Jul'24

  Microsoft and Google’s GHG emissions gains call viability of net-zero targets into question

  Microsoft and Google cite expansion of their datacentres due to demand for AI services for their greenhouse gas emissions increasing. What does this mean for their 2030 carbon reduction commitments?

• July 09, 2024 09 Jul'24

  Tony’s Chocolonely gains Salesforce comfort with Own SaaS backup

  Tony’s Chocolonely sometimes lost Salesforce.com data and often hit storage limits, but cloud-to-cloud SaaS backup from Own allows it to easily recover customer data and archive old data

• July 03, 2024 03 Jul'24

  Police Digital Service employees arrested on suspicion of fraud, bribery and misconduct

  The Police Digital Service has confirmed an internal review of its processes will be undertaken in the wake of staff arrests

• June 27, 2024 27 Jun'24

  Halo Trust partners with AWS to accelerate AI-led landmine clearance in Ukraine

  Landmine clearance organisation Halo Trust is drawing on AWS’s AI expertise to see if the technology can accelerate the pace of its work in Ukraine

• June 25, 2024 25 Jun'24

  European Commission declares Microsoft’s bundling of Teams with M365 anti-competitive

  The European Commission has informed Microsoft of its preliminary view that selling Microsoft Teams bundled in with its Office 365 suite is anti-competitive

• June 25, 2024 25 Jun'24

  UK government’s M365 use under scrutiny after Microsoft’s ‘no guarantee of sovereignty’ disclosure

  Microsoft’s hold on government IT is under scrutiny, following a disclosure to a Scottish policing body that saw the software giant advise that it cannot guarantee data sovereignty in its cloud-based Microsoft 365 suite

• June 24, 2024 24 Jun'24

  Kmart taps event streaming for real-time insights

  Retailer’s Hamilton event streaming platform delivers real-time insights on container shipments, sales and customer interactions to support its online retail business

• June 13, 2024 13 Jun'24

  Epicor rides Southeast Asia manufacturing boom

  Midmarket ERP software supplier capitalising on growing investments by Chinese and local manufacturing firms in region to drive business

• June 12, 2024 12 Jun'24

  CMA working paper outlines concerns about Microsoft’s competitive hold on UK cloud market

  Microsoft has dismissed the idea its cloud licensing practices are affecting its two biggest competitors, but stakeholders claim the CMA's latest working paper could signify a day of reckoning over its pricing strategy

• June 11, 2024 11 Jun'24

  Tableau CEO on AI moves to ease analytics adoption

  Tableau’s head honcho Ryan Aytay talks up Tableau’s efforts to bring more consumerisation and personalisation capabilities to data analytics through the use of AI

• June 10, 2024 10 Jun'24

  Driving customer experience through cloud and AI

  Autodesk’s global CIO Prakash Kota explains how the company is modernising its IT infrastructure and adopting cloud and AI to drive customer experience

• June 03, 2024 03 Jun'24

  Dell launches PowerStore Prime and hints at PowerScale AI boost

  Array range launched at Dell World 2024 in Las Vegas as PowerScale gets OS upgrade and new Intel Xeon CPUs, while Dell CEO hints at acceleration for PowerScale NAS

• May 30, 2024 30 May'24

  CMA slammed for excluding public sector from UK cloud market antitrust user research

  The Competition and Markets Authority is under fire for instructing the firm overseeing the user research part of its antitrust probe into the UK cloud infrastructure services market not to include public sector buyers

• May 29, 2024 29 May'24

  Blackpool Council courts datacentre developers for tech-focused town regeneration project

  Blackpool Council is seeking the support of the datacentre community for its bid to create a sustainable technology campus that will capitalise on the town’s proximity to transatlantic undersea cables

• May 23, 2024 23 May'24

  CMA: AWS and Microsoft deny cloud discounts have anti-competitive effect on market

  The CMA finds that IT buyers do not see the anti-competitive impact that discounts can have on the UK cloud market, despite acknowledging that preferential pricing can dictate their choice of cloud provider

• May 22, 2024 22 May'24

  G-Cloud 14: Overseas suppliers risk non-compliance as CCS changes stance on UK VAT requirements

  After assuring overseas suppliers multiple times during the G-Cloud clarification period that they did not need a UK VAT number to participate in the framework, government procurement chiefs have now backtracked on this guidance by telling non-UK ...

• May 15, 2024 15 May'24

  AWS CEO Adam Selipsky to step down in June 2024

  After three years heading up the world’s biggest public cloud company, Adam Selipsky is stepping down to be replaced by long-time Amazon staffer Matt Garman

• May 15, 2024 15 May'24

  Google ups ante in GenAI with Gemini enhancements

  Google has updated Gemini 1.5 Pro with a two-million-token context window and debuted a smaller, lightweight model optimised for high-frequency, specialised tasks

• May 14, 2024 14 May'24

  CMA to double spend with AWS while overseeing anti-trust probe into cloud giant

  The CMA has reignited concerns about how its use of AWS could constitute a conflict of interest, given the public cloud giant is the subject of an anti-trust probe by the watchdog

• May 13, 2024 13 May'24

  How SingPost is delivering on digital transformation

  SingPost group CIO outlines the company’s efforts to leverage AI and automation to improve operations, emphasising the importance of building the right culture as it expands its regional footprint

• May 08, 2024 08 May'24

  Microsoft hit by fresh round of cloud-focused anti-competitive behaviour complaints

  A Spanish trade association has filed a complaint with the country's competition watchdog over accusations Microsoft’s ‘anti-competitive’ behaviour is harmful to startups

• May 01, 2024 01 May'24

  Google Cloud accelerates asteroid discovery for US-based non-profit

  Google Cloud opens up about the work it is doing with a US-based planetary science non-profit to help map the solar system

• May 01, 2024 01 May'24

  AWS results see public cloud giant tap into surging GenAI demand

  Amazon CEO Andy Jassy claims AWS has turned a corner where its customers’ worries about cloud cost optimisation are concerned

• April 04, 2024 04 Apr'24

  AWS cuts several hundred jobs to tackle ‘inefficiency’ as customer cloud cost-cutting continues

  Public cloud giant AWS is embarking on another round of job cuts, with analysts citing the fact it’s losing ground to Microsoft in the AI race

• April 04, 2024 04 Apr'24

  UK-based cloud provider Civo offers ‘unconditional’ data egress fees waiver to customers

  Stevenage-based ‘open’ cloud champion Civo becomes latest provider to waive data egress fee charges for customers, but claims its offer is unconditional, unlike how the hyperscalers are approaching the same issue

• March 21, 2024 21 Mar'24

  CCS holding firm on G-Cloud 14 insurance requirements for prospective Lot 4 suppliers

  The government’s procurement arm is seemingly refusing to give in to supplier calls to extend its decision to revise down the insurance requirements for G-Cloud 14 to the framework’s fourth Lot

• March 20, 2024 20 Mar'24

  AWS Public Sector Day: AI-enabled care homes and using big data to ease biodiversity crisis

  At this year’s AWS Public Sector Day, delegates heard how AI and cloud-based data processing tools are helping address skills shortfalls in the health and social care sector, as well as the UK’s biodiversity crisis

• March 18, 2024 18 Mar'24

  CCS slammed over errors in G-Cloud 14 data protection documents

  The government’s procurement arm is under fire again, after prospective suppliers to the G-Cloud 14 framework raised complaints about CCS’s quality control procedures

• March 15, 2024 15 Mar'24

  Global McDonalds IT outage result of third-party error

  An IT outage that forced McDonald's to temporarily shutter thousands of restaurants has been blamed on a configuration error by a third-party supplier, but there is no suspicion of foul play

• March 05, 2024 05 Mar'24

  Rapid7 hits out over botched vulnerability disclosure

  Software development firm JetBrains and security specialist Rapid7 fall out over the handling of a critical vulnerability disclosure, while customers are left rushing to patch

• March 05, 2024 05 Mar'24

  IT leaders dial back cloud-first strategies as hybrid IT becomes more of an investment priority

  Latest data from TechTarget and ESG reveals changing attitudes towards cloud deployments within the enterprise

• March 05, 2024 05 Mar'24

  Dutch organisations start building a federated European cloud

  The ‘European cloud services in an open federated ecosystem’ (ECOFED) project is co-funded by the Dutch government and will run from 2024 to 2027

• March 05, 2024 05 Mar'24

  Keepit brings backup and restore to unprotected SaaS applications

  SaaS backup specialist keeps data in its own cloud datacentres, protects cloud data across numerous platforms and aims to give customers the ability to rapidly add data sources

• March 05, 2024 05 Mar'24

  Own targets SaaS backup and offers analytics insight

  Targeting a growing market – SaaS applications that lack backup – Own offers backup, fine-grained restores and analytics on data stores that can bring business insight

• March 04, 2024 04 Mar'24

  G-Cloud 14 insurance requirements ‘under review’ by CCS after SME supplier backlash

  CCS has confirmed to Computer Weekly the insurance requirements for Lots 1 to 3 of the G-Cloud 14 framework are under review, as SME-focused minister pledges to investigate matter

• February 28, 2024 28 Feb'24

  Microsoft reinvents ERP into total enterprise integration

  Microsoft is offering a complete one-stop shop of enterprise services from infrastructure through to remote worker powered by AI

• February 28, 2024 28 Feb'24

  CCS accused of pricing G-Cloud SMEs out of framework with £20m insurance cover hike

  The Crown Commercial Service’s commitment to helping SMEs win more government cloud deals is being called into question again, following news that it is planning to up the insurance cover required by G-Cloud 14 suppliers by £20m