News

Despite being fervent adopters of cloud, Australian enterprises are slower than those in the US and UK in deploying business-critical applications

Healthcare company is looking to AI, chatbots and learning playlists to help staff learn new skills more quickly as it adapts changing business priorities

O2 has extended its rural network roll-out, targeting over 300 small communities all over the UK

Big Blue's decision to strike a multi-billion deal for open source player Red Hat means it gains a firm with a strong channel and developer network

IBM and Red Hat senior leadership teams confirm imminent merger, which they claim will help accelerate migration of enterprise workloads to the hybrid cloud

Professional services network PwC has partnered with social initiative UKBlackTech to encourage more young people from different backgrounds into the technology industry

Committee has “serious concerns” about police forces’ digital capabilities, interoperability and tech adoption, and urges ministers to take responsibility

The authorities for Finnish city Espoo are testing out AI technology to help them target services at the residents who need them most

After over a decade of controversy, next week marks the beginning of a court battle between subpostmasters and the Post Office over allegations of faults in an accounting system leading to unfair prosecutions

Global spending on technology in the retail sector is set to grow by 3.6% in 2019, according to predictions by Gartner analysts

Chancellor indicates that those struggling with business rates will get help in the face of mounting online competition

NetApp CEO George Kurian says data center customers are adopting more all-flash file and block storage to manage data across multiple public and private clouds.

Big Blue boosts midrange arrays with NVMe and NVMf capability and launches Spectrum Discover, a Data Lake metadata-focused data analysis tool, plus a new tape drive, the TS1160

Now called Carbonite Server VM Edition, the latest expansion of Carbonite's backup capabilities signifies the vendor's strategic push into the midmarket.

The 2018 Budget promises £1.6bn to fund “advanced technologies” such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing, £200m for rural broadband and £150m for tech fellowships, along with plans to impose a digital services tax for web giants

Late to HCI, NetApp tries to play catch up against Dell EMC, VMware and Nutanix by pushing its SolidFire flash-based product into hybrid cloud deployments.

What's the best approach for implementing RPA? John Hancock discovered that a time-honored practice for the automation of business processes didn't make sense when it came to RPA.

IBM and Red Hat plan to build a raft of complementary open source products to capture a huge hunk of the hybrid cloud market, but not offend their respective partners.

The online property search firm is at ease with microservices, containers and serverless computing, even as it grapples with legacy applications that were developed earlier on in its history

IBM said Red Hat will remain independent after its $34 billion deal goes through, and there are reasons for customers to believe that.

Systems integrator Avanade has had to adapt to Microsoft’s evolution into an “ecosystem platform” that includes open-source software

Proposed legislation would compel landlords and property developers to offer full-fibre broadband to tenants and customers

The tech industry is not impressed with the chancellor’s plan to tax web giants, saying it can stifle innovation, while tax lawyers warn that it is a very risky move that could lead to US retaliation

A large number of large banks could disappear within 12 years unless they change business models and economics

Consumer identity management can deliver competitive advantage, but only if businesses follow some golden rules, says KuppingerCole

AWS retains its title as the world's biggest cloud provider, but the position is not going unchallenged by the likes Microsoft and Google, Synergy Research Group's third quarter market analysis shows

NVMesh2 will allow NVMe flash connectivity, so customers can use existing network hardware between servers. Erasure coding for data protection is also added

A £400m bonus for schools is going to spent by some on improving the technology they use in the classroom

Report says distributed ledger technology “has the potential to deliver significant benefits in financial services and other sectors in the future”

As the government confirms the IR35 reforms will be extended to large and medium-sized businesses in the private sector from April 2020, campaigners claim the move risks destabilising the UK's flexible workforce

8x8 has acquired the open source video conferencing company Jitsi from Atlassian in a bid to improve its online meetings platform, 8x8 Meetings.

The power specialist is rolling out a management service across Europe that should appeal to MSPs

For many CIOs, robotic process automation promises quick wins, but businesses should also take a longer-term view to drive digitisation

Tableau announced a basic certification training exam, adding to its roster of online data literacy courses. Self-service BI rival Qlik also has a big focus on data literacy.

IBM agreed to buy Red Hat with Kubernetes in mind for its multi-cloud management strategy, and it'll have far-reaching implications for the open source container management community, especially Cloud Foundry.

IBM's acquisition of Red Hat could threaten the Linux leader's open source culture of allowing developers to work on any open source projects.

For digital-minded CIOs, Gartner's 2019 top 10 technology trends should come as no surprise: IT is getting smarter, casting an intelligent digital web over the enterprise -- and everywhere else.

McAfee executive attributes Australia’s poor cloud security record to the lack of data protection measures amid “new and confusing” cloud configurations

Research shows business leaders see artificial intelligence and machine learning as key to enabling them to adapt to market disruption

The French energy management and automation firm has nearly halved material wastage by applying smart manufacturing technologies at its Indonesia plant

The UK Post Office is investigating the possibility of enabling UK citizens to re-use their passport data for other applications where digital identity is a key component

Social media giant admits it has a lot of work to do to keep on top of security as it looks to extend payment option to Messenger

After a strong first half the third quarter has been more subdued for the channel player

Following the legal split of the two organisations, telecoms regulator Ofcom has formally ‘released’ BT from the 2005 undertakings set up to manage the Openreach infrastructure business

It has been a good Q3 and a decent first nine months of the year for CDW's operations in the UK

As automation begins to change the way people work, only a small percentage of firms have begun full-scale projects to give their existing staff new skills

The EU data protection laws are helping to drive data protection maturity internationally, but five months after enforcement many companies are still playing catch-up, says consultant

More than 150,000 publicly owned homes have now been connected to Hyperoptic’s ultrafast fibre broadband network

At this year's AWS Transformation Day, the cloud giant's enterprise strategist, Miriam McLemore, talked about why enterprises should be looking to embrace their heritage and legacy when moving to the cloud

Those customers that do not take an interest in artificial intelligence face losing ground and missing out on the benefits

A series of delays and disruption caused chiefly by changes in project ownership meant the government’s IoT UK Research and Innovation Programme failed to use a quarter of its allocated budget between 2015 and 2018

The Leicestershire-based motorcycle company is deploying IT systems to give customers and its own staff a ‘premium brand experience’

Some Red Hat users are taking news of the $34 billion sale to IBM in stride, and say it's important to wait and see.

How to be a better boss: At Tech Conference 24, leadership guru Kim Scott shared how a stern critique from Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg led to the concept of 'radical candor.'

The percentage of women on the boards of technology firms has not changed for the last 20 years, with the gap between men and women on boards growing

As enterprises increase their DevOps tooling investments, Electric Cloud aims to position itself as an orchestrator for the disparate teams and technologies within an organization.

At Gartner Symposium 2018, analyst Peter Firstbrook highlighted the emerging trends in security that cybersecurity pros -- and their employers -- need to prep for in the next year.

Microsoft created the first sandboxed antivirus solution in its latest Insider version of Windows Defender for Windows 10, moving proactively to harden the product against attacks.

A PwC 5G survey finds service providers will have to educate consumers and build unique services if they expect potential buyers to pay more for the high-speed wireless technology.

Excelero's software-defined storage extends NVMe over fabrics support to TCP/IP and Fibre Channel, but the startup isn't abandoning NVMe over RDMA with its NVMesh 2.

NetApp appends services to Data Fabric that aim to help enterprises flexibly manage their data between local storage and public clouds, including AWS, Azure and Google.

At Harvard Business School's recent Tech Conference 24, three panelists discussed the potential need for regulating social media platforms by an independent, quasi-governmental system.

To get new technology into hospitals faster, the Digital Health Collaborative wants to standardize security risk assessments and business associates agreements.

Gartner believes CIOs should prepare for quantum computing. When is it coming, what impact will it have and what do CIOs need to know? Gartner's David Cearley breaks it down.

CHIME released its first Most Wired survey at its Fall CIO Forum, and found that the road to interoperability remains bumpy -- but there are signs of improvement.

Datto’s interim chief talks company’s future against the backdrop of a European partner event

Bahrain is a small island with big plans for its financial technology industry

Mobile operator Three hopes to boost average mobile data speeds by up to 33% through carrier aggregation

Businesses must focus on GDPR and ethical AI if they are to become software firms, says Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella

Following extensive testing and a limited commercial roll-out in campus enterprise environments, Estonian robotics firm Starship Technologies is launching a direct-to-consumer robot delivery service in Milton Keynes

The first off-the-shelf supercomputer to run in space, Apollo 40, will be used for local number crunching and artificial intelligence applications

Success in consumer identity management is not just about getting the technology right, it is also about keeping in mind the consumer needs, preferences and concerns, says KuppingerCole

Hyper-converged infrastructure maker Nutanix pushes its Beam cloud monitoring and management platform into customers’ datacentres, but only for Nutanix deployments, for now

Gartner's Erick Brethenoux gives practical advice on how CIOs can get started with AI. One of his tips: Think data quality, not data quantity.

According to recent industry analyst predictions, digital transformation budgets are on the rise for 2019, with investments in those initiatives driving the increase.

Druva customers can perform cloud migration to Amazon Web Services more simply due to Druva Cloud Platform's integration with AWS Snowball Edge devices.

Genesys has developed new workforce management software to help contact centers with forecasting and scheduling.

A major update to Virtual Instruments' infrastructure management product adds proactive analytics, predictive capacity capabilities, interactive topology maps and iSCSI support.

Access networking supplier Aerohive is to add Alexa skills to its HiveManager network management suite

IBM is in the midst of a multi-year repositioning as it looks to offset the downturn in enterprise demand for its traditional, on-premise offerings by courting enterprise cloud buyers, prompting it to place its biggest bet yet on open source

Following on from research from McAfee indicating it is a fairly confusing picture out there Claranet has called on more focus on the human end of cloud security

MEF is making its SD-WAN standard available to members, with public availability expected in 2019. But analysts deem the specifications too low-level to effect change.

IT organizations that undertake continuous delivery and deployment initiatives must find strategies to enable that nonstop rush into production without any space for massive or prolonged user-facing problems.

The introduction of Cisco's 400 GbE switches comes a week after Arista unveiled its hardware. The products differ in merchant silicon, optical connectors and backward compatibility.

The Department for Education will be awarding two businesses a share of £300,000 in funding to further develop prototypes submitted as part of the Higher Education Open Data competition

As long as it is making money, why worry how may iPhones are out there, the company argues

Telco sets out plan to get its troubled Global Services business unit fighting fit

Find out who made the shortlist for this year's Best of VMworld Europe User Awards, with the winners set to be announced at VMworld next week

DWP’s outgoing chief digital and information officer will begin new role in charge of digitalisation of Centrica’s consumer business in the New Year

Each year, John Lewis hosts a number of retail startups intent on using technology to transform the industry. Next year they will be aiming to change the customer experience in-store

Vendor believes more frequent update cycle is better for managed service providers

The government’s initial recruitment campaign for the UK’s "biggest and most important security job” has been unsuccessful, Cabinet Office admits

Privacy watchers say the breach of personal data of members of the Radisson Hotel Group’s loyalty scheme could be an interesting test case for how the GDPR will be applied

A global Cisco study has found that customers looking to innovate need to take the pressure off the IT budget by getting better at predicting where problems might occur

Telecoms regulator is making a new attempt to establish better access to BT’s duct and pole infrastructure for communication services providers

The government’s Crown Representative for SMEs, Emma Jones, sheds light on her three-pronged approach to increase spend with smaller businesses

Facebook will appeal a decision by the Irish High Court to refer questions over the legality of EU-US data transfers to the European Court of Justice in January, as the Dublin court rejects attempt by a UK IT expert to join the case

A new report looking at how startups can penetrate the policing market has been released, but there are still a number of practical and ethical challenges facing SMEs moving into the space

Amazon's AI voice assistant platform for enterprises, Alexa for Business, is now compatible with third-party devices from vendors including Polycom.

DevSecOps is seen as a way of ensuring application security, but security leaders must understand that embedding a security culture and taking the inter-dependencies of new development frameworks into account is key, says KuppingerCole

Researchers found Kraken ransomware has become more popular after being packaged in the Fallout exploit kit and becoming part of an affiliate program.

News roundup: SamSam ransomware targeted 67 organizations in 2018, according to research. Plus, Equifax is sending its breach victims to Experian for credit monitoring, and more.

A panel of experts speaking at Microsoft’s Future Decoded event in London said one of the biggest skills gap in the technology industry surrounds soft skills

Armis researchers discovered two chip-level Bluetooth vulnerabilities -- dubbed Bleedingbit -- that could allow pseudo-remote code execution on wireless access points.

Rackspace's managed public cloud business is packaging services to help customers at different phases of their cloud journeys; other news from the week.

The success of the $34 billion Red Hat buyout would rely on Big Blue's handling of the open source software vendor's portfolio and culture, according to IBM business partners.

HashiCorp is valued at $1.9 billion for its IT management software, such as Vault 1.0, and the IBM-Red Hat merger has set off speculation about the firm's future.

After its acquisition by IBM, Red Hat wasted little time unveiling the next version of its flagship product, RHEL 7.6, which supports hybrid clouds and updated security.

In networking news, a report shows increased confidence in Wi-Fi; Ciena releases an analytics-as-a-service product; and Avi Networks targets multi-cloud load balancing.

Expect enterprise Java to evolve under the influence of new stewards, including IBM and Red Hat which will likely steer it toward cloud-native and microservices development.

The Managed CockroachDB distributed database cloud service targets megascale workloads but faces stiff competition from public cloud players Microsoft, AWS and Google.