TechTarget News - Week of Jan 10, 2021

Pennine NHS trust gets new imaging tech

Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust is the first of eight NHS trusts to go live with a Manchester-wide diagnostic imaging project

AWS, Apple and Google bans prompt pro-Trump Parler app to fall offline

Free speech-championing social media site Parler has gone dark for violating Amazon, Apple and Google's terms of service, in light of reports of the platform's involvement in co-ordinating the attack on Capitol Hill

New SolarWinds CEO sets out rescue plan

Customers can expect to see more regular and thorough checks on SolarWinds products, alongside greater engagement with the security community

BT removes mobile data charges for BBC Bitesize educational content

As part of a broader partnership between the UK’s public broadcaster and its incumbent telco, hugely popular and award-winning BBC Bitesize programming slot is to be zero rate for all EE, BT Mobile and PlusNet Mobile customers

5 cybersecurity vendors to watch in 2021

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic and economic setbacks, 2020 was another big year for investments in cybersecurity vendors. Here are five startups that stood out from the crowd.

Salesforce Ventures tops $3 billion invested

Salesforce Ventures continues to invest heavily in partners to help build out its platform as the pandemic evolves customer needs. Q&A with managing partner Matt Garratt.

APAC firms’ ‘future readiness’ a mixed bag

Led by firms in China, Singapore and Australia, just over a quarter of businesses in APAC fit the bill as a future-ready business, study finds

Early stage UK security startups face funding crisis

Overall cyber security funding since the advent of the pandemic is well up, but investment is dominated by safe, later-stage firms while those raising capital for the first time fall away

PC market enjoying a revival

Shipments tracked by Canalys in 2020 were the highest for a decade as users embraced notebooks and mobile workstations

August Equity backs fourth MSP

Firm continues its strategy to invest in managed service players it believes can become significant in the market

Parler collapse opens door to phishing attacks

The shutdown of controversial social media site Parler, and the publication of huge amounts of user data scraped by ethical hackers, is giving cyber crime experts cause for concern

Mimecast latest security firm to be compromised

Users of a specific Mimecast certificate used to authenticate services to Microsoft Office 365 may be at risk of compromise in an attack that may relate to the ongoing SolarWinds incident

Tibco acquisitions add capabilities to analytics platform

The recent completion of Tibco's acquisition of IBI has the potential to benefit customers of both given the complementary qualities of the vendors' platforms.

SolarWinds confirms supply chain attack began in 2019

SolarWinds and CrowdStrike published updates Monday that added new information for the timeline of the supply chain attack and how threat actors first gained access.

Digital vaccine certificate looms as HR's next problem

HR departments may want electronic proof of an employee's COVID-19 vaccination, but it's unclear when digital vaccine certificates will be ready.

Cockroach Labs nabs $160M to grow distributed SQL database

Cockroach Labs is looking to advance its CockroachDB database platform in 2021 with $160 million in new funding that it will use to help expand features and market reach.

High phone prices driving consumers to the used phone market

High-priced phones from Apple and Samsung have energized the used phone market, experts said. A $1,000-plus price tag leads many to reconsider the value of a new phone.

Capitol building breach poses cybersecurity risks

While security experts are divided on the level of risk, they agree there is a potential for threats after rioters stormed the Capitol building and ransacked offices.

White House issues guiding principles for AI regulations

While the recommendations for AI regulation in the White House memo are loose, they appear to show the government is beginning to embrace AI, and could be a start toward oversight.

Palo Alto Networks opens Australia cloud location

The cyber security company’s Australia cloud location will address data localisation requirements amid growing adoption of cloud-based security services

Telstra International appoints South Asia head

The international arm of Telstra has hired former DXC Technology executive Geraldine Kor as its managing director for South Asia to tap new growth opportunities

BT eyes up next-gen services with digital unit

In what it says is an important statement of intent following a 2020 with a number of innovations, incumbent telco announces new division designed to deliver next-gen digital platforms and services

European IT outsourcing spend up in 2020 after cloud boost

IT outsourcing sector growth is an indication that businesses are beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel amid the Covid-19 pandemic and the economic disruption it has brought

Covid-19 immunity passport tests to begin in UK

A Covid-19 immunity and vaccination passport developed by two UK firms and backed by Innovate UK has entered the live testing phase

Microsoft Defender zero-day fixed for January Patch Tuesday

In addition to the fix for its antivirus software, Microsoft also corrected a publicly disclosed printer driver flaw that affected Windows client and server systems.

Intel CEO Bob Swan to be replaced by VMware's Pat Gelsinger

Facing delays of critical products along with superior offerings by AMD and Nvidia the past couple of years, Intel CEO is stepping down to be replaced by VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger.

CES: Laptops sport designs friendly for remote workers

Top PC manufacturers Dell, HP and Lenovo emphasized at-home flexibility in their CES laptop announcements. Remote work has driven the need to be productive anywhere.

Oracle offers APEX low-code dev platform as managed service

Oracle has released its APEX low-code development platform as a managed service, touting it as a high-functioning, lower-cost alternative to other low-code tools.

Oracle Database 21c brings blockchain and JavaScript

Oracle's flagship DB platform is moving beyond its roots with the 21c update, to embrace more languages and models in a bid to create a universal converged database offering.

National Retail Federation tackles political unrest, COVID-19

Retailers at NRF discuss COVID-19 operations and how they changed retail forever. Also: the technologies that keep customer experience consistent during supply-chain disruptions.

APAC firms grapple with cyber security amid pandemic

Some aspects of cyber security have taken a backseat as companies across the Asia-Pacific region rush to shore up their infrastructure to cope with the demands of remote work

Zoom reveals phone product spike, public offer price

Strong service performance, reliability and enterprise-grade features drive uptake of Zoom Phone as still rapidly growing conferencing firm announces $1.75bn share offering

Port of Felixstowe lands funding for UK government 5G trial

UK’s largest and busiest container port to test the potential of 5G across two use cases: enabling remotely controlled cranes and optimising predictive maintenance though IoT and AI

Unforeseen consequences of new technologies put UK at risk

Lords committee told that the risks associated with various emerging digital technologies must be assessed together, with input from UK citizens, if the government is to avoid ‘siloisation’ of fundamentally interconnected problems

Scottish councils need better digital skills, report finds

Councils in Scotland still suffer from a lack of digital skills among staff despite progress during the pandemic, and the Scottish Local Government Digital Office has failed to deliver its goal of common platforms and joint procurement, according to Audit Scotland’s Accounts Commission

AWS urges US court to throw out Parler breach of contract lawsuit

Amazon Web Services has responded to news of Parler’s attempt to sue it for breach of contract by filing a lawsuit detailing allegations of the various threats it claims forced it to pull the plug on the stricken social media site

BT cries foul on rivals’ coverage claims as O2, EE extend UK 5G nets

Two of the UK’s mobile giants make significant additions to next-gen networks, but BT consumer CEO warns that rivals are not giving customers meaningful levels of coverage and quality in their 5G offers

Experian calls for less bureaucratic data regulations

Open banking requires cross-industry collaboration, but sharing personal data requires explicit consent, which can become a bottleneck

Democrats push for AI bias testing

Lawmakers in states and Congress are showing increasing interest in guarding against AI bias. Legislation in California and New York City seeks system audits.

Qualcomm announces Nuvia acquisition plan

Mobile chip giant makes strategic acquisition to augment technology roadmap to redefine compute performance for next-generation devices

Kaseya CEO: MSPs stopped an SME catastrophe

The managed service community has kept many small and medium-sized enterprises going throughout the course of the pandemic, says Kaseya CEO

Qualcomm to buy Nuvia for $1.4 billion

Qualcomm's $1.4 billion acquisition of Nuvia would bring a top-notch silicon design team to the mobile chipmaker. Qualcomm did not say when it expects to close the deal.

Veritas acquires HubStor for SaaS data protection

The HubStor product will continue to be offered, but Veritas intends to integrate its technology and capabilities into its Enterprise Data Services Platform in the future.

Workday adds vaccine management for 45M to its platform

COVID-19 vaccine management is getting the attention of HR vendors. Workday announced its vaccine tool, which integrates with the platform's core HR data.

Assent Compliance automates text analytics with AWS

With more than 20,000 documents to review each month, Assent Compliance, a supply chain data management vendor, turned to AWS to automate its text analysis operations.

Banks and telcos lead big data analytics spending in APAC

Banks and telcos contributed nearly one-third of spending on big data analytics in the region, while the government and healthcare sectors will register the highest growth rates, new research finds

Nordic startups make advances in pet tech

Nordic tech startups are looking to take pet tech mainstream following the acceleration of the industry during the current pandemic

Google Cloud, Nokia accelerate readiness for cloud-native enterprise 5G solutions

Cloud platform provider and comms tech supplier announce plans to jointly develop cloud-native 5G core solutions for communications service providers and enterprise customers with cloud capabilities to the network edge to accelerate enterprise digital transformation

CrowdStrike backing top partners

Security player will deepen investment in its top-level partners as it looks to reward those who have invested in the firm

Samsung lowers the price of Galaxy phones with S21 line

Samsung has dropped the starting price of its latest Galaxy phones by 20%. The S21 line will start at $800 when it goes on sale Jan. 29. Other models will cost $1,000 and $1,200.

150,000 records accidentally wiped from police systems

Home Office claims data wiped from national police systems only relates to people who have never been convicted of a crime or had further police action taken against them following an arrest

Private LTE/5G market set to reach £4.2bn in 2024

Research firm predicts sales of private LTE/5G infrastructure to show 43% CAGR from 2019 to 2024, potentially worth an estimated $5.7bn (£4.2bn)

Deloitte: Life sciences vertical taps cloud for R&D

The life sciences vertical has begun to fully embrace cloud computing, spurred on in part because of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Deloitte research; other IT channel news.

Data storytelling a key part of Yellowfin analytics platform

Data storytelling remains a focal point for Yellowfin. Stories, the vendor's narrative generation tool, features heavily in both its latest platform update and roadmap for 2021.

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