IT

Schneider Electric launches IT monitoring & dispatch services in the UK.

Schneider Electric, today announced the launch of Monitoring & Dispatch Services in the UK. The services enable IT solution providers and end users to optimise resources, improve efficiency, and help prevent downtime by leveraging Schneider Electric to manage the operations of distributed IT infrastructure. Through simplifying the management of edge computing sites, the new services are designed to make life easier for IT staff, ensure coverage at any unmanned sites and can provide significant savings over the lifecycle of the infrastructure. Services include remote monitoring, troubleshooting, and on-site, next-business-day remediation, including replacement parts. "I am pleased that our Monitoring & Dispatch Services are now available in the UK. The services add to Schneider Electric’s continued drive to find new and innovative ways to simplify operating at the edge while increasing uptime, meeting the key challenges of multiple remote sites and limited IT staff," states David Pownall, Vice President of Services at Schneider Electric. "Using our vast experience in IT infrastructure, we are providing more options to enable our partners and end users to operate more productively, efficiently and sustainably. IT solution providers can add Monitoring & Dispatch Services to their service offering to quickly and cost-effectively expand their portfolio and value to customers. Digital transformation requires edge computing and comes with new challenges Digital transformation depends on edge computing, which places IT infrastructure across distributed networks. Industry analysts agree that as a result, shrinking IT staffs are challenged to manage the complexity. In a recent report* from IDC, analysts comment "edge IT presents organisations with new challenges related to areas such as deployment, integration, network management, security, and cost management." More than 60 percent of end user organisations want outside help in managing their edge deployments, according to IDC. In answer to those challenges, Monitoring & Dispatch Services are powered by analytics from the EcoStruxure IT data lake. This data, along with Schneider Electric's deep domain expertise, allows the Connected Services Hub and customers to glean insightful, data-driven recommendations to maintain system uptime and shift from being reactive to proactive in maintaining distributed IT infrastructure. This approach combines 24/7 expert remote monitoring and troubleshooting by Schneider Electric's engineers with next-business-day, on-site support, including replacement parts, when necessary. Moreover, by employing a proactive approach to service, end users can save up to 40 percent** over the lifecycle management of their distributed IT. Benefits of Monitoring & Dispatch Services include:  Optimise resources: By streamlining and standardising operations, the new services eliminate the burden of managing dispersed physical infrastructure deployments without having to hire additional IT staff.Improve efficiency and reduce risk: It helps reduce mean time to repair with access to enhanced reports, providing the ability to plan for required maintenance, future upgrades, and expansions.Help prevent costly downtime: 24/7 remote monitoring against system instability and unexpected failures. "Monitoring & Dispatch Services have enabled our IT teams to focus on mission-critical activities that support Ventura County Community College District's key priorities," says Dan Watkins, Associate Vice Chancellor, Information Technology, Ventura County Community College District. "By combining 24/7 monitoring, troubleshooting, on-site support, and any necessary parts; the service reduces our time spent on reactive maintenance, keeps us focused on achieving our commitments and timelines, and helps us gain OpEx efficiencies." New services fuel IT solution provider revenue growth As IT solution providers seek new ways to help their customers address the challenges of managing distributed infrastructure networks, they are extending their offer portfolios to include new services. Monitoring & Dispatch Services can quickly and cost-effectively be added to a partner's service portfolio to expand their offerings to include remote monitoring, troubleshooting, and on-site, next-business-day remediation, including replacement parts. "Thanks to Monitoring & Dispatch Services, we have been able to provide a full package service to our customers to relieve their staff from maintenance duties and give them the peace of mind to dedicate their time to their focused activities," comments Dan Coffman, CEO, UPS Protection. Monitoring & Dispatch Services are supported by the open, vendor-agnostic software platform EcoStruxure IT. Schneider Electric's portfolio of software and services provide the power and flexibility for customers to seamlessly manage critical infrastructure devices on their own, with a partner, or to leverage Schneider Electric's expert service engineers to manage it on their behalf. Monitoring & Dispatch Services are available in North America, Australia, Austria, Germany, New Zealand, and now in the United Kingdom.

Ionos receives planning approval for Worcester Six development

A major data centre is to be built on Worcester Six, the flagship business park, after Wychavon District Council approved plans by property developer Stoford. The development of plot 6 will deliver a 51,479sq ft unit to be undertaken on behalf of 1&1 Ionos, which is the largest European-based data hosting company. The new site is earmarked to become a highly energy-efficient, cutting-edge data centre totalling 38,501 sq ft for IONOS and its subsidiary brand Fasthosts for UK and overseas customers. The development will also include 12,978sq ft of ancillary offices. Edward Peel, Development Manager at Stoford, comments: “The approval for the IONOS development will bring another world-class operator to Worcester Six, which recognises the strategic location, excellent infrastructure links, and talented workforce that businesses can draw upon. “We believe this is the first data centre to come to Wychavon and it is a clear indication of the confidence that IONOS, which is the largest cloud and hosting provider in Europe, has for the area, and for the business park. “The excellent central location of Worcester Six, plus the availability and diverse routing of services that we have installed to the site, made this a forerunner for IONOS; we are proud to be delivering this building for them.” Achim Weiss, IONOS CEO, says: “We are thrilled to start construction of the Worcester Six data centre soon. The demand for cloud services has been growing even more in these difficult times and with our new site we will be able to provide a variety of hosting, computing, and storage solutions to customers across the UK. We are very grateful that Wychavon District Council has approved our application so quickly.” Councillor Richard Morris, Deputy Leader and portfolio holder for economic growth at Wychavon District Council, adds: “IONOS choosing Wychavon as a base for their new data centre and offices is a tremendous vote of confidence in our local economy and will create high quality jobs in a growth industry.  I look forward to having a tour of the new centre when it opens next year.” Councillor Ken Pollock, Cabinet Member with Responsibility for Economy and Infrastructure at Worcestershire County Council, adds: “We look forward to working with IONOS, as a potential new occupier of the Worcester Six Business Park. This news is testament to the teams who have worked tirelessly in the most difficult of circumstances to maintain the county’s extensive progress in the business development and growth area. “Data has become one of the world’s most valuable commodities in recent years and the pandemic has not altered this. Data centre demand continues to be driven by the rapid adoption of cloud services and the emergence of business models. This development not only solidifies Worcester Six Business Park as a first-rate business location but also provides Worcestershire with a highly valued asset, bringing substantial economic benefits for the county.” IONOS was established in 1988 and is the largest hosting company in Europe, managing more than eight million customer contracts and hosting more than 12 million domains in its regional data centres around the globe. The IONOS group operates in fifteen countries around the world and employs 3,500 people worldwide. In the past two years, Worcester Six has welcomed Marmon Food and Beverage Equipment, Siemens, Spire Healthcare, Kimal and Kohler Mira at Worcester Six. Once fully developed, the business park will provide 1.5 million sq ft of accommodation. Stoford also obtained consent for a speculative unit of 37,000 sq ft in February this year, which it says can be delivered within a 10-month period.

AWS announces general availability of Amazon managed workflows

Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com company (NASDAQ: AMZN), announced the general availability of Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow (MWAA), a new managed service that makes it easy for data engineers to execute data processing workflows in the cloud. Apache Airflow is a popular open-source tool that helps customers author, schedule, and monitor workflows. With Amazon MWAA, customers can use the same familiar Airflow platform as they do today to manage their workflows, and enjoy improved scalability, availability, and security without the burden of having to build, scale, and manage the underlying infrastructure. Amazon MWAA scales workflow execution capacity based on customer needs, and integrates with AWS security services to provide secure access to customers’ data. There are no up-front investments required to use Amazon MWAA and customers only pay for what they use. Today, customers are using analytics and machine learning to derive insights from massive amounts of data. To effectively use this data, customers often need to first build a workflow that defines a series of sequential tasks to prepare and process the data. Tens of thousands of customers use AWS Step Functions to visually build and run cost-effective and scalable event-driven workflows that execute tasks across multiple AWS services. There are also customers who want the Apache Airflow orchestration workflow, which has an active open source community, a large library of pre-built integrations to third-party data processing tools like Apache Spark and Hadoop, and the ability to use Python scripts to create workflows. However, using Apache Airflow requires data engineers to install, maintain, scale, and secure the Apache Airflow environments, which adds cost and operational complexity. Furthermore, to support role-based authentication for secure access, Apache Airflow often requires a manual, iterative, and error-prone combination of configuration changes, command-line interface (CLI) commands, and, in some cases, edits to the Apache Airflow code. Customers also must integrate and configure additional tools for alerting for issues like system downtime, workflow errors, and task execution delays. While customers really enjoy the pre-built integrations and familiar Python programming language of Apache Airflow, they want it without the added operational cost and complexity. Amazon MWAA makes it easy for customers to build and execute Apache Airflow workflows in AWS. Amazon MWAA manages the provisioning and ongoing maintenance of Apache Airflow so customers no longer need to worry about patching, scaling, or securing self-managed Apache Airflow implementations. With Amazon MWAA, compute resources that execute tasks are scaled on demand, providing consistent performance for users. Customer data is secure by default as workloads run in customers’ own isolated and secure cloud environments using Amazon’s Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC), with stored data encrypted using AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS). Amazon MWAA makes it easy for customers to combine data using any of Apache Airflow’s integrations, including AWS services and popular third-party tools like Apache Hadoop, Presto, Hive, and Spark, to automate data processing, machine learning pipelines, and software development and operations. Customers can provide role-based access to Apache Airflow’s user interface easily and securely via AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), providing users Single Sign-On (SSO) access for scheduling and viewing their workflow executions. Amazon MWAA automatically sends Apache Airflow system metrics and logs to AWS’s monitoring service, Amazon CloudWatch, making it easy for customers to view task execution delays and workflow errors across one or more environments without third party tools. With Amazon MWAA, data engineers get the extensibility of Apache Airflow with the scalability, availability, and security of AWS. “Customers have told us they really like Apache Airflow because it speeds the development of their data processing and machine learning workflows, but they want it without the burden of scaling, operating, and securing servers,” says Jesse Dougherty, Vice President, Application Integration, AWS. “With Amazon MWAA, customers can use the same Apache Airflow platform as they do today with the scalability, availability, and security of AWS.” Customers can launch a new Amazon MWAA environment from the AWS Management Console, CLI, AWS CloudFormation, or AWS SDK, and start running in minutes. Amazon MWAA is available today in US East (Northern Virginia), US West (Oregon), US East (Ohio), Asia Pacific (Singapore), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), Asia Pacific (Sydney), Europe (Ireland), Europe (Frankfurt), and Europe (Stockholm), with more regions to come. The Pokémon Company International, a subsidiary of The Pokémon Company in Japan, manages the property outside of Asia and is responsible for brand management, licensing, marketing, the Pokémon Trading Card Game, the animated TV series, home entertainment, and the official Pokémon website. “Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow meshes with our security policy by providing single sign-on controlled access through IAM roles and the ability to restrict access to our Amazon Virtual Private Cloud,” comments Eric Smith, Data Platform Engineer at The Pokémon Company International. “With Amazon MWAA, we can focus on building reliable data pipelines that achieve business goals rather than patching and securing instances.” Detroit-based Rocket Mortgage, the nation’s largest mortgage lender, enables the American Dream of homeownership and financial freedom through an industry-leading, digital-driven client experience. “Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow has helped us grow and scale our data science and machine learning workflows with significantly less infrastructure overhead," states Dan Jones, Senior Vice President of Data Intelligence for Rocket Mortgage. "With this new service, our technology teams are able to deliver best-in-class, data-driven solutions faster than ever before." GoDaddy is the company that empowers everyday entrepreneurs. With more than 20 million customers worldwide, GoDaddy is the place people come to name their ideas, build a professional website, attract customers, and manage their work. “Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow solves one of the biggest operational overheads with orchestration,” concludes Jeremy Zogg, Senior Director of Engineering at GoDaddy. “We have spent a lot of hours setting up, configuring, scaling, and monitoring our on-premises Apache Airflow instances. This was our top challenge for our workflow deployments and we’re excited to migrate and concentrate on what we do best: harnessing the power of data to drive great outcomes for our customers and business.”

Europe on track for quantum leadership: IQM raises €39m.

IQM Quantum Computers has announced that it has raised €39m in Series A funding, bringing the total amount of funding raised to date to €71m.  This ranks among the highest fundraising rounds by a European deep-tech start-up within a year. MIG Fonds has led this round, with participation from all existing investors including Tesi, OpenOcean, Maki.vc, Vito Ventures, Matadero QED. New investors Vsquared, Salvia GmbH, Santo Venture Capital GmbH, and Tencent, have also joined this round. “IQM has a strong track record of research and in achieving high growth. They continue to attract the best global talent across functions and have exceeded their hardware and software milestones. We are thrilled to lead this round and continue to support IQM as the company accelerates its next phase of business and hardware growth,” says Axel Thierauf, Partner at MIG Fonds, and Chairman of the Board of IQM. Since 2019, IQM has been among the fastest-growing companies in the quantum computing sector and already has one of the world’s largest quantum hardware engineering teams. This funding will be used to accelerate IQM´s hardware development and to co-design application-specific quantum computers. A significant part of the funding will also be used to attract and retain the best global talent in quantum computing, and to establish sales and business development teams.  ”Today’s announcement is part of our ongoing Series-A funding round. I am extremely pleased with the confidence our investors have shown in our vision, team, product, and the ability to execute and commercialize quantum computers. This investment also shows their continued belief in building the future of quantum technologies. This is a significant recognition for our fantastic team that has achieved all our key milestones from the previous round. We’re just getting started,” comments Jan Goetz, CEO of IQM. “It is impressive to be a part of the IQM journey and see the progress of their technology. We’re proud to see another startup from Finland making a global impact. IQM will have a lasting impact on the future of computing, and consequently will help solve some of the global challenges related to healthcare, climate change and development of sustainable materials among many others,” adds Juha Lehtola, Head of Direct VC Investments at Tesi (Finnish Industry Investment).  IQM delivers on-premises computers for research laboratories and supercomputing centres. For industrial customers, IQM follows an innovative co-design strategy to deliver quantum advantage based on application-specific processors, using novel chip architectures and ultrafast quantum operations. IQM provides the full hardware stack for a quantum computer, integrating different technologies, and invites collaborations with quantum software companies.  “We want to invest in deep technology startups that shape the future and advance society. IQM is the perfect example of a company that is on top of its game; their work on quantum computing will make an impact for generations to come,” concludes Herbert Mangesius, Founding Partner at Vsquared and Vito Ventures. While quantum computing is still under development, governments and private organizations across the world are investing today to retain their competitive edge and become ready for the future. The next decade will be the decade of quantum technology, and we will see major breakthroughs with real-world applications using quantum computers in healthcare, logistics, finance, chemistry and beyond.

Acronis acquires CyberLynx, enhances cyber protection portfolio

Acronis, a global leader in cyber protection, announced today the acquisition of CyberLynx, a leading cybersecurity consultancy firm. This acquisition marks Acronis’ third in a year, continuing the company’s growth plan. As a provider of security audits and proprietary training solutions, CyberLynx enjoys a customer presence built on technical expertise and strong connections with leading suppliers. This will advance Acronis’ mission to deliver world-class cyber protection to organisations. “Acronis’ acquisition of CyberLynx shows its commitment to strengthening its expertise in cybersecurity,” comments Frank Dickson from IDC. “By providing integrated cybersecurity and data protection, Acronis reduces the complexity of implementing cybersecurity and improving IT. The CyberLynx acquisition will strengthen Acronis’ services, further enhancing Acronis’ ability to be an active partner in improving clients security posture with training solutions.” Acronis will integrate CyberLynx’s services into its suite of Acronis Security Services. Drawing on CyberLynx’s expertise in threat simulation and analysis, Acronis can assist service providers and managed security service providers as they protect their clients, serving as the “last line of defence” against threats. “Adding CyberLynx to our portfolio helps Acronis provide security evaluations to our partners, empowering them to improve client protection,” says Serguei Beloussov, Acronis’ Founder and CEO. “Working with our security team and network of Cyber Protection Operation Centres.” “In advancing its vision of cyber protection, Acronis has been redefining how organisations should be thinking about data protection and cybersecurity against the today’s landscape, and we’re thrilled that the next stage of CyberLynx’s contributions will be as part of such a visionary company,” explains Noam Herold, founder and CEO of CyberLynx. “Our team looks forward to collaborating with our new peers to continue strengthening the security of organisations around the world.” As the company continues its growth strategy, Acronis plans to consider additional acquisitions that will further enhance its offerings with new technologies and capabilities that address the Five Vectors of Cyber Protection — solving the safety, accessibility, privacy, authenticity, and security challenges that face today’s data, applications, and systems.

Schneider Electric Releases EcoStruxure Micro Data Centers for Indoor Environments

Schneider Electric, announced today the expansion of its IP and NEMA rated EcoStruxure Micro Data Center R-Series for rugged indoor environments. The new micro data centres offer a fast and simple way to deploy and manage edge computing infrastructure in challenging indoor spaces for industrial use. The six new models are available in 16U, 24U, and 42U sizes starting in December in the United States and Canada. They will be available in Europe early next year. As industrial operators deploy Industry 4.0 technologies to increase productivity, safety, and automation, micro data centres are becoming essential to addressing everything from the convergence of IT and OT to the enabling of IIoT applications — making IT on the factory floor more reliable. “Advanced automation technologies come with significant cost-saving, safety, and productivity benefits, but to reap the benefits, IT must be located closer to the end point — in spaces that weren’t built with IT in mind,” says Jean-Baptiste Plagne, Vice President Offer Management, Rack & Edge Systems, Energy Management, Schneider Electric. “To ensure reliability of IT networks on the factory floor, we are introducing the new IP and NEMA rated R-Series EcoStruxure Micro Data Centre. These micro data centres provide a solution that’s simple-to-manage for IT and industrial channels and for end users like distributors.” EcoStruxure Micro Data Center solutions are configurable, pre-packaged, enclosed rack systems that include power, cooling, security, and management. They save up to 40% in field engineering costs, get systems to market 20% faster, and reduce maintenance costs by 7%. Micro data centres take advantage of existing infrastructure and can potentially reduce capital expenses by 42% a traditional build. The new R-Series reinforces these benefits and helps customers alleviate difficulties because it is: Built to withstand harsh indoor environments and applications. Industrial edge environments can be challenging with high levels of dust, moisture, and wide temperature variations. With Schneider Electric’s portfolio of software and services when there’s limited-to-no on-site IT staff. EcoStruxure IT, an open, vendor-agnostic platform, provides the power and flexibility for users to manage critical infrastructure on their own, with a partner, or to allow Schneider Electric's service engineers to manage the assets for them. It can go in unsecured locations. Able to standardise your design across multiple environments with a single, all-in-one-solution, which is easier to deploy and maintain than disparate systems. The new R-Series is available through APC Channel Partners and Schneider Electric sales representatives. For industrial operators to capture the benefits of increased automation, they cannot rely on cloud-technology alone to bring the resiliency and speed demanded by artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other Industry 4.0 technologies. Local edge data centres are IT infrastructure enclosures/spaces/facilities distributed geographically to enable endpoints on the network. When in industrial environments, such as a manufacturing plant or distribution centre, this application is referred to as "industrial edge computing." Analysts have identified the edge as becoming increasingly important.

Increased responsibilities are pushing IT to breaking point

IT is an innovator as well as a caretaker in mid-market organisations, but increased pressure is driving teams towards burnout Increasing pressure on IT teams is pushing many IT decision-makers to the brink, according to new research from Pulsant, a leading UK provider of regional data centre and cloud infrastructure services. Nearly two-thirds of UK IT decision-makers (65%) have felt under increasing pressure to keep the organisation running effectively over the past year, with 80% of these admitting this has harmed their health and wellbeing. The research, which was conducted on 201 UK IT decision-makers in mid-market organisations, finds increased pressure on IT has manifested in various ways: 40% of IT decision-makers impacted say they are experiencing anxiety as a result of increased pressure; over a third (35%) are suffering from increased stress which is unsustainable and will result in burn out if not addressed, and nearly a quarter (24%) have experienced this which has resulted with absence from the business. Worryingly for businesses, 20% have either resigned or started looking for a new job. The rise in pressure could be due to an increase in expectations with 77% of IT decision-makers saying expectations of IT have risen within their organisation in the past 12 months. The biggest reasons for this increase were noted as a greater focus on security and compliance (45%), the expectation for IT to work with more areas of the business (39%), the expectation for IT to support and have knowledge of a broader range of technologies (38%), increased pressure to update ageing infrastructure (36%) and being expected to deliver projects quicker (35%). This, in turn, means that IT teams are left stretched across a wide range of responsibilities, with over a third (34%) of IT decision-makers saying a big workload/not enough time is one of the top challenges within their teams.  “An accelerating pace of change means that IT teams are under more pressure than ever to support more critical business initiatives and deliver results faster, while at the same time ensuring business systems remain available, secure and compliant,” says Pulsant CTO, Simon Michie. “This can place IT teams under immense strain which is detrimental to both the success of the business, and more importantly employee wellbeing, with staff left stressed, anxious and having to take time out from the business. “ The research also revealed a divide in opinions on the purpose of IT, with IT seen as both a caretaker of information and technology and also the driver of innovation across the business. Over half of IT decision-makers (58%) and business leaders (55%) believe the primary role of IT is either a help desk or technical support function or to be responsible for maintaining and running business-critical systems, while 40% of IT decision-makers and 45% of business leaders see the main role of the IT department as an enabler of innovation. IT has also become influential in board-level business decision making with the majority (87%) of IT decision-makers saying IT is involved in setting the business strategy for the year ahead. An overwhelming majority (93%) say their organisation has a representative from the IT team on the board/leadership team, highlighting that IT is now widely regarded as a critical function. However, while there is clear recognition for the role of IT in driving the business strategy and innovation, IT teams face challenges in delivering on expectations. Nearly two-thirds of IT decision-makers (65%) say their team is under pressure to be more innovative but there is not enough investment for this to be possible. IT decision-makers are also put off from driving new ideas forward by challenges including conflicting priorities (38%), lack of resource (36%) and time (35%). “It’s hugely positive that both business leaders and IT decision-makers recognise the role of IT in driving innovation, but it’s clear that more attention needs to be paid to providing the IT team with the right support and resources it needs to perform both functions effectively and maintain the wellbeing of IT professionals,” concludes Michie.