Cloud

Google Cloud appoints new regional Vice President

Google Cloud has announced the appointment of Maureen Costello as Vice President, United Kingdom and Ireland (UKI) and Sub-Saharan Africa. In this role, Maureen will oversee the company's sales strategy and operations across both regions. Maureen brings nearly three decades of industry experience to Google Cloud, having previously served as Corporate Vice President for Industry Solutions Delivery at Microsoft. Prior to her role at Microsoft, she held several leadership positions during her 25-year tenure at Accenture, including Senior Managing Director and Resources Lead for UKI. "It’s an honour to join Google Cloud at such a pivotal time in its journey," Maureen comments. "We have a tremendous opportunity to help businesses across the UKI and Sub-Saharan Africa harness the full potential of the cloud, from AI and data analytics to cyber security and sustainability. I am eager to build on the strong foundation already in place." Maureen joins Google Cloud at a key stage in its growth trajectory. The company has recently announced major relationships in the UK with organisations including BT, John Lewis & Partners, Vodafone, and WPP. In Africa, Google Cloud opened its first region in Johannesburg, South Africa, in January 2024, and has committed $1 billion to support digital transformation initiatives across the continent. "Maureen is a proven leader with an exceptional track record of driving growth and building high-performing teams," notes Tara Brady, President, EMEA, Google Cloud. "Her deep industry expertise and understanding of the unique needs of customers will be invaluable as we continue to expand Google Cloud's presence in these key markets. We are thrilled to welcome her to the Google Cloud EMEA leadership team." Google Cloud is a new way to the cloud, providing AI, infrastructure, developer, data, security, and collaboration tools built for today and tomorrow. It offers a powerful, fully integrated and optimised AI stack with its own planet-scale infrastructure, custom-built chips, generative AI models and development platform, as well as AI-powered applications, to help organisations transform. Customers in more than 200 countries and territories use Google Cloud as their trusted technology partner. For more from Google Cloud, click here.

AWS Direct Connect Location available at Telehouse Osaka

KDDI Corporation, parent company to Telehouse, has announced today the availability of an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Direct Connect Location at its Telehouse Osaka data centre in Japan. Telehouse Osaka customers can now directly access over 240 AWS cloud services, including AWS's generative AI via AWS Direct Connect, a cloud service that links customer networks directly to AWS Regions (data centres) through a dedicated network from Telehouse Osaka. This enables low-latency and secure connections to their own cloud environments. Telehouse Osaka will reportedly be the first data centre in Japan operated by a Japanese telecommunications company to provide a dedicated connection point to AWS Direct Connect. Globally, this will be the third AWS Direct Connect site to implement the service, following Telehouse PARIS Voltaire and Telehouse London Docklands. Takeyuki Yanagisawa, General Manager, Connectivity DC Planning Department at KDDI, comments, “The AWS Direct Connect Location at Telehouse Osaka allows for the creation of a secure and private link between AWS cloud services and our customers’ IT systems within the data centre. This setup significantly enhances throughput and ensures stability of our customers’ networks.” “Additionally, by using the fibre core-based data centre interconnection service in the Osaka Business Park, customers can also access their IT infrastructure from other data centres.” For more from KDDI, click here.

Alibaba named 'leader' in Public Cloud Platforms report

Alibaba Cloud, the digital technology and intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group, has been named a 'Leader' in The Forrester Wave: Public Cloud Platforms Q4 2024 report. Alibaba Cloud believes this designation recognises its depth of its cloud and AI offerings and strategy, its significant global presence, as well as the ability to provide its global customers with a wide range of products and services. This is the first time Alibaba Cloud has been recognised as a Leader among other significant public cloud platform providers in this report. Alibaba Cloud is named one of four leaders among nine global vendors evaluated in Forrester’s report, with the second highest scores in the current offering and strategy categories. The report states that Alibaba Cloud showed its capacity for AI innovation with homegrown AI models, breadth of foundation model choices and model-as-a-service (MaaS) innovation. The report also states that the core infrastructure and model-as-a-service capabilities enable Alibaba Cloud to provide a major model repository for AI across China. “Alibaba has upped the ante on serverless beyond AI, packaging its powerful cloud-native infrastructure into more accessible offerings for both developers and operators, with data and analytics as a stand out,” Forrester notes in the report. “Alibaba is a good fit for Chinese-based enterprises or international corporations requiring cloud scale across APAC and parts of Africa, Europe, and Latin America.” The Forrester report is a 30-criterion evaluation of the nine most significant public cloud platform providers. Each provider is evaluated on the strengths of their current offerings, strategy and market presence. Alibaba Cloud has achieved the highest possible assessment score (5.0 out of 5.0) in 17 criteria, including database, data integration and governance services, container and Kubernetes services, serverless/FaaS services, compute, IoT, storage services, as well as AI development services. Jingren Zhou, Chief Technology Officer of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, comments, “Expanding our cloud-native infrastructure and AI capabilities in the public cloud space to better support our clients is a top priority. We are honoured to be recognised by Forrester for our efforts in this critical area. To address the increasing demands of AI, we are dedicated to continuously enhancing our ability to provide accessible, scalable, and reliable cloud products and AI applications to our customers.” At Apsara Conference 2024, Alibaba Cloud’s annual flagship event hosted in September, Alibaba Cloud unveiled a revamped full-stack infrastructure designed to meet the growing demands for robust AI computing. It also released over 100 of its newly-launched large language models, Qwen 2.5, to the global open-source community. Qwen, Alibaba Cloud’s proprietary large language model, has seen significant adoption since its introduction in April 2023. The Qwen models have been downloaded over 40 million times on open-source platforms such as Hugging Face and ModelScope, and have inspired the creation of more than 78,000 derivative models. As a creator of the MaaS concept and an advocate of open source, Alibaba Cloud also built ModelScope, China’s biggest AI model community. It hosts over 10,000 models and serves more than 8 million developers. Alibaba Cloud continues to expand its global reach, currently operating 85 data centres in 28 regions globally. In May 2024, Alibaba Cloud announced plans to launch its first cloud region in Mexico, and to establish additional data centres in its key markets including Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and South Korea in the next three years. For more from Alibaba Cloud, click here.

Nationwide migrates IT estate to HPE GreenLake cloud

Hewlett Packard Enterprise today announced that Nationwide Building Society has selected HPE GreenLake cloud for its private cloud deployment, enabling it to accelerate its hybrid cloud journey. With the addition of HPE GreenLake Management Services as a strategic cloud services provider, Nationwide is now using the power of cloud technology to support the evolving needs of its customers. In 2018, Nationwide kick-started an ambitious journey to ensure it was primed for the next generation of digital innovation, with its hybrid cloud strategy being driven by the need for different cloud environments for various types of data and workloads. Leveraging the comprehensive capabilities of HPE GreenLake, Nationwide is creating an agile, scalable, secure, resilient, and efficient technology platform. “In today’s world our customers expect us to deliver an always-on service whilst providing new, innovative features that help them better manage their finances,” says Paul Walsh, Director of Infrastructure & Service Delivery, at Nationwide Building Society. “Nationwide’s hybrid cloud strategy is vital to our ability to compete and means we can continue to meet the needs and expectations of our customers. HPE GreenLake cloud is a core component of our hybrid cloud strategy. With them we’re building a cloud platform that will further improve our resilience and agility, enabling us to provide even better levels of service and deliver new capabilities to our developers faster than ever before.” With HPE GreenLake Management Services, Nationwide’s IT team will automate and orchestrate infrastructure management and deliver infrastructure as code. This enables them to focus on innovation, value-add activities and gain better control over application builds and security. Faster release cycles will accelerate the time to market, providing consistent customer experiences across all digital platforms. At the same time, Nationwide can ensure that sufficient controls are in place to manage risk, protect their customers and meet the demands of regulators, while unlocking the value of cloud technology. Nationwide’s hybrid cloud strategy fully embraces cloud economics, enabling efficient monitoring and management of consumption. HPE GreenLake's consumption-based model prevents overprovisioning and allows Nationwide to only pay for capacity that it is using. This is expected to support Nationwide in reducing its IT cost base by at least 30%. Furthermore, a dedicated service within HPE GreenLake cloud gives the building society a clear overview of their energy consumption and emissions, enabling Nationwide to manage its infrastructure more efficiently and reduce the environmental impact. The impact will be further reduced by upcycling and recycling of decommissioned assets, such as the end-of-use compute and storage infrastructure that GreenLake has replaced. “We are proud to support Nationwide with their cloud vision, providing them with enhanced control and security and the reliability and flexibility for growth,” says Matt Harris, Senior Vice President and Managing Director, UK, Ireland, Middle East and Africa at HPE. “Nationwide’s modernisation journey showcases the effectiveness of HPE GreenLake cloud, with the storied institution transitioning from complex, legacy technology to a modern, future-proofed hybrid cloud operating model, where a one-size-fits all public cloud could never be the only answer." For more from HPE, click here.

CtrlS Datacenters announces direct access to Oracle Cloud

CtrlS Datacenters, Asia’s largest Rated-4 data centre operator and a member of Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN), today announced it will offer its customers direct high-speed connectivity to Oracle’s cloud and AI services through Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) FastConnect. Organisations can harness the power of AI and a full suite of over 150 cloud services, including Oracle Autonomous Database, using the Oracle Cloud Mumbai Region and the Oracle Cloud Hyderabad Region to unlock innovation and drive business growth. Through dedicated 2x100G Partner ports, CtrlS Datacenters offers customers both shared and dedicated access to OCI FastConnect. This enables organisations to: • Reduce latency and improve performance: experience faster data transfer, minimising lags and disruptions for optimal application performance• Enhance security: dedicated network paths and robust encryption help ensure secure migration and management of workloads in OCI• Increase agility and scalability: scale cloud resources to support evolving business needs, fostering greater flexibility and adaptability This collaboration with Oracle is designed to empower organisations in key markets, such as Hyderabad and Mumbai, to access OCI services with enhanced speed, security, and reliability. Customers across all CtrlS data centres will be able to get the OCI FastConnect nodes in Hyderabad and Mumbai. With OCI, customers can benefit from best-in-class security, consistent high-performance, simple and predictable pricing, and the tools and expertise needed to bring enterprise workloads to cloud quickly and efficiently. Beyond Mumbai and Hyderabad, enterprise customers of CtrlS Datacenters across all markets (Bangalore, Noida, Lucknow, and Patna) can benefit from OCI FastConnect through their Cloud Connect portfolio. Chennai and Kolkata will follow soon. This solution leverages diverse connectivity options to deliver secure and reliable access to OCI, regardless of physical location. Sridhar Pinnapureddy, Founder & Chairman, CtrlS Datacenters & Cloud4C, comments, "Our unwavering commitment lies in being a market leader, not just in Rated-4 data centres, but also in building a comprehensive interconnection ecosystem that empowers businesses across India. Partnering with Oracle to provide direct access connectivity options to OCI marks a significant step towards this vision. “It's not just about offering services; it's about equipping organisations with the agility and security they need to thrive in the cloud-driven era. This expansion reinforces our dedication to bridging the gap between ambition and achievement, propelling organisations toward a brighter future." OCI’s extensive network of more than 100 FastConnect global and regional partners offers customers dedicated connectivity to Oracle Cloud regions, providing customers with optimal cloud deployment options anywhere in the world. For more from CtrlS Datacenters, click here.

Tata unveils AI infrastructure with NVIDIA accelerated computing

Tata Communications today announced a transformative upgrade to its AI cloud infrastructure in India, powered by NVIDIA Hopper GPUs. The company says that the strategic collaboration marks a significant milestone in the country’s AI journey, and that it positions Tata Communications as a key player in enabling AI applications across a wide spectrum of industries - including manufacturing, healthcare, retail, and banking and financial services - and equipping them with the computing power needed to handle complex AI workloads. As part of the initiative, Tata Communications will integrate cutting-edge NVIDIA software solutions such as NVIDIA NIM microservices, and the NVIDIA Omniverse and NVIDIA Isaac platforms, into its AI Cloud offerings. These technologies will provide businesses with an extensive suite of tools and services designed for AI-driven simulation, automation and more. At the end of this year, Tata Communications will begin the first phase of its large-scale deployment of Hopper GPUs, establishing itself as one of the largest NVIDIA Hopper GPU cloud-based supercomputers in India. The second phase, planned for 2025, will further expand the infrastructure with Blackwell GPUs. Tata Communications is poised to disrupt the AI landscape with an AI studio, a ground-breaking, all-in-one platform designed to transform how businesses use AI, by offering tools like AI Workbench, Model Garden, Responsible AI and serverless functions. Furthermore, its advanced tools will simplify distributed data management, allowing businesses to efficiently collect and curate data across various enterprise systems and move it to the AI Cloud using Tata Communications' IZO Multi Cloud Connect platform. This approach will ensure cost-effectiveness and scalability for enterprises, while maintaining their existing data structures. Complementing this is Tata Communications' CloudLyte Edge Computing platform, which enables low-latency inferencing, allowing businesses to deploy models at the edge for real-time responses. Together, these innovations empower enterprises to fully harness the power of AI. “AI is expanding the boundaries of innovation and revolutionising business in ways we could never have imagined,” says AS Lakshminarayanan, MD & CEO, Tata Communications. “Therefore, every entity must prioritise AI integration to stay competitive. We are delighted to partner with NVIDIA to build a unique and transformative Cloud Fabric that will empower a generation of Indian innovators and entrepreneurs, fostering a vibrant AI ecosystem and propelling the nation towards a future fuelled by AI.” Providing enterprises with a powerful infrastructure capable of handling complex AI workloads will help drive AI adoption across India. Combining NVIDIA’s AI platform with TATA Communications’ global network, will create a national supercomputing framework, driving innovation and helping elevate India’s role in the global AI player ranks. “Tata Communications’ AI cloud infrastructure, integrating NVIDIA accelerated computing, will support businesses of all sizes - from AI startups to large enterprises - helping drive AI transformation across various sectors of the Indian economy and creating a powerful ecosystem for AI innovation,” adds Jay Puri, Executive Vice President of Worldwide Field Operations at NVIDIA. Tata Communications customers will also gain access to the NVIDIA AI Enterprise software platform on its accelerated infrastructure, which is designed to let users build, customise and run generative and agentic AI applications in production. This includes NVIDIA NIM Agent Blueprints, which provide customisable reference architectures for use cases like digital human technologies or AI virtual assistants for customer service, multimodal PDF extraction workflows for enterprise data retrieval and container security workflows for cyber security. Enterprises can also create their own AI models using the NVIDIA NeMo end-to-end platform for developing custom generative AI, and run efficient AI inference through NVIDIA’s NIM microservices - both part of the NVIDIA AI Enterprise - offering unparalleled flexibility and performance for AI workloads. By integrating NVIDIA technologies, Tata Communications will continue to demonstrate its commitment to building next-generation AI infrastructure and services, positioning the company to lead India’s AI transformation and make AI more accessible across industries. For more from Tata Communications, click here.

CMC Networks rolls out platform in Africa and Middle East

CMC Networks, a global Tier 1 service provider, has rolled out its CMC Fusion networking platform across 51 African and 11 Middle Eastern countries. It will enable carriers, service providers and enterprises to provision and manage network services across these regions from anywhere in the world, simplifying business growth across dynamic markets. CMC Fusion is a cloud-based platform that consolidates multiple network services and analytics into a single portal and marketplace, including MPLS, Carrier Ethernet, Dedicated Internet Access (DIA), multi-cloud connect, software-defined wide-area networking (SD-WAN), service monitoring, assurance, security, management, and more. The easy-to-use portal is built on the largest application-aware, AI-enabled and software-defined network (SDN) in Africa. It is aligned with global industry standards to ensure interoperability and provide support with regulatory compliance. “CMC Fusion is transforming what was once a complex, costly and fragmented market into one unified networking ecosystem,” says Marisa Trisolino, CEO at CMC Networks. “The company is developing a platform that is making it easier than ever to do business across Africa and the Middle East.” CMC Fusion enables seamless, consistent performance and application experience for customers connecting across multiple countries and clouds in Africa and the Middle East. It provides a consolidated view of all information and analytics, making it easy for customers to track their orders, tickets, and services. Round-the-clock network monitoring enables fast identification and troubleshooting of any potential problems. Carriers, service providers and enterprises can move with greater agility to connect and capture new growth opportunities across multiple markets. Geoff Dornan, CTO at CMC Networks, adds, “In an increasingly cloud-centric world, CMC Networks is removing the borders and barriers to growth in Africa and the Middle East and innovating to directly address on-the-ground challenges where the company operates. CMC Networks is looking forward to making it even easier for its customers to grow their businesses across these regions.” CMC Cloud is one of the many solutions available through CMC Fusion, delivering high-performance edge computing across Africa. The Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) solution is designed to bring workloads closer to the end user and improve the performance of applications and services, without the need to invest in physical hardware. CMC Networks has the largest pan-African network servicing 51 out of 54 countries in Africa and 11 countries in the Middle East, plus regional hubs in key interconnect locations across Europe, the Americas and Asia Pacific. For more from CMC Networks, click here.

Nasuni integrates Microsoft 365 Copilot

Nasuni, an enterprise data platform for hybrid cloud environments, has announced its latest advancement in data intelligence by further integrating with Microsoft 365 Copilot. Through the Microsoft Graph Connector, Nasuni managed data is now fully accessible and operational with Microsoft Search and Microsoft 365 Copilot, significantly expanding data access for Microsoft's AI services.  AI requires AI-ready infrastructure, and today's legacy data storage infrastructure creates a challenge for forward-thinking enterprises. Legacy hardware-based storage generates silos of data, making it impossible to run AI and analytics against. Organisations, which can have billions of files and petabytes of data, need to break down these silos and consolidate their data into the cloud. The power to unlock this data is incredible, which is why the Nasuni File Data Platform enables this through data consolidation, protection and accessibility for anyone and anything (including AI).  The Graph Connector enables organisations to leverage Nasuni’s managed data repositories to harness the full potential of Microsoft 365 Copilot, aligning AI-powered experiences with specific business needs and workflows. Organisations can use the Graph Connector to leverage Nasuni data with Microsoft 365 semantic index to unlock AI-powered search, enhanced compliance, and advanced analytics through a unified interface.  Key benefits of this integration include:  · Unlocking greater value from data: Customers can now maximise the value of their Nasuni-managed data by making it accessible for personalised experiences via Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft Search, enriching user interactions with relevant content.  · AI-powered search and insights: The Graph Connector enables Nasuni-managed files to be indexed into Microsoft's semantic index, which forms a key part of the Microsoft 365 AI infrastructure. This semantic index is utilised by Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft Search to provide contextually relevant answers and insights across Microsoft 365 applications.  · A unified data interface: Customers benefit from single-pane-of-glass access to their Microsoft 365 data (including SharePoint and OneDrive) and Nasuni. This unified view allows for efficient searching and interaction with documents across the entire unstructured file stack, inclusive of Nasuni-managed data.  "By enabling Microsoft 365 Copilot through the use of the Microsoft Graph Connector, we're empowering our customers to get even more value out of their Nasuni-managed data," says Jim Liddle, Chief Innovation Officer of Data Intelligence and AI at Nasuni. "This solution integration will make it frictionless to use Microsoft 365 Copilot with Nasuni data in context with Microsoft 365 stored data sets, allowing for more informed decision-making and improved efficiency in our customers' day-to-day operations."  For more from Nasuni, click here.

VIAVI introduces VAMOS automation platform

VIAVI Solutions has introduced the VIAVI Automation Management and Orchestration System (VAMOS), an intelligent automation platform that incorporates AI/ML capabilities to enable wireless and cloud service providers, network equipment manufacturers and their ecosystems to reduce operational expenses and accelerate time-to-market. The complexity of network architectures continues to increase, as operators and equipment manufacturers investigate the next generation of technology, migrate to the cloud, and leverage AI and ML. Continuous Testing (CT) becomes ever more prevalent to provide a unifying perspective on real-world performance. However, labs are confronting the dual challenges of more tests and limited headcount. Automation has become a crucial way for them to manage the complexity, scheduling and manpower demands of CT, allowing technicians to efficiently power through hundreds of test cases, and to focus on higher-order analysis and problem solving. VIAVI has developed VAMOS as part of its NITRO Wireless portfolio to automate test campaigns and their execution in one centralised cloud-based, Lab-as-a-Service platform. Built-in AI and ML capabilities enable test optimisation and faster response times. VAMOS’s customisable workspaces and configurations streamline the testing process across organisations and lab locations. Shared tool testbeds and individual sandboxes accommodate multiple test needs while the platform’s robust analytics and reporting help maximise test resource utilisation and boost test accuracy. “As VIAVI works with leading labs around the globe to integrate wireless, cloud and AI, the need for automation and orchestration has never been clearer,” says Ian Langley, Senior Vice President, Wireless Business Unit, VIAVI. “In initial implementations at major labs, VAMOS has already demonstrated significant reductions in cost per test-hour and increases in hardware utilisation.” In addition to providing a standalone solution to schedule and run test campaigns based on VIAVI’s NITRO Wireless portfolio, VAMOS can be integrated with a third-party automation framework, allowing it to interact with a wider range of products and existing test environments. Connection is available via both software and hardware. VAMOS will be integrated into the VIAVI Automated Lab-as-a-Service for Open RAN (VALOR) for the lab’s on-demand, cloud-based testing. VALOR is designed to manage and support 5G and Open RAN deployments that would benefit from access to tools and expert staff with a minimal ramp-up time. The project is funded by the Public Wireless Supply Chain Innovation Fund. For more from VIAVI Solutions, click here.

Juniper revolutionises data centre assurance

Juniper Networks has announced several new and unique enhancements to its data centre assurance capabilities, driving exceptional user experiences through increased network visibility, analysis and automation. The Juniper data centre networking solution now incorporates new cloud-hosted services that leverage AI for networking to deliver enhanced insights into application behaviours, both traditional and emerging AI workloads, for ongoing optimisation and rapid troubleshooting. In addition, Juniper has added new capabilities for analysing and validating data centre operations plus even richer telemetry data which, alongside other data centre assurance capabilities, help to reduce deployment times by up to 85% and cut OPEX costs by up to 90% in some instances. Juniper’s data centre networking solution consists of QFX Series Switches, EX Series Switches, PTX Series Routers, ACX Series Routers and high performance SRX Series Firewalls managed via Juniper Apstra data centre assurance software and the Marvis Virtual Network Assistant (VNA). As a key part of the Juniper AI-Native Networking Platform, the solution leverages the right data to deliver the right real-time responses for highly reliable data centre networking. This enables unique capabilities, such as multivendor intent-based networking and switch management, proactive AIOps and a GenAI conversational interface for knowledgebase queries. From traditional data centres to new data centres for AI training, inference and storage clusters, Juniper combines exceptional performance with best-in-class flexibility and operational simplicity, plus switch management, proactive AIOps and a GenAI conversational interface for knowledgebase queries.   To simplify data centre operations and maximise network performance even further, Juniper has added new and unique software enhancements, which include: New AI-Native cloud services that improve application visibility and assurance to optimise performance and lower mean-time-to-resolution (MTTR) Juniper is launching two new data centre cloud services, Service Awareness and Impact Analysis, to complement the Marvis VNA for Data Center AI-Native cloud service announced earlier this year. Service Awareness leverages AIOps to add application and service data to the Juniper network knowledge graph, enabling greater application-to-network visibility. Service Awareness increases the understanding of where apps and services attach, how they communicate across the network, and what resources they consume, providing direct insights and supporting additional assurance capabilities such as Impact Analysis.  Impact Analysis builds on Service Awareness to enable faster troubleshooting and issue resolution and improved application assurance. AI/ML maps identified issues to impacts, providing a clear picture of which issues are responsible for applicationimpacts and which are unrelated. State comparison between different times improves identification and resolution of transient issues. Service Awareness and Impact Analysis are now available in the Juniper Apstra Premium license tier at no extra charge. Marvis VNA for Data Center, the initial application in the Juniper Apstra Cloud Services suite, continues to be available in all three Juniper Apstra license tiers (Standard, Advanced, Premium) at no extra charge.  All three data centre cloud services are built on Juniper’s microservices cloud architecture, which maximises scale, resiliency and performance. Continued investment in intent-based networking improves the operator experience and further optimises application performance​. The latest release of Juniper Apstra (version 5.0), which is a seamless upgrade for current users, builds on this leadership by adding over 100 new features focused on simplifying data centre operations even further. For more from Juniper, click here.