AWS CEO Matt Garman has a bullish outlook on the future of the SaaS industry despite continued claims of a looming “SaaSpocalypse”.

Speaking during a recent interview with Fortune, the AWS chief dispelled worries that the SaaS industry faces an existential threat in the form of agentic AI - so much so that the company is making its own foray into the space.

Last week, the company unveiled sweeping changes to Amazon Quick, a desktop AI assistant which acts as a single information source connecting the disparate applications, tools, and data used by workers in their daily lives.

AWS is framing the revamped platform as a boon for personal productivity, noting in an announcement that it is “continuously running in the background” monitoring desktop activities and “surfacing what needs attention”.

As the company explained in a blog post, this could include information contained in Slack threads, for example, or important unread emails and file uploads.

AWS’ foray into this domain was inspired by the fact that “so many applications are getting done with AI and agents”, according to Garman, who described Amazon Quick as a “huge business opportunity”.

“We think that there is just such a massive change out there that everything is going to be remade,” Garman told Fortune. “I don’t think personal productivity has really been remade for the last 30 years,”

“There are going to be millions of successful applications that people use,” he added. “Obviously the vast, vast majority of them will not be built by Amazon or AWS, but we think there are a handful of them that we can build that will be pretty successful and that customers will like.”

Garman’s comments suggest that, far from heralding the doom of traditional software, AI will ultimately act as an enabler to deliver more intuitive workplace tools.

This isn’t the first time Garman has poured cold water on threats of a pending SaaSpocalypse. As ITPro reported in February this year, Garman said while there is “huge disruption” ahead for the SaaS industry, “much of the fear is overblown”.

Garman’s comments came at the peak of software stock sell-offs sparked by the launch of a handful of powerful new AI solutions, with Anthropic’s Claude Cowork tool ranked chief among these.

The workplace productivity tool gives users sector-specific plugins designed to automate tasks across a wide range of areas, spanning legal, marketing, sales, and data analytics.

That launch spooked software investors due to fears the technology could ultimately render dedicated SaaS solutions in these domains obsolete.

AI transforming software

Despite a positive outlook, Garman told CNBC in February that the advent of generative AI, and more recently AI agents, will transform how software is built and sold.

Long-term, that could create a more challenging market for providers, who will be operating in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

“AI is absolutely a disruptive force that’s going to change how software is consumed and how it’s built,” he said.

“The SaaS providers and the larger players of today have an inside track to winning that business. Now, they have to innovate, just like the rest of the world. They can’t stand still. If they stand still, they’re absolutely going to be disrupted.”

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The vast majority of organizations are confident about their SaaS security posture, despite the fact that most have suffered a breach or security incident in the past year.

That’s according to a new study from AppOmni, which found SaaS is one of the most actively targeted layers of the enterprise attack surface.

The study, which includes a poll of more than 800 security leaders and decision makers, warned that this domain is one of the least defended areas of modern business.

The growing risks faced by enterprises in this regard are mirrored by continued growth in the SaaS space, with businesses now using dozens - or even hundreds - of applications.

More than half of enterprises polled by the firm are using at least 50 SaaS solutions, for example, while more than a third have 100 or more.

Notably, three-quarters (75%) of organizations have fallen victim to a SaaS data breach or security incident in the last 12 months. Yet the study found 89% of those believed they had appropriate visibility of their SaaS environments.

Brendan O’Connor, CEO of AppOmni, said the study highlights a growing disconnect between the threats faced by enterprises and their ability to tackle the issue.

"The data shows a concerning ‘illusion of control,’ where the vast majority of security leaders feel confident in their SaaS security posture, even as a huge number of them are dealing with SaaS-related incidents,” O’Connor said.

“Today's SaaS risks are not theoretical — they’re real, and they’re impacting businesses now."

The big SaaS security talking points

Data security remains a big concern for enterprises, AppOmni found, with 57% of survey respondents citing data breaches and the potential loss of intellectual property as their main worry.

Meanwhile, just over a third (37%) expressed considerable apprehension about compromised customer data.

AI is also changing the dynamic for security teams, AppOmni warned, particularly with regard to governance. Nearly two-thirds (61%) of respondents said they expect AI to dominate SaaS security discussions in the coming year, for example.

Respondents added that there’s a growing appetite for more robust oversight of non-human identities and generative AI tool access within SaaS applications.

Tooling gaps also remain wide, with just 13% of respondents currently using a dedicated SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) solution, despite nearly one-third saying they need one.

Security hygiene and risk management on the agenda

A key talking point in the AppOmni centered around a continued lack of basic security hygiene. Nearly half (41%) of incidents stemmed from permission issues, for example, while 29% resulted from misconfigurations.

AppOmni said this shows there’s still much work to be done in terms of improving broader security awareness and best practices.

Elsewhere, risk management practices also require improvement, the study noted. Just over half (52%) of organisations only use periodic reviews to assess SaaS-related security risks.

This, the company added, is leaving critical gaps where misconfigurations and threats can persist undetected. Only 43% of enterprises have implemented continuous or near-real-time oversight.

Too much trust in providers

Complacency and overconfidence on SaaS security were among the most concerning aspects of the survey, according to AppOmni.

Just over half (53%) said they are confident about their stance on this front, but many are basing this on trust in SaaS vendors rather than internal validation.

Only 16% of respondents assign SaaS security solely to security teams, while 43% leave it to various business units.

"The key lesson for enterprises is that visibility alone is not security, and trust in SaaS vendors is not a strategy," said O’Connor.

"We need a fundamental shift from ad hoc, reactive processes to a mature, disciplined approach built on continuous monitoring and clear ownership."

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Software sprawl is killing business growth, according to new research, with tools meant to simplify operations actually making them much more complex.

With more than three-quarters of UK mid-market firms planning to boost their software spend this year, a report from Nintex shows this sharpened focus on rapid adoption means interoperability is being neglected.

Three-in-ten IT leaders said they were using between 51 and 100 SaaS tools, with more than a quarter adding new SaaS tools every two to three weeks. However, despite the fact that 93% of UK firms claim SaaS integration, only a third said their tools were fully interoperable.

This growing array of disparate tools is causing serious headaches for IT leaders, the study found, with 53% reporting data inconsistency and integrity issues.

Half of respondents also said they have downstream challenges with analytics, governance, and security while 86% revealed this was having a moderate to major financial impact on the business.

"The UK’s race to invest in software and AI is rewriting the rules of competition — but speed without structure is a losing game,” said Robert Ekstrom, Nintex regional vice president for EMEA.

“British organizations have recognized that a sprawling, disconnected tech stack isn’t just an IT problem; it’s a barrier to innovation, growth, and resilience.

"The real leaders of 2025 won’t be the ones with the most tools, but the ones with the smartest, most connected foundations."

Cutting down software sprawl is on the to-do list

The good news is that most organizations are aware of the problem, with more than six-in-ten considering tackling software sprawl a high priority.

Nearly half of mid-market organizations are doing this by actively leveraging AI, while a similar number are encouraging their teams to consolidate software onto platforms.

"It’s promising to see a shift underway: organizations that consolidate, integrate, and harness AI to tame complexity will not only survive the digital era — they will define it," said Ekstrom.

Across the four countries surveyed – Australia, the UAE, UK, and the US – just over half of mid-market organizations reported having between 100 and 300 SaaS tools in their tech stack. Only a third said their tech stack was entirely integrated.

More than four-in-ten said software sprawl was leading to manual data entry and duplication, with a similar number reporting workflow and approval delays.

Notably, one-quarter said it was causing poor customer experiences while a third faced challenges in scaling operations.

"No amount of AI or SaaS tools can fix a broken process. Chasing efficiency with a sprawling tech stack is like building on shifting sands — today’s quick wins become tomorrow’s operational risks," said Niranjan Vijayaragavan, chief product officer at Nintex.

"Real progress demands more than tools; it requires intentional process and policy redesign, intelligent workflow orchestration, and a strong, integrated foundation."

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Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has unveiled the launch of a new internal AI division focused on advancing the tech giant's agentic AI capabilities.

The new ‘CoreAI – Platform and Tools’ division looks to improve synergy between the company's software engineering and AI divisions, as well as other key teams from the office of the CTO such as AI Supercomputer, AI Agentic Runtime, and Engineering Thrive.

Building a complete Copilot and AI stack through this division will allow customers to build and deploy AI applications and agents, Nadella said. The division will also build out GitHub Copilot.

Jay Parikh will lead the group as EVP of Core AI, with Eric Boyd, Jason Taylor, Julia Liuson, Tim Bozarth, and their respective teams reporting to Parikh.

in a blog post unveiling the move, Nadella said the new division aims to interoperate with other departments at Microsoft to build closer collaborative ties.

“Ultimately, we must remember that our internal organizational boundaries are meaningless to both our customers and to our competitors,” he said.

“When we talk about operating as One Microsoft, we are effectively talking about how we are continually increasing our customer focus, raising the bar on our innovation, and driving accountability, so we can truly live up to our mission."

Microsoft’s agentic AI focus

Nadella said a key factor behind the shake up is due to the fact the industry is approaching the next stage of AI development, with enterprises globally focusing heavily on agentic AI adoption.

With this in mind, 2025 will be shaped by 'model-forward' applications, he said.

Microsoft’s focus in the year ahead will be on building out its agentic AI capabilities, and how the firm builds, deploys, and maintains these platforms from an engineering standpoint will see a fundamental change.

“This is leading to a new AI-first app stack — one with new UI/UX patterns, runtimes to build with agents, orchestrate multiple agents, and a reimagined management and observability layer,” Nadella said.

Azure will continue to underpin AI infrastructure and Microsoft will build its AI platform on top, Nadella noted. As platforms and tooling capabilities come together, agents will be created that change every SaaS application category.

“Our success in this next phase will be determined by having the best AI platform, tools, and infrastructure. We have a lot of work to do and a tremendous opportunity ahead, and together, I’m looking forward to building what comes next,” Nadella said.

Microsoft’s latest move is part of a continuing focus on AI agents. In October 2024, the firm unveiled that it would launch agents for Copilot in preview for its customers to automate workflows and business processes.

Other customer-focused moves by the firm saw Microsoft unveil Azure AI Foundry in a bid to help enterprise customers scale AI adoption.

Tech leaders have voiced serious concerns about the rising trend of ‘SaaS dependency’, warning that developers are being hindered by a growing array of tools.

In its SaaS Disruption Report, Onymos found that 84% of technology leaders rely on SaaS tools with low-code or no-code capabilities for software development.

However, there are big challenges across the software development lifecycle (SDLC), with almost a quarter of technology leaders indicating that application performance is a major business impediment.

Technology leaders singled out development (22%), quality assurance (20%), and maintenance (20%) as the three most arduous phases of the SDLC, with more than three-quarters saying that workloads for updating applications have risen in the last year.

Over half identified daily maintenance and application operations tasks as taking the most time. But while 84% of technology leaders reckoned that optimizing application development capabilities was of primary importance, fewer than half said they spend time on application innovation.

"While SaaS tools have seemingly become indispensable for enterprises as they focus on software development to drive business value, our findings reveal critical gaps in the current model – particularly around maintenance, innovation, and data," said Shiva Nathan, founder and CEO of Onymos.

Technology leaders said there are significant business risks tied to unaddressed challenges in software development. More than half highlighted higher operational costs, while 45% cited increased security risks, and 38% compliance and regulatory concerns.

Around one-third mentioned reduced profitability, with 28% citing missed revenue opportunities.

"To truly enable enterprises to maximize their software development efforts and create innovative and differentiated applications and secure their data, we must transform the current SaaS model to offer greater flexibility, empower development teams with more control, reduce the burdens of maintenance and updates, and give data ownership back," said Nathan.

"By reimagining SaaS to address the challenges enterprises face, we can realize new opportunities for enterprises to innovate faster, deliver greater value to their customers, and secure their data and reputations."

Earlier this year, a report from Red Canary found that software ecosystems are riddled with underutilized or inefficient SaaS tools, which is bogging down practitioners operating across a range of different industries.

Three-quarters of security teams said their attack surface had widened by 77% in the past two years.

In a previous study released this summer, Onymos found that more than three-quarters of technology leaders were concerned about SaaS security threats, with 45% saying they'd experienced a cybersecurity incident through a third party SaaS solution in the past year.

The average enterprise uses 130 different SaaS applications, the survey found, with around 85% of IT leaders saying they rely on low-code or no-code SaaS solutions for their application and software projects.

Managed service providers (MSPs) provide essential IT and technology services in a fast-growing market. Many smaller and medium-sized companies in particular have come to rely heavily on their MSP partner, who is fundamental to how they run and secure their business.

In fact, a recently published report from Grand View Research underlined the increasing reliance on managed services, forecasting a growth rate of 13.6% from 2023 to 2030. But, while it certainly looks like market demand will continue to rise, many MSPs find they are constantly having to adapt their services to their customers’ changing needs and challenges. Staying profitable can be a struggle in this fast-evolving sector.

What is driving the shifting markets?

The ongoing digital transformation has been one of the biggest drivers of market change for a few years now. Almost all larger enterprises are digitalizing their business processes, and many see this transformation as non-negotiable – the key to survival.

Smaller organizations are following suit, adopting cloud infrastructure and implementing new technology solutions that replace older IT components traditionally managed by an MSP. This means service providers can no longer rely on the regular cycle of updating and upgrading physical infrastructure to maintain a steady stream of income.

Alongside this, businesses are confronted with a surge in constantly changing cyber threats. Keeping up with and reacting to new threats as they emerge is a complex challenge as numerous risks and vulnerabilities have to be juggled at once. Think of a patient who arrives in the A&E department with multiple serious injuries – even though all of them require urgent attention, it’s the life-threatening problem that must be dealt with first while everything else moves down the list of priorities.

In this analogy, it’s the MSP’s responsibility to correctly triage the client’s needs and to address them in the right order. Right now, access to cloud tenants takes priority for many organizations. So, switching from an on premises, device-based security approach to an application-based approach is the most pressing issue, as not being able to access critical applications could be the injury that eventually grinds a business to a halt.

SaaS applications are rapidly on the rise, with many businesses relying on dozens of them. If a cybercriminal gains access to a user’s corporate Microsoft or Google account, then device-based security will no longer contain the attack or stop the damage. Consequently, MSPs and their clients need to shift their focus to where they are most vulnerable right now.

Another factor affecting the market is the speed at which technology is evolving, and the pace at which new solutions are being adopted by businesses. In their quest to stay ahead of the competition, many organizations feel the need to jump on the bandwagon, embracing the latest trends as quickly as they can. Generative AI has promised to be a real game changer, and almost every business is hoping to ride this wave and use the technology to its advantage.

Of course, this also presents fresh attack points for malicious actors seeking to exploit the vulnerabilities in every new technology advancement. Don’t underestimate how quick hackers are to capitalize on an opportunity. During the recent global Crowdstrike outage, for instance, fake landing pages appeared within mere hours of the news breaking, in an attempt by cybercriminals to pilfer corporate credentials. The learning? MSPs, and their customers, have to be as nimble and as diligent as the bad guys.

The pathway to increased revenue

The good news is that there are meaningful steps MSPs can take to not only improve their services, but at the same time also open new revenue channels.

• Create an inventory of which cloud applications your clients are actually using. Many MSPs have never before been in charge of overseeing and protecting SaaS applications. So, the first step is finding out what apps your clients use and why. Having this reliable information helps manage the shifting nature of security risks.
• Understand your clients’ current security measures. Investigate how, or if, those applications are currently being secured. Perhaps the most critical step is finding out who in the company has access to each app. Your clients probably don’t realize the full range of cloud applications being used in their environment and the extent to which staff, including former employees, have access to them.

Armed with this information and taking their industry into account, consider the full scale of cyber risks your client may be exposed to. For example, one of the biggest threats businesses are likely to face is token hijacking. Closing any gaps will ensure you boost security for your clients.

• Build truly secure environments. This is the crucial final step in bringing your clients up to current security standards and must not be missed. Technology such as comprehensive cloud detection and response (CDR) extends across an organization’s key operational tools and helps MSPs create a solid foundation that constantly monitors their clients’ environments for new cyber threats.

Once an MSP has selected the right software partner to secure their clients’ SaaS application needs, they will uncover new revenue opportunities. Offering secure cloud solutions to your customers through software partners can fill in any missing gaps left by their digital transformation and help accelerate your clients’ transition to the digital era.

Small businesses are undoubtedly the backbone of the UK economy, and the MSPs supporting them play a role that is just as critical. As business requirements continue to change and MSPs grapple with a fast changing market, there are solutions that can replace missing revenue lost to digital transformation and advancing technology.

Not losing sight of the bigger picture and identifying the path forward will be crucial for MSPs as customer demands, IT needs, and new cyber threats continue to emerge. By helping their clients understand their full SaaS application landscape, identifying any possible security issues and offering tangible solutions, MSPs will continue to not just grow but thrive.

Since the term was first coined in the 1990s, software as a service (SaaS) has helped evolve the way channel partners differentiate their service offerings to deliver more value to their clients. SaaS has an overwhelming modern-day presence, with a market value of $197 billion (£155 billion) in 2023, projected to grow to $247 billion (£195 billion) this year.

SaaS products have enabled channel partners to more easily deliver scalable, flexible solutions that fit the diverse needs of their clients. Despite this, signs are emerging that out-of-the-box SaaS platforms are starting to struggle to meet the unique and continually evolving needs of the ‘modern’ organization. As the channel industry continues to innovate alongside technology and strives to keep abreast of changing market needs, it’s important that channel leaders make sure the SaaS solutions they offer do too.

An imminent evolution

As businesses push to differentiate themselves and personalize their services based on these changing needs, a gap has emerged between the promise of fast transformation and the constraints of off-the-shelf SaaS. Businesses are often overwhelmed by the high costs, inflexibility, and complexity of traditional SaaS applications. They are slow to implement and over-engineered with features that don’t align with the real needs of a business, and so are cumbersome to navigate, resulting in low adoption rates and wasted resources.

No-code platforms bridge the gap between off-the-shelf solutions and unique business requirements by empowering organizations to create custom applications tailored to their specific needs, without any extensive coding knowledge required.

Then, as no-code has matured, the integration of AI – particularly generative AI – has further transformed its capabilities. AI-powered no-code platforms take the software development process one step further by enabling businesses to build composable applications using modular components, which can be adapted easily based on shifting goals or requirements.

Taken together AI and no-code have set a modern market standard – with unprecedented speed, agility, autonomy, and an incredible rise in productivity. This provides an unprecedented level of freedom to scale automation across your business combined with the ability to do it so much faster than with traditional SaaS software.

Automation – but make it personal

How does the channel reap the benefits of the evolution of AI and no-code in turn? As previously stated, organizations are looking to identify the productivity gains that can be derived from SaaS and automation, but are also looking for products which more closely align with their specific business challenges and requirements.

Channel partners, therefore, have had to personalize their service in turn, working with customers to find solutions that really work for them. In the last few years, this has meant solutions which incorporate AI and no-code capabilities.

The democratization of no-code application and workflow development has allowed channel leaders to more easily offer core digital transformation benefits such as accelerated time-to-market to a range of different sectors through one customizable solution.

In other words, AI-powered no-code products are providing channel leaders with the benefits of selling a SaaS solution while simultaneously demonstrating how the solution can be tailored to a specific industry, business, and even department. This helps them to demonstrate consideration and understanding of an organization’s unique needs and to build trust and loyalty with each client.

More specifically, the evolution of SaaS towards no-code helps the channel to build:

• A wider client pool: since no-code platforms can adapt to the business rather than forcing the business to fit the platform, partners can personalize their offerings and engage with a more diverse range of businesses, expanding their client base beyond conventional boundaries. For example, bankers may prioritize no-code to improve customer retention with automated loyalty bonus programmes. In telecoms, a priority for no-code AI might be to manage forecasts, streamline network planning, and optimize complex workflows across teams and territories.
• Client-centric culture: these platforms promote a strong partner-centric culture that reflects and aligns with client strategies, ensuring that offerings resonate on a deeper level, even within niche markets, since more can be done with less through no-code.
• Engaging experiences: these platforms provide a modern alternative when compared to traditional SaaS which requires significant amounts of data entry and step-by-step workflows. In contrast, by embedding AI directly into workflows, businesses can reimagine how they operate, making processes more streamlined and innovative. Embedding AI directly into your processes allows you to delight users with productive, slick and engaging user experiences, and replaces data input with conversational prompts – this delivers so much value that user adoption is no longer a question.
• Just right’ fit: the ability to rapidly compose no-code applications from pre-built components and templates results in an experience built from the ground up that is uncluttered, lightweight, and most importantly… personalized. Instead of being bloated with unnecessary features or monolithic apps, you simply take the components that you need, so you’re left with a solution that is tailored, without excess complexity.
• Scalability with personalisation: even when addressing bulk requests, AI no-code allows for the same solution to be both personalized and scalable, ensuring that clients receive the attention they need without compromising on quality, accelerating time to market in a fast-paced business environment.

The future of the SaaS channel relationship

The introduction of SaaS to the channel has had a lasting impact, reshaping how partners deliver value to their clients. But as the channel continues to evolve, so do the demands on SaaS platforms, and out-the-box solutions are no longer sufficient.

This is where AI-driven, no-code platforms come into play. Because they allow for intelligent, modular assembly of software components, channel partners can offer one solution that can be tailored to customers’ and sectors’ specific needs – all without employees at the end-user organization needing extensive technical experience.

For over 100 years, the UK’s British Broadcasting Corporation – the BBC – has pushed the boundaries of TV production, creating and distributing innovative shows and documentaries worldwide.

The logistics of that process have undergone massive changes in recent years, and the corporation is again leading the way with its digital transformation strategies.

Speaking at the International Broadcasting Convention (IBC) this month in Amsterdam, Sinead Greenway, the BBC’s director of broadcaster and end-user technology said the organization was “SaaS- first, cloud-second, on-prem only when necessary.”

“We want to get out of the business of running and maintaining heavy infrastructure,” Greenway said. “And we want a cost and resource profile that scales with our organization. We’re 20,000 people that could scale up to 40,000 when we think about all the talents and the contractors and everybody else that's in our world. So we have to make our part easy.”

Part of the problem for the BBC is how good it actually is and how long it has been in operation (102 years). For the relatively small license fee, you get surprisingly varied options across information (news and sport), music, education, and live TV. This also includes hundreds of TV shows and documentaries. And as part of its digital transformation much of this – some 25 petabytes worth – has been moved to the cloud.

“We've got lots of great stuff and the challenge is having lots of great stuff,” Greenway explained. “How do we have less? How do we have the best and how do we make it do more? And then enabling colleagues to work anywhere, including flexibly for more offices. This isn't a caving speech; this is very much about an infrastructure approach and how we look at our networks and breaking that link between our building and our people so that they can do their best. So aiming for that hard thing, working well from everywhere.”

What’s apparent here is that on-prem is becoming highly unfavorable for some. Digital transformation seems to generally mean physical servers are someone else’s problem – let the hyperscalers deal with those – but looking at the wider picture, it seems that software is the main driver of this trend.

Take, for example, SAP; at its Sapphire conference, the company made it quite clear that it wants its customers in the cloud and its strategy is to entice legacy on-prem clients with generative AI tools, like its copilot, Joule. Addressing this directly, CEO Christian Klein said: “I guess we will find no one – no investor, no customer, no partner – who believes the future is on-prem”.

Generative AI on-screen

Looking around at IBC, it was impossible to ignore the effect generative AI is having across the media industry. Whether it’s being used as an aid for content creators, or enhancing our understanding of news programs, there is a clear demand for these types of tools. However, there is a rather surprising way in which part of this adoption is being driven, according to Chinese company Huawei.

“Today users are spending more time on mobile. But, most importantly, people are not just watching, they have also become content creators. So now it is user-generated content that is making the real difference,” Jamy Lyu, Huawei’s president of cloud media services, said during the company’s pre-IBC media summit.

Lyu observed that increasingly mature AI is reshaping the wider media and entertainment industry, with cloud and AI, in particular, revolutionizing content production.

There is also a demand for more real-time interaction during live-streamed events, such as sporting competitions and breaking news stories. Here, AI and cloud technologies are powering innovations that improve latency. Take, for example, Huawei’s Cloud Low Latency Live (LLL) service which works with its Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) to limit latency to within 500 ms and reduce frame freezes by 10%. This can enable viewer interactivity as watchers can chat together in a live room, instead of just liking videos.

What’s more, the technology also includes a function to prevent ads from interrupting video playback, as the Huawei Cloud uses AI recognition and codec to fuse targeted ads into less obtuse areas of the screen – which is a more passive way to mix advertising with content.

Advertising is unavoidable and it’s an industry that’s already seen drastic change courtesy of AI. For the BBC, which is largely funded by taxpayers, new technologies are helping it achieve digital transformation under a tight budget – ultimately helping it avoid mass advertising.

“We absolutely face all of the financial and operational constraints,” Greenway said. “In a hundred-year-old organization, some of those constraints paradoxically give us the catalyst for change. So having this simplified medium supply chain driving velocity, thinking about more lightweight approaches to what we can do in the cloud, in terms of production, is how we shift the dial from one to the other and make those tough choices.”

More than three-quarters of technology leaders say they're concerned about SaaS security threats, prompting calls for more robust development practices.

The findings of the Onymos SaaS Disruption Report reveal that enterprises prioritize data privacy and security, with 65% and 72% respectively saying that they're the most critical priorities in the app development process.

An overwhelming 91% of the tech leaders polled believe retaining data within custom-built, internal applications is crucial, with only 36% of tech leaders running all of their applications on-premise or on private cloud.

The report noted that 45% of tech leaders have experienced a cybersecurity incident through a third party SaaS solution in the past year - echoing a Gartner prediction that 45% of organizations globally will have experienced attacks on their software supply chains by 2025.

The most common incidents occurring through third party SaaS solutions were malware attacks, experienced by 46%, phishing, at 34%, insider threat and web application attacks at 31% each and DDoS attacks at 27%.

SaaS, said Shiva Nathan, founder and CEO of Onymos, is integrated into every aspect of application and software development, used both to accelerate overall development processes and as an essential component or plug-in for specific solutions or products.

The average enterprise uses 130 different SaaS applications, the company said, and around 85% of IT leaders say they rely on low-code or no-code SaaS solutions for their application and software projects.

According to McKinsey, the global SaaS market is worth about $3 trillion and is expected to rise to as much as $10 trillion by 2030.

However, SaaS also presents risks. Fears cited by survey respondents include the indirect security risk that comes with working with SaaS vendors, lack of clarity on the data privacy protections in SaaS solutions, and security requirements not being met by vendors.

"For instance, when companies purchase a SaaS solution to expedite the creation of an application, they must provide data access to the third-party SaaS provider in exchange. By granting this access, enterprises face risks such as cyberattacks and accidental data leakage," Nathan said.

"As we increasingly rely on SaaS to develop our business-critical applications and software, we must reconsider how we approach SaaS data privacy and security. It is no longer acceptable to require companies to hand over their data in exchange for key functionality or faster time-to-market."

Incidents have included an attack on healthcare provider Kaiser Permanente, exposing the personal information of over 13 million members, as well as a data breach at Welltok caused by a vulnerability in Progress Software’s MOVEit Transfer server.

The report recommends the adoption of 'no-data' architecture principles, which prioritize data privacy and security, and suggests that enterprises should be allowed to own and modify the code associated with the SaaS solutions they use for their application and software development.

Finally, rigorous third party security audits and penetration tests should be prioritized and carried out regularly.

Security experts have issued a warning over the rise of 'shadow SaaS', with new research showing nearly three-quarters of workers admitting to using unauthorized SaaS applications at work.

In a survey of more than 250 global security professionals by Next DLP, carried out at RSA Conference 2024 and Infosecurity Europe 2024, 73% admitted to using SaaS applications that had not been approved by their company’s IT team in the past year.

This was despite the fact that they appeared to be highly aware of the risks, with 65% of respondents naming data loss, 62% citing lack of visibility and control, and 52% identifying data breaches as the top risks of using unauthorized tools.

Four-in-ten security professionals said they didn't think employees properly understand the data security risks associated with shadow SaaS and shadow AI.

However, despite this, only 37% said they had developed clear policies and consequences for using these tools, with just 28% promoting approved alternatives to minimize the problem.

Chris Denbigh-White, chief security officer at Next DLP, said the research highlights a clear disparity between employee confidence in using unauthorized tools and their organization’s ability to mitigate the risks.

One-in-ten even admitted they were certain their organization had suffered a data breach or data loss as a result of the use of shadow SaaS. With such high stakes, Denbigh-White said it’s imperative that security teams implement strict measures, or at the least offer alternatives.

"Security teams should evaluate the extent of shadow SaaS and AI usage, identify frequently used tools, and provide approved alternatives,” he said. “This will limit potential risks and ensure confidence is deserved, not misplaced."

Shadow SaaS concerns mirrored in AI 

Organizations appear to be a little more cautious when it comes to shadow AI, according to the study. Half of respondents said that AI use had been restricted to certain job functions and roles in their organization, and 16% banned the technology altogether. 

Overall, 46% of organizations said they have implemented tools and policies to control employees’ use of generative AI.

"Security professionals are clearly concerned about the security implications of GenAI and are taking a cautious approach. However, the data protection risks associated with unsanctioned technology are not new," Denbigh-White said.

"Awareness alone is insufficient without the necessary processes and tools. Organizations need full visibility into the tools employees use and how they use them. Only by understanding data usage can they implement effective policies and educate employees on the associated risks."

In a recent study from WalkMe, based on freedom of information requests, nearly four-in-ten UK councils were found to be allowing staff to use AI tools without having a responsible use policy in place.

Meanwhile, two-fifths of UK office workers told Veritas that they or a colleague have input sensitive information, such as customer, financial, or sales data, into a public generative AI tool.

Six-in-ten failed to realize that this could result in the leaking of confidential information and breach data privacy compliance regulations.

There’s a palpable sense of excitement ahead of the 2023 Dreamforce conference in San Francisco next week, which Salesforce is billing as the “AI event of the year”. 

Conference agendas have been saturated with AI content – including the likes of Google Cloud Next and Dell Technologies World – begging the question of how Dreamforce will differentiate itself. But the company’s recent overperformance and shift in focus paints a compelling picture. 

Salesforce started 2023 in a rather awkward position. With tentative warnings of a looming recession and turbulent economic conditions, the tech giant joined others across the industry in laying off around 8,000 staff. 

Amidst the seemingly never-ending wave of tech layoffs, the generative AI boom was gathering momentum, with organizations the world over fawning at the tantalizing opportunities that might await in a new era of AI-driven optimization. 

Since then, Salesforce has made no secret of its desire to capitalize on this trend, with CEO Marc Benioff highly vocal about the firm’s bullish outlook on generative AI in recent months. 

Benioff told Yahoo Finance in June, for instance, that the current generative AI wave is going to be “the biggest that anyone has ever seen”. 

“I think that the success of OpenAI is the point of evidence that this is going to be one of the fastest growing moves, not just in the consumer market but in the enterprise market,” he said. 

Unpacking a star-studded AI agenda

During a recent earnings call in which the firm recorded better-than-expected results (a consistent trend for the firm so far this year) Benioff outlined the firm’s ambition, adding it’s firmly positioning itself as a standout leader amid the generative AI boom.

"We're now driving our AI transformation," he told reporters. "We're pioneering AI for both our customers and ourselves, leading the industry through this incredible new innovation cycle. We are very thirsty to make sure that Salesforce is the number-one AI CRM, and we have done a lot organically to do that in the last six months.”

With Salesforce going all-in on AI, Dreamforce will serve as an opportunity to showcase these plans and act as a launchpad for its goals through the rest of 2023 and beyond. 

Simply glance at the conference agenda and you’ll see how excited Salesforce is, with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic co-founder Dario Amodei, and Clement Delangue, CEO & co-founder of Hugging Face, set to appear. 

But there’s more to its AI ambitions than soundbites and a star-studded conference agenda. The company has made significant moves in the AI space throughout 2023 in a drive that shows no signs of slowing down. 

Doubling down on generative AI investments

In March, Salesforce Ventures, the company’s investment wing, launched a $250 million generative AI fund to support the startup ecosystem and “spark the development of responsible generative AI”. 

At launch, Salesforce revealed it planned to initially invest in four companies, including Anthropic, Cohere, You.com, and Hearth.AI. 

Naturally, this ambitious investment pledge raised eyebrows, but just two months later the firm doubled down on its commitment with an additional $250 million in funding and the addition of Tribble and Humane to its ecosystem. 

These AI investments are by no means Salesforce’s first. 

It’s been innovating in the space for nearly a decade, having launched its Einstein AI assistance tool in 2016, for example, to provide customers with machine learning capabilities. 

This latest round of investment underlines the firm’s optimistic long-term outlook on generative AI and, more importantly, its commitment to drawing upon the shared expertise of partners within its broader ecosystem. 

This also coincided with the launch of Salesforce’s ‘AI Cloud’ in June. This is a product suite designed to provide enterprise customers with access to generative AI capabilities, hosting a range of models from partner organizations including Anthropic, Cohere, and OpenAI, as well as its own first-party models. 

Partnering up to conquer the AI market

By drawing on its partner community, Salesforce is taking a similar approach AWS, which has in recent months leveraged its own in-house capabilities alongside those of external partners. 

AWS unveiled the launch of Amazon Bedrock in April, offering customers access to in-house foundation models as well as those from third parties, such as Anthropic, Stability AI, and AI21 Labs. 

The service was hailed as a dynamic approach at the time, and one that differentiated it from industry counterparts such as Google and Microsoft in the generative AI race. AWS, too, has been highly vocal of its success. Swami Sivasubramanian, VP for database, analytics, and machine learning revealed in July that the service has attracted “thousands of customers” within just a few months of launch.

Following suit from AWS could deliver positive results for Salesforce in the immediate future given the impact that Bedrock has already had. 

If AWS’  success is an appropriate measurement of how this dynamic, ecosystem-driven approach to AI innovation can work, then it’s not without reason to say Salesforce can deliver on Benioff’s plans to position the company as the “number-one AI CRM” in the coming months. 

ITPro's Ross Kelly will be covering Dreamforce 2023 live from the Moscone Center, San Francisco between 12 – 14 September. To stay up-to-date with the latest news and announcements from the conference, follow our live blog and subscribe to our newsletter below. 

Telefónica and F5 have expanded their partnership to launch a new SaaS-based service designed to improve the security and speed of app deployment in multi-cloud environments. 

Deployed on F5’s Distributed Cloud platform, the new Web Application Defense (WAD) managed service enables Telefónica Tech’s enterprise customers to detect threats and vulnerabilities in real time by combining telemetry collection with programmable rules, advanced AI, and machine learning.

Managed from a single dashboard, the offering has been designed to protect enterprise applications whether they are deployed on-premises, across multiple clouds, or at the edge.

Juan Campillo, Telefónica Tech’s director of cyber security product marketing, said the company’s partnership with F5 enables the company to launch a “state-of-the-art managed services solution” that can detect and block the attempted exploitation of application vulnerabilities.

“In particular, the deployment of WAD on F5's Distributed Cloud Platform will add speed to a critical security layer, while providing flexibility for our enterprise customers to deploy, secure and operate applications in a multi-cloud environment wherever needed: In the data center, across hybrid deployments, or across multiple clouds,” he said.

“In addition, the managed services approach is a significant boost for organizations that lack the resources and expertise to address today's cyber security challenges."

Specializing in digital transformation, Telefónica Tech provides a host of services and integrated solutions across cyber security, cloud, IoT, big data, and blockchain. 

The company claims it has the capacity to reach 5.5 million customers across 175 countries through its presence in Spain, the UK, northern Europe, USA, Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Chile, and Mexico.

The firm’s new WAD managed service is supported by its security operations center (SOC) team, which will provide round-the-clock support and cloud environment monitoring for enterprise customers.

Available for organizations in Spain for a monthly fee, the offering currently includes F5’s Web Application Firewall (WAF), bot defense, API security, and distributed denial of service (DDoS) mitigation capabilities.

“We are delighted to announce the launch of the WAD managed service with Telefónica Tech,” commented Mariana Agache, VP for SP Managed Services at F5. “Our partnership goes far beyond just providing a technology platform, and we will continue to support Telefónica with enablement and go-to-market efforts both in EMEA and beyond. 

“As ever, our mutual goal is to ensure continual innovation and safe, world-class services for customers.”  

UK companies have identified cyber security and marketing tools as the top priority for investment in 2023, the latest data from Capterra has revealed.

According to the research firm’s Software Buyer Trends report, both software categories were identified by 41% of respondents as a key priority for the year ahead. The pair edged out IT management (40%), supply chain management or ERP (39%), sales management or CRM (36%), and accounting software (31%).

In the UK, it found that cyber security continues to be a growing concern for businesses, with 70% of respondents stating that they have either already started using cyber security software before the pandemic (39%) or have adopted it since (31%).

In fact, more than half (58%) said they consider “advanced cyber security” a valuable or potentially valuable emerging technology for their organisation.

The report surveyed 1,526 business leaders and managers between August and October 2022, with respondents from Australia, Canada, France, the UK, and the US.

Increased spending

Despite the talk of economic recession and an uncertain global financial landscape, UK software spending is expected to increase over the coming year, with 62% of UK business decision-makers stating that they plan to spend more on software in 2023.

In terms of their projected budget for the year, 45% revealed that they plan to spend between 10-20% more than in 2022, with 17% even stating they will be spending more than that.

“Software buying trends are not expected to wane,” said Eduardo Garcia, content analyst for the UK at Capterra. “2022 began on the back of a record-breaking year for the UK tech sector. Record investments of over £29.4 billion have seen the sector thrive, creating more unicorns and opportunities than ever.”

Three key procurement challenges

Although spending increases are forecast, there may be some familiar investment challenges ahead. The top three hurdles, as cited by UK business leaders were found to be: compatibility with existing systems (42%), identifying the right technology (38%), and security concerns (38%).

Additionally, many organisations are still cautious with their strategy, with 54% saying that they approached new and emerging technologies ‘somewhat’ or ‘very’ cautiously – compared to 48% across the full range of surveyed countries.

Overall, however, UK businesses appear to remain committed to their digital progress and technology investment, with 50% agreeing that emerging technologies have played a key role in their IT strategy.

“UK businesses are looking to apply part of their budget to strengthen their cyber security capabilities,” Garcia added. “This is in addition to focusing on other strategic elements that can improve their revenues and operations, such as marketing, IT management, and supply chain management.

“Our survey shows that despite the difficulties 2023 may bring, UK companies are still set on developing their digital transformation strategies,” Garcia said.

Businesses in today's age need to do more with less. As usual, budgets shrink when a recession begins to take hold, which puts pressure on IT teams. Investing in tech has been high on the agenda, but organisations must now scale back, whether it's in slashing office costs, getting energy bills down, or reducing software costs.

Businesses can achieve more by working smarter, not harder. This means being strategic in the way they operate and making sure they're using their resources in the most effective way possible. Reducing software costs is feasible, but businesses must take care to make these savings in a responsible way, and try not to compromise on core business functionality.

Identify the biggest points of expenditure

The rapid shift to hybrid working dramatically increased IT spending. This, tied with economic concerns, has meant IT teams and the c-suite are under immense pressure to reduce costs without hindering digital transformation efforts, according to Helena Nimmo, CIO at Endava.

“There will be conversations about consolidations of systems, aligning IT with hybrid working and translating the value of the digital work done over the past couple of years into operational cost reductions. Even with the current increased rate of inflation,” she says.

Software spend takes up a significant portion of all IT spend, and with the SaaS model, it's near impossible to turn on and off. The cost of a SaaS application has many services wrapped into a single charge, and it is good to understand what these items are, says Nimmo.

"For example," she explains, "your contract might stipulate a certain storage quota and, once you are over it, you pay over the odds for the difference. Finding a way to stay within the quota for cost avoidance, or even reduce it for cost reduction, can be a piece of forensic work at the time of contract renewal, but is definitely worth it."

Guiding principles to reducing software costs

Beyond budget pressures, the ongoing supply chain challenges are reducing the supply of devices and components, pushing costs up. It can be difficult to identify where IT teams can cut costs without impacting productivity and satisfaction, says John Atkinson, director of sales engineering, UK and Ireland at Riverbed.

“The increasing prevalence of SaaS and hybrid cloud infrastructure make it challenging to monitor IT asset performance and usage, leading to bloated software, network and cloud spend,” he says.

“As a result, IT teams struggle to create a consistent, high-quality user experience. License tracking and other cost saving measures often fall by the wayside as many teams lack the tools to adequately monitor their infrastructure’s performance.”

One of the most important principles is to create an IT strategy that provides commonality and direction. Aligning the use of applications across the business, ensuring they are fit for purpose and making full use of their capabilities will realise the best cost efficiencies, according to Matthew Garrett, principal consultant at Entec Si.

"In larger companies, it's often the case that different applications are used across teams to do the same job," he says. "Aligning these applications and encouraging staff to adopt the same applications already in use in the business, rather than procuring new ones that get the same results, should reduce some of the spending on software,"

Searching across the business for greater efficiencies

For businesses looking to cut costs without losing out on functionality or compromising on quality, IT decision makers first need to understand how to make best use of their existing applications.

Through application rationalisation, Garrett says, businesses using multiple applications – for example, multiple document management systems – can to help relieve some costs. However, care must be taken not to compromise the integrity of core business operations.

“Rethinking the delivery of traditional infrastructure solutions and looking to use cloud-based options could also provide significant cost savings for larger businesses," he says. "A good example of this would be the use of a zero trust security model and tools to remove the need for a traditional WAN.

“For larger businesses with multiple offices, removing the need for traditional WAN can reduce costs, whilst moving to a cloud-based solution will increase user experience, security and connectivity to applications from locations outside of the office.”

Organisations should always strive to maximise the value of their software before cutting spending, agrees Simon Blunn, SVP and general manager EMEA at WalkMe. He advises asking employees whether they require any additional assistance or tools to get the most out of the software in front of them.

“A proper approach to digital adoption can help forestall aggressive cost cuts by making sure the technology organisations have invested in is being used to its full potential," he says. "Similarly, if users are able to fully utilise workplace software, the efficiencies gained will offset software costs through increased productivity."

Making new software arrangements

With the cloud and SaaS in ascendency, funding models for business software have changed. Greg Ouillon, EMEA CTO at New Relic, says that consumption-based pricing models are the future of SaaS and the best way for organisations to manage IT spend.

“In short, customers only pay for what they use," he explains. "This is critical during times where departments must justify every penny they spend. Traditional models forced teams to lock into multi-year contracts. For many, this resulted in under usage and wasted budget, or overuse and penalties."

Cloud models may have promised more flexibility around cost, but some products have not followed through on that initial promise, according to Tom Bridge, principal product manager at JumpCloud. “Look at products where you can see what you pay for on a per user basis, and what deals you can do by taking more of a bundled approach as well,” he advises.

This automatically-generated transcript is taken from the IT Pro Podcast episode ‘Achieving software sustainability'. We apologise for any errors.

Rory Bathgate

Hi, I’m Rory Bathgate. And you’re listening to the IT Pro Podcast, where this week we’re asking if you can go green, while staying in the green.

The climate crisis is an issue that we must all confront, and businesses in particular face calls to cut back on emissions to meet net zero targets. In recent years, increasing focus has been placed on the climate impact of tech firms, and data centres in particular.

According to Bloomberg, by 2030 big energy systems could account for 20% of worldwide energy drain, which if not produced by renewable energy would represent a stark increase in carbon emissions. Despite this, many firms still weigh the cost of going green against expansion plans, and greater processing power often comes with a hefty energy cost.

To explore these challenges, I spoke with Behrad Babaee, Technology Evangelist at Aerospike, and the author of a white paper that proposes a framework for measuring the CO2 impact of software platforms. We discussed whether increased sustainability can also lead to increased affordability and even processing power.

Please note that as this interview was recorded at Big Data London, the acoustic quality is a little different to normal episodes, but we hope that the conversation itself will prove more than interesting enough nonetheless.

Rory

So something that struck me straight away at your talk was that some firms, they still see sustainability as a choice between sustainability and affordability. What would you say to those firms?

Behrad Babaee

So basically, what I found in this research was that actually the in, in software in terms of computing industry, it's the opposite. If you, if you think about it, and you want to create a software that is more efficient, you have to make the application run on fewer instructions, you want to reduce the number of instructions. So when you reduce the number of instructions, your task will complete faster, yeah, you're gonna have more space available on your CPU as you do more things. So you can do more. Therefore, you're going to reduce the number of reduce the amount of resources that you require. So when you reduce the amount of resources you have, your costs will be lower, your efficiency, your amount of emissions will be lowered as well, because a lot of the emissions are based on the amount of resources that you use and energy those resources are using. So basically, I think software and IT industry is one of the only industries that can actually reduce the cost by making the applications more sustainable. So I think that that's that's that's a unique opportunity for the IT industry to reduce their emissions.

Rory

Kind of an unprecedented win-win scenario, for IT professionals. I think something that struck me in the white paper was, you argue that efficient was always mean, as you're saying speed and cost of higher and more intensive resources are used. So could you expand upon that with with an example?

Behrad

So let's, let's talk about an example. Let's imagine that you have a task that takes I don't know, 10% of the instruction sets 10% of the instruction that your CPU uses in a second. I don't know how many megahertz or gigahertz your CPU has. But imagine that I'm using 10% of those instructions to handle that. If I can reduce that 10% to 5%. All right, I suddenly can do twice more on the same CPU. So that's the example of this that you can increase the speed, you can reduce the amount of resources that you need. And also because we are reducing the amount of resources, we are reducing the cost, and we are reducing the emissions as well. So I guess that's, that's an example.

Rory

Right, so something that companies should be striving for. And it's also something that companies, that you're saying, is eminently achievable by companies. Is this something that you see, is better suited to be built from the ground up? So let's put it another way to sort of start from scratch with systems or is this applicable to existing systems that could quite easily be transformed?

Behrad

I think in general, in IT industry, building something from ground up is less common than you know, fixing something. Yeah. So I think I think you have to be realistic. You have to look at it from both ways. So one side is that okay, I want to build it a new application, right? And then I can look into the different technologies that are available in the markets. And then you can study the amount of emissions that they might produce and make a decision based on that, to, to pick a technology that is better for the environment. But other than that, if you already have an application that is using something, I think that everybody's always trying to improve their application. So you can always look into that to improve that application. And, you know, basically make things work better. So I think that it's not either, you know, either this or that, you can always have both.

Rory

That's true, I suppose you're hard pressed to find any system in it, that isn't in some way, sort of stacked upon 40 years of pre existing systems. And exactly, so this is something that can be continually improved. I know that in the white paper, you you push forward a framework for identifying areas that are causing the most common impact, and then to allow companies to take that data and then apply it into making their system more efficient. Could you just describe that in detail?

Behrad

So the idea came to me from this, that I learned that the IT industry is actually using a lot of energy. At the moment, apparently, we are using something between 5 to 9% of the energy in the world, in 2030 is going to expand to to around 20%.

Rory

That's a shocking statistic.

Behrad

You know that, you know, energy is one of the most polluting businesses in the world. So therefore, IT industry is one of the polluting industries of the world. So I was like, Okay, if you're like that, is there any way to measure the amount of emissions that we are producing? Right, you know, to be able to review something, you first need to be able to measure it. And I looked around, and I couldn't find anything that gives you any indication about how much emissions a software produces. And then I had this idea that I might be able to expand this argument about efficient softwares to, to amount of emissions that they produce as well. And then, to be honest, the paper, you know, explain everything as much detail. But if you just want to look at look at it from you know, 30,000 feet view, it's it's rather simple. I'm saying that for a software, you look at this, that's how much resources you need to handle a specific workflow. And it can be anything, you know, well, Aerospike is a database company. So I did it with size up data. But if you imagine, you want to do that, for a technology that is analytics, you can say that, I don't know, I want to be able to analyse, I don't know 50 million users. That's whatever the workload that you have. So you can define your workload. And then based on that workload, you can say that I need this much resources. And then from there, it's going to be very easy. Yeah, there are some public data sources that are telling you that for this specific type of resource there, there are this much emissions produced while it was manufactured. And when you run it in, let's say, Ireland or that country, it's going to produce that much emissions, because it's using the power and energy that the country generates with that much efficiency in that country. So then you put them together. So you end up with this number. And I was thinking that if you have efficient, efficient softwares, you can improve this number. Basically, this paper shows that, you know, two nominally similar technologies can produce 5x different amounts of CO2, one of them produces 110 tonnes per petabyte, the other one produces 670 tonnes, right? It's a significant number, right?

Rory

So it's not inherent in the system itself. It's to do with the different practices thar the companies are deploying.

Behrad

Exactly. You don't you don't necessarily see that. But when you do the calculation, you see that oh, actually it's significantly more. And then yeah, if you're conscious of that, if you think that, you know, you need to reduce the CO2 emissions, then yeah, that's the way that you can focus on and one more thing is that that I think, in the years to come, more companies are going to look into that. Because right now, all of the three cloud providers, the most important cloud providers, tell you about the amount of emissions that your account produced during last quarter, right? They don't allow you to estimate that But you can see what's happened in the past three months. And I think that it's going to be the precursor for this, that they're going to charge back the companies who are using their infrastructures on the CO2 emissions, because very likely AWS and Microsoft and Google, you know, Net Zero targets as well. And if people start to use their resources, how can they offset that, I think the way that they will offset that is by charging back that number to the user. And then then it's going to be the responsibility of user to reduce that admission. So you

Rory

I think that maybe with a combination of I know in the paper, you suggest that they should be giving users insight into a prediction of how much carbon impact will be —

Behrad

Absolutely.

Rory

— and also, this charge that you're talking about? Users will have to foot the bill for if you like, pushing Amazon Web Services, or Azure, or whoever it is off their net zero target. So with a combination of those two things, do you think we can see an effective shift towards more efficient systems?

Behrad

Absolutely.

Behrad

Fantastic. So off the back of that call for more prediction, or for prediction available from cloud providers, I noticed that you're calling also for a universe of CO2 emissions metric, because my understanding is that currently, different providers provide CO2 emissions in different metrics is very difficult to compare across providers.

Behrad

Yeah, that's correct. So when you measure the amount of co2, you know, there are CO2 zones in Zone 1, Zone 2 and zone three? Is it? Is it directly created by you? Is it indirectly created by you, or it's two levels away from you. So each of these cloud providers are giving you different numbers, and these numbers are not necessarily comparable. So that's one of the problems. But the reason that I was talking about, you know, a metric was that, this analysis that I did was just between two different technologies. There are not only two technologies in the market, and you know, in the database market, there are at least 50 famous databases. I think, very similar to the way that we say that, yeah, this database can do, I don't know, 50,000 transactions per second on a node, or this database can handle that much data, we should have a metric that says that, yeah, this database can do, I don't know that and produce that much emissions. So people can really compare that and it's not really databases only, right. You can do that with analytics engine as well, you can say that more, I don't know that. That's amount of workload, this technology produces that much emissions that technology produces those emissions. And then, based on what are you doing, you can you can look into that and then make decisions. Luckily, I believe that efficient, software's always going to use less resources, and always going to produce fewer emissions. So think that is going to be always the case, so somehow you can guess that from the resources that you have. But I still believe that, you know, if you want to, for example, use as a service system. Right. You don't necessarily know what resources that you you're going to use. Right? So if you have something to tell you that yeah, this service that we're using producing this much emissions based on this thing that you do, I think that that's going to be relevant.

Rory

And ever more relevant as digital transformation is, you know, accelerated by the pandemic. But I guess in essence, what you're saying is that companies are at the moment sort of handing away their, there's a screen behind which they're not really aware of what they say their carbon impact is. So this information should be more transparent, across the board.

Behrad

I agree.

Rory

More specifically to Aerospike. Can you talk a bit about I know this is a broad, we've talked about a broad range of processes or frameworks, decision making, can you talk broadly about how this how these ideas are being applied within the company?

Behrad

So efficiency is core to what Aerospike does, right? So the the database from the day one was created for people who needed really, really fast access to data, so they had to make it really, really efficient. So they got all of the fat from the system and made it really really fast. So we do have clients that are doing thirty million transactions per second, with latency of less than a millisecond, right, these these numbers are just, you know, whenever when I was joining Aerospike I heard these numbers that they're lying. You know, it is like, you know, I worked in the database market for many, many years, and these numbers just didn't make any sense. Yeah. And they were doing that, while they were reducing the number of servers, just like it doesn't, it's not possible. So. So yeah, you know, the database is written to be super, super efficient. And then, as I discussed, you know, efficiency and speed, always bring you, you know, you were, you're going to need fewer resources, and you're going to generate less emissions. So I think that I don't think that when the company has started to build a application, that we're focused on this, this is something that we started to figure out, when more things started to come out, you know, the company in 2010, I don't think that many companies in 2010, 2011 were ticking about reducing their CO2. This is something that we recently understood that we need to we need to care about. Now we are looking at the market. And now we are comparing ourselves against the competitors. And we see, oh, we can we can help people other than, you know, just reducing their latency and help them to store a lot of data, we can help them to reduce their CO2 emissions as well.

Rory

A kind of handy marriage between short-term savings and also the understanding that with the climate crisis, you know, down the line, any changes made now are long term savings in the billions and trillions.

Behrad

Exactly.

Behrad

So I think there's one question that many people asked me, and I think that that would be, that might be interesting to some other people as well. So as we are moving towards more sustainable sources of energy. So is it going to have an impact on this argument that I'm making that you know, moving towards more efficient software is going to reduce emissions? Because some people think that okay, in 2030, we are using 20%. But all of this 20% is coming from sustainable sources? Is it going to be still relevant? My answer to that question would be this that no source of energy is emission free, every single source of energy has some kind of emission, some of them are more, some of them are less, and that you're not reducing the amount of energy that you're using either. So 20% of the energy in seven years, is possibly more than 50% of the energy that we're using today. So using all of the levers that we have to reduce the emissions is just the right thing to do. And then there's also another point and it's that, you know, expecting someone else to reduce their emissions and not doing it yourself is kind of hypocritical. If you if you think we need to do that. Right. And I'm not I'm not in a position to say that you should write I'm a software engineer. I only know about software, right? I'm not saying that you should write. But if you think you should, you should act, right. You can't you cannot say that, "Oh yeah, the sources of energy are going to clean up so I don't need to act." Because what if I did if they didn't?

Rory

Yeah. Right. Yeah. And potentially a perilous situation for any company that designed that it doesn't want to be at the kind of the forefront of this movement, a risk in itself to not act.

Behrad

Yeah. And, I don't know if this bit is going to be interesting at all, but I'll have another talk tomorrow that I'm discussing, and at how Aerospike is five times faster. You know, you know, because you cannot do it with sorcery, right. So somehow you should be able to do that. And then most people know that, you know, the data structures and algorithms that applications use, many were invented in the 70s and 80s. So yeah, how come there's a new technology in the market that is working often faster than the other technologies in the market? And, you know, I had that question when I was joining Aerospike as well. I didn't know that. How on earth is that possible? And that's a very interesting topic as well. The reason for that the reason that I figure now is that the number of transistors that you get, on, although the number of transistors that you get on a chip is not doubling every two years anymore. You know, if you look at, you know, the most advanced CPU that you can get right now it has around 8 billion transistors, and most advanced CPU that you could get 16 years ago, had like 580 million transistors. So the number of transistors is only 14 times more. Which it should have been 256 times more, because it's 16 years,

Rory

Right, and we're rubbing against the laws of physics there.

Behrad

So so so that's true about a single chip. Yeah. But if you look at the computers, yeah, the number of transistors has not only doubled every two years, I guess it's 10 times more every single year. Because now, you know, when you're comparing the computers today, with the computers of let's say, 16 years ago, you have significantly more than 256 times more RAM on a single machine. A top of the market machine in 2006, would only handle 64 gigabytes of RAM. Today, you can have 24 terabytes of RAM on a on a single machine. Right? It's 384 times more RAM, it's more than 256. And with this is even more interesting, because back in 2006, we hardly had any transistors, right, we were using spinning disks. Now, we are using these SSDs that are just transistors, and for a single terabyte of data, we have trillions of transistors. So basically, the number of transistors that you have in your CPUs is in billions, doesn't even matter. Right, because the number of transistors that you have in your disk is in the order of trillions. So significant changes in the hardware in the past 16 years caused a lot of changes in the way that we write programmes. But we still have a lot of programmes that were written for that kind of hardware that was good for 2006. And you can still run them on the modern hardware that we have today. But they do a lot of clever things to combat the scarcity of resources that they were facing in 2006, which you don't need to do today. And if you don't do them today, it lets your application fly and allow it to work five times faster, although you're using almost the same algorithms and almost the same data structures. And it's not unique to Aerospike. There are lots of other modern technologies that are coming into the market that are significantly better than the applications that were created 15 years ago.

Rory

I think this is kind of a worthwhile topic to link in as you're talking about efficiency. I know that you made a reference at the start of the podcast to that increase.

Behrad

Yeah, so the reason that we can do that is basically that. And it's not only limited to Aerospike, there are other technologies that are doing that as well. And I think that decisions make a decision makers have to notice that, you know, if you work with the technology for the past 10 years, and you call it the modern technology, yes, it is modern technology, it is not you're not using a technology that was developed in the 80s. You're using a technology that was developed in the past 15 years. But you have to notice that there has been a massive change in the type of the hardware that we are using today. And 16 years ago, so it was noticing what is going on with the newer technologies that are coming to the market, because there's a chasm between the number of transistors that we had in 2006 and 2022, and it's not stopping. It's still growing. And you're missing a lot, if you're still, you know, using those software that were written for scarcity instead of abundance.

Rory

And enterprises have to get their eye off the supposed bottleneck with the processors, almost an obsession with somehow defeating that hardware challenge? And as you were talking about adapting algorithms, adapting programmes to more efficiently use the hardware that we do have, and actually is an order of magnitude better than what we had.

Behrad

Yeah. Another example of that is the ratio of RAM to disk. A server in in 2006, is 1:200, 1:300. For each megabyte of RAM, you have around 200-300 megabytes of disk. On a server today, you can increase that to 1:10. For each megabyte of RAM, you can have 10 megabytes of disk. So RAM is not, and RAM is relatively cheap. So RAM is not that scarce resource that you had to use very, very carefully. You can use it freely. And you don't need to constantly move things between disk and RAM to do let your application or to let your application use the RAM. You can keep everything in RAM. But but that's a different mentality. Right. And that's a different mentality, which interestingly, we are doing with microservices, because with micro services, you're dedicating resources to one or two threads, which just owns one or two cores of our CPU. And because it's dedicated, we can, we can increase the speed of our applications. So we basically, took concurrency outside of the process. And we made the processes basically parallel instead of putting multi threading inside.

Rory

And needlessly trying to use multi threading is a silver bullet when yeah, there's a whole separate process that actually improves efficiency, and to tie it back into the sort of title, title of discussion it's in these exact areas that businesses should be looking into to, to increase their their reduce the overhead costs and increase their sustainability and efficiencies?

Behrad

Exactly. So what I was saying was that there are lots of new applications, new technologies that are coming into the market that are significantly faster than the older technology. And by older, I mean, 10 years ago technology. I'm not talking about, you know, Oracle 2000, Oracle 1984, right, I'm talking about something that is relatively recent. They are new technologies that are coming in, they are faster because they're faster, they're using fewer resources and because of fewer resources, they are generating less emissions.

Rory

You can find links to all of the topics we've spoken about today in the shownotes, and even more on our website at it pro.co.uk. You can also follow us on social media, as well as subscribe to our daily newsletter. Don't forget to subscribe to the IT Pro podcast wherever you find podcasts. And hey, if you're enjoying the show, leave us a rating and a review. We'll be back next week with more insights from the world of it but until then, goodbye

Businesses are rapidly having to contend with responding to the climate crisis, and the tech industry is set to become one of the biggest contributors to energy drain by the end of the decade. It is clear that sustainable software options are a goal, but many firms are reluctant to adopt lower-carbon systems out of concern for loss of power.

Joining us this week is Behrad Babaee, Technology Evangelist at Aerospike, to talk about his proposals for a universal metric with which to measure the carbon output of software, and how it is possible to cut cost, latency and carbon emissions at the same time.

Highlights

“You know that, you know, energy is one of the most polluting businesses in the world. So therefore, IT industry is one of the polluting industries of the world. So I was like, Okay, if you're like that, is there any way to measure the amount of emissions that we are producing? Right, you know, to be able to review something, you first need to be able to measure it. And I looked around, and I couldn't find anything that gives you any indication about how much emissions a software produces.”

“20% of the energy in seven years, is possibly more than 50% of the energy that we're using today. So using all of the levers that we have to reduce the emissions is just the right thing to do.”

“So significant changes in the hardware in the past 16 years caused a lot of changes in the way that we write programmes. But we still have a lot of programmes that were written for that kind of hardware that was good for 2006. And you can still run them on the modern hardware that we have today. But they do a lot of clever things to combat the scarcity of resources that they were facing in 2006, which you don't need to do today.”

Read the full transcript here.

Footnotes

• CO2 Emission Efficiency as a Measurable Non-Functional Requirement: An Emission Estimation Framework
• Google Cloud’s sustainability expansion offers new solutions for businesses with green ambitions
• Is sustainability the next big channel play?
• Google Earth Engine open for business on Google Cloud, in corporate sustainability push
• Microsoft partners commit to 2050 net zero target
• Tech Nation and PwC partner to scale 20 of the UK's most exciting climate tech companies

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Pre-pandemic, SD-WAN was touted as the critical building block for multi-cloud adoption. Employees returning to the offices are experiencing that their corporate network is much slower than the one at home. Increased SaaS usage, security risks, hybrid workforce, and poor end-user experience are causing CIOs to re-evaluate their secured multi-cloud application access strategy.

Is SD-WAN still critical? Is Zero Trust the new centre of the network and network security modernisation? How do we gain visibility into SaaS applications, monitor, mitigate threats, and secure access to sensitive data?

In this webinar, Cloudflare will discuss these questions and share:

• The change in CIO priorities from pre to post-pandemic
• Key architecture and technologies, importance of SaaS security & recommendations for 2023 & beyond
• The roadmap to Zero Trust architecture

Provided by

IT distributor and solutions aggregator TD SYNNEX has announced a new Independent Software Vendor (ISV) experience, designed to help accelerate Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) opportunities in the channel.

The initiative takes advantage of the company’s partner ecosystem to help power IT operations, automate complex processes, as well as deploy new functionalities.

The firm says the framework will provide ISVs with enablement at every stage of the ISV lifecycle, helping to drive sales, boost go-to-market practices, and deliver successful business outcomes for users.

“With the explosive growth in the multi-hybrid cloud solutions space, we have implemented a streamlined ISV experience framework that ensures we curate the channel’s best ISV solutions marketplace,” announced Francisco Criado, vice president of Cloud, Data, and IoT at TD SYNNEX.

The ISV experience offers three tiers of offerings, each featuring different program capabilities tailored for ISVs of different sizes, ranging from startups to mature companies.

The first, dubbed ‘Business Acceleration’, centres on offerings built to help ISVs innovate and automate their business at their own pace, while ‘Technical Aggregation’ aims to help ISVs build monthly recurring revenue models with access to the TD SYNNEX advanced cloud platforms Stellr and StreamOne.

The third – ‘Marketing as a Service’ – brings additional capabilities to continue the building and enhancing of ISVs’ channel practices as they look to scale their respective SaaS businesses.

TD SYNNEX said the new framework will deliver a wide range of benefits, including automated billing, provisioning, and management for easier transactions via its cloud marketplaces, as well as multi-cloud billing with support for consumption and subscription-based pricing models.

There’s also access to the aggregator’s IT solutions provider ecosystem, SaaS delivery models and cloud-ready applications, its range of professional services, on-demand marketing programmes, as well as its experts in next-generation technology.

“By leveraging our strong vendor relationships, combined with unparalleled solutions aggregation and support capabilities, we are committed to helping ISVs accelerate business growth,” Criado said.

The company claims its latest announcement represents the “most inclusive and comprehensive” ISV experience that’s currently available in the market.

Business communications platform Slack is hiking up its monthly price and changing the way its free tier works.

The changes, which the company announced via its blog, will go into effect on 1 September 2022.

Current customers can lock in their existing payment plans for an additional year, according to the blog, provided they renew before September. However, if they fail to act, users on the 'Pro' plan will see the price increase from $8 per month to $8.75 (£7). For the yearly 'Pro' subscription, users will see an increase from $6.67 per month to $7.25 per year (£5.75).

The reasoning behind the increase has been put down to new features; Slack has pivoted slightly since the pandemic, now advertising itself as a 'digital HQ' for hybrid workers. This has seen a host of new features and improvements, such as Slack Connect and more investment in Slack Huddles. This is the first time the cost of Slack has increased since its inception in 2014, which has coincided with a global cost of living crisis.

"To reflect all of that added value and ensure that we can keep investing in innovation, today we are announcing our first price increase since we launched in 2014," Slack said in its blog. "This increase will only affect users on our Pro subscription. In addition, we're updating our Free subscription to make it easier than ever for users to try out new features."

For those that are on free Slack plans, there will be changes to the way messages are saved. Previously Slack would show the last 10,000 messages and 5GB worth of uploads. However, this will change to a time basis rather than an amount with Slack showing 90 days' worth of messages or uploads, regardless of how much or how little is sent.

Free users will also have access to some of the newer Slack features, such as Clips, which allows anyone to send audio, video or screen-share messages in direct messages or channels. This is mainly used to provide updates and important info when a recipient(s) is ready, rather than having extra meetings. This will also include a 'retention' period for messages and files.

String me up on charges of shooting fish in a barrel, if you will, but I’m 99% sure we’re all sick of paying subscriptions for software.

Two companies that are having no trouble living with themselves are those who arguably swung the pendulum towards subscriptions in the first place: Adobe and Microsoft. Adobe first launched Creative Cloud back in 2012, moving from the big one-off cost of Creative Suite to the subscription model, since when the company’s net income charts have taken on the appearance of Tour de France mountain stage. Microsoft financial reports, meanwhile, reveal that Microsoft 365 Consumer subscriptions have increased by almost ten million over the past year alone to 54.1 million, while Office 365 commercial seat growth is up 17% year-on-year.

So, subscriptions are the gift that keeps on giving for the software giants, which is why almost the entire industry has latched onto the idea. If your small business files accounts, you’re almost certainly paying QuickBooks, Sage, Xero or someone else a monthly stipend to record your financials; password managers want a monthly fee to spit out the f%djfDBbe3!d’s for you; even gaming is swinging heavily towards subscription plans.

In my experience, most people won’t grumble too much if software switches to a subscription model and offers something in return. There’s a growing and obnoxious trend, however, for companies to switch to subscriptions and offer nothing extra – or to even withhold features from customers who previously paid for a one-off licence in full expectation of being able to use them for as long as they liked.

This was the case recently with the iPad/Mac note-taking app Notability. In a blog post with more spin on it than a Shane Warne delivery, the developer announced the app was going free! Free, that is, except for the $14.99 per year subscription that you’d have to pay to access most of its useful features. The company would generously give customers who’d previously bought the app one year’s grace before the subscription kicked in, but then they’d be expected to pay again for some features they'd already bought.

That went down about as well as a Jacob Rees-Mogg lecture on Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage and within 24 hours the company was forced to yank the handbrake, spin round and promise not to take features off customers who’d already paid for them. But the apology came with a slab of emotional blackmail. “We are a small company, so we designed the original one-year access plan as a precautionary measure since we were not certain if we could support lifetime access,” the Notability team wrote on its blog. “We sincerely apologise for putting our current users in this position.”

Then there are companies that justify shuffling to a subscription by throwing in features you don’t necessarily want in the first place. Acronis True Image 2021 got a five-star review, even though we grumbled about the one-off £34 cost. Now, however, Acronis True Image is no more and is replaced by Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office, which has “made the leap from backup to a complete cyber protection solution – combatting the full scope of data threats, from accidents and hardware failure to device theft and cyberattack”. In other words, it’s thrown in a series of security features that you might already have and is charging customers, you guessed it, £34 per year for the privilege.

Notability and Acronis are far from alone in being sucked into the subscriptions model – they’re just the two most recent examples I had to hand. Although there are plenty of free alternatives to subscription-based software, the direction of travel is clear.

This, I fear, is bad for customers. Not only because there’s a finite limit to how many subscriptions most people can afford to maintain, but because the monthly payout makes software firms complacent. They don’t need to tempt you every year or two with killer new features that will persuade you to buy a new version – they’ve got you in the keep net. Especially when – as with Microsoft and Adobe – their software has a virtual monopoly on their particular sectors. Name a recent addition to Microsoft Word, or Excel, or Photoshop that would have tempted you to pay hundreds of quid for an upgrade? Bet you can’t.

Microsoft has added more functions to its Windows 365 cloud PC service to help users seamlessly and securely switch to different devices.

The tech giant has also revealed a new capability that lets users work offline with an automatic re-syncing feature that saves user data.

To begin, 'Windows 365 Boot' is a security feature that lets admins designate a "primary" device for their workforce to use Windows 365. Microsoft suggests this is a solution that will favour temporary or frontline workers, where sharing devices in BYOD scenarios is very common.

All a new user needs is their own personal Windows 365 credentials, through which they can access their own account on the new device.

Microsoft has also announced 'Windows 365 Switch', designed for those that want to change devices, like moving from a desktop to a tablet, on the fly. Users can use the function to switch from the cloud PC to a local desktop, similar to the service that is in 'Task Switcher'. This includes porting the keyboard commands and swipe gestures as well.

Windows 365 was introduced last year as "the world's first Cloud PC" that lets users stream their entire Windows experience straight from Microsoft's cloud. So personal settings, apps, and contents can be accessed, securely, on any device. The feature is mainly aimed at hybrid workers, but also those running BYOD device programmes. Microsoft also notes that it's a useful service for companies going through mergers or acquisitions where devices and systems need to change in as seamless a way as possible.

The tech giant has also considered downtime with Windows 365 offline, which will enable work in the service even when disconnected. What's more, when connectivity is restored, the cloud PC will automatically re-sync with the Windows 365 service so that no user data is lost and the user experience and workflow remain persistent.

There is also a new Windows 365 app that will offer another way to access the cloud PC from the Task Bar or Start menu, which users can personalise with the desktop path.

Imperial College London is moving some of its library and student support services to the cloud, using ServiceNow’s automation systems.

The university decided to enlist the cloud service provider's help after being impressed with the self-service elements of its workflow automation offering.

“The decision to move to cloud was not cut and dried, but we always knew that there was an advantage in that it cuts down on our in-house requirements, in terms of maintenance and support of hardware,” Imperial ICT service centre manager, Paul Carter, told Cloud Pro.

“There is a big drive for improving the student experience within the university and the move to cloud fits in nicely with that, so we’re hoping that we will be a bit more flexible in terms of what the students want and support requirements, such as being able to contact IT or ICT.”

The college also hopes the service will reduce the need for students to make physical visits to support offices, as they will be able to access many of the standard forms and other paperwork online. This, in turn, will reduce queues, particularly at the beginning of term.

The move to cloud will take place in three stages, with a small, non customer-facing portion of the library team moving onto the ServiceNow system next week. This will be followed by two further adoption phases in September and November.

In a statement, ServiceNow’s vice-president of EMEA, Kevin Tumulty, said: “We are privileged to help some of the most prestigious and forward-thinking organisations in the world automate service delivery to transform IT and the business. We relish the prospect of facilitating this impressive project at Imperial College London.”

Nokia has announced two new software as a service (SaaS) offerings for telecom operators and enterprises: iSIM Secure Connect and AVA Network Data Analytics Function.

Centered on security, analytics, and monetization, the new services build upon Nokia's recent venture into SaaS to help communication service providers (CSPs) and businesses drive greater value from their services by migrating to a subscription-based, agile model that replaces custom, expensive, on-premise software with purely on-demand software.

“As opposed to classic SIMs, embedded SIM (eSIM) and integrated SIM (iSIM) technologies can store and manage multiple subscription profiles remotely for authenticating users and devices on mobile networks,” explained Nokia.

iSIM Secure Connect, a new SaaS solution from Nokia, enables CSPs and enterprises to securely and centrally manage eSIM- and iSIM-enabled devices subscriptions.

Additionally, the iSIM Secure Connect platform automates all aspects of the eSIM/iSIM management process and opens up opportunities to monetize services linked to trustable digital identities.

Nokia’s second offering complements its AI&analytics, virtualization, and automation (AVA) solution. The Nokia AVA Network Data Analytics Function (NWDAF), with its distributed architecture and open APIs, provides analytics at the network edge, implements 3GPP-compliant analytics services, and facilitates software-development collaborations.

Its artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML)-driven closed-loop automation helps optimize network operations and improve customer experience, in addition to generating new revenue streams.

As for commercial release, Nokia said its AVA NWDAF service will be available later this quarter via a SaaS delivery model. iSIM Secure Connect is scheduled to launch as SaaS later this year. However, other deployment options will continue to be available to customers.

“Adopting Nokia AVA NWDAF and iSIM Secure Connect through the SaaS model will greatly improve the time-to-value that CSPs and enterprises can realize by having on-demand access to services. These latest Nokia SaaS services strengthen our leadership position in helping our customers change the very foundation of how our industry does business,” said Raghav Sahgal, president of cloud and network services at Nokia.

The worldwide healthcare software as a service market is set to reach $51.7 billion by 2028, according to a new report from Grand View Research.

A compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19.5% is projected for the market between 2021 and 2028, credited to the growing adoption of cloud computing in the healthcare industry.

A case in point is software as a service (SaaS), the largest service segment in the cloud space. SaaS is fast becoming an important component of electronic health record (EHR) systems, clinical information systems, and remote patient monitoring systems.

In the healthcare industry, SaaS offers benefits such as increased flexibility, improvement of return on investment, competitive advantage, and lowering software deployment costs.

Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to increased adoption of SaaS-based telemedicine, mobile health applications, and CRM/ERP systems.

As an example, CloudHospital began offering SaaS services in November 2021 to help clinics and hospitals meet increasing demand. In addition to managing traffic, communication, and patient booking, the firm intends to increase hospital visibility and accessibility through the service.

“The adoption of telemedicine and other digital technologies gain rapid traction during the COVID-19 pandemic, owing to the increasing burden on the healthcare workforce and shortage of healthcare resources. An increasing pressure to reduce healthcare costs and increase the quality of care is estimated to drive the market growth,” explained Grand View Research.

Rapid technological advances and new initiatives from key players have also contributed to the market growth. Microsoft, Salesforce, Adobe lead the healthcare software as a service market.

Additionally, North America held the largest revenue share of over 47.0% in 2020. The CAGR for Asia Pacific is expected to be the highest during the forecast period (2016-2028).

The end of the year should be a period for reflection, looking back over what we’ve accomplished during the last 12 months and thinking about the lessons we can apply to the forthcoming year. The best way to do this is through data, and when it comes to packaging data-driven insights in a fun and accessible format, there’s one clear winner.

If your social media feeds are anything like mine, you’ll have seen a slew of people sharing their ‘Spotify Wrapped’ results over the last few weeks. For those unfamiliar with this annual ritual, around this time of year, Spotify crunches through the vast reams of data it collects on its users’ listening habits and collates them into a fun little report for each individual user, showing what bands and genres they listened to most that year.

Spotify has essentially cracked the code to making mass data collection not only acceptable but fun, and each year, the flurry of activity as people share their results gives the company a healthy dose of free organic marketing. This isn’t, of course, a new observation, and neither is the idea that more services should copy it; Netflix, Twitter, YouTube, and basically every other online content platform have the capacity to offer users the same kind of insights into their habits. It remains surprising that to date, no other platform has made much of an effort to duplicate this obviously winning formula.

What’s even more interesting, however, is that no business software vendors have tried it either. SaaS tools of varying stripes have an all but unassailable foothold within modern IT, and as part of their continued operation, they have to monitor a huge number of data points covering a wide range of areas. The resulting data gives vendors everything they need to build reports highlighting a number of interesting trends and stats across every business.

Collaboration services like Slack, for example, could offer both individual stats (such as how many messages you send compared to coworkers, who you message the most, and how many new channels you joined that year) as well as organisation-wide figures like how many messages your company sends per day, the average number of GIFs shared per week, and so on.

Google – the reigning champion of data-driven business – could go even further for Workspace customers, collating data from across products like Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Meet to show how many documents you shared with colleagues, the number of emails you opened without responding to, and how much time you spent that year in meetings compared to other staff.

This extends to technical staff as well, who are already highly metric-driven through tools like Trello and Jira. It’s not that much of a stretch to picture a ‘Jira Wrapped’ report showing a team’s average ticket completion time, or how many new tickets were opened that year compared to last year. GitHub already has an unofficial version of this – courtesy of developers Himanshu and Ishan Sharma – showing each GitHub user’s commits and pull requests for the last 12 months.

Admittedly, this concept isn’t without its perils. Without due consideration, this process could veer into the territory of overly invasive employee surveillance and behaviour monitoring, depending on what data points are being tracked. With that having been said, however, much of this information is already used by companies for KPI measurement and staff performance reviews. Presenting it in a more engaging, interactive style could, therefore, alleviate some of the apprehension and dread that can often accompany this process, as well as giving staff an opportunity to gain some perspective on their own methods, behaviours and processes that they may not otherwise recognise.

As well as being a fun way for employers to give staff insight into their activity, these reports could also provide useful indicators for organisations to base decisions on. Data-driven transformation continues to be a goal for many companies, and organisation-wide stats based on their staff’s tool usage could tell them whether they need to invest in more automation to speed up manual processes, where certain teams or departments may be under-resourced, and if de-emphasising meetings in favour of shorter email or IM updates might free up workers’ time for more productive tasks.

The fact is that all of this data already exists, and is surfaced in various ways throughout the tools in question, but it’s too sporadic and hard to find at present. Distilling it into an annual bite-sized roundup not only makes it more useful for both employees and businesses, it also provides a tangible benefit to the data-harvesting that most SaaS platforms carry out by default. If cloud vendors really want to embed data-driven thinking into their customers’ organisations, then their new years’ resolution should be to follow Spotify’s lead, and give us a reason to care about it.

Nokia has announced its foray into software as a service (SaaS) for communication service providers (CSPs).

With SaaS for CSPs, the firm aims to offer telecom operators a more flexible, customer-centric, and less expensive way to operate networks.

Nokia Data Marketplace (NDM), Nokia's SaaS offering launched earlier this year, is now commercially available through a SaaS framework, enabling CSPs to securely share and access data.

What’s more, NDM's new SaaS version offers enhanced productivity, efficiency, and scalability to a variety of industry verticals, including energy, transportation, and smart cities.

Additionally, Nokia’s NetGuard Cybersecurity Dome, slated to be released in 2022, will enable CSPs to monetize 5G security services. Nokia Anomaly Detection, a machine learning service focused on detecting and remediating network anomalies, will also be offered through a SaaS model by early 2022.

“Offering SaaS for CSPs is a natural evolution of everything as a service, a key element to Nokia’s overall strategy," the company explained.

"It reflects a culmination of steps Nokia has taken in recent years to enhance CSP network operations, including rearchitecting its software applications to make them fully cloud-native and deployable in any cloud environment, edge, public or private."

Between 2021 and 2025, Nokia expects to reach an expanded SaaS market, which is comprised of CSPs and enterprises, with a value of $3.1 billion and an annual growth rate of approximately 25-30%.

Nokia president of cloud and network services Raghav Sahgal said: “The convergence of 5G, cloud-native software and SaaS creates a great and fast-growing opportunity for Nokia. With the groundwork we’ve already been laying, our SaaS delivery framework is in a very strong competitive position.

"It enables a combination of rapid time to value with on-demand access for Nokia SaaS applications and low cost of ownership, based on a pay-as-you-go / pay-as-you-grow commercial model. This is a multi-year journey and we are going at it aggressively.”

Document productivity software company Nitro Software has agreed to acquire Connective NV, a European-based e-sign software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider for $81 million.

Nitro will fund the transaction by tapping investors for $104 million. Connective is the leading e-sign SaaS provider in Belgium, according to Nitro, and is expanding its customer base in 11 other European countries. The firm has over 30 eID and smart card integrations across 20 countries, which Nitro claimed was the most of any e-sign vendor today.

Among Connective’s customers includes the Belgian and French governments, BNP Paribas, Cofidis, ING Bank, Pirelli, and Toyota.

The deal bolsters Nitro's e-sign capabilities, including support for Advanced Electronic Signature (AES) and Qualified Electronic Signature functionality, and the company sees opportunities for improving the Nitro Productivity Platform's existing e-sign capability.

Nitro co-founder and CEO Sam Chandler said the deal was a “milestone moment in Nitro's growth story.”

"With the acquisition of Connective, Nitro is in prime position to become one of the top three global players in the rapidly growing enterprise e-sign market, at a time where increased trust, security, and regulatory compliance are vital to business success. With data privacy and security at a premium, the future of e-signing is built around high-trust eID-driven solutions, and this acquisition positions Nitro to become a global leader in this space,” he said.

"Connective's Smart Document solution will also further bolster Nitro's offering, making document workflow automation easy, powerful, and available to all. There is a multitude of opportunities to drive additional demand of the Connective offerings within Nitro's platform through our global customer and partner networks. Nicolas and his team have built a world-class company that tightly aligns with our mission of delivering best-in-breed, high-value technologies with unparalleled customer service experience and we couldn't be more excited to welcome the entire Connective team to the Nitro family."

Connective CEO Nicolas Metivier said "We are delighted to have found a partner in Nitro that so closely aligns with our mission and vision, as well as our core company values. There was an immediate connection with Sam and the Nitro team, and it was clear to me how Connective's market-leading solutions could scale even further as part of the Nitro Productivity Platform."

When the transaction is complete, Connective will become an indirect subsidiary of ASX-listed, Nitro Software Limited. The complete Connective team is expected to join Nitro.

Citrix is considering finding a buyer for itself to rejuvenate its fortunes after a shaky 2021 in which its share price has fallen to levels not recorded since mid-2019.

The virtualisation and workplace collaboration software firm is working with advisers to consider the benefits and drawbacks of selling itself, according to Bloomberg, with plans to approach potential buyers within weeks.

A final decision hasn’t been made on whether to proceed with a sale, regardless of whether the company finds a buyer, however. Citrix might also yet remain a standalone firm.

The firm has, in recent months, struggled to capitalise on a catalogue of successes over the last couple of years, with share prices dropping sharply in April 2021. Citrix encountered supply chain issues in the first three months of the year, which led to the company missing its revenue targets.

These supply chain issues affected hardware shipments and the company also generated a lower-than-expected duration of on-premise licenses. This is despite the company handling a much higher demand for its software and services during the pandemic than Citrix otherwise would have expected.

Exemplifying this decline was the fact its flagship Workspace suite of tools and services recorded declining year-on-year revenues of 11%, while its app delivery and security revenues also fell by 6% against the first three months of 2020.

It was a similar story for the second quarter of the year, with shares falling further thanks to a “mixed” financial performance. CEO David Henshall pinned these difficulties on “sales execution challenges” caused by complexity in managing a rapid transition to the cloud among customers while managing different license model types.

The company has also had to endure a rocky few months due to a string of security issues, most notably in May 2019 in which an attack saw hackers seize 6TB of sensitive data. Since then, there have been a number of minor incidents, with cyber criminals taking advantage of flaws in Citrix systems.

The potential move comes after Elliot Management recently took more than a $1 billion stake in Citrix, as of last week, according to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ).

The firm has previously explored the option of selling itself in 2017, Bloomberg adds, although discussion with potential buyers stalled at the time due to differences in opinion over the valuation of the company.

Citrix has yet to respond to IT Pro's request for comment.

Mavenir has acquired communications platform as a service (CPaaS) provider Telestax for an undisclosed sum. Telestax’s acquisition will help Mavenir further enhance Mavenir Engage.

Engage, Mavenir’s cloud-based customer engagement solution, doubles as an omnichannel messaging monetization tool with rich communication services (RCS)-based business messaging, campaign management, visual flow builders, payment integrations, and advanced analytics.

A full-stack CPaaS enabler, Telestax will add new agile software as a service (SaaS) models and customize solutions for small and medium businesses. Telestax will also enable consumer-friendly APIs and web tools.

Telestax’s other notable CPaaS applications include call queuing, number masking, Cisco Message Exchange, and SMS for Microsoft Teams.

“CPaaS is the key enabling technology for our Mavenir Engage service to position Communications Service Providers (CSPs) at the forefront of the digital engagement landscape,” said Ian Maclean, senior vice president and general manager of cloud services at Mavenir.

Maclean added, “With this acquisition, Mavenir is lowering the barrier of entry and democratizing business messaging for businesses of all sizes to implement conversational commerce experiences.”

Earlier this year, Mavenir launched its BSS Digital Enablement platform to help CSPs accelerate 5G deployments. Mavenir also deployed its 4G/5G Open vRAN at O-RAN Town, Deutsche Telekom’s multi-vendor open RAN network.

“Communication Platforms are becoming a key differentiator for service providers,” said Pardeep Kohli, president and CEO of Mavenir.

“They will unlock enterprise value in 5G with API enablement for different verticals such as IoT, Smart Cities, Automotive and provide turnkey applications for logistics, fleet management, AI/ML chatbots, voice biometrics verification, immersive commerce/entertainment, and many other use cases.”

Adobe has announced that it is acquiring video collaboration start-up Frame.io for $1.276 billion (roughly £937m).

New York-based Frame.io was founded in 2014 as a workflow service for filmmakers. It takes time consuming processes, such as editing footage, and makes it asynchronous over the web, similar to Google Workspace.

Adobe said it has tried to create its own collaboration software, but instead settled on buying Frame.io because some of its customers were already using it in their workflows. The startup's cloud-based software allows users to store and view footage, and also leave edits, with a simple shareable link. It also already has integrations with popular video editing software, such as Adobe's Premiere Pro, Apple's Final Cut and Avid Media Composer.

"Frame.io and Adobe share a vision for the future of video creation and collaboration that brings together Adobe's strength in video creation and production and Frame.io's cloud-native platform," said Emery Wells, Frame.io CEO. "We're excited to join Adobe to continue to drive video innovation for the world's leading media and entertainment companies, agencies, and brands."

As part of the deal, Wells and co-founder John Traver will join Adobe, with the former remaining in charge of the Frame.io team, but reporting to Creative Cloud CPO Scott Belsky. However, there are no details as yet as to what a Frame.io subscription will look like via Adobe. Currently, there is a limited version of the service available for free, and also an enterprise tier starting at $15 per month, but both could change after the deal closes during the fourth quarter of Adobe's 2021 fiscal year.

The full valuation of the deal is also still subject to customary purchase price adjustments and, until the transaction closes, each company will continue to operate independently.

Microsoft has announced price increases for both Office 365 and Microsoft 365 services that will come into effect in March next year.

The changes will apply to its commercial and business services, with consumer and education subscriptions remaining the same.

The increase will also apply globally, with local market adjustments for certain regions, however only US pricing is available at present: Microsoft 365 Business Basic is going up from $5 to $6 per user and Microsoft 365 Business Premium will increase from $20 to $22. Office 365 E1 will rise from $8 to $10, Office 365 E3 will jump up from $20 to $23, Office 365 E5 will move from $35 to $38 and Microsoft 365 E3 changes from $32 to $36.

These are the first "substantive" price increases to Office 365 since it was launched a decade ago, according to Microsoft, with only minor changes to the suites coming in over the last ten years. The reasoning for hiking them up now is partly to do with the higher demand for cloud-based services brought about by the pandemic, according to Jared Spataro, the corporate vice president for Microsoft 365.

"As leaders around the world look to empower their people for a more flexible, hybrid world of work, it's clear that every organisation will need a new operating model across people, places, and processes," Spataro wrote in a blog post. "We're committed to building on the value we've delivered over the past decade to continuously provide innovation that helps our customers succeed and thrive today and well into the future."

The changes follow a period of immense growth for Microsoft and its cloud services; the firm recently surpassed the milestone valuation of $2 trillion and it has more than 300 million paid seats for Office 365. The tech giant has also added more than 20 apps to Office 365 since it originally launched, including Microsoft Teams, OneDrive and SharePoint.

Deloitte Canada has acquired SAP consultancy firm Clockwork for an undisclosed sum.

The acquisition will help Deloitte Canada strengthen its SaaS solution deployment, cloud migration, and custom application development. Clockwork will also help grow the firm's partnerships with cloud providers Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

"It should come as no surprise that we're excited to have the Clockwork team join Deloitte," said Anthony Viel, Deloitte Canada CEO.

Viel continued, "Apart from expanding our presence as a leading Canadian SAP consultancy, Clockwork's recognized brand and experienced leaders are an especially important aspect of this move, one that is sure to strengthen our SAP technical skills, assets, and market leadership in the space."

In addition to enhancing Deloitte's SAP and cloud transformation offerings across a range of verticals, the addition of Clockwork will help the firm serve a new market of clients in the public and private sectors.

The SAP Enterprise Solutions practice of Deloitte Canada will add 45 employees from Clockwork to its Toronto, Montreal, and Calgary offices. The co-founder and former president of Clockwork, Mike Roach, will join the firm as a new partner.

"We're no strangers to Deloitte, and while we've formed a solid working relationship in the past, it's another thing entirely to be teaming up under one name," said Mike Roach, Consulting partner, Deloitte Canada, and former co-founder and president at Clockwork.

"By gaining access to a plethora of Deloitte resources and relationships, we hope to achieve even more for our clients and can't wait to tackle new challenges together."

Earlier this year, Deloitte Canada acquired digital consulting firm The Working Group to support its mid-market and large clients' digital and cloud transformation journeys. The firm also acquired Groundswell Group to enhance artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud transformation capabilities in Western Canada and across the nation. Clockwork marks Deloitte Canada’s third acquisition in 2021.

Google is aiming to broaden the appeal of its online productivity suite, Google Workspace, by making it freely available to anyone that has a Google account.

This means that all of the company's three billion users, from enterprise to education, can access the full Google Workspace platform, and apps like Gmail, Chat, Docs and more, without the need to pay for a subscription. Some paid-for tiers will remain, however, along with a new tier designed exclusively for sole traders.

There are also new features for the free tier that address specific challenges workers will face with the switch to hybrid working, These include updates to Google Chat, new subscription offers and greater security across the platform.

"Collaboration doesn't stop at the workplace - our products have been optimised for broad participation, sharing and helpfulness since the beginning," said Javier Soltero, VP and GM, Google Workspace.

"Our focus is on delivering consumers, workers, teachers and students alike an equitable approach to collaboration, while still providing flexibility that allows these different subsets of users to take their own approach to communication and collaboration."

The biggest change for free users is that Google Rooms has evolved into 'Google Spaces'. This is effectively a private chat area, similar to those found Slack or Microsoft Teams, where groups of users can chat and collaborate via text or video call.

There are a range of new functions within this, such as 'threads' and presence indicators that let users know if participants are free or available to talk. Users can also pin messages to Spaces so that important announcements don't get lost amongst the general chatter.

Google is also adding a Companion Mode to Google Meet which it claims allows everyone to continuously contribute to meetings, no matter if they are in the office or at home.

For the paid-tier, Google has added client-side document encryption which will allow businesses to use their own encryption keys.

Quantum Metric, a SaaS company specializing in digital product development, has announced the availability of its solution on Salesforce ‌AppExchange.

The strategic integration will enable Salesforce users to draw upon Quantum Metric's proprietary Continuous Product Design (CPD) technology to pinpoint, isolate, and resolve problematic customer experiences. According to Quantum Metric, users don't have to leave their Salesforce environment to access the service.

It is impossible for service professionals to provide great service without a complete view of customer interactions, concludes a recent Salesforce study. Quantum‌ ‌Metric's‌ ‌integration‌ ‌with‌ ‌Salesforce provides service representatives with real-time access to customer data and insights, including device, location, and cart value.

Moreover, the service allows agents to access contextual evidence whenever a customer encounters friction on a website or native application. This way, agents can quickly identify site errors, abandoned carts, or rage-clicking incidents.

The Quantum Metrics dashboard also lets managers ‌assess‌ ‌the‌ ‌scope‌ ‌of‌ ‌a‌ ‌problem‌ ‌and‌ ‌prioritize‌ ‌or‌ ‌escalate‌ ‌it‌ ‌as‌ ‌necessary.

"The Quantum Metric integration not only identifies where friction occurs with individual customers, it also provides transparency and insights into how many other customers have experienced this issue, and what that means when it comes to an overall impact on an organization's business goals," explained Zack McCook, senior director of content and communications at Quantum Metric.

"Creating the best digital experience for our customers has been of the utmost importance, particularly over the past year," said Jasmeet Singh, senior director of digital operations at Tapestry.

"We are thrilled about Quantum Metric's integration for this very reason, and are looking forward to enhancing our customer services practices to resolve frustrations in real-time and create the most personal interactions and support possible."

Slack has reported 13,000 more paid customers in its first-quarter results, taking its total to 169,000, which represents a 39% increase year-on-year.

The comms platform reported Q1 total revenues of $273 million - a 36% increase from last year - which is in stark contrast to its performance towards the end of 2020 where it struggled to capitalise on the greater adoption of cloud services amid multiple lockdowns.

The company now has 1,285 paid customers with annual revenue greater than $100,000. What's more, it also has 113 paid customers with greater than $1 million in annual revenue - which is an increase of 45% year-on-year.

The results are likely the last Slack will announce before its acquisition by Salesforce closes. Earlier in the week, reports surfaced that Salesforce customers had already begun integrating Slack into their businesses, which could be the reason its paid customers had increased.

Unlike several other software providers, Slack didn't manage to pull in more users during the pandemic. While Zoom and Microsoft Teams rapidly increased, Slack saw its stock actually downgraded ahead of the autumn lockdown as it stagnated.

However, the firm did record traction with its Slack Connect service, which is a feature that lets users chat with other organisations via Slack. Over 91,000 paid customers have used the service adding more than 950,000 connected endpoints.

"Companies globally are racing toward a digital-first way of working to attract talent and to win," said Stewart Butterfield, the CEO of Slack.

"Slack is not just embracing this trend, we are enabling it. In Q1 we saw a near-record number of paid customer additions, a record number of paid customers adopting Slack Connect, and approached one million active developers on our platform."

Since its launch in 2016, Workplace has aimed to bring the powerful tools and addictive user experience of Facebook to corporate environments, with the intention of improving staff engagement and communication.

Remote working was already on the rise when COVID struck, but the ongoing health crisis has made it a priority for every job that can be done remotely to be made as accessible as possible for people working from home.

To this end, Slack - now owned by Salesforce - and Microsoft’s rival Teams have been providing vital communication between now-remote colleagues, alongside video conferencing tools such as Zoom and Google Meet.

Workplace includes unified communications, with voice, video and text chat. However, it adds a lot more: personal blogs, events, and both formal and informal groups for staff. Its knowledge management features make a compelling alternative to an office intranet, and there’s polling and checklists for rudimentary project tracking in there, too.

It really is a corporate version of Facebook - for better and for worse.

Facebook Workplace review: User experience

Workplace looks and feels a lot like Facebook. Whether that’s a user experience advantage or not may depend on whether your company’s staff actually use or care for Facebook, but either way, the user interface is undeniably clear and easy to navigate.

Its desktop browser interface tiles neatly on higher resolution monitors, but is most comfortable occupying the entire screen on resolutions of 1920x1080 or less. You can enable dark mode via a menu accessible from your profile icon at bottom left, which is very easy on the eyes if you’ve been staring at a screen all day.

The interface is split into a large content pane on the right, a narrower tabbed index to its left and, at the far left, a narrow icon pane that allows you to switch between your home view, notifications, chat and, if you have access, the Workplace admin panel.

The Home screen opens on your News Feed, which behaves much as it does in the traditional version of Facebook: you can share posts, videos or images to your timeline, and see posts from the colleagues and groups you follow.

When you create a post, Workplace prompts you, uninspiringly, with a line asking “What are you working on?”. You can @mention others, use emoji, start live video streams, and share location check-ins, images, animated gifs and pre-recorded H.264/AAC videos up to to 720p.

There are plenty of formatting options available for posts, including markdown support, lists and code blocks. Posts can also be scheduled in advance, so you don’t have to let the entire company know that you’re still working at 2AM.

Live video streaming - not to be confused with video chat - supports your average smartphone or USB camera, external hardware encoders, and software such as Xsplit, Wirecast and OBS. An excellent addition is support for Real-Time Messaging Protocol over SSL (RTMPS) to help secure your content, although you’ll have to ensure that any external encoder you use supports this if you want to stream from it.

Facebook Workplace review: Knowledge management

So far, so Facebook. Next down on the Home navigation column is the Knowledge Library. This is a genuinely useful addition, allowing you to create neatly formatted documents in a tree structure, with a powerful search feature that brings to mind Atalassian’s Confluence.

Workplace suggests using this for corporate handbooks and policy documents. It’s also useful for sharing style guides, documentation and even code and scripting examples, although the otherwise generous formatting options unfortunately lack code blocks or markdown support.

You can attach files of up to 50MB to your Knowledge documents, but file type support is somewhat limited, so we couldn't attach a DLL that went with a chunk of our documentation until we compressed it. Once shared, users can discuss the documents via comments, and edit them if they have appropriate privileges.

It could be a little easier to publish Knowledge Library files - inviting people to view a parent file in a tree doesn’t automatically share its children with them, for example - but the system is nonetheless outstandingly useful and feels more elegant and streamlined than similar features other hybrid project/comms solutions such as Basecamp.

Facebook Workplace review: Keeping in contact

Groups work much as their Facebook counterparts. They’re ideal for individual project teams and workgroups, but also for company-wide pet photo sharing and sign-ups for the next virtual pub quiz. You get a few extra posting features in these, including the ability to create events, video chatrooms, shared documents, polls, checklists of actionable items, and Q&A sessions.

The final entry on the Home navigation pane is People, which is populated with links to the colleagues you interact with most often – this opens on a chat window, but you can also get to their profiles, ‘about’ pages and various other content they’ve created or interacted with via a shortcut bar. An Add People button allows you to invite others from either inside or outside your company’s verified domain.

A directory allows you to browse everyone in the company Workplace, while an Events tab lets you schedule private or company-wide events as you please, with associated discussion pages. Oddly, this doesn’t include the ability to schedule a video conference in advance.

You can save a range of posts and other content via the three-dot menu you’ll find at the top right of most content, and these can all be found in your Saved tab, although you can’t save content from the Knowledge Library to these bookmarks.

Facebook Workplace review: Notes, Notifications, and Navigation

Notes, like the corresponding section of the core Facebook product, houses your own private drafts and public notes; these are for individual staff members’ personal use, while the Knowledge Library is designed to be a more general reference for all employees or team members.

The Follow Coworkers tab, meanwhile, allows you to see all your colleagues and quickly subscribe to their feeds – they aren’t notified when you follow or unfollow them, which is a nice touch. Finally an org chart can be used to illustrate the company’s departmental and managerial relationships.

Below that, you’ll find sections listing the groups and people you interact with most frequently.

A cluster of extra icons at the top of the furthest-left navigation pane provide quick access to a few more helpful features. Notifications are pretty self-explanatory, covering both updates from your colleagues and changes to Workplace itself. As a product under active development, you’ll see the latter with some regularity.

In one such recent change, Group notifications default to selected highlights, and you have to manually opt in if you wish to be notified about all posts from a group. That’s fine for your company pet appreciation group, but less than ideal for key main project groups, so keep an eye on those notification settings.

The Chat tab lists every group and private chat you’re in and is Workplace’s Messenger-inspired communication solution to compete with Slack or Microsoft Teams.

Administrators get an extra settings icon below this, and at the very bottom, everyone gets a trio of icons. These let you provide feedback to Workplace itself, get help and – via your own user icon at bottom left – set your status, enable Do Not Disturb mode, check your activity, and access your account settings.

Facebook Workplace review: Unified communications

While it’s widely regarded as an alternative to Slack or Teams, Workplace’s core communications features aren’t exactly peerless. Video chats are limited to 50 people – fewer even than the free tier of Google Meet. Video quality of the calling system (which is forked from WebRTC with a few enhancements) isn’t bad, though, so you’re well sorted for sensibly-sized meetings.

Group calls are supported under Firefox, Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers, notably Edge and Opera. However, Linux users may experience issues when using Firefox, and should use Chromium instead.

There’s also a desktop video chat app for Windows and MacOS. You can create new video chatrooms from either the news feed or the chat pane, but not from events. Events also don’t get associated chatrooms. However, the Workplace team is currently working on ways to integrate live video streams into events more fully.

Each group can have its own chatroom too, and you can see an overview of them all via your Chat tab, but we missed the compact layout we’ve become accustomed to in rivals such as Slack. Your entire chat history and individuals’ profiles are both searchable, and #topics are supported to help keep things on track. However, although you can directly reply to chat messages, there’s no reply threading, which, as with Discord, can make busy rooms feel cluttered.

You can’t adjust how much space your central chat window takes up relative to the channel list and right-hand About sidebar, either. The general layout feels a great deal like Facebook Messenger, and that doesn’t translate entirely well to a business tool, although the mobile app is rather more streamlined.

Facebook Workplace review: Quality of life

Workplace’s default notification settings mean that you’ll get a lot of email: every time someone adds you to a group, every time you’re mentioned or interacted with, and to keep you up to date with a significant chunk of the activity in your groups. This is one of those rare cases where most people will be best off disabling emails and enabling in-browser or on-device push notifications via their Workplace account settings.

You can’t block messages from anyone inside your organisation, but you can block people from outside it who’ve been invited to participate in a shared multi-company chat. You can, however, block specific co-workers from inviting you to events via the settings pages.

You can also limit who can see your posts, hide comments containing certain words and review both posts that tag you and tags added to your posts before they appear on your profile. There’s a highly customisable Do Not Disturb mode, too, supporting both one-off and scheduled settings.

If you’re a member of multiple Workplaces, you can switch between them via the bottom-left personal menu options; this is less convenient than Slack’s implementation, but works well enough given that Workplace has a larger and more feature-packed interface.

Workplace supports ‘he’, ‘she’, and ‘they’ pronouns, configurable alongside your name in general settings. It also has none of Facebook’s weird name restrictions, and use of Workplace is entirely unrelated to the possession or status of a standard Facebook account. Two-factor authentication is supported via the security settings.

Facebook Workplace review: Administration

The Administration panel is hugely comprehensive and not actually as overwhelming as it might appear at first glance. You get a lot of data about what your company’s staff are up to, with features such as a security panel tracking password use, malware and poorly secured accounts. If you’ve got an ultra widescreen monitor, enabling full width mode makes this a lot easier to parse at a glance.

You get very granular control over rights and access privileges, as well as over company roles and the content in your Workplace. Administrators can highlight posts as important, group them together in campaigns and send out surveys.

A couple of more unusual features are worthy of note: you can add staff members to a frontline workers group. This is intended for deskless workings, including non-office and even casual staff, such as cashiers, field engineers, warehouse workers and delivery personnel.

These accounts can be claimed by the worker using a code, rather than via email, and are mobile-first, rather than hinging on the desktop interface. The mobile app provides quick access to the same content as the desktop version, and enables front-line staff to quickly communicate with each other and with their managers, regardless of where they are, as well as providing easy access to knowledge documents. Extra restrictions can be applied to staff in the frontline set, such as barring them from creating Workplace groups.

Workplace also has its own version of Facebook’s Safety Check system, which allows you to ask your staff to indicate whether they’re okay or not in case of a localised crisis, such as a building fire or natural disaster, and pin relevant updates to the top of the Workplace feed.

There’s also less practical stuff, like badges – while it’s useful to know who the fire wardens are and who’s new to the business, awards for effort, helpfulness and participation feel like shiny, patronising trinkets of no real value, and might not be as popular with workers as Workplace seems to expect.

As you’d hope, you can connect Workplace to other cloud services, including Sharepoint, Google Drive and OneDrive, but not the broader features of Office 365 or Google Workspace. Its reasonably comprehensive library of integrations also includes Zoom, BlueJeans and WebEx video conferencing, Jira and Salesforce, but there’s no support for anything that competes with Workplace’s core communication features, such as Slack or Teams.

Facebook Workplace review: Pricing

Workplace has two subscription tiers: Advanced, priced at an extremely competitive $4 per user, per month, and Enterprise, which costs $8 per user, per month. Charities, educational establishments, and some other non-profit organisations may be eligible for a free tier via the Workplace for Good scheme.

Enterprise gives you unlimited storage, compared to 1GB per user for the Advanced subscription, as well as faster and more comprehensive support, with a dedicated team and 4-hour initial response time, compared to Advanced users’ 24-hour potential delay. Enterprise subscribers also get early access to new features and an enhanced peer-to-peer version of the Enterprise Live video streaming system.

Advanced is marketed at small businesses or teams within larger companies, while Enterprise (unsurprisingly) targets large enterprises, but there’s not a great deal to choose between them.

Facebook Workplace review: Verdict

On paper, Workplace is a slightly perplexing attempt to bring social media style interaction to a business environment. In practice, though, you get a competitively-priced hybrid solution with elements of chat and video communication, blogging and vlogging, knowledge management and even lightweight project management capabilities. That’s a lot of functionality - even if some of it is questionably useful.

The Knowledge Library, support for extended posts, and community tools are things we’d like to see more of in business communications platforms, particularly as many of us are settling in for the long haul when it comes to remote working.

However, Workplace isn’t as on point when it comes to its core unified communications, with chat that feels slightly clunky, lack of automatic video and chatrooms for events, and video conferencing tools hampered by some irritating limitations. That’s something we hope to see improve, because Workplace’s focus on building a sense of community among colleagues is a useful take on internal business communications.

HPE has doubled down on its commitment to data-driven insights with the acquisition of cloud analysis platform provider CloudPhysics, as well as the release of its new Software-Defined Opportunity Engine (SDOE).

The acquisition adds CloudPhysics' SaaS-based, data-driven platform for analysis of on-premises and cloud setups, bringing detailed insights to customers and partners across most IT environments, the firm said.

CloudPhysics' solution monitors and analyses IT infrastructures, estimates costs and viability of cloud migrations, as well as model a customer’s IT infrastructure as a virtual environment.

Quick to deploy, the solution can generate insights in as little as 15 minutes, HPE says, while its data capture includes over 200 metrics for VMs, hosts, datastores and networks.

"Through increased visibility and understanding, CloudPhysics transforms the procurement process to be a win-win for both customers and partners,” commented Tom Black, Senior Vice President and General Manager of HPE Storage.

"Our partners will benefit from shorter sales cycles, an increase in assessed to qualified opportunities and higher close rates. More importantly, our partners become trusted advisors to accelerate the transformation agendas of our customers."

The CloudPhysics solution will be integrated into HPE’s freshly unveiled Software-Defined Opportunity Engine (SDOE), which is designed to provide customers with data-backed customised sales proposals.

Powered by HPE InfoSight, the SDOE solution uses intelligence and deep learning to generate holistic technology recommendations for businesses to optimise their infrastructure and accelerate digital transformation.

The platform auto-generates a quote with the best storage solution for a customer in as little as 45 seconds – a dramatic reduction on a process that could take weeks previously.

HPE says SDOE will enable businesses to work as trusted partners with their customers as they build a detailed understanding of their workloads, configuration and usage patterns. On average, the streamlined tool also eliminates five meetings from the current sales process, the tech firm added.

"By utilising software and data-driven analytics, HPE Storage is transforming the sales and customer experience with real intelligence - removing complexity and guesswork, and turning it into a simple and data-driven decision making process, based on the preference and specific needs of the customer,” Black added.

Microsoft will launch a standalone, offline version of its flagship Office productivity suite for users and businesses unwilling to take out a subscription, more than two years after launching Office 2019.

Dubbed Office 2021, this software suite will launch alongside a long-term servicing channel (LTSC) version developed primarily for enterprises, according to the Verge.

Office LTSC will include new features such as support for dark mode, and accessibility improvements, alongside enhancements to core functionality - although the company has refrained from detailing these feature changes.

The announcement follows the company's hints last year that it would release a ‘perpetual licence’ edition of its productivity suite. This is despite an understanding that Microsoft was seeking to phase out offline variants of Office in light of the huge shift to cloud-based collaboration.

Office 2019, for example, was released with a reduced extended support period against that offered in previous offline editions. Users were able to tap into just five years of mainstream support, as opposed to the standard seven years afforded in the past.

Microsoft's desire to migrate its customers to subscription-based services was also signalled by the launch of Microsoft 365, which encompasses the breadth of its workplace services, including Outlook and Teams.

The imminent launch of Office 2021 and Office LTSC, however, suggests the company understands not all its customers are ready to move to the cloud.

“It’s just a matter of trying to meet customers where they are,” head of Microsoft 365, Jared Spataro, told the Verge.

“We certainly have a lot of customers that have moved to the cloud over the last 10 months, that’s happened en masse really. At the same time, we definitely have customers who have specific scenarios where they don’t feel like they can move to the cloud.”

Like Office 2019, Office LTSC will only be supported for five years, excluding extended support. Pricing for Office Professional Plus, Office Standard and individual apps will also increase by 10% for commercial customers against Office 2019. Pricing for consumer and small business customers with Office 2021, however, will not change.

The software giant is planning to release a preview of Office LTSC in April ahead of a full release later this year. Office 2021 will launch at the same time, but won’t be available in preview.

Trello has completely redesigned its platform with a greater focus on multi-team collaboration and remote working trends.

The workflow management service is also getting a refreshed design, but it's the changes to its boards and cards that will be of most interest to enterprise customers.

"We are building for an entirely new era of teamwork - where people live in different locations, but work stays connected," Trello's head of product, Michael Pryor wrote in a blog post. "This is the beginning of a whole new Trello."

The cards within Trello have been tweaked to improve workflows and also increase integration with third-party services, such as Dropbox, Google Drive and Salesforce.

'Link' cards can now preview content from sites like YouTube, Dropbox and even Instagram with just a simple copy and paste of a URL. There are also new 'Board' cards which can render a direct visual link to another board to connect projects across Trello.

The company has also announced that 'Mirror' cards will be coming in the next few months, enabling users to clone one card to appear on a number of other boards. An update to one of those cards then updates on all its copies.

The wider platform has also been updated with 'Views' which adds more collaborative layers to the platform by providing a collection of new dashboards that show projects in a number of different forms. The first is 'Timeline', which as the name suggests, lets users see how different projects fit in a workflow. Similarly, 'Calendar view' will display start and due dates across a traditional calendar layout.

If your workflow is too big and spans across multiple teams and boards, Trello's new 'Table view' offers a more simplistic visual. It pulls cards in from selected boards across your team and displays them in a spreadsheet-style list that can be sorted and filtered down to your exact workload.

For data-driven business, Trello's new 'Dashboard' transforms workloads and projects into tables and charts. It 'visualises' key metrics, such as due date, card assignments and cards-per-list to offer a different look at your operation.

All the updates have been ushered in with a refreshed logo and platform design with greater use of pastel colours.

Nokia has successfully tested a new real-time spam and fraud detection service that could end nuisance telephone calls. Nokia worked on the trial with Hiya, a Seattle-based identity verification platform that helps analyze over 13 billion calls each month.

The telecoms company has integrated Hiya Protect on its cloud-native Telephony Application Server. Hiya Protect uses machine learning models to analyze calling events in real-time around the world for fraudulent behavior and new scams. Hiya serves more than 130 million businesses and customers worldwide.

The test marks the industry’s first VoLTE network integration through a public cloud service to a major European carrier. The company claimed that Hiya Protect could accurately detect various legitimate and illegitimate calls to keep subscribers protected from the unwanted ones plaguing the telephony industry.

The test involved Hiya's SaaS cloud interworking with Nokia’s cloud-native, IMS based Telephony Application Server. Hiya said the test not only proved the success of its detection and alerting capabilities, including fraud, spam, legitimate callers, and verified businesses, but it also proved the integration of Nokia core solution with Hiya’s cloud. As a result, Nokia’s Telephony Application Server is properly issuing call events and enforcing Hiya’s call instructions, the firm claimed.

Hiya’s integration also showed minimal impact on call set-up time to meet industry-standard service requirements.

Alex Algard, CEO at Hiya, said the project was a critical step in addressing carriers’ needs to integrate a cloud-based solution at the network level.

“Fraudsters and spammers are sophisticated and constantly change their tactics, so our solutions must outsmart them to stay a step ahead, which is why integrating at the network level and pushing the application to the Edge is such an important accomplishment,” he said.

Jitin Bhandari, vice president of core network products at Nokia, said proving open solutions like this can be effectively integrated and accurately detect spam calls is a “big step in pushing the industry forward.”

“This is the type of open cloud-based innovation and collaboration that is needed to solve nuisance/spam calls in networks and make the communication experience better for users across the globe,” he added.

Global health care software provider Eceptionist has launched a new web-based solution to help private and public organizations manage COVID-19 vaccine distribution.

Dubbed VaxManager, the software as a service (SAAS) solution alleviates the administrative burden of managing COVID tests, flu shots, and other vaccines when they become available.

VaxManager incorporates an organization's COVID guidelines into a test/vaccine request workflow to automatically screen and prioritize vaccine and test requests, the company said.

The mobile-friendly platform also includes a self-registration and self-request portal for patients to ensure quick and easy onboarding. Automated appointment reminders, follow-up notifications, and post-testing and post-vaccine information make the software highly reliable and relevant for patients.

Intelligent vaccine-appointment scheduling, automated triage and high-risk-group screening, and interoperability with third-party clinical systems are other notable features of this tool.

VaxManager service is open to pharmacies, employers, universities, school districts, churches, and any other groups willing to participate in COVID-19 vaccine distribution to patients and citizens.

“VaxManager is a SAAS solution for busy immunization clinics. The platform addresses your existing resource constraints with powerful tools for automated screening and prioritization of high-risk populations to more efficiently distribute the Covid-19 vaccine when it becomes available,” Eceptionist said.

AWS has announced a slew of new Partner Network Programs aiming to better facilitate cloud transformation.

Announced during its re:Invent event, AWS’ new programmes include new offerings for software vendors, expansions to its Competency Program, as well as updates to AWS Marketplace.

The ISV Partner Path aims to provide AWS Partners with resources designed to help accelerate business growth, such as access to curated programmes, prescriptive guidance, and direct AWS support.

Also aimed at software vendors, the AWS SaaS Boost is an open source, ready to use reference environment which partners can use to rapidly migrate applications over to a SaaS delivery model on AWS.

AWS also unveiled four new additions to its AWS Competency Program: Travel and Hospitality, Energy, Mainframe Migration, and Public Safety and Disaster Response. The Program includes categories in solution areas such as machine learning (ML), Internet of Things (IoT), DevOps, and Big Data, and was previously only available in Education, Financial Services, Government, and Retail industry verticals.

Travel and Hospitality, and the Public Safety and Disaster Response Competencies are available today, while the Energy and Mainframe Migration are to become available early next year.

The cloud giant also announced that, as of today, customers will be able to purchase professional services from AWS Partners directly from AWS Marketplace, making it easier to identify software and associated services in a single procurement window. Computacenter, Presidio, and Rackspace are among the providers already participating in the programme.

AWS Channel & Alliances head Doug Yeum said that the company is “excited to continue to launch new programs and services to support our tens of thousands [of] AWS Partners around the world”.

“As more organizations rapidly move to the cloud, the majority of them are using AWS Partners that they know and trust to provide specialized technology and expertise. To help our partners, we are continuing to invest heavily in making it easier for them to build successful cloud businesses on AWS and ultimately ensure that customers have access to the best software and services to navigate their cloud journeys,” he added.

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Salesforce has agreed to buy workplace messaging platform Slack in a deal worth $27.7 billion (£20.7 billion), the largest acquisition in the cloud giant's history.

Under the terms of the deal, Slack will now operate as a Salesforce company, but it will still be led by CEO Stewart Butterfield.

The acquisition was first reported earlier this week but an official announcement came late on Tuesday, ahead of Salesforce's annual conference Dreamforce. It is one of the largest deals in recent years, falling just short of IBM's $34 billion takeover of Red Hat in 2019.

The two companies will form a unified platform for enterprise collaboration with Slack integrated into every Salesforce cloud. The communications service will also become the new interface for Salesforce 360 customers.

Salesforce CEO, Marc Benioff, called Slack one of the most beloved platforms in enterprise software history and said the acquisition was a "match made in heaven". In turn, Butterfield called it the "most strategic combination in the history of software".

Butterfield also pointed out that Salesforce "started the cloud revolution", referencing the company's early work selling software as a subscription service (SaaS). It is now the standard practice and a billion-dollar industry with companies like Microsoft dominating with its online Microsoft 365 suite.

Slack has endured a long rivalry with Microsoft and its competing Teams platform, which benefits from being bundled in with 365 subscriptions. There is a suggestion that joining Salesforce, a customer relationship management (CRM) software company with a large enterprise portfolio and customer base, will help push Slack further into that market and potentially level the playing field.

"Together, Salesforce and Slack will shape the future of enterprise software and transform the way everyone works in the all-digital, work-from-anywhere world," Benioff said in a statement. "I'm thrilled to welcome Slack to the Salesforce Ohana once the transaction closes."

Microsoft has also wadded into competition with Salesforce by recently making CRM software a priority. Benioff previously said that his company was the world's fastest-growing enterprise software company while announcing plans to create 12,000 new jobs over the next year.

A surge in attention Slack enjoyed at the start of the pandemic, that led to thousands of new paid customers, appears to have now dissipated, according to analysts, as customers appear to now be turning to rival products instead.

The communications platform has been unable to maintain the same levels of growth as that enjoyed by the likes of Microsoft Teams and Zoom, prompting Morgan Stanley analysts to downgrade Slack's stock to the equivalent of a selling rate, according to CNBC.

Slack shares closed down 6.3% after the downgrade. The comms platform hasn't seen the same rapid growth as Zoom, which reportedly saw revenues increase 355% in Q2.

"Massive work from home demand for collaboration tools may end up doing more harm than good for Slack," the analysts wrote, according to CNBC. "We see higher risk at current levels.

"In many cases, Slack did not have the opportunity to properly pitch its differentiation, and in our view, the customers that have standardised on Microsoft Teams are not looking back."

In March, CEO Stewart Butterfield posted a lengthy tweet about the company's reaction to the pandemic and its sudden uptick in paying customers. According to that note, by the mid-point of the first quarter of 2020, Slack had added 7,000 new paying customers, rising to 9,000 a week later. In previous quarters the average was around 5,000 new customers, suggesting that the company would be a beneficiary of the so-called 'new normal'.

Most companies that provide technology or software to aid remote working saw some level of increased adoption in the first quarter of the year and that continued into the second quarter and beyond. Slack, however, saw its growth peak on 3 June, with its stock falling 28% in the following months.

What will hurt more, however, is how far Slack has fallen behind Microsoft Teams. The two companies are fierce rivals but Microsoft's more holistic service helped it secure some 44 million daily active users in March. Those users have largely stayed with the service, according to Morgan Stanley's analysts.

Slack has filed an anti-competition complaint against Microsoft, arguing that Teams is a 'weak' product that is forced upon Office 365 users as part of the bundle.

This complaint has only been raised with the EU and it has yet to be acknowledged.

VectorCare, a San Francisco-based patient care logistics company offering a no-code SaaS platform and mobile apps to help remote care teams collaborate and execute healthcare events in real-time. VectorCare’s new Delivery app will allow for greater collaboration, scheduling, tracking and communication of patient needs.

There was a slow but steady increase in home-based care entering 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic created a surge in mobile health care demand. Hospitals and other health care providers weren’t equipped to handle the logistics of so many new patients at once.

"The healthcare industry is being forced to evolve rapidly, and the 'new normal' is here to stay," commented David Emanuel, VectorCare CEO. "Legacy technology today can't keep up and healthcare providers are being forced to adopt new innovative and agile solutions that empower remote care teams and accelerate incredible patient care. We're excited to continue driving this healthcare-at-home movement through our platform and care delivery apps."

VectorCare’s new Delivery app allows health care providers to create and follow predefined workflows, record relevant data, enter status updates and schedule new services all from their smartphone. They can even view all documentation and information on their assigned work visits.

VectorCare’s advancement in mobile technology for healthcare workers comes as other companies are also helping the health care industry achieve more flexibility. Microsoft has announced a new Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare that’ll launch on Oct. 30. Ginger, a mobile-based mental health care company announced $50 million in series D funding in August to help it keep up with record demands during the pandemic.

Microsoft always uses its annual Ignite conference to show off all the latest tools and features it has planned for its Microsoft Teams platform, and this year the company hasn't disappointed.

The company has taken steps to address a few of the more inconvenient aspects of Teams, whether that's through UI changes, better admin controls, or with wider integration options. Although the update list is pretty comprehensive, we've picked out some of the more important updates that are either available now, or coming soon.

UI improvements

New Together mode scenes - before end of 2020

Teams’ Together mode, first announced in July, is that somewhat unsettling feature that pulls each user together into a virtual space, such as an empty auditorium, which is said to make participants feel less like they’re on a video call and more part of a cohesive group. Microsoft plans to expand on the number of scenes available to users by the end of the year, although it’s not clear what precisely these will be.

Custom layouts – before the end of 2020

Also due to arrive over the coming months is the ability to customise the layouts of video meetings and how information is shared with other participants. An example given is the option to have a presenter’s video feed transposed on top of their PowerPoint slides.

Teams Panels – early 2021

Provided we have all returned to the office by early 2021, Microsoft will be rolling out its own range of door tablets that sit outside of a meeting room and give information on its availability. These new devices will provide another way for users to reserve space, view upcoming meetings, and identify free slots. These will be largely supplied by electronics firms Creston and Yealink.

Channel information pane – available now

A channel info pane has been added to give a quick activity summary of things like users, posts, and pinned files, which can be used by new users to get a sense of what the channel is about, or by existing members to catch up on recent activity.

Better search results – before end of 2020

Search is also getting an overhaul, so that finding messages, people, or files should soon be far more intuitive. The results page has been redesigned to surface more appropriate results that are based on content or individuals that you interact with most.

Alternate meeting types

Breakout rooms – October 2020

Microsoft is also adding what it calls ‘breakout rooms’, a feature that meeting organisers can use to split up participants into smaller groups – something which could prove especially useful for training sessions. Presenters will also be able to jump between rooms, make announcements to the team as a whole, and end the individual sessions on the fly.

Meeting recap – before end of 2020

One of the more sorely needed updates will arrive in October in the form of Meeting Recaps. This new tool will collate a meeting’s recording, associated transcripts, its chat history, and any shared files into a single window that is then automatically shared in the meeting chat tab. It can also be configured to automatically add this info to the meeting event entry in an Outlook calendar, as well as the meeting details tab inside Teams.

Better support for webinars – before end of 2020.

Microsoft is also adding more sophisticated tools for supporting webinar sessions. These include the option to use event registration with automated emails and make use of a post-session dashboard that details viewer engagement – although it’s not clear how comprehensive this data will be.

Better calling tools

Improved calling features – before end of 2020

Over the next few months Teams will be getting a handful of new calling features, including an alternate view that shows contacts, voicemail, and a user’s calling history in a single window.

Users will also soon be able to connect a call queue with a channel in Teams, the idea being that users can then collaborate inside the channel while taking calls in the queue. This should be particularly useful for those handling, for example, an IT help desk, where they can transfer the queues to relevant channels on the fly.

New calling plans – available October

Microsoft Calling Plan countries are set to expand, bringing calling services to Austria, Denmark, Italy, Portugal, Sweden, and Switzerland.

Team management tools

Teams templates – available now

New templates are generally available today that let Teams admins quickly deploy Teams environments with predefined channels and suggested apps, each tailored to specific industries, such as banks or hospitals. Admins are also able to construct their own templates if they want to standardise how Teams is deployed across an organisation.

Member limit increase – before end of 2020

Microsoft is increasing the number of allowed members on any given Team from 5,000 to 25,000.

Better app integrations

Wellbeing and productivity – available October

Better analytics tools for monitoring wellbeing and productivity will soon be added that offer managers a more informed way of making changes to how they and their staff access Teams.

Microsoft has also partnered with meditation app Headspace to create built-in tools that help to improve employee wellbeing and reduce stress. Teams will also be getting a ‘virtual commute’ feature that allows employees to decompress after a long day and gives them time to disconnect from work. Both of these will be coming in the first half of 2021.

SharePoint Home – before end of 2020

Users will soon be able to download the new SharePoint home site app that allows admins to build a portal to a company’s intranet from within Teams. This comes with all the customisable options you might expect, including the option to change naming schemes, branding, and navigation to specific resources.

Approvals – available in October

Microsoft is overhauling the process for completing approvals in Teams, allowing users to create, manage, share, and act on approvals within the Teams environment. An approval process can trigger from a single chat window, or from a dedicated Approvals App.

Microsoft is also adding new integrations with Adobe Sign and DocuSign before the end of 2020.

Security improvements

Customer Keys – before end of 2020

Microsoft is adding a tool that lets customers add an additional layer of encryption to their data using their own keys, on top of existing Teams encryption. The same function already exists in SharePoint Online and OneDrive.

Microsoft Graph API for Teams Data Loss Prevention – available now

Leaving public preview is the Microsoft Graph Change Notification API for Teams messages, which allows developers to build apps that are able to monitor messages in near-real-time and trigger actions that prevent potential data loss.

Teams Export – available in preview

A new API is available in preview for developers that allows the exporting of either 1:1 or group chat messages, along with any associated files, images, or user mentions.

More powerful admin tools

More options for company branding – before end of 2020

Teams admins will soon be able to customise their custom line-of-business application catalog using their organisation’s branding – which should make it much easier for end-users to discover these apps organically.

Bulk policies – available now

Admins can now assign policies in batches of up to 50,000 users, allowing for better control over how Teams features are utilised.

Delegate device management – available now

Allows global admins to set controls that only allow lower-level admins to view and manage the devices section in the Teams Admin Center – effectively allows global admins to control the permissions of other admin functions.

Smarter analytics and automation

Improved power BI app – before end of 2020

Changes to the way Power BI interacts with Teams should make it easier to discover data from across the organisation, as well as speed up the process of creating visualisation from Excel. Power BI is now designed to be a centralised place for users to analyse data, as well as enhancing how users engage with Excel inside chat windows and channels.

New Power Automate app – before end of 2020

The new Power Automate app will bring with it a new set of templates that make it easier to automate processes within Teams, as well as a much friendlier UI. New options for automation will also be added, such as automated meeting creation and automated message actions.

Resource-specific consent (RSC) – available now

Teams now supports the option to install RSC-enabled apps that let admins control how much data is accessed by individual teams, without having to change global permissions. Other app functions can include creating, renaming, or deleting channels, reading messages, creating tabs, and reading settings.

Single sign-on – available now

Thanks to an integration with Azure Active Directory, Teams now supports single sign on (SSO), allowing developers to build apps that allow users to sign in using the same account used for Microsoft Teams.

Streamlined support for Android

Earlier this year, Microsoft launched a new product called 'Collaboration Bars', essentially video conferencing hardware that's powered by Android and plugged into Teams. Unlike its Microsoft Teams Rooms hardware, this Android range is meant for smaller teams, focus groups, or instances where a budget version would do just fine.

This week the company announced two things in relation to this hardware. Firstly, the company is simplifying things somewhat by bringing this Android version under the same branding as the main Teams Rooms. However, what's more interesting is that Microsoft is working with partners to develop new form factors beyond the simple integrated media bar, so we could soon see a new range of Android devices built for Teams.

By now, we all know that the function of IT is about more than just laptops and servers; IT is instrumental in helping keep staff connected not just to services and infrastructure, but to the business as a whole. In this Q&A session, Rebecca George OBE, managing partner at Deloitte and workplace culture specialist, explores how to proactively use technology to build and enhance a strong sense of internal culture within a business, why IT needs to become the department of 'yes' and how to prevent staff from burning out.

Jane McCallion

Features Editor, IT Pro

Jane started her journalistic career in 2010 as a freelance writer. Her work covered everything from mining and water resource management, to pensions and fisheries. She joined IT Pro and Cloud Pro in 2012 as a staff writer and became features editor across IT Pro, Cloud Pro and Channel Pro in 2016. Jane is an avid baker and cook (you can find photos of many of her creations on Instagram, where she is sunday_lunch), as well as a dedicated linguist.

Rebecca George OBE

Managing partner, Deloitte

Rebecca leads Deloitte’s Public Sector practice across 13 European countries. She is passionate about improving citizen outcomes and works with clients to drive large-scale, complex transformation programmes. Her focus throughout her career has been on transformation enabled by technology. Rebecca joined Deloitte as a Partner in 2006 after spending nearly 20 years at IBM in roles including sales, business process reengineering, and HR, in the UK, EMEA and globally. Rebecca is involved in activities to increase the participation of Women in the IT industry since the mid-1990s. She is President of the BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, where she is a Fellow. She is a Liveryman, on the Court at the Worshipful Company of IT, and is a member of the Board of the City Mental Health Alliance. She is Non-Executive Chair of the T-Level Reform Programme Board for the Department of Education. She was honoured with an OBE in 2006 for work she did for the Government on Sustainable Communities.

Cloud-based accounting software firm Xero has acquired Waddle, a lending platform which specialises helping small businesses gain access to capital.

The transaction, valued at AU$ 80 million (around £44 million) is expected to be completed before the end of the year and is subject to satisfaction of closing conditions. According to Xero, the transaction, integration, and operating costs are expected to have minimal impact on the company’s FY21 EBITDA.

Xero CEO Steve Vamos described the Waddle acquisition as “an important step” in the company’s “strategy to help small businesses better manage cash flow and gain access to working capital”.

He added: “Waddle’s lending platform has the potential to enable a wide range of banks, fintechs and other lenders to better support small business financial needs. We’re excited about the benefits Waddle can bring to many of our customers and banking partners.”

Founded in Australia in 2014, Waddle’s lending platform service automates the manual processes involved in invoice financing, making it easier for banks and fintechs to lend to small businesses.

Although headquartered in Sydney, Waddle - which has been a Xero ecosystem partner since 2016 - currently also serves customers in the UK. Following the acquisition, it is expected to continue to offer services to customers and partners, including other accounting software providers.

The announcement comes two years after Xero acquired document management and collection software Hubdoc for £53 million. Following the acquisition, it was also announced that Hubdoc’s co-founder and CEO Jamie McDonald joined Xero’s leadership team as executive general manager of product, accounting, and global services. It is unclear whether Waddle co-founders and directors Simon Creighton and Nathan Andrews will hold any new positions within the company.

Xero offers three tiers of SaaS accounting suites targeting businesses of various sizes: Xero Starter for £10 per month, Xero Standard for £22 per month, and Xero Premium for £27.50 per month. Unlike some of its rivals, all three tiers support online VAT submission to HMRC and also offer new subscriber discounts.

Palo Alto Networks has acquired an incident response and digital forensics consultancy in a deal worth $265 million (roughly £202 million), a move designed to bolster its own enterprise security oversight platform.

The Crypsis Group, which offers data breach response, digital investigations and cyber risk management services, will be integrated with Palo Alto Networks in order to strengthen its Cortex XDR services.

While Cortex XDR already provides prevention, detection and incident response capabilities, Palo Alto will be hoping to add Crypsis’ consultancy and forensics services into the mix. This would allow the platform to collect telemetry data, manage data breaches and initiative rapid response actions.

"The proposed acquisition of The Crypsis Group will significantly enhance our position as the cybersecurity partner of choice, while expanding our capabilities and strengthening our Cortex strategy,” Palo Alto Networks’ CEO and chairman Nikesh Arora said.

“By joining forces, we will be able to help customers not only predict and prevent cyberattacks but also mitigate the impact of any breach they may face."

Palo Alto is planning to integrate the expertise and technical insights provided by Crypsis to establish a continuous feedback loop between incident response units and product research teams in order to better safeguard clients. The processes and technology built by Crypsis will also be integrated into this division.

Crypsis employs 150 security consultants who handle more than 1,300 complex and significant cyber security engagements each year, the company claims. It has also serviced more than 1,700 organisations across a number of sectors including health care, financial services, energy and e-commerce.

The company’s CEO Bret Padres will also join Palo Alto Networks, although his role in the new organisational structure has not yet been fully defined.

Palo Alto Networks offers security services through Cortex XDR to give clients full visibility over their security architecture, as well a comprehensive portfolio of tools and services to prevent intrusion and learn from any incidents that do occur.

The firm recently announced a partnership with Deloitte, in which several Palo Alto platforms including Cortex XDR and Cortex XSOAR will be integrated into the company’s managed security services portfolio for customers worldwide.