Cloud technologies are key to Hong Kong businesses according to a new report from SolarWinds – but containers, blockchain and robotics still have a fair way to go yet.

The findings appear in the company’s latest IT trends report, ‘The Intersection of Hype and Performance.’ The research polled 75 IT practitioners, managers and directors in Hong Kong – with the overall research quizzing more than 800 respondents across four continents – and found cloud and hybrid IT was the...

• $86bn was spent on security in 2017, yet 66% of companies have still been breached an average of five or more times.
• Just 55% of CEOs say their organizations have experienced a breach, while 79% of CTOs acknowledge breaches have occurred. One in approximately four CEOs (24%) aren’t aware if their companies have even had a security breach.
• 62% of CEOs inaccurately cite malware as the primary threat to cybersecurity.
• 68% of executives whose companies experienced significant breaches in hindsight believe that the breach could have been prevented by implementing more...

• 84% of marketing organizations are implementing or expanding AI and machine learning in 2018.
• 75% of enterprises using AI and machine learning enhance customer satisfaction by more than 10%.
• 3 in 4 organizations implementing AI and machine learning increase sales of new products and services by more than 10% according to Capgemini.

Measuring marketing’s many contributions to revenue growth is becoming more accurate and real-time thanks to...

The Internet needed a means to maximise its potential – and the solution would need to be highly adaptable and accepting of a wide variety of technology. Cloud computing has evolved with the information age.

The evolution of applications for cloud computing: A history

The Allied Telecom Group describes cloud computing as an interconnected network of remote servers; specifically, Internet-host servers that process and manage information, as well...

Many have lauded the latest phone from Google, the Pixel 2, applauding its ability to showcase the emerging capabilities of artificial intelligence. Not only does the virtual assistant sound more human than other competitors’ technologies, but it also does a better job of understanding commands and questions.

Still, there’s a 

Guided by senior executive goals for digital transformation, more organizations are increasing their use of cloud computing technologies. The typical multi-cloud mix includes a blend of public cloud, private cloud and traditional IT services. Finding the best-fit service mix starts with the business requirements.

The latest Global Cloud Index (GCI) 2016-2021 from Cisco focuses on the worldwide market outlook for enterprise data...

• Data scientist has been named the best job in America for three years running, with a median base salary of $110,000 and 4,524 job openings.
• DevOps engineer is the second-best job in 2018, paying a median base salary of $105,000 and 3,369 job openings.
• There are 29,187 software engineering jobs available today, making this job the most popular regarding Glassdoor postings according to the study.

These and many other fascinating insights are from Glassdoor’s 50 Best Jobs In...

• While 94% of supply chain leaders say that digital transformation will fundamentally change supply chains in 2018, only 44% have a strategy ready.
• 66% of supply chain leaders say advanced supply chain analytics are critically important to their supply chain operations in the next 2 to 3 years.
• Forecast accuracy, demand patterns, product tracking traceability, transportation performance and analysis of product returns are use cases where analytics can close knowledge gaps.

These and other insights are from 

• Big data adoption reached 53% in 2017 for all companies interviewed, up from 17% in 2015, with telecom and financial services leading early adopters.
• Reporting, dashboards, advanced visualization end-user “self-service” and data warehousing are the top five technologies and initiatives strategic to business intelligence.
• Data warehouse optimization remains the top use case for big data, followed by customer/social analysis and predictive maintenance.
• Among big data distributions, Cloudera is the most popular, followed by Hortonworks, MAP/R, and Amazon...

More than 20 announcements flowed at AWS re:Invent today, including updates on machine learning, databases and the Internet of Things (IoT) – not to mention a couple of big-name customer wins.

The theme for Amazon Web Services CEO Andy Jassy was around builders. Unlike the previous year’s keynote, where it was about superpowers, this presentation had a slightly more mundane – and musical – approach.

Technology builders are like musicians, Jassy explained. Some guitarists may play...

Meg Whitman is to step down as CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), bringing down the curtain on a six-year tenure and overseeing one of the largest corporate breakups of recent years.

Whitman had in July stepped down as chairwoman of HP’s board of directors, remaining chief executive of HPE, and had previously faced speculation about her role as the chief executive’s seat at Uber dramatically became available earlier this year.

Whitman’s replacement will be HPE president Antonio Neri, a 22-year HP...

Say hello to the Cloud Analytics Academy. The program, launched today by Snowflake Computing alongside Amazon Web Services (AWS), Looker, Talend and WhereScape, aims to help executives lead their organisations in data warehousing, BI, and more.

The curriculum is designed by Kent Graziano, Snowflake chief technical evangelist, with the partnering companies chipping in with their expertise.

There are three courses; the ‘executive fast track’ is the one-size-fits-all course with five sessions on key...

Big data analysis can provide continuous business intelligence to managers, enabling sophisticated monitoring of current activities, and helping them to make smarter, faster decisions based on fact data and hidden trends and patterns. But while managers may think it’s cool, rushing to implement “a big data analytics” program can get you into trouble.  There are many architectures, tools, and algorithms to sort through, and you’ll need to manage stakeholder expectations. Software...

Philip Hammond proclaimed in this year’s Spring Budget speech that the fourth industrial revolution is “well and truly under way.” Building on the third industrial revolution that saw the rise of electrons and IT to automate production, this new digital wave is characterised by a fusion of technologies that blurs the lines between the physical, digital and biological spheres.

As noted by Hammond, everyone will need to be “agile and bold” to embrace this revolution. But what does...

MapR Technologies, a data management platform provider, has announced an equity round of $56 million (£42.5m) from existing investors.

The company said it would use the money to “continue product innovation of the industry’s first modern enterprise platform for all data, accelerate country and regional growth to fulfil the demand for the MapR Converged Data Platform throughout APAC and Europe, and bolster MapR’s thriving global partner community.” According to CrunchBase, the...

As companies make a move for their initial public offering (IPO), the investor page goes up, the bell gets rung on the NYSE, and, perhaps most importantly, their financial results have to be displayed for all to see.

Cloudera and Okta, two companies who declared their intentions to go public within weeks of each other in April, have announced their second quarter 2018 financial results, with both companies beating expectations.

Cloudera, a big data software provider, announced total revenues of $89.8 million...

Microsoft has announced the acquisition of Connecticut-based Cycle Computing to help provide easier access to high performance computing (HPC) in Azure.

Cycle has been in business since 2005 and provides orchestration software running both off the primary public cloud providers as well as in private cloud environments. Its core tenet is that ‘greater access to compute enables people to ask bigger questions, faster answers and a better world’, in the company’s own words.

According to the...

At the AWS Summit in New York, Amazon Web Services focused predominantly around enterprise migration – and launched two new products aimed at taking the difficulty out of data analysis and transfer.

The cloud infrastructure giant announced the launch of AWS Migration Hub, a tool which aims to help organisations migrate their assets from on-prem data centres to Amazon’s cloud, as well as the general availability of AWS Glue, a product first announced in December last year which eases the process of...

If you’re looking for your next break in the cloud computing industry, be warned: salaries are slowing down while job postings soar.

That is the verdict of Experis, a professional IT resourcing provider, whose latest Tech Cities Job Watch looked at the challenges and opportunities in the UK technology job market.

According to the research, which utilised Innovantage’s recruitment software to analyse more than half a million employer websites, the number of cloud roles almost doubled (97.73%...

Editor's note: Read more around artificial intelligence, deep learning and machine learning at AI News.

• Tech giants including Baidu and Google spent between $20B to $30B on AI in 2016, with 90% of this spent on R&D and deployment, and 10% on AI acquisitions.
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) investment has turned into a race for patents and intellectual property (IP) among the world’s leading tech companies.
• U.S.-based companies absorbed 66% of all AI investments in 2016. China was...