Web and mobile applications are a key differentiator between healthcare providers in a highly competitive industry — customers want to be able to access their healthcare records, prescriptions, and associated data in the way that is most convenient to them. Healthcare providers who aren’t online are falling behind.

In the rush to build online services, it may be tempting to take shortcuts where protected health information (PHI) hosting is concerned. After all, a standard web hosting provider is...

Red Hat has announced the acquisition of CoreOS, a provider of Kubernetes and container solutions, for $250 million (£176.5m).

The move will help Red Hat ‘further its vision of enabling customers to build any application and deploy them in any environment with the flexibility afforded by open source’, as the company put it. “We believe this acquisition cements Red Hat as a cornerstone of hybrid cloud and modern app deployments,” said Paul Cornier, Red Hat president of products...

Updating or modernising key legacy applications and moving them to the cloud has become a high priority for organisations as they pursue digital transformation. But for various reasons, some legacy applications will have been deemed best left alone, left to run on in-house systems.

But as ever smarter cloud-accessible technologies become available, offering massive data processing capabilities, machine learning and artificial intelligence for example, the reasons for continuing to leave these remaining...

Quantum computing promises much – but are organisations secure enough to make the most of it? According to a new report from the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), companies are aware of the risk of quantum computing but not yet ready to take action.

The alliance had previously put together the Quantum Safe Security Working Group (QSS WG) to assess the risks of the emerging technology. According to today’s report, which polled more than 100 CSA members with more than 90% working in either IT or...

• There has been a 14X increase in the number of active AI startups since 2000.
• Investment into AI startups by venture capitalists has increased 6X since 2000.
• The share of jobs requiring AI skills has grown 4.5X since 2013.

These and many other fascinating insights are from Stanford University’s inaugural AI Index (PDF, no opt-in, 101 pp.). Stanford has undertaken a 

“Machine learning is so tantalizing for most every day developers and scientists. Still, there are a lot of constraints for builders….How do we turn machine learning from a capability of the few, into something that many more people can take advantage of?” – Andy Jassy, Keynote from AWS re:Invent 2017

The fintech industry has been hyped about the potential of machine learning technology for years. Despite all the noise, it’s still very early for most companies. Expert...

During much of 2017, it was possible to read many articles that predicted the end of cloud computing and favour edge computing instead. However, there is also the view that believes edge computing and cloud computing are extensions of one another. In other words, the two technological models are expected to work together. Cloud...

A new report from the Cloud Industry Forum (CIF) and Ensono argues that while the vast majority of organisations are undertaking digital transformation initiatives – led by various members of the C-suite – KPIs are not aligning with objectives.

The study, conducted by Vanson Bourne, polled 200 IT and business decision makers in the UK, finding the usual disparity between IT and business. For instance, 22% on respondents on the biz side said they believed their organisation had completed its...

• Machine learning engineers, data scientists, and big data engineers rank among the top emerging jobs on LinkedIn.
• Data scientist roles have grown over 650% since 2012, but currently, 35,000 people in the US have data science skills, while hundreds of companies are hiring for those roles.
• There are currently 1,829 open machine learning engineering positions on LinkedIn.
• Job growth in the next decade is expected to outstrip growth during the previous decade, creating 11.5m jobs by 2026, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

These and many other...

It’s been another exciting year in the cloud computing space. From blockchain, to AI, to containers and microservices, the technological developments have made for interesting reading – as well as the continued pushes by the leading companies in the ecosystem.

Below, CloudTech has put together five trends which shaped 2017, featuring some of the biggest stories of last year, as well as a series of predictions from executives on what they expect from 2018.

2017

The AWS/Azure competition – with Alibaba and Oracle on...

Cisco has announced its intention to acquire Cmpute.io to help organisations get the most out of their multi-cloud deployments.

The acquisition, which is expected to close in the second quarter of Cisco’s 2018 fiscal year, was announced on Cisco’s blog, with Rob Salvagno, head of Cisco’s M&A and venture investment team, writing that the addition of Cmpute.io’s technology will “help customers optimise their cloud...

It may be holiday season in the US – but two companies who probably won’t be on the same Thanksgiving table are Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft. The two largest public cloud providers appear to have crossed paths again, this time over security giant Symantec.

Late last night, AWS issued a missive announcing that Symantec has chosen the Seattle firm as its ‘strategic infrastructure provider for the vast majority of its cloud workloads’.

According to the press materials, Symantec...

Chevron is making Microsoft Azure its primary cloud provider as part of a seven year partnership with the Redmond giant.

The energy corporation added the move will accelerate the application of technologies such as analytics and the Internet of Things to drive performance and improve efficiencies. According to Chevron CIO Bill Braun, the company saw Microsoft as a good fit because of its global reach.

The move is especially key because of the bountiful amounts of data energy companies, among others in similar...

The rapid advancement of cloud-scale software is driving the digital transformation impacting nearly every facet of our life. The ways we work, communicate, navigate, travel, shop, manage our money, access healthcare, interact with things and places are extremely different from only five years ago.

There are many underlying technologies that enable this transformation – but none as profound as the rise of cloud-based software applications that we interact with throughout our day. 

IDC notes that...

The keenest rivalry in cloud computing may have just taken a slightly different turn: Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft are collaborating on an open artificial intelligence (AI) ecosystem.

The project, called Gluon, is a programming API which “allows developers of all skill levels to prototype, build, train and deploy sophisticated machine learning models for the cloud, devices at the edge and mobile apps,” in the words of a joint press release.

“The potential of machine learning can...

General Electric (GE) has selected Amazon Web Services (AWS) as its preferred cloud provider, according to an Amazon announcement.

In a short note, Amazon said GE ‘continues to migrate thousands of core applications to AWS’, and that many of its cloud apps on businesses such as aviation, healthcare and transportation, run on Amazon’s cloud. GE began an enterprise-wide migration in 2014 and has migrated more than 2,000 applications in that time.

GE’s focus on digital is crystal clear....

Many organisations are now actively considering blockchain deployments, and a significant proportion are already anticipating integration of blockchain into their IT systems within the next 18 months, according the latest worldwide market study by Juniper Research.

The Juniper survey found that among the largest companies (those with 20,000 of more employees) that were considering deploying or were in the process of deploying blockchain, 54 percent had reached the PoC...

• 84% of respondents say AI will enable them to obtain or sustain a competitive advantage.
• 83% believe AI is a strategic priority for their businesses today.
• 75% state that AI will allow them to move into new businesses and ventures.

These and many other fascinating insights are from the Boston Consulting Group and MIT Sloan Management Review study published this week, Reshaping Business With Artificial Intelligence. An online 

Born in the cloud services may be one thing – but what are the key aspects to look out for when migrating existing applications to the cloud? According to a new whitepaper from IDC, security, privacy, and compliance regulations came out on top for organisations.

The study, ‘Critical Application and Business KPIs for Successful Cloud Migration’, polled 600 enterprises and was conducted alongside application performance management provider AppDynamics. Naturally, the paper exists to point...

Only 55.4% of companies meet all PCI DSS compliance standards, according to a new report released by Verizon. While this number is up 7% from 2015, it still translates to nearly half of retailers, IT services companies, payment software providers and hospitality organisations do not adequately protect credit cardholder information.

Companies had the greatest difficulty meeting the following requirements, many of which are related to infrastructure compliance and policies:

• Requirement 3 – Protect...