Cloud

Increasingly mobile workforces have led to a loss of data control. Information on laptops and smart phones as well as within multiple cloud applications means increased risk of company data loss and the inability to track, hold or monitor data for regulatory compliance and legal obligations.

Data protection specialist Druva is announcing Microsoft Office 365 integration of its InSync product, offering a centralized conduit for enterprises to manage this dispersed data.

With distributed networks, virtual servers and the cloud, corporate data is increasingly stored in lots of different places, making backup and business continuity more of a challenge.

Following its acquisition of Backupify in December last year, backup and recovery specialist Datto is launching a range of new products and enhancements designed to protect data no matter where it resides -- across on-premise physical or virtual servers or in the cloud via SaaS applications.

For some companies, bringing the internet to the entire world is an important part of giving people greater opportunities. Mark Zuckerberg has been pedalling Internet.org for some time now -- even if a lot of people don’t like the scheme -- and now there's a new kid on the block.

Airbus is due to start building more than 900 satellites for OneWeb, a company looking to bring highspeed internet access to billions of people all over the world. The aim is to offer 100 percent coverage of the globe, and there is a great focus on speed. Airbus is hoping to build more than one satellite per day and launch the first batch in 2018.

Adobe has carved out a niche for itself as a provider of industry-standard tools for art and design; Photoshop is now so widely used that, like Google, it has become a verb. The company's Creative Cloud suite receives its annual update today, and as part of the update Adobe is also launching its own stock image service.

Adobe Stock is set to compete directly with the likes of Shutterstock and Getty images. Adobe already has something of a captive market. It is very well aware that the people who tend to use stock images are the same people who use Adobe software -- it just makes sense for the two worlds to collide.

As data volumes grow managing them and being able to extract meaningful insights in a timely manner becomes more and more difficult, especially for small and medium businesses.

Latvian database-as-a-service (DBaaS) company Clusterpoint is looking to expand its innovative technology to developers and small to medium sized businesses in North America by opening a new server cluster in Dallas.

Post-Snowden there is great interest in just what involvement the government has with technology firms. There are frequent requests from government agencies for information about users and the likes of Google, Snapchat, and even the NSA itself have all released transparency reports that reveal, in broad strokes, the number of requests for data they have received.

Amazon is the latest company to release a transparency report -- although the term really should be used in the loosest possible sense. The report includes scant details about the number of subpoenas, search warrants, court orders, and national security requests received in the first five months of 2015. The report is so vague as to be virtually meaningless.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is about to become a lot more environmentally friendly after announcing the construction of an 80 megawatt solar farm.

The green proposal will generate 170,000 megawatt hours (MWh) of solar power each year, the equivalent of approximately 15,000 US homes.

Cloud management specialist BetterCloud has released the results of its latest survey into the pace of cloud adoption in businesses.

The survey of 1,500 IT professionals from 53 countries also looks at the differences in cloud office systems and their customers, the current and expected usage rates for cloud applications, and the effects of cloud office systems on productivity, collaboration, cost savings and more.

I have some advice for the European Union Competition Commission: Lay off. You don't need to reign in the Google monopoly. Apple will correct the market around search and mobile. That's one of two related takeaways from Monday's WWDC 2015 keynote. iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan up Apple's push into search and proactively-delivered information in big ways. That is if delivery is as good as the company promises.

The other takeaway harkens back to what I told you last week about Tim Cook's piracy rant against unnamed Facebook and Google alongside the friggin U.S. government -- plural if thinking beyond the Feds: It's BS marketing. Apple prepares a major competitive assault against Big G, hitting where damage can be severe: Perception and profits. I cannot overstate Google's vulnerability, which ironically is where the search and information giant exploited Microsoft during this Century.

Businesses are constantly seeking to improve the digital experience that they offer their customers, delivering something that's engaging and personalized. Add in demand for mobile access from every device, integrated social capabilities, and the need to analyze data from the internet-of-things to quickly make decisions and companies are looking for faster ways to create improved customer experiences.

Today IBM and Portico Consultancy are unveiling new cloud services to help businesses of any size quickly build, test and deploy applications to deliver on their requirements.

If Apple's streaming music service launches tomorrow at WWDC and is branded with the company's name/logo, look for broad naming changes ahead. My guess, and it's only that: the lower-case letter before products like iMac or iPhone will disappear; over time. Under CEO Tim Cook, the branding strategy differs from Steve Jobs. That's sensible considering where the company is today compared to 1998 when the cofounder introduced iMac.

Apple Watch foreshadows the new nomenclature. Contrary to months of iWatch rumors before launch, the device is identified by sound as Apple Watch, but what you see is the company's logo, which is one of the most recognizable brand icons ever created. If Apple Music turns out to be more than just streaming, but the replacement for or displacement of iTunes, consider that as sign of future naming conventions to come. If I am mistaken -- well, Apple should do what I predict.

The UK's HMRC -- the government department responsible for tax -- is switching allegiances in its choice of cloud storage providers. Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs is switching to Google Apps as more and more departments move away from Microsoft services.

Earlier in the year, the Cabinet Office and Department for Culture, Media and Sport ruled out using Office 365, but found Google offered more suitable collaboration options. As reported by The Register, the move illustrates the government's increased trust in Google's ability to securely store sensitive data offshore.

Storing your personal data in the cloud makes a lot of sense. It provides a handy backup, and you can access your content from anywhere. I write about a lot of cloud storage services, but I only really use established ones from the likes of Google and Microsoft.

I would consider, and use, storage services from other companies, but the problem is they can’t be trusted. So many of the sites I sign up to -- usually purely to write about -- shut down within a year or so. These aren’t storage services from firms you’ve never heard of either. Today’s discontinued service is Younited by F-Secure.

Nine years ago, a NPR interviewer asked me about Google and other U.S. companies censoring search results in China. The question was one of morality -- to which I gave answer she didn't expect. That response, or my recollection of it, is appropriate for rather ridiculous and self-serving statements that Apple CEO Tim Cook reportedly made two days ago.

"We believe that people have a fundamental right to privacy", Cook said, Matthew Panzarino reports for TechCrunch. "The American people demand it, the constitution demands it, morality demands it". Oh? What is moral? The answer I gave NPR in 2006 applies: There is no moral high ground in business. The high ground is quagmire, because all public companies -- Apple surely among them -- share a single, moral objective: Make profits for stockholders. Plain, pure, and simple.

New research by cloud storage specialist CTERA Networks highlights the challenges that enterprises face in providing cloud storage and file sharing services, while reducing IT costs and maintaining security and data control.

It shows that security of data remains a major issue with 35 percent of organizations experiencing corporate data leakage in 2014 as a result of employees sharing files via often-unsanctioned file sync and share (FSS) services, a four percent increase over 2013.