Bank of England warns that banks are overly reliant on cloud

Bank of England, London

The Bank of England is calling for increased powers to oversee the banking and finance sector’s switch to cloud computing.

Its concerns stem from cloud adoption making systems more secretive and concentrating sensitive data in the hands of a select few tech giants like Amazon and Microsoft.

The central bank has said it will need “additional policy measures” to make sure it can assess the industry’s IT infrastructure, even when it’s run by third...

16 July 2021 | Banking & Finance

EU privacy body investigates use of American cloud services

A close up of the USA flag.

The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) has launched an investigation into the use of cloud services provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft under Cloud II contracts by European Union (EU) institutions, bodies and agencies (EUIs).

It has also begun looking at the use of Microsoft Office 365 by the European Commission.

These investigations are part of the EDPS’ strategy for EU institutions to comply with the “Schrems II” Judgement so that ongoing...

8 June 2021 | Regulation & Government

AXELOS: How to get the most out of the ITIL 4 framework

The ITIL framework - the acronym being retained from its former description of Information Technology Infrastructure Library - is focused on aligning IT services with the needs of businesses, including activities such as IT service management (ITSM) and IT asset management (ITAM).

Since 2013, it has been owned by AXELOS, a joint venture between Capita and the UK Cabinet Office. As the company puts it, its role is to be 'responsible for developing, enhancing and promoting a number...

7 April 2021 | Enterprise

IDC: Worldwide IT security spend will reach $174.7bn – with government and telecoms set to benefit

A distributed workforce, and ongoing work-from-home mandates, have evolved the charter of corporate information technology (IT) organisations. CIOs are now tasked to support flexible working arrangements that require them to reconsider prior assumptions about securing the combined infrastructure that enables an employee to perform work remotely.

Enterprise spending on IT security products and services has experienced new growth in 2020, as many organisations invest in solutions to...

30 September 2020 | Regulation & Government

AWS and Microsoft ramp up war of words in JEDI cloud contract row

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has said it 'won't back down' in its appeal process for the $10 billion JEDI government cloud computing contract - as the war of words between AWS and Microsoft escalates.

The contract for the Department of Defense has long courted rumour and conjecture around alleged potential intervention by President Trump, whose relationship with Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO and owner of the Washington Post, is known to be antipathic.

Following the initial award...

11 May 2020 | AWS

Pentagon to ‘reconsider certain aspects’ of JEDI Microsoft cloud contract award

Updated 1530 GMT The Pentagon has asked a federal court for 120 days to ‘reconsider certain aspects’ of the decision to award Microsoft the $10 billion (£7.9bn) federal cloud computing contract.

The ruling, in a court order published on Thursday, noted that Amazon Web Services (AWS), who last month won a temporary injunction against the award, would ‘likely be able to show that...

13 March 2020 | AWS

Why standardisation is good for NetOps: Innovation instead of impediment

Standardisation is sometimes viewed as an assault on innovation. Being forced to abandon a polyglot buffet and adopt a more limited menu will always sound stifling. That may be because standardisation is often associated with regulatory compliance standards that have official sounding names like ISO 8076.905E and are associated with checklists, auditors and oversight committees.

The reality is that there...

14 March 2019 | Platforms

SD-WAN infrastructure market to hit $4.5bn by 2022, says IDC

The software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) market continues to grow rapidly – and IDC is predicting the overall infrastructure market will be worth $4.5 billion (£3.53bn) by 2022.

The figure, which appears in the analyst firm’s latest SD-WAN Infrastructure Forecast, takes into account the significant uptick in SD-WAN investment, with infrastructure revenues going up 83.3% in 2017 to reach $833 million.

Another report, IDC’s Market Share – the...

13 August 2018 | Data & Analytics

Cloud ubiquity could see the term die off by 2025, argues Citrix

Many in the industry have wondered about when the cloud will dissipate – in other words, when the term ceases to be used because of the technology’s ubiquity. Citrix has stuck its head over the parapet – and said that 2025 may signal the death of the buzzword.

At least, that’s the verdict of a quarter of the 750 UK-based IT decision makers polled by Citrix, alongside Censuswide. Of the 26% who believe the term cloud will be obsolete by 2025, more than half...

30 July 2018 | Data & Analytics

The top five reasons for a multi-cloud infrastructure

Having been focused in the cloud sector for more than 12 years now, I have experienced much fast paced change and continued assumptions, misunderstanding and over-promising of cloud as the saviour of all ills.

Cloud is used as a generic term and yet covers a wide plethora of sub form factors (SaaS – software as a service, PaaS – platform as a service and IaaS – infrastructure as a service) and delivery mechanisms (private, public and hybrid clouds). Within these you...

19 March 2018 | Infrastructure