From cloud computing and blockchain to machine learning and the metaverse, sifting through shiny new tech toys is a time-consuming business. How do you decide if an emerging technology is a must have for your organisation, and are there benefits to being an earlyadopter?

Migrating to the cloud took centre stage in the pandemic. For Sue Daley, director for technology and innovation at the trade association techUK, the potential benefits in scalability and agility make it the undisputed building block of any tech transformation.

Cloud computing is the digital foundation which allows all other techs to converge and, in our view, moving your valuable assets over to the internet should be your number one priority going forward, whatever the size and nature of your business, Daleysays.

When it comes to investigating the plethora of new digital innovations to use in the cloud, its important you dont allow clever new gizmos to become a distraction.

However appealing the product or service, make sure you know how it will achieve your objectives and fit in with your existing tech infrastructure, because otherwise you may be wasting your money, Daleyadds.

Better use of data and data analytics software is a crucial issue across all industries. It could be well worth investigating edge computing: the ability to capture, store, process and analyse data locally or at the edge of the network, rather than at a remote datacentre.

Its highly likely that 5G, biometrics, machine learning and all the other digital tech being created and refined today will eventually be highly relevant for businesses. In the short term, however, investing in a system such as the internet of things (IoT) the term used for physical devices which connect via the web may not offer any specific commercial advantages, unless it can be combined with something a business already uses, such as 3Dprinting.

The much-hyped metaverse which enables businesses to offer new services or digital equivalents of their physical products offers a tantalising glimpse of our tech future. For now, however, many businesses are hampered by issues as fundamental as poor mobile connectivity.

For these organisations, getting the basics right is far more important than investing in advanced fingerprint mapping or augmented reality, says Martin McTague, national chairperson of the Federation of Small Businesses.

One in three small businesses receive download speeds of less than 10 megabits per second and close to half are affected by poor mobile connectivity, he says. With the cost of doing business soaring, small businesses should look closely at where new tech can add meaningful value, rather than trying to stay ahead of the curve for the sake of it. Theres no use trying to run before you canwalk.

When it comes to innovations like blockchain, a digital ledger system initially used for cryptocurrency transactions, businesses should look closely at the costs and benefits and be certain that any investment will add value in the shortterm.

Security must always be a top concern, with the majority of SMEs now viewing ransomware and cyber attacks as an ever-present threat.

When widening their use of tech, its vital that small firms ensure that staff can work safely from home without the threat of network breaches and ensure their customers can receive goods and services remotely without being compromised, saysMcTague.

With adequate preparation and repeated testing, organisations which opt to trial an emerging new tech at an early stage in the lifecycle can gain a competitive advantage as and when the techmatures.

However, before embarking on a trial it is important to appraise the businesss current skills level and processes. Where possible, organisations should identify an individual or team with the knowledge to guide itthrough.

Ensuring that the tech will be welcomed by your staff and not resented is another vital part of the preparation stage.

Being an early adopter can give you knowledge and understanding and if you are satisfied that you have the resources to successfully steer it through a trial, its probably worth going ahead, says Daley. In order to give the tech a fair chance though, you need to have your data in an appropriate format and a digital framework which can support the newcomer tech and demonstrate its ability to increase efficiency and improve the lives of yourstaff.

As world-class innovators such as Tesla founder Elon Musk have amply demonstrated, an early presence in a market attracts the loyalty of customers and employees and garners great publicity. However, the risks of being an early adopter are equally clear. As tech becomes more complex, the dangers of reputational damage caused by gremlins in the machine becomes more likely. The PR enjoyed by a pioneer may quickly turn sour if early users have a negative experience.

With more users, data, and connections the risk of cyber attacks increases. And as technologies develop, early mover advantage can quickly become a disadvantage when later movers produce new, improved versions of the original product, says Stephan Hartgers,vice president of digital strategy at the tech consultancy Mobiquity Europe.

Businesses that come late to a technology can also reap the benefits of lower prices once the early glitches have been ironed out, usually at great cost to the earlybirds.

An organisations overall risk appetite and digital maturity should help dictate whether being an early adopter is a smart move. However, punitive barriers to late adoption and internal resistance to change are equally important.

For Hartgers, transforming a negative, technophobe culture into a more positive and pioneering one may be the most vital step of all in effecting a digital transformation.

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How to cut through the technology hype - Raconteur

IBM z16: Heres why the cloud wont replace the mainframe. Source: IBM

In todays time of Big Data and cloud, the mainframe may not be as trendy, but it has continued to serve as the central nervous system of major industries like finance and healthcare. In fact, industry reports indicate that much of the worlds largest corporations actually use this technology. Thus, with an existing strong demand still, the leader in the mainframe space, IBM, launched its latestz16which is also the industrys first integrated on-chip AI accelerator, indicating that the technology is from being obsolete.

Mainframes entered the market in the early 1950s when IBM and the BUNCH (Burroughs, Unisys, NCR, Control Data, Honeywell, GE, and RCA) created the computing age and together competed for critical applications, sophisticated modeling, and large-scale transactions as well as workloads among the largest of organizations. Fast forward 71 years later, mainframe still plays a central role in the daily operations of most of the worlds largest corporations.

Although other forms of computing are used extensively in business in various capacities, the mainframe occupies a coveted place in todays online business environment. According to IBM, its modern mainframe today is even central to hybrid cloud environments and is used by two thirds of the Fortune 100, 45 of the worlds top 50 banks, eight of the top 10 insurers, seven of the top 10 global retailers and eight out of the top 10 telcos.

In short, quoting and IBMs study by Celent Operationalizing Fraud Prevention on IBM Z, IBM zSystems run 70% of global transactions, on a value basis.

Looking back, the first modern mainframe was the IBM Z, launched as S/360 in April 1964. At that point, it could perform 229,000 calculations per second; an innovation that helped put man on the moon. From there the mainframe became mainstream among enterprises as businesses started using the platform to run critical applications and complete transactions.

IBM did not stop and had continued to innovate on the z mainframe platform bolstered by the rise of hybrid-cloud models and many mission-critical enterprise applications that must stay on the mainframe. Today, the latest z16 by IBM comes with its integrated on-chip Telum AI accelerator. The accelerator can scale up to 300 billion inference requests per day at one-millisecond latency for each inference request, enabling state-of-the-art AI in workloads that were not possible before.

Additionally, according to IBM, the IBM z16 with z/OS has a 20x response time with 19x higher throughput when inferencing compared to a comparable x86 cloud server with 60ms average network latency. In short, IBMs latest mainframe still makes it perfect for mission-critical workloads such as healthcare and financial transactions.

For the first time, banks can analyze fraud during transactions on a massive scale: IBM z16 can process 300 billion inference requests per day with just one millisecond of latency, IBM said in a statement. For consumers, that could mean reducing the time and energy required to handle fraudulent transactions on their credit card. For both merchants and card issuers, it means a reduction in revenue loss.

However, theres more to the z16. Building on IBMs history of security leadership, IBM z16 also is specifically designed to help protect against near-future threats that might be used to crack todays encryption technologies. Building on IBM technologies like Pervasive Encryption and Confidential Computing, IBM z16 takes cyber resiliency a leap further by protecting data against future threats that could evolve with advances in quantum computing, IBM added.

What has always made the mainframe truly invaluable is its superior computing abilities. It offers better control when running workloads and it can manage workloads over a set of distributed systems far better than mid-range systems. And when it comes to scaling and managing vector processing nothing beats the mainframe.

Considering how 96 of the worlds top 100 banks and nine out of ten of the worlds biggest insurance companies still depend on mainframes, it shows that the technology is predictable, reliable and scalable. The IBM Z business isnt going anywhere, said IBM Vice President for Worldwide Sales of IBM Z and LinuxONE Jose Castano in a press briefing recently.

Even Covid-19 has unearthed a renewed focus on IBM Z, to help keep the worlds financial trading, retail transactions, insurance claims processing, healthcare IT, and more afloat, he added. In a separate blog posting by IBM, the company noted that hybrid cloud approach that includes and integrates mainframe computing can drive up to five times the value of a public cloud platform alone.

The main sources of value are in five categories: increased business acceleration, developer productivity, infrastructure efficiency, risk and compliance management, and long-term flexibility. Blending mainframe power, reliability and security into the cloud landscape is essential to achieve the enterprise-wide agility and capability required to keep pace with ever-changing business needs.

IBM even announced the IBM Z Cloud and Modernization stack in January this year which brings industry-standard tooling for development, automation, and provisioning by leveraging the Red Hat OpenShift container platform. It connects IBM z assets to the hybrid cloud and reduces the time to provision and manage systems across the enterprise.

The company has even seen a significant sales growth over the past two years especially in Asia Pacific with 20 new customers adopting the Z mainframes, IBM Asia Pacific director Francis Goh told the press in a briefing held in Kuala Lumpur recently. 4Q 2021 was IBMs best quarter in Asia Pacific since 2016, he said, adding that this was the reflection of the overall momentum for IBM and its mainframe business.

Dashveenjit Kaur| @DashveenjitK

Dashveen writes for Tech Wire Asia and TechHQ, providing research-based commentary on the exciting world of technology in business. Previously, she reported on the ground of Malaysia's fast-paced political arena and stock market.

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IBM z16: Here's why the cloud won't replace the mainframe - Tech Wire Asia

Solution Enables Fast, Scalable, Cost-Effective Use of AWS Nitro Enclaves to Protect MPC Custody Assets Against Risk, Theft and Misuse

PALO ALTO, Calif. and LONDON, May 3, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Anjuna SecurityInc., the Confidential Computingsoftware company, and Parfin, the British-Brazilian fintech company building digital asset solutions for institutional customers, today announced that the Anjuna Confidential Cloud Software solution now enables Parfin's MPC Custody platform to utilize the highly secure hardware protection of AWS Nitro Enclaveswithout any changes to applications or processes. The added layer of hardware security locks out cloud provider employees, third-party insiders or compromised software components from access to Multi-Party Computation (MPC) cryptographic keys, digital assets or proprietary custodial applications.

In the digital asset custody market, trust, risk protection and the highest levels of security are essential, including securing private keys, deposit addresses and credentials, even beyond traditional MPC. Parfinalready had very high levels of security through the use of leading-edge blockchain and MPC technologies, TLS encryption, hardware security modules (HSMs) and being SOC2 certified and compliant. Parfin wanted to utilize AWS Nitro Enclaves to eliminate the potential of asset exposure during runtime when it is, by necessity, unencrypted in memory. Parfin also wanted to take advantage of the agility, high performance, scale and economics of the public cloud.

"Anjuna provided the level of security we envisioned for our Parfin MPC Custody system," said Alex Buelau, chief technology officer and co-founder, Parfin. "Now, we can ensure our customers' distributed key shares are protected by an additional layer of secure enclaves that wasn't possible without Anjuna."

Even with wide distribution of MPC or blockchain cryptographic keys, the one remaining point of exposure is when keys, code or data is processed. Sophisticated and motivated attackers can target multiple points to orchestrate high-value theft or abuse. Eliminating this gap has been the aim of complex, expensive, cumbersome technologies, such as multisig and HSMs.

Anjuna addresses the remaining gap in blockchain, MPC and the use of public cloud infrastructure by locking down data, applications and digital assets during runtime by making confidential computing and AWS Nitro Enclaves in the cloud practical. With the Anjuna solution, companies can use widely available hardware-grade enclaves transparently, requiring no change to code, processes or implementation even among multiple clouds. Anjuna makes the highest level of runtime security fast, affordable and instantly scalable.

"With so much at stake, it is critical that digital finance goes beyond MPC technologies to close the potential wide-open exposure that currently exists during runtime on servers," said Ayal Yogev, co-founder, and CEO of Anjuna. "As a leader, Parfin has taken this above and beyond step to ensure the highest levels of protection for customer's assets, whether digital wallets, personal information or transaction data."

About ParfinFounded in 2019 by executives Marcos Viriato, Cristian Bohn and Alex Buelau, Parfin is an Anglo-Brazilian fintech that offers a modular and secure platform for custody, trading and management of digital assets. Parfin's platform offers advanced MPC custody and connects institutional investors to the various players in the cryptocurrency market, such as exchanges, banks and custodians. For more information, visithttps://www.parfin.io/

About AnjunaAnjuna Security makes the public cloud secure for business. Software from Anjuna Security effortlessly enables enterprises to safely run even their most sensitive workloads in the public cloud. Unlike complex perimeter security solutions easily breached by insiders and malicious code, Anjuna leverages the strongest hardware-based secure computing technologies available to make the public cloud the safest computing resource available anywhere.Anjuna is based inPalo Alto, California.

To learn more, go to anjuna.ioor experience a free trial.

SOURCE Anjuna Security, Inc

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Parfin Selects Anjuna to Add Crucial Layer of Hardened Security for use of Multi-Party Computation for Digital Asset Custody - PR Newswire

Written by Joe McKendrick, Contributor Joe McKendrickContributor

Joe McKendrick is an author and independent analyst who tracks the impact of information technology on management and markets. As an independent analyst, he has authored numerous research reports in partnership with Forbes Insights, IDC, and Unisphere Research, a division of Information Today, Inc.

With all the analyst, press and conference talk about the ascendency of cloud, one can be forgiven for assuming that the entire world is now running on AWS, Azure or Google Cloud and other providers. However, at this stage, only seven percent of enterprises are truly all-cloud. This number is likely to more than double over the next two years, but still represents the minority of enterprises.

That's one of the takeaways of a recent survey of 850 IT executives released by Foundry (formerly IDG Communications), which finds clear momentum for cloud computing going into the near future, but a lot of work until on-premises systems are replaced, dislodged, or shifted into the background.

Half of the executives surveyed said their organization's total IT environment is "some on cloud but mostly on-premises," while over a third (34%) is "mostly cloud but some on-premises," and only seven percent is "all cloud." The all-cloud number is expected to increase by some 250% over the next 18 months, to 17% who plan to shift everything they have to the cloud.

There has also been impetus to expand organizations' skill repertoire for cloud in an effort to close the skills gap. One-third report a lack of cloud management skills/expertise. and 30% report difficulty finding staff with cloud development skills/expertise. At the same time, roughly 8 in 10 have added an average of 3.3 new roles and functions as a result of their cloud investment. The top roles added include the following:

There's no question, of course, that cloud has become the default strategy for most. Seventy-two percent of IT leaders say that their organization is defaulting to cloud-based services when upgrading or purchasing new technical capabilities. About half, 46% of respondents, predict their organization's total IT environment will be "mostly cloud but some on-premises" by then -- up from 34% at present.

Much of IT infrastructure itself leverages cloud-based services. The percentage of companies with most or all IT infrastructure in the cloud is expected to increase from 41% today to 63% in the next 18 months. Overall, the top growth areas cited are Software-as-a-Service (with 52% seeing growth over the past year), followed by Platform-as-a-Service (38%), Security-as-a-Service (37%), Infrastructure-as-a-Service (36%) and cloud-based analytics (33%).

The survey also shows that on average, organizations will allocate almost one-third (32%) of their total IT budget to cloud computing over he coming 18 months.

Interestingly, while cloud is seen as an enabler of greater business flexibility, facilitating lower-cost innovation and growth to match business expansion, IT leaders still primarily see it in light of its IT utility -- helping data centers run leaner and cheaper, with greater resiliency. The top business objectives driving cloud investments include the following:

Top challenges are controlling cloud costs (36%), data privacy and security challenges (35%) and lack of cloud security skills/expertise (34%). When asked what IT executives expect from future or current cloud providers, leading the list is security expertise (41%), followed by better cloud management capabilities (40%) and cost management capabilities (38%).

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Cloud computing has all the momentum, but we still live in an on-premises world for now - ZDNet