March18, 20215 min read

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From rapidly transforming consumer behaviors to heavily affectingeconomies around the globe, the Covid-19 pandemic has created a plethora of challenges and continues to have a multi-sector impact on nations and citizens alike.

With the arrival of vaccinations, 2021 seems to bring a new ray of hope for economies worldwide but the fact remains: This year is going to witness the survival of the fittest, implying that businesses that turn digital and adapt to the new normal are likely to emerge out of the Covid-19 crisis in better position to succeed.

To begin with, cloud computing is arguablygoing to remain the staple ofleading companies. To give a quick run-through, cloud spending grew by 37% in the first quarter of 2020 itself ushering in a new era of digitization wherein companies look at cloud computing as the most robust way to tide themselves over during the Covid-19 challenge - at this time last year the world had just woken up to the viral effect of the novel Corona virus beyond China. Capitalizing upon theurgency to drive processes remotely and securely, cloud service providers had an unlikely successful year.

Even as total IT spending dropped by 8%, the cloud market grew substantially. Having worked on a number of cloud implementations, I pick the following three key trends in the post-Covidera.

Related:5 Ways theCloudCan Benefit Your Business During the Pandemic

Cost optimization was always a priority before the pandemic. However, disruptions afterward have further elevated its stature in the priority stack. Today, start-ups and enterprises are seeking intelligence to deploy flexible cost models, particularly those in pay-as-you-go services. As expected, the OpEx versus CapEx solutions debate has once again intensified.

In the pursuit of normalization, controlled costing is the first step. With OpEx, businesses can get the total of their costing parameters while achieving scalability with products & services. PwC, in its latest survey, found that75% of finance decision-makers use OpEx cost modeling and are deferring CapEx for at least another year.

Cloud ecosystems assure total flexibility and scalability in developing and managing key enterprise processes. Using OpEx as a cost model and cloud as a deployment model, enterprises can:

Entities, both government and private, are likely to upscale their infrastructure capacity in 2021. At the same time, they want to keepcosts in control. Therefore, hybrid cloud systems backed by OpEx cost models will set the narrative for data storage and monitoring.

In order to recover from the pandemic hangover, MSPs - Managed Service Providers, would want to enhance their Customer Experience (CX) quotient while keeping costs in check; exactly what native cloud computing delivers. Native cloud technologies through containerization empower digital transformation strategies for enterprises across the spectrum. Since Azure, AWS and Google Cloud have raised the green flags, at least 60% of service providers will offer containerization on public cloud platforms.

At their core, container management repositories perform workload transportation between multiple verticalssuch as on-premise, edge, and the cloud. Subsequently, platforms like Kubernetes, that lessen the complexity in container management, should gain explosive acceptance in 2021-22. In addition,serverless computing that was among the top five Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) cloud services in 2020, is still likely to be a preferred paradigm for multi-cloud developments.

Related:It's Time to Prepare for a Multi-CloudFuture

To put it simply, edge computing brings storage and processing closer to the geographic location of data consumption. Besides ensuring faster response times, it saves bandwidth (and infrastructure) while empowering the service providers to serve their customerslocally.

Theres no doubt thatEdge computing will growstronger in 2021. Cloud service providers will experiment with new business models beyond humongous data centers and central control of public clouds. Nonetheless, it still seeks the innovation of computing in traditional clouds while enhancing business agility. Edge computingallows enterprises to improvise upon their real-time analytics and make smarter business decisions. Since predictive analysis in CRM and other ERP verticals is growing, edge computing will have a greater role in the process.

Per IDC research, by 202425% of organizations will look forward to using cases that integrate edge data with apps already hosted in the cloud.2021 will also seea series of partnerships between traditional cloud and edge computing service providers. Also, telecom service providers will have a key role in driving these hybrid ecosystems.

Going forward, devices and applications closer to the consumers location will play an important rolein the larger fabric of the Internet of Things (IoT) and hybrid cloud models.

The cloud was already a dominating force. The pandemic only proved that most enterprise processes can be managed remotely if the right cloud implementation is backing them. Therefore, it is not incorrect to believe that cloud service providers are sitting on a gold mine of opportunity.

Related:Ready to Scale? 5 Advantages toImplementing CloudTech in Your ...

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Cloud Computing Will Be a Goldmine in the Post Covid-Era - Entrepreneur

TORONTO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Combat Networks Inc. announced today that it has acquired Duologik and GDL, two privately held IT Solution Providers based in Toronto. This transaction expands Combat's solution portfolio to include offerings for archival and disaster recovery that span on-premise infrastructure and multi-cloud technology. It also provides advanced user experience with flexibility to select the optimal platform for any given application. Duologiks team of experienced consultants have been designing and building cost-effective, efficient IT architectures for large Enterprise and Public Sector entities for over 25 years. The company specializes in next-generation data management for hybrid cloud environments as well as data recovery and disaster survivability solutions.

The agreement was finalized on March 24, 2021. Duologik will be re-branded as Combat Networks; representatives from both teams have been working to ensure a seamless integration of the two businesses.

As Networking solutions evolve in the software-defined era, the IT skills and experience of the Duologik and GDL teams will strengthen Combats Managed Solution offerings, said Christopher Emery, CEO of Combat Networks. We look forward to offering fully managed solutions to our customers that not only include networking elements, but the IT infrastructure that underpins their worry-free operation. Working together, Combat and Duologik will accelerate our customers transition to next generation network solutions.

Were excited to join Combat Networks, said Zoreena Abas, President of Duologik. This is an opportunity to further accelerate the innovation that keeps our customers agile and competitive in their markets.

About Combat NetworksSince July 2001, Combat Networks has assisted its customers by designing and architecting state of the art high-performance networks. The company provides turnkey deployments of UC and networking solutions, as well as ongoing management, maintenance, monitoring (NOC), and troubleshooting. Headquartered in Ottawa and with offices across Canada, Combat services many of the countrys largest Federal and Provincial Government Departments, Municipalities, Healthcare, Police Force, Education and Fortune 1000 companies. Combat Networks corporate mission is to be recognized by its customers as the most knowledgeable, most responsive, and most valuable external resource for network infrastructures where security, performance, and reliability are vital requirements. Everyone at Combat is focused on and dedicated to our customers success, by providing a complete lifecycle solution from network planning and project management through to post-sales support and network transition services. Combat has the people, skills, and products to work for you at all stages of the network infrastructure lifecycle. Visit us at http://www.combatnetworks.com.

About DuologikDuologik has specialized in provided next-generation IT infrastructure through innovation and strategic acquisitions since 1985. The company leverages long-term big vendor relations and industry experience to deliver optimal return on customers IT investments. Duologiks solutions engage the latest technology from HP Enterprise, Arcserve, VMWare and Microsoft. The companys primary focus is ensuring that customers have the ability to securely access, process and deploy data from any device, anywhere, anytime. Visit us at http://www.duologik.com.

About GDLGDL is located in Richmond Hill, Ontario and was established in 2005. The company offers managed IT and Disaster Recovery services and data availability management through hosting, virtualization and cloud services. Visit us at http://www.gdlsolutions.ca.

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Combat Networks Announces the Acquisition of Infrastructure and Managed Services experts, Duologik and GDL Solutions - Business Wire

Australian eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant is hopeful the country's new Online Safety Act will go some way to protecting women and girls in the online world as people grapple with how to do exactly that in the offline world.

"You wouldn't be surprised that 70% of the reports of all forms of abuse that come into our office are from women and girls," Inman Grant told senators on Tuesday night. "That even applies to child sexual abuse where 90% of the perpetrators are men and 84% of the victims are girls.

"That applies to image-based abuse, that applies to youth-based cyberbullying, and certainly to adult cyber abuse."

There are a handful of programs Inman Grant said that "cover the continuum of women and the spectrum of harms". One receiving a lot of attention from her office is a program aiming to help women experiencing domestic and family violence.

"One, of course, where women are particularly vulnerable, are women that are experiencing domestic and family violence, where technology-facilitated abuse is present as an extension of that coercion control and surveillance in 99.3% of these cases, and they deserve special protections," she said.

The commissioner is also concerned about women in the public sphere, pointing to the experience recentlyrecountedby Liberal MP Nicole Flint as one example.

"We know that women are three times more likely to receive online abuse, but the tenor and tone of the abuse is very different too, it tends to be sexualised, violent, will target things like your fertility or appearance," Inman Grant said.

"It's rooted in misogyny, and it's meant to silence women's voices. We know from women that they self-censor, or they will get off social media altogether.

"Social media did promise to be a great leveller. In terms of promoting women's voices, we need to do a better job at protecting those voices online."

Senators pointed to the work underway by Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins, asking Inman Grant if the contents of the Online Safety Act would help protect women.

"I think they will immeasurably, and in the end, as I say, particularly with the serious adult cyber abuse scheme, we'll continue with our prevention programs and the proactive and systemic change work that we do, including the work we're doing around technology, challenges, and trends," she said.

"Of course, we know that a lot of trolls will use the veil of anonymity to try and abuse women with impunity. So all of these things I think, will come together and give us some important potent new tools to help us -- a lot of this abuse that we see is rooted in misogyny, in racism, in hate that is surfaced by social media.

"And this abuse online, targeting women, reinforces the gender inequality that already exists in our societies and our institutions. So we really need to protect women in the cloud as well."

See also: Three women in tech keeping the gender conversation going

With the new proposed law extending the cyber takedown function to adults, eSafety will have the power to issue takedown notices directly to the services hosting the content and end users responsible for the abusive content.

Inman Grant clarified that the takedown directive -- which is slashed from 48 to 24 hours under the new legislation -- would only apply in serious situations.

"The adult cyber abuse scheme is set at a very high threshold because adults are more resilient," she said, noting it's on par with the Criminal Code, which uses the terminology "to use a carriage service provider to menace, harass, or cause offence".

She also said the term "offensive" is sometimes taken out of context.

"This is a very, very high threshold, where we have to make out intent to cause serious harm directed to a specific Australian individual. The second part of the test is an objective test that would ask those questions," she added.

"I do think we need to set expectations so that people -- when they come to us, that it's not just going to be banter or opinions or mean statements, that there's a very, very high bar that has to be met before we can before we would recommend removal of that content."

The commissioner also addressed concerns of the overreaching powersthat eSafety is set to receive with the legislation.

"I can't speculate about future safety commissioners and how they might use the power. All I would say is that, in my 30 years in working in technology, I've learned that you can't anticipate the creative and myriad ways that people will misuse technology. And it requires us to have a broad toolkit," she said.

"I think the lines were carefully drawn on to make sure that there wasn't suppression of free speech, and that there are a number of transparency and accountability provisions available."

She said beyond the AAT review, there's also potentially judicial review and involvement from the Commonwealth Ombudsman, in addition to amendments currently being drafted around an internal review process.

"And I'd say also that there was a pretty rigorous merit-based process that was involved for me landing this role. I fully anticipate that the government would be looking at people who have experience at the intersection of technology, policy, and social justice and would assess any concerning ideological events that might influence their decision making," Inman Grant said.

"I'm influenced by how do I minimise the risk to online citizens and I would expect the future eSafety Commissioner would hold those same values."

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Protecting women in the cloud: eSafety hopes the Online Safety Act will do just that - ZDNet

Oracle platinum partner Magia Solutions is working with Australian Data Centres (ADC) to support government departments' use of Oracle Cloud Services from the Oracle Cloud Region in Canberra.

Magia CEO Surend Dayal previously led Oracles public sector business in Australia, and the company has broad experience with Oracle technology including Autonomous Database, ERP, CX and Digital Marketing.

"The Oracle and ADC partnership for the Oracle Sovereign Cloud Region is a much-needed investment to provide the Commonwealth more choice in hyperscale cloud providers," he said.

"Magia has established a priority focus on the federal market to help agencies take advantage of this investment by ADC

ADC managing director Rob Kelly said Our mission has been to make strategic investments that will foster more choice and access to innovation for the Commonwealth.

We are delighted that our partnership with Oracle has enabled Magia, a high-quality Australian business, to strategically re-enter the Federal market. Choice is a fundamental necessity for any market, and particularly the Australian Federal market, to ensure all Australian companies have a fair go at securing business.

Magia and ADC are both private, wholly owned-and-operated Australian companies that are aligned with the conditions of the Certified Strategic Hosting Provider certification level of the Digital; Transfomation Agency's Hosting Certification Framework.

Image: Fleshas via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

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Oracle specialist teams with ADC to address federal market - iTWire

Now that organizations around the world have switched to working from home, it is more important than ever for systems and data to remain available 24/7. Across industries, from online retailers to healthcare organizations, even brief periods of downtime can have disastrous consequences. But avoiding service interruption is a tough task for IT departments, who work around the clock, and in many cases have fewer resources than usual.

As a result, IT professionals always have an eye on potential cost savings, with many looking to modern cloud solutions as a source of efficiency and a potential move away from major capital IT projects. However, it is impossible to make significant efficiency gains without a well-established cloud strategy and an effective user adoption plan. Whats more, these must be implemented in a way that contributes to a more resilient IT environment, which is a prerequisite for 24/7 availability.

Organizations pursuing a cloud-first strategy should realize that there is simply no universal model for housing disaster recovery (DR) in the cloud. However, they can choose from three options, each of which has the potential to meet todays technology and business priorities. These include hosting Disaster Recovery in a public cloud, hosting VMware environments in a public cloud, or the option of implementing disaster recovery as a Service (DRaaS).

But where do the merits of each of these options lie, and why might an organization consider embarking on such a path ahead of their existing approach?

For organizations looking for the lowest-cost model, purchasing infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) from a public cloud provider is often the most suitable option. Trading in a physical secondary location for a public cloud destination drastically reduces investment costs and hours spent on maintenance, day-to-day management and upgrades. This remote storage in the cloud - without the need for human intervention - represents a more simple and affordable way to meet data protection requirements. This applies, among other things, to compliance with the 3-2-1 backup rule, which requires organizations to keep three copies of their data on two different data carriers, one of which must be stored at an external location.

Public cloud providers offer their customers on-demand IT resources to meet evolving business needs. This makes it a lot easier to scale alongside data growth than if an organization arranges everything itself. In public clouds such as AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud and Oracle, numerous services are available to help organizations cover themselves against downtime in a way that would otherwise only be achievable with great difficulty and significant in-house investment.

Organizations with VMware-based virtualization environments have historically faced specific complexities in moving to the cloud, including applications that do not lend themselves to a direct migration or a IaaS solution. In many cases, this is the point at which large companies have previously opted to leave the cloud option behind, being unwilling to spend time and money on a major overhaul of all their applications and configurations. However, Oracle Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud now offer the capability to migrate and protect native workloads while preserving policies and configurations for VMware in the same way as an on-premises environment.

As a result, organizations no longer have to adapt their applications, so DR migration relating to VMware environments is much faster and requires minimal changes. This gives large organizations the freedom to optimize their DR without the tremendous complexity traditionally associated with a cloud-based backup and DR strategy.

The primary reason organizations are moving to disaster recovery-as-a-service (DRaaS) is that they simply lack DR capabilities in-house. But in addition, other important reasons might be that they need to improve recovery objectives or that their DR capabilities are limited to tape backups. With DRaaS, however, they can partner with a cloud specialist who can help them achieve their Recovery Time Objectives and Recovery Points Objectives and provide them with expert support. In doing so, they can offload their backup and DR tasks to a level that makes them feel comfortable.

In this scenario, a DRaaS provider takes care of the implementation to ease the pressure on the IT department. And if the organization has to meet specific compliance requirements or has a need for self-service options, the DRaaS partner can also provide customization.

The net result is that DRaaS provides access to many of the benefits of the public cloud, such as reliability and scalable support for the 3-2-1 rule. This is complemented by specialist support from the DRaaS partner that contributes to mature backup and DR processes and thus a more resilient IT infrastructure. This allows for better recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs) while making it much easier to test these procedures more regularly with little or no disruption to business processes.

For any modern organization focused on 24/7 availability, moving DR infrastructure to the cloud represents a logical step. Not only can hosting backups and DR in the cloud help organizations achieve significant cost savings, but it can also lay the foundation for a resilient IT environment that will also benefit other cloud initiatives. Thanks to all the innovations in cloud computing in recent years, and the support for hosting VMware environments in the public cloud in particular, there are options for cloud-based DR available for organizations of all shapes and sizes.

Given the variety of internal and external risks that todays highly connected, digitally transformed businesses face, robust and resilient DR that allows organizations to return to business as usual without delay is essential. Resilient IT allows businesses to be ready for any type of disruption, planned or unplanned, allowing them to mitigate the risk of downtime and focus on the projects that drive transformation.

By placing the emphasis on resilience, networks can be built with the ability to seamlessly adapt to change while protecting business functions and customers from all types of disruptions and disasters, from technology misconfiguration, cyber attacks and even natural disasters. In todays uncertain and rapidly changing circumstances, these are valuable capabilities.

Gijsbert Janssen van Doorn, Director of Technical Marketing, Zerto

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Disaster recovery and the cloud - three options for 24/7 businesses - ITProPortal