Deloitte and Google Cloud unveil plans to collaborate on next-generation security offerings

Building on their existing global alliance, Deloitte and Google Cloud announces that they will jointly leverage the strength of their portfolios in cyber and cloud solutions to provide customers with end-to-end secure cloud transformation services and solutions in support of their digital transformation journeys and to better combat cyber threats.

As organizations move more of their businesses to the cloud, better control over data and activities in the cloud, as well as preventing privilege misuse, becomes critically important. Migrating a single application to cloud can seem straightforward, but more often, that application's function is tied to multiple business processes. Deloitte employs complex logic, data-driven analysis, and automated tools to rapidly map your applications and infrastructure to Google Cloud Platform (GCP), helping to increase speed, quality and savings.

Deloitte has received Google Cloud’s Cloud Migration and Infrastructure specializations, demonstrating success in architecting and building GCP infrastructure and workflows, and migrating customer workloads to GCP.

Google Cloud’s infrastructure is designed, built and operated with rigorous attention to security. Deloitte has spent decades helping clients protect their businesses from security threats, and can help move securely to the cloud.

As clients increasingly leverage cloud native services to modernize their existing application portfolios and build new and innovative products and services for their customers, they turn to us to help drive increased value through Google Cloud. Its functional knowledge of client businesses and products, combined with the capability of Google Cloud services, helps clients reduce technology operating costs, accelerate innovation, and increase business agility and security.

Through its alliance with SAP, Deloitte and Google have the people, knowledge and experience to help capture the transformative potential of SAP running on Google’s fast, reliable, and global platform. Its integrated SAP offering can help leverage the power of SAP S/4 HANA and Deloitte’s preconfigured solutions to devise a comprehensive cloud strategy.

As a recognized global leader in business analytics and business strategy, Deloitte and Google are able to help harness the power of Google Cloud’s array of big data processing and analytics tools to enable data-driven insights at speeds and volumes that were previously unimaginable. Combined with its cognitive computing practices, Deloitte uses Google Cloud’s machine learning engine to provide next-generation machine learning offerings that help solve tough business challenges.

Deloitte provides dedicated, active, scalable cloud management as a service to help you set the pace of change in your industry. We leverage our secure platform and worldwide network of specialists to understand every dimension of your challenges and how they impact your requirements. Deloitte’s business insight, coupled with turnkey, on-demand cloud management offerings on Google Cloud, make it possible to accelerate the path to cloud.

"The increasing integration, interconnectedness, and data exchange of our businesses and lives create shared vulnerabilities where a problem in one area can quickly cascade into another. By building security into these environments, organizations can better protect their data, privacy, and operations," said Deborah Golden, U.S. cyber leader, Deloitte Risk & Financial Advisory, and principal in Deloitte & Touche LLP. "Together with Google, we are supporting secure transformative change for our clients, something that all organizations should prioritize, and can enable them to be better secured in their critical cyber and cloud needs."

"For enterprise customers moving to the cloud, security isn't an afterthought, it's at the top of every CIO's list, and in general is a board level topic," said Sunil Potti, vice president engineering at Google Cloud Security. "Building in the right security processes and controls from the beginning of the cloud journey can significantly reduce risks and costs for customers, and so we are delighted to be collaborating with Deloitte to help deliver end-to-end security services and solutions to our joint-customers."

As a Google Cloud Security Premier Partner, Deloitte offers cloud security services to its clients globally and helps assist Google Cloud Platform customers address security, privacy and compliance related risks as they migrate and transform their business in the cloud. 

As part of growing the alliance, Deloitte will offer Google Cloud customers cloud security solutions in the areas of security monitoring and threat response, zero trust, identity and access management (IAM) and data security. 

The alliance will also provide next-generation capabilities that can help organizations proactively detect, continuously monitor and respond to unauthorized activity before it can adversely affect networks, and establish and operationalize a zero trust architecture and program to continuously monitor and authenticate users — constantly determining their level of risk based on who they are, what they access, and when and where they do it from. 

The companies will also enhance a digital transformation strategy and lay the foundation to leverage new data-driven identity models as they evolve, and provide a suite of services designed to help organizations address data risk management challenges and help them understand the value of their data and privacy considerations, as well as to operationalize their data risk governance program. 

CloudJumper launches distribution agreement with Crayon to improve access to cloud workspace for Azure

CloudJumper announces alliance with Crayon that combines the power of CloudJumper’s Cloud Workspace Management Suite (CWMS) for VDI and RDS workloads with the expertise of Crayon’s managed services and independent 'cloud economics' consulting practice.

CloudJumper and Crayon’s partnership bring new possibilities for customers and MSPs who want the flexibility of choice for management, security options and the ability to build their own value-add services suite leveraging WVD. 

Microsoft’s Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD) brings new choices for customers who want more control of the managed services running on top of desktop and application virtualization solutions. Legacy VDI providers have historically served as a gatekeepers controlling the workstation management plane. CloudJumper brings to Azure WVD what the legacy vendors will not – the flexibility of controlling managed services on top of managed desktops.

The utility of Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD) is further enhanced through CloudJumper's Cloud Workspace Management Suite (CWMS). CWMS is an automation, orchestration workflow and policy solution to deploy, configure and manage WVD in real-time and at cloud scale. CWMS will instantly, and continually, optimize the customer’s Azure investment.

WVD is a complex collection of Azure services. CloudJumper simply funnels the hundreds of WVD setup options into a few key questions and then orchestrates and deploys a customized environment. With CloudJumper, the customer is just minutes away from deploying thousands of new WVD VMs– something that is not available in a native Azure user interface (UI).

To provide additional support for this distribution partnership, CloudJumper's product development team has been working closely with Microsoft's WVD product team for over two years. As a result, CloudJumper is proud to be recognized as a Microsoft Preferred Solution Provider for WVD.

Microsoft Azure WVD provides customers with unique licensing options and operating system flexibility for Windows 10 and Windows 7 desktop virtualization. Windows 7 desktops can now be migrated to Azure WVD and receive up to three years extended security updates at no additional costs. 

New Windows 10 multi-session OS options are only offered in Azure. These OS choices along with the many complementary Azure PaaS management and security offerings can be securely delivered directly into the Azure tenant. Native Azure Management, supported by CWMS, means no redirection and no third party vendor lock-in. This allows customers to leverage current Microsoft licensing instead of buying overlapping third party tools.

The partnership with Crayon combines the strengths and expertise of CloudJumper and Crayon to deliver the next generation of cloud DaaS and WaaS VDI and RDS desktop and application virtualization solutions.

Headquartered in Oslo, Norway, Crayon is in over 35 countries, providing more than 8,000 customers with strategic advice, consulting and managed services, and support with complex IT estates. Crayon has been the preeminent IT infrastructure consulting business in the Nordic region for more than 12 years, and has expanded its footprint in the US in the last two years.

“Crayon’s deep experience in all aspects of the digitalization journey helps ensure the success of the new partnership. We are pleased to combine CloudJumper’s advanced platform with Crayon’s unique SAM to Cloud Consultancy Services as companies take the next step in digital transformation with their move to Windows Virtual Desktop,” said Alex Picchietti, global director of cloud services for Crayon. “The wealth of expertise from both companies will support organizations making this important move to improve productivity and operational efficiency.”

“The advent of WVD and the partnership with a respected industry leader like Crayon extends the reach of our combined solutions globally,” said JD Helms, president of CloudJumper. “Customers are demanding choice and flexibility in their managed workspace providers and CloudJumper is uniquely positioned to do just that.”

NTT forms alliance with Microsoft to enable new digital solutions that help enterprise customers accelerate their digital transformations

NTT and Microsoft announced on Tuesday a multi-year strategic alliance aimed at delivering secure and reliable solutions that help enterprise customers accelerate their digital transformations. The alliance will bring together NTT’s ICT infrastructure, managed services and cybersecurity expertise, with Microsoft’s trusted cloud platform and AI technologies. 

Key initiatives of the alliance include the creation of a Global Digital Fabric, development of digital enterprise solutions built on Microsoft Azure, and co-innovation of next-generation technologies in the area of all-photonics network and digital twin computing.

As one of the world’s largest global technology and business solution organizations, NTT provides integrated services that include digital business consulting and managed services for cybersecurity, applications, cloud, data centers and global networks in over 190 countries and regions. 

As part of the alliance, NTT has chosen Microsoft Azure as its preferred cloud platform for modernizing its global IT infrastructure and customer solutions in the areas of advanced analytics for cybersecurity threat intelligence and the hybrid-IT management platform.

The alliance has announced formation of a Global Digital Fabric that weaves Microsoft Cloud and NTT’s globally connected ICT infrastructure, by combining the strengths of the two companies in the areas of productivity solutions, public cloud, global datacenter and network infrastructure. The Global Digital Fabric aims to create a highly sustainable, secure and robust environment for enterprises to accelerate their digital ambitions around the world.

The alliance also covers the development of digital solutions built on Microsoft Azure to empower enterprises to accelerate their digital transformation and to operate more securely from the enterprise to the edge to the cloud. Key initiatives include advanced analytics for cybersecurity threat intelligence, social robotics with relational AI for digital companions, digital workplace solutions, as well as knowledge discovery and management.

The alliance will also explore research and development of all-photonics network and digital twin computing as part of NTT’s Innovative Optical and Wireless Network (IOWN) concept. The goal is to provide a more natural interaction between people, nature and technology, and to support sustainable growth with an optical-based networking and information processing platform of the future.

Furthermore, NTT and Microsoft are committed to harnessing the power of technology for a more sustainable future. The companies intend to work together to invest in innovative projects that leverage technology to build on NTT’s sustainability initiatives and Microsoft’s AI for Earth grants.

“NTT is committed to helping enterprises realize their digital transformation initiatives to help create a smarter world. We believe that the combination of the Microsoft Azure platform along with NTT’s connected infrastructure and service delivery capabilities will accelerate these efforts,” said Jun Sawada, president and CEO of NTT. “Additionally, the companies will collaborate on IOWN, including areas such as all-photonics network and digital twin computing.”

“Our strategic alliance combines NTT’s global infrastructure and services expertise with the power of Azure,” said Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft. “Together, we will build new solutions spanning AI, cybersecurity and hybrid cloud, as we work to help enterprise customers everywhere accelerate their digital transformation.”

F5 enters into alliance with AWS to enable users to innovate faster in the cloud

F5 Networks announced a multi-year global Strategic Collaboration Agreement (SCA) with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to allow customers to use F5 for new cloud-native application workloads and extend their existing F5 investments on AWS.

F5’s application services ensure the performance and security of millions of applications for global enterprises. The SCA will enhance companies’ ability to leverage the full suite of F5 Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and cloud-native application services to migrate, build, secure, and operate their applications on AWS. 

The structured framework of this engagement will allow customers to have a consistent and scalable operating model for their application assets on AWS, while exploring future innovations that enhance migration and operation of applications to the cloud. 

Customers can use advanced F5 solutions to standardize, scale, and optimize application services for AWS environments, from lift-and-shift and re-platforming, to full application development and modernization.

“F5 has collaborated closely with AWS for years, most recently on our SaaS offering, F5 Cloud Services. Together with AWS, we are providing a set of solutions that help enterprises deploy apps quickly and securely, while ensuring they are performant and comply with policy,” said Chad Whalen, Executive Vice President, Worldwide Sales at F5. “This aligns with our strategy of supporting modern DevOps practices and serving engineering teams with capabilities that create the most efficient path from code to customer.”

Enterprises are adopting the cloud to speed innovation cycles and create efficiencies, but today many companies must maintain separate data center and cloud environments, which drive up their operational costs, add complexity, and increase risk. These customers need a hybrid cloud solution that allows their applications to run with consistent performance and security regardless of the location. 

The work F5 and AWS do together addresses this need, allowing organizations to use F5 application services across all environments. Additionally, F5 solutions will make it easier for DevOps teams and application developers to provision, configure, and manage services via APIs or the web portal, without the need for deep networking or security expertise.

“The ability to deploy and run applications on AWS using F5 services is an important requirement for many customers that have standardized on F5 for application delivery and security,” said Mike Clayville, vice president, worldwide commercial sales and business development at AWS. “This Strategic Collaboration Agreement elevates our historic relationship with F5 to a higher level. It will be a great asset for customers as they build new cloud-native applications on AWS and move an increasing number of mission-critical workloads such as SAP and Windows to AWS.”

As part of the collaboration, F5 and AWS will work to allow customers to upgrade to F5’s application services, including F5 Cloud Services using cloud-native, SaaS-based application performance and security services; BIG-IP Virtual Edition with software-based, full-featured Layer 4–7 application delivery and security services; NGINX is a lightweight, highly scalable, and highly performant API management, and full-service proxy software built atop the open source web server; Silverline, its cloud-based managed services platform for application threat protection; and Aspen Mesh, an enterprise-ready, fully supported service mesh built on Istio.

“StockCharts.com is benefiting tremendously from the close collaboration between F5 and AWS,” said Chip Anderson, Founder and President of StockCharts.com. “By leveraging F5’s cloud solutions on AWS, our new cloud strategy is allowing us to provide our customers with a faster, more reliable, secure, and scalable set of web applications. We are now providing more insight and data, faster than ever before.”

Dell Technologies On Demand delivers consumption-based and as-a-service delivery models for its Infrastructure portfolio

Dell Technologies released Tuesday Dell Technologies On Demand, a set of consumption-based and as-a-service offerings on its infrastructure portfolio that deliver IT with the agility of cloud and the control, performance and predictability of on-premises infrastructure. 

As part of this new offering, the company is expanding its extensive flexible consumption portfolio to support Dell EMC PowerEdge servers and the new Dell EMC PowerOne autonomous infrastructure system.  

Customers have the freedom to shift IT infrastructure spending from one-time capital expenses to ongoing operational expenses, predictably and sensibly. Benefits include integrating full-stack solutions from Dell Technologies Cloud to Dell Technologies Unified Workspace to engineered workload solutions for critical business applications and workloads; and matching spending with usage through Pay As You Grow, Flex On Demand or Data Center Utility, three flexible consumption solutions that scale while providing transparency on total cost of ownership throughout the technology lifecycle. 

It also uses advanced data collection and processor-based measurement by the hour with the new Flex On Demand for PowerEdge servers to avoid the costs associated with over-provisioning; provides value-added services with ProDeploy, ProSupport and Managed Services. They can be bundled effortlessly and paired with all the financial consumption models, bringing a tailored as-a-service experience; and expands PCaaS to include small business, offering PC acquisition, lifecycle management of hardware, software, services and financing for growing companies in a single, predictable price per seat per month.

Gartner indicates that by 2022, 15 percent of new deployments of on-premises computing will involve pay-per-use pricing, up from less than 1 percent in 2019. With Dell Technologies On Demand, businesses can choose between several flexible consumption options, including global support, deployment and managed services. This helps customers reduce the management of on-premises IT to make it as easy to consume as public clouds. 

For example, the new PowerOne autonomous infrastructure transforms into infrastructure as a service when paired with flexible consumption solutions and value-added services from Dell Technologies On Demand. The customer pays for what they use when they use it.

"The multi-cloud world is here and will only grow, which means customers need on-demand and consistent infrastructure that yield predictable outcomes across all of their clouds, data centers and edge locations," said Jeff Clarke, vice chairman, Dell Technologies. "Dell Technologies On Demand makes it possible for organizations to plan, deploy and manage their entire IT footprint. They can choose how they consume and pay for IT solutions that meet their needs with the freedom and flexibility to evolve as their needs change over time." 

Dell Technologies On Demand offers flexible payment options for an extensive range of technologies across the full infrastructure stack, including compute, storage, networking and virtualization. Software-defined and hybrid cloud solutions are available via Dell Technologies Cloud and VMware, along with modern data protection, PC and digital workspaces. 

Dell Technologies partners can now resell Dell Technologies On Demand to their customers. More than 2,000 channel partners already are using payment solutions from Dell Financial Services (DFS), and partners who finance with DFS have historically grown twice as fast with Dell than those who do not finance with DFS.

"By providing flexible consumptions options on essential infrastructure through Dell Technologies On Demand, we can help customers make quicker decisions and realize a faster return on investment with our offerings," said S.S. Lim, managing director at PTC, a Dell Technologies Titanium partner. "We needed to help our customers adopt a pay-per-use model, so they don't have to secure a budget for capital expenses. By working with Dell Technologies, we can do this by spreading out their payments over time, enabling them to start using technology more quickly to help achieve their business goals."

"The media and entertainment industry has unique technology needs, and for years, we have partnered with Dell Technologies to provide enterprise-grade, scalable technology that our customers know they can count on," said Kris Kostiuk, director, business development - media & entertainment at Scalar, a CDW Company. "With Dell Technologies on Demand, our customers benefit from push-button elastic capacity, and only pay for the technology they use, so they can concentrate their focus on creating amazing work."