SUSE moves to independence, reaffirms commitment to users, partners, open source communities

SUSE announced creation of independent open source company following the completion of SUSE's acquisition by growth investor EQT from Micro Focus. The newly independent SUSE has expanded its executive team, adding new leadership roles and experience to foster its continued momentum into this next stage of corporate development.

With its ongoing momentum, portfolio expansion and successful execution in the marketplace, as a standalone business SUSE is better positioned to focus on the needs of customers and partners as a provider of enterprise-grade, open source software-defined infrastructure and application delivery solutions that enable customer workloads anywhere – on premise, hybrid and multi-cloud – with exceptional service, value and flexibility.

Enrica Angelone has been named to the new post of chief financial officer, and Sander Huyts is SUSE's new chief operations officer. Thomas Di Giacomo, formerly chief technology officer for SUSE, is now president of Engineering, Product and Innovation. All three report to SUSE CEO Nils Brauckmann.

SUSE's expanded leadership team led by CEO Brauckmann will build on the rapid growth of the past eight years as the company continues to deliver and innovate based on current and future market requirements. As it has for more than 25 years, SUSE remains committed to an open source development and business model and to actively participating in communities and projects to bring open source innovation to the enterprise as high-quality, reliable and usable solutions.

This open source model refers to the flexibility and freedom of choice provided to customers and partners to create solutions that combine SUSE technologies with other products and technologies in their IT landscape through open standards and at different levels in their architecture, without forcing a locked-in stack. This focus on openness is embedded in SUSE's culture, differentiates it in the marketplace and has been key to its success.

SUSE's transition is timely as containers are enabling new levels of agility and the need for digital transformation built on open source software-defined infrastructure and application delivery technologies is growing. SUSE's heritage in open source software, strong brand and array of solutions, including container management, ideally position it to capitalize on this market dynamic, creating tremendous value for customers and partners.

EQT's backing and SUSE's independent status will enable the company's continued expansion as advanced innovation drives growth in SUSE's core business as well as in emerging technologies, both organically and through add-on acquisitions.

"Current IT trends make it clear that open source has become more important in the enterprise than ever before," Brauckmann said. "We believe that makes our status as a truly independent open source company more important than ever. Our genuinely open, open source solutions, flexible business practices, lack of enforced vendor lock-in and exceptional service are more critical to customer and partner organizations, and our independence coincides with our single-minded focus on delivering what is best for them. Our ability to consistently meet these market demands creates a cycle of success, momentum and growth that allows SUSE to continue to deliver the innovation customers need to achieve their digital transformation goals and realize the hybrid and multi-cloud workload management they require to power their own continuous innovation, competitiveness and growth."

"SUSE's return to the role of an independent open source software company comes at a pivotal point in the industry. Open source software is the favored way to build new solutions today and is irreplaceable as the foundation for most public cloud services,” said Al Gillen, group vice president, Software Development and Open Source, IDC. “As one of the industry's largest purely open source software companies, SUSE's independence will benefit customers as the company builds on its heritage of technical excellence, value-driven partnerships and community engagement to deliver timely technology solutions to the market."

Samsung SDS invests in Iguazio to boost cloud services; adopts Iguazio’s Nuclio serverless PaaS for real-time intelligent applications

Iguazio, provider of the high performance platform for serverless and machine learning applications, announced this week that it is partnering with Samsung SDS to accelerate and streamline the delivery of intelligent applications.

Samsung SDS has invested in Iguazio and will incorporate its platform into Samsung’s cloud services portfolio, powering serverless agility and data science operations for cloud native and AI-driven applications.

Iguazio’s platform includes data services and AI tools, empowering end-to-end serverless agility in the enterprise and real-time applications to improve performance, security, collaboration and the scalability of machine learning. Iguazio’s Nuclio is the leading open source serverless framework, enabling the development of modern applications over Kubernetes without having to manage infrastructure.

"Samsung SDS is excited to invest in Iguazio. We look forward to providing our customers with intelligent, serverless applications by implementing Iguazio's technology to our cloud's PaaS," said Dr. Shim Yoon, Executive Vice President, Cloud Business Division Leader of Samsung SDS.

“Iguazio welcomes Samsung SDS as a strategic Investor,” said Asaf Somekh, CEO, Iguazio. “We’re already working with different Samsung SDS groups on financial services and manufacturing deployments and are excited about the value Iguazio has created by powering Samsung’s cloud with serverless and machine learning.”

IDC reports that global enterprise storage systems market revenue grew 7.4 percent during the fourth quarter of last year

Research firm IDC released on Friday through its Worldwide Quarterly Enterprise Storage Systems Tracker, vendor revenue in the worldwide enterprise storage systems market increased 7.4 percent year over year to $14.5 billion during the fourth quarter of 2018. Total capacity shipments were up 1.7 percent year over year to 92.5 exabytes during the quarter.

Revenue generated by the group of original design manufacturers (ODMs) selling directly to hyperscale data centers declined 1.5 percent year over year in the fourth quarter of 2018 to $2.7 billion. This represents 18.8 percent of total enterprise storage investments during the quarter. 

Sales of server-based storage increased 4.7 percent year over year to just under $4.1 billion in revenue. This represents 28.1 percent of total enterprise storage investments.

The external storage systems market was worth roughly $7.7 billion during the quarter, up 12.5 percent from the fourth quarter of 2017.

Dell emerged as the largest supplier for the quarter, accounting for 20.6 percent of total worldwide enterprise storage systems revenue and growing 14.8 percent year over year.

HPE/New H3C Group was the second largest supplier with an 18.0 percent share of revenue on year-to-year growth of 0.6 percent.

NetApp generated a 5.8 percent share of total revenue, statistically tying for the number three spot during the quarter with IBM, which captured 4.8 percent market share.

Huawei, Lenovo and Hitachi all statistically tied for the fifth position with shares of 4.0 percent, 3.5 percent, and 3.3 percent respectively.

As a single group, storage systems sales by ODMs directly to hyperscale datacenter customers accounted for 18.8 percent of global spending during the quarter, down 1.5 percent against the fourth quarter of 2017.

Dell was the largest external enterprise storage systems supplier during the quarter, accounting for 30.3 percent of worldwide revenue. NetApp and HPE/New H3C Group finished statistically tied for the second position with a 10.9 percent and 10.6 percent share of revenue during the quarter respectively. 

IBM was the fourth largest with 8.9 percent share, while Hitachi and Huawei rounded out the top 5 in a statistical tie with 6.0 percent and 5.7 percent market share.

The total All Flash Array (AFA) market generated over $2.73 billion in revenue during the quarter, up 37.6 percent year over year. The Hybrid Flash Array (HFA) market was worth slightly more than $3.06 billion in revenue, up 13.4 percent from the fourth quarter.

"The fourth quarter results represent a slight shift from trends realized during the first three quarters of 2018, most notably the revenue decline for the ODM group of vendors as cloud providers slow their investment due to significant existing capacity," said Sebastian Lagana, research manager, Infrastructure Platforms and Technologies. "That considered, OEM vendors selling dedicated storage arrays are addressing demand from businesses investing in both on-premises and public cloud infrastructure. Ensuring storage systems support both a hybrid cloud model as well as increasingly data thirsty on-premises compute platforms is a high priority for enterprise customers."

WekaIO achieves AWS Storage Competency Status for primary storage to deliver HPC storage offerings in the cloud

WekaIO, vendor of high-performance, scalable file storage for data intensive applications, announced Thursday that it has achieved Amazon Web Services (AWS) Storage Competency status for primary storage. This designation recognizes that WekaIO’s proven cloud-scale, parallel file system capabilities can help customers achieve their high-performance computing (HPC) goals on AWS.

Achieving the AWS Storage Competency differentiates WekaIO as an AWS Partner Network (APN) member that possesses deep domain expertise in storage solutions on AWS and have developed innovative technology and solutions that leverage AWS services.

WekaIO has established itself as a provider of high performance parallel file storage software that seamlessly integrates with Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) object storage. Customers, like TRE ALTAMIRA and Untold Studios, have chosen WekaIO for its enterprise grade stability and features to run their high-performance workloads on AWS.

AWS is enabling scalable, flexible, and cost-effective HPC solutions from startups to global enterprises. To support the seamless integration and deployment of these solutions, AWS established the AWS Competency Program to help customers identify Consulting and Technology APN Partners with deep storage industry experience and expertise.

“Achieving AWS Storage Competency status marks an important milestone in WekaIO’s continued focus and commitment with innovation in enabling HPC workloads on AWS,” said Liran Zvibel, Co-Founder and CEO of WekaIO. “Matrix is one of the fastest parallel file systems, and suited for workloads that are data intensive, latency-sensitive, and running at massive scale, like AI and machine learning. Our customers using Matrix on AWS are looking for comparable performance to on-premises, with the ability to leverage AWS.”

“The elasticity of WekaIO Matrix on AWS has solved the challenge of keeping up with fast-growing resource constraints,” said Alessandro Menegaz, IT Manager at TRE ALTAMIRA. “The improvements we got in terms of performance and costs savings have been high impact to our business.”

Mellanox Technologies appoints Doug Ahrens as its chief financial officer

Mellanox Technologies, supplier of high-performance, end-to-end smart interconnect solutions for data center servers and storage systems, announced Wednesday appointment of Doug Ahrens as senior vice president and chief financial officer, effective Jan. 2, 2019.

Ahrens will have overall responsibility for worldwide financial operations and strategy including planning and analysis, accounting, compliance, financial reporting and investor relations. He has extensive financial and operational experience in the technology industry, and joins Mellanox from GlobalLogic, where he served as chief financial officer.

Prior to that Ahrens served as chief financial officer of Applied Micro Circuits. His career demonstrates a strong track record of increasing financial managerial responsibilities at semiconductor companies including Maxim and Intel. He started his career as an environmental engineer at Chevron Corporation.

Ahrens holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from UC San Diego, an MBA from the Harvard Business School, and an active CPA license.

“I am pleased to have Doug join Mellanox as our CFO to further strengthen our leadership team,” said Eyal Waldman, Mellanox Technologies president and CEO. “Doug brings more than 20 years of semiconductor and technology industry experience, which along with his extensive financial leadership in both publicly and privately held companies make him ideally suited to lead our continued financial growth and profitability.”

C3 acquires Internet Service Provider EtherneXt to continue service expansion

Cloud Computing Concepts, provider of technology and communications services to small, medium, and enterprise businesses nationwide, announced on Wednesday that it has acquired EtherneXt.

Founded in 2002, EtherneXt has been providing internet connectivity, co-location, and managed services to a diverse base of customers throughout North America.

C3 is a technology and communications services provider to small, medium and enterprise businesses nationwide. Its combination of cloud-based technologies and expert onsite and remote support substantially reduces both IT-related capital investments and ongoing management costs.

C3’s approach increases stability, tightens security, enhances employee mobility, and ensures business continuity in the event of a disaster. CFOs benefit from C3’s fixed cost approach, while owners and CEOs benefit from the single point of contact for all of their telecommunications and technology needs.

This transaction was completed on Nov. 2, 2018 and C3 has retained the services of Bill Desjardins as a consultant to assist with a smooth transition.

C3 will be providing special introductory pricing through Mar, 31, 2019 for new services ordered by existing EtherneXt clients.

“We are excited to welcome the clients of EtherneXt to the C3 Family,” commented Rick Mancinelli, CEO of C3. “We will build upon the personalized service that EtherneXt has provided its clients for more than 15 years by providing access to a much broader product portfolio, a deeper engineering team, 24x7 bilingual help desk, and additional co-location options in New York, Cleveland, and Las Vegas.”

“I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the many EtherneXt customers over the years,” commented EtherneXt CEO Bill Desjardins. “I have spent a significant amount of time working with C3 prior to this transaction and would like to emphasize that C3 has earned my utmost respect for their technical capabilities, ethics, and platform services. You are in good hands!”

DataLocker debuts PortBlocker for SafeConsole to ensure that no unauthorized data leaves organization on USB storage devices

DataLocker announced on Thursday PortBlocker, an endpoint protection agent that limits USB mass storage devices used on a user’s workstation. It is a straightforward approach to prevent data breaches while also keeping malware out of the workstation. Integrated with SafeConsole central management platform for encrypted devices and endpoints, PortBlocker is easy to deploy and remotely manage.

PortBlocker is installed on workstations to ensure only whitelisted devices may be mounted as USB mass storage devices. This blocks usage of unsecured and unaudited USB mass storage devices and ensures that those infected with malware cannot infect the workstation or network.

PortBlocker also logs USB activity and reports back to the SafeConsole management server for auditing. Managing PortBlocker with SafeConsole allows administrators to control which devices are allowed or blocked, set policies for different groups, and see audit logs and activity.

PortBlocker delivers endpoint port control by whitelisting USB storage devices by VID, PID, and serial number through SafeConsole; devices can be automatically blocked when the workstation is outside of the geolocation requirements, including IP Address, Country or ISP; policies are applied based on the workstation location in Active Directory.

Individual policy can be created down to the workstation level, if needed.

Administrators can remotely Allow All and Block All devices through SafeConsole. Events including when a device is blocked, an endpoint is registered, exactly when the ‘allow all’ devices policy is changed, etc., are reported to SafeConsole in the Device Audit Logs. PortBlocker automatically receives policy updates from SafeConsole; deploys PortBlocker to multiple workstations with little user interaction, and uses PortBlocker in secure network environments without special configurations.

PortBlocker can filter USB mass storage, MTP, and PTP devices. Common USB-connected peripherals known to use the USB mass-storage device class include USB flash drives, USB external hard drives, MP3 players, digital cameras, media card readers, and smartphones.

Other devices, such as USB mice and keyboards, are always allowed.

“PortBlocker represents the next step in the evolution of DataLocker as a Data Loss Prevention (DLP) solution for removable storage. It allows organizations to ensure that the only devices used to copy files in its environment are approved, secured and audited. Its integration with SafeConsole, the leading central management solution for encrypted storage, makes locking down your USB ports simple and hassle free,” said Jay Kim, CEO, DataLocker.

Iron Mountain acquires Lane Archive Technologies to expand its operational presence in the Philippines

Iron Mountain Inc., vendor of storage and information management services, announced on Tuesday acquisition of Lane Archive Technologies in the Philippines, expanding the company's presence in the country. 

The acquisition will add eight facilities in Manila, Davao and Cebu to Iron Mountain's existing Philippine operations, delivering records management, data management, document management and secure destruction to nearly 1,000 customers.

Iron Mountain stores and protects billions of valued assets, including critical business information, highly sensitive data, and cultural and historical artifacts. Providing solutions that include information management, digital transformation, secure storage,  secure destruction, as well as data centers, cloud services and art storage and logistics, Iron Mountain helps customers lower cost and risk, comply with regulations, recover from disaster, and enable a more digital way of working.

Founded in 1987, Lane Archive Technologies offers records and data management services, along with document management and secure destruction, to its customer base throughout the Philippines. Based in Manila, Lane has operations throughout the country and delivers information management services to a variety of customers.

"The acquisition of Lane Archive Technologies is a key milestone for our Philippines business, significantly expanding our operations in Manila and adding talented members of the Lane team," said Peter Hwang, managing director, Iron Mountain Asia. "With operations in the country's major business and commercial centers, we are adding scale and availability for our local and regional business, as well as our international customers with operations in the Philippines. This strengthens our in country presence while building upon the high levels of service that our customers expect for their information management needs."

"The acquisition of Lane Archive Technologies continues our strategy of expanding our presence in markets like the Philippines, where the move to digital transformation, coupled with the opportunity for records and information management outsourcing, is significant and growing," said Ernest Cloutier, executive vice president and general manager, International for Iron Mountain. "In these markets, our blend of expertise and technology relationships positions us to take advantage of those opportunities through the acquisition of leading local service providers that share our commitment to the highest levels of service delivery, security and trust. We can support our local and global customers while enhancing returns as we integrate these companies into our regional business, and ensuring we can capitalize on these trends."

Juniper Research predicts that retailers will lose $130 billion globally in card-not-present digital fraud in the coming five years

A new study from Juniper Research has found that retailers are set to lose some US$130 billion in digital CNP (Card-not-Present) fraud between 2018 and 2023. It highlighted that increasingly complex approaches by fraudsters, alongside retailers’ inertia in adapting to new fraud prevention requirements, would be key factors behind the increases in fraud transaction value.

Juniper’s new research, Online Payment Fraud: Emerging Threats, Segment Analysis & Market Forecasts 2018-2023, claimed that as cybercriminals seek to monetise their knowledge to a wider, less tech-savvy audience, complex cross-channel fraud will become the ‘new normal’, with retailers ill-prepared to fight it.

The report provides a deep-dive analysis of how the changing digital payments landscape, alongside key shifts in fraudster behaviour, is creating new challenges and opportunities for fraud prevention service providers.

The research report covers major payment service dynamics, such as PSD2 (the EU’s revised payment services directive), API-driven banking, 3-D Secure 2.0 and Instant Payment schemes alongside a comprehensive analysis of digital payment segment trends and fraud outlook in terms of digital banking, remote physical goods purchases remote digital goods purchases, digital money transfer, air ticketing, and fraud detection and prevention strategies.

“A layered FDP solution naturally helps directly preventing fraud, but it also offers major gains in terms of recovering potentially lost revenue through false positives. This is something about which retailers remain undereducated, and has allowed fraudsters to capitalise on relatively low FDP spend,” explained research author Steffen Sorrell.

The report found that eCommerce merchants remain, to a large extent, focused on assessing fraud risk at the point of transaction. As such, analysis in terms of session and behavioural monitoring, or validating the identity of a user to assess fraud risk before any transaction, is lacking. Juniper cited industry perception of FDP (Fraud Detection & Prevention) as one of the reasons behind this, with FDP seen as a high-cost tool used only to prevent fraud.

Juniper found that the perception of FDP return on investment on the part of retailers is, in turn, hampering global FDP spend growth. Juniper anticipates that digital payment players will spend $9.6 billion annually on FDP solutions in 2023, although the bulk of growth over the forecast period is likely to be driven by financial institutions and payment service providers.

This is due to awareness of FDP benefits, as well as a requirement to deal with challenges such as open banking systems and instant payment mechanisms.

Nokia appoints Sandra Motley as president of its fixed networks business group

Nokia named Sandra D. Motley as president of its fixed networks business group effective Jan. 1, and she will report to Nokia President and CEO Rajeev Suri.

Motley succeeds Federico Guillén, who as previously announced has been named president of customer operations, EMEA & APAC effective

Tuesday.

Motley is a seasoned telecommunications professional with leadership experience spanning business development, sales, marketing, research, product development, portfolio management and strategy.  

Motley holds MS and BS degrees in Mechanical Engineering from S.U.N.Y. at Buffalo and received an MBA in Finance from Fairleigh Dickinson University. She started her career at AT&T Bell Laboratories, held a range of R&D and sales leadership positions at Alcatel-Lucent in both fixed and wireless businesses, and then joined Nokia in 2016.

At Alcatel-Lucent, her roles included leading sales for U.S. wireless accounts and serving as Chief Operating Officer (COO) for that company's wireless business, where she was responsible for R&D, Quality and Operational functions. After becoming part of Nokia, Motley oversaw end-to-end solutions for the North America market, and most recently, she has held the role of COO for the Fixed Networks business group.

"Sandy is an exceptional leader with comprehensive executive management background across global business functions, and she brings business acumen, strong customer relationship skills, and proven success in leading cross-functional teams to deliver on challenging business and operational objectives. I am pleased that she has accepted this role," said Nokia President and Chief Executive Officer Rajeev Suri.