IBM To Acquire Red Hat, Completely Changing The Cloud Landscape And Becoming World's #1 Hybrid Cloud Provider

Press release London, UK - 28 Oct 2018:

 IBM and Red Hat, the world's leading provider of open source cloud software, announced today that the companies have reached a definitive agreement under which IBM will acquire all of the issued and outstanding common shares of Red Hat for $190.00 per share in cash, representing a total enterprise value of approximately $34 billion.

"The acquisition of Red Hat is a game-changer. It changes everything about the cloud market," said Ginni Rometty, IBM Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer. "IBM will become the world's #1 hybrid cloud provider, offering companies the only open cloud solution that will unlock the full value of the cloud for their businesses.

"Most companies today are only 20 percent along their cloud journey, renting compute power to cut costs," she said. "The next 80 percent is about unlocking real business value and driving growth. This is the next chapter of the cloud. It requires shifting business applications to hybrid cloud, extracting more data and optimizing every part of the business, from supply chains to sales."

"Open source is the default choice for modern IT solutions, and I'm incredibly proud of the role Red Hat has played in making that a reality in the enterprise," said Jim Whitehurst, President and CEO, Red Hat. "Joining forces with IBM will provide us with a greater level of scale, resources and capabilities to accelerate the impact of open source as the basis for digital transformation and bring Red Hat to an even wider audience –  all while preserving our unique culture and unwavering commitment to open source innovation."

This acquisition brings together the best-in-class hybrid cloud providers and will enable companies to securely move all business applications to the cloud. Companies today are already using multiple clouds. However, research shows that 80 percent of business workloads have yet to move to the cloud, held back by the proprietary nature of today's cloud market. This prevents portability of data and applications across multiple clouds, data security in a multi-cloud environment and consistent cloud management.

IBM and Red Hat will be strongly positioned to address this issue and accelerate hybrid multi-cloud adoption. Together, they will help clients create cloud-native business applications faster, drive greater portability and security of data and applications across multiple public and private clouds, all with consistent cloud management. In doing so, they will draw on their shared leadership in key technologies, such as Linux, containers, Kubernetes, multi-cloud management, and cloud management and automation. 

IBM's and Red Hat's partnership has spanned 20 years, with IBM serving as an early supporter of Linux, collaborating with Red Hat to help develop and grow enterprise-grade Linux and more recently to bring enterprise Kubernetes and hybrid cloud solutions to customers. These innovations have become core technologies within IBM's $19 billion hybrid cloud business. Between them, IBM and Red Hat have contributed more to the open source community than any other organization.

"Today's announcement is the evolution of our long-standing partnership," said Rometty. "This includes our joint Hybrid Cloud collaboration announcement in May, a key precursor in our journey to this day."

With this acquisition, IBM will remain committed to Red Hat's open governance, open source contributions, participation in the open source community and development model, and fostering its widespread developer ecosystem. In addition, IBM and Red Hat will remain committed to the continued freedom of open source, via such efforts as Patent Promise, GPL Cooperation Commitment, the Open Invention Network and the LOT Network.

IBM and Red Hat also will continue to build and enhance Red Hat partnerships, including those with major cloud providers, such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Alibaba and more, in addition to the IBM Cloud. At the same time, Red Hat will benefit from IBM's hybrid cloud and enterprise IT scale in helping expand their open source technology portfolio to businesses globally.

"IBM is committed to being an authentic multi-cloud provider, and we will prioritize the use of Red Hat technology across multiple clouds" said Arvind Krishna, Senior Vice President, IBM Hybrid Cloud. "In doing so, IBM will support open source technology wherever it runs, allowing it to scale significantly within commercial settings around the world."

Upon closing of the acquisition, Red Hat will join IBM's Hybrid Cloud team as a distinct unit, preserving the independence and neutrality of Red Hat's open source development heritage and commitment, current product portfolio and go-to-market strategy, and unique development culture. Red Hat will continue to be led by Jim Whitehurst and Red Hat's current management team. Jim Whitehurst also will join IBM's senior management team and report to Ginni Rometty. IBM intends to maintain Red Hat's headquarters, facilities, brands and practices.

"IBM's commitment to keeping the things that have made Red Hat successful - always thinking about the customer and the open source community first – make this a tremendous opportunity for not only Red Hat but also open source more broadly," said Paul Cormier, President, Products and Technologies, Red Hat. "Since the day we decided to bring open source to the enterprise, our mission has remained unchanged. And now, one of the biggest enterprise technology companies on the planet has agreed to partner with us to scale and accelerate our efforts, bringing open source innovation to an even greater swath of the enterprise."

Financial Details

The acquisition of Red Hat reinforces IBM's high-value model. It will accelerate IBM's revenue growth, gross margin and free cash flow within 12 months of closing. It also will support a solid and growing dividend.

The company will continue with a disciplined financial policy and is committed to maintaining strong investment grade credit ratings. The company will target a leverage profile consistent with a mid to high single A credit rating. The company intends to suspend its share repurchase program in 2020 and 2021.

At signing, the company has ample cash, credit and bridge lines to secure the transaction financing. The company intends to close the transaction through a combination of cash and debt. 

The acquisition has been approved by the boards of directors of both IBM and Red Hat. It is subject to Red Hat shareholder approval. It also is subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions. It is expected to close in the latter half of 2019.

Investor conference call details

IBM will host an investor conference call beginning at 8:30 a.m. EDT, Monday, October 29, 2018. The Webcast may be accessed via a link at https://www.ibm.com/investor/events/ibm-acquires-redhat102018.html. Presentation charts will be available shortly before the Webcast.

Atos delivers one of the most powerful quantum simulators in the world to Hartree Centre in the UK

Press release Paris, London, 5 February 2019

Atos, a global leader in digital transformation, today announces an agreement with the Science and Technology Facilities Council’s (STFC) Hartree Centre that will see one of the UK’s leading high-performance computing research facility take the first UK delivery of an Atos Quantum Learning Machine, the highest performing quantum simulator in the world.

This Quantum Learning Machine will be one of the highest-performing ever deployed by Atos and will be used to develop new quantum-based services designed to help researchers and industry prepare for the coming quantum computing revolution. These include quantum algorithm development and the first UK repository for quantum algorithms, collaborative research projects on quantum computing applications and specialist training.

This new collaboration builds on an established partnership between Atos and the Hartree Centre, which began with the UK’s first Bull Sequana X1000 supercomputer being hosted at the facility in 2017. The Hartree Centre, based at Daresbury Laboratory and part of the Sci-Tech Daresbury Campus in Cheshire, UK, also hosts the JADE national deep learning service.

Commenting on the partnership announcement, Andy Grant, Vice President, HPC & Big Data, Atos UK and Ireland said, “We are delighted to deepen our existing relationship with the Hartree Centre, which we believe will help UK industry future-proof itself for the arrival of quantum computing. Our Quantum Learning Machine as a service will be made available to any organisation wanting to learn about, and experiment, with quantum computing and understand the key opportunities and challenges this technology presents. Quantum is the future of computing and it is crucial that organisations are ready to harness the coming revolution.”

Alison Kennedy, Director of the STFC Hartree Centre, said: “We’re thrilled to be enabling UK companies to explore and prepare for the future of quantum computing. This collaboration will build on our growing expertise in this exciting area of computing and result in more resilient technology solutions being developed for industry.”

Leigh Lapworth, Head of Computational Sciences at Rolls-Royce, which will be one of the first organisations to use the quantum simulator, said: “The Quantum Learning Machine will provide a platform on which we can develop new quantum algorithms with potential impacts across our business. We have a long track-record of successful collaborations with the Hartree Centre and with the support of Atos we look forward to research that takes us in new and exciting directions.”

In November 2016, Atos launched an ambitious program to anticipate the future of quantum computing and to be prepared for the opportunities as well as the risks that come with it. As a result of this initiative, Atos was the first to successfully model quantum noise. To date, the company has installed Quantum Learning Machines in numerous countries including Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United States empowering major research programs in various sectors.

Capgemini launches ‘Perform AI'

A new portfolio of solutions to help organizations fuel innovation and deliver real business outcomes using Artificial Intelligence (by Sam Connatty)

Paris – January 28, 2019 – Capgemini today launched Perform AI, a new portfolio of solutions and services to assist organizations in achieving and sustaining tangible business outcomes by building and operating enterprise-grade artificial intelligence (AI) at scale. The portfolio provides customers with a complete set of solutions to infuse AI in their organizations, delivering operational excellence and business innovation for immersive, highly personalized experiences. Leveraging the full capabilities of the entire Group – from strategy and design through to global implementation and management – Perform AI brings together people, process, data and technology to realize superior, sustainable and trusted business performance.  

A recent publication from the Capgemini Research Institute highlighted that a mix of anxiety and ill-informed opinion is obscuring the risks and opportunities of implementing AI. Organizations therefore need a pragmatic approach to move forward. In terms of anticipated demand, IDC forecasts cognitive and AI spend will grow to $52.2 billion in 2021 and achieve a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 46.2% over the 2016-2021 forecast period.[1]

Perform AI has been designed to address the real opportunities and the critical challenges which companies confront today, whatever their maturity on data management and AI:

• Applying AI at scale: Moving beyond proofs-of-concept and isolated deployments to industrialize AI across the enterprise, scaling the business benefits throughout the organization.
• Empowering people: Proactively managing the impact of AI initiatives on augmented workforces and seeking the best interactions between people and AI.
• Transforming operations and beyond: Applying AI-based technologies to assist, augment or automate operations, right through to reimagining business processes.
• Embedding ethics: Applying AI with an ethical and responsible approach; one that is transparent to users and customers, embeds privacy, ensures fairness, and builds trust.
• Spurring innovation for competitive advantage: Leveraging AI to introduce entirely new business models, ways of working, products, services, and experiences, offering legacy enterprises the opportunity to leapfrog their current market positions to ones previously reserved for digitally native enterprises only.

“Most companies have already started to experiment with AI to help them transform certain functions within their business, but those that adopt it effectively and throughout the enterprise will gain true competitive advantage,” comments Lanny Cohen, Group Chief Innovation Officer at Capgemini. “To realize true real-world impact and ensure sustained success, companies need to move beyond isolated initiatives to infusing AI into everything they do – from simply changing technologies to shifting the entire game. With Perform AI, we are laser-focused on applying AI to achieve mission-critical, high business impact, resulting in tangible performance outcomes for today and in the future.”

Capgemini’s Perform AI portfolio comprises four core components, affording vital flexibility needed for bespoke roadmaps through to rollout of AI at scale across a business:

1. AI ACTIVATE: Creates the strategic direction and the organization and technology platforms for where and how AI should be applied and adopted in the enterprise for maximum impact.
2. AI TRANSFORM: Delivers AI-infused performance improvements to optimize existing business processes and to create the springboard for long term growth by introducing the right AI technologies and solutions among the vast and rapidly expanding volume of tools and solutions.
3. AI REIMAGINE: Draws upon the strategy and innovation capabilities within Capgemini Invent and Capgemini’s network of Applied Innovation Exchangesto help organizations envision new products and services, customer experiences, operating and business models, and revenue streams.
4. AI ENGINEERING: Provides foundation services to ensure the enterprise’s data estate and governance deliver trusted AI solutions in production and at scale. AI Engineering addresses the operating core of AI – data underpins every stage of the transformation.

To concentrate asset and solution creation as well as expert capability development, Capgemini has created a network of cross-practice AI Centers of Excellence (CoEs). These Perform AI CoEs are now operational in France, Germany and North America, all supported by a hub CoE in India. Geographical coverage of the Perform AI CoEs will be extended throughout 2019.

Markets of primary focus for Perform AI are the Manufacturing and Financial Services sectors, as well as the Customer Experience domain. Capgemini has worked closely with its extensive ecosystem of technology partners, start-ups and academia to build AI solutions that help address these specific industry needs, including a Manufacturing intelligence platform leveraging computer vision for quality defects prevention and machine learning for failure detection; cognitive analytics to address multi-dimensional underwriting risk in the Financial Services sector; or natural language processing, conversational interfaces and computer-vision based emotions recognition to predict and understand consumers needs with unmatched certainty.

With data privacy and security emerging as some of the most important priorities for businesses, it is vital that companies balance their AI innovation with efforts to secure and maintain the trust of their customers, partners, and employees. Capgemini’s Perform AI portfolio focuses on the ability to secure data and AI platforms.

Building on its existing recognition as one of the world’s most ethical companies, Capgemini has integrated ethics into the foundations of its Perform AI portfolio.

“We have launched Perform AI to enable organizations to augment operations and potentially reinvent their business at a time when they are expected to regularly meet and exceed customers’ expectations that are higher and more diverse than ever before,” concludes Anne-Laure Thieullent, AI and Analytics Group Offer Leader, Capgemini. “Through the application of AI technologies, our Perform AI solutions will increase the speed of execution and certainty of success for our clients’ AI initiatives, which are sometimes still fragmented and not exploited to their full potential. With Perform AI and the follow up releases of this new portfolio, we are dedicated to becoming the premier AI-infused consulting and technology services company and are excited to take our clients to the next stage of their journey to the Intelligent Enterprise.”

https://www.capgemini.com/news/perform-ai/

Airbus under attack! Industrial espionage by way of Supply Chain Attack?

First of all, let’s start with the facts,

January the 30^th 2019: Airbus issues a press release announcing that the commercial sector of the company has come under cyber attack. It was a non authorized access to company data. Airbus reassures there won’t be any economic impact on the company operations.

Airbus, let us remember, is an European society with its headquarters in the Netherlands, active in the field of aircraft production and Space and Defense research. One of its activities is the cyber defense both for internal use and for its customers.

The press release continues saying that the attack is under analysis and Airbus's experts have already undertaken a number of necessary actions in order to strengthen the security measures,mitigate the impact of the attack and of course, to identify the source of the attack.

The press release ends with saying that the authorities, included Data Protection sector, have already been informed of the attack and reassuring that Airbus employees have been solicited to take the necessary precautions in order to continue their activities.

After a few days the press is already on the case.

On the 4^th of February the newspaper “Challenges” reports that according to statements coming from public sources and other sources close to the company, the “modus operandi” used by the attackers is similar to the one used by a group of Chinese cyber group. It looks like the scope of the attack was to hijack technical documents relating aircraft certifications. The attack scheme is in fact similar to the APT 10 , or even more sophisticated.

It looks like the attack started in December was aimed to affect an Airbus supplier, and then move to the real objective. This theory is based on clues and it will be difficult to prove it.

Let’s notice that the company trend in the stock exchange wasn’t apparently affected by this attack.

Anyways, what happened shows how dangerous can a supply chain attack be, especially if aimed to strike a third party, usually a supplier of the main objective, with little or no cyber defense capabilities.

ALESSANDRO RUGOLO

(english translation by Francesco Rugolo)

Pictures :  https://www.airbus.com/

To know more about the topic:

- https://www.airbus.com/newsroom/press-releases/en/2019/01/airbus-statement-on-cyber-incident.html;
- https://www.challenges.fr/entreprise/transports/cyberattaque-contre-airbus-la-piste-chinoise-avancee_640396;
- https://www.mirror.co.uk/travel/news/breaking-airbus-cyber-attack-believed-13955680;
- https://www.fireeye.com/current-threats/apt-groups.html#apt10;
- https://www.cshub.com/attacks/articles/incident-of-the-week-airbus-reports-employee-data-hack;
- https://www.csoonline.com/article/3191947/data-breach/what-is-a-supply-chain-attack-why-you-should-be-wary-of-third-party-providers.html

Turkcell Joins Hands with Huawei to Build a 5G-oriented All-Cloud Core Network

Huawei Press release

Feb 15, 2019

[Turkey, Istanbul, February 15, 2019] Recently, Turkey's largest carrier Turkcell announced that it will join hands with Huawei to build a 5G-oriented all-cloud core network. This Project will launch the largest Cloud EPC Network globally, and this will be the first Core Network with key technologies for 5G evolution globally: commercial cloud-based software architecture, control and user plane separation (CUPS), and A/B test. This means global top carriers have made substantial progress in software architecture transformation, network architecture transformation, and the O&M transformation for 5G evolution.

Huawei will provide a mature, reliable cloud solution to Turkcell, which enables Turkcell to achieve the network transformation strategy and a smooth evolution to 5G.

• Cloud Native software structure

Cloud Native multi-point disaster recovery technology helps build a more elastic network, and ensure a highly reliable running environment for live network services, a network that can withstand multiple points of failure and still run smoothly.

• CUPS network architecture

Huawei solution uses CUPS architecture to shorten transmission distances, simplify O&M, and deliver the best service experience to subscribers.

• A/B test

Huawei solution provides an industry-leading A/B test solution to automate O&M and help carriers perform hitless upgrades with minimal resources required.

Huawei has signed more than 490 contracts for all-cloud core networks worldwide, helping carriers build an elastic, robust, agile, and all-cloud core network and smoothly evolve to the 5G network.

Romantic Phishing is on the Rise – How Not to Lose Your Money While Losing Your Heart

Press release

Kaspersky Lab experts have detected a sharp increase in phishing activities from criminals offering users various romantic goods on the eve of St. Valentine’s Day.

The total number of  user attempts to visit fraudulent websites with a romantic theme that were detected and blocked during the first half of February more than doubled compared to the same time in 2018, a reminder that fraudsters are always looking for an excuse to steal users’ data and money.

Phishing is one of the most popular and easiest social engineering techniques to exploit online users. It is a type of fraud where criminals use deception to acquire users’ credentials – from passwords to credit card numbers, bank account details and other financially important information. Phishing emails and websites usually come disguised as legitimate ones that encourage a recipient, for one reason or another, to urgently enter their personal data. They are often fueled by the news agenda, be it major sport event or thematic holidays. St. Valentine’s Day is no exception.

The overall number of user attempts to visit fraudulent websites that were detected and blocked by Kaspersky Lab solutions in the first half of February 2019 – the days leading up to February 14th – dramatically peaked from over two million in 2018 to more than 4.3 million this year. According to statistics, the most affected countries were Brazil (a more than 6.4% share of detections), Portugal (more than 5.8%), and Venezuela (5.5%). They were followed by Greece (5.3%) and Spain (5.1%).

Deeper analysis into the sent emails has shown that fraudsters are particularly exploiting pre-order gift items and performance enhancing drugs as a trap to lure users into sharing their credentials in order to please their loved ones. This again proves the findings of Kaspersky Lab’s own survey, indicating that when it comes to love, users tend to lose their vigilance.

“Our research has shown that there is no difference between phishing activities exploiting major sporting events, fake payment bills, or a more romantic pretext. They all just need to drive users’ emotions, be it excitement, stress, or love. Thus, almost anything can become an attack tool in the cyber fraudsters’ hands. The detected spike reminds us that we should always be cautious when surfing the web even we are just buying flowers for our loved one,” - warns Andrey Kostin, Senior Web-Content Analyst at Kaspersky Lab.

Press Release

D-Wave Releases Hybrid Workflow Platform to Build and Run Quantum Hybrid Applications in Leap Quantum Application Environment

D-Wave press release

Developer preview of D-Wave Hybrid available now for trial and feedback. Provides simple framework for combining classical computing approaches with quantum computing power.

BURNABY, BC – (December 10, 2018) — D-Wave Systems Inc., the leader in quantum computing systems, software, and services, today announced a developer preview of D-Wave Hybrid™, a simple, open-source hybrid workflow platform for building and running quantum-classical hybrid applications. D- Wave Hybrid will become part of the Ocean software development kit within D-Wave’s Leap™ Quantum Application Environment (QAE) and is available today at https://github.com/dwavesystems/dwave-hybrid for trial and developer input. The D-Wave Hybrid framework provides simplified workflow control to developers, allowing them to use both classical and quantum systems in parallel, gain insight into systems performance, optimize code across systems, and develop quantum hybrid applications more easily.

The developer preview of D-Wave Hybrid includes:

• Hybrid workflow control: enables rapid development of hybrid applications that can run across classical and D-Wave 2000Q™ quantum systems.
• Modular approach: incorporates logic to simplify distribution of classical and quantum tasks, allowing developers to interrupt and synchronize across the systems and draw maximum computing power out of each system.
• Problem deconstruction: capable of breaking down large problems that are bigger than the quantum processor unit (QPU) into piece parts that are then recombined for the overall solution.
• Familiar coding environment: built in Python, so developers who code with parallel resources will find the framework familiar and don’t need to know quantum mechanics to get started.
• Leap QAE access, education, and community support: as part of the Leap QAE, developers who open source their code also benefit from free, real-time access to the D-Wave 2000QTM system, learning resources, and community and technical forums for easy developer collaboration.

D-Wave Hybrid is designed to accelerate developers’ ability to build and run hybrid algorithms, continuing D-Wave’s work to help customers with their real-world quantum application development. To-date, D-Wave customers have developed 100 early applications for problems spanning airline scheduling, election modeling, quantum chemistry simulation, automotive design, preventative healthcare, logistics, and more. Many have also developed software tools that simplify application development. These existing applications, tools, and community give developers a wealth of examples to learn from and build upon.

“The future is hybrid, so we’re opening up this developer preview to gain feedback and input from the community to ensure it is easy for developers to get started harnessing quantum and classical systems running in parallel to solve real problems,” said Murray Thom, D-Wave VP of software and cloud services. “With Leap, we are making it possible for potentially hundreds of thousands of developers to write and run quantum applications, without having to learn the complex physics that underpins quantum computers. The D-Wave Hybrid developer preview reflects our ongoing investment in helping developers learn quantum systems and build the first quantum killer application.”

About Leap Quantum Application Environment

Leap is the first cloud-based QAE providing real-time access to a live quantum computer. In addition to access, Leap provides open-source development tools, interactive demos and coding examples, educational resources, and knowledge base articles. Designed for developers, researchers, and forward- thinking enterprises, Leap enables collaboration through its online community, helping the community write and run quantum applications and speed the development of real-world applications.

Leap offers both free and paid plans designed for individual developers, commercial enterprises, government, research, and education sectors. To find out more and get started using Leap, visit the D- Wave website at www.dwavesys.com.

D-Wave Hybrid developer preview can be accessed via GitHub at https://github.com/dwavesystems/dwave-hybrid.

About D-Wave Systems Inc.

D-Wave is the leader in the development and delivery of quantum computing systems, software, and services and is the world's only commercial supplier of quantum computers. Our mission is to unlock the power of quantum computing for the world. We believe that quantum computing will enable solutions to the most challenging national defense, scientific, technical, and commercial problems. D-Wave's systems are being used by some of the world's most advanced organizations, including Lockheed Martin, Volkswagen, DENSO, Google, NASA Ames, USRA, USC, Los Alamos National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. With headquarters near Vancouver, Canada, D-Wave's US operations are based in Palo Alto, CA and Hanover, MD. D-Wave has a blue-chip investor base including PSP Investments, Goldman Sachs, Bezos Expeditions, DFJ, In-Q-Tel, BDC Capital, Growthworks, 180 Degree Capital Corp., and Kensington Capital Partners Limited. For more information, visit: www.dwavesys.com.

https://www.dwavesys.com/press-releases/d-wave-releases-hybrid-workflow-platform-build-and-run-quantum-hybrid-applications