The fire happened on March 10th and destroyed the firm’s SBG2 datacentre and damaged another facility, SBG1. The two other datacentres at the site, SBG3 and SBG4, were switched off as a precaution and were assessed as undamaged by the incident.

As a result, OVHCloud customers across Europe were affected by service interruptions and downtime and the company worked tirelessly to restore their applications and workloads back online again. These have included having a widescale clean-up of the datacentre campus, as well as finding ways to quickly replace the server capacity destroyed during the fire.

It was reported that the firm is trying to find replacement server capacity at alternative datacentre locations for customers who had workloads housed in SBG2 and the damaged parts of SBG1.

Fortunately, the company confirmed that 80% of the public cloud-hosted virtual machines hosted by these data centers are back online since last Tuesday. Besides, it also stated that 25% of its bare metal services have been restored, and 34% of its bare metal-based VPS service are back online. SBG4 and SBG3 are reported to be operating at 99% availability for customers.

The company hopes to have 95% of services restored by the end of the week.

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Out of the respondents, 80% felt that their company would be left behind if it didn’t achieve digital transformation and 73% of IT leaders believe that they might be fired if their digital transformation projects fail.

The report also found that US$5.7million had been spent by organisations on digital transformation in the past year, with 89% saying that digital technology is going to disrupt their future, if it hasn’t already.

Survey participants added that it is crucial business leaders define the goal of digital transformation with the amount of money being spent. 95% said the “ultimate goal” should be “giving customers and end-users a truly unique experience”.

Matt Cain, CEO of Couchbase, said in the report: “Our study puts a spotlight on the harsh reality that despite allocating millions of dollars towards digital transformation projects, most companies are only seeing marginal returns and realising this trajectory won’t enable them to compete effectively in the future.”

Couchbase surveyed 450 heads of digital transformation at companies in the US, the UK, France, and Germany.

Written by Leah Alger

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The multi-cloud data management company’s report, The Veritas 2017 GDPR, found that 31% of survey respondents believe that their enterprise conforms to the legislation’s key requirements, although when questioned about GDPR provisions, the majority said they are unlikely to be in compliance; with 2% revealing a distinct misunderstanding over regulation readiness.

The findings showed that 61% of respondents think it’s difficult for their organisation to identify and report a personal data breach within 72 hours of awareness, and 48% said they are compliant without full visibility over data loss incidents; although organisations that don’t report the theft or loss of personal data is breaking key requirements.

‘Avoiding reputational damage and financial loss’

Jason Tooley, Vice President at Veritas, said: “Organisations who actively focus on development of a culture of data confidence will have a clear business advantage. Customer and supplier confidence in the use of data is critical to improved customer engagement, greater personalisation and ultimately service quality. This allows organisations to turn GDPR from being a regulatory challenge to being a business differentiator.”

Organisations struggle to control former employee data access and to ensure that reputational damage and financial loss is avoided, therefore former employees corporate data should be deleted to help stem malicious activity, although the report highlights that 50% of former employees are still able to access internal data.

‘Ensuring data compliance in the cloud’

“The complexity created through the management of data across multiple cloud and on-premise environments is accentuating the challenge and will inhibit an organisation’s ability to remain compliant in the face of the GDPR articles. For every organisation that’s currently struggling to make sense of the GDPR’s provisions, it should immediately seek an advisory service to audit its levels of preparedness and create a smooth and accelerated path towards total compliance,” added Tooley.

13% of survey respondents concluded that they do not have the capability to analyse and search personal data to uncover explicit and implicit references to an individual; with 49% believing that companies that comply with GDPR consider it the sole responsibility of the cloud service provider, ensuring data compliance in the cloud.

900 businesses across the US, the UK, France, Germany, Australia, Singapore, Japan and the Republic of Korea were interviewed for the report in February and March 2017.

Written by Leah Alger

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These findings are supported by The Business Grammar Report that was commissioned by leaders in self-service data analytics, which surveyed over 500 European business leaders. This study found that 30% of its participants consider data and analytics skills to be the most important skill when hiring a potential employee. Only 28% viewed multilingualism in the same respect.

Data proficiency within the business world

These findings have identified a shift within the business world, in terms of how data is managed. Alteryx’s research found that only 15% of European business leaders across five countries leave data analysis to an IT department. In addition, half of UK businesses are currently teaching their employees to be data proficient.

In France and Germany almost half of their businesses (in each country) are doing the same. Four out of five European business leaders felt that data analytics should be a compulsory part of all MBA programmes. In the Netherlands and Germany, 88% and 87%, respectively agreed with this view.

Stuart Wilson, VP EMEA Alteryx Inc, stated that “it makes sense to equip every business analyst with self-service tools that allow them to ask questions of their data”. . 42% of those who were surveyed admitted that decisions on data accessibility still lay with their IT team. He admitted that any business analyst who is data proficient could expect a 36% higher salary than someone who is not. 30% allowed their departmental leaders responsibility over decisions.

Andy Cotgreave, a Senior Technical Evangelist at Tableau admitted superior businesses are those that “educate their teams” on data specific matters. French IT teams still take the lead on data management and analysis decisions, according to 51% of respondents. Yet, in Denmark this statistic is much lower, 31%.

Challenges with self-service data analysis

However, problems arise when businesses begin to manage their own data. Incomplete data is one of the main problems that face business leaders. 41% of those who were surveyed agreed with this view. In Germany 53% reported this issue as their main obstacle.

Edited from press release by Ruby Arenson

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The report, Amplifying Human Potential: Education and Skills for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, commissioned by Infosys and conducted by independent research agency Future Foundation, polled 1000 young people per country, aged between 16 and 25, in Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Overall, while youth across all surveyed countries understood the role that technology will play in their careers and the need to advance their own skills, there is a clear disparity in technical confidence and job opportunities among developed and emerging economies.

Recognition of the importance of computer sciences subjects

Respondents acknowledged the role of technology skills in securing good career opportunities, with clear majorities in both emerging (74% in India and 71% in China) and developed countries (60% in France and 59% in the UK) stating that computer sciences subjects were key education tools.

IT skills and knowledge surging in emerging markets

The data further shows a large technical knowledge gap between emerging and developed economies. For example, there is a 30% gap between Indian young men (81%) and their counterparts in the US (51%). Among female respondents, the gap is 28% between India (70%) and the US (42%), and 37% with the UK (33%).

Existing education systems failing to support future career goals

In the US, 45% of those polled considered their academic education to be very or quite old-fashioned, and that it failed to support career goals, compared to 37% in China. In the UK and Australia, 77% had to learn new skills themselves in order to do their jobs, as their school or university education had not prepared them for the workplace, compared to 66% in India.

The workforce of tomorrow also understands that as technology increasingly takes away routine tasks, they will need to pursue lifelong learning to develop new skills and focus on “soft” skills that computers will not be as adept at handling.

In terms of retraining if necessary, around 80% of young people across all markets concur that continuous development of skills is essential to be successful in work. Between 78% (Brazil) and 65% (China) of 16-25 year olds are willing to completely retrain if required.

The development soft skills

Apparent across all regions is the role that communications, relationship-building and problem-solving abilities play in modern, technology-driven workplaces. While academic achievement was prioritized by between 50% (South Africa) and 36% (Germany), communications and on-the-job learning and problem-solving polled far higher. Communication skills polled between 86% (Australia) and 79% (Brazil), while on-the-job learning polled between 85% (Brazil) and 76% (Germany).

Gender gap in IT unresolved, wider in Western Europe

Young men, across all countries surveyed, are more likely to have existing IT knowledge and the desire to advance these skills. In emerging markets such as India (81% male to 70% female) and China (68% male to 59% female) as well as developed economies such as the US (51% male to 42% female), the gap is far less pronounced with higher levels of perceived competency in the emerging economies. However, in other developed economies such as France (49% male to 24% female), Germany (49% male to 26% female) and the UK (62% male to 33% female), gender gap in technology skills is significantly wider.

Disruptive forces on the technology job market

Overall, young people are aware that the Fourth Industrial Revolution will usher several disruptive forces in the job market: from the next-gen Internet of Things and Big Data, to work environments that will be drastically changed by automation, artificial intelligence and similar technologies. Today’s youth understands that it must be agile, open to learning and capable of operating in a global environment to build a long-term career path.

Edited from press release by Cecilia Rehn.

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