CLOUD APP DEVELOPMENT
Accenture | February 23, 2022
Accenture is helping Navitaire, an Amadeus company providing technology and business services to the airline industry, accelerate its cloud-first transformation journey, enabling the full migration of Navitaire’s application suite to the Microsoft Azure platform in just 24 months.
The collaboration — in which Accenture is teaming with Avanade, its joint venture with Microsoft — is key to helping Navitaire achieve its long-term cloud strategy centered on customer innovation and improved flexibility, responsiveness, efficiency and scale, benefits that have become even more critical during the COVID-19 pandemic recovery.
Accenture will assist Navitaire in further integrating new technology capabilities such as advanced analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning, as well as technology from its ecosystem partners, to help improve Navitaire’s clients’ ability to create new products and services for their customers.
The team has already completed foundation builds in three Azure regions, with the fourth region targeted for the first quarter of 2022, and migrated New Skies, Navitaire’s industry-leading reservations platform, to the cloud. This gives airlines access to new cloud services and improved system performance.
“Our accelerated transformation will enhance operational agility and better position us to develop new services for our customers across the travel ecosystem,” said Kyle Stromberg, chief technology officer, Navitaire. “The collaboration with Accenture will help achieve our cloud strategies and support our customers’ ability to innovate, deliver personalized digital experiences and make more data-informed decisions.”
Emily Weiss, a senior managing director at Accenture who leads its Travel industry practice globally, said, “As the pandemic has shown us, being digital and in the cloud is essential — and time is of the essence. We’re now in an era of compressed transformation. Our work with Navitaire will help it spur innovation at speed and with scale, which are the hallmarks of a truly cloud-first organization.”
Last year, Accenture was positioned as a Leader in both Market Impact and Vision & Capability for systems integration capabilities on Microsoft Azure in a report from Everest Group, a leading industry analyst.
About Accenture
Accenture is a global professional services company with leading capabilities in digital, cloud and security. Combining unmatched experience and specialized skills across more than 40 industries, we offer Strategy and Consulting, Interactive, Technology and Operations services — all powered by the world’s largest network of Advanced Technology and Intelligent Operations centers. Our 674,000 people deliver on the promise of technology and human ingenuity every day, serving clients in more than 120 countries. We embrace the power of change to create value and shared success for our clients, people, shareholders, partners, and communities.
About Navitaire
Navitaire, an Amadeus company, delivers industry-leading technology services supporting growth, profitability and innovation to more than 60 airlines and rail companies worldwide carrying a total of 819 million annual passengers in 2019, including many of the world’s most successful low-cost and hybrid airlines. Navitaire offers a full suite of cloud-enabled proven solutions focused on revenue generation and streamlining costs in the areas of reservations, ancillary sales, loyalty, revenue accounting and business intelligence. Navitaire has offices in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia, and is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Amadeus Group.
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CLOUD SECURITY
Apiiro | June 09, 2022
Apiiro, the leader in Cloud-Native Application Security, today announced the Apiiro Partner Program, which provides comprehensive support for technology, consulting, and reseller partners across the Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP) ecosystem.
In the era of cloud-native application development, the remediation lifecycle is getting longer and more complex because risks are distributed across the design, code, open source packages, infra-as-code, containers, Git and CI/CD servers, and cloud infrastructure.
In addition, the shift in responsibilities and the use of a multitude of tools, each addressing only a small subset of cloud-native application risks has reduced the overall efficacy with noisy alerts and false-positives due to the lack of context. Context from cloud infrastructure to code and Software Bill Of Materials visibility (SBOM) are instrumental for the remediation process across the software supply chain.
Partners like Alacrinet, Defy Security, Google Cloud, HashiCorp, NetSPI, NXGN, Parabellyx, and Trace3 from the cloud-native application security, DevOps, cloud infrastructure security, and other cybersecurity industries are joining the Apiiro Partner Program to work together to help customers remediate cloud-native application risks across the software supply chain. Partners will benefit from the Apiiro Risk Graph technology and enabling resources to speed customer adoption and success with a contextual shift left risk remediation technology.
"Our customers aren't just modernizing their cloud-native application security - they're reinventing the way they develop, build, and deploy cloud-native applications across the software supply chain. By uniting in the Apiiro Partner Program, Apiiro and our partners can collectively ensure cloud-native applications are developed and delivered in a secure manner,"
John Leon, VP of Business Development at Apiiro
Program benefits include training materials and sales resources, access to technical evaluation demos and documentation to enable go to market and joint promotion opportunities. By enrolling in the Apiiro Partner Program, partners can increase their value to customers by delivering contextual shift left risk remediation before releasing to the cloud.
Apiiro has quickly gained momentum and recognition in the cloud-native application security market:
The current winner of the prestigious RSA Sandbox Innovation Award
Named a Gartner 2021 Cool Vendor in DevSecOps
Detected Day 0 Supply Chain Security vulnerability found on Kuberenetes based Argo CD platform
Contributor to the NIST 800-218 Secure SW Development Framework published February 2022
Apiiro is a new partner in the Google Cloud Marketplace. Google Cloud customers can purchase the Apiiro platform directly on Google Cloud Marketplace, enabling them to simplify cloud software procurement for their enterprise via online discovery, purchasing, and fulfillment.
About Apiiro
Apiiro helps security and development teams proactively fix risk across the software supply chain, before releasing to the cloud. Backed by Greylock and Kleiner Perkins.
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CLOUD INFRASTRUCTURE MANAGEMENT
Volocopter | May 17, 2022
Today, Volocopter, the pioneer of urban air mobility (UAM), announced a strategic collaboration with Microsoft to develop an aerospace cloud system in Microsoft Azure that will address the nascent cloud computing requirements for eVTOLs, UAM, and autonomous aviation. Once primed for commercial use, Azure will support the digital platform VoloIQ, the operating system for Volocopter's UAM services, and its subsequent transition to autonomous operations.
Volocopter plans to make the VoloIQ its standard UAM operating system for all electric passenger and drone flight operations. Its modular structure will be vast, covering aspects like booking and e-commerce, commercial scheduling, operational network planning, flight planning, flight monitoring, supplying airspace digital twins, and vehicle data logging and analysis. Volocopter has chosen Microsoft Cloud / Azure to securely interconnect all these UAM ecosystem elements into one integrated set of services.
"Having Microsoft on board as a project partner and investor is proof that the solutions Volocopter creates – like the VoloIQ – are pioneering and hold remarkable market potential. We're proud that Microsoft Azure is the one to provide a secure cloud and thus to ensure safety remains at the forefront of our operations."
Alexander Oelling, Volocopter's Chief Digital Officer.
Volocopter and Microsoft will begin collaborating by ensuring Microsoft Azure meets the VoloIQ's needs for commercial operations. Azure will then enable the VoloIQ's flight and service support for Volocopter's electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft (VoloCity, VoloDrone, and VoloConnect), alongside ground infrastructure (VoloPort) support in real time.
"From the newest technologies to regulation, creating solutions to seamlessly address the cloud computing requirements for supporting continued advancements in aviation is a complex endeavor. We certainly see the potential a secure, robust, and efficient cloud platform could offer aerospace and urban air mobility operators," said Uli Homann, CVP of Cloud and AI at Microsoft. "Working in collaboration with Volocopter, we will start to build the foundation for a commercial model for aerospace cloud."
The collaboration between Volocopter and Microsoft was first publicized in 2020, when Volocopter and Lufthansa Industry Solutions announced plans to develop the VoloIQ for autonomous aircraft operations using Microsoft Azure.
The VoloIQ's aim is a straightforward one: to provide complete digital transparency and greater ecosystem efficiency in real time. By utilizing this digital resource, Volocopter's services – and all the relevant process elements needed to realize this service – will be user-friendly and digitally accessible for customers, pilots, operators, and stakeholders alike. Furthermore, the VoloIQ's solid scope will streamline Volocopter's transition into an autonomous air taxi services provider when the time comes and bolster its efficient maintenance and infrastructure as soon as it becomes operational.
About Volocopter
Volocopter is building the world's first sustainable and scalable urban air mobility business to bring affordable air taxi services for goods and people to megacities worldwide. Volocopter leads and cooperates with partners in infrastructure, operations, and air traffic management to build the ecosystem necessary to 'Bring Urban Air Mobility to Life'. Volocopter has over 500 employees in offices in Bruchsal, Munich, and Singapore. The company has raised $579 million in equity from investors including Geely, WP Investment, Mercedes-Benz Group, Intel Capital, and BlackRock..
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CLOUD INFRASTRUCTURE MANAGEMENT
BT | March 11, 2022
Today, Google Cloud and BT announced a strategic, five-year partnership to accelerate BT's company-wide digital transformation. The collaboration will involve BT using a suite of Google Cloud products and services—including cloud infrastructure, machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI), data analytics, security, and API management—to deliver superior customer experiences, reduce costs and risk, and build new revenue streams.
BT is undertaking a massive digital transformation through its BT Digital unit, and this initiative includes creating a group-wide data and AI fabric as part of its cloud-first and AI-first strategy. Under the partnership, the two companies will help BT unlock hundreds of new business use-cases to strengthen its ambitions around digital offerings and creating hyper-personalised customer engagement.
BT's data transformation is centred around driving business outcomes and using AI and deep ML across the organisation to allow businesses and customers to make more data-led decisions, as well as creating deeper personalisation for customer offerings and new go-to-market propositions. This will also enable BT to have real-time network analytics to allow for a more enhanced customer service through predictive fault management and assurance.
In addition, Google's SRE team will partner with BT to foster a continuous delivery and "zero ops" autonomous operations culture to accelerate product development and continuous innovation as part of the new culture of working that BT calls "The Digital Way."
Our partnership with Google is one of a series of strategic moves that BT Digital is taking to help accelerate BT's growth and digital transformation. This is a partnership that is deeper than just at the technology level. It will help Digital as a whole supercharge BT and drive its return to growth,"
Harmeen Mehta, Chief Digital and Innovation Officer, BT.
"We're proud to collaborate with one of the world's leading providers of communications services and play an integral part in its digital transformation journey," said Thomas Kurian, CEO at Google Cloud. "By deploying our full cloud capabilities, and support from our SRE organisation, our goal in this partnership is to set up BT with the tools it needs for future growth and innovation."
Google and BT have already started working together on adopting Google technology, and plan to complete the core migration of data by 2023.
About Google Cloud
Google Cloud accelerates every organisation's ability to digitally transform its business. We deliver enterprise-grade solutions that leverage Google's cutting-edge technology – all on the cleanest cloud in the industry. Customers in more than 200 countries and territories turn to Google Cloud as their trusted partner to enable growth and solve their most critical business problems.
About BT
BT Group is the UK's leading telecommunications and network provider and a leading provider of global communications services and solutions, serving customers in 180 countries. Its principal activities in the UK include the provision of fixed voice, mobile, broadband and TV (including Sport) and a range of products and services over converged fixed and mobile networks to consumer, business and public sector customers. For its global customers, BT provides managed services, security and network and IT infrastructure services to support their operations all over the world. BT consists of four customer-facing units: Consumer, Enterprise, Global and its wholly-owned subsidiary, Openreach, which provides access network services to over 650 communications provider customers who sell phone, broadband and Ethernet services to homes and businesses across the UK.
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