Amazon Stays in the JEDI Fight with Filing to Stop Microsoft’s Work on the $10 Billion Project

Amy Larsen DeCarlo – Principal Analyst, Security and Data Center Services

Summary Bullets:

• Two months after Amazon filed a protest with the courts over the JEDI contract award to Microsoft, the company asked a judge to suspend work on the project

• Amazon wants the court to halt work on JEDI while it considers whether the bid process was fair

In the latest episode of the DoD Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract saga, Amazon Web Services (AWS) petitioned the U.S. Federal Claims Court to suspend work on the cloud engagement while the Claims Court evaluates whether the contracting process was fair. The move comes two months after Amazon initially filed suit in Federal Court arguing the contract was not awarded fairly. In a November video, AWS CEO Andrew Jassy pressed the Pentagon to “shine a light on what really happened.” Jassy claimed multiple aspects of the evaluation process were deficient and subject to error.

IoT Deployment Trends in 2019

J. Marcus

Summary Bullets:

• The biggest regional change in 2019 was the frequency of deployments with a global remit, most of which are undertaken by global companies operating in multiple countries and regions around the world.

• In 2019, the most common project goal for IoT deployments was improved operational efficiencies (79% of all deployments), while advanced automation was the most common use case.

GlobalData has been tracking data on deployments of Internet of Things (IoT) technology by enterprise organizations for several years, via its IoT Deployment Database. While collecting available data on deployment projects undertaken in 2019 will continue throughout 2020 as more information becomes available, the data collected so far provides useful insights on where activity is occurring regionally, by sector, and for each common use case. Below are highlights—including how enterprise IoT market activity in 2019 looks compared to the previous three years.

Vodafone Business Provides a Glimpse of the Future of Networking

S. Soh

Summary Bullets:

• Vodafone is developing an intent-based infrastructure, which is an automated platform to deliver desired business outcomes.

• Enterprise customers should consider the trends related to the evolution of network solutions and include the evaluation of digital platforms and roadmap when sourcing a new WAN supplier.

Vodafone has articulated and shown how the right digital platforms and software-defined capabilities can enable the network of the future. As enterprises pursue digital transformation, they often think cloud first before worrying about whether the network can support the major shift in workloads. To support a hybrid, multi-cloud environment, the network needs to be flexible to deliver the right performance for different applications, in a dynamic fashion. And yet, customers often do not have full visibility into how their network and applications are performing. It can also be problematic to determine network issues without the tools that provide end-to-end visibility. This will likely get more complex when enterprises begin to adopt 5G, edge computing, and IoT.

Cloud Computing Giants Expand Environmentally Sustainable IT Battleground

C. Drake

Summary Bullets:

• Demonstrating a genuine and broad commitment to environmentally sustainable IT has become a major new competitive battleground for cloud computing giants Google, Microsoft, and Amazon Web Services.
• Some cloud providers, notably Microsoft, are now extending existing commitments to new areas, including helping customers with their own environmental sustainability objectives.

Demonstrating a genuine and broad commitment to environmentally sustainable IT has become a major new competitive battleground for cloud computing giants Google, Microsoft, and Amazon Web Services (AWS). All three companies are already committed to improved energy efficiency and the use of renewable energy within their international network of data centers – even if those goals have not yet been fully realized. However, that commitment is now being extended to new areas, including the ability to help customers with their own sustainability objectives. This will open up a whole new competitive battleground between these leading cloud companies.

UEM Update Shows Evolution to Advanced Analytics and “Zero Trust” Along with New Distribution Strategies

K. Weldon

Summary Bullets:

• GlobalData’s latest analysis of the unified endpoint management (UEM) market shows how the evolution from MDM to EMM to UEM has changed the market, although the same vendors remain on top.

• Each of the upper-tier vendors, including VMware, BlackBerry, and MobileIron, is responding to the market’s fluid dynamics in unique ways, to differentiate themselves and serve the needs of more sophisticated users.

Top vendors in the UEM market have expanded their core mobile device, application, and content management features to encompass endpoint configuration management, client-server application enablement, secure collaboration, mobility analytics, and IoT device and data management and security. This transition is primarily driven by the convergence of traditional and mobile endpoints. As enterprise endpoints are increasingly mobile, management and security paradigms must adjust to manage data and applications from diverse devices (e.g., smartphones, tablets, laptops, and IoT devices) that can be active anywhere at any time. The need to conduct business on an ever-increasing variety of devices has also made enablement and innovation via mobility a business differentiator. And the massive wave of IoT devices still expected to flood enterprises in the coming years exacerbates the need to discover and manage an ever-broadening array of endpoints. Eventually, however, enterprise network vendors may take some share from UEM providers, by accomplishing the same level of mobile management and security through their equipment and services. In the meantime, UEM remains an important capability.

Rethinking Low-Code Platforms Through Software Automation

C. Dunlap

Summary Bullets:

• Low-code platforms will continue to consolidate key technologies including AI, RPA, and OCR.
• This month, two key acquisitions build on low-code momentum: Google-AppSheet and Appian-Novayre.

Last year’s consolidation of low-code platforms, in which AI played the most prominent role, has elevated the enterprise application platforms to new heights of innovation addressing operations’ most pressing issue: the need for software automation. The latest low-code trend supporting automation is the addition of robotic process automation (RPA), a promising technology which helps enterprises eliminate repetitive tasks in the app modernization process.

TM 5G Showcase Langkawi: Leading the 5G Race in Malaysia

A. Amir

Summary Bullets:

• The 5G race in Malaysia is heating up with various initiatives announced by service providers.
• Telekom Malaysia (TM) edges out the competition by leveraging its existing ICT portfolio, professional service capabilities, and R&D to offer end-to-end solutions.

The 5G scene in Malaysia is heating up, as the market is only a few months away from expected commercial availability. The regulator, MCMC, recently announced that 5G will be available to users by July 2020. Since the kickoff of the 5G Demonstration Project (5GDP) by MCMC in September of last year, the telcos have been making regular announcements about their progress. These include Celcom’s partnership with the police and municipal council on a smart city deployment in Langkawi, Digi’s launch of its 5G OpenLab in Cyberjaya, Maxis’ 3 Gbps in C-band 5G trial spectrum, and TM’s collaboration with players from other verticals to co-develop 5G applications in Subang and Langkawi. While MCMC has outlined 55 use cases in 32 sites across six states for the 5GDP, Langkawi has been the center of the attention, as the service providers placed most of their resources for their 5G initiatives on the island.

TM Collaborates with Eight Players Across Different Verticals to Develop 5G Use Cases in Langkawi

A. Amir

Summary Bullets:

• TM announced its 5G collaboration with eight players from different industries: government, hospitality, and retail.

• Apart from mixed reality and video, TM should also develop applications that leverage other 5G benefits (e.g., URLLC, network slicing, and edge-compute).

TM is making a major milestone in its 5G journey with its collaboration with the Majlis Perbandaran Langkawi Bandaraya Pelancongan (the city council) and Langkawi Development Authority, Jabatan Laut Malaysia (Malaysia Marine Department) as well as several other hospitality and retail players including Haji Ismail Group, Nadias Hotel, Hotel Ayda Chenang, The Loaf Asia, and Artisans Pizza. The collaborations focus on smart city and smart tourism use cases such as smart traffic light, smart parking, smart safety and security, smart retail analytics, and smart vehicle management solutions. These applications are running on the carrier’s trial standalone (SA) 5G network on 700MHz (the first SA 5G network in the country).

An Intriguing Networking Choice: Passive Optical LAN (POL)

S. Schuchart

Summary Bullets:

• With growing bandwidth needs due to things like Wi-Fi 6 and video, options like POL can provide long-term investment protection benefits

• POL can reduce operating expenses, both administratively and from a power/cooling standpoint

The networking journey is always one of change, yet there are some technologies that we’ve used for literally decades that are not up to the challenges of growing bandwidth and device density. Indeed, new services such as Wi-Fi 6 are driving the need for more bandwidth, especially on the backhaul. Copper Ethernet cables are a great example of where a great technology is beginning to run into the harsh limits of physics. To achieve even 10 Gigabit speeds excessive care has to be taken with thick, less flexible cables and distance limits of 100 meters for properly installed cabling systems (Cat6a or Cat7). With bandwidth rising to 40Gbps and 100Gbps and beyond, it becomes a matter of much discussion on how we support networks going forward, especially in new construction. Nobody wants the expense of upgrading a building’s network cabling because bandwidth needs have exceeded its limited capacity.

CES 2020: Enterprise Treasures Among High-Tech Gadgetry and Games

Kathryn Weldon – Research Director, Business Network and IT Services – Americas

Summary Bullets:

• While most people go to CES to see exciting new devices and technologies for consumer applications, many of the same technologies enable compelling enterprise use cases.

• Enterprise offerings at CES 2020 featured solutions for healthcare, agriculture, manufacturing, public safety, and transportation, using technologies such as AR/VR, 5G, AI/machine learning and IoT/digital twins.

As CES renamed itself several years ago in order to remove the limitation of its initial laser focus on consumer electronics, the show has evolved to include high-tech solutions of all kinds for both consumer and enterprise use cases (as well as new infrastructure solutions from network and IT technology providers). Hidden among the cool immersive gaming applications and thin feature-rich sexy new AR glasses were a wide variety of enterprise focused companies and products. Technologies including AR/VR, 3D printing, AI/automation/robotics, 5G/wireless networking, and solutions for the next generation of connected car/autonomous vehicles were featured in many exhibits and keynote sessions.