Alibaba Cloud Continues Its Momentum in ASEAN as Competition Increases

A. Amir

Summary Bullets:

• Alibaba Cloud strengthens its ASEAN presence with a new win in East Malaysia and its first event in Indonesia.
• As competition intensifies, it is important for the cloud provider to expand its partner ecosystem, especially with the domestic players.

The Southeast Asia region (a.k.a. ASEAN) has been a new battleground for the hyperscalers for a few years. Cloud adoption is still relatively low compared to other markets. As the cloud becomes a commodity and the market grows, this opportunity has attracted global hyperscalers to expand their presence in the region. Alibaba Cloud opened its data centers in Malaysia and Indonesia in 2017 and 2018, respectively. Google announced in October 2018 that it will have its Indonesian data centers ready in early 2020, and AWS responded with a similar announcement in April 2019. These global hyperscalers are also offering their respective cloud stacks (e.g., AWS Outposts, Alibaba Apsara Stack, Google Anthos, and Azure Stack) for deployments in customers or third-party data centers to address the data residency requirement. They have also been strengthening their domestic presence by expanding the in-country sales forces and their partner ecosystem in the region through various collaborations with local providers, governments (such as universities), and other vertical players. Some of Alibaba’s recent initiatives include its partnership with SCC to offer Sabah Pay in East Malaysia and its first Cloud Day event in Indonesia.

Maxis Strengthens Its IoT Portfolio with Microsoft Azure

A. Amir

Summary Bullets:

• Maxis is enhancing its IoT portfolio with Microsoft Azure to deliver solutions more efficiently and provide flexibility in the market.
• While it is a positive move, Maxis could consider integrating Azure features into its IoT network, collaborate on MEC and strengthen its professional services capabilities.

Maxis recently announced its partnership with Microsoft to enhance its IoT portfolio (note: the partnership also includes cloud and UC, but this article discusses the IoT collaboration). Through the partnership, Maxis will be using Microsoft Azure IoT in its offering. Azure is ranked as ‘very strong’ by GlobalData in the ‘Enterprise IoT Platforms’ category and stands out with its development capabilities such as IoT Toolkit, its open source platform and initiatives with the developer community. Azure IoT is also used by many leading carriers in their IoT solutions, including AT&T, Singtel, Telstra and Vodafone. For Maxis, this partnership provides a significant upgrade to its previous M2M platform that has been in place for many years. Microsoft Azure IoT enables Maxis to address various limitations of its IoT solutions, such as offering more flexible and scalable deployments through the cloud-based platform. The AI, machine learning and analytics capabilities supported by Azure IoT provide the carrier with better data visibility and hence enable the carrier deliver its IoT solution more efficiently. The open source and API capabilities provide Maxis a platform to expand its vertical offerings and offer better integration with customers’ existing systems. Besides, the Azure Stack and IoT Edge enable Maxis to offer low-latency applications and address the growing edge-compute demand. However, the Microsoft Azure IoT platform will not sell by itself and the partnership is not exclusive. Besides viewing this as a platform upgrade, Maxis should look at other ways to achieve differentiation in its IoT business.

Apple Will Use Xnor.ai’s AI Chip Technology to Strengthen its Competitive Edge vis-à-vis Amazon, Microsoft, and Google

Summary Bullets:

• Apple will use the recently acquired Xnor.ai’s technology to enhance the AI and data processing capabilities of a range of products, including its cameras and HomeKit smart home system.

• To succeed against rivals such as Google, Apple will need to develop AI device capabilities that deliver additional functionality and value for its customers.

Apple’s recent US$200 million acquisition of Seattle-based Xnor.ai makes it the latest in a growing number of companies that are targeting the opportunities associated with AI and edge computing. Apple’s acquisition of Xnor.ai will potentially help it challenge the hyperscale cloud providers, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, all of which are focused on harnessing the benefits of AI and edge computing, and which compete against Apple in several product and service segments – including streaming media, virtual assistants, smart speakers, and tablets.

5G SD-WAN Paired with Slicing and Edge Could Deliver Fit for Purpose Networks

M. Rogers

Summary Bullets:

• Integrating a 5G underlay into an SD-WAN solution can help deliver network performance with more functionality to remote sites.

• 5G technology like network slicing and edge computing can deliver a fit for purpose networks to drive better application performance and improve security.

SD-WAN is increasingly important to branch networking, enabling remote sites to be spun up more quickly and cost effectively. 5G can integrate with SD-WAN to be considered as an active-active connection with a lower cost per byte and will be able to support the branch or remote sites with performance in terms of bandwidth and latency that can begin to compare with MPLS.

As 5G matures operators will be able to offer network slicing. Network slices can be created with 5G’s capabilities – enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB), massive machine type communications (mMTC), and ultra-reliable low latency communications (uRLLC) – to support applications that require these attributes. Instead of the traditional network services that are more static and often manually configured, enterprises have better ability to spin up/down services dynamically based on metrics such as bandwidth, latency, throughput, security, geography coverage, session, and reliability. This will enable operators to offer different slices with varying resources over a single mobile connection, optimizing the network based on application. 5G will be even more compelling once network slicing becomes automated and part of the self-service catalog.

What to Expect at MWC 2020 for the Enterprise

K. Weldon

Summary Bullets:

• MWC is nearly upon us and GlobalData consumer, infrastructure, and enterprise technology analysts are anticipating the major topics and themes to be showcased at this year’s event.

• While 5G and IoT have been the two big (and broad) themes at the last two shows, this year’s focus may be more granular and, hopefully, will be based more on real-world solutions than on hype, as these technologies start to mature.

Every year at MWC, analysts prepare for a diverse array of one on one meetings, booth tours, and occasionally inspiring keynotes and panel discussions, as well as a barrage of media and marketing events aimed at getting analysts excited about new products and services and turning these into “story” ideas.

Assuming that coronavirus doesn’t further disrupt the event by the time it is scheduled (February 24th-27th) it is fairly easy to anticipate what we will see there. Like the last two years, this year’s show is going to be focused a lot on 5G, on IoT, and on new and improved offerings for both consumers and enterprises, including devices, services, applications, and infrastructure solutions. But since this is the third year in a row that 5G and IoT are the major themes (which is not surprising as MWC remains a show about the mobile industry and these technologies dominate the news cycle), we are hoping that this year will be more about the real world and less about the hype. Clearly IoT has been around for a long time, but has been somewhat disappointing so far in terms of revenues to the provider ecosystem. 5G has barely gotten started, but is already dominant in the service and product discussions of mobile operators and equipment vendors.

IBM Makes a Leadership Shift

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

Summary Bullets:

• Rometty, IBM’s first female CEO, is retiring after four decades at the company

• Her retirement was widely anticipated: the company’s previous two CEOs retired at age 60; Rometty is 62.

Ginni Rometty is ending her eight-year tenure as IBM’s chief executive this year. IBM named Arvind Krishna, currently senior vice president of cloud and cognitive software, as the new CEO. Jim Whitehurst, formerly the CEO of IBM’s newly acquired Red Hat, will take over as president. Rometty will stay on as executive chairman until the end of 2020.