With the big three — Amazon, Microsoft and Google — reporting earnings this week, we learned that the cloud infrastructure market topped $57 billion for the quarter, up $11 billion over the same period last year.

That adds up to 24% growth, according to data from Synergy Research. It might not be the growth we are used to seeing from this market, but at a time of economic instability, it continues to perform remarkably well.

Still, it is a step back from the days when we saw growth steadily in the 30s. It’s even down from last quarter when the market grew 29%. So it’s fair to say that growth is slowing in an area that’s seen explosive expansion over the last several years.

Synergy chief analyst John Dinsdale attributed this slowdown to several factors. First of all, there’s the law of large numbers, which states that as a market size increases, growth decreases. When you combine that with a strong dollar affecting earnings outside the U.S. and a shrinking market in China, it is having an impact.

“It is a strong testament to the benefits of cloud computing that despite two major obstacles to growth, the worldwide market still expanded by 24% from last year. Had exchange rates remained stable and had the Chinese market remained on a more normal path, then the growth rate percentage would have been well into the thirties,” Dinsdale said in a statement.

The other news here is that of the big three, Google Cloud was the only one to gain share, up a tick to 11%, as the work that CEO Thomas Kurian is doing to build the business continues to pay dividends. Meanwhile, Amazon held steady as the market leader at 34%, good for around $19 billion for the quarter, with Microsoft in second at 21% with revenue of almost $12 billion. Google’s 11% came in at around $6 billion.

But that doesn’t tell the whole story as Amazon’s cloud growth slowed to 27.5% in the quarter, down from 33% growth the prior quarter.

As the chart below showing third-quarter data back to 2017 illustrates, the market has grown in leaps and bounds over the five-year period, from just over $10 billion to almost $60 billion.

Image Credits: Synergy Research

It’s also worth noting that only Google beat analysts’ expectations for cloud revenue, while both AWS and Microsoft came up short of their predictions. The usual caveats apply here around numbers matching publicly reported amounts. Synergy counts public platform, infrastructure and hosted private cloud services in its numbers. Total revenue reported by individual companies may also include other elements, which Synergy doesn’t count.

The fact is that in spite of economic headwinds, the market remains surprisingly strong, and while companies may be looking for places to cut, as we wrote back in June, it’s not that easy to reduce cloud spending because it’s fundamental to most businesses these days. Most companies born in the cloud aren’t going to suddenly build a data center, and those in the midst of shifting to the cloud need to keep moving workloads because of all the benefits the cloud brings around business agility.

Companies looking to cut spending can and should be looking for waste, but regardless, the cloud market will likely continue to produce decent numbers, even if the economics force down overall revenue and slow growth in the short term.

We usually include Canalys data as a means of comparison in these reports, but the data was not available yet at the time we published. As soon as Canalys publishes its data, we will update the article.

As overall cloud infrastructure market growth dips to 24%, AWS reports slowdown by Ron Miller originally published on TechCrunch

It’s been four years to the day since Microsoft closed its acquisition of GitHub, which at the time was mostly a code repository. Today’s GitHub looks quite a bit different, now that it added CI/CD tools with GitHub Actions and Codespaces as an online editor and compute platform, as well as various security tools and more. But according to GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke, who took over from Nat Friedman a year ago, Microsoft has very much allowed GitHub to do what it does best.

“We kept GitHub GitHub and it remains this independent entity within Microsoft similar to LinkedIn,” he told me. “I think we did a fantastic job with doing this and kept GitHub in its original form. You don’t see more Microsoft in GitHub.com than you saw four years ago and that has helped us to continue to grow and we’re very excited where this is going.”

He noted that GitHub has continued to receive the same support from Microsoft’s leadership team, including CEO Satya Nadella, over the years. “Microsoft has not forgotten why we did the deal in the first place and what the important pillars of the deal are. The first and foremost principle is to put developers first. And that is what we do every day,” Dohmke said.

But, he also acknowledged that Microsoft is a big company and that people sometimes have their own ideas of what the Microsoft/GitHub relationship should be like. So far, though, it seems like the leadership on both sides has been able to keep those ideas at bay.

Dohmke noted that GitHub has obviously benefited from Microsoft’s sales prowess, which helped it land a number of big accounts. That surely also helped the company get to the $1 billion annual recurrent revenue it announced yesterday. Dohmke said that he believes GitHub would’ve likely reached this milestone as an independent company, too.

“I’m generally an optimistic person,” he said. “So any company can get there if they just stay focused on their mission. The biggest challenge that companies have once they get to a certain size is focus.”

Today’s GitHub is obviously in a different position than the GitHub of four years ago. Its product portfolio, for one, has expanded quite a bit with projects like CodeSpaces and, most recently, Copilot. “I think I will have achieved my mission as CEO if we generate happy developers — happy developers who enjoy doing their job and that don’t see security, compliance and accessibility as a burden but as part of what makes them happy and what gets them to perform in their life,” Dohmke said. And projects like this are clearly a part of that.

“I think, what we’re doing here is we’re disrupting ourselves with AI, with Copilot and with Codespaces, he added. “Those are all new investments that are away from the traditional GitHub — the old-school GitHub that had repos and issues and wikis — and keep pushing the boundary of what we believe is possible.”

But, he also stressed, this isn’t just about big announcements and flashy events, but also focusing on the little fixes and features that may be just as important to keep developers happy. “I think that’s our superpower: that we can balance the tiny bits with big wins and the big disruptions to our own business.”

Four years after being acquired by Microsoft, GitHub keeps doing its thing by Frederic Lardinois originally published on TechCrunch

As part of its earnings call, Microsoft today announced a number of new data points for GitHub, the massively popular code repository service it acquired for $7.5 billion in 2018. According to Microsoft, GitHub now has an annual recurring revenue of $1 billion, up from a reported $200 to $300 million at the time of the acquisition.

The company also announced that the service now has over 90 million active users on the platform, up from 28 million when the acquisition closed and 73 million last November, when Thomas Dohmke replaced Nat Friedman as the service’s CEO.

This marks the first time Microsoft has shared any financial data about the service the acquisition closed.

“Since our acquisition, GitHub is now at $1 billion annual recurring revenue and GitHub’s developer-first ethos has never been stronger,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in today’s earnings call. “More than 90 million people now use the service to build software for any cloud, on any platform — up three times.”

For the most part, Microsoft let GitHub be GitHub since the acquisition closed. Early on, a lot of developers — and especially open source advocates — worried that Microsoft would change the way the service operated and reduce its free offerings in order to squeeze more money out of it. But instead, GitHub expanded its free service and has continued to embrace open source and open source developers. Meanwhile, projects like GitHub Copilot probably wouldn’t have been possible without the help of Microsoft. And while some users defected to GitLab and other services, the new users numbers speak for themselves.

Microsoft says GitHub now has a $1B ARR, 90M active users by Frederic Lardinois originally published on TechCrunch

There are plenty of reasons why Microsoft Edge is a great choice for professionals: its speed, security, and compatibility with Microsoft Office make it an ideal choice for business users. If you’re one of those who prefer Edge over other browsers, you might find more reasons to like it when you realize that it can do even more. Here, we list some of its most notable features and updates.

Browser tab sharing

Edge Workspaces is a new feature that enables teams to share browser tabs. This function makes it easier to share files and links within teams. Instead of giving members individual access to files and links, teams can simply save a single link on an Edge Workspace. This functionality will come in handy for teams that usually collaborate on projects and are bringing in new members to work on them.

Vertical Tabs

You’ll find Vertical Tabs to be a very useful feature if you often open numerous tabs at once. Instead of hovering over or clicking on a tab to see which page it’s on, you can easily find the tabs on the left edge of the browser where they’re much easier to see and manage. This makes opening and moving pinned tabs as well as creating new tabs much easier, so you never have to accidentally close or lose track of tabs again.

With the recent Microsoft Edge update, users will be able to conceal the horizontal title bar at the top of the screen, giving them more vertical space to work with. To enable Vertical Tabs, go to Settings > Appearance > Customize toolbar and toggle on “Hide title bar while in vertical tabs.”

Tab groups

Microsoft Edge allows you to categorize related tabs so you can better organize your web browser. For instance, you can group all project-related tabs together and designate another tab group for YouTube video watching.

To use tab groups, right-click on an open tab and select Add tab to a new group. Then, create a label and choose a color to identify the tab group. When the tab group is set up, you can add tabs to the group by clicking and dragging.

Collections

Collections allows you to gather information from different sites, then organize, export, or return to it at a later time.

To use Collections, click on the Collections button at the top-right corner of the screen and a pane will open on the right side of your browser window. You can then drag and drop web pages, text, images, videos, and other elements into a group, which you can then import into an Excel workbook or a Word document.

Tracking prevention

Whenever you visit a site, online trackers can collect information about your internet activity, including the pages you visit, the links you click on, your search history, and more. Companies can then use the data collected to target you with personalized advertisements and experiences.

The tracking prevention feature in Microsoft Edge is designed to keep you from being tracked by sites that you aren’t accessing directly. It’s enabled by default, and it gives you control over the types of third-party trackers to be detected and blocked, thereby enhancing your online privacy.

Typo protection

Users who type in the website on a browser’s address bar may sometimes misspell the website URL and be led to a fraudulent site. To prevent this, Microsoft Edge has introduced typo protection for website URLs, a security feature that many users will find most useful.

Password Monitor

Due to data breaches, millions of online personal credentials are frequently exposed and end up being sold on the dark web. To keep your online accounts safe from hackers, Microsoft developed the Password Monitor. When enabled, this feature notifies you if the credentials you’ve saved to autofill are on the dark web. It then prompts you to take action, allowing you to view a list of all the leaked credentials and then leading you to the respective sites to change your password.

Immersive Reader

Immersive Reader makes reading online easier and more accessible by removing clutter from the page and simplifying web page layouts. Built into the new Microsoft Edge, this feature also provides access to a variety of capabilities, including hearing text read aloud or adjusting the text size. This feature is specially designed for those who have dysgraphia and dyslexia.

Easy switching

You can download Microsoft Edge on your Windows, Mac, iOS, and/or Android device. What’s great is that you can easily copy or migrate your bookmarks, form-fill information, passwords, and basic settings to the new Microsoft Edge with just a single click.

To learn more about the latest features of Microsoft Edge and how to enjoy their benefits on your business computers, give us a call today.

There are a number of features in Microsoft Edge that makes it the perfect browser for business users. These include tab management, annotation tools, and a reading mode that strips away distractions and lets you focus. Plus, Edge is constantly being updated with new features and improvements to enhance user experience. In this article, we list some of the most useful features you’re probably not using.

Browser tab sharing

Edge Workspaces is a new feature that enables teams to share browser tabs. This function makes it easier to share files and links within teams. Instead of giving members individual access to files and links, teams can simply save a single link on an Edge Workspace. This functionality will come in handy for teams that usually collaborate on projects and are bringing in new members to work on them.

Vertical Tabs

You’ll find Vertical Tabs to be a very useful feature if you often open numerous tabs at once. Instead of hovering over or clicking on a tab to see which page it’s on, you can easily find the tabs on the left edge of the browser where they’re much easier to see and manage. This makes opening and moving pinned tabs as well as creating new tabs much easier, so you never have to accidentally close or lose track of tabs again.

With the recent Microsoft Edge update, users will be able to conceal the horizontal title bar at the top of the screen, giving them more vertical space to work with. To enable Vertical Tabs, go to Settings > Appearance > Customize toolbar and toggle on “Hide title bar while in vertical tabs.”

Tab groups

Microsoft Edge allows you to categorize related tabs so you can better organize your web browser. For instance, you can group all project-related tabs together and designate another tab group for YouTube video watching.

To use tab groups, right-click on an open tab and select Add tab to a new group. Then, create a label and choose a color to identify the tab group. When the tab group is set up, you can add tabs to the group by clicking and dragging.

Collections

Collections allows you to gather information from different sites, then organize, export, or return to it at a later time.

To use Collections, click on the Collections button at the top-right corner of the screen and a pane will open on the right side of your browser window. You can then drag and drop web pages, text, images, videos, and other elements into a group, which you can then import into an Excel workbook or a Word document.

Tracking prevention

Whenever you visit a site, online trackers can collect information about your internet activity, including the pages you visit, the links you click on, your search history, and more. Companies can then use the data collected to target you with personalized advertisements and experiences.

The tracking prevention feature in Microsoft Edge is designed to keep you from being tracked by sites that you aren’t accessing directly. It’s enabled by default, and it gives you control over the types of third-party trackers to be detected and blocked, thereby enhancing your online privacy.

Typo protection

Users who type in the website on a browser’s address bar may sometimes misspell the website URL and be led to a fraudulent site. To prevent this, Microsoft Edge has introduced typo protection for website URLs, a security feature that many users will find most useful.

Password Monitor

Due to data breaches, millions of online personal credentials are frequently exposed and end up being sold on the dark web. To keep your online accounts safe from hackers, Microsoft developed the Password Monitor. When enabled, this feature notifies you if the credentials you’ve saved to autofill are on the dark web. It then prompts you to take action, allowing you to view a list of all the leaked credentials and then leading you to the respective sites to change your password.

Immersive Reader

Immersive Reader makes reading online easier and more accessible by removing clutter from the page and simplifying web page layouts. Built into the new Microsoft Edge, this feature also provides access to a variety of capabilities, including hearing text read aloud or adjusting the text size. This feature is specially designed for those who have dysgraphia and dyslexia.

Easy switching

You can download Microsoft Edge on your Windows, Mac, iOS, and/or Android device. What’s great is that you can easily copy or migrate your bookmarks, form-fill information, passwords, and basic settings to the new Microsoft Edge with just a single click.

To learn more about the latest features of Microsoft Edge and how to enjoy their benefits on your business computers, give us a call today.

Microsoft Edge has numerous features that are perfect for business users. And with recent updates, Edge gives users even more reason to make it their default browser. Here’s a closer look at some of the best features of Microsoft’s powerful browser and how you can make the most out of them.

Browser tab sharing

Edge Workspaces is a new feature that enables teams to share browser tabs. This function makes it easier to share files and links within teams. Instead of giving members individual access to files and links, teams can simply save a single link on an Edge Workspace. This functionality will come in handy for teams that usually collaborate on projects and are bringing in new members to work on them.

Vertical Tabs

You’ll find Vertical Tabs to be a very useful feature if you often open numerous tabs at once. Instead of hovering over or clicking on a tab to see which page it’s on, you can easily find the tabs on the left edge of the browser where they’re much easier to see and manage. This makes opening and moving pinned tabs as well as creating new tabs much easier, so you never have to accidentally close or lose track of tabs again.

With the recent Microsoft Edge update, users will be able to conceal the horizontal title bar at the top of the screen, giving them more vertical space to work with. To enable Vertical Tabs, go to Settings > Appearance > Customize toolbar and toggle on “Hide title bar while in vertical tabs.”

Tab groups

Microsoft Edge allows you to categorize related tabs so you can better organize your web browser. For instance, you can group all project-related tabs together and designate another tab group for YouTube video watching.

To use tab groups, right-click on an open tab and select Add tab to a new group. Then, create a label and choose a color to identify the tab group. When the tab group is set up, you can add tabs to the group by clicking and dragging.

Collections

Collections allows you to gather information from different sites, then organize, export, or return to it at a later time.

To use Collections, click on the Collections button at the top-right corner of the screen and a pane will open on the right side of your browser window. You can then drag and drop web pages, text, images, videos, and other elements into a group, which you can then import into an Excel workbook or a Word document.

Tracking prevention

Whenever you visit a site, online trackers can collect information about your internet activity, including the pages you visit, the links you click on, your search history, and more. Companies can then use the data collected to target you with personalized advertisements and experiences.

The tracking prevention feature in Microsoft Edge is designed to keep you from being tracked by sites that you aren’t accessing directly. It’s enabled by default, and it gives you control over the types of third-party trackers to be detected and blocked, thereby enhancing your online privacy.

Typo protection

Users who type in the website on a browser’s address bar may sometimes misspell the website URL and be led to a fraudulent site. To prevent this, Microsoft Edge has introduced typo protection for website URLs, a security feature that many users will find most useful.

Password Monitor

Due to data breaches, millions of online personal credentials are frequently exposed and end up being sold on the dark web. To keep your online accounts safe from hackers, Microsoft developed the Password Monitor. When enabled, this feature notifies you if the credentials you’ve saved to autofill are on the dark web. It then prompts you to take action, allowing you to view a list of all the leaked credentials and then leading you to the respective sites to change your password.

Immersive Reader

Immersive Reader makes reading online easier and more accessible by removing clutter from the page and simplifying web page layouts. Built into the new Microsoft Edge, this feature also provides access to a variety of capabilities, including hearing text read aloud or adjusting the text size. This feature is specially designed for those who have dysgraphia and dyslexia.

Easy switching

You can download Microsoft Edge on your Windows, Mac, iOS, and/or Android device. What’s great is that you can easily copy or migrate your bookmarks, form-fill information, passwords, and basic settings to the new Microsoft Edge with just a single click.

To learn more about the latest features of Microsoft Edge and how to enjoy their benefits on your business computers, give us a call today.

It’s Microsoft Ignite this week and while a lot of the announcements this week target the kinds of IT professionals and admins who really need more deployment options for Azure Kubernetes Service through Azure Arc, the company is also announcing a few user-facing updates to its Edge browser.

The most important of these is likely Edge Workspaces, a new feature (currently in preview) that will allow teams to share browser tabs. Microsoft argues that this feature can be useful when bringing on new team members to an existing project. Instead of sharing lots of links and files, the team can simply share a single like to an Edge Workspace (which will then likely consist of lots of links and files, but hey, at least it’s just one link to share). As the project evolves, the tabs are updated in real time. I guess that’s a use case. We’ve seen our share of extensions that do similar things, none of which ever get very popular. Meanwhile, teams share these links and files in other ways (think Confluent, etc.).

Image Credits: Microsoft

On the security front, Microsoft is bringing typo protection for website URLs to the browser, promising to protect “users from accidentally navigating to online fraud sites after misspelling the website address by suggesting the website that the user intended.” Nothing too complicated here, and a useful feature for sure.

Also new is an opt-in enhanced security mode that automatically applies the most conservative settings when you surf to unfamiliar websites. It disables just-in-time JavaScript compilation, for example. The idea here is that users and admins can set off often a user has to visit a site before it’s considered ‘familiar’ and set the level of security accordingly. That won’t help if a familiar site is hacked and somebody introduces malicious code, but it should prevent quite a few security issues.

Finally, Microsoft is also introducing a number of new accessibility features. Edge now features live captions when audio is playing (taking a cue from Google’s playbook on Android) and an enhanced narrator experience now provides more contextual information about fields and buttons for visually impaired users. With this update, screen readers can now also read Edge’s Instant Answers for queries like “Seattle weather.” And with page colors, users will soon be able to change — you guess it — page colors to improve readability and color contrast.

Microsoft’s Edge browser gets shared Workspaces, new security features and more by Frederic Lardinois originally published on TechCrunch

The UK’s competition watchdog has confirmed it will move to an in-depth investigation of the Microsoft-Activision $68.7BN gaming mega-deal, a couple of weeks after it signalled concerns about the proposed acquisition.

Earlier this month, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said it was worried Microsoft could harm rivals in the gaming industry by restricting access to popular Activision titles.

It also expressed concerns about the impact on development of the more nascent cloud-gaming market.

“The CMA has referred the anticipated acquisition by Microsoft Corporation of Activision Blizzard, Inc. for an in-depth investigation, on the basis that, on the information currently available to it, it is or may be the case that this Merger may be expected to result in a substantial lessening of competition within a market or markets in the United Kingdom,” the regulator wrote in an update on the case today.

It also confirmed the (four) individuals appointed to the inquiry group. The so-called phase 2 CMA investigation will involve this independent panel examining concerns raised by the preliminary probe — a detailed assessment that could take months or even over half a year.

Other regulators reviewing the Microsoft-Activision acquisition include the U.S.’ FTC.

Despite close regulatory attention to the proposed mega-deal, Activision suggested earlier this month that it still expects the acquisition to close in mid 2023. While Microsoft expressed willingness to work with regulators to allay their concerns.

Game on for UK’s deeper antitrust probe of Microsoft-Activision by Natasha Lomas originally published on TechCrunch

End-to-end encrypted email provider Tutanota finally got a fix last month from Microsoft for a registration issue that had affected users who were trying to sign up to the tech giant’s cloud-based collaboration platform, Teams, using a Tutanota email address — but only after complaining about the problem publicly.

TechCrunch picked up its complaint last month.

In a blog post confirming the resolution yesterday, Tutanota writes that Microsoft got in touch with it “within a week” after media outlets such as this one raised the issue with Microsoft. It had been complaining about the issue through Microsoft’s official support channels since January 2021 — without any resolution. But after the oxygen of publicity arrived the problem was swiftly fixed last month. Fancy that!

While it’s (finally) a happy ending for Tutanota, its co-founder Matthias Pfau makes the salient point that this situation remains an entirely unsatisfactory one for SMEs faced with the market muscle of powerful platforms which have — at best — a competitive disinterest in swiftly attending to access issues and other problems affecting smaller businesses that need fair interfacing with their platforms to ensure they can properly serve their own customers.

“While the issue has been resolved pretty quickly by Microsoft after the right people contacted us following the media attention, we still believe that this example shows why we need better antitrust regulations. It is not fair that a Big Tech company can ignore a small company’s request to fix an issue that effects its users for months, and is only interested in fixing the issue after it received bad publicity because of this,” he writes.

“After all, not every small company has the option to go public, possibly because the media will decide their issue is not worth talking about or because they simply do not have established media contacts and find it hard to get through to the right people.

“While we are very happy that this particular issue has now been fixed for all Tutanota users, we still believe that there must be a better way for companies to contact Big Tech and request fixes from them – one where they can not simply answer to the request with “Sorry, fixing the issue you are having is not feasible for us.”

Platform fairness is one issue that the European Commission has been attending to in recent years — but apparently not with enough of a flex to ensure all SMEs are being treated attentively by cloud giants.

Tutanota is not alone in experiencing issues with Microsoft’s support response to its complaint. Another SME, the browser maker Vivaldi, got in touch following our report on Tutanota’s issue — saying users of a webmail service it offers had reported a similar issue on Azure, another Microsoft cloud computing platform. It told us that users of its Vivaldi.net email service had been given information — “and possibly access to” — other vivaldi.net users’ Azure accounts. Which sounds, well, suboptimal.

“The reason is that vivaldi.net is handled as a corporate domain, not an email provider domain. Microsoft has refused to fix the problem, claiming it is by design,” a spokesperson for the company explained last month, adding: “We have also had similar reports about other services.”

“It’s frustrating that in 2022 to find Microsoft blatantly continues to engage in anti-competitive practices,” they added.

After TechCrunch raised Vivaldi’s complaint with Microsoft, the SME got back in touch with us to say — surprise! — it had suddenly had fresh attention from the cloud giant to its complaint… “We are having a meeting with them this week. So they have woken up after two years. Let’s see what comes out of this,” its spokesperson told us a few weeks ago.

We followed up this month to see if Vivaldi has also had a resolution — but at the time of writing we’re still waiting on a response.

We also asked for an update from Microsoft but haven’t heard back yet. But the tech giant previously told us: “We’re in touch with Vivaldi.net to look into their concerns around data and will take action as needed to ensure that customer data is handled properly and any issues are addressed appropriately.”

One thing is clear: These two complaints are just the tip of the iceberg. (Just the social media chatter around our Tutanota reporting includes a similar complaint about IBM Cloud — and another that Microsoft also blocks self hosted emails from its virtual private servers “without any sort of explanation, so you can conveniently get an email address from them as well”, with the complainant accusing its business of “always been forced dominance” — for e.g.)

What’s a whole lot less clear is whether or not current (and incoming) EU regulations are up to the task of protecting SMEs from cloud giants’ power to be totally disinterested in resolving platform problems that affect smaller competitors.

Back in 2019, the European Union agreed a regulation the bloc’s lawmakers claimed was pioneering in this regard — aimed at tackling unfair platform business practices, with the Commission saying they wanted to outlaw “some of the most unfair practices” and create a benchmark for transparency. The regulation, which came into force just over two years ago, included a requirement that platforms set up new avenues for dispute resolution by mandating they have an internal complaint-handling system to assist business users.

However the EU’s platform-to-business (P2B) trading regulation, which was targeted at so-called “online intermediation services” which provide services to business users that to enable them to reach consumers, had a heavy focus on ecommerce platforms, search engines, app stores and rental websites etc (and barely any mention of cloud computing). So it’s not clear whether services like Microsoft Teams and Azure are intended to fall in scope — despite “online intermediation” itself being a broad concept.  

If the regulation is supposed to apply to cloud services, the poor experiences of SMEs like Tutanota — having core issues affecting their users essentially ignored via official support channels — indicates something isn’t working. So, at very least, there’s a failure of enforcement going on here. The lack of clarity around whether the P2B regulation even applies in such cases also obviously doesn’t help. So there does seem to be a communication gap — if not an outright loophole.

The EU has further digital regulations incoming that are squarely targeted at ruling how platforms do business with others, with the goal of ensuring open and contestable markets via proactive enforcement of fair terms and conditions. Most notably the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which will apply to the most powerful “gatekeeper” platforms.

However this regulation is not yet in force — application will start next year — and it will require individual gatekeepers and “core platform services” to be designated before requirements apply, which will take many months in each case. So, well, it’s not going to be a quick fix.

Additionally, there have also been some concerns about whether the new regime will robustly apply to cloud giants productivity and enterprise services to other businesses. So some legal fuzziness around cloud services may persist.

Asked if it’s confident the DMA will be an antitrust game-changer, a spokeswoman for Tutanota was doubtful it will prove a silver bullet to resolve the baked-in power imbalance between platforms and SMEs. “A better way to resolve such issues is needed,” she told us. “Possibly the DMA will address this but consequences in cases of negligence on the gatekeeper’s side must be in place; otherwise it will be easy for them to continue to ignore small competitors.

“As long as Big Tech companies do not have to fear any kind of consequence — be it bad publicity or drastic fines — they will not be interested to invest into fixing issues of competitors’ users — which from their business perspective is understandable. This is exactly why we need better legislation in this regard.”

“We expect the DMA to be a good first step into this direction, though it will probably not address all issues,” she added.

The Commission was contacted with questions on these issues but at the time of writing it had not responded. We’ll update this report if we hear back.

On cloud platforms and SME antitrust complaints by Natasha Lomas originally published on TechCrunch

In 2022, the amount of corporate data stored in the cloud (versus on-premise servers) reached 60%, a signal of how the world of enterprise IT is evolving. But lest you think that cloud=modern=more efficient, when it comes to security, the picture is more complicated: multiple silos mean multiple challenges to visibility, creating security vulnerabilities and resulting in half of all data breaches last year happening in the cloud, according to IBM.

Now a startup called Dig Security, which is building security tools specifically to address that complexity, has raised investment that speaks to the demand it’s seeing.

The company — which assesses and the provides real-time monitoring for clients’ data assets sitting multi-cloud-based environments — has raised $34 million, a Series A investment that it’s going to be using to continue expanding its platform.

The startup’s focus today, said Dan Benjamin, CEO and co-founder, is on data in public rather than private clouds. It integrates with all of the major providers — Azure, AWS, Google Cloud — as well as big names in data warehousing like Snowflake and Databricks, and the services that it provides include data security posture management (DSPM), data loss prevention (DLP), and data detection and response (DDR).

The investment is being led by SignalFire, with Felicis Ventures, Okta Ventures and previous backer, cybersecurity-specialist incubator and investor Team8, also participating. Dig emerged from stealth and announced its $11 million seed round only in May of this year. The reason for the rapid follow-up is that the seed round had actually closed (and been used) some time before it was actually announced, said Benjamin; and because the emergence from stealth found the company getting a lot of inbound contacts from customers and investors.

Okta Ventures, the strategic investment arm of the identity and access management giant, falls into both of those categories: Dig has a strong integration with Okra’s sign-in management products to both monitor potentially malicious activity and also to help set up stronger protections to head off bad actors before they take hold.

Dig’s founders — Benjamin, Ido Azran (VP of R&D) and Gad Akuka CTO) — are repeat founders who have track records at companies like Microsoft, Google, Mimecast, SAP and more, and as Benjamin explained it, there is a strong argument for a big third-party player to provide security services for cloud data, simply because it’s grown up to be a huge, but very fragmented market with no proprietary ‘owner’: because of the prevalence of micro services, organizations rarely use only one service like AWS or Azure; and data is run over multiple instances.

“A typical organization has 30 different types of data stores across tens of thousands of instances,” Benjamin said. Even a smaller organization might have 10 different types of data stores.

This means that while a cloud company might develop strong cloud security product, we are still some ways away from those products working effectively across data regardless of where it is.

I should also point out that Benjamin also predicted that approach would likely change over time: he worked in corporate development at Microsoft and knows that the appetite among big players like these will be to see how cloud data security companies — like Dig — will evolve over the coming years and potentially snap one up to bolt on that kind of functionality.

For now, however, companies like Dig have a clear opportunity to make some traction in the market.

“Dig is uniquely positioned to help make DDR the standard for data security,” said Nir Polak, venture partner at SignalFire, who himself has a strong cyber profile as the founder and chairman of Exabeam. “The rise of remote work and the increasingly high stakes of cloud attacks require real-time data security capabilities – too many organizations remain exposed to the risks that lurk behind the public cloud. SignalFire is thrilled to support Dig as the only vendor in the cloud data security market that provides real-time data protection across any cloud and any data store.”

It is not the only player here: a number of others are also moving in on the opportunity to provide more holistic security approaches to bridge the fragmentation of most enterprise environments. Others that have raised big funds include Laminar, HYCU, vArmour, JupiterOne. Bigger tech companies that are making acquisitions to bring more multi-cloud management and security capabilities into their platforms include Google acquiring Siemplify, and F5 buying NGINX.

Dig scoops up $34M to tackle the fragmented world of cloud data security by Ingrid Lunden originally published on TechCrunch

Seeing ads while browsing the internet is normal, and many people are used to it. But Windows 11 users may be surprised to see ads right on their local computer. Not to worry, though, as there are several solutions to that problem. Get rid of Windows 11 ads permanently by following these steps.

Turn off suggested content in Settings

You may find Microsoft subtly suggesting some of its products or services to you while you use certain built-in apps. If you don’t like that, you can disable this feature by going to Settings > Privacy & security > General. Then, toggle off the switch button beside Show me suggested content in the Settings app. With this feature off, the Settings app will stop displaying suggested content.

Disable system notifications

Microsoft has programmed Windows 11 to send push notifications of tips and tricks that introduce users to more of the company’s products. If you find these suggestions random or unwelcome, you can disable them entirely.

Go to Settings > System > Notifications. Then, uncheck two boxes: the one beside Offer suggestions on how I can set up my device and the one beside Get tips and suggestions when I use Windows. This will prevent the system from showing notifications about certain Windows features or offers.

Remove ads on the Lock screen

Your Lock screen may display ads from time to time depending on your background settings. To prevent this, simply go to Settings > Personalization > Lock screen and choose either the Picture or the Slideshow option under Personalize your background. Then, scroll down the page and deselect the “Get fun facts, tips, tricks, and more on your lock screen” option. Your Lock screen should now be ad-free.

Uninstall pins from the Start menu

Microsoft uses the pin feature on the Start menu to place ads for its own products and services or other apps found on the Microsoft Store. The apps typically vary depending on the user’s region, but some of the common ones include Prime Video and Adobe Express. They’re designed to be highly visible to lure users into clicking and subscribing to them.

To remove these pins, open Start, right-click the app you want to get rid of, then select Uninstall. 

Keep File Explorer ad-free

Microsoft also uses File Explorer to promote certain services like OneDrive. To stop getting such ads in File Explorer, open File Explorer and click the three-dotted menu on the command bar. Choose Options, then go to the View tab. Look for the “Show sync provider notifications” option, then deselect the checkbox beside it. This turns off advertisements in File Explorer.

This blog is a good starting point if you want to learn about Windows 11. But if you need something a little more advanced, our managed IT services experts are second to none. Get in touch with one of our specialists today to maximize Windows 11’s full potential.

If you’re using Windows 11, you might have seen ads and notifications pop up in unusual places such as File Explorer or the Start menu. This can be both distracting and annoying, and it can even hinder your productivity. Fortunately, there are several ways to get rid of these ads. Read on to learn more.

Turn off suggested content in Settings

You may find Microsoft subtly suggesting some of its products or services to you while you use certain built-in apps. If you don’t like that, you can disable this feature by going to Settings > Privacy & security > General. Then, toggle off the switch button beside Show me suggested content in the Settings app. With this feature off, the Settings app will stop displaying suggested content.

Disable system notifications

Microsoft has programmed Windows 11 to send push notifications of tips and tricks that introduce users to more of the company’s products. If you find these suggestions random or unwelcome, you can disable them entirely.

Go to Settings > System > Notifications. Then, uncheck two boxes: the one beside Offer suggestions on how I can set up my device and the one beside Get tips and suggestions when I use Windows. This will prevent the system from showing notifications about certain Windows features or offers.

Remove ads on the Lock screen

Your Lock screen may display ads from time to time depending on your background settings. To prevent this, simply go to Settings > Personalization > Lock screen and choose either the Picture or the Slideshow option under Personalize your background. Then, scroll down the page and deselect the “Get fun facts, tips, tricks, and more on your lock screen” option. Your Lock screen should now be ad-free.

Uninstall pins from the Start menu

Microsoft uses the pin feature on the Start menu to place ads for its own products and services or other apps found on the Microsoft Store. The apps typically vary depending on the user’s region, but some of the common ones include Prime Video and Adobe Express. They’re designed to be highly visible to lure users into clicking and subscribing to them.

To remove these pins, open Start, right-click the app you want to get rid of, then select Uninstall. 

Keep File Explorer ad-free

Microsoft also uses File Explorer to promote certain services like OneDrive. To stop getting such ads in File Explorer, open File Explorer and click the three-dotted menu on the command bar. Choose Options, then go to the View tab. Look for the “Show sync provider notifications” option, then deselect the checkbox beside it. This turns off advertisements in File Explorer.

This blog is a good starting point if you want to learn about Windows 11. But if you need something a little more advanced, our managed IT services experts are second to none. Get in touch with one of our specialists today to maximize Windows 11’s full potential.