Microsoft announced that it is expanding its partnership with Dell Technologies to provide customers with a native, supported and certified VMware experience on Microsoft Azure. The deal patches up a dispute the companies had over Microsoft running its own software in Azure to enable VMware virtualization.
Now users can run, manage and secure applications across VMware environments and Microsoft Azure with a common operating framework. Dell, which owns a majority stake in VMware, had partnered with Microsoft to run Windows on Dell PCs, and that has relationship has been expanded to include VMware.
VMware has also entered the Microsoft 365 ecosystem to extend the capabilities of Intune and Windows Virtual Desktop. This will be available later this year.
In addition to modern application development, the combination can also be used for datacenter reduction or expansions, disaster recovery and business continuity, according to Microsoft.
Qtum announces developer tools in Google Cloud partnership
Qtum, an open-source smart contract platform, unveiled blockchain developer tools in partnership with Google Cloud. Developers and non-technical users can launch nodes and build on the Qtum blockchain with the free tools.
“Google Cloud is the perfect partner to help us make the blockchain ecosystem simpler and more intuitive. Where launching a node was once an intensive and complex process, Qtum’s new developer suite introduces helpful shortcuts and tools to make it faster and easier,” said Miguel Palencia, the CIO of Qtum.
The Qtum developer toolkit, which includes Qtum Core, a Solidity Compiler, Qmix IDE, Solar (smart contracts deployment tool), Qt-dev libraries and more to develop dApps, can be downloaded here.
Privitar report: organizations not trusted with data privacy
Data privacy software company Privitar has released a report that revealed that consumers overwhelmingly lack trust in public and private sector organizations to protect their data.
Notable findings state only 21% of consumers trust social media companies to protect their data and 81% of consumers said they want more control over when they choose to share their personal data with businesses. Three-quarters don’t trust industry claims of transparency.
The research, which surveyed 5,128 consumer respondents and 751 business respondents in the US, UK and France, found that healthcare was most trusted at 47% while social media was lowest at 21% among all industries.
“These latest research findings reaffirm our belief that there is an urgent need for both trusted privacy-protection measures and much greater transparency in how data insights are used. We must always be cognizant that data points and statistics relate to people – to individuals with personal lives and a right to self-determination,” said Jason du Preez, Privitar’s CEO.
Puppet upgrades infrastructure automation portfolio
Puppet announced enhancements to its infrastructure automation portfolio that improves scalability.
“Organizations need a solution that is extensible — one that complements their current automation efforts and helps them scale beyond individuals to multiple teams,” said Matt Waxman, head of products at Puppet. “Our latest product capabilities meet people where they are and provides a clear roadmap to expand automation across their organizations.”
Puppet Enterprise 2019.1 includes an enhanced integration with Bolt, the company’s open source, agentless task runner. New capabilities in Continuous Delivery for Puppet Enterprise includes new Impact Analysis, Module Delivery Pipeline and simplified Puppet Deployments capabilities.
