BizTech Brief #19 - 2016 Summary

Summary of 2016

This year has had many big announcements within the IT industry. This was my first full year within IT and I personally was amazed at how many product updates, acquisitions, announcements and also hiccups there are within IT. This BizTech Brief issue is a brief summary of the biggest news (in my opinion) from the past 12 months. 

Windows Server 2016

In mid-October, Microsoft made their biggest release of the year, as they released Windows Server 2016.

Windows Server 2016 includes built-in breach resistance to help thwart attacks on your systems and meet compliance goals. Even if someone finds a way into your environment, the layers of security built into Windows Server 2016 limit the damage they can cause and help detect suspicious activity

Microsoft is optimising Windows Server 2016 for innovation in the cloud, and optimising System Center 2016 for management across private and public cloud environments. Microsoft is unlocking tremendous new value – from efficiencies in cloud app development and software-defined infrastructure, to solution cost savings across storage and networking investments. Windows Server 2016 brings cloud inspired capabilities to your datacenter, giving customers the platform they need to drive competitive value. Advances in compute, networking, storage, and security give customers added flexibility to meet changing business requirements. Modern application platform features, including Windows Server Containers, increase speed and agility. 

Dell completes largest merger in tech history

On September 7th, almost a year after the deal was first publicly announced, Dell completed it’s $65 Billion acquisition of EMC. This was a historic moment for Dell and EMC and for the Tech industry as it was described as the biggest merger in the history of Tech. 

Micheal Dell, CEO of Dell Technologies stated ‘With the supply chain that we have and the go-to-market strength and the scale, we feel very well positioned both in the new areas of technology and in the existing areas of technology today’. This acquisition has meant that Dell are now a dominator within the data centre infrastructure and cloud computing sector and Dell EMC now aims to be a ‘one-stop shop’ for information technology sold to businesses. 

VMware Services now available on Amazon Web Services

During the annual VMworld US conference VMware announced many product updates and releases. The big news during the 2016 conference was that VMware services would now be available on Amazon Web Services. This means that customers will now be able to run any application across vSphere-based private, public and hybrid cloud environments.

This service will be powered by VMware Cloud Foundation and will enable customers to rapidly deploy secure, enterprise-grade cloud based resources. The result is a seamless service that works both on-premises private clouds and advanced AWS services.

Yahoo suffers security breach not once, but twice

This year it seemed to be a trend that many large organisations reported security breaches within their business. This year Yahoo announced that in 2014 they attacked and lost around 500 million customer’s data and information. However, Yahoo had another stroke of bad luck when they announced (in Dec 2016) they had suffered an attack in August 2013 which exposed data of over 1 billion users. This is the largest security breach known in any company.

This second announcement was almost detrimental to the future of Yahoo as it threatened a deal that was in place for Verizon to acquire Yahoo for $4.8 Billion. However towards the end of the year it seemed Verizon were still looking to move forward with the acquisition.

Microsoft acquires the largest professional networking platform

In June 2016 Microsoft announced a deal that they were acquiring the world’s largest professional network, Linkedin for $2.6Billion. The acquisition was finalised on December 8th and the Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella stated that the joining of the two companies will ultimately "help professionals transform how they work, realise new career opportunities and connect in new ways."

Linkedin has over 400 Million users and Microsoft believe that this information in conjunction with their Office 365 applications and Dynamic CRM applications, can help businesses to network wider and develop contacts.