Alphaus Makes an Entry into Southeast Asia

Cloud Financial Management company Alphaus has made an entry into Singapore. The company plans to provide its suite of cloud financial management solutions to the fast-growing MSP Cloud Comrade in Singapore.

This move into Singapore will mark its journey of expansion in the Asia-Pacific region where it plans to pioneer in simplifying billing/spend management and tackling cloud waste for companies. Its SaaS products serve it as a catalyst to faster, greater, and better adoption and use of the cloud.

“The SaaS solutions from Alphaus for billing management and cloud cost optimization provide us with the requisite tools, information, and intelligence to achieve these seamlessly. These tools are integral to our operations and in use 24/7. Alphaus’ Wave and Ripple go a long way in helping maximize ROI, one of the key value propositions for moving to the cloud,” said Andy Waroma, Co-Founder & Co-Managing Director of Cloud Comrade.

Alphaus was founded in 2015 and is backed by DNX Ventures, NTT DoCoMo Ventures, Mitsubishi UFJ Capital, Archetype Ventures, Accord Ventures and 500 Startups. The company counts NTT Data, Nomura Research Institute (NRI), and ISI-Dentsu, as its clients. Headquartered in Japan, the company has a growing Global Delivery Center in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia comprising 10 team members. Alphaus is looking to further expand in the APAC and Oceania regions.

 

Rapid.Space Cloud Announces New Japan Zone

The European company Rapid.Space has launched its first point of presence in Japan in partnership with Nexedi KK. The company has a presence in over 200 points all around the world.

This new zone will provide its clients in Japan the advantages of Rapid.Space hyper open architecture including open source software, open hardware and transparent, open services.

Rapid.Space will be offering its flagship virtual machines "VPS" (195€/month for 256 GB RAM and 20 cores) and "VPSBrute" (495€/month for 1 TB RAM and 64 cores), as well as web acceleration via its global CDN (content delivery network) and SDN (software-defined networking) through this Japan zone. These offerings will help its Japanese clients meet their high computational requirements.

"We are very proud to be growing our global infrastructure with the presence of Rapid.Space cloud in Japan. It is a country with one of the most innovative and technologically advanced economies — but also one with significantly higher cloud infrastructure costs. Here, we hope to carve out our niche with our Rapid.Space high-performance, hyper open virtual machines and access to our global CDN and SDN while also adding more points of presence throughout Japan," said Jean-Paul Smets, CEO of Rapid.Space.

 

Deloitte Join Forces with Palo Alto Networks to Improve Multi-Cloud Security

Deloitte, which operates the topmost MSSP and Palo Alto Networks in a recent press meet, has announced a strategic partnership in order to deliver robust multi-cloud security solutions to enterprise and government organizations. The two companies have developed innovative solutions that Deloitte will be offering through its zero trust and cloud security orchestration automation and response services.

Deloitte will combine its most innovative cyber risk consulting services with Palo Alto Networks' security capabilities with this partnership. By doing this, Deloitte and Palo Alto Networks can help their joint customers simplify the most critical security infrastructure and get the most value out of their cybersecurity investments. Palo Alto Networks will use its Prisma Cloud solution for cloud security posture management (CSPM) to help organizations eliminate security threats and will protect the servers against alert fatigue.

The Deloitte-Palo Alto Networks integrated multi-cloud security automation, and orchestration solutions are currently available in the United States. Both the companies aim to deliver application security, data and privacy, and other cybersecurity solutions to various global organizations. They will be offering these services to organizations in financial services, government, and other industries.

 

Asian B2B Payments Platform Nium Raises $200+ Million in Series D

The leading B2B payments platform, Nium, has announced that it has secured $200+ million in its Series D round. The round was led by Riverwood Capita. Temasek, Visa, Vertex Ventures, Atinum Group of Funds, Beacon Venture Capital, Rocket Capital Investment, and other notable angel investors, including DoorDash executive, Gokul Rajaram; Chief Product Officer at FIS, Vicky Bindra; and, Co-Founder of Tribe Capital, Arjun Sethi, also participated in the round.

Nium has raised nearly $300 million to date. The fresh funding will be used by Nium to drive innovative product development, attract top industry talent, and acquire strategic technologies and companies. Also, the company will use the funds to expand its technical infrastructure and add new embedded fintech services.

“We started Nium with the humble goal of taking out regional complexity in cross-border payments,” said Prajit Nanu, Nium’s Co-founder and CEO. “Today, our sights are set higher. We believe we can be a global catalyst to increase global commerce, removing some of the payments friction which has traditionally held businesses back. The Nium platform simplifies the B2B payments experience by enabling critical financial services to be easily embedded – helping today’s local market players become tomorrow’s global giants.”

Nium provides access to the world’s payment infrastructure to its users through its API. Nium users can send money in seven currencies and issue cards in over 40 countries.

 

Appian Unveils Japan Regional Office

Appian has announced the opening of its new office in Japan. The new Appian office in Japan will be spearheaded by Shinsaku Hashimoto. Under his leadership, Appian will expand its presence in Japan. Appian’s Low-Code Automation platform will help improve the value of the Japanese corporate brands and the transparency and intelligent automation of the public institutions in the country.

Appian is known to deliver complete automation, uniting business process management (BPM), robotic process automation (RPA), and artificial intelligence (AI) in a single workflow. Through its offerings the company simplifies workflow design.

Gartner predicts that the low-code market is set to grow by 21% in FY2021.

“We are excited to deepen our ties with Japan and its leading companies,” said Shinsaku Hashimoto. “Appian’s global customers trust us to accelerate and improve their most important business processes and automations, which helps them respond more quickly to change.”

Appian is collaborating with global partners including Wipro in Japan.  This partnership with Wipro will focus on a unique solution to mitigate End User Computing (EUC) risks for financial services institutions through a EUC remediation platform. Further, Appian is also partnering with Ridgelinez Co., Ltd., to help Japanese organizations accelerate process visualization, intelligent automation, and governance enhancement. Appian Japan will also work with Pkutech Co., Ltd. to support digital transformation that unifies BPM, AI, and RPA for Japan’s largest companies.

 

Dish, AT&T signs new wireless network deal worth $5 Billion

Dish Network Corp, in a recent press meet, has stated that it has signed a multi-year deal worth $5 billion to make AT&T Inc. the primary network services partner for its wireless customers. It is a 10-year deal in which AT&T will provide voice, data, and messaging services to the customers with Dish-owned mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) Boost Mobile, Ting, and Republic Wireless.

The MVNOs do not own any networks, but they can rent capacity from established operators to sell their wireless and 5G network services to their clients and customers. Dish's retail wireless customers throughout the United States will be able to get access to voice and data roaming services on AT&T's network.

Many other telecom firms in the US are spending billions to ramp up their 5G infrastructure to provide faster wireless and data services with better coverage, as there is an increased demand due to the global pandemic-led shift to remote working and online learning. Dish has over 8.89 million retail wireless subscribers based on its last quarterly earnings report, whereas AT&T has more than 186 million mobile subscribers.

 

Byju’s buys Great Learning for $600 Million to expand its EdTech Services

India's leading digital learning platform Byju's has brought professional training and higher education platform Great Learning for $600 million to accelerate an acquisition spree to expand its EdTech offerings globally. This cash-and-stock purchase marks an entry to the higher education segment for Byju's. The company stated that the Singapore-based Great Learning would receive certain payments based on its future performance, and Byju's will add $400 million more to boost the unit's growth.

India's most valuable startup aims to combine its technology with Great Learning's professional courses in design and cloud computing. The pandemic has boosted online education popularity as students and professionals are now seeking to upgrade their skills while schools and offices have shuttered. With this, Byju's is seizing an opportunity to create a very large EdTech company for the world.

To date, Byju's had 100 million registered students and 6.5 million paid subscribers on its eponymous learning app. The company's courses solve real-world problems through a practical approach, in contrast to traditional learning in universities. Great Learning works with universities in India, including Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

 

Multi-cloud strategy is helping businesses see beyond Microsoft and Amazon

In the digital world we live in, many companies tend to treat Microsoft Corp. and Amazon.com Inc. as their only options while implementing cloud computing. However, in recent times, IT managers are starting to look beyond and realized that there are various other options too in the market, and the competition is pretty heavy in this segment. Analysts are speculating that the governments and businesses are now signing up with different providers, pitting the vendors against each other to bring down the costs.

Many other providers like Oracle Corp, Google, and IBM Corp are getting a chance due to the shift even though Microsoft and Amazon hold the lion’s share in the market. Experian PLC, a popular name in the credit-reporting segment, made its move to the cloud in 2014 with AWS. However, the company has since then availed services from other providers like Oracle, Microsoft, and Google. The global chief architect of Experian, Mervyn Lally, has stated that more options are good because they tend to add more competitive pressures on the providers. Popular companies like AT&T is also bringing together various providers under one network. A multi-cloud strategy is gaining immense traction in recent times because it can manage workloads better and cost-effectively.

 

 

HCL will support Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services during strategic launch

HCL Technologies, a popular name in the global tech segment, has recently made an announcement that it has become a launch partner for Microsoft’s recent effort Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services. HCL has stated that the company is bringing together various capabilities for the latest effort from Microsoft, and it will provide comprehensive compliance coverage along with multilayered security options. This is mainly being done to improve the collaboration between employees, improve productivity, provide a better experience for customers, modernize the core systems, and manage risk.

President of HCL’s Financial Services, Rahul Singh, has stated that the company is keen on participating in this initiative is mainly due to the fact that it will allow Ideapreneurs of HCL to make their domain expertise in a hyperscale foundation that is futuristic. HCL’s PowerBanking product will make use of the available features of  Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services. This provides better comprehensive scenarios for the customers of retail banks. Bill Borden, Corporate VP of Microsoft’s Worldwide Financial Services, has stated that their companies play a crucial role in promoting the digital transformation goals of their customers. The company is looking forward to making use of its expertise in the retail banking segment to promote innovation for growth.

 

 

Alphabet Launches Brand New ‘Moonshot’ for Robotics Software

Google's parent Alphabet recently has launched a new "moonshot" project to develop software for robotics, which can be used in a wide range of industries. The new unit, Intrinsic, will very soon become an independent Alphabet company to power their industrial partners to advance their work and to help them make everything from solar panels to cars. Also, Intrinsic is working to improve industrial robotics' creative and economic potential for several businesses, entrepreneurs, and developers.

Intrinsic emerged from Alphabet X and has launched the "moonshot" project that helps self-driving car division Waymo and life sciences group Verily. Intrinsic is currently focusing on supporting a shift towards a more sustainable and equitable way of manufacturing and thereby facilitating low-cost production. The company is looking for partners in the automotive, electronics, and health care sectors who are already using industrial robotics.

Recent analysis and statistics show that currently, just 10 countries manufacture 70 percent of the world's goods. Meaning most things are made far away from their end consumers driving global transport emissions, and many countries and businesses miss out on economic opportunities. Intrinsic will overcome these challenges by making manufacturing easy and efficient.