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Contributed

5G Edge & Security Deployment Evolution, Trends & Insights

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The Heavy Reading 2022 5G Network Strategies Operator Survey provides insight into how 5G networks may evolve as operators and the wider mobile ecosystem continue to invest in 5G technology. The article will discuss some of the findings for 5G and edge computing, and conclude with a perspective centred around 5G security.

Drivers for 5G edge deployments

Current edge deployments are being driven by the healthcare, financial services and manufacturing industries. Heavy Reading says the next largest growth segment will be the media and entertainment sector, with 66% of respondents indicating they would deploy 5G edge services to these verticals in the next two years.

As the compiled data illustrates, the initial edge focus for service providers is to lower costs and increase performance. From a financial perspective, the main driver cited by 63% of those surveyed was to reduce bandwidth use and cost, followed by better support for vertical industry applications (46%) and differentiated services versus the competition (43%). 

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Two key criteria for edge deployments by smaller operators (less than $5bn in annual revenue) were improved resilience and application performance. Respondents cited that both these criteria had the effect of lowering costs and increasing customer satisfaction as service level agreements (SLAs) would be easier to fulfil. 

Larger operators bring focus to differentiated services and applications that would create new revenues. The reason higher significance was communicated compared to smaller operators (68% versus 28%) might be centered in the need to compete not only with other telco service providers, but also hyperscalers. This presents an interesting observation considering that some service providers are looking to partner with hyperscalers to overcome challenges with edge deployment.

Edge deployment options

Even though a variety of different deployment options for the edge can be utilized, the most favored one is a hybrid public/private telco cloud infrastructure, with 33% of respondents preferring this choice. This finding is not surprising, as it allows service providers a good mix between ownership and control, and also reach. 

As Heavy Reading points out, the cultural reluctance service providers retained when partnering with hyperscalers is now diminishing, primarily due to the speed at which hyperscalers can roll-out edge deployments.

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Deployments at the edge of the network, actually on-premises, is also an option chosen by some service providers, and seems to be targeted at private 5G opportunities. Multi-access edge computing (MEC) is seen as a key enabler for private 5G, with private 5G for mining being a key segment for US tier 1 service providers.

The use of container-based technology at the edge

Linux containers allow the packaging of software with the files necessary to run it, while sharing access to the operating system and other infrastructure resources. This configuration makes it easier for service providers to move the containerized component between environments (development, test, production), and even between clouds, while retaining full functionality. Containers offer the potential for increased efficiency, resiliency and agility that can boost innovation and help create differentiation. 

However, utilization of container-based technology remains a challenge for many service providers in the context of edge deployments. The survey confirms this complexity in the relatively slow pace of transition to containers, with almost half of respondents claiming less than 25% of their edge workloads are containerized today. This trend is forecasted to display greater adoption in the coming years, as over 50% of respondents expect 51% or more of their workloads to be containerized by 2025.

Other complexities with edge deployments

Cost and complexity of infrastructure is cited as the main barrier to current edge deployments (55% of respondents). Integration and compatibility between ecosystem components also scores high (49%). To address the integration and compatibility challenge, Red Hat has retained strong collaboration with partners focused on innovation for service provider networks. 

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Through our testbed facilities we can enable the development, testing and deployment of partner network functions (virtual network function and cloud-native network function) for accelerated adoption and mitigation of risk. We continuously validate network functions to ensure they’ll work reliably with our product offerings. 

Additionally, Red Hat has developed numerous partner blueprints and reference architectures to allow service providers to deploy pre-integrated components from different vendors. Through our extensive portfolio, we provide a common and consistent cloud-native platform, accompanied by necessary functional components, orchestration and integration services from our partners for full operational readiness.

5G security concerns and strategy

Security of 5G networks has even great importance, primarily due to a more distributed network architecture, more capable devices, and a larger quantity of attack surfaces. The survey indicates a number of infrastructure capabilities that are important to service providers in a security context, including the use of trusted hardware and identity, and access management. In terms of securing the 5G edge, trusted hardware is considered a critical component for device endpoints.

As reinforcement to earlier points around container-based technology — container orchestration security and continuous image security scan and vulnerability analysis — also score highly. Trusted hardware and continuous image security scan and vulnerability are also the top two priorities for service providers’ 5G edge security strategies. They are also ranked highly as important capabilities for securing endpoints.

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Zero-trust deployment and provisioning is also called out as an important factor. Zero-trust scores relatively highly in terms of consistent infrastructure provisioning for physical and virtual network functions (48%) and encryption of data in motion (46%). 

While the majority of service providers say they are confident their 5G security strategy is robust, there is concern outside of the US related to maturity and the ability to scale. These concerns are centered around the internal resources and related skill sets needed to effectively implement a security strategy that includes ever-changing risks, compliance requirements, tools and architectural modifications. 

Closing remarks

The edge expands opportunities and migrating toward it to capture new service and revenue opportunities, as well as network efficiencies, is a critical direction for service providers. With increasing demand and application use cases difficult to predict, technologies must be able to continually adapt to avoid inflexibility. 

Service providers must implement security strategies and processes using different capabilities to effectively mitigate security risks. And these strategies and processes must be adapted over time as technologies, threats and needs evolve. Centralized identity management and access control is key for cloud-centric security approaches, using the principle of least privilege to provide users with only the access they need.

Business, Contributed

Service Providers: The Digital Link Between Industries, Society & Enterprise IT

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Last year, Red Hat shared our plan to evolve our global Telecommunications, Media and Entertainment (TME) organization to better suit the needs of our partners and customers. Since then, we’ve been connecting and building within our ecosystem to deliver solutions that answer our customer’s biggest needs, one of which is helping navigate the global shift in the way services are delivered across both the TME industry and society as a whole. 

Industry-leading partners and connected organizations are working together with the telco ecosystem to build on each other’s innovations in new ways, working together to accelerate the pace of industry change, with a focus on building frictionless customer journeys. For example, service providers are helping banks meet the demands of customers for real-time digital services like hyper-personalization, real-time fraud detection and next-gen connectivity – while also giving the unbanked access to financial services. From mobile banking and payments, connected vehicles, public safety monitors, private 5G and more, service providers are fundamental in providing the many technologies that are driving a completely new landscape for improved societies and global transformation. 

How Cloud Independence Can Drive Change

However, this does not happen overnight. Service providers are rethinking their cloud approach by transitioning to a hybrid and multi-cloud environment to help them become more flexible, agile, scalable and competitive in a constantly evolving market. In a TM Forum Themes Report, sponsored by Red Hat, we found that this pivot can lead a service provider to decide which hyper-scale cloud provider meets their needs best.

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This leads to future-looking questions, such as:

  • Which workloads fit which clouds? 
  • Which cloud-native solutions have the flexibility and functionality at the scale my organization requires? 
  • Can I balance these benefits against customer choice, disparate cloud silos, increased costs and limited flexibility? 

To help mitigate this risk, we found that service providers are working to maintain cloud and container independence – especially if they want to remain competitive as these new technologies begin rapidly rolling out. This TM Forum Themes Report explains this need for independence, highlighting how service providers are increasingly taking a hybrid multi-cloud approach to maintain supplier diversity while expanding their own telco cloud (operator-as-a-platform) skills and technologies.

Customers at Transformation’s Epicentre

Underpinning these efforts are 5G networks that provide innovative ways for service providers to monetize their investments. We see this in areas like enterprise multi-access edge computing (MEC), open and virtualized RAN, 5G core and more, with real-world successes from our customers including Bharti Airtel, Verizon and VodafoneZiggo. 

Red Hat can help service providers successfully compete with new services and business models, boost revenues and meet rising customer expectations by providing strategic expertise and a rich portfolio of products and services for their hybrid cloud deployments. We provide the flexibility for their projects across this vast landscape, from proofs-of-concept to production environments, helping providers select what works best for their own specific needs.

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In addition to this shift, we’re excited to see service providers taking advantage of cloud services managed by third-party experts like Red Hat including Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS (ROSA) and Microsoft Azure on Red Hat OpenShift (ARO). This helps organizations offload the underlying infrastructure work and focus on their core business, providing additional flexibility and driving tangible business benefits. 

We are also seeing Red Hat customers increase artificial intelligence (AI) deployments, or providing AI-as-a-Service, over the past year, from Turkcell AI to NTT East (in Japanese). It is clear that the practical deployments of AI – from new consumer apps and social engagements, to enterprise B2B apps and AI at the edge, are making a significant impact by enhancing customer experiences, driving greater business efficiencies and creating new revenue streams. 

The Partner Ecosystem is Expanding 

In order to deliver these customer-centric solutions, Red Hat is working with Ericsson, a leading provider of 5G software and hardware to lower the barriers to 5G adoption and build an open platform for 5G connectivity and innovation. We are doing this through active collaboration across Ericsson’s portfolio, including packet core, IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) and operations support system (OSS), as well as Cloud RAN in Ericsson’s Open Lab – a space for fast and interactive co-creation of innovative solutions with communications service providers and ecosystem partners. 

Things do not stop there – other software providers such as Baicells, Casa Systems, MATRIXX Software, Mavenir, Nokia, Rakuten Symphony and Samsung work closely with Red Hat to modernize 5G and RAN workloads across the open hybrid cloud. Additionally, with Dell Technologies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Intel and Lenovo, we are able to build full-stack hardware and software solutions on top of a reliable infrastructure to support customer deployments from the data center to the edge. 

Business, Contributed, Editorial

Continuing the Pace of Government Innovation in a Post-Pandemic World

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The unprecedented disruption the world faced during the past two years forced governments to rewrite the rulebook on how they serve their citizens. During the COVID-19 pandemic, public sector organizations across Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) had to act quickly to find digital solutions to everyday challenges to keep citizens safe and productive. Enabled by cloud technology, digitized government agencies became better equipped to offer citizen, educational, and healthcare services, which helped improve and even save lives. 

As we emerge from the crisis, the experience, momentum, and lessons learned have heightened potential for leaders to drive digitization as a priority to deliver their national agendas. Public sector organizations across APJ are pivoting from the pandemic and looking ahead to how digital transformation enabled by cloud can help to seize opportunities to deliver faster, more innovative, and modernized citizen services.

Scaling Digitization for Public Sector Organizations

According to a Gartner survey in 2021, digitally advanced government organizations realize more benefits of modernization, including higher efficiency, cost reductions, greater workforce productivity, compliance, and transparency. Research by Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud Economics shows that AWS customers in ASEAN – across commercial and public sectors – who migrated to AWS are seeing an acceleration in innovation, with an approximate 29% reduction in time-to-market for new features and applications, about 41% increase in employee efficiency, and an improvement of about 37% in operational resiliency through less downtime of services.

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In the last year, AWS has signed six government cloud services agreements across APJ to boost digitization, supporting these governments with our network of local partners as they move their customers and themselves to the cloud, including Malaysia, and Thailand in ASEAN. These initiatives help governments save lives, provide critical citizen services, and support learner outcomes – ultimately changing the way society engages, educates, and does business for good. They also enable opportunities for local businesses on the AWS Partner Network to work closely with public sector customers to solve some of the biggest community challenges.

Enabling Security, Resilience, and Continuity through the Cloud

Aside from accelerating the speed and scale of digitization, leveraging the cloud also ensures security, resilience, and continuity. This creates a safe and reliable environment for students to learn, employees to work remotely, and citizens to access government services and healthcare.

In Indonesia, when the Bali Provincial Government launched its Smart Island initiative to transform the Indonesian island into a digital province, the Communication, Information, and Statistics Agency of Bali (Diskominfos) migrated its data to AWS cloud from an on-premises infrastructure. Launching an attendance system using machine learning technology, it enabled 19,820 public service employees to sign in to the office virtually, saving almost 69% in monthly costs for its attendance system. Many of Bali’s other critical applications are also built using AWS solutions, including a traditional village census system, a health facility oxygen monitoring system, and an asset management system.

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By digitally transforming on the cloud, the public sector can rapidly scale services to meet spikes in demand, wind-down operations to reduce costs, and innovate widely using the latest cloud technology.

More Digital Skills Needed to Support Digitization

As the digitization momentum accelerates, governments across APJ will also need to prioritize digital skills training for their workforce in order to unlock the cloud’s full potential. The recent “Building Skills for the Changing Workforce” report produced by AWS and AlphaBeta shows that Australia, India, Indonesia, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, and South Korea will need to train an estimated 86 million more workers in digital skills collectively over the next year to keep pace with technological advancements – equivalent to 14% of their current total workforce. The report also noted that three of the five most demanded digital skills by 2025 will be cloud-related.

In Thailand, the Ministry of Digital Economy and Society is collaborating with AWS to train more than 1,200 public sector employees with cloud skills, so they can implement cloud technologies at scale, make better data-driven business decisions, and innovate new services to drive improved outcomes for citizens. In Indonesia, its Information and Communication Technology Training and Development Center (BPPTIK Kominfo) worked with AWS to get its employees up to speed on cloud knowledge, in support of Indonesia’s goal of creating a pool of about 9 million digital professionals by 2030 as part of its national digital information agenda. And in Malaysia, AWS has worked to provide cloud training for the Malaysian Administration Modernization and Management Planning Unit (MAMPU) to help accelerate their cloud use and fulfil mission-critical needs.  This is in addition to the training of over 3.5 million users across Asia Pacific since 2018.

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Looking ahead, we will need to move beyond business as usual to close the skills gap and create conditions for successful digitization. Governments, educators, and industries across APJ will need to collaborate more closely than ever to give all individuals the opportunity to build and deepen their digital skills that will support digitization momentum now and in the future.

Closer Collaboration Needed to Unlock the Potential of APJ

As societies and communities across APJ continue to evolve, organizations of all kinds – from governments to industries to non-profits – will need to come together to solve some of the biggest issues we are facing, from helping marginalized communities to addressing climate change.

This is why AWS launched Cloud Innovation Centers (CIC), to serve as a platform for public and private sector organizations to collaborate, solve challenges, and test new ideas with AWS’s technology expertise. In Singapore, AWS is partnering with East Coast Town Council and Accenture on a six-month pilot to deploy cloud-powered sustainability solutions in municipal estate management, to support Singapore’s move towards its net zero carbon emissions goal by 2040.

We encourage collaborations between governments, industry, and cloud services providers to enable long-term scaling of digital programs. The momentum has been established, so let’s continue to ride the wave and work together to keep digitization at the forefront of the region’s push for progress as we pivot from pandemic to prosperity.

Business, Contributed, Editorial

Edge Automation: Seven Industry Use Cases & Examples

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Put simply, edge computing is computing that takes place at or near the physical location of either the user or the source of the data being processed, such as a device or sensor.

By placing computing services closer to these locations, users benefit from faster, more reliable services and organizations benefit from the flexibility and agility of the open hybrid cloud.

Challenges in Edge Computing

With the proliferation of devices and services at edge sites, however, there is an increasing amount to manage outside the sphere of traditional operations. Platforms are being extended well beyond the data- centre, devices are multiplying and spreading across vast areas, and on-demand applications and services are running in significantly different and distant locations.

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This evolving IT landscape is posing new challenges for organizations, including:

  • Ensuring they have the skills to address evolving edge infrastructure requirements.
  • Building capabilities that can react with minimal human interaction in a more secure and trusted way.
  • Effectively scaling at the edge with an ever-increasing number of devices and endpoints to consider.

Of course, while there are difficult challenges to overcome, many of them can be mitigated with edge automation.

Benefits of Edge Automation

Automating operations at the edge can reduce much of the complexity that comes from extending hybrid cloud infrastructure so you are better able to take advantage of the benefits edge computing provides.

Edge automation can help your organization:

  • Increase scalability by applying configurations more consistently across your infrastructure and managing edge devices more efficiently.
  • Boost agility by adapting to changing customer demands and using edge resources only as needed.
  • Focus on remote operational security and safety by running updates, patches and required maintenance automatically without sending a technician to the site.
  • Reduce downtime by simplifying network management and reducing the chance of human error.
  • Improve efficiency by increasing performance with automated analysis, monitoring and alerting.

7 Examples of Edge Automation

Here are some industry-specific use cases and examples demonstrating edge automation’s value.

1. Transportation industry

By automating complex manual device configuration processes, transportation companies can efficiently deploy software and application updates to trains, aeroplanes and other moving vehicles with significantly less human intervention. This can save time and help eliminate manual configuration errors, freeing teams to work on more strategic, innovative and valuable projects.

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Compared to a manual approach, automating device installation and management is generally safer and more reliable.

2. Retail

Establishing a new retail store and getting its digital services online can be complex, involving configuration management of networked devices, configuration auditing and setting up computing resources across the retail facility. And once a store is set up and open to the public, the IT focus shifts from speed and scale to consistency and reliability.

Edge automation gives retail stores the ability to stand up and maintain new devices more quickly and consistently while reducing manual configuration and update errors.

3. Industry 4.0

From oil and gas refineries to smart factories to supply chains, Industry 4.0 is seeing the integration of technologies such as the internet of things (IoT), cloud computing, analytics and artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) into industrial production facilities and across operations.

One example of the value of edge automation in Industry 4.0 can be found on the manufacturing floor. There, supported by visualization algorithms, edge automation can help detect defects in manufactured components on the assembly line. It can also help improve the safety of factory operations by identifying and alerting hazardous conditions or unpermitted actions.

4. Telecommunications, media and entertainment

The advantages edge automation can provide to service providers are numerous and include clear improvements to customer experience.

For example, edge automation can turn the data edge devices produce into valuable insights that can be used to improve customer experience, such as automatically resolving connectivity issues.

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The delivery of new services can also be streamlined with edge automation. Service providers can send a device to a customer’s home or office that they can simply plug in and run, without the need for a technician on site. Automating service delivery not only improves the customer experience, it creates a more efficient network maintenance process, with the potential of reducing costs.

5. Financial services and insurance

Customers are demanding more personalized financial services and tools that can be accessed from virtually anywhere, including from customers’ mobile devices.

For example, if a bank launches a self-service tool to help their customers find the right offering — such as a new insurance package, a mortgage, or a credit card — edge automation can help that bank scale the new service while also automatically meeting strict industry security standards without impacting the customer experience. 

Edge automation can help provide the speed and access that customers want, with the reliability and scalability that financial service providers need.

6. Smart cities

To improve services while increasing efficiency, many municipalities are incorporating edge technologies such as IoT and AI/ML to monitor and respond to issues affecting public safety, citizen satisfaction and environmental sustainability.

Early smart city projects were constrained by the technology of the time, but the rollout of 5G networks (and new communications technologies still to come) not only increase data speeds but also makes it possible to connect more devices. To scale capabilities more effectively, smart cities need to automate edge operations, including data collection, processing, monitoring and alerting.

7. Healthcare

Healthcare has long since started to move away from hospitals toward remote care treatment options such as outpatient centres, clinics and freestanding emergency rooms, and technologies have evolved and proliferated to support these new environments. Clinical decision-making can also be improved and personalized based on patient data generated from wearables and a variety of other medical devices.

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Using automation, edge computing and analytics, clinicians can efficiently convert this flood of new data into valuable insights to help improve patient outcomes while delivering both financial and operational value.

Red Hat Edge

Modern compute platforms powered by Red Hat Edge can help organizations extend their open hybrid cloud to the edge. Red Hat Edge represents Red Hat’s collective drive to integrate edge computing across the open hybrid cloud. Red Hat’s large and growing ecosystem of partners and open methodologies give organizations the flexibility they need to build platforms that can respond to rapidly changing market conditions and create differentiated offerings.

Business, Contributed

How Managed Services Keep the Edge Ecosystem Afloat

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As the amount of connected “things” — vehicles, devices, equipment, sensors — proliferate, organisations continue to look for ways to securely harness the data those things generate. An entire ecosystem dedicated to collecting and analysing that data has erupted, and it’s taking data infrastructures to the edge of their capabilities.

Edge computing represents a vast opportunity for IT organisations if implemented well. Unfortunately, the data centre infrastructure required to host edge computing implementations is a patchwork affair. Today, organisations must leverage centralised data warehouses, regional edge data centres and local edge micro data centres.

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Tech Research Asia (TRA) revealed in 2020 that organisations in Malaysia who has deployed edge computing were able to lower their costs in IT and operations, resulting in an overall improvement in employee experiences. However, most local organisations still find edge computing a fairly new concept. How can local organisations effectively tap into the full potential of Edge computing?

With so many geographically dispersed locations without on-site IT staff and often limited in-house resources, many organisations are turning to managed services providers to help deploy, monitor, and maintain their edge data centres. Still others, such as existing managed service providers and IT solutions providers, are expanding their services portfolio to help clients with the edge. This represents a vast opportunity for IT solution providers.

Managed services providers enable end-users to focus on core competencies

Edge locations need the same resilience, security, and fault tolerance as centralised locations, especially as they support more and more mission-critical applications. Managed service providers with the right capabilities offer peace of mind and operational efficiencies for edge deployments.

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Ensuring the necessary resilience and availability at the edge is not a simple matter. It requires having at least two major capabilities in place:

  • Remote monitoring and management of UPS and physical infrastructure
  • Data collection and analytics from monitoring equipment. This data improves the reliability and cost-effectiveness of assets at the edge.

These highly specific capabilities are not the core competencies of most companies. They don’t even cover all the expertise and manpower necessary to maintain support infrastructure. Turning to a managed services provider places the responsibility for infrastructure uptime into the hands of experts so end users can focus on the core of their business.  

Managed services boost revenues for existing providers

An increased need for managed services also represents an opportunity for existing providers. For example, power protection at the edge is not something many end-users consider. But an unmanned edge computing deployment without power is just another cost centre. For existing services providers, adding power monitoring and protection to their portfolio of offerings invites additional recurring revenue streams.

The story is the same for monitoring and dispatch services. When physical infrastructure in remote locations goes down, those sites need immediate attention. Most organisations don’t have a full-time response staff for such incidents, opening the door to managed services providers. Solutions and services providers can earn additional business by offering remote monitoring or dispatch services.

Managed services keep the edge ecosystem running smoothly

Edge computing has come a long way despite still having challenges to overcome. There are still operational issues to be considered in order for organisations to effectively ensure edge of network availability during this proliferation. The global health crisis too played a role in the impact of data centre downtime, making the availability of data centres, at the core and at the edge, a key concern for organisations.

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Maintaining availability is challenging, given edge data centres experience more frequent total facility outages than their centralised counterparts. The primary methods companies leverage to improve edge availability — investing in improved equipment and redundant equipment — are not cost-effective ways of ensuring uptime.

It’s clear that the growing edge ecosystem represents a two-pronged opportunity for managed services. End users can turn to managed services providers for cost-effective uptime of their edge deployments, and existing providers can work with partners to add new services to their portfolios.

Regardless of where companies fall in the spectrum of offered services, the first step is to cultivate true partnerships. A typical service provider contract lasts three years. Customers must feel at ease knowing that the contract brings them the latest offerings, keeps equipment in optimal condition, and prepares them for uncertainties and surprises.

The edge is the present and future of infrastructure investments. Appropriate managed services can keep the ecosystem running smoothly for all parties involved.

Business, Contributed, Gaming

Why Payments Are the Key to the Gaming Industry in Asia Pacific

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The gaming industry is booming, and Asia is its centre. But it’s also becoming more competitive. And with payments increasingly being baked into the player experience, getting this fundamental element right is even more critical.

The growth of gaming over the past three years has been rapid, and there are no signs that this trend will slow down any time soon. Like many digital shifts, the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated a pre-existing trend as consumers spent more leisure time at home, on smartphones or games consoles.

For gaming publishers, this has obviously been a huge boost to the industry. Globally gaming industry revenue is predicted to grow from USD$178bn in 2021 to USD$269bn in 2025, an increase of 51% in just five years. And this is especially true in Asia, which leads the world in its number of active gamers. Almost half of all gaming revenue came from Asian markets pre-COVID-19 and this percentage has been maintained despite the growth of gaming globally in the past two years.

The Role of Payments

Another major trend in gaming is a shift in the way that consumers pay for them. The old model of buying games outright in a single one-off purchase is now outdated in the majority of cases; subscriptions and in-app purchasing have become the norm for games on all platforms, from mobile games through to many of the major titles on the most popular consoles.

Source: StockVault
Source: StockVault

This trend has given publishers much greater scope when it comes to monetizing the games that they produce. But it also means that payments are now a much more integral element to the overall player experience than before, and therefore need to be considered much more carefully.

When thinking about payments in gaming, there are three primary factors that need to be considered:

  • Invisibility – Ultimately players don’t want to go through the process of making payments when it means interrupting the game they are playing. So any payment needs to be as quick and painless as possible to encourage them to do it frequently.
  • Security – But at the same time, any game’s checkout process must be safe. Games have been proven to be a target for scammers in the past who have viewed the industry as an easy target.
  • Choice – The payments landscape is becoming more diverse, and in-game payment options need to reflect that. Consumers are increasingly unprepared to spend money online if they cannot use their payment method of choice, particularly those that have developed into regional payment preferences.

Let’s look at these in more detail, particularly what they mean for gaming companies in the Asian market.

The impact of poor UX, card declines, and inefficient risk management

As we have already stated, one of the key criteria for the success of payments in gaming is that transactions such as subscriptions and in-app purchases are seamless to the point of being invisible. A clunky user experience with multiple verification steps is one way checkouts can fail in this objective.

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Diablo Immortal’s Lootboxes. Source: latestgamestories.com

Multi-step authentication processes, high lag times or time-outs, or hidden costs can make a payments experience frustrating to such an extent that the consumer abandons the transaction and in extreme circumstances could stop them playing the game altogether. And research does suggest that APAC consumers have the highest rates of cart abandonment in the world generally, meaning gaming companies in the region must focus on giving players a best-in-class payment experience.

Even more significant can be the impact of payment declines. If a player cannot complete a transaction because their card payment is declined then this completely de-rails their gaming experience. A declined transaction not only has a negative effect on revenues for gaming companies that lose the individual transaction in the short term but also the frustration this causes players may render the game unplayable in the long term, costing the operator recurring payments from loyal customers.

Partnering with a payments partner that minimises abandoned transactions and their associated costs is critical. Some of the criteria gaming partners should consider include:

  1. Does the payments company connect me to local acquiring and enable smart routing to maximize acceptance rates?
  2. Does the payments company prevent mass declines of legitimate transactions and limit false positives through industry and regional expertise in risk management?
  3. If a legitimate transaction is declined due to human error or oversight e.g. a card used for a recurring transaction expires, does the payments company have capabilities in place to recover the transaction?

Fighting fraud

Unfortunately, gaming platforms have long been a target for fraudsters. This threat has increased in the past two years as bad actors were better able to hide in plain sight due to the increase in player numbers more generally. Card-not-present fraud (where a fraudster uses stolen card details to make a transaction) and friendly fraud (where a consumer uses their own card details to make a legitimate transaction and then claims a chargeback) are both frequent in gaming, including in APAC.

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Another practice gaming publishers should be aware of is carding, where a fraudster steals credit card information and tests its usability by making one or a number of small transactions at a relatively insecure platform, before moving on to making more substantial transactions elsewhere. In-game purchases have been a traditional target of these types of fraud.

Offering seamless gameplay via in-app purchases and subscriptions without compromising the safety of the platform or players must be a priority. A risk management platform with real-time, highly configurable, fraud detection and scoring engine capabilities is the optimal solution to maximise protection.

Diversifying Checkout

The APAC region is a diverse landscape when it comes to payment preferences, with local digital wallets being particularly popular. And it isn’t only the region as a whole that has marked payment preferences; within APAC, individual countries have their own local payment methods that have proved to be popular with consumers. So for gaming companies with ambitions to expand their player base throughout the region, having more options to enable players to pay is essential.

This is particularly true because we know that there are several key payment methods that are important to consumers in many APAC countries. AliPay and WeChat are obvious examples in China, but countries such as Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia all have diverse payment landscapes that do not rely on card transactions.

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According to research conducted by Mastercard, 94% of consumers in APAC are thinking about trying an alternative payment method for the first time in 2022 and 84% said they already had access to more payment methods than they did in 2020. This includes crypto; 45% of APAC consumers are considering using crypto for payments in 2022 vs. only 12% that said they had used crypto to make a payment in 2020.

And globally younger consumers tend to be less reliant on traditional payment methods such as debit and credit cards than older generations. More tech-savvy and less loyal to financial institutions such as banks, these consumers will happily switch payment methods to ones that offer a better user experience. As gamers tend to skew towards younger demographics as well, having a diversified checkout is even more important.

It’s an Exciting Time for Gaming in Asia Pacific

And APAC continues to lead the world when it comes to the sizes of the gaming industry market. But there is a route to making the most of the opportunities a booming industry provides, and that begins with payments.

Working with a payments partner that doesn’t offer you a one-size-fits-all solution and instead can tailor a customized platform that suits your business strategy and needs is essential in today’s market. This is especially true in a region such as APAC with so many individuals, and unique markets. Gaming businesses

Business, Computers, Contributed

Cyberattackers are Using the Cloud too – Are Malaysian Enterprises Prepared?

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Cloud technology has been an integral component in paving the way for organizations across industries to undergo digital transformation. Globally, 50% of organizations are adopting a cloud-native approach to support both employees and customers, and the number of connected devices is expected to climb to 55.9 billion by 2025.

In Malaysia, we’ve also seen swift progress in cloud adoption – with the most recent milestone being the upgrade of the Malaysian Government’s Public Sector Data Centre (PDSA) into a hybrid cloud service called MyGovCloud. The pace of cloud adoption is expected to accelerate following the government’s decision to provide conditional approval to Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Telekom Malaysia to build and manage hyperscale data centres and cloud services in Malaysia.

With cloud-based systems becoming a key component of organizations’ operations and infrastructures, malicious actors have been turning to the cloud, taking advantage of weaknesses in cloud security to perform various malicious activities — leading to new complexity regarding effective attack surface risk management. 

Why Malaysian Businesses Need Better Risk Management

The shift to the cloud and dramatic increase in connectivity gives malicious actors new and often unmanaged attack vectors to target.

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As revealed in Trend Micro’s semi-yearly Cyber Risk Index (CRI) report, 67% of organizations in Malaysia report they are likely to be breached in the next 12 months – indicating a dire need for local organizations to be better prepared in managing cyber risks.

To better reduce the risk of cyberattacks, enterprises must first understand how cyberattackers are exploiting the cloud for their own benefit and bridge security gaps by proactively anticipating data breaches.

One of the most common ways that organizations put themselves in a vulnerable position to be attacked is through misconfigurations of the cloud. While misconfigurations might seem straightforward and avoidable, they are the most significant risk to cloud environments – making up 65 to 70% of all security challenges in the cloud. This is especially true for organizations that have been pushed to migrate quickly to the cloud since remote work became the new norm.

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Malicious actors are also turning to low-effort by high-impact attack strategies in gaining access to cloud applications and services. On top of exploiting new vulnerabilities in an enterprise’s network, cyberattackers will persistently exploit known vulnerabilities from past years as many enterprises still lack the ability to get full visibility on environments that are left unpatched.

How Malaysian Businesses can Stay Prepared

Since criminals can execute their attacks more effectively, they can also target a larger number of organizations, potentially leading to an increase in overall attacks. Organizations now have much less time to detect and respond to these incidents, and this will be expounded as the business model of cybercriminals matures further.

With that in mind, enterprises must strengthen their security posture foundations to defend against evolving cyberthreats. Among the key cybersecurity strategies to adopt include:

Automating everything

We live in a world where skills shortages and commercial demands have combined to expose organizations to escalating levels of cyber risk. In the cloud, it leads to misconfigurations and the risk of knock-on data breaches, as well as unpatched assets which are exposed to the latest exploits. The bad news is that cybercriminals and nation states are getting better at scanning for systems which may be vulnerable in this way.

Better digital attack surface management starts with the right tooling. Solutions such as Trend Micro Cloud One enable and automates platform-agnostic cloud security administration and cloud threat detection and response, which can help security teams improve the efficiency of threat investigation and response, as well as reduce the risk of a security breach.

Empowering employees with resources and tools to ensure cloud operational excellence  

Many enterprises are already well on their way in the world of cloud, with more and more security teams using cloud infrastructure services and developing cloud-native applications. However, this can often be a steep learning curve for cloud architects and developers – leaving gaps in protection, compliance, and visibility.

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To improve the situation, organizations need to provide resources to employees to ensure that the cloud service configurations adhere to industry best practices and compliance standards. One such way is to use tools that automatically scan cloud services against best practices, relieving teams from having to manually check for misconfigurations.

Adopt a Shared Responsibility Model

Clouds aren’t secure or insecure, they’re as secure as you make them. Instead of “who is more secure – AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud?” ask “what have I done to make all of my clouds as secure as I need them?”

Security in the cloud works using the Shared Responsibility Model – which dictates who is responsible for any operational task in the cloud and security is simply a subset of those tasks. Security self-service for the cloud is fully here in all its forms, and understanding this model is critical to success in the cloud.

While increased cloud adoption allows organizations to be more agile, scalable, and cost-efficient, the benefits of using cloud services and technologies are no longer just reaped by legitimate companies, but also cybercriminals who keep up with the trend. As criminals accelerate attacks and expand their capabilities, businesses must adopt a solid cybersecurity strategy to stay a step ahead.

Business, Contributed

Automation in an App-centric, Hybrid Cloud World

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The past few years have shown that enterprises want their applications, data, and resources located wherever it makes the most sense for their business and operating models, which means that automation needs to be available to execute anywhere. Automation across platforms and environments needs a common mechanism with an approach of automation as code, supported by communities of practice and even automation architects or committees to help define and deliver on the strategy.

Per a recent IDC Market Forecast— Worldwide IT Automation and Configuration Management Software Forecast, 2021–2025[i]—“state-of-the-art system management software tools will be needed to keep up with increasing operational complexity, particularly in organizations that cannot add headcount to keep up with requirements.” Managing this overall complexity is no easy feat. As IT and business needs continue to evolve, it’s no longer an issue of “if” organizations turn to automation, but “which” automation tool they choose.

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This is where the power of open source technology excels; per the same IDC study, “open source–driven innovation helped fuel the growth of newer players and technologies.” With a community-based, consistent approach to automation, the subject matter experts write the integrations and share them with other teams, building internal communities of practice that can adapt to change and deployments allowing enterprises to get to the cloud at an accelerated pace.

This is how Red Hat, through Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, approaches automation, delivering tailored innovation for individual platforms combined with a standard, cross-framework language. With the continued shift to consuming public cloud services and resources, the key is to have a platform that allows you to harness the same skills, language and taxonomy that your teams have been using to drive efficiency and savings in on-premises implementations. This approach enables enterprises to achieve what they want, where they want to, in clouds like Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.

Endorsing agility at the edge

We know that enterprises and their needs do not end with cloud automation. Assets at the edge are now just as important and, arguably, even more difficult to manage, than in the data center. Edge computing is critical to business, making automating at the edge non-negotiable. Making all of your existing processes and group components available using a tool like Ansible Automation Platform allows you to move edge management from a multi-person, complex task to one where common components and workflows are used with Ansible for management and integration.

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Ansible automation becomes the connective tissue in an IT organization, bridging applications and their dependent infrastructure, and maintaining technology at the edge. IT staff can rely on automation to roll out new services at the edge to meet customer needs with speed, scale, and consistency.

Connecting it all through automation

We often refer to Ansible Automation Platform as the glue between people, process and technology. Automation allows for greater emphasis on strengthening the whole system, rather than just the sum of its parts. The benefits automation can bring aren’t always simple to achieve, but the right framework makes it less challenging. When there’s success at a high level, new ways of working become reality, along with resiliency and adaptability. This formula is precisely what organizations need as they face new challenges to drive modernization and transformation.

[i] IDC Market Forecast, Worldwide IT Automation and Configuration Management Software Forecast, 2021–2025, doc #US47434321, February 2021.

Business, Contributed, Editorial

Edge Computing Benefits and Use Cases

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From telecommunications networks to the manufacturing floor, through financial services to autonomous vehicles and beyond, computers are everywhere these days, generating a growing tsunami of data that needs to be captured, stored, processed and analyzed. 

At Red Hat, we see edge computing as an opportunity to extend the open hybrid cloud all the way to data sources and end-users. Where data has traditionally lived in the data centre or cloud, there are benefits and innovations that can be realized by processing the data these devices generate closer to where it is produced.

This is where edge computing comes in.

4 benefits of edge computing

As the number of computing devices has grown, our networks simply haven’t kept pace with the demand, causing applications to be slower and/or more expensive to host centrally.

Pushing computing out to the edge helps reduce many of the issues and costs related to network latency and bandwidth, while also enabling new types of applications that were previously impractical or impossible.

1. Improve performance

When applications and data are hosted on centralized data centres and accessed via the internet, speed and performance can suffer from slow network connections. By moving things out to the edge, network-related performance and availability issues are reduced, although not entirely eliminated.

2. Place applications where they make the most sense

By processing data closer to where it’s generated, insights can be gained more quickly and response times reduced drastically. This is particularly true for locations that may have intermittent connectivity, including geographically remote offices and on vehicles such as ships, trains and aeroplanes.

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3. Simplify meeting regulatory and compliance requirements

Different situations and locations often have different privacy, data residency, and localization requirements, which can be extremely complicated to manage through centralized data processing and storage, such as in data centres or the cloud.

With edge computing, however, data can be collected, stored, processed, managed and even scrubbed in place, making it much easier to meet different locales’ regulatory and compliance requirements. For example, edge computing can be used to strip personally identifiable information (PII) or faces from a video before being sent back to the data centre.

4. Enable AI/ML applications

Artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) are growing in importance and popularity since computers are often able to respond to rapidly changing situations much more quickly and accurately than humans.

But AI/ML applications often require processing, analyzing and responding to enormous quantities of data which can’t reasonably be achieved with centralized processing due to network latency and bandwidth issues. Edge computing allows AI/ML applications to be deployed close to where data is collected so analytical results can be obtained in near real-time.

3 Edge Computing Scenarios

Red Hat focuses on three general edge computing scenarios, although these often overlap in each unique edge implementation.

1. Enterprise edge

Enterprise edge scenarios feature an enterprise data store at the core, in a data centre or as a cloud service. The enterprise edge allows organizations to extend their application services to remote locations.

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Photo by NASA on Unsplash

Chain retailers are increasingly using an enterprise edge strategy to offer new services, improve in-store experiences and keep operations running smoothly. Individual stores aren’t equipped with large amounts of computing power, so it makes sense to centralize data storage while extending a uniform app environment out to each store.

2. Operations edge

Operations edge scenarios concern industrial edge devices, with significant involvement from operational technology (OT) teams. The operations edge is a place to gather, process and act on data on-site.

Operations edge computing is helping some manufacturers harness artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) to solve operational and business efficiency issues through real-time analysis of data provided by Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) sensors on the factory floor.

3. Provider edge

Provider edge scenarios involve both building out networks and offering services delivered with them, as in the case of a telecommunications company. The service provider edge supports reliability, low latency and high performance with computing environments close to customers and devices.

Service providers such as Verizon are updating their networks to be more efficient and reduce latency as 5G networks spread around the world. Many of these changes are invisible to mobile users, but allow providers to add more capacity quickly while reducing costs.

3 edge computing examples

Red Hat has worked with a number of organizations to develop edge computing solutions across a variety of industries, including healthcare, space and city management.

1. Healthcare

Clinical decision-making is being transformed through intelligent healthcare analytics enabled by edge computing. By processing real-time data from medical sensors and wearable devices, AI/ML systems are aiding in the early detection of a variety of conditions, such as sepsis and skin cancers.

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Photo by CDC on Unsplash

2. Space

NASA has begun adopting edge computing to process data close to where it’s generated in space rather than sending it back to Earth, which can take minutes to days to arrive.

As an example, mission specialists on the International Space Station (ISS) are studying microbial DNA. Transmitting that data to Earth for analysis would take weeks, so they’re experimenting with doing those analyses onboard the ISS, speeding “time to insight” from months to minutes.

3. Smart cities

City governments are beginning to experiment with edge computing as well, incorporating emerging technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT) along with AI/ML to quickly identify and remediate problems impacting public safety, citizen satisfaction and environmental sustainability.

Red Hat’s approach to edge computing

Of course, the many benefits of edge computing come with some additional complexity in terms of scale, interoperability and manageability.

Edge deployments often extend to a large number of locations that have minimal (or no) IT staff, or that vary in physical and environmental conditions. Edge stacks also often mix and match a combination of hardware and software elements from different vendors, and highly distributed edge architectures can become difficult to manage as infrastructure scales out to hundreds or even thousands of locations. The Red Hat Edge portfolio addresses these challenges by helping organizations standardize on a modern hybrid cloud infrastructure, providing an interoperable, scalable and modern edge computing platform that combines the flexibility and extensibility of open source with the power of a rapidly growing partner ecosystem

Contributed, Lifestyle

Compatibility, Sound Preference, or Location: Which Samsung Soundbar is the one for you?

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When it comes to selecting a sound system, there are various variables to consider. This depends on your goals and demands, how you use your leisure time, whether watching movies or playing video games and even how compatible it is with the rest of your entertainment system. For some, the visual may be the most important factor, while for others, the sound quality is what makes their entertainment come alive.

Curious to know which is most suitable for you? Here are Samsung’s recommendations on which soundbar you should go for based on your needs:

HW A550 A series Soundbar
  • For gamers: If you own a gaming console and have been looking for an immersive sound experience, consider the Q-Series Soundbar with Dolby Atmos and DTS:X. With the ultimate 3D sound coming to you from every direction, you’ll be able to feel like you’ve stepped into your TV and are experiencing the game in the first person. The Q800A Soundbar comes with three channels, one subwoofer channel, and two up-firing channels – which ultimately means that the sound moves around you based on the action on your screen. Not only does it bring your games to life, but you can also experience playing music on a whole other level, as with the ‘Tap Sound’ feature, you can simply tap the soundbar, and it will recognize your device and play the song you’re currently playing on your phone.
  • Seamless compatibility with other devices: If you’re looking for an all-rounder soundbar that can jive with all of your devices, you can consider the S-Series All-in-One Soundbar with Acoustic Beam and built-in Bixby Voice Assistant. You won’t have to worry about where you’re placing it in your house as it’s designed to fill the room with immersive sound and improved audio quality with its dual-sided horn speakers and Samsung’s Acoustic Beam® technology.
Q800A Soundbar with Dolby Atmos and DTSX
  • All about the bass: The bass makes a great sound system for music lovers. If blasting music and dancing to your heart’s desire is your thing, you can go for the A-Series Soundbar with the Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS Virtual:X feature to give you immersive surround sound simulation. Imagine rewatching one of your favourite live concerts with the Powerful Bass Boost that’s connected to its very own wireless subwoofer – surely nothing could go wrong. The A-Series Soundbar can also connect to two different mobile devices simultaneously, allowing you and your friends to switch between your favourite playlists at any given time.