Last year, plenty of conferences and keynotes did not happen. One of the most anticipated conferences that did not happen last year was Google’s I/O conference. We expected Google to launch a new line-up of Pixel smartphones as well in the 2020 edition of Google I/O. Of course, that did not happen.
This year is a year where all these big conferences are making a comeback though. Apple and E3 have made a commitment for an all-virtual WWDC 2021 and E3 2021 this year. They are also making the event available to attend completely for free. Google has just done the same.
Source: Google
As with any other year, Google is a little cryptic with their Google I/O conference and its event date. This year you have to solve some puzzles over in Google’s event page. They call it the punch card, and it is exactly that. With some guidance from 9To5Google, you should be able to breeze through the Punch Card puzzle and reveal the Google I/O dates.
Google’s I/O event for 2021 is also confirmed by Google’s own CEO, Sundar Pichai to be happening from the 18th May 2021 to the 20th May 2021. As with any other virtual conferences happening in 2021, Google I/O 2021 can be attended online completely free. You should be able to sign up right after you complete the puzzle for Google I/O.
We are still expecting a Google Pixel announcement out of Google I/O 2021’s keynote. Other than that, the three-day conference is filled with workshops and learning experiences. The best part of all of that, of course, is that they are all completely free. All-virtual also means that you can take your learning all from the comfort of your homes.
There are also some rumours of Google working on their own new-generation TWS earphones in the Google Pixel Buds A. Not much is known yet about the new TWS earphones from Google though. Of course, the TWS earphones will be compatible with Google Assistant and probably come with more functions than your average TWS earbuds.
As mentioned, Google I/O 2021 is happening May 18th, 2021 to May 20th, 2021 onward. The event will be held completely online, and attendance is free. The only catch is completing their puzzle.
South Korea has become one of the biggest electronic giants the world has ever seen. With the likes of Samsung and LG, it is no wonder the South Koreans are highly regarded in the modern era of technology. The two electronic giants have conquered everything from televisions to even washing machines in 2021. They make some of the best-selling televisions, fridges, even down to a water purifier.
They have also been a leader in the smallest things we carry with us every day. Samsung and LG have been at the forefront of smartphone technologies for the past few years now. But there has been some interesting development for the past few weeks or so. One of them is the fact that LG has made an announcement that they are no longer interested in the smartphone business.
The announcement from LG’s very own newsroom describes that LG Electronics Inc. will close its mobile business unit as per approved by their board earlier in the day. What that means is that LG will give up its smartphone business unit and not dabble in the smartphone market in the future.
To be fair, the company has been considering the exit for a while now. LG’s Mobile Business Unit, or its smartphone division has been posting losses for the past five years at least, and they show no sign of recovering. The company has been focusing on selling some mid-range smartphones while developing interesting concepts that produces smartphones like the LG Wing. They also showed some concept of a rollable smartphone, something we do not expect to see LG producing ever with the announcement.
As per the announcement as well LG will continue to make their current inventory available for sale. LG will also continue to provide support and software updates for their current customers and their existing products until an unspecified time. Although there is no indication to when they will end their product life support. They only indicated that it will be varied by regions.
This also means that the company will have to repurpose its workforces from its mobile business units. They mentioned that this will be determined at a local level as well. Still, they have some time to repurpose everyone within the business unit.
LG is expecting the close to complete by the 31st July 2021. While LG will no longer be officially selling their devices by the end of July, they expect some existing stocks to still be available after specified date and those will still be on sale. LG will still be involved in the development of mobile technologies, however. They will continue to work on 6G network related developments even after the Mobile Business Unit concludes its closure.
2020’s gone and it won’t be missed. For all of the chaos, confusion and change the previous year brought, it helped illuminate a critical facet of Red Hat, our associates, our partners, our customers and our communities. It showed that we are resilient. Not only did we weather it as a company, we helped those around us stand firm through the storm. That’s something to be proud of, and I know that as CEO of Red Hat, I’m thankful at how we as a business, as a pillar of the open source community and as a global organization kept a steady hand throughout.
Red Hat was born out of community. It’s at the center of everything we do. When faced with uncertainty and when we see others in need, that’s when we pull together and show our mettle. Throughout the past year, Red Hatters showed a tremendous capacity for fortitude and humanity. When I first took over the role of CEO, I made the comment that I wanted every Red Hatter who was here at that point to still be here in a year. And I think we’ve held true to that.
At the time, that conversation centered on finding work-life balance when the lines became blurred. Without taking care of our personal lives and mental health, we’re not able to meet the needs of our customers. As associates became school teachers and caretakers, dealt with drastically reduced social interactions and grieved the loss of normalcy, they still served customers and helped them be successful. We didn’t just hunker down and wait for the storm to pass; we still moved forward and made ourselves available to help others.
No time to slow down
While the COVID-19 pandemic stalled many industries, the software industry raced forward. Technologies like cloud computing and automation became more important than ever. They are now firmly in the category of must-have, instead of nice-to-have. As a company, we turned our attention to products and services that our customers need to support remote work, expand digital services, scale to meet demand, become more resilient and keep innovating. I attribute our ability to continue to show strong growth throughout the year to this strategy and I’m so proud of the team for keeping the momentum going.
With our biggest announcements last year, you’ll no doubt sense a theme – making sure that our customers can develop and deploy any app, anywhere. They want the choice and flexibility to use the innovations and technologies on a platform that makes sense for the job at hand, and we’re making sure they can do just that. Red Hat OpenShift is the industry’s leading enterprise Kubernetes platform and highlights a future where containers and virtualization, managed consistently across the open hybrid cloud, are helping customers maintain operations while still bringing new products and services to market faster.
We introduced Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes, a new management solution designed to help organizations exert more consistent control over their Kubernetes clusters across the hybrid cloud — from bare-metal to major public cloud providers and everything in between.
Once they can deploy anywhere, they need to be able to bring those mixed workloads together and that’s where OpenShift Virtualizationcomes in. An integrated component of Red Hat OpenShift, we’re giving customers the ability to manage traditional workloads alongside cloud-native services, letting them prepare for the future while retaining existing investments. This helps to break down technology silos that can slow innovation and impact the customer experience.
For those wanting an increased level of support from us, OpenShift Dedicated is a fully managed service of Red Hat OpenShift on AWS, Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure. We continue to enhance and refine the capabilities of this managed offering, providing an option for organizations looking to reduce the operational complexity of infrastructure management, but still get all the benefits of enterprise Kubernetes. This enables their IT teams to focus on building and scaling the next-generation of applications, rather than keeping infrastructure lit up.
One of the benefits of open source is our close connection to the innovation born in open source communities, where new ideas and concepts emerge and incubate. This is a direct link to IT’s future, enabling us to more readily see trends as they evolve. It’s this connection that enabled us to push the envelope in open hybrid cloud computing, and it’s now providing our launchpad for the next wave: edge computing. Edge brings its own challenges for administrators and developers alike, so we’ve delivered new capabilities for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat OpenShiftto help bring edge computing into hybrid cloud deployments.
Coming together
The channel is what made Red Hat. Without our partner ecosystem, Red Hat would be a very different company. We have been successful because of our independence and our work across a broad spectrum of cloud and service providers, including Amazon, Google, IBM and Microsoft. As the saying goes: “actions speak louder than words.” Our neutrality is something that can’t change and you can see it in some of the moves we made this year.
Red Hat and Microsoft have been working to co-develop hybrid cloud solutions for years, which ultimately led to Azure Red Hat OpenShift, the industry’s first jointly-engineered, managed and supported OpenShift service on a leading public cloud. This year we continued our drive as a leading enterprise Kubernetes service on the public cloud with Azure Red Hat OpenShift on OpenShift 4, bringing the power of Kubernetes Operators to Azure along with the flexibility of Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS.
As I’ve said, open source is about choice and about meeting customers where they are, on whichever cloud platform they prefer. With that in mind, we continued our work across the public cloud withRed Hat OpenShift Service on AWS, a jointly-managed and jointly-supported enterprise Kubernetes service on AWS. Red Hat OpenShift is now the common Kubernetes denominator on two of the world’s largest clouds but, most importantly, it’s now easier for our customers to consume OpenShift where it makes most sense for them without sacrificing operational flexibility or service levels.
We’re also seeing the promise of our acquisition by IBM come to fruition, as we scale and work together for powerful world-spanning solutions. Schlumbergerrepresents one of these moments. By collaborating with IBM, this initiative will support its business and provide Schlumberger’s associates global access to its leading exploration and production cloud-based environment and cognitive applications by using IBM’s hybrid cloud technology, built on Red Hat OpenShift.
On the horizon
Just a month in and we’ve already set the tone for the year. All roads, whether it’s through edge computing, serverless or Kubernetes, lead to open hybrid cloud. That’s what we’ve worked to build and where our focus continues to be. We’ve been talking about it for nearly a decade because it’s not just another trend; it’s an enterprise imperative. It’s through the hybrid cloud that we help our customers solve dynamic challenges and keep Red Hat in innovation’s vanguard.
We announced our intent to acquire StackRox, a leader and innovator in Kubernetes-native security. Once the transaction closes, this move will allow us to enhance security for cloud-native workloads by expanding and refining the Kubernetes’ native controls already present in OpenShift while shifting security into the container build and CI/CD phase.
Having a seamless integration between our sales and services strategy and our technology vision is critical to our success, and it calls for the right leader. For nearly a decade, Arun Oberoi has led the team and transformed our go-to-market approach matching our expanding open hybrid cloud portfolio, through strategic acquisitions and new alliances. He will retire later this year and Larry Stack will step into the role of executive vice president of Global Sales and Services. What I appreciate most about him is that he embraces the Red Hat culture and the customer is always the focus. There is a huge opportunity in front of us, as we keep scaling, Larry’s strong experience and the strategic thinking that he brings are going to help us capitalize on it.
Just because we made it out of 2020, doesn’t mean we’re back to business as usual. The pandemic is still impacting the world and organizations are still feeling the effects. The challenges aren’t going away, but we’ve shown resilience and that needs to be a trait that we keep as we move through the year. While 2021 holds many unknowns, one thing that is not unknown is our path forward.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) has been a part of Malaysia’s digital transformation journey since 2015 when we established our presence in the country with a local marketing entity, AWS Malaysia Sdn. Bhd. The announcement by the Malaysian Government outlining the Malaysia Digital Economy Blueprint via MyDigital marks a milestone in the nation’s journey to transform to a digital economy, built on cloud computing. As part of this journey, AWS is delighted to be named as a Cloud Service Provider for the Government of Malaysia by the Malaysian Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit (MAMPU).
With the right technology, governments, nonprofits, economic development organisations, and other entities can improve their internal operations, become more productive and, ultimately, focus more acutely on serving citizens. This can support business growth and help citizens enjoy improved quality of life. As organisations increasingly embrace cloud-based solutions, long-lasting effects can be realised in the form of community-wide collaboration, partnerships with local businesses, and increased innovation. These organisations can in turn wield greater influence on economic development and growth. The cloud also provides affordable IT services for entrepreneurs, helping them start and scale companies quicker and more reliably. These efforts pave the way toward building new businesses and a more productive workforce, which boosts local economic development.
AWS works closely with state governments, education institutions, and not-for-profit organisations in Malaysia to accelerate innovation, increase agility, and drive cost savings through the cloud. Our Malaysian customers range from public sector entities such as Smart Selangor Delivery Unit (SSDU), Asia Pacific University, and other government agencies, to enterprises including Petronas, Maxis, Astro, and Boost (Axiata), to startups like StoreHub, FashionValet, and 123RF.
SSDU leverages cloud computing to transform government services
SSDU started working with AWS in 2018 when they first built a Citizens Electronic Payments Platform for Malaysians to access paid government services through a highly scalable and reliable central mobile and web portal on AWS. Using the centralised platform, SSDU was able to conduct data analysis in identifying trends with near real-time data generated across the entire Selangor state to forecast and optimise services, accelerating the development of new solutions without large upfront investments. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, SSDU rolled out an operation dashboard on AWS that provided critical data for making real-time decisions to enforce containment measures. Simultaneously, SSDU facilitated the shift of over 1,000 local traders to sell products from physical to online stores to enable business continuity.
Using AWS, SSDU gained the control and confidence they needed to securely run their platform with the most flexible and secure cloud computing environment available today. As an AWS customer, SSDU benefits from AWS data centres and a network architected to protect all customer information, identities, applications, and devices. With AWS, SSDU has improved its ability to meet core security and compliance requirements, such as data locality, protection, and confidentiality using AWS’s comprehensive services and features. We look forward to partnering with more government agencies, empowering them to transform their digital service offerings for citizens.
Optimising the educational experience with cloud
Education institutions, like Asia Pacific University in Malaysia, have gone all-in on AWS, moving their entire technology infrastructure to AWS in order to transform the teaching and learning experience. They are running a mobile application for a cashless campus, deploying IoT services for their student attendance and queue systems, and using artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) for part of its learning environment. Asia Pacific University is delivering education resources to students 116 times faster than when they were using on-premises infrastructure, vastly improving students’ user experience.
Upskilling the next generation of cloud talent
Additionally, AWS Educate programme provides students and educators with resources and content that focus on building cloud skills in education institutions in Malaysia such as Universiti Malaya (UM), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM), and Asia Pacific University of Technology & Innovation. In August-September 2020, AWS held the ASEAN DeepRacer Women’s League to encourage young women in higher education institutions to acquire skills in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), and discover how technology can be used to create innovations to solve real-world problems. Two Malaysian students attained the first and second runner-up in the ASEAN League.
AWS has also been nurturing the local startups in Malaysia, and providing cloud skilling to develop the future workforce. Through AWS startup programmes, we have helped reduce cost of experimentation and accelerate innovation with AWS promotional credits. For example, the AWS Trusted Advisor online tool helps startup customers reduce costs, increase performance, and improve security by checking their use of AWS services, and making suggestions to help optimise performance. We further offer a variety of free online education and livestreamed or on-demand training events for startups across Asia at every growth stage, including AWSome Days and the AWS Builders Online Series for early-stage founders new to the cloud. To date, AWS has supported and helped grow hundreds of startups that are headquartered in Malaysia.
AWS is deeply committed to providing Malaysia with the best-in-class cloud technology. We look forward to building upon our worldwide experience in working with over 7,500 government agencies, more than 14,000 academic institutions and over 35,000 nonprofit organisations, alongside millions of active customers across other vertical industries around the world, to support the Government of Malaysia on its digital transformation journey.
Hot off the heels of AMD’s announcement of their new EPYC processors, Dell Technologies has revealed a series of new offerings that put the AMD EPYC front and centre. The new Dell EMC servers come optimised for multiple workloads to help businesses better cater to their needs. They up the ante with up to 64 cores with EPYC’s new Zen 3 architecture.
The new additions add to Dell Technologies’ already robust portfolio of Dell EMC PowerEdge offerings. They bring updated technologies with improved compute capabilities. The expanded portfolio allows for better handling of critical workloads and applications augmented by fast data performance thanks to the integration of PCIe Gen 4 technology. In addition, the new offerings in the Dell EMC PowerEdge portfolio come with up to six accelerators to help with large, challenging, data-intensive workloads. They continue to put data security and redundancy at the core with a well-established Root of Trust and what Dell Technologies refers to as a Cyber resilient architecture.
Of course, running on the Zen 3 augmented EPYC processors, the new PowerEdge servers are more power-efficient than before. Dell Technologies claims that the new racks offer up to 60% power efficiency compared to the previous generation. Adding to its power efficiency, Dell has equipped the new generation PowerEdge with multi-vector cooling. This technology helps direct airflow to the hottest portions of the server; helping maintain lower temperatures and better performance.
The new line up consists of six offerings catered for different workloads and computing environments. From powerful, performance-oriented racks to AI optimised racks to deceivingly powerful, slim racks, Dell’s new offerings have you covered. Their Dell EMC PowerEdge XE8545 marries the performance of AMD’s new EPYC cores with NVIDIA’s A100 GPUs for powerful, AI and machine learning optimised workloads. The PowerEdge R6515 packs a configurable, dual-socket setup in a 1U rack server for compact performance while the R7515 brings a scalable single-socket 2U rack with performance and affordability in mind. They’ve got the C6525 for high performance, dense computing environments while the R7525 and R6525 bring extended flexibility.
Just when we thought AMD is done with being the best at gaming, they proved that one title is never enough. They want to retain their title as the most powerful ever, with a full-stop right after. So, they went ahead and introduced what seems to be the most powerful processing chips in the world, the EPYC 7003 series server processors.
The new EPYC 7003 series is the third-generation server processors by AMD. That also means that it gets the Zen 3 architecture that the AMD Ryzen 5000 series line-up got. That same architecture also means that AMD’s processing core clusters gets to access all of the available cache memory module when necessary, instead of just half of it. Again, if you were doing some research with AMD’s latest Ryzen 5000 with Zen 3 architecture, it might sound like something simple and small. The results are quite significant though.
At least in terms of a server, Zen 3 architecture also allows the cores to process more data at any single time than before. In practical terms, that also means a much faster processor compared to before. Of course, AMD’s implementation also means more efficient power consumption.
The headline figures for EPYC’s flagship is up to 64 cores and 128 threads. With 64 cores, the processor features 256MB of cache, that is the first indication that this is not your regular consumer gaming PC stuff. All cores are clocked at 2.45GHz and can be boosted up to 3.675GHz when necessary.
Of course, these chips are also embedded with extra security measurements and algorithms. In a server, data center, cloud seservice, and virtualisation environment, protecting your data is of utmost importance. Security, in this case, has to start from the processors itself with AMD’s own Infinity Guard suite encryption technologies to keep everything it processes secure.
Of course, you are not going to see the AMD EPYC processors out on the street. These are highly specialised processors made for Artificial Intelligence implementation, data centers, and data backbones for larger organisations. These are the stuff that keeps thigs like Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and Amazon Web Services running for you.
The AMD EPYC processors range from 32 cores to 64 cores. The EPYC processors are usually the base for AMD’s Ryzen Threadripper platforms. There are obviously no announcements made yet on the availability of the prosumer processor platforms at this time. If they are launching a Threadripper soon though, the AMD EPYC processors could probably give you an insight to what you can expect.
Huawei may be facing a tough 2021 if the new licensing measures taken by the Biden administration is any indication. It looks like the U.S. is clamping down even further on the restrictions that were initially put on Huawei. According to Reuters, the Biden administration is reinforce existing measures by streamlining and making existing licenses more consistent. The new measures seem to reinforce pre-existing measures that are preventing Huawei from accessing much needed resources and components for its infrastructure and mobile businesses particularly when it comes to 5G technologies.
The new measures come as the latest blow to Huawei in what seems to be a crippling two years for the company. Back in 2019, Huawei was placed on the “entity list” which prevents companies trading in the U.S. from doing business with the company. This was done after reports surfaced of the company potentially providing access to data to the Chinese government.
Since then, Huawei has been facing hurdle after hurdle when it comes to acquiring technologies for its broad range of products. This has led to Huawei losing access to Google’s Mobile Services (GMS) which has impacted its smartphone businesses which use Google’s Android operating system. Huawei has been hard at work building its own Huawei Mobile Services and App Gallery to complete the user experience on their smartphones. The company has also been working on their own proprietary OS – Harmony OS – which is intended to replace Android on its devices.
It looks like Xiaomi is likely going to have a break when it comes to their impending U.S. ban. In a court ruling released on the 13th of March, a judge in the District of Columbia, Rudolph Contreras, found that the classification of Xiaomi as a “Chinese Communist military company” was “arbitrary and capricious” and granted the company a preliminary injunction against the restrictions that were due to take effect. In addition to issuing the preliminary injunction, the judge stated that filing of the claim from the Department of Defense lacked “a satisfactory explanation” and lacked a rational connection between the facts and the conclusion made. The preliminary injunction bodes well for Xiaomi as the company looks to reverse the classification all together.
Xiaomi found itself in the middle of a legal battle towards the end of Trump’s administration. The Department of Defense, under Trump, declared Xiaomi a threat to national security citing ties to the Chinese government. However, Xiaomi has since denied the claim. In their court filing, the company cited that the classification would cause irreparable damage and losses. Keep in mind, the ban that Xiaomi was facing is not the same as the one Huawei is facing. Xiaomi was facing a ban on investments from the U.S. If the injunction was denied, any individual or company linked to the United States would have had to divest their shares in the company by November. This was clarified by Xiaomi when it announced that Google Play Services would remain on its international phones.
Xiaomi has since issued a public statement regarding the matter.
Microsoft has finally rolled out end-to-end encryption (E2EE) feature to Microsoft Teams after a long wait. This feature is available for commercial or paid subscriber, and it only applies to one-to-one unscheduled meetings. Although, Microsoft mentioned that this feature will be applied in other types of meeting in the future.
This security feature has provided users a better platform to discuss sensitive and confidential matters or topics. Microsoft’s implementation not only encrypts the conversation during the meeting but also enhances cryptographic keys held on users’ devices. In other words, no third party gets access to the meeting or trace the conversations, including Microsoft. The latest security upgrade is supposed to reduce privacy concerns.
On the other hand, PowerPoint Live is one of the new features in Microsoft Teams, it allows users to remotely control the slides, while the viewers or other presenters can privately skip ahead to the content they want without disrupting the presentation. Presenters can review comments, content, notes, and meeting participants on a single screen, which is convenient.
Moreover, Microsoft Teams is offering 3 presenter modes for customized presentations. The 3 modes are ‘Standout’, ‘Reporter’, and ‘Side-by-side’.Only Standout mode will be released within this month (March 2021), Reporter and Side-by-Side mode will be released soon as per Microsoft. Standout mode places the presenter’s video feed front and center. Side-by-side places the video feed right beside the presenter’s slides. Reporter mode is pretty self-explanatory.
Of course, users can leave it in Dynamic Mode to keep things simple. Dynamic View personalizes and automatically manages the frame to the speaker window as people speak up or turn on their cameras. Users can decide to place the participant gallery at the top of their window, closer to your webcam’s placement. This layout arrangement helps maintain a sort of natural eye gaze. Dynamic View will also be coming later this month.
Shopee, one of Malaysia’s largest e-commerce platforms, is bringing next day delivery to its users. The platform will be offering next day deliveries for Peninsular Malaysia excluding Perlis, Kedah, Kelantan and Terrengganu through its Shopee Xpress service. The offer kicked off on 18 February 2021 as the platform geared up for its upcoming 3.3 sale.
The next-day delivery offer applies to purchases on Shopee Mart with the “Next-Day Delivery” tag. Keep in mind that your order will also need to be placed before 12PM daily to make use of the service. Orders placed after 12PM will be considered orders for the next day and will be delivered the day after. So, if you order at 1 PM on Monday, you’ll be receiving your order on Wednesday. If eligible orders do not make it to their destination by the next day, users will receive a free shipping voucher for their next Shopee Mart purchase.
The new service comes in response to the data reported by iPrice and Parcelhub which showed that Malaysians experienced a 119% increase in delivery times in 2020’s movement control order (MCO). This made Malaysia the country with the longest delivery time for online purchases in the region.
Shopee’s next-day delivery offer is only the tip of the iceberg as the company has been working with partners to facilitate a faster, more convenient delivery process. They have since increased the number of Shopee Xpress drop-off points to more than 300 nationwide with partners such as Parcelhub and Mailboxes Etc (MBE). These new drop-off points are expected to help reduce turnover times. To date, Shopee has successfully reduced delivery times to East Malaysia (Sabah & Sarawak) from 10 days to 4 days.
During their 3.3 sale, customers can get free shipping with a minimum spend of MYR10. Shopee is also offering daily 50% off deals and bargains from as low as MYR0.33. They will also be working with TV3 for a 3.3 Supermarket Show which will air at 9PM on 3rd March 2021.
