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MoD Defence Digital adds Oracle Cloud to MODCloud list of assured providers
Database giant Oracle has been added to the list of providers the Ministry of Defence has endorsed for use by the UK defence community
Caroline Donnelly, Senior Editor, UK
Published: 23 Sep 2020 10:13
The UK Ministry of Defence's technology arm has added Oracle to its roster of assured public cloud providers that are approved to process and store the defence community's data.
The MoD's Defence Digital department, set up in 2019 to oversee the delivery of effective IT tools and services to military personnel, is responsible for providing the defence community with access to certified and assured private and public cloud services.
This is through the delivery of its MODCloud initiative, and the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure platform has now been added to the list of providers the defence community can access through it, which also includes Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft.
Sara Sharkey, head of MoD Defence Digital application services and DevOps, said the aim of MODCloud is to provide the defence community with the cloud building blocks they need to underpin their wider digital transformation plans.
"The real opportunity of digital transformation – which includes artificial intelligence, machine learning, internet of things, blockchain and human interfaces – is to embrace data on a scale we've never seen before," said Sharkey.
"Selecting Oracle Cloud Infrastructure within our MODCloud multi-hybrid suite of services offers new technologies that are reshaping how we approach IT and using this information, allowing us to focus on innovation and outcomes for both business and, importantly, people."
The defence community will be able to access the software giant's cloud-based infrastructure, business applications and platform services portfolio of products through the initiative, as part of a pan-defence Oracle enterprise agreement.
Richard Petley, senior vice-president and country leader for Oracle UK, said the arrangement will see the MoD join a host of other public sector organisations that are adopting the firm's cloud services.
"The Ministry of Defence will capitalise on the choice and economic benefits that Oracle Cloud Infrastructure can provide, all of which will help meet challenges that lie ahead," said Petley.
"It joins a whole host of public sector organisations, such as the Home Office, Western Sussex Family Assist, Lambeth Borough Council, Croydon County Council, the Office for National Statistics and Scottish Water, which are already using Oracle Cloud."
Read more about Oracle's cloud strategy
Oracle may be late to the cloud infrastructure and platform game, but it believes it has what it takes to carve out a bigger slice of the Asia-Pacific cloud market.
Oracle's Dedicated Region Cloud at Customer will let enterprises run an entire cloud region in their own datacentres in a potentially game-changing move.
Andrew Sutherland, senior vice-president for technology at Oracle, told Computer Weekly that joining MODCloud is a ringing endorsement for Oracle's second-generation cloud infrastructure.
The company lifted the lid on its generation two cloud at Oracle OpenWorld 2018, claiming it would offer enterprises better performance, pricing and security than its competitors' public clouds, while also giving users access to autonomous analytics and database capabilities.
"Our customers, across all industries, have come to us and said Oracle has been there, looking after a lot of our data for a long time, and now it's becoming much more valuable and [in large] volumes and we need help with that," said Sutherland. "The answer of course now is in cloud computing.
"It wasn't obvious the first time around with generation one cloud that we really had the answer to this. The generation one clouds were great for less critical workloads, test and development and everyone learned a lot of from the concepts of pooling resources, and elasticity.
"But the questions of how do we manage large volumes of high-value data efficiently kept coming – and so we responded by creating this Oracle Cloud Infrastructure which we term 'generation two' cloud. Candidly, I think we've cracked it with the cloud technology here."
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Decentralising datacentres: The new challenges of security at the edge
In September 2020, the Computer Weekly Security Think Tank, our panel of information and cyber security experts, considered the challenges inherent in decentralising the datacentre, and set out to answer the question, how can security professionals ensure such setups are just as secure as the traditional centralised model? Read more in this e-guide.
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Small business owners tend to be everything in one: the department of sales, HR department, accountant, and all other professionals their business requires.
So when the social media craze happened, many small business owners didn't see an opportunity in it - they saw another headache.
Sure, the very idea of social media marketing is utterly confusing. Yet, it works. In a report by Social Media Examiner, 90% of all marketers indicated that their social media efforts have generated more exposure for their businesses. Increased traffic was the second major benefit: 77% reported positive results.
In this post I'll show you how you can use social media for business promotion, lead generation, and reputation building in just the time you have.
Then we'll see how you can cover the essentials of each of these without taking any more than 30 minutes of your time.
Social media is first and foremost a place to socialize. While you might assume that if you have 5 minutes left to deal with social media, you should spend them posting news about your brand, that is simply not true. Social media exposure works through building a reputation of a helpful, friendly brand. So first thing you should do is act as customer service: find mentions about your brand on social media and respond to them. React to any questions, comments, complaints, and praises you see online.
Social Media Monitoring tools like Awario make this task easy and quick for you. All you have to do is set up an alert for your brand, and the program will show you all mentions on all kinds of social media (from Facebook to blogs) in one dashboard (or send them to your email). In Awario, you can reply to mentions of your brand on major social networks right from the dashboard, too.
First of all, great customer service is one of the best ways to make sure your existing customers come back. Secondly, it is a way to build reputation of a trustworthy brand, which will undoubtedly attract new customers. Thirdly, customer service done on social media results in more brand exposure: the whole online population of Facebook acquaintances and Twitter followers of the mention's author observes you being helpful.
Monitor mentions of your competitor(s) alongside monitoring mentions of your own brand (set up an alert in a Social Monitoring tool for your competitor's brand). When you have a couple of minutes a day, reply to some of the mentions. If users are asking an industry question, reply to it without necessarily promoting your brand. If they are complaining, promote your brand openly, explaining why your product wouldn't have the same problems. If people are asking about your competitor, offer your brand as an alternative. And so on.
By responding to mentions about your competitor, you are making your brand known to people that are already interested in this kind of products. Moreover, you have a chance of getting the unsatisfied customers of your competitors that either didn't know about your product, or needed a push to switch.
Social media is all about building relationships. By sharing posts of people in your industry and your influencers, you are killing two birds with one stone: you're posting relevant content (preferably interesting one, too) on your brand page, and you are promoting people that might be useful to you in the future. Share posts that contain images or videos the most. Don't forget to include the appropriate hashtags and @mentions.
Share posts of your customers, if there are any, and if these posts are related to your business. For example, never hesitate to share testimonials on your brand page.
It is completely unrequired that you share all posts you find fitting: one or two each day is usually enough.
By sharing relevant and useful posts of other people, you are engaging your customers, your influencers, and experts in your industry. This is a way to establish yourself as a knowledgeable and friendly brand, and build brand awareness among people in the industry.
While the first point (sharing posts of people in your industry and your influencers' posts) should take most of your brand page's space (80%), it doesn't mean you should completely ignore anything that happens with your actual products. 20% should still be dedicated to posting any news and updates about your products, sales, and questions to people about your products. Don't forget images! Adding an image to your post takes no more than a minute, and yet it has immense power. For example, images boost retweets by an impressive 35%.
Even if your brand page is on Facebook, you're not fooling anyone: users know that you're there to sell. Hence, when they sign up for (like, follow) your brand, they expect your page to be a news source about your products. So talking about your product (without overdoing it) is logical and effective in raising your conversion.
Which posts reach most people?
Which of your tactics are most successful (offering a 10% discount for your product to your competitor's unhappy client)?
What people mention your brand a lot? Can they become brand ambassadors?
Refine your social media actions based on the results you get.
That was it! We're out of time!
Social media marketing doesn't stop here. In fact, this is just where it starts. However, this is an actual situation when 20 minutes a day can bring your business to the whole new level.