VMware claims the latest additions the Workspace ONE platform turn it into the first "intelligence-driven digital workspace," able to improve user experience and enable predictive security across an IT environment.

Dubbed Workspace ONE, the cloud-based service is integrated with the Workspace ONE platform, and "uniquely" combines aggregation and correlation of users, apps, networks and endpoints data. It leverages the data to power a decision engine able to provide actionable recommendations and automation, and allows IT to identify and fix issues, set employee-friendly access policies and provide a consistent user experience across devices and platforms while helping mitigate security issues at scale.

Microsoft plans to open two datacentres in Germany at a cost of over €100 million, Handelsblatt and WirtschaftsWoche reports-- despite the relative failure of a previous attempt at offering cloud services for the country.

Back in 2015 the company, in order to allay German data security concerns (and comply with strict privacy laws), collaborated with "data trustee" Deutsche Telekom to create Microsoft Cloud Deutschland, a cloud offering with extra-secure ring-fenced data. However the service was not very popular, due to high pricing and a lack of flexibility in lifting and shifting data.

Robin Systems announces Robin Cloud Platform 4.0-- an update of the open source container-based software solution featuring support for Microsoft Azure, as well as Amazon Web Services and on-premise installations.

The update also adds SAP HANA, IBM DB2, Microsoft SQL and packaged enterprise apps to all existing big data, NoSQL and Oracle workload support. As a result, the company says, customers can share resources across multiple applications with guaranteed performance isolation, all while slashing deployment and management times "from days to minutes."

“Our customers tell us that what excites them most about Robin is the app-store experience that lets them easily deploy, manage and consolidate all Big Data, NoSQL and databases," Robin adds. "While there are solutions in the market that can orchestrate application clusters, Robin is the only solution that also lets them simplify application lifecycle management and consolidate with predictable QOS. With our latest release we now also let them migrate any enterprise data app, modern or legacy, from on-premise to cloud or between clouds.”

Germany is the best out of 24 countries-- including the likes of the US, UK and Japan-- in a Business Software Alliance (BSA) study assessing how prepared the countries are for cloud adoption and cloud.

The BSA Cloud Computing Scorecard examines the legal and regulatory framework, with an emphasis on privacy laws, cybersecurity laws and broadband infrastructure, in order to determine the cloud computing readiness of the country in question. The result is a list of 72 relevant questions.

Germany scored highest on the Scorecard with 84 points out of 100. The BSA says Germany has a comprehensive cybercrime legislation, modern electronic commerce and electronic signature laws, and strong commitment to international standards and interoperability, among other things. That said, Germany still has room for improvement, since its privacy legislations includes registration requirements that "may act as a cost barrier for the use of cloud computing."