Realising that Public Cloud is not the single solution towards their digital journey, 91 per cent of Indian enterprises are already in the process of rebalancing their Cloud strategy, a new report said on Thursday.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in India are set to benefit from a $30 million global "anti-COVID" programme that Alibaba Cloud, the data intelligence backbone of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, launched on Thursday.

IT advisory IDC estimates that domestic IT spending will decline 4.5% to $55.5 billion this fiscal

As Indian firms realign their focus on revenue growth, they need to leverage customer and market behaviour to place their bets on long-term, sustainable growth, a new report said.

The headcount has now come down from more than 1,000 employees a year ago, with the majority of job cuts in the wake of Covid-19 outbreak that forced shutdowns in the February-April period. The headcount comprises staff on the company’s rolls as well as those on contract and outsourced manpower.

Zoom was the most downloaded non-game app worldwide for April 2020 with close to 131 million installs, a 60x growth from April 2019

There was significant spike in downloads and uploads per user, owing to the high volume of work and streaming content across India.

The new center takes the total number of Customer Support Centres of Excellence to ten, five of which are based in Asia.

Amazon is beefing up its data centre infrastructure and cloud services business in India as the clamour around data localisation grows louder everyday.

The data centre market, currently pegged at around $4 billion, is likely to grow to $7 billion by 2020 or 2022, say industry players.

The first project is to develop an automated real-time email-communication solution for customer queries and reduce turn-around time on redressal.

Adani expects to invest Rs 700 billion to build data parks in India over the next two decades.

From big businesses to real estate companies to global technology firms, everybody is talking of setting up data centres or of making aggressive expansions. Priyanka Sangani delineates the new trend.

While Edge data centers will be providing an array of services independently, a more centralized data center can be backing them up with cloud services and analytics.

The overall server market in India witnessed a Year-over-Year (YoY) growth of a dismal 0.8 per cent in terms of revenue to reach $280.1 million in the third quarter (Q3) versus $277.8 million in Q3 of 2018, a new report by International Data Corporation (IDC) said on Wednesday.

This expansion adds up to 15 data centres under STT GDC India’s ownership and management, and increases the power capacity to more than 90 megawatt of critical IT load across eight cities, further strengthening its market-leading position, said the company.

The company’s data centers are currently located in Singapore. “We don’t have a stated plan yet but we may look at opening an Indian data centre to be closer to customers in India. Some customers prefer local presence,” said Nikhil Arora, managing director, GoDaddy India.

With close to 450 million Internet users, India is already the largest market for companies like Facebook in terms of users.

DBS Bank is leveraging technology to reduce man hours, enhance the customer journey, automate processes and open new revenue streams.

A simple fix has helped the airline’s cabin crew save 20 minutes of their work, helping the airline improve turnaround times for better on-time performance.

Many species around the world are likely to become extinct as ecosystems and the diversity of life found in them are threatened by pressures, such as pollution, overexploitation, climate change, invasive species, fragmentation, degradation and loss of habitat. A recent report has examined the causes of biodiversity loss and the policies surrounding efforts to tackle this loss

Researchers have developed a new model to estimate the impact of harvesting wild species and land use change on biodiversity. Unlike previous models, it considers the indirect effect of harvesting or pest control on landscape structure through reducing the variety of species.

A global team of marine biologists have recently completed a Census of Marine Life, which contributes to our basic understanding of marine ecosystems. Among its findings - marine biodiversity in the Baltic and Mediterranean are among the most threatened globally.

Researchers argue that of the five mechanisms available for ensuring the provision of ecosystem services ??? prescription, penalties, persuasion, property rights and payments ??? only payments are likely to be effective at the global level. However, while a number of international Payments for Ecosystem Services (IPES) schemes exist, their impact on ecosystem services remains negligible.

Changing environmental conditions could put diverse ecosystems, such as rainforests and coral reefs, at greater risk of multiple extinctions. A new study suggests that, rather than protecting ecosystems from collapse, high levels of biodiversity may actually prove risky in a situation such as climate change ??? where an unpredictable environment can suddenly extinguish a population needed to support an ecosystem, leading to knock-on effects further up the food chain.

To preserve rich biodiversity in protected areas of tropical forests, safeguarding the surrounding area can be just as important as safeguarding the park or reserve itself. This is according to a new study, which assessed the ecological health of 60 protected areas across the tropics.

Controlled fires could help the regeneration capacity of some insects in regions of intensively managed forests, according to a recent study of Finnish forests that are part of an EU LIFE restoration project. Results indicated that fire can be an effective conservation measure but its impact depends on the region???s history and context.

A new method for identifying forest sites to protect under the Natura 2000 network — as well as reviewing existing sites — is presented in a recent study. The modelling approach predicts the location of certain types of high nature value habitats using existing data on the distribution of key indicator species. The study demonstrates the method using the case of a German federal state, Lower Saxony.

Understanding the way fish use their habitat is necessary for a science- based approach to fisheries management, according to a new scientific review. The paper summarises the current state of knowledge and tools available to assess fish movement patterns in relation to freshwater fisheries, and recommends more systematic use of these tools to inform the management of fish populations.

Agri-environment schemes (AES) have been implemented throughout Europe to mitigate against the negative effects of agricultural intensification. Although these schemes have shown positive effects on the abundance and richness of certain species and taxa, the impact of AES on reproduction of target species at the local and landscape scale is poorly understood. This large-scale study looked for the effect of selected AE measures on bumblebee reproduction. Results indicate that bumblebee reproduction is significantly higher on sown flower patches when compared to conventional management. Although the increase is most pronounced at the plot scale, higher reproduction was found in landscapes surrounding larger sown plots (at least one hectare) compared to smaller sown plots.

The United Nation's Globally Harmonised System of Classification and Labelling of Chemicals (GHS) is an international initiative to standardise how chemicals are managed across the world. A recent study has proposed a suite of indicators which measure progress in implementing the GHS.

Because natural conditions in the environment, such as temperature, can significantly affect the toxicity of pollutant chemicals on living organisms, the effects of pollutants can differ according to region. Ecological risk assessment should therefore include environmental characteristics relevant to each region, according to recent research.

A new study has developed a set of indicators to evaluate how well companies voluntarily manage dangerous chemicals. These indicators can be used to check progress towards the World Summit on Sustainable Development goal of effectively managing chemicals.

Researchers have developed a technique to recover indium, an important raw material with limited supply, from liquid crystal display (LCD) screens. The method could contribute to a resource-efficient, circular economy.

A study of the pollution caused by ship scrapping in Alang, India, shows significantly higher levels of heavy metal and petroleum hydrocarbons in sediment and seawater, compared to a control site. The researchers also found reduced populations of zooplankton — a critical food source for marine biota — and increased numbers of pathogenic bacteria.

The Alang shipbreaking yards in India recycle almost half of all end-of-life ships worldwide. The major activity at the yards is plate-cutting, used to recover steel from ships. This process consumes nearly 29 kg of oxygen and 7 kg of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and emits almost 22 kg of CO2 per 1 km-long cut with a 1 mm depth. This study reveals the carbon footprint and resources consumed in the cutting of steel plates. The method used to derive these findings could be adapted to ship dismantling yards worldwide.

Soil is an overlooked source of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) for grazing cows, finds a new study of contaminated farms in Switzerland. The researchers tested a new modelling tool to track two specific environmental POPs — known as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and dioxins (PCDD/Fs) — as they moved from the farm environment into a cow’s body over time. The tool could be used to assess measures designed to decontaminate animals or to prevent contamination, such as grazing regimes that aim to reduce the risk of cows eating soil accidentally.

Croatian researchers have developed new indicators that can be used to analyse photochemical pollution and smog caused by ozone. The indicators are based on simple mathematical formulae and could make it easier for those who monitor pollution levels to make meaningful comparisons between different sites.

Extending the Montreal Protocol on ozone-depleting substances to include hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) could have important benefits for climate change action, say scientists in a recent analysis. HFCs are currently part of the Kyoto Protocol as greenhouse gases, but this protection will end with the expiry of Kyoto commitments this year.

Emissions of non-methane volatile organic compounds (NMVOCs) can have damaging effects on human health. New research has now revealed that only three substances out of a large number of NMVOCs are responsible for almost all damaging effects on human health. Air pollution policies should be designed to target these substances specifically, rather than overall NMVOC emissions, the researchers recommend.

Air pollutants and greenhouse gases (GHGs) from a coal-fired power station have been correctly identified 12 km away, researchers report in a new US study. Their monitoring method paves the way for a space-based satellite system which can check emissions reported by individual power stations against actual emissions.

Under the United Nations Minamata Convention on mercury, China and India could avoid a combined 242 tonnes of mercury emissions in 2050 from coal-fired power plants, a new study predicts. This amount is equal to approximately 12% of total emissions in 2010. While the benefits will be mostly regional, lower mercury deposition in surrounding oceans is good news for Europeans who eat fish sourced from those waters.

Measurements of individual vehicle emissions are usually made in laboratory tests. In this study, researchers followed cars driving in real conditions to measure emissions of air pollutants, including black carbon and nitrogen oxides. The study shows that diesel cars contribute disproportionately to air pollution, and highlights the value of on-road measurements.

A recent study develops a framework for implementing IAMs using the Lombardy region of Italy as a case study. Researchers have run an uncertainty and sensitivity analysis with an environmental model, specifically with an Integrated Assessment Model (IAM) for air quality, demonstrating how model components are sources of uncertainty in the output of an integrated assessment. Policy responses should therefore consider uncertainty and sensitivity when developing measures to improve air quality.

New low cost methods using bacteria to remove toxic metals from groundwater have been investigated using both actual contaminated groundwater and artificially controlled systems. Environmental conditions, such as changing levels of acidity or alkalinity, can have a significant effect on the removal of toxins, results show.

THE gently lapping waters of the bay are the soundtrack to this outstanding modern home at Lindisfarne.

Transactions will fall by up to 60% this spring then steadily tick back up, with a rebound by the end of 2021, according to most likely scenario forecast by Zillow

An extra £390,000 is being made available to community groups across Hertfordshire this year, amid the county’s ongoing response to the Covid-19 outbreak.

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LYNCHBURG —What a difference a day makes. At least as far as the weather is concerned. The heavy rain and strong winds from yesterday have given way to sunny skies and a calm breeze. Unfortunately, Tropical Storm Michael’s aftermath remains a reminder.