Globe x Yondu - Are You the Next Cloud Cadet?

Technology has become an integral part of our everyday lives. With that said, there’s always room for improvement and the opportunities for new innovations are larger than ever. Such opportunities come with the need for passionate and driven individuals who will lead the shift as the Industrial Revolution 4.0 (IR 4.0) comes to the Philippines.

Globe, in partnership with Yondu, acknowledged this need and created the Accelerated Cloud Cadetship Enablement Program (AC2E) program. Both companies recognise that cloud technology will be a critical enabler of  IR4.0 and is launching this initiative to ensure that the country is able to deliver the talent needed to succeed in the coming digital transformation.

Globe Chief Information Officer Pebbles Manalang says "Globe is providing an opportunity for the next generation of IT professionals to be exposed in Cloud Technology with AC2E program at a young age."

In his talk recently Dr. Jose Ramon Albert, Senior Research Fellow of the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) made a conclusion during the IR4.0 Summit that people, business and government need to adapt to the disruption that will be brought about by IR4.0. Adapting to IR4.0 includes training the workforce with the new skills that will be needed to prepare for the future.   

An Overview of the AC2E program
AC2E is a cloud capability build program that offers a holistic technical and professional development plan to aspiring young IT professionals for the duration of seven months.

This premier program aims to produce 25 highly skilled cloud practitioners who are deployment and future-ready. It will launch in November with a series of events until December. Official onboarding and start of the program will be on January 2020 until August 2020.

Eligibility
Fresh graduates (those who have graduated from March 2018 onwards) of a two-year associate course or four-year Bachelor’s course in Computer Science, IT, Engineering, Mathematics, or any STEM-related courses can apply for this program. Most importantly, aspiring applicants should have a high propensity to learn new things, be immensely curious, a team player, and willing to work in a hyper-fast environment.

All qualified applicants will take an online technical assessment which will measure each applicant's technical competency. Out of all these applicants who will take the assessment, 100 qualifiers will be short-listed and will undergo paper screening. The top 50 will be chosen. The top 50 will attend a 2-day workshop and will be narrowed down to the top 30 who will continue with HR assessment and final deliberations.

Selected applicants will be hired by Yondu Inc. as a probationary employee with a competitive salary. They will be reporting in the Globe office at BGC, Taguig for the duration of the program.

For regional hires, a temporary relocation package for the duration of the program will be provided.

Those who pass the selection process will receive an email and SMS confirming they have passed.

What to expect from the AC2E program

Selected cadets can expect an exciting, intensive, and rigorous program. They will develop technical skills through learning sessions and immersions, as well as leadership and professional skills - making for a holistic experience. They will also be mentored and coached by a pool of experts in the IT industry. At the end of the program, the cadets will have the opportunity to work for a high-performing organization and get certification/s in different cloud platforms.

Onboarding will happen for two weeks to make sure that there is enough time for the cadets to be introduced to Globe and Information Systems Group (ISG). During this time, they will also be given other useful information that they will use throughout their journey.

For six months, the cadets will develop their skills and competencies in five major areas, or “stints”. This will be done through immersions and mentoring sessions. After each stint, the cadets will have a revalida where the knowledge, skills, and competencies that they acquired will be put to the test. Certifications will also be given after each track.

To culminate the entire program, a Capstone Project will be given to the cadets. They will group themselves in three’s or in pairs and will have three weeks to use their newly acquired cloud knowledge and skills in creating a proof of concept (POC). This will then be presented to a panel of experts.

The cadets will then graduate and be deployed to their home stints based on their performance throughout the entire program. Additional learning sessions on cloud native and cloud security topics will be offered for the cadets’ further education.

Opportunities After the Program
There are numerous job opportunities that await cadets once they finish the program, particularly in the fields of Architecture, Operations, Development, and Business such as roles include Enterprise Architect, Solutions Engineer, Cybersecurity Specialist, Infrastructure Operations, Application Developer, DevOps Engineer, Finance Analyst, and Cloud Finance Manager, to name a few.

The AC2E program understands the importance of the IT industry in the Philippines, especially with the rise of digital technology. It is a great platform for aspiring IT professionals to encourage innovation. Cadets will be given the chance to have an exciting learning experience that will help hone their skills and expand their horizons.

Interested? Register Now!

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JG Summit Upgrades Employee Experience with Microsoft Office 365 and Cloud Platform

JG Summit Holdings Inc. aims to achieve this goal through a digital transformation journey that will embed digitalization in its core business strategies to meet the evolving needs and lifestyle not just of its customers, but also of its employees.

“Our vision is to be the leading digital conglomerate in the Philippines. To achieve that goal, multiple groups within the JG Summit Business Units, Subsidiaries, and Affiliates have been working behind the scenes to bring about this transformation,” said JG Summit President and CEO Lance Y. Gokongwei.

(L to R): Jackie Buenviaje, Account Executive, Microsoft Philippines, Carlos Santos, Group Chief Information Officer, JGSHI, Lance Y. Gokongwei, President and Chief Executive Officer of JGSHI, Andrea Della Mattea, President, Microsoft Asia Pacific, Alberto Granados, Vice President, Microsoft Asia Pacific, Ricky Kapur, General Manager, Enterprise Operations Unit, Microsoft Asia Pacific, Tanya Aguila – Loo, Specialist Technology Unit Lead, Microsoft Philippines

Among the initiatives will be to upgrade the employee experience across the entire conglomerate through the use of Microsoft Office 365 and the cloud platform. JG Summit is transitioning from on-premise systems to Microsoft’s cloud services.

Office 365 is a set of Microsoft applications that allows users belonging to the same network to store files and share information.  Compared to earlier versions of Microsoft applications, Office 365 uses the cloud platform, which offers agility, greater efficiency and security benefits.

JG Summit’s move to the cloud platform will further enable its employees to transform their environment into a digital workplace. With this project, the conglomerate envisions a New Culture of Work where employees will be introduced to the Modern Digital Workplace which will empower people across the organization to achieve more by enabling better communication, collaboration, and sharing of information from computers to mobile phones in a single cohesive platform.

The first step is to migrate everyone away from current e-mail platform and put everyone up unto the cloud platform accessible from anywhere in the world and enable collaboration on any device.

Ricky Kapur, General Manager, Enterprise Operating Unit, Microsoft Asia Pacific, reiterated how JG Summit’s initiatives closely aligns with Microsoft’s mission. “At Microsoft, we empower every person and every organization to do more. The fourth industrial revolution is here, and organizations must digitally transform not just to optimize operations, but to enable their people. We’re very excited to work with JG Summit and be part of their digital transformation journey.”

JG Summit is one of the largest and most diversified Filipino conglomerates, engaged primarily in businesses that serve a growing middle class with rising disposable incomes in the Philippines, Southeast Asia, and Australasia.  These businesses include branded snack foods and beverages, commodities, agro-industrial businesses, air transportation, banking, real estate, and petrochemicals.

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Microsoft organizes the first, Azure Summit in the Philippines!

Microsoft Philippines showcased Microsoft Azure services in the first ever Azure Summit in the Philippines! The service enables organizations to open new possibilities, accelerate innovation, future proof their business, and stay compliant and secure

(from L-R) Microsoft Philippines COO Christian Lim, James Indino – VP-IT of Philcare, Marian Lontoc – IT Sales Director – Crayon, Andres Valencia – Global VP of ISV and Verticals, Crayon, Dir Angel Magtalas - ICTSS, Dept of Budget and Management, and Microsoft Philippines Managing Director Hans Bayaborda.

At the event, Microsoft gave a glimpse of what to expect from Azure as it help organizations with their Digital Transformation. Several Microsoft partners and clients – including Crayon, Philcare, and the Department of Budget and Management – shared their own stories of, and insight into digital transformation (DT) with Microsoft Azure. Attendees also heard from several Microsoft executives on actionable insights from their latest DT study. Microsoft’s own inspiring DT journey as a company was brought up by Hans Bayaborda, Microsoft Philippines Country Manager.

The event was well received by Filipinos as it was attended by over 900+ IT/Data Pros delegates, eager to see how organizations are using technology to change the game. Microsoft also gave away 25 Azure certifications to enable even more organizations through the cloud.

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Fortinet Introduces FortiGate 6000F series, Industry’s Fastest 100 Gbps+ Next-Generation Firewall Appliance.

Taguig City, February 13, 2018. Fortinet® (NASDAQ: FTNT), the global leader in broad, integrated and automated cybersecurity solutions, today introduced its FortiGate 6000F Series of Next-Generation Firewalls (NGFW).

The first in the series, the FortiGate 6000F incorporates a new hardware processing architecture that delivers the validated performance of a Fortinet chassis in a compact appliance form-factor to deliver advanced security for exponentially increasing.

The FortiGate 6000F series NGFWs are ideally suited for enterprise edge networks that prioritize threat protection and encryption inspection throughput in a form-factor that enables high density, energy efficiency, and deployment simplicity.

The FortiGate 6000F is built around Fortinet’s next-generation hardware architecture that combines discrete, multi-cpu processing cards that enable chassis-class performance, resilience, and capacity.

Delivers unparalleled processing power and speed to meet the security needs of enterprise edge traffic with industry-leading encrypted traffic inspection, threat protection and NGFW performance.

The Next-Generation of FortiGate 
Fortinet’s new F-series includes the FortiGate 6300F and FortiGate 6500F, which are high-performance, compact and easy to manage NGFW appliances that are integrated within the Fortinet Security Fabric.

Advanced Security Capabilities and Performance: The 6000F series are the industry’s fastest NGFW appliances, delivering advanced threat protection and SSL inspection performance to handle massive volumes of traffic at the network edge.

High Speed and Flexible Interfaces: High density zSFP+ and QSFP28 interfaces support 10G, 40G, 100Gbps and new 25G data rates to provide high speed connectivity and increased flexibility as enterprises migrate to higher density designs.

Security Fabric Integration: FortiGate firewalls serve as the foundation of the Fortinet Security Fabric and run FortiOS, the world’s most deployed network security operating system. The Fortinet Security Fabric provides broad, integrated, and automated security that is required to protect the vast digital attack surface created by digital transformation.

Next-Generation Hardware Architecture
An industry first for a security appliance, Fortinet’s next-generation hardware architecture leverages compact internal processing cards that are miniaturized versions of the blades typically used in cutting-edge modular security chassis. Each processing card combines multiple 12-core CPUs, Security Processing Units (SPUs), and Content (CP9) and Network Processors (NP6) into a discrete unit. The FortiGate 6000F series can support up to ten discrete processing cards in a 3U appliance.

The innovative design enables traditionally chassis-only benefits like high resilience and session scale while also delivering advanced security capabilities at breakthrough speeds never before seen in a compact appliance form-factor. The architecture provides additional benefits like hardware load balancing using new custom Distribution Processors (DP3) that intelligently assign tasks between the discrete processing cards.

Increase in Multi-Cloud Networks and Encrypted Traffic Requires Security Speed & Scale
Multi-cloud environments and the increasing use of IoT and mobile devices to access mission-critical applications are drastically increasing the volume of encrypted data on enterprise edge networks. The adoption of these technologies is also increasing bandwidth, throughput, and session capacity requirements that are driving enterprises to modernize their edge networks.

Additionally, the expanded digital attack surface and complex threat landscape is escalating the need for advanced security protections that can be applied with speed and scale across all connected devices. Security appliances need to be able to deliver the high performance required to protect encrypted traffic at the enterprise edge with a compact, modern interface that can seamlessly grow capacity in a smaller, efficient physical footprint.

“Enterprise adoption of the cloud is massively increasing the volume of traffic that needs to be inspected at the enterprise edge. Add to this the ever-increasing percentage of encrypted traffic and today’s NGFW’s need to perform at levels unheard of five years ago. The FortiGate 6000F high-end firewall series is built upon a new architecture that delivers the industry’s highest threat protection and encryption inspection performance to ensure enterprises can scale their defenses and meet the evolving needs of their business.”, John Maddison, senior vice president of products and solutions, Fortinet.

“Our use of the cloud continues to expand to meet the evolving business needs of our users and customers. This growth has increased the amount of traffic crossing our networks and created an imperative to continue to maintain security standards across our entire infrastructure without impacting business productivity. Our extended IT infrastructure is absolutely critical to everything we do, so it’s invaluable to have the security performance and seamless protection that Fortinet provides across our physical and cloud-based domains.” - Stuart Berman, global security architect at Steelcase

“Cloud computing is becoming increasingly popular, but gaps in protection can occur if security solutions can’t keep pace with agile public, private, and hybrid cloud environments.  The growth of IoT and Mobility also puts large demands on performance and security architectures as data traverses these end points.  ePlus recognizes these advances and has invested significantly in providing our customers with comprehensive security solutions to meet these growing demands.  We are proud to partner with Fortinet and leverage their robust platform to both scale and secure these transformative environments.” - Pascal Perot, VP strategic alliances, security at ePlus

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PR: ePLDT taps Amazon Web Services, expanding its cloud expertise

ePLDT, the digital enterprise enabler of the country's leading telecoms and digital services provider, PLDT, continues to expand its cloud expertise and strengthen its portfolio of cloud solutions with its recent elevation to Standard Consulting Partner in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Partner Network (APN).

As an AWS Standard Consulting Partner, ePLDT enables enterprises to design, build, migrate, and manage their workloads and applications on Amazon Web Services.

"This fits our overall strategy to offer a full-spectrum of enterprise cloud solutions via our own managed infrastructure and expertise as well as through partnerships with the best in the business," shared Nerisse Ramos, ePLDT Group COO.  "We recognize that when it comes to cloud adoption and implementation, one size does not fit all requirements since different workloads require different deployment models and infrastructure tuning.  The mission is to empower enterprises with the countless benefits that cloud offers - lower cost of ownership, operational agility, auto software updates, increased collaboration, easy and affordable business continuity and disaster recovery implementation- to name some. Of course, this is wrapped around by the combined expertise of ePLDT and AWS."

Amazon Web Services, global leader in cloud infrastructure provider, is the cloud computing platform of Amazon with operations on 11 regions around the globe, it offers wide range of web-based services including Compute, Storage, Network, Mobile, and Database.

The Amazon Partner Network (APN), the partner program of Amazon Web Services, is focused on providing members of the AWS partner ecosystem with program, technical, business, and go-to-market support.  Consulting Partners, which include System Integrators, Strategic Consultancies, Agencies, Managed Service Providers, and Value Added Resellers, gain access to resources and trainings to support customers in deploying, running, and managing applications in the AWS Cloud.

Apart from being an AWS Standard Consulting Partner, ePLDT is also a member of the Asia Cloud Computing Association (ACCA). An industry trade association, ACCA aims to accelerate growth of the cloud market in Asia and provides a platform for members to discuss implementation and growth strategies, and establish policies and best practices related to the cloud computing ecosystem.

"We are proud of joining the AWS Partner Network as a Standard Consulting Partner, as it reflects our commitment to help our customers leverage on cloud technology to drive growth and performance in their businesses," noted PLDT Enterprise, International & Carrier Business EVP and ePLDT President Eric Alberto. "This, along with our membership in the Asia Cloud Computing Association, is just a few of the many initiatives we have undertaken to expand our solutions portfolio and strengthen our expertise to ensure we sustain our status as the digital solutions partner-of-choice for the Enterprise market."

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