The Deloitte CFO report highlights the unprecedented pace of change within the finance function. With the ’risk appetite’ among Chief Finance Officers (CFOs) at the lowest since 2008, continued economic uncertainty, external compliance, regulatory change and internal cultural shifts; cost reduction is once again the CFO’s top priority.

Alibaba Cloud, the data intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group, generated the third largest cloud database management system (DBMS) revenue among global players in 2018, according to a recent report entitled Gartner, The Future of the DBMS Market Is Cloud, Donald Feinberg et al., 21 June 2019.

According to this report conducted by global analyst firm Gartner, Alibaba Cloud’s DBMS revenue increased by 116% year-on-year in 2018. Cloud DBMS revenue of the other two market leaders Amazon and Microsoft grew by 75% and 134% respectively.

DHL Supply Chain, world leader in contract logistics, today launched its latest research report on the evolution of e-commerce supply chains. The study shows that, despite understanding the vital importance of e-commerce on customer retention and satisfaction, most companies have failed to fully implement an e-commerce strategy.

The new insights are from a global survey of nearly 900 decision-makers responsible for logistics or supply chain management and e-commerce.

Credit Union Leasing of America (CULA), the leader in enabling credit unions to leverage the $64.6 billion U.S.¹ vehicle leasing market, announces the launch of a redesign to their proprietary lease management system, Seamless Lease Connection. The upgraded Seamless portal features several enhancements and is now accessible anywhere with an Internet connection.

Europe’s fastest growing company, Blue Motor Finance, today announces a new collaboration with Lloyds Bank Commercial Banking API Lab

The companies are partnering on an innovative Faster Payments and Direct Debit API to ensure individual motor traders and dealerships receive instant loan payments.

The new programme brings together Europe’s fastest growing FinTech start-up and one of the UK’s largest banks. The two companies have a longstanding relationship and plan to build on this further, to bring instant payments to the car finance market for the first time.

New research* from secured property lender Fitzrovia Finance reveals a lack of understanding of some of the fundamental risks involved through investing through property investment platforms. 75% of investors who have used these platforms wrongly believe first charge secured debt/loans are riskier than second charge mezzanine debt/loans.  A further 7% said they didn’t know which was riskier.

It also revealed 18% of retail investors who have used property investment platforms don’t feel they clearly explain the level of risk involved in their investments.

WorldStream, a fast-growing Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) hosting provider with more than 15,000 dedicated servers installed in their two company-owned data centers in the Netherlands, has expanded its Research & Development department from 3 to 10 employees in just a few months time.

We may be halfway through 2019, but as the year hurtles onwards, it’s important to pause and reflect on the latest and greatest news from Q2.

With milestones surpassed – and fading into the distance – coupled with the ongoing adoption of biometrics to bring trust to new use cases, Q2 has contributed to a very successful first half of the year.

Here’s my top biometrics news picks from the past three months.

The irresistible advance of biometrics

NTT Security, the specialized security division and center of excellence in security for NTT, today announced that it has completed the acquisition of WhiteHat Security, a leading application security provider committed to securing applications that run enterprises’ businesses.

The acquisition will strengthen NTT Security’s ability to address modern enterprise security needs that range from IT infrastructure to critical business applications, covering the full lifecycle of digital transformation.

Pico, a leading provider of