Business & Technology
Datadog launches UK data hosting in AWS London region
SOFIAH NICHOLE SALIVIO
News Editor
Datadog has launched its products and services in the Amazon Web Services Europe (London) Region, expanding its UK data hosting footprint.
The launch gives customers and partners the option to store observability and security data within the UK. It is aimed at organisations that want in-region data residency as they expand cloud and AI workloads.
Demand is particularly acute in regulated industries such as financial services, healthcare, government and higher education, where data governance and operational continuity are closely scrutinised. Keeping data closer to the workloads being monitored can also reduce latency and support faster incident response.
The development adds a UK location to Datadog’s existing service presence across North America, Asia and Europe. It follows the company’s earlier announcement that it planned to establish a UK data centre presence.
Businesses face growing pressure to determine where operational and security data is stored as cloud systems become more distributed. For many large organisations, especially those handling sensitive information, the location of monitoring and security data has become part of broader compliance and resilience planning.
Customers using the London region will be able to retain unified visibility across cloud, hybrid and AI environments while keeping observability and security data in the UK. Datadog describes the expansion as a response to changing governance requirements and the operational demands of more complex technology estates.
Yanbing Li, Chief Product Officer at Datadog, linked the move to the way AI systems are reshaping enterprise infrastructure. She said the volume of data, the number of dependencies and the risk of failures were all increasing as companies adopted AI more broadly.
“UK enterprises scaling cloud and AI workloads increasingly want the option to keep observability and security data in-region to support their data governance and operational resilience,” said Yanbing Li, Chief Product Officer at Datadog.
“AI is accelerating the complexity of modern systems, creating more data, dependencies and potential points of failure. This milestone helps customers keep observability and security data close to their workloads while maintaining the resilience and governance needed to operate at scale. With end-to-end visibility across infrastructure, applications, security and AI, Datadog gives customers the complete picture they need to maintain operational control.”
UK demand
Datadog’s UK expansion reflects a broader shift in enterprise technology buying, with organisations increasingly asking suppliers to provide local hosting options for key operational systems. In the UK, that trend has been reinforced by sector-specific rules, internal risk controls and a preference among some customers to limit cross-border data movement where possible.
Observability tools, used to monitor applications, infrastructure and system performance, have become more central as companies move workloads across public cloud, private infrastructure and AI-driven services. Security teams also rely on the same data to investigate incidents and assess risks, making hosting location a more prominent issue than when such tools were used mainly for troubleshooting.
Steve Barrett, Vice President EMEA at Datadog, said the company was responding to changes in how UK organisations build and manage digital systems.
“Cloud adoption is now the norm for UK organisations, and AI is adding a new layer of operational complexity. As systems become more distributed, observability becomes increasingly important to maintaining resilience, security and control. Launching in the AWS Europe (London) Region gives customers the option to keep their observability and security data in-region, helping them strengthen governance while continuing to scale with confidence,” said Barrett.
Datadog sells software used by technology, operations and security teams to monitor the health and performance of digital systems. Its tools bring together information from applications, infrastructure and security environments, so decisions about data location can affect not only IT operations but also internal audit, legal and compliance teams.
By making its services available in the AWS London region, Datadog is seeking to meet those customer requirements without asking UK users to rely on storage in other jurisdictions. For buyers in tightly regulated sectors, that may simplify procurement and internal approval processes, particularly where resilience planning and governance standards require clearer control over where data is held.
The UK launch offers customers greater flexibility in meeting data residency, governance, compliance and security requirements while maintaining operational continuity.
In a surprise move, the Old Speckled Hen brands that originated at Morland Brewery in Abingdon have been sold by Greene King to Damm UK, the British arm of Barcelona-based independent family brewer SA Damm of Estrella Damm fame.
Old Speckled Hen and its spin-off brands Old Golden Hen, Old Crafty Hen, Old Master Hen and Low Alcohol Old Speckled Hen will continue to be brewed by GK at Bury St Edmunds until June next year.
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Then they will move to Eagle brewery in Bedford, where Damm operates the former Charles Wells brewery.
Nick Mackenzie, CEO of Greene King, said: “We are proud to have built Old Speckled Hen into one of the nation’s favourite ales over the last 25 years and are delighted to have secured a partner in Estrella Damm who will continue to brew the ales in the UK.”
Pubs experts, including Dave Richardson of Oxford CAMRA (Campaign for Real Ale), are now assessing why Greene King decided to sell such a famous brand, having acquired it in 1999 from Morland, which it closed down the following year.
It is still widely available in GK’s Oxfordshire pubs and is one of three GK brands in the top ten cask ales by sales volume in 2025, alongside Abbot and IPA.
Greene King has now announced a new strategy to concentrate on “on trade” sales via pubs rather than “off trade” via retail or export.
It will no longer sell bottled, canned or packaged beers from next June, although Damm will continue to sell Old Speckled Hen this way. Greeene King’s new £40m brewery in Bury St Edmunds is due to open at the same time.
Writing in What’s Brewing, CAMRA’s Roger Protz called the move “a shock decision” resulting from the “rapacious profiteering of giant supermarkets”.
He added: “Old Speckled Hen is one of Greene King’s major brands but the income from sales to the off-trade is tiny as a result of the deep discounts demanded by the retailers.
“Greene King owns a massive estate of 2,600 pubs, restaurants and hotels. It supplies those outlets with draught and packaged beers.
Its two main cask brands, IPA and Abbot, are popular in its pubs and also in the wider on-trade, meaning free-trade pubs or those owned by other brewers or pub companies that allow their tenants to sell guest beers.”
The former Morland brewery off Ock Street in Abingdon was converted into flats.
The popular Brewery Tap pub in the street is a reminder of the town centre brewery.
Abingdon now has a micro-brewery, Loose Cannon, which is situated off Drayton Road.
Old Speckled Hen beer is named after an MG car, a 1927 black and gold factory ‘runaround’.
SOFIAH NICHOLE SALIVIO
News Editor
Donald Trump is the world’s most-searched AI voice, according to Murf AI, with 46,770 annual searches.
The AI text-to-speech platform based the ranking on Semrush search volume data. Trump’s total exceeded the combined searches for the AI voices of Barack Obama, Stephen Hawking, Morgan Freeman, MrBeast and Taylor Swift.
Political figures account for 27% of the 15 most-searched AI voices, suggesting interest in synthetic voices extends beyond entertainment and into politics, where impersonation can have wider consequences.
Stephen Hawking ranked second with 7,600 annual searches, followed by Morgan Freeman with 5,910 and Obama with 5,410. Arnold Schwarzenegger placed fifth with 3,790, while David Attenborough, Joe Biden, Snoop Dogg, Eminem and MrBeast completed the top 10.
The remaining names in the top 15 were Kanye West, Taylor Swift, Elon Musk, Drake and Ice Spice. Search volumes ranged from 1,740 for Kanye West to 990 for Ice Spice.
Murf AI said demand for these voices is largely driven by satirical content, parody debates, viral videos, memes and deepfake-style clips shared on social media. That trend places synthetic speech tools at the centre of an ongoing debate about consent, misuse and the limits of current rules.
Regulatory gap
The findings come as governments and public figures face growing pressure to define how AI-generated audio should be labelled, licensed and controlled. The debate has intensified as synthetic voice tools have become easier to access and more convincing.
In Europe, the EU AI Act will require AI-generated content to be labelled from August 2026. In the United States, there is still no federal law banning political deepfakes, leaving a patchwork of state-level measures and platform policies to address misleading audio and video.
That gap has become more visible as well-known figures try to protect their voice and likeness. Matthew McConaughey has taken steps to prevent AI impersonation, Scarlett Johansson has publicly objected to a ChatGPT voice that sounded like her, and Taylor Swift has reportedly filed trademark applications covering her voice and image amid concerns about AI misuse.
The Murf AI figures do not measure how often cloned voices are used in finished content, but they offer a snapshot of public demand. Search activity can indicate where audience interest is strongest, especially around political figures with familiar, easily recognised speech patterns.
Trump’s position at the top stands out because it puts a sitting political figure ahead of actors, musicians and broadcasters whose voices have long been imitated in popular culture. The gap is also striking: his total is more than six times that of the second-placed name.
That concentration of interest is likely to heighten concerns about the use of synthetic voices in election-related satire, false endorsements and fabricated speeches. Even when intended as parody, critics argue such clips can circulate without context and mislead audiences once detached from their original source.
Murf AI linked the ranking to a broader question of governance in AI voice generation, arguing that rising demand for cloned voices will increase pressure on regulators, platforms and brands to build systems that make synthetic audio easier to identify and harder to misuse.
Sneha Roy, Co-founder and COO of Murf AI, said: “Beyond the search numbers, the ranking points to a wider problem for AI voice governance. When voices are ethically licensed and fairly compensated, we unlock creative possibilities without compromising integrity. The real opportunity in AI voice is collaboration rather than limitation.”
Mor Cross Transport Services, a long‑established company based at Enstone Airfield near Chipping Norton, entered creditors’ voluntary liquidation in December.
The company’s nature of business is given as freight transport by road, and the notice is categorised as a corporate insolvency appointment of liquidators.
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A Shipston‑on‑Stour address is given as the registered office, while the principal trading address is shown as being a unit at Enstone Airfield.
Statement of affairs published onto Companies House has revealed Mor Cross Transport Services has £1,126,411 of debts to settle with creditors.
Among those are the lorry giant Scania, which is owed £143k by the company for its finance services.
What’s more, the Redundancy Payments Service is owed just over £19k, HMRC is owed just over £67k and NatWest has a claim of over £49k.
A whole host of other businesses are listed as creditors owed money, many of which from the world of haulage.
Banbury’s Morgan Transport Ltd is owed £1,920, Bledington’s D.C. Griffin Transport is owed £8,556 and Kingham’s Cotswold Carriers Removals is owed £4,950.
Documents say the haulage firm has a deficiency for its debts of £859,343, meaning not everybody owed money is likely to get it back unless the liquidators find the money.
Joint liquidators Mustafa Abdulali and Neil James Dingley, of Moore Recovery Limited, were appointed on in December 2025.
According to the company’s website and commercial profiles, the firm was originally established in 1991 and provided UK and European road‑haulage services, including bulk, traction and general haulage using flatbed and curtain‑sided vehicles.
The firm’s online information highlights 24‑hour in‑cab communication and satellite tracking, with the Enstone Airfield site given as its operating base.
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