SOFIAH NICHOLE SALIVIO

News Editor

Evri is adopting Microsoft 365 E7 across its business and plans to deploy 6,000 licences over the coming months.

The move makes Evri one of the first organisations in the UK to adopt the package, which became available in May. The rollout will include Microsoft 365 Copilot, Microsoft Agent 365 and the Microsoft Entra Suite.

Evri says it has invested more than £3.5 million in artificial intelligence to date, building on an initial commitment of £1 million several years ago. The latest rollout will extend tools already tested in parts of the business and broaden their use across more teams.

Evri delivers more than 1 billion parcels a year and has expanded its workforce as the business has grown. The company says artificial intelligence will help staff find information more easily across the organisation and reduce the risk of siloed working.

Wider rollout

According to Evri, the software will cut manual work, support day-to-day decision-making and improve communication between teams. Employees will also be able to build agents to handle routine tasks and use data from VeriSnap to improve delivery quality.

Evri says Microsoft 365 Copilot is also intended to support staff with writing and grammar, which could help colleagues from different backgrounds communicate more effectively. The company linked that part of the programme to its diversity and inclusion efforts.

Evri says its existing technology architecture has allowed it to move early on the new Microsoft offering. Although Microsoft 365 E7 is aimed at large organisations, previous investment in artificial intelligence and related systems means it can scale the tools more quickly.

Security was one of the reasons for selecting Microsoft, Evri says. The system will operate within a secure closed environment at all times.

Technology plans

Marcus Hunter, Chief Technology Officer at Evri Group, outlined the company’s rationale for the investment.

“Our investment in Microsoft 365 Copilot E7 marks an exciting milestone in Evri’s AI journey. We’ve been building our capabilities in this space for a number of years, and this allows us to take the next step – putting powerful, secure AI tools directly into the hands of our people.

“This is about empowering all our people through technology. By removing manual tasks and unlocking insights from across our organisation, we can help our teams work smarter, deliver better service, and continue to scale as our business grows.

“Microsoft is a trusted partner for Evri, and together we’re ensuring that everything we do with AI is secure, responsible and delivers real value for both our colleagues and our customers,” said Marcus Hunter, Chief Technology Officer at Evri Group.

Evri Group was formed following the merger of Evri and DHL eCommerce UK. The combined business also handles a further 1 billion business letters a year. The group includes UK Mail and customs clearance specialist Coll-8 alongside Evri’s core parcel operation.

The company says it has more than 12,000 employees and more than 30,000 self-employed couriers, supported by a network of more than 12,500 ParcelShops and lockers and more than 500 hubs and depots. It describes its Barnsley site as Europe’s biggest dedicated parcel delivery facility.

The latest investment adds to a broader effort by logistics groups to apply artificial intelligence to internal workflows as parcel volumes rise and networks become more complex. At Evri, the programme initially covers 6,000 licences and more than £3.5 million already committed to artificial intelligence.

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.”

The former Morland brewery in Abingdon (Image: Contributed)

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.

The Brewery Tap pub in Abingdon (Image: Contributed)

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.

Old Speckled Hen beer (Image: Greene King)

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’.