17th July 2012
Microsoft has unveiled Office 2013 at a press event in the US, with a customer preview version already available for download. The new package is expected to be geared towards meetings and communications, and will be delivered to subscribers through a cloud service that is continuously updated.
The detractors of cloud computing benefits will state that the typical adoption is still limited at most enterprises — they’re deploying cloud services to a few early-adopters. That being said, some leading markets are confidently moving ahead with mainstream deployments, regardless of the caution. While others, such as western Europe, are apparently in transition.
The western European private cloud market will grow at a CAGR of 23.2 percent for the next five years to reach $7.9 billion in 2016, according to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC).
IDC has been looking in-depth at the private cloud marketplace — from a hardware, software, services and networking points of view.
«The growth of private cloud is even more impressive in the context of the current economic situation,» said Mette Ahorlu, research director, IDC European Services.
According to IDC’s assessment, demand in the region is being driven by the need for cost savings and efficiency and with a longer perspective of creating increased flexibility, and is across the board — from hardware, to software, to management, networking and services.
Creating a private cloud has an impact on all aspects of IT infrastructure.
Key findings from the market study include:
IDC believes that managed cloud services is fundamentally a network-based offering. It’s becoming an established commodity, scales to a mass market customer base, and builds on the kind of support or billing relationships that telecom service providers are capable of offering.
SilkRoad Technology Inc. has launched Point, the latest tool in the social talent management solutions provider’s Life Suite product range. The new employee-centric social networking solution connects employees to each other and their organisation by uniting the popular features of social networking with talent management.
SilkRoad Point gives employees the forum they need to share expertise and be recognised by peers and leaders while simultaneously helping companies to better understand what and who is driving their business.
The launch follows positive feedback from industry experts and HR professionals in attendance at the HR Software Show, Olympia, where Point was previewed last week.
“Our research shows that organisations that adopt peer-to-peer learning, recognition, and knowledge sharing dramatically outperform their peers in customer service, time to market, and employee engagement,” says Josh Bersin, Chief Executive Officer and President of Bersin & Associates, the leading provider of research-based HR best practices that drive business results. “SilkRoad Point represents a new breed of consumer-like social talent tools that organisations can use to easily leverage the power of social connections in corporate learning, collaboration, and project management.”
Employers often have a limited view of what employees are actually doing as job descriptions and performance reviews don’t always accurately depict employees’ knowledge and contributions across the organisation. With Point, organisations can increase knowledge and insight through the use of social collaboration and learning. Employees identify centres of influence by contributor, content and topic. As a result, organisations create a self-motivating culture where employees can be identified and recognised for their influence and recognise others for their contributions.
“HR has struggled to understand how knowledge and information flows across the organisation,” says Lisa Rowan, Program Director for HR, Learning, and Talent Management Strategies, IDC. “With Point, organisations now have the ability to reveal not only the connections between its employees but the meaning behind them and how it impacts the company. Point enables companies to share goals, inspire innovation, and increase efficiency to drive organisational change and success.”
Features include:
“With Point, we’ve closed the gap between social networking and talent management by converging them together to drive even higher levels of employee engagement and performance,” says Brian Platz, COO of SilkRoad. “Using Point, companies can more easily encourage and increase knowledge sharing for greater productivity, innovation and collaboration. Organisations are enabled to better engage and retain employees using social networking features already familiar to employees while decreasing risks with greater insights into strategic workforce planning.”
By Sue Poremba
The cloud business has grown and matured over the past years to levels that were unimaginable at its inception. Modern cloud providers have data centers spread across the world, or at least in key regions. This allows them to offer high-speed access to data in the cloud regardless of region and also helps them keep data duplicates on different continents.
This proliferation of the cloud has also meant the availability of free or inexpensive cloud storage options –- a boon for small companies working with a tight IT budget. However, it may also mean utilizing a variety of services, spreading data between a number of providers with different options and different terms of services.
So, does it matter if your company’s documents, intellectual property, and other corporate data are stored in various locations or should everything be consolidated to one server?
“It is up to every company …
The hottest IT trends of 2012 are shaping up to be Cloud, mobile and “big data”. The links between API management, Cloud and mobile are clear. The links between API management and big data – a concept that creates capabilities for capturing and analyzing previously unimaginable amounts of unstructured data – are less obvious but no less significant. I see two key areas of synergy…
First of all, in the three-tier architecture of the Web, the line was typically blurry between the presentation and logic tiers and concrete between logic and data. Big data now blurs the line between logic and data. Combine this with the fact that the mobile app development paradigm fragments the presentation platform and it is evident that the API will become the concrete and consistent border in application processing flows. In this context, API management will prove vital in enforcing security, collecting business metrics and normalizing protocols.
Many analysts are observing that by the end of 2012 most organizations will be using at least ten types of cloud computing products and services either directly or indirectly. Email, mobile apps, collaboration, social networking, storage, converged video conferencing, business apps, commercial transactions, marketplace presence, to name a few of the range of cloud sourcing and delivery solutions available in public, private and hybrid cloud combinations as well as the hosting options. In short we are already in the multi-cloud world.
In his session at the 11th International Cloud Expo, Mark Skilton, Global Director, Strategy Office, Capgemini Infrastructure Services, will look at best practices strategy, design and engineering principles for successful cloud-enabled solutions and services from a variety of different business scenarios.
Which cloud model is right for your business? What are the factors that should influence your decision?
In his session at the 11th International Cloud Expo, Josh Butikofer, Chief Solutions Architect at Adaptive Computing, will discuss how to evaluate public, private, and hybrid clouds along several dimensions.
He will use real-world case studies to show Cloud Expo delegates the pros and cons of each of these cloud models. Armed with this information, you can then decide what is best for your organization.
Josh Butikofer, Chief Solutions Architect at Adaptive Computing, is a seasoned speaker capturing both the technical and business audience with his humor and backs it up with his technical, industry and business expertise in developing high-profile, bleeding-edge customer solutions for over a decade.
NIST released a new publication entitled Cloud Computing Synopsis & Recommendations (Special Publication 800-146) that describes in detail the current cloud computing environment, explains the economic opportunities and risks associated with cloud adoption, and openly addresses the security and data privacy challenges. NIST makes numerous recommendations for companies or agencies considering the move to the cloud (including delivering a strong case for uniform management practices in the data security and governance arenas).
The report highlights several reasons why cloud-based SaaS applications present heightened security risks. As a means to offset the threats, NIST’s recommendation on cloud encryption is clear-cut: organizations should require FIPS 140-2 compliant encryption to protect their sensitive data assets. This should apply to stored data as well as application data, and for Federal agencies, it’s a firm requirement, not simply a best practice or recommended guideline.
CDW today announced its new CDW Cloud Collaboration solution. CDW, a Cisco Gold Certified Partner, will host the new offering in its own facilities and will combine Cisco’s collaboration platforms with CDW professional services to provide customers the security and personalization of a traditional, on-premise communications solution with the flexibility, scale and economics of a cloud solution.
Most organizations understand the value of collaboration technologies such as voice and video conferencing, voicemail or customer collaboration platforms, but many lack the deep technical expertise and staff resources to successfully deploy and manage them. With CDW’s Cloud Collaboration offering, users can focus on critical business responsibilities and customer needs with peace of mind, knowing that CDW is behind them to deliver a strategic collaboration solution from design to implementation to management.
“The way organizations work is changing, with employees no longer confined to working in the same physical location and customers increasingly involved in product and service development. As a result, collaboration technology needs are evolving,” said Christine Holloway, vice president of converged infrastructure solutions, CDW. “Today, organizations need new technologies that increase efficiency, accommodate a dispersed workforce and integrate customer communications, while freeing up IT staff to work on other projects. Built upon industry-leading technology from Cisco, CDW Cloud Collaboration includes all the features necessary to provide organizations with top collaboration services.”
CDW’s Cloud Collaboration solution, powered by the Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution (HCS), provides organizations with exceptional flexibility in choosing the way that collaboration applications are deployed. The capability to choose a hosted deployment option can also help organizations deploy collaboration technologies faster, while potentially lowering capital expenditures and operating expenses.
“As enterprises adopt collaboration technologies to quickly connect people with a high level of security to the resources and information they need to get work done, many businesses are requiring cloud solutions and looking for options from partners,” said Richard McLeod, senior director, Worldwide Partner Collaboration Sales at Cisco. “Based on Cisco HCS, CDW Cloud Collaboration provides customers with the flexibility to have collaboration applications delivered to them as services, with ongoing support and management provided by CDW.”
CDW Cloud Collaboration is supported by a dedicated team of CDW solution architects and engineers, and each client will have its own highly secure, virtualized private intranet hosted in CDW’s facilities. Partnering with Cisco helps ensure that CDW Cloud Collaboration meets a proven quality standard, with CDW’s expert team ready to support implementation and management. CDW holds Cisco Master Certifications in unified communications, managed services and security, and the CDW team includes more than 600 Cisco certified engineers, including more than 50 with the CCIE certification – the highest technical certification offered by Cisco. Further demonstrating CDW’s deep knowledge, Cisco recently named CDW its Global Partner of the Year – Americas and awarded the company its U.S. Nationals Architectural Excellence Award for Collaboration.
For more information about CDW’s Cloud Collaboration offerings, please visit: http://www.cdw.com/cloudcollaboration.
Neotys today announced that Wipro Technologies, the Global Information Technology, Consulting and Outsourcing business of Wipro Limited, has chosen NeoLoad, a leading load and performance testing solution for web and mobile applications, to upgrade its performance testing suite to increase test productivity and enhance the value proposition for end customers.
As part of this alliance, Wipro will provide testing solutions for customers who need load and performance testing solutions for Web and mobile applications, using NeoLoad. Wipro will use NeoLoad to realistically simulate user activity and analyze server behavior. The solution allows Wipro consultants to test more quickly, efficiently and frequently, enabling customers to safely deploy Internet, intranet or mobile applications on whatever architecture they use. NeoLoad supports Flex, Silverlight, GWT, Ajax Push, HTML5 etc. Wipro will also use NeoLoad across the major application types including ERP and CRM from the major providers. NeoLoad supports Oracle, SAP and Microsoft among others.
“We’ve had outstanding results from the Neotys partnership already,” said Arun Kumar Singh, VP Testing Services Business, Wipro. “Using NeoLoad we were able to reduce the testing time required for many applications by 30%. We expect NeoLoad to substantially increase our productivity and the value we provide to our customers.”
“As one of the world’s leading IT majors, Wipro provides a comprehensive solution for customers looking to implement and test web and mobile applications either within their company firewalls or in the cloud,” said Laurent Gaudy, VP Partners & Alliances, Neotys. “This partnership is strategic to Neotys and we look forward to the expanded presence that Wipro will provide to us.”
“Developing partnerships is a key step in market maturity as it broadens a vendor’s ability to address a wider market,” said Thomas Murphy, research director with Gartner. “As applications become more complex, an increasing number of users rely on a mixture of internal and outsourced resources to achieve cost effective results, making it imperative to form strategic relationships.”
Wipro Technologies is the largest offshore independent testing services provider with innovative solutions and differentiated offerings that reduce cycle times and provide quality assurance for software across industry verticals and domains and has 13+ years of experience in independent Testing Services. The Testing Services Business is a service line in Wipro with testing capabilities across verticals and domains.
