iomart Group, proclaimed as the UK’s leading cloud computing company, has registered end of year profits of £10.7m before tax growth, an increase of 56% and marking a significant improvement on 2012’s £6.9m profit.

Revenue growth went up 29% to £43.1m, again an improvement on the previous year, whilst adjusted EBITDA growth (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) was 48%, up to £16.5m.

The figures are suitably impressive for the Scottish company, proving last year’s comments from senior execs were almost Nostradamus-esque in their accuracy.

iomart Group director of marketing and corporate communications Phil Worms told CloudTech this time last year that “the market expected us to deliver”, with CEO Angus MacSween adding that “at least another two or three” acquisitions were expected to be made.

And with buyouts of Melbourne Server Hosting, Skymarket and Internet Engineering for an overall figure of …

“Both cost and trust are much further along than before, but there are still many components that can and need to be optimized for SMBs to truly adopt the cloud,” said Vikas Aggarwal, founder & CEO of Zyrion Inc., in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. “There needs to be integration and manageability at the service level and not just the infrastructure level,” Aggarwal explained.
Cloud Computing Journal: The move to cloud isn’t about saving money, it is about saving time. – Agree or disagree?
Vikas Aggarwal: Agree. Though saving time is all about money anyway – saving money in optimizing compute resources as well as faster time-to-market, faster delivery, and better revenues.

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At the top of many IT group’s list of concerns lie security, compliance and internal process governance – both in static data centers and in dynamic clouds. Indeed, governance should not be overlooked. And, as they say in many security circles, the best measure of successful security is silence. Although the discussion around governance in the cloud has evolved, many organizations still struggle with questions such as:
Which apps should we deploy to public clouds?
When and where should cloud environments be encrypted?
Who has access to cloud-based applications and infrastructure?
Which firewall rules should apply?
How do security rules differ from app to app based on the application’s lifecycle phase?

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“Anyone moving to the cloud saves not only time but money,” stated Joel Daly, Chief Operating Officer of HOSTING, in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. “For SMBs, the primary cost issue is a lack of resources. They have no choice but to run legacy systems during the transformation to the cloud. This gets expensive, but once done, the cost savings are there.”
Cloud Computing Journal: The move to cloud isn’t about saving money, it is about saving time. – Agree or disagree?
Joel Daly: Agree, but time is money. Virtualization allows for faster provisioning and faster recovery, therefore increasing time-to-market for solutions. In many cases, especially if you’re a software provider, getting to market sooner means revenue sooner. In addition, via the cloud, you can reinvest that money and use it to increase your capabilities. A recent study by the University of Manchester showed that 60% of companies have more time to focus on strategy and innovation and 70% of large enterprises and 59% of SMEs surveyed have been able to reinvest more money back into their business.

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An IT services provider based in Asia is throwing up some big numbers when it comes to savings and cloud computing.
DataOne Asia, an independent provider of IT services in the Philippines, said businesses can significantly reduce expenses by putting in place cloud computing solutions, according to an article on PCAdvisor.co,uk.
«Businesses that migrate their IT systems to the cloud could save at least 50 percent of their expenses. This is because the cloud minimizes the cost of infrastructure, management and support,» said DataOne Asia President and CEO Cyril Rocke.
Rocke says that the cloud could help companies minimize expenses on procuring and maintaining their IT infrastructure.
«Most IT users tend to underestimate the cost of procuring infrastructure. Whenever a company wants to buy IT equipment like servers, they cannot do it in a snap. They need to follow a long procurement process where they have to justify the project, write cost-benefit analyses, and submit the necessary papers to different departments. Sometimes, there’s even a need to hire IT experts that will decide which equipment is best for a company.»
«In reality, companies can spend more than a year and thousands of [dollars] on the procurement process alone. This entire traditional procurement process severely damages businesses, and reduces their ability to react and roll out new ideas and solutions.»

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Organizations of all sizes are challenged because of an industry-wide deficit of information security professionals. Compounding this problem is the steady adoption of cloud-based services, including software and infrastructure as a service, where information security is not always a core competency of the cloud provider.
In his session at the 12th International Cloud Expo, Rob Aragao, VP, Services, at EiQ Networks, will discuss how other organizations have solved these challenges through hosted SecureVue security information and event management (SIEM) – a service-based offering that delivers advanced security expertise and managed security services to organizations that utilize cloud-based services. Attendees will walk away with an understanding how customers have greatly improved the security posture of their cloud-based deployments through hosted SIEM.

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In this CTO Power Panel at the 12th International Cloud Expo, moderated by Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan, topics discussed will be at a deliberately high level and will include:
How fast will the last remaining barriers to enterprise-wide cloud adoption melt away – are truly secure public clouds feasible, for example, or only private ones?
How exactly does a company or organization go about deciding whether to migrate only specific applications to the cloud – such as storage or security – or their overall IT infrastructure?
How much of an influence on cloud adoption is the US Government’s continuing support of Cloud strategies for all government agencies?

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During the past month or so, Rich Mogull, analyst and CEO of securosis has published multiple blogs on cloud encryption best practices, specifically in infrastructure clouds. The final blog IaaS Encryption: How to Choose, provides a good opportunity for us to touch and expand on some of the volume storage cloud security points highlighted on Rich’s article:
“Always use external key management. Instance-managed encryption is only acceptable for test/development systems you know will never go into production”
Instance managed encryption means the encryption keys are kept on the virtual disk. In other words, anyone with access to your cloud instance, has access to your encryption keys – hence to your data. In addition, specific cloud operations, such as disk snapshots, will snapshot the encryption keys with it.

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During the past month or so, Rich Mogull, analyst and CEO of securosis has published multiple blogs on cloud encryption best practices, specifically in infrastructure clouds. The final blog IaaS Encryption: How to Choose, provides a good opportunity for us to touch and expand on some of the volume storage cloud security points highlighted on Rich’s article:
“Always use external key management. Instance-managed encryption is only acceptable for test/development systems you know will never go into production”
Instance managed encryption means the encryption keys are kept on the virtual disk. In other words, anyone with access to your cloud instance, has access to your encryption keys – hence to your data. In addition, specific cloud operations, such as disk snapshots, will snapshot the encryption keys with it.

read more