Two separate pieces of research released this week have found its way to CloudTech HQ, and both have come to the same conclusion: Amazon Web Services (AWS) is miles ahead of the competition in terms of providing infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS) services.
This isn’t surprising in itself, but let’s not forget these companies Amazon is skinning are among the biggest on the planet.
Gartner’s latest Magic Quadrant, on IaaS, unsurprisingly put Amazon in its leaders category, well ahead of its competitors in both ability to execute and completeness of vision.
The analyst house cited AWS’ product portfolio and pricing structure in particular, and estimated that its operations are five times larger than a dozen of its major competitors combined.
Want more proof? Q2 data from the Synergy Research Group painted a similar picture, putting AWS’ quarterly revenue at over $600m …
New reports show that when the NSA was conducting its surveillance programs, perhaps including XKeyscore and PRISM, the agency was not following its own legal guidelines. These reports, based on internal NSA audit reports leaked via the “Snowden leak”, showing the NSA violated its own privacy rules and overstepped its authority thousands of times in the past few years, will serve to further unsettle many enterprises abroad, even leading some to conclude that utilizing U.S. cloud applications is not worth risking unauthorized data access by the government and others.
Recent reports estimate this new hesitation to use U.S. cloud applications may cost providers more than $35 billion in the coming years. With new revelations that the NSA broke its own privacy rules, enterprises globally may find even more reason to hold back from U.S. cloud providers, potentially making the size of the impact even worse for U.S.-based cloud providers.
As we stated in a recent press release on the topic, when enterprises allow fears of surveillance to slow down or stop their adoption of U.S. cloud applications, it has the potential to put those enterprises at a competitive disadvantage to others in their industries – specifically in cases where they are “forced” to adopt a less beneficial/efficient cloud service for managing their business.
Business are adding innovation as a core component of their strategy.
With an historic transition underway to an information-based economy, organizations are increasingly investing in innovation. While disruptions across industries have happened for a long time, the recent capability to quickly leverage technology that launches disruptive movements brings a significant increase of such occurrences. At every opportunity, start-ups who experience disruptions can now develop and release expedient pioneering solutions. Strategists at legacy businesses face the challenge to keep up with industry transformation by developing new solutions at a break neck pace and adopting new business models.
Modern technology has enabled businesses to evolve beyond the four walls of an office and have more autonomy and flexibility when it comes to how they communicate with each other. With Unified Cloud Communications, a business can have homeworkers, office workers and team members who aren’t even in the same country as each other and they will be able to have just as much communication with each other as they would have if they were all in the same room.
How is this possible? The internet.
Cloud communications are internet-based voice and data communications that have increased a business’ range in terms of reach and communications by having telecommunications applications hosted, run and accessed via a web infrastructure. It was originally just data based, but voice communication is now possible and has taken off and evolved the technology even further.
Modern technology has enabled businesses to evolve beyond the four walls of an office and have more autonomy and flexibility when it comes to how they communicate with each other. With Unified Cloud Communications, a business can have homeworkers, office workers and team members who aren’t even in the same country as each other and they will be able to have just as much communication with each other as they would have if they were all in the same room.
How is this possible? The internet.
Cloud communications are internet-based voice and data communications that have increased a business’ range in terms of reach and communications by having telecommunications applications hosted, run and accessed via a web infrastructure. It was originally just data based, but voice communication is now possible and has taken off and evolved the technology even further.
Managed service providers exist to help businesses. Depending on the MSP, a client organization can expect a close, consultative experience in designing and implementing cloud and infrastructure support. However, is there a limit for what managed services should cover?
When speaking of what the client has to do versus what the MSP is responsible for and what they can do to go above and beyond that represents a line of delineation between managed infrastructure services and managed application services.
From the MSP perspective, guarantees for how far up the stack they go is really code for the degree of managed infrastructure rather than managed application support a client can expect.
When we speak about going up the stack, every infrastructure provider is a managed provider to some extent. Some companies will always go a lot further than other providers. What determines that extent relates to the client. There are clients who don’t want to deal with the infrastructure. There are also businesses that don’t want to deal with technology. The latter group generally has a vision they want to bring to market but don’t want to be encumbered of having to create the things that make the vision work.
Managed service providers exist to help businesses. Depending on the MSP, a client organization can expect a close, consultative experience in designing and implementing cloud and infrastructure support. However, is there a limit for what managed services should cover?
When speaking of what the client has to do versus what the MSP is responsible for and what they can do to go above and beyond that represents a line of delineation between managed infrastructure services and managed application services.
From the MSP perspective, guarantees for how far up the stack they go is really code for the degree of managed infrastructure rather than managed application support a client can expect.
When we speak about going up the stack, every infrastructure provider is a managed provider to some extent. Some companies will always go a lot further than other providers. What determines that extent relates to the client. There are clients who don’t want to deal with the infrastructure. There are also businesses that don’t want to deal with technology. The latter group generally has a vision they want to bring to market but don’t want to be encumbered of having to create the things that make the vision work.
Are you one of those independent executives that uses strategic foresight to gain a decisive lead over competitors that tend to follow the crowd? Granted, it takes courage to make bold moves — and follow the path that’s less traveled. Big rewards tend to go to the confident, not the cautious.
What’s your business technology investment strategy for 2013, and beyond? Does your corporate foresight anticipate success, based upon your ability to deploy quantum-leap technological advances — like managed cloud services?
According to International Data Corporation (IDC), the economic slowdown in China has driven them to lower their expectations for worldwide IT spending growth this year. IDC now forecasts IT spending growth of 4.6 percent in constant currency for 2013. That’s down from the previous forecast of 4.9 percent growth and a sharp deceleration from last year’s growth of almost 6 percent.
Despite the lower forecast, IDC expects IT spending will reach $2 trillion for the first time ever in 2013. Meanwhile, total ICT spending, including telecommunications services, will increase by 3.8 percent at constant currency to $3.6 trillion.
Are you one of those independent executives that uses strategic foresight to gain a decisive lead over competitors that tend to follow the crowd? Granted, it takes courage to make bold moves — and follow the path that’s less traveled. Big rewards tend to go to the confident, not the cautious.
What’s your business technology investment strategy for 2013, and beyond? Does your corporate foresight anticipate success, based upon your ability to deploy quantum-leap technological advances — like managed cloud services?
According to International Data Corporation (IDC), the economic slowdown in China has driven them to lower their expectations for worldwide IT spending growth this year. IDC now forecasts IT spending growth of 4.6 percent in constant currency for 2013. That’s down from the previous forecast of 4.9 percent growth and a sharp deceleration from last year’s growth of almost 6 percent.
Despite the lower forecast, IDC expects IT spending will reach $2 trillion for the first time ever in 2013. Meanwhile, total ICT spending, including telecommunications services, will increase by 3.8 percent at constant currency to $3.6 trillion.
You’ve probably already heard that storage capacity needs are growing rapidly, with IDC projecting the digital universe will exceed 40,000 exabytes (40 billion terabytes) by 2020. According to Gartner, organizations are on average growing their capacity 40% to 60% year over year. On the other hand, disk storage densities of SAN and NAS storage arrays are not keeping up with the growth of data, resulting in a looming storage capacity sprawl for many organizations. The potential impact is measured not only in additional floor-space, but also cooling, management and increases in maintenance staff. As a result, many organizations will eventually find themselves trapped in a situation where their storage needs exceed their existing on-premise capabilities – the unenviable position of facing additional investments in infrastructure and people.
In fact, a recent survey we took indicated that a full 60% of users feel that they are «always running out of storage» – a clear indication that this «future» problem is already being felt on the ground.