The path to successful application delivery has been a long and winding road for many companies. Back in the days of Y2K and the dot-coms, applications were often delivered out of a physical data center. This usually consisted of a dedicated raised-floor room at the corporate headquarters or leased colocation space from one of the […]

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More than four in five (82%) of UK IT leaders believe they are not fully ready to move to infrastructure as a service (IaaS) providers because of a shortage of in-house skills, with Microsoft Azure as the most trusted IaaS provider.

The research, commissioned by Reconnix, found that despite the general air of reticence moving apps from traditional servers to the cloud was at least a high or medium priority for 88% of those polled.

Yet there’s a problem – and it’s the dreaded skills gap again. Only 7% of respondents were confident they had all the required skills in their team to run IaaS environments. Overall more than half (59%) said they had only some of the required skills, no skills at all, or did not know.

As for the vendors themselves, Microsoft Azure was considered the most trusted IaaS provider. 36% of respondents chose it ahead of IBM (22%) and Amazon Web Services (14%). Steve Nice, the CTO of Reconnix, described this facet as “surprising” by virtue of Amazon’s market share – yet recent market research shows Microsoft is winning the race for second place in IaaS and closing Amazon’s share.

“There’s a very clear desire for businesses to move applications away from traditional environments and towards infrastructure as a service providers, however a lack of adequate skills seem to be holding back many IT departments from making this move,” Nice said.

“It’s natural for businesses to err on the side of caution, but this conservative approach can mean that many are missing out on the transformative benefits of the cloud.”

Respondents claimed cost savings were the single biggest motivator of moving to the cloud with 32% of the vote, with greater flexibility (30%) and increased compute power (18%) also popular.

Similarly, years ago in software development circles, the debates about outsourcing were fierce and emotional. Back then, much centered on the cost leverage available to companies to move development to low-cost areas such as India, China, and Eastern Europe. However, over time, companies found that while cost gave them flexibility and resourcing mite, the more important benefit ended up being owning development resources and presences close to emerging markets while leveraging outsourcing partners for on-demand resource expansion. Wow, sounds a lot like Colocation + Hybrid Cloud to me! Let’s look at some of the other similarities.

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This week Dell released its first Global Technology Adoption Index (GTAI). This survey of more than 2,000 global organizations took a close look at how organizations are truly using security, cloud, mobility and big data to drive success. While the data collected from this effort should put to rest any doubts about the value of cloud computing, it also calls into question our collective mental state. Are half of us schizophrenic?

The survey data showed that 97 percent of organizations surveyed use or plan to use cloud. This high percentage is not surprising given that the data also showed a strong correlation between cloud use and company growth. Of those using cloud, 72 percent of organizations surveyed experienced 6 percent growth or more in the last three years, with just 4 percent experiencing zero or negative growth. This is in sharp contrast with companies not using cloud, where just 24 percent have growth rates of 6 percent or more, and 37 percent experienced either zero or negative growth. So with this overwhelmingly positive evidence supporting rapid adoption of cloud, why do 52% of the IT decision-makers surveyed still consider security a barrier for expanding cloud computing use?

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We’re nearing the end of 2014 and most smart CEOs already know their IT transformation game plan for 2015 – more digital differentiation woven into the fabric of their essential operations.

Every enterprise is now a digital business, regardless of the industry. That’s why digital service innovators are in such high demand. Meanwhile, many of the more traditional IT process-oriented jobs will diminish in importance.

Are you evolving your IT support team’s roles and responsibilities, as a result these key trends? Forward-thinking CIOs and IT managers have already embraced business technology that will do some of the more tedious routine system administration tasks via automation, so that they can redirect their focus to higher-priority activities.

What’s considered a pressing requirement? Many believe that it’s attaining parity in the enterprise with the freemium consumer cloud offerings that have helped to fuel the so-called Shadow IT phenomenon.

Public cloud gains more converts

However, there’s been progress that’s worth revisiting. According to the latest worldwide market study by International Data Corporation (IDC), public cloud computing services spending for the enterprise will reach $56.6 billion in 2014 and grow to more than $127 billion in 2018.

This forecast represents a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22.8 percent, which is estimated to be about six times the rate of growth for the overall global IT market. In 2018, based upon findings from the IDC study, public IT cloud services will account for more than half of worldwide software, server, and storage spending growth.

«Over the next four to five years, IDC expects the community of developers to triple and to create a ten-fold increase in the number of new cloud-based solutions,» said Frank Gens, senior vice president and chief analyst at IDC.

The ongoing adoption of what IDC calls cloud-first business strategies – by IT buyers implementing new digital services – is a major factor that is driving public enterprise cloud services growth.

IDC believes that the enterprise cloud services market is now entering an evolutionary phase. It will produce an explosion of new digital solutions and associated commercial value creation – built on top of the pervasive cloud computing infrastructure that’s being deployed across the globe.

These new applications and emerging use-cases will be created in vertically-focused platforms with their own innovation communities, which will help to reshape how companies operate their increasingly essential IT function. According to the IDC assessment, it will also transform how these companies compete within their primary industry.

Mr. Gens adds «Many of these solutions will become more strategic than traditional IT has ever been.»

IDC expects Software as a Service (SaaS) will continue to dominate public cloud services spending, accounting for 70 percent of 2014 expenditures. IDC says the second largest public cloud category will be Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). They also predict that Platform as a Service (PaaS) and storage will be the fastest growing categories, driven by major increases in developer cloud services adoption and Big Data applications, respectively.

Next steps toward a digital nirvana

In time, I anticipate that we’ll see more multinational companies upgrade their legacy data centers and deploy private cloud solutions to meet their user’s needs – for a variety of different but equally compelling strategic business reasons. I expect public cloud to more frequently coexist with private cloud, in a multitude of combinations that will be limited by our own imagination.

Granted, there will be some technical constraints that need to be overcome – like making these cloud service permutations all work together in a frictionless manner. That being said, are you prepared with the right hybrid cloud management and orchestration solution in place? If not, start the due diligence process to select an appropriate solution. You’ll need time; choose wisely.

Of course, the now ubiquitous open-source software suites will play an instrumental role in enabling the transition to a hybrid cloud model. Certainly, the enthusiasm and momentum of the early-adopters at the OpenStack Summit in Paris, France this week was very encouraging for the fast-followers.

Besides preparing for a multi-cloud environment, I believe that the future outlook for many companies will likely include embracing a Mobile Cloud scenario, where the two most apparent enterprise technology trends morph together into a cohesive whole.

The combination of capable mobile devices and hybrid cloud computing services should provide an adaptive and flexible business technology foundation, so you’ll need to understand how they integrate into your existing IT infrastructure and legacy commercial applications.

Smartphones, tablets and personal productivity-oriented mobile applications (apps) are transforming how information is being accessed, used and shared in the enterprise. The savvy Line of Business leaders at progressive companies have already enabled employees to purchase mobile cloud apps for file syncing, and other requirements that may not have been met by the IT organization.

Some perceptive corporate IT leaders saw the mobile-first strategy gain traction in the marketplace, and immediately got involved with a proactive plan to build and support corporate-approved apps. The mobile application development platform providers, such as FeedHenry, offer the tools and services that together constitute the critical elements of a total solution.

These platforms enable an enterprise to design, develop, deploy, distribute and manage a portfolio of mobile apps running on a range of devices and addressing the requirements of diverse use-cases. Clearly, the best way for IT organizations to be relevant in the mobile cloud era is to get involved; preferably sooner, rather than later. So, what’s the status of your plan?

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IBM has today announced the IBM Global Entrepreneur Program for Cloud Startups, which aims to help aspiring firms to the tune of $120,000 (£75,000) if they get a foot up on IBM’s cloud platform.

Those who get the funding will be able to access the entire set of jewels in IBM’s cloudy crown, including SoftLayer infrastructure, Aspera’s data transfer, Cloudant’s database as a service, and Twitter’s social analytics, after the firms’ partnership was announced earlier this month.

Big Blue is also offering face to face events, as well as CIO and entrepreneur meet-ups for successful startups.  With over four million developers and 143,000 companies in the IBM cloud ecosystem, IBM claims it has the widest range of cloud services out there.

The firm certainly feels as though it’s got the largest in terms of funding, trilling in its press literature the $120k is greater than Google ($100k), Microsoft Azure ($60k) and Amazon Web Services’ ($15k) offerings. This publication is reminded of Rackspace’s £250,000 pledge to startups back in November 2013, but that was the total amount of its cloud hosting, so IBM does have the edge, providing it gets more than three customers, anyway.

For the enterprise market in particular, the fresh blood startups provide can be a boon for larger companies looking for more streamlined solutions to age-old IT problems. Again, IBM facilitates this by offering connections with its in-depth enterprise customer base.

“The IBM Global Entrepreneur Program for Cloud Startups provides a comprehensive and strong network of resources to drive collaborative cloud innovation,” said Norwest Ventures’ Promod Haque. “By enabling access to IBM’s broad and fast-growing enterprise cloud portfolio and third party cloud services build around open APIs, startups can now more easily build and monetise their solutions.

“More importantly, by providing a global path to the enterprise, this program can help accelerate the rate at which cloud startups can get to market and scale,” he added.

It’s interesting to note how a venture capitalist is championing this kind of innovation. It’s clear the large vendors want to muscle into this space, however there may be room for both kinds of approach. Current cloudy startups receiving venture capital include software-defined storage firm SwiftStack with $16m, cloud-based platform Volometrix – $12m in series B – and OpenStack provider Mirantis, with a whopping $100m.

You can find out more here.

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German tech giant SAP has announced former Microsoft corporate vice president (CVP) Quentin Clark as its new chief technology officer.

Clark was previously at Microsoft, where he’d served for 20 years, as CVP for business applications, reporting directly to then executive vice president Satya Nadella. He helped oversee the delivery of various data products including Microsoft SQL Server, Power BI, and BI in Microsoft Office.

His job role at SAP is described on his LinkedIn profile as ‘technology ambassador.’ “Clark will drive direction and vision of SAP’s future technology and shape SAP’s brand as the technology leader”, it adds.

“I am very pleased to have Quentin join SAP,” said executive board member Bernd Leukert, who Clark will report to. “He is not only an impressive technologist who thrives on pursuing a meaningful vision but at the same time a passionate leader.”

He added: “I am sure that Quentin will significantly contribute to shaping and executing our technology strategy and turning opportunities into innovation – and help our customers to Run Simple.”

In other words, this is cloud, cloud, cloud. The company released its third quarter results last month and found cloud subscriptions up 51% from Q313, while software revenues were down 3% from this time last year.

The problem with that, however, is cloud subscriptions and support was €738m (£584.1m), while software revenue was €2.53bn (£1.99bn). It’s a bit of a jump, but then it’s what SAP would roughly be expecting given it wants to migrate its revenues to cloud. For a company with ambitions to be ‘THE cloud company’, then it’s little surprise analysts have been concerned about its future, along with the likes of Oracle and IBM.

The move to bring Clark in as CTO continues the list of the executive merry-go-round. Former SAP head of cloud Shawn Price recently joined Oracle, as well as former Google App Engine exec Peter Magnusson.

We’re nearing the end of 2014 and most smart CEOs already know their IT transformation game plan for 2015 – more digital differentiation woven into the fabric of their essential operations. Every enterprise is now a digital business, regardless of the industry. That’s why digital service innovators are in such high demand. Meanwhile, many of the more traditional IT process-oriented jobs will diminish in importance.
Are you evolving your IT support team’s roles and responsibilities, as a result these key trends? Forward-thinking CIOs and IT managers have already embraced business technology that will do some of the more tedious routine system administration tasks via automation, so that they can redirect their focus to higher-priority activities.
What’s considered a pressing requirement? Many believe that it’s attaining parity in the enterprise with the freemium consumer cloud offerings that have helped to fuel the so-called Shadow IT phenomenon.

read more

Eighty-nine percent of knowledge workers retain access to the sensitive corporate applications and files of former employers.

Earlier this year, a member of the team at Site-Eye, one of the top time-lapse film companies in the UK, noticed a disturbing problem with one of its client’s feeds. A deeper investigation revealed that of the 200 cameras it had installed at construction sites around the world, 120 had been remotely disabled. In order to restore service to these cameras, engineers needed to be dispatched to each location, setting Site-Eye back $80,000.
The cause behind the problem? A single disgruntled former employee who walked away from his job with the passwords to the company’s services in-hand.

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