While small and midsize businesses are often keen to move their applications to the cloud, the benefits of cloud migration don’t simply rain down from the sky. In order to take advantage of the flexibility (and cost savings) of virtual server hosting, organizations need to address some common challenges.
Fortunately, there are a few simple steps businesses can take to enable successful transition of applications to the cloud.
The first step is determining which applications to move to a virtual server. As with any IT project, businesses must balance risk and reward, cost and benefit. They must assess the cost/benefit of moving the application to a cloud server, assess its technical suitability for the cloud, and manage the migration process to ensure success.

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The RightScale 2015 State of the Cloud report has found DevOps adoption increase year on year in enterprises, as well as a continued push towards a hybrid cloud strategy.

The survey, of 930 respondents, found 82% of enterprises want a multi-cloud strategy; 55% want to pursue hybrid cloud, compared to 13% multiple public cloud and 14% multiple private. This is up from 74% and 48% respectively the previous year. “Hybrid cloud is (even more) the strategy of choice for enterprises,” the company notes.

Yet the most interesting stats relate to vendor usage. DevOps adoption hit two thirds (66%) in 2015, compared to 62% in 2014, with Chef the most popular according to 28% of respondents. Puppet (24%) and Docker (13%) comprised the top three, yet interestingly significantly more respondents said they would utilise Docker (35%) in the future.

Similarly, Amazon Web Services (AWS) had by far the most usage according to those polled. 57% said they were currently running apps on AWS, compared with Microsoft Azure IaaS (12%), Rackspace (11%), Azure PaaS (9%), Google App Engine (8%), and Google IaaS (8%).

Other interesting stats from the study included:

• 62% of enterprise respondents say central IT makes more than half of cloud purchasing decisions
• Greater scalability (57%) remains the key benefit of the cloud, alongside faster access to infrastructure (57%) and higher availability (51%)
• 93% of the 930 respondents are using cloud in some capacity, with 58% opting for both public and private, 30% public only, and 5% private only

The move towards increased DevOps usage is not a hugely surprising one. When CloudTech spoke with Jared Wray, CTO of CenturyLink Cloud in November, he enthused about the Cloud Development Centre, which took DevOps principles and aimed to make a large telco move more effectively.

Docker’s usage is also an interesting finding; a variety of major cloud vendors, such as Google, Amazon and Microsoft, are already partnering with the tool, yet a major vulnerability located in November might put users off deploying for now.

You can find details of the full report here.

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IBM has launched IBM Spectrum Storage, a new storage portfolio which adds a layer of intelligent software to store each piece of data at the optimal cost maximising performance and security.

The tech giant has also put more than $1bn of investments into its storage software portfolio over the next five years.

Software defined storage is an interesting area, where the programming that controls storage-related tasks is decoupled from the physical storage. It’s not to everyone’s taste, with the idea of software-concealed storage becoming more popular, according to TechTarget’s Rich Castagna; yet he complains the “laggards are – as usual – the big storage dudes.”

Yet according to Gartner, by 2019 70% of existing storage array products will be available as “software only” versions.

“A new approach is needed to help clients address the cost and complexity driven by tremendous data growth,” said IBM Systems SVP Tom Rosamilia. “Traditional storage is inefficient in today’s world where the value of each piece of data is changing all the time.

“IBM is revolutionising storage with our Spectrum Storage software that helps clients to more efficiently leverage their hardware investments to extract the full business value of data.”

The solution is described by Big Blue as a hybrid cloud offering, as it manages data wherever, whenever, from flash storage to tape and cloud.

Yet despite the huge investments in cloud from IBM over the past year – there was certainly a positive atmosphere at the media unveiling of the SoftLayer UK data centre in January – not every commentator is convinced. David Linthicum, writing for InfoWorld, argues that IBM “has a big problem to solve around the cloud.”

Linthicum cites the departure of SoftLayer CEO Lance Crosby, as well as the decision to make IBM veteran Robert LeBlanc its new head of cloud, as a key problem. Similarly, with an 11^th consecutive quarter of declining revenue for IBM, reports of more layoffs don’t help a company which is shifting its revenues to the cloud, Linthicum argues.

“In its current approach, IBM’s cloud efforts will suffer the death of a thousand cuts,” he wrote. “Unfortunately, the company has too much legacy baggage that its leadership doesn’t know how to manage.”

Do you agree with this view? You can find out more about IBM Spectrum Storage here.

Today’s most successful brands have switched focus from managing sales transactions to managing customer experiences with the goal of maximizing the lifetime value of each relationship. In an environment where customers have increasing control over the relationships with companies they do business with, managing every moment of the customer experience is crucial to a successful recurring revenue business.
Customers want what they want, how they want it, and when they want it. The businesses that can deliver on these demands the quickest gain satisfied customers, and satisfied customers are more likely to continue to spend money with companies they like. As a result, maximizing the customer lifetime value (CLV) is a key and measuring CLV is a critical metric for understanding the success or failure of a recurring revenue program. Rather than focusing solely on new or single sales transactions, sales support focuses on maximizing CLV at every potential revenue moment as it carries the most value to your business over time.

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BroadSoft has announced that Wavenet Limited has selected BroadSoft’s BroadCloud® managed services to offer its customers and channel partners an integrated IP voice and Unified Communications (UC) service.
Wavenet, which has over 2,000 customers and supports 20,000 users in the United Kingdom, provides companies and associated partners with core telephony services. Wavenet’s arrangement with BroadSoft will enable the company to accelerate delivery of its hosted software and services, as customers demand the flexibility and scalability afforded by cloud-based infrastructure.

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You can’t have a conversation about technology today without the topic of security breaches ending up front and center as a key concern. This is understandable with all the high profile breaches that have been occurring on what seems a regularly scheduled event. Anthem, the nation’s second largest health insurer is the latest in a long line of high profile breaches that have occurred recently. Given the size and severity of these breaches, security is very visible on everybody’s radar. This is especially true when discussing migration to the cloud. Unfortunately every breach can result in slowdowns or impediments to cloud migration plans.

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On the surface, many network management products seem the same. But any network management system claiming to be a solution will, at a minimum, maintain an inventory of the network devices, understand their interconnectivity, monitor (and alert on) each device’s response (availability), monitor each device’s performance to some degree, and may note configuration changes. But beauty is only skin deep. How, how well, and how deeply an NMS does these makes all the difference.

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Technology is driving the world. Innovation, fuelled by demand and the right amount of push through angel and venture backed funds are putting fuel into the fire. Here is what is driving demand, why demand is growing and where the growth is heading.
Overall the global technology arena is set for tremendous growth. here we are not specifically talking about Consumer or Enterprise growth but overall. Today, innovation is taking place in every small city to the large metropolis. Companies like whatsapp, drop box and many others that started in dorm rooms and garages are becoming mainstream application purely because of the massive disruptions they create. Do expect a number of smaller companies to grow rapidly and provide very focused and niche applications. Being narrow and catering to a very small need that is felt by a large audience is the place to grow.

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