Archivo mensual: septiembre 2015

Bistip, Cloud South East Asia, Content & Applications, Enterprise IT, Interviews, Opinion, social marketplace

How the cloud enables the Bistip social marketplace to scale efficiently

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERABCN has partnered with the Cloud South East Asia event to interview some of its speakers. In this interview we speak to Rohit Kanwar, CEO of Indonesian social marketplace service Bistip.

Cloud South East Asia: Who are Bistip and how are you shaking up the Indonesian market?

Rohit Kanwar:  Bistip is Peer to Peer market place for social delivery through which item seekers and travellers are connected. Bistip travellers can post their trips in the platform visible to everyone and item seekers offer them extra money for bringing them their desired items. Currently Bistip has close to 35,000 customers and more than 100,000 web visits per month.

We are analogous in the logistics industry, like Uber or AirBnB.  Social couriers existed in most of the Asian countries before, but they were limited to close friends and families. However, with the adoption of smartphone and cloud based technologies it’s faster and easier to scale and roll out services to more people now.

Indonesians love buying high value goods, which are often expensive to purchase locally; with the help of Bistip they are now accustomed to getting “Anything from anywhere globally ” within Indonesia, at affordable prices.  Our mission is reduce overseas travel cost by providing travellers with extra money. We are adding 1000 customers per month, with a revenue over 250K USD and plan to achieve 1 million registered customers by 2017.

How is technology helping you grow and reach new customers?

Our customer acquisition strategy is 100% digitally focussed; we are also using online advertising tools to reach out to new customers. We are actively using digital technology and analytics to reach our target audience and demography based on respective products. We also use social media listening technology to understand the sentiments of customers about our product and services. Modification of products based on customer insight helps us to reach new customers and better serves existing members.

What role does cloud computing play in your business?

All our web and app based platforms are on cloud based technology. Its subscription based model (Pay as you go) helps to scale up capacity in a cost effective way. Our Cloud vendors provide us with features such as managed services, Web Performance dashboards and analytics integrated platforms, which enable us to focus on our Business KPIs instead of day to day network operations. Cloud base technology is a boom to start-ups as it reduces high capex spending on IT infrastructure.

How do you think established, global technology vendors are supporting start-up companies in Indonesia?

Indonesia currently has 70 million smartphones and more than 100 million Internet users.  Jakarta generates more tweets than any other city in the world. There is huge paradigm shift among technology vendors towards Indonesia due to the growing, successful start-up ecosystem in the country. Global technology vendors such as Google, Cloudera, IBM, Microsoft, etc. are showing a keen interest in understanding business requirement for start-ups.

Tech Vendors have dedicated support teams assisting start-up companies with solving their problems. Global technology vendors regularly arrange boot camps, Hackathons and networking seminars in the country in order to support start-ups with fund raising and other mentorship activities.   A few technology vendors have venture funds to support start-ups as well.  Overall the atmosphere and ecosystem is developing faster than ever before in Indonesia.

What is next for Bistip?

Bistip is coming up with a mobile application, along with new features and services, to reduce the shipping time and provide more security to our customers. It will also have an integrated payment system. Bistip aims to achieve 1 million customers by end of 2017.

Bistip is also exploring the opportunity to start operations in other countries. We have signed two partnerships with Uber in Indonesia, Aramex and are likely to sign a few more with online travel portal and retail stores in the near future. We are also in final level talks with a VC for raising further funds. Hopefully our execution plans will follow our strategy and we can provide our travellers with more benefits and our buyers with a better service.

 

Learn more about how the cloud is developing in South East Asia by attending Cloud South East Asia on 7th & 8th October 2015 at Connexion @ Nexus, KL, Malaysia.

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Internet of Things, IoT, IoT cloud, M2M, Salesforce, Software as a service

Salesforce IoT Cloud promises to create meaning from M2M talk

Internet of Things flat iconic illustrationSalesforce has launched its Internet of Things (IoT) offering with IoT Cloud, which promises to convert machine to machine conversations, digital content and customer information into useful intelligence that sales staff can act on.

The IoT Cloud is powered by event processing engine Salesforce Thunder, which will allow customers to personalise the way they sell, service and market. Development partners include processor maker ARM, Etherios, Informatica, PTC ThingWorx and Xively LogMeln.

The service was unveiled by Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff at the company’s Dreamforce conference in San Francisco. “Salesforce is turning the internet of things into the internet of customers,” said Benioff. The IoT Cloud will allow businesses to create instant one-to-one proactive actions for sales, service, marketing or any other business process, Benioff said.

According to Salesforce, its ‘massively scalable’ cloud computing architecture can ‘listen’ to the connected world and make sense of the billions of events each day from all sources. The connections with wearables, windmills, telephones and turbines – and all other devices – can be contextualized by Salesforce’s own real-time rules, it claims. The IoT Cloud aims to give business users intuitive, point-and-click tools to define rules and logic for events that can trigger actions among the users of Salesforce’s customer relationship systems.

The rationale is to glean information reported by devices – such as the numbers of hard braking movements by drivers of a car fleet – in order to monitor and manage customer cases. Machine intelligence, such as vehicle braking data, could help Salesforce users negotiate from a position of superior knowledge with their customers.

According to Salesforce’s figures there will be 75 billion devices connected to the Internet by 2020, with the volume of data growing exponentially each year. The McKinsey Global Institute estimates that IoT applications have the potential to make $11.1 trillion worth of economic impact per year by 2025.

The challenge is to make sense of all that data, said IoT market watcher Gary Barnett, chief analyst at Ovum. “IoT deployments only bring value when organisations can act on the information their IoT networks generate,” said Barnett, chief analyst, Ovum. “The ability to make sense of that data will be a key factor in turning it into action.”

Ctera, Data management, Enterprise IT, HP, News & Analysis, Storage, Storage as a Service

Ctera now integrated with HP’s hybrid cloud manager

Cloud storageCtera Networks says it has integrated its storage and data management systems with HP’s cloud service automation (HP CSA) as it seeks way to simplify the management of enterprise file services across hybrid clouds.

The HP CSA ‘architecture’ now officially recognises and includes Ctera’s Enterprise File Services platform. The logic of the collaboration is that as the HP service helps companies build private and hybrid clouds they will need tighter data management in order to deliver new services to enterprise users, according to the vendors.

Ctera, which specialises in remote site storage, data protection, file synchronisation, file sharing and mobile collaboration services, has moved to make it easier to get those services on HP’s systems. According to Ctera, the new services can now be run on any organization’s HP CSA managed private or virtual private cloud infrastructure.

Enterprises that embrace the cloud need to modernise their file services and IT delivery models, according to Jeff Denworth, Ctera’s marketing SVP. The new addition of Ctera to HP CSA means they can easily manage file services from a single control point and quickly roll out the apps using a self-service portal, Denworth said.

“HP CSA helps IT managers become organisational heroes by accelerating the deployment of private and hybrid clouds and IT services,” said Denworth. The partnership with HP will result in a ‘broad suite’ of file services, increased agility and cheaper hybrid cloud services, according to Denworth.

The partnership should make things simpler for cloud managers, who are being forced to take on several roles, according to Atul Garg, HP’s general manager of cloud automation. “Today’s IT teams are becoming cloud services brokers, managing various products and services across hybrid environments and fundamentally changing how they deliver value to the broader organisation,” said Garg. Now file services can be deployed easily to tens of thousands of users, said Garg.

Cloud Storage, hybrid cloud, Storage, Storage and Information Management

The Storage (R)Evolution or The Storage Superstorm?

The storage market is changing, and it isn’t changing slowly. While traditional storage vendors still dominate the revenue and units sold market share, IDC concludes that direct sales to hyperscale (cloud scale, rack scale) service providers are dominating sales of storage. Hyperscale is the ability of an architecture to scale appropriately as increased demand is added to the system; hyperscale datacenters are the type run by Facebook, Amazon, and Google. 

Quote to remember:

“…cloud-based storage, integrated systems, software-defined storage, and flash-optimized storage systems <are selling> at the expense of traditional external arrays.”

In my opinion, this is like the leading edge of a thunderstorm supercell or a “Sandy” Superstorm – the changes that are behind this trend will be tornadoes of upheaval in the datacenter technology business. As cloud services implementations accelerate and software defined storage services proliferate, the impact will be felt not only in the storage market, but also in the server and networking markets. These changes will be reflected in how solutions providers, consulting firms, and VAR/DVARs will help the commercial market solve their technology and business challenges.

EMC is still number one by a very large margin, although down 4% year over year. HP is up nearly 9%; IBM and NetApp are way down. EMC overall (with NAS) has 32.4% revenue share; NetApp number 2 with 12.3%. Even with the apparent domination of the storage vendor market, it is obvious to EMC, their investors, and storage analysts everywhere (including yours truly) that the handwriting on the wall says they must adapt or become irrelevant. The list of great technology firms that didn’t adapt is long, even in New England alone. Digital Equipment Corporation is just one example.

Is EMC next? Not if the leadership team has anything to say about it. The recent announcements by VMware (EMC majority owned) at VMworld 2015 show not only the renewed emphasis on hybrid cloud services but also the intensive focus on software defined storage initiatives enabling the storage stack to be centrally managed within the vSphere Hypervisor. VMware vSphere APIs for IO Filtering are focused on enabling third party data services, such as replication, as part of vSphere Storage Policy-Based Management, the framework for software-defined storage services in vSphere.

EMC is clearly doubling down on the move to Hybrid Clouds with their Federation EMC Hybrid Cloud, as well as all the VMware vCloud Air initiatives. GreenPages is exploring and advising their customers on ways to develop a hybrid cloud strategy, and this includes engaging the EMC FEHC team as well as the VMware vCloud Air­ solution. EMC isn’t the only traditional disk array vendor to explore a cloud strategy, but it seems to be much further along than the others.

Software Defined Storage is the technology to keep an eye on. DataCore and FalconStor software dominated this space before it was even called SDS by default – there were no other SDS solutions out there. EMC came back in a big way with ViPR, arguably the most advanced “true” software defined storage solution in the market place now. Some of the other software-only vendors surging in this space, where software manages advanced data services across different arrays, like provisioning, deduplication, tiering, replication and snapshots, include Nexenta, Hedvig and others. Vendor SDS is a valid share of the market and is enabled by storage virtualization solutions by IBM, NetApp and others. Once “virtualized,” the vendor software enables cross platform data services. Other software-enabled platforms for advanced storage solutions include Coho Data and Pivot3. Hyperconverged solutions such as VSAN, SimpliVity or Nutanix offer more options to new datacenter solutions that don’t include a traditional storage array. “Tier 2” storage platforms such as Nexsan can benefit from this surge because, while the hardware platforms are solid and well-built, those companies haven’t invested as much or as long in the add-on software services that NetApp (for example) has. With advanced SDS solutions in place, this tier of storage can step up with a more “commodity” priced solution for advanced storage solutions.

In addition to the Hybrid Cloud diversification strategy, EMC and other traditional storage manufacturers are keeping a wary eye on the non-traditional vendors such as Nimble Storage, which is offering innovative and easy-to-use alternatives to the core EMC market. There are also a myriad of startups developing new storage services such as Coho, Rubrik, Nexenta, CleverSafe and others. The All Flash Array market is exploding with advanced solutions made possible by the growing maturity of the flash technology and the proliferation of new software designed to leverage the uniqueness of flash storage. Pure Storage grabbed early market share, followed by XtremIO (EMC), but SolidFire, Nexenta, Coho and Kaminario have developed competitive solutions that range from service provider oriented products to software defined storage services leveraging commodity flash storage.

 

What does this coming superstorm of change mean to you, your company, and your data center strategy? It means that when you are developing a strategic plan for your storage refreshes or datacenter refreshes, you have more options than ever to reduce total cost of ownership, add advanced data services such as disaster recovery or integrated backups, and replace parts (or the whole) of your datacenter storage, server and networking stacks. Contact us today to continue this discussion and see where it leads you. 

 

 

 

 

 

By Randy Weis, Principal Architect

Cloud Storage, Featured, hybrid cloud, Storage, Storage and Information Management

The Storage (R)Evolution or The Storage Superstorm?

The storage market is changing, and it isn’t changing slowly. While traditional storage vendors still dominate the revenue and units sold market share, IDC concludes that direct sales to hyperscale (cloud scale, rack scale) service providers are dominating sales of storage. Hyperscale is the ability of an architecture to scale appropriately as increased demand is added to the system; hyperscale datacenters are the type run by Facebook, Amazon, and Google. 

Quote to remember:

“…cloud-based storage, integrated systems, software-defined storage, and flash-optimized storage systems <are selling> at the expense of traditional external arrays.”

In my opinion, this is like the leading edge of a thunderstorm supercell or a “Sandy” Superstorm – the changes that are behind this trend will be tornadoes of upheaval in the datacenter technology business. As cloud services implementations accelerate and software defined storage services proliferate, the impact will be felt not only in the storage market, but also in the server and networking markets. These changes will be reflected in how solutions providers, consulting firms, and VAR/DVARs will help the commercial market solve their technology and business challenges.

EMC is still number one by a very large margin, although down 4% year over year. HP is up nearly 9%; IBM and NetApp are way down. EMC overall (with NAS) has 32.4% revenue share; NetApp number 2 with 12.3%. Even with the apparent domination of the storage vendor market, it is obvious to EMC, their investors, and storage analysts everywhere (including yours truly) that the handwriting on the wall says they must adapt or become irrelevant. The list of great technology firms that didn’t adapt is long, even in New England alone. Digital Equipment Corporation is just one example.

Is EMC next? Not if the leadership team has anything to say about it. The recent announcements by VMware (EMC majority owned) at VMworld 2015 show not only the renewed emphasis on hybrid cloud services but also the intensive focus on software defined storage initiatives enabling the storage stack to be centrally managed within the vSphere Hypervisor. VMware vSphere APIs for IO Filtering are focused on enabling third party data services, such as replication, as part of vSphere Storage Policy-Based Management, the framework for software-defined storage services in vSphere.

EMC is clearly doubling down on the move to Hybrid Clouds with their Federation EMC Hybrid Cloud, as well as all the VMware vCloud Air initiatives. GreenPages is exploring and advising their customers on ways to develop a hybrid cloud strategy, and this includes engaging the EMC FEHC team as well as the VMware vCloud Air­ solution. EMC isn’t the only traditional disk array vendor to explore a cloud strategy, but it seems to be much further along than the others.

Software Defined Storage is the technology to keep an eye on. DataCore and FalconStor software dominated this space before it was even called SDS by default – there were no other SDS solutions out there. EMC came back in a big way with ViPR, arguably the most advanced “true” software defined storage solution in the market place now. Some of the other software-only vendors surging in this space, where software manages advanced data services across different arrays, like provisioning, deduplication, tiering, replication and snapshots, include Nexenta, Hedvig and others. Vendor SDS is a valid share of the market and is enabled by storage virtualization solutions by IBM, NetApp and others. Once “virtualized,” the vendor software enables cross platform data services. Other software-enabled platforms for advanced storage solutions include Coho Data and Pivot3. Hyperconverged solutions such as VSAN, SimpliVity or Nutanix offer more options to new datacenter solutions that don’t include a traditional storage array. “Tier 2” storage platforms such as Nexsan can benefit from this surge because, while the hardware platforms are solid and well-built, those companies haven’t invested as much or as long in the add-on software services that NetApp (for example) has. With advanced SDS solutions in place, this tier of storage can step up with a more “commodity” priced solution for advanced storage solutions.

In addition to the Hybrid Cloud diversification strategy, EMC and other traditional storage manufacturers are keeping a wary eye on the non-traditional vendors such as Nimble Storage, which is offering innovative and easy-to-use alternatives to the core EMC market. There are also a myriad of startups developing new storage services such as Coho, Rubrik, Nexenta, CleverSafe and others. The All Flash Array market is exploding with advanced solutions made possible by the growing maturity of the flash technology and the proliferation of new software designed to leverage the uniqueness of flash storage. Pure Storage grabbed early market share, followed by XtremIO (EMC), but SolidFire, Nexenta, Coho and Kaminario have developed competitive solutions that range from service provider oriented products to software defined storage services leveraging commodity flash storage.

 

What does this coming superstorm of change mean to you, your company, and your data center strategy? It means that when you are developing a strategic plan for your storage refreshes or datacenter refreshes, you have more options than ever to reduce total cost of ownership, add advanced data services such as disaster recovery or integrated backups, and replace parts (or the whole) of your datacenter storage, server and networking stacks. Contact us today to continue this discussion and see where it leads you. 

 

 

 

 

 

By Randy Weis, Principal Architect

business, Exact, News & Analysis, Research, SME, UK

Cloud business users grow faster and are twice as profitable says study

Companies that commit themselves to cloud computing are likely to grow faster and enjoy twice the profit of their non-cloud using rivals, according to a study. The research also indicates that the UK is leading Europe in cloud adoption. However, one critic said there is no evidence that cloud computing creates productivity, or is a consequence of it.

The Exact 2015 SME Cloud Barometer report, an independent study of 2,975 SME leaders in the UK, the USA, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium, found a correlation between companies with three or more cloud products and revenue growth. The ‘heavy users’ of cloud achieved higher revenue growth and over twice the profit of their less committed cloud users.

Penetration of cloud computing in the UK is relatively high in comparison with its European peers, according to the study. The UK has the second highest number of ‘heavy’ cloud software users (27 per cent) behind the USA on 29 per cent. However, the Netherlands, Belgium and France were not significantly behind, with their rates of cloud adoption being 25, 24 and 24 per cent respectively. Germany, with a cloud adoption rate of 10 per cent, was more significantly behind.

Nearly half (47 per cent) of the UK sample of small and medium sized enterprises SMEs now use at least one cloud business software tool.

The study examined the correlation between growth and cloud adoption and found that on average those companies it defined as heavy users enjoyed revenue growth of 26 per cent in 2015. In comparison the companies that used only one or two cloud computing systems grew revenues by an average of 14 per cent. Those with no cloud systems at all showed the slowest growth rates, with revenues on average growing by 10 per cent.

Of the UK sample, the most popular reason given (by 54 per cent of the survey) for adopting new cloud systems was that the ‘need to replace outdated versions’. Saving money on IT was the most frequently cited motivation for cloud computing among UK SMEs. Getting better access to information was the third most important criterion for cloud.

Erik van der Meijden, CEO of study sponsor Exact, claimed that most SMEs see it as a strategic purchase. “[They] said they felt that technology is going to have a strong impact on the competitive landscape in their market over the next three years,” said Meijden.

However, analyst Clive Longbottom, principal researcher at Quocirca, said the link between cloud and productivity needs more definition. “Causality is something that doesn’t seem to be taken into account here,” said Longbottom, “slow-thinking companies that are performing badly are unlikely to be at the leading edge of technology. Those that see technology as a core part of their business will tend to perform better.”

Sin categoría

SMBs urged to put disaster recovery plans in place after damning report findings

(c)iStock.com/maxkabakov

Smaller businesses are less likely to have a business continuity plan in place – and according to disaster recovery (DR) and backup provider Databarracks, there needs to be a stronger culture shift to put it right.

According to the vendor’s most recent Data Health Check report, only a quarter (27%) of small businesses have business continuity plans, compared to 68% of medium-sized firms and 75% of large organisations. Of the organisations with a plan in place, 88% had a specific IT disaster recovery plan outlined within it. A further 7% of respondents expect to put one in within the next 12 months.

One of the more interesting titbits from the research related to how and why data was lost. According to the figures, human error contributed to almost a quarter (24%) of data loss, ahead of hardware failure (21%). To put this in perspective, the November 2014 iteration of the Data Health Check ranked the good old fashioned cock-up in third place, narrowly behind hardware and software failure. For the second year running, large businesses are more likely to lose data through human error than a hardware meltdown.

Not surprisingly, disaster recovery testing had a major impact on the confidence organisations had in their solutions. 58% of organisations who had tested their DR systems in the past year said they were “very confident” with their choice. For those who hadn’t tested, that number fell to 28%. In contrast, only 3% of businesses had tested their DR plans and found concerns.

The figures point to a clear trend; disaster recovery is no longer out of the reach of small businesses through the commoditising effects of cloud computing. According to Oscar Arean, Databarracks technical operations manager and author of the report, businesses who say they don’t have the time to test a DR system are more than likely blowing smoke.

“Sometimes it takes a prolonged period of downtime or a substantial data loss for a business to realise the importance of a robust DR solution, but it shouldn’t come at that cost,” said Arean. He added: “We need to see a culture shift and perhaps some of that responsibility falls to the service providers as well as the customers.

“DR providers need to educate organisations on the importance of disaster recovery planning and testing, and demonstrate how vulnerable they are if this isn’t done.”

In May, figures from Databarracks revealed the majority of councils in London have disaster recovery systems in place – yet many had not been tested for at least 12 months.

Features on iPhone, iOS features, iPhone features, Parallels Access, Remote access, Remote Desktop, Remote Mac access on iPhone

6 Things You Didn’t Know Your iPhone Could Do

Your iPhone is capable of more than you think. Have you tried any of these features or apps? Check out our list of six things you didn’t know your iPhone could do: 1. Siri can read email headers for you. You’re driving, and you get that all too familiar buzz signifying something new in your inbox. […]

The post 6 Things You Didn’t Know Your iPhone Could Do appeared first on Parallels Blog.

Parallels Access, Remote access, Remote Computer, Remote Desktop, Syncing Photos, Tips & Tricks

How to Sync Photos Between Android and Mac with Parallels Access

By Paul Christopher Nathaniel, Parallels Support Team As much as we like our iPads, we realize that many people who own Macs may also opt for an Android or Windows tablet instead. For iPhone, iPad, and iPod, you can sync/transfer photos to your computer using iTunes. But that same process is a little different for Android—let’s […]

The post How to Sync Photos Between Android and Mac with Parallels Access appeared first on Parallels Blog.

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[session] Modernizing Applications for the Cloud By @KevinHoffman | @CloudExpo #Cloud

Today, we are in the middle of a paradigm shift as we move from managing applications on VMs and containers to embracing everything that the cloud and XaaS (Everything as a Service) has to offer.
In his session at 17th Cloud Expo, Kevin Hoffman, Advisory Solutions Architect at Pivotal Cloud Foundry, will provide an overview of 12-factor apps and migrating enterprise apps to the cloud.
Kevin Hoffman is an Advisory Solutions Architect for Pivotal Cloud Foundry, and has spent the past 20 years building enterprise and mobile software for small businesses, massive enterprises, and everything in between. He has spent his career balancing the beauty of ideal solutions against practical constraints and applying that same mentality to migrating enterprise applications to the cloud.

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