When I talk to people about my split schedule and how I work from home a few days a week, the first word out of their mouths is usually “Lucky!” or “Do you wear your pajamas all day?” (I will admit to taking my fair share of meetings in pajamas). Working from home now and […]
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A virtual machine (VM) is the ideal way to check out an OS that has been released as a beta, like Mac OS X 10.11, also known as El Capitan. A VM is a sandboxed environment, so any issues seen in the beta OS won’t affect any of your files on the Mac, destabilize your […]
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The global personal cloud market is expected to top almost $90 billion (£58.5bn) in revenue by 2020, according to the latest forecast by Allied Market Research.
The research firm anticipates a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 33.1% between 2015 and 2020, with growing customer awareness cited as boosting growth and personal cloud for individuals continuing to lead the market.
Individual users will comprise around 60% of total market revenue by 2020 according to Allied, however the SMB segment is expected to take nearly a quarter of revenue at a CAGR of 35% across five years. In terms of share between cloud providers and user-hosted solutions, provider-hosted personal cloud will constitute nearly 75% of the market value by 2020; yet user-hosted cloud is expected to grow at a CAGR of 46% to make up the remaining quarter.
Key growth drivers between now and 2020 include flexible packages, affordable pricing structures, as well as increased security features. Allied cites Dropbox’s addition of two factor authentication as part of this push. The company has also added the ISO/IEC 27018 privacy standard to its arsenal as of May, with Microsoft achieving certification back in February.
One interesting prediction the researchers make is through funding models; while subscriptions understandably remain the primary revenue generator for personal cloud services, Allied expects advertisement and lead generation to surpass this by 2019.
Increased uptake from the Asia Pacific region is expected to contribute significantly to overall growth, representing a greater market share than North America and Europe in six years. According to the Asia Cloud Computing Association’s 2014 cloud readiness index, Japan continues to lead the way, ahead of New Zealand and Australia. The report authors anticipate a ‘seismic data revolution once information access in Asia becomes universally cheap, powerful, and available’, aligning with Allied on there being a tipping point for Asia Pacific cloud usage.
You can read more about the report here (subscription required).
For VMware customers shops under pressure from users to improve their app and desktop experience, gain greater infrastructure flexibility and simplify end user computing management, Citrix has announced a free service to migrate VMware Horizon View virtual app and desktop deployments to XenApp and XenDesktop. Powered by the new Citrix Lifecycle Management Service – now available from Citrix Workspace Cloud – the new service enables administrators to do an in-place migration in less than 15 minutes by easily exporting application and desktop settings from Horizon View into the Citrix app and desktop delivery solution. The creation of the migration service addresses numerous requests Citrix has received to salvage failed, stalled and small VMware VDI deployments.
Little known unbranded manufacturers are making inroads into the storage market as the cloud commoditises the industry storage, according to a new report by market researcher IDC. Meanwhile, the market for traditional external storage systems is shrinking, it warns.
The data centres of big cloud companies like Google and Facebook are much more likely to buy from smaller, lesser known storage vendors now, as they are no longer compelled to commit themselves to specialised storage platforms, said IDC in its latest Enterprise Storage report.
Revenue for original design manufacturers (ODMs) that sell directly to hyperscale data-center operators grew 25.8 per cent in the second quarter of 2015, in a period when overall industry revenue rose just 2.1 per cent. However, data centre purchases accounted for US$1 billion in the second quarter, while the overall industry revenue is still larger, for now, at $8.8 billion. However, the growth trends indicate that a shift in buying power will take place, according to IDC analyst Eric Sheppard. Increasingly, the platform of choice for storage is a standard x86 server dedicated to storing data, said Sheppard.
ODMs such as Quanta Computer and Wistron are becoming increasingly influential, said Sheppard. Like many low-profile vendors, based in Taiwan, they are providing hardware to be sold under the badges of better known brand names, as sales of server-based storage rose 10 per cent in the second quarter to reach $2.1 billion.
Traditional external systems like SANs (storage area networks) are still the bulk of the enterprise storage business, which was worth $5.7 billion in revenue for the quarter. But sales in this segment are declining, down 3.9 per cent in that period.
With the cloud transferring the burden of processing to data centres, the biggest purchasers of storage are now Internet giants and cloud service providers. Typically their hyper-scale data centres are software controlled and no longer need the more expensive proprietary systems that individual companies were persuaded to buy, according to the report. Generic, unbranded hardware is sufficient, provided that it is software defined, the report said.
“The software, not the hardware, defines the storage architecture,” said Sheppard. The cloud has made it possible to define the management of storage in more detail, so that the resources can be matched more evenly to each virtual machine. This has cut the long term operating costs. These changes will intensify in the next five years, the analyst predicted.
EMC remained the biggest vendor by revenue with just over 19 per cent of the market, followed by Hewlett-Packard with just over 16 per cent.
Finnish kit vendor Nokia is continuing to promote its nascent cloud offerings for telcos, three months after the launch of its AirFrame datacentre family of products, reports Telecoms.com.
AirFrame itself is now available as a containerised solution with a built in power and cooling system and Nokia has also added a software-defined storage module. It is supported by a cloud Care Services package, which is comprised of a service management module for resolving VNF faults, as well as a support package specifically for VMWare deployments.
As well as AirFrame Nokia is promoting its OSS Office for Telco Cloud offering, which seems to be more of a strategic consultation service than a physical product. All of this is stitched together by something Nokia is calling Service Chaining, which is a virtualized environment for the delivery of network services.
“Wherever operators are on their cloud transformation journey, Nokia has the solutions and expertise, all the way from strategy to migration to maintenance,” said Deepak Harie, VP of Systems Integration at Nokia Networks. “Our extensive and open cloud portfolio helps operators in making important decisions towards the most efficient processes, services and solutions across all cloud domains. With Nokia Telco Cloud, operators will be able to achieve maximum benefits from telco and IT convergence.”
Essentially Nokia is trying hard to strengthen its credentials as both a cloud player and a full managed service provider for that sector, something its main competitors have already established. You can expand Nokia’s service chain cloud diagram below.
The personal cloud market will have a compound annual growth rate of 33.1 per cent between now and 2020, by which time it will be worth $89.9 billion globally, according to a new study.
The report, World Personal Cloud Market- Opportunities and Forecasts, 2014-2020, says growing customer awareness of personal cloud services is driving the growth. Europe and the USA will be surpassed by the Asia-Pacific region as the most voracious users of personal cloud apps, with the latter accounting for two-fifths of total market share in 2020.
Advances in smartphones, tablets and mobile devices have boosted the growth of the personal cloud market as storage needs grow, it says. The change was catalysed by the virtualizing of the work environment as employers began using personal cloud storage as a solution to work problems, says the report.
Growth rate apart, the main finding of the study by Allied Market Research was that there has been a reversal of expectations, with individuals dictating the growth of corporate networks.
In addition, the study found that the personal cloud will become a conduit for lead generation and other indirect marketing methods. These could create new opportunities and provide the potential for revenue generated through advertising. Individuals will continue to lead the personal cloud as a result of the increasing influence of personal digital content, as devices with cameras proliferate and visuals become increasingly influential in the multimedia world, says the study.
The faster growth rate enjoyed by the Asia-Pacific region is anticipated as a result of different consumer behaviour in a different computing environment. Its population has significantly higher usage of multimedia devices coupled with faster broadband networks, according to the report.
Another strong influence will be exerted by the established market players, such as Google, Apple, Microsoft and Dropbox, who are leading the market with their flexible packages and affordable pricing structure. Their advanced features and attractive app prices, such as two-factor authentication for security, have improved customer satisfaction and driven wider adoption. The addition of Dropbox’s two-factor authentication, in June 2015, is cited as a major confidence builder in the personal cloud.
In turn, the mobile social media applications made possible by the new multi-featured, affordable smartphones created the demand for storing personal data using personal cloud platforms. Improvised secure features helped to popularise personal data storage and make the cloud a less ominous proposition, said the report.
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Big data is providing supplier networks with greater data accuracy, clarity, and insights, leading to more contextual intelligence shared across supply chains.
Forward-thinking manufacturers are orchestrating 80% or more of their supplier network activity outside their four walls, using big data and cloud-based technologies to get beyond the constraints of legacy enterprise resource planning (ERP) and supply chain management (SCM) systems. For manufacturers whose business models are based on rapid product lifecycles and speed, legacy ERP systems are a bottleneck. Designed for delivering order, shipment and transactional data, these systems aren’t capable of scaling to meet the challenges supply chains face today.
Choosing to compete on accuracy, speed and quality forces supplier networks to get to a level of contextual intelligence not possible with legacy ERP and SCM systems. While many companies today haven’t yet adopted big data into their supply chain operations, these ten factors taken together will be the catalyst that get many moving on their journey.
The ten ways big data is revolutionising supply chain management include:
Software vendor Autodesk is to move distribution of its computer aided design (CAD) system to the cloud.
After July 31, 2016, new commercial licenses of Autodesk Design and Creation suites and individual products will be available by subscription only. The transition allows the vendor to offer new, simplified subscription options to customers, who can get multiple products and share licenses with the added benefit of flexibility, it said.
Along with a simpler customer experience, Autodesk promised its new subscription model will offer lower upfront costs and a pay per use option on Autodesk products and cloud services with multi-year, annual, quarterly or monthly subscription terms. The new model makes companies more adaptable and makes changing business environments less expensive, according to Autodesk.
“The way we design and make things is changing. Every industry is being disrupted by changes in production, demand and products,” said Andrew Anagnost, Autodesk’s senior VP of Industry Strategy and Marketing.
By giving customers the flexibility to subscribe to software Autodesk is “embracing this new norm”, said Anagnost.
Autodesk announced in March 2015 that will stop selling perpetual licenses of most of its individual products after January 31, 2016, after which new licenses will only be available as subscriptions. Now the exceptions to that announcement, Autodesk’s Design & Creation Suites, are included in its subscription-based strategy.
Autodesk said it aimed to “pave the way for a smooth transition” with a choice of simplified subscription plans tailored to individuals, teams and enterprises. Customers can buy subscription plans to gain access to individual products or a portfolio of products with the option of single user licensing or shared network licensing.
Those who buy a perpetual license of Autodesk Design & Creation Suites and affected products prior to July 31 2016 will continue to own and have full usage rights for those licenses. Customers on the Maintenance scheme for those perpetual licenses will continue to receive corresponding benefits for as long as they continue to renew their Maintenance subscription.
Autodesk has published a list of changes for Perpetual Licenses for both individual desktop software and design and creation suites affected by the cut off deadlines. A number of country specific variations is also published on the site.
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A new paper from Osterman Research in conjunction with CTERA Networks argues a clear need for organisations to adopt enterprise grade file sync and share (EFSS) software due to security and shadow IT fears.
Naturally, the conclusion of the report is less than surprising given CTERA’s continued push against consumer grade (CFSS) software. Back in July the firm released research detailing how three quarters of firms are looking for an alternative to public file sync and share services. VP strategic marketing Rani Osnat told this publication back in July how while the likes of Box and Dropbox have made a concerted effort at greater security, more still needed to be done.
Yet the statistics from worried enterprise organisations make for interesting reading. More than three quarters (76%) of survey respondents say they are at least somewhat concerned about consumer-grade file sync and share solutions, with only 5% said they were ‘not concerned at all’.
Email (95%) was not surprisingly the most popular conduit for employees sharing files with others, followed by Microsoft SharePoint (68%), and IT managed file sync and share tools (58%). Employee-managed sharing tools comprised 42% of the vote. Yet the paper argues email creates “a number of functional problems in the context of managing servers and overall IT infrastructure”, with network bandwidth all too easily being affected.
The report also mentions the continually occurring issue of shadow IT, noting that between May 2012 and January 2015, the usage of consumer storage applications without the blessing of the IT department has not abated. According to Osterman’s figures, in 2012 only 11% of Dropbox enterprise usage was IT approved, compared to 45% which was under the radar; yet in January of this year, while over a quarter (28%) of IT departments had approved Dropbox usage, the number of miscreants rose to almost half (49%).
These results show that while IT departments are getting to grips with the usage of consumer cloud storage, significantly more employees rely on it to get their jobs done. This laxity is proven by further figures which show only 8% give their organisations an A grade for information security. The majority (84%) opted for a more humdrum mark of B or C.
Mark van der Linden, Dropbox UK country manager, wrote for this publication back in July: “The products that are most loved by employees in their personal lives are often the best solutions for businesses too. The solution for CIOs is to see cloud security as an opportunity to choose products that work best for their teams, and at the same time, strengthen their organisation’s overall security posture.”
Yet CTERA argues differently. “The use of CFSS solutions shifts control over corporate data from IT to individual employees, and has become a key element of the ‘shadow IT’ or ‘consumerised IT’ problem that organisations must address,” the report notes. “The use of EFSS solutions will mitigate the risks associated with CFSS solutions.”
You can read the full 17 page report here (sign up required). Who do you agree with?