SYS-CON Events announced today that CDS Global Cloud, an Infrastructure as a Service provider, will exhibit at the 19th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on November 1–3, 2016, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
CDS Global Cloud is an IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) provider specializing in solutions for e-commerce, internet gaming, online education and other internet applications. With a growing number of data centers and network points around the world, CDS provides Cloud Hosting, Hybrid Hosting, IDC and GPN (Global Private Network) from its Global Interconnected Cloud platform (GIC).
Archivo mensual: julio 2016
Roadmap for Hybrid IT | @CloudExpo #IoT #M2M #API #DataCenter #BigData
With 15% of enterprises adopting a hybrid IT strategy, you need to set a plan to integrate hybrid cloud throughout your infrastructure.
In his session at 18th Cloud Expo, Steven Dreher, Director of Solutions Architecture at Green House Data, discussed how to plan for shifting resource requirements, overcome challenges, and implement hybrid IT alongside your existing data center assets. Highlights included anticipating workload, cost and resource calculations, integrating services on both sides of the firewall, self-service, monitoring, and workload prioritization.
Microservices and Integration | @DevOpsSummit @Elasticio #IoT #Microservices
The proper isolation of resources is essential for multi-tenant environments. The traditional approach to isolate resources is, however, rather heavyweight.
In his session at 18th Cloud Expo, Igor Drobiazko, co-founder of elastic.io, drew upon his own experience with operating a Docker container-based infrastructure on a large scale and present a lightweight solution for resource isolation using microservices. He also discussed the implementation of microservices in data and application integration in general, shared the challenges they ran into using open source technologies like Apache Mesos and Marathon for Docker containers and what solutions they found to deal with them.
[slides] IoT Service to IoT Profit | @ThingsExpo #IoT #M2M #InternetOfThings
Whether your IoT service is connecting cars, homes, appliances, wearable, cameras or other devices, one question hangs in the balance – how do you actually make money from this service? The ability to turn your IoT service into profit requires the ability to create a monetization strategy that is flexible, scalable and working for you in real-time. It must be a transparent, smoothly implemented strategy that all stakeholders – from customers to the board – will be able to understand and comprehend.
[video] Digital Transformation with @Interoute | @CloudExpo #API #Cloud
«My role is working with customers, helping them go through this digital transformation. I spend a lot of time talking to banks, big industries, manufacturers working through how they are integrating and transforming their IT platforms and moving them forward,» explained William Morrish, General Manager Product Sales at Interoute, in this SYS-CON.tv interview at 18th Cloud Expo, held June 7-9, 2016, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY.
Beating the Data Deluge | @CloudExpo #NAS #BigData #DataCenter #Storage
IDC estimates that the digital universe is doubling every two years. That means the need for data storage is increasing at the same rate. This exponential demand is no match for traditional vertical-scaling storage architectures. The resulting bottlenecks significantly reduce performance, and trying to store so much data would require prohibitively expensive server scale-out.
Is SAP HANA in the Cloud Right for Me? | @CloudExpo @SAPInMemory #Cloud
With the pace of technological development and the complex needs of ERP, it can be difficult to choose the right SAP HANA hosting or upgrade strategy. There are unexpected benefits of moving to the cloud, but also risks in outsourcing mission-critical applications. Here are some of the common arguments for and against SAP HANA in the cloud.
EU moves forward with Privacy Shield despite EDPS warning
The European Commission has announced it will continue ahead with the EU-US Privacy Shield despite the European Data Protection Supervisor claiming the pact is not robust enough, reports Telecoms.com.
Since Safe Harbour was struck down by the European Court of Justice last year, the industry has been in limbo as politicians were unable to draft an agreement between the US and EU, which met the criteria for data protection in the European market. In May, European Data Protection Supervisor, Giovanni Buttarelli, outlined his concerns on whether the proposed agreement will provide adequate protection against indiscriminate surveillance, believing the pact would not be strong enough to stand up.
“Today Member States have given their strong support to the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield, the renewed safe framework for transatlantic data flows,” said Vice-President Andrus Ansip and Commissioner Věra Jourová in a joint statement. “This paves the way for the formal adoption of the legal texts and for getting the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield up and running. The EU-U.S. Privacy Shield will ensure a high level of protection for individuals and legal certainty for business.”
Despite the European Commission pushing forward with the draft, there have been a number of individuals and parties within the EU who have criticised the agreement. For some, the EU-US Privacy Shield is simply a reheated Safe Harbour, with very little to address the concerns of the original agreement.
Article 29 Working Group is another influential group has highlighted to the industry the pact has made progress, though it did identify a number of shortcomings when looking at mass surveillance and oversight. The new agreement does encourage organizations to be more considered and conservative when sharing data with US, however critics of the new agreement have claimed there are still too many exceptions where the US and its intelligence agencies can move around the agreement. Despite the concerns, the European Commission has ploughed ahead.
On the other side of the argument, Microsoft has somewhat unsurprisingly confirmed its support of the pact, though it has stated it should go further. In any case, a large vendor expressing its support for an agreement which would enable the organization to do more business in Europe should not be met with astonishment.
“It is fundamentally different from the old ‘Safe Harbour’: It imposes clear and strong obligations on companies handling the data and makes sure that these rules are followed and enforced in practice,” said the announcement. “For the first time, the U.S. has given the EU written assurance that the access of public authorities for law enforcement and national security will be subject to clear limitations, safeguards and oversight mechanisms and has ruled out indiscriminate mass surveillance of European citizens’ data.”
“And last but not least the Privacy Shield protects fundamental rights and provides for several accessible and affordable redress mechanisms. During the formal adoption process, the Commission has consulted as broadly as possible taking on board the input of key stakeholders, notably the independent data protection authorities and the European Parliament. Both consumers and companies can have full confidence in the new arrangement, which reflects the requirements of the European Court of Justice. Today’s vote by the Member States is a strong sign of confidence.”
It would appear the European Commission is moving forward to demonstrate to the industry progress is being made, though could be seen as a flimsy approach. With the concerns expressed by influential and respected bodies within the industry, it should not be seen as a surprise if the agreement is struck down once again by the European Court of Justice.
Tech News Recap for the Week of 7/5/2016
Were you busy this week? Here’s a tech news recap of articles you may have missed for the week of 7/5/2016!
Gartner is predicting that corporate no-cloud policies will be extinct by 2020. Wendy’s released a list of restaurants that were hit by a data breach that compromised debit and credit cards. Microsoft’s new Dynamics 365 will bundle ERP and CRM in the cloud. Google acquired video software company Anvato and is testing Chrome encryption that is meant to withstand attacks from quantum computers. You can now send files with Skype when the recipient is offline, Windows 10 has an anniversary, and more top news you may have missed this week!
Follow us on Twitter to stay up-to-date on the latest news throughout the week!
Tech News Recap
- Corporate “no-cloud” policies to be extinct by 2020, Gartner says
- How to Know Which Digital Trends Are Worth Chasing
- Microsoft’s new Dynamics 365 will bundle ERP and CRM in the cloud
- Is All-Cloud Computing Inevitable? Analysts Suggest It Is
- The Hyper-Converged Landscape: What’s New, What’s Hot, and What’s Possible
- Windows 10 Anniversary Update: 5 Key Business Features
- The New IT: Driving Business Innovation With Tech
- You can now send files with Skype when the recipient is offline
- Spending on public cloud IT infrastructure to hit $23.3 billion
- CEO conversations: The road to Convergence 3.0
- Google is testing Chrome encryption that’s meant to withstand attacks from quantum computers
- Wendy’s releases list of restaurants hit by data breach that compromised debit and credit cards
- National Basketball Players Association to Hold Their First-Ever Technology Summit
- New Jersey CTO Prioritizing Security, Embracing Cloud
- Which cloud is on top?
- IT spending will shrink worldwide due to Brexit, Garner predicts
- Google acquires video software company Anvato
- Top 20 NSX articles for June 2016
Register for upcoming webinar, ” The Hyper-Converged Landscape: What’s New, What’s Hot, and What’s Possible
By Ben Stephenson, Emerging Media Specialist
The top seven KPIs to measure your success in the cloud
(c)iStock.com/Peter Hermus
You’ve put a lot of effort into building your cloud business and you want to make sure you stay ahead of the competition. You’ve kept a close eye on market trends and you’ve seen there are many ways to measure business performance. But, how much do you really know about Key Performance Indicators and how they affect your business? Did you know that the right KPIs can make the difference between continued success and a slow decline?
You’re probably wondering what kind of KPIs you should be looking at and how often you have to do it. Don’t worry. We’ve done all the grunt work for you. Here are seven Key Performance Indicators that will help you measure your success in the cloud.
Measure your customer growth
Look closely at the monthly figures provided by your sales team. Are they still bringing in new customers? Are your numbers this quarter higher or equal to what you saw last month? This is not the time for your sales team to be running out of steam. If you notice that customer growth is declining, start asking questions. Maybe your sales people aren’t getting enough lead volumes from the Marketing department. You have to look at the value provided by each sales person. In the cloud industry, 8-10 percent is ideal and 15 percent is acceptable. However, a higher percentage means the person’s quota is either too low or their income is too high. Deciding what to pay sales people has been a major challenge for partners who want to attract good sales reps to the cloud.
Calculate your average revenue per user (ARPU)
This is a very important metric. As competition in the cloud industry grows, resellers are spending more time cultivating long-term relationships to maximize their Average Revenue per User (ARPU). Get involved in cross-selling. Build a joint roadmap with your customer so you can stay involved with his business. It’ll be up to you to continually educate him about how you can help him meet the numerous challenges he’ll be facing.
You might also consider hiring a dedicated marketing/sales expert. But don’t make this move until you’re sure the expert can generate enough revenue from renewals and cross-selling and upselling. For example, a sales expert who costs you $50,000 in salary, commission and benefits should be able to drive a minimum of $333,000 in revenue.
What are you spending on marketing?
If you’re struggling with your sales volume, it’s time to look at your marketing program. A lot of partners we spoke to said they were spending less than 1 or 2 percent of their revenue on driving net new demand. Successful channel partners tend to spend as much as 8-10 percent on marketing. Since cash flows are spread out over longer periods, it’s really important to ramp up acquisition and make sure you’re investing as much money as possible to maximize your marketing.
Take a hard look at your renewal rate
What’s an ideal number? You should be looking for less than 8-10 percent per year of annual churn. However, this number will vary based on your customer acquisition rate. Customers are making purchase decisions every month and it’s important to keep the lines of communication open.
The renewal process is ongoing. From the day your customer signs their first contract, you’re ensuring they understand how important it is to get the product you’re selling and do business with you. You should make sure you give them plenty of reasons to renew.
Consider value-added services
A lot of partners make the same mistake. They offer the same services year after year and try to squeeze every penny out of the deal. You have to realize that SMBs are adopting cloud technology at a faster rate every year. If you don’t offer the cutting-edge services your clients need to stay competitive, they’ll simply go somewhere else. Partners who’ve developed their business model around Project or Managed Services can earn between 50-65 percent of their revenue from these services. This is one of the areas where you have the most control, so keep looking for opportunities to add to your offer. Ideally, a new partner should aim to have 15 percent of revenue from these sources by the end of year one, 33 percent by year two, and 45 percent or more by year three.
Look at your gross margins by offering
No matter what kind of services you offer, it’s important to see what kind of profit you’re getting from each one. For example, you should really strive for a gross margin of 30 percent or more for each Project Services offering. On the other hand, Managed Services offerings should return at least 40 percent while IP offerings should give you more than 50 percent margins. If your returns are lower, this may indicate that you haven’t established your offering properly or that something else is out of kilter. Take a close look at your services and why you’ve added them to your offering in the first place. If you’ve started offering a solution or service simply because one customer asked for it, step back and see how successful it’s been for your business. If it’s not creating reasonable income for your company, it might be time to replace it with something else.
How efficient are these value-added services?
Aside from the KPIs we’ve mentioned here, there are others that relate specifically to your project services and managed services. Gross Service Margins, the Efficiency Factor, Usage and Billable Markup Rates are the most significant KPIs for value-added services. Each of these KPIs will let you know how each service is performing and provide early warnings when you need to make adjustments. You should include them in your BI dashboards and add them to your quarterly assessments. Pay close attention to the Efficiency Factor. This measures how much of your work can be repurposed, packaged and resold as IP. Remember, your customers are looking for turnkey products they can implement right away, so use these building blocks to either jumpstart projects, or resell them as a finished product. This will make a difference in the kind of profits you can generate overall.
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