Let’s face it, embracing new storage technologies, capabilities and upgrading to new hardware often adds complexity and increases costs.
In his session at 18th Cloud Expo, Seth Oxenhorn, Vice President of Business Development & Alliances at FalconStor, discussed how a truly heterogeneous software-defined storage approach can add value to legacy platforms and heterogeneous environments. The result reduces complexity, significantly lowers cost, and provides IT organizations with improved efficiencies, all while delivering real freedom and flexibility. Come learn how to #BeFree.

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Most organizations prioritize data security only after their data has already been compromised. Proactive prevention is important, but how can you accomplish that on a small budget? Learn how the cloud, combined with a defense and in-depth approach, creates efficiencies by transferring and assigning risk. Security requires a multi-defense approach, and an in-house team may only be able to cherry pick from the essential components.
In his session at 19th Cloud Expo, Vlad Friedman, CEO/Founder of Edge Hosting, will discuss what questions to ask and the technologies to look for from your cloud service provider to ensure your applications stay online and secure.

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(c)iStock.com/Ivan Bliznetsov

The move for enterprises to the cloud is not a question of if but when – and neither is it a question of pace.

That’s the view of Matthew Finnie, chief technical officer at virtual data centre (VDC) provider Interoute. He argues that the industries traditionally less than keen on changing – finance and manufacturing, and a trend which this publication has covered extensively – have all come to the same realisation. “The issue for us is not so much the speed at which stuff will move to the cloud, which is going at a good old pace, but it’s actually more the implicit understanding that most people have now – stuff is going to leave their premises,” he tells CloudTech.

“No-one, really, should be in the business of running their own infrastructure, unless of course that is your business, or you’re very, very large,” he adds. “They’ve all got to get out – it makes no sense any more for anyone to build their own.”

Nor does the outspoken Finnie believe cloud transformation is going to make things unnecessarily complicated and lead to headaches for IT departments. “It’s less about the absolute scale of the data centre, [but] more about the scale of the ability to take on some of those data centre assets in whatever form they come at you,” he says. “If you’ve got an AS/400, you ain’t sticking that in the cloud, or worse, an application written in COBOL. That’s certainly not going in the cloud. We use the network as a method of binding it together.”

Regarding the complexity, Finnie continues on the theme. “There’s no technology precedent that says it goes all from one place, your data centre, to multiple locations, platform as a service, software as a service, infrastructure as a service and your own data centre, and therefore it’s going to be really complicated. It’s all transitionary. From our experience, the speed of transformation has got nothing to do with technology… [but] many times the fear and loathing of the IT department.”

One important piece of news from Interoute’s perspective was the acquisition of cloud networks provider Easynet. The £402 million deal was announced in September and given full sign-off in November from the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). As Finnie explains, the similarities between both companies, as well as a big European footprint, was vital. “What they were predominantly was manage WAN,” he says, “and in any digital transformation, the hard yards are connecting everyone up.

“For us, it was about acquiring a set of customers that we could upsell to, and practically speaking, by acquiring Easynet we acquired our next largest competitor. We gave ourselves a year to do the integration, and we’re already in a place now, six months in, where we’re actively upselling to those existing customers,” Finnie adds.

But with that in mind, Interoute has been busy expanding its empire, with new VDC zones in Singapore and Istanbul mooted. For the company, the latter is about as far south and east as you can go in Europe, and represents a good base to potentially target the Middle East. “We’ve got lots of bigger customers who are European based, but global – a lot of them will have an Asian presence,” Finnie says.

“They’ll want to run services natively in a region, and so [the move] is to support that, but also we’ve now got a model on this digital platform approach that will combine network and cloud, and those are very portable. It’s much lighter in terms of putting a full service set into a region.”

Read Matthew’s articles on CloudTech here.HHe ioro

(c)iStock.com/triloks

The last few years have seen an influx of ‘disruptive’ new tech startups entering the marketplace with all sorts of software as a service (SaaS) and app solutions for small businesses and larger enterprises. On the face of it, this is great news. However, the phrase “spoilt for choice” could also apply, and might even be causing paralysis in cloud service adoption.

With regards to document management systems (DMS), centralisation has been the goal for many years; however, the emergence of new tech with broad integration capabilities, such as SAP Modules and buzzy newcomer Slack, are turning that idea on its head.

The diffusion of data, documents and devices is rife these days, so it’s no longer practical for cloud-based document management systems to try to apply rigid rules and processes – after all, the tree that bends with the breeze stands the longest.

The future is flexible

Users will increasingly expect greater flexibility from their DMS (and collaborative tech in general), but what does this actually mean and could more choice end up stifling cloud adoption?

At the end of last year, I made a number of predictions about the future of online document management and concluded that the advent and advance of new tech would displace more established services, but could also muddy the waters for business decision-makers.

The number of different platforms that have surfaced and gained traction within the business world this year is unprecedented. In fact, the continued rise of Enterprise Social Networks (ESN) has been compared to the rise of personal computing in the nineties, in terms of the value gains experienced by full adopters.

So, is a more flexible and diverse document management toolset a good thing, or is it actually leading to some businesses turning away from the cloud in the face of too many options?

Seamless integration is key

The broad range of business process and workflow solutions on offer might seem intimidating, but this can be mitigated somewhat if the various apps integrate with each other in a secure, seamless, straightforward manner. This gives the user the freedom and flexibility to choose the best tool for the job and easily incorporate it into their enterprise content management (ECM) strategy.

Cloud services are designed to help businesses of all shapes and sizes reduce costs, improve collaboration and boost efficiency, which should all have a significant impact on bottom line. Document management systems in particular allow employees to access information wherever and whenever they need to, even simultaneously with their colleagues. The flexibility of the solution means the business itself is able to be more flexible, agile and competitive.

A more collaborative approach

Surely having more choice in the tools available, as well as greater accessibility and mobility, is preferable to the more rigid systems of a decade ago? People are far more likely to work from home nowadays, where they’ll want to access important business information and documents via their smartphone or tablet one day, and see any changes reflected on their office PC the next.

Secure, cloud-based platforms are also highly desirable as they allow freelancers and contractors (with the necessary access privileges) to log in from anywhere in the world and contribute to a project or workflow.

As SaaS and apps designed to facilitate remote working, file sharing and online collaboration begin to proliferate in the corporate world, the document management systems they integrate with will be forced to keep pace, or better yet, get ahead of the curve.

Ultimately, if these tools offer a genuine solution and make life easier for users, the ability to cherry pick from a broad range of options and plug them straight into your existing workflow has to be a good thing.

Security and convenience

The substantial increase in cloud-based DMS, SaaS and ESN adoption highlights how business behaviour is changing and evolving in terms of information management. A bring your own device (BYOD) approach is rapidly becoming the norm for remote interaction and collaboration, which helps promote an ‘always on’ mindset, particularly within startups.

Consumerisation within business will increase as wearable tech and the Internet of Things (IoT) become more pervasive and start to generate valuable data and insight. Taking control away from IT departments and putting it in the hands of the user can be dangerous, but there are advantages. Providing the devices, tools and platforms are secure and appropriate, letting your employees use the technology they’re most comfortable with should improve productivity and satisfaction.

Although they can sometimes appear to be at odds with each other, security and convenience have always been key considerations and that’s unlikely to change any time soon.

The rise of modularity

So is the profusion of disruptive tech really making life difficult for cloud-based DMS providers? Not really, no. It’s keeping us on our toes and forcing us to keep integration at the forefront of our solutions, which can only be good news for users.

Modular business tools, like SAP Business ByDesign, offer a diverse range of SaaS products, catering for project management, human resources, customer relationship management and many other business processes. I suspect modularity will become a staple of the best document management systems, allowing SMEs and enterprises to stack and build flexible, tailored solutions that meet their specific requirements.

I’m not sure if there’s ever been such a thing as a one-size-fits-all DMS package, but new tech with broad integration capabilities means flexibility and choice will be increasingly prized by users in the years to come.