Choosing the right cloud for your workloads is a balancing act that can cost your organization time, money and aggravation – unless you get it right the first time.
Economics, speed, performance, accessibility, administrative needs and security all play a vital role in dictating your approach to the cloud. Without knowing the right questions to ask, you could wind up paying for capacity you’ll never need or underestimating the resources required to run your applications.

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For the vast majority of IT decision makers, cloudy offices fit their organisations like a glove. That’s one of the key findings from a study released by software vendor BetterCloud, which found 95% of the almost 270 respondents agree that Office 365 and Google Apps suit their workplace needs well.

Comparing the two, however, is something which is too tempting to resist. 44% of Google Apps users say that system fits their needs ‘very well’, compared with 39% for Office 365, while Google also comes out on top for users who complain about poor suitability; 1% compared to 6% of Microsoft users. Putting all the figures together, 40% say their cloud office solutions suit their company ‘very well’, with 55%, 4% and 1% going for ‘well’, ‘poorly’, and ‘very poorly’ respectively.

The report also, as one would expect, digs in to the key pain points and benefits of moving to cloud apps. Again, it appears Google has the slight advantage. More Office 365 users (57%) cited security as a key issue compared to Google Apps (37%), while integration with current business systems is also more of a headache for Microsoft houses (29% and 22% respectively).

Whether security is better with Google, or whether it is just less of a hot button issue for its customers, remains to be seen. Yet there is an interesting development in this report. Previous surveys from BetterCloud argue Google is the more likely home for smaller businesses compared to the more enterprise-focused Microsoft. This study, however, focuses solely on medium to large enterprises – so one would expect security to be especially vital.

Elsewhere, more than half (54%) of respondents reported needing less effort with their storage management or data recovery plays, while more than two thirds (67%) say they get things done more quickly with migration to the cloud. This positivity was the key point of the report’s conclusion.

“Cloud applications are at the heart of the evolution of IT,” the report notes. “This is causing a shift in the skills of IT professionals and is changing the jobs they are doing.

“The use of cloud applications is impacting the culture in organisations broadly, and in IT departments especially,” it adds. “Offloading applications to the cloud frees technology administrators from mundane tasks and enables more innovation, while at the same time users become empowered and more productive.”

You can find out more about the report and download it here (registration required).

Competitors can’t compete, and leaders can’t lead if they don’t know the rules of the game. Understanding how points are scored, and what is required to win is key to any competition. In the age of digital transformation there are key rules to learn:
Data is the modern commercial battlefield
Information dominance is the strategic goal

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As organizations shift towards IT-as-a-service models, the need for managing and protecting data residing across physical, virtual, and now cloud environments grows with it. Commvault can ensure protection, access and E-Discovery of your data – whether in a private cloud, a Service Provider delivered public cloud, or a hybrid cloud environment – across the heterogeneous enterprise.
In his general session at 18th Cloud Expo, Randy De Meno, Chief Technologist – Windows Products and Microsoft Partnerships at Commvault, discussed how to cut costs, scale easily, and unleash insight with CommVault software, the only singular data and information management solution for cloud data protection and beyond.

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SYS-CON Events has announced today that Roger Strukhoff has been named conference chair of Cloud Expo and @ThingsExpo 2016 Silicon Valley.
The 19th Cloud Expo and 6th @ThingsExpo will take place on November 1-3, 2016, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
«The Internet of Things brings trillions of dollars of opportunity to developers and enterprise IT, no matter how you measure it,» stated Roger Strukhoff. «More importantly, it leverages the power of devices and the Internet to enable us all to improve the state of the world and lives of people.»

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Cloud is often seen as the answer to a wide range of business challenges from business innovation to cost reduction. However, there is uncertainty as to whether corporations should operate a model of public, private or hybrid cloud. Here, we will discuss the common perceptions and misconceptions surrounding public and private cloud and the benefits to the enterprise in the adoption of a hybrid model.

Public vs private cloud

According to IDC, overall spending on infrastructure for cloud environments will hit $38.2 billion in 2016. It’s clear that whichever way an organisation chooses to adopt cloud services the capability will be there, but getting to that final decision on what type of services the organisation needs can be a complex process. In the past, the choice of which cloud model to adopt was largely predicated by the business conditions of the industry a company is operating in. For example, private cloud is ideally suited as an entry point for the financial services industry. Private cloud gives the organisation greater control of security and data placement decisions enabling it to comply with the audit requirements of regulators more easily, which is mission critical within the industry.

When looking at the pros and cons of public cloud, one benefit of public cloud is the near unlimited scalability. Scaling up or down can be done quickly, giving greater elasticity for unplanned projects or those that expand rapidly without warning. On the flip side, there are concerns surrounding the security and privacy of data due to the number of attacks to the public cloud. The onslaught of attacks to services that are publicly available, which invariably transcend borders is a mounting concern for companies using public cloud.

Yet, businesses are learning that despite previous barriers to the initial adoption of cloud computing technology such as compliance, customisation, utilisation and privacy requirements, hybrid cloud can offer what the business of the future needs in a secure environment. There no longer needs to be a trade-off between public and private.

Why hybrid?

The hybrid cloud market is growing fast. For the enterprise, hybrid cloud seems the natural evolution from a traditional model, providing huge benefits such as, agility, improved experience, security and compliance and increased innovation.  Markets and Markets published a report last April estimating that the global hybrid cloud market is expected to grow from USD 33.28 Billion in 2016 to USD 91.74 Billion by 2021.

Flexibility and agility

Customer expectations are ever-changing, and as such businesses are under constant pressure to providecontinually improving customer experiences. This requires a systematic and iterative approach to capitalising on a range of technologies’ capabilities – meaning fast, agile development is required. A complete hybrid cloud portfolio enables businesses to place workloads where they make the most sense. An enterprise can align its architecture to take advantage of performance requirements that only dedicated servers can offer. In addition, there is the capability to build upon prior investments in applications and IT infrastructure that an enterprise has already made.

Security and compliance

A common concern about cloud technology among enterprises is security and multi-tenancy. There is growing business pressure to shift data and processing to the cloud, but with mounting regulatory requirements and in some situations regulatory uncertainty, failure to meet these requirements could have critical business impact. A hybrid cloud system satisfies these concerns by allowing a business to choose dedicated servers and network devices that can isolate or restrict access and enabling an organisation to choose exactly where data can be placed. Yet, at the same time this can be orchestrated into one, singular, integrated piece of architecture.

Speed and experience

Cloud has reached a tipping point and the characteristics of IT investment are shifting. Moving from a situation where each organisation keeps a tight hold on their own data, IT executives are actively researching and investigating ways and platforms to integrate data with digital business partners, an experience which can only be fully realised within a cloud environment. But, an enterprise cannot rewrite all of its apps for the cloud or take all of its data to the cloud. Making it simple to migrate any existing enterprise data to the cloud to create efficient workflows with partners, yet keep other data if not needed for cloud operations on private servers, is a massive benefit to large corporations. The speed in which this can be done is what makes moving to a hybrid cloud such an attractive option.

Innovation

Companies recognise the world is being rewritten in code, as IBM Design general manager Phil Gilbert says, and cloud is the environment in which the new reality can be delivered.

Hybrid cloud is being used to make IT portfolio economics work and deliver faster app innovation. For example, DevOps can rapidly create and deploy a new app, microservice or AOI (Add On Instruction) across hybrid cloud that can be scaled up or down. Continuous innovation means being able to access data and analytics to extract deeper insights more quickly than ever before, allowing businesses to get closer to their customers and make smarter decisions in real-time.

Ultimately, when looking for the right cloud solution there is no one size fits all approach. Every hosting solution is unique, and every customer has requirements that revolve not only around technology, but also around support, financial and business objectives. The debate has moved on. It’s not really a matter of either/or — it’s both. A hybrid cloud provider 

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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The cloud competition for database hosts is fierce. How do you evaluate a cloud provider for your database platform?
In his session at 18th Cloud Expo, Chris Presley, a Solutions Architect at Pythian, gave users a checklist of considerations when choosing a provider.
Chris Presley is a Solutions Architect at Pythian. He loves order – making him a premier Microsoft SQL Server expert. Not only has he programmed and administered SQL Server, but he has also shared his expertise and passion with budding DBAs as a SQL Server instructor at Conestoga College in Kitchener, Ontario. Drawing on his strong disaster-recovery skills, he monitors production environments to swiftly detect and resolve problems before they arise. A self-described adrenaline junkie, Chris likes tackling the biggest database problems and putting out the toughest fires – and hitting the road on his motorcycle.

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I wanted to gather all of my Internet of Things (IOT) blogs into a single blog (that I could later use with my University of San Francisco (USF) Big Data “MBA” course). However as I started to pull these blogs together, I realized that my IOT discussion lacked a vision; it lacked an end point towards which an organization could drive their IOT envisioning, proof of value, app dev, data engineering and data science efforts. And I think that the IOT end point is really quite simple…

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Unless your company can spend a lot of money on new technology, re-engineering your environment and hiring a comprehensive cybersecurity team, you will most likely move to the cloud or seek external service partnerships.
In his session at 18th Cloud Expo, Darren Guccione, CEO of Keeper Security, revealed what you need to know when it comes to encryption in the cloud.

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