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During a speech at a Conservative Way Forward event on September 9, Liam Fox, the International Trade Secretary, said that Britain had become “too lazy and too fat”, with businessmen preferring “golf on a Friday afternoon” to trying to boost the country’s prosperity.

While somewhat diffused by Downing Street later as “clearly private views”, his statement was certainly thought provoking.

As the CEO of a company that provides cloud-based IT services to hundreds of British businesses, I suggest we have a good ‘bird’s eye view’ of evolving working patterns. Besides manufacturers, our customers include professionals such as lawyers, accountants and recruiters, as well as financial service providers, leisure centres and automobile repair centres. And yes, we also service golf courses.

Our system enables customers to log in from anywhere – golf course, office, home, coffee shop, even when on holiday – not only to view emails or access files but, if needs be, access their entire suite of business applications.

When customers log into their cloud server it is not to surf the internet, but to work. We can share that:

• Customers log in at all times of the day (even at 3am)
• Busy usage typically starts at 7:30am and ends at around 6:30pm (as opposed to the conventional 9 to 5)
• We regularly find customers calling us while working from home

It is apparent that in today’s day and age work habits have changed; namely that the clear division that might have existed in the past between work time and private time has become blurred. With cloud computing, one doesn’t need to sit by one’s desk in order to work. A manager might go to the golf course for a round of nine holes from 12pm to 2pm and continue working until 9pm from home.

I wouldn’t call that person lazy. I am proud that my customers can have flexibility in the way that they work and I know that an efficient IT solution such as ours enhances their options.

As a final thought, and although Mr Fox was referring to businesses, I would like to add a word about the UK’s charity sector. We have dozens of charity customers, and we find that their employees care about the cause that they are serving and are admirably dedicated to their job.

We feel privileged to serve such a hard working clientele.

In a recent CloudTech article multi-cloud, or hybrid cloud, strategy was heralded as “…
transformative for businesses, allowing them flexibility to scale offerings, save on hosting solutions, and ultimately offer better solutions to their customers. The article goes on to cite:
A 2016 Dimensional Research survey of more than 650 IT decision-makers that indicated that 77 percent of businesses are planning to implement multi-cloud architectures in the near future; and a 2015 IDC study that found that 86% of enterprises predicted they will need a multi-cloud approach to support their solutions within the next two years.

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Most of us already know that adopting new cloud applications can boost a business’s productivity by enabling organizations to be more agile and ready to change course in our fast-moving and connected digital world. But the rapid adoption of cloud apps and services also brings with it profound security threats, including visibility and control challenges that aren’t present in traditional on-premises environments. At the same time, the cloud – because of its interconnected, flexible and adaptable nature – can also provide new possibilities for addressing cloud security problems. By leveraging the power of the cloud with a data science and machine learning cloud-based solution, security and risk professionals can solve many of the traditional security challenges found in popular apps like Office 365, Google Drive, Salesforce and Box.

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The global public cloud services market is set to break the $200 billion mark, going to $208.6bn (£157.8bn) at a 17.2% increase by the end of this year, according to the latest prognostication from analyst house Gartner.

Gartner’s verdict comes primarily through the rapid growth of cloud system infrastructure services, which the analysts expect to grow 42.8% this year, with cloud application services – SaaS – growing at a 21.7% clip, to reach $38.9bn.

The forecast also argues that the main driver of public cloud adoption was IT modernisation, followed by cost savings, innovation, and agility. Yet the key here is not that revenues continue to rise – but how more and more organisations are trusting cloud security, always a moaning point for many survey respondents.

“Gartner’s position on cloud security has been clear – public cloud services offered by the leading cloud providers are secure. The real security challenge is using public cloud services in a secure manner,” said Ed Anderson, Gartner research vice president. “More education is needed to help organisations overcome the hype associated with the security concerns. This should be a key area of focus for providers in working with their clients to unlock the benefits of public cloud services.”

Yet according to Angelo Di Ventura, director at end to end technology provider Trustmarque, it’s not all plain sailing. Citing the growth in SaaS services, Di Ventura said: “It’s important CIOs are able to retain visibility over the cloud services in use throughout the business. In particular, if left unchecked, easy to purchase SaaS services can cause considerable disruption.”

Gartner adds that while hybrid cloud is expected to dominate, challenges still remain in this field, including integration, application incompatibilities, and a lack of management tools, APIs, and vendor support.

“Cloud integration can offer serious challenges to today’s organisations,” added Di Ventura. “Ultimately, maximising the ROI of cloud demands new skills and capabilities of businesses.”

You can read the Gartner note here.

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Note-taking app provider Evernote has announced it is moving to Google Cloud Platform and is ditching its own servers and networks.

The company, which celebrated its eighth anniversary earlier in the summer, said in a company blog post that the current arrangement did not give Evernote the ‘speed and flexibility’ needed for the future.

What was more interesting in the move, as confirmed by both Evernote and Google, was that after various consultations, the search giant’s interests in machine learning and data analytics sealed the deal.

“We look forward to taking advantage of these technologies to help you more easily connect your ideas, search for information in Evernote, and find the right note at the moment you need it,” Ben McCormack, VP operations wrote. “That’s exciting to us, and we’re already exploring some ideas that we think you’ll love.”

Brian Stevens, VP at Google Cloud Platform, added: “By moving its data centre operations to Google’s cloud, Evernote can focus on its core competency: providing customers with the best experience for taking, organising and archiving notes.”

Another key area for both stakeholders, naturally enough, was security. Evernote’s self-claimed three laws of data protection – “your data is yours, your data is protected, your data is portable” – does not change with the move to Google’s cloud, the company said.

Ultimately, despite this big customer win – the press material could not resist the opportunity to reel off other A-list customers, from Coca-Cola, to Spotify, and Snapchat, the poster child of the Google cloud platform – Google is fighting for the bronze medal in cloud infrastructure, as plenty of industry research, from Synergy to Gartner, insists.

Evernote expects the change to be completed by the end of this year, with McCormack noting the experience will be generally status quo for customers.

“The transition to the cloud will occur completely in the background,” McCormack added. “You should see no impact to your service during the transition, and you do not need to take any action. Behind the scenes, Evernote will become faster, stronger, and more stable.”

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Some mainstream IT buyers might think that most cloud infrastructure vendors and service providers are essentially alike. But there are key differences. Besides, given the body of market research to the contrary, there’s clearly no such thing as a «one-size-fits-all» cloud solution.

Furthermore, if you believe that a hybrid cloud should support an IT agenda to transform a business, then a viable solution must consider the pre-existing systems of record within the enterprise. That’s why forward-thinking CIOs often seek information and guidance on two fronts.

First, they want to know how to extract costs from their legacy IT investments. Second, they desire to use that assessment exercise to free-up budget and fund innovation via a DevOps model that would streamline new cloud-native technology deployments.

That’s why pragmatic CIOs understand the reality of a coexistence environment, where current on-premises IT systems must be an integral part of the total digital transformation equation.

Applying the best of both worlds

In previous global market studies, senior executive decision makers have stated that they are likely to always have a blend of traditional on-premises IT and cloud-based services. Cloud computing has enabled organizations to increase their overall utilization of existing IT assets.

Consider these highlights from a recent survey of senior executives:

• 92 percent of surveyed executives said their most successful cloud initiative enabled creation and support of new business models.
• Executives said they expect 45 percent of workloads to stay on dedicated, on-premise systems, even as cloud adoption expands.
• 83 percent of high-performing organizations said their cloud initiatives are coordinated or fully integrated within the organization.

According to the latest worldwide market study by IBM Institute for Business Value, there are four main reasons why organizations are strategically combining cloud-based services and traditional IT into tailored hybrid solutions.

Fifty-four percent of surveyed executives cited the most popular reason for implementing hybrid cloud solutions as lowering the total ownership cost of technology.

Forty-two percent of respondents believe that operational efficiencies can stem from selecting the most compatible infrastructure and middleware.

Forty-two percent of respondents also said that cloud services are proven to accelerate innovation by enabling quick prototyping of new ideas for faster experimentation.

To meet customer expectations, forty percent of respondents reported that cloud’s agile and composable attributes enable faster time to market for new products and services.

Additional findings from the market study

The optimal Hybrid IT environment will differ by individual enterprise. Case in point; executives say they need to decide which IT and business functions can be delivered through cloud computing with a projectable, positive business outcome.

In two years, most organizations plan to use software-as-a-service (SaaS) with a variety of applications. However, many believe that their adoption of cloud could be restrained by three major deployment challenges — security and compliance requirements; cost structure considerations; and risk of operational disruption.

Despite these challenges, successful companies are delivering business value through hybrid cloud in three areas – operations, finance and innovation. Seventy-six percent of surveyed executives said their most successful cloud initiative has significantly achieved expansion into new industries. Close behind were the creation of new revenue sources and new business models.

That being said, fifty-seven percent of executives from high performing organizations identified cost as the most important criterion in deciding which workloads should be moved to the cloud.

One way to achieve an optimal hybrid solution is to tap into the capabilities and data that resides on existing systems. The study also found that innovation advantages can be gained by utilizing application programming interfaces (APIs) and by enabling access to external technical talent.

Likewise, conducting rapid IT experimentation gives innovative organizations the ability to test and fail quickly. Cloud computing is proven to enable nimble development and testing. What’s more, quick and automated resource provisioning can shorten applications development time.

In summary, taking advantage of hybrid cloud services is much easier and more effective when companies rely on skilled and experienced technology partners that provide expertise on recent trends, best practice methodologies and proven hybrid architecture frameworks.

Hybrid cloud information and guidance

You have a choice; you can select the vendor that has all the hybrid IT components- technology, products and professional services – that you will ultimately need to succeed. Choose to deploy an optimal hybrid cloud configuration and gain a strategic competitive advantage that will give you a decisive edge in your industry.

Learn how to gain a flexible and secure IT service delivery platform with an optimal hybrid cloud solution that’s designed, engineered and deployed as the best-fit for your particular digital business transformation requirements and technical specifications.

In the era of microservices and cloud-native applications, Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) is going through a major transformation. The combination of containers and continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD) is enabling rapid deployment of software like never before. And though the languages, runtimes, frameworks, deployment targets have changed dramatically, the tooling hasn’t evolved much. Developers are still relying on traditional integrated development environments (IDEs) such as Visual Studio, Eclipse, and IntelliJ. While they may be powerful, they are definitely not designed to take advantage of emerging technologies.

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Israel-based cloud storage and data protection company CTERA Networks has received $25 million (£18.9m) in an investment round led by US-based Bessemer Venture Partners, which brings the company’s total financing to nearly $70 million to date.

Cisco and Israeli investment management firm Vintage Investment Partners also participated alongside Bessemer in the investment round.

The funds will be used to boost the company sales and marketing initiatives as well as to push global customer acquisition of its CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, which allows a gold standard for file storage, collaboration and data protection among secure and distributed enterprise organisations.

The CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform assimilates endpoint, office and cloud file services with uncompromising IT security, cloud choice and automation. The company claims that it is the only solution that can address a variety of end-user computing file management and data protection requirements.

It enables organisations to sync, serve and protect data from one centrally managed solution that is 100 per cent secure and deployable on any cloud infrastructure, all behind the customer’s firewall.

Liran Eshel, co-founder and CEO at CTERA: “With organisations increasingly looking to modernise their data infrastructures, CTERA is uniquely poised to provide secure tools that offer easy and globally accelerated access to files and backups. This newly announced investment round will enable CTERA to deliver best-in-class products, support and service to an even broader collection of forward-thinking enterprise customers.”

Jeff Denworth, CTERA SVP marketing, wrote in a blog post that the funding was a “terrific validation” of the company’s vision and execution. “While the business is growing at a very healthy pace, we’ve made the decision to ‘power up’ the sales execution and solution delivery engine to tackle a unique market opportunity that CTERA is well posed to lead in,” he said.

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The company may only be a week old – but Dell Technologies is already challenging the traditional leaders in the cloud infrastructure space, according to new data released from Synergy Research.

Naturally, this statement isn’t quite telling the whole truth. Even though Dell Technologies came into being on September 7, the company’s history, having come about following the completion of Dell’s $67 billion acquisition of EMC, and all it entails – Virtustream, Pivotal, VCE et al – means it is more a question of semantics than anything else.

The Synergy verdict for Q216 revenues shows Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (HPE) as the overall leader by a nose, with 15% of the overall market including public cloud hardware, private cloud hardware, and software, while Cisco (14%) and Dell/EMC (13%) took the silver and bronze medals respectively.

The overall numbers show the continuation of a well-known trend.

The cloud software market is growing more quickly than the others, yet remain smaller. Microsoft has the lion’s share of the market, with VMware – another Dell Technologies subsidiary – in second place. Synergy notes the other primary players in this space are Huawei, IBM, Lenovo, NetApp, and Oracle.

“While total spending on data centre infrastructure remains relatively flat, cloud share of that spending continues to rise as an ever-increasing portion of computer workloads migrate to either public or private clouds,” said Jeremy Duke, Synergy Research founder and chief analyst, adding: “We are also seeing that within the cloud infrastructure market, hyperscale cloud operators are accounting for an ever-larger share of overall capex. This is a trend which is not going to change any time soon.”

The verdict of HPE leading the way was also echoed in the most recent analysis from IDC, in figures released in April of this year.