The Cloud Standards Customer Council (CSCC) has published the latest version of its Practical Guide to Cloud Computing, which aims to give organisations a 10-step roadmap from developing business cases to moving to production.

The report, version 3.0, makes several changes to its predecessor, which was published in 2014, including updates to address maintaining cloud services and data residency management. As well as this, the ‘essential characteristics’ of cloud computing, opening the document, have been altered to reflect characteristics defined in the ISO/IEC 17788 standard.

Plenty has changed in the industry over the past three years. The report has been updated to take into account the likes of serverless computing, containers and microservices technology, as well as hybrid cloud, which wasn’t as ubiquitous a term in 2014 as today.

Yet the general good practice around adoption, governance, and integration remain solid. Take integration with existing enterprise systems – point eight in the 10-step agenda – for example. This is naturally important, if you’re a large organisation with significant investments at stake or if there are some assets which are simply not cloud-ready yet.

The report notes how there are a variety of components which can be considered from both the organisational and cloud service provider side, such as data, process integration and management capabilities, while there are several links in place between cloud services and existing applications. If an organisation has already established a process of adopting open standards for data formats, or communication protocols and APIs, then cloud services integration can be built on top of that. If not, then cloud integration can be used as a baseline for when these standards do appear.

The report offers by way of conclusion a summary of critical keys to success for any organisation embarking on a cloud journey. This includes establishing executive support, addressing organisational change management, establishing commitment, carefully evaluating cloud service agreements, addressing federated governance, handling security and privacy, complying with legal and regulatory requirements, and defining metrics and a process for measuring impact.

Naturally, this is only a guide – the ultimate selection of cloud solutions depends on the abilities of IT and business decision makers – yet the importance of making these moves is key. Analysing the top six benefits of cloud computing, the report notes the ability to achieve economies of scale, reduce CapEx by moving to OpEx, improve access, implement agile development, leverage a more global workforce, and gain access to emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and blockchain.

You can read the full 45-page document here (pdf).

Organizations around the world are struggling to cope with the current data explosion. A vital characteristic of this data is that it is unstructured and represents things like email, images, and videos. Storage of this form of data is typically in an object format which differs significantly from the database norm. Databases housed data grows very slowly because most of it is structured. Object storage formats are now being used to optimize access to large amounts of non-transactional files across a growing number of vertical markets.

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«We’re developing a software that is based on the cloud environment and we are providing those services to corporations and the general public,» explained Seungmin Kim, CEO/CTO of SM Systems Inc., in this SYS-CON.tv interview at 21st Cloud Expo, held Oct 31 – Nov 2, 2017, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.

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The cloud revolution in enterprises has very clearly crossed the phase of proof-of-concepts into a truly mainstream adoption. One of most popular enterprise-wide initiatives currently going on are “cloud migration” programs of some kind or another. Finding business value for these programs is not hard to fathom – they include hyperelasticity in infrastructure consumption, subscription based models, and agility derived from rapid speed of deployment of applications. These factors will continue to drive cloud adoption into the foreseeable future.

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SYS-CON Events announced today that CrowdReviews.com has been named “Media Sponsor” of SYS-CON’s 22nd International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 5–7, 2018, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY.
CrowdReviews.com is a transparent online platform for determining which products and services are the best based on the opinion of the crowd. The crowd consists of Internet users that have experienced products and services first-hand and have an interest in letting other potential buyers learn their thoughts on their experience.

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SYS-CON Events announced today that Telecom Reseller has been named “Media Sponsor” of SYS-CON’s 22nd International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 5-7, 2018, at the Javits Center in New York, NY.
Telecom Reseller reports on Unified Communications, UCaaS, BPaaS for enterprise and SMBs. They report extensively on both customer premises based solutions such as IP-PBX as well as cloud based and hosted platforms.

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Talk about a global outlook: data centre provider Equinix has announced the launch of a new strategy to connect its data centres around the world through software defined networking (SDN).

The inter-metro connectivity, which enables users to dynamically connect its own infrastructure across Equinix locations as well as connect to any other customer, comes through the Equinix Cloud Exchange Fabric (ECX Fabric). For enterprises, it helps them with agility, while for service providers the move helps connect them with a global base of enterprise cloud buyers.

The new ECX Fabric capabilities are not quite available in all regions yet, however. All ECX locations in North America and EMEA are already catered for, including Frankfurt, London and New York, with 17 in total. Equinix says it will aim to roll out to new metros in the regions, such as Denver, Geneva and Milan, by early 2018, while extending connectivity to APAC areas later next year.

“As digital transformation intensifies, business possibilities have no limits and neither should an organisation’s IT infrastructure,” said Sara Baack, Equinix chief marketing officer in a statement. “Building a digital business requires the ability to reach strategic global destinations on demand, to access everyone that matters, and to bring people, clouds, data and things together.

“Today’s announcements and our future product and services roadmap are aimed at leveraging the Equinix global platform to serve as a strategic partner for companies on this journey,” added Baack.

According to figures from Synergy Research back in June, Equinix and Digital Realty, the company’s main rival in the colocation space, have extended their already substantial leads in the market. The primary reasons for this extension include Equinix completing the acquisition of 29 data centres from Verizon, alongside the planned merger of Digital Realty and DuPont Fabros.

IT vendor revenue in the worldwide server market increased 19.9 percent year-over-year to reach $17 billion in the third quarter of 2017 (3Q17), According to the lattest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC).

While demand from cloud computing service providers has driven overall market performance in the past, other areas of the server market are beginning to show growth. Worldwide server shipments increased 11.1 percent year over year to 2.67 million units in 3Q17.

Server systems market development

Volume server revenue increased by 19.3 percent to $14.2 billion, while midrange server revenue grew 26.9 percent to $1.4 billion.

High-end systems grew 19.4 percent to $1.3 billion, benefiting from the IBM z14 launch this quarter. That said, IDC expects continued long-term secular declines in high-end system revenue, with short periods of growth related to major platform refreshes.

"Hyperscalers continued driving volume demand in the third quarter, with Amazon again leading the charge, as Google and Facebook also began ramping up their server deployments again," said Kuba Stolarski, research director at IDC.

While original design manufacturers (ODMs) have largely been the beneficiaries of hyperscaler server demand, some OEMs have now begun to experience significant growth related to the enterprise segment.

Dell grew its server business by 37.9 percent, relying on the strong synergy between its server team and the storage team incorporated from the EMC acquisition. HPE has been pivoting away from hyperscaler business and focusing on the enterprise, hurting year-over-year comparisons in the short term, but showing strength in the enterprise.

China has become a strong market for enterprise growth, as evidenced by Dell growing 42.3 percent year-over-year to $433 million, and HPE/New H3C Group growing 49.6 percent to $421 million. In addition, IBM has demonstrated that the enterprise still has space for non-x86 systems, growing the newly refreshed system z business by 63.8 percent year-over-year to $673 million.

HPE/New H3C Group remained first in the worldwide server market with 19.5 percent market share in 3Q17, as revenue decreased 1.1 percent year-over-year to $3.3 billion. HPE's share and year-over-year growth rate includes revenues from the H3C joint venture in China that began in May of 2016; thus, the reported HPE/New H3C Group combines server revenue for both companies globally.

Dell maintained the second position in the worldwide server market with 18.1 percent of vendor revenue for the quarter and 37.9 percent year-over-year growth to $3.1 billion. IBM and Cisco were statistically tied for the third market position.

IBM had 6.4 percent share, with revenue growing 26.5 percent year-over-year to $1.1 billion. Cisco had 5.8 percent share, with revenue increasing 6.9 percent to $992 million.

Lenovo was ranked fifth with 5.1 percent share and revenue declining 12.6 percent to $861 million. The ODM Direct group of vendors grew revenue by 45.3 percent to $4.1 billion. HPE and Dell were in a statistical tie for first place in unit share, each with 18.8 percent.