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cloud migration, Microsoft, News & Analysis, Office 365, SkyKick, Software as a service, Todd Schwartz, Vendor

Office 365 migration provider SkyKick scores $10m

SkyKick bagged $10m this week and is strengthening its capabilities beyond cloud migration

SkyKick bagged $10m this week and is strengthening its capabilities beyond cloud migration

SkyKick, a cloud migration specialist turned cloud service management provider, secured $10m in funding this week, which the company said would be used to accelerate product development and broaden its portfolio.

SkyKick specialises in migrating Microsoft productivity apps (Office 365, Exchange, etc.) and data into the cloud, and the company recently pivoted into the rest of the lifecycle by offering cloud app and permission management as well as backup and restore capabilities (which are only available in the US for now).

The $10m in funding brings the total amount secured by the firm since its founding to just over $17m, and will be used to expand sales and marketing as well as product development efforts.

“We are excited to usher in the next era for SkyKick—a global software company delivering cloud management solutions for partners,” said Todd Schwartz, SkyKick co-founder and co-chief executive.

“Cloud usage is expected to double in the next three years, and the average IT partner will soon have over 5,000 customer cloud touch points to administer, which can be incredibly complex and time-consuming for solution providers to backup and manage.”

The move to broaden its portfolio comes at a time of increasing saturation in the Office migration environment. Microsoft itself already offers a number of free cloud migration tools and there are a few others developed by third parties like SkyKick, so its ability to develop and offer strong capabilities relevant for post-deployment lifecycle needs is essential to its future growth.

Cisco, David Goeckeler, Hilton Romanski, Internet of Things, IoT, M&A, News & Analysis, OpenDNS

Cisco to acquire OpenDNS to strengthen cloud security for IoT

Cisco plans to acquire OpenDNS for $635m

Cisco plans to acquire OpenDNS for $635m

Cisco is to acquire cloud-based network security provider OpenDNS for $635m.

OpenDNS’ offering combines DNS services with a managed network security service that tracks devices and traffic and helps mitigate malware or denial of service threats. But it also adds predictive intelligence capabilities by using big data analytics to metabolise real-time behaviour and machine learning algorithms to automate mitigating action.

Cisco said the acquisition would strengthen security services portfolio, a core element of its Internet of Things (IoT) strategy.

“As more people, processes, data and things become connected, opportunities for security breaches and malicious threats grow exponentially when away from secure enterprise networks,” said Hilton Romanski, Cisco chief technology and strategy officer.

“OpenDNS has a strong team with deep security expertise and key technology that complements Cisco’s security vision. Together, we will help customers protect their extended network wherever the user is and regardless of the device.”

As part of the deal, which is expected to close sometime in the first quarter of next year, the OpenDNS team will join the Cisco Security Business Group led by David Goeckeler, the division’s vice president and general manager.

Targeting the network has become an increasingly important component of enterprise IT security, particularly with the explosion of malware and denial of service attacks – and will continue growing in importance as the IoT brings vast volumes of automated connectivity and data transaction.

The trend has seen more emphasis place on cloud-based security services, which can act as a security perimeter without needing to install anything with a datacentre. According to Gartner, the cloud-based security market with grow from $2.1bn in 2013 to $3.bn this year.

Accenture, BT, Internet of Things, Mark Harrop, News & Analysis

BT, Accenture and Cisco form Wireless IoT Forum board

The Wireless IoT Forum has announced its founding board memebers

The Wireless IoT Forum has announced its founding board memebers

Following its launch in March, the Wireless IoT Forum has announced its founding board members, featuring BT, Cisco, Accenture and Telensa among others, reports Telecoms.com.

The forum is a collaborative industry effort designed to help further define the requirements of the wireless WAN in an IoT era. Specifically, the group claims it is looking to drive the widespread adoption of wireless WAN tech by removing fragmentation and drive consolidation around a minimal set of standards for licensed and license-except wireless solutions

Ensuring the interoperability of solutions running throughout the entire IoT stack is one of the primary challenges associated with bringing the Internet of Things to fruition. As such, CEO of the WIoT Forum William Webb believes solving compatibility issues remains key to driving the broad scale adoption of IoT.

“…the risk presented by fragmentation remains very real,” he said. “Without widely-agreed open standards we risk seeing pockets of proprietary technology developing independently, preventing the benefits of mass-market scale. We are delighted today to be announcing our inaugural membership and to begin work to drive towards a collective view on the right way to deliver widespread IoT services.”

BT’s Mark Harrop reckons the IoT industry should look at using GSM as a benchmark for collaboration. “As the success of the GSM standard in the mobile world showed, working to open industry standards is critical to creating the necessary situation for mass market success,” he said. “By aligning the complete value chain in defining and promoting these standards the Wireless IoT Forum is ideally suited to make the Internet of Things a success.”

Under the remit of the association are a variety of working groups, focussing on four core areas; including marketing and requirements; review of applications and standard APIs; connectivity and networking challenges, including configurations, security and radio access for low power wide area networks; and finally regulation.

CipherCloud, cloud security, Cloud Security Alliance, CSA, Jim Reavis, News & Analysis, Pravin Kothari

CSA, CipherCloud look to standardise APIs for cloud access security brokerage

The CSA and CipherCloud are leading an initiative to standardise API implementation for cloud access security brokerage

The CSA and CipherCloud are leading an initiative to standardise API implementation for cloud access security brokerage

The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) and cloud security vendor CipherCloud are forming a working group to jointly develop best practice around API deployment for cloud access security brokerage services.

Cloud Security Open API Working Group, which at its founding will include contributions from Deloitte, InfoSys, Intel Security, and SAP among others, will jointly define protocols, guidelines and best practices for implementing data security services – encryption, tokenisation and other technologies – across cloud environments.

The CSA said the working group plans to develop API specifications and reference architectures to guide cloud-based data protection.

“Standards are an important frontier for the cloud security ecosystem,” said Jim Reavis, chief executive of CSA.

“The right set of working definitions can boost adoption. This working group will help foster a secure cloud-computing environment – a win for vendors, partners and users. Standardising APIs will help the ecosystem coalesce around a universal language and process for integrating security tools into the cloud applications,” Reavis said.

Pravin Kothari, founder and chief executive of CipherCloud said: “Cloud is the killer app for security innovation. But currently, inefficiencies at the technical level in the form of custom connector protocols can hold back innovations in cloud security. Defining a uniform set of standards can enable us all to operate from the same playbook. As a pioneer in [cloud access security brokerage], we are excited to co-lead this initiative with CSA to accelerate security across clouds.”

The initiative may enhance the ability to integrate various cloud services securely according the Jeff Margolies, principal at Deloitte, and open up what is generally considered to be a fairly closed, proprietary-dominated space.

“Currently the cloud security ecosystem lacks basic integration standards for connecting third-party security solutions to cloud applications, platforms and infrastructure,” he said, adding that the working group may help consolidate standards among vendors and cloud customers.

Colt, IT services, KVH, Managed services, News & Analysis, Rakesh Bhasin, Vendor

Colt bows to competition, exits IT services

Colt is bowing out of the increasingly saturated IT services market

Colt is bowing out of the increasingly saturated IT services market

In a bid to increase profitability Colt announced this week that the company would exit the IT services market and put greater focus on its “core” services including its network, voice and datacentre services.

The company said its “managed exit” from the IT services market would also allow it to focus on offering datacentre services (colocation, cloud) and optimise use of its assets.

“Our IT services business would continue to need considerable investment in the short-to-medium term in order to deliver profitability and we do not believe this business can compete and grow successfully with a level of risk that is acceptable,” the company said in a statement Tuesday.

“Colt will continue to honour existing customer contracts through to termination, but will no longer seek new business.”

“The recent performance of IT Services has shown few signs of improving in accordance with the targets we set to deliver appropriate profit and cash returns in the medium term.”

The company anticipates the move will save about €25m annually, though it expects to incur cash and non-cash impairment charges of €45m to €55m and around €90m, respectively. Revenue from IT services is expected to decline €20m annually will become immaterial by 2018, it said.

“The fundamentals of our core network services and voice services businesses remain solid, and we are driving improvements in our datacentre services business. We are taking decisive action to become a more focused and disciplined organisation which we believe will accelerate the performance of our Core Business,” said Rakesh Bhasin, Colt chief executive.

“Overall, we believe the prospects for the Group are good and I am confident that, with the recent changes we have made within the senior management team, we will be able to deliver improved profitability and cash returns,” he added.

Colt still owns and will continue to operate its 22 carrier neutral datacentres in Europe and 7 in the Asia Pacific region (including those acquired through Japanese IT services provider KVH last year), though its goal of moving away from IT services may also mean a pivot towards becoming more of a systems integrator, which – like the IT services market – is quite competitive, and it isn’t entirely clear how the company intends to differentiate from other large incumbents in this space.

Andy Jassy, Asia Pacific, AWS, Datacentre, Gartner, India, Infrastructure as a Service, News & Analysis

AWS to expand to India in 2016

AWS said India is the next big market for public cloud expansion

AWS said India is the next big market for public cloud expansion

Amazon unveiled plans this week to bring its Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure to India by 2016 in a bid to expand into the quickly growing public cloud services market there.

AWS is already available in India and the company claims to have over 10,000 local customers using the platform, but the recently announced move would see the company set up its own infrastructure in-country rather than relying on delivering the services from nearby availability zones like Singapore.

The company says the move will likely improve the performance of the cloud services on offer to local organisations.

“Tens of thousands of customers in India are using AWS from one of AWS’s eleven global infrastructure regions outside of India. Several of these customers, along with many prospective new customers, have asked us to locate infrastructure in India so they can enjoy even lower latency to their end users in India and satisfy any data sovereignty requirements they may have,”said Andy Jassy, senior vice president, AWS.

“We’re excited to share that Indian customers will be able to use the world’s leading cloud computing platform in India in 2016 – and we believe India will be one of AWS’s largest regions over the long term.”

The India expansion comes at a time when the local market is maturing rapidly.

According to analyst and consulting house Gartner public cloud services revenue in India will reach $838m by the end of 2015, an increase of almost 33 per cent – making it one of the fastest growing markets for public cloud services in the world (global average growth rates sit in the mid-twenties range, depending on the analyst house). The firm believe many local organisations in India are shifting away from more traditional IT outsourcing and using public cloud services instead.

AT&T, China Mobile, China Telecom, Comcast, Deutsche Telekom, Lithium, Networks, News & Analysis, OpenDaylight, OpenFlow, Orange, Sarwar Raza, SDN, T-Mobile, Telefónica I+D, Virtualisation

OpenDaylight launches third open source SDN platform, announces advisory group

OpenDaylight has released the latest version of its open source SDN platform and cobbled together an advisory group to improve the feedback loop between deployment and feature evolution

OpenDaylight has released the latest version of its open source SDN platform and cobbled together an advisory group to improve the feedback loop between deployment and feature evolution

The OpenDaylight project has released the third version of its open source software-defined networking (SDN) platform, Lithium, as the organisation launches an advisory tasked with feeding technical insights learned through deployment back into the developer community.

The OpenDaylight Project is an open source collaboration between many of the industry’s major networking incumbents on the core architectures enabling software defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualisation (NFV).

The community is developing an open source SDN architecture and software, the latest release of which has been dubbed Lithium, that supports a wide range of protocols including OpenFlow, the southbound protocol around which most vendors have consolidated.

“End users have already deployed OpenDaylight for a wide variety of use cases from NFV, network on demand, flow programming using OpenFlow and even Internet of Things,” said Neela Jacques, executive director, OpenDaylight.

“Lithium was built to meet the requirements of the wide range of end users embedding OpenDaylight into the heart of their products, services and infrastructures. I expect new and improved capabilities such as service chaining and network virtualization to be quickly picked up by our user base,” Jacques said.

The organisation said Lithium boats a number of improvements over the previous release of its platform, Helium, like increased scalability, native support for OpenStack Neutron, new security, monitoring and automation features, support for more APIs and protocols including Source Group Tag eXchange (SXP), Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP), IoT Data Management (IoTDM), SMNP Plugin, Open Policy Framework (OpFlex) and Control and Provisioning of Wireless Access Points (CAPWAP).

“We see OpenDaylight as a powerful platform for carrier-grade SDN solutions, which is getting more feature-rich with every release,” said Sarwar Raza, vice president, NFV Product Management, HP and OpenDaylight Project board member. “ConteXtream, now an HP Company, has been active in the OpenDaylight community since its inception and has made significant contributions to Service Function Chaining, an important capability for NFV. We look forward to our continued involvement in the OpenDaylight project to help enable widespread adoption of SDN and create a solid foundation for NFV.”

The move comes the same week the project announced the formation of the OpenDaylight Advisory Group (AG), a group composed mostly of telcos tasked with providing technical input to the OpenDaylight developer community based on deployment experience.

The twelve founding members of the advisory group include researchers and specialists from China Telecom, Deutsche Telekom, T-Mobile, China Mobile, Telefónica I+D, AT&T, Orange, and Comcast.

The organisation said the advisory group was set up to help provide technical and strategic guidance to the steering committee and developer community – in other words, to keep the open source platform from straying from the requirements of those deploying it.

Interestingly, apart from NASDAQ, enterprises seem relatively under-represented on the committee, which could see future iterations of OpenDaylight focus more heavily on those use cases – possibly over others more common in the enterprise.

Amit Walia, data privacy, Data security, Informatica, News & Analysis, Ponemon Institute

Close to 60 per cent of confidential cloud data can’t have risk levels assessed – research

UK IT professionals claim to be struggling with accurately assessing the risk of storing their confidential data in the cloud

UK IT professionals claim to be struggling with accurately assessing the risk of storing their confidential data in the cloud

Data from a recent Ponemon Institute survey commissioned by Informatica suggests UK enterprises are struggling to assess the risk associated with placing confidential data in the cloud, with respondents claiming they can’t determine the risk to 58 per cent of the confidential data they store in the cloud.

The problem seems particularly acute when it comes to cloud-based data specifically – enterprises said they faced the same challenge with 28 per cent of the sensitive information held on-premise.

The survey results, which include responses from 118 UK IT and IT security professionals with responsibility for data protection, hint at differences in the level of data management tool deployments for on-premise and cloud-based systems, which does seem to skew the results in terms of confidence in data risk allocation. About 46 per cent are using such tools for data on premise and 34 per cent for data in the cloud.

Still, less than half of respondents claimed to have common processes in place for discovering and classifying the sensitive or confidential data on-premise, and just a quarter said they have a process in place for data stored in the cloud.

About 54 per cent of respondents said they are not confident in their ability to proactively respond to a new threat in the cloud, and 30 per cent of the sensitive or confidential data located in the cloud is believed to be at risk according to respondents.

“The survey highlights that whilst organisations continue to fear cyberattacks, what really keeps them up at night is the unknown. Namely not knowing where data is and the associated risk to it,” said Larry Ponemon, chairman and founder, Ponemon Institute.

“Whilst businesses are more confident about having data on premise, the shift towards cloud computing is continuing to accelerate and organisations can’t afford to be held back by data security concerns. Instead, security practitioners need to get a handle on the classification of data so that they can feel more confident about the information that they are moving to the cloud. Regardless of whether information is held on premise or in the cloud, data governance protocols should be the same,” Ponemon said.

Informatica senior vice president and general manager, data integration and security Amit Walia said the results demonstrate the majority of organisations do not have a handle on their sensitive data, regardless of whether it exists on-premise or in the cloud.

He explained that as data volumes grow enterprises are leaning more on customised software and automated processes rather than manual processes to classify data risk and apply rules and policies, which is creating somewhat of a false perception when it comes to risk.

“Because businesses have less confidence in their understanding of sensitive data then they perceive more risk. To reduce threat exposure and improve breach resiliency, organisations need to invest in data centric security technologies, which enable businesses to enact the need-to-know data access policies that help limit the exposure of sensitive data,” Walia said.

IBM, Internet of Things, IoT, Lake George, News & Analysis, Rick Relyea, The Jefferson Project

IoT, big data used to make Lake George a model for water body preservation

IBM and the Jefferson Project have teamed up to use IoT and big data to monitor and analyse Lake George's health

IBM and the Jefferson Project have teamed up to use IoT and big data to monitor and analyse Lake George’s health

The Jefferson Project at Lake George, New York, a collaborative project between Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, IBM Research and The FUND for Lake George is using Internet of Things sensors and big data analytics to create a model that can be used to help preserve a wide range of water sources.

Researchers have been monitoring the chemistry of algae in Lake George for the past 35 years to demonstrate how the lake is being affected by a range of inputs including pollution, tourism, and weather activity.

But the project has recently started a new phase which has seen IBM and Jefferson Project researchers put sophisticated underwater sonar-based sensors (powered by solar energy) to measure a range of data.

Those sensors are linked up to custom software deployed on IBM Blue Gene/ Q supercomputer and IBM Smarter Planet software deployed in a datacentre on the Rensselaer campus.

Rick Relyea, director of the Jefferson Project at Lake George said the IoT sensors have greatly improved data accuracy, which has allowed researchers to improve the models they generate from the patterns being observed.

“The Jefferson Project provides the unique opportunity for biologists and environmental scientists to work closely with engineers, physicists, computer scientists and meteorologists to understand large lakes at a level of detail and intensity that is simply unprecedented,” Relyea said.

“Together, we will make tremendous inroads into understanding how lakes naturally behave and how human activities alter biodiversity, the functioning of freshwater ecosystems, and overall water quality.”

The project researchers have already used the preliminary data generated by the sensors to create a range of models that can help predict the impact of weather events, salt run-off, and heavy tourism on water circulation and the water body’s chemistry, which Rylea said could be applied to many other bodies of water in a bid to improve their health.

“The major threats to Lake George are many of the same threats to lakes around the world. Too many nutrients coming in from either fertiliser or sewage. We have contaminants coming in, those may be pesticides, it may be road salts. We have development coming in changing the habitat around the lakes, changing how much water run-off there is. And we have invasive species coming in.”

health, Internet of Things, News & Analysis

Virgin Active urges cloud players to embrace ‘the database of you’

CWF VirginIn his keynote address at Cloud World Forum 2015, the CIO of fitness chain Virgin Active – Andy Caddy – urged cloud and big data companies to find better uses for the mountains of data people are accumulating about themselves.

Coining the term “the database of you”, Caddy said that in his capacity as the CIO of a health and fitness company with 1.4 million members in 270 clubs he is acutely aware of the desire for gym-goers to track their every waking movement and a bunch of other biometric data, such as heartrate, besides.

Caddy also thinks wearables such as fitness bands are at an early stage and, in reference to the recent IPO of fitness band company Fitbit, indicated he thought wearables were currently near the most hyped phase of the Gartner Hype Cycle. He reckons it will be a few years yet before the ‘winning design’ emerges, such as happened with smartphones and the touchscreen form factor that has changed little for the past eight years.

One result of all this hype, however, is that people are constantly generating data about themselves – around 31 datapoints per year for Virgin Active members. Caddy’s concern is they they’re currently not able to do much with it, beyond gloating about how much exercise they’ve done on social media.

When Caddy surveyed members, as part of his planning for a ‘connected club’ initiative, about what they want technology in a gym context to do for them they said they want it to be device agnostic, always on and provide useful feedback and advice, as opposed to raw data. Caddy concluded with a call to the tech industry to step up to the plate and give his members what they’re looking for. “We need someone to come in and do this stuff, because it’s just begging for it,” he said.