IT growth in 2014 will exceed 2013, but it will be another year until we see “strong” growth in the global tech market, according to the latest report from Forrester Research.

The paper, entitled ‘A Better But Still Subpar Global Tech Market In 2014 And 2015’, pretty much does what it says on the tin, predicting that business and government IT purchasing will increase 6.2% in US dollars in 2014, aside from purchases of telecommunications services.

This is a “distinctly better” return than 2013’s 1.6% growth according to Forrester’s Andrew Bartels, writing on the company’s official blog, who warned that even with 2015’s more impressive growth rate of 8.1% in US dollars, it will be a far cry from the “double digit” growth rates of the late 90s’ tech boom.

The global IT spending predictions are intriguing, but CloudTech readers’ interests will be …

Alan Kay’s saying that the best way to predict the future is to create it resonates through the best cloud computing and enterprise software predictions for 2014. 

Constraints that held start-ups back from delivering sophisticated new apps and services are disappearing fast.  The dynamics of one of my favorite books, The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christensen, are in full force across the cloud and enterprise landscape.

There are many predictions being generated right now and instead of writing yet another set,  I’m providing a listing of those that are the most interesting and thought-provoking. They are listed below:

• 10 Cloud Computing Predictions for 2014 – In-depth analysis of ten predictions including how more companies will realize they are really in the software business, private cloud computing having a moment of truth and continued adoption of cloud brokerages.  This set of predictions is an interesting read and provides useful …

The past couple of weeks have seen a variety of updates from players looking to up their cloudy stake in China, including Amazon and IBM.

Now China Unicom has joined the race, offering a service called Wo-Cloud, according to a report from Web Hosting Daily.

According to the firm’s president, Lu Yimin, China Unicom will focus on the IaaS and PaaS area.

“China Unicom will rely on its advantages in network resources, infrastructure, mobile internet technology, scope of customers, and dedicated service,” he said in a statement.

The firm also announced the launch of two data centres, in Hohhot and Langfang, and introduced the www.wocloud.cn gateway.

The service is based on OpenStack, which has also been in the news in recent times following the announcement of Oracle’s sponsorship of the OpenStack Foundation. The technology, developed by Rackspace and NASA, has a dazzling array of sponsors, from …

It’s that time again. As 2013 comes to a close, the landscape for 2014 grows ever nearer on the horizon. With a little help from some friends, CloudTech sums up the most compelling stories of 2013 alongside the biggest areas for growth over the coming year.

1) All about hybrid cloud

2013 was the year when hybrid cloud truly came of age, from theories to tangible business use cases.

Big companies practically fell over themselves to push this message through in research reports: Rackspace claimed back in August that hybrid was the future for three in five enterprises, whilst Gartner forecast that almost half of enterprises will be utilising hybrid cloud solutions by 2017.

And in an exclusive interview back in July, SAP VP cloud Sven Denecken told CloudTech that hybrid is “picking up speed” and added that for enterprises “it is the right mix of cloud solutions.”

With …

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is looking to extend its presence in the cloud services market by opening up a Chinese region.

The company cites “thousands” of customers in China who currently uses AWS’ services, including the likes of Xiaomi, NQ Mobile and Papaya Mobile, and is looking to expand through partnerships.

Partnerships include various local providers, including ChinaNetCenter and SINNET to provide infrastructure and ISP services, with “a select group” of China-based and multinational companies being chosen for the initial trial.

The amazonaws.cn page (below) is live and ready for limited preview in early 2014:

“China represents an important long-term market segment for AWS,” said Andy Jassy, AWS SVP in a statement. “We are looking forward to working with Chinese customers, partners, and government institutions to help small and large organisations use cloud computing to innovate and deploy faster, save money, expand their geographic reach, and do so without …

As the cloud industry matures, AWS (among other major companies) is quickly becoming part of what many pundits are pointing to when they reference infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS). With its scale and wide spread use, one could argue that AWS is the definitional IaaS platform.

While not rare by any measure, pure IaaS consumption is not the sole method for infrastructure delivery. Managed hosting, colocation, and internal data centers are all part of a fully considered approach to IaaS.

With so much variation among how companies utilize the platform, one can’t help but wonder what comes next. Is IaaS always going to be consumed the way it is right now?

As we noted in our recent coverage of AWS re:Invent conference, AWS’ move towards virtual desktops is a particularly interesting sign.

IaaS typically requires a certain level of automation, especially for services like AWS that does not  provide any support …

As we head into 2014, the potential for growth in public sector cloud services adoption looks more promising than ever.

The ‘Public Cloud First’ policy on IT procurement should continue to drive further growth in demand and the CloudStore marketplace provides a straightforward way for government departments to buy the services they need off the shelf.

But what will be the other trends for buyers of public sector cloud services in the year ahead?  Here are four which I think are important:

1. Belt and braces for cloud security – Many local and central government organisations in the UK must adhere to the PSN code of compliance by April 2014, which includes the need for a protective monitoring capability so that there is clear visibility around how IT systems are being accessed and used. I expect this will accelerate and drive wider adoption of GPG13 compliant security information and event management capabilities …

Madan Sheina, Lead Analyst, Software – Information Management

Box hopes to give subscribers greater analytic insights into, and control over, the content stored in its cloud service following its acquisition of privately held dLoop for an undisclosed sum. This is a move that Ovum has been predicting for some time, and will make Box more attractive to the enterprise customers who are becoming increasingly interested in online storage and collaboration services like Box, but who also put a sharp focus on content security and management. It also comes on the heels of Box’s publicly stated intent to raise another $100m in venture funding, which could point to further acquisitions and a likely IPO in 2014.

dLoop will provide more granular safeguards over Box content

dLoop is billed as a “data analytics” vendor – but not in the traditional business intelligence (BI) sense. The company has a narrow focus on analyzing access …

Microsoft has announced the Cloud OS Network, a global group of over 25 cloud service providers who will deliver services on the Microsoft cloud platform.

The providers include the likes of CGI, Dimension Data and NTTX, and is a concerted play from Microsoft to enable more usage of its Windows Azure infrastructure as a service (IaaS) offering.

“This announcement represents important progress against our goals and strategy for Cloud OS,” Takeshi Numoto, Microsoft cloud and enterprise marketing corporate VP thundered in a blog post, adding: “More importantly, it is great news for enterprise customers across the globe.”

The partnering companies cover all four corners of the globe, from Capita in the UK to SingTel in Singapore and Revera in New Zealand, operating overall in more than 90 countries, with 425 data centres and over three million customers.

The news also promotes Microsoft’s vision of hybrid cloud being the future …

Tech giant Oracle has announced corporate sponsorship of the OpenStack Foundation, clearing the path for integration between the open source software and its various clouds.

The Redwood firm plans to integrate a huge amount of its products into the OpenStack technology, including Oracle’s virtual machine, its infrastructure as a service, as well as its Exalogic elastic cloud, its storage and its compute cloud.

Edward Screven, chief corporate architect at Oracle, said in a statement: “Oracle is pleased to join the OpenStack Foundation and plans to integrate OpenStack capabilities into a broad set of Oracle products and cloud services.

“Our goal is to give customers greater choice and flexibility in how they use Oracle products and services in public and private clouds,” he added.

Mark Collier, OpenStack Foundation chief operating officer, said: “We welcome Oracle to the OpenStack community, and look forward to innovative contributions from their many domain experts …