Does the Fear of the Cloud and Big Data Threaten Your Job?

What is the biggest threat to your job?  Is it what you do?

Or what you don’t do?

I have a really long commute to and from work.  And I when I say long, I mean an hour and a half or more long. Needless to say, I have a lot of time to listen to the news.

This week, I was listening to CNBC on satellite radio, and the show was about how fear motivates people much more than opportunity.  The show used examples of big companies that only bring innovations to market when they are under competitive threat. They don’t innovate because of new market opportunity or better customer service. The research shows that most companies are motivated primarily by fear.

Remember when Facebook acquired Instagram for $1billion dollars? Everyone speculated why since Instragram …

CloudTech caught up with Sven Denecken, VP cloud solutions at SAP at the SAP UK & Ireland Forum earlier this week, to discuss what the term ‘hybrid’ really means, the advantages of HANA Enterprise Cloud, and where SAP truly sees itself

One of the more interesting flashpoints from the opening morning of the SAP UK & Ireland Forum in Birmingham this week was at the end of Rob Enslin’s keynote.

As reported by CloudTech in an editorial, Enslin told SAP customers and partners that, when he was asked what SAP’s main focus is – ERP, cloud, big data, mobile apps – he replied that it was all of them.

So with that in mind, and given that HANA, SAP’s data aggregation technology with in-memory capability, is referred to widely throughout the company, would customers be confused about what they’re actually getting?

Sven Denecken, VP of cloud systems at SAP, told …

Examining the Core Components of a Private Cloud

– Brought to you by 2X Cloud Computing guest blogger Brien M. Posey –

Private cloud environments tend to be made up of a number of different components. One of the keys to building an effective private cloud environment is to understand what these components are and what they do. This blog post is intended to serve as a beginner’s guide to some of the most commonly used private cloud components.

The first component that you need to be familiar with is the Web Portal. One of the challenges that administrators face when building private cloud environments is that of accepting connections from Internet based clients, but without compromising security in the process. Doing so usually means creating a DMZ environment that can be used as an entry point for Internet based clients.

Typically the DMZ will contain a server that is acting …

More and more companies are transferring sensitive data to the cloud, according to the latest report from Thales e-Security and the Ponemon Institute on cloudy data encryption.

Over half (53%) of survey respondents said they were transferring such data, with a further 31% stating they were looking to push ahead in the next 12 months.

The report, one in a series of overall encryption trends, concludes that organisations, instead of not noticing the cloud security warnings, or even simply ignoring them, are aware that their security is being threatened, but are still pushing ahead with change.

35% of those polled said that moving sensitive and confidential data to the cloud has “decreased their security posture”, with 15% saying the opposite. The previous year’s survey revealed that 39% felt cloudy data transfer had weakened security, which, although hollow, is something of a victory.

Similarly, companies feel more confident in cloud …

David Molony, Principal Analyst, Enterprise

Telcos have launched a series of credible cloud services offers, and there is a perception in the market that they can now compete with global systems integrators in the converged ICT space. But telco noise levels are set low. There’s a tentativeness in their marketing (which may be deliberate) but, more importantly, they are not getting the direct advocacy they deserve from their global MNC customers.

Tier-2 telcos ramp up cloud services

Telco cloud service providers were heavily outnumbered by cloud technology vendors at the recent Cloud World Forum in London. That’s normal at trade exhibitions, but still we wanted to hear more from the network and data center operators in the shadow of the Google megabooth.

The event was well attended; it featured mostly vendors, but also some network operators who seem to be setting themselves up as European cloud service providers …

There were some pretty big statements being laid down during Rob Enslin’s keynote speech at the SAP UK and Ireland Forum today, with the enterprise giant’s global customer operations president making plenty of noise about HANA, the company’s big cloud bet and a shift to the database sector.

The big push this year, of course, is HANA’s Enterprise Cloud, which is in the words of SAP, “the power of real-time business and simplicity of the cloud». It’s enterprise class with cloud’s flexibility, alongside in-memory capability. The company seems pretty pleased with its technology, especially if this morning’s activity was anything to go by.

“HANA is the biggest innovation in the business software industry in the last 20 years.”

“We are the innovation leader – we have to be.”

“We have to understand that change is happening; for you to be able to survive that …

Andrew Brosnan, Senior Analyst, Health Sciences

At its recent Big Data and Analytics Analyst Insights Summit in Toronto, IBM laid out its portfolio of technologies and services specifically for business analytics. The portfolio is a robust and comprehensive offering, encompassing all types of analytics, with specific tools and technologies across the “stack” for organizations of all sizes.

The phrase “easy, fast, and smart” was a recurring theme throughout the event, highlighting IBM’s commitment to providing a broad array of analytical tools and technologies that are easy to use and fast.

For many analytics vendors in a Big Data age this has been a rally cry, but IBM is well positioned to provide such capabilities to life science organizations because of the breadth of its expertise and the depth of its research and development (R&D).

Life science companies are faced with increasing volumes of fast-moving and diverse data (Big …

As cloud computing continues to materialise and mature in the fabric of today’s IT, one of the primary barriers to widespread adoption is the high proportion of legacy ICT in many companies.

That’s according to the latest survey, this time from NTT Europe polling 300 CIOs and IT decision makers on current trends, barriers and solutions.

56% of those surveyed cited the complexity of their IT layout as the biggest barrier to large scale cloud adoption, with the figure rising to 70% in the public sector.

In some cases, the reason for being so attached to older IT software is financial. 28% of respondents said their legacy systems were too expensive – or valuable – to completely trash.

“[CIOs] expect enterprise clouds today to be able to handle the complexity of their business engine, meet internal and external compliance requirements, and reduce the management burden on in-house IT staff,” the …

The development of cloud technology is opening the door for companies in the trade finance sector to move away from the inherent constraints of paper-based processes.

In Asia, this is particularly compelling, as importers don’t need to invest heavily in hardware and software to use cloud-based trade finance solutions – in some cases enabling them to leapfrog more costly and complex ERP tools.

As such, many operators in these less mature markets are very open to working in the cloud and receptive to the competitive opportunities it brings.

From a corporate perspective, SaaS-based multi-bank trade finance applications and exporter-led solutions are also extremely compelling in terms of cost and their potential to make essential processes more effective.

Typically, cloud-based trade finance solutions are far easier to deploy and use, especially when compared with more restrictive on-premise technologies. This in turn can enable corporate users to increase business efficiency and payment …

At the Hadoop Summit conference last week, Teradata announced some Hadoop-only products that are a lead-in for applying its data management services to this emerging platform. The new offerings, announced in conjunction with strategic partner Hortonworks, include a new Teradata-branded Hadoop-only appliance that adds new deployment and node management capabilities, and deeper Teradata-delivered service and support options. The announcements raise the question of what value-add IT incumbents bring to the Hadoop game, when professional support subscriptions are otherwise available direct from the source. The answer is twofold: one-stop shopping for enterprise data platforms and the potential of optimized data integration and management across increasingly heterogeneous analytic platform environments.

Enriching Hadoop

Teradata has announced for Q4 release a new standalone appliance for Hadoop; it also announced an a la carte Hadoop offering that provides options for installing Hadoop on a recommended commodity Dell server or on third-party hardware chosen by the …