Tony Baer, Principal Analyst, Software – Enterprise Solutions

Few topics have lately drawn more hype and scrutiny than Big Data. Having originated with Internet firms, Big Data has captured enterprise attention with examples that show how organizations, from public sector to financial services firms, telcos, and media derived insights that improved customer retention, operational efficiency, and risk mitigation.

Big Data has drawn media attention with examples that touch people’s lives, such as the massive data hunt that occurred in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing. Yet few technology trends have also drawn so many myths – such as that Big Data is a special project that can only be undertaken by uniquely skilled professionals, requiring its own dedicated infrastructure.

Although that was the model for early Big Data projects among Internet firms, that model is not sustainable for the enterprise. To hit the enterprise mainstream, Big Data must become a …

After a raid at his New Zealand mansion in January last year, the larger than life Kim Dotcom has released a whitepaper taking direct aim at the US government.

The paper goes into detail how the raid wasn’t enough for “The Government Communications Security Bureau” who continued to illegally spy on Kim Dotcom for ten days after the raid on his home, according to his lawyers.

These very lawyers, US lawyer Ira Rothken and international lawyer Robert Amsterdam, have accused the Government of using “dirty tricks” to create a “black media campaign” against Kim.

Backing up this theory is the release of a 72-page indictment document to journalists by US prosecutors.

As a result of this media campaign, prosecutors attempted to create a “pitchfork mob” scenario towards the Megaupload founder, through taking aim at his high financial status and extravagant lifestyle.

Everything didn’t turn out quite to plan …

The platform as a service (PaaS) market is expected to reach $6.45bn by 2016 and grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of almost 50%, with application infrastructure and middleware PaaS expected to grow the fastest.

That’s the big takeaway from analysts TechNavio, having published the latest industry report entitled Global Platform as a Service Market 2012-2016.

According to the researchers, the market currently stands at $1.31bn, with that number expecting to rise to $1.85bn by the end of this year.

These figures correspond similarly with Gartner’s predictions, saying that PaaS revenue was on target to hit $1.2bn by the end of 2012 – yet TechNavio notes some difficulties in the current market, particularly the lack of best use practices and universally recognised standards.

PaaS, whilst remaining the smallest cloud market, is generally recognised as the fastest growing. Informatica’s Juan Carlos Soto, speaking …

Recent headlines are full of companies moving towards SaaS (software as a service) models.

Many of these are perky start-ups utilising new opportunities, whilst others are high-profile players like Adobe, which has announced going forward that its “Creative Suite” products will exist solely in the cloud.

Adobe, at the annual “MAX” event, has completely re-branded the companies most well-known Creative products which consists of Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, and Premiere Pro. Each will now gain a CC moniker (e.g. Photoshop CC) which represents “Creative Cloud”.

The blog post announcing the changes quotes: “As the world changes, so must the tools and services we use to create. This presents a unique opportunity to re-imagine the creative process.”

Interestingly, Adobe has also made the decision to kill off web-design tool ‘Fireworks’. The product was only used by a small subset of users, but very diehard fans.

Adobe says in a post …

Joe Dignan, Chief Analyst, Public Sector Technology

The third iteration of the UK government’s cloud store is about to go live, so what has changed and what is likely to happen next?

The good news is that we appear to have reached the end of the beginning for G-Cloud, with the Cabinet Office reporting sales of £18.2m going through the first two procurement frameworks, G-Cloud i (Gi) and G-Cloud ii (Gii).

The delay in getting G-Cloud iii (Giii) up and running is apparently due to there being 50% more suppliers and a much greater diversity of offerings. The increase in volume has caused the small G-Cloud team issues in sending out award letters.

However, the government has finally agreed on a “public cloud first” policy. This policy is something that the G-Cloud team, led by Denise McDonagh, has championed and it is a game-changer in a number of …

It’s been decades-long in coming, but the bulk of hype around cloud computing could be gone by the end of 2013, thanks to a steady maturation of the underlying technology and more sophisticated IT use.

This is good news for companies hoping to a make the leap from local servers to managed stacks.

Terms of endearment

“Enterprise cloud” carries the lion’s share amount of hype, and has for the past few years, says CIO. This term is a catch-all for cloud services, and has been overused as a way to describe alternatives to public clouds, most of which take the form of public clouds in disguise.

IT pros are now fully aware that bolt-on virtualisation solutions, for example, aren’t precursors to the cloud, and with cloud security now robust enough to handle even mission critical data, the days of taking potshots at public providers because they’re …

There is currently quite a buzz around the concept of advanced analytics, as organisations look to predict future outcomes more effectively, based on a detailed understanding of what has actually happened in the past rather than testing theoretical hypotheses based on statistical analysis.

Put simply, the better the analysis, the better-informed decisions will be around anticipating – and responding effectively to – future demand.      

Like many emerging management tools, it is easy to overstate the importance or complexity of the concept. At one level, advanced analytics is simply today’s way of mining information when presented with a lot of customer information.

And this applies whether in a CRM system, a traditional structured set of sales reports or looking to analyse product perceptions from the blogosphere.

Yet the value of the resulting intelligence – whether derived from a front-end CRM system or at the back-end in improving data management – is undeniably powerful in …

The overlap between cloud computing and enterprise mobility is becoming ever more pronounced. And according to a new survey from Rackspace Hosting, the proliferation of cloud computing, and mobilising workforces means that companies are likely to spend far less on office space.

It’s not strictly correct to call this a ‘new’ survey. It’s the third in a series on the state of cloud computing from the global hosting provider, called ‘Cloud Computing: State of Play’. A previous iteration had revealed that moving to the cloud had cost savings for nearly nine in 10 companies.

Yet this report examined the benefits, or otherwise, of the post-PC era, BYOD (bring your own device), and how cloud integrates with those elements.

“There is no doubt that cloud computing is enabling a more flexible workplace using a range of devices,” said Dr. Brian Nicholson of Manchester Business School in a canned quote …

Madan Sheina, Lead Analyst, Information Management

Oracle recently held its third annual Industry Analyst World conference at its Redwood Shores headquarters, and it came as no surprise to Ovum that business analytics featured as one of six major track themes (aligning nicely with our Big Data and Analytics Super Theme for 2013).

Oracle’s business intelligence (BI) and enterprise performance (EPM) portfolio is undoubtedly impressive in both breadth and depth. Having spent much time and effort rationalizing and updating its product set, Oracle is also planning innovative new analytics offerings through the convergence of new products, notably its Exalytics in-memory engine and Endeca-powered information discovery environment.

This will inevitably present product development, integration, and marketing challenges, but Oracle has the necessary engineering resources and budget to address all three. However, it needs to do so quickly.

BI and analytics now pivotal in Oracle’s Red Stack

Business analytics is a …

The latest cloud computing survey, this time from NaviSite, has examined enterprise IT’s strategies, in particular for coping with an increasingly data-heavy ecosystem, and found that cloud is at the forefront of the data strategy for IT execs.

The report interviewed more than 500 IT professionals from companies with more than 200 employees, and found intriguing trends in the enterprise space.

Cloud computing is one of the biggest trends facing enterprise IT departments today, according to a quarter of respondents. Slashed budgets was the top trend according to 31% of those surveyed, with data explosion (25%) rounding off the top three.

There have been plenty of recent surveys dissecting trends in the enterprise space. Interestingly, one of the most recent of these, a report from Ernst & Young and India’s CIO Klub, also focused on how to cut budgets. Previous iterations of the report did similarly – 2009 advocated wide …