The European Commission produced a communication entitled “Unleashing the Potential of Cloud Computing in Europe,” which announced a new cloud computing strategy for the European Union. The EC released a statement saying that the Cloud computing strategy will, if it works, facilitate the use of the cloud across the EU both in the state and private sector.

This would create and estimated 2.5 million jobs and 160 billion Euros added to the EU’s GDP by 2020.

The initiative would align cloud computing services with existing EU protocols regarding consumer rights such as privacy and security of data under the Data Protection Directive. This would mean that those individuals concerned with the distribution of their data online and in the cloud would have a better degree of protection.

The proposal has several strategies including:

– To put in place scheme whereby technical standards are voluntarily taken up by the relevant …

In 2012, we began losing our battle against data, as the amount of digital data being created, stored and shared reached new heights. At the same time, we witnessed a record build out of centralized infrastructure, as cloud vendors and enterprises built or expanded datacenters around the globe in an attempt to store and manage all this data. And the pace of both of these are only accelerating as we enter the new year.

This data escalation combined with the continued forces of consumerization and gamification of enterprise IT will lead to a clear mandate for CIOs and IT leaders in 2013:  take back control of corporate data. 

We will see a significant increase in investment around data management, particularly in data classification, storage, big data, and data protection.  IT will also start saying “no” to the many rogue cloud platforms, data sharing and collaboration services being used by employees …

You’re already using it

You may already be familiar with the term ‘Real Time Protection’, which could just as easily be labeled ‘Cloud Protection’. Simply put, when a vendor’s research team identifies a new email threat, the characteristics of the message are sent to all affected hardware appliances straightaway, so that the malicious content is immediately blocked. This all happens far ahead of the regular update by on-premise virus signatures.

Because they are outsourced, Cloud technologies can be implemented far more flexibly; it could also be referred to as an «elastic protection». Conventional security technologies demand computing power from both onsite hardware and software. But when new threats emerge it means that much more computing power is necessary to take successful action against the threats from one moment to the next. This performance can be provided in the Cloud without having to replace or upgrade the customer’s …

Joe Dignan, Chief Analyst, Public Sector Technology, Ovum

Cloud delivery and procurement is still a central plank in global public sector procurement. The G-Cloud Framework has been running for the best part of a year, having launched in April 2012, so now is a good time to revisit the UK government’s flagship procurement initiative, CloudStore.

At a recent event, Ovum heard that the UK’s CloudStore was a great success. We heard that the second iteration of the G-Cloud Framework included 71 new suppliers, bringing the total to 462, of which 75% are SMEs. With 2,814 new services being offered through the four lots, there are now 3,185 services on offer. The problem with this story is that total sales amount to less than £4m for the year. In fact, the top-10 buyers only spent £2.6m.

The new UK government CTO, Liam Maxwell, quotes the public …

Dr Steve Hodgkinson, Research Director, IT, Asia-Pacific, Ovum

Many governments are implementing cloud services portals – “cloud stores” – to encourage cloud services adoption and provide “trusted” shopping experiences for agencies. The decision by the US government to close its apps.gov portal raises interesting questions about the usefulness of these portals. Ovum’s view is that the focus of government cloud strategy should be on encouraging organizational learning in agencies about why, how, when, and where to buy cloud services.

The relative immaturity and fast pace of evolution of the cloud services market mean that buyers need astute shopping skills, but these are only developed through hands-on experience and the sharing of tips and advice among fellow shoppers. Accelerating the development of intelligent buying behaviors at an agency level will be a lower-risk path than relying on centralized government cloud shops in which services of uncertain quality are sold by shop …

New research from Host Analytics and conducted by Dimensional Research has found that for four out of five business execs, the cloud is chosen for its value over anything else.

A similar number of employees surveyed said that it’s beneficial for them to use cloud applications.

The research, which covered over 300 CIOs and business executives, again found various benefits to cloud adoption, which may perhaps shift the balance as IT budgets are being prepared for 2013.

When asked for the reasons a cloud app was chosen over other, on-premise options, the disparity between business executives and CIOs was stark.

Value was the obvious factor for execs (80%), whereas compliance was the most important component for CIOs (58%); value (53%) and greater competitive advantage (51%) completed the top three.

Compliance is a vital, perhaps underrated reason for utilising the cloud. 61% of survey respondents said they have out of …

Hosting applications on the cloud is tempting many IT organisations for sundry reasons like availing benefits from outsized datacentres, backup power sources and other capabilities that till lately only established IT organisations could afford.

Pay-as-you-go culture or guaranteed availability makes cloud adoption an easy and unperturbed choice for many SMBs and large scale organisations.

Many hosting providers maintain compound data centres, so decision makers often assume disaster recovery to be the inherent feature in the cloud culture that is offered to them. But little do they realise that this is a vital issue that warrants concern. Disaster Recovery (DR) is not a default configuration for many providers that offer cloud space in the IT market.

The 9/11 attacks cautioned many towards IT disaster preparedness (though probability of such disasters are extremely rare but not impossible). Before dealing with your cloud space provider and before signing on the dotted line …

As 2012 draws to a close, a growing number of savvy enterprise CIOs — and perhaps even more Line of Business leaders — are joining the momentum towards an increase in the mainstream adoption of managed cloud services.

Furthermore, the near-term market outlook for 2013 is particularly bright and the long-term expectations are equally promising — due mostly to the reported positive experience and results from the early adopters of cloud services across the globe.

Peer recommendations are clearly driving this change in the marketplace.

Worldwide spending on public IT cloud services will be more than $40 billion in 2012 and is expected to approach $100 billion in 2016, according to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC).

Over the 2012–2016 forecast reporting period, IDC believes that public IT cloud services will enjoy a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 26.4 percent, that’s five times the traditional IT …