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58% of attendees at the 2014 Cloud Expo and the AWS Summit, in New York, have indicated they are building hybrid cloud solutions for their organisations, according to a survey.

According to the survey, conducted by Avere Systems, the same number (58%) said they were planning on migrating at least some of their on-prem applications to the cloud within the next two years.

Archiving is the most popular aspect of enterprises that are being moved to the cloud, with 28% of the vote. This was followed by corporate file sharing on 22%, with 18% of respondents admitting they would move their entire business to the cloud.

Half (49%) of respondents said that Amazon Web Services was their cloud of choice for storage, compared with 19% for Google, and 13% for Microsoft Azure. More than half (56%) of respondents are looking at deploying AWS for object storage.

Over a quarter (26%) of those polled indicated their top level executive team was driving cloud strategy within their organisations. A similar number (22%) said it was their storage and data management teams leading the charge.

It’s yet more evidence that hybrid cloud – a mix of cloud and on-premise for mission critical applications – is seen as the way forward, not just for smaller businesses but for the enterprise market.

Cloud service providers are increasingly noticing this. VMware, for instance, has hybrid cloud as one of its three strategic priorities, alongside software defined data centres and end user computing. CenturyLink and Rackspace have also kickstarted initiatives for managed hosting services in recent months.

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EMC has announced it is to merge data centre biz VCE into its main organisation, buying out all but 10% of Cisco’s stake in the company.

The news comes weeks after EMC announced the buy of open cloud provider Cloudscaling, and can be seen as an advancement of the ménage a trois-esque relationship between EMC, VMware and Cisco in ownership of VCE.

The converged infrastructure (CI) provider was originally set up as a joint venture between EMC, VMware and Cisco in order to create Vblock, a cloud computing platform which morphed into CI. In a blog post reflecting on this alliance Gary Moore, president and COO of Cisco and Howard Elias, president and COO of EMC, described is as “the most successful in IT history.”

The duo put the success of the platform down to “the best technologies, combined with a maniacal focus on the customer experience and tremendous execution by talented teams.”

EMC noted VCE will remain intact under CEO Praveen Akkiraju, with Cisco and VMware continuing as “strategic partners and investors” in the firm.

“VCE was created to be a disruptive force by radically transforming and simplifying IT data centre architectures, accelerating a shift to cloud computing,” said Joe Tucci, chairman and CEO of EMC in a statement. “It has been a huge success and has changed the conversation with CIOs.

“Our commitment to increased investment will enable VCE to significantly expand the scale and scope of its solutions, helping customers take better advantage of hybrid cloud and next generation opportunities,” he added.

“We would like to welcome Praveen, VCE president Frank Hauck and the VCE team to EMC and congratulate them on the tremendous success of VCE.”

Earlier this month it was reported that EMC had bought Cloudscaling, an open cloud provider. A couple of theories were floated around at the time regarding the move – one was to keep EMC relevant, as a legacy IT vendor, while the other was a need to beef up its non-VMware operation, after hedge-fund manager Elliott Management sent a letter to the board of EMC advising them to cast off its VMware unit.

Arguably, both theories can be further refined with the VCE reshift news today. Not every analyst is keen though.

“We view the Cisco/VCE news as a ‘yawner’ given that EMC right now is facing a plethora of growth and strategic challenges and the last thing on investors’ minds is the future of VCE,” wrote FBR Capital Markets analyst Daniel Ives in a note to clients, as reported by Reuters.

VCE CEO Akkiraju, writing in a blog post, sees things a little differently. “Now that VCE is a $2bn company looking to expand beyond platforms to deliver hybrid cloud solutions, it’s critical to evolve to a structure that supports our broader mission from the technology and financial perspectives,” he wrote.

“As an EMC business we will benefit from being an integral part of an established leader in the data centre and cloud space.”

SYS-CON Events announced today that Verizon has been named “Gold Sponsor” of SYS-CON’s 15th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on November 4-6, 2014, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA. Verizon Enterprise Solutions creates global connections that generate growth, drive business innovation and move society forward. With industry-specific solutions and a full range of global wholesale offerings provided over the company’s secure mobility, cloud, strategic networking and advanced communications platforms, Verizon Enterprise Solutions helps open new opportunities around the world for innovation, investment and business transformation. Visit verizonenterprise.com to learn more.

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Don’t emphasize network security at the cost of endpoint security; the two can be integrated and work hand in hand. The result is a safer, more secure business ready for the challenges of the future.

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Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the most popular enterprise cloud service according to a report released today from Skyhigh Networks – but the research also fired a broadside at how companies are struggling to block consumer products.

The reports, which are quarterly and based on data from more than 1.6 million users, noted a huge disparity in companies saying they block certain services and the amount of employees actually blocked.

80% of companies say they block Dropbox, but only 21% of users are actually blocked

Take file sharing provider Dropbox. It’s a very popular service to block, with 80% of firms surveyed saying they nix it. Yet only 21% of users are blocked. It gets worse the further you look. Half of companies claim to block iCloud, yet the actual block rate is only 9%. For Netflix (40% and 4%) and Instagram (48% and 4%), it’s a similar story. Only Facebook has a good hit rate – 50% of companies say they block it, and 31% of users are actually blocked.

The remaining number – in Dropbox’s case, 59% of users – is what Skyhigh calls the “cloud enforcement gap.” This can come about in various ways. Either the cloud service provider proffers a new URL which isn’t picked up on by the IT department, or block rates aren’t enforced by certain geographies, or exemptions to particular groups get picked up on and shared around.

It’s a prevalent trend. The number of cloud services used by the average company rose 23%, from 588 in Q114 to 724 in Q3, yet almost three quarters (74.3%) of cloud services in use do not meet the current EU Data Protection Directive.

In other words, it’s shadow IT. Facebook is the most popular service in this category, followed by Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and Pinterest.

It’s interesting to note the differences between consumer and enterprise in this instance. Box is the seventh most popular enterprise tool, yet Dropbox is positioned #11 in consumer cloud services. Other storage providers, Apple’s iCloud (#13) and Google Drive (#14) also feature in consumer.

The average company uses an eye watering 125 collaboration services

Ultimately, Dropbox is the most popular file sharing tool overall, ahead of Google Drive, Box and OneDrive. Office365 is the most popular collaboration tool, ahead of Gmail and WebEx, while workday is number one for HR. The average company uses 37 different file sharing services, and an eye watering 125 collaboration services.

The report also notes how the Pareto Principle, or the 80/20 rule, applies to cloud services, but in a much more extreme manner. 80% of data uploaded to the cloud goes to less than 1% of all services – Box (23%) is the most popular there, followed by Dropbox (11%), YouTube (9%), and Microsoft Office365 (7%).

In order, the 10 most popular enterprise cloud services are AWS, Microsoft Office365, Salesforce, Cisco WebEx, Concur, ServiceNow, Box, LivePerson, Zendesk and Yammer. The top 20 also includes services from enterprise giants, such as BMC, Workday and GoToMeeting. Microsoft’s storage product, OneDrive, and NetSuite, were new entries in this edition.

Read the full document here.

Read more: How cloud doesn’t have to mean shadow IT takes hold

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Analysis If Google is struggling with its numbers, then there isn’t much hope for everyone else. The third quarter financial results have been a bit of a struggle across the board, but the big legacy tech vendors are really starting to feel the heat.

Oracle’s revenues only went up 3% year on year, lower than Wall Street expected, while SAP’s marginally went up but its software division took a hit. Now it’s IBM’s turn – and the findings don’t look good.

IBM posted its third quarter financial results, showing revenue of $22.4 billion, down 4% or 2% at constant currency, operating net income at $3.7bn, down 18%, yet cloud revenue was up more than 50% year to date.

Owch. Yes, the company has been making waves in its cloud computing investments, ever since it bought SoftLayer. CloudTech has generally been impressed with what IBM has done in cloud this year. A billion dollar investment, and a strategic rebranding to becoming a cloud company is certainly an impressive statement of intent. But it didn’t cut much ice among the analysts.

Toni Sacconaghi, of Sanford Bernstein, used the word “crisis” in his question to the IBM execs on the earnings call, which included CEO Ginni Rometty, who normally doesn’t appear on these calls.

Explaining the numbers were part of the reason she was on the call, Rometty replied: “Obviously we were disappointed in this quarter, but when we talk about what we’re doing for the long term and these actions, these actions go on the heels of what has been a series of what I think are very bold actions from the entire year with a very clear strategy,” she said, according to Seeking Alpha.

“The strategy’s correct, and now it’s our speed of execution that needs to continue to improve.”

This strategy includes lopping off limbs which are no longer profitable, such as its server division to Lenovo for north of $2bn earlier this year and earlier this month, its chipmaking business to Globalfoundries – but in that one, IBM is paying $1.5bn for the privilege.

Yet Rometty will hope this is a small price to pay so she can run the 102 year old International Business Machines her way.

There’s plenty of evidence and promise about that – take into account IBM’s recent partnership with Apple to give Cupertino the enterprise foot-up it needs, putting IBM software into iDevices. Similarly, the recent partnership with SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud is an interesting one.

The argument IBM, and SAP, and Oracle, are all using is the same one. Yes, the numbers don’t look great now, but look a bit further along the path and it’ll get better. We’ve got to move away from on-prem software revenues, and cloud sales can’t make up that shortfall straight away.

It’s an easy get out clause struggling companies make to keep the vultures away for the near future at least. But in this instance, it’s true. It will mean short term pain. IBM’s layoffs this year (known as ‘resource actions’) were especially brutal, with the Alliance@IBM employee page continuing to make depressing reading. But it’s happening to other companies too – take Microsoft as an example of that. And if it results in long term gain through cloud subscription revenues, then Rometty et al will consider it a job well done. But remember – it’s still an ‘if’.

The only place to be June 9-11 is Cloud Expo & @ThingsExpo 2015 East at the Javits Center in New York City. Join us there as delegates from all over the world come to listen to and engage with speakers & sponsors from the leading Cloud Computing, IoT & Big Data companies.
Cloud Expo & @ThingsExpo are the leading events covering the booming market of Cloud Computing, IoT & Big Data for the enterprise. Speakers from all over the world will be hand-picked for their ability to explore the economic strategies that utility/cloud computing provides. Whether public, private, or in a hybrid form, cloud computing, Internet of Things & Big Data are rapidly becoming an integral part of the enterprise IT environment. By shifting some of their applications out of the enterprise data center and into the cloud, IT managers can eliminate a whole litany of costs and headaches; in capital equipment, in power and cooling, in administration and maintenance.

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To manage complex web services with lots of calls to the cloud, many businesses have invested in Application Performance Management (APM) and Network Performance Management (NPM) tools. Together APM and NPM tools are essential aids in improving a business’s infrastructure required to support an effective web experience… but they are missing a critical component – Internet visibility.
Internet connectivity has always played a role in customer access to web presence, but in the past few years use of the Internet in the web experience has dramatically increased. The broadening use of Cloud Services sources means that web content is coming to the customer from all over the Internet in a multitude of paths. Relying solely on Network and Internet Service Providers will get you connected but at what cost to performance and cost. Gaining the ability to monitor, analyze and plan managing Internet paths and take more complete control of your customer’s experience is no longer a nice-to-have, it is critical to your brand and profitability.

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Veteran’s 360 and Rick Collins, Founder & Executive Director of Vets 360, Inc., are being honored at this year’s Champions Leadership, and Research Conference™ . This event, November 6th-7th, 2014 at the Washington Duke Inn & Golf Club in Durham, NC, is an independent conference, and a component of eMerging Entrepreneurs’ “Veterans Economic Advancement project.” A 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, eMerging Entrepreneurs, Inc. provides Career Transition Assistance, Small Business Training, and Entrepreneurial Developmental services to veterans, military spouses, and under-served minority communities. The organization employs a grassroots approach to assisting those who seek to advance their small business interests; partnering with state & federal agencies, universities, local chambers of commerce, and military installations in an effort to extend high-tech training & resource solutions to under-served communities. “Cloud Musings” and GovCloud Network are proud to be strong supporters of Vets 360

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The speed of product development has increased massively in the past 10 years. At the same time our formal secure development and SDL methodologies have fallen behind. This forces product developers to choose between rapid release times and security.
In his session at DevOps Summit, Michael Murray, Director of Cyber Security Consulting and Assessment at GE Healthcare, will examine the problems and present some solutions for moving security in to the DevOps lifecycle to ensure that we get fast AND secure.

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