Monthly Archives: June 2015

Cloud computing, Cloud Services

Alibaba’s Cloud Computing Market Strategy

Alibaba Group may be the underdog of the global cloud computing industry when compared to cloud giants like Amazon Web Services and Google, but it may have an advantage. It’s Chinese.

 

Earlier this week, Alibaba acquired a deal with the city of Dalian to build a cloud-computing center and provide online government services. This deal joins many between Alibaba and the Chinese government and has arisen through the Chinese fear of foreign technology.

 

Due to this fear, Alibaba’s cloud unit, Aliyun, has been able to gain experience in the Chinese market before challenging leaders like Amazon, Google, or Microsoft on a global scale.

 

aliyun-logo

 

James McGregor, at US communications consultancy Apco Worldwide, said, “Basically, they are following the political trends and they’re grabbing the business opportunities that result. China wants control of its information, of its data, of its news, of its technology food chain, and so there are huge opportunities.”

 

The cloud-computing sector has boomed largely because it has become cheaper for companies to store data in the cloud rather than maintaining servers in-house.

 

While Aliyun is still relatively small, China has the largest market share in cloud computing so it has plenty of room for growth. Acquiring enough expertise to become a major global player will take some time, so for the time being Aliyun is taking advantage of China’s unwelcoming environment for foreign providers. It has made cloud arrangements with other Chinese cities and provinces like Shanghai and Guangdong.

 

 

Cheng Jing, an Aliyun director, has stated his main priority: “First, we have to be sure our services can make money. If these services can also promote Ali’s relationship with the government then that’s a good thing.”

The post Alibaba’s Cloud Computing Market Strategy appeared first on Cloud News Daily.

Parallels Business Solutions

Offer Managed IT Services with Parallels Remote Application Server

With an aim to optimize resources and implement innovative technologies, businesses are turning towards Managed IT Services. The rapid growth of this market speaks volumes about the value it delivers to IT companies. According to a survey conducted by MSPMentor, 45% of organizations are using a managed service provider to handle corporate clouds; 39% are […]

The post Offer Managed IT Services with Parallels Remote Application Server appeared first on Parallels Blog.

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Would You Build Your House from a Visio Diagram? By @Kevin_Jackson | @CloudExpo #Cloud

Cloud computing CAD is now a business requirement. Cloud solution architects are integral to the ideation, creation and deployment of new business models and CAD is the right tool for optimizing their solutions. This is why the use of cloud computing solution computer aided design today will determine the future profitability of billion dollar corporations.

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Why Workloads Are Not on the Public Cloud | @CloudExpo #IoT #API #Cloud

Public Cloud IaaS started its life in the developer and startup communities and has grown rapidly to a $20B+ industry, but it still pales in comparison to how much is spent worldwide on IT: $3.6 trillion. In fact, there are 8.6 million data centers worldwide, the reality is many small and medium sized business have server closets and colocation footprints filled with servers and storage gear. While on-premise environment virtualization may have peaked at 75%, the Public Cloud has lagged in adoption as teams delay their cloud migrations or seek alternatives like the public cloud or await SaaS alternatives for their essential apps. Today’s mass market for cloud computing IaaS is made up of non-cloud natives and the industry needs to respond to grow. In his talk, William Toll will break down the reasons for the delays and how existing IT teams can accelerate their plans to migrate to the public cloud – without expensive consultants or big cloud migration projects.

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Top Three Cloud Takeaways from @CloudExpo By @IanKhanLive | #Cloud

We had over 300 conversations about Cloud Monetization at Cloud Expo just a few weeks ago. What was more surprising was the fact that Cloud Monetization is not something new that is revolutionizing the industry, but a natural need of the market. Imagine that you came up with the new cake recipe. It doesn’t change the fact that people need to eat!
Moving on from cakes to the cloud, here are some observations from Cloud Expo.

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The Secure Path to Value in the Cloud By @Windstream | @CloudExpo #IoT #API #DevOps #Microservices

Even as cloud and managed services grow increasingly central to business strategy and performance, challenges remain. The biggest sticking point for companies seeking to capitalize on the cloud is data security. Keeping data safe is an issue in any computing environment, and it has been a focus since the earliest days of the cloud revolution. Understandably so: a lot can go wrong when you allow valuable information to live outside the firewall. Recent revelations about government snooping, along with a steady stream of well-publicized data breaches, only add to the uncertainty

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acquisition, Colt, fibre, fidelity, Telco Cloud

Fidelity bid for Colt doesn’t convince directors

Fidelity Investments, which is already the majority shareholder in Colt Group, has bid to acquire the remaining stock of the telecoms and cloud provider, but Colt directors are unconvinced.

The relationship between the two companies is intimate and has been from the very beginning. Fidelity provided the cash to form Colt back in 1992, to provide telecoms services in London. It soon expanded across Europe but in 2001, together with a lot of other telecoms and tech companies, encountered problems requiring a further injection of capital from Fidelity.

For some reason, despite holding its current majority position since then, Fidelity has decided it’s time for Colt to be wholly private once more. “As founders and majority shareholders of Colt, Fidelity is pleased to announce the continuation of its commitment to the business through returning the group to private ownership,” said Cyrus Jilla, President of Eight Roads, the proprietary investment arm of Fidelity.

“We typically hold our proprietary investments outside the financial services industry, such as Colt, in the private domain. This transaction allows us to hold our investment in Colt consistent with this strategy while providing an attractive and certain value for the current Colt independent shareholders.”

The independent directors of Colt, who are there to protect the interests of its shareholders, have publicly acknowledged the offer of 190p per share from Fidelity, but reckon it’s too low.

“The independent directors believe that the offer undervalues the company and its prospects and accordingly they consider that the financial terms of the offer are not fair to the independent shareholders of Colt,” said their statement.

“The independent directors believe that the financial terms of the offer may be considered by some shareholders to be acceptable in the circumstances, and accordingly make no recommendation to shareholders whether or not to accept the offer.

“Over the course of 2015, the management of Colt has been working on a plan to refocus the company’s activities and significantly improve its financial performance. The Board has provisionally approved a new business plan and further details will be announced in due course.”

Colt’s shares were trading at around 156p before the bid and jumped straight up to 190p, implying the market thinks Fidelity’s bid is likely to be accepted.

Cloud Services, Cloud Technology

Oracles Financial Details About Cloud Computing

In past endeavors, Oracle has sold database software to major businesses using licensing agreements. In contrast to companies like IBM, Oracle has seen where it must go in order to thrive in the new high tech world. It is going to the cloud.

 

In the latter part of 2014, Oracle acquired major cloud companies, such as Datalogix, a data analytics firm. Oracle can both store information and analyze it, making it able to not only provide technology but also a solution.

 

The Oracle cloud engine has four distinct parts: Software-as-a-Service, Platform-as-a-Service, Infrastructure-as-a-Service and, most recently, Data-as-a-Service. The aim of the Oracle cloud engine us to be able to provide a solution to a company no matter what level it is.

 

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Due to the rise of the cloud and companies such as Amazon that operate outside of the standard of locking customers into contracts, Oracle has had to be become more flexible in order to keep its customers.

 

Oracles latest financial report exemplifies how well it has been performing in the cloud market. While Wall Street was looking for earnings of 87 cents per share with $10.95 billion in revenue, Oracle reported non-GAAP revenue of 78 cents per share on revenue of $10.7 billion. Oracle blamed this disappointing news on currency fluctuation.

 

The company has noted a seventeen percent decline in new software licenses year after year. Customers have began to break away from the traditional model and have started to utilize more recently developed cloud technology.

 

“We sold an astonishing $426 million of new SaaS and PaaS annually recurring cloud subscription revenue in Q4,” CEO Safra Catz wrote. “We expect our rapidly increasing cloud sales to quickly translate into significantly more revenue and profits for Oracle Corporation. For example, SaaS and PaaS revenues grew at a 34% constant currency rate in our just completed Q4, but we expect that revenue growth rate to jump to around 60% in constant currency this new fiscal year.”

The post Oracles Financial Details About Cloud Computing appeared first on Cloud News Daily.

Dad, Dad gadgets, Dad gifts, Father's Day, Father's day gifts, Parallels Access, Remote access

This is What Your Dad Wants for Father’s Day

With Father’s Day approaching, it’s time to open the secret “man vault” and tell everyone what every dad really wants for Father’s Day—a little rest and relaxation! This year, give Dad the gift of a full day as a professional couch potato. Dads everywhere might be asking “How?” Being a professional couch potato sounds too good […]

The post This is What Your Dad Wants for Father’s Day appeared first on Parallels Blog.

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The state of the cloud in 2015: “Bullish” VC firm predicts tipping point

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Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP), a venture capital firm which has been investing in cloud computing for almost 20 years, has released a bullish prediction on cloud trends in the coming years.

Software as a service (SaaS) is approaching 30% of total application spend, compound annual growth rate hitting 17.6% between 2013 and 2018. On premise, by contrast, is at 2.8%. BVP also argues the ‘tipping point’ of cloud CRM will hit in 2016; by 2018, the VC firm expects cloud CRM to reach 62% revenue share. Salesforce is the current market leader with 16% share, compared to SAP (13%), Oracle (10%) and Microsoft (7%).

In this instance, describing companies as private and public cloud providers relates to whether they are pre- or post-IPO. For ‘public’ cloud companies, there has been a tremendous shift in market cap since 2008. Back then, Salesforce had a leading market cap of $7.4 billion, ahead of NetSuite ($2.3bn) and Concur ($1.5bn). In 2015, Salesforce still leads, but with a $50.5bn market cap, ahead of LinkedIn ($26.2bn) and Workday ($16.9bn).

The total cloud market cap at 2015 stands at approximately $180bn, while in 2008 it was nearer $25bn. By 2020, BVP expects it to pass $500bn.

For cloud companies that are pre-IPO, of the 300 ‘up and comers’ identified in the SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, developers, IT operations and security space, 28 have grown into $1bn and over businesses. Dropbox ($10bn), Stripe ($5bn) and Zenefits ($5bn) are the three biggest hitters.

The report outlines a variety of ways in which the cloud has outperformed its predicted market cap. For CEOs, BVP outlines major trends and coming disruptions; industry cloud coming of age, further commoditisation of IaaS, more merger and acquisition from legacy vendors who are “cornered animals” ahead, and the dawning of enterprise mobile. BVP predicts the coming five years will be “fatal” to many legacy vendors, who were caught in the innovator’s dilemma; now it’s too late to build and too expensive to buy.

You can find the full 47 page report here. Do you agree with the predictions and issues raised?