Monthly Archives: September 2015

cloud backup, Enterprise IT, Fujitsu, News & Analysis

New Fujitsu data protection appliance backs up hybrid IT

FujitsuFujitsu has announced its new Rapid Recovery Appliance, which it claimed will make it easier to install a cloud backup as a service (BaaS) offering. The new appliance will make Fujitsu’s globally available Fujitsu Cloud BaaS more resilient and secure, it claimed.

The pre-configured system is designed to be installed on the customer’s premises in order to give users of hybrid IT systems greater control over their data protection processes. The new system will solve the logistical problems created by the mixture of internal IT and external cloud services that many companies now have, according to Fujitsu.

The system should combine the benefits of a backup and recovery appliance with the convenience of cloud-computing’s ‘pay-as-you-grow’ pricing policies and data security. According to Fujitsu, it makes an enterprise’s data both secure and readily recoverable, wherever it resides.

The new Fujitsu BaaS automatically replicates data to the secure cloud for offsite data protection. It facilitates the rapid recovery of recent local backup data through the use of Fujitsu’s cloud-based backup data and retrieval services. The system uses deduplication technology from Seagate and compression techniques to minimise the cost of transferring large volumes of data across the cloud.

Fujitsu Cloud BaaS will use 256-bit AES encryption to convert data both in-flight and at-rest in both the onsite appliance backup vault and the cloud backup vault. The BaaS Rapid Recovery Appliance also provides automated, continuous cloud replication, helping to cut the costs and resources needed to maintain system integrity.

The pre-configured system will cut the storage footprint and minimise the bandwidth costs associated with cloud backup, said Fujitsu’s Global Offering Manager James Jefferd. The main business benefit, he said, is that it simplifies and speeds up a process that hybrid clouds could make more complicated for end users.

“With the trend toward a cloud service delivery model, IT buyers want easy-to-integrate cloud offerings that combine the benefits of cloud with existing assets,” said Jefferd. The BaaS Rapid Recovery Appliance can replace traditional on-site, tape-based backup with an easy to use flexible system, he said.

Gartner analyst Dave Russell predicted it would be good for remote-office and departmental computing environments. “Most organisations cite concerns over security as their top cloud issue. The greater issue is often latency, so a disk-to-disk-to-cloud model is emerging,” said Russell.

M&A, Microsoft, News & Analysis, productivity, Volometrix

Microsoft buys VoloMetrix to include people analytics in its cloud offering

MicrosoftMicrosoft has bought Seattle-based people analytics software maker VoloMetrix. The new addition will become part of an organisational analytics offering to Microsoft’s cloud service customers.

VoloMetrix uses information about employee email and calendar use to assess their individual and collective productivity. The system can also pull in data from Salesforce and other sources. By identifying employees that have too many meetings or who create excessive email traffic it can help companies manage their time resources more effectively.

According to Microsoft corporate vice president Rajesh Jha the newly acquired technology will be a strand in Microsoft’s new organisational analytics service Delve which will be unveiled for previews in October. Eventually, the service will become part of Microsoft’s cloud service Office 365.

The terms of the acquisition have not been disclosed. VoloMetrix co-founder and CEO Ryan Fuller blogged that joining Microsoft means the company can grow far more quickly. “Microsoft has a huge vision to reinvent productivity and a set of assets in Office 365 that are fundamental to how work gets done,” Fuller said.

VoluMetrix had previously raised $17 million in funding, including a $12 million cash injection in September 2014. Its enterprise clients include Boeing, Facebook, Genentech, Qualcomm, Seagate and Symantec.

Quantifying employee productivity is a new growth area with two start ups, Culture Amp and VoloMetrix, leading the field. These systems collate data about employees’ electronic calendar and email behaviour and use that data to assess people’s impact at work.

The systems can expose those who spend all their time “managing up” to senior executives or promoting themselves in status meetings, rather than working, according to Volometric founder Fuller. “You can quickly see the load senior executives are imposing, as well as the social graph of who else is affected,” said Fuller.

Cloud based people analytics will be used to understand the external and internal relationships and drive corporate decision-making, Fuller said: “Once a company understands the behaviours that correlate to success, they can measure them.”

In anticipation of opposition over privacy issues, VoloMetrix recently hired former Microsoft privacy strategist, Peter Cullen, to advise it. Reports are currently anonymous and private but individuals can see their own statistics.

Australian rival Culture Amp, used by enterprises like Airbnb, Box, Etsy, GoDaddy and Jawbone,

received $6.3 million in Series A funding from Felicis Ventures, Index Ventures and Blackbird Ventures in March 2015.

Mac, Parallels RAS, Parallels Remote Application Server, RAS, RDP Client Mac, Remote Application Server, Virtualization

Why is Parallels RAS the Best Option for an RDP Client for Mac?

Right from its inception, Apple has been a major contender in the technology segment. While it poses a great challenge for Windows in the desktop OS segment, it also owns a major portion of the mobile OS market share. IDC reports that Apple shipped a record high number of devices (2.34 million Macs) in Q3 […]

The post Why is Parallels RAS the Best Option for an RDP Client for Mac? appeared first on Parallels Blog.

Uncategorized

Cloud adoption frustration: It’s not whether you move, it’s who you move with

(c)iStock.com/AnthiaCumming

Three quarters of UK businesses are experiencing frustration with cloud adoption, according to a new study from Arlington Research and StratoGen.

The research, which polled 1,000 UK senior business executives, found more than a third (36%) of respondents admitting they host fewer than 10% of their IT applications in the cloud. One in five polled said their main issue with cloud technology was the cost, while 17% cited insufficient availability of applications and 16% opted for a lack of IT support.

The report argues a lack of business growth with cloud technologies is hampering UK executives – and more worryingly, many want out. One in three (33%) of respondents admit they are ready to remove their business off the cloud completely, while a further 31% are considering a similar move. Meanwhile 17% of respondents argue their current cloud solutions prevent their company from growing, and 14% are worried downtime issues impact on employee productivity and earnings.

Naturally, one can raise an eyebrow as to why Stratogen, a provider of VMware cloud hosting with data centres in three continents, would publish survey results decrying the state of cloud technologies. Yet according to chief commercial officer Karl Robinson, it’s not the issue of moving to the cloud, it’s who you move with.

“A cloud platform should always be fit for a business’s individual needs, with in-built scalability to allow for growth without surprising cost hikes,” said Robinson.

He added: “It is clear UK businesses today have a distinct lack of confidence in the cloud’s ability to deliver the benefits it is capable of. To truly instil trust, cloud solutions must prove the business value being provided. Until then, the business benefits of mass cloud adoption will not be realised.”

Recent research on the topic of adoption has been similarly gloomy. More than half of participants in an August study from Oracle admitted their IT organisations were unprepared for the competitive threat of moving to the cloud.

Uncategorized

Back to Business: A Round-up of Resources for Windows Server 2003 Migration | @CloudExpo #Cloud

Transitioning from the freedom of summer to the structure of back to work and school can be tough for all of us. Yet, September is a time of renewal, a time to refocus on our goals and remember that, sometimes, making big changes begins with small ones. The key is not to overwhelm ourselves, but to keep moving forward, often with small steps at a time.
We know that the big work of migrating hundreds of thousands of machines running Windows Server 2003 — including 175 million websites or one fifth of the internet, according to recent numbers provided by Internet services firm Netcraft — still lies ahead.

read more

Uncategorized

The Case for Disaster Recovery Services Beyond Business Continuity By @Stratustician | @CloudExpo #Cloud

Disaster Recovery isn’t a new concept for IT folks. We’ve been backing up data for years to offsite locations, and used in-house data duplication in order to prevent the risks of losing data stores. But now that cloud adoption has increased, there have been some shifts in how traditional Disaster Recovery is being handled.
First, we’re seeing increased adoption of cloud-based backup and disaster recovery. Gartner stated that between 2012 and 2016, one third of organizations are going to be looking at new solutions to replace current ones particularly because of cost, complexity or capability. These new solutions not just address data, but the applications themselves, and are paving way for Disaster Recovery as a Services (DRaaS). Unfortunately, there is still some confusion as to when cloud services may suffice for disaster recovery, or if looking at full-fledged DRaaS makes more sense for organizations. Let’s explore four of the key considerations when it comes to DRaaS and cloud backup services.

read more

cloud security, Funding, Netskope, News & Analysis

Cloud broker Netskope raises $75 million for analytics based security enforcement services

Secure cloudCloud security firm Netskope has received $75 million to develop its policy enforcement systems for cloud applications.

Describing itself as a cloud access security broker, Netskope raised the investment in a Series D funding round led by Iconiq Capital. Existing investors Accel Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners and the Social + Capital Partnership also participated.

Netskope monitors and enforces policy on data shared across cloud applications. It aims to give companies an instant view of the use of their data and creates plans of action to prevent betrayed confidences and information leakage. In May 2014 investors staked $35 million in a Series C round of funding. It total, the company has raised $130 million in investment.

Data protection for cloud based apps is an emerging niche in the security market which, according to analysis by Gartner, has a market value of $5 billion. The new genre of Cloud Access Security Brokers solves problems that cannot be addressed by traditional firewalls, according to Gartner.

Netskope’s founder claims that the company differentiates itself by being more precise, and going deeper into the data. This, says founder and CEO Sanjay Beri, helps customers gain better understanding of their data’s exposure.

While cloud apps give the workforce better tools and flexibility, the IT department has to manage the proliferation of data shared across the masses of unsanctioned cloud apps, said Beri. Since there are often ten times more cloud apps in use than IT departments are aware of, this is creating a massive security problem, which Netskope aims to solve, according to Beri.

“Only Netskope provides surgical visibility and control for all cloud apps, whether sanctioned by IT or not,” said Beri. Mobile apps in particular will create security problems for enterprises, as the bring your own device trend continues, according to Netskope, which offers a data loss prevention system that examines 400 different file types across over 3000 different data identifiers. Its own internal figures suggest that 90 per cent of the apps used by its enterprise customers are unsanctioned and not considered as enterprise ready. In addition, 13.6 per cent of those app users have had their account credentials compromised.

The new capital will be used to expand sales, marketing, customer success, engineering and research operations worldwide, adding to its current 250 person headcount. New data centres are planned for Asia-Pacific and Europe to meet growing demand.

Uncategorized

Why the C-Suite Should Look to IT to Stay Competitive By @FerventGeek | @CloudExpo #Cloud

While the Beatles may not have been too concerned about cloud uptime or network security when they wrote their famous ballad, they had the right idea about turning to friends for a helping hand. It’s a lesson CIOs should take to heart.
After all, the IT department – including network, systems, applications and database administrators – is often the eyes, ears and hands of the CIO, providing front-line information and making recommendations on the latest technology and IT methods to ensure that business is running at optimum efficiency and achieving competitive advantage through technology.

read more

Uncategorized

The Increasing Value of Big Data Analytics By @Dana_Gardner | @BigDataExpo #BigData

Converged infrastructure solutions are hastening the path to big-data business value and cloud deployment options.
We’ll also delve into how the right balance between open-source and commercial IT products helps in creating a big-data capability, and we’ll further explore how converged infrastructure solutions are hastening the path to big-data business value and cloud deployment options.

read more

Uncategorized

Public Boxes for #DevOps By @ElasticBox | @DevOpsSummit #API #Containers #Microservices

ElasticBox, the agile application delivery manager, announced freely available public boxes for the DevOps community. ElasticBox works with enterprises to help them deploy any application to any cloud. Public boxes are curated reference boxes that represent some of the most popular applications and tools for orchestrating deployments at scale.

Boxes are an adaptive way to represent reusable infrastructure as components of code. Boxes contain scripts, variables, and metadata to automate processes for deploying applications to any cloud infrastructure. Stitched together, boxes model complex processes like deploying or upgrading multi-tier enterprise applications.

read more