Monthly Archives: September 2015

cloud adoption, Europe, News & Analysis, Research, UK

Mounting frustration with cloud technology is stifling adoption – research

An influential group of senior business executives is being disillusioned by experiences with cloud hosted applications, according to new research. The proportions, though relatively low, are growing as cloud disenchantment threatens to set in.

The revelations come from research by cloud service provider Stratogen. Its main finding was that the expense, the lack of both applications and support and the downtime involved are all disappointing the company decision makers who backed cloud computing in their companies.

If news of the disenchantment spreads among the business community, the bad feedback could nip cloud growth in the bud, according to Karl Robinson, chief commercial officer at StratoGen. “The research highlights a major problem for cloud technology,” said Robinson, “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.”

The study, conducted independently by Arlington Research, involved a survey of 1000 senior business executives. Around three quarters (74 per cent) of the survey group reported day to day frustrations with using cloud hosted applications.

The main complaint for 20 per cent of the study group was the high cost of their cloud applications. Another minority (17 per cent) complained about the lack of available cloud applications. The lack of IT support was mentioned by 16 per cent of the survey and one tenth of those surveyed were not happy with the amount of downtime.

As a result, a minority of the survey group (17 per cent of the business leaders quizzed) are concerned that their cloud systems are preventing their company from growing. Around the same proportion (14 per cent) are worried that downtime is affecting employee productivity and creating a loss of company earnings.

Though these are complaints from a small minority, the survey figures seem to indicate that their influence is disproportionally high, since 33 per cent of the business leaders say they are now ready to remove their business off the cloud completely. A further 31 per cent are also considering a cloud exodus.

“The perceived high cost of cloud hosting is a direct result of the unexpected metered costs businesses are all too often hit with,” said Robinson, “migration challenges and the time invested in integrating cloud technology with legacy applications can further increase the cost of cloud computing.”

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NXTmonitor, @eCubeSystems’ DevOps Solution | @DevOpsSummit #DevOps

eCube Systems has released NXTmonitor, a full featured application orchestration solution. NXTmonitor, which inherited the code base of NXTminder, has been extended to support multi-discipline processes and will act as a DevOps utility in a heterogeneous enterprise environment. Previously, NXTminder was packaged with NXTera middleware to configure and manage Entera and NXTera RPC servers.
“Since we are widening the focus of this solution to DevOps, we felt the need to change the name to NXTmonitor to accurately reflect the operations monitoring features it provides,” says Kevin Barnes, President of eCube Systems.

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Analytics, Big Data, Hadoop, News & Analysis, SAP, Telco Cloud, Vora

SAP announces improvements to cloud platform and Vora analytics software

SAP HANA VoraSAP has released new software that it claims will make analytics easier for users of open source Hadoop software.

The SAP HANA Vora is a new in-memory query engine that improves the performance of the Apache Spark execution framework. As a result, anyone running data analysis should be able to get better interactions with their data if it’s held on Hadoop and companies will benefit from more useful intelligence.

SAP claims this new software will overcome the general ‘lack of business process awareness’ that exists in companies across enterprise apps, analytics, big data and Internet of Things (IoT) sources. The software will make it easier for data scientists and developers to get access to the right information by simplifying the access to corporate and Hadoop data.

SAP HANA Vora will bring most benefit in industries where Big Data analytics in business process context is paramount. SAP identified financial services, telecommunications, healthcare and manufacturing as target markets. The savings created by the new software will come from a number of areas, it said. In the financial sector, the return on investment in the systems will come from mitigating risk and fraud by detecting new anomalies in financial transactions and customer history data.

Telecoms companies will benefit from optimising their bandwidth, SAP claims, as telcos use the software to analyse traffic patterns to avoid network bottlenecks and improve the quality of service. Manufacturers will benefit from preventive maintenance and improved product re-call processes as a result of SAL HANA Vora’s newly delivered powers of analysis of bills-of-material, services records and sensor data.

The use of Hadoop and SAP HANA to manage large unstructured data sets left room for improvement, according to user Aziz Safa, Intel IT Enterprise Applications and Application Strategy VP. “One of the key requirements is better analyses of big data,” said Safa, “but mining these large data sets for contextual information in Hadoop is a challenge.”

SAP HANA Vora will be released by the end of September, when a cloud-based developer edition will also be available. Here’s a SAP vid on the matter.

 


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Announcing @Pythian Named “Bronze Sponsor” of @CloudExpo | #DevOps #BigData #IoT #Microservices

SYS-CON Events announced today that Pythian, a global IT services company specializing in helping companies leverage disruptive technologies to optimize revenue-generating systems, has been named “Bronze Sponsor” of SYS-CON’s 17th Cloud Expo, which will take place on November 3–5, 2015, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
Founded in 1997, Pythian is a global IT services company that helps companies compete by adopting disruptive technologies such as cloud, Big Data, advanced analytics, and DevOps to advance innovation and increase agility. Specializing in designing, implementing, and managing systems that directly contribute to revenue growth and business success, Pythian’s highly skilled technical teams work as an integrated extension of our clients’ organizations to deliver continuous transformation and uninterrupted operational excellence.

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Citrix, Citrix Workspace Suite, Parallels RAS, Parallels Remote Application Server, RAS, Remote Application Server, Virtualization

Citrix Workspace Suite Features vs. Parallels RAS

Citrix offers a range of products that cater to different virtualization needs of business networks. XenApp is a software that virtualizes applications and publishes them to remote users. XenDesktop software lets you deliver virtual desktops across remote networks. The main drawback with Citrix virtualization products is that you have to purchase licenses for each one […]

The post Citrix Workspace Suite Features vs. Parallels RAS appeared first on Parallels Blog.

News, Services

StorageCraft’s New Pricing

San Francisco, StorageCraft Technology Corporation has recently announced that they are going to adopt a new pricing model as well as enhancements for its StorageCraft Cloud Services disaster recovery solution. This new model allows users to recover their systems and data without excessive costs by permitting users to customize cloud coverage. This customization allows the service to meet the unique needs and budgets of individual customers. Users will also have access to systems and data anytime with instant failover in a cloud built specifically for disaster recovery. Several recovery options are offered by StorageCraft Cloud Services to decrease system downtime as well as data loss. Users may choose from the myriads of options according to what fits their unique budget.

StorageCraft cloud services

 

Mike Kunz, StorageCraft’s Vice President of Worldwide Sales, has commented: “Data is the life-blood of a business. A business owner with data in a cloud should not be forced to pay a ransom to gain access to his or her data after a disaster. The new, simple pricing model makes StorageCraft Cloud Services as affordable as generic clouds, while offering recovery options that other clouds do not offer. To put it simply, StorageCraft Cloud Services’ pricing allows users to focus on the recovery — not on what is affordable to recover or how to pay for a recovery. Other vendors charge high fees at the time of recovery, such as essential CPU, RAM, and bandwidth resources.  StorageCraft Cloud Services supports your business’ recovery point objectives and recovery time objectives, including full virtualization.”

StorageCraft Cloud Services allows users to store backup images offsite in the StorageCraft Cloud and gives users the opportunity run networked systems in the Cloud when local access to systems and data is unavailable. StorageCraft Cloud Services is offered in a myriad of budget-friendly tiered options and service+ levels, Cloud Basic (Secure offsite storage of your critical business backups with full system restore via a bare metal restore drive), Cloud+ (Includes everything in Cloud Basic, plus immediate file and folder recovery), and finally Cloud Premium (Includes everything in Cloud+, as well as instant virtualization of data and systems in the cloud). Since its initial launch in 2012, StorageCraft Cloud Services has exemplified both extreme growth and stability. The company, StorageCraft, has been renowned for both its speed and reliability within the Cloud Industry.

The post StorageCraft’s New Pricing appeared first on Cloud News Daily.

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Future Business Trends in Tech: Looking Forward to 2025 By @Stratustician | @CloudExpo #Cloud #BigData

When it comes to how trends like Big Data, mobility, cloud computing and social networking have impacted organizations, it’s clear that it has led to a large shift that has paved the way for a new market of startups who boldly embrace these trends and other organizations who are still struggling to keep up. But these trends have only started to pave the way for what we might see in the next 10 years, and the future is exciting.

We’ve seen the impact the four tech mega trends; Big Data, Always-Connected Mobile Devices, Social Networking and Cloud Computing, have on the way organizations operate. These trends mean they now need to be able to not just spot new opportunities, but also be able to innovate in an agile way, demonstrate transparency and trust, and deliver a unique and personalized user experience 24/7 in real time. These changes have had a significant impact in how the global economy interacts between customers and organizations across all platforms both physical and digital.

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AppZero Joins Microsoft Enterprise Cloud Alliance | @CloudExpo #Cloud

Cloud and datacenter migration innovator AppZero has joined the Microsoft Enterprise Cloud Alliance Program. AppZero is a fast, flexible way to move Windows Server applications from any source machine – physical or virtual – to any destination server, in any cloud or datacenter, using its patented container technology. AppZero’s container is also called a Virtual Application Appliance (VAA). To facilitate Microsoft Azure onboarding, AppZero has two purpose-built offerings: AppZero SP for Azure, a SaaS portal, https://azure.appzero.com/, and an Azure Certified app in the Microsoft Azure Marketplace. The first five migrations on AppZero SP for Azure can be done at no cost.

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cloud transition, Enterprise IT, Europe, News & Analysis, study, UK

Cloud strategy still tentative for many UK corporations – study

IT managers and CIOs should not feel they’ve missed the boat as the majority of enterprises have only just started their cloud journey, according to a new enterprise study.

If a study of 200 senior IT managers in large public and private sector organisations is an accurate reflection of the nation’s IT, only 3 per cent of enterprises have arrived at their final cloud destination. Not far from half (41 per cent) of IT managers surveyed were categorised as ‘still taking their first tentative steps towards cloud’ by the survey conductor Vanson Bourne. The study, run on behalf of UK cloud services provider Redcentric, also identified another significantly large group (32 per cent) that said they’re only half way to their cloud destination.

The study also identified the five types of personality trait that emerge among IT managers and CIOs as the pressure to adopt cloud technology builds. Five genres of manager were identified – in ascending order of caution – as Experimenters, Evolutionaries, Accelerators, Progressives and Cautionaries.

The relative proportions of these self-identified personality types did not always match the spread of cloud installations, however. Four per cent of cloud managers identified themselves as ‘risk-taking experimenters’ who were ‘willing to accept the ups and downs of moving to the cloud and not entirely sure the direction they will take’. This roughly equated to the proportion of managers (3%) who were satisfied they had completed their cloud journey.

Equal numbers of IT mangers and CIOs saw themselves as Accelerators (16%) who want to move to the cloud as fast as possible and Progressives (16%) who want to use cloud to make bold business changes. Taken together, these categories indicate that 32 per cent of the study group are frustrated in their ambitions for the cloud. This matched exactly the number (32 per cent) of companies that have yet to reach the half way point of their cloud migration.

The majority of the study group (50 per cent) identified themselves as Evolutionary and stated that they take a steady approach where cloud is a natural progression for the business.

There is a significant group of Cautionaries (15 per cent) who are most cynical about cloud overall. However, only 3 per cent of the group have not embarked on cloud projects, which indicates that 12 per cent of IT managers and CIOs have embarked on a cloud migration without having any faith in the technology.

“We wanted to help UK organisations understand where they are and where their journey is likely to take them next,” said Redcentric sales director Andy Mills, “The findings show there is huge untapped potential still to explore.”

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SaaS provider Apttus raises $108m series C funding, takes aggressive approach

(c)iStock.com/RyanKing999

Software as a service (SaaS) provider Apttus has secured $108 million (£70.4m) in series C funding, just seven months after its previous funding round.

Apttus delivers SaaS apps providing an unbroken funnel throughout the sales process, with the company claiming to pioneer the ‘quote to cash’ cycle, which is an end to end process covering an entire sales lifecycle in the cloud. The latest cash injection comes after a $37m round in September 2013 and $41m in February this year, with the investors this time round include Iconiq Capital, K1 Capital, KIA, and Salesforce Ventures.

Securing more than $100m such a short time after a previous round naturally indicates a fast growing company, yet the company shunned venture capital for the first seven years of its existence.  Now, having earned a unicorn valuation the company is going for the jugular, as Apttus CEO Kirk Krappe explains. “It’s about market opportunity, pure and simple,” he tells CloudTech. “Hiring one salesperson means bringing on more engineers, a BDR (business development representative) to develop leads, and more.

“Our current customers represent about 1% of our target accounts, and if we’re going to maximise our potential, it was time to expand, via funding.”

The link with Salesforce is key, as Apttus is delivered on the Salesforce1 platform. According to Krappe, the funding round is a ‘tremendous show of support’ from the cloud software giant – which is also a customer of Apttus – adding: “Apttus and Salesforce are in sync – where their process ends, the quote to cash cycle begins.”

A key sign of Apttus’ expansion is through its workforce; the California-based firm began 2015 with 500 employees, is now at 900 and aims to end the year at 1400. Apttus has also opened offices in London, Sydney and Chicago, with another in Japan on the way. Krappe explains: “That kind of growth does not come without a unique set of growing pains. The next 12 months will be about getting our team and workforce ready for the next step, whatever or whenever it may be.”

Regarding that next step, Apttus is understandably remaining tight lipped. After the last funding round, many in the media speculated whether Apttus would go to IPO or be acquired, possibly by Salesforce. Krappe notes the company is under no pressure from investors, saying: “There are no definite plans as far as a liquidity event – it simply could go either way.”