Ask anyone who is working with data “What is your biggest challenge?” The answer most of the time is “the inability to use our data fully.” This and similar statements signify one common thread of pain. With data growing at 44% over the next 10 years, it goes without saying that your business is going to be inundated with data from all sides. With “making a profit” on the minds of over 35% of SMB survey respondents, it goes without saying that the challenge is multi-fold with being able to sustain the business and ensure profitability being prime.
Monthly Archives: February 2016
Rackspace grows Q4 2015 net revenue 11%, hopes riding on AWS performance
Rackspace has reported results that surpassed expectations for the final quarter of 2015 but it acknowledged its faces an uphill struggle and fortunes may now be tied to Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Though the Texas-based managed cloud company reported net revenue for the fourth quarter of 2015 to be up by 10.7% on the same period in 2014 it expects a fall in the next financial quarter. Rackspace predicted that the Q4 revenue total of $523 million will fall to around $517 million in the next quarter (Q1 2016). For the full year of 2016, Rackspace expects revenue to be between $2.08 billion and $2.16 billion.
Top of the highlights that Rackspace listed for the year 2015 was the strategy to support AWS, Microsoft’s Azure public cloud and Microsoft Office 365. These moves will open up ‘huge and fast-growing new markets’, predicted CEO Taylor Rhodes. “We intend to be the number one managed services provider for AWS, and we are well on our way toward that goal.”
Outsourcing has made the company more dynamics, according to Rhodes: “Our business is becoming less capital intensive, resulting in higher free cash flow.”
Capital efficiency initiatives helped Rackspace reduce capital expenditures to 23% of its revenue, and the company’s adjusted free cash flow rose to $196 million for 2015. Rackspace shared its increased Adjusted Free Cash Flow with stockholders through a major share buyback that is still underway.
Since the October launch of Rackspace Fanatical Support for AWS, Rackspace has won 100 customers, while its technical support team has collectively earned 230 AWS technical certifications and more than 1,100 business and technical accreditations. In January 2016 Rackspace appointed Brian Stein as its new head of global engineering. According to Rhodes, the support team is the key to expansion, as it aims to sell its managed services customers more products. The tide of recent events has seen incremental workloads go to AWS, which slowed growth but Rackspace’s new multi-cloud portfolio can “reignite that essential part of our growth engine,” Rhodes said.
Of the AWS customers Rackspace has signed, 70% have chosen Rackspace’s highest service level, Aviator. “This indicates we are adding significant value on top of the AWS infrastructure,” said Rhodes.
HPE launches AppTrace Pulse to monitor cloud apps
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has launched a service that developer clients can use to monitor their cloud app performances.
The HPE AppPulse Trace is intended for developers and DevOps teams to use for isolating and fixing problems. The new module fits into HPE’s Application Performance Monitoring (APM) software suite and is integrated with HPE’s analytics engine Vertica.
HPE claims it can pinpoint the exact lines of code and server location at the root of every glitch in the cloud. It achieves this by trawling massive volumes of data produced by applications and end user interactions. AppPulse Trace can find faults in user interactions, analyse crashes and measure resource usage, according to HPE. The intelligence can then be used by developers to fine tune apps, create new tools and rethink their approach to building applications.
AppPulse Trace works alongside two other modules already available, AppPulse Active and AppPulse Mobile. Active lets developers emulate real-user behaviour with scripts and synthetic transaction robots. This helps to model events and identify problems to fix before apps are put into production. AppPulse Mobile tracks the digital user experience of mobile apps in production, giving developers and DevOps teams real-user data so they can prioritise the issues affect users most. It also gives instant insight into the health of any application.
With developers under pressure to deliver apps at short notice this could be an indispensable tool according to Tony Sumpster, general manager of HPE’s IT Operations Management.
Beta test user Chris Trimper, Application Services Manager at Independent Health Association said it saved him nearly a whole week of work. “The worst way to monitor performance is to wait for someone to complain. With HPE AppPulse we saved 36 IT hours a month by reusing scripts and we reduced our average app response time from 12 seconds down to 4 seconds,” he said.
IBM and Microsoft race to develop Blockchain-As-A-Service
IBM has made 44,000 lines of code available to the Linux Foundation’s open source Hyperledger Project in a bid to speed the development of a Blockchain ledger for secure distributed online financial transactions.
IBM is now competing with a number of vendors, such as Microsoft Azure and Digital Asset, to bring Blockchain services to market either as a Bitcoin crypto currency enabler or for wider applications in financial services trading and even the IoT.
In a statement IBM said it wants to help create a new class of distributed ledger applications by letting developers use IBM’s new blockchain services available on Bluemix, where they can get DevOps tools to create and run blockchain apps on the IBM Cloud or z System mainframes. New application programming interfaces mean Blockchain apps will now be able to access existing transactions on these systems to support new payment, settlement, supply chain and business processes.
IBM also unveiled plans to put Blockchain technology to use on the Internet of Things (IoT) through its Watson IoT Platform. Information from RFID-based locations, barcode-scans or device-reported data could be managed through IBM’s version of Blockchain with devices communicating with the ledger to update or validate smart contracts. Under the scheme, the movement of an IoT-connected package through multiple distribution points could be managed and updated on a Blockchain system to give a more accurate and timely record of events in the supply chain.
The vendor intends to foster greater levels of Blockchain app design activity through its new IBM Garages that will open in London, New York, Singapore and Tokyo.
In Tokyo IBM and the Japan Exchange Group have agreed to test the potential of blockchain technology for use in trading in low transaction markets. As the Linux Foundation’s Hyperledger Project evolves, the joint IBM and JPX evaluation work will adapt to use of the code produced by that effort.
Meanwhile, Microsoft is to launch its own Blockchain as a service (BaaS) offering within in its Azure service portfolio with a certified version of the online ledger scheduled to be launched in April.
In January 2016, Microsoft announced that it is developing Blockchain related services in its Azure’s DevTest Labs. In November BCN reported that Microsoft has launched a cloud-based ledger system for would-be bitcoin traders.
Microsoft is also inviting potential service provider partners pioneer the use of Blockchain technology in the cloud.
Announcing @YourSpeedyCloud to Exhibit at @CloudExpo New York | #Cloud
SYS-CON Events announced today that SpeedyCloud will exhibit at SYS-CON’s 18th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on June 7-9, 2016, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY.
SpeedyCloud is the IaaS brand owned by Beijing SpeedyCloud Technology Co., Ltd., a leader in the cloud industry. As a general solution provider, SpeedyCloud provides IaaS for Internet and enterprises companies.
Why data security in the cloud is your responsibility
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Concerns about data security have always been one of the key inhibitors for the take-up of cloud – yet its rapid growth in the last year suggests that such fears now are being overcome.
In many cases, they were overstated and were more about overall supplier risk management, which relies on the supplier’s financial security and terms of contract. With appropriate due diligence cloud can actually provide improved data security, because most cloud service providers will implement and manage considerably better IT security controls than internal IT departments.
There are three reasons for this. Firstly, ensuring good security is vital to the success and wellbeing of the cloud provider’s business; most reputable firms hold and maintain ISO 27000 best practice information security certifications. Many cloud providers also host data from the public sector and regulated industries, which require them to gain separate pan-government security accreditations and to be regularly security tested by independent, government approved security testers in order to maintain them. Finally, cloud providers can afford the best security technologies and the staff to maintain and update them.
Using cloud to deliver a virtualised desktop environment also has another security advantage: no data ever leaves the data centre unless the organisation’s security policy specifically allows mapping of local drives, USB memory sticks or other external storage. However, trusting your data to the cloud does not mean that your organisation can simply hand over all responsibility to its chosen cloud provider. You need to ensure that the service provider delivers the appropriate levels of information security and measure, audit the supplier yourself to ensure that the relevant security is applied and manage it as they would for every corporate risk.
First, you need to evaluate your potential supplier’s financial security and terms of contract, as you would when buying any other service, and seek out independent verification of their capabilities.
Second, and before moving any data to the cloud, ask your potential cloud service provider:
- Who is the ultimate holder of my data?
- Where is my data held? This may be particularly important if your organisation needs to comply with Safe Harbour principles on the protection of personal data. Be aware that your cloud provider has to tell you where they will be storing your data. It is important to ensure it is stored in a jurisdiction that has the correct safeguards in place and does not contravene the Data Protection Act.
- Do you operate good processes and can you prove it?
- What specific security standards and levels of security are you applying to my data?
- How can you guarantee that no-one else can get access to my data unless I specifically want them to?
One organisation for which data security is paramount is a logistics company handling and storing high value items. Rather than managing their own data security, they now use a managed cloud service from Fordway which provides their specialised applications to virtualised desktops. Data is held safely in the cloud, and users cannot store confidential data on their desktops. They have 24×7 monitoring and support and a fully managed DR service, with data snapshotted and replicated to the company’s backup site so it can be restored quickly if required.
The risks of getting it wrong
The risks of a data security breach will differ for each organisation. For some, the risk is primarily the loss of sensitive corporate data, which could have serious financial and operational implications. A survey by PwC for the Department of Business, Industry and Skills found that the average cost of a security breach is £1.46m – £3.14m for a large organisation and £75k – £311k for a small business.
For companies developing innovative new products, the risks can be even greater. Commercial espionage is not merely idle speculation by IT companies keen to sell the latest security products. In a speech last year GCHQ director general for cyber security Ciaran Martin noted that intellectual property is valuable as never before, and referred to an “astonishing” level of cyber attacks on UK industry sponsored by other states.
Organisations also have to meet ever-stricter statutory compliance and governance obligations, such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the PCI (Payment Card Industry) directive and in the UK the Data Protection Act. If they which breach regulatory requirements for handling sensitive customer data they will both reduce customer confidence and can be fined by the relevant authorities. The Data Protection Act is rigorously enforced by the ICO, which has the power to issue penalty notices of up to £500,000 for serious breaches of the Act. There are also plans for a new General Data Protection Regulation which could see businesses fined up to 4% of their annual global turnover for breaching new EU data protection laws.
Data security, then, is not something to be taken lightly. However, the cloud offers significant advantages over in-house data storage provided that organisations take the appropriate precautions before choosing a cloud service. Evaluate your potential supplier carefully, ensure that you know exactly where your data will be held and what security processes and standards will be applied, and continue to audit your supplier regularly to ensure standards are maintained.
Wikibon research argues ‘true’ private cloud market is smaller than AWS share
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Organisations are starting to conflate the private and public clouds – yet new research from Wikibon finds the market size of ‘true’ private cloud implementations is lower than the revenues of Amazon Web Services (AWS), the leading public infrastructure as a service player.
Wikibon’s research aims to clarify private cloud and differentiate between solutions marketed by vendors and implementations by businesses. The research body assesses the true private cloud at $7 billion (£4.9bn), lower than AWS at $7.9bn and significantly lower than the overall IaaS public cloud market of $25bn in 2015. The analysis argues the private cloud market will in time be of a similar level to the traditional on-premises IT market as the latter drops in size.
According to the analysis, the top four companies in the private cloud base are HP Enterprise, Oracle, VMware, and EMC, with IBM, NetApp and Cisco trailing.
The author of the piece, Brian Gracely, assesses several reasons why private cloud has not kept up with the growth of public cloud:
- Virtualisation is not cloud: Wikibon argues the capabilities of virtualisation are now mature, and the need for it is slowing
- Cloud management is not a high priority IT focus: it is very difficult to be a standalone cloud management software business, according to the researchers
- Do business apps need a private cloud? The ownership of SaaS applications is often managed outside the core IT teams
It’s nothing new, but the changing focus on private cloud means providers are looking at products which offer the benefits of both. CenturyLink’s launch in 2014 aimed to offer the agility of a public cloud with the security of a private cloud, while earlier this month Rackspace’s announcement attempted to do similarly.
The research also examined the highest paying tech skills, with HANA ahead of database Cassandra, Cloudera, platform as a service in general and OpenStack. A piece from Firebrand Training featured in this publication earlier this week argued database, Linux, and security as among the most in-demand cloud skills for 2016.
Helping Clients Understand Cloud Computing and Cloud Technology | @CloudExpo #Cloud
What is the cloud? Does my data really sit on fluffy white clouds and float above the world? What happens when an airplane drives through my spreadsheet, or a bird gets stuck in my document?
The scope of cloud technology and cloud computing is growing, as is its adoption. Your prospects and clients could be using it right now and not even know it. When working with the right IT services provider, cloud technology helps small-to-medium-sized businesses scale up the IT needs of their companies much faster than setting up new hardware.
New Abilities and Insights Can Create New Business Value By @Dana_Gardner | @CloudExpo #Cloud
A thought leadership discussion that focuses on advancements in business applications and the modern infrastructure that supports them, and what that combination portends for the future.
As we enter 2016, the power of business networks is combining with advanced platforms and mobile synergy to change the very nature of business and commerce. We’ll now explore the innovations that companies can expect — and how that creates new abilities and instant insights — and how companies can, in turn, create new business value and better ways to reach and serve their customers.
Database as a Service Platform Improves High Availability | @CloudExpo #Cloud
No one comes close to Tesora’s database as a service platform in terms of the combination of features and choice of 13 different databases.
Today the company makes available new features in its database as a service – based on OpenStack Trove – which make it easier for administrators to manage disparate database technologies through their life cycle.