I love EMC World (though I can’t say the same about Las Vega$). I get an opportunity to talk to customers who are at the dirty and grimy frontline of trying to derive value from all of this Big Data hoopla. They teach me tons!
One theme that came up several times in our conversations was the following:
“I can’t get the Business to engage in an envisioning type of engagement. We have lost their trust. So we are forced to start our Big Data journey from the technology.”
Monthly Archives: May 2016
81% of CIOs believe legacy systems are having negative impact on business
Research from Trustmarque has highlighted 81% of CIOs believe legacy infrastructures are having a negative impact on the IT department’s productivity levels.
The report stated the majority of CIOs see the legacy systems as a drain on IT resources and 86% believe IT management has become more complex over the last five years, owing to the fact teams have to juggle between the impact of cloud and mobile, as well as delivering on legacy systems. Due to the increased number of SLA’s and an increasingly diverse number of vendors to support both new and legacy technologies, 58% are struggling to deliver a consistent level of IT across the business.
“Providing comprehensive, consistent IT support in today’s complex IT world is a huge challenge for CIOs. It’s unsurprising many are finding IT management a growing burden,” said Mike Henson, Director, Cloud and Managed Services, Trustmarque. “Particularly where there is a lot of legacy technology, CIOs have an important decision to make – whether to continue to support legacy IT, or explore migration to the cloud – where support costs can be considerably lower.
“Today, IT might be easier to use than ever, but it’s also much more complex to manage and support. The business IT model has shifted, digital experiences are high on the agenda, along with a desire to consume rather than build IT. This shift has caused considerable strain on CIOs’ time, resources and budgets.”
While cloud could now be seen as a priority throughout the industry, the majority of businesses are having to navigate a number of transformation projects to implement the technology. In reality, very few companies are in a position to deliver a Greenfield cloud proposition within their organization, leading to complications in managing the co-existence of cloud and legacy, as the report indicates.
One are which this is seemingly having a direct impact is on innovation. As IT complexity has increased, the report indicates the number of ‘tickets’ being raised throughout the business has also increased. This in turn keeps IT employees focused on operational tasks (“keeping the lights on”) as opposed to focusing on implementation of new technologies to support digital transformation projects. 77% of the CIOs questioned in the survey confirmed one of their top priorities was to reduce the proportion of internal resource devoted to operational IT, freeing team members up to invest more time in transformational IT projects.
“In today’s increasingly connected world, business IT is unpredictable – changing to reflect varied business needs and the ways in which modern employees want to work,” said Henson. “Many CIOs struggle to balance the need to run business IT as usual, while at the same time delivering innovative new services to demanding users. Clearly, CIOs recognise the growing need for continued innovation within their organisation – but also recognise that a lack of internal resources and skills can hamper this ambition.”
Although general consensus throughout the industry is leaning towards cloud penetrating the mainstream marketplace, it is unlikely we’ll see cloud and other emerging technologies as the default until resource can be effectively moved away from operational IT. A number of different businesses have stated the need to transform to remain competitive in the marketplace, thought the report does imply these projects are unlikely to succeed until the idea of IT as simply a support function is removed from the business mind-set.
Dynatrace and Pivotal Cloud Foundry announce new partnership
Performance management company Dynatrace has announced a new partnership with Pivotal to monitor the performance of transactions across their Pivotal Cloud Foundry app and micro-services portfolio.
Dynatrace Application Monitoring Service Broker Tile and Buildpack Extensions will offer customers the opportunity to identify and resolve performance issues during and after a cloud migration project. The team claim the new offering will enable customers to create performance standards, which will ultimately improve user experience.
“The root-cause-analysis capabilities in Dynatrace products solve the new set of challenges that a Cloud Native microservices architecture creates – namely, that there are so many moving parts, it can be difficult to identify the underlying cause of aberrant system behaviour,” said Joshua McKenty, Head of Platform Ecosystem at Pivotal.
The migration to cloud computing has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years, as companies are aiming to create more business value around the projects, building use cases which extend beyond a reduction in CAPEX/OPEX. Dynatrace claim the new product will enable customers to maintain visibility of all apps, containers and VMs under management, as well as identifying root causes of performance troughs. The new offering is mainly aimed at those focused on cloud native application development and multi-cloud deployments, with Dynatrace claiming developers can now proactively optimize end-to-end transaction latencies.
“For Pivotal Cloud Foundry users, this collaboration will result in new levels of actionable insight into their apps,” said Rob Cohen, VP of Strategic Business Development at Dynatrace. “Equally important for companies leading the Cloud Native approach, it will encourage better collaboration through data transparency, which is a key part of continuous delivery in the cloud.”
Announcing @ContentMX Named “Sponsor” of @CloudExpo New York | #Cloud
SYS-CON Events announced today that ContentMX, the marketing technology and services company with a singular mission to increase engagement and drive more conversations for enterprise, channel and SMB technology marketers, has been named “Sponsor & Exhibitor Lounge Sponsor” of SYS-CON’s 18th Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 7-9, 2016, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York.
“CloudExpo is a great opportunity to start a conversation with new prospects, but what happens after the show ends?” said Jeff Mesnik, ContentMX President. “We are here for the sponsors, resellers and cloud providers to make a plan to continue the conversation and not leave money on the show floor.”
Are the costs of cloud implementations overruling the benefits?
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Cloud computing has unquestionably had a dynamic effect on business growth and productivity, enabling mobile collaboration and scalable packages that allow for rapid expansion. One of the principal benefits given in favour of this model of computing is its ability to drive down costs, particularly when it comes to removing or reducing the need for upfront investment, and providing a stable, predictable IT subscription.
One might assume, then, that the global take-up of cloud solutions would drive costs down further even as efficiencies grow. Yet often the opposite is true, and many businesses are encountering ‘hidden’ costs they hadn’t anticipated, causing some to question the overall value of cloud migration.
Unexpected costs
While cloud service providers naturally advertise the potential IT cost-savings to be made, caution is necessary when taking into account various factors.
The first is a question of human resources. In-house IT staff will need ongoing training in order to efficiently manage the cloud architecture, from the first stages of migration to integrating systems and maintaining them. This cost is enhanced the more complex hybrid systems become, as your staff need to collaborate extensively with the service provider’s administrators.
With regard to data retrieval, some cloud service providers offer tiered storage options, with differing levels of accessibility, which allow businesses to compartmentalise their data according to how often they need to retrieve it. This means that if you should unexpectedly need access to critical data promptly, you could end up paying more than you had initially budgeted for storage.
It can also be easy to either over- or under-provision, increasing costs, until you find the solution that works best for you, while pricing models are known to change regularly, in part due to service providers finding that increasing demand or complexity of their offering is raising their own costs.
While by no means comprehensive, this list should throw some light on what is a pressing concern for businesses investing in cloud migration. Part of the issue is that many businesses still view cloud computing solely as a cost, rather than as a benefit. Even though they may be paying more than they anticipated, the importance of reliable service, increased productivity and IT agility that they gain in return cannot be overstated.
Operational costs will still tend to be substantially lower than hosting software in-house, and there are numerous advantages, just one of which is an efficiency gain in the instant release of upgraded software and application of patches.
Cost reduction strategies
The good news is there are various strategies available to lower unexpected or ‘hidden’ costs of cloud computing.
Planning is key. The more time spent before migration into the cloud determining exactly what your company’s requirements and internal resources are, the more successful that migration is likely to be in its early stages. When looking at budget, it’s advisable to factor in the costs of making a few mistakes, such as storage needs, at the beginning. Never rush into a decision when selecting a provider as if you make the wrong choice, it can be time-consuming and costly to move your data elsewhere.
Staggering the migration process is also a good idea; consider moving easier workloads across first to build up knowledge, experience and confidence among your IT team, while equally important is investing in your in-house staff so that they are optimised. It’s worth noting here that you should expect some cost in relation to this to be permanent; while cloud computing in itself is not inherently expensive, the ‘human cost’ of ongoing training, support and maintenance can be.
It is also in the best interests of your service provider to ensure their clients are happy, so if you have issues with costs, you can take them up with your account manager and try to work out a more suitable plan going forwards.
Conclusion
There is a reason why most opinion towards cloud computing remains positive, as it does usually make financial sense for businesses of all sizes. It’s therefore vital to have a good understanding of what you’re paying for and why.
Dropbox opens Hamburg office to reduce US/EU data concerns
Dropbox has announced the opening of its latest European office, branching into the German market ahead of plans to open a new data centre in Europe latter in the year.
The company has answered concerns from European customers regarding the transmission of data across the Atlantic by committing to hosting their data within the EU; a region which the company claims is generating the majority of recent growth. This commitment has also been backed up with the company opening new offices in Dublin, London, Paris and Amsterdam, in addition to Hamburg.
Data residency has been an issue for European customers for a number of months since the Court of Justice of the European Union declared Safe Harbour void last October. Since then, there have been a number of efforts to sooth the relationship between the US and the EU, though the issue still remains contentious and newer drafts Safe Harbour have been criticized by various European quarters.
As Europe represents a healthy growth region for the Dropbox, it would appear the team are not prepared to wait for the EU/US data storm to blow over. Opening a new data centre in Germany has the potential for Dropbox to avoid the repercussions of the long-standing dispute.
“From manufacturing to professional services to healthcare, industries in Europe and around the world are discovering the benefits of increased collaboration on Dropbox,” said Thomas Hansen, Global VP of Revenue at Dropbox. “And the opening of our Hamburg office is just a part of our European commitment.
“From co-working spaces to corporations, people bring Dropbox to work, and adoption in Germany has been phenomenal. The top three cities in terms of Dropbox signups are also the largest: Berlin, Hamburg, and Munich. But Karlsruhe and Dresden are the real hotspots when measuring users per capita.”
As with other freemium business models Dropbox has reportedly found difficulties in upgrading customers to the paid-for services. The company launched a new relationship with Adyen last year to offer localized payment models in 12 European countries, build around a direct debit payment mechanism, a more popular model in the European markets, as opposed to PayPal or credit card models.
ST Telemedia continues expansion in data centre market
ST Telemedia Global Data Centres has expanded its data centre footprint through a joint venture with Tata Communications, where it will now take a 74% majority stake in Tata’s data centre business in India and Singapore.
The new deal expands ST Telemedia’s already healthy presence throughout the world as it adds 14 data centres in various cities across India, including Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Pune, and its three Singapore facilities. The company now has a presence in four major regions, including a strong footprint in two of Asia’s fastest growing economies, India and China.
Tata will retain a 26% share of the joint venture, but will focus on advanced services within the data centre that enable digital transformation. Tata highlighted the new partnership will enable the business to refocus investments on area such as cloud enablement and unified communications.
“This partnership marks another key milestone in STT GDC’s growth,” saod Sio Tat Hiang, Executive Director at ST Telemedia. “Since ST Telemedia’s initial investment in the data centre business in mid-2014, we have made remarkable progress in building a formidable data centre footprint internationally with strategic presence in key economic hubs to capture industry demand.
“The latest addition of India to the STT GDC network will be a major impetus to advance the company’s ambition to be a significant global data centre service provider. We are pleased to partner with an established company like Tata Communications, to pursue opportunities in the growing data centre market.”
ST Telemedia’s data centre market portfolio currently contains a number of organizations including GDS Services, MediaHub, Level 3 Communications and Virtus Data Centres, the latter of which has doubled in size for two consecutive years, making it one of the largest data centre providers in the London area. The company ambitions are to develop the largest global platform of advanced, integrated and carrier-neutral data centres in every major economic centre.
While ST Telemedia has seemingly prioritized the data centre market, the team have made a number of investments additional growth areas including IoT, with an investment in software and managed services company Greenwave, and also big data following its investment in Datameer, an analytics and visualisation company earlier this year.
Organizations struggling to capitalize on benefits of big data
Big data is now considered one of the more significant priorities of businesses through 2016 however research from DNV GL has highlighted only 23% of organizations have a defined strategy moving forward.
According to research from the business assurance arm of DNV GL, while the majority (52%) of companies have outlined the importance of big data for future operations, roughly only a quarter have the capabilities to fulfil the promise and capitalize fully on the benefits. The interest increases significantly for larger organizations, those of 1000 or more employees, as 70% highlighted it as a priority.
“Big data is changing the game in a number of industries, representing new opportunities and challenges,” says Luca Crisciotti, CEO of DNV GL – Business Assurance. “I believe that companies that recognize and implement strategies and plans to leverage the information in their data pools have increased opportunities to become more efficient and meet their market and stakeholders better.”
One of the larger concerns for big data which have been voiced in conference and articles in recent months is an organizations ability to act upon the potential of the information now available. The volume of data is growing at a notable rate, though one concern is few organizations have the current technological capabilities or adequately trained employees to realize the potential.
BCN has been told during numerous conversations many organizations current capabilities can only analyse a small proportion, between 5-25% dependent on who you speak to, of the data collected. Until organizations are capable of analysing and actioning larger proportions of the data, the potential of big data or the promised ROI will not be achieved. DNV GL claim 16% of organizations are viewing better business decision making and 11% for financial savings, are the aims of big data, while 16% have prioritised an improved user experience.
“The ability to use data to obtain actionable knowledge and insights is inevitable for companies that want to keep growing and profiting,” said Crisciotti. “The data analyst or scientist will be crucial in most organizations in the near future.”
DNV GL believe more has to be done to enable and prepare the organization for utilizing big data to the full extent. The team claims only 28% have improved information management and 25% have implemented new technologies and methods. From an employee perspective, only 16% have addressed the internal culture and 15% the company’s business model.
Big data has been championed as a means to drive efficiency within organizations, but also as an opportunity to create a more personalized experience for customers in the digital era. It is also a prelude to artificial intelligence, another area which has been dominating headlines in recent months, neither of which will be achievable until investments have been made in technology and personnel to increase the proportion of data which can be understood and actioned.
What does the role of the CIO look like in 2016?
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It is a question which carries more resonance as technology matures: what is the major role of the CIO today?
The usual responses range from improving business efficiency, to spearheading the organisation’s technological revolution. At the MIT Sloan CIO Conference earlier this month, the answer was simple. “The perfect CIO is enabling the perfectly friction-less business,” argued Steve Rosenbush, the editor of CIO Journal.
Yet there are many layers to uncover to get to the heart of this statement.
The role of the CIO is becoming more strategic – the CIO’s future career opportunities are broadening out
Harvey Nash and KPMG have today released a report on ‘the creative CIO’. The authors, Harvey Nash chief executive Albert Ellis and KPMG International global CIO advisory service network lead Lisa Heneghan, conclude that despite an increasing examination of security, the CIOs with a creative mindset are winning out over those with an operational focus.
Moving up the stack
The report shows that CIOs are, on the whole, moving away from the ‘keep the lights on’ mentality – simply because there is enough stuff going on elsewhere. Four out of 10 CIOs surveyed said they spend at least one day a week outside IT, while the vast majority of core IT priorities that fall under a CIO’s remit, such as managing operational risk and compliance, business intelligence and analytics, and delivering stable IT performance to the business, are not seen as important as they were.
Heneghan tells CloudTech: “We have seen from the survey that the proportion of time the CIO is spending actually internally focused on managing IT is reducing. There is an increasing amount of time being spent working with colleagues outside of IT and in smaller organisations also working with customers.
“This supports the view that the role of the CIO is becoming more strategic – there is a need for CIOs to talk business strategy and provide a platform to enable this. The CIO’s future career opportunities are broadening out,” she adds.
Too many cooks?
Adam Woodhouse is director of CIO advisory at KPMG. He argues that the rise of job roles such as the CDO (chief digital officer) and the CTO has given CIOs ‘a jolt to recognise that to be relevant and support growth they cannot focus on their own world in isolation’ – 84% of CIOs surveyed said they do not fully own the company’s digital strategy. Also key to this change is the rise in IT budget not being provisioned by IT. “It is therefore not a surprise that CIOs now need to influence more effectively, and building relationships with customers is a key element of this,” he tells CloudTech.
Despite not spending as much time in the boiler room of IT anymore, the CIO’s technical expertise needs to be sharper than ever. Big data and analytics was cited by 39% of survey respondents as a function which suffers from a skills shortage, up from 36% the year before. Woodhouse explains the cloud is a ‘core element’ of driving an agile methodology – the principle of failing fast and learning from your errors.
“It is a given that the lights must be kept on, but we have seen from the survey an increasing emphasis on supporting business growth, and agility is fundamental to this,” he says. “When we asked what steps CIOs are taking to make their business more agile, there was the obvious top answer of implementing agile methodologies, but a clear second place was given to implementing SaaS solutions.” 69% of large organisations polled expect to make a ‘significant’ investment across infrastructure, platform, and software as a service in the next three years as a result.
More dialogue
Any thoughts however that the job role of the CIO is diminishing, with more C-suite executives in the company, is a misnomer. The report reveals that the proportion of CIOs sitting on the executive board or senior leadership committee is at its highest level in 11 years of tracking. More than two thirds (67%) of respondents expect the strategic influence of the CIO to go up in 2016.
Cloud adoption will continue to develop – and this needs to be integrated with business strategy to truly drive differentiation
Increasingly, the CIO is more likely to report directly to the CEO, with more than a third (34%) confirming this is the case, compared to 12% who report to the CFO and COO respectively. The report argues this is due to the growing strategic influence of the CIO; Heneghan argues that with CEOs needing to understand more about technology and CIOs needing to understand more about business, the boundaries are blurring.
“The role of the CIO is becoming less defensive and more proactive in stimulating debate on what technology can bring to the organisation and benefit its customers,” Heneghan says. “Therefore I see the relationship becoming more balanced and the dialogue two way, rather than the CIO always responding to requests or issues.”
As for what 2017 will bring, Woodhouse expects more of the same. “I expect the strategic importance of the role to continue to increase, and as such we will see CIOs spending even greater amounts of their time outside of the traditional fortress [of] IT,” he says.
“We know that cloud adoption will continue to develop and this needs to be integrated with business strategy to truly drive differentiation – I will be interested if skill shortages in this area hamper CIOs delivering,” he adds. “We also absolutely expect to see an increase in the adoption of digital labour strategies which may displace the broader ‘digital’ strategy question.”
Hyper-Converged Storage – What is it?
Hyper-Converged Storage Hyper-converged storage is the latest buzz in the datacenter infrastructure segment. It is a software-defined architecture that combines storage, network, computing, and virtualization resources into a single entity. By combining storage and computing resources with applications and data in a single entity, hyper-converged storage delivers highly optimized datacenter solutions for target workloads. Hyper-converged […]
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