Internet of @ThingsExpo, taking place November 1-3, 2016, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA, is co-located with 19th Cloud Expo and will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading industry players in the world.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is the most profound change in personal and enterprise IT since the creation of the Worldwide Web more than 20 years ago.

All major researchers estimate there will be tens of billions devices – computers, smartphones, tablets, and sensors – connected to the Internet by 2020. This number will continue to grow at a rapid pace for the next several decades.
With major technology companies and startups seriously embracing IoT strategies, now is the perfect time to attend @ThingsExpo in Silicon Valley. Learn what is going on, contribute to the discussions, and ensure that your enterprise is as “IoT-Ready” as it can be!

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Nearly 95% of small to medium businesses say they either already use a cloud hosting service or plan to transition to it according to the latest study from B2B research firm Clutch.co – as web hosting providers aren’t hitting the mark.

The survey, which quizzed 300 SMBs – defined as having between two and 1000 employees – found a trend towards cloud hosting. Almost three quarters (72%) of SMBs have changed web hosting providers over the past five years, while a worrying 86% said they had experienced issues in the last year alone. Most businesses change providers because they can find better value elsewhere.

In terms of specific issues with hosting providers, the biggest bugbear was downtime, cited by 35% of respondents, although poor performance (33%), increased costs (32%), poor customer support (27%), and server limits (26%) were also noted.

Rachel Bair, director of hosting and client services at Unleashed Technologies, summed up the survey’s findings. “I don’t think you can truly move forward within a company without using cloud in some way, whether that’s by buying software as a service from somebody or creating your own cloud infrastructure for your business,” she said. “To stay competitive in your own vertical, cloud hosting will be the way to go.”

The research therefore concludes that SMBs are becoming increasingly attracted to cloud hosting providers because of their difficulties with web hosting. Yet it might not be a walk in the park with regard to cloud vendors, either. Regarding infrastructure, a study from iland last year found a series of issues customers had with their providers, from onboarding, to the lack of a human aspect to customer support, and bill shock.

When it comes to storage, research from Clutch in November found just over half (52%) of small businesses are currently using cloud storage, with Dropbox the most popular. Could the two aspects be compared? Alex Miller, an analyst at Clutch, noted that while the hosting side is bound to get higher figures because the same vendors can be involved, there is still an issue with the results.

“Unlike switching from on-premises storage options to cloud storage options, the process of utilising cloud hosting is not much different from traditional hosting services, and can often be done with the same vendors,” Miller told CloudTech.

“However, the results from both surveys show that many users select a service based on cost rather than performance of the service, which can lead to future problems given the vast difference of capabilities among cloud providers.”

You can read the full survey results here.

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Demand for European data centre space continues to rise due to greater need for cloud services – but the Brexit vote could yet send UK plans off-kilter, according to the latest note from consulting firm BroadGroup.

The analysis, which appears in the firm’s latest Colocation Market Quarterly (CMQ), argues there is ‘strong’ demand for real estate in primary European locations, arguing Paris has performed ‘particularly strongly.’ The company argues a mix of hyperscale vendors needing to beef up their European presence, as well as smaller cloud firms seeking colocation space has primarily contributed to the trend.

Yet despite this, the consultants give a pessimistic note to the impact of a Brexit vote, both in the ‘initial certainty’ following the EU referendum result, and in the long-term implications. BroadGroup certainly aren’t the first company to offer such a caution –  in July analyst firm IDC praised the EMEA cloud infrastructure landscape with one hand and warned of a post-Brexit downturn in the other – yet Steve Wallage, managing director of BroadGroup consulting, notes broader concerns from data protection regulation (GDPR), to availability, and cost of power.

“UK data centres could be perceived by some investors as only relevant for local demand, a change from London long being considered a hub for European HQ and data centres, initial entry into Europe, and regional consolidation,” said Wallage. “For example, some of the hyperscale cloud players are now positioning UK data centres in this way.”

According to BroadGroup, the company knows of three potential UK data centre investments from Asian companies which are now “unlikely” in the wake of Brexit. Amazon Web Services took an opportunity at its London summit in July to confirm its UK data centre plans were still on track.

The note that Paris has become a particular hotspot is exemplified by Equinix buying Digital Realty’s operations in the French capital earlier this month for a reported $211 million (£158m). Earlier this week, Apple’s proposal to build an €850m data centre on the west coast of Ireland was provisionally given the green light.

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According to the Cloud Industry Forum, 80% of UK companies are adopting cloud technology as a key part of their overall IT and business strategy. However, one of the perceived barriers to cloud adoption continues to be concerns around security and compliance, which was the key topic of discussion at a recent techUK panel in which iland took part. During this discussion, we talked about the fact that nine out of ten security professionals worry about cloud security.

One of the key aspects that we’ve certainly found here at iland and which was borne out in a survey around cloud security that we conducted earlier in the year with independent analyst firm Enterprise Management Associates (EMA), is that companies actually now consider cloud security to be superior to on-premise environments, but often expose themselves to risk by blindly relying on a glut of technology they are unable to actively manage. 

Our survey found that nearly half (47%) of security personnel admitted to simply trusting their cloud providers to meet security agreements without further verification.  This highlighted that transparency continues to be a key issue, as many providers do not offer detailed insights into the cloud environment.  Or, if they do, this is certainly not up to the same levels customers are accustomed to in their own data centre operations.  At the same time, we also found thatteams tend to throw technology at the problem, however tech alone will not solve the problem. Again, the survey showed that 48% more security technologies are deployed in the cloud than on-premise.

Further, security features now top the list of priorities companies consider when selecting a cloud provider ahead of performance, reliability, management tools and cost.  Therefore, our advice to companies is that it is really important firstly to verify your cloud provider’s claims and, secondly, to ensure that you can properly leverage the technology that you are deploying. 

Interestingly, our survey showed that there appears to be much more alignment between IT and the business. Asrespondents indicated IT would rather delay a new application deployment due to security concerns than deploy it in a potentially insecure environment, and the business agreed in an almost 3 to 1 margin. To my mind, this represents a fundamental shift in organisational dynamics, where business should no longer view security personnel as naysayers, but allies who are committed to fighting threats alongside the business.

One of the key problems that accentuate security issues appears to be around skills and staffing shortages.  Infact over two thirds (68%) of organisations EMA admitted that they have staffing shortages and 34 % have skills shortages, which directly correlate to flaws and opposing perceptions uncovered in our study.  While IT has made monumental progress in identifying and adopting necessary security technologies, cloud providers must do more to ensure teams can easily validate claims, manage disparate tools, anticipate threats and take action when needed.

Further, we can see there is a lack of understanding of compliance among IT personnel. While 96% of security professionals acknowledge that their organisations have compliance related workloads in the cloud, only 69% of IT teams identified the same. This gap could lead to exposures for the organisation if IT were to place a compliance-related workload into a non-compliant cloud provider.  

And, finally, clearly defined responsibilities are needed both with your cloud service provider and within your own company, as clearly in the end, where security is concerned, the buck stops with you. There is no point claiming that you thought someone else had it covered.  This is where DevSecOps comes in as the next evolution of DevOps whereby you make security the responsibility of every member of the team, at every step of the way, right from dev through to ops. 

Right now and for the forecastable future cloud adoption sees no sign of abating. Therefore, it is critical that we get security and compliance right. Otherwise it will continue to be a blocker for organisations and could hinder innovation and competitive advantage.

Read more: A warning shot: Why cloud security remains more important than ever 

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IBM has announced that financial and HR cloud app provider Workday has signed up for its cloud services in what has been described as a “multi-year strategic partnership.”

The deal, first reported in the Wall Street Journal, means IBM’s cloud will become the primary platform for Workday’s development and testing projects – with the latter intending to expand their use ‘over time’. The two companies already partner on various initiatives; IBM uses Workday’s human capital management program for its own workforce, while Big Blue acquired Meteorix, a Workday services partner, in 2015.

“IBM and Workday are both delivering transformative applications and services in the cloud,” said Aneel Bhusri, Workday CEO and co-founder in a statement. “Workday will use IBM Cloud to continue accelerating Workday’s internal development and testing efforts to support our ongoing global expansion.” “Leading enterprises like Workday continue to turn to IBM Cloud for its global reach, flexibility, and resiliency,” added Robert LeBlanc, IBM cloud senior vice president. “Though a preferred cloud partnership with IBM, Workday can accelerate its innovation efforts to better serve clients around the world.”

According to recent industry research, IBM is firmly entrenched in the top five cloud infrastructure services players. The most recent quarterly analysis from Synergy Research argues that IBM is ranked third, ahead of Google but behind Microsoft and, unsurprisingly, AWS. IBM’s 57% year over year growth puts it behind Microsoft (100%) and Google (162%), but ahead of Amazon (53%).

On a slightly different note, analysis from IHS Markit put the same four companies in the leaders’ section for off-premises cloud IT infrastructure service leadership, but put AWS in fourth place based on market momentum and presence.