With the new launch of the Parallels® Remote Application Server v15.5, we have revamped the Parallels Client to have a new modern, attractive look and sleek interface. As you can see from the image above, the user interface is now much simpler and easier to navigate, and more natural gestures have also been introduced. But […]
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Cloud has become a ubiquitous term today, and I’m sure you would’ve heard it many times over. Have you ever wondered why so many companies move to the cloud, and if your company should also be looking at this transition, if you’re not there already?
Well, the simple answer to this question is – cloud is the future. The many benefits that come from cloud far outweigh the costs associated with it, and this is why just about everyone is moving their operations to the cloud.
Here are some of the advantages your company gets by moving to the cloud.
The biggest advantage with cloud is business continuity. Regardless of your location or the natural calamity that strikes your part of the world, business will continue as usual, and no part of your service will be disrupted.
A case in point is that of the National Kidney Registry (NKR), a nonprofit organization, that aims to match kidney donors with needy patients. When this NGO started off, it maintained its own servers at its Long Island office, but staying on top of security, medical regulations, and demand proved to be difficult. So, the company decided in 2012, to move its operations to a cloud company called Rackspace. This proved to be a great move, as operations of the organization were unaffected when Superstorm Sandy struck a few months later. Though the offices of NKR were closed for a week after the storm, needy patients were still able to get in touch with potential donors, and this business continuity was possible due to cloud.
Cloud is ideal for companies that are looking to expand its operations and customer base, as it’s easy to scale up capacity without worrying about infrastructure requirements. Such agility can give businesses an edge over competitors, and this is why most CIOs and IT Directors rank this as the a top reason for cloud adoption.
When you have your own servers, you’ll need a dedicated team to take care of its maintenance. Your team has to stay on top of security, software updates, and other tasks that can prove to be a hassle in terms of both time and money. With a cloud provider, you don’t have to worry about any of these maintenance tasks, thereby giving you more time and resources to focus on your business.
Cloud makes it possible for your employees to share and collaborate work, regardless of physical location. In other words, your employee in China can easily share his work with an employee in the US, so there is no time-lag or delay in implementation. In addition, it also gives you the flexibility to hire workers from any part of the world.
When you move to the cloud, you have the option to work on different enterprise-class applications and technology, without having to spend on the underlying infrastructure. A pay-as-you-go model and a robust set of business applications mean you’re better off trying innovation in the cloud.
Now that you know the benefits, are you ready to move to the cloud?
The post Top 5 Reasons to Move to the Cloud appeared first on Cloud News Daily.
Picture credit: CenturyLink
Louisiana-based CenturyLink has been particularly busy over the past week. The telco has announced, within days of each other, the acquisition of Level 3 Communications, while also agreeing to sell 57 of its data centres to a consortium led by BC Partners and Medina Capital.
The two moves are linked; CenturyLink says the funding from getting rid of its data centres – priced at $2.15 billion – will be used as part of the Level 3 deal, rated at an eye-watering $34 billion.
According to the press materials, the portfolio comprises 195 megawatts of power across 2.6 million square feet of raised floor capacity. CenturyLink noted that it would still provide a wide range of IT services, including network, managed hosting, and cloud, going forward, which will continue to be hosted in the data centres alongside a range of products from the BC and Medina consortium.
In a series of press releases issued within moments of each other on Friday, the consortium announced the acquisition of Cryptzone, Catbird – cybersecurity companies based in Massachusetts and California respectively – investigative analytics firm Brainspace, and fraud protection provider Easy Solutions.
Medina argued that the new company, with the four companies added in, will be an “immediate leader in the global colocation market”, with more than 3,500 customers currently. According to figures from Synergy Research back in May, CenturyLink was placed in the top 10 colocation providers, although significantly behind the top three of Equinix, Digital Realty, and NTT, with the analysts noting the overall market would reach more than $33 billion by 2018.
“We believe this transaction will benefit customers, employees and investors,” said Glen Post, CenturyLink CEO and president in a statement. “Both CenturyLink and BC Partners have a strong customer focus and are committed to ensuring a seamless transition of the customers and their colocation environments.”
Elsewhere, the move to acquire Level 3 will aim to create the “second largest domestic communications provider serving global enterprise customers”, according to the press materials, while adding the two companies combined offer a presence in more than 60 countries.
Speaking to this publication last year having just arrived as EMEA managing director, Richard Warley said that the telcos should be the “natural winners” in the cloud space because of their network clout. Yet a recent article in Fortune doubted whether the move to acquire Level 3 will help CenturyLink’s cloud ambitions, noting that it’s “hard to see how CenturyLink or any telco-focused company can make a dent in the public cloud market so dominated by Amazon Web Services followed by Microsoft and Google.”
Were you busy this week? Here’s a tech news recap of articles you may have missed for the week of 10/31/2016.
Amazon Web Services releases Amazon Linux container image for use in on-premises data centers. The death of Azure Remote App: will a phoenix rise from the ashes? The six trends that will shape cloud computing in 2017, as well as nine emerging tech trends that will start generating billions in 2017. How the IoT if poised to transform cities, if done properly. How digital transformation is driving the way we consume applications and more top news this week you may have missed!
Remember, to stay up-to-date on the latest tech news throughout the week, follow @GreenPagesIT on Twitter.
Did you miss VMworld? Click here to download our recap webinar, “Buzz from VMworld 2016: Key U.S. & Europe Announcements” with GreenPages CTO Chris Ward
By Jake Cryan, Digital Marketing Specialist
Cloud can be used for many innovative applications that extend beyond the business world. Though it is used extensively for businesses now, its use across other sectors, especially social and environmental sectors, are also being explored actively. One such innovative application is the Environment Data Cloud.
As the name suggests, Environment Data Cloud helps to understand the environment and hopefully, make more accurate predictions. It consists of four services platforms and an integration platform, all of which come together to provide better insights into environmental data. The aim of this application is to integrate all data related to the environment across different government units, to make it easier to share data between the many government departments and agencies. In addition, this data will be made available to private companies to help them make meaningful analysis and inferences.
An integral part of Environment Data Cloud is its database called ERDB, that stores tons of historical information about the environment. Such information can be a boon to researchers to identify patterns, and make the right connections to improve weather prediction.
This application is already functional as it has integrated more than 6,000 data sets from different government units. It has also released around 960 data sets as open data to private companies including the weather app of ASUS, and based on this information, more than 40 value-added cases have been reported.
One of the most important result of this app is the platform it has offered for social interaction. Known as i-Environment web portal, this platform helps citizens to get the information they want easily, and has also encouraged more citizens to become aware of their environment. With such information, it won’t be long before local communities get together to preserve their immediate environment. This participation and awareness is critical, as we’re already reeling under the effects of climate change and its many consequences.
This project, in many ways, brings out the power of cloud applications and its ability to have far-reaching consequences that extend beyond the business world. The social applications of cloud are enormous, and this is just the beginning of it all. More companies around the world are working on similar applications that’ll help people to truly enjoy the benefits of technological advancements.
Due to the positive impact and potential of Environment Data Cloud, the Cloud Computing Association in Taiwan has given away an award called “Cloud Computing and IoT Innovation Award 2016.” This award recognizes companies and government agencies that are coming up with innovative applications of the cloud. In general, this award is divided into two categories – one for innovation from private companies and the other for innovation from government agencies. Environment Data Cloud won the award in the government category.
Such awards are sure to encourage more companies to come up with social and environmental applications of the cloud, so that it benefits every section of the society, and augurs well for the future of humankind. Going forward, it’s hoped that more such applications will be developed for the larger good of the society.
The post Environment Data Cloud – An Innovative Cloud Application appeared first on Cloud News Daily.
The Parallels Client has been revamped with the introduction of Parallels® Remote Application Server (RAS) v15.5. We have restructured the appearance and user interface of the application while retaining its simplicity. The Parallels Client is available on the App Store for free. Using the new Parallels Client for iOS, you can access your published applications and desktops in a few simple steps. With the launch of RAS v15.5, the Parallels […]
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(c)iStock.com/roberthyrons
The idea that IT leaders and their teams should pay attention to broader issues outside of their direct remit has been on the agenda of many businesses for years. IT should play a much greater role, it has been argued, than its traditional speciality of ‘keeping the technology lights on’. But for many, the scope to achieve greater levels of integration has been limited, not least by the need to control IT investment and drive down costs.
Now, the rapid adoption of cloud is driving a change in how organisations see IT supporting their business as a whole. A year ago, this meant the emergence of ‘cloud people’, where organisations were increasingly shaping their IT teams with cloud front of mind. At the time, that was an emerging concept, yet just a year later we are seeing the growth of a broader ‘cloud culture’, whose influence is going far beyond tech teams and right into the boardroom.
Cloud, in its many forms (public, private, hybrid, hyper-scale…), has been a massive success story. As undoubtedly one of the most discussed tech trends in recent years, people could be forgiven for thinking that it’s already established a winning position in the technology industry.
Yet, according to tech analyst house IDC, cloud spending is some distance away from its likely peak, compared to investment in ‘traditional’ approaches to IT. Estimates say it will be 2020 before spending on cloud services will come close to equalling what is spent on traditional IT.
But a ‘resource revolution’ is already well underway with organisations using cloud to change how their IT teams work – not at the expense of jobs, but in the pursuit of specialisation.
Recent research from Freeform Dynamics, for example, revealed that reports of cloud-driven shrinkage in IT teams are exaggerated; IT teams are using cloud to develop specialist skills among their staff, rather than reduce headcount. Indeed over the last three years only 6% of research respondents reported some decrease in the size of their IT teams. In contrast, over 70% reported their IT teams had seen ‘some’ increase or a ‘significant’ increase in staff levels.
Over the next three years, while many are expecting a net increase in the size of IT teams overall, the growth rates are slowing (45% indicating growth, with only 7% within this expecting a significant increase). However, there is a major shift in the make up of IT teams driven by the adoption of cloud and hosting. Looking at the mix of specialists versus generalists, the number of those declaring at least half of their teams being made up of generalists falls off dramatically as the use of cloud goes up.
This confirms that the need for generalist IT staff to take care of routine operations (provisioning, patching, etc), decreases rapidly with cloud adoption. Emphasis is switching to more specialist skills such as architecture, design, security, information management and line-of-business applications.
So what’s next? As the bottom-line benefits of cloud are better understood at board level, business leaders are seeing it as way to ensure IT can have a more direct impact on overall success. ‘Cloud culture’ is changing the way businesses think about the way they operate, not just the way they manage IT.
That idea is supported by the findings of the Freeform Dynamics study, which showed that contrary to the industry marketing hype, only 15% of cloud users were motivated purely by cost savings when adopting the technology.
Instead, 31% said balancing cost management and value was their priority, while 23% were concerned primarily with value. This shows that cloud adoption is being driven by a wide range of objectives, from management of service levels and responsiveness to change, to the management of IT related risks, to simply getting the most from suppliers.
Lessons can be learnt from the startup community, for instance, who enthusiastically embrace cloud solutions to give them flexibility and control as they expand and develop.
Startups are also setting the trend for the type of IT leader and team members needed in today’s economy. They frequently look for people who can bring an approach that balances business need and technology expertise. They might not have the deep technical background of their counterparts from the pre-cloud era, but they can very effectively bridge the gap between business need and IT delivery.
An increasing part of the cloud cultural mix is the way businesses also now rely on specialist partners, such as Cloud Service Providers, to make their shift in tech investment pay off.
CSPs deliver specialist skills, experience and infrastructure to support in-house teams ‘as-a-service’. In the early days of the cloud market, providers often delivered their services in a largely hands-off manner. This may remain appropriate in the context of some requirements, but today, where converged services increasingly make more sense, customers are making a broader commitment to individual providers. In an emerging cloud culture, those providers must become more willing to play an engaged role and get even more involved with the customer’s environment.
(c)iStock.com/Wavebreakmedia
The vast majority of enterprises still lack a mature cloud strategy, according to a recent survey of 6,159 executives conducted by IDC. Just 3% of respondents define their cloud strategies as “optimised,” the highest level of strategic maturity, while nearly half (47%) say their cloud strategies are usually “opportunistic or ad hoc.”
At a time when 68% of surveyed organisations are using cloud to help drive business outcomes (up from 42% just one year ago), the impact of his lack of strategy could have long-term effects on the success of cloud projects.
An “ad hoc” cloud strategy is likely the result of a number of factors: the project-by-project adoption of cloud, the speed of cloud adoption, and the staggered expiration of data centre contracts / equipment (which leads to intermittent cloud migration), to name a few. But no matter the cause, the result is often one or more of the following:
In some cases, ad hoc cloud strategy is purposeful: the enterprise wants to take advantage of cloud technologies by experimenting with multiple platforms, usually as part of Center of Excellence or isolated DevOps team that works out the best strategy and then communicates that strategy to the rest of the company. Anecdotally, according to companies that Logicworks works with, some companies often get stuck at this step; they have one or two moderately successful projects, but do not know how to expand usage with the proper controls across the enterprise.
The IDC survey confirms the results of a Logicworks/Wakefield survey conducted in July 2016, which found that nearly half of IT decision makers believe their organisation’s IT workforce is not completely prepared to address the challenges of managing their cloud resources over the next five years.
The report further found that one of the top reasons for this lack of strategy is that many organisations mistake cloud vendors’ claims of “simplified” infrastructure maintenance for “little to no” infrastructure maintenance; in other words, they think maintaining their cloud systems will be easy. The survey found that 80% of IT decision makers feel that leadership underestimates the cost and effort of managing cloud systems, and as a result, they do not effectively plan for the staffing and resources IT requires to achieve highly available, scalable cloud systems.
Clearly enterprises have some work to do — not just to develop a strategy around where and when cloud is adopted, but how to manage and govern these cloud deployments going forward. Whether they choose to do so in-house, with a short term strategic consultant engagement, or with a long-term cloud management solution, most know that they cannot afford to maintain an “ad hoc” cloud strategy. As cloud matures, expect to see a mature, flexible framework for cloud management, automation, and large-scale DevOps as the next must-have for enterprise IT teams.
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SYS-CON Events announced today that Impiger Technologies will exhibit in Booth #109 at the 19th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on November 1–3, 2016, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
Impiger Technologies is a world-class, enterprise software product engineering company specializing in Mobile Application Development, Cloud Applications, Microsoft Technology Solutions, Web Technology and Telecom Services. Impiger Technologies helps enterprises improve business efficiency, productivity, and grow revenue. Impiger Technologies offers a comprehensive set of, cost-effective services from prototype to production and everything in-between.
First of all, what is the Parallels® Remote Application Server (RAS) HTML5 Gateway? The HTML5 Client is part of the RAS Secure Client Gateway and provides users access to Windows® applications and desktops from a web browser. The Parallels HTML5 Client has been developed using only HTML5 technologies; this makes it a very fast, stable, […]
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