All posts by Business Cloud News

Enterprise IT, Eugene Barbashin, Europe, IBM, Mariinsky Theatre, News & Analysis

Mariinsky Theatre taps IBM cloud to improve broadcasting

Russia’s Mariinsky Theatre is using a hybrid cloud to support live performance broadcasts

Russia’s Mariinsky Theatre is using a hybrid cloud to support live performance broadcasts

Russia’s Mariinsky Theatre is working with IBM to deploy a hybrid cloud solution that would improve its ability to stream live videos of performances to mobile devices globally.

The theatre already has more than 250,000 unique viewers around the world tuned into Mariinsky.tv, where it currently hosts webcasts of live performances and on-demand recordings.

It had previously broadcast performances on the web using its own on-premise platform to edit and stream performances, but the company said it sought a cloud-based platform for this in a bid to expand its global reach and improve its ability to withstand peaks in demand.

“To support a growing global community of loyal Theatre audiences, we needed a scalable, hybrid cloud solution that could meet the standards for quality that we and our viewers expect,” said Eugene Barbashin, head of the computer technology department, Mariinsky Theatre.

The company said at times its digital platform would need to scale to support thousands of simultaneous viewers, particularly around very popular orchestra or ballet performances, but that it was struggling to cope with demand at times.

“We tried various competitive offerings from Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, but viewers still had buffering issues while streaming performances. We chose IBM Cloud to more fully meet our needs in terms of reliable performance and ease-of-use,” Barbashin added.

Amazon, ClusterK, News & Analysis

Amazon buys ClusterK to reduce AWS deployment costs

Amazon has acquired ClusterK, which offers software that optimses deployments on AWS spot instances

Amazon has acquired ClusterK, which offers software that optimses deployments on AWS spot instances

Amazon has acquired ClusterK, a provider of software that optimises deployment on AWS spot instances for cost and availability.

Amazon confirmed the acquisition to BCN but declined to offer any details about how the technology would be integrated in AWS, or the financial terms of the acquisition.

One of the challenges with EC2 spot instances is that cost and availability can vary dramatically depending on overall demand.

At the same time when these instances are used for long jobs (say, running batch jobs on large databases) and those jobs are interrupted, those instances can actually disappear from right under you – unless failovers on reserved instances or similar techniques are deployed.

Those are some of the things ClusterK aims to solve. It offers an orchestration and scaling service that uses the AWS spot market in conjunction with on-demand or reserved instances to optimise workload deployments for cost and availability – an automated way of keeping workload cost and availability in check (the company claims it can reduce cloud costs by up to 90 per cent).

While it’s not clear exactly how Amazon intends to integrate the technology it is clear the company is keen to do what it takes to keep the price of its services dropping, which is where ClusterK could certainly add value. While disclosing its cloud revenues for the first time last week the company said it has dropped the prices of its services about 50 times since AWS launched ten years ago.

M&A, Marc Benioff, News & Analysis, Salesforce

Rumour has is Salesforce is looking to sell itself

Rumour has it Salesforce is entertaining acquisition offers

Rumour has it Salesforce is entertaining acquisition offers

Cloud heavyweight Salesforce may be working with financial advisors and fielding acquisition inquiries, according to Bloomberg. The biz paper added that there is no certainty any deal will materialise.

It isn’t clear whether the inquiries are coming from a direct rival – purportedly with enough market cap and clout to takeover Salesforce (i.e. Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, or possibly even IBM) – or a bank or private equity firm; given Salesforce’s current stock price (it jumped over 11 per cent after acquisition rumours began circulating) its market cap sits just under $50bn which, given most acquisitions are priced at a premium, could put a final tab closer to $60bn.

Salesforce spokespeople told BCN the company does not comment on rumours and speculation.

If the rumours are true the potential suitor wouldn’t likely suffer much disappointment. Salesforce recently posted revenues for the quarter ending January 31, 2015 of $1.44bn, a 26 per cent year on year increase with annual revenues reaching $5bn.

The CRM giant, now the sixth largest software company in the world according to Salesforce chief executive Marc Benioff, is projecting full year revenues for fiscal 2016 to grow between 20 and 21 per cent to $6.475bn and $6.52bn.

It’s also had some success at positioning itself well for trends that are clearly on the up – platform-as-a-service; cloud marketing automation; the Internet of Things and wearables.

All of this is just speculation of course. Nevertheless, if Facebook’s eye-watering $19bn acquisition of WhatsApp was enough to make you shudder, a $50-60bn acquisition of Salesforce would surely leave you a bit stunned to say the least.

Ardruino, Brian Kelly, Golgi, Intel Edison, Internet of Things, IoT, News & Analysis, Openmind Networks

Golgi adds native Arduino, Intel Edison support to IoT platform

Golgi is adding support for more devices to its Internet of Things cloud service

Golgi is adding support for more devices to its Internet of Things cloud service

Data transport and Internet of Things cloud service provider Golgi has added support for native Arduino and Intel Edison endpoints in a bid to bolster the IoT platform.

Golgi, which is owned by data transport tech provider Openmind Networks, offers a cloud-based managed connectivity service that helps bridge the gap between different IoT devices and applications across multi-architecture networks.

The service effectively auto-generates native code for each endpoint once the platform is told what kind of data it will be ingesting from them, so that developers don’t have to muck about learning a rift of different technologies in order to link up a broad range of sensors to their applications and services.

“Our support for Arduino and Edison creates a place where IoT developers and makers of embedded devices can meet,” said Brian Kelly, chief technology officer and co-founder of Golgi.

One of the big challenges in the IoT sector at the moment sits where the needs of device manufacturers and IoT app developers conflict.

Device manufacturers seem incentivised to back (build to) as few technology ecosystems as possible given the cost implications, but as we’re still in the heyday of IoT it is clear there is no shortage of IoT tech ecosystems, each with their own take on transport and application language support, jockeying for the top spot. Similarly, developers don’t want to have to learn a raft of technologies just to develop and deploy an IoT service. That’s the challenge Golgi is trying to solve – by abstracting much of the underlying coding work away.

“We’ve been solving operators’ data transport problems for 13 years, and now we’ve extended our infrastructure to solve these problems for IoT developers. Because Golgi translates the various communications languages of device makers, developers don’t have to learn them; they can focus on what they know best. As a result, their product development cycle is shortened by 50 per cent and time to market is speeded up,” Kelly said.

Association for Information and Image Management, Content & Applications, ECM, Enterprise content management, John Mancini, News & Analysis

Cloud, mobile hugely disrupting enterprise content management – survey

Cloud services and mobile phone proliferation is distrupting enterprise content management

Cloud services and mobile phone proliferation is distrupting enterprise content management

The proliferation of cloud services and mobile devices in enterprises is making it more difficult for IT and IM administrators to keep track of and manage content according to a recently published survey.

The Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM) surveyed 434 organisations globally to gain a better understanding of the factors influencing enterprise content management deployment.

The results suggest ECM as is commonly known to or practiced in enterprises is quickly disappearing, in part because data is now more decentralised than ever before, and because applications used to manage content in a multi-cloud, multi-device landscape aren’t being adopted.

While 39 per cent have some degree of mobile access for content in ECM platforms, only 5 per cent have widespread access for staff and project partners and less than 20 per cent have comment, edit and process interaction capability.

“There is no doubt that organisations still require their content to be managed properly, but the term ‘ECM’ is past its prime as a description of the revolution that is being driven by mobile, analytics, cloud and collaborative technologies,” said AIIM president John Mancini. “Organisations are desperate for best practices to deal with the technology disruption that is occurring.”

ECM has evolved in the past few years, particularly in terms of the breadth of capabilities enterprises now require to manage their content. The massive proliferation of mobile devices and (sanctioned and unsanctioned) cloud services – and more pressingly how those cloud services link up with one another – is starting to force enterprises to adopt different strategies and technologies to help manage content, and has if anything accelerated demand for e-discovery tools and cloud-based repositories like Box.

“All of this data points to an industry in transition. There are still many organisations that can benefit from more traditional ECM solutions that automate document-intensive processes. But there is also an explosion of content outside the realm of these kinds of structured processes, along with a revolution occurring in how, where, and when knowledge workers do their jobs. Even among the current users of ECM technologies, 52 per cent believe that within five years, ECM systems will be an undifferentiated part of the IT infrastructure.”

Benny Einhorn, Enterprise IT, Martin West, News & Analysis, NICE Systems, Software as a service, Thomas Cook, travel, workforce management

Thomas Cook deploys cloud-based workforce management platform

The travel agency is moving its on-premise workforce management platform to the cloud

The travel agency is moving its on-premise workforce management platform to the cloud

Thomas Cook has swapped out its on-premise workforce management solution for a cloud-based alternative in a bid to make the company more responsive and competitive, it announced this week.

The travel agency said it has been using Nice Systems’ workforce management platform for a number of years, but it decided to move onto the company’s cloud-based service to help gain a consolidated view of its workforce, which would make things like scheduling and forecasting more efficient.

“Following many years of success with Nice’s workforce management solution, we decided to move our operations to the cloud in order to accommodate our growing business needs, which includes a multi-channel service operation,” said Martin West, head of central operations support, Thomas Cook UK & Ireland.

“This has also given us the opportunity to centralise our customer-facing operations, which will help us achieve greater operational efficiency, better service, and reduced costs,” West said.

Benny Einhorn, president, Nice EMEA said: “With this cloud deployment, the company has a clear, organization-wide view into the forecasting and scheduling of staff, while at the same time retail personnel have ownership over their schedules. We’re proud of our partnership with Thomas Cook which provides an excellent example of how a company can deliver outstanding customer service through employee engagement.”

Australia, centurylink, Craig Scroggie, Datacentre, Gery Messer, News & Analysis, Singapore

CenturyLink partners with NextDC on Australian cloud expansion

CenturyLink is partnering with NextDC to bolster the reach of its cloud services in Australia

CenturyLink is partnering with NextDC to bolster the reach of its cloud services in Australia

CenturyLink is expanding its cloud footprint in Australia this week, partnering with local datacentre incumbent NextDC to bolster its managed and hybrid cloud services to the region.

CenturyLink already has a datacentre presence in Australia but the partnership announced this week will see CenturyLink offer its managed hosting, colocation and cloud services from NextDCs network of datacentres in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Canberra and Perth.

“We are eager to offer our managed hybrid IT services and consistent IT experience to multinational corporations in Australia, one of the most connected countries in the world,” said Gery Messer, managing director, Asia Pacific, at CenturyLink.

“The extension of CenturyLink’s datacentre footprint into Australia signifies our commitment to serve growing customer demand for IT services in the Asia-Pacific region,” Messer added.

Craig Scroggie, chief executive officer of NextDC commented: “NextDC’s agreement with CenturyLink continues the trend of the world’s top IT providers utilizing NextDC’s national datacentre network to provide services. CenturyLink is an important new member of our ecosystem of carriers, cloud and IT service providers, and its presence will essentially open up a world of new possibilities for Australian organizations on their journey to a hybrid cloud model.”

Like many American cloud incumbents CenturyLink views APAC as a key market moving forward. Last month the company launched a cloud node in Singapore and last year set up a datacentre in Shanghai, China, all in a move to bolster demand for its services in the region.

News & Analysis, organisational change, Tesco, Tomas Kadlec

Former Tesco IT lead: Don’t narrow standardization to just technology

Enterprise technologists need to consider standardisation, orchestration and automation as these extend to business processes

Enterprise technologists need to consider standardisation, orchestration and automation as these extend to business processes

Moving to the cloud means not only focusing on orchestration and standardization at the technical level but change at the business process level, too, explained Tomas Kadlec, who until recently served as group infrastructure IT director at Tesco.

Kadlec, who was speaking at the Telco Cloud Forum in London this week said technologists within enterprises too often narrow their focus on the technologies needed to solve a problem or supply a need.

“In cloud everyone’s always talking about automation and orchestration, and as a technologist and an enthusiast within IT you always focus on the IT element,” he said. “So you go down and automate it, deploy orchestration, and make it brilliant. But suddenly you realize this one step is just that, one step in a much larger process.”

Kadlec was most recently responsible for Tesco’s IT infrastructure strategy globally, and has spent the better part of the past few years building a private cloud deployment model the company could easily drop into regional datacentres to power the troubled European food retailer’s operations locally and beyond.

This was done largely to improve the services it provides to clients and colleagues within the company’s brick and mortar shops, and support a growing range of internal applications and digital services.

He explained that as cloud services become more prominent within organisations, technologists need to start addressing standardisation, automation and orchestration at the business process and organizational level – which is where many of the challenges really are. This will help sell these technologies to other areas of the business outside IT, and help accelerate positive change in these organisations.

“How do you actually bring people together? How do you make sure the Korean team isn’t thinking of moving to Windows 8 or something while the UK team doesn’t even have the capability? It’s about simplification of the landscape, speaking the same language,” he said.

“So as an IT pro there is an element of having to go back to the customers and bridging that gap between needs and capabilities. Standardization is not jus technical, it really about mindset and organizational change,” he added.

Juan Manuel Moreno, Networks, News & Analysis, OpenStack, Telco Cloud, Telco Cloud Forum, Telefonica, Unica

Telefónica: Unifying cloud and comms can make us more efficient

Juan Manuel Moreno, global cloud director at Telefónica

Juan Manuel Moreno, global cloud director at Telefónica

Telefónica is working to roll out a wide range of internally and customer-focused cloud services on both its own UNICA and OpenStack platforms, but the company’s global cloud director Juan Manuel Moreno said the challenges of shifting such a large company aren’t purely technical.

Moreno, who was speaking at the Telco Cloud Forum in London Tuesday, said the company has been in the process of transforming its technology platforms and internal operations for some time.

It’s no secret telcos like Telefónica have in recent years worked to strengthen their cloud capabilities in a bid to broaden their service portfolios and battle dwindling voice and data revenues – and to regain ground lost to more nimble OTT players.

“We are reliant on the full ecosystem of providers of technology… using technology partners to build these new services. But it’s a challenge because these players are moving so quickly,” Moreno said. “One of the biggest challenges in this space is that everyone and everything is moving so quickly.”

Much of what the company has done externally was intricately linked with its efforts to virtualize core elements of its own networks, plans it originally set out in 2014, with the aim of virtualising 30 per cent of all new infrastructure by 2016. The company took many of those platforms to use as the foundation for their customer-facing cloud services.

“Unifying communications and cloud or IT is an opportunity to be more efficient, to discover more services, and of course to develop a broad portfolio of services,” he explained.

But he was fairly candid about the challenges involved with moving Telefónica, a large, global service provider with very heterogeneous technology platforms and business processes, over to a more automated, cloud-centric operational model and product portfolio.

He said overcoming the business process-related challenges would also be key if the company is to effectively capture more revenue from its traditional base as well as new segments (he said Telefónica sees SMBs as the largest commercial opportunity for the foreseeable future).

“In cloud the technology is available for everyone now… But we still have to transform internally in order to really strengthen our market position,” he added.

Accenture, News & Analysis, Oracle, PaaS, Platform as a service, Saas, Software as a service, Stephen Rohleder, Thomas Kurian

Accenture, Oracle form business unit to accelerate cloud uptake

Accenture and Oracle are forming a business unit to accelerate cloud uptake

Accenture and Oracle are forming a business unit to accelerate cloud uptake

Oracle and Accenture are teaming up to create a joint business unit that will help mutual customers move more quickly onto (mostly Oracle) cloud platforms.

According to the companies the Accenture Oracle Business Group will bring together technologies and consulting power in order to help customers implement cloud-based services, which includes helping those clients tailor their business processes to those technologies.

Thomas Kurian, president, product development at Oracle said: “By providing a single process to implement end-to-end mission- critical services, the Accenture Oracle Business Group is ideally positioned to help our customers realize the true benefits of cloud computing.”

The group will offer vertically-integrated solutions built using Oracle’s software-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service offerings, supported by fleets of Accenture consultants skilled in Oracle and Java tech – who will also help implement cloud readiness and data migration strategies for clients.

“Building on our 23-year alliance relationship, the Accenture Oracle Business Group combines Accenture’s deep industry and technology experience with Oracle’s expansive set of cloud solutions to deliver client value not found elsewhere in the market today,” said Stephen Rohleder, group chief executive for North America, Accenture.

“This is part of our strategy to take advantage of Oracle’s leading technologies and build our business together for the future. It is a game-changer for our clients, Oracle, and Accenture,” Rohleder said.