It’s one of the more interesting uses of capitalisation CloudTech had seen in recent times. SAP co-CEOs Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe outlined their company’s plans to become THE cloud company following Q1 results, as the software giant looks to shift its traditional on-prem image to a more agile cloud-first model.

And according to SAP UK&I managing director Kevin Kimber, the signs are pointing in the right direction for this business transformation.

“It’s hugely ambitious,” he tells CloudTech. “It’s never been done before by a company of this size. We believe we’re well on the way to achieving it, and our customers tell us that on a daily basis, we’re really at the heart of those discussions. It’s absolutely squarely in focus.”

Recent updates from the company have been something of a roadblock, however. Last month SAP axed top cloud chief …

Onyeka Nchege, the CIO of Coca-Cola, cited the importance of education and adaptability in how to transform a brick and mortar business to the cloud.

Speaking during the keynote of Cloud World Forum in London, Nchege noted that the 100 year old company, consistently voted as one of the most powerful global brands, has partially migrated to the cloud with technology not a huge standpoint.

“A lot of folks tend to focus on the technology…but you realise very quickly the technology isn’t where you want to focus your time to begin with,” he told delegates.

Coca-Cola has moved what Nchege called ‘non critical’ apps, such as HR and time-keeping, into the cloud, with a look on migrating core ERP in the near future. “If my HR partner were here, he’d kill me for saying this stuff is non-critical,” he joked.

Nchege noted the five important reasons companies …

Jaroslaw Knapik, Senior Analyst, Financial Services Technology

Big Data will dramatically enhance key areas in banking such as fraud analytics, customer analytics, and web analytics. It does not replace banks’ current analytical infrastructure, but extends its scope: it has become conceivable to conduct analyses based on all data, not just a sample.

Big Data also extends the range of data types that can be covered, the problems that can be addressed, and the user groups able to use it within a single organization. Beyond the familiar base of transactional data and text, emerging technologies and frameworks are providing banks with the power and tools to digest digital and physical channel interactions and various types of data such as customer data, graph data, and geo-location data.

This is not just a matter of the data being available, or of technology seeking a problem to solve. Data from customers, banking channels, back-office …

A recent study conducted by the University of London looked into the positive aspects of introducing wearable technology at the workplace.

One of the key takeaways from the study is that wearable technology can improve employee productivity by as much as 8.5% while enhancing job satisfaction by 3.5%. Writing for CNN, Dr. Chris Brauer, the person who spearheaded the study tells us that such wearables could help in building a symbiotic growth relationship between the employer and the employee – while the employer could use behavioural data from such technology to pick the best resource for a task, the employee could use this very data to build a “biometric CV” that would help them personalize their work space.

While the use of such technology at the workplace still seems like a distant dream, at least one industry has taken the first stride towards using wearable technology to enhance their …

2014 hasn’t been the same type of year for cloud as 2013. If you go back into 2013, it’s almost as if cloud could do no wrong. Was 2014 the wake-up call that cloud needed? Box’s IPO is now on hold after the company admitted that it was hemorrhaging 9 figures.

Cloud companies that were seeking investments in the stock market or by drumming up venture capital have been met with a cold shoulder since the beginning of the year. When will the investing mood cheer up for cloud companies around the globe?

Laurence Goldberg, who works for Barclays mentions, “Valuations got a little bit ahead of themselves through March.” Goldberg goes on to say that, “The market is still excited about these types of companies.”

Large cloud players such as Microsoft, Amazon and Google haven’t been hit nearly as hard as the smaller players such …

Matt Robinson, VP technology at Progress Software, explains to CloudTech why the company is betting on Node.js with the acquisition of PaaS provider Modulus.

The deal, announced earlier this week, aims to put progress in the enviable position of offering an industry-beating cloud, mobile, hybrid and on-premise development capability – and according to Robinson, the growth of Node.js, and JavaScript in general, makes this move a no-brainer.

“Modulus is a real purpose built platform for Node developers,” he explains. “We talked to prospects and customers of Modulus and they all say similar feedback of ‘it’s just a natural experience for us to go in and deploy their applications and scale them really easily from a simple user interface.’

“It gives us a way to really attach ourselves to this very fast moving emergent technology,” he adds.

Robinson arrived at Progress after being CEO at rapid app development firm …

Brian Riggs, Principal Analyst, Enterprise Telecoms

Dimension Data’s acquisition of Teliris is the latest move in a strategy to grow its managed and hosted unified communications (UC) services business. The acquisition adds a cloud-based videoconferencing service to a Dimension Data portfolio that already includes a number of managed and hosted telephony, UC, videoconferencing, and contact center services. It also expands Dimension Data’s presence in the US, where it is eager to grow its market share, particularly in the area of cloud-based videoconferencing services.

However, Dimension Data’s cloud-based UC portfolio is large, complex, and in need of focus. Adding another component to it increases the complexity, at least in the near term. Dimension Data will need to add integrating Teliris to an already-long list of things it needs to do to simplify its cloud-based UC portfolio.

Meanwhile Teliris is in the process of simplifying its own portfolio. The …

A recent study conducted by Osterman Research revealed the growing popularity of tools like Microsoft SharePoint. Between 2012 and 2014, the percentage of employees using SharePoint within an organization has risen from 39% to 75%.

A major reason for this terrific rise is due to the spurt in the use of intranet applications like document collaboration, file sharing and records management. Interestingly, file sharing on SharePoint (82% of respondents) appears to have trumped popular third party services like Dropbox (63% of respondents) at the workplace.

Intra-organisation collaboration is a major avenue for growth of cloud-based service providers. Unlike retail customers, enterprise-level partnerships help providers reach out to thousands of paying customers with minimal outreach.

This explains why Dropbox, despite its 200M+ user base is still second to SharePoint when it comes to enterprise patronage. While 100% of SharePoint users are enterprise customers who pay, less than 5% of Dropbox customers …

At WWDC, among a litany of other announcements, Apple unleashed iCloud Drive, representing further entry from Cupertino into the cloud storage space. But is it too little, too late?

Sitting as part of iOS 8, Apple is offering up to 5 gigabytes of free storage, with users being charged a princely 59p a month for up to 20GB and £2.40 a month for 200GB. This certainly compares favourably with Microsoft’s OneDrive – £5 per month for 200GB – and niche players such as Box and Dropbox, with prices similar to Google Drive and Amazon Web Services.

But the question remains: with so many players in the market, why Apple? And why now?

With iCloud Drive, Apple in theory has the missing piece of the jigsaw for the full enterprise collaboration suite that Google and Microsoft already has. Yet some of the tech press remains resolutely unconvinced about this move.

In …

Those who leverage managed server providers (MSPs) often use the MSP to access and manage public cloud services.  However, there are right and wrong ways to do this.

Many believe that MSPs and public clouds live in very different worlds.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  In the past, ‘managed service providers’ was a term used to describe infrastructure services delivered on a subscription basis.  With the advent of cloud computing, managed IT services and management services have become synonymous.  Indeed, most MSPs are very cloud-like.  Many even provide auto- and self-provisioning capabilities, as well as some elastic scaling features.

However, as MSPs continue to grow in popularity, along with cloud computing, best practices are beginning to emerge around how to use MSPs as management layers for cloud-based resources.  Simply put, it’s the ability to leverage a tiered model to deal with public clouds using the MSP as …