By Greg Schulz

I’m always interested when I hear or read a software vendor or their value added reseller (VAR) or business partner claim that their solution eliminates vendor lock-in.

More often than not, I end up being amazed if not amused over the claims which usually should be rephrased as ‘eliminating hardware vendor lock-in.’

What is also amazing (or amusing) is that while some vendors make claims of eliminating (hardware) vendor lock-in, there is also some misdirection taking place.

While some solutions may be architected to cut hardware vendor lock-in, how they are sold or packaged can force certain vendors technology into your solution.

For example, the EMC Centera software in theory and architecture is hardware vendor independent, however it is sold as a solution (hardware and software), similar to how Dell sells the DX which uses software from Caringo and – you guessed right – Dell hardware, among …

Kevin Noonan, Research Director, Public Sector, Ovum

Many procedures for government procurement can be traced back through earlier stages of technology development. Over time, procurement has delivered substantial value and, like technology, it has developed and matured. However, the technology sector is changing at an increasing pace and procurement is struggling to keep up.

Business needs have also changed. Today’s corporate priorities are more about agency-wide productivity and consistency delivering better government outcomes. We recently discussed this phenomenon in the Ovum report Bridging the Gap Between IT Cost-Cutting and Agency Productivity. Some agencies are still chasing simple, across-the-board IT cost-cutting, while others are driving more sophisticated savings measures by focusing on agency-wide productivity. Of course, this approach also requires more sophisticated vendor relationships and a much lower tolerance of failure.

The changing technology landscape requires a rethink of requirements-gathering

Today there is a much richer set of engagement options …

Our friends at Newvem are at it again. They’ve just released an incredible infographic on Demystifying Amazon Web Services (AWS).

The new infographic demonstrates the size of Amazon’s cloud and reveals usage analysis including a deep dive on reserve instances.

And, since this comes from Newvem – the experts in usage analytics – it also provides recommendations for how to reduce costs and make your AWS cloud more efficient!

Dome9 secures AWS EC2 instances by providing automated and centralised security management, with on-demand secure access. Learn more at http://www.dome9.com/amazon-aws-ec2-security.

Today, a great number of different storage mediums exist whose purpose is to retain information in some manner. One of the oldest data storage mediums, the tape, is a linear storage system that still has great application with today’s revisions to this long standing technology.

Implementing tape storage within virtual storage infrastructure can be a great asset to a backup and recovery solution for many industries.

The tape storage system sequentially stores data on drives that utilise a magnet tape as a storage medium. The core design of tape has existed for many years but has been refined to operate more efficiently and reliably while sustaining the immense amount of information needed in today’s storage solutions.

Most of today’s tape drives resemble the form factor of a cassette tape rather than the big projector-like reels which slowly rotated in the computing labs, seen in early science fiction …

Highest number of cloud users in Romania and Greece, according to research

Research from software advocates Business Software Alliance (BSA) has inferred a surprising lack of cloud usage among European Union computer users.

The figures, surveying 4000 people, showed that across the EU, whilst 86% of respondents used cloud services for personal use, less than a third (29%) used it for business purposes.

Greece and Romania had the most cloud users with 39%, higher than the global average of 24%, with Poland (25%), the UK (21%) and Austria (20%) making up the top five.

The most popular responses to the question “What type of online cloud computing services have you used?” were:

• Email service (79%), compared to a global figure of 78%
• Online word processing aligned with 36% of EU consumers (45% global numbers)
• Photo storage and online games came joint third (35%) with European computer users

The global figures …

The Journal of Accountancy reports that doing business in the cloud should cost less than doing business on-premise.   A survey of 1,000 accounting firms found that 70% of respondents increased their use of web-based applications in the cloud between 2010 and 2012, and that cloud accounting is becoming more popular.

The article suggests doing a three-year amortisation of upfront costs for an on-premise application including servers, software licenses and installation plus estimated maintenance for 3 years and comparing that to the cost of subscribing to the cloud version of the product for three years.

“This can be applied to partial versus full cloud conversions and should be done on an application-by-application basis to determine whether there is cost savings by moving each application to the cloud,” said the Journal of Accountancy.

• In most instances, by moving accounting functions to the cloud, an SME could expect to reduce support costs …

Zscaler, the SaaS cloud security company, has for the first time received venture capital investment to the tune of £24 million ($38m), mainly from Lightspeed Venture Partners.

The San Jose startup was traditionally funded internally, but according to Zscaler the money will be used to “further accelerate its go-to-market strategy, and further develop its cloud security offering with a high emphasis on mobility”.

In other words: it’s not because Zscaler needs the cash, more upgrading what it already has.

And according to CEO Jay Chaudhry, it represents a shift in company policy.

“To date, we have resisted outside investment despite inquiries from top-tier investors,” he said, adding: “Our new strategic partners share our vision and are committed to helping Zscaler build a long-lasting business”.

Zscaler’s security solution revolves around a unified SCG (Secure Cloud Gateway) and famously requires no hardware or software to enforce multiple security policies. As …

A survey from Wakefield Research for virtualisation experts Citrix has shown that, for consumers, many Americans are unaware of what ‘the cloud’ entails.

32% of respondents stated that cloud was “a thing of the future”, while 95% of those surveyed who thought they weren’t using the cloud actually were, for such simple tasks as online banking and social networking.

The research, which garnered responses from over 1000 American nationals, found some surprising and eye-opening results. Highlights included:

• 40% of respondents stated an advantage of the cloud was being able to access work information in their “birthday suit”
• A quarter of those surveyed said the cloud was great for keeping embarrassing videos off the hard drive
• A third of interviewees said they faked knowledge of the cloud at work, with 14% pretending to know for a job interview and 17% winging it on a first date

Thankfully, Americans did see …

Google’s top advertising customers are pushing for convergence of mobile and video quickly, which is turning into a strong catalyst of growth of the global mobile video market.  With their largest advertising customers wanting greater flexibility in bringing video to mobile devices, Google will make significant strides this year to make that happen.

During their latest earnings call, Google execs said that Android, Chrome and YouTube are the highest priority areas of their business. I’ve been following the last year of earnings calls closely, and it’s clear that Google’s largest advertising customers are pushing the company to bring video to mobile at a level of performance and usability not accomplished yet.  The Q2, 2012 earnings call transcript makes this point clear which can be accessed here Google’s Management Discusses Q2 2012 Results – Earnings Call Transcript.

 Mobile and Video: Transforming Convergence Into Cash

Over the last …

The landscape of IT innovation is changing.

“Back in the day” (said in my gravelly old-man voice from my Barcalounger wearing my Netware red t-shirt) companies who were developing new technology solutions brought them to the enterprise and marketed them to the IT management stack.

CIOs, CTOs and IT directors were the injection point for technology acceptance into the business. Now, that injection point has been turned into a fire hose.

Think about many of the technologies we have to consider as we develop our enterprise architectures: tablets, smartphones, cloud computing, application stores, and file synchronisation.

Because our users and clients are consuming these technologies today outside of IT, we need to be aware of what they are using, how they are using it, and what bunker-buster is likely to be dropped into our lap next.

Sure, you can argue that “tablets” had been around for a number of years …