(c)iStock.com/letty17

Meet Datacentreplus. The company, based in Manchester, UK, is aiming to find a gap in the North West data centre market by serving the small to medium business customer.

“We believe colocation and dedicated server hosting should be simple,” a missive on the company’s website reads. “We’re getting back to basics and offering no-nonsense, straightforward colocation and dedicated servers, with a focus on quick delivery and great customer service that does not stop the moment you pay your bills.”

Mashukul Hoque (left) is the founder and managing director of Datacentreplus. His view is that the larger data centre players in the North West are not doing enough to keep their customers happy.

“The North West data centre landscape is the biggest outside London and the South East,” he tells CloudTech. “Currently, it is dominated by large players who are primarily interested in acquiring the larger customers, and their business model is geared towards that. This leaves a large gap where the small to medium customer is not very well served,” he adds.

This move was born, to some extent, out of necessity. Hoque is also managing director of Manchester-based software company Sandyx, and his “relatively small, but vital” data centre requirements were refused point blank – or if not, with a plethora of caveats. “There appeared to be little or no flexibility on offer,” he explains. “By adding in annual costs, set-up fees and network engineering support fees, I felt as though my business was simply being discredited and being pushed away.”

The North West, and the greater Manchester area in particular, is ripe for technological transformation. According to the Tech Nation report released earlier this year, the greatest volume of digital employment, after inner London, and Bristol and Bath, is Manchester.

Hoque has no plans to move, although he says Datacentreplus is already looking at a second, larger site. “Our intention is to remain in the North West and actually probably just in Manchester,” he explains. “We’re looking forward to providing some of the infrastructure that will enable lots of tech startups to incubate in Manchester.”

The company officially soft launched last year as Hoque anticipated some ‘technical glitches’. Yet he notes: “Many of our customers have come from the established data centres and we have been genuinely surprised at the lack of effort made by these data centres to retain customers. The data centre is now 20% full without any serious marketing effort on our part, so we’re pleased that we’ve made unexpectedly good progress.”

Not everything has gone exactly to plan, however. Hoque blames a ‘very slow pace’ in getting any kind of infrastructure upgrade from utilities and telecoms providers from going more quickly, among others. “The key challenges we have experienced so far is one centred round skills set – there is a real lack of UK-based engineers who have networking and other essential skills,” he adds.

Another key issue Hoque envisages Datacentreplus will face, alongside many other data centre providers, is sustainability – minimising power usage and reducing the environmental impact of data centres. In a research report published earlier this month, Emerson Network Power advocated a similar issue, although technological change is advancing; as Chris Molloy, a distinguished engineer at IBM notes, as IT equipment becomes more resilient, data centres will either generate less heat or be able to tolerate much higher temperatures.

For the time being however, having launched its e-commerce site last week, Datacentreplus is aiming to educate small businesses on the cloud – and go similarly stratospheric in its North West hub.

(c)iStock.com/4X-Image

The push is on to better streamline unused data centre capacity – and according to a missive from network provider Emerson Network Power, 2016 will see a greater emphasis on shared service distributed cloud computing models.

According to the company’s five trends shaping the data centre landscape for 2016, enterprises which have data centres either as ‘comatose’ – buildings which have not delivered computing services for at least six months – or data centres with free room will be able to sell excess capacity on the open market as the evolution from basic software as a service to more hybrid environments intensifies. Recent Stanford research found 30% of physical servers were comatose.

This greater use of resources is seen elsewhere in Emerson Network Power’s predictions. No longer are companies focused on efficiency, but a greater emphasis on sustainability and social responsibility is key – and the company argues this trend will not just be limited to on-premise technology decisions.

A related survey, opining on the data centre of 2025, argues that data centres will in general be smaller than they are now; more than half (58%) of respondents expect data centres to be half the size of current facilities, while one in 10 argues the enterprise data centre of 2025 will be one tenth the size.

With regard to data centre cooling, the move towards sustainability was again noted. Chris Molloy, a distinguished engineer at IBM, argued data centre equipment will not need as much heat removal as it will either generate less heat, or tolerate much higher temperatures, or both. “As IT equipment becomes more resilient, we will see ASHRAE A3/A4-based data centres operating with temperatures in the cold aisle rising to above 100°F, reducing the need for cooling,” he said. More natural cooling methods, such as provided by the Node Pole facility in Sweden, are a major USP for those providers.

The Internet of Things (IoT) will also play a part in 2016 data centre trends, Emerson Network Power argues. Some of these predictions are self-fulfilling. The IoT will force data centre providers to use a common language, as currently thousands of devices speak a host of languages including IPMI, SNMP, and Mod Bus. The alternative the network provider proposes, Redfish, is one of their projects alongside Intel, Dell, and HP. Similarly, another prediction focuses on the ‘neighbourhood data centre’; large data centres which are supported by edge facilities for low latency content for IoT networks.

What do you make of these ideas for the future of the data centre?

(c)iStock.com/4774344sean

Research from B2B research firm Clutch has revealed just over half (52%) of small businesses are using a cloud storage solution, with Dropbox the most popular and Apple the highest rated service.

According to the report, which polled 438 small business across the US and 744 full time employees, Dropbox was used by 53% of respondents, ahead of Google Drive (45%), Apple iCloud (34%) and Microsoft OneDrive (30%). Box, in comparison, was used by only 6% of respondents, indicating a preference towards consumer services. Apple’s cloud storage was given the highest Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 62, ahead of Dropbox (54), Google Drive (50) and OneDrive (45).

Plenty of moves have been made in the storage space in recent weeks. Microsoft announced earlier in November that it was dropping its unlimited OneDrive plan, previously available to Office 365 subscribers, after the company admitted a small percentage of users were putting 75 terabytes of data into their accounts – more than 14,000 times the average. Dropbox continues to push itself towards the enterprise market, announcing enhancements to its Dropbox for Business product to include new account management tools and greater security at a recent event.

Yet these survey results show businesses are not as savvy as one might expect with storage. “Cloud storage has been around for a while, but there are still many people who do not know the full scope of what can be done with it,” said David Amaya, consultant at Cardinal Solutions.

“Security and compliance concerns hold many back from adopting the cloud – as small businesses become more aware of what is possible and how the cloud addresses these concerns, the number using the cloud will continue to increase,” he added.

Elsewhere, research from all-flash storage provider SolidFire has examined the state of storage in next-generation IT deployments and argues storage automation is ‘predominantly’ addressing immediate problems IT teams face – but more work can be done. VMware has the largest contingent of organisations using storage automation, while OpenStack and, increasingly, containerised solutions such as Docker, are ‘poised to be a disruptive force’.

(c)iStock.com/4x-Image

As global spend on cloud infrastructure continues to rocket, leading cloud providers have to up their game and invest billions of dollars in expanding their network of hyperscale data centres.

That’s according to the latest data released by Synergy Research. The company notes the top four cloud providers – Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Google, and IBM – have approximately 110 data centres located in 20 different countries.

More than $25 billion has been spent in recent merger and acquisitions related to data centres, Synergy argues, with Equinix, Digital Realty, NTT and IBM at the head of operations. IBM’s $2bn acquisition of SoftLayer in 2013, while NTT’s spree of acquisitions over the past five years includes Dimension Data ($3.2bn), Raging Wire ($0.4bn) and e-shelter ($0.5bn). Digital Realty has over the past five years bought 365 Main ($0.7bn), Sentrum ($1.1bn) and Telx ($1.9bn), while Equinix purchases Switch and Data in 2010 ($0.7bn) and is pending completion of buying TelecityGroup for $3.4bn.

This overall trend relates to a huge impact over how companies support their IT needs. As previous Synergy reports have explored, the four leading cloud infrastructure service providers are growing at rates far in excess of the market. Similarly, as service provider data centre spend continues to go up, outlay on enterprise data centre equipment remains static.

“This is a time of unprecedented change in the IT industry,” explained John Dinsdale, a chief analyst and research director at Synergy Research. “End users are getting access to flexible and agile IT services that they could only dream about a few years ago and CIOs are pulling back from buying and managing their own data centres.

“It’s all change,” he added. “Companies like AWS and Microsoft are now major players in enterprise IT; IBM is totally reinventing itself; companies like Equinix and NTT are amassing huge data centre footprints, while HP and Cisco are aggressively growing their cloud technology business units.

“We do not expect the rate of change to lessen over the coming years.”

(c)iStock.com/TheaDesign

A report from the Cloud Technology Alliance has assessed how independent software vendors (ISVs) take their cloud solutions to market, and found the age old discussion over who owns the customer relationship remains unsolved.

39 companies responded to the survey, 72% of respondents based on North America and 26% in EMEA. Of the respondents, only 36% say they expect channel partners to be self-sufficient in closing business, while 33% of ISVs surveyed expect their channel partners to support and bill their customers. Only one in 10 ISVs expect their partners to close upsell opportunities and renewals.

Yet ISVs are not as rigorous as one may expect in terms of reviewing their channel partners in terms of company fit and performance. Only 60% of ISVs surveyed say they review and cut non-performing partners, with only 14% doing it systematically. The numbers differ by company; 65% of Google ISVs say they review their partners’ performance, compared to only 54% of Microsoft ISVs.

The report was broken down into seven categories: an overview of respondents’ demographics and go to market strategies; how ISVs work with the channel; channel recruiting and program structures best practices; how ISVs work with the channel; channel conflict; future investments; and achieving vendor-channel alignment.

The majority of ISVs surveyed use some sort of free version of their product to go to market; 61% offer free trials and 16% leverage a freemium pricing model. The majority of respondents price on a per-user basis, while others – most notably in the Microsoft ecosystem – price their solutions based on the total number of employees in an organisation.

31% of those polled – mostly Google Apps for Work ISVs – do not work with the channel. “These companies are likely in the early stages of launching their products or have optimised for e-commerce”, the report notes. Of the remainder, 28% have been working in the channel for more than three years, compared to 25% between one and three years and 17% for less than 12 months. 47% of ISVs reported they receive less than a quarter of their revenues through channel partners.

The report’s assessment of the differences between Microsoft and Google houses, as well as the disparity between channel partners and vendors, argues several points to achieve vendor-channel alignment. Sources of friction include an expectation around vendors providing their channel partners with leads, and who holds responsibility for customer renewals. The report argues having proper channel managers in place can address the issues of better business planning, training, and forecasting.

(c)iStock.com/istocksdaily

A survey from Puppet Labs shows DevOps engineers earn “noticeably higher” salaries than the majority of other job titles.

More than half (55%) of those polled in the 2015 DevOps Salary Report earn $100,000 per year or more, according to the research. The only job role which is more likely to provide greater remuneration is architect, which includes cloud or infrastructure architect and systems architect.

“Now that organisations are learning the benefits of DevOps, we’re seeing additional salary data that reveals just how much demand there is around the world for highly qualified IT and DevOps practitioners,” said Nigel Kersten, CIO at Puppet Labs. “It’s encouraging to see these positions continue to grow, and we look forward to watching the market evolve and adapt to the growing urgency around making IT a competitive advantage.”

The research also revealed a divide between the sexes which still exists, but is not a chasm; even though more men (47%) reported earning $100,000 or more than women (36%), the situation was reversed with regard to the $50,000 to $100,000 bracket (59% of women, 47% of men).

Previous Puppet Labs research, on the state of DevOps implementations, found a ‘pathological, power-oriented culture’ makes employees burn out faster. Managers should be encouraged to incorporate a culture of ‘continuous learning’, as well as implement a blame-free environment, such as post-mortems following outages which don’t exist to point the finger at someone.

Back in October a study from Appvance, conducted by Vanson Bourne, found 91% of CIOs agreeing that executing a DevOps strategy was a top priority for their organisation. Almost nine in 10 (89%) said ensuring confidence in the quality of their releases was key to success, while 87% advocated increasing velocity and productivity as their main priorities.

(c)iStock.com/Henrik5000

Software defined networking (SDN) will move from early adopters into the hands of mainstream buyers by 2017, according to the latest research note from IDS.

The findings, which appear in the latest IHS Infonetics Data Centre and Enterprise SDN Hardware and Software report, also show the market for ‘in use’ SDN Ethernet switches – ostensibly the real market for SDN, compared with the Ethernet switches that lie dormant – at $1.4 billion this year, nearly doubling from last year.

During the first half of 2015, bare metal switches comprised almost half (45%) of global in-use SDN-capable Ethernet switch revenue. Dell garners 100% of branded bare metal switch revenue, while HP has the largest share of SDN-capable – both in use and not in use – branded Ethernet switch ports.

Cliff Grossner, research director for data centre, cloud and SDN at IHS, notes the continued acceleration in the marketplace. “New SDN use cases continue to emerge, and the first half of 2015 was no exception with the establishment of the software defined enterprise WAN market,” he said. “The SD-WAN market is still small, but many startups and traditional WAN optimisation appliance vendors and network vendors have jumped in.”

SD-WAN is a natural progression from SDN, theoretically benefiting wide area networking as it allows businesses to mix and match their WAN network types, better utilising their network resources. As Cahit Akin, CEO of Mushroom Networks points out, VoIP packets can be sent with better quality and reliability by optimising the WAN network through software-configured algorithmic nodes to stop latency and jitter.

In June, IHS released a note which forecast the in use software defined networking market would hit $13bn by 2019, up from 2014’s figure of $781m.

(c)iStock.com/Jannoon028

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has issued a report arguing there is “no fundamental reason” why financial organisations cannot move to cloud-based models so long as the guidelines the body issues are adhered to.

“Our aim is to avoid imposing inappropriate barriers to firms’ ability to outsource to innovative and developing areas, while ensuring that risks are appropriately identified and managed,” the FCA argues. “We see no fundamental reason why cloud services (including public cloud services) cannot be implemented, with appropriate consideration, in a manner that complies with our rules.”

The FCA is at pains to stress the guidance it offers is not exhaustive, nor should it be read in isolation, but argues its approach is “risk-based and proportionate”.

First on the list are legal and regulatory considerations for financial firms. A company should have a “clear and documented business case or rationale” to support the decision to outsource to the cloud, do its due diligence – including ensuring the outsourcing agreement does not impair the firm’s operational risk – as well as identifying all service providers in the supply chain and ensure the firm’s requirements are adhered to throughout.

Risk management is also a necessary concern, by noting current industry good practice in terms of data and information security management. International standards, such as the ISO 27000 series, also need to be considered, as well as carrying out a data security risk assessment.

The relationship between service providers is also considered, as well as change management and continuity and business planning. Firms should “consider that disruptions could be caused by intentional cyber attacks, and that these may negate controls focused on delivering system availability”, the report notes.

Back in July, a report from CipherCloud argued the financial industry has an increased confidence in cloud technologies, with 100% of respondents saying they put certain personally identifiable information (PII) in the cloud. This report appears to further give the green light, but with a few provisos.

The FCA is asking its membership to give feedback for the coming three months, with the closing date for comments being February 12. You can read the report here.

(c)iStock.com/TERADAT SANTIVIVUT

More organisations are saying cloud computing gives them a competitive advantage, but fewer are saying it gives their company a significant advantage, according to the latest figures from Verizon.

The report, the third annual ‘State of the Market: Enterprise Cloud’ paper released by the telco giant, found 77% of firms cite cloud as a competitive advantage, compared with 74% this time last year. Yet only 16% argue cloud gives significant advantage this time round, down from 30% in 2014.

37% of organisations say cloud has enabled their firm to adapt its business model, with a further 19% saying they were working towards it, and 25% saying they were considering it. By 2018, Verizon argues half of companies will be putting at least three quarters of their workloads in the cloud.

Verizon argues there are three types of persona which any company can identify with:

• The sceptics: These companies, Verizon notes, aren’t luddites in terms of what cloud can do for their business – they almost certainly will use SaaS apps – but are restricted on what they can do. The financial services industry is a good example. Only 6% of survey respondents expect less than 25% of their workloads in the cloud by 2018.
• The pragmatists: These are companies which are taking a measured approach to cloud, steadily creating an enterprise-class infrastructure using standard components from cloud providers tied together using APIs and orchestration services.
• The natives: These are the cloud-first, or cloud-only, businesses, using cloud-based ERP and CRM software and utilising the subscription economy, rather than buying servers.

Elsewhere, more than a quarter (27%) of businesses are already using private cloud, while a further 17% plan to implement it. Organisations are also becoming less cloud-phobic; 87% of those polled say they think cloud is at least as reliable as on-premises infrastructure, while four in five say it is as least as secure. 93% of companies say they are using two or more cloud providers, while a quarter are using an eye-watering 10.

“Last year, the news was that cloud was being used for mission-critical workloads; now enterprises are using it to transform how they achieve that mission,” commented Ryan Shuttleworth, cloud chief technology officer for Verizon Enterprise Solutions. “Companies are using cloud technologies to create new customer experiences, reengineer their business processes, find new opportunities to grow, and manage risk and compliance measures,” he added.

(c)iStock.com/JasonDoiy

Microsoft has announced it is to launch commercial cloud services from the UK, making Azure and Office 365 available from UK data centres by late 2016.

The Redmond giant already has data centres in 20 locations – or regions, if you prefer semantically – across five continents, yet its representation in Europe has been comparatively low, with only two data centres in Ireland and the Netherlands respectively. Back in September, cloud platform marketing general manager Mike Schutz boasted to analysts of the strength of Microsoft’s portfolio, being at that time “in more regions than [AWS and Google] combined.”

Alongside Azure and Office 365, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online will follow for UK customers, according to the company. Microsoft also announced an expansion of its data centre facilities in Ireland and the Netherlands.

“At Microsoft, our mission is to empower every person and organisation on the planet to achieve more,” said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in a statement. “By expanding our data centre regions in the UK, Netherlands and Ireland we aim to give local businesses and organisations of all sizes the transformative technology they need to seize new global growth.”

Michel Van der Bel, area vice president and general manager of Microsoft UK, added: “The UK is a global leader in embracing the benefits of cloud-based solutions. Our commitment to offer Microsoft Azure, Dynamics CRM Online and Office 365 from local data centres will help meet such demand, especially for those organisations looking for solutions delivered from data centres based in the UK.”

The sense of competition among the ‘big four’ in cloud infrastructure – AWS, Google, IBM, and Microsoft – remains undimmed. Microsoft has always remained tight-lipped about its exact revenue figures from Azure, but having recalibrated its financial reporting, it is noticeable that the ‘intelligent cloud’ segment of its results contributed $5.89bn of its overall revenue last quarter, up from $5.48bn this time last year.