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Once again, the tea leaves and crystal balls are out at Gartner headquarters as the analyst house looks to predict the shape of the enterprise file sync and share (EFSS) industry. Accellion, Box, Citrix and Syncplicity occupy the top right leaders section in this iteration, while Microsoft, Google and – perhaps surprisingly – Dropbox again sits in the challengers square.

EFSS, as Gartner defines it, is “a range of on-premises or cloud-based capabilities that enables individuals to synchronise and share documents, photos, videos and files across mobile devices, such as smartphones, tablets and PCs.” A total of 16 vendors were included in the report, from over 100 contenders. To make the final cut, companies had to have an offering which hit more than $10 million in revenue for 2014, be sold as a standalone product, and have a presence in at least two geographic regions, with no more than 70% of revenue coming from one region.

The analysts argue today’s EFSS market offers more mature options than ever, through new capabilities for system integration and enhanced content collaboration. The report takes the opportunity to put a few predictions out there – by 2018, it argues, any enterprise content management (ECM) or enterprise mobility management (EMM) offering will embed natively basic EFSS features. It is already interesting to note EMM provider AirWatch by VMware is one of the vendors which made the final report.

One company which made the ‘visionary’ section of the report is Egnyte. For regular readers of this publication, they will know Egnyte as a company which refuses to be rushed in the face of competitors’ IPOs and mammoth venture capital pots. When Egnyte opened up a European branch last year, the company had raised $62.5m in capital – small change compared to Box’s $414m and Dropbox’s $607m at the time. Egnyte CEO Vineet Jain told this reporter he had refused the board’s request to open up to Europe a year earlier, stating “you need to strengthen into a specific territory before you go and fight another war.”

Yet the style seems to work; Egnyte was the only company in the 2015 quadrant which moved into a new space, from niche player to visionary, and, along with Google, was the only vendor to move up and right from the previous year. Jain said: “In the midst of high profile IPOs and increasing consolidation, this space has become hyper-competitive and infrastructure players like VMware and Citrix, as well as collaboration players like Microsoft and Google, are converging on this market.”

He added: “It has become increasingly clear that value-added files services on top of these offerings with a hybrid focus of security and innovation around user experience is the key to survive and win long-term. As the market has continued to evolve, it is clear from Egnyte’s movement into the visionary category that our hybrid, open technology is quickly becoming a preferred solution for the enterprise.”

For CTERA Networks, making its debut on the quadrant as a niche player having only pushed out its first EFSS release in 2012, it’s a different story but the mood is still one of celebration. In a blog post, CTERA SVP marketing Jeff Denworth wrote: “There’s no denying the EFSS market is a hot space. With nearly 150 vendors that are tracked by IT analysts, Gartner had their work cut out for them narrowing their focus on the companies that have the right combination of product vision and execution.

“To realise the accomplishment of making it onto this list among our viable competitors after arriving on the scene as much as seven years after our peers, well…CTERA is proud to say we’re doing something right,” he added.

For Box, firmly positioned in the leaders’ section again, it was business as usual. “This is a highly competitive and fast-growing market, as nearly every business in the world is looking for technology to power new ways of working to increase productivity and collaboration across their organisation,” said Box SVP and general manager of enterprise Whitney Bouck in a statement.

“Our leadership position in this magic quadrant demonstrates that cloud-only technologies are able to meet the most stringent security needs of larger and heavily regulated enterprises across all industries, while also providing a platform for enterprise content collaboration, business processes and workflow support.”

Naturally, the full report digs very deep down and contains insights, strengths, and weaknesses over each vendor selected. Brian Clendenin, writing for IT World Canada and a former Gartner employee, argues you should always speak with the analysts who conducted the research, as well as looking out for the cautions which relate to stability issues, for instance, based on customer preferences. If you see them, he argues, remember the vendors always offer the best customers to the analysts.

Disclaimer: CloudTech’s copy of the Gartner EFSS report was obtained through Egnyte.

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The revenues of Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft, IBM and Google in cloud infrastructure services commands more than half of the worldwide market, according to new data from Synergy Research.

The figures reveal the combined market share of the ‘big four’ at 54% of the overall cloud infrastructure market, comparing favourably with Q214 (46%) and Q213 (41%). AWS holds a 29% market share at the top, with each of the big four cloud providers increasing their share of the global market in the second quarter this year.

Quarterly revenues of the big four have for the first time surpassed $3 billion, while the overall market, including infrastructure as a service, platform as a service and private and hybrid cloud, is approaching $6bn. While it looks ominous for smaller providers, Synergy chief analyst John Dinsdale argues opportunities still abound.

“The rest of the market is being left behind,” he explains. “No other company has been able to get close to these four in terms of data centre footprint, global presence and market power.”

Dinsdale adds: “The situation is not going to change any time soon. That being said, the market as a whole continues to grow quickly and there are many growth opportunities for small to medium sized cloud providers.”

Recent Synergy analysis has shown Microsoft establishing a niche in second place in the cloud infrastructure market while AWS continues to dominate. In February, the analyst house reported Amazon’s market share had hit a five year high.

The view of opportunities still pervading for smaller cloud players is one echoed by Ditlev Bredahl, CEO of OnApp. Writing for this publication in June, Bredahl argues: “Is it the end for any cloud provider without the capital of the mega-hosters? Far from it. By sharing their infrastructure they are able to offer more scale and reach than the mega-hosters combined.” However Kelly Stirman, VP strategy at MongoDB, argued at the recent Cloud World Forum event there will only be three cloud IaaS players – Amazon, Google and Microsoft – as everyone else will have run out of money.

What’s your opinion on the cloud infrastructure services market?

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IBM is ramping up its commitment to open source technologies by releasing a new platform which enables developers to build cloud applications.

The platform, called developerWorks Open, allows developers to not only download the code but have access to blogs and videos, comprising a global network to accelerate development projects.

IBM has had more than 20 years in the open source computing biz, becoming a main player in projects such as Apache, Linux and Eclipse. Big Blue is a platinum member of the OpenStack foundation, which announced a partnership with Google earlier this month.

The company is also spearheading a project called Academic Initiative for Cloud, where the next generation of developers will be equipped with IBM’s platform as a service offering Bluemix. More than 200 universities in 36 countries have signed up for the initiative, meaning cloud development curricula can potentially reach more than 20,000 students.

Evidently, there is a benefit for IBM – if the next generation are good, and used to Bluemix technology, then Big Blue can snap them up. It’s similar to Rackspace, another big open source advocate, investing in a data science boot camp for PhD students last year.

But developerWorks Open is also about giving something back. IBM is open sourcing a number of its MobileFirst apps – 10 more of which quietly hit the stands this week as part of IBM and Apple’s ongoing partnership – for a variety of industries, including healthcare, retail, insurance and banking.

IBM argues developerWorks Open comes at “an important time” for cloud developers, stressing the need to simplify implementations. Dr Angel Diaz, VP cloud architecture and technology, said: “IBM firmly believes that open source is the foundation of innovative application development in the cloud.

“With developerWorks Open, we are open sourcing additional IBM innovations that we feel have the potential to grow the community and ecosystem and eventually become established technologies,” he added.

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Microsoft has reported a $3.2 billion net loss for the second quarter of 2015, the worst in the company’s history, but backed it up alongside continued strong cloud growth.

It was always going to look nasty. Following the $7.5bn writedown of its Nokia offshoot, the analysts were prepared to sink their teeth into the Redmond giant as its latest financial results came through. Yet Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was unrepentant, arguing the cloud and mobile gains were pushing the company in the right direction and to consign Nokia to the past.

“We’re seeing proof that preference for our cloud SaaS services creates a flywheel of growth for our cloud platform services,” he said in an analyst call, concluding: “Above all else, I’m optimistic about our future. Our cloud services are accelerating fast and Windows is positioned for renewed growth.”

In all, commercial cloud revenue grew 88% – 96% in constant currency – driven by Office 365, Azure and Dynamics CRM online, while more legacy operations saw a slow decline. Office Commercial products and services, for instance, fell 4% due to “continued transition to Office 365” as well as declining business PCs following the end of support for Windows XP.

Piers Linney, co-CEO of cloud services provider and Microsoft Gold partner Outsourcery, says the uptick in cloud sales justifies his company’s decision to not move to a more vendor-agnostic partner.

“The growth of cloud brought a number of challenges to many of the established players in the industry who have had to rapidly adapt to new business models as a result,” said Linney. “These latest results from Microsoft, while mixed, show that it has held its strong footing in what is a rapidly expanding cloud market.”

He added: “Working with Microsoft enables us to deliver expertise in an offering that is always reliable and best of breed. Microsoft’s latest cloud sales result justifies our decision to remain Microsoft-centric and shows that the strength of Microsoft, and Outsourcery in turn, will only continue.”

Elsewhere, the Redmond firm also announced a major partnership deal with General Electric, moving its 300,000 employees to Office 365. GE chief technology officer Larry Biagini cited continuous iteration and innovation as a key to move to Office 365, alongside the ability to take advantage of as much cloud capability as possible, including Skype for Business and Yammer. The company signed a deal with Box in May last year for content sharing and collaboration services.

It’s that time of year again. Companies are issuing their latest quarterly financial figures, and SAP’s Q215 numbers see continued growth in cloud services, but overall profits remaining relatively stagnant.

Cloud subscriptions and support for the German software giant stood at €552 million for the second quarter of 2015, a more than 100% change from the previous year. Other software licenses and support saw a 13% change at €3.51 billion. Total revenue hit €4.97bn, at an increase of 20%, yet operating profit of €701m was a mere 1% rise, and profit after tax dropped 16% year over year.

Despite this the company is reiterating its 2015 business outlook, expecting full year non-IFRS cloud subscriptions and support revenue to be in a range of €1.95bn to €2.05bn, full year non-IFRS cloud and software revenue to increase by 8% to 10%, and full year 2015 non-IFRS operating profit to be in the range of €5.6-€5.9bn.

SAP’s modus operandi, as any regular reader of CloudTech will know, is to migrate its mammoth legacy on-premises software revenues to the cloud. It is by no means the only company attempting that – IBM and Oracle instantly spring to mind – but all three companies are suffering to some degree.

For SAP, everything is going in the right direction; just not at the pace it would like. SAP shifted its long term goals again at the start of this year, predicting a 2017 operating profit target of between €6.3bn and €7bn, from a previous total of €7.7bn.

All three companies have had the Campaign for Clear Licensing (CCL) on its tail, with the organisational body fighting against obfuscatory software practices. Oracle was lambasted for its “arms length, impoverished” relationship with customers, while SAP told this publication in February it would “welcome any customer feedback” following the CCL audit.

Bill McDermott, SAP CEO, is unrepentant in his cloud vision. He said: “Our business is thriving because we have the most complete vision for how to make this transition to digital business a simple one. I am confident that our strategy to deliver a platform, applications and business networks is exactly what customers need from SAP.”

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Google has unveiled itself as the newest corporate sponsor of the OpenStack Foundation, promising to commit engineering resources and further collaborate on technologies such as app catalogue Murano and API service Magnum.

Mark Collier, chief operating officer of the OpenStack Foundation, wrote in a blog post announcing the news: “Few companies understand cloud-native apps at scale like Google, so I expect big things as Google developers contribute to OpenStack projects like Magnum.”

He added: “OpenStack gives [companies] a solid platform to explore new and compelling technologies as they emerge, and I know they’ll be even more confident in that path knowing that Google has joined our mission to make OpenStack the platform for containerised workloads.”

Google joins the more than 100 current corporate sponsors, which practically reads like a who’s who of tech. The eight platinum members, of whom the majority of funding derives, includes AT&T, HP, IBM, Rackspace and Red Hat. The search giant’s key selling point for OpenStack is its expertise in software containers, notably gaining prominence due to products such as Docker. Google currently launches two billion containers a week.

The move is being seen as a fillip for OpenStack, after recent venture capital investments were beginning to run dry. Similarly, the likes of EMC buying Cloudscaling in October signified a wider trend of larger companies dominating and swallowing up smaller firms.

There is one other angle this announcement could be viewed from. While the list of companies tied up in OpenStack is impressive both in length and breadth, two notable absentees remain Microsoft and Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google’s main rivals in cloud infrastructure as a service. As Matt Weinberger of Business Insider points out, Microsoft’s dominance in hybrid cloud, through a combination of Windows Server and Azure public cloud, and AWS’ huge market lead in cloud infrastructure – latest estimates put Amazon’s revenue at more than its four main competitors put together.

Earlier this month, CSC chief enterprise architect David Auslander wrote for this publication that OpenStack was ready for prime time, with the right planning and the support of an integrated vendor.

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Figures from the Cloud Industry Forum (CIF) reveal more than half (51%) of organisations polled with between 21 and 200 employees and almost three quarters (72%) of firms with more than 200 employees are still reliant on Windows Server 2003, despite the support from Microsoft having expired on July 14.

Naturally, this may not be the most surprising news you will read today. Back in April, this publication spoke with hybrid IT provider Zynstra and cloud storage provider CTERA Networks and concluded many organisations were leaving it until the last minute to finalise data migration plans. As Nick East, Zynstra CEO, argued: “The most expensive upgrade strategy is the one that you do in crisis – you’ve done it after the event, so you really don’t have any options.”

Small businesses have been steadily migrating away from WS2003, the CIF argues, and the key factor in larger organisations’ reluctance to move is complexity. Jon Seddon, head of product at Outsourcery, a founder member of the CIF, said: “When we consider how integral Windows Server 2003 has been to businesses’ IT for the past decade, and the layers that have built up on the operating system during that time, the task of moving away from it can be a daunting one.”

Seddon echoed East’s ‘don’t bury your head in the sand’ ethos when he added: “It’s somewhat understandable that the proportion of larger organisations still using Windows Server 2003 hasn’t shown much movement in the run up to the end of support deadline. But doing nothing is clearly not an option, and those still using the operating system past [the] deadline face significant risks to the security of their data, their productivity and the ability to remain competitive.”

The research, of 250 UK IT decision makers, found a quarter of organisations with fewer than 20 employees have upgraded from WS2003 in the past year. 44% of those organisations claim to still use the outdated server in some aspect, down from 58% in 2014.

In May, the CIF prognosticated over how adoption of cloud services would increase as more firms flew away from WS2003, arguing by early 2016 86% of UK-based firms will formally use at least one cloud service. Back then, 58% of companies polled overall by the advisory board were using the server, down only 2% from the year before.

For the cloud service providers, the CIF notes a word of caution, adding they need to show businesses they can be trusted with the most intimate of corporate data. East argued similarly, saying the software industry should “do a better job” of making the software lifecycle more transparent for companies. Organisations do not need to migrate data away from WS2003 in one hit, he added; one of his customers utilised a “divide and conquer” approach, where one particularly tricky application to move over was using Server 2003 on a virtualised machine.

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Rackspace has announced it has expanded its service offering with Microsoft, working with customers to speed up their deployment of Azure cloud services.

The two companies are unveiling a self-service hybrid solution utilising Rackspace’s private cloud powered by Microsoft Cloud Platform. The two companies, who have enjoyed a 13 year partnership, will aim to minimise costs and optimise performance with its feted fanatical support, offering a 100% network uptime guarantee and one hour hardware replacement.

This move is targeted squarely at organisations who are not quite ready to go all out with the public cloud, serving customers who want public, private and hybrid cloud environments built on the Microsoft Azure stack. Alongside the support, Rackspace will offer architectural guidance to customers, helping them build applications – in some cases to take into account on premise IT environments – and optimise databases.

Taylor Rhodes, Rackspace CEO, said following the announcement: “Our strategy at Rackspace has always been to provide the world’s best expertise and service for industry-leading technologies. We’re pleased to expand our relationship with Microsoft and the options we provide for our customers by offering Fanatical Support for Azure.”

Rackspace recently won the 2015 Microsoft Hosting Partner of the Year award. Following an uneasy last 12 months, in which the company abandoned takeover plans in September, shares in the company plummeted. Following the Microsoft deal, investors are being much more kind. Zacks upgraded the firm’s shares from a hold rating to a strong buy rating, while Wells Fargo & Co reaffirmed its outperform rating.

Elsewhere, the open cloud provider is shovelling a “significant investment” into CrowdStrike’s $100 million series C financing round. The company, whose total funding round pot stands at $156m, includes Rackspace as a customer and provides software as a service around an endpoint protection platform.

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If organisations could track all cloud consumption and usage across the enterprise, the majority (57%) would utilise it to improve IT forecasting.

That was the key takeaway from a survey undertaken by enterprise software provider Cloud Cruiser, who collared 279 IT professionals at the recent Microsoft Ignite event in Chicago. Interestingly, 16% of respondents admitted they did not use Microsoft cloud technologies.

39% of those polled said they would use more wide-ranging tracking skills to compare costs across different platforms and vendors, while 34% said they would expand their on-demand and self-service access to cloud. 72% said tracking cloud usage and costs was extremely or very important to their IT function. Despite this, companies generally argued their ability to track and analyse cloud usage and costs was good. 17% described it as excellent, 28% described it as very good and good respectively, while only 27% put it as poor or horrible.

On the whole, almost a third (31%) of companies polled said they preferred a hybrid cloud strategy, while only 6% used all of their IT estate as public cloud. 37% of those polled have a quarter or more of their services in the cloud, 21% of respondents have between a quarter and half of their services in the cloud, while 8% respectively have between half and three quarters and more than three quarters.

“This latest survey is representative of what we are seeing in the market with our partners and enterprise customers,” said Deirdre Mahon, Cloud Cruiser chief marketing officer. “Once an organisation gets serious about cloud, they quickly hit a wall in terms of tracking usage and gaining full control on forecasts – essentially delivering services with efficiency and agility.”

Not surprisingly, Office 365 remains the most popular Microsoft cloud technology currently in use by businesses, with 58% of the vote. Virtualisaton hypervisor Hyper-V (35%), System Center (34%) and Azure (32%) all came a close second. A recent report showed the disparity between Microsoft and Google’s cloud office offerings; smaller businesses were more likely to opt for the search giant, while more Google Apps implementations are done in one go. Similarly, 62% of Office 365 respondents opted for a hybrid deployment strategy.

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A report from enterprise mobile collaboration provider harmon.ie argues Microsoft is making progress in moving its customers’ productivity software to the mobile cloud, yet on premise remains important.

The company, which offers a tool which puts all Microsoft productivity tools within a single screen, notes Microsoft has a stronghold on productivity suites. 97% of respondents polled said they expect their clients’ use of Office 365 to increase in the coming 12 months, with harmon.ie reporting, “Office 365 is the company’s fastest growing commercial product and it shows no signs of slowing down.”

Not surprisingly, cost savings (68%) were cited as the primary driver for moving to the cloud. However, while companies are happy to make their email cloud-based, they are unwilling to move beyond individual productivity tools into a more comprehensive, integrated cloud collaboration environment.

In previous reports the company had argued Microsoft was the “undisputed” leader in enterprise collaboration, but is rarely used as an all-in-one solution. The latest research figures back this up; only 12% of respondents use Lync – or, rather, Skype for Business – frequently, and a pitiful 3% only use enterprise social network Yammer on a regular basis.

One of the bigger barriers to cloud adoption is SharePoint; the collaboration tool is important to companies, but predominantly not in the cloud, with 72% admitting they use it either on premise or hybrid. Almost half (47%) of respondents called out hybrid integration services as an area of potential revenue growth.

This hybrid play is one harmon.ie imagines will be continuing for the near future at least, despite the general trend of companies becoming more acquainted with the mobile cloud. “We are at a tipping point as an industry,” said harmon.ie CEO Yaacov Cohen in a statement. “There is no doubt that businesses are moving to Microsoft Office 365, but on premises is certainly not going away.”

He added: “Although the mobile-first, cloud-first era is still in its infancy, now is the time for partners to craft services and solutions to ease their customers’ migration concerns while driving immediate business agility and CAPEX savings.”

You can read the full report here (email required).