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Newly released figures from the Cloud Industry Forum (CIF) show that cloud computing adoption rate in the UK currently stands at 84%, with that number expecting to sizeably increase due to the shutdown of Windows Server (WS) 2003.

WS2003 will have its support stopped on July 14 and, as this publication has previously examined, many companies are leaving it to the last minute to finalise data migration plans. The CIF results confirm it; 58% of companies polled are still supporting the server, down only 2% from the year before. One solution is to adopt a hybrid cloud strategy, migrating easier data to the cloud but keeping others on-premise until the time is right. The CIF believes this uptake will significantly boost the overall numbers of UK cloud adoption.

78% of respondents are using two or more cloud-based services, according to the research of 250 senior IT and business decision makers from the public and private sectors. By early 2016, CIF predicts that 86% of UK-based firms will formally use at least one cloud service.

Seven in 10 (70%) of those polled who are already using cloud expect that number to go up in the next 12 months, while eight in 10 (79%) say they include consideration of cloud services within their wider IT strategy.

CRM is the most likely application to become cloud-based over the next 12 months, according to respondents; followed by disaster recovery, data storage, email, and collaboration services. Earlier this week disaster recovery specialists Databarracks issued a bullish prediction that disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) would become the most adopted cloud service of 2015.

“Cloud computing has come a long way in just a few short years,” said Alex Hilton, Cloud Industry Forum CEO. “Cloud has moved from the edge of the IT estate to the centre, and it is now largely regarded as just another way that we do IT.”

He added: “Importantly, it is, by and large, delivering the benefits the industry promised it would deliver.”

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Almost half of companies surveyed by Britannic Technologies said they had cloud-based voice and telephony services, while two thirds said they had a partial voice solution in the cloud.

84% of respondents said they understood the proposition of cloud computing, yet there were some intriguing responses as to why companies aren’t putting their voice services in the cloud. Almost half (48%) of those polled said they were concerned about security worries, while 38% were worried over reliability, 29% found it difficult to integrate into existing systems, 19% were worried they couldn’t manage it in-house, and 19% didn’t understand it.

Interestingly, the most likely executive to approve cloud-based telephony was the IT director (49%), followed by the CEO (31%) and the rest of the board (31%). Cost savings (60%) were the main reason why voice and telephony services were being moved to the cloud, followed by greater business agility (55%), speed of deployment (40%), and freeing up the IT team to work on other areas (33%).

These figures, which were described in part as “staggering” in the press material, yet the wider story here may be the uptake – or lack of – of unified communications (UC) services. A recent report from Research and Markets described the trend as Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS), and there are still plenty of partnerships taking place; StarHub announcing a deal with Avaya, and ShoreTel, Ingram Micro and HP partnering up in separate deals.

Yet the majority of recent research around the area has not been positive. The overall UC market of $21.1 billion is dwarfed by the global telephony market of $1.65 trillion.

As reported by CBR Online, a recent PwC report argues the case of there being two different markets: UC 1.0, used by more than half of small businesses which has a degree of integration between fixed and mobile telephony; and UC 2.0, companies having a more integrated solution which naturally commands a smaller audience. Similarly, a survey from Easynet argues European companies, while understanding the benefits of UC, aren’t utilising it to its full potential.

Jonathan Sharp, Britannic sales and marketing director, commented on today’s findings: “Senior managers are now aware that technology helps businesses differentiate themselves in today’s competitive marketplace. It also enables employees to work in more collaborative ways and essentially service customers better.”

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Workers in small to medium businesses (SMBs) feel happier and more productive when using cloud apps in their day to day work, according to new research from Kronos.

The study, which focused on 1000 European knowledge workers in SMBs, notes how late many small businesses are in moving to the cloud, arguing SMB leaders are “yet to realise [its] strategic value”. Yet almost two thirds (63%) believe the majority of their work will be carried out through cloud apps by 2020.

The importance of a productive working atmosphere is key, according to the report. Employees are more likely to expect reliable software (86%) or hardware (84%) than a competitive salary (75%).

Workforce flexibility was the most important benefit of cloud apps for employers, with 58% of the vote, followed by cost savings (49%) and increased agility (48%). For employees, this swapped to flexibility (91%), real-time access (89%) and quicker software updates (84%). When it came to deciding a particular piece of cloud software, speed of use (95%) was the most important factor, followed by the security of the company (90%), security of data (89%) and simplicity (88%).

Despite the overall feeling of small businesses adapting more readily to cloud, there is still plenty of work to do. Only a third (34%) of those polled believe they are getting either ‘maximum’ or ‘great’ value from their cloud applications, while three in five (61%) believe their firm needs a more definitive policy on the way cloud apps are used by employees.

Kronos argues the next few years are “critical” for SMBs as they will be forced to gain a further grip on cloud technologies. The key, the firm argues, is to establish clear guidelines on usage, ensuring employees are more productive while secure at the same time.

This is something we’ve heard in the past, of course, but the tide is turning: 83% of respondents said that, given the opportunity, they would prefer to use cloud apps over their on-premise equivalents.

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There’s good news and bad news: councils in London do have disaster recovery (DR) systems in place; but many haven’t tested them in at least a year.

The findings from disaster recovery provider Databarracks, following a Freedom of Information (FoI)request, arrive at a time when the United Kingdom takes to the polls in the General Election. And the results represent a worrying sign, according to Databarracks managing director Peter Groucutt.

“As expected, all councils to respond to our request had thorough backup and DR plans in place, which is excellent, but without testing, they could be proved useless at their time of need,” he said.

With election fever high, Databarracks also examined the importance of electoral data to councils should disaster strike through recovery time objectives (RTO) and recovery point objectives (RPO). For some councils, RTO for electoral data was 24 hours, while others said seven days and one case gave two weeks.

Groucutt added: “We put a lot of faith in IT infrastructure to just work. If [councils] haven’t tested their DR capabilities, they really have no idea of how they’d cope should disaster strike at the very time that would cause most damage.

“All of the boroughs we spoke to have good backup and disaster recovery policies in place, but now it’s time to put them to the test and make sure they really work.”

Disaster recovery continues to gain prominence in IT analysis, so much so that Gartner released its first disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) Magic Quadrant in April. IBM, NTT Communications and Sungard Availability Services were named the top vendors, while Databarracks was listed as a niche player.

Of the 32 councils who were sent FoI requests, three did not respond while two did not answer on the basis it was outside the FoI requirements.

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The significant disruption in technology today, driven by cloud, mobile, analytics and collaboration technologies, is changing the way organisations view enterprise content management (ECM), according to a report from the Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM).

John Mancini, AIIM president and author of the report, described ECM as “past its prime” as a term which encompasses the revolution driven by cloud and mobile technologies. He explains: “The ECM industry is in need of a new label, and organisations are desperate for best practices to deal with the technology disruption that is occurring.”

It’s apparent that ECM isn’t doing its job – or, cloud technologies are superseding it. According to the AIIM survey, of over 400 organisations, 62% with a ‘significant’ ECM capability find their workers rely on file sharing for day to day information access. More than half (52%) of organisations polled have three or more ECM systems, with 22% having five or more. Yet 60% of respondents say user adoption has been a big problem in ECM projects. Are too many cooks spoiling the broth?

This isn’t a new theory, of course: Gartner has been proclaiming cloud, social, mobile and information as the ‘Nexus of Forces’ for IT for the last three years. And it’s concepts like formalised enterprise content management that are feeling the heat.

The report examined a variety of statements, and assessed whether they were high or low priority for organisations. Of particular interest were the three central roles of content management solutions in the future; determining the human user’s current situation, understanding precisely what that person wants, and using powerful analytical ability to make highly focused and insightful suggestions. However, when presented with the statement ‘95% of all workplace information and content will now be stored in the cloud’, organisations were more indifferent.

Mancini added organisations were ‘hungry for best practices’ in this emerging era, and three major disruptive forces were accelerating the pace of change – consumerisation, cloud and mobile, and the Internet of Things. Even though traditional ECM still had a place, he argued, more than half of those polled said within five years ECM would be an undifferentiated part of the IT infrastructure.

“All of this data points to an industry in transition,” he said. “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.”

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Disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS), a commoditised offering whereby organisations can recover if their cloud service hits the skids, has had relatively slow uptake. Yet the trend has garnered enough ground for Gartner to put together a Magic Quadrant on it – and the analyst house has seen fit to put IBM, NTT Communications, and Sungard Availability Services at the top of the pile.

Not surprisingly, the platitudes have not been slow in forthcoming. Peter Groucutt, managing director at niche player Databarracks, said that “to be recognised as a niche player in the global market is a testament to our success.”

Sungard executive vice president Jack Dziak said the report “further confirm[s] and enhance[s] our leadership position in the highly complex market for advanced recovery solutions.” Nayan Naik, NTT senior director product strategy, said: “DRaaS is quickly becoming a highly diverse market evolving from a service that appealed mainly to small businesses to one that service organisations of all sizes across all verticals, and NTT Communications is proud to be distinguished as a leader.”

Gartner sees three kinds of cloud-based recovery service; DRaaS, recovery using infrastructure as a service, and recovery using backup as a service (BaaS). It’s interesting to note how Gartner saw small businesses – firms with less than 100 employees – as the earliest adopters of DRaaS, with larger organisations initially reticent. Yet research from Databarracks in September 2014 found only 30% of smaller businesses had a business continuity plan in place, compared to 54% of medium organisations and 73% of large businesses.

In all there are 14 vendors listed in the quadrant, including iland, Verizon and VMware. Gartner examines the landscape from the perspective of the larger vendor, arguing many of their initial concerns, such as having multiple data centres that could be used as backups for each other, closing a data centre in preparation for a DRaaS strategy taking years, and lack of readiness to move to a public cloud-based service, are still prevalent.

David Dignam, business development manager at HP, told this publication this time last year that disaster recovery solutions, in more centralised, mature markets such as the UK, do not differentiate between smaller and larger businesses. “There’s a question about [the] maturity of the market,” he said.

Yet the importance of keeping data and applications secure is clear. Cloud storage provider Nirvanix shut down in October 2013, giving customers just two weeks to save their data. Disaster recovery is key – and Gartner offers its insight as to which vendors are best for which customers.

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Everyone occasionally likes a comfortable pair of shoes. Businesses, when forced to upgrade their legacy tech, are no different. UK-based cloud provider Exponential-e has sounded a dire warning to enterprises hoping to cling onto their Windows Server 2003 deployments as the 100 day countdown to support switch-off begins at Microsoft towers.

The arguments against keeping Windows Server 2003, which will have support stopped on July 14, are straightforward; it’ll be a hacker’s dream; there will be huge compliance headaches, and so on. Yet according to Exponential-e almost two thirds (63%) of respondents said they did not know what the shutdown meant for them or their business.

A third (35%) admitted they did not feel fully prepared to deal with the end of life process, while only 16% of organisations said they were looking at a cloud-based solution for future deployments.

Nick East is CEO of hybrid IT provider Zynstra, which offers a Windows Server 2003 migration path. He says, based on his experiences with customers, plenty have moved over in good time, but he’s not surprised by the results.

“If I talk to other IT service providers and other technology providers in the industry, large and small, there’s a fairly consistent message: many organisations are leaving this quite late,” he tells CloudTech. “With a relatively short amount of time to go, lots of organisations are still running Windows Server 2003, and infact in some cases not really yet having made a detailed enough assessment to the extent of the impact of the WS2003 platform on critical parts of their business.”

East notes “it’s never too late to do something”, and in some cases migration has been completed in less than four weeks. It all depends on what data and applications you have to move over. The Zynstra boss explains a “divide and conquer” approach where a customer had an easy migration path bar one application, which was run instead on Server 2003 on a virtualised machine.

“One thing that is clear…is the most expensive upgrade strategy is the one that you do in crisis,” he explains. “It’s expensive because you’ve done it after the event, so you really don’t have any options.

“It’s also expensive in the long term because even if you have an Elastoplast approach to the process, then you end up paying for that much further down the line as well,”

Regular readers of sister publication Enterprise AppsTech will have spotted this trend before with Windows XP. The end of life for XP was slated for April 8 2014, and it was obvious many firms were unprepared. One unnamed tech firm told this correspondent at the time it had only gone off XP with weeks to spare describing it as ‘do as we say, not as we do.’  It was chaos; as a result, Microsoft announced an extension to its antimalware support until July 14 2015. Even still, XP today accounts for almost 17% of device share.

East “sympathises” with Microsoft yet argues despite the importance of the software lifecycle, the industry could do better. “This challenge of keeping systems up to date, whether it’s features, bug fixes or security patches, is a standard part of the software industry,” he says. “I think that the software industry should do a better job of making that transparent to customers.”

However, his message is clear to companies who haven’t weighed up their options yet. “Although there may still be time, it may be too late, [but] you can’t bury your head in the sand,” he says. “You’ve just got to get on and build the right IT strategy. The sooner you start, the sooner you’ll know the impact, and the least likely you’ll be in a crisis upgrade.”

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The cloud infrastructure services market continues to grow at a rapid rate with Amazon Web Services (AWS) at the summit, and latest Q1 data from Synergy Research reveals AWS remains bigger than its four nearest competitors.

The data reveals how the trend of the cloud infrastructure market has been similarly plotted for the past year. AWS was not the fastest growing company during Q115, with only 49% growth, yet retains a larger slice of the market than Salesforce, Microsoft, IBM and Google combined. Microsoft keeps its second placed position in the market, with 96% growth in Q1 – the greatest out of all the vendors analysed.

The graph below shows the full extent of AWS’ dominance, and how the map looks similar to the Q114 figures:

Despite AWS’ dominance in the market, it is clear that the company hasn’t rested on its laurels in recent quarters. IBM, and particularly Microsoft, had upped their game in 2014, with Q214 figures detailing how the four challengers had an overall market share greater than Amazon’s.

In January Amazon revealed it was finally siloing its AWS figures from the rest of its financial results. Even though Amazon’s overall financial results saw a $57 million net loss from its first quarter, AWS revenue went up by 50%.

Synergy estimates overall quarterly cloud infrastructure service revenues, including IaaS, PaaS, private and hybrid cloud, have now topped the $5 billion mark. John Dinsdale, Synergy chief analyst and research director, noted how while across the cloud spectrum there were six companies capable of market leadership – Cisco was not included in the graphs – in this field AWS remains king.

“On a strict like-for-like basis AWS remains streets ahead of the competition in cloud infrastructure services,” he said, adding: “Furthermore, this part of the cloud market is growing much more rapidly than SaaS or cloud infrastructure hardware and software.”

What do you make of these latest research results?

Picture credit: Rackspace

Rackspace has officially launched its new UK data centre in West Crawley, cutting the ribbon in front of local dignitaries, partners and a smattering of hacks.

The launch, on April 22 – not coincidentally Earth Day – offered the chance for Rackspace and its partner Digital Realty to map out its future and the importance of two key areas; the Open Compute Project – to whom the data centre design has been donated – and environmental change.

The 130,000 square foot facility, built on a 15 acre campus, has a power usage effectiveness (PUE) rating of 1.15, which Digital Realty SVP sales and marketing Matt Miszewski noted was “almost unheard of in commercially available multi-tenant data centres.” The average data centre PUE is nearer 1.7, and Rackspace admitted their original target was 1.25.

Other environmentally-conscious features include a sloped roof to harvest rainwater, as well as circular lights which utilise natural light and cooling using natural air – or, as an exec noted, to take advantage of the UK’s natural temperature.

“The progress has been incredibly impressive,” Miszewski said. “In partnership we can say this is one of the greatest data centres on the planet.” “We’ve heavily invested here, and we appreciate the opportunity to serve the community,” added Rackspace COO Mark Roenigk.

PUE remains an important metric to assess the environmental impact data centres create, however it’s not universally recognised. Professor Ian Bitterlin, chair of the British Computer Society’s data centre group on server lifecycle, recently told E&T: “The problem with PUE is that people confuse it with a data centre ‘goodness’ metric. It is not.” He added: “A data centre can have a PUE of 1.2 but be wasting 90% of the total energy because the utilisation is low. Improving server effectiveness is the only way to improve data centre effectiveness.”

Rackspace’s alliance with the Open Compute Project enables further energy efficiencies, including less weight, less waste and less wattage than traditional server design.

The company anticipates customers from around the globe to utilise the Crawley data centre, but expects most of the demand to come from the UK and Europe, where various other vendors have been building data centres for greater latency and data sovereignty from European customers.

Rackspace was unable to detail specifics on customer movement, but CloudTech understands customers would be migrating data over to the centre by end of May.

Take a look at another picture of the data centre below:

Disclosure: Your correspondent’s travel expenses for this story were paid for by Rackspace.

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Latest survey research from Cloud Sherpas has revealed while seven in 10 IT leaders view enterprise cloud software as central to their company’s success, only half have a formal cloud strategy in place.

82% of the more than 200 global respondents to the2015 Enterprise Cloud Report said cloud technology was a key part of their IT strategy. 36% of those polled said they were currently using multiple applications, while 31% said they were regularly using cloud daily. 52% of high tech and manufacturing respondents said they were using multiple cloud applications, compared to 50% for education and 44% real estate.

The survey data shows the driving forces behind enterprise cloud adoption. In a multiple choice question 57% of respondents cited the CIO as the primary driver, ahead of the CEO (22%) and CTO (19%). The organisation’s customers were cited by 19% of those polled. Efficiency (71%) was the key organisational factor to improve according to respondents, ahead of collaboration (66%), innovation (55%) and engagement (50%).

One of the more curious parts of the survey came when answering statements on security and privacy.

To the statement “Security concerns have prevented one or more of my company’s business functions from adopting cloud technology”, 28% strongly agreed while a further 31% agreed. Regarding the statement “The complication of our legacy system has challenged my organisation from taking it to the cloud”, 62% overall agreed, with 24% strongly agreeing. Almost two thirds (63%) agreed with the statement “Privacy concerns have prevented one or more of my organisation’s business functions from adopting cloud technology.”

The overall consensus of the survey again relates to the lack of clear strategy organisations deploy when moving their IT infrastructure to the cloud. “A transition to the cloud requires companies to consider multiple factors beyond price and vendor, including a thorough analysis of the existing application stack and proper alignment with business needs,” said Matthew Johnson, Cloud Sherpas vice president of advisory services.

“When stakeholders across the business, including executives, come together on a strategy and execution, companies will get the most benefit from moving to the cloud,” he added.