Picture credit: iStockPhoto

Danvers Baillieu, chief operating officer at VPN provider hidemyass, says he can’t understand companies who are reluctant to move to the cloud because it’s so easy to set up “your mother could do it.”

Baillieu spoke to CloudTech after research from Reconnix earlier this month found the majority of UK businesses weren’t ready to move to the cloud, citing a lack of in-house skills as the problem.

“I assume nobody is saying they can’t move over to Gmail apps because it’s so easy to set up that your mother could do it,” he says. “The whole point of a lot of those services [is] it requires no IT skills.

“I think actually the resistance from the IT department comes because they see themselves being done out of a job when half of these things get implemented,” he adds.

Baillieu asserts his data is safer in a remote centre since hidemyass migrated, even though he understands people are ‘always reticent about innovation.’

“We got to the point where we needed a development server,” he explains. “We bought a server and stuck it in our office, and we found it less convenient to do that.

“One of the things we talked about when we had this server in our office [was] what happens if our office burns down, what happens if our office gets broken to, and all of these physical things?” he adds. “All of those concerns were front of mind, and when we moved it to a data centre that does all of this stuff really well, we were much happier about it.”

A more pressing recent concern is through where data resides for EU customers. After Microsoft was forced in a court order to give the US government a customer email in its Dublin data centre, it wasn’t unreasonable to expect alarm bells to ring from customers – and the cloud vendors have responded.

Having previously been a lawyer, Baillieu wryly notes how there are ‘always people who want to tell you why something can’t be done’. Yet he adds: “The big providers have obviously had pushbacks from their customers on these sorts of issues, and they adapt.

“Once it’s up, it’s a lot easier than having to worry about racks overheating in your office.”

Picture credit: iStockPhoto

Nearly half of organisations polled in a recent survey admitted they had failed or stalled their cloud hosting implementations, with a further half claiming they had to alter their budget and a whopping 70% force to make changes to their design.

These are the latest figures from a study of 358 respondents conducted by INetU and THINKStrategies entitled “The Adventures of Moving to the Cloud”, which aims to show CIOs and business managers it’s not a “walk in the park” to migrate over.

Only 27% of respondents said they were “extremely satisfied” by their experience with a cloud vendor, according to a post from THINKStrategies’ Jeff Kaplan on Datamation.

“While I’ve always been a tireless advocate for the fundamental advantages of cloud-based alternatives to traditional on-premise systems and software, I’m also a realist who believes our survey findings show that there are still plenty of potential pitfalls associated with migrating important business applications and processes to the cloud,” he noted.

Security remains the toughest hurdle to clear with regards to cloud implementation according to the survey respondents, with 27% citing it as the most difficult. This compares with compliance (20%), capacity planning (13%), monitoring (9%), provisioning (4%) and billing (4%).

Similarly, billing was the easiest function according to those polled (50%), ahead of provisioning (34%), monitoring (30%), compliance (27%), security (22%) and capacity planning (21%).

A recent seminar at the Public Sector Enterprise ICT conference in London found four key ways to overcome security in the cloud: build your knowledge up, be a smart buyer, bust the ‘in-house is best’ myth, and prioritise the quick wins.

Yet there was one piece of good news which came from the survey data: 96% of respondents who said they were extremely satisfied with their solution were managed by their cloud hosting provider.

You can find out more here. What do you make of the results?

Picture credit: iStockPhoto

The IDG Enterprise Cloud Computing Study has found the number of firms who have at least a portion of their computing infrastructure in the cloud continues to go up – but it’s the technology underneath this adoption which is the most interesting.

The latest research, which polled 1672 respondents and aimed to measure cloud computing trends among technology decision makers, found over a third (38%) were “comfortable” hosting in the cloud given the state of current cloud offerings, and 56% were still weighing up their options.

As cloud usage goes up, backlog theoretically goes down, and so this study proves. 69% of respondents have at least something in the cloud, up from 61% the year before and 57% in 2012. In comparison, only 18% say they plan to deploy within the next 12 months, down from 24% in 2013.

The signs only point up. 63% of respondents say cloud computing increases IT agility, while IT innovation (61%) and employee collaboration (56%) were also highly cited.

Yet the more interesting facet of this report is through emerging technologies. 61% of those polled admitted their organisations were looking at investing in software defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualisation (NFV) to get the most agility out of their cloud investments.

Network bandwidth delivery speed was also a key boon for cloud adoption, according to 49% of respondents. IT complexity eased for 55% of those polled, but interestingly, cloud has little to no effect on the overall IT headcount. 17% of respondents said it was increasing, 20% decreasing, and 52% said it had no impact.

Three quarters (74%) said they were either very or somewhat confident in the security of their information assets in the cloud, yet a lot of external cloud projects end up winging their way back to IT. The issues raised were lack of skillset within departments and security concerns (59%).

Nevertheless, the study shows interesting if not surprising progress for enterprise cloud. A report released earlier this month from CipherCloud and Gigaom found that while most enterprises are in the cloud, they’re reluctant about using it to develop enterprise applications.

Picture credit: iStockPhoto

Google has announced one terabyte of free Drive storage to every customer who buys a Chromebook, rated at around $240 (£153).

The move is the latest in a long, long series of price cuts, bluffs and double bluffs from the main cloud infrastructure players to make users part with their cash.

Describing it as “a bonus for the holiday season” Alex Vogenthaler, Google Drive group product manager, wrote in a blog post: “That’s enough space to keep more than 100,000 awkward holiday sweater pics safe and shareable in Drive.

“With that much free storage, you can use your Chromebook for work, play and pretty much everything else you’ll do this holiday season,” he added.

It is a holiday offer only – any claims must be redeemed before January 1. But let’s go through the most recent acts of this play.

Microsoft has been the clear aggressor in this market, offering unlimited OneDrive cloud storage to its Office 365 user base last month. In June, it opened up a free terabyte to those same customers. Yet if users prefer to use Dropbox from their Office accounts they can do, after the two firms announced an alliance earlier this month.

Compare and contrast with standalone storage provider Bitcasa, which ditched its $10 a month unlimited plan. This publication mused on the matter and concluded that in the face of such huge competition, Bitcasa may be right in putting up its guard and offering a niche, although as one commenter pointed out, raising question marks about its ethics in the process. Meanwhile, Box is still pushing on with its unlimited storage plans for business users, unveiled back in July.

So who’s right? Well, it’s probably AWS. If in doubt, say AWS. The firm has a huge lead in the cloud infrastructure market, according to the latest figures from Synergy Research. A recent Storagebod column from The Register also made this point, explaining: “It seems to me that if the traditional storage vendors really want to compete with the cloud vendors, they need to change their sales model completely.”

Microsoft has marked out a foothold in second place, yet its most recent outage last week had Synergy Research chief analyst John Dinsdale telling CloudTech Redmond’s response was “an awful lot less than stellar.” Points off for that, although the commenter community was indecisive, with remarks ranging from “terrible” to “much ado about nothing.”

As cloud storage has become a less valuable commodity, the larger vendors are looking to provide one size fits all solutions. This threat to the traditional cloud storage providers is noted – take collaboration tool Box Notes as a perfect example of expanding the empire.

The reality though is if you’re sold on one particular office product, then storage is hardly going to seal the deal. With this festive feast, Google is simply keeping up appearances.

Picture credit: iStockPhoto

IBM has announced the rollout of new cloud-based DevOps services to enable enterprises to develop software faster, as well as launching a single-tenant version of its platform as a service (PaaS) Bluemix.

The aim with DevOps is to apply agile development principles to the larger, slower-moving enterprise market. With the cloud-based offering from IBM, organisations can now utilise collaborative lifecycle management either on-premise or as a managed service, as well as reduce time and cost when testing to the cloud.

“Software success is increasingly indistinguishable from business success,” said Kristof Kloeckner, IBM software group general manager. “IBM is helping clients harness the collaborative power of the cloud to deliver business outcomes that can compete on the highest levels of agility, speed and collaboration, regardless of the current size or complexity of the organisation.”

Big Blue also described two of its clients who were utilising DevOps techniques – and increasing their output and productivity as a result. Nationwide Mutual Insurance reduced critical software defects by 80% in 18 months, resulting in 20% efficiency gains, whilst exam setting firm Pearson VUE is able to continually improve its test-taking experience through predictive analytics.

“The true value of DevOps is not just in efficiency,” said Steve Farley, vice president of application development at Nationwide. “We also need to anticipate and adapt to market changes and demands with speed, incorporating feedback more frequently to improve value to customers.”

Communications provider CenturyLink is also using DevOps in its cloud team, with CTO of their cloud division Jared Wray telling CloudTech of the new office layout, including collaborative spaces and ‘fishbowl’ rooms, so developers and operations can liaise with one another, improving efficiency.

Bluemix, announced as a developer-friendly PaaS earlier this year, is now a dedicated service, a collaborative, cloud-based platform in a single tenant environment, with available features including data caching, runtimes, to give developers flexibility to run their apps in the language of their choice, and Cloudant’s database as a service.

Bluemix is also compatible with SoftLayer’s IaaS, again solidifying the partnership between the two, which IBM snapped up last year. SoftLayer CEO Lance Crosby was profiled in a Bloomberg piece asking whether he could speed up Big Blue’s transition to the cloud. “There’s more smart people than I’ve ever met, but not necessarily cloud smart,” Crosby says of his colleagues.

IBM is also opening up a Bluemix Garage in Level39 in London, a collaboration area for developers to talk about the cloud and complementing the current one in San Francisco.

You can find out more about the new series of products here.

Picture credit: iStockPhoto

Microsoft Azure cloud storage went down for several hours overnight knocking various sites and services offline, with the tech giant blaming the fault on an undetected bug during testing.

The incident can be located on the Azure status history page, under ‘Multiple Azure Services’ and multiple regions.

 “From 19 Nov 2014, 00:52 to 05:50 UTC a subset of customers using Storage, Virtual Machines, SQL Geo-Restore, SQL Import/Export, Websites, Azure Search, Azure Cache, Management Portal, Service Bus, Event Hubs, Visual Studio, Machine Learning, HDInsights, Automation, Virtual Network, Stream Analytics, Active Directory, StorSimple and Azure Backup Services in West US and West Europe experienced connectivity issues,” it explains, adding: “This incident has now been mitigated.”

According to an Azure blog, the problem came about after an issue arose during an upgrade rollout which went unchecked during the several weeks of testing prior to release, which Microsoft calls ‘flighting’.

“During the rollout we discovered an issue that resulted in storage blob front ends going into an infinite loop, which has gone undetected during flighting,” Jason Zander, CVP at Microsoft Azure wrote. “The net result was an inability for the front ends to take on further traffic, which in turn caused other services built on top to experience issues.

“We will continue to investigate what led to this event and will drive the needed improvements to avoid similar situations in the future,” he added.

Microsoft is engaged in being the global leader in cloud and infrastructure, and has made good progress in recent months. Last month a note from Synergy Research found that while Amazon Web Services (AWS) was still the clear market leader in cloud infrastructure services, Microsoft had pulled clear of its competition, including Google and IBM, for second place.

According to Synergy, in the second quarter of this year Microsoft grew at 164%, compared to IBM at 86%, AWS at 49% and Google 47%.

The firm has also made aggressive product and partnership plays in recent months, including sealing a deal with Dropbox for enterprise storage. Analysts at the time questioned the validity of the partnership, arguing Dropbox needed an enterprise footprint, while Microsoft needed to give assurances it will ‘play nicely’ with others.

You can read more about the Azure outage here. Were you affected?

Picture credit: iStockPhoto

The Canadian Cancer Society (CCSSK), based in Saskatchewan, has launched an omni-channel engagement centre utilising cloud telephony from NewVoiceMedia and Salesforce, and found charitable donations had increased by 40%.

At the society’s Relay for Life event, participation went up 30% and pledge numbers increased by 70%. The company looked to the cloud primarily to provide a greater customer experience. Utilising Salesforce data, employees were able to create more personalised calls with their customers leading to greater relationships.

“Better retention is a virtuous cycle,” explains Andrew Caswell, associate executive director at CCSSK. “As it increases, you lay a strong foundation for future years.”

As the solution utilises the cloud, it also means greater scale and flexibility. Through NewVoiceMedia’s cloud telephony, all inbound calls go through the system and get routed to a free phone in one of the firm’s offices around Saskatchewan, meaning some calls which were unanswered can now be taken. The level of scale is such that an entire Western Canada centre is being mooted; CCSSK has been making calls for the Alberta province.

It’s not just about customers either. The cloud telephony system enables incoming calls to be routed to the right parties, which frees up time for CCSSK’s Customer Care Reps to address individual contributors, volunteers, or cancer survivors. The solution also utilises real-time reporting, meaning CCSSK can identify areas of improvement for customer service.

“We wanted to emphasise the quality of relationships with participants, volunteers, donors and cancer survivors to reach more people with our support programmes and increase our fundraising,” said Catherine Moore, senior director of strategic engagement and platform development at CCSSK.

Describing NewVoiceMedia as “a game changer”, she added: “Now we are better able to engage with people to increase the impact of our support, prevention and advocacy programmes.”

NewVoiceMedia isn’t the only cloud service provider aiming to make a difference to cancer. Microsoft launched a recent campaign highlighting the work being done by scientists and engineers at Virginia Tech, analysing DNA sequencing information. Canada itself is investing $6.7m (£4.28m) in cloud-based biotech infrastructure designed to analyse genetic data.

You can read the full case study here.

Picture credit: iStockPhoto

Verizon Enterprise Solutions has announced the official launch of its Verizon Cloud Marketplace, a store for software certified to operate in the Verizon cloud.

The communications provider has been aggressive in its cloud push in recent months, and is opening up this one-stop shop with a variety of partners, including AppDynamics, Hitachi and Juniper Networks.

“The launch of Verizon Cloud Marketplace is an important milestone in the ongoing evolution of our cloud ecosystem,” said SVP cloud services Siki Giunta.

“Verizon Cloud Marketplace is all about simplifying and streamlining migration to the cloud, and enterprises using Verizon Cloud will now have access to a growing number of industry-leading cloud-based applications required to power their businesses in the digital age,” he added.

Currently Verizon offers a wide-ranging portfolio of enterprise-ready cloud services, as well as more than 40 data centres across four continents. The company has beefed its portfolio up with some heavyweight partnerships, including the likes of Oracle providing middleware, and is also aiming to leverage its communications and network experience.

Many traditional telecoms firms, from Ericsson to CenturyLink, are providing cloud services, aiming to provide better customer service as well as reduce costs. CenturyLink Cloud CTO Jared Wray told CloudTech last week of his firm’s strategy to build a single platform and converge the network with computing layers.

With recent survey data from Verizon revealing 65% of enterprises are using cloud computing, it puts the firm’s aggressive push into perspective.

Earlier this month it was announced that Verizon’s cloud service had achieved FedRAMP certification, being given authority to operate.  Verizon’s a bit late to the party with this, after HP, Amazon, Microsoft and various others got their pips last year, however the telco aims to go full speed ahead now.

Find out more about the Verizon Cloud Marketplace here.

Picture credit: Bob Mical/Flickr

It’s every CIO’s worst nightmare. Your employees are collaborating and getting stuff done, sharing files on cloud software. But what if a device was lost, or the files ended up in the wrong hands?

Meet Veradocs. The Mountain View based startup, until today operating in stealth, has announced a $14 million (£8.95m) round of funding despite not having a product, with the aim of “creating an entirely new way to secure and share information.”

The company was founded earlier this year by Ajay Arora and Prakash Linga, and has a plethora of admirers, including Battery Ventures, who led the funding round and whose partner Roger Lee has joined the Veradocs board, as well as Robin Daniels, former head of enterprise marketing at Box, who joins as chief marketing officer.

Using Veradocs, end users and IT can set policies for data and files, change policies in real time, and allow users to revoke access at any time – essentially a ‘kill switch’.

“In a world without walls, current offerings stop short at solving the issues around data security, and these issues now extend well beyond traditional highly regulated industries like financial services,” said CEO Arora. “With Veradocs, we are creating an entirely new way to secure and share information that gives IT strong levels of security while providing consumer-like user experience and choice.”

There are plenty of options for companies looking at storage, sync and share. From the likes of tech giants Google and Microsoft, to the traditional leaders Box and Dropbox – who recently announced a partnership with Redmond to improve its footprint in the enterprise space – there are lots of cards on the table. There are even solutions out there which put all your accounts together into one big cloud.

It’s all well and good for companies to have the data encrypted within those services, but if it travels anywhere else then the information may be at risk. With a product expected to be out in early 2015, Veradocs aims to change that.

CloudTech has reached out to Veradocs and will update accordingly.

Picture credit: iStockPhoto

A report from CipherCloud and Gigaom Research has revealed while most companies are in the cloud, they’re still reticent about using it to develop enterprise applications.

According to the research, just less than half (44%) of respondents had already made cloud deployments, with only 14% saying it would take them more than a year to deploy. 83% of respondents said they had adopted public cloud. Yet only 21% of those surveyed said they were using the cloud as a platform to build enterprise apps.

It seems that while businesses are more than happy to espouse the virtues of the cloud, it’s only for the front end. At Apps World Europe last week John Finch, the CIO of the Bank of England, all but confirmed this at his organisation, although when you’re the central bank and have no real market competition, it’s probably better to be on the safe side.

Not surprisingly, security is the primary concern for companies moving into the cloud, being cited by 62% of those polled. App performance (44%), time to learn new skills (41%) and cost (39%) were also popular. Yet the polls changed dependent on whether you were a leading edge or mainstream buyer, most notably with security (46% leading edge buyers, 63% mainstream) and vendor lock-in (29% leading edge, 5% mainstream).

The report leads on to shadow IT as a natural issue if there’s cloudy software afoot. Shadow IT being what it is, often the IT department only hears about it through the grapevine, or worse, when something goes wrong and the rogue employee needs bailing out because of a security violation.

It further warns that a company just can’t rely on this method – data security must cut across a business’s organisational lines.  81% of line of business employees admitted to using unauthorised software as a service applications, with Dropbox, not surprisingly, the most popular choice.

The report concludes shadow IT is, in reality, “an expensive road disaster”, security needs to be implemented across the company and not just an IT bailout, and that the cloud is here to stay.

“The cloud is not going to replace IT,” the report concludes. “Instead, the cloud is simply another vehicle for which IT delivers services to users – and IT should use it appropriately.”

What do you make of the results? Are you developing enterprise apps in the cloud at your company?