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More than half of CIOs polled by Verizon and Harvard Business Review say their use of cloud computing has improved their organisation’s competitiveness; but hybrid IT is the primary method of coping with digital transformation struggles.

The study, which polled more than 300 business and IT executives worldwide, found that 63% of organisations are pursuing a hybrid IT approach, yet a third (32%) are struggling to integrate cloud with other systems.

The top barriers preventing organisations from going deeper into cloud are, naturally, security (35%), integration with other systems (32%), and integrating multiple clouds (25%). What’s more, the report affirms the view that many organisations still use on-premises, as well as in-house, delivery for certain systems.

“It’s all about digital transformation in the enterprise: improving the customer experience and adopting new business models to respond to disruption from established rivals and new entrants, and hybrid IT is how you do that,” said Carl Lehmann, research manager in charge of enterprise architecture, integration, and business process management for the 451 Group.

Yet while this approach has its benefits – for instance, creating new business processes and customer-facing applications involving multiple cloud and non-cloud systems working together – there are drawbacks. “Few IT departments are experienced at managing this hybrid delivery model, or the network technologies required to make it work,” the report notes. “As a result, companies are beginning to partner with experienced hybrid IT providers that have the expertise and products to deliver these newer technologies and capabilities.”

The report agrees many companies are struggling with hybrid IT – “a repeatable, reliable, and consistent hybrid IT approach remains the exception rather than the rule” – but reiterates the importance of getting an orchestrated mix of systems right. Yet help is at hand. The report also notes companies are recognising the importance of outsourcing infrastructure management, in order to help them stay on top of technology change – as cited by 72% of respondents – as well as better respond to business demands (67%) and more quickly resolve problems (57%).

You can read the full report here (pdf).

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Good news and bad news, according to the latest research from Dimension Data; enterprise networks are being refreshed more frequently, but it’s coming at a cost on the security side.

The classic image of the enterprise network sagging under a series of legacy technologies is becoming a thing of the past, the company argues in its latest Network Barometer Report due to the pressure from technologies such as mobility, software defined networking (SDN) and the Internet of Things (IoT). Yet when it comes to security, companies neglecting to patch their networks remains a concern.

In terms of geographical splits, the Americas saw a particularly fast growth, with the number of ageing and obsolete devices spotted dropping from 60% in 2015 to 29% this year, while Europe, Asia Pacific and Australia saw growth at a more regular pace. According to the company, this explanation can be put down to American enterprises refreshing their networks due to the new generation of programmable infrastructure, compared to other regions who refresh as part of data centre network redesigns.

Despite some of the issues with older networks – such as not being able to handle the traffic for cloud-based collaboration, or IoT or SDN, Dimension Data argues it needs to be handled with care.

“Ageing networks are not necessarily a bad thing: companies just need to understand the implications,” said Andre van Schalkwyk, network consulting senior practice manager at Dimension Data in a statement. “They require a different support construct, with gradually increasing support costs. On the other hand, this also means that organisations can delay refresh costs.”

One aspect of the research was much bleaker than the rest; the number of devices inspected which had at least one known security vulnerability – in other words, made public by their manufacturer – had risen from 60% last year to 76% in 2016. 97,000 network devices were assessed in total.

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Oracle has announced the completion of cloud ERP software provider NetSuite for $9.3 billion after shareholders approved the transaction.

In a short note issued earlier this week, the company confirmed that the acquisition would be completed by November 7, after a small majority – 53% – of NetSuite shares had been tendered in favour of the agreement. The original tender date expired on November 4, while the Department of Justice approved the deal in September.

The deal has not been without its hiccups, however. T. Rowe Price, a NetSuite shareholder, warned Oracle to up its offer from $109 per share cash to $133 per share. A month ago, Oracle showed its hand and announced a final extension of its tender offer, noting: “In the event that a majority of NetSuite’s unaffiliated shareholders do not tender sufficient shares to reach the minimum tender condition, Oracle will respect the will of NetSuite’s unaffiliated shareholders and terminate its proposed acquisition.”

Speaking to this publication when the deal was originally announced in July, John Dinsdale, chief analyst and managing director of Synergy Research, explained how the acquisition would strengthen Oracle’s cloud story. “It will push Oracle a couple of places higher in the enterprise SaaS market share rankings and will strengthen its position as one of the two leading ERP SaaS vendors, alongside SAP,” he said.

In an FAQ feature when the deal was announced, the two companies elaborated on the benefits of the partnership and that it would remain business as usual for both parties. “Oracle and NetSuite cloud applications are complementary and will co-exist in the marketplace forever,” it read. “Oracle intends to invest heavily in both products – engineering and distribution.”

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Even though the majority of respondents in a survey released by Oracle say collaboration between business and IT is key for an enterprise cloud model to succeed, a plethora of barriers remain.

The research, which polled 1,200 technology decision makers in midsize and large companies across three continents, found more than a quarter (27%) of respondents said managing shadow IT is a ‘significant’ barrier to adopting an integrated approach to the cloud, while almost half (43%) say business departments lack understanding when it comes to the need for integrated cloud resources.

Other barriers for adopting an integrated cloud approach, and thus precluding collaboration, were proving return on investment, cited by 36% of respondents, discord between infrastructures (36%), increased cost (31%) and increased security risk (29%).

Naturally, the takeaway from the research is that by using infrastructure as a service – a service which Oracle is more than happy to provide – organisations can collaborate more freely and the divisions between line of business and IT will become more harmonious.

“These issues can be blamed in part on infrastructure that has become too rigid, confused and complex,” said Pascal Giraud, senior director IaaS foundation and cloud platform Oracle EMEA in a statement. “This has led to an unresponsive, disjointed organisation where opportunity and innovation fall down the cracks between lines of business and badly integrated systems.”

Elsewhere, research from Databarracks has found that nearly two thirds (61%) of IT decision makers polled believe their employees regularly sidestep their employer’s security policies. Issues which may go against corporate policy include taking company data off-site, keeping written records of passwords, and fabricating or omitting information on sign-in sheets.

The company added that, despite the rise in ransomware attacks, there remains a “blind ignorance” to enterprise security. 

Picture credit: Golem

Say hello to Golem. The goal of the Golem project is to allow users to rent unused computing power – think Airbnb for computers – and to create, not entirely modestly, ‘the new way the Internet will work’. But how is it going about this mission?

The answer: by utilising blockchain and paying users in cryptocurrency. In theory, the Golem network will be a decentralised ecosystem where dedicated software and the combined power of users’ machines will be able to complete any computing task.

Julian Zawistowski is CEO of imapp, the company which develops Golem. Describing the Golem project as ‘Uber for computers’ – or in the future, describing Uber as ‘Golem for cars’ – he explains how the idea came about when working on a ‘cool computing chemistry’ project.  “We realised we had scaling up problems,” he tells CloudTech, “because at that point you never have enough computing power when it peaks, but then all of a sudden you need nothing… [it’s] very volatile.”

Enter Ethereum, a public blockchain platform which enables the ability for ‘smart contracts’ – protocols that can verify or enhance the performance of a contract. This enables the backbone for Golem; having an Ethereum-based transaction system can clear payments between providers, requestors, and software developers, while it also compares favourably for developing applications on the platform as opposed to other blockchains, such as Bitcoin.

“The idea of building Golem occurred to us only when we learned more about Ethereum and smart contracts,” says Zawistowski. “Then we realised you could use this blockchain layer with the logic that smart contracts give you to build a system like Golem.”

Golem recently announced the launch of a crowdfunding project, beginning on November 11, using its own Golem Network Token (GNT). Zawistowski explains the GNT is important to give the project flexibility and control, compared to other blockchain tokens, adding that the plan is to be able to deliver Golem as a standalone independent product in six months’ time.

The link between blockchain and cloud technologies – aside from the hype around blockchain being similar to the hype around cloud the better part of a decade ago, as Chirag Mehta recently put it – is an interesting one. If we take the concept of a distributed network of computers as being similar, and the concept of ‘blockchain as a service’ (BaaS), spearheaded by major cloud providers, such as AWS, Google, IBM, and Microsoft, then there is a link.

Zawistowski argues these are where the similarities end, however; not least with regard to redundancy. Redundancy in cloud, creating backup copies, is naturally important – but for blockchain, it’s on a much bigger scale to base the platform’s security. “The biggest advantage of blockchain technology is the biggest disadvantage at the same time,” he explains. “That may not be true for every technology, in details, but basically every node in the network does the same, and scaling up the network does in fact not add to its usability.

“Of course you want some redundancy on cloud for security, but there’s like a backup, a single, or two or three copies of what you’re doing – not 60,000 of them!”

Picture credit: CenturyLink

Louisiana-based CenturyLink has been particularly busy over the past week. The telco has announced, within days of each other, the acquisition of Level 3 Communications, while also agreeing to sell 57 of its data centres to a consortium led by BC Partners and Medina Capital.

The two moves are linked; CenturyLink says the funding from getting rid of its data centres – priced at $2.15 billion – will be used as part of the Level 3 deal, rated at an eye-watering $34 billion.

According to the press materials, the portfolio comprises 195 megawatts of power across 2.6 million square feet of raised floor capacity. CenturyLink noted that it would still provide a wide range of IT services, including network, managed hosting, and cloud, going forward, which will continue to be hosted in the data centres alongside a range of products from the BC and Medina consortium.

In a series of press releases issued within moments of each other on Friday, the consortium announced the acquisition of Cryptzone, Catbird – cybersecurity companies based in Massachusetts and California respectively – investigative analytics firm Brainspace, and fraud protection provider Easy Solutions.

Medina argued that the new company, with the four companies added in, will be an “immediate leader in the global colocation market”, with more than 3,500 customers currently. According to figures from Synergy Research back in May, CenturyLink was placed in the top 10 colocation providers, although significantly behind the top three of Equinix, Digital Realty, and NTT, with the analysts noting the overall market would reach more than $33 billion by 2018.

“We believe this transaction will benefit customers, employees and investors,” said Glen Post, CenturyLink CEO and president in a statement. “Both CenturyLink and BC Partners have a strong customer focus and are committed to ensuring a seamless transition of the customers and their colocation environments.”

Elsewhere, the move to acquire Level 3 will aim to create the “second largest domestic communications provider serving global enterprise customers”, according to the press materials, while adding the two companies combined offer a presence in more than 60 countries.

Speaking to this publication last year having just arrived as EMEA managing director, Richard Warley said that the telcos should be the “natural winners” in the cloud space because of their network clout. Yet a recent article in Fortune doubted whether the move to acquire Level 3 will help CenturyLink’s cloud ambitions, noting that it’s “hard to see how CenturyLink or any telco-focused company can make a dent in the public cloud market so dominated by Amazon Web Services followed by Microsoft and Google.” 

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According to the latest research from Pluribus Networks, building private clouds is of “critical importance” to effectively utilising public cloud services.

The research, which polled 134 IT professionals and business decision makers who attended this year’s VMworld, found that there was nothing to split public and private clouds among respondents as technologies which will impact their company the most in the future.

43% said public and private cloud respectively were most likely to impact their company over the next three years, followed by 41% for virtual desktop infrastructure and 30% for converged infrastructure. Yet the research also noted only 14% ‘strongly agreed’ that their IT department was set up to meet the needs of the business, putting doubt over new technologies being used.

One area of investment which is a little less important for today is the network; three times as many respondents say the network is a strategic rather than tactical investment. Yet 42% of respondents are adopting software defined networking (SDN) to meet their application challenges, ahead of converged infrastructure (38%), big data (32%), and containers (30%0.

“It turns out most IT organisations are looking for the roadmap to begin their digital transformation journey, and the discussion about wide-scale adoption of public cloud versus building a private cloud in-house becomes a major part of their investigation,” said Mark Harris, vice president of marketing at Pluribus Networks in a statement.

“As their research progresses, they realise that each of these cloud approaches share one thing in common: they each offer the means to bring new business services online quickly and cost-effectively. They also realise that the hybrid mix of private and public cloud is a function of existing capacity and future needs,” Harris added. “It is a pure business planning process.”

Writing for CIO.com earlier this week, cloud computing influencer Bernard Golden noted that most IT organisations will “in the long run intuit the economic unviability of private clouds” aside from certain scenarios, such as data sovereignty. “On-premises infrastructure will inevitably shrink to a fraction of what is currently installed, with much pain realised by the legacy vendor/on-premises infrastructure staff coalition as this dynamic plays out,” Golden added.

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A ‘significant’ disconnect exists between C-level executives and IT professionals when it comes to an organisation’s ability to recover from a disaster, according to new research from Evolve IP.

The study, which polled more than 500 executives and IT professionals, argued that while almost seven in 10 of the C-suite believe their company is ‘very prepared’ to recover from a disaster, the figure translates less well when it comes to IT pros (44%).

The study also found a clear link between disaster recovery (DR) compliance and an ability to recover IT assets if an incident occurs. More than two thirds (67%) of respondents in the banking industry noted their confidence – in an industry where DR compliance was noted by 97% of those polled – compared with 58% of government who were ‘very prepared’ and 55% in technology. Yet the exception which proves the rule is in the healthcare industry; while 89% of respondents said they had DR compliance requirements, just over half felt prepared to recover from an outage.

One in three (33%) companies said they had suffered from at least one incident or outage that required disaster recovery, with hardware failure and server room issues being the primary reason for failover, as reported by almost half (48%) of those polled. Perhaps more worryingly, the number of deliberate attacks as the cause for disasters doubled when compared to similar survey results from 2014.

“In the years Evolve IP has conducted the survey, we’re assured by the fact that companies are becoming increasingly aware of the need to protect critical business assets from a major outage: malicious or unintentional, human error, hardware failure or a natural disaster,” said Scott Kinka, chief technology officer and founding partner of Evolve IP.

“More companies are avoiding risky backup policies considered ‘good enough’ in years past, using backup tape or replicating data to a secondary mirror site less than 50miles from their main data centre, for instance,” Kinka added. “Instead, we’ve seen notable growth in the number of companies developing a disaster recovery plan and educating themselves to the benefits of new DR approaches like DRaaS.”

Writing for this publication earlier this week, Donald Bowker of Sungard AS discussed the right times and methods for testing disaster recovery plans. “Faults and setbacks that come to light during a DE test can be distressing but by testing your DRP you will identify these issues before they become a problem and have the opportunity to fix them,” he wrote. “By making disaster recovery planning a priority and testing your procedures regularly, your business will be fully prepared for any setbacks.”

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Even though seven out of 10 organisations have at least one application in the cloud today, adoption continues to go up, according to the latest verdict from IDG Enterprise.

The survey, which polled 925 respondents and was conducted among the audiences of six of the company’s brands, including CIO, InfoWorld and ComputerWorld, shows interesting comparisons when put aside the same study from five years ago; back then, just over half (51%) of those polled had at least one app in the cloud.

Increasingly, organisations are using multiple cloud models; private, public, and hybrid were cited by 62%, 60% and 26% of respondents respectively. Almost half (45%) of survey respondents say they use storage as a service models, while a third (33%) are planning to deploy disaster recovery as a service. 27% said they were planning on rolling out storage as a service, with the same number cited for database and mobility as a service.

The study also examined buying patterns within different businesses. Perhaps not surprisingly, the CIO (90% of respondents) dominates the enterprise cloud purchase influence, ahead of IT architects (84%), while for small and medium businesses the CEO (81%) is in charge, ahead of the CIO (79%) and the CFO (71%).

As ever, security remains a challenge. When it comes to cloud migration, sensitivity of data was cited by the most respondents as a critical or very important consideration with 82%, ahead of how important the application is to daily business operations (76%) and the cost of migration (74%).

Overall, however, the consensus is positive. “We are at a time where companies are not asking if cloud should be used, but how,” said Brian Glynn, chief revenue officer at IDG Enterprise. “Enterprises are leading the way on what is possible. Given their human and capital resources they are able to fully test cloud options to help them innovate and provide strong solutions to their customers.”

You can find out more about the IDG 2016 cloud computing survey here.

Picture credit: “MongoDB”, by Andreas Kollegger, used under CC BY 2.0 / Modified from original”

NoSQL database provider MongoDB has announced the launch of its 3.4 product, promising greater analytics capabilities and additional data models.

Among the new features include multi-model functionality, native graph analytics, as well as a new SQL interface. The company hopes the new release will help it be placed ‘at the centre of enterprises’ digital transformation initiatives’, according to the press material, citing the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence as use cases which require deeper analytical and operational requirements.

Elsewhere, the launch of 3.4 offers a variety of options to simplify application deployments to multiple data centres, from ‘zones’, claimed as the industry’s first fully elastic database partitioning capability designed for multi-region deployments, as well as faster elastic operations which aim to reduce the time balancing data across distributed clusters.

“Developers want to access and store their data in the simplest way possible,” said Eliot Horowitz, MongoDB CTO and co-founder in a statement. “We are continuing to add new capabilities to our query language – like graph and faceted search operators – so developers can use MongoDB for applications that previously required multiple technologies, thereby consolidating their technology footprint.”

“Leaders of nearly every business are under enormous pressure to disrupt, or be disrupted, by the advent of the digital enterprise,” added Dev Ittycheria, MongoDB president and CEO. “Organisations that know how to leverage next-generation software and data technologies to transform their businesses have an intrinsic competitive advantage.”

As is with the way of these things, MongoDB rolled out a number of customers who have tested the new service. Among them include Chinese search engine Baidu, pollsters YouGov, who say they have been “passionate” users of MongoDB since 2010, and real estate portal Homes.com.