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Nitrous.io, a Singapore and San Francisco-based cloud integrated development environment (IDE) provider, has announced it is to shut down its development platform and cloud IDE on November 14, with customers given until that date before their data is deleted.

The company has stopped new signups, and said that payments made after October 16 will be refunded in full, as well as promising that subscriptions to any Nitrous email list will expire at the end of this month.

While two weeks is a less than ideal timeframe to sort out new data, the company said in a blog post confirming the shutdown that customers who have an active workstation will be able to easily download a backup of their data through an email link.

The company added that a self-hosted and open source version of the Nitrous IDE, called Nitrous Solo – which will allow users to host their own instances on other cloud providers – will be rolled out “in the coming weeks.”

According to Crunchbase, Nitrous.io, previously known at Action.io, received a total of $7.65 million in funding across two rounds; one of $1m in seed funding in April 2013, alongside $6.65m of series A in March 2014 led by Bessemer Venture Partners. The company launched a professional version of its development platform in April last year, claiming at the time that more than 200,000 people had registered and built apps using the original free version of Nitrous.

You can read the full blog post here.

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Another quarter, another period of dominance for Amazon Web Services (AWS) in public cloud IaaS – according to the latest analysis from Synergy Research.

The figures tell a similar story from previous quarters; the market leaders are growing faster than the rest of the market, but while Microsoft and Google are growing faster than AWS, the Seattle-based giant still holds 45% of the worldwide public IaaS space, dwarfing Microsoft, Google, and IBM’s shares put together.

When it comes to public platform as a service (PaaS), AWS is still the market leader, although the three nearest challengers – Salesforce, Microsoft and IBM – hold slightly more share combined this time. For managed private cloud, however, IBM leads the way with almost 20% global market share, ahead of AWS, Rackspace, and NTT.

The latest figures may show more than ever an entrenched space with the winners and runners up decided.

Yet Synergy argues that in some cases, second tier companies are attempting to buck the trend; Chinese giant Alibaba, in IaaS, and Oracle in PaaS.

Speaking to this publication in July, when Oracle confirmed it was to acquire cloud ERP software provider NetSuite for $9.3 billion, Synergy chief analyst John Dinsdale noted that while the deal would not ‘directly’ help Oracle in the PaaS market, it distinctly remained a top 10 player.

Here, though, the findings are clear. “Amazon, Microsoft and Google continue to invest huge amounts in their hyperscale data centre infrastructure, and all three have recently expanded their data centre footprints and also announced plans to open up more geographic regions in the coming months,” said Dinsdale. “This scale is the prime reason why they are able to gain market share and pressure smaller players into consolidation or refocusing their cloud activities.”

AWS announced in September plans to launch a data centre in Paris, while in the same month IBM sealed the deal to open up a centre in Norway, citing continued Nordic cloud demand.

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Hybrid cloud object storage system provider Cloudian has announced the completion of a $41 million (£33.8m) financing round, with the funds helping the company expand sales and marketing as well as growing international operations.

The funding round includes existing investors including Intel Capital, INCJ, Eight Roads, and Goldman Sachs, as well as new investors Lenovo, City National Bank, Epsilon Venture Partners, and DVP Investment.

“Connected devices are already generating millions of terabytes of information every day. The challenge is both to manage that information and to analyse and derive value from it,” said Lisa Spelman, vice president and general manager of Intel’s data centre marketing group in a statement. “We believe Cloudian’s unified storage approach, which combines data management and data analytics in a single platform running on Intel Architecture, positions data centre managers exceptionally well to extract value from the massive volumes of information created by accelerating device connectivity and advances in machine learning.”

The path of Lenovo integrating with Cloudian dates back to an OEM agreement back in June which enables Lenovo’s salesforce to offer Cloudian-based object storage. The manufacturer added that Cloudian’s storage solution was the ‘clear winner’ for driving ‘innovation, efficiency and investment protection into the data centre’.

Similarly, Cloudian is one of the various vendors integrating with Coldline, Google’s latest cold storage service announced earlier this month. Cloudian’s HyperStore product is seamless integrated with Coldline, offering up to hundreds of petabytes of on-premise storage, as this company blog post explains.

Total funding for Cloudian stands at $81.68 million, in five rounds from eight investors. 

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A new report from enterprise cloud services provider ServiceNow argues that a tipping point has finally been reached with more than half of enterprises surveyed would use cloud as the default choice for business application rollouts.

52% of the 1,850 senior managers polled across four continents said they now prefer cloud as a platform compared with on-premise data centres, while more than three quarters (77%) of respondents expect to shift to a cloud-first model in the next two years.

The primary reason for this shift, the report argues, is the emergence of DevOps. 94% of respondents said they were involved with the DevOps movement in some way, while three quarters (76%) admitted it was a major factor driving the move to cloud-first operations. 88% of those polled said that cloud could replace a formal IT department “at least some of the time.”

Just under three quarters of those polled (72%) said IT’s relevancy is on the rise following a cloud-first reorganisation, while 68% said IT will be ‘completely essential’ in the future. Ultimately, ServiceNow argues, the role of IT will have to shift from ‘builder’ to ‘broker’ to succeed in the cloud-first environment.

“Amidst the cloud-first shift, there are ominous signs for IT if there’s no change,” said Dave Wright, chief strategy officer at ServiceNow. “We believe this presents a real opportunity for those visionary IT organisations who can become strategic partners to the enterprise during this shift to cloud-first.”

Not all the findings were rosy, however, with almost nine in 10 (89%) companies polled who had shifted to a cloud-first model saying their current IT staff lacked the required skill sets to be successful. Achieving 360 degree visibility for the business (64%) was named as the biggest priority going forward.

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A new whitepaper from the Asia Cloud Computing Association (ACCA) argues there is a gap between data analytics services offered by vendors and the requirements of Asia Pacific organisations looking to engage them.

The findings, which appear in the paper ‘Data Analytics to Bridge Knowledge Gaps’, finds that 62% of companies surveyed use data analytics to some extent, yet less than half use analytics for making financial decisions and only 5% use it for human resources purposes.

The paper points out that cloud computing is an “obvious technological enabler” of analytics, and companies who continue to be sluggish in their cloud deployments – such as those who perceive industry regulation as a barrier to adopting cloud – are already at a disadvantage.

ACCA offers five recommendations across various stakeholders to ‘unlock’ data analytics on cloud. Analytics providers need to simplify their tools and develop more capacity building services to generate greater demand; as the report notes, training and consulting for clients is “perhaps the area where providers to date are the most successful.” Regulators need to promote privacy regulations that “reflect the reality of big data and analytics,” while ecosystem players – such as investors, accelerators and third party consultants – need to show how business sectors can be disrupted through analytics. Innovators, the report noted, need to keep going as they are.

“The impact that efficient use of data analytics could create to APAC businesses is profound and imminent. However, to drive greater adoption and value, the entire ecosystem needs to play their part,” said Arun Sundar, chief strategy officer at TrustSphere and chairman of the ACCA Emerging Cloud Services Working Group. “The role of governments and trade bodies is critical at this juncture to bring the demand and supply side in alignment with industry best practices and frameworks.

“This will help to allay concerns about issues such as privacy and cross-border data transfer policies which will encourage business leaders in APAC to leverage analytics for improved business outcomes for both enterprises and consumers alike,” Sundar added.

Previous ACCA reports have focused on the ‘cloud readiness’ of Asia Pacific nations. In April this year, the latest analysis found Hong Kong to have overtaken previous leader Japan to secure the #1 spot.

You can read the full whitepaper here (PDF).

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There has been plenty written around the disconnect between line of business and IT around cloud deployments – but what about just IT? According to the latest research from BetterCloud, there is a similar issue afoot between IT executives – CIOs and VPs – and the run of the mill employees.

“On just about every topic, entry-level admins, managers, and senior IT professionals see things through a different (perhaps more accurate) lens than IT executives (VPs and CIOs)”, the report notes.

The study argues that non-executive IT staff are more likely to say their team lacks control over their SaaS applications than the higher ups. 49% of execs polled said they did not have sufficient control, compared to 63% of non-execs. “We believe this data point shows that many non-executive IT staff have a more realistic picture of what’s going on in their own environments than the IT executives they work under,” the report says.

When it comes to visibility over their SaaS applications – in other words, how they are being used – the findings are similar, with 30% of IT execs saying their organisation lacks visibility compared to 47% of IT non-execs. It’s a similar story with budget, with non-executive IT staff 25% more likely to feel as though their IT teams lack budget when compared to their superiors.

Infact, it’s a similar story pretty much across the board; with onboarding (29% of non-execs say new hires lack access to the right SaaS apps compared with 18% of execs), offboarding (31% and 13% respectively), and staffing; 54% of non-execs believe they are understaffed compared with 38% of execs. The only issue where both sides seem to agree is over how the department is perceived; more than two thirds (74% execs, 69% non-execs) believe their IT team gives them a competitive advantage.

“Despite the major hurdles they must overcome, the majority of IT professionals believe they are making a difference,” the report concludes. “Now, the question becomes: What could IT teams do if they were on the same page? If everyone is rowing in the same direction, how much more of an impact could be made?”

You can read more here.

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Microsoft has announced it will be increasing its prices for customers buying its enterprise software and cloud services in British pounds by up to 22% from January to “harmonise” within the EU and EFTA (European Free Trade Association) regions.

The company said on-premise enterprise software will increase by 13% to align closer to the Euro, while “most” enterprise cloud prices will rise by almost a quarter, adding that after the adjustment customers will “still find our cloud offerings highly competitive.”

For existing customers, Microsoft said the changes will not affect them. “These changes will not affect existing orders under annuity volume licensing agreements for products that are subject to price protection,” the company wrote. “For example, customers with Enterprise Agreements have price protection on previously ordered enterprise software and cloud services, and will not experience a price change during the term of their agreement.

“Similarly, business customers with cloud commitment subscriptions such as Office 365 also receive price protection during their subscription term, which is normally 12 months from the start of paid subscription,” it added.

Microsoft said it assessed its prices “periodically”, noting the move was not especially different to adjustments in pricing made for Norwegian krone and Swiss franc in April 2016 – again using the word “harmonisation”.

Yet the inferences are clear; the value of the pound has dipped considerably post-Brexit. On June 23, the day of the referendum, it was 1.4819 US dollars to the pound. At the time of publication, it is hovering at 1.22312, representing a 17.5% downturn. In a piece published yesterday, the Financial Times noted the move was to “reflect the plunging pound.”

In July, analyst firm IDC warned that its coming analyses on the European cloud infrastructure market may be downscaled following the Brexit vote, adding that it expects a “challenging transition” ahead for the UK. Taylor Rhodes, CEO of managed cloud services provider Rackspace, cited Gartner’s similarly gloomy post-Brexit forecast for IT spending growth when speaking to analysts in August, following a move by the company to sell one of its ‘non-core’ business units.

It’s not all bad news, however. Writing for this publication in August, Louis Columbus discussed how Brexit can accelerate public cloud adoption, while focusing on Amazon Web Services (AWS). “The continual pressure on CIOs to reduce the high hardware and software maintenance costs is accelerating thanks to Brexit,” he wrote. “Because no one can quantify with precision just how Brexit will impact European economies, CEOs, and senior management teams want to minimise downside risk now.”

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Revenues from OpenStack business models will surpass $5 billion (£4.08bn) by 2020 and grow at a CAGR of 35%, according to the latest figures from 451 Research.

The numbers, which are being released to coincide with the day before the latest OpenStack Summit, puts the exact figure at $5.7bn by 2020, from $4.6bn the previous year and $3.5bn in 2018.

“We continue to believe the market is still in the early stages of enterprise use and revenue generation,” said Al Sadowski, research vice president at 451 Research. “We expect an uptick in revenues from all sectors and geographic regions, especially from those companies in the OpenStack Products and Distributions category that are targeting enterprises.”

451 Research argues the primary area where OpenStack will see success is in the private cloud space.

Alongside more traditional use cases, such as DevOps, platform as a service (PaaS) and big data, the research firm sees significant benefits with regard to software defined networking (SDN), network function virtualisation (NFV), mobile, and the Internet of Things.

The primary user base, according to the research firm, remains enterprises looking to deploy cloud-native applications in private cloud environments, with “limited” appeal for organisations who are already using hyperscale cloud providers, as well as on legacy applications.

These figures make for interesting reading alongside those put out by OpenStack themselves earlier this month. According to data taken from the OpenStack user base, containers – cited by 78% of respondents – SDN and NFV (61%) and bare metal (56%). are the primary technologies of interest going forward.

451 warns that while container software is ‘mostly’ beneficial and complementary to OpenStack, “persistent attention to containers and their management threatens to eclipse OpenStack, similar to how OpenStack surpassed its rival CloudStack in mindshare and then market share.”

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Cloud security services provider Skyhigh Networks and enterprise cloud storage firm Box have announced a partnership designed to enable greater data governance for Box customers.

Users can identify sensitive data, automatically classify it, and enforce collaboration control policies through Skyhigh and Box Security Classification, all without requiring any change in customer behaviour.

To put the partnership into context, take a situation where an employee uploads a document with protected health information (PHI). The document under the new system will automatically be classified, and as a result cannot be shared with employees who lack proper access privileges. Similarly, if an audit uncovers a document with passwords shared externally, the document is automatically removed.

According to Box, more than 18% of stored files in the firm’s storage repository contain sensitive data, such as credit card and social security numbers, as well as health data. The need for data governance policy is therefore necessary, the companies argue. “Companies are flocking to Box not only for a powerful work tool, but for superior security,” said Chris Cesio, VP of business development and channel at Skyhigh in a statement. “With Skyhigh and Box Governance, our joint customers can create a secure collaboration platform that the security and compliance teams love just as much as business users.”

One customer using the revamped solution is the State of Missouri. “We moved work to Box to increase employee productivity and, naturally, control over our sensitive data needed to follow,” said Michael Rolling, Missouri CISO. “Using Box and Skyhigh we can automatically classify sensitive data in the cloud and apply necessary policies, thereby reducing risk without burdening our IT team or business users.”

Last month Skyhigh announced it had secured $40 million (£30.9m) in series D funding. The company said it hoped the funding would enable them “to accelerate our growth and carry us to profitability.”

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Google has announced a ‘major refresh’ of its cloud storage options, including Coldline, a new storage class aimed at long-term archival and disaster recovery.

The revamped storage classes are multi-regional, for highest availability of frequently accessed data, such as video and business continuity, regional, for data accessed frequently within a region such as data analytics and general compute, Nearline, for infrequent access, and Coldline.

“Whether a business needs to store and stream multimedia to their users, store data for machine learning and analytics or restore a critical archive without waiting for hours or days, Cloud Storage now offers a broad range of storage options to meet those needs,” wrote Kirill Tropin, product manager in a blog post.

Picture credit: Google

The move is particularly interesting given Nearline, which was launched in March last year, was already considered as the lower cost yet higher latency data solution. In a graph outlining Nearline, the ‘time to first byte’ was seconds, ahead of ‘hours’ for more traditional cold storage.

“(Near) online data at an offline price” was the tag line. Yet in August Google announced a revamp of Nearline, promising lower latency and improved performance. Now, all four classes in the latest move promise millisecond access, with Google hoping it “changes the way that companies think about storing and accessing their cold data.”

As you’d expect, Google also rolled out a customer to showcase its new offerings; this time, it’s video hosting provider Vimeo, which is using the multi-regional storage class for high availability and Nearline to minimise overall costs in tandem with Fastly, a content delivery network service. Other companies announced today in the expanded Google cloud storage partner ecosystem include hyperconverged provider Cohesity, who said it was “excited” by the collaboration in a statement, Cloudian, and Veritas.

Back in September, Google announced eight new locations for its Cloud Platform service across five continents. The company cited its machine learning potential as a key aspect for potential new customers, with note-taking app Evernote a case in point when it recently confirmed it was moving onto Google’s platform.

Coldline is priced at $0.007 per gigabyte per month, which Google claims is the most economical storage for data accessed less than once per year.