(c)iStock.com/BrianAJackson

It’s a well-worn theme, yet raises its head again; new research from Claranet and Vanson Bourne argues that European businesses are suffering from a lack of understanding between the IT department and the rest of the organisation.

Just over a quarter (26%) of the 900 IT leaders polled – based in Benelux, France, Germany, Portugal, Spain, and the UK – said they believe the wider business has total understanding of the role of the IT department. A similar number (28%) of IT departments think they meet all the needs of the wider business.

The research findings are the latest in a series issued by the managed hosting service provider. In April, the company revealed that almost half of IT leaders see their primary job as one of cost reduction. This time around, while the figures are up from 2015’s analysis (21% and 26% respectively), Claranet argues more needs to be done to change a familiar disposition.

“IT leaders have a key role to play in building understanding between their department and the wider business,” said Andy Wilton, Claranet CIO. “Those IT leaders who aren’t prioritising developing an understanding between IT and the business are harming their own career prospects and the prospects of their business.

“In order to better support the business, the IT team must focus more energy on the applications and data that are key to business success, and less on day to day technical management and infrastructure maintenance,” added Wilton. “These activities are a large part of the reason that the IT department is stuck in a reactive mode and prevent it from driving the wider business agenda.”

This may be easier said than done. Writing for this publication earlier this month Keith Tilley, EVP global sales and customer services management at Sungard Availability Services, put forward four key tenets to improve workflows for IT departments and drive change: seeking out the right skills; communicating clearly; securing adequate resources; and turning occasionally to colleagues outside of the IT department.

(c)iStock.com/KiskaMedia

Collab9, a Cisco-powered unified communications provider based in Gardena, California, has announced it has become the first unified comms as a service (UCaaS) provider to be authorised by FedRAMP, the government security standard.

The move is aimed at federal, state, and local agencies for their unified collaboration needs, with Collab9 offering messaging, both for voicemail and email, mobility, and integration with Microsoft Office 365, Skype for Business and Gmail.

“We’re elated to be the first and only UCaaS provider to earn the FedRAMP Authorized designation, with the help of the FCC as our sponsor,” said Kevin Schaltze, Collab9 CEO in a statement. “We can now help federal and government agencies accelerate their cloud adoption, increase their confidence in cloud security, and ensure the application of a consistent set of security standards to their cloud environments.”

“As agencies are increasingly using more cloud services, specialised services like UCaaS solutions are gaining greater entry into the federal marketplace, said Ashley Mahan, FedRAMP agency evangelist. “The federal government’s increasing adoption of all types of cloud services will result in many more specialised services coming through FedRAMP, like UCaaS solutions.”

While this is claimed as the first UCaaS play to get FedRAMP accreditation – Collab9 notes its data centre was built with the NIST 800-53 federal standard in mind – there have been plenty of other moves in the cloud infrastructure space. In June, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft, and CSRA’s ARC-P infrastructure as a service, were given a passing grade under the new FedRAMP High Baseline requirements.

Research in the unified comms space continues to show an emerging, yet hazy market. Back in November, a study from Osterman Research found that more than a quarter of IT decision makers and almost two in five business decision makers were at least ‘somewhat’ fearful about migrating their systems to unified comms.

(c)iStock.com/ismagilov

Cloud infrastructure, big data, and analytics are among the top technologies most likely to generate greater productivity, according to the latest report from Deloitte.

The findings, which appear in the firm’s latest report on mid-market technology, showed that more than a quarter of the 500 respondents argued integrating with existing apps and infrastructure was the key factor influencing how quickly cloud services were adopted.

41% of respondents admitted migration to the cloud was an issue of concern in terms of data privacy and security risks. Phishing (48%) was the most frequently cited answer, while 46% worry about risks that their employees introduce to the organisation.

The report also argued that finance and accounting is the most likely path to cloud success. 57% of respondents said there had been successful cloud deployments in these areas, followed by enterprise resource planning (33.6%) and customer relationship management (33%). 64% of respondents said they were actively building cloud solutions into their CRM, while 61% say they use analytics to increase the accuracy of forecasting.

“As these companies move further into the cloud, they are introducing tremendous value but also complexities that need to be understood,” said Karl Rupilius, principal and NetSuite practice leader at Deloitte Consulting. “Integration is becoming more important to manage, both in the cloud and on-premise as well.

“That’s the market’s next iteration: tying it all together and managing cloud integration more cohesively.”

The research findings are particularly interesting given they cover a more wide-ranging area of technology than the majority of cloud surveys.

“Other evidence of mid-market companies’ technology maturation includes their shifting focus around cloud-based services,” the report notes. “In last year’s survey, privacy and security risks were the leading factor deciding the pace of their cloud adoption. This year, such concerns took a big step back, and now the companies are mainly focused on issues around cloud integration.”

You can find out more about the report here.

(c)iStock.com/Serjio74

New research released by Turbonomic and Verizon has revealed several key reasons for businesses wanting to adopt a multi-cloud strategy, from business continuity to resilience – yet cost is still a burning issue.

The study, which polled 1,821 IT decision makers, saw the need for business continuity as the most important business driver for adoption of multi-cloud, cited by 77% of respondents, ahead of increased resilience (74%), and reduction of operational expenditure (70%) and capital expenditure (69%). However, with regard to selecting vendors, 70% said pricing was the primary consideration, ahead of 51% who opted for service level agreements or quality of service.

More than four in five organisations identified at least 12 different management issues they were facing including balancing performance and cost (90%), delivering IT services to the appropriate budget (89%), and ensuring consistent application performance (86%).

Yet these aren’t the only challenges faced. 81% of those polled said choosing the right workloads for the right clouds is an issue, while 84% had problems with evaluating cloud vendors to meet business and technical requirements.

Charles Crouchman, CTO at Turbonomic – formerly VMTurbo – argued the one factor which will change the mindset of organisations who look at cloud as cost first is ‘experience.’

“As the cloud moves from shadow IT to enterprise IT, the costs will become more transparent – in particular, the cost of assuring that your end users are getting what they expect from your service or brand,” he told CloudTech. “Smart companies understand that customer delight is the path to success – and focusing solely on cost is not a recipe for assuring customers are delighted with your service.”

Crouchman added that he wasn’t surprised by the main survey result – that organisations are facing so many management challenges – but that organisations need to look at cost versus performance from a different perspective. “The reality is that while price and cost impact your CFO and company, performance impacts your customer,” he said. “Without them you don’t have revenue, so you have to focus on all of the trade-offs.

“The reality of the impact poor performance or downtime has on your customer means that you will pay for performance no matter what – and it is in each cloud’s economic interest for you to pay as much as possible.

“So CIOs who believe that the cloud will invariably reduce CapEx or OpEx costs will soon face the reality of cloud bills that are larger than they expected,” Crouchman added.

Earlier this month, Google announced the acquisition of cloud commerce platform provider Orbitera, ostensibly with multi-cloud strategy in mind.

(c)iStock.com/Jonathan Maddock

US cloud provider Datapipe has announced it is acquiring Britain-based managed cloud firm and AWS partner Adapt in an attempt to expand the firm’s European presence.

The firms took the unusual step of issuing two separate press releases to cover the same news. From the Adapt side, the company noted the move to Datapipe was a ‘non-disruptive addition’ due to the firm’s similar roadmaps and propositions.

“Adapt and Datapipe both have cultures that focus on proactive, high touch customer service and a commitment to customer-specific solutions designed to meet clients’ individual business challenges,” said Robb Allen, Datapipe CEO. “Our similar approach to guiding clients on their cloud journey makes the acquisition a natural fit for us and will increase our scale and service capabilities in the United Kingdom, and the broader European market.”

Looking at the acquisition in a wider context, however, it shows demand for UK tech businesses in a post-Brexit landscape. Recent research and analysis has been less than kind to Blighty after the referendum vote to leave the European Union in June. A note from consulting firm BroadGroup earlier this month argued that while demand for European data centre space continues to rise, Brexit could send UK ambitions off-kilter, although Amazon Web Services (AWS) recently confirmed its plans for a UK data centre remain on track.

It was a similar story from analyst house IDC in July, praising EMEA infrastructure but warning of a UK downturn. This facet was inferred by Adapt CEO Stewart Smythe. “We are seeing emerging customer requirements for a tactical and strategic presence overseas, so it makes sense for us to advance the UK’s capability in a global market rather than create more bulky domestic organisations,” he said.

“UK-only consolidations in our space can get very messy and can be short-sighted. We have chosen a far more exciting path.”

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

(c)iStock.com/mushakesa

Nearly 95% of small to medium businesses say they either already use a cloud hosting service or plan to transition to it according to the latest study from B2B research firm Clutch.co – as web hosting providers aren’t hitting the mark.

The survey, which quizzed 300 SMBs – defined as having between two and 1000 employees – found a trend towards cloud hosting. Almost three quarters (72%) of SMBs have changed web hosting providers over the past five years, while a worrying 86% said they had experienced issues in the last year alone. Most businesses change providers because they can find better value elsewhere.

In terms of specific issues with hosting providers, the biggest bugbear was downtime, cited by 35% of respondents, although poor performance (33%), increased costs (32%), poor customer support (27%), and server limits (26%) were also noted.

Rachel Bair, director of hosting and client services at Unleashed Technologies, summed up the survey’s findings. “I don’t think you can truly move forward within a company without using cloud in some way, whether that’s by buying software as a service from somebody or creating your own cloud infrastructure for your business,” she said. “To stay competitive in your own vertical, cloud hosting will be the way to go.”

The research therefore concludes that SMBs are becoming increasingly attracted to cloud hosting providers because of their difficulties with web hosting. Yet it might not be a walk in the park with regard to cloud vendors, either. Regarding infrastructure, a study from iland last year found a series of issues customers had with their providers, from onboarding, to the lack of a human aspect to customer support, and bill shock.

When it comes to storage, research from Clutch in November found just over half (52%) of small businesses are currently using cloud storage, with Dropbox the most popular. Could the two aspects be compared? Alex Miller, an analyst at Clutch, noted that while the hosting side is bound to get higher figures because the same vendors can be involved, there is still an issue with the results.

“Unlike switching from on-premises storage options to cloud storage options, the process of utilising cloud hosting is not much different from traditional hosting services, and can often be done with the same vendors,” Miller told CloudTech.

“However, the results from both surveys show that many users select a service based on cost rather than performance of the service, which can lead to future problems given the vast difference of capabilities among cloud providers.”

You can read the full survey results here.

(c)iStock.com/caracterdesign

Demand for European data centre space continues to rise due to greater need for cloud services – but the Brexit vote could yet send UK plans off-kilter, according to the latest note from consulting firm BroadGroup.

The analysis, which appears in the firm’s latest Colocation Market Quarterly (CMQ), argues there is ‘strong’ demand for real estate in primary European locations, arguing Paris has performed ‘particularly strongly.’ The company argues a mix of hyperscale vendors needing to beef up their European presence, as well as smaller cloud firms seeking colocation space has primarily contributed to the trend.

Yet despite this, the consultants give a pessimistic note to the impact of a Brexit vote, both in the ‘initial certainty’ following the EU referendum result, and in the long-term implications. BroadGroup certainly aren’t the first company to offer such a caution –  in July analyst firm IDC praised the EMEA cloud infrastructure landscape with one hand and warned of a post-Brexit downturn in the other – yet Steve Wallage, managing director of BroadGroup consulting, notes broader concerns from data protection regulation (GDPR), to availability, and cost of power.

“UK data centres could be perceived by some investors as only relevant for local demand, a change from London long being considered a hub for European HQ and data centres, initial entry into Europe, and regional consolidation,” said Wallage. “For example, some of the hyperscale cloud players are now positioning UK data centres in this way.”

According to BroadGroup, the company knows of three potential UK data centre investments from Asian companies which are now “unlikely” in the wake of Brexit. Amazon Web Services took an opportunity at its London summit in July to confirm its UK data centre plans were still on track.

The note that Paris has become a particular hotspot is exemplified by Equinix buying Digital Realty’s operations in the French capital earlier this month for a reported $211 million (£158m). Earlier this week, Apple’s proposal to build an €850m data centre on the west coast of Ireland was provisionally given the green light.

(c)iStock.com/Valerie Loiseleux

IBM has announced that financial and HR cloud app provider Workday has signed up for its cloud services in what has been described as a “multi-year strategic partnership.”

The deal, first reported in the Wall Street Journal, means IBM’s cloud will become the primary platform for Workday’s development and testing projects – with the latter intending to expand their use ‘over time’. The two companies already partner on various initiatives; IBM uses Workday’s human capital management program for its own workforce, while Big Blue acquired Meteorix, a Workday services partner, in 2015.

“IBM and Workday are both delivering transformative applications and services in the cloud,” said Aneel Bhusri, Workday CEO and co-founder in a statement. “Workday will use IBM Cloud to continue accelerating Workday’s internal development and testing efforts to support our ongoing global expansion.” “Leading enterprises like Workday continue to turn to IBM Cloud for its global reach, flexibility, and resiliency,” added Robert LeBlanc, IBM cloud senior vice president. “Though a preferred cloud partnership with IBM, Workday can accelerate its innovation efforts to better serve clients around the world.”

According to recent industry research, IBM is firmly entrenched in the top five cloud infrastructure services players. The most recent quarterly analysis from Synergy Research argues that IBM is ranked third, ahead of Google but behind Microsoft and, unsurprisingly, AWS. IBM’s 57% year over year growth puts it behind Microsoft (100%) and Google (162%), but ahead of Amazon (53%).

On a slightly different note, analysis from IHS Markit put the same four companies in the leaders’ section for off-premises cloud IT infrastructure service leadership, but put AWS in fourth place based on market momentum and presence.

(c)iStock.com/NickILitov

Small to medium businesses in ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations) are certainly on the cloud bandwagon – but it’s a stretch to say they are confident about its capabilities.

That was the overall finding from research conducted by Data & Storage Asean and commissioned by Barracuda Networks. The survey, which polled 130 IT professionals from small businesses in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore, found 73% of respondents argued their data was safer under their own control rather than in the cloud. A similar percentage (71%) said they would not be likely to adopt a cloud-first strategy.

Where there was near certainty in some aspects, there was indecision in others. 42%, a majority, said they believe cloud providers adequately protect and secure their data, compared to 26% for no and 36% for ‘don’t know’, while more than two thirds (68%) say they had no defined preference over the type of cloud they were looking to implement. For those who did know what they wanted, backup and DR (9%) was the most popular.

Despite this, in terms of security backup and DR was perceived as the major concern, cited by 28% of respondents. Security in general (26%) had similar figures, while more than a quarter of respondents said they were unsure.

The survey results may indicate a certain lack of cloud maturity in south east Asia, although the most recent figures from the Asia Cloud Computing Association (ACCA) found Singapore to be the second most cloud-enabled major Asia Pacific nation, only behind Hong Kong. Indonesia (#11), Malaysia (#8), and the Philippines (#9) fared less well out of the 14 countries analysed.

“Our key conclusion is that IT professionals from SME companies around ASEAN have made first steps into cloud, but are doing so in [a] tactical rather than [a] strategic manner,” the report notes. “There is still uncertainty about which cloud use case to adopt, and also a significant uncertainty around data security and protection as IT is moved to cloud.

“We see a need for more education and guidance to help assist SMEs in this region truly harness the full potential of incorporating cloud into their IT strategy,” the researchers added.

You can read the full report here.

(c)iStock.com/scanrail

IT professionals are becoming more confident in the security of the public cloud compared to corporate data centres, according to the latest study from IT consulting firm SADA Systems.

The poll, which quizzed more than 200 IT managers around their use of public cloud services, found that 84% of respondents were using some form of public cloud infrastructure today.

49% of respondents said they used Google Cloud Platform, compared with 48% for Microsoft and 42% for AWS – although it’s worth noting that SADA’s work comes primarily through Google and Microsoft reselling.

Half (50%) of those polled said they are likely to increase their public cloud usage by at least 25% over the next three years, with a further 25% saying they would increase their usage by more than half. 45% of firms polled said it took them three to six months to migrate to public cloud, with 23% saying it took three months.

In terms of issues with cloud adoption, more than half (51%) of respondents said concerns around data security prevented them from quicker adoption, while long-term viability of cloud (40%) and escalating costs (33%) were also highly cited.

“All signs point to public cloud adoption growing and enterprise IT becoming more comfortable with the prospect of running their most sensitive data on public cloud infrastructure,” said Tony Safoian, SADA president and CEO in a statement. “Security and reliability will always be primary concerns – as they should – and companies should lean on expert consultants and integrators to guide them in addressing these issues.

“The convenience of public cloud, coupled with easy access to proven resources for managing these environments, make the option of moving to public cloud too compelling to ignore,” Safoian added.