All posts by Jamie Davies

AWS, Data Transfer, News & Analysis, Public Cloud

AWS launches new features at Chicago Summit

amazon awsAmazon Web Services has launched a number of new features, along with the announcement that AWS Import/Export Snowball is now available in four new regions, including Europe.

Speaking at AWS Chicago Summit, the team announced several updates including new security features, tools which simplify the movement of data around an organizations cloud, platforms for automatically deploying and running apps on Amazon’s cloud infrastructure, testing features, as well as authentication services.

Firstly, the AWS Device Farm Update is a feature, initially introduced last June, which enables customers to test mobile apps on real devices. The service is built on the concept of ‘write once, test everywhere’, enabling developers the chance to test apps in more than 200 unique environments (a variety of carriers, manufacturers, models, operating systems etc.). The update now provides customers with remote access to devices for interactive testing.

Writing on the AWS blog, Jeff Barr, Chief Evangelist at Amazon Web Services said, “you simply open a new session on the desired device, wait (generally a minute or two) until the device is available, and then interact with the device via the AWS Management Console. You can gesture, swipe, and interact with devices in real time directly through your web browser as if the device was on your desk or in your hand. This includes installing and running applications.”

Amazon S3 and Snowball, designed to increase speed of the data migration process, also received attention during the event. The AWS Import/Export Snowball was launched for customers who intend to move larger amounts of data, generally 10 terabytes or more, and has now been beefed up once again. New features for S3 make use of the AWS edge infrastructure to increase speed, and Snowball also has larger-capacity as well as now being available in four new regions.

“Many AWS customers are now using AWS Import/Export Snowball to move large amounts of data in and out of the AWS Cloud,” said Barr. “The original Snowball appliances had a capacity of 50 terabytes. Today we are launching a newer appliance with 80 terabytes of capacity.”

Amazon Kinesis, a service which enables users to manage data that is streamed into the cloud, has been updated to allow users to deploy, run, and scale Elasticsearch in the AWS Cloud, as well interaction with Amazon CloudWatch, its monitoring service.

The Cognito service allows apps to add authentication, user management, and data synchronization without having to write backend code or manage any infrastructure. The ‘Your User Pools’ feature update allows developers to build a user directory that can scale to hundreds of millions of users, to help manage the authentication process.

“Using a user pool gives you detailed control over the sign-up and sign-in aspects of your web and mobile SaaS apps, games, and so forth,” said Barr. “Building and running a directory service at scale is not easy, but is definitely undifferentiated heavy lifting, with the added security burden that comes when you are managing user names, passwords, email addresses, and other sensitive pieces of information. You don’t need to build or run your own directory service when you use Cognito Identity.”

Finally, the Elastic Beanstalk, which automatically deploys and runs apps on Amazon’s cloud infrastructure, has also been updated, by adding support for managed platform updates. Developers are now able to select a maintenance window, and the new feature will update the environment to the latest platform version automatically.

“The updates are installed using an immutable deployment model to ensure that no changes are made to the existing environment until the updated replacement instances are available and deemed healthy (according to the health check that you have configured for the application),” said Barr.

Financial Results, hybrid cloud, News & Analysis, Quarterly Earnings, VMware

Leadership restructure has little impact as VMWare reports 5% growth

VMWare campus logoVMWare has reported healthy growth during its Q1 earnings call despite disruptions in the management team over the period.

Revenues for the first quarter were reported at $1.59 billion, an increase of 5% in comparison to the same period in 2015, though license revenues saw a drop of 1% to $572 million. The company now expects second-quarter revenue of $1.66 billion to $1.71 billion, compared with analysts’ average estimate of $1.66 billion.

“Q1 was a good start to 2016, both for results and against our strategic goal of building momentum for our newer growth businesses and in the cloud,” said Patrick Gelsinger, CEO at VMWare. “Our results were in line with our expectations for the period and support our outlook for the full year.”

Over the course of the period, there may have been concerns surrounding changes in the leadership team, and how a restructure would impact the performance of the business on the whole. Carl Eschenbach announced last month he would be leaving his post as VMWare President and COO to join venture capital firm Sequoia Capital as a Partner. CFO Jonathan Chadwick also left the business in January.

Eschenbach joined the firm in 2002 as VP of Sales, was appointed as co-President and COO in 2011 and eventually as the stand-alone President in 2012. During Eschenbach’s time at VMWare, revenues grew from $31 million in 2002, to more than $6 billion in 2015. The changes in leadership would not have appeared to have stifled the company’s performance, as its cloud business units performed healthily over the first quarter.

“We think on the executive side, it really is the combination of being able to attract new players than – I mentioned Rajiv (Rajiv Ramaswami, GM, Networking and Security) we brought in a leader for China, Bernard (Bernard Kwok, Greater China President); we’ve been able to continue to attract talent,” said Gelsinger. “We’ve also had commented on our very strong bench, and – like Maurizio (Maurizio Carli, VP Worldwide Sales), we had brought him over from Europe a year plus ago to prepare for this eventuality, and so we had been grooming and preparing for these transitions.”

The company also reported healthy growth for its cloud business unit, including NSX, VSAN, End-User Computing and vCloud Air Network. The company highlighted standalone vSphere license bookings were less than 35% of total bookings, a figure which was more than 50% two years ago. The team claim this reduction demonstrates the product offering has been successfully diversified.

“Turning to hybrid cloud. Total bookings for vCloud Air Network grew over 25% year-over-year,” said Zane Rowe, CFO at VMWare. “We see significant interest from cloud and service providers around the world wanting to utilize our hybrid cloud technologies. For example, as Pat mentioned earlier, IBM will be delivering a complete SDDC offering based on VMware’s technologies across their expanded footprint of cloud data centres worldwide. vCloud Air also performed well in Q1 with large enterprise customer adoption.”

In terms of long-term strategy, Gelsinger outlined a three-point plan to facilitate VMWare’s growth in the cloud market segment. Firstly, the business will consolidate its position in the private cloud space, a segment which it describes as the ‘foundation of our business’. Secondly, through the vCloud Air service and vCloud Air Network, the company aims to encourage its customers extend their private cloud into the public cloud. And finally, connecting, managing and securing end points across a range of public clouds, including Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.

cognitive computing, Financial Results, Financials, IBM, News & Analysis

IBM reports cloud growth amid 16th quarterly revenue decline

IBMIBM has reported healthy growth for its cloud and strategic imperatives business units, despite witnessing revenue declines for the 16th straight quarter.

The strategic imperatives units, which include the cloud, analytics, mobile, social and security services, delivered $29.8 billion in revenue over the last 12 months, accounting for 37% of total revenues, with cloud accounting for $10.8 billion.

“We delivered $18.7 billion in revenue, $2.3 billion in net income and operating earnings per share of $2.35,” said Martin Schroeter, CFO at IBM. “Importantly, we also made significant investments and took significant actions to accelerate our transformation and move our business into new areas.”

Specifically in Q1, total revenues for the group dropped by 5% to $18.7 billion, the strategic imperatives unit grew 14% to $7 billion, with cloud accounting for $2.6 billion, a 34% year-on-year increase. The company also announced or closed ten acquisitions during the quarter, investing just over $2.5 billion in new businesses including Bluewolf, a Salesforce partner, Truven, a provider of cloud-based healthcare data and The Weather Company’s digital assets.

While the company built its reputation in the traditional IT market segment, sliding revenues and enterprise attention to cloud solutions has enforced a transformation play for the tech giant, which would appear to paying off well.

“We’re continuing to expand our Watson ecosystem and reach,” said Schroeter. “Over the last 12 months, the number of developers using Watson APIs is up over 300% and the number of enterprises we’ve engaged with has doubled. Watson solutions are being built, used, and deployed in more than 45 countries and across 20 different industries.”

Watson would appear to be one of the main focal points for IBM’s new cloud-orientated business model, as the cognitive computing platform has formed the basis of numerous PR campaigns throughout the year, highlighting client wins from pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and the McLaren Honda Formula One team.

“Our enterprise clients are looking to get greater value from their data and IT environment,” said Schroeter. “They’re not just focused on reducing cost and driving efficiency but using data to improve decision-making and outcomes. They’re looking to become digital enterprises that are differentiated by Cognitive. We’re creating Cognitive Solutions that marry digital business with digital intelligence. We’re bringing our industry expertise together with these cognitive solutions and we’re building it all on cloud platforms”

Geographically, the company highlighted business was relatively consistent worldwide, though the Asia-Pacific region did demonstrate growth. EMEA and North America demonstrated slight declines, though there have been improvements from previous quarters, though Latin America continued to prove tough for IBM. The company does have a large business unit in the region, though it quoted volatile economic and political environments in Brazil, as reasoning for declines.

Although the company has not halted the revenue declines which have been a constant for IBM in recent years, the strategic imperatives units would appear to be taking a stronger role in fortunes of the business. IBM has grown its capabilities in numerous developing markers in recent months, including cloud video platforms and user experience, though it does appear to be backing cognitive computing for future growth.

“As we build new businesses in areas like Watson Health and Watson Internet of Things, this requires different skills and to be in different places,” said Schroeter. “I mentioned earlier that over the last year we’ve added over 6000 resources in Watson Health and added over 1000 security experts. These are specialized skills in highly competitive areas. So this is not about reducing our capacity; this is about transforming our workforce.

“So where are we in the transformation? It is continued focus on shifting our investments into those strategic imperatives, it is making sure that the space we’re moving to is higher margin and higher profit opportunity for us and then making sure we’re investing aggressively to keep those businesses growing.”

While IBM is not out of the woods yet, the recent quarterlies did beat analyst predictions and its acquisition activities would appear to be more aggressive than others in the space. The company is seemingly not wasting any time in positioning itself firmly in the cloud space, though it does appear executives are backing the growth of cognitive computing, and Watson’s market penetration in particular, as the catalyst for future success of Big Blue.

Digital Video, IBM, News & Analysis, TV

IBM announces four new clients for video business unit

Curved video wallIBM has revealed four new client wins for its video business, IBM Cloud Video, a couple of hours ahead of its quarterly earnings announcement.

Speaking at NAB Show, the company announced Comic-Con HQ, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, AOL and Broadway Video will now all be utilizing the IBM video platform. The company expects the market to exceed $100 billion in the next three years, as well as digital video to account for 80% of all internet traffic by 2019.

“IBM is at the forefront of the industry at a time when video is the driving influence in how organizations communicate, share information, and entertain,” said Braxton Jarratt, General Manager of the IBM Cloud Video business unit. “Today’s announcements will be viewed as a significant milestone in the company’s cloud video strategy, as IBM makes the sharing, distribution, and management of video increasingly simple across any device.”

IBM announced the acquisition of Ustream in January though financials of the agreement were not disclosed. Ustream created a cloud model to support live and on-demand video streams and claimed to have 80 million viewers per month from customers including NASA, Samsung, Facebook, Nike and The Discovery Channel. The IBM Cloud Video business unit was formed by the combination of IBM’s R&D dollars alongside acquisitions of Clearleap, Ustream, Aspera and Cleversafe.

The deal with Comic-Con HQ will offer numerous services including subscriber and content management, billing, and video compatibility on multiple devices. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation will be using IBM’s tech to support its next-generation, ad-supported streaming video service. AOL will be using transfer and automation software from Aspera (an IBM company) to power its media management platform.

The news comes ahead of the company’s quarterly earnings, in which analysts expect IBM to announce further revenue declines. The company has reported revenue declines for 15 straight quarters, though these trends have been witnessed by several tech giants who have been primarily associated with now-legacy IT, not only IBM. The move into cloud computing is seemingly one of a number of strategies set in place for IBM to counter negative growth, and carve a new niche in the digital ecosystem.

data protection, Microsoft, News & Analysis, Policy and Regulation

Microsoft files lawsuit against US government and secret snooping orders

Lady Justice On The Old Bailey, LondonMicrosoft has filed a new lawsuit in federal court against the United States government arguing the right that customers should have the right to know when the state accesses their emails or records.

Under current law, the government has the right to demand access to customer information, while also issuing orders to companies such as Microsoft to keep these types of legal demands secret. Microsoft claim these orders are becoming too often common place; rather than common routine, these secrecy issues should be the exception not the rule.

“We believe that with rare exceptions consumers and businesses have a right to know when the government accesses their emails or records,” said Brad Smith, President and Chief Legal Officer at Microsoft on the company blog. “Yet it’s becoming routine for the U.S. government to issue orders that require email providers to keep these types of legal demands secret. We believe that this goes too far and we are asking the courts to address the situation.

“Cloud computing has spurred a profound change in the storage of private information. Today, individuals increasingly keep their emails and documents on remote servers in data centres – in short, in the cloud. But the transition to the cloud does not alter people’s expectations of privacy and should not alter the fundamental constitutional requirement that the government must – with few exceptions – give notice when it searches and seizes private information or communications.”

While the company recognizes there are certain circumstances where secrecy would be required, it would appear the US government is using the legal demands to keep secrecy as a default setting. Microsoft has claimed the demands violates the company’s First Amendment right to free speech, as well as the customers Fourth Amendment right, which gives people and businesses the right to know if the government searches or seizes their property.

“Over the past 18 months, the U.S. government has required that we maintain secrecy regarding 2,576 legal demands, effectively silencing Microsoft from speaking to customers about warrants or other legal process seeking their data,” said Smith. “Notably and even surprisingly, 1,752 of these secrecy orders, or 68% of the total, contained no fixed end date at all. This means that we effectively are prohibited forever from telling our customers that the government has obtained their data.”

Microsoft’s case is built on the perception the Electronic Communications Privacy Act is currently being abused by US officials, but also the fact the act is dated and no longer relevant. The act, which is seemingly unpopular with technology firms, has been in place since 1986. Microsoft argues the time period between the act being written and the widespread use of the internet is too long for the legislation to be relevant to today’s world.

“While today’s lawsuit is important, we believe there’s an opportunity for the Department of Justice to adopt a new policy that sets reasonable limitations on the use of these types of secrecy orders,” said Smith. “Congress also has a role to play in finding and passing solutions that both protect people’s rights and meet law enforcement’s needs. If the Department of Justice doesn’t act, then we hope that Congress will amend the Electronic Communications Privacy Act to implement reasonable rules.”

The company believes the act should be updated in three areas. Firstly, from a transparency perspective, the government should be held accountable when it snoops through customer data, and in the majority of cases the customer should be informed. Second, there should be a focus on digital neutrality as customers should not receive less notice of government activities simply because emails are stored in the cloud. Finally, there should be a necessity clause which would limit what the government can keep secret. In these circumstances, Microsoft wants the right to tell its customers what has been seen outside of the necessity clause.

Google, News & Analysis, Outage, Public Cloud

Google cloud team launches damage control mission

Close up of an astronaut in outer space, planet Mars in the background. Elements of the image are furnished by NASAGoogle will offer all customers who were affected by the Google Compute Engine outage with service credits, in what would appear to be a damage control exercise as the company looks to gain ground on AWS and Microsoft Azure in the public cloud market segment.

On Monday, 11 April, Google Compute Engine instances in all regions lost external connectivity for a total of 18 minutes. The outage has been blamed on two separate bugs, which separately would not have caused any major problems, though the combined result was a service outage. Although the outage has seemingly caused embarrassment for the company, it did not impact other more visible, consumer services such as Google Maps or Gmail.

“We recognize the severity of this outage, and we apologize to all of our customers for allowing it to occur,” said Benjamin Treynor Sloss, VP of Engineering at Google, in a statement on the company’s blog. “As of this writing, the root cause of the outage is fully understood and GCE is not at risk of a recurrence. Additionally, our engineering teams will be working over the next several weeks on a broad array of prevention, detection and mitigation systems intended to add additional defence in depth to our existing production safeguards.

“We take all outages seriously, but we are particularly concerned with outages which affect multiple zones simultaneously because it is difficult for our customers to mitigate the effect of such outages. It is our hope that, by being transparent and providing considerable detail, we both help you to build more reliable services and we demonstrate our ongoing commitment to offering you a reliable Google Cloud platform.”

While the outage would not appear to have caused any major damage for the company, competitors in the space may secretly be pleased with the level of publicity the incident has received. Google has been ramping up efforts in recent months to bolster its cloud computing capabilities to tackle the public cloud market segment with hires of industry hard-hitters, for instance Diane Greene, rumoured acquisitions, as well as announcing plans to open 12 new data centres by the end of 2017.

The company currently sits in third place in the public cloud market segment, behind AWS and Microsoft Azure, though has been demonstrating healthy growth in recent months prior to the outage.

Intel, News & Analysis

Only 13% trust public cloud with sensitive data – Intel survey

Solving problems. Business conceptA survey from Intel has highlighted companies are now becoming more trusting of cloud propositions, though public cloud platforms are still not trusted to secure sensitive data.

The Blue Skies Ahead? The State of Cloud Adoption report stated 77% of the respondents believe their company trusts cloud platforms more than 12 months ago, though only 13% would utilize public offerings for sensitive data. 72% point to compliance as the biggest concern with cloud adoption.

“This is a new era for cloud providers,” said Raj Samani, CTO at Intel Security EMEA. “We are at the tipping point of investment and adoption, expanding rapidly as trust in cloud computing and cloud providers grows. As we enter a phase of wide-scale adoption of cloud computing to support critical applications and services, the question of trust within the cloud becomes imperative. This will become integral into realising the benefits cloud computing can truly offer.”

One area of the survey which could be perceived as a concern is only 35% of the respondents believe C-level executives and senior management understand security risks of the cloud. Industry insiders have told BCN that executives are almost using cloud security as a sound-bite to demonstrate to investors that the board prioritizes technology as a means of driving business innovation, though few could be considered technology orientated or competent.

“The key to secure cloud adoption is ensuring sufficient security controls are integrated from the start so the business can maintain their trust in the cloud,” said Samani. “There is a growing awareness amongst the C-suite of the potential consequences of a data breach. Yet IT must take steps to educate senior management further on the enabling capabilities of the cloud, underlining the importance of always keeping security considerations front of mind.”

“Securing the cloud is a top-down process but getting every employee to follow best practice and behave in a secure manner requires company-wide participation. For example, when faced with many of the cloud threats defined by the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), IT will absolutely require employee support to ensure data remains secure.”

Contemplate. Business concept illustrationFrom an investment perspective, Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) continues to lead the way with 81% of respondents highlighting their organization is planning to invest in this area. Security-as-a-Service followed closely with 79%, whereas Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) accounted for 69% and 60% respectively. The survey also highlighted respondents expect 80% percent of their IT budgets to be dedicated to cloud computing services in the next 16 months.

While the increased trust in cloud platforms is a positive, it would appear in some circumstances it is a case of blind trust. More than a fifth of IT decision makers are not sure whether unauthorized cloud services are being used within the organization and 13% cannot account for what is currently being stored in the cloud. Shadow IT continues to distress IT departments throughout the industry and the most popular means of dealing with it would appear to be database activity monitoring according to 49% of the respondents.

Shadow IT maybe a concern for the vast majority of companies in the journey to cloud security, but it does lead to the question as to whether conquering shadow IT is possible, and whether 100% secure can ever be a realistic goal. “Faced with a rapidly expanding threat landscape, IT should never consider their infrastructure to be 100% secure,” said Samani. “Attack methods are constantly updated: there is no room for complacency. IT departments must ensure they regularly update and check their security measures, undertaking their due diligence to ensure corporate data remains secure.”

The concept of secure IT would appear to be a growing conversation throughout the ranks within enterprise, though the concrete understanding and commitment behind the sound-bites from executives remains unclear. 100% may well be an unattainable goal however until the concept of secure IT is appreciated completely throughout the organization, from top-to-bottom and bottom-to-top, it would appear companies will be unlikely to utilise cloud platforms for any sensitive data.

AI, Artificial intelligence, Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, News & Analysis

AI forms backbone of Facebook’s 10 year plan

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook has seemingly positioned artificial intelligence as one of the catalysts for innovation for the company over the next 10 years.

Outlining its technology roadmap for the next 10 years, the company highlighted artificial intelligence, as well as virtual and augmented reality, as technologies to drive new features and user experience. New features highlighted include translation, photo image searches, ‘talking pictures’ and real-time video classification.

“Artificial Intelligence will power all kinds of different services with better than human level perception and we’ll see the emergence of the next major computing platform in virtual and augmented reality,” said Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg during his opening keynote at F8. “These are all elements of our 10 year roadmap to connect the world and each of these elements is in service of our mission. It’s about bringing people together, that’s what we do here.”

The company has been making efforts in recent months to bolster its position in the artificial intelligence space. Recently, the company announced a string of new hires for its artificial intelligence research team, including a number of acquisitions from Microsoft’s R&D team, another company who have been making strides to perfect AI. The new staff members bring experience to the team in the fields of causal inference in learning systems, computer vision, cost-sensitive learning, speech recognition and syntactic parsing with approximate inference.

Joaquin Quiñonero Candela, Director of Applied Machine Learning at Facebook

Joaquin Quiñonero Candela, Director of Applied Machine Learning at Facebook

On the company blog, Joaquin Quiñonero Candela, Director of Applied Machine Learning at Facebook outlined a number of use cases which are a reality today. “We built an AI backbone that powers much of the Facebook experience and is used actively by more than 25 percent of all engineers across the company. Powered by a massive 40 PFLOPS GPU cluster that teams are using to train really large models with billions of parameters on huge data sets of trillions of examples, teams across the company ae running 50x more AI experiments per day than a year ago, which means that research is going into production faster than ever.”

The company has already applied an AI-based automatic translation system, claiming that an off-the-shelf translation program would not be adequate as they trained on a general corpus like appliance manuals. As language on Facebook is far more colloquial, the systems would not be effective. The company claims that its AI capabilities have the ability to learn and recognize new expressions, regional differences and the various uses of emojis.

In terms of pictures, Facebook claim its AI can understand the content of the image at a pixel level to make classification and searching of image simpler. “This is called image segmentation, and it allows us to recognize individual objects in the image as well as their relation,” said Candela. “Using image segmentation we will be able to build more immersive experiences for the visually impaired with “talking images” you can read with your fingertips, as well as more powerful ways to search images. In one case here, we have the ability to search for ‘a photo of us five on skis on the snow, with a lake in the background and trees on both sides’.

“AI is central to today’s Facebook experience, and, with our research pushing the state of the art, we’re just getting started on this journey. I’m excited to see where it takes us next.”

AI, Bot, DropBox, Facebook, News & Analysis, Salesforce

Salesforce and Dropbox launch on Facebook’s messenger platform

facebook botSalesforce and Dropbox are two of the first to launch service offerings on Facebook’s new messenger platform.

According to Facebook, Messenger is one of the industry’s fastest growing apps, increasing user rates from 500 million in 2014 to 900 million today. The company have now introduced a number of bot services on the app, allowing businesses to communicate with their customers providing anything from automated subscription content like weather and traffic updates, to customized communications like receipts, shipping notifications, and live automated messages.

“Using Salesforce, businesses are now able to engage with their customers on Facebook Messenger in a whole new way – in fact, Salesforce enables each Messenger interaction to be specifically tailored, based on the context of the entire customer relationship,” said Paul Smith, GM of Salesforce Marketing Cloud in EMEA. “When you remember that most companies are now competing primarily on the customer experience they can deliver, you can begin to see the massive impact of opening up this new channel to businesses: brands will be able to create deeper, more personal 1-to-1 customer journeys within chat. It’s another way in which we’re helping companies to succeed in the Age of the Customer.”

Powered by Salesforce Lightning, the platform will enable customers to deliver personalized engagement at scale with CRM data. The company claims that each message can be linked directly to a customer’s history in the Salesforce CRM platform, enabling brands to deliver personalized messages to customers. The news builds on trends within the industry as vendors aim to create increasingly personalized experiences for customers as a means of meeting the expectations of increasing demanding consumers.

“Now with Messenger, Facebook is inviting companies to engage their customers in new ways on its platform at scale,” said Alex Dayon, Chief Product Officer at Salesforce. “With Salesforce for Messenger companies will be able to easily connect their businesses to Messenger, creating deeper, more personalized and 1-to-1 customer journeys within the chat experience.”

Dropbox has also taken advantage of Facebook’s new platform to increase its own offering. As part of the proposition, users can share files stored on Dropbox’s cloud-storage service directly through Facebook’s messenger app.

“We want people to communicate just the way they want to on Messenger, with everyone they care about,” said Stan Chudnovsky, Head of Product for Messenger at Dropbox on the company’s blog. “Giving our users the ability to share their Dropbox videos and images in Messenger threads with just a few taps will help them bring more style and personality to those conversations.”

While the news has grabbed headlines in a very effective manner, it remains to be seen whether Facebook can police the platform in a way that satisfies consumers. The platform could essentially be seen as an upgrade on SMS advertising which was received coldly by consumers after the initial enthusiasm declined.

Enterprise IT, Intranet, MyHub, News & Analysis

6 Benefits of a Cloud-Based Intranet

BenefitsAs cloud technology continues to enter business operations, services and platforms that were formerly strictly on-site solutions are developing new opportunities for businesses looking to expand into internet-based computing. Intranets are the perfect example: rather than having to install and maintain a comprehensive platform on your servers, businesses looking to enhance their employee communication can now take advantage of cloud solutions instead.

Especially for larger enterprises looking for internal marketing and employee collaboration tools, intranets continue to gain popularity. If your business can is looking to establish an internal presence, here are 6 benefits of a cloud-based intranet you should consider.

1) Intranet Benefits For Your Business

First, let’s examine the general benefits of intranet platforms as they relate to your business. Cloud-based or on-premise, these platforms help businesses of all sizes improve their internal communication and collaboration.

Increasingly, organizations are realizing just how important internal marketing is to succeed in a competitive market place. By treating employees as a valuable marketing audience, organizations can grow workers into brand advocates that will spread positive messages about the business to their family and friends.

In addition, intranets help to engage employees and create a connection between workers and their daily tasks through enhancing collaboration and providing productivity tools. Studies show that employees who are happy at their jobs are significantly more productive than their counterparts, ultimately driving business growth.

2) Accessibility of Cloud-Based Intranets

Many of the general benefits of intranets are amplified in cloud-based platforms. For example, a platform that is not hosted on your internal servers is accessible from anywhere in the world. Particularly if your employees travel frequently or work from a variety of locations, they may require access to collaboration tools or the internal company blog regardless of location. Cloud-based intranet enables that access, increasing both use of the platform and the resulting collaboration.

As millennials are beginning to enter the workforce, global accessibility will continue to rise in importance. Recent research has shown that younger generations are more likely to believe that working remotely increases their productivity and motivation, increasing the need for collaboration software that is accessible in locations other than company headquarters.

Experienced users in cloud technology will be familiar with this argument. Global accessibility remains one of the core benefits of cloud computing as a whole, and naturally extends to cloud intranets. Accessibility regardless of location means increased flexibility and convenience, which are both crucial parts in helping your employees conduct their work and collaborate successfully and efficiently.

NECSupp_2012_OFC_e13660222445253) Scalability of Operations

No business is stagnant. Ideally, your goal in establishing an intranet system within your company is to increase employee productivity, which will in turn result in business growth. But can your intranet handle larger operations?

The answer to that question, of course, depends. An on-premise solution may only be configured for a certain number of users and storage capacity. Increasing each variable is most likely possible, but will require additional resources, time commitment, or both.

A cloud-based solution, on the other hand, is more easily scalable. Designed to grow with the company for which it runs, a cloud-based intranet generally offers unlimited users and storage that could not be supported by limited on-site servers. If and when your business grows, its intranet will grow alongside it.

4) Existing IT Constraints

Anyone who has experienced a major software implementation knows just how time and resource-intensive the process is. That is no different for on-premise intranet software, which will require both expertise and extensive work hours to install, secure, and maintain. Many companies simply do not have an IT department ready and willing to take on that work.

Unless your IT division is willing to take on and take lead for your intranet, both during implementation and for continuous maintenance, your options are limited. Many companies hire an intranet specialist specifically for this task, which will both lengthen the implementation phase and put a further strain on your resources. A cloud-based solution, on the other hand, eliminates the need for dedicated IT resources and frees your technical department up for other aspects of your business.

5) Low Set Up Costs

Any potential intranet buyer or influencer should understand the differences in pricing models between the two alternatives. Cloud-based intranet relies on an SaaS model, meaning that it will cost a contracted monthly fee to maintain and update. On-premise software, on the other hand, usually comes with a high upfront cost to buy the software license, train employees, and any overhead caused by the implementation process.

Which of the two alternatives can your business afford? Especially if only limited resources are available, the answer is most likely to be the SaaS model. Our clients tend to think of it as a payment plan: no one has the money to buy their house up front, so a mortgage is a natural solution. Similarly, cloud-based intranet will enable you to implement the software without coming up with a large chunk of budget immediately.

Running in the country6) Streamlined Training Opportunities

With on-premise software, ownership and responsibility lies with you. Either marketing or IT will need to train employees, ensuring software adoption and maximum functionality as early as possible. That can be especially difficult given that the leads in charge of training are only learning the software themselves.

A cloud-based intranet, on the other hand, offers more streamlined training opportunities. Because the software is used by many other businesses, your provider likely has an established library or knowledge base of tutorials and training modules available for your use. That, in turn, enables you to streamline your training, ensuring that your employees will learn the software comprehensively and successfully.

Understanding the Drawbacks of Cloud-Based Intranets

At the same time, businesses looking to establish an intranet powered by cloud computing should understand that while the benefits are undeniable, certain disadvantages do exist. When compared to on-site solutions, it’s important to keep the following drawbacks in mind:

  • Continuous Costs. While the initial set up costs are much lower than for on-premise intranet solutions, you will need to plan in costs after the initial deployment. Cloud-based intranet is an SaaS solution, meaning that you will be paying a monthly fee for storage, maintenance, and upkeep.
  • Less Control. You will rely on software used by other companies, rather than a custom solution for your business. That means you rely on external service, rather than internal professionals for any maintenance and trouble shooting. Software updates will be initiated by the provider, rather than your IT department.

Is a Cloud-Based Intranet Right For Your Business?

Ultimately, that question depends on your individual business situation. You may have a robust IT team that is happy and eager to take on management and maintenance of your on-premise solution. Or you may prefer paying a large sum up front for more flexibility later. But in reality, most businesses with tight budgets, limited IT capabilities, and a mobile workforce should at least consider the thought of a cloud-based intranet solution. The benefits are undeniable, and can help you improve your employee productivity significantly.

Through partnering with MyHub, your business can take advantage of the many opportunities provided by intranets without the requirements necessary to install and maintain an on-premise solution.

Written by Frederik Schrader Search Engine Marketer at MyHub Intranet