All posts by Jamie Davies

Big Data, cognitive computing, IBM, News & Analysis

Are decision makers thinking too short-term for cloud benefits?

April 13, 2016 Jamie Davies

While cloud adoption maybe hitting the mainstream, the majority of projects are focused primarily around increasing productivity of employees through automation as opposed to the greater benefits of cloud computing.

Speaking at Cloud World Expo, Rashik Parmar, IBM’s Lead Cloud Advisor, highlighted that the benefits of cloud maybe currently underplayed by some organizations, as projects are initially too focused on productivity advantages. While automation could build an effective business case for cloud implementation, benefits such as performance and business predictability are often overlooked until projects are more mature.

“With performance we talk about speed. It’s the timing in which it takes to change, drive innovation in the market place and accelerate the way you deliver value to you customers,” said Parmar. “Predictability is one we often don’t think about. With the cloud you start to be able to understand the kind of outcomes you can achieve well before you put them out there. It’s that ability to be able to predict those outcomes and be confident that this particular journey is going to deliver value that gives people the inspiration and the ability to invest in cloud projects.”

Parmar highlighted that cloud is more than simply a tool for automation of software, but also the access to data, which has been healthily increased by the wider adoption of IoT technologies. Advances in cognitive computing are now enabling businesses to drive decision making through automation, taking time consuming tasks away from employees to ensure they can concentrate on core tasks.

“What we’re now starting to get into is a stage of machine learning, a stage of cognitive computing which allows us to see some of the broader patterns and automate further,” said Parmar. “Tasks which were being handed to humans are being replaced by automation. Radiography is a good example. A radiographer looks at an x-ray and decides whether there is a crack or a hairline fracture, and these are quite hard to automate without human skills. With the new cognitive capabilities and picture recognition analytics, we can use machine learning to pick out these anomalies and automate these tasks.”

While the initial benefits of cloud will always be automation and therefore and increase in productivity, as organizations mature through their cloud journey’s the long-term potential of cloud becomes more apparent.

IBM’s position would appear to be on the advanced side of cloud computing, seemingly wanted to accelerate customers through the adoption process and through to the performance and predictability benefits sooner rather than later. Though this does leave the question of how many organizations would be in a position digitally to capitalize on such concepts currently. Can organizations be fast-tracked to the advanced stages of cloud computing or does there have to be an internal learning curve? Could this be a case of IBM trying to encourage customers to walk before they can crawl?

EMC, Enterprise IT, News & Analysis, Transformation

UK businesses at threat of losing IT talent

April 13, 2016 Jamie Davies

EMC has released a new study highlighting UK businesses are at risk of losing IT talent due to underappreciation of technology in the business on the whole.

The Great Skills Exodus report claims decision makers are failing to prioritise IT as a business enabler, while 88% of IT workers believe the growth and success of their organisation is fundamentally reliant on technology. Frustrations from the IT department can be linked to a lack of transformation in the company they work for as 26% has witnessed an unwillingness to change the way ‘things have always been done’ from the management team.

“IT has got to become a key aspect of the business strategy, not merely a function of the overall business,” said Ross Fraser, UK&I Country Manager at EMC. “Technology is potentially the definitive aspect of any business but it can be seen as a supportive function by a substantial amount of organizations at the moment. Decision makers now have to rethink what they are doing as the process of IT and move with the times.”

While there has been encouraging progress in the adoption of cloud technologies in recent months, it would appear board level decision makers are not realizing the full potential of the technology itself. Cloud as a technology could be perceived as now penetrating the mass market, though the digitally enabled business model, required to activate cloud for its greatest potential, could be seen as lagging.

“If you want to modernize, automate and transform your infrastructure, whether than means on premise or off premise, you have to embrace the idea of new IT,” said Fraser. “There are a few companies where their future probably depends on how well they embrace future IT and I think that there is also a lack of understanding that if they don’t embrace it they will come under huge amounts of pressure and competitive threats because they are not competitive enough as a business.”

Among the concerns put forward by respondents in the survey, 20% feel held back by their organisation’s restrictions on implementing new technologies, 30% feel they have few opportunities to demonstrate their ability, and less than 20% believe their organization has a significant focus on IT as a means of driving innovation.

“The worst case scenario could be that they won’t exist, think about Kodak or Blockbuster,” said Fraser. “Now this is on an extreme level but it does demonstrate how disruptive the digital business model is. It could mean death by a thousand cuts, but if you don’t get the technology question right it could mean major problems in the long run. Every business has the digital challenge, but if they get it right from a technology perspective it creates a workforce which sees where they are working is an important aspect of the business, they start to see career progression and new opportunities.”

EMC believe a stronger and more consistent message throughout the organization on technology, would not only provide the organization with a more competitive position in the market, but also highlight the importance of IT as a function to the on-going success, ensuring employee retention would be increased.

“Technology is at the heart of business transformation and the IT team is ideally placed to help any organisation navigate new opportunities and threats in the market,” said Fraser. “With employment of IT professionals forecast to grow at 1.62 percent per year by 2020, businesses must ensure that they offer the most compelling career opportunities in order to retain the best staff, or risk losing as many as three quarters of their IT team in the coming months – something which would have a hugely detrimental impact on any organisation.”

data protection, News & Analysis, Private Cloud

IBM and Box extend partnership to offer greater flexibility on data residence

April 12, 2016 Jamie Davies

IBM has extended its partnership with Box to provide enterprises the choice to store data regionally in Europe and Asia on the IBM Cloud.

The IBM cloud will be available as part of Box’s new Box Zones technology, and is the first time that Box customers will have the choice of where to store their data. IBM will also utilize the Box Zones offering to extend its hybrid cloud proposition.

“Organizations want to tap into all of the benefits of the cloud while retaining the security, performance, control and other attributes they might achieve with local data centre infrastructure,” said John Morris, general manager at IBM Cloud Object Storage. “With Box Zones and the IBM Cloud, enterprise customers across Europe and Asia will soon have the choice to leverage the IBM Cloud global footprint locally, and uniquely support hybrid cloud and on-premises deployments, integrating data between Box Zones and on-premises content repositories”

Since the launch of the partnership in June 2015, the pair has integrated a number of different products, including a new version of the IBM MobileFirst for iOS Expert Seller app that is built on Box Platform.

“Box and IBM are focused on bringing world-class technology to enterprises across the globe, and on building dynamic content and collaboration solutions that transform the way our customers do business,” said Aaron Levie, CEO of Box. “Box Zones enables us to combine Box’s rich, intuitive content management experience and collaboration tools with IBM Cloud’s powerful global infrastructure to overcome many of the data storage concerns faced by businesses in Europe and Asia.”

The launch would appear to be well timed as transatlantic data movement and residence has been under continuous scrutiny following the European Court of Justice’s decision to strike down Safe Harbour last October. While EU-US Privacy Shield has been put to the industry, receiving backing from Microsoft in the process, industry insiders have told BCN that the new policy is unlikely to have much impact on the concerns of EU citizens and businesses. As the EU-US Privacy Shield is a policy, not law, companies are likely to refer directly to national legislation as opposed to any European directive.

IBM’s and Box’s partnership could be perceived as a shrewd move to counter any arguments that potential customers have with regard to their data residence and overall compliance.

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

Microsoft endorses EU-US Privacy Shield despite criticism from EU industry commentators

April 12, 2016 Jamie Davies

Microsoft has become one of the first major US tech companies to confirm its support of the EU-US Privacy Shield, the successor of the now defunct Safe Harbour Agreement.

Data transfer between the EU and the US has been on relative shaky legal grounds over recent months, as between the EU striking down the Safe Harbour Agreement and introducing the EU-US Privacy there has not been an official framework. While Microsoft has publicly stated its approval of the agreement, it does not believe that it goes far enough.

“We recognize that privacy rights need to have effective remedies. We have reviewed the Privacy Shield documentation in detail, and we believe wholeheartedly that it represents an effective framework and should be approved,” said John Frank, Vice President EU Government Affairs at Microsoft, on his blog.

“We continue to believe today that additional steps will be needed to build upon the Privacy Shield after it is adopted, ranging from additional domestic legislation to modernization of mutual legal assistance treaties and new bilateral and ultimately multilateral agreements,” said Frank. “But we believe that the Privacy Shield as negotiated provides a strong foundation on which to build.”

Back in October, the European Court of Justice decided that Safe Harbour did not give data transfers between Europe and the US adequate protection, and declared the agreement which had been in place since 2000 void. The EU-US Privacy Shield, Safe Harbour’s successor, has also come under criticism in recent weeks as concerns have been raised to how much protection the reformed regulations protect European parties.

While Microsoft does appear happy with the new agreement, there have been industry commentators who have outlined their own concerns. Privacy activist Max Schrems, who has been linked to the initial downfall of Safe Harbour, said in a statement reacting to Privacy Shield, “Basically, the US openly confirms that it violates EU fundamental rights in at least six cases.” Others to react negatively are German MP Jan Philipp Albrecht who commented on twitter, “This is just a joke. @EU_Commission sells out EU fundamental rights and puts itself at risk to be lectured by CJEU again”, as well as whistle blower Edward Snowden who said, “It’s not a “Privacy Shield”, it’s an accountability shield. Never seen a policy agreement so heavily criticized.”

As part of the announcement, Microsoft has also committed to responding to any complaints about its participation in Privacy Shield within 45 days.

Enterprise IT, Huawei, News & Analysis

Huawei launches All-Cloud strategy

April 11, 2016 Jamie Davies

Huawei has launched its All-Cloud strategy the Huawei Global Analyst Summit 2016, as a means to capitalize on digital capitalization trends.

The new strategy builds on the ROADS experience model – Real-time, On-demand, All-online, DIY, and Social – which was launch at the same event 12 months ago. While the ROADS framework focuses on delivering improved user experience, All-Cloud centres on network modernization and aims to enable digital transformation within enterprise. The new campaigns have been billed under the tagline of “Growing together through digitalization and building a better connected world”.

“Global digitalization is accelerating, and this is improving efficiency and user experience in many areas, including vertical industries, public services, and every aspect of our lives. Our Global Connectivity Index (GCI) 2016 reveals that global connectivity improved by 5% in 2015,” said Deputy Chairman of the Board Eric Xu. “We can work together in the areas of enhancing connectivity, enabling the digital transformation of vertical industries, improving the connectivity experience and expanding access under all scenarios, and to accelerate global digitalization.”

“In the All IP era, we proposed our Single strategy, which effectively supported the development of operator customers,” said Xu. “Nowadays, as we face the digital transformation of different industries, we advocate full cloudification to build efficient networks and agile competitiveness. Driven by end users’ needs for a better experience, Huawei proactively advocates the All Cloud strategy, promotes network modernization, and works to enable digital transformation across industries, thus meeting end user needs to enable customer success.”

The All-Cloud proposition is built on a data centre-centric architecture, with all network functions, services and applications will run in the cloud data centre. The company has claimed that through a unified and open architecture, it will be able to meet customers’ needs for business transformation on all cloud platforms, public, private, industry, and hybrid.

Within the company’s carrier business, the team plan of developing cloud-based IoT, video services, and service platforms, to win new business, but will also promote the cloudification of operations systems.

“Network Functions Virtualization standardizes and virtualizes equipment and hardware on ICT networks,” said Xu. “However, even with NFV, we still adopt a traditional method for managing the software architecture and operations model. If we can move another step forward and use the cloudification concept to make network software fully distributed and automated, we can realize Network Functions Cloudification (NFC).”

In the enterprise unit, cloud computing, SDN, and big data technologies will form the central pillars of marketing messages. The company has seemingly prioritized digital transformation as a means for enterprise to transform towards agile and smart operations.

On the company’s blog it highlighted that the transformation will take place over three stages. “First, Huawei will need to encourage enterprises to move their IT systems to the cloud to fully utilize resources and improve efficiency. Second, Huawei will accelerate the pace of transforming enterprise networks into SDN, and then use a unified SDN controller to centrally integrate telecom, enterprise, and DC networks and achieve agile operations throughout the entire process. Third, Huawei will enable smart enterprises with Big Data.”

Internet of Things, IoT, News & Analysis, Verizon

What did we learn from Verizon’s IoT report?

April 8, 2016 Jamie Davies

Verizon has recently released its State of the Market: Internet of Things 2016 report, which outlined the growth and potential for the IoT industry. The report features a number of use cases and information detailing the technology’s rise to fame, but also barriers for enterprise organizations over the coming months.

Here, we’ve detailed a few of the lessons learnt from the report:

IoT is no longer a nice idea, it’s becoming mainstream

If 2015 was the year IoT gained credibility in the business world, 2016 is the year IoT gains commercial feasibility.

While the concept of IoT has been around for some time, the idea of the technology having a B2B commercial backbone, capable of delivering on commercial objectives is now a reality. The potential of IoT has been well discussed but now we are seeing companies delivering on the promise. IBM is one which has particularly active in this segment, driving the Watson use case through the press repeatedly this year.

Wearables had a head start on B2B applications, though could be to thank for the relative ease of acceptance within the industry (both for enterprise and consumers). The marketing campaigns surrounding the earliest fitness wearables or smart watches normalized IoT, allowing for what could be perceived as a simple transition into the B2B sphere. But thanks to these (comparative) simple applications, the integration of IoT into the manufacturing process, healthcare, transportation, utilities, smart cities and any other context you could think of, has been a seemingly simple transition.

According to Verizon’s research, IoT networks connections have been growing healthily, the number of connections in the utilities industry has grown 58% between 2014 and 2015, and this is also backed up by forecasts by IDC research. The IDC’s findings estimate the IoT market spend will increase from $591.7 billion in 2014 to $1.3 trillion in 2019.

IoT might be entering mainstream, but data could hold it back

Data acquisition, analysis and action might be becoming one of the most repetitive conversations in the industry, but that is for good reason.

Verizon capture Verizon recently commissioned a report by Oxford Economics highlighted only 8% of businesses are using more than 25% of the IoT data which they have collected. In fact, only 50% of the businesses involved in the study said they would be using more than 25% of the collected IoT data in three years’ time.

On the surface, this shouldn’t seem as an issue that would cause too many problems, until you take into account the long-term deliverables of IoT. The promise of IoT is the collection of vast quantities of data to allow advanced analytics tools to make accurate predictions and customizations. If only a partial amount of the data is being analysed, only a partial amount of the promise can be realized.

IoT has hit the mainstream market, however it will never reach the promised deliverables if companies are not analysing more of the data collected. What is the point is spending millions on sensors, connections, storage and data scientists, if the full potential of the technology cannot be achieved. Can the long term financial security of the IoT industry be guaranteed if the promise is never fully realized?

There could be a number of reasons for the backlog of data, though industry insiders have told BCN the interface required to translate different data sets into a common language for analysis could be one of the reasons for the holdup. It would appear not all of the IoT value chain has evolved at the same pace.

Regulators will have to play a more significant role in the future

Regulation does and will play a major role in the delivery and adoption of IoT. Back in 2007 the Energy Act in the US accelerated the role of IoT in the monitoring of energy consumption, and while this could be considered the initial catalyst, growth has increased year on year ever since.

While this is an instance of regulation giving the IoT industry freedom to grow, it should not be seen as a surprise if regulators put in place rulings which could limit what the industry can and cannot do. Whether it is the ethical use of data, volumes of data which can be collected on a single person or the means in which and where the data is stored, regulation is likely to play a more significant role in coming years.

The report discusses the security of IoT which is a constant barrier for businesses and individuals alike. New regulations are likely to severely punish instances of data loss, and when you consider the sheer volume of data should IoT reach its potential, future instances of data loss could be disastrous.

Currently regulation within the IoT market is relatively low-key, encouraging growth of the technology as opposed to monitoring it, however there are a number of areas which need consideration in the short- to mid-term future. Lack of control and information asymmetry, low-quality consent, intrusive identification of behaviour patterns and user profiling and limitations on the possibility of remaining anonymous whilst using services are all areas which should be taken into consideration.

acquisition, M&A, News & Analysis

Maintel announces acquisition of Azzurri Communications

April 8, 2016 Jamie Davies

Systems integrator Maintel announced it has entered into a conditional agreement to acquire Azzurri Communications.

The acquisition of Azzurri Communications, which offers communication services including telephony, mobile services, document management, is part of a larger push for Maintel market position. The company highlighted that the deal is a strong component in its strategy to grow and diversify its revenue base.

“Azzurri Communications is a highly respected business with a complementary product offering and target market, which will provide enhanced scale and visibility for the combined group,” said Eddie Buxton, CEO at Maintel. “This acquisition will accelerate Maintel’s shift into hosted cloud and data, ensuring we are well positioned to take advantage of these high growth areas of the unified communications market. It will also build scale in managed services, continuing the shift in our business mix, which we have been driving following previous acquisitions.”

The acquisition will broaden Maintel’s offering to include a network services division, a mobile division, managed services, and technology and professional services. “With the acquisition of Azzurri, Maintel will also gain a new set of highly skilled and professional team members. We are looking forward to welcoming Azzurri employees to the group,” said Buxton.

Alongside the announcement, Maintel’s also reported a 21% increase in revenues for 2015, up to £50.6m. As part of the company’s growth strategy, it also acquired Datapoint and Proximity Communications in recent months.

“We are really pleased at the prospect of joining Maintel because this enables the combined business to offer its customers a broader range of services,” Chris Jagusz, CEO of Azzurri Communications. “Our employees will benefit too by being part of one of the most significant players in our market.”

Big Data, IBM Watson, Machine learning, News & Analysis, Pfizer

Pfizer utilizes IBM Watson for Parkinson’s research

April 7, 2016 Jamie Davies

IBM and Pfizer have announced a research collaboration with the intention of improving how clinicians deliver care to Parkinson’s patients.

The collaboration will be built on a system of sensors, mobile devices, and IBM Watson’s machine learning capabilities, to provide real-time disease symptom information to clinicians and researchers. The team aim to gain a better understanding as to how the disease progresses as well as how patients react to certain medications, to design future clinical trials and also speed up the development of new therapies.

“We have an opportunity to potentially redefine how we think about patient outcomes and 24/7 monitoring, by combining Pfizer’s scientific, medical and regulatory expertise with IBM’s ability to integrate and interpret complex data in innovative ways,” said Mikael Dolsten, President of Pfizer Worldwide R&D.

According to the World Health Organization, neurological diseases such as Parkinson’s affect almost one billion families around the world, Approximately 60,000 Americans are diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease each year according to the Parkinson’s Disease Foundation, and an estimated seven to 10 million people suffer from the disease globally.

“The key to our success will be to deliver a reliable, scalable system of measurement and analysis that would help inform our clinical programs across important areas of unmet medical need, potentially accelerating the drug development and regulatory approval processes and helping us to get better therapies to patients, faster,” said Dolsten.

The collaboration seeks to create a holistic view of a patient’s well-being by seeking to accurately measure a variety of health indicators. Data generated through the system could also arm researchers with the insights and real-world evidence needed to help accelerate potential new and better therapies.

“With the proliferation of digital health information, one area that remains elusive is the collection of real-time physiological data to support disease management,” said Arvind Krishna, SVP at IBM Research. “We are testing ways to create a system that passively collects data with little to no burden on the patient, and to provide doctors and researchers with objective, real-time insights that we believe could fundamentally change the way patients are monitored and treated.”

AWS, Enterprise IT, News & Analysis

AWS to breach $10 billion barrier through fail-fast business model

April 7, 2016 Jamie Davies

Amazon Founder and CEO Jeffrey Bezos has announced the company has become the fastest ever to reach $100 billion in annual sales, while AWS will also breach the $10 billion milestone in 2015, owing the success to the company’s “fail-fast” business model.

Bezos claims in a letter to the company shareholders the cloud computing business unit has grown at a faster rate than the business on the whole as it celebrates its tenth birthday this year. The company launched its first major service in 2006, a simple storage service, but now offers more than 70 services for compute, storage, databases, analytics, mobile, Internet of Things, and enterprise applications.

“AWS is bigger than Amazon.com was at 10 years old, growing at a faster rate, and – most noteworthy in my view – the pace of innovation continues to accelerate – we announced 722 significant new features and services in 2015, a 40% increase over 2014,” said Bezos in the statement.

“Many characterized AWS as a bold – and unusual – bet when we started. “What does this have to do with selling books?” We could have stuck to the knitting. I’m glad we didn’t. Or did we? Maybe the knitting has as much to do with our approach as the arena. AWS is customer obsessed, inventive and experimental, long-term oriented, and cares deeply about operational excellence.”

Throughout the statement Bezos referred to the company as “the best place in the world to fail” as he coupled numerous failures within the business as the catalyst for innovation. The concept builds on a popular industry model of “fail-fast” and while numerous companies around the world claim to incorporate the model into their innovation models, industry insiders have told BCN the management team are less than happy to accept failure.

The model builds on the idea that failure within the innovation team is an acceptable practise, assuming it is done quickly and lessons are learnt to improve the product offering. Failing fast, in theory, enables the team to remove inadequacies in the product offering, encouraging innovation and efficiency. Sources said while the model can drastically improve the product offering, the management team can rarely come to terms with the idea that failure can lead to greater success.

On the surface, the organization wants to be seen to incubate innovation, though the management team rarely accepts failure. According to Bezos, Amazon is seemingly one of the few companies to have successfully embedded such a business model.

“Most large organizations embrace the idea of invention, but are not willing to suffer the string of failed experiments necessary to get there,” said Bezos. “Outsized returns often come from betting against conventional wisdom, and conventional wisdom is usually right. Given a ten percent chance of a 100 times payoff, you should take that bet every time. But you’re still going to be wrong nine times out of ten.”

Chef, containers, Features, Rackspace

Will containers change the world of cloud?

April 6, 2016 Jamie Davies

The rise of containers as a technology has been glorious and confusing in equal measure. While touted by some as the saviour of developers, and by others as the end of VM’s, the majority simply don’t understand containers as a concept or a technology.

In the simplest of terms, containers let you pack more computing workloads onto a single server and in theory, that means you can buy less hardware, build or rent less data centre space, and hire fewer people to manage that equipment.

“In the earlier years of computing, we had dedicated servers which later evolved with virtualisation,” say Giri Fox, Director of Technical Services at Rackspace. “Containers are part of the next evolution of servers, and have gained large media and technologist attention. In essence, containers are the lightest way to define an application and to transport it between servers. They enable an application to be sliced into small elements and distributed on one or more servers, which in turn improves resource usage and can even reduce costs.”

There are some clear differences between containers and virtual machines though. Linux containers give each application, its own isolated environment in which to run, but multiple containers share the host servers’ operating system. Since you don’t have to boot up an operating system, you can create containers in seconds not minutes like virtual machines. They are faster, require less memory space, offer higher-level isolation and are highly portable.

“Containers are more responsive and can run the same task faster,” adds Fox. “They increase the velocity of application development, and can make continuous integration and deployment easier. They often offer reduced costs for IT; testing and production environments can be smaller than without containers. Plus, the density of applications on a server can be increased which leads to better utilisation.

“As a direct result of these two benefits, the scope for innovation is greater than its previous technologies. This can facilitate application modernisation and allow more room to experiment.”

So the benefits are pretty open-ended. Speed of deployment, flexibility to run anywhere, no more expensive licenses, more reliable and more opportunity for innovation.

Which all sounds great, doesn’t it?

That said, a recent survey from the Cloud & DevOps World team brought out some very interesting statistics, first and foremost the understanding of the technology. 76% of respondents agreed with the statement “Everyone has heard of containers, but no-one really understands what containers are”.

While containers have the potential to be
the next big thing in the cloud industry, unless those in the ecosystem understand the concept and perceived benefits, it is unlikely to take off.

“Containers are evolving rapidly and present an interesting runtime option for application development,” says Joe Pynadath, ‎GM of EMEA for Chef. “We know that with today’s distributed and lightweight apps, businesses, whether they are a new start-up’s to traditional enterprise, must accelerate their capabilities for building, testing, and delivering modern applications that drive revenue.

“One result of the ever-greater focus on software development is the use of new tools to build applications more rapidly and it is here that containers have emerged as an interesting route for developers. This is because they allow you to quickly build applications in a portable and lightweight manner. This provides a huge benefit for developers in speeding up the application building process. However, despite this, containers are not able to solve the complexities of taking an application from build through test to production, which presents a range of management challenges for developers and operations engineers looking to use them.”

There is certainly potential for containers within the enterprise environment, but as with all emerging technologies there is a certain level of confusion as to how they will integrate within the current business model, and how the introduction will impact the IT department on a day-to-day basis.

“Some of the questions we’re regularly asked by businesses looking to use containers are “How do you configure and tune the OS that will host them? How do you adapt your containers at run time to the needs of the dev, test and production environments they’re in?” comments Pynadath.

While containers allow you to use discovery services or roll your own solutions, the need to monitor and manage them in an automated way remains a challenge for IT teams. At Chef, we understand the benefits containers can bring to developers and are excited to help them automate many of the complex elements that are necessary to support containerized workflows in production”

Vendors are confident that the introduction of containers will drive further efficiencies and speed within the industry, though we’re yet to see a firm commitment from the mass market to demonstrate the technology will take off. The early adopter uptake is promising, and there are case studies to demonstrate the much lauded potential, but it’s still early days.

In short, containers are good, but most people just need to learn what they are.

ICLOUD PE