All posts by Lavanya

Services

Service Cloud Einstein to Power Salesforce CRM

In a bid to take on competition and to boost its own marketshare in the cloud CRM market, Salesforce has decided to add Service Cloud Einstein to its portfolio. Dubbed as the world’s best intelligent customer service platform, Service Cloud Einstein helps companies to better manage the complexities of customer service with the help of artificial intelligence. Released during Salesforce’s Dreamforce conference last year, this product is the summation of all artificial intelligence efforts from the company.

Service Cloud Einstein create an intuitive experience for customer service agents and their managers, and in the process, improves their overall efficiency and productivity. For a customer service agent using Service Cloud Einstein, it routes the call to the correct agent using a feature called Einstein Case Management. This feature uses machine learning to automatically escalate calls if needed. In other cases, it classifies them into different categories, and brings up the case resolution management for the agent, thereby making it easy for him/her to handle customer requests and queries.

In addition to providing case resolutions, these platforms collect initial information through chatbots, and pulls up any relevant information about the customer. Obviously, such prior information can prepare agents to better handle customer calls. It also gives the necessary background information to add a personal touch to customers.

Service Cloud Einstein works great for customers too, as every case is prioritized and handled efficiently. It evaluates a case based on its level of emergency, and in the case of high priority cases, it automatically routes them to the best agent within the shortest time possible. As a result, customers can get their issue handled quickly and efficiently.

Such a system is sure to add many layers of business value to any organization. Firstly, when customers get quick and personalized service, they tend to be happy. This translates to good satisfaction levels, and that customer is likely to stay with the company. This factor alone can save thousands of dollars for companies, as it is estimated that any marketing campaign spends almost ten times to attract a new customer than to retain an existing customer.

Secondly, this system works well for agents, as they have all the information required to handle a customer’s call. This is sure to keep them engaged and satisfied, which translates to a low attrition rate.  Again, companies get to save money as they don’t have to spend often on finding the right candidates and training them. Experienced employees will tend to stay back, and this is sure to increase the overall productivity and bottom line revenues of the company.

Lastly, Service Cloud Einstein collects information and provides an intelligent analysis of the same. In other words, this will give more insights into customer call patterns, nature of problems and customers’ behavior. Armed with such information, managers can offer a higher quality of service to customers in the future.

In all, the addition of Service Cloud Einstein can boost the productivity of clients in a big way, and in the process, will improve the marketshare of Salesforce too.

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News

Findings from 2017’s Intel Cloud Security Report

The Intel Cloud Security Report of 2017 has brought out some interesting revelations about the cloud industry, and the likely attitudes and expectations this year. Titled Building Trust in a Cloudy Sky, this report features responses from more than 2,000 IT professionals to know about their insights into the current happenings of the cloud industry, and the possible challenges they believe would hamper its growth in the near future.

Out of these 2000 professionals, about 45.6 percent opined that the rate of cloud adoption has slowed down because of the non-availability of cloud “specialists.” In other words, the gap in cloud skills is impeding the adoption of cloud within their respective organizations, thereby casting a shadow in IT deployments. Surprisingly, 15 percent of the respondents opined that lack of security skills has not affected their organization at all, and in fact, no such problem even exists.

Another significant take away from this report is the role of IT department in cloud deployments. As much as 40 percent of cloud services used by organizations are deployed without the knowledge of their IT department. This finding opens up a multitude of problems. Firstly, lack of transparency can lead to  a disjointed security environment that can put the entire organization at risk. Secondly, such a disjointed environment means more work for the security department as they have to identify loopholes and address them, after they occur.

Thirdly, when an organization doesn’t have a comprehensive or a company-wide policy, it creates a lot of chaos. Such a scenario can encourage different departments to commission their own services and deployments, which could be a nightmare for any organization.

Due to the above problems, it’s best to involve the IT department in any deployment. Even if they’re not actively involved in every stage of deployment, they should at the minimum have sufficient visibility to ensure that all applications and data are safe and secure.

The Intel Cloud Security Report also highlights some positive developments for the cloud industry. For example, the number of respondents who distrust public cloud services has fallen from 50 percent to 29 percent over the last year. In addition, 85 percent of the respondents said they store some or all of their critical applications and data in the cloud.

This is a heartening development, and goes to show how much cloud security has advanced over the last year. These advancements have softened people’s attitude towards public cloud, and in turn, this is expected to increase the rate of cloud adoption.

When the respondents were questioned about their use of PaaS, SaaS and IaaS, their responses showed that an overwhelming majority preferred a hybrid cloud model to store their data. Also, 57 percent of organizations have been involved in some form of hybrid cloud deployment, up from the 19 percent of last year.

Predictably, the number of organizations using private cloud has fallen from 50 percent last year to 25 percent this year.

All this means, we can expect more cloud adoption this year. In fact, we can expect more hybrid cloud and public cloud deployments as organizations feel more confident about cloud security.

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Microsoft

What is Azure IP Advantage Program?

Protecting intellectual property rights has become an uphill battle in today’s business world. To offer an extra layer of protection for its customers, Microsoft has come up with a program called Azure IP Advantage program.  Under this program, customers will have the best of protection against intellectual property risks, lawsuits and infringements.

Deemed as one of the most comprehensive protection programs from Microsoft, it is designed to help customers protect their cloud-based innovations and products that were developed using cloud technologies. This way, developers can continue with their coding and companies can focus on their business, as they don’t have to deal with IP lawsuits and worries about the diminishing rights on their assets.

To be more specific, customers can enjoy the following three benefits under this program:

  1. They can defend against any IP lawsuit with the more than 10,000 patents from Microsoft. These patents include those registered within and outside of the US. It also includes pending applications that are ancillary to the approved patents.
  2. A springing license to any of Microsoft’s existing patents that are transferred to non-practicing entities.
  3. Uncapped indemnification for IP lawsuits.

These benefits are available to all Azure customers, but the springing license and picking of patents are available only to those clients that meet the terms and conditions laid down by Microsoft in this regard.

For the patent pick feature, a customer should be a bonafide user of Azure, and should have paid at least $1,000 per month for the last three months. This includes the aggregated amount paid towards different Azure services. Say, for example, if you’re paying $600 a month for one service and $500 for another, you can combine it. Also, note that this the average monthly usage over the last three months. So, if you spend $800 the first month, $700 the next and $1500 the third, then you become eligible too.

In addition, the customer should be facing a lawsuit for patent infringement and the customer should have remained patent peaceful against Azure for the past two years. If the customer meets all these conditions, then they tap into Microsoft’s 10,000 patents.

This program can be a significant one for both Microsoft and its customers. From Microsoft’s perspective, this program can give it an edge in the fiercely-competitive cloud market that is dominated by AWS.  Since IP protection and the ensuing lawsuits are something that many companies are forced to handle on a regular basis, this protection can be an enticing factor to move to Microsoft.

From a customer’s perspective, this program takes away the hassles of handling IP lawsuits, and this can help them to focus on the core aspects of their business. In today’s connected world, IP infringement and risks have become common, so this plan might offer the much-needed protection against these risks.

Overall, this seems like a good move by Microsoft, and it can bring much savings to customers in the form of reduced time and effort to deal with intellectual property lawsuits and infringements.  In the process, it can also hope to rope in more customers.

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News

Forcepoint Acquires Skyfence

Forcepoint, the commercial cyber security division of Raytheon, has acquired Skyfence solution for $40 million in cash.

Skyfence is a cloud security arm of a company called Imperva. In fact, Imperva acquired Skyfence in 2014 for $60 million in cash, and has sold the same now to Forcepoint today.

Skyfence offers solutions and software that provide increased visibility into cloud servers and applications like Office 365 and Dropbox. This software constantly analyzes the servers and applications for content and activity, so the chances for any fraudulent or unauthorized data leak is greatly reduced. Due to this innovative feature, this product is being used by many companies as it helps to plug hacking and data leaks, and at the same time, offers an extra layer of security.

It also acts as a cloud access security broker (CASB) that offers security services to companies looking to protect their intellectual property rights. On top of it, Skyfence helps companies to adhere to data protection standards established by organizations such as the European Union, Sarbanes-Oxley legislation and the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard. In all, Skyfence monitors the network constantly to identify unauthorized accesses and to protect the IP assets of a company.

Forcepoint, on the other hand, is an Austin, Texas based division of Imperva that deals with cybersecurity systems. Specifically, it delivers cybersecurity solutions for its customers to help them gain deep insights into the behavior and intention of network users, as they interact with the system as well as the different cloud applications that reside in it.

If you look closely into the business of both the divisions, you’ll understand the close connection. While one provides cybersecurity solutions, the other analyzes the network to prevent data leaks. Together, they can offer a more powerful solution, and this is why the acquisition makes sense from the perspective of both companies. With this acquisition, Forcepoint’s cloud security is expected to get a big boost.

Under the terms of the deal, Skyfence will be added to the web security and data loss prevention arm of Forcepoint, and the employees will join Forcepoint’s team. However, the operations and the location of employees will continue to be in Israel.

This deal reflects the growing importance on cyber and cloud security, considering the many attacks and the ensuing data losses that have occurred over the last few years. Statistics show that the number of attacks in 2016 increased to 1061 compared to 1017 the previous year. What’s more interesting is that the percentage of motivated crimes increased from 67 percent in 2015 to 72.1 percent in 2016, thereby signaling that crimes are becoming more planned and targeted than the causal hacks of the previous years.

In the light of these statistics, it becomes imperative for every company to protect their network and digital assets. This is why companies like Forcepoint are likely to see high levels of growth over the next few years. Undoubtedly, this acquisition is sure to act as a big boost for Forcepoint, and hopefully, will augur well for the cloud security industry and its customers at large.

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News

Fox Films Chooses Mandic Cloud

The Brazilian office of Fox Films has chosen a local cloud services provider called Mandic Cloud Solutions for providing cloud storage and backup services.

Fox Films Brazil was looking for a reliable service provider that would help with supporting the complete financial and operational structure of the company, and in the process improve its internal and external operations. Furthermore, Fox Films wanted a provider whose services can be used both by its affiliates and partners located within and outside of South America.

Mandic Cloud Solutions was the perfect partner for Fox Films, and both the companies entered into an agreement about a month ago. Over the last month, Mandic’s infrastructure was implemented, and it became operational within just a few weeks. Since the system was setup, Fox Films has seen enormous benefits.

According to its IT coordinator, Arlem Silva, there is a 70 percent improvement in stability and security. To top it, employees and partners find the system easy to use, so training was not a lengthy process. As an example, he says, that earlier it took 30 minutes to generate a report, and now, the same can be done in ten minutes. That’s the kind of time and resources that Fox Films can save with this new system.

In addition, Fox Films Brazil can now safely and quickly access all the information they want from Fox’s headquarters in London, and so can its partners. Fox Films Brazil can report all financial transactions to London as it happens, thanks to an agile and flexible system. This also means there’s greater transparency in its operations than before, and this is sure to improve the morale of the top brass, as well as all the stakeholders who’re interested in knowing the nitty-gritty details of operations.

Besides these advantages, Fox Films can now rest assured that its operations is on a safe and stable system. A salient feature of Mandic Cloud is its disaster recovery plan, that taps into human and computational resources to support a business in the best way possible. This translates to no downtimes, and a smooth backup system that will automatically kick in when the primary node fails. In fact, the transition will be so seamless that no one would see or feel any impact. Such a sound infrastructure is one of the reasons for Fox to choose Mandic.

If you’re wondering what Mandic Cloud Solutions is, let’s turn back a few years. It had established itself as Brazil’s main enterprise email service provider, but when the cloud wave began, it reinvented itself as a cloud services firm. The company’s website claims that it has more than 20 years experience in the IT industry. It was the first one to experiment email in the cloud, and claims much credit for revolutionizing Internet in the country. Such innovative approaches attracted foreign partners, with Riverwood Capital and Intel Capital being its important capital investors.

These developments are a positive sign for Brazil’s cloud business, as it can put homegrown cloud companies on the international map.

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Google

Snap Enters into an Agreement with Google Cloud

Snap and Google have entered into a five-year agreement, under which Snap has committed to purchasing Google services to the tune of $400 million each year. When this deal expires in 2022, Snap would have spent $2 billion on Google cloud. Already, Snap relies on Google Cloud to run many of its operations, and this agreement will only strengthen the partnership between the two companies.

This agreement is a big win for Google Cloud, as it is looking to take on competition from AWS and Microsoft. Recent results show that AWS is still at the top, followed by Microsoft. Though Google has been working hard in its cloud segment, it hasn’t been able to take on these two giants. While this deal is not expected to help Google surpass its competitors, it will nevertheless increase the chances for Google to gain a better footing in the cloud segment. It is worthy to note that last year Google secured similar agreements with Apple and Spotify.

In addition, this agreement is expected to bump up the annual revenue of Google in a big way. Currently, Google doesn’t separate the revenue from its cloud business, rather it combines it with its other non-advertising revenue such as Google Play Store. With this agreement, we can expect the non-advertising revenue to increase greatly over the next five years. In the fourth quarter of 2016, the revenue from this segment was $3.4 billion.

An another good aspect of this deal is that Snapchat users are a highly engaged bunch of people, with an average user opening the app at least 18 times a day. Further, mobile video is an integral part of Snapchat, and this could give a boost to Google’s aspirations to become the leading mobile video provider.

As of now, mobile video accounts for 55 percent of the total Internet traffic, and this is expected to reach 75 percent by 2020, according to Cisco. Also, data from mobile video is expected to grow at an astounding rate of 62 percent each year from 2017 to 2020. This will include not just videos, but also video-related technologies such as augmented reality (AR) apps like Pokemon Go.  All this means, Google stands to gain much from this partnership, not just in terms of revenue, but also from a wide market presence.

For Snap, this partnership can open the door for new possibilities that are sure to enhance the usability of its software. In early 2015, both the companies talked about a partnership in which Snap users can point to an object, and Google will provide all the information pertaining to it from its search database.  Though that partnership did not take off then, this agreement can lead to similar collaboration between the two companies.

This partnership, in many ways, reflects the growing importance of cloud and its presence as a central component in the operations of any company. As cloud industry increases further in strength, we can expect more such partnerships that will augur well for not just companies, but also for users and the cloud industry at large.

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Technology

Cloud’s Wide Reach Among Dutch Businesses

We know Netherlands for their beautiful canals and magnificent dykes, but did you know about their high levels of cloud adoption?

A quick research shows that most large and medium organizations use cloud in one form or another. Take their Central Bank, for example. Many of their applications are in the cloud, and so is it with multinational companies, school systems and more.

A detailed study was conducted by an IT training provider called Global Knowledge in December 2016. This study included 500 Dutch companies, all of which were asked about their cloud usage including their SaaS, IaaS, PaaS and other aspects of cloud. The results showed that an astounding 75 percent of companies use cloud, and these numbers are only expected to increase in the coming years.

The participants of this study said that the main reason for them to move to the cloud is the flexibility and scalability that comes with it. They have seen their business performance improve and their upfront investment costs in hardware and software come down, and this is why many of them plan to completely move to the cloud soon.

Let’s take a few case studies to see how cloud has impacted the Dutch market. The Voice of Holland is a television talent show that saw a huge surge in network traffic on the final day of the season. Despite a sudden surge in traffic, there were no network breakdowns or distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. On the contrary, the network scaled up, and everything turned out to be fine.

This TV show uses cloud to increase or decrease its capacity, based on the number of users. The initial few weeks of the show will see a relatively lesser number of users when compared to the latter weeks when interest picks up and everyone wants to see the winner of the season. Since cloud makes it easy to scale up or down seamlessly, it has really helped this TV show to have a cost-effective operational model.

Another example of a Dutch company that uses cloud is Aviko, an international potato processing company. It adopted Amazon Web Service (AWS) only about six months ago, and this move has paid rich benefits for the company. When it had an opportunity to expand to China, this partnership with AWS helped to create the right hardware and computing infrastructure for the company.

Before AWS, Aviko was using SAP’s ERP, and the company is sure that it wouldn’t have helped its new center in Inner Mongolia to connect to its headquarters in Netherlands. To top it, there were restrictions on Internet usage by the Chinese government and this created a lot of latency and VPN-related issues. It was then that the company decided to have a copy running in China’s AWS, as this seemed like a simple plan. Today, Aviko is a well-established supplier in the Chinese market and is looking for more expansion within China. In this sense, this move to AWS has been helpful for its expansion plans.

These case studies show how Dutch businesses make the most of what cloud offers. Maybe there’s a lesson for each of us here!

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Amazon AWS

AWS is still the king

Amazon Web Services (AWS) reinforced its position as the continuing leader of the cloud market when it announced the fourth quarter results of 2016. During this time, sales from its cloud business touched a whopping $14 billion, signaling a 47 percent jump in its earnings. Though it was slight lower than expected, as analysts had predicted a revenue of $3.6 billion, it nevertheless is twice the growth of the company as a whole.

To give you a perspective, Amazon’s North American segment posted an earnings of $2.36 billion, which is lower than the earnings from AWS. Also, the operating profit of AWS increased by 25 percent, and this looks huge when compared to the paltry increase of 2.95 percent by the North American segment of its business.

Much of this growth can be attributed to the fact that almost every company in the Silicon Valley, starting from small businesses to giants use cloud in one form or the other, and they all seem to prefer to AWS because of its sprawling infrastructure. Many companies in other fields that are not based in the Silicon Valley are also looking to move their operations to AWS, with Capital One Financial and Workday being the latest to join this bandwagon.

Amazon’s total net income was $2.4 billion, resulting in an earnings of $4.99 per share. The overall revenue for 2016 increased by 27 percent to $136 billion, compared to a total revenue of $107 billion in 2015. The operating income was $1.3 billion during the last quarter of 2016, while it was $1.1 billion during the same time the previous year.

It’s no brainer to understand why its cloud segment had such a stellar performance. Besides the ever-increasing demand for cloud services, AWS introduced more than 1,000 new services and features in 2016, as against 700 in 2015. It also offered seven price cuts in the fourth quarter, and this made AWS cheap and accessible to many small and medium businesses.

In addition to this excellent performance by AWS, the company also showed a positive outlook for the upcoming year. In fact, Amazon as a whole feel confident about achieving higher growth levels in subsequent years. To this end, the company announced that it will create more than 100,000 full-time jobs in the US within the next 18 months, and this will include positions spanning across different education and skill levels. It also hinted that these new jobs will spans across the entire country, and not just within a specific region, thereby signaling that it is eyeing a country-wide expansion.

As for its cloud arm, AWS has announced that many companies like Matson, McDonald’s and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) have agreed to move tens of thousands of applications to its cloud over the next few years, and this means, more revenue for the company in 2017 and beyond. It also plans to open 11 new centers spread across the US, Canada, India, Korea and the UK.

All this surely points to an amazing year for AWS!

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Microsoft

Windows 10 Cloud – Microsoft’s Answer to Chromebooks?

Microsoft aims to dominate in as many sectors as possible, and this is why it has such a wide array of products. Its current crop of PC products compete right from the high end Macbook Pro to the lowest Chromebooks. In fact, to take on this low end version, Microsoft has released a new operating system called Windows 10 Cloud. This new OS comes after multiple failed attempts in the form of Windows RT and Windows 8.1 with Bing, both of which didn’t take customers away from Chromebook or Macbook.

At this point, not much is known about Windows 10 Cloud, as Microsoft has decided to maintain a veil of secrecy around it. Some reports however suggest that this new operating system can be a simplified version of Windows 10, possibly one that could run only on Unified Windows Platform (UWP) apps installed from the Windows store. In this sense, it could be similar to the earlier ones – Windows RT or Windows 8.1 with Bing. Hopefully soon, we’ll get to know how similar or different it is from its earlier operating systems.

One thing that’s for sure is that Windows 10 Cloud has little or nothing to do with cloud. The name is misleading, and maybe with an intent to make users guess about its connection with Azure. Or it could be to keep tune with Microsoft’s policy of “cloud first.” A look into Microsoft’s latest earnings show that much of the profits are driven by the company’s cloud business, and maybe this name could reflect the rapid transition that Microsoft is making to become the leader in cloud computing.

Another theory is that this operating system will rely on Microsoft’s cloud services when using the hardware that ships with this OS. In other words, it means Office 365 for productivity, Bing for search engine, Cortana for help and OneDrive for storage. On top of it, Microsoft is expected to bundle its key services as default, including Bing, with an intent to keep customers within its own ecosystem of products and services.

Reports of this new operating system has been found by Windows sleuths and experts when they browsed through the latest builds. From these log files, we can make an intelligent guess about the due date, which could be on or before April 2017. Alternately, it can also be shipped along with the second planned update to Windows 10, that is expected to roll out later this year.

So, what is it that Microsoft wants to achieve through this product? Obviously, it wants to capture the lower end of the PC market, and want users to take to its product over Chromebooks. Experts opine that this is highly unlikely given that Chromebooks is already quite popular among people, and unless Microsoft offers something extraordinary in its Windows 10 Cloud, such a shift is unlikely.

Currently, reports show that Microsoft may either reduce the price of its Windows 10 Cloud systems or it may provide additional features such as a larger display for the same cost.

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Services

Dropbox and Slack Roll out New Features

Dropbox and Slack, two well-known and widely used cloud-based products, have rolled out new features to attract more customers.

The common theme among the new changes is scaling the existing products to work for the entire company instead of just a small team or group. Currently, both these services have a common weakness, which is their tendency to create fragmentation and reinforce silos because only a small group of workers can adopt them for their own use. Typically, it’s only for a team or an informal group of workers who have to collaborate together.

Though the existing features make it convenient for small groups of people to use them, it creates problems for IT departments as the existing features do not support a company-wide collaboration and use. That has changed with these new enhancements.

Dropbox’s new feature called “Dropbox Smart Sync” allows users to view all the files stored in the cloud, in their local machine as well. This way, the storage space needed in local machines can remain the same, and yet users can browse through unlimited data, and even download just what they want. An example released by the company shows that users working with just 128 GB of hard drive space can browse through terabytes of data to find what they want. Once they identify the file they want, they can simply download it to their local machine. Earlier, users needed a web browser to log in and view files, but those additional steps are not needed now.

Another new feature from Dropbox is called “Paper”, that is expected to provide a flexible platform for employees of different departments to collaborate with each other for creating, reviewing, and editing documents within an organization. Both these features encourage a company-wide access, rather than just small groups.

Like Dropbox, Slack has also expanded its features. The Slack Enterprise Grid allows companies to create an unlimited number of workspaces, so different groups can work together, and at the same time can collaborate across different groups. Currently, only a single workspace exists for the entire organization. While this may work for an organization with about 500 employees, it can get too overwhelming for an organization with say 20,000 employees. To overcome this restriction, Slack’s new features make it convenient to create many small workspaces, so it can be scaled for the entire organization as well.

This feature comes with an administrative layer to help wrap everything together and to manage all the different workspaces and communications. All this means, as an employee, you can find employees who are in other departments and workspaces and collaborate with them if you have to. But, you won’t have to read through all the messages that transpire in the other groups.

These new features from both Dropbox and Slack augur well for users, and more importantly, it shows a growing and maturing cloud market. The rolling out of such features means these companies are eyeing for a larger market share and want to stay on top of competition. Such developments are sure to increase cloud adoption, that in turn, can make collaboration and working much easier, simpler and more convenient than before.

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