Category Archives: IT service management

Cloud computing, IT service management, Medical, Research

Global Healthcare Cloud Computing Market to Triple to 12 Billion in Five Years

According to a new market report published by Persistence Market Research “Global Market Study on Healthcare Cloud Computing: Hybrid Clouds to Witness Highest Growth by 2020″ the global healthcare cloud computing market was valued at USD 4,216.5 million in 2014 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 20.1% from 2014 to 2020, to reach an estimated value of USD 12,653.4 million in 2020.

Healthcare cloud computing refers to a process which involves delivering hosted medical services to the clients. These services can be classified into majorly three types: infrastructure-as-a-service, platform-as-a-service, and software-as-a-service. A cloud can be public, private, hybrid or community in nature.

Globally, the healthcare cloud computing market is witnessing significant growth due to increased government healthcare IT spending and advanced features of cloud computing services In addition, rising demand for better healthcare facilities, increasing in popularity of wireless and cloud technologies are driving the healthcare cloud computing market. However, factors such as high cost involved in the implementation of clinical information systems and lack of security and privacy of patient’s information restrain the global market for healthcare cloud computing market. In addition, interoperability issues negatively impact the growth of the healthcare cloud computing market. The global healthcare cloud computing market is estimated at USD 4,216.5 million in 2014 and expected to reach USD 12,653.4 million in 2020, growing at a CAGR of 20.1%.

North America has the largest market for the global healthcare cloud computing market. This is due to technological advancements in the region. North American market for healthcare cloud computing is estimated at USD 1,857.5 million in 2014 and is expected to reach USD 5,757.7 million in 2020, growing at a CAGR of 20.7%. In terms of deployment model, hybrid clouds are the fastest growing segment. In terms of service model, software-as-a-service (Saas) is the largest segment of healthcare cloud computing market.

One of the latest trends that have been observed in the global healthcare cloud computing market includes increasing use of mobile devices for delivering healthcare services.

EMEA, G-Cloud, Government, Guest Post, IT service management

Examining the G-Cloud Initiative – How the UK Public Sector is moving to the Cloud

Guest Post by Ben Jones

Ben Jones is a tech writer, interested in how technology helps businesses. He’s been assisting businesses in setting up cloud based IT services around the south of England.

There’s a cloud on the horizon of Whitehall. But this isn’t a prediction of stormy times ahead. No, this is the G-Cloud, and it’s being heralded by some as government’s biggest ever IT breakthrough.

In years gone by, the government has been accused of paying too much for IT contracts, many of which were won by a small number of suppliers. But now, the G-Cloud initiative aims to change this. The online system called, CloudStore, is part of the government’s plans to slash IT costs by £200million per year. So how is this going to be achieved? Well, the target is to move half of the government’s IT spending to cloud computing services and the CloudStore, also dubbed the government’s app store, is the key.

It was first announced as a government strategy almost 18 months ago in March 2011 with specific aim of making IT services for the public sector easier and cheaper. This means ditching the expensive bespoke IT services with lengthy, expensive contracts. Instead this initiative aims to replace these with more choice both in suppliers and, as a result prices. It’s a radical change in the historic approach by both the government and the public sector. Furthermore, cloud computing has the potential to be a global governmental strategy, with the American government already having its own version in place. And a look at the figures gives a clear indication why, with some governmental departments reporting a drop in the cost of IT services by as much as 90 per cent. And following the first CloudStore catalogue launch in mid-February, some 5000 pages were viewed in the first two hours, and in the first ten weeks, contracts worth £500,000 were signed. In this first procurement, around 257 suppliers offering approximately 1700 services were signed to the first G-Cloud CloudStore.

It’s the government’s attempt to bring competitiveness to its suppliers, encouraging a wider selection and promoting flexibility in procurements thus allowing more choice to the public sector. And what’s interesting is the mix of both small and medium sized businesses with over half of the suppliers signed to the first CloudStore being SMEs. This includes the likes of web hosting company Memset whose managing director Kate Craig-Wood backed the G-Cloud Services, who says they offered value for money for the taxpayer.

This new initiative heralds a new era for the British government and the wider public sector. And it’s hoped the new IT system will put paid to the Government’s history of ill-advised and mismanaged IT projects. That’s not to say there haven’t been any concerns over the G-Cloud Initiative. Some key concerns have related to how it’s going to be rolled out to public sector workers across the UK with some employees having fears over security as well as a lack of understanding. However, these haven’t stopped the second round of procurement for the G-Cloud in May 2012 with the total procurement value now available there soaring to £100 million. And in this time, the framework will run for 12 months and not the six as per the first iteration. This year-long contract will then become the standard, although it has been reported that this could be extended to 24 months in certain cases.


DataCore, Hosting, IT Management, IT service management, Partnerships, service provider, Storage hypervisor, Storage virtualization, VMware

DataCore Software Announces Pay-as-You-Serve Cloud Service Provider Program for Hosted IT Services

DataCore Software today announced that providers of hosted IT services may now rent DataCore’s SANsymphony-V storage hypervisor through the company’s Cloud Service Provider Program. Under the program, Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) pay for the use of the software monthly based on the amount of storage they serve versus having to purchase it outright. This allows participating providers to reduce capital expenditure and better align costs to revenue.

DataCore’s storage hypervisor software manages and protects hosted IT environments, providing a high performance, highly scalable, automatically tiered storage infrastructure upon which providers can confidently build and offer their hosted IT services.

The DataCore Cloud Service Provider Program goes a step further in the direction of “on demand” infrastructure with its “Pay-as-You-Serve” proposition to hosted IT service providers—they pay for the software as they use it, based upon the storage they serve to their subscribers.

“In order to offer the most competitive pricing for their services, CSPs and other hosting companies seek to lower capital expenditures and keep expenses and their timing aligned to revenue-producing activities,” said Carlos M. Carreras, vice president of alliances and business development, DataCore Software. “The DataCore storage hypervisor ‘software advantage’ gives us the unique ability to offer the kind of service provider program that other leading software companies, like VMware, have developed, but apply it to the storage-side of the infrastructure. Ideally tailored for the flexibility, efficiency and predictable expenses they seek.”

New cutting edge technologies will also be of interest to CSPs. These innovations designed to satisfy large scale, Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) requirements crucial to building robust cloud storage infrastructures are packaged in the company’s newest product, SANsymphony-V R9.0, aptly described as “The Storage Hypervisor for the Cloud.”

The storage hypervisor’s powerful storage management capabilities and interchangeable hardware design empowers hosters with great cost-savings flexibility, new levels of automation for increased resource productivity and a storage infrastructure that easily incorporates the industry’s latest innovations.

“The new DataCore CSP pricing model reduces our upfront costs – thereby enhancing our margins,” comments Philippe Merckel, CEO, MERCKEL SAS. “DataCore understands that as data centers move to the cloud in the form of virtual, private data centers, cloud platforms need the storage virtualization functionality that DataCore brings to the table with its storage hypervisor. The key, however, for CSPs lies in making the adoption of this technology cost-effective. That is what this Cloud Service Provider Program does. It makes it far easier for us to standardize on DataCore for storage virtualization because we pay as we go rather than paying for everything upfront. It fundamentally suits our own business model whereby our own clients lease our cloud platform.

The DataCore Cloud Service Provider Program is currently open only to providers of hosted IT services located in Europe; the program will be expanded to include North America and additional geographies over the next 90 days. For more up-to-date information about program eligibility and the program itself, please visit: http://www.datacore.com/Partners/cloud-service-providers/CSP-Program.aspx.