Category Archives: News & Analysis

Cloudflare, Funding, Google, Microsoft, News & Analysis, Qualcomm, startup

Cloud security start up Cloudflare gets $110 million in venture funding

Secure cloudGoogle, Microsoft and chip maker Qualcomm are among the investors to collectively stake $110 million in networking and cyber security start up CloudFlare, according to a report in Fortune.

Cloudflare offers services that speed up cloud systems and web sites while beefing up security. Its main market proposition is to speed up the functioning of any services used by enterprises at the edge of their networks. By doing so it provides a cheaper alternative to the traditional model of on-premise appliances.

Cloudflare claims enterprises can quickly set up cloud-based firewall, load balancing, WAN optimization, distributed denial of service (DDoS) mitigation, content delivery and domain name services services worldwide without needing any hardware. It claims that in one day it saved Chinese users more than 243 years of time that would have been collectively spent waiting for web content to load.

Last week Cloudflare finalized a joint venture with Chinese Internet giant Baidu that allows both US-based companies and Chinese-based companies to use CloudFlare’s website performance service while adhering to Chinese data laws.

Although CloudFlare maintains no physical operations in China, it has worked with Baidu to set up technology within Baidu’s facilities that mimic CloudFlare’s services elsewhere, Prince said.

The funding round was led by Fidelity Investments with Google Capital, Microsoft, Baidu and Qualcomm Ventures, the investment arm of Qualcomm all contributing funds. CloudFlare now has $182 million in total funding.

Matthew Prince, CEO of the start up, said Cloudflare didn’t need the funding as much as it needed the credibility that comes with top brand association. The confidence that comes with the backing of Google and Microsoft could convince nervous buyers that this is a solid investment when the company prepares itself for an initial public offering, it was reported. However, the IPO is unlikely to happen this year, said Prince, and he hinted that it would come no earlier than 2017.

Content & Applications, Microsoft, News & Analysis, office 2016, Office 365, Software as a service

Microsoft releases Office 2016 for ‘mobile-first, cloud-first world’

Microsoft Office 2016 devices croppedMicrosoft has promised to ‘re-invent productivity and business processes’ for the mobile and cloud-first world, with its new Office 2016 for Windows. It has also unveiled new additions to Office 365 and made Office 2016 for Mac available as a one-time purchase.

The latest version of Office is designed to make optimal use of Windows 10, with better collaboration and tighter security. The productivity applications within the suite have been updated to make them more cloud friendly, with changes to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Access, Project and Visio to make them more collaborative in nature, according to Microsoft.

One reported change is that groups of employees can now work on a single Word document and view each other’s comments as they are written. The new system now includes Skype for Business so that users of any new Office app can chat, screen share or video chat directly from their documents. Another new feature, enabled by Skype integration, is the ability to simultaneously co-author documents. In October Skype will be available on Office Online, according to Microsoft.

“The way people work has changed dramatically, and that’s why Microsoft is focused on reinventing productivity and business processes for the mobile-first, cloud-first world,” said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

These latest changes are a ‘big step’ in transforming Office from familiar but individual productivity tools to a connected set of apps and service designed for collaboration and teamwork, according to Nadella.

The security protection for business customers has been beefed up, according to Microsoft, with built-in data loss prevention features designed to cuts the risk of data leaks. New multi-factor authentication will secure the access of those outside the corporate network. Enterprise Data Protection, promised ‘later this year’ will help business to secure the process of sharing corporate content across application and cloud locations.

The delivery of future Office desktop application updates is to change, says Microsoft, so that Office 365 subscribers receive new features and capabilities continuously.

Other new tools include an analytics from Office Delve, a personal work analytics (Delve) and additional charts and formulas for Excel.

“The Office 2016 apps run beautifully on the best Windows ever,” said Kirk Koenigsbauer, Microsoft’s corporate VP for the Office Client Applications and Services. “The Office 2016 apps simplify collaboration and remove barriers to team success.”

BCSG, News & Analysis, SMB, telco, Telco Cloud, UK

Study urges telcos to do better on cloud

Mobile bankingTelecoms operators are missing an open goal on cloud services, according to a report by cloud service market provider BCSG, writes Telecoms.com. While operators are perfectly placed to sell small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) the services they want, their indifference is actually driving customer away and they could miss a multi billion pound opportunity.

Its report ‘SMB cloud services: the multi-billion dollar opportunity for telcos’ interprets the data from an independent survey of 500 US and UK SMBs. The report argues that there is a strong demand for cloud computing services among medium sized businesses. However, the SMBs say their buying decisions are being delayed by confusion over which services will best suit their needs. While 43 per cent of the study group said they want to buy cloud services, only 31 per cent even had a cloud migration strategy in place.

Demand for cloud services is high and many want support in making the transition from their present on-premise computing model, says the report. However, telcos are ignoring this clear opportunity for consultancy, it argues.

Many SMBs complained that the indifference of their current supplier will make them look elsewhere. According to the report 42 per cent of SMBs receive ‘no help from their telecoms operators whatsoever’. This could possibly lead to mass defections, as 58 per cent of the sample of SMBs said they’d take their business to any service provider that shows them how to get access to a broader range of technology. As a result of the lack of interest shown by the telcos in their existing customers, 52 per cent of the SMBs said they will contemplate switching operators in the next two years.

With the potential UK/US SMB cloud computing services market quantified at $22 billion by PAC/Compass Intelligence studies, it’s vital that operators seize the initiative and address this clear and captive audience, said Tom Platt, commercial director at BCSG. “Operators have a unique opportunity to provide support and guidance to SMBs,” said Platt. If they don’t there could be consequences, Platt warned. “Long tenure from SMB customers does not imply loyalty.”

cloud operating system, FusionSphere, Huawei, Huawei Cloud Congress, News & Analysis, Telco Cloud

Huawei launches latest FusionSphere cloud operating system at Shanghai Cloud Congress

Huawei cloud eventHuawei has launched the latest version of its enterprise cloud operating system. FusionSphere 6.0 was unveiled at Huawei Cloud Congress in Shanghai, alongside FusionInsight and FusionStage.

The cloud operating system aims to helps customers run their services more smoothly over virtual servers, private clouds, public clouds, hybrid clouds, desktop clouds and network function virtualisation infrastructures (NFVIs).

The strategy is to build all components, systems and ecosystems of FusionSphere on open source software and to comply with native OpenStack standards, said Joy Huang, VP of Huawei’s IT product line. It also supports OpenStack application programming interfaces (APIs) so that third-party apps based on native OpenStack can run on Huawei FusionSphere 6.0 without any adjustment.

Huawei has also released OceanStor DJ, a data service platform that offers storage and management services on demand by unifying storage resources, which it claims will raise operating operation efficiency in data centres. Administrators can now select from a menu of data management services and pool the resources across their cloud data centres. OceanStor DJ also offers archiving and offline data services.

Huawei said it is ‘working closely’ with 30 storage application vendors to provide easy to use data services such as data protection, databases, big data and data security through OceanStor DJ.

“OceanStor DJ provides storage as a service (SaaS) for enterprise IT systems, freeing up engineers from the heavy workload in managing data storage and focusing them on service transformation and innovation,” said Fan Ruiqi, president of Huawei’s storage product line.

Huawei storage products have a community of dedicated users, strong customer support and the ability to manage growing amounts of data, said Eric Sansonetti, VP of Business Partnerships at database company VoltDB. “We foresee ample opportunities to partner in the growing area of real-time analytics and data challenges,” said Sansonetti, “an open data service platform for partners will help push the development of software-defined storage.”

Huawei announced that it is currently ranked 7th in the latest official ranking of commitment to Openstack.

Huawei also participates in the open-source container field and is among the founding members of Open Container Initiative (OCI) project and Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF).

News & Analysis, Oracle, procurement, Public Sector, uk government

Ministry of Justice has made no savings at all from cloud strategy claims report

The UK Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has saved nothing from its cloud strategy as the department still buys 2.3 million licenses, reports The Register. According to the report, a government insider said Oracle is “extreme in its defence of existing licensing” and “stopping any flexibility.”

A freedom of information (FOI) request forced the MoJ to reveal that it buys 53 separate Oracle products including 961,000 internet expense licences, 250,000 licenses for each of three human resources systems and 100,000 payroll licences.

With 3,000 staff at the MoJ’s headquarters, that would average around 767 licenses for each employee. If all staff employed by the MoJ’s partner agencies were considered, then 33 Oracle licences have been bought for each of a total of 70,000 staff.

The MoJ transferred its people, services and IT to the Cabinet Office-run shared services centre in November last year. The FOI response revealed there had been no licensing cost savings yet to be associated with the move, since the licences are held in perpetuity and do not expire. The Technology Oracle Support and Maintenance Shared Services Oracle Support contracts will expire in April 2016, which could save £100m over the lifetime of the shared services centre contract.

The MoJ has refused to disclose the total it is spending on Oracle software, claiming this is a matter of commercial confidentiality.

The MoJ needs to review its use of Oracle, said analyst Clive Longbottom, senior researcher at Quocrica. “If the ministry being held to ransom by Oracle, through the systems integrators and consultants that the government insists on using, then it’s time to insist on a replacement database,” said Longbottom.

The analyst argued that Microsoft or IBM would be ‘more than willing’ to help the MoJ to move them over to their systems. A more nuanced data storage platform using a non-relational database alongside Hadoop could save them a lot on Oracle licences. “Oracle fights to the death to look after its licence revenues,” said Longbottom. “It is still in a legal battle with Rimini Street over how the third party support vendor manages Oracle licensing.”

Financing, Funding, investment, News & Analysis, Survey, VCs

Investor confidence is highest in cloud computing say venture capitalists

Money cloudCloud computing has been hailed as the strongest technology investment sector for the third time in a row in a survey that gauges confidence among capital, private and growth equity speculators.

The cloud sector came out strongest in the 2015 Global Venture Capital Confidence Survey compiled by Deloitte and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA). The study quizzes 200 speculators on the general venture capital environment as well as other market factors such as conditions in industries and across regions.

While biopharmaceuticals and robotics reported the highest levels of confidence growth, and the Internet of Things (IoT) was recognised for the first time by the study, cloud computing was the top tech trend for the third year in a row. When the survey group was asked to gauge their levels of confidence in a technology, cloud was the most convincing quantity in which investors would put their faith, with a confidence rating of 4.18 out of 5. Mobile came in second place with a rating of 4.05, while new category the IoT came third with a score of 3.95. Software was a close fourth with a rating of 3.82 on the confidence range.

Investors are most confident in companies based in Silicon Valley and San Francisco with $15.2bn being invested in these regions. Next in the investment league came New York with $4.5bn and Boston, which received $3.2bn from speculators. Confidence in investing in UK-based companies varies, with four of the eight countries questioned saying they have increased confidence in the UK’s tech startup economy and four saying their confidence has fallen.

Interest in investing in Israel was rated highly (a 3.9 out of 5) while Canada (3.60) continued to rise from previous years’ survey results. Confidence in emerging markets has declined among global investors, with rating Brazil at 2.70, down 43 basis points from 2014.

In the cloud computing industry there is much for venture investors to feel excited about, according to Bobby Franklin, president and CEO of NVCA. “The fundraising environment continues to improve, the IPO market is gaining strength and there is no shortage of innovative, game-changing start up companies to take to the next level,” said Franklin.

Analytics, IBM, News & Analysis

IBM launches Cloud Security Enforcer to counter employee data leakage failures

Security concept with padlock icon on digital screenIBM has created a Cloud Security Enforcer service to give companies a more commanding view of all third-party cloud apps used by their employees and new powers to secure them. The Enforcer aims to give companies more control over granting access to corporate data and applications.

Most companies can only see a fraction of the cloud applications used by their workforce, according to IBM’s research. An Ipsos poll, conducted on behalf of IBM in July, found that one-third of employees at Fortune 1000 companies are sharing and uploading corporate data on third-party cloud apps. These employees increasingly engage in risky practices on these tools, such as signing in with their personal email addresses, using weak passwords or re-using corporate log-in credentials, says IBM.

The cloud’s productivity dividend for companies is being undermined by the loss of control of corporate data and the lack of employee protection, it says. The Millennial generation (those born between 1982 and 2002) are the worst offenders and the biggest users of cloud apps, according to IBM’s study. By 2020 half the employees at Fortune 1000 companies will be millennials and of these 51 per cent use cloud services at work. One in four employees links these apps to his or her corporate log-in and password, leaving loopholes through which hackers can gain access to company networks.

Rogue activities on unsanctioned apps, known as ‘Shadow IT’, lead to a loss of control that IBM’s new cloud-based tool combats by scanning corporate networks, finding the apps that employees are using and providing a more secure way to access them. The system was built in partnership with file sharing app maker Box, which aims to strengthen the security of files shared over mobile devices and the web. IBM has also built secure connectors into Box’s file-sharing cloud app for Cloud Security Enforcer, as well as Microsoft Office 365, Google Apps and Salesforce with more apps connectors to be added to its catalogue.

The Cloud Enforcer users deep threat analytics from IBM X-Force Exchange, IBM’s global threat intelligence network, which is manned by a global network of security analysts which monitors the internet for malicious activity and analyses 20 billion global security events daily.

Apache, Apple, Infrastructure as a Service, Mesos, News & Analysis

Apple allegedly planning to unify web services on Mesos open source infrastructure

Mesos logoNews of significant numbers of Apple device crashes have fuelled industry speculation that Apple is planning to unify its variety of online services into one open source system built on Mesos infrastructure software.

According to web site The Information Apple is recruiting open source engineers. The recruitment could support a strategy to pull all its web services, including iCloud and iTunes, out of their separate technical silos and looking to merge them into one cohesive whole. Apple is said to be concerned about the lack of interoperability between Apple’s online services.

The plan to run internet applications across an ‘orchestrated infrastructure’ could be disruptive in more ways than one, according to Quocirca analyst Clive Longbottom.

“It’s a good idea that would enable Apple to more closely integrate various capabilities and offer new services around search, buy and store function,” said Longbottom. “The two main problems are around migrating all existing services over, and in ensuring high availability for all services when they are all in the same basket.”

According to Reuters, significant numbers of Apple customers are reporting their mobile devices have crashed as they tried to upload the new iOS 9 operating system. This is the latest in a number of technical challenges Apple is facing as its cloud software portfolio becomes more ambitious and difficult to manage, according to Sergio Galindo, General Manager at developer GFI Software, “The rollout of iOS 9 is an ambitious project, particularly as Apple has maintained support for devices that are elderly, in smartphone terms. Devices such as the iPhone 4s are significantly different and underpowered compared to more recent iterations,” said Galindo.

According to GFI’s own research, Apple’s OS X and iOS were the software systems platforms with the most exploitable vulnerabilities, closely followed by the Linux kernel. iOS was found to have significantly more flaws than conventional desktop and server Windows installations.

“Software glitches, vulnerabilities and compatibility issues in an embedded device such as a phone create a challenging user experience,” said Galindo. “This is why testing of new updates before allowing users to update their phones and tablets is essential. Applied to a business context, it is important for IT departments to ensure users do not put their devices or the corporate network at risk.”

AWS, Cisco, Dell, Equinix, Google, HP, IBM, Microsoft, News & Analysis, Platform as a service, Public Cloud, Salesforce, Software as a service, Synergy Research

Public cloud generating $22 billion a quarter for IT Companies

metalcloud_lowresPublic cloud computing generated over $22 billion in revenues for IT companies in the second financial quarter of 2015, according to a study by Synergy Research Group.

The revenue breaks down into $10 billion earned by companies supplying public cloud operators with hardware, software and data centre facilities and $12 billion being generated from selling infrastructure, platforms and software as a service.

In addition the public cloud supports ‘huge’ revenue streams from a variety of internet services such as search, social networking, email and e-commerce platforms, says the report. It identifies the supply side companies with the biggest share of revenues as Cisco, HP, Dell, IBM and Equinix. On the cloud services side the market leaders are AWS, Microsoft, Salesforce, Google and IBM.

As the public cloud makes inroads into the total IT market, the hardware and software used to build public clouds now account for 24 per cent of all data centre infrastructure spending. Public cloud operators and associated digital content companies account for 47 per cent of the data centre colocation market.

While the total IT market grew at less than five per cent per year, the growth of cloud revenues outpaced it. Infrastructure and platform as a service revenues (Iaas/Paas) grew by 49 per cent in the past year and software as a service (SaaS) grew by 29 per cent.

“Public cloud is now a market that is characterized by big numbers, high growth rates and a relatively small number of global IT players,” said Synergy Research Group’s chief analyst Jeremy Duke.

However, the report noted that there is still a place for regional small-medium sized public cloud players.

Amazon, AWS, News & Analysis, Storage, Storage as a Service

Amazon Web Services to offer new hierarchical storage options after customer feedback

amazon awsAmazon Web services (AWS) is adding a new storage class to speed up the retrieval of frequently accessed information.

The announcement was made by AWS chief evangelist Jeff Barr on his company blog. Customer feedback had made AWS conduct an analysis of usage patterns, Barr said. AWS’s analytical team discovered that many customers store rarely-read backup and log files, which compete for resources with shared documents or raw data that need immediate analysis. Most users have frequent activity with their files shortly after uploading them after which activity drops off significantly with age. Information that’s important but not immediately urgent needs to be addressed through a new storage model, said Barr.

In response AWS has unveiled a new S3 Standard, within which there is a hierarchy of pricing options, based on the frequency of access. Customers now have the choice of three S3 storage classes, Standard, Standard – IA (infrequent access) and Glacier. All still offer the same level of 99.999999999 per cent durability.‎ The IA Standard for infrequent access has a service level agreement (SLA) of 99 per cent availability and is priced accordingly. Prices start at $0.0125 per gigabyte per month with a 30 day minimum storage duration for billing and a $0.01 per gigabyte charge for retrieval. The usual data transfer and request charges apply.

For billing purposes, objects that are smaller than 128 kilobytes are charged for 128 kilobytes of storage. AWS says this new pricing model will make its storage class more economical for long-term storage, backups and disaster recovery.

AWS has also introduced a lifecycle policy option, in a system that emulates the hierarchical storage model of centralised computing. Users can now create policies that will automate the movement of data between Amazon S3 storage classes over time. Typically, according to Barr, uploaded data using the Standard storage class will be moved by customers to Standard IA class when it’s 30 days old, and on to the Amazon Glacier class after another 60 days, where data storage will $0.01 per gigabyte per month.