Category Archives: News & Analysis

21Vianet, Azure, Datacastle, Microsoft, News & Analysis, Ralph Haupter, Wing Ker

Datacastle, 21Vianet partner on cloud data protection, backup in China

Datacastle is partnering with 21Vianet to deploy its cloud backup solutions in China

Datacastle is partnering with 21Vianet to deploy its cloud backup solutions in China

Backup provider Datacastle has partnered with 21Vianet in a deal that will see it resell its cloud-based backup and data protection solutions to customers in China.

The solution is being deployed on Microsoft Azure, which partners with 21Vianet to host its infrastructure-as-a-service in the region.

“21Vianet is committed to bringing the worldwide best-in-class cloud solutions on Microsoft Azure in China,” said Wing Ker, president of Microsoft Cloud Operations at 21Vianet. “Enterprises in China will now have endpoint data protection option to protect against ransomware, data loss, and data breach through our partnership with Datacastle.”

Ron Faith, chief executive officer of Datacastle said: “Given 21Vianet’s expertise operating Microsoft Azure in China and their trusted status as a datacentre service provider, customers in China will get the best performance, reliability and security.”

Microsoft and 21Vianet announced general availability of Microsoft Azure Services in China just over a year ago, which launched amid much fanfare. The service launched with about 3,000 clients signed up to use it, and Ralph Haupter, corporate vice-president and chief executive of Microsoft Greater China recently said Azure has accumulated more than 50,000 customers, mainly SMEs.

AWS, Google, IBM, John Dinsdale, Microsoft, News & Analysis, Synergy Research

Synergy Research: AWS still larger than four biggest rivals combined

AWS is larger than its four top rivals combined

AWS is larger than its four top rivals combined

Amazon pulled the curtain back from its AWS business last week, announcing its cloud services now rakes in over $5bn annually. John Dinsdale, chief analyst and research director at Synergy Research Group said that now puts the e-commerce giant ahead of most of its largest competitors.

Amazon recently reported its cloud business took in revenues of $1.57bn in the first quarter of 2015, and enjoyed close to 50 per cent growth year on year. This is the first time the e-commerce giant has publicly disclosed AWS revenues.

Following on from that, some vendors which shall remain nameless (AWS competitors) worked behind the scenes to remind press off how much more profitable their cloud businesses are by comparison. But Synergy Research data suggests AWS is far larger than most of its competitors combined, at least in the infrastructure services market specifically.

Microsoft enjoys the highest revenue growth rate and IBM is leading private & hybrid services segment, but according to Synergy AWS continues to grow faster than the market as a whole, and that its market share approached 30 per cent in the most recently reported quarter.

Google is quietly gaining share though it remains just half the size of Microsoft in this market, the firm said.

“Across the full and varied spectrum of cloud activities there are now six companies that can lay a valid claim to having annual cloud revenue run rates in excess of $5 billion – AWS, IBM, Microsoft, HP, Cisco and salesforce – and all are able to claim leadership in different parts of the cloud market,” Dinsdale said.

“However, on a strict like-for-like basis AWS remains streets ahead of the competition in cloud infrastructure services. Furthermore, this part of the cloud market is growing much more rapidly than SaaS or cloud infrastructure hardware and software.”

Like-for-like comparisons seems scarce in cloud revenue reporting, not the least of which because it’s such a nascent sector. Considering the market leader in cloud only just started publicly disclosing revenues tacked onto that business, it may be some time before vendors and service providers come up with standard definitions for what can be reported as ‘cloud’ (for instance, IBM recently reported its annual cloud revenues now exceed $7.7bn).

Synergy estimates quarterly cloud infrastructure service revenues (which includes IaaS, PaaS and private & hybrid cloud) now total exceed $5bn.

Asia Pacific, Datacentre, Foxconn, Kaohsiung, NEC, News & Analysis

NEC, Foxconn to partner on cloud services

NEC, Foxconn are partnering to develop and deliver cloud services to enterprise

NEC, Foxconn are partnering to develop and deliver cloud services to enterprise

NEC Corporation and electronics manufacturing giant Foxconn Technology Group have announced a partnership that will see the two firms jointly develop an infrastructure-as-a-service platform for enterprises.

The deal will see NEC deploy its datacentre operations management software as well as its software-defined networking technology as the foundation of the service, which will be hosted in Foxconn’s Kaohsiung datacentre in Taiwan.

“We are proud to contribute to the commercialization of Foxconn’s datacentres integrated with SDN technology. Virtualized datacentres enable flexible configuration and rapid provisioning of IT resources, bringing significant benefits to datacentre operators and users alike,” said Takayuki Morita, executive vice president, NEC Corporation.

“NEC is a market leader in the SDN field, with an installation record that includes hundreds of systems for customers worldwide. Utilizing our extensive experience and expertise, we are committed to providing support for the smooth operation of Foxconn’s datacentres in Taiwan, while seeking to broaden our collaboration in order to promote the global expansion of Foxconn’s datacentre business,” Morita said.

NEC will also be providing a direct channel to potential enterprise clients, which may give the joint initiative a boost in the region; Foxconn doesn’t really have a direct relationship with enterprises.

Ed Wu, corporate executive vice president, Foxconn, said: “Information processing technology is a cornerstone in Foxconn’s sustainable business strategy and we are pleased to be working with an industry-leading company like NEC to boost our capabilities in datacentre solutions and to augment our comprehensive suite of information and communications technology solutions.”

“We are committed to investing in the development of high-quality, innovative products and services that meet the needs of our customers and consumers, enabling them to tap the immense opportunities in the Big Data era,” he said.

Amy Hood, Financial Results, Microsoft, News & Analysis, Satya Nadella

Microsoft doubles cloud revenue in Q3

Nadella said Microsoft is well on its way to becoming a cloud-first, mobile-first company

Nadella said Microsoft is well on its way to becoming a cloud-first, mobile-first company

Microsoft pulled in $21.7bn in revenues for the three months ending March 31, 2015, up 6 per cent year on year. But the company said its commercial cloud revenue more than doubled in the past quarter alone.

Microsoft reported mixed success in its devices segment (Surface revenues increased 44 per cent; phone revenues decreased, with volumes this quarter shifting from 10.5 to 8.6 million units sold) and Windows OEM revenues declined.

But he company reported commercial cloud revenue grew 106 per cent (111 per cent in constant currency), driven by Office 365, Azure and Dynamics CRM Online. Microsoft claims its cloud services now have an annualized revenue run rate of $6.3bn.

Office 365 and Azure accounts for a great deal of that growth according to Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s chief exec. Office 365 consumer subscribers increased to over 12.4 million, up 35 per cent sequentially

“We have 50 trillion objects stored in Azure, a three times growth year-over-year in storage transactions, and more than five trillion in March alone. And Azure websites are growing with nearly half a million sites hosted,” Nadella said during a call with analysts and journalists this week.

“It’s clear that we are well on our way to transforming our products and businesses across all of Microsoft. The early signs are evident in how our customers are using our products.”

“Our momentum in the cloud is a highlight. Increasingly, customers are choosing Microsoft cloud services to transform their own businesses, going beyond just moving existing workloads to the cloud. These results showcase our ability to transform and perform simultaneously.”

However, Office commercial products and services revenue declined 2 per cent.

“Enterprise penetration is accelerating with over half of all agreements signed during the quarter including cloud services,” added Amy Hood, the company’s chief financial officer.

DropBox, Genius Scan, News & Analysis, Philippe Plichon, Polabox, Stupefix

Dropbox targets France with new Paris office

Dropbox has opened a new office in Paris

Dropbox has opened a new office in Paris

Dropbox has announced the opening of its Paris office, the company’s third European location. The cloud storage incumbent wants to redouble efforts to target French businesses.

The company also has offices in Dublin and London, and the Paris team, led by Philippe Plichon (who up until recently served as director retail & tech at Google), will seek to grow the company’s business in France.

“We’ve seen huge success in France, so Paris is a natural choice for us. The number of Dropbox users in France has doubled over the past two years, now accounting for one out of every five French Internet users. The Paris-based developers of Genius Scan, Stupefix, and Polabox have also taken to Dropbox, building integrations into their popular apps. And more French companies are choosing Dropbox for Business every day to help them work smarter,” the company said in a statement.

“In the next three years, we expect over 2.5 million French businesses to be using at least one cloud service.”

The company said it has a strong position internationally – over 70 per cent of Dropbox users are located outside the US.

The office opening comes just a couple of weeks after cloud storage rival Box moved to strengthen its business in the region. Box hired former Microsoft cloud sales exec Jeremy Grinbaum to lead its commercial expansion efforts in France and southern Europe.

Amazon, AWS, Brian Olsavsky, Infrastructure as a Service, Jeff Bezos, News & Analysis

AWS a $5bn business, Bezos claims, as Amazon sheds light on cloud revenue

Amazon publicly shed light on AWS revenues for the first time

Amazon publicly shed light on AWS revenues for the first time

Amazon reported first quarter 2015 sales revenues of $22.7bn, an increase of 15 per cent year on year from $19.7bn, and quarterly cloud revenues of $1.57bn. This is the first time the e-commerce giant has publicly disclosed AWS revenues.

North America saw the bulk of Amazon’s sales growth, with revenue swelling 24 per cent to $13.4bn and operating income increasing 79 per cent to $517m. Outside North America, revenues actually decreased 2 per cent to $7.7bn (excluding the $1.3 billion year-over-year unfavourable foreign exchange impact, revenue growth was 14 per cent).

The company was for the first time pleased to report AWS revenue grew close to 50 per cent to $1.57bn in Q1 2015, with operating income increasing 8 per cent to $26m and a 16.9 per cent operating margin.

“Amazon Web Services is a $5 billion business and still growing fast — in fact it’s accelerating,” said Jeff Bezos, founder and chief executive of Amazon.

“Born a decade ago, AWS is a good example of how we approach ideas and risk-taking at Amazon. We strive to focus relentlessly on the customer, innovate rapidly, and drive operational excellence. We manage by two seemingly contradictory traits: impatience to deliver faster and a willingness to think long term.”

Brian Olsavsky, vice president, chief financial officer of global consumer business said that excluding the favourable impact from foreign exchange, AWS segment operating income decreased 13 per cent. But speaking to journalists and analysts this week Olsavsky reiterated the company was very pleased with the results, and that it would “continue deploying more capital there” as it expands

AWS has dropped its prices nearly 50 times since it began selling cloud services nearly a decade ago, and this past quarter alone has seen the firm continue to add new services to the ecosystem – though intriguingly, Olsavsky refused to directly answer questions on the sustainability of the cloud margins moving forward. This quarter the company announced unlimited cloud storage plans, a marketplace for virtualised desktop apps, a machine learning service and a container service for EC2.

Bronto Software, ERP, Marketing, NetSuite, News & Analysis, Software as a service

NetSuite buys Bronto to bolster retail marketing capabilities

NetSuite is acquiring Bronto Software to blend its marketing automation capabilities with its ERP platform

NetSuite is acquiring Bronto Software to blend its marketing automation capabilities with its ERP platform

Cloud ERP incumbent NetSuite has acquired Bronto Software, a provider of cloud-based marketing automation software for omnichannel commerce, in a deal worth about $200m.

Founded in 2002, Bronto offers retailers cloud-based omnichannel marketing software for campaign lifecycle management and claims to sell its services to over 1,400 businesses including some of the world’s top brands (Armani Exchange, Timex ,Trek Bikes).

NetSuite said Bronto’s offerings will complement its SuiteCommerce, an ERP platform tailored to B2B and B2C commerce.

“This combination, for the first time ever, ties a rich marketing automation system with a cloud-based omnichannel commerce platform. The capabilities this solution will deliver are transformational,” said Zach Nelson, chief executive of NetSuite.

“Just as customers demand seamless cross-channel shopping experiences, they increasingly expect companies to communicate consistently through all of their digital experiences – on site, at stores, in email or through social or mobile. By combining the two companies’ offerings and technology, we can help merchants deliver relevant and consistent digital commerce experiences throughout the customer journey,” Nelson said.

Joe Colopy, chief executive of Bronto Software said the two companies will integrate their respective offerings.

“Today’s consumers expect brands to know them across every channel and marketing touchpoint. Providing that type of experience demands a unified approach to digital engagement, whether driving transactions online or offline or engaging with them through website, email, mobile or social,” he said.

“This will help merchants to better engage with their customers, drive repeat purchases and build lifelong loyalty.”

Over the years many large incumbents like Oracle and SAP as well as newer upstarts like Salesforce have moved quickly to strengthen their position in marketing automation through acquisition. Integrating ERP with marketing automation is a no-brainer, particularly when catering to firms with complex supply chains, so it’s no surprise NetSuite, a relatively new player in the field, is following in the same footsteps as other ERP players.

Datacentre, News & Analysis

Rackspace moves managed cloud into UK Digital Realty facility

Rackspace has moved its managed cloud platform into Digital Realty's new Sussex datacentre

Rackspace has moved its managed cloud platform into Digital Realty’s new Sussex datacentre

Rackspace has launched its latest UK datacentre this week, moving its cloud platform into datacentre giant Digital Realty’s new facility Crawley, West Sussex facility.

Digital Realty said the datacentre is among the most environmentally friendly in the UK. It delivers Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of 1.15 and deploys ‘indirect outside air’ cooling technology instead of mechanical cooling, which according to the company means the overhead energy required to operate the datacentre has been cut by almost 80 per cent.

Rackspace said the 130,000 square foot datacentre will house its managed cloud services.

“This data centre is the epitome of intelligent 21st century infrastructure engineering.  We partnered with industry leaders to design and deliver one of the most environmentally friendly and reliable data centres in Europe. Our customers depend on us for their mission critical managed IT services and this new data centre furthers our commitment to delivering world class services to those customers,” said Mark Roenigk, chief operating officer of Rackspace.

“This is our tenth global datacentre and this expansion will enable us to grow with our customers for many years to come.  We are proud of the energy efficiency achieved with the innovative design that will become the starting point for boosting the adoption of more efficient technologies in the UK and Europe.  We are honoured to operate and provide a positive impact in the Crawley community,” Roenigk said.

The facility provides 6MW capacity across two halls, which will eventually double to four in the near future with a total 12MW capacity, and was built to house up to 50,000 servers. It’s also Open Compute-compliant, so it can house Open Compute Project-based rack designs, which no-doubt factored into Rackspace’s decision to move into the facility; the company is an active participant in the open source hardware project.

“With the addition of the Crawley site, the Digital Realty – Rackspace collaboration, which began in 2011, has been extended to a third continent. We are delighted to see Rackspace establish its new managed cloud data centre with such outstanding eco-credentials,” said William Stein, Digital Realty’s chief executive officer said.

“With competition growing for facility services across the UK and Europe, we are pleased Rackspace choose Digital Realty as a provider to collaborate on this bespoke facility in Crawley,” he added.

Lindsey Irvine, News & Analysis, Salesforce, smart watches, Wearables

Salesforce: Use of wearables in the enterprise to triple in two years

Salesforce says use of wearables in the enterprise will triple over the next couple of years

Salesforce says use of wearables in the enterprise will triple over the next couple of years – under the right conditions

Use of wearables in the enterprise will more than triple in the next two years, with smartwatches emerging as a popular candidate to deliver sales and customer service improvements, Salesforce claims.

The CRM company surveyed over 1,400 working adults, 500 of which are wearable tech adopters, to find out how wearable technology is being used in the enterprise, with smartwatches emerging as the most impactful platform in terms of delivering improved sales or customer service experiences or data that can generate insights to improving those processes (digital lanyards and smart glasses rank second and third, respectively).

While wearable tech is still quite a nascent segment (only a fifth of those surveyed overall use wearable for the most basic use cases) research does suggest employees are sold on the potential of these technologies to have a material impact on their businesses.

Salesforce said 79 per cent of adopters agree wearables will be strategic to their company’s future success; 76 per cent report improvements in business performance since deploying wearables in the enterprise; and 86 per cent of adopters plan to increase their wearables spend over the next 12 months.

Just over half of adopters (54 per cent) claim their company supports Bring Your Own Wearable (BYOW) model, while 40 per cent said they companies plan to support BYOW in the future.

“Wearables are the next phase of the mobile revolution. Like smartphones before them, the key to success for wearables in the enterprise is all about the killer business apps,” said Lindsey Irvine, global director of strategic partnerships, Salesforce. “This research demonstrates the tremendous opportunity for wearable use cases to drive significant business value.”

About 52 per cent of respondents said they use or plan to use wearables for real-time access to customer data; 49 per cent for hands-free instruction or guides to field service; and 48 per cent for access to business analytics and alerts.

But according to the research about 30 per cent of adopters cite the lack of business applications as a primary challenge in deploying wearables, and just 8 per cent of wearable adopters said they’re ready to gain actionable insights from the volume of employee and customer data generated from wearables.

Salesforce said that a rich app ecosystem will be required for enterprises to feel confident in deploying and integrating wearables with their existing IT landscape and business processes. Improvements in wearable tech will also be required – among respondents who indicated they have yet to incorporate wearables into their business plans, 25 per cent said that they’d be motivated by lower cost and 15 per cent by devices that can better multitask.

News & Analysis, NuoDB, Object Management Group, OMG, Richard Soley, Seth Proctor

OMG targets data residency in the cloud with new working group

The OMG is forming a working group to develop practical solutions for managing data residency requirements in cloud services

The OMG is forming a working group to develop practical solutions for managing data residency requirements in cloud 

The Object Management Group (OMG) has formed a new working group to study issues of documenting and controlling data across distributed cloud environments, a big inhibitor of cloud for those with strict data sovereignty requirements.

OMG’s Data Residency Working Group will study how to document and control data and online documents where they physically reside, and work with experts to provide practical, multi-disciplinary solutions to help organisations manage the growing gap between regulation and technology.

Richard Soley, chairman and chief executive of OMG said the move is in response to growing uptake of cloud services, at a time when data residency and data privacy laws don’t necessarily align with the technology trend.

“There is a groundswell of concern about data residency, especially in Europe,” Soley said.

“For example, European Union Safe Harbour Principles mandate that companies outside the EU that store Personally Identifiable Information (PII) about EU residents must comply with EU data protection requirements. Many other countries have also restricted how data originating within their borders can be stored abroad.”

“The goal of the Working Group is to develop a taxonomy to help organizations realize the promise of cloud computing while complying with new and evolving privacy regulations, and user demands for data residency.”

Data residency is a huge challenge for many firms looking to use cloud services, in part because it’s difficult to satisfy regulatory requirements for keeping data in-country; data is often sharded or backed up in a range of different locations, particularly for platforms offered by some of the larger geographically distributed cloud service providers. Forming consensus around standard, practical procedures to manage data residency within the context of cloud specifically could go some way towards satisfying regulators in certain niches (i.e. financial services, healthcare) and allowing enterprises to broaden their options when it comes to their IT systems.

Seth Proctor, chief technology officer of NuoDB, a database firm that recently worked with the OMG to survey its members on their data woes, said the organisations recently found nearly nine in ten respondents claimed to have data residency challenges.

“As data increasingly is accessed and shared across geographic boundaries, governmental and other regulatory agencies worldwide have begun adopting stringent laws and regulations about how data can be collected, stored, shared, and transferred,” Proctor said.

“To meet these new data protection and privacy requirements, we need consistency in how we define, discuss, and address the issue of data residency, so that we as an industry can create practical solutions.”

For those of you who may be interested in participating, the Data Residency Working Group is due to have its first meeting in Berlin, Germany on Tuesday June 16.