Category Archives: Software as a service

Content & Applications, Infrastructure as a Service, Microsoft, News & Analysis, Software as a service

Microsoft maps out 2016 BizTalk Server, Azure Stack and cloud integration plans

AzureMicrosoft has unveiled its plans to integrate its cast of cloud services and servers in the coming year. Cloud users can now download a roadmap for the direction of its integration products such as the BizTalk application-integration server, Azure Stack and the Logic Apps included in the Azure App Service offering.

The initiative is the idea of new Azure CTO Mark Russinovich in a bid to keep customers aware of the changes that are being made now that many integration processes are out of their domain. Traditionally, integration has been conducted on the customer’s premises or through a business to business arrangement, but in the cloud era the systems they want integrated are typically outside of their control, Russinovich said in the company blog. “Everything from sales leads to invoicing, email and social media, is going to be well beyond the corporate firewall,” he said.

As modern integration goes from corporate computer systems to an increasingly mobile world, there needs to be a change of approach on both ends. On a technical level, this change is unpinned by application programming interfaces (APIs) within lightweight, modern, HTTP/REST-based protocols using JSON, Russinovich said. On a cultural level, Microsoft is to open more channels of communication with its cloud users through updates such as this.

Before the tenth release of BizTalk Server, in Q4 2016, it will release a Community Technology Preview and a beta of the product in Q3. BizTalk Server 2016 is to align with Windows Server 2016, SQL 2016, Office 2016 and the latest Visual Studio. The latest BizTalk release will straddle both the on-premise and cloud worlds, supporting SQL 2016’s AlwaysOn Availability Groups whether they are hosted on Azure or in house.

BizTalk Server will also have better interfaces with Salesforce.com and Office 365, as Microsoft bids to improve the hybrid experience. New, improved BizTalk adapters for Informix, MQ and DB2 have also been promised, along with better PowerShell integration.

Halfway through 2016 Microsoft will host another integration summit, Integrate 2016, as the vendor signals its intent to take its Integration platform as a service (iPaaS) responsibilities seriously too.

According to the roadmap Microsoft should imminently release a preview of a planned Logic Apps Update with Logic Apps becoming generally available in Q2. Azure Stack will be available in Q4.

acquisition, energy, News & Analysis, Salesoforce, Software as a service

Salesforce buys SteelBrick from California and wind power from Virginia

Cloud giant Salesforce.com has announced two new acquisitions, one intended to boost its bottom line and the other to shrink its carbon footprint.

The acquisition of California based start up SteelBrick gives it a quoting and billing system for SMEs that runs within the Salesforce cloud platform. Meanwhile, it has announced an agreement to source 40 megawatts of green power, from a new West Virginia wind farm, through a virtual power purchase agreement (VPPA).

SteelBricks, which announced the take-over on its company blog, makes configure-price-quote and subscription-billing apps for small and medium-size enterprises. It had recently added subscription billing functions after buying UK-based cloud app maker Invoice IT. The apps automate the processes between researching customers and collecting payment and clients include Silicon Valley cloud vendors Cloudera and Nutanix.

Salesforce already part owned SteelBrick, having funded the start up through investment arm Salesforce Ventures. In December it announced plans to acquire the rest of SteelBrick for $360 million. Salesforce said it aims to close the deal by the end of April.

Having seen how Salesforce pioneered the shift to enterprise cloud computing, SteelBrick CEO Godard Abel said the company founder Max Rudman had been on a six year mission to simplify the process of selling. Abel was brought in as CEO having previously founded BigMachines, acquired by Oracle in 2013.

Meanwhile, San Francisco-based Salesforce is to buy an electricity supply from a West Virginia wind farm approximately 2,700 miles away. The two have signed a 12-year wind energy agreement for 40 megawatts (MW) of power to be provided through a virtual power purchase agreement (VPPA).

The electricity generated under the agreement is expected to be 125,000 megawatt hours annually, which exceeds Salesforce’s data centre electricity consumption in its full fiscal year 2015. The wind farm is expected to be operational by December 2016 and will deliver clean energy to the same regional electricity grid that currently powers the majority of Salesforce’s data centre load.

This announcement follows Salesforce’s recent commitments to achieve net-zero greenhouse-gas emissions by 2050 and to power all its global operations with renewable energy.

AWS, containers, News & Analysis, Software as a service

AWS opens up EC2 Container Registry to all

amazon awsCloud giant Amazon Web Services (AWS) has opened its technology for storing and managing application container images up to public consumption.

The AWC EC2 Container Registry Service (ECR) had been exclusively for industry insiders who attended the launch at the AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas in October. However, AWS has now decided to level the playing field, its Senior Product Manager Andrew Thomas revealed, guest writing on the blog of AWS chief technologist Jeff Barr. Thomas invited all interested cloud operators to apply for access.

As containers have become the de facto method for packaging application code all cloud service providers are competing to fine tune the process of running code within these constraints, as an alternative to using virtual machines. But developers have fed back teething problems to AWS, Thomas reports in the blog.

ECR, explains Thomas, is a managed Docker container registry designed to simplify the management of Docker container images which, developers have told Thomas, has proved difficult. Running a Docker image registry, in a large-scale job like an infrastructure project, involves pulling hundreds of images at once and this makes self-hosting too difficult, especially with the added complexity of spanning two or more AWS regions. AWS clients wanted fine-grained access control to images without having to manage certificates or credentials, Thomas said.

Management aside, there is a security dividend too, according to Thomas. “This makes it easier for developers to evaluate potential security threats before pushing to Amazon ECR,” he said. “It also allows developers to monitor their containers running in production.”

There is no charge for transferring data into the Amazon EC2 Container Registry. While storage costs 10 cents per gigabyte per month all new AWS customers will receive 500MB of storage a month for a year.

The Registry is integrated with Amazon ECS and the Docker CLI (command line interface), in order to simplify development and production workflows. “Users can push container images to Amazon ECR using the Docker CLI from the development machine and Amazon ECS can pull them directly for production,” said Thomas.

The service was effective from December 21st in the US East (Northern Virginia) with more regions on the way soon.

M&A, NetDespatch, News & Analysis, Royal Mail, Software as a service

Royal Mail bags couriering SaaS specialist NetDespatch

Email DatentunnelThe UK’s Royal Mail has bought cloud-based parcel management system NetDespatch in a bid to expand its range of services and global reach.

NetDespatch will operate as an independent standalone subsidiary so it can continue to service existing clients and is free to offer services to Royal Mail competitors in future. NetDespatch directors Matthew Robertson and Matthew Clark will remain in charge of operations and all existing client terms and conditions will remain unchanged.

The service provider helps carriers (such as its new parent company Royal Mail) to manage the transport of parcels for 130,000 business customers in 100 countries across the world. The NetDespatch parcel management system is a software as a service (SaaS) cloud system that carriers use to track the movements of parcels. It has grown in popularity as it can make it easier to integrate ecommerce websites, sales order processing and warehouse systems at the point of despatch. It makes it easier for users to print shipping labels, customs documents and manifests and automatically pre-advises their carrier of incoming parcels.

The aim is to make a relatively complex process simple, make logistics more efficient and save money for everyone in the supply chain from retailer to carrier to consumer, said Matthew Robertson, NetDespatch’s Commercial Director. “E-commerce is exploding in the run up to Christmas and we expect to continue to steam ahead in 2016 and beyond,” he said.

NetDespatch’s cloud software has made the integration of the Royal Mail’s systems with its customers’ complex IT estates a lot quicker, according to Nick Landon, Managing Director of Royal Mail Parcels. “This acquisition will support our parcels business with new and innovative software solutions,” he said. The fee for the transaction was not disclosed.

Enterprise IT, Financial Results, News & Analysis, Oracle, Platform as a service, Software as a service

Oracle cloud sales boom but at what price?

Oracle plane However Oracle’s co-chief executive Safra Catz warned fiscal 2016 will be “a trough year for profitability as we move to the cloud.”

Oracle’s total revenues were down by 6% to $9.0 billion with the sales of ‘cloud plus on-premise software’ down 4% to $7.0 billion. Meanwhile, total cloud revenue has gone up in the last quarter by 26% (in US dollars) and Oracle made $649 million on pure cloud software. The two most successful categories of cloud software for Oracle have been SaaS and PaaS which accounted for $484 million, a rise of 34%. Cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS) revenue was $165 million, a rise of 7%.

Expect the SaaS and PaaS revenue to grow by 50% in Q3 and 60% in Q4, said Catz. According to Oracle it won 100 Fusion Human Capital Management system contracts and over 300 Fusion Enterprise resource planning deals in the last quarter. Oracle said it is on target to sell and book more than $1.5 billion of new SaaS and PaaS business this fiscal year.

“We now have more than 1,500 ERP customers in the cloud, that’s at least ten times more ERP customers than Workday,” said Oracle’s other joint CEO, Mark Hurd. “It was a very strong growth quarter for our cloud business, with SaaS and PaaS bookings up 75% in constant currency and billings up 68% in U.S. dollars.”

Not everyone in Wall Street is convinced however. “While the company is showing some signs of cloud success, the meat and potatoes legacy database and app business is under major secular pressure,” FBR Capital Markets analyst Daniel Ives told MarketWatch.

Oracle’s Board of Directors declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.15 per share of outstanding common stock.

Box, Enterprise IT, News & Analysis, Salesforce, Software as a service, Storage as a Service

Box and Salesforce unite for integrated in-app file management

mergerSalesforce and Box have worked together to integrate their respective cloud offerings so you can use files stored in Box without having to exit Salesforce. To this end they have jointly created a new Salesforce Files Connect for Box service, along with a Box software development kit (SDK) for Salesforce.

The Salesforce Files Connect for Box means that users of the former’s customer relationship management system can search, browse, access and share Box files from any device without coming out of their Salesforce app or jeopardising the existing access and security granted in Box.

The two firms claim the integration will make users of each service more productive, as content managed on Box can easily be connected directly to records, users and groups within Salesforce. The newly created cohesion between the two apps means that two Salesforce users can now collaborate together on material that is stored in the Box system.

The Box SDK for Salesforce aims to give developers license to use Box’s content management within any app built on Salesforce App Cloud. It also allows developers to embed Box’s content management functions within the Salesforce system. The upshot is that it gives Salesforce users mope options on the type of content they can use, even from specialised industries like financial services, healthcare and government.

Salesforce Files Connect for Box is currently being tested out by select customers and is expected on general release in Summer 2016. Box SDK for Salesforce is currently available for free on Github for developers.

Integrations like this help make it easier for enterprises to move to the cloud, said Box CEO Aaron Levie.

“As companies get more mobile, social and connected, it’s critical that anyone can instantly access the information they need, no matter where it is stored,” said Nasi Jazayeri, executive VP of Community Cloud at Salesforce.

Adobe, Content & Applications, Creative Cloud, Financial Results, News & Analysis, Software as a service

Adobe posts 22% Q4 revenue growth, driven by Creative Cloud

AdobeAdobe Systems has claimed it is only just starting to gain from cloud adoption, after reporting record earnings.

Strong growth in subscriptions to Adobe Systems’ Creative Cloud has contributed to the ninth consecutive quarter in which the software vendor topped market expectations, as it reported revenue of $1.31b in Q4 of the fiscal year ending in November 2015. Of this, revenue from its digital media business, including Creative Cloud, rose by 35% to $875.3 million.

The vendor added 833,000 new subscribers to the Creative Cloud in the three months ending in November, some 150,000 more than market analysts expected. Meanwhile, Adobe Marketing Cloud brought in $352 million in revenue thanks to an unexpectedly strong adoption of its software as a service (SaaS) offerings.

Adobe’s strong growth from Creative Cloud has come as enterprises and professionals have adopted the new model of purchasing apps like graphic design tool Photoshop, web design software Dreamweaver and web video building application Flash. According to Adobe 52% of its customers subscribe to the full Creative Cloud bundle, with the remaining 48% subscribing to individual products within the portfolio.

Adobe Systems’ Photoshop Lightroom is now the fastest growing app in its Creative Cloud, CFO Mark Garrett told Reuters. “It’s growing the most because it’s attracting hobbyists and consumers,” he said. Since these were people that would never buy Adobe’s products before, the Creative Cloud and the switch from traditional licensing to web based subscription has expanded its market, Garrett said. “Our financials show that the benefits of our move to the cloud are just beginning.”

Adobe’s digital marketing business, which makes software that analyses customer interactions and manages social media content, grew by just 2.3% in comparison, to $382.7 million.

The company’s shares jumped 4.7% to $93.10 following the release of its latest trading figures.

Cloud28+, Europe, HPE, Infrastructure as a Service, News & Analysis, Platform as a service, Software as a service

Cloud28+ promises to clear up the cloudy issues of compliance

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) claims its new Cloud28+ cloud service catalogue will simplify the search for compliant cloud services for European enterprises.

Cloud 28+ is a community of commercial and public sector organisations aimed at expanding cloud service adoption across Europe. The Cloud28+ catalogue, on the other hand, is a centralized enterprise app store which now lists 680 cloud services from 150 members across the range of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offerings. To date 1000 end user organisations have pre-registered to use the catalogue.

The matchmaking Cloud28+ service online catalogue, now on general availability, promises a broad range of benefits for European customers. It allows customers to specify data centre locations and providers, in accordance with local laws and business requirements. It will helps users to find cloud-native independent software vendors with whom they can partner and it will help companies market themselves more expansively by letting them publishing their own services in the catalogue. This could allow end user organisations to turn their IT teams into ‘revenue-generating engines’, claims HPE.

The main benefit of the Cloud28+ service catalogue, HPE claims, is that it gives open access to huge numbers of enterprise cloud services. This will help cloud buyers to compare the cloud market, on functional and non-functional criteria, including price, service level agreements and certification levels.

One of the main selling points of the system is that is makes it easier to comply with increasingly strict data protections laws in the EU, according to James Kinsella, founder of Zettabox a cloud storage and team sharing system and the latest addition to the Cloud28+ catalogue. “It’s a logical community for Zettabox to join, as its mission is to build a cohesive and collaborative cloud environment, for Europeans by Europeans,” said Kinsella.

The Cloud28+ technology framework is based on HPE Helion OpenStack. This will give it the portability of cloud services and eliminate vendor lock-in, said Xavier Poisson, Hybrid IT VP at HPE. “This is an important milestone on the journey to a European Digital Single Market,” said Poisson.

The overturning of the Safe Harbour agreement in European courts had tremendous implications for cloud service providers, according to one analyst. “It certainly makes services that comply with European data privacy requirements more attractive,” said William Fellows, analyst at 451 Research.

Adobe, Flash, HTML, News & Analysis, Software as a service

Is Adobe axing Flash under cover of Creative Cloud?

Adobe Animate screenAs an official Adobe blog hailed a ‘new era’ for Flash Professional, the software company seems to be sidelining its creation.

Apple boss Steve Jobs once famously dismissed Flash as proprietary software from the PC age. Now Adobe appears to be admitting it doesn’t have a role in the age of the cloud. While updating readers on developments in its Creative Cloud, Adobe reveals that Flash Professional CC is to be re-branded as Adobe Animate CC in order to “more accurately reflect the content-formats produced by this tool.”

Flash has long been heavily criticised because its proprietary nature made it unsuitable for the web. Jobs said Apple would never consider Flash for any of its phones tablets because “we know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps.”

Latterly, the high power needed by devices running Adobe would make it unsuitable for the cloud, while the lack of openness would, in Jobs’ words, “hinder the progress of the platform.”

Adobe explains, in its blog, that “open web standards and HTML5 have become the dominant standard” and that “Flash Professional CC product team has embraced this movement by rewriting the tool from the ground up”. Adding native support for HTML5 Canvas and WebGL, in addition to supporting output to any format was such a ‘hug hit’ with Adobe customers that, in a short space of time, a third of all content produced in Flash Professional CC is HTML5-based, reaching over 1 billion devices worldwide.

The name change reflects the downgrading of Flash’s role in Creative Cloud. However, in another official blog post the vendor explains that Adobe Animate CC will continue to support Flash (SWF) and AIR formats ‘as first-class citizens’, as well as other formats like broadcast-quality video. “We will continue improving Animate CC’s HTML5 capabilities over time, while optimizing its core animation and authoring feature set,” said Rich Lee, senior product marketing manager for Creative Cloud web products.

In the cloud, it was the lack of stability and security that dissuaded Apple from using Flash.

Flash was highlighted by Symantec for having one of the worst security records in 2009. Steve Jobs once said he knew first hand Flash is the top reason for Apple device crashes. “We don’t want to reduce the reliability and security of our iPhones, iPods and iPads by adding Flash,” Jobs once said. Now, it seems, Adobe has accepted that Flash isn’t right for the cloud.

developers, Microsoft, News & Analysis, powerapps, Software as a service

Microsoft launches PowerApps for programming in the cloud

Microsoft powerappsMicrosoft has unveiled a new DIY programming system called PowerApps and new features for Office 365 and Dynamics CRM 2016 at its annual Convergence EMEA conference in Barcelona.

The new features in Microsoft Office 365, include meetings and voice services in Skype for Business while there’s a new customer engagement option in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016. Meanwhile Microsoft PowerApps is a new enterprise service that helps employees to create apps and share them with co-workers.

Office 365 now has options for a Skype Meeting Broadcast, Public Switch Telephone Network (PSTN) Conferencing, PSTN Calling and Cloud Private Branch Exchange. In addition Office 365 customers now have one platform for calling, conferencing, video and sharing, Microsoft claims.

There are new analytics and data visualization tools in the cloud package too. Delve Analytics promises interactive dashboards that tell users who they are spending their time with and how. This, says Microsoft, will help employees to prioritise better. The cloud package will have greater levels of security and compliance, it claims, through a new Customer Lockbox feature which allows each user to set access control limits. A new eDiscovery option makes it easier to manage large quantities of data and find information.

These new features, along with new Power BI (business intelligence) and Advanced Threat Protection are available in a new premium enterprise suite, Office 365 E5.

Meanwhile the new Dynamics CRM 2016, Microsoft promises, will be a more intelligent, mobile and productive system, thanks to new data and intelligence components. Among the features is a new ‘intelligent product recommendations’ mode for sales reps to personalize up-selling.

Dynamics CRM 2016 can also simplify everyday jobs, like meeting follow-ups.

On that same theme PowerApps is a system for creating apps for everything from a simple survey to something more ambitious and mission critical, according to Microsoft. These can connect to line-of-business systems and cloud services and run on any device. They can be used by everyone from employees through IT staff to Professional developers.