As organizations shift toward IT-as-a-service models, the need for managing and protecting data residing across physical, virtual, and now cloud environments grows with it. CommVault can ensure protection &E-Discovery of your data – whether in a private cloud, a Service Provider delivered public cloud, or a hybrid cloud environment – across the heterogeneous enterprise.
In his session at 16th Cloud Expo, Randy De Meno, Chief Technologist – Windows Products and Microsoft Partnerships, will discuss how to cut costs, scale easily, and unleash insight with CommVault Simpana software, the only singular data and information management solution for cloud data protection and beyond.

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Everyone in the OpenStack community has a vested interested in making it work. Without a strong guiding hand, the open source community runs the risk of becoming so fragmented that compatibility and integration suffer.
This is a bigger challenge than most people realize because the line between opens source “customer” and “developer” is very thin. As Gigaom’s Paul Miller points out in his latest research report, local configuration changes and code alterations have a way of moving the enterprise installation away from the community release, and the problem is compounded with each new release of the platform. Over time, the initial cost-savings of turning to an open source solution can be eaten up by complex patching and maintenance requirements and the user becomes further isolated from an increasingly fragmented ecosystem.

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PlexHosted, a developer of robust managed cloud-hosting solutions for better enterprise collaboration, today unveiled enhanced cloud offerings solutions for business, ensuring the cloud is both practical and affordable to organizations of all sizes.

Cloud migration can be daunting for small and mid-sized businesses, especially when faced with expensive service offerings from large vendors and filled with capabilities they don’t need. PlexHosted’s new hosting solutions provide the same quality of management as larger vendors, but at a much more attractive price.

PlexHosted’s new standalone farms start at $279 per month, which is 10% less than its nearest competitor. It’s two-tier farms (from $628), three-tier farms (from $877), and HA farms (from $1,799) also all show significant savings from average market prices. Those fees include 24/7 server(s) and services monitoring as part of the service – there are no additional set-up and hourly support fees as found at many other vendors. PlexHosted delivers cloud IaaS solutions and manages the farm all at one low monthly price.

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One of the more interesting data points to come out of our State of Application Delivery 2015 was the overwhelming importance placed on availability – even over security. When respondents were asked which service they would not deploy an application without, they chose availability. Security came in a close second.

This caused a great deal of discussion. After all, one of the most often cited impediment to adopting, well, everything has been and remains security. One would think, then, that security is top of mind and clearly a priority for everyone.

Yet availability beat it out for what amounts to the “most important application service.”

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Exponential growth in data and information at hand is forcing organizations to rethink their business models. With the rise of digital channels (both as sales channel and marketing channel) the business environment is becoming more complicated and challenging, and the competition is intensifying. Firms are responding by setting up dedicated analytics (or information science or insights) divisions, or repositioning existing teams, to enable a culture of data-driven decision making. There has been significant momentum in recent years with rampant hiring of analytics talent. However, business need to assess if the investment has paid off by achieving the intended objective, or showing signs of positive ROI.

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(c)iStock.com/Henrik5000

The latest figures from Synergy Research have found Cisco and HP to be the leaders in the cloud infrastructure equipment market, while IBM, the clear market leader in Q412, slips further down the table.

The analysts point to IBM selling off its server business to Lenovo – which is now the seventh largest vendor in the space – as a key point in the Armonk firm’s downturn.

Cisco has a clear lead in public cloud infrastructure, while HP is on top in private cloud, according to the research. Synergy puts Cisco’s lead down to its dominance of the networking segment, while HP’s prominence is down to its market leading position in cloud servers. Total Q4 cloud infrastructure equipment revenues, including hardware and software, topped $13 billion.

The IBM proposition is a particularly interesting one. Almost one year ago to the day, IBM UK&I leader Doug Clark told this publication the reasoning behind the Lenovo sell-off. “We’re seeing the centre of gravity move,” he said. “It’s been cited by a number of market watchers where the real value of cloud is, and it’s moving up the stack.

“We’re not letting go of our systems space, but I think we’re being more specific about which bits fit with which part of where the growth is going, and each element within IBM needs to justify its position as we go forwards,” he added.

John Dinsdale, Synergy Research chief analyst, agreed with Clark’s assessment. “IBM does not want to be in markets where it competes head-to-head with many other vendors for large volume [and] relatively low priced technology based on open standards,” he tells CloudTech in an email. “But it absolutely does want to maintain a strong position in servers based on its own technology, which are used in markets and applications where high performance is required and high pricing is acceptable.”

He added: “Cloud remains extremely important to IBM and I think it’s doing a good job of growing that business – especially on the services side. I think IBM’s main challenges are in the other parts of its business.”

Other Synergy research into cloud infrastructure services sees Amazon Web Services a clear market leader, but Microsoft in a clear second place with 96% year on year growth, compared to IBM in third with 48% growth.

(c)iStock.com/typhoonski

By Simon Taylor, Chairman, Next Generation Data

In this digital age, all businesses are effectively IT businesses no matter what they actually make or sell, whether in retail, professional services, manufacturing, and so on. IT underpins the systems and processes and more importantly will usually offer the key competitive edge, manage and pay the personnel, control suppliers and their costs, manage prospects and analyse customers buying habits, not to mention monitoring sales and powering web sites.

But the click-of-a-button efficiencies and competitive edge made possible by all of this sometimes obscures the realities of life for organisations of all shapes and sizes. That is, the web and cloud based computing solutions their business eco systems increasingly depend on are only as good as the quality and reliability of the servers, networks and data centres supporting them.

If these breakdown, suffer a security breach (digital or physical) or a natural disaster such as from fire or flood, some or all business operations are likely to be affected, often with serious consequences for them and their service providers. 

More often than not it’s been too costly for the majority to relocate to Tier 3 or higher data centres as these have typically been built in and around London, where real estate and labour costs are at a premium. To compound the problem further there’s been an acute shortage of similar calibre facilities available in the regions.

This has meant many cloud and hosting providers, SMBs and larger entities have had little choice other than to keep their valuable IT equipment and data on-site or in poor quality data facilities converted out of office buildings, when it would be far more prudent to relocate them to modern purpose-built facilities – offering optimised data centre environments and maximum security.

On the move

Fortunately there is an increasing wind of change blowing through the data centre services industry and it’s heading out into the regions. This is largely thanks to the tumbling cost of high speed fibre networks provided by telecom carriers and ISPs and which are essential for carrying data practically anywhere between everyone and everything. Their relative low cost now makes it much more viable for data centre operators to take the kind of next generation data centre facilities traditionally clustered around London close to the telecom exchanges and replicate them much further afield. 

At last larger, more scalable and higher calibre colocation data centres need no longer remain the exclusive preserve of very large businesses and will become increasingly accessible and affordable for small and growing businesses as well as the service provider channel.    

NGD, for example, has been one of the first operators to open a very large Tier 3+ data centre well outside of London and the M25. At 750,000 square feet, the facility has the economies of scale as well as the power and resilient infrastructure necessary for accommodating and future proofing any company’s data storage and processing requirements, large or small. It also functions as a major regional hub for multiple international telecom carriers and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to ensure customers can be connected far and wide, including millisecond latency to London.

Channel benefits

As the strategic value of IT to businesses of all kinds continues to grow along with demand for more secure and resilient data facilities, it is only a matter of time until more data centre operators establish large and more affordable  state-of-the-art facilities well outside of the M25 and further NGD’s vision of establishing a serious alternative to London.

Apart from the security and business continuity benefits this new breed of mega data centre can undoubtedly provide compared to the alternatives discussed, it also brings significant business opportunities for IT resellers, cloud providers and smaller systems integrators requiring much more scalable data centre capacity, often initially requiring just a few racks. For larger users there are also considerable cost savings on energy usage and carbon emissions taxes due to major investments in the very latest energy optimisation and cooling systems and, in a few cases, a total commitment to renewable green energy.    

The growing change blowing through the data centre industry can only be good news for the continued security and future prosperity of businesses everywhere. Equally, in our digital age, the ‘magnetic’ effect of regionally located world class data centres on local economies cannot be underestimated in their ability to attract more businesses and fresh talent from far and wide – much like the motorways and railways achieved in the previous two centuries.  

Cloud data governance was previously an avoided function when cloud deployments were relatively small. With the rapid adoption in public cloud – both rogue and sanctioned, it’s not uncommon to find regulated data dumped into public cloud and unprotected. This is why enterprises and cloud providers alike need to embrace a cloud data governance function and map policies, processes and technology controls accordingly.
In her session at 15th Cloud Expo, Evelyn de Souza, Data Privacy and Compliance Strategy Leader at Cisco Systems, will focus on how to set up a cloud data governance program and spans setting up an executive board to ensuring the availability, integrity, security and privacy of cloud data through its lifecycle.

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