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A report published by BCSG has revealed how awareness and uptake of cloud services in small to medium businesses (SMBs) is on the rise.

The survey, of 600 European participants across all stages of small business, from micro businesses to pre-startups, found 64% of SMBs are already using cloud-based software, while the average number of applications in use is three.

78% of respondents say they are considering purchasing new solutions in the next two to three years – potentially the average number of cloud software applications in use will be 7, with 88% consuming at least one service.

The report assesses eight primary areas which will see a significant uptake of cloud services, from marketing and financial management to managing customers and legislation. 35% of users are currently using cloud apps to manage marketing duties, with a further third expecting to adopt cloud software for marketing within the next three years. As businesses go through the lifecycle, uptake in cloud services increases.

In terms of collaboration, 25% of firms surveyed said they were currently using cloud apps, while 36% expect to see uptake in the next three years. Again, this figure rises the further a business gets into making profit.

For small businesses ensuring they keep their heads about water, it comes at a cost. Two thirds (66%) of those surveyed say they put more than 40 hours a week in at work. 56% polled cited a lack of customers as a primary issue, compared to lack of money (46%), lack of time (36%) and lack of support (28%).

“Getting a business off the ground means hard work, difficult decisions and learning on the job,” commented John Davis, BCSG managing director. “Access to much-needed expertise and support can be hard to find. However, cloud-based services are increasingly providing a viable solution.”

Do you agree with these survey results?

Since enterprise digital transformation efforts involve organizational, process, and technology changes that better connect the customer to the technology systems of record, formulating the best way of accomplishing the goals of digital sounds like a perfect application of enterprise architecture. Only most organizations don’t see this connection.

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SYS-CON Events announced today that that Innodisk, the service-driven provider of industrial embedded flash and DRAM storage products and technologies, will exhibit at SYS-CON’s 16th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on June 9-11, 2015, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY.
Innodisk is a service-driven provider of industrial embedded flash and DRAM storage products and technologies. With satisfied customers across the embedded, aerospace and defense, cloud storage markets and more, it has set itself apart with a commitment to dependable products and unparalleled service. This has resulted in products including embedded peripherals designed to supplement existing industrial solutions and high IOPS flash arrays for industrial and enterprise applications. The expanded business lines are leading its next step in being a comprehensive solution and service provider in the industrial storage industry.

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This is the first of a series of posts and links to resources on server storage I/O performance and benchmarking (view more and follow-up posts here).
The best I/O is the I/O that you do not have to do, the second best is the one with the least impact as well as low overhead.
Drew Robb (@robbdrew) has a Data Storage Benchmarking Guide article over at Enterprise Storage Forum that provides a good framework and summary quick guide to server storage I/O benchmarking.

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Picture credit: Luke Kilpatrick/Flickr

Opinion This week has been a pretty big one for VMware. The San Francisco end user computing giant has launched what it claims to be the industry’s first unified platform of virtualised compute, networking and storage for the hybrid cloud, as well as announcing new partners for its Partner Network.

Despite past claims that VMware had been a bit late to the cloud party, only pushing out vCloud Air in 2013, the firm is taking big steps to remedy it with a litany of products as part of its hybrid push: VMware vSphere 6, the foundation for the software-defined data centre, VMware Integrated OpenStack, VMware Virtual SAN and vSphere Virtual Volumes, for mass enterprise adoption of software-defined storage, and VMware vCloud Air, bridging public and private clouds to enable a secure network domain.

The soundbites around the announcements were as you’d expect. VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger said in a statement: “Every traditional industry across the globe is being transformed by software. To navigate and thrive in the face of this change, businesses must be decisive in the face of uncertainty.

“Today, we are taking another leap forward in helping our customers meet these demands through a unified platform, defined in software, which will offer unmatched choice and extends our innovations across compute, networking and storage to deliver the hybrid cloud,” he added.

The past 12 to 18 months have seen plenty of change from VMware in adopting to a cloud strategy, opening data centres at the rate of approximately one a month last year, including one in Chessington in July. There’s a lot of noise – but what is the overall view of how successful the strategy is?

The first point to note is the company’s image is still in a process of flux. Regular readers of CloudTech will know that it takes months, if not years, for mindsets to change from traditional software to cloud. IBM, for example, has been telling anyone and everyone that it’s now a cloud first company, and put $1bn of investments into that very purpose.

But it’s a different story here. As chief cloud technologist Simone Brunozzi told Bloomberg, when he joined VMware a year ago “most companies were not aware of the fact that we were doing cloud at all.” VMware’s expertise in virtualisation technologies is well-founded, but this is a completely different ball game.

Oracle is regarded as a similar latecomer to the cloud mindset; despite undergoing a boardroom shuffle and gobbling up various high level cloud employees, from SAP’s former head of cloud Shawn Price to Google App Engine mastermind Peter Magnusson, the company’s still playing catch-up.

Yet all this may be insignificant. Why? VMware’s concerted push in the still-not-quite-mature hybrid cloud space means there’s room to manoeuvre.

This time last year, the key tenet for the company was end user computing and enterprise mobility, as evinced in the acquisition of AirWatch. Now, hybrid cloud is an ideal arena in which to play. More than half (58%) of attendees at the 2014 Cloud Expo and AWS Summit admitted they are building hybrid cloud solutions for their organisations. A January study from IDC and Red Hat found 69% of respondents were using at least four public cloud IaaS platforms – including VMware vCloud Hybrid Service.

For larger organisations, they’re neither going all-in to the cloud or all on one cloud – it’s a healthy mix. Yet VMware’s disaster recovery service, announced in April last year, is aimed at curing reticent customers of their cloud phobia.

Of course, there’s a long way to go before VMware is at the front of the queue in hybrid cloud vendors. IBM pushed out an announcement citing Synergy Research figures positioning it as numero uno in hybrid and private enterprise cloud. Yet the signs are there. As IDC analyst Gary Chen put it; VMware won’t capture all of the business out there, but if a company their size is making more and more noise, it’s getting increasingly difficult to ignore them.

Find out more about VMware’s hybrid cloud announcements here.

Cybersecurity breaches are seemingly making headline news every day. Recent cases have highlighted identity theft, the loss of personal financial data, and the disclosure of sensitive national security information. The executive in the hot seat for preventing these failures is the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO).
In order to better understand the challenges and concerns of this critical professional community, the 2015 National CISO Survey is now being conducted. Commissioned by the National Cybersecurity Institute at Excelsior College, this data will be used to develop and publish actionable information for use by the day to day cybersecurity professionals.

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VMware has announced a unified platform of virtualized compute, networking and storage for the hybrid cloud. Defined in software, VMware’s platform will enable customers to create one consistent environment across the private and public cloud to run, protect and manage any cloud-native or traditional application. The platform will also offers customers openness and choice in how to build and manage their applications and cloud environments based on their specific needs.

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By Martin Cooper, Technical Director, SolidFire

As enterprises turn to public cloud services and managed service providers to meet their IT needs, colocation providers have seen their customer base gradually diminish. Infact, managed service providers now bring in five-times more revenue.

Colo providers are aware their traditional business models are no longer relevant and that they need to give enterprises what they want: the cloud. But incorporating cloud into their provision in such a saturated market won’t be simple. To have any chance of success, colo providers need to carve out what differentiates them from their competitors and implement the right technology to underpin their offering. But where do they start?

Service providers who got into the cloud game early seemed, at the time, to be more visionary. But for a colo provider looking to get into the cloud business now, there are advantages to being a little later to the table. Early cloud adopters are now burdened by a number of things, including poorly-performing legacy equipment that still has one to three years of remaining depreciation and older storage technologies that costs them a lot to maintain. They are also required to carry out deep quality assurance and testing in response to any change to a legacy system that typically has very poor APIs, or none at all.

Even if service providers were to adopt newer technologies like all-flash storage and iSCSI networking, migrating customers from one system to another can be disruptive and cause severe customer satisfaction issues. With the right strategy and technology, colo providers can become the proverbial small, agile ship in the harbour while the larger cloud providers are the lethargic vessels struggling to keep up with the fast pace of innovation.

Understand the need to differentiate

Determining the kind of cloud offering that makes sense for a colo’s business operationally, based on who their customers, is crucial for identifying who they’ll likely be competing against. Everyone uses Amazon Web Services or Rackspace as a point of reference, but many compete on differing value propositions. It is key for colos to build their value proposition based on why their current customers chose to do business with them in the first place. By looking at why they chose them for colocation, there is most likely a recurring theme.

Whether it’s proximity to a major point of presence, the availability of multiple bandwidth providers, or a trusted local brand, these are a colo’s established differentiators. And they need to build their cloud value proposition on the same core pillars.

They’ll find that by understanding why their customers chose them and what cloud services they are competing against; extending their business value proposition will be much faster, easier and less costly than trying to build a new cloud services brand from scratch.

Choose technology wisely

Now consider the technology used behind the scenes. Using strategic technologies to bridge the colocation-to-cloud gap can be a solid first step. The choice of technology is key to architecting a colos cloud offering (as is the decision to either build their offering from scratch or buy a “cloud in a box,” but more on that later).

If colos automate their solution as much as possible, then it means they’ll be delivering consistent quality services to their customers. And it will totally differentiate the service offerings from most of the competition.  Enterprises are simply looking for a guaranteed and predictable platform from which to host their applications. The hypervisor has become ubiquitous and most enterprises don’t care what is under the covers of the infrastructure until it comes to its underlying storage systems.

Colocation to the cloud: The hybrid approach

It’s unlikely that a colo will go from colocation to an Amazon-like cloud straight away due to complexity and the cost. Many colo providers begin by delivering private clouds to their colocation customers in what is called a hybrid model. Delivering hybrid cloud hosting services on top of their colocation business makes the jump into the cloud business a financially attainable and realistic business proposition.

Taking small steps by delivering hybrid-hosting offerings to their current colocation customers is an easy way to hone their cloud delivery and implementation skills. Their current customers will be more forgiving and more tolerant of small issues as they grow their hybrid cloud offerings.

The journey from colo to the cloud can be a little scary, but with some advance planning, the latest all-flash storage, a good understanding of customers and good timing —colocation providers can make the journey a successful one for their business.

Can’t get enough of SpongeBob SquarePants? You’re in luck! Soon you’ll be able to watch your favorite show on demand.

Nickelodeon owner Viacom recently announced its plan to offer a stand-alone Internet offering that focuses on mobile viewers for the popular cable channel. Full details and offerings for the plan, which launches in March, haven’t been released yet so it’s still unclear how much subscribers will pay and if they will get the same services as cable and satellite TV subscribers or access to supplemental content and archives of past shows.

What we do know from this news, however, is that Viacom sees the long-term benefits of recurring revenue. When the company didn’t renew its contract with Netflix in 2013, it shut off streaming access to popular shows like SpongeBob. As a result, Viacom knew this service would be attractive to the parents of SpongeBob-loving children, who would buy into purchasing a subscription that allows them to take SpongeBob on the road with them via tablet or smartphone. As consumers continue to shift away from cable and towards streaming, Viacom needed to find a way to continue to monetize Nickelodeon’s most popular shows. Looks like they found an answer – the new subscription service will guarantee a continuous revenue stream.

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Analytics is the foundation of smart data and now, with the ability to run Hadoop directly on smart storage systems like Cloudian HyperStore, enterprises will gain huge business advantages in terms of scalability, efficiency and cost savings as they move closer to realizing the potential of the Internet of Things.
In his session at 16th Cloud Expo, Paul Turner, technology evangelist and CMO at Cloudian, Inc., will discuss the revolutionary notion that the storage world is transitioning from mere Big Data to smart data. He will argue that today’s hybrid cloud storage solutions, with commodity hardware and in-place analytics capabilities, will help to yield high value insights without the high price tag.

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