The Physical Web is an open standard so any device can broadcast a URL wirelessly, so any phone/tablet/watch nearby can see and rank those devices. When the user taps on one, they just go to that web page. It’s really that simple. It’s about thinking small, enabling micro-information (what is in my prescription bottle) or micro interaction (can I buy a candy bar). Scott Jenson leads a project called The Physical Web within the Chrome team at Google.
Four in five SMEs “fully adapted” to the cloud by 2020, report forecasts
Four in five small businesses will be “fully adapted” to the cloud by 2020, according to a new forecast from software firm Intuit.
The figures, posted in a deck entitled ‘Small Business Success in the Cloud’, prognosticated that 78% of US SMEs would be au fait in six years, as opposed to the current adoption rate of 37%.
While this was the standout stat, the overall report gives off vibes similar to Verizon’s report last week, which pigeonholed users into distinct categories. In this instance, Intuit identified four types of player that would be fully in the cloud by 2020, “moving from passive to active use of the technology”, according to a press release.
‘Plug in players’ would, as the name suggests, simply plug in to cloud providers who deliver a fully managed service – “giving small business operators the ability to focus on mission-critical areas of business”, as the PR states, while ‘head to headers’ are firms which are able to utilise cloud computing, outsourcing its IT costs, to compete with far larger vendors for contracts.
‘Hives’ will be companies which operate virtually, with employees in different locations. With the rise of the weightless office and virtual desktop infrastructure among other technologies, this is fast becoming a reality among smaller businesses. ‘Portfolioists’ however is a more obtuse category, targeting freelance employees who are optimising the cloud to make up a portfolio of work.
Intuit sees this analysis as showing off the human side of cloud computing, as well as giving a glimpse as to how entrepreneurs can utilise cloud.
“Today, the US and global economy is going through a series of shifts and changes that are reshaping the economic landscape,” said Steve King, of Emergent Research in a statement.
“In this new landscape, many people are using the power of the cloud to re-imagine the idea of small business and create new, innovative models that work for their needs.”
Recent cloud surveys include a study from Verizon which showed that two thirds of US enterprises who had adopted cloud early had seen some form of competitive advantage, as well as an IDC study which affirmed the chief financial officer will “hold the keys” to the next phase of cloud adoption.
You can find out more about the Intuit analysis here.
@ThingsExpo | @Cisco Named “Gold Sponsor” of Cloud Expo Silicon Valley 2014
On Friday SYS-CON Events, Inc. named Cisco “Gold Sponsor” of upcoming Cloud Expo, co-located with 3rd International Internet of @ThingsExpo, the largest IoT event in the world. 15th International Cloud Expo will take place November 4-6, 2014 at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, California. Cisco will present a number of technical sessions, including a general session which will be announced next week.
@Cisco To Present Agile Application Deployment at @CloudExpo
Agility is top of mind for Cloud/Service providers and Enterprises alike. Policy Driven Data Center provides a policy model for application deployment by decoupling application needs from the underlying infrastructure primitives. In his session at 15th Cloud Expo, David Klebanov, a Technical Solutions Architect with Cisco Systems, to discuss how it differentiates from the software-defined top-down control by offering a declarative approach to allow faster and simpler application deployment.
@ThingsExpo Story | @Cisco To Present at Cloud Expo Silicon Valley
Evelyn de Souza is a cloud compliance and data privacy strategy leader at Cisco responsible for championing solutions to address emerging industry trends. She is a strong proponent of building repeatable processes that enable organizations to sustain compliance while optimizing data security posture. Evelyn co-chairs the Cloud Security Alliance Cloud Controls Matrix (CCM), which harmonizes regulations and industry standards to a common framework.
The Challenge of OpenStack Dev in Africa
“Do you drive in Nairobi?”
‘Yes, I do,” came the quick reply.
That surprised me, because I won’t drive in the Philippines, where I spend about half of my time. At least they drive on the right-hand side of the road in Manila, unlike in the former British colony of Kenya.
I was talking to Adam Nelson, an American who has set up shop in Nairobi to deliver public cloud services. His company is called Kili (www.Kili.io) I wrote a short article about him the other day for Cloud Computing Journal, and branded his firm “The AWS of Africa.” To be sure, Adam would like to expand much more deeply into the potential user base in Kenya, he told me, and extend his service throughout East Africa and the continent.
Simplifying Live & On Demand Video Workflows
Video management and delivery has become increasingly challenging due to the diversity of solutions, mobile devices, platforms and video formats. As a result, companies are often required to piece together multiple solutions and vendors to get what they need.
In his session at 15th Cloud Expo, Ralf Jacob, Chief Revenue Officer at Verizon Digital Media Services, addresses the challenges of streaming live and on-demand adaptive video to multiple platforms and devices by moving the workflow from hardware-dependent infrastructure to software and cloud-based infrastructure. He will demonstrate how Verizon Digital Media Services eliminates complexity instead of managing it, with a simpler, more scalable approach that significantly reduces costs.
Aggressive cloud adopters get competitive advantage, roars latest research
The latest cloudy research paper this time arrives courtesy of US telco Verizon, and shows that companies who have shown faith with the cloud early are getting a competitive advantage through increased business agility.
The research, of Harvard Business Review readers, categorised users into four different groups; enthusiasts, moderates, cautious and non-existant on cloud adoption, and showed a higher predilection for enthusiasts (35%) than any other group. 34% of respondents were moderates, while cautious (22%) and none (9%) trailed behind.
This is particularly interesting for one reason. Similar research from Quocirca and CA Technologies this time last year had three categories, of enthusiasts (22%), avoiders (23%), and blockers (3%). A middling category, where 35% of respondents sat, was for those who evaluated its usage before deciding – similar to the ‘moderates’ category in the recent Verizon study.
Around two thirds of respondents admitted they had gained at least some competitive advantage through adopting cloud. 30% their advantage had been “significant”, compared to “some” (33%), “a little” (11%), and “none” (8%).
It’s the usual plethora of statistics concerning cloud adoption, although this stat came as a surprise to CloudTech HQ. The most popular cloud deployment is private (41%) according to respondents, followed by hybrid (35%) and public (13%). This goes at odds with greater public cloud deployment, although a recent article from David Linthicum gives credence to the future of the private cloud as a point of control, or interfaces, into public clouds.
The Verizon report notes, correctly, the correlation between companies cautious about the cloud and private cloud uptake. Yet this also correlates with business value derived from cloud, according to the respondents. The biggest win was simplification of HR and CRM (37%), followed by better delivery of internal resources (33%), and greater ways for employee collaboration (31%).
“This research shows that cloud is not just taking a seat at the table; it’s already delivering significant benefit and becoming the norm,” wrote Siki Giunta, Verizon SVP cloud, data centre and connected solutions in a preamble generously titled the ‘sponsor’s perspective.’
She added: “In those early days of cloud computing, the same concerns came up time and again: security, compliance, and loss of control. But years of hard work by governments, standards bodies, vendors, and enterprises themselves have improved transparency, data portability, integration, manageability, and performance.”
Verizon, lest we forget, announced its own cloud platform in October, with various companies – Oracle for middleware, CloudBees to name two – signing up to partner. Despite its various problems with the FCC elsewhere, Verizon hopes that its long standing security and enterprise expertise enables customers to “cloud with confidence”, in the words of the official site.
Find the full report here.
Massive Windows Server 2003 Services Opportunity Revealed [@AppZero_Inc]
Most people are aware that Windows Server 2003 is coming to the End of Support (EOS) on July 14th 2015. This means enterprises are more or less forced to stop running applications on the WS2003 Operating System, migrate them to a newer OS or replace them. EOS dramatically changes the solid “run-your-business operating platform” to one where there will be no security patches, no compliance and escalating costs. There are few events that open up such large security concerns, throw compliance out the window and have a greater than million dollar price tag all at the same time.
In one of the Microsoft sessions at the recent World Wide Partner Conference (WPC), they revealed that there are 22 million machines still running Windows Server 2003. They estimate that 53% of them are physical, likely running on old hardware providing a big hardware refresh opportunity as well.
Hybrid Cloud: Opening the Door to #IoT and Innovation @ThingsExpo
Rarely have we experienced such rapid innovation in the IT industry. CIOs have become essential leaders of the business, both in terms of promoting growth by optimizing technology and mitigating risk for their organizations. At the same time, IT departments are being stretched as business demands outpace available budget and legacy investments consume most resources.
Creating flexibility in today’s IT environment has become critical as organizations seek to strike a balance between maximizing existing enterprise application investments and continuing to drive innovation and efficiency. Many are turning to cloud technology to support evolving business and IT goals.
Just as businesses can’t take a one-size-fits-all approach, neither can the technology on which these organizations rely. That’s where hybrid cloud comes in: giving organizations the ability to seamlessly move between on-premises and off-premises cloud options, allowing them to utilize cloud computing and the business advantages it offers to their fullest potential.