Only a quarter of CFOs are planning to move into cloud accounting in the next five years, according to a survey from chartered accountant firm William Buck.

The survey, which covered CFOs in Australia and New Zealand, painted a cautious picture of cloud adoption among the accountancy sector. 12% of firms currently use cloud accounting, with a huge 64% saying they’re not looking at moving into the cloud by 2018.

“While the cloud accounting media drum has been beating for some time, many CFOs are still cautious about the new technology and are hesitant to move away from the tools that they have been using for decades,” the William Buck report notes.

Education on the benefits of cloud accounting is therefore key, according to the report.

The primary benefits of cloud accounting are increased flexibility, streamlined workflow and reduced software expenses, as the CFOs surveyed pointed out.

Other areas …

I had the privilege of interviewing the CEO of Capriza, Yuval Scarlat, last week. We discussed a wide range of topics such as cloud mobility, MADPs, MBaaS, mobile strategies and why he thought the market needed another mobile solutions vendor.
On a side note, I think Capriza’s website design is very effective. Enjoy!

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Introducing the concept of cloud computing into your existing environments can seem to be a daunting task. Cloud computing is the next generation of computing and taking your first step into the cloud can be revolutionary for you and your company. The question you need to ask yourself is where to start? What are some of the low risk workloads that I can test the cloud with? More important, which cloud do you use as there are many different forms of clouds to choose from that could benefit your business. In this article we will take a look at some of the common clouds in today’s computing world, and then we will focus in on using infrastructure as a service, as this probably provides the easiest entry point into the cloud.

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There is a question we need to ask. It is a question which might end up annoying some people in the Cloud industry however it is one which we need to ask. Was the Cloud designed to be this way? This is to say, was the Cloud designed as terminology meant to distract everyday consumers from what really goes on in the world of data centers? Was the Cloud designed as a distraction? Cloud Education For the past two years, we have dedicated this space to one thing above the rest: explaining, highlighting and educating consumers on how the Cloud works and more importantly, how Cloud solutions can work for you. We have done this because here at Solar VPS, we firmly believe the more you know about how the Cloud works and how Cloud services can positively impact your business, the more prone you will be to investing in said Cloud services. And yet, on another level, we have dedicated this space to explaining Cloud and IT concepts because we know, just as other providers know, the more the public understands about the Cloud, the more the public will demand better IT solutions from providers. The more you know, the more you push for higher level services. This stated, we have something to admit. For all the effort we have put into educating our readers and consumers concerning Cloud services, we have the feeling that we have failed. For all the information we have presented and created, we have the feeling that the marketing effort behind the Cloud was never meant to be educational. We have the feeling, the marketing behind the Cloud, for the most part, has been designed to mislead the consumer. Much like the first rule of magic, the marketing behind the Cloud has been nothing more than a purposeful distraction designed to make the viewer look one way to mask the truth. All said, the marketing behind the Cloud has been everything but simple. Is the Cloud Battle Over? Published on January 15, 2014 in InformationWeek, Reuven Cohen hits on this very subject. “There’s been a renewed debate recently over the various layers of Cloud Computing stacks. At stake is a fight for Cloud Computing market share and mind share — and possibly, the future of Cloud platforms.” “Beyond a small group of technologists, Cloud Computing remains largely a mystery for most people. Ironically, I believe that’s the point of the Cloud: To act as an abstraction of the complexity found in more traditional data centers and application hosting infrastructures.” That sentiment bears repeating: “Beyond a small group of technologists, Cloud Computing remains largely a mystery for most people. Ironically, I believe that’s the point of the Cloud: To act as an abstraction of the complexity found in more traditional data centers and application hosting infrastructures.” To act as an abstraction of the complexity found in more traditional data centers and application hosting infrastructures. Another way of saying this: the Cloud is meant to distract … Continue

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As 2013 ended and 2014 began, the cloud prognosticators came out in true form, including AppZero CEO Greg O’Connor. Here are some of the more interesting predictions and surprising areas of agreement.
Hybrid Cloud is the way to go according to Business Today : “This year’s catchwords will be “hybrid cloud,” or the combination of both private and public cloud services. Analyst house Gartner released a report revealing that half of major enterprises will deploy hybrid cloud solutions by 2017.

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CiRBA has announced the availability of CiRBA Version 8. With this release, CiRBA adds support for Microsoft® Hyper-V® to its award-winning Control Console, which enables organizations to maximize efficiency and minimize risk in virtual and cloud infrastructure. This new capability is a key addition to CiRBA’s already strong platform support, which includes VMware® ESX®, IBM® PowerVM®, and Red Hat® Enterprise Virtualization.

Also now shipping in Version 8 is CiRBA’s new Reservation Console, announced last fall, which automates the entire process of selecting the optimal hosting environment for new workloads and reserving compute and storage capacity. The Reservation Console combines with CiRBA’s cross-platform support to enable CiRBA customers to automate “fit for purpose” placements for new workloads across multi-hypervisor, multi-SLA, multi-site virtual and cloud environments.

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AppZero, the fastest, most flexible way to move server applications, announced today AppZero v5.5 that introduces the Tether Console and IIS modernization. The software is now available and further eases one-step migrations for complex Windows server applications from older operating systems such as Window Server 2003 to Windows Server 2012, and from the data center to the cloud.
AppZero Tether Console is a simple interface that guides users through the AppZero process of migrating applications from source server to destination. AppZero migration automates the extraction and movement of server-side applications to any cloud or machine in a fraction of the time required by other approaches, and with no change to the application. AppZero is the only cloud-independent application extraction and cloud delivery automation tool on the market.

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ConVirt support for Hyper-V provides much more robust management than Hyper-V manager, and at a fraction of the cost of System Center for someone that wants better, less expensive management of Hyper-V. For those looking to deliver self-service infrastructure, ConVirt provides a single point of control to manage Hyper-V, along with VMware, KVM, Xen, plus Amazon EC2, Eucalyptus and OpenStack.

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ConVirt support for Hyper-V provides much more robust management than Hyper-V manager, and at a fraction of the cost of System Center for someone that wants better, less expensive management of Hyper-V. For those looking to deliver self-service infrastructure, ConVirt provides a single point of control to manage Hyper-V, along with VMware, KVM, Xen, plus Amazon EC2, Eucalyptus and OpenStack.

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Database change management is a unique challenge when adopting an agile development practice or implementing DevOps patterns. It really straddles two groups: the developers and the DBAs. Developers design and author the application schema changes based on the needs of the business. DBAs are on the hook for providing a secure and high performing data platform and protecting the integrity of the organization’s priceless data. In companies where these two groups are isolated, the goals of each can soon become opposed and forward progress can grind to a halt. Because of this unique division and its impact on the application lifecycle, implementing DevOps patterns to nurture understanding and collaboration between these two groups is crucial to the success of companies that are trying to adapt to a market that expects better value of services provided, through more frequent releases at a high level of quality.
In framing the discussion, I relied heavily on “The Three Ways” of DevOps. The Three Ways are the principles that underpin the DevOps patterns that Gene Kim discusses in detail in his novel “The Phoenix Project” and in the“The DevOps Cookbook”, written by John Allspaw, Patrick Debois, Damon Ewards, Jez Humble, Kim, Mike Orzen, & John Willis. Here’s a quick summary of The Three Ways:
• The First Way: Systems Thinking – This Way stresses the performance of the entire system of value delivery. Instead of becoming laser focused on the part of the process for which an individual or team is responsible, the individual or team works to understand the entire process from requirements generation to customer delivery. The goal is to eliminate the delivery impediments that arise when a project transitions from one isolated silo to another. Understanding the entire system allows business, development, and operations to work towards a common goal in a consistent manner.
• The Second Way: Amplify Feedback Loops – This Way deals primarily with facilitating easier and faster communication between all individuals in a DevOps organization. The goals of this step are to foster better understanding of all internal and external customers in the process and to develop an accessible body of knowledge to replace the dependence on “tribal knowledge.”
• The Third Way: Culture of Continual Experimentation & Learning – This way emphasizes the benefits that can be realized through embracing experimentation, risk taking, and learning from failure. By adopting this kind of attitude, experimentation and risk taking lead to innovation and improvement while embracing failure allows the organization to produce more resilient products and sharpen skills that allow teams to recover more quickly from unexpected failure when it does occur.
Database change management is a unique challenge when adopting an agile development practice or implementing DevOps patterns. It really straddles two groups: the developers and the DBAs. Developers design and author the application schema changes based on the needs of the business. DBAs are on the hook for providing a secure and high performing data platform and protecting the integrity of the organization’s priceless data. In companies where these two groups are isolated, the goals of each can soon become opposed and forward progress can grind to a halt. Because of this unique division and its impact on the application lifecycle, implementing DevOps patterns to nurture understanding and collaboration between these two groups is crucial to the success of companies that are trying to adapt to a market that expects better value of services provided, through more frequent releases at a high level of quality.
I will dive more deeply into each of the Ways as they pertain to the database change management in subsequent blog posts. Until then, checkout Gene Kim’s blog post on “The Three Ways.”

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