Yahoo’s going with another plainspoken blonde.
After the market closed Monday Yahoo’s board named Marissa Mayer, one of Google’s first employees and long-time protector of the stripped-down look of Google’s homepage, CEO replacing interim CEO Ross Levinsohn.
The Yahoo board is taking another flyer on Mayer, 37, considering she’s coming out of Google’s product side, responsible for the look and feel of such things as Google Mail, Google News and since 2010 Google Maps and other Google location and local services. She has no CEO or turnaround experience. She did sit on Google’s operating committee and is on the board of Wal-Mart.
It’s speculated that the Third Point contingent on Yahoo’s board, who got there recently by way of a threatened proxy fight, were instrumental in recruiting her. Presumably they think Yahoo’s products and technology need an overhaul to get more competitive with Google and Facebook.
Crunching the Numbers in Search of a Greener Cloud
Although sometimes portrayed as a big computer in the sky, the reality of cloud computing is far more mundane. Clouds run on physical hardware, located in data centres, connected to one another and to their customers via high speed networks. All of that hardware must be powered and cooled, and all of those offices must be lit. Whilst many data centre operators continue to make welcome strides toward increasing the efficiency of their buildings, machines and processes, these advances remain a drop in the ocean next to the environmental implications of choices made about power source. With access to good information, might it be possible for users of the cloud to make choices that save themselves money, whilst at the same time saving (a bit of) the planet? Greenpeace has consistently drawn attention to the importance of energy choices in evaluating the environmental credentials of data centres, with 2011′s How Dirty Is Your Data? report continuing to polarise arguments after more than a year. The most efficient modern data centres deploy an impressive arsenal of tricks to save energy (and therefore money), and to burnish their green credentials. They use the most efficient modern processors, heat offices with waste server […]
Egnyte Secures $16 Million in Financing Led by Google Ventures
Egnyte, the leading provider of cloud and hybrid cloud file sharing solutions for businesses, today announced it has closed a $16 million round of Series C financing led by Google Ventures with additional support from existing investors, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) and Polaris. The funds will be used to expand sales and marketing efforts as well as further the development of hybrid cloud and next generation cloud technologies. As a part of today’s funding, Karim Faris, Partner at Google Ventures, will join the board of Egnyte.
Cloud Expo Silicon Valley Speaker Profile: Mark Skilton – Capgemini
With Cloud Expo 2012 Silicon Valley (11th Cloud Expo) due to open in just four months ‘time at the Santa Clara Convention Center, CA, let’s introduce you in greater detail to the distinguished individuals in our incredible Speaker Faculty for the technical program at the conference…
We have technical and strategy sessions for you dealing with every nook and cranny of Cloud Computing, but what of those who are presenting? Who are they, where do they work, what else have they written and/or said about the Cloud that is transforming the world of Enterprise IT?
Microsoft unveils new Office 2013 in the cloud
17th July 2012
Microsoft has unveiled Office 2013 at a press event in the US, with a customer preview version already available for download. The new package is expected to be geared towards meetings and communications, and will be delivered to subscribers through a cloud service that is continuously updated.
Western European Private Cloud Infrastructure Growth: IDC
The detractors of cloud computing benefits will state that the typical adoption is still limited at most enterprises — they’re deploying cloud services to a few early-adopters. That being said, some leading markets are confidently moving ahead with mainstream deployments, regardless of the caution. While others, such as western Europe, are apparently in transition.
The western European private cloud market will grow at a CAGR of 23.2 percent for the next five years to reach $7.9 billion in 2016, according to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC).
IDC has been looking in-depth at the private cloud marketplace — from a hardware, software, services and networking points of view.
“The growth of private cloud is even more impressive in the context of the current economic situation,” said Mette Ahorlu, research director, IDC European Services.
According to IDC’s assessment, demand in the region is being driven by the need for cost savings and efficiency and with a longer perspective of creating increased flexibility, and is across the board — from hardware, to software, to management, networking and services.
Creating a private cloud has an impact on all aspects of IT infrastructure.
Key findings from the market study include:
- Most enterprises are still in early phases of cloud adoption, typically testing out cloud and perhaps rolling out one or a few cloud services to the full range of relevant users, but not deploying cloud on a really large scale.
- There is growing interest in pre-packaged private clouds, pre-configured with servers, storage, network and management that speed up implementation and reduce need for services.
- The cloud computing approach is to become a critical part of the IT strategy for the majority of EMEA organizations in the next two to three years.
- While security, compliance and data location are barriers to public cloud they become drivers for the adoption of the private cloud.
- Partnering between technology companies and service companies is important to help create transparency in a complex market where clients think there are too many moving parts.
- Hosted private cloud is not nearly as popular as clouds on customers’ premises, but hosted private cloud will grow even faster and revenue will exceed on-premises clouds by 2016.
- While the market is serviced by traditional IT providers and outsourcing companies, telecom service providers have also seen it as a great opportunity to expand their businesses.
IDC believes that managed cloud services is fundamentally a network-based offering. It’s becoming an established commodity, scales to a mass market customer base, and builds on the kind of support or billing relationships that telecom service providers are capable of offering.
SilkRoad Launches Point for Social Talent Networking
SilkRoad Technology Inc. has launched Point, the latest tool in the social talent management solutions provider’s Life Suite product range. The new employee-centric social networking solution connects employees to each other and their organisation by uniting the popular features of social networking with talent management.
SilkRoad Point gives employees the forum they need to share expertise and be recognised by peers and leaders while simultaneously helping companies to better understand what and who is driving their business.
The launch follows positive feedback from industry experts and HR professionals in attendance at the HR Software Show, Olympia, where Point was previewed last week.
“Our research shows that organisations that adopt peer-to-peer learning, recognition, and knowledge sharing dramatically outperform their peers in customer service, time to market, and employee engagement,” says Josh Bersin, Chief Executive Officer and President of Bersin & Associates, the leading provider of research-based HR best practices that drive business results. “SilkRoad Point represents a new breed of consumer-like social talent tools that organisations can use to easily leverage the power of social connections in corporate learning, collaboration, and project management.”
Employers often have a limited view of what employees are actually doing as job descriptions and performance reviews don’t always accurately depict employees’ knowledge and contributions across the organisation. With Point, organisations can increase knowledge and insight through the use of social collaboration and learning. Employees identify centres of influence by contributor, content and topic. As a result, organisations create a self-motivating culture where employees can be identified and recognised for their influence and recognise others for their contributions.
“HR has struggled to understand how knowledge and information flows across the organisation,” says Lisa Rowan, Program Director for HR, Learning, and Talent Management Strategies, IDC. “With Point, organisations now have the ability to reveal not only the connections between its employees but the meaning behind them and how it impacts the company. Point enables companies to share goals, inspire innovation, and increase efficiency to drive organisational change and success.”
Features include:
- People and Connections – Increase collaboration and connections to share links, files, questions, photos, polls, announcements and feedback across the organisation.
- Groups – Connect people with similar interests by creating Groups. Groups can be used to align a team around a particular topic or set of goals encouraging knowledge sharing and collaboration.
- Content – Share content in the form of articles, thoughts, Q&A and files by posting on either a personal landing page or a group home page. Comment, reply and discuss to build better solutions through collaboration.
- Points and Influence – Tag topics with a ‘Point’ to help categorise content for more efficient search strategies. By identifying Points, which can include thoughts, documents, files etc., influential content and its author(s) will emerge.
- Integrated Learning Platform – Allow users to easily access and manage their learning plans directly from Point. Informal social learning supplements the knowledge gained by the learning programs found in GreenLight.
“With Point, we’ve closed the gap between social networking and talent management by converging them together to drive even higher levels of employee engagement and performance,” says Brian Platz, COO of SilkRoad. “Using Point, companies can more easily encourage and increase knowledge sharing for greater productivity, innovation and collaboration. Organisations are enabled to better engage and retain employees using social networking features already familiar to employees while decreasing risks with greater insights into strategic workforce planning.”
Pros and cons of consolidating data into one cloud
By Sue Poremba
The cloud business has grown and matured over the past years to levels that were unimaginable at its inception. Modern cloud providers have data centers spread across the world, or at least in key regions. This allows them to offer high-speed access to data in the cloud regardless of region and also helps them keep data duplicates on different continents.
This proliferation of the cloud has also meant the availability of free or inexpensive cloud storage options –- a boon for small companies working with a tight IT budget. However, it may also mean utilizing a variety of services, spreading data between a number of providers with different options and different terms of services.
So, does it matter if your company’s documents, intellectual property, and other corporate data are stored in various locations or should everything be consolidated to one server?
“It is up to every company …
Big Data and API Management
The hottest IT trends of 2012 are shaping up to be Cloud, mobile and “big data”. The links between API management, Cloud and mobile are clear. The links between API management and big data – a concept that creates capabilities for capturing and analyzing previously unimaginable amounts of unstructured data – are less obvious but no less significant. I see two key areas of synergy…
First of all, in the three-tier architecture of the Web, the line was typically blurry between the presentation and logic tiers and concrete between logic and data. Big data now blurs the line between logic and data. Combine this with the fact that the mobile app development paradigm fragments the presentation platform and it is evident that the API will become the concrete and consistent border in application processing flows. In this context, API management will prove vital in enforcing security, collecting business metrics and normalizing protocols.
Cloud Expo Silicon Valley: Business Value in a Cloud-Enabled Ecosystem
Many analysts are observing that by the end of 2012 most organizations will be using at least ten types of cloud computing products and services either directly or indirectly. Email, mobile apps, collaboration, social networking, storage, converged video conferencing, business apps, commercial transactions, marketplace presence, to name a few of the range of cloud sourcing and delivery solutions available in public, private and hybrid cloud combinations as well as the hosting options. In short we are already in the multi-cloud world.
In his session at the 11th International Cloud Expo, Mark Skilton, Global Director, Strategy Office, Capgemini Infrastructure Services, will look at best practices strategy, design and engineering principles for successful cloud-enabled solutions and services from a variety of different business scenarios.