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“Dear Deidre,

I’m stuck in a loveless marriage.

I’m in a three-year relationship which I don’t think I can get out of. It started off great, but now I’m getting bled dry and I don’t have the freedom I thought I would have. What should I do?

Regards,

C.I O’Really.”

Some of you will be suffering from the same concerns as poor Mr. O’Really. Over the last two years it seems like every organisation has been enthusiastically walking down the aisle with whichever cloud vendor had the best deal at the time.

In this ‘heartache column’, I want to look at the inhibitors of cloud adoption and which factors are driving the fear of cloud lock-in. Then talk through the two crucial steps users can take to get the best of both worlds – the business velocity provided by the cloud, without the risks of locking themselves into a specific vendor.

Our own Cloud Brief research has found 82% of respondents are strategically using or evaluating the cloud today. So they should, cloud computing is helping business build better services, quicker and at a lower cost. Better, quicker, cheaper. It’s what we’re all looking for in a relationship with the vendors we love the most.

The number one driver for cloud adoption is agility – the need to rollout new applications faster. This was reinforced at a recent meeting I had in London with developers from a leading global financial institution. They complained it takes three months for hardware supporting a new project to be procured, installed, racked, and stacked. Clearly unacceptable in today’s hyper-competitive market governed by agile development, continuous integration, and elastic scaling.

Where did it all go wrong?

The cloud is providing serious value, but hitching your wagon to one provider could present serious competitive disadvantage. Another cloud vendor could make all sorts of changes to become more appealing. New services, features or region availability are all changes that could give your competitors an advantage.

So what form does that lock-in take? It’s not about the hardware, operating systems and software of the past, instead it’s about APIs, services and data. The underlying infrastructure made up by compute, storage and networking are largely a commodity and can be exchanged between cloud providers. But as we move up the infrastructure stack, the APIs and data these services exchange become less portable.

There are a number of potential friction points: security, management, continuous integration pipelines and container orchestration. That’s not all though, business need to also consider their content management, search, databases, data warehouses, and analytics too.

It’s the data management services which cause most concern. You may have heard of the term ‘data gravity’. It was coined a few years ago, but has a real resonance today. As you’ll remember from fourth form physics: The mass of an object increasing is equalled by the increase in the strength of its gravitational pull. Well, the same is true for data. The more data you have in a specific location, the harder it is to move.

So you’ve got data gravity tugging on your heartstrings and you’re staring down the barrel of being locked-in to an endless stream of unfulfilling and expensive date nights. What are the options?

Open your heart

There are no easy answers, especially if your organisation needs the simplicity and convenience of an “as-a-service solution”. However, there are two things you can do to greatly improve your options.

The first step is to find a service that can be run on multiple public cloud platforms. Would you buy a car that can only be driven on 30% of roads? Don’t buy a service that only works on Amazon, Google or Microsoft.

Second, find services which have open source alternatives. That way, if you tire of your current vendor relationship, you can just give them the heave-ho and download the same software and run it yourself, anywhere. Having an open source choice means you can run your deployment on another cloud or on your own private infrastructure.  Going from an as-a-service to running it yourself does require planning, but it does give you the ultimate freedom.

To demonstrate why both of the above points matter, take a look at Comparethemarket.com. The largest price comparison site in the UK made the switch from managing its own on-premise infrastructure to Amazon Web Services (AWS). As a part of that move, the IT team considered the AWS DynamoDB NoSQL database service. However, concerns around exposing itself to excessive AWS control made comparethemarket.com eliminate DynamoDB as an option.

So our advice to C.I. O’Really is blunt: get a divorce. If your vendor isn’t treating you right then get one that is. Find a solution that is cloud-agnostic and that has an open source version available. These two points will go a long way to giving you the joy of the cloud, along with the freedom. They may seem charming but please, just date your cloud provider, don’t marry them.

Editor’s note: Dear Deidre is a well-known UK agony aunt column in The Sun newspaper. Other agony aunts are also available.

Cloud computing is being adopted in one form or another by 94% of enterprises today. Tens of billions of new devices are being connected to The Internet of Things.
And Big Data is driving this bus. An exponential increase is expected in the amount of information being processed, managed, analyzed, and acted upon by enterprise IT. This amazing is not part of some distant future – it is happening today. One report shows a 650% increase in enterprise data by 2020. Other estimates are even higher.
Big Data at Cloud Expo Silicon Valley is the place where you can see the technologies and use cases that are delivering Big Data to enterprise IT.

read more

Internet of @ThingsExpo, taking place November 1-3, 2016, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA, is co-located with 19th Cloud Expo and will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading industry players in the world.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is the most profound change in personal and enterprise IT since the creation of the Worldwide Web more than 20 years ago.

All major researchers estimate there will be tens of billions devices – computers, smartphones, tablets, and sensors – connected to the Internet by 2020. This number will continue to grow at a rapid pace for the next several decades.
With major technology companies and startups seriously embracing IoT strategies, now is the perfect time to attend @ThingsExpo in Silicon Valley. Learn what is going on, contribute to the discussions, and ensure that your enterprise is as “IoT-Ready” as it can be!

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Nearly 95% of small to medium businesses say they either already use a cloud hosting service or plan to transition to it according to the latest study from B2B research firm Clutch.co – as web hosting providers aren’t hitting the mark.

The survey, which quizzed 300 SMBs – defined as having between two and 1000 employees – found a trend towards cloud hosting. Almost three quarters (72%) of SMBs have changed web hosting providers over the past five years, while a worrying 86% said they had experienced issues in the last year alone. Most businesses change providers because they can find better value elsewhere.

In terms of specific issues with hosting providers, the biggest bugbear was downtime, cited by 35% of respondents, although poor performance (33%), increased costs (32%), poor customer support (27%), and server limits (26%) were also noted.

Rachel Bair, director of hosting and client services at Unleashed Technologies, summed up the survey’s findings. “I don’t think you can truly move forward within a company without using cloud in some way, whether that’s by buying software as a service from somebody or creating your own cloud infrastructure for your business,” she said. “To stay competitive in your own vertical, cloud hosting will be the way to go.”

The research therefore concludes that SMBs are becoming increasingly attracted to cloud hosting providers because of their difficulties with web hosting. Yet it might not be a walk in the park with regard to cloud vendors, either. Regarding infrastructure, a study from iland last year found a series of issues customers had with their providers, from onboarding, to the lack of a human aspect to customer support, and bill shock.

When it comes to storage, research from Clutch in November found just over half (52%) of small businesses are currently using cloud storage, with Dropbox the most popular. Could the two aspects be compared? Alex Miller, an analyst at Clutch, noted that while the hosting side is bound to get higher figures because the same vendors can be involved, there is still an issue with the results.

“Unlike switching from on-premises storage options to cloud storage options, the process of utilising cloud hosting is not much different from traditional hosting services, and can often be done with the same vendors,” Miller told CloudTech.

“However, the results from both surveys show that many users select a service based on cost rather than performance of the service, which can lead to future problems given the vast difference of capabilities among cloud providers.”

You can read the full survey results here.

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Demand for European data centre space continues to rise due to greater need for cloud services – but the Brexit vote could yet send UK plans off-kilter, according to the latest note from consulting firm BroadGroup.

The analysis, which appears in the firm’s latest Colocation Market Quarterly (CMQ), argues there is ‘strong’ demand for real estate in primary European locations, arguing Paris has performed ‘particularly strongly.’ The company argues a mix of hyperscale vendors needing to beef up their European presence, as well as smaller cloud firms seeking colocation space has primarily contributed to the trend.

Yet despite this, the consultants give a pessimistic note to the impact of a Brexit vote, both in the ‘initial certainty’ following the EU referendum result, and in the long-term implications. BroadGroup certainly aren’t the first company to offer such a caution –  in July analyst firm IDC praised the EMEA cloud infrastructure landscape with one hand and warned of a post-Brexit downturn in the other – yet Steve Wallage, managing director of BroadGroup consulting, notes broader concerns from data protection regulation (GDPR), to availability, and cost of power.

“UK data centres could be perceived by some investors as only relevant for local demand, a change from London long being considered a hub for European HQ and data centres, initial entry into Europe, and regional consolidation,” said Wallage. “For example, some of the hyperscale cloud players are now positioning UK data centres in this way.”

According to BroadGroup, the company knows of three potential UK data centre investments from Asian companies which are now “unlikely” in the wake of Brexit. Amazon Web Services took an opportunity at its London summit in July to confirm its UK data centre plans were still on track.

The note that Paris has become a particular hotspot is exemplified by Equinix buying Digital Realty’s operations in the French capital earlier this month for a reported $211 million (£158m). Earlier this week, Apple’s proposal to build an €850m data centre on the west coast of Ireland was provisionally given the green light.

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According to the Cloud Industry Forum, 80% of UK companies are adopting cloud technology as a key part of their overall IT and business strategy. However, one of the perceived barriers to cloud adoption continues to be concerns around security and compliance, which was the key topic of discussion at a recent techUK panel in which iland took part. During this discussion, we talked about the fact that nine out of ten security professionals worry about cloud security.

One of the key aspects that we’ve certainly found here at iland and which was borne out in a survey around cloud security that we conducted earlier in the year with independent analyst firm Enterprise Management Associates (EMA), is that companies actually now consider cloud security to be superior to on-premise environments, but often expose themselves to risk by blindly relying on a glut of technology they are unable to actively manage. 

Our survey found that nearly half (47%) of security personnel admitted to simply trusting their cloud providers to meet security agreements without further verification.  This highlighted that transparency continues to be a key issue, as many providers do not offer detailed insights into the cloud environment.  Or, if they do, this is certainly not up to the same levels customers are accustomed to in their own data centre operations.  At the same time, we also found thatteams tend to throw technology at the problem, however tech alone will not solve the problem. Again, the survey showed that 48% more security technologies are deployed in the cloud than on-premise.

Further, security features now top the list of priorities companies consider when selecting a cloud provider ahead of performance, reliability, management tools and cost.  Therefore, our advice to companies is that it is really important firstly to verify your cloud provider’s claims and, secondly, to ensure that you can properly leverage the technology that you are deploying. 

Interestingly, our survey showed that there appears to be much more alignment between IT and the business. Asrespondents indicated IT would rather delay a new application deployment due to security concerns than deploy it in a potentially insecure environment, and the business agreed in an almost 3 to 1 margin. To my mind, this represents a fundamental shift in organisational dynamics, where business should no longer view security personnel as naysayers, but allies who are committed to fighting threats alongside the business.

One of the key problems that accentuate security issues appears to be around skills and staffing shortages.  Infact over two thirds (68%) of organisations EMA admitted that they have staffing shortages and 34 % have skills shortages, which directly correlate to flaws and opposing perceptions uncovered in our study.  While IT has made monumental progress in identifying and adopting necessary security technologies, cloud providers must do more to ensure teams can easily validate claims, manage disparate tools, anticipate threats and take action when needed.

Further, we can see there is a lack of understanding of compliance among IT personnel. While 96% of security professionals acknowledge that their organisations have compliance related workloads in the cloud, only 69% of IT teams identified the same. This gap could lead to exposures for the organisation if IT were to place a compliance-related workload into a non-compliant cloud provider.  

And, finally, clearly defined responsibilities are needed both with your cloud service provider and within your own company, as clearly in the end, where security is concerned, the buck stops with you. There is no point claiming that you thought someone else had it covered.  This is where DevSecOps comes in as the next evolution of DevOps whereby you make security the responsibility of every member of the team, at every step of the way, right from dev through to ops. 

Right now and for the forecastable future cloud adoption sees no sign of abating. Therefore, it is critical that we get security and compliance right. Otherwise it will continue to be a blocker for organisations and could hinder innovation and competitive advantage.

Read more: A warning shot: Why cloud security remains more important than ever 

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IBM has announced that financial and HR cloud app provider Workday has signed up for its cloud services in what has been described as a “multi-year strategic partnership.”

The deal, first reported in the Wall Street Journal, means IBM’s cloud will become the primary platform for Workday’s development and testing projects – with the latter intending to expand their use ‘over time’. The two companies already partner on various initiatives; IBM uses Workday’s human capital management program for its own workforce, while Big Blue acquired Meteorix, a Workday services partner, in 2015.

“IBM and Workday are both delivering transformative applications and services in the cloud,” said Aneel Bhusri, Workday CEO and co-founder in a statement. “Workday will use IBM Cloud to continue accelerating Workday’s internal development and testing efforts to support our ongoing global expansion.” “Leading enterprises like Workday continue to turn to IBM Cloud for its global reach, flexibility, and resiliency,” added Robert LeBlanc, IBM cloud senior vice president. “Though a preferred cloud partnership with IBM, Workday can accelerate its innovation efforts to better serve clients around the world.”

According to recent industry research, IBM is firmly entrenched in the top five cloud infrastructure services players. The most recent quarterly analysis from Synergy Research argues that IBM is ranked third, ahead of Google but behind Microsoft and, unsurprisingly, AWS. IBM’s 57% year over year growth puts it behind Microsoft (100%) and Google (162%), but ahead of Amazon (53%).

On a slightly different note, analysis from IHS Markit put the same four companies in the leaders’ section for off-premises cloud IT infrastructure service leadership, but put AWS in fourth place based on market momentum and presence.