In his keynote at 18th Cloud Expo, Andrew Keys, Co-Founder of ConsenSys Enterprise, will provide an overview of the evolution of the Internet and the Database and the future of their combination – the Blockchain.
Andrew Keys is Co-Founder of ConsenSys Enterprise. He comes to ConsenSys Enterprise with capital markets, technology and entrepreneurial experience. Previously, he worked for UBS investment bank in equities analysis. Later, he was responsible for the creation and distribution of life settlement products to hedge funds and investment banks. After, he co-founded a revenue cycle management company where he learned about Bitcoin and eventually Ethereum.
SAP and Microsoft expand partnership
SAP CEO Bill McDermott (Left) and Satya Nadella, CEO at Microsoft (Right) speaking at SAPPhire Now in Orlando
Microsoft and SAP have extended a long-standing partnership to deliver broad support for the SAP HANA platform on Microsoft Azure.
The extended partnership will focus on greater integration between the two portfolios to simplify work-through integrations between Microsoft Office 365 and cloud solutions from SAP. The new team also claim the combined proposition will provide enhanced management and security for custom SAP Fiori apps.
The announcement builds on a previous relationship which was debuted in 2014, allowing SAP customers to build HANA applications in the Microsoft cloud platform, taking advantage of public cloud scalable resources, though the new partnership now incorporates more of the Azure security and management capabilities.
“This partnership is perhaps one of the broadest things we’ve done together,” said Satya Nadella, CEO at Microsoft. “Take the cloud. We’ve taken the best of SAP and the best of our hyper-scale cloud. It means SAP certifications are now certified on Azure, HANA is certified on Azure and S/4 HANA is certified on Azure.
We’ve taken our hyper-scale cloud and made it real for customers. Every application which SAP run is now compatible with Office 635 meaning we now have seamless integration. This recipe is going to accelerate the growth which our customers seek, by combining two product portfolios which are customers probably already use.”
As part of the new agreement, there will be a new deployment option for SAP HANA on the Azure cloud. The updates will certify SAP HANA to run development, test and production workloads on Microsoft Azure, including SAP S/4HANA, and will enable customers to run larger and more demanding workloads than previously possible. New integrations will also enable customers to combine Office 365 features (including communications, collaboration, calendar etc.) with SAP cloud-based applications including Concur, SAP Fieldglass and SAP SuccessFactors.
New developments which can be expected towards the latter end of the year also include the ability to deploy custom mobile hybrid SAP Fiori apps on SAP HANA Cloud Platform with an open standards plug-in framework, which will enable Microsoft Intune capabilities to be embedded within the app itself. The team believe these integrations will be available in Q3.
“We believe the IT industry will be shaped by breakthrough partnerships that unlock new productivity for customers beyond the boundaries of traditional platforms and applications,” said SAP CEO Bill McDermott. “SAP and Microsoft are working together to create an end-user experience built on unprecedented insight, convenience and agility. The certification of Microsoft Azure infrastructure services for SAP HANA along with the new integration between Microsoft Office 365 and cloud solutions from SAP are emblematic of this major paradigm shift for the enterprise.
The news follows another partnership announcement from SAP with Apple made in recent weeks. Apple has made multiple moves over the last 24 months to improve its position in the enterprise IT space, partnering with Cisco last year, to optimise iOS device performance across Cisco’s suite of enterprise communications services, and IBM in 2014, bringing IBM’s strengths in big data and analytics to Apple devices.
Wipro and Xactly partner to increase customer sales performance
Wipro and Xactly have launched a new partnership to offer sales performance management solutions to customers as a SaaS model.
The new partnership claims the new solutions will enable an organizations leadership team to bridge the gap between their business goals and sales performance. The sales performance management is estimated to be valued in the region of $715 million (2015) with both Wipro and Xactly believing the market still has healthy growth potential.
“Sales Performance Management is a key priority for organisations, across the board,” said Hiral Chandrana, SVP for Business Application Services at Wipro Limited. “Companies can optimise their sales performance processes through effective incentive compensation design for their employees and tools to measure the same. We are confident that Wipro’s extensive experience in transforming the front-office sales process coupled with Xactly’s incentive compensation cloud products will deliver the right platform to accelerate business outcomes for our clients.”
The Wipro and Xactly partnership will aim to combine software products, which focus on managing employee performance, monitoring margins, and mitigating risk, with Wipro’s consulting experience in transforming the sales functions, to improve the performance of customer’s employees.
“We are always looking to partner with like-minded industry leaders who understand the importance of using incentives to drive the right behaviors and are aiming to shape the next wave of this industry,” said Nitin Mathur, VP of Worldwide Professional Services at Xactly. “Wipro’s global reach and services expertise complements our mission of helping companies use compensation as a strategic lever to drive better sales alignment, retention, and performance.”
Hybrid IT skillsets – Does your IT team have what it takes?
IT runs the world and without it the well-behaved, functional technological ecosystem would come to a screeching halt. But the agile, dynamic nature of the tech world provides businesses with many services to consume to meet the bottom-line goals, which means that IT needs to constantly keep up with the latest trends while balancing the people, process and budget equations. Cutting costs, encouraging work flexibility or improving efficiency are the objectives of an investment in technology. It’s part of IT’s responsibility to maximize the ROI of that investment.
For many, the biggest technological transformation for businesses to date has been the cloud. It’s fair to say cloud adoption is nearly ubiquitous, with just 7% of IT pros across the UK saying their organisation have not migrated any infrastructure to the cloud. However, despite its popularity, it’s become clear cloud adoption isn’t suitable for all workloads and, even if it were, 65% of organisations state that it’s unlikely that all of their infrastructure will ever be migrated to the cloud. Thus the market has developed and created a new trend – hybrid IT.
The evolution of hybrid IT
An annual IT trends report from SolarWinds, which surveyed UK IT practitioners, managers and directors, highlighted this new trend and found the vast majority of businesses have shifted away from on-premises infrastructure to hybrid IT environments.
Hybrid IT is where businesses migrate some infrastructure services to the cloud, while continuing to maintain some critical IT services onsite. Hybrid IT is benefiting businesses by reducing the cost, while increasing the agility and scalability of infrastructure, and relieving internal IT personnel of some day-to-day responsibilities.
However, it has also put the IT pros implementing hybrid IT under a lot of pressure. Now they are faced with a dual mandate: increase efficiency through cloud services while also ensuring critical systems, databases and applications are secure, lean, and agile. This is a huge challenge and many IT pros simply don’t have the skillset to cope with such a huge task that includes a constantly moving target with continuous integration and continuous delivery. It’s therefore imperative that businesses provide sufficient resources to support the IT team, and encourage IT pros to gain the skills and tools required to properly manage hybrid IT environments.
Addressing IT pros’ concerns
Despite a vital need for new skills, tools and resources, less than half of IT pros (48%) feel they have the support needed from leadership, and the organisation as a whole, to develop or improve the skills needed to better manage hybrid IT environments. Nearly three quarters (72%) also feel further disadvantaged as they are uncertain whether their IT organisation currently has adequate resources to manage a hybrid IT environment.
Here are a few suggestions and tips IT pros should take advantage of which could help enhance their skillset for managing a hybrid IT environment:
Think about DevOps – IT pros would benefit from leveraging the principles of DevOps when managing a hybrid IT environment. This would help to achieve faster choices, greater agility and organisational efficiency. IT pros will then be able to update and make any necessary changes to infrastructure, making IT services, whether on-premises or in the cloud, more agile, lean and scalable.
Management and monitoring toolsets – Leverage a management and monitoring toolset which can quickly surface a single point of truth across all the relevant platforms is hugely beneficial when working with both on-premises and cloud resources. This will create a more efficient process to remediation, troubleshooting and optimising, thanks to the normalisation of key performance metrics, alerts and other collected data from applications and workloads, regardless of their location or service provider.
Educate yourself – As more IT services become available from vendors, IT pros must improve upon the following: being business savvy for contract negotiation, having technical expertise to understand and use the available cloud services and project management. These will all require the ability to effectively manage project budgets, workflows and deadlines; dissect terms and conditions; and understand service-level agreements.
A syllabus for IT pros – In order to be successful in the hybrid IT world, IT pros need to have a versatile portfolio of skills. Areas which need to be focused on are: service-oriented architectures, automation, vendor management, application migration, distributed architectures, API and hybrid IT monitoring and management tools and metrics.
Monitoring as a discipline is a necessity – Monitoring as a discipline needs to be viewed as a core IT function. Once established in practice, businesses will begin to reap the rewards of streamlining infrastructure and application performance, cost and security which will all feed into a successful IT management strategy.
Kong Yang, Head Geek at SolarWinds
Platform9 launches OpenStack channel partner program
Platform9 has launched a new channel partner program designed for resellers who are focused on deploying enterprise-ready OpenStack private clouds for their customers.
The Platform9 proposition, delivers OpenStack private clouds as a SaaS-based managed service, is built on the continuing wave of OpenStack enthusiasm from enterprise-scale organizations. The team claim to be able to deliver the benefits of public cloud through opensource technologies, without the vendor lock-in and “VMware or AWS” tax.
At the OpenStack Summit last month numerous organizations outlined their commitment to the technology, including Wal-Mart, AT&T, SAP and Wells Fargo, and the OpenStack Foundation also claimed more than 50% of the Fortune 100 is now using an OpenStack platform.
“Our new channel program helps our partners capitalize on the significant business opportunity surrounding customers’ cloud transformation needs. Platform9’s unique SaaS-based OpenStack solution enables partners to deliver immediate value to their customers while enhancing their status as a private cloud ‘trusted advisor,’” said Adam Ulfers, Platform9 VP of Sales. “Most importantly, we can help increase our partners’ share of cloud spending by extending their solutions and services as they build out their customers’ data centre ecosystems.”
Last month, the team also announced a number of updates to its OpenStack-as-a-Service proposition, aimed at increasing the ‘readiness’ of the platform for enterprise organizations. As part of updates, Platform9 included a SAML integration with Okta to provide SSO integration across groups of users and internal organizations, a zero-touch upgrade to OpenStack Liberty and a trial version of Platform9 Managed OpenStack which is available on a USB stick.
The Platform9 Channel Partner Program enables its resellers to implement an on-premises private cloud, which the company claims offers the same self-service provisioning and open APIs as a public cloud proposition. The program also offers resellers a number of sales leads, joint marketing and demand generation campaigns, for resellers who take part.
“With growing concerns about runaway costs and data lock-in with the public cloud, many customers are pursuing hybrid cloud strategy, with IT as internal service providers,” said Alvin Chu, Senior Director, Cloud Practice, FusionStorm, one of Platform9’s resellers. “With Platform9’s private-cloud-as-a-service, we can transform our customers’ existing data centre resources into flexible, enterprise-grade private cloud infrastructure in just minutes – all backed by an operational SLA. Platform9 accelerates the time to value for our customers and for our business as well.”
How Santander embraced cloud storage for greater productivity and data security
(c)iStock.com/tupungato
If you were to think of an industry that would be naturally reluctant to embrace technologies such as cloud and mobility for reasons of sensitive data privacy, which one would you think of first? The two most common answers are usually healthcare and banking – so it is therefore interesting to note how Santander has gone all in on enterprise file sync and share (EFSS) with cloud storage provider CTERA Networks.
According to the bank, the opportunity to move organisational capabilities to the cloud arose as far back as 2011 to increase productivity – yet there was a huge task to be undertaken in terms of finding a solution that would pass all of Santander’s security tests. This is perhaps not unreasonable, but the proposed EFSS solution would need to prove ‘dramatically’ more cost effective, hardware-agnostic, and have high security standards when deployed in Santander data centres, including multi-user encryption keys, data redundancy, and file versioning. The deployment has been made across more than 60,000 employees across Spain and Latin America.
The benefits, according to Pablo Ruiz Correa, head of open innovation at Santander, are tangible. “We realised the need to provide a solution for simple, anytime anywhere file access and collaboration, but we also needed to meet requirements for total data privacy and security,” he explained, adding: “CTERA has allowed us to transform how users sync, collaborate on and protect their files without requiring any of the security compromises that are common to public cloud SaaS offerings.”
For CTERA, it represents an impressive customer story, and one which fits into their enterprise-secure cloud storage philosophy. Research carried out by the vendor in September last year found that more than three quarters of survey respondents were at least somewhat concerned about consumer-grade file sync and share solutions. The company’s view has been consistent; even though the likes of Dropbox and Box – which is traditionally an enterprise player anyway – have been beefing up their security, it still is not enough against vendors who know the B2B game inside out, a view shared by fellow enterprise storage firm Egnyte.
Speaking to CloudTech in July last year Rani Osnat, CTERA VP strategic marketing, explained: “When you talk to larger enterprises, especially the ones that are in regulated industries like banking or insurance, or healthcare, they definitely have a strong preference for private cloud solutions. They have the know-how, and they have strict security and compliance requirements that are not entirely satisfied by solutions that utilise a public cloud infrastructure.”
An interesting comparison as to how banks are moving forward with technology was evinced by Spain’s leader, CaixaBank. Pere Nebot, the bank’s CIO, told delegates at this year’s Mobile World Congress that by now 80% of all contracts signed are digital, with only 8% of transactions now undertaken in a physical branch.
It is clearly a case of keeping up with the Joneses, and banks would do well not to be left behind. “Santander is now not only more productive and agile, but we’ve managed to increase our data security, control and cost savings in our journey to the cloud,” added Correa.
You can find the full case study here.
Infoblox bolsters off-premise security capabilities
Infoblox has released its DNS Firewall as a service, extending its services to roaming devices off-premise, which will be available towards the end of 2016.
The new service will offer protection to customers roaming outside the corporate perimeter, as well as within, by offering a single pane of glass for protection from malware and cyberattacks. The cloud-service works through providing actionable network intelligence to customers to strengthen their operational and security postures. It also delivers unified reporting and single-policy configuration, which Infoblox claims are capabilities not available through purely cloud-based DNS services.
“Enterprise networks do not have the luxury of being walled gardens any more, not with employees bringing their own devices and accessing data from everywhere,” said Scott Fulton, EVP of Products at Infoblox. “Infoblox DNS Firewall as a service helps our customers by providing the same industry leading protection for on- and off-premise devices, helping organisations to build enterprise networks that are more available, secure, and smart.”
The offerings capitalize on the threat intelligence technology which Infoblox acquired through buying IID in February 2016. IID was acquired for approximately $45 million as a means for Infoblox to increase its threat detection capabilities, as a means to differentiate Infoblox from other DDI vendors.
IID’s cloud-based platform for threat intelligence federation allows customers to share threat intelligence, which has been highlighted as another potential growth area for Infoblox, though this is a competitive marketplace already. Companies such as iSight already have a healthy presence in the threat intelligence market segment, though Infoblox does have a number of partnerships with these vendors, inherited through recent acquisitions, which the team does not expect to change moving forward.
mod_nss: Instalación y configuración
En algunas algunas distribuciones nos podemos encontrar que mod_ssl no soporta TLS 1.2, pero en cambio sí podremos instalar mod_nss que sí lo soporta. Vamos a ver como usar mod_nss
Primero deberemos cargarlo y definir algunas variables globales, por ejemplo en /etc/httpd/conf.d/nss.conf:
LoadModule nss_module modules/libmodnss.so AddType application/x-x509-ca-cert .crt AddType application/x-pkcs7-crl .crl NSSPassPhraseDialog builtin NSSPassPhraseHelper /usr/libexec/nss_pcache NSSSessionCacheSize 10000 NSSSessionCacheTimeout 100 NSSSession3CacheTimeout 86400 NSSRandomSeed startup builtin NSSRenegotiation off NSSRequireSafeNegotiation off NSSCipherSuite +rsa_rc4_128_md5,+rsa_rc4_128_sha,+rsa_3des_sha,-rsa_des_sha,-rsa_rc4_40_md5,-rsa_rc2_40_md5,-rsa_null_md5,-rsa_null_sha,+fips_3des_sha,-fips_des_sha,-fortezza,-fortezza_rc4_128_sha,-fortezza_null,-rsa_des_56_sha,-rsa_rc4_56_sha,+rsa_aes_128_sha,+rsa_aes_256_sha NSSProtocol TLSv1.0,TLSv1.1,TLSv1.2
A continuación mediante certutil crearemos la base de datos que contendrá los certificados:
echo "ejemplopassword" > /etc/httpd/alias/pwdfile.txt echo "internal:ejemplopassword" > /etc/httpd/alias/pin.txt certutil -N -d /etc/httpd/alias -f /etc/httpd/alias/pwdfile.txt
Para el caso de CentOS, al instalar mod_nss se generará una base de datos con certificados autofirmados de ejemplo en /etc/httpd/alias
Mediante certutil deberemos generar la clave privada y el CSR que necesitamos para firmar el certificado, por ejemplo:
# certutil -R -s 'CN=systemadmin.es, O=systemadmin, OU=modnss, L=Barcelona, ST=Barcelona, C=RC' -o /etc/httpd/ssl/systemadmin.csr -a -g 2048 -d /etc/httpd/alias -f /etc/httpd/alias/pwdfile.txt
Podemos ver la clave privada generada mediante certutil -K:
# certutil -K -d /etc/httpd/alias/ certutil: Checking token "NSS Certificate DB" in slot "NSS User Private Key and Certificate Services" < 0> rsa 37d35426e3a54d45c360be5727cc0f93be4dbeb4 NSS Certificate DB:alpha < 1> rsa c2fb4ee7ebeedc5a8f0c0cb8d6d2d51581b9ef57 NSS Certificate DB:cacert < 2> rsa 6c18f8803eb18ad6ad1930c3b4650eb3e8dc5b72 NSS Certificate DB:Server-Cert < 3> rsa 67c0de3a88a738ffaaf3508d370b528b7976ab0e NSS Certificate DB:sudosueu < 4> rsa 7b7276980ef037e4b6b37652a95e16376ea95e29 SelfSignedSP < 5> rsa da7524dee9662362db91ff0b95e77c078e2c4ed5 (orphan)
Una vez la entidad certificadora nos devuelva el certificado firmado, deberemos importar primero el certificado intermedio, si existe. Por ejemplo, para importar el certificado presente en /etc/httpd/ssl/systemadmin_intermediate.crt a la clave GeoTrustGlobalCA haríamos:
# certutil -A -n 'geotrust' -t 'CT,,' -d /etc/httpd/alias -f /etc/httpd/alias/pwdfile.txt -a -i /etc/httpd/ssl/systemadmin_intermediate.crt
Finalmente, importaremos el certificado firmado mediante el siguiente comando. En este caso suponemos que el certificado esta en /etc/httpd/ssl/systemadmin_cert.crt y lo queremos importar con la clave systemadmin:
# certutil -A -n 'systemadmin' -t 'P,,' -d /etc/httpd/alias -f /etc/httpd/alias/pwdfile.txt -a -i /etc/httpd/ssl/systemadmin_cert.crt
Podemos verificar la cadena mediante certutil -O:
# certutil -O -n systemadmin -d . "GeoTrustGlobalCA" [CN=GeoTrust DV SSL CA - G3,OU=Domain Validated SSL,O=GeoTrust Inc.,C=US] "systemadmin" [CN=www.systemadmin.es]
Si volvemos a listar las claves privadas veremos que ya no se encuentra huérfana:
# certutil -K -d . certutil: Checking token "NSS Certificate DB" in slot "NSS User Private Key and Certificate Services" < 0> rsa 37d35426e3a54d45c360be5727cc0f93be4dbeb4 NSS Certificate DB:alpha < 1> rsa c2fb4ee7ebeedc5a8f0c0cb8d6d2d51581b9ef57 NSS Certificate DB:cacert < 2> rsa 6c18f8803eb18ad6ad1930c3b4650eb3e8dc5b72 NSS Certificate DB:Server-Cert < 3> rsa 67c0de3a88a738ffaaf3508d370b528b7976ab0e NSS Certificate DB:sudosueu < 4> rsa 7b7276980ef037e4b6b37652a95e16376ea95e29 SelfSignedSP < 5> rsa da7524dee9662362db91ff0b95e77c078e2c4ed5 systemadmin
Para habilitar el virtualhost SSL con mod_nss, deberemos añadir las siguientes opciones:
<VirtualHost *:443> (...) NSSEngine on NSSCipherSuite +rsa_rc4_128_md5,+rsa_rc4_128_sha,+rsa_3des_sha,-rsa_des_sha,-rsa_rc4_40_md5,-rsa_rc2_40_md5,-rsa_null_md5,-rsa_null_sha,+fips_3des_sha,-fips_des_sha,-fortezza,-fortezza_rc4_128_sha,-fortezza_null,-rsa_des_56_sha,-rsa_rc4_56_sha,+rsa_aes_128_sha,+rsa_aes_256_sha NSSProtocol TLSv1.0,TLSv1.1,TLSv1.2 NSSNickname systemadmin NSSCertificateDatabase /etc/httpd/alias (...) </VirtualHost>
Simplemente deberemos indicar la clave del certificado a usar mediante NSSNickname, en el caso de ejemplo sería systemadmin.
Tags: Apache
London’s Virtus Data Centres doubles annual revenues
London based Virtus Data Centres has announced it has doubled its revenues over the last twelve months, though the team haven’t released any specific numbers to substantiate the claim.
The company has recorded a healthy number of new customers throughout the period, including T-Systems which runs its private and public cloud operations from the London2 location in Hayes, as part of a five year transition project to close its private data centre in Feltham. Virtus has 40MW of capacity across its three locations, having acquired the London4 site in Slough during the latter stages of 2015 from Infinity SDC.
“Our aim is to combine cutting edge design and technology with transparent and agile commercials to offer the very best tailored solutions and service for our customers,” said Neil Cresswell, CEO at Virtus Data Centres. “This unique approach to data centre service delivery is the reason we see continued growth across all business lines with the likes of T-Systems and Symantec collocating in our leading facilities. It’s been a fantastic start to the year, and one which we seek to improve upon.”
The company, which has been in operation since 2008, offers traditional retail and wholesale colocation models, through three locations in the London area (Enfield, Hays and Slough) will a fourth set to open early next year. Virtus also boasts to have the highest total colocation MW sales of any operator in the London market throughout 2015, according to findings from CBRE, and is only one of four data centre operators in London to have been awarded Tier III design certification from the Uptime Institute. Virtus has also been expanding its credentials and capabilities in recent months, achieving supplier status with the Crown Commercial Service as part of the G-Cloud 7 initiative.
Recent expansion initiatives have been driven through investment from ST Telemedia, which was announced last year in June. As part of the agreement, ST Telemedia will make what it claims is a ‘significant investment’ into Virtus committing to a 49% via a Joint Venture with Virtus’ existing owner Brockton Capital. ST Telemedia has a healthy track record when it comes to data centre companies having launched i-STT in 2000 which was later merged into Equinix (it has now divested), as well as investments in Level 3 Communications and GDS Services.
Why savvy digital visionaries see beyond the nearby clouds
(c)iStock.com/oztasbc
While the decisive CEOs have a digital transformation agenda, those companies executing plans to re-imagine their business models are in the minority. And yet, the early adopters now using cloud computing are enabled to respond quickly to changing market conditions. In contrast, the laggards are undecided and risk falling further behind.
This is a global phenomena, where the industry and local market leaders are able to enact their transition with limited interference or threats from more traditional competitors. Just consider the current status-quo within the United Kingdom, as an example.
The transformation of UK businesses is still relatively immature. Many organisations are aware of the potential of open hybrid cloud adoption, but they fail to actively address the technical debt that defines their legacy IT environment. Besides, they tend to narrowly focus on a small snapshot of the bigger picture.
While some British leaders have progressive transformational goals under consideration, much more work is needed if they are to reach their full digital potential. This is the key finding from the latest market study by the UK-based Cloud Industry Forum (CIF).
Their study was conducted in the fourth quarter of 2015. They polled 250 senior IT and business decision-makers from both the public and private sectors. What they uncovered was not encouraging: just 16% of organisations have a digital transformation strategy in place. However in two years, 72% of those polled say they will be better prepared. What are they waiting for, before they act? Perhaps they need a little guidance to show them the way forward.
Maybe they seek someone who can describe how to distinguish between the herd of unimaginative me-too cloud service providers, and thereby offer an alternative point of view – one that can demonstrate they’ve navigated boldly across a complex and disruptive digital business transformation landscape.
“Cloud computing is the agent of digital disruption, and we can see that there are significant benefits to be had by businesses that pursue both digital transformation and cloud computing strategies in tandem, ” stated Alex Hilton, CEO of CIF.
Hilton believes that cloud computing and digital transformation go hand in hand. In fact, 85% of UK businesses with a digital transformation plan have already benefited from a tangible competitive advantage.
Cloud services form the foundation of digital transformation and can facilitate rapid business change. That is apparent, it’s also clear from their research that transformation strategies serve to enhance the effectiveness and benefits of cloud computing implementations.
That’s why the more progressive organisations have focused on developing multifaceted talent – beyond basic technical-centricity. The notion of engaging a Digital Polymath is compelling. Harnessing the wisdom of a worldly open-minded individual that acknowledges the near-term challenges and opportunities, yet also has the vision to be able to anticipate the broader future.
Other key findings from the study include:
- 13% of organisations that have implemented, or planning on implementing a digital transformation strategy, say that cloud is critical to it, and a further 80% say that cloud is important.
- Implementing a digital transformation strategy benefits cloud users, and those that have are statistically more likely to report experiencing greater benefits from their cloud deployments.
- 38% of cloud users with a digital transformation strategy say that cloud has given their organisations a significant competitive advantage. This figure is higher than the number that do not have a digital transformation strategy reporting the same (5%).
- The cost savings of cloud users also increases if the organisation has implemented a digital transformation strategy (26% average saving) compared to those who have not (9% average saving).
- The CIO is the most likely to be the driving force behind digital transformation, and by some margin at 60%. The next most likely is the CEO in 18% of cases.
- 59% of organisations that currently have, or are in the process of implementing, a digital transformation strategy say it will steer the use of technology over the next decade.
- 43% of survey respondents report that the intention is to achieve better use of data and analytics, and 30% report it is to improve innovation abilities.
The UK market study results are somewhat consistent with the findings of similar surveys of business leaders in the North America region. Striving to merely reach parity with the more progressive market leaders in your industry is likely a blueprint for a myopic plan of action. When you eventually arrive at that destination, you discover that the goal posts have already moved.
The alternative perspective – think ahead; imagine what’s next; define that future state; design a distinctive digital agenda that’s very difficult for competitors to simply replicate; execute in the now.