In today’s data-driven world, is your business prepared for the constantly changing flood of structured and unstructured data?
According to the 2015 Economist Study sponsored by Hitachi Data Systems (HDS), “Preparing for next-generation cloud: Lessons learned and insights shared,” 70 percent of participant organizations use private clouds for file storage, archive, big data repository, collaboration and productivity.
A Year Ahead: Cloud Battle, Data Walls By @Bob_Muglia | @CloudExpo #Cloud
Last year, I made some predictions about how the cloud and data would change the technology landscape. This included the now clear rise of SQL, the consolidation of cloud application vendors, the end of the war between the public and private cloud, and the growth of analytics fueled by machine data.
As we close 2015 and look ahead, what might be in store for 2016? I’ve again provided a few of my own predictions. As always, what actually happens will be even more exciting.
Oracle cloud sales boom but at what price?
However Oracle’s co-chief executive Safra Catz warned fiscal 2016 will be “a trough year for profitability as we move to the cloud.”
Oracle’s total revenues were down by 6% to $9.0 billion with the sales of ‘cloud plus on-premise software’ down 4% to $7.0 billion. Meanwhile, total cloud revenue has gone up in the last quarter by 26% (in US dollars) and Oracle made $649 million on pure cloud software. The two most successful categories of cloud software for Oracle have been SaaS and PaaS which accounted for $484 million, a rise of 34%. Cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS) revenue was $165 million, a rise of 7%.
Expect the SaaS and PaaS revenue to grow by 50% in Q3 and 60% in Q4, said Catz. According to Oracle it won 100 Fusion Human Capital Management system contracts and over 300 Fusion Enterprise resource planning deals in the last quarter. Oracle said it is on target to sell and book more than $1.5 billion of new SaaS and PaaS business this fiscal year.
“We now have more than 1,500 ERP customers in the cloud, that’s at least ten times more ERP customers than Workday,” said Oracle’s other joint CEO, Mark Hurd. “It was a very strong growth quarter for our cloud business, with SaaS and PaaS bookings up 75% in constant currency and billings up 68% in U.S. dollars.”
Not everyone in Wall Street is convinced however. “While the company is showing some signs of cloud success, the meat and potatoes legacy database and app business is under major secular pressure,” FBR Capital Markets analyst Daniel Ives told MarketWatch.
Oracle’s Board of Directors declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.15 per share of outstanding common stock.
Cloud is growing up: from cost saving to competitive advantage
The last decade witnessed one of, if not the most transformational waves of technological change ever to break on the shores of IT – cloud computing. Companies vied to position as the key holders to the cloud universe, and customers too, competed for the honor of being first to market in terms of their use and migration to the various cloud models.
The first phase of cloud was characterised by migration of business to the cloud. This phase is still happening, with many companies of all shapes and sizes at varying stages along the migration path.
The initial catalyst for cloud adoption was, broadly speaking, cost and efficiency based. Amidst times of global economic fluctuations and downturn during the ‘mid-noughties’ the cloud model of IT promised considerable IT efficiencies and thus, cost savings. For the early migrators however, cloud has moved beyond simple cost efficiencies to the next phase of maturity: competitive advantage.
IDC reported earlier in the year that 80% of cloud applications in the future will be data-intensive; therefore, industry know-how and data are the true benefits of the cloud.
The brokerage of valuable data, (be it a clients’ own proprietary information about inventory or customer behavior, or wider industry data), and the delivery of this critical information as a service is where the competitive advantage can be truly found – it’s almost now a case of ‘Innovation as a Service’.
The changing modus operandi of cloud has largely been driven by the increasing, types, variety and volumes of streams of data businesses now require to stay competitive, and now the roll out of cognitive and analytics capabilities within cloud environments are as important to achieving business goals and competitive advantage, as the actual cloud structure itself.
There’s almost no better example of this, than the symbiotic relationship between Weather.com and its use of the cloud. For a company like Weather.com the need to extract maximum value from global weather data, was paramount to producing accurate forecasting pictures, but also by using advanced analytics, the management of its data globally.
Through IoT deployments and cloud computing Weather.com collects data from more than 100,000 weather sensors, aircraft and drones, millions of Smartphones, buildings and even moving vehicles. The forecasting system itself ingests and processes data from thousands of sources, resulting in approximately 2.2 billion unique forecast points worldwide, geared to deliver over 26 billion forecasts a day.
By integrating real-time weather insights, Weather.com has been able to improve operational performance and decision-making. However, by shifting its (hugely data-intensive), services to the cloud and integrating it with advance analytics, it was not only able to deliver billions of highly accurate forecasts, it was also able to derive added value from this previously unavailable resource, and creating new value ad services and revenue streams.
Another great example is Shop Direct: as one of the UK’s largest online retailers, delivering more than 48 million products a year and welcoming over a million daily visitors across a variety of online and mobile platforms, the move to a hybrid cloud model increased flexibility and meant it was able to more quickly respond to changes in demand as it continues to grow.
With a number of digital department stores including £800m flagship brand, Very.co.uk, the cloud underpins the a variety of analytics, mobile, social and security offerings that enable Shop Direct to improve its customers’ online shopping experience while empowering its workforce to collaborate more easily too.
Smart use of cloud has allowed Shop Direct to continue building a preeminent position in the digital and mobile world, and it has been able to innovate and be being better prepared to tackle challenges such as high site traffic around the Black Friday and the Christmas period.
In the non-conformist, shifting and disruptive landscape of today’s businesses, innovation is the only surety of maintaining a preeminent position and setting a company apart from its competitors – as such, the place of the cloud as the market place for this innovation is insured.
Developments in big data, analytics and IoT highlight the pivotal importance of cloud environments as enablers of innovation, while cognitive capabilities like Watson (in conjunction with analytics engines), add informed intelligence to business processes, applications and customer touch points along every step of the business journey.
While many companies recognise that migration to the cloud is now a necessity, it is more important to be aware that the true, long-term business value can only be derived from what you actually operate in the cloud, and this is the true challenge for businesses and their IT departments as we look towards 2016 and beyond.
Written by Sebastian Krause, VP IBM Cloud Europe
Cisco to create 200 new cloud jobs at Cisco Meraki UK
Cisco has announced plans to create 200 new UK jobs for cloud professionals with an investment of $2.5m in the UK-based Startupbootcamp accelerator.
The news came as Cisco entertained Sajid Javid the UK’s Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills at its new City of London HQ in Finsbury Square. Javid met with Cisco’s UK CEO Phil Smith to discuss the digitisation of the economy and Cisco’s role in catalysing this process in the UK.
In July Cisco announced it would invest $1 billion in the UK over the next three to five years. In November in announced its intention to buy London-based conferencing company Acano for £470m ($700 million) and Portcullis for an undisclosed figure.
The 200 new UK jobs will be at Cisco Meraki, a cloud controlled wifi, routing and security specialist arm which Cisco plans to grow three-fold by early 2017. Meraki is expected to grow in response to booming demand for solutions to the problems created by the BYOD trend in enterprises.
In a separate initiative Cisco is investing in Startupbootcamp, a startup accelerator that aims to nurture new digital talent. Cisco runs different technology themes in programmes across eight sites in Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Copenhagen, Eindhoven, Israel, Istanbul and London. Startupbootcamp claims that 80% of its alumni are still trading and have attracted an average investment of £400,000 each.
Cisco already runs an incubator, IDEALondon, in association with University College London (UCL) and DC Thomson. Last week as IDEALondon celebrated its second anniversary it announced it has secured £10 million in external funding and earned £2 million in revenue, creating 100 jobs. Cisco customers now have 50 pilot projects using technology from IDEALondon startups. The pilot projects help refine the systems and give Cisco customers access to new options that otherwise wouldn’t be available, it claims.
“There are still huge opportunities to improve productivity with digital technology,” said Cisco’s UK CEO Phil Smith.
“Two hundred new high value jobs is fantastic news,” said Javid. “Britain is the place to do business.”
Racemi Speeds Server Migrations to Virtually Any Cloud Platform | @CloudExpo #Cloud
Racemi continues to make server migrations to cloud faster and easier with more and more advanced capabilities.
Cloud Foundry launches PaaS certification to combat vendor lock-in
Trade body the Cloud Foundry Foundation, has announced the industry’s first certification programme for platform as a service (PaaS) offerings as part of its drive to standardise the PaaS sector of cloud computing.
Cloud Foundry Certification aims to ensure all certified products use the same core Cloud Foundry software. Certification will be awarded to products and services that meet strict technical requirements outlined by the foundation’s technical governing body, it claims. Products called “Cloud Foundry” can only use that designation after meeting Cloud Foundry Certification standards. Products must re-certify every year.
The goal is to make applications work across any PaaS in a multi-vendor, multi-cloud environment. The first products to be tested for certification will be CenturyLink’s AppFog, HPE Helion Cloud Foundry, Huawei FusionStage, IBM Bluemix, Pivotal Cloud Foundry, SAP HANA Cloud Platform and Swisscom Application Cloud.
The standard is necessary because the first generation of cloud computing companies saved time and money by tying themselves to a single cloud provider such as Amazon or Google, according to Cloud Foundry CEO Sam Ramji. As the second generation of companies begins businesses want long term commitment and need an industry standard in order to regain control of their applications.
“Now that companies are regularly building new applications on their platforms they want broad standardisation across vendors,” said ESG Analyst Stephen Hendrick. Gartner research reports the PaaS market crossed the $4 billion mark this year and Wikibon Research predicts it will grow to $68.3 billion by 2026.
IDC predicts that by 2016, there will be an 11% shift In IT spending, with money being moved from traditional in-house IT delivery to the cloud and by 2017, 35% of new applications will use cloud-based as faster DevOps life cycles to streamline app production.
Cloud Foundry is collectively developed by 55 member companies in banking, telecoms, heavy industry, management consulting and large-scale computing vendors such as Pivotal, IBM, SAP, HPE, Intel, EMC, VMware, Cisco.
The platform is portable across Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, OpenStack and a range of data centre infrastructure.
‘The Connected Person’: IoT, Big Data, and the Cloud
(Image Credit: iStockPhoto/DragonImages)
Today, cloud-based services typically offer corporate and small, medium enterprise customers a cost-effective and dynamic avenue to large-scale computing, with services offering infrastructure, operating systems and software. The inclusion of the developing concept of Internet of Things (IoT) will be able to provide additional information to these customers for their processing of Big Data from multiple sources such as from devices, sensor networks and social media channels. “Edge” or “fog” computing refers to capabilities being handled on the device end for improved performance. (“Edge” refers to the edge of the device and the cloud.) Proprietary variations on the concept of the IoT already produce new insights for end-users.
In the relatively near future, a standards- and cloud-enabled IoT for service providers will likely also serve “the connected person.” This is already happening to some degree via apps on mobile devices. The personalized cloud for individuals will be populated by devices, software and data that ultimately bring the world to one’s digital doorstep.
This will provide a means to access, monitor and to some extent control one’s digital world, from the home area network to the larger world. Cloud-enabled IoT and associated Big Data processing has implications for healthcare, education, transportation, personal finance – all the industry verticals served today by the Internet. In this vision, cloud-based hardware in conjunction with cloud-based software will capture, share, route, process and visualize information.
3D printing is a good use case to illustrate this point. Information might be drawn from data and software in the cloud and transmitted to a physical machine to create an object. Another use case is wearable medical devices that connect through the cloud to monitoring software for access by medical personnel. This information may be correlated with datasets created from various Big Data sources, e.g., genomic data, clinical drug studies, epidemiological histories. But the concept applies to people obtaining services from nearly any industry vertical, e.g., finance, retail, transportation, education, entertainment. Several IEEE societies are working on various elements of these efforts, perhaps most notably the IEEE Computing Society’s Cloud Computing Initiative, the IEEE IoT Initiative, and the IEEE Big Data Initiative.
The single most important foundation needed to achieve this vision is the development of pertinent standards. In fact, several efforts are already underway by the IEEE Standards Association (IEEE-SA). This is an open, transparent, collaborative effort that requires the broadest possible participation for the best results. If you are involved in cloud- , IoT- or Big Data-related technology, participation in the standards development process provides an opportunity to shape that standard and see more clearly the future direction of a standard and the technology it enables.
In the big picture, standards ensure interoperability, which grows markets, producing economies of scale. Economies of scale bring down costs and, thus, prices, leading to further market growth.
Work on IEEE Project P2301 – Guide for Cloud Portability and Interoperability Profiles (CPIP) is ongoing as you read this blog. The purpose of this guide is to assist cloud computing vendors and users in developing, building and using standards-based cloud computing products and services, which should lead to increased portability and interoperability, and growth in the cloud computing adoption rate.
IEEE Project P2302 – Standard for Intercloud Interoperability and Federation (SIIF) is now underway. This standard creates an economy amongst cloud providers that is transparent to users and applications, which provides for a dynamic infrastructure that can support evolving business models. Users will benefit from the freedom to being able to more easily distribute resources and applications among different cloud providers.
IEEE Project P2303 – Standard for Adaptive Management of Cloud Computing Environments was approved in 2015. Because of the dynamic nature of cloud resources to be provided to customers, the traditional monolithic nature of management systems is no longer appropriate. Instead for cloud services, it is important to have a management structure that is modular and can be adapted to specific dynamic cloud configurations desired by customers. The working group has scheduled its kickoff meeting Dec 18 which will be led by its working leader Joel Fleck.
IEEE Project P2413 – Standard for an Architectural Framework for the Internet of Things (IoT) represents another important effort in this area. The architectural framework defined in this standard will promote cross-domain interaction, aid system interoperability and functional compatibility, and further fuel the growth of the IoT market. The adoption of a unified approach to the development of IoT systems will reduce industry fragmentation and create a critical mass of multi-stakeholder activities around the world.
Security- and privacy-related standards requirements are being developed under the Quadruple Trust Sub-Working Group of P2413. Quadruple Trust refers to security, privacy, protection, and safety.
Challenges of integration and scale remain unplumbed in this developing scenario. How disparate technologies will converge, what integration issues remain unforeseen and the behavior of such wide-ranging, global networks at scale will need to be understood.
The concept of IoT and Big Data processing enabled by cloud technology is an exciting challenge for technologists and it offers myriad business opportunities. But we cannot lose sight of the fact that the IEEE’s over 400,000 members worldwide pursue a mission to develop “technology for the benefit of humanity.” These technologies should not create greater disparities in the existing digital divide between the haves and the have-nots. Indeed, there are benefits to the developing world. Sensors can provide information on rainfall, soil characteristics for farming. Market information and current and historical prices can also be provided for selling of products.
The expected growth in cloud-based IoT has implications for energy consumption and environmental sustainability, as the innocuous-sounding “cloud” is really made possible by massive, energy-dependent server farms. That’s why IEEE is simultaneously tackling “Green ICT,” which seeks ways to achieve highly efficient computing and integrate renewable energy sources to power the cloud.
(Article features contributions from Sri Chandrasekaran, Director Standards and Technology, IEEE India)
Do you think IEEE’s standards will be vital in achieving the “Connected Person”? Share your thoughts in the comments.
Future Ready in the API Economy By @Kevin_Jackson | @CloudExpo #Cloud
The world of business is software. No matter the industry vertical or business model, effective software is the key to business success. An even more important aspect of this reality is the application programming interface (API). If you are unfamiliar with this kind of geeky term, APIs are the glue that connects applications to each other and manages the virtual discussions between you and your customers. APIs are also what enables business agility and flexibility of a #FutureReady business
Evolve IP Added to Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider Program | @CloudExpo #Cloud
Evolve IP has announced its participation in the Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider Program. The program enables Evolve IP to offer an integrated suite of Microsoft cloud services including: Office 365, Hosted Exchange, Skype for Business, Windows Intune and more. In addition to integrating the offerings into Evolve IP’s award-winning cloud platform, Evolve IP will directly provision, manage and support the products and services.
“Our cloud architecture and internal technical capabilities help make Evolve IP uniquely qualified to offer an integrated suite of Microsoft cloud services,” said Scott Kinka, Chief Technical and Product Officer and Founding Partner of Evolve IP. “Our market surveys show that customers are very comfortable working in Microsoft products and are not looking to change. Accordingly, they need a cloud provider with a unified services strategy who can deliver, manage and integrate them seamlessly along with services like enterprise voice and hosted call centers. Our inclusion in Microsoft’s cloud partner program gives us that capability.”