Archivo de la categoría: Enterprise IT

EMC, Enterprise IT, EY, News & Analysis, partnership

EY and EMC announce strategic technology partnership

Red Hat and Fujitsu are partnering to develop OpenStack converged infrastructure solutions

EY and EMC have announced a formal strategic partnership over business technology services, building on a long-standing relationship between the two firms.

The partnership will offer a number of different services to clients ranging from enterprise mobility management, hybrid cloud enablement, governance risk & compliance and cyber security.

“Working together as an integrated team, combining advisory services and innovative products, we will be able to connect on both existing and future initiatives to help our clients maximize their technology investments and drive better  business outcomes,” said Mark Weinberger, Chairman and CEO at EY. “The alliance will further expand EY’s digital capabilities and range of services offered to clients.”

Addressing growing trends in the industry, security will form one of the central pillars of the partnership. One of the first offerings from the team is Isolated Recovery, an offering which protects company data from cyber-attacks. The team claim a combination of cyber, business impact analysis and resiliency services, will provide a more secure environment for company data.

The partnership will also include Identity Access Management Monitoring (IAM) for single sign on, which will utilize real-time monitoring technologies. Security monitoring is not something that enterprise organizations traditionally engage in, though it is a growing trend as organizations aim to reduce risk when moving through to a cloud environment.

The alliance builds on EMC’s trend of partnering with major technology players to deliver alternative solutions. Last month, EMC and VMware jointly launched a family of hyper-converged infrastructure appliances (HCIA) for VMware environments.

The VxRail appliance family combines EMC’s data services and systems management with VMware’s software such as vSphere and Virtual SAN.

Enterprise IT, Exponential-e, Microsoft Azure, News & Analysis, Rendering-as-a-Service

Exponential-e and Microsoft create Render-as-a-Service offering

Casa 3D progetto su carteExponential-e has announced that it will be working with Microsoft to deliver its new Render-as-a-Service offering.

The partnership, built through the Azure platform, will enable Exponential-e to deliver hybrid render services to a variety of industries that utilise 3D modelling. Potential customers highlighted by the team include manufacturing, architecture, medical providers and scientific research organizations.

“Due to steadily rising image resolutions, rendering is requiring more and more computing horsepower,” said Mukesh Bavisi, Managing Director at Exponential-e. “Also the limitations of power, space and cooling for in-house render farms means they are increasingly more expensive and complex to run.

“Exponential-e’s unique collaboration with Microsoft Azure solves the headache of restricted resource on maxed out internal render nodes.  It provides an on-demand, scalable solution that enables seamless hybrid integration of on premise resource privately connected to the raw compute power. The service is managed as one environment via a single self-service pane of glass.”

3D modelling has been growing healthily in recent years as the technology becomes more affordable and accurate. Analysts have estimated industry revenue will increase from $1.9 billion to $17 billion between 2015 and 2020. Current applications vary widely from the healthcare industry, foetal monitoring and ultrasound scans of pregnant women, to engineering, 3D computer aided design (CAD) programs, to 3D imaging in the entertainment industry.

While the software has become increasing accurate and detailed, the compute power required to run such programs on a consistent basis is also increasing. The success of Exponential-e’s product does rely on the demands of rendering becoming too much of a burden for organizations to run in-house, though it believes the market is heading that direction.

“Render-as-a-Service will alleviate the key pain point for businesses that utilise render processing across the globe,” said Bavisi. “Marrying our network with the Microsoft Azure cloud means greater rendering efficiencies than ever before, and provides us with the opportunity to take this solution to new sectors. By alleviating a key challenge in rendering, our customers can instead focus on driving innovation in an increasingly competitive landscape.”

The RaaS solution is currently in the beta testing stages, though visual effects (VFX) studio, Jellyfish Pictures is already utilising RaaS to flexibly scale resources on demand.

Deutsche Telekom, Enterprise IT, Huawei, News & Analysis, Public Cloud

Deutsche Telekom aims to increase European market share with Open Telekom Cloud launch

DTDeutsche Telekom has launched Open Telekom Cloud, a new public cloud platform with Huawei as the hardware and software solution provider, in an effort to increase its market share in the European public cloud segment.

The service will offer European enterprises on-demand, pay-as-you-go cloud services via an OpenStack-based Infrastructure-as-a-Service solution operated by T-Systems. The company ambition is to accelerate its position in the market segment, which is currently dominated by US players.

“We are adding a new, transformational cloud offering to our existing portfolio of cloud services,” said Deutsche Telekom CEO Tim Höttges at CeBIT in Hanover. “For our business customers in Europe this is an important new service to support their digitization, and a critical milestone for us in our ambition to be the leading provider of cloud services in Europe.”

“More and more customers are discovering the advantages of the public cloud. But they want a European alternative,” said Anette Bronder, Head of the T-Systems Digital Division. The move aims to capitalize on recent industry concerns over where data is being stored, as European customers are increasingly demanding that their data remain within the boundaries of the EU.

Located in Biere, Saxony-Anhalt, any data will be subject to German data protection policy, recognized as one of the most stringent globally. “Access to a scalable, inexpensive public cloud provided by a German service provider from a German data centre under German law will be very attractive to many customers in Germany” said Andreas Zilch, SVP at analyst firm Pierre Audoin Consultants. “The combination of a competitive service and German legal security represents a unique selling point right now.”

Deutsche Telekom and its subsidiary T-Systems have been offering cloud solutions since 2005. The data centre in Biere, and its twin in Madgeburg, hosts almost all of the company’s ecosystem partners, which includes the likes of Microsoft, SAP, Cisco, Salesforce, VMWare, Huawei, Oracle, SugarCRM, and Informatica.

The announcement also strengthens Huawei’s position in the European market, a long-term ambition for the Chinese tech giant. Huawei will provide hardware and software solutions, including servers, storage, networking and Cloud OS, while also the technical support for the public cloud services.

“The strategic partnership allows each party to fully play to their strengths, providing enterprises and the industry with various innovative public cloud services that are beyond those provided by over-the-top content players,” said Huawei Rotating CEO Eric Xu “At Huawei, we are confident that, with esteemed partners like Deutsche Telekom, we can turn Open Telekom Cloud into the standard of public cloud services for the industry at large.”

 

BPM, Enterprise IT, News & Analysis, Tibco

Tibco focuses on user experience with Spotfire update

cloud exchangeTibco software has released an update to its data analytics offering, Spotfire, focusing on improving user experience and increased collaboration.

The update offering focuses on enhancements to core visualisations, built-in data access and data preparation functions and simplified web-based administration tools.

“This release accelerates self-service productivity, enabling faster, more accurate insights that can be shared over a platform that scales on cloud or on-premises,” said Michael O’Connell, Chief Analytics Officer at Tibco. “Our goal is to enable users to simplify and reduce time to insight, while enabling actions through a unified Spotfire platform that does not rely on costly add-ons or extensions.”

Tibco also recently joined the Cloud Foundry Foundation, an industry standard platform for cloud applications. Using the company’s BusinessWorks Container Edition platform, Tibco will contribute to programs focused on portable cloud-native applications.

“At the Cloud Foundry Foundation, we are always looking for ways to enhance our platform so that it provides vendor-agnostic flexibility, scalability, and interoperability for cloud deployments to help enterprises develop cloud deployments that best suit their business needs,” said Sam Ramji, CEO of Cloud Foundry. “Integration remains a key concern as cloud development proliferates, so we are pleased that Tibco will be sharing its expertise to deepen the Cloud Foundry platform’s capabilities.”

The company also released Nimbus maps, a new interface aimed at giving customers complete overview of business processes and operations through a single cloud-based application. The product is aimed at enabling digital transformation to ensure updates are communicated to relevant team members across the enterprise.

“If you’re going to become a Digital Business, you first need to understand how your processes actually work, and what they affect,” said Matt Quinn, CTO at Tibco. “This allows you to focus on transforming the processes that matter the most, such as those that have direct customer touch points, impact your customer experience or affect your time to market for new products or services.

“Nimbus Maps puts process discovery and communication directly in the hands of those that know your business the best, which not only accelerates process improvement, but also helps tie the improvements directly to key metrics from Net Promoter Scores (NPS) to customer Service Level Agreements.”

cloud datacentre, Enterprise IT, IBM, News & Analysis, Smartphone

IBM announces $200 million Indosat Ooredoo cloud deal

Money cloudIBM has announced a five-year $200 million contract with Indosat Ooredoo to develop and deliver solutions on IBM’s cloud platform, Bluemix.

As part of the deal, IBM and Indosat Ooredoo will build an integrated command centre to serve local clients, of both organizations. The move forms part of IBM’s expansion plans for the cloud business, which coincides with the company’s recent win in South Africa, where it will open its first cloud data centre in the country.

“This collaboration shows how IBM’s expertise, technology and services can help Indosat Ooredoo and Lintasarta lead market change in Indonesia while also transforming their existing operations,” said Martin Jetter, SVP, IBM Global Technology Services.

Indonesia’s telco and technology market has been growing rapidly over recent years. Smartphone growth has been healthy in the world’s fourth most populous country, as penetration of total mobile phones is expected to reach 53% in 2017, up from an estimated 24% in 2013. This demonstrates huge potential for growth, as smartphone penetration in China during 2013 was estimated at around 71%.

Outside of Indonesia, the Asia-Pacific region is expected to be a significant growth area for the cloud industry. Market research firm IDC, estimates that by 2018, more than 70% of enterprise organizations in the region will access public cloud IaaS and SaaS capabilities via aggregation hubs.

Jakarta has regularly been quoted as the city which produces the largest number of tweets per day, though this is not solely down to consumers. Businesses regularly use social media, most notably twitter, to communicate with its customers, more so than in western markets.

“Use of smart mobile devices is becoming pervasive, opening up enormous opportunities for local businesses – so we are excited to be working with Indosat Ooredoo and Lintasarta to help clients tap into the power and flexibility of cloud-based solutions and digitally transform their businesses,” Jetter said.

Indosat Ooredoo’s subsidiary, Lintasarta, will jointly develop and deliver cloud-based solutions with IBM, accelerating collaboration and automation of software delivery and infrastructure changes. Customers of the telco will also have access to IBM’s cloud-based enterprise mobility management platform.

“We will be able to bring a greater range of higher value services to market more rapidly, with the confidence of knowing that we are collaborating with one of the world’s largest and most innovative technology companies,” said Alexander Rusli, President and CEO of Indosat Ooredoo. “This landmark alliance will reshape the local market and help Indonesian customers and organizations tap into the most advanced technology available anywhere in the world.”

Alongside the deal, IBM has also announced that it will open its first cloud data centre in South Africa. Working in collaboration with Gijima and Vodacom, the move aims to support cloud adoption and customer demand across the African continent.

“Our new Cloud Data Center gives customers a local onramp to IBM Cloud services including moving mission critical SAP workloads to the cloud with ease,” said Hamilton Ratshefola, IBM Country GM in South Africa. “It also gives customers the added flexibility of keeping data within country which is a key differentiator for IBM.”

The announcement adds to IBM’s growth on the continent, where it currently has a presence in at least 24 countries. IBM has highlighted that Africa is a substantial market for future international growth of its cloud business.

Enterprise IT, IaaS, Infrastructure as a Service, Microsoft Azure, News & Analysis, Public Cloud, Shadow IT

93% of enterprise now using cloud services – survey

business cloud network worldThe vast majority of IT professionals are now using at least one cloud-based service, according to a survey recently published by IT portal Spiceworks.

While 93% of respondents confirmed that they are using at least one cloud based service within their operations, the survey also highlighted IT professionals are still hesitant when considering emerging technologies.

Opportunities such as email hosting and cloud storage are increasingly being viewed as the norm, though IaaS is still met with some scepticism with only 20% of respondents currently using it, and only 16% considering its use in the next 12 months. EMEA professionals demonstrated a higher appetite for IaaS, with use 11 percentage points higher in EMEA than in North America.

In terms of current cloud services, web and email hosting are by far and away the most utilized, with 76% and 56% usage respectively. Online back-up and recovery appears to be the biggest growth area, with 35% of respondents currently using the service and 23% planning to engage over the next 12 months.

When building the business case for cloud transition, cost still remains the top priority for the majority of IT professionals. 71% of respondents highlighted this would be considered the number one reason for the transition, though cloud enabled innovation was only a driver for 3%. While early adopters are moving away from CAPEX/OPEX reductions as the business case for cloud adoption, the rising cost of hardware implementation and maintenance still drives mainstream cloud implementation.

The survey also highlighted that Shadow IT remains a challenge for a large part of the industry, as services which remain un-sanctioned by the IT team are still demonstrating high usage from the rest of the business. 33% of respondents highlighted they have deployed Dropbox services officially, but 78% of companies have employees using the service without IT approval. Google Drive was also being used in 59% of companies surveyed without approval from the IT team.

Microsoft Azure emerged as the most commonly used IaaS provider, accounting for 16%, closely followed by rival AWS at 13%. However 21% of respondents are considering Azure over the next twelve months, compared to only 11% weighing up AWS. The Microsoft team can be encouraged by these statistics, though this is a category which currently does not seem to have a clear market leader. Other brands highlighted by the survey in this space include Rackspace, Google and VMWare.

Despite AWS’s dominant market position, industry insiders questioned by BCN perceive Azure as the more effective platform. With Microsoft bolstering its ranks through strategic company and talent acquisition over the last 18-24 months, Azure is viewed as the more productive offering, despite being more expensive.

The results show a number of positive trends within the cloud industry, though still a number of worrying factors. 20% of IT services are cloud based today, and 30% of the respondents expect that within three years, more than half of their IT services will be cloud based. Conversely the culture of trusting public cloud services with company data/content without approval from the IT function seems to be a trend which isn’t disappearing.

Enterprise IT, HPE, Machine learning, Microsoft Azure, News & Analysis

HPE launches ‘machine-learning-as-a-service’ on Microsoft Azure

HPE office logoHPE has upgraded its Haven OnDemand proposition to deliver it as ‘machine learning as a service’ via Microsoft Azure.

The product offers a freemium model and has collected around 12,000 registered developers since the beta launch in 2014. Through the leadership of Haven OnDemand CTO, Chris Goodfellow, the service is built on the mantra of ‘the sum is greater than the parts’, utilizing more than 60 API’s which combine to provide machine learning capabilities.

“The software industry is on the cusp of a new era of breakthroughs, driven by machine learning that will power data-driven applications across all facets of life,” said Colin Mahony, GM of HPE Big Data. “HPE Haven OnDemand democratizes big data by bringing the power of machine learning, traditionally reserved for high-end, highly trained data scientists, to the mainstream developer community”

Haven OnDemand includes features designed for applications such as sentiment analysis in text, text extraction from images, face and logo recognition, social media analysis and speech recognition. Developers can also build a set of self-learning functions that analyze, predict and alert based on structured datasets. French start-up Ayni utilized the speech recognition API to help it create text transcripts of live audio streams on its foreign language education app.

Alongside the product development over the last 12 months, HPE has also run an active global hackathon program, which has provided feedback to help optimize the offering.

All HPE Haven OnDemand APIs and services are hosted on Microsoft Azure, building on the long-term strategic partnership between the two tech giants. Back in December, the partnership was extended as HPE appointed Microsoft Azure as a preferred public cloud partner. In return, HPE was granted preferred partner status in providing infrastructure and services for Microsoft hybrid cloud offerings.

“Organizations have massive quantities of information that can hold insights into business transformation, but harnessing it can be challenging,” said Garth Fort, General Manager, Partner and Channel Marketing, Cloud and Enterprise at Microsoft. “Leveraging the high performance and scalability of Azure, HPE Haven OnDemand brings our mutual customers a compelling solution to help turn their data into value.”

CRM, Enterprise IT, Financial Services, News & Analysis, Salesforce

Salesforce modernizes wealth management offering

Salesforce WearSalesforce has launched Financial Services Cloud, a new product suite that includes portfolio management, prospecting and data management tools.

As part of the new look product offering, Salesforce has built an ecosystem of more than 20 partners to implement the additional features into the suite. “Today’s investors don’t wait for quarterly meetings to discuss their finances with advisors; they expect to be able to engage them for advice when and how they want,” said Richard Lumb, Group Chief Executive, Financial Services at Accenture, a member of the product ecosystem.

While seen as a more traditional industry, wealth management businesses are apparently under increasing pressure to provide more detail to customers on a more consistent basis. Whereas a quarterly meeting might have been sufficient in the past, customer demands for information, speed and continuous delivery has forced the wealth management industry to evolve into the internet age and an open-all-hours model.

With clients demanding more face-time, and instantaneous insight into the performance of their investments, wealth managers are seeking digital solutions to increase productivity. Such product launches not only demonstrate the trend of modernizing more traditional industries, but also the need to provide the complete customer experience to remain competitive in the CRM space.

“Legacy advisor solutions were created decades ago to serve a product-centric world. Today, we live in a new world that is digital- and client-centric, which is turning the wealth management industry on its head,” said Simon Mulcahy, GM of Financial Services at Salesforce.

To develop the new features, Salesforce developed a number of new partnerships with niche technology providers. For example, DocuSign and eSignLive plan to add integrations that could allow advisors to send, sign and manage financial documents, and WealthEngine provide tools to facilitate wealth scoring and analytics.

“The wealth management industry is undergoing rapid change, and the ability to deliver on customer expectations for a more responsive and highly personalized digital-led experience will become an increasingly important competitive differentiator,” said Kieran Hines, Practice Leader for Financial Services Technology at Ovum. “Investing to enhance the customer experience is a top three IT priority for a significant number of private banks in 2016, with institutions in Western Europe and North America particularly focused on this area.”

Enterprise IT, IBM, News & Analysis, redundancies, Survey

Fresh redundancies illustrate IBM’s continuing cloud challenge

IBMWithin the last twelve months, the company has inducted more than 70,000 IBMers and spent more on acquisitions than in any other 12-month period in its history. Focusing on data analytics, security, machine learning and mobile, the business is attracting a new breed of employee to its ranks. All would seem well until you consult social media.

The Facebook group, Watching IBM, has increased its following by more than 66% over the last week. The group has taken responsibility for bringing light to the 70,000 job losses experienced by the firm in the past few months. Comments such as “At the beginning of 2015 our department had 25 people in it. At the beginning of 2016 our department has 13 in it,” highlight the decline.

For all the positive news of expansion, new product offerings, and 70,000 new employees, the headcount over the course of the twelve month period has shrunk around 1% to 377,757 from 379,592.

With company revenues declining for fifteen consecutive quarters, this should not come as a great surprise for most; IBM’s struggles to re-invent itself as a cloud business have been well documented over recent years.

Back in January, Clive Longbottom, Service Director at Quocirca commented that IBM could risk being left behind, should the transition take too long. With AWS, Microsoft and Google continuing to surge forward, that risk is continuing to grow, though the consultancy skills nurtured in IBM will remain in demand “I still believe that IBM will remain a major force in the IT world, it just has to make sure it positions and messages itself effectively to its existing customers and to its prospects”

Last week IBM released a report which highlighted that two- thirds of organizations implementing hybrid cloud are gaining competitive advantage from their hybrid environments are nearly three times as likely to use it to assemble data assets or monetize data.

Surveying more than 500 hybrid cloud implementers, in 26 countries worldwide, the report highlighted that 85 percent of respondent commented that a hybrid approach to cloud is accelerating the digital transformation in their organization. During 2015 Q4, total cloud revenues (public, private and hybrid) for the vendor increased 43% to $10.2 billion, though revenues throughout the business were down 9% to $22.1 billion in the same period for 2014.

Despite some negative press, and a surge in social media activity being directed towards the tech giant, it seems the workforce transition is far from complete. “We’ve been shifting resources aggressively,” CFO Martin Schroeter commented last week “and we’d like to shift them more aggressively.”

Enterprise IT, Financial Results, HPE, News & Analysis, quarterly results

Whitman thanks partnerships for strong HPE Q1

HPE street logoHewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has claimed earnings of $300 million in its first quarter of 2016 show it is shaping up for the cloud more strongly than expected.

HPE CEO Meg Whitman claimed that the success of the company was a consequence of a strong product offering. “Our portfolio is truly the best we’ve had in years and is driving strong customer traction,” said Whitman, who claimed the company was in better shape for the cloud, describing it as ‘agile and nimble’. In January BCN reported how HPE is faced with making 72,000 more redundancies this year, according to IT market watcher Trip Chowdhry at Delaware-based Global Equities Research.

The results created earnings of 41 cents per share in HPE, exceeding the expectations of Wall Street analysts, who reportedly expected non-GAAP earnings of 40 cents a share. While Wall Street had estimated HPE’s revenue to be $12.68 billion, the unexpectedly good revenue figure was marginally higher, at $12.7 billion.

According to HPE, the earnings for the next quarter could be as high as 43 cents a share.

Whitman told analysts that HPE is in a much better position, being the main infrastructure provider for SAP HANA with double the number of shipments of its nearest competitor. Another important deal, with Canadian comms company Rogers, helped HPE establish its credential as a leader in creating hybrid cloud infrastructures for enterprises as the move away from their existing traditional IT systems. In January BCN reported how hybrid cloud management is the main focus of HPE’s cloud strategy.

Meanwhile, HPE’s networking revenue showed 62% growth on the same period last year. This was attributed to the acquisition of wireless networking specialist Aruba Networks in March 2015, which has created record revenue from China revenue performed well in other regions. “We are seeing strength in China,” said Whitman. Aruba also grew double digits at an operational level and the vendor enjoyed demand for HPE’s switching portfolio to complement Aruba’s wireless offerings.

Enterprise group revenue was up 1% on the equivalent period in 2015, at $7.1 billion. Networking revenue grew by 54%, through Aruba’s wireless tech sales, however server and storage sales declined, falling by 1% and 3%. More worryingly perhaps, enterprise service revenue is also in decline, falling by 6% to $4.7 billion, while software revenue dropped by 10%.