Archivo de la categoría: News & Analysis

Enterprise IT, Jennifer Stroud, Joanne Marshall, News & Analysis, ServiceNow

University of Bradford deploys ServiceNow for HR

The University of Bradford is deploying ServiceNow to modernise its HR function

The University of Bradford is deploying ServiceNow to modernise its HR function

The University of Bradford is deploying ServiceNow in a bid to transform its human resources function.

The university said it is deploying the platform to increase the HR department’s efficiency and responsiveness, and give it stronger technical capabilities to facilitate recruitment. It said it previously relied on a range of manual techniques, with little reporting, prioritisation capabilities or unified visibility on the day to day activities in HR.

“We are seeing increased demand for easy access to HR services and information,” said Joanne Marshall, director of HR at the University of Bradford. “Our old way of working was no longer fit for purpose. ServiceNow has facilitated a new model where employees can complete their own transactions and find answers to a wide range of questions. As a result, we now have the ability to redirect strategic HR resources to other areas within the business.”

Jennifer Stroud, general manager, HR service management business unit, ServiceNow: “We are increasingly seeing organisations adopting a service management approach across the workplace with HR leading the way. As the University of Bradford demonstrated, organisations can see fast transformations and dramatic improvements in the overall service experience.”

While ServiceNow is primarily deployed as an IT service management platform it’s clear the company is keen to refocus its offering on other central functions like HR and finance. Earlier this year the company launched its own application marketplace so customers can buy third-party apps built on the ServiceNow platform including a range of HR, legal and financial services apps.

IBM, Internet of Things, Jai Iyer, News & Analysis, SiCAD

IBM partners with SiCAD on cloud-based IoT silicon design and test service

IBM is working with SiCAD to offer an IoT silicon design service in the cloud

IBM is working with SiCAD to offer an IoT silicon design service in the cloud

IBM is partnering with silicon design platform provider SiCAD to offer a cloud-based high performance services for electronic design automation (EDA) which the companies said can be used to design silicon for smartphones, wearables and Internet of Things devices.

The IBM Electronics Design Automation (EDA)-based tools will be delivered via SoftLayer infrastructure on a PAYG basis and provide on-demand access to silicon design tools.

IBM will initially deliver three key services: IBM Library Characterization, to create abstract electrical and timing models for chip designs; IBM Logic Verification, to simulate electronic systems and design languages; and IBM Spice, an electronic circuit simulator used to check design integrity and probe chip behaviour.

The company said deployment clusters will be segregated (both compute and networking), so clients won’t share any infrastructure.

“The proliferation of smartphones, tablets, wearable devices and Internet of Things (IoT) products has been the primary driver for increased demand for semiconductor chips. Companies are under pressure to design electronic systems faster, better and cheaper,” said Jai Iyer, founder and chief executive of SiCAD. “A time-based usage model on a need basis makes sense for this industry and will spur innovation in the industry while lowering capital and operations expenses.”

The companies said the partnership will help enable startups designing silicon for IoT applications, a venture not only increasingly attractive because of the explosion of activity around IoT and the need for purpose-built chip architectures but the sheer size of the silicon land-grab in the sector.

Big Data, Jignesh Patel, M&A, News & Analysis, Pivotal, Quickstep Technologies, Relational database, Sundeep Madra

Pivotal buys Quickstep Technologies in big data play

Pivotal is acquiring Quickstep Technologies to boost SQL performance

Pivotal is acquiring Quickstep Technologies to boost SQL performance

Pivotal has acquired Quickstep Technologies, a query execution technology developer, for an undisclosed sum. The company said the move could vastly improve the performance of its big data solutions.

Quickstep’s technology was developed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison by Jignesh Patel, professor of computer sciences and a team of developers at the school, in part with funding from the US National Science Foundation. It’s a relational data processing engine that incorporates a technology called Bitweaving, which uses various techniques to reduce the number of cycles to evaluate and compute a predicate across a batch of code, the result being a massive improvement in performance when asking a database a question.

Patel is no stranger to the database space. His thesis work was commercialised by NCR when it was acquired by Teradata, and he also co-founded Locomatix, a startup that designed a platform to power real-time data-driven mobile services, which became part of Twitter two years ago.

“In the Quickstep project we have rethought from the ground up the algorithms that make up the DNA of data platforms so that the platform can deliver unprecedented speed for data analytics. It is time to move our ideas from research to actual products,” Patel said. “There is no better home for this technology than at Pivotal given Pivotal’s formidable track record in delivering real value to their customers in big data.”

Pivotal said the technology will be integrated as a new query execution framework for Greenplum Database and Pivotal HAWQ, which it claims will “provide orders of magnitude increase in performance for advanced analytics, machine learning, and advanced data science use cases.”

Sundeep Madra, vice president, data product group, Pivotal said: “Enterprises are seeking ever faster speeds for their data so that they can affect outcomes in real time. Quickstep brings to Pivotal a fresh way of thinking about data, one aligned to new capabilities in hardware and demanding expectations today’s businesses have. We look forward to bringing this technology to our customers, and welcome the Quickstep team to the Pivotal family.”

call centre, Funding, Josh Stein, News & Analysis, Software as a service, Talkdesk

Talkdesk scores $15m in cloud contact centre push

Talkdesk has raised $15m to take call centre software into the cloud

Talkdesk has raised $15m to take call centre software into the cloud

Cloud-based contact centre software provider Talkdesk has secured $15m in a series A round of funding led by DFJ with participation from existing investor, Storm Ventures, which the company said would be used to fuel its international expansion.

The latest round of funding brings the total amount raised by the firm since its founding to over $33m.

Talkdesk, which was founded in 2011, said its web-based contact centre solution integrates with Zendesk, Desk.com, Salesforce, Zoho, SugarCRM and Help Scout among other cloud services.

“Today’s consumers are used to instant app-driven communications, but most cloud-based call center solutions do not provide the functionality necessary for companies to meet their rising expectations for service. As such, companies are looking for a more progressive call center technology that provides relevant real-time customer information so they can deliver an exceptionally personalized experience,” said Tiago Paiva, Founder and chief executive of Talkdesk.

“We developed Talkdesk to address the needs of this $20B market1. We accomplished this by making it simple for companies to deploy a robust cloud-based call center software solution that provides contextual information about their customers, without the complexity or high cost associated with implementation,” Paiva said.

Call centres are becoming increasingly dispersed and as a result the software they use needs to be more nimble, slimmed down and flexible to deploy than when these were operating as large, centralised departments. The trend has contributed to the rise of a wide range of cloud-based contact centre solutions delivering omni-channel support.

Talkdesk said it’s one of the companies capitalising on this rise, and at more than 70 employees said it has experienced 1,000 per cent year on year revenue growth since its founding.

“This is the classic cloud-software eats the world storyline that we have seen before,” said Josh Stein, partner at DFJ. “We are seeing a massive evolution in the call center technology space that, until now, has been dominated by antiquated solutions.”

Cisco, Internet of Things, IoT, Kansas City, News & Analysis, Sprint, Stephen Bye, Wim Elfrink

Cisco, Sprint tapped for Kansas City IoT deployment

Kansas City is working with Cisco, Sprint and a range of partners on fa large-scale IoT deployment

Kansas City is working with Cisco, Sprint and a range of partners on fa large-scale IoT deployment

Kansas City, Missourim announced a deal with Cisco and Sprint that will see the municipality deploy an Internet of Things (IoT) platform it said will transform the urban services it offers citizens.

As part of the deal Cisco will offer up its Smart+Connected wireless networking and mobile app services and work with a group of partners to bring together an ecosystem to develop applications including smart lighting, digital kiosks, a development data portal, and smart water innovation development.

Some of the applications being developed by project partners include CityPost, which broadcasts real-time location-based information and alerts through a Smart City network powered on the street by interactive Smart Signs (city posts) and on smartphones, and a series of applications designed to enhance policing.

“It’s exciting to see forward looking cities like Kansas City driving innovations that enable cities to connect people, process, data and things, and bring the Internet of Everything to life,” said Wim Elfrink, executive vice president, industry solutions group, and chief globalisation officer for Cisco.

“Kansas City is empowering its citizens, helping them become more efficient and more productive, and the city is poised to create significant new economic value. We’re pleased to be part of the team that will deploy a Smart+Connected City framework,” Elfrink said.

Sprint will deploy Cisco hardware to build and manage a Wi-Fi network that will serve as the backbone of the connectivity platform.

“Sprint looks forward to playing an integral role in this ground-breaking initiative to bring greater connectivity across a wide range of business and consumer applications that support the Internet of Everything in our hometown,” said Stephen Bye, chief technology officer at Sprint. “Delivering Wi-Fi connectivity is a great fit for Sprint, and enables our customers to more easily use both cellular and Wi-Fi for a better mobile experience.”

The first phase of the project is due to kick off later this year, the municipality said.

Alex Hilton, CIF, Cloud Industry Forum, Enterprise IT, Infrastructure as a Service, News & Analysis, Piers Linney

CIF: Enterprises still struggling with cloud migration

Enterprises are still struggling with their cloud migrations, the CIF claims

UK enterprises are still struggling with their cloud migrations, the CIF research shows

The latest research published by Cloud Industry Forum (CIF) suggests over a third of UK enterprises IT decision-makers believe cloud service providers could have better supported their migration to the cloud.

The CIF, which polled 250 senior IT decision-makers in the UK earlier this year to better understand where cloud services fit into their overall IT strategies, said its clear UK business are generally satisfied with their cloud services and plan to use more of them. But 35 per cent of those polled also said their companies still struggle with migration.

“The transition to cloud services has, for many, not been as straightforward as expected. Our latest research indicates that the complexity of migration is a challenge for a significant proportion of cloud users, resulting in unplanned disruption to the business,” said Alex Hilton, chief executive of the Cloud Industry Forum.

“There may be a case that cloud service providers need to be better at either setting end user expectations or easing the pain of migration to their services. But equally, it’s important that end users equip themselves with enough knowledge about cloud to be able to manage it and ensure that the cloud-based services rolled out can support business objectives, not hinder them.”

Piers Linney, co-chief executive of Outsourcery said the research highlights the need for providers to develop a “strong integrated stack of partners.”

“IT leaders looking for a provider should first assess their existing in-house skills and experience to understand how reliant they will be on the supplier to ensure a smooth transition. Equally, cloud suppliers need to be more sensitive to their customers’ requirements and tailor their service to the level of support needed for successful cloud adoption,” he said.

“The most critical factor is for IT leaders to really get under the bonnet of their potential cloud provider, make sure that the have a strong and highly integrated stack of partners and a proven track record of delivery for other customers with needs similar to their own.”

Angus MacSween, Consulting, Europe, Infrastructure as a Service, iomart, M&A, News & Analysis, Peter Burgess, SystemsUp

iomart buys cloud consultancy for SystemsUp for £12.5

iomart is buying IT consultancy SystemsUp for an estimate £12.5m

iomart is buying IT consultancy SystemsUp for an estimate £12.5m

UK cloud service provider iomart announced it has entered into a deal to acquire IT consultancy SystemsUp, which specialises in designing and delivering cloud solutions, for up to £12.5m.

The deal will see iomart pay £9m in an initial cash consideration for the London-based consultancy with a contingent consideration of up to £3.5m depending on performance.

iomart said the move would broaden its cloud computing expertise. SystemsUp designs and delivers solutions made to run on Google, AWS and Microsoft public clouds among other platforms, and specialises in the public sector cloud strategies.

“The market for cloud computing is becoming incredibly complex and the demand for public cloud services is increasing at pace,” said Angus MacSween, chief executive of iomart. “With the acquisition of SystemsUp, iomart has broadened its ability to engage at a strategic level and act as a trusted advisor on cloud strategy to organisations wanting to create the right blend of cloud services, both public and private, to fit their requirements.”

While iomart offers its own cloud services the company seems to recognise the need to build up skills in a range of other platforms; the company said SystemsUp will remain an “impartial, agnostic, expert consultancy.”

Peter Burgess, managing director of SystemsUp said: “We have already built up a significant reputation and expertise in helping organisations use public cloud to drive down IT costs and improve efficiency. As part of iomart we can leverage their award winning managed services offerings to deepen and widen our toolset to deliver a broader set of cloud services, alongside continuing to deliver the strategic advice and deployment of complex large public and private sector cloud projects.”

The move comes six months after iomart’s last acquisition, when the company announced it had bought ServerSpace, a rival cloud service provider, for £4.25m.

Alibaba, Aliyun, Equinix, Infrastructure as a Service, Intel, Meeras, News & Analysis, Raejeanne Skillern, Sicheng Yu

Alibaba announces partner programme to boost cloud efforts

Alibaba's partner programme will help it expand internationally

Alibaba’s partner programme will help it expand internationally

Alibaba’s cloud division Aliyun has launched a global partnership programme aimed at bolstering global access to its cloud services.

The company’s Marketplace Alliance Program (MAP) will see it partner with large tech and datacentre operators, initially including Intel, Singtel, Meeras, Equinix and PCCW among others to help localise its cloud computing services and grow its ecosystem.

“The new Aliyun program is designed to bring our customers the best cloud computing solutions by partnering with some of the most respected technology brands in the world. We will continue to bring more partners online to grow our cloud computing ecosystem,” said Sicheng Yu, vice president, Aliyun.

Raejeanne Skillern, general manager of cloud service provider business at Intel said: “For years Intel and Alibaba have collaborated on optimizing hardware and software technology across the data center for Alibaba’s unique workloads. As a partner in Aliyun’s Marketplace Alliance Program, Intel looks forward to continuing our collaboration to promoting joint technology solutions that are based on Intel Architecture specifically tailored to the rapidly growing market of international public cloud consumers.”

The move is part of Alibaba’s efforts to rapidly expand its presence internationally. This year the company put its first datacentre in the US, and just last week announced Equinix would offer direct access to its cloud platform globally. The company, often viewed as the Chinese Amazon, also plans to set up a joint venture with Meeras in Dubai that specialises in systems integration with a focus on big data and cloud-based services.

network functions virtualisation, Networks, News & Analysis, NFV, OPNFV

OPNFV announces first major software release

OPNFV has launched the first version of its NFV platform

OPNFV has launched the first version of its NFV platform

Linux Foundation driven open source NFV organisation OPNFV has announced the availability of the first version of its software, which it is calling Arno, reports Telecoms.com.

OPNFV was formed just eight months ago by a group of NFV veterans including Chairman Prodip Sen, who was at Verizon and now also heads up NFV at HP. Its aim is to develop an open platform for NFV, which in turn should accelerate the growth of the technology and shorten the time to market for NFV solutions.

As the first release Arno, which commences a sequence of river-based names the second of which will presumably begin with B, is aimed at those exploring NFV deployments. It provides an initial build of the NFV Infrastructure (NFVI) and Virtual Infrastructure Manager (VIM) components of ETSI NFV architecture.

“Only eight months after its formation, OPNFV has met one of its major goals by creating an integrated build, deployment and testing environment that accelerates NFV implementation and interoperability,” said Sen. “With Arno, we now have a solid foundation for testing some of the key resource orchestration and network control components for NFV. This is great a testament to the power of an open source collaborative model and the strength of the NFV ecosystem.”

Here’s a more detailed breakdown of what Arno (which is available to download here) brings to the table, according to the OPNFV announcement:

  • Availability of baseline platform: Arno enables continuous integration, automated deployment and testing of components from upstream projects such as Ceph, KVM, OpenDaylight, OpenStack and Open vSwitch. It allows developers and users to automatically install and explore the platform.
  • Ability to deploy and test various VNFs: End users and developers can deploy their own or third party VNFs on Arno to test its functionality and performance in various traffic scenarios and use cases.
  • Availability of test infrastructure in community-hosted labs: Agile testing plays a crucial role in the OPNFV platform. With Arno, the project is unveiling a community test labs infrastructure where users can test the platform in different environments and on different hardware. This test labs infrastructure enables the platform to be exercised in different NFV scenarios to ensure that the various open source components come together to meet vendor and end user needs.
  • Allows automatic continuous integration of specific components: As upstream projects are developed independently they require testing of various OPNFV use cases to ensure seamless integration and interworking within the platform. OPNFV’s automated toolchain allows continuous automatic builds and verification.
Enterprise IT, Gaia Gallotti, IDC, News & Analysis

IDC: Cloud high on the list for utilities sector but skills shortage pervades

The utilities sector is struggling with an ageing workforce and lacks critical cloud skills

The utilities sector is struggling with an ageing workforce and lacks critical cloud skills

About three quarters of utilities see moving their on-premise apps and workloads into the public cloud as a dominant component in their IT strategies, according to a recent IDC survey. But Gaia Gallotti, research manager at IDC Energy Insights told BCN the firms need to first overcome a pretty significant skills gap and an ageing workforce if they are to modernise their systems.

According to the survey, which polled 38 international senior utility executives, the vast majority of respondents are sold on the benefits cloud could bring to their IT strategies.  About 87 per cent said cloud services provide better business continuity and disaster recovery than traditional technology, and 74 per cent said public cloud migration will be dominant within their broader IT strategy.

Interestingly, while 76 per cent of respondents believe cloud providers can offer better security and data privacy controls than their own IT organisation,  63 per cent said ceding control to a cloud provider is a barrier to their organisation’s adoption of cloud services.

“The utilities industry can no longer afford to deny the advantages of ‘going into the cloud.’ As security concerns are further debunked, utilities expect to see a significant push in their cloud strategy maturity in the next 24 months, so much so that they expect to make up lost ground and even supersede other industries,” Gallotti said.

But most also believe internal IT skillsets not up to speed with new cloud standards, methodologies, and topologies. 74 per cent said they will need a third-party professional services firm to help develop a public cloud strategy.

“This is a huge problem the industry is facing, but not exclusively for cloud services. Utilities are struggling to attract talent in all IT domains, especially for the ‘third platform’, as they compete with companies in the IT world that attract ‘Generation Y’ talent more easily,” Gallotti explained.

“The utilities industry also has an issue with aging workforce outside of IT and across its other business units. In the short term, we expect utilities to rely more on their service providers to fill skills gap that emerge, in the hope of more easily attracting the right talent as the industry transforms and becomes more appealing to Gen Y.”