Data#3, a business solutions provider, has released an impressive result for the first half of 2017. It reported  a revenue of AU$506 million, and a net profit of AU$5.8 million. These numbers reflect a 34 percent increase when compared to the same time last year.

Revenue for the first six months that ended on December 31, 2016 included a revenue of AU$58 million from the cloud. This represents almost 11.6 percent of the total revenues of the company, and it reflects the growing contribution of cloud to its overall business.

Out of this, Data#3’s public cloud solutions accounted for AU$53.3 million, representing a 32.5 percent increase. It’s on-premise solutions also saw a steady growth, as it registered a nine percent growth to contribute AU$360.7 million. Product revenue from hardware and software sales grew by 11.5 percent, as it increased from AU$37.1 million to AU$413.9 million.

Data#3 is a publicly traded company in the information and communication (ICT) sector of Australia. It is headquartered in Brisbane, but its operations span across entire Australia. it was founded in 1977 and was established by Powell, Clark and Associates (PCA). With about 900 employees, this company has a firm presence in Australia’s IT market.

Data#3’s result brings up many interesting aspects of its business. Firstly, it reflects the growth of the company from a product-centric company to that of a service-centric one, to meet the changing needs of the IT environment. According to Laurence Baynham, the CEO of Data#3, this company has a strategic growth comprising of three long-term objectives, which are to deliver sustained growth, increase services and grow cloud services revenues.

These objectives show the importance given by Data#3 to its cloud businesses, as the company firmly believes that cloud is an important component of its future business strategies. Already, the company has a list of impressive clients in the cloud market. An example is the Victoria State Emergency Services, for which Data#3 built an emergency solution using Microsoft Azure. With this, Victoria became the first emergency organization in Australia to tap into the power of public cloud.

Secondly, cloud can become an integral part of Data#3’s future operations as the company has opined that it is witnessing a rapid increase in the demand for cloud-based services, and it wants to position itself to meet this demand. In this sense, we can expect the company to make heavy investment in cloud infrastructure over the next few years as it transitions itself to a cloud-based company.

These numbers also show the growing importance of cloud, as companies position themselves to make the most of it. In many ways, it also reflects the penetration of cloud in Australian markets, as much of the clients of this Brisbane-based company is in Australia. Recently, Alibaba also expanded its operations to cater to the growing demands of the Australian cloud market.

Lastly, the company has announced that it will be establishing a health sector practice, similar to the investments it has made in education. We can expect many practices in health sector to be driven by cloud.

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YotaScale announced another round of funding today worth $3.6 million from Engineering Capital, Pelion Ventures, and angel investors such as Jocelyn Goldfein, Timothy Chou and Robert Dykes. This is the third round of funding for Yotascale. In January 2016, it got a funding of $1.2 million from Engineering Capital and in September of the same year, it got $2.4 million from a company called NewDo Venture. In all, the company has raised a total funding of $7.2 million.

YotaScale – Company Profile

YotaScale is an infrastructure performance management platform for cloud computing. Founded in 2015, this company is headquartered in Menlo Park in California. It was founded by Asim Razzaq, a  former Senior Engineering Director at eBay and PayPal. During his stint at eBay, Razzaq realized that there was no dedicated service for monitoring the performance of cloud infrastructure, so he set out to fill this gap with his own company. Abbas Yousafzai is the current CTO, and Razzaq is the CEO of this company.

YotaScale collects and analyzes data collected from billions of data points on a platform. It uses machine learning algorithms to monitor factors such as load balance, performance, cost and availability of any platform. The aim of this system is to ensure that a company’s infrastructure is optimized to meet the changing business priorities of its clients. In fact, using such performance-based information, enterprises can customize platforms to align with their own priorities, so they can make the most of the underlying hardware and software of any cloud platform. In addition, it gives them unique insights about the platform, using which they can create new products and applications, and at the same time, reduce their operating costs.

Performance management for cloud computing is a hot and growing space, and there is much competition in this niche. CloudHealth technologies and Cloudability are two other notable companies involved in performance management, and together, both these companies have raised about $80 million through investments. In comparison, this funding of $7.2 million pales. However, Razzaq is confident that his product will bring in more investors as the company expands.

That said, YotaScale, or for that matter, other companies in this space too, face many hurdles. Different types of cloud infrastructure data are generated at different times because not all hardware or software components run at the same time. Some information is generated hourly, while others daily, and so on. With such disparate data, it becomes difficult to combine them together to get the picture of the platform’s performance at any given time.

For example, let’s say three components run and based on it, the performance is optimal at 1:00 AM, but when data about a hardware component arrives in at 5:00 AM, it changes to sub-optimal. This way, it’s hard to know if the performance was optimal at all at 1:00AM because the data that is needed to get a complete picture hasn’t come in until 5:00 AM.

Another problem is to define what is normal because it is highly contextual. So, what is normal for one situation may not be normal for another one.

Addressing these hurdles will be a crucial aspect for YotaScale in the near future.

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The Intel Cloud Security Report of 2017 has brought out some interesting revelations about the cloud industry, and the likely attitudes and expectations this year. Titled Building Trust in a Cloudy Sky, this report features responses from more than 2,000 IT professionals to know about their insights into the current happenings of the cloud industry, and the possible challenges they believe would hamper its growth in the near future.

Out of these 2000 professionals, about 45.6 percent opined that the rate of cloud adoption has slowed down because of the non-availability of cloud “specialists.” In other words, the gap in cloud skills is impeding the adoption of cloud within their respective organizations, thereby casting a shadow in IT deployments. Surprisingly, 15 percent of the respondents opined that lack of security skills has not affected their organization at all, and in fact, no such problem even exists.

Another significant take away from this report is the role of IT department in cloud deployments. As much as 40 percent of cloud services used by organizations are deployed without the knowledge of their IT department. This finding opens up a multitude of problems. Firstly, lack of transparency can lead to  a disjointed security environment that can put the entire organization at risk. Secondly, such a disjointed environment means more work for the security department as they have to identify loopholes and address them, after they occur.

Thirdly, when an organization doesn’t have a comprehensive or a company-wide policy, it creates a lot of chaos. Such a scenario can encourage different departments to commission their own services and deployments, which could be a nightmare for any organization.

Due to the above problems, it’s best to involve the IT department in any deployment. Even if they’re not actively involved in every stage of deployment, they should at the minimum have sufficient visibility to ensure that all applications and data are safe and secure.

The Intel Cloud Security Report also highlights some positive developments for the cloud industry. For example, the number of respondents who distrust public cloud services has fallen from 50 percent to 29 percent over the last year. In addition, 85 percent of the respondents said they store some or all of their critical applications and data in the cloud.

This is a heartening development, and goes to show how much cloud security has advanced over the last year. These advancements have softened people’s attitude towards public cloud, and in turn, this is expected to increase the rate of cloud adoption.

When the respondents were questioned about their use of PaaS, SaaS and IaaS, their responses showed that an overwhelming majority preferred a hybrid cloud model to store their data. Also, 57 percent of organizations have been involved in some form of hybrid cloud deployment, up from the 19 percent of last year.

Predictably, the number of organizations using private cloud has fallen from 50 percent last year to 25 percent this year.

All this means, we can expect more cloud adoption this year. In fact, we can expect more hybrid cloud and public cloud deployments as organizations feel more confident about cloud security.

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Forcepoint, the commercial cyber security division of Raytheon, has acquired Skyfence solution for $40 million in cash.

Skyfence is a cloud security arm of a company called Imperva. In fact, Imperva acquired Skyfence in 2014 for $60 million in cash, and has sold the same now to Forcepoint today.

Skyfence offers solutions and software that provide increased visibility into cloud servers and applications like Office 365 and Dropbox. This software constantly analyzes the servers and applications for content and activity, so the chances for any fraudulent or unauthorized data leak is greatly reduced. Due to this innovative feature, this product is being used by many companies as it helps to plug hacking and data leaks, and at the same time, offers an extra layer of security.

It also acts as a cloud access security broker (CASB) that offers security services to companies looking to protect their intellectual property rights. On top of it, Skyfence helps companies to adhere to data protection standards established by organizations such as the European Union, Sarbanes-Oxley legislation and the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard. In all, Skyfence monitors the network constantly to identify unauthorized accesses and to protect the IP assets of a company.

Forcepoint, on the other hand, is an Austin, Texas based division of Imperva that deals with cybersecurity systems. Specifically, it delivers cybersecurity solutions for its customers to help them gain deep insights into the behavior and intention of network users, as they interact with the system as well as the different cloud applications that reside in it.

If you look closely into the business of both the divisions, you’ll understand the close connection. While one provides cybersecurity solutions, the other analyzes the network to prevent data leaks. Together, they can offer a more powerful solution, and this is why the acquisition makes sense from the perspective of both companies. With this acquisition, Forcepoint’s cloud security is expected to get a big boost.

Under the terms of the deal, Skyfence will be added to the web security and data loss prevention arm of Forcepoint, and the employees will join Forcepoint’s team. However, the operations and the location of employees will continue to be in Israel.

This deal reflects the growing importance on cyber and cloud security, considering the many attacks and the ensuing data losses that have occurred over the last few years. Statistics show that the number of attacks in 2016 increased to 1061 compared to 1017 the previous year. What’s more interesting is that the percentage of motivated crimes increased from 67 percent in 2015 to 72.1 percent in 2016, thereby signaling that crimes are becoming more planned and targeted than the causal hacks of the previous years.

In the light of these statistics, it becomes imperative for every company to protect their network and digital assets. This is why companies like Forcepoint are likely to see high levels of growth over the next few years. Undoubtedly, this acquisition is sure to act as a big boost for Forcepoint, and hopefully, will augur well for the cloud security industry and its customers at large.

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The Brazilian office of Fox Films has chosen a local cloud services provider called Mandic Cloud Solutions for providing cloud storage and backup services.

Fox Films Brazil was looking for a reliable service provider that would help with supporting the complete financial and operational structure of the company, and in the process improve its internal and external operations. Furthermore, Fox Films wanted a provider whose services can be used both by its affiliates and partners located within and outside of South America.

Mandic Cloud Solutions was the perfect partner for Fox Films, and both the companies entered into an agreement about a month ago. Over the last month, Mandic’s infrastructure was implemented, and it became operational within just a few weeks. Since the system was setup, Fox Films has seen enormous benefits.

According to its IT coordinator, Arlem Silva, there is a 70 percent improvement in stability and security. To top it, employees and partners find the system easy to use, so training was not a lengthy process. As an example, he says, that earlier it took 30 minutes to generate a report, and now, the same can be done in ten minutes. That’s the kind of time and resources that Fox Films can save with this new system.

In addition, Fox Films Brazil can now safely and quickly access all the information they want from Fox’s headquarters in London, and so can its partners. Fox Films Brazil can report all financial transactions to London as it happens, thanks to an agile and flexible system. This also means there’s greater transparency in its operations than before, and this is sure to improve the morale of the top brass, as well as all the stakeholders who’re interested in knowing the nitty-gritty details of operations.

Besides these advantages, Fox Films can now rest assured that its operations is on a safe and stable system. A salient feature of Mandic Cloud is its disaster recovery plan, that taps into human and computational resources to support a business in the best way possible. This translates to no downtimes, and a smooth backup system that will automatically kick in when the primary node fails. In fact, the transition will be so seamless that no one would see or feel any impact. Such a sound infrastructure is one of the reasons for Fox to choose Mandic.

If you’re wondering what Mandic Cloud Solutions is, let’s turn back a few years. It had established itself as Brazil’s main enterprise email service provider, but when the cloud wave began, it reinvented itself as a cloud services firm. The company’s website claims that it has more than 20 years experience in the IT industry. It was the first one to experiment email in the cloud, and claims much credit for revolutionizing Internet in the country. Such innovative approaches attracted foreign partners, with Riverwood Capital and Intel Capital being its important capital investors.

These developments are a positive sign for Brazil’s cloud business, as it can put homegrown cloud companies on the international map.

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It’s an acquisition season, and the latest comes from Razer, a gaming company that has bought a cloud-based startup called Nextbit for an undisclosed amount.

Nextbit has been having a dream run since its inception. The founders had a vision to build a smartphone around the cloud, so it can allow the seamless use of apps and content. Such an idea would give you the flexibility to access anything you want, without worrying too much about the phone’s storage size or its platform. The founders believed that such a product would greatly enhance the experience of users.

To achieve their vision, they started a fundraising campaign in Kickstarter with a financial goal of $500,000. The campaign was started on 1st September 2015, and within 12 hours, they reached their goal of $500,000. They raised $1.3 million in two weeks, and this surpassed their expectations, as they had aimed to raise $500,000 only over a month. Buoyed by the success of their campaign, Nextbit got down to creating their product, that was touted as the first cloud-based smartphone and the smarter of smartphones.

Within a year, the first cloud smartphone called Robin was shipped to Kickstarter backers and general customers. This device uses cloud storage to store files that have not been used for some time, so users can enjoy more space in their phone for frequently used apps and files. Due to this innovative idea and its huge popularity, Razer acquired Nextbit for an undisclosed sum, though it is speculated that the founders got a sizeable equity in the deal.

As per the terms of the deal, Nextbit will continue with their innovation, but will be a part of a bigger company. According to a blog post by Tom Moss, one of the co-founders, published in Nextbit’s community forum, Nextbit will operate as an independent unit within Razer, and will be focused on providing unique mobile design and experience.

This deal was in the pipeline for some time, and this is why Nextbit stopped selling its Robin smartphones and their accessories. However, the company promised that it will offer warranties for another six months, and will provide software updates and security patches until February 2018.

For Razer, this acquisition is another attempt to diversify its portfolio, so it can better withstand the shocks from any single market. In fact, if you look back, this strategy is in tune with the company’s policies over the last few years. Though it began with selling mouse for PC gamers, it expanded into other areas such as keyboards and headsets, which was the most logical expansion to widen its products. Next, it acquired a company called Nabu to make a foray into wearable technology and Leviathan Mini to add portable speakers to its product portfolio.

This acquisition of Nextbit is a little different from its previous ones, as it is entering an unchartered territory, even by its own standards. It’ll be interesting to see how this acquisition plays out for the company, and also for Nextbit’s customers.

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Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is on an acquisition streak, as it has acquired a cloud metering and billing company called Cloud Cruiser.  The financial terms of the deal are not being disclosed, and the acquisition is expected to be complete by the end of this year. This is the second acquisition that HPE has made in a week, with the earlier one being its acquisition of a company called SimpliVity for a whopping $650 million.

Founded in 2010, Cloud Cruiser provides analytics and software to help vendors measure the cloud services used by businesses and other IT departments. In other words, this company provides metering software to track the use of public and private cloud services. The idea behind this software is to offer an accurate picture of the scope of cloud services currently used by different companies, and their current and future need. With this information, service providers can determine the potential gap that exists between their client’s current usage and needs, and help to fill it with the right services.

This Northern California company has so far obtained a funding of around $20 million, and has an impressive list of clients that include Accenture, Microsoft, TD Bank, and Ford. HPE is in fact, Cloud Cruiser’s largest client, accounting for a major chunk of its revenue. This company’s cloud metering service is used by HPE’s Flexible Capacity arm of business, that allows customers to manage their own data centers with a pay-as-you-go model. However, the rising costs of Cloud Crusier was proving to be expensive for HPE, so it’s little surprise then that HPE is acquiring this company.

If you look closely, HPE stands to gain much in this acquisition. Firstly, HPE doesn’t have to pay money any more for the cloud metering services, and this is definitely a smart way to save money. Secondly, this acquisition fits perfectly with HPE’s Flexible Capacity business, and it can extend this service in a more effective manner for its customers. Currently, HPE offers a pay-as-you-go model, so Cloud Cruiser’s service can sure help to meter and bill more efficiently, not to mention the analytical information that can be gained from it. Thirdly, HPE is already embarking on a hybrid cloud strategy, and this is most evident with its acquisition of SimpliVity. In this sense, this acquisition is expected to give a further boost to HPE’s strategy.

On completion of this acquisition, Cloud Cruiser will become a part of HPE’s Data Center Care portfolio in its Technology Services Support division. The co-founder and CEO of Cloud Cruiser, David Zabrowski, will join HPE and will report to Scott Weller – the SVP of Technology Services Support. Coincidentally, Zabrowski served as VP and General Manager of HPE from 1997 to 2002. So, this will be a reunion of sorts for the CEO too.

Overall, this acquisition will be a good one for HPE as it can further its growth strategy as well as help it to save costs. As for Cloud Cruiser, this is a good end.

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A lot of innovation is happening in the cloud, and much of it is coming from startups. Fortunately, venture capitalists understand the importance of cloud innovation and the role of startups in a cloud ecosystem, and this is why these startups get a reasonable amount of funding to continue their operations. The latest cloud startup to get a $25 million funding is ProtectWise, a cloud security company based in Denver, Colorado. Investors who participated in this round of funding include Top Tier Capital Partners, Tola Capital, Arsenal venture Partners, and a few other unnamed venture capitalists. With this round of funding, the total amount of capital raised by the company so far has touched $67 million.

This company was founded by Scott Chasin and Gene Stevens in 2013 to provide the highest possible levels of visibility on any network. With about 70 employees, this company has grown rapidly over the last three years. Its flagship product, ProtectWise Grid, records all networking activity that happens in your organization’s internal and external network, including the cloud system where your data is stored and the network through which it is accessed. This information is indexed and analyzed to identify any breaches, or even threats, so that it can be fixed at the earliest. In many ways, this product acts as the CCTV camera of your organization’s network, and it can even be rewound to see how and when a hacker entered your network.

Such information can be invaluable in today’s business network, as there is a marked increase in the number of hacking incidents. According to a report titled Global State of Information Security, and released by Pricewaterhouse Coopers, there has been a 38 percent increase in breaches during 2016 when compared to the previous year. This includes a 28 percent increase in cloud architecture and mobile device breaches. This situation is not expected to improve in 2017, according to the same report, and this means, businesses are looking for ways to protect their network in every way possible.

Given this scenario, it’s no surprise that companies like ProtectWise are getting the funding to continue their operations. Though this approach to cyber security has been tried in the past, what makes ProtectWise Grid unique is that all this protection happens in the cloud, as this is where visibility is the lowest. Typically, network recording appliances in the cloud are stored on large storage systems that takes many months to analyze. As a result, it’s hard to find breaches as they occur, and sometimes, it’s identified only after much data has been lost. To avoid such a situation, ProtectWise is based on advanced algorithms that analyze massive amounts of data within a short time, so breaches and vulnerabilities can be identified at the earliest. It breaks down complex data into small and manageable blocks, so that it’s easy to analyze.

Let’s hope this product can break many of the barriers that exist in cloud security and provide us with a clean and efficient system for protecting data.

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Cloud market is booming, and every company wants to expand their presence. Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is no exception, as it plans to have a larger footprint in this sector within the next few years. To this end, it has acquired a company called SimpliVity for $650 million in cash.

SimpliVity was founded in 2009, and is based in Westborough, Massachusetts. Over the last eight years of operations, this company has raised $276 million in four rounds of funding, according to Crunchbase. It specializes in the making of hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) – a $2.4 billion market with a strong growth of more than 25 percent a year. HCI saves companies billions of dollars every year in technology and infrastructure costs, as it combines computing, storage, and networking into a single component. To cash in on this trend, SimpliVity created its own HCI product called OmniCube that runs on many hardware such as Lenovo, Dell, Cisco, HPE, and Huawei.

Its flagship product, OmniCube, provides a simple and scalable architecture to achieve the highest levels of performance while ensuring data protection. Users can start with a single node, and can expand it to a global network of nodes to move and protect data across different physical locations.

With HCI being such a hot market, SimpliVity had big plans for its future. In March 2015, it obtained a funding of $175 million from investors based on its valuation of $1 billion. However, those investors are taking a beating now because HPE is paying only $650 million for the company.

This brings up an important question of why SimpliVity decided on an offer that’s almost 35 percent less than the company’s worth. If you look at the IPO tech market, it’s come to a standstill since 2015. Nutanix, a competitor, took the IPO route, but was not as successful as it was expected to be. Also, experts opine that the tech IPO will not improve any time soon, and is only expected to get worse. Given this scenario, SimpliVity’s directors thought this was a good offer., and decided to take it, even if it meant the last round of investors have to lose $350 million.

As for HPE, this is a sweet deal as it can expand HPE’s existing capabilities. It is also likely to fit into HPE’s strategy of making hybrid IT simple for its customers, as more companies are looking for ways to create a secure and resilient IT infrastructure at affordable prices. With this acquisition, HPE aims to get a larger market share in the hybrid cloud platform –  platforms that run applications partly on clients’ private servers and partly on public cloud servers.

In addition, HPE’s sales is expected to get a big boost from OmniCube’s revenue, thereby making it a double treat for the company. In fact, when SimpiVity’s product and market reach is combined with HPE’s existing product line and marketshare, it can be a deadly combination. The best part is customers get to enjoy these added benefits, and HPE can hope to get more revenue, even if it was a bittersweet end for SimpliVity.

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As the cloud market expands and more players join the bandwagon, it becomes imperative for the larger players to come up with new programs that’ll benefit them, others, and the cloud industry as a whole. Earlier, AWS announced its plan to start a training program in the UK to fill the skills gap, and today, it is Oracle’s turn to announce a new program in Israel to promote cloud innovation.

Known as the Startup Accelerator Program, this program will be run and managed by Oracle’s research and development team. Under this program, Oracle will provide six months of mentoring in technical and business areas, provide support for advanced technology needs, and give access to Oracle’s customers and partners. With such a solid backing, startup companies have a greater chance than ever before to succeed. This help can be significant considering that more than 90 percent of startups fail due to a combination of factors such as wrong product, no market need, not enough cash, poor marketing, unstable business model, disharmony among founders, legal challenges, cost issues, and more.

Though Oracle’s program does not guarantee success, it greatly improves the chances for the startup to be successful as it helps to alleviate many of the above factors. However, it will restrict this program to only five startups for every six months, as it wants to focus in helping these companies overcome their initial challenges. Obviously, if it takes on more companies, then its resources will get diluted, thereby benefiting none. This is why it’s a sensible idea to restrict it to just a handful of companies.

This is the second startup program by Oracle, with the first one launched in Bengaluru, India.  Many startups such as ExpertRec, Niyo Solutions, Tydy, and Vear have benefited from this program, and enthused by its success, Oracle has decided to extend it to Israel as well.

Under the terms of the agreement, startup companies will be given suggestions and training sessions by leading CIOs and CEOs of Oracle and its partner organizations. The startups selected for this program can choose to work out of Oracle’s office or in a space of their own. However, they may have to travel to Oracle’s office for certain mandatory meetings. These startups don’t have to necessarily use Oracle’s cloud platform, though they will be given free credits for it. In addition, training will take place only on Oracle cloud. Oracle takes no equity in the program, as their goal is to encourage entrepreneurship.

If you’re wondering what’s in it for Oracle – a lot. Firstly, it can benefit greatly with innovation. Since the cloud market is becoming a crowded space, anything that’ll stand out for customers will give an edge to the providers. When Oracle has access to startups, it can not only help them to succeed, but also have the choice to acquire them if needed. Secondly, such a move can augur well for the cloud industry as a whole, and when demand increases, Oracle may eventually benefit from increased demand.

Due to these reasons, this program creates a win-win situation for everyone involved.

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