Archivo de la categoría: Research

forecast, News & Analysis, Personal Cloud, Research

World personal cloud worth $90 billion by 2020 says Allied Market Research

metalcloud_lowresThe personal cloud market will have a compound annual growth rate of 33.1 per cent between now and 2020, by which time it will be worth $89.9 billion globally, according to a new study.

The report, World Personal Cloud Market- Opportunities and Forecasts, 2014-2020, says growing customer awareness of personal cloud services is driving the growth. Europe and the USA will be surpassed by the Asia-Pacific region as the most voracious users of personal cloud apps, with the latter accounting for two-fifths of total market share in 2020.

Advances in smartphones, tablets and mobile devices have boosted the growth of the personal cloud market as storage needs grow, it says. The change was catalysed by the virtualizing of the work environment as employers began using personal cloud storage as a solution to work problems, says the report.

Growth rate apart, the main finding of the study by Allied Market Research was that there has been a reversal of expectations, with individuals dictating the growth of corporate networks.

In addition, the study found that the personal cloud will become a conduit for lead generation and other indirect marketing methods. These could create new opportunities and provide the potential for revenue generated through advertising. Individuals will continue to lead the personal cloud as a result of the increasing influence of personal digital content, as devices with cameras proliferate and visuals become increasingly influential in the multimedia world, says the study.

The faster growth rate enjoyed by the Asia-Pacific region is anticipated as a result of different consumer behaviour in a different computing environment. Its population has significantly higher usage of multimedia devices coupled with faster broadband networks, according to the report.

Another strong influence will be exerted by the established market players, such as Google, Apple, Microsoft and Dropbox, who are leading the market with their flexible packages and affordable pricing structure. Their advanced features and attractive app prices, such as two-factor authentication for security, have improved customer satisfaction and driven wider adoption. The addition of Dropbox’s two-factor authentication, in June 2015, is cited as a major confidence builder in the personal cloud.

In turn, the mobile social media applications made possible by the new multi-featured, affordable smartphones created the demand for storing personal data using personal cloud platforms. Improvised secure features helped to popularise personal data storage and make the cloud a less ominous proposition, said the report.

cloud adoption, Europe, News & Analysis, Research, UK

Mounting frustration with cloud technology is stifling adoption – research

An influential group of senior business executives is being disillusioned by experiences with cloud hosted applications, according to new research. The proportions, though relatively low, are growing as cloud disenchantment threatens to set in.

The revelations come from research by cloud service provider Stratogen. Its main finding was that the expense, the lack of both applications and support and the downtime involved are all disappointing the company decision makers who backed cloud computing in their companies.

If news of the disenchantment spreads among the business community, the bad feedback could nip cloud growth in the bud, according to Karl Robinson, chief commercial officer at StratoGen. “The research highlights a major problem for cloud technology,” said Robinson, “It is clear UK businesses today have a distinct lack of confidence in the cloud’s ability to deliver the benefits it is capable of.”

The study, conducted independently by Arlington Research, involved a survey of 1000 senior business executives. Around three quarters (74 per cent) of the survey group reported day to day frustrations with using cloud hosted applications.

The main complaint for 20 per cent of the study group was the high cost of their cloud applications. Another minority (17 per cent) complained about the lack of available cloud applications. The lack of IT support was mentioned by 16 per cent of the survey and one tenth of those surveyed were not happy with the amount of downtime.

As a result, a minority of the survey group (17 per cent of the business leaders quizzed) are concerned that their cloud systems are preventing their company from growing. Around the same proportion (14 per cent) are worried that downtime is affecting employee productivity and creating a loss of company earnings.

Though these are complaints from a small minority, the survey figures seem to indicate that their influence is disproportionally high, since 33 per cent of the business leaders say they are now ready to remove their business off the cloud completely. A further 31 per cent are also considering a cloud exodus.

“The perceived high cost of cloud hosting is a direct result of the unexpected metered costs businesses are all too often hit with,” said Robinson, “migration challenges and the time invested in integrating cloud technology with legacy applications can further increase the cost of cloud computing.”

ANZ, Asia Pacific, banking, development, IBM, News & Analysis, Research

IBM signs cloud development agreement with ANZ bank

ANZ has signed a five-year, A$450 million (£208 million) strategic agreement with IBM, the centrepiece of which is the establishment of a cloud-based Innovation Lab based on IBM’s Bluemix cloud development platform-as-a-service, reports Banking Technology.

The lab will allow the Bank’s developers to build, test and deploy new applications and services at “a fraction of the time and cost previously taken”.

As well as the Innovation Lab and cloud capabilities, the agreement includes access to IBM’s software portfolio and core systems infrastructure. The IBM agreement will provide common platforms across ANZ’s network as it continues to grow as a super-regional bank and will allow the bank to deliver a “more integrated and innovative banking experience for digital customers”.

IBM will deploy its newest z13 mainframe and Power8 infrastructure as part of ANZ’s private cloud environment. The infrastructure will provide the bank with the reliability, security and resiliency needed to service the needs of mobile customers across the bank’s network. IBM integration, content management, data, analytics and cloud software will support ANZ’s core banking and infrastructure needs.

“Understanding our customers’ needs and preferences around mobile and digital banking is critical to our business and to providing a superior customer experience,” said Scott Collary, ANZ’s chief information officer. “We therefore need to ensure we’re meeting these needs in an innovative, consistent and seamless way and with this partnership with IBM, we’re working to achieve this goal.”

IBM has been a strategic partner of ANZ for more than 40 years said Scott Barlow, IBM client director for ANZ Bank: “This new agreement continues to build on this by enabling ANZ access to an arsenal of leading edge technology to provide the agility, speed and innovation essential in the rapidly changing financial services marketplace.”

Cloud computing, IT service management, Medical, Research

Global Healthcare Cloud Computing Market to Triple to 12 Billion in Five Years

According to a new market report published by Persistence Market Research “Global Market Study on Healthcare Cloud Computing: Hybrid Clouds to Witness Highest Growth by 2020″ the global healthcare cloud computing market was valued at USD 4,216.5 million in 2014 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 20.1% from 2014 to 2020, to reach an estimated value of USD 12,653.4 million in 2020.

Healthcare cloud computing refers to a process which involves delivering hosted medical services to the clients. These services can be classified into majorly three types: infrastructure-as-a-service, platform-as-a-service, and software-as-a-service. A cloud can be public, private, hybrid or community in nature.

Globally, the healthcare cloud computing market is witnessing significant growth due to increased government healthcare IT spending and advanced features of cloud computing services In addition, rising demand for better healthcare facilities, increasing in popularity of wireless and cloud technologies are driving the healthcare cloud computing market. However, factors such as high cost involved in the implementation of clinical information systems and lack of security and privacy of patient’s information restrain the global market for healthcare cloud computing market. In addition, interoperability issues negatively impact the growth of the healthcare cloud computing market. The global healthcare cloud computing market is estimated at USD 4,216.5 million in 2014 and expected to reach USD 12,653.4 million in 2020, growing at a CAGR of 20.1%.

North America has the largest market for the global healthcare cloud computing market. This is due to technological advancements in the region. North American market for healthcare cloud computing is estimated at USD 1,857.5 million in 2014 and is expected to reach USD 5,757.7 million in 2020, growing at a CAGR of 20.7%. In terms of deployment model, hybrid clouds are the fastest growing segment. In terms of service model, software-as-a-service (Saas) is the largest segment of healthcare cloud computing market.

One of the latest trends that have been observed in the global healthcare cloud computing market includes increasing use of mobile devices for delivering healthcare services.

Amazon AWS, Amazon Web Services, Cloud computing, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft, OpenStack, Research

Cloud Computing Entering Hypergrowth Phase

Cloud services and cloud platforms are now an undeniable part of the IT landscape. Forrester research indicates the shift has begun from exploration of cloud as a potential option, to rationalization of cloud services within the overall IT portfolio.

Cloud platforms, most notably Amazon Web Services, were only collectively $4.7 billion last year but are maturing quickly thanks to stronger recent solutions from traditional IT partners IBM, HP and Microsoft. The growth in use, maturity, and financial viability of public cloud platforms are proving their longstanding value as legitimate deployment options for enterprise applications. While not a one-for-one replacement for on-premise, hosting, or colocation, cloud platforms fit well as ideal deployment options for elastic and transient workloads built in modern application architectures.

For applications and services built in an agile mode with modern architectures, discrete cloud services, such as database, storage, integration and other standalone cloud middleware components, will empower developers by freeing them from the management and maintenance of these components and reduce overall deployment footprint and cost. They are also managed and enhanced by vendors as often as daily delivering new capabilities that can help a company maintain pace with the changing desires of an empowered customer base

As the largest clouds continue to invest in efficiencies that can only be achieved at their massive scales, the gulf between the cost efficiencies that can be had from the cloud and what is possible on-premise or through other outsourcing and hosting options will widen dramatically.

How Forrester came to these conclusions.

Capacity management, Kushagra Vaid, Research, Server Management, Stanford University, Tools

Stanford Researchers Create Tool to Triple Cloud Server Efficiency

Two Stanford engineers have created a cluster management tool that can triple server efficiency while delivering reliable service at all times, allowing data center operators to serve more customers for each dollar they invest.

“This is a proof of concept for an approach that could change the way we manage server clusters,” said Jason Mars, a computer science professor at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.

Kushagra Vaid, general manager for cloud server engineering at Microsoft Corp., said that the largest data center operators have devised ways to manage their operations but that a great many smaller organizations haven’t.

“If you can double the amount of work you do with the same server footprint, it would give you the agility to grow your business fast,” said Vaid, who oversees a global operation with more than a million servers catering to more than a billion users.

How Quasar works takes some explaining, but one key ingredient is a sophisticated algorithm that is modeled on the way companies such as Netflix and Amazon recommend movies, books and other products to their customers. Instead of asking developers to estimate how much capacity they are likely to need, the Stanford system would start by asking what sort of performance their applications require.

Read much more detail here.

 

Amazon AWS, Facebook, Google, Hardware, Magnetic storage, Open Compute Project, Opinion, Research, Seagate Technology, Storage, Tape library

Will Disks Using Shingled Magnetic Recording Kill Tape for Cold Storage?

We previously reported on the rumored Seagate/eVault “cold storage” tech initiative seeking to use disks to supplant tape libraries.

Now come this analysis from The Register.

We know Facebook’s Open Compute Project has a cold storage vault configuration using shingled magnetic recording drives. Both Google (mail backup and more) and Amazon (Glacier) have tape vaults in their storage estate. Shingled drives could change that equation because, probably, the cost/GB of a 6TB shingled drive is a lot less that that of a 4TB drive and, over, say, 500,000 drives, that saving turns into a big sum of dollars.

What are shingled drives, you ask? This video from Seagate explains:

Education, quantum computing, qubits, Research

Cloud Computing is Dead. Long Live Quantum Cloud Computing

Qcloud “…aims to provide resources for anybody interested in quantum technologies, in particular those who want to have some practical experience of using and manipulating information using quantum computers.”

We don’t even pretend to understand quantum computing. Now it’s in the cloud?!?

The Bloch sphere is a representation of a qubit, the fundamental building block of quantum computers (source: Wikipedia).

NSA, Opinion, PRISM, Research, Snowden

Survey Shows Extent of NSA/PRISM’s Damage to US Cloud Companies

A survey by the Cloud Security Alliance  found that 56% of non-US residents were now less likely to use US-based cloud providers, in light of recent revelations about government access to customer information.

During June and July of 2013, news of a whistleblower, US government contractor Edward Snowden, dominated global headlines. Snowden provided evidence of US government access to information from telecommunications and Internet providers via secret court orders as specified by the Patriot Act. The subsequent news leaks indicated that allied governments of the US may have also received some of this information and acted upon it in unknown ways. As this news became widespread, it led to a great deal of debate and soul searching about appropriate access to an individual’s digital information, both within the United States of America and any other country.

CSA initiated this survey to collect a broad spectrum of member opinions about this news, and to understand how this impacts attitudes about using public cloud providers.