KPMG International’s Cloud Survey reports businesses saying cloud computing challenges are harder and more costly than they originally thought.
Why? Failure to address changes that were needed in:
GigaOM does a good overview.
Webfusion, a UK hosting group, polled more than 1,000 respondents in the US to gauge their understanding of ‘cloud’ technology. Of the respondents, almost one third (31.8 per cent) stated that they had no understanding of the term at all, with only 25 per cent claiming to have a clear understanding of Cloud technology. The findings come on the heels of a similar survey conducted in the UK, which revealed that 34 per cent of the British public had a good understanding of ‘cloud’.
Key findings include:
Commenting on the findings, Thomas Vollrath, CEO of Webfusion’s parent company Host Europe Group, said: “We were surprised at the general lack of cloud knowledge in the UK, but it turns out that we are much more Cloud savvy than our American counterparts, despite the US often being considered as technological innovators. With research indicating that three quarters of US businesses are consciously using some sort of cloud service, with UK adoption standing at 61 per cent, these results are yet more surprising.
“If consumers in the US don’t know what ‘Cloud’ means and have no idea that applications like iTunes are Cloud-based, then perhaps the use of the term should be restricted, at least in consumer circles. The reversal between US and UK consumer and enterprise Cloud knowledge goes to show that the use of the term ‘Cloud’ still remains a business message and should be used as such,” he concluded.
It’s getting to be the time of year when the “lists of” come out, recalling the best (or worst, depending) of this and that, usually followed by pundit predictions for the coming year. Cloud Computing is no different so this particular form of holiday cheer is starting to appear. We’ll try to find and point to the ones worth spending some time with.
First up: Joe McKendrick at Forbes on “7 Predictions for Cloud Computing in 2013 that Make Perfect Sense“. Notice we’re no longer shackled to the nice round number 10. He found 7 so what’s what he offered us. They range from “More hosted private clouds” to “Cloud as a defining term fades“. I think maybe the most intriguing one was “Cloud and mobile becoming one“.
Read the post for the full list and all his reasoning and details.
Taking a hybrid approach that supports traditional and cloud-based IT solutions is key to business cloud adoption in China, according to the Strategy Analytics Business Cloud Strategies (BCS) service report “Chinese Organizations Adopt SaaS and Other Business Clouds.” It describes the extent to which businesses and other organizations in China have embraced a mix of public and private clouds while maintaining traditional on-premise software deployments.
Chinese organizations are moving to cloud computing due to expectations of superior scalability and other benefits. However, the pace of cloud adoption is affected not only by security concerns which represent the top reason for not moving apps to the cloud for every country surveyed but also reliability concerns which is more of a concern in China than in all but one of the other countries surveyed.
“Chinese organizations are investing in moving applications and infrastructure to public and private clouds,” commented Mark Levitt, Director of Business Cloud Strategies research at Strategy Analytics. “However, continued reliance on traditional on-premise solutions for key business workloads due to reliability and security concerns requires cloud service providers and product vendors in China to fully support hybrid cloud and non-cloud environments.”
“Cloud product and service providers that want to be successful in China need to demonstrate how clouds can actually enhance security, reliability and mobility for Chinese organizations,” said Andrew Brown, Director of Enterprise Research at Strategy Analytics.
Research and Markets has announced the addition of the “Potential of Cloud Computing” report to their offering.
First there was the advent of the Internet that changed the manner in which we do business forever. Now, with the advent of cloud computing, the world is ready to undergo another major shift in terms of technology.
Cloud computing is an internet-based process that makes it possible to share information, software and even resources from computers to other devices all through the internet. The concept of cloud computing brings forth a new delivery model for IT services that are conducting businesses over the Internet. The process generally involves provision of scalable and virtualized resources over the internet. Not only does the process provide ease-of-access, but the speed and overall reliability of the entire concept of cloud computing is changing the IT industry rapidly.
Taiyou Research presents an analysis of the Potential of Cloud Computing.
Key Topics Covered:
1. Executive Summary
2. Overview of Cloud Computing
3. Market Profile
4. Benefits of Deploying the Cloud
5. Cost Benefits to Organizations from Cloud Systems
6. Cloud Computing Delivery Modes
7. Cloud Computing Deployment Models
8. Understanding the Concept behind Cloud Computing
9. Application Programming Interfaces
10. Cloud Computing Taxonomy
11. Deployment Process of the Cloud System
12. Technical Features of Cloud Systems
13. Understanding Cloud Clients
14. Regulatory Landscape & Investment
15. Commercializing of Cloud Computing
16. Concepts Related to Cloud Computing
17. Cloud Computing versus Other Computing Paradigms
18. Cloud Exchanges and Markets Worldwide
19. Research Projects on Cloud Computing
20. Cloud Computing Case Studies
21. Future of Cloud Computing
22. Market Leaders
23. Appendix
24. Glossary
Our friends at Cloudreach asked today if we had seen the Information Services Group’s recent report that said global IT services deals with a Cloud computing element have tripled since 2010 The report, which looks at more than 24,000 contract records, shows the number of IT deals featuring Cloud have doubled from nine per cent in 2010 to 27 per cent in 2012.It also suggests that private Cloud does not fully realise Cloud’s promise, whereas public Cloud offers great economies of scale.
Pontus Noren, director and co-founder of Cloudreach, a Google Apps and Amazon Web Services reseller, also commented, “This report demonstrates how Cloud computing is living up to the hype – it is one of the only areas in IT that is rapidly growing. Cloud’s continual growth can only be good for the global economy because it allows them to concentrate on core business activities, leaving behind traditional IT set-ups that involve purchasing and managing equipment, which can prove expensive and time consuming.
“I see future growth being unstoppable for Cloud computing. I have heard suggestions that in five years time, 50 per cent of emails will be cloud-based, whereas today that figure is just two per cent. A twenty five fold increase in five years is just explosive.
“It is also encouraging to see that public Cloud is preferred over private, as it offers a much more scalable and flexible solution.Largely unlimited data storage and universal access makes public Cloud an ideal option for many businesses, such as those with offices at more than one location, a mobile workforce, limited IT resources or rapidly evolving IT requirements. Firms can increase or decrease capacity as they need, and only pay for what they use.”
City Lifeline, the central London colocation data centre, has found that private Cloud is the more popular choice for businesses, with 63 per cent choosing private over public. Although the results, which come from an on-stand survey carried out at this year’s IP Expo, also demonstrated a growing understanding of Cloud in general (only 4 per cent of businesses claimed not to understand it), 87 per cent felt that private was safer than public.
Roger Keenan, managing director at City Lifeline said, “With technology, security risks should always be considered, but they do not need to become obstacles. Our aim at this year’s IP Expo was to increase understanding of Cloud among businesses, so they can make the most of all it affords. Both public and private Cloud have merits, but security should not be a concern with either if you are working with a reputable provider”.
Although acceptance of the Cloud as a concept continues to increase, the Federal Cloud Computing Survey recently found that security was one of the top challenges facing businesses when they consider the Cloud. However, City Lifeline found that privacy and security issues surrounding the Cloud in general are quickly becoming a thing of the past, with only 37 per cent of respondents letting this stand in their way. 41 per cent of businesses believe there are no obstacles at all, so why is there such a discrepancy around public over private?
Keep it simple, scalable and secure is the approach of small and medium businesses in adopting business clouds according to the Strategy Analytics Business Cloud Strategies (BCS) service report, “SMBs Run on Business Clouds According to 2012 Global Survey.” It describes the extent to which SMBs have embraced public clouds for applications more than any other cloud option.
Unlike larger organizations that have invested in both public and private clouds for applications and infrastructure, SMBs prefer public Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings that are easy to use, manage and integrate with other infrastructure and applications. Security remains a concern shared with larger firms.
“Many SMBs have moved nearly all of the applications that they can to public SaaS clouds,” commented Mark Levitt, Director of Business Cloud Strategies research at Strategy Analytics. “In the next 12-24 months, SMBs will explore how to move their remaining applications to run on public Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) clouds.”
“To compete with larger competitors, SMBs recognize that they must tap the vast resources available in business clouds to act nimbly and quickly in response to business and market needs,” said Andrew Brown, Director of Enterprise Research at Strategy Analytics.
Research and Markets has announced the addition of Javelin Strategy & Research’s new report “Battle For Control Of The Mobile Wallet: Sorting Out Players,Technologies and Strategies to Win” to their offering.
Mobile payments and purchasing at the physical point-of-sale have experienced little adoption in the U.S. marketplace despite abounding innovation in mobile and payments technologies. Control over the consumer’s preferred mobile wallet will be critical to the new business models that will develop in this ecosystem and the tremendous wealth that will accrue to the winners.
The battle for control of the wallet is in its initial stages, with many players just entering the field, jostling to grab early market leadership, and changing alliances and positions rapidly. A successful wallet will have to find a winning proposition for consumers, merchants, mobile network operators and financial institutions. This report will provide an update on how products have moved, where we can expect these products to be in the future, which primary technologies are being used at the POS (NFC, cloud, and bar code), and how wallets can maximize adoption.
Highly innovative but new vendors to the payments space, such as Google, the mobile network operators (the Isis partners in particular), Square, and Apple will need to position and partner differently than incumbent companies, such as Visa, MasterCard, card issuers, and alternative providers like PayPal. This report will also address consumer perception of different providers and why Visa and PayPal lead as preferred consumer wallet providers.
Primary Questions
– What is a digital wallet, and why is it important?
– What are the differences among NFC, cloud, and bar code mobile wallets, and what are their advantages and disadvantages?
– Who are the major competitors in the mobile wallets space, and how are they different?
– How are incumbent payments competitors transitioning into the mobile wallet space?
– Who are new entrants in payments , and what are their advantages and disadvantages?
– Which mobile wallets do consumers prefer?
– Which consumer segments should wallet providers target?
The Redis experts at Garantia Data did some benchmarking in the wake of Amazon’s announcement of
Their conclusion:
After 32 intensive tests with Redis on AWS (each run in 3 iterations for a total of 96 test iterations), we found that neither the non-optimized EBS instances nor the optimized-EBS instances worked better with Amazon’s PIOPS EBS for Redis. According to our results, using the right standard EBS configuration can provide equal if not better performance than PIOPS EBS, and should actually save you money.
Read the full post for details and graphs.
