Category Archives: Research

Archiving & Regulatory Retention, compliance, E-mail archiving, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft Office 365, Mimecast, Research

Mimecast: Email Regulation Issues Leaving Businesses Confused

October 4, 2012 Richard

Corporate email archiving and retention policies are muddled and unclear, with many businesses leaving themselves exposed to potential litigation or compliance issues, according to new research launched today by Mimecast®, the leading supplier of cloud-based email archiving, security and continuity for Microsoft Exchange and Office 365.

The research, which surveyed IT managers on their organizations’ email policies and archiving practices, found that just 20 percent of businesses (23 percent globally) retain archived email for three years or more, with one in four businesses (25 percent U.S.; 26 percent globally) admitting that they do not have a clear policy on retaining email at all.

Key findings:

Email retention policies are often ad hoc or based on guesswork – Just
one in four IT departments (30 percent U.S.; 26 percent globally) have
an email retention policy designed to comply with industry regulations:

Forty-one percent of businesses surveyed (43 percent globally) say
their archiving policies are based on ‘internal best practice’
with no consideration given to industry or country specific
regulations
Six percent of U.S. and global businesses admit to deciding their
email retention policy around a ‘random future date’ with ‘no
basis’
eDiscovery for email is a major area of concern – Many
businesses are not confident that they would be able to identify all
emails relating to a specific customer in a timely manner:
- On average, it would take a U.S. business 15 working days to
  identify all emails relating to a potential litigation
- Eighteen percent of U.S. businesses do not think they would be
  able to comply with this kind of email eDiscovery request within a
  month

Forty-one percent of businesses surveyed (43 percent globally) say
their archiving policies are based on ‘internal best practice’
with no consideration given to industry or country specific
regulations
Six percent of U.S. and global businesses admit to deciding their
email retention policy around a ‘random future date’ with ‘no
basis’

On average, it would take a U.S. business 15 working days to
identify all emails relating to a potential litigation
Eighteen percent of U.S. businesses do not think they would be
able to comply with this kind of email eDiscovery request within a
month

Concern around email compliance – IT departments are concerned
that they are leaving their businesses exposed:
- Just one in four (24 percent U.S.; 27 percent globally) IT teams
  are ‘completely confident’ that their email policies comply with
  all relevant regulations
- Forty-eight percent (46 percent globally) are ‘mostly confident’
  with 34 percent (23 percent globally) ‘minimally confident’ or
  ‘not at all confident’

Just one in four (24 percent U.S.; 27 percent globally) IT teams
are ‘completely confident’ that their email policies comply with
all relevant regulations
Forty-eight percent (46 percent globally) are ‘mostly confident’
with 34 percent (23 percent globally) ‘minimally confident’ or
‘not at all confident’

“Taking fifteen days to identify all relevant emails sent and received by a client is a massive and unnecessary resource drain,” said Jim Darsigny, CIO, Brown Rudnick LLP. “For IT departments, managing and enforcing email policies can no longer be an ad-hoc approach as the risk potential and time wasted is too high to ignore. In our organization, the cloud enables our business to significantly reduce the pain, costs and resources normally dedicated to sourcing archived email data. With a solid email eDiscovery strategy in place, we are not only able to better serve our clients, but we can also more accurately assess their level of risk.”

“IT departments can and should be doing more to protect their organizations by adopting a more rigorous approach to email archiving,” Eliza Hedegaard, Account Director Legal, Mimecast. “However, the businesses I speak to are not being helped by a regulatory system that is incredibly confusing and difficult to navigate. Regulators should be helping businesses by simplifying the regulatory framework and putting greater emphasis on clearly communicating what organizations need to do to in order to comply instead of adopting scare tactics that focus on what will happen if organizations fall foul of the rules.”

Big Data, Memcached, NoSQL, Redis, Research

Redis/Memcached: Even Modest Datasets Can Enjoy the Speediest Performance

September 27, 2012 Richard

A pretty technical blog post over at Garantia Data’s blog relates the results of a recent benchmark test of the effects of cloud intrastructure on Memcached and Redis datasets:

Redis and Memcached were designed from the ground-up to achieve the highest throughput and the lowest latency for applications, and they are in fact the fastest data store systems available today. They serve data from RAM, and execute all the simple operations (such as SET and GET) with O(1) complexity.

However, when run over cloud infrastructure such as AWS, Redis or Memcached may experience significant performance variations across different instances and platforms, which can dramatically affect the performance of your application.

Read the full post.

Big Data, Economic growth, Government agency, Government Technology, New York, Research, Smart city

Study: Big Data, Cloud will Transform City Government

September 21, 2012 Richard

Around the world, city leaders face the challenge of delivering economic growth while meeting sustainability targets and rising expectations about the quality of municipal services, often in the face of drastic budget reductions. This is forcing many city leaders to improve efficiency and drive further innovation in the creation and delivery of services. According to a recent report from Pike Research, a part of Navigant’s Energy Practice, new platforms for communication, data sharing, and application development – particularly cloud computing and data analytics – will play a key role in this transformation.

Cumulative investment in smart government technology between 2011 and 2017 will be almost $4.8 billion, the report finds. Annual investment in smart government technologies in North America alone will surpass $1 billion in 2017, and annual investment in cloud services for smart cities will reach nearly $1.4 billion worldwide by 2017.

“Cloud-based computing, in particular, offers new options for cities that reduces capital expenditure, provides access to new skills, and reduces time-to-deployment of new solutions,” says research director Eric Woods. “Cloud-based systems also enable cities to take advantage of the huge amounts of operational data they collect to improve efficiency and develop new services.”

City leaders are also looking at investment in technology as a means of spurring economic growth. This includes a range of strategies: making the city a center of cleantech development and innovation (e.g., Denver, Copenhagen, and Amsterdam); creating new types of digital commerce and development (e.g., New York and Manchester); being at the leading edge of technology adoption (e.g., Barcelona and Friedrichshafen); becoming an exporter of technology (e.g., Seoul); or retaining or establishing a position as a regional trading hub (e.g., Singapore and Songdo). Each of these approaches, the study concludes, requires a vision of where the city is heading, an investment in infrastructure, and a commitment to innovation.

Pike Research’s report, “Smart Government Technologies”, analyzes the global market opportunity for smart government technologies. It assesses the business drivers, market forces, and technology trends that are transforming the use of information and communication technology and related technologies in smart cities and communities. The study forecasts the size and growth of the market for smart government technologies through 2017, and it also forecasts the growth in smart government data analytics and cloud-based services between 2011 and 2017. The report includes profiles of major smart government initiatives around the world and also examines the strategies of key players in the smart government market including government agencies, IT companies, telcos, and infrastructure providers. An Executive Summary of the report is available for free download on the firm’s website.

EMC Corporation, Federal government of the United States, Feds, Government, hybrid cloud, Mission critical, Research, VMware

Study: If Federal Agencies Move Three Applications Each to the Cloud, Savings Top $16 Billion

September 20, 2012 Richard

MeriTalk recently surveyed Federal IT professionals to understand if and how they are moving mission critical applications to the cloud. They found that Feds estimate they can save $16.6 billion annually if all agencies move just three mission-critical applications to the cloud.

As Federal agencies are making cloud progress, the early-adopters that are moving their mission-critical applications to the cloud are realizing cost savings and improved access to IT, according to the report, which was sponsored by EMC Corporation, VMware and Carahsoft. The report says the Feds spend more than half their IT budget on supporting mission-critical applications – and that private cloud is the platform of choice for mission-critical application transition. The study reveals how Federal IT executives view the barriers, current status, and future plans related to this shift.

Not surprisingly, Feds say security is a challenge – 73 percent identify security as a primary barrier. As a result, most favor private clouds. Thirty-eight percent of respondents say they have moved a mission-critical application to a private cloud; 11 percent say they have moved a mission-critical application to a hybrid cloud; and, 10 percent say they have moved a mission-critical application to a public cloud.

“Private and hybrid clouds offer significant cost-saving benefits along with the necessary security infrastructure that have not yet been realized through public cloud models,” said Kyle Keller, Cloud Business Director at EMC Federal. “The benefits of moving mission-critical applications to the cloud can be realized while also maintaining confidence in the security of those resources.”

Agencies spend 70 percent of their IT budget maintaining outdated legacy applications[1] – this is identified as a significant obstacle to cloud transition. Federal IT executives report that 52 percent of their mission-critical applications are custom built. When asked what would be required to make mission-critical applications ready for the cloud, 45 percent of Federal IT executives said these applications will require major re-engineering to modernize for the cloud.

Forty six percent of Federal IT executives say moving mission-critical applications to the cloud will improve their agencies ability to fulfill their mission, and 43 percent say it will improve their agencies’ big data analytics capabilities.

Of those who have moved a mission-critical application to the cloud, 91 percent report success. Federal IT managers surveyed report moving applications including financial management, procurement, logistics, customer relationship management systems, and project management.

“Our customers who are migrating their mission critical applications to the private cloud are realizing great benefits in cost savings, efficiency, availability and agility,” says Aileen Black, Vice President of U.S. Public Sector, VMware. “These benefits, enabled by the cloud, are the keys to customer success in the cloud.”

“Transitioning legacy, mission-critical applications to the cloud is not a forklift exercise – in many cases it’s more like an organ transplant,” said Steve O’Keeffe, founder, MeriTalk. “With the complexity and security concerns, it’s not surprising many agencies want a private room.”

“It’s been our experience that agencies are moving to the cloud in great numbers and are, as this survey clearly indicates, achieving significant benefits from doing so,” said Craig P. Abod, President, Carahsoft. “What began with virtualization now encompasses mission-critical applications as the next step in the journey and the value chain.”

Despite the barriers, many Federal IT executives see mission-critical applications in the cloud in their agencies’ futures. In two years, they expect 26 percent of their mission-critical applications to live in the cloud. In five years, they expect 44 percent to be in the cloud. In order to accomplish implementation goals, Federal IT executives recommend promoting cloud savings opportunities, identifying cloud-ready mission-critical applications, clarifying FedRAMP, and encouraging early adopters to share best practices.

“Mission-Critical Cloud: Ready for the Heavy Lift?” is based on a survey of 151 IT Federal government managers and systems integrators in June 2012. The report has a margin of error of +/- 7.95 percent at a 95 percent confidence level.

Download the study.

Data center, Data center infrastructure management, Efficient energy use, Green, Green Computing, Hosting, Pike Research, Research

Report: Green Data Center Market $45 Billion by 2016

September 14, 2012 Richard

The combination of rising energy costs, increasing demand for computing power, environmental concerns, and economic pressure has made the green data center a focal point for the transformation of the IT industry as a whole. According to a recent report from Pike Research, a part of Navigant’s Energy Practice, the worldwide market for green data centers will grow from $17.1 billion in 2012 to $45.4 billion by 2016 – at a compound annual growth rate of nearly 28 percent.

“There is no single technology or design model that makes a data center green,” says research director Eric Woods. “In fact, the green data center is connected to the broader transformation that data centers are undergoing—a transformation that encompasses technical innovation, operational improvements, new design principles, changes to the relationship between IT and business, and changes in the data center supply chain.”

In particular, two powerful trends in IT are shaping the evolution of data centers, Woods adds: virtualization and cloud computing. Virtualization, the innovation with the greatest impact on the shape of the modern data center, is also recognized as one of the most effective steps toward improving energy efficiency in the data center. In itself, however, virtualization may not lead to reduced energy costs. To gain the maximum benefits from virtualization, other components of the data center infrastructure will need to be optimized to support more dynamic and higher-density computing environments. Cloud computing, meanwhile, has many efficiency advantages, but new metrics and new levels of transparency are required if its impact on the environment is to be adequately assessed, the report finds.

The report, “Green Data Centers”, explores global green data center trends with regional forecasts for market size and opportunities through 2016. The report examines the impacts of global economic and political factors on regional data center growth, along with newly adopted developments in power and cooling infrastructure, servers, storage, and data center infrastructure management software tools across the industry. The research study profiles key industry players and their strategies for expansion and technology adoption. An Executive Summary of the report is available for free download on the Pike Research website.

FluidSurveys, Non-governmental organization, Research, TechSoup

Why NGOs Are Moving IT to the Cloud

September 13, 2012 Richard

TechSoup Global (www.techsoupglobal.org) announced today the results of its 2012 Global Cloud Computing Survey of 10,500 nonprofits, charities, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from 88 countries — the most extensive technology survey ever conducted of NGOs worldwide.

TechSoup Global’s report on barriers and motivators in cloud computing reveals that a majority of NGOs are planning to move their information technology (IT) to the cloud. However, they need more education and support to take full advantage of the benefits cloud computing offers regarding costs, productivity, and collaboration. Many NGOs are not even aware that they are using cloud applications already, or they are not familiar with the full suite of cloud-based applications available to them.

The survey results will enable the global NGO sector to make more informed decisions about cloud computing adoption and will also help capacity-building organizations, funders, corporate donors, and partners develop programs that maximize the potential of these technologies. For example, NGOs state that startup costs of moving information to the cloud and externalities such as lack of consistent electricity or Internet access are barriers that prevent them from using cloud computing.

Key results of the 2012 Global Cloud Computing Survey include:

90% of respondents worldwide are using at least one cloud computing
application.
53% report plans to move a “significant portion” of their IT to the
cloud within three years.
60% say lack of knowledge is the greatest barrier to greater use of
the cloud.
79% say the greatest advantage is easier software or hardware
administration.
47% say cost-related changes and ease of setup would be the greatest
motivators for moving their IT to the cloud.
NGOs in Egypt, Mexico, India, and South Africa have the most
accelerated timetables for moving their IT to the cloud.

Leveraging the resources of TechSoup Global’s 36 partner organizations and more than 200,000 registered member organizations, the survey was translated into 21 languages. It includes statistically significant results (more than 100 responses) from 26 countries around the world.

“TechSoup Global is thrilled to better understand how and why cloud computing can rapidly advance the causes of every social benefit organization in all parts of the world,” said TechSoup Global co-CEO Rebecca Masisak. “By sharing the voices of NGOs with the sector as a whole, this survey will allow us to better use cloud computing to improve organizations’ effectiveness, collaboration, and access to data.”

“TechSoup Global has long worked to bring available technologies to nonprofit organizations. And this survey shows that the global NGO sector can do more to make the cloud easier by creating solutions that address the precise needs of organizations across the world,” said Dan Webb, TechSoup Global’s director of solutions and services.

The 2012 Global Cloud Computing Survey was conducted online using FluidSurveys, a product donated by Chide.it, a TechSoup Global donor partner.

To access the full report, visit www.techsoupglobal.org/2012-global-cloud-computing-survey. Details on responses by country are available in the appendix of the full report. TechSoup Global is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.

Research, Toluna

Study: 44.4% of IT Pros Say They Will Move to the Cloud In the Next Year

September 6, 2012 Richard

Qumu today announced the results of their 2012 IT in the Cloud Assessment Project. A survey of over 700 IT professionals conducted online by Toluna found that 44.4% of them will be moving applications to the cloud within the next 12 months, with up to 33.4% saying that this will include up to half of their applications.

54.5% of respondents touted the benefits of making the move to cloud-based applications. When asked what benefits they thought were most important, surprisingly, more than 30% of IT professionals said better security. This result indicates that companies are becoming more comfortable with the quality of security in cloud based apps. After security, other benefits identified are:

Cost savings once deployed – 26.9%
Better mobility support – 25.9%
Time saved not having to update infrastructure – 22%
Quick deployment – 18.5%
Better for the environment – 12.6%
Elasticity to scale up or down as needed – 11%
Outsourced system support and maintenance – 10.9%

Even as IT professionals report they are planning to move applications to the cloud, many organizations already have. The survey found that fully 44.9% of IT professionals are already running some applications in the cloud. The top applications include email (25.9%), storage (24%) and document management (13.9%). Other applications include project management (11%), CRM (10.3%), marketing automation (6.8%), video communication (10.3%) and employee portals (11.3%).

Enterprises are adopting collaborative cloud-based solutions to enable their people to be more connected and productive. For many companies, video communications have become an integrated part of the corporate culture. 55% of respondents site benefits of using a secure YouTube-like service for enterprise video sharing. According to the survey, the biggest benefits that IT professionals see from using such services include:

Increased access to training videos – 26.1%
Gives employees a “voice” to share ideas – 24.3%
Increased access to subject matter experts knowledge – 23.6%
Better employee collaboration – 22.5%
Improved organization and search of company video assets – 20.6%

Additionally, the survey found surprising differences between large enterprises and small to medium sized businesses. In all cases, large enterprises were more favorable to cloud-based solutions than SMBs:

Running current applications in the cloud (51% vs. 42.4%)
Seeing benefits in migrating applications to the cloud (59.5% vs.
52.5%)
Seeing benefits of using a secure enterprise video-sharing service
(63.3% vs. 47.3%)

“The results showing that large enterprises are more inclined to Cloud applications is somewhat surprising. Some may expect large companies to be concerned with Cloud security,” said Ray Hood, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Qumu. “We believe that larger companies have more history with IT outsourcing and see the Cloud as the logical next step.”

The survey results come alongside the release of Qumu’s latest whitepaper, Managing Business Video in the cloud and Hybrid Clouds, as well as Qumu’s attendance at IBC 2012, the premier annual conference and exhibition for professionals engaged in the creation, management and delivery of electronic media.

Asia/Pacific Rim, CCID Consulting, China, Research

Cloud Computing Application Market Driven by Small, Medium-sized Financial Institutions in China

August 31, 2012 Richard

With the continuous growth of China’s economy over the recent years, the small- and medium-sized financial institutions have also witnessed rapid development. According to statistics of China Banking Regulatory Commission, the urban commercial banks and rural financial institutions have outplayed the large state-owned commercial banks in terms of total assets growth rate in recent years. By the end of December 2011, the total assets of urban commercial banks registered a year-on-year growth rate of 26.6%, much higher than that of state-owned commercial banks, which was 16.8% year-on-year.

The rapid development of small and medium-sized financial institutions has boosted the development of IT application in the financial industry. As small and medium-sized financial institutions need to reduce investment costs and accelerate their own business development, building the public cloud will undoubtedly be the best choice, which will be a new type of data center outsourcing service. Various application platforms will provide all kinds of settlement services for small and medium-sized banks, saving them from building application systems on their own. In this case, the small and medium-sized financial enterprises no longer have to build data centers and they can throw all technical problems with software and hardware to the cloud computing service providers. Besides, the use-on-demand and pay-per-use delivery model can also significantly cut the construction and operation costs.

According to statistics of CCID Consulting, China’s financial application of cloud computing yielded a revenue of RMB 15.62 in 2011, up 48.2% year-on-year and accounting for 9.5% of overall cloud computing application market. The small and medium-sized financial institutions, contributing 20% of the revenue, are an important force in promoting the rapid development of cloud computing application in the financial industry. For instance, banks in villages and towns of Jiangsu, Henan and other provinces and cities have carried out informatization construction through managed cloud services. Thealliance of urban commercial banks of Shandong Province also actively deployed cloud service platforms for its 14 member banks, providing unified IT system and product development, data operation maintenance, gross settlement and business operation platform services.

Data center, IBM, Research, Workload automation

Research and Markets: IBM IBM SmartCloud Workload Automation and TWS Fix Pack 1

August 30, 2012 Richard

On June 14, 2012, IBM released Fix Pack 1 (FP1) for Tivoli Workload Scheduler (TWS). On the same day, the company also launched SmartCloud Workload Automation (SCWA). SCWA combines TWS and TWS for Applications into one platform, belonging to IBM SmartCloud Foundation. At the same time, IBM announced a fundamental change of its pricing structure, away from its traditional resource-based approach and toward a per-job pricing model. This new usage-based pricing scheme was launched to make SCWA more attractive for today’s cloud-centric data center.

In this impact brief, Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) will evaluate the importance of TWS FP1, SCWA, and the new pricing model for the overall workload automation marketplace, as well as for the market for cloud platforms. For more details on IBM Tivoli SmartCloud’s ability to provide the necessary management capabilities for multi-hypervisor cloud deployments, please review EMA’s whitepaper on this topic.

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/ltjk95/ibm_releases_ibm_s

ICLOUD PE