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How Cloud Powers Business Agility By @Infor | @CloudExpo [#Cloud]
While change definitely can bring unprecedented opportunity to drive topline revenue and improved efficiency, it can also bring obstruction and more challenges for core business operations and infrastructure if not dealt with properly. More specifically, change can come in many different ways such as expansion into new countries, new and enhanced product lines, a merger or acquisition, different customers and even new suppliers and distributors. All of these changes can provide vast opportunities for growth, but only if a business is ready to get the most out of them.
IBM’s cloud revenue hits $7bn in 2014, but still plenty of work to do
(c)iStock.com/claudiodivizia
IBM has released its Q4 and full year financial figures for 2014, showing net income at $15.8bn down 7% year on year, revenue from continuing operations down 6%, but total cloud revenue of $7bn in 2014, up 60%.
It’s a not unexpected result given, like SAP, IBM is aiming to shift its revenues more towards the cloud as opposed to legacy on-premises software, but at the expense of its overall profits.
Martin Schroeter, chief financial officer and SVP IBM UK, said in prepared remarks: “We once again had strong performance in our strategic imperatives that address the market shifts in data, cloud, and engagement. We’re continuing to shift our investments and resources to our strategic imperatives and solutions that address our clients’ most critical issues.”
For the fourth quarter, pre-tax income from continuing operations was flat compared to Q413, while net income was at $5.5bn, down 11, and revenue was at $24.1bn, down 12% overall but down only 2% adjusting for divested businesses and currency.
Looking at software specifically, security software grew at a double digit rate, with IBM bringing its analytics, big data, mobile and cloud capabilities in line with security to address the market opportunity of cyberthreats. Software as a service (SaaS) offerings were up nearly 50%.
2014 was a major year for IBM in terms of bolstering its cloud play – and, by delivering a $7bn cloud business by 2015, it’s succeeded so far in that. Back in March, the Armonk firm announced it had moved $1bn of resources and investments into cloud. In July, IBM celebrated the first year of its acquisition of SoftLayer by offering a series of features linking up the IaaS provider with Watson.
Alongside that there is BlueMix, which Ovum analyst Gary Barnett described as “the next step in the transformation of IBM’s cloud offering”, as well as a partnership with SAP towards the end of last year bringing together IBM’s cloud with SAP’s HANA database.
“Our strategic direction is clear and compelling, and we have made a lot of progress,” Schroeter said. “We have been successful in shifting to the higher value areas of enterprise IT. The strong revenue growth in our strategic imperatives confirms that, as does the overall profitability of our business.
“We expect the industry to continue to shift,” he added.
Application Availability Between Hybrid Data Centers By @PSilvas | @CloudExpo
Reliable access to mission-critical applications is a key success factor for enterprises. For many organizations, moving applications from physical data centers to the cloud can increase resource capacity and ensure availability while reducing system management and IT infrastructure costs. Achieving this hybrid data center model the right way requires healthy resource pools and the means to distribute them. The F5 Application Availability Between Hybrid Data Centers solution provides core load-balancing, DNS and acceleration services that result in non-disruptive, seamless migration between private and public cloud environments.
PTC 2015 Focuses on Submarine Cables and SDNs By @JohnSavageau | @CloudExpo [#SDN]
In an informal survey of words used during seminars and discussions, two main themes are emerging at the Pacific Telecommunications Council’s 2015 annual conference. The first, as expected, is development of more submarine cable capacity both within the Pacific, as well as to end points in ANZ, Asia, and North America. The second, software defined networking (SDN), as envisioned could quickly begin to re-engineer the gateway and carrier hotel interconnection business.
Bangkok Bank Deploys @Akamai’s Web Solutions | @CloudExpo [#Cloud]
Akamai Technologies has announced that Bangkok Bank is using Akamai’s Web Performance Solutions to deliver high quality user experiences for its growing customer base across all geographies.
Ian Guy Gillard, Executive Vice President, Bangkok Bank Public Company Limited, said, «Akamai’s ability to provide a fast, secure and quality web experience has directly supported our plans to expand our business internationally, ensuring we provide all our customers with seamless and secure access to our banking services wherever they are.»
The Migration to Cloud Computing By @JohnSavageau | @CloudExpo [#Cloud]
A couple years ago I attended several «fast pitch» competitions and events for entrepreneurs in Southern California, all designed to give startups a chance to «pitch» their ideas in about 60 seconds to a panel of representatives from the local investment community. Similar to television’s «Shark Tank,» most of the ideas pitches were harshly critiqued, with the real intent of assisting participating entrepreneurs in developing a better story for approaching investors and markets.
How to Make a Business Case for Secure EFSS By @TLOTL | @CloudExpo [#Cloud]
When properly implemented and managed, secure enterprise file sync-and-share (EFSS) applications can improve project management and empower your workforce. Unfortunately, making the business case for secure EFSS isn’t always easy – especially when users and management aren’t aware of the risks existing applications pose.
Don’t get discouraged, though! The arguments in favor of change are strong. If you’re pushing your organization to eliminate public cloud use from the workplace, the following blueprint can help you set up a convincing business case.
DocOps Approach Breaks Rules | @DevOpsSummit [#DevOps]
Mobile, the cloud and data have upended traditional ways of doing business. Agile, continuous delivery and DevOps have stepped in to hasten product development, but one crucial process still hasn’t caught up. Continuous content delivery is the missing limb of the success ecosystem. Currently workers spend countless, non-value add hours working in independent silos, hunting for versions, manually pushing documents between platforms, all while trying to manage the continuous update and flow of multilingual content.
DevOps Award Goes to @LogicMonitor | @DevOpsSummit [#DevOps]
LogicMonitor was recognized as the winner of the 2015 Modern Infrastructure Impact Awards for ‘Best DevOps and Cloud Management’. TechTarget’s Data Center Media Group present the award to recognize the top cloud and data center products and technologies that are positively impacting IT Operations Departments by helping them to run with efficiency and insight.
In the award, TechTarget editors said, “It’s refreshing to hear about a monitoring suite that installs easily and is comprehensive, yet customizable. Add [LogicMonitor’s] great support and a cost-effective hosted software-as-a-service model, and you’ve got a Modern Infrastructure Impact Awards winner for best DevOps and cloud management tool.’
In response to LogicMonitor’s nomination for the award, LogicMonitor customers and TechTarget readers demonstrated a groundswell of support. One stated that LogicMonitor is ‘fantastically powerful, and yet, surprisingly easy to setup and maintain.’ Another said LogicMonitor is ‘so easy and monitors everything in our infrastructure at a great price.’