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Organisations on average use 613 cloud apps, according to the latest study from Netskope – but almost 90% of them aren’t enterprise-ready.

That’s the key takeaway from Netskope’s January 2015 cloud report of millions of users in the Netskope Active Platform, which found that more than one in five organisations have over 1000 cloud apps in use.

Given 15% of users admitted they had their credentials compromised, as well as a quarter of all files in cloud storage apps being shared with at least one person outside the organisation, it’s certain to give CIOs a headache.

Marketing, collaboration and HR departments are least likely to be using enterprise-ready cloud apps – marketing departments polled by Netskope had a whopping 96% of apps not ready.

The report asserts that a growing number of users are logging into their cloud apps using compromised credentials, be it through reused passwords or details which have been stolen through a data hack or exposure. Despite this, cloud adoption continues to grow, with a 6% increase between the last two quarters.

“Employees today have shifted from thinking of apps as a nice-to-have to a must-have,” said Sanjay Beri, CEO and founder of Netskope. “CISOs must continue to adapt to that trend to secure their sensitive corporate and customer data across all cloud apps, including those unsanctioned by IT.”

The most popular enterprise cloud apps, according to the study, were Google Drive, Facebook and YouTube, with Twitter and Gmail completing the top five. This is an interesting comparison, given aside from Google Drive, there were no other storage and collaboration apps in the top five. iCloud (#6), Dropbox (#7), OneDrive (#9) and Box (#10) however all featured strongly.

Despite the worries about what files go where and who has access to what, some organisations are attempting to stem the tide. Veradocs, a Mountain View-based startup, aims to effectively provide a ‘kill switch’ for compromised data, allowing end users and IT to set policies for files and change their in real time.

Cyberattacks such as Heartbleed and Shellshock were cited by Beri as a serious danger last year. “These events underscore the sobering reality that many in the workforce have been impacted by data breaches and will subsequently use compromised accounts in their work lives, putting sensitive information at risk,” he said.

You can download the full report here.

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Fewer than 10% of companies polled in the latest Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) survey are aware of their employees’ shadow IT activity.

The survey, created in conjunction with Skyhigh Networks, gave a definition of shadow IT as “technology spending and implementation that occurs outside the IT department, including cloud apps adopted by individual employees, teams, and business units.”

And the report, which polled executives and IT managers, found their biggest worry over shadow IT is security of corporate data in the cloud, with almost half (49%) of respondents citing it. Compliance violations (25%), the ability to enforce policies (19%) and redundant services creating inefficiency (8%) were also noted.

It’s certainly a worry for business executives – and particularly so given these worrying stats:

• File sharing and collaboration tools (80%) by far the most popular cloud services used, followed by communication tools (41%), social media (38%) and content sharing (27%)
• Dropbox (80%) is by far the most likely cloud service to be blocked, followed by Facebook (50%) and Apple iCloud (50%). Surprisingly, 18% of respondents say they block LinkedIn
• Security of data (73%) is the biggest concern for holding back cloud projects, with loss of control over IT services (38%) and concern over regulatory compliance (38%) again highly cited

Remarkably, half of companies still don’t have a policy in place on acceptable cloud usage. But is it apathy which is holding firms back? Yes and no: 27% of those polled admitted they didn’t have a plan but are looking to create one, while 23% were more apathetic.

However in terms of data breaches, 2014 was hardly a banner year according to the CSA. While more software vulnerabilities were uncovered last year than any other year on record, only 17% of companies polled said they’d experienced an insider threat in the past 12 months, such as an employee taking sensitive data with them after quitting. Yet around a third (31%) said they weren’t sure, which certainly raises alarm bells.

The report again sounds out issues facing organisations when moving data to the cloud. “Companies will need to enforce the same security, compliance, and governance policies that they do for data stored on premises,” the report argues.

“IT will also need to work more collaboratively with business users to understand the motivations behind shadow IT and enable the cloud services that drive employee productivity and growth in the business without sacrificing security,” it adds.

Back in 2013 the CSA coined the term ‘the notorious nine’ for security threats to cloud, with data breaches, data loss and account hijacking the top three fears. As we enter 2015, it seems not much has changed.

There is a difference. One is strategic, one is tactical. One lays the foundation for the future, the other sweeps the past under the rug.

There is a move (again) in technology that pits consolidation as the be-all and end-all of tactical maneuvers in the data center to reduce operating expenses. The hue and cry is not surprising. Many of us have seen it before. An onslaught of technology in the forms of solutions and services rains down upon the data center, promising to solve this pain point and the next. Eventually, overwhelmed by the unmanageable number of devices, appliances and servers needed to support all these disparate solution, consolidation arrives on a white horse to save the day. Get rid of all the boxen! Save money on power, on cooling, on management. Simplify your architecture!

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SYS-CON Events announced today that Cloudian, Inc., the leading provider of hybrid cloud storage solutions, will exhibit at SYS-CON’s 16th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on June 9-11, 2015, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY., and the 17th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on November 3–5, 2015, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
Cloudian, Inc., is a Foster City, California – based software company specializing in cloud storage software. The main product is Cloudian, an Amazon S3-compliant cloud object storage platform, the bedrock of cloud computing systems, that enables cloud service providers and enterprises to build reliable, affordable and scalable cloud storage solutions. In addition, Cloudian is actively partnering with the leading cloud computing environments including Citrix Cloud Platform and OpenStack, cloud on-ramp providers, and the vast ecosystem of tools and applications that is afforded through true S3 compatibility. Cloudian’s customers include Alcatel-Lucent, Vodafone, Nextel, Docomo, NTT, SoftBank, Telecom Italia, Nifty, LunaCloud, Constant Hosting, and Clara Online. The company has additional offices in China and Japan.

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For better or worse, DevOps has gone mainstream. All doubt was removed when IBM and HP threw up their respective DevOps microsites. Where are we on the hype cycle? It’s hard to say for sure but there’s a feeling we’re heading for the «Peak of Inflated Expectations.» What does this mean for the enterprise? Should they avoid DevOps? Definitely not. Should they be cautious though? Absolutely. The truth is that DevOps and the enterprise are at best strange bedfellows. The movement has its roots in the tech community’s elite. Open source projects and methodologies driven by the alumni of companies like Netflix, Google and Amazon. This is a great thing for the evolution of DevOps. It can be alienating for Enterprise IT though. Learning about Netflix and their simian armies, or Facebook and their mind-melting scale is fascinating. Can you take it back to the office on Monday morning though?

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What do we know so far about cloud computing? Well, first the hype-cycle slowed down and we started realizing that hybrid cloud (as a combination of public and private resources) was a relatively sensible idea, i.e., from both an expenditure (public) and security (private) perspective. Now we know which data and processing tasks to put where – and when, right?
Not exactly, it’s still not all quite crystal clear in cloud is it?
The nomenclature, taxonomy and classification of the cloud are all part of the problem. At the risk of introducing a new term, it may be useful to talk about the workload cloud.

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Due of the rise of Hadoop, many enterprises are now deploying their first small clusters of 10 to 20 servers. At this small scale, the complexity of operating the cluster looks and feels like general data center servers. It is not until the clusters scale, as they inevitably do, when the pain caused by the exponential complexity becomes apparent. We’ve seen this problem occur time and time again.
In his session at Big Data Expo, Greg Bruno, Vice President of Engineering and co-founder of StackIQ, described why clusters are so different from farms of single-purpose servers that reside in traditional data centers, and why without an automated solution that can address the cluster requirements, real pain is coming and failure is certain.

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We are so proud of the success of out first cloud computing training class. This group took the challenge of changing their careers, studying hard and focusing their efforts in order to reap the rewards! We are ecstatic over there accomplishment of :’
100% PASS RATE ON COMPTIA CLOUD ESSENTIALS EXAM!!!
Mira Costa, Vets360 and GovCloud Network are STILL in their corner helping them to successfully land a job in their new career but we are not stopping here!
Information session for the next cloud computing class is scheduled for Thursday, January 22nd, 6pm at the Mira Costa San Elijo CampusRoom 303.
Please contact Mira Costa Community College for more information.

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The recent trends like cloud computing, social, mobile and Internet of Things are forcing enterprises to modernize in order to compete in the competitive globalized markets.
However, enterprises are approaching newer technologies with a more silo-ed way, gaining only sub optimal benefits.
The Modern Enterprise model is presented as a newer way to think of enterprise IT, which takes a more holistic approach to embracing modern technologies.

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CIOs surveyed by investment firm Piper Jaffray in its latest study have reported dissatisfaction with public cloud solutions, and are departing Google as their choice of public cloud provider.

The report, which polled 112 CIOs across eight industries, found nearly three quarters (73%) had allocated budget to private, hybrid or public cloud projects in 2015, yet the security of public cloud was cited by 35% of respondents as the primary reason for keeping data on premise.

Amazon Web Services remains the most popular public cloud provider and is growing, with 35% of respondents citing it compared to 33% in 2014. It was a similar story with the top three, Microsoft Azure (21% this year, 20% last year) and Rackspace (16% this year, 15% last year), while Google’s usage went down to 7% from 12%. IBM SoftLayer went up to 6% share, while other players – VMware, Verizon, Dell, Savvis, HP, polled 3% or less.

The results in the Piper Jaffray survey ring true when compared to recent industry research in the cloud infrastructure market, which showed Microsoft as taking the clear second place behind AWS – and according to the report, it indicates how organisations will continue to take up Microsoft in 2015.

Cloud budgets are up 6% year over year, with on-premises spending up 2%. 89% of those polled said they would expect their private cloud spending to increase, with a similar number (88%) agreeing for AWS and 70% saying their Microsoft Azure cloud spending would go up.

Gene Munster, a Piper Jaffray analyst, told the WSJ that the Google losses were predominantly attributed to their losing the ‘initial branding war’ with AWS.

Google has been pushing its cloud options aggressively in recent months, offering one terabyte of free Drive storage to every customer who bought a Chromebook during December. Compare that with Microsoft allowing free unlimited storage to Office 365 customers, however, and it doesn’t look as rosy, even though Microsoft had a several hour outage in November.

Read more: Cloud computing and the changing role of the CIO: Which is best for your business?