There are people who take life slowly, accept it on its terms, meditate, read about meditation, and internalize books like «Wherever You Go, There You Are,» a bestseller by a guy with a hyphenated name. I’m more of a Malcolm Gladwell fan — Outliers or his newest book “David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants.»
Maybe I’m just naturally the type that will spend 10,000 hours practicing, sharpening, mastering, thinking about the advantages a startup has over leaders in the market, getting back in the game. I’ve been in enterprise software for 30 years and the cloud since its formation. A long time ago, I faced the fact that I don’t have the basketball gene (although I do coach several boys’ sports teams) and I’m pretty sure meditating will not increase my productivity as a start-up CEO. I could be wrong on the meditating part.
Net Neutrality: Are We on a Collision Course? | Part 2
In my last blog, I discussed how today’s Internet is vastly different than the Internet envisioned at the start of the net neutrality debate. As promised, I’d now like to get into some fictional examples that paint the picture of why this is such a polarizing topic for so many.
Example 1: Perhaps one day I will find that while I can make a Skype call from the office, it doesn’t work from home. Then I find that I’ve lost access to all my Skype contacts who live in an area served by a certain phone company. When I go to Facebook it’s the other way around – I can access my Facebook account from home, but not when I’m visiting a friend who lives in a different area with a different carrier.
DigitalOcean Raises $37.2 Million Series A Round
DigitalOcean, a cloud computing startup, has closed a $37.2MM Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz with participation from existing investors IA Ventures and CrunchFund.
DigitalOcean believes in making complex infrastructure simple and providing customers with a seamless experience. New users can deploy a cloud server in 55 seconds with an intuitive control panel interface, which can be replicated on a larger scale with the company’s straightforward API.
Better Cloud Security with Lower Operational Overhead
When considering the major benefits of modern cloud computing, the lower operational overhead of the cloud should be high on anyone’s list. But when it comes to sensitive data — such as healthcare, finance, retail or government data — security measures are needed to ensure privacy and abide by regulations. Such security measures may be prohibitive in terms of operational overhead.
Companies are faced with finding the right balance between the lower operational overhead offered by the cloud and the higher operational overhead required by traditional cloud security.
Analysing SaaS IPOs: the past, present and future [infographic]
It’s been almost 10 years since Salesforce.com filed for IPO, on June 23 2004. And with a 56.4% gain in initial trading, it was the first genuine indicator of the huge monetisation potential in software-as-a-service (SaaS).
While Salesforce remains the leader in SaaS, there have been a plethora of public offerings since then – but not at the lightning pace that would have been expected.
Back in December Altos Ventures wrote about the first decade of SaaS IPOs, with an interesting conclusion: of the 40 SaaS firms who had floated, it took on average 9.7 years to go from founding to IPO, with the biggest hurdle breaking the $30m revenue mark.
It had been a tough journey for the majority of these firms, even the “unicorns” – the best in class organisations.
Yet there is light at the end of the tunnel, according to a new research infographic …
Inspiring Change – Why We Need More Women in Tech
The theme for this year’s International Women’s Day is Inspiring Change. As one of Europe’s leading cloud companies iomart has long championed the employment possibilities that working in the field of technology offers to women. Sadly current statistics show that our industry is still falling short. According to research by e-skills UK, only 17% of employees in IT & Telecoms are female. I had the pleasure of interviewing iomart’s Group Technical Manager, Anne Bryson, about her career and her thoughts on this major issue.
Balance Between User Base and Community in OpenStack and OpenNebula
In our last post «OpenNebula vs. OpenStack: User Needs vs. Vendor Driven» we stated that»OpenStack penetration in the market is relatively small compared with the investment made by vendors and VCs». We have received several emails from people asking for the numbers that support this statement. This conclusion arises from the comparison between OpenNebula and OpenStack user base, a well as between the resources invested in development and marketing by each of them.
How Are You Architecting for the Cloud – Science, Art or by Accident?
When was the last time you had a technology conversation that did not include the word ‘cloud’ in it? Gartner predicts that by 2016 the bulk of IT spend will be for the cloud. Gartner also believes that ‘nearly half of large enterprises will have hybrid cloud deployments by the end of 2017.’ Cloud technology continues to evolve at breakneck speeds and business wants to move to the cloud equally as fast. This presents significant challenges for technologists who need ensure the business doesn’t go crashing into a brick wall while moving at these speeds.
Is SMAC Good Enough to Meet the Demands of the New Digital World?
According to a recent KPMG report, SMAC, or Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud Computing, comprises around 80% of total ICT (Information & Communications Technology) spend. SMAC is not only promising a modern way for enterprises to leverage information technology, but it’s also revolutionizing the way business will be done in the future. However, getting there is not as easy as S, M, A, and C. Enterprises need to fully understand the power and potential of these technology areas in order to make sense of their intended dominance in the next few years ahead.
AppZero Announces $3M in Funding
Cloud migration innovator AppZero has announced a $3M round of funding to support enterprises moving to the cloud, including those faced with moving millions of applications to newer operating systems from Windows Server 2003, which reaches the end of extended support next year.
Leading technology investors and super angels are the investors and include AppZero Chairman Nigel Stokes, former CEO and co-founder of DataMirror, now part of IBM; Joseph Alsop, former CEO and co-founder of Progress Software; Covington Capital, a Canadian venture capital investment firm focused on supporting the growth and success of visionary entrepreneurs; individual investments from the partners of Gold Bench Capital, LLC; Frank A Bonsal, Jr., founder of New Enterprise Associates (NEA), one of the country’s largest venture capital firms; and Matt Ocko, long-time technology entrepreneur and startup investor, co-founder and co-Managing Partner of Data Collective.