The Washington Post recently ran an article by Andrea Peterson on RIM (now BlackBerry), with a chart they called «The decline of blackberry in one chart». But more than the story of BlackBerry this chart rang home for me the enormous dynamics of a relative new industry.
As their chart showed the four mobile vendors that together had about hundred percent market share in 2005 barely managed to hold on to 20% by 2013. In only eight years they went from hero to zero, and were replaced by platforms that were introduced in 2007 (Apple) and 2009 (Android). I don’t cover mobile platforms so see this data mainly as a consumer, but it did make me wonder about the cloud market.
The mobile market in 2005 was by no stretch of imagination a startup market, I was on my third cellphone, after having enjoyed a car bound phone (car bound because it took up about half the boot) for about 4 years. The vendors were established, companies were handing out cellphones to most of their road warriors. Something that actually started in Europe – my US colleagues initially were juggling company provided calling cards and dialing codes – but by 2005 this was pretty much a global movement. A movement that felt more mature, established and business as usual as today’s cloud market.
Bitrix24 Collaboration for SMBs Update Supports Online Document Creation, Sharing
Bitrix has released a new version of Bitrix24, its free enterprise social network and collaboration suite for small businesses. The new release allows users to create, edit and collaborate on documents online, without having MS Office suite installed on their personal computers.
In addition to using Bitrix24 instant messenger for video and group chats, users now have access to video conferencing and screen sharing capabilities. Email connectors to MS Exchange, Outlook, Gmail, AOL, Yahoo!, iCloud and other popular e-mail services have been added to enable e-mail access from Bitrix24 accounts.
Activity Stream has been enhanced with real time updates, smart forwarding, notification options and company-wide announcements, while engagement analytics module (Company Pulse) has been added to provide real time indicators for enterprise social network adoption, identify roadblocks and slow adopters, and show which intranet tools are currently being (under)used by employees.
Bitrix24 has also released a fully functional mobile CRM, which allows creation or editing of CRM entries and invoices directly from the mobile device. The new mobile app also allows using multiple Bitrix24 accounts from a single smartphone or tablet.
“2013 has been a year of significant growth for us, – said Bitrix24 CEO Dmitry Valyanov, – we’ve signed up 90,000 companies, which is well over 500,000 users for the cloud and onsite versions of Bitrix24 intranet. Our workforce grew by 40% to over 130 employees and we opened three new sales and support offices. GooglePlay now lists Bitrix24 among the top 5 mobile intranet apps, along with or surpassing such established enterprise social brands as Jive Software, IBM Connection, VMWare SocialCast and TIBCO Tibbr. We hope to have a million users by the end of the year.”
Bitrix24 is 100% free to any company or organization with up to 12 employees. Bitrix24 paid cloud plans are priced at $99/mo (50 GB) and $199/mo (100 GB), and both come with unlimited users.
Object Storage Is THE Big Thing
In my opinion, Object Storage officially broke through this month. It went from being the “next” big thing to being “the” big thing. Why? Because Larry said so. Well, technically he didn’t: someone else had to do it for him as he skipped the Oracle Open World Keynote to see Team USA win the America’s Cup in the most exciting regatta of all times. So I’ve been told. I wasn’t there and I’m not a sailor. I kite surf, like Richard Branson.
What has Larry Ellison to do with Object storage and how is he an authority on the topic? Isn’t object storage about unstructured data, rather than databases? Well, correct: I don’t expect a whole lot from Oracle’s object storage technology. They are a database company and they are pretty damn good at that. But they haven’t been exceptionally successful with the Sun storage legacy other than the tape part of that business. Oracle’s object storage technology could have been good if they had recycled some of Sun’s honeycomb technology, but it doesn’t look like that is going to be the case. The little information that is out there points to OpenStack Swift, and we all know how well Oracle and open source blend! Also, Swift isn’t exactly storage-efficient: the technology was designed to run on cheap, commodity hardware – not really Oracle’s game.
Day 2 Keynote at Cloud Expo | How to Maintain Relevancy in a Cloud World
Let’s face it, developers rule. They have instantaneous access to technology resources that can be spun up easily without your knowledge. It is this pressure that is driving the inevitability of Cloud adoption across enterprise IT. If you still think of your IT organization as a cost center – presiding over a hefty annual budget and responsible for doling out dollars to the developers – then it’s time to rethink and re-imagine the business of IT.
If IT continues with the same old tired cost models and budget planning cycles, some of the best, most creative and most ingenious innovations in technology will never see the light of day. It’s a true dilemma for developers and innovators – why spend time creating, when your next great idea or project doesn’t meet the initial business case requirements for funding? But that was the old world of IT. The hard truth is that IT organizations are faced with a fundamental choice: resist or transform. CIOs can either accept the fact that they are now service providers competing with external vendors for budget dollars, or become impediments to change and lose relevance. Those choosing to become service providers are finding they need to develop a new operating model for IT, one that requires new platforms, processes, and skills.
Top Ten Considerations When Investing in BYOD
By Chris Reily, Director of Solutions Architecture
Every year has its own special IT acronym and 2013 has been no different. During client meetings, in the pages of IT trade publications and on the minds of vendor partners – the term BYOD pops up more frequently than Psy’s “Gangham Style” does on pop radio. For the record, Psy is the smartly dressed Korean pop music sensation sporting Risky Business-style Ray Bans as opposed to the (also trending) bearded Uncle Si of Duck Dynasty (reality-TV) fame. If this is all meaningless to you, you’ve been working too hard. Ask your family, they miss you.
Consumerization of IT is finding its way into the enterprise rapidly. Choice, personalization and mobility are no longer simply appreciated but are ultimately demanded. BYOD in theory sounds like a terrific plan and if executed properly can be an outstanding component of an end user computing (EUC) solution in many environments. Success however goes far beyond an employee stipend and flexibility in choice. BYOD is not for every organization and even in those organizations where it makes sense, it’s not for every employee. Here is a list of the top ten considerations when investigating a BYOD solution for your organization:
- What are the core applications you need to deliver to end users? Are these applications supported by recommended or allowed devices? What are the corporate use cases?
- Will your infrastructure support connectivity and desktop/application delivery to new devices on your network? Storage, compute and network – it all matters.
- Do you have the budget to support this initiative? Hint: it will be more than you expect. Hint #2: don’t expect to “save money” (at least in the first year). The ROI (return on investment) may come but expectations inside 36 months are unrealistic.
- Who needs what? Organizations are diverse and dynamic. Not every employee will need to be part of a BYOD initiative. Different categories of associates will have varying device needs. The road warrior sales guy, administrative assistant and mechanical engineer will all have different needs.
- A well-executed plan will drive employee job satisfaction. Figure out how your team will deal with happy IT-using employees; it may be a new experience for all involved.
- Are you ready to set policy and stick to it? There will be challenges that make you question what you were thinking in the first place. Get managerial support and be confident.
- Be flexible. Sure, this may seem somewhat contrary to comment #6. Of course you’ll encounter situations where the intelligent response is to modify and improve.
- Get “buy in” from the board room and the corner office(s). The support of senior management and investors is critical; don’t even go there without serious majority support.
- Seek advice and approval from legal, accounting and human resources. Ask the art department and maintenance team too if you think it can help.
- Talk to others. I know this is hard for many of us who have spent careers in IT, but give it a shot and see what happens. Speak to partners who have delivered BYOD solutions. Reach out to similar organizations who have implemented their strategy. Heck, speak with companies who tried it and failed. Arm yourself with information, do your research.
This is a lot to digest. A poorly executed implementation has the surety of employees abandoning the program. Small steps and a detailed approach work best – don’t be afraid of running test groups and proof of concept (POC) trials. The risk of not exploring your options may leave your IT environment seeming as outdated as last decade’s pop dance craze. Is your organization considering BYOD? Have you already implemented a policy? If so, how has your experience been?
Enterprise architecture: The key to cybersecurity
When I first discuss security in our Licensed ZapThink Architect (LZA) SOA course, I ask the class the following question: if a building had 20 exterior doors, and you locked 19 of them, would you be 95% secure? The answer to this 20-doors problem, of course, is absolutely not – you’d be 0% secure, since the bad guys are generally smart enough to find the unlocked door.
While the 20-doors problem serves to illustrate how important it is to secure your Services as part of a comprehensive enterprise IT strategy, the same lesson applies to enterprise Cybersecurity in general: applying inconsistent security policies across an organization leads to weaknesses hackers are only too happy to exploit.
However, when we’re talking about the entire enterprise, the Cybersecurity challenge is vastly more complex than simply securing all your software interfaces. Adequate security involves people, process, information, as well as technology. Getting …
Hostway Partners with Parallels to Deliver Turnkey Public Cloud Servers
Hostway has announced the Application Packaging Standard (APS) integration of its FlexCloud Servers (Infrastructure-as-a-Service, or IaaS), public-cloud hosting suite, in partnership with Parallels, a global leader in hosting and cloud services enablement and cross-platform solutions.
«In the rapidly evolving cloud services market, collaboration is the key to success. We’re thrilled to work with an industry leader like Parallels to give partners new ways to customize, bundle and seamlessly deliver the cloud applications and scalable infrastructure solutions customers demand,» said Todd Benjamin, Vice President of Hosted Services. «By enabling delivery of cloud services in a Parallels environment, Hostway provides ecosystem partners with a low risk, quick-to-market path to leverage their own channels to grow their businesses and offer an end-to-end solution.»
Nirvanix files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, vows to save data
Cloud storage provider Nirvanix has announced it has voluntarily filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy as expected, following the news earlier this month it was to shut down effective September 30.
The Nirvanix website paints a sorry picture this morning, with a company update put almost out of the way at the bottom of the page stating that bankruptcy was sought “in order to pursue all alternative to maximise value for its creditors while continuing its efforts to provide the best possible transition for customers.”
A statement on the website also details the efforts the company is taking to make sure its customers don’t lose out, either returning data or transitioning it to other providers. Nirvanix state they are “working hard to have resources available through October 15” to aid the transition process.
The CSP is working particularly closely with IBM, with a team from Big Blue on hand to …
Wozniak: I am a fan of the cloud…but let’s not go all in yet
Steve Wozniak says he’s “a fan” of the cloud, yet he’s still worried about what could happen if consumers and companies don’t back things up locally.
This may come as something of a surprise to the tech fraternity, for whom the general consensus was that Woz wasn’t too keen on cloud – to put it politely.
Last August, after a showing of the Mike Daisey monologue ‘The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs’, Wozniak was quoted as telling a packed theatre audience: “I think cloud’s going to be horrendous. I think there are going to be a lot of horrible problems in the next five years.”
Yet 12 months on the Apple co-founder, who is speaking at Apps World Europe in October, said that the position was “unclear” and things needed to be clarified.
“I am actually a fan,” Wozniak told CloudTech. “The advantages of the …
Enterprise Architecture: The Key to Cybersecurity
The focus shouldn’t be on threats, but rather on how those threats might change. At the technology level, this focus on change shifts the focus from a static “locked door” approach to security to the immune system metaphor I discussed last year. But there’s more to architecting for security than the technology. At the organizational level, effective EA will help resolve shadow IT issues which can lead to unmanaged security threats as an example. At the process level, EA will address social engineering challenges like phishing attacks. Securing your technology without applying a comprehensive, best practice approach to organizational and process security is tantamount to leaving some of your doors unlocked.