Six Degrees Group Announces New Funding, Cloud Hosting Acquisition

Image representing Penta Capital as depicted i...

Six Degrees Group today announces it has raised £8 million in new funding from Penta Capital and that it has completed the acquisition of Cloud Computing Centre (CCC), a Surrey-based managed cloud hosting expert established in 1999.

CCC focuses on the cloud market and brings over 100 mid-market hosting customers who spend an average of £36,000 pa. The acquisition takes Six Degrees Group’s run-rate position to £50m revenue and £12m EBITDA. CCC’s cloud platform is highly complementary to the existing Six Degrees technology and they are also a Microsoft Gold Partner and Silver Hosting Partner, bringing incremental skillsets for Microsoft Hyper-V to the Group.

Commenting on the acquisition, Alastair Mills, CEO of Six Degrees Group, stated:

“I am delighted to welcome Cloud Computing Centre to Six Degrees Group. This is a significant acquisition for us as it reinforces our mid-market focus, strengthens our managed cloud hosting team and brings outstanding technical capabilities to the Group.”

In response, Keith Bates, CEO of Cloud Computing Centre, stated:

“This is an exciting day in the evolution of Cloud Computing Centre. We felt that the time was right to join forces with one of the fastest-growing managed data service providers in the sector, especially when we have so much in common. Joining Six Degrees Group will significantly strengthen our ability to win mid-market and corporate cloud hosting contracts and to deliver new services to our existing clients.”


SYS-CON.tv Interview: Assessing Cloud Requirements

“There are different areas in the cloud, different models in the cloud. I think a lot of that depends on the data. If the data is really sensitive then we want to have a private cloud. If the data is something that can be out there, then we have a public cloud,” observed Ajay Budhraja, CTO at the Department of Justice, in this SYS-CON.tv interview with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan at the 10th International Cloud Expo, held June 11–14, 2012, at the Javits Center in New York City.
Cloud Expo 2012 Silicon Valley, November 5–8, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA, will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading Cloud industry players in the world.

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Google Compute Engine and Cloud Video Transcoding — How Does it Compare?

Zencoder performed some initial comparison tests of Google Compute Engine versus Amazon EC2 for transfering and transcoding video.

“On EC2, we use Cluster Compute instances, which are fast dual-CPU machines in two sizes: 4XL and 8XL. We compared these with the fastest GCE instance type, which is currently a single-CPU 8-core server.”

Here’s one of their resulting charts:

Read the full post for details.


Integrated Systems and Enterprise Cloud Adoption

There are a lot of benefits to leveraging cloud computing technology but so are barriers. The thoughts of several folks collected through tweet chats is captured in this blog post.
Why is it that cloud computing is maturing but adoption is lagging? This transformational approach has huge potential but compared to the buzz surrounding it, enterprises are just taking baby steps towards widespread adoption. When invited by IBM to do a tweet chat on “Accelerating the Adoption of Cloud”, I liked the opportunity because of the widespread discussion around it as well as controversial enterprise adoption efforts made by “Shadow IT”, a common term used for folks who bypass corporate IT to start their own cloud initiatives.

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Akamai Posts Strong Second Quarter

Akamai Technologies on Thursday reported financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2012. Revenue for the second quarter of 2012 was $331 million, a 20 percent increase over second quarter 2011 revenue of $277 million.
Net income in accordance with United States Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, or GAAP, for the second quarter of 2012 was $44 million, or $0.24 per diluted share, an 8 percent decrease from second quarter 2011 GAAP net income of $48 million, or $0.25 per diluted share, and a 2 percent increase from first quarter 2012 GAAP net income of $43 million, or $0.24 per diluted share.

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Another R Mention in the NYT

The R language gets a brief mention in an article in yesterday’s New York Times on automated bond trading: The traders here are mostly educated in math or physics, often outside the United States, and their desks are piled high with textbooks like the “R Graphs Cookbook,” for working with obscure computer programming languages. R an obscure programming language? Perhaps the finance desk should drop by the graphics desk sometime, where R is routinely used for the Times’ interactive online and print graphics features. (A visualization of the last century of drought in the US is a particularly elegant recent…

David Smith

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Moving to the cloud makes great financial sense, says IDC

A detailed study from the International Data Center (IDC) has shown that companies who use the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud make substantial savings over time.

The report, titled ‘Business Value of Amazon Web Services Accelerates Over Time’ and commissioned by AWS, saw the research house interview representatives from 11 organisations which had deployed AWS onto their services.

According to IDC, after three years enterprises should expect to see three and a half times their investment in AWS; and after five years the realisation would be $8.40 per every $1 invested.

“While all customers had enjoyed positive returns on their investment, there is a definite correlation between the length of time they had been AWS customers and their returns”, the report states.

The key statistics from the report are:

  • Those who used AWS saw a 626% ROI over five years
  • Overall companies in the cloud saved an average of …

Cloud Computing: Data Gathering in the Cloud

“Axway is about secure data transmission – moving data in a highly secured manner,” stated Alan Taylor, Director of Alliances at Axway, in this SYS-CON.tv interview with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan at the 10th International Cloud Expo, held June 11–14, 2012, at the Javits Center in New York City. Joining Alan in this interview are Mark Clark, Senior Director of Cloud Solutions at ScaleMatrix, and Wendy Petty, Senior Adviser for Cloud Solutions at CA Technologies.
Cloud Expo 2012 Silicon Valley, November 5–8, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA, will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading Cloud industry players in the world.

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Hype Cycles, VDI, and BYOD

An interesting thing is occurring in the spaces of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) that is subtle, and while not generally part of the technology hype cycle, seems to be an adjunct of it in these two very specific cases. In espionage, when launching a misinformation campaign, several different avenues are approached for maximum impact, and to increase believability. While I don’t think this over-hype cycle is anything like an espionage campaign, the similarities that do exist are intriguing.

The standard hype cycle tells you how a product category will change the world, we’ve seen it over and over in different forms. Get X or get behind your competitors, Product Y will solve all your business problems and cook you toast in the morning. More revolutionary than water, product Z is the next big thing. Product A will eliminate the need for (insert critical IT function here)… The hype cycle goes on, and eventually wears out as people find actual uses for the product category, and the limitations. At that point, the product type settles into the enterprise, or into obscurity.

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The cloud news categorized.