BMC has unmatched experience in IT management, supporting 92 of the Forbes Global 100, and earning recognition as an ITSM Gartner Magic Quadrant Leader for five years running. Our solutions offer speed, agility, and efficiency to tackle business challenges in the areas of service management, automation, operations, and the mainframe.
Singtel to Exhibit at @CloudEXPO Silicon Valley | @Singtel @SingtelBusiness #Cloud #AI #IoT #IIoT #Blockchain #Smartcities
The platform combines the strengths of Singtel’s extensive, intelligent network capabilities with Microsoft’s cloud expertise to create a unique solution that sets new standards for IoT applications,» said Mr Diomedes Kastanis, Head of IoT at Singtel. «Our solution provides speed, transparency and flexibility, paving the way for a more pervasive use of IoT to accelerate enterprises’ digitalisation efforts. AI-powered intelligent connectivity over Microsoft Azure will be the fastest connected path for IoT innovators to scale globally, and the smartest path to cross-device synergy in an instrumented, connected world.
Your Kubernetes Career with @Dicedotcom | @KubeSUMMIT #AI #AIOps #DevOps #CloudNative #Serverless #Docker #Kubernetes
In his general session at 19th Cloud Expo, Manish Dixit, VP of Product and Engineering at Dice, discussed how Dice leverages data insights and tools to help both tech professionals and recruiters better understand how skills relate to each other and which skills are in high demand using interactive visualizations and salary indicator tools to maximize earning potential.
Manish Dixit is VP of Product and Engineering at Dice. As the leader of the Product, Engineering and Data Sciences team at Dice, he takes a metrics-driven approach to management. His experience in building and managing high performance teams was built throughout his experience at Oracle, Sun Microsystems and SocialEkwity.
Microservice Forensics at @KubeSUMMIT | @BuoyantIO @Linkerd #Serverless #DevOps #AI #AIOps #Docker #Kubernetes #Microservices
When you’re operating multiple services in production, building out forensics tools such as monitoring and observability becomes essential. Unfortunately, it is a real challenge balancing priorities between building new features and tools to help pinpoint root causes. Linkerd provides many of the tools you need to tame the chaos of operating microservices in a cloud native world.
Because Linkerd is a transparent proxy that runs alongside your application, there are no code changes required. It even comes with Prometheus to store the metrics for you and pre-built Grafana dashboards to show exactly what is important for your services – success rate, latency, and throughput.
Women in Blockchain Power Panel | @CloudEXPO @IBMCloud @IBMBlockchain #FinTech #Blockchain #SmartCities
Blockchain has shifted from hype to reality across many industries including Financial Services, Supply Chain, Retail, Healthcare and Government. While traditional tech and crypto organizations are generally male dominated, women have embraced blockchain technology from its inception. This is no more evident than at companies where women occupy many of the blockchain roles and leadership positions. Join this panel to hear three women in blockchain share their experience and their POV on the future of blockchain.
SUSE Named Gold Sponsor of ServerlessSUMMIT | @KubeSUMMIT @SUSE #HybridCloud #CloudNative #Serverless #DevOps #Docker #Kubernetes
SUSE is a German-based, multinational, open-source software company that develops and sells Linux products to business customers. Founded in 1992, it was the first company to market Linux for the enterprise.
Founded in 1992, SUSE is the world’s first provider of an Enterprise Linux distribution.
Announcing @Darktrace Silver Sponsor of @CloudEXPO Silicon Valley | #Cloud #CIO #AI #AIOps #Infosec #MachineLearning #SmartCities
Darktrace is the world’s leading AI company for cyber security. Created by mathematicians from the University of Cambridge, Darktrace’s Enterprise Immune System is the first non-consumer application of machine learning to work at scale, across all network types, from physical, virtualized, and cloud, through to IoT and industrial control systems. Installed as a self-configuring cyber defense platform, Darktrace continuously learns what is ‘normal’ for all devices and users, updating its understanding as the environment changes.
Sponsorship Opportunities at @CloudEXPO | #Cloud #IoT #Blockchain #Serverless #DevOps #Monitoring #Docker #Kubernetes
CloudEXPO has been the M&A capital for Cloud companies for more than a decade with memorable acquisition news stories which came out of CloudEXPO expo floor. DevOpsSUMMIT New York faculty member Greg Bledsoe shared his views on IBM’s Red Hat acquisition live from NASDAQ floor. Acquisition news was announced during CloudEXPO New York which took place November 12-13, 2019 in New York City.
UK remains key focus growth area for NetSuite
5 Apr, 2019
Europe, and the UK, in particular, remains a key market for NetSuite, with much-untapped potential yet so explore.
So says the company’s vice president of EMEA, Nicky Tozer, who talked about key focus areas and milestones during an interview with Cloud Pro at NetSuite’s annual user conference, SuiteWorld, in Las Vegas this week.
“We’re still focusing on growing the UK. It’s a mature market and, actually, the largest in terms of revenue delivery. So, we’re still continuing to grow that. That also has a very mature partner and customer NetSuite sales ecosystem,” Tozer said.
“The focus is pretty much the same, it’s pretty simple: it’s growth into EMEA. When we were acquired, we only had one office in the UK in EMEA. When Oracle bought us, they bought access to our market and probably saw that we have huge potential for expansion and would get a return on its money for that.”
Thus far, the company has enjoyed growth in 15 countries in EMEA, specifically in Western Europe, the Middle East and Africa. But, according to Tozer, in addition to helping ramp up the pace of expansion, Oracle has also assisted massively with R&D, recruitment and onboarding.
“NetSuite has been able to operate business as usual since we were acquired. That’s been huge in terms of continuing our success. It’s actually quite visionary of Oracle, really. Quite often, with acquisitions, they are just consumed into operations,” Tozer added.
“We were the second largest acquisition Oracle has made. We thought that would happen to us as a relatively small fish in a big pond. But, Oracle has allowed us to carry on operating as we have been.”
Tozer was appointed to the role in July 2019, as announced in a blog post by David Turner, senior director of marketing for EMEA. Prior to taking up the EMEA leadership role, replacing Mark Woodhams, Tozer looked after Northern European operations, as well as being instrumental in UK and Ireland business growth.
An 80:20 rule is key to NetSuite’s expansion, according to Tozer. By using a foundational level that exists everywhere, the firm is able to localise or customise on top of that layer, rather than re-inventing the wheel each and every time.
“We take 80% of what we do everywhere else in the world. Someone who needs a single, integrated business platform to run their business and be able to grow internationally fundamentally needs the same thing, whether they’re in Dubai, the UK, France, Germany or wherever. Then you obviously need to add that 20% localisation that makes it relevant.
“But the 80% of what we do is what has really allowed us to grow and ramp up that quickly. Some people call it cookie cutter or you know, or NetSuite in a box, but it’s that kind of approach.”
When asked how the company would ensure it maintains the same levels of service, support and experiences existing customers and partners are used to as it so rapidly expands, Tozer seemed confident.
“One very key metric is renewal rates,” Tozer said.
“If we’re not keeping our customers happy, they will vote with their bank account. We simply can’t let that happen.”
Why Africa’s cloud and data centre ecosystem will – eventually – be a land of serious opportunity
Take a look at the data centre footprint of the three largest cloud infrastructure vendors – Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud – and you are met with a breathless marketing message.
Azure (middle) promises 54 regions worldwide – the terminology differs for each one – promising ‘more global regions than any other cloud provider.’ AWS’ cloud (top) ‘spans 61 availability zones within 20 geographic regions around the world’, while Google (bottom) promises 58 zones, 134 network edge locations and ‘availability in 200+ countries and territories’.
If you look at the maps, however, two continents stand out. South America, population approximately 420 million, has only Sao Paulo – albeit the largest city on the continent representing 3.4% of the entire South American populace – as designated data centre bases for all three providers. Yet Africa meanwhile – population approximately 1.22 billion – is even barer.
It does appear to be something of an oversight. Yet things are changing.
A recent report from Xalam Analytics, a US-based research and analysis firm, had explored the ‘rise of the African cloud.’ The study went live at the time Microsoft’s Johannesburg and Cape Town data centre sites were switched on, and has explored Africa’s ‘cloud readiness’, industry expectations, as well as its associated services.
Ultimately, the fact remains that, thus far, Africa has not been worth investing in. According to Xalam’s estimates, less than 1% of global public cloud services revenue was generated in the continent. This figure, the company adds, is lower than mobile operators’ revenue for SMS.
The report argued that only five of the 25 African countries analysed were considered ‘cloud-ready’; South Africa far at the top, Mauritius, Kenya, Tunisia and Morocco. 11 nations, including Egypt, Nigeria and Ivory Coast, were considered on the cusp of cloud-readiness.
This makes for an interesting comparison when put against the bi-annual cloud studies from the Asia Cloud Computing Association (ACCA). The overall landscape in Asia is one of contrasts. Those at the top, such as Singapore and Hong Kong, are considered global leaders. Those at the bottom, such as India and China, arguably share many of the failings of African countries; large land masses and poor connectivity. South Africa, ACCA estimated, would have placed just under halfway in the 14-nation Asian ranking, between Malaysia and The Philippines.
These issues are widely noted in the Xalam analysis. “Africa is a tricky place for cloud services,” the company wrote in a blog post. “Many countries don’t have broadband speeds adequate and affordable enough to support reliable cloud service usage. Where cloud services are built upon a reliance on third party providers, provider distrust is deeply ingrained in many African enterprises, having been nurtured by decades of failing underlying infrastructure and promises not kept.
“Where the public thrives on an open, decentralised Internet, many African governments profess a preference for a more centralised, monitored model – and some are prone to shutting down the Internet altogether,” the company added.
Guy Zibi, founder and principal of Xalam Analytics, said there were two other concerns uncovered in the research. “Data sovereignty concerns are prevalent; in most African markets, the sectors that typically drive the uptake of cloud services – financial, healthcare, and even the public sector – are not allowed to store user data out of the country,” he told CloudTech. “Given that there was no public cloud data centre in the region and local options were not entirely trusted, this naturally impacted uptake.
“There is [also] still a fair amount of distrust in the ability of third-party providers to manage mission-critical enterprise workloads,” added Zibi. “In many countries, the underlying supporting infrastructure – power primarily – has historically been shaky, making it difficult for providers to provide quality services. That lack of trust has long held up the expansion of third-party managed services, including cloud services.”
Yet the winds of change – “trust levels are improving but there’s some way to go, and from a low base”, as Zibi put it – are prevalent. Alongside Microsoft’s newly-opened data centre complexes in South Africa, AWS is planning a region in Cape Town. Zibi said the launch was a ‘game-changer’ and a ‘seminal event for African cloud services.’
“It did four things in our view,” he said. “It offered validation from one of the world’s largest cloud providers that there was deep enough cloud demand in the region and a credible economic case to support this type of investment. It suggested that the underlying supporting infrastructure – South Africa’s at least – was solid enough to support a hyperscale data centre, and it probably accelerated local service deployment timelines by competitors like AWS and Huawei.
“It [also] gave more confidence to local corporate customers that they could start moving to the cloud more aggressively,” Zibi added.
Naturally, as these things are announced, customers are asked if they could tell their stories. Microsoft gave three examples of companies utilising cloud services. Nedbank, Microsoft said, had ‘adopted a hybrid and multi-vendor cloud strategy’ with Microsoft an ‘integral’ partner, eThekwini Water was using Azure for critical application monitoring and failover among other use cases, while The Peace Parks Foundation was utilising rapid deployment of infrastructure as well as offering radio over Internet protocol – ‘a high-tech solution to a low-tech problem’ – to improve radio communication over remote and isolated areas.
Zibi noted that the facets binding the cloud-ready African nations together was strong adoption of high speed broadband, adequate power supply, good data infrastructure and solid regulations fostering adoption of cloud services. While Azure and AWS are the leaders, Google is seen by Xalam only as a challenger. In a move that is perhaps indicative of the state of play in African IT more generally, Oracle and IBM – alongside VMware – are the next strongest providers.
The report predicted that top line annual cloud services revenue in Africa is set to double between now and 2023, and public cloud services revenue to triple in that time. The barriers understandably remain in such a vast area, but the upside is considerable. “Few other segments in the African ICT space are as likely to generate an incremental $2bn in top line revenue over the next five years, and at least as much in adjacent enabling ecosystem revenue,” the company noted.
“But the broader upside is unmistakable, and the battle for the African cloud is only beginning.”
You can find out more about the report here (customer access only).
Interested in hearing industry leaders discuss subjects like this and sharing their experiences and use-cases? Attend the Cyber Security & Cloud Expo World Series with upcoming events in Silicon Valley, London and Amsterdam to learn more.