Gartner and Synergy studies show continued cyclical cloud spend

The cloud industry continues to go up and up – both in terms of global public cloud revenue and spending on data centre hardware and software.

Those are the key findings from two separate research studies, from Gartner and Synergy Research respectively.

Gartner found the worldwide public cloud services market is set to hit $214.3 billion (£164.1bn) in 2019, up 17.5% from the previous year. The primary category will remain SaaS – or cloud application services as Gartner puts it – expecting to account for almost $95bn of that figure this year and $143.7bn by 2022. Yet the fastest growing category will be infrastructure as a service (IaaS), almost doubling in revenue between 2019 and 2022.

In total, SaaS contributes 44% of overall spending today, with cloud business process services (BPaaS) at 23%, IaaS at 18% and platform as a service (PaaS) at 8.8%. Gartner predicts SaaS’ share to be broadly similar by 2022 at 43%, while IaaS rises to 23%, and PaaS at 9.6%.

“At Gartner, we know of no vendor or service provider today whose business model offerings and revenue growth are not influenced by the increasing adoption of cloud-first strategies in organisations,” said Sid Nag, research vice president at Gartner. “What we see now is only the beginning, though. Through 2022, Gartner projects the market size and growth of the cloud services industry at nearly three times the growth of overall IT services.”

Synergy, meanwhile, found that worldwide spend on data centre hardware and software grew by 17% last year. The continued demand for public cloud services is driving this spend, with more extensive server configurations ramping up enterprise selling prices. Public cloud demand grew 30% while private cloud – or cloud-enabled – went up 23%. For traditional ‘non-cloud’ there was no change year on year.

Looking at the runners and riders, Dell EMC and Cisco took the top two slots in the vendor space for public cloud, with HPE and Huawei tied for third. Original design manufacturers (ODM) account for the most market share. In private cloud, Dell EMC again came out on top, ahead of Microsoft and HPE tied for silver, and Cisco.

“Cloud service revenues continue to grow by almost 50% per year, enterprise SaaS revenues are growing by 30%, search [and] social networking revenues are growing by almost 25%, and eCommerce revenues are growing by over 30% – all of which are helping to drive big increases in spending on public cloud infrastructure,” said John Dinsdale, a chief analyst at Synergy.

“We are also now seeing some reasonably strong growth in enterprise data centre infrastructure spending, with the main catalysts being more complex workloads, hybrid cloud requirements, increased server functionality and higher component costs,” Dinsdale added. “We are not seeing much unit volume growth in enterprise, but vendors are benefiting from substantially higher average selling prices.”

These two research reports show that cloud spending is a virtuous circle. Organisations feel an increasing demand for cloud services and adoption; this revenue implores greater capex from the vendors in their infrastructure; and this in turn leads to higher data centre hardware and software spending in general.

“Organisations need cloud-related services to get onboarded onto public clouds and to transform their operations as they adopt public cloud services,” added Nag. “As cloud continues to become mainstream within most organisations, technology product managers for cloud-rated service offerings will need to focus on delivering solutions that combine experience and execution with hyperscale providers’ offerings.”

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What to expect at NetSuite SuiteWorld 2019


Maggie Holland

31 Mar, 2019

The tag line for this year’s SuiteWorld conference in Las Vegas is ‘Grow beyond.’ What that means, precisely, we will find out in the next few days.

«SuiteWorld is Oracle NetSuite’s annual celebration of customers, business leaders, and partners who run remarkable businesses through the power of the NetSuite platform,» the website proclaims.

«This marks our ninth year of bringing together the NetSuite community and we will be showcasing why our customers grow beyond the expected – and how they have grown to be exceptional leaders in their industry.»

It’s two years, roughly speaking, since I last attended NetSuite’s annual US conference in person, and just under three years since Oracle confirmed it was acquiring the cloud company. 

Quite a lot has changed in that time. Although, in speaking to some of the execs pre-conference, in some senses, not much has changed at all… There’s still a laser focus on customer and partner success, in addition to international expansion. Those focus areas were always on the radar for NetSuite before its Oracle parentage. 

However, what has become clear is the ability to execute on those plans and turn them from vision to reality not just at pace, but at scale, too. That’s what Oracle brings to the table. Largely hands-off in terms of day-to-day running and look-and-feel, the clout the cloud giant offers has helped transform NetSuite’s ability to realise its potential. 

While it would be unbecoming of a cloud company to give too much away before the main event, we can expect the usual slew of updates about NetSuite’s roadmap and what customers can expect going forward. We’re also expecting a big focus on its channel ecosystem if the pre-event announcement is anything to go by. 

In particular, the company has unveiled its aims for partners to be as successful as customers are. Akin to its SuiteSuccess customer programme, it hopes to achieve this for partners with its newly announced SuiteLife programme. 

At present, NetSuite boasts more than 550 partners across 85 countries. It has ambitious expansion plans so needs a partner programme that is fit for purpose. 

«With SuiteLife, new partners will be able to start selling and delivering NetSuite to customers in only 90 days, while existing partners will benefit from innovative new offerings to expand their NetSuite practice and amplify their growth,» the company claims. 

“The rate at which customers are moving ERP to the cloud is at an all-time high and our partner ecosystem plays a critical role in helping us meet this demand,” said Craig West, vice president of alliances and channels, Oracle NetSuite.

“By making it easier than ever for partners to join, succeed and grow in the NetSuite ecosystem, we are putting the power of the NetSuite platform into the hands of more organisations across the world. With NetSuite, organisations gain the visibility and control needed to navigate complexities and accelerate growth while NetSuite partners capitalise on the generational transition to the cloud.”

Outside of the partner focus, we’re expecting a raft of customer case studies and the usual celebs talking about how the cloud is helping them do what they do in their given industry and, thus, can help other sectors, too.

Stay tuned for all the news and views coming out of SuiteWorld this week…

Equifax and FICO launch Data Decision Cloud


Clare Hopping

2 Apr, 2019

Equifax and FICO have teamed up to offer the Data Decisions Cloud to businesses, a risk management and marketing suite focused on offering improved customer experiences for financial organisations.

The service brings together Equifax Ignite data and analytics platform with FICO Cloud applications and the FICO Decision Management Suite (DMS) to help businesses analyse different data points, uncover new insights and build predictive models to lead the development of new customer services.

It will streamline the way customers interact with financial institutions and reduce operating costs by introducing better transparency into organisations.

«We are energized about this broad partnership between Equifax and FICO. Two industry leaders are joining forces to help financial institutions better meet the needs of consumers and improve business agility,» said Mark W. Begor, CEO of Equifax.

«Our partnership will seamlessly integrate Equifax’s differentiated data assets and Ignite platform with FICO’s market-leading cloud based decisioning software and applications.»

The end-to-end development platform will enable businesses to explore opportunities, test and deploy apps and services within their organisation.

It will lead the way to three other joint developments, including a connected platform to create new predictive data technologies, A compliance-as-a-service product to support anti-money laundering schemes and a pre-screen marketing automation platform to develop FCRA-compliant campaigns.

«Our common mission is to empower financial institutions to leverage data-driven decisioning in all their customer interactions,» said William J. Lansing, CEO of FICO.

«With this strategic partnership, FICO and Equifax will help organizations operationalize the best data with unparalleled predictive analytics and applied AI, and do so in a streamlined and cost-effective way.»

Announcing @ScalaHosting to Exhibit & Keynote at @CloudEXPO | #HybridCloud #AI #CIO #Serverless #SDN #SDDC #DataCenter #Hosting #Kubernetes

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The cloud migration landscape: Multi-cloud and hybrid battle for supremacy as security remains key

A new study from data virtualisation provider Denodo makes for an interesting snapshot of where cloud migration trends sit today, with security remaining top of mind and hybrid and multi-cloud architectures key.

The findings of the study, which surveyed more than 200 business executives and IT professionals, would not have come as a major surprise to regular readers of this publication. Perhaps some of the figures may have been a little on the low side. 36% of organisations polled said they were currently in the process of migrating workloads to the cloud, with almost 20% saying they were in the advanced stages of implementation.

46% of those polled said they leveraged a hybrid cloud model, with private cloud (33.6%), multi-cloud (32.6%) and public cloud (31.6%) all polling similarly. Cost optimisation (54%) the most frequently cited motivating factor for multi-cloud, ahead of securing a best in breed offering (45%) – with echoes to a recent Turbonomic study – and avoiding vendor lock-in (38%).

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure were the clear one-two when it came to most widely used providers, polling 67% and 60% of the vote respectively. Google Cloud, cited by 26% of respondents, trailed.

When it came to security, more than half (52%) of respondents cited it as a key concern, ahead of managing and tracking cloud spend (44%) and a lack of cloud skills (31%). In one statistic that may have gone against the usual trend, Docker – cited by 31% of those polled – was the most popular container technology ahead of Kubernetes (21%).

Naturally, given its heritage, Denodo advocates data virtualisation – where applications can retrieve and manipulate data without knowing where it is located or how it is formatted – as a tool to help organisations manage the complexity of their multi-cloud workloads.

“While organisations continue to adopt cloud solutions at a fast pace, they soon realise that the migration of critical enterprise information resources is a challenge due to today’s complex, big data landscape,” said Ravi Shankar, Denodo chief marketing officer. “Using data virtualisation, businesses alleviate these pain points by building a data services architecture that allows them to gain the maximum benefits from their data and take advantage of cloud modernisation, analytics and hybrid data fabric.”

You can read the full report here (email required).

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What is SD-WAN and how can it help your business?


Cloud Pro

1 Apr, 2019

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that data has turned every organisation on its head. Driven by a simultaneous explosion in cloud computing, network sophistication and general connectivity, there has been unprecedented growth over the past several years in both the amount of data the average business generates and its ability to capture and analyse that data.

Now, even small businesses rely on mining the data they collect for intelligence and insights. Combine that with the proliferation of cloud-based and internet-connected tools used by companies, and you’re faced with a problem. All of that data has to be sent into, out of and through your corporate network, which can lead to bottlenecks in more traditionally-configured networks as businesses grow.

Networking is a notoriously temperamental part of enterprise IT, and is often one of the most time-consuming and frustrating elements to troubleshoot. Configuring business wide area network elements to handle a new service or to address a fault usually involves manually issuing commands to each router in the network individually, which can take weeks or even months depending on the size and geographical locations of the network and the complexity of the change.

One new technology in particular has been mooted as a potential solution to this problem; software-defined wide area networking, otherwise known as SD-WAN. SD-WAN has a number of advantages over older types of wide area network configurations and enterprises are starting to roll it out within their organisations, with a study from network monitoring company SevOne indicating that around half of respondents had active SD-WAN projects in place. 

SD-WAN uses the technologies and principles of cloud computing to make managing WANs far less painful. It achieves this by decoupling the data plane from the control plane and centralising the management and configuration of the WAN itself through a single cloud-based console. This means that bandwidth can be dynamically shared throughout the WAN, and remotely re-allocated rather than having to be reconfigured at the local network level by an on-site engineer. SD-WAN can prioritise bandwidth allocation based on need, elastically scaling a network’s bandwidth up and down as needed.

This is the biggest difference between traditional WAN models and SD-WAN: all of the management and configuration of the network can be done remotely from a single management console. This makes provisioning a new branch or office quicker and easier compared to regular WAN. Rather than having to send a network technician down to the site to set up and configure the new office’s network in person, the IT team can use their usual management console to set it up according to predefined policies and rules, provisioning and configuring new equipment at the push of a button.

This is a huge timesaver for branch staff as well as sysadmins, as it means that all they need to do when they have a piece of networking equipment that needs replacing is take it out of the box and plug it in. Instead of having to wait for a technician to come and get it set up, it can be onboarded almost instantaneously. This means quicker time-to-value from new IT hardware and less hassle for your staff as they’re left to do their jobs without worrying about setting up networking infrastructure.

Business agility also benefits from SD-WAN, particularly when it comes to expansion. Getting the network up and running no longer has to be a bottleneck when opening a new location — just ship the equipment to the new building, and the aforementioned remote provisioning will ensure that it’s set up quickly and painlessly. It aids digital transformation in a similar fashion, allowing businesses to quickly adopt mobile devices, cloud collaboration tools and other transformative technologies without having to put hundreds of hours into making sure the network can support them.

SD-WAN can also help reduce your operational costs in a number of areas. Removing the need for an on-site technician when altering or troubleshooting a network takes travel time and costs out of the equation, making your network engineers more efficient. By the same token, using pre-set templates and profiles means a small, centralised team of network administrators can take care of network operations for a wide geographic area, reducing the need for local technicians.

CIOs can save money on the connections themselves, too; SD-WAN allows them to reduce their reliance on expensive MPLS connections by bundling together bandwidth from standard commercial broadband packages, 4G connections and even satellite links. In addition, the software-defined nature of the technology means that it can be run using commodity hardware, rather than expensive proprietary equipment.

In addition to this, SD-WAN brings huge benefits to the reliability and quality of your connections. Because these networks are centrally controlled, the software can utilise automatic routing and handling rules to ensure that latency-sensitive applications like videoconferencing or VoIP tools always have as much bandwidth as they need to deliver smooth service. What’s more, the ability of SD-WAN to group multiple connection types together mean businesses can automatically failover to a secondary line if their main connection fails.

Not all SD-WAN solutions are created equal, however. While other providers can offer some or all of the advantages detailed above, Cisco’s SD-WAN products offer all of this plus a number of additional key benefits that other vendors do not. For example, Cisco’s SD-WAN toolkit includes advanced, real-time threat intelligence built into the network itself, as well as integrated enterprise firewall capabilities and security analytics. Cisco’s products also feature secure boot, runtime prevention and trust anchors, and all software is digitally signed.

Additionally, centralising the management and monitoring of the network means that it’s quicker and easier to identify hackers causing anomalous activity, and if they do get in, then micro-segmentation means that you can shut down their access to other parts of the network, preventing lateral movement once they’ve breached the perimeter.

Moreover, the vManage dashboard centralises network orchestration, monitoring and analytics, while its broad portfolio of SD-WAN hardware — including its ASR, ISR and vEdge routers – can support multiple deployment configurations, from cloud to branch to edge. Similarly the Cisco Meraki MX Security Appliances managed by the Meraki Dashboard offers a cloud-managed SD-WAN solution.

SD-WAN technology can be deeply transformative for many types of businesses from fast-growing or acquisitive to large, established and complex networks, and Cisco is the ideal partner to help deploy it. As one of the oldest and established networking providers in the world, whatever your business environment, Cisco has the technical expertise and platform capabilities to enable and accelerate your organisation’s SD-WAN transformation.

Discover more about Cisco’s SD-WAN solution and how it can transform your business

How AI and big data analytics keep the most innovative companies ahead of the pack

Alphabet/Google is now the most innovative company in the world according to Boston Consulting Group (BCG), unseating Apple’s 13-year dominance of their annual rankings.

  • Alphabet/Google is now the most innovative company in the world according to BCG, unseating Apple’s 13-year dominance of their annual rankings
  • Strong AI innovators are over three times more likely to have deep expertise in big data analytics
  • The ten most innovative companies in the world extensively use AI and platforms today to grow faster than competitors and markets
  • T-MobileDow DuPontValeStryker, and Rio Tonto join the list of the top 50 most innovative companies for the first time this year
  • Fastest movers include Adidas, who jumped from #35 to #10, SAP who increased from #42 to #28 and Phillips who improved from #49 to #29

These and many other insights are from the Boston Consulting Group’s 13th annual report defining the world’s most innovative companies in 2019. The Most Innovative Companies 2019: The Rise of AI, Platforms, and Ecosystems is a fascinating glimpse into the rising importance of artificial intelligence (AI) and of platforms that support innovation.

What makes this survey noteworthy is how it captures how AI’s use is rapidly expanding and how enterprises are relying on platforms to scale their efforts in this area. BCG is providing an Interactive Guide that compares the 50 most innovative companies in the world, sortable by industry, company and year.

There’s also interactive analysis of 'steady innovators' or those companies who’ve appeared on the list every year since 2005. There are breakouts of new entrants, returnees, and movers for easier analysis. The report is available for download here (28 pp., PDF, free). Forbes also has an annual list of the world’s most innovative companies you can find here. The methodology Forbes uses is explained in the post, How We Rank The Most Innovative Companies 2018.

Key insights from BCGs’ most innovative companies of 2019 include the following:

What differentiates the world’s most innovative companies are their creation and use of AI and platforms with Alphabet/Google, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft leading all others

Each of them is actively creating and providing AI-based applications, platforms and ecosystems that enable enterprises to improve customer experiences, creating entirely new revenue streams, business models and competitive advantages. Alphabet/Google has defined its direction as an “AI first” company, intentionally creating a culture of AI-driven innovation. The following is BCG’s list of the most innovative companies of 2019:

Enterprises who rate themselves strongest at innovation and better than average at AI base their self-evaluations on successfully changing customer experiences

BCG found that the most advanced enterprises using AI today are succeeding at changing customer experiences, creating new business models and measuring AI’s contribution to streamlining internal processes. 19.2% of all enterprises interviewed perceive themselves as being better than average at AI and strong innovators. The following graphic compares how enterprises rate themselves at AI versus their strength at innovation:

Strong AI innovators are over three times more likely to have deep expertise in big data analytics

Enterprises who perceive themselves as strong AI innovators based on their success using AI to improve customer experiences, create new business models and streamline operations are two times as likely to be faster at adopting new technologies. They’re also 65% more likely to be actively targeting technology platforms to scale their AI initiatives and strategies further. The following graphic compares strong and weak innovators’ relative levels of adoption across 15 different innovation and product development categories:

Big data analytics, the speed of adopting tech, digital design, and technology platforms are the four areas enterprises who consider themselves strong innovators have the widest perceived advantage over weak innovators

When enterprises were asked which of the following 15 areas of innovation and product development will be the most impactful over the next three to five years, Big data analytics was far and away the most valued by strong versus weak innovators. Digital design and speed of adopting tech are two additional areas of innovation and product development that most differentiate the most and least innovative companies.

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Pragmasoft to Exhibit at @CloudEXPO Silicon Valley | #Cloud #CIO #AIOps #AI #IoT #Agile #UX #Serverless #DataCenter

Pragmasoft is a team of highly experienced developers, testers and UX designers. They are passionate about bringing innovation and advancement right to your doorsteps. This is their profession and they simply love driving Agility. They are proud to utilize Agile and accelerate their customers level of innovation. Their mission is to translate the needs of customers to adaptive technology and software solutions by providing lean software development.

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CFP Deadline For @CloudEXPO Silicon Valley | #HybridCloud #AI #DevOps #IoT #Blockchain #Serverless #Docker #Kubernetes

At CloudEXPO Silicon Valley, June 24-26, 2019, Digital Transformation (DX) is a major focus with expanded DevOpsSUMMIT and FinTechEXPO programs within the DXWorldEXPO agenda. Successful transformation requires a laser focus on being data-driven and on using all the tools available that enable transformation if they plan to survive over the long term. A total of 88% of Fortune 500 companies from a generation ago are now out of business. Only 12% still survive. Similar percentages are found throughout enterprises of all sizes.

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Red Hat to Present at @KubeSUMMIT | @IBMcloud @RedHat @GHaff @DanielOh30 @VeerMuchandi @ChrisVanTuin #DevOps #Serverless #Docker #Kubernetes

Kubernetes as a Container Platform is becoming a de facto for every enterprise. In my interactions with enterprises adopting container platform, I come across common questions: – How does application security work on this platform? What all do I need to secure? – How do I implement security in pipelines? – What about vulnerabilities discovered at a later point in time? – What are newer technologies like Istio Service Mesh bring to table?In this session, I will be addressing these commonly asked questions that every enterprise trying to adopt an Enterprise Kubernetes Platform needs to know so that they can make informed decisions.

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