Microsoft has extended its lead over Salesforce in the enterprise software as a service (SaaS) market with the LinkedIn acquisition starting to make its presence felt, according to Synergy Research.

The analyst firm, which has put out a note based on Q2 data, finds Adobe, Oracle and SAP round out the top five, with Salesforce still comfortably in the silver medal position.

Salesforce still bests Microsoft in the CRM space – the slowest growing of the buckets enterprise SaaS is measured in (below) – but Microsoft rules the roost in the collaboration category, ahead of Cisco and Google. Oracle comes out on top for ERP, with ADP leading in HR/HCM apps.

While enterprise SaaS is now considered mature in certain aspects, its spending power continues to pale against on-premise software, meaning growth will remain buoyant for many years, according to Synergy.

The company adds the SaaS market will double in size by the end of 2020.

As John Dinsdale, Synergy research director and chief analyst points out, Microsoft still has lots of on-premise customers it can turn into SaaS ones.

“Traditional enterprise software vendors like Microsoft, SAP, Oracle and IBM still have a huge base of on-premise software customers and they are all now pushing to aggressively convert those customers to a SaaS-based consumption model,” he said.

“At the same time, born in the cloud software vendors like Workday, Zendesk and ServiceNow continue to light a fire under the market and help to propel enterprise spending on SaaS,” Dinsdale added.

Announcing Microsoft’s most recent quarterly revenues of $23.3 billion last month, chief executive Satya Nadella made a number of references to LinkedIn, saying record levels of messages were sent through a new messaging overlay, as well as discussing opportunities for product overlap through Dynamics, Microsoft’s CRM and ERP solutions, with LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator.

“In a world where customers are increasingly digitising every business process, we continue to invest and expand our portfolio of modern, modular business applications that are infused with AI,” Nadella told analysts.

Due in part to the increased prevalence of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, it seems that more computing capacity is moving to the edge than ever before – and a lot of this is happening in the data centres that increasingly cloud-savvy organisations now rely upon. There are many drivers behind this change, including governance, security, regulation and IP protection.

Reducing latency

Moving datacentres closer to the edge can solve various issues, not least of which is latency. Looking into the near future with the likes of artificial intelligence (AI), there will need to be powerful analytics solutions located at the point of consumption, because network latency can be costly and even fatal to businesses.

Imagine the problems that latency could cause if we get to a point where AI is being used to support medical surgery, or if robotics becomes a critical part of vehicle navigation. These scenarios require real-time action and response — something that is prevented through latency.

A time to co-exist

That’s not to say we should forget about cloud entirely. When talking among peers, it is clear that edge computing and networks will co-exist for some time to come, and that a balance will be achieved based on use cases and business scenarios.

Moving to the edge doesn’t signal the end for core data centres. It’s about an appropriate use of edge and public cloud based on specific business requirements, rather than one being better than the other. The answer here lies in hybrid solutions.

A significant evolution

Going forward, we will see an increasingly significant evolution of the hybrid cloud model. People have been talking about hybrid for a little while now, but the evolution of services and architectures that support this model have yet to catch up to requirements.

That’s all changing now. Microsoft will later this year release Azure Stack, a solution that is very much all about putting services and capabilities at the edge, while ensuring that the benefits of hyper-scale computing and services in the (public) cloud are available when required.

The idea of buying a private version of Azure — with all of its inherent services and capabilities — and putting this at the edge to deal with latency, governance, IoT, security and other edge requirements (and doing so in essentially the same ecosystem), will prove to be a game changer.

Horses for courses

Businesses won’t move everything previously kept at the core towards the edge — they will pick and choose depending on circumstances. It is very much a case of horses for courses. We have lived through a period where public cloud has been seen as the bright new shiny toy, capable of solving all the ills of corporate IT. As the public cloud matures and evolves, people are naturally starting to see use cases where the edge has distinct advantages over centralised cloud scenarios.

Look at the differences between the edge versus public cloud. At the cloud end you have less control and less customisability, but better scalability and access to hyper-scale services that you couldn’t justify building for yourself. At the edge end, you have more control, more customisability, lower latency and the ability to apply greater control and regulation.

It’s about finding an appropriate use of these two models based on need rather than one being better than the other – the answer here is about hybrid solutions and building true end-to-end hybrid ecosystems that allow you to get the best of both worlds.

Embrace the change

With the release of Azure Stack, more businesses will be encouraged to put their services and capabilities at the edge, while ensuring that the benefits of hyper-scale computing and services in the (public) cloud are available when required. If a business can buy what is essentially a black box appliance supported by the hardware vendor and Microsoft directly, then all it really has to do is keep the lights on, so to speak.

This makes edge scenarios cost effective and easy to manage, but again with the added benefits of intelligent elasticity back to the (public) cloud, with little if any additional costs or changes required – true hybrid cloud that takes the benefits of both the edge and the centre and combines them together.

The idea of bringing private cloud capability back to the edge is one of the biggest game changers we have seen for some time. The other big public cloud players will undoubtedly try to keep up to ensure they remain relevant to the edge by evolving their true hybrid strategies – we know AWS is talking to VMware right now about this very possibility, so the wheels are already in motion. However, right now, it is Microsoft that has the edge.

Two apparently distinct movements are in the process of disrupting the world of enterprise application development: DevOps and Low-Code.
DevOps is a cultural and organizational shift that empowers enterprise software teams to deliver better software quicker – in particular, hand-coded software.

Low-Code platforms, in contrast, provide a technology platform and visual tooling that empower enterprise software teams to deliver better software quicker — with little or no hand-coding required.

Two disruptive approaches with remarkably similar value propositions. Except that one emphasizes hand-coding while the other replaces it.

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Anyone who has ever had the misfortune of dealing with a cancer diagnosis – either personally or as a caregiver to a friend or loved one – must have at some point wondered why they invariably had to wait well past their treatment appointment time, every time.
The root cause is that the healthcare scheduling system is broken. Healthcare providers are using a calculator, spreadsheets and standard electronic health record (EHR) templates to solve a math problem that demands a cluster of servers and data scientists to solve effectively.
Most EHRs use scheduling templates that have no real scheduling intelligence built in. In their efforts to be patient-centric, they typically subscribe to a first-come, first-served «hair salon» methodology. Even the best among them use gut-based rules of thumb to accommodate patient and staff needs for a particular appointment slot. The result is, in effect, the opposite of a patient-centric situation – a domino effect of longer wait times and unhappy patients and doctors.

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Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the last decade, you’ve seen cloud computing spread like fire across every industry. You also probably know that the cloud plays a pivotal role when it comes to digital transformation. Whether “the app is the business” is a well-worn subject or not, it doesn’t change the fact that companies are spinning up their apps faster because they can scale, test, and optimize them in real production environments in the cloud. But, like any technology, the cloud isn’t perfect. If it isn’t configured specifically to your application and business needs, you can find yourself dealing with performance issues, unhappy users, and one splitting headache.

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If you’ve moved your enterprise infrastructure into the cloud, to say you’re not alone is an understatement. In researching our latest infographic, it’s clear that more and more enterprises are adopting cloud models and increasing their spending for cloud technologies. It’s also clear that, as cloud options and models increase, building in-house cloud skills and expertise will be necessary to keep pace with advancing cloud technologies and to optimize ROI.

So what’s driving cloud adoption in 2017? Here we will address this question and explore how enterprises are adopting cloud frameworks. 

Enterprise cloud adoption continues to rise

“The No. 1 trend is ‘here come the enterprises’,” according to Forrester analyst Dave Bartoletti.  Forrester reported that, of 1,000 technology decision makers for North American and European enterprise infrastructure, 38% were building private clouds, 32% were building public clouds, and 30% would build some form of cloud in the next 12 months.

Last July, Gartner predicted that $111 billion in IT spending would be redirected away from traditional on-premise technology and invested in the cloud. This amount is expected to increase to $216 billion by 2020. Gartner’s Ed Anderson, research vice president, said: “Cloud-first strategies are the foundation for staying relevant in a fast-paced world. The market for cloud services has grown to such an extent that it is now a notable percentage of total IT spending, helping to create a new generation of start-ups and ‘born in the cloud’ providers.” This shift is also seen in the move to put more IT workloads into the cloud.

According to McKinsey & Co., enterprises will make a significant shift from building IT infrastructure to consuming IT. Its “IT as a Service Cloud Survey” reported: “More large enterprises are likely to move workloads away from traditional and virtualized environments toward the cloud—at a rate and pace that is expected to be far quicker than in the past.” As more data is produced by a growing number of people, machines, and things, more of it will be moving to the cloud.

Cisco thinks that more than 83% of data center traffic will be cloud-based by 2019, and most of this will be in the public cloud. Cisco also reported that enterprises using the public or private cloud have increased 61% over 2015, with 68% of enterprises using cloud infrastructure for one to two small applications.

ROI in the enterprise

Among organizations with mature cloud strategies, Cisco reported that “the most ‘cloud advanced’ organizations see an annual benefit per cloud-based application of $3 million in additional revenues and $1 million in cost savings. These revenue increases have been largely the result of sales of new products and services, gaining new customers faster, or the accelerated ability to sell into new markets.”

In its 2017 State of the Cloud report, Interop ITX, respondents to its cloud computing survey reported thatthey had “benefitted greatly” from cloud computing in the following areas: Greater scalability, better and/or faster access to tech resources, improved performance, expanded geographic reach, and cost savings.

Building in-house cloud expertise is key

Digital technologies are at the heart of some of the most disruptive changes facing companies today, according to reports by both Deloitte and Microsoft. Deloitte notes that while 90% of CEOs believe that digital technologies are driving disruptive change, 70% report that their organization lacks the skills to adapt. This is compounded by the fact that… skills are becoming obsolete at an accelerating rate and roles such as software engineers “must now redevelop skills every 12-18 months.”

In its survey of 250 UK tech leaders in medium- to large-sized organizations, the Microsoft Cloud Skills Report found that 83% of businesses ranked cloud skills as critical for digital transformation. A study by IDG pointed out that “enterprise organizations have added new roles and functions to their business including cloud architects/engineers, cloud systems administrators and security architects/engineers” to ensure return on their cloud investments. The 2017 Dice Salary Survey also noted the importance of the cloud on the need for skills: “The migration from hardware-based storage to cloud storage and the explosion of IoT technologies connecting billions of devices are creating a demand for skills to support these transitions and growth. When industries experience transformation at this level, it creates skills demand and increased salaries.”

Solving the skills gap with training

The Deloitte 2017 Global Human Capital Trends report notes that software engineers typically have to upgrade their skills every 12 to 18 months. The report saw “the issue of improving employee careers and transforming corporate learning” move up from fifth to the second most important trend in the report. The research indicates that acquiring new skills and upskilling existing staff has never been more important. The Microsoft report noted that 60% of companies are choosing to train existing employees, while 53% anticipate using external training providers and 46% will be looking to hire outside professionals with cloud skills.

Workforce solutions provider ManpowerGroup’s U.S. Talent Shortage Survey 2016/2017 found that nearly half of employers are using training programs with existing personnel to augment open positions.

Check out the full Cloud Computing in 2017 infographic in this post.

Modern software design has fundamentally changed how we manage applications, causing many to turn to containers as the new virtual machine for resource management. As container adoption grows beyond stateless applications to stateful workloads, the need for persistent storage is foundational – something customers routinely cite as a top pain point.
In his session at @DevOpsSummit at 21st Cloud Expo, Bill Borsari, Head of Systems Engineering at Datera, will explore how organizations can reap the benefits of the cloud without losing performance as containers become the new paradigm.

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As any medical professional will explain, prevention is always better than cure. So why are so many organisations reactive instead of proactive when it comes to cybersecurity threats? A new report from the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) aims to introduce new metrics for enterprises to improve their security game.

The report, titled ‘Improving Metrics in Cyber Resiliency’, introduces Elapsed Time to Identify Failure (ETIF) and Elapsed Time to Identify Threat (ETIT), as well as processes to measure and develop lower values in order to improve the resiliency of an information system. The research advocates the responsibility for measuring and reporting each metric should be transferred to intrusion detection system (IDS) providers.

The ETIF metric is relatively straightforward to understand. If one takes the standard graphical representation of a cyberattack, with time as the x-axis and quality of service (QoS) between 1.0 and 0.0 as the y-axis, a triangle appears as QoS goes down with the attack starting, before gradually rising back to 1.0 as the system recovers.

ETIF is therefore the time between the start and end of the cyberattack, and the triangle indicates loss of resiliency. Yet a further graph (below) shows how, if ETIF is reduced, the overall loss of resiliency goes down with it – in this instance, from triangle ABC to ADE. Indeed, if ETIF is reduced to zero – in other words, the cyberattack was identified occurred at the same time, being nullified at the IT/OT infrastructure – the researchers add the loss of resiliency would be zero with it.

ETIT, on the other hand, is ‘critical’ in changing limits on loss and recovery functions, and as a result impacting on the quality of service, the CSA adds. “If there is an ability for early identification of the threat that is causing the failure, then the overall time to recovery and hence the loss of resiliency could be reduced,” the report notes.

“It is our hope that this report will initiate discussion and eventually encourage competition within the intrusion detection system space,” said Dr. Senthil Arul, lead author of the document. “As more companies are storing operation assets away from local servers, it’s clear that we need to bolster asset resiliency in the cloud if we are to keep operational resiliency unaffected.”

You can download the full report here (registration optional).

Opinion Many years ago, I compared the concept of technical debt to a mismanaged baseball team. The baseball team in question spent untold millions on ageing veterans, rather than home-grown talent that could take them into the future. IT departments the world over tend to exhibit the same behaviours in retaining ageing technology rather than keeping up with upgrades, new methodologies, and new paradigms.

The obvious result of this lack of foresight is the gathering of overwhelming technical debt. After years of ignoring or putting off dealing with the growing problem, many CIOs suddenly find themselves before the CEO and board of directors asking for funding to stem the rising tide. Many times, the funding necessary is not forthcoming without presentation of a solid business case and return on investment documentation. Unfortunately, paying off technical debt isn’t a business case. It’s an explanation of how the IT department got into this situation. 

Enter cloud computing. Everyone wants to move to the cloud, so the CIO has an instant business case.  Problem solved, right? Well not so fast.

If you are reading this then you probably have a good sense of the benefits to be gained from migrating workloads to the public cloud. In particular, the cloud can reduce infrastructure deployment cost, decrease maintenance costs, create standardisation, increase utilisation, and lower overall service lifecycle costs. Migrating workloads to the cloud can be the best way to pay off that technical debt. But there is a good deal of work to do first and a good number of risks that need mitigation prior to executing a cloud migration program.

A clear assessment of the current environment will be necessary in order to determine the level of effort for migration. The information to gather will include physical platform characteristics, application characteristics, performance and capacity data, and application to infrastructure mapping. This assessment will serve as the first step in architecting an overall solution.

Many of the workloads in an IT department beset by technical debt will need to be re-platformed from their current out of date environments as part of the migration path to the cloud. Even if the workloads run on cloud-ready operating systems, the workloads will probably need to undergo a physical to virtual conversion. 

Security is a major area that needs to be assessed and planned for in architecting the Cloud based solution. Remember that most cloud providers have a statement of “separation of responsibilities” when it comes to security. Usually, the shared responsibility statement sounds something like: the cloud provider is responsible for the security of the cloud and the customer is responsible for the security in the cloud.    

Another major area that needs to be considered – and will ultimately drive choices in the cloud – is service and data availability planning. Cloud providers differ in how they support availability services, especially in how they support multi-region failover. The criticality of the services in question and the level of availability they need should be built into the solution.

One of the major reasons that companies fall into a technical debt cycle is that their IT department is already overwhelmed with just regular functions that they need to perform. Many organisations come to realise that they need help in executing a cloud migration. Whether the company chooses a consulting partner, the cloud provider, or both,  it is often beneficial to get assistance from another party who has done this before.

These are just some of the areas that need attention when creating your cloud migration strategy. While this might seem like a lot of work it is well worth the effort. Cloud computing, properly planned for and executed, is singularly capable of turning an enterprise IT department fortunes around. No, cloud migration is not a magic pill, it requires a coordinated effort between IT operations, development, infrastructure support, the cloud provider and executive management. If an organisation and its partners can muster this kind of cooperation, plan effectively, and execute efficiently, technical debt can be reduced if not paid off using cloud computing.