Like other industries did before it, retail banking is riding a bucking bronco of digital transformation. While customer satisfaction levels drop and government rules and regulations continue to expand, retail banking seeks new ways to adapt to the massive changes in how consumers interact and use financial products and services.
However, unlike other industries such as book publishing that have been rocked by the tsunami of digital changes in the marketplace, companies in the banking sector also have to comply with extensive regulations intended to protect consumers. In confronting this new landscape, banks are looking at better ways to use their existing data in real-time to improve customer experience and loyalty, comply with a growing number of government rules and privacy laws, and consolidate disparate IT systems in their current infrastructure. Banks must provide a seamless experience for customers no matter which product or service they choose.
Announcing @CloudRank to Exhibit at @CloudExpo New York | #AWS #Cloud #Azure
SYS-CON Events announced today that Cloud Academy will exhibit at SYS-CON’s 20th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on June 6-8, 2017, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY.
Cloud Academy is the industry’s most innovative, vendor-neutral cloud technology training platform.
Cloud Academy provides continuous learning solutions for individuals and enterprise teams for Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and the most popular cloud computing technologies. Get certified, manage the full lifecycle of your cloud-based resources, and build your knowledge based using Cloud Academy’s expert-created content, comprehensive Learning Paths, and innovative Hands-on Labs.
Why Healthcare IT Teams Love Intelligent Deception | @CloudExpo #Cloud #Cybersecurity
The healthcare industry is not immune from today’s relentless wave of cyberattacks. Cyber theft of protected health information (PHI) is on the rise, and health organizations understand that 100 percent prevention of attacks is not realistic.
According to Ponemon Institute’s Sixth Annual Benchmark Study on Privacy & Security of Healthcare Data report, nearly 90 percent of all healthcare organizations have suffered at least one data breach in the last two years. According to another report, 88 percent of ransomware attacks in Q2 2016 were on healthcare entities.
Cloud market valued at $148bn for past year, growing 25% annually
(c)iStock.com/Maciej Noskowski
Operator and vendor revenues across the main cloud services and infrastructure market segments hit $148 billion (£120.5bn) in 2016 growing at 25% annually, according to the latest note from analyst firm Synergy Research.
Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS) experienced the highest growth rates at 53%, followed by hosted private cloud infrastructure services, at 35%, and enterprise SaaS, at 34%. Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft lead the way in IaaS and PaaS, with IBM and Rackspace on top for hosted private cloud.
In the four quarters ending September (Q3) 2016, total spend on hardware and software to build cloud infrastructure exceeded $65bn, according to the researchers. Spend on private cloud accounts for more than half of the overall total, but public cloud spend is growing much more rapidly. The note also argues unified comms as a service (UCaaS) is growing ‘steadily’.
“We tagged 2015 as the year when cloud became mainstream and I’d say that 2016 is the year that cloud started to dominate many IT market segments,” said Jeremy Duke, Synergy Research Group founder and chief analyst in a statement. “Major barriers to cloud adoption are now almost a thing of the past, especially on the public cloud side.
“Cloud technologies are now generating massive revenues for technology vendors and cloud service providers and yet there are still many years of strong growth ahead,” Duke added.
The most recent examination of the cloud infrastructure market by Synergy back in August argued AWS, Microsoft, IBM and Google continue to grow more quickly than their smaller competitors and, between them, own more than half of the global cloud infrastructure service market.
PCM starts the year with an acquisition
PCM, one of the leading technology providers in North America, has started 2017 with a big acquisition. On Tuesday, it acquired Stratiform, an industry leading provider of a wide range of cloud services. It paid a sum of C$2.1 million based on the closing price of Stratiform’s shares on December 29, 2016. In addition, it has agreed on a potential payout of C$1.75 million over a period of three years. Stratiform’s revenue was C$5.5 million for the fiscal year that ended on July 31, 2016.
This acquisition is expected to give a big fillip to PCM’s hopes of becoming a leading cloud provider in this region. In fact, Stratiform’s cloud-based products and services will lay the foundation for PCM’s cloud-related offerings. Through this acquisition, PCM plans to leverage on the clouds expertise of Stratiform to expand its own presence in Canada and the United States, and also reach out to more markets, especially small and medium business (SMB), mid-market, and public sector enterprises of North America. Stratiform is also a Microsoft Gold Partner, so this acquisition is likely to give PCM a better foothold in the world of Azure, Office 365, and Enterprise Mobility Suite.
Stratiform was founded in 2012 by Jordan Byman and Darren Lloyd, with a clear aim to focus on Microsoft-related technologies. Within a short time, this company became a Microsoft Gold Partner for devices, deployment, cloud services, connectivity, and a Microsoft Silver Partner for hosting cloud solutions in the small and mid-market business segments. This company offers professional consulting, designing, and planning services on a wide range of Microsoft solutions. According to its LinkedIn profile, it employs anywhere 11 to 50 people. All this points to a small company that had an amazing run over the four years since its founding.
PCM, on the other hand, was founded in 1987, and is headquartered in El Segundo, California. With more than 3,700 employees spread across its 45 locations in the United States, Canada, Pakistan, and the Philippines, this company has an annual total revenue of more than $1.6 billion. Its operations is divided into many subsidiaries that include sales, services, marketing, logistics, and business process outsourcing (BPO).
This acquisition augurs well for PCM, as it can give it a strong foothold in the cloud market. In this sense, Stratiform is a good choice for acquisition, as it has an established market and expertise that has to be built on by PCM. Historically, PCM has expanded its operations and revenue by way of strategic acquisitions. It was founded as a telemarketing, direct marketing, and print catalogs company, and it made a foray into other areas by acquiring companies such as PC Wintel, Computability, Wareforce, Data Systems Worldwide (DSW), and En Pointe Technologies and Sales Inc.
As for Stratiform, it had a dream run, and it can continue building its expertise with a larger pool of resources, thereby giving the brains behind Stratiform a better chance to reach out to a global audience.
In all, 2017 started off on a great note for both the companies!
The post PCM starts the year with an acquisition appeared first on Cloud News Daily.
Why you can’t let disaster recovery slide off your IT budget in 2017
(c)iStock.com/olm26250
As we welcome in the New Year, we are already seeing multiple blogs prognosticating 2017 trends, setting priorities and suggesting resolutions. We are also rapidly approaching the 2017 budget cycle. I am sure you will read many articles concerning new plans or resolutions for the coming year, but this one will be about an old resolution: IT disaster recovery (DR).
When disaster strikes, organisations need to be able to recover IT systems as quickly as possible. Not having a disaster recovery plan in place can put the business at risk of high financial costs, reputation loss and even greater risks for its clients, customers and employees. Despite this, each year business continuity gets cut from the budget and companies continue to fail to invest in DR.
Here are five common objections that continue to dominate the disaster recovery budget discussion and why IT leaders need to refute them:
«It’s going to cost a fortune»
Business leaders often assume that disaster recovery is going to break the bank. When thinking about a robust disaster recovery plan, secondary data centres complete with HVAC, as well as second copies of all servers, storage and networks comes to mind. Furthermore, there is a general misconception that systems are sitting idle, just waiting for disaster to strike, and all this is before even considering the maintenance costs involved.
However, having a robust disaster recovery plan in place doesn’t have to mean investing in a secondary data centre. Technology has developed massively in the last few years and there are now a number of different options that enable organisations to minimise the cost of DR without sacrificing the recoverability of IT systems. Cloud-based disaster recovery, often termed Disaster-Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS) enables failover of virtual machines to secure cloud locations. Often billed by VM or by TB of storage, DRaaS provides the flexibility to only pay for what you need. Having an on-demand pricing model means the costs are therefore remarkably low. With DRaaS, organisations do not have to sacrifice the ability to fail over in a time of need and are also gaining the benefits of security and compliance within the cloud platform. In most cases, it has now become a lot more cost effective for organisations to invest in DRaaS rather than building and managing a secondary data centre.
«But I have backup down the hall»
Some businesses may argue they are covered in case of disaster because they have a robust backup system in the form of an on-site server. If you back up each day to this, then surely you do not need DRaaS?
However, backup ‘down the hall’ is not immune from a localised disaster and additionally, should disaster strike, restoring data from back up takes hours, if not days. DRaaS is about minimising downtime. With DRaaS organisations can restore operations quickly (often in minutes or even seconds) and in a highly automated fashion. It can also be tested in advance so that if and when an issue does arise the infrastructure can be recovered at the push of a button as the failover system has been fully tested and proven.
The difference between back up and DR is significant and both can co-exist happily in a secure and compliant business continuity strategy.
«We don’t get bad weather!»
With headlines focusing on big natural disasters, many believe that if they live in a region with generally good weather, they are exempt from the danger of an outage. This is a false sense of security, however, as the ‘disaster’ in disaster recovery doesn’t just refer to natural disasters caused by weather events.
Outages are increasingly more likely to be the result of human error or malicious attacks – just look at the increase in ransomware attacks we’ve seen on businesses over the past year. Organisations are also susceptible to power outages, upgrade problems or bad coding.
Incidents such as these are completely out of an IT team’s control. It is therefore vital that there is a robust disaster recovery plan in place to be able to recover when the inevitable happens.
«We don’t have outages»
This objection is for the most part unrealistic. Generally, people do not like talking about outages. Usually it is not a case of an organisation not experiencing outages, it is more likely that these outages do not get fed back to senior leadership.
Whilst some smaller outages may go unnoticed and leave a business moderately unscathed, over the course of a week, a month or a year downtime adds up and ultimately becomes expensive, having an unplanned effect on revenue. In addition to this, downtime can impact reputation, customer loyalty and employee productivity.
When it comes to outages organisations need to be more transparent in their approach; utilise the data on outages, attacks, maintenance windows, patch and upgrade problems that exist in your IT department to implement a reliable and effective DR strategy.
«We can handle a little downtime»
The final objection is ‘we don’t need a robust DR plan because we can deal with a few minutes of downtime’. Businesses may question how much downtime will really impact the business and argue that since all their systems are not customer facing, it isn’t the end of the world.
However, downtime can actually have a very significant impact on revenue. In the last decade, our expectations as consumers and IT end users have changed. We expect everything instantly and business is increasingly conducted online. As a result, people are more sensitive to an interruption in service and having even a few minutes downtime could have a massive impact on customer loyalty, not to mention bottom line revenue.
The impact of downtime is tremendous. A 2016 survey conducted by Opinion Matters on behalf of iland showed that, for 69% of respondents, downtime of only minutes would have highly disruptive or catastrophic business impact. Additionally, Gartner has reported that 72% of firms had to use their IT disaster recovery plans, in its 2015 Business Continuity Management survey, and estimates in their 2016 Magic Quadrant for Disaster Recovery as a Service that the DRaaS market will nearly triple in the next three years to a revenue point of $3.4 billion by 2019.
A robust disaster recovery strategy is vital to running a successful and secure business. If any of these five objections have influenced your decision to invest in a business continuity plan, it may be time to reconsider. Without an IT disaster recovery plan, you run the risk of incurring serious business losses through outages, hours of downtime, lost data, and negative impact on reputation. Make 2017 the year that DR is put firmly back in the IT budget.
Why you can’t let disaster recovery slide off your IT budget in 2017
(c)iStock.com/olm26250
As we welcome in the New Year, we are already seeing multiple blogs prognosticating 2017 trends, setting priorities and suggesting resolutions. We are also rapidly approaching the 2017 budget cycle. I am sure you will read many articles concerning new plans or resolutions for the coming year, but this one will be about an old resolution: IT disaster recovery (DR).
When disaster strikes, organisations need to be able to recover IT systems as quickly as possible. Not having a disaster recovery plan in place can put the business at risk of high financial costs, reputation loss and even greater risks for its clients, customers and employees. Despite this, each year business continuity gets cut from the budget and companies continue to fail to invest in DR.
Here are five common objections that continue to dominate the disaster recovery budget discussion and why IT leaders need to refute them:
«It’s going to cost a fortune»
Business leaders often assume that disaster recovery is going to break the bank. When thinking about a robust disaster recovery plan, secondary data centres complete with HVAC, as well as second copies of all servers, storage and networks comes to mind. Furthermore, there is a general misconception that systems are sitting idle, just waiting for disaster to strike, and all this is before even considering the maintenance costs involved.
However, having a robust disaster recovery plan in place doesn’t have to mean investing in a secondary data centre. Technology has developed massively in the last few years and there are now a number of different options that enable organisations to minimise the cost of DR without sacrificing the recoverability of IT systems. Cloud-based disaster recovery, often termed Disaster-Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS) enables failover of virtual machines to secure cloud locations. Often billed by VM or by TB of storage, DRaaS provides the flexibility to only pay for what you need. Having an on-demand pricing model means the costs are therefore remarkably low. With DRaaS, organisations do not have to sacrifice the ability to fail over in a time of need and are also gaining the benefits of security and compliance within the cloud platform. In most cases, it has now become a lot more cost effective for organisations to invest in DRaaS rather than building and managing a secondary data centre.
«But I have backup down the hall»
Some businesses may argue they are covered in case of disaster because they have a robust backup system in the form of an on-site server. If you back up each day to this, then surely you do not need DRaaS?
However, backup ‘down the hall’ is not immune from a localised disaster and additionally, should disaster strike, restoring data from back up takes hours, if not days. DRaaS is about minimising downtime. With DRaaS organisations can restore operations quickly (often in minutes or even seconds) and in a highly automated fashion. It can also be tested in advance so that if and when an issue does arise the infrastructure can be recovered at the push of a button as the failover system has been fully tested and proven.
The difference between back up and DR is significant and both can co-exist happily in a secure and compliant business continuity strategy.
«We don’t get bad weather!»
With headlines focusing on big natural disasters, many believe that if they live in a region with generally good weather, they are exempt from the danger of an outage. This is a false sense of security, however, as the ‘disaster’ in disaster recovery doesn’t just refer to natural disasters caused by weather events.
Outages are increasingly more likely to be the result of human error or malicious attacks – just look at the increase in ransomware attacks we’ve seen on businesses over the past year. Organisations are also susceptible to power outages, upgrade problems or bad coding.
Incidents such as these are completely out of an IT team’s control. It is therefore vital that there is a robust disaster recovery plan in place to be able to recover when the inevitable happens.
«We don’t have outages»
This objection is for the most part unrealistic. Generally, people do not like talking about outages. Usually it is not a case of an organisation not experiencing outages, it is more likely that these outages do not get fed back to senior leadership.
Whilst some smaller outages may go unnoticed and leave a business moderately unscathed, over the course of a week, a month or a year downtime adds up and ultimately becomes expensive, having an unplanned effect on revenue. In addition to this, downtime can impact reputation, customer loyalty and employee productivity.
When it comes to outages organisations need to be more transparent in their approach; utilise the data on outages, attacks, maintenance windows, patch and upgrade problems that exist in your IT department to implement a reliable and effective DR strategy.
«We can handle a little downtime»
The final objection is ‘we don’t need a robust DR plan because we can deal with a few minutes of downtime’. Businesses may question how much downtime will really impact the business and argue that since all their systems are not customer facing, it isn’t the end of the world.
However, downtime can actually have a very significant impact on revenue. In the last decade, our expectations as consumers and IT end users have changed. We expect everything instantly and business is increasingly conducted online. As a result, people are more sensitive to an interruption in service and having even a few minutes downtime could have a massive impact on customer loyalty, not to mention bottom line revenue.
The impact of downtime is tremendous. A 2016 survey conducted by Opinion Matters on behalf of iland showed that, for 69% of respondents, downtime of only minutes would have highly disruptive or catastrophic business impact. Additionally, Gartner has reported that 72% of firms had to use their IT disaster recovery plans, in its 2015 Business Continuity Management survey, and estimates in their 2016 Magic Quadrant for Disaster Recovery as a Service that the DRaaS market will nearly triple in the next three years to a revenue point of $3.4 billion by 2019.
A robust disaster recovery strategy is vital to running a successful and secure business. If any of these five objections have influenced your decision to invest in a business continuity plan, it may be time to reconsider. Without an IT disaster recovery plan, you run the risk of incurring serious business losses through outages, hours of downtime, lost data, and negative impact on reputation. Make 2017 the year that DR is put firmly back in the IT budget.
Better Predictors | @CloudExpo @Schmarzo #BigData #IoT #AI #ML #Analytics
I love the simplicity of the data science concepts as taught by the book “Moneyball.” Everyone wants to jump right into the real meaty, highly technical data science books. But I recommend to my students to start with the book “Moneyball.” The book does a great job of making the power of data science come to life (and the movie doesn’t count, as my wife saw it and “Brad Pitt is so cute!” was her only takeaway…ugh).
A look into Cerevo’s Data Logger
Do you love biking? Have you always been interested in your ride’s statistics, like how many miles did you cover, average speed, calories burned, and more? There are already many apps that give you this information, and the latest to join this market segment is Cerevo’s Ride -1.
Ride-1 is a data logger that comes with advanced technologies and sensors to give you the most accurate information. It is equipped with nine axis motion sensors, out of which three each will handle geomagnetism, acceleration, and angular velocity respectively. There are also other sensors that come with it such as temperature sensor, air pressure sensor, GPS system, and illuminance sensor, to give you a complete picture of your riding experience.
The best part about this device is that it comes with an 8-GB flash memory that can store up to 400 hours of data. This means, you can store all information pertaining to your rides over a certain time period, and analyze the same, to understand if you’re on the right track to achieve your fitness and biking goals. Also, you can automatically upload this data through cloud or a Wi-Fi connection to other devices, or you can even share it with other people so they know your exact geographic location. This feature can be particularly useful for those who want to track the rides of their near and dear ones.
In addition to these features, Ride-1 is relatively small, and can be attached easily to your bike within minutes. Thus, there is no hassle of a long setup time, and cumbersome usage instructions. When you combine it with a smartphone, you can almost use it like a cycle computer, as it gives you information about your posture, speed, and other aspects in real-time. This feature is most helpful for professional athletes, and others who ride with a specific goal in mind. You or your coach can analyze all this information to make the appropriate changes that’ll get you faster to your biking goals.
Currently, this product is available on Cerevo’s online shop, and also on select retail and electronic stores. It’s priced at around $210. Though some experts consider this to be a little pricey, it’s definitely worth for the features it offers. Also, this price is much lower than that of a highly functional cycle computer, and it can be used extensively on other devices too, provided you combine it with a cloud system and a smartphone. It is also waterproof, and comes with a rechargeable battery that can power the system for 15 hours after a charge of just three hours.
This product is manufactured by a Japanese company called Cerevo. Found in 2007 and headquartered in Tokyo, this company specializes in making next-generation networked devices for both consumers and professional users. The unique ideas and design of Cerevo have made it a popular brand among tech savvy users, especially those belonging to the Millennial generation.
With such cool features, Cerevo’s Ride-1 is going to be a big hit, and the company is likely to meet its target of 10,000 pieces much before its estimated time of three years.
The post A look into Cerevo’s Data Logger appeared first on Cloud News Daily.
Phishers pretending to be Apple
In my opinion, one of the most despicable types of computer criminals today is the phisher. As Wikipedia explains: “Phishing is the attempt to obtain sensitive information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details (and, indirectly, money), often for malicious reasons, by disguising as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication… Phishing is typically carried […]
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