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Oracle has announced total revenues of $8.6 billion (£6.6bn) in its first quarter 2017 financial results, up 3% in constant currency and with the cloud change at the heart of it.

Addressing analysts after the results were announced, Safra Catz, Oracle co-CEO, said in her first remarks, as transcribed by Seeking Alpha: “Clearly, we are pleased with our results, with the most obvious thing being that we overachieved again in the cloud especially in the United States. As you all know, we have pivoted the organisation to go after the cloud and we are outperforming even our most aggressive expectations.”

Cloud software as a service (SaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS) revenues were $798m, up 79% in constant currency, while total cloud revenues – in other words, factoring in infrastructure as a service (IaaS) with it, were $969m, up 61% respectively. Oracle expects to sell more than $2bn of SaaS and PaaS in annually recurring revenue.

In the press material, Oracle again fired shots at its opponents – noting that the previous quarter has seen the sign up of ‘more ERP customers than Workday has sold in the history of their company’ – while in the analyst call Larry Ellison, Oracle CTO, had his sights set on Amazon Web Services with the rollout of new second generation IaaS data centres.

“For the first time, we have this big technology advantage in the infrastructure as a service,” said Ellison. “We expect this will enable Oracle to accelerate our infrastructure as a service business to the same high growth rates that we’re currently experiencing in both SaaS and PaaS.”

The key move from Oracle over the past quarter has been the company’s acquisition of cloud ERP rival NetSuite for $9.3bn in July. Only one mention was made of the deal on the analyst call – Catz confirmed that the antitrust reviews had all been cleared for the deal except in the US.

Other notes from the financial results showed short-term deferred revenue at $9.5bn, up 5% in constant currency compared with this time last year, while operating income was $2.6bn.

Since cloud computing has made big leaps in the past few years by emerging as a conventional business tool, several strategies have consequently surfaced. These myths aren’t necessarily as risky as they were initially presented to be, but they certainly affect our methods of approaching solutions in the cloud computing space.

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Cloud applications are awash within businesses today – whether the organisation knows it or not. There are more than 4.2 million apps available across the Android and Apple stores alone, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that employees are quick to download the latest app instead of going through the red tape of IT procurement, provisioning, testing and security. From Dropbox and Twitter to Facebook and Salesforce, apps have become the de facto method for sharing and storing data, allowing easy access and greater collaboration. In principle this is no bad thing, but in reality there’s risk involved and businesses are often innocent bystanders.

We’re all at the mercy of someone else’s security policies. I can have every single possible security tool, device and dashboard in place, but if a service I use is hacked? That’s out of my control. In the last couple of weeks Dropbox confirmed a hack in 2012 had resulted in 68 million user names and passwords appearing online. That’s around a third of Dropbox’s user base. A couple of days later OneLogin announced a bug had let a hacker view users’ secure notes, potentially exposing a Pandora’s box of information for anyone looking to move sideways in big businesses.

Most hackers are after a quick and easy payday. And any savvy hacker knows there’s loot to be had from cloud services. Given today’s consumer / corporate crossover world we live in, things like Dropbox are a prime target as they’re a vast cache of IP and corporate databases – and probably a fair amount of personal information that can exploited. At the same time, apps like OneLogin are designed to increase security and anyone looking to procure a few passwords would do well to try their luck here. 

The cloud industry has been hard at work dragging people over the line in the security debate for some time.  We have worked hard to tackle the issue head on and incidents like these don’t help assuage the doubts that many still have.

Enterprises are bombarded with advice about how to keep their data safe. We tell them about the importance of monitoring network activity, of knowing what their employees are doing, the need for layered solutions and access controls. But we need to practice what we preach.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a cloud app provider, a cloud security provider, an end user, or a service provider the same rules apply. If your password database is accessed and its contents downloaded or moved, big red, loud alarm bells should be ringing and, if they’re not, you’re not doing it right. Everyone needs an understanding of what normal looks like for their business, who is accessing what and from where, as well as the ability to control what can and can’t be done.  

The cloud shouldn’t be feared; it should be embraced with open arms. But, as an industry, we need to take care of our own backyard first; otherwise we’re falling at the first hurdle.

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During a speech at a Conservative Way Forward event on September 9, Liam Fox, the International Trade Secretary, said that Britain had become “too lazy and too fat”, with businessmen preferring “golf on a Friday afternoon” to trying to boost the country’s prosperity.

While somewhat diffused by Downing Street later as “clearly private views”, his statement was certainly thought provoking.

As the CEO of a company that provides cloud-based IT services to hundreds of British businesses, I suggest we have a good ‘bird’s eye view’ of evolving working patterns. Besides manufacturers, our customers include professionals such as lawyers, accountants and recruiters, as well as financial service providers, leisure centres and automobile repair centres. And yes, we also service golf courses.

Our system enables customers to log in from anywhere – golf course, office, home, coffee shop, even when on holiday – not only to view emails or access files but, if needs be, access their entire suite of business applications.

When customers log into their cloud server it is not to surf the internet, but to work. We can share that:

• Customers log in at all times of the day (even at 3am)
• Busy usage typically starts at 7:30am and ends at around 6:30pm (as opposed to the conventional 9 to 5)
• We regularly find customers calling us while working from home

It is apparent that in today’s day and age work habits have changed; namely that the clear division that might have existed in the past between work time and private time has become blurred. With cloud computing, one doesn’t need to sit by one’s desk in order to work. A manager might go to the golf course for a round of nine holes from 12pm to 2pm and continue working until 9pm from home.

I wouldn’t call that person lazy. I am proud that my customers can have flexibility in the way that they work and I know that an efficient IT solution such as ours enhances their options.

As a final thought, and although Mr Fox was referring to businesses, I would like to add a word about the UK’s charity sector. We have dozens of charity customers, and we find that their employees care about the cause that they are serving and are admirably dedicated to their job.

We feel privileged to serve such a hard working clientele.

In a recent CloudTech article multi-cloud, or hybrid cloud, strategy was heralded as “…
transformative for businesses, allowing them flexibility to scale offerings, save on hosting solutions, and ultimately offer better solutions to their customers. The article goes on to cite:
A 2016 Dimensional Research survey of more than 650 IT decision-makers that indicated that 77 percent of businesses are planning to implement multi-cloud architectures in the near future; and a 2015 IDC study that found that 86% of enterprises predicted they will need a multi-cloud approach to support their solutions within the next two years.

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Most of us already know that adopting new cloud applications can boost a business’s productivity by enabling organizations to be more agile and ready to change course in our fast-moving and connected digital world. But the rapid adoption of cloud apps and services also brings with it profound security threats, including visibility and control challenges that aren’t present in traditional on-premises environments. At the same time, the cloud – because of its interconnected, flexible and adaptable nature – can also provide new possibilities for addressing cloud security problems. By leveraging the power of the cloud with a data science and machine learning cloud-based solution, security and risk professionals can solve many of the traditional security challenges found in popular apps like Office 365, Google Drive, Salesforce and Box.

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The global public cloud services market is set to break the $200 billion mark, going to $208.6bn (£157.8bn) at a 17.2% increase by the end of this year, according to the latest prognostication from analyst house Gartner.

Gartner’s verdict comes primarily through the rapid growth of cloud system infrastructure services, which the analysts expect to grow 42.8% this year, with cloud application services – SaaS – growing at a 21.7% clip, to reach $38.9bn.

The forecast also argues that the main driver of public cloud adoption was IT modernisation, followed by cost savings, innovation, and agility. Yet the key here is not that revenues continue to rise – but how more and more organisations are trusting cloud security, always a moaning point for many survey respondents.

“Gartner’s position on cloud security has been clear – public cloud services offered by the leading cloud providers are secure. The real security challenge is using public cloud services in a secure manner,” said Ed Anderson, Gartner research vice president. “More education is needed to help organisations overcome the hype associated with the security concerns. This should be a key area of focus for providers in working with their clients to unlock the benefits of public cloud services.”

Yet according to Angelo Di Ventura, director at end to end technology provider Trustmarque, it’s not all plain sailing. Citing the growth in SaaS services, Di Ventura said: “It’s important CIOs are able to retain visibility over the cloud services in use throughout the business. In particular, if left unchecked, easy to purchase SaaS services can cause considerable disruption.”

Gartner adds that while hybrid cloud is expected to dominate, challenges still remain in this field, including integration, application incompatibilities, and a lack of management tools, APIs, and vendor support.

“Cloud integration can offer serious challenges to today’s organisations,” added Di Ventura. “Ultimately, maximising the ROI of cloud demands new skills and capabilities of businesses.”

You can read the Gartner note here.

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Note-taking app provider Evernote has announced it is moving to Google Cloud Platform and is ditching its own servers and networks.

The company, which celebrated its eighth anniversary earlier in the summer, said in a company blog post that the current arrangement did not give Evernote the ‘speed and flexibility’ needed for the future.

What was more interesting in the move, as confirmed by both Evernote and Google, was that after various consultations, the search giant’s interests in machine learning and data analytics sealed the deal.

“We look forward to taking advantage of these technologies to help you more easily connect your ideas, search for information in Evernote, and find the right note at the moment you need it,” Ben McCormack, VP operations wrote. “That’s exciting to us, and we’re already exploring some ideas that we think you’ll love.”

Brian Stevens, VP at Google Cloud Platform, added: “By moving its data centre operations to Google’s cloud, Evernote can focus on its core competency: providing customers with the best experience for taking, organising and archiving notes.”

Another key area for both stakeholders, naturally enough, was security. Evernote’s self-claimed three laws of data protection – “your data is yours, your data is protected, your data is portable” – does not change with the move to Google’s cloud, the company said.

Ultimately, despite this big customer win – the press material could not resist the opportunity to reel off other A-list customers, from Coca-Cola, to Spotify, and Snapchat, the poster child of the Google cloud platform – Google is fighting for the bronze medal in cloud infrastructure, as plenty of industry research, from Synergy to Gartner, insists.

Evernote expects the change to be completed by the end of this year, with McCormack noting the experience will be generally status quo for customers.

“The transition to the cloud will occur completely in the background,” McCormack added. “You should see no impact to your service during the transition, and you do not need to take any action. Behind the scenes, Evernote will become faster, stronger, and more stable.”