IDC estimates that the digital universe is doubling every two years. That means the need for data storage is increasing at the same rate. This exponential demand is no match for traditional vertical-scaling storage architectures. The resulting bottlenecks significantly reduce performance, and trying to store so much data would require prohibitively expensive server scale-out.
Is SAP HANA in the Cloud Right for Me? | @CloudExpo @SAPInMemory #Cloud
With the pace of technological development and the complex needs of ERP, it can be difficult to choose the right SAP HANA hosting or upgrade strategy. There are unexpected benefits of moving to the cloud, but also risks in outsourcing mission-critical applications. Here are some of the common arguments for and against SAP HANA in the cloud.
EU moves forward with Privacy Shield despite EDPS warning
The European Commission has announced it will continue ahead with the EU-US Privacy Shield despite the European Data Protection Supervisor claiming the pact is not robust enough, reports Telecoms.com.
Since Safe Harbour was struck down by the European Court of Justice last year, the industry has been in limbo as politicians were unable to draft an agreement between the US and EU, which met the criteria for data protection in the European market. In May, European Data Protection Supervisor, Giovanni Buttarelli, outlined his concerns on whether the proposed agreement will provide adequate protection against indiscriminate surveillance, believing the pact would not be strong enough to stand up.
“Today Member States have given their strong support to the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield, the renewed safe framework for transatlantic data flows,” said Vice-President Andrus Ansip and Commissioner Věra Jourová in a joint statement. “This paves the way for the formal adoption of the legal texts and for getting the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield up and running. The EU-U.S. Privacy Shield will ensure a high level of protection for individuals and legal certainty for business.”
Despite the European Commission pushing forward with the draft, there have been a number of individuals and parties within the EU who have criticised the agreement. For some, the EU-US Privacy Shield is simply a reheated Safe Harbour, with very little to address the concerns of the original agreement.
Article 29 Working Group is another influential group has highlighted to the industry the pact has made progress, though it did identify a number of shortcomings when looking at mass surveillance and oversight. The new agreement does encourage organizations to be more considered and conservative when sharing data with US, however critics of the new agreement have claimed there are still too many exceptions where the US and its intelligence agencies can move around the agreement. Despite the concerns, the European Commission has ploughed ahead.
On the other side of the argument, Microsoft has somewhat unsurprisingly confirmed its support of the pact, though it has stated it should go further. In any case, a large vendor expressing its support for an agreement which would enable the organization to do more business in Europe should not be met with astonishment.
“It is fundamentally different from the old ‘Safe Harbour’: It imposes clear and strong obligations on companies handling the data and makes sure that these rules are followed and enforced in practice,” said the announcement. “For the first time, the U.S. has given the EU written assurance that the access of public authorities for law enforcement and national security will be subject to clear limitations, safeguards and oversight mechanisms and has ruled out indiscriminate mass surveillance of European citizens’ data.”
“And last but not least the Privacy Shield protects fundamental rights and provides for several accessible and affordable redress mechanisms. During the formal adoption process, the Commission has consulted as broadly as possible taking on board the input of key stakeholders, notably the independent data protection authorities and the European Parliament. Both consumers and companies can have full confidence in the new arrangement, which reflects the requirements of the European Court of Justice. Today’s vote by the Member States is a strong sign of confidence.”
It would appear the European Commission is moving forward to demonstrate to the industry progress is being made, though could be seen as a flimsy approach. With the concerns expressed by influential and respected bodies within the industry, it should not be seen as a surprise if the agreement is struck down once again by the European Court of Justice.
Tech News Recap for the Week of 7/5/2016
Were you busy this week? Here’s a tech news recap of articles you may have missed for the week of 7/5/2016!
Gartner is predicting that corporate no-cloud policies will be extinct by 2020. Wendy’s released a list of restaurants that were hit by a data breach that compromised debit and credit cards. Microsoft’s new Dynamics 365 will bundle ERP and CRM in the cloud. Google acquired video software company Anvato and is testing Chrome encryption that is meant to withstand attacks from quantum computers. You can now send files with Skype when the recipient is offline, Windows 10 has an anniversary, and more top news you may have missed this week!
Follow us on Twitter to stay up-to-date on the latest news throughout the week!
Tech News Recap
- Corporate “no-cloud” policies to be extinct by 2020, Gartner says
- How to Know Which Digital Trends Are Worth Chasing
- Microsoft’s new Dynamics 365 will bundle ERP and CRM in the cloud
- Is All-Cloud Computing Inevitable? Analysts Suggest It Is
- The Hyper-Converged Landscape: What’s New, What’s Hot, and What’s Possible
- Windows 10 Anniversary Update: 5 Key Business Features
- The New IT: Driving Business Innovation With Tech
- You can now send files with Skype when the recipient is offline
- Spending on public cloud IT infrastructure to hit $23.3 billion
- CEO conversations: The road to Convergence 3.0
- Google is testing Chrome encryption that’s meant to withstand attacks from quantum computers
- Wendy’s releases list of restaurants hit by data breach that compromised debit and credit cards
- National Basketball Players Association to Hold Their First-Ever Technology Summit
- New Jersey CTO Prioritizing Security, Embracing Cloud
- Which cloud is on top?
- IT spending will shrink worldwide due to Brexit, Garner predicts
- Google acquires video software company Anvato
- Top 20 NSX articles for June 2016
Register for upcoming webinar, ” The Hyper-Converged Landscape: What’s New, What’s Hot, and What’s Possible
By Ben Stephenson, Emerging Media Specialist
The top seven KPIs to measure your success in the cloud
(c)iStock.com/Peter Hermus
You’ve put a lot of effort into building your cloud business and you want to make sure you stay ahead of the competition. You’ve kept a close eye on market trends and you’ve seen there are many ways to measure business performance. But, how much do you really know about Key Performance Indicators and how they affect your business? Did you know that the right KPIs can make the difference between continued success and a slow decline?
You’re probably wondering what kind of KPIs you should be looking at and how often you have to do it. Don’t worry. We’ve done all the grunt work for you. Here are seven Key Performance Indicators that will help you measure your success in the cloud.
Measure your customer growth
Look closely at the monthly figures provided by your sales team. Are they still bringing in new customers? Are your numbers this quarter higher or equal to what you saw last month? This is not the time for your sales team to be running out of steam. If you notice that customer growth is declining, start asking questions. Maybe your sales people aren’t getting enough lead volumes from the Marketing department. You have to look at the value provided by each sales person. In the cloud industry, 8-10 percent is ideal and 15 percent is acceptable. However, a higher percentage means the person’s quota is either too low or their income is too high. Deciding what to pay sales people has been a major challenge for partners who want to attract good sales reps to the cloud.
Calculate your average revenue per user (ARPU)
This is a very important metric. As competition in the cloud industry grows, resellers are spending more time cultivating long-term relationships to maximize their Average Revenue per User (ARPU). Get involved in cross-selling. Build a joint roadmap with your customer so you can stay involved with his business. It’ll be up to you to continually educate him about how you can help him meet the numerous challenges he’ll be facing.
You might also consider hiring a dedicated marketing/sales expert. But don’t make this move until you’re sure the expert can generate enough revenue from renewals and cross-selling and upselling. For example, a sales expert who costs you $50,000 in salary, commission and benefits should be able to drive a minimum of $333,000 in revenue.
What are you spending on marketing?
If you’re struggling with your sales volume, it’s time to look at your marketing program. A lot of partners we spoke to said they were spending less than 1 or 2 percent of their revenue on driving net new demand. Successful channel partners tend to spend as much as 8-10 percent on marketing. Since cash flows are spread out over longer periods, it’s really important to ramp up acquisition and make sure you’re investing as much money as possible to maximize your marketing.
Take a hard look at your renewal rate
What’s an ideal number? You should be looking for less than 8-10 percent per year of annual churn. However, this number will vary based on your customer acquisition rate. Customers are making purchase decisions every month and it’s important to keep the lines of communication open.
The renewal process is ongoing. From the day your customer signs their first contract, you’re ensuring they understand how important it is to get the product you’re selling and do business with you. You should make sure you give them plenty of reasons to renew.
Consider value-added services
A lot of partners make the same mistake. They offer the same services year after year and try to squeeze every penny out of the deal. You have to realize that SMBs are adopting cloud technology at a faster rate every year. If you don’t offer the cutting-edge services your clients need to stay competitive, they’ll simply go somewhere else. Partners who’ve developed their business model around Project or Managed Services can earn between 50-65 percent of their revenue from these services. This is one of the areas where you have the most control, so keep looking for opportunities to add to your offer. Ideally, a new partner should aim to have 15 percent of revenue from these sources by the end of year one, 33 percent by year two, and 45 percent or more by year three.
Look at your gross margins by offering
No matter what kind of services you offer, it’s important to see what kind of profit you’re getting from each one. For example, you should really strive for a gross margin of 30 percent or more for each Project Services offering. On the other hand, Managed Services offerings should return at least 40 percent while IP offerings should give you more than 50 percent margins. If your returns are lower, this may indicate that you haven’t established your offering properly or that something else is out of kilter. Take a close look at your services and why you’ve added them to your offering in the first place. If you’ve started offering a solution or service simply because one customer asked for it, step back and see how successful it’s been for your business. If it’s not creating reasonable income for your company, it might be time to replace it with something else.
How efficient are these value-added services?
Aside from the KPIs we’ve mentioned here, there are others that relate specifically to your project services and managed services. Gross Service Margins, the Efficiency Factor, Usage and Billable Markup Rates are the most significant KPIs for value-added services. Each of these KPIs will let you know how each service is performing and provide early warnings when you need to make adjustments. You should include them in your BI dashboards and add them to your quarterly assessments. Pay close attention to the Efficiency Factor. This measures how much of your work can be repurposed, packaged and resold as IP. Remember, your customers are looking for turnkey products they can implement right away, so use these building blocks to either jumpstart projects, or resell them as a finished product. This will make a difference in the kind of profits you can generate overall.
The post 7 Top KPIs to Measure Your Success in the Cloud appeared first on SherWeb.
Oracle and Fujitsu to team up for enterprise cloud services in Japan
(c)iStock.com/ricochet64
Oracle and Fujitsu have announced a new strategic alliance to deliver enterprise-grade cloud services to customers in Japan and their subsidiaries.
The partnership aims to bring Oracle’s cloud application and platform services to Fujitsu’s cloud service, K5; installing Oracle’s cloud services into its data centres in Japan and connecting them to K5.
The first Oracle cloud app being offered to Fujitsu customers as part of the new deal is Oracle HCM Cloud, regarding, as the name suggests, HR and human capital management. Fujitsu for its part will implement Oracle HCM Cloud to gain ‘unprecedented insight’ into the company’s global workforce.
“We at Fujitsu support the digital transformation of our customers, and aim to contribute to optimised customer systems and business growth with the rollout of our Digital Business Platform MetaArc,” said head of digital services business and CTO Shingo Kagawa. “Oracle is a leader in Japan’s database market segment and possesses strong capabilities in the [systems of record] domain. Now, as we look to strengthen MetaArc and K5, taking part in this strategic alliance with Oracle will work to meet the cloud needs of our customers.”
Fujitsu’s infrastructure offering in EMEA was recently tracked by analyst house IDC, alongside nine other vendors, finding that EMEA cloud IT infrastructure revenue had grown by 17% to £1.3 billion (£1bn) in the first quarter of this year. In September last year, the Japanese giant announced Fujitsu Cloud Services Management, a service which enables unified management of cloud environments across different departments within an organisation.
“We strongly believe this cloud alliance will support Japanese companies to drive digital transformation,” said Hiroshige Sugihara, president and CEO of Oracle’s Japanese arm. “This will be a gateway for customers to achieve standardisation, modernisation, and globalisation.”
SaaS for SMBs: The main meal, not the side salad
We know that telcos are well-placed to sell cloud services to small and medium-sized businesses. Even if they don’t always know it yet, the business customers they provide telecoms services to need to embrace digital services to succeed, and telecoms providers are trusted to deliver technology that meets their stated needs. Cloud is very much at the forefront of most telcos’ thinking, in terms of how it can be used to serve their own operational requirements, but also as a delivery mechanism and opportunity for providing business customers with a range of additional services. They are increasingly offering a catalogue of cloud applications that can provide business customers with efficient tools to help run their organisations without the cost and complexity of buying, running and maintaining software from myriad, discrete providers.
But while this is good in theory, the practice is somewhat different. In the last two to three years, there has been a lot of talk about the opportunity that exists, but for most this opportunity has not resulted in a significant new revenue stream. And building new revenue streams are vital for operators.
Voice and data revenues are declining so portfolio diversity is necessary if operators are to remain profitable. Providing cloud services remains one of the most obvious routes to diversity – which makes its current stagnation a bit of a worry.
Through a number of interviews and workshops, BCSG has identified some of the key factors that have stopped telcos from making the most of the opportunity.
Getting it wrong
Unfortunately, selling cloud services as “just another add on” doesn’t work as it might with other services for small businesses. The telco may be a natural provider of these services, but to reach the mass market customers need to be educated on how the solutions can bring value and why the telco should be considered as the vendor – it is, after all, a service of the type that the business may have previously acquired from elsewhere.
Many telcos are failing to making it clear why businesses should buy from them – the value of these joined-up digital solutions (alongside existing services, for example a device, a 4G connection and the ability to access their business files on the move) are not being communicated to the customer.
Additionally, many telcos are not communicating in an effective way, preferring a ‘big bang, product push’ approach to marketing – all products, all channels, all customers, all at once. This untargeted approach is not winning business.
Getting it right
To be successful, telcos need to understand their own customers better. What would they most benefit from? How well do they understand their own needs? How can they get a busy business owner to stop and take time to consider how to become more efficient with a new application? How could the business grow as a result of a new cloud marketing solution?
Without understanding how to take a customer on the journey, knowing what education they will need, and having a clear idea of the barriers they will face, customers won’t adopt the services or reach the point where they are getting good value, a must for any SaaS product. Developing this customer understanding enables providers to deliver a targeted approach that personalises the engagement. Once that baseline of customer understanding is established, telcos can begin the education process that underpins a path to purchase and ongoing use. At this point, targeted marketing must take customers on a journey that builds understanding of, comfort with, and desire for the services available. Telcos could help businesses understand, for example, how a mobile device can be combined with cloud-based software that creates online forms to save time completing admin outside of working hours or how a tablet and email marketing app can be used together to create the next campaign to find new customers in dead time waiting for a flight in an airport.
Working with the software vendors (ISVs) to provide insight about customers and their products is critical – they are, after all, the experts on their product. ISVs already sell their products through a number of channels and so should have the resources and expertise on hand to help with the sales process. There is no need to build something from scratch. While it might seem obvious, our analysis shows these key elements of the customer journey and marketing process are rarely followed.
Finally, once the understanding, education, customer journey and value is understood, telcos need to execute effectively. This means using the right marketing tools in the right way to reach the right customers at the right time. Taking a measured, staged approach to rolling out new services, using each opportunity to test, learn and scale, reduces risk and helps to avoid big bang launch, followed by re-launch 6 months later as the first approach hasn’t worked.
A lot of the steps and processes needed to create the right customer journeys can easily be automated using the right tools, such as marketing automation. These tools are also essential for the measurement and analysis of performance that helps to foster further learning about the customer.
Telcos have been told that “the time is now” for cloud services for several years, but up until now, with some exceptions, cloud services has remained a lacklustre business stream for telcos. Making cloud services the centre of attention, rather than an afterthought tacked on at the end of a sales call, will help telcos capture that all important cloud opportunity.
Written by Alan Marsh, Product and Marketing Director at BCSG
[session] Closing the Loop in IoT | @ThingsExpo @BsquareCorp #IoT #BigData
Early adopters of IoT viewed it mainly as a different term for machine-to-machine connectivity or M2M. This is understandable since a prerequisite for any IoT solution is the ability to collect and aggregate device data, which is most often presented in a dashboard. The problem is that viewing data in a dashboard requires a human to interpret the results and take manual action, which doesn’t scale to the needs of IoT.
The cloud is a utility, and we’re fine with that – AWS
While the telco industry is fighting to avoid being relegated to the likes of utilities, AWS has already accepted cloud computing is commoditised, reports Telecoms.com.
As cloud as a concept continues to become normalized within the business world, the number of competitors is growing day by day. AWS would generally still be considered the leader in the market, though progress from Microsoft and Google, as well as a number of new players appearing has slightly eroded this dominant position. According to Brendan Bouffler, AWS’ lead for the team responsible for developing the scientific computing segment, the prospect of cloud becoming utilized would not bother the market leader.
“It already is,” said Bouffler. “You can move in and out of our cloud whenever you like. There’s no long term commitment as our standard terms and conditions last for an hour. You can sign up for an hour and then move out. We see it all the time. We’re constantly holding our feet to the fire and forcing ourselves to innovate, that’s how we keep customers.”
Within the telco industry, operators are fighting against the tide to prevent the business being classed in the same bracket as utilities. Competing on price and constantly attempting to undercut challengers is not a battle ground the industry wants to operate in. The telcos would like to compete on value adds and brand equity, though Bouffler believes there is enough untapped business in the cloud market for the utility model to be successful.
Estimates on the value of the global cloud computing market vary, though statista believes it is worth in the region of $114 billion this year. Should AWS continue its healthy start to 2016, it will account for $10 billion. By 2020 the market is predicted to grow to roughly $159 billion, offering plenty of opportunity for competitors to establish themselves, and AWS to continue its growth.
“Running a company like a hardware vendor does where they are looking for high margins is a legitimate business model, but ours is different to that,” said Bouffler. “We’re a high volume, low margin business and it’s successful for us. It was pretty successful in disrupting the retail industry in the way books were sold. As a consumer of books, I’m in awe of that. You can put books in the hands of people for almost pennies. We democratized reading and we’re going to do the same for cloud.”
Bouffler believes the disruptive nature of Amazon and AWS is fuelling future growth within the business itself. Competing on price is not a worry for the team, as this was the origins of the Amazon book business. Amazon was launched in 1994 and shook up the retail book industry. It drove down prices, opened up new distribution channels and created an entirely new way of consuming literature. Bouffler believes the same is being done for computing.
Although the telco industry is concerned with the direction it is heading, the potential for growth within the cloud computing industry means being classed as a utility is not necessarily a terrible fate for AWS. While there are some organizations who would like to create an industry with higher margins, Bouffler believes the origins of Amazon, the disruptive nature of the business and the experience of operating in a low margin/high volume environment puts the company in a strong position to compete and succeed in a utility environment.
“This is only the tip of the iceberg,” said Bouffler. “Some of our customers are people doing something they wouldn’t have usually done without cloud computing. It wasn’t that they were substituting for money which would have been spent on a hardware cluster, these are projects that weren’t going to happen. This is net new stuff. This whole net new universe is still in front of us, I think we’re only just scratching the surface.
“It’s incredibly sustainable. Even though we’re a low margin business and a high volume business we’re good with that. We’ve been doing this since Amazon came into business (22 years ago), and the model is still working. I think there is still tons to be done before anyone writes obituaries about that business model.”
Google adds media capabilities with Anvato purchase
Google has bolstered its capabilities in the video streaming market through acquiring video platform Anvato which will join its cloud business unit.
Anvato provides a software platform that fully automates the encoding, editing, publishing and secure distribution of video content across multiple platforms. The acquisition will improve Google’s capabilities to recruit media companies to its cloud storage business, in the long-term quest to gain ground on Microsoft Azure and AWS in the cloud market segment.
“Anvato’s Media Content Platform, which counts many large media companies as customers, will complement our efforts to enable scalable media processing and workflows in the cloud,” said Belwadi Srikanth, Senior Product Manager at Google. “The cloud is transforming the way video content is created and distributed to an array of connected devices, as well as the way users engage with this content. And in recent years, the adoption of over-the-top (OTT) technologies has emerged as a critical platform for delivering rich audio, video and other media via the Internet.”
Offerings such as Anvato’s have been pushed to prominence in recent years as more video content moves into the OTT category. Google already counts a number of media outlets as customers, including Sky News and Spotify, though the continuing OTT trend will generate more demand for cloud services. The Anvato purchase will add several other media heavy hitters to the customer list such as NBCUniversal, Univision, Scripps Networks, Fox Sports, Media General.
“We are thrilled to bring together Anvato with the scale and power of Google Cloud Platform to provide the industry’s best offering for OTT and mobile video,” said Alper Turgut, CEO at Avanto. “This will allow us to supercharge our capabilities, accelerate the pace of innovation, and deliver tomorrow’s video solutions faster, enabling media companies to better serve their customers.”