February 18, 2014
Volume XLVII, Issue 2
The Unstoppable Surge of Cloud Computing in 2014
Excerpted from BitCloud Report
According to the August 2013 edition of research firm Gartner's annual hype cycle for emerging technologies, cloud computing is entering its mid-life phase.
Gartner says that it bases it's IT spending forecast methodology on rigorous analysis of sales by thousands of vendors across the entire range of IT products and services.
Whether or not you agree with Gartner's hype cycle approach, it's now quite apparent to any observer of the IT industry that interest in and adoption of cloud computing is surging ahead like an unstoppable tsunami or - perhaps more pertinent at the height of an Australian summer - like a raging bushfire.
Gartner predicts that worldwide IT spending is set to reach $3.8 trillion in 2014. Cloud computing represents a good slice of that spend.
"Bringing together personal clouds and external private cloud services is an imperative. Enterprises should design private cloud services with a hybrid future in mind and make sure future integration/interoperability is possible," it says.
The so-called personal cloud is becoming more important, with the increasingly complex demands of mobile users driving apps to demand increasing amounts of server-side computing and storage capacity.
IBM recently announced that it plans to divest itself of its low end (x86-based) server business, building upon a longstanding collaboration that began in 2005 when Lenovo acquired IBM's PC business. IBM is moving more and more towards being a provider of services, with a strong emphasis on cloud computing.
IBM is placing a major focus on social collaboration, encouraging their customers across a broad range of industries to move away from working in silos or hierarchies, and in the last few years has released several cloud-based "social business" offerings.
IBM's Ed Brill said in an interview: "The major shift now in the way people do businesses is from the individual to a more collaborative work experience. This change has not only increased productivity, but also allowed for more innovation.
"The cloud is a great way to deliver productivity tools that lend to collaboration; it works for small businesses with little or no IT staff and few resources, and it works for large businesses that want to pay on a utility basis for capabilities, instead of deploying their own people.
Public cloud solutions also have the advantage of incorporating the entire value chain including customers, partners, and suppliers.
IBM reported in October 2013 that organizations are gaining competitive advantage through high cloud adoption, with almost double the revenue growth and nearly 2.5 times higher gross profit growth than peer companies that are more cautious about cloud computing.
The IBM survey found that one out of five organizations is ahead of the curve on cloud adoption and achieving competitive advantage — not just cutting costs and driving efficiency.
Research firm International Data Corporation (IDC) in September 2013 predicted that worldwide public cloud services spending will reach nearly $108 Billion by 2017 as focus shifts from savings to innovation.
"There are signs that cloud services are starting to shift into a 'Chapter Two' phase where the scale of cloud adoption will not only be much bigger, but also more user and solution driven," says IDC.
"In this phase of growth, cloud and the other 3rd Platform technologies — mobile, social, and big data — will become even more interdependent as they continue to drive growth and innovation across all industries that depend on IT." The IBM report doesn't quite match IDC's figure, mentioning that by 2017 the worldwide public cloud services market is predicted to exceed $244 billion.
But what's a mere $130 billion or so? IBM and IDC were probably counting different aspects of cloud computing. Anyway, it's readily apparent that cloud adoption is skyrocketing, and your organization needs to surf the wave rather than getting left behind.
Desperately Needed: More Cloud Training, More Cloud Skills
Excerpted from Forbes Report by Joe McKendrick
Okay, just about everyone is convinced at this point — cloud computing is a good thing that can provide tremendous business value, if applied properly and smartly. The question is, who is going to make this all happen?
Organizations are relying on information technology (IT) managers and professionals, to a large extent, of course. However, many IT people say they aren't receiving enough training or support to move their organizations into this new computing realm.
That's the takeaway of a recent survey of 1,000 IT professionals, conducted by ScienceLogic. The survey finds 50 percent of organizations will spend more on IT in 2014, investing heavily in virtualization and cloud infrastructure. At the same time, half of the respondents participating in cloud initiatives within their organizations say they need more education on the technology — their current skill-sets do not adequately prepare them to do their jobs well in the coming year.
Skills shortages are already proving to be a show-stopper for many cloud efforts. A new survey of 286 federal managers by Accenture, for example, finds only 10 percent of US federal agencies have been able to migrate significant portions of their IT portfolios to the cloud, despite the government's aggressive "Cloud First" policy.
The reason for this lag — not enough skills in the cloud arena. More than two thirds of respondents said their agencies lack the necessary skilled staff to execute its cloud strategy and 31 percent said they would need to hire at least one new employee. About half of survey respondents (45 percent) said training is necessary to develop those skills, estimating that cost between $25,000 and $50,000 per employee.
What kinds of cloud skills are in demand? At a high level, organizations need professionals who can work closely with the business to build their cloud expertise. Some key areas, as identified in a Microsoft white paper on critical cloud skills, include the following:
Business Liaison: "Move skills up the stack in the decision process. Hone expertise to the business from within IT. Determine whether to focus in-house or off-premise, define options whether the organization decides to stay on-premise or moves to the cloud."
Data Center Manager: "Reposition data center skills toward the hosted data center. Enhance automation skills. Work in standardized environments and with standardized applications as an option."
Security Specialist: "Help businesses move core business processes and data securely to private, public, or hybrid cloud solutions. Stay abreast of new security models and technologies, such as data protection skills, privacy standards, securing message integrity (encryption, digital signing and malware protection), federated identity management, authentication methods, and auditing."
Software Architect: "Serve as a link between the organization's technical and business staff. Design and build complex distributed systems that exist both outside and inside an enterprise and the cloud. Understand how to design and construct multi-tenant and virtualized systems that can manage thousands of simultaneous users and isolate higher levels of the stack from physical component failures."
What are organizations asking for at this time? An unscientific perusal of listings at the Dice site finds the following positions and requirements being sought, which provides some clues as to the specific areas of technical training needed:
Cloud Solution Architect (IT services company): Needs "extensive computer science and systems background including large-scale distributed systems, operating systems, networking, databases, and virtualization." Specific skills: Open Stack, Java, C++, XML, SOAP, JSON, Web services.
Cloud Integration Engineer (financial services branch location): "Build out of a new Amazon EC2 environment…. responsible for the build, deployment and troubleshooting of an AWS cloud environment along with helping define the continuous delivery process." Specific skills: Amazon Web Services EC2, Puppet.
Senior Cloud Engineer (construction materials supplier): "Implementation and management, blueprint creation for end-to-end infrastructure provisioning, and service catalog administration. Implement Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud platforms." Specific skills: VMWare, OpenStack, Amazon Web Services, lifecycle management, release management methodologies, Microsoft Windows 2003/2008/2012 server.
Cloud Developer (medical products manufacturer): "Extend and maintain the existing cloud infrastructure to provide customers with a growing set of capacities in the areas of 3D/2D data management, image data processing, data fusion, streamlined workflows, heterogeneous system integrations, and business operations." Specific skills: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Python programming, Linux administration, Django, RESTful services and API development.
Report from CEO Marty Lafferty
 Plan now to participate in CLOUD COMPUTING EAST (CCE:2014), the upcoming must-attend strategic summit for business leaders and software developers in our nation's capital.
Jointly presented by the DCIA&CCA, CCE:2014 will take place on Thursday and Friday, May 15th-16th, at the Doubletree by Hilton Hotel in Washington, DC.
This important gathering of thought leaders and first movers will thoroughly examine the current state of adoption and the outstanding challenges affecting two major and increasingly related sectors of the economy, whose principals are currently engaged in migrating to the cloud.
CCE:2014 will focus on the gCLOUD (The Government Cloud) and the hCLOUD (The Healthcare Cloud).
Plenary sessions will feature principal representatives of such industry leading organizations as Amazon Web Services, Google, IBM, and Verizon, providing delegates with a real insider's view of the latest issues in this space.
gCLOUD case studies will expose the truth about cloud computing and the public sector. What really happened when a local municipality tried to streamline operations by moving just a few basic functions to the cloud? Why was the FedRAMP experience of one major cloud provider with government bureaucracy such a total shocker?
gCLOUD speakers will include representatives of such organizations as ASG Software, Clear Government Solutions, DST, HP, IBM, Ipswich Public Library, NASA, The City of New York, QinetiQ-NA, SAP America, Tech Equity, Unitas Global, Verizon, Virtustream, and WSO2.
hCLOUD sessions will range from revelations of the astonishing experience of a medical imaging company new to this arena to a generous sharing of the deep wisdom from a patient-records-storing firm that was doing cloud computing before the name cloud was even coined.
hCLOUD speakers will include representatives of such organizations as AVOA, BP LOGIX, BrightLine, Dell, DICOM Grid, Level 3, MultiPlan, NTP Software, Optum, ServerCentral, SYSNET Intl., and Vizix.
Other featured speakers will include authors, analysts, industry observers, and representatives of such organizations as ActiveState, Aspera, BUMI, CDAS, Edwards Wildman Palmer, Expedient, Intuit, Juniper Networks, Kwaai Oak, M*Modal , Mobily, Numecent. The PADEM Group, Rackspace, SOA Software, Stratus Technologies, Trend Micro, Trilogy Global Advisors, V2Solutions, Veristor, Visionary Integration Professionals, and WikiPay,
The gCLOUD will examine the ways that local, state, and federal governments can improve services and protect citizens with cloud-based tools. It will also address liabilities and challenges that need to concern government agencies regarding cloud-based services, countering NSA-fallout gloom with energized and confident approaches that overcome concerns raised by the Snowden scandal.
The explosion of data, advances in security and reliability, and options for redundant storage; challenges to natural resource management, transportation, and utility grid monitoring; and the impact of cloud services on law enforcement and emergency responsiveness will be featured topics.
The hCLOUD will explore progress being made by the healthcare industry in adopting cloud-based solutions to become more efficient, collaborative, and interactively connected. It will also address legitimate concerns that healthcare organizations must address in implementing cloud-based services.
Managing private patient records; collecting clinical research data; big-data imaging, and remote patient monitoring will be covered.
Speakers will include end-user organizations, public-sector thought-leaders, and private-sector cloud vendors, representatives of hospitals, clinics, multi-physician practices, and healthcare solutions providers, and executives and innovators from the cloud computing industry.
Please contact Don Buford, CEO, or Hank Woji, VP Business Development, at the CCA to learn more about attractive conference exhibition and sponsorship opportunities.
To review conference topics and apply to join the speaking faculty for this event, please click here. If you'd like to speak at this major industry event, please contact me, Marty Lafferty, CEO of the DCIA, at your earliest convenience. Share wisely, and take care.
Cloud Computing Market to Top $121 Billion by 2015
Excerpted from TweakTown Report by Michael Hatamoto
The cloud still provides great service and future promise, but analysts and industry experts are unsure what to expect in 2014.
Cloud computing is predicted to reach $121.1 billion by 2015, according to a report from MarketsandMarkets, though other analysts guess the market will have a difficult time in 2014.
Embracing the cloud gives users the chance to utilize a scalable and cost-effective way to access and share information from any Web-connected device.
For companies trying to sell cloud services to the consumer or B2B markets, it's quickly coming down to service quality. Any company trying to drive innovation in the cloud market must pay attention to good product support, customer support, and clear lines of communication with users.
Companies such as Apple, Google, Microsoft and Amazon tend to get a lot of headlines for their respective cloud efforts, though software providers like Red Hat and CA are expected to have a difficult time growing this year.
Cloud Computing Sales to Triple by 2017
Excerpted from Investor's Business Daily Report by Patrick Seitz
Corporate spending on cloud computing is headed sky high, according to a report Friday from IHS Technology (IHS).
Cloud-related tech spending by businesses is forecast to triple from 2011 to 2017, the research firm said. By 2017, enterprise spending on cloud computing will amount to a projected $235.1 billion, triple the $78.2 billion spent in 2011, IHS said.
This year, global business spending for infrastructure and services related to the cloud will reach an estimated $174.2 billion, up 20% from the amount spent in 2013.
Cloud services, applications, security and data analytics will account for an ever-growing portion of total information technology spending by enterprises, valued today at about $2 trillion, IHS analyst Jagdish Rebello said.
"The robust growth will come as an increasing number of large and small enterprises move more of their applications to the cloud, while also looking at data analytics to drive new insights into consumer behavior," Rebello said.
Cloud computing lets consumers, businesses and other organizations access computing resources from remote servers via the Internet. Many customers see it as a more effective and cost-efficient way to provision IT resources.
Among the large tech companies battling for market share in the cloud are Google, Microsoft and Amazon.
Some companies like Barracuda Networks, Box, Carbonite, and Dropbox are specializing in cloud-based data storage services. Others sell online software application services such as Salesforce.com, ServiceNow, and Workday .
The Cloud Grows Up
Excerpted from Wall St. Journal MarketWatch Report
Gartner Senior Vice President Peter Sondergaard sees the big picture: where global technology is heading, and how trends such as cloud computing and business analytics are revolutionizing business.
Sondergaard discussed how companies are responding to these trends in a conversation with Michael Hickins, an editor at The Wall Street Journal. Edited excerpts of their discussion follow.
HICKINS: In a Gartner survey late last year, one priority that global CIOs ranked very high for their companies was enterprise resource planning the suite of systems used to store and use the data necessary to run a business. But here at the conference, CIOs ranked ERP much lower. Why is that?
SONDERGAARD: I think we are early in a phase of revisiting our applications, in particular our ERP infrastructure. We've spent 20 years building a platform that has consolidated itself around virtually two players: SAP and Oracle. But I believe cloud is going to drive a revisiting of our ERP platform. I think we will move to a federated, more loosely coupled ERP environment that enables us to select applications that are not on-premise but that end up being cloud-based.
HICKINS: Why now? Cloud has been around and maturing for a number of years.
SONDERGAARD: There's a maturity in organizations. Everything goes back to people skills. Do we have the right people and experience to manage external providers from a cloud perspective, to understand how you do the integration internally? And it takes time for organizations to build that experience up. That's there now. Our CIO survey showed that about 25% of organizations are seriously invested in cloud.
It's a question of maturity, on the buyer's side but also on the provider's side. We are under pressure, all of us, to act faster. The word agility appears in every CIO conversation.
When you ask people why they are buying cloud-based applications, 51% say it's because of agility. Only 17% will say it's because of cost.
HICKINS: As IT tries to become more agile, how can that be reflected in the larger organization? Or can the two work at different speeds?
SONDERGAARD: It doesn't matter whether I'm in the music industry or the mining industry. I am under pressure to digitize what I do as an organization. I'm under pressure to show agility.
The response to that right now is a couple of things. First, business executives are asking to have somebody that looks at digitization across the enterprise. It's a strategy role, but increasingly a strategy role with teeth. An increasing number of these new chief digital officers actually have larger organizations reporting to them. They're not single individuals. About 40% of those chief digital officers report directly to the CEO.
The other thing organizations are looking at is, how do I put in place what we in Gartner would call a bimodal, or two-speed, IT function: systems that pay everybody's bills and sell the stuff that we sell, but that also demonstrate agility and innovation.
HICKINS: In your survey and here, CIOs reported that the No. 1 initiative for their companies was business intelligence and analytics. How does that tie into the need for greater agility?
SONDERGAARD: It ties in because the value of information in your enterprise is what differentiates you. And in terms of agility, what differentiates us is the capability of using that information. Information is a strategic asset.
We are now struggling with what the response to that is. And the response has to be, first, the organization—the total organization—has to make someone responsible for what the corporate strategy around information is, because you cannot afford to ignore it. Wal-Mart cannot afford to ignore that it competes on information, and its biggest competitor is Google. Same goes with everybody in this room. Your competitor is Google or other providers that have information about your customers.
The second thing is there needs to be someone in charge of collecting and managing that information. This is causing some organizations to create yet another role: a chief data officer that integrates the responsibility of information management, of business intelligence or analytics, and information as it pertains to product strategy. Somebody needs to be responsible for pulling it together.
We sit in a unique time of change, which is why we appoint individuals that sit outside, perhaps, the defined structures, but are responsible for this.
I'm convinced five years from now, there will be very few chief digital officers left because I believe it has to be a business-skill set that pervades every business individual in an organization.
Never a Better Time for CIOs to Fix IT's Reputation
Excerpted from Huffington Post Report by Vala Afshar
A recent Gartner study predicts that by 2015, 25 percent of large global organizations will appoint a Chief Digital Officer (CDO). In a time where there is a lot of technology analyst talk about the relevance of the CIO and Enterprise IT, Mike Kail, CIO of Netflix offers a refreshing perspective. In his opinion, there has never been a better time for IT to fix its reputation in the industry and move from being the blockers in an organization to being the enablers. IT has an opportunity to show that they can deploy great technology that is accessible anywhere leveraging cloud computing, SaaS and mobility, and providing analytics to the teams that need it.
Netflix is an amazing company that is growing rapidly with 1 in 4 Americans subscribing and 33 percent of all home broadband Internet traffic in the U.S. generated by Netflix video. But Kail, who embodies pragmatic optimism and a can-do attitude, does not view this rapid growth as a strain but as an opportunity. To deal with the challenges of the transformation IT, Kail advices CIOs to not be driven by fear but rather to embrace this opportunity to create a new reputation for IT.
8 Ways for IT to Fix Its Reputation:
1. Focus on cloud wherever possible - Kail feels that IT should be focused on the goals of the core business and at Netflix that means providing entertainment, not procuring hardware and network infrastructure and storage systems when these services are readily available and more agile delivered through SaaS or public cloud. IT needs to look at things differently and ask how they can leverage other resources to bring a different perspective to their organizations. Kail focuses on cloud wherever possible using either best-of-breed SaaS apps or doing their own custom app development and deploying on public cloud. His goal for 2014 is to have 100 percent of corporate IT in the public cloud.
2. Hire talented people that think differently - At a company where there is a 126-page culture deck -- hailed as Silicon Valley's most important document ever - there is an equal (if not greater) value placed on the cultural fit vs. the technical fit when it comes to recruiting new talent. In the hiring process, Netflix sets the context of culture early on and the deck contains the guiding principles for how all employees should operate every day. The two traits that Kail wants his employees to have are intellectual curiosity and continuous involvement. "While cloud computing is not a huge shift in thinking, you need to having people that want to think differently about infrastructure and architecture to figure out how to secure something or handle resiliency and latency when you don't have full control over something," says Kail.
Netflix is a very dynamic organization where people are not just doing one thing all day. This gives employees the opportunity to continuously expand their skill sets and look at different and new technologies, something Kail calls "Enterprise IT 3.0". Because Kail has tried to organize his team to contain no silos, employees can work cross-functionally so they are continuously evolving their skills. This means that as they move to being 100 percent cloud-based the make-up of the IT team will not change.
3. IT's charter is to improve business efficiency -- When moving to cloud or any new technology, setting context for everyone about why you are doing it is the key to success says Kail. Do this early on and have a good clear plan that stems from looking at how to improve business efficiency in conjunction with moving to cloud. The last thing you want to do is to forklift existing apps and put in cloud just to do it. IT needs to look at all the business processes and take a fresh look at different areas, such as the financial system, that people don't always think about. Things have changed and old systems may not be as efficient as they used to be. According to Kail: "IT's charter should be to improve business efficiency and move the business forward rather than being trying to 'protect employees' or prohibit them from doing something."
4. Support "UAD" (Use Any Device) -- Kail says that instead of the acronym "BYOD," we should be using Use Any Device ("UAD"). People expect the same experience wherever they are and for IT to support a bunch of different apps to help them get their job done. Everything is mobile these days, in fact Kail doesn't have an office at Netflix but instead operates wherever he is via various mobile devices. "People should be able to use best device to get the job done, and IT should support it in a secure manner with great access to apps and data," says Kail.
5. Try to remove friction wherever possible -- Removing friction is a great opportunity for IT. At Netflix, IT created one login for all SaaS apps to tie everything together in one place. This eliminates the need for employees to have a different password for every app they use and allows them to experience the same secure log-in from any device. In this way IT has served the business by ensuring an optimal user experience from anywhere so that all the business-critical apps are with them everywhere.
Of course IT is challenged to balance providing a really flexible environment with being secure and knowing what's going on. Kail said security is always something that is there in the back of his mind -- it's an integral part of everything they do.
6. Communicate deep context for change -- When thinking about how to introduce change and innovation, you have to understand the variable switching costs in technology and then address them head-on with the employee base. Netflix switched from Exchange on-premise to Google Apps last year and in doing so, Kail wrote a long Google doc memo which explained why they were deploying the new technology.
"When you deploy new technology, you need to communicate to end users otherwise they get frustrated," says Kail, who thinks poor communication and lack of explanation and support for new technology are the root causes of shadow IT. IT needs to understand the needs of the business in near future or employees will go find their own apps that they understand and that helps them get their job done.
7. Embrace "shadow IT" -- According to CIO Insight shadow IT's footprint is growing rampantly and recommends "don't block popular SaaS apps that help employees get their jobs done." Mike Kail, who is of the mindset of Kim Stevenson and Kristin Russell when it comes to shadow IT, couldn't agree more. He feels that people should use the apps they need to get their job done and if there is a big need for certain apps then IT should provide access, not block it. He sees shadow IT as an opportunity for IT understand what the user needs are and how they can improve the service they deliver and support them better.
8. Partner with line-of-business -- With a lot of talk about technology thought leadership shifting away from IT and moving into the hands of the CMO or CDO, CIOs should try to put themselves out of their comfort zone and learn something new and see how they can help out. Kail says there are a lot of opportunities for CIOs to try to understand the vast marketing landscape and figure out how to partner with the CMO and provide solutions to them, but it will involve getting comfortable with being uncomfortable.
Kail's parting advice for CIOs who want to fix the reputation of IT: "Do what you think is right and take ownership for it. Execute and if something is not working don't try to force it, but rapidly change the course. Be self-aware and business-aware."
You can watch the full interview with Mike Kail here.
Computer Economics — The Cloud Saves 15 Percent
Excerpted from Diginomica Report by Den Howlett
Affiliate partner Computer Economics has provided Diginomica with a confidential preview copy of its new report: The Economic and Strategic Benefits of Cloud Computing. The results are startling. From the executive summary:
The study finds that organizations fully utilizing cloud computing save on average more than 15% in IT spending, whether measured as a percentage of revenue or on a per-user basis
As far as we know, this is the first time that an analyst firm has documented the savings which can be achieved when cloud technologies are widely deployed. These savings are significant and especially given that IT spend can be anything around 3-5% of total revenue.
In arguments around cloud economics, the on-premises vendors tend to highlight the long run costs of using a subscription service as higher than licence plus maintenance. Cloud players on the other hand talk about the shift from capex to opex. Both cannot be right. What has been missing is a fully costed assessment of moving most if not all IT assets into a cloud environment.
This is the first time we've seen an independent effort to put numbers on the various component parts of an IT budget for this purpose. To that extent, CE looked at six key metrics: Personnel, Applications, Data Center, Network User Devices, and Other.
It should not surprise that while applications cost IS higher in cloud scenarios by some considerable margin, every other measure shows savings. The highest saving came from data center operations where the cost fell by an average of 58 percent. This fits in with gripes we've consistently heard from end user organizations and analysts alike about the ongoing costs associated with data center operations.
While the report makes a solid case, it is limited in sample size. The results were garnered from a modest sample of seven businesses ranging in revenue from $50 million and $550 million and between 135 and 860 employees. The sample spans industries as diverse as plastics manufacture and pure services organizations. the quoted applications portfolio includes vendors as diverse as Workday, NetSuite, Microsoft, Box, Google, FinancialForce and Salesforce.
I asked Frank Scavo, CEO Computer Economics the following:
Q: The sample size is small — to what extent are you confident this is sufficiently representative?
A: Yes it is a small sample, mainly because we put a floor on the size of company we allowed in our sample. There are plenty of five or 10 person organizations that have gone all cloud. But it is not that easy to find companies over $50 million in annual revenue that have moved all or most of their systems to the cloud. But we found seven, between $50 million and $550 million. We hope to get more respondents in the coming months, but I do not believe the conclusions of the report will change.
The reason I am confident that cloud saves money is that the results are consistent. We compared each respondent with its industry peers, whether manufacturing, high tech, wholesale distribution, professional services, or whatever. In every single case, the cloud respondents are spending less on IT than their industry counterparts. That is a very striking outcome. So, we are reporting between 15% and 20% savings. If we get a larger sample, perhaps the number will be 12%. Or maybe it will be 25%. But I don't think it will flip to show that cloud users spend more on IT than on-premises customers do.
Q: Presumably the recommendations can only be applied to this size of business?
A: I think the results apply to any size business. As you would expect, our findings show that companies that have migrated to the cloud eliminate most or all of their data center spending. But they also show savings in IT personnel costs across the board. Of course, they spend more on applications software, as that line item has the data center costs bundled in with it. But the savings in data center and personnel expenses is more than the increase in applications costs. I don't see why that would be any different in smaller or larger companies.
Q: Did respondents indicate where they are putting saved costs — you say innovation but what does that mean?
One respondent indicated that cloud systems allows his company to grow 25% through acquisition, without having to increase back office costs. Another respondent pointed to the same benefit. A third respondent mentioned the ability to quickly bring new functionality online without the risk that comes with buying licenses. All of the respondents were big on the flexibility and scalability benefits of cloud systems. In fact, it was hard to get them to indicate any downside.
A Stronger Role in Cloud Transparency
Excerpted from BNAmericas Report by Andrew Rogers
Governments must play a stronger role in ensuring the transparency of cloud computing services, Pietro Hagemann, the director of IT and cloud computing for Chinese ICT firm Huawei in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, told BNamericas at a cloud computing workshop organized by the UN's Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (Eclac).
People used to process and store their own data, but they're now giving that information to third party organizations, and governments have a strong role to play in regulating how that data is used, with the aim of providing increased transparency to consumers of cloud computing, Hagemann said.
Major cloud providers today are trusted because they're big brands, but consumers cannot know for sure how their data is being used, the executive added.
Although questions have been raised in recent months regarding the use of personal data by national governments, at some point consumers have to trust some entities to regulate the cloud industry, which puts governments in a strong position to assume this role.
The cloud services model is global by nature and allows many different companies and actors to work together in a collaborative environment. Trust is essential to the effective functioning of this model, and governments have to take the lead in building this momentum, Hagemann said.
As consumers trust other globally interconnected businesses, such as the airline industry, thanks to national and international regulations to ensure comparable safety standards worldwide, the establishment of a cloud security framework must also be globalized across countries, with enforcement at a local, national and international level.
Private sector cloud companies can provide the technology to deliver services in a secure way, but the regulatory framework must be put in place in order for this to occur, he said.
The security of cloud service and data is currently the biggest challenge facing every country, although different countries each have different interests. Governments must consider how countries will build a global information society, in which data is exchanged across national borders, and at the same time establish trust among consumers that that data is going to be protected, according to the executive.
Google Cloud Gets on Board with HIPAA
Excerpted from Healthcare IT News Report by Erin McCAnn
To all the developers building applications in the cloud that need to comply with HIPAA privacy rules: You've just gained a big ally.
Internet behemoth Google recently announced its cloud platform will now be HIPAA-friendly and will support business associate agreements going forward.
Google started inking business associate agreements back in 2013 when the HIPAA Final Omnibus Rule went into effect, making BAs accountable for violating certain HIPAA privacy and security rules.
This February, the company went one step further.
"To serve developers who want to build these applications on Google's infrastructure, we're announcing support for business associates agreements for our customers," wrote Google Cloud Platform Product Manager Matthew O'Connor, in a Feb. 5 company post. "We're looking forward to supporting customers who are subject to HIPAA regulations on Google Cloud Platform."
The HIPAA final omnibus rule took effect September 2013, and it made BAs directly liable for violations of HIPAA rules. The rule also expanded the definition of a BA to include health information organizations, e-prescribing gateways, PHR providers, patient safety organizations and subcontractors with access to protected health information. Moreover, subcontractors are now defined as business associates.
After the rule went into effect, many covered entities reported having difficulties getting BAs to actually sign business associate agreements.
Healthcare IT News spoke with BakerHostetler's Privacy and Security Attorney Ted Kobus back in August 2013, right before the HIPAA final rule took effect. He said that, overall, BAs have been less prepared. "We see them asking for help with compliance issues, business associate agreements, questions about cloud computing and general compliance questions," Kobus said.
Lynn Sessions, healthcare privacy attorney, also with BakerHostetler, works with many of the more sophisticated BAs on updating their agreements; she said the ones dragging their feet with HIPAA are the cloud providers. Organizations "new to the party, like cloud providers who thought they were never business associates in the first place, are having to play catch up," said Sessions.
Cloud computing in healthcare is poised for explosive growth. By the end of 2013, analysts estimated the global market would hit nearly $4 billion, representing more than 21 percent growth from 2012, according to the findings of a September 2013 Kalorama report. In comparison, health IT spending over the year was only projected to increase by nearly 11 percent. "EMR is driving this market," said Bruce Carlson, publisher of Kalorama Information, in a Sep. 19 press statement. "Hospitals are building great systems for gathering electronic records, but they need solutions to store all of that data, and it can't be a new server wing that might compete with needed space for care."
Cloud Computing: Impact of Comcast's Acquisition
Excerpted from Sys-Con Media Report by James Carlini
Comcast's recent $45 billion acquisition of Time-Warner Cable was big news in the Cable TV world, but it should be big news in the area of cloud computing and network diversity.
Instead of looking at Comcast as a cable TV provider, it is time that we should be looking at it as another alternative to the traditional network carriers like AT&T and Verizon for our data needs both at home and at the business location.
Do you have network redundancy in place in your cloud computing applications? They cannot be considered "mission critical" if you only have them running on one connection to the central office.
Ninety-nine percent of the commercial buildings are still in the horse-and-buggy days of having one main connection to one central office of the phone company for connectivity. Corporate tenants who have mission-critical applications should be using more than one network access point for their core business applications as well as a secondary network carrier with a totally separate network topology. If you aren't, you have a huge single point-of-failure embedded in your network and are not even close to having something reliable.
It's time to move forward from the horse-and-buggy days and start adding redundancy to all networks that carry any applications that you consider mission critical. If you work from home, that connection to your customer base is also mission critical.
Maybe the incumbent network carriers like AT&T and Verizon don't look at Comcast as being a real competitor because its focus is more on cable TV, but in reality, the network grid that Comcast has could go head-to-head in markets where incumbents like AT&T provide U-Verse.
Did you know if you get U-Verse, you cannot get a second high-speed U-Verse line? I found that out recently and could not believe how short-sighted that is from a marketing strategy standpoint. It leaves AT&T wide open for someone like Comcast to come in and provide a second line for work-at-home couples. This was our solution when AT&T could not ante up a second line.
This raises a huge question as to the available network resources AT&T has in the street. If their policy is to not provide a second line, it means it doesn't have enough network capabilities in the street.
Look at Comcast as another alternative when you start to build redundancy and resiliency into your networks. Broaden your perspective when it comes to identifying solutions for network infrastructure challenges.
DDN Closes 2013 with Strong Business Momentum
DataDirect Networks (DDN) today announced tremendous momentum exiting fiscal year 2013, with 2nd half revenue growth driven by rapidly expanding market demand for high performance block, file and object storage.
A leader in high performance computing (HPC) market for 15 years, DDN provides storage designed to meet the scale and performance demands of data intensive environments. 2013 marked a transitional year where many markets accelerated adoption of HPC and storage products to meet their analytics, vertical application and data accessibility needs.
While demand for DDN storage continues to increase in HPC, DDN is also seeing increased adoption in the highly data intensive market segments of cloud storage, life sciences, research, government, manufacturing, Internet and telecommunications. Highlights for the year included:
DDN delivered breakthrough business results for the fiscal year ending December 31st 2013, increasing bookings volume by 31 percent sequentially in 2H:13, while adding 122 net new customers over the year to a roster of the world's leading computing sites. This brings the total number of DDN customers to more than 1,100 and over 500PB of total storage capacity sold to date.
This momentum illustrates the rapid acceleration in demand for the DDN product line in a broad set of commercial and industrial markets, where according to leading industry analyst firms, increased HPC spending is occurring. Despite the challenging macroeconomic conditions in 1H:13, DDN delivered solid performance to close out the year, positioning the company well for growth in 2014.
Across all markets, notable new and expanded customer relationships during the year included BP, Life Technologies, Los Alamos National Laboratories, Suzuki and University of Bonn. These companies are adopting DDN technology to achieve significant competitive advantage by unlocking new opportunities to monetize their data, such as for scientific discovery, financial trading accuracy or improved seismic activity prediction, among other use cases.
Company momentum was also driven by growth in adoption of DDN WOS object storage for large scale web application adoption and for organizations with the need to address three primary use cases: cloud storage, content distribution and Hadoop archival.
Over the course of 2013, DDN introduced a number of advances to its technology portfolio, building on the company's leadership in addressing end users' big data and cloud storage requirements, including massive scale out object storage, extreme performance, Hadoop-based analytics, and file system and workflow acceleration. These innovations included:
Hadoop and Big Data Storage: Analytics Platform — Launched in February 2013, the first Big Data appliance for the enterprise dramatically simplifies Apache Hadoop deployment, delivering up to seven times better analytics performance as compared to commodity clusters.
Object Storage: WOS Technology — Introduced in September 2013, WOS 3.0 and WOS 7000 appliance are leading the cloud revolution, delivering trillion-file scalability and 200x performance increases over previous generations. With multiple customer installs now at over 10PB and DDN's largest WOS install at 70-80 billion objects, DDN continues to achieve significant marquee brand wins.
Block Storage: SFA12KX Appliance Series — Featuring the most advanced processor technology and a hyper-optimized operating system to deliver extreme performance at up to 48GB/s and 1.4 Million IOPS from a single appliance, the leading performance storage platform, the SFA12KX, was launched in November 2013.
Burst Buffer Cache: Infinite Memory Engine (IME) — Previewed at Supercomputing '13 in November, IME technology, the industry's first distributed buffer cache system designed to accelerate parallel file systems, extracts the best performance efficiency across the I/O hierarchy, increasing system reliability multifold, while reducing exascale I/O TCO by millions of dollars.
Coming Events of Interest
Cloud Computing Conference for DoD & Government - February 19th-21st in Washington, DC. This 5th annual CCCDG seeks to build on the success of last year's event and refine its scope by addressing the newest developments in cloud computing for the public sector.
1st International Conference on Intelligent Cloud Computing 2014 (ICC 2014) - February 24th-25th in Oman, Jordan. The objective of the conference is to bring together researchers, practitioners and developers working with cloud systems and intelligent systems. A variety of intelligent mechanisms and techniques will be presented that may be used to develop advanced cloud systems, solutions, and services that offer new functionalities.
Interop Las Vegas - March 31st to April 4th in Las Vegas, NV. The leading independent technology conference and expo series designed to inspire and inform the world's IT community. New in 2014: Cloud Connect Summit and the InformationWeek Conference.
CLOSER 2014 - April 3rd-5th in Barcelona, Spain. The Fourth International Conference on Cloud Computing and Services Science (CLOSER 2014) sets out to explore the emerging area of cloud computing, inspired by recent advances in network technologies.
NAB Show - April 5th-10th in Las Vegas, NV. From broadcasting to broader-casting, NAB Show has evolved over the last eight decades to continually lead this ever-changing industry. From creation to consumption, NAB Show has proudly served as the incubator for excellence — helping to breathe life into content everywhere.
Media Management in the Cloud — April 8th-9th in Las Vegas, NV. This two-day conference provides a senior management overview of how cloud-based solutions positively impact each stage of the content distribution chain, including production, delivery, and storage.
CLOUD COMPUTING EAST 2014 - May 13th-14th in Washington, DC. Three major conference tracks will zero in on the latest advances in the application of cloud-based solutions in three key economic sectors: government, healthcare, and financial services.
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