RagingWire Launches Cloud Connect Service

RagingWire Data Centers launched its Cloud Connect service providing direct and secure access to hundreds of clouds, SaaS applications, and an ecosystem of on-net enterprises via a global private network. The new Cloud Connect service is being launched based on the global interconnection platform of Console Connect, Inc., with plans to deploy additional cloud connectivity options over time including the Software-Defined Exchange Service (SD-Exchange) from NTT Communications.

“Cloud Connect is a powerful extension to our carrier neutral network services, offering our customers a secure and reliable path for hybrid cloud deployments and access to enterprise applications,” said Bruno Berti, director of product management at RagingWire. “We are excited to work with Console Connect, Inc. as our first solutions partner to deliver Cloud Connect across our data center portfolio.”

Cloud Connect offers a robust set of network destinations including top clouds such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform, as well as leading SaaS applications including Box, Cisco WebEx, LinkedIn, Zendesk, and Zoom, plus an ecosystem of on-net enterprises and buildings.

Leveraging the Console platform and Console Connect’s global network of 170 points-of-presence (PoPs) in 20 countries, Cloud Connect enables customers to bypass the public internet with a single click for cloud and application connectivity, resulting in better performance and security. Cloud Connect offers industry-leading automation that delivers on-demand provisioning, flexible connectivity, and user-controlled management and reporting through an easy-to-use and intuitive web-based interface. A vibrant social network core built in to the platform provides up-to-date announcements of new features and benefits as well as the ability to interact with network support, other users, and partners via a private community.

“RagingWire, with their breadth of colocation solutions and long track record of delivering mission critical uptime, is an ideal partner for us to deploy our global interconnection platform and automated provisioning and management software,” said Jef Graham, CEO of Console Connect. “With Cloud Connect from RagingWire and Console Connect, companies can easily extend their enterprise servers into the cloud and vice versa with a powerful hybrid architecture.”

Typical use cases for Cloud Connect will be for both enterprises and cloud-based companies as they enable hybrid computing environments. For example, enterprises can extend their in-house, colocated server farms to one or multiple clouds to provide capacity for application development and testing or to address usage spikes. Cloud-based companies may use Cloud Connect to implement dedicated servers housed in RagingWire’s data centers to support applications with stable usage or to lower costs as cloud usage fees escalate.

Cloud Connect is available immediately. Insight Catastrophe Group (ICG), an innovative insurance portfolio manager and solutions provider, has already recognized the benefits of the new Cloud Connect service.

“Insight Catastrophe Group is modernizing property insurance through technology and data to deliver sophisticated risk models and online quoting and binding,” said Scott Wilsey, chief technology officer for ICG. “We needed an integrated, secure, and scalable way to extend our enterprise systems to AWS and Microsoft Azure. We found our solution with Cloud Connect and colocation from RagingWire and Console Connect. The service has been very reliable and their support has been great. We like the transparency we get into our circuit and their ability to do cloud interconnect.”

Source: CloudStrategyMag

Equinix Opens State-of-the-Art Data Center In Amsterdam

Equinix, Inc. has  announced the opening of its new International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data center in Amsterdam at its Science Park campus. The $113M facility, called AM4, supports the increasing demand for interconnection capacity to accelerate business performance.

According to Cisco, global IP traffic is set to increase nearly threefold in the next five years.¹ This growth in IP traffic will accelerate the need for greater connectivity for organizations hoping to create business value as they undergo digital transformation. AM4 enables companies to extend network infrastructure to the digital edge and enhance workload performance by shortening the distance between services and users.

The European Commission’s Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI) 2017² ranks the Netherlands as the 4th most advanced digital economy in the EU, and the Netherlands also ranks 4th on the Global Competitiveness Index 2016-2017 (WEF).³ Digital infrastructure and interconnection capacity facilitates the flow of global data in and out of this market which opens up new business opportunities across markets and drives the larger digital economy.

The Netherlands has connections to more than 150 global submarine cables networks and Equinix data centers in Amsterdam represent one of the densest network concentrations in the world. This massive amount of network connectivity combined with the latest advancements in data center technology provides Dutch businesses with significant choice when strategizing future IT deployments. For this reason, multinationals looking to expand into Europe also consider Amsterdam a top destination, as it locating there facilitates connectivity to 80% of Europe within 50 milliseconds to maximize performance.

“With its connectivity to continental Europe as well London and the Nordics, Amsterdam has become a key hub for cloud and other service providers to offer enterprise interconnection. European enterprises are starting to realize their current network architecture is no longer optimal for digital transformation as they journey to the cloud. A deployment in a network-dense interconnection-oriented facility such as that being offered in Amsterdam could be a viable option to support their digital transformation,” said Penny Jones, senior analyst, European Services at 451 Research.

Today Equinix operates multiple Amsterdam data center campuses and the addition of AM4 further increases capacity to meet growing demand for hybrid cloud, interconnection, and connectivity to business ecosystems across a number of vertical markets and internet exchanges. High connectivity makes Amsterdam Science Park an attractive location and cloud hotspot in Europe, which handles approximately 38% of the Dutch data traffic, making it the second-largest data route in the Netherlands.

The initial phase of AM4 includes space for 1,555 cabinets and is planned to have four expansion phases. At full build the vertical facility will represent a total investment of $189 million and provide 4,200 cabinets across eight floors with more than 125,000 gross sq ft (11,500 square meters) of data center space.

Amsterdam is considered the digital gateway to Europe⁴ and Equinix Amsterdam has more than 700 customers, providing connections to over 150 network service providers and access to an established cloud ecosystem which includes leading CSPs such as AWS, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Office 365, Oracle, and IBM Softlayer. This broad choice of cloud options enable businesses to flexibly create a multi-cloud environment to meet their changing IT needs. Additionally, Equinix brings together buyers and sellers of cloud services via the Equinix Cloud Exchange™ in more than 20 markets globally including Amsterdam.

“The Netherlands is one of the leading drivers of data centers in Europe. Thanks to its excellent connectivity, Amsterdam is the world’s largest internet hub, making the digital sector one of the three main ports, next to Schiphol and the port of Rotterdam. Equinix’ new data center AM4 ensures that Amsterdam remains the global internet hub and that European organizations are supported in their digital transformation,” said Nina Tellegen, director, Amsterdam Economic Board.

Equinix has a long-term goal of using 100% clean and renewable energy for its global platform and continues to make advancements in the way it designs, builds and operates its data centers with high energy efficiency standards. For example, Equinix’s Amsterdam data centers at Science Park realize significant energy savings and reduction in their CO_² footprint using an in-ground Aquifer Thermal Energy Storage, instead of mechanical cooling, and has one of the lowest operating PUE’s in the retail colocation sector.

1. Cisco Visual Networking Index: Forecast and Methodology, 2016–2021, http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/collateral/service-provider/visual-networking-index-vni/complete-white-paper-c11-481360.html
2. https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/desi
3. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/GCR2016-2017/05FullReport/TheGlobalCompetitivenessReport2016-2017_FINAL.pdf
4. Dutch Digital Infrastructure 2016, by Deloitte Consulting, November 2016. https://www.dinl.nl/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/17112016-Dutch-Digital-Infrastructure-Report-2016.pdf

Source: CloudStrategyMag

CloudMigrator365 Launches New Cloud Management Platform

CloudMigrator365 has launched its new Office365 management platform, CloudManager, at Microsoft Inspire 2017 in Washington D.C.

CloudManager is a public cloud management platform which, for the first time, enables organizations and Service Providers the ability to control multi-tenant Office 365 deployments in a very intuitive and cost-effective way.

The initial release of the CloudManager platform simplifies administration of Office365 users and licenses while enhancing the control and efficiency of large Office365 deployments.

CloudManager benefits organizations of all sizes and has proven to dramatically lower daily administrative cost and Office365 support ticket escalations. The new software product is particularly suited to fast-growing or large distributed organizations with substantial license needs and continuous staff recruitment and attrition.

The intuitive platform offers a number of advanced Office365 administration features including bulk transaction processing, advanced hierarchical management capability and Role Based Access Control, providing advanced security around Office365 administration. With simplicity and ease of use at its core, CloudManager also provides a comprehensive audit and reporting dashboard which captures all administrator and customer actions.

“CloudManager gives organizations more control, simplicity and access. This signals our intent to move into other areas of the cloud sector with product development that is complementary to our CloudMigrator365 solution which has successfully migrated over 6 million people to the cloud across 57 countries worldwide,” said Darren Mawhinney, managing director, CloudMigrator365.

“We recognize that as more and more cloud services are adopted by large organizations, administration is becoming a significantly more costly and complex problem. CloudManager aims to remove this headache and provides organizations with a simple, cost-effective solution.

“We have already had many existing and potential clients signing up for the cost-effective platform and we are looking forward to rolling CloudManager out globally,” he added.

Headquartered in Belfast, Northern Ireland, the cloud migration company provides simple, secure and cost-effective Microsoft-based migration for companies of all sizes with customers including global brand leaders to SMEs across all sectors.

CloudMigrator365 is growing rapidly, most notably adding world-class organizations including LinkedIn, YMCA (Canada) and The University of Bristol to its ever-expanding global client-list. Designed to simplify and automate migration for clients to Office 365, it has proven particularly popular with a growing number of IT partners as well as professionals worldwide who now rely on the solution.

In addition to its Belfast Headquarters, CloudMigrator365 is also located in London, Manchester, and Edinburgh.

Source: CloudStrategyMag

IBM Report: Half Of Surveyed CEOs Plan To Adopt Cognitive Computing By 2019

Cognitive computing has nearly endless possibilities to improve business processes and functions with 73% percent of surveyed CEOs in a recent IBM study citing it will play a key role in their organizations’ future and all executives in the study anticipating a 15% percent return on investment from their cognitive initiatives.

According to the new IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV) study, “Accelerating enterprise reinvention: how to build a cognitive organizations,” while investment in cognitive is expected to yield significant competitive advantages, surveyed executives are prioritizing its application in specific business functions including information technology, sales, information security, and innovation. The study is based on a survey from more than 6,000 executives across industries with further analysis from leaders of each business function to determine the organizational priorities for applying and adopting cognitive computing.

Cognitive computing is a next generation information system that can understand, reason, learn, and interact with humans in natural language. While traditional analytics can provide data-based insights, cognitive more easily turns these insights into actionable recommendations. A new IDC spending guide found global spending on cognitive platforms will climb from around USD 3 billion in 2016 to more than USD 31 billion by 20191. Concurrently, the IBV report found half of surveyed global CEOs plan to adopt cognitive computing by 2019.

This new study provides insight into how surveyed business leaders intend to prioritize cognitive investments within individual business functions to accelerate their business transformation. The study found the top three functional priorities to apply cognitive computing by surveyed CEOs include:

Information technology: to support faster, more efficient planning, development, and testing of enterprise software to enable greater agility and accelerated solution design.

Sales: to improve the efficiency of customer-facing services, expand customer account management capabilities, increase cross-sell and up-sell opportunities, and improve efficiency of lead management — all with richer contextual understanding.

Information security: enable faster, more reliable fraud detection or other activities within volumes of structured and unstructured data. By accelerating threat detection and reducing resolution time, this can save up to thousands of staff-time hours, freeing personnel to focus on more business-critical initiatives.

When it comes to accelerating enterprise innovation with cognitive, the IBV recommends businesses to:

• Envision the future: outline a 18-to-24-month digital strategy for adopting cognitive with a limited set of initiatives that paves the way for smaller, more exploratory investments with finite objectives and time frames. Define enterprise or business unit reinvention case, KPIs, and targets. Apply a targeted operating model and governance that support this strategy.
• Ideate: focus on thorough and periodic assessments in the market and with target users. Experiment and educate the rest of the enterprise on how cognitive capabilities are being used — such as the use of natural language processing or machine learning for large data analysis and insights. Create common use cases and applications, and design the basic standards and architectural considerations tailored to the organization. As the strategy progresses, assess market and user needs, define future experiences, end-to-end processes, and capabilities that cognitive can facilitate accordingly.
• Incubate and scale: during the shift from planning and design to execution, apply cognitive to specific use cases, rapidly explore and prototype solutions to solve specific and measurable business challenges. Design and execute pilots with agility and limited risk to existing customers and operations. When these concepts are incubated, commercialized, and scaled, use a lean governance model to periodically review progress and value. Monitor the business case value realization and make adjustments, as necessary.

1. Daquila, Marianne and Jessica Goepfert. “Worldwide Semiannual Cognitive SystemsSpending by Vertical Market 2016–2019 Forecast.” IDC press release. March 8, 2016. http://www.idc.com/ getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS41072216

Source: CloudStrategyMag

Equinix And Oracle Offer Direct Access To Oracle Cloud In Asia Pacific

Equinix, Inc. has announced the immediate availability of dedicated, private access to Oracle Cloud in its Sydney, Australia, International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data center. Available via Oracle Cloud Network Service – FastConnect and the Equinix Cloud Exchange™, access will be available for Oracle Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) as well as Platform as a Service (PaaS). This direct access enables enterprise customers in this growing region to migrate compute, applications and data to Oracle Cloud in a high-performance, low-latency manner for an optimal user experience.

This builds on previous announcements between Equinix and Oracle to offer direct connection to several Oracle PaaS and IaaS services, including database, Java, integration, analytics, compute and storage — in multiple regions around the globe. The addition of Sydney brings the total number of markets that Equinix is offering private access to Oracle Cloud to five, globally.

“We are excited to continue our collaboration with Oracle and bring this service to the Asia Pacific market. The ability to connect directly to Oracle is an essential strategy for companies as they deploy workloads to the cloud. By providing direct access, our mutual customers can create a high-speed, dedicated, and low-latency connection that allows them to fully realize the benefits of hybrid deployment. We look forward to ongoing collaborations with Oracle, bringing this solution to additional Equinix data centers across the globe,” said Robert Blackburn, global managing director, Oracle strategic alliance, Equinix.

Cloud deployments in Asia Pacific, and specifically Australia, are on the rise. According to a recent report by IDC*, 67% of all Australian organizations surveyed are embracing cloud, using public or private cloud for more than one or two applications or workloads. Yet, factors such as security and privacy concerns still inhibit public cloud adoption. Through the Equinix Cloud Exchange integration with Oracle FastConnect, customers in Australia can establish direct connectivity between their private IT infrastructure and Oracle Cloud. This enables them to fully realize the benefits of hybrid cloud — moving application, middleware and database workloads seamlessly between private IT infrastructure and Oracle Cloud on a private, dedicated connection resulting in consistent and predictable performance and lower latency.

Whether a customer is looking to incorporate direct connection to Oracle as part of a broader interconnection strategy, or specifically needing to migrate data-heavy applications to the cloud, connection to Oracle Cloud inside Equinix is a highly scalable solution for many enterprise users, that can further a customer’s efforts to address data privacy, regulatory compliance and data sovereignty scenarios. In addition to direct access to the Oracle Cloud, customers in Sydney will also gain access to Oracle Managed Cloud Services to help them determine the best deployment model for their business needs.

In today’s world, business models are increasingly interdependent and enterprises are adopting an Interconnection Oriented Architecture™ (IOA) strategy in order to deliver the level of performance users demand while taking advantage of multiple IaaS, PaaS and SaaS cloud services. Enterprises bring these services closer to their global end users by putting workloads and application as close as possible to the digital edge of their network in Equinix facilities, co-locating IT hubs adjacent to the various cloud service providers that host their cloud edges in Equinix data centers.

“With interconnection emerging as a catalyst of revenue growth for many Australian businesses, being able to securely and directly connect to cloud and network services is critical. Our goal at Equinix has always been to help our enterprise customers realize the full benefits of the cloud – without worrying about application latency or cost issues. We are thrilled to be bringing Oracle direct access to our customers in Australia. This private, direct access reduces network costs, increases throughput, and provides a more consistent network experience than Internet-based connections,” said Jeremy Deutsch, managing director, Equinix Australia.

The Equinix data centers in Sydney are the most interconnected in Australia. Enterprise customers in Sydney are able to establish direct links to both of the continent’s largest peering points, as well as key submarine cable systems, and gain direct access to multiple network and cloud providers such as Oracle, via the Equinix Cloud Exchange. And with the largest selection of international and regional networks in Australia, enterprise customers have the broadest choice of network providers from which to connect to Oracle Cloud.

Oracle Cloud delivers nearly 1,000 SaaS applications and 50 enterprise-class PaaS and IaaS services to customers in more than 195 countries around the world, and supports 55 billion transactions each day. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure is also part of the fast growing sector of cloud computing. According to a recent Gartner report the highest cloud growth is expected to come from IaaS, with a growth of 38.4% in 2016.

The Equinix Cloud Exchange is currently available in 21 markets globally – Amsterdam, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, Melbourne, New York, Osaka, Paris, Sao Paulo, Seattle, Silicon Valley, Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo, Toronto, Washington D.C., and Zurich.

Source: CloudStrategyMag

ZNetLive To Add Hybrid Cloud Solution In Q3

ZNetLive has announced its plan to expand its product portfolio to include Microsoft Azure Stack based Hybrid Cloud Solution to help users get proficient computing capabilities with increased productivity at reduced operational costs.

The Azure Stack Hybrid Cloud solution expected to be made commercially available by early Q3 this year, will provide users with single vendor support for Azure Stack and Azure public cloud. The solution encompasses Azure’s storage, geo presence and flexible capacity to enable an organization’s expansion on a global level.

The pay per usage solution will be available with one contract and monthly invoicing and the users will get their own client portal, with which they will be able to seamlessly create, deploy and manage their workloads on cloud. The kind of IT automation that this solution will provide will enable organizations maintain crucial business data on premise while getting economies of scale with faster deployment of new services and applications on public cloud.

“This is one more step by ZNetLive in empowering Digital Transformation. The Azure Stack Hybrid Cloud solution combines path breaking ZNetLive’s cloud management services with modern, scalable, and flexible Microsoft Azure Stack capabilities to provide a comprehensive hybrid cloud solution to enterprises seeking digital transformation for modernization, high performance and scalability at low costs,” said Munesh Jadoun, founder & CEO, ZNetLive.  

For those onboarding the solution, the management and support provided by ZNetLive will include cloud strategy formulation, building Azure hybrid cloud following detailed analysis of crucial and routine workloads and customers’ workload migration. It will also include security, back-up and disaster recovery services. 

The company has been implementing integrated Azure Stack and Azure pack cloud solutions for some time now.

The solution also includes Azure ExpressRoute Services to provide users with speedier private Azure connection from production environment for regular data migration, data transfer and thus, helping in expenditure reduction. With it, the users can add storage and compute capacity to their existing datacenter for high throughput and reduced latencies. The solution enables them to build applications spanning on premise infrastructure and Azure without compromising on privacy or performance.

Source: CloudStrategyMag

IDG Contributor Network: What can be uncovered when big data meets the blockchain

As defined by the World Economic Forum (WEF), “Blockchain technology allows parties to transfer assets to each other in a secure way without intermediaries. It enables transparency, immutable records, and autonomous execution of business rules.”

Investments in the blockchain are on the rise. Banks, private businesses, and even governments are investing in the technology. The WEF predicts that smart contracts alone on the blockchain could equal 10 percent of the global GDP by 2027. As with any new technology, it’s important to note the value of the data that comes with it. And arguably the most valuable data involved with blockchain technology is that of virtual currency use.

Over the past few years, and with the development of bitcoin, the use of virtual currencies is gaining momentum around the world. However, the currencies remain unpredictable and only partially understood, even by experts. To create clarity, organizations interested in the blockchain, and more specifically bitcoin, are beginning to use big data to provide insights into the virtual currency’s future performance. The IDC recently reported that global IT spending is in the trillions and big data revenues will grow to more than $203 billion by 2020. By 2027, the value of big data as a service is predicted to be between $500 billion and $1 trillion, and managing virtual currency on the blockchain could account for a significant portion of that revenue.

Many of the best ways to realize the full potential of the virtual currency, and alleviate some of the risks involved, may be by harnessing its big data. As the blockchain is essentially a ledger that every bitcoin transaction must pass through for verification by the millions of other peer-to-peer users, the insights to be collected from that ledger are potentially endless. And even though there is no identifying information in a transaction on the blockchain itself (the blockchain only knows the two wallets that exchanged the currency and the amount), all transactions are public and each user’s activities are visible to everyone on the blockchain.

Organizations are beginning to perform data analysis on virtual currency activities to uncover powerful insights into trends and events surrounding currencies like bitcoin. So what type of trends can be revealed? Here’s a brief overview of what data enthusiasts are beginning to unmask in the world of the blockchain and cryptocurrencies with a big data mindset and the right data analytics tools.

Uncovering transactional data

The data within the blockchain is predicted to be worth trillions of dollars as it continues to make its way into banking, micropayments, remittances, and other financial services. In fact, the blockchain ledger could be worth up to 20% of the total big data market by 2030, producing up to $100 billion in annual revenue. To put this into perspective, this potential revenue surpasses that of what Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal currently generate combined.

Big data analytics will be crucial in tracking these activities and helping organizations using the blockchain make more informed decisions. SpreadCoin, a cryptocurrency that is more decentralized than bitcoin, proposes reinventing bitcoin mining into big data mining. Its whitepaper outlines the development of an incentive system to support a broad system of node managers at a time when bitcoin usage is on the rise and the number of nodes are declining.

Data intelligence services are emerging to help financial institutions, governments, and all kinds of organizations delve into who they might be interacting with on the blockchain and uncover “hidden” patterns.

Uncovering social data

As the popularity of bitcoin advanced in 2013 and 2014, the virtual currency began to rise and fall as a result of real-world events and the general public’s sentiment about the technology. These fluctuations are proof that the virtual currency has several characteristics that make it ideal for social data predictions. According to Rick Burgess of Freshminds: “Using social data to predict consumer behavior is nothing new, and many traders have been looking to include social metrics into their trading algorithms. However, because there are so many factors involved in pricing most financial instruments, it can be extremely difficult to predict how markets will change.”

Fortunately, bitcoin users and social media users tend to align quite well, and it may be beneficial to use them both for data analysis, as he further explains:

• Bitcoin traders tend to be in the same demographic as social media users, and so their attitudes, opinions, and sentiment towards bitcoin are well documented.
• The value of bitcoins is determined almost solely by market demand because the number of coins on the market is predictable and are not tied to any physical goods.
• Bitcoin is predominantly traded by individuals rather than large institutions.
• Events that affect bitcoin value are disseminated first and foremost on social media.

Data analysts are now mining social data for insights into key cryptocurrency trends. This, in turn, helps organizations uncover powerful demographic information and link bitcoin’s performance to world events.

Uncovering new forms of data monetization

According to Bill Schmarzo, CTO of Dell EMC Services, blockchain technology also “has the potential to democratize the sharing and monetization of data and analytics by removing the middleman from facilitating transactions.” In the business world, this gives consumers stronger negotiating powers over companies. It allows consumers to control who has access to their data through the blockchain. They could then demand pricing discounts in exchange for revealing data on their personal consumptions of a company’s product or service.

Schmarzo also explains how the blockchain may lead to new forms of data monetization because it has the following big data ramifications:

• All parties involved in a transaction have access to the same data. This accelerates data acquisition, sharing, the quality of data and data analytics.
• A detailed register of all transactions is kept in a single “file” or blockchain. This provides a complete overview of a transaction from start to finish, eliminating the needs for multiple systems.
• Individuals can manage and control their personal data without the need for a third-party intermediary or centralized repository.

Ultimately, the blockchain could become a key enabler of data monetization by creating new marketplaces where companies and individuals can share, sell, and offer their data and analytical insights directly with each other.

Spearheaded by the large scale adoption of bitcoin, blockchain technologies are gaining ground throughout the business and financial worlds. The fast and secure transactions it facilitates could potentially revolutionize traditional data systems. According to a survey by KPMG and Forrester Consulting, one-third of decision makers trust their company’s data. But with blockchain technologies, this trust can be considerably strengthened, and real applications will become much more commonplace.

This article is published as part of the IDG Contributor Network. Want to Join?

Source: InfoWorld Big Data

Report: Most Businesses Will Increase Cloud Computing Spending In 2017

Businesses have become less skeptical of cloud computing, more confident in its security, and more inclined to invest money in it, according to new findings. Nearly 70% of U.S. businesses surveyed by B2B ratings and reviews firm Clutch say that they plan to increase spending on cloud computing in 2017. One in five of those businesses report that their cloud computing spending this year will likely increase by more than 30%.

The increased spending on cloud computing is likely due to a shift in perspective, according to experts. The cloud is no longer seen by many businesses as simply an alternative option, but as the next logical step for data storage and management.

“Cloud is the new normal,” said Jeremy Przygode, CEO of Stratalux, Inc., a California-based managed service provider (MSP). “When businesses need to evaluate new solutions, or need to do a hardware refresh on existing solutions … Cloud is the go-to solution to figure out how to do that.”

Businesses also report having greater confidence in cloud security, possibly influencing more migration to the cloud. In the survey, the largest percentage of businesses identify security as a benefit of using the cloud.

This attitude is a shift from past years, when cloud security was often treated with skepticism and distrust.

When it comes to which type of cloud to use, most businesses are using a private cloud, where services and infrastructure are maintained on a private network. However, over 80% indicate that they are considering implementing or planning to implement a hybrid cloud option in the future. A hybrid cloud has services and infrastructure spread between a private network and off-site cloud provider.

A hybrid cloud offers flexibility and customizable features.

“Customizing your cloud experience allows the customer to leverage different toolsets that’s truly drilled down to their department, their individuals, and how they do business,” said Kevin Rubin, President and COO of Stratosphere Networks, a Chicago-based IT MSP.

Experts emphasize, however, that a business should select an option that best fits their particular needs.

Once the decision is made to adopt cloud computing, many businesses seek outside help for the subsequent installation. Over half of businesses surveyed (57%) say they hire an external consulting firm to help them implement their cloud strategy.

This is a wise decision, especially if a business does not have internal expertise, says Haresh Kumbhani, founder and CEO of Zymr, Inc., a San Francisco-based cloud consulting and agile software development agency. He believes that no business will have all the expertise required.

“The idea of bringing experts in different dimensions, from strategy to implementation, delivery and security, surveillance and so on, is essential for making purchase and implementation decisions,” he said.

Read the full report here.

Source: CloudStrategyMag

TierPoint Cited As A Strong Performer In The Hosted Private Cloud Sector

TierPoint LLC has announced that it was recognized as a “Strong Performer” in The Forrester Wave™: Hosted Private Cloud Services, North America, Q2 2017.  In the report, analysts from Forrester Research evaluated nine providers that met the qualifications to participate in the Wave.

In the report, TierPoint received the top score among all participants in the “Services and Customer Experience” criterion. TierPoint was cited for “customer reference reviews that rave about its innovative and technically astute customer-centric support teams.”  In their comments, Forrester analysts pointed to TierPoint’s strength across onboarding, ongoing support and customer service.

TierPoint earned the highest possible score (5 out of 5) for its data center locations and for “Business Technology (BT) Vision.” The latter is a Forrester criterion that considers an evaluated vendor’s vision for hosted private cloud and how that vision aligns “with near and future trends, customer demands, and Forrester’s business technology (BT) vision of the hosted private cloud service.” Forrester also noted TierPoint for “delivering high levels of network and onsite security along with a massive North American data center footprint.”

“I believe our recognition in this report reflects the strength of our strategy and the importance we place on collaborating with our customers to provide the best customized cloud solutions for them,” said Terry Morrison, chief technology officer, TierPoint. “Our hosted private cloud is built from market-leading technologies that, along with our capabilities and experience, make us an industry leader in hybrid IT solutions.”

Source: CloudStrategyMag

Cirba™ Unveils Optimization Service For Public Cloud

Cirba, Inc. has unveiled an analytics service, Densify™, for optimizing public cloud and on-premise virtual infrastructure. The Densify service is the next evolution of SaaS as it combines the organization’s predictive and real-time optimization analytics with an assigned Densification Advisor™, eliminating the burden of learning, operating, managing and maintaining software. Cirba also announced it is rebranding to Densify, reflecting the company’s strategic value proposition to reduce cloud and infrastructure costs while also improving application performance. The Densify service offers fast time to value, ease of adoption and use and the greatest potential for savings in the market through the industry’s most powerful optimization engine. For a limited time, customers can start with Densify service free for the first 14 days.

“Based on our experience, we know that organizations desperately want to reduce their cloud bill and show highly utilized infrastructure, but there are only so many hours in the day,” said Gerry Smith, CEO of Densify. “We understand that IT is looking for more than a software product — they want outcomes. They are looking for experts who can tune and watch over the automated analytics; they want to know that someone is there for them, helping them deliver results – not another management and maintenance burden.”

Driving Immediate Business Value

With a unique combination of SaaS-based analytics and the Densification Advisor service, Densify is a complete service for automated optimization of public, on-premise or hybrid cloud infrastructures. With Densify, companies automate virtual machine (VM) placement and resource allocation actions to proactively remove risk and drive the lowest unit cost. The new service also offers precise, data-driven cloud migration and transformation strategies and real-time hybrid and multi-cloud workload placements. One of the key benefits of Densify is that it delivers better application performance with the highest asset utilization and lowest public cloud spend without requiring any special training. The service is up and running within 15 minutes, maximizing efficiency, simplicity and results for customers under the guidance of the Densification Advisor.

“Densify serves as the ‘brain’ of our customers’ environments, right-sizing them, taking the guess work out of adding new applications, and determining the best way to leverage cloud,” said Andrew Hillier, CTO and co-founder of Densify. “The analytics engine is extremely robust and has the ability to model some really advanced modernization techniques such as stacking workloads in bare metal clouds or optimizing container placement within a public cloud instance, which can save upwards of 80 percent of the cloud bill for some customers. Our approach is completely different from other products that are reactionary and can’t offer any visibility or insight into the reasoning or best practices of cloud utilization.”

The new service offering delivers immediate business value in these key areas:

• Reduced Cloud Costs – Densify examines detailed public cloud utilization and billing data to help customers actively reduce costs for services such as Amazon Web Services (AWS)®, Microsoft Azure®, Google® Cloud Platform and IBM® SoftLayer®.  Densify leverages workload pattern analysis and industry benchmarks to enable more advanced optimization of cloud usage. For customers, this translates into savings of 41% on average.
• Reduced Infrastructure Requirements – In bare metal clouds and on-premise infrastructure, such as an internal VMware® environment, Densify analyzes workload patterns to right-size allocations and strategically place VMs. Densify is the only solution that can dovetail workloads to increase density by an average of 48%, resulting in a savings of 33%.
• Better Performing Applications – Densify’s predictive analytics leverage historical patterns to model what a workload is going to do in the future. This enables Densify to automatically and proactively place and size VMs to avoid compute and storage risks. It also provides real-time responses to address operational anomalies and unexpected resource shortfalls.
• Optimized Application Placement and Transformation – Densify reviews all application requirements and workload patterns to automatically place workloads in the best hosting environments whether in the cloud or on-premise according to requirements, cost and strategic priorities. It also provides detailed cloud migration and technology refresh plans.

Addressing Cloud Infrastructure Market Challenges

Despite a growing desire to move to the cloud, many organizations remain concerned about the complexity and risk of such a transition, the scarcity of skilled resources that truly understand new cloud environments, and the time and costs required to manage these new implementations. Other cloud optimization solutions require companies to learn and manage tools, which is resource intensive. At the same time, these offerings lack deep analytics to truly identify how to reduce and control operating costs and risk, putting customers in an ongoing reactive mode with ever escalating operating expenses. In contrast, Densify’s deep, pattern-based workload analysis provides sophisticated cloud optimization capabilities through right-sizing and advanced hosting strategies, such as leveraging containers. With this unique approach, Densify safely reduces cloud spend by 20 to 80 percent.

“Enterprises are often painfully reminded by their monthly AWS and Azure bills that shoveling their apps to public cloud can lead to unpredictable OPEX,” said Torsten Volk, managing director, Hybrid Cloud & Infrastructure Management, Enterprise Management Associates (EMA).   “Our research shows that cost control is the number one priority in hybrid cloud operations, driving demand for a solution that increases the efficiency of public cloud use and provides guidance regarding which public cloud service offers the desired compromise between risk and cost. Densify’s service provides exactly this analytics and control layer to instantly optimize existing application environments and show how future environments will be deployed in a policy driven and cost effective manner. This gets even more interesting when considering the new economics introduced by container-as-a-service offerings and by server-less functions.”

Source: CloudStrategyMag