WOLF Weekly Cloud Sum-up, Feb 24, 2012

The cloud is one of those amorphous technologies that get trotted out as the answer to all of our woes, usually by people who don't think all that deeply about IT and its challenges. We hate to puncture anyone's bubble with a dose of reality, but at a macro level, adoption of all public cloud services except software as a service is going pretty darned slow. For the past five years as part of our annual cloud survey, InformationWeek Reports has asked a simple question: What are your company's plans for cloud computing? The response we watch most closely is: We're receiving services today from a cloud provider. In 2008, 16% of survey respondents chose that option. In 2009, it was 21%, then 22% in 2010. It jumped to 31% last year, and to 33% this year.



Read More about cloud computing and its adolescence

Is The Cloud Finally Catching Up With Mighty Oracle?

Oracle for years has seemed impervious to cloud computing. First Larry Ellison dismissed it. Then he sort of touted it, his version at least. But all along, Oracle was growing nicely. The industry chatter didn’t seem to matter. Big companies buy big software systems.

Something changed this winter.

Oracle’s software license sales limped up just 2% in December, and the company blamed customer budget cuts and fears over the European debt crisis. Sales to Europe, Africa and the Middle East make up a third of Oracle’s revenues. The stock took an instant 8% hit, but perhaps more tellingly is 22% off its May 2011 high. Investors appear to be signalling that Oracle‘s recent woes are due to more than just stingy customers. Could it be true that big, hulking IT organizations are changing buying patterns?

Interest in cloud computing growing

About 60% of the respondents of a Microsoft survey in Qatar expressed interest in learning about the “private cloud” and the benefits it could bring to businesses in the country. The survey has indicated that almost two-thirds of Qatar’s IT professionals are looking to the private cloud as a future focus area. The survey involved some 109 participants at the Microsoft Open Door event held in Doha recently.

The event gathered together IT professionals in an effort to allow them to experience new solutions, and support technologically enabled economic development in what is fast becoming one of the fastest growing markets in the region. Microsoft Gulf General Manager Samer Abu Latif and Microsoft Qatar Country Manager Naim Yazbeck in their keynote speeches delivered valuable insights into the vision for the company in Qatar and the region.

Cloudburst for SMEs

Cloud computing has captured the attention of organisations across the globe, as a technology that allows lower operational expenses and on-demand scalability. In India it has been the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that have seen an increased adoption of cloud computing; and the reasons are obvious. Take the case of Zenga Media, a company in the mobile television services space. The company has not only been able to manage cost better on hardware but has also been able to manage its human resources better.

Six principles for effective cloud computing

The growing shift to cloud computing can deliver significant value—but most enterprises have little knowledge of the perils of transferring IT decision making away from technology specialists to business unit leaders. Eliminating oversight and governance from cloud computing decisions can create significant risk to organizations, effectively undermining any benefits of moving to the cloud and, at the same time, potentially creating serious issues for organizations.


We hope these short sum-ups on Cloud Computing are helping you to take a knowledgeable approach towards moving to the cloud. Stay tuned for more sum-ups on in the forthcoming week.

Don’t forget to add your comments and suggestions. I will have more around the cloud a week later.

Santanu Das
Marketing Evangelist, WOLF Frameworks


NOTE: The views expressed above are purely personal and for informational purposes only. WOLF FRAMEWORKS INDIA PVT. LTD. MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

WOLF Weekly Cloud Sum-up, Feb 17, 2012

A convergence of cloud computing trends will create new business models for Australian businesses in 2012, according to analyst firm Frost & Sullivan. The firm has three converging predictions for the year ahead: cloud computing will finally become mainstream; the rise in cloud services will drive mobile computing; and the pervasive nature of social networking plus the need to manage online reputations will see social media widely integrated into business activities. These three trends will combine to force an inversion of the traditional model of IT in business. Usually, IT simply responds to business needs, providing the tools that the business needs to achieve its goals. But in 2012, ICT developments will drive business process change and, in some instances, create new business models.



Read More to find out how Cloud Computing will create new business models in 2012.

Cloud computing market hot, but how hot? Estimates are all over the map

There are reports that the dean of Silicon Valley venture capital firms, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, is very interested in cloud computing services, and may invest up to $100 million in the market this year. Bloomberg quotes partner Matt Murphy as indicating the VC firm’s partners “have talked about it, and are intrigued by the idea…. Companies’ comfort level and willingness to adopt the cloud is hitting an acceleration point. Now’s the most interesting time in the last 10 years to be investing in enterprise-based companies.”

How cloud computing will change everything

There's been a lot of talk about "the cloud" when it comes to technology and IT in the past few years. It's a revolution as big as the advent of the microprocessor and just as relevant as the desktop computer. The cloud is quickly changing businesses as we know them, forcing them to reboot how they think about their consumers in this ever-connected world. We're not just talking about everything from owning data centres to your accounting software to your email server, but the products and services that are being sold. If the cloud isn't on your business's mind, rest assured that it should be, and that it will (once again) change everything.

Cloud Computing Can Drive Business Innovation

Cloud computing is assumed to be an IT staff initiative at most businesses. But business strategists at IBM have concluded that it needs to be a top management priority. Too many companies are experimenting lightly with cloud computing. They're using it to tweak existing operations, as opposed to thinking about how it could revise or re-invent the fundamental way they sell their goods and services, said Saul Berman, global strategy consulting leader in IBM's global technology services.

Multitenancy & Cloud Computing Platforms: Four Big Problems

It feels a little blasphemous to type this while Cloud Connect, the cloud industry’s premier conference, takes place just 30 miles away. But sometimes when you see a balloon rising from all of the hot air filling it, you gotta take aim with the BB gun and pop it. As most of you know, multitenancy is the term describing when a single instance of software serves dozens or hundreds of users/customers at the same time. Anyone can see how much more efficient this is versus the old server hosting model, where the ratio of server:customer is 1:1. Even using today’s Red Hat-type virtualization, each server can cram fewer users/customers onto itself than a true multitenant service.


We hope these short sum-ups on Cloud Computing in 2012 helped you to take a knowledgeable approach towards moving to the cloud. Stay tuned for more sum-ups on in the forthcoming year.

Don’t forget to add your comments and suggestions. I will have more around the cloud a week later.

Santanu Das
Marketing Evangelist, WOLF Frameworks

NOTE: The views expressed above are purely personal and for informational purposes only. WOLF FRAMEWORKS INDIA PVT. LTD. MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

WOLF Weekly Cloud Sum-up, Feb 10, 2012

Lower trading volumes and less than stellar profits mean that Wall Street firms are looking to cut costs, so the adoption of third-party cloud-based applications and services is expected to accelerate this year. Scivantage runs a retail online-trading portal and professional trading and tax applications in a private cloud. Joe Stensland, SVP and managing director of Scivantage, told Wall Street Technology that, “We deliver the application with a private cloud and allocate the resources needed for each client deployment so they don’t have to bring in resources and infrastructure, While the interest in cloud services is moving up the list of priorities at large firms that have become cost-conscious, according to Stensland, “Midrange firms have become even more interested in the cloud’s pay-for-what-you-eat philosophy.” The cloud helps firms’ ability to cope with capacity planning. Financial firms have to be prepared for sudden bursts, but don’t want to incur the costs unless they need it. But they have “burst-ready” capacity—which is more critical than before due to increasing market volatility. Concerns about privacy and security mean that some firms refuse to let client data leave the facility. But some firms are migrating to private clouds managed outside their data centers.



Read More to find out what experts have to say

Peer Networking Key in Cloud Computing

The phenomenal growth of Cloud Computing has been driven by a number of factors. But in order for the Cloud industry to build on its initial momentum, a broader cross-section of IT and business decision-makers must become adept at taking full advantage of the rapidly expanding array of virtual resources available in the Cloud. The whirlwind of activity surrounding Cloud alternatives over the past few years has not only spawned countless start-ups seeking fortune in the Cloud marketplace, but also attracted a myriad of established players attempting to repurpose, or ‘Cloud-wash’, their existing products and services to exploit the escalating demand for Cloud solutions.

Cloud computing, apps power jobs growth in Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley is creating jobs and wealth for highly skilled workers but may be leaving some residents behind as employment closes in on Pre-Great Recession levels, according to a report released Tuesday.
The 2012 Silicon Valley Index found job growth in the high-tech hub far outpaced America as a whole last year. The region added 42,000 jobs, a jump of nearly 4 percent, compared with a nationwide increase of little more than 1 percent.

Cloud Users Need to Know What They're Buying

How much cloud is too much? That's the question a handful of companies are attempting to answer for enterprise users of cloud computing services. It's no secret that cloud vendors are taking advantage of their solutions' virtual nature to sell customers more capacity than their applications may require. In some cases, cloud vendors have bypassed IT and worked with less tech-savvy business customers in order to get away with this. Sometimes the fault for over provisioned clouds rests squarely with users who've chosen their own way around IT. "Today’s cloud services can easily be acquired by corporate end-users and strategic business units in an unauthorized and ad-hoc fashion ('the consumerization of IT') and can quickly become very costly unless properly managed," states Jeff Kaplan of consultancy THINKstrategies in an email today.

Are you taking the right approach to cloud?

Today’s SMB operates in a highly competitive and increasingly technology driven market. Operational efficiency is naturally a high priority for small and medium businesses to stay ahead and emerging technologies like cloud and virtualization have a crucial role in determining the same. Cloud computing in particular, offers many advantages in terms of flexibility, agility and on-demand resources that can give organizations a real competitive edge. Cloud as a cost effective technology also fits in comfortably within the strained IT budgets of the SMBs.

We hope these short sum-ups on Cloud Computing in 2012 helped you to take a knowledgeable approach towards moving to the cloud. Stay tuned for more sum-ups on in the forthcoming year.

Don’t forget to add your comments and suggestions. I will have more around the cloud a week later.

Santanu Das
Marketing Evangelist, WOLF Frameworks

NOTE: The views expressed above are purely personal and for informational purposes only. WOLF FRAMEWORKS INDIA PVT. LTD. MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

WOLF Weekly Cloud Sum-up, Feb 03, 2012

Forrester, the technology research company, just released its business and technology outlook for 2020. The short version is that cloud computing will come on quicker than you think, it will be controlled by a very few companies that will fight for the right to own your data, and businesses need to think about what software they can write that will differentiate them from all the other customers of these giants. Like a lot of these reports, Forrester has a couple of clichés (we have entered the era of individual empowerment; change is the only constant) and interesting facts that you don’t really know what to do with (there will be 22 billion connected devices in 2020; Moore’s Law dictates that the computing power of I.B.M.’s Watson will fit into a human hand by then).

The substance of the report, however, is plain: cloud and mobile computing combined will rapidly improve, dislodging many incumbents in enterprise computing, and vastly empowering a few others, becoming what Forrester calls “computing cartels” that control millions of servers in data centers around the globe. These cartels, the report says, will include Amazon, Cisco Systems, Google, I.B.M., Microsoft, Oracle and a few competitors. Like most of these reports, it does not name losers, though Hewlett-Packard and Dell were among those noticeably absent.



Read More about Cloud Cartels

Hybrid cloud computing can benefit businesses

Businesses that employ security consultants are among some of the organisations that can benefit from using cloud computing in their everyday operations. Peter Job, founder and chief executive officer of Intergence Systems, believes that businesses should consider adopting a hybrid cloud data management system. However, regardless of the advantages of cloud computing, he accepted that some people remained sceptical, which suggests he thinks that there are some concerns over data protection. "But where people are less worried is the whole issue of private cloud," he expanded.

Cloud computing looks to be future of disaster management

Our generation thrives on the ability to instantly share what's new on social networks in real-time. This coincides with a growing percentage of people who depend on their smart phones, PDAs and iPads. Although the bulk of what we use this technology for is often considered to be unnecessary, it could play a vital role in the aftermath of a disaster. That is why NDSU's Juan Li, assistant professor of computer science, and Samee U. Khan, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, felt compelled to find a way to make this possible. Together they developed a cloud computing disaster management system that would help communities more easily share information in the wake of a calamity. "Natural and manmade disasters require effective and efficient management of massive amounts of data and coordination of wide varieties of people and organizations. This is where our system comes into play," Li said in a recent press release.

Cloud computing, a power tool for economic growth

Despite being an important tool for economic growth and job creation, cloud computing services remain under-exploited by public administrations as well as small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This is why the European Commission will present a strategy on the matter by the summer of 2012. The aim is to put in place an EU framework that promotes the use of cloud computing services. The task is not an easy one in that this technology facilitates data circulation – a field that is particularly sensitive.

Cloud vs. virtualization

Companies are becoming increasingly dependent on the cloud. But will this kill virtualisation? Many companies, which are turning to cloud computing, will find the need to manage their cloud space becoming more important. Most of these companies rely on both public and private clouds. The impact in India could be higher than in developed countries, if one goes by a research study conducted by IDC in November 2011. According to the study, less than half of end-users across Asia Pacific (excluding Japan) will complete their private cloud projects by 2014. The respondents of the IDC survey felt this was because of lack of experience in building these systems and because of higher-than-expected upfront investment requirements. IDC says that consequently an increased number of enterprises will make a detour to public cloud services. This, in turn, will result in the management of the hybrid cloud being more pronounced in countries like India.


We hope these short sum-ups on Cloud Computing in 2012 helped you to take a knowledgeable approach towards moving to the cloud. Stay tuned for more sum-ups on in the forthcoming year.

Don’t forget to add your comments and suggestions. I will have more around the cloud a week later.


Santanu Das
Marketing Evangelist, WOLF Frameworks

NOTE: The views expressed above are purely personal and for informational purposes only. WOLF FRAMEWORKS INDIA PVT. LTD. MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.