End user risk plagues the rise of cloud computing

Dive Brief:

Cloud computing offers major benefits to schools, and while there are risks that have presented barriers to adoption for some, experts say there are ways to mitigate risk and still see the advantages.

EdTech: Focus on K-12 reports data breaches are a top concern, but districts can encrypt their data to offer another layer of protection. And though risks presented by end users are serious, awareness campaigns can help. Finally, targeted outreach to teachers can ensure they understand why they shouldn’t sign up for cloud-based applications on their own.

IT professionals can avoid a good deal of risk by doing their due diligence on the front end, finding out which vendors will keep data safe, private and secure and follow FERPA guidelines before entering into any contracts.

Can data transparency be the future of outsourcing?

The benefits of storing data in the cloud are clear. However, as businesses are beginning to closely examine what having data in the cloud entails, they’re discovering that their relationships with cloud vendors are sometimes, well, cloudy.

In a 2015 Forrester Consulting survey, more than 60% of businesses said issues with transparency were stalling further expansion into the cloud. These organisations are justified in being wary, because knowing where data is going and how it is being treated is paramount.

I’ll explain why the next wave of successful cloud providers will compete on these issues rather than price, product or market.

The cloud computing effect: Better security for all

IT's paranoia about the cloud forced better security approaches to become the norm and helped on-premises deployments

Cloud computing offers lots of benefits, but improved security is not one that makes many IT lists. In fact, many -- perhaps even most -- IT pros still believe that cloud computing means a huge step backward in terms of security risk.

That doesn't seem to be the case. About 10 percent of our workloads now run on public clouds, and so far, so good.

Why? Ironically, partly because IT has been so paranoid about public clouds that it spent time and money to implement advanced security approaches such as identity and access management and to be more proactive about security measures.

Moreover, public cloud providers themselves understand the importance of security. If they get one cross-tenant hack, they are done for. Thus, providers consistently and proactively update security systems. Most enterprises would like to do the same, but they don't have the time or the budget, which leaves them comparatively more vulnerable.

Read More@ http://www.infoworld.com/article/3104547/cloud-security/the-cloud-computing-effect-better-security-for-all.html

How Cloud Technology Will Evolve In 2016

Cloud technology is huge. It's both the present and the future. Like anything with a future, it's continuing to evolve every single year. There are now more cloud contact centers than ever before. If you have anything to do with the cloud, you need to be aware of the changes that are hitting the industry.

In this guide, you are going to learn about some of the main trends that are forcing cloud technology to evolve over the coming year.

The Race is On for Data

This hybrid cloud world has sparked something of an arms race. Studies say that we tend to use more than one cloud at the same time. And that means that companies are going to be doing their best to get your data. Whether it's Amazon or Salesforce, the major cloud players are all competing to get your data.

Data is an asset to companies because they have all the information they need to sell their other services. In many ways, the grabbing of data for companies is like the grabbing of oil for countries. Every cloud service provider is going to aggressively grab your data.

In many ways, the cloud could evolve in a way that brings you closer to these big companies.

Microsoft And IBM In The Cloud

Summary

• Endless possibilities available for the cloud.
• Cloud revenue of $127.5 billion expected by 2018.
• Microsoft’s LinkedIn acquisition will increase content availability and user connectivity.
• IBM’s VMware partnership also building desktop application solutions.

Cloud computing has been evolving since the 1990s when the internet was first commercialized. Since then individuals and businesses have become increasingly reliant upon it for everyday personal and work activities. It's a capability that allows stored data to be accessed virtually anywhere through the internet. As a result of its convenience and lower cost, more and more companies in today's business environment are evolving their technological infrastructures from servers to the cloud.

Samsung Snaps Up Joyent, the Best-Kept Secret in Cloud Computing

ONE OF THE best-kept secrets in cloud computing has just found a new home. Samsung Electronics announced Wednesday that it will acquire Joyent, a vital but lesser-known player the cloud hosting market—and one with quite a history behind it.

Joyent sells hosting services that enable customers to run their software in the cloud, not unlike those offered by Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure, and also helps companies build their own cloud-style systems in their own data centers. It has also boasted marquee clients such as Adobe and European telco giant Telefónica. But it’s perhaps best known for incubating a software development platform called Node.js, which is now one of the most popular programming tools on the planet.

Five reasons why we should adopt cloud computing

More and more businesses are turning to the cloud computing. Has yours?

Today, many of the small and medium business are adopting cloud computing. As it allows these companies to use world-class infrastructure without the need of purchasing a hardware or maintaining large support teams.

Global Cloud Services Market is Expected to Reach $555 Billion, Globally, by 2020

According to the new report by Allied Market Research, titled "Global Cloud Services Market (Services, Type, End User and Geography) - Global Analysis, Industry Growth, Trends, Size, Share, Opportunities and Forecast, 2013-2020", the global cloud services market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 17.6% from 2014 to 2020, reaching a market size of $555 billion in 2020. In 2014, the overall cloud services market revenue will reach $209.9 billion, led by public cloud services. The community cloud services segment is gaining momentum and is expected to garner revenue of $1 billion this year, thanks to its adoption in healthcare segment.

Cloud Computing Benefits Financial Sector

By embracing cloud computing services, companies in the financial sector are able to add efficiency to their operations.

Cloud computing is one of the rising areas in which IT services are being offered to businesses as a commodity. A cloud computing contract incorporates services for different software and applications, as well as the processing and storage of data. These services help clients enhance the efficiency of their work processes and make it possible for clients to respond to and counter issues swiftly, resulting in increased customer satisfaction.

Finance Opts For Hybrid Cloud

Cloud computing is prevailing in many domains but still hasn’t fully entered the financial sector because of concerns about the security and control of data.

Security is Still Your Responsibility in the Cloud

Over the next 14 months, 80 percent of IT budgets at organizations throughout the U.S. will go to cloud computing services, according to a new global study from Intel Security. As sensitive data is moved to the cloud, it is becoming more obvious that the cloud still has its risks. According to the study, only 13 percent of IT security professionals completely trust public cloud providers to secure sensitive data, and 66 percent of them believe senior management does not completely understand the risks of storing sensitive data in the cloud.

Will Cloud Kill The IT Star?

It’s a question I hear often when speaking with companies across the globe: Does cloud computing spell the demise of the CIO and IT department?

The short answer: No. The longer, more complicated answer: The cloud will force IT leaders and their organizations to fundamentally change what they do (and don’t do), how they work with other departments, and what skills they bring to the table. The upside is tremendous for those who adapt; the downside is perilous for those who don’t.

Cloud Security Challenges

Large organizations are embracing public and private cloud computing at a rapid pace. According to ESG research, one-third of organizations have been using public and private cloud infrastructure for more than three years, and more than half of organizations (57%) have production workloads running on cloud computing infrastructure (note: I am an ESG employee).

Of course, cloud computing is very different than physical or virtual servers, which translates into a different cybersecurity model as well. And these differences lead to a variety of security challenges.

Is Cloud Computing Right For You?

Cloud computing is a hot topic right now but there’s a real lack of clarity surrounding the solution. Before you sign on the dotted line, there are a whole host of business considerations that you need to make. We’ve collated the most important business considerations to help you identify which option makes more business sense.

Google and the war of the clouds: IoT isn’t the point

At London’s Cloud Expo, Barak Regey, Google’s director of cloud platforms for Europe, recommended that cloud companies simply abandon trying to predict how their data and cloud capacity needs will evolve over the next five years.

The cloud expert stated that with the explosion of the Internet of Things (IoT) and the pace of innovation and change in the technology industry, cloud organisations simply won’t be able to calculate and prepare for how much cloud capacity they’ll need.

Cloud use in manufacturing and process sectors on cusp of huge growth

Cloud services are on the verge of strong growth in more ‘traditional’ industries, such as manufacturing and processing, as the benefits become harder to ignore for such firms.

Richard Martin, executive vice president for engineer and operations solutions at Rolta, told V3 ahead of our Cloud & Infrastructure Live summit on 20-21 April, that cloud had not been a top priority for traditional industries in the past.

“Process industries have not progressed like some industries in the cloud because a lot of what they do is very driven by intellectual property and they are protective of that and not keen on putting this sort of information in the cloud,” he said.

However, Martin explained that major business software suppliers like SAP and Oracle have started offering services in the cloud which has helped firms realise that they could benefit from the cloud across their business.

“We are starting to see the first uptick on the hockey stick [for cloud uptake in process industries]. CIOs have to have an answer when shareholders say: 'What is your strategy [for cloud]?',” he added.

Martin said that manufacturing firms are ripe for embracing the cloud owing to the huge number of applications they have in use, not just from big box vendors like SAP and Oracle but from more niche, industry-specific providers.

“Most people don’t realise that a typical processing and manufacturing company can have as many as 800 applications, of which maybe 50 are back-office related, so there’s an amazing amount of knowledge that is hidden,” he said.

Making this information easier to access and deriving insights from it becomes much easier when everything is hosted in a central environment, according to Martin.

Read More: http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/2454061/cloud-use-in-manufacturing-and-process-sectors-on-cusp-of-huge-growth

Apple signs up to Google Cloud services

Apple has moved some of its iCloud services onto the Google Cloud, marking one of the most high-profile wins for Alphabet's rival to Amazon Web Services since it came under new leadership last fall.

Google has been a distant third in its race with Amazon and Microsoft's Azure as the trio vie for market share in cloud computing, but it has made strides since the appointment of industry veteran Diane Greene as head of that business in November.

Google also scored a victory with Spotify last month, when the music streaming service announced it would shift away from Amazon Web Services and move most of its services onto the Google Cloud platform.

Apple's move to Google comes as part of a broader diversification for its wide range of internet services, which include iCloud backups such as photo storage, music streaming and video downloads. Apple already uses cloud services from Amazon and Microsoft, as well as its own data centers, according to people familiar with the matter.Apple could eventually take more of these services in-house, and it has disclosed plans to build three new data centres over the next two years, in addition to the four it already has.

As one of the world's biggest companies with rapidly growing needs for storage and computing, Apple is a prize customer for cloud service providers. Analysts suggested that it may be playing providers off of each other at a time of high competition.

Read More: http://www.cnbc.com/2016/03/17/apple-signs-up-to-google-cloud-services-in-major-win-over-amazon.html

Cloud Services Market to Top $200 Million in 2016

The worldwide market for public cloud services, such as Amazon.com Inc.’s (NASDAQ: AMZN) Amazon Web Services (AWS), is forecast to reach $203.9 billion in 2016, a year-over-year increase of more than 16%. The fastest growing sector of that market is cloud-based infrastructure as a service (IaaS), forecast to grow from $16.2 billion in 2015 sales to $22.4 billion in 2016, a jump of more than 38%.

When Amazon launched AWS in 2006, the idea that individuals and corporations would store their critical data on someone else’s hardware was nearly unthinkable. That’s all changed now. Netflix Inc. (NASDAQ: NFLX) runs its streaming videos on AWS and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) is another huge customer.

Competitors are stacking up as well, with Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL), Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) and International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE: IBM) among the top contenders. Amazon’s 27% share of the market tops second-place Microsoft’s 16% and IBM’s 12% third-place showing, according to report at Forbes.

The big difference for Amazon is that AWS adds revenue and gross profit to the company’s financial performance, where the impacts on Microsoft and IBM are more on the order of reducing the amount of lost revenue and income due to the shift away from enterprise hardware and software to cloud computing.

When Gartner released its forecast for cloud computing revenues in 2016, research director Sid Nag said:
The market for public cloud services is continuing to demonstrate high rates of growth across all markets and Gartner expects this to continue through 2017. This strong growth continues reflect a shift away from legacy IT services to cloud-based services, due to increased trend of organizations pursuing a digital business strategy.


Read More: http://247wallst.com/technology-3/2016/03/22/cloud-services-market-to-top-200-million-in-2016/

Cloud: the future of storage is here

Using cloud services for data backup and storage is becoming increasingly common among businesses of all sizes. According to Richard Vester, Director of Cloud Services at EOH, hardware-based storage was long the favoured option because companies looked to protect their data from hacking and loss of privacy. That control is now easily accessible through cloud-based options, which is far more cost-effective.

IS FOG COMPUTING THE FUTURE OF THE CLOUD?

The IoT already produces massive amounts of data. It’s time to start dealing with it. Is Fog and Edge Computing inevitable?

Equinix Says Hybrid Cloud Is The Future

Global datacenter and networking interconnect provider Equinix EQIX +0.74% is seeing major growth in enterprises moving away from private datacenters and into co-location facilities, particularly those with big, fast, low-latency connections to cloud providers.

It’s a relatively new trend for Equinix, and enterprises are now the company’s fastest growing vertical.

“Much of the traffic of private companies is flowing out, not in,” says Brian Lillie, Global CIO for Equinix. “It’s not flowing to that corporate data-center, it’s flowing out to the Internet, either to cloud services, or just the general Internet.” And he would know. Equinix boasts nearly 170,000 connections between customers, what Lillie terms cross-connects, and being able to see who connects to whom means Equinix can spot trends in the way customers are connecting to each other.

“The other trend we’re seeing is clouds connecting to clouds,” Lillie says, “So this era that you hear people talk about of the multi-cloud is real.”

Equinix are users of cloud computing themselves, for both internal applications and those that are customer facing. “We have maybe fifty to sixty cloud applications that we use to run Equinix,” Lillie says. “If you think of us as a mid-size enterprise in the US, and we’re running that many, yet we’re also running thirty or forty or fifty on-site. So you’re seeing that hybrid cloud is real, and we see that in the connectivity data we have.”

Read More: http://www.forbes.com/sites/justinwarren/2016/03/09/equinix-says-hybrid-cloud-is-the-future/#239b9957a953