Facts and statistics about Cloud Computing

Cloud computing describes the use of networks of remote servers - usually accessed over the Internet - to store, manage, and process data. As a segment of IT services, cloud computing is generating billions of dollars in revenue annually and showing few signs of slowing down. For customers, cloud computing offers access to numerous technologies while lowering the barriers to entry, such as technical expertise or costs. Typically, the cloud service market is divided into three primary service models, encompassing infrastructure, platforms, and software. Depending on a business's needs and security concerns, customers can also choose between private, public, or hybrid cloud deployment.

The largest segment of cloud computing is Software as a Service (SaaS), which currently generates more than half of the cloud computing market's revenue and has become a common delivery model for many business applications. Popular services include customer relationship management and enterprise resource planning software. Under this model, customers pay for access to software and databases, while the infrastructure and platforms are managed by the service provider. Salesforce, Microsoft, Adobe, and SAP are all major players in this segment.

On the next tier, Platform as a Service (PaaS) grants customers access to a computing platform for application development. This platform may include an operating system, web servers, databases, and the access to one or more programming-language environments. Salesforce has the highest market share in the PaaS segment, although established other players like Amazon and Microsoft also hold sizeable proportions. While experts predict the cloud platform market to grow rapidly over the next decade, it is nevertheless expected to remain the smallest cloud computing segment by some margin.

Read More: http://www.statista.com/topics/1695/cloud-computing/

Cloud computing key to SAP success

German software-maker SAP says cloud computing yielded strong returns for 2015 and promised a bright future as the company released a preliminary take on its 2015 finances.

New cloud bookings - which the company bills as "the key measure for SAP's sales success" in the area - grew by 103 per cent for the full year.

"We decisively beat our full-year guidance for cloud and software revenue," said Bill McDermott, the company's chief executive.
"SAP gained significant share against core and best-of-breed competitors."

He added that the figures give "us tremendous confidence in our business in 2016 and beyond".

Cloud computing is the practice under which companies rent out services and access to software online, as opposed to the old business model of customers buying packages of software stored on actual discs they kept in their home or office.

Overall, the company saw an 18 per cent jump in revenues for 2015, for a gross of 20.8 billion euros ($A32.36 billion). However, earnings before interest and taxes fell by 2 per cent to 4.25 billion euros.


Read More: http://www.news.com.au/finance/business/breaking-news/cloud-computing-key-to-sap-success/news-story/5e47127d1ea00b9e2c28657517315dd1

Oracle’s Ellison says cloud industry still in early days

Oracle Corp. Executive Chairman Larry Ellison said his company will continue its push into the cloud while noting the industry still has much room to grow.
Leadership in the field remains up for grabs with the biggest cloud-only businesses still relatively small — none at around $100 billion, Ellison said, probably referring to annual sales. Redwood City’s Oracle now counts relatively newer entrants such as Amazon.com, Workday Inc. and Microsoft Corp. among its most formidable competitors, the company’s billionaire founder said on Sunday.
“This is how much our world has changed,” Ellison said during a keynote at Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco. “We no longer pay any attention” to traditional competitors SAP SE and IBM Corp. “It is quite a shock.”
Oracle is investing in the cloud as the company comes under growing pressure from rivals that deliver software via connections over the Internet. It is now rolling out products that touch many different parts of its lineup, including applications and tools for customers in e-commerce and manufacturing.
While this shift helps the company break into new markets, it’s also hampering Oracle’s traditional business of selling licenses for software installed on corporate systems.

“We are in the middle — and I really do mean in the middle — of a general shift in computing that is no less important than shift onto personal computing,” he said. “It seems like early days.”
In recent years, Oracle had battled Salesforce.com in the cloud and raced to beat SAP and IBM. Oracle has been redesigning its products so that they can be sold and delivered over the Internet to keep up with the transformation in the broader enterprise technology industry, where companies are increasing spending on cloud services from providers such as Amazon, Workday and Microsoft.
Revenue however has come under pressure during the company’s transition. In the period that ended Aug. 31, sales fell 1.7 percent to $8.45 billion. Analysts on average had forecast sales of $8.53 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Read More : http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Oracle-s-Ellison-says-cloud-industry-still-in-6591754.php

Intel and Oracle push into big data, label IBM and SAP cloud clowns

Larry Ellison has dismissed his two historic competitors, IBM and SAP as "nowhere in the cloud," and used Sunday night's OpenWorld keynote to show off products and services designed to bury Big Blue and the HANA heroes.

"We compete with Amazon in cloud infrastructure and never, ever see IBM - this is how much our world has changed," Oracle's chief technology officer and chairman said at the start of the Oracle OpenWorld conference in San Francisco.

"Our two biggest competitors in last two decades have been IBM and SAP and we no longer pay any attention to either one; it's quite a shock. SAP nowhere in cloud, and only Oracle and Microsoft is in every level of the cloud - applications, platform, and infrastructure."

To ruin IBM's day, Oracle and Intel announced a partnership called "Exa your power" that offers a chance for those running IBM Power Systems to conduct a free proof of concept study on migrating to Oracle's cloud. Oracle co-CEO Mark Hurd promised that Big Blue buyers would see lower costs and higher performance.

Intel also used the keynote to show off new hardware that will make it easier for Oracle to seduce SAP's in-memory customers – its latest 3D Xpoint DIMMS. Intel's CEO Brian Krzanich came on stage to show off the new hardware, due out next year, which he claimed was a thousand times faster than NAND, and 10 times as durable.

Krzanich claimed the new hardware will enable 6TB in-memory databases and well and truly set heads spinning as you try to figure out just where data, memory, and storage begin and end.

Read More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/26/intel_and_oracle_jump_into_bed_to_shaft_ibm_and_sap_over_big_data/