Cloud Networking Changes Everything

The public cloud infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) market is booming and expected to grow by 47 percent, from $6 billion in 2012 to $9 billion in 2013, according to Gartner’s Forecast Overview: Public Cloud Services, Worldwide, 2011-2016, 4Q Update. Additionally, the overall public cloud computing market, including software-as-a-service (SaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS), IaaS and other related services, will grow from $110 to $131 billion over the same period with a CAGR of 41.3 percent through 2016. While this projected growth is significant, cloud computing still represents less than three percent of the $3.7 trillion spent on IT per year. This begs the question, If cloud computing is so hot, why is it still just three percent of the overall IT industry?

It might be helpful to look back to when cloud IaaS was introduced to the market more than eight years ago by Amazon.com. The primary goal was to provide computing capacity at a lower cost than actual physical servers. Since then, many other cloud service providers have jumped on the bandwagon to offer low-cost, best-effort cloud services. Yet, while a market for these services clearly exists, most don’t meet the enterprise requirements for a more reliable and secure computing platform. The problem lies in the fundamental challenge that end users have in using a server-centric cloud approach to solve problems better addressed by networks.

Red Flags

Security breaches cost U.S. businesses significant amounts of time and money, and carry legal ramifications for strictly regulated financial and medical institutions. As such, it shouldn’t come as too great a surprise that it is the main concern for 71 percent of corporate technology decision makers when evaluating cloud services for business critical workloads, as reported by a recent Intel survey. The same study found that 28 percent of IT professionals have experienced a public cloud-related security breach – which, according to 65 percent of respondent companies, is a greater percentage than with traditional IT infrastructures.

One reason for the significant level of concern about cloud security might be that most providers seem to share the same server-centric approach to cloud architecture. Organizations utilizing these types of cloud environments are often unknowingly making it easier for criminals to gain access to information. When establishing vast, cloud-based data centers that are business-critical by nature, companies must institute the same level or better of perimeter security controls than what is present in privately hosted clouds.

Evaluating the various concerns around public cloud security, the network tops the list as most cloud platforms are only accessible via the network, and it has been proven to be at the core of many security breaches. However, the network is also the backbone of most organizations today. Without a strong and secure network foundation, many − if not all − will find it challenging to deliver services to the market.

Network Evolution

Looking at all the major changes within the technology landscape in the last five years, patterns have changed substantially, and computing fabrics demand more from the network. Coupled with an increasingly mobile workforce and customer base, the need for reliable and secure services that can be scaled-up/down as needed, and hosted pay-as-you-go models is driving the re-evaluation of today’s cloud service providers.

The collaboration, and in some cases the merger, between traditional computing and static network aspects are guaranteed to impact any IT organization. Network services can no longer be viewed in a silo. Like security, quality of service and intelligent routing network services will become essential to delivering elastic cloud services that deliver the promise of true utility computing. Further, the ability to provision services “on the fly” will be impossible without the ability to connect to these services in a safe and secure manner.

Public cloud platforms are not exempt from this trend as additional perimeter control and logical network separation is necessary in providing secure cloud services that bridge the public and private network spheres. The network-centric cloud architecture is inevitable as it is clear that the current service model will have to evolve to provide the required security guarantees. By adopting a network-centric cloud platform, organizations will reap the on-demand provisioning and elasticity benefits of cloud services with security at the core.

By Phillip Spies,

Senior Services Architect, Cloud Services, Dimension Data

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Cloud Collaboration – The Necessity Of Teaming Up

“Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships.”

- Michael Jordan, arguably the greatest basketball player ever.

For the vast majority of Americans, Michael Jordan needs no introduction. For the very few who haven’t heard of him (is that even possible?), he is the epitome of individual brilliance who has shined brighter on the basketball court than any man before or since. But even for such a paragon of perfection, teamwork was a necessity for success. I’m sure that Jordan’s impressive statistics would be far less impressive if he didn’t have his team backing him up. Even for an individual sport like tennis, the likes of Venus Williams would attest how much they owe their support staff.

The corporate world is more a basketball game than a tennis match, comprising people with different skill sets who complement each other and collaborate to achieve the desired results. And three things have made collaboration even more important than ever before – the specialization of human knowledge, the globalization of business and the mobility of the individual. Allow me to explain.

Every day we add to the bank of human knowledge at an exponential rate. Just to put things in perspective, experts estimate there has been more data generated in the last two years than in all the years of human existence before that. And while not all of that data is useful information, a large part of it is, and needs specialized knowledge to effectively utilize.

Think about the computer industry. 50 years ago, mainframes, FORTRAN and COBOL would be enough to describe the industry. Today, in order to run IT for an organization, you would need the services of a cloud architect, network engineer, Java programmer, Oracle administrator, so on and so forth. And they will have to collaborate to deliver the optimum solution. Same is the case with healthcare.  Three decades ago, a GP (General Physician) might have been enough for most of your medical needs; today, the GP may refer you to a Neurologist, Nephrologist, Endocrinologist, etc. And they would have to collaborate to heal you.

The point I’m making is that increase of knowledge has made it necessary for specialists to emerge – humans are limited in how much they can individually learn and work, making collaboration a necessity in every field of human endeavour, including business.

On the second point of globalization, the need for collaboration is easier to understand. If a project requires input from people with first-hand knowledge of local conditions, it necessitates collaboration between them across geographical boundaries.

Finally, let’s look at how enhanced mobility is fuelling collaboration. There’s no denying that mobile technologies are getting more powerful and less expensive. According to this report from PricewaterhouseCoopers, this trend is not going to change anytime soon. Therefore, access to business information is becoming easier and cheaper. And with cloud technologies, this effect is multiplied manifold. People are using the cloud to collaborate like never before. In fact, more can be done on a smartphone today than on a desktop computer 10 years ago.

From emailing a client presentation to monitoring patient health remotely, mobility and collaboration is everywhere. Citrix, one of the early leaders in this space with its VDI solutions, has embarked upon a mobility initiative that seeks to bring together the best minds across industries and technologies to find the best solutions for the future. If you’re looking to be at the forefront of this mobility revolution, Mobile Enterprise 360  should be your go-to expert source.

By Sourya Biswas

This post is brought to you by the Mobile Enterprise 360 Community and Citrix

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Why Public Cloud Storage Services are not ready for the Enterprise

Cloud storage has now become an inevitable choice as a disaster recovery solution for the enterprise. Providers at the same time market their services as ‘replace the tape’ strategy by comparing cost, time and reliability numbers. However, like any other service, cloud has few down sides, some very critical for the enterprise. A survey by FixYa, engaging thousands of its users indicates security and reliability among the top 5 concerns when  it comes to public cloud storage services; Dropbox, Google Drive, Sugar Sync, iCloud and Box.

Dropbox, the leading, cross-platform and cross-device cloud storage service with over 100 million users was marked having security concerns by 40% of those surveyed. ‘Storage limits’ came out to the second with 25% of those surveyed identifying storage costs associated with increasing limits. This was followed by ‘File Syncing Issues’ (15%) and ‘Laggy Responses’ (10%), the survey states. In the past, Dropbox has dealt with some major security issues, including compromising email addresses of a portion of its user base. Dropbox users who only rely on the service for personal use such as storing photos and media aren’t discouraged by these security concerns.

According to the survey, top complaint on Google Drive was ‘Missing Folders’ (30%), followed by Syncing Issues (20%). Despite the popularity and ease of use, Google Drive still experiences usability issues that need to be addressed. Security, however, doesn’t seem to a concern with drive. Like the drive, Sugar Sync was also reported to have some usability issues as 15% of those surveyed checked on ‘Syncing Issues’. Sugar Sync also lacks Quickbooks support making it a deal breaker for financial users.

Let’s see how Apple’s iCloud is doing on the survey. Surprisingly, iCloud came out to be the only service from the 5 surveyed having major compatibility issues. Not good news for enterprise users. 35% reported erroneous behavior of iCloud after updating to OS X Mountain Lion while 25% other reported issues syncing with non-Apple devices. 15% other also reported issues syncing in between the devices. iCloud doesn’t seem to have any security concern; however it’s not as device friendly as Dropbox.

Box, a popular cloud storage service for small businesses and currently in use at over 150,000 small/medium sized businesses was also hammered by survey respondents with 25% reporting upload issues while another 25% reported security concerns. Though FixYa clarified that the security concerns is with only free accounts and do not appear to be a problem for large-scale business accounts.

While there are some excellent Enterprise cloud storage options, the survey provides critical analysis of some of the most popular public cloud storage options available for the enterprise.

By Salam UI Haq

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SaaS on a EULA? Get Some New Pants!

A good contract is like a good pair of pants. When the pants fit right and look good, you wear them all the time and hardly notice them. But if they’re too tight, you won’t buy them and if they’re too loose they fall down and leave you exposed. And if they’re just wrong – like trying to pair hockey pants with a suit coat – nobody knows what to do with you.

As more and more software companies deliver SaaS instead of software CDs, why do I still see so many EULAs? They aren’t quite as bad as hockey pants with a suit, but I’d say they approach wearing hockey pants for skiing. Yes, they’re warm and in the winter sports category but they leave a lot of bare leg and have way too much unnecessary padding.

First let’s talk about the fundamental differences between licensed software and SaaS. One is a right to take a copy of some technology to your home or office, install it on your computer and use it all by yourself (or with the other users in your company). Your data stays with you. The other is a service provided by a vendor which allows you to input and review data that is processed somewhere else. No software is delivered. No copies of technology are made for the users. But your data is processed and stored outside of your computer.

So, one is a license – a right to get a copy and use IP – and the other is a service – that processes and stores information. They really are different pants even if software is involved in both.

The legal community has done a good job of drilling the importance of protecting IP into software developers. Yes, intellectual property rights are what make that wonderful technology valuable. Tie them up tight in your license agreement, use license keys and other mechanisms to control users and audit them to make sure they aren’t proliferating without paying.

But do you know the best way to protect IP? Don’t share it. Don’t let anyone see it or get a copy. In other words, use it to deliver a service: SaaS. No license is required when IP isn’t shared (There go the huge pads on the hockey pants). And granting a license for IP that isn’t delivered could result in the unintended requirement to deliver it (Those pants fall right down around the ankles).

The legal community hasn’t done a good job of advising SaaS users of the risks of losing control of their data and the means to process it themselves. SaaS customers under a EULA don’t get any assurances about how the vendor will protect their data (Those hockey pants are too short for the slopes). They don’t know what kind of backup procedures the provider has or how to get their data back in a meaningful format. Because the contract won’t address data issues at all, it doesn’t even say that the client owns its data (Get me some ski pants!).

In summary, my last pants analogy: if you’re selling SaaS with a EULA, get some new pants.

By Cindy Wolf

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Advances of Cloud Computing in Business Development

The presence of cloud computing as a tool in business is getting a reaction almost as though it’s something new. There’s a lot of attention being paid to advances mostly as a result of affordable, scalable SaaS solutions. These solutions allow for a mobility and ease of access for which older systems didn’t allow. Given that they’re a symptom of the newer cloud computing push, they’re of course serving to earn accolades for the cloud that it did not have previously.

Of course, cloud computing in business is not brand new. It largely went unrecognized for what it was for such a long time, largely due to the fact that it wasn’t referred to as ‘cloud computing’. As a result, people often fail to make the proper connection between the present and the past, and to realize, in retrospect, that it’s always been around.

Cloud is a buzzword that in many circles has lost all meaning, but there is a true definition for the concept. To be honest, it’s essentially a formal and catchy term for data being handled on a server and delivered through TCP/IP. To a great extent, it’s just “stuff that goes over the internet, usually with a browser.”

Server farms are what these were once called, and businesses have used them for years. Originally, they weren’t offsite, but once bandwidth and security allowed it, data centers began leasing servers to businesses to serve as rental super computing powers. Oil companies, engineering companies and large enterprises with a lot of variables to calculate in business strategy have used these since the early 90s in fact.

But, what’s changed? Why does it have a new name, and why is it so popular? Well, because of the omnipresence of the digital world in our lives, everyone has something constructive they could do with supercomputing power, networking and storage.

Modern convenience makes this concept an affordable reality, and in many cases, it’s almost free. But, we’re talking about cloud computing in business, and what’s been done to advance it specifically.

Well, as said before, SaaS does allow for mobility and negation of distance, so that a business with travelling employees is not out of commission due to distance or being en route most of the time. Beyond this, though, there’s a standardization to be had from the cloud that was once not possible.

Cloud computing and SaaS give businesses a set of interoperable tools to track many assets of their business, and allows businesses to grow independent of their location or distance between offices. This kind of solidarity allowed by BI, ERP, CRM and training services makes business a much more reliable and controlled environment than the chaos that preceded it.

On top of this, leasable supercomputer resources like this give even small businesses the raw computing power they need to calculate trends and run deep analysis to find problems and remedy them. Thanks to these advances in SaaS, this supercomputing power is represented in the same fashion their old traditional software was, but with the insurmountable power of a server farm behind it.

In the past 10 years, we’ve seen cloud computing in business evolve from a dedicated remote super computer terminal into a publically-accepted scenario of business software being part of the internet. Quite a transition, but probably one for the best.

Mr. Omri Erel

Marketing director at WalkMe and lead author of SaaS Addict

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Working With Customers And The Cloud

You may have the best product or service in the world, but without a customer you have nothing. Today’s assets focus on the customer and how you can leverage the cloud (and other technologies) to optimize customer engagement.

“The goal as a company is to have customer service that is not just the best but legendary.“

- Sam Walton (1918-1992), legendary founder of Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart has excellent customer service, but that’s not the only thing that makes it the most valuable company in the world. Its lean supply chain and cost efficiencies help it deliver on its promise of “Always Low Prices.” In the same vein, not every cloud-based solution will work for you.

In the realm of customer service, the contact center plays a preeminent role. This paper  explores several facets of a cloud-based contact center – deployment, the Total Cost of Ownership, etc. – all to help you answer that million-dollar question,  ”Is it right for you?”

“If you work just for money, you’ll never make it, but if you love what you’re doing and you always put the customer first, success will be yours.”

- Ray Kroc (1902-1984), man behind McDonald’s.

Many believe that excellence in customer service is a luxury only deep-pocketed companies like Apple can manage, while most businesses struggle to conduct daily operations under strained budgets. According to this paper, this is simply not true. Today, any company with the right basics and methodology can attain customer service  nirvana.

 ”Every day were saying, ‘How can we keep this customer happy?’ How can we get ahead in innovation by doing this, because if we don’t, somebody else will.”

- Bill Gates, iconic entrepreneur and co-founder of Microsoft.

The best way to keep customers happy is to consistently exceed expectations, not just meet them. Customers today demand more than a toll-free number and an email id to reach you; they expect personalized customer service in real-time, using voice, text-based media types like email and chat, and social media, with seamless transfers between them. This paper tells you how to deliver exceptional customer service  across multiple channels.

“A satisfied customer is the best business strategy of all.”

- Michael LeBouef, business author and academic.

In many companies, customer service is reactive, a consequence of a sale. However, proactive customer service is the need of the day. In fact, customer service can be an actual strategic advantage that drives growth. This paper outlines five ways this can be achieved.

“Whether you are big or small, you cannot give good customer service if your employees don’t feel good about coming to work.”

- Martin Oliver, MD Kwik-Fit Financial Services.

Finally, in the zeal to satisfy the customer, don’t forget your employees. You can substantially improve morale by implementing a mobile workforce. See here how Citrix can help you.

By Sourya Biswas

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Mimecast Email Servers Go Down – 100% Uptime SLA?

No cloud service provider should ever claim 100% uptime and it seems that Mimecast had a very tough day yesterday. Its mail servers went down in the UK, bringing down its cloud mail management services and angering many of its UK customers who couldn’t access the mail service.

The company blames the outage on a series of servers coming down in one of its UK data centers. It later updated that a server by server check is underway and a good number of the servers have gone back up. This indicates the extent of the outage as well.

With emails getting throttled, there’s no surprise that users do not have any good words to speak for Mimecast. Some users complained that they haven’t been able to communicate with their clients because their mails are “in the post”.

The cost which Mimecast will have to pay in terms of lost user confidence and potential lawsuits from really, really angry users will make matters worse. What’s more alarming is Mimecast’s claim for 100% uptime in its SLA (Service Level Agreement). It is one thing to claim 100% uptime in marketing campaigns and another to legally bind into providing something which is not possible. According to many in the industry, offering 100% uptime in SLA is “nonsense” and it seems like Mimecast will have to face the brunt of their untrue claims.

With all the benefits which Cloud offers, the downside is equally significant. In private networks, server or system outages may be tolerated and seldom leak out to the press and even if they do, it’s not significant to impact the organization in any negative manner. With Cloud, it’s different. We have seen it often times that outages which may only last a few minutes create a ripple effect and many a times result in companies not able to recover from the bad reputation they leave behind.

There is no scenario which looks promising for Mimecast right now but the market has to respond on the alarming developments at Mimecast and market will take into account user sentiment which is definitely not looking good. Will a formal apology patch the reputation?

By Salam UI Haq

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(Smart) Phone Your Way To Success

Today, I am going to talk about that one thing we use most in our lives – our smartphones. Recently, I came across an article that mentioned that of all the cell phones purchased in the US, 40% are smartphones. That got me thinking about these incredible devices’ increasing importance in our lives.

Wikipedia defines a smartphone as “a mobile phone built on a mobile computing platform, with more advanced computing ability and connectivity than a feature phone.” However, with smartphones becoming smarter by the day, not to mention cheaper, soon enough the only cell phone you will be able to buy will be a smartphone. In other words, the smartphone will become the default phone, with its predecessors relegated to quaint symbols of a bygone era.

What’s the rationale behind this explosive growth of smartphones? Consider the typical user of a smartphone – me. I wake up in the morning courtesy the iPhone’s Alarm function, quickly check my mail on the in-built Safari browser, browse through the day’s appointments in the Reminders section, use the pre-loaded Newsstand to browse the day’s headlines, look up the outside temperature on Weather, listen to music on iTunes and if stuck in traffic, look up alternate routes with the Maps app. And I haven’t gotten to the downloaded apps yet.

I extensively use the Priceline app to plan my travels, the RunKeeper app to keep track of my workouts, the Dropbox app to sync my files and the Stanza app to read books on flight delays. As a matter of interest, all the apps I mentioned are free. Of course, I do use the in-built camera for the occasional photograph and video.

And it’s not only in our personal lives that smartphones are having an impact; smartphones and their relatives, tablets, have already made significant inroads into the corporate world. According to a recent survey by information security major Symantec, 59% of the 6,275 respondents said that their organizations are opening up line-of-business applications to mobile access.

It’s not difficult to understand why the corporate world is embracing mobile technologies. From ease of access to the ability to work on the move, from flex-work that improves employee morale to faster responses that reduce waste, from cost optimization to operating efficiencies, mobile technologies can affect both the top line and the bottom line of an organization’s income statement.

However, there are some important issues to be addressed, mainly regarding security, integration and interoperability. Not only will the right technologies have to be used, the right policies will have to be written and enforced. As a leader in this space, Citrix is asking the right questions and has created a growing community of mobility enthusiasts who converge on Mobile Enterprise 360 to share a wealth of information. If you’re interested in mobility in the workplace (and how can you not be?), you should definitely check it out.

Today, mobility is a necessity for success, both in the workplace and at home. Citrix can show you how to do it better.

By Sourya Biswas

This post is brought to you by the Mobile Enterprise 360 Community and Citrix

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Cloud Infographic: Hosting Your Clinical Applications

Like any kind of outsourcing, hosting clinical and pharmacovigilance systems in the cloud with an experienced service provider allows pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical device companies, in addition to clinical research organizations and academic institutions, to reduce costs and operate more efficiently.

View this infographic to learn:

• How hosting helps you be efficient with your money
• How hosting helps you save your resources
• Which applications you can host in the cloud
• Additional features and benefits of hosting

Infographic Source: BioPharm

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Saudi Arabia Builds A Healthier Tomorrow With The IBM Cloud

“Health is the greatest gift, contentment the greatest wealth, faithfulness the best relationship.”

                                                                - Gautama Buddha (563-483 BC), spiritual leader and founder of Buddhism.

Cloud computing can bestow many gifts on businesses – cost efficiencies, performance optimization, mobility – but when it bestows the gift of a healthier future, that is the greatest gift of all. And this is what has led Saudi Arabia to embrace IBM’s cloud-based Public Health Solution.

This is not the first time I’m writing about the significant synchronicities between cloud computing and healthcare. From two years back when I wrote about the use of cloud computing to analyze humongous amounts of genetic data to more recently, where I enumerated several free information assets for the healthcare CIO, healthcare on the clouds has featured regularly in my writings.

However, this is the first time that a national government has been so welcoming of this technology. Today, the Saudi Ministry of Health announced the successful implementation of IBM’s Public Health Solution for Disease Management in Jeddah, Mekkah, Taif and Qunfudah. This will help public health professionals reduce the spread of communicable disease by improving communications and providing relevant information on demand.

While the implementation was formally announced only today, the IBM SmartCloud-based system has been up and running for the last seven months. During this short time, it has been used by more than 1,200 employees at the Ministry of Health coordinate 180,000-plus immunizations and 1,000-plus investigations. With this system, the entire healthcare system in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia can function as a seamless whole, yet still be accessible from anywhere.

Here’s an example. With the ability to record and forecast immunizations, the technology can also be used to track the exact location of vaccines, down to which refrigerator in each hospital, to ensure enough supply is available. In the event of an outbreak of a serious communicable disease, the system will alert public health officials who will plan and direct actions to protect citizens.

Saudi Arabia’s Deputy Minister for Public Health, Dr. Ziad Memish said, “IBM’s innovative cloud-based healthcare technology serves as the foundation of the Ministry’s e-health scheme and infectious disease control program. It will help us improve public health in the Kingdom by keeping people healthier, enhancing vaccination coverage, identifying health issues and taking preventive measures to combat infectious diseases.”

It’s heartening to see the developing world leveraging the best in technology for the welfare of the general population. While the financial impact of cloud computing on businesses cannot be understated, we cannot forget that adage we have all heard some time in our lives – “Health is Wealth.” And even here, cloud computing has a major role to play.

By Sourya Biswas

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