Cloud

October 4, 2016 by Julie McGrath

Infrastructure is no longer static, immovable, or inflexible — and neither should be an IT pro’s skill set.

Take a look at 10 of the hottest Infrastructure skills that IT pros should be considering today.

1. Cloud Security

The sad reality about new IT technologies is that security is often an afterthought. Cloud computing came along and people jumped onboard before a robust and well-planned security roadmap could be established. Because of this, many early cloud adopters are scrambling to re-architect their cloud services with advanced security. While cloud security essentially uses the same tools found in traditional infrastructure security, there are more things to consider. Security considerations ranging from third-party data storage, data access, and even multi-tenancy issues are new skills you can acquire.

2. Software-Defined WANs

As a whole, it’s going to take some time for end-to-end software defined networking (SDN) to take hold. But one specific aspect of SDN, namely software-defined WANs, can and should be implemented today. For many companies, SD-WAN will be their first foray into SDN — and it’s a skill that will be the tip of the “software-defined” iceberg.

3. Cloud Service Broker

As server and network infrastructures continue to be outsourced into the cloud, some in-house infrastructure administrators are left wondering what role they may play in the not-too-distant future. One skill set that will be useful is that of a cloud service broker. In this role, the broker will evaluate various cloud services and form/maintain relationships with them on behalf of the organisation. And, while negotiating contracts may be a major skills change for many administrators, this role still requires a deep understanding of the underlying infrastructure technologies that cloud providers offer. So if you’re looking to still use the technical skills you have, while also seeking to move toward more of a non-technical role, then this might be the right fit for you.

4. Next-Generation Firewalls (NGFWs)

Next-generation firewall skills are currently in very high demand. Today’s NGFWs not only incorporate traditional layer 3/4 access controls and stateful inspection, they also perform layer 7 packet inspection to identify and apply policy traffic based on application type. In many ways, the NGFW is the linchpin for other modern security tools — and thus a skillset that every enterprise will soon require.

5. Cloud-Managed Networking

Cloud-managed networking is still in its infancy. Wireless LANs were the first part of the network to move to the cloud. But because of the popularity of cloud-managed WLANs, routing, switching, and network security is also becoming more popular. While networking is networking, regardless of where it’s managed, most vendors are using completely new interfaces that administrators must master.

6. Collaboration

It used to be that enterprise collaboration tools consisted of desk phones, videoconference rooms, and perhaps a chat client. But these days, collaboration is far more wide reaching. We’re talking about personal meeting rooms with full HD video capabilities, smartphone apps that fully mimic your office phone and chat applications, and shared project-management tools that tightly integrate with other enterprise tools such as mail and calendaring. Collaboration tools are becoming hugely popular in the new “work from anywhere” world in which we live.

7. Mobile Device Management (MDM)

The use of employee-owned mobile devices and laptops in the enterprise continues to explode. Most enterprise applications these days have smartphone or Web-based apps that employees can — and do — use. Companies that were early BYOD adopters are finding that their infrastructure is left vulnerable because there is little to no security protecting potentially insecure devices from accessing company resources — or from preventing the loss of intellectual property on personal devices. Mobile device management is a popular way to alleviate many of these problems — and thus it is a great skill to know.

8. Malware Sandboxing

Advanced malware is becoming an increasingly difficult problem for enterprises to tackle. Even with the use of tools like next-generation firewalls, intrusion prevention, advanced security gateways, and desktop malware prevention, advanced malware often squeaks through. Malware sandboxes are one of the newest and most popular tools used to catch malware that other tools can’t. Data flagged as potentially suspicious is placed in a simulated and segregated environment called a sandbox. The data then is allowed onto the simulated network, where it’s run through a gauntlet of tests to determine if the code starts doing something malicious. For security administrators, malware sandboxing is a great tool to have in the tool belt — and one that’s likely to grow in popularity.

9. Application Containers

Many people think application containers are the next evolutionary step in data center virtualization. Instead of virtualizing entire servers to host a single application, application containers allow for essentially the same thing, except they’re running on a single OS. An application container does this by creating virtual containers that enable OS settings unique to one particular application and hiding them from other applications. Data centers can run the same number of applications with far lower memory and storage requirements. Those who are heavily involved in server virtualization absolutely must look into containers.

10. Data Center Switching

Switching in the data center is far more advanced — and far more specialized — than it used to be. Today’s data centers often use a combination of switching, virtualized routing, and various application load-balancing and high-availability techniques that are growing in complexity. Add to this SDN’s creep into data center switching architectures and you have an area of networking that is highly complex, cutting edge, and in high demand.

Conclusion

Not only does this list encompass a wide range of infrastructure responsibilities, the skills also vary in technical complexity. In the end, there is almost certainly a skill or two that any infrastructure administrator has (or soon will have) on their “to learn” lists. The world of IT Infrastructure is growing rapidly, therefore this skill list will continue to expand over the course of time.

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– Andrew Froehlich

September 12, 2016 by Julie McGrath

Small businesses are fleeing to cloud computing and mobile apps, says new study

Small businesses around the world are increasingly relying on cloud computing and apps to run their operations and solve business problems. Here’s why.

The mobile revolution has reached mom-and-pop shops. According to a newIntuit study, 64% of small businesses across the US, Canada, Australia, and the UK now run their operations in the cloud—up from just 37% in 2015. And 68% of these enterprises use mobile or web-based apps in their day-to-day business, compared to just half last year.

The growth is not a surprise, said Vinay Pai, vice president of the Intuit Developer Platform. Many small business owners, he said, are using apps such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Snapchat in their everyday lives. “That same expectation has bled over into how they’re running their business, looking to using apps for invoicing, billing, and time management,” Pai said.

The study collected responses from 2,000 small enterprise owners across the four countries, the majority of which employ one to 50 employees.

More than two in five small businesses reported their biggest challenges were controlling costs and reducing expenses. Improving cash flow, customer billing, and time management were the top factors considered among businesses looking to integrate apps.

Not surprisingly, about half of small businesses said they judge technology success on whether it will increase their revenue, the study found. “Most of these small companies are looking to grow their business, and for anything that helps with cash flow and minimizes expenses,” Pai said.

For example, in the US, federal compliance regulations require tracking employee overtime hours and ensuring they are paid. Paying for an app that tracks hourly employees can cost far less than the penalty a business would incur for not doing so, said Pai.

Apps for invoicing are also popular because they cut down on the time it takes for a business owner to get paid, Pai added. With paper invoices, it usually takes about 30 days to receive a check. With an app, businesses can get their money wired within 8 days, with half receiving payment the same day.

For small business app adopters, 68% reported using an average of 4 apps, the study found. And 66% of all small businesses surveyed said they use mobile to run their business.

Benefits and drawbacks

Many small business leaders were reluctant to move systems to the cloud, but did so because of all the available software, said Gene Marks, owner of the Marks Group PC, a small business consulting firm specializing in CRM applications.

Cloud-based apps allow the software vendor to offer easier support and updates in real time, Marks said. But, it’s important to note that monthly or yearly subscription models cost business owners more over time than the pay-once models of the past.

Marks said that his clients have reported quicker updates and increased accessibility and mobility with cloud-based apps. Using cloud-based apps can also attract millennial business and workers, who grew up using the web and mobile devices, Marks said.

The Marks Group, a 10-person firm, moved to the cloud-based Zoho CRM earlier this year, due in large part to the ability to integrate cloud-based applications. It can now use many third-party apps such as the Google suite in their system, Marks said.

App priorities for small business owners included gains in privacy, security, and cost, the Intuit study found. For Marks however, the biggest issue is the price, in terms of both longer-term costs and control. Most app services ask for a monthly fee, rather than a single payment for the system, and do not protect small business users if that fee rises over time, he said.

Tips for small business leaders

The largest barrier for small businesses considering app adoption is the sheer number available: 41% of owners said they feel there are too many to choose from, and that they are unsure which apps will be best for their business needs. Other barriers were cost (39%) and complexity (23%).

Business owners should look at reviews and search for apps that solve a particular business problem, Pai recommends. Many apps have a 2 to 4 week free trial period, so don’t be afraid to try them out, he said.

While apps can solve for certain challenges, small business employees often do not know how to fully leverage these tools, Marks said. He estimates that his typical client only uses 20% of a cloud CRM system’s full capabilities. He recommends finding a partner or outside expert who knows the app well, and offering training to employees. Some 66% of app users said they would pay for training, the study found.

Small businesses that have success with cloud app initiatives often assign someone internally to own the system, Marks said. That person becomes the go-to support system for the app, and should have training and resources on using it. “If you create an expert inside your company, it will expand the use of the application for everybody,” Marks said.

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– Alison DeNisco

August 22, 2016 by Julie McGrath

Modern IT meets Machine! Robot Wars’ Team Storm is applying the principles of DevOps, IoT and real-time data analytics in advancing the design of its machine, while setting out to inspire a new generation to get into robotics

Using modern technologies and practices to breathe new life into legacy hardware systems is a scenario most enterprise IT departments will have found themselves in at one time or another.

Ex-Robot Wars competitors Team Storm faced a similar situation in January 2016, when the producers of the popular BBC2 show asked if they would like to appear in the new series with their 16-year-old, fan-favourite robot, Storm2.

And not just to perform a victory lap or two of the Robot Wars arena for old times’ sake, but to compete against the creations of a new generation of enthusiasts and competitors.

“It was an incredible ride for us [first time around], in that we went from never having appeared on TV to winning the World Championships in nine months,” says Ed Hoppitt, who – with Tim and Meral Bence – makes up Team Storm.

“When they asked us back, we were quite relaxed about it because winning the World Championship is the biggest thing you can win and we were pretty sure we weren’t going to do it again. So we got involved with the intention of getting something else out of it.”

By that he means the opportunity to push the limits of what Storm2 could do with technologies that were not around when the robot made its debut on the show back in the early 2000s.

“When you look at Storm2 compared with the other machines, it doesn’t look old, but it is a very different to the robot that fought in series seven of the show,” he says.

“I think a lot of people expected us to turn up with something that looks like it was dragged out of a garage, but we’ve spent a lot of time and money redoing the bits that needed to be done.”

Bigger and better

Despite advances in engine design, battery capacity and armor strength in the decade or so Robot Wars has been off-air, returning to the show with a new machine was not an option for Team Storm.

“When we built Storm2, it was almost an order of magnitude more powerful than most robots it was competing against, and we said if we can’t make that same jump again, we’re don’t want to build another robot for the sake of it or something that isn’t innovative,” Hoppitt says.

“For us it is about taking the original design as far as we can, and we are pretty much there. The way it is constructed is probably not strong enough for what we are going to see in the next series of Robot Wars.”

Don’t give up the day job

When he is not tinkering with robots, Hoppitt works for virtualisation software provider VMware, where he heads the organisation’s Europe, Middle East and Africa-focused cloud native applications and DevOps team. The company also sponsors Team Storm.

So for Hoppitt and the rest of the team, using software to manage and solve hardware problems is not exactly a foreign concept, and is an approach they have followed since the beginning with Storm2.

“Most teams that build robots are engineers, so there is a really obvious set of transferrable skills there, whereas we designed the robot using concepts people use to design software. We started out by breaking down what would be required for us to win,” he says.

As it turns out, the “winning requirements” for Team Storm are similar to those most IT managers look for when procuring kit, in that it needs to be reliable and easy to maintain.

Both concepts have influenced the design of Storm2 throughout its life, along with the feedback the team has received over the years by participating in off-screen robotics competitions.

This has allowed Hoppitt and his team to take a DevOps and agile-like approach to improving the robot’s design, which has made its return to theRobot Wars arena after such a long time away a far less daunting prospect.

“The thing about agile technology and DevOps is you’re essentially always working with a prototype, and you are always in the middle of that cycle of innovation and looking for things you can learn from,” says Hoppitt.

The UK has the benefit of a large and vibrant live events scene where competitive robot fights are concerned, he adds, which has provided the team with ample opportunities to hone Storm2’s design.

“You go to an event, you learn about what your robot can and cannot do, you adapt the design, go to another event and the cycle of innovation starts again,” he says.

“I could take the robot to 10 events a year in the UK, whereas in America they have one event every 12 months. So, in the UK, we get to go through that cycle of innovation much faster.”

The Agile Advantage

Hoppitt’s experience in the project management side of DevOps has also come to the fore in all this, as the team have found themselves having to outsource parts of the design process.

“I have a day job that doesn’t involve building robots, so we have had to outsource or get people involved with the building and machining side of things, and then you end up in a situation where you have to manage multiple teams and find a way to do that effectively,” he says.

To help with this process, the team uses project management software Trello, which allows them to organise tasks, track the progress of the third parties dealing with them and see how all this contributes to the design and build of the finished product.

“The core of our DNA with all this is to approach the situation like an IT organisation would, while keeping in mind that we actually want to build a reliable service,” he says.

“If your robot breaks down, it doesn’t matter how fabulous the weapon on top of it is because you’ve already lost. Similarly, if it takes a lot of damage in one fight and it is too difficult to maintain and fix before the next one, you have lost.”

Tactical Telemetry

A lot of the changes Team Storm made to their machine in preparation for its big return to the small screen were internal, including the introduction of telemetry sensors that track the engine temperature, voltage, current and the revolutions per minute of its wheels.

This information is fed-back in real time to the driver, and displayed on a panel built into Storm2’s handheld controls. This allows the team to tweak their strategy depending on how the machine is holding up during the course of a three-minute fight.

“The motor is designed to run at 24 volts and the overall robot runs at 42 volts. So, if we’re halfway through a fight and we’re not delivering enough damage, we can judge how hot the motor is and make a call on whether or not we should give it the full 42 volts,” he says.

Despite the apparent tactical advantage having access to this telemetry data gives the team, some members of the robotics community have been a little skeptical about its usefulness, Hoppitt says.

“Lots of people in the community have talked about getting this data back from the robot as being a gimmick, but it has saved us hundreds or thousands of pounds because we’re not blowing up motors all the time,” he said.

“We’re looking at taking it next level by interfacing the telemetry system to Liota [VMware’s internet of things gateway], so we can capture all of the data in the cloud and make it available to work on from anywhere, because we all live in different locations.”

Spoiler alert

The collection of telemetry data and the ability to interpret it in real-time is often cited by Formula One teams as critical to success on the track.

In the case of Team Storm, Hoppitt says it is hard to say if it had a huge bearing on their success this time around.

“There are a couple of fights where we adapted what we were doing because of the data we were getting,” he says.

“There was one fight where we knew one of the motors had taken damage because it was reading significantly hotter than the other one, when they should both be around the same temperature.

“But, in hindsight, it is difficult to say whether or not those changes would have been decisive moments in determining whether or not we would be successful.”

As anyone who watched the 14 August 2016 show can confirm, Team Storm made it to the final 10, only to miss out on a place in the grand final.

“We ended up a heat finalist, which, for a robot that was conceived in 1999 and went up against one that was built today, is not a bad result at all.”

Inspiring the next

As previously stated, Team Storm had other reasons for wanting to take part in the show this time around, aside from just wanting to win.

A big source of motivation for the group was getting the chance to inspire a new batch of hobbyists to have a bash at building a machine of their own, just like they were during the show’s original run.

At the time, Hoppitt was studying for a degree in computer science and business at Royal Holloway when he and a pal decided – after watching series after series of the show – to build a robot called Storm.

“It was built like you would build a robot if you were a child. We wanted it do everything. It had to be four-wheel drive, it had to lift things, it had to run both ways and carry things. And it did all those things really badly. It was rubbish at everything,” recalls Hoppitt.

“That is the reason why the only robot you see on TV is Storm2, but we learnt a lot from the mistakes we made from building the first one.”

Increasing diversity

Fellow robotics enthusiast Will Thomas credits the show with not only inspiring him to start building machines of his own, but also for spurring him on to pursue a career in design technology.

Thomas won the Sunday 31 July 2016 episode of the show with his robot, Shockwave, after impressing producers with an early concept for the machine. In total, the robot took 12 hours to design using CAD software, and five weeks to build once his team found out they had secured a spot on the show.

“When the original series was in its prime, I was 10 and captivated by it. In the evenings and at weekends, I’d be in my room hacking remote control cars apart, trying to build my own robot,” he said.

“After a couple of years of nagging my dad, we started building robots for the small, featherweight class and getting quite competitive, before moving up to the heavyweight class about eight years ago.

“Since then we’ve built a few of our own machines including Shockwave, and we’re getting reasonably good at it now,” he adds.

After having his interest in robots piqued at an early age, Thomas has gone on to complete a degree and masters in robotics, and is now in the throes of training to become a design technology teacher.

“It was the show that kick-started my interest, and with any luck we can do the same for a new generation, but the thing that would be really nice would be to get more female teams involved,” he says.

It is worth mentioning that both Team Storm and Team Shock have female members, while a recent episode of the show saw a nine-year-old girl called April compete with her robot, Glitterbomb.

Making people aware of that and dispelling the perception from outsiders that robotics is “only for boys” is something Thomas is keen to do, on the back of his involvement with the show and the wider live events circuit.

“My fiancée has been dragged into it by me, but she has her own heavyweight robot that we might look to enter Robot Wars next time around and highlight the fact it really is not a boys’ club,” he says.

“If you look behind it all, there are an awful lot of girls involved with making it possible and in the audience there are girls who loved the show first time around and have had to drag their other halves along.”

The Social Aspect

Both teams are also using social media to interact with fans of the show as part of their quests to inspire others to get involved, with Thomas remarking that many of the questions he gets online are from people asking how to qualify.

“It ranges from people who are five years old to people at university and older. If there is another series, there would be a huge number of applicants for it, because so many people seem to want to have a go,” he says.

“We were inundated with messages asking how we did it and congratulating us on our win, and it’s a really great way to get in touch with the people. I think the social media aspect is what could end up making the show even bigger than it was last time.”

– Caroline Donnelly

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August 12, 2016 by Julie McGrath

With Amazon, Google and Microsoft all reporting strong growth on the back of cloud, we take a closer look at how they have achieved it

The grip that Amazon Web Services (AWS) has on the infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) market can make it hard for even relatively big players to get a look-in when enterprise CIOs shop around for cloud services.

Microsoft has managed to hold its own, with the help of its Azure platform, by focusing on convincing its existing base of on-premise enterprise customers to ditch their own servers and use its cloud infrastructure.

It is a strategy that appears to be working very well for Microsoft. Its fourth-quarter 2016 financial results saw the Azure cloud division emerge as one of the company’s best-performing business initiatives, with revenue growth of 102%.

In recent years, the company has also publicly committed to matching AWS on price for various commodity cloud services, which has been a useful marketing tactic.

For instance, every time Amazon decides to publicly announce a price cut for any of its cloud infrastructure services, Microsoft grabs the opportunity to crowbar its way into that narrative and announce a price cut of its own.

This has helped to create the impression that the IaaS market is something of a two-horse race between AWS and Microsoft, which is an image Google has been working hard to dispel since late 2015 when it appointed former VMware co-founder, Diane Greene.

A Google board member since 2012, Greene was appointed to oversee the running of Google’s newly-converged cloud services business, bringing the product, engineering, sales and marketing efforts of its off-premise infrastructure and software initiatives under one roof for the first time.

Unified approach

The move was comprehensively referenced during a conference call to discuss Alphabet, Google’s parent company, and its 2016 second-quarter results, with CEO Sundar Pichai, who described how taking a more unified approach to cloud was opening doors for it in the enterprise.

“It’s a big set of changes, and it’s obviously having an impact,” said Pichai on the call transcribed by Seeking Alpha.

“So for me, I see a shift to a world-class enterprise approach, and it’s definitely having an impact on the type of conversations we are having and the outcome of the RFPs [requests for proposals] we are engaged in.”

Proof of that is evident in some of the high-profile contract wins Google has secured this year with the likes of music-streaming site Spotify and Apple.

To keep up this momentum, the company outlined the steps it has taken to increase its headcount across several areas of the business, including its cloud division, with more than 2,460 recruits taken on in the previous quarter.

Google vs AWS

At present, Alphabet does not provide a breakdown within its financial results of the cloud’s contribution to its wider business, which banked a profit of $4.9bn against revenues of $21.5bn in Q2.

Instead, it is reported as “other revenue”, which means the performance of Google’s converged cloud unit is muddied because its figures are lumped in with those for Google Play and the company’s hardware ventures.

Even so, this part of its business brought in revenue of $2.2bn, up 33% on the year before.

It is currently unclear just how big Google’s cloud business is, but there is no denying that AWS has the upper hand, based on its financial results, which were released the same day.

The activities of AWS alone brought in $2.9bn in revenue for its parent company, Amazon.com. This figure is 58% higher than that for the same quarter a year ago, and equates to about 9% of Amazon’s total sales.

During a conference call to discuss the results, also transcribed by Seeking Alpha, the senior management team at AWS said the work being done behind the scenes to improve the efficiency of its infrastructure was having a positive impact on its revenue generation.

Datacentre footprint

The company is also currently building out its datacentre footprint across the globe in response to customer concerns about latency, data sovereignty and security, and this looks set to bring a fresh tranche of users on board, it said.

Brian Olsavsky, chief financial officer at Amazon.com, said: “When we expand geographically, existing customers will run more of their workloads on AWS. Sometimes they have local latency concerns or security issues that require them to run things in their country, so that helps.

“We also open up to new customers when we add these regions, and it is certainly an exciting investment for our customer base.”

In view of Google’s and Microsoft’s attempts to become even bigger thorns in the side of AWS, the company is in no danger of overlooking the competitive threat either of these rivals pose to its market-leading position in the cloud.

Particularly, as Olsavsky referenced elsewhere during the results call, there is a strong chance that AWS, Google and others will find their services being used by the same customers as enterprises move to adopt a multi-cloud approach in their IT environments.

“We have been in this business longer than anyone,” he said. “Having said that, there is plenty of room for multiple suppliers in this business.

“What we focus on is innovating on behalf of customers and expanding our geographic footprint to make our services more widely available.”

In a briefing note following the recent wave of financial results, Kate Hanaghan, research director at analyst house TechMarketView, said AWS clearly continues to lead the way in the cloud market.

“We know more about the performance of AWS than its competitors,” she said. “Google’s cloud revenue is buried, and while we know Microsoft’s Azure revenue was up 102% in its last quarter, this was from an unknown base.

“Our view is that AWS is growing at a slower rate in the UK specifically. That said, AWS is outpacing the market and most of the other players.”

– Caroline Donnelly

July 11, 2016 by Julie McGrath

Spending on IT Infrastructure by Cloud Environments in 2016 Will Be Strong Despite First Quarter Slowdown, According to IDC

According to the latest forecast from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Cloud IT Infrastructure Tracker, total spending on IT infrastructure products (server, enterprise storage, and Ethernet switches) for deployment in cloud environments will increase by 15.5% in 2016 to reach $37.1 billion. This amount excludes double counting between storage and servers. In comparison, spending on enterprise IT infrastructure deployed in traditional, non-cloud, environments will decline by 4.4% in 2016, but will still account for the largest share, 63.4%, of end user spending. Spending on private cloud IT infrastructure will grow by 10.3% year over year to $13.8 billion with more than 60% of this amount contributed by on-premises private cloud environments. Spending on public cloud IT infrastructure will increase by 18.8% in 2016 to $23.3 billion.

All regions are expected to increase spending on cloud IT infrastructure in 2016 with investments in public cloud growing at a faster rate than investments in private cloud IT infrastructure. For cloud environments combined, spending on Ethernet switches will be growing at the highest rate, 39.5%, while spending on server and storage will grow at 11.4% and 14.2%, respectively.

For the long-term forecast, IDC expects that spending on IT infrastructure for cloud environments will grow at a 13.1% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) to $59.5 billion in 2020. This will represent 48.7% of the total spending on enterprise IT infrastructure. Spending on non-cloud IT infrastructure will decline at 1.4% CAGR during the same period. Within the cloud segment, spending on public and private will grow at 18.8% and 10.3% CAGR respectively. In 2020, IDC expects public cloud service providers (CSPs) will spend $38.4 billion for delivering services, while spending on private cloud will reach $21.1 billion.

“Despite weakness in hyperscale CSP demand for IT infrastructure products in the first quarter, we expect spending on public cloud to increase in the second half of the year,” said Natalya Yezhkova, research director, Storage Systems. “Overall, we will continue to see steady growth in demand for public cloud services and, as a result, underlying spending on IT infrastructure by CSPs. The economic and financial volatility we see in some regions will push demand further as increasing sophistication of public cloud offerings allows organizations to fulfill their needs across a growing variety of IT domains while OPEX-oriented pricing models provide some relief to tightening IT budgets.”

– Business Wire

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June 29, 2016 by Julie McGrath

Microsoft leads the way in Cloud Computing for the Enterprise

Almost three quarters (74%) of global organizations across a range of industries are planning to move even more of their systems to the public cloud, according to new studies. Public cloud refers to cloud computing that allows companies to build, operate, and store software and data in off-site, third-party data centers.

The study, which included survey responses from mostly decision makers, found that a plurality of businesses are looking at employing Microsoft Azure rather than going with public cloud market leader, AWS.

34% of respondents indicated that they would employ Microsoft Azure for their cloud solutions.
24% of respondents noted their intention to use VMware.
22% of respondents said their company would pursue AWS for their cloud operations.

Microsoft Azure’s popularity is likely due to Microsoft’s brand recognition as an enterprise software company, as well as its more robust hybrid cloud offerings.

Microsoft is one of the only cloud vendors that offers true, end-to-end, hybrid cloud options, managing both public and private cloud aspects, notes Tech Republic. And while both Google and AWS offer hybrid cloud solutions, they often outsource their private cloud segment to third parties.
Microsoft is well known among businesses as a software provider due to the substantial adoption of its suite of productivity offerings, such as Office 365. As the use of cloud becomes normalized, this exposure within the enterprise is likely to help it close the gap with AWS within the broader market.

Still, for many larger legacy companies, the public cloud is still relatively new territory. Concern over data security, largely wrought from a lack of information, means that many organizations are employing hybrid cloud strategies, rather than moving all of their data across to the public cloud. 93% of respondents said that if security were better they would invest even more in cloud solutions.

-BI Intelligence

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