Three cloud computing trends for 2015 and beyond

With cloud computing becoming increasingly popular, here are our top three predictions for what you can expect to happen with it this year and in the years to come:

1. Cloud spending will continue to rise

It will surely come as no surprise to you that cloud spending will continue to rise in 2015 and beyond. This report by RackSpace (http://core0.staticworld.net/images/article/2014/09/rac_cloud.adoption_infographic_rnd03-100441764-large.png) predicts that in 2015, small and medium businesses will spend around $10 billion dollars more on cloud computing solutions than they did in 2014. Other experts are also predicting that more of information technology budgets will be dedicated to implementing and managing cloud solutions, which will stimulate a spike in overall cloud spending in the coming years.

2. New developments in cloud security

It’s no secret that in today’s economy, data is king. Big data was definitely one of the business buzzwords for 2014, and now more and more businesses are realising the importance of collecting and analysing it, and the effect that it can have on marketing, sales and overall growth. The one thing many businesses are worried about when they look to migrate to cloud based solutions is security, and rightly so – many are worried that their data could fall into the hands of a business rival or cybercriminals. Whilst cloud storage solutions are an extremely safe and secure way to store your data, you can expect to see even more developments in cloud security over the coming years. Many experts are predicting that a wave of new cloud security solutions will hit the market in 2015, including new developments in security for emerging hybrid cloud solutions. In fact, Forbes predicts that this year spending on security development will increase by around 46% (http://forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2014/11/26/computerworlds-2015-forecast-predicts-security-cloud-computing-and-analytics-will-lead-it-spending/), with a large amount of that devoted to the cloud.

3. Hybrid cloud solutions

2015 will also see the emergence and popularisation of what have been called ‘hybrid cloud solutions’. This is where an organisation uses a mixture of both private and public cloud solutions for their data and applications. These hybrid cloud solutions offer organisations more flexibility, as they allow businesses to choose which specific cloud services they want to use for different applications. This will become more popular in the coming years, and IT experts predict that by 2017 this hybrid model will be in use in around 50% of all businesses.

Three cloud computing trends for 2015 and beyond

Amazon gets into hosted email with WorkMail

Joining the hotly contested hosted email solution market, Amazon is taking on the likes of Gmail for businesses and Office 365 with a new service called WorkMail. There are a few differences to its rival products; for a start, WorkMail allows businesses to choose on which set of Amazon AWS servers their data lies, which will help keep them within their jurisdiction and stay compliant with local data privacy laws. Something that may or may not be an advantage, depending on the level of enterprise security, is that WorkMail lets businesses manage their own sets of encryption keys.

The product is available now across the US and Europe, and is likely to roll out globally soon. This expansion will also help to cut transfer times. WorkMail costs $4 per user per month (pupm), or can be bundled with WorkDocs for document sharing and a collaboration suite for $6 pupm. It can sync with anything that uses ActiveSync, including Outlook on PCs. While Amazon may be dominating in cloud computing services, it is falling behind in adoption by enterprises for the routine tasks of business – especially when it comes to smaller businesses. So WorkMail and WorkDocs are part of a concerted effort to get those users interested in AWS, S3 and EC2, where Amazon has so much power and can offer opportunities for companies to exploit.

The trouble is that users are now happy with vibrant and full-spectrum products, like Google Docs, Outlook, OneDrive and Office 365, which all leave Amazon’s barebones and piecemeal approach looking rather hollow. We’ll find out in coming quarters just how much AWS makes for Amazon, as the company changes its reporting methods, but it is hard to see WorkMail adding more than pocket change to the numbers.

Does WorkMail sound like an option for your business, or are you already happy with your current product and unlikely to move unless there is an obvious and significant advantage? We wonder what Amazon will offer next to attract customers, but we think there’s an uphill battle ahead.

Amazon gets into hosted email with WorkMail

Public cloud reliability rankings revealed

Cloud computing is on the rise. With more and more of us relying on cloud services for business and personal use, cloud computing solutions are having to adapt to increased levels of use. 2014 saw cloud become more popular, and make lots of changes to its functions, but just how well are the public cloud solutions coping? A survey conducted throughout the year by cloud computing website tracker Cloud Harmony tested the performance of a number of public cloud solutions, arriving at total downtimes, outage incidents and uptime percentages for all those tested.

The survey tested the reliability, performance and consistency of over 30 different public cloud computing options, and came to some interesting conclusions. Out of the 30 different solutions tested, which ranged from major corporations like Google and Amazon to smaller cloud operations like Akamia and Zettagrid, the top two might not surprise you. You’ve probably guessed it already, but Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform topped the list, boasting consistently impressive performance levels and very few major outages. In fact, in the period tested by Cloud Harmony, Amazon Elastic Computer Cloud, which powers its Web Services, recorded only 20 different outages, totalling a little over two and a half hours of overall downtime throughout the year. This means that for the whole of 2014, Amazon Web Services boasted an uptime percentage of 99.074% – rather impressive. Google Cloud Platform’s statistics are even more impressive though. During 2014, users of Google’s public cloud only experienced 14 minutes of outages, giving it an uptime percentage of 99.9996%.

CEO of Cloud Harmony, Jason Reed, said of the survey: “The more established players are fine-tuning their systems and becoming quite stable”. He commented on the performance of AWS, which he said, “has been providing cloud services longer than anyone in the market” and is used by Google to run its cloud services. He praised their “long track record of managing a reliable distributed system”.

If you need advice or information about cloud computing or cloud and remote backup and storage solutions for your business, contact us at Oswin today.

Public cloud reliability rankings revealed