For ultimate performance, and peace of mind, go multi-cloud

Companies everywhere are increasingly not only migrating their in-house networks to one cloud computing service, but to several of them. The reason? To drastically slash the risk of something going wrong and losing invaluable data, and to improve performance and reliability.

We all know that the major cloud providers, such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Salesforce, bend over backwards to tell us how secure their services are and that nothing will ever happen to bring them crashing down. But that’s exactly what happens every now and then. Microsoft’s Azure cloud service was the most recent victim of a widespread outage that affected large numbers of its clients – and in business, as in life, there are just no guarantees.

All it takes is a loose cable or a hard disk that stops working and a company’s critical online operations come to a sudden and distressing halt. That’s not even taking other major risk factors into account, including fierce storms that knock out power supplies and cause infrastructure damage, and the ever-present threat of cyber-attacks that have become a devastating reality for some companies around the world.

When systems go down and a firm can’t email or use messaging services, as well as critical programs and apps, it all spells disaster – especially if they’re running an ecommerce operation. Customers will lose trust in the company and quickly go elsewhere.

The answer: the multi-cloud

Using different cloud computing services can greatly benefit companies in other ways too, such as the speed that web pages load on PCs and mobile devices. It’s hugely important for online operations that pages load in a second or two, because that’s what users expect, according to recent research, and slow sites won’t do much for companies in terms of their search engine rankings.

Developing a multi-cloud strategy also allows companies to take advantage of the different features of a number of cloud services – as not all of them are the same – and improve their own operations, including managing how traffic is routed and handling large volumes of server requests.

Preventing disruption and enhancing services is what the multi-cloud, and every firm, is all about.

For ultimate performance, and peace of mind, go multi-cloud

How the Internet of Things could affect your business

There’s been a lot written about the Internet of Things (IoT), but as far as your business, its needs and prospects are concerned, it boils down to five areas that may change or benefit your organisation. They are represented by the five key connection points along the IoT chain, between the things and your business. Some companies will be able to address only one, while a few will span the whole chain to potentially dominate the IoT market. Allied to this are key enabling technologies like cloud computing, network security and mobility, all of which will play a key part in the IoT’s success.

Each company needs to ask itself where they fit in, and what technology they need to focus on, or partner with others to offer a solution or business advantage. Here are the five areas you should consider:

Thing-centric usage, where the thing has most of the processing and data. Providers of these will either be massive vendors selling billions or niche makers (perhaps start-ups) selling to enthusiasts, a small market or a particular industry.

Gateway-centric, where the thing remains a relatively dumb device with a gateway device in the field acting as the primary control point. Internet and mobile service providers will play a key role here, helping to link devices.

Smartphone-centric usage is where the user’s smartphone acts as a hub for a range of IoT devices and objects. The Apple Watch and other wearables are likely starting points for most consumers, but businesses will find increasing numbers of them providing data that a company can use to add value or sell products alongside. Developing apps that can access that data is one area that some companies could exploit.

Cloud-centric usage, where most businesses will find value through a cloud service working as the major point of interest. This can be either providing live dashboard information based on data from the things (smart traffic systems, for example) or providing reports, analysis and predictions. Most cloud players are preparing to adopt IoT, but service sellers could create all kinds of products in this market.

Finally, an enterprise-centric focus is where most large and vertical businesses will see value from the IoT, as they control or use the IoT that is anchored to their existing IT systems.

Any one of these areas is currently rife with potential for technology companies to break into this growing market. It could be an idea from a tiny player that is just as relevant as something put out there by the likes of BlackBerry, for IoT security or Nest, provider of IoT home gadgets.

 

How the Internet of Things could affect your business

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

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

Office 365 is now available as a donation to qualified nonprofits

Get anywhere access to familiar Office applications, plus professional email, calendar, HD video conferencing, and more.

Take advantage of the cloud to help your non-profit deliver on its mission.

Microsoft is now offering its cloud-based Office 365 for Non-profits software programme to qualifying non-profits around the world via its software donation programme. The donation is available immediately to eligible organisations in 41 countries around the world, including the UK, and will be extended to a total of 90 countries by July 2014.

Office 365 for Non-profits lets non-profit and NGO staff use its cloud-based service to access files from almost anywhere, whether with a PC, smartphone or tablet. Staff can collaborate using shared applications such as email and shared calendars. Microsoft pledges a 99.9 per cent uptime. Jean-Philippe Courtois, president, Microsoft International, said: “Today we are donating to non-profits and NGOs access to Microsoft’s best-in-class cloud-based productivity and collaboration tools, enabling them to spend fewer resources and time on IT and focus on their missions addressing global issues, such as disease eradication, education and literacy, and environmental sustainability.”

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Office 365 is now available as a donation to qualified nonprofits