_ 13.May. 2014

CLOUD FORBUSINESS

FORECASTGOOD FORNEW CLOUD

P.03CLOUDJARGONBUSTER

P.08F1 RACESAHEAD INCLOUD…

P.15

CLOUD FOR BUSINESS

03raconteur.net twitter: @raconteur

! Hopefully we are all now famil-iar with the benefits of the cloud. The lower capital expenditure, the joy of passing on the job of maintenance to someone else, the limitless scalability – these have been talked about so much it feels almost redundant to rehash them.

So, what’s next with the cloud? What are we going to be talking about for the next five years?

Here’s one debate generating a lot of noise: bespoke app devel-opment on the cloud. It’s in its infancy right now, but the way the cloud works means ordinary firms are going to be able to create their own applications.

Apps for smartphones are already being made in large num-bers on the cloud. Using an online service such as Appery.io, you can drag and drop components via a browser to build your app. Add plug-ins from the online catalogue and hey presto, your app is ready to go. With nothing to download or install, it really is that easy.

Adam Spearing, area vice-pres-ident of Salesforce.com, reckons this approach is about to trans-form the cloud. “A few years ago, app development was dominated by people who were typified by their extreme focus and deep expertise in code and systems. Frequently they had computer science training and tons of rig-orous study time to become an

expert. After all, building apps was complex,” he says.

“Fast forward to 2014 and every-thing you know about app devel-opment has changed. The cloud makes it easier than ever to create great applications, regardless of your background. Anyone can take ideas and turn them into solutions faster than ever before. Kids use Scratch and create interactive apps, while LEGO Mindstorms and Raspberry Pi are bringing them a ‘maker culture’ in engaging ways.

“Businesspeople can create enterprise cloud apps without a professional programming back-ground, too, as sites such as Code-Academy make it easy for non-programmers to learn the logic of coding. And leading platform-as-a-service solutions give employees enough flexibility to build their own apps while ensuring they meet the governance needed by corporate IT.”

Researchers at Gartner estimate that, within three years, 25 per cent of large enterprises will have their own app stores. Cloud-based soft-ware vendor EvaluAgent already offers a workforce optimisation platform which is 80 per cent hard-coded and 20 per cent tweakable.

EvaluAgent managing director Jamie Scott says: “Bespoke appli-cation development is possibly the most compelling reason for firms to move to the cloud, but

many companies are not aware of this. Imagine a world where software can be customised to fit a company’s existing business processes as a standard part of the set-up process, without involving prohibitive charges. This is now already becoming a reality thanks to the cloud.”

Another trend worth paying attention to is the rise of virtual-ised environments for graphically intensive applications. Histori-cally, if you wanted to run Photo-shop or AutoCAD, you needed to do it on your own computer. Will that stay the same? Not according to Nvidia, one of the world’s leading makers of graphics chips and cards.

Nvidia vice-president Greg Estes says: “Previously, cloud offer-ings could not run graphics-rich

programmes such as Autodesk’s AutoCAD and Adobe’s Creative Suite, but we are now seeing more and more companies moving their most 3D-intensive users to a virtual set-up. This allows access to critical applications, any-where, from any device, providing employees with more flexibility as well as eliminating the need for local cumbersome desktops.”

This change could lead to con-sumers gaming on the cloud. Mr Estes forecasts: “It offers freedom from consoles, where service oper-ators can use this technology as the base for their on-demand gaming-as-a-service. This move will lead to a revolution in gaming across any device of any quality, be it a PC, Mac, tablet, smartphone or TV.”

Cost will remain a tricky area for

the cloud. It’s still annoyingly hard to get a full picture on expendi-ture and return on investment. Service level agreements (SLAs) need clearing up too. According to Compuware, 79 per cent of IT professionals believe SLAs are sub-standard and 75 per cent say cloud-providers may be hiding problems, often using holes in the SLA to get away with it.

Security will never stop being an issue for the cloud. And now we have regional legal issues to grap-ple with. Do you want the United States government to requisition your data? What about EU data-protection laws? It is revealing that BT now permits its cloud cus-tomers to locate their data in the country of their choice; and there are 16 to choose from.

One last prediction? The good news stories will just keep com-ing. Such as the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), which switched in-house automa-tion processes over to a hosted system by Redwood Software. The cloud now handles the direct debits, gift-aid paperwork and donor tracking.

Does it work? The RSPB’s data manager Andrew Oldham says: “As a charity, we want to focus our efforts on not-for-profit activity, so it makes a massive difference to us not having to worry about hardware, infrastructure or main-tenance costs. Automation has been monumental in boosting the charity’s productivity.”

No matter how the cloud devel-ops, this is what matters.

Bespoke app development on the cloud is something new that forecasters predict has a bright future, writes Charles Orton-Jones OVERVIEW

NEW CLOUD ON HORIZON AND FORECAST IS GOOD

Businesspeople can create enterprise cloud apps without a professional programming background

DISTRIBUTED IN

STEPHEN ARMSTRONGContributor to The Sunday Times, London Evening Standard, Monocle, Wallpaper* and GQ, he is also an occasional broadcaster on BBC Radio 4 and Radio 2.

TOM BREWSTERFreelance journalist covering information security, whose work has appeared in The Guardian and WIRED, he was named BT Security Journalist of the Year in 2012 and 2013.

DAVE HOWELLFreelance journalist, writer and micro publisher, he specialises in business and technology, and has written for a range of publications and websites.

MIYA KNIGHTSEditor of Retail Technology magazine and website, she also writes and consults for a number of national and industry trade publications and analyst houses.

JOHN LAMBFormer editor of titles including Computer Weekly and Information Week, he publishes Ability magazine on technology for disabled people.

CHARLES ORTON-JONESFormer Professional Publishers Association Business Journalist of the Year, he was editor-at-large of LondonlovesBusiness.com and editor of EuroBusiness magazine.

CAROLINE REIDSport and business writer, she was formerly on the staff of the official Formula 1 magazine.

PUBLISHING MANAGERMichael Kershaw

DESIGN, ILLUSTRATION, INFOGRAPHICSThe Surgery

MANAGING EDITORPeter Archer

PRODUCTION MANAGERNatalia Rosek

COMMISSIONING EDITORCharles Orton-Jones

Although this publication is funded through advertising and sponsorship, all editorial is without bias and sponsored features are clearly labelled. For an upcoming schedule, partnership inquiries or feedback, please call +44 (0)20 3428 5230 or e-mail info@raconteur.net

Raconteur Media is a leading European publisher of special interest content and research. It covers a wide range of topics, including business, finance, sustainability, lifestyle and the arts. Its special reports are exclusively published within The Times, The Sunday Times and The Week. www.raconteur.net

The information contained in this publication has been obtained from sources the Proprietors believe to be correct. However, no legal liability can be accepted for any errors. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior consent of the Publisher. © Raconteur Media

Share and discuss online atraconteur.net

CONTRIBUTORS

IN ASSOCIATION

DISTRIBUTION PARTNERS

CLOUD FOR BUSINESS

raconteur.net twitter: @raconteur raconteur.net twitter: @raconteur 0504

FINANCE

! With internet-connected PC and mobile devices running cloud-based consumer software and services, such as e-mail and social networks, it is easy to see why com-pany finance departments want to capitalise on the same cost-sav-ings, accessibility and convenience afforded their staff at home.

However, this vital line of busi-ness has been comparatively slow to realise the benefits of cloud computing, compared for example to its sales, marketing or human resources counterparts, with their highly distributed and increasingly mobile workforces. A global survey of 2,041 business executives, com-missioned by Microsoft and con-ducted by 451 Research, confirms that 32 per cent of organisations now include a formal cloud com-puting plan as part of their overall IT and business strategy.

A financial services sector study published by Oracle, Accenture and Longitude Research also reveals 68 per cent of 1,275 execu-tives are either planning to use a cloud-based financial accounting system or are already doing so. But they are only likely to subscribe or apply cloud-based software or services in selective situations.

“Cloud is the single most dis-ruptive force in technology,” says Steve Cardell, president of enter-prise services and diversified

industries at HCL Technologies, who runs the IT software and services provider’s enterprise application software practice. “But I would also say that finance has been at the back of the bus. And for good reason – they have a lot more legal and regulatory compliance considerations than some other parts of a business.”

This cautious attitude is slowly beginning to change in response to emerging challenges. Speed of deployment and lower capital costs, for example, are often the primary rea-son a finance department begins to evaluate what the cloud can offer. Hosted IT infrastructure services, for instance, are help-ing finance departments manage seasonal peaks in demand for computing power.

“Budgeting and planning often need a huge amount of IT capac-ity,” says Mr Cardell. “In some cases, the month-end processes can cause IT-based systems to

COUNTING THE COST OF BEING CLOUDLESS Finance departments are playing catch-up in switching to cloud-based accounting systems, as Miya Knights discovers

Machinesin the cloud

Page 06

grind to a halt. So most build for the peak and don’t use that spare capacity the rest of the time or struggle to meet demand during peak periods.” Where data govern-ance and security is often written into service contracts, he adds, “cloud infrastructure can be most helpful for cost-effective opera-tional speed and agility”.

The finance department also has a range of options when it comes to cloud-based software, includ-ing those developed for time and expense reporting, for example. “I call these input applications,” says Mr Cardell. “They are usually the first area

of cloud-based finance software adoption.” Used by management and staff to provide finance with vital operations data, these applica-tions, which can often be accessed through a browser or mobile device, can streamline the gather-ing and dissemination of account-ing information in real-time.

Mr Cardell highlights the core finance function itself as the place where cloud adoption has so far failed to keep pace with the rest of the business. “These applications tend to be highly transactional and are therefore more liable to risk and regulation, such as payroll or

statutory financial accounting packages,” he says.

This is because enter-prise resource plan-ning (ERP) software has historically

required signif-icant invest-

ment and in-house manage-ment

where “there are

just not as many cloud prod-

ucts on the market,” Mr Cardell says. Major vendors, such as Oracle and SAP, have introduced large enterprise cloud-based ERP offerings. But cloud-based vendors, including NetSuite and

Salesforce, are also mak-ing headway in the mid-market.

The finance department of Broadway Malyan made the move to cloud-based accounting soft-ware early. Anne Howard, head of UK finance for the international archi-tecture practice, says it has enabled more effec-tive resource planning, as well as cost-savings

and improved productivity. “The business had already made a move into cloud with Google Apps a couple of years ago,” Ms Howard says. “So we were open to cloud solutions where finding a fit with our global business made cost, flex-ibility and scalability paramount. It means we have no hardware costs and that the software is constantly upgraded. And we can expand access to the systems to our people anywhere in the world.”

She adds that, although security is a major consideration, cloud providers’ systems are often more secure than businesses whose core purpose is not IT related.

Broadway Malyan migrated to Twinfield, integrating the provid-er’s online, cloud-based account-ing suite with the company’s existing customer relationship management system in 2012. Ms Howard says the company worked with Twinfield to develop some specific local functionality, which included handling BACS (Bank-ers’ Automated Clearing Services) and cheque payments. But this was preferable to buying a larger enterprise package with “more functionality than we needed”, she says.

“It’s just been so easy. We have better visibility of what’s happen-ing internationally, where before that would only happen when we physically visited each office to do an audit. And we can now spend the time saved on value-added areas rather than churning out the accounts.” This includes more business-facing analysis of opera-tions, to reveal the least and most efficient projects or most valuable clients, for example. “And we can run reports knowing the data is automatically refreshed,” she adds.

Ms Howard agrees with Mr Card-ell that the main opportunity cloud now offers is around reporting and analytics. “Different business functions can pull external data sources and unstructured data into cloud-based analytic platforms or tools,” he says.

“You can run finance data through Power BI, for example, to produce tables and integrate this dynamically with a presentation, so that the content of the slides changes whenever the underlying data changes.” With benefits like these, it is easy to see why 47 per cent of organisations, surveyed by researchers at Gartner, plan to move their core ERP systems to the cloud within five years.

Problems f loat away in the cloudThe advantages of working in the cloud are just too great to ignore, says Big Red Cloud

sion 2.0 and new licences are needed, you’ll be opening your wallet yet again.

The cloud does away with all of that. A user can log-on via a web browser to have full and immediate access to the very latest version of their accounts software. It doesn’t matter which computer they use. It could be via a tablet. It could be on a PC in an internet café at Narita airport, Japan.

The cloud application provider takes charge of all hardware requirements so there are no serv-ers to buy and no visits from the man with the drill. The cloud provider handles and pays for all the ongoing nitty-gritty, such as upgrades, anti-virus and back-up. Costs associated with these activities simply evapo-rate. Oh, and no electricity bill spikes either – not your problem anymore as you aren’t running a datacentre.

By moving to the cloud you’ll be benefiting from your partner’s technical expertise. They will have a large cohort of dedicated techni-cal staff, way in excess of what an individual firm could justify sus-taining. And cloud providers have access to lavish resources, such as Microsoft Azure’s platform. This is Microsoft’s datacentre offering, which leases mass-scale technical infrastructure to cloud hosts.

Marc O’Dwyer, chief executive of Big Red Cloud, which bases its cloud accounting service on Azure, says: “Microsoft has thrown millions at Azure. It offers incredible resilience, back-up and cost advantages. The power of Azure is now available at the fingertips of small businesses.”

Should your accounts be in the cloud? At first glance this might seem unim-portant. What does it matter? Can’t the IT guys decide the technical stuff like this? Well, yes, they can. But the question of where to host your accounting software is critical.

In addition to the cost considerations, there is a long list of operational ben-efits to the cloud. When you start to grasp the differences between the old-fashioned approach of buying software and installing it on your own equip-ment stored in your office, and the cloud approach whereby all you need is access to the internet, the advantages ought to get you pretty excited.

Let’s start with something basic, like capital expenditure. The old way of using software was to do every-thing in-house. This required firms to splash out on servers to run soft-ware. The bills quickly added up.

The software costs money. And you’ve got to fork out for an IT guy to install the software. He’ll need to maintain it too. Upgrades and patches must be applied. The data must be backed-up, which costs money. You’ll need to make sure your anti-virus system is up to the job.

The expenditure doesn’t end there, as there are hidden nasties, like the cost of ethernet cabling, electricity bills and forking out for a technician to drill holes in your walls to accommodate your bulky kit. And there is possible downtime during upgrades. But when the software maker launches ver-

This means even the smallest firm can have the same technol-ogy at its disposal as the very larg-est. The cloud will change the way your firm works, for the better. There are game-changers. For example, accountants can use the cloud platform to access data in real-time.

Mr O’Dwyer explains: “If you are not in the cloud there is a time-delay. Firms need to download their data to a file and then send that to the accountant. This is not a responsive way to work. But with the cloud, the accountant can look at the financial information at any time of day and always get the very latest picture. This means the accountant can take a more active role.

“They can use our business intelli-gence tools to give advanced informa-tion on debtors days [how quickly cash is being collected from debtors] or to warn executives that cash collection is behind schedule and action needs to be taken. It changes the relationship

between accountants, book-keepers and their clients. It is for this reason we offer free access to accountants and book-keepers.”

The same is true for business-own-ers as real-time information gives more accurate insight into the busi-ness, allowing for faster and more insightful decision-making.

There are additional improve-ments, such as the ability to hot-desk in the office. Workers can use any machine to access accounts. Perhaps you are stuck at home with the kids or need to address an urgent issue when on holiday. With-out the cloud, you are reduced to using some sort of “remote login” third-party application or must wait for someone to download and e-mail you the files you need, which may be out of date by the time you get them. With the cloud you have instant access to everything.

And the old system meant invoices couldn’t be processed until the account-ants had done their work. With the cloud there is no delay. If necessary, there can be an ongoing conversation between multiple parties, all viewing the same accounts from multiple locations.

For fast-growing firms the cloud offers seamless – and limitless – expansion possibilities. You simply aren’t going to hit a point where your IT guy shakes his head and says, “The server is full”. In the cloud, it is com-

pletely scalable and simple to add ten, a hundred or a thousand new staff to an application. With Big Red Cloud an unlimited number of users are allowed, for no extra fee.

Maybe though the biggest pay-off is mind-space. Business-owners need to focus on their core activities. They should not spend valuable time trying to bone up on how a datacentre should be run or whether their software is up to date. The cloud means you can forget about reams of niggling issues forever.

Pick the right cloud partner and you can take your business to new heights. Big Red Cloud founder Mr O’Dwyer says: “Big Red Cloud is simple to implement, works from the get-go and comes with full tel-ephone support. We’re here to help smart modern enterprises make better business decisions and set the foundation for future growth.”

Clarity of mind, lower costs, maxi-mum up-time, automated back-ups, anywhere-access, easy expansion, improved management control and greater security all come as standard in the cloud. It is pretty much impos-sible to achieve anything similar in-house. That is why there is so much excitement about the cloud. You’d be crazy not to take advantage.

For more information, please contact Marc O'Dwyer Tel: 0161 926 8822 Web: bigredcloud.co.uk E-mail: info@bigredcloud.com

The cloud means you can forget about reams of niggling issues forever

THE CLOUD APPLICATION

ON-PREMISE

Large up-front capital infrastructure and installation

costs. Extra irregular payments

Generally one licence per computer with data downloads and manually distributed files

E-mail or physical back-up data exchange with risk of

being out of synch

Server, hardware and infrastructure required

Manual, potential downtime and extra licence costs

Often pay for separate licences

In-house reliability, storage and back-

up issues

Extra licences needed

No capital expenditure to get up and running. Regular and

predictable payments

Real-time information anywhere, anytime with internet connection

Real-time updating of a single data set by client

and accountant

No limits. Accommodates increasing volumes of data

Automatic, with every user on the same version

Included in subscription cost

Major industry specialist delivers the required and secure computing power

Potentially unlimited

FINANCIAL

USERS

BUSINESS ACCESS

ACCOUNTANT'S ACCESS

SCALABILITY

UPGRADES

TECHNICAL SUPPORT

PLATFORM

SaaS CLOUD MODEL

COMPARE IN-HOUSE AND THE CLOUD

UPDATERECORDS

REAL-TIME COLLABORATION

ACCOUNTANT BUSINESS OWNER

SIMPLE AND INTUITIVE INTERFACE

SIMPLE AND INTUITIVE INTERFACE

CLOUD FOR BUSINESS CLOUD FOR BUSINESS

raconteur.net twitter: @raconteur raconteur.net twitter: @raconteur 0706

INTERNET OF THINGS

! Understanding the societal impact of computing and test-ing the possibilities of machines with human-like intelligence have always been passions of Sir Nigel Shadbolt. Yet he recognises the threats concomitant with trusting too much in code, even if they seem like science fiction to some.

It’s only been 12 months since Sir Nigel was knighted for his ser-vices to science and engineering, but his work stretches back 30 years. Over that time, through his psychology and computer science research, he’s seen the inexorable spread of the internet as a force for change and is now keeping a watchful eye on the so-called internet of things.

This will see the spread of con-nected, automated devices, largely operating on their own, suppos-edly for the benefit of the general public. They will be powered by cloud-based systems, again consisting of collections of highly-automated machines, spread across global data centres, with the ability to deal with massive fluxes of traffic – something the growing pool of connected things is expected to deliver. For the aver-age home-user, this means being able to let computers decide how best to manage their energy use to save money or having their fridge send alerts when groceries have reached their use-by date.

But Sir Nigel believes the most successful internet of things pro-jects will initially benefit the emer-

gency services and urban planning groups, as they can take advantage of open data streams. He has been impressed by one initiative using a variety of information sources to place ambulances as close to likely incidents as possible and expects cities to get greener with more efficient energy usage thanks to automated controls.

In a bid to further the benefits of the web for the common man, Sir Nigel and his team at the Uni-versity of Southampton, where he is a professor of artificial intel-ligence (AI) and head of the Web and Internet Science Group, are working on the study and practice of social machines (SOCIAM). The project will determine how to develop distributed, crowd-powered systems that have the potential for profound impact on individuals, businesses and gov-ernments. “We want to make that a routine way in which business is done,” he says.

He also founded the Open Data Institute (ODI) with the forefa-ther of the world wide web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee. The purpose of the ODI is to encourage govern-ment and businesses to open up sources of data for the public good. Yet Sir Nigel believes this idea of openness needs promoting across other areas to ensure the inter-net continues to bring benefits to a wide audience, whether via web browsers, the cloud or con-nected “things”.

In particular, in a “post-Snowden

world” and one in which a handful of companies have massive power over the way the web works, he worries about excessive control over the internet. He frets about “intrusive and exclusive control by any agency”, whether a state agency, such as the US National Security Agency, or an organisa-tion on the scale of Facebook and Google. Despite the intrusions on privacy such entities have brought, Sir Nigel is still hopeful. “The thing that depresses me is when people just sit on their hands and say privacy is dead, get over it. It’s entirely in the hands of our soci-ety,” he says.

His answer is to build account-ability into the internet, by having tracking working for the average user, rather than against them. “We’ve got more computing power than ever; some of it should be devoted to this issue of tracking for our benefit,” he adds. “The way you can do that is doing what’s called ‘accountable computing’, where there’s a trace associated with the flow of data in these systems about where it’s been, who has had access to it.”

Those building the architecture of the internet also need to be

wary of granting machines too much decision-making power through AI. “You have to keep asking yourself, if we keep grant-ing autonomy to these systems to take decisions on our behalf, do we understand the full range of their responses and the side-effects that might have?

“Fundamentally we have to ask at every point where we’re delegating decision-making authority, do we know how to take it back and do we understand the limits of that authority? That’s really crucial,” he says.

While cloud systems have seen failures, for example when Goog-le’s Gmail goes down or Amazon Web Services hosting collapses causing websites to go dark, they still work most of the time. As long as machines are coded responsibly, these systems will continue to operate adequately, says Sir Nigel, and the same goes for other, more contentious technologies, such as weaponised military drones. “You have to put those rules of subservience into the fundamental software systems,” he says.

Sometimes the code giving machines their instructions does

get out of control, so much so that humans cease to understand how they work. “We’ve got this very interesting area of AI called genetic algorithms where you essentially evolve programs,” Sir Nigel says. “Those programs can do things that you stare at as a designer for hours and hours to work out how it’s doing what it’s doing.

“There’s a very good example in electronic design where they had a program to design oscil-lators and amplifiers, simple electronic circuits. They found some of these designs that the genetic algorithms had evolved and nobody could make any sense out of them. The system had learnt to take advantage of really peculiar impurities and facets of the hard-ware and the materials that you would never design for as a human designer. It’s fascinating, but it’s kind of spooky.”

Yet fears of the fictional Skynet, of a world in which machines have taken over, are far-fetched. It should be remembered humans often make fatal mistakes. In many cases, we should trust machines more than an individual with free will and capacity for error, Sir Nigel says.

He concludes: “What we do know is that, in lots of routine kinds of automation, the error rates are much less than when you’ve got human operators there. That’s just a sad fact. People make mistakes more often than our machines do.”

Fundamentally we have to ask at every point where we’re delegating decision-making authority

Smart machines can save time and money in the cloud

PLACING OUR TRUST IN THE MACHINES

A fridge that knows the use-by date of food and appliances which switch off to economise on electricity are just the start of an internet-like network of machines increasingly entrusted to make our decisions, writes Tom Brewster

Brighten upbusiness

Page 12

! Examples of national and regional efforts to embrace the cloud can be found in the United States, Europe, Japan, China, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and many other countries and regions. In the private sector, adoption of cloud services is growing within the banking industry, manufactur-ing, healthcare and in many other large corporations, as well as small and medium-sized businesses.

Despite the simplicity of the idea of information and communica-tions technology services offered as a utility, on demand and pay-as-you-go, the cloud computing model is based on a complex chain of interactions between multiple parties, which operate in different countries and cross jurisdictions.

The complexity and opacity that sometimes characterise the cloud “supply chain” have generated some barriers to faster adoption of cloud computing, including: • Lack of clarity around the defini-

tion and attribution of responsi-bilities and liabilities

• Difficulties achieving accountabil-ity across the cloud supply chain

• Incoherent global, and some-times regional and national, legal framework and compliance Wre-gimes

• Lack of transparency of some service providers or brokers, particularly around security and risk management

• Difficulties in performing inter-nal and external due diligence

• Lack of clarity in service level agreements (SLAs)

• Lack of interoperability• Lack of awareness and expertise.

A key underlying theme in all these is the need for assurance and trust between cloud providers and customers, and generally within the overall ecosystem.

Barriers can be removed. Gov-ernments, cloud service providers and customers should be working collaboratively towards increasing the level of trust in the market.

To this end, the definition of secu-rity control and certification frame-

works, SLAs, standardised contrac-tual terms, and the use of continuous monitoring are key means to provide more transparency and governance to the cloud customer.

The European Commission strat-egy for cloud computing, for instance, is based on three main pillars: 1. Identification of suitable stand-ards and certification schemes 2. Definition of model terms for SLAs, and contractual terms and conditions 3. Definition of common requirements in public sector organisations, and use of public procurement as a market and qual-ity stimulus.

Similar approaches are currently being adopted in the US and Asia-Pacific region. Cloud providers are striving to become more transpar-ent, especially when it comes to security and privacy.

Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) STAR, a voluntary registry where cloud providers can publish the results of their security assess-ment – either self-assessment or third-party audit-based cer-tification – against the CSA best practices, namely Cloud Control Matrix, is a clear example of cloud providers’ willingness to maintain the trusted relationship they have with existing customers and to provide assurance to potential new ones that their service will be sufficiently secure. Assurance is provided by telling customers which are the security controls and measures in place to manage risks to their infrastructures, services and data.

The objective is to put the cus-tomer in a position to compare competing offerings against their requirements, to make informed decisions when choosing the ser-vice they need and to be able verify, during the service delivery phase, if reality matches what was promised.

These are certainly steps in the

right direction and point to the creation of a market where security is a market differentiator, where transparency is the general rule and obscurity the exception. Cloud solution providers have business incentives to be transparent, to share information with regulators, enforcement authorities, as well as current and potential users, about their security practices.

The most obvious business incentive is based on the simple logic that the customer is more likely to buy services only from those providers which provide enough information to effectively manage their risks. In this respect,

the example of an incident man-agement process is very illustra-tive; in fact a cloud customer necessarily needs information and co-operation from the cloud provider to be able to manage an incident properly.

Policy-makers are playing their part by introducing a number of “soft” policy measures, as well as new binding rules on transparency and accountability. We have also seen a more proactive approach of some cloud solution providers who are voluntarily sharing relevant information with the general pub-lic. What is still missing, perhaps surprisingly, is a more active role of cloud service customers.

Cloud Security Alliance is a not-for-profit organisation focus-ing on best practices, standards, research-provider certification and education in cloud computing security. CSA’s activities include the Open Certification Frame-work/STAR Certification, aware-ness and educational campaigns, conferences, seminars, summer schools, webinars, educational papers, guidelines for companies and government, and finally train-ing and professional certification through the CCSK (Certificate of Cloud Security Knowledge).

TRANSPARENCY ANDASSURANCE FORA TRUSTED CLOUD

Share and discuss online atraconteur.net

OPINION

Cloud computing is becoming a mature business model, and many companies and governments around the globe are implementing strategies to embrace cloud services, says Daniele Catteddu, managing director, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, at Cloud Security Alliance

raconteur.net twitter: @raconteur raconteur.net twitter: @raconteur 0908

CLOUD FOR BUSINESS

CLOUD FOR BUSINESS

! When two Help for Heroes web-sites crashed under the weight of traffic following the murder of soldier Lee Rigby in the streets of London, the charity turned to the cloud to make sure it did not hap-pen again.

“Before that I was a bit of a sceptic about the cloud,” admits Charles Bikhazi, head of IT devel-opment at Help for Heroes. “But the move was forced upon us by events – we needed to be able to handle these spikes in demand.”

As cloud services move into the mainstream, companies ranging from the giant Coca-Cola down to the small, corner restaurant are looking to the web to deliver their information and communica-tions technology (ICT). Although

most avoid Help for Heroes’ crash course in technology, many strug-gle to make informed decisions about the cloud.

Marketing hype and the absence of reliable, independent analysis make it difficult for hard-pressed managers to understand an eco-system in which nearly every ICT function from servers and storage to application software and telecommunications has its cloud equivalent.

Underlying the services is a bit-ter commercial struggle involving suppliers that only operate in the cloud and established firms jug-gling their cloud offerings with older products developed for use “on-premise”.

The competition has led to keener prices for some cloud prod-ucts, although comparing services is complicated by the large number of suppliers and the many different ways they have of presenting and charging for their wares.

For example, providers are not above making cloud buyers pay for

resources that they do not need. Organisations may be asked to buy extra disc storage and processor power in order to get the amount of main memory they require.

“Many of these problems stem from [services] that were designed around legacy architectures, which is why we see such dramatic per-formance and cost differences among providers,” claims a study, from cloud company Profitbricks, called The Secret World of Cloud Integration-as-a -Service Pricing.

The industry has created an alphabet soup of jargon to describe its technology. At the top floats Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), the longest established cloud service. In SaaS, software solutions and associated data are held centrally

by one or more suppliers and can be accessed by their customers through any PC with a web browser.

Common business applications – e-mail, human resources man-agement, customer relationship management and accounting – are available as a service from well-known names such as Salesforce, Microsoft and Google. Instead of laying out for a single licence, customers pay monthly for each user, sometimes according to how much time users actually spend on the service.

Although SaaS is the largest mar-ket for cloud computing at present, in the longer term Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is likely to be a more important sector.

PaaS is aimed at business man-agers who want to develop and adapt their own applications. Suppliers provide both the hard-ware and operating systems for running applications, and the tools for developing them. The tools are usually presented as an application stack.

ECOSYSTEM

How the cloud works and interacts with other technology as an IT “community” can be confusing, unless you read John Lamb’s jargon buster

UNDERSTANDTHE CLOUDECOSYSTEM

LOOKING BEHIND THE CLOUD

The industry has created an alphabet soup of jargon to describe its technology

The advantage of PaaS is it makes it much easier to develop new busi-ness processes without involving IT experts. Off-the-shelf services enable managers to develop and adapt business applications with-out incurring high costs and long lead times.

The business of loading up a server with systems, data and software, known as provisioning, is faster in the cloud. End-users are able to select and remove cloud services by themselves. Indeed, many services include software that adds additional resources automatically.

Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is the third main category of cloud service. It is aimed at organisations that want to reduce the amount of money they spend on buying, hosting and supporting their computer servers.

IaaS providers offer comput-ing power on a rental model that IT departments can access instead of buying their own serv-ers and running the risk of having too much or too little capac-ity. Organisations access virtual machines created within suppliers’ datacentres.

A price war has already broken out between major players, such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. In April, Microsoft cut the price of renting virtual machines by up to a third in order to match earlier reductions by Amazon. Not to be outdone, Google has followed suit.

Recent tests of the performance of virtual servers on Amazon EC2, Google Compute Engine, and Microsoft Windows Azure, carried out by InfoWorld magazine, put Google ahead in terms of speed and cost, closely followed by Azure. But that pecking order is likely to change as the suppliers jockey for position.

Amazon and Google’s public cloud services have grown out of the huge server capacity the companies built up to run their own businesses. Microsoft on the other hand is a relative newcomer and has adopted a hybrid strategy with Azure mixing private and public cloud.

There are growing pains. Some service providers suffered outages last year, but that seems unlikely to dent the growth of a business that now sees Amazon installing more server capacity each day than its entire business required to run a decade ago.

Few organisations of any size have moved their ICT entirely to the cloud; most manage a mixture of existing software and hardware

on their premises together with new cloud services.

They must also choose between buying public cloud services that are shared with other users and building their own private cloud. Many users opt for a hybrid approach, running a mixture of public and private cloud services.

For example, Help for Heroes is keeping its all-important database of donors in-house for the moment and relies on its cloud supplier Rackspace to provide additional computing power when needed.

However, in future Mr Bikhazi is looking to expand Help for

Heroes’ use of the cloud. Projects include introducing cloud-based customer relationship manage-ment and adopting Microsoft’s Azure, which provides both IaaS and PaaS resources.

Help for Heroes will also take advantage of the free access to Office 365, the SaaS that Microsoft offers to not-for-profit organisa-tions to run e-mail and PowerPoint applications online.

Managing a transition like this can be tricky. “Businesses can find themselves cobbling together end-to-end processes as a result,” says Jez Back, cloud expert at manage-ment consultancy Deloitte UK.

Recently, cloud brokers have set up shop to aid the process. Brokers combine technology, consulting and buying power. They act as middlemen between business users and cloud suppliers, putting together packages of services.

Security remains one of the hottest issues for cloud users. National Secu-rity Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations about the extent of covert data gathering by security services in the United States and the UK have undoubtedly affected corporate attitudes to the security of cloud computing.

Around two thirds of organisa-tions not currently using cloud feel the revelations have pre-vented them from moving their ICT into the cloud, according to the NSA After-shocks survey by the Japanese communications company NTT.

Many are looking for reassur-ance about where their data will be stored in increasingly global networks of cloud datacentres.

But looking ahead the cloud is likely to provide fewer shocks. It will become more transparent as suppliers fine tune their services and terms of business. Mean-while, customers will buy with a greater certainty of what they will be getting.

Share and discuss online atraconteur.net

CLOUD SERVICE MODELS NUMBER OF PROVIDERS

DATABASE, WEBSERVER, DEVELOPMENT TOOLS...

VIRTUAL MACHINES, SERVERS, STORAGE,

NETWORK...

THE CLOUD PYRAMID

CRM, E-MAIL, VIRTUAL DESKTOP, COMMUNICATION,

GAMES...Software-as- a-Service

Platform-as-a-Service

Infrastructure-as -a-Service

CLOUD CLIENTS - APPS,BROWSERS,MOBILES

PUBLIC CLOUD SERVICES, WORLDWIDE (US$M)Source: Gartner 2014

MOST POPULAR

LEAST POPULAR

WHICH SERVICES ARE YOU USING IN THE PUBLIC CLOUD OR THE PUBLIC PORTION OF YOUR HYBRID CLOUD?

42% Collaboration software

42%IaaS

39%Disaster recovery

56%Cloud storage

62%SaaS

23% Cloud-based

network management

26%Business intelligence

21%Security-as-a-Service

21% Hybrid cloud integration

13%Desktop-as-a-Service

SaaS

PaaS

IaaS

PUBLIC, PRIVATE OR HYBRID CLOUD STORAGE?

35,7

77

2,49

2 22,3

74

3,60

4

9,20

8

132,

605

49,0

60

5,04

5 38,7

20

7,19

9 25,1

17

214,

313

53,5

53

5,95

7

45,5

03

8,71

8 32,8

02

253,

436

20152013

Cloud business process services TOTAL

2014

Cloud application infrastructure services TOTAL

Cloud application services TOTAL

2016

Cloud management and security services TOTAL

2017

Cloud system infrastructure services TOTAL

2018

Public cloud services TOTAL

58,8

43

6,91

2

52,9

11

10,1

36 41,8

26

293,

918

THOUSANDS OF APPLICATIONS IN

THE CLOUD

FEW CLOUD PLATFORMS

ELITE GROUP OF PROVIDERS

SCALABILITY

SECURITY

PERFORMANCE

RELIABILITY

COST

PUBLIC CLOUD PRIVATE CLOUD HYBRID CLOUD

Very high Limited Very high

Good, but depends on the security measures of the service provider

Most secure, as all storage is on-premise

Very secure; integration options add an additional layer of security

Medium; depends on internet connectivity and service

provider availability

High, as all equipment is on-premise

Medium to high, as cached content is kept on-premise, but

also depends on connectivity and service provider

Very good; pay-as-you-go model and no need for on-premise

storage infrastructure

Good, but requires on-premise resources, such as datacentre space, electricity and cooling

Improved, since it allows moving some storage resources to a pay-

as-you-go model

Low to medium Very good Good, as active content is cached on-premise

Source: TechTarget 2013

Source: Raconteur

40,2

07

3,33

0 27,3

21

4,64

3

13,3

41

157,

776

44,5

55

4,14

3 32,6

46

5,83

0

18,5

85

184,

537

CLOUD FOR BUSINESS

11raconteur.net twitter: @raconteur10 raconteur.net twitter: @raconteur

! Over the past few years, more businesses have discovered the benefits of using the cloud to pro-vide elements of their IT infra-structure. Often the initial deci-sion will have been based around cost efficiencies and the attraction of not having to pay large upfront costs, but for many the cloud has also been a source of innovation that has helped to drive organisa-tional growth or change the way in which they operate.

One of the biggest advantages has been the ability to experiment with new offerings without hav-ing to commit to costly projects. “Many business leaders will tell you that true innovation is try-ing out different ideas and cloud computing has broken down some of the traditional cost barriers that can prematurely halt this kind of trial and error,” says Andy Barrow, technical director at ANS.

“If a small enterprise is develop-ing a smartphone application or website for particular territories, public cloud providers like Ama-zon or Google can be used to build a presence and roll out a campaign quickly, while only paying for the cloud provision that they need in each of those territories.”

Others have found more efficient ways of working on the back of being able to access information from almost anywhere, across a range of devices. “Physical location no longer matters, so the best tal-ent can be sourced wherever they are to create unique, global teams based on expertise,” says Pete Bax-ter, vice president at Autodesk UK. “The cloud is enabling businesses to do what they couldn’t do before.”

The ability to access software through the cloud is also helping IT departments provide extra resources or functionality to busi-ness teams, without physical or geographic restraints. “Cloud plat-forms are allowing thousands of point solutions to be developed by IT and the business alike,” says Steve Cardell, president of enterprise services and diversified industries at HCL Technologies. “This is a hotbed of innovation and creativity, bringing the potential to enrich every job role.”

AGILITY AND INNOVATION

CASE STUDY

CASE STUDY

TRACING SUCCESS TO THE CLOUD

GETTING A CAFFEINE BOOST

Demand-generation marketing agency Trace-point started up three years ago and decided not to own any server hardware, but instead to rely on the cloud. The business saw immediate practical benefits, particularly around sharing files with clients and staff, but has also used the cloud to help it become more innovative and responsive, to both its own needs and those of clients. Company founder James Cox says the real light-bulb moment was when the business switched from a traditional accountancy model to a cloud-based package. “Although we were quite quick at getting invoices and expenses across to the accountants, it would take four or five weeks to get financial information back into the business,” says Mr Cox. “Now we can close our books five days after the end of the month, and very quickly

see which activities are producing the best results and which need some attention.”The cloud model has also helped the company compete with much bigger operators by enabling it to access a range of software packages to offer clients. “These bring together data silos, in places such as Google Analytics, customer relationship management or social media software, and con-nect it all together,” he says. “It was always much more difficult to link up different parts of the busi-ness when things weren’t in the cloud.”Like Mr Milligan, Mr Cox attributes much of his business’s success to this way of working. “We wear it as a badge of honour that we have never lost a client and we couldn’t have grown as we have without delivering a tangible impact to their businesses,” he says. “We couldn’t have done that without the cloud.”

For Andy Milligan, founder of consultancy firm Caffeine Partnership and author of Brand It Like Beckham, the cloud has come to epitomise the innovation his business stands for. “When we first set up, we wanted to be an unconventional consultancy so we looked at what we would do differently,” says

The cloud is enabling businesses to do what they couldn’t do before

This ability is helping organisa-tions embrace trends, such as big data, modelling and simulation, and 3D animation, says Professor Sian Hope, chief executive of HPC Wales. She gives the example of architectural visualisation firm iCreate, which has used the pro-cessing power of supercomputers based in the cloud to improve details of its animations and reduce the amount of time it spent rendering them. “This increased quality, alongside faster produc-tion speeds, allows the company to compete more effectively in a global market, taking on larger and more ambitious projects, and pro-viding services to more customers than previously possible,” she says.

But Chris Harding, director of interoperability at The Open Group, a vendor and technology-neutral IT consortium, also has a word of warning, despite acknowl-edging the potential of the cloud as a source of innovation. “The advantages of being able to use resources as and when you need them, and paying only for what you use, often make the decision to use cloud for development a no-brainer,” says Dr Harding.

“But the considerations for long-term operation of systems are very different and cloud is not always the best solution. Do not fall into the trap of relying on the special features that your develop-ment cloud provides, so that it is impossible to move to an in-house or hosted platform, or even to another cloud provider that may be more economic for your produc-tion system.”

INNOVATION IS ASFREE AS A CLOUDFlexibility offered by cloud computing makes businesses more agile and able to innovate without costly commitments to IT infrastructure, as Nick Martindale reports

Mr Milligan. “We thought nimbleness was the key, and to do that we needed people who were really good at thinking smartly and quickly.”By enabling genuinely flexible working, the company’s use of the cloud has helped both recruit the right kind of people and create the conditions in which their natural instincts can flourish. “Our clients tend to be senior leaders and our proposition is giving them experienced businesspeople who will help them to grow,” he says. “You can only do that if you have expert people, and they typically tend to be self-starters and don’t want to be managed in a traditional way.”More practically, the cloud also means staff can be based all over the country, which allows the growing consultancy to respond quickly to new projects. “If a client asks if we can start work tomorrow in Birmingham, Glasgow or even overseas, we can say yes because we’ll have one of our consultant associates who doesn’t live that far away,” says Mr Milligan. The cloud also creates a culture where partnering with other organisations becomes the norm. “The ability to link up with nimble networks allows us to create a much better offering,” he says. “A truly innovative mindset is naturally collaborative.”

sioned by Adapt, 75 per cent do not feel that their cloud provider really understands their business and one in four businesses does not expect their cloud provider to be meeting their business needs within the next 12 months.

The survey, conducted by Easy-Insites on behalf of Adapt in March 2014, comprised 102 respondents from commercial organisations with 200-plus employees in the UK. It discovered that cloud is cur-rently used to support a wide range of requirements. Some 60 per cent of businesses use it to manage diverse workloads from test and development to business-critical applications, with specific com-pliance and governance require-ments and varying infrastructure demands. With this diversity comes natural specialism – you wouldn’t put your low-priority workloads on an expensive extreme perfor-mance platform in the same way you wouldn’t buy a Ferrari to tow a caravan – it’s about fitness for pur-pose and the most efficient, appro-priate solutions for the objectives you need to achieve.

What all businesses agree on is the need to drive maximum return from their existing investments and develop a future strategy that is both relevant and the right-fit. So can one provider do it all? Tellingly, some 62 per cent of businesses are already multi-sourcing and 53 per cent of respondents had learnt from experi-ence that a single provider could not meet all their needs.

Provider specialisms can help busi-nesses achieve more, faster. How-ever, managing a range of provid-ers requires considerable time and effort on the part of in-house teams,

Three quarters of UK businesses are now officially “in the cloud” in one form or another. The universal, horizontal benefits of agility and utility are undeniable and compel-ling, but businesses still need to be able to translate these into enable-ment and competitive advantage to really get the most out of their cloud investments.

Not all clouds are created equal, and depending on your drivers, desired outcomes and preferences, some will be a far better fit than others. But in a fragmented, rap-idly evolving provider market that features niche startups, traditional infrastructure providers, telcos and a technicolour array of differ-ent propositions and services, it is hard to be (and stay) well informed. It’s sometimes difficult to know where to go and how to map your changing requirements to individ-ual provider capabilities.

A mismatch is evident between what UK businesses need versus what they actually get from their provid-ers. According to research commis-

forcing investment at both a service management and supplier manage-ment level, and potentially missing out on economies of scale. The indi-vidual providers meanwhile inevi-tably have an incomplete view of the customer, so organisations are not aligned to support their overall long-term growth strategy.

Against this backdrop, the idea of working with a single overall pro-vider that manages these various relationships can be highly appeal-ing. Cloud brokers or aggregators match organisations with providers that can service their needs at a par-ticular point in time, or on a certain cost model. But because the broker/aggregator is a tactical rather than strategic role, their ability to develop long-term relationships that evolve with customer demand is low.

Another option is the cloud inte-grator. Integrators are the advisory conduit between the business and what the complete provider land-scape can deliver. Unlike brokers and aggregators, who simply bundle

ABOUT ADAPT

multi-provider services together to be consumed through one contract, integrators take the long-term part-nership view, comparing providers and clouds through the eyes of your business, and evaluating the poten-tial for specific commercial, opera-tional, technical and compliance gain. Cloud integrators are not cre-ated overnight – it takes years of real-world experience and significant investment in platforms, people and processes to really deliver results.

But the fundamental difference is that the integrator takes account-ability and responsibility for end-to-end ser vice management, bringing together provider, legacy, customer-owned and public hyper-scaler solutions to achieve a set of goals or outcomes. This single pane, comprehensive view reduces complexity, and delivers more meaningful insight and intelligence back to businesses.

The integrator approach empow-ers organisations to maximise their return on investment, and really capi-talise on the breadth of choice and options available, maintaining a per-manently optimised blend of services, solutions and providers that repre-

sent the best fit for delivering busi-ness outcomes for today and tomor-row’s aspirations. This is a marked difference from the traditional out-sourcing concept, under which cus-tomers tend to be locked into three or five-year cycles with little scope for flex and change along the way.

Crucially, it also releases in-house IT teams from managing those rela-tionships, freeing them to focus on getting new products to market more rapidly and delivering real-world ben-efit back to the wider business.

According to the research, almost half (48 per cent) of UK businesses expect to make big changes to their cloud platforms in the next 12 months. If you are one of them, take the time to consider your options carefully. Keep-ing your teams focused on creating business value and outsourcing the effort, worry and uncertainty associ-ated with choosing, migrating to and managing multiple cloud environments might just be the right move for you.

If you’d like to find out more about how a cloud integrator strategy could help your business make the most of the cloud, visit www.adapt.com/extending-your-cloud

Can one provider do it all?The rise of the integrator model helps UK businesses make the most of the cloud, says Adapt's Tom Needs

Outsourcing the effort, worry and uncertainty associated with choosing, migrating to and managing multiple cloud environments might just be the right move for you

“In recent years, financial uncer-tainty has forced tactical decisions – it’s now all about gearing for growth again. A good case in point was a cus-tomer who had been acquired and left with costly out-of-support legacy infrastructure and a requirement to integrate complex core HR and pay-roll systems.

“Our experience meant we were able to take on management of the legacy and, collaborating with the customer, designed creative trans-

Adapt is an award-winning, end-to-end managed services provider and cloud integrator. We help customers make the transition to highly secure, scalable, enterprise-class IT that delivers real-world advantage, ena-bling change and innovation.

formation plans that exploited a mix of public and private cloud services, while moving towards complete integration with the new parent company’s systems. The result – a faster time to benefit and a sizable cost reduction, putting them in a strong position to grow their com-bined market share.”

Kevin LinsellHead of service development Adapt

Adapt services increase agility. Our integrated offering spans the entire IT infrastructure from end-to-end man-agement and cloud services through to colocation, hosting and complex net-working solutions. For more informa-tion, visit www.adapt.com

INTEGRATED CLOUD IN CONTEXT

ONE CLOUD PROVIDER DOES NOT FIT ALL

Use private cloud65%

Use public cloud43%

Use community cloud23%

Use blended hybrid cloud31%

COMPANIES ARE TRYING TO CREATE THE RIGHT CLOUD MODEL TO MATCH THEIR NEEDS THERE IS A MISMATCH BETWEEN WHAT BUSINESSES REQUIRE VERSUS WHAT THEY ACTUALLY GET FROM PROVIDERS

OF UK BUSINESSES ARE OFFICIALLY IN THE CLOUD

75%

USE CLOUD FOR BOTH BUSINESS-CRITICAL AND GENERAL PRODUCTION

ACTIVITIES

60%

ARE USING MORE THAN ONE PROVIDER

62%

AGREE THAT ONE CLOUD PROVIDER CANNOT DO IT ALL

53%

DO NOT EXPECT THEIR CLOUD PROVIDER TO BEMEETING THEIR BUSINESS NEEDS IN 12 MONTHS

DO NOT FEEL THAT THEIR CLOUD PROVIDERREALLY UNDERSTANDS THEIR BUSINESS

Tom Needs Chief commercial officer, Adapt

CLOUD FOR BUSINESS CLOUD FOR BUSINESS

13raconteur.net twitter: @raconteur12 raconteur.net twitter: @raconteur

OPINION

Perception of the cloud is shifting to the best way of moving companies into the new age of digital business

CLOUD FORDIGITAL BUSINESSGregor Petri, Gartner research director, looks into the cloud and the new age of digital business

33

Move from beingan IT builderto a service broker

COMM

ERCIA

L FEATUR

E

The modern chief information officer needs to focus attention on finding new ways to add value to the business, says Dave Allen, NetApp vice president for Northern Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and general manager for UK & Ireland

The things that create real value are the applications which power your business or the products your business creates

modity areas, you can make decisions about how to deal with them. Do you have them delivered to you as a cloud service? Or do you build shared infra-structures that are highly efficient and automated to reduce the costs of running them? Typically this is a dis-cussion focused on operational excel-lence and legislative requirements, rather than technology.

The opportunity for CIOs to add value and competitive differen-tiation to the business increases exponentially as investment shifts from commodity IT to business value IT and new opportunities. According to Gartner, 63 per cent of IT budget is spent running cur-rent IT infrastructure, 21 per cent on meeting the natural growth in application performance require-ments and data, but only 16 per cent on new opportunities, where there is the potential to create the most value.

This is the challenge for a modern CIO: how do you maintain opera-tional excellence while increasing investment on ways to add busi-ness value and exploit your unique data? How do you move from being a builder of IT to a broker of service?

NetApp creates innovative prod-ucts, storage systems and software that help customers around the world store, manage, protect and retain one of their most precious corporate assets – their data.

For more information visit www.netapp.com /uk

The IT market is changing faster than ever. Industry trends, includ-ing cloud, big data, mobile, flash and the software-defined datacen-tre, mean this will only acceler-ate. The landscape is changing for chief information officers (CIOs) as workloads are becoming more dis-tributed and hybrid cloud becomes reality. So, given this complexity, what should CIOs and the rest of us in IT be discussing and thinking about? Where should you be look-ing to save money and where to invest your time?

The things that create real value are the applications which power your business or the products your business creates. With more focus here it’s amazing how much addi-tional value IT can add through aggressive application of tech-nology innovation. An example is accelerating test and development by enabling developers to instantly create database copies. The focus

should be providing high levels of automation and self-service.

Companies are constantly look-ing to exploit data and informa-tion, whether it’s social media feeds, such as the Twitter Firehose which streams 500,000,000 tweets directly to you every day, new ana-lytics tools, such as Hadoop, to mine vast quantities of information for trends and patterns or develop-ing BYOD (bring your own device) strategies to better enable your mobile workforce.

For example, NetApp IT recently deployed a Hadoop solution, which has reduced queries on 24 billion records from four weeks to less than 10.5 hours, accelerating the compa-ny’s ability to respond to customers’ needs. It enabled a previously impos-sible query on 240 billion records in less than 18 hours, further enhanc-ing its proactive service capabilities. A survey by Vanson Bourne shows that 69 per cent of C-level executives cite technology as one of the main reasons why business decisions are not being made quickly enough.

The things IT has to do to sup-port the business are necessary and time consuming, but typically add little value. Ask yourself the question, “If I started today from scratch, what would IT do and not do?”

Once you’ve identified these com-

! For a while, business leader-ship considered cloud comput-ing merely as a smarter way to do IT – with smarter most often meaning faster, better and, espe-cially, cheaper.

The part about the cloud being faster is certainly true. Many a company finds their IT depart-ment is able to respond sig-nificantly faster to their needs by using cloud services. And if not, they gain speed by going rogue, simply bypassing their IT depart-ment and going straight to the cloud themselves.

Cheaper is a different question. Even though cloud providers, such as Amazon Web Services, Micro-soft Azure and Google Compute Engine, continue to lower their infrastructure service prices, many companies find that the cost of infrastructure is only a very small part of their total IT cost. So the use of the cloud is not necessarily mak-ing overall IT significantly cheaper.

In response, perception of the cloud phenomenon is shifting from merely a smarter way to facilitate “business as usual” to the best way of moving companies into the new age of digital business.

Digital has taken the business community by storm. After decades of IT lingering at the bottom of the annual chief executive top ten pri-ority list and cost reduction becom-ing the most discussed aspect of IT in boardrooms across the world, the idea of gaining competitive advantage through digital capabili-

ties is back with a vengeance. Granted, new imaginative

capabilities, such as 3D printing, smarter decisions through big data analysis and the potential of reach-ing out directly to millions of con-sumers through social networking technologies, did more good to the momentum of digital than IT departments finding ways to run their existing enterprise resource planning system “in memory” or “on Amazon”.

This made some argue that digital business should not reside under the current chief of information processing and indeed we are see-ing the new role of a chief digital officer or CDO emerge in many organisations. Some old-school chief information officers (CIOs) may worry that these fast-moving CDOs have the same devastating impact on IT’s role as that other type of CDO, collateralised debt obligation, had on financial markets in the wake of the sub-prime crisis.

Other CIOs cannot wait to embrace the role themselves to get back into making a real differ-ence by using the cloud to run what could be described as “software-defined business”.

Over time, digital business will make digital resources as impor-tant to companies as today’s most mentioned critical success factor – human resources or HR. And just as businesses did not concede day-to-day control over their human capital to a corporate staff depart-ment, neither should we expect them to do so with digital.

Already we see lines of busi-ness taking a more active role in defining their digital future. For example, by bringing architects and developers back into their line organisation. That would mean the emergence of “rogue” or “citizen” IT is not a passing fad, but a sign of times to come.

To manage this change, corpo-rate IT will need to eschew its traditional service provider role for a brokering role, similar to the role of central HR in corporations, to provide the crucial governance, compliance and business continu-ity still needed in the ever-faster moving digital economy.

Adverts for cloud computing are usually about as exciting as those for a new microwave oven. You can heat food up quicker, says one; no updates to install and no big capital expenditure, says the other. These days we all know there’s more to life than microwaved food. And the same is true for the benefits of the cloud. Five years ago the internet was like the high street with companies selling to consumers. Now it’s central to almost every company’s business, connecting them with suppliers, employees, customers and partners. Stephen Armstrong has our top ten ways the cloud helps businesses with some shop-fresh examples…

TOP TIPS

CLOUD CAN BRIGHTEN UP YOUR BUSINESS

TENWAYS

John Winsor, chief innovation officer at Havas and chief executive at Victors & Spoils (V&S), says the cloud is restruc-turing the ad agency model. V&S uses a global team of freelancers paid per job. Xenios Thrasyvoulou, founder and chief executive of PeoplePerHour, argues that crowdsourcing talent is the future for flexible firms. The online marketplace lets small firms advertise projects; freelancers respond.

04 DIFFERENT WAYS

TO EMPLOY

06SHARING INFORMATION

Newham University Hospital NHS Trust serves a population of some 240,000 in East London. The advent of tablets, smart-phones, wi-fi and the cloud means doctors and nurses can access data instantly wherever they are. David Bolton, director of public sector market development for QlikTech, says the company’s software speeds up production of reports and shares information via an online dashboard.

Locking all suppliers into your supply chain allows a free flow of information, measurement, and cost and inventory control, says Debra Hofman, vice president of supply chain research at research giant Gartner. The company predicts that by 2016 60 per cent of banks worldwide will process the majority of their transactions in the cloud.

01 SUPPLY CHAIN

“Usually it is easy to deploy wherever you want,” says Rob Keenan, head of UK portfolio management at Siemens Enterprise Communications. London agency James Park Associates designs first-class seats for air opera-tors, including Singapore Airlines, and uses the cloud to enable its Asian and London offices to collaborate on design, thus effectively operating a 24-hour working day.

07WORKING FASTER

Sales software hotshot Salesforce measures how influential employees are on the company’s cloud-based internal social network Chatter. Chief executive Marc Benioff invites the company’s top 20 influencers to the quarterly off-site retreat with top exec-utives. “We estimate we have 25 per cent fewer meetings, 26 per cent less e-mail and access to 39 per cent more information using Chatter to commu-nicate and collaborate internally,” the company says.

09COLLABORATION

Many large servers run at less than 30 per cent capacity, according to Peter Zonneveld, co-founder and chief executive of Greenclouds. The com-pany buys surplus computing power from those with too much and sells to those with a temporary need. In Brazil, startup Audio Monitor links to the country’s radio stations, via the cloud, and prompts artists when their tunes are played to maximise royalties.

03NEW BUSINESS MODELS “For business facing a changing mar-

ket and client needs, the cloud brings incredible responsiveness,” says Jacqueline Davey, IBM vice president, cloud. The company helped online game developer Mojang, of Minecraft fame, spin up its cloud presence for its new Battlefield 4 game. “Using the cloud allowed us to add an extra 25,000 players in just four hours,” Ms Davey says.

02MARKET RESPONSIVENESS

The cloud’s real-time data record-ing and response allows TP Vision, a joint venture of Hong Kong-based TPV Technology and TV manufacturer Philips Electronics, to measure view-ers’ habits and fine-tune programming suggestions for Philips Smart TV cus-tomers. The company can personalise programme suggestions as people view and target adverts with the preci-sion of a search engine.

08DATA

GATHERING

Cloud-based software company CallidusCloud has developed MySalesGame, pioneering the gamification of sales. MySalesGame sets levels and missions into a company’s customer relationship management software, such as sales staff adopting best practice, reaching milestones and hitting targets. Those finishing a mission or a level get rewards from peer recognition on social collaboration platforms or a perk.

05 NEW WAYS

TO MOTIVATE

Green eMotion is the European Union’s continent-wide bid to promote the use of electric cars. The system has to link 43 coun-tries, allow newcomers on stream, enable any GPS device to connect to the system and map electric car recharging docks across Europe. “This would have been completely impossible before the cloud,” says Jacqueline Davey, IBM vice president, cloud. “Using the cloud, however, the system can grow as large as it needs.”

10SCALABILITY

CLOUD FOR BUSINESS CLOUD FOR BUSINESS

15raconteur.net twitter: @raconteur14 raconteur.net twitter: @raconteur

The complexity and volume of data generated by sophisticated racing cars means cloud computing could soon be in pole position for Formula 1, writes Caroline Reid

As enterprises of all sizes continue to adopt cloud-based services, Dave Howell asks is security still a major concern?

SKY’S THE LIMIT FOR F1 AND THE CLOUD A CLOUD OF

INSECURITY?

FORMULA 1

! When millions of dollars are spent to gain a mere tenth of a sec-ond advantage, it’s little surprise that Formula 1 teams are looking to high-tech solutions, such as cloud computing, for the future direction of the sport.

Competing in F1 is a costly busi-ness. The leading teams spend more than $400 million each to propel two cars around a track for a few hours 19 times a year. Every team must design and build its own chassis and, with only 2.5 seconds a lap separating the champions from the losers, getting the technologi-cal advantage is crucial.

The most visible components may be the sponsor-covered chas-sis and wheels, but it’s what the eye can’t see that makes the cars so costly. Incorporating on-board computing power in an F1 car presents its own challenges and increases costs.

To make sure the bodywork is as slender and aerodynamic as pos-sible, all the wiring, electronics and cooling systems must be packed in a tight space around the engine – more difficult than it sounds when there’s 1.25km of wiring and up to 150 on-board sensors to be installed.

Each sensor gives readings up to 1,000 times per second and data is

sent wirelessly from the car to the pits. This gives around 1.5 billion samples of data from each race and these are monitored in the garage while the car is on track, then analysed afterwards by supercom-puters back at the team’s factory. Leading teams take around 20 engineers to races just to work on telemetry read-outs, with a further 30 back at base working simultane-ously. In this environment, quick transfer of data is crucial.

This is the reason why cloud computing is starting to play a major part in the world of F1, long before the racing car even gets on the track. Red Bull Racing has won both the drivers’ and constructors’ world championships for the past four years, and cloud computing is playing an ever-increasing role in the team’s quest for victory.

Its head of technical partner-ships Alan Peasland explains: “At Infiniti Red Bull Racing we have

a private on-premise cloud that we use for a variety of simula-tion and computing tasks. In the design and development of the car, we use our high-performance computer (HPC) to run compu-tational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations and finite element analysis in order to support the core design activities.”

This affects areas from the evalu-ation of aerodynamic performance to the refinement of the mechanical

properties of a design, such as its strength and fatigue life. Most of the computing power running within Red Bull Racing’s HPC is consumed in processing the hundreds of simulations performed by CFD in a typical week. Running parallel to this, the HPC also analyses the data produced as the team tests scale models in its wind tunnel.

To accomplish this it has the sup-port of some of the world’s leading tech companies. Suppliers include

! The cloud is transforming every aspect of the business community. Surveys of business owners con-sistently conclude that the cloud now plays a significant role in their ability to compete and realise their strategic goals. Security though, continues to be a concern, but is fast receding as a major barrier to the adoption of more cloud services.

Cyber attacks have been made on cloud-based services that many enterprises have come to rely upon. Twitter, Dropbox, LinkedIn and Google Docs have all had their security compromised over the last few years. The Heartbleed secu-rity scare that impacted on many cloud-based services was the last to hit the headlines.

According to researchers at The Verge, as much as one terabyte of data per day is being stolen from businesses, academic institutions, the military and governments.

David Emm, senior security researcher at Kaspersky Lab, says: “Recently, trust in cloud storage has been undermined somewhat by the Snowden [NSA] leaks and growing fears about privacy. I think it’s too early to say whether this will affect the take-up of cloud services significantly. Although it may well ensure that security issues become a key part of the negotiations between cloud pro-viders and prospective clients.”

With Andy Barrow, technical director at ANS commenting: “Security concerns are often a scapegoat used by IT teams who are adverse to change, rather than a legitimate concern. In reality, working in the cloud means busi-nesses can access a level of data security that may be cost-prohibi-tive to invest in themselves.”

Findings from the Cloud Indus-try Forum (CIF) reveal busi-nesses are pushing ahead with cloud adoption despite security concerns. “Around 69 per cent of businesses express concerns about security, yet the overall cloud adoption rate has increased rapidly from 48 per cent in 2010 to

69 per cent in 2013,” says CIF chief executive Alex Hilton.

As the cloud becomes ubiquitous, business owners need to appreci-ate that the perimeter of their organisation’s security has shifted from their on-site servers and into the cloud. In the brave new world of cloud-supported business, a fresh appreciation of security

is rapidly developing across the entire business environment.

To ensure high levels of secu-rity, businesses need to partner with cloud service vendors that can demonstrate they meet cur-rent security standards, such as ISO 27001, ISAE3402/SSAE16 and CSA STAR. Carrying out due diligence when adopting cloud services is vital to ensure robust and reliable data security.

When cloud security is consid-ered, it seems that experience breeds confidence. As businesses gain more knowledge and see secu-rity concerns are being addressed, security becomes less of a pressure point to more cloud adoption.

“Overall, the security risks still exist, but companies are willing to accept them to make savings and to be more responsive to demands,” says Dr Gerhard Knecht, head of global security services and com-pliance at Unisys. “Others delay the large-scale implementation until the first wave of security breaches and remedial action has

As businesses gain more knowledge and see security concerns are being addressed, security becomes less of a pressure point to more cloud adoption

Cloud computing is starting to play a major part in the world of F1, long before the racing car even gets on the track

IBM Platform Computing, Ansys, iLight, AT&T and Siemens PLM who, according to Mr Peasland, “all contribute to the overall solution that takes us from initial concept design, through simulation and analysis, and into manufacture”.

All this takes place long before a car turns a wheel on a track some-times half way around the world from Red Bull Racing’s Milton Keynes base. Calculations done in the cloud are key to making sure everything runs smoothly.

“Performance on track will be influenced not only by the new components we send to each race that help to tailor the car for the specific circuit, but also how quickly the car can be optimised during the race weekend,” says Mr Peasland. Information travels in the other direction too. “Data captured on-car during practice sessions will be transferred back to the factory, by virtue of our AT&T Global EVPN Network, where it will then be analysed by our team of experts.”

Perhaps surprisingly, at the moment cloud computing is little used for processing data during the race, and Red Bull Racing and the other teams instead transport heavy servers to each race.

Share and discuss online atraconteur.net

DATA SECURITY

been taken care of. This is akin to companies using the ‘never install version 1.0 in your company’ approach.”

Ultimately the cloud services that any business adopts must instill high levels of confidence and trust, as Rajinder Tumber, security consultant at Auriga, concludes. “Customer trust is of paramount importance to business owners. Without trust, customers will seek business with a rival competitor. Therefore, businesses need to ensure they are using secure and trustworthy cloud-based services and platforms, as well as imple-menting and embedding effective security practices to better protect customer data,” he says.

There is little doubt that the cloudscape offers massive value and flexibility that all enterprises can leverage. The cloud itself isn’t necessarily inherently insecure. If a sensible approach to security pol-icies is taken, cloud-based services can be securely managed to deliver the benefits they clearly offer.

Security concerns will prevent a wholesale move to the cloud for some time yet, but the advantages the cloud presents far outweigh any security concerns.

Security specialist Graham Clu-ley says it best when he observes that the cloud really means “some-body else’s computers”. In this context, business owners consid-ering the cloud and its security should simply ask themselves if they are comfortable placing their data on these systems?

“We have our own software-defined on-premise cloud,” he says. “The main reason for doing so is due to the sensitive nature of the data being processed and stored, and also the speed of access to this data.

“Formula 1 is a high-paced, time-restricted environment in all areas of the business, so being able to have real-time access to large volumes of data is crucial in order to perform complex simu-lations during race weekends that can ultimately deliver increased performance on the track.”

However, Mr Peasland believes cloud technologies are set become more important in the near future. “As cloud technology advances and with the introduc-tion of hybrid clouds that can support our peaks in demand, it’s highly likely that this will be an area of development for the team,” he says.

Bill Peters, chief information officer of Caterham F1, says his team is considering migrating IT to the cloud. “We’re starting to look at potentially having our supercomputer capabilities as a service that we buy, as opposed to something we have in-house. Similarly, if we could have reli-able enough communications to trackside, there’s no reason why you couldn’t host all your track-side systems in the cloud as well, so you wouldn’t need to carry the whole IT circus from track to track,” he says.

It would also help to cut costs and, in a sport where many smaller teams struggle to keep up with the larger outfits’ accelerat-ing budgets, this could be a driv-ing force behind its proliferation. Mr Peasland agrees that “cloud computing, in the right environ-ment and used in the correct way, will most definitely be able to offer cost-savings.” And that isn’t the only way it will change the sport.

He says: “As cloud technology and services mature, it will not only be areas such as CFD and simulation that will benefit, but all other business systems, including telephony and com-munications, design and devel-opment. And it’s our innovation partners, such as IBM Platform Computing and AT&T, who will work with us to move us forwards in this area.”

Formula 1 motor racing teams are driving computer diagnostics in the cloud