Costs of the Cloud
December 15, 2016
The cloud was supposed to save organizations a bundle on servers, but now we learn from Datamation that “Enterprises Struggle with Managing Cloud Costs.” The article cites a recent report from Dimensional Research and cloud-financial-management firm Cloud Cruiser, which tells us, for one thing, that 92 percent of organizations surveyed now use the cloud. Researchers polled 189 IT pros at Amazon Web Services (AWS) Global Summit in Chicago this past April, where they also found that 95 percent of respondents expect their cloud usage to expand over the next year.
However, organizations may wish to pause and reconsider their approach before throwing more money at cloud systems. Writer Pedro Hernandez reports:
Most organizations are suffering from a massive blind spot when it comes to budgeting for their public cloud services and making certain they are getting their money’s worth. Nearly a third of respondents said that they aren’t proactively managing cloud spend and usage, the study found. A whopping 82 percent said they encountered difficulties reconciling bills for cloud services with their finance departments.
The top challenge with the continuously growing public cloud resource is the ability to manage allocation usage and costs,’ stated the report. ‘IT and Finance continue to have difficulty working together to ascertain and allocate public cloud usage, and IT continues to struggle with technologies that will gather and track public cloud usage information.’ …
David Gehringer, principal at Dimensional Research, believes it’s time for enterprises to quit treating the cloud differently and adopt IT monitoring and cost-control measures similar to those used in their own data centers.
The report also found that top priorities for respondents included cost and reporting at 54 percent, performance management at 46 percent, and resource optimization at 45 percent. It also found that cloudy demand is driven by application development and testing, at 59 percent, and big data/ analytics at 31 percent.
The cloud is no longer a shiny new invention, but rather an integral part of most organizations. We would do well to approach its management and funding as we would other resource. The original report is available, with registration, here.
Cynthia Murrell, December 15, 2016
Be Prepared for Foggy Computing
October 31, 2016
Cloud computing allows users to access their files or hard drive from multiple devices at multiple locations. Fog computing, on the other hand, is something else entirely. Fog computing is the latest buzzword in the tech world and pretty soon it will be in the lexicon. If you are unfamiliar with fog computing, read Forbes’s article, “What Is Fog Computing? And Why It Matters In Our Big Data And IoT World.”
According to the article, smartphones are “smart” because they receive and share information with the cloud. The biggest problem with cloud computing is bandwidth, slow Internet speeds. The United States is 35th in the world for bandwidth speed, which is contrary to the belief that it is the most advanced country in the world. Demand for faster speeds increases every day. Fog computing also known as edge computing seeks to resolve the problem by grounding data. How does one “ground” data?
What if the laptop could download software updates and then share them with the phones and tablets? Instead of using precious (and slow) bandwidth for each device to individually download the updates from the cloud, they could utilize the computing power all around us and communicate internally.
Fog computing makes accessing data faster, more efficient, and more reliably from a local area rather than routing to the cloud and back. IBM and Cisco Systems are developing projects that would push computing to more local areas, such as a router, devices, and sensors.
Considering that there are security issues with housing data on a third party’s digital storage unit, it would be better to locate a more local solution. Kind of like back in the old days, when people housed their data on CPUs.
Whitney Grace, October 31, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Is the Cloud Really Raining Dollar Signs?
October 5, 2016
Cloud computing offers people the ability to access their files from any place in the world as long as they have a good Internet connection and a cloud account. Many companies are transferring their mainframes to the cloud, so their employees can work remotely. Individuals love having their files, especially photos and music, on the cloud for instantaneous access. It is a fast growing IT business and Forbes reports that “Gartner Predicts $111B In IT Spend Will Shift To Cloud This Year Growing To Be $216B By 2020.”
Within the next five years it is predicted more companies will shift their inner workings to the cloud, which will indirectly and directly affect more than one trillion projected to be spent in IT. Application software spending is expected to shift 37% towards more cloud usage and business process outsourcing is expected to grow 43%, all by 2020.
Why wait for 2020 to see the final results, however? 2016 already has seen a lot of cloud growth and even more is expected before the year ends:
$42B in Business Process Outsourcing IT spend, or 35% of the total market, is forecast to shift to the cloud this year. 25% of the application software spending is predicted to shift to the cloud this year, or $36B.
Gartner is a respected research firm and these numbers are predicting hefty growth (here is the source). The cloud shift will surely affect more than one trillion. The bigger question is will cloud security improve enough by 2020 that more companies will shift in that direction?
Whitney Grace, October 5, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Axcelerate Focuses on Control and Visibility
June 13, 2016
The article on CMSWire titled Recommind Adds Muscle to Cloud e-Discovery relates the upgrades to the Axcelerate e-Discovery platform from Recommind. The muscle referred to in the article title is the new Efficiency Scoring feature offered to increase e-discovery review process transparency by tracking efficiency and facilitating a consistent assessment. The article explains,
“Axcelerate Cloud is built on Recommind’s interactive business intelligence layer to give legal professionals a depth of insight into the e-discovery process that Recommind says they have previously lacked. Behind all the talk of agility and visibility, there is one goal here: control. The company hopes this release allays the fears of legal firms, who traditionally have been reluctant to use cloud-based software for fear of compromising data.”
Hal Marcus, Director of Product Marketing at Recommind, suggested that in spite of early hesitancy by legal professional to embrace the cloud, current legal teams are more open to the possibilities available through consolidation of discovery requirements in the cloud. According to research, there are no enterprise legal departments without cloud-based legal resources related to contract management, billing, or e-discovery. Axcelerate Cloud aims to promote visibility into discovery practices to address the major concern among legal professionals: insufficient insight and transparency.
Chelsea Kerwin, June 13, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Recommind Enables Easier Oversight into E-Discovery for Legal Industry
February 19, 2016
A recent article, entitled Recommind Adds Muscle to Cloud e-Discovery from CMS Wire, highlights an upgrade to Recommind’s Axcelerate e-discovery platform. This information intelligence and governance provider for the legal industry has upped their offering by adding a new efficiency scoring feature to enable “extensive visibility into the overall e-discovery review process.” Recommind make the updated based on polling their clients and finding 80 percent do not have oversight in regards to the technological competency of their outside counsel:
“Citing the same survey, he added that 72 percent of respondents pointed to insufficient visibility into the discovery practices of their outside counsel — legal professionals working with them but outside the firm — as a major concern. Axcelerate Cloud also eliminates the cost unpredictability that arises with traditional hosting charges with cloud-based e-discovery tools providers and the infrastructure maintenance required for on-premises solutions.”
When insights from big data is what a company is after, stronger cloud-based functionality is often the first step. Reminds us of enterprise search firm Autonomy which was eventually sold to HP. What will be next for Recommind?
Megan Feil, February 19, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Feeding the Google AI Beast and Keeping in Mind, You Are What You Eat
January 13, 2016
The article titled We are All SkyNet in the Googlesphere on Disinformation refers to the Terminator’s controlling A.I., SkyNet, who determines the beginning of a machine age in the movie, and the conspiracy that Google is taking on that role in reality. Is it easy to understand the fear of Google’s reach, it does sometimes seem like a gigantic arm with a thousand hands groping about in cyberspace, and collecting little pieces of information that on their own seem largely harmless. The article discusses cloud computing and its relationship to the conspiracy,
“When you need your bits of info, your computer gathers them from the cloud again. The cloud is SkyNet’s greatest line of defense, as you can’t kill what is spread out over an entire network. Since the magnificent expose of the NSA and their ability to (at least) access every keystroke, file or phone call and Google’s (at minimum) complicity in managing the data, that is to say, nearly all data being collected, it’s hard to imagine the limitations to what any such Google AI program could learn.”
The article ends philosophically with the suggestion that the nature of a modern day SkyNet will depend on the data that it gathers from us, that we will create the monster in our likeness. This may not be where we expected the article to go, but it does make sense. Google as a company will not determine it, at least if literature has taught us anything.
Chelsea Kerwin, January 13, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
There Is a Hole in the Cloud
January 11, 2016
Everyone is running to the cloud to reserve their own personal data spot. Companies have migrated their services to the cloud to serve a growing mobile clientele. If you are not on the cloud, it is like you’re still using an old flip phone. The cloud is a viable and useful service that allows people to access their data anytime and anywhere. Business Insider reveals that cloud usage is heavily concentrated in the US: “Latest Data From The Valley’s Oldest VC Firm Shows One Big Flaw In The Hype Around The Cloud.”
Bessemer Venture Partners is the longest running venture capitalist company in Silicon Valley. To celebrate its 100th cloud investment, it surveyed where the company’s cloud investments are located. Seventy-six of the startups are in the US, eleven are in Israel, and four are in Canada.
“The fact that less than one-quarter of BVP’s cloud investments are in non-US startups shows the adoption of cloud technologies is lagging in the rest of the world. It’s also a reminder that, even after all these years of cloud hype, many countries are still concerned about some aspects of cloud technology.”
Cloud adoption around the world is slow due to the US invents a lot of new technology and the rest of the world must catch up. Security is another big concern and companies are hesitant to store sensitive information on a system with issues.
The cloud has only been on the market for ten years and has only gained attention in the past five. Cell phones, laptops, and using open source software took time to catch on as well.
Whitney Grace, January 11, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Top Trends for Cyber Security and Analytics in 2016
December 23, 2015
With the end of the year approaching, people try to predict what will happen in the New Year. The New Year brings on a sort of fortunetelling, because if companies are able to correctly predict what will happen in 2016 then it serves for positive profit margins and a healthier customer base. The IT industry has its own share of New Year soothsayers and the Executive Biz blog shares that “Booz Allen Cites Top Cyber, Analytics Trends In 2016; Bill Stewart Comments” with possible trends in cyber security and data analytics for the coming year.
Booz Allen Hamilton says that companies will want to merge analytical programs with security programs to receive data sets that show network vulnerabilities; they have been dubbed “fusion centers.”
“ ‘As cyber risk and advanced analytics demand increasing attention from the C-suite, we are about to enter a fundamentally different period,’ said Bill Stewart, executive vice president and leader of commercial cyber business at Booz Allen. ‘The dynamics will change… Skilled leaders will factor these changing dynamics into their planning, investments and operations.’”
The will also be increased risks coming from the Dark Web and risks that are associated with connected systems, such as cloud storage. Booz Allen also hints that companies will need skilled professionals who know how to harness cyber security risks and analytics. That suggestion is not new, as it has been discussed since 2014. While the threat from the Internet and vulnerabilities within systems has increased, the need for experts in these areas as well as better programs to handle them has always been needed. Booz Allen is restating the obvious, the biggest problem is that companies are not aware of these risks and they usually lack the budget to implement preemptive measures.
Whitney Grace, December 23, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Internet Sovereignty, Apathy, and the Cloud
December 21, 2015
The OS News post titled Dark Clouds Over the Internet presents an argument that boils down to a choice between international accord and data sharing agreement, or the risk of the Internet being broken up into national networks. Some very worked up commenters engaged in an interesting discussion that spanned government overreaching, democracy, data security, privacy, and for some reason, climate change. One person summarized their opinion thusly:
“Best policy: don’t store data with someone else. There is no cloud. It’s just someone else’s computer.”
In response, a user named Alfman replied that companies are to blame for the current lack of data security, or more precisely, people are generally to blame for allowing this state of affairs to exist,
The privacy issues we’re now seeing are a direct consequence of corporate business models pushing our data into their central silos. None of this is surprising except perhaps how willing users have been to forgo their own privacy. Collectively, it seems that we are very willing to give up our rights for very little in exchange… makes it difficult to achieve critical mass around technologies promoting data independence.”
It is hard to argue with the apathy factor, with data breaches occurring regularly and so little being done by individuals to protect themselves. Good thing these commenters have figured it all out. Next up, solving climate change.
Chelsea Kerwin, December 21, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Business Intelligence Services Partnership Between Swedish Tech Companies Zinnovate and Yellowfin
November 25, 2015
The article titled Business Intelligence Vendor Yellowfin Signs Global Reseller Agreement with Zinnovate on Sys-Con Media provides an overview of the recent partnership between the two companies. Zinnovate will be able to offer Yellowfin’s Business Intelligence solutions and services, and better fulfill the needs that small and mid-size businesses have involving enterprise quality BI. The article quotes Zinnovate CEO Hakan Nilsson on the exciting capabilities of Yellowfin’s technology,
“Flexible deployment options were also important… As a completely Web-based application, Yellowfin has been designed with SaaS hosting in mind from the beginning, making it simple to deploy on-premise or as a cloud-based solution. Yellowfin’s licensing model is simple. Clients can automatically access Yellowfin’s full range of features, including its intuitive data visualization options, excellent Mobile BI support and collaborative capabilities. Yellowfin provides a robust enterprise BI platform at a very competitive price point.”
As for the perks to Yellowfin, the Managing Director Peter Baxter explained that Zinnovate was positioned to help grow the presence of the brand in Sweden and in the global transport and logistics market. In the last few years, Zinnovate has developed its service portfolio to include customers in banking and finance. Both companies share a dedication to customer-friendly, intuitive solutions.
Chelsea Kerwin, November 25, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
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