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Cloudhosting Feb/March 2017 l www.cloudhostingmagazine.co.uk l £8.50 Where Sold Safe and sound: Fintech goes virtual What's on the cards?: Predicting the year ahead Data centre resiliency: Too much pressure? Scared to innovate: Security concerns hold IT back Cashing in: Metro Bank moves into the Cloud Protection mechanism: Collaboration in the pharma sector INDUSTRY NEWS - USER STORIES - OPINIONS - INTERVIEWS - ANALYSIS
- Page 3 and 4: COMMENT From the Editor This issue
- Page 5 and 6: 26-27 April 2017, Manchester Centra
- Page 7 and 8: NEWS NOVOSCO SECURES SEVEN-FIGURE C
- Page 9 and 10: 2017 PREDICTIONS "For most, the deb
- Page 11 and 12: 2017 PREDICTIONS "The rise of S3 ha
- Page 13 and 14: 2017 COMING SOON www.cloudhostingaw
- Page 15 and 16: CASE STUDY: ASTRAZENECA new Cloud s
- Page 17 and 18: TECHNOLOGY: ENTERPRISE CONTENT MANA
- Page 19 and 20: OPINION: DATA CENTRE RESILIENCY Pre
- Page 21 and 22: CASE STUDY: FISCAL TECHNOLOGIES "It
- Page 23 and 24: TECHNOLOGY: APIS spinning up new we
- Page 25 and 26: EVENT REPORT: CLOUD EXPO EUROPE 201
- Page 28: What if you could store, synchronis
Cloudhosting<br />
Feb/March 2017 l www.cloudhostingmagazine.co.uk l £8.50 Where Sold<br />
Safe and sound:<br />
Fintech goes virtual<br />
What's on the<br />
cards?:<br />
Predicting the year<br />
ahead<br />
Data centre<br />
resiliency:<br />
Too much pressure?<br />
Scared to innovate:<br />
Security concerns hold IT back<br />
Cashing in:<br />
Metro Bank moves into the Cloud<br />
Protection<br />
mechanism:<br />
Collaboration in the pharma sector<br />
INDUSTRY NEWS - USER STORIES - OPINIONS - INTERVIEWS - ANALYSIS
COMMENT<br />
From the Editor<br />
This issue of Cloud Hosting will land on reader's desks and inboxes just a week or<br />
two after Cloud Expo, an event which has grown into the biggest and best<br />
attended trade show of its type in the whole of Europe. The multi-strand expo -<br />
now encompassing Smart IoT, Cloud Security, Data Centre World and Big Data World<br />
as well as Cloud Expo itself - was spread across almost the entire floor-space of the<br />
voluminous ExCel in London's docklands.<br />
The presentation theatres were hugely popular, with large queues outside in advance<br />
of talks from the likes of BT, Google and Microsoft alongside industry specialists such<br />
as Pulsant, Navisite and OVH. Cloud Hosting magazine had staff at the show<br />
throughout both days, and as well as visiting stand and attending seminars we also<br />
managed to sign up a healthy batch of new readers - so if this is your first time of<br />
reading, welcome aboard!<br />
Elsewhere in this issue Claranet unveil new research which suggests that UK IT<br />
departments are more likely than many European counterparts to have concerns about<br />
cloud security - which in turn may be making such organisations 'scared to innovate'.<br />
Ian Furness of Claranet says it's understandable that organisations may prefer to host<br />
applications internally, particularly those associated with high risk information: "But just<br />
because your servers are under your roof, this doesn't necessarily make them more<br />
secure. In fact, if managed and maintained correctly, alternative delivery models - such<br />
as public cloud - are suitable for even the most sensitive data and can bring massive<br />
transformational benefits to organisations."<br />
We also look at the issue of data centre resiliency, something increasingly impacted<br />
by the growth of cloud. Operators face a constant battle of balancing workloads<br />
against available budgets. Many data centre owners choose to over-provision<br />
resources and servers 'just in case' a disaster situation occurs, however this can be<br />
immensely costly. There are other strategies available, as RF Code's Adrian Barker<br />
comments: "It is all about understanding and managing your environment to ensure<br />
reliability. Operational management solutions can provide real-time insight, control and<br />
predictability so data centre managers can solve environmental and operational<br />
challenges with valuable insight, rather than guesswork. Data centre assets need to be<br />
monitored and tracked to maintain performance and guard against technical failure.<br />
Environmental conditions need to be dynamically adjusted with changes in demand."<br />
EDITOR: David Tyler<br />
(david.tyler@cloudhostingmag.co.uk)<br />
NEWS EDITOR: Mark Lyward<br />
(mark.lyward@cloudhostingmag.co.uk)<br />
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(abby.penn@cloudhostingmag.co.uk)<br />
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(josh.boulton@cloudhostingmag.co.uk)<br />
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(christina.willis@cloudhostingmag.co.uk)<br />
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With the likes of Cisco claiming that around 83% of data centre traffic in the next three<br />
years will be generated through cloud computing, these issues need addressing, and<br />
sooner rather than later.<br />
David Tyler<br />
david.tyler@cloudhostingmag.co.uk<br />
www.cloudhostingmagazine.co.uk Feb/March 2017<br />
@CHMagAndAwards<br />
Cloudhosting<br />
3
CONTENTS<br />
Contents<br />
Industry predictions...............................................................................................8<br />
A little later than usual - due to unforeseen circumstances! - we ask leading industry names<br />
to look ahead: what flavour of Cloud will we prefer, is file sync and share on its way out,<br />
and even the future of the data centre itself are all under discussion<br />
Case study: AstraZeneca..............................................................................14<br />
Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca is leveraging Cloud collaboration technologies while<br />
keeping users and data secure<br />
Automating the IT production line........................................................22<br />
David Grimes, CTO at Navisite, discusses the growing role of APIs in reducing costs<br />
and developing tomorrow's businesses<br />
The main event.......................................................................................................24<br />
Cloud Expo, Europe's biggest and best attended Cloud and digital transformation show<br />
took place recently in London's ExCel: Cloud Hosting magazine was there to report back<br />
Editor’s comment.........................................................3<br />
News.......................................................................................6<br />
<br />
<br />
88% adopting Cloud<br />
Red Hat & IBM in new deal<br />
Performance anxiety............................................12<br />
Jonathan Arnold, Managing Director at Volta Data<br />
Centres, explains how high performance computing can<br />
change your business for the better<br />
Scared to innovate?.............................................16<br />
New research from Claranet suggests that UK IT<br />
departments are among the most likely in Europe to<br />
identify security/compliance as their biggest challenge<br />
Technology: ECM....................................................17<br />
Advantages of the Cloud reach to the core of most<br />
businesses - but executives must choose their partners<br />
carefully, argues Tim Rushent, Account Manager for<br />
industry and commerce at Hyland<br />
Pressure sensitive...........................................19<br />
The growth in Cloud services is putting increased<br />
pressure on data centre resiliency, suggests Adrian<br />
Barker, General Manager EMEA at RF Code<br />
Case study: FISCAL Technologies........21<br />
Fintech specialist FISCAL Technologies is securing<br />
customer data and winning new business thanks to The<br />
Bunker's virtual hosting infrastructure<br />
4<br />
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26-27 April 2017, Manchester Central<br />
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INFRASTRUCTURE SOURCE SO
NEWS<br />
HEAVENLY CLOUD<br />
Navisite has partnered with PMGC to<br />
provide its Infrastructure-as-a-<br />
Service (IaaS) and Desktop-as-a-Service<br />
(DaaS) solutions to multi-discipline, notfor-profit<br />
organisation, BCHA<br />
(Bournemouth Churches Housing<br />
Association). PMGC and Navisite were<br />
selected following a formal tender<br />
process for their strong value-for-money<br />
proposition, as well as the flexibility and<br />
scalability of their solution. Nearly 500<br />
users were migrated to the Cloud environments,<br />
including roles, access rights<br />
and over 1 Terabyte (TB) of data.<br />
BCHA develops services that help bring<br />
together housing, health and social care<br />
in order to deliver support to society's<br />
most in-need. Prior to reviewing its IT systems,<br />
the organisation was using legacy<br />
versions of software and carrying out their<br />
important work through on-premise<br />
servers. After a careful review process,<br />
BCHA selected PMGC and Navisite's<br />
Cloud hosting, IaaS and DaaS solutions<br />
to meet the key objectives of reducing<br />
system downtime and increasing the reliability<br />
and speed of access to IT services.<br />
With PMGC's help, BCHA's network<br />
infrastructure was moved to an environment<br />
that supports roaming use with centralised<br />
profiles and file redirection. Since<br />
moving to the Cloud, system downtime<br />
has been vastly reduced and BCHA<br />
employees are able to quickly connect to<br />
applications and data - achieving a<br />
reduction in access rate time of approximately<br />
80 per cent, compared to the previous<br />
system.<br />
This reduction in time, facilitated by having<br />
both their Cloud hosting and DaaS<br />
environments in the same high quality<br />
Navisite data centre facility, allows staff to<br />
spend more of their working day to help<br />
address real client needs. The migration<br />
also involved upgrading and re-implementing<br />
BCHA's full suite of both traditional<br />
and bespoke applications.<br />
www.navisite.co.uk<br />
TIME TO DESIGN FOR FAILURE ON PUBLIC CLOUD SERVICES?<br />
The recent Amazon Web Services (AWS)<br />
outage, which impacted a number of<br />
high-profile websites and service providers,<br />
has highlighted the importance of specific<br />
skillsets to support public Cloud services.<br />
This is according to Radek Dymacz, head<br />
of R&D at disaster recovery and AWS consulting<br />
partner Databarracks, who states<br />
that organisations should adopt a 'design<br />
for failure' approach to prevent outages.<br />
Radek explains: "The growth of hyperscale<br />
Cloud services has led to an<br />
increase in managed services for these<br />
Clouds. We have seen telecoms providers,<br />
data centre owners and managed service<br />
providers launch their own Cloud services<br />
and, in many cases, pull out of the market.<br />
Many of these businesses are now focusing<br />
their efforts on providing managed<br />
services for the hyperscale public Clouds<br />
of AWS, Azure and Google. However, platforms<br />
like AWS need a different approach<br />
to traditional hosting.<br />
"The ability to design for failure is essential<br />
to the value proposition of public Cloud<br />
UK CLOUD ADOPTION RATE REACHES 88%<br />
The latest research from the Cloud<br />
Industry Forum (CIF) reveals that the<br />
overall Cloud adoption rate in the UK now<br />
stands at 88 per cent, with 67 per cent of<br />
users expecting to increase their adoption of<br />
Cloud services over the coming year.<br />
However, while organisations are clearly taking<br />
a Cloud-first approach, the industry body<br />
predicts that the vast majority of companies<br />
will be maintaining hybrid IT estates for<br />
some time to come. Conducted in Feb<br />
2017, the research, polled 250 IT and business<br />
decision-makers in large enterprises,<br />
SMBs and public sector organisations.<br />
The results reveal that since the first<br />
research was conducted in 2010, the overall<br />
Cloud adoption rate has increased by 83<br />
per cent, with an increase of 5 per cent<br />
since last year. There has been a more significant<br />
increase in Cloud adoption amongst<br />
platforms, and yet organisations are still<br />
consuming AWS services as though<br />
they're building a traditional hosting environment.<br />
The great strength of platforms<br />
like AWS is that you can build in resiliency<br />
in a way that scales depending on your<br />
budget. At the larger end of the spectrum,<br />
this might involve using object storage<br />
across multiple Availability Zones and even<br />
Regions to provide an extra layer of<br />
resilience. This is expensive but, for large<br />
organisations, so is downtime.<br />
"We recommend that all organisations<br />
adopt a 'design for failure' approach. This<br />
means that if any single element fails then<br />
there is an easily-identifiable specific<br />
cause, with a known resolution.<br />
Radek concludes, "What we're seeing in<br />
customer demand agrees with this trend as<br />
businesses are now more mature in their<br />
use of Cloud services. They have gone<br />
beyond testing, so they are now seeking<br />
help to increase resilience, optimise cost<br />
and support it round-the-clock."<br />
www.databarracks.com<br />
small and public sector organisations, who<br />
have previously trailed behind overall adoption,<br />
with adoption rates now standing at 82<br />
per cent for both, up from 54 per cent and<br />
62 per cent, respectively, a year ago.<br />
Alex Hilton, CEO of CIF, commented: "This<br />
research highlights how far the IT landscape<br />
has come since we first conducted this<br />
research in 2010. We are entering an<br />
unprecedented time of change as digital<br />
technologies disrupt entire industries and<br />
customer expectations. Cloud is critical in<br />
enabling companies to cope with this<br />
change and this research highlights how<br />
organisations are increasingly and consistently<br />
warming to the Cloud delivery model,<br />
especially as they begin the realise the benefits<br />
to be had from migrating their apps and<br />
infrastructure to the Cloud."<br />
www.cloudindustryforum.org<br />
6<br />
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Feb/March 2017<br />
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NEWS<br />
NOVOSCO SECURES SEVEN-FIGURE CLOUD CONTRACT<br />
A3,500-room hotel group has chosen<br />
managed Cloud provider Novosco to<br />
upgrade and managed its entire IT infrastructure.<br />
The seven-figure deal will see<br />
Novosco work in partnership with Village<br />
Hotel Club, which has 28 hotels, to manage<br />
its migration to the Cloud.<br />
Founded in 1995, Village Hotel Group<br />
employs over 4,000 people and has a presence<br />
in London, Cardiff, Edinburgh, and<br />
other major cities across England, Scotland<br />
and Wales. It is one of the major hotel<br />
groups in the UK, and has been continuing<br />
to expand its presence, with plans in place<br />
for a new 153-bedroom hotel at Lakeside<br />
Business Park in Portsmouth.<br />
Novosco is a managed Cloud provider<br />
with clients in the public, private and voluntary<br />
sectors across the UK and Ireland,<br />
including Premiership football teams, some<br />
of the UK's largest health trusts and many<br />
top companies. Novosco employs almost<br />
150 people and has offices in Belfast,<br />
Manchester, Dublin and Cork. Last year it<br />
acquired English specialist IT security solutions<br />
and managed services expert NetDef.<br />
Novosco Managing Director, Patrick<br />
McAliskey, said: "Village Hotel Club is a<br />
highly dynamic and growing company, and<br />
we are delighted to work with them to add<br />
value to their business and help facilitate<br />
their on-going expansion. As a result of the<br />
investment being made, we will be able to<br />
scale the company's IT infrastructure as it<br />
continues to grow."<br />
www.novosco.com<br />
SOFA SO GOOD FOR RACKSPACE AND DFS CLOUD DEAL<br />
Retail giant DFS handled a 34 per cent<br />
increase in transactions per day during<br />
its most recent busy sales periods by utilising<br />
a Rackspace managed Cloud solution.<br />
By undertaking "peak planning", DFS has<br />
managed spikes in website traffic around<br />
Christmas, and has been able to grow the<br />
business through new digital services.<br />
DFS is the UK's leading upholsterer, with<br />
more than 110 stores nationwide as well<br />
as additional outlets in Ireland, Holland<br />
and Spain. The company has experienced<br />
a huge increase in mobile and online<br />
shoppers, with the platforms especially<br />
popular amongst customers researching<br />
new purchases.<br />
Undertaking a process of digital transformation,<br />
DFS has introduced in store functionality<br />
on staff tablets allowing them to<br />
show customers the products they are<br />
interested in on the video walls and<br />
screens, really bringing the product to life.<br />
The business experiences two peak<br />
shopping periods throughout the year, one<br />
being the 'Guaranteed by Christmas' ordering<br />
period in September, and the other<br />
around the Boxing Day sales that filters<br />
through to the New Year. Traffic to the website<br />
during these times spikes by 68 percent<br />
compared to average levels during<br />
the rest of the year.<br />
Employing a VMware Managed<br />
Virtualisation offering, Rackspace worked<br />
with DFS to carry out peak period planning<br />
to help ensure the retailer is prepared to<br />
deal with traffic surges and help ensure<br />
online channels work effectively for customers.<br />
In addition, through a working relationship<br />
with ecommerce specialists<br />
Salmon who rebuilt DFS's websites,<br />
Rackspace is able to provide DFS with the<br />
reassurance that it has some of the top<br />
technology minds supporting its business.<br />
www.rackspace.co.uk<br />
IBM, RED HAT COLLABORATE<br />
IBM and Red Hat have announced a<br />
strategic collaboration designed to help<br />
enterprises benefit from the OpenStack<br />
platform's speed and economics while<br />
more easily extending their existing Red<br />
Hat virtualised and cloud workloads to the<br />
IBM Private Cloud. As part of this new<br />
collaboration, IBM has become a Red Hat<br />
Certified Cloud and Service Provider, giving<br />
clients greater confidence that they<br />
can use Red Hat OpenStack Platform and<br />
Red Hat Ceph Storage on IBM Private<br />
Cloud when the offering launches for general<br />
availability at the end of March 2017.<br />
Additionally, Red Hat Cloud Access will<br />
be available for IBM Cloud by the end of<br />
Q2 2017, allowing Red Hat customers to<br />
move eligible, unused Red Hat Enterprise<br />
Linux subscriptions from their data centre<br />
to a public, virtualised cloud environment.<br />
www.ibm.com/cloud-computing<br />
GOOGLE CLOUD PARTNER<br />
Claranet is now part of the Google<br />
Cloud Partner Program and has<br />
achieved Premier status and the Partner<br />
Specialisation in Infrastructure The Google<br />
Cloud Partner Program is designed to<br />
help partners build their practices or products<br />
on the Google Cloud Platform in<br />
order to help them reach higher levels of<br />
success. The Partner Specialisation<br />
recognises strong customer success and<br />
technical proficiency.<br />
Charles Nasser, Founder & CEO, at<br />
Claranet, said: "Achieving Google Cloud<br />
Premier Partner and Infrastructure<br />
Specialisation status is an important step<br />
forward for Claranet. Google Cloud provides<br />
opportunities for significant business<br />
transformation by allowing customers to<br />
rapidly develop high-performance applications<br />
and leverage data assets. Helping<br />
customers improve through effective use<br />
of platforms such as Google Cloud is central<br />
to Claranet's proposition and reinforces<br />
our commitment to customers."<br />
www.claranet.co.uk<br />
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Feb/March 2017<br />
Cloudhosting<br />
7
2017 PREDICTIONS<br />
What's on the cards this year?<br />
A little later than usual - due to unforeseen circumstances! - we ask leading<br />
industry names to look ahead to what 2017 might bring: what flavour of<br />
Cloud will we prefer, is file sync and share on its way out, and even the<br />
future of the data centre itself are all under discussion<br />
Noone would argue that 2016 proved<br />
to be a year of extraordinary events<br />
and changes, politically and socially<br />
as well as in terms of the Cloud industry<br />
and the wider IT sector. Many of us are<br />
eagerly looking forward to a new start and<br />
hopefully some positive news. But as<br />
always happens when we invite vendors<br />
and analysts to submit their best guesses<br />
for the sector in the coming 12 months,<br />
there is a wide variety of opinion on offer.<br />
WHITHER THE CLOUD?<br />
The debate around what form Cloud<br />
computing will most likely take in the future<br />
continues, and as you'd expect, different<br />
vendors have their own views on what<br />
approach is likely to win out.<br />
Jon Lucas, Director at Hyve Managed<br />
Hosting comments: "Cloud computing has<br />
been one of the biggest tech topics of last<br />
year. Given the levels of hype, people could<br />
be forgiven for thinking that it's already<br />
established a winning position in the<br />
technology industry. Yet, according to IDC,<br />
Cloud spending is some distance away from<br />
its peak, compared to investment in 'traditional'<br />
approaches to IT. Their estimates say it will be<br />
2020 before spending on Cloud services will<br />
come close to equalling what is spent on<br />
traditional IT. For IT users and purchasers, this<br />
will mean Cloud will continue to dominate<br />
strategic technology decision making next<br />
year. For most, the debate has already gone<br />
far beyond whether they will use cloud, to how<br />
they can use it more effectively in even more<br />
areas of their business. Businesses will also<br />
seek out greater expertise in order to optimise<br />
their use of cloud. The role of Cloud and<br />
managed service providers will grow as IT<br />
teams shift their emphasis from the traditional<br />
role of 'keeping the IT lights on' to focusing on<br />
how tech can deliver bottom-line benefits."<br />
Jacco van Achterberg, EMEA Sales Director<br />
at Cloudian sees security being a driver for<br />
hybrid Cloud growth: "Last year we predicted<br />
8 Cloudhosting Feb/March 2017 @CHMagAndAwards<br />
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2017 PREDICTIONS<br />
"For most, the debate has already gone far beyond<br />
whether they will use Cloud, to how they can use it more<br />
effectively in even more areas of their business. The role<br />
of cloud and managed service providers will grow as IT<br />
teams shift their emphasis from the traditional role of<br />
'keeping the IT lights on' to focusing on how tech can deliver bottom-line<br />
benefits." - Jon Lucas, Hyve Managed Hosting<br />
that Amazon S3 would become the de-facto<br />
standard for Cloud storage. The rise of S3<br />
has helped drive the adoption of cost-effective<br />
object storage. Now, object storage is not just<br />
a niche market; people are using it in everyday<br />
life without realising, be it through social<br />
media, Netflix and many other outlets that rely<br />
on the service. S3 has turned object storage<br />
into an industry movement. Looking ahead<br />
into 2017, we are predicting a bigger<br />
migration of data to cloud environments with a<br />
focus on the deployment of hybrid<br />
public/private Cloud solutions. With more<br />
companies looking to deploy a Cloud storage<br />
solution, the protection and control over<br />
sensitive data will be a further driving force<br />
toward hybrid solutions."<br />
Geoff Barrall, CTO at Nexsan agrees but<br />
goes further: "Towards the end of 2016 we<br />
heard that vSphere-based Cloud services will<br />
run on AWS in 2017, a move that shows the<br />
major players are preparing to accommodate<br />
customers in a hybrid Cloud environment. No<br />
matter how far we look into the future, there<br />
will always be data too sensitive to trust to<br />
public Cloud services. So whilst some<br />
companies will create a hybrid Cloud strategy,<br />
and some may go all private, most<br />
companies, especially larger ones, will not risk<br />
their data to a 100% public Cloud strategy. So<br />
what of file sync and share? Today's NAS<br />
storage solutions have not kept up with the<br />
times, creating a gap between the worlds of<br />
the data centre and the connected mobile<br />
user. 2017 will see forward thinking companies<br />
not just creating secure file sync and share<br />
capability, but intertwining them with the<br />
company's storage environment to avoid<br />
damaging or duplicating files. In essence, next<br />
year we will see the delivery of the data centre<br />
on the go."<br />
CULTURE SHOCK<br />
Paul Zeiter, President of Zerto is another<br />
proponent of the hybrid Cloud approach:<br />
"Over the last few years we've seen previous<br />
predictions around increased public Cloud<br />
adoption come to fruition, and we predict<br />
2017 will be the year hybrid Cloud asserts<br />
itself as the dominant Cloud environment.<br />
Cloud spending will continue to be on the<br />
incline, and we believe a majority of that<br />
spend will go toward hybrid Cloud<br />
infrastructures; this is proving to be the sweet<br />
spot for the enterprise. Organisations that<br />
have spent a lot of time and resources on their<br />
own data centre are not likely to do away with<br />
it all overnight. Adopting a hybrid Cloud<br />
environment allows for a transition to Cloud in<br />
a way in which feels most comfortable; a<br />
gradual approach that can provide both<br />
immense cost savings as well as recovery<br />
benefits. Hybrid Cloud allows for a variety of<br />
recovery options should the need arise, onpremises,<br />
public Cloud or a little of both,<br />
which help companies be better prepared for<br />
a variety of disaster scenarios. Additionally, the<br />
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9
2017 PREDICTIONS<br />
"2017 will be the year that organisations are able to break<br />
free from the shackles of their storage hardware vendor and<br />
take advantage of innovations in hybrid Cloud deployments<br />
for storage. This is being driven by the long-awaited promise<br />
of Software Defined Storage and that public Cloud pricing<br />
can be realised for data protection."- Gary Quinn, FalconStor<br />
perceived complication and expense of<br />
transitioning to cloud, that has previously held<br />
many IT organisations back, is now starting to<br />
wither. More and more companies are<br />
realising that adopting a hybrid Cloud<br />
approach, with the right partners in place, can<br />
actually be quite simple and affordable."<br />
On the other hand, Campbell Williams,<br />
Group Strategy and Marketing Director at Six<br />
Degrees Group sees Cloud having to win<br />
friends in the boardroom: "Businesses have<br />
continued to rapidly adopt Cloud computing<br />
in 2016 and IT leaders have become more<br />
business focused. Now, IT is not just about<br />
'keeping the technology lights on', it is a way to<br />
transform organisations. Cloud technology<br />
may have high levels of automation, but it<br />
doesn't run itself. Businesses now realise that<br />
human expertise is central to the success of<br />
Cloud strategies. Moving into 2017 we are<br />
seeing the growth of a broader 'Cloud culture'<br />
where the influence of IT leaders is going far<br />
beyond just tech teams and instead going<br />
right into the boardroom. IT leaders in 2017 will<br />
have to be more business savvy than ever<br />
before and those in the boardroom will need<br />
to be receptive to this change."<br />
SDS ON THE RISE<br />
Software-defined is one of the buzzwords of<br />
the last year, and there is no question that this<br />
will continue to be the case in 2017. Gary<br />
Quinn, CEO FalconStor, says: "2017 will be the<br />
year that organisations are able to break free<br />
from the shackles of their storage hardware<br />
vendor and take advantage of innovations in<br />
hybrid Cloud deployments for storage. This is<br />
being driven by the long-awaited promise of<br />
Software Defined Storage and that public<br />
Cloud pricing can be realised for data<br />
protection. While SDS has in the past been<br />
more about utilising legacy equipment, it can<br />
now be used to leverage multi-vendor<br />
hardware implementations that also leverage<br />
multi-vendor public Cloud offerings."<br />
CENTRE OF ATTENTION<br />
The growth of Cloud will of course continue to<br />
impact on how data centres evolve, as Patrick<br />
Brennan of Atlantis Computing suggests: "In<br />
2017, Cloud will continue to drive radical<br />
change across enterprise IT. Businesses will<br />
make even greater investments outside of their<br />
own data centres, particularly in 'as-a-service'<br />
computing. 2017 will be the last year we<br />
spend money in our own data centre as we<br />
move applications to the public Cloud. The<br />
Cloud will also bring about significant change<br />
in the role of IT professionals - IT leaders with<br />
more general experience will create teams of<br />
people with specialised knowledge of key<br />
elements of IT infrastructure, such as storage<br />
and security."<br />
Jonathan Arnold, MD of Volta Data Centres<br />
also sees radical changes in the future of the<br />
data centre: "The modern data centre is set to<br />
undergo big changes in 2017. Companies are<br />
now accepting the need and practicalities of<br />
outsourcing the care of their IT equipment to<br />
third parties, but it is more imperative than ever<br />
that those partners have the right<br />
infrastructure, service levels and set-up.<br />
Location, performance and technical<br />
excellence all underpin the choices a business<br />
will make when outsourcing to a data centre.<br />
These can't be underestimated and in 2017<br />
we will see the rise of the 'super data centre' -<br />
delivering a service like no other. Those legacy<br />
data centres that don't invest and update to<br />
keep up will be left standing in the wake of<br />
facilities that can offer exactly what this new<br />
breed of customer needs."<br />
Arnold goes on: "Legacy equipment is<br />
finding its way out of enterprise data centres,<br />
giving way to new equipment capable of more<br />
computing in a smaller footprint. With<br />
customers being more aware of the amount of<br />
data they use and how they are using it, they<br />
are looking to data centres to use<br />
supercomputing technologies, such as High<br />
Performance Computing clusters which exploit<br />
parallel processing to enable advanced,<br />
resource intensive applications to be run<br />
efficiently, quickly and sustainably."<br />
Chuck Dubuque of Tintri sounds a similar<br />
warning: "Companies don't want to actively<br />
manage their data centres-in fact they can't. It's<br />
impossible to meet the agility and scale<br />
demands of the digital market. 2017 will be the<br />
year companies turn away from legacy<br />
architectures that are crudely automated (or<br />
Cloudhosting<br />
10 Feb/March 2017<br />
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2017 PREDICTIONS<br />
"The rise of S3 has helped drive the adoption of costeffective<br />
object storage. Now, object storage is not just a<br />
niche market; people are using it in everyday life without<br />
realising, be it through social media, Netflix and many other<br />
outlets that rely on the service. S3 has turned object storage<br />
into an industry movement." - Jacco van Achterberg, Cloudian<br />
automatable) and look for intelligent<br />
infrastructures built for virtualisation and<br />
Cloud workloads that are highly autonomic,<br />
providing guaranteed levels of service, high<br />
performance, and policy based<br />
management for workloads that run for 3<br />
years or 3 seconds."<br />
DIGITAL WATCH<br />
A relatively new term that we are certain to see<br />
more of in 2017 is 'digital transformation'.<br />
Matthew Finnie, CTO of Interoute, touches on<br />
the theme: "While some commentators expect<br />
2017 to be flat on IT spending overall, we<br />
expect to see IT increase spend on Cloud and<br />
digital transformation. In particular, we'll see<br />
investment in emerging integrated digital<br />
platforms that enable a business to move<br />
faster, deploy resources quicker and exploit<br />
new market opportunities. The majority of<br />
business-critical information for many<br />
organisations is still in systems that are not<br />
currently in the cloud, but as part of their<br />
development, many companies will seek to<br />
exploit Cloud-based models of consumption.<br />
Exploiting corporate information whilst<br />
continually innovating will drive a need for a<br />
bimodal digital platform approach, or else<br />
companies will risk ending up losing ground."<br />
Dimension Data's CTO Ettienne Reinecke<br />
says digital is about building truly customercentric<br />
business models on IT including the<br />
network, data centre, applications, and other<br />
infrastructure - which may be on-premise, or<br />
Cloud-based. "Today, there's no such thing as<br />
a digital strategy - just strategy in a digital<br />
world. And while the digital age is creating a<br />
degree of uncertainty for some organisations,<br />
it's also opening the doors to exciting<br />
possibilities and ushering in an era of infinite<br />
potential. In the year ahead, control and<br />
ownership of data and metadata will emerge<br />
as a point of discussion - and indeed<br />
contention. That's because data and metadata<br />
are the 'gold dust' that allow organisations to<br />
glean rich insights about customer behaviour.<br />
In addition, metadata allows organisations to<br />
identify specific behavioural patterns, derive<br />
business intelligence, and make informed<br />
business decisions."<br />
POST-BREXIT BLUES?<br />
The impact of the 2016 referendum on EU<br />
membership is yet to be felt, of course, but<br />
there is little question that data sovereignty<br />
and information management issues will arise.<br />
As Dimension Data's Reinecke argues,<br />
organisations are increasingly protective of<br />
their metadata, and wary of who has access<br />
to it. "Organisations don't just want ownership<br />
and control of their data for compliance<br />
reasons: they want it to perform analytics. We<br />
expect that this will trigger some interesting<br />
discussions between businesses and their<br />
Cloud providers. For example, where are the<br />
boundaries with respect to ownership,<br />
especially around metadata. We foresee this<br />
issue resulting in a bit of 'push and pull' among<br />
the various parties."<br />
Volta's Jonathan Arnold suggests: "Brexit<br />
has brought about a greater need for data<br />
sovereignty and for consumers to<br />
understand that their data is held in a country<br />
with data privacy laws they have confidence<br />
in. London continues to be the number one<br />
city location for colocation, with 72% of UK<br />
consumers highlighting that they would feel<br />
more confident if they knew their data was<br />
being stored in London rather than other<br />
European cities."<br />
Matthew Finnie of Interoute reminds us that<br />
the GDPR legislation will still affect practically<br />
every business in the UK in 2017, whatever<br />
Brexit may bring: "We will see 2017 beset<br />
with GDPR readiness and testing, as the<br />
bounds and impact of the regulation start to<br />
become apparent. The onus will be on<br />
enterprises and providers to seek out<br />
solutions that have definitive compliance,<br />
rather than waiting for challenges and legal<br />
disputes to unravel in the courts.<br />
Investments in compliant platforms that<br />
support a simple approach to geographic<br />
location of data will avoid this confusion."<br />
Ultimately, there is only one absolutely<br />
certain statement that we can make with<br />
regard to the coming year: that in about 12<br />
months time, Cloud Hosting magazine will be<br />
running another 'predictions' feature not unlike<br />
this one, containing just as many diverse<br />
views. Anything more than that - well, your<br />
guess is as good as ours! Ch<br />
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Feb/March 2017 Cloudhosting<br />
11
STRATEGY: HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING<br />
Performance anxiety<br />
Jonathan Arnold, Managing Director at Volta Data Centres, explains how<br />
high performance computing can change your business for the better<br />
Big data has changed the way<br />
companies view information; they<br />
now recognise its value almost as<br />
an asset on the balance sheet. How it is<br />
managed, analysed and used to deliver<br />
new services determines everything, from<br />
operational performance to customer<br />
satisfaction - not least through the<br />
effective use of that essential single view<br />
of the customer.<br />
As a result, more and more companies<br />
are looking to data centres that have<br />
embraced high performance computing<br />
(HPC). With its foundations in<br />
supercomputing technologies, HPC<br />
clusters exploit parallel processing to<br />
enable advanced, resource intensive<br />
applications to be run efficiently, quickly<br />
and sustainably. This is done by using<br />
huge amounts of power while dividing<br />
activities between multiple processors,<br />
dramatically reducing processing times<br />
from hours to minutes.<br />
HPC enables companies to scale<br />
processes significantly, for example in the<br />
cases of collecting, storing, analysing and<br />
processing more data. In turn this will reduce<br />
costs and increase profits through optimised<br />
production and delivery of a service.<br />
Companies with access to HPC solutions will<br />
be able to develop and analyse increasingly<br />
large databases of information.<br />
Previously the need for HPC was limited<br />
to markets such as engineering or<br />
science and academia, focused on dataintensive<br />
calculations.<br />
One of Volta's customers, Academia,<br />
specialises in providing software, IT<br />
hardware, training and service solutions to<br />
a vast number of clients within the<br />
Education (and other) sectors. It required<br />
a partner able to cope and scale with the<br />
ever-increasing data needs of its own<br />
customers and chose to work with Volta.<br />
This enabled it to provide excellent<br />
service, uptime and data speeds to its<br />
customers in line with their expectations<br />
and demands.<br />
However, the business world is now<br />
recognising the advantages of HPC and<br />
looking to data centres to provide these<br />
same capabilities.<br />
One industry that has embraced high<br />
performance computing is media postproduction,<br />
where high quantities of data<br />
need to be processed and moved as<br />
quickly as possible. In this market,<br />
reliable, accessible and secure IT<br />
infrastructure is imperative to ensure<br />
companies can deliver their world-class<br />
movies on schedule. Downtime, latency<br />
and poor security cannot be accepted in<br />
the fast-paced and commercially sensitive<br />
movie marketplace.<br />
Without a partner able to perform at the<br />
same speed, post-production studios will<br />
struggle to meet the pressing demands<br />
required by real-time editing and online<br />
collaboration.<br />
While these two sectors are just<br />
examples of early adopters of high<br />
performance computing, it's clear that<br />
other businesses will benefit from faster<br />
and more efficient processing.<br />
For anyone looking to get more out of a<br />
lot of data, HPC could be the answer, or<br />
at least part of the solution. While the<br />
growth of data acquisition and processing<br />
demands is far outstripping the ability of a<br />
standard CPU, a data centre with HPC<br />
infrastructures will be able to help<br />
customers get more out of their big data<br />
by developing patterns and analysis.<br />
HPC heralds a new opportunity to<br />
innovate in order to meet the demands of<br />
our new, data-devoted world. It is costeffective<br />
and powerful, putting more<br />
information back more quickly into the<br />
hands of the people who need it. With<br />
speed and analysis at your fingertips, your<br />
business processes could be what<br />
propels you to the head of the pack. And<br />
when data is fully recognised as a<br />
financial asset on your balance sheet,<br />
how you treat it and how you make it work<br />
effectively for you will help determine how<br />
successful your company becomes.<br />
More info: www.voltadatacentres.com<br />
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2017<br />
COMING SOON<br />
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CASE STUDY: ASTRAZENECA<br />
Focused on protection<br />
Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca is leveraging Cloud collaboration<br />
technologies while keeping users and data secure<br />
As a global pharmaceutical<br />
company whose footprint includes<br />
operations in over 100 countries,<br />
AstraZeneca has an immense amount of<br />
data to protect, thousands of users to<br />
connect, and a highly regulated<br />
environment to operate in.<br />
To help tackle these challenges,<br />
AstraZeneca Chief Information Officer,<br />
Dave Smoley, developed an IT strategy<br />
that put collaboration at the forefront,<br />
breaking the traditional mould of<br />
conservative pharmaceutical companies;<br />
allowing users, patients and medical<br />
professionals to share data and make the<br />
most of new science, creating a lean,<br />
fast-paced and creative environment.<br />
THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX<br />
In addition to collaborating with leading<br />
universities and other pharmaceutical<br />
companies, AstraZeneca has tens of<br />
thousands of salespeople globally who<br />
need immediate access to their data from<br />
anywhere in the world. With the old ways<br />
of connecting through VPNs proving to<br />
be cumbersome, the team at<br />
AstraZeneca started looking to the Cloud<br />
for answers, specifically, how to drive<br />
secure and effective collaboration<br />
through widely used Cloud-based tools<br />
like Box.<br />
"People couldn't understand why they<br />
need to VPN-in to access Box," says Jeff<br />
Haskill, AstraZeneca's Chief Information<br />
Security Officer. "With the help of Skyhigh,<br />
we've removed that friction and offer a<br />
more streamlined solution which is still<br />
secure and compliant, but a night and<br />
day difference from what our employees<br />
are used to." With Skyhigh, AstraZeneca<br />
now enforces security and compliance<br />
policies across Cloud services like Box<br />
without adding any friction in the form of<br />
VPN or new agents on devices, making<br />
the secure path the easy path for users.<br />
With the consumerisation of IT on the<br />
rise, the use of shadow, or unsanctioned<br />
Cloud services, has grown within the<br />
enterprise as any employee with a credit<br />
card or email address can sign-up for<br />
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CASE STUDY: ASTRAZENECA<br />
new Cloud services without the<br />
knowledge or approval of IT. As<br />
employees start sharing data outside the<br />
enterprise, they increase an<br />
organisation's overall risk of data loss and<br />
exfiltration.<br />
"What we needed was visibility," says<br />
Haskill. "As we pushed more data into the<br />
Cloud, we really had to answer the tough<br />
questions - what are we using the Cloud<br />
for, what's our data doing, where's it<br />
moving to, and who has access to it?"<br />
To gain the granular visibility and control<br />
AstraZeneca was looking for, they<br />
decided to leverage CASB (Cloud Access<br />
Security Broker) technology and brought<br />
in Skyhigh Networks. Haskill and his team<br />
deployed Skyhigh for Shadow IT to help<br />
answer questions about who had access<br />
to their data and where it was going.<br />
AstraZeneca uses Zscaler as their inline<br />
proxy to monitor web traffic across users,<br />
devices and locations and protect<br />
employees from malicious or<br />
compromised sites. Skyhigh seamlessly<br />
integrates with existing technologies like<br />
Zscaler to process proxy logs to provide<br />
the visibility into AstraZeneca's Cloud<br />
usage as well as the individual risk ratings<br />
of each service.<br />
Using the integration, AstraZeneca can<br />
also analyse a particular Cloud IP address<br />
to see if the site is malicious or serving<br />
malicious content and block it if so.<br />
With increased visibility, Haskill and his<br />
team were able to leverage Skyhigh's<br />
Global CloudTrust Registry which includes<br />
the risk ratings of over 19,000 Cloud<br />
services to allow or block Cloud services<br />
based on their individual risk scores, and<br />
further drive adoption to Box through justin-<br />
time coaching and user education.<br />
"I've been in this field a long time and<br />
not much surprises me," says Haskill. "We<br />
thought we would have a lot of shadow IT,<br />
we found it was true and now we can act<br />
upon it."<br />
In addition to driving adoption and<br />
consolidating services, AstraZeneca also<br />
uses Skyhigh to further secure their Box<br />
usage. By using Skyhigh, Haskill and his<br />
team are able to drill down and see who<br />
has access to sensitive data, who it has<br />
been shared with, and also have the<br />
ability to extend their existing on-premises<br />
Data Loss Prevention (DLP) to the cloud.<br />
As such, they can limit and control<br />
access based on user role, device type<br />
(managed and unmanaged) and user's<br />
geographic location; all while notifying the<br />
security operations centre if compromised<br />
accounts or insider threats are detected.<br />
"Skyhigh lets us use Box to its full<br />
capability," says Haskill. "We can see how<br />
our data is being used and if it is being<br />
shared with third parties."<br />
DATA DRIVEN SECURITY<br />
In utilising Skyhigh as a central control<br />
point to enforce policies across all Cloud<br />
services, Haskill and his team are armed<br />
with the actionable information they need<br />
to continue to lower risk across the<br />
organisation and gain executive support.<br />
"We have the proof, down to the<br />
smallest kilobyte of data, which allows us<br />
to have intelligent discussions with the<br />
executive leadership teams and with the<br />
business, because we have actionable<br />
data to share," says Haskill. As a result,<br />
Haskill knows that the overall risk posture<br />
at AstraZeneca has decreased by the way<br />
the business approaches Cloud usage:<br />
"When IT can bring the audit committee<br />
and the executive members together and<br />
they are confident and comfortable using<br />
the Cloud, it is huge. You know you've<br />
made an impact on risk. It is no longer IT<br />
security saying, 'we believe this, or we<br />
think that'. We have the data we need to<br />
answer their questions and provide the<br />
metrics showing how Skyhigh is<br />
mitigating and lowering risk. It's the facts."<br />
FORWARD LOOKING<br />
As Haskill and his team continue to<br />
enable their workforce's needs for global<br />
collaboration, all new services are<br />
screened and "wrapped in Skyhigh,"<br />
allowing for the required controls to be in<br />
place. "Skyhigh has allowed us to<br />
leverage new Cloud technologies that<br />
wouldn't have been possible before,"<br />
says Haskill. "Our users never see<br />
Skyhigh even though it is a key part of<br />
our whole IT security strategy, allowing us<br />
to keep our users and data safe so they<br />
can have the global access they need on<br />
any device."<br />
With a target of having a substantial<br />
proportion of their apps in the Cloud by<br />
2018, it is imperative for AstraZeneca to<br />
have solutions that integrate into existing<br />
solutions, as the old, traditional model is<br />
heavy on paperwork and requires onpremises<br />
devices.<br />
"Skyhigh integrated seamlessly with our<br />
existing providers like Zscaler, and feeds<br />
into our SIEM, so we get the information<br />
that is important for us and we can<br />
continue to be fast, lean and agile," says<br />
Haskill. Leveraging the integration<br />
between Zscaler and Skyhigh,<br />
AstraZeneca can secure and govern<br />
Cloud usage, by pushing governance<br />
policies based on Skyhigh's Cloud<br />
insights directly to Zscaler to block highrisk<br />
services, and enforcing granular DLP<br />
policies on Cloud usage.<br />
"Skyhigh has streamlined application<br />
management from weeks to hours and<br />
that's key to our overall strategy to be<br />
fast," concludes Haskill. "The reduction in<br />
man hours allows us to focus on more<br />
important things, like enable our users<br />
and deliver on the key science that makes<br />
AstraZeneca a great place to work."<br />
More info: www.skyhighnetworks.com<br />
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15
RESEARCH: SECURITY<br />
Scared to innovate?<br />
New research from Claranet suggests that UK IT departments are among<br />
the most likely in Europe to identify security/compliance as their biggest<br />
challenge - and as a result, they are also more likely to host their<br />
applications internally<br />
stumbling block to the prosperity of<br />
businesses in the UK."<br />
Vanson Bourne surveyed 900 end user<br />
IT leaders from mid-market businesses<br />
in the six markets in which Claranet<br />
operates (Germany, Benelux, France, Spain,<br />
Portugal, and the UK) and found that 57 per<br />
cent of UK organisations rank security and<br />
compliance as the biggest IT challenge, joint<br />
highest with security conscious Germany.<br />
This concern is reflected by the fact that 50<br />
per cent of applications managed by UK<br />
businesses are hosted on internal<br />
infrastructure, which can be attributed to<br />
prevailing attitudes towards cloud security<br />
and data ownership. Additionally,<br />
authentication and security are the<br />
applications that are most likely to be<br />
hosted internally, with 63 per cent of UK<br />
organisations doing so, due to the fact that<br />
these are often associated with highly<br />
secure data.<br />
For Ian Furness, Hosting Services Director at<br />
Claranet, it's critical that British businesses<br />
address these security concerns and maintain<br />
the integrity of their data so they can facilitate<br />
innovation and respond to changing market<br />
pressures. He explains: "Security concerns<br />
amongst UK organisations are justified as<br />
businesses come under increasing pressure<br />
to keep up with the constantly evolving threat<br />
landscape, especially as more data is<br />
analysed and stored online. However, these<br />
security concerns make organisations a lot<br />
more risk adverse, which ultimately stifles<br />
innovation.<br />
"Considering that today's businesses are<br />
becoming much more software driven and the<br />
gate to competitiveness comes down to<br />
adapting applications that respond to<br />
increasing market pressures, security<br />
concerns, if left unaddressed, present a major<br />
According to Furness, organisations often<br />
equate security with having perceived control,<br />
which indicates why British businesses are<br />
more likely to host their applications internally.<br />
It's understandable, he argues, that<br />
organisations may want to take this approach<br />
for their applications, particularly those that are<br />
associated with high risk information: "But just<br />
because your servers are under your roof, this<br />
doesn't necessarily make them more secure.<br />
In fact, if managed and maintained correctly,<br />
alternative delivery models - such as public<br />
cloud - are suitable for even the most sensitive<br />
data and can bring massive transformational<br />
benefits to organisations."<br />
Claranet's conclusions from the research<br />
are clear: though security is not likely to<br />
change as the number one IT priority any<br />
time soon, the specific threats, and the ways<br />
businesses manage and respond to them,<br />
most certainly will. Ian Furness comments:<br />
"Businesses will need to stay alert to changes<br />
to legislation and the nature of prevailing<br />
threats as more and more data is stored and<br />
analysed. IT services providers (ITSPs) have a<br />
critical role to play here. A well-staffed ITSP<br />
with years of security expertise is likely to be in<br />
a better position to maintain the integrity of<br />
data, compared to an under-resourced inhouse<br />
IT team. By working with a trusted<br />
service provider businesses can benefit from<br />
transformational benefits and highly compliant<br />
security protocols in tandem."<br />
More info: www.claranet.co.uk<br />
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TECHNOLOGY: ENTERPRISE CONTENT MANAGEMENT<br />
Choose your<br />
partners<br />
The advantages of the Cloud reach to the core of<br />
most businesses - but executives must choose their<br />
partners carefully, argues Tim Rushent, Account<br />
Manager for industry and commerce at Hyland<br />
Nearly four-fifths of all data centre traffic<br />
will be Cloud-based by 2019<br />
according to some predictions, fuelled<br />
by a growing awareness of the opportunity to<br />
scale an organisation's digital capacity, not just<br />
in terms of storage, but also functionality.<br />
As early concerns over security have been<br />
assuaged, executives have been persuaded to<br />
embrace the Cloud for its flexibility and<br />
reduced costs: however, most remain unaware<br />
of further opportunities that the move presents<br />
- and its hidden risks. For example, a move to<br />
the Cloud can be an ideal time to adopt an<br />
enterprise information platform that unites data<br />
from different systems and formats, from<br />
where it can be accessed, analysed and<br />
managed. From increased efficiency at a user<br />
level, to automated workflow management<br />
and vastly improved executive overview, a<br />
fundamental technology overhaul may not be<br />
necessary, as enterprise content management<br />
(ECM) software can provide the seamless link<br />
needed to bring together existing platforms.<br />
The move to Cloud makes the adoption of<br />
such systems even easier, as they will not be<br />
restrained by capacity. But it is not enough to<br />
simply trust that a Cloud provider will keep a<br />
company's data secure: it is important to<br />
thoroughly evaluate key aspects, such as the<br />
provider's infrastructure and security<br />
provisions, alongside their track record and<br />
industry reputation.<br />
Common pitfalls include failure to ensure a<br />
system offers the scope to cater for longerterm<br />
needs; becoming locked into contracts<br />
that can hold a firm's data hostage; and failure<br />
to make adequate provision for disruptive<br />
events, such as outages or the Cloud provider<br />
going bust. All of these scenarios can be<br />
avoided or suitably mitigated, but they must<br />
be considered at an early stage - not when<br />
they happen out of the blue and leave a<br />
company unable to use its essential IT<br />
infrastructure.<br />
Other key issues to consider include:<br />
Security - What technologies are in place<br />
to manage risks and what are the<br />
processes for dealing with a data breach?<br />
How is encryption used and what data<br />
backup regime do they have in place?<br />
Audits - Will the provider carry out regular<br />
infrastructure reviews, to ensure regulatory<br />
and legal compliance? Who is responsible<br />
for carrying out such audits and are they<br />
prepared to share earlier reviews with you?<br />
Integration - Are there any technical or<br />
other hurdles to overcome, to ensure the<br />
Cloud resources can readily be integrated<br />
with your own on-premise and existing<br />
Cloud systems? Does the hosting<br />
provider have sufficient networking<br />
bandwidth in place to deal with increased<br />
data volumes?<br />
When evaluating vendors, remember not all<br />
Cloud providers are the same. For example,<br />
if you are looking for a provider to deliver<br />
ECM services, that provider's infrastructure<br />
must be specifically designed for the task.<br />
Servers, data stores and networking links<br />
must be optimised to ensure they can<br />
provide the level of availability and<br />
performance that is required.<br />
Once a Cloud provider has been selected,<br />
putting an effective contract in place is the<br />
next important step. Don't get locked into a<br />
long-term agreement from which it is very<br />
costly to withdraw. Also, pay particular<br />
attention to how data will be transferred at the<br />
end of the contract and what would happen to<br />
it in the event that the provider ceases trading.<br />
The contract should be clear about what<br />
would happen if there were difficulties with any<br />
third party involved, where responsibilities lie<br />
and what compensation would be payable in<br />
the event of outages.<br />
The flexibility and scalability offered by the<br />
Cloud provides a golden opportunity for firms<br />
looking to develop their digital infrastructure<br />
and build further competitive advantage<br />
through a single enterprise information<br />
platform. However it is important to carefully<br />
review the prospective hosting provider before<br />
entering what should be a very productive<br />
long-term relationship.<br />
More info: www.onbase.com<br />
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Feb/March 2017 Cloudhosting<br />
17
CASE STUDY: METRO BANK<br />
Take that to the bank<br />
Metro Bank, the first new UK high street bank in over 100 years, has<br />
reduced close-of-business processing time by 50 percent and report<br />
production time by two-thirds by moving its IT infrastructure to a managed<br />
Cloud solution<br />
focused culture and ethos of delivering<br />
exceptional customer service. Kane explains:<br />
"Rackspace just gets us - they understand<br />
our culture and share our values. You can't<br />
underestimate the power of people. They<br />
have exceeded our expectations, and<br />
provide us with superior levels of support<br />
and guidance day in, day out."<br />
Metro Bank was founded in 2010 and<br />
has already launched more than 45<br />
branches, providing banking<br />
services for both personal and business<br />
customers. With ambitions to reach 100<br />
branches by 2020, Metro Bank stands out<br />
from traditional financial organisations, with its<br />
highly customer-driven approach that<br />
includes services such as being open seven<br />
days a week and the capability to open an<br />
account in under 20 minutes - without having<br />
to book an appointment.<br />
Unlike its high street competitors, Metro Bank<br />
is not tied to legacy IT systems, which means it<br />
has the freedom to incorporate the latest<br />
technologies that offer unparalleled scalability<br />
and agility. This has enabled the business to<br />
genuinely disrupt the banking sector and break<br />
away from industry norms with services that<br />
are focused entirely on providing high levels of<br />
customer service and convenience. These<br />
capabilities became a reality when seamlessly<br />
migrating Metro Bank's entire infrastructure -<br />
including its core banking operations, digital<br />
offerings and even ATMs - to a managed<br />
Cloud solution architected by Rackspace.<br />
Metro Bank chose Rackspace to help<br />
support its rapid growth, roll-out new services<br />
and streamline existing processes, starting<br />
with an initial 12-month migration project. This<br />
was delivered on time, on budget and without<br />
any costly downtime, with applications starting<br />
to go online within six weeks. The day after the<br />
first migration, close of business processing<br />
on core banking systems were 50 percent<br />
quicker and vital reports that were taking an<br />
hour to produce could now be completed in<br />
just 20 minutes.<br />
Aisling Kane, Chief Operating Officer at Metro<br />
Bank says: "We're growing exponentially so it's<br />
essential that we partner with organisations<br />
that can scale alongside us, which Rackspace<br />
has clearly shown it can."<br />
GROWING A CUSTOMER-FOCUSED<br />
CULTURE<br />
Both businesses share the same customer<br />
Metro Bank is using a Rackspace<br />
Dedicated Server Solution for its high<br />
performance and enhanced security. The<br />
company is also using DevOps to roll out<br />
new services quickly in a controlled<br />
environment as it moves towards automated<br />
management. The infrastructure includes<br />
Disaster Recovery capabilities.<br />
Darren Norfolk, MD of Rackspace UK<br />
added: "We're proud to be supporting Metro<br />
Bank's impressive growth, and as an<br />
organisation with a customer service<br />
orientated culture ourselves, its mission to<br />
deliver truly outstanding experiences for<br />
customers. Metro Bank has used this<br />
approach to pose a serious challenge to the<br />
industry status quo during a period that has<br />
seen technology change the face of<br />
banking. These days, finance companies<br />
have to focus on connecting people to their<br />
money quickly, processing transactions<br />
accurately and presenting customers with<br />
access to their information at all times. We<br />
have enjoyed helping the bank achieve this,<br />
by providing the leading technology<br />
platforms that power these compelling<br />
customer offerings."<br />
More info: www.rackspace.co.uk<br />
18 Cloudhosting Feb/March 2017 @CHMagAndAwards<br />
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OPINION: DATA CENTRE RESILIENCY<br />
Pressure sensitive?<br />
The growth in cloud services is putting increased pressure on data centre<br />
resiliency, suggests Adrian Barker, General Manager EMEA at RF Code<br />
to damage or failure. A lack of capacity is<br />
equally damaging - a spike in traffic could be<br />
enough to cause downtime if equipment<br />
becomes overheated and overworked.<br />
The flood of digital content, internet<br />
traffic, Big Data and eCommerce has<br />
had a dramatic effect on data centres<br />
in recent years. One of the most significant<br />
trends to date is the meteoric rise of cloud<br />
computing.<br />
Cisco is forecasting 83% of data centre<br />
traffic in the next three years will be generated<br />
through cloud computing. Is that really<br />
surprising? Businesses of every size are<br />
utilising Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS),<br />
PaaS (Platform as a Service) or SaaS<br />
(Software as a Service) offerings. Data<br />
centres have had to physically transform in<br />
order to meet availability demands.<br />
With fundamental business tasks now<br />
dependent on an uninterrupted service from<br />
the data centre, the spotlight is on the issue<br />
of downtime. This is more than just a financial<br />
consideration. If a business cannot access its<br />
cloud and hosted services it seriously risks a<br />
loss in productivity and the potential for a<br />
major impact on its commercial reputation.<br />
DOWNTIME DEBACLES<br />
Software company SSP Worldwide came<br />
under fire in September 2016 when its SaaS<br />
solution suffered an outage. The system is<br />
used by 40% of the UK's brokers to track<br />
insurance renewals amongst other services.<br />
The downtime, which was said to be caused<br />
by a data centre power outage, lasted almost<br />
two weeks, by which time brokers had made<br />
their frustrations known online. Their concerns<br />
included loss of business and risk of action<br />
from the Financial Conduct Authority.<br />
Another incident saw Salesforce suffer an<br />
outage attributed to a failure in the power<br />
distribution in its primary data centre, causing<br />
twelve expensive hours of disruption. In this<br />
case, the CEO was forced to apologise via<br />
social media; the kind of experience that all<br />
business leaders dread.<br />
COPING WITH DEMAND<br />
There are many different ways in which data<br />
centre and service availability can be affected.<br />
Around a quarter of outages are due to power<br />
failures, but software and hardware problems,<br />
human error, natural disasters and cyberattacks<br />
also play a big part.<br />
Another problem is overheating due to<br />
inefficient cooling. A rapid increase in<br />
temperature can cause immediate equipment<br />
failure but inadequate cooling of equipment<br />
over a prolonged period of time will also lead<br />
Operators face a constant battle of<br />
balancing workloads against available<br />
budgets. Many data centre owners choose to<br />
over-provision resources and servers 'just in<br />
case' a disaster situation occurs, however this<br />
can be immensely costly. There are other<br />
strategies available.<br />
PREVENTION - BETTER THAN CURE<br />
One of the methods to maintaining resiliency,<br />
even in the face of an extreme weather event<br />
or a catastrophic power failure, is through a<br />
clear understanding of the data centre<br />
environment. Operational management<br />
solutions can provide real-time insight,<br />
control and predictability so data centre<br />
managers can solve environmental and<br />
operational challenges with valuable insight,<br />
rather than guesswork.<br />
Data centre assets need to be monitored<br />
and tracked to maintain performance and<br />
guard against technical failure. Environmental<br />
conditions need to be dynamically adjusted<br />
with changes in demand. It is all about<br />
understanding and managing your<br />
environment to ensure reliability.<br />
As data gets bigger and cloud computing<br />
expands further, data centre dependency is<br />
only set to increase, although the use of realtime<br />
insight and other tools will ensure data<br />
centres remain secure, resilient and reliable in<br />
the face of businesses' unrelenting appetite<br />
for more data.<br />
More info: www.rfcode.com<br />
www.cloudhostingmagazine.co.uk<br />
@CHMagAndAwards<br />
Feb/March 2017 Cloudhosting<br />
19
CASE STUDY: FISCAL TECHNOLOGIES<br />
Safe and sound<br />
Fintech specialist FISCAL Technologies is securing customer data and<br />
winning new business thanks to The Bunker's virtual hosting infrastructure<br />
Founded in 2002, innovative fintech<br />
company FISCAL Technologies<br />
provides forensic solutions that<br />
empower purchase-to-pay (P2P) teams to<br />
protect organisational spend. Ultimately, the<br />
company creates software that prevents<br />
money from mistakenly or fraudulently leaving<br />
an organisation. It offers a variety of forensic<br />
solutions that analyse financial transactions<br />
across the entire P2P process, finding<br />
anomalies, errors, duplicates and identifying<br />
potential fraud. With offices in the UK and the<br />
US, FISCAL has experienced seven years of<br />
profitable growth, with ambitious plans for the<br />
future.<br />
INTERNATIONAL RESCUE<br />
FISCAL Technologies' customers place a<br />
premium on their security. Some of their<br />
customers require contractual certainty that<br />
their data does not come into contact with<br />
any organisation that has any kind of<br />
relationship with the US or American<br />
organisations due to data sovereignty<br />
requirements. FISCAL had kept US and UK<br />
customers' data stored in the same data<br />
centre in the UK, but subsequently needed to<br />
split the data because of this segregation<br />
requirement. Whilst FISCAL partnered with a<br />
company in the US for their American<br />
customers, they found that their previous UK<br />
provider, who had been in place for three<br />
years, did not have adequate measures in<br />
place to guarantee adherence to their client's<br />
data sovereignty requirements.<br />
In order to guarantee its customers<br />
complete certainty that they fulfilled the above<br />
requirements, FISCAL needed a hosting and<br />
infrastructure provider that not only met all the<br />
most recent security accreditations, but also<br />
had security embedded in everything it did. In<br />
particular, adherence to the ISO 27001<br />
security standard - a comprehensive,<br />
technology-neutral specification that deploys<br />
a risk-based approach going across all<br />
sections of an organisation - was key.<br />
Moreover, as an ambitious organisation<br />
looking to accelerate its growth, FISCAL<br />
needed a partner who could not only keep up<br />
with them, but would have both the capacity<br />
and the drive to grow with FISCAL and be<br />
adaptable to its requirements. Another critical<br />
20 Cloudhosting Feb/March 2017 @CHMagAndAwards<br />
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CASE STUDY: FISCAL TECHNOLOGIES<br />
"It's hugely important to our clients to have certain security guarantees in<br />
place. The Bunker is distinct for a security culture that is deeply embedded<br />
in its DNA, and for having a more comprehensive security provision than<br />
anyone else we spoke to."<br />
consideration was experience, and FISCAL<br />
sought a partner that had a heritage of<br />
working with other fintech and financial<br />
services firms.<br />
ULTRA SECURE SOLUTION<br />
FISCAL embarked on a wide-ranging<br />
procurement process - and quickly found that<br />
The Bunker stood out for its security provision,<br />
which was more comprehensive than any<br />
other they had encountered before and<br />
covered all the necessary accreditations,<br />
including ISO 27001. With a significant<br />
amount of experience working in the fintech<br />
sector, The Bunker fitted the bill perfectly.<br />
The Bunker's solution was a virtual<br />
environment, with powerful SQL Server<br />
databases, load balanced firewalls, and<br />
active directory domain controllers. This<br />
system delivers not only a robust approach to<br />
data and system security, but also the speedy<br />
performance and seamless management that<br />
FISCAL requires in order to deal with the<br />
sheer volume of data and amount of<br />
processing that it manages for its customers.<br />
A NEW IMPETUS<br />
Demonstrating a high-level of security<br />
compliance has provided a powerful new<br />
business impetus for FISCAL.<br />
Howard Durdle, CTO at FISCAL,<br />
commented: "Being in financial services,<br />
security is absolutely paramount, and for<br />
many of our customers, having the level of<br />
security provided by The Bunker was a<br />
prerequisite to making deals. For example, for<br />
a large defence contractor who placed huge<br />
value on security and on their data not<br />
touching the US, The Bunker were a vital<br />
element in passing a lengthy procurement<br />
process and securing a deal. Hosting our<br />
customers' data in a former Ministry of<br />
Defence bunker, deep underground and fully<br />
insulated from the outside world, gives us a<br />
powerful story to tell potential and current<br />
customers about the importance we place on<br />
security."<br />
Moreover, the benefits of running a fully<br />
virtualised estate are clear to Howard: "In the<br />
case of any kind of system failures, we can<br />
migrate virtually across to other parts of the<br />
infrastructure, massively reducing any<br />
potential for downtime - not that it's been an<br />
issue as of yet."<br />
PRODUCTIVE PARTNERSHIP<br />
Howard said: "It's hugely important to our<br />
clients to have certain security guarantees in<br />
place. The Bunker is distinct for a security<br />
culture that is deeply embedded in its DNA,<br />
and for having a more comprehensive<br />
security provision than anyone else we spoke<br />
to."<br />
Looking to the future, while FISCAL is still in<br />
the process of moving their customers off the<br />
old platform, the company is looking to<br />
expand the virtual infrastructure and to double<br />
its customer load over the next year - all whilst<br />
maintaining current performance levels.<br />
"We have mutually complementary<br />
narratives," concludes Howard. "FISCAL is<br />
absolutely focused on protecting<br />
organisations' money, whilst The Bunker has<br />
the same obsession with protecting<br />
organisations' data. This cultural overlap has<br />
made for a productive partnership."<br />
More info: www.thebunker.net<br />
www.cloudhostingmagazine.co.uk<br />
@CHMagAndAwards<br />
Feb/March 2017 Cloudhosting<br />
21
TECHNOLOGY: APIS<br />
Automating the IT<br />
production line<br />
David Grimes, CTO at Navisite, discusses the growing role of APIs in reducing<br />
costs and developing tomorrow's businesses<br />
Finding ways to reduce costs while<br />
continuing to offer excellent<br />
products and services is the eternal<br />
business challenge. To help businesses<br />
do this, IT teams and service providers<br />
are increasingly looking to APIs<br />
(Application Programming Interfaces).<br />
APIs are sets of routines, protocols and<br />
tools for building software applications<br />
that enable automation, which supports<br />
increased efficiency, consistency and cost<br />
savings for businesses. How exactly are<br />
organisations using APIs to do this, and<br />
how is this likely to develop in the future?<br />
OPERATIONAL RELIABILITY &<br />
EFFICIENCY<br />
One important outcome of the automation<br />
enabled by APIs is consistency. Through<br />
automation, businesses remove human<br />
error (and human expense) from<br />
operational processes. Even when a<br />
repeatable task is well-documented with a<br />
clear procedure, when human workers<br />
perform the task it is likely that you will<br />
end up with varied outcomes.<br />
On the other hand, if that repeatable task<br />
is automated, it will be performed in the<br />
same way every time, improving<br />
operational reliability and in turn<br />
operational efficiency. API enabled<br />
platforms are driving a true re-think in how<br />
we manage IT; we are moving quickly<br />
from a process-driven, reactive world to<br />
an automation-driven, proactive world.<br />
AUTOMATING DEVOPS<br />
APIs allow for more dynamic systems that<br />
can scale up and down to deliver just the<br />
right amount of infrastructure to the<br />
application at all times. For example,<br />
instrumentation in your application that<br />
provides visibility to an orchestration layer<br />
can tell when more capacity is required in<br />
the web or app tier. The orchestration<br />
layer can then come back to the APIs<br />
provided by the infrastructure and begin<br />
22 Cloudhosting Feb/March 2017 @CHMagAndAwards<br />
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TECHNOLOGY: APIS<br />
spinning up new web servers and adding<br />
them to the load balancer pool to<br />
increase capacity.<br />
Likewise, systems built on APIs will then<br />
have the instrumentation to tell when they<br />
are overbuilt, for example at night and can<br />
then use the APIs to wind down<br />
unnecessary servers in order to reduce<br />
costs.<br />
Indeed, through the ability to script the<br />
powering-on of development and testing<br />
environments at the start of the business<br />
day and automatically powering-off at the<br />
end of the business day, businesses can<br />
realise huge cost savings on their hosting<br />
- up to 50-60 per cent in some cases.<br />
Overall, leveraging APIs in support of a<br />
DevOps strategy is always a blend of<br />
optimising for cost, for performance and<br />
the ability to have deep app-level visibility.<br />
AUTOMATING REPORTING<br />
APIs are also highly useful in reporting<br />
procedures, as many applications are<br />
now producing vast amounts of data that<br />
are often an untapped asset. IT teams<br />
therefore need to think about how to<br />
make those datasets available efficiently<br />
in order to build a dynamic reporting<br />
engine that can potentially be configured<br />
by the end user, who will be the person<br />
that understands the nature of the<br />
information that he or she needs to<br />
extract from the data.<br />
This is frequently accomplished through<br />
APIs. IT teams and application services<br />
providers can use APIs to build systems<br />
that process data and make it accessible<br />
to end users immediately, so that they do<br />
not have to go through a reporting team<br />
and do not lose any of the real-time value<br />
of their data.<br />
BUSINESS CONTINUITY & DR<br />
The benefits of automation through APIs<br />
make them a crucial part of modern<br />
disaster recovery approaches. The<br />
assumption that you'll be able to access<br />
all of the tools that you would need during<br />
a disaster through the typical user<br />
interfaces is not always true. In the<br />
modern world of highly virtualised<br />
infrastructure, APIs are the enabler for the<br />
core building blocks of disaster recovery,<br />
in particular replication, which is driven<br />
from the APIs exposed by the<br />
virtualisation platforms. The final act of<br />
orchestrating DR, failover, is also often<br />
highly API dependent, for these reasons.<br />
In essence, disaster recovery is one<br />
specific use case of the way that APIs<br />
enable efficiency and operations<br />
automation. Humans make mistakes and<br />
processes become very difficult to<br />
maintain and update. Therefore a DR plan<br />
based on processes and humans<br />
executing processes is not an ideal option<br />
to ensure the safety of your business in<br />
the event of a disaster. Kicking off DR can<br />
be likened to "pressing the big red button".<br />
However if you can make it one button<br />
that kick starts a set of automated<br />
processes, this will be much more<br />
manageable and reliable than thirteen<br />
different buttons, each of which has a<br />
thirty-page policy and procedure<br />
document that must be executed during<br />
a disaster.<br />
WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD?<br />
While there are some obvious benefits to<br />
API-enabled technology and automation,<br />
much of the IT industry is yet to get up to<br />
speed to understand this technology's<br />
potential. This is particularly true in<br />
industries that have been using<br />
information technology for a long time. In<br />
these industries, we're still seeing a large<br />
number of legacy applications, legacy<br />
staff skill-sets and legacy approaches to<br />
managing infrastructure.<br />
As we watch the younger generation<br />
coming into the IT industry, who have<br />
grown up with and are being taught about<br />
APIs, there is likely to be a shift towards<br />
more comprehensive API use and<br />
understanding of the value APIs can offer.<br />
As we see disruptors displace incumbent<br />
packaged software players and new<br />
entrants to the enterprise IT community,<br />
we are likely to see more realisation of the<br />
benefits of API use - particularly as skillsets<br />
build and the potential to utilise<br />
capabilities inherent in new generation<br />
Cloud infrastructures grow.<br />
It will, however, take time to produce and<br />
develop enough entry level IT<br />
professionals who possess the training<br />
and education required to take full<br />
advantage of the opportunities APIs offer.<br />
APIs are also contributing to reducing<br />
the cost of developing new ideas.<br />
Entrepreneurs can now quickly start a<br />
new business on Cloud Infrastructure-asa-Service<br />
platforms, without having to<br />
make large upfront investments on IT<br />
equipment to get an idea off the ground.<br />
Start-ups can use APIs to control and<br />
power systems down to reduce costs as<br />
required and can then efficiently scale up<br />
on the same Cloud infrastructure as their<br />
new product or service grows.<br />
To fully take advantage of the reduced<br />
costs, APIs should be an integrated part<br />
of Cloud solutions, rather than an<br />
expensive addition to the service.<br />
As the number of innovative startups in the<br />
tech space grows and as enterprises<br />
increasingly search for new, effective<br />
solutions and ways of working, we are likely<br />
to see more creative uses of APIs, driving<br />
consistency, efficiency and automation.<br />
Businesses are going to have to work hard<br />
to stay ahead of the market and making full<br />
use of API-enabled technologies and<br />
software to increase efficiency and reduce<br />
costs is a key enabler to support these<br />
competitive drives.<br />
More info: www.navisite.co.uk<br />
www.cloudhostingmagazine.co.uk<br />
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Feb/March 2017 Cloudhosting<br />
23
EVENT REPORT: CLOUD EXPO EUROPE 2017<br />
The main event<br />
Cloud Expo, Europe's biggest and best attended cloud and digital transformation<br />
show took place recently in London's ExCel: Cloud Hosting<br />
magazine was there to report back<br />
This year's Cloud Expo Europe -<br />
alongside Smart IoT, Cloud<br />
Security, Data Centre World and<br />
Big Data World - played host to over 500<br />
leading international technology<br />
exhibitors and 600 speakers. Delegates<br />
took advantage of the free entry to learn<br />
from global business experts as well as<br />
leaders of innovative UK and<br />
international start-ups.<br />
The comprehensive conference<br />
programme included:<br />
Over 600 top experts, including<br />
number 1 rated CIOs, Acclaimed<br />
Global Cloud Leaders, Cloud Gurus<br />
from Box, BT, Google, McLaren<br />
Technology Group, Microsoft, Paypal,<br />
Spotify, Twitter and Vodafone,<br />
covering all the major technology<br />
and business issues<br />
24 Cloudhosting Feb/March 2017 @CHMagAndAwards<br />
www.cloudhostingmagazine.co.uk
EVENT REPORT: CLOUD EXPO EUROPE 2017<br />
The opportunity to learn from dozens<br />
of real practitioners from blue chip<br />
companies, service providers and<br />
leading organisations including<br />
organisations including Financial<br />
Times, ITV, LEGO, Lloyds, LV and the<br />
Ministry of Defence.<br />
Suppliers at the show included AWS,<br />
Commvault, LeGrand, IBM, Intel, OVH,<br />
Navisite, NTT Communications, Pure<br />
Storage, Samsung, Trend Micro,<br />
VMware, Veeam, Volta and Western<br />
Digital.<br />
Delegates were able to network with<br />
thousands of peers, industry<br />
visionaries, leaders and people who<br />
are facing similar challenges.<br />
The industry-leading sister events<br />
were all well attended: Data Centre<br />
World, Cloud Security Expo, and<br />
Smart IoT all took place at the same<br />
time in the same place, as well as<br />
brand new launch event Big Data<br />
World.<br />
SPEAKERS' CORNER<br />
Pulsant CTO Matt Lovell presented at the<br />
Infrastructure, Storage & Virtualisation<br />
Theatre, talking about 'converting hybrid<br />
services to value', and also told us about<br />
Pulsant's newest collaboration with<br />
Microsoft on AMP, a hybrid cloud<br />
solution set. As one of only a handful of<br />
strategic hosting partners to Microsoft,<br />
AMP will strengthen Pulsant's delivery,<br />
management and support of Azure and<br />
Azure Stack.<br />
We also spoke with Hiren Parekh, UK<br />
Director at OVH, one of Europe's largest<br />
cloud hosting providers and a relatively<br />
new name in the UK market. The<br />
company recently announced a new<br />
data centre in the UK, and has ambitious<br />
growth plans. OVH also presented at<br />
Cloud Expo on 'Understanding different<br />
types of cloud services' as well as 'My<br />
CTO loves Software Defined Data<br />
Centres' - we were sorry to have missed<br />
that one!<br />
On the IBM stand the focus was on a<br />
demonstration of the 'Cognitive<br />
Command Centre', showing social<br />
sentiment around blood and organ<br />
donation using URLs and hash tags.<br />
The company was involved in a number<br />
of speaker sessions including the 'Cloud<br />
Super Providers' panel discussion which<br />
was one of the best attended of the two<br />
days.<br />
THIS YEAR'S MODELS<br />
Navisite had a very noticeable presence<br />
at the event, and Sean McAvan, Navisite<br />
Europe MD presented on the topic of<br />
'Multi-Cloud - Practical Use Cases,'<br />
exploring one of the hottest trends in the<br />
cloud and IT industry. Sean's talk<br />
covered why businesses across multiple<br />
industries are adopting a multi-cloud<br />
approach, and how this is impacting IT<br />
across a range of industries. He also<br />
discussed how IT teams and providers<br />
could manage multi-clouds and<br />
overcome the barriers to adoption.<br />
A major Navisite customer, the National<br />
Theatre was also at the show talking<br />
about the importance of technology to<br />
the Theatre's success, and how moving<br />
to the cloud has enabled this, including<br />
the enablement of better remote<br />
working. Cloud solutions are supporting<br />
digital transformation across the arts<br />
sector, explained John Cheyne, IT<br />
Director at the NT, and this is likely to<br />
develop in the future.<br />
HyperGrid attended Cloud Expo to<br />
showcase their HyperCloud offering but<br />
also to talk in more detail about how<br />
consumption-based models are set to<br />
define the way businesses embrace<br />
cloud in the coming years. HyperGrid<br />
were the first provider to move from a<br />
traditional, hardware-based hyperconverged<br />
infrastructure solution to a<br />
SaaS solution. HyperGrid now offer a<br />
fully consumption-based, on-premise<br />
cloud service for the enterprise, with no<br />
Capex costs - an approach also adopted<br />
by the likes of Nutanix and Simplivity.<br />
HyperGrid CEO Nariman Teymourian<br />
was on hand at the show to discuss how<br />
HyperCloud is 'shaking up the cloud<br />
landscape', as well as share his thoughts<br />
on the latest developments and future of<br />
cloud, including how consumptionbased<br />
models can bring added depth to<br />
a space currently dominated by key<br />
players such as AWS and Azure.<br />
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Feb/March 2017 Cloudhosting<br />
25
EVENT REPORT: CLOUD EXPO EUROPE 2017<br />
Datapipe - who acquired Adapt late last<br />
year - were named a leader in the 2017<br />
Gartner Magic Quadrant for Public Cloud<br />
and Infrastructure Managed Service<br />
Providers (the tenth time it has been<br />
placed in a Magic Quadrant) and Stewart<br />
Smythe, Managing Director at Datapipe<br />
Europe was at Cloud Expo Europe to<br />
discuss the strategies which have helped<br />
to enable this achievement. This included<br />
Datapipe's ability to support cloud<br />
deployments in China, as a global<br />
managed service provider of Alibaba<br />
Cloud, as well as the recent launch of<br />
Datapipe's end-to-end platform,<br />
Trebuchet.<br />
MAKING CONNECTIONS<br />
Elsewhere, Talend was promoting how it<br />
is using data to develop the connected<br />
car and also talking about the<br />
government's journey from being 'data<br />
rich and insight poor' to truly data driven.<br />
Vice President Ciaran Dynes discussed<br />
the issues surrounding data collection for<br />
the 23% of UK cars that are predicted to<br />
be connected by 2020.<br />
Interoute unveiled its VDC Container<br />
Orchestration platform with Rancher - to<br />
help companies develop the tools needed<br />
to improve customer experience and<br />
service levels, as well as speed up<br />
DevOps projects. Matthew Finnie, CTO at<br />
Interoute hosted a keynote presentation<br />
on 'Why digital transformation is no longer<br />
a choice'.<br />
Finnie was also keen to explain how<br />
Interoute is enabling enterprises (such as<br />
client AO.com) to digitally transform, as<br />
well as explaining how organisations can<br />
integrate legacy, third party and digital IT<br />
environments.<br />
Druva used the timing of the event to<br />
announce news around Office 365 and<br />
data protection for cloud applications,<br />
based on a partnership with Phoenix<br />
Software here in the UK. According to<br />
Rick Powles, Druva VP for EMEA, many<br />
companies don't consider how easy it is<br />
for data to live outside the data centre,<br />
but at least 40 per cent of all company<br />
data is already there according to analyst<br />
reports.<br />
Rubrik, one of the fastest growing cloud<br />
companies to come out of Silicon Valley,<br />
is the start-up responsible for developing<br />
the world's first Cloud Data Management<br />
platform for data protection, storage and<br />
archival - and has recently opened a<br />
London office. In the three years since its<br />
conception, Rubrik has grown<br />
exponentially, announcing earlier this year<br />
a booked revenue approaching $100m<br />
run rate and a 700% annual customer<br />
growth. As a company, explained Yvonne<br />
Prest, Rubrik's recently appointed UK<br />
Channel Manager, its fundamental aim<br />
has always stayed the same; to reimagine<br />
and radically simplify how data storage,<br />
back up and cloud recovery works.<br />
WHAT'S IN STORE?<br />
As usual, storage companies were well<br />
represented at Cloud Expo Europe. Tom<br />
O'Neill, Kaminario's CTO International,<br />
talked about the urgent requirement for a<br />
scalable storage platform to enable cloud<br />
businesses to grow rapidly without<br />
adding complexity. To that end, Kaminario<br />
set itself a challenge: how to create a<br />
cloud storage platform which can scale<br />
without adding complexity. The answer,<br />
O'Neill explained, is to make storage<br />
application-aware.<br />
At the event Kaminario was<br />
demonstrating its sixth generation of its<br />
K2 all-flash array delivering multi-petabyte<br />
scale storage. The newer generation AFA<br />
delivers up to five times more capacity<br />
than the previous generation and twice as<br />
much performance. The array can linearly<br />
grow the number of CPU cores and<br />
independently grow solid-state capacity.<br />
Samsung Semiconductor showcased its<br />
industry-leading memory and storage<br />
systems at the show - including its Z-SSD<br />
products, 10nm class DRAM with 3D TSV<br />
and AutoCache. The company was also<br />
promoting its selection of all-flash array<br />
and NVMe over fabric solutions.<br />
Overall there can be no question that no<br />
other UK business IT event is bigger,<br />
better attended and packs more leading<br />
educational content into 2 unmissable<br />
days than Cloud Expo Europe - all at no<br />
cost.<br />
More info: www.cloudexpoeurope.com<br />
Cloudhosting<br />
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