Showing posts with label cloud companies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cloud companies. Show all posts

Domestic cloud computing estimated to grow at 53%: Study


As per a report published on Moneycontrol.com website:
The domestic cloud computing industry is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 53% to be a Rs 2,434 crore market by 2014, a study conducted by CyberMedia Research India said.
"The public cloud computing market in India is estimated to touch Rs 2,434 crore in 2014 after growing at a CAGR of 53% between 2010-2014," a company statement said.
"Cloud computing is witnessing widespread interest from the vendor-service provider-channel community on the one hand and business leaders and CIOs on the other," CyberMedia Research India Software and IT Services Research Lead Analyst Kamal Vohra said.
This is fuelled by the strong belief that cloud computing will allow a large number of SMB enterprises to adopt the same enterprise class software and technology solutions, it added.
As per the study, penetration in cloud computing is expected to grow by 6.8% in 2012 from 4% in 2010.
On the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) industry, the study said the market was expected to grow by 50% to touch Rs 465 crore by this year-end.
The Infrastructure-as-a-service Industry (IaaS) was also expected to pickup pace after 2012. The overall CAGR for the India IaaS market during 2010-2014 was expected to be at 49%, the statement added.

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SAP buys SuccessFactors for $3.4 billion

SAP has agreed to buy San Mateo's SuccessFactors Inc. for $3.4 billion in cash in a bid to catch up with rival Oracle in the cloud-computing market.

The move is the latest acquisition by co-CEOs Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe, who took charge of SAP when CEO Léo Apotheker was forced out in 2009.

McDermott and Snabe have pledged to make the largest maker of business-management software better at meeting demand for new technologies, such as cloud computing, real-time analytics and mobile applications.
The SuccessFactors deal shows SAP's previous go-it-alone approach to the cloud was lacking, said Thomas Otter, a vice president at Gartner Inc.

"My first reaction was: What took you so long?" Otter said. "This means a fundamental shift in terms of their cloud strategy, which has been rather slow to get off the ground. This is a tacit admission that their cloud strategy was a failure."

Stock takes a hit

SAP shares dropped 1.6 percent to 44 euros in Frankfurt Monday, valuing the company at 54 billion euros.
"In addition to the high price paid, which we think investors will see negatively, the other question will be whether the decision to acquire reflects a sign of SAP's strength or its weakness," UBS analyst Michael Briest said Monday. He cut his rating on SAP shares to "neutral" from "buy."

SAP, Oracle and companies such as Apple, Salesforce.com, IBM, Amazon.com, Dell and Microsoft are promoting cloud computing as a secure way to outsource data centers and reduce the need for pricey servers and other hardware.

SuccessFactors, which makes software used to manage employee performance, has more than 3,500 customers and 15 million subscribers in 168 countries. The company is predicted to have $502 million in revenue in 2013, according to analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg.
SAP is paying 8 times SuccessFactors' forecast revenue for next year, compared with a median of 3 times revenue companies paid for 32 North American software targets over the past five years, Bloomberg data show.

'Crown jewel'

"You get what you pay for, and if you want the crown jewel in this industry, you have got to pay for it," McDermott said. "We are very comfortable with the relationship between the price and 2012 revenues. It's very much in the medium range. We don't consolidate old, tired companies that don't grow anymore."
SAP may take a break from large deals after the close of SuccessFactors, while it concentrates on expanding in cloud computing, mobile business software, data analysis and in-memory computing, McDermott added.

"For now, I think we have the assets we need to win," he said.

McDermott and SuccessFactors CEO Lars Dalgaard first met on Sept. 27 at SuccessFactors' office in San Mateo. One asset SAP gains is Dalgaard himself.
Dalgaard, 44, will have the job of overseeing SAP's broad software-as-a-service efforts, including its Business ByDesign Web programs for midsize companies. Peter Lorenz, an SAP executive vice president in charge of the group of products, will report to him, McDermott said.
"Lars will oversee the entire SAP cloud," McDermott said. "This is our catalyst."

Owning SuccessFactors, which helps companies decide which employees to retain and how much to pay them, can help SAP sell "human capital management" software to the highest echelons of its customers' management, McDermott said.

SuccessFactors may also add programs for handling logistics and supply-chain operations, Dalgaard said.
"The talent management market will probably be worth about $3.5 billion this year," Otter said. "SAP has essentially spent what the whole market will be worth this year in one swoop. It is a lot to pay for a niche in their portfolio, but human resources technology is a hot space."

The global market for cloud services may surge to $148.8 billion in 2014 from $68.3 billion in 2010, Gartner estimates.
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IDC Predicts 2012 Will Be the Year of Mobile and Cloud Platform Wars

01 Dec 2011
FRAMINGHAM, Mass., December 1, 2011 – One year ago, International Data Corporation (IDC) predicted that the IT industry's next dominant platform, built on mobile computing, cloud services, social networking, and big data analytics technologies, would begin its transition into the mainstream. Today, spending on these technologies is growing at about 18% per year and is expected to account for at least 80% of IT spending growth between now and 2020. With future market revenues at stake, IDC predicts that 2012 will be marked by some of the first high-stakes battles as companies seek to position themselves for leadership in these critical and fast-growing technology areas.

"The industry's shift to the 3rd Platform will accelerate in 2012, forcing the industry's leaders to make bold investments and fateful decisions," said Frank Gens, senior vice president and chief analyst at IDC. "Companies like Microsoft, HP, SAP, RIM, and others – including Apple – will face 'crossroads moments' in 2012. By the end of the year, we should have a good idea which vendors will – and won't – be among the industry's leaders at the end of the decade."
Overall, IDC predicts that worldwide IT spending will grow 6.9% year over year to $1.8 trillion in 2012. As much as 20% of this total spending will be driven by the technologies that are reshaping the IT industry – smartphones, media tablets, mobile networks, social networking, and big data analytics. Meanwhile, emerging markets (defined as all markets except North America, Western Europe, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand) will drive more than half of all IT spending growth worldwide in 2012, led by the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) and a handful of other fast-growing markets like Indonesia, Vietnam, and Saudi Arabia. The growing importance of these markets is reflected in IDC's prediction that China will surpass Japan as the world's second largest IT market sometime in the course of the year.
2012 will also be the Year of Mobile Ascendency as mobile devices (smartphones and media tablets) surpass PCs in both shipments and spending and mobile apps, with 85 billion downloads, generate more revenue than the mainframe market. The mobility market will see heated competition in 2012 as Microsoft joins the crucial battle for dominance in the mobile operating system (OS) market and the Kindle Fire challenges the iPad in the media tablet market. Similarly, a host of new mobile devices with "good enough" capabilities (think "smartphone lite") will challenge the current device leaders on price and functionality in key emerging markets like China, India, Indonesia, and Brazil.

Competition will also characterize the world of cloud services in 2012 as the strategic focus shifts from building infrastructure to the creation of application platforms and ecosystems. Here the battle for enterprise platform dominance is just getting underway with established players like IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle facing serious challenges from Amazon, Google, Salesforce.com, and VMware. As evidence of this challenge, IDC expects Amazon Web Services to exceed $1 billion in cloud services business in 2012 with Google's Enterprise business to follow within 18 months. IDC also expects a merger and acquisition (M&A) feeding frenzy as these companies seek to gain a competitive edge. Look for Microsoft to buy a content/media cloud, like Netflix, to provide a marketplace for its apps and content. Other prime targets for acquisition include Cloud Application/SaaS companies, like Workday, NetSuite, and Taleo. 

Social networking technologies – especially where they are being accelerated by mobile technologies – will be recognized as a mandatory component in every major enterprise IT vendors' strategy. As a result, IDC expects a number of major IT vendors to make "statement" acquisitions in social business while others continue to expand their community platforms. Companies like LinkedIn, Spigit, BrightIdea, Attensity, and Lithium are logical acquisition targets for Microsoft, IBM, and Oracle. Meanwhile, Facebook will attempt to leverage its consumer dominance into a broader role serving as the business-to-consumer platform of choice. 

Finally, Big Data will earn its place as the next "must have" competency in 2012 as the volume of digital content grows to 2.7 zettabytes (ZB), up 48% from 2011. Over 90% of this information will be unstructured (e.g., images, videos, MP3 files, and files based on social media and Web-enabled workloads) – full of rich information, but challenging to understand and analyze. As businesses seek to squeeze high-value insights from this data, IDC expects to see offerings that more closely integrate data and analytics technologies, such as in-memory databases and BI tools, move into the mainstream. And, like the cloud services market, 2012 is likely to be a busy year for Big Data-driven mergers and acquisitions as large IT vendors seek to acquire additional functionality.
  • In addition to key developments in mobile, cloud, social business, and big data, IDC predicts that 2012 will be a notable year in a number of other areas:
  • Mobile data network spending will exceed fixed data network spending for the first time
  • 80% of new commercial enterprise apps will be deployed on cloud platforms
  • 15% of new mobile apps will be based on HTML5 by year's end
  • Vendors from emerging markets, such as Huawei and China Telecom, will make an aggressive push into developed markets, including the U.S.
  • The number of intelligent, communicating devices on the network will outnumber "traditional computing" devices by almost 2 to 1 within next 24 months, changing the way we think – and interact – with each other and devices on the network
"Even though the IT industry will follow along the same transformational path as it did in 2011, the events, the choices, and the stakes will be very different in 2012," added Gens. "The urgency to act – and to make the right decisions – will dramatically increase. By the end of 2012, we should be able to see much more clearly which players have successfully positioned themselves in the 'lead pack' of the marathon-like race for industry leadership in the decade ahead."

IDC's predictions for 2012 are presented in full detail in the report, IDC Predictions 2012: Competing for 2020 (Doc #231720). In addition, Frank Gens will lead a group discussion of this year's predictions in an IDC Web conference scheduled for December 1 at 12:00 pm U.S. Eastern time. For more information, or to register for this free event, please go to: http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=IDC_P24932.

International Data Corporation (IDC) is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets. IDC helps IT professionals, business executives, and the investment community to make fact-based decisions on technology purchases and business strategy. More than 1,000 IDC analysts provide global, regional, and local expertise on technology and industry opportunities and trends in over 110 countries. For more than 47 years, IDC has provided strategic insights to help our clients achieve their key business objectives. IDC is a subsidiary of IDG, the world's leading technology media, research, and events company. You can learn more about IDC by visiting www.idc.com.

Source: http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS23177411
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Six Types of Cloud Computing


Article Summary:
Six Types of Cloud Computing — Everyone is talking about cloud computing today, but not everyone means the same thing when they do. While there is this general idea behind the cloud – that applications or other business functions exist somewhere away from the business itself – there are many iterations that companies look to in order to actually use the technology. Cloud computing offers a variety of ways for businesses to increase their IT capacity or functionality without having to add infrastructure, personnel, and software.
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Top 10 cloud computing providers of 2011

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India leads in cloud storage adoption


Hitachi Data Systems Corporation (HDS), a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi recently announced survey results indicating that India is leading in cloud storage and converged system adoption in Asia Pacific. The survey results also revealed that more than 50 percent of the large Asia Pacific enterprises that participated in the survey are not anticipating or planning for the advent of “Big Data.”
The survey results are published in an HDS-sponsored IDC white paper titled “The changing face of storage: A rethink of strategy that goes beyond the data”. The survey was conducted by IDC from August to September 2011 with 150 IT executives from large enterprises in Australia, New Zealand, China, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore. HDS commissioned the survey to better understand their storage management challenges, needs and strategies.


"There is a great potential for the information cloud because it will analyze content independently of applications or media and enable analytics of Big Data


- Kevin Eggleston, Senior Vice President and GM, Hitachi Data Systems Asia Pacific


“HDS believes that data and information must be stored, governed and managed for insight and innovation in order to drive strategic and competitive value,” said Kevin Eggleston, senior vice president and general manager, Hitachi Data Systems Asia Pacific. “Embracing the latest technologies, like cloud services, not only enables enterprises to manage data growth but also to collect and connect data to create valuable information. Our three-tiered strategy of infrastructure cloud, content cloud and information cloud uses a dynamic infrastructure and enables fluid content to gain faster and more sophisticated insight and greater value from stored data.”

The Indian market is the most mature in terms of the adoption of cloud technologies and the highest usage levels of converged systems. 50 percent of respondents in India are using or planning to use cloud storage in the next 6 to 12 months. 30 percent of respondents in India are using converged systems and 35 percent are either evaluating or planning to use such systems.

The Indian market responses indicate that the move to more advanced datacenter architectures is well underway, and the growing pains are keenly felt. Data management issues due to explosive growth and new challenges uncovered through the virtualization of the server platform dominate concerns. However, fundamental issues such as managing email growth and backup also remained high.
Other key highlights include: 
1. Having access to accurate data on a timely basis key to gain deeper business insight. About 70 percent of respondents in India stated that the demand of the business for deeper analysis outpaces the ability for their systems to ensure the data they had is relevant, timely and useful. Their data growth is outpacing their ability to effectively manage it.
2. Virtual server sprawl remains a key concern. 70 percent cited problems from virtual server sprawl, as they are unable to keep a close track of the virtual platform assets and their alignment to storage.
3. Justifying storage investments is a key challenge as budgets remain tight. 60 percent cited aligning IT costs to business budgets and growth as a main challenge to adopting their IT strategy amid current market conditions.
4. Insufficient backup window a key issue. Due to the nature of their business, 60 percent  of Indian organizations do not have enough time to back up systems.

5. Managing email is getting more difficult and expensive. 60 percent of respondents in India cited concerns over the rising costs in managing email growth.


“Data needs to be shared, compared, analyzed and visualized more holistically. Only then can data become information used for insight, trending, and leveraged proactively in anticipation of things to come,” said Eggleston. “There is a great potential for the information cloud because it will analyze content independently of applications or media and enable analytics of ‘Big Data’ to better align itself to human behavior for deeper, more relevant insight, driving innovation, advancing research, enabling better collaboration, and building more sustainable societies.”

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15 Cloud Computing Companies to Watch...


Cloud computing is spreading like wildfire. The number of enterprises moving their IT operations to the cloud is tremendously growing. Established vendors like Salesforce, Amazon and Google, including other startup firms that provide tools and services for cloud computing continues to increase and clamors for attention.
In this emerging industry, here are the lists of 15 promising cloud computing vendors based on cloud security and storage to apps and infrastructure offerings that should be on your radar screen.
Zimory
Zimory, a Berlin-based company, offers a technology suite for enterprises to transition virtual data centers into cloud-based infrastructure. The company aims to provide high-quality cloud solution while maximizing efficiency as it taps into underused resources. Zimory’s open-technology can scale up to thousands of machines and connect with multiple clouds.  The firms Carrier Grade Cloud Computing portfolio is billed to be a comprehensive solution for deploying and managing secure and scalable public, private and hybrid clouds.
Abiquo
Abiquo is one of the most promising upstarts in the cloud computing arena. It boasts of a comprehensive hypervisor support portfolio including leading vendors such as  Microsoft, Citrix, VMware and Zend. The firm offers a permission-based hierarchy that enables enterprises to forge public, private or hybrid clouds spanning data centers on- and off-premises. It provides a support system to remove vendor lock-in problem through a  drag-and-drag conversion for virtual machines from one hypervisor to another.
Standing Cloud
Standing Cloud provides enterprises with a simple proposition: “We do the sys admin so you don’t have to. Sure, you could handle Web application management. But why?” The firm provides management services on a variety of big-league cloud operators.
Standing Cloud enables users to “deploy myriad open source software solutions to IaaS (infrastructure-as-a-service), but goes a step farther in letting you choose from multiple clouds,” according to Forrester analyst James Staten.
Appirio
Appirio engages itself with both the technological and consulting challenges of enterprise adoption of cloud computing. Since 2006, the firm has helped implement cloud deployments for 200 enterprise clients with some of the leading vendors, including Google, Salesforce and Amazon. Earlier this month, it has acquired VMG, a consulting firm specializing in learning programs and  cloud training.
Spanning Cloud Apps
Spanning Cloud Apps, a company specializing in backup services for Google Apps on its LinkedIn page, was founded to become the Norton Computing of the cloud computing era. The firm offers its signature Spanning Backup product for a free trial and acceptable annual subscription
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Bluelock
Bluelock is considered as a leading VMware vCloud hosting provider that offers both technology and services in the infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) space. The firm’s services are tied to VMware’s virtualization technology. It delivers a tailored solution for establishing a virtual data center hosted on a public or hybrid cloud.
Skytap
Skytap, self-service cloud automation, announces the release of a new technology that claims to establish a secure hybrid cloud that connects to an on-site data center with its cloud in 10 minutes. The firm anticipates winning with a dead-simple hybrid cloud deployment solution that provides the security of the traditional data center with the scale of the cloud.
CloudOptix
CloudOptix, backed up by MeghaWare product line, is a cloud virtualization software player that offers businesses and users a way to create a private cloud from different vendors.  With the preconfigured MeghaWare Cloud Appliance’s portfolio of storage, and applications, it promised low-cost deployment in less than 15 minutes. To defang the problem of vendor lock-in, its CloudTop application, allows customers to choose among devices, apps and cloud providers.
RightScale
RightScale, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) vendor offers a fully automated management platform for cloud computing deployments. It aims to lower the entry barriers to cloud deployments with server templates through its “cloud-ready” mechanism for connecting servers with the customer’s cloud environment.
Recently, RightScale and Zend Technologies announces their new offering that pairs RightScale’s cloud management platform with Zend’s PHP architecture and Zend Server. This technology deploys and manages Php applications in the cloud.
CloudSwitch
CloudSwitch, known as an enterprise cloud gateway, provides software in line with the policies and tools rooted in the data center with a cloud environment. It offers security for businesses that requires maintenance of in-house and cloud-based IT assets. Earlier this month, CloudSwitch conjoined with Riverbed to boost performance and security in the cloud.
Kaavo
Kaavo considers itself to be “the first and only company to deliver a solution with a top-down application-focused approach to IT resource management across public, private and hybrid clouds.”  The firm believes that its application-centric approach  is necessary for effective cloud management. Its core product, IMOD, an application management assures speeding up of server systems online, configuring middleware, and other steps to hasten the transition to a cloud-based environment.
Prolexic Technologies
Prolexic Technologies is a provider of cloud-based security technology that mitigates DDoS attacks. The firm caters to SMN, enterprise and government clients. It features proprietary mitigation and control software that helps detect and fend off DDoS attacks through pairing with a global network of “scrubbing centers.”
At the end of March, the firm received $13.9 million fund from Kennet Partners, an organization that is rumored to be helping a major electronics manufacturer guard against a DDoS attack.
Nimbula
Nimbula, founded by a management team that helped develop Amazon EC2 coins itself as a “cloud operating system company.” Recently, the firm released its flagship product, Nimbula Director 1.0 that provides management for both cloud-based resources and on-premises data centers. This Director 1.0 is also available for free download for smaller deployments up to 40 cores, and an optional-fee based annual support for larger systems.
Nasuni
Nasuni, through its partnership with cloud-computing providers offers a “cloud gateway” that searches for the best aspect of the cloud and on-premises storage. This year, its Nasuni Filer product features a “snapshot retention,” that allows IT managers to set storage and retention policies on the cloud. With this feature, managers can determine the point then a snapshot can be deleted irrevocably
NephoScale
NephoScale is one of the more recent entrants in the IaaS market. The firm’s public cloud infrastructure platform offers pay-by-the-hour servers, object-based storage, and dedicated, on-demand servers. Its signature innovation, the CloudScript, enables users to control all elements of their cloud deployment using a single, one-to-many API call.
Recently, the firm offers a free, one-year trial of a 256 MB cloud server and as much as 1 GB of storage through its Cloud Computing and Storage Starter Package. According to NephoScale President Bruce Templeton, this offering will allow start-up companies to familiarize themselves with their services without spending too much.

Reference: http://cloudtimes.org/

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