Tag: Infrastructure-as-a-Service

Public IT cloud service spending to soar

Posted on November 3, 2014 by - News

Clouds in Oxford: pic Mike MageeBy 2018, spending on public IT cloud services is set to be worth $127 billion.

That’s according to research from IDC, which indicates a five year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22.8 percent – six times the rate for the IT market overall.

The spending is a result of the conjunction of IT vendors offering more services and buyers wanting to buy more kit.

IDC thinks much of the growth is likely to be industry platforms with their own communities.

The news is good for developers, as their numbers will triple and create as many as a 10 time increase of new cloud offerings.

And the offerings will be strategic rather than tactical.

IDC expects a great deal of consolidation in the cloud services industry as a result of increased competition.

Software as a service (SaaS) will dominate public IT cloud services spending – accounting for as much as 70 percent of expenditure this year.  That’s because customer demand is chiefly at the application level, followed by infrastructure as a service (IaaS).

Governments need to go cloud busting

Posted on December 17, 2013 by - News

cloudbustA report from Gartner said that by 2017 public cloud offerings will account for over 25 percent of government business services, not counting defence and security.

But CIOs need to get themselves into the debate on public cloud sourcing, and kick of sourcing strategies with politicos.

By 2017, predicted Gartner, 35 percent of government shared service organisations will be managed by private sector companies. Public private partnerships are already embracing infrastructure as a service but governments will move to integration and software as a service.

And, Gartner predicts, by 2017 as many as 60 percent plus of government open data programmes that do not use open data internally will be discontinued.

And if you’ve a job in government software development, mind your back, because at least 25 percent of such jobs will be axed while governments hire data analysts from outside.  Data analysis is now a high priority.

Westcoast to be powered by HP’s cloud

Posted on October 17, 2013 by - News

Clouds in Oxford: pic Mike MageeHP said that its distributor and partner Westcoast will use its  Converged Cloud offering to woo the reseller base.

The investment is over £1 million and will mean Westcoast will offer its resellers cloud services, to manage Microsoft Lync, Exchange and SharePoint in the distributors’ IL3 data centre.

The move, said HP, means that Westcoast customers – that is to say its resellers –  will be able to use current credit lines as well as take part in a partner programme which includes training and support.

Duncan Forsyth, Westcoast’s MD said that the era of onsite IT is becoming IT in the cloud. “We want to support both,” he said. HP Converged Cloud will let his company deliver IaaS (infrastructure as a service) and SaaS (software as a service) for resellers with a minimal need for capital investment.

The system will effectively be based on HP products including Proliant Bladesystem c7000 enclosures with BL460c Gen 8 blades using Intel Xeon chips.  The system will also use SoreServ storage systems, HP tape libraries and HP 5400 Switch series.

HP exec Michael Clifford said that managing and using data centres “frighten many resellers” but using its systems will help resellers to see clearly through the mists of the cloud and offer quality cloud services.

Alvea Services launches Infrastructure Service

Posted on March 11, 2013 by - News

Hands across the waterAlvea Services has launched its Infrastructure Service, aimed at helping companies with additional virtual servers.

The managed security and cloud-based computing provider, says its new Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) has been designed for organisations that may need to vary their computing capabilities at a moment’s notice to match the changing needs of their business. Rather than have to invest in an IT infrastructure that may lie redundant when full capacity is not required, they are claimed to be able to use Alvea’s new service to quickly and easily provision additional virtual servers when they need them.

The company says this is is particularly important for project-based businesses, those that operate around seasonal fluctuations in demand or those that may need additional resource for testing or short-term data processing.

A key feature of the new service is its secure data seeding capability, either via encrypted hard disk or high-speed internet transfer, which allows businesses to move their data to the cloud quickly and securely. There is also a simple user interface to give clients instant provisioning of IT security and cloud services with a pay-as-you go model so that IT departments can react quickly to the changing needs of their businesses and only pay for the computing power they use.

The new service has been built around a UK-based data centre to comply with data “sovereignty” and security requirements and is operated by IT security and data centre management specialists.

The service is delivered and supported by a network of IT and security resellers that provide technical support and advice on how Alvea Infrastructure can be integrated into an organisation’s existing IT environment.

To demonstrate the service,  Alvea is offering businesses free trials of the service, for a limited period of time, and inviting them to ‘try before you buy’ to test out the flexibility of the new service.