More CIOs and CTOs are looking for digital transformation and smart technology solutions to their line of business leader innovation requirements. Blockchain and related distributed ledger technologies are already making an impact outside of the finance and insurance space from which they emerged.

Promising new use cases are being trialed in a number of digitally transforming sectors -- notably supply chain management, retail and consumer, arts and entertainment, and public services.

Blockchain applications market...

Cloud computing platforms and applications are proliferating across enterprises today, serving as the IT infrastructure driving new digital businesses. The following roundup of cloud computing forecasts and market estimates reflect a maturing global market for cloud services, with proven scale, speed and security to support new business models.

CIOs who are creating compelling business cases that rely on cloud platforms as a growth catalyst are the architects enabling these new business initiatives to...

The money just keeps rolling in for Snowflake Computing. The San Mateo-based data warehousing provider has announced $450 million (£341m) in additional growth funding to help grow its organisation and explore new strategies.

Snowflake offers a comprehensive and complete data warehouse – in other words, repositories of integrated data from at least one source, usually more – in the cloud, with the capability...

From competitors to friends; big data behemoths Cloudera and Hortonworks are to merge in a $5.2 billion (£3.97bn) deal.

Cloudera, which went for IPO last year, noted Hortonworks, which went public in 2014, as a competing open source player in its filing to the SEC....

When emerging technologies, such as blockchain, artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things converge, a ‘gestalt shift’ will occur, according to a new book. “The character of the experience will drastically change,” write Mark van Rijmenam and Dr. Philippa Ryan in Blockchain: Transforming Your Business and Our World. “All of a sudden, we can see the world through a different, more technologically advanced, lens and this opens up a completely new...

More and more enterprise data is being transferred to the cloud, but sometimes the journey can break the network's back - which calls for less virtual and more physical solutions.

Microsoft has announced the general availability of Azure Data Box, a physical box which organisations can order, fill up, and then return to Redmond for it to be uploaded to an Azure environment. 

Companies and users can store up to 100 TB per standard box, with variables either way. The newly announced Data Box Heavy can...

Enterprise data lakes are an essential component of many digital transformation projects. Numerous insights about customers, partners and other stakeholders are extracted from these significant commercial assets. Given the benefits, IT infrastructure and associated software investment will increase to support new use cases.

According to the latest worldwide market study by International Data Corporation (IDC), revenues for big data and business analytics (BDA) solutions will reach $260 billion in 2022 with a...

• 71% of enterprises globally predict their investments in data and analytics will accelerate in the next three years and beyond
• 57% of enterprises globally have a Chief Data Officer, a leadership role that is pivotal in helping to democratise data and analytics across any organisation
• 52% of enterprises are leveraging advanced and predictive analytics today to provide greater insights and contextual intelligence into operations
• 41% of all enterprises are considering a move to cloud-based analytics in the next year
• Cloud computing (24%), big data (20%), and AI/machine learning (18%) are the three technologies...

A blockchain acts as a digital distributed ledger of transactions or records. The ledger, which stores the information or data, exists across multiple participants in a peer-to-peer network. There's no single, central repository. Distributed ledgers technology (DLT) allows new transactions to be added to an existing chain of transactions using a secure cryptographic signature.

Worldwide spending on blockchain solutions is forecast to reach $11.7 billion in 2022, according to the latest global market study...

• Executive management, operations, and sales are the three primary roles driving Business Intelligence (BI) adoption in 2018.
• Dashboards, reporting, end-user self-service, advanced visualization, and data warehousing are the top five most important technologies and initiatives strategic to BI in 2018.
• Small organizations with up to 100 employees have the highest rate of BI penetration or adoption in 2018.
• Organizations successful with analytics and BI apps define success in business results, while unsuccessful organizations concentrate on adoption rate first.
• 50% of vendors offer perpetual on-premises licensing...

Many organizations are making the move to cloud-native platforms as their strategy for digital transformation. Cloud native allows companies to deliver fast-responding, user-friendly applications with greater agility. However, the architecture of the data in support of cloud-native transformation is often ignored in the hope that it will take care of itself.

With data becoming the information currency of every organization, how do you avoid the data mistakes commonly made during this cloud transformation...

With nine in 10 sales and marketing teams insisting that cloud-based business intelligence (BI) technology is necessary to the management of their strategies, it’s no wonder that the adoption has exploded in recent years. However, many businesses, especially small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) are still lagging behind.

• Worldwide big data market revenues for software and services are projected to increase from $42bn in 2018 to $103bn in 2027, attaining a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 10.48% according to Wikibon
• Forrester predicts the global big data software market will be worth $31bn this year, growing 14% from the previous year. The entire global software market is forecast to be worth $628bn in revenue, with $302bn from...

• Employees would most recommend Dataiku, StreamSets, 1010 Data, Reltio, Looker, SAP, Google, Salesforce, Tamr, DataRobot, 

The rise of Alibaba Cloud, to become a major player in cloud infrastructure, is a fascinating one.

Between 2014 and 2016, Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS) saw the top right box change not one iota. Amazon Web Services (AWS) was out on its own, followed by Microsoft, then a gap to the rest. 2014 had a swarm of ‘visionary’ players, but by 2016 only Google remained to take third place.

Last year, however, things changed. The top right of course remained the same, but...

• Cloud BI adoption is soaring in 2018, nearly doubling 2016 adoption levels.
• Over 90% of sales and marketing teams say that cloud BI is essential for getting their work done in 2018, leading all categories in the survey.
• 66% of organizations that consider themselves completely successful with business intelligence (BI) initiatives currently use the cloud.
• Financial Services (62%), technology (54%), and education (54%) have the highest Cloud BI adoption rates in 2018.
• 86% of Cloud BI adopters name Amazon AWS as their first choice, 82% name Microsoft Azure, 66% name Google Cloud, and 36% identify IBM...

Cloud technologies are key to Hong Kong businesses according to a new report from SolarWinds – but containers, blockchain and robotics still have a fair way to go yet.

The findings appear in the company’s latest IT trends report, ‘The Intersection of Hype and Performance.’ The research polled 75 IT practitioners, managers and directors in Hong Kong – with the overall research quizzing more than 800 respondents across four continents – and found cloud and hybrid IT was the...

• $86bn was spent on security in 2017, yet 66% of companies have still been breached an average of five or more times.
• Just 55% of CEOs say their organizations have experienced a breach, while 79% of CTOs acknowledge breaches have occurred. One in approximately four CEOs (24%) aren’t aware if their companies have even had a security breach.
• 62% of CEOs inaccurately cite malware as the primary threat to cybersecurity.
• 68% of executives whose companies experienced significant breaches in hindsight believe that the breach could have been prevented by implementing more...

• 84% of marketing organizations are implementing or expanding AI and machine learning in 2018.
• 75% of enterprises using AI and machine learning enhance customer satisfaction by more than 10%.
• 3 in 4 organizations implementing AI and machine learning increase sales of new products and services by more than 10% according to Capgemini.

Measuring marketing’s many contributions to revenue growth is becoming more accurate and real-time thanks to...

The Internet needed a means to maximise its potential – and the solution would need to be highly adaptable and accepting of a wide variety of technology. Cloud computing has evolved with the information age.

The evolution of applications for cloud computing: A history

The Allied Telecom Group describes cloud computing as an interconnected network of remote servers; specifically, Internet-host servers that process and manage information, as well...