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The rapid diffusion for the cloud computing paradigm and promised benefits for the adoption of cloud infrastructure are attracting a growing number of businesses and organisations.

Of course, it is essential for organisations to maximise the benefits of migration to cloud architecture by reducing costs and minimising risks. Cloud computing represents a fundamental change in how companies use and provide their services. For many businesses of small and medium size, it represents a...

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As we’re now full swing into 2015, there is certainly a greater understanding over the potential – and the limitations – of cloud computing. Research from NTT Communications has explored the varying issues and argued there needs to be a smoother migration path from the corporate data centre to the cloud.

Similarly, even though cloud will claim a growing share of IT budgets in coming years, many IT decision makers don’t believe it is living up to its potential.

The...

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The playground for cloud infrastructure providers is busy, as the most recent  Gartner report shows, and Amazon Web Services (AWS), though being challenged by Microsoft Azure, still look like the unattainable leader. What makes Amazon appear a cure-all solution and how many of its services de facto bring tangible benefits to cloud neophytes?

AWS comes with a stack of tempting benefits such as elastic...

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Nearly half of organisations polled in a recent survey admitted they had failed or stalled their cloud hosting implementations, with a further half claiming they had to alter their budget and a whopping 70% force to make changes to their design.

These are the latest figures from a study of 358 respondents conducted by INetU and THINKStrategies entitled “The Adventures of Moving to the Cloud”, which aims to show CIOs and business managers it’s not a “walk in...

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By Chris Chesley, Solutions Architect

Many SMBs struggle with deciding if and what to move to the cloud. Whether it’s security concerns, cost, or lack of expertise, it’s often difficult to map the best possible solution. Here are eight applications and services to consider when your organization is looking to move to the cloud and reduce their server footprint.

What to move to the cloud

1. Email

Obviously in this day and age email is a...

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The Cloud Standards Customer Council (CSCC) has published a new document assessing best practice for migrating applications to the cloud, including data transfer requirements and application performance management (APM).

The latest 16 page release is a supplementary document to the 28 page behemoth (pdf) released in December 2013 outlining a migration roadmap for businesses in six easy steps; assess...

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The cost and functional benefits of migrating services to the cloud have been well documented, but as more solutions are introduced to the market, choosing the right one is presenting many businesses with a real challenge. The industry is becoming increasingly crowded, so we have simplified the research process and singled out five key things organisations may not know about the cloud to help them make the most informed decision.  

Beware of hidden costs

Many businesses...

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Danish beer brand Carlsberg is rolling out Microsoft Office 365 for greater enterprise collaboration, according to details of a customer case study from Redmond.

Carlsberg is rolling out this technology initiative under the banner of ‘GloCal’, which “aims for global efficiency while staying true to its local roots,” and chose Microsoft Office 365 as the optimal solution.

Employees use a full range of Microsoft products: Exchange Online for email; Lync as a...

You know the cloud has taken over when even the most reticent of industries - legal, financial - shift to the cloud, and even discuss Europe-wide private clouds specifically for their industry.

It seemed for a long time that the traditional reasons for moving to the cloud - i.e. reduced cost, increased flexibility - were the key drivers behind the shift towards cloud-delivered software, but some professions are seeing wider benefits. Let's look at the example of Human Resources - another of those industries...

The latest edition of Six of the Best, featuring the CloudTech editorial team’s favourite links from around the web, has either a slightly hotchpotch feel to it, or covers an extremely wide range of cloud computing stories over the past couple of weeks. We’ll leave it up to you to decide.  

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This blog post is for informational and educational purposes only. Any legal information provided in this post should not be relied upon as legal advice. It is not intended to create, and does not create, an attorney-client relationship and readers should not act upon the information presented without first seeking legal counsel.

In a profession notorious for being slow to change, cloud-based solutions for many of the traditionally office-based systems like...

Cloud computing services and technology is on the cusp of mass adoption by the legal industry, according to a report from LexisNexis.

Nearly three quarters (72.4%) of firms surveyed said they were more likely to use the cloud this year, with adoption levels among attorneys in smaller firms hitting 40% - a number which is 10% higher than previous surveys.

This consensus is so grounded that, for the majority (38.7%) of the over 275 respondents, cloud systems will overtake on-premise in the legal profession...

Keeping up with the day-to-day HR needs of a growing workforce can significantly affect your efficiency. Paperwork, approvals, requests for information and staying compliant: all take you away from your strategic focus. A cloud-based HR system can help remove the administrative stress from your growing HR needs and allow you to concentrate on your business.

You already use the cloud

It’s amazing how many people are aware of ‘The Cloud’ but don’t...

You can’t move at the moment for surveys advocating the importance of hybrid cloud strategy – and this latest one, from Rackspace Hosting and conducted by Vanson Bourne, is no different.

60% of IT top brass see the hybrid cloud as the bright, shiny future for IT operations, with a third of that number (19%) completely integrated, compared to only 41% who are partially hybrid-oriented.

The primary reason for hybrid adoption over pure public cloud systems was more control, according to 59% of those...

Research from Quocirca in conjunction with CA Technologies has revealed that opinion on cloud services in Europe is still fiercely divided.

The Quocirca report divides respondents into three potential categories; ‘enthusiasts’, ‘avoiders’ and ‘blockers’, and found that overall 57% of those polled were ‘cloud positive’.

In Europe, 22% were considered enthusiasts, for whom “cloud is the future for much of [their] IT requirement”, whilst a further 35%...

Cloud hosting can bring many benefits to both small and large businesses, but before you fly into the software sky, it’s always worth looking at the business case before any such move.

Application vendors will no doubt be shortly banging on your door with their options and proposals for hosting your current services in the cloud. Let’s stop to consider a few things before you sign away on any new hosting contacts.

The benefits

There are plenty of benefits for moving to cloud hosting for both your...

Over the next five years, cloud computing is still the highest priority for investment, according to the latest piece of research from Compuware, alongside Research in Action.

16.5% of companies cite cloud as the most important area of their IT portfolio to strengthen, ahead of mobile IT (13.5%), business analytics, big data and in-memory (11.3%).

It’s not a surprise that cloud is pretty big news this year too. Cloud infrastructure (12.5%) is the top area of investment for IT in 2013. Renegotiation of...

Steve Hodgkinson, Research Director, Public Sector TechnologyThe New South Wales state government in Australia is taking visionary but practical steps towards cloud services adoption via a program of pilot projects. The projects recognize the need to treat cloud services as an emerging trend to be investigated and evaluated hands-on. It is a practical organizational learning exercise, not an ideological quest or a whole-of-government “grand plan”. Cloud services adoption is best driven at an agency-by-agency...

The key responsibility of the CIO is to ensure an organisation has the technology it needs to function cost effectively, while at the same time remain a competitive force.

Nowhere is this more relevant than in the contact centre industry. If a contact centre does not have technologies, such as interactive voice recognition (IVR), multimedia queuing or real-time speech analytics, then it risks not being able to meet customer expectations of service.

However, buying-in all of these solutions can be an large...

David Molony, Principal Analyst, EnterpriseTelcos have launched a series of credible cloud services offers, and there is a perception in the market that they can now compete with global systems integrators in the converged ICT space. But telco noise levels are set low. There’s a tentativeness in their marketing (which may be deliberate) but, more importantly, they are not getting the direct advocacy they deserve from their global MNC customers.

Tier-2 telcos ramp up cloud services

Telco cloud service providers were...