An ‘enormous’ opportunity is afoot for cloud companies as more organisations move towards implementing hybrid cloud and managed services, according to a new study from Microsoft.

The report – which was conducted in association with 451 Research and which comes in at a whopping 127 pages – polled more than 1700 respondents in 10 geographies, and found that almost two thirds (62%) of overall cloud and hosting infrastructure spend comes bundled with value-added services. When it came to...

As the benefits of cloud computing become more pronounced, more businesses are migrating to the cloud. Greater scalability, flexibility and financial security often come as a result of making the shift to cloud computing - and those are just a few of the advantages. The allure of the cloud is well known. However, the fine details of cloud migration and implementation are often overlooked.

Migrating to the cloud is more

CIOs are preferring hybrid cloud models with security the primary motivation for adoption, according to a new study from NetApp.

The research, which polled 750 CIOs and IT managers in France, Germany and the UK, saw more than half of respondents in each country saying they use a combination of private and public cloud. Germany came out on top with 69%, compared with France (61%) and UK (58%). In terms of partner options, local service providers are the most popular, cited by a combined 26% of respondents,...

Rackspace has announced a partnership with Google Cloud to become its first managed services support partner.

The news, revealed at the time of Google’s Cloud Next event in San Francisco, represents an alignment between the two companies’ ‘obsession’ with customer service and support, Rackspace said. The two companies will collaborate on a new managed services offering for Google Cloud Platform (GCP) customers which will be made available later this year.

Rackspace already has...

A new study from Informatica and Deloitte has found that cloud is “well on the way” to being the dominant vehicle for business analytics.

The report, which was conducted at the end of last year alongside Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) and consulted more than 400 global business and technology leaders, found that cloud was either a key or important part of the analytics strategy for 91% of respondents.

In addition, self-service was considered a key component with cloud-ready organisations...

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It continues to gain traction whilst still being significantly behind the market leader; but what underpins this growth? A new study from NetEnrich has found that while Microsoft Azure continues to see impressive usage figures, companies have to rely on channel providers to help them make the most of their implementations.

The survey, which garnered the views of more than 80 IT professionals in large and midmarket companies, found 46% of respondents were running at least half of...

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Organisations in the UK are among the least likely globally to have a cloud-first strategy, according to a new report from Intel Security.

The study, which polled more than 2,000 senior IT professionals, found the UK had pretty miserable scores across the board compared to their international brethren. The UK’s score of 70% for businesses who are cloud-first – whilst still a reasonable number – lagged behind the global average of more than 80%, while only 7% of UK...

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The cloud and IT skills gap has been a long-suffering gripe for many organisations; and a new research study from Robert Half Technology shows the problem is by no means resolved yet.

According to the study, which was based on interviews with more than 100 CIOs and IT executives across the UK, three quarters (74%) of CIOs and IT directors polled admitted they frequently encountered IT professionals who were not up to the task. Yet only two in five (38%) say they use standardised skills...

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The forecast for the digital era is cloudy all over. According to a recent IDC FutureScape on cloud market predictions, 50% of IT spending and 60% of IT infrastructure spending will be cloud based by 2018. Between 60% and 70% of all software, services and technology spending will be on the cloud by 2020. 

IDC also forecast that 65% of organisations’ IT assets will be offsite, in co-located, hosting and cloud data centers by 2018. One-third of IT staff will be working at...

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If your business is ahead of the curve when it comes to cloud adoption, then prepare for a hit of good news; organisations which execute a strategic cloud plan are growing revenue 2.3 times faster than their competition and are on average generating a 35% lift year on year in top line revenue.

But for those not quite there, what are the strategies which need to be examined? These and other findings comprised a new study from CloudHealth Technologies which argues cloud-leading...

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With adoption growing, service provision changing and the emergence of true cloud architecture, this is going to be a big year for cloud computing. Here is the story behind each trend:

SMBs drive cloud adoption

Small and medium-sized businesses will be the driving force behind the cloud adoption not only because the cloud presents an amazing and cost-effective opportunity to utilise the services they are not able to...

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If the goal for CIOs is to go to the cloud, one thing is holding them back, according to a new report from Trustmarque: outdated budgeting models.

The report, titled ‘Highlighting operational and financial barriers to cloud’, argues more than half (55%) of UK CIOs polled believe out of date capex models are slowing down their adoption of cloud services. An overwhelming 87% say existing software licensing agreements are another cause of delay – a higher figure...

IBM has added three new advancements to the Watson Cloud platform: real-time Speaker Diarisation (beta) support available via the Watson Speech to Text API, Visual Recognition tagging with a built-in set of visual labels, and the Watson Discovery Service.

With these new capabilities, developers will be able to add intelligent visual recognition and speech to text capabilities to web and mobile...

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• U.S.-based organisations are budgeting $1.77M for cloud spending in 2017 compared to $1.30M for non-U.S. based organisations.
• 10% of enterprises with over 1,000 employees are projecting they will spend $10M or more on cloud computing apps and platforms throughout this year.
• Organisations are using multiple cloud models to meet their business’s needs, including private (62%), public (60%), and hybrid (26%).
• By 2018 the typical IT department will have the minority of their apps and platforms (40%) residing in on-premise...

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It’s that time of year again: Cisco has released its latest cloud index survey, and the numbers keep getting bigger. This time, global cloud traffic is predicted to rise from 3.9 zettabytes (ZB) per year in 2015, to 14.1 ZB per year by 2020, assisted by greater data centre virtualisation and increased migration to cloud architectures.

The figures from this time...

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The idea that IT leaders and their teams should pay attention to broader issues outside of their direct remit has been on the agenda of many businesses for years.  IT should play a much greater role, it has been argued, than its traditional speciality of ‘keeping the technology lights on’.  But for many, the scope to achieve greater levels of integration has been limited, not least by the need to control IT investment and drive down costs.

Now, the rapid...

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The vast majority of enterprises still lack a mature cloud strategy, according to a recent survey of 6,159 executives conducted by IDC. Just 3% of respondents define their cloud strategies as “optimised,” the highest level of strategic maturity, while nearly half (47%) say their cloud strategies are usually “opportunistic or ad...

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Even though seven out of 10 organisations have at least one application in the cloud today, adoption continues to go up, according to the latest verdict from IDG Enterprise.

The survey, which polled 925 respondents and was conducted among the audiences of six of the company’s brands, including CIO, InfoWorld and ComputerWorld, shows interesting comparisons when put aside the same study from five years ago; back then, just over half (51%) of those polled had at least one app in the...

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The vast majority of companies who are moving to cloud applications also have a significant current investment in on-premise operational applications and on-premise capabilities around data warehousing, business intelligence and analytics. This means that most of them will be working with a hybrid cloud/on-premise data management environment for the foreseeable future.

Moving at ‘cloud speed’, and setting up a new application in a matter of hours, is a big advantage in...

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A new report from enterprise cloud services provider ServiceNow argues that a tipping point has finally been reached with more than half of enterprises surveyed would use cloud as the default choice for business application rollouts.

52% of the 1,850 senior managers polled across four continents said they now prefer cloud as a platform compared with on-premise data centres, while more than three quarters (77%) of respondents expect to shift to a cloud-first model in the next two...