How hybrid clouds and legacy apps will evolve in 2017
The reign of the cloud has begun. Employing a strong cloud strategy has escalated from being a luxury to a must have for the enterprise. Meanwhile, as companies around the world struggle with their digital transformation efforts, Bimodal IT has become the new norm, for good or bad. I anticipate we’ll see companies look to take their cloud strategies to the next level in an effort to bridge the divide between the two modes of IT in 2017.
They’ll do that through the use of hybrid approaches including the expansion of private cloud usage and new solutions that facilitate legacy application modernization. Here’s how I see those predictions playing out this year.
Adieu, Yahoo
Yahoo, one of the earliest and brightest dot-coms, is a Hellhole at the close of 2016. It stinks of decay and neglect. The 1 billion active user accounts ravaged by hackers is a metaphor for the trendy neighborhood turned into gang-ridden slum. Verizon was, or maybe still is, buying Yahoo. Walk away, I say, unless Yahoo is willing to pay for the privilege of becoming part of the expanding VZN communications and media empire.
I typically make many changes at the start of the new year, and as 2017 begins, I take my advice offered to Verizon: Abandon Yahoo. First to go is its photo-sharing site, for many of the reasons stated seven months ago. My Flickr Pro account expires in September, and I will cancel a few weeks earlier to prevent auto-renewal. In the meantime, I consider my Flickr officially closed, and I will no longer use it. All photos will remain until the service makes them unavailable—and pursuant to the terms,
Hybrid clouds make it easy to deploy new technologies
According to IDC, by 2018 at least half of IT spending will be cloud based, reaching 60 percent of all IT Infrastructures, and 60 to 70 percent of all software, services, and technology spending by 2020.
As cloud has become a standard way of doing business, organizations globally are using it as a tool for innovation and business transformation. Those who successfully use the cloud to achieve growth will have a mature, strategic view of how best to implement and integrate it across their organizations. All approaches to cloud have advantages. From the straightforward simplicity of public cloud services, versus the increased security and control of a private cloud, there is a cloud environment to meet every organization’s needs.
The benefits of a multi-cloud strategy
Multi-cloud has been discussed within the cloud computing industry for a while, but there is still confusion and disagreement about what it is. What most can agree on is that multi-cloud is about mixing and matching the best-in-class technologies and services from different cloud providers to create the best possible solution for a business.
This flexibility is what will define the industry in the coming years, allowing organizations to leverage the relative advantages, price-points and geographic locations of the solutions to their best advantage. However, the transition to a multi-cloud solution can be fraught with risks if improperly managed. As a result, enterprises looking to gain advantage through this technology are seeking expert help in the form of third-party managed service providers.
DirecTV Now is a bargain -- for NOW
From the day I received the Oct. 14, 2016 letter about billing changes, AT&T U-verse and Internet cancellation was inevitable. I had auto-pay set up to a credit card, but the service provider wanted access to my bank account, which I didn't want to give. "Beginning in December, your credit card will be charged eight days after your Bill Cycle date", the correspondence reads. The change meant AT&T would take payment on the 8th of the month rather than the 21st. Since the company bills a month in advance, the new date would work out to about six-weeks in fees paid ahead for future service. On principle, being an independent-minded "don't tell me what to do" Mainer, I considered other options.
Ironically, the launch of another AT&T service, DirecTV Now, on October 30th, made the decision to cancel super easy. After several starts and stops, the Wilcox household has finally cut the cord for good. DirecTV Now is the nudge, but other streaming services make a big difference, too. Much has changed since the last cord-cutting effort, in November 2015, which we abandoned after about 7 weeks. The quality and quantity of original programming from Amazon, Hulu, and Netflix is greater and hugely enticing 12 months later.
Lack of talent and compliance worries among cloud predictions for 2017
This is the time of year when industry experts like to come up with predictions for the coming 12 months. Last week we looked at some of their security forecasts, today it's the turn of the cloud to get the crystal ball gazing treatment.
So, what do experts think are going to be the cloud trends of 2017?
Open source champion Google becomes Cloud Foundry Foundation gold member
Say what you want about Google, but the company is clearly a major proponent of open source ideology. Some people criticize the search giant for making billions on the back of open source (such as with Android), but Google is a code contributor too. You know what? If a company can have success using open source code, that is a good thing -- as long as it is properly licensed, of course.
Today, Google announces that it has joined the Cloud Foundry Foundation as a gold member. This is yet another example of the search giant's open source focus. Google joins some other respected companies at this membership level, such as Verizon, GE Digital, and Huawei to name a few. For whatever reason, the search giant stopped short of committing as the highest-level platinum member, however.
IT leaders look to the cloud for backup and recovery
A new survey of over 250 senior IT executives reveals that 89 percent of IT leaders are planning on implementing more cloud based disaster recovery in the next year.
The study by disaster recovery and business continuity specialist Quorum also reveals that 80 percent of IT leaders say it takes more than an hour for them to recover from a server failure, with more than 25 percent saying they need more than two hours.
The future is cloudy with a chance of big data
A new survey reveals that big data deployments are on the rise and increasingly are in the cloud. More than half of respondents say they deploy big data in the cloud today and 72 percent plan on doing so in the future.
The study from self-service analytics platform AtScale shows close to 70 percent have been using big data for more than a year (compared to 59 percent last year) and 95 percent of respondents have achieved positive value or are anticipating that they will.
Google makes it easier than ever to switch from iOS to Android via the cloud
Christmas is a time that sees many people getting new phones -- and for Google this is the perfect opportunity to try to steal a few iPhone users. But the problem with switching from one mobile platform to another is making sure data migrates across. Thanks to Google Drive, this is now easier than ever.
Google has had a guide to switching from iOS to Android on the Android website for some time, but it has now been updated to reflect important changes that have been made to the iOS version of Google Drive.
Fighting ransomware in the cloud
A recent survey of 500 businesses revealed that nearly half were brought to a standstill by a ransomware attack within the last 12 months. Ransomware is malware that installs covertly on a victim's computer, executes a crypto-virology attack that adversely affects it, and demands a ransom payment to decrypt it or to not publish it.
There has been more and more documented evidence that ransomware is on the rise, particularly in the UK. It's being used as a sort of testing ground to the point whereby ransomware has become the number one threat facing British organizations in 2016.
The benefits of cloud-connected spreadsheets
This year has been the year of spreadsheet distress. Spreadsheet errors have been blamed for a number of high profile corporate meltdowns including one in the rail franchise bid process for the West Coast mainline that is said to have cost the tax payer around £60m.
Spreadsheet calculations represent up to £38 billion of private sector investment decisions per year and simple errors could be putting billions of pounds at risk. With so many high profile incidents filling the newswires, it may seem unlikely that the spreadsheet is set for a reprieve in 2017. However, new developments in IT are set to allow businesses to cling on to their beloved spreadsheets in 2017 and make them robust enough to satisfy regulators and auditors who have already indicated that they consider them, in their existing state, to be a major potential risk.
DreamObjects improves enterprise cloud storage
The cloud is becoming the first place many businesses turn to when looking to increase their storage capacity.
Web hosting and cloud services company DreamHost is looking to give enterprises more scalable, reliable, and high performing cloud storage with the launch of its latest DreamObjects storage hosting service.
Google cozies up with Slack for tighter integration
Faced with competition from the likes of Microsoft Teams, Slack is strengthening its partnership with Google to bring greater cloud integration to users.
The beloved communication tool is teaming up with Google Cloud to improve Google Drive support, but there's also support for bots in the form of Drive Bot. Security and sharing is also in line for improvements, and the recently-announced Team Drives from Google will also be supported.
New platform simplifies integration of business systems
Businesses increasingly rely on a range of systems. But getting those systems to work smoothly together can prove to be something of a challenge.
Integration specialist Jitterbit is announcing what it calls a Citizen Integrator, a cloud based integration platform.
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