CLOUDCOMPUTING

WORLD
Issue 18 April 2016

Make Your
Business Cloud
CLOUD TECHNOLOGY Comfortable
Cloud Infrastructure

Business Continuity

Data Protection
The future is
OpenStack
Get ready with our
new certifications
The market for OpenStack Software is set to quadruple by the end of 2018
as global IT embraces the power of this open-source platform for Cloud
computing. Build your expertise ready to take advantage with our range of
vendor-neutral certifications.

Visit www.bcs.org/openstack to find out more.

0000/LD/AD/0416

© BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, is the business name of The British Computer Society
(Registered charity no. 292786) 2015
 CONTENTS
6
CCW News
All the key news in the world of cloud.

8
The Real Cost of Cloud Computing
The benefits of cloud-based and location-based environments.

10
Disaster Recovery Nirvana
Scott Sterry discusses cloud-based strategies for backup, recovery and testing.

14
Why a ‘Plan B’ is Essential
Nick Hawkins discusses the feasibility of modern emergency communications

CLOUDCOMPUTING
plans

18
Enterprise Resourcing Planning
Martin Hill explains why moving your ERP system to the cloud will benefit WORLD
your business. e-space north business centre
181 Wisbech Rd, Littleport, Ely,

22
Cambridgeshire CB6 1RA
Make your Business Cloud Comfortable
Tel: +44 (0)1353 771460
Claire Vyvyan discusses the role that intelligent financing options will play in info@cloudcomputingworld.co.uk
www.cloudcomputingworld.co.uk
making cloud technology more widely available

24
Combining HPC with Big Data Analytics on the same Infrastructure
Dr. Matthijs van Leeuwen discusses current trends in the high performance
LGN Media LTD
computing and big data markets
Publisher & Managing Director:

28
Ian Titchener
The General Data Protection Regulation is Here - What Now? Editor: Nick Wells
Creative Director: Andy Beavis
Mahmood Hamdi outlines the impact of new data protection laws on the
Advertising Sales Manager:
cloud computing industry. Simon Langston
Production Manager: Rachel Titchener

30
The Cyber Weakness
Financial Controller: Samantha White

Sean Paxton explains why people are the key to cyber security The views expressed in the articles
and technical papers are those of
the authors and are not endorsed

32
Gettin’ In Tune by the publishers.
The author and publisher, and its
Farming cooperative improves agility with Office 365 and Intune officers and employees, do not
accept any liability for any errors

34
that may have occurred, or for any
The Need for Training reliance on their contents.

James Smith explains why training is a must if technology is to make the All trademarks and brandnames
are respected within our publication.
right impact. However, the publishers accept
no responsibility for any inadvertent

36
misuse that may occur.
Five Tips to Convert Cloud Sceptics
This publication is protected by
Monica Visconti-Patel outlines the importance of cloud adoption in today’s copyright © 2015 and accordingly
must not be reproduced in any
office environment. 
medium. All rights reserved.

38
Seeing through The Cloud
Cloud Computing World stories,
news, know-how?
Please submit to
Alistair Forbes discusses the benefits of cloud-based analytics for managed nick@lgnmedia.co.uk
service providers

CLOUDCOMPUTING 3
 The Legends Suite, Etihad Stadium, Manchester, 28th September 2016

Data Centre Summit North is a one-day conference

focussed event taking place at Manchester City
Football Clubs Etihad Stadium on the 28th of
September 2016. Data Centre Summit brings all of the
industries thought leaders together in one place. Data
Centre Summit consists of education, networking and
debate, It will provide an open forum for delegates to
be inspired by and learn from the best in the business.

Other benefits of attending:

• See what’s new in the industry and keep up to date
with latest innovations and technologies
• Catch up with your current suppliers and meet
new ones – all in one day saving precious time
• Find new partners and business opportunities
• Network with your peers from other organisations
– make use of our networking lounge
• Be part of the latest thinking and share the
experience of other organisations’ experience
PLATINUM • Find ways of saving money and developing your
HEADLINE business
SPONSOR
• Visit the exhibition of leading vendors

www.datacentresummit.co.uk
 FOREWORD

The Devil’s in the Data.

Welcome to the new issue of Cloud Computing World.
The maturation of the cloud promises increased business
agility, better utility and a low-cost way of protecting data.
However, the digital landscape is becoming increasingly
unpredictable. Technology is evolving rapidly and companies
are still determining how they can best utilise the cloud in an
increasingly complex future. The demand to build an
on-premise private cloud has become stronger recently, driven
in part by security issues, yet the elements of a DR plan and
recovery process can be daunting for even the most seasoned
IT professional.

Data is the lifeblood of many organisations and its security is

imperative to ensure business continuity. Any company can
face network issues or infrastructure failure, and solutions need
to keep pace with the evolving threat of cyber attack (though
some managers may regard cyber security as a nuisance).
It’s great to witness the arrival of cloud-based technology
and infrastructure that’s able to combine high performance
computing, big data, private and public cloud environments,
but the foundation of any continuity strategy is developing
a culture in which staff implement cloud security practices
without thinking about them. Enjoy the issue.

Best Regards, Nick Wells, Editor, Cloud Computing World

CLOUDCOMPUTING 5
 REGULARS
CCWNEWS
C
astle Street Investments and its
recently acquired subsidiaries of
C4L and Selection Services have re-
branded to CORETX. The name restates the
company’s commitment to the delivery of
robust and reliable data centre and network
infrastructure as the CORE of their services,
while their network is the route to public,
private and hybrid cloud for the mid-market.
The company believes that its proven
track record of managing the delivery of
transformational infrastructure projects
through the two company acquisitions
will set CORETX apart as a leader in the
integrated services market. Andy Ross, CEO
commented: “CORETX has an exceptional
opportunity to deliver proximate technology
services to a wider base of both direct and
channel customers. With our acquired
in-house expertise in networks, data centre
and integrated service delivery we are
excited about our new brand opportunity
and proving our ongoing ability to deliver
through our owned infrastructure.”
www.coretx.com
T
eradata, the big data analytics and
marketing applications company,
has announced some innovative
hybrid cloud advancements across its
data warehouse product line, offering the
next generation of agility, flexibility, and
integration between systems. Teradata
Hybrid Cloud is a customer environment
using a mix of on-premises, managed cloud,
and public cloud resources orchestrated
to deliver ease-of-use benefits such as
automatic synchronisation, optimised query
routing, and end-to-end management
across the ecosystem. This new level of
flexibility and workload portability enables
organisations to quickly and seamlessly
optimise their data warehouse resources
to match continuously changing business
requirements. Companies can transparently
shift workloads between resources in their
Teradata Hybrid Cloud environment knowing
the systems are synchronised and always
ready to deliver business value to users. The
announcement spans four new and exciting
capabilities:
• Introduction of Teradata IntelliFlex
• Availability of Teradata Database on
6 CLOUDCOMPUTING
All the key news in the world of cloud.
Please don’t forget to check out our Web
site at www.cloudcomputingworld.co.uk for
a regular weekly feed of relevant news for
cloud professionals.
Amazon Web Services
• Regional Expansion of Teradata Managed
Cloud into Europe, and
• New Teradata Services to Facilitate
Customers’ Hybrid Cloud Evolution
With these advancements, companies
can tailor their Teradata data warehouse
environment with economic flexibility
and requirements-driven deployment
options using a combination of on-
premises systems, managed cloud
services, and public cloud resources.
Teradata users value deployment
choices and want agility, flexibility, and
workload portability. ”IDC market research
clearly shows that hybrid deployment
of business analytics technology is the
way forward for the vast majority of
companies across industries.” said Dan
Vesset, GVP, Analytics and Information
Management, IDC. “Companies want
to buy performance when they need it.
They have more variation in the type and
value of their data and analytics – and
they want a solution that can cost-
effectively query, analyse, and store all of
it. The hybrid cloud announcement from
Teradata brings in-demand technological
advancements to its customers looking for
on-demand on- and off-premises business
analytics solutions.”
www.teradata.co.uk
X
angati has released its next-generation
service assurance analytics and
performance control platform for hybrid
cloud infrastructures. Xangati ESP for Cloud
Workspace and Cloud Infrastructure features
self-healing support for new compute
environments, new storage and networking
data sources and enhanced visibility into end-
user metrics, spanning a range of software-
dashboard modules for Virtual Infrastructure
(VI), Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
and Virtual Applications. The Xangati ESP
is a virtual appliance built on a common
in-memory architecture that visualises
performance data with unprecedented
speed and scale across multiple dashboard
software modules. Crunching hundreds
of thousands of interactions in real time,
without the use of agents or probes, Xangati
enables predictive analytics based on
dynamic threshold algorithms that determine
acceptable service levels for performance,
efficiency, capacity, availability and cost.
The company has also launched four new
compute ESP extensions to its best-in-class
monitoring solution: NVIDIA physical GPU,
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft
Azure and Docker. Xangati’s virtual appliance
software correlates real-time data across
on-premise virtualisation, containers and
public clouds. “With enterprises focused
primarily on progressing their hybrid-
cloud strategies, Xangati helps mitigate
migration risk with its next-gen platform
by extending its real-time performance
analytics and IT efficiency solution beyond
conventional on-prem orthodoxies,” said
Atchison Frazer, CMO, Xangati. ”This
includes the two most popular public cloud
resources, the predominant containerisation
standard and several new data sources and
analytics indices around one management
console to assure service delivery quality
and self-healing functions for virtual apps
across conventional infrastructure silos.”
www.xangati.com
A
range of ultra-high security cloud
computing services for businesses -
from small firms to large enterprises
– has gone live, delivered by data centre
operator MigSolv. The new services
provide companies with access to virtual
IT systems in MigSolv’s highly secure
data centre, without any need to buy and
maintain their own equipment. The services
also provide US companies operating in
Europe – but without their own European
data centres – with a solution to the data
transfer restrictions of the European Court of
Justice’s recent ‘Safe Harbour’ ruling.

The company’s three new cloud
computing options are:
• Public Cloud – a flexible, low-cost service
designed for small companies
• Private Managed Cloud – for larger
companies with more demanding data
processing requirements
• Hybrid Cloud - for companies needing, or
who desire, a mixed approach
MigSolv is providing these cloud options
in addition to its existing ‘colocation’
services, where it houses companies’ own
IT equipment within its data centre. The
company is delivering the new services in
partnership with cloud specialist Ormuco
– a HP Helion Network Partner with three
million customers worldwide. Ormuco has
installed its specialised cloud systems within
MigSolv’s data centre. Alex Rabbetts, CEO
of MigSolv, said: “Our new services provide
all the benefits of Cloud computing along
with an extremely high level of protection
for companies’ business-critical data. Vitally,
our Cloud systems are based in our ultra-
high security data centre which we’ve sited
in Norwich, avoiding the considerable risks
facing London-based facilities.”
www.migsolv.com
D
arktrace, the leader in Enterprise
Immune System technology, has
announced that it has extended its
self-learning threat detection to third-party
cloud environments.Powered by machine
learning and mathematics developed at
the University of Cambridge, the Enterprise
Immune System is unique in detecting
emerging cyber-threats within networks,
without using rules or signatures. Delivered
within an appliance that is installed at the
heart of the network, Darktrace’s self-
learning software is now complemented by
total visibility of virtualized environments,
including third-party cloud environments.
Darktrace OS-Sensors are lightweight,
host-based server agents that complement
Darktrace’s virtual appliance, vSensors.
OS-Sensors work by intelligently extracting
copies of network traffic for analysis by
the master Darktrace appliance, giving
the Enterprise Immune System complete
visibility of lateral information flow within
the cloud, as well as within the physical
network activity.
www.darktrace.com
P
rovider of managed cloud IT services
Synextra has now completed the move
into its new, 1500sqft premises located
in Warrington. Boosted by an impressive
first financial year, Synextra looks to bring
its innovative cloud-based virtual desktop
and hosting to even more companies across
the UK. With expectations of £1.2million
turnover within the next two years, the
business has plans for strong growth.
Managing Director Michael Pyne sees this
as “...evidence of significant progress and
more importantly, intent for serious growth.
With an ever-expanding team of system
engineers, account managers and a newly
founded marketing department, this move
gives us the space we need to exceed
expectations.”
www.synextra.com
V
arenafi, a leading provider of Next
Generation Trust Protection, has
announced support for Amazon Web
Services (AWS) cloud services. Delivered
through a fast, automated security platform,
Venafi’s integration with AWS Certificate
Manager, AWS Elastic Load Balancing (ELB)
and AWS CloudFront is the industry’s first
and only patented solution to provide full,
enterprise-wide visibility, control and
automation for both Amazon certificates
and other third-party issued certificates.
Today, enterprises that deploy AWS cloud
computing services and Amazon certificates
do not have a single place to store and
protect their entire inventory of keys and
REGULARS
certificates. In addition, the sheer volume
of AWS-issued and other certificates may
create blind spots that make it difficult to
know exactly how and where all certificates
are being used. Venafi’s integration with
AWS makes it fast and easy for IT security
teams to locate and secure all the keys
and certificates within their enterprise,
and extend consistent security out to AWS
cloud instances. Unlike other certificate
management solutions, Venafi secures
and protects all of an enterprise’s keys and
certificates, including certificates signed
by multiple certificate authorities (CAs).
Venafi’s new release also delivers easy-to-
use DevOps automation capabilities for
automated key generation and certificate
enrollment that can be used within any
DevOps architecture. Venafi ensures that
keys and certificates used by DevOps are
compliant with corporate security policies
and guidelines. Enterprises gain centralized
security policy enforcement and visibility
of all keys and certificates while enabling
DevOps to maintain speed and agility.
“Today many enterprise customers are
taking advantage of Amazon certificates
and AWS cloud computing services, and
the speed of IT continues to increase as
more organizations adopt cloud-based
applications and DevOps approaches.
However, speed should not come at the
expense of security,” said Kevin Bocek, Vice
President of Security Strategy and Threat
Intelligence at Venafi. “The adoption of
cloud computing and the move toward Fast
IT have resulted in a lack of proper security
practices, that often introduce security blind
spots, chaos, security policy violations, and
vulnerabilities. The AWS-Venafi integration
makes it fast and easy for cloud and IT
operations teams to embrace speed without
sacrificing security. It also provides security
teams with the ability to manage risk
and mitigate security threats caused by
unsecured keys and certificates.”
www.venafi.com
CLOUDCOMPUTING 7
 CLOUD SERVICES Colocation vs. Cloud Hosting

THE REAL COST OF

The benefits of cloud-based and
location-based environments.
By Sungard Availability Services

CLOUD COMPUTING Introduction

Infoburst: The lack of cost agility and high
subscription costs are very real concerns for
businesses looking to switch to the cloud.
Cloud computing has broken into the mainstream
and the business benefits are clear to see, but
some companies still harbour concerns over cloud
technology. Do implementation costs outweigh
the perceived benefits? Is the cloud a secure
location for critical business data? How much does
it all cost to maintain a cloud infrastructure? There
is so much noise about the cloud, it can (and
excuse the pun) cloud your judgement.
Simply put, cloud computing is just computing
based on the Internet. Applications and programs
that would once have been run from software
downloaded on a physical computer or server are
now accessed online. The business benefits are
huge. Cloud-based services are highly flexible,
matching the demands of businesses with
growing or fluctuating bandwidth. Scalability is
simple, software updates are automated and a
third party handles hardware management. 
Employees can also be more flexible as cloud
computing opens up the doors to mobile working.
If you’ve got an Internet connection, you can
be at work from anywhere and, in most cases,
from any device. Collaboration subsequently
improves as documents and files can be updated
in real time, giving teams full visibility of their
collaborations. Document control is streamlined.
Gone are the days of long email chains where
various versions of a document are sent to
different individuals and teams. With cloud
computing, files are stored in a central repository
so everyone views and edits one version. Cloud
computing boosts productivity, technical quality
and competitiveness.
However, many organisations are slow to
adopt cloud computing due to confusion around
the financial impact of its implementation and
management. While the upfront cost savings are
apparent, the lack of cost agility, high subscription
costs and the cost of switching to the cloud are all
very real concerns for businesses looking to make
the switch.

8 CLOUDCOMPUTING
 CLOUD SERVICES
The Cloud Hangover
Many enterprises experience a ‘cloud hangover’
due to the unanticipated costs associated with the
implementation and maintenance of
cloud-based services. This could be in the form
of upfront costs when transitioning to the cloud,
or through hidden costs that do not appear until
the services are fully operational, according to
recent research from Sungard AS, where almost
250 IT decision makers were surveyed regarding
their company’s experiences, investments and
satisfaction with the cloud. Cloud implementation
costs have risen. Almost two-thirds (63 per cent) of
businesses spent £106,000 or more implementing
cloud-based services when surveyed in August
2015. In 2013, only 50 per cent of businesses had
crossed the same threshold.
A range of costs, which only became apparent
after implementation, were also identified by the
respondents. More than one-third (36 per cent)
experienced extra costs due to upgrades and a
further 35 per cent identified internal maintenance
and customisation related to data recovery,
patching and compliance software. Consultancy
and staffing costs were also named by 30 per cent
of respondents as unexpected additional costs
These maintenance costs soon add up too, as
almost three-quarters (74 per cent) of respondents
spent £21,000 or more in monthly maintenance provider supplies and manages your full hardware
costs, on top of their initial setup costs.  Infoburst: The pressure to deliver infrastructure and its day-to-day administration.
The cloud also has a huge effect on the more services in less time is a very real A cloud-based infrastructure can also rapidly scale
business’s transformation process. If your business issue for many IT decision makers. up or down to your business’s needs whereas a
does adopt a cloud-based service, your traditional colocation package does not offer such time-critical
in-house IT processes will, most likely, be disrupted. flexibility.
But this disruption may bring further benefits - it Colocation and cloud hosting both offer a
will free employees to work remotely and with range of benefits, but a business must understand
increasing flexibility and it will bring the best its current state and future goals before committing
software solutions to your business so it remains to either option. This is crucial for making sure that
competitive. There is always disruption with any you are making the right decision. If you don’t
technical changes and its exact nature is impossible have the time to manage your own infrastructure,
to predict, but cloud hosting allows enterprises then you might be better off opting for a cloud-
to keep pace with an ever-changing technical based solution. However, if you are looking to
landscape. minimise the risk of hidden costs then you need
to have a solid contract and agreement with
Cloud Hosting v Colocation any provider, whether they are cloud-based or a
The pressure to deliver more services in less time colocation provider.
is a very real issue for many IT decision makers.
Alternative infrastructures such as colocation and Conclusion
cloud hosting are popular options to relieve this There can be no doubt that cloud implementation
pressure. Many companies choose colocation, brings with it a raft of business benefits. Scalability
which is where they rent a space in a colocation and flexibility are two key advantages, which will
facility to house, use and maintain their own be important as data-heavy innovations such as
equipment. The associated costs of housing a big data analytics, social media adoption and
physical infrastructure, such as power, cooling and the Internet of Things mean organisations must
data centre floor space, are shared with other be able to cope with the deluge of data due to
businesses. Colocation and cloud hosting offer enter the enterprise space. More data demands
very similar benefits in terms of flexibility and a more robust infrastructure, which means more
cost. Both are highly scalable - a business does not cost, regardless of the solution you choose.
need to shell out for a completely new data centre Arguably, the most important part is planning and
with either option. Both options are also popular revisiting forecasts regularly to see if you would be
disaster recovery strategies, avoiding the expense better suited to a cloud-based or location-based
of building another data centre. environment, and what this would mean for your
However, colocation means your business business and stakeholders further down the line.
is still responsible for purchasing, monitoring,
maintaining and managing its equipment. A cloud www.sungard.com

CLOUDCOMPUTING 9
 BUSINESS CONTINUITY Exploiting the Cloud

DISASTER RECOVERY
NIRVANA
Scott Sterry discusses
cloud-based strategies
for backup, recovery and
testing.
By Scott Sterry, VP of Business
Development, Cristie

Infoburst: Replicating data into a

cloud environment is an essential
criteria for selecting backup and
recovery solutions.

10 CLOUDCOMPUTING
 BUSINESS CONTINUITY

Introduction
Data is the lifeblood of many organisations
and its reliability and security an imperative to
ensure business continuity. But the foundation
of any true business continuity strategy is
strong IT disaster recovery capability, as
evidenced by productivity and revenue losses
linked to system downtime – an estimated
£1.2 trillion in the last 12 months.
The DR journey is typically an arduous
one for all involved. The impact of lost data
or systems is not limited to a company’s
ability to operate. Employees suffer personal
consequences of failed systems, including
high levels of stress, blemished professional
reputations and poor performance reviews.
The nirvana of any disaster recovery
journey is total recovery assurance. Absolute
confidence that, following a failure, the
plans put in place and the solutions selected
will provide an instantly usable, touchable,
environment including data, applications, OS
and configuration information: all the crucial
elements of a fast and successful recovery.

Unrealistic Recovery Targets

However, DR plans are often built backwards
from the unrealistic demands of those
stakeholders who shout the loudest, or
arbitrary recovery time objectives (RTOs)
based on conjecture. Some organizations
look to DRaaS providers to help align business
goals with the technical requirements of
disaster recovery, but most struggle on
alone with the headache of traditional
solutions that sustain a mismatch between
user expectations and what will actually be
delivered following a disaster.
The elements of a DR plan and recovery
process can be daunting for even the most
seasoned IT professional. To create a
resilient IT infrastructure and ensure high
availability, they must identify and protect
critical applications, systems, servers and
data. But replicating an entire system ready
to be powered on in the event of disaster is
expensive and onerous. Specific application
groups, data, backup locations and target
environments all need to be agreed and
understood before a plan can be signed off
and tested.

CLOUDCOMPUTING 11
 BUSINESS CONTINUITY
 Testing Outside Comfort Zones
It’s Getting Cloudier
The proliferation and maturation of the cloud
has mitigated the need for capital-intensive
backup and recovery infrastructure and support. It
promises increased business agility, better utility
and a low-cost way of protecting data off-site.
More and more organizations are expanding
their initiatives to include public clouds, with
a predicted 44 per cent annual growth rate in
workloads.
Cloud-based strategies for backup, recovery
and testing have growing appeal for users that
have aggressive RTOs and limited resources
to manage DR plans or testing. If DR nirvana
includes freedom to back up, recover and test
whatever, whenever, without fear of repercussion
or cost, then leveraging the cloud takes us one
step closer to this technologically enlightened
state.
Being able to replicate systems and data
into a cloud environment, and recovering those
systems into dissimilar architecture, is fast
becoming an essential criteria for those selecting
backup and recovery solutions. Data protection
providers are driving competitive advantage by
accommodating this shift to cloud. By choosing
to both replicate and recover in the cloud,
organisations can benefit from on demand
availability and substantially improve their RTOs.
The cost, complexity, risk and compliance related
to data protection all decrease.
Is The Cloud Right For Me?
To fully exploit the benefits of the cloud for
recovery assurance, users need to be confident
that they can recover operating systems and
applications to the compute architecture provided
in the cloud. Is this dissimilar environment
provided at OS level or applications in containers?
Will my OS run post-recovery in a different
environment? What is the bandwidth from where
it is, to where it needs to be restored to? Does
my backup application support recovery into the
specific public cloud I want to use, or will I need
to build a new environment and then recover my
data?
12 CLOUDCOMPUTING
Infoburst: Automating DR can bring
critical systems back online in the
right order, without relying on staff to
complete a plethora of manual steps.
The days of cold standbys seem numbered.
Dormant, pre-built environments with the OS
installed might be ready to be booted up, but
they are costly to implement and manage. Hot
standbys in the cloud with RTOs of less than
ten minutes, minimal disruption and flexible
RPOs are cost-effective and make good business
and technical sense. With storage costing less
than compute resources in current cloud pricing
models, users have more freedom to explore these
active-passive types of backing up and restoring,
rather than rebuilding servers and reloading data.
The cost of this scenario is limited to one set or
resources (CPU, memory, hard disk) permanently
residing in the cloud, with only a limited amount
of temporary resources for DR testing or
invocation.
To gain a realistic understanding of which systems
will be returned to their original state, extensive
testing needs to be staged that allows for any
outcome – including failure. Those industries with
external regulations relating to disaster recovery
also risk substantial fines or loss of accreditation
if rigorous testing is not performed on a regular
basis.
Typically, however, companies only test
around 10 per cent of their estate, and then only
in areas of the infrastructure with which they are
familiar. Although this is understandable in the
light of under-resourced IT departments and a
fear of DR testing interrupting busy production
systems, it only leads to false confidence that
systems are recoverable. A true DR test does not
involve any preparation of systems or tweaking of
settings before a disaster is simulated, otherwise
the aim of testing becomes that of passing a
DR test, and it will not grant the desired recovery
assurance. Nor will it provide the necessary facts
and figures for auditors, management KPIs and
informed IT infrastructure purchases.
Automation also allows us to extend testing
comfort zones. Through cost-effective and reliable
recovery simulation, cloning and replication that
utilises the cloud means the magic can happen
overnight as we sleep soundly. Peace of mind is a
valuable commodity in business.
Conclusion
When data centres are taken out of the equation,
and the flexibility of the cloud introduced, we are
no longer forced to contend with others when
scheduling physical hardware and staff resources.
Automating DR can bring critical systems back
online in the right order, without relying on staff
to complete a plethora of manual steps. We’re
getting closer to DR nirvana, but what is the next
step? Current assent highlights containerisation
that provides flexibility when cloning or recovering
to a dissimilar OS, and dramatically reduces the
amount of resources needed to protect critical
systems.
www.cristie.co.uk
Purchasing cloud services is easy.

Managing t hem requires

the right solution...
FLEXERA SOFTWARE®

FlexNet Manager ®

for Cloud Infrastructure

With FlexNet Manager for Cloud Infrastructure
organizations get comprehensive, accurate and actionable
insight into cloud infrastructure usage to optimize use and
spend on these services. Built on proven Flexera Software
license management technology, it automates the collection
and aggregation of cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS)
usage data and billing information to produce a complete
view of the cloud service consumption throughout the
enterprise. It enables organizations to optimize utilization
of Amazon Web Services Reserved and On-Demand
instances and provide an accurate chargeback mechanism
for cloud services. Get your head out of the clouds and visit:
www.flexerasoftware.com/slo-cloud

Visit www.flexerasoftware.com/slo-cloud

© 2016 Flexera Software LLC. All other brand and product names mentioned herein may be the trademarks and registered trademarks of their respective owners.
 BUSINESS CONTINUITY Cloud Technology

WHYA‘PLANB’
ISESSENTIAL
Nick Hawkins discusses the
feasibility of modern emergency
communications plans
By Nick Hawkins, EMEA Managing Director, Everbridge

Infoburst: Any organisation can
be routinely faced with IT outages,
network issues or even complete
infrastructure failure.
Introduction
Any incident that has an impact on an
organisation’s business continuity has the
potential to escalate into a crisis. These range
from routine IT and operational incidents to
sophisticated cyber attacks or acts of nature,
such as a flooded office or power outage.
Although these events cannot always be avoided,
organisations can manage and minimise the
physical, financial and reputational damage by
committing time to planning and by pro actively
implementing effective cloud-based systems and
procedures as a ‘plan B’ should periods of IT
downtime occur.

14 CLOUDCOMPUTING

Analogue Swords In A Digital Fight
The growth of connected devices, mobile and
digital communications continues to accelerate
the speed and effectiveness at which people
communicate and consume information during
all types of incidents. Any organisation can be
routinely faced with IT outages, network issues or
even complete infrastructure failure, but traditional
enterprise solutions for critical communications
have not kept pace with this increasingly digital
world and evolving cyber threats.
A recent Business Continuity Institute (BCI)
survey asked 467 respondents in 67 countries
about their emergency communications plans.
The survey found that a significant number
of organisations continue to use analogue,
manual, or one-way people-based solutions to
communicate during all types of events and
critical situations. The survey found that just
55 per cent of organisations had emergency
communications software in place; 63 per cent
relied on manual calling; 53 per cent on company
website announcements and 83 per cent relied on
internal emails – by far the most common method
of emergency communications.
The survey showed that most companies’
communication plans rely on IT resources, yet
these can often be the cause of the crisis. Internal
email is the most popular form of emergency
communication, but this begs a serious issue.
If a network is compromised, then so is the
business’ capability to send email notifications.
With a far broader and more complex range
of incidents, both operational and emergency-
oriented in nature, organisations today require
solutions that are engineered for modern critical
communications.
Infoburst: If internal systems are
compromised, what will be the cost of
reduced productivity?
BUSINESS CONTINUITY
To assure critical communications during
system downtime, major service disruptions,
and even complete network breech, an
organisation’s critical communications platform
must be completely separate to its normal
network. Utilising SaaS-based cloud tools is
the only effective way to ensure continuity of
communications during a crisis. It offers the
reliability, security, and scalability necessary to
communicate with key stakeholders during periods
of IT outage.
Evolving Threats
Cyber attacks are becoming increasingly common
for organisations of all sizes. The number of
companies reporting distributed denial of service
(DDOS) attacks has been doubling year on year
and when brands such as the BBC, Evernote and
eBay are victims it demonstrates how seriously
organisations should be taking the issue.
Of the BCI survey respondent companies
that did not have an emergency communications
plan in place, a staggering 68 per cent said they
would wait for a business-effecting event before
creating an emergency communications plan.
This has the potential to be a disastrous approach.
According to the 2015 report from the Ponemon
Institute, ‘2015 Cost of Cyber Crime Study:
United Kingdom’, cyber attacks cost businesses
on average £4.1 million per incident and incidents
take an average of 31 days to resolve. If internal
systems are compromised, what will be the cost
of reduced productivity? Losses in the areas of
labour, revenue, and service all contribute to the
total cost of an IT outage.
Businesses are unable to go on hold for a
month to resolve a cyber attack; which is why
CLOUDCOMPUTING 16
 BUSINESS CONTINUITY
Infoburst: The cost of IT downtime
can be distilled into two key areas:
productivity loss and revenue loss.
16 CLOUDCOMPUTING
companies need an alternative to the internal
network that enables them to communicate
quickly and effectively in the event of a breach.
The Impact of IT Downtime
A major IT incident will impact businesses across
all vertical markets. E-commerce providers will
experience a loss of online revenue, a drop off
in the conversion rate of potential customers
and a negative impact on the reputation of
the brand. Companies in manufacturing will
experience a reduction in employee productivity,
delayed shipments and frustrated customers. In
other industries, the impact can be even worse.
Hospitals for example might experience severe
impacts on prescription procedures. Medication
errors can cost the lives of patients.
Quantifying Losses
Generally the cost of IT downtime can be distilled
into two key areas: productivity loss and revenue
loss. North American Systems International (NASI)
recently looked at these issues, and provided
companies with a formula to quantify each of
these loss areas as a starting point for calculating
the total cost of IT downtime.
The formula given by NASI to calculate losses
resulting from reduced employee productivity
during an IT outage is P x E x R x H, where P is the
number of employees affected; E is the average
percentage they are affected; R is the average
employee cost per hour and H is the number of
hours of the outage.
Revenue lost to an IT outage can also be
calculated. The formula in this instance is (GR/TH)
x I x H. In this calculation GR is the business’ gross
yearly revenue; TH is the total yearly business
hours; I is the percentage impact and H is the
number of hours of the outage.
In a practical example, if a retailer that
generates 40 per cent of its revenue online
for a gross yearly revenue of £1.2 Billion,
just 90 minutes of IT downtime can cost the
business £82,000. If that retailer can reduce the
downtime to one hour by activating a previously
implemented emergency communications
platform and automating communications, it
could save £27,000 on one incident alone.
IT outages usually lead to a flow of related
costs, and a cost analysis should also include
factors such as late delivery surcharges, overtime
costs, loss of customers, additional marketing
costs and impact on stock price. It is easy to
see how the cost of an IT outage can lead to a
business critical situation.
Effective Communications
Effective communications to minimise the
impact on these key areas during periods of IT
downtime depends on two key things: delivering
the right message to the right individual, and
receiving an acknowledgement that the message
has been delivered and actioned. In the case of
a cyber-attack, a business will need to send both
internal and external notifications to minimise
damage. Internal experts will need to be located
and informed of the issue instantly, so the
situation can be assessed and immediate action
can be taken. If they’re impacted, customers
must be informed early to protect consumer
confidence and brand reputation.
A SaaS cloud-based platform will enable a
business to message every relevant employee
quickly, regardless of the extent of the impact
on the internal network. Responses to the
notification can be received within minutes and
the business will know who is available to fix an
issue and where they are located. By allocating
responsibilities to the nearest people with the
right skills the impact of the issue on the business
– its revenue, productivity and reputation – will
be substantially minimised.
Conclusion
Technology is evolving rapidly, and to create
an effective ‘plan B’ companies need to
determine not only how they can utilise critical
communication tools now, but how they can
use them in the increasingly complex future.
The digital business landscape is becoming
increasingly unpredictable, and unified critical
communications need to be easily adaptable to
effectively manage a future crisis. Customers,
employees and stakeholders are increasingly
connected and businesses need the ability to
communicate to a wide range of individuals
quickly and reliably during an emergency
situation. By implementing cloud-based SaaS
tools, organisations can ensure an effective
plan is in place before the crisis occurs; if
organisations are proactive, resulting losses can
be minimised.
www.everbridge.com
schneider-electric.com/microdc
 CLOUDSERVICES Cloud ERP Systems

ENTERPRISE
Martin Hill explains why moving
your ERP system to the cloud will
benefit your business.
By Martin Hill, Vice President Marketing, Epicor

RESOURCE PLANNING
International

18 CLOUDCOMPUTING

Introduction
The reality is that most enterprise applications are
well on their way to being cloud-based. We’ve seen
it with simple workloads such as HR and payroll,
travel and expense management, and in the last
decade we’ve seen the cloud as the new normal
for customer relationship management (CRM)
deployments. According to Gartner, “Spending on
public-cloud-based, vertical-specific applications is
expected to significantly increase through 2017,
further highlighting the growing confidence in their
use for mission-critical systems.”
Upgrading your enterprise resource planning
(ERP) system to the cloud means retiring your old
approach to business management applications
and no longer having to procure, install, maintain
and manage the infrastructure. And perhaps most
compelling is to leverage the cloud to redefine your
business processes and take advantage of a new
era of service delivery and flexibility to enable your
organisation to grow. So what are the benefits of
cloud based ERP solutions? Below are nine reasons
why moving your ERP system to the cloud will
benefit your business and support business growth.
 
Freedom of Choice
Put quite simply, not all cloud ERP systems are
created equal. Specifically, very few ERP vendors
respect your right to choose the deployment
model that is most appropriate for you, and revise
that decision down the road as your business
grows or technical needs change. Your right to
transition between on-premises, multi-tenant and
single tenant is an important one. It recognises
that the ‘best’ deployment model for you today
might not be the best model in a few years, or
even a few months. By providing the choice of
Multi-Tenant (with its compelling economics and
seamless upgrades) or Single Tenant (allowing
more administrative control and administrative
ownership), you can choose the model that works
best for you.
 
Compelling Cloud Economics
Despite the cloud having proven its value beyond
just good financial sense, there is no doubt that
for companies of all sizes the economics of cloud
deployment are undeniably compelling, moving
from capital to operational expenditure. Some of
the more hidden economic benefits of the cloud
include:
• Not being as capital intensive as an on-
premises deployment because of the
subscription-based pricing model.
• Better and more instant scalability, allowing
clients to add (and sometimes remove)
users to their system on demand and saving
them from having to invest in hardware and
software at the ‘high water mark’.
• The direct and indirect costs of your
infrastructure, from server to database systems
to the hardware and replacement cycle cost.
CLOUDSERVICES
• The hidden costs of maintaining the servers
yourself.
• The benefit of the reduced deployment
times (and corresponding improved ROI)
that are typical for cloud deployments, as the
necessary infrastructure is in place already.
 
Better IT Resource Utilisation
Moving to the cloud means that your IT
department will be able to deliver higher-value
activities that are better aligned with your mission,
and they will be able to spend less time “patching
the servers and keeping the lights blinking.” At the
end of the day, most IT departments are stretched
pretty thin, and find themselves spending too much
time on low-value (but admittedly critical) activities
such as verifying backups, applying security
updates, and upgrading the infrastructure upon
which your critical systems run. There is tremendous
business benefit to assigning those tasks back to
your ERP vendor as part of a cloud deployment,
freeing up your IT department’s time to work on
more strategic business projects such as creating
executive dashboards, deploying mobile devices
and crafting helpful management reports.
 
The Cloud is More Secure
Today, it’s hard to imagine a client who could
possibly create a more secure operating
environment than leading cloud providers. Indeed,
Gartner reports that “Multi-tenant services are not
only highly resistant to attack, but are also a more
secure starting point than most traditional in-house
implementations.” Where security once implied
locking the server room door and forcing people
to use long passwords, today it means hardened
electronic operating environments. You can’t claim
to be secure unless you have systems and people
protecting your infrastructure 24 hours a day, 365
days a year, and verifying that security updates
from all vendors are thoughtfully tested and then
applied.
Security today is a comprehensive, end-to-end
mind set that has to be built across every layer of
the ERP environment from the physical network
interface cards to the user passwords. It means a
holistic approach to anticipating and minimising
possible natural, human and technical disruptions to
your system to ensure uptime and peace of mind.
 
Upgrades 
Cloud deployment redefines the experience by
designing upgrades — big and small — to be
deployed by the ERP cloud operations staff as part
of standard support services, without imposing
software installations on your staff. Minor updates
are transparently deployed in a non-disruptive
fashion, and major upgrades are announced
well in advance, and include a sandbox training
environment and end-user training.
These major upgrades are designed to require
little to no project management on your part,
short of double checking that everything is working
CLOUDCOMPUTING 20
 CLOUDSERVICES
Infoburst: The cloud increases the
business benefits that ERP offers.
20 CLOUDCOMPUTING
the way you expect it to and ensuring that your
internal users are prepared to take advantage of
the new version.
Always being on the most current version of
the software provides peace of mind that you’re
no longer having to make the “upgrade or not?”
decision, and provides you with the newest and
most powerful version of your ERP solution at all
times.
 
Mobile and Collaborative
The modern ERP deployment landscape is full of
mobile professionals, including sales and service
staff operating outside the four walls of your office,
who expect access to the ERP system from their
handheld devices. You may also have mobile onsite
staff such as shop floor operators and logistics
staff that need to access your ERP from tablets and
similar devices. Moving to a cloud-based system
gives everyone the real-time system access they
require as a routine part of their jobs while driving
out the inefficiency of paper-based processes and
the burden and security risk of figuring out how to
deliver this yourself.
Opening up your ERP system by virtue of cloud
deployment allows you to retire the poorly defined
ad-hoc ‘integration by Excel file’ workflows that
might have cropped up across your organisation.
In their place, you can deploy real-time integration
processes that link your employees, suppliers,
partners and customers.
Cloud deployment brings the opportunity to
redefine many of your legacy business processes
and workflows in a way that leverages these more
open, connected, instantaneous integration paths.
 
Process Alignment Globally
Increasingly, companies have staff working across
multiple locations and they aspire to provide the
efficiency of a single unified ERP system across the
enterprise to support them. For many organisations,
moving to the cloud provides the immediate
opportunity to shed multiple operating ERP systems
across the company, achieve instant visibility across
every location and standardise a single set of
operational and administrative processes.
Deploying a single cloud ERP globally (where
the only infrastructure requirement is Internet
access) removes many operational obstacles, and
gives you the confidence that your continued
expansion efforts can be accommodated without
a significant IT effort by simply enabling that new
location in your existing cloud-based ERP system.
With consistency comes improved transparency
and increased efficiency.
Reduced Risk, Better Value
Many clients choose a cloud-based system (ERP
and other workflows) because it allows them to
deploy a much more complete solution than they
could otherwise manage or financially justify under
legacy deployment models. Not having to make a
massive upfront investment in the ERP system and
its supporting infrastructure is critical in allowing
smaller companies to perform beyond same-sized
competitors from an enterprise application quality
and completeness perspective.
 
Social Responsibility
We’re all very well aware of the resources that
go into on-premises deployment. Multiple new
computers and servers may have to be purchased
and manufactured, with their well-documented
environmental impact. Those computers need to
be transported from their place of production to
a wholesaler, who needs to warehouse them until
they are later transported to you, likely crossing
tens of thousands of miles in the process. Electricity
is generated to power them and ultimately those
physical machines are scrapped. The impact of that
waste can’t be ignored if your company is looking
to make decisions that balance your corporate
needs and social responsibilities.
 That’s why cloud deployment is now
widely cited as one of the most environmentally
responsible IT decisions. Perhaps reducing your
carbon footprint isn’t your primary decision making
criterion, but it’s certainly a benefit that aligns with
the values of many of your employees, customers,
and communities.
 ERP solutions aren’t just software. They are
tools that can be used to help grow your business
profitably, offering flexible solutions that provide
more accurate information in real-time, driving
smarter, faster decision-making, and enabling
customers to quickly meet changing market
demands to stay ahead of their competition. The
cloud increases the business benefits that ERP
offers and can accompany your business on the
road to successful growth.
www.epicor.com
Server Emulators & Load for Commissioning
& Integrated Systems Testing
Temporary Racks & Power distribution
Temporary blanking
Temperature & Humidity logging
Fully installed and managed or rental only

heatload.co.uk
Datacentre Testing .… No Problem

16MW Heat Load Available for rent

Rack Mounted 3.5 or 3.75kw

Rack Mounted 2kw Single Phase Single Phase

Floor Standing – 3-Phase & Single Phase

2, 3, 9, 15 & 22kw

www.heatload.co.uk +44 (0)1243 575106

Heatload.co.uk is a trading name of Mafi Mushkila Ltd
 HYBRID CLOUD Multi-Cloud Strategies

MAKEYOUR
BUSINESSCLOUD Claire Vyvyan discusses the
role that intelligent financing

COMFORTABLE
options will play in making cloud
technology more widely available
By Claire Vyvyan, Vice President, Enterprise Solutions
Group at Dell

Introduction
Anyone who’s been paying close attention to
the cloud industry is likely to be both intrigued
and excited by the various opportunities it opens
up. Since early last year, many have stated that a
hybrid cloud approach is the industry end-state and
despite some resisting this viewpoint initially, it’s at
the centre of all cloud conversations today.
This will be the year when the hybrid cloud
truly becomes the prevailing approach for most
organisations. It is going to have a substantial
positive effect on businesses, regardless of the
vertical, the cloud providers, and the overall
approach to how cloud is addressed in enterprises
of all sizes across the board. Over the course of the
year ahead, there are a few key cloud trends that
will be front and centre of cloud development.

The Year of Hybrid Cloud

Infoburst: This will be the year
when the hybrid cloud truly becomes
the prevailing approach for most
organisations.
Enlightened cloud advocates have believed that the
world is moving toward hybrid cloud for quite some
time and it’s great to see others starting to sing the
same tune. The debate between public or private
cloud has diminished and now, the question is
not if it will happen, but rather when and how fast
companies will reach the hybrid cloud end-state.
Customers are confirming this as a recent survey
of mid-sized organisations worldwide found more
than half of them used more than one type of
cloud in 2015.
The next step will see organisations begin to
take their cloud strategies one step further with an
increased adoption of a hybrid cloud approach.
This will manifest itself in organisations that have
the ability to not only have on-premises support
and use of a managed or public cloud provider, but
also the ability to choose and utilise the multiple
public cloud providers out there – the Azures, the
Amazons, the Googles, etc. – to achieve their
desired business outcomes.
Cloud-Comfortable
Greater understanding of workload management
and the principle of becoming ‘cloud-comfortable’

22 CLOUDCOMPUTING

are driving hybrid cloud adoption. This shouldn’t
come as a shock – especially as previous barriers
or impediments to cloud adoption, such as costs,
control, complexity, and security, are coming
“Based on a shift in customer demands, it’s
down. As a result, businesses’ comfort levels with
the cloud are continuing to increase and more
IT organisations are confidently deploying cloud
environments in-house. After initially over-indexing
on public cloud and realising it was neither as
cheap nor always as simple or secure as promised,
many IT leaders are finally beginning to strike the
right balance. As they become cloud-comfortable,
they will have even higher expectations in terms of
integrated manageability and cloud management,
across clouds of all types, will continue to be a hot
topic among CIOs.
Financing
Cost remains one of the largest barriers to adopting
and implementing cloud – a fact attested to
by many organisations. As they explore hybrid
cloud options, businesses become increasingly
aware of the total cost of ownership and lifecycle
management costs. They want the right cloud
infrastructure at the right cost with the right
characteristics.
While on the journey to find the model that
fits perfectly with their business, many realise
the limitations and costs of their existing public-
cloud-only models. This has generated demand for
new cloud financing options – ones that address
how to use the cloud now and how to use it in
the future. As a result the conversation will likely
change from wanting the cloud to seamlessly run
specific applications to how a cloud infrastructure
can enable an organisation to achieve its business
goals.
Though this is already the case for businesses
around the world, the continued drive will cause
demand to increase. In this way, hybrid cloud will
serve as the catalyst for cloud financing reform
and it will reshape our expectations of what the
cloud should ultimately assist organisations to
accomplish.
Public Cloud
Historically, the lure of public cloud has been
the relative ease and simplicity of being able to
quickly access IT resources for workloads, such as
test-and-development projects. Based on a shift
in customer demands, it’s now necessary to make
the availability of private cloud as fast, easy and
seamless as public cloud. With this approach, CIOs
can recapture some level of cloud control and
security, while making cloud access easier for their
constituents.
There are a few ways to make cloud easier for
customers, particularly for those that are already
becoming more cloud comfortable. For example,
IT leaders can offer line-of-business owners a
simple catalogue of their most popular offerings
(e.g., the creation of a certain number of mail and
messaging inboxes). If a test-and-development
team wants to rapidly create and test a cloud-
based application, a pre-catalogued compute and
HYBRID CLOUD
now necessary to make the availability of
private cloud as fast, easy and seamless as
public cloud.”
storage resource pool could be offered, preventing
the engineers from having to go to a public cloud
and do this in a shadow IT form. With a catalogue
of offerings IT leaders or DevOps managers can
assess how much a solution will cost and the assets
available for usage when either deploying a cloud
infrastructure on their own or with the help of
deployment services.
One thing that is certain: these developments
should be less about the IT components and more
about the application or business outcome and
from there the necessary infrastructure can be
chosen. In essence, businesses should not begin
with the infrastructure, drop the app on top and
attempt to realise the desired outcome. To be
successful, it is necessary to start with the end
in mind – what the business is trying to achieve
and what outcome is being driven. Private cloud
becomes much easier when customers know what
they want to achieve and then match their needs
with the infrastructure and services best suited to
realise their goals.
Conclusion
In summary, tremendous changes are on the
horizon for cloud computing – ones that will
ultimately benefit businesses and organisations
that rely on it as their core IT delivery mechanism.
Not all businesses walk the same path, whether it is
cloud financing, types of deployment or differences
in overall objectives. However, a few things are
pretty clear; one choice does not fit all, it’s no
longer a conversation of public vs. private cloud
rather it’s about positive disruption and innovation.
A recent worldwide survey undertaken by Dell
showed that 9 out of 10 IT decision makers see
hybrid cloud strategy as important in achieving a
future-ready enterprise. This demonstrates just how
crucial it is for vendors to recognise the importance
of hybrid cloud as a key option for businesses. Many
businesses will face challenges along their cloud
journey including complexity, high cost-risk and a
lack of transparency around control. Hybrid cloud
combines the efficiencies, scalability and elasticity
of the public cloud with the control and security
of private cloud to match the right application to
the right cloud and manage the cloud applications
that power organisations. With such significant
benefits on offer, vendors need to acknowledge the
importance of hybrid cloud and tailor their solutions
accordingly.
www.dell.com
CLOUDCOMPUTING 23
 CLOUD INFRASTRUCTURE High Performance Computing

COMBININGHPCWITH
BIG DATA ANALYTICS
ONTHESAMEINFRASTRUCTURE Dr. Matthijs van Leeuwen discusses current trends in the high
performance computing and big data markets
By Dr. Matthijs van Leeuwen, Bright Computing

Infoburst: The cloud computing

revolution continues to change the way
organisations view their IT resources.

24 CLOUDCOMPUTING

Introduction
Three important trends keep coming up in
conversations with customers in the high
performance computing (HPC) and big data
markets. The first is that more and more users
want to combine HPC workloads with big data
analytics workloads on the same infrastructure.
The second trend is the demand for flexibility
to run workloads on either bare metal, virtual
machines, or, most recently, in containerized
environments. The third trend, closely related to
the second, is the demand for flexibility to run
on-premise and in the public cloud. New
technology is providing an infrastructure that
can be the foundation for combining high
performance computing, big data, and private
and public cloud environments, and managing it
all through a single-pane-of-glass.
HPC and OpenStack
The cloud computing revolution continues to
change the way organisations view their IT
resources. OpenStack cloud software provides a
common, open source platform that can be used
by corporations, service providers, researchers and
anyone else that wants to deploy a private cloud.
For many HPC users the question now becomes,
can I run an HPC workload atop this OpenStack or
alongside it? In the past users needed a dedicated
HPC cluster, but now the ability to choose
either option creates flexibility. Virtualising the
infrastructure using an OpenStack private cloud
allows administrators to be far more flexible in
allocating resources.
Take an example of a 25-server environment,
in which 10 servers must be dedicated to meet
the demands of the HPC load. In this scenario, it
is difficult to grow or shrink to meet demand if the
demands change significantly. With OpenStack,
users have far more flexibility to grow or shrink the
cluster. One might increase the cluster overnight
and decrease it again in the morning.
Running workloads virtualised inside
OpenStack can be a big benefit in many
settings. Take the example of researchers in the
pharmaceutical industry conducting simulations
for drug discovery. When one is required by
regulation to store results of simulations and
be able to produce them years later, one could
choose to run inside a virtual machine (VM)
and then shut down and store the entire VM,
complete with operating system and libraries.
The user would know for certain that results
could be precisely duplicated, because the
software environment is stored exactly as it
was. In addition, some users have very different
requirements for their operating systems and their
versions of libraries, and a completely tailored
environment can be offered in a VM.
CLOUD INFRASTRUCTURE
“OpenStack cloud software provides a
common, open source platform that can
be used by corporations, service providers,
researchers and anyone else that wants to
deploy a private cloud.”
While offering a variety of benefits, OpenStack
can be difficult to configure and manage. In
addition, with virtualisation there is a performance
penalty, typically less than 10 per cent. Some users
chalk that up to the price one must pay, while
others consider it a barrier to adoption. Also, there
is a perception that some hardware technologies
are not fully supported by OpenStack, but the
industry is definitely making huge progress. For
example, InfiniBand and accelerators can now be
used through virtualisation.
Those not using OpenStack are probably
turning to other forms of private cloud, which
can be quite an expensive proposition. Or, they
may just semi-manually manage their VMs on
bare metal using customised scripts and smart
provisioning. This is not as flexible, can be prone
to errors, and perhaps most significantly, makes
users very dependent on the system administrator.
Combining HPC and Big Data Workloads
Figure 1 is a conceptualisation of an infrastructure
that combines HPC and big data workloads and
gives users the choice of working in either a bare
metal or virtualised infrastructure – and even
burst through into the public cloud. We start at
the bottom with the physical infrastructure of the
servers. On top of that basic infrastructure resides
a Linux operating system, with a management
solution in which the Bright agent is running
on every server. Running HPC on top of that
foundation would require the use of a cluster
management solution like Bright Cluster Manager.
The Bright Computing layer offers a single pane
of glass management for the hardware, the
operating system, the software, and users.
For running big data workloads or adding big
data functionality on top of that, you would use
Bright Cluster Manager for Big Data, an option
that builds, manages, and maintains big data
clusters using Hadoop and/or Spark. Bright Cluster
Manager for Big Data was specifically designed to
combine HPC and big data workloads. When used
on a Bright cluster with Intel’s HAM + HAL plugins,
the system offers a common file system and
workload manager across the two platforms.
The scenarios in the ‘Other’ category, for
CLOUDCOMPUTING 25
 CLOUD INFRASTRUCTURE
Figure 1: Bright Cluster Manager for
Big Data was specifically designed to
combine HPC and big data workloads.
26 CLOUDCOMPUTING
example, server farms, storage clusters, or even
a high frequency trading cluster at a bank, also
require a similar cluster management solution
and infrastructure. For the ‘Private Cloud’ option,
Bright OpenStack adds cloud capability on top of
the initial foundation.
The support of Bright Cluster Manager allows
users to offload the workload to a public cloud or
to a mixed environment, with some servers run
on-premise and some in the cloud. It is easy to
expand the two options with the single pane of
glass solution.
The demand to build an on-premise private
cloud has become stronger recently, driven in part
by security issues. In some industries, legislation
requires that certain data remain inside the
company’s firewall. There are other issues that
favor an on-premise solution over a public cloud.
For example, the very large datasets involved
with big data applications may be impractical
to transfer to a public cloud. Finally, cost may
be a factor, since public cloud services are often
more expensive to use over the long term, when
compared to on-premise alternatives. Moving up
the diagram, perhaps the most exciting aspect
of the concept is the ability to combine all these
options on the same infrastructure. For example,
the next step would be to further build on top of
the virtualisation layer provided by OpenStack.
The chief task of OpenStack is to manage
VMs – to stand them up, apply a configuration to
the template, move them around, and to manage
them. But it is important to realise that OpenStack
has no awareness of – and no control over – what
happens inside the VM. In other words, it controls
the VM itself, but it does not control what goes
on inside it. Typically, an operating system runs
inside of these VMs, either Linux or Windows. If
you want control and awareness of what happens
inside the VM, you could apply the Bright layer on
top of these VMs and operating systems.
This means that the software used to build
and manage the cloud is the same as that used to
manage the cluster built inside that cloud – even
though the bottom is based on bare metal, and
the top is based on virtual machines. The figure
shows that one can continue to build exactly the
same infrastructure on top of the VM layer as was
achieved with bare metal, including HPC, big data,
private cloud, as well as other server types. Finally,
this foundation sets the stage for bursting out to
the public cloud from within both the physical and
virtualised infrastructures. Bright Computing can
do all of this out of the box.
The conceptualisation shows an approach
for combining HPC and big data workloads and
giving operators the flexibility to choose between
bare metal and virtualised infrastructure. The next
step, now in the works, is working with containers
– simulated virtual machines that may look and
feel like a real server from the point of view of
owners and users.
Real World Examples
The innovative and unique infrastructure depicted
in the Figure 1 has been in place for nearly a year
at Bright Computing. It is being used to run a
private cloud inside a Bright data centre, where
software developers stand up HPC clusters, big
data clusters, and OpenStack clouds. It has also
been used by quality assurance engineers to run
tests, by support engineers who need to reproduce
a scenario experienced at a customer site, and by
systems engineers to run demonstrations.
The infrastructure has proven to be extremely
flexible, enabling Bright to do a lot more with
its resources. The ability to virtualise the clusters
enables us to stand up and shut down the large
number of clusters needed to serve customers,
without having to build out a much larger data
centre.
Another example is a major pharmaceutical
company that was looking to optimise the use
of its existing server infrastructure. The company
had a substantial group of HPC and big data
users and wanted to deploy a private cloud in
their data centre in which they could mix general
IT workloads with HPC workloads. The objective
was to make more HPC resources available
for researchers to run jobs overnight when the
general IT world load was low.
Using Bright OpenStack, the company’s
administrators were able to provide flexibility and
customisation to their user base while optimising
the use of existing resources. The solution
reduced their need to invest in more hardware
because they could use what they already had
more efficiently. The initial deployment was so
successful that similar deployments are now in use
at five other sites.
www.brightcomputing.com
 OPINION Data Protection Laws

THEGENERALDATA
PROTECTIONREGULATION Mahmood Hamdi outlines the impact

ISHERE–WHATNOW?
of new data protection laws on the
cloud computing industry.
By Mahmood Hamdi, CEO of Detracker

9 out of 10 CIOs are unprepared. However, the

UK public is more than ready to exercise the
redress mechanisms that it outlines with two thirds
requesting tougher laws, while 20 per cent of EU
citizens are willing to pay more for services that
centre around privacy.

Below are the key aspects that should be addressed

right away.

• The GDPR applies globally, so if you have

Infoburst: The new regulations have
been designed to strengthen the
privacy rights of EU individuals.
Introduction
The European Parliament has finally passed the
General Data Protection Regulation after a vote in
the early hours of April 14th. The new legislation
applies to all companies that have EU customers
and completely changes the laws surrounding
data protection. Four years in the making, the new
regulations have been designed to strengthen the
privacy rights of EU individuals. So, even if you’re
not based in the EU, if your data belongs to EU
individuals then you’ll have to comply. When it
comes to obtaining consent, responsibilities have
also been tightened for data controllers. Data
processors and third parties acting on behalf of
data controllers will also have to abide by the
same organisational and security measures. The
GDPR has certainly caught some C-level decision
makers off guard. In fact, it’s been reported that
customers in the EU then you need to comply.
• Companies will have to review and carefully
vet which third parties they are working
with as GDPR punishes both if one is non-
compliant.
• Privacy policy has to be plain, simple, honest
and inclusive.
• Data has to be stored in the EU.
• Individuals have the right to access, modify
and erase data. Make sure your infrastructure
and database can effectively respond.
• You’ll need to appoint a data protection
officer to guide your company’s compliance if
you are processing large amounts of personal
data.
• A risk assessment will help you address
your security vulnerabilities. If you’re data
is breached, you will need to notify the
authorities within 72 hours.
• The GDPR outlines a two-tier penalty system
with maximum fines of up to 4 per cent of
an entity’s global annual turnover or £14.7
million (€20 million). Non-compliance with
an order by the supervisory authority is also
subject to administrative fines of the same
gravity. A second tier of fines of £8 million (or
2 per cent of global annual turnover) applies
in the case of violating the obligations of the
processor and the controller.
• The GDPR will come into force in the first half
of 2018. The current adoption phase is in
place to allow businesses to get up-to-speed
with all of the above.
www.detracker.eu

28 CLOUDCOMPUTING
 Distributed by

Speak to our team of networking

experts on 0800 881 5198 or
email networksales@mayflex.com
 CYBER SECURITY Online Security Awareness

THE CYBER
WEAKNESS Sean Paxton explains why
people are the key to cyber
security
By Sean Paxton, Product Manager of Networks
at Redcentric

Infoburst: It can be hard to generate a truly

beneficial interaction between the people
responsible for IT security and the rest of the
organisation.

30 CLOUDCOMPUTING

Introduction
Cyber security is one of the great issues of our
time. As organisations have become increasingly
dependent on computer and data communication
technology, the opportunity for thieves has grown.
Couple that with the lack of national boundaries
in cyberspace and the relatively low probability
of being caught and the risk/reward ratio makes
cybercrime much more attractive than taking a
sawn-off shotgun into a bank. The ‘attack surface’
grows all the time. By 2020, it is estimated there
will be 4 billion people online and the Internet of
Things will be up and running, interconnecting
26 billion Internet enabled devices and thereby
allowing a thief who can find an entry point to
jump from device to device. There is also no sign
of this growth of complexity ever stopping, so the
opportunities for cyber-thieves will only increase.
 Organisations are getting better at protecting
themselves. Software updates are usually
implemented quickly or automatically now, so
vulnerabilities are blocked before the attacker can
exploit them. Vulnerabilities usually occur because
multiple coders, with differing habits, write
different modules within a large software system.
No matter how well specified and tested the
modules are, there will always be slight variations
in the way things work because each person
does things slightly differently. It is these small
differences the thief is looking for.
 Firewalls are better than they were. Most
people have enough awareness to know they
are exposed if they are not behind a firewall and
most people have enough sense to run anti-virus
software and keep it updated. Simple attacks
are therefore mostly blocked by technology. A
reasonable guess is that 99 per cent of attacks are
blocked before they do any harm. But that would
still leave one per cent of a large number that
do get through. It is clear that technology alone
cannot defeat cyber-thieves.
 
The Cyber Weakness
Thieves always turn to the greatest source of
weakness – people. People are inconsistent. Some
care about protecting themselves online,
while others do not realise the dangers that
exist. Some are cautious about opening email
attachments; some are not and often live to
regret it. A thief can exploit these inconsistencies
and weaknesses. Business policies do not help,
as when performance is measured on things
like sales numbers, hitting deadlines and cost
savings, there are rarely employee incentives for
strong cyber security. Outside the office, people
are careless online in ways they would never be
elsewhere. Social networks create digital footprints
that are often impossible to remove or improve
once they exist. It is not difficult for a researcher
CYBER SECURITY
to move from reading Facebook personal
information to researching the same person on
Linkedin to find their professional profile, then to
find their colleagues and find a way in, perhaps by
emulating a colleague. Indeed, some people do
this for a living, researching likely targets, finding
all their personal details, before selling that profile,
together with all the supporting information, on
the dark web to criminals who will use it to steal
from the person or their employer.
 So how should an organisation approach
the soft, people issues involved in cyber
security? Perhaps the first recognition businesses
should make is that people do not listen, do
not pay attention and often simply do not do
what they are told even when they do listen
and understand. The ability to influence and
persuade is more important than the ability
to write procedures. Unfortunately, the soft
human resources and psychology skills needed
to approach the issue in this way are often not
the skills possessed by the people responsible for
cyber security. Cyber security is generally seen as
a part of the IT department. As such, it attracts IT
professionals who understand and analyse issues
before writing procedures to address them, but
lack the necessary skills to train and persuade the
professionals on the front line. Mandating does
not work, but it is the way most organisations deal
with the issue.
 
Taking A Stand
As far as cyber security is concerned, it often
gets lost in the shuffle. Most organisations have
poor management and auditing practices, weak
or non-existent personal risk assessments and
pre-employment screening. Simultaneously,
communication between the arm of the business
responsible for cyber security and the workforce
is almost non-existent. Many managers regard
cyber security as a nuisance they have to deal
with, taking time away from what really matters in
achieving their objectives.
 It can be hard to generate a truly beneficial
interaction between the people responsible for
IT security and the rest of the organisation.
People often do not like being told what to do,
even when they listen. Relationships take a long
time to develop and need a lot of nurturing, but
employees will respond and contribute if they
are treated like adults and persuaded to build a
culture of online security awareness. The key is
developing everyday practices that help people
feel secure online and, over time, developing a
culture in which people implement those practices
without resentment and without thinking about
them.
www.redcentricplc.com
CLOUDCOMPUTING 31
 CASE STUDY
GETTIN’ IN TUNE EACS help farming cooperative improve agility with Office 365 and Intune
Infoburst: As part of the move
to Office 365, Fenmarc chose
Microsoft’s cloud-based client
management solution, Intune.
32 CLOUDCOMPUTING
Flexible Systems for an Agile Business
About Fenmarc
Fenmarc produces and packs a large range of
prepared vegetables for UK retailers such as
Asda, Waitrose, Ocado and Aldi. Established as
a farming cooperative some 45 years ago and
based in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, it now has 200
colleagues and is considered one of the largest
suppliers of prepared fresh vegetables in the UK.
Fenmarc is part of Lifecrown Investments, which
also owns Agellus Hotels, a collection of boutique
hotels, gastro pubs and restaurants. The Fenmarc
IT team manages the IT systems and infrastructure
for all Lifecrown Investments companies.
The Challenge
In 2014, Fenmarc negotiated the sale of two parts
of its business. As part of the deal, it needed to
divide the organisation into three and make each
of the businesses entirely self-sufficient, with its
own sales, orders, distribution, finance and email
systems. This presented a tremendous challenge; to
split everything into three while ensuring all systems
remained fully operational with no downtime. To
make things more demanding, the deal was to go
through in the New Year, so all preparation needed
to be done in confidence and during the run-up to
Christmas, one of the busiest times of the year for
anyone working in the food industry. “We brought
in our long-term trusted partner EACS as soon as
possible in the process. It was very beneficial to
know that we could talk confidentially from the
outset, and rely on EACS to deliver within tight
timeframes,” explained Paul Bower, Head of IT at
Fenmarc. “EACS helped us with our email systems
and it quickly became obvious that we should
move from Microsoft Exchange to Office 365. We
 CASE STUDY
wanted to minimise changes for the business and
by staying with Microsoft rather than looking at
alternatives, we kept continuity for our users with
familiar Office applications.” As part of the move
to Office 365, Fenmarc also chose Microsoft’s
cloud-based client management solution Intune
to replace Microsoft System Centre Configuration
Manager (SCCM). Intune manages Fenmarc’s
software and anti-virus updates and patches,
software and hardware inventory, and includes all
mobile devices.

Squeezed Timescales
Fenmarc and EACS worked to very short timescales
under tremendous pressure to complete the
migration within just four weeks. Due to the
confidential nature of the sell-off, it was not
possible to have EACS on-site during the planning
and specification phase. However, as Office 365 is
cloud-based, much of the work could be done off-
site. “The main challenge was the sheer enormity
of the project and the very short timescales. It
was both physically and mentally challenging to
maintain focus. Everything had to be planned
meticulously; I had three separate project plans
that we had to follow to the letter. There was no
room for slippage and no opportunity to move
tasks around,” said Paul. “Our saving grace was that
we could rely on EACS. We had great confidence in
the relationship and knew we could depend on the
team.”
EACS had previously installed Mimecast
archiving software, which really came into its own
as the team hit the data migration part of the
project. “With Mimecast, we were able to archive Infoburst: Fenmarc has a cloud-based running in just a couple of days – which is a huge
our email data in three separate directions for system that can grow and adapt as the advantage and enables us to be much more agile
organisation continues to evolve.
the three companies. Importantly, this gave us in the market. This is the beauty of Office 365. If
great peace of mind throughout the migration we need to divest some parts of the business in
process; we were confident that there would be the future, we can build a standalone environment
no data loss,” said Paul. The actual migration took and be operational within just a few hours. Again
place during December and went live on 16th this would have taken weeks or even months
January 2015. However, it was business as usual previously.”
with production and packing staff working round
the clock to meet Christmas deliveries. A team Conclusion
of engineers from EACS worked diligently with “Before, we had twin servers in a virtual
Fenmarc throughout the holiday period to meet environment, which was quite complex to manage
the January deadline. and required a team of experts in Microsoft
Exchange, SCCM and SharePoint,” concludes
The Result Paul. “Now, as the new interfaces are relatively
Fenmarc now has one instance of Office 365 for intuitive, we no longer rely on specialists and have
the whole Lifecrown Investments group. Data and freed up the IT team to focus on the wider picture
systems are kept separate using Sophos firewalls, within the business, which is great for professional
which were also supplied by EACS. The team development.” Despite the massive transformation
implemented Intune to manage updates and taking place behind the scenes, Fenmarc employees
patches for all devices. were unaware that any changes had taken place.
With Office 365 and Intune, Fenmarc has a “With the help of EACS, we delivered a completely
flexible, cloud-based system that can grow and seamless transition between Exchange and Office
adapt as the organisation continues to evolve in 365 in a very short timescale at our busiest time
line with market demand. Previously, to set up the of year. Many users did not realise that anything
IT systems for a new business or divest another had changed, but that should be the aim of IT.
would take weeks or even months to complete. We’re here to provide a service for the business
Now, Fenmarc knows the same results can be – everything should happen in the background,
achieved within just a few days. “Two new hotels allowing the users to get on with business as usual.”
have recently been added to the group,” says
Paul. “We were able to get the systems up and www.eacs.com

CLOUDCOMPUTING 33
 CYBER SECURITY IT Training

THENEEDFOR
TRAINING
James Smith explains why training is a must if technology is
to make the right impact.
By James Smith, Training Manager, Quiss Technology

34 CLOUDCOMPUTING

Introduction
New technology, software updates and evolved
applications being integrated into the daily
operations of data companies across the UK and
Europe are helping boost productivity and drive
improvements in efficiency. Or are they? The
promise of better performance and improved
efficiency through the deployment of enhanced
technology systems is being unwittingly frustrated
by organisations that are failing themselves
– and their workforce. While a lot of attention
is being paid to the latest technology and the
improvements it can make, very little interest is
shown in the need to educate the individuals who
will be using it to understand how best to operate
their new applications or systems optimally.
Training
Many organisations simply believe their employees
are already competent with new technology,
believing most to be running the latest versions
of operating systems and software on their home
computers, tablets and phones, but this is rarely
the case. Hoping that individuals will learn new
systems in their own time is risky and as a result
this knowledge gap can reduce the efficiency and
productivity advantages that those systems and
updates provide. It’s easy to imagine the effect
on productivity when a critical user in a business
arrives at their desk on a Monday morning to find
Windows 10 has been rolled out and nothing is
quite the same as it was in the familiar Windows 7,
used for years or worse, their still capable Windows
XP at home. The same can be said for major
upgrades like a new version of Microsoft Office,
when favourites like Outlook, Word and Excel make
significant changes. Without appropriate training
any potential improvements and efficiency savings
remain unlocked.
Good training will help employees get the
most out of specific technology, like iPads, smart
phones, tablets etc. It can also help organisations
compare applications or technology to allow
strategic purchasing decisions to be made,
knowing the advantages and dis-advantages
offered by implementation within each
organisation’s unique operating environment.
While traditional training delivered in the
classroom is still important, the best providers
will offer on-site training, teaching small classes
for 30-45 minutes, offering a series of sessions
covering the most popular issues, which
employees can book in advance to suit their
individual needs. Floor walking is also proving
popular as it allows trainers to help users solve the
real problems they face in their day-to-day work,
using their own data and systems – far better for
helping users learn, than made-up scenarios.
CYBER SECURITY
On-site sessions reduce the need for
participants to travel or stay overnight near the
training venue, which helps increase the return on
investment for larger firms with lots of employees
needing regular training. Bigger organisations,
with a large number of new starters, or lots of
applications to master, may consider a permanent
trainer on-site, who could be seconded from the
service provider; an arrangement that offers greater
flexibility to cover multiple locations. A combination
of small classroom sessions, delivered at an
organisation’s location, followed by floor-walking
training a few weeks later is the best way to ensure
users become more confident in the use of new
systems and applications.
Cyber Security
Technology training takes many forms and covers
a wide range of subjects. Of growing importance
is training users to be aware of and mitigate the
risks of cyber-crime. Despite all the technology and
security around systems, most criminals know the
easiest point of attack is the individuals using the
system, not the system itself. Training providers are
now regularly delivering sessions on cyber-security
to organisations handling sensitive and confidential
data. It is of particular importance for organisations
with users requiring remote access, which can pose
a threat to the integrity of the systems – a point
not lost on criminals offering free Wi-Fi access!
The problem for organisations of all complexity
is that modern cyber-criminals change their attack
methods regularly, looking to interrupt trade,
obtain valuable data or simply steal money. The
threats require more than good password practices,
with staff needing to understand the potential
risks from web browsing, phone hacking, sharing
information on social media that might be useful
to criminals - like posting an innocent birthday
message for the head of finance. The effective use
of the latest technology, from tablets to telephone,
can be beyond some users, with some of the more
senior likely to struggle through without asking for
help. A few one-on-one sessions could solve many
problems and teach a few old dogs some very new
tricks to help them improve their productivity.
Conclusion
Too many organisations are making technology
upgrades and leaving the learning to the individuals
that use it, with an expectation that employees
will discover the new features for themselves. Once
new technology has been implemented, leaving
efficiency and productivity improvements in the
hands of those using it, is a poor decision when
easily tailored support is so readily available.
www.quiss.co.uk
CLOUDCOMPUTING 35
 OPINION Cloud-based Unified Communications

Infoburst: How much of the buzz

around cloud is reality?

36 CLOUDCOMPUTING

FIVE TIPS TO CONVERT
CLOUD SCEPTICS
Introduction
There’s no denying that we’re in the middle
of a cloud craze, but behind all the hype, does
investment in cloud software really deliver a
return? How much of the buzz around cloud is a
promise of possible benefits, and how much of it
is reality? To decipher what’s tangible and what’s
pie in the sky, here are five reasons why cloud
adoption is important, according to the facts.
Freedom From Costs
When you move services to a cloud provider, you
immediately relinquish some control over your
data and processes. However, you also instantly
free yourself from the cost of hardware and server
management, as well as gaining back the time
and manpower that it would ordinarily take to run
IT systems. In fact, 84 per cent of CIOs say that
they’ve saved on application costs by moving to
the cloud.
Initial Hiccups Are In The Past
In the earliest stages of cloud adoption,
bandwidth was an expensive endeavor and
quality over-the-top solutions were not readily
available. Cloud-based phone systems have
become cheaper alternatives to traditional
telephony methods and they now function
just as well after several years of trial, error and
innovation. This is equally true for any sized
business, from SMBs to multinational enterprises.
Take Back Control From Your Devices
Companies without cloud-based tools are
often dependent on fixed-line devices to access
corporate data or software. Cloud adoption frees
workers from the confines of their desk phones
and PCs, enabling the staff to access company
OPINION
Monica Visconti-Patel outlines the
importance of cloud adoption in today’s
office environment. 
By Monica Visconti-Patel, Senior Director of Sales and Marketing,
EMEA, at RingCentral
software and data on the move from their
personal devices.
Support for Remote Workers
Gone are the days where working from home
meant spotty access and expensive cell phone
bills. Cloud adoption has made it truly feasible to
work from home, or anywhere you go, without
having to compromise the quality of experience.
In the UK, the Professional Contractors
Group estimates that there are 1.4 million
British freelancers working across all sectors,
representing a 14 per cent growth in the past
decade. Remote employees and freelancers can
both have a quality experience that matches an
office environment without forfeiting access to
company or client projects and software stored
in the cloud.
Access to Enterprise Systems
Integration with other SaaS systems is happening
before our eyes, but it’s almost entirely happening
in the cloud. Cloud adoption offers greater
access to integrations that give access to entire
enterprise systems. Without the cloud, software
remains extremely siloed.
www.ringcentral.co.uk
CLOUDCOMPUTING 37
 BIG DATA ANALYTICS Cloud-based Analytics

SEEINGTHROUGH
Alistair Forbes discusses
the benefits of
cloud-based analytics for
managed service providers

THE CLOUD
By Alistair Forbes, General Manager,
LogicNow

Introduction
No awards for ‘prophetically’ stating that the
cloud is growing in impact and importance for
MSPs – more and more industry focus on the cloud
means MSPs are looking not only to move their
core business into it, but also to support customers’
cloud-to-cloud integrations and security. Among
the many benefits that cloud-based systems offer,
the opportunity to capitalise on big data analytics
is one of the most far-reaching. However, actually
realising this particular benefit can be challenging.
Even within a single MSP, the volumes of
data generated by monitoring and management
platforms are substantial and most do not have
the in-house capability to utilise sophisticated
analytics tools to derive actionable insights from
that data. The possibilities are amplified when
cloud-based platforms aggregate data from large
communities of users to capitalise on the collective
intelligence that is created. Within market-leading
cloud-based management platforms, there are
billions of data points across millions of enterprises’
devices managed by MSPs that can be analysed
and synthesised in order to better manage, protect
and support clients’ businesses. However, not only
do MSPs have to manage the explosion of the
size and mix of business data, they also have to
simultaneously reduce spend on storing, processing,
archiving and analysing that data. Putting in place
the tools and the talent that are required is often
cost-prohibitive for small to medium sized MSPs.
Circumventing these obstacles is where intelligent
cloud-based analytics, delivered as an integral part
of the tools that MSPs use every day, comes into
play.

Infoburst: There are two important Identifying the Opportunities

elements to cloud-based analytics - the There are two important elements to cloud-based
large-scale collection and the effective analytics – the large-scale collection and the
use of data.
effective use of data. One cannot succeed without

38 CLOUDCOMPUTING

the other and both define the extent to which
an MSP can use the resulting insights to evolve.
The most straightforward way to use the data
would be to report on what has already happened
(descriptive analytics). The next level of analytics
is to use the data to anticipate and optimise what
is likely to happen in future (predictive analytics).
However, this still requires that the MSP both
interprets the trends and determines the corrective
action, overlooking the potential for using analytics
to recommend the optimal approaches to
proactivity and improving the customer experience
(prescriptive analytics).
This is where intelligent cloud-based analytics
comes into its own, delivering timely, actionable
insights and visibility of issues that may impact
the business before they even materialise. Today,
many businesses rely so heavily on their IT systems
that a systems problem can mean significant lost
productivity and revenue. The backup systems that
used to work are just no longer viable – records,
customer contacts and service delivery information
are more than likely held only electronically and if
IT systems are unavailable, even for a short period
of time, it’s time wasted and income lost – no
matter how short the gap between the break and
the fix.
Cloud analytics and machine learning
technologies absorb the mass of customer data
available, automatically interrogate it, identify
correlations and then determine not only what
is likely to happen, but also recommend to the
MSP the best response or course of action for an
optimal outcome. The more data points there
are, the greater the accuracy and the faster the
recommendation can be delivered and acted upon
and cloud-based systems have by far the greatest
Infoburst: Cloud-based analytics open
up a number of opportunities for the
MSP market.
BIG DATA ANALYTICS
amount of data available for such analyses.
Detecting and solving potential problems before
they arise, rather than responding to emergencies
when the damage is already done, provides a
better quality service and more reliable business
operations.
There is another important element to cloud-
based analytics - security. While many businesses
used to have concerns about the security of cloud-
based systems, there is now a growing acceptance
of the fact that having systems in a secure,
professionally managed data centre is actually
more secure than having systems located on-
premise with relatively weak physical and electronic
security measures in place. Tools such as two-factor
authentication provide additional security and are
now commonplace in cloud-based systems and
applications.
Missing the Data Hurdles
While cloud-based analytics open up a number
of opportunities for the MSP market, two
major challenges have to date been barriers to
widespread adoption. The first is the cost – few
MSPs have the financial resources, systems
capacity and in-house skills on which sophisticated
analytics and machine learning depend. This mix
of components is traditionally the preserve of
larger companies. The second is availability of the
volumes of data that enable advanced analytics
and machine learning to work and identify
meaningful, accurate trends, constantly learning
from large amounts of data from multiple diverse
sources. Such quantities of data are normally more
than most individual IT providers have available to
them or can affordably get their hands on.
The solution is to draw on a large, active
community of MSPs to create an aggregated
pool of data within a single cloud-based RMM
platform. Through this platform, data is aggregated
from thousands of MSPs into the same single
pool, allowing the platform itself to generate and
activate workflows that are triggered by conclusions
drawn from the intelligent analysis of the data.
The Rewards of the Cloud
The collective intelligence derived from a large
community is key to allowing MSPs to benefit from
cloud-based analytics and machine learning. This
drives invaluable insights and visibility of business
activities, predicting the impact of external and
internal events and enabling MSPs to make better
business decisions.
MSPs that are not capitalising on the
possibilities that are within their reach will quickly
find that they are falling behind their competitors.
Freeing up time and resources to focus on
customer relationships, while simultaneously
improving service quality and efficiency will be
critical enabling factors for the next generation of
successful MSPs.
www.logicnow.com
CLOUDCOMPUTING 39
CONFERENCE 2016

Headline Sponsor

The Barbican 22nd June

Conference Centre,
Golden Lane, 2016
London EC1Y 0QT

The BICSI UK Conference and Exhibition is a one day conference due to

take place at London’s prestigious Barbican Conference Centre.

The event will deliver game changing information to those involved in the
installation and specification of network infrastructures in the data centre
and information communications technology environment.

For more information

Ian Titchener Simon Langston
ian@lgnmedia.co.uk simon@lgnmedia.co.uk
Tel 01353 771464 Tel 01353 771466

TO REGISTER VISIT WWW.BICSICONFERENCE.CO.UK

LGN Media LTD

E-Space Business Centre, 181 Wisbech Road, Littleport, Cambridge, CB6 1RA