Heads in the cloud

Fifteen years ago the service provider market was the place to be. Lots of businesses were making their first moves online, customer acquisition was relatively straightforward and growth was easily achieved. But over the past decade or so most service providers have faced tricky trading conditions, they have had to watch their margins erode as the market matured and consolidated. Some have reacted by focusing on defensive strategies rather than innovation. However the case for innovation in a difficult market has been well-argued – innovation, and the differentiation that follows from it, can flourish when times are tough as people look for an alternative approach, and there are many celebrated examples of this happening with great success in other industries. Fortune magazine, for instance, launched in 1930 less than a year after the Wall Street crash; Diet Coke was launched in 1982 in the middle of a global recession; Apple launched its first iPod in 2001 around the time that the dotcom bubble burst.
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In early 2015, insights from Beyond Infrastructure: Cloud 2.0 Signifies New Opportunities for Cloud Service Providers were released detailing the future of cloud service providers and Managed Service Providers. Key findings include:

• The highest expectations when moving to hosted services or cloud computing are gaining improved technology quality on platforms and applications, helping to grow the business, improved availability and better business service.
• Within two years, 34% of enterprises will have 60% or more of their applications on a cloud platform. 47% of marketing departments will have 60% or more of their applications on a cloud platform in two years.
• 63% of all enterprises surveyed are running an on-premises private cloud with a hosted private cloud. 45% using an on-premises private cloud with a public cloud. 32% have a hosted private cloud integrated to a public cloud.
• CIO/CTOs are the most influential C-level executives regarding purchasing decisions related to cloud-based Application Development and IT Operations/Administration apps. CEOs are the most influential regarding cloud-based marketing app adoption.

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The latest release of Flexiant Cloud Orchestrator comes complete with nifty Load Balancer features. There are two really useful functions I particularly like about this – the automatic geoDNS service and that the back-end servers need not be part of the Flexiant Cloud Orchestrator ecosystem. This is great for anyone wishing to exploit hybrid cloud technology. Today’s blog, I delve into the new load balancer features.
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Managed hosting and cloud computing service provider, Logicworks published a blog recently on why cloud MSPs are software companies. We asked our CTO Alex Bligh and VP of Product Marco Meinardi to comment on it. You can read Alex Bligh’s comments here.
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Managed hosting and cloud computing service provider, Logicworks published a blog recently on why cloud MSPs are software companies. We asked our CTO Alex Bligh and VP of Product Marco Meinardi to comment on it. Here is Alex Bligh’s comments.
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