A new report from Salesforce sheds further light on the shifting sands of IT; eight out of 10 UK tech leaders say IT is now the primary enabler of customer experience, while three quarters admit IT is currently undergoing the biggest historical shift of its role.

IT stands at a crossroads of change, a post from Devon McGinnis, editorial manager of marketing research at Salesforce explains. Companies are increasingly adopting customer-centric models. Business units like sales, customer service, and marketing tasked with creating new experiences that meet elevated customer expectations are changing their views to see IT as a strategic partner.

IT now has the opportunity to not only improve customer-facing tech, but to transform it, McGinnis adds.

Its worth noting here that IT teams generally have modest expectations around their abilities. 61% of the more than 2,200 global respondents said they are moderate performers, compared with 24% who thought they were lower than average and 15% who rated themselves as high performers.

Salesforce argues that with the shifting position of IT the department has turned from a cost centre to a value-based service brokerage. The old model of IT as a maintainer of the status quo infrastructure is giving way to a new mindset, in which IT adds innovative capabilities that bring a competitive edge to the business, the report notes.

This is something which has been covered by this publication for some time as well as Salesforce adding that the role of CIO is fundamentally changing to the role of business leader. More than two thirds (67%) of IT teams polled said improving their collaboration with other lines of business was a high priority, while the 15% of teams who were higher performers were significantly more likely to rate the strength of their partnerships with service, marketing and sales as excellent.

Cloud computing was assessed by respondents as the most likely technology to reinvent business by 2020, with artificial intelligence (AI) and mobile technologies for customers winning the silver and bronze medals respectively. More than four in five (83%) IT leaders polled said they felt more comfortable with their knowledge of cloud security than they did five years ago.

Discussing the UK findings in particular, Adam Spearing, Salesforce area vice president EMEA, noted with interest the position of AI. The rise of artificial intelligence will also help IT teams to automate more mundane, time consuming tasks and free up time for team members to focus on innovation, he said.

While much of ITs work happens behind the scenes, its efforts are at the forefront of customer interactions. Without IT as the companys backbone, UK businesses will fall flat on powering crucial customer experience initiatives, added Spearing.

You can download the full report here (registration required).

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Salesforce report argues IT stands at a 'crossroads of change' - Cloud Tech

Alex Fung, Vontobel Wealth Management

Many investors in cloud computing are currently floating on Cloud Nine. It is therefore no wonder that investors are also increasingly interested in this theme, Alex Fung of Vontobel Wealth Management Asia writes.

By Alex Fung, CEO Vontobel Wealth Management Asia-Pacific

For a long time, it was the norm that companies and institutions established their own IT infrastructure with servers and computers that were sometimes huge. By doing so, they put considerable financial and time resources into an area that is very important; but actually is strategically not very relevant.

In the meantime, however, many providers have come on the scene to take over this task from companies by offering cloud computing, often shortened simply to the Cloud.

Rented as a Service

In a nutshell, this means that all the software, storage capacity and computing power can be used as required through a network such as the Internet, or as part of a Virtual Private Network (VPN).

As a result, the IT infrastructure, such as all the hardware and software applications, is no longer owned by the user, but is instead rented as a service from one or more cloud providers that look after its operation.

Enormous Amounts of Data at a Reasonable Price

Cloud computing offers diverse benefits. Lower costs are generally incurred for the IT infrastructure and software applications, since these services only have to be paid for when they are used. As scalability is so straightforward, capacity can be rapidly increased if necessary.

In addition, cloud computing provides simple software updates, greater computing power, mobility and in some cases also improved security. Cloud computing allows increasingly large volumes of data to be stored and then accessed at any time.

As such, this technology is both the driver and solution for dealing with big data. Many companies are unable to handle the constantly increasing demands for professional data management that must satisfy extremely high security standards. Transferring the companys own data and applications into a cloud is the most efficient procedure in many cases.

Attractive Growth Market

According to estimates from the US market research company International Data Corporation (IDC), global spending for cloud services is set to increase in the current year by 18.2 per cent to around 44.2 billion dollars. Annual growth of almost 14 per cent is expected until 2020.

At the same time, the proportion of cloud solutions in comparison to traditional data centres is about to augment steadily. To manage this growth of demand, leading providers are currently investing billions in the development of new cloud infrastructures. Size is very important in this business, because the more computing capacity an IT infrastructure handles, the higher the relative cost savings are.

Numerous Possibilities for Asian Investors

Cloud computing is attracting many new providers and is hotly contested as a rapidly growing market. Careful selection is thus important to determine tomorrows winners. Participation in the Cloud Computing market

There are numerous possibilities for Asian investors keen to participate in the potential of this growth market. Given the rapid pace of change in the market and the intense competition, the main skill for advisory firms is to be able to identify the winners of the future in the cloud computing market. Before making any investment decisions, it is therefore best to speak with experts who have the necessary expertise to pick underlying instruments in this technology segment.

Alex Fung is the Chief Executive Officer of Vontobel Wealth Management Asia, based in Hong Kong.

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Alex Fung: Is Cloud Computing Providing Heavenly Opportunities? - finews.asia

This search engine is designed to provide results for Cloud Computing searches. If your search is more general in nature, please use 4search.com.

Cloud computing is the use of computing resources (hardware and software) that are delivered as a service over a network. The name comes from the common use of a cloud-shaped symbol as an abstraction for the complex infrastructure it contains in system diagrams. Cloud computing entrusts remote services with a user's data, software and computation. End users access cloud-based applications through a web browser or a light-weight desktop or mobile app while the business software and user's data are stored on servers at a remote location. Proponents claim that cloud computing allows companies to avoid upfront infrastructure costs, and focus on projects that differentiate their businesses instead of infrastructure. Proponents also claim that cloud computing allows enterprises to get their applications up and running faster, with improved manageability and less maintenance, and enables IT to more rapidly adjust resources to meet fluctuating and unpredictable business demand. In the business model using software as a service, users are provided access to application software and databases. Cloud providers manage the infrastructure and platforms that run the applications. SaaS is sometimes referred to as on-demand software and is usually priced on a pay-per-use basis. SaaS providers generally price applications using a subscription fee. Proponents claim that the SaaS allows a business the potential to reduce IT operational costs by outsourcing hardware and software maintenance and support to the cloud provider. This enables the business to reallocate IT operations costs away from hardware/software spending and personnel expenses, towards meeting other IT goals. In addition, with applications hosted centrally, updates can be released without the need for users to install new software. One drawback of SaaS is that the users' data are stored on the cloud provider's server. As a result, there could be unauthorized access to the data. Cloud computing relies on sharing of resources to achieve coherence and economies of scale similar to a utility over a network. At the foundation of cloud computing is the broader concept of converged infrastructure and shared services.

2017 4Internet, LLC. Patent Pending.

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Cloud Computing Search Engine | 4CloudComputing.com

Steve Lack is Vice President of Cloud Solutions for Astadia.

New technology that experiences high growth rates will inevitably attract hyperbole. Cloud computing is no exception, and almost everyone has his or her own definition of cloud from its on the internet to a full-blown technical explanation of the myriad compute options available from a given cloud service provider.

Knowing what is and what is not a cloud service can be confusing. Fortunately, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has provided us with a cloud computing definition that identifies five essential characteristics.

On-demand self-service. A consumer [of cloud services] can unilaterally provision computing capabilities, such as server time and network storage, as needed, automatically without requiring human interaction with each service provider.

Read: Get what you want, when you want it, with little fuss.

Broad network access. Capabilities are available over the network and accessed through standard mechanisms that promote use by heterogeneous thin or thick client platforms (e.g., mobile phones, tablets, laptops and workstations).

Read: Anyone, anywhere can access anything you build for them.

Resource pooling. The providers computing resources are pooled to serve multiple consumers using a multi-tenant model, with different physical and virtual resources dynamically assigned and reassigned according to consumer demand.

Read: Economies of scale on galactic proportions.

Rapid elasticity. Capabilities can be elastically provisioned and released, in some cases automatically, to scale rapidly outward and inward commensurate with demand. To the consumer, the capabilities available for provisioning often appear unlimited and can be appropriated in any quantity at any time.

Read: Get what you want, when you want it then give it back.

Measured service. Cloud systems automatically control and optimize resource usage by providing a metering capability as appropriate to the type of service (e.g., storage, processing, bandwidth, and active user accounts). Resource usage can be monitored, controlled and reported, providing transparency for both the provider and consumer of the utilized service.

Read: Get what you want, when you want it, then give it back and only pay for what you use.

Each of these five characteristics must be present, or it is just not a cloud service, regardless of what a vendor may claim. Now that public cloud services exist that fully meet this cloud computing definition, you the consumer of cloud services can log onto one of the cloud service providers dashboards and order up X units of compute capacity, Y units of storage capacity and toss in other services and capabilities as needed. Your IT team is not provisioning any of the hardware, building images, etc., and this all happens within minutes vs. the weeks it would normally take in a conventional on-premise scenario.

Opinions expressed in the article above do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Data Center Knowledge and Penton.

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How Do You Define Cloud Computing? - Data Center Knowledge

Satya Nadella speaks at Microsoft Ignite 2016 (Photo by GeekWire/Kevin Lisota)

Microsoft is a huge multinational technology company, with lines of business spread across PCs, productivity software, gaming, internet search, and more. But after its third fiscal quarter earnings report came out yesterday, financial analysts spent most of their time asking about a very specific business.

Questions about Microsoft Azure and associated cloud services dominated Microsofts financial results call yesterday afternoon. By contrast, market leader Amazon Web Services only came up a handful of times during the Amazon call with analysts, which makes some sense given that AWS is already a well-understood component of Amazons overall business.

For Microsoft watchers, this shift is a little newer. The company still doesnt break out revenue for Azure (come on, folks, its about time) but said Azure revenue nearly doubled compared to last year, and CEO Satya Nadella was peppered with questions about Azure and cloud growth in general.

Heres a few of his answers, courtesy of a transcript from Seeking Alpha:

On the evolution of the cloud: For example, right when everyones talking about the cloud, the most interesting part is the edge of the cloud. Whether its IoT, whether its the auto industry, whether its whats happening in retail, essentially compute is going where the data gets generated, and increasingly data is getting generated at the volumes in which its drawing compute to it, which is the edge.

On cloud holdouts: But we do have a huge on-premise base. There is still a need for those on-premise products. That will continue, but our focus is on transitioning to the cloud.

On short-term thinking: These are generational opportunities that whats at play when it comes to the Intelligent Cloud or whats happening in augmented reality. Either one of those things, I think if we started viewing it quarter to quarter or year to year, well completely miss the trend.

But I completely understand that all of you measure us to what we have done for you lately. And thats a fine way and well keep account of it, but thats not how it works.

On enterprises moving to the cloud: its not about in fact taking any old workload per se, but its about reimagining what they want to do across these. And in that context, of course, theyre lifting and shifting some of the older workloads, but theyre modernizing the entire business process flow. And thats whats I think (is) the killer opportunity, not any one technology, but the entire flow.

Link:
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella outlines its cloud computing strategy ... - GeekWire