Category Archives: Cloud Computing
Skip The Cloud Computing ETF And Buy This Stock Instead – Seeking Alpha
First Trust Cloud Computing ETF (NASDAQ:SKYY) is the first and only ETF to provide exposure to the fast-growing cloud computing industry. This market segment is growing by leaps and bounds and should do so for several years to come. For example, Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) Web Services recently announced that its operating income increased from $580 million in the year-ago quarter to $926 million in the fourth quarter of 2016. Meanwhile, Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) announced that Azure revenue surged 93% year-over-year.
According to research firm IDC:
Between now and 2020, worldwide spending on public cloud services is expected to soar to more than $195 billion. This is double the revenue the industry is expected to generate by the end of 2016.
The share price of SKYY should be in the clouds, right?
Well, no. Despite the great promise for cloud computing, the ETF has not really performed much better than the S&P 500.
In fact, you could get almost the same performance holding the SPDR S&P 500 Trust ETF (NYSEARCA:SPY) with a lot less volatility.
The reason for the mediocre return is because there is a limited number of public companies that are focused specifically on cloud technology. Besides small pure play cloud computing companies, SKYY necessarily holds larger firms involved in the cloud computing space, but they derive much of their revenues from other operations. This minimizes or eliminates any advantage that the themed ETF may have over a broad index. I had a similar problem with Global X Internet of Things Thematic ETF (NASDAQ:SNSR) as was described in this article. Fortunately, being a small investor, I can pick and choose from the holdings of SKYY instead of buying the entire ETF.
One nice thing about ETFs is that the fund provider must, by law, publish the stock holding daily, and this makes the job very easy using Portfolio123, my investment tool of choice.
Using Portfolio123, I devised an investment strategy that significantly outperforms the S&P 500. The model portfolio periodically chooses 5 stocks from the 30 stocks held by SKYY.
The model ranks the stocks based on two criteria: highest 5-year compound annual sales growth and lowest Beta. The model has been live since July 28, 2016 and has outperformed SKYY by a wide margin.
Investors can get access to this model by paying a small monthly subscription fee. Unfortunately, I cannot reveal the 5 picks in this article, but instead, I am going one better, and that is to reveal the one stock from the 5 current holdings that I believe is shooting for the clouds (literally).
The stock is Open Text Corporation (NASDAQ:OTEX).
Why I Like OTEX
OTEX is one of the 5 picks from my cloud computing stock portfolio, which means that the stock has good compound sales growth and relatively low Beta compared to most of the SKYY holdings.
The stock price has risen from under $22 to $33 in the last year, and is now near a 52-week high, while sitting at a support level. The stock appears to be ready for take-off.
OTEX has a trailing twelve month (TTM) Return on Equity (ROE) of 41.7%, third highest of the cloud computing stock universe, higher than Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL).
Intuit Inc. (NASDAQ:INTU) and International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM) both have higher ROE than OTEX, but have lower 5-year compound sales growth. In the case of IBM, the 5-year sales growth is negative.
Open Text announced that it would acquire the Enterprise Content Management division of Dell back in September. Since that point in time analysts have been warming up to OTEX, with the average recommendation improving from 2.1 to 1.7 now. Note: 1 is a strong buy.
Likewise, the short interest percent of float has been dropping. It was approximately 3.4% in September and now it is 2.3%. This means that fewer traders are taking a short position in the stock, which is generally considered to be positive.
Based on the above observations, I believe that buying and holding OTEX alone is better than buying SKYY.
Disclosure: I/we have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours.
I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.
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Skip The Cloud Computing ETF And Buy This Stock Instead - Seeking Alpha
Microsoft To Defend Cloud-Computing Customers from Patent Trolls … – Top Tech News
By Matt Day. Updated February 10, 2017.
Microsoft sued the Justice Department last year, arguing that the gag orders often applied to search warrants for its customers' data were overly broad and unconstitutional.
The company said the orders, which sometimes prevent Microsoft from notifying customers that the government came calling, violated the company's First Amendment rights to discuss government conduct, as well as its customers' Fourth Amendment protections from unreasonable search and seizure.
The government asked U.S. District Judge James Robart to throw out the suit, arguing that the company could not bring Fourth Amendment claims on behalf of its customers. Those rights have to be asserted by individuals, Justice Department lawyers argued in a hearing last month.
Robart agreed to dismiss Microsoft's Fourth Amendment claims, citing legal precedent that prevents people and companies from defending those rights vicariously. Microsoft's First Amendment challenge could proceed, he said.
Microsoft President and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith said in a statement he was pleased the case will be allowed to proceed. A spokesperson for the Justice Department said it is reviewing the decision and declined further comment.
The case is among the set of high-profile conflicts between technology firms and the government over the balance between privacy and law enforcement access to digital information.
Microsoft and other technology companies have called for an update to U. S. digital privacy laws, some of which are decades old. The government, in Microsoft's case and others, has argued that existing law gives prosecutors plenty of leeway to operate in the digital age while respecting individual and corporate privacy rights.
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Microsoft To Defend Cloud-Computing Customers from Patent Trolls ... - Top Tech News
UK businesses remain ‘risk-averse’ and lagging behind in cloud strategy, Intel argues – Cloud Tech
(c)iStock.com/john shepherd
Organisations in the UK are among the least likely globally to have a cloud-first strategy, according to a new report from Intel Security.
The study, which polled more than 2,000 senior IT professionals, found the UK had pretty miserable scores across the board compared to their international brethren. The UKs score of 70% for businesses who are cloud-first whilst still a reasonable number lagged behind the global average of more than 80%, while only 7% of UK firms said they stored all of their data in the public cloud, compared with 25% on average globally.
Similarly, the UK lags behind when it comes to having a DevSecOps development, security, and operations function in the business, with 28% compared to the 44% global average. As a result, shadow IT practices are likely to be more prevalent; almost three quarters (74%) of UK respondents said their organisation had public cloud services in use which were commissioned outside of the IT department, above the global average of 66%.
Despite the majority belief that shadow IT is putting the organisation at risk, security technologies such as data loss prevention, encryption, and cloud access security brokers remain underutilised, Intel noted in an executive summary. Integrating these tools with an existing security system increases visibility, enables discovery of shadow services, and provides options for automatic protection of sensitive data at rest and in motion throughout any type of environment.
One of the primary reasons for UK firms being tentative is that old favourite, the skills gap. Almost a quarter (24%) of respondents said that having skilled staff who understand cloud architecture will boost adoption rates. This rings true with similar research from Robert Half Technology earlier this month, which found that three quarters of UK-based CIOs and IT directors regularly encounter IT professionals who they believe are not up to the task.
In terms of global statistics, hybrid cloud usage increased from 19% to 57% of respondents year on year, while organisations using only private cloud dropped from 51% to 24%.
You can read the full report here (registration required).
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UK businesses remain 'risk-averse' and lagging behind in cloud strategy, Intel argues - Cloud Tech
Salesforce Research Reveals Keys to Exceptional Customer Service – CIO Today
Armed with technologies that give them on-the-go access to a world of information, day or night, people today expect fast, smart and responsive service from the companies they do business with. And if they don't get it, they'll take their business elsewhere -- and fast, according to new research from customer relationship management (CRM ) giant Salesforce.
Based on responses from 2,600 customer service professionals across the globe, Salesforce's second annual "State of Service" report identifies four key trends driving the customer experiences expected from companies today.
These trends include a new, company-wide focus on customer experience; an expanding range of tools and technologies for customer service agents; a new view of customer service as an opportunity for sales rather than as a cost center; and the growing use of artificial intelligence and other smart technologies to provide more "human" interactions with customers.
Such changes are helping customers and service professionals alike to become more knowledgeable and more empowered in the decisions they make, according to the Salesforce report. And companies that make the most of these trends are gaining competitive advantages, while companies that don't risk falling behind.
Customers Expect Service Consistency
"Customer experience has become the defining line between companies that grow and companies that fall behind," Adam Blitzer, Salesforce's executive vice president and general manager of sales and service clouds, said in a statement accompanying the release of the report.
In fact, customer service today is no longer just confined to a company's customer service team, the report noted. Every part of a business, from service and sales to marketing and beyond, plays a role in the customer experience, and the highest-performing organizations are those that do this best.
"High performers are more focused on improving service and support through enterprise collaboration," according to the Salesforce report, which added that this approach is taken by 80 percent of top teams, compared to just 45 percent of those deemed underperformers. "Top service teams are 3.4x more likely than underperformers to excel at connecting and collaborating across departments to drive a cohesive customer journey."
Providing consistent service to customers, no matter which part of the company they're dealing with, is especially important considering how easy it now is for consumers and business buyers to take their purchasing power elsewhere. According to the report, 69 percent of consumers and 82 percent of business buyers say their loyalty to a company is influenced to a moderate or major degree by how personalized the service is that they receive.
Predictive AI Enables More 'Human' CRM
For businesses, providing such personalized service is becoming easier, thanks to emerging technologies for smarter, more predictive customer relationship management, the Salesforce report found.
"While it might sound counterintuitive to say 'use technology to be more engaging in your service,' that's exactly the mindset of forward-thinking teams," the report stated. "Rather than replace human contact, AI [artificial intelligence] enhances the experience by adding humanlike intelligence to interactions."
For example, CRM tools with smart analytics can "listen" to the words and tones used during a customer conversation to recommend the best possible next steps an agent should take. In addition to helping to provide better, more responsive service to customers, such technologies also help service professionals to focus more of their time and energies on the most complex customer requests while making other interactions quicker and easier to manage.
Today's top customer service teams are more than twice as likely as underperformers to be putting such predictive tools to use, according to Salesforce. They're also far more likely than underperformers to believe that predictive AI will have a "transformational" impact on customer service by 2020.
"This aligns with our finding that 51 [percent] of consumers and 75 [percent] of business buyers expect that, by 2020, companies will anticipate their needs and make relevant suggestions before they reach out," the report stated.
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Salesforce Research Reveals Keys to Exceptional Customer Service - CIO Today
Tech giant Oracle makes huge investment to bring cloud services to Australia – The Australian Financial Review
US technology giant Oracle is poised tounveil a major investment in its Australian operations, setting up its cloud platform and infrastructure services in the country as part of a global push to try and compete with the likes of Amazon Web Services, Google and Microsoft in selling computing power.
Oracle already sells cloud-based software products in Australia, but previously any local customers wanting to use Oracle to provideits computing capacity or run its applications would have had it hosted overseas.
Recently appointed Oracle Australia and New Zealand managing director Rob Willis declined to say how much it was costing to set up its own data centre infrastructure in Australia, but conceded it was a "huge" investment, which the company felt was necessary in order to expand its local presence and pick up new customers in small and medium-sized operations.
The company has recently faced accusations from rivals, such as cloud software provider Workday, that it has failed to genuinely embrace the cloud computing era, but Mr Willis told The Australian Financial Review the decision to base its services in Australia showed it was going "all in".
"If you are going to open up something like this you have to get to a certain point and that investment is huge," he said.
"You have to secure the facility, then you have to ship in a whole bunch of hardware andpeople to put it alltogether beforeloading in all the software and makingit work. So it is a huge investment, butwe have found elsewhere that what we get back from making that investment is worth it."
Last month Oracle announced it was expanding its cloud services globally, with new regions in North America and EMEA, but the move into Australia will enable it to target the large number of potential clients, which still refuse to have their data hosted offshore due to data sovereignty concerns.
In setting up in Australia, Oracle is going someway to match market leader AWS and Microsoft, which has local data centres for its Azure cloud, and is ahead of Google's Compute offering, which is due to set up in Sydney this year.
Oracle's Australian data centre isbased in Sydney and is already operational, rather than building its own data centre, it is working with a specialist provider, which it declined to name.
Mr Willis said that, while there remained some customers that were unwilling to move to the cloud, the vast majority wanted to and had been waiting for Oracle to make this move. While the company has traditionally attracted larger enterprises for its database systems and products, the software as a service (SaaS) model, where companies pay for usage on subscription has opened up the market to customers of all sizes.
"One of the most exciting things about the cloud is that it meets the typical requirements of our large customers, but also generatesinterest from smaller and medium-sized companies, who wantthe benefits of enterprise style infrastructure," he said.
"We are now veryfocused on trying to do a better job of addressing those customers."
Last week the local boss of one of the company's principal rivals for the medium-sized SaaS clients, Workday, said it was taking market share off Oracle and SAP rapidly, and accused the two older companies of putting modern interfaces on the top of creaking old systems.
Whereas Workday was founded in the cloud era, it was accusing Oracle of seeking to hold on to the past where companies paid more money to have all their software and technology run on their own premises - something Mr Willis refuted.
"There is no doubt that Oracle has a huge history of building software and doing things on-premise,but at the same time there is no doubt that that is shifting very rapidly into being a company where everything it does is cloud first," hesaid.
"Our history is in the on-premise world, but we are in a massive transition and transformation, which is rapidly approaching the stage where we say we are just a cloud company."
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Tech giant Oracle makes huge investment to bring cloud services to Australia - The Australian Financial Review
Cloud Wars Escalate with Price Cuts and Big Wins – Top Tech News
By Shirley Siluk / Top Tech News. Updated February 10, 2017.
Calling it "the industry's first secure Internet gateway in the cloud," Cisco said yesterday that Umbrella is designed to provide enterprise users with a safe way to access cloud services from anywhere via any device. And because Umbrella is a cloud-based service, it's fast and easy for customers to deploy without the need for new hardware or software, according to Cisco.
Built on the OpenDNS platform, Umbrella incorporates other Cisco technologies such as Cloud Web Security and Advanced Malware Protection. Those integrations enable the gateway service to inspect files before they're downloaded from potentially risky domains, and also adds new predictive intelligence capabilities to avoid other potential threats.
'Secure Onramp to the Internet'
"Before you connect to any destination, a SIG acts as your secure onramp to the Internet and provides the first line of defense and inspection," Kevin Rollinson, product marketing manager for Cisco OpenDNS, wrote yesterday in a blog post. "Regardless of where users are located or what they're trying to connect to, traffic goes through the SIG first. Once the traffic gets to the SIG cloud platform, there are different types of inspection and policy enforcement that can happen."
As a secure Internet gateway, Umbrella offers advantages over other protection strategies such as secure Web gateways, or SWGs, added Brian Roddy, who heads cloud security for Cisco. SWGs can be hard to deploy and "constantly create problems around latency and capacity," he said. By contrast, Umbrella was developed to reimagine how security is delivered, he added.
"For us, it wasn't about taking the old technology and just sticking it into the cloud," Roddy said. "We wanted to create a new layer of defense -- protecting users whether they're on and off the corporate network. We want it to be easy to deploy, be highly effective, minimize latency, support world-wide installations and support the open architectures that have made SaaS so effective."
Umbrella 'Detects Anomalies' To Predict Threats
While software-as-a-service tools such as Salesforce, Box, Google's G Suite, Office 365, WebEx, Trello and others, are widely used today, professionals who access those services from remote locations or mobile devices don't always use them via secure connections such as VPNs. In a survey conducted on behalf of Cisco last year, IDG Research Services found that 82 percent of the corporate laptop users it questioned admitted to sometimes bypassing their organizations' VPNs.
"Much of this off-network usage was for personal activities, but nearly 30 percent of the end users said they sometimes access company data without logging into their VPNs," according to IDG.
Unlike a VPN, Umbrella uses a customer's existing Cisco hardware, such as AnyConnect clients, routers or wireless LAN controllers, to "easily point Internet traffic to Umbrella whether on or off the corporate network," the company said. Umbrella "resolves over 100 billion Internet requests every day and correlates this live data with over 11 billion historical events," according to Cisco. "This is analyzed to identify patterns, detect anomalies, and create models to automatically uncover attacker infrastructure being staged for the next threat."
Cisco did not provide pricing for Umbrella, but the company is offering a free 14-day trial to each customer who signs up for the service.
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Cloud Wars Escalate with Price Cuts and Big Wins - Top Tech News
Privacy Advocates Celebrate as Judge Rules Microsoft Can Sue the DOJ – The VAR Guy
That so-called judge is at it again. U.S. District Judge James Robart, whom President Trump lambasted recently for issuing the court order that halted his temporary travel ban, has ruled that the federal government cant get out of being sued over its surveillance operations.
Last April, Microsoft sued the Department of Justice over the FBIs use of sneak-and-peak email searches and its refusal to allow the company to notify its customers that their data was under surveillance. The suit alleges that the FBI violated users Fourth Amendment right against unlawful search and seizure, as well as Microsofts First Amendment right to free speech. Robart rejected the Fourth Amendment complaint on the grounds that Microsoft couldnt sue on behalf of its customers, but said the company had made a solid enough argument on the free speech issue to send it through to trial.
"The public debate has intensified as people increasingly store their information in the cloud and on devices with significant storage capacity, Robart said in Thursdays ruling. Government surveillance aided by service providers creates unique considerations because of the vast amount of data service providers have about their customers."
In its initial suit, Microsoft said the secrecy orders often prohibit the company from ever telling customers when the FBI presents a warrant for surveillance, even if the investigation is no longer active. Of the 2,600 orders Microsoft had received, it said more than two-thirds had no fixed end date.
Microsoft has drawn wide support from the tech industry. Apple, Google and Amazon all publicly came out against the federal law that allows sneak-and-peek searches. The case highlights the growing legal complexity associated with cloud computing, big data and privacy rights. On one side, the government argues they need the searches to aid in investigations and protect citizens. On the other, privacy advocates say that the government is too liberal with its use of gag orders that prevent companies from notifying their users of the searches.
Putting an end to service providers obligatory and sometimes indefinite silence would be a significant first step toward effecting real and meaningful change in privacy laws, says Ladar Levison, founder and CEO of email service provider Lavabit. Levison has achieved hero status among privacy advocates for his refusal to help the FBI gain access to Edward Snowdens email account in 2013. When they demanded Lavabits SSL encryption key in order to get Snowdens password, Levison shut down the company rather than comply. If people only knew how extensive the governments reach was, he says, there would be a much bigger groundswell of demand for a right to privacy.
Its my belief that if the millions of people who have been placed under surveillance found out that they had been placed under surveillance, and the dubious set of circumstances that led to their lives being inspected by government agents, that this issue of privacy and surveillance would carry a lot more weight with a lot more individuals.
One of the trickiest parts of the legal process surrounding a push for privacy legislative reform is exactly what Microsoft ran into in Robarts courtroom: you cant sue on behalf of someone elses violated Fourth Amendment rights. But Levison says that even if Microsoft cant sue to keep customers data private, eliminating the gag order will be a big step.
From my perspective as a service provider, the only time were put in this position of having to defend our clients in court is when they cant defend themselves. Microsoft has to defend their customers when their customers cant defend themselves, but if Microsoft can tell them theres been this accusation made against them in regards to criminal activity, and thus is being asked to turn over their propertynotice I refer to their information as propertyit allows that individual to make a Fourth Amendment claim.
Its a busy time for privacy advocates. The U.S. House of Representatives unanimously passed the Email Privacy Act this month, reforming the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) and requiring law enforcement agencies to obtain a warrant to access emails 180 days or more older. Also this month, a U.S. judge ordered Google to comply with search warrants seeking customer emails stored on servers outside of the United States, departing from the precedent set by a federal appeals court seven months ago in a similar case involving Microsoft. And we wont soon forget the furor surrounding the FBIs attempt to compel Apple to create a backdoor into the iPhone belonging to the terrorist responsible for the San Bernadino shooting last year.
These issues are on the cusp of being settled, and unfortunately theyll be settled for all time. How often do we debate states rights or the ability of the federal government to levy an income tax? Were on the verge of hashing out what is going to be the constitutionality and law surrounding these types of service provider requests, said Levison. These issues are deeper and more complex than most people realize.
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Privacy Advocates Celebrate as Judge Rules Microsoft Can Sue the DOJ - The VAR Guy
Microsoft To Defend Cloud-Computing Customers from Patent Trolls – NewsFactor Network
Businesses often set up virtual private networks, or VPNs, to protect against IT threats that can be introduced via remote workers using cloud services to access corporate data. Because employees don't always use those VPNs, though, Cisco has launched a new layer of protection: a secure Internet gateway (SIG) dubbed Umbrella.
Calling it "the industry's first secure Internet gateway in the cloud," Cisco said yesterday that Umbrella is designed to provide enterprise users with a safe way to access cloud services from anywhere via any device. And because Umbrella is a cloud-based service, it's fast and easy for customers to deploy without the need for new hardware or software, according to Cisco.
Built on the OpenDNS platform, Umbrella incorporates other Cisco technologies such as Cloud Web Security and Advanced Malware Protection. Those integrations enable the gateway service to inspect files before they're downloaded from potentially risky domains, and also adds new predictive intelligence capabilities to avoid other potential threats.
'Secure Onramp to the Internet'
"Before you connect to any destination, a SIG acts as your secure onramp to the Internet and provides the first line of defense and inspection," Kevin Rollinson, product marketing manager for Cisco OpenDNS, wrote yesterday in a blog post. "Regardless of where users are located or what they're trying to connect to, traffic goes through the SIG first. Once the traffic gets to the SIG cloud platform, there are different types of inspection and policy enforcement that can happen."
As a secure Internet gateway, Umbrella offers advantages over other protection strategies such as secure Web gateways, or SWGs, added Brian Roddy, who heads cloud security for Cisco. SWGs can be hard to deploy and "constantly create problems around latency and capacity," he said. By contrast, Umbrella was developed to reimagine how security is delivered, he added.
"For us, it wasn't about taking the old technology and just sticking it into the cloud," Roddy said. "We wanted to create a new layer of defense -- protecting users whether they're on and off the corporate network. We want it to be easy to deploy, be highly effective, minimize latency, support world-wide installations and support the open architectures that have made SaaS so effective."
Umbrella 'Detects Anomalies' To Predict Threats
While software-as-a-service tools such as Salesforce, Box, Google's G Suite, Office 365, WebEx, Trello and others, are widely used today, professionals who access those services from remote locations or mobile devices don't always use them via secure connections such as VPNs. In a survey conducted on behalf of Cisco last year, IDG Research Services found that 82 percent of the corporate laptop users it questioned admitted to sometimes bypassing their organizations' VPNs.
"Much of this off-network usage was for personal activities, but nearly 30 percent of the end users said they sometimes access company data without logging into their VPNs," according to IDG.
Unlike a VPN, Umbrella uses a customer's existing Cisco hardware, such as AnyConnect clients, routers or wireless LAN controllers, to "easily point Internet traffic to Umbrella whether on or off the corporate network," the company said. Umbrella "resolves over 100 billion Internet requests every day and correlates this live data with over 11 billion historical events," according to Cisco. "This is analyzed to identify patterns, detect anomalies, and create models to automatically uncover attacker infrastructure being staged for the next threat."
Cisco did not provide pricing for Umbrella, but the company is offering a free 14-day trial to each customer who signs up for the service.
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Microsoft To Defend Cloud-Computing Customers from Patent Trolls - NewsFactor Network
SAP President Steve Singh says cloud computing is yesterday’s news ‘microservices’ are the future – GeekWire
Concur co-founder Steve Singh. (GeekWire Photo)
Cloud computing is so 2016.
Sure, migration from client servers to the cloud is an ongoing megatrend, but tech moves fast and SAP President Steve Singh is already looking to the future. He believes microservices apps developed in small, separate pieces, rather than as one complete program are the next big trend.
Singh shared his forecast on an episode of CNBCs Mad Money this morning.
Theres another shift coming, and thats from cloud computing to microservices. Now I realize that microservice is a bit geeky so maybe I can give you a simple example. When Kate, your producer, sent me an email saying, hey would you like to come on the show obviously, I always love seeing you so I said, Ill be there Thursday. And just in that email thread, it automatically decided that I should book travel for Steve out to New York so I can join you on the show. All of that happened from the email. So whats happening is the email is saying, look I need to book travel. Ill just call Concur and have Concur do it for me. So as a user, I dont go into Concur. I just go about my normal daily routine and the applications start to take actions for me all seamlessly.
Concur is the travel expense software startup that Singh led through its saleto SAP for $8.3 billion in 2014. The acquisition turned SAP into one of the largest cloud companies in the world. As part of the deal, Singh joined as an executive board member and president of business networks and applications.
Im having a lot fun, having a lot of fun growing my portion of the business and really seeing the whole company thrive, Singh said Friday.
Watch the full interview on Mad Money below.
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SAP President Steve Singh says cloud computing is yesterday's news 'microservices' are the future - GeekWire
IT infrastructure gearing to cloud computing under 4.0 – Bangkok Post – Bangkok Post
The emergence of a value-based economy under the Thailand 4.0 initiative is enhancing the local cloud computing market as it enters another year of expected double-digit growth.
IDC Thailand, the local operating unit of global IT research firm IDC, reports that Thailand's IT infrastructure spending grew by 3.9% to 400 billion baht in 2016 and is forecast to reach 500 billion in 2020.
The local cloud market, meanwhile, grew by 16% last year, with an undisclosed market value.
"This year will see the local cloud market grow stronger than the past several years," said Natasak Rodjanapiches, managing director for Thailand and Myanmar at Oracle Thailand, the local operating unit of the US software giant.
Cloud services will demonstrate robust growth over the next few years, with the biggest acceleration coming from infrastructure as a service (IaaS), he said.
Cloud adoption continues to accelerate in Thailand as organisations move down the path towards digital transformation and increasingly shift away from legacy IT services to cloud-based services, the penetration of cloud adoption in Thailand remains low, standing at 16% last year.
Cloud is widely used in several sectors ranging from retail, finance and banking, food, trading, manufacturing, and telecommunications.
In the second quarter of the fiscal year ending November 2016, Oracle reported global revenue from cloud products and services at $1 billion, an increase of 62%.
Oracle Thailand also saw spectacular growth in cloud service revenues last year, thanks to the digital transformation, Mr Natasak said.
"We expect several consecutive years of robust growth in our cloud revenue," he said.
Mr Natasak said cloud adoption in medium-sized businesses grew at an even stronger rate, as they realised the advantage of the cloud technology in helping them optimise legacy IT, adapt capacity, improve resiliency and reduce costs.
Despite accelerating cloud adoption, Mr Natasak acknowledged that many companies are still concerned over data loss and privacy as their biggest security challenges when considering adopting cloud technology.
Chris Chelliah, Oracle Asia Pacific's group vice-president and chief architect for cloud, said a lack of standard cloud platforms and lack of clear-cut paths or journeys to the cloud are key barriers to cloud adoption.
To resolve these challenges, Oracle provides an integrated cloud computing platform service under a pay-as-you-go model to help organisations drive innovation and business transformation by increasing business agility, lowering costs and reducing IT complexity.
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IT infrastructure gearing to cloud computing under 4.0 - Bangkok Post - Bangkok Post