Cloud computing will gain momentum as both vendor offerings and buyer expectations mature, but government buyers will firm their resolve to keep data within the control of their respective legal and regulatory jurisdictions. Domestic telcos across the region will start to position as the dominant providers of enterprise-grade cloud computing services – differentiating on the basis of keeping data within country, their operational scale and their ability to manage end-to-end quality of service.

“Asian governments will continue to invest in local cloud computing capabilities to boost the competitiveness of their ICT industries in the region while Australia stays asleep at the wheel on the need to link the government procurement and industry development agendas”, said Dr. Steve Hodgkinson, Research Director. “The Government needs to wake up to the fact that cloud computing will offshore Australian ICT jobs if we are too slow off the mark in stimulating the growth of competitive cloud facilities downunder”.

On vendor side, there is increasing investment and traction in cloud-aligned IT services and the solutions and value-add services associated with the expanding cloud adoption.

The momentum for application-based shared services (such as HR, payroll and finance apps) will slow in government, while momentum for more commodity-like ICT infrastructure-based shared services (networks, application hosting and office computing) will grow strongly – drawing on the broader momentum of the utility-like services demonstrated by cloud computing.

Other trends Ovum predicts are Government 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 initiatives. The Citizen-facing Government 2.0 will have a brief flurry of activity but start to wane unless initiatives are integrated explicitly as part of the service delivery and ICT strategies of departments and agencies. “It is quite likely that government 2.0 will turn out to be a blip on the radar if CIOs are not in the loop because it will just create an unmanageable mess of apps, data of questionable veracity and fragmented online channels”, adds Hodgkinson.

Enterprise 2.0 initiatives – within the public sector – will gain momentum in agencies that take the change management dimensions seriously, and whither in agencies that assume that web 2.0 technologies can inspire collaboration in the absence of collaborative behaviours on the part of agency executives.

IT Services in 2011 across AP are becoming expansionary on the back of positive budget directions across the majority of industries. Much of this is being driven by the ongoing investment and expansion into data centre space and the associated supporting services and ecosystem. “This is very much aligned with the anticipated growth cloud demand, increasing energy prices and drive for more sustainable computing”, said Jens Butler, Principal Analyst. In addition, Butler believes that Enterprise Applications (especially in the operations, product lifecycle and supply chain areas) and Business Intelligence (in performance management and customer intelligence) investment will expand substantially throughout AP.

Hodgkinson also regards desktop virtualization as a key trend to watch in 2011. “The technology is maturing, we are seeing some big enterprise implementations coming to fruition, and the iPad is turning out to be a useful catalyst for executives to insist on the ability to access the corporate SOE from any device.”

The last two years have seen a growth in the number of business organizations in the Philippines adopting cloud computing platforms for low cost, low maintenance but high efficiency formation of back-office infrastructure.

This increasing demand for cloud computing by domestic industries can be attributed largely to the recent global financial crisis, which prompted companies to find better ways to continue their business, amid subsequently slow economic growth.

Cloud computing is a technical metaphor for shared computing power from Internet-connected hardware and software. It is similar to using an electricity or water utility service wherein the supply of water or power comes from different sources, without the user having to know where these came from.

In a cloud computing platform, applications commonly used in companies are delivered via the Internet. The application itself is hosted and maintained by a third party provider, essentially freeing the end user from doing the installation, maintenance and upgrading of the application.

Cloud computing platforms only require smaller monthly maintenance fees or on the accumulated time each application is used.

The total cost savings is summed up from decreased maintenance, manpower, and computer hardware requirements, all of which are done by the third-party service provider.

Cloud computing has already made its way into many web-based services. In fact, many of these are already available on Google, one of the Internet applications companies that use cloud computing as backbone for its business. The Google App services are a premium paid version of Google’s free services, such as Gmail, Google Groups, Google Calendar, Google Docs, among others. These use cloud computing to enable paying customers, mostly businesses, to use more services without them having to install any application on their own computers.

Because Google Apps are primarily software in the cloud, these cost much less than the license-based office suite or about only 1/3 of retail desktop applications expenses. This makes Google Apps very appealing for both small and large-scale deployment and they are also easier to maintain.

In the Philippines, Google Apps is being offered by Orange&Bronze Software Labs, an authorized reseller of Google Enterprise products in the country. Through Orange&Bronze, local companies can now subscribe to Google Apps and benefit from using office applications “in the cloud.”

According to Calen Martin Legaspi, president and CEO of Orange&Bronze, many companies are now realizing the value of cloud computing in their operations.

“When it comes to ease of use and saving resources—people, time and money—companies, whether big or small would benefit a lot from cloud computing, especially from Google Apps. In the US, companies get an average savings of up to 67 percent in annual operational and capital expenditures from using Google Apps,” Legaspi said.

“There’s no need to worry about 24/7 operational costs, software and hardware upgrades, server maintenance, data storage, deployment, migration, mobility and security issues. A company will spend less in buying new computers and licenses for business application software as well as maintaining people for IT infrastructures,” he added.

Legaspi said that Google Apps is customizable to fit almost every organizational requirement. Orange&Bronze’s expertise in software development with a strong team of talented “software engineers and architects” allows for trouble-free customization of Google Apps for practically every business operation.

In addition, there is also Google Apps Marketplace which offers products and services that integrate directly with Google Apps from accounting tools to human resource management and even customer relationships management (CRM) tools.

Aside from Google Apps, Google is also offering premium services for its Google Maps. The web mapping service application is helping a lot of retail, distribution and manufacturing companies in its delivery services, through its route planner. Because of its global positioning system (GPS)-tracking capability, companies would now be able to track its distribution fleet to prevent un-planned stops, reduce mileage, and plan more fuel efficient routes.

Google Maps can also be customized to help companies track down and filter the right target market for real estate, insurance, wholesale and retail distribution.

Businesses can try to check how much they can save with cloud services via Google’s cloud calculator at: http://www.gonegoogle.com/#/company-name. To know more about cloud computing and Google’s premium services for businesses, Orange&Bronze can be reached at 894 3415 or 751 0303 or through their website at www.orangeandbronze.com.

EMC has unveiled the RSA Solution for Cloud Security and Compliance for comprehensively managing security, risk and regulatory compliance of cloud infrastructures, helping increase customer confidence to virtualize business-critical applications.

“Security is a top concern organizations have about moving critical business applications to the cloud,” said Jon Oltsik, Principal Analyst at the Enterprise Strategy Group.  “Even with all the benefits cloud computing provides, CIOs will continue to be wary until there is a way to manage security and compliance with the same level of assurance that is available today with physical data center environments. With today’s announcement, EMC has made an important first step in addressing this fundamental concern with security in today’s growing virtualized and cloud infrastructures.”

Featuring an easy to use dashboard based on the RSA Archer eGRC platform, the solution is designed to give organizations a complete assessment of security and compliance posture across their VMware virtual infrastructure. This allows customers to centrally manage security across both virtual and physical infrastructures using RSA Archer. The dashboard integrates with a library of more than 100 VMware-specific controls such as administrative authentication, that map to the most current global regulations such as PCI-DSS and HIPAA to ensure best practices for deployment. The solution also integrates with the RSA enVision security information and event management platform to provide a more comprehensive assessment of security events from across the enterprise.

“Demonstrating compliance on virtualized platforms has been a labor-intensive and highly complex process, particularly as many of our customers require FISMA compliance,” said Chris Day, Chief Security Architect, Terremark Worldwide, a leading global provider of managed IT infrastructure services. “We’ve given input throughout the design of the RSA solution and fully support their shared vision with partners VMware and Intel. Using the RSA Solution for Cloud Security and Compliance will enhance our ability to assess the security of the virtual infrastructure and help the customers that choose Terremark for their cloud infrastructure respond to compliance audits.”

The RSA Solution for Cloud Security and Compliance helps enable organizations to rationalize a multitude of compliance requirements, control frameworks, standards and best practices into a set of centralized security policies that can be applied to virtual infrastructure. Simple dashboards are designed to make it easy to visualize security and compliance posture. Through automated assessments and simple workflows, the solution helps streamline the process of managing tasks between security teams that define policies and IT operations teams responsible for implementing those policies

Capabilities delivered as part of the RSA solution include:

·         Dashboard views based on the RSA Archer eGRC platform designed to enable fast and accurate assessment of security and compliance posture across physical and VMware virtual infrastructure.

• Top-Down Visibility for Control and Compliance: The RSA solution includes a comprehensive, centralized library and ready reference of security controls within the RSA Archer platform. This library has been expanded to cover more than 100 VMware-specific controls that map the most current, global regulations such as PCI-DSS and HIPAA.  New software available with RSA Archer automates the measurement of several VMware configuration elements to simplify the task of measuring compliance. RSA enVision is being enhanced to add further intelligence to the RSA Archer platform by updating the compliance assessments with security-relevant events.  RSA enVision collects security events from an ecosystem of products including the RSA^® Data Loss Prevention suite, VMware vShield, VMware vCloud™ Director, VMware vCenter™ Configuration Manager, EMC^® Ionix^®, and HyTrust^® appliance to enrich the compliance reports provided by the RSA Archer platform.

• Process Automation for Managing Remediation of Security Policies: The RSA Solution for Cloud Security and Compliance leverages automated workflow and notification processes in RSA Archer to simplify the tasks of remediating security issues.

“Our customers are excited about the opportunity to continue extending and optimizing their use of virtualization but are hesitant unless they can deliver proof of compliance against security standards such as PCI or HIPAA and VMware best practices,” said Bret Hartman, Chief Technology Officer of RSA, The Security Division of EMC. “Today RSA is delivering the first step to give customers both the capability and confidence to extend their VMware deployments to handle business-critical applications while providing a simpler and easier way to help ensure compliance for cloud infrastructures.”

The RSA Solution for Cloud Security and Compliance is the first in a series of steps to deliver on the vision of security and compliance for cloud infrastructure which EMC outlined at RSA Conference 2010 in conjunction with key partners Intel and VMware.

EMC will feature demonstrations of the RSA Solution for Cloud Security and Compliance and will also show a technology preview demonstration for how the solution will evolve in the future to leverage VMware vSphere™ and Intel^® Trusted Execution Technology (Intel^® TXT) to ensure hardware root of trust and isolation of regulated workloads.

RSA is contributing actively in the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) Consensus Assessments Project for developing an open question-set, based on the CSA Cloud Controls Matrix, for security assessment of cloud services.  When this work is complete, the RSA solution will be enhanced to offer tenants a way to assess the security of cloud service provider environments and their internal datacenters using RSA Archer.

“Intel is working with VMware and EMC to enable a hardware-based root of trust for the cloud,” said Boyd Davis, Intel Vice President & General Manager, Data Center Group Marketing, “We’re excited to see RSA taking the first step in delivering products and solutions that support our shared vision.”

“Our collaboration with RSA is designed to help customers deploy cloud environments that provide comprehensive security up and down the virtual stack,” said Parag Patel, vice president, Global Strategic Alliances, VMware. “RSA’s solution ties security controls to higher order compliance objectives, including collecting and correlating security and compliance events across the cloud infrastructure and key security services delivered through VMware’s vShield™.”

The RSA Solution for Cloud Security and Compliance and the RSA SecurBook for solution deployment best practices will be available in Q4 2010.  In addition, strategic services from the RSA Security Practice of EMC Consulting can guide customers on the approach best suited to their business and operational objectives.

RSA, The Security Division of EMC, is the premier provider of security, risk and compliance management solutions for business acceleration.  RSA helps the world’s leading organizations succeed by solving their most complex and sensitive security challenges.  These challenges include managing organizational risk, safeguarding mobile access and collaboration, proving compliance, and securing virtual and cloud environments.

Combining business-critical controls in identity assurance, encryption & key management, SIEM, Data Loss Prevention and Fraud Protection with industry leading eGRC capabilities and robust consulting services, RSA brings visibility and trust to millions of user identities, the transactions that they perform and the data that is generated.

For more information, visit www.RSA.com and www.EMC.com.

SAN FRANCISCO – The bidding war for 3Par ramped up this week when HP raised its offer to $30 per share, a $3 increase over Dell’s bid, bringing the bidding to $2 billion. Dell had launched the opening salvo in mid-August when it had offered just over $1 billion to buy 3Par. As of this writing, 3Par had deemed HP’s bid “superior” and Dell was mulling over its response.

The unlikely battle of these PC behemoths over a small Fremont, CA data-storage company emphasizes the storage market’s continuing shift toward enterprise cloud computing. Thanks to the recession, more corporate clients are embracing the kind of affordable virtualized storage that companies like 3Par provide.

The fight for 3Par is undoubtedly fueled by the fact that Both Dell and HP have seen their “beige box” business falter as personal computing evolves toward handheld devices. At the same time, however, both companies have lead the growth in the server market. As that business migrates toward the promise of cloud computing, it’s not hard to see why the two companies are vying for a seat at the table.

Cloud computing offers several indisputable advantages for small businesses. It reduces upfront costs, as the initial infrastructure is paid for by the cloud storage provider – no small break for small business owners, who constantly struggle to keep costs down. As it negates the need for vast on-site data centers, it also reduces the need to employ a large in-house IT staff. And because multiple customers share resources in the cloud model, it further lowers ongoing costs.

Whichever company ultimately comes out on top in the bidding war will undoubtedly incorporate 3Par’s virtual storage solutions into its already robust storage portfolio. The acquisition will position either HP or Dell as a one-stop storage solution with greater production and cost efficiencies, which should make it pretty attractive for cash-strapped customers looking to pare down the number of physical servers and decentralize their data in the cloud.

It’s still not clear which PC giant will end up owning 3Par. Dell has three business days beginning Monday to announce whether it will counter HP’s $2 billion bid or concede. Regardless of which company triumphs, ultimately, small businesses may come out the winner.

June 24, 2010

June 23, 2010

Jojo Colina, Head of Product Development and Management of premier IT company ePLDT (shown in photo), discussed new technologies for data storage during the Computer World Executive Briefing held at the AIM Conference Center. Organized by Media G8way, the event entitled “Data Storage” focused on emerging trends and technologies for storing mission-critical data. In his presentation, Colina focused on cloud computing, giving more details on its many benefits to today’s businesses. Event visitors also learned more about ePLDT services at the ePLDT booth.

By James A. Martin
February 2, 2010