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IT in EuropeOCTOBER 2012, VOLUME 6

Gain a complete overview of European IT in today’s marketplace.

CLOUD STORAGE—WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?

CISOs KEY TO TRANSITION TO CLOUD, SAYS (ISC)2

LACK OF CLOUD STANDARDS HINDERS CLOUD ADOPTION

INTERVIEW: DAVE SCAM-MELL, CEO OF SOHONET

CLOUD SHOWS PROMISE FOR BUSINESS APPLICATIONS

THECloudissue

IT IN EUROPE • OCTOBER 2012 2

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EDITORS LETTER


CISOS KEY TO TRANSITION TO CLOUD, SAID (ISC)2


INTERVIEW: DAVE SCAMMELL, CEO OF SOHONET

CLOUD LIKELY FUTURE FOR BUSINESS APPLICATIONS

ADDITIONAL EUROPEAN RESOURCES

EDITOR’S LETTER

WHEN THE UK GOVERNMENT first decided to evaluate cloud computing as part of its IT strategy, its then-CIO researched what “the cloud” meant. He found 22 definitions—none of which met the govern-ment’s needs, so he created a 23rd.

What are the first words that come to mind when you think of the cloud? Low cost, perhaps. Pay as you go, maybe. Probably also: not secure, too complex, regulatory headaches, lacking standards, no interoperability.

Ask two CIOs to explain what the cloud means to them, and you’ll likely receive two different answers. Ask them what are their concerns about the cloud, and they will be in much greater agreement.

Sadly, the cloud is currently going the way of so many great technologies in IT—from initial curiosity, to ensuing enthusiasm, to widespread confusion in the light of a welter of meaningless acronyms and a lack of best practice. IaaS? PaaS? SaaS? You find a cloud sup-plier putting “at a service” on the

end of pretty much every technol-ogy available, to the extent it all becomes rather meaningless.

So here is a definition that we think will become increasingly sig-nificant: Cloud is no more, and no less, than the commoditisation of processing power.

In the same way as the internet commoditised networking, and that smartphones, tablets and laptops are commoditising end-user devic-es, the cloud is doing the same to servers and storage.

Commoditisation does, typi-cally, mean lower costs. But its significance goes much further—it creates a platform for innovation. There is enormous competitive advantage to be gained by organ-isations that understand how to take advantage of the opportunities for innovation that the cloud repre-sents. In this month’s IT in Europe, we aim to help point you in the right direction. n

BRYAN GLICK Computer Weekly Editor in Chief

WHAT IS THE TRUE DEFINITION OF CLOUD?


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HE KEY BENEFIT of cloud storage is the ability to pass on the cost and headache of buying and managing storage

to a remote third party, so provid-ing a flexible storage resource you pay for as you use. But, the remote nature of cloud storage is also its key weakness because access to the cloud is choked by bandwidth constraints and latency.

So, the suitability of cloud stor-age for your environment depends on the type of data you want to outsource. Here we assess the state of cloud services for four types of data: Primary, nearline, backup and archive.

Applications such as databases and document editors create and modify data and interact directly with primary storage. Low latency and high bandwidth are therefore crucial and all cloud-based systems aimed at this type of data therefore

require some cache in a cloud stor-age appliance.

This on-premises cache allows applications to retain the most active data locally, while the sys-tem synchronises in the back-ground with the cloud.

Vendors include Nasuni, which offers global file access via a local appliance, the Nasuni Filer, acces-sible via CIFS, NFS and iSCSI, and is aimed at remote and branch offices. It includes Active Directory integration, snapshotting, com-pression and deduplication.

n Nirvanix Hybrid Cloud Storage is a local cloud storage device that replicates to Nirvanix’s seven glob-al nodes with a single namespace. The storage appliances, which are remotely managed by Nirvanix, provide policy-based replication, encryption, and customisation for different applications, users or workgroups.

CLOUD STORAGE— WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?Read the key benefits of cloud storage and what different types of cloud storage are used for. By Clive Longbottom

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n Panzura’s Cloud Storage Con-troller provides access to a global file system with global file locking and deduplication. It contains a tiered storage system which cach-es recently used files using HDDs and SSDs and a total capacity of up to 36 TB.

NEARLINE CLOUD STORAGENearline storage is data you don’t need to access right now but which needs to be available within a rea-sonably short timescale; maybe hours or minutes rather than mil-liseconds. Nearline cloud storage usually involves a local storage appliances much like those used for primary storage, but using slower disk technology.

n Ctera’s Cloud Attached Storage appliance offers shared storage, folder synchronisation and remote access. The device supports NAS and iSCSI, and caches using SATA drives.

n TwinStrata’s CloudArray appli-ances provides an iSCSI storage gateway as either a virtual or a physical appliance with access to a maximum of 50 PB using SATA drives, with deduplication, com-pression and encryption.

CLOUD BACKUPCloud backup allows you to keep backup costs in line with projected backup data growth. You can set and forget after the initial installa-tion, with agents taking care of the backup process and monitoring performed via a web portal.

Bandwidth will always be a restriction; however, so large or complex backup sets will be more efficient using a store-and-forward technique. This involves backing up at LAN speeds to local disk, which then synchronises with the cloud back end, a technique that helps shorten the backup window and means that restore requests from a recent backup can be serviced locally.

Backup products that allow the cloud include the following:

n Commvault Simpana allows you to backup to cloud services—pub-lic or private—that are compliant with REST APIs. Its policy engine includes multi-tenancy controls for use with multiple providers including Amazon, Microsoft and Nirvanix, customisable data man-agement and protection levels, and encryption and deduplication.

n EMC Networker 8.0 provides centralised backup across a wide

Office Organisation in the CloudREAD THE FULL CASE STUDY IN GERMAN

http://www.searchcloudcomputing.de/applikationen/erp/articles/372147/


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range of platforms including virtual environments. The latest version includes multi-tenancy features that allow data, devices and users to be logically zoned. Features include encryption and bandwidth throttling.

n HP Data Protector 7.0 includes deduplication and snapshotting, with backup to Autonomy’s 14 data centres, adding encryption and mir-roring across multiple locations. It supports multiple hypervisors and software platforms, and restores can be managed using a browser.

n SecurStore Backup & Recovery is agentless, uses SecurStor’s own data centres, and offers encryp-tion, snapshotting, compression and deduplication. It is application-aware, and can backup and restore most major databases, as well as Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Notes and Groupwise, and virtual infra-structures deployed on VMware, Citrix, Microsoft, Parallels, and Vir-tual Iron. It also includes a client to backup laptops.

n Symantec NetBackup 7.5 uses an optional plug-in to provide backup to cloud storage providers Amazon, Rackspace, AT&T and Nirvanix. In addition to NetBackup’s stan-

dard features, the plug-in enables encryption, and bandwidth meter-ing and throttling.

n Tivoli Storage Manager offers centralised, automated data pro-tection by storing backup, archive, space management and bare-metal restore data to the cloud, retain-ing multiple copies and versions of every file. Managed using a browser, its features include incre-mental backup, deduplication and compression, and reports on where data is stored and how much it is costing. Optional features include continuous data protection, and application-aware backup and restore.

n Zmanda Cloud Backup backs up Windows servers, desktops and live applications such as Microsoft Exchange and SQL Server to either Amazon S3 or Google Cloud Stor-age, adding a management layer to both cloud providers. Features include multi-threaded uploads and downloads, incremental or dif-ferential backups, compression and bandwidth throttling.

ARCHIVE CLOUD STORAGELong-term data storage is one of the longest-established cloud ser-

Marketing and Sales: The Channel at the Time of the CloudREAD THE FULL ARTICLE IN ITALIAN

http://www.01net.it/marketing-e-vendite-il-canale-al-tempo-della-nuvola/0,1254,2_ART_149227,00.html


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vices. Archived data is still needed but is not part of the active work-ing set, and so can be moved to a cheaper medium to reduce storage costs. Key characteristics for an archive are searchability, retention management, auditing, and appli-cation integration such as the abil-ity to retrieve old emails.

While high latency and band-width limitations are less critical for infrequently accessed data, data portability and the long-term sur-vival of the service provider can be issues.

Vendors offering archive services include Archivum, which provides a local gateway appliance that encrypts all data before dispatch-ing it to Archivum’s data centre.

That data is not deleted from your premises until the provider has created three copies, one of which is locked away offline in a third-party escrow service. The company claims retrieval takes minutes.

n Amazon Glacier is a tape library replacement service with retrieval times of three to five hours that costs as little as $0.01 per GB per month. Retrieval costs extra, and you can only retrieve a limited amount of the total data volume in storage, although there is no charge to move data to Amazon’s EC2 service.

n EMC Cloud Tiering Appliance allows you to move inactive data to a lower storage tier. Specifically, it allows you to use policies to save infrequently accessed data locally, archiving older data to the com-pany’s Atmos cloud service while allowing it to be retrieved directly by end users.

n Quantum Q-Cloud offers similar pricing to Amazon Glacier, but uses a deduplicating appliance to send encrypted, compressed data to the company’s data centres. The use of a local appliance allows local retrieves, and the service also pro-vides role-based access control. n Clive Longbottom is a service director at UK analyst Quocirca Ltd and a contributor to SearchVirtualDataCentre.co.uk.

Migrating to a Private Cloud Data CentreHow do you run your own data centres as efficiently as Google, Facebook, Microsoft or Amazon? In this guide we look at how the industry is starting to offer hardware as a service to support the private cloud, where users can pay for addi-tional CPUs, storage, and UPS and cooling capacity almost on-demand.

http://searchvirtualdatacentre.techtarget.co.uk/

http://www.computerweekly.com/guide/Migrating-to-a-private-cloud-data-centre



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HIEF INFORMATION secu-rity officers have an important role in moving their organ-isations, whether

they are public or private, to a cloud computing environment, said professional certification body (ISC)2

The move is inevitable because of the lower costs and greater effi-ciencies, but the CISO’s role is to ensure that it is done securely, said Marc Noble, director of govern-ment affairs for (ISC)2.

“It is far easier to say ‘no’ to something, but economic reali-ties are driving organisations to the cloud and CISOs have to find a

way for their businesses to operate securely in that environment,” he said.

CISOs should be part of the busi-ness, and this is a prime example of how they can be business enablers, according to Noble, who is also co-chair of the (ISC)2 US government advisory board for cybersecurity.

With proper due diligence, he believes the CISO can ensure that by moving to the cloud, the organ-isation will benefit from a much higher level of security than before.

“Organisations have had a long-held false sense of security, believ-ing that all their data was safe behind a firewall, whereas in real-ity, cyber criminals have been pen-

CISOs KEY TO TRANSITION TO CLOUD, SAYS (ISC)2

CISOs have an important role in moving their organisations to a cloud computing environment, says professional certification body (ISC)2. By Warwick Ashford

C

Sandvik Tightens Supply Chain With Single Supplier E-procurement Portal READ THE FULL STORY

http://www.computerweekly.com/feature/Sandvik-tightens-supply-chain-with-single-supplier-e-procurement-portal


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etrating such defences for years,” he said.

However, Noble said he believes that a step-by-step approach is the best, particularly where there is a need for high confidentiality around data, especially for some central government departments.

Organisations should start with systems such as email that deal with the least confidential data held by a company to get comfortable with cloud computing and familiar with how it all works before moving on.

This is the approach that is even being adopted by cloud computing service providers in the US trying to pitch for federal government business, he said. They want to get a single government-approved service up and running so they can build on the lessons learned to move forward.

Once organisations are com-fortable enough to put things like their financial systems in the cloud, Noble said that will be the tipping point for deriving maximum benefit from the cloud.

For government, Noble said it may be useful to set up internal private clouds that all government agencies can use.

This will help them learn that cloud computing can be done

securely enough for them, he said, and see first-hand the efficiencies to be gained from sharing a single data repository rather than sending copies of data from one to another when required.

However, Noble said that en-cryption should go hand-in-hand with cloud computing, especially when confidential or sensitive data is involved.

Although cloud computing will enable most organisations achieve a higher level of security than they were capable of on their own, he said no one could pretend it will be fool proof.

“It is only a matter of time before cyber criminals find a weakness they can exploit, but by encrypt-ing all sensitive data in the cloud, organisations can give themselves extra protection and comfort,” he said.

EU to Fund Cloud-Based Supercomputers for SMEsREAD THE FULL STORY

A STEP-BY-STEP APPROACH IS THEBEST, PARTICULARLY WHERE THERE IS A NEED FOR HIGH CONFIDENTIALITY AROUND DATA.

http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240158455/EU-to-fund-cloud-based-supercomputers-for-SMEs


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Even if data is somehow breached, strong encryption means that it will take too long to decrypt to make it worthwhile and attack-ers will simply move on.

At the same time, not all data requires encryption; therefore, it is more important than ever for organisations to know the value of all their data and allocated defences accordingly, according to Noble.

Again, there is an important role for the CISO to work with man-agement and systems owners to ensure they understand the risks involved, he said, because it is the management that has to have the final say on how much security is enough.

“As a partner of the business, the CISO has to explain the risks and get management to say if defences are adequate; it is a vital part of IT governance,” said Noble.

The CISO might also have to ensure that management under-stands its role making the risk deci-sions and must not allow manage-ment to push that decision onto the CISO.

Cloud computing means that management will now be forced to make these decisions about what controls must be put around the data, he said, they can no longer avoid the issue by simply putting everything behind a firewall and hoping for the best.

The move to cloud will also help to define roles within organisa-tions more clearly. By knowing exactly how everyone in an organ-isation interacts with data will help improve access controls and ensure everyone is cleared to the appropriate security level.

Organisations should also get the same assurances from their cloud service providers by requiring all technicians to be security cleared, and writing that requirement into the contract.

Noble said that as organisations grow in experience and confidence, they will be able to expand their use of cloud and benefit in the long run not only from improved efficiency and lower cost, but also better security and access controls with the guidance of their CISOs. n

Warwick Ashford is the security editor for ComputerWeekly.com.

THERE IS AN IMPOR- TANT ROLE FOR THE CISO TO WORK WITH MANAGEMENT AND SYSTEMS OWNERS TO ENSURE THEY UNDERSTAND THE RISKS INVOLVED.

http://www.computerweekly.com/


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HE LACK OF ESTABLISHED cloud standards and interoperability has made it difficult to move workloads

between private clouds and public clouds and some experts say these problems hinder cloud adoption.

Without any industry-wide cloud standards, vendors have built pro-prietary cloud services on software stacks that are not compatible with the stacks used in public clouds —making interoperability difficult, said Clive Longbottom, managing director of Quocirca Ltd., an analy-sis firm in Reading, UK.

”It is a bit of a mess out there,” Longbottom said. “A majority of

customers are just looking for a ‘standard’ across their own kit, with little view to what they may need in the future.”

Many cloud adopters do not consider open-source stacks such as OpenStack that are used by the public cloud providers, but instead choose a proprietary one from familiar vendors such as VMware Inc., Microsoft or IBM, experts said.

“Then, when it becomes obvious that virtual machines would be bet-ter off if hosted outside in a more public environment, the problems start because the existing VMs have to be completely re-ported to work in the new environments,” Longbottom warned.

LACK OF CLOUD STANDARDS HINDERS CLOUD ADOPTIONIT uses private cloud services to overcome data centre space and energy issues, but poor cloud standards and interoperability lower cloud quality. By Archana Venkatraman

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Italy’s Growth Passes Through the Manufacturing Districts READ THE FULL STORY IN ITALIAN

SharePoint in the Cloud or On-Premises? READ THE FULL ARTICLE IN GERMAN

http://searchcloudsecurity.techtarget.com/guides/Guide-Examining-cloud-computing-security-standards-guidelines

http://searchcloudsecurity.techtarget.com/guides/Guide-Examining-cloud-computing-security-standards-guidelines

http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/OpenStack

http://www.searchcloudcomputing.de/storage/migration/articles/378346/


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Cloud interoperability standards would allow IT to move applica-tions and workloads back and forth between private and public clouds and from one public cloud to another. Such application migration among clouds would allow IT to select the best cloud technologies and avoid vendor lock-in.

Meanwhile, cloud adoption is on the rise as IT wants a solution for a lack of space in the data cen-tre, increasing energy prices and a pressure to move to a cloud-like environment.

PRIVATE CLOUDS PAY THE PRICEFor now, poor cloud standards and interoperability and subsequent vendor lock-ins are the prices busi-nesses pay for the customisation they receive in private cloud ser-vices, said Frank Jennings, chair of code governance board at Cloud Industry Forum (CIF), the industry body that advocates the adoption and use of cloud computing ser-vices.

“The very nature of this tailored, bespoke approach may lead to systems which aren’t necessary interoperable with a competitor’s systems,” Jennings said.

The problems caused by a lack of cloud standards and interoperabil-ity are evident, especially with the government’s G-Cloud initiative.

“Many of the putative suppliers have chosen a cloud stack that isn’t directly compatible with the stack used within the central G-Cloud itself,” Longbottom said. ”This

means that different levels of inte-gration are being put in place—from direct coded integration to a more enterprise service bus type of bus and connector approach.”

CLOUD STANDARDS ON THE HORIZONStandards follow technology mar-ket demands, so it is common for there to be a lack of standards at the early stage of a new technol-ogy, said one expert.

In addition, “the rate of change is so fast that standards cannot keep up,” said Hamish Macarthur, founder of Macarthur Stroud Inter-national, an IT research company based in Surrey.

But, interoperable technology standards in cloud computing may be achievable in the next two to three years, Macarthur said.

CIF is involved in promoting interoperability and cloud stan-dards, but “these things take time,” Jennings said. Another global industry body, the Distributed

THE PROBLEMS CAUSED BY A LACK OF CLOUD STANDARDS AND INTEROPERA- BILITY ARE EVIDENT, ESPECIALLY WITH THE GOVERNMENT’S G-CLOUD INITIATIVE.

http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240150269/UK-cloud-adoption-continues-to-grow-says-Cloud-Industry-Forum

http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240150269/UK-cloud-adoption-continues-to-grow-says-Cloud-Industry-Forum

http://searchcio.techtarget.com/news/1508089/Cloud-interoperability-standards-aim-for-vendor-independence

http://searchcio.techtarget.com/news/1508089/Cloud-interoperability-standards-aim-for-vendor-independence

http://www.computerweekly.com/feature/Could-G-Cloud-become-the-pride-of-public-sector-IT


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Management Task Force (DMTF) is also working with the industry providers to develop open cloud standards.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) have the early vote of confidence from the markets and standards could be based on its platform, according to experts.

“Long term, it would not be sur-prising to see API and architectural standards that evolve from the AWS and GCE models,” said Randy Bias, co-founder and chief technol-ogy officer of Cloudscaling, an open cloud service provider based in San Francisco, CA.

Until standards are put in place, experts urged private cloud adopt-ers to take precautionary steps.

Assess not just the SLAs, the technology and the APIs of the cloud services but also consider the risks, liabilities and vendor lock-in before signing a contract, Jennings said.

IT should look to stacks from cloud providers that have already talked about private/public cloud interoperability and providers that demonstrate a strong commitment to open standards, experts said.

“[Companies] must find out

what services or tools the provider can offer for workload interoper-ability with the major public cloud stacks,” Longbottom said.

The customer, in theory, could ask for the private cloud supplier to use tools and platforms commonly used in the industry and agree on the specification accordingly. “But this doesn’t happen enough,” Jen-nings said.

If all else fails, don’t agree to buy the provider’s services, Macarthur said. n

Archana Venkatraman is the data centre editor for ComputerWeekly.com.

IT SHOULD LOOK TO STACKS FROM CLOUD PROVIDERS THAT HAVE ALREADY TALKED ABOUT PRIVATE/PUBLIC CLOUDINTEROPERABILITY AND PROVIDERS THAT DEM-ONSTRATE A STRONG COMMITMENT TO OPEN STANDARDS.

http://www.dmtf.org/news/pr/2010/7/dmtf-releases-new-open-cloud-standards-incubator-documents-announces-workgroup-format

http://www.dmtf.org/news/pr/2010/7/dmtf-releases-new-open-cloud-standards-incubator-documents-announces-workgroup-format

http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/AWS-import-export-Amazon-Web-Services

http://www.computerweekly.com/feature/IT-leaders-start-to-question-cloud-interoperability

http://www.computerweekly.com/feature/IT-leaders-start-to-question-cloud-interoperability



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OHO, IN THE heart of London’s West End, boasts an exciting history, from its early days as the hunting

grounds of Henry VIII to the centre of the UK sex industry—reviled and revered in equal measure.

In more recent years, the district has become synonymous with film-making, playing host to numerous production companies and offices from Soho Square to Wardour Street.

But while Soho might be great for post-production, the studios are nowhere near central London and stretch out into the English countryside or overseas to the Hol-

lywood hills. This distance means a good network is essential for pro-duction to run smoothly.

EARLY DAYS“Sohonet was founded in 1995, set up by a number of post-production houses—in spite of the telcos—as they had the need to start mov-ing data around. The telcos fitted neither budgets nor requirements at the time,” said Dave Scammell, CEO of the Soho-based service provider.

The coalition of post-production businesses—10 in total—formed Sohonet and began to buy up and lease dark fibre, firstly within the

INTERVIEW: DAVE SCAMMELL, CEO OF SOHONETWe speak to the head of Sohonet, a service provider built for the film and media industry in the centre of London. By Jennifer Scott

S

IKOULA Password Keeping Cloud to Counter the Unlimited Heavyweights of French Cloud READ THE FULL ARTICLE IN FRENCH

http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240105348/Telcos-offer-cloud-alternative

http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240086058/Dark-fibre-grows-across-Europe

http://www.lemagit.fr/technologie/datacenter-technologie/cloud-grid-computing/2012/09/24/ikoula-passe-ikeeping-cloud-a-lillimite-pour-contrer-les-poids-lourds-du-cloud-francais/



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area to serve themselves, but later across the world as the need for connections grew.

“We grew quite slowly up until 2000, when we were taken over by a small UK telco [called] Neos Net-works,” said Scammell. “But it sub-sequently discovered it didn’t have the appetite for the level of service the media industry required.”

As they had during their early days, the production houses knew best, and Scammell led a manage-ment buyout of Sohonet in 2003.

“If you look at the history of telco, a company lays fibre, adds service, expands and it is con-stantly changing,” he said. “We extracted ourselves from that cycle and have been growing since then by about 20% every year.”

“The original 10 houses were pretty much the only ones we served up until 2000; we grew our customer numbers slightly, but in 2003 we really expanded—not just in Soho but around the world. We now have offices in the US and Australasia and have around 500 customers worldwide.”

If you look at the history of telco, a company lays fibre, adds service, expands and is constantly chang-ing. We extracted ourselves from that cycle.

Scammell said the technology behind the network was a mixture of supplier-provided systems and development that Sohonet has car-ried out itself.

“The core infrastructure is dark fibre, which we buy and lease from many different suppliers,” he said.

“We then light the fibre with pretty standard equipment, dependent on the service.”

“What we add on is our own custom-designed diagnostics and monitoring. It is designed to be responsive and give a good view of the large-scale networks we work over.”

Overall, Sohonet relies on 40 carriers across the globe to carry its customer’s traffic, but Scammell said the extra controls that it put in place with its own technology ensures good service levels for its users.

“What is unique about Sohonet is that we are carrier agnostic and designed to deal with a variety of companies from that perspective,” he said.

“The thing is, fibre gets cut—it is not too difficult to work out a diverse data path and build that into the network. However, these days, the most serious incidents we see is when large telcos constantly add and change their networks.

“Almost on a weekly basis some carriers are doing upgrades and the number of times it goes wrong is

THE TECHNOLOGYBEHIND THE NETWORK WAS A MIXTURE OF SUPPLIER-PROVIDED SYSTEMS AND DEVELOP-MENT THAT SOHONET HAS CARRIED OUT ITSELF.

http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/agnostic



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astounding,” he added. “By using diverse carriers we can get around that.”

One example of how the compa-ny navigates around these issues is the way it links its Soho post-pro-duction companies with the famed film industry in LA.

“A lot of our clients need to send data between London and Los Angeles, so for this we triangulate our network,” said Scammell. “We have one carrier service that takes us from London to New York, a separate carrier from New York to LA and a third carrier between LA and London. If one of them has network problems, we can route that traffic across other parts of the triangle.

“Do we have incidents? Yes, but it is because our carriers do. How-ever, we have plans to avoid such things and we have always got our

customers in mind, working on the basis that we are happy if our cus-tomers are happy.”

And the customers are well-known names, ranging from War-ner Brothers and HBO in the US, to Pinewood and Shepperton studios in the UK.

“Within the studios, we then deal with a lot of productions, from small projects lasting between three and six months through to large scale feature films or projects like Harry Potter, which can go on for years,” said Scammell.

FUTURE AMBITIONSNow Sohonet is looking to the future, to continue to growing its customer base and to add new ser-vices.

“We are planning to expand and have great new projects in the pipeline,” said Scammell. “Our customers have huge data, huge security needs and want to know they can call someone 24/7. As such, we are always looking for more value adds to roll-out to our customers.”

As well as launching new storage and compute on-demand services, Sohonet is launching FileRunner, enabling its customers to send files to one another faster, with the same levels of service and security.

However, despite the need for extra capacity and infrastructure, Scammell said it was not going to become a data centre company.

“We are in the process of open-ing up what we like to call Soho

AS WELL AS LAUNCH- ING NEW STORAGE AND COMPUTE ON- DEMAND SERVICES, SOHONET IS LAUNCH- ING FILERUNNER, ENABLING ITS CUSTOM-ERS TO SEND FILES TO ONE ANOTHER FAST-ER, WITH THE SAME LEVELS OF SERVICE AND SECURITY.

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Centres,” he said. “We are not try-ing to be a data centre company. We are not looking to build and operate them as there are already a lot of major data centre suppliers that do that.

“But, we do want to offer spec-ific locations for more integrated systems for Sohonet customers, typically located with support staff who can be hands on, giving our clients an extra level of reas-surance.

“There is already one open in Australia, a London location is next and LA will have its own Soho Cen-tre ‘within the next month or so.’ “

BESPOKE SERVICE“We pride ourselves on being agnostic so if Amazon offers the best solution for a customer, we will offer that over our network, but if they can’t and we have got some-thing we can offer, then we will,” added Scammell.

“We are not trying to be too rigid as every production is different. Their uniqueness sets them apart and we need to be responsive. We can’t do a one-size-fits-all, cookie-cutter approach; others who have tried that have failed.”

Then, it comes down to location,

as the company wants to set up operations in more countries as its next avenue of growth.

“We will expand to offer more of these products and expand into more geographical areas,” said Scammell. “We have just opened an office in Vancouver and we are starting to expand more around the EU, thanks to huge demand, both where clients want to collaborate with people that work there or those based there want to share what they have.”

The CEO concluded: “All these services rely on a really good net-work, and we can offer the security, the connectivity and the service to our unique customers.”

Jennifer Scott is the networking editor for ComputerWeekly.com

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“ WE CAN’T DO A ONE-SIZE-FITS-ALL, COOKIE-CUTTER APPROACH; OTHERS WHO HAVE TRIED THAT HAVE FAILED.” —DAVE SCAMMELL, CEO, SOHONET




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HEN I STARTED my IT career in the

early 1980s, the deployment of applications was

a relatively simple affair: everything lived on the mainframe in the com-pany’s data centre. If you needed to update an application then you knew exactly which environment it was going to run on: a green-screen dumb terminal, with com-plete certainty about which version of the operating system, database, [Transaction Processing] monitor and compilers that you would need to cater for and test. Those were the days.

Today the picture is very differ-ent for those developing or imple-menting applications, whether they be internal IT staff, consultants or software vendors. The spread of desktop computing and distributed systems means that you need to take into account a wide range of

potential environments in which your application will run, and so needs to be tested.

The problem is worse if you are a software vendor, who has to deal with multiple customer environ-ments, but even within a single enterprise there is likely to be a range of server operating systems, web server software, desktops and now even mobile devices to cope with.

Every time that you add another layer of complexity, the task of testing out that the software actu-ally still works becomes greater: what worked just fine under a cer-tain version of Linux in combina-tion with Apache and Windows 7, may not work in the same way when deployed in an environment using Weblogic and some subtly different release of the operating system.

The complexity of the operating environment in a large enterprise

CLOUD SHOWS PROMISE FOR BUSINESS APPLICATIONSOutsourcing your business application headaches, together with the flexibility of its leasing model will make the cloud the way forward for large enterprises as well as small businesses. By Andy Hayler

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has driven up the cost of deploying software. Seventy per cent of the enterprise software budget now typically goes on maintenance, not delivering new business applica-tions, and a sizeable chunk of that is associated with testing out and fixing problems due to software not working as expected in the spa-ghetti of operational environments that are the reality in most enter-prises.

To add to this issue, IT opera-tions managers have to struggle with forecasting demand for pro-cessing capacity, memory and disk in a world where data volumes are booming and where there may be unpredictable spikes in demand. Many companies have peak peri-ods, such as Christmas time in retail, and have to allow for enough capacity to cope with such spikes in demand.

ENTER THE CLOUDThe rise of “cloud” computing promises a way off the treadmill of constant hardware upgrades. Pioneered by companies like Salesforce.com, more and more enterprise software is becoming available via a web browser, with the software vendor assuming the responsibility of dealing with peaks and troughs in demand, and with ensuring that the software actually works in the chosen technical envi-ronment.

Connected with this has been a change in the pricing model for such software. Instead of buying

the software up-front the software is typically rented, usually based on the usage made of it, whether in terms of number of users, sessions or the amount of data accessed. For an enterprise this pricing model change has many benefits: you no longer have to fork out a large sum of money upfront, only to discover that the project using it gets cancelled or the software does not work as advertised. There are no more issues with capacity upgrades, as that is the vendor’s problem.

Smaller companies have adopted cloud deployments more enthu-siastically than large ones. There are, naturally enough, downsides and risks with cloud deployment to offset its benefits. People worry about the security of their data, and of just how reliable that third party cloud infrastructure really is.

There have been well publi-cised glitches, such as Amazon’s web services outage in June 2012 because of storms in the midwest United States causing power out-ages affecting several data centres, which brought down several well-known mobile and web applica-tions that used the Amazon cloud.

Whilst there will doubtless con-tinue to be issues like this, com-panies should consider just how secure their own internal data real-ly is, and how reliable and carefully backed up their own data centres are in the case of a major prob-lem—are you really any better at running a data centre than Amazon and Google?

http://searchcloudapplications.techtarget.com/news/2240159371/How-much-are-users-to-blame-for-their-AWS-outage-woes

http://searchcloudapplications.techtarget.com/news/2240159371/How-much-are-users-to-blame-for-their-AWS-outage-woes


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Security of data is a complex issue, and it is at least as likely that important data may be com-promised by executives having their laptops stolen as it is by a security issue in a managed cloud environment. Moreover, albeit at extra cost, it is possible to have a “private cloud,” whereby the data centre is run by a third party, but a set of infrastructure is dedicated to a particular customer.

Large enterprises still seem ner-vous about adopting cloud technol-ogies wholesale, but there are now a few examples of data quality and master data management technol-ogies becoming available in a cloud form, although the vast majority of vendor revenues in these areas are still from the traditional on-premise model.

The success of Salesforce has shown that many companies are willing to put sensitive data—what is more sensitive than their sales pipeline?—into a cloud environ-ment and the world has not ended yet as a result.

After initial denials that the cloud was relevant, Oracle showed that cloud computing was not mere water vapour by purchasing Right-Now in late 2011, with SAP similarly buying a cloud company called Success Factors—for a little matter of $3.4 billion—shortly afterwards.

Even that most conservative of institutions—government—is

getting in on the act. The UK gov-ernment plans to shift half of new government spending to cloud computing services by 2015, with its own government cloud-based application store launched in Feb-ruary 2012. Even if it falls short of this ambitious target, it shows that cloud computing has clearly moved beyond early adopters and small businesses.

The combination of shifting infrastructure problems to some-one else, combined with the nearly ubiquitous leasing model—rather than up-front payment plus main-tenance—for cloud software is compelling.

Every company need to do their own cost/benefit analysis and risk assessment, but as the market matures it is likely that more and more organisations will steadily move in this direction. n

Andy Hayler is co-founder and CEO of The Information Difference and a keynote speaker at conferences on master data management, data governance and data quality.

THE UK GOVERNMENT PLANS TO SHIFT HALF OF NEW GOVERNMENT SPENDING TO CLOUD COMPUTING SERVICES BY 2015.

http://searchcrm.techtarget.com/news/2240102519/RightNow-customers-concerned-curious-about-future-with-Oracle

http://searchcrm.techtarget.com/news/2240102519/RightNow-customers-concerned-curious-about-future-with-Oracle

http://searchoracle.techtarget.com/news/2240117441/Oracle-Taleo-vs-SAP-SuccessFactors-a-different-feel




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ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

IT In Europe E-zine is a TechTarget e-publication. Contributors include: SearchSecurity.co.UK,

SearchVirtualDatacentre.co.UK, SearchStorage.co.UK,

SearchDataManagement.co.UK, SearchNetworking.co.UK,

ComputerWeekly.com and Microscope.co.uk.

Bryan Glick Computer Weekly Editor in Chief

Kayleigh Bateman Special Projects Editor

Christine Casatelli Managing Editor

Linda Koury Director of Online Design

TechTarget 3-4a Little Portland Street, 1st Floor

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© 2012 TechTarget Inc. No part of this publication may be transmitted or reproduced in any form or by any means without written permission from the publisher. TechTarget reprints are available through

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About TechTarget: TechTarget publishes media for information technology professionals. More than 100 focused websites enable quick access to a deep store of news, advice and analysis about the technologies, products and processes crucial to your job. Our live and virtual events give you direct access to indepen-dent expert commentary and advice. At IT Knowledge Exchange, our social community, you can get advice

and share solutions with peers and experts.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCESn Migrating to a Private-

Cloud Data Centre

n A Guide to the Public Services Network (PSN)

n Storage and Backup Infrastructure

n VMworld 2012 Conference Coverage

n IT in Europe

n Computer Weekly Supplier Directory

http://searchsecurity.techtarget.co.uk/

http://searchvirtualdatacentre.techtarget.co.uk/

http://searchstorage.techtarget.co.uk/

http://searchdatamanagement.techtarget.co.uk/

http://searchnetworking.techtarget.co.uk/


http://www.microscope.co.uk/

www.techtarget.com

www.techtarget.com

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http://www.computerweekly.com/guides/A-guide-to-the-Public-Services-Network-PSN-programme

http://www.computerweekly.com/guides/A-guide-to-the-Public-Services-Network-PSN-programme

http://www.computerweekly.com/guides/Storage-and-backup-infrastructure

http://www.computerweekly.com/guides/Storage-and-backup-infrastructure

http://www.computerweekly.com/guides/VMworld-2012-conference-coverage

http://www.computerweekly.com/guides/VMworld-2012-conference-coverage

http://www.computerweekly.com/guides/IT-in-Europe

http://www.computerweekly.com/guides/Computer-Weekly-Supplier-Directory

http://www.computerweekly.com/guides/Computer-Weekly-Supplier-Directory

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