tracking the cloud computing landscape in the enterprise...
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Tracking the cloud computing landscape in the enterprise IT Case studies revealing potential bumps and surprising benefits in the cloud computing adoption process
Page 1 of 34
Tracking the cloud computing landscape in the enterprise IT
Contents
Early enterprise adopters seek cloud computing storage, PaaS
Interest in cloud disaster recovery blossoming in the enterprise
Cloud shops misled with high SaaS data integration costs
Breaking through the barrier: Interest in cloud BI and analytics grows
Cloud data storage services popular among SMBs, enterprises
Can cloud computing cure enterprises' BYOD woes?
Office 2013: Designed for the cloud computing generation
Cloud services face-off: Comparing Google Drive, Dropbox, Box and Cubby
Learning from the mistakes and successes of others is one of the best ways to move forward with any new technology. This special report details the results of a TechTarget survey designed to examine the use of cloud computing in enterprise IT. Discover the major factors contributing to the rise of cloud computing adoption, and gain insight into real-life case studies of your peers integrating cloud technology into their organizations. Learn about the advantages and mistakes to avoid when implementing this technology from those who have gone before you.
Early enterprise adopters seek cloud computing storage, PaaS
Cloud computing adoption goes far beyond the choice of public, private or
hybrid models. Enterprise IT pros and administrators also need to decide on
the specific services each cloud model provides. And certain trends are
starting to emerge with regards to how IT departments are utilizing cloud
services. Storing data in the cloud, as well as SaaS and PaaS, are the clear
winners so far.
Enterprises see potential in cloud storage
At one time or another all businesses have encountered storage capacity
problems. Cloud-based storage has the clear benefit of elastic provisioning,
allowing consumers to access additional storage space on demand. But
costs of cloud data storage could turn any benefit on its head. Since
corporations can expend major intellectual and financial capital to deploy and
manage storage resources, it's hardly a surprise that storage has emerged
as a major use for cloud services.
Page 2 of 34
Tracking the cloud computing landscape in the enterprise IT
Contents
Early enterprise adopters seek cloud computing storage, PaaS
Interest in cloud disaster recovery blossoming in the enterprise
Cloud shops misled with high SaaS data integration costs
Breaking through the barrier: Interest in cloud BI and analytics grows
Cloud data storage services popular among SMBs, enterprises
Can cloud computing cure enterprises' BYOD woes?
Office 2013: Designed for the cloud computing generation
Cloud services face-off: Comparing Google Drive, Dropbox, Box and Cubby
Slide 1.
Data that changes regularly but is accessed infrequently is the first type of
data that survey respondents are cloudsourcing (Slide 1), with top data types
being nearline storage, disaster recovery (DR) data and archive data. Far
less growth is expected in primary storage, which underscores the reluctance
to rely on cloud providers for production data in real time where security and
availability concerns exist. Backup data growth remains flat, which isn't
surprising considering the broad acceptance of cloud services for backups.
Additionally, DR and backup data are perceived as two distinct items, with
69% of respondents reporting DR data is stored separately in the cloud from
regular backup data.
Despite the emergence of cloud-based storage, survey results suggest even
though respondents are using cloud-based DR services, 39% also ship data
to another physical DR site and 33% still put DR data on tape. Even more
Page 3 of 34
Tracking the cloud computing landscape in the enterprise IT
Contents
Early enterprise adopters seek cloud computing storage, PaaS
Interest in cloud disaster recovery blossoming in the enterprise
Cloud shops misled with high SaaS data integration costs
Breaking through the barrier: Interest in cloud BI and analytics grows
Cloud data storage services popular among SMBs, enterprises
Can cloud computing cure enterprises' BYOD woes?
Office 2013: Designed for the cloud computing generation
Cloud services face-off: Comparing Google Drive, Dropbox, Box and Cubby
alarming, only 46% of respondents say they can recover using cloud-based
storage services, and just 28% have actually tested recovery.
Currently, most businesses use cloud storage to support less than 25% of
available business workloads. The number of business applications housed
in cloud storage is expected to increase dramatically in the next six months,
reflecting reported increases in nearline and archive storage (Slides 2 and 3).
Slide 2.
Slide 3.
Page 4 of 34
Tracking the cloud computing landscape in the enterprise IT
Contents
Early enterprise adopters seek cloud computing storage, PaaS
Interest in cloud disaster recovery blossoming in the enterprise
Cloud shops misled with high SaaS data integration costs
Breaking through the barrier: Interest in cloud BI and analytics grows
Cloud data storage services popular among SMBs, enterprises
Can cloud computing cure enterprises' BYOD woes?
Office 2013: Designed for the cloud computing generation
Cloud services face-off: Comparing Google Drive, Dropbox, Box and Cubby
CRM, collaboration top SaaS uses
Software as a Service (SaaS) allows users to access business applications
that third-party providers in the cloud own and support. Of respondents using
SaaS apps, 59% use CRM/sales tools and 52% use collaboration tools.
Numerous other SaaS apps are being used to a lesser degree, including
business analytics tools, human resources (HR) applications, marketing
tools, ERP systems and financial apps.
Enterprises are adopting SaaS for a variety of reasons. Approximately 23%
of respondents cite SaaS enables faster app implementation times and 23%
like the SaaS pricing model. Additional considerations include easy end-user
app deployment, competitive features and functionality as well as the ability
to reduce dependence on IT resources.
However, SaaS tools pose some challenges for business users. For
example, more than 34% of respondents say SaaS applications can cause
Page 5 of 34
Tracking the cloud computing landscape in the enterprise IT
Contents
Early enterprise adopters seek cloud computing storage, PaaS
Interest in cloud disaster recovery blossoming in the enterprise
Cloud shops misled with high SaaS data integration costs
Breaking through the barrier: Interest in cloud BI and analytics grows
Cloud data storage services popular among SMBs, enterprises
Can cloud computing cure enterprises' BYOD woes?
Office 2013: Designed for the cloud computing generation
Cloud services face-off: Comparing Google Drive, Dropbox, Box and Cubby
integration challenges with other cloud-based or on-premises apps. This
echoes the concerns of application suitability and integration found in public
cloud adoption.
The convenience and cost control the SaaS model creates allows clients to
worry less about software development or acquisition, installation and
ongoing maintenance. So while SaaS tools are generally confined to a small
minority of business functions, survey respondents expect SaaS products to
compose a larger percentage of enterprise applications in the next six
months (Slides 4 and 5).
Slide 4.
Slide 5.
Page 6 of 34
Tracking the cloud computing landscape in the enterprise IT
Contents
Early enterprise adopters seek cloud computing storage, PaaS
Interest in cloud disaster recovery blossoming in the enterprise
Cloud shops misled with high SaaS data integration costs
Breaking through the barrier: Interest in cloud BI and analytics grows
Cloud data storage services popular among SMBs, enterprises
Can cloud computing cure enterprises' BYOD woes?
Office 2013: Designed for the cloud computing generation
Cloud services face-off: Comparing Google Drive, Dropbox, Box and Cubby
Money talks with PaaS respondents
Platform as a Service (PaaS) allows companies to upload and run business
workloads from complete cloud service providers. More than 63% of survey
respondents that report using cloud computing use PaaS to develop and
deploy cloud-based applications. PaaS also plays a role in extending SaaS
offerings, with 43% of these respondents using it to expand tools like SAP.
About 40% of respondents use PaaS to develop and deploy mobile
applications, while 36% rely on PaaS for application testing. The four top
PaaS providers are Amazon Beanstalk (32%), Google AppEngine (28%),
Microsoft Windows Azure (26%) and Salesforce Force.com (21%), according
to survey responses.
Why are companies building cloud-based applications from the ground-up
using PaaS, which requires more in-house development know-how than
other cloud models? There are several compelling reasons.
Page 7 of 34
Tracking the cloud computing landscape in the enterprise IT
Contents
Early enterprise adopters seek cloud computing storage, PaaS
Interest in cloud disaster recovery blossoming in the enterprise
Cloud shops misled with high SaaS data integration costs
Breaking through the barrier: Interest in cloud BI and analytics grows
Cloud data storage services popular among SMBs, enterprises
Can cloud computing cure enterprises' BYOD woes?
Office 2013: Designed for the cloud computing generation
Cloud services face-off: Comparing Google Drive, Dropbox, Box and Cubby
About 25% of respondents consider PaaS to be a cost-effective computing
alternative to building and maintaining in-house IT resources; 20% use PaaS
as a vehicle for more effective deployment of in-house IT resources; 16%
expect better service scalability and 11% see PaaS as a shift from traditional
systems administration to application development, or DevOps.
Choosing a PaaS provider is no easy task; it requires a modicum of
familiarity with the vendor. About 49% of survey respondents said the chosen
provider was already part of the company’s current cloud ecosystem and
36% said the PaaS provider supported a current application development
language.
PaaS provides significant flexibility for companies that update or change
workloads frequently. Most current PaaS deployments are confined to a
small minority of the business' IT infrastructure, though respondents expect
PaaS deployments to compose a larger portion of enterprise infrastructure in
the next six months (Slides 6 and 7).
Slide 6.
Page 8 of 34
Tracking the cloud computing landscape in the enterprise IT
Contents
Early enterprise adopters seek cloud computing storage, PaaS
Interest in cloud disaster recovery blossoming in the enterprise
Cloud shops misled with high SaaS data integration costs
Breaking through the barrier: Interest in cloud BI and analytics grows
Cloud data storage services popular among SMBs, enterprises
Can cloud computing cure enterprises' BYOD woes?
Office 2013: Designed for the cloud computing generation
Cloud services face-off: Comparing Google Drive, Dropbox, Box and Cubby
Slide 7.
Cloud computing has made inroads into enterprise data centers, allowing
organizations to mitigate some burden of hardware and support. The result is
more scalable computing with predictable per-usage costs. But cloud
computing service providers still have a long road to plow.
Many IT professionals are still satisfied with a more traditional data center
infrastructure. Thirty-eight percent of respondents say their current IT
investment is enough, 24% feel the benefits of cloud are inadequate and
18% feel virtualization offers enough of an advantage. Other issues, such as
security and a fear of losing control of IT, also factor into the decision to hold
off on cloud computing. Ultimately, the benefits will outweigh the problems,
making prospects for future cloud adoption bright.
Page 9 of 34
Tracking the cloud computing landscape in the enterprise IT
Contents
Early enterprise adopters seek cloud computing storage, PaaS
Interest in cloud disaster recovery blossoming in the enterprise
Cloud shops misled with high SaaS data integration costs
Breaking through the barrier: Interest in cloud BI and analytics grows
Cloud data storage services popular among SMBs, enterprises
Can cloud computing cure enterprises' BYOD woes?
Office 2013: Designed for the cloud computing generation
Cloud services face-off: Comparing Google Drive, Dropbox, Box and Cubby
Interest in cloud disaster recovery blossoming in the enterprise
Jessica Carroll, managing director of IT and digital media at the United
States Golf Association in Far Hills, N.J., was something of a pioneer in her
embrace of cloud disaster recovery and business continuity.
In 2008, when cloud computing was still a blip on the technology horizon,
Carroll was faced with the challenge of bringing her '90s-era IT shop into the
21st century. She knew that tape rotation and colocation weren't going to be
the wave of the future. Higher expectations for disaster recovery -- quick,
seamless, gap-free -- led her to consider and ultimately adopt a cloud
disaster recovery solution from IBM. "It enabled us to port our data to an off-
site location without adding strain to the administration of managing the
backups, without adding huge amounts of infrastructure and without
unreasonable costs," she said.
With the cloud-based data backup solution in place, the United States Golf
Association (USGA) set up a secondary site at an IBM facility in Sterling
Forest, N.Y., with servers and personnel prepared to recreate the
organization's IT environment in the case of an emergency.
The IT world is now catching up with Carroll. In the recent 2012 TechTarget
Cloud Pulse survey, a majority of respondents from the 926 companies that
reported using cloud for some aspect of their business said they now are
using a cloud disaster recovery solution (20%) or plan to in the next six
months (31%).
These numbers don't surprise Alan Berman, president of the Disaster
Recovery Institute (DRI) International, a disaster recovery and business
continuity (DR/BC) nonprofit educational organization headquartered in New
York. He recently returned from speaking engagements throughout North
America, South America and Asia. At every stop, cloud-based disaster
recovery was what audiences came to hear about.
Page 10 of 34
Tracking the cloud computing landscape in the enterprise IT
Contents
Early enterprise adopters seek cloud computing storage, PaaS
Interest in cloud disaster recovery blossoming in the enterprise
Cloud shops misled with high SaaS data integration costs
Breaking through the barrier: Interest in cloud BI and analytics grows
Cloud data storage services popular among SMBs, enterprises
Can cloud computing cure enterprises' BYOD woes?
Office 2013: Designed for the cloud computing generation
Cloud services face-off: Comparing Google Drive, Dropbox, Box and Cubby
"We've already seen more and more use of [cloud disaster recovery] on a
personal level, and we're going to be seeing more and more on a business
level," Berman said. The most recent numbers he's seen at DRI International
show that 25% of businesses are using cloud-based disaster recovery now,
and 35% plan to in the near future.
Money a major driver of cloud disaster recovery trend
The biggest adopters of cloud-based DR/BC are the business entities that
have been in the forefront of cloud computing, Berman noted: small and
medium-sized businesses (SMBs). Ease of use is certainly a factor for
smaller businesses with smaller pools of IT expertise, but cost is the biggest
draw. "It's the perfect thing for small businesses," he said. "It gives them full
portability, and it's relatively cheap, especially the backup storage -- 100 gigs
costs about $100 a year, and you never have to worry about backup."
Larger businesses reap the same benefits of nearly automatic recovery and
freedom from a dedicated recovery site, in Berman's view, and money plays
an even larger role in the decision to utilize the cloud for disaster recovery. In
the current economy, companies don't want to invest in hardware and don't
want the responsibility of having to increase the size of their server pool
when they need to expand, he said; a cloud solution takes care of these
issues. Also, from a financial perspective, using cloud can increase return on
investment by removing disaster-recovery-related assets off the books. "Real
estate is expensive; electricity is expensive; hardware is expensive and has
to be replaced. I think the fact that businesses can knock all that from capital
expenditures is an important part of what's driving this," he added.
Cloud-based disaster recovery evolving
The interest from both enterprises and SMBs in cloud-based disaster
recovery solutions reflects an appetite for cloud solutions in general.
According to the Cloud Pulse survey, 61% of 1,497 respondents said they're
now using some type of cloud service. Among the 39% of respondents not
using cloud services, 19% plan to use a cloud service in the next six months,
and 35% plan to in the next year.
Page 11 of 34
Tracking the cloud computing landscape in the enterprise IT
Contents
Early enterprise adopters seek cloud computing storage, PaaS
Interest in cloud disaster recovery blossoming in the enterprise
Cloud shops misled with high SaaS data integration costs
Breaking through the barrier: Interest in cloud BI and analytics grows
Cloud data storage services popular among SMBs, enterprises
Can cloud computing cure enterprises' BYOD woes?
Office 2013: Designed for the cloud computing generation
Cloud services face-off: Comparing Google Drive, Dropbox, Box and Cubby
Inquiries about cloud disaster recovery are something Gene Ruth, analyst at
Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner Inc., gets from clients with increasing
regularity. He said it's natural for IT organizations already using the cloud to
investigate moving DR/BC to the cloud.
But, he cautions, businesses -- especially larger ones -- need to realize this
is a technology that's still evolving. For IT organizations looking to move to a
cloud DR/BC solution in the next six months, he advises they proceed with
caution until an array of mature solutions become available.
"I'm very bullish on cloud storage in general, but I don't know about the six-
month time frame," Ruth said. "You need to be patient, because it's an
evolving industry." In particular, the infrastructure that allows access to the
cloud to begin with is still developing, as are cloud gateways and software
that supports disaster recovery in the cloud. "Customers need to get
comfortable with it."
After almost five years of using a cloud disaster recovery strategy, the
USGA's Carroll believes any CIO would do well to at least consider the
option. As technology has evolved, so has her recovery solution, particularly
the hot-site architecture. The increased virtualization in the USGA data
center and the ability to capitalize on this type of infrastructure with the IBM
solution have both helped streamline and expedite potential recovery times.
Today about 1 GB of mission-critical data goes to the cloud service each
night. Tapes remain part of the backup and recovery process, but for on
campus backups, Carroll's team is more focused on SAN to SAN backup and
recovery and less focused on tapes than it was in 2008. The solution has
been trouble-free, she said, and fairly recently performed well in a potential
disaster situation.
"When Hurricane Irene was bearing down on our location in late 2011, we
were able to accelerate some unplanned backups to the cloud in case our
campus took a direct hit," Carroll said. "While we luckily sailed through the
storm, the cloud solution meant we could administer on-the-fly changes like
this very quickly and remotely." That said, every business has its own special
considerations, she added. Being aware of bandwidth and data volume and
Page 12 of 34
Tracking the cloud computing landscape in the enterprise IT
Contents
Early enterprise adopters seek cloud computing storage, PaaS
Interest in cloud disaster recovery blossoming in the enterprise
Cloud shops misled with high SaaS data integration costs
Breaking through the barrier: Interest in cloud BI and analytics grows
Cloud data storage services popular among SMBs, enterprises
Can cloud computing cure enterprises' BYOD woes?
Office 2013: Designed for the cloud computing generation
Cloud services face-off: Comparing Google Drive, Dropbox, Box and Cubby
knowing how much of your entire data set it makes sense to backup is
paramount to a viable strategy.
"Focus on the information that is most critical to your business and that you
will absolutely need in order to get your business up and running in a
disaster," Carroll said. "And at the end of the day the best answer to comfort
with cloud DR/BC is test, test, test."
Cloud shops misled with high SaaS data integration costs
With its promise of lower costs and simplified management, Software as a
Service can be appealing in the enterprise -- until it comes time to integrate it
with on-premises applications and data.
That's when enterprises looking for an easy solution to application
management problems might end up spending more time and money than
they bargained for.
"[Some companies] think, 'Well, I don't have to hire developers anymore,
because I have a SaaS solution,' and that's not true," said Sean McDermott,
CEO of Windward IT Solutions, an IT service management and systems
engineering firm based in Herndon, Va.
Given the customization work that's involved in integrating on-premises apps
and their data with Software as a Service (SaaS) apps, it can cost between
$80,000 and $100,000 to switch between SaaS apps.
"There's this expectation that moving to a SaaS-based solution … is going to
solve all [their] problems, and they're shocked when they see the bill,"
McDermott said. "So you better make your decision right the first time
around, because it can be a very costly mistake."
Some 34% of 1,497 respondents to TechTarget's Cloud Pulse Survey
completed in August, cited SaaS application integration as an inhibitor to
Page 13 of 34
Tracking the cloud computing landscape in the enterprise IT
Contents
Early enterprise adopters seek cloud computing storage, PaaS
Interest in cloud disaster recovery blossoming in the enterprise
Cloud shops misled with high SaaS data integration costs
Breaking through the barrier: Interest in cloud BI and analytics grows
Cloud data storage services popular among SMBs, enterprises
Can cloud computing cure enterprises' BYOD woes?
Office 2013: Designed for the cloud computing generation
Cloud services face-off: Comparing Google Drive, Dropbox, Box and Cubby
SaaS deployments -- and one that is often overlooked until it's too late.
Another 26% cited SaaS data integration problems. For example,
incompatible database formats between SaaS and on-premises apps.
Fighting SaaS data integration problems with more SaaS
Some longtime users of SaaS services have found some cloud-based third-
party tools helpful, but there's no substitute for in-house developers with a
deep knowledge of applications to put those tools to use, they said.
"The key in any kind of integration implementation is that you need some
highly skilled, knowledgeable people to make it happen," said Lien Chen,
corporate director of IT for San Jose, Calif.-based RAE Systems.
RAE, a global manufacturer of chemical radiation detection systems, uses a
SaaS offering called Informatica Cloud to integrate data between its on-
premises Oracle enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, on-premises
FileMaker Pro system, and Salesforce.com in the cloud.
"The Oracle system has so many layers and so many different tables … and
you have to know where to pull [data] from," Chen said. "That was a
struggle."
RAE deployed Informatica during the cleanup of 2010's Deepwater Horizon
oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, when demand for its products suddenly
increased. It needed a more streamlined, less error-prone way of getting data
from the Oracle ERP system into Salesforce, which its customer service
personnel uses. After installing a lightweight agent on-premise, developers at
RAE used a drag-and-drop Web interface to set up a link between the two
systems, which is refreshed automatically multiple times per day.
Previously, the customer service personnel had to juggle Salesforce and
Oracle, as well as a separate serial number database in FileMaker Pro, Chen
said. Now that all three programs have been integrated with Informatica, the
personnel can just focus on the customer, she said.
The devil's in the SaaS data integration details
Page 14 of 34
Tracking the cloud computing landscape in the enterprise IT
Contents
Early enterprise adopters seek cloud computing storage, PaaS
Interest in cloud disaster recovery blossoming in the enterprise
Cloud shops misled with high SaaS data integration costs
Breaking through the barrier: Interest in cloud BI and analytics grows
Cloud data storage services popular among SMBs, enterprises
Can cloud computing cure enterprises' BYOD woes?
Office 2013: Designed for the cloud computing generation
Cloud services face-off: Comparing Google Drive, Dropbox, Box and Cubby
Meanwhile, there's a plethora of other products on the market that claim to
aid in application and/or data integration between on-premise apps and the
cloud, including Dell's Boomi, MuleSoft, Jitterbit, Adeptia and IBM's Cast
Iron. Third-party tools aren't necessarily a panacea, however, McDermott
said.
"I'm a big believer in SaaS solutions, but there's a lot of stuff under the hood
that you've got to think about," he said.
For example, multiple objects in one application might need to be
concatenated into one on the other side. Users should make sure to ask
integration vendors detailed questions around these kinds of issues,
McDermott said.
"The devil's in the details," he said.
Fireclay Tile, a manufacturer headquartered in San Jose, Calif., uses another
SaaS tool called Data Integrator from Pervasive Software to integrate a
QuickBooks accounting system with Salesforce.
"What we were doing before was double entry, where you'd enter the sales
order in one place, then go over to the accounting department and they'd re-
enter all that information," Fireclay Vice President Eric Edelson said.
With the two systems integrated through Pervasive's SaaS, Fireclay was
able to consolidate headcount and put those freed-up staff into sales and
marketing roles.
There were some sacrifices Fireclay was willing to make to integrate
Salesforce, however, Edelson said. For example, the company migrated
customer records when it first started using the service in 2009, but it didn't
integrate historical transaction information, instead leaving an archive on an
older system.
"Most companies have years and years of data, and that's a really big
nightmare to integrate all that information," Edelson said. "We made the
decision that we don't need all that information."
Page 15 of 34
Tracking the cloud computing landscape in the enterprise IT
Contents
Early enterprise adopters seek cloud computing storage, PaaS
Interest in cloud disaster recovery blossoming in the enterprise
Cloud shops misled with high SaaS data integration costs
Breaking through the barrier: Interest in cloud BI and analytics grows
Cloud data storage services popular among SMBs, enterprises
Can cloud computing cure enterprises' BYOD woes?
Office 2013: Designed for the cloud computing generation
Cloud services face-off: Comparing Google Drive, Dropbox, Box and Cubby
They've barely used the old computer since then, and it's just not that
important, Edelson said.
Breaking through the barrier: Interest in cloud BI and analytics grows
Hurricane Irene threatened to pummel New York, Phil Green couldn't have
known that what was about to happen would change his perspective of the
technological landscape forever.
His biggest concern centered on a park called Flushing Meadows, home to
the U.S. Open. The tournament, the final of the four tennis tournaments that
make up the Grand Slam each year, was well underway. But Green wasn't
worried how high winds and heavy rain might affect the game. Instead, as
senior director of advanced media for the United States Tennis Association
(USTA), he was focused on something much more basic: electricity.
"We were hearing things like, 'no power for days,'" he said.
For an employee who helps to oversee USOpen.org, a power outage was
like a death sentence. During the two weeks of competition, the website
experiences its peak traffic for the year. Those visits are dependent on fresh
articles, photos, videos and analytics. Irene was quickly becoming a kink in
the plan.
But there was a potential solution. Green agreed to allow representatives
from IBM, a technical support provider for USTA, to move the infrastructure
and tools to the cloud until the storm passed, enabling employees to continue
updating the site.
"There was no hesitation," he said. "Was I a little bit on edge? Of course."
Unlike Green and the USTA's leap of faith, many businesses have been
reluctant to embrace cloud computing. To be fair, most organizations don't
Page 16 of 34
Tracking the cloud computing landscape in the enterprise IT
Contents
Early enterprise adopters seek cloud computing storage, PaaS
Interest in cloud disaster recovery blossoming in the enterprise
Cloud shops misled with high SaaS data integration costs
Breaking through the barrier: Interest in cloud BI and analytics grows
Cloud data storage services popular among SMBs, enterprises
Can cloud computing cure enterprises' BYOD woes?
Office 2013: Designed for the cloud computing generation
Cloud services face-off: Comparing Google Drive, Dropbox, Box and Cubby
experience a do-or- potentially-die moment when faced with the decision.
Nor do they have a vendor at the ready to provide the product and support.
Still, new research suggests cloud computing is gaining ground, especially
for business intelligence (BI) and analytics, with significant numbers planning
deployments in the not-so-distant future.
The key is elasticity
According to the recent 2012 TechTarget Cloud Pulse survey, more than half
of the respondents are using cloud IT services and applications today. Of the
643 respondents who detailed what tasks they were currently using cloud IT
services for, 32% said BI and analytics.
While that number may seem high, the results don't surprise William
McKnight, who said both BI and analytics are broader in meaning and more
decentralized in practice these days.
"We are indoctrinated to think we're running the company on analytics," said
McKnight, president of McKnight Consulting Group LLC, based in Plano,
Texas. "But it could be shallow [rather than] predictive analytics."
Terminology aside, the cloud has its good side, McKnight said. It can save on
staffing and infrastructure cost and time to deployment, but a key
characteristic is its elasticity.
"One of the nice things about the cloud is that you don't have to predict
ahead of time exactly how much you're going to need," he said. "The solution
scales out. And, if you go with a public cloud provider, they will have the
hardware at the ready when you've tapped out your current allocation. And
you can continue to scale."
The cloud can also be an asset for organizations embarking on a "big data"
analytics journey, according to Mark Theissen, CEO of Cirro Inc., which
provides a product that connects data from Hadoop to BI tools. Big data
tends to include multistructured data such as text, which multiplies quickly
and can be difficult to load into traditional databases. Businesses faced with
this challenge are left seeking a workaround, and some have turned to the
Page 17 of 34
Tracking the cloud computing landscape in the enterprise IT
Contents
Early enterprise adopters seek cloud computing storage, PaaS
Interest in cloud disaster recovery blossoming in the enterprise
Cloud shops misled with high SaaS data integration costs
Breaking through the barrier: Interest in cloud BI and analytics grows
Cloud data storage services popular among SMBs, enterprises
Can cloud computing cure enterprises' BYOD woes?
Office 2013: Designed for the cloud computing generation
Cloud services face-off: Comparing Google Drive, Dropbox, Box and Cubby
cloud in the form of a technology called Hadoop. An open source software,
Hadoop is known for its quick consumption and storage of large amounts of
data -- regardless of format -- across a distributed computing environment.
Still, Hadoop isn't a mainstream technology, and the use cases can be tough
to find.
"It's really the leaders of your large corporations that I've seen doing the most
when it comes to working with these challenges," said Theissen. "They have
the money, the data, and they certainly are looking for these competitive
differentiators."
Private or public cloud
Businesses may increasingly be embracing the cloud, but, Theissen said,
they tend to gravitate toward a private rather than a public offering, citing
security and availability concerns.
"We're in very early days for BI and analytics in the public cloud," Theissen.
"Everyone's more focused on the private or hybrid implementation."
That was precisely the case for USTA, which continues to use IBM's private
cloud offering. But, according to the Cloud Pulse survey results, even that
may be changing. When asked what services respondents will be using in
the public cloud or the public portion of the hybrid cloud in six months, 24.5%
of 351 respondents said BI and data management.
That response proved to be the most popular when measuring where
respondents are now compared with where they plan to be six months from
now, gaining a 17.1% increase. The next closest -- hybrid cloud integration --
saw a 15.1% increase.
Part of the increase may be due to a maturing market. Razorfish Inc., a
marking analytics service provider based in Seattle, Wash., moved to a
hybrid cloud two years ago when the company was sold by Microsoft to
Publicis Groupe. It was a transition the company had to explain to its
customers, a conversation that tended to go pretty smoothly, according to
Matt Comstock, vice president of BI at Razorfish.
Page 18 of 34
Tracking the cloud computing landscape in the enterprise IT
Contents
Early enterprise adopters seek cloud computing storage, PaaS
Interest in cloud disaster recovery blossoming in the enterprise
Cloud shops misled with high SaaS data integration costs
Breaking through the barrier: Interest in cloud BI and analytics grows
Cloud data storage services popular among SMBs, enterprises
Can cloud computing cure enterprises' BYOD woes?
Office 2013: Designed for the cloud computing generation
Cloud services face-off: Comparing Google Drive, Dropbox, Box and Cubby
"We sold it on the fact that it was going to be less expensive and more
reliable than what we had," said Comstock, though he added his clients
typically reside in the marketing rather than IT department.
Today, Razorfish is an Amazon Web Services customer, performing almost
all data and analytics functions in the cloud. The company utilizes Hadoop to
pull in unstructured data and Teradata-Aster to transform that data into
structured information they can then analyze.
As for the common cloud concerns, such as security, Comstock said it's
never been a problem.
"We've had an outage or two," he said, pointing to this week's Amazon
outage as one that affected his company. "[But] you're getting a lot of good
practices … that would take time and money to get done internally. That's
definitely an additional benefit."
Cloud data storage services popular among SMBs, enterprises
Cloud storage services for data protection and other applications are
currently used by 44% of companies that responded to a recent TechTarget
survey. That number should grow over the next six months or so, as 46%
said they plan to increase their use of cloud data storage services. For the
most part, cloud storage users are quite satisfied with the services they're
using: 17% rate their experience to date as "outstanding," 59% said it has
been "good" and only 3% expressed disappointment.
Similar cloud storage usage statistics were reported in a Purchasing
Intentions survey conducted earlier by TechTarget's Storage Media Group --
29% of respondents were using cloud storage for non-backup applications,
and 33% noted the use of cloud backup services.
Page 19 of 34
Tracking the cloud computing landscape in the enterprise IT
Contents
Early enterprise adopters seek cloud computing storage, PaaS
Interest in cloud disaster recovery blossoming in the enterprise
Cloud shops misled with high SaaS data integration costs
Breaking through the barrier: Interest in cloud BI and analytics grows
Cloud data storage services popular among SMBs, enterprises
Can cloud computing cure enterprises' BYOD woes?
Office 2013: Designed for the cloud computing generation
Cloud services face-off: Comparing Google Drive, Dropbox, Box and Cubby
Following backup, the leading application for cloud storage is disaster
recovery (DR). Thirty-eight percent of cloud storage users said they use it for
DR, and 52% plan to expand their current use of cloud storage for DR or plan
to start using it for that purpose in the next six months. Data archiving is often
cited as a potential "killer app" for cloud storage, and 28% of our respondents
said they're using cloud storage for archiving now. That number is likely to
grow fairly quickly, as 39% are planning to add/expand cloud storage
services for archiving over the next half-year.
At this time, it appears that most companies using cloud storage for DR do
so in conjunction with another DR methodology. For example, 39% ship data
to a separate physical recovery site in addition to using the cloud for DR; for
30% of those surveyed, DR data also goes to tape. Right now, 46% of cloud
DR users can use cloud-based computing services in conjunction with their
cloud storage to recover and resume operations in the cloud.
On ramp to cloud data storage services
Most cloud storage users (57%) still rely on service provider-supplied
software to access their cloud storage services. Another 18% use locally
Page 20 of 34
Tracking the cloud computing landscape in the enterprise IT
Contents
Early enterprise adopters seek cloud computing storage, PaaS
Interest in cloud disaster recovery blossoming in the enterprise
Cloud shops misled with high SaaS data integration costs
Breaking through the barrier: Interest in cloud BI and analytics grows
Cloud data storage services popular among SMBs, enterprises
Can cloud computing cure enterprises' BYOD woes?
Office 2013: Designed for the cloud computing generation
Cloud services face-off: Comparing Google Drive, Dropbox, Box and Cubby
installed software that can link to cloud storage, while a similar number use
on-premises appliances to create a more seamless hybrid cloud
environment. The appliance market is largely populated by startups, but
Microsoft's recent acquisition of StorSimple, one of the pioneers in this field,
should spur even greater interest in this access alternative. While the overall
number of appliance users is still relatively modest, 29% of larger companies
and 39% of midsized companies currently use appliances.
Backup still app No. 1 for cloud storage
While cloud-based DR and archiving are on the rise, backup is still the most
popular app among cloud data storage services. On average, companies in
our survey reported having approximately 8.5 terabytes (TB) of backup data
stored in the cloud. Seventy-five percent of cloud backup users have less
than 10 TB of cloud backup data, but 11% have more than 20 TB of their
backup data stored in the ether. Assuming the data is deduplicated and
compressed, that figure is likely to represent 100 TB or more of source data.
Thirty-four percent of reporting companies have more than half of their
company's total backup data stored in a cloud backup service. On average,
cloud backup users have 41% of their backup data tucked away in the cloud.
If companies carry through with their plans, those numbers will grow in the
next six months, resulting in half the companies keeping more than 50% of
their backup data in the cloud.
The type of data companies are backing up to the cloud varies considerably,
with user files accounting for the most backup data (72%), closely followed
by data from the main data center (66%), mobile users (41%) and remote
offices (41%).
Page 21 of 34
Tracking the cloud computing landscape in the enterprise IT
Contents
Early enterprise adopters seek cloud computing storage, PaaS
Interest in cloud disaster recovery blossoming in the enterprise
Cloud shops misled with high SaaS data integration costs
Breaking through the barrier: Interest in cloud BI and analytics grows
Cloud data storage services popular among SMBs, enterprises
Can cloud computing cure enterprises' BYOD woes?
Office 2013: Designed for the cloud computing generation
Cloud services face-off: Comparing Google Drive, Dropbox, Box and Cubby
But not just backup
Backup may be king of the storage cloud with DR closing the gap, but
companies are using cloud storage for other applications. Survey
respondents said that on average, 35% of their companies' applications are
currently tapping into cloud storage. An eye-opening 25% of those users tell
us that 50% or more of their companies' apps have data stored in the cloud.
Here, too, you can expect those numbers to rise in the short term, with 42%
of respondents expecting that more than half of their apps will be hooked into
cloud storage within six months.
Page 22 of 34
Tracking the cloud computing landscape in the enterprise IT
Contents
Early enterprise adopters seek cloud computing storage, PaaS
Interest in cloud disaster recovery blossoming in the enterprise
Cloud shops misled with high SaaS data integration costs
Breaking through the barrier: Interest in cloud BI and analytics grows
Cloud data storage services popular among SMBs, enterprises
Can cloud computing cure enterprises' BYOD woes?
Office 2013: Designed for the cloud computing generation
Cloud services face-off: Comparing Google Drive, Dropbox, Box and Cubby
Right now, companies have an average of approximately 7.5 TB of non-
backup data stored with a cloud data storage service, and they anticipate
that figure to rise to 10.9 TB over the coming months.
Can cloud computing cure enterprises’ BYOD woes?
BYOD may be a top trend in businesses today, but those four letters may
ultimately spell trouble for a company if the proper mobile policies are not in
place to handle the expanding number of mobile devices.
There is a 'diversity explosion', notes Rohit Mehra, Director of Enterprise
Communications Infrastructure at International Data Corp. (IDC), pointing out
that by 2015 close to 17 million 'smart' devices of all types will be shipping
worldwide as compared to nearly 12 million today. This creates challenges
for companies of all sizes as IT managers struggle to implement new controls
and safeguards that may be lacking in current mobile user policies.
Page 23 of 34
Tracking the cloud computing landscape in the enterprise IT
Contents
Early enterprise adopters seek cloud computing storage, PaaS
Interest in cloud disaster recovery blossoming in the enterprise
Cloud shops misled with high SaaS data integration costs
Breaking through the barrier: Interest in cloud BI and analytics grows
Cloud data storage services popular among SMBs, enterprises
Can cloud computing cure enterprises' BYOD woes?
Office 2013: Designed for the cloud computing generation
Cloud services face-off: Comparing Google Drive, Dropbox, Box and Cubby
Security still tops the list of most IT administrators, while the cost of mobile
applications development is usually dead last in terms of key challenges,
according to IDC research.
There is no question that using mobile devices do increase the productivity of
workers and sharpens a company's competitive edge. Roughly 94 percent of
small business users report their mobile devices make them more efficient,
while 67 percent say their companies would lose competitive ground without
the use of such devices, according to recent survey conducted by CDW, a
leading technology services and products provider.
A Cure in the Cloud
As a testament to bring your own device (BYOD) trends, of the 752 U.S.-
based mobile device users and IT professionals polled, nearly 90 percent of
the managers taking part in CDW's Small Business Mobility Report survey
say their employees use personally-owned mobile devices in their daily work.
This flood of personal mobile devices can create headaches in terms of
mobile device management (MDM) practices, although evolving technologies
may mitigate some of these concerns.
Page 24 of 34
Tracking the cloud computing landscape in the enterprise IT
Contents
Early enterprise adopters seek cloud computing storage, PaaS
Interest in cloud disaster recovery blossoming in the enterprise
Cloud shops misled with high SaaS data integration costs
Breaking through the barrier: Interest in cloud BI and analytics grows
Cloud data storage services popular among SMBs, enterprises
Can cloud computing cure enterprises' BYOD woes?
Office 2013: Designed for the cloud computing generation
Cloud services face-off: Comparing Google Drive, Dropbox, Box and Cubby
One of these technologies is cloud-based applications and services, which
shift the bulk of critical information that resides on a mobile device to a
centralized or virtual resource that is available to all types of devices via
wireless networks and the Internet. This not only provides a specific and
easily managed target for security and mobile policy safeguards (especially if
it is a personal cloud that provides limited and non-public access to data and
applications) but can also clearly separate personal from business
applications and data.
Personal information can reside on the client's device or public clouds such
as Flickr for a user's family photographs. Roughly 70% of the companies that
took part in IDC's smart device study, released in March, reported their
companies were involved in cloud-based activities at some level. A little more
than 8% already launched projects, close to 25% launched a project, and
nearly 40% planned to launch an initiative in 12-18 months, noted IDC
analyst Mehra.
Office 2013: Designed for the cloud computing generation
Despite the fact that it's a client software package you install on your PC,
Office 2013 will be a productivity suite for the cloud computing generation,
and that's reflected in its services, features and design.
"This is designed from the get-go for Office as a service," said Microsoft CEO
Steve Ballmer at the new conference to introduce the new suite. Its naming
alone is a bit confusing, but that reflects the area of emphasis. While
Microsoft has formally named the product "Office 2013," Ballmer referred to it
as "the new Office" or "the new Office 365" during the event.
Office 365 is the Office suite subscription program that it's been offering to
small businesses for about a year. At the San Francisco event, Microsoft also
introduced previews of several editions of Office 365, expanding it from just
small businesses to home users and enterprise users.
Page 25 of 34
Tracking the cloud computing landscape in the enterprise IT
Contents
Early enterprise adopters seek cloud computing storage, PaaS
Interest in cloud disaster recovery blossoming in the enterprise
Cloud shops misled with high SaaS data integration costs
Breaking through the barrier: Interest in cloud BI and analytics grows
Cloud data storage services popular among SMBs, enterprises
Can cloud computing cure enterprises' BYOD woes?
Office 2013: Designed for the cloud computing generation
Cloud services face-off: Comparing Google Drive, Dropbox, Box and Cubby
Also, current subscribers to Office 365 will be automatically upgraded to
Office 2013 when it ships. The new version will support up to five PCs, Macs
or mobile devices. When Office 365 Home Premium officially launches, it will
include an additional 20GB of SkyDrive storage space and 60 minutes of
Skype credit each month, as well as free future upgrades.
There is a lot of online support in Office. Besides SkyDrive for saving files,
once you sign into Office, your personalized settings, most recently used
files, templates and even your custom dictionary will move with you between
devices. So you won't have to take your work computer home, you can work
from home on your own system and everything will be available to you.
In addition to the SharePoint and Skype support, Microsoft is also adding
Yammer, a secure, private social network for businesses. Microsoft only
announced plans to acquire Yammer late last month. Yammer is not in the
consumer preview of Office, however.
Office 365 will support both tablets and PCs running Windows 7 and 8. It
should not surprise anyone that Office 2013 won't support Windows Vista
and Windows XP, since Microsoft is trying its best to put those two operating
systems out to pasture.
Still, Microsoft is taking a pass on a large portion of its installed base.
Windows XP and Vista still account for 54.6% of Windows PCs still in use,
according to statistics compiled by Web analytics firm Net Applications.
Windows 7 has ramped quickly, but is still hovering at 45% market share.
The public beta is available now and will function for 60 days after the final
product ships. Microsoft has not given a release date, and with so many
products shipping this fall, including Windows 8, Windows Server 2012 and
Visual Studio, Microsoft may very well wait on shipping Office just to avoid
overload.
In the meantime, the company has launched an Office blog to keep in touch
with users about Office 2013 developments.
Page 26 of 34
Tracking the cloud computing landscape in the enterprise IT
Contents
Early enterprise adopters seek cloud computing storage, PaaS
Interest in cloud disaster recovery blossoming in the enterprise
Cloud shops misled with high SaaS data integration costs
Breaking through the barrier: Interest in cloud BI and analytics grows
Cloud data storage services popular among SMBs, enterprises
Can cloud computing cure enterprises' BYOD woes?
Office 2013: Designed for the cloud computing generation
Cloud services face-off: Comparing Google Drive, Dropbox, Box and Cubby
"I'm quite impressed," said Joshua Greenbaum, principal analyst with
Enterprise Application Consulting. "I think they've done a really good job. The
blending of the touch and cloud experience are pretty well done and a good
way for Microsoft to get The Ball rolling in terms of understanding what
Windows 8 can do."
Greenbaum is an Office 365 subscriber and said Office 2013 fixes a lot of the
problems he had with it. "The preview showed us cloud and desktop are now
the same thing with the same license. That works really well. One of the
problems with Office 365 is it doesn't have the same user experience as
desktop. There were a number of contentions between the two that had to be
sorted out. Office 2013 has really broken down those barriers," he said.
Cloud services face-off: Comparing Google Drive, Dropbox, Box and Cubby
In today's highly mobile world, it wouldn't be at all unusual to check your
email on your tablet before you even got out of bed in the morning, finish up
a presentation for your boss on your home desktop PC, and even update the
sales figures on that business plan from your smartphone late that night. Yet
how can you keep all of those files available and in sync no matter where or
how you're accessing them?
In the olden days, you might have relied on USB thumb drives, or perhaps
you just emailed files back and forth to yourself. Things have gotten a lot
easier now with the advent of cloud-based online storage services. Still, how
Page 27 of 34
Tracking the cloud computing landscape in the enterprise IT
Contents
Early enterprise adopters seek cloud computing storage, PaaS
Interest in cloud disaster recovery blossoming in the enterprise
Cloud shops misled with high SaaS data integration costs
Breaking through the barrier: Interest in cloud BI and analytics grows
Cloud data storage services popular among SMBs, enterprises
Can cloud computing cure enterprises' BYOD woes?
Office 2013: Designed for the cloud computing generation
Cloud services face-off: Comparing Google Drive, Dropbox, Box and Cubby
do you choose the one that's best for meeting your own needs, whether
those are more related to photo sharing, file sync, or group editing, for
instance? Here's the lowdown on four services that you might consider:
Dropbox, Box, and the newer Cubby and Google Drive.
Dropbox (2GB for free, up to 18GB total with referrals, up to
100GB for $199 yearly)
Dropbox is the current market leader, and with good reason. It's incredibly
easy to use and very reliable. The service monitors one particular folder on
your computer and automatically uploads files in that folder to your Dropbox.
You can then access those files either from within Finder on a Mac, the
standard Windows file system on a PC, any web browser, or the free apps
available for mobile devices. Those apps run on Android smartphones and
tablets, as well as on Apple's iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad.
Once you sign in to your Dropbox account on your mobile device, you'll find a
simple interface which looks just like a traditional computer file system. If you
mark individual files as favorites, you'll be able to access those files offline
when you don't have an Internet connection (when service goes down,
during an airplane flight, etc.).
The Android and iOS tablet apps are relatively bare bones, but they work just
fine. No matter what mobile platform you're using, you can view some file
types within the Dropbox app itself, most notably plain text, PDFs, and both
JPEG and PNG photos. Other files -- such as Microsoft Office documents
and ePub eBooks -- are opened in helper apps like Polaris Office on Android
devices or Documents to Go, GoodReader, iBooks, or Stanza on the iPad.
Page 28 of 34
Tracking the cloud computing landscape in the enterprise IT
Contents
Early enterprise adopters seek cloud computing storage, PaaS
Interest in cloud disaster recovery blossoming in the enterprise
Cloud shops misled with high SaaS data integration costs
Breaking through the barrier: Interest in cloud BI and analytics grows
Cloud data storage services popular among SMBs, enterprises
Can cloud computing cure enterprises' BYOD woes?
Office 2013: Designed for the cloud computing generation
Cloud services face-off: Comparing Google Drive, Dropbox, Box and Cubby
If you want to edit your files from directly within the Dropbox app, you can do
so only on Android devices, and even then only for plain text files. Other
document types can be edited by external apps such as Polaris Office on
Android devices, and with apps such as Pages or Documents to Go on iOS
devices.
Dropbox, though, needs to keep innovating or it runs the risk of falling behind
some of the "younger" services such as Google Drive and Cubby. As things
stand, Dropbox is an excellent backup and file storage/synchronization
service. Yet it doesn't offer any real editing or collaboration tools. It also
forces users to keep all of their files in a single Dropbox folder for
synchronization. The smartphone and tablet apps are straightforward and
easy to use, but they could be more feature-rich.
Box (5GB for free, up to 50GB of total storage available for $19.99
a month)
Box is similar to Dropbox in its cloud storage and synchronization services.
However, Box adds some clever collaboration tools to the mix, as well. For
example, you can share individual files or entire folders with a few clicks. You
can also embed files on a web page for public viewing, with full control over
whether users can print, download, or share the file.
If you're working with a group, you can add collaborators to each folder in
your Dropbox, share direct links to individual files, and add comments as
well, instead of needing to send a flurry of email messages back and forth
each time a document warrants discussion.
Page 29 of 34
Tracking the cloud computing landscape in the enterprise IT
Contents
Early enterprise adopters seek cloud computing storage, PaaS
Interest in cloud disaster recovery blossoming in the enterprise
Cloud shops misled with high SaaS data integration costs
Breaking through the barrier: Interest in cloud BI and analytics grows
Cloud data storage services popular among SMBs, enterprises
Can cloud computing cure enterprises' BYOD woes?
Office 2013: Designed for the cloud computing generation
Cloud services face-off: Comparing Google Drive, Dropbox, Box and Cubby
The Box mobile apps are available for Android and iOS, plus BlackBerry
PlayBook and the webOS TouchPad. They don't offer much in the way of
built-in editing features, but they do work with external helper apps such as
Quickoffice, PaperPort Notes, and PDF Expert to make the editing process
as seamless as possible.
Box also places a strong emphasis on security, with the mobile apps
optionally requiring a four digit unlock code each time the app is launched, in
addition to the regular login information. You can optionally cache all recent
files as they are accessed within the mobile app, or you can mark individual
files as favorites for offline access.
The Box smartphone and tablets app also offer some unique features. For
instance, there's an Update tab that lets you know what the latest activity
was and exactly when it happened, including the name of the person who
accessed each file. You can also create batch uploads of photos and videos
directly from your smartphone or tablet, instead of uploading one at a time, or
-- as with the other file sharing apps covered here -- only allowing the upload
of individual new photos taken from within the app.
Box is more expensive overall than Dropbox, but it provides more
collaboration and workgroup features. Arguably, the mobile apps are more
polished as well, with better security and real time notifications regarding who
has accessed your files.
Box might be overkill for someone who just wants to back up his or her files.
Yet for groups and enterprise customers, it offers some compelling features.
Moreover, it's the only one of the four services covered here to
provide mobile apps for all four tablet platforms: Android, BlackBerry, iOS,
and webOS.
Cubby (5GB for free)
Cubby isn't quite on the scene yet, although it's almost there. Currently in
beta, Cubby is the new file sharing service from LogMeIn, the popular remote
desktop application that allows you to access your home computer from
Page 30 of 34
Tracking the cloud computing landscape in the enterprise IT
Contents
Early enterprise adopters seek cloud computing storage, PaaS
Interest in cloud disaster recovery blossoming in the enterprise
Cloud shops misled with high SaaS data integration costs
Breaking through the barrier: Interest in cloud BI and analytics grows
Cloud data storage services popular among SMBs, enterprises
Can cloud computing cure enterprises' BYOD woes?
Office 2013: Designed for the cloud computing generation
Cloud services face-off: Comparing Google Drive, Dropbox, Box and Cubby
anywhere. I've only been using the service for a few days, and I'm already
quite impressed.
Cubby is more flexible than Dropbox in that any folder can be designated as
a "cubby." Consequently, you don't need to change the way you've already
organized your files. Cubby also offers strong file sharing tools, allowing you
to create public links for either individual files or for an entire cubby folder. On
the other hand, Cubby doesn't have the emphasis on collaboration and group
editing which you'll find in Google Drive.
One of Cubby's more interesting concepts is unlimited peer-to-peer syncing.
If you've been struggling for a long time to keep multiple computers in sync
and you haven't found a good solution, Cubby has you covered. Once you
set up the service on two computers (such as home and work, or the home
desktop and your laptop), you can designate specific cubby folders to sync
between the two. The service will then work seamlessly in the background to
keep them both in lockstep.
Even better, there are practically no GB limits. If you have 20GB of vacation
photos on your desktop that you also want on your laptop, Cubby will do that
for you. The only limit which applies is 5GB total for Cubby folders that are
synced to the cloud for use with mobile devices. Both the Android and iOS
apps are already available in their respective stores.
As with Dropbox, you can mark individual files as favorites for offline access.
You can also upload files or photos from your mobile device to Cubby,
making the service a great way to share photos if you'd rather send the pics
directly instead of publicly uploading your life to Facebook and Flickr.
Page 31 of 34
Tracking the cloud computing landscape in the enterprise IT
Contents
Early enterprise adopters seek cloud computing storage, PaaS
Interest in cloud disaster recovery blossoming in the enterprise
Cloud shops misled with high SaaS data integration costs
Breaking through the barrier: Interest in cloud BI and analytics grows
Cloud data storage services popular among SMBs, enterprises
Can cloud computing cure enterprises' BYOD woes?
Office 2013: Designed for the cloud computing generation
Cloud services face-off: Comparing Google Drive, Dropbox, Box and Cubby
If you're the forgetful type, or the sort to delete first and realize later that you
needed a particular file, you'll be glad to know that Cubby has the ability to
restore deleted files from the archive. Cubby also keeps multiple versions of
each file, just in case you later decide that you liked chapter 8 of your novel
better before you revised it.
Even though it's currently only a beta offering, Cubby already gets a lot of
things right. The Android and iOS apps are well polished and extremely fast.
The service deserves close attention, especially if you are concerned more
about synchronization and sharing than with group editing and collaboration.
Google Drive (5GB for free, additional storage available for
purchase)
Although Google Drive is the newest player in this group, Google has been
storing documents and allowing folks to work on them from any web browser
for quite some time with Google Docs.
So Google Drive is the spiritual successor to Google Docs. This becomes
readily apparent when you access it for the first time. You'll see that anything
you've previously stored in Google Docs is already available in your Google
Drive.
You'll also encounter a short introductory video, after that, you'll be prompted
to download and install the Google Drive app on your PC or Mac. Google
Drive will then create a folder on your computer.
Anything dragged to that folder will sync with your Google Drive, as well as
Page 32 of 34
Tracking the cloud computing landscape in the enterprise IT
Contents
Early enterprise adopters seek cloud computing storage, PaaS
Interest in cloud disaster recovery blossoming in the enterprise
Cloud shops misled with high SaaS data integration costs
Breaking through the barrier: Interest in cloud BI and analytics grows
Cloud data storage services popular among SMBs, enterprises
Can cloud computing cure enterprises' BYOD woes?
Office 2013: Designed for the cloud computing generation
Cloud services face-off: Comparing Google Drive, Dropbox, Box and Cubby
with all of the devices associated with your Google account, such as tablet
computers and smartphones.
Google hasn't yet released any iOS apps for Google Drive, but the Android
OS tablet and smartphone experience closely mirrors the desktop
experience. Once you download the free Android app from the Google Play
store, you'll find that the main screen of the Google Drive app looks almost
exactly like what you'd see on a regular computer. You can easily navigate
from folder to folder, and you can star your most important documents to
make them easier to find. Sharing with one of your Google contacts is a
snap. It takes just a couple of taps.
If you want to make individual documents available for offline viewing, you'll
need to go through and mark them each individually ahead of time. You can
also create new documents by taking a photo of any printed text and
uploading it to your Google Drive (although that service is somewhat hit-or-
miss at the moment, and it doesn't work at all if you take the photo in
landscape mode instead of portrait).
There are a few gotchas with Google Drive that you will want to think about
carefully before completely switching over to the service. It's a hybrid file
backup/online collaboration tool designed to help you share and collaborate
with others more easily. So there's no encryption.
Also, there's no offline editing of Google Docs files. You can view Google
Docs files when you're offline, but editing them is not possible even if you've
configured offline access in Google Chrome. You can, however, edit
Microsoft Office documents offline, and they'll be synchronized back to your
Google Drive the next time you're connected.
Google Drive is a no-brainer option for those who are already heavily
invested in Google services like GMail and Google Docs, for those who need
extensive collaboration tools, and for those who own Android tablets and
smartphones. Unfortunately, there is no word yet on when iOS apps for your
iPad and iPhone will be available. They have been announced, but Google
has not rolled out a timeline for when that will happen.
Page 33 of 34
Tracking the cloud computing landscape in the enterprise IT
Contents
Early enterprise adopters seek cloud computing storage, PaaS
Interest in cloud disaster recovery blossoming in the enterprise
Cloud shops misled with high SaaS data integration costs
Breaking through the barrier: Interest in cloud BI and analytics grows
Cloud data storage services popular among SMBs, enterprises
Can cloud computing cure enterprises' BYOD woes?
Office 2013: Designed for the cloud computing generation
Cloud services face-off: Comparing Google Drive, Dropbox, Box and Cubby
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