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Posts Tagged ‘Cloud’

BusinessRadioX Announces the Launch of Silver Lining in the Cloud

May 24th, 2013

BusinessRadioX® welcomes to the studio the latest addition to its radio family, Silver Lining in the Cloud, co-hosted by seasoned sales and marketing experts Nikole Smith-Toptas and Dominick Rainey, from BusinessRadioX® in Gwinnett.

Silver Lining in the Cloud, sponsored by Computer Design & Integration (CDI), is a weekly radio show that will highlight and promote many of Atlanta’s top businesses and business leaders. Airing each week on Wednesdays at 10am EST, the show will feature C-level influencers who will discuss the silver lining that their business offers to the community and how they are making a difference in the marketplace; they will share insights into what makes them the best at what they do and how they do it. Guests will include executives from the insurance, financial, manufacturing, medical and educational industries. Listeners will tune in to hear tips and strategies around dynamic new and innovative concepts that make for a successful business in today’s economic climate.

Open to C-level professionals all over the metro-Atlanta area, the show provides a unique opportunity for businesses to join in an open forum and present the sliver linings of their organizations. According to Smith-Toptas, “This show is an informational marketing tool and a way of networking to get to know more about the business community by offering them a platform to talk about the silver lining of their business.”

Nikole Smith-Toptas is currently the marketing manager for CDI Managed Services, a B2B IT managed services provider that specializes in cloud hosting and IT outsourcing in Roswell, Georgia. As a seasoned sales and marketing professional with over 20 years of experience in a variety of industries, Smith-Toptas has worked in business and project development, training program management, customer service and managing multi-functional work teams. She is an avid participant in sales training courses, workshops and seminars that helps her keep current with business trends.

Dominick Rainey has over 30 years of business development and direct sales experience in the IT industry from a consultative selling perspective. Rainey had over 13-years expertise as National Account Manager with Honeywell/Allied Data Communications and is currently in his 11th year with CDI as an IT Managed Services Consultant. Rainey is proficient in areas of sales prospect qualification and with managing the sales process for IT Managed Services. This also includes IT Hosting and Cloud Computing services.

Source:http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/5/prweb10760528.htm

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Tags: BusinessRadioX Cloud IT Outsourcing

Cloud-based Dictation a Competitive Edge for Hynes Lawyers

May 7th, 2013

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The Brisbane-based commercial law firm employs the latest workflow technology and focuses on optimizing internal processes in order to offer highly competitive, flexible pricing and quality service to its clients.

“We looked at three or four different dictation providers, before choosing Winscribe after a successful pilot in 2012. What stood out was Winscribe’s ability to deliver a software-as-a-service (SaaS) dictation platform that served our dictation needs and the needs of other clients that we serve through our LPO in Manila,” said Lauren Ward, IT Manager at Hynes Lawyers. gI_131426_dictationcloud

“Our legal process outsourcing company, Diversify BPO, allows legal firms and other businesses in Australia to have their own dedicated staff members in the Philippines, which can carry out a variety of work, such as transcription, to the highest standard but at a significantly lower cost,” explained Ward.

In order to prevent conflict of interest, Winscribe’s cloud based dictation solution has been configured to automatically route dictation to separate typing groups. Hynes has no access to other firms’ dictations and each Diversify BPO client is allocated with their own dedicated staff member(s). This is verified through Winscribe’s built in auditing capabilities, which log when, where and by whom dictations have been accessed.

“With the technology side taken care of by our dictation partner Winscribe, we could focus on the areas that really mattered to us – ensuring that our change management strategy was implemented and that we trained our Filipino team members to a very high standard.” says Ward.

Optimising its document creation workflow has led to significant cost savings for Hynes, which it subsequently can pass onto its clients.

“We re-evaluated our support structure and have successfully outsourced a number of legal processes to our Manila-based team, which are like a natural extension to our business here. Hynes Lawyers are in itself a case study for the gains that can be achieved when technology and process improvement come together,” says Ward.

Hynes Lawyers’ fee earners in Brisbane use mobile dictation via Winscribe’s dictation applications for iPhone and iPad which allow them to be productive while on the move and to record meetings and witness interviews using the same application.

“Our fee earners have a lot more transparency. They can see the status of their documents directly from their smartphone, tablet or PC and that just wasn’t possible before,” says Ward.

He concludes, “We are in a very good position to grow, thanks to our partnership with Winscribe, and our focus on improving processes to deliver reliable outcomes to our clients at competitive prices.”

Source:http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/5/prweb10699896.htm

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Tags: BPO Cloud IT

iSoftStone and IBM Officially Launched Cloud Service Platform for SMEs in Northwest China

May 3rd, 2013

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iSoftStone Holdings Limited (”iSoftStone,” NYSE: ISS), a leading China-based IT services and solutions provider, and International Business Machines (”IBM”), the largest IT and business solutions provider today announced a collaboration to build www.xb-cloud.cn (”XB-CLOUD”), a Cloud Service Platform for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (”SMEs”) in Northwest China. The two companies, together with Industry and IT Committee of Gansu Province, Lanzhou Municipal Government, and China Mobile Gansu also recently officially established the Cloud Service Association for SMEs of Gansu Province. These initiatives aim at facilitating SMEs’ daily operations through efficient use of cloud computing and promote Lanzhou as a model of the Northwest China in using advance technology to drive industries’ growth. outsourcing22

The establishment of XB-CLOUD and Cloud Service Association for SMEs of Gansu Province is an extension of the Cloud Computing Service Center for SMEs in Northwest China co-launched by Lanzhou Municipal Government, China Mobile Gansu and IBM last year. The Cloud Computing Service Center has been built in China Mobile Gansu’s Xigu premises, and the initial phase of cloud computing services platform and application development are completed.

Contributing to the collaborative effects, iSoftStone will leverage its experience in cloud computing and smart city to provide support in the whole lifecycle management of XB-CLOUD including infrastructure and application development, deployment and operation, while IBM will provide its excellent consultation services and hardware facilities and products. XB-CLOUD currently provides a wide range of services that meet SMEs’ every aspect of needs including communication services, coordinated office management, production management and sales management, etc.

The Chinese government attached great importance on the development of cloud computing, and listed it as a strategic and emerging industry in its 12th Five-Year Plan. The output value of China’s cloud computing industry chain is expected to reach RMB200 billion by 2016. SMEs will benefit enormously from utilizing cloud computing to save cost and enhance efficiency in IT infrastructure set-up, to facilitate scalable application and information sharing, and to be equipped with various software application services to meet specific needs at different stages of their business development.

In the opening ceremony, Niu Xiangdong, Vice Mayor of Lanzhou Municipal Government said, “After ten months’ of initial set-up, XB-CLOUD has been officially launched. This marks the completion and official introduction of the first cloud computing project in Northwest China. Without the joint efforts and coordination of China Mobile Gansu, IBM and iSoftStone, this can never be achieved.” Niu spoke highly of the quick launch and introduction of the platform.

Kang Yanwen, Executive Vice-President of iSoftStone said, “A hundred years ago, the Yellow River Bridge connected both sides of the Yellow River. Today, IT is the bridge connecting SMEs and their informatization developments. iSoftStone is truly honored to be the builder and operator of XB-CLOUD. The successful launch of this platform marked a milestone in our company’s cloud computing development history and has also lead the industry by introducing a new and innovative payment model to integrate SMEs and mobile operators’ bill settlement platforms. iSoftStone will continue to be the operator of XB-CLOUD to help mobile operators to implement and promote cloud services among SMEs.”

Chen Gu, Chief Technology Officer of IBM Software Group in Greater China said, “Cloud computing is not just about integration and sharing of IT resources, but also a new business innovation model to create an ecological environment of economic development, helping all enterprises to utilize cloud computing to improve their business performance.”

Set up at the same time, the Cloud Service Association for SMEs of Gansu Province was initiated by Industry and IT Committee of Gansu Province, Lanzhou Municipal Government, China Mobile Gansu and IBM. As the deputy alliance member of the association, iSoftStone will assist in the promotion and implementation of cloud services. Other alliance members of the association consist of 10 universities including Lanzhou University and Northwest Normal University, China Mobile Gansu and other IT companies.

Source:http://www.marketwatch.com/story/isoftstone-and-ibm-officially-launched-cloud-service-platform-for-smes-in-northwest-china-2013-05-02

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Tags: China Cloud IBM IT SME

Accenture’s “cloud broker” bid

April 30th, 2013

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At first, it seemed as though cloud computing might pose an existential threat to the IT outsourcing industry. If customers can rent IT capabilities over the Internet without setting up their own infrastructure, why would they need outsourced IT skills?

In truth, there is a lot of extra work associated with using cloud computing. In 2009, Gartner analyst Darryl Plummer spotted the need for a so- called “cloud broker”, a function – internal or external – that makes it easier for a business to adopt public cloud services by certifying approved cloud providers, taking care of integration, managing user identity across services, and more besides. accenture

This is a role that IT services providers are understandably keen to fill. Indian IT outsourcer Infosys was one of the first to market with its Cloud Ecosystem Hub service, which it claims can “enable organisations to rapidly adopt, manage and govern a hybrid cloud environment”.

In the last nine months, meanwhile, outsourcing and consultancy giant Accenture has been developing its own cloud brokerage platform, which it unveiled publicly in April 2013.

The Accenture Cloud Platform is made up of a mix of software and services. Front and centre is a procurement portal that can be deployed internally or hosted in the cloud itself.

This gives IT administrators, or perhaps even business users, a single screen through which they can buy services from Accenture’s ecosystem of approved cloud providers.

They can also procure pre-built integrations – for example, from Salesforce.com to NetSuite – that are hosted on Accenture’s infrastructure and paid for on a per-transaction basis.

And thirdly, they can buy pre- configured services from Accenture. For example, the “testing-as-a-service” offering allows customers to rent testing tools on a pay-per-use basis, and spin up cloud infrastructure as a testing environment, in one fell swoop.

All of is this is paid for with a single monthly bill.

“You can look at the platform as an app store, but some of the apps have been pre-integrated,” says Jack Sepple, global senior managing director for Accenture’s cloud practice.

It is a canny idea from Accenture. The platform, the company claims, makes it easier for businesses to govern cloud usage across their organisation. “In the client-server era, there was a big decentralisation of governance for a while, and the same thing is happening with cloud and for valid business reasons,” says Sepple. “Part of the reason for adopting this platform is to help customers pull governance back into one place.”

But it also parks a shop front for Accenture’s services right in front of their IT administrators. In future, Accenture aims to even sell human labour – software testers, for example – through the cloud portal on a pay-per-use basis.

Accenture has yet to announce which suppliers make up its cloud service provider ecosystem, but it has revealed one glaring omission: cloud market- creator Amazon Web Services.

AWS is “definitely on our roadmap”, Sepple says, but for the time being it does not meet the requirements of its enterprise customers. “As a Global 2000 customer, there are certain terms and conditions you expect, and certain service level agreements you need”.

Accenture recently announced that it would be investing a further $400 million in its cloud computing capabilities. The Accenture Cloud Platform will be a part of that, but the company also plans to grow its 6,700- strong cadre of cloud experts.

Cloud computing is already a $1 billion-a-year business for Accenture, Sepple says, which equates to around 3.5% of its 2012 revenues. IDC recently estimated that the global cloud computing market will grow 245% from $40 billion in 2012 to $98 billion in 2016. Accenture expects its cloud business to match or exceed that growth.

But legacy systems are not going away, and Sepple is also confident that Accenture will find work integrating those systems will cloud environments for many years to come. “We did a study looking at how fast our customers want to move to the cloud,” he says. “Even as far out as 2020, they think that are large proportion of the workload will still be based on internal systems.”

“We see a long path ahead of us.”

Source:http://www.information-age.com/it-management/outsourcing-and-supplier-management/123457010/accenture-s–cloud-broker–bid

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Secure-24 Launches Backup as a Service

April 30th, 2013

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Security-conscious enterprises are cool to the cloud backup market. One IT services provider is looking to to thaw things out.

Ahead of EMC World 2013, Southfield, Mich.-based Secure-24, a provider of hosting, cloud and managed IT services for mid-market and enterprise customers, took the wraps off a new Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS) offering that leverages EMC storage infrastructure and its own data center facilities for high-security data protection. The company specializes in SAP and Oracle hosting, as well as IT outsourcing services. outsourcing6

Secure-24 BaaS employs hardware and software from EMC, including Avamar, Networker and Data Domain deduplication storage systems. The firm is a certified Gold EMC Velocity Service Provider and earned EMC’s Journey to the Cloud Award last year.

For its part, Secure-24 data security, high availability and compliance services.

The company’s ITIL-compliant (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) secure data protection services are anchored by data centers in Michigan, Arizona and Nevada. Each facility houses “an EMC backup architecture with over 1.8 Petabytes of protected data deployed,” stated the company.

Taken altogether, Secure-24 eliminates the security and manageability concerns that are preventing enterprise IT departments from taking the cloud backup plunge.

Keith Bankston, Backup Services Manager for Secure-24, notes that his company’s solution addresses the roadblocks to suitably implementing backup operations for critical data. “Many organizations face challenges in justifying the cost to have all critical applications and data backed up properly. A BaaS solution must integrate into existing infrastructure, and provide a single management interface for all administrators,” he said.

Secure-24 solves all that. “Enterprise-level backup and restore requires a number of critical procedures. We provide our clients with a solution to reduce the costly risks of information loss without the high upfront investment,” said Bankston.

Secure-24 joins a growing number of cloud backup providers hoping to lure big companies with demanding data security and compliance requirements.

MezeoCloud introduced a number of updates to its enterprise cloud storage platform in March, including Amazon S3 and OpenStack storage connectors with encryption support. NetApp and Equinix also teamed up last month to provide businesses with secure, Amazon Web Services-based cloud storage. In December, InfraScale boasted that it takes a “three-tiered encryption” approach for its FileLocker cloud storage platform.

Source:http://www.enterprisestorageforum.com/backup-recovery/secure-24-launches-backup-as-a-service.html

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Tags: Cloud Data IT

Gillespie wants to “keep the ship moving”

April 29th, 2013

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Cloud, mobility and IT outsourcing will be Simon Gillespie’s key areas of focus as he takes on the role of CEO of Dimension Data, a gap left open by the departure of Robin Hartendorp, who had been the company’s CEO since 2000. Outsourcing14

Gillespie, who has managed Dimensions Data’s northern region and business integration for the past two years, stepped up to the role as Hartendorp moved onto Gen-i, where he has now taken up the newly created role of general manager for central government.

Speaking about Gillespie’s appointment as CEO, Dilip Kumar, Dimension Data’s Asia Pacific COO, says the promotion was a logical step for the business. “Simon has played a key leadership role in the organisation and has been groomed for this role. We believe he is well suited to lead the continued growth of our New Zealand business. With over 19 years at Dimension Data, he is a proven leader with the enthusiasm to lead the organisation through the next phase of development.”

Gillespie says he wants to make sure the business continues to grow. “We have had fantastic success in the last few years. We are privileged to have high quality clients, we have excellent global backing, and the best talent in the market. I look forward to building on this capability for our business and our client’s business,” he says, adding that the strategy in New Zealand will continue to mirror Dimension Data’s global plans of growth in the cloud, mobility and IT outsourcing areas.

“In many ways I’m looking to ensure Dimension Data continues in business as usual mode. We have had a fantastic few years of growth that some of our larger competitors would be very envious of. I want to keep the ship moving in the same direction. Our momentum has been based around a laser like focus on client delivery as well as product, service and commercial innovation and I intend to keep driving that,” says the newly appointed CEO.
“Over the next few months I will be focussed on talking to our team, our partners and most importantly our clients about how we do this,” he adds.

Gillespie cites some recent deals as signs that the company remains a strong player in the region: “Recent successes like our cloud services contract with Kathmandu, our unified communications contract with PGG Wrightson and the just announced network services partnership with the University of Otago, and our broader commitment to building a presence in Dunedin, are signs of our strength in the market,” he says. He adds that the company’s strategic partnerships with Cisco, Microsoft, IBM and HP will remain “pivotal” to Dimension Data’s success. “We will continue to be relevant to these suppliers by successfully representing their solutions to our clients,” he says.

Gillespie’s management of Dimensions Data’s northern region and business integration in the past two years culminated in the recent integration of three sites into Dimension Data’s new premises in the Auckland Viaduct. He has had direct responsibility for over 350 staff, out of a total of 650 Dimension Data staff in New Zealand. “He has led the New Zealand operation through major growth during which the company grew from 45 staff to over 550, with revenues growing from $20 million to over $240 million,” says Kumar.

Source:http://reseller.co.nz/reseller.nsf/news/gillespie-wants-to-keep-the-ship-moving

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Hosted private cloud services business to surpass US$24bn by 2016

April 2nd, 2013

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Global spending on hosted private cloud services will be more than US$24bn by 2016, IDC has predicted. The sector will grow at a compound annual rate of 50pc a year over the next four years.

IDC says that along the way, hosted private cloud (HPC) services will become the backbone of a new set of infrastructure services, transforming existing provider models for IT outsourcing, hosting infrastructure services, and other key IT industries. outsourcing25

Private cloud services are designed for a single enterprise and have user-defined and controlled restrictions on access and level of resource dedication.

Hosted private cloud is a composite view of two private cloud services deployment models, both of which offer customers and providers different choices about resource dedication, tenancy cost, user access/control of the computing asset, and real and perceived security structures in place.

Deployment models for hosted private cloud
IDC says there are two key deployment models for HPC: dedicated private cloud and virtual private cloud.

Dedicated private cloud offers dedicated 1:1 physical compute and storage resources focused on the needs of one enterprise or extended enterprise. This model offers the greatest customer control over their contracted resource. Examples of dedicated private cloud service offerings include Amazon EC2 Dedicated Instances, IBM SmartCloud Enterprise, Savvis Symphony Dedicated, and Rackspace Cloud: Private Edition.

Virtual private cloud is an adjunct of public cloud services with shared virtualised resources and a range of customer control and security options distinct from most public cloud services. Examples of virtual private cloud service offerings include Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), IBM SmartCloud Enterprise Plus, Savvis Symphony VPDC/Open, and Rackspace RackConnect.

“IDC anticipates that virtual private cloud will be the predominant operational model for companies wanting to take advantage of the speed and lower capital costs associated with cloud computing while cloud service providers will welcome the move away from the expense of dedicated 1:1 physical systems for delivering their business process and data centre outsourcing and other services,” said Robert Mahowald, research president for SaaS and Cloud Services at IDC.

The private cloud market up until 2016
Virtual private cloud is expected to make steady gains in part because of its similarity to public cloud, particularly public Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), which many IT buyers are already using as a cost-saving alternative to replacing ageing infrastructure.

As more companies evaluate their Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS) options, the need to centralise the management of all cloud-sourced capabilities will become apparent. Meanwhile, the majority of dedicated private cloud buyers will be those companies with existing IT outsourcing or hosted infrastructure services contracts.

Potential buyers of dedicated private cloud services will place a premium on off loading the asset management burden and on operational reliability, over and above other cloud features, such as scalability, granular billing, and customer self-service.

When dedicated private cloud grows, the winners are likely to be large incumbent packaged software providers and equipment providers, global systems integrators, professional services firms, and telecommunications service providers.

These providers are working mightily to build single-vendor stacks, providing all the underlying components, from bare metal to ‘ trusted partner applications’. But if virtual private cloud becomes the dominant provider-based model, as IDC expects, it will be more like a public cloud model with mostly standardised, virtually dedicated assets, which means a vastly different set of vendors will benefit.

“Not even the largest technology incumbents can sustain IT market leadership without achieving leadership in cloud services,” Mahowald said.

“Quite simply, vendor failure in cloud services will mean stagnation. Vendors need to be doing everything they can, today, to develop a full range of competitive cloud offerings and operating models optimised around those offerings.”

Source:http://www.siliconrepublic.com/cloud/item/31698-hosted-private-cloud/

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