1、Published in association withCLOUD FOR BUSINESSThe world runs on software.We make sure it works.Perfectly.Transform faster with intelligent observability and automation.Distributed inAlthough this publication is funded through advertising and sponsorship,all editorial is without bias and sponsored f

2、eatures are clearly labelled.For an upcoming schedule,partnership inquiries or feedback,please call+44(0)20 8616 7400 or e-mail .Raconteur is a leading publisher of special-interest content and research.Its pub-lications and articles cover a wide range of topics,including business,finance,sustainabi

3、lity,healthcare,lifestyle and technology.Raconteur special reports are published exclu-sively in The Times and The Sunday Times as well as online at .The information contained in this publication has been obtained from sources the Proprietors believe to be correct.However,no legal liability can be a

4、ccepted for any errors.No part of this publication may be reproduced with-out the prior consent of the Publisher.Raconteur Media/cloud-for-business-2022raconteur/raconteur_ContributorsNMSC,2021$2.94bn$68.71bn20192030451 Research,2021WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF EDGE COMPUTING?Percentage of IT profession

5、als who expect the following to be benefits of an edge computing strategyA MARKET SET TO BOOMProjected size of the global edge computing marketEnable new core business functions and capabilitiesImprove monitoring,response and site readabilityImprove customer experienceOptimise data collection and tr

6、ansferCost saving and optimisation for network communicationCreate/expand revenue-generation opportunities or services38%34%32%35%33%29%INDEPENDEN T P U B L I C AT I O N BY13/03/2022#0789RACONTEUR.NETCampaign Manager Chloe JohnstonDeputy editorFrancesca CassidyReports editorIan DeeringSub-editorNeil

7、 ColeGerrard CowenHead of productionJustyna OConnellDesign and production assistantLouis NassDesignKellie JerrardCelina LuceyColm McDermottSean Wyatt-LivesleyManaging editorSarah VizardDesign directorTim WhitlockIllustrationSara GelfgrenSamuele Mottabetter experience.Edge computing can also aid inte

8、rconnectivity by reducing the amount of data that needs to be backhauled to data centres.”In some ways,the emergence of edge computing represents a new topology for IT.So says Paul Savill,global practice leader for networking and edge computing at Kyn-dryl,the provider of managed infrastruc-ture ser

9、vices that was recently spun out of the technology firm IBM.Companies are looking at the edge as“a third landing spot for their data and appli-cations.Its a new tier between the public cloud and the intelligence at an end device a robot,say,”he explains.But most organisations dont expect their edge

10、and cloud implementations to exist as distinct entities.Rather,they want to find ways to blend the scalability and flexibility they have achieved with the cloud with the responsiveness and autonomy of internet-of-things and satellite processors installed at the edge.Gill believes that“cloud and edge

11、 are pure yin and yang.Each does things the other doesnt do well.When put together effectively,they are highly symbiotic.”They will need to be,as more and more intelligence is moved to the edge.More than 75 billion smart digital devices will be deployed worldwide by 2025,according to projections by

12、research group IHS Markit.And it is neither desirable nor realistic for these to be interacting continuously with the cloud.“When you start to add in multiple devic-es,you see a vast increase in the volume,velocity and variety of the data they gener-Cumulo-nimble:giving the cloud a competitive edge

13、As businesses digitise more assets at the fringes of their operations,theyre adopting edge computing to compensate for the clouds limitations.How well do the two paradigms blend?ike companies around the world,US fast-food chain Taco Bell responded to the pandemics com-mercial impact by accelerating

14、its shift to the cloud.As customers traditional pat-terns of restaurant and drive-through con-sumption changed rapidly and often permanently to include kiosk,mobile and web ordering,often through third-party delivery services,Taco Bell moved the remainder of its group IT to cloud services.But this 1

15、00%cloud-based approach stops at the restaurant door.Given that many of its 7,000 outlets dont have fast and/or reliable internet connections,the company has recognised the limitations of the public cloud model and augmented its approach with edge computing.This set-up enables the company to process

16、 data near the physical point at which it is created,with only a periodic requirement to feed the most valuable material back to the cloud and receive updates from it.Taco Bell is just one of thousands of firms seeking to exploit the fast-evolving and much-hyped distributed IT capability that edge c

17、omputing can offer.“Edge computing is getting so much attention now because organisations have accepted there are things that cloud does poorly,”observes Bob Gill,vice-president of research at Gartner and the founder of the consultancys edge research community.Issues of latency(time-lag)and limited

18、bandwidth when moving data are key potential weaknesses of the centralised cloud model.These drive a clear distinction between the use cases for cloud and edge computing.But the edge is also a focus for many organisations because they want to add intelligence to much of the equipment that sits withi

19、n their operations and to apply artificial intelligence-powered auto-mation at those end points.Early adopters include manufacturers implementing edge computing in their plants as part of their Industry 4.0 plans;logistics groups seeking to give some form of autonomy to dispersed assets;health-care

20、providers that have medical equip-ment scattered across hospitals;and energy companies operating widely dispersed gen-eration facilities.“For such applications to be viable and efficient,their data must be processed as close to the point of origin or consumption as possible,”says George Elissaios,di

21、rector of product management at Amazon Web Services.“With edge computing,these applications can have lower latency,faster response times and give end customers a ate,”says Greg Hanson,EMEA and Latin America vice-president of data man-agement company Informat-ica in.“You simply cant keep moving all o

22、f that data into a central point without incurring a significant cost and becoming reliant on network bandwidth and infrastructure.”In such situations,edge IT performs a vital data-thinning function.Satellite pro-cessors sitting close to the end points filter out the most valuable material,collate i

23、t and dispatch it to the cloud periodically for heavyweight analysis,the training of machine-learning algorithms and longer-term storage.Processors at the edge can also apply data security and privacy rules locally to ensure regulatory compliance.Gill notes that edge computing has shift-ed quickly“f

24、rom concept and hype to suc-cessful implementations.In many vertical industries,it is generating revenue,saving money,improving safety,enhancing the customer experience and enabling entirely new applications and data models.”Before achieving such gains,many edge pioneers are likely to have surmounte

25、d numerous significant challenges.Given that the technology is immature,there are few widely accepted standards that busi-nesses can apply to it.This means that theyre often faced with an overwhelmingly wide range of designs for tech ranging from sensors and operating systems to software stacks and

26、data management methods.Such complexity is reflected in a wide-spread shortage of specialist expertise.As Savill notes:“Many companies dont have all the skills they need to roll out edge com-puting.Theyre short of people with real competence in the orchestration of these distributed application arch

27、itectures.”The goal may be to blend cloud and edge seamlessly into a unified model,but the starting points can be very different.There are two fundamentally different though not totally contradictory schools of thought,according to Gill.The cloud out perspective,favoured by big cloud service provide

28、rs such as Amazon,Microsoft and Google,views the edge as an extension of the cloud model that extends the capabili-ties of their products.The other approach is known as edge in.In this case,organisations develop edge-na-tive applications that occasionally reach up to the cloud to,say,pass data on to

29、 train a machine-learning algorithm.Adherents of either approach are seeing significant returns on their investments when they get it right.“We may be in the early phase of exploit-ing that combination of IoT,edge and cloud,but the capabilities enabling these distrib-uted architectures the software

30、control and orchestration tools and the integration capabilities have already reached the point where theyre highly effective,”Savill reports.“Some companies that are figuring this out are seeing operational savings of 30%to 40%compared with more tradition-al configurations.”In doing so,they are als

31、o heralding a large-scale resurgence of the edifice that cloud helped to tear down:on-premises IT albeit in a different form.“In the next 10 to 20 years,the on-premis-es profile for most companies will not be servers,”Elissaios predicts.“It will be con-nected devices and billions of them.”M I G R AT

32、 I O NH O S T I N GS E C U R I T YThere are key considerations in moving to the cloud even for those with the smallest budgetsNetflix and Spotify prefer a single-provider solution,yet this approach remains unfashionableWhat should your firm be doing to protect itself from cybercriminals probing for

33、weak links?040710Kenny MacIverL Cloud and edge are pure yin and yang When put together effectively,theyre highly symbioticE D G E C O M P U T I N GPeter ArcherBestselling author and experienced journalist,he is a former staffer on the Press Association.David BenadyWriter,editor,content creator and a

34、nalyst who specialises in media,marketing,retail and IT.Adrian BridgwaterSpecialist author on software engineering and application development who contributes to Forbes and Computer Weekly.Marianne CurpheyAward-winning financial writer,blogger and columnist for various publications,and former staff

35、at The Guardian and The Times.Kenny MacIver Award-winning journalist and ex-editor of Information Age and Computer Business Review.Charles Orton-Jones PPA Business Journalist of the Year,former editor of EuroBusiness,specialising in fintech and high growth startups.Chris Stokel-WalkerTechnology and

36、culture journalist,with bylines in The New York Times,The Guardian and Wired.Mark TaylorFreelance business journalist and editor,who specialises in coverage of compliance in highly-regulated sectors,where law meets business meets innovation.C L O U D F O R B U S I N E S S02Commercial featureWhy is t

37、he exponential growth in data volumes such a challenge?Its absolutely true that data con-tinues to explode every year,which is a fact in DevOps and security.Whether you are talking about log analytics,secu-rity data,or other business metrics,the output generated grows so fast it over-whelms traditio

38、nal architectures.The headline result is a spiralling cost.Most data service providers charge by data volume or the number of queries you run,so when data grows exponen-tially,so do costs.The performance also takes a hit.Youd think more data equals better results,but exponential data vol-umes can le

39、ad to slow or shallow ana-lytics.This leads to companies carefully cherry-picking the analytics they want to run,resulting in lost valuable insights.In a way,it forces companies to look for the needle in a haystack.What is the problem with traditional solutions?Traditional methods slow down as the d

40、ata grows in volume.Every query takes longer to perform which impacts the entire enterprise.If you are an organisation with 300 developers and each developer runs 10 queries a day which is not a lot thats 3,000 a day.If each query takes just 30 seconds longer,you are losing two full workdays,across

41、the organisation every day.Worse is the way cost and perfor-mance infl uence the approach to ana-lytics.Companies know they dont have the time or resources to search all the data,so they only run quick queries or limit their scope,reducing their observability.Rather than offer-ing insights,data grow

42、th is,therefore,a major problem at present.What is the optimum approach?At Coralogix,weve fl ipped the architecture.Traditionally,the sequence is to store data and then analyse it.Our method is the reverse.We analyse data in real time,with no delays,and then let the cus-tomer choose whether to store

43、 it or not.This means every drop of data can be analysed.Users can then archive it,throw it away,or if anything is interest-ing they can put it on hot storage for frequent search.The advantages are huge.It reduces cost,increases coverage,and solves performance issues.Analysis is done in real time,wi

44、th no delays;insights can be spotted the moment they occur;teams no longer need to cherry-pick which queries they run;and the cost is much lower.Interoperability is crucial too.Coralogix is not dependent on a storage or database schema.We allow multiple syntaxes and dashboards.Users can plug Coralog

45、ix into Kibana,Grafana,Jaeger,Tableau,or SQL client.Alternatively,users can use our API or CLI tool.How can companies query the data for insights?Companies are welcome to use their current suite of analyt-ics tools and dashboards.Integration couldnt be easier.And we provide the most extensive alerti

46、ng mechanisms on the market.We offer anomaly detection to identify unusual code behaviour like error ratio spikes and code fl ow anom-alies.Our machine learning alerts are world class,offering a dramatic reduc-tion in alert fatigue which stems from false positives.Users can defi ne an event,and then

47、 our alerts will let them know it happened more than usual.Most importantly,our alerts run on their complete data set in real time,spotting problems far earlier than pos-sible with human observation or tradi-tional methods.Does this methodof analysis impact costs?Legacy vendors charge linearly.The m

48、ore data you produce,the more you pay.As data grows exponen-tially,so do costs.Coralogix operates a radically different billing model.We charge by use case.You pay for whats important to you.So monitoring data,which is the everyday stuff you need to focus on in real time,is priced dif-ferently to fr

49、equently searched data.Compliance data,which is of low-operational value,is the cheapest.This way,you pay per value instead of volume.Each data priority level is priced according to its business value.Crucially,you get access to all Coralogix features no matter what use case you opt for.The key is t

50、hat costs are decoupled from data volumes.Your organisation can produce as much data as it needs,without costs rising lockstep.Tell us about CoralogixI co-founded the company in 2015 and today we serve more than 2,000 clients such as M,Masterclass,UCSF,and Fiverr.We also cooperate with more than 10,

51、000 DevOps and engineering users,moni-toring half a million applications,with more than 3 million events processed per second.Importantly,we have all of the nec-essary qualifi cations including HIPAA,PCI,ISO/IEC 27001 and 27701,GDPR,and FCA to work with the most demanding clients across fi nancial s

52、ervices,healthcare,government,and other highly regulated industries.Is it easy for companies to work with Coralogix?Because of our architecture,onboarding is made easy.We use common syntaxes such as the Elastic syntax,PromQL,and SQL.And we plug into any dashboard you have in your ecosystem.And becau

53、se we dont change the collection layer you can send data from anywhere,any way you like.You can visualise it any way you like,and use any syntax you like.Theres no vendor lock-in and you dont have to retrain your people.What is the companys fi ve-year vision?We started with log data,and con-tinued w

54、ith metric information,such as performance and infrastruc-ture monitoring.We launched a security product for posture,compliance,and network security monitoring.And now were launching tracing and APM.Our plan for the future is a continu-ation of this vision;one where we are a unifi ed generic data pl

55、atform that can accept any data,analyse it anyway,and display it with any syntax.In the next few years,that will extend to business information,marketing information,and compliance data.For us,its all a data problem we know how to solve.Visit to learn moreAnalytics in reverse how to benefi t from th

56、e boom in data volumeMore data means better insights,right?Ariel Assaraf,co-founder and CEO of Coralogix,explains why switching the sequence of data analysis helps ensure that data insights arent lost in the dinWeve fl ipped the architecture.We analyse data in real time,with no delays,and then let t

57、he customer choose whether to store it or not how to benefi t from the boom in data volumeMore data means better insights,right?,co-founder and CEO of Coralogix,explains why switching the sequence of data analysis helps ensure that data insights Q&APlatinum linings:how to bring down cloud expenditur

58、eloud services are gobbling up an increasingly large share of corpo-rate technology budgets as busi-nesses rush to digitalise.The search is on for ways to keep costs in check and extract maximum value for money from the cloud.Gartner calculates that expenditure on public cloud services will surge fr

59、om 9%of global enterprise IT budgets in 2020 to more than 14%in 2025.Its researchers have estimated that global spending in this area rose by 23%year on year in 2021 to$332bn(249bn).Theyre expecting a further 20%increase this year.“Humanity is generating ever more data,”observes Maxim Melamedov,co-f

60、ounder and CEO of Zesty,a provider of software designed to optimise cloud utilisation.“Its inevitable that we will see inflation in the costs of running,storing,managing and getting insights from this tremendous amount of data.”Businesses have been updating their IT infrastructure for more than a de

61、cade as they keep pace with digitalisation trends in their industries,but the process in many sectors has been accelerated by the Covid crisis.Industries ranging from retail and entertainment to financial services and travel have been going digital-first.They have moved their computing provision fro

62、m small-scale,in-house data centres to the big public cloud providers,such as Ama-zon Web Services(AWS),Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure.With providers carrying the risk and cap-ital expenditure of running data centres and renting out storage and computing capacity,this already offers businesses con

63、-siderable efficiency savings.But,even with these improvements,business leaders are starting to become sensitive to the scale of the investment required.“Cloud costs are becoming more visible to the C-suite as a growing recurring expense,”notes Martin Hosken,chief tech-nologist for cloud services at

64、 VMware.This topic is“moving up the food chain in most organisations because it is so outcome driv-en and CEOs care about outcomes”.Moving from in-house data centres to outsourced cloud provision can actually prove more costly at first,because it may take several months to transfer everything over.I

65、n that bimodal interim,companies are paying to use both systems.A cost-saving tip from Hosken is for firms to rationalise the use of their apps during the migration rather than doing a lift and shift,in which the apps are moved at the same time.While businesses will want their move to the cloud to b

66、e quick and efficient,they should first carefully assess each app they use to ensure it isnt consuming an unnec-essary amount of processing power and storage space,he stresses.Companies should keep their wits about them and beware of public cloud costs that can quickly escalate as applications scale

67、 up to millions of users.Providers offer the ability to cap usage and there are ways of reducing waste,so an app will consume computing resources only when necessary.A cost-saving method that many compa-nies have adopted is to use market forces and play competing vendors off against each another,Hos

68、ken notes.Rather than depending on a single provider for all their cloud needs,which would give them less bargaining power,they are using two or more in order to angle for discounts.“We are seeing a lot more of the deliber-ate use of multiple clouds to reduce cost and improve bargaining power,”he sa

69、ys.He adds that negotiations with vendors are typically managed by the chiefs of IT,finance and procurement,plus any director with the ability to strike a good deal.This underlines the fact that public cloud provision has extended beyond a concern just for the IT team to become an enter-prise-wide i

70、ssue.With the entire C-suite focusing on ballooning cloud costs,there is pressure on the whole business to ensure that its use of the cloud is efficient.The greatest cloud usage usually occurs on the customer-facing side of a business,but all other functions need to be aware of the costs they can co

71、ntrol in this area.Some companies are setting up cloud centres of excellence,bringing together leaders from across the business to assess expenditure and decide where cutbacks can be made.The main public cloud vendors offer soft-ware that enables companies to analyse the costs of running individual

72、applications.A company running a food delivery service can track the cost down to a specific app and establish the appropriate usage,for instance.In the same way,every business unit,including HR,R&D and app develop-ers,can monitor the costs of their activities in the cloud and then see where any was

73、t-age is occurring.Melamedov is a proponent of“right-siz-ing”,which entails using software that can predict how much storage and computing power a company is likely to need over a given period.This enables cloud provision to be dialled up or down as and when need-ed to ensure optimal efficiency.Sid

74、Nag,vice-president in Gartners tech-nology and service provider group,agrees that companies need to keep a tight rein on their cloud usage.The holy grail of cloud computing is self-service,enabling end users to use the cloud under their own As businesses produce ever more data,the costs of handling

75、all this material have rocketed.Finding efficiency savings in this area is becoming a C-suite prioritysteam through self-service application pro-gramming interfaces.“But that approach has its hazards,”he warns.“You also need to have oversight so that you dont have runaway costs and rogue and shadow

76、clouds being stood up by your end users.You want to have a curated environment,such as a portal where you provide the end capabilities for your users to consume.”Data centres are massive guzzlers of energy,the cost of which is spiralling at present.But the big providers are all aiming to reach net-z

77、ero carbon emissions Ama-zon,for instance,is the worlds largest cor-porate buyer of renewable energy and enterprises can use their cloud contracts to offset their own emissions.Its clear that,as long as the costs of accessing transformational cloud technolo-gy keep rising at such a remarkable rate,t

78、he issue of how to control them will climb the C-suites agenda at much the same pace.NOTICING THE COST OF THE CLOUDHow long IT,finance and operations leaders say it takes to notice a rise in cloud costsAnodot,2021CDavid BenadyC O S T S T R AT E GY Its inevitable we will see inflation in the costs of

79、 running,storing and getting insights from the huge amounts of data we are producing Immediately Hours Days Weeks Months4.7%4.5%4.6%24.4%36%23.3%11.6%18.2%23.1%36.4%36.1%27.3%14.1%13.6%12%Small businessesEnterpriseAll respondentsR A C O N T E U R.N E T03GOING GREENER WITH THE CLOUDThere are many rea

80、sons to move to data-led and cloud-based business models:the increased efficiency,the cost savings,the decision-making agility.But there is also an environmental case to be made.Businesses are increasingly concerned about their ESG credentials and there are opportunities to be greener by building su

81、stainability into enterprise IT strategyBUSINESSES CARE ABOUT VENDORS SUSTAINABILITYImportance of a cloud vendors sustainability and green initiatives to global enterprise customersTHE CLOUD HAS HELPED DATA SERVICES BECOME MORE EFFICIENTEnergy use by data centres globallySomewhat important I will pa

82、y more attention to providers who focus on sustainability,but its not the only factor56%Not really important Sustainability is not really a factor in my cloud decision-making20%Not at all important Not even a consideration13%CLOUD PROVIDERS ARE MAKING EFFORTS TO BE MORE SUSTAINABLECarbon reduction g

83、oals of the worlds largest cloud providersCLOUD STRATEGIES COULD BE BETTERPercentage of companies that have taken measures in their cloud computing/virtualisation strategy to reduce their carbon footprintGoogle,Microsoft,Amazon,2021Science,2020Capgemini,2021CloudBolt,202111%Vital I will not do busin

84、esses with a cloud vendor that isnt thinking and acting greenincrease in data-centre energy usageCarbonfreeCarbon negativeNet-zero carbon emissionsOnly aincrease in computing capacity of data centresincrease in storage capacityGoogleMicrosoftAmazon2030203020402010194tWh2018205tWh57%32%10%Not aware/n

85、ot implementedPilotsDeployed66%increase in internet trafficof technology leaders said their IT departments were expected to help their organisation achieve its sustainability goalsCloudBolt,202179%potential reduction in energy usage by European companies that switch to the public cloud from self-man

86、aged data centres451 Research,202180%tonnes of CO2 emissions that continued adoption of the cloud could prevent from 2021 to 2024Capgemini,20211billionpositive difference in efficiency between cloud storage and average enterprise IT in the US451 Research,20213.6xBUSINESSES ARE INVESTING HEAVILY IN T

87、HE CLOUDEnterprise spending on cloud infrastructure servicesStatista,20222001920202021$32bn$46.5bn$69bn$96bn$129.5bn$178bn1025C L O U D F O R B U S I N E S S04Commercial featureCommercial featurePace to discontinue the third party man-agement solution they had in place and use preemptible

88、s directly,”says Purcell.As with solving any cloud computing challenge,technology is only one piece of the puzzle.That is why DoiT supports clients with the often challenging job of achieving behavioural change across their organisations,so that teams at all levels embody cloud best practice.“Someon

89、e needs to own the job of cloud optimisation.Finance cannot unilater-ally own it as they often lack the technical experience,and engineering/operations often lack the operational imperative to optimise it,”Purcell says.“Regardless of what we call it,it requires organisational support,constant focus

90、and authority to drive behavioural change,”With global spend on public cloud ser-vices predicted to hit$1.1tn(760bn)by the end of 2023,the need to get better value out cloud systems has become urgent.s the digital economy accelerates,most businesses are aware of the unprecedented potential for effi-

91、ciency and innovation that leveraging the cloud can bring.Yet getting the best value and performance out of cloud systems can be challenging,and many businesses fail to realise the benefits despite investing heav-ily in new technology.According to a recent survey by US soft-ware firm Flexera,cloud b

92、udget overruns of up to 40%are a problem for more than a third of businesses,and one in 12 compa-nies overspend by more.It comes as half of all workloads glob-ally are expected to be in the cloud by the end of 2022.Agility,scalability,reliability and speedCloud consultancy DoiT International helps d

93、igitally savvy companies around the world to better leverage public cloud services and technologies to achieve their business goals.By providing intelligent technology,unmatched expertise and unlimited tech-nical support at no extra cost,DoiT enables clients to harness the agility,scalability,relia-

94、bility and speed that the cloud can offer.“There is no doubt that companies today understand how essential public cloud adoption is to their business growth and success.However,the dynamic and rapidly changing nature of the environment cre-ates operational and management com-plexities that require c

95、ontinuous focus and investment,”says chief product officer John Purcell.“Our decades of cumulative experi-ence in cloud operations,management and optimisation technology mean DoiT is uniquely positioned to help the customers who partner with us.We work with these companies to take better control of

96、their cloud estate and ensure its working in support of their business goals,both today and in the future.”A licensed reseller of Amazon Web Services(AWS),Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure platforms,DoiT helps firms to architect,build and optimise complex large-scale distributed cloud systems,and to

97、ensure those systems are operating in absolute alignment with their businesses.More than half of its staff are engineers with years of experience building projects in the public cloud,and they can provide support and guidance on areas such as cost optimisation,infrastructure review,application moder

98、nisation,containers and Kubernetes,big data and machine learning,and training.“We educate your team on best prac-tices and guiding principles for a success-ful implementation,”says Purcell.Controlling costsOne of the cornerstones of DoiTs offer is helping companies optimise and reduce their cloud sp

99、ending so they get best return on investment from their cloudapplications.Many firms find it hard to optimise cloud costs because they have traditionally viewed IT spending as capital expenditure which is outlaid from the start,Purcell says.However,cloud spending fluctuates based on user need and is

100、 better viewed as an operating cost to be managed over time.“One of the foundational promises of the cloud is that you only pay for what you use.But many firms end up having infrastruc-ture running in their cloud that their busi-ness does not actually need,”Purcell says.“Like any other superfluous s

101、pend in a corporate budget,this waste suppresses critical margins that fuel the profitable or viable operation of the business.”To tackle the problem,companies must maintain an accurate real-time view of their needs and continuously make consid-ered decisions on the best ways to change consumption a

102、nd allocate spend.However,many struggle,and budgets can easily spiral out of control.By offering expert consultancy and a powerful technology suite,DoiT helps clients to instil robust cost-manage-ment practices and ensure clients do not waste money on idle processing power or storage.Its automated c

103、ost management and governance tools alert IT leaders to issues such as budget overruns,cost spikes and underused resources,allow-ing them to streamline policy creation and enforcement and use monitoring and budget planning effectively.DoiT also helps firms to understand and better leverage the often

104、 confusing pricing plans and discounts offered by the major cloud providers so that budgets are put to best use.Companies who are complacent could find themselves wasting money and missing out on vital productivity gains the cloud has to offer,says Purcell.“Optimisation has become the next fron-tier

105、 in cloud computing,and firms ignore that at their peril.There is no point lev-eraging the cloud only to let inefficiencies erode the agility,scalability,reliability and speed gains that are there for the taking.”To find out more about how DoiT can help you maximise your cloud investment,visit:doit-

106、Achieving changeIn one example,DoiT helped Pace Revenue,a provider of business intelligence to the hospitality industry,to streamline and optimise its cloud architecture.Due to Covid-19,the UK-based firm wanted to identify areas of overspending and root out productivity blackspots.“We reviewed Paces

107、 cloud spend and architecture and proposed a transition of their workload onto preemptible nodes and some re-architecture of their applica-tions,”says Purcell.As a result Pace saw at least a 50%reduction in compute costs with no detectable impact on their application and considerable improvement to

108、Google Kubernetes Engine preemptibles and virtual machine performance.It also achieved significant savings on third-party management fees.“Our technical expertise and clear implementation guidance was enough for A Regardless of what we call it,cloud optimisation requires organisational support,const

109、ant focus and authority to drive behavioural changeThe cloud offers firms huge benefits,but only if its used in a smart,cost-efficient and cost-effective way.John Purcell,chief product officer at cloud consultancy DoiT International,shares how companies can get the best value from their cloud invest

110、mentOptimising use to unlock the true potential of cloudout of reach to all but the biggest and most well-funded multinationals.”But firms should not adopt such technol-ogy without first considering their strategic direction.Cloud transformations are com-plex and,unless are executed properly,can lea

111、d to serious operational inefficiencies and data leakage.Before parting with any money,CIOs and CEOs should take a step back and review their business model.Ash Finnegan digital transformation officer at Conga,an enterprise cloud com-puting and data company,observes that a lot of SMEs have been rush

112、ing their digital transformations.“Regardless of their size,organisations need to complete a thorough assessment and understand where they are with regard to their digital maturity today,”she says.“This involves analysing their current operational model,identifying strengths and weaknesses,and estab

113、lishing how they can better connect with their customers and serve them.”Do sweat the small stuffor several years,Peter Ambrose,MD of The Partnership,contem-plated moving the 20 million files held by his business to the cloud.Every evening,the 80 employees at the property law firms offices in London

114、 and Guildford would back up the days convey-ancing documents,searches,emails and other correspondence to a huge bank of on-site servers.“Each case generates about 160 docu-ments,”he explains.“Every time we creat-ed a document,we stored it.We needed to back up our data and keep it safe because it is

115、 incredibly sensitive personal informa-tion that includes bank details and identi-ty checks.My top concern which literally kept me awake at night for years was whether that data was vulnerable to a ran-somware attack.”Finally,after months of research and planning,in November last year The Part-nersh

116、ip migrated all archived and live case data to a cloud service.“It was scary Ill make no bones about it,”Ambrose admits.“Although we had done all the tests,until youve actually moved this huge amount of data,you worry about whether its going to work.”The Partnership is one of a growing num-ber of SM

117、Es that have successfully moved their operations to the cloud.Another is Dakota Hotels.The luxury accommodation group needed a cost-effective cloud-based software solution that could be scaled up as the business grew.It also wanted to harness the potential of the cloud to help with the HR challenges

118、 that the pandemic had forced upon the hos-pitality sector.As an additional benefit,the company gained greater insights into its costs and commercial opportunities.“The time savings weve accrued by mov-ing to the cloud have freed people up to SMEs have as much to ponder as large companies do when co

119、nsidering cloud migrations.Even those on the tiniest budgets would be unwise to become preoccupied by providers headline pricesfocus on innovation,”says the companys operations director,Andrew Ovenstone.“This has enabled our finance professionals to move away from number-crunching and become value c

120、reators.”All hotels under the Dakota brand com-pile their own profit-and-loss statements,which meant that a cloud-based solution would be an ideal solution to support multi-ple data entries.This has granted each hotel the autonomy to input data without compromising consolidation,reporting or intelli

121、gence at group level.For SMEs,there are several key factors to consider when contemplating a move to the cloud.The first of these is the issue of cost versus opportunity.“Cost matters for SMEs,but you also need to think about what moving to the cloud can enable for your business,”says Dr Antonio Wei

122、ss,senior partner at The PSC,a consultancy that helps providers of public services with their digital transformations.“If you hold data and applications on your premises,you probably run quite a restricted service,”says Weiss,whose book,The Practical Guide to Digital Transforma-tion,was published in

123、 February.“The cloud enables huge possibilities in terms of data processing and analysis.It also offers better security and improved performance for your customers and staff.So,while you should aim to keep costs low in any cloud transition,you need to focus on how it can make your business better an

124、d to ensure that you have a plan to capi-talise on this.”The second key factor to consider is flexi-bility.One of the challenges for The Part-nership was to find a cloud provider that would store and register multiple versions of documents rather than providing a static record.This enables employees

125、 to return to the material and update it where necessary.“We looked at Microsoft and Amazon Web Services,but found that they wouldnt work for us,”Ambrose says.“We needed a system that could cope better with change-able data,so we partnered with Egnyte.”The third consideration is the level of functio

126、nality required in the short and long term.SMEs need to be realistic about what level of service and availability they will need,says Mairead OConnor,executive for cloud engineering at AND Digital.“Public cloud platforms enable SMEs to occupy the same playing field as big,cash-rich corporations,”she

127、 says.“Every compa-ny has been granted access to technology like machine-learning tools.Until recently,functionality of this sort would have been FMarianne CurpheyC L O U D M I G R AT I O N For businesses using simpler cloud applications,the primary driver should be functionality,followed by securit

128、y,compliance,scalability and costNetwrix,202045%of small businesses worldwide identify IT and security team staffing as a challenge to cloud securityHashiCorp,202160%of small businesses worldwide have adopted multi-cloud solutionsStatista,2021$863bnamount spent by SMBs on IT services worldwide in 20

129、21R A C O N T E U R.N E T05Commercial featurepossible,will the needle begin to move in the right direction.”A fundamental change in cybersecurity design and application is now essential.Fortunately,technologies such as machine learning present an opportunity to ensure all the separate security stack

130、s can work in unity,rather than in silos.As a result,over three-quarters of organisations said they plan to invest in a cloud-based security platform that allows their security prod-ucts to autonomously share security event data to better protect their business.Headquartered at its UK innovation hub

131、,Censornets Autonomous Integrated Cloud Security platform integrates attack intelligence across email,web and cloud to ensure cyber defences react at lightning speed.This machine learning-powered platform takes threat feeds from millions of users globally and combines them with commercially availabl

132、e and government threat feeds from the likes of the NSA and GCHQ.These insights are automatically fed into its decision engine,enabling it to react autonomously to all threats.“For security to be effective,youve got to join it all up and make sure the individual Why artificial intelligence is the an

133、swer to cyber alert overload Organisations face an almost relentless onslaught of cyber threats,made worse by complex,siloed defence systems and rising stress levels.Autonomous cybersecurity facilitates a simpler,more integrated approachybersecurity has become one of the most pressing issues for bus

134、i-ness leaders.To thrive,organisa-tions need to tap into sophisticated tech-nologies that allow them to operate more efficiently,run a remote workforce and improve customer experience.However,cybercriminals are now also able to tap into their own increasingly sophisticated tool-sets to exploit them.

135、A study of IT and security leaders by Censornet found that the current threat from cyber attacks is so high that a third of UK mid-market organisations suffered an outage that knocked them offline for more than a day last year.Ransomware is a particular threat-and more than two-thirds of companies f

136、eel unable to protect themselves from it.Some 21%of those hit by a ransomware attack were forced to pay hackers an average of 144,000 in ransoms in 2021,with some companies coerced into handing over more than 500,000.We all know that the greatest asset to an organisation-its people-is also typ-icall

137、y its largest vulnerability.Some 17%of companies reported serious attacks over the past year after employees opened sus-picious or malicious emails.This number rises to 28%among businesses turning over more than 51m.These vulnerabilities have worsened amid the recent trend in remote working,which en

138、ables hackers to exploit the gaps caused by dispersed operations outside traditional network perimeters.“The financial and reputational cost of cybercrime is constantly rising,”says Ed Macnair,CEO at cloud security firm Censornet.“Meanwhile,the threat land-scape continues to evolve.Even the shock-in

139、g events were seeing in Ukraine are con-tributing,with Russian malware actors taking advantage of the situation to steal and disrupt-and not just in Ukraine but globally.Malicious actors exploited the pandemic and they would exploit anything else to find new ways to attack companies.”This widespread

140、 failure to prevent cyberattacks is not caused by a lack of response.Organisations have invested sig-nificantly in attempts to tackle cyber risks.Censornet research discovered that more than half of mid-market organisations pur-chased cybersecurity products specifi-cally designed to protect their hy

141、brid and remote workers just during the pandemic.Despite their best intentions,this extensive accumulation of products aimed at bolstering cyber defences has actually had the opposite effect.Incessant floods of alerts from myriad siloed security solu-tions not only add new layers of complex-ity to I

142、T estates,which hackers love to exploit,but they also critically overwhelm security professionals.The average number of security products managed in a single organisation stands at 24,according to Censornet,and nearly a third of companies are managing more than 31 security products at once.This can

143、gen-erate in excess of 700 cybersecurity alerts on an average day,meaning that a security professional has to investigate more than 35 security alerts every hour.This leaves only 102 seconds to assess each alert to determine whether it is a genuine threat or a false alarm.More than a third(38%)of mi

144、d-market security staff said they have even received a call in the middle of the night to investigate a cyber security incident.This flood of demands at all hours trans-lates into almost half of security profes-sionals feeling overwhelmed,rising to 59%in the public sector.Its not surpris-ing,then,th

145、at one in 10 cybersecurity professionals admits to having suffered from sleep deprivation due to cybersecu-rity concerns.The average security team member sleeps for 5.7 hours per night,considerably less than the seven hours or more recommended by the NHS.“Each cybersecurity product is acquired to do

146、 a specific job,but over time,through adding new layers of security,the over-lap between those products grows,”says Macnair.“You end up with alert overload:hundreds or thousands of alerts coming into an IT security team every day.The ability to cope with the alerts generally stacks talk to each othe

147、r,”says Macnair.“That is really difficult to do when youve got different vendors providing differ-ent elements.Weve built a platform that looks after this in four core areas of secu-rity email,web,cloud applications and authentication which together account for 93%of the cyber threat landscape.“By m

148、aking sure they autonomously com-municate we completely simplify security.These products take action on their own;theyre not just pinging off alerts,theyre actually doing something about it.Crucially,this gives time back to overwhelmed IT secu-rity professionals,who can then focus their efforts on t

149、he most sophisticated attacks.The future of cybersecurity is integration and automation,and businesses not taking part will quickly fall behind.”Discover the biggest threats facing the UK Mid-Market and what comes next: on the size of the company,but its becoming unmanageable for most teams,so they

150、have to try to select the most pressing threats to deal with.“The average security analyst can deal with maybe eight or 10 different threats a day,but some of them are getting hun-dreds every single hour.How do you make sense of all that noise?Organisations must work smarter,not harder.Only when sec

151、urity systems work seam-lessly together,faster than is humanly number of cybersecurity alerts caused by point products on an average day716average number of hours each security team sleeps each night5.7C Only when security systems work seamlessly together,faster than is humanly possible,will the nee

152、dle begin to move in the right directionTHE RISING MONETARY THREAT FROM RANSOMWAREThe amounts mid-sized companies were forced to pay hackersof companies have suffered a ransomware attack,and were forced to pay hackers an average of 144,000 21%2.2%4.9%4.9%9.8%14.6%17.1%19.5%2.4%7.3%4.9%2.4%500 or les

153、s501-5,0005,001-10,00010,001-25,00025,001-50,00050,001-100,000100,001-200,000200,001-250,000250,001-500,000500,001-1m1m+Censornet,2021Censornet,2021The fourth key factor to consider is the likely level of service and tech support required.Despite the hurdles involved,migration to the cloud can yield

154、 many ben-efits,as The Partnership and Dakota Hotels have discovered.Using subscription cloud services elimi-nates the need to maintain and upgrade technology,which can be costly and time-consuming for SMEs.But it is vital to establish exactly how much support you expect from your cloud provider and

155、 to be realistic about your own IT abilities.The provision of adequate tech support is key for smaller firms,stresses Charlie Daw-son,marketing and channel director at cloud provider Imscad Global.“There will be some SMEs with the resources to support their own cloud migration and provide ongoing su

156、pport.Bt they should ensure the provider they choose offers a good level of support,including the ability to have issues resolved using in-person communication,”he says.Security is the fifth major consideration.For Ambrose,his decision to use a cloud ser-vice was prompted by the ongoing chal-lenge o

157、f protecting The Partnerships in-house servers.Yet price and perfor-mance are often the first considerations for many SMEs,even though a loss of data could have catastrophic ramifications.While factors such as affordability and capacity are clearly fundamental,most cloud providers offer only the mos

158、t basic security features,especially at the budget end of the spectrum,warns Trevor Morgan,who is a product manager at data security specialist Comforte.“This simply wont be enough if your highly sensitive information on finances,intellectual property and customers is destined for the cloud,”he says

159、.Concerns about regulatory compliance will come to the fore here,especially for businesses in industries that require very strict risk controls for example,defence,healthcare and financial services.“Each market will present different con-straints,but companies operating in the same space may still h

160、ave different appe-tites for risk,”notes Dean Clark,chief tech-nology officer at digital consultancy GFT Group.“The ideal balance between securi-ty,compliance,cost and functionality will depend on the individual organisation.”SMEs should also determine whether the solution they are considering has t

161、he right level of security for them in place.Two-fac-tor authentication(2FA)should be a mini-mum standard,according to Lee Wrall,who is a director at managed services provider Everything Tech.“Were seeing that some cloud solutions are putting 2FA into their future roadmap,but we believe it should al

162、ready be there,”he says.“For more robust infrastructure requirements,wed recommend opting for bigger,more established solutions such as Microsoft or Amazon,as these provide fea-tures such as security,compliance and the ability to scale up as standard.For businesses using simpler cloud applications,t

163、he primary driver should be functionality,followed by security,compli-ance,scalability and cost.”Database requirements constitute the sixth and final key consideration.In the cloud,storage capacity is one of the meas-ures that service providers use to charge for their offering.If you do not have sig

164、nificant volumes of data,the cloud may not provide value for money.“For any company that needs some level of scale and availability,the cloud is usually the best option,”says Andrew Oliver,senior director of product marketing at MariaDB,an open-source database provider.“For a very small database wit

165、h merely internal users,hosting in house might be more cost-effective if the company has the time and expertise and a careful plan for off-site backup.”The time savings weve accrued by moving to the cloud have freed our people up to focus more on innovationSMALL BUSINESSES ARE UPPING INVESTMENT IN T

166、HE CLOUDSMB annual spend on public cloud worldwideUp to$120,000$120,000 to$600,000$600,000 to 1.2m$1.2m to$2.4m$2.4m to$12mMore than$12mFlexera,202151%0%27%56%10%12%7%11%3%17%2%4%2019 2020he COP26 climate summit may be over,but the pivotal dialogue around how tech-nologies such as cloud can help bus

167、i-nesses achieve climate goals will remain at the forefront of the digital transformation discussion in 2022.Now,more than ever,businesses will be thinking carefully about their own net-zero strategies and how they can use technology to be more sustainable.The good news is that the cloud can be a bi

168、g part of the solution.At techUK,we work with our mem-bers to showcase how the latest devel-opment in cloud services can empower businesses to be effective,efficient and sustainable.In doing so,we are help-ing build that bridge between the cloud industry and end users,so they can work together to mi

169、tigate climate change.But how can cloud really empower UK businesses in the move to a more sustainable future?Moving operations to the cloud means taking advantage of the higher use rates of on-demand infrastructure;more efficient cooling and newer hard-ware optimised by cloud providers;and the pote

170、ntial for more sustainable,flexible and resilient supply chains.In fact,Accenture estimates that an infrastructure as a service(IaaS)migration could save the average busi-ness 65%on energy use and reduce carbon emissions from their IT sys-tems by up to 84%.However,unlocking the full poten-tial of a

171、sustainable cloud requires pro-active engagement and shared responsibility between cloud provid-ers and end-users to ensure efficient and effective deployment.Working together,they can navigate re-engi-neering legacy applications and devel-oping the best procedures to measure carbon emissions associ

172、ated with cloud workloads.But at the heart of this approach must be effective data management,which can help businesses be proac-tive in identifying redundant or rarely used data.This collaboration between cloud pro-viders and end-users is crucial.Working together toward net-zero targets not only en

173、sures efficient and effective cloud deployment,but also places end-users in a favourable position to expedite the sustainable adoption of exciting emerging technologies such as high-performance computing,machine learning and quantum technologies.These emerging technologies will open access to previo

174、usly unattainable services and solutions that could ena-ble and drive innovation in areas such as pharmaceutical research and drug discovery and the development of next generation communications infra-structure.But it will also provide the technological architecture for areas supporting the climate

175、change fight including battery optimisation and even carbon capture.While the future for the planet is still uncertain,what is clear is that as we move forward from COP26 we need the insights and innovation a cloud-powered digital transformation will bring if a thriving modern econo-my and net zero

176、is to be achieved.Cloud can be a catalyst for discovery in fields like energy,transport,and cli-mate science by opening access to other emerging technologies like AI and quantum computing.But we also must remember the fun-damental ways in which the effective and efficient adoption,deployment and use

177、 of cloud services can help support and empower businesses to achieve their net-zero ambitions and help us all build a more sustainable world.We will need the insights and innovation that digital transformation brings if net zero is to be achievedSue Daley Tech and innovation director techUKO P I N

178、I O NTFlexera,202148%of global companies identify cloud migration and going cloud-first as a priority for IT and tech teams64%Deloitte,2020of global businesses expect cloud infrastructure to be one of the most impactful industry 4.0 technologiesC L O U D F O R B U S I N E S S06Commercial featureRega

179、ining cloud control with intelligent,AI-powered observabilityWith burgeoning cloud and hybrid IT complexity,driven by constant innovation,executives warn of the near impossibility of providing reliable systems and security.Introducing smart observability can enable businesses to better understand an

180、d swiftly remedy emerging technology problems before lasting damage is doneomputing environments are becom-ing increasingly labyrinthine,as businesses adopt hundreds or even thousands of cloud services,often selected by central IT or siloed departments.The prob-lem is worsened by integration efforts

181、 that lag far behind rapid,ongoing innovation,includ-ing the regular addition of customer-facing apps and functionality.Six in 10 chief information officers(CIOs)expect that this digital transformation will continue to accelerate.Most IT environ-ments are now multi-cloud and change by the minute,wit

182、h code quality also slipping given the constant pressure for innovation.Alarmingly,some 63%of CIOs now say their hybrid and multi-cloud setup is so com-plex that no human team could manage it,according to the research by the software intelligence company Dynatrace.“The need to constantly innovate,an

183、d to transform employee and customer expe-riences,means systems are getting more deeply complex,and in essence,impossible for many companies to manage,”says Alois Reitbauer,chief technology strategist at Dynatrace.“Businesses are risking a real loss of tech control as they drown in the shifting sea

184、of corporate technology.”Problems emerging for businesses include unexplained process failure,new deploy-ments causing latencies and outages,and ser-vice users not being able to complete trans-actions.That is aside from damaging security problems,with 71%of security heads recently warning they are n

185、ot fully confident their codes are free from vulnerabilities before going live.All these problems can quickly erode business revenue and reputation.Companies typical response to these chal-lenges include introducing application per-formance monitoring(APM),but this often results in far more warnings

186、 being generated than can be addressed.The average number of corporate security alerts presented by an APM-based approach is 2,168 per month,and seven in 10 CIOs say their teams are left sub-merged in manual tasks as a result.“Businesses end up with a deluge of infor-mation that they dont know what

187、to do with,”Reitbauer explains.“Their monitoring might highlight tens or even hundreds of systems connected to any one problem,meaning a huge amount of work then has to be done to find where the root cause lies and how to fix it,a situation worsened when there are mul-tiple other problems taking pla

188、ce simultane-ously.”Many businesses persist with legacy monitoring technology,having stitched together up to 10 monitoring systems,on average delivering observability into only 11%of their IT infrastructure.In addition,the information most busi-nesses find on their systems lacks context.“Its a bit l

189、ike having a clinician check someones temperature,finding its high,but not being given any indications as to events that might reveal the underlying cause,”Reitbauer notes.“Theyd have to ask all sorts of questions to get the broader picture and find out what the problem is.”Such questions often then

190、 fail,because biases in human thinking typically mean a focus on instinct or recent experi-ences,which can lead even the sharpest IT professionals to overlook the real causes.As a result,many businesses are now turn-ing to Dynatraces automatic and intelligent observability,which has artificial intel

191、li-gence for IT operations(AIOps)at the core.Dynatraces unified platform is easy to use and rapidly assesses a range of possible ques-tions,analyses what is happening across com-plex cloud environments in full context and assesses user experience.It sifts through the information to derive clear answ

192、ers and pri-oritise urgent remedial action.In the case of security risks,suspicious actions are immedi-ately blocked.“The technology is designed for the velocity,volume and complexity of modern cloud environments,and it is transparent and unbiased.It provides clear,factual explana-tions and actionab

193、le priorities based on busi-ness impact,”Reitbauer explains.A retail business experiencing slow tech-nology performance since a new app deploy-ment,for example,can use Dynatrace to find exactly where and how problems are grow-ing,and determine how teams can optimise the user experience.Meanwhile,a f

194、inancial firm can detect emerging flaws in user expe-rience and identify remedies,helping teams transition from reactive to proactive.And a life sciences organisation with IT security concerns can visualise potential impact and enable teams to collaborate in response.As IT infrastructures become eve

195、r more sprawling,it is time for businesses to imple-ment intelligent observability and regain control of complex cloud environments.They can do so by moving from a deluge of alerts to a unified platform-based approach.This enables teams to automatically identify root causes,resolve issues quickly,an

196、d reduce time spent on manual tasks so they can pri-oritise innovation.To learn more about how Dynatrace can help your business,visit and follow us on Twitter dynatraceWhat are the daily frustrations that you see IT,CloudOps and DevOps teams experiencing without reliable observability?Often people d

197、ont realise the prob-lems they are having in their apps.They may not even know that users cant log in or that an app isnt working properly.When they do identify a problem,they may not understand it among the thousands of data points in front of them.This effectively means they are losing control of

198、the tech-nology they use.Do companies face a challenge choosing the right observability system?Yes.Typically,companies have acquired several application performance mon-itoring systems that dont interact or provide rapidly actionable data in context.Instead,its better to start with desired outcomes

199、and ask:“How should problems be identified and resolved?”Usually,this will lead to intel-ligent root cause and impact analysis,with responses automatically prioritised.This is where smart,AI-powered observability comes in.What are the benefits of intelligent observability?Automated problem identific

200、ation and resolution massively improve decision making while saving a great deal of time and money.AI and automation should be high on every companys priority list.As more businesses get observability right,it will gradually become the norm for devel-opers to be able to simply create and run technol

201、ogy that works powerfully and reli-ably,and to quickly remediate problems when they arise.chief information officers(CIOs)expect digital transformation to continue accelerating6 in 10of CIOs believe their IT environment has surpassed human ability to manage63%C Dynatraces software intelligence platf

202、orm is designed for the velocity,volume,and complexity of modern cloud environments,and it is transparent and unbiased.It provides clear factual explanations and actionable priorities based on impactWith companies drowning in the complexity of their systems,Alois Reitbauer,chief technology strategis

203、t at Dynatrace,explores how businesses can regain control today As more businesses get observability right,it will gradually become the norm for developers to be able to simply create and run technology that works powerfully and reliably,and to quickly remediate problems when they ariseQ&AStormy ski

204、es ahead for financial risk?The tech underpinning the worlds financial system is dominated by three cloud operators.Regulators believe that new laws are necessary to manage this concentration of riskC L O U D C O N C E N T R AT I O N Its not realistic to ask banks to consider alternatives to their c

205、loud systems,because the cost and scale of doing that is not sensiblen ditching their outdated,expen-sive and inefficient operational software for advanced cloud plat-forms,our tech-addicted banks may have swapped one set of risks for another.Regulators worry that so-called cloud concentration relyi

206、ng on a tiny group of providers to provide key services could trigger the next global economic meltdown if left unaddressed.“If the worlds financial market infra-structure ultimately sits with two or three cloud providers,the risk of one of those going down could easily pose a bigger threat to finan

207、cial stability than the collapses of Lehman Brothers or Northern Rock,if not managed correctly,”warns Bradley Rice,financial services partner at Ashurst.In the past decade,banks have flocked to three main providers:Microsoft Azure,Amazon Web Services(AWS),and Google Cloud.These three behemoths have

208、the scale and resources to handle the security,maintenance and data processing demands of the global financial system.Research by S&P Global found that about 45%of financial services firms use AWS as their primary provider,with Azure clocking a similar percentage.Those with more than one cloud provi

209、der employ a second from the same trio.Azure is used in some form by 79%of financial services firms.Regulators are concerned.In the UK,the Financial Conduct Authority(FCA),the Prudential Regulation Authority and the Bank of England have all warned of cloud concentration risk.They are meeting indus-t

210、ry representatives to stress the dangers of relying too much on outsourced services.What happens if a cloud provider is taken out by a hostile force or otherwise fails?There are also competition concerns:given the amount of responsibility and power the trio hold,there are fears that they could hold

211、firms to ransom.“If significant numbers of companies in the industry are running on one cloud pro-vider,that provider becomes a systemically important part of the financial system by default,”notes Bo Svejstrup,executive vice-president of COO functions and data at Danske Bank.“If that provider has a

212、n issue that causes services to become unavailable for an extended period,this could create systemic problems at national or even regional levels.”Cloud adoption has soared during the pandemic.But Covid isnt entirely to blame for the present situation,according to the head of resilience at one UK in

213、vestment bank.Commenting anonymously,he says that the City has been shifting operations into the cloud to save money for many years.“This move has taken place in isolation without wider design or consideration for systemic operations,”the executive says,adding that little thought has been given to w

214、hat would happen should a cloud provider pull the plug or suffer a widespread failure.“Nobody is doing anything.Thats because most big players Amazon,Goog-le,Microsoft and so on do not care about some UK bank dictating that they need to send resilience assurance,”he claims.Given the software giants

215、reluctance to undergo the same forensic examination that their finance clients face,regulators action over an operational resilience fail-ure,”Rice adds.“Ultimately,I think we will see regulators around the world regulating critical infrastructure providers,like the cloud providers,data providers an

216、d other market infrastructure providers.”For banks themselves,there is no future scenario where the cloud becomes less important or central to operations.“Many financial services organisations now see themselves more as technology companies that happen to operate in a regulated sec-tor,”Emmanuel say

217、s.Some have no physical presence whatso-ever.Their data is spread across geogra-phies rather than hosted on the premises,as was the norm a decade ago.Starling,for example,offers a 100%digital service;it is acutely aware of concentration risk.“From conception,Starling has deployed its systems and ser

218、vices across multiple clouds which work to back up our data in real time,”says Steve Newson,the banks chief technology officer.“By doing this,we ensure that we arent dependent on one single third-party supplier and we reduce risk.”Danske Bank also operates with a mul-ti-cloud strategy,accessing vari

219、ous services from different providers.“For any service provider,we must have an exit strategy allowing us to migrate the service to another provider or to an in-house solution at any point,”says Svejstrup.This covers the hazards of services being una-vailable for whatever reason,including a contract

220、 dispute between the bank and its cloud operator.The way forward is to employ a more rig-orous approach to resilience,Svejstrup says.The degree of exposure to different providers should be transparent for both regulator and industry,adding transpar-ency to some complex relationships.“Every instituti

221、on needs a clear overview of its exposure to cloud providers as well as clearly defined and well-tested exit plans,”he says.Industries beyond financial services should heed the lesson and avoid becoming seduced by a single big-name cloud provid-er promising to take care of everything.“This fundament

222、al practice is also good for other sectors that provide systemic and critical functions,”Svejstrup says.“It reduc-es the risk of outages,instability and poor service quality,whatever you provide.”“will have to row back on some of their expectations and deadlines”,the exec says.“I hear the same thing

223、 my third parties arent playing ball on industry calls I go on,”he adds.“Its not realistic to ask banks to consider alternatives to their cloud sys-tems,because the cost and scale of doing that is not sensible.”Microsoft,Google and AWS are all declin-ing to comment on this issue,as is the FCA.The Ba

224、nk of England is making no official comment either,but a Bank executive will at least confirm that it has spoken“a fair bit”about the cloud and its respective risks in the past year.It considers the matter“significant”and is meeting industry repre-sentatives,the executive says,adding that new polici

225、es and laws will be needed to mit-igate the stability risks.Such legislation will invariably try to catch up with new technology by adding to operational resilience demands,says Jona-than Emmanuel,partner at Bird&Bird.But he says firms should continue to think in terms of perceived risk versus the a

226、ctual risk of retaining archaic legacy systems.“Regulators are trying to ease firms into a new way of thinking,but it will not be long before we see some major enforcement IMark TaylorMICROSOFT AND AMAZON DOMINATE THE CLOUD MARKETUse of cloud providers by organisations worldwide,by vendorMicrosoft A

227、zureAmazon Web ServicesPrivate cloud(self-service)Google Cloud PlatformIBM CloudTurbonomic,202167%57%34%23%9%R A C O N T E U R.N E T07Commercial featurehe benefits for companies when moving software and application development to the cloud are well documented,chief among them being speed,agil-ity,sc

228、ale and potentially lower costs.But when undertaking this powerful transformation,a huge opportunity must not be overlooked-the chance to reinvent your companys mindset around security.According to the GitLab 2021 Global DevSecOps Survey,59%of com-panies deploy in the cloud at least once every few d

229、ays.This makes it no longer viable to have dev teams who only develop and release,with secu-rity teams working in a separate silo to test for bugs and threats afterwards.Instead,the cloud offers an exciting new age of collaboration,embed-ding security considerations into the development process itse

230、lf to ensure these no longer represent a barrier to the speed of a release.As use of the cloud by organisa-tions matures,three themes are fun-damental to success:embracing a more frequent methodology for con-tinuous software releases;break-ing application development into microservices,connected via

231、 APIs;and recognising the wider risks due to increased resources and broader access in the cloud.All three themes have security impli-cations and require important deci-sions to be made.But all can be tackled by moving security upstream,identify-ing vulnerabilities,and implementing fixes much earlie

232、r in the software life-cycle.A mindset change to continuous monitoring will also be critical.When working in the cloud,greater real-time monitoring is crucial to safe-guarding a companys cloud opera-tions.This is due to the dynamic nature of cloud-native,where-according to Sysdigs 2022 Cloud-Native

233、Security and Usage Report-nearly half of microservices running in containers live for less than five minutes.DevOps and security teams must think very differently about how they do their jobs and collaborate using a common set of tools.Tighter interac-tions will allow them to grow more con-fident in

234、 each others responsibilities and outcomes,addressing risks earlier in the software development process.Meaningful change is then driven from two directions.First,the mindset of the chief information security officer(CISO)must move from guarding the perime-ter to accepting there are no defined bound

235、aries to control in the cloud.You cannot keep track of everything that happens,so you need the right protocols to continuously look for unusual activity,allowing security and developers to react in real time.In parallel,the developer mindset must change too,from building to get functionality out fas

236、t at any cost,to considering security during the development process itself.It is in nobodys interest to com-promise security for speed.One data leak,or cyber-attack,causes huge reputational damage.IBM found the average cost of a breach in hybrid cloud environments to be$3.61m.Developers are usually

237、 responsi-ble for functionality,performance,and user experience,but the cloud allows them to also become guardi-ans of security.Trust is key here;trust between security and development teams and trust within the C-suite.However,it takes a counterintuitive approach to achieve it.The more you build au

238、tomated checks to confirm processes are followed,the easier it will be for developers and security to collaborate and trust each other.The cloud makes it easier for devel-opers to address vulnerabilities before releasing applications,collab-orating with security teams to priori-tise issues and conti

239、nuously monitor compliance with policies.Implementing these further upstream in the development pro-cess is a huge change in process and mindset,but the risks involved mean its far better than raising issues months down the line and hoping they get taken care of.Everyone benefits from having less fi

240、xes to implement.Nobody wants to hold up a release,so this is a shared goal.The cloud also allows a switch from a command-and-control approach to a trust-but-verify one.Prevention of risk is never com-plete.Sysdigs 2022 Cloud-Native Security and Usage Report found 75%of containers running have patch

241、able high or critical vulnerabilities.This necessitates a mindset of acceptance that not every risk can be prevented,and that detecting and responding rapidly becomes key.Implementing continuous monitor-ing in real time gives security teams confidence that they can find threats and anomalies before

242、they do any damage,rather than after a breach has occurred.Covid-19 forced many companies to develop new apps and services fast.For Worldpay by FIS,contactless payments by voice,retina,and digital mediums were reprioritised quickly.This pivot was only possible because they already worked in cloud en

243、vironments.As new applications were developed,time was saved by adopting tools like Sysdig to scale visibility across environments and accelerate identification and remedia-tion of vulnerabilities.Scanning for vulnerabilities in the development pipeline ensures the most appropriate devs those respon

244、sible for particular areas of the code can focus fast on the right priorities for a fix.Both sides can also combine their experience to quickly understand if a problem is real or not.Due to the fact that containers have short lives and they may quickly dis-appear,it is critical to keep a detailed re

245、cord of what happened to investi-gate incidents down the line.This is a new age of shared responsi-bility where the gatekeepers and build-ers no longer spend six months devel-oping software or applications,only to be slowed by vulnerabilities or bugs.Importantly,businesses should not fear a move to

246、the cloud simply because of highly publicised secu-rity breaches.Sticking with cur-rent on-premises solutions is risky.Breaches still happen on-premises,they are just less public.Embracing the cloud,with its more automated development processes,is a huge step forward in mitigating security risks.Sec

247、urity teams therefore should become empowered to sit alongside developers,so they can understand how to make something happen,rather than forcing devs to roll back weeks of work.If your company is willing to change its mindset to recognise the benefits of collaboration between developers and securit

248、y teams in the cloud,you will soon speed innovation,enable agility and deliver scale.Those are compelling reasons why any company should move to the cloud in the first place.For more information please new horizon for cloud security through DevOps collaborationAn effective cloud strategy enables dev

249、elopment and security teams to work in tandem.Such cross-departmental collaboration is crucial as cloud-related security threats growCommercial featureT Embracing the cloud,with its more automated development processes,is a huge step forward in mitigating security risksof containers live less than 5

250、 minutesof companies deploy at least once every few daysthe average cost of a breach in hybrid cloud environmentsof containers running have patchable high or critical vulnerabilitiesof cloud roles are non-human46%75%88%MOVING AT THE SPEED OF CLOUDTransforming Development for Cloud Has Security Impli

251、cations59%$3.61millionSysdig,2022IBM,2021GitLab,2021Contrary motion:the case for staying singleithout the mavericks who are pre-pared to challenge received wis-dom,the business world would be a lot less dynamic or interesting,for that matter.Take Paul Graham,co-founder of the startup accelerator Y C

252、ombinator,for instance.Renowned in Silicon Valley for his ability to pick a winner,he recently admit-ted that hed never read one business plan or balance sheet supplied by firms seeking an investment from him.Grahams justification?“The reason I dont care about business plans is that I can learn more

253、 from five minutes of interrogat-ing the founders than I can from reading the 10 pages of fluff theyve written.”And consider fintech unicorn Bolt,which broke its industrys norm of long working hours by adopting a four-day week in Sep-tember 2021.Acknowledging that it was an experiment,the firms foun

254、der and execu-tive chairman,Ryan Breslow,explained at the time:“People are done working like cows for five days.They are ready to work like lions for four.”There are contrarians in the cloud com-puting world too.When the consensus over-whelmingly favours hosting applications using a multi-cloud solu

255、tion(the use of two or more computing services from any num-ber of vendors),a small minority resolutely back the single-cloud model.But why?The multi-cloud model offers clear advantages for users.For instance,it makes it possible for them to haggle on pric-es and select the best-value vendor for eac

256、h service required,because some providers are better than others for certain tasks.In essence,it gives users the choice and modu-lar flexibility that a single-cloud approach clearly cannot provide.Of the 1,700 IT decision-makers polled in a survey for US cloud computing firm Nuta-nix in September la

257、st year,83%agreed that a hybrid multi-cloud approach was ideal.Do the refuseniks have a convincing argument?Is the single-cloud model worth sticking with if no one provider can offer the best value for all services?Scott Riley,founder of consultancy Cloud Nexus,is proud to be a contrarian.He blasts

258、what he sees as three widely held myths associated with the multi-cloud approach.“The cost differences between the main hyper-scale cloud providers are not that sig-nificant unless youre prepared to make a multi-year commitment,”he says.“You have the price or you might buy through a distributor for

259、a 10%discount.”The concept of using multi-cloud to geo-locate data is also wrong,argues Riley,who says:“All hyper-scale providers have multi-ple geographical data centres with individ-ual fault-tolerant platforms.”Its a fair point.Where in the world is beyond the reach of the major cloud hosts these

260、 days?The Pitcairn Islands,perhaps?Then theres resilience.Is it really correct to say that multi-cloud is inherently better in this respect?“Load distribution has to happen some-where,”Riley says.“Take an inbound request and pass it to the nearest,or least busy,server in any given cloud.Where does t

261、his sit:cloud A,cloud B or a third cloud?Wherever it sits,whenever that platform has an issue,no one is getting to the appli-cation,regardless of how many cloud plat-forms youve deployed it to.”Security is one of the biggest aspects of cloud strategy.Theres a widespread belief that using several pro

262、viders is a more resil-ient approach than relying on one.But thats another popular fallacy,says Tim Erlin,vice-president of strategy at cybersecurity company Tripwire.“There are good and valid reasons to have a multi-cloud strategy,but security is not usually one of them,”he says.“The security advan

263、tages are dubious at worst and require significant investment at best.Most often,the security benefits are ascribed to the protection that multi-cloud gives against distributed denial-of-service DDoS attacks,which is really a rehash of the resilience argument.”Achieving resilience requires a sub-sta

264、ntial outlay and there are better ways of doing so than adopting a mul-ti-cloud approach,Erlin argues.“Building a multi-cloud infrastruc-ture that allows for seamless failover the facility to switch automatically to a back-up system across providers requires specific investment.Its not simply an eme

265、rgent quality of having multiple pro-viders,”he says.“This might be a worthwhile invest-ment for businesses that require that level of availability and/or are at a high risk of DDoS attacks,but it should be considered alongside alternatives that might mitigate the risk at a lower cost.”Maybe the big

266、gest argument in favour of a single-cloud strategy is the simplicity it offers.David Liddle,senior cloud security consultant at Adarma Security explains:“In addition to insider threats,cloud mis-configurations are one of the biggest issues facing users.These misconfigura-tions,which range from overl

267、y permissive policies attached to identities to poorly configured security groups,can be intro-duced in several ways.Spotting them in a single hyper-scale environment can be extremely difficult.With a multi-cloud approach,the problem of eliminating misconfigurations becomes even more difficult.”Then

268、 there are the risks of migration.Moving from a single host to multi-cloud is a serious undertaking.It requires virtual machines(VMs)to be stripped out,because cloud hosts,while similar in functionality,have their own quirks.A VM that runs on Amazon Web Services(AWS)may not run on Microsoft Azure,fo

269、r instance.Companies need to be sure theyve got the right monitoring tools in place to run a multi-cloud spread.Every extra element is a point in favour of the simplicity of the sin-gle-cloud approach.Perhaps the most convincing evidence is from the tech giants.Netflix,for example,runs computing and

270、 storage exclusively on AWS.It trialled a multi-cloud operation briefly in 2018 before committing to a sin-gle provider.Netflix is no ordinary custom-er at one point it accounted for 15%of all global internet traffic.If it felt that using only one provider were too much of a risk,it surely would hav

271、e diversified by now.Spotify prefers one provider too,having migrated from AWS to Google Cloud in 2016.The companys vice-president of technology,Tyson Singer,said last year:“Theres simplicity in having a single cloud.It saves us a lot of hassle and complexity.”The approach Netflix and Spotify have a

272、dopted is still unfashionable.Multi-cloud is the default option,but its useful to know the arguments for and against.“Is multi-cloud advisable?The answer is far from straightforward,”Liddle says.“For If companies such as Netflix and Spotify dont see much value in adopting a multi-cloud approach,why

273、are so many smaller firms so keen on the model?some,multi-cloud is essential.For others,its an aspirational money pit.”Smaller companies in particular may feel emboldened to keep things simple.If they do,they can take comfort in pursuing a strategy that suits a pair of digital giants.Trends dont las

274、t forever in business.Contrarians act and followers emerge.Run-ning a single-cloud strategy may feel awk-ward,but you may simply be ahead of the technology curve.Canonical,2021WCharles Orton-JonesH O S T I N G E N V I R O N M E N T S For some,multi-cloud is essential.For others,its an aspirational m

275、oney pitMANY USES FOR HYBRID SOLUTIONSPercentage of IT professionals who cite the following use cases for multi-cloudWe dont use hybrid or multi-cloudUse to accelerate development,automate DevOpsUse to expand cloud backup options to cut costsUse fo disaster recoveryUse to clustermission-critical dat

276、abasesUse to move an applicationUse for cloud burstingUse to switch between public cloud providers quicklyUse to on-and off-ramp dataOther usesUse to monitor and predict usage costs22.2%20.7%13.3%12.6%6.2%5.5%5.3%4.2%4%2.4%3.7%C L O U D F O R B U S I N E S S08For cloud users,there is a struggle to p

277、redict the weatherCloud computing is becoming more democratic and open yet predicting where it will go next remains difficult even for expertsloud computing has grown up.In the past two decades,the technolo-gy industry has fought against an occasionally brittle approach to security provisioning with

278、 an increasingly sophisti-cated set of cloud functions.We now have access to a far more evolved notion of software-as-a-service technology.This is the era of cloud native.Natively built cloud services which never existed in any kind of terrestrial version are now coming to the fore.What factors,then

279、,should you consider when working with cloud computing?Adam Selipsky is CEO of Amazon Web Services(AWS).Hes been candid about cloud computings somewhat difficult ado-lescence:at the start,he says,it was expen-sive,slow and inflexible.Cloud vendors sought to achieve custom-er lock-in where they could

280、,with interoper-ability far from an engineering imperative.That time has thankfully passed,and a new,more democratic and open approach to the cloud has prevailed.“People used to question me about Ama-zon Web Services and ask what the connec-tion with books was,but I think things have moved on,”said

281、Selipsky,who was speaking at his firms AWS re:Invent conference in December 2021.acquisitions,or because of product launch sprawl or relabelling existing services.The resounding message coming from the cloud industry is a promise.The vendors Vendors large and small are putting a huge effort into mak

282、ing cloud services more consistent and easier to consume and use.Cloud specialists like to call this a simpli-fied unified platform experience,but we could just call it cloud that works.One of the companies talking in these terms is enterprise cloud specialist Nuta-nix.The firm has described its lat

283、est plat-form refresh as a simplified portfolio that brings together rich product capabilities across private on-premises and public clouds.This aims to deliver consistent infrastructure,data services,management and operations for applications in virtual machines and containers.Senior vice-president

284、 of product manage-ment at Nutanix,Thomas Cornely,has said the firm has focused on delivering a simpli-fied portfolio that delivers a consistent infrastructure with data services,as well as management tools.This theme resonates throughout the cloud vendor glitterati.It further echoes in the wider en

285、terprise software platform space,which includes services such as enterprise resource planning(ERP)and cus-tomer relationship management(CRM).Its easy to see why it matters.Enterprise software is often too complex to purchase,let alone run;sometimes that is down to tell us they understand that custom

286、ers need to work across private and public clouds with a simplified application and data ser-vices product portfolio that is charged with more straightforward billing.In practice,while cloud billing might be a dry topic,its a hot issue.Lets remember,there is no actual cloud,as such.Its just a global

287、 collection of server units housed in international data centres,running man-agement software with various different optimisation parameters to make different virtualised cloud services behave and per-form in different ways.But how thats all packaged and sold mat-ters a great deal.The cloud industry

288、 has worked hard to simplify its packaging,metering and pricing structures.Take the use of so-called reserved instances,where customers agree to a specified amount of cloud based on knowledge of their own pre-dictable IT workload requirement.Thats helped in some cases,but not in all.Adrian Bridgwate

289、rCFacebooks founder and CEO Mark Zuck-erberg famously complained that cloud is too expensive back in 2019.Still,the reality of cloud that can be turned on and off,pro-viding the ultimate OpEx-only flexibility,is still something of a pipe dream.Not everything is quite as perfect as the branding claim

290、s would have us believe.Even the most ardent evangelists typically agree that cloud perfection and indeed cloud-native is still a work in progress.We should also remember that enterprise cloud is not just for Christmas.Customers need to think about ongoing supporting services,from load balancers to

291、specialised accelerators to advanced security monitor-ing and thats just a start.Then theres upgrades,testing and system maintenance:just like Windows,clouds need patch updates,too.If cloud computing has been guilty of anything,it has been too shiny and new.The idea that we might all be able to tap

292、into hyperconnected computing services built on virtual machines running in cloud datacentres was always quite radical.Giv-ing everyone massive computing power in the palm of our hand was a dramatic ampli-fication of the internets initially promised freedoms.In short,it was a lot to take on.The driv

293、e to cloud migration is,of course,one of the central moves repeatedly cited in the oft-discussed journey to digital trans-formation most companies are on.But to make this journey,enterprises need a plan,a toolset and a capability arsenal.Brent Schroeder is chief technology officer for enterprise-gra

294、de open-source solutions specialist SUSE.He says his firm has seen companies dramatically shrink their cloud migration windows.With the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic still play-ing out,Schroeder reminds us that tradi-tional IT deployment windows of 90,60 or even 30 days are now too long.The way f

295、orwardis process,planning and precision-engineered software production,he says.SUSE insists customers work with private cloud and public cloud infrastruc-ture that is consistently deployed within robust security and governance guidelines.In other words,organisations shouldnt make the change to cloud

296、 without change management.As we make these changes,we can now shoulder a good deal of our total cloud software application lifecycle by using infrastructure as code(IaC),though thats another subject for analysis in itself.Cloud computing offers flexibility,scala-bility and changeable manageability,

297、but only if we understand which direction the wind is blowing.The power of this weather system is still forming,so please make sure you wear a coat.Cloud computing offers flexibility,scalability and changeable manageability,but only if we understand which direction the wind is blowingO P I N I O NGa

298、rtner,2021366bnprojected spending on public cloud services worldwide in 2022Proofpoint,2021284%increase in public cloud application SaaS end-user spending worldwide from 2015 to 2020R A C O N T E U R.N E T09Misconfiguration of the cloud platform/wrong setupExfiltration of sensitive dataUnauthorised

299、accessInsecure interfaces/APIsExternal sharing of dataHijacking of accounts,services or trafficMalicious insidersForeign state-sponsored cyber attacksDenial of service attacksCommercial featureloud skills are in short supply.Three-quarters of organisa-tions cite a lack of skills as a challenge on th

300、eir journeys.Other barriers include the IT delivery gap,a taxing landscape of cloud partners and a growing imperative that invest-ments align to a sustainable future.Given these pressures,why is Softcat quietly confident for the future?Its because the companys ethos and vision for cloud are firmly g

301、rounded in its culture and the way it works.People firstCloud journeys depend on people;those with a passion for outcomes built on rapidly evolving technology.Yet as cloud technology has rapidly grown,so have the gaps in talent and recruitment.As of early 2022,Softcat employs 1,700 people across nin

302、e locations to serve its customers with their digital workspace,cybersecurity and hybrid cloud needs in the UK and Ireland.The companys growth is attributed to our culture,which started 29 years ago and is built on our ethos that people come first.This powers our focus to annually bring through the

303、next generation of talent and ensure that irrespective of age,gender,or experience,we provide equal opportunity for development.We work with schools and universities to raise awareness of what the tech-nology industry has to offer.As a result,we are seeing many more young people drawn to the industr

304、y.Daisy Mossop,GTM(go to market)manager at Softcat(pictured)is a product of Softcats commitment to young talent.A graduate of the com-panys award-winning apprenticeship scheme,Mossop is also just one exam-ple of Softcats commitment to diver-sity in the tech sector.Incidentally,the companys emphasis

305、on sustainability was an important factor for Mossop in choosing to work at Softcat.Indeed,we have observed that young people want their employer to provide an environment that not only educates and nurtures,but also demonstrates values they can relate to;values such as community,social responsibili

306、ty and sustainability.Thanks to the rise of digital chan-nels and 24 months of lockdowns,many younger employees are self-taught,having learned a variety of new skills from their sofa.Its here our approach bears fruit:Softcat achieved fifth position in the 2021 Super-Large Category of the UKs Best Wo

307、rkplaces Awards;won the top apprenticeship employer in the UK award in 2021 and 2022 by RateMyApprenticeship;and has also grown its tech starter pro-gramme,which continues to promote women in technology.Evolving career motivations Engaging young talent isnt enough when they face significant hurdles

308、starting their careers.The cost of living is rapidly increasing,and experience is still a pri-mary factor for many recruiters.So,providing opportunities to mit-igate these pressures is important,as is understanding and making a pro-gressive effort to address the evolving expectations of not just you

309、nger mem-bers of our team,but also our custom-ers and the wider society.Its here that the sustainability imperative is impossible to ignore.Global e-waste is growing at a stagger-ing rate.UN research found that the world discarded a record 53.6 million tons of e-waste in 2019,of which only 17%was re

310、cycled.By 2030,its pre-dicted this will increase to more than 74 million tons a year.So what is the link between finding new talent and sustainability?In recent surveys by Global Tolerance,42%of employees want to work for an organ-isation that has a positive impact on the world.Research from highlig

311、hts that nearly 70%said that if a company had a strong sustain-ability plan it would affect their deci-sion to stay long term.Its this context that underpins Softcats commitment to be a respon-sible employer and business part-ner.As our CFO,Graham Charlton,recently commented:“The IT indus-try needs

312、to lead the way toward a net-zero future.As technology and its place in society proliferates,the requirement for it to be sustainable becomes paramount.”This is why,through a range of initi-atives that have gained total employee buy-in,Softcat has reduced its emis-sions by 37%over the past five year

313、s,while growing revenue and expanding our workforce.Cloud:a different approach While the new breed of born in the cloud partners have attracted the industrys top talent and accomplished well-publicised transformations,this has left an undesirable legacy:a skills bubble slowing the growth for the who

314、le market and an oversight in the components of cloud adoption that are considered less exciting,regardless of their importance.Flexera research highlights that 55%of organisations are having challenges with cloud software licensing and 59%of organisations are still to focus on cloud migration.This

315、creates divisive views that cloud can positively or negatively impact sus-tainability.A cloud journey can reduce IT infrastructure,cutting energy output and lowering emissions.But conversely,30%of cloud spend is wasted accord-ing to Flexera research.This ultimately means someone elses equipment con-

316、tributing to your Scope 3 emissions-perhaps less than it originally was,but not as low as it could be.Softcat has taken a different approach.Armed with an appreciation of sustaina-bility,both climate and commercial,we help customers get maximum results by emphasising the importance of manag-ing comm

317、ercial relationships and provid-ing intelligence regarding cloud usage to avoid waste and sprawl,which supports sustainable change.We do this with small and mid-sized businesses as well as enterprises,across private and public sectors.This gives us a breadth of experi-ence that provides a platform t

318、o support digital transformation.A recent example is Softcats part-nership with a leading public cloud provider to support UK Police as part of the One Government Cloud Strategy to transform legacy IT.Digital forensic units are experiencing an exponential increase in demand for data process-ing on l

319、ive and archive storage.Our partnership has demonstrated an 80%reduction in analysis time for a single mobile phone image and a 90%reduc-tion in storage costs versus on-prem-ises.This increases department effi-ciency and reduces carbon footprint using modern cloud technology in place of ageing on-pr

320、emises equipment.The future:no dreamworkThe cloud scene is teeming with pro-viders.Much rarer are partners pre-pared to build and invest in a lasting community that embraces young talent and reflects the values of its people and customers.In the long-run,its a people-first ethos,with a sustainable a

321、ttitude that delivers cloud outcomes that support lasting growth.Its here we measure our success.We have maintained annual customer satisfaction results at 95%,and despite the challenges of a global pandemic,we hold a Net Promoter Score of 59-a great position in the technology industry.For more info

322、rmation please The recipe for cloud success?Sustainability and talentMatt Larder,head of cloud,explains the philosophy behind the growth of Softcat,a challenger in cloud transformationCommercial featureC Young people want their employer to provide an environment that not only educates and nurtures,b

323、ut also demonstrates values they can relate toDaisy Mossop,GTM manager,SoftcatDont crash and burn when your server goes downServers are central to business operations and a crash can be catastrophic.Firms should plan for the worst to enable a speedy recoveryationwide customers faced repeat-ed disrup

324、tion to their banking ser-vices around Christmas,unable to access their funds or pay their bills.While the building society described the outage as a“technical issue”,some experts identified a server failure.The disruption demonstrated just how much damage a tech crash can cause and the salient impo

325、rtance of servers for smooth business operations,with millions of users unable to receive or make payments.Whatever the causes of a server crash ranging from simple hardware failure and power outages to software glitches,cyber-attacks and natural disasters the conse-quences can be catastrophic.Busin

326、esses,big and small,rely on connectivity;in a dig-ital age,its the lifeblood of commerce.The result is that organisations have become increasingly reliant on servers.As screens go blank,digital and human connections are cut.The afflicted organisa-tion loses productivity,orders and profits,while cust

327、omers are affected,causing repu-tational damage and possible loss of future business.In addition,if private data is lost,regulatory fines and penalties can result,as well as class-action lawsuits.Servers support essential connections,which facilitate business operations includ-ing interaction with s

328、taff and customers.Their importance means more and more companies use a network of cloud servers.These servers now play a vital role in business technology.They provide a central repository to receive,store,retrieve and send data,ensuring all team members have timely access to the information they n

329、eed.Web,email and file servers,to name just a few,are essential for employees,teams and systems to perform the tasks that make up their jobs.The pandemic and resulting shift to remote and hybrid working have neces-sarily accelerated data-centric,cloud-based digitalisation,so businesses have become i

330、ncreasingly dependent on the uninterrupt-ed operation of their servers.But have servers a computer with advanced hardware running a server pro-gram become an Achilles heel?Essential to business operations,what happens when servers crash?How can an organisation recover quickly and get back to work?Az

331、eem Javed is a consultant at Creative Networks,managed IT and telecoms spe-cialists.He says that encapsulating backup as part of a business continuity and disaster recovery(BCDR)strategy“is critical for all businesses,ensuring continuity of their operations and suitable recovery.”Peter ArcherNContin

332、gency planning and a system backup strategy installing locally based or remote backup servers or backup to an external hard drive and disaster recovery software can certainly help the chief tech-nology officer sleep more soundly at night.If a business has alternate backups for its files,it can quick

333、ly bounce back and resume operations.A full backup is a complete copy of an organisations data assets.This process requires all files to be backed up into a sin-gle version.However,the dataset should be copied in its entirety and stored in a sepa-rate location,away from the server.Such an offsite backup,which can be accessed,restored or administered from a different location,guarantees high-level