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$100bn revenues and networking maturation %

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The tech media has spent years arguing whether innovation and market size within infrastructure as a service (IaaS) has finally topped out – but the most recent figures show there is still some way to go yet.

2022 saw the worldwide IaaS market grew by almost 30% (29.7%) to total $120.3 billion (£93.6bn) in revenue, according to figures totted up by Gartner. Amazon maintained the number one spot, with Microsoft as runner up. Alibaba retains third place ahead of Google – though at 7.7% and 7.5% market share respectively, it is a negligible lead – with Huawei in fifth position. The top five vendors accounted for more than 80% of the market, Gartner added.

Within this are interesting examples of evolution in themselves. Google Cloud filed the most profitable quarter in the company’s history earlier this month, with an operating income of $395m during Q2 2023. This compared with a loss of $590m this time last year. Microsoft, meanwhile, posted an all-time best net income of $20.1bn. Yet the company stalled with regard to Azure – whose figure is allocated across several buckets rather than being entirely disclosed – which grew only 26%, compared with 27% the previous quarter.

The narrative driving these figures is, of course, AI. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai outlined their thought process where the cloud infrastructure and AI markets are converging in their earnings calls.  

“Azure… the way I think about is we still are [at] inning two or three of even cloud migration, especially when you view is whether by industry moves to the cloud, segment move… as well as country adoption of the cloud,” said Nadella. “There’s still early innings of the cloud migration itself, there’s a lot there still – and then on top of that, there is this completely new world of AI driving a new set of workloads.”

“When I think about it long-term, I view the AI opportunity as expanding our total addressable market and allows us to win new customers,” Pichai told analysts. “The scale of investments that we can directly bring into [Google] Cloud now – we have over 80 models across Vertex [AI], Enterprise, Search and Conversational AI, and we are taking all of them, translating it into deep industry solutions.”

For the hyperscale cloud providers, AI has long been a service to provide on top of the infrastructure. Gartner has seen this play out for some time, having added platform as a service (PaaS) to its IaaS Magic Quadrant in 2020, recognising expanded enterprise use cases. “IaaS is driving software as a service and platform as a service growth as buyers continue to add more applications to the cloud and modernise existing ones,” said Sid Nag, VP analyst at Gartner.

Nag added that the maturity of the IaaS market has led to a ‘slight softening’ from the end of 2022, as companies use their allocated capacity, but another acceleration should come in 2024.

“Generative AI will continue to drive the cloud market forward, particularly as hyperscalers look to support offerings beyond the existing, democratised generative AI solutions,” said Nag. “As enterprises integrate generative AI into their technology portfolio, new markets and opportunities for cloud hyperscalers will emerge related to sovereignty, ethics, privacy, and sustainability.”

Meanwhile, IDC has posited that worldwide revenue for what the analyst describes as IaaS cloud networking services will reach almost $20bn ($19.4bn) this year, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 27.9% from 2022 to 2026.

IDC defines this space as ‘public cloud-based IaaS network services in which all the network infrastructure and services are elastic and on-demand.’ The primary example of such networking technology is cloud connects and interconnects – in other words, either providing a dedicated network to connect to the cloud versus linking multiple connections to enable data exchange – while other examples include cloud WANs, IaaS service meshes, and VPNs to IaaS clouds.

Again, this is an area where the hyperscalers are wielding significant leverage and investment. IDC noted that the top five public cloud IaaS vendors – the analyst puts Google ahead of Alibaba and swaps Tencent in for Huawei – were also the leaders in the IaaS cloud networking market. Organisations’ hybrid and multi-cloud strategies are helping to define this market.

“Cloud connects/interconnects are foundational to every cloud strategy as these make it possible for enterprises to quickly and securely connect their on-premises and edge environments to IaaS providers,” said Rohit Metra, IDC group vice president, network and telecommunications. “The rise of multi-cloud and SaaS applications that meet the demands of the modern distributed workforce in enterprises is the driver of rapid growth in cloud WANs and other IaaS network services.”

So if you are thinking there is little left to uncover in the IaaS market – it may be time to think again.

Photo by zhang kaiyv

Want to learn more about cybersecurity and the cloud from industry leaders? Check out Cyber Security & Cloud Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here.

  • James has a passion for how technologies influence business and has several Mobile World Congress events under his belt. James has interviewed a variety of leading figures in his career, from former Mafia boss Michael Franzese, to Steve Wozniak, and Jean Michel Jarre. James can be found tweeting at @James_T_Bourne.

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HCLTech and Cisco create collaborative hybrid workplaces

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Digital comms specialist Cisco and global tech firm HCLTech have teamed up to launch Meeting-Rooms-as-a-Service (MRaaS).

Available on a subscription model, this solution modernises legacy meeting rooms and enables users to join meetings from any meeting solution provider using Webex devices.

The MRaaS solution helps enterprises simplify the design, implementation and maintenance of integrated meeting rooms, enabling seamless collaboration for their globally distributed hybrid workforces.

Rakshit Ghura, senior VP and Global head of digital workplace services, HCLTech, said: “MRaaS combines our consulting and managed services expertise with Cisco’s proficiency in Webex devices to change the way employees conceptualise, organise and interact in a collaborative environment for a modern hybrid work model.

“The common vision of our partnership is to elevate the collaboration experience at work and drive productivity through modern meeting rooms.”

Alexandra Zagury, VP of partner managed and as-a-Service Sales at Cisco, said: “Our partnership with HCLTech helps our clients transform their offices through cost-effective managed services that support the ongoing evolution of workspaces.

“As we reimagine the modern office, we are making it easier to support collaboration and productivity among workers, whether they are in the office or elsewhere.”

Cisco’s Webex collaboration devices harness the power of artificial intelligence to offer intuitive, seamless collaboration experiences, enabling meeting rooms with smart features such as meeting zones, intelligent people framing, optimised attendee audio and background noise removal, among others.

Want to learn more about cybersecurity and the cloud from industry leaders? Check out Cyber Security & Cloud Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here.

Tags: Cisco, collaboration, HCLTech, Hybrid, meetings

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Canonical releases low-touch private cloud MicroCloud

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Canonical has announced the general availability of MicroCloud, a low-touch, open source cloud solution. MicroCloud is part of Canonical’s growing cloud infrastructure portfolio.

It is purpose-built for scalable clusters and edge deployments for all types of enterprises. It is designed with simplicity, security and automation in mind, minimising the time and effort to both deploy and maintain it. Conveniently, enterprise support for MicroCloud is offered as part of Canonical’s Ubuntu Pro subscription, with several support tiers available, and priced per node.

MicroClouds are optimised for repeatable and reliable remote deployments. A single command initiates the orchestration and clustering of various components with minimal involvement by the user, resulting in a fully functional cloud within minutes. This simplified deployment process significantly reduces the barrier to entry, putting a production-grade cloud at everyone’s fingertips.

Juan Manuel Ventura, head of architectures & technologies at Spindox, said: “Cloud computing is not only about technology, it’s the beating heart of any modern industrial transformation, driving agility and innovation. Our mission is to provide our customers with the most effective ways to innovate and bring value; having a complexity-free cloud infrastructure is one important piece of that puzzle. With MicroCloud, the focus shifts away from struggling with cloud operations to solving real business challenges” says

In addition to seamless deployment, MicroCloud prioritises security and ease of maintenance. All MicroCloud components are built with strict confinement for increased security, with over-the-air transactional updates that preserve data and roll back on errors automatically. Upgrades to newer versions are handled automatically and without downtime, with the mechanisms to hold or schedule them as needed.

With this approach, MicroCloud caters to both on-premise clouds but also edge deployments at remote locations, allowing organisations to use the same infrastructure primitives and services wherever they are needed. It is suitable for business-in-branch office locations or industrial use inside a factory, as well as distributed locations where the focus is on replicability and unattended operations.

Cedric Gegout, VP of product at Canonical, said: “As data becomes more distributed, the infrastructure has to follow. Cloud computing is now distributed, spanning across data centres, far and near edge computing appliances. MicroCloud is our answer to that.

“By packaging known infrastructure primitives in a portable and unattended way, we are delivering a simpler, more prescriptive cloud experience that makes zero-ops a reality for many Industries.“

MicroCloud’s lightweight architecture makes it usable on both commodity and high-end hardware, with several ways to further reduce its footprint depending on your workload needs. In addition to the standard Ubuntu Server or Desktop, MicroClouds can be run on Ubuntu Core – a lightweight OS optimised for the edge. With Ubuntu Core, MicroClouds are a perfect solution for far-edge locations with limited computing capabilities. Users can choose to run their workloads using Kubernetes or via system containers. System containers based on LXD behave similarly to traditional VMs but consume fewer resources while providing bare-metal performance.

Coupled with Canonical’s Ubuntu Pro + Support subscription, MicroCloud users can benefit from an enterprise-grade open source cloud solution that is fully supported and with better economics. An Ubuntu Pro subscription offers security maintenance for the broadest collection of open-source software available from a single vendor today. It covers over 30k packages with a consistent security maintenance commitment, and additional features such as kernel livepatch, systems management at scale, certified compliance and hardening profiles enabling easy adoption for enterprises. With per-node pricing and no hidden fees, customers can rest assured that their environment is secure and supported without the expensive price tag typically associated with cloud solutions.

Want to learn more about cybersecurity and the cloud from industry leaders? Check out Cyber Security & Cloud Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here.

Tags: automation, Canonical, MicroCloud, private cloud

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AWS and SoftwareOne collaborate on RISE with SAP

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Amazon Web Services (AWS) and SoftwareOne Holding AG, a global provider of end-to-end software and cloud technology solutions, have partnered to help customers transition to RISE with SAP on an AWS cloud environment.

Called the Ready for RISE on AWS bundle, it combines SoftwareOne’s deep SAP advisory and implementation knowledge with AWS technologies to expedite a client’s SAP transformation journey.

The collaboration comes at a time when there is growing pressure on organisations to decide how to modernise their SAP environments driven in part by the end of mainstream support for SAP ERP Central Component (SAP ECC) in 2027. Despite the imminent deadline, many organisations are still confused as to which path to take, including when to adopt RISE with SAP, SAP’s bundled offering of cloud solutions, infrastructure, and services that helps migrate SAP ERP to the cloud.

Ireneusz Hołowacz, Director of Application Development Center at GAVDI Polska, said: “A stable, efficient, and cost-effective environment for consultants and programmers is one of the most important priorities of our daily work. Thanks to the migration of our SAP systems to the AWS cloud with the help of SoftwareOne, GAVDI Polska has achieved all the goals set for this process.

In a survey recently conducted by SoftwareOne with Americas’ SAP Users’ Group (ASUG) – the full details of which will be revealed in January 2024 – showed that while 42% of respondents were familiar with RISE with SAP, 40% had heard of it but weren’t familiar with the details and 18% had never heard of it. Over half (52%) said they were still unsure how RISE with SAP would impact their existing relationship with cloud service providers.

“SAP customers have implemented some of the most comprehensive and complex enterprise systems in the industry and moving them to cloud services like AWS requires many important decisions to be made to optimise these investments,” says Joshua Greenbaum, Principal at EAC. “SoftwareOne’s extensive experience in the SAP ecosystem, combined with its unique capabilities around system rationalisation, cost containment, contracts and licenses, and cloud service management, among others, will provide customers deploying on AWS with the ability to make the most of RISE on SAP and other SAP offerings. Ready for RISE on AWS is an important offering for SAP customers at this critical moment in their business transformations.”

The Ready for RISE on AWS bundle will help clients understand their SAP transformation options and offer a comprehensive solution to organisations who consider RISE with SAP. It includes advisory data preparation, conversion services, data and AI, cloud innovation platform, supporting the entire journey to RISE on AWS. Clients will benefit from accelerated Return on Investment (ROI), optimal data management, and cost-saving strategies while laying the foundation for ongoing innovation and long-term business success.

Matt Schwartz, worldwide director, SAP Alliance & Partner Network at AWS, said: “As a valued AWS Premier Consulting Partner, AWS is working closely with SoftwareOne to offer SAP customers comprehensive assistance through each step of their journey to RISE with SAP on AWS.  SoftwareOne’s ability to bundle Advisory, Data & AI, Cloud Platform, and Operations considerations can be of high interest to customers who are seeking to understand RISE with SAP as well as the cloud native and operation considerations that surround and support the RISE with SAP construct.”

PF Grillet, SAP Business Lead at SoftwareOne, said: “There are many choices available to SAP clients who know they need to modernise but aren’t sure of the best option, particularly given the business-critical nature of the applications.

“All of our services are centered around our customers and what is right for them. This includes supporting and optimising RISE with SAP in scenarios when it’s the right decision based on their requirements. Our extensive knowledge of and relationship with AWS means we can help them better prepare and achieve a seamless transition to S/4HANA using RISE with SAP on AWS with reduced costs and risks. This collaboration goes beyond preparing businesses for change; it’s making transformation and becoming innovation-ready a reality using AWS technologies.”

The offering includes SNP tooling to reduce a customer’s data footprint and accelerate migration. SoftwareOne will migrate selected data to an AWS data lake, accelerate innovation readiness and ensure SAP data is suitable for broader data analytics and AI use cases. Clients gain access to innovative tools like AWS’ Sagemaker for Machine Learning, continuous data management and optimisation within the AWS environment. The AWS innovation platform also includes Amazon Bedrock that helps organisations accelerate adapting Large Language Models and deploying GenAI use cases that leverage the extended data set.

“While the future innovation opportunities are exciting, clients need to balance these with a pragmatic approach to costs,” explained Marilyn Moodley, Country Leader for South Africa and WECA at SoftwareOne, “We integrate ‘Cost-Out’ recommendations into the core of our services, providing a more cost-effective solution for customers, like reducing the data footprint size and optimising storage and archiving.

“Our expertise in the complexities of SAP licensing further drives cost savings while our FinOps capabilities enable customers to optimise their AWS cloud spend and effectively manage their AWS cloud environment, ensuring full transparency in their budgets. The overall result is a significantly reduced time for RISE migration, which translates into a quicker time to value.”

Want to learn more about cybersecurity and the cloud from industry leaders? Check out Cyber Security & Cloud Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here.

Tags: AWS, partnership, SAP, SoftwareOne, transition

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