Apple launched the beta for iCloud, cloud computing service that allows users to store data such as music files for download to multiply devices, such as personal computers running Mac OS X or Microsoft Windows on servers owned by Apple, iPhones, iPads or iPods. iCloud is to replace Apple’s MobileMe program, acting like data syncing centre for email, contacts, calendars and other data.

Beta is now available to all users with an Apple id and features web-based version of Mail, Calendar, Contacts, Find my iPhone or iWork. Users can access them if they visit iCloud.com while using Mac OS X Lion or iOS 5. However, it doesn’t include Apple’s cloud music services. Apple unveiled pricing structure for iCloud storage:

• first 5GB of storage on the service- free
• an addition 10GB- $20
• 20GB- $40
• 50GB- $100

Mashable is reporting that iCloud beta is a modified version of MobileMe and it includes similar interfaces. It also includes the addition of iWork support. Overall, iCloud has is the simplistic and universal interface for all of Apple’s cloud services.

iCloud is said to be unveiled this autumn. According to an Apple support page, MobileMe will be discontinued after June 30, 2012, and anyone who had an account as of the unveiling of iCloud has been extended to that date.

The latest research by Virgin Media Business revealed that six in 10 workers are demanding access to cloud services so they would be able to access all the services they use in the office from any location on any device. However, only 10% of the companies are deploying cloud technology. Research firm Gartner predicts that by 2016 all of the global 2000 companies will be using public cloud services. Does this mean all the businesses need to speed up the adoption of cloud solutions so they won’t fall behind?

78% of interviewed office workers believe than in 10 years they will be able to access all their applications over the web. Despite high demand and expectation of workers, many businesses are still slow to adapt cloud-based solutions because of connectivity concerns. 88% of business owners have yet to deploy cloud applications within their company. They main concern is whether their IT infrastructure is suitable for the adoption of cloud. Around 20% of business owners are not comfortable using applications via the internet and are worried about their internet connection. They also raise certain doubts about how much bandwidth cloud-based applications will use.

Big corporations are leading the way towards cloud. It’s estimated that by 2016 all of the global 2000 businesses will adopt cloud services. Apple has revealed that 75% of Fortune 500 companies are testing and deploying iPads within their firms. Companies like Disney, Estee Lauder or Xerox have already issued iPads to their workforce.

Companies can increase their productivity by freeing their business via remote working but there is much more to gain for companies than just productivity. Employees are willing and ready do adopt cloud services. The only thing holding the businesses back from cloud is connectivity concerns. Mark Heraghty, managing director of Virgin Media Business commented:

“A fast, secure and reliable internet connection is crucial to support an increasingly dispersed, mobile workforce, and once businesses liberate themselves from these bandwidth concerns they can start making the most out of cloud applications to boost innovation and productivity.”

Google Chromebook is the thin client, cloud-based computing device that runs Google Chrome OS. Chromebook relies on Internet connectivity to access applications and store data. Will Google’s latest brainchild Chromebook  revolutionate desktop IT and set up a new computing standard?

The concept
The main assumption is that these days online service is available everywhere. Chromebook operates on Google’s free software (Gmail, Chrome, Google Talk, Picassa, Google Docs) that can basically do everything that the regular software can do. A laptop doesn’t need hard drive nor programs on it. Chromebook doesn’t require operating system and doesn’t need desktop, files nor folders. Everything a user needs is located online and all the laptop needs is a web browser. So even if you attach a hard drive of flash drive, its contents appears in the browser window. You can’t quit or minimize the browser as there is no desktop behind it.

Another step in cloud adoption
Google believes businesses will be keen on buying Chromebooks as they offer significantly lower total cost of ownership figures. Google laptops reduce the need for administration software, maintenance and helpdesk cost. “On average, enterprises spend $3,000 per year on their PC environment for a well-managed PC desktop. We believe Chrome OS will be significantly cheaper,” explained Google.
It is believed that Chromebooks will accelerate cloud adoption. “We are all starting to use the cloud more in our day-to-day lives, whether it is a web e-mail service, music streaming site or a cloud-based CRM application. The launch of the Chromebook by Google should help to further drive cloud adoption among businesses that had previously been unsure about switching to a virtual platform,” said Andrew McGrath, executive director of Virgin Media Business.
Experts warn that before embracing the cloud-based solution, businesses need to make sure that they have the connectivity in place as all the mission-critical applications will be accessed from the cloud. Adoption of the Chromebook will also require a change in IT management and monitoring systems. Any cloud-based services used by the organisation need to be carefully monitored  and controlled in order to ensure they are getting the service they require.

Threats and obstacles
While not online, Chromebook can’t really perform any operations. Users won’t be able to access their emails and documents, listen to music, watch film nor read books. Google’s software does the basic job but what happens if client wants to run some other software like Skype, iTunes or Photoshop?
“Without the web, Google’s business model fails. Every time we search, Google gets a chance to make money based on advertising. That’s why the company wants us to ditch our powerful laptops and trade them in for web-centric workstations that won’t work unless they are linked to Google’s servers,” criticised George Colony, CEO of the analyst firm.

Chromebook’s web-based structure is a strength for some and a weakness for others. However, it marks a shift towards the cloud solutions and moves IT from traditional desktop-based solutions.

Small and medium-seized businesses in Britain are adopting internet-based software and storage services more slowly than Europe’s firms. The study by VMware revealed that the average of 60 percent of SMEs have already adopted cloud-based IT services compared to 48 percent in the UK. Why British businesses are lagging behind the rest of Europe and what can be done to encourage SMEs to embrace the cloud?

The information appeared as Microsoft and Tata Consultancy Services have launched internet-based business software platforms for SMEs and IBM has revealed the range of products promoting the adoption of cloud services. According to the research, the most common service used by small and medium-seized enterprises was storing data remotely rather than on the server or on the hard drives. The most common software accessed from the cloud rather than installed directly were email and office software such as spreadsheets or word processing.

Some of the British businesses have adopted cloud solutions quite quickly, moving every service to a cloud provider. Others believe that cloud services are the next thing to sell and that the IT service providers are pushing customers to switch to cloud-based solutions, even if the solutions are not entirely suitable. There is also a security issue involved as some companies don’t believe that cloud is a safe way to go. They want to know where their data is stored, where is it backed to and what happens when they loose connectivity.

Phil Lydford, Director at Managed Networks believes that local cloud solutions providers can help SMEs overcome their concerns: “SMEs in the UK exhibit a preference for smaller private clouds that enable them to understand where their data is held and how secure it is in the event of difficulties. They also like to know that they can speak with someone who understands their situation rather that having to go through some remote help function. Integration with locally deployed businesses applications remains a challenge for large clouds in the SME environment.”

The debate around cloud services and their security has been on for a while. There is a huge schism between IT departments and business communities in terms of cloud services adoption.

The study carried out by Accenture, London School of Economics and Political Science’s Outsourcing Unit revealed that IT people see security and privacy as serious barriers in deploying cloud-based services while business communities perceive it as a big chance for improvement. Andrew Greenway, global cloud programme leader for Accenture commented: “Business people said they didn’t see security and privacy as an issue around cloud. IT people conversely saw data privacy, lock-in and security as much more of a problem. They also weren’t as convinced by the cloud as the business community, which has got increasingly frustrated with the speed of delivery of IT.”

Business communities look to increase the effectiveness and reduce costs and believe that cloud computing is a perfect solution. A report by Microsoft indicates that businesses which use cloud applications and services save on energy use and emissions. It translates into smaller carbon footprint for companies. Microsoft estimates that simply by switching to cloud services the emission of carbon can be reduced by 90 percent for small deployments of 100 users and between 30 to 60 percent for large deployment above 1000 employees.

However, over 40 percent of surveyed IT professionals believe risks far overweight benefits and only 10 percent said they would move mission critical applications to the cloud. The experts say that the gap between IT people and business communities needs to be narrowed down. Otherwise business people are going to bypass IT departments to buy services they desire but ultimately they both want to improve the company they work for.  “There is a need for IT to get with the programme and understand the world is going to be different and demand a much more transparent and agile method [of IT delivery] in the future. This is a major change in direction for IT that’s going to impact every organisation, public and private, and it could be a long journey,” said Greenway.

Switching to cloud computing appears to be inevitable, so the organisations need to start to adapt the changes and learn how to manage cloud coherently. IT and business people play different roles within a firm, they can bring with them different perspectives when it comes to cloud services. When a schism does emerge, the best approach is to engage in genuine conversation, to share views and considerations about how to move forward with cloud.

The latest research by the Cloud Industry Forum revealed that nearly half of UK businesses (48%) are already using some form of cloud service. The main driver for change wasn’t actually the need to keep costs low, but the desire for increased flexibility. Worldwide, Microsoft predicts that by 2014 four out of 10 SMEs will be in the cloud by 2014. Is cloud computing soon to replace private IT infrastructure entirely?

Probably, one of the most significant indicators of cloud services success is the high rate of satisfaction with its technology. The survey showed that 94 per cent of cloud users were happy and satisfied with the service and are planning to expand the technology into different parts of their operations.

As for 52 per cent of the companies yet to invest in cloud services, they are very keen on doing so. Only 2 per cent of them weren’t interested in developing the cloud technology.

Andy Burton, chairman of Cloud Industry Forum, commented: “The reality is that customers are trying the cloud, they’re doing it for a purpose and they’re very happy with it.” He also added that much of the interest in cloud came from business leaders, but 65 percent of the companies converting to cloud had the decision taken by IT managers.

In a broader perspective, the latest research by Microsoft’s “SMB Cloud Adoption Study 2011” predicts that four out of every 10 small or medium businesses will adopt cloud-based services by 2014. The survey was carried out across 16 countries. It was also discovered that the larger the business, the quicker it adopts cloud services.

As cloud computing becomes more and more ubiquitous and existing IT systems outdated, the businesses will migrate to cloud rapidly.

Data, communications and information access technologies are changing the UK’s work / life boundaries. A recent survey by the Federation of Small Businesses found that around 40 per cent of SMEs were now home-based. Apart from over 3 million people estimated as regular home-based workers – of whom around 2.5 million work with computers and telecommunications – the shift to adopting a remote workforce model has accelerated with the emergence of highly sophisticated internet resources and mobile worker applications.

The technology platforms and channels of reciprocal connectivity can now deliver ever increasing levels of complex data and media exchange.  Even with the ready availability of a virtual office PC experience with thin client applications such as DesktopLive, an overwhelming majority of company employers have been slow to adapt to the changing landscape.

During the period of extreme UK weather conditions in December 2010, productivity losses due to the failings of the transport system were minimised in many companies who resorted to the provision of their current basic technologies such as laptops, broadband and dial-in meeting facilities to create a link to the office or customers via the internet or teleconference.

Notwithstanding, staff trust and network security issues – as a result of which, nearly one in five employees wanting to work from home are being prevented from doing so by their employer – many companies, also face a considerable challenge when IT managers are tasked with evaluating the correct IT technologies to support which will best equip the company and its remote users for optimal, customised usage.

Inevitably, the most significant and traditional obstacle is the concern over security. Unsurprisingly, as a Cisco Systems report recently revealed, over half of all respondents saw security as the biggest challenge to enable remote working. The preference for a traditional ‘last resort’ method of issuing ‘secured’ laptops with multi layered, network protection safeguards, is not only restrictive to flexible data access and processing but is rapidly becoming an obsolete method in the age of fast mobile access, storage and handling via web based superservers.

It does beg the question of the obvious, alternative application of a simple SaaS ( Software as a Service) or accessing office software as a resource in the Cloud. The emergence of the iPad leading the way for the use of tablets, alongside the mobile, is an example of how access to common user interfaces across a wide range of devices is poised to change the preconceptions of businesses comfortably working with cloud based applications.

In other words, familiarity of logging on to a virtualised work environment through dedicated applications or a web browser, will help ease the shift from running software locally on an individual user’s physical processing unit and importantly, access is securely protected behind a vendor’s firewall. The crossover is beginning to happen and according to research by IT analysts Forrester, three quarters of European and US businesses already proposing to make use of the iPad and to also replace laptops.

It is a process of partial transition to a more cloud based working model, where the necessities of taking a proactive IT approach to a dynamic web environment of fast paced technology changes, can be moderated by an IT support infrastructure guiding the appropriate deployment of expanding business data storage and application software access.

The recent announcement that Citrix – Managed Network’s Silver Solutions partner – are working with Amazon Web Services to optimise XenServer virtualisation and some Windows software for the Amazon cloud represents not only an “extension of their partnership” but also, according to Simon Crosby, Citrix’s chief technology officer for their datacentre and cloud division, a “focus on furthering compatibility with AWS to give customers an enhanced experience when connecting their XenServer-virtualised datacentres.”

As a tangible expression of a proactive IT approach designed to make it easier to migrate workloads between datacentres and the AWS Elastic Compute Cloud, Crosby believes the collaboration “will ensure unparalleled portability, security and manageability of application workloads between private and public clouds”.

Issues of portability, network security and operability, especially concerning moving sensitive data applications to a cloud environment are still a key stumbling block with many businesses who are, nevertheless, becoming increasingly aware of cloud’s potential to gain competitive market advantage and make significant cost savings, especially during a tough economic period.

However, both SMEs and their larger counterparts are making increasing use of a variety of cloud computing applications by replacing their own enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) applications with basic off-the-shelf versions to deal with human resources and accounting. The movement out of their data centres has also extended into areas such as CRM, email systems and websites.

As a result of a piecemeal approach, IT managers are having to undertake the management of a quasi hybrid cloud environment, which means some data resides on-premises whilst others are in the cloud. It has been anticipated by technology and IT support analysts that hybrid cloud would be a more favoured path for first wave migration, and global brands such as HP have followed the path of Amazon Web Services (AWS) and IBM. Recently, they announced they would be entering the cloud vendor arena via their new HP Enterprise Cloud Services which bundles server, storage, network and security resources for consumption as pure services.

Appealing to many businesses and organisations that fear cloud lock-in, as well as the costs and complexity of following a SaaS or software platform, and coming from a heritage of on-premises platform, hybrid clouds are intended to help organisations make the transition. Hybrid computing is increasingly being seen as key to enabling core competency for enterprises, allowing growth and management of applications regardless of heritage, production model or technology.

As the workforce becomes increasingly mobile and more geographically dispersed, public/hybrid clouds enable IT departments to outsource IT infrastructure (servers, storage and networking) thus, making IT application services more easily accessible over the Internet.

Cloud computing was highlighted at the World Economic Forum 2011, held in Davos, Switzerland, 26 – 30 January, when Neelie Kroes, the European digital agenda commissioner presented a forceful argument for the EU to be ‘cloud-active’.

Focusing on European technology research and innovation, and the alignment of data protection and other legislation development, Kroes emphasised the existence of “manifold” reasons for EU involvement in the cloud.

As 21st century business imperatives are about to become subsumed ever more deeply into mind boggling petabytes of online data and media, storage, access and transference, savvy enterprises have long recognised that a proactive IT infrastructure harnessing cloud based resources to be the inevitable, long term solution.

But as the European digital agenda commissioner implied, data protection and network security is a factor and, has often been a key reason preventing many companies from making that existential leap from the boundaries of physical ownership to the limitless possibilities of a virtual resource.

For a large number of companies, the most fundamental security boundary between their infrastructure and the outside world consists of the perimeter defence provided by firewalls in their demilitarised zone. IaaS, or Infrastructure as a Service, whereby, the client typically pays on a per-use basis for outsourcing IT, moves the fundamental security boundary to the configurations of virtual machines and virtual network paths in the IaaS provider’s data centre. This ultimately means the equipment used to support operations, including storage, hardware, servers and networking components, is owned by the service provider who is responsible for security, running and maintenance.

A 2010 business study conducted by global IT consultants, International Data Corporation (IDC) found, that of the respondents surveyed:

44% saw paying just for what you get as one of the key advantages.
40% said a major advantage of cloud was that it is easy and fast to deploy.
40% considered not needing to buy additional IT infrastructure as a key advantage.

However, on a more typically cautious note :

38% of survey respondents were concerned about the security and compliance of cloud services.
34% were concerned about the location of their corporate data in the cloud.

The coming faster broadband and emergent mCommerce will, undoubtedly, lead more businesses to seriously consider the transition to the cloud. The use of cloud based services to access a dizzying array of online applications has been gaining rapid momentum in the last five years.

Proving extremely popular with IT managers to further enhance operational flexibility and customer service, company owners and their Finance directors naturally welcome the benefits of operating a lower-cost network infrastructure and using data centre resources to transform fixed IT costs into variable operational expenses!

Attitudes towards adopting cloud as a resource service are mellowing, inasmuch as it is recognised that many organisations have been working with cloud applications quite happily for some time. But the issue of multiple remote worker access to replicated PC screen experience and company data storage is not yet resolved although a straightforward solution such as DesktopLive easily provides, is readily available.

The evolution of cloud itself is dynamic and, notwithstanding, the vital necessity of ensuring a secure network infrastructure in place to support cloud integration, businesses should gain greater understanding from their prospective cloud service provider of how the responsibilities of compliance to their security and data protection requirements will be most assuredly met.

Definitely seeing accelerated movement into the Cloud being reported in the news these days! Alongside the likes of Amazon and Sage, for example, Google have not been slow to propel their own engine of change, as it were, with repeated announcements that printing from Google is taking to the Cloud.

This month, CloudPrint has been launched in beta, aimed primarily at mobile documents, which essentially means anywhere or at any time, a document in Google Docs or an email in Gmail can be opened via a mobile browser, ‘Print’ clicked from the drop down menu, and ready to be collected immediately upon arrival.

Driving the realisation that Cloud’s time has come is a combination of converging factors. Faster and wider broadband, cross-platform web technologies enabling multiple access, transfer and storage of unlimited complex data, and the increasing reliance on web channels or virtual platforms as an application resource in order to facilitate a proactive IT requirement.

We have already seen relatively straightforward consumer web based services, from hosted and web email, to online transactions, tax preparation, photo and album creation and today’s linking social networking sites in the continuing development of successful SaaS business applications.

Printing via your mobile represents another tangible example of adaptation to a ‘thin client’ approach to cloud computing, as is readily available via DesktopLive, where a basic monitor screen access to web based software (SaaS) removes the need for physical storage of application drivers and the connecting of hardware to software via a cable.

The end of the physically located desktop has been much talked about in recent times as the smartphone/tablet revolution continues and indeed, the Cloud, as a location-independent communications network is now really becoming better understood across the wider business community. But it’s likely that the static desktop will continue to operate alongside mobile, but increasingly more reliant on cloud based applications as data/media processes accelerate and complexify.

Analysts have predicted that with the arrival of increased high-speed bandwidth, which makes it practical to locate infrastructure remotely, and reacting to the current difficult economic climate, over three quarters of IT managers are said to favour SaaS and will move from a capital expenditure to opt, instead, for outsourcing IT by purchasing 40 per cent of their IT infrastructure as a service.

Gartner forecast that within 2 years, 12 per cent of the global software market will consist of Internet-based forms of SaaS and cloud computing offered by cloud vendors accompanied by intrinsic IT support . In addition, Cloud computing will, by necessity, intensify and enhance frameworks of greater cooperation and collaboration among a geographically-dispersed workforce at multiple locations, including any number of related associates outside a company firewall.

The prevailing consumer adoption of personal forms of cloud computing is inevitably, driving business to migrate to the cloud with adoption rates doubling from 2004 to 2008, with around a fifth of SMEs and a quarter of medium-size companies currently using SaaS.

According to a Gartner 2009 study, “ .. .nearly 90 per cent of organisations surveyed expect to maintain or grow their usage of software as a service (SaaS), citing cost-effectiveness and ease/speed of deployment as primary reasons for adoption.”