| Security aware app design | |
| “Embedded intelligence combined with pervasive analytics will drive the development of systems that are alert to their surroundings and able to respond appropriately” | 
Singlepoint Brian Seery, technical consulting director |
| Increasingly clients are facing more and more regulation and more sophisticated security attacks which are difficult to address with current on premise infrastructure solutions. Cloud services that were once considered risky are now benefitting from enhanced security hardening and widespread adoption of industry standards. That said a lot of our clients are taking a ‘hybrid’ approach using both on premise and cloud depending on applications, verticals, budgets and business needs.As mobile devices continue to proliferate, the emphasis is shifting to serving the needs of the mobile user in diverse contexts and environments, as opposed to focusing purely on devices alone. Mobile devices are now a key part of the computing environment and it is this overall area which is continuing to raise significant challenges for IT as they no longer manage the control of the user endpoints. Embedded intelligence combined with pervasive analytics will drive the development of systems that are alert to their surroundings and able to respond appropriately. Context-aware security is an early application of this new capacity. By understanding the context of a user request, applications can not only adjust their security response but also adjust how information is delivered to the user.At Singlepoint we are working with clients in the area of ‘Security-Aware’ application design which encompasses runtime controls which enable clients to make optimal use of this ever changing environment.
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| Reactive to demand | |
| “A proper usage assessment for compute and storage could see organisations saving thousands on their monthly cloud spend” | 
Asystec David Braiden, principal software architect |
| More and more Irish organisations are dipping their toe into the world of cloud services and 2016 is seeing massive growth in this area. Irish customers are also benefiting from the fact that the main cloud services giants have a data centre presence in Ireland.Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure are the leaders in this area and offer a vast array of features and services at a low PAYG cost model which can help reduce an organisations TCO. However, most organisations are not getting the value that they could be.
The use of cloud services in a lot of companies has been driven by development teams who are being reactive to demand. This lack of planning and accountability has led to them using standard compute and storage, and not looking at the various tiers available. A proper usage assessment for compute and storage could see organisations saving thousands on their monthly cloud spend. “Pricing for various AWS storage services is complicated and thus difficult to understand and predict” – Gartner, July 2016 AWS has been primarily focusing on public cloud whereas Azure have been taking a slightly different approach and have been developing their new Portal to manage both public cloud and on premise virtualisation. Azures pricing models are a little easier to understand but they do lack some of the feature of AWS especially in the area of Object and Block storage. Asystec has a dedicated Cloud Services division that can help our customers understand cloud costing models and assist in Cloud migration.
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| Innovation focus | |
| “Customers listed the four biggest business benefits from cloud as access, scalability, performance and speed. Interestingly, cost savings were well down the priority list” | 
SureSkills Simon Campbell, cloud business development manager |
| Most organisations, ultimately, want to do business easier: to sell more and to scale. The IT industry talks about cloud services like email and messaging, or websites and e-commerce, and thinks in terms of Office 365 or the Google Apps suite. Customers talk about business-driven imperatives like improving productivity, enabling collaboration, or getting faster access to information.We know this because we surveyed our customers about what services would benefit from being migrated to a cloud platform, and what were the biggest business benefits of doing so. At 26.5% and 25.3% respectively, email and websites were the top candidates for cloud migration.
Some 22% of our customers said moving IT infrastructure to the cloud would deliver business benefits. In our experience, as customers understand the general value of cloud, they then begin looking at how they manage and mine information. CRM is a classic example of this, and was next in our survey (16%). Our customers listed the four biggest business benefits from cloud as access, scalability, performance and speed. Interestingly, cost savings were well down the priority list. Cloud’s real value is in helping customers to focus on innovating in their business. At SureSkills, we encourage customers to first take a step back, evaluate what to move, and to conduct proofs of concept. Considering the end destination – in other words, where the value is focused on their business – is the surest way to plot a successful route on their cloud journey.
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