IT departments are engaging more with the rest of their businesses, but there is still room for improvement on delivering the resources required to meet objectives, according to findings published by Cisco.

The results are from a global survey of 1,300 IT decision makers across 13 countries and paint a mixed picture for IT professionals.

Although 63 percent of respondents said they are confident that IT can respond to business needs, 76 percent said that companies sometimes worked around the IT department to roll out new applications without its involvement.

The survey also appears to show that the corporate network is holding back progress in many cases, with many IT professionals claiming that their network is not ready for data centre consolidation or moving work to the cloud. Reasons given for holding up the successful rollout of new applications included not enough budget (34 percent of respondents), not enough staff (25 percent) and network limitations (26 percent).

Despite this (or perhaps because of it), 71 percent of IT decision makers indicated that they planned to deploy software-defined networking (SDN) solutions this year. Chief reasons for doing so are to enable automated provisioning, while 33 percent said they expected SDN to deliver savings.

The growth in importance of the cloud can be seen by the fact that one in five respondents said that none of their applications were cloud-based a year ago, while two thirds indicated that up to 20 percent of their applications were cloud-based within the same timeframe.

About half of respondents pointed to data protection or availability and reliability of cloud services as the major roadblocks to successful implementation of a cloud strategy.

Overall, Cisco’s report concludes that greater alignment is needed between IT planning and business requirements. This being Cisco, network transformation is also highlighted as a key need to deliver application and business transformation, with any plans for growth and innovation being tied to network readiness and adoption of new technologies.

The survey included IT decision makers from companies in the UK and other major European economies, the US, China, Russia, Brazil, India Australia and Japan.

The May issue of the V3 Tablet App is now available for download for the iPad via the Apple App Store, with this edition focusing on cloud computing and its impact on the world of enterprise IT.

You can get your hands on it by simply registering free on the V3 website and using your login details to download the issue when prompted. And best of all, there’s no charge for the app if you’re a V3 subscriber.

This issue includes an in-depth feature on OpenStack based on an interview with Rackspace chief technology officer John Engates, discussing why he believes the technology is posing a serious threat to the likes of VMware in the cloud space.

Looking to the past, and the IT history section focuses on the instrumental role the Hotmail email service played in helping the world embrace the concept of cloud computing by making us comfortable with accessing services through the web.

Elsewhere, we spoke exclusively to the chief operating officer of HP, Bill Veghte, to discuss the future strategies for HP as it seeks to haul itself out of the mire that has blighted the company over the past few years.

After the huge outpouring of love for Windows XP after its one-year support cut-off date passed, we also assess some of the options open to firms considering life beyond the platform in our top 10 section.

Lastly, but by no means least, there’s the head-to-head review the world has been waiting for: the iPhone 5 against the Samsung Galaxy S4. We compare both phones based on a number of criteria to see which deserves the smartphone crown – you’ll have to download it to find out the winner.

As if all this wasn’t enough, there’s also the usual mix of our news analysis from the past month, a light-hearted look at some of the more silly stories that hit the headlines and views from our maverick guest CEO writer – all delivered in a rich, interactive format.

You can get the issue free if you have registered on the V3 website. Registering is free and only takes two minutes. Simply use the same website login details to get the app when prompted to download it.

Cloud computing has been around for quite a few years now, so isn’t it about time we accepted that the cloud is simply part of the way IT is delivered these days, rather than some exotic and dangerous cutting-edge technology

The very name ‘cloud’ doesn’t help, of course, as it is a loosely defined term that covers a broad range of technologies and usage cases, but until someone can come up with a better term for what cloud represents, it looks like we are stuck with it.

In fact, cloud has been around for much longer than people think, with web-based applications such as Hotmail representing early examples of software-as-a-service (SaaS) and CRM vendors such as Salesforce.com operating for over ten years.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has also been offering its Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) virtual machine service since 2006. But with the exception of CRM, such services have often tended to be aimed at consumers or developers – early adopters who are less risk-averse than large corporations with their concerns about data security and reliability of service.

However, there seems to have been a change in the air recently. Many organisations seem to be satisifed that the cloud is now mature enough, and has the potential to deliver IT in a more convenient and cost-effective manner than building and operating infrastructure themselves.

At the recent AWS Summit, for example, attendees heard from a number of Amazon customers who were not only using the firm’s cloud to host key applications and services, but were considering moving most, if not all, of their IT infrastructure onto it in the near future. These were not tiny startups, but organisations such as News International and Rail Settlement Plan, a division of the UK Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC).

Furthermore, a growing number of enterprise IT providers are bringing cloud services online, in recognition that this is where many customers are going to want to be in the future. Microsoft has recently officially launched its own infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) platform as part of Windows Azure, for example.

This enables enterprise customers to create a virtual network on Azure and populate it with virtual servers, linked to their own corporate domain and managed as if it were on-premise infrastructure. In effect, Microsoft is making it no more difficult or risky for Windows shops to build out onto its cloud than it is to manage a remote branch office.

But things are always more complicated than they first appear, and organisations have other issues to take into consideration than simply whether cloud infrastructure is more cost effective than on premise.

Redstation has become the first UK data centre operator to sign up to a new 100Gbit/s service from Virgin Media Business (VMB) in order to help it cope with the ever-rising demand for network capacity due to the rise in cloud computing services.

The 100Gbit/s service is a new offering from VMB that is claimed to be the fastest on the market to date. Jeff Wollen, executive sales director of partner markets and public sector at VMB said the firm had introduced the new service to keep pace with rising data demands.

He said: “Businesses are getting more and more data hungry with every passing day. As they become more reliant on cloud services, and mobile working technology to run their operations they need faster and more reliable data transfer between sites.”

Redstation, which owns data centre locations in Gosport, Hampshire and in Docklands in London, is the first firm to sign up to the service. It hosts thousands of servers running applications, email accounts and websites for clients based in over 100 countries.

This ever-growing demand for its services forced the firm to look at ways of improving access to the data stored in its locations, and upgrading the network connections between the data centre and major exchanges was a key part of this.

Martin Groom, managing director, at Redstation, told V3 that the updated network – which will be live by September – will more than double its overall capacity from 80Gbit/s to 180bit/s in order to ensure customers’ connections remain stable.

“Over the last 18 months we have seen the demand for bigger network connections, and greater bandwidth come to fruition because of cloud computing and a lot of larger customers are offering apps that are pretty bandwidth intensive,” he said.

“We need to be running at around 40-50 percent capacity in order to avoid issues of packet loss or latency, so we have to be operating in the gigabit-per-second range.”

The service from VMB is now available to any interested firms. V3 contacted VMB for pricing information but had received no information at the time of publication.

LAS VEGAS: The 2013 edition of EMC World brought the launch of one highly-anticipated release and the crystallisation of a vision for the IT industry that centres on big data and private cloud deployments.

EMC executives joined forces with the heads of their EMC, RSA and Pivotal subsidiaries to pitch a future in which firms operate mobile and cloud-based applications that rely on a series of highly virtualised systems powering big data platforms, both on-premise and in the cloud.

Headlining the event’s releases was the ViPR platform. Described by EMC as a software-defined storage system, ViPR allows firms to combine multiple appliances and facilities – both those offered by EMC and those built by rival vendors – into a single platform that can then be provisioned as needed in the form of virtualised appliances.

The company believes that the platform will provide a central component in its vision for a fully software-defined data centre. EMC executives have hailed the ViPR platform as essential for helping service providers to offer cloud applications and services.

Though initially targeted for service providers, the company is eventually hoping to deploy ViPR in the larger enterprise space as well with the growing pack of private and hybrid clouds that EMC believes will power the next generation of data centres.

EMC is also looking to foster the growth of a central ecosystem around the ViPR platform. Speaking in an interview with V3, EMC’s Amitabh Srivastava said that the company is going to offer outside developers a set of APIs to their products with ViPR. Additionally, the company hopes that the platform will inspire further innovation among the storage community and help to spark the emergence of new startups in the field.

Potential rivals, however, were quick to jump on ViPR and lob criticism at the platform for allegations of closing off the ecosystem. Cloud service storage architect SolidFire accused EMC of trying to undercut the OpenStack Cinder platform with ViPR.

SolidFire chief executive Dave Wright said: “It’s disappointing that rather than contribute that functionality to the broader storage community, they are attempting to create a new layer of lock-in in the orchestration stack.”

Las Vegas: The head of EMC’s newly-formed Pivotal subsidiary said that the company will be looking to keep an open approach as it builds its cloud computing platform.

Paul Maritz told attendees at the company’s annual partner conference that the upcoming Pivotal platforms will look to provide users with support for any number of popular cloud platforms and service providers.

The Pivotal boss said that the company is hoping to a void a replay of history as it oversees what executives describe as a third “era” in enterprise computing. While the first era was described as the use of mainframes and terminals and the second era a transition to networked PCs and servers, EMC believes that the third era will be one of mobile devices, cloud computing and big data.

“We don’t want this third generation of applications to go back to like being the first generation,” Maritz said, noting the common mainframe practice of locking users into a single brand for their entire infrastructure.

“We don’t want you to build an app in Amazon’s cloud and have to pay Amazon a tax for the rest of its lifecycle.”

Rather, Pivotal hopes to make its big data platform more akin to Linux, the open source operating system which runs on virtually all enterprise server hardware.

The declaration comes as Pivotal steps up its efforts to establish itself among EMCs other leading brands. A combination of staff and products from EMC and VMware, Pivotal recently picked up steam when it announced a $105m investment from General Electric (GE).

Maritz said that the influx of capitol was a vote of confidence in Pivotal’s big data analysis muscle and an indication of how the company can change business. In GE’s case, the change will include a shift from the sales of hardware directly to firms into a service model in which GE will sell time on hardware it monitors and maintains in-house.

“They see their industrial business undergoing rapid change in the future,” said Maritz.

“They see the opportunity to transform the value of a jet engine or turbine by taking in all of the telemetry and delivering new value to their customers.”

SAP has announced that it will start to offer its HANA analytics database platform as an enterprise cloud service.

The HANA Enterprise Cloud will allow users to run SAP Business Suite applications in the cloud. SAP says the by bringing its wares to the cloud it can reduce prices and offer users increased flexibility.

“With SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud, we are addressing a fundamental customer need that we have seen since we first launched HANA. Customers want more and more options in how they take advantage of the value SAP HANA brings,” said member of the executive board of SAP AG, Technology and Innovation Dr. Vishal Sikka.

“With the SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud, we are delivering HANA at scale with instant value and no compromise. We are simplifying customers’ experience and expanding their choice in how they want to adopt SAP HANA, now bringing it to a massive scale for enterprise mission critical applications – and we are doing this without disruption through the cloud.”

The HANA Enterprise Cloud will allow users to run programs such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and Data Warehousing in the cloud.

SAP has already created seven datacenters across the world to run the platform. Officials with the company say that it will begin to deploy 300,000 computers to manage the cloud network.

According to SAP, the cloud-based offering will be able to reduce costs by allowing users to stop buying large servers in bulk for use with HANA.

The firm has yet to reveal detailed pricing for the HANA Enterprise Cloud. However, the company says that more details about the platform should be released later this month at its annual Sapphire Now convention in Orlando, Florida.

SAP has been slowly rolling out its strategy to focus its product portfolio around HANA in recent months. Last January, the company announced that it would integrate its Business Suite platform into HANA’s in-memory database.

This March, SAP also announced that HANA had 1,000 users. The user base developed within two years since its original launch. SAP said at the time that users of the product included Vodafone and John Deere.

Las Vegas: EMC is using a strong series of recent sales returns as proof that the company will outperform its rivals in Europe.

EMEA president Adrian McDonald said that the company has in recent years been able to overcome the general financial malaise in the industry to consistently see solid growth in its sales and market share.

According to McDonald, the company on average grew its business at a rate three times that of the regional market growth and was able to raise its market share in the storage space on an average of two per cent over the last several years.

“We are seeing immense opportunity,” McDonald proclaimed.

“The market is looking to EMC for many of the answers in many of these essential questions going forward.”

The EMEA head sees the company building on its strong position in Europe going forward. He said that as the company rolls out its initiatives with the Pivotal, EMC and VMware brands, the market will likewise continue to shift towards cloud-based applications, particularly in the private cloud space where many enterprises will seek to transform their IT infrastructure.

“The essential story is a world of immense change,” McDonald said.

“The business world is going through enormous changes, likewise the IT world is changing in front of our eyes.”

While the company is confident with its direct channel, it also believes that its partner firms will reap a windfall from improved sales as the company looks to continue its growth through 2016.

“One of these underling stories to EMC’s success in EMEA,” said McDonald, “has been growing interdependency between EMC and the partner community.”

Infrastructure management firm Boundary is aiming to provide administrators with a single console that is capable of monitoring all applications and platforms.

The company said its management platform will allow admins and IT staff to keep an eye on application performance by analysing activity. It will also help to detect performance issues ahead of time for both on-premise and cloud deployments.

Gary Read, Boundary chief executive, told V3 the latest version of the platform not only monitors activity, but is also able to tie into a number of different alert systems on individual applications, allowing administrators to see alerts for multiple applications in a single pane.

“Because we are using this listening of the conversation as the key data set and using that to add context to the other happenings, then we are providing customers with this unique consolidated review,” Read explained.

Because Boundary is able to take a network-level approach and monitor activity based on application output or “chatter”, the platform is able to function as a platform-neutral service without the need to hook into APIs for each application. This versatility allows the Boundary platform to work with any number of network configurations and deployments.

With the latest update, the company is also hoping to speed up the ability to consolidate management by gathering applications alerts. Read said that the combination will help to further build what the company sees as a complete system for monitoring networking activity and application status.

“The product is about providing a service where operations teams and businesses can ensure the quality of service, the performance and availability of their modern infrastructure and applications and to enable those companies moving to cloud and moving to an agile operations environment to do so,” he explained.

Cloud computing adoption may be being hindered by unacceptable terms of service imposed by service providers while issues such as the US government Patriot Act are still a concern for UK and European businesses.

With cloud computing one of the hottest topics in IT and widely regarded as the chief way services will be delivered in future, vendors and service providers ought to be doing all they can to attract customers and assuage their fears about outsourcing vital functions.

However, it seems that some cloud service providers are failing to meet key customer requirements, or even driving them away with unpalatable terms and conditions of service.

Colin Towers, global chief technology officer at digital media and marketing firm Aegis Media, which boasts locations in 130 countries, said that some cloud service providers have “silly clauses in contracts that are off-putting, such as limitations on liability or the right to mine customer data.”

The firm, which often deals with sensitive customer information, has had to think again about using some cloud services, Towers added while speaking to V3 about Aegis Media’s use of cloud services at the recent VMware Forum in London.

While Aegis Media is largely favourable towards adopting a cloud-based strategy, the firm is bringing some services back inside the firewall and onto private cloud infrastructure in order to mitigate some risks.

“We’re very concerned about the Patriot Act,” said Towers, a sentiment that will be well understood by many IT chiefs on this side of the Atlantic.

“The problem is that US government bodies have the right to access any data held by US companies, even if that data isn’t stored in the US. And you would never even know if it happens – the service provider isn’t allowed to disclose the fact,” explained Towers.

Other bugbears with public cloud infrastructure or data stored on cloud services are down to corporate governance issues, such as auditing. “Clients want the right to audit, to see if you are in compliance with the relevant regulations and standards. They can do this if we have things running in our own data centre,” he explained.

However, when the data is stored on a service operated by a third party provider, the situation can be more complex. “It’s the difference between having a certificate that says you comply with regulations and whether you can be audited to prove it,” he said.

Meanwhile, Aegis is moving some services in the opposite direction, out to the cloud, again to mitigate risk. “We’re taking things such as our public-facing website and hosting that with a service provider, because we wouldn’t want any attack on that to hit critical services in our data centre,” Towers said.

Overall, Aegis Media is looking to expand on its use of cloud services, as it becomes more comfortable with them, but it will depend on the service provider giving them what they want, according to Towers.

“There needs to be acceptance from service providers that customers have requirements around privacy and compliance, and they don’t want to see these silly clauses,” he said.