David Akka Blog

BBC: Cloud computing for business goes mainstream

Last week Tim Weber, Business Editor for the BBC, declared that Cloud Computing for business had finally gone mainstream, his article which extolled the virtues of cloud also highlighted the concerns many businesses have when faced with the prospect of letting go of all their valuable dating and trusting it to “the  cloud”.

Can we believe everything we read? Has cloud now really become mainstream? Its true Cloud does seem to be on top of everyone’s list of topics for discussion but is the solution really ready for everyone. Tim certainly thinks so, he stated “Cloud computing can be applied nearly anywhere: the small retailer that needs a secure e-commerce website quickly and cheaply; the ferry operator that has huge computing spikes in may and June while 90% of its IT system idle the rest of the year; the fire service that needs extra computing power to predict the movement of forest fires during the summer”. But what of those whose data and IT is the company’s differentiator? Can you release your crown jewels into the public domain? Or should you forget cloud and potentially price yourself put of the market?

I don’t believe you have to do either, I believe the Hybrid Cloud is the ideal solution for many. Hybrid is the happy marriage of on-site or private cloud’s security with public clouds economic benefits. So what do I mean by a hybrid model?

Hybrid is the ability to create enterprise business applications that span both on-premise infrastructure and cloud infrastructures (regardless of whether this is private or public) and without the need to worry about how to create such solutions. This enables companies that are not yet entirely comfortable keeping their "crown jewels" on a public cloud, to start immediately benefiting from all other areas of the cloud that they are willing to embrace. As time passes and confidence builds these companies will be able to transfer more and more of their business logic, with relative ease, to the cloud.  

 

 The Hybrid cloud model could for many be that first step into the unchartered waters of cloud computing which will allow companies to dip a toe in the water without jumping head first into the unknown. Ultimately some will stay with this Hybrid model whilst others will move totally into the public cloud, but at the very least this model will allow companies to make this decision without being forced into something simply because it is seen as the cheap, quick and scalable.

For more information on the Hybrid Cloud and how Magic Software’s uniPaaS solution can span between on-premise, off-premise, desk-top and mobile devises without the need to worry about which bits go click here

SDMS use uniPaaS to enhance their inter-connectivity

"Magic Software has been the backbone of our business for over 15 years. With uniPaaS we now have a solution offering designed for 21st century consumption – interconnectivity and cloud-based solutions designed to meet the business needs of our customers today, tomorrow and years to come."

This quote is taken from a recent case study from a customer of ours. I wanted to bring this particular case study to your attention to show you the business opportunities available when moving from eDeveloper to the uniPaaS platform.  

We at Magic Software take pride in the fact that our technology is offering our customers the versatility to adapt to ever changing requirements as well as safeguarding the future of their business.

I hope you can find five minutes to read the SDMS story

 

As featured in the Sunday Times yesterday

Written by Sean Hargrave

Private and public ‘clouds’ provide IT flexibility and security

The biggest buzzword in computing that business people are going to increasingly come across throughout the year ahead is undoubtedly ‘the cloud’.  

It is a simple premise. Rather than host all of its applications within a headquarters office, many companies are choosing to instead make them available through remote servers which employees can access on a computer or mobile wherever they have internet access.

Consumers are also being offered ‘cloud’ services such as several well known music streaming sites, web-based email accounts, including Hotmail and Gmail, and photo and video storage sites, such as Flickr.

The extra flexibility has meant many software providers are now being called upon to develop applications which can be deployed in the cloud, where storage is relatively cheap, and where they can be updated by the vendor. This frees business clients from the traditional need to have to employ or contract IT staff to periodically shut down their network and update applications from within the company’s own server room.

When this is done remotely and automatically, with the end user always having access to the latest updated version of the software, the model is known as Software as a Service (SaaS). It comes with the bonus of clients generally being charged nothing (or very little) up front, paying instead a monthly fee per user. This typically makes cloud services much cheaper than those hosted by the end user and cloud services are generally far quicker to set up and deploy.

Mixed blessings

For developers at software companies, as well as those working within IT teams at (typically) large companies, these latest developments are both an opportunity and a threat.

On the one hand they are a welcome means of giving the end user extra choice and flexibility as to how they use applications, which are likely to provide better value for money. At the same time, though, the emergence of cloud computing and SaaS is causing both end users and developers to have serious questions, particularly over whether such new services will drive down revenue and if wider access risks security.

According to David Akka, Managing Director of Magic Software UK, Eire & Nordic, such legitimate concerns are holding back both software developers and their clients from fully embracing the cloud. These questions have prompted the company to develop its uniPaaS platform, which can minimise development costs by making the same application work in multiple environments - be it a corporate data centre or the cloud, for example. It also allows ‘hybrid’ solutions where a company may keep its proverbial ‘crown jewels’ on its own network but release less sensitive applications over the cloud.

“For software developers there is a very real question about the economics of the cloud and if they are losing a very valuable revenue stream,” he says.

“Many companies are still on licence deals and are happy to be paying for software and applications on this more traditional model. The software developers are happy for this as it’s a very valuable revenue stream, which they obviously don’t want to threaten by switching all their efforts in to developing for the cloud.

“However, at the same time, they can’t ignore the cloud. It’s a development that has allowed the vast majority of small and medium software development companies to take on the big four and offer new, agile pricing models. So, there’s a lot of demand from companies who want to use it to quickly set up applications that their work force can access wherever they are and without the upfront costs you’ll typically pay with a licence agreement.”

It is for this reason that Akka claims his company has developed the necessary platform to allow software developers and their clients to make applications available on new channels without a time delay while a new programme is written. In essence, applications can be repurposed for a different channel at a later date without the need to code all over again from scratch.

“The cloud combined with SaaS is proving a great means for the developers to take on the giants of the industry and provide incredible value to business clients,” Akka adds.

“As ever, though, it’s difficult for developers to second-guess future demand. They don’t know when they’re writing a new application which channel is going to prove the most popular, so it makes sense to develop a single application and then, through one platform, distribute it to a number of different channels.”

Mix and match

This requirement is set to become even more important, Akka suggests, because he believes that although cloud computing is set to be the key trend and buzzword for the year ahead, for many companies the cloud will start to take on a very different look and feel. For companies of all sizes, but particularly among large enterprises, Akka reveals there are moves to embrace the cloud but to do so in a hybrid fashion, as he explains.

“The large enterprises we deal with directly and other companies we’ve come in to contact with through events are all pretty much reporting the same thing,” he explains.

“They get the cloud and they want to use it because they realise paying per month for flexible services that are quick to deploy and are managed for them is very attractive. However, nearly every executive will tell you they don’t want their mission-sensitive information such as finances or strategic planning on the public cloud.
“That’s why we’re starting to see a difference between the public and private cloud, it’s certainly a big trend the experts at Gartner research are predicting for 2010. The public cloud is the cloud as we know it today, but we’re starting to see a private cloud appear which has far better security and can only be accessed by registered users or devices to help protect against eavesdroppers.

“It means applications will in future be placed on a platform, like ours, which allows clients to dictate which information never leaves their company’s internal network, which can go on the private cloud and which is ok to be on the public cloud.”

Out and about

Moving forward, cloud applications will also need to be accessible on mobile devices. Although cloud services have, to date, been mostly accessed on the move through laptops, mobile phones are now becoming sophisticated enough to access applications and Wi-Fi hotspots and 3G networks are now providing quick access to data on the move.

Hence, software developers and businesses are having to consider how best to roll out their services on to mobile devices.

“Developers know they need to be able to offer applications that work on smartphones but, again, it’s the typical scenario of them not knowing what the future brings,” he says.

“They don’t know how popular it is going to be, who will be insisting on it for their applications so we think, again, it’s another reason to use a platform which can take a single application and deliver it across a wide range of channels, including mobile, without developers having to make lots of different versions themselves. We’ll certainly be extending our support for Windows Mobile to the iPhone and Blackberry models this year to add more flexibility.”

So, the year ahead looks set to see a proliferation of routes companies will seek to use to allow their staff to remain productive inside and outside the office. At the same time, the option of accessing applications through the cloud, whether private or public, or a combination of both, will mean software developers will need to remain agile and able to provide their service wherever their clients require.

For businesses it should be an exciting time as the cloud develops to combine flexibility with improved security. For companies of all sizes the results should be liberating, freeing them from a straight choice between fully controlling applications and having them completely hosted on the cloud.

Freedom Through The Hybrid Cloud

2009 was definitely the year of cloud-education, although many companies are still prudent to act on the cloud. This prudence is born from a number of issues, such as where to start, security risks, organization readiness and lack of standards and industry consensus. We also learned that some enterprises see the utilization of cloud environments verses their own internal environments as an "either or" concept. However, this does not necessarily need to be the case. For many companies the number one reason for moving to the cloud is for economic benefit. Other reasons such as, simplicity, connectivity with remote users, elasticity and flexibility definitely dominate the discussion.

We see companies trying to benefit from some of the above in the form of their own "private clouds". What most have not considered is that a hybrid-cloud approach can also contribute and help them to achieve these benefits, regardless of whether we look at private or public clouds. We see more and more companies talking about private clouds, which in essence is nonsense; why is this? Because the whole point of a cloud is to consume services rather than own and maintain infrastructure, in much the same way we do when consuming utilities. This has taught us about companies' attitudes and concerns with regard to cloud technologies. On the one hand they want to take advantage of as many cloud benefits as they can, but without putting their businesses at risk and therefore; owning part of the solution.

 

So what do we mean by a hybrid model? This is the ability to create enterprise business applications that span across both on-premise infrastructure and cloud infrastructures (regardless of whether this is private or public) and without the need to worry about how to create such solutions. This enables companies that are not yet entirely comfortable keeping their "crown jewels" on a public cloud, to start immediately benefiting from all other areas of the cloud that they are willing to embrace. As time passes and confidence builds these companies will be able to transfer more and more of their business logic, with relative ease, to the cloud.

In 2009 we spoke with many CTOs, IT Managers and ISVs, and were invited to demonstrate and pilot this concept to them. Most of whom were keen on the idea of developing applications on platforms that can be deployed both on-premise and off-premise, or in combinations of both. One such example of this that we are currently investigating for one of our prospects is, taking their invoicing model for their Accounting package (create invoice, print invoice, amend invoice and so on) into the cloud. This allows their salesforce and administration teams to work remotely from home or on mobile devises, but also keeps their General Ledger model, forecasting and reconciliation within the safety of the enterprise.

We also found another interesting aspect of the hybrid model that many customers, such as banks, local governments, the NHS and so on, need because of their regulatory, compliance and governance requirements. Some organizations are required by law to own, manage and maintain the data repository of their solutions due to regulatory standards, such as data protection, Basel II and so on. By providing a solution that allows them to put their entire application logic on the cloud while keeping all the database on-premise, within the concept of a data vault, accessed by secure VPN links from the application platform proves to be the only solution that meets their needs and requirements.

Magic Software's uniPaaS Application Platform allows organizations to develop enterprise business solutions that can span between on-premise, off-premise, desk-top and mobile devises without the need to worry about which bits go where and provides the flexibility and functions to each of the environments at any given time. For example, when designing and deploying the solution there is no need to pre-determine what runs where. uniPaaS enables organizations that have current software development needs, to start building applications without the need to worry about how to deploy and can therefore make the decision to move to the cloud when they are ready.

The real reasons organisations want to move to the cloud!

Some of the leading cloud vendors at last month's Business Cloud Summit voiced there opinions on the real reasons organisations are looking at cloud computing. Arguements ranged from cost and ROI, improved service and flexibility of business applications, to better provision of applications to suit individual user requirements.

Take a look at the video to find out more.

 

SaaS and the real worry – Integration!

For many the real concern about SaaS - Software-as-a-Service is how to take traditional on-premise applications, like SAP's ERP, for example, and make it available over the cloud? SaaS integration has a number of benefits, some of which include:

• Increasing the flexibility of information over different systems
• Bridging disparate pieces of a process together
• Enabling a traditional on-premise application to go mobile through a common set of data interfaces
• Reducing the complexity and expense of integration

Over the next year, we are set to see cloud vendors differentiate themselves by offering complete cloud solutions as opposed to the basic infrastructure offerings. Solutions that help integrate private and public clouds, provide single sign-on and security, offer real multi-tenancy billing and chargeback, and enable business process and workflow automation in the cloud will become the new breed rather than the traditional hosted virtual machines.

As I mentioned in Monday's blog post, using a combination of Magic Software's uniPaaS application platform for the RIA front-end and the iBOLT business integration suite at the back-end, enterprises and ISVs can now build a mobile application that provides powerful Rich Internet (RIA) functionality for business users that also integrates and presents all of the various enterprise systems' data on one screen.

Through the combination of uniPaaS and iBOLT businesses can combine SAP with Salesforce.com CRM data, ERP data and back-office systems and processes to produce entire business workflows that can be customized, extended, deployed in any language and centrally managed over the cloud - be that private or public cloud scenarios.

The management of SaaS integration is enabled through the orchestration of data and information flows within the system environment. iBOLT is designed to easily assist with this orchestration, while uniPaaS enables rich application functionality over any mobile devise. Hence, your business data is easily accessible through workflow orchestration built in iBOLT and made available to end user s in a user friendly, mobile GUI through uniPaaS.

Click here to read more on this topic. I'd also be interested to hear your thoughts on this subject.

My opinion on cloud computing for 2010

We've already had 4 days to start enjoying 2010 and looking at what the year has in store, I think we could be in for a good one - Fingers crossed!

2009 saw widespread recognition of the operational and economic benefits of cloud computing, so much so that we all now understand how it is set to transform IT for the future. After a year of uncertainty and reduced IT budgets I believe we are set to see a growth in the use of cloud services in 2010. With that in mind, here are my predictions for the year to come and how I see Magic Software contributing to this.

So far Magic Software UK has already signed up to attend the Cloud Computing Congress at the London Olympia on March 16th, so it looks like the Cloud will still be hot on the agenda.

2010 will see an explosion in the demand for mobile devices and mobile applications. The challenge will be to provide a viable Rich Internet Application platform for the development and deployment of business application and in particular enterprise mobile applications that will be powerful yet practical enough to enable workers to complete essential tasks via their mobile devices - without transferring one-for-one the entire client user interfaces of heavy ERP or CRM enterprise applications to mobile screens.

Using a combination of Magic Software's uniPaaS application platform for the RIA front-end and the iBOLT business integration suite at the back-end, enterprises and ISVs can now build a mobile application that provides powerful Rich Internet (RIA) functionality for business users that also integrates and presents all of the various enterprise systems' data on one screen.

The combination of uniPaaS and iBOLT will mean businesses can combine SAP with Salesforce.com CRM data, ERP data and back-office systems and processes to produce entire business workflows that can be customized, extended, deployed in any language and centrally managed.

2010 will also see significant changes in the cloud-based service offerings. It won't be just the applications we make use of as services, it will also be consultancy and training, which is set to move into the cloud and stand as a major differentiator between the cloud vendors.

As more and more people gain experience with cloud services, knowledge will disseminate in the industry and best practices around security, networking, ‘hybrid clouds', application architecture and IT policies will become widespread.

Hybrid cloud scenarios will become the dominant use scenarios for cloud computing for the years to come. However, the drive toward hybrid cloud scenarios requires the integration of cloud-based and on-premises technologies in the enterprise.

Magic Software's iBOLT business integration platform is designed to fully and automatically integrate on-premise and on-demand cloud and mobile applications, and to extend the functionality of those applications while preserving the core business logic of the underlying technology.

With this in mind, 2010 looks set to be an exciting year on the cloud technology front. What's your verdict? Tell me your predictions for the cloud in 2010.

Magic Software is "On the Radar"

A while ago I met with Bola Rotibi the Principal IT Analyst at MWD Advisors to talk about Magic Software, our products, who they're geared to and what the vision is for Magic Software in the future.

Ms Rotibi asked some hard-hitting questions, which included areas for improvement and explored why Magic Software's uniPaaS is seen as a new breed of application platform. Here's a snippet of the article, which I recommend taking a look at - it makes for an interesting read. 

Why is uniPaaS interesting?

"As an application platform, uniPaaS is part of the new wave of what MWD refers to as "Managed Development Environments", that are leveraging strong history and credentials in RAD development environments (e.g. 4GL and CASE)."

"The single programming model, framework and code base allows developers to easily incorporate and implement RIA-based technology into their applications whilst at the same time employ a SaaS delivery model and the ability to deploy to a mobile device platform".

To access the full piece click here - Registration is free.

Business Cloud Summit & Cloudforce 2

Can you believe it's only 1 month until Christmas and there are still 2 major Cloud Computing events happening before the end of this year! It's truly amazing how interest in the Cloud has grown in speed and momentum over the past year.

So far Magic Software UK have exhibited at Cloudforce 1 in May this year and Cloud Computing World earlier this month, where we heard from the likes of  of Eric Auchard, Chief Technology Correspondent for Thomson Reuters and Paul Cheesbrough, CIO of the Telegraph Media Group on the trials, pitfalls and benefits of Cloud Computing in the modern day.

Just so you know you'll also find me at the Business Cloud Summit on December 2^nd and at Cloudforce on December 8^th, so there's plenty for me to do before the year is out. I'd like to invite any of you who will be attending these events to drop by the Magic Software booth.

You'll find me on Booth 8 at the Business Cloud Summit where we'll be running demos on uniPaaS, Magic Software's application platform designed to provide the true "Power of Choice", as we at Magic Software like to call it. What this basically provides is a means to development applications for on-premise, off-premise, SaaS, RIA and mobile deployment in a single paradigm.

For any of you attending Cloudforce you'll find me at Booth 24 where we will be running demos on iBOLT^TM, Magic Software's Business Process Integration solution designed specifically for integration with Salesforce.com.

I look forward to seeing some of you at these events!

Businesses need a balanced approach to mobile strategies - As featured in the FT.com - 16/11/09

I was asked recently to comment on mobile application technologies and the Cloud for the Financial Times.com, and I wanted to share the article with you. Below is a small snippet, if you'd like to read the whole article - visit FT.com

"...Today, a corporate Mobile Application Strategy needs to address key components including deployment across multiple devices and business areas, security, device management and offer critical infrastructure services such as e-mail..."

"...the businesses that truly plan to embrace the remote worker phenomenon fully will be extending their business logic, the rules that express business policy, to users via corporate mobile devices..."