Author: Amy Larsen DeCarlo

As Principal Analyst for Security and Data Center Services at Current Analysis, Amy assesses the managed IT services sector, with an emphasis on security and data center solutions delivered through the cloud including on demand application and managed storage offerings.

HP Enterprise’s Newest Cloud Tactic? Work with Microsoft to Sell Customers on Azure

by Amy Larsen DeCarlo, posted in Cloud Enable
A. DeCarlo
A. DeCarlo

Summary Bullets:

  • Close on the heels of its decision to shutter its Helion public cloud, HP Enterprise is going the partner route to the hybrid cloud with a new alliance with Microsoft Azure
  • HP Enterprise will now sell customers on Microsoft Azure services while Microsoft will send customers seeking out consulting and private cloud services to HP Enterprise

HP Enterprise CEO Meg Whitman slipped a surprise into the Q4 2015 earnings call, the last quarter in which HP reported as a single company. The company is teaming with long-time ally Microsoft in the cloud. HP Enterprise, which announced last month that it is scrapping its own Helion public cloud services, will now be a preferred Microsoft Azure partner. The company will now sell Microsoft Azure public cloud services while the latter will point clients in need of public cloud and consulting services to HP. Continue reading “HP Enterprise’s Newest Cloud Tactic? Work with Microsoft to Sell Customers on Azure” →

HP Dims the Lights on Its Helion Public Cloud

by Amy Larsen DeCarlo, posted in Cloud Enable
Amy Larsen DeCarlo
Amy Larsen DeCarlo

Summary Bullets:

  • HP’s fits and starts in the cloud continued this week with its disclosure in a blog that the company will sunset its Helion public cloud offer in January.
  • Unable to compete against the hyperscale tier cloud providers, HP is choosing to redouble its efforts in private cloud – and in selling hardware and software to IaaS providers across the public/private spectrum.

HP is making a fast exit from the public cloud sphere. Outmaneuvered by cloud behemoths like AWS and Microsoft which can outcompete HP consistently on price and agility in the IaaS realm, HP has decided to take its Helion public cloud solution off the market in January 2016. In a blog post this week, Bill Hiff, Senior Vice President and General Manager for HP Cloud, said that while HP is committed to helping customers manage their infrastructures across the traditional IT and private and public cloud spectrums, it was time to make a change. Continue reading “HP Dims the Lights on Its Helion Public Cloud” →

Amazon Undercuts Rivals on Storage Prices

by Amy Larsen DeCarlo, posted in Cloud Enable
Amy Larsen DeCarlo
Amy Larsen DeCarlo

Summary Bullets:

  • Once again, Amazon is playing the role of market disruptor with its new cut-rate pricing plan for unlimited storage.
  • Cloud Drive’s deep price cuts are certain to have a big impact; competitors including Google, Box, and Dropbox will have to respond.

Amazon making a price cut is hardly news, given its cloud services arm’s penchant for dropping its fees. However, when the retailer reduces the annual fee for unlimited storage to $59.99, the market takes notice. Cloud Drive has no restrictions on the number of users and no ceiling on the size of an individual file. This low-cost, unlimited storage plan will have broad appeal to both businesses and consumers. Continue reading “Amazon Undercuts Rivals on Storage Prices” →

Amazon Web Services Fires Up Its New Directory Service, Taking Aim at the Enterprise – and Microsoft

by Amy Larsen DeCarlo, posted in Cloud Enable
Amy Larsen DeCarlo
Amy Larsen DeCarlo

Summary Bullets:

  • AWS’ new Directory Service promises central IT a single system to authenticate users to both cloud-based and on-premises applications.
  • By integrating its Directory Service with Microsoft Active Directory, AWS makes its authentication solution a practical unified option for some heavy users of its cloud, but it is unlikely to supplant Microsoft anytime soon and its pricing model is flawed.

In a bit of a role reversal, Amazon Web Services is taking a direct shot at rival Microsoft in its pursuit of corporate clients. AWS is hoping that its new Directory Service will sweeten the appeal of its cloud to IT executives who have been put off by the complexity of post-cloud migration application management challenges. Specifically, AWS is playing up the fact that by working with Microsoft Active Directory, the company can offer business and government customers a unified mechanism via its AD Connector to authenticate users, add or move computer systems, and facilitate connections to printers and other enterprise resources both in the cloud and on-premises. The solution looks like an elegant one, but a complex pricing model could throw a wrench in the works. Continue reading “Amazon Web Services Fires Up Its New Directory Service, Taking Aim at the Enterprise – and Microsoft” →

CSC Explores the Leveraged Buyout Option

by Amy Larsen DeCarlo, posted in Cloud Enable
Amy Larsen DeCarlo
Amy Larsen DeCarlo

Summary Bullets:

  • CSC contacted a number of private equity firms in the first step toward evaluating whether a leveraged buyout that would allow the company to make further adjustments outside of the scrutiny of Wall Street would be a good option.
  • Though there are potential benefits associated with going private, even the exploration period can be risky as we all learned from Dell’s protracted 2013 leveraged buyout which put the company’s every flaw in the spotlight for months on end.

CSC has come a long way since the UK National Health Service (NHS) contract went off the rails and the shamed ITSP had to pay its client more than $1 billion for its botched job. Under the direction of current CSC President and CEO Mike Lawrie, the company implemented an extensive restructuring plan that includes some cost-cutting and some realignment of products. So when word hit the street that CSC was talking to private equity firms about a possible buyout, people took notice. After all, we are just a couple of years out from the point in time when industry watchers were speculating on whether CSC would sell itself to the highest bidder. Continue reading “CSC Explores the Leveraged Buyout Option” →

Pattern Recognition: The First Step to Reducing Risk Is Recognizing Threats

by Amy Larsen DeCarlo, posted in Secure
Amy Larsen DeCarlo
Amy Larsen DeCarlo

Summary Bullets:

  • Business and governments alike are facing unprecedented cybersecurity challenges as the threat environment becomes more virulent and complex and as more data is digitized.
  • Yet, as difficult and complicated as it can be to mount an effective defense today, threats share some common traits. The latest Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report uncovered the fact that the majority of security incidents fit into one of nine distinct patterns.

In an era where cybercrime and its costs to business and government are escalating at a breakneck pace, resource-constrained enterprises are struggling to keep ahead of the threats. One of the issues made clear by incidents such as the 2013 Target breach is that often organizations have the information, but their IT teams are drowning in so many alerts and false alarms, they fail to focus in on the most damaging threats. Unfortunately, too many IT teams are simply overwhelmed by the volume of incident data and the mysterious sources of cyber-attacks. Continue reading “Pattern Recognition: The First Step to Reducing Risk Is Recognizing Threats” →

Forecast for Change: Making Sense of Nebulous Cloud Numbers

by Amy Larsen DeCarlo, posted in Cloud Enable
Amy Larsen DeCarlo
Amy Larsen DeCarlo

Summary Bullet:

  • IBM acknowledged that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is looking into the way the company accounts for cloud revenues, but the provider isn’t alone in reporting practices that can seem inscrutable.
  • Will the investigation prompt IBM and others to disclose more detail around their on-demand sales, or by their nature is it too difficult to break out revenue figures that are often bundled together with hardware, software, and other services?

When it comes to forecasting cloud computing revenues, ambitious projections are the rule as number crunchers envision expansive demand for economical on-demand IT services.  Yet calculating future cloud numbers is an especially speculative exercise in a market space where many of the top players don’t explicitly report their current cloud figures. The reason for this is fairly straightforward; as bullish as many enterprises – and IT analysts – are on the cloud, revenues from on-demand services still account for a relatively small portion of most publicly-traded companies’ overall sales and thus they are not specifically required by regulation or convention to report those numbers. Continue reading “Forecast for Change: Making Sense of Nebulous Cloud Numbers” →

Oracle Rethinks Its Solo Cloud Act

by Amy Larsen DeCarlo, posted in Cloud Enable
Amy Larsen DeCarlo
Amy Larsen DeCarlo

Summary Bullets:

  • Oracle is enlisting a number of partners to help the company catch up to more nimble rivals that leapfrogged the software giant in the cloud.   These allies include Microsoft and Salesforce.com, two partners which might be best classified as ‘frenemies.’
  • The deal with Microsoft in particular represents a sharp about-face from Oracle’s more single-minded strategy which traditionally has been focused on crushing its rival rather than embracing the desktop software giant.

You might say Oracle has evolved its cloud position, slowly.  In the years since CEO Larry Ellison derided cloud computing as nothing more than a passing tech marketing fad, the once niche segment has gone mainstream.  Now on-demand titans like Amazon Web Services and Salesforce.com are driving the market forward with their multibillion dollar enterprises, and customers are clamoring for the flexibility and cost advantages of a consumption-based IT delivery model.  Even Oracle’s Ellison recognizes the need to do more than slap ‘as a service’ on its marketing materials.  Continue reading “Oracle Rethinks Its Solo Cloud Act” →

Commoditization and the Cloud: Bypassing the Race to the Bottom

by Amy Larsen DeCarlo, posted in Cloud Enable
Amy Larsen DeCarlo
Amy Larsen DeCarlo

Summary Bullets:

  • Last month, Amazon Web Services cut EC2 prices for the 19th time since it launched its flagship service, reflecting the ongoing race to the price floor that so many IaaS providers are pursuing.
  • At what point do these reductions cut into service quality and features, or has that already happened?

In recent weeks, everyone from Amazon Web Services and Microsoft to Rackspace has either slashed pricing for cloud offers or promised to beat their rivals’ prices.  There is no doubt that this competitive pursuit of business customers is sweetening the cloud’s appeal to the point where even the most reluctant of prospects have no choice but to consider their on-demand options.   However, all the battling to win the title of ‘Cloud Price Chopper King’ is also producing an unwanted result: the perception that the cloud is all about price.  This leads many businesses to wonder if there is any differentiation at all between and among mass-market public cloud solutions. Continue reading “Commoditization and the Cloud: Bypassing the Race to the Bottom” →

Practice Makes Perfect, or at Least Safer

by Amy Larsen DeCarlo, posted in Secure
Amy Larsen DeCarlo
Amy Larsen DeCarlo

Summary Bullets

  • Cybercriminals have become increasingly sophisticated in the methods they use to breach the enterprise, but the biggest risk may still be plain old human error.
  • Recent research shows that lost physical documents, missing memory devices, and misplaced laptops are the source of more breaches than online hacking attacks.

As an industry, we spend a considerable amount of time dissecting the latest cyber attacks and forecasting where the next source of trouble will be.  We advocate for enterprises to mount multi-layer defenses against a diverse set of threats leveled by an increasingly well organized contingent of hackers motivated by profit or ideology.  However, recent research serves as a clear reminder that the biggest threat posed to an organization’s data security may not be driven by malice or money.  In fact, the biggest threat may come from plain old fashioned human error. Continue reading “Practice Makes Perfect, or at Least Safer” →