Author: John Marcus

John is a Principal Analyst for Business Network and IT Services at Current Analysis. His focus is on new developments in cloud services and service providers in Europe.

Vendors Find Pace of Tech Change Causing Tension Within UK Public and Businesses

by John Marcus, posted in IT Leader
J. Marcus

Summary Bullets:

  • According to a new survey, citizens feel overwhelmed by rapid changes in technology, making for cautious purchasing and declining trust in business.
  • Business leaders are more positive, but they are keenly aware of public confusion around new technologies; as a result, they are moderating their adoption planning.

The well-established promise of a digital future for society is welcomed by most people and businesses, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t accompanied by a certain level of confusion and concern. While the disruption caused by technological change has revealed new opportunities for UK citizens and companies, it has also exposed the limits of tech knowledge among both individuals and organizations, often necessitating what feels like ill-prepared decision making. A recent survey by Fujitsu captured public opinion on the importance of digital transformation to the success of future generations. It also tapped business leaders across the UK’s major industries to gain insights on how they view the advantages and challenges of increased digital adoption. Continue reading “Vendors Find Pace of Tech Change Causing Tension Within UK Public and Businesses” →

Alibaba Cloud Aims for Platform Integration with Digital Industries; New Retail Deployment with El Corte Inglés Highlights Success Beyond China

by John Marcus, posted in IT Leader
J. Marcus

Summary Bullets:

  • Deployment with leading Spanish retailer El Corte Inglés represents the potential of Alibaba Cloud’s ‘New Retail’ solutions beyond China (and beyond Alibaba’s own e-commerce business).
  • Retail is just one of many industries where the company is positioning to deliver integrated AI-driven digital solutions.

Ahead of its annual Apsara Conference in Hangzhou, China, Alibaba Cloud announced a key enterprise customer engagement in Europe. While the deployment of its AI-driven retail solution with leading Spanish retailer El Corte Inglés is described as a pilot, the two companies were already working together, having signed an agreement last year that covers commerce, smart payments, cloud computing, and retail-specific digital solutions. Continue reading “Alibaba Cloud Aims for Platform Integration with Digital Industries; New Retail Deployment with El Corte Inglés Highlights Success Beyond China” →

HPE in Industrial IoT – Moving Away from a Catch-All Platform to Collaborative Solutions

by John Marcus, posted in Cloud Enable
J. Marcus

Summary Bullets:

• HPE has discontinued marketing and development of its IoT platform.

• HPE is instead moving forward in supporting IoT deployments with infrastructure and consulting, working directly with customers as well as third-party SIs and platform providers.

HPE was in Berlin this week as a primary sponsor at Industry of Things World 2019, a hands-on conference focused on industrial IoT and digital transformation for enterprises.

Despite the clear importance of IoT to HPE’s strategy, HPE Universal IoT Platform, which the company had been promoting aggressively for a few years since its launch in 2016, has been discontinued (although it is maintained in a few deployments where it is still being used). HPE found market requirements to be so diverse that attempting to provide a horizontal solution across all sectors and use cases won’t resonate with enough customers to make it worth it. Key industrial verticals – for example automotive manufacturing, which represents a large market opportunity for IIoT – expect a vertical template, and HPE never had much traction with its platform in manufacturing. With its origins in telco OSS/BSS systems, HPE’s solutions have worked well with large scale smart city deployments, although it found adding connectivity to devices challenging. Continue reading “HPE in Industrial IoT – Moving Away from a Catch-All Platform to Collaborative Solutions” →

Q-loud’s Data Hub for Techem Is a Prime Example of Telcos’ Platform Business Aspirations

by John Marcus, posted in Internet of Things
J. Marcus

Summary Bullets:

  • Q-loud developed an IoT solution for energy provider Techem, which it will deploy and operate.
  • Techem will offer IoT-enhanced smart building services to its customers in the real estate industry, leveraging Q-loud’s platform.

It seems like a pretty modest news item at first glance, a deal between a smaller German challenger in the IT and connectivity space and a specialist energy provider. Q-loud is the IoT unit of QSC AG, a business-oriented network operator and system integrator which has recently shifted its strategy away from traditional telco services for SMEs toward digital opportunities. The largest telcos in Europe, of course, are doing the same, trying to build new platform-based businesses. Some have made multiple acquisitions to get there (Orange invested EUR 1 billion in such acquisitions in 14 months), while the smaller QSC has taken a different approach: selling off a significant part of its telco assets to reinvest the proceeds in digital (the sale of subsidiary PlusNet earlier this year to EnBW Telekommunikation for EUR 229 million euros is funding development of its cloud and IoT businesses). Continue reading “Q-loud’s Data Hub for Techem Is a Prime Example of Telcos’ Platform Business Aspirations” →

Can We Use Blockchain to Thwart Fake News?

by John Marcus, posted in Cloud Enable, IT Leader, Secure
J. Marcus

Summary Bullets:

  • Digital media faces a ‘fake news’ problem where sources may be biased or worse, and actual content may be manipulated.
  • Orange is behind Safe.press, a blockchain-based consortium for certifying news sources as legitimate – and not ‘fake.’

As investigative journalists and whistleblowers struggle to be heard in calling out the rampant abuse of social networks in propagating ‘fake news,’ one startup is trying to tackle the issue with new technology. Continue reading “Can We Use Blockchain to Thwart Fake News?” →

Deutsche Telekom’s Car SOC is Ready to Protect Drivers—Is the Auto Industry?

by John Marcus, posted in Secure
J. Marcus

Summary Bullets:

• Connected cars are vulnerable to the same threats facing any Internet user or device

• Deutsche Telekom proposes its Car SOC to the industry, but as of today no one is responsible for protecting drivers from cyber attacks

Connected cars, like anything else using the Internet, are exposed to a range of vulnerabilities most drivers dare not even contemplate. Even without being connected, the digital technology in place is at risk from attackers, whether through the cloning of remote control key entry and engine starting, or from malware introduced to internal systems via infected diagnostic tools at the local garage. Continue reading “Deutsche Telekom’s Car SOC is Ready to Protect Drivers—Is the Auto Industry?” →

Adapt to Succeed: Wipro Demonstrates Formula for Digital Growth

by John Marcus, posted in IT Leader
J. Marcus

Summary Bullets:

  • Wipro has grown its digital business rapidly by focusing on customer experience and investing in a consultative approach.
  • It showed how at its recent analyst briefing, begging the question of whether it can remain differentiated.

Wipro held an analyst day in the UK this month to showcase its digital business, started from scratch four years ago and boosted by its acquisition of Designit in 2015. Since then, Wipro Digital has grown from less than 50 to more than 5,000 employees generating an increasingly significant portion of Wipro’s overall revenues. Continue reading “Adapt to Succeed: Wipro Demonstrates Formula for Digital Growth” →

What to Expect in Data Center and Cloud Services Next Year

by John Marcus, posted in Cloud Enable
J. Marcus

Summary Bullets:

• Global hyperscale IaaS providers will build capacity in new regions around the world, often leveraging colocation providers that can support their scale

• Multi-cloud requirements will drive new interoperability from major providers, more choice in multi-cloud connectivity, and more demand for cloud-native managed services

GlobalData expects core cloud market segments like infrastructure (IaaS), platform (PaaS), and software (SaaS) as a service to maintain their strong momentum of growth in 2019. For the enterprise seeking solutions, we expect to see more specialist assistance available in the form of cloud enablement solutions directly in response to the reality of a multi-cloud world. Globally, the major cloud service providers will extend their reach farther around the globe, often partnering with colocation players to speed time to market rather than buying or building their own sites. They will also need to respond along with the rest of the overall ecosystem to hybrid and multi-cloud imperatives, trading improved interoperability for continued customer loyalty. Specifically, we expect to see:

• Expansion in Middle East/Africa and Asia among global cloud IaaS providers: with China-based players now expanding beyond Asia, we expect western cloud service providers to build more capacity in the Middle East, Africa, and the APAC region. Local and regional hosting has become an imperative for some use cases, but these regions also offer the highest rate of near term growth. Continue reading “What to Expect in Data Center and Cloud Services Next Year” →

IoT Projects Increasingly Target Revenue Growth

by John Marcus, posted in Internet of Things
J. Marcus

Summary Bullets:

• Most IoT projects to date have focused on increasing efficiency or reducing costs

• In 2018, IoT deployments are increasingly intended to generate new revenues as well

IoT offers operators and enterprises a slew of opportunities, with the rise of pervasive connectivity opening up new ways to both collect and generate data in pursuit of stronger businesses and a better experience for customers. The GlobalData IoT Innovations Tracker is following new deployments across sectors worldwide, capturing the key use cases and technology choices made by the deploying organizations. But it also considers the key questions for each deployment: Why are we doing this? What do we hope to gain from this IoT project?
Continue reading “IoT Projects Increasingly Target Revenue Growth” →

Orange Cyberdefense on Turning the Skills Shortage into an Advantage

by John Marcus, posted in Secure
J. Marcus

Summary Bullets:

• At a recent Orange Cyberdefense analyst event, the company addressed (among other things) the familiar topic of the skills shortage in cybersecurity

• In doing so, it illustrated ways in which it might turn this fundamental market challenge into an advantage

The theme at Orange Cyberdefense’s recent analyst event was combining the best of both human and technology resources, so it was no surprise that the inescapable cybersecurity skills shortage was a featured topic alongside sessions dedicated to strategy, portfolio, and innovation. Without directly saying so, the managed security service provider (MSSP) is clearly trying to turn this global challenge into an advantage – at least in France, where it can claim market leadership with only about a 15% share due to a highly fragmented environment involving hundreds of solution providers.

With its strategy for retraining and recruitment well underway, Orange Cyberdefense has managed to increase the size of its team despite the people shortage and its associated side effect of high turnover among qualified employees. With 100 Orange employees upskilled and recruited by its own Cyberdefense Academy since 2017, plus the addition of 300 new external recruits in 2018, the group’s security business now has 1,300 “humans” on board. Continue reading “Orange Cyberdefense on Turning the Skills Shortage into an Advantage” →