Posted on September 27, 2013, by Goran Čandrlić | 7 minute read
Structure: Europe took place in London in a little more than a week from now, in past. Besides a belief that Europe is a bit behind the US in cloud adoption, it is obvious that interest is rocketing. Reports that were presented at Structure: Europe also support this idea. In what is a major concern when it comes to cloud adoption, i.e. data privacy, Viviane Reding, VP of the European Commission and the EU’s Commissioner for Justice, called for a single data privacy law to cover the entire European Union, as reported by GigaOM. "Currently, some European countries — Germany and Switzerland, for example — have more iron-clad data sovereignty rules than others," she explains. "The value of E.U. citizens’ data in aggregate was €315 billion ($426 billion) in 2011 and could hit the I €1 trillion ($1.35 billion) annually in 2020, provided that trust issues that have arisen can be addressed," according to the European Union. The market for cloud technologies is expected to boom in the following years, but the privacy concern remains an issue with 92% of Europeans woreying about mobile apps collecting their data without the consent, according to the research.
Find out more on GigaOM.
Find all live coverage of Structure:Europe from GigaOM here.
At Structure:Europe GigaOM also hosted their own mapping session on the requirements for cloud infrastructure in Europe. Some key requirements for cloud providers were highlighted. For example, a data center location. "If you are connecting to applications and services resident in the cloud, the further away those resources are, the more likely you are to experience poor performance due to network latency. Conversely, locate the apps close to the users, and bingo. It’s a much nicer experience for everyone," they say. "It’s going to be paramount that the network be highly available, flexible and able to connect resources in multiple different geographies." Next, they mentioned the issue of data portability across clouds: "Attendees noted that there is a perception that smaller providers are a riskier bet from a longevity and stability standpoint and therefore the ability to migrate to another provider was important." Finally, security, simplicity and ease of use were discussed. Cloud providers in Europe that best meet this criteria were also listed: GreenQloud, Interoute, SoftLayer (owned by IBM), CloudSigma, IOMart, Memset and Rackspace. However, none meet all of the objectives, yet.
Read more from the GigaOM review.
"Drew Houston, the 30-year-old CEO and cofounder of Dropbox, is supposed to be having his Steve Jobs moment," is a grand opening for Wired article that tries to get an insight into Dropbox and its new radical plan to become the mobile era's answer to the hard drive. "Dropbox is known for its supremely useful cloud storage service, which lets you drop files into a folder that can be accessed from any computer. But going forward, the company wants to power a new breed of syncable apps that would let you share any kind of data with anyone across any device," it is explained in the article. "Devices become dumb windows for accessing the information—your information—in Dropbox’s cloud. That’s where your stuff lives. And you’ll pay Dropbox for more space because you will want to put more stuff there," writes Marcus Wohlsen. Wohlsen sees Drew Houston regular guy persona as the talent that is yet to conquer the cloud world. In the past, the Dropbox vision grew by powers of 10, from 10 users to 100 to 1,000 to 100,000.
Image 1 - Dropbox vision grew by powers of 10
Image source: www.dropbox.com
What may yet happen, and at which pace? Find out here.
Switching continents now. And skipping the US. Big data initiatives are growing tremendously in Asia. This interest is driven by the general, cross-industry perceptions of the value of data in addressing customer demands and expectations and the urgent need to respond to changing market conditions while increasing operational efficiency, according to a report titled: Big Data Adoption Trends in Asia Pacific 2013 to 2014. "Statistics show that nearly half of the leading companies in various industries have established their own data management strategies, which in turn create 4 times the annual revenue of other companies," it is explained by the Intelligent HQ group which brings the following infographic that shows this growth of big data in Asia.
Infographic source: http://www.intelligenthq.com/partners/big-data-world-asia-2013/
New Gartner report investigates on the seriousness of business investing in big data technologies. "64% of organizations surveyed have already purchased or are planning to invest in big data solutions in 2013, compared with 58% in 2012. Of that 64%, 30% have already invested in big data tech, 19% plan to invest within the next year and another 15% plan to invest within two years. Less than 8% of Gartner’s 720 respondents, however, have actually deployed big data technology," according to TechCrunch. Big data is expected to be huge and drive $34 billion of IT spending in 2013. Still, it is in the age of experimentation and early deployment. In how this technology is to be used by businesses, "49% want to increase their company’s efficiency by using big data to reduce costs or identify risks earlier, while 55% hope it will help them improve customer service. 42% of organizations want to develop new products and business models using insight gleaned from big data, while 23% want to monetize information directly," it is reported by Gartner.
Read more from TechCrunch.
Find the Gartner report here.
