Another boring cloud event?

There are a handful of events throughout the year that purport to be THE leading cloud event of the calendar and the ‘one event you should not miss this year’.    While these are bold claims and there is a sameness to them all, IP EXPO 2013 (Oct 16th/17th at Earls Court 2, London) seems to be an attractive proposition this year.

The usual scores of vendors are well-represented from the very biggest global brands to the emerging niche players but the highlights for me are the Amazon Web Services Lab and the Citrix Mobility & Cloud Zone.

Amazon Web Services continues to be a key strategic vendor for our clients.   The rate of innovation, value for money and commercial model provided by AWS makes it a strong candidate for a range of projects ranging from Enterprise applications to complete datacentre migrations.   The old favourite use-cases of Test & Development and Disaster Recovery are now ubiquitous and the more alluring projects are around Data Analytics and Visualisation.   AWS are providing more than a dozen sessions on a range of topics presented by AWS Technical Architects and other experts - all in their own lab environment.  Great opportunity to ask those “Could I do this on AWS?” questions that you have had in the back of your mind…

The Citrix Mobility & Cloud Zone should be popular.   Citrix continues to develop winning products and services that overcome limitations of legacy applications and make IT more mobile and flexible.   If you haven’t had a good look at Citrix recently this could be time well-spent…

Cloud computing has significantly disrupted some of the contented vendors that have dominated markets like IT infrastructure for the last 20 years.  As 2014 planning approaches, now is the time to address your cloud strategy – understand the advancements and innovations in the Cloud and perhaps cut through the hype of ‘big data’ and understand what you can actually do today to visualise and analyse data that may be available to you without costing the earth.  

See how our global client-base has benefited, visit Cloudreach Stand G44 and let us help you define your Cloud Strategy.

Register now for IP Expo - http://www.ipexpo.co.uk/

10GB of Google Drive storage free, sign in from Quickoffice app on Android or iOS before Thursday!

Sign in to your Google Account from the new Quickoffice app for Android or iOS by Thursday September 26, 2013, and an extra 10GB of Google Drive storage will be added to your account for two years (look for it in the next few weeks). So don’t let your hardware or software differences get in the way of true collaboration -- download the new app and start working together today. 

For more information: http://googledrive.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/freeing-quickoffice-for-everyone.html

AWS Enterprise Summit 2013

At the AWS Enterprise Summit 2013 | London this week, Channel 4’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Bob Harris, stressed that companies need to ‘get out of the datacentre mentality’.   Harris was one of a rich panel of IT leaders speaking at the Summit aimed at the Enterprise space.

The range of use-cases and applications featured by the Enterprises participating at the Summit demonstrates that Amazon Web Services (AWS) is no longer limited to the Innovators and Early Adopters.   Enterprises are already today moving their data-centres to the cloud in their entirety as well as using AWS for production E-Commerce and ERP applications.

Another notable speaker was Matthew Graham-Hyde, CIO of Kantar and author of upcoming title “The Essential CIO” to be published later this year.   Graham-Hyde made the point that the use of AWS and other cloud technologies isn’t a technology conversation but a business conversation.

When asked what would you do differently if you could start again with AWS both speakers were emphatic in their response that they would go ‘deeper and faster than we have done’  and ‘go sooner” than they did - a strong recommendation bearing in mind that Channel 4 have been using AWS for 5 years already!

AWS are more than disruptive in this space with their policy of voluntarily offering price-reductions across the board to all of their customers no fewer than 37 times in the last 7 years!  Some progressive organisations like News UK have already moved one third of all their servers to the cloud and are steadily working on the rest.

AWS demonstrates its Enterprise Credentials

At Cloudreach we are proud to be a Gold Sponsor of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Enterprise Summit 2013 at the Grange St. Paul's Hotel on Tuesday September 17th.  The AWS Summits are extremely popular and are generally oversubscribed within days of opening the registration.  In a change to previous summits this event concentrates specifically on AWS use-cases  for the Enterprise rather than Developer or Start-up communities. 

The highlight of the last summit in April was Werner Vogels, Chief Technology Officer of Amazon Web Services. Werner’s fanaticism for AWS technology is only matched by his love of football as he extolled the virtues of AWS and Liverpool FC - big AWS users and Cloudreach customers themselves!  This time we have Andy Jassy, Senior Vice President of AWS; Stephen Schmidt, Chief Information Security Officer and Yuri Misnik, Head of Solution Architects - which should provide a good mix of vision for the future and down-to-earth practicality of using AWS in an Enterprise environment.

What better way to cut through the hype and learn about what Enterprises are truly doing with AWS than to hear directly from clients using the services in production environments.   The Summit features eight different clients and their experiences of AWS, with Cloudreach counting half of the eight among our clients!  If you are lucky enough to be on the list of registered attendees you can hear about the full spectrum of use-cases from funkypigeon.com to Channel 4 to BP. Unfortunately places are limited and registration has been shut for some time so if you are not already on the list you will need to wait until next time or contact Cloudreach directly to talk about AWS for your organisation.  Don’t forget to contact us if you are interested in attending AWS Re-Invent 2013 in Las Vegas in November!

Cloudreach clients speaking at this week’s London AWS Enterprise Summit include:

Funkypigeon.com
Funkypigeon.com is a personalised card and gift site. Customers can enjoy not having to think about whose birthday it is each day and just get their reminder, order the card and the gift online and it’s done. Cloudreach worked with funkypigeon.com to migrate, optimise and manage the funkypigeon.com website 24/7 on Amazon Web Services.

Channel 4
Channel 4 is an Enterprise that needs no introduction.   As part of their ever- growing portfolio of online offerings Cloudreach are working with Channel4 to help optimise their extensive AWS estate.

BP
Cloudreach is working with Air BP - the specialised aviation division of BP, one of the world's major energy companies. They provide innovative and flexible solutions to meet the needs of hundreds of airports around the world and Cloudreach is helping Air BP to migrate a global enterprise application to AWS.

Kantar
Kantar is home to some of the world’s leading research, data and insight companies. As a Cloudreach customer we are working closely with Kantar on a range of AWS projects from Big Data analytics to datacentre migrations.