Business Technology Roundtable

Cisco released findings from two global studies that provide a vivid picture of the rising security challenges that businesses, IT departments and individuals face -- particularly as employees become more mobile, blending work and personal lifestyles throughout their waking hours. Despite popular assumptions that security risks increase as a person's online activity becomes shadier, findings from the Cisco 2013 Annual Security Report (ASR) reveal that the highest concentration of online security threats tend to target legitimate destinations visited by mass audiences -- such as major search engines, retail sites and social media outlets. Cisco found that online shopping sites are 21 times as likely, and search engines are 27 times as likely, to deliver malicious content than a counterfeit software site. Security risks rise in businesses because many employees adopt "my way" work lifestyles in which their devices, work and online behavior mix with their personal liv...

In 2013, IT buyers will be looking for increased stability and better ways to prepare for the next five years in their business cycle, according the the latest market study by Ovum. "The fact that we live in very uncertain times makes investment decision-making even more difficult. With continuing instability across the global markets and even in locations with historically robust growth -- such as China and India -- the outlook for IT services in 2013 is unpredictable," said Jens Butler, principal analyst, IT Services at Ovum . Oven believes that business leaders will be looking for greater reliability in their IT usage and -- as a consequence -- seeking stability, capability and accessibility among their external service providers . Growing Trend Towards Cloud Applications Moreover, Ovum has published three "Trends to Watch" reports on cloud computing -- which reveals that 2013 will see managed cloud services continue to grow rapidly. Their Private and...

Across the globe, during the holiday season, more people purchased a new media tablet or smartphone equipped with Wi-Fi connectivity for broadband internet access. Some will want to use these powerful mobile devices at work -- in addition to using them at home or while on the go. According to the latest market study by Ovum, employees in high-growth markets are more willing to embrace the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) to work phenomenon, and adopt the personal productivity benefits of enterprise mobility. Ovum believes that the BYOD trend is driven by professionals in high-growth markets that seek to live and work much more effectively than their peers -- and the fact that there's less corporate provision of mobile phones or tablets. As part of a large study that assessed employee behavior and attitudes towards a BYOD solution , Ovum revealed that across the 17 markets that they surveyed, 57.1 percent of full-time employees engage in some form of BYOD activity. Yet, when ...

As 2012 draws to a close, a growing number of savvy enterprise CIOs -- and perhaps even more Line of Business leaders -- are joining the momentum towards an increase in the mainstream adoption of managed cloud services. Furthermore, the near-term market outlook for 2013 is particularly bright and the long-term expectations are equally promising -- due mostly to the reported positive experience and results from the early adopters of cloud services across the globe. Peer recommendations are clearly driving this change in the marketplace. Worldwide spending on public IT cloud services will be more than $40 billion in 2012 and is expected to approach $100 billion in 2016, according to the latest market study by International Data Corporation ( IDC ). Over the 2012–2016 forecast reporting period, IDC believes that public IT cloud services will enjoy a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 26.4 percent, that's five times the traditional IT industry, as more business leaders ac...

The demand for substantive customer feedback -- and engaging all constituents into the feedback process -- drives the need for businesses to innovate and also manage innovation in a new way. Results from a recent market study show that this inherent need is also creating the opportunity for social technologies to help support and add value to the commercial innovation process. The fourth annual "Social Business Survey" from International Data Corporation ( IDC ) revealed a significant departure from previous years -- in terms of focus and use cases for social business technology. With the maturing of social media tools within the enterprise -- and their adoption as an engagement channel -- use cases have grown into some broad categories, such as customer experience, sales enablement, digital commerce, enterprise social network (ESN), innovation management, and socialytics. IDC says that as users request solutions to extend outside the firewall, the 2012 survey demons...

A significant new analysis of the economic potential of video, data and voice systems that work together over the Internet -- known collectively as Unified Communications (UC) -- demonstrates that when these collaboration technologies are interoperable, they deliver clear commercial and consumer benefits. The paper, written by Dr. Michael Katz and Dr. Bryan Keating studies the current unified communications market. The Katz/Keating study outlines the potential negative outcomes for the market of some UC vendors refuse to adopt industry standards that would enable video-to-video calls between different systems. "The economic effects of incompatibility are not an abstract academic theory," Katz said. "There are real, everyday consequences to economic growth, consumer well-being and business productivity when one company has a proprietary Internet video system that does not work with others. This means less jobs will be created and people and businesses wil...

In the second annual Cisco Global Cloud Index (2011-2016) , Cisco forecasts global data center traffic to grow fourfold and reach a total of 6.6 zettabytes annually by 2016. The company also predicts global cloud traffic, the fastest-growing component of data center traffic, to grow sixfold – a 44 percent combined annual growth rate (CAGR) – from 683 exabytes of annual traffic in 2011 to 4.3 zettabytes by 2016. For context, 6.6 zettabytes is equivalent to: 92 trillion hours of streaming music – Equivalent to about 1.5 years of continuous music streaming for the world's population in 2016. 16 trillion hours of business Web conferencing – Equivalent to about 12 hours of daily Web conferencing for the world's workforce in 2016. 7 trillion hours of online high-definition (HD) video streaming – Equivalent to about 2.5 hours of daily streamed HD video for the world's population in 2016. The vast majority of the data center traffic is not caused by end use...

As video calling usage increases, 81 percent of Europeans say that they now see it as personally important for them that these communications technologies work together, according to the findings from a recent market study. In a clear signal to the video communications industry, 86 percent want companies to agree to a common standard so that software and devices -- including popular video calling apps like Skype, Facetime, and Google Chat -- are able to communicate with one another. Unfortunately, that is still not the case in video calling, as opposed to speaking on the phone or exchanging emails, where interoperability is already the norm. Europeans appear to have a very healthy appetite for video communications. In a survey of 1873 consumers, conducted on behalf of Cisco Systems , nearly 40 percent of those who use video calling said they will use it more often in the next twelve months, whereas only 4 percent expect to use it less often. Growing Applications for Video Cal...

What are the best practices for deploying managed cloud services? Case studies have now confirmed that cloud services can be a better, faster, less expensive and less risky way to source Information and Communications Technology (ICT) solutions, according to the latest market study by Ovum. Results from recent research conducted by Ovum details the experiences of five public sector organizations that have successfully deployed cloud services -- either with Infrastructure-as-Service (IaaS), Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) or Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). Highlighting the known benefits and the catalysts that empower organizations to embrace the cloud service delivery model, Ovum says they have developed a framework to assist government agencies in understanding the organizational factors associated with early adoption of managed cloud services . Moving Beyond Analysis Paralysis "Cloud services have long been debated across the globe, but it is now time to stop discussing theor...

You may think that the worldwide economic downturn has negatively impacted most CIO's budgets, but so far that hasn't been the case. According to the latest market study by IDC, worldwide IT spending remains on course to grow by 6 percent this year in constant currency, that's only slightly down on last year's pace of 7 percent growth. Strong performance in software, storage, enterprise network and mobile device markets has offset weaker trends in PCs, servers, peripherals and telecom provider equipment. However, the strength of the U.S. dollar in the first half of 2012 means that IT spending is on course for growth of just 4 percent this year. Including telecom services, it's now estimated that total ICT spending will increase by 5 percent this year in constant currency to $3.6 trillion (that's growth of 2.5 percent in U.S. dollars). "In spite of economic uncertainty, which continues to inhibit enterprise investment in some tech segments, the conti...

While much of the market attention on cloud services adoption tends to be focused on private enterprise applications, government agencies potentially have a lot to gain from its widespread use. The cost-savings and scalability advantages of the cloud have been clear to those savvy IT leaders that are informed, but government adoption has been hampered by some unique challenges -- and the absence of a compelling mandate. That is, progress was slow until the " Cloud First " initiative was launched. IDC has released a status update that details the growing demand for cloud services and enterprise architecture resources among U.S. government agencies. Their latest market study focuses on the results of an IDC Government Insights survey, which measured the progress of cloud solutions at government agencies -- while also examining the related architecture needs. The results of the comprehensive survey revealed that despite the growing demand for cloud services, many IT mana...

The detractors of cloud computing benefits will state that the typical adoption is still limited at most enterprises -- they're deploying cloud services to a few early-adopters. That being said, some leading markets are confidently moving ahead with mainstream deployments, regardless of the caution. While others, such as western Europe, are apparently in transition. The western European private cloud market will grow at a CAGR of 23.2 percent for the next five years to reach $7.9 billion in 2016, according to the latest market study by International Data Corporation ( IDC ). IDC has been looking in-depth at the private cloud marketplace -- from a hardware, software, services and networking points of view. "The growth of private cloud is even more impressive in the context of the current economic situation," said Mette Ahorlu, research director, IDC European Services. According to IDC's assessment, demand in the region is being driven by the need for cost sa...

A comprehensive enterprise mobile device and application strategy, if executed correctly, can become a significant competitive advantage. But, there's a growing need for answers to the questions troubling many IT executives -- with regard to their mobile device policies, the adoption of media tablets, and mobile application development costs and practices. According to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC), corporate-liable devices still prevail with 77 percent of survey respondent organizations providing smartphones to their employees and 49 percent providing media tablets in 2011. Of these corporate-liable devices, 70 percent were purchased by the organization and issued to the employees while only 7 percent were purchased by the employee with full or partial reimbursement. The goal of the study, based on responses from CIOs and IT professionals in the U.S. and Europe, is to provide IT organizations with insight into how their peers have addresse...

The increased uptake in cloud service adoption is truly a worldwide phenomenon. New research published by Cisco Systems demonstrates the dramatic shift in attitudes towards cloud services in the UK and Ireland. The report -- entitled " Cisco CloudWatch 2012 " -- is the second in Cisco's annual Cloud series and finds IT decision makers in a bullish mood, increasingly placing applications and services from across their business into the cloud and planning for further investment over the coming 12 months. Furthermore, the message that cloud services can deliver significant cost reduction is now resonating within the IT community -- cost saving has become a top driver for adopting cloud applications . Granted, security remains the number one concern when migrating services and applications to the cloud. But that concern is noticeably less pronounced than in last year's report. The use of public cloud is up 11 percent, although private cloud still dominates. ...

The ongoing transformation to a comprehensive Business Technology model requires savvy leaders to see beyond the traditional IT and networking silos within their organization -- thereby offering a cohesive portfolio of application-driven services to their key stakeholders. Cisco has introduced a versatile and broad approach to network programmability -- Cisco Open Network Environment ( Cisco ONE ) -- aimed at helping customers drive the next wave of business innovation through trends such as cloud, mobility , social networking, and video. Cisco ONE enables flexible, application-driven customization of network infrastructures to help realize business objectives such as: increased service velocity, resource optimization, and faster monetization of new services. The Cisco Open Network Environment is delivered through a rich set of platform APIs, agents and controllers, and overlay network technologies. Cisco ONE complements current approaches to software-defined networking while en...

Cisco issued results of their annual Visual Networking Index (VNI) Forecast (2011-2016). It's the company's ongoing initiative to forecast and analyze Internet Protocol (IP) networking growth and trends worldwide. The VNI Forecast update projects the significant amount of IP traffic expected to travel public and private networks -- including Internet, managed IP, and mobile data traffic generated by all users. This year, Cisco has also developed a new complementary study -- the Cisco VNI Service Adoption Forecast, which includes global and regional residential, consumer mobile, and business services growth rates. By 2016, annual global IP traffic is forecast to be 1.3 zettabytes -- (a zettabyte is equal to a sextillion bytes, or a trillion gigabytes). The projected increase of global IP traffic between 2015 and 2016 alone is more than 330 exabytes, which is almost equal to the total amount of global IP traffic generated in 2011 (369 exabytes). This significant level of ...

Like it or not, some enterprises have already entered a post-PC world -- where their business communication network must accommodate new user-driven choices. These include traditional applications, mobile apps, social apps and operating systems; various server architectures; and an array of mobile devices ranging from smartphones to tablets and other mobility tools. Are you experiencing this phenomenon? If not, you will soon. Moreover, this latest business technology trend has huge ramifications. Cisco’s Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG) conducted extensive research and analysis to uncover key insights about BYOD (“bring your own device”) and desktop virtualization trends in U.S. enterprises. The Cisco IBSG Horizons BYOD and Virtualization study surveyed 600 enterprise IT leaders from 18 industries. The Top 10 Market Insights Insight 1: Mobility Is Pervasive Seventy-eight percent of U.S. white-collar employees use a mobile device (e.g., laptop, smartphone, or tablet...

As the role of cloud computing is growing around the globe, many CIOs and other senior IT decision makers are facing challenges with their existing network infrastructure -- to support the migration of their business applications to the cloud. A new international study by Cisco Systems revealed the ongoing challenges associated with public or private cloud deployments. These latest research findings provide insight into the current state of cloud service adoption and the chasm between IT expectations and network realities. The survey also examines the experiences of IT professionals regarding the level of difficulty and time required to update their networks and migrate their applications to the cloud. The 2012 Cisco Global Cloud Networking Survey addresses the applications that are most critical for businesses to move to a cloud services delivery model, as well as the network challenges and potential disruptions and road blocks they are facing during this process. The report also...

Government agencies are reportedly one of the primary benefactors of managed cloud services. According to the results from a recent market study by IDC, IT decision-makers across the Asia-Pacific region (excluding Japan) found that 59 percent of public sector respondents are confident in the ability of their internal IT departments to deploy private cloud environments. However, IDC Government Insights cautions that high levels of private cloud adoption may not bode well for a collaborative and citizen-engaging government and preemptive measures should be taken for collaboration to take place across organizational boundaries. More insights can be found in the IDC report entitled, "Cloud Computing for Government: a View from Asia-Pacific." Frank Levering, Research Manager for IDC said, "An efficient and productive internal IT department is definitely a good to have in any organization, private or public. However, a department that is highly confident in running its o...