magazine
08
agenda
Cloud becoming standard for
small businesses
Almost half (49%) of Britain’s SMEs have adopted
cloud services and 11% plan to do so in the near
future, according to a report by CEO-membership
organisation Vistage.
A survey of its members found that the main benefits
of the cloud are perceived to be flexibility (cited by 45%);
easy access to company data (45%); disaster recovery
(28%) and cost savings (22%).
The top reasons Vistage member gave for moving
or planning to move to the cloud are: to assist a mobile
workforce (36%); to access new systems (21%); to
achieve greater automation (21%); and to make use of
new products and services (21%).
Cloud services are becoming an integral part of
smaller businesses’ IT landscape: 34% of SMEs use the
cloud for CRM or for contact management; 32% use it
for web hosting; and 28% use it to store work documents
and office systems.
Server huggers – IT managers who like to
keep data close to hand – are alive and
well and living in Europe, according to a
study by Iron Mountain.
Its analysis of data storage practices in
France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain
and the UK found that 46% of IT teams
insist on keeping data on hardware they
can see, touch and control when that data
is confidential, sensitive, business-critical,
frequently used, subject to strict regulation,
newly created or of potential business value
– or when they work in industries that are
inherrently cautious:
n
A UK healthcare firm with fewer than
250 employees told Iron Mountain that it
stores everything on site because “we are
not allowed to store data anywhere else”.
n
A retailer of a similar size keeps all of
its data on site because it’s too sensitive
and business-critical to put at risk.
n
In the Netherlands, a financial services
firm with just under 100 employees says
it keeps all its data on servers on site
“business we cannot afford any kind of data
breach.”
However, for a variety of reasons, from
business efficiency to cost savings, almost
as many businesses favour a hybrid on-/
off-site storage solution that includes tape,
disc and cloud storage: 37% already have a
hybrid system and 8% plan to implement
one within the next 12-24 months:
n
A Dutch telecommunications firm
with more than 1,000 employees uses a
private cloud to store data on the basis that
there is no point putting data employees
need frequent access to on an old or slow
server;
n
A services firm in France with over
1,000 employees stores information in the
cloud but backs up the most frequently
used information on-site to avoid the high
cost of retrieval from the cloud.
n
A media and broadcast firm in
Germany with over 500 employees has
its own data centre but also uses tape,
public clouds, internal servers and digital
hard drives: “Due to the growing volume
of unstructured data, our focus has shifted
from data protection and risk to cost-
effective data storage.”
Christian Toon, head of information risk
at Iron Mountain, said: “The IT professionals
we spoke to believe that getting storage
right is an art rather than an exact science.
Most still feel more at ease when they can
see and touch their data storage racks –
often for very sensible business reasons.
However, evolving security risks and the
growing need to harness the full value of
information is making on-site server storage
untenable in the long term.We would
advise IT teams to transition to a rich,
blended platform that includes a secure off-
site data centre and cloud solutions.”
Cloud data risk
One is six, or 4.6 million, UK employees have lost
work-related data in the last 12 months due to
corrupted/malfunctioning personal devices and cloud
services, Kroll Ontrack claims. The data recovery
specialist says that data loss from mobile devices
specifically has doubled in the last two years, from
7% in 2012 to 13% this year.
Long live the pen
Pentel is inviting students and office workers aged 15-
25 to ‘Save The Pen’ in a new social media marketing
campaign running on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube,
Instagram and Vine during October and November.
A tongue-in-cheek riposte to the notion that the
pen is less important in today’s digital age, the viral
campaign features a number of video clips showcasing
humorous and unexpected uses of Pentel pens and
markers. A different clip will be uploaded every day
until the video is complete can be played in full.
The art of storage embraces
mixed media
Are power cuts putting
your data at risk?
Eaton has redesigned its Blackout and Power
Outage Tracker, which enables businesses to
review and assess the risks of power outages
in their area. The online tool, which now
also covers the Republic of Ireland, lets users
explore incidences of power outages, their
duration and the number of people affected.
Workplace trend report
Bene’s latest trend report,
NewWork
Spaces II
, identifies and explains seven
key trends shaping the workplace of
tomorrow. Part of the Bene Editions
series, it can be accessed online by
going to
/
trendreport-work-spaces-II/index.
html.
NEW WORK
SPACES II
CONTEMPORARY
TRENDS IN OFFICE
ENVIRONMENTS
