Top 10 cloud, data centre and big data stories of 2013 so far

10 - Huge rise in big data adoption, finds survey

In May 2012 Computing ran a survey on plans for big data adoption. In March 2013 we ran it again. The enormous difference in the answers returned across those 10 months demonstrate the massive shift in opinion on the validity of big data technology in that time, within all types of organisations.

The scepticism and fear invoked by the phrase "big data" was found to have dissipated, replaced by an urge to jump on board before the train leaves the station.

And here are a couple of reasons why.

9 - Predictive analytics helps firms to get 'about three per cent better at guessing', says APT chief

Predictive analytics helps firms to get "about three per cent better at guessing" what a consumer would like to buy, said Applied Predictive Technologies (APT), whose customers include Boots, Asda and Kraft.

"Realistically, what predictive modelling does not say is: ‘Now I know for a fact that you want this'. What it means is I get about three per cent better at guessing - and that is worth a lot of money," APT's founder told Computing in January.

8 - 'Without Splunk we might be taken out of the market,' says Barclays

Barclays' adoption of Splunk data insight and intelligence tools has prevented the bank from being fined for anti-compliance or worse, barred from doing business, said Stephen Gailey, group head of security services for Barclays, about the machine data analytics platform.

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Top 10 cloud, data centre and big data stories of 2013 so far

But suddenly all data has become big...

7 - Be wary of companies rebranding to offer ‘big data solutions', says FT CIO

Companies are rebranding what they have offered for many years as "big data solutions", Financial Times CIO Christina Scott warned delegates at Computing's Big Data Summit in March. Scott explained why she is a partial cynic about the hype surrounding the term "big data".

"I'm a partial cynic. A lot of companies have rebranded what they've already done as big data, so you have to be aware of that. Big data can revolutionise business but not the technology - it's the analytics [that is important," she said.

And the face of analytics is changing

6 - First BI-by-the-hour service launched by Jaspersoft

In February, open-source business intelligence vendor Jaspersoft launched what it claimed was the first fully featured pay-by-the-hour BI service in the cloud.

Based on Amazon Web Services (AWS), the Jaspersoft service was launched in conjunction with Amazon's RedShift, a cloud-based datawarehouse.

But among longstanding concerns about public cloud services, a new one emerged in March

5 - Companies running on AWS accuse Amazon of copying

More companies complained of unfair competition from Amazon Web Services (AWS), suggesting that Amazon has created AWS-based services similar to their own, pricing them aggressively in a bid to win market share.

The new concerns were driven by companies such as Newvem, which claimed that Amazon offered a free cloud capacity-management service, called AWS Trusted Advisor, just two weeks after Newvem had gone live with a free version of its service. Newvem accused Amazon of copying the work that its partners have done on AWS, taking their ideas, implementing them and offering them at a low price.

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Top 10 cloud, data centre and big data stories of 2013 so far

In the UK other major cloud players were gearing up. Salesforce is planning a new data centre to service Europe, and Oracle was another big cloud player eyeing up the UK.

4 - Oracle to open cloud data centre dedicated to G-Cloud

Computer giant Oracle said that it is setting up a data centre in the Thames Valley in order to retain and capture government cloud computing business. The data centre is Oracle's second in the UK after Linlithgow in Scotland, which it picked up when it acquired Sun Microsystems.

The move is partly to defend existing business in the UK public sector, but also to win new business as the government moves towards a "cloud first" policy in a bid to squeeze IT costs.

And they weren't the only ones planning new data centres.

3 - Nine out of 10 companies in Europe plan data centre expansion

Nine out of 10 companies in the European Union are planning to expand their data centre operations in 2013 or 2014, despite the supposed shift to cloud computing.

Some 88 per cent of respondents to a survey claimed that they would "definitely or probably expand their data centres" in the next year or two, while one-quarter claimed that they would definitely be expanding their data centre operations this year.

This finding was corroborated by a Computing survey in May.

2 - Research: the autonomous data centre is far from dead

A survey of IT decision makers found that only a fifth had no plans to use cloud computing, proving that, at the very least, it is being taken seriously, while a further 22 per cent said they were evaluating the technology in some way or other.

However, When Computing survey respondents were asked to look ahead 10 years the overwhelming prediction was for a hybrid result, with the on-premise data centre retained as a crucial part of the mix alongside public and private cloud platforms.

That said, one major organisation definitely saw cloud as part of its secret recipe for success ...

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Top 10 cloud, data centre and big data stories of 2013 so far

1 - Cloud-first policy adopted at Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola Enterprises, the company that bottles and distributes the famous beverage in Western Europe and Scandinavia, has adopted a de facto "cloud-first" policy - not just for new enterprise applications, but also for in-house developments.

Coca-Cola has been moving in that direction since 2009 when it first implemented SuccessFactors for human resources management. Since then, it has installed a slew of cloud-based applications, retiring elements of its SAP enterprise resource planning (ERP) system as it goes.

The latest to go is SAP customer relationship management (CRM), said Kemal Cetin, vice president of information technology at Coca-Cola Enterprises, replaced by Salesforce.com's Sales Cloud and its Service Cloud, including some third-party apps that run on the Salesforce platform.