Ericsson And Cisco Join Forces

Mobile equipment maker Ericsson and U.S. networking company Cisco Systems Inc announced that they have agreed to a business and technology partnership that should generate additional revenues of $1 billion for each company by 2018.

Cloud Analytics Growth Rate Will Continue

It’s no secret that cloud computing and data analytics are both rapidly expanding areas within information technology. Put them together, and you get a winning combination that’s expected to grow by more than 26 percent annually over the next five years.

That’s according to market-tracking firm Research and Markets, which recently released a new report on the global cloud analytics market.

Increased adoption of data analytics is one of the major drivers in this market, Research and Markets found. More specifically, many organizations are adopting data analytics in order to better understand consumption patterns, customer acquisition and various other factors believed to increase revenue, cut costs and boost customer loyalty.

HP, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP are among the dominant vendors in this arena, the company said in a press release.

Big Data is one of the particularly significant trends in the market, Research and Markets said.

“Cloud analytics deals with the management of unorganized data, which helps organizations access important data and make timely decisions regarding their business,” the company said.

The rates of growth in this arena might actually be much higher than those suggested by the report, said analyst Ray Wang, founder of Constellation Research.

In fact, Constellation Research predicts an annual growth rate of closer to 46 percent until 2020, he said.

Early-arriving cloud companies like Salesforce “had great reporting, but they didn’t necessarily have great analytics,” Wang said.

It’s for that reason that challengers such as Actuate have popped up, he noted.

“More and more, because of the size and complication, we’re seeing analytics move to the cloud,” Wang said.

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Office 365 Goes Video Streaming

Microsoft unveiled Office 365 Video, a YouTube-like streaming service where enterprises and large organizations can post in-house video content for communication and training.

“Office 365 Video provides organizations with a secure, company-wide destination for posting, sharing and discovering video content,” said Mark Kashman, a senior product manager with the Office 365 team, in a blog posting.

Kashman touted Video as a tool for internal communications, citing the examples of new-employee orientation, management messaging and worker training. Employees will also be able to contribute to a “Community” section, though most companies will probably frown on cat antic clips.

The service rolls out over the next few days to companies that have registered for Office 365′s First Release early distribution program, then through early 2015 to others.

Video will be available only to subscribers of Office 365′s plans for enterprises — E1 through E4 — and universities (A2 through A4). It will not be offered to consumer subscribers or firms with small business-oriented plans like Business Essentials, Business and Business Premium.

Kashman also said Office 365 plans for government agencies will get Video at some point, but he did not proffer a timeline.

The other requirement is SharePoint Online, an off-premises component of the enterprise and academic plans, but missing from the increasingly popular Office 365 ProPlus, the rent-not-buy plan used by organizations that have decided to retain their back-end services, like SharePoint and Exchange, on premises.

Although Office 365 Video has elements of consumer streaming services like Google’s YouTube, it’s strictly an in-house affair: It will be available only to employees, and then only those whom IT administrators have assigned access rights.

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Is Google Diverse?

Google Inc  shared the gender and ethnic makeup of its 50,000-strong workforce on Wednesday, disclosing a significantly below-average proportion of minorities and women employees that it said was “miles from where we want to be.”

Google’s disclosure of its workforce demographics represented a rare move for a U.S. company, even if the figures came as no surprise to those familiar with Silicon Valley, an industry long scrutinized for its lack of diversity. Blacks and Hispanics made up just 2 and 3 percent of overall employees at Google, respectively, while women accounted for 30 percent, the company said in a detailed blogpost.

That compares with the U.S. workforce average of about 47 percent women in 2012, according to the Department of Labor. For blacks and people of Hispanic descent, it was 12 and 16 percent, respectively.

“Put simply, Google is not where we want to be when it comes to diversity, and it’s hard to address these kinds of challenges if you’re not prepared to discuss them openly, and with the facts,” Laszlo Bock, senior vice president of people operations,said in the blog posting.

The employment gaps for women and minorities in the tech sector may stem from education, Bock said. Women earn roughly 18 percent of all computer science degrees in the United States; blacks and Hispanics make up less than 10 percent of U.S. college grads and collect fewer than 5 percent of degrees in computer science majors, respectively, he argued.

But Bock, who added that Google has donated more than $40 million to organizations promoting computer science education among women, said Google recognized the extent of the internal problem and was open to discussion about possible solutions.

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IT Dissatisfaction Growing

Companies want to reduce spending on IT operations and infrastructure and shift resources to revenue-producing areas, according to two new studies. But businesses leaders and IT executives are also registering higher levels of dissatisfaction with IT as more demands are placed on technology.

The reports, by the Hackett Group and McKinsey & Co., both agree that business executives want IT to do more to improve the bottom line while companies spend less on infrastructure in the process.

The bad news for people who work in IT operations is that large businesses expect to cut IT staff positions by about 2% this year, thanks to automation and outsourcing, according the Hackett’s survey of 160 businesses with revenues above $1 billion.

One path to improved automation will likely be through adoption of software-defined infrastructures, something Bank of America plans to do.

IT budgets will grow by 1.7% this year as IT pivots, increasingly, from a service-providing operation to a revenue-generating one, the Hackett Group said in its study.

IT managers are being told that “you’ve got to grow the business, not just run the business,” said Mark Peacock, an IT transformation practice leader and principal at Hackett.

McKinsey & Co., in its online survey of more than 800 executives — with 345 having a technology focus — also found that executives want less of their budgets to go to infrastructure so more resources can be shifted to analytics and innovation.

The McKinsey survey found that business executives are less likely to say now that IT performs effectively, compared to their views two years ago.

“The IT executives are even more negative,” wrote McKinsey, with only 13% of them saying their IT organizations “are completely or very effective at introducing new technologies faster or more effectively than competitors.” That percentage was down from 22% in 2012.

The negative results “likely reflect the overall rising expectations for corporate IT,” wrote McKinsey.

When asked how to fix IT shortcomings, respondents cited improved business accountability, more funds for priority projects and a higher the level of IT talent, the report said.

The Hackett Group survey didn’t report on dissatisfaction, but it did find that the top goal for IT organizations this year is “to strengthen partnership and goal alignment between IT and the business.”

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