Multi-cloud continues to gather momentum as leading suppliers announce products and services designed to help IT departments provision, manage and secure the many different cloud services they lease from different providers simultaneously.

These announcements mark two standout trends: firstly, the continuing shift away from product based hardware or software license fees into a service-orientated model that offers both more flexibility and less risk of overpaying for underused infrastructure for the buyer; and secondly the establishment of an all-important recurring revenue streams for the supplier.

Keeping track and the monitoring of data – The Network of Things

As network infrastructure and network monitoring spreads across multiple sites, data centres, servers and client devices, keeping track of the data which traverses it can become more complex and time consuming. Yet having detailed insight into exactly what information is being transmitted, and how it affects application, system and service performance, is a crucial business metric that cannot be overlooked.

The Industrial IoT (IIoT) is spreading across multiple verticals, but organisations must make sure their network and security infrastructure is up to the job.

Though still at a relatively early stage of its development, the industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is on the cusp of rapid and large scale expansion. Public and private sector organisations are discovering new ways for connected devices, real time data collection and analysis to help them improve existing processes and operations.

Universities targeted by cyber criminals and state-sponsored hackers can fight back

With high numbers of students and visitors using multiple devices to access their networks and applications (and new users registering every year), universities face more problems than most when it comes to protecting their data and systems from cyber attacks. Hackers will target educational establishments because they are perceived to lack the budget and manpower to establish effective cyber security defences against unauthorised intrusion from both internal and external sources.