Cloud evangelist Ian Moyse explores the emergence of Metallic, the SaaS back-up of choice for Microsoft. Data has exploded, security threats are greater than ever before and cloud continues to proliferate. With this the need for protection and resilience of data is at its greatest and the game has just been changed by this new entrant.

Cloud evangelist Ian Moyse zeroes in on the role of cloud during the pandemic with excellent insight. 2020 is the year when cloud computing came into its own as the enabler to Work From Home. Cloud has its pros and cons like any technology, but its successes have been highlighted during 2020’s COVID period. What will this mean for digital transformation and disruption for the remainder of 2020 and beyond?

5G had aggressive rollout plans anyway and COVID has exasperated the need for this new tech. Aligned to this and the political shenaniganss amidst COVID's time, Huawei had their Annual Analyst Summit with some interesting takeaways.

As if the demands on bandwidth and mobile/remote working were not enough, add in COVID WFH needs. More than ever the demands on bandwidth are upon us and 5G is in sight. However the route is not easy and without its bumps as NOKIA just discovered.

5G will make some lagging use cases a wider reality, for example AR and VR and the obvious gains for the gaming and media/entertainment sector. We need to see however 5G delivering more tangible use case benefits around the likes of education (which will bring benefit across the world due to the lower latency) IOT and wearables which all have the opportunity to accelerate and become mainstream commoditised drivers of 5G adoption. 5G needs to demonstrate not just speed and reliability, but drive capability; the capability to do the new ; innovate and being benefits that will drive the users value aligned to the increased costs.

Is cloud adoption fully mature or have we some way to go? It has matured for certain, but there remain some key barriers for organisations to be able to truly take full advantage.

What is driving the growth of cloud and what barriers remain? What are today's challenges in business to utilising new tech?

Everyone seems to be talking about AI, are you the one left behind or is it hype and no one else is going it either? What is the current application and how mature is the reality of use?

Data, Big Data, Insights all great if you have the data captured in a format and place you can use it. with CRM it is difficult enough to get users to capture all the data you want, let along telephony data. Now add the complexity of an increasingly mobile workforce. How do you best capture more data from mobile users with less effort, what are the options and barriers?

Cloud is changing the way we do so many things and with telecoms despite an initial false start with the basic VOIP, it has no evolved to a point where telecoms legacy is and has to be disrupted by new cloud scale and power. Far beyond VOIP, telephony itself at the core is ripe for change to benefit us all in both business and our personal lives.

We live in a time of disruption, where brand names and legacy businesses cannot rest on their laurels due to increasingly affordable technologies Empowering those embracing them to quickly pose a threat. The supply chain demands faster more cost-effective processes leading to the panacea of friction-less engagement.

Cloud,IOT, Big Data, AI all continue to grow at a pace outstripping the available skills and certainly experience. Where does our focus need to be to ensure we can take best advantage of these new technologies?