Let’s continue the review of finalist solutions of EuroCloud Award 2016, with short descriptions of the Cloud solutions participating in the Best Cloud Solutions offered by start-up CSPs.

Start-up’s driving role in Cloud industry

The small companies were always the pioneers of Cloud technologies. The big Cloud players from today have contributed to Cloud market consolidation as startup companies. A small company is from many points of views more open for the fast transformation. Beginning with particular solutions addressing one or more market niche, the SMB Cloud providers are coming to cover many enterprise industries, offering solutions based on the last tools and technologies.

During EuroCLoud Awards competition, the European startup companies were very active, coming with solutions with a wide spectrum of applicability.  This was the reason EuroCloud Europe Council established a special award category, dedicated to startups company. From one year to other, more and more European SMB cloud providers are registering her offers in the European Contest.

Here is the podium of the Best Cloud Services provided by Start-Ups

 ⇒ Winner:

Medius CloudSE (Cloud Secure Element), from Medius d.o.o (Slovenia)

⇒ Finalists:

Cloud Bursting like business “The new Cloud Generation” from TodoenCloud (Spain)

GR8PI platform from Great People Inside (Romania)

 

Winner: Medius CloudSE (Cloud Secure Element) provided by Medius d.o.o. (Slovenia)

Medius Java Middleware and Application Integration Inc. is a software engineering company specialised in development, design, implementation and integration of the most complex enterprise IT solutions.

Medius CloudSE is an open API architecture that implements CIPURSETM and EMVCo specification as a cloud-based Secure Element (SE). A secure element (SE) is a tamper-resistant platform (typically a one chip secure microcontroller) capable of securely hosting applications and their confidential and cryptographic data. With the introduction of HCE (Host Card Emulation) technology and with the use of the Medius CloudSE exposed API, 3rd party developers and service providers can now emulate the behaviour of traditional tamper-resistant smart cards with an Android device. The whole solution is independent of third parties SE issues, such as carriers and device manufacturers and does not require any physical upgrade of the existing ticket validation infrastructure.

The main functionality of such cloud solution is to perform secure transactions with the mobile device instead of the plastic smart card. But this is not what generates the added value. By replacing the plastic smart card service providers can now achieve 24/7 interaction with the user and push the user engagement to a higher level. By monitoring the behaviour of the users they are able to pinpoint the key factors to enhance end user service of their clients.

Medius CloudSE benefits are:

– providing mobile ticketing alongside classical contactless smart card without changes on existing validation infrastructure;

– easy to use API for embedding mobile ticketing functionality to a 3rd party Android application;

– independent from SE issues (phone manufacturers, MNOs, TSMs);

– suitable for all NFC android 4.+ devices;

– allows an unlimited number of coexisting service providers and operators;

– API for card/ticket management;

– additional functionalities (ticket vending, browsing,).

CloudSE can be used wherever there is a need for a secure storage of personal data on the mobile device which is used on the contactless infrastructure (POS terminals/validators).

CloudSE perfectly fits the field of an NFC banking ecosystem and others such as digital ticketing, loyalty access control, identification, etc. where currently we are facing extensive use of contactless plastic smart cards. Smart cards can with the use of CloudSE be easily replaced by the virtual card instances stored in the cloud.

 

Finalists: Cloud Bursting like business “The new Cloud Generation” provided by Todo En Cloud (Spain)

Todo En Cloud SL is a Spanish Cloud Service Provider which think the Cloud must be democratised and should be as simple as possible, where the language spoken is the business application language and not the cloud resources on which it is based. To sustain this philosophy the company moved all his know-how and Cloud technology experience in the customer’s IT departments.

Todo En Cloud is offering a large spectrum of Cloud services:

• Cloud Architecture as a Service
• Public/Hybrid/Private Cloud Services
• Federated Cloud and Cloud Bursting Services
• CTOaaS (CTO as a Service)
• Disaster Recovery Plan services and backup services

The Cloud Bursting Service is unique in the market and responds to the requests of more than 65% of cloud customers that needs this feature: the power to expand their Cloud infrastructure across multiple Cloud providers and to combine and manage it from a single console. This feature ensures the scalability of the Cloud provider and allows the customer to meet the demands of their applications: by expanding cloud infrastructure across multiple Cloud providers, we cover the geographical scattering demand required for global businesses and we reduce latency dramatically.

The single console allows customers to view their global cloud infrastructure from a single site, simplifying its management and enabling reactive programming to events. This will also save important costs and reduces resource consumption. The Cloud Bursting Service is a complete and safe solution that allows the customers to deploy projects anywhere in the world without architecture or management problems.

Cloud Bursting combines capacity with a global infrastructure management, allowing the extension of the Cloud infrastructure across multiple Cloud providers, offering the customer the opportunity of surviving a failure of the main Cloud provider by deploying the infrastructure on several Cloud providers at the same time.

Furthermore, Cloud Bursting provides transparent data migration and cloud interoperability without obstacles, a features unique in the market, which generates security and confidence from a customer perspective.

Finalist: GR8PI platform from Great People Inside (Romania)

The Great People Inside concept is developed by an International consortium of assessment and recruitment experts holding decades of collective experience and know-how in this, and related areas like coaching, performance optimisation etc. They realised that the present and traditional way of attracting, assessing, selecting, developing and maintaining workforces on a global level, and more or less on all parameters, no longer meet the needs and requirements of modern companies and organisations.

GR8PI is a people intelligence platform helping organisations, institutions and individuals to take optimum decisions based on full people potential. The solution is a valuable human potential tool enabling the optimum selection of the desired people who effectively fit the job requests and the organisation culture, providing a professional assessment of employees’ engagement level, establishing the key drivers, and validating the talent pool development.

The GR8PI platform impacts much more than just the recruitment market and much more than just the Romanian and European markets! As the demand for qualified workforce becomes bigger and bigger in most regions, the need for attracting and maintaining the right people is rapidly growing. Recruitment will always be paramount, but the ability to develop and maintain the existing workforce is at least as important as qualified candidates become a rare resource.

The GR8PI service empowers companies and organisations to embrace and manage the complete life cycle of each and every employee, securing optimum results for both employee and employer. And from a business model perspective, the GR8PI service is almost revolutionary – it makes high-end HR tools and services available, and affordable to everyone while at the same time offering tool-level customisation in a scale never seen before.

Great People Inside considers GR8PI Cloud-based platform as the first truly customisable People Intelligence and assessment solution in the world, including assessments and Talent Management solutions, adapting to specific requirements of any company or organisation. According to the provider, with GR8PI platform, the client has the freedom to customise, brand or even create his own assessments and reports, which better fit organisation’s culture and competency vectors.

The platform is currently available in 15 languages including English, Spanish, Portuguese, Greek,
Romanian, German and French, with expansion perspectives in over 30 countries.

Part of the seventh annual EuroCloud Europe Forum from Bucharest, EuroCloud Award 2016 gala hosted on October 5th by Regina Maria Saloon in Athenee Palace Hilton Bucharest, was the special moment of the announcement of best European Cloud services.