A recent survey revealed user attitudes and adoption plans for cloud storage.
Nearly three-quarters of cloud storage users estimated they could recover their data within 24 hours
One out of every eight organizations that do not use cloud storage responded that it would take “more than a week” to recover their data
Respondents were attendees at the recent Cloud Expo at the Javits Center in New York June 11-14, an audience expected to offer more sophisticated insight into the use of cloud computing than a general IT audience. Seventy-three percent of respondents have implemented some form of cloud computing already, with more than a quarter (28 percent) having done so for three or more years.
Virtualization for SMBs, Top to Bottom
Recently, Russ Stockdale wrote a blog post (part 2 of a 4-part series) on a VMware blog. He states that he is continuously looking for opportunities to increase revenue, control costs, and expand services to customers. These are the exact issues that I assist clients with all across the SMB range—from companies with one physical server running everything to customers with multiple sites and 100s of users. Since I get to talk to customers, many of which are SMBs (the same space Mozy serves) and architect solutions to their problems, whatever they may be, I figured I would write a blog along the same lines. The one key technology that we use and recommend is virtualization. Below are some suggestions for products/solutions GreenPages often provides SMBs.
Our smaller clients (less than 5 servers) have the same uptime and business continuity demands that larger companies do, but usually with a single person as their IT department. Virtualization makes their lives easier and provides much more flexibility than physical servers. The VMware VSA (vSphere Storage Appliance) allows the use of local storage to provide the benefit of a SAN including vMotion and High Availability at a much lower cost. Reducing a server to a giant file also allows for easier backup and recovery with snapshots, with both VMware and 3rd party backup software.
For medium sized companies, (less than 20 servers) virtualization fills some key technology gaps. Specifically, the ability to spin up new servers quickly to meet users’ needs is key to a fast paced environment. These size companies also get the same benefits as I mentioned above with business continuity, flexibility, and much less downtime with vMotion and High Availability. Backups are also easier in a virtual environment and many of our clients are getting rid of tape and putting these backups into the Cloud or another offsite location. That is much easier than rotating backups and taking tapes or a NAS drive offsite on a regular basis.
Our larger SMB customers (more than 20 servers) are usually heavy users of virtualization already. We help them take the next steps in managing their environment and their risks by helping them implement three key VMware technologies. First, most of these clients already have more than one location. We help them get automated failover and disaster recovery by implementing Site Recovery Manager (SRM). This is a fantastic way of getting multisite failover, migration, and recovery by leveraging their existing virtual environment and hardware. SRM also provides proof to auditors and management that they have a disaster plan in place that is tested on a regular basis.
The second way we help these customers is by using vCenter Operations Suite to help them manage the hardware and resources they have better. VMware vCenter Operations Enterprise (vCOPs) will point out trouble spots in their environment and assist them in identifying any issues and resolutions. Additionally the software will show them where they have over- or under-allocated resources to specific virtual machines or datastores so they can use those resources elsewhere and put off additional hardware purchases. vCOPs also has some forecasting capabilities so you can plan your next hardware purchases and not have to acquire new hardware unexpectedly.
An additional step that a few of our clients are taking is setting up self-provisioning capabilities with vCloud Director. This allows them to spin up virtual machines for test or development or for other reasons without any interaction from the IT staff. This makes it much quicker and easier to create virtual machines. It also makes for a much cleaner environment since there are limits on who can create VMs and what virtual machines are created. vCloud Director will also clean up the old or expired VMs so you do not end up with VMware sprawl.
All companies no matter how large or small are better off leveraging virtualization to provide more flexibility, easier management, and better uptime and business continuity. VMware has industry leading technology and features that every SMB can and should take advantage of. If you’re looking for more information on virtualization and SMB IT Solutions check out some other blogs I have written on JourneyToTheCloud.
How to explain the value of PSN to public sector stakeholders
It’s fair to say that the Public Services Network (PSN) has been a long time coming. It hasn’t received the air time that G-Cloud has, for example, but it has nonetheless moved on significantly in the last six months.
As research we have conducted recently reveals, we’ve moved beyond simply talking about PSN – reaching a point where general understanding of the benefits it promises are such that it is now seen as central to public sector IT strategies.
My firm, for instance, recently organised a roundtable discussion in conjunction with Alun Michael MP at the House of Commons, to discuss how we could bring relatively technical, but nonetheless important, issues around PSN into mainstream parliamentary debate.
We were joined by representatives from local, central and devolved government, including Kent County Council, the Welsh Assembly and the Cabinet Office, all of whom have been deeply involved in the …
Cloud Security Alliance “Association Sponsor” of Cloud Expo Silicon Valley
SYS-CON Events announced today that Cloud Security Alliance has been named “Association Sponsor” of SYS-CON’s 11th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on November 5–8, 2012, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) is a not-for-profit organization with a mission to promote the use of best practices for providing security assurance within Cloud Computing, and to provide education on the uses of Cloud Computing to help secure all other forms of computing. The Cloud Security Alliance is led by a broad coalition of industry practitioners, corporations, associations and other key stakeholders.
Next Stop in Cloud Computing: How Can It Be Implemented?
First there was “what.” Then there was “why.” Now there is “how.”
Cloud computing is being embraced by most enterprise IT shops – at least according to attendees and vendors at the 10th Cloud Expo in New York, writes Roger Strukhoff of Cloud Computing Journal. Many organizations now want to know how to harness the strengths of cloud computing.
The word of the day at Cloud Expo was “multi-cloud,” Strukhoff explained:
“It turns out that enterprise IT is complex, and that cloud is not going to eliminate that complexity, at least with larger shops. However, it will continue the push in recent years to eliminate silos, decouple and loosely recouple services, get a grip on measuring things, and provide the vaunted ‘single pane of glass’ through which IT management can view and manage what’s going on,” he writes.
E-signature and Cloud Service Myths
E-signature services offer an innovative and convenient way for businesses of any size to help cut costs, improve efficiency and offer convenience to customers or clients. Delivery of documents and forms through the Internet or cloud-based services takes just seconds. This means less waiting, more working and quicker processing. The technology has matured and grown […]
Red Hat’s Buying FuseSource Off Progress Software
Red Hat said Wednesday that it’s arranged to buy FuseSource from Progress
Software. Terms were not disclosed but they’re not material.
FuseSource evidently has some open source integration and messaging
widgetry that Red Hat thinks is valuable. Red Hat’s plans are fixated on
applications. FuseSource is supposed to let it “accelerate the delivery of
application integration products and services to enterprise customers.”
Megaupload case gathers steam as warrants deemed invalid
The US case against Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom is looking shakier by the day, following news that warrants used to raid his New Zealand home were invalid.
On Thursday New Zealand High Court Judge Justice Helen Winkelmann ruled that the warrants used in January “did not adequately describe the offences to which they related”. Many of Dotcom’s substantial assets were frozen, and property seized including a 20 luxury vehicles, works of art and computers.
Moves by the FBI to copy data from Dotcom’s computer and take it offshore were also unlawful, she said.
In January Dotcom was cut out of a safe room in his $30m Aukland mansion by SWAT officers and arrested along with four others. Now under house arrest, he was initially judged a flight risk and denied bail.
Megaupload was unceremoniously executed, provoking outrage from millions of users who had legitimately used the service to …
Private Clouds and the 500kW Threshold
I’ve been intrigued by two recent and fairly consistent comments made by cloud thought leaders about the power and significance of the under-hyped private cloud. Zynga CTO Debra Chrapaty recently commented about the Zynga migration from public to private cloud centricity.
Zynga owns the base and rents the spike; see The Power of the Private Cloud for a link to the GigaOm Research interview.
Time to Rain on the “Cloud Service Model” Parade
The Cloud community have been talking recently about Everything as a Service; they call it EaaS. At first hearing it’s an interesting idea, another acronym to complement IaaS, PaaS and SaaS. Unfortunately it’s rather like the tail wagging the dog! The Cloud community use the term Service liberally but with minimal consistency.