Maintaining email servers is a full-time job including server maintenance, filtering spam, blocking viruses, and creating backups. A hosted Exchange service frees up IT time by putting all of these tasks in the hands of the email host. Even still, the myths surrounding hosted Exchange persist. Let’s knock them out one at a time to see why Exchange might make sense for you.
Myth #1: Hosted Exchange is Only for Large Businesses
Because of the time it takes to manage an Exchange server, small businesses can take the most advantage of a third-party email system. While large businesses can also use Exchange, small business IT departments have more tasks to keep the company running. Allowing the host to manage the email servers takes much of the busy work away from IT personnel, so they can focus on more internal issues instead of maintaining servers.
Is Hosted Private Cloud the Future of Cloud Infrastructure?
Every business is different, and their infrastructure is sure to follow suit. However, just as there are standards within best practices for cloud, so too are there consistencies where cloud platforms are concerned.
When we say cloud platforms, however, we don’t mean open or closed clouds, like Rackspace versus AWS. Instead we are referring to public, private and hybrid clouds.
A recent Business Technology Roundtable blog post delved into an IDC study, finding that companies are increasingly leveraging hosted private clouds. IDC points to the hosted private cloud as the new backbone to the infrastructure services, “…transforming existing provider models for IT outsourcing, hosting infrastructure services, and other key IT industries.”
Achieving Application Portability for DevOps
Enterprise applications are increasing in complexity, with multi-tier and distributed applications being the new standards for dealing with high-volume, high-scale requirements. In many development environments, the ideal scenario is to enable DevOps teams to manage dev/test environments in public clouds, with on-demand, usage based billing model – and to ultimately deploy these complex applications in on-premises clouds. Achieving application portability between heterogeneous cloud environments is critical to achieve the productivity goals of DevOps – yet often requires time-consuming workarounds. This article will present examples of approaches employed today, including newer options for model-driven cloud management platforms with their emphasis on automating application portability and approach to eliminating cloud lock-in.
Cloud Expo Silicon Valley: Best Practices in Scaling Cloud Architectures
Cloud scalability and performance should be at the heart of every successful internet venture. The infrastructure needs to be resilient, flexible, and fast – it’s best not to get caught thinking about architecture until the middle of an emergency, when it’s too late.
In his interactive, no-holds-barred session at the 13th International Cloud Expo®, Phil Jackson, Development Community Advocate at SoftLayer, dives into how to design and build-out the right cloud infrastructure.
Phil Jackson is Development Community Advocate for SoftLayer. He helps customers and partners integrate with the SoftLayer’s API. He also architects the company’s Drupal websites, writes API documentation, and maintains the developer blog. Formerly, he was a Sales Engineer building internal tools and providing technical consultation for potential and existing customers.
Jackson started his career in webhosting at Ev1Servers where he led the training department. With a passion for technology that started at a young age, he has developed skills in a variety of scripting and programming languages and enjoys sharing his knowledge with the tech community.
Cloud Expo Silicon Valley: Advanced Analytics for All
Today when it comes to analytics it’s a choice between simplicity and power:
Experts can use automated techniques like machine learning
Analysts can manually do statistical analysis
Business users can use rudimentary visual analysis
The future is Advanced Analytics for All (AA4A) combining the power of machine learning with the simplicity of visual analysis. Cloud computing cuts the cost of such computationally expensive analysis, and makes it available to everyone over any device.
In his session at the 13th International Cloud Expo®, Arijit Sengupta, CEO of BeyondCore, will discuss through real case studies how AA4A methodology is already saving lives, money and delivering invaluable insights automatically.
Is the Cloud Really Less Costly Than On-Premise?
To state the obvious, businesses of all sizes are moving their applications to the cloud or renting software as a service (SaaS) instead of licensing or buying the software outright.
The number one reason people cite is cost. Businesses large and small are under the impression they can save a bundle by moving their apps to the cloud. At the same time, companies who handle a move to the cloud badly can suffer a negative backlash from their user community.
When you consider all the cost factors, like your time, energy and risk to your business, will you save money in the long run by going with SaaS? The short answer is no.
One thing is clear: businesses will pay less up front for cloud vs. on-premise. Modern SaaS systems are rented on a pay-as-you-go basis, or might have short-term contracts. Average license fees for equivalent on-premise software range from two to three years’ worth of SaaS subscriptions. Add in 20% annual maintenance when you buy and install your own software and you are in concept paying three years’ worth of subscription revenues up front for the same tools.
Cloud Expo: Converging OpenStack Compute with NexentaStor Storage
Reliable, scalable storage is a key component of cloud deployments. Those deploying an infrastructure cloud frequently opt for network-attached storage (NAS) over local storage, to make it simpler to implement enterprise-grade features.
By combining OpenStack Compute, today’s industry-standard open source cloud platform, with NexentaStor, the most popular open storage solution, companies can build clouds that are feature rich, avoid vendor lock-in, offer complete control of the stack, and reduce costs by unlocking the ability to use less expensive commodity hardware.
In his session at the 13th International Cloud Expo®, Boris Renski, Co-Founder & Executive Vice President of Mirantis, will discuss how Mirantis, a leader in engineering services for OpenStack Cloud, and Nexenta, which provides enterprise-class storage solutions, integrated NexentaStor with OpenStack Compute.
Brass Tacks: Answering the Cloud Security Questions That Matter
Strong InfoSec strategies must answer the key questions of who is logging in, what is accessed, when was it changed and how is the IT landscape affected.
Enterprise security can be a labyrinthine, complex beast with many moving parts, dozen upon dozen of requirements, needs, implications, options and alternatives.
But when we get down to the nitty gritty (the brass tacks if you will), cloud security can be simplified by six simple questions.
The challenge of predicting enterprise cloud computing growth
69% of enterprises who have separate budgets for cloud computing are predicting spending increases this year and into 2014.
This is one of several key take-aways from a research study published today by TheInfoPro, a service of 451 Research. TheInfoPro Wave 5 Cloud Computing Study is based on research completed in the first six months of 2013, and relies on live interviews with IT management and primary decision-makers in midsize and large enterprises in Europe and North America. You can view details of TheInfoPro Cloud Computing Overview Program and methodology here.
Additional key take-aways from the study include the following:
- The worldwide cloud computing market will grow at a 36% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) through 2016, reaching a market size of $19.5B by 2016.
- 38% of enterprises surveyed break out cloud computing budgets, while 60% include cloud-related spending as part of their enterprise-wide IT budgets. TheInfoPro asserts that …
SYS-CON Launches WebRTC Journal
SYS-CON Media has launched WebRTC Journal on Ulitzer.com featuring over 160 original articles, news stories, features, and blog entries. WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communication) is an open source project supported by Google, Mozilla and Opera that aims to enable browser-to-browser applications for voice calling, video chat, and P2P file sharing without plugins. Its mission is “To enable rich, high quality, RTC applications to be developed in the browser via simple Javascript APIs and HTML5.”
Follow WebRTC Journal on Twitter at @WebRTCSummit.