Gartner has been looking toward the future, and what it sees is a future in the cloud.
Gartner believes that service-led solutions – software as a service (SaaS), infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS) – will usurp more traditional sourcing methods by 2015.
IT companies will need to “bridge legacy offerings and new services” to pave a way to the cloud for service providers, according to an article on CloudComputingNews.net.
Cloud services appear to be growing at a much quicker rate than other segments of the IT services market. Hardware and software support will grow slowly compared to IaaS and BPaaS (business process as a service), which will grow 13.1% and 47.3% in 2013, according to Gartner.
“Growth opportunities certainly exist for service providers with life cycle solutions in relation to the Nexus of Forces,” noted Eric Rocco, Gartner managing vice president. “However, this requires IT services providers to adapt to significant changes, including the growing influence of business leaders in technology investment decisions.”
Cloud Expo New York: Scalable Big Data Solutions in a Bare Metal Cloud
The cloud provides an easy on-ramp to building and deploying Big Data solutions, particularly the latest technologies that favor scale-out architectures. Transitioning from initial deployment to a large-scale, highly performant operation may not be as easy.
Understanding the benefits, weaknesses, and performance characteristics of public cloud and bare metal cloud deployments can help you make the right decisions.
In his session at the 12th International Cloud Expo, Marc Jones, VP of Product Innovation for SoftLayer, will provide some insight into how to select the correct deployment strategy based on your Big Data application’s needs. This insight is based on SoftLayer’s extensive testing while creating Big Data solutions on our bare metal cloud platform.
Popular Cloud Expo Speaker David Linthicum Appointed Sr. VP at CTP
«David…, together with our select group of cloud experts, will provide our clients with an unparalleled wealth of cloud knowledge and ensure we deliver the most advanced and sensible cloud solutions possible,» said Chris Greendale, Founder and CEO, Cloud Technology Partners, as he announced that David Linthicum has been appointed Senior Vice-President at CTP.
Exploring the demand for hosted private cloud services
The cloud movement is about much more than the service offerings. It’s a core ingredient of a larger commercial transformation movement – where savvy leaders are using business technology to advance their operations and accelerate their key processes.
According to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC), worldwide spending on hosted private cloud (HPC) services will be more than $24 billion in 2016. IDC says that they define HPC as an operational model for deploying computing infrastructure services of many types via the cloud.
IDC forecasts that HPC spending will experience a compound annual growth rate of more than 50 percent during the 2012-2016 period, as companies look to managed cloud services in its various forms as a means to transform the ‘how’ of what they provide to their customers.
Evolution of Public and Private Cloud Models
IDC believes that hosted private cloud offerings will become the backbone …
Why It’s Pivotal EMC & VMware Refuse to PaaS Up the Opportunity
If you were to ask EMC or VMware whom they consider their major threat and competition you’d be easily forgiven for being mistaken to think it was NetApp, HP or offerings such as Hyper-V. With many terming us to now be in the third era of corporate computing, with mainframe and the client/server being the first two, the current cloud era has undoubtedly been spearheaded by the likes of Google, Amazon and Facebook.
Amazon Web Services’ OpsWorks is a positive move
Laurent Lachal, Senior Analyst, Software – IT Solutions
In February 2013, Amazon Web Services (AWS) launched the beta version of AWS OpsWorks, a configuration and deployment service for AWS public cloud-based applications and their related resources. While AWS usually creates its services from scratch, OpsWorks is based on third-party technology, namely the open source Chef-based SaaS offering, Scalarium, developed by Peritor, a small Germany-based IT service provider that AWS acquired in 2012.
OpsWorks reflects the increasingly important role of cloud computing-driven infrastructure-as-code/DevOps practices. It is a good, albeit rather limited to date, step forward that will help some AWS customers and partners to remain in control of their AWS public cloud-based solutions.
On the other hand, it is not nearly as threatening to some of AWS’s partners that many claim. In a recent report entitled Amazon Web Services’ OpsWorks: Boosting Cloud Automation, Ovum provides a detailed analysis of its …
Nebula Launches "World’s First Enterprise Cloud Computer"
“The Nebula One delivers on Nebula’s mission to democratize cloud computing by bringing the simplicity, agility, and operational efficiency of the world’s largest Internet companies to all enterprises at a fraction of the cost of public cloud services,” said Chris C. Kemp, co-founder and CEO of Nebula, as Nebula today announced the general availability of Nebula One, which the company describes as «the world’s first enterprise cloud computer.»
The Nebula One private cloud system aims to free the organization to focus on applications instead of infrastructure.
Eight reasons why hosting companies fail
by Adam Bogobowicz, Senior Director of Product Marketing for Service Providers, Parallels
One can learn plenty from good advice but nothing is a better teacher than a respectable failure. I was talking about it with my colleagues, Michael Fountain (mfountain@parallels.com) and Alex Goncharov (alex@parallels.com) who are 10+ year veterans of the hosting industry, and we decided to compile a list of reasons for why good (small) hosting companies fail with some tips on how to avoid it with your own business. We know that this list is far from comprehensive, so if there is a lesson that you would like to share with fellow hosters please comment on the blog on this site or send us e-mail. And of course if you lived through one of these disaster scenarios yourself, please share it with the world.
They gave it away for free in the hope of making it up in volume
There are a few well-funded hosting companies, still in business, which tried this strategy. Some of them do get lucky and if you think about Facebook – very lucky! But if you are starting out and are funded with your savings, credit card and your folks’ money, you would be surprised how quickly these funds evaporate if you give your services away for free. On the other hand, if you just got funded $40M by venture capital to give away your services, enjoy it, but plan to sell your business before the cash runs out.
Quick Tip: If you are interested in how to make Freemium model work please read my previous related blog at http://blogs.parallels.com/serviceprovider/2013/2/6/now-you-can-have-your-website-and-eat-it-too.html
They paid more to acquire a customer (ads &/or affiliate commissions) than the customer’s Life Time Value
This is a less over-the-top case than the one above and is driven by focusing on wrong measures for the business or just ignoring the financials of the business. I have seen an extreme case of this miscalculation with a company that was willing to pay 10 times Life Time Customer Value to acquire new customers. It was done in the spirit of hoping to make up the difference in the future, but with even most basic financial calculation it quickly appeared to be as problematic as a Madoff-style pyramid scheme.
Quick Tip: Some providers can pay a lot more for customers’ clicks because they upsell customers with value-add services (Internet connectivity, e-commerce packages, web design, system administration services etc.) This is why, for example, cost-per-click for hosting related keywords can go as high as $25 per click. If, however, your conversion rate is only 10%, your per customer acquisition cost will be $250, which is too high for the majority of hosting companies. Investing in lower frequency, local, niche keywords and focusing on Search Engine Optimization could help to resolve this issue.
For more information on Customer Life Time Value concept you can read this blog http://blogs.parallels.com/serviceprovider/2013/3/11/understanding-hosting-marketing-measures.html
Their customer on-boarding process took too long
Customers today are used to instant gratification when they make a purchase online. They expect the next screen they see to be the one that holds the information telling them what they just purchased. If you take 24 hours to process an order, you may think that’s reasonable, but it’s not. Automation is your friend. Use it. Also, don’t make your customers tell you their life story. Stop asking for a fax number! When is the last time you used a fax machine to process an order? The more things you ask for on your order form, the more time your customers spend thinking about if they really want your service or not. Don’t make them think that hard.
Quick Tip: Asking customers to provide simple contact information (Name, Phone, Email) in the beginning of purchase process and immediately posting it to your CRM is a very good idea. You can call every customer who did not complete the purchase in minutes and help them to finish the purchase. Also customers are willing to provide more information once they have paid for your order.
They got bad a support reputation
I personally know many hosters who put a phone number on their site and then don’t answer the phone. Do not get a bad support reputation – it will kill you. People talk and when they do, they like to acknowledge other people’s mistakes. So, don’t put a Twitter handle on your site if you are not setup to respond to customer tweets within 30 minutes! Set expectations early and set expectations often. If you mess up and it becomes public, then resolve it publically. Your customers are watching.
Quick Tip: Use virtual phone system. You will be surprised how affordable their fees are. For example http://mightycall.com is less than $10/month.
Fraud got their merchant account shut down
Let’s face facts…if you sell services online, you will be the victim of fraud sooner rather than later. Automation is great, but it must be done in a way that lowers your risk to fraudulent transactions. Not implementing any fraud prevention measures is a guaranteed way to get your merchant account or credit card process account terminated due to too many fraudulent transactions that result in charge backs. And this is not a rare scenario. Anybody who has been in this industry a few years knows a business that faced this problem.
Quick Tip: One of the ways to deal with this problem is to use a hosting automation system that comes with large number of Fraud Screening tools, flexible manual approval rules and support for PREAUTH, also well known as “Authorization Hold” credit card processing. With Preauth processing your hosting automation captures the funds and waits for you to approve it manually after looking at and considering all the information from Fraud Screening tools.
They didn’t know how to reboot a server without a control panel
Hosting is a business with minimum technical skill requirement. This problem (not having technical chops to run a hosting business) is a fairly recent phenomenon because as hosting technology gets simpler, many new hosters come into this industry without a deeper understanding of the underlying hosting technology. We have seen over the last two years quite a few startup hosting companies without Linux or Windows admin skills that got themselves in serious trouble when technical issues outside of the panel happen to their business… and problems do happen… just ask a hoster.
Quick Tip: Consider buying and using hosting infrastructure and automation products that come with unlimited support, such as Parallels Plesk Automation or make sure your support contract is 24×7, valid and active. If you cannot afford to hire a good system administrator right now, grow your own – gradually train and certify your support engineers, so they eventually will become very good system administrators with some practice. Many Software Vendors provide technical training for free or this can be negotiated during purchase. When Alex was managing his hosting business he managed to get MCSE training for all his support engineers sponsored by Microsoft for free. Did you know that you can have your engineers trained to manage Parallels Business Automation Standard for free?
The server was in a closet on a Comcast cable pipe
Ok, this one is just silly but you would not believe how common. I have seen desktop PC in the kitchen playing the role of a datacenter. I can understand this when hosting is done in a developing country where leasing a box is not an option, but if you choose to run your own servers instead of leasing from one of many infrastructure providers in US or Europe, you are wasting your money and asking for a disaster.
They thought that Excel was a wonderful billing automation solution
You would be amazed to see how many hosters are using Excel on their desktops to bill their customers… and when the hard drive fails they go out of business. Excel was OK for a small hosting business to keep track of customers, hosting plans, billing cycles, IPs, servers, when you had your first 10 customers, but eventually when your enterprise starts to grow, you sure need to move to a proper hosting automation and billing solution.
Quick Tip: Automate your hosting business. Get hosting automation that provides full range of traditional hosting services right out of the box: domain registration, shared hosting (Linux/Windows), VPS hosting (Linux/Windows), Hypervisor-based VMs, dedicated servers, SSL certificates. Reconsider your .xls billing strategy and take a look at http://www.parallels.com/products/pba-standard/
The Pivotal Initiative – Aiming for the PaaS Crown
If you were to ask EMC or VMware whom they consider their major threat and competition you’d be easily forgiven for being mistaken to think it was NetApp, HP or offerings such as Hyper-V. The current cloud era has undoubtedly been spearheaded by the likes of Google, Amazon and Facebook. It is here where EMC and VMware face their biggest challenge of remaining relevant and cutting edge in a market that demands automation, simplicity and speed of deployment.
To Cloud or Not to Cloud?
Today’s IT infrastructure is in the midst of a major transformation. In many ways, the data center is a victim of its own success. The growing number of technologies and applications residing in the data center has spawned increasing complexity, which makes IT as a whole less responsive and agile. While businesses are focused on moving faster than ever, large and complex infrastructure is inherently rigid and inefficient.
As a result, IT is moving outside the traditional data center into colocation facilities and cloud infrastructures – essentially Infrastructure Anywhere. The move to Infrastructure Anywhere is driven by the core objective of improving responsiveness and agility and reducing costs. For example, you can scale up resources through the cloud in minutes, not months. But for all of its benefits, this new Infrastructure Anywhere model presents critical challenges.
To make smart decisions about where to run applications and what kind of resources you need, you first must understand your workload: utilization, capacity, and cost. Gaining unified visibility is difficult when your application workloads are distributed across data centers and colocation facilities in different parts of the country or around the world. With limited visibility, how do you accurately align resources and capacity with workloads for efficient processing, cost control, and — more important — achieve the full business value of your IT investment?