How Outsourcing Your IT Lowers Risk

Outsourcing your IT lowers risk

(originally published in Western Sydney Business Access)

By Dexter Duncan

Lowering business risk drives many business decisions and this article explores how outsourcing your IT lowers risk.   Small companies tend to outsource more of their IT than larger companies since “in-sourcing” a multi-skilled team is costly and relying on a “one-man band” will not optimize the long term business.   Both of these reasons are at the heart of avoiding risk.

In our experience, even mid-size companies with a group of in-house IT people do not have the same level of skill as a group of external consultants.   An IT company that is supporting or setting up multiple environments for scores of companies has specialist with more experience in managing and preventing problems than someone who is only familiar with your environment.     A good team of external consultants lowers your risk.

I think from a business point of view, we can broadly define ‘risk’–

 Risk is a potential event or circumstance which impacts business operations or profits.  

Obviously, risk is a normal part of business.   However, if you can spend a limited amount of money to reduce future pain and/or reduce chances of stopping your operations or losing money, you would.

Before giving an example, let’s put outsourcing in perspective.   How much of Australia IT is outsourced?  Australia IT spend is projected at A$61.9 Billion for 2012, with outsourcing more than one third of this:

• Outsourcing services – A$22.4 billion
• Internal Services – $A 15.4 Billion,
• Software – A$6.5 Billion,
• Telecommunications – A$ 12 Billion
• Hardware – A$ 5.4 Billion

When your business is small, it is normal to balance your risks by using a family member or friend to give you ad-hoc support for your IT.    As your business grows, the initial processes and technology start to be under strain.    If technology is old or your processes are not streamlined, you could be setting yourself up for a major risk event.

Some example risk events:

• You use a good paper based processes that works well.  Now you are bigger and the paper based process is consuming time.
• You get caught out in a compliance audit and need to pay fines/penalties.
• You are under threat for breach of contract which could cost you in future business.
• You are paying your staff to wait while printers or e-mail get fixed.   Worse, you are losing e-mails.
• Your server(s) go(es) down and you cannot do any work.   The daily back-ups have not been working for months.
• You lose a staff member and cannot find files needed to complete a project
• HR, contract management or accounting software is either non-existent, not backed up or only 1 person in the company knows how to implement it.

Technology changes fast and using a one-man support squad may be cheap, but he/she does not have the specialist knowledge that prevents problems, solves problems and/or creates new solutions for your growing business.     Look at outsourcing as risk mitigation for your day-to-day operations (such as IT helpdesk, server maintenance and applications support) or growth & business improvement areas (such as software development and automation).

We knew a successful national manufacturer with in-house IT staff costing around $50,000 per person/ year.    They had other ad-hoc support for their software and database needs.  They were good at “putting out fires” and could set up systems that worked.    They got fed-up with repeat IT problems and realized their software system was part Frankenstein.  They reduced their risks by outsourcing and implementing changes which increased productivity and a system that was easier to use/support.

When to Outsource?

• Most importantly, outsource when you can see that using an outside resource will mitigate risk
• Outsource when expertise is needed
• Outsource depending on size of your business and risk
• Outsource when only temporary resource is needed
• Outsource when you are trying to up-skill your staff
• Outsource when it makes financial sense

On operational side, a good external specialist can put together a “managed services” package that includes IT help desk, infrastructure support and maintenance. On the growth side, a small outside team of 2-3 people can perform business analysis and complete software development much more quickly than you could do in-house, especially when using standard development platforms such as .NET, Java or common applications like CRM and SharePoint.   The exception: when your systems are unique and/or provide a competitive advantage, in-sourcing is the best solution.

Call your local technology partner for advice.

See our website for more:

www.EmpowerIT.com.au

or

www.EmpowerCS.com.au

About the author: Dexter Duncan is a Manager at Empower IT Solutions. Contact Dexter at dd@EmpowerIT.com.au

References:

1)      2011 November, Gartner Symposium/ITxpo in Gold Coast , Australia.   More than 1,500 CIO’s and IT leaders attended

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) in the Cloud

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) in the Cloud (Published in Western Sydney Business Access)

By Dexter Duncan

Microsoft recently released their on-line “cloud” based CRM (Customer Relationship Management) at an introductory price of $42/month per user.   As a user and seller of Microsoft CRM solutions, this is a welcome entry for businesses, especially small to medium businesses.   This financial benefit to businesses is that you can centralize all your client contacts in one area for a low operational cost per user.  The alternative of paying for an on-premise solution is still available, but the cloud based solution is more cost and time effective.

CRM is one of the original “killer applications” for cloud computing where you pay as you go and only pay for what you use.   In fact, the cloud based CRM leader, SalesForce.com, has been pushing the on-line model for many years.     The big difference with Microsoft announcement:

1)      Price.   Salesforce charges between $65 to $250 per user per month, depending on which option you choose.

2)      Efficiency with Microsoft look and feel.   Microsoft has designed their products to work together and have a common look.   This makes it easier for CRM to be adopted by users already familiar with Microsoft.

Whenever Microsoft enters a new area, they tend to “commoditize” the market by introducing a high level of functionality at a low price using their market dominance to quickly steam roll the market.    Microsoft recently reached their 1 millionth CRM customer, and you can bet they’ll grow faster with their new on-line based service.

Before you get all excited and jump onto the CRM bandwagon, you should be aware that the cost of adding a simple “out of the box CRM” system is still different than one that is modified to suit your business processes.     We had a recent friendly client that wanted to tie their distributors and sales calendars together, using CRM as a sort of enterprise sales tracking device.   Although Microsoft makes it look easy in their on-line videos, the amount of back-end database steps turned a simple $10,000 project into one that could cost $50,000.   Even though $50,000 may sound like a bomb, it is a bargain when compared with the typical costs of yesteryear.

In the early days of CRM (10 or more years ago) it was common to hear about CRM failures.   In most cases, the failure had to do with trying to force technology down user’s throats rather than looking at your natural business processes and bending the technology around your processes.   Nowadays, there is a heap of functionality in an out of the box CRM system to help you with your sales, marketing and customer service, but it is still possible to have a failure if you try to do too much.

Sales and Account Management

The sales department is usually the best place to begin using CRM.

For most businesses, basic CRM usage is the same and is implemented inside the business quickly.   Common across many is to use CRM to manage all information related in sales funnel or account management:

-          Capturing leads and qualifying them

-          Tracking opportunity status and actions required

-          Keeping track of activities per client/customer

See screenshot for what the Microsoft CRM looks like.

 

You can see from the screenshot that the CRM uses Microsoft Outlook client which helps you seamlessly track calendar events and e-mails against each lead, opportunity or account.

In order for CRM to really act as a central database for all client/customer activity, you’ll need to expand beyond the sales team to use CRM to track marketing campaigns and service activity.

Marketing Campaign

Once you determine the tasks for the campaign, for example, sending mail out to a list with phone call follow-ups, you can track the status and success of the campaign and assign leads to the sales department once they are qualified.

Customer Service/Project Tracking

After the sale is made, you can design a number of follow-ups to ensure you provide customer service.   For on-going service activity, this can be scheduled and tracked each month, with a report at the end of each month to show you how many hours your team is spending on each client.     Similarly, in delivery of a project, you can track your hours from each of the project team members so that you are able to inform clients when they have gone over the allotted time in a project.

Customisations

Although you can usually operate the basics of CRM with an out of the box system, you’ll find that you may need to make some customizations that reflect different lines of businesses, product or service areas that your company delivers.   As I referenced above, you could also choose to set-up common calendars for your distributors and sales people, which would require a more detailed design, but now possible for a fraction of the price that it would cost a few years ago.

The best approach is to start with the basic functionality with the sales team with some minor customisations.   Once the team is familiar using it, you can start to involve the team in making some work-flow changes to improve your service or operation.

Call your local technology partner for more advice.

See our website for more:

www.EmpowerIT.com.au

About the author: Dexter Duncan provides marketing advice and heads business development at Empower IT Solutions. Contact Dexter at dd@EmpowerIT.com.au

Location Based Services in the Cloud

Location Based Services (first published in Parramatta Business Access)

By Dexter Duncan

This article gives a brief overview of Location Based Services, including some business benefits and examples of some market leaders.  The LBS market is still in the infant stage, but exploding to almost USD $13 Billion by 2014 (according to Juniper Research).   Interestingly, the largest geographical market for LBS is Asia Pacific, with Japan and Korea leading the world.   For businesses, this is a new channel to market and sell products/services with potential to build loyalty or improve efficiencies to your bottom line.

Some History:

What is Location Based Services?  Most of you are already using “Location Based Services” but probably do not realize it.

• The most basic LBS is the car GPS (Global Positioning System) for navigation or traffic updates.    The same application has become common on iPhones and Android phones.
• Telstra released its’ Whereis® Everyone service in 2008, which gives you a free way of tracking your family and friends on a map.   The service is used to give you an SMS alert when someone arrives at a preset location and is also used to find your lost mobile phone.
• Some of the other more common uses on current GPS includes list of nearby or on-route restaurants, shopping centres, ATM, petrol stations, schools, etc.

The two main technologies used to pin-point your location are GPS which uses satellites and Mobile “triangulation” technology which uses mobile phone towers.

What’s New:

The new entrants to LBS improve on above by adding games, rating systems, social network sharing and general comments based on location.    Part of the reason for the growth of LBS is the combined popularity of social networking, smartphones and cloud computing, so you can say it is mostly a consumer based trend.   The main barriers to entry are slow data on mobile phones which is why high speed internet and faster smartphones are important.

Many companies have jumped on this bandwagon, making it easy to download applications to your iPhone or Android.   Facebook provides LBS through something called “Places”.    Google has something called “Latitude” tracking your location to Google maps and allowing you to see other users, make comments and review restaurants in the area.

What are the Benefits of LBS?:

1. Business to consumer benefits – Engage your customers & build loyalty:
   1. Give most frequent visitors status
   2. Give discounts
   3. Advertise specials
2. Business to business benefits – Cost effective “off the shelf” tools to improve your service to other businesses.
   1. Track start/stop and arrival times – no need to install expensive hardware like “buddy” clocks or fingerprint scanners at each location
   2. Use metrics to improve service and show contract compliance.

Some Business to Consumer Examples: Foursquare® and Gowalla®

The most common example in use is for retail and food outlets to incorporate LBS into their marketing and loyalty programs.    Two of the most common in this space are Foursquare and Gowalla.    Foursquare already have more than 5 million users.   Simplistically, they both combine location based games with social networking into some modern day loyalty programs for businesses.       Instead of the barista clicking your coffee card at Gloria Jeans, it could happen automatically, but you could give greater attention to your most loyal clients or those that visit you the most over the last 30-60 days!

With Foursquare, someone with frequent visits  at one or multiple locations earn “badges”, thereby entitling them to special privileges such as discounts or a special “reserved table” for certain badges.  The person with most visits is crowned “mayor” until someone else surpasses them. All are tracked on a modern day smart phone.

With Gowalla, you have a ‘passport’ that allows you to collect stamps, pins or other virtual items (like coupons) based on locations visited.    When you travel to different cities, states or countries, you collect different “pins” to show your achievements.   You are also able to share photos and make comments on places your friends visit.

Some Business to Business ideas:

LBS can help you locate a staff member, truck or item and tell you if and when he/she/it arrived or how far away they are.  Some interesting scenarios for Business to Business applications include:

• Cost effective solution for tracking your staff or equipment arrivals
• Location based information storage.  Many need to fill out forms or report based on the location.

If you have a lot of staff and locations to track, LBS allows you to build an application that gives you real-time updates on a map.    If a security guard, nurse or truckie does not show up, you’ll be able to take action before the client rings!    Some scenarios:

• A nurse who goes to a different location each day/week to help others.  LBS could let you know when they arrived and how long they stayed.  You could even fill-out location specific forms that may be required such as medicine or progress reports.

• A security officer who attends different sites based on a contract or response to an alarm.    LBS lets you know when security arrives and could provide a location specific report.

Call your local technology partner for more advice.

See our website for more:

www.EmpowerIT.com.au

About the author: Dexter Duncan provides marketing advice and heads marketing and business development at Empower IT Solutions. Contact Dexter at dd@empowerit.com.au

 

 

 

 

References:

http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/23/location-based-services-revenue/

Location based services reach $12.7 Billion by 2014 according to Juniper Research

http://gigaom.com/2011/01/26/are-location-based-services-ready-to-turn-the-corner/

Phlanthr compares Gowalla vs Foursquare on their website.   Below comparison is from Phlanthr on this link.

http://www.philanthr.org/blog/2010/2/4/location-app-smackdown-foursquare-vs-gowalla.html

Social Networking is Part of the Cloud

Basic overview on Social Media (published in Parramatta Business Access)

By Dexter Duncan

In my last article, we explored the growth of smart phones as a trend and tool for businesses.   One of the main engines purporting growth of smartphones is Social Media applications, which is the focus of this article.

Social Media is mainly about content creation, sharing and open feedback.   Many companies already use internal collaboration software based on Microsoft Sharepoint, but what about including clients, prospects, users, loyal customers and partners?

When folks mention Social Media, what do they mean?   Some of the most common forms of social media include:

• Blogs
• Mini-Blogs like Twitter
• Location based network services – Foursquare and Gowalla
• Forums (usually a form of Wiki)
• On-line podcasts and conferences
• Wiki’s like Wikipedia
• Video sharing like You Tube
• Public communities – Facebook, LinkedIn

It is important to mention that most of the above survive on a cloud computing type models — the data is stored in the cloud and not on your computer/server. Many of the above are used to communicate with clients and potential clients but also to learn what others think about product or services.    Some of the more recent changes that are recognizing the use of social media in business include:

• Facebook profiles are now integrated into CRM solutions from Salesforce.com.
• LinkedIn is directly plugged into email with Lotus Notes.
• Twitter is starting to appear in all sorts of enterprise offering, such as support updates or special offerings.

Facebook has more than 700,000 business accounts and LinkedIn profiles are often used as CV hunting grounds — should your business jump into it?  According to Banner Corp a recent business-to-business Barometer study from Circle Research, the most common social networking channels companies are using are LinkedIn, Twitter and Blogging with more than 60% of businesses using LinkedIn.   They go on to claim that the most effective use of social networking tend to be blogging, maintaining business profiles on social networks and creating podcasts.

In short, social networking is not for everyone and companies need to consider the demographics of their customers, prospects and suppliers/partners.    The other huge consideration is to ensure you have policies in place to handle this infiltration into the company.    Everything from time wasting office work to security concerns such as SPAM and malicious viruses needs to be thought through.   With the right password policy and staff education program in place, the experience of diving into social media is likely to be successful.

The below are some generic marketing tips from a company named Nicholson Kovac.

SOCIAL NETWORKING BEST PRACTICES

YouTube®

1. Reserve a YouTube.com URL.

2. Choose relevant keyword friendly tags for videos to increase your search results.

3. Brand and customize your YouTube channel by adding background images and choosing company colours.

4. Get best quality by following YouTube’s video compression

guidelines.

5. Thank subscribers and respond to wall comments.

6. Build up your library of content quickly. Repurpose video from traditional

advertising (i.e. TV spots).

7. Regularly monitor your insights on your YouTube

channels.

8. To increase your reach, look beyond YouTube and post your videos on other social video sites such as Vimeo.

FACEBOOK

1. Secure your own Facebook URL.

2. Think carefully about who you “friend.”

3. Select your privacy settings.

4. Update regularly.

5. Keep your friends organized using Facebook’s groups feature.

6. Create fan pages and track your insights.

7. Engage customers with polls or special fan promotions and giveaways.

1. Reserve your custom LinkedIn URL.

2. Fill out your profile completely.

3. Have a compelling and search-friendly headline.

4. Give and receive recommendations.

5. Stay active.

6. Connect with everyone.

7. Import your other feeds (i.e.blog, Twitter, etc.).

8. Become an industry thought leader by joining groups and answering people’s questions.

Twitter®

1. Reserve your custom Twitter URL.

2. Include a well-written bio.

3. Make your page stand out with a custom background.

Include your contact info and links to other social networks.

4. Post regularly and retweet others’ posts if they are interesting and relevant to your audience.

5. Listen and be prepared to respond to conversations. A good way to interact is to ask questions.

6. If you want to get retweets, be relevant.

7. Make sure your tweets provide some value for your audience. For example, post pictures, provide coupons or a behind-the-scenes view of your company.

®

®

In a future article, I will talk more about location based services.   Call your local technology partner for more advice.

See our website for more:

www.EmpowerIT.com.au

About the author: Dexter Duncan provides marketing advice and heads marketing and business development at Empower IT Solutions. Contact Dexter at dd@empowerit.com.au

References:

1. Sophos Whitepaper, June 2010,:  Social Media in the Enterprise, great opportunities and great risks. www.sophos.com
2. Banner Corp. Whitepaper, More than Twitter, Social Media and the Tech Buyer  www.b1.com
3. Nicholson Kovac Whitepaper; 2010,  Social Media 101.  www.nicholsonkovac.com

The age of the iPhone is Here

(Article featured in Parramatta Business Access)

By Dexter Duncan

In my last article, we explored internet prices and some of the benefits related to Australias’ National Broadband Network.   This article explores the growth of smart phones as a trend and tool for businesses.   We will discuss some sample applications that improve productively beyond access to e-mail.    With the simple mobile phone having the same power as your office computer, some productivity solutions will never be the same.

There are some parents tracking the where-abouts of their kids through the GPS on their mobile phone.   More honesty is brought into the conversation when they tell you where they are going and when they are coming home.   Imagine an automatic time-stamp  of employee time-clocks when they arrive (in office or at a client site).  Or staff filling out on-line report in the field which are automatically presented after leaving a client site.   Or your travelling boss being able to approve things quickly from his phone!  There are many smart phone applications that are suddenly possible with latest generation of smartphones such as ones using Google Android and Apple’s iPhone.

Many people are aware that you can get a Skype number which allows you to answer a call or chat anywhere in the world costing only the price of your monthly internet service    Having data service on your phone allows many more of the computer based applications on your mobile phone.   You can easily set-up an office number that automatically rings your mobile when you are away from your desk.

About a year ago, I was travelling inter-state for the day and received a call from my daughter’s school.  They called to ask me to pick my sick daughter up, not realizing I was thousands of miles away.     During a client meeting, I could also quickly send a chat message to overseas technical support folks without interrupting the flow of the meeting or costing a fortune.

The Australian government is already talking up telemedicine and education examples as remote usage ideas for the National Broadband Network.    Other examples such as security related eye or thumbprint scans or logistically related  delivery or warehouse inventory tracking could all be improved by integrating with mobile phone.

Growth in mobile internet shows it will overtake regular “fixed” internet by 2014.   This is partly driven by availability of 3G mobile networks and popular demand for social networking like Facebook.   (Social networking is already more popular than e-mail….)

Technology is becoming easier to use, with even some luddite older generation folks using iPads or iPhones to check their mail or calendars.    I have been impressed with the ability of my Android smartphone to automatically combine both my personal and business calendars without any configuration on my part.   Smartphones is THE growth area for both phone makers and service providers and the “voice only” mobile phone is no longer growing and is not as profitable.

There are many players entering the smartphone market with reports of upcoming devices from Microsoft, Dell, Playstation and Nokia.   Although Blackberry is still popular in some circles, the introduction of the Apple iPhone with over 400,000 applications changed the landscape of smartphones.  Many folks think Nokia is on their way out and they desperately need their new introductions of smartphones to be a success.  You now have a plethora of smartphones available in Australia today, with some of the best coming from brands that were not very popular a few years ago:

1. HTC  Desire $779
2. HTC Legend $600
3. HTC Wildfire $349
4. Samsung Galaxy S $850
5. Samsung Galaxy  Tab $1,000
6. Motorola Quench
7. Motorola Milestone 2

All the above are based on Google Android “open” operating system.   HTC provides a variety of choices at different prices.   Samsung is a fantastic experience with a large screen.   Motorola is preferred by some as it has a quality feel about it.   Depending on which carrier you have, you could easily add one of them to your life.

If you or your staff already have phones with access to e-mail and web-browsing, you may ask, why should I change/upgrade?   Some of the key differences in this generation of phones include:

• Faster Phones (i.e. fast browsing, games, reduced lag time),
• Bigger and higher resolution screens and
• Cheaper mobile broadband

In many cases, you no longer need a laptop to read or send basic documentation as smartphones support many of these.   This can equate to higher productivity depending on how you use the phones.   The world is changing and the winners are the ones that find new ways of wringing productivity out of their business.  

Here are some recent numbers on how many iPhones and Androids were sold by Telstra (the largest mobile player in Australia):

If you look at the broader picture, it shows Androids gaining on iPhones.     iPhones were about 400,000 units over six month period and Androids around 290,000 over same period.     

Call your local technology partner for more advice.

See our website for more:

www.EmpowerIT.com.au

About the author: Dexter Duncan provides marketing advice and heads marketing and business development at Empower IT Solutions. Contact Dexter at dd@empowerit.com.au

Gigaom:  Mary Meeker: Mobile Internet will soon overtake fixed Internet, April 2010

http://gigaom.com/2010/04/12/mary-meeker-mobile-internet-will-soon-overtake-fixed-internet/

Cloud Computing Architecture: Part 1

Cloud Computing Architecture:  Part I

Updated in September 2010 by Dexter Duncan.

(Article submitted to magazine targeting CIOs and originally published  in September 2009.)

The latest craze in the IT (Information Technology) sector is Cloud Computing.   Some call it the new frontier.  The Wild West is here, bringing with it opportunities for new companies.  Conferences on this topic are already in their third or fourth year. Companies in this space are attracting venture capital funds even during the Global Financial Crisis.  IDC estimates the market size for Public Cloud Computing to be at USD $56 Billion by 2014, with an annual growth rate of 25%, or five times the regular IT growth rate. Extending this to 2020, the market size for Cloud Computing stands at an astronomical $213 Billion. With the growing shift in application software development from PC to Data Centers and Clouds, we expect that this opportunity will increase even higher.  With these projections, so many vendors and service providers have got into the game and so much press activity has taken place. Gartner’s 2009 IT Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, released this July, places “Cloud Computing” at the peak of the “hype cycle”. The lead adopter phase is over and a period of uncertainty, innovation and consolidation has begun as companies find practical uses for Cloud Computing.

Cloud computing is often called the 5th Utility [2].   Utilities such as water, gas, and electricity are fundamental in our daily life and are exploited on a pay per use basis. The existing infrastructures deliver these services almost anywhere and anytime.  The usage of these utilities is charged, according to different policies, to the end user.  The same idea of utility is applied to computing and a consistent shift towards this approach is seen with the proliferation of Cloud Computing.

Cloud Computing promises to deliver on- demand IT resources on a pay-per-use basis by dynamically growing or shrinking the virtualized resources and providing them as a service to the users over the internet. This is aimed at a global market with massive demands in real time, ranging from the end users that host their personal documents on the Internet, to enterprises outsourcing their entire IT infrastructure to external data centers. The approach of Cloud Computing makes the notion of IT as a fifth utility a reality: not only computing and storage resources are delivered on demand but the entire stack of computing is offloaded to the Cloud.

CIOs should ask: how does Cloud Computing help my organization?  Can this new commoditized infrastructure give me a competitive advantage in delivering services or does it provide new flexibility?   Many of the advantages of Cloud Computing are a culmination of advantages derived from the multiple technologies that drive it – such as Grids, Clusters, Virtualization, Utility (e.g. pay-per-use), Service Oriented Architecture and Quality of Service needs.

Some of the most famous names in Cloud Computing are giants such as IBM, Microsoft, Google and Sun Microsystems (now part of Oracle).  In addition, a number of IT vendors, including HP, Dell, EMC (VMWare), Cisco, Citrix, RedHat, AT&T, Unisys, Oracle, and small to mid-size start-ups have made product and service announcements addressing the Cloud Computing space.  Even Amazon, the bookseller, opened up its datacenters for business by selling compute and storage “on-demand” and includes this new service as one of its best revenue growth areas.

What is Cloud Computing and who are the teams playing in this space?

The CEO of Microsoft, Steve Balmer, reportedly told a reporter in New York in March 2009, “Anything that has been a server needs to be a service.”     His statement is a good summary of Microsoft’s Azure strategy, but only partly covers the definition of Cloud Computing.  A new framework race is on that allows enterprises to manage based on the demand based commodity infrastructure.  The framework needs to make it easy to manage, provision, monitor, secure and change resources when needed or based on pre-determined service levels that match the applications.

Cloud Computing Reference Model

Cloud Computing is a type of parallel and distributed system consisting of a collection of interconnected and virtualized computers that are dynamically provisioned and presented as one or more unified computing resources based on a service-level agreement [1]. According to this definition, Cloud Computing refers to the practice of delivering software and infrastructure as a service on a “pay as you go” basis.

Figure 1 illustrates the layered architecture of the Cloud Computing. Generally, the Cloud architecture defines 4 distinct layers from physical hardware to end user applications. Physical resources including spare desktop machines, clusters and datacenters form the lowest level of the stack, on top of which the virtual infrastructure is deployed. Infrastructure supporting large scale Cloud deployments are more likely datacenters hosting hundreds or thousands of machines, while small scale, in house Clouds provide a more heterogeneous scenario where the idle CPU cycles of spare desktop machines are used to leverage the compute workload. This level provides the “horse power” of the Cloud.

Figure 1: Cloud Computing layered architecture.

For full article, click here.

Cloud computing by the numbers: What do all the statistics mean?

Computing By The Numbers (Click Here)

Found the above article by Ryan Nichols in Computerworld interesting.   He provides a good summary on market numbers and some general observations.   He also ties into the drivers of cloud computing adoption, mainly agility or ease of responding to business change.   He also covers a trend of social computing and mobile web and how these might be integrated in SaaS offerings.  As an example, Salesforce.com has developed Chatter as a mobile application which ties into Salesforce.

Here is part of his article:

“…The market for public cloud computing services is large and growing, even if the exact numbers vary widely

IDC estimates the market for public cloud products and services at $16B in 2010, growing to $56B by 2014. Gartner more optimistically estimates the cloud market at $150B by 2013 while Merrill Lynch estimates the market at $160B by 2011. And of course, the article that spurred this post quoted AMI research‘s estimate that SMB cloud spending alone will reach $100B by 2014. Regardless of the exact numbers or the exact definitions of cloud computing that each of these companies used, the conclusion is that market for public cloud infrastructure, platforms and applications is large and growing much more quickly than any other type of IT spending.”

“Head-scratcher #1: If virtualization is growing and cloud computing is growing, how can the market for private enterprise servers also be growing?

Gartner estimates that virtualization is growing rapidly and that by 2013, 60% of server workloads will be virtualized. In addition, based on all the numbers we’ve already seen, public cloud infrastructure, applications and platforms are growing at 25%+. At the same time, IDC projects that the market for enterprise servers will double by 2013. If virtualization is increasing server utilization and cloud computing is moving applications to vast pools of shared infrastructure, then how can the market for servers be growing at this clip? It’s even more surprising if you factor in Moore’s law.”

Ryan Nichols is the Vice President of Cloudsourcing and Cloud Strategy forAppirio.

Hosted Document Management and More

By Dexter Duncan

A few weeks ago, I invited one of our clients to a seminar on Microsoft SharePoint.   I realized that she did not know what SharePoint was, although she had heard of it.  Despite the overwhelming success of SharePoint (with more than 100 million sold and $1Billion in revenue), there are many businesses that do not know much about it.   Many enterprises have adopted SharePoint for internally setting up collaboration for Facebook-style communication, as a platform for their web sites and/or as an easy to use document management tool.    Sharepoint is available as a hosted (cloud computing) solution or can be installed on premises.

This article gives a brief overview of Microsoft SharePoint including some key benefits of using it.

As a start, Microsoft includes a free version of SharePoint if you buy Windows SBS 2008.    So your main cost is for implementation/ set-up.   As your requirements become complex, you fork out the additional money as needed for licensing feature-rich versions.   There are multi-million dollar companies in Australia whose only focus is to design SharePoint solutions for clients.    So what does Microsoft SharePoint offer that is so enticing?

SharePoint makes it easy for companies to “consolidate workflows”.   You can actually achieve multiple things using Microsoft SharePoint as your main platform.  The most common usages of SharePoint are:

• Collaboration (i.e. a corporate style Facebook)
• Document management (i.e. an easy way to track document changes and workflow.)
• Search/indexing,– (i.e. quick access to all your internal files)
• Applications management including legacy applications
• Website Portal and Content Management

A quote from a Microsoft website says:

“(SharePoint) improve(s) organizational effectiveness by providing comprehensive content management and enterprise search, accelerating shared business processes, and facilitating information-sharing across boundaries for better business insight.”

Some examples of “shared business processes” that could be automated with SharePoint include:

• Staff Expense Reimbursement and Approval
• Sick Leave and Holiday Request and Approval
• Room and Equipment Reservation
• Staff/Client Reports

In the latest version (Sharepoint 2010), you can reportedly search, view and edit content/people, lists, libraries and other Office content even when off-line.    This is great feature for folks with a mobile workforce as they can read/write and sync changes much easier.

SharePoint Benefits:

(source: Microsoft Technet)

SharePoint is a web-based application that helps take Microsoft Office beyond the desktop application, bringing it online to allow more effective sharing or collaboration within your company.

• Improve team productivity with easy-to-use collaborative tools. Connect people with the information and resources they need. Users can create team workspaces, coordinate calendars, organize documents, and receive important notifications and updates through communication features including announcements and alerts, as well as the new templates for creating blogs and wikis. While mobile, users can take advantage of convenient offline synchronization capabilities.
• Easily manage documents and help ensure integrity of content. With enhanced document management capabilities including the option to activate required document checkout before editing, the ability to view revisions to documents and restore to previous versions, and the control to set document- and item-level security, Windows SharePoint Services can help ensure the integrity of documents stored on team sites.
• Deploy solutions tailored to your business processes.While standard workspaces in Windows SharePoint Services are easy to implement, organizations seeking a more customized deployment can get started quickly with application templates for addressing specific business processes or sets of tasks.
• Build a collaboration environment quickly and easily.Easy to manage and easy to scale, Windows SharePoint Services enables IT departments to deploy a collaborative environment with minimal administrative time and effort, from simple, single-server configurations to more robust enterprise configurations. Because deployment settings can be flexibly changed, less pre-planning time is required and companies can get started even faster.
• Reduce the complexity of securing business information.Windows SharePoint Services provides IT with advanced administrative controls for increasing the security of information resources, while decreasing cost and complexity associated with site provisioning, site management, and support. Take advantage of better controls for site life-cycle management, site memberships and permissions, and storage limits.
• Provide sophisticated controls for securing company resources. IT departments can now set permissions as deep down as the document or item level, and site managers, teams, and other work groups can initiate self-service collaborative workspaces and tasks within these preset parameters. New features enable IT to set top-down policies for better content recovery and users, groups, and team workspace site administration.
• Take file sharing to a new level with robust storage capabilities. Windows SharePoint Services supplies workspaces with document storage and retrieval features, including check-in/check-out functionality, version history, custom metadata, and customizable views. New features in Windows SharePoint Services include enhanced recycle bin functionality for easier recovery of content and improved backup and restoration.

To find out more about Microsoft SharePoint solutions, contact your local technology partner.

Should Google Host your Corporate e-mail?

Should Google Host your Corporate e-mail?

(first published in Parramatta Business Access)

By Dexter Duncan

A recent company we spoke to is paying $120/year per user for e-mail hosting with Antivirus protection.   It is a simple POP account with no strategy for back-ups.   He has been paying these rates for years and we thought it sounded like a rip-off based on the service he was getting.    At minimum of 40 users, one would pay about $15,000 over three years.   Setting up an on premises Microsoft Small Business Server, which includes Exchange (mail) costs around $15,000 to $18,000, excluding on-going labour costs, so if control over your data is not important, a hosted mail solution works out better since it cost around the same and is less hassle.    With cloud computing now a rage, hosting e-mail is starting to look like a good option.

Businesses should consider Email hosting, especially those based on Microsoft Exchange, but should they consider Google?   Google has been trying to move into this space as part of their plan to dislodge Microsoft as the technology king at enterprises.    In order to get support, you need Google’s Premier edition which costs $50/year per user.      Based on cost savings alone, one would think that corporate and government houses around the planet would be exiting Microsoft in droves to sign-up with Google.   However, businesses around the world continue to make decisions to use Microsoft as their technology of choice for e-mail.   Why is this?

The short answer is that businesses, even small ones, do not always make a decision on up-front costs savings.   There are many features, benefits and security advantages of Microsoft, but Google is catching up fast.   First let’s explain E-mail Hosting versus an on-premise solution.  Then we can compare Google with Microsoft Exchange Hosting.

Email Hosting

In a previous article, I explained a recent trend called Cloud Computing.  Email hosting is part of this trend.    As seen from above example, the main advantage of a hosted e-mail solution is a lower upfront cost since hosting allows you to turn it into an operating cost.   No hardware is needed on premise and the service is “in the cloud”.     Email hosting has been around for years, although the pressure from Google forced Microsoft to rush in improving their hosting offer.

Some of the traditional problems associated with hosted mail solutions are:

-          Email Pop accounts – Back-up is stored on employee computers

-          No clear access to data back-ups.   What if employee deletes all the mail?

-          Domain Names –limited number of domain name’s supported

-          No shared mailboxes and calendars and or Public Folders.

-          Limited or no control over your own data

-          Regarding privacy, hosted solutions could release your e-mail to authorities without your consent (called “sealed subpoena”)

Google vs. Microsoft

Now let’s compare Google to Microsoft Exchange hosting.

Strengths of Google:

-          Focus on End-users

-          Free applications (office, video, calendar, etc.)

-          Price – Very Low cost offering

-          Limited support of Blackberry phones and Outlook and getting better

-          Great support on Google’s Android phone

-          Single sign-on across all Google Applications

-          99.9% uptime (e.g. maximum of 9 hours down-time per year)

-          With Postini, can obtain fairly good administration and back-up

Strengths of Microsoft

-          Focus on balanced support of end-users, administrators and company needs

-          Option for on-premise solution, hosted solution or combination of both

-          Great support of Blackberry phones at extra cost of a server

-          Smooth integration with Microsoft Office suite, Active Directory and Sharepoint which simplifies day-to-day operations

-          Brick level back-up allows you to easily regain employee files after they deleted them.

-          99.999% uptime (e.g. only a few minutes of downtime per year) with 100% guarantee possible

-          Mature eco-system of local support partners

Google has been rapidly improving their service so some of the above technical limitations could be minimized in a short time-frame.  However, if you are a current Exchange user, the migration of your mail contacts and existing mail to Hosted Exchange is easier.    Google also lacks a clear public product road-map to plan against when compared to Microsoft.

In short, Google or Microsoft hosted e-mail are good offerings which a small business should consider.     Medium to large companies will likely continue using on-site based Exchange solutions, however, the improvements available with hosting is worth a look, especially if you prefer making e-mail services part of your operational expenses.

To find out more about Hosted e-mail solutions, contact your local technology partner.

Technology Trends: Cloud Computing and More

Technology Trends: Cloud Computing and More

By Dexter Duncan

This article covers some technology trends that could impact your business.    Some of the major trends in IT for all businesses include Cloud Computing, Software as a Service (SaaS) and Virtualisation.   What do these terms mean and how could they improve your bottom line?

The CEO of Microsoft, Steve Balmer, reportedly told a reporter in New York in March 2009, “Anything that has been a server needs to be a service.”     His statement is a good summary of Microsoft’s strategy, and gives you an indication of where things are going.    In short, both Virtualisation and Software as a Service (SaaS) are component parts in the overall Cloud Computing trend.

Believe it or not, Cloud Computing was started from a non-traditional IT player.  Amazon.com, the famous web based bookseller, has changed the traditional computer hosting model by offering hosted computers (e.g. CPU/Memory) to use by the hour.   Additionally, the ease of setting up a new computer with Amazon takes literally seconds, therefore, changing the process of ordering and maintaining computers forever.    They have turned traditional computing on its’ head by turning the service into something similar to a utility (i.e. pay-per-use).  Amazon even helped coin the phrase “Cloud Computing” by naming their initial product Elastic Compute Cloud.    This service is sometimes called Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and is the foundation for turning your capital expense (CapEx) into an Operating Expense (OpEx), thereby impacting your bottom line dramatically.

Many other vendors have jumped into the fold and offered similar services, among them, Rackspace, Mosso, Nirvanix, IBM, etc.   Locally, the only major hosting company offering a similar service is Melbourne IT.

Think about on-line accounting packages, collaboration, messaging, document management, CRM systems, etc.    They are all available “in the cloud” instead of being hosted on your small business server.     At last count, there are over 150 vendors with announcements in the Cloud Computing infrastructure or software areas, most of them big players.

You should ask: how does Cloud Computing help my organization?  Can this new commoditized infrastructure give me a competitive advantage in delivering services or does it provide new flexibility?   Many of the advantages of Cloud Computing are a culmination of advantages derived from the multiple technologies that drive it – such as Grids, Clusters, Virtualization, Utility (e.g. pay-per-use), Service Oriented Architecture and Quality of Service needs. Some software is now offered in a Software as a Service (SaaS) model, where you pay based on number of users, and the software is delivered/accessed through the internet.    Both Software-as-a-Service and Virtualisation are therefore smaller waves in the larger Tsunami called Cloud Computing.

Salesforce.com helped pave the popularity of Software as a Service (SaaS) by offering a CRM solution where their clients pay for only what is used without having to host or maintain the software.   Even MYOB is reported to have a Software as a Service product in the pipeline.   Microsoft and a company called Zoho have similar CRM solutions “in the cloud”.

To help you understand further, Google is offers Software as a Service. You can get your e-mail, store documents, and create spreadsheets and a number of other things without installing any software on your local machine.   However, you cannot buy any infrastructure (i.e. hardware) from Google.

Traditional hosting often locks companies into long term monthly contracts, but have the benefit of built-in back-up and redundancies.   Cloud Computing goes further by allowing you an hourly rate, instead of monthly.   Cloud Computing is possible at a much lower cost due to the popularity of something called “Virtualisation”.   Many companies are moving to virtualization as a way of saving money.   Basically, you can use virtualization to create multiple computers images on one computer.  This means less hardware, less power, less space and often also means it is easier to back up your data.

The key elements of “pay-per-use” and “ease of setting up/down” are critical elements of Cloud Computing that are made possible by virtualization technologies.   Some of the benefits of Cloud Computing are also benefits of virtualization:

• reduced administration and support costs;
• reduced electricity cost and lower CO² emissions;
• better efficiency of CPU resources;
• easier to back-up and restore in event of failure.

Virtualization is one of the key drivers that make Cloud Computing elastic and most CIOs are already aware of the big names involved: EMC (VMWare) and Citrix Systems (XenServer).   The growth and popularity of Cloud Computing, especially driven by companies such as Amazon and other companies, is mainly in the USA.   Australia tends to have more SMBs and more expensive broadband and hosting costs, but there is an overall trend to follow America in the longer term.     Most, if not all of the technologies mentioned in this article are already in use by SMBs in Australia.

Cloud computing is a way of getting enterprise grade software and features at a much lower cost without having to maintain a computer system yourself.  One of the problems with Google is they often do not have the same level of functionality that Microsoft has, therefore not considered as enterprise grade software.   Both Microsoft and IBM have both recently made announcements specifically targeting SMB market with software options available in the cloud.   Microsoft’s plan is to offer a version of their Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) for SMBs, which includes Microsoft-hosted Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Live Meeting conferencing and Communications Online.  With over 150 Million businesses with fewer than 500 employees, no wonder the SMB market is being targeted.

So what should you do as a small-to-medium business?

Start looking at options in the hosting, software-as-service or virtualization area that can save you money.     A good place to start is in your most commonly used software like Microsoft.   Microsoft Exchange and Sharepoint hosting has become a normal option for many small businesses.  This reduces the number of servers needed on your premise and is a step in the direction of cloud computing.

To find out more about Cloud Computing, Software as a Service (SaaS) and virtualization, contact your local technology partner.

See our website for more:

www.empowerit.com.au/about-us/articles.php

About the author: Dexter Duncan provides consulting services to small business and heads marketing and business development at Empower IT Solutions. Dexter’s career spans Texas, Silicon Valley, Singapore and Sydney working at large and small companies. Dexter was born in Texas, wears his Texas boots and has Bachelor of Science degree. You can contact Dexter at dd@empowerit.com.au

References and readings –

Rackspace whitepaper comparing Cloud Computing and Managed Hosting.

http://www.rackspace.co.uk/rackspace-home/media-centre/resource-centre/white-papers/

Cloud Nerve Network Blog.   More information on Cloud Computing.

http://texdexter.wordpress.com

IBM and Microsoft targeting SMB Market.   Article in PC World in March 2010.

http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/article/340607/ibm_microsoft_court_smbs_cloud_appliances/)

ZDnet article by Mary Foley in February 2010.  Microsoft reported to be working on BPOS Lite (Business Productivity Online Suite) http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=5090