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The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 4,000 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 7 years to get that many views.
With the emergence of cloud computing, the ability to spin up new resources via an API and deploy a new virtual instance of machines quickly has become one of the more popular paradigms. Resource automation is an important part of any company’s business initiatives. Cloud hosted applications can be deployed, provisioned and created with new instances in an on-demand basis. These computing resources can be created and utilized in very short order, usually in a matter of minutes, and in some cases a matter of seconds.
High Availability, Configurable and Programmable features make Cloud Automation a key driver for adoption
The dynamic nature of cloud automation enables companies to provision and de-provision cloud resources on-the-fly as you meet needed threshold metrics based off of application environment variables, such as increased load traffic, additional users or environment changes on the system running queries, additional taxation of your application platform during data mining or migration processes, and during heavy usage and peak load traffic with data crunching scenarios imposed during run-time.
An important point to note is the rapid adoption and move towards multicore servers strengthing the impact of dynamic automatic virtualization. Overall, the fulcrum points of cloud automation are, increased efficiency, as it pertains to billing, and the ease of implementing highly available computing power required during peak loads of your business applications hosted across the clouds.
Benefits of not having to purchase and provision new servers
By embracing cloud technologies, companies are presented with opportunities to scale their offerings to their clients and serve their business initiatives, all while gaining the ability of dynamical scaling. Competitive advantages can be seen in hundreds of articles and white papers written by companies, who were either start-ups or building a new application, or migrating an existing data center application to the cloud, and were enabled to get to market quicker and expand or contract their platform hardware requirements in real time as the demand of their systems change.
Amazon and Windows Azure® Cloud Automation Features
There are numerous cloud providers to compare and contrast for Cloud Automation, so we have put together some key points about Amazon Web Services and Windows Azure. Amazon offers auto scaling which the company describes here : http://aws.amazon.com/autoscaling/. Windows Azure offers Autoscaling Application Blog information here: http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/net/how-to-guides/autoscaling/
Amazon CloudWatch and Auto Scaling ( the following content was copied from the links above )
Amazon CloudWatch provides monitoring for AWS cloud resources and the applications customers run on AWS. Developers and system administrators can use it to collect and track metrics, gain insight, and react immediately to keep their applications running smoothly. Amazon CloudWatch monitors AWS resources such as Amazon EC2 and Amazon RDS DB instances, and can also monitor custom metrics generated by a customer’s applications and services. With Amazon CloudWatch, you gain system-wide visibility into resource utilization, application performance, and operational health.
Amazon CloudWatch provides a reliable, scalable, and flexible monitoring solution that you can start using within minutes. You no longer need to set up, manage, or scale your own monitoring systems and infrastructure. Using Amazon CloudWatch, you can easily monitor as much or as little metric data as you need. Amazon CloudWatch lets you programmatically retrieve your monitoring data, view graphs, and set alarms to help you troubleshoot, spot trends, and take automated action based on the state of your cloud environment.
Amazon Auto Scaling
Auto Scaling allows you to scale your Amazon EC2 capacity up or down automatically according to conditions you define. With Auto Scaling, you can ensure that the number of Amazon EC2 instances you’re using increases seamlessly during demand spikes to maintain performance, and decreases automatically during demand lulls to minimize costs. Auto Scaling is particularly well suited for applications that experience hourly, daily, or weekly variability in usage. Auto Scaling is enabled by Amazon CloudWatch and available at no additional charge beyond Amazon CloudWatch fees.
Features of Amazon Auto Scaling
Windows Azure® Autoscaling Application Block
( the following content was copied from the links above )
The Autoscaling Application Block can automatically scale your Windows Azure application based on rules that you define specifically for your application. You can use these rules to help your Windows Azure application maintain its throughput in response to changes in its workload, while at the same time control the costs associated with hosting your application in Windows Azure.
Along with scaling by increasing or decreasing the number of role instances in your application, the block also enables you to use other scaling actions such as throttling certain functionality within your application or using custom-defined actions.
You can choose to host the block in a Windows Azure role or in an on-premises application.
A multitude of Cloud Platform offerings, brings compelling opportunity
It is clear that the cloud computing models of deployment, management and ongoing maintenance and support bring a very compelling argument to “why adopt the cloud”. The largest and most innovative companies today are openly embracing this paradigm of technology thought leadership and ROI is proving itself every day.
To learn more about Cloud Computing, Windows Azure®, Amazon Cloud, and other fantastic Cloud and SaaS platforms for business, contact our strategic cloud advisers by visiting http://www.nubifer.com
Cloud computing, at its core, offers a large set of resources that enable a concept known as elasticity. Elasticity is a part of the core feature set that comprise cloud computing. The concept behind elasticity is so integral to cloud computing that Amazon Web services decided to categorize the major offering in their cloud as Amazon EC2 (Elastic Cloud Compute).
The definition of elasticity can be described, or sometimes known as, dynamic scaling. The ability to dynamically scale and change resource requirements or consumption needs in direct response to runtime requirements makes this paradigm of cloud computing an integral part of the model. Most applications require a standard level of resources operating under normal, ready state environmental conditions, but also require additional computing resources during peak usage situations.
Before the advent of the cloud model, companies were required to pre-build, pre-purchase and configure sufficient capacities to not just operate properly under standard load requirements, but also handle extensive peak load situations while offering sufficient performance. When looking into the past and present of the self-hosted model, this means companies having to over provision and purchase additional hardware and software for their given application requirements and further requires engineers to try to accurately predict customer or end user usage in peak load scenarios.
When looking into managed hosting, it is possible to start with a small subset of computing resources and hardware and continue to grow the resource as the applications requirements grow. But in the model of managed hosting, provisioning for new hardware and software dedicated to the application’s needs can take weeks, or even larger companies, months.
With cloud computing having hundreds and thousands of virtualized computing resources which can be leveraged, provisioned, and released in conjunction to the application and peak load requirements on demand make the elastic cloud model the most powerful and convenient paradigm available to business. When businesses incorporate automation via dynamic scaling, also known as elasticity, the service-level offerings to end-users increase substantially.
Our next blog will focus on virtualization in cloud computing. Please check back often, or subscribe to our blog to stay up-to-date on the latest posts and perspectives and news about cloud computing. For more information about Nubifer Cloud Computing visit www.NUBIFER.com
A primary characteristic of cloud computing is that the platform leverages pooled or shared assets. These computing resources can be bought, controlled externally, and used for public or private usage. As we look further into the validity of these shared computing resources, one can easily see that they are an integral component to any public or private cloud platform.
Take, for example, a business website. We begin to see standard options commonly available in today’s market. Shared hosting, is one of the choices companies have had for quite some time now. The shared approach leads them to be free from managing their own data center, and in turn, leverage a third party. Most of the time, managed hosting services lease out to their customers a dedicated server which is not the shared with other users.
Based solely on this, cloud computing looks a lot like a shared hosting model of managed services. This is due to the fact that the cloud platform provider is the third-party that manages, operates and owns the physical computing hardware and software resources which are distributed and shared. At this juncture in the paradigm is where the similarities between shared or dedicated hosting and cloud computing end.
With cloud computing set aside for a moment, the move away from IT departments utilizing self hosted resources and using outsourced IT services has been evolving for years. This change has substantial economic impacts. Two of the main areas of change are in CAPEX and OPEX. This furthers the potential opportunity for reducing OPEX in conjunction with operating the hardware and software infrastructure. The change from CAPEX toward OPEX defines a lowering of the barrier for entry when starting a new project.
When examining self hosting, companies are required to allocate funding to be spent up front for licenses and hardware purchases. Operating under fixed costs, it is an out-of-pocket expense in the beginning of that project. Furthermore, when leveraging and outsourced offering (a.k.a. managed hosting), the upfront fees can typically be equal to a one-month start-up operational cost, and possibly a set up fee. When analyzed from a financial perspective, the annual cost is close to the same, or just a little bit lower, than the CAPEX expense for an equal project. Additionally, this can be offset by the reduction of required OPEX to manage and care for the infrastructure.
In stark comparison, when analyzing the cloud model, it is standard to see no up-front fees. With closer examination, a subscriber to cloud services can register, purchase, and be leveraging the services in much less time than it takes to read this blog.
The dramatic differential comparisons in financial expenditures you might see between these hosting models, and the cloud model, exist because the cost structures when utilizing cloud infrastructures are drastically more attractive than earlier models offered to IT. With further investigation, it’s clear the economies of scale are multi-faceted, and driven by relation to the economics of volume. The largest cloud platform providers are able to offer a better price point to the IT consumers because they are able to bulk purchase, and offer better goods and services; which in this paradigm, are capacity, power, data storage, and compute processing power.
And so continues our 2012 blog series dedicated to understanding the core layers of cloud computing. Our next blog will focus on elasticity in cloud computing. Please check back often, or subscribe to our blog to stay up-to-date on the latest posts and perspectives and news about cloud computing. For more information about Nubifer Cloud Computing visit www.NUBIFER.com
The term ‘Cloud Computing’ is now mainstream and well-known in most business sectors. To gain an understanding of how this came to be, and what all the interest and hype is about, you must recall the recent and growing beliefs among vendors analysts that have helped to popularize, and define cloud computing as as the pinnacle of computing service offered by third parties, offering cheap computing infrastructure and software services.
The resources available for use when needed is described as “on demand”, and can be scaled dynamically in direct response to the needs of the users of the software and platforms. Simply put, cloud computing completes a departure from the past of developing, maintaining, operating and managing IT infrastructure systems. Thus bringing businesses an easier way to focus on what they do best in their own vertical.
Economic Advantage
When you look at cloud computing from an economic perspective, the adoption of cloud computing has the potential to provide economic benefits for all sizes of businesses, providing for greater flexibility and agility in the day to day operations. As the cloud providers and industry leaders continue to refine, evolve and define cloud computing, our understanding of its costs, its values and ongoing benefits proliferate opportunity each day.
Some of the areas we’ll cover in our online blogs are the main principles of cloud computing. Additionally, we will also discuss the benefits from moving from traditional data center driven software applications and migrating to the cloud. Furthermore, we will discuss how evolving IT has brought us to what we now call cloud computing.
Media and News about the Cloud
Nowadays, online journals, blogs conferences, technical books and a myriad of other information sources continue to define and disseminate information about cloud computing. However, even large mainstream technology companies and technical information websites are still learning, and educating the masses on what ultimately brought about the “Cloud”.
In some respects, cloud computing’s entry to the World Wide Web is not new, but what is new is the access that companies and people have. Furthermore, it is clear that Cloud Computing may also win the award for the most overhyped category, including service oriented architectures also known as SOA, application service providers, business intelligence and other evolving computing terms, just to name a few.
Because our blog discusses the very large scale topic of cloud computing, we need to dive in and discuss the facets of the cloud in its greatest detail possible. It is our goal, at Nubifer to cut through all the hype, and share with you practical applications, frameworks, business thought leaders and approaches to leveraging the cloud for your own endeavors.
Analyze to Understand, Practice to Gain Experience
Many analysts, business users, subscribers and pundits ask themselves, “How did this new paradigm of cloud computing, and its driving popularity come to be?” It’s easy to step back and call cloud computing a marketing approach or another series of vendors trying to play up their offerings. But with all the hype put aside, there is a large body of legitimate information and technology advancements that are fueling the cloud, and all of the excitement behind it. All of the expectations and hype surrounding Cloud Computing are based on sound information and real-time opportunities aimed at improving business efficiencies profitability and succinctly.
Primarily software developers and SMB’s leveraged the cloud in the first 24 months that it was available for public use. Amazon attracted over1 million customers when it first opened its offering to public consumption. Amazon’s own website shows the bandwidth consumed by large companies leveraging the cloud has even surpassed their own online store, Amazon.com. Clearly, something is driving the rapid adoption of the cloud.
The Cloud has taken on similar marketing popularity as previous paradigm shifts and offerings evolving in the World Wide Web. For example, the move from traditional mainframes, to then client and server and then from client server to now the Internet, the model of cloud computing has, and will continue to have major implications for the future of business IT.
Principles that Help Define the Many Layers of Cloud Computing
It is our perspective at Nubifer, that these layers of cloud computing are the main key areas of interest, and are the components necessary for something to be defined as Cloud Computing.
Our upcoming blog series will cover
And so begins our 2012 blog series dedicated to understanding the core layers of cloud computing. Please check back often, or subscribe to our blog to stay up-to-date on the latest posts and perspectives and news about cloud computing. For more information about Nubifer Cloud Computing visit http://www.NUBIFER.com
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Your 5 Responsibilities
Important note: Not all clouds are created equally. Some can run your applications unchanged, with instant access; while others require little tweaking. Recognizing your needs and differentiating cloud technologies will help you determine the correct strategy for handling the particular business problem that needs attention.
2. Identify your application and process requirements. Once you have accurately defined your business needs, it is time to select the application best-suited to meet those needs. Be clear and precise about the nature of the application, the development process you want to adapt, and the roles and access permissions for each user.
Your teams no longer have to struggle through traditional linear and slow development processes. Instead, the cloud can give them access to the best practices that are fluid and agile. Many self-service solutions can even empower them to run copies of the same environment in parallel.
Simply put, the cloud may lead to breakthrough productivity when used properly. However, if used incorrectly it can also lead to enormous amounts of wasted resources. Having said this, take your time to do your research and choose wisely.
3. Determine your timetable. Cloud projects are not short sprints contrary to popular belief. They are better illustrated as long journeys over time. Please plan accordingly.
Nubifer recommends to define your early experiments in a quarterly basis because cloud technology is transformative. Learn from the first quarter, take note, and execute the necessary adjustments and then move on to the next. The objective is to generate a learning organization that increases control over time and progresses based on data and experience.
4. Establish success factors. Define what success is for you. Do you want to improve the agility of the development process? Maybe you want to increase the availability of your applications? Or perhaps you want to enhance remote collaboration? Define achievement, and have a tool to measure progress as well. Identifying metrics and establishing realistic goals will aid you achieve the solution that meets not only your needs, but also your budget and payback time frame.
5. Define data and application security. Companies overlook this critical responsibility more often than they realize. Make sure to do your due diligence and attentively determine whom you can trust with cloud application. After which, empower them. The following are questions that need unambiguous answers: What specific roles will team members take in the cloud model? Does everyone comprehend fully the nature of the application and data they are planning to bring to the cloud? Does everyone know how to protect your data? Do they understand your password policies? Dealing with these security factors early on enables you to create a solid foundation for cloud success while having your own peace of mind about this issue.
Your Provider’s 5 Responsibilities
There is also a need to distinguish if users will require training, or if they already equipped to handle a self-service Web interface. Answers to these questions can determine whether adoption will be rapid and smooth, or slow and bumpy.
2. Scale and speed. A well-constructed cloud solution provides the unique combination of scale and speed. It gives you access to the resources at a scale that you need with on-demand responsiveness. This combination will empower your team to run several instances in parallel, snapshot, suspend/resume, publish, collaborate, and accelerate the business cycle.
3. Reliability and availability. As articulated in the Service Level Agreements (SLAs), it is the responsibility of the cloud provider to make the system reliable and available. The provider should set clear and precise operational expectations, such as 99.9 percent availability, with you, the consumer.
4. Security. Ask for a comprehensive review of your cloud provider’s security technology and processes. In specific, ask about the following:
Application and data security.
In order to be able to implement your policies, the cloud solution must permit you to define groups, roles with granular role-based access control, proper password policies and data encryption–both iin transit and at rest.
5. Cost efficiencies. Without any commitments upfront, cloud solutions should enable your success to drive success. Unlike a managed service or a hosting solution, a cloud solution uses technology to automate the back-end systems, and therefore can operate large resource pools without the immense human costs. Having this luxury translates all these into real cost savings for you.
Despite business leaders recognizing the benefits of cloud computing technologies, more than a handful still have questions about cloud security and control. Indeed, that is understandable. However, by adopting a collaborative approach and aligning their responsibilities with those of the cloud provider, these leaders can find solutions that offer the best of both worlds. They get the visibility and control they want and need, while giving their teams access to the huge performance gains only the cloud can provide.
Contact Nubifer for a free, no-obligation Cloud Migration consultation.
A published study by CDW reported that a number of enterprises are actually unaware that they are already using cloud applications and have a limited cloud adoption strategy.
It must be noted though, that this does not mean these enterprises have no intention of moving to the cloud. It just means, that these enterprises have not yet approached cloud computing strategically, and have not implemented an organization wide adoption strategy.
Another interesting note, according to the CDW report, is the percentage of companies claiming to have an enterprise policy on the acclimation to cloud computing — only 38%. This comes as a surprise as the report also concludes that 84% of organizations have already installed, at the minimum, one cloud application.
In March 2011, more than 1,200 IT professionals were asked to answer surveys for the CDW 2011 Cloud Computing Tracking Poll, which drew some interesting conclusions. It was discovered that these enterprises are uneasy with using public clouds and would rather go through the private clouds.
Cloud Application Usage
However, it is necessary to examine these statistics again with more caution. As mentioned above, more than 84% of these organizations claim that they have, at the bare minimum, one cloud application, yet they still do not consider themselves as cloud users.
The reason behind this discrepancy has yet to be determined. In other words, organizations are still unclear as to if and how it can integrate with their current enterprise architecture.
This is emphasized by how only 42% of those surveyed being convinced that their operations and amenities have the ability to operate efficiently in the cloud. Statistics show that applications operated in the cloud most frequently are the following:
Developing a Cloud Strategy
Eight industries that were surveyed as part of the CDW Cloud Computing Tracking Poll back in March 2011 were—small businesses, medium businesses, large businesses, the Federal government, State and Local governments, healthcare, higher education and K-12 public schools. The poll discovered conclusions specific to each of the eight industries. It also included 150 individuals from each industry who acknowledged themselves as knowledgeable with the current uses and future plans of cloud application usage within their respective organization.
Although there are various hurdles to consider prior to adoption, primarily they can be divided into four segments:
1. Adoption Strategy
Despite having a number as high as 84% of organizations using at least one cloud-based application, only 25% of them have an organization wide adoption strategy and recognize themselves as cloud users. Just over a third has a formal plan for cloud adoption.
2. ROI Considerations
Approximately 75% were noted to have cost reductions upon migrating applications to a cloud platform.
3. Security
One of the, if not the primary obstacle, holding both current and potential users back is security. However, quite a number of users, including those who are currently using cloud applications, have yet to realize the full potential of security applications available.
4. Future spending
It is necessary for organizations to discover what future hardware and software acquisitions can be migrated into a cloud ecosystem.
Cloud Computing Now
A lot can happen in five years—this is especially true for the cloud industry. Currently, this study does not discuss in depth the difference between cloud computing and SaaS. However, it is likely that SaaS could be included in the study as it did define cloud computing as a “model for enabling convenient, on-demand access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources.”
With this in mind, along with the recent Forrester research on IT spending, it is highly likely that the data CDW has outlined will be significantly different five years from now.
According to Forrester, a record number of organizations will be investing in SaaS technologies, which broadly, is a subset of cloud computing. The data includes a finding that 25% of enterprises examined have a adopted a new cloud technology this year, with 14% using IaaS, 8% using PaaS, and 6% using business-process-as-a-service.
Does Your Organization Have a Cloud Migration Strategy?
In the end, the research was able to provide some thought provoking data. It was able to show that many companies are already leveraging the cloud without even knowing it.
Regardless of the potential ROI and efficiency gains offered by cloud computing, a significant number of companies have yet to seize the opportunity to leverage the scalability and efficiency of modern cloud applications.
Aside from this, according to the research, many companies find themselves without a coherent company wide strategy for dealing with cloud adoption. This is important to note because it is no secret a lack of planning can lead to disastrous results—with results like these needing a lot of financial and organizational efforts to fix.
If your organization is one of those lacking a coherent and comprehensive cloud adoption strategy, contact the Cloud accelerator experts at Nubifer to help guide the way. Nubifer partners with the leading vendors in order to provide unbiased cloud application architecture diagrams, white papers, security and compliance risk analysis and migration consulting services.
Cloud computing technologies have the ability to deliver a vast array of important benefits, including the option to leverage compute and storage resources on-demand. Public clouds are the most visible form of this. But, some organizations need important applications and workloads to be operated behind their firewall.
The size of modern data sets makes it difficult to send over the internet to a public cloud data center. Management most likely has security concerns about data being stored in a facility outside of IT’s control. Often times there is specific hardware, software, or storage requirements that cannot be adhered to in public cloud ecosystems. In response, many organizations are leveraging private clouds.
There are two basic approaches to deployment of a private cloud environment: Build your own or purchase an appliance.
Build Your Own Private Cloud
With organizations operating their own compute, storage and network resources, one option to look into is redeploying these existing instances into a private cloud. Due to the trend of server consolidation, many of these machines may already be operating a virtualization layer. Beginning from this point, deploying infrastructure (IBM, VMWare, etc.) is a logical nest step.
Erecting a private cloud takes more than piling software layers on top of existing resources. Unfortunately, many enterprises may not have the internal resources and expertise to take on this integration workload. This is where a consulting firm like Nubifer can play an integral role in solving these vexing problems.
The Open Source Alternative
With proprietary and trade-marked technology comes the issue of being stuck with a specific vendor. In response, open-source options have evolved. Rackspace CEO Lew Moorman said his company opted to leverage OpenStack to open-source the software behind the cloud computing stack “because we believe a widely adopted, open platform will drive standards.” In the past 6 months, more than 50 companies had joined the community.
Opposition to adopting open source does exist. For example, the OpenStack code base is still very immature, and features such as supporting ‘VMware hypervisors’ and live migration of instances are still in development.
Also, IT folks need to download the releases and install themwith the existing compute, storage and networking infrastructure. This brings up another potential deal breaker: do you burden your internal IT staff with these modifications? Nubifer is here to help…
Cloud Appliances
An evolving method to deploying a private cloud is by leveraging a cloud appliance. A cloud appliance is a rack of computing resources delivered tested and ready to go, with the software versioned and configured. When the appliance is plugged in to power and the network, you’re ready to go.
For example, Nubifer partner, IBM, sells a private cloud appliance. This appliance blends standard hardware components and x86-based servers. By deploying an integrated cloud appliance, IT is spared the time it would take to build its own. This frees up an organization to enterprise to focus on delivering business value rather than building IT componentry.
IBM’s private cloud offering is an integrated solution combining self-service, orchestration, and automation for heterogeneous resource pools.
Cloud appliances have drawbacks, though. For example, new equipment is bought as part of the appliance, versus redeploying existing components.Because of this, an organization would probably consider an appliance during a hardware refresh cycle. In addition, there are a limited amount of pre-configured models, leading to a one size does not fit all situation.
Organizations are attempting to focus more on primary business functions, which for most does not include constructing IT infrastructure. All while public clouds are leveraging standardization to lower costs and offer greater levels of agility.
However, many workload requirements inhibit moving data sets to public cloud environments, spawning the deployment of private clouds. However, when an enterprise considers building a private cloud, it’s back in the discussion of building out IT infrastructure.
Cloud appliances offer a potential solution. By pre-integrating all components, IT simply plugs in and turns the power on. And after all, when buying a new car, you would prefer to turn the key and go, versus huddling hour upon hour reading the user manual. Why shouldn’t your private cloud deliver a similar experience?
For more information on private cloud implementation contact a Nubifer representative.
Cloud computing seems like a simple idea, and, ease of operation, deployment and licensing are its most desirable qualities. But when it comes to issues of compliance, once you go beneath the surface you’ll discover more questions than you thought of originally.
Compliance covers a lot of issues, from government regulations, to industry regulations such as PCI DSS and HIPAA. Your organization probably has internal guidelines in place, but migrating to a public cloud, a cloud application suite or something similar will mean giving up the reins to the cloud vendor.
That’s a position many auditors—and C level officials—discover themselves in today. They want to discover how to adopt the cloud in a fashion that maintains their good standing with compliance. Here are a few tips for keeping an eye on compliance in the cloud.
Challenges to your Workload
When you survey cloud vendors, start by asking about sound practices and methods for identity and access management, data protection and incident response times. These are basic compliance requirements. Then, as you identify various compliance issues to your prospective cloud vendor’s controls, you’ll probably encounter a few cloud-specific challenges.
Multi-tenancy and de-provisioning also pose challenges. Public clouds use multi-tenancy to better provision server workloads and keep costs low. But multi-tenancy means you’re sharing server space with other organizations, so you should know what safeguards your cloud provider has in place to prevent any compromise. Depending on how critical your data is, you may also want to use encryption. HIPAA, for example, requires that all user data, both moving and at rest, be encrypted.
User de-provisioning is an issue that will become more challenging as password-authentication methods grow in complexity and volume. Federated identity management schemes will make it easier for users to log on to multiple clouds, and that will make de-provisioning much trickier.
Ever-Changing Standards
Like it or not, you’re an early adopter. Your decisions about what applications to move to the cloud and when to move them will benefit from an understanding of new and/or modified standards that are now evolving for cloud computing.
Today you can look for SAS 70 Type II and ISO 27001 certifications for general compliance with controls for financial and information security typically required by government and industry regulations, but these don’t guarantee that your company’s processes will comply.
Bringing visibility to users is a major goal of the Cloud Security Alliance, a three-year-old organization fast gaining popularity among users, auditors and service providers. A major goal of the CSA is development of standardized auditing frameworks to facilitate communication between users and cloud vendors.
Well underway, for example, is a governance, risk and compliance (GRC) standards suite, or stack, with four main elements: the Cloud Trust Protocol, Cloud Audit, Consensus Assessments Initiative and the Cloud Controls Matrix. The Cloud Controls Matrix includes a spreadsheet that maps basic requirements for major standards to their IT control areas, such as “Human Resources Employment Termination,” while the Consensus Assessments Initiative offers a detailed questionnaire that maps those control areas to specific questions that users and auditors can ask cloud vendors.
Efforts of the CSA and other alliances, plus those of industry groups and government agencies, are bound to produce a wealth of standards in the next several years. The CSA has formal alliances with ISO, ITU and NIST, so that its developments can be used by those groups as contributions to standards they’re working on. And a 2010 Forrester Research report counted 48 industry groups working on security-related standards in late 2010.
Importance of an SLA
Regardless of your company’s size or status, don’t assume your cloud vendor’s standard terms and conditions will fit your requirements. Start your due diligence by examining the vendor’s contract.
Your company’s size can give you leverage to negotiate, but a smaller business can find leverage, too, if it represents a new industry for a cloud vendor that wants to expand its market. In any case, don’t be afraid to negotiate.
Security
To best understand your potential risk, as well as your benefits, you should bring your security team into the conversation at the earliest possible opportunity, says Forrester.
Moving to the cloud may offer an opportunity to align security with corporate goals in a more permanent way by formalizing the risk-assessment function in a security committee. The committee can help assess risk and make budget proposals to fit your business strategy.
You should also pay attention to the security innovations coming from the numerous security services and vendor partnerships now growing up around the cloud.
For more information regarding compliance and security in the Cloud, contact a Nubifer representative today.
Cloud computing has been gaining momentum for the last few years, and has recently become required ingredient in every robust enterprise IT environment. Leading CMS vendor, and Nubifer partner, Kentico Software, took a step forward recently when they announced that their CMS Portals are now supported by the leading Cloud platforms. This means that you can now decide to deploy Kentico either on premise in your own IT landscape, using a public Cloud platform (such as Amazon or Windows Azure), or leveraging a hybrid model (with a database behind a firewall and a front end in the cloud).
Kentico Software clients include Microsoft, McDonald’s, Vodafone, O2, Orange, Brussels Airlines, Mazda, Ford, Subaru, Isuzu, Samsung, Gibson, ESPN, Guinness, DKNY, Abbott Labs, Medibank, Ireland.ie and others.
A recent Cloud Trends Report for 2011 discovered that the number of organizations that are immenently planning the move to the cloud almost doubled from 2009 (24%) to 2010 (44%). The study also discovered that issues relating to cloud security is the primary obstacle to migration. In the published report, more than a quarter of those surveyed cited security as their number one concern, with almost 60% including security in their top three.
CA Technologies recently published a study concluding that, despite industry concerns about cloud security, roughly half of those leveraging the cloud do not effectively review vendors for security issues before deployments. The study, ‘Security of Cloud Computing Users: A Study of Practitioners in the US & Europe’, discovered that IT personnel vary with their determination of who is in charge of securing sensitive data and how to go about doing it.
Constructing a Cloud Security Plan
Despite the ability of many organizations to analyze their own security protocols, there remain many valid cloud security fears. Shifting the burden of protecting important data to an outside vendor is nerve-racking, especially in a vertical that has to abide by regulations such as HIPAA, SOX or PCI DSS.
Risks involving cloud security still have many unknowns, so discovering an over-arching cloud strategy is a requirement. If your organisation does not have a game plan in place, are you ready to adapt and change as requirements evolove?
Your CFO or related exec is your organizations’ largest risk for financial application breach and data loss. The HR director needs to be effectively trained and managed so that ‘lost’ personnel files don’t come back to bite you. Most importantly, the largest risk of all is the CEO.
Hackers realize this, which is why Chief executives are consistently victims of “whaling attacks,” such as the well known ‘CEO subpoena phishing scam’.
A robust strategy to protect the most privileged users has the additional benefit of giving your organization an generalized cloud security road-map. Are mobile device risks a concern? Your most senior users desire remote and mobile access. What about data loss? Your senior users have more access to tarrying data points.
When your organization moves from analyzing itself to evaluating potential cloud application and platforms, do not neglect to look into how prevalent cloud services have already become in your IT infrastructure. Are you using Salesforce.com? Basecamp? Taleo? Google Apps?
Super brand cloud/SaaS/PaaS providers, Microsoft, Salesforce.com and Google all have tremendous reputations. So aligning projects leveraging these brands with security protocols should not be time consuming. You’ll want to analyze others to ensure they are legit providers that spend the time to properly secure their IT environments.
Lastly, as software licenses run out and as product upgrades come due, you’ll be in position to effectively begin analyzing the cloud vendors you will want to leverage for your mission-critical operations.
Following that advice will get you started. For more information on formulating a Cloud Security strategy visit Nubifer.com.
The Cloud Computing Tracking Poll was conducted as a review of the current and future use of the cloud by business organizations and government offices which was based on a survey of nearly 1,200 IT professionals.
About 84% of the organizations said that they have deployed at least one cloud application, while some others are not aware if they are a part of the users who are in the cloud.
“Many organizations are carefully – and selectively – moving into cloud computing, as well they should, because it represents a significant shift in how computing resources are provided and managed,” said David Cottingham, senior director, CDW. “With thoughtful planning, organizations can realize benefits that align directly with their organizational goals: consolidated IT infrastructure, reduced IT energy and capital costs, and ‘anywhere’ access to documents and applications.”
CDW mentioned that applications most frequently run in the cloud are service applications, such as email or docs, which have about half of the cloud users, file storage has 39 % of users, web and video conferencing has 36 and 32 % respectively, and 34 % of the respondents are the ones conducting online training programs.
Among those currently leveraging the cloud, almost 85 % said they cut application costs by moving to the cloud. On an average, users said, they save 21 % annually on those applications which are migrated to a cloud platform.
“The potential to cut costs while maintaining or even enhancing computing capabilities for end users presents a compelling case for investment in cloud computing,” Cottingham said. “The fact that even current cloud users anticipate spending just a third of their IT budget on cloud computing within five years suggests that before wide-scale implementation, IT managers are taking a hard look at their IT governance, architecture, security and other prerequisites for cloud computing, in order to ensure that their implementations are successful.”
This survey included 150 individuals from various industries who thought of themselves as familiar with their organization’s use of, or plans for cloud computing, a report on the CDW website said.
To learn more about how your organization can leverage cloud applications, visit Nubifer.com.
Apple’s iCloud offering is additional evidence of the unmitigated flow of data to the cloud. Despite the latest breaches of security at various organizations, including the issues that have affected many Sony customers, more and more of us are casting personal or business assets to the cloud.
Yet many of us remain uneducated about the required steps we should employ to keep our online data safe. Adhering to these five guidelines will go a long way towards aiding the average person keep online threats at a distance.
1. Don’t Take Security for Granted
There are two ways to your online data. One is through the cloud provider’s environment, and the second route is even more potent, and it’s much closer to home. The easiest and most available way for an intruder to get to your online records is through your login credentials. Of course you want the provider to be secure, but don’t let that make you listless about your personal log-in creds.
2. Use Strong, Memorable Passwords
The problem with having complicated passwords is that they are usually hard to remember. Thekey is to start with something notable and then merge it into a strong password — this entails mixing numbers, letters, lower and upper case, and symbols as well. Start with an address, car license numbers, telephone numbers, date of birth. Don’t use your own — use those you know; friends, kids, parents, partners, previous addresses; or old addresses you were at and cars you drove a decade ago. Choose something that can’t be linked to your online personality but always mix it up — half an area code, a name with half of a zip code, parts of an old address. Then add in a $, an !, or an @ sign to mix it up even more.
3. Guard your Inbox
You are going to recycle passwords, mostly for sites where you are not keeping important information like your credit card numbers, DOB, address or SSN. There’s one place where you should never neglect to use a unique password — your email inbox. Because this is the primary location where all your other logins come back to when you reset a password. This one location is the portal to all your other online personas.
Although it’s a bit of a hassle, you should opt for double-protecting your inbox with a two-factor authentication, which means you have to enter a second password in order to gain access. This is especially crucial if you have a habit of going to malicious websites, you don’t keep your anti-malware software up to date, or you have a habit of failing to identify phishing emails.
4. Don’t Leave the Password Recovery Backdoor Open
Quite often, users take many precautions to protect their personal information but make it very easy to reset their password through the password recovery service. If your user ID is simple to guess (it’s often your email) then do not use something easy to figure out for your password reset, such as your DOB, wife’s maiden name or some other easily accessible piece of personal information.
5. Have an Alternate to Fall Back on
Security is mostly about risk avoidance, and however careful your execution, you can’t eliminate all risk. So give yourself a fallback option. Don’t put all your money in one account, have a separate emergency email address, make sure you’ve got local coffee shop with WiFi you can resort to if your main Internet connection disappears. Knowing that you’ve got a second option if something bad happens helps you remain calm in an emergency, which gives you a better chance of surviving a crisis.
For more information regarding the security of your online data, visit Nubifer.com.
The “private cloud” Windows Azure appliances that Microsoft announced a year ago are here. There’s an August, 2011 ship date slated for the first of them.
Fujitsu, one of three OEMs that announced initial support for the Azure Appliance concept, is going to deliver its first Azure Appliance in August 2011, Fujitsu and Microsoft announced on June 7. Fujitsu’s offering is known as the Fujitsu Fujitsu Global Cloud Platform, FGCP/A5, and will be running in Fujitsu’s datacenter in Japan. Fujitsu has been running a trial of the service since April 21, 2011, with 20 companies, according to the press release.
Microsoft officials had no further updates on the whereabouts of appliances from Dell or Hewlett-Packard. Originally, Microsoft told customers to expect Azure Appliances to be in production and available for sale by the end of 2010.
Windows Azure Appliances, as initially described, were designed to be pre-configured containers with between hundreds and thousands of servers running the Windows Azure platform. These containers will be housed, at first, at Dell’s, HP’s and Fujitsu’s datacenters, with Microsoft providing the Azure infrastructure and services for these containers.
In the longer term, Microsoft officials said they expected some large enterprises, like eBay, to house the containers in their own data-centers on site — in other words, to run their own “customer-hosted clouds.” Over time, smaller service providers also will be authorized to make Azure Appliances available to their customers as well.
Fujitsu’s goal with the new Azure-based offering is to sign up 400 enterprise companies, plus 5,000 small/medium enterprise customers and ISVs, in the five-year period following launch, a recent Fujitsu press release noted.
For more information regarding the Azure Appliances, and how they can provide you with a turn-key private cloud solution, visit Nubifer.com/azure.
The role of the CIO will change if the IT department shifts from a service provider to a utility model, with usage-based metering. This will result in a shift in core tasks from developing applications and user interfaces and result in a new set of tasks involving the definition of service-level agreements, selecting cloud management tools and understanding customer service. The role of the CIO could shift to become more like an independent business manager running a public service.
Usage-Based
The CIO used to be involved in strategic technology planning for the organization and was likely making strategic decisions, such as when to upgrade Microsoft Office and Windows and which strategic vendor to use for hardware. But this changes when an organization implements a cloud architecture, as new tasks and skills come into play. Some of the traditional roles of the CIO remain, while the CIO is also required to play a new role as a cloud manager. This requires providing the tools and computing power to meet the changing needs of users in a quicker, more efficient manner. This may also include setting up a private cloud, in which users have access to consistent, repeatable services from a services portal available via standard Internet protocols.
Earlier this year, an InformationWeek article revealed that a survey of IT executives found that, when stating the top reasons for moving to cloud computing, cutting costs was nearly just as important to respondents as faster response to end users. The same survey found that although 58 percent of respondents were making the move to the cloud, most were taking a slow approach to do so.
The Future Lies in the Cloud
With that said, a Mashable post citing a different cloud computing survey predicts that by 2011, a vast majority of computing will take place in the cloud. Although this survey seemed to focus more on the consumer side of things, most IT executives see a future in the cloud. The CIO job will adapt and change as this transition occurs, and will function more as a logistical manager.
As cloud services move outside the firewall, understanding how the vendor is providing the services your company needs will become increasingly important. As will understanding that your company’s information is safe and secure wherever it is stored.
To learn more about the cloud, and how it can help your organization, contact Nubifer today.
Everything from phone services to marketing operations has a cloud based solution. Oftentimes, you are using SaaS without even realizing it. For example, your email provider is likely delivering service from the cloud, without on-premise hardware and software.
The following is a guide of different factors to consider when deciding to adopt a cloud solution for your business.
The growth of cloud computing is astonishing.
The worldwide cloud computing market is estimated at $8 billion, with the U.S. market accounting for $3.2 billion of that sum, or 40%. Gartner’s 2011 predictions place Cloud Computing at the top of their list of Top Strategic Technologies. Additionally, Gartner predicts that the SaaS market will reach $14 billion in 2013.
Says Gartner, “Cloud computing services exist along a spectrum from open public to closed private. The next three years will see the delivery of a range of cloud service approaches that fall between these two extremes. Vendors will offers packaged private cloud implementations that deliver the vendor’s public cloud service technologies (software and/or hardware) and methodologies (i.e., best practices to build and run the service) in a form that can be implemented inside the consumer’s enterprise. Many will also offer management services to remotely manage the cloud service implementation.”
A recent study conducted by AMI-Partners revealed: “Small and medium business (SMB) spending in the U.S. on software-as-service (SaaS) will increase exponentially over the next five years, eclipsing growth in investments in on-premise software by a significant margin. AMI forecasts growth in investments in on-premise software by a significant margin. AMI forecasts a 25% CAGR in hosted business application services spending through 2014. This will come against a modest 5% uptick for all other categories of on-premise software combined. However, this growth will not be uniformly spread across all hosted applications. Mature applications such as ERP, SCM, procurement, finance, and core HR will turn over more slowly than those that are less saturated and have lower switching costs.”
Cloud computing software solutions vs. desktop applications.
Small businesses choose cloud computing solutions over desktop applications because it is less expensive. You pay a small monthly amount rather than a one-time fee, like with traditional desktop software.
Another reason small businesses choose cloud computing solutions is that the SaaS application is often a simplified version of what you are currently using, which is installed on your machine. The developers of many cloud computing apps have created just the basics required to get the job done.
One of the market leaders in the cloud computing industry, Salesforce.com, has over 52,000 customers in 2009 while hosting provider Rackspace has over 1,000 SaaS apps in its new AppMatcher.com service.
Cloud computing solutions are available whenever you want, wherever you are.
The application often needs to be accessible from a web browser for many small business users operating virtual offices or operating remotely on different machines depending on location. Cloud computing is available wherever you have access to a computer and browser, and that is one of its biggest advantages.
If you aren’t connected and operating your laptop offline, many apps have either a mobile app or a widget that you can download to run a lighter version of the software. Some Google Apps, for example, offer a desktop version called Google Gears, which will sync your data when you’re back online. Google Apps has over two million businesses and 25 million users in its cloud computing marketplace.
Simple, focused cloud computing solutions can often get the job done.
If you don’t use all of the features of your desktop, a cloud computing application might offer a “forever free” plan, which will allow you to do the same work as a desktop application, but limited in some way. A billing solution might let you run an unlimited number of voices, for example, but only for two separate clients.
With that said, all apps that live in the cloud are not more basic than their desktop equivalents, but rather they offer a paired down basic package that can help you complete the task at hand when you don’t require the feature-risk version. Zoho, for example, offers a simple bookkeeping app that is free. You can also integrate it with other financial SaaS apps to do more, or purchase the more feature-rich SaaS version.
Pay attention to the security of your data.
It is important to remember that you are still responsible for making sure data is where it needs to be—onsite or in a cloud. Your cloud computing vendor isn’t responsible for your data, security or data privacy. They may promise certain aspects of security, but your are responsible if regulators come calling if you are a financial institution, for example. It is important to make sure you aren’t violating any compliance concerns and that your data is safe.
A May 2010 ‘USA Today’ article told the story of a small business owner whose store was robbed. Eight desktops were stolen. They purchased eight new computers and were back in business in no time thanks to cloud services, like Salesforce.com, Microsoft Office 365 and QuickBooks Online.
Choose a stable and reliable cloud computing vendor.
It is important to ask questions like, What type of Service Level Agreement (SLA) do they have? How long have they been in business? Can you talk to users directly? How many customers do they have? It is often possible to read testimonials and get good information, and if the testimonials are real, they will often link to the person who made the comment. You can also do a search on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.
Consider the uptime of your cloud computing applications.
Uptime refers to the time a hosted application’s performance record and most are in the range of 98-99.9%–which acknowledges that servers go down for maintenance or unexpected issues. Make sure to read SLAs carefully and talk about changing terms with the vendor if you have to.
Pay attention to customer support.
Be sure to check if there is an extra charge for support and maintenance or if it is included in your monthly subscription fee. While it is often included, it important to read the fine print to check and also to see if you have access to a customer support team via phone, email or social media.
Choose a flexible cloud computing vendor.
Your monthly frees are usually dependent on how many users you have and you can add and subtract users as needed. Your capital outlay to “purchase” cloud based apps is often lower than traditional on-premise or desktop apps. Cloud computing is one streamlined way to scale with your needs.
Evaluate your requirement for software upgrades.
Cloud computing apps are regularly improved and upgraded, and you benefit from each and every improvement without additional direct cost and without the effort and time of downloading and configuring upgrades. Enhancements often happen more quickly and in shorter development cycles, often based on customer requests.
Make sure your cloud solutions integrate well.
Cloud computing might just be for you if your need involves some type of integration, as many of the current cloud based apps offer an API (application programming interface) which other synergistic apps will leverage. You might find an accounting package, for example, that ties into a CRM package. You would have to pay someone to customize both apps for you if you wanted to do this with your current desktop application. A web-based app would save you time and money and might have already done it for you.
You can look into an offering like CastIron (recently acquired by IBM) if integration is your concern, as it “pre-configures a number of apps” so that you can connect to the solutions you are using already.
Cloud computing offers a distinct advantage if rapid deployment is integral to your project, as many cloud computing projects are up and running in hours—sometimes in minutes. Although you may not get every feature set configured to your need, you can start working right our of the gate oftentimes. If the provider you evaluate has an API connected to another application you need, it may offer advantages over a desktop application—which will require more money to customize later.
Cloud computing isn’t always the least exciting solution.
Cloud computing may be the perfect option if cash-flow is an issue. While on-premise software purchases often involve high upfront licensing costs, cloud computing apps often require no large up-front licensing fees requiring department or board approval. There are usually no annual maintenance fees either.
On a website pricing page, SaaS pricing is often clear, and if a cloud computing app vendor requires a demo or doesn’t reveal its pricing, it usually means that there is a more complicated solution that demands some installation process or customization that will cost more upfront.
Pay attention to how quickly your software needs to change.
User are often forced to choose between a.) Upgrading at a high cost and experiencing delays as the new features are evaluated and plans for adoption are formulated, and hire or enlist local IT talent to develop, test, debug, deploy and train personnel on the new application, or b.) Continue using the older version of the software and avoid advantages of an upgraded version when an application packages requires an upgrade.
You are left waiting for software changes to be made by the software company in both cases, but with the cloud computing model, you will see those upgrades sooner than with a desktop application. The vendor applies upgrades at the data center and the upgrades are made available to users immediately via online connection and there are only minor delays—they also come at no cost to the user.
Remember: your monthly fee covers the upgrades so make sure to compare this when you need to consider this. If you upgrade each year, than the monthly outlay may be lower from a total cost perspective over time, while with a desktop application you are waiting until the next—often annual—release.
Many goals can be accomplished without all of the bells and whistles.
Because they are often focused on a particular area or business niche, cloud based applications can be less robust. While it can be argued that you have to operate your business—from a software perspective—using the Pareto Principle in which 80% of the effects come from 20% of the solution, this isn’t entirely accurate because most desktop users routinely admit that they don’t use all of the features of a desktop application. This partly explains how many cloud based applications get developed—they look at core problems rather than a large feature set that most users won’t even try.
If the cloud computing application lacks some of the features you need, you can add features via customization or premium levels of vendor service. Each application provider is different, but most offer extensive interface capability, usually via Web services that integrate both internal and hosted systems.
A common myth is that cloud computing software doesn’t play well with legacy applications/data sources, but there are two primary methods of integrating cloud computing apps: batch synchronization (which initially involved exporting/importing your data into a cloud based applications, after which your data can be incrementally synchronized on a scheduled basis) and real-time integration via Web services (which is like a neural middle layer where your application talks to the cloud computing company).
It is important to note that you have to evaluate the implications and limitations of cloud computing software for your needs. Some gaps remain for complex end-to-end processes that require complicated workflows or business processes.
Engage your technical team.
It is important to keep lead technical people in the loop for security and integration issues for a number of reasons. If you are a business owner and are unsure about what information you are sharing, you could be sending information out that onsite applications need or you could even be putting corporate information at risk.
Applications and services are now easily accessible to end-users, who can acquire SaaS capabilities without input from their IT or data management teams, which is a major challenge with cloud computing. Other related issues like data replication, outages and the complications of outsourced data storage can complicate cloud integrations. And if your tech team isn’t aware that your are running certain cloud based apps, you could create challenge in multiple functional areas.
Good cloud computing companies have built their web apps on a Web-services based architecture because it is less proprietary and easier for these apps to share data with one another. These standards make it easier for companies to integrate services, but they can inadvertently create security problems by making a hacker’s job easy if the proper security isn’t in place.
Internal training is still required.
Most SaaS vendors provide online video tutorials in addition to robust user communities and forums where you can get your questions answered. This makes cloud applications easier to use with less training involved. Direct access to these teams means less of a burden on your own internal technical teams.
Conclusion
Cloud computing is drastically shaping the current small business market and if you are trying to grow your business and are limited by cash flow, cloud computing is an attractive option. The addition of Smartphones and other mobile technologies—aka mobile computing—makes for a dwindling audience for on-premise applications. The previously listed 16 things to consider before choosing cloud computing solutions will help give you a new outlook on how to get work done and solve problems.
For more information on how cloud computing can help your small business contact a Nubifer representative today.
Both solutions are based on a common platform and architecture that many IBM clients use today as on-premise software. Customers are not locked into a single consumption model and in fact can choose from an array of flexible delivery options including on-premise software, SaaS, appliances and managed help desk services. Now, organizations large and small can take advantage of enterprise-class software and easily migrate from one model to another based on their business needs.
For small and medium-sized businesses without large IT departments, this service provides a quick, and practical path towards improving IT performance. For larger organizations, this service can complement existing IT management infrastructure, helping organizations better manage their costs and standardize IT operations.
Tivoli Live – Service Manager offers a comprehensive set of capabilities for implementing problem, incident, change, release and asset management processes, leveraging a common data model and a robust change management database. Customers have the flexibility to purchase any of these capabilities through our unique role based user pricing.
Tivoli Live – Monitoring Services delivers Tivoli Monitoring and Tivoli Composite Application Management software over the Web, which allow customers to manage the health and performance of their data center’s resources – including operating systems, virtualized servers, middleware and applications.
Despite those figures, overall, small businesses are largely unfamiliar with cloud computing. Josh Waldo, director of SMB Marketing at Microsoft reveals, “Roughly 20 percent of SMBs claim to know what cloud technology is.”
The numbers just don’t match up, but Waldo points out that just because people may not identify with the term cloud computing doesn’t mean they aren’t using the technology. Take Gmail or Hotmail, for example: They are both prime examples of the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) form of cloud computing and are extremely popular—without their many users even realizing they are using cloud technology when checking their inbox.
“People might not understand what cloud is. But they are using it. They’re using it in their private life. In some cases they’re using it in their work life. But they might not necessarily identify it with the term cloud,” says Waldo.
He believes that the lack of familiarity SMB’s have with cloud computing can be an opportunity for Microsoft, Zoho and other providers of small business technology. Says Waldo, “For Microsoft, what that means is that this gives us a big opportunity to really educate SMB’s about cloud technologies and how they can benefit their business. Our goal is really going to be to help SMB’s evolve how they think about technology.”
According to Waldo, the benefits for small businesses that embrace the cloud are potentially huge: “First, SMBs can get enterprise-class technology at a fraction of the price, where you’re not purchasing on-premises technology that’s going to cost you an enormous amount upfront. Second, it really allows companies, whether you’re a development shop and you’re building software, or you’re an end customer—like a financial or insurance firm—to focus on your business rather than your IT requirements.”
By outsourcing data-center needs, for example, small business IT can eliminate building out capacity to handle potential strikes in data or transaction processing, because they buy the processing power they need when they need it. This leads to another key benefit of cloud computing: elasticity and the expectation of mobility. Waldo defines elasticity as the capability to scale up or down rapidly, based on need. While that includes processing power, it also means being able to add new users from a seasonal workforce—without having to deal with per-seat licensing associated with traditional desktop software.
When it comes to the expectation of mobility, Waldo says that today’s notebook, smartphone and tablet-totting employees want to make their work more flexible by making it mobile. SMB’s can let employees access the information and applications they need while on the go by exposing core applications as SaaS via the cloud.
Embracing Cloud Computing
Waldo recommends that SMB’s that have decided to embrace the cloud by adding cloud computing to their small business technology portfolio seek expert advice. “We really think it’s important that SMB’s choose carefully. And if they’re uncertain, they should work with a third party or a consultant or a value added reseller or some type of agent who understands the various elements of cloud technology and [who] can advise clients,” he says.
According to Chad Collins, CEO of Nubifer.com, a provider of turn-key cloud automation solutions, the first thing a small business should consider is which problem it is trying to solve: “The most important thing is that the cloud really isn’t just about infrastructure. It’s about solving problems. It should be about scalability, elasticity and economies of scale.” Collins adds, “What our enterprise clients are asking for is the ability to create virtual environments, run applications without code changes or rewrites and, most importantly, to be able to collaborate and share using single sign-on interface.
Another important question is whether the cloud provider offers granular user access and user-based permissions based on roles. Can you measure value on a per user basis? Can you auto-suspend resources by setting parameters on usage to avoid overuse of the cloud? The latter is important because although cloud services can result in immense cost savings, their pay-as-you-go nature can yield a large tab if used inefficiently.
Collins recommends paying special attention to the level of responsive support offered by a cloud provider. “I think for SMBs it’s really important. Having to log a Web form and then wait 24 to 48 hours for support can be really frustrating,” he says, adding that the provider should guarantee that a support team would respond in mere hours. Agreeing with Collins, Waldo points out that a service-level agreement with a high-availability and 24 hour support is key.
To discover how the power of cloud computing can benefit your SMB, please visit Nubifer.com.
When looking at a BizTalk Server Team blog, it appears as if Microsoft is thinking about BizTalk vNext transforming into something akin to Windows Azure and SQL Azure—at least in concept—a “BizTalk Azure.”
An excerpt from the blog says, “Our plans to deliver a true Integration service—a multi-tenant, highly scalable cloud service built on AppFabric and running on Windows Azure—will be an important and game changing step for BizTalk Server, giving customers a way to consume integration easily without having to deploy extensive infrastructure and systems integration.”
The latest news from Microsoft reveals that there will be an on-premise version of BizTalk vNext as well—and the final version is slated to arrive in 2012. A Microsoft spokesperson said, “We will deliver new cloud-based integration capabilities both on Windows Azure (as outlined in the blog) as well as continuing to deliver the same capability on-premises. This leverages our AppFabric strategy of providing a consistent underlying architecture foundation across both services and server. This will be available to customers in the 2 year cadence that is consistent with previous major releases of BizTalk Server and other Microsoft enterprise server products.”
In September 2010, Microsoft released the latest on-premises software version of BizTalk (BizTalk Server 2010), which is a minor release of Microsoft’s integration server that supports Visual Studio 2010, SQL Server 2008 R2, Windows Server AppFabric and Windows Server 2008 R2.
There are currently over 10,000 BizTalk Server customers—paying a hefty price for the product—and thus Microsoft officials are being careful in their positioning of BizTalk Azure. Microsoft will ensure that existing customers are able to move to the Azure version “only at their own pace and on their own terms.” Microsoft plans on providing side-by-side support for BizTalk Server 2010 and BizTalk Azure to make sure apps don’t break and will also offer “enhances integration between BizTalk and AppFabric (both Windows Server AppFabric and Windows Azure AppFabrics).
Microsoft recently rolled out the First CTP (Community Technology Preview) of the Patterns and Practices Composite Application Guidance for using BizTalk Server 2010, Windows Server AppFabric and Windows Azure AppFabric together as part of an overall composite application solution. Additionally, Microsoft previewed a number of future enhancements to Windows Azure AppFabric.
For more information regarding BizTalk on Azure, contact a Nubifer representative today.
The DoD Fiscal Year (FY) 2010 IT cost of the Business Mission—excluding payroll costs for uniformed and civilian personnel—is $5.2 billion, in addition to 1/3 of the costs of the communications and computing infrastructure tacking on an additional $5.4 billion to total costs.
The average IT budgets of the largest US corporate organizations are exceeded by the scope of DoD Business Applications by a multiple of three. As a result, DoD Business Operations need to think about its future IT directions as operating a secure and private cloud that is managed organically by the DoD Business Mission in order to squeeze the cost benefits out of the cloud.
There are many forms of cloud computing, ranging from Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), but when it comes to the Department of Defense, offerings that can offer support of over 2,000 applications need apply. Business Operations cannot be linked to “public” clouds that are proprietary.
The DoD, for example, can’t rely on the largest cloud service like the Amazon Elastic Cloud, which offers computing capacity completely managed by the customer and is thus a “public cloud.” Because compute processing is purchased on demand, Amazon is an IaaS service. Once your applications are placed in the proprietary Amazon cloud, however, it is difficult to transfer the workload into a different environment.
Google, however, offers a PaaS service as a public cloud (read: accessible to all) via the Google App Engine. Google allows developers to build, host and run web applications on Google’s mature infrastructure with its own operating system; Google only provides a few Google-managed applications.
Salesforce.com’s enterprise level computing currently operates at $1.4 billion revenue rate per year, with 2 million subscribers signed up for SaaS application services running in a proprietary PaaS environment. Because Salesforce offers only proprietary solutions and can’t be considered by DoD, although Salesforce’s recent partnership with VMware might change all that.
Other cloud providers offer IaaS services, but they all leave it to customers to manage their own applications; they qualify for DoD applications provided that would meet open source and security criteria.
Open Platform and Open Source
Microsoft’s Windows Azure platform offers a PaaS environment for developers to create cloud applications and offers services running in Microsoft’s data centers on a proprietary .Net environment. These preferentially .Net applications are integrated into a Microsoft controlled software environment but can be defined as a “closed” platform.
Currently, DoD Business Mission applications are running largely in a Microsoft .Net environment. What remains to be seen is if DoD will pursue cloud migration into a multi-vendor “open platform” and “open source” programming environment or continue sticking to a restrictive Microsoft .Net?
The largest share of the DoD IT budget goes towards the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), which has advocated the adoption of the open source SourceForge library in April 2009 for unclassified programs. DISA’s Forge.mil program enables collaborative software development and cross-program sharing of software, system components ad services in support of network-centric operations and warfare. Forge.mil is modeled from concepts proven in open-source software development and represents a collection of screened software components and is used by thousands of developers. Forge.mil takes advantage of a large library of tested software projects and its components are continuously evaluated by thousands of contributors (including some from firms like IBM, Oracle and HP although not from Microsoft, which controls its own library of codes).
OSS is defined as software for which the human-readable source code is available for use, study, reuse, modification, enhancement and redistribution by the users of that software by a DoD Memorandum of October 16, 2009 by the Acting DoD Chief Information Officer on “Clarifying Guidance Regarding Open Source Software (OSS).” OSS meets the definition of “commercial computer software” and will thus be given preference in building systems. DoD has began the process of adoption of open course computer code with the announcement of Forge.mil.
Implications
Due to the emigration of business applications, a reorientation of systems development technologies in favor of running on “private clouds”—while taking advantage of “open source” techniques—is necessary in order to save the most. The technologies currently offered for the construction of “private” clouds will help to achieve the complete separation of the platforms on which applications run, from the applications themselves. The simplification that can be achieved through the sharing of “open” source code from the Forge.mil library makes delivering cloud solutions cheaper, quicker and more readily available.
For more information regarding the DoD and open source cloud platforms, please visit nubifer.com today.
Developed with cross-government and industry support over the past 18 months, the voluntary program would put cloud services through a standardized security accreditation and certification process. Any authorization could subsequently be leveraged by other agencies. Federal CIO Vivek Kundra said in a statement, “By simplifying how agencies procure cloud computing solutions, we are paving the way for more cost-effective and energy-efficient service delivery for the public, while reducing the federal government’s data center footprint.”
The adoption of cloud computing has been promoted by the Obama Administration as a way to help save the government money, and Kundra and other top officials have championed the technology and instituting policies like data center consolidation requirements—which could bring about a shift to the cloud. Federal IT managers, however, have consistently raised security concerns as the biggest barrier to adoption.
The government’s security concerns arise partly because cloud computing is a relatively new paradigm that has to be adapted to the security requirements of regulations like the Federal Information Management Security Act (FISMA, which governs federal cyber-security for most government agencies). By mapping out the baseline required security controls for cloud systems, FedRAMP creates a consistent set of security outlines for cloud computing.
FedRAMP will seek to eliminate a duplicative, costly process to certify and accredit applications. Each agency used to take apps and services through their own accreditation process, but in the shared-infrastructure environment of the cloud, this process is redundant.
The FedRAMP draft is comprised of three major components: a set of cloud computing security baseline requirements; a process to continuously monitor cloud security; and a description of proposed operational approaches to authorizing and assessing cloud-based systems.
FedRAMP will be used for both private and public cloud services, and possibly for non-cloud computing information technologies and products. For example, two agencies have informed IBM of their intent to sponsor certification of their new Federal Community Cloud services.
Commercial vendors will not be able to directly request FedRAMP authorization, but rather have to rely on the sponsorship of a federal agency that plans to use their cloud services. Guidance on the CIO Council’s website suggests, FedRAMP “may not have the resources to accommodate all requests initially,” and that GSA will focus on systems with potentially larger user bases or cross-government interest, suggesting that the government predicts a large amount of interest.
FedRAMP will remain an inter-agency effort under federal CIO Kundra’s authority and will be managed by GSA. The new Joint Authorization Board, which now includes reps from GSA, the Department of Defense, will authorize the systems that go through the process with the sponsoring agency.
Although FedRAMP provides a base accreditation, most agencies have security requirements that go beyond FISMA and thus may have to do more work on top of the FedRAMP certification to make sure the cloud services they are looking to deploy meet individual agency requirements.
For more information regarding the Federal adoption of cloud technologies, visit Nubifer.com.
Although everyone associated with the industry is likely familiar with the term cloud computing, what remains ambiguous are its offerings, both now and in the future. The benefits of cloud computing can essentially be classified into as many as five categories, the majority of which are discussed in the paragraphs to follow.
The Internet allows for you to market your brand internationally, whether you are a SMB or a multi-national organization. It also enables organizations to reach out and offer their products/services to an international audience, and the ability to combine data/applications with the ability to use remote computing resources thus creating exciting new opportunities.
Take the latest and greatest mobile app, for example. This new application has the ability to travel anywhere the user is, whether they are surfing on their TV, phone, or laptop. A tremendous amount of information has to be transferred online and shared with several services in order for that application to operate seamlessly, while guaranteeing privacy and security.
Cloud computing offers more than the storing of data off-site and allowing access through their browser. Cloud computing also has the ability to adapt and scale its services to fit each users’ needs through intelligent algorithms. The basic usage of the cloud results in a more personalized experience, as the platform acquires greater familiarity about the intents of the user. In turn, this allows users to effectively use smart services, acquire better information so they can take action wherever they happen to be.
We as human beings are social entities. We naturally and instinctively interact with those around us. In the past, communication was done by telegraph, letters, telephone and faxes, but it is now largely through the Internet. The Internet has created a plethora of communication opportunities, such as instant messaging, Internet telephony and social media. Cloud computing expands on this concept and offers the opportunity to make it possible to incorporate interaction and collaboration capabilities into areas that were seemingly beyond our reach previously.
Due to this progression of the common-place, our expectations become higher and higher over time. At some point in our past it was unthinkable for a cellular phone to be able to surf the net, and provide driving directions. But today, not only do we expect our mobile phone to give us the Internet at our fingertips, but also we expect it to guide us where we need to go.
Because of these expanding expectations, the cloud must be intelligent as well. There will be corresponding pressure for devices to catch up to cloud computing as it becomes increasingly intelligent and more intuitive.
Hand-held devices are great examples of this. Smart phones have a multitude of functions in additions to communications, such as GPS, voice recorder, camera, fame device, calculator and the list goes on. If a phone is paired with an operating system like Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7, it becomes a smart device capable of using cloud services to their full capabilities.
Because the cloud is built upon the capabilities of servers, it is appropriate to imagine large data centers when thinking of cloud computing. This means that server technology must advance as the cloud does—but there is a catch. Cloud services will become more powerful as a server software does. In this way, server and cloud improvements mutually drive each other, and the user greatly benefits from this, whether the user is an individual, organization or company.
Once we tap into cloud computing fully, web sites will no longer crash because of surges in traffic—the cloud will accommodate to computing activity peaks accordingly.
For more information about the form and functionality of the cloud, visit Nubifer.com.
With more than 20,000 members and more than 200,000 processes currently modeled and documented, IBM’s new Blueworks Live offering unites process documentation and social community elements. IBM’s new cloud service provides a new ability to structure and automate ad-hoc processes quickly, effectively and efficiently.
IBM’s latest business process management cloud offering, Blueworks Live offers the most effective way for businesses to acquire and use IT with IBM’s reputation for security, reliability and integration. IDC predicts that public cloud services will grow at over five times the rate of traditional IT products. In 2009 worldwide revenue from public IT cloud services exceeded $16 billion, and that figure is expected to reach $55.5 million by 2014 (representing a compound annual growth rate of 27.4%).
With IBM’s new business process management cloud offering, employees will be able to quickly improve simple processes like new marketing promotional campaigns, employee on-boarding, and sales quote approvals, gaining increased visibility, understanding, insight and control. With Blueworks Live, business users interact with their departmental colleagues and collaborate through a private and secure company work stream, choosing to easily follow any updates to roles, processes, etc. These are updated in a stream view similar to that of the popular social networks enabling managers and team members to instantly see the status of work in progress via built-in dashboards and reports.
Blueworks Live offers intuitive discovery and documentation capabilities for even the most complex processes. For example, one client, PRC, is using Blueworks Live’s capabilities as part of its integrated call center operations.
IBM WebSphere Decision Server
Automating decisions to streamline process design and execution and subsequently make better, quicker decisions is a key to improving business processes. IBM is adding a new technology to its market leadership in Business Rules Management Systems – WebSphere Decision Server. Among this decision management software’s capabilities is the ability to deliver more dynamic marketing promotions and pricing, better fraud detection and prevention and more refined risk assessments.
Joining SPSS Decision Management, this product builds on IBM’s growing decision management portfolio, allowing business users to set up industry-specific data for fast, efficient modeling, providing predictive analytics to business users.
IBM enables organizations to detect and react to defined data patterns as they occur and provide the appropriate decision response based on various factors such as business policies and best practices or regulatory requirements by combining Business Rules Management technologies with WebSphere Decision Server.
IBM WebSphere Lombardi Edition
An easy-to-use business process management (BPM) offering for building and managing process applications with less time, money and risk in a unified platform, WebSphere Lombardi Edition’s graphical design makes it easy for process owners and business users to implement and improve their business processes.
Clients can gain the visibility to understand process bottlenecks and inefficiencies so they can be streamlined, with built-in real-time monitoring and analytics. WebSphere Lombardi Edition is tailored to business processes requiring a high degree of usage and collaboration, and its shared model architecture ensures collaboration between business and IT departments.
If you have moved from server based email systems and are using Gmail, it is important to make sure you are making the most out of Gmail.
Use Priority Inbox to Save Time
Do you know how much time you spend checking your email? Likely a lot! Gmail’s Priority Inbox helps you prioritize your email by identifying the messages that require your immediate attention, saving you a lot of time. Using a variety of signals to predict which messages are important, Gmail discovers which people you email most and which messages you open and reply to. Once you turn on and manage Priority Inbox in your mail Settings, the service will continue to get better and better the more you use it.
Seamless Chat, Video and Calling
Gmail knows that you work with people in multiple ways, and makes it easy to choose the most effective means of communication, whether it may be email, chat, text messaging, video chats or phone calls—which are all available from your inbox. Voice and video chat, for example, lets you have an actual conversation with someone or meet face-to-face in high resolution. Google also added the ability to call phones in Gmail, making it possible to make phone calls from your computer to any landline or mobile phone number.
Become More Attached to Your Email
Attachments in other email systems take up space, can be difficult to find and often make you open up another program to take action—slowing you down. Gmail alleviates this cumbersome burden by letting you quickly view attachments without needing to open or download them on client-side software. Google’s Docs Viewer lets you view .doc, .pdf, .ppt and other attachments in a new browser tab by clicking the “view” link at the bottom of a Gmail message. And what if you want to edit the file? Simply click “edit online” to open it in Google Docs or download it to your desktop.
Gmail also features the Google Docs preview tab, which lets you read the entire contents of a Google document, spreadsheets or presentation right in Gmail. (Your administrator needs to have enables Labs for your to access them.)
Put Email in Context
With contextual gadgets, you can update a sales lead without even leaving your inbox. Contextual gadgets display information from social networks, business services, web applications and other systems—while allowing you to interact with that data right within Gmail. With just a few clicks via the Google Apps Marketplace, your administrator or any third-party developer can build and distribute Gmail contextual gadgets to the domain with a few easy clicks.
Productivity Keys
Google built in keyboard shortcuts to help you sort through your email quickly and efficiently. After enabling this feature in settings, you can archive (e), reply (r), compose (c), delete (#) or complete other actions with one key or a short combo. While in Gmail, you can print it out and post it at your desk as well.
Experiment in Google Labs
Gmail Labs gives you, the user, features to customize Gmail in whatever way you want. Some Labs accommodate references (like adding a “Send & Archive” button), while others help you communicate (like the Google Voice player and SMS in Chat) and help you stay organized (like the Google Docs and Calendar gadgets).
For more information regarding Google Apps, and its efficiencies, contact a Nubifer representative today.
Zoho Corp., a leader in Software as a Service business applications, announced Wednesday January 19th that they are adding an accounting application to their portfolio: Zoho Books. Over the past few years, Zoho has had over 300,000 apps created on their platform, and as Zoho evolves as a leading work-flow engine, they are introducing application Integration with online payment gateways like Paypal, Google Checkout and Authorize.net.
Zoho offers SaaS applications and provides a wide, integrated portfolio of rich online applications for businesses. With 26 different applications spanning Collaboration, Business and Productivity, Zoho helps businesses and organizations get work done. Zoho’s applications are delivered via the Internet, requiring nothing but a browser, enabling organizations to focus on their business while leveraging Zoho in order to maintain the servers and keep data safe.
Detailing Zoho Books
Zoho Books is an online accounting application that gives organizations complete visibility of their finances and aides management of cash moving in and out of the business. Zoho defines its’ Books application as “accounting for rest of us”. A primary selling point is that users need not be an accountant to mange their business and make informed financial decisions.
Those interested can view Zoho’s Youtube video describing Zoho Books here.
Features of Zoho Books:
Money In
Get a clear picture of how much cash-flow your business is generating. Manage your customers and invoice them either online or by direct mail. Automate recurring invoices, payment reminders and payment thank-you notes.
Money Out
Manage and control expenses and cash flow. Record invoices and commitments for purchase, services and even for reimbursable expenses, such as client travel. Keep track of the outstanding balances with vendors.
Banking and Credit Cards
Record and monitor your bank and credit card transactions such as deposits, fund transfers, checks, expenses, credits and refunds.
Go Global
Transact globally with multi-currency capabilities. Record foreign currency invoices and expenses.
Collaborate
Share accounting duties with anyone in your organization, but set different permissions for those with access employees.
Stay on Top of Your Business
Glance through the dashboard to know what’s going well with your business and what’s not. Make smart and quick business decisions with the help of our insightful, available-anywhere reports.
Zoho Books integrates seamlessly with other Zoho applications. For example, users can import their contacts from Zoho CRM, view data from various modules in Zoho Sheet, etc. In particular, Zoho Invoice customers will be able to seamlessly migrate from Zoho Invoice to Zoho Books – and go beyond invoicing to full-blown accounting without having to start over.
Zoho Books is also immediately available for Google Apps users through the Google Apps Marketplace.
Zoho Books is priced at $24/month (or $240/year with a 2 month discount). This includes access for 2 users. If you’d like to provide access for additional users, it’ll be an additional $5/user/month.
For more information on Zoho Books or any other Zoho application contact a Nubifer representative today.
Article reposted form HPC in the Cloud Online Magazine. Article originally posted on Dec. 14th 2010:
2010 has been an incredible year for cloud computing in general and an even more exciting year for HPC and cloud. This is due, in part, to an increasing number of offerings designed to make high-performance computing applications perform better, flow with more steamlined management and make better use of the elastic resources that have become available.
As the end of the year approaches, it seemed like a great time to look back on some companies that shaped the HPC cloud ecosystem as a whole as well as to give a holiday “heads up” on some companies to keep an eye on in the coming year. There’s no way to put together a list that encompasses everything but here are a few honorable mentions.
Amazon EC2
This year Amazon took the world by storm with the announcement of services focused on HPC, HPC Clusters. Cluster Compute and Cluster GPU instances have been specifically engineered to provide high-performance network capability – allowing applications to get the low-latency network performance required for tightly coupled, node-to-node communication. Finally, it seems that affordable, flexible and elastic services have arrived for the HPC community.
Adaptive Computing
Computing, and in particular cloud computing, is really all about the software and how to make the cloud work for you and not against you as a user. Adaptive has been around since mid 1990’s (formerly known as Cluster Resources) and provides intelligent automation software for data center, cloud, and high-performance computing environments. The company’s software solutions, powered by Moab, deliver policy-based governance that allows customers to consolidate and virtualize resources, allocate and manage applications, optimize service levels, and reduce operational costs. These services have allowed many users to get the most out of the cloud infrastructure.
Nubifer
Here’s a name that might be new to some of you. Nubifer’s mission revolves around making (and keeping) the cloud simple with a series of cloud program and services that enable users to easily configure and create cloud based services. One aspect of the company is its personalized and tailored architecture from any web-enable device–this means that part of their appeal is their technology-agnostic approach.
Clustercorp
Clustercorp has an impressive sound byte – “Over 10,000 datacenters are power by Rocks Worldwide.”
Rocks+ is a complete cluster and cloud operating environment. Rocks+ can be used with Amazon’s EC2 to power large scale enterprise data and HPC workload. Rock’s creates single computing resource from multiple clustered systems. Remove the complexity drives down the costs.
Whamcloud
First what a great name, not easy to forget. Whamcloud is basically picking up Lustre where Sun left off. The company provides vendor-neutral solutions for Lustre 1.6 and beyond. With years of experience developing Lustre features for high performance computing solutions – 50% of the TOP 500 fastest computers are powered by Lustre.
Cloud.com
Yet another great name that’s certainly not easy to forget….
Cloud.com’s approach to cloud computing is to help organizations quickly and easily build, manage, and deploy private and public clouds. Extending beyond individual virtual machine images running on commodity hardware, the Cloud.com CloudStack provides an integrated software solution for delivering virtual data centers as a service.
The CloudStack’s secure cloud architecture, administrators can ensure that memory, CPU, network, and storage allocated to the individual virtual datacenter deployments are isolated from one end user to another. Certainly addressing one of cloud computing’s big challenges – security.
Microsoft
With many of the traditional big vendors reducing or even eliminating their spend in HPC markets Microsoft seems to be increasing their spend. Pushing the Azure and Azure services Microsoft’s cloud services vision starts to become a reality as the company continues to tout its proclaimed devotion to bringing high performance computing to the masses.
Platform Computing
It is all about software management services here and many from traditional HPC have at least heard the name. After all, it’s the software makes the hardware work. The good news is that the world is recognizing that software and software management has been a missing link in the evolution of cloud computing. Platform has a rich set of cluster workload management software and have clearly targeted the HPC community and will likely continuting building its long legacy in HPC this year with more advancements for HPC cloud users.
Mellanox
With a broad array of system interconnects, Mellanox provide the fabric or glue that connects all the pieces together – Ethernet to Infinband, interconnect CPUs and Storage, adapter cards to switches. Mellanox has what can only be described as a “veritable smorgasbord” of interconnect products for high performance computing.
Rightscale
A pay-as-you go cloud computing model which is very attractive to small- and mid-size businesses as well as HPC users for the simple reason that it reduces capital expenditures and provides economies of scale not possible with the traditional datacenter model. Rightscale also provides a simple way to leverage Amazon’s EC2 platform, which is the top IaaS choice for many scientific and large-scale enterprise applications.
BlueArc
In 2009 the amount of digital content created and stored grew by 62 percent over the previous year, which had already been higher than any year on record. By the end of this decade the amount of data to be stored and created will be 44 times bigger than it was in 2009. This explosive growth in digital content, particularly unstructured content, has changed the rules of the game for businesses of all types. HPC is a huge creator and consumer of data, and it is more and more unstructured. Not only do you get both structured and unstructured but you also get high availability, manageability and high performance.
Virident Systems
Is it conceivable that the HPC user community is ready for solid-state storage solutions? Answer is yes. Solid state has been around for 30 or so years in the HPC/supercomputing community from vendors such as Cray Research first half of 1980. Now SSD, based on NAND Flash memory, is back with a vengeance in several form factors as HDD replacements or more impressively as storage utilizing PCIe form factor. tachIOn from Virident provides a Tier 0 solution for high performance computing workloads, the goal is to eliminate the all to common IO bottleneck.
With technological innovations in security, storage, network and connectivity making cloud infrastructure increasingly cost effective, cloud computing is becoming increasingly prevalent in enterprise IT environments. Cloud service brokers are quickly adopting these new technologies and are looking to deliver reliable, scalable, cost efficient options to their customers.
The concept of ‘shared compute resources’ has existed for awhile, with the industry full of ideas to eliminate the need for the desktop and computer sprawls in data centers, with these concepts centering on hosted applications. Hosted applications can be accessed from any place using an Internet connected device, but recently a new paradigm of similar hosted computing has come forth. This new concept is to create compute power in the cloud and make it available to anyone—while simultaneously hiding all of the complexity of managing it.
Cloud computing can not only be used as a vehicle of quicker service deployment and delivery for enterprises, but can aid governments as well. This is because the combined scale, sprawl and complexity of the government sector IT requires a simpler solution. Governments commonly reach out to widely dispersed geographies, people and sectors, which have different agendas, Internet connectivity, require different scales, applications of different complexity and other variables.
Because of this, governments have been maintaining IT environments of their own, creating an inability to reach people and deploy applications being limited by their capacity to create more data-centers.
A cloud platform may be an effective option for the public sector because it can provide a scalable way of building and facilitating computing infrastructures for their computing needs. The government’s ability to reach people on a broader scale can be made possible by the cloud’s increased availability, also resulting in simplified maintenance requirements for their own in-house IT environments.
Compute Resource Distribution
In order to guarantee that compute resources are readily available for various departments, governments usually require large geo-located deployments of IT infrastructure. In the past, this was completed with the help of distributing and allocating budgets for IT within siloed departmental budgets, making it difficult for governments to track and control the expenditures various departments make in their disparate IT ecosystems.
Lower investments in IT equals lower automation of processes and subsequently lower quality of service, but this can be changed by IT infrastructure provisioning using a pubic cloud platform. Cloud infrastructures can help entities ensure that that IT needs of its department are dispersed in the form of computing capacity as opposed to budgets.
Provisioning
A users scale of usage dictates deeper discounts on the platform pricing, but not in provisioning of compute efficiencies. Governments are essentially buying IT solutions in bulk—which is why cloud computing is able to provide a solution to the provisioning challenge of governments’ IT needs. Governments should readily consider centralized cloud deployments with quick provisioning of computing power.
In anticipation and expectation of providing better access to information and services to the people, most governments entities are aiming to distribute compute resources to as many sectors of the country as possible. The time to deliver a service is currently dependent on factors like bottlenecks, availability and processes, but cloud computing can shift the focus of governments to extending the reach of IT applications and information.
Standards in Regulation
It is necessary for governments to ensure that complex regulatory frameworks are implemented and followed in their IT environments. A large portion of these regulatory needs are followed through by IT departments today, and regulatory controls are executed through IT policies. Most often, security and governance are dependent on individual or standardized procedural controls—and the cloud can facilitate the shift from procedural controls to standards.
Managing Information Availability
Governments’ focus is on dispersing meaningful information to their citizens and their various departments, and cloud computing can help facilitate this focus. Governments will be able to scale to unforeseen new heights with a renewed focus on information disbursement.
Essentially, shifting the priority from managing infrastructure to managing information can drive social change, and the cloud is positioned to make this a reality for governments organizations.
For more information regarding the Cloud Computing’s role in the public sector, visit Nubifer.com.
Article reposted form HPC in the Cloud Online Magazine. Article originally posted on Nov. 29 2010:
For decision makers looking to maximize their impact on the business, cloud computing offers a myriad of benefits. At a time when cloud computing is still being defined, companies are actively researching how to take advantage of these new technology innovations for business automation, infrastructure reduction, and strategic utility based software solutions.
When leveraging “the cloud”, organizations can have on-demand access to a pool of computing resources that can instantly scale as demands change. This means IT — or even business users — can start new projects with minimal effort or interaction and only pay for the amount of IT resources they end up using.
The most basic division in cloud computing is between private and public clouds. Private clouds operate either within an organization’s DMZ or as managed compute resources operated for the client’s sole use by a third-party platform provider. Public clouds let multiple users segment resources from a collection of data-centers in order to satisfy their business needs. Resources readily available from the Cloud include:
● Software-as-a-Service (SaaS): Provides users with business applications run off-site by an application provider. Security patches, upgrades and performance enhancements are the application provider’s responsibility.
● Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS): Platform providers offer a development environment with tools to aide programmers in creating new or updated applications, without having to own the software or servers.
● Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS): Offers processing power, storage and bandwidth as utility services, similar to an electric utility model. The advantage is greater flexibility, scalability and interoperability with an organization’s legacy systems.
Many Platforms and Services to Choose From:
Cloud computing is still in its infancy, with a host of platform and application providers serving up a plethora of Internet-based services ranging from scalable on-demand applications to data storage services to spam filtering. In this current IT environment, organizations’ technology ecosystem have to operate cloud-based services individually, but cloud integration specialists and ISVs (integrated software vendors) are becoming more prevalent and readily available to build on top of the emerging and powerful platforms.
Mashing together services provided by the worlds largest and best funded companies like Microsoft, Google, Salesforce.com, Rackspace, Oracle, IBM, HP and many others, gives way to an opportunity for companies to take hold and innovate, and build a competitive, cost saving cloud of their own on the backs of these software giant’s evolving view of the cloud.
Cloud computing comes into focus only when you think about what IT always needs: a way to increase capacity or add capabilities on the fly without investing in new infrastructure, training new personnel, licensing and maintenance of new software. Cloud computing involves all subscription-centric or pay-for-what-you-use service that extends your IT environments existing capabilities.
Before deciding whether an application is destined for the cloud, analyze you current cost of ownership. Examine more than just the original licenses and cost of ownership; factor in ongoing expenses for maintenance, power, personnel and facilities. To start, many organizations build an internal private cloud for application development and testing, and decide from their if it is cost-effective to scale fully into a public cloud environment.
“Bridging the Whitespace” between Cloud Applications
One company, Nubifer.com (which in Latin, translates to ‘bringing the clouds’) approaches simplifying the move to the Cloud for its enterprise clients by leveraging a proprietary set of Cloud tools named Nubifer Cloud:Portal, Cloud:Connector and Cloud:Link. Nubifer’s approach with Cloud:Portal enables the rapid development of “enterprise cloud mash-ups”, providing rich dash-boards for authentication, single sign-on and identity management. This increased functionality offers simple administration of accounts spanning multiple SaaS systems, and the ability to augment and quickly integrate popular cloud applications. Cloud Connector seamlessly integrates data management, data sync services, and enables highly available data interchange between platforms and applications. And Cloud:Link provides rich dashboards for analytic and monitoring metrics improving system governance and audit trails of various SLAs (Service Level Agreements).
As a Cloud computing accelerator, Nubifer focuses on aiding enterprise companies in the adoption of emerging SaaS and PaaS platforms. Our recommended approach to an initial Cloud migration is to institute a “pilot program” tailored around your platform(s) of choice to in order to fully iron-out any integration issues that may arise prior to a complete roll-out.
Nubifer’s set of Cloud Tools can be hosted on Windows Azure, Amazon EC2 or Google AppEngine. The scalability offered by these Cloud platforms promote an increased level of interoperability, availability, and a significantly lower financial barrier for entry not historically seen with current on-prem application platforms.
Cloud computing’s many flavors of services and offerings can be daunting at first review, but if you take a close look at the top providers offerings, you will see an ever increasing road map for on-boarding your existing or new applications to “the cloud”. Taking the first step is easy, and companies like Nubifer that provide the platform services, and the partner networks to aid your goals, are resourced and very eager to support your efforts.
The beta version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 was launched earlier this fall, generating buzz among industry analysts due to its major enhancements. Among the new features are a next-generation Microsoft Outlook client, Microsoft Office contextual CRM Ribbon for Office navigation and user experience, user personalization and role-tailored design.
Specifically architected for both cloud and on-prem deployments, the new software is Microsoft’s most robust attempt at gaining traction in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) market space.
Following are some improved features of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011:
1. Advanced User Personalization Capabilities
Users can now configure their workplaces to meet their unique roles and informational needs. Personalizing a workspace means that users can set the default pane and tab that display when they open Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online. Now you can customize what links appear in the workplace view, how many records appear in lists, how numbers and dates display and language capabilities. Users can also combine these personalized features with new dashboards creating personalized dashboards for default viewing.
2. Integration with SharePoint and Microsoft Dynamics NAV
This latest version of Microsoft Dynamics illustrates Microsoft’s desire to offer out-of-the-box integration with two of its key products, SharePoint and Microsoft Dynamics NAV. Microsoft Dynamics CRM integrates with SharePoint Server’s document management through contextual document repositories and will also integrate with Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 R2 (set to arrive in the next few months). In conjunction with each other, these two products will increase productivity by enhancing interaction between front and back office applications.
3. Business Intelligence Functionality
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011’s new real-time dashboards offer advanced business intelligence functionality that is more intuitive. Users are able to speedily configure multiple dashboards to monitor business performance, for example, and can set up dashboards for individual or shared use. The dashboards can include in-line charts with drill-down intelligence to visually navigate data, identify trends and uncover new insights.
4. Seamless Integration with Microsoft Office
With Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 comes a new Office 2010 contextual ribbon for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online and Microsoft Dynamics CRM browser clients, which delivers a consistent, familiar navigation and user experience. This allows Dynamics CRM users to take advantage of native Outlook functionality such as previews and conditional formatting. With the new release, users can highlight and flag CRM records (like with an Outlook email) and the reading pane grants readers an instant view of a record without having to open up a new screen.
5. Interactive Process Dialogs
Dialogs aid users in the collection and processing of information using step-by-step scripts. Companies can use dialogs to increase performance and versatility by incorporating advanced work-flow logic, which calls automated tasks using the responses a customer or user makes during a dialog script.
6. Improved Configuration Capabilities
Key features include custom activities and communications, data auditing, field-level security, tailored form experience and improved knowledge base.
7. Cloud Development and Deployment
With Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, developers can take advantage of Windows Azure to develop and deploy custom code for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online using tools like Visual Studio. Developers can incorporate Microsoft Silverlight, Windows Communication Foundation and .NET Language Integrated Query (LINQ) into their cloud solutions using Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0.
8. Role-Based Forms and Views
Forms and views in Microsoft Dynamics CRM are based on user roles; this role-tailored design ensures that users have speedy access to the relevant information they need, while simultaneously preventing users from accessing data that they aren’t authorized to view.
9. Microsoft Dynamics Marketplace
An online solutions catalog which helps developers accelerate and extend their Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online implementations. The Microsoft Dynamics Marketplace is fully integrated with Microsoft Dynamics CRM enabling customers to access the Marketplace from within Microsoft Dynamics CRM in order to search applications and connect with Microsoft Registered Partners.
10. Customizing and Sharing
With Dynamics CRM, Microsoft introduces what the vendor calls “solutions”: ways to save customizations and share them with others. Users can create a solution or import an app created by a developer outside the organization; a managed solution can only be edited by a specific user while an un-managed solution can be edited by any user with an appropriate role. A solution is able to have version numbering, relationships with entities and other components and security features based on user roles.
Microsoft Dynamics 2011 offers a powerful suite of Business Intelligence capabilities which will aid any organization streamline is contact management processes.
For more information about CRM consulting services offered by Nubifer, visit www.nubifer.com
Although the software giant has yet to reveal a specific timeline for the integration, Microsoft announced plans in October to add Office Web Apps to its hosted Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS). This integration will give Microsoft a much-needed edge, and keep BPOS ahead of rivals like Google Apps. Google Apps offers office productivity applications as part of their broader cloud-based collaboration and communication suites.
Described by Microsoft officials as “online companions” to Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote, Office Web Apps offers hosted versions of Microsoft’s Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote that feature the use-ability found in the on-premise Microsoft Office suite. The software company says they are aiming to let users “access, view and edit” documents via a the Internet.
With about 20 million users, Office We Apps is currently available free for individual consumers as part of the Windows Live online services. Office Web apps is also a component to the free Live@EDU collaboration and communication suite for educational institutions. Office Web Apps can also be accessed by organizations that own the on-premise versions of Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010.
It has been widely reported that the absence of Office Web Apps from BPOS has not hindered the adoption of that collaboration and communication suite for businesses (which features Exchange Online, Office SharePoint Online and Microsoft Office Live Meeting).
According to industry analysts, BPOS licenses have more than tripled since the start of 2010, but it is unknown how many BPOS seats have been sold overall. Microsoft stated recently that there are 40 million paid seats of Microsoft Online Services—of which BPOS is a part of. In October, Microsoft announced a number of big customer wins for BPOS, such as DuPont (58,000 end users), Volvo (18,000 end users), Australia’s Spotless Group, Godiva and Sunoco.
Industry analysts have observed that the familiarity of Microsoft’s software interfaces and tools (because it is present in many enterprises), as well as the links between Microsoft’s cloud and on-premise software, will be an advantage for the company.
Gartner explains, “I’d expect to see a growing opportunity for companies looking to move to a more cost-effective collaboration environment to consider Microsoft in the mix because of its experience in delivering enterprise collaboration.”
Analysts have also seen that Microsoft’s sales-teams are being aggressive about spreading the word about BPOS and promoting it as part of the renewing of enterprise contracts. A Gartner analyst has been quoted as saying, “Microsoft has tapped a deep root of demand for cloud services with BPOS.”
Additionally, Microsoft announced new customers, including several California State University schools, the University of Montana, Northern Kentucky University, the College of DuPage, Washington University in St. Louis and Aston University in the U.K., for Live@EDU. Live@EDU now features more than 10,000 academic institutions with over 11 million end users. Live@EDU includes Office Web Apps, Windows Live Sky Drive and Outlook Live.
For more information regarding BPOS contract a Nubifer representative today. Nubifer is a Microsoft Certified Partner.
Zoho Corp., a leader in Software as a Service business applications, announced Wednesday December 8th that their ‘Zoho CRM’ offering now allows users to leverage QuickBooks software and Telephony Integration. Over the past few years, Zoho has had over 300,000 apps created on this platform, and as Zoho CRM evolves as a leading work-flow engine, they are introducing two key modules to Zoho CRM – QuickBooks & Telephony integration.
Zoho offers SaaS applications and provides a wide, integrated portfolio of rich online applications for businesses. With more than 20 different applications spanning Collaboration, Business and Productivity, Zoho helps businesses and organizations get work done. Zoho’s applications are delivered via the Internet, requiring nothing but a browser, enabling organizations to focus on their business while leveraging Zoho in order to maintain the servers and keep data safe.
Zoho CRM for QuickBooks
Zoho’s most recent CRM integration will help users sync information between their Zoho CRM and QuickBooks applications. This update now enables a business’ Customer and Inventory data to be synced between these two leading-edge officing and productivity systems. As QuickBooks doesn’t offer a per user model, this Add-on can be licensed for the entire organization for $25/Month.
Key features of the QuickBooks update for Zoho CRM include:
Zoho PhoneBridge – Telephony Integration
As the name suggests, PhoneBridge connects your Telephone system(PBX) with Zoho CRM and allows you to interact with your CRM account during all your inbound and outbound calls. This add-on connects data from Zoho CRM with the telephony systems. For incoming and outgoing calls from your telephone, Zoho CRM can pull up the information of the caller, if available in the CRM system, and display that information in the app allowing you to log information for the contact.
Where is it used? Consider the case of a Call Center. Cold Calling, telemarketing calls, telesales calls,customer care, customer support - these are the typical operations of call centers. They can leverage the data from the CRM System during a call.
This feature is available immediately. This module is proceed at $6/user/month after a 15 day trial.
Contact Nubifer representative to discover how Zoho CRM can work for your business.
A recent survey conducted by Gartner reports that companies spend approximately 10 percent of their budget for external IT services on cloud computing research, migrations and implementations.
Gartner conducted the survey from April to July 2010, surveying CIOs across 40 countries, discovering that nearly 40% of respondents allocated IT budget to cloud computing. Almost 45% of the CIOs and other senior IT decision makers questioned about general IT spending trends provided answers pertaining to cloud computing and its increased adoption rates.
Among the questions asked were how organizations’ budgets for cloud computing were distributed. Detailing the results, a Research Director at Gartner noted that, “One-third of the spending on cloud computing is a continuation from the previous budget year, a further third is incremental spending that is new to the budget, and 14 percent is spending that was diverted from a different budget category in the previous year.”
Organizations polled in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and North America spent between 40 and 50 percent of their cloud budget on cloud services from external providers. The survey also discovered that almost half of respondents with a cloud computing budget planned to ramp up the use of cloud services from external platform providers.
According to Gartner analysts, the survey results demonstrated a “shift towards the ‘utility’ approach for non-core services, and increased investment in core functionality, often closely aligned with competitive differentiation.”
Additionally, more than 40% of respondents anticipated an increase in spending in private cloud implementations designed for internal or restricted use of the enterprise, compared to a third of those polled seeking to implement public clouds.
Gartner called the investment trends for cloud computing as “healthy” as a whole. Said Gartner, “This is yet another trend that indicates a shift in spending from traditional IT assets such as the data-center assets and a move towards assets that are accessed in the cloud. It is bad news for technology providers and IT service firms that are not investing and gearing up to deliver these new services seeing an increased demand by buyers.”
Discussing the findings, Chad Collins, CEO of Nubifer Cloud Computing said, “This survey supports what we are seeing at ground zero when working with our enterprise clients. Company executives are asking themselves why they should continue with business as usual, doling out up-front cap/ex investments while supporting all the risks associated with large scale IT implementations.” Collins elaborates, “Cloud platforms allow these organizations to eliminate risks and upfront investments while gaining greater interoperability and scalability features.”
Collins went on to add, “Forward thinking organizations realize that by using external providers and cloud computing models, they can gain more flexibility in their cost and management of thier application base, while also getting the elasticity and scalability needed for growth.”
To learn more about adopting a cloud platform and how your organization can realize the benefits of cloud computing technologies, contact a Nubifer representative today.
The Zoho Family welcomed a new addition on November 10: Zoho Support. The web-based help desk software helps organizations to easily manage and respond to perpetually-increasing customer support inquiries arriving via a variety of channels, from phone and email to website and self-service portals. In our current era of real-time communication and instant gratification, customers have come to expect punctual answers to their questions.
Zoho Support provides this with its innovative web interface, which allows technicians to prioritize customer tickets, locate the correct response, and promptly respond to the customer.
Often times, the fastest way for customers to get support is via self-service, and Zoho Support boasts features that members of the support organization to publish solutions to known issues in a customer portal. This enables customers to solve their problem before contacting your staff. Customers can also submit and track tickets in the customer portal.
Zoho Support is comprised of the following modules, or tabs:
Zoho Support is already integrated with Zoho CRM, so you can smoothly transition from selling to supporting. Zoho Chat is also integrated, so your support agents can easily find what they are looking for not only in the solutions database but from their colleagues over IM while they’re on the phone with a customer.
Zoho Support is available immediately via paid plans starting at $12 per month per agent for Enterprises and large support organizations. Unlimited-user plans for smaller companies that process up to 200 tickets per day are also available and Zoho Support additionally offers a free plan.
For more information regarding Zoho’s suite of officing applications visit www.nubifer.com.
Due to its reputation as a game-changing technology set, Cloud Computing is a hot topic when discussing emerging technology trends. Cloud Computing is defined by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) “as a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.”
IT optimization has largely been the reason for the early adoption of Cloud Computing in “Global 2000” enterprises, with the early drivers being cost savings and faster infrastructure provisioning. A December 2009 Forrester Report indicated that over 70% of IT budget is spent on maintaining current IT infrastructure rather than adding new capabilities. Because of this, organizations are seeking to adopt a Cloud Computing model for their enterprise applications in order to better utilize the infrastructure investments.
Several such organizations currently have data center consolidation and virtualization initiatives underway and look to Cloud Computing as a natural progression of those initiatives. Enterprise private cloud solutions add capabilities such as self-service, automation and charge back over the virtualized infrastructure and thus make infrastructure provisioning quicker, helping to improve the over-all utilizations. Additionally, some of these organizations have been beginning to try public cloud solutions as a new infrastructure sourcing option.
IT spending of “Global 2000” enterprises makes up less than 5% of their revenues, thus optimizing IT isn’t going to impact their top or bottom line. In the current economic state, IT optimization is a good reason for these large enterprises to begin looking at Cloud Computing. So what is the true “disruptive” potential of Cloud Computing? It lies in the way it is going to aid these large enterprises in reinventing themselves and their business models in order to rise to the challenge of an evolving business landscape.
Social Networking Clouds and e-Commerce
Worldwide e-Commerce transactions will be worth over $16 trillion by 2013, and by 2012 over 50% of all adult Internet users in the U.S. will be using social networks. Currently, 49% of web users make a purchase based on a recommendation gleaned from social media. This increased adoption of social media makes it easier for consumers to remain connected and get options on products and services. Basically, the consumer has already made up their mind about a produce before even getting to the website or store. This is causing major changes in consumer marketing and the B2C business models. The relationship used to be between the enterprise and the consumer, but it is now changed to a deeper relationship that encompasses the consumer’s community.
Large enterprises can’t afford to have “websites” or “brick-and-mortar stores” any longer if they want to remain relevant and ensure customer loyalty—they need to provide online cloud hosted platforms that engage the consumers constantly along with their social community. That way, they incorporate the enterprise business services in their day-to-day life. When the Gen Y consumers reach the market, for example, “community driven” social commerce just may replace traditional “website based” e-commerce. Enterprises need to begin building such next-generation industry specific service platforms for the domain they operate it in anticipation of this.
Computing’s Pervasiveness
One half of the world population—roughly 3.3 billion—have active mobile devices, and the increased use of these hand held devices is altering the expectations of consumers when it comes to the availability of services. Consumers expect that the products and services should be available to them whenever they need the service, wherever they are, through innovative applications, the kinds of applications that can be better delivered through the cloud model.
The number of smart devices is expected to reach one trillion by 2011, due to increasing adoption of technologies like wireless sensors, wearable computing, RFIDs and more. This will lead to significant changes in the way consumers use technology, as future consumers will be used to (and be expecting) more intelligent products and services such as intelligent buildings that conserve energy and intelligent transportation systems that can make decisions based on real-time traffic information. An entirely new set of innovative products and services based on such pervasive computing will need to be created for the future generation.
Service providers will look to increase customer loyalty by providing more offerings, better services and maintaining deeper relationships as products and services become commoditized. Several industry leaders are increasingly adopting open innovation models, there by creating business clouds supported by an ecosystem of partners, in order to increase the portfolio of offerings and innovate faster. A new generation of applications must be created as Cloud Computing becomes more pervasive with the increased adoption of smart devices.
To gain a competitive edge, reduce CAPEX on infrastructure and maintenance, and take advantage of powerful SaaS technologies offered in the Cloud, Companies need to build their next generation business cloud platforms in order to better manage the scale of information.
To learn more about Cloud Computing and how companies can adopt and interoperate with the cloud, Visit Nubifer.com
Migrating Department of Defense applications to public cloud platforms operated outside of the Department of Defense DMZ typically raise concerns about the efficacy of security protocols. Currently, the DoD data-centers rely on fire-walled barriers that are designed to prohibit interactions with those outside of its perimeter. The effectiveness of these safe-guards can be argued on a number of levels. The DoD contracts out the management of much of its data, meaning those in charge of their data are neither military nor civilian employees.
Regardless of this outsourcing, the transference of compute resources to third party platform providers will be subjected to stringent security guidelines. What may be viewed as a minor security incident could result in a revocation of security certification for the cloud services provider.
High level DoD executives realize that cloud computing offers a significant opportunity for cost savings, scalability, as well as fail-safe features that offer advantages when compared to the current DISA data-centers. Decision makers are now asking whether the externalization of the DoD workload to a public cloud cause a degradation in network security. Will the governmental auditors reject a public cloud because they cannot fully guarantee security? But the fact is that many public cloud offerings offer the same level of data security, obfuscation and redundancy that’s offered in the DoD’s internal data-centers.
DoD data-centers lock up server farms as well as associated power inside a physical structure in order to gain security. Additional controls installed include:
- Perimeter firewalls
- Demilitarized zones (DMZ) for isolating incoming transactions
- Network segmentation
- Intrusion detection devices and software for monitoring compliance with security protocols
Currently, there are a plethora of companies selling hardware devices and software packages claiming to increase data-center security. But as security threats rise, data-center management teams keep adding disparate security management devices, thus increasing not only operating costs but also the delays that are incurred as transactions travel their way through multiple security barriers.
The accumulation of these disparate security features only increase the vulnerability of systems and add to potential security loop-holes. Each data-center will ultimately have security measures that are unique to each individual situation. Therefore they are not amenable to coordinated and standardized oversight.
Cloud platform providers gain from the benefits of virtualization. Virtual machines from multiple providers are co-hosted on physical resources without any cross-referencing that can jeopardize security. This allows virtualization to be the key technology that enables the migration of applications into a cloud environment where security is provided via the hypervisor that controls each separate virtual machine. A standardized third-party security appliance can be connected to this hypervisor allowing for consistent security services delivered to every virtual machine even if they run on differing operating systems.
Users must stop viewing protection of applications at the data center or server levels as the basis for achieving security. Instead, we have to view each individual virtual computer, with its own operating system and its own application as fully equipped to benefit from standardized security services.
A data-center may encompass thousands of virtual machines. Cloud security will be achieved by protecting virtual computers through their hypervisor on which they operate. This way, every virtual machine can be assigned a sub-set of security protocols that will carry its protection safeguards as well as security criteria. Take moving a virtual machine from a DISA data-center to the cloud, the security of a relocated virtual machine will not be compromised. Multi-tenancy of diverse applications, from varied sources is now feasible since the cloud can run diverse applications in separate security enclosures, each with their own customized security policies.
In a cloud environment the addition of a new application is simplified. Integration with security measures can be instant and seamless because a hypervisor already supports your current security protocols. And if a virtual machine can port its own security measures when migrating from one cloud to another, these integration efforts can be further reduced.
In Summation
Security services for a cloud environment can now be pooled and standardized to support a large number of virtual machines. Such pooled services can be managed to give DoD data-centers vastly improved shared security awareness.
But the overall management and monitoring of enterprise-wide security will still remain an intensive task. However, as compared with the current diversity in security methods, the transfer of applications onto a cloud platform will further reduce costs and simplify the administration of security.
Whether the Department of Defense can efficiently implement its own private cloud, or whether it will have to rely on commercially provided cloud providers is yet to be known. The DoD could rely on commercial firms for most cloud computing services, except for retaining the direct oversight over security. This could be accomplished by managing all security appliances and policies from DoD Network Control Centers that would be staffed by internal DoD personnel.
For more information regarding security of Cloud platforms and how the government is approaching Cloud Computing and Software-as-a-Service, visit Nubifer.com.
Announced October 19th 2010, Microsoft is launching Office 365, the software giants’ next cloud productivity offering syncing Microsoft Office, SharePoint Online, Exchange Online and Lync Online in an “always-on” software and platform-as-a-service. Office 365 makes it simpler for organizations to get and use Microsoft’s highly-acclaimed business productivity solutions via the cloud.
With the Office 365 cloud offering, users can now work together more collaboratively from anywhere on any device with Internet connectivity, while collaborating with others inside and outside their enterprise in a secure and interoperable fashion. As part of today’s launch announcement by Microsoft, the Redmond based software company is opening a pilot beta program for Office 365 in 13 different regions and countries.
Microsoft relied on years of experience when architecting Office 365, delivering industry-acclaimed enterprise cloud services ranging from the first browser-based e-mail to today’s Business Productivity Online Suite, Microsoft Office Live Small Business and Live@edu. Adopting the Office 365 cloud platform means Microsoft users don’t have to alter the way they work, because Office 365 works with the most prevalent browsers, smart-phone hand-sets and desktop applications people use today.
Office 365 developers worked in close association with existing customers to develop this cloud offering, resulting in a platform that is designed to meet a wide array of user needs:
“Office 365 is the best of everything we know about productivity, all in a single cloud service,” said Kurt DelBene, president of the Office Division at Microsoft. “With Office 365, your local bakery can get enterprise-caliber software and services for the first time, while a multinational pharmaceutical company can reduce costs and more easily stay current with the latest innovations. People can focus on their business, while we and our partners take care of the technology.”
With Office 365 for small businesses, professionals and small companies with fewer than 25 employees can be up and running with Office Web Apps, Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Lync Online and an external website in just 15 minutes, for $6 per user, per month.
Microsoft Office 365 for the enterprise introduces an wide range of choices for mid and large organizations, as well as for governmental entities, starting at $2 per user, per month for basic e-mail. Office 365 for the enterprise also includes the choice to receive Microsoft Office Professional Plus on a pay-as-you-use basis. For less than $25 per user, per month, organizations can get Office Professional Plus along with webmail, voicemail, business social networking, instant messaging, Web portals, extranets, voice-conferencing, video-conferencing, web-conferencing, 24×7 phone support, on-premises licenses, and more.
Office 365 is creating new growth opportunities for Microsoft and its partners by reaching more customers and types of users and meeting more IT needs — all while reducing the financial burden for its customers.
Product Availability
Office 365 will be available worldwide in 2011. Starting today, Microsoft will begin testing Office 365 with a few thousand organizations in 13 countries and regions, with the beat expanding to include more organizations as the platform matures. Office 365 will be generally available in over 40 countries and regions next year.
Towards the end of next year, Microsoft Office 365 will offer Dynamics CRM Online in order to provide their complete business productivity experience to organizations of all varieties and scales. Additionally, Office 365 for education will debut later next year, giving students, faculty and school employees powerful technology tailored specifically to their needs.
October 19th at Noon PDT, Microsoft will launch http://www.Office365.com. Customers and partners can sign up for the Office 365 beta and learn more at that site, or follow Office 365 on Twitter (@Office365), Facebook (Office 365), or the new Office 365 blog at http://community.office365.com to get the latest information.
Nubifer is a Microsoft Registered Partner with expertise in Office, Windows 7, BPOS and Windows Azure. Contact a representative today to learn how the Office 365 cloud platform can streamline your business processes or visit www.nubifer.com and fill out our online questionaire.
When it comes to cloud computing, one of the major concerns is protecting the data being stored in the cloud. IT departments often lack the knowledge necessary to make informed decisions regarding the identification of sensitive data—which can cost an enterprise millions of dollars in legal costs and lost revenue.
The battle between encryption and tokenization was explored in a recent technology report, and the merits of both are being considered as securing data in the cloud becomes more and more important. Although the debate over which solution is best continues, it is ultimately good news that protection in cloud computing is available in the first place.
It is essential that data is secure while in storage or in transit (both inherent in cloud computing) in the current business climate; the protection is necessary whether dealing with retail processing, accessing personal medical records or managing government information and financial activity. It is necessary to implement the correct security measure to protect sensitive information.
So what is tokenization? Tokenization is the process in which sensitive data is segmented into one or more pieces and replaced with non-sensitive values, or tokens, and the original data is stored encrypted elsewhere. When clients need access to the sensitive data, they typically provide the token along with authentication credentials to a service that then validates the credentials, decrypts the secure data, and provides it back to the client. Even though encryption is used, the client is never involved in either the encryption or decryption process so encryption keys are never exchanged outside the token service. Tokens protect information like medical records, social security numbers, financial transactions, etc prevent unauthorized access.
Encryption, on the other hand, is the process of changing the information using an algorithm to ensure it is unreadable to anyone expect those who possess a key or special knowledge. The military and government have been using this method for some time to make sure that their sensitive information remains in the hands of the right people and organizations.
Tokenization and encryption can be applied when using cloud computing to protect the information is used in the cloud. For organizations seeking to determine which method is a better fit for them, it is necessary to ask questions about the security of the method and whether one has more pros than the others. It is necessary in this case to clearly define the objectives of the business process as well.
A clear method of protecting information is essential if cloud computing is posing benefits for the enterprise. Conversely, this can also be an obstacle to launching a cloud computing strategy. Gartner reports that 85 percent of participants cited security as a key factor that could prevent them from launching cloud-based apps.
In conclusion, there is no clear winner in the debate over tokenization versus encryption. Rather, it depends on the goals of the business and how the company plans to manage the security of their sensitive information. The data needs to be protected in a way that is easily manageable when launching a cloud computing strategy—and it is only at this point that cloud computing can be both successful and secure. For more information regarding securing data int eh cloud via tokenization, contact a Nubifer representative today.
Zoho Corp., a leader in Software as a Service business applications, announced Wednesday October 6th that their ‘Zoho Creator’ offering now allows users to create situational applications. Over the past few years, Zoho has had over 300,000 apps created on this platform, and as Zoho Creator evolves as a leading work-flow engine, they are introducing two key modules to Zoho Creator – Reports & Schedules.
Zoho offers SaaS applications and provides a wide, integrated portfolio of rich online applications for businesses. With more than 20 different applications spanning Collaboration, Business and Productivity, Zoho helps businesses and organizations get work done. Zoho’s applications are delivered via the Internet, requiring nothing but a browser, enabling organizations to focus on their business while leveraging Zoho in order to maintain the servers and keep data safe.
Reports Module
Zoho is introducing a powerful business intelligence module in Zoho Reports that lets users create different types of reports and pivot tables.This Reporting module is now integrated into Zoho Creator allowing users to analyze the data they have in their application. Users are now able to:
Scheduler Module
The newly introduced scheduler module lets users create and schedule automated tasks. These tasks can be triggered by user input or at pre-set times and/or dates. There are three general schedule types:
Reports Pricing
Scheduler Pricing
These two modules are available for use now and are readily available at http://www.zoho.com. For more information on Zoho’s suite of SaaS applications, and migration best practices please contact a Nubifer representative today. www.Nubifer.com -or- (800) 293 4496.
With a reported $14 billion left over from its 2009 fiscal year, what is IBM going to do with it? Industry experts suggest that they are expanding upon their ability to deliver enterprise cloud computing solutions and services.
It’s expected that cloud services will add $3 billion in net revenue by 2015, says IBM’s Vice President of Cloud Computing Walt Braeger. Although IBM won’t be able to do so without acquisitions, the company’s excess of cash won’t be spent on a single acquisition—like when IBM purchased Cognos for $5 billion in 2007.
It’s been well documented that IBM has already spent a great deal on significant cloud computing acquisitions, most of which were acquired for less than $1 billion, although a few stray from that norm. IBM spent $1.4 billion on Sterling Commerce (which was a unit of AT&T and focuses on providing software that helps companies manage their channel relationships) earlier this year, for example. IBM also acquired Cast Iron Systems—who’s software systems help connect its cloud services to traditional and legacy software systems—for an undisclosed amount in May.
Cloud Computing and its Inner-workings
Because the business aspects of cloud computing are increasingly local, IBM will need to have a physical presence in many of the nations in which it hopes to build a customer base for its cloud services.
Braeger cited that IBM already has a multi-billion dollar investment in its service delivery centers, located across the globe. Because they require massive amounts of reliable bandwidth, cloud computing centers have to be located next to major Internet points of presence. IBM has not encountered bandwidth constraints as it grows its cloud computing business thus far, but that may change as focus turns to developing markets—where solutions will need to incorporate low-bandwidth mobile devices.
Organizations will utilize IBM’s cloud appliance service model, CloudBurst, in some cases. CloudBurst is a physical device that delivers a cloud, and is one of IBM’s many answers to the security fears of its customers.
CloudBurst, when initially conceptualized, was aimed at developers. This is due to the fact that developers drive so much business value that the typical enterprise devotes 30 to 50 percent of its entire technology infrastructure to development and testing. All but ten percent of that infrastructure remains idle, IBM said, thus making the case for a scalable, flexible, interoperable cloud infrastructure.
Developers and a Cloud Infrastructure
According to Braeger, cloud projects in enterprise testing have delivered on all the hype surrounding the cloud, with an average Return On Investment (ROI) in just four months, making these projects extremely attractive to organizations that are constricting IT budgets.
These types of projects require a multitude of components to be in place before they can begin delivering: self-service access to resources, a detailed service catalog, and infrastructure ready and available for instant provisioning. Those have always proven to be pain points for developers and enterprise IT in the past. For example, developers dealt with bureaucracy when requesting a system on which they could test a new application. Now though, says Braeger, the situation has changed due to a cloud-based infrastructure.
Changing the model so drastically requires IT to revamp other functions beyond deploying resources. Organizations need to develop the capacity to charge other departments for use, for example, meaning departments must be willing to be metered.
These are unlikely to be major obstacles though, at least according to Braeger. In many large enterprises, IT departments already have an accounting function and an auditing function that is standardized. Because modules that work well in a particular auditing system can be reused across a wide spectrum of customer, this makes IBM’s job easier.
Cloud Computing Living Up to the Hype
There is bound to be internal push-back, regardless of the early evidence of a quick return on investment, with so many major changes altering the daily work-flow. During his company’s annual meeting this year, IBM CEO Samuel Palmisano told shareholders that despite the turmoil, cloud technologies are slated to revolutionize how IT functions within the enterprise.
Braeger did admit that hype surrounding cloud computing is current at what industry researcher Gartner would call a “peak of inflated expectations”, which is inevitably followed by a “trough of disillusionment”—but is able to highlight the cloud’s demonstrated success in delivering a quick ROI and more efficient IT services as a reason not to be concerned.
Zoho announced today that Zoho CRM, Invoice & Projects now integrate with Gmail through Contextual Gadgets. Gmail Contextual Gadgets is a way for users to integrate third party applications into Gmail. When a user installs a contextual gadget in Gmail, the gadget shows up when that individual opens an email. The gadget can contain information pulled in from various third-party systems (eg: Zoho CRM, Invoice and Projects) and displayed contextually within that email.
Google announced this earlier this year, but Zoho unveiled today that they have created contextual gadgets for their CRM, Invoice & Projects applications.
Following are a few examples of tasks that can be accomplished leveraging Zoho’s Contextual Gadgets.
Zoho CRM
Zoho Invoice
Zoho Projects
If you would like more information regarding Zoho Projects Contextual Gadgets,visit Nubifer.com.
Zoho CRM, Invoice & Projects are already part of the Google Apps Marketplace, and are currently being leveraged by thousands of businesses using Google Apps.
Although the Business Productivity Online Services (BPOS) is a primary component of Microsoft’s Cloud services, BPOS is not an all encompassing definition of their cloud service suite—it is simply one compelling offering available.
A Closer Look at Microsoft’s Cloud Services
It is a common assumption that Microsoft is relatively new to offering cloud services, but Microsoft has been on a journey leading up to this point for 15 years, beginning back with Windows Live and Hotmail.
During that time, their services and offerings delivered online have continued to expand. Currently, a number of cloud-based solutions are available, enabling businesses and organizations to become more efficient and scalable. Here is an outline of Microsoft’s cloud offerings, and brief descriptions of their capabilities:
Windows Azure:
A flexible, familiar environment to create applications and services for the cloud in which can shorten time to market and adapt to growing demand.
Windows Live ID:
Identify and authentication system provided by Windows Live. Lets you create universal sign-in credentials across diverse applications.
Microsoft SQL Azure:
Provides a highly scalable, multi-tenant database that doesn’t require installation, setup, patches or routine management.
Windows Intune:
Streamlines how businesses manage and secure PC’s using Windows Cloud Services and Windows 7.
Microsoft Office Web Apps:
Offers online companions to Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote, granting freedom to access, edit and share Microsoft Office documents from anywhere.
Microsoft Exchange Online:
Highly secure hosted email for your employees. Offers “anywhere access” and starts at just $4 per user per month.
Microsoft Office Live Meeting:
Provides real-time Web-hosted conferencing, enabling you to connect with colleagues and engage clients from wherever you’re located.
Microsoft Forefront Online Protection for Exchange:
Helps protect businesses’ inbound and outbound email from viruses, spam, phishing scams and email policy violations.
Microsoft SharePoint Online:
Gives your business a highly secure, central location in which employees can collaborate and share documents.
Microsoft Office Communication Online:
Delivers robust messaging functionality for real-time communication via text, voice and video.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online:
Helps you find, keep and grow business relationships by centralizing customer information and streamlining processes with a system that adapt to new demands quickly.
Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS):
Unites online versions of Microsoft’s messaging and collaborating solutions such as: Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Office Live Meeting and Office Communications Online.
Opting for Microsoft Online Services allows you to combine the power of rich desktop-based applications with the flexibility of fully-hosted Internet services.This approach gives users an all-in-one integrated experience on the same applications your users already know with a consistent look and feel from any device, in any location.
To summarize, the opportunity that Microsoft’s cloud services offers is exciting, whether you are a partner or a business. It is important to utilize the resources outlined above to either begin or continue your journey into what Microsoft’s cloud and online services can offer your enterprise.
For more information about Microsoft’s Cloud Solutions, contact a Nubifer representative today, or visit Nubifer.com.
At a time when organizations are coming under increased pressure to cut operational costs—especially when it comes to technology budgets—cloud computing offers companies interoperability and robust technology environment which in turn can improve cost savings. Because cloud solutions, apps and platforms are Internet-based and share compute resources, delivering software and information to computers on demand lessens the financial burden traditional IT ecosystems place on the enterprise.
A global IT research firm recently completed their second global research project on IT outsourcing practice and attitudes. The researchers polled IT and business decision makers in the U.S., U.K. and Singapore and discovered that more than two-thirds of business decision makers say upgrading infrastructure with a lighter budget is the main challenge facing them this year. Additionally, more than three quarters of decision makers regard cost savings as their main strategic priority for the fiscal year.
The pressure is not lost on IT managers either, with nearly half of respondents citing discovering a more cost-effective IT infrastructure as their main priority. Effective managing and prioritizing IT demand come next, followed by delivering faster data access across their organizations.
Reducing Your In-House IT Burden
Currently, public sector IT managers claim that only 7 percent of their infrastructure is outsourced, despite highlighting the need to reduce IT infrastructure costs as their key concern. Comparing this to the private sector, the figure changes significantly. In the private sector, IT managers say almost 20% percent of their infrastructure is outsourced.
Owning and operating your own IT infrastructure has previously been viewed as something that differentiated large from medium businesses, as it could allow for greater business flexibility of service design-once hardware and equipment was provisioned with enough capacity- and afford greater flexibility. This is changing with the availability of high-powered virtual servers and virtualization technologies, in addition to the increased standardization of platforms and ability of service providers to deliver leading-edge cloud services.
Only an exceptionally efficient enterprise can justify building and operating an IT infrastructure after a full audit of costs and impacts is taken—in both monetary and environmental terms. The ROI of maintaining infrastructure in-house rarely materializes, as replacement of machines outpaces cost efficiencies.
The Changing IT Environment
IT is heading down a path where a large-scale shift toward outsourced systems is occurring, and expected to increase into 2011 and 2012. Within the next 10 years, public sector respondents expect to have 64 percent of their organizational infrastructure under third-party management—approaching the assumed private sector level of nearly 67 percent.
The Adoption of Cloud Solutions
A large portion of this shift will result in applications moving to cloud environments where shared resources are provided to computers and other devices on demand. Currently, 59 percent of government and public sector IT teams are using or expect to use cloud for enterprise applications within five years, with the overwhelming majority expecting significant savings by switching to cloud-based infrastructure.
The primary differences between the cloud platforms are in the levels of service delivered. Both public clouds (in which resources are available for purchase by any organization) and private clouds (in which an organization shares a pool of resources amongst its divisions and partners) offer the same capabilities when it comes to rapid deployment, interoperability and scalability.
Although private clouds allow for simplified compliance auditing when the highest levels of security are required, only the modern generation of enterprise cloud services are able to offer the full range of security, application stack choice and service-level capabilities required for critical compute services.
Cloud computing offers the opportunity to do more by buying less, so the choice between cuts or the cloud is a no longer an issue. IT teams and service managers need vision and the courage to drive the required changes by working differently.
Decision makers in public entities currently lag behind their private sector counterparts in their cloud adoption ratios, and this proves to be a key barrier to a more over-arching support of cloud platforms. Currently only 8 percent of public service managers claim they understand what cloud computing is and what benefits in can offer. This shows a clear need for more dialogue between the IT teams and the wider organizations on what is now possible with cloud computing.
On the other hand, service managers do see the potential for development of new ways of working based on more flexible IT infrastructure. In fact, two-thirds of respondents agree they could change the way they plan for IT enhancements if they could reduce or reduce the cost of IT infrastructure.
This vision must apply to the regulatory environment, with virtualization being rapidly accredited for government use as an approved technology. It is important to learn from high security environments in the commercial world, in which virtualization is already accredited.
In order to benefit from the corresponding economic efficiencies, efforts must be accelerated as quickly as possible. Resources will be freed to deliver the services organizations need in a flexible, scalable and more sustainable way.
For more information about how we can implement a interoperable and cost effective cloud solution please visit nubifer.com.
Cloud computing is an outcome of efficient IT automation, and is a model that is only possible by standardizing core elements of computing and the automation of their operation. The cloud cannot be a self-sustaining platform without automation, nor can it scale to very large numbers of customers or systems.
As the modern IT landscape becomes more concentrated, new computing complexities begin to surface. Although this has occurred in the past with evolving programming languages, computer networks, software design architectures and system virtualization, IT automation has raised the bar on that concept more than any other.
By most industry estimations, we are only at an early stage in the grand scheme of operations automation, just the second or third of several unavoidable evolutionary stages in the growing capability of systems to stand on their own in a global IT ecosystem.
Organizational Automation
Organizational automation of server deployment is the first stage of automation. When the server is the unit of deployment, server automation is a prime idea. Each server can host a single operating system, creating that OS and formatting to apps to include is an ideal method of streamlining operations of a single server.
The difficulty of this method is that it’s difficult to execute efficiently at large scales because the system administrator is still burdened to make operational decisions on behalf of the application. You may now be wondering about the number of servers is an ideal amount to deploy? And, which types of servers should you should add instances to in order to meet peak loads and what the time-frame should be for doing that? The result of this method of operation is a significantly cumbersome manual operations environment, with most organizations Nubifer has Consulted with at this stage and scale, implementing strategic capacity planning and erect a system for expected peak.
Application Implementation
The implementation of a sectioned distributed application where the different data-sets of the application are aimed for a deployment location is a significant upgrade to single server deployment. This type of automation essentially ensures that each set of data ends up where it’s supposed to be stored and that it’s configured correctly.
Standards in Source Code
We also noticed that standardized operations code adds important functionality to simple distributed deployment automation which shifts capacity consumption based on application needs in real time. This type of scaling automation ensures that your organization pays only for what you use.
Implementing Cloud Automation
Nubifer has noticed that modern scaling automation has one primary limitation: the fashion in which the health of the application is determined has to be built into application OS’s ahead of time. The developer has to determine what conditions to examine, what state requires an adjustment to scale and what layers of the application are scaled in response. This all has to be effectively architected prior to the application being deployed into your organization’s IT environment.
Interop and Identity Management
Leveraging the interoperability and intelligence of behavior learning algorithms enabling cloud systems to receive a wide variety of monitoring data is the next logical step, followed by picking through that data to determine normal and abnormal behaviors and to determine appropriate ways to react to any anomalies. These forms of learned behavior turn the application system an adaptive system which becomes increasingly better at making efficient choices the longer the application is in production.
Even though the issue discussed above is a complicated one, successful migrations will be exceedingly important as they will continuously evolve strategies for dealing with app performance, security and cost management.
Why Give Up Control?
You may be wondering why you want to give up control over operations of your key apps to an automation system. The reasoning lies under the same motivation for turning over of your operating systems to virtual machines, your phone systems to managed service providers or your compute resources to cloud environments: agility, interoperability, scalability and cost.
The Take-Aways
Companies that adopt one or more cloud models for a large percentage of their workloads will see key advantages over those that don’t, and cloud providers that adopt the best infrastructure and service automation systems will improve their chances in the marketplace. Visit Nubifer.com to learn more about the past, present and future states of cloud computing and to gain insights and key research into the field of cloud computing, software-as-a-service, platform and infrastructure-as-a-service.
For enterprise companies today, the process of determining one or more common application usage profiles for use in cloud platform performance testing is known as ‘application workload modeling’. Cloud application workload modeling can be accomplished in a myriad of ways, and is a critical piece to properly planning, developing and implementing successful cloud solution technologies.
Some General Best Practices when Developing Cloud Applications.
- Define and Identify the objectives
- Document and Identify primary usage scenarios
- Develop and Determine navigation paths for key scenarios
- Design and Determine individual user data and variances
- Determine the likely-hood of such scenarios
- Identify peak target load levels
- Prepare and Deploy the new cloud solution
The common thread across all of these types of “on-demand” cloud apps is that their usage rate is relatively standard or predictable most of the time, but become the most demanded of resources periodically. Utilizing a scalable cloud solution approach in this manner enables greater cost savings and ensures high availability of your enterprise business systems.
Application Load and Scalability, and Dynamically Reacting to Peak Load
As it is most often associated with consumer-facing web apps, unpredictable load occurs when an inordinate amount of traffic is directed toward your site, and the app is subsequently unable to meet this demand—causing the entire website to return a load error message. Nubifer has noticed sudden spikes in traffic when organizations launch fresh marketing campaigns, or receive extensive back-linking from prominent authority sites. Apps and sites eminently susceptible to these load spikes are ideal candidates for the cloud, and the most prominent advantage of this methodolgy is the auto-scale or on-demand capability.
Monitoring, a Primary Key to Any Successful Cloud Deployment
Your cloud platform monitors the patterns of Internet traffic and the utilization of the infrastructure, adding additional server resources if the traffic crosses your preset threshold. The extra servers that are added can be safely deactivated once the traffic subsides and the environment isn’t so demanding. This creates an extremely cost-efficient use case for leveraging a cloud platform for app and site hosting.
To the contrary of unpredictable load occurrences, e-commerce sites commonly experience predictable spikes in traffic. For instance, when Amazon launches pre-ordering for the next novel for Oprah’s book club, they prepare their infrastructure to handle these peak loads. Organizations of this size typically have a ballpark budget figure of the infrastructure cost because of its inherent predictability. There are many occurrences in the public sector that experience predictable bursts as well, such as electoral results and the examination of the latest census reports.
Understanding Application Usage Pattern Trends
Within your business, these patterns are manifested during a virtual company meeting or initiation of a compulsory online training for all employees, but the primary difference between this pattern of usage and the first is that there may not be a periodic recurrence of this particular pattern or spike in resource demand.
It’s paramount that your IT personnel remain cognizant of these peak load times, whether they are predictable or not, as this is a key element for effectively leveraging a cloud solution that offers support and business intelligence data regarding peak load and latency issues.
How We Have Evolved to Solve for Peak Load and Usage Monitoring
Nubifer has solved these business scenarios by developing a robust set of tools and monitoring applications for private and public clouds, named Nubifer Cloud:Link. To learn more about Cloud:Link and Nubifer’s approach to enterprise cloud monitoring visit CloudLink.pro
On July 26, Google released a version of its hosted suite of applications that meets the primary federal IT security certification, making a major leap forward in its push to drive cloud computing in the government. Nearly one year in the making, Google announces its new edition of Google Apps as the first portfolio of cloud applications to have received certification under the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA).
The government version of Google Apps has the same pricing and services as the premier edition, including Gmail, the Docs productivity site and the Talk instant-messaging application.
Google Business Development Executive David Mihalchik said to reporters, “We see the FISMA certification in the federal government environment as really the green light for federal agencies to move forward with the adoption of cloud computing for Google Apps.”
Federal CIO Vivek Kundra announced a broad initiative to embrace the cloud across the federal government last September, as a way to reduce both costs and inefficiencies of redundant and underused IT deployments. The launch of that campaign was accompanied by the launch of Apps.gov. An online storefront for vendors to showcase their cloud-based services for federal IT manager, Apps.gov was revealed at an event at NASA’s Ames Research Center and attended by Google co-founder Sergey Brin. At the same time, Google announced plans to develop a version of its popular cloud-based services that would meet the federal-government sector’s security requirements.
Mike Bradshaw, director of Google’s Federal Division, said, “We’re excited about this announcement and the benefits that cloud computing can bring to this market.” Bradshaw continued to say that “the President’s budget has identified the adoption of cloud computing in the federal government as a way to more efficiently use the billions of dollars spent on IT annually.” Bradshaw added that the government spends $45 million in electrical costs alone to run its data-centers and servers.
Security concerns are consistently cited by proponents of modernizing the deferral IT apparatus as the largest barrier to the adoption of cloud computing. Google is including extra security features to make federal IT buyers at agencies with more stringent security requirements feel more at ease. These extra security features are in addition to the 1,500 pages of documentation that came with Google’s FISMA certification.
Google will store government cloud accounts on dedicated servers within its data centers that will be segregated from its equipment that houses consumer and business data. Additionally, Google has committed to only use servers located in the continental U.S. for government cloud accounts. Google’s premier edition commercial customers have their data stored on servers in both the U.S. and European Union.
Mihalchik explained that security was the leading priority from the get-go in developing Google Apps for Government saying, “We set out to send a signal to government customers that the cloud is ready for government.” Adding, “today we’ve done that with the FISMA certification, and also going beyond FISMA to meet some of the other specific security requirements of government customers.”
Thus far, Google has won government customers at state and local levels such as in the cities of Los Angeles, California and Orlando, Florida. Mihalchik said that over one dozen federal agencies are in various stages of trialing or deploying elements of Google apps. Mihalchik states that several agencies are using Google anti-spam and anti-virus products to filter their email. Others, like the Department of Energy, are running pilot programs to evaluate the full suite of Google Apps in comparison with competitors’ offerings.
Find out more about cloud security and FISMA certification of Google Apps by talking to a Nubifer Consultant today.
Zoho, an industry leader in cloud hosted officing software, announced today the launch of Zoho Sheet 2.0. Among the many added features of Zoho Sheet, is the newly added support for million cell spreadsheets.
When a user logs-in to Zoho Sheet 2.0, they will not notice much change visually, but there have been many performance improvements on the back-end. Frequent users of Zoho’s increasingly popular spreadsheet app will notice the performance and interoperability improvements instantly. Regarding the performance of the app, Zoho enhanced the back-end engine significantly upgrading its performance, allowing users of Zoho Sheet 2.0 to load large and complex spreadsheets with instant response times.
Zoho Sheet’s One Million Cell Spreadsheet
At Nubifer Inc., we are constantly working with extensive spreadsheets, and were infinitely familiar with constant freezes and over-consumption of local compute resources. This is no longer an issue for our teams, as Zoho Sheet is completely online with all the heavy lifting being done on the server side, keeping our client side agile and nimble.
With Zoho’s latest product update, subscribers can now create a million cell spreadsheet. Zoho Sheet 2.0 supports 65,536 rows and 256 columns per worksheet, creating 1 Million Cells per spreadsheet project. Supporting a million cells is an important feature, but maintaining efficient load-times with large spreadsheets was the primary goal with Zoho Sheet 2.0. Waiting as long as 5 minutes to load very large spreadsheets is no longer an issue, this can now be experienced instantly within your web browser. We here at Nubifer encourage you to give it a test drive, and witness for yourself how agile and efficient response is while using Zoho Sheet 2.0.
Here is an example embedded spreadsheet with 25,000 rows. The performance on the return is quite impressive.
In addition to the improved performance metrics, here are some other great features designed to aid functionality and work flow.
Chrome & Safari Browser Support
Zoho Sheet now officially supports Chrome 4+, Safari 4+, Firefox 2+ and IE 6+.
Some Additionally Impressive Improvements
Are you an existing user? If not, you probably wont see many changes visually, but you will experience these enhancements when working with Zoho Sheets 2.0.
Zoho is tirelessly working on performance updates to their cloud-hosted officing applications. Some updates are cosmetic for look and feel, while others are performance based. The overwhelming majority of Zoho’s updates go under the hood. For these updates, users may not notice anything visually, but these updates are significant and lay the groundwork for things to come in the future.
For more information about Zoho Sheet, or other Zoho officing applications please visit Nubifer.com.
The overwhelming majority of cloud computing platforms consist of dependable services relayed via data centers and built in servers with varying tiers of virtualization capabilities. These services are available anywhere that allows access to the networking platform. Clouds often appear as single arenas of access for all subscribers’ enterprise computing needs. All commercial cloud platform offerings are guaranteed to adhere to the customers’ quality of service (QoS) requirements, and typically offer service level agreements. Open standards are crucial to the expansion and acceptance of cloud computing, and open source software has layed the ground work for many cloud platform implementations.
The article to follow is what Nubifer Inc. CTO, Henry Chan, recently described to be his summarized view of what cloud computing means, its benefits and where it’s heading in the future:
Cloud computing explained:
The “cloud” in cloud computing refers to your network’s Internet connection. Cloud computing is essentially using the Internet to perform tasks like email hosting, data storage and document sharing which were traditionally hosted on premise.
Understanding the benefits of cloud computing:
Cloud computing’s myriad of benefits depend on your organizational infrastructure needs. If your enterprise is sharing large number of applications between a varying number of office locations, it would be beneficial to your organization to store the apps on a virtual server. Web-based application hosting can save time for people traveling without the ability to connect back to the office because they can have access to everything over their shared virtual private network (VPN).
Examples of cloud computing:
Hosted email (such as GMail or Hotmail), online data back-up, online data storage, any Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) application (such as a cloud hosted CRM from vendors like Salesforce, Zoho or Microsoft Dynamics) or accounting applications, are examples of applications that can be hosted in the cloud. By hosting these applications in the cloud, your business can benefit from the interoperability and scalability cloud computing and SaaS services offer.
Safety in the cloud:
Although there are some concerns over the safety of cloud computing, the reality is that data stored in the cloud can be just as secure as the vast majority of data stored on your internal servers. The key is to implement the necessary solutions to ensure that the proper level of encryption is applied to your data while traveling to and from your cloud storage container, as well as when being stored. This can be as safe as any other solution you could implement locally when designed properly. The leading cloud vendors all currently maintain compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley, SAS90, FISMA and HIPPA.
Cloud computing for your enterprise:
To determine which layer of cloud computing is optimally suited for your organization, it is important to thoroughly evaluate your organizational goals as it relates to your IT ecosystem. Examine how you currently use technology, current challenges with technology, how your organization will evolve technologically in the years to come, and what scalability and interoperability will be required going forward. After a careful gap analysis of these determinants, you can decide what types of cloud-based solutions will be optimally suited for your organizational architecture.
Cloud computing, a hybrid solution:
The overwhelming trend in 2010 and 2011 is to move non-sensitive data and applications into the cloud while keeping trade secrets behind your enterprise firewall, as many organizations are not comfortable hosting all their applications and hardware in the cloud. The trick to making cloud computing work for your business is to understand which applications should be kept local and which would benefit most from leveraging the scalability and interoperability of the cloud ecosystem.
Will data be shared with other companies if it is hosted in the cloud:
Short answer: NO! Reputable SaaS and cloud vendors will make sure that your data is properly segmented according to the requirements of your industry.
Costs of cloud computing:
Leading cloud-based solutions charge a monthly fee for application usage and data storage, but you may be outlaying this capital expenditure already, primarily in the form of hardware maintenance and software fees—some of which could be wiped out by moving to the cloud.
Cloud computing makes it easy for your companies’ Human Resource software, payroll and CRM to co-mingle with your existing financial data, supply chain management and operations installation, while simultaneously reducing your capital requirements on these systems. Contact a Nubifer representative today to discover how leveraging the power of cloud computing can help your business excel.
The dynamic and flexible nature of cloud computing, software-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service may help organizations in their recovery from the current economic downturn, according to more than two thirds of IT decision leaders and makers who participated in a recent annual study by Vanson Bourne, an International Research Firm. Vanson Bourne surveyed over 600 IT and business decision makers across the United States, United Kingdom and Singapore. Of the countries sampled, Singapore is leading the shift to the cloud, with 76 percent of responding enterprises using some form of cloud computing. The U.S. follows with 66 percent, with the U.K. at 57 percent.
This two year study about Cloud Computing reveals that IT decision makers are very confident in cloud computing’s ability to deliver within budget and offer CapEx savings. Commercial and public sector respondents also predict cloud use will help decrease overall IT budgets by an average of 15 Percent, with others expecting savings as much as 40 Percent.
“Scalability, interoperability and pay-as-you-go elasticity are moving many of our clients toward cloud computing,” said Chad Collins, CEO at Nubifer Inc., a strategic Cloud and SaaS consulting firm. “However, it’s important, primarily for our enterprise clients, to work with a Cloud provider that not only delivers cost savings, but also effectively integrates technologies, applications and infrastructure on a global scale.”
A lack of access to IT capacity is clearly labeled as an obstacle to business progress, with 76 percent of business decision makers reporting they have been prevented from developing or piloting projects due to the cost or constraints within IT. For 55 percent of respondents, this remains an issue.
Confidence in cloud continues to trend upward — 96 percent of IT decision makers are as confident or more confident in cloud computing being enterprise ready now than they were in 2009. In addition, 70 percent of IT decision makers are using or plan to be using an enterprise-grade cloud solution within the next two years.
The ability to scale resources up and down in order to manage fluctuating business demand was the most cited benefit influencing cloud adoption in the U.S. (30 percent) and Singapore (42 percent). The top factor driving U.K. adoption is lower cost of total ownership (41 percent).
Security concerns remain a key barrier to cloud adoption, with 52 percent of respondents who do not leverage a cloud solution citing security of sensitive data as a concern. Yet 73 percent of all respondents want cloud providers to fully manage security or to fully manage security while allowing configuration change requests from the client.
Seventy-nine percent of IT decision makers see cloud as a straight forward way to integrate with corporate systems. For more information on how to leverage a cloud solution inside your environment, contact a Nubifer.com representative today.
Microsoft’s Windows Azure runs Windows applications and stores advanced applications, services and data in the cloud. This baseline understanding of Windows Azure, coupled with the practicality of using computers in the cloud makes leveraging the acres of Internet-accessible servers on offer today an obvious choice. Especially when the alternate option of buying and maintaining your own space in data centers and hardware deployed to those data centers can quickly become costly. For some applications, both code and data might live in the cloud, where the systems they use are managed and maintained by someone else. On-premise applications—which run inside an organization—might store data in the cloud or rely on other cloud infrastructure services. Ultimately, making use of the cloud’s capabilities provides a variety of advantages.
Windows Azure applications and on-premises applications can access the Windows Azure storage service using a REST-ful approach. The storage service allows storing binary large objects (blobs), provides queues for communication between components of Windows Azure application, and also offers a form of tables with a simple query language. The Windows Azure platform also provides SQL Azure for applications that need traditional relational storage. An application using the Windows Azure platform is free to use any combination of these storage options.
One obvious need between applications hosted in the cloud and hosted on-premise is communication between applications. Windows Azure AppFabric provides a Service Bus for bi-directional application connectivity and Access Control for federated claims-based access control.
Service Bus for Azure AppFabric
The primary feature of the Service Bus is message “relaying” to and from the Windows Azure cloud to your software running on-premise, bypassing any firewalls, network address translation (NAT) or other network obstacles. The Service Bus can also help negotiate direct connections between applications. Meanwhile, the Access Control feature provides a claims-based access control mechanism for applications, making federation easier to tackle and allowing your applications to trust identities provided by other systems.
A .NET developer SDK is available that simplifies integrating these services into your on-premises .NET applications. The SDK integrates seamlessly with Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and other Microsoft technologies to build on pre-existing skill sets as much as possible. These SDKs have been designed to provide a first-class .NET developer experience, but it is important to point out that they each provide interfaces based on industry standard protocols. Thus, making it possible for applications running on any platform to integrate with them through REST, SOAP and WS-protocols.
SDKs for Java and Ruby are currently available for download. Combining them with the underlying Windows Azure platform service produces a powerful, cloud-based environment for developers.
Access Control for the Azure AppFabric
Over the last decade, the industry has been moving toward an identity solution based on claims. A claims-based identity model allows the common features of authentication and authorization to be factored out of your code, at which point such logic can then be centralized into external services that are written and maintained by subject matter experts in security and identity. This is beneficial to all parties involved.
Access Control is a cloud-based service that does exactly that. Rather than writing your own customer user account and role database, customers can let AC orchestrate the authentication and most of the user authorization. With a single code base in your application, customers can authorize access to both enterprise clients and simple clients. Enterprise clients can leverage ADFS V2 to allow users to authenticate using their Active Directory logon credentials, while simple clients can establish a shared secret with AC to authenticate directly with AC.
The extensibility of Access Control allows for easy integration of authentication and authorization through many identity providers without the need for refactoring code. As Access Control evolves, support for authentication against Facebook Connect, Google Accounts, and Windows Live ID can be quickly added to an application. To reiterate: over time, it will be easy to authorize access to more and more users without having to change the code base.
When using AC, the user must obtain a security token from AC in order to log in; this token is similar to a signed email message from AC to your service with a set of claims about the user’s identity. AC doesn’t issue a token unless the user first provides his or her identity by either authenticating with AC directly or by presenting a security token from another trusted issuer (such as ADFS) that has authenticated that user. So by the time the user presents a token to the service, assuming it is validated, it is safe to trust the claims in the token and begin processing the user’s request.
Single sign-on is easier to achieve under this model, so a customer’s service is no longer responsible for:
• Authenticating users
• Storing user accounts and passwords
• Calling to enterprise directories to look up user identity details
• Integrating with identity systems from other platforms or companies
• Delegation of authentication (a.k.a. federation) with other security realms
Under this model, a customer’s service can make identity-related decisions based on claims about the user made by a trusted issuer like AC. This could be anything from simple service personalization with the user’s first name, to authorizing the user to access higher-valued features and resources in the customer’s service.
Standards
Due to the fact that single sign-on and claims-based identity have been evolving since 2000, there are a myriad of ways of doing it. There are competing standards for token formats as well as competing standards for the protocols used to request those tokens and send them to services. This fact is what makes AC so useful, because over time, as it evolves to support a broader range of these standards, your service will benefit from broader access to clients without having to know the details of these standards, much less worry about trying to implement them correctly.
Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) was the first standard. SAML specified an XML format for tokens (SAML tokens) in addition to protocols for performing Web App/Service single sign-on (SAML tokens are sometimes referred to inside Microsoft as SAMLP–for the SAML protocol suite). WS-Federation and related WS-* specifications also define a set of protocols for Web App/Service single sign-on, but they do not restrict the token format to SAML, although it is practically the most common format used today.
To Summarize
The Service Bus and Access Control constituents of the Windows Azure platform provide key building block services that are vital for building cloud-based or cloud-aware applications. Service Bus enables customer to connect existing on-premises applications with new investments being built for the cloud. Those cloud assets will be able to easily communicate with on-premises services through the network traversal capabilities, which are provided through Service Bus relay.
Overall, the Windows Azure platform represents a comprehensive Microsoft strategy designed to make it easy for Microsoft developers to realize the opportunities inherent to cloud computing. The Service Bus and Access Control offer a key component of the platform strategy, designed specifically to aid .NET developers in making the transition to the cloud. These services provide cloud-centric building blocks and infrastructure in the areas of secure application connectivity and federated access control.
For more information on the Service Bus & Access Control, please contact a Nubifer representative or visit these Microsoft sponsored links:
• An Introduction to Windows Azure platform AppFabric for Developers (this paper)
o http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=150833
• A Developer’s Guide to Service Bus in Windows Azure platform AppFabric
o http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=150834
• A Developer’s Guide to Access Control in Windows Azure platform AppFabric
o http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=150835
• Windows Azure platform
o http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/
• Service Bus and Access Control portal
o http://netservices.azure.com/
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