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How Cloud Computing Could Change the Role of the CIO

Cloud computing is at the top of conference agendas and a common buzz word online, so it should come as no surprise that it is also on the minds of many IT executives. And as more and more enterprise IT departments move to the cloud, many are beginning to wonder how this will affect the traditional role of the CIO.

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.

2011
04/13
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Cloud Computing’s Varying Forms of Functionality

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.

2011
03/01
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10 Compelling Reasons to Choose Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

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

2010
12/11
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BPOS to be Enhanced with Office Web Apps

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.

2010
12/09
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Microsoft Announces Office 365

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.

2010
10/19
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A Closer Look at Microsoft’s Cloud Service Offerings

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.

2010
09/23
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Taking a Closer Look at the Power of Microsoft Windows Azure AppFabric

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/

2010
08/13
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Dell and Microsoft Partner Up with the Windows Azure Platform Appliance

Dell and Microsoft announced a strategic partnership in which Dell will adopt the Windows Azure platform appliance as part of its Dell Services Cloud to develop and deliver next-generation cloud services at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference on July 12. With the Windows Azure platform, Dell will be able to deliver private and public cloud services for its enterprise, public, small and medium-sized business customers. Additionally, Dell will develop a Dell-powered Windows Azure platform appliance for enterprise organizations to run in their data-centers.

So what does this mean exactly? By implementing the limited production release of the Windows Azure platform appliance to host public and private clouds for its customers, Dell will leverage its vertical industry expertise in offering solutions for the speedy delivery of flexible application hosting and IT operations. In addition, Dell Services will produce application migration, advisory migration and integration and implementation services.

Microsoft and Dell will work together to develop a Windows Azure platform appliance for large enterprise, public and hosting customers to deploy to their own data centers. The resulting appliance will leverage infrastructure from Dell combined with the Windows Azure platform.

This partnership shows that both Dell and Microsoft recognize that more organizations can reap the benefits of the flexibility and efficiency of the Windows Azure platform. Both companies understand that cloud computing allows IT to increase responsiveness to business needs and also delivers significant efficiencies in infrastructure costs. The result will be an appliance to power a Dell Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) Cloud.

The announcement with Dell occurred on the same day that Microsoft announced the limited production release of the Windows Azure platform appliance, a turnkey cloud platform for large service providers and enterprises to run in their own data centers. Initial partners (like Dell) and customers using the appliance in their data centers will have the scale-out application platform and data center efficiency of Windows Azure and SQL Azure that Microsoft currently provides.

Since the launch of the Windows Azure platform, Dell Data Center Solutions (DCS) has been working with Microsoft to built out and power the platform. Dell will use the insight gained as a primary infrastructure partner for the Windows Azure platform to make certain that the Dell-powered Windows Azure platform appliance is optimized for power and space to save ongoing operating costs and performance of large-scale cloud services.

A top provider of cloud computing infrastructure, Dell’s client roster boasts 20 of the 25 most heavily-trafficked Internet sites and four of the top global search engines. The company has been custom-designing infrastructure solutions for the top global cloud service providers and hyperscale data center operations for the past three years and has developed an expertise about the specific needs of organizations in hosting, HPC, Web 2.0, gaming, energy, social networking, energy, SaaS, plus public and private cloud builders in that time.

Speaking about the partnership with Microsoft, president of Dell Services Peter Altabef said, “Organizations are looking for innovative ways to use IT to increase their responsiveness to business needs and drive greater efficiency. With the Microsoft partnership and the Windows Azure platform appliance, Dell is expanding its cloud services capabilities to help customers reduce their total costs and increase their ability to succeed. The addition of the Dell-powered Windows Azure platform appliance marks an important expansion of Dell’s leadership as a top provider of cloud computing infrastructure.”

Dell Services delivers vertically-focused cloud solutions with the combined experience of Dell and Perot Systems. Currently, Dell Services delivers managed and Software-as-a-Service support to over 10,000 customers across the globe. Additionally, Dell boasts a comprehensive suite of services designed to help customers leverage public and private cloud models. With the new Dell PaaS powered by the Windows Azure platform appliance, Dell will be able to offer customers an expanded suite of services including transformational services to help organizations move applications into the cloud and cloud-based hosting.

Summarizing the goal of the partnership with Dell, Bob Muglia, president of Microsoft Server and Tools said at the Microsoft Windows Partner Conference on July 12, “Microsoft and Dell have been building, implementing and operating massive cloud operations for years. Now we are extending our longstanding partnership to help usher in the new era of cloud computing, by giving customers and partners the ability to deploy Windows Azure platform in their datacenters.”

2010
07/26
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Microsoft Releases Security Guidelines for Windows Azure

Industry analysts have praised Microsoft for doing a respectable job at ensuring the security of its Business Productivity Online Services, Windows and SQL Azure. With that said, deploying applications to the cloud requires additional considerations to ensure that data remains in the correct hands.

Microsoft released a version of its Security Development Lifecycle in early June as a result of these concerns. Microsoft’s Security Development Lifecycle, a statement of best practices to those building Windows and .NET applications, focuses on how to build security into Windows Azure applications and has been updated over the years to ensure the security of those apps.

Principle security program manager of Microsoft’s Security Development Lifecycle team Michael Howard warns that those practices were not, however, designed for the cloud. Speaking in a pre-recorded video statement embedded in a blog entry, Howard says, “Many corporations want to move their applications to the cloud but that changes the threats, the threat scenarios change substantially.”

Titled “Security Best Practices for Developing Windows Azure Applications,” the 26-page white paper is divided into three sections: the first describes the security technologies that are part of Windows Azure (including the Windows Identity Foundation, Windows Azure App Fabric Access Control Service and Active Directory Federation Services 2.0—a core component for providing common logins to Windows Server and Azure); the second explains how developers can apply the various SDL practices to build more secure Windows Azure applications, outlining various threats like namespace configuration issues and recommending data security practices like how to generate shared-access signatures and use of HTTPS in the request URL;  and the third is a matrix that identifies various threats and how to address them.

Says Howard, “Some of those threat mitigations can be technologies you use from Windows Azure and some of them are threat mitigations that you must be aware of and build into your application.”

Security is a major concern and Microsoft has address many key issues concerning security in the cloud. President of Lieberman Software Corp., a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner specializing in enterprise security Phil Lieberman says, “By Microsoft providing extensive training and guidance on how to properly and securely use its cloud platform, it can overcome customer resistance at all levels and achieve revenue growth as well as dominance in this new area. This strategy can ultimately provide significant growth for Microsoft.”

Agreeing with Lieberman, Scott Matsumoto, a principal consultant with the Washington, D.C.-based consultancy firm Cigital Inc., which specializes in security, says, “I especially like the fact that they discuss what the platform does and what’s still the responsibility of the application developer. I think that it could be [wrongly] dismissed as a rehash of other information or incomplete—that would be unfair.” To find more research on Cloud Security, please visit Nubifer.com.

2010
07/12
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Microsoft Makes Strides for a More Secure and Trustworthy Cloud

Cloud computing currently holds court in the IT industry with vendors, service providers, press, analysts and customers all evaluating and discussing the opportunities presented by the cloud.

Security is a very important piece to the puzzle, and nearly every day a new press article or analyst report indicated that cloud security and privacy are a top concern for customers as the benefits of cloud computing continue to unfold. For example, a recent Microsoft survey revealed that although 86% of senior business leaders are thrilled about cloud computing, over 75% remain concerned about the security, access and privacy of data in the cloud.

Customers are correct in asking how cloud vendors are working to ensure the security of cloud applications, the privacy of individuals and protection of data. In March, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told an audience at the University of Washington that, “This is a dimension of the cloud, and it’s a dimension of the cloud that needs all of our best work.”

Microsoft is seeking to address security-related concerns and help customers understand which questions they need to ask as part of Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing efforts. The company is trying to become more transparent than competitors concerning how they help enable an increasingly secure cloud.

Server and Tools Business president Bob Muglia approached the issue in his recent keynote at Microsoft’s TechEd North America conference saying, “The data that you have is in your organization is yours. We’re not confused about that, that it’s incumbent on us to help you protect that information for you. Microsoft’s strategy is to deliver software, services and tools that enable customers to realize the benefits of a cloud-based model with the reliability and security of on-premise software.”

The Microsoft Global Foundations Services (GFS) site is a resource for users to learn about Microsoft’s cloud security efforts, with the white papers “Securing Microsoft’s Cloud Infrastructure” and “Microsoft’s Compliance Framework for Online Services” being very informative.

Driving a comprehensive, centralized Information Security Program for all Microsoft cloud data-centers and the 200+ consumer and commercial services they deliver –all built using the Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle–GFS covers everything from physical security to compliance, such as Risk Management Process, Response, and work with law enforcement; Defense-in-Depth Security controls across physical, network, identity and access, host, application and data; A Comprehensive Compliance Framework to address standards and regulations such as PCI, SOX, HIPPA, and the Media Ratings Council; and third party auditing, validation and certification (ISO 27001, SAS 70).

Muglia also pointed out Microsoft’s focus on identity, saying, “As you move to cloud services you will have a number of vendors, and you will need a common identity system.” In general, identity is the cornerstone of security, especially cloud security. Microsoft currently provides technologies with Windows Server and cloud offerings which customers can use to extend existing investments in identity infrastructure (like Active Directory) for easier and more secure access to cloud services.

Microsoft is not alone in working on cloud security, as noted by Microsoft’s chief privacy strategist Peter Cullen. “These truly are issues that no one company, industry or sector can tackle in isolation. So it is important to start these dialogs in earnest and include a diverse range of stakeholders from every corner of the globe,” Cullen said in his keynote at the Computers, Freedom and Privacy (CFP) conference. Microsoft is working with customers, governments, law enforcement, partners and industry organizers (like the Cloud Security Alliance) to ensure more secure and trustworthy cloud computing through strategies and technologies. To receive additional information on Cloud security contact a Nubifer.com representative today.

2010
07/07
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Nubifer Cloud:Link Mobile and Why Windows Phone 7 is Worth the Wait

Sure, Android devices become more cutting-edge with each near-monthly release and Apple recently unveiled its new iPhone, but some industry experts suggest that Windows Phone 7 is worth the wait. Additionally, businesses may benefit from waiting until Windows Phone 7 arrives to properly compare the benefits and drawbacks of all three platforms before making a decision.

Everyone is buzzing about the next-generation iPhone and smartphones like the HTC Incredible and HTC EVO 4G, but iPhone and Android aren’t even the top smart phone platforms. With more market share than second place Apple and third place Microsoft combined, RIM remains the number one smartphone platform. Despite significant gains since its launch, Android is in fourth place, with only 60 percent as much market share as Microsoft.

So what gives? In two words: the business market. While iPhone was revolutionary for merging the line between consumer gadget and business tool, RIM has established itself as synonymous with mobile business communications. Apple and Google don’t provide infrastructure integration or management tools comparable to those available with the Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES).

The continued divide between consumer and business is highlighted by the fact that Microsoft is still in third place with 15 percent market share. Apple and Google continue to leapfrog one another while RIM and Microsoft are waiting to make their move.

The long delay in new smartphone technology from Microsoft is the result of leadership shakeups and the fact that Microsoft completely reinvented its mobile strategy, starting from scratch. Windows Phone 7 isn’t merely an incremental evolution of Windows Mobile 6.5. Rather, Microsoft went back to the drawing board to create an entirely new OS platform that recognizes the difference between a desktop PC and a smartphone as opposed to assuming that the smartphone is a scaled-down Windows PC.

Slated to arrive later this year, Windows 7 smartphones promise an attractive combination of the intuitive touch interface and experience found in the iPhone and Android, as well as the integration and native apps to tie in with the Microsoft server infrastructure that comprises the backbone of most customers network and communications architecture.

With that said, the Windows Phone 7 platform won’t be without its own set of issues. Like Apple’s iPhone, Windows Phone 7 is expected to lack true multitasking and the copy and paste functionality from the get-go. Additionally, Microsoft is also locking down the environment with hardware and software restrictions that limit how smartphone manufacturers can customize the devices, and doing away with all backward compatibility with existing Windows Mobile hardware and apps.

As a mobile computing platform, Cloud Computing today touches many devices and end points. From Application Servers to Desktops and of course the burgeoning ecosystem of smart phone devices. When studying the landscapes and plethora of cell phone operating systems, and technology capabilities of the smart phones, you start to see a whole new and exciting layer of technology for consumers and business people alike.

Given the rich capabilities of Windows Phone 7 offering Silverlight, and/or XNA technology, we at Nubifer have become compelled to engineer the upgrades to our cloud services to inter-operate with the powerful new upcoming technologies offered by Windows Phone 7. At Nubifer, we plan to deploy and inter-operate with many popular smart phones and hand-set devices by way of linking these devices to our Nubifer Cloud:Link technology and offering extended functionality delivered by Nubifer Cloud:Connector and Cloud:Portal which enable enterprise companies to gain a deeper view into the analytics and human computer interaction of end users and subscribers of various owned and leased software systems hosted entirely in the cloud or by way of the hybrid model.

It makes sense for companies that don’t need to replace their smartphones at once to wait for Windows Phone 7 to arrive, at which point all three platforms and be compared and contrasted. May the best smartphone win!

2010
07/01
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Cloud Interoperability Brought to Earth by Microsoft

Executives at Microsoft say that an interoperable cloud could help companies trying to lower costs and governments trying to connect constituents. Cloud services are increasingly seen as a way for businesses and governments to scale IT systems for the future, consolidate IT infrastructure, and enable innovative services not possible until now.

Technology vendors are seeking to identify and solve the issues created by operating in mixed IT environments in order to help organizations fully realize the benefits of cloud services. Additionally, vendors are collaborating to make sure that their products work well together. The industry may still be in the beginning stages of collaborating on cloud interoperability, but has already made great strides.

So what exactly is cloud interoperability and how can it benefit companies now? Cloud interoperability specifically concerns one cloud solution working with other platforms and applications—not just other clouds. Customers want to be able to run applications locally or in the cloud, or even on a combination of both. Currently, Microsoft is collaborating with others in the industry and is working to make sure that the premise of cloud interoperability becomes an actuality.

Microsoft’s general managers Craig Shank and Jean Paoli are spearheading Microsoft’s interoperability efforts. Shank helms the company’s interoperability work on public policy and global standards and Paoli collaborates with the company’s product teams to cater product strategies to the needs of customers. According to Shank, one of the main attractions of the cloud is the amount of flexibility and control it gives customers. “There’s a tremendous level of creative energy around cloud services right now—and the industry is exploring new ideas and scenarios all the time. Our goal is to preserve that flexibility through an open approach to cloud interoperability,” says Shank.

Paoli chimes in to say, “This means continuing to create software that’s more open from the ground up, building products that support technologies such as PHP and Java, and ensuring that our existing products work with the cloud.” Both Shank and Paoli are confident that welcoming competition and choice will allow Microsoft to become more successful down the road. “This may seem surprising,” says Paoli before adding,” but it creates more opportunities for its customers, partners and developers.”

Shank reveals that due to the buzz about the cloud, some forget about the ultimate goal: “To be clear, cloud computing has enormous potential to stimulate economic growth and enable governments to reduce costs and expand services to citizens.” One example of the real-world benefits of cloud interoperability is the public sector. Microsoft is currently showing results in this area via solutions like their Eye for Earth project. Microsoft is helping the European Environment Agency simplify the collection and processing of environmental information for use by the general public and government officials. Eye on Earth obtains data from 22,000 water monitoring points and 1,000 stations that monitor air quality through employing Microsoft® Windows Azure, Microsoft ® SQL Azure and already existing Linux technologies. Eye on Earth then helps synthesize the information and makes it accessible for people in 24 different languages in real time.

Product developments like this emerged out of feedback channels which the company developed with its partners, customers and other vendors. In 2006, for example, Microsoft created the Interoperability Executive Customer (IEC) Council, which is comprised of 35 chief technology officers and chief information officers from a variety of organizations across the globe. The group meats two times per year in Redmond and discuss issues concerning interoperability as well as provide feedback to Microsoft executives.

Additionally, Microsoft recently published a progress report which—for the first time—revealed operational details and results achieved by the Council across six work streams (or priority areas). The Council recently commissioned the creation of a seventh work stream for cloud interoperability geared towards developing standards related to the cloud which addressed topics like data portability, privacy, security and service policies.

Developers are an important part of cloud interoperability, and Microsoft is part of an effort the company co-founded with Zend Technologies, IBM and Rackspace called Simple Cloud. Simple Cloud was created to help developers write basic cloud applications that work on all major cloud platforms.

Microsoft is further engaging in the collaborative work of building technical “bridges” between the company and non-Microsoft technologies, like the recently-released Microsoft ® Windows Azure Software Development Kits (SDKs) for PHP and Java and tools for the new Windows ® Azure platform AppFabric SDKs for Java, PHP and Ruby (Eclipse version 1.0), the SQL CRUD Application Wizard for PHP and the Bing 404 Web Page Error Toolkit for PHP. These examples show the dedication of Microsoft Interoperability team.

Despite the infancy of the industry’s collaboration on cloud interoperability issues, much progress has already been made. This progress has had a major positive impact on the way even average users work and live, even if they don’t realize it yet. A wide perspective and a creative and collaborative approach to problem-solving are required for cloud interoperability. In the future, Microsoft will continue to support more conversation within the industry in order to define cloud principles and make sure all points of view are incorporated. For more information please contact a Nubifer representative today.

2010
05/21
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Microsoft and Intuit Pair Up to Push Cloud Apps

Despite being competitors, Microsoft and Intuit announced plans to pair up to encourage small businesses to develop cloud apps for the Windows Azure platform in early January 2010.

Intuit is offering a free, beta software development kit (SDK) for Azure and citing Azure as a “preferred platform” for cloud app deployment on the Intuit Partner Platform as part of its collaboration with Microsoft. This marriage opens up the Microsoft partner network to Intuit’s platform and also grants developers on the Intuit cloud platform access to Azure and its tool kit.

As a result of this collaboration, developers will be encouraged to use Azure to make software applications that integrate with Intuit’s massively popular bookkeeping program, QuickBooks. The companies announced that the tools will be made available to Intuit partners via the Intuit App Center.

Microsoft will make parts of its Online Business Productivity Suite (such as Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Office Live Meeting and Office Communications Online) available for purchase via the Intuit app Center as well.

The agreement occurred just weeks before Microsoft began monetizing the Windows Azure platform (on February 1)—when developers who had been using the Azure beta free of charge began paying for use of the platform.

According to a spokesperson for Microsoft, the Intuit beta Azure SDK will remain free, with the timing for stripping the beta tag “unclear.”

Designed to automatically manage and scale applications hosted on Microsoft’s public cloud, Azure is Microsoft’s latest Platform-as-a-Service. Azure will serve as a competitor for similar offerings like Force.com and Google App Engine. Contact a Nubifer representative to see how the Intuit – Microsoft partnership can work for your business.

2010
05/05
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Microsoft Not Willing to Get Left in the Dust Left by Cloud Services Business

Microsoft may be the largest software company on the globe, but that didn’t stop it from being left in the dust by other companies more than once and eWEEK reports that when it comes to cloud services Microsoft is not willing to make the same mistake.

Although Microsoft was initially weary of the cloud, the company is now singing a different tune and trying to move further into the data center. Microsoft had its first booth dedicated solely to business cloud services at the SaaSCon 2010, held at the Santa Clara Convention Center April 6 and 7. Microsoft is positioning Exchange Online (email), SharePoint Online (collaboration), Dynamics CRM Online (business apps), SQL Azure (structured storage) and AD/Live ID (Active Directory assess) as its lead services for business. All of these services are designed to run on Windows Server 2008 in the data center and sync up with the corresponding on-premises applications.

The services are designed to work hand-in-hand with standard Microsoft client software (including Windows 7, Windows Phone, Office and Office Mobile), thus ensuring that the overarching strategy is set and users will have to report on its cohesiveness over time. Microsoft is also offering its own data centers and its own version of Infrastructure-as-a-Service for hosting client enterprises apps and services. Microsoft is using Azure—a full online stack comprised of Windows 7, the SQL database and additional Web services—as a Platform-as-a-Service for developers.

Featuring Business Productivity Online Suite, Exchange Hosted Services, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online and MS Office Web Apps, Microsoft Online Services are up and running. In mid-March Microsoft launched a cloud backup service on the consumer side called SkyDrive, which is an online storage repository for files which users can access from anywhere via the Web. SkyDrive may be a very popular service, as it offers a neat (in both senses of the word) 25GB of online space for free (which is more than the 2GB offered as a motivator by other services).

SkyDrive simply requires a Windows Live account (also free) and shows that Microsoft really is taking the plunge. For more information on Microsoft’s Cloud offerings, please visit Nubifer.com.

2010
04/19
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Microsoft and Citrix Come to a Desktop Virtualization Agreement

On March 18, Microsoft announced a partnership with Citrix Systems which seeks to promote the pair of companies’ end-to-end virtualization packages for businesses. One aspect of the broad-based partnership sees Microsoft and Citrix aggressively offering customers of rival VMware View the option of trading in 500 licenses with no additional cost. This highly aggressive facet of the recent alliance between Microsoft and Citrix highlights the perpetually increasing competitive nature of the entire virtualization industry.

Also during the company’s March 18 announcement, Microsoft put a number of changes in place in its virtualization policy. One such change which was instituted was making virtual desktop access rights a Windows Client Software Assurance benefit. Beginning on July 1, Software Assurance clients will no longer need to buy a separate license in order to access Windows in a virtual environment.

Windows Client Software Assurance and Virtual Desktop Access license customers will be able to access virtualized Windows and Office applications beginning on July 1 as well. These applications will be accessible through non-corporate network devices, like home PCs. Under Microsoft’s agreement with Citrix, Windows XP Mode will no longer require hardware virtualization technology and assets like Citrix XenDesktop’s HDC technology will be able to be applied to the capabilities of the Microsoft RemoteFX platform.

In an interview with eWEEK one day before the March 18 announcement, Brad Anderson, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s management and Services Division, said, “What we’re bringing to the market together is this end-to-end experience with a simple and consistent interface for the end user. It’s comprehensive, and it leverages what customers already have. If you take a look at the assets that our companies already have in virtualization, it’s the most comprehensive group of assets on the market.”

Together, Microsoft and Citrix are trying to fire a broadside into rival VMware with the “rescue for VMware VDI” promotion. The promotion allows VMware View customers to trade in up to 500 licenses for no additional cost. New Microsoft-Citrix customers also receive about 50 percent off the estimated retail price for virtual desktop infrastructure through another promotion.

In its media portrayal, Microsoft emphasized the announcement as a value proposition. “Two infrastructures are more expensive than one infrastructure,” said Anderson before adding, “When customers see the chance to consolidate multiple infrastructures into one, it’s a chance to manage virtual and hardware desktop so it’s truly one infrastructure. It enables administrators to do everything through system center. And reducing infrastructure reduces cost.”

The partnership with Citrix comes on the heels of another Microsoft virtualization initiative, which arrived on February 22. Microsoft unveiled two business-focused virtualization applications, App-V 4.6 and MED-V 1.0 SP1 Release Candidate designed to better integrate proprietary applications into business’ evolving IT infrastructure APP-V 4.6 extends 64-bit support for Microsoft’s application virtualization product to streaming applications. MED-V 1.o SP1 RC allows applications which require Internet Explorer 6—or that otherwise cannot be supported on Windows 7—to run in a managed virtual desktop environment. For more information about Cloud Computing, please visit Nubifer.com.

2010
04/12
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Microsoft’s CEO Says Company is Playing All Its Hands in the Cloud

During a recent speech at the University of Washington, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer spoke about his company’s future plans: and they primarily take place in the cloud! Citing services and platforms like Windows® Phone 7 Series and Xbox Live, Ballmer spoke about cloud-centric objectives. While Microsoft faces competition from Google and others when it comes to cloud-based initiatives, everyone is wondering how Microsoft will alter its desktop-centered products like the Windows franchise to remain ahead of the pack.

During his March 4 speech at the University of Washington, Ballmer stated that Microsoft’s primary focus in the future will be in the cloud and applications derived from the cloud. This may come as somewhat of a surprise, as Microsoft’s fortune largely comes from desktop-based software like Microsoft® Windows and Microsoft® Office, but Ballmer said, “We shipped Windows 7, which had a lot that’s not cloud-based. Out inspiration now starts with the cloud Windows Phone, Xbox, Windows Azure and SQL Azure … this is the best bet for our company.”

While speaking in front of a screen displaying a large cloud logo with the words “We’re all in,” Ballmer continued to say, “Companies like ours, can they move and dial in and focus and embrace? That’s where we’re programmed. You shouldn’t get into this industry if you don’t want things to chance. The field of endeavor keeps moving forward.”

When discussing Microsoft’s cloud initiatives, Ballmer spoke about the creation of a cloud-based Office that would allow workers to collaborate and communicate. He also referenced cloud-ported entertainment (via Xbox Live) and the creation of something he dubbed “smarter services” which would be capable of quickly integrating new hard- and software that could interact with the cloud smoothly. Ballmer spoke about Microsoft’s cloud-based development platform, Microsoft® Azure, and mentioned Azure Ocean, a University of Washington project which reportedly collects the world’s oceanographic data.

Microsoft’s most recent smartphone operating system, Windows® Phone 7 Series, was cited by Ballmer as one of the company’s cloud-centric smarter devices. “Earlier [Microsoft] phones were designed for voice and legacy [applications],” said the Microsoft CEO before adding that Microsoft® 7 Phone Series was created to “put people, places, content, commerce all front and center for the users with a different point of view that some other phones.”

Citing the reciprocal need of search and Bing Maps to draw in information from users in order to “learn” and define their actions, Ballmer placed the cloud at an even playing field. While Bing Maps has started integrating Flickr images into its Streetside feature—thus presenting an eye-level view of an environment—Microsoft is experimenting with putting Streetside cameras on bikes and pedestrians instead of on the roofs of cars to offer even more views to users. Search engines like Bing take history information ported to them by users and gauge user intent. Ballmer suggested that the “ability of the cloud to learn from all of the data that’s out there, and learn from me about what I’m interested in” is one of the cloud’s most basic and important dimensions.

When it comes to competition in the cloud, Microsoft faces the most in consumer applications. Ballmer praised Apple’s App Store, calling it “a very nice job,” but knows that Microsoft has a ways to go in terms of catching up to Apple’s cloud-based monetization of intellectual property like movies and music. As for Google, the company has a lead in the search engine market in the U.S. and its Google Apps cloud-based productivity has been making inroads with businesses and government.  Google recently announced plans for a dedicated federal cloud computing system sometime later in 2010. This announcement likely propelled Microsoft’s February 24 announcement Business Productivity Online Suites Federal. The online-services cloud for the U.S. government comes equipped with strict security reinforcements.

Overall, Ballmer’s speech at the University of Washington furthered the notion that Microsoft is poised to focus its competitive energies in the cloud more and more. The industry will be waiting to see what this will mean for the traditionally desktop-centric Windows franchise, Microsoft’s flagship product; especially since news recently surfaced suggesting Microsoft is currently developing Windows 8. For more information on Windows Azure please visit Nubifer.com.


2010
04/07
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Microsoft and IBM Compete for Space in the Cloud as Google Apps Turns 3

Google may have been celebrating the third birthday of Google Apps Premier Edition on February 22, but Microsoft and IBM want a piece of the cake, errr cloud, too. EWeek.com reports that Google is trying to dislodge legacy on-premises installations from Microsoft and IBM while simultaneously fending off SaaS solutions from said companies. In addition, Google has to fend off offerings from Cisco Systems and startups like Zoho and MinTouch, to name a few. Despite the up-and-comers, Google, Microsoft and IBM are the main three companies competing for pre-eminence in the market for cloud collaborative software.

Three year ago, Google launched its Google Apps Premier Edition, marking a bold gamble on the future of collaborative software. Back then, and perhaps even still, the collaborative software market was controlled by Microsoft and IBM. Microsoft and IBM have over 650 million customers for their Microsoft ® Office, Sharepoint and IBM Lotus suite combined. These suits are licensed as “on-premises” software which customers install and maintain on their own servers.

When Google launched Google Apps Premier Edition (GAPE), it served as a departure from this on-premises model by offering collaboration software hosted on Google’s servers and delivered via the Web. We now know this method as cloud computing.

Until the introduction of GAPE, Google Apps was available in a free standard edition (which included Gmail, Google Docs word processing, spreadsheet and presentation software), but with GAPE Google meant to make a profit. For just $50 per user per year, companies could provide their knowledge workers with GAPE, which featured the aforementioned apps as well as additional storage, security and, most importantly, 24/7 support.

Google Apps now has over two million business customers–of all shapes and sizes–and is designed to appeal to both small companies desiring low-cost collaboration software but are lacking the resources to manage it and large enterprises desiring to eliminate the cost of managing collaboration applications on their own. At the time, Microsoft and IBM were not aggressively exploring this new cloud approach.

Fast-forward to 2009. Microsoft and IBM had released hosted collaboration solutions (Microsoft ® Business Productivity Office Suite and LotusLive respectively) to keep Google Apps from being lonely in the cloud.

On the third birthday of GAPE, Google has its work cut out for it. Google is trying to dislodge legacy on-premises installations from Microsoft and IBM while fending of SaaS solutions from Microsoft, IBM, Zoho, Mindtouch and the list goes on.

Dave Girouard, Google Enterprise President, states that while Google spent 2007 and 2008 debating the benefits of the cloud, the release of Microsoft and IBM products validated the market. EWeek.com quotes Girouard as saying, “We now have all major competitors in our industry in full agreement that the cloud is worth going to. We view this as a good thing. If you have all of the major vendors suggesting you look at the cloud, the consideration of our solutions is going to rise dramatically.”

For his part, Ron Markezich, corporate vice president of Microsoft Online Services, thinks that there is room for everyone in the cloud because customer needs vary by perspective. Said Markezich to EWeek.com, “Customers are all in different situations. Whether a customer wants to go 100 percent to the cloud or if they want to go to the cloud in a measured approach in a period of years, we want to make sure we can bet on Microsoft to serve their needs. No one else has credible services that are adopted by some of the larger companies in the world.”

Microsoft’s counter to Google Apps is Microsoft’s ® Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS). It includes Microsoft ® Exchange Online with Microsoft ® Exchange Hosted Filtering, Microsoft ® SharePoint Online, Microsoft ® Office Communications Online and Microsoft ® Office Living Meeting. Microsoft also offers the Business Productivity Online Deskless Worker Suite (which includes Exchange Online Deskless Worker for email, calendars and global address lists, antivirus and anti-spam filters) and Microsoft ® Outlook Web Access Light (for access to company email) for companies with either tighter budgets or those in need of lower cost email and collaboration software. Sharepoint Online Deskless Worker provides easy access to SharePoint portals, team sites and search functionality.

The standard version of BPOS costs $1 user per month or $120 per user per year while BPOS Deskless Worker Suite is $4 per user per month or $36 per user per year. Users may also license single apps as stand-alone services from $2 to $5 per user per month, which serves as a departure from Google’s one-price-for-the-year GAPE package.

The same code base is used by Microsoft for its BPOS package, on-premises versions of Exchange and SharePoint, thus making legacy customers’ transition into the cloud easier should they decide to migrate to BPOS. Microsoft thinks that this increases the likelihood that customers will remain with Microsoft rather than switching to Google Apps or IBM Lotus.

At Lotusphere 2008, IBM offered a hint at its cloud computing goals with Bluehouse, a SaaS extranet targeted toward small- to mid-size business. The product evolved as LotusLive Engage, a general business collaboration solution with social networking capabilities from IBM’s LotusLive Connections suite, at Lotusphere 2009. In the later half of 2009, the company sought to fill the void left open by the absence of email, by introducing the company’s hosted email solution LotusLive iNotes. iNotes costs $3 per user per month and $36 per user per year. Additionally, IBM offers LotusLive Connections, a hosted social networking solution, as well as the aforementioned LotusLive Engage.

Vice president of online collaboration for IBM Sean Pouelly told EWeek.com that IBM is banking on companies using email to adopt their social networking services saying, “It’s unusual that they just buy one of the services.” Currently over 18 million paid seats use hosted versions of IBM’s Lotus software.

IBM’s efforts in the cloud began to really get attention when the company scored Panasonic as a customer late last year. In its first year of implementing LotusLive iNotes, the consumer electronics maker plans on migrating over 100,000 users from Lotus Notes, Exchange and Panasonic’s proprietary email solution to LotusLive.

When it comes down to it, customers have different reasons for choosing Google, Microsoft or IBM. All three companies have major plans for 2010, and each company has a competitive edge. For more information regarding Cloud Computing please visit Nubifer.com.

2010
03/25
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How Microsoft Windows 7 Changed the Game for Cloud Computing … and Signaled a Wave of Competition Between Microsoft, Google and Others.

On October 22 Microsoft released the successor to Windows Vista, Windows 7, and while excitement for the operating system mounted prior to its release, many are suggesting that its arrival is a sign of the end of computing on personal computers and the beginning of computing solely in the cloud. Existing cloud services like social networking, online games and web-based email are accessible through smart-phones, browsers or other client services, and because of the availability of these services Windows 7 is Microsoft’s fist operating system to include less features.

Although Windows is not in danger of extinction, cloud computing makes its operating systems less important. Other companies are following in Microsoft’s footsteps by launching products with fewer features than even Microsoft 7. In September, Microsoft opened a pair of data centers containing half a million servers between them and subsequently issued a new version of Windows for smart-phones. Perpetually ahead of the curve, Microsoft also launched a platform for developers, the highly publicized Azure, which allows them to write and run cloud services.

In addition to changing the game for Microsoft, the growth of cloud computing also heightens competition between the computer industry. Thus far, advancements in technology have pushed computing power in the opposite direction of central hubs (as seen in the shift from mainframes to minicomputers to PCs), while power is now being inverted back to the center in some ways, with less expensive and more powerful processors and faster networks. Basically, the cloud’s data centers are outsized public mainframes. While this is occurring, the PC is being pushed aside by more compact, wireless devices like netbooks and smart-phones.

The lessened importance of the PC enables companies like Apple, Google and IBM to fill in the gap caused my Microsoft’s former monopoly. There are currently hundreds of firms offering cloud services, and more by the day, but as The Economist points out, Microsoft, Google and Apple are in their own league. Each of the three companies has its own global network of data centers and plans on offering several services while also seeking to dominate the new field by developing new software or devices. The battle between Microsoft, Google and Apple sees each company trying to one-up each other. For example, Google’s free PC operating system, Chrome OS, shows Google’s attempt to catch up to Microsoft, while Microsoft’s recent operating system for smart-phones shows Microsoft’s attempt to catch up with the Apple iPhone as all as Google’s handset operating system, Android. Did you follow all of that?

Comparing Google, Microsoft and Apple

Professor Michael Cusamano of MIT’s Sloan School of Management recently told The Economist that while there are similarities between Google, Apple and Microsoft, they are each unique enough to carve out their own spot in the cloud because they approach the trend towards cloud computing in different ways.

Google is most well known for its search service as well as other web-based applications, and has recently began diversifying, launching Android for phones and Chrome OS. In this way, it can be said that Google has been a prototype for a cloud computing company since its inception in 1998. Google’s main source of revenue is advertising, with the company controlling over 75% of search-related ads in the States (and even more on a global scale). Additionally, Google is seeking to make money from selling services to companies, announcing in October that all 35,000 employees at the pest-control-to-parcel-delivery group Rentokil Initial will be using Google’s services.

While Microsoft is commonly associated with Microsoft Office and Windows, the company’s relations to cloud computing are not as distant as one might think. Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing, shows the company’s transition into the cloud, as does its web-based version of Office and the fact that Microsoft now offers many of its business software via online services. Microsoft smartly convinced Yahoo! to merge its search and a portion of its advertising business with Microsoft because consumers expect cloud services to be free, with everything paid for by ads.

As evidenced by the iPhone, the epitome of have-to-have-it, innovative bundles of hard- and software, Apple is largely known for its services outside the cloud. Online offering like the App Store, the iTunes store and MobileMe (a suite of online services), however, show that Apple’s hunger to get a piece of the cloud computing pie is growing by the day. Apple is also currently building what many have suggested is the world’s largest data center (worth a whopping $1 billion) in North Carolina.

While Apple, IBM and Microsoft previously battled for the PC in the late 1980s and early 1990s, cloud computing is an entirely different game. Why? Well, for starters, much of the cloud is based on open standards, making it easier for users to switch providers. Antitrust authorities will play into the rivalry between the companies, and so will other possible contenders, such as Amazon and Facebook, the world’s leading online retailer and social network, respectively (not to mention Zoho and a host of others). An interesting fact thrown to the debate on who will emerge victorious is the fact that all current major contenders in the cloud computing race are American, with Asian and European firms not yet showing up in cloud computing in any major way (although Nokia’s suite of online services, Ovi, is in beginning stages). Visit Nubifer.com for more information.

2010
01/19
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Launch of Azure

After months of media and technology buzz, Microsoft announced that Microsoft Azure, often described as “Windows in the Cloud,” would be launched on January 1, 2010. The software giant’s Internet-based cloud computing service is likely to alter the entire face of the ever-expanding cloud computing field.

Ray Ozzie, Microsoft chief software architect, revealed the official launch date for Microsoft Azure at the recent Microsoft Professional Developers Conference, held in Los Angeles. Known as an industry leader in selling packaged software like Windows operating systems and Office work programs, Microsoft is joining in on the increasing trend towards cloud computing by unveiling a program hosted on the Internet—or in the cloud.

Cloud computing is an attractive avenue for enterprise companies as well as individuals, as it eliminates the cost and time of buying, installing, updating and maintaining software on workplace machines by letting users and companies basically rent text, spreadsheet, calendar and other programs in the cloud on an as-needed basis. According to industry tracker Gartner, revenue from cloud computing will surpass 14 billion dollars annually by the end of 2013.

Speaking at the at the recent Microsoft Professional Developers Conference, Ozzie said that the first month of Windows Azure will be free of charge, with users being billed from February on. Ozzie described Windows Azure as part of a “three screens and a cloud” future, in which software is delivered across personal computers, televisions and phones connected by cloud-based services.

“Customers want choice and flexibility in how they develop and deploy applications,” explained Ozzie before continuing to say, “We’re moving into an era of solutions that are experienced by users across PCs, phones and the Web, and that are delivered from data centers we refer to as private clouds and public clouds.”

Due to advancements in the cloud made by competitors like Amazon and Google, Microsoft has been under the microscope to make the transition into offering cloud services as of late. Google, for example, has long since established Internet-based applications like its popular Web-hosted email service, Gmail, while Internet retail giant Amazon currently offers an online application platform called the Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2).

With the launch of Microsoft Azure, competition within the cloud computing field continues to expand, while the transition into the cloud for companies becomes more achievable. To see how Adopting Windows Azure could help your organization, visit Nubifer.com.

2010
01/04
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