Advantages Of Virtualization

Cloud Computing in the College Classroom

Wednesday, August 18, 2010 by Brant Howell

Recently, BlueLock’s Brandon Jeffress and I visited Anderson University in Anderson, Indiana to take a look at how cloud computing is being used, or could be used, in the classroom environment. Jeffress, alum of Anderson, arranged for us to meet with Professor Charles Koontz, head of the Information Technology department there. After a tour of the facilities, we sat down with Professor Koontz to discuss the role of virtualization in modern college IT training.

You can’t open a news feed today without reading something about cloud computing, virtualization, or infrastructure as a service (IaaS), so Brandon and I were surprised to learn that these topics are all but absent from the modern college IT major’s curriculum. Professor Koontz explained that colleges follow the guidelines of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) which sets standards for the curriculum of IT majors in order to ensure that graduates possess the appropriate body of knowledge upon entering the working world. Cloud computing, it seems, has simply exploded onto the business scene so quickly that education has not been able to keep up. Curriculum changes take time, and so it is left up to the proactive student to engage with these expanding fields through their own research and internships.

Brandon and I weren’t satisfied with that. Even for the most proactive students, internships and independent exploration cannot compare to the engagement one gets with a project under the direction of a professor. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way to introduce students to virtualization through a short classroom tutorial, allowing them to interact with the topics they were reading about in the news through actual hands-on experience?

Professor Koontz suggested that the IT major’s senior capstone class might be a great place to start. He invited Brandon to come and teach a day’s class on Cloud Computing, the advantages of cloud hosting, and his role at BlueLock this fall. Brandon agreed that even an introductory level class might really help to give the students some clarity around the whirlwind of topics referred to as “cloud,” including: Platform as a Service (PaaS), Infrastructure as a Service(IaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS).

Additionally, Brandon suggested that the advantages of cloud computing could work in the students advantage when it comes to getting hands-on experience in managing environments. Before virtualization, it would have been impossible for an individual student to practice managing their own multiple-server environment. Even just three servers would have cost thousands of dollars in years past. But now, with virtualization, it takes just a few minutes to spin up three new VMs. If a college were to leverage virtualization in its classroom, students could manage their own multi-server environment in the cloud with ease. The student could control everything from creation of the VMs to their retirement, giving them great experience in one of the hottest fields in IT.

Professor Koontz believes such a program would be a great addition to a student’s education and would be willing to experiment with such a program at Anderson. He also recommended we investigate other local universities, including Indiana University, IUPUI, Ball State, Purdue University, and The University of Indianapolis. Together these schools could work to build a standard curriculum and pool their resources to implement this short tutorial series which might give Indiana’s recent graduates a leg up as they step out of the classroom and into a very “cloudy” business world.

Does Virtualization = Cloud Computing or Vice Versa?

Tuesday, August 10, 2010 by Bob Roudebush

There's some debate these days about whether or not you must be utilizing virtualization technology to be considered a true cloud computing solution. Some argue that cloud computing is merely a paradigm and not a prescribed set of technologies; that while the advantages of virtualization are great you don't need virtualization to enjoy the advantages of cloud computing. Just like I'm not convinced that one model fits all when it comes to cloud computing, I'm also not convinced that you have to be running a workload in a virtual machine for it to be considered to be "in the cloud". At the core of it, cloud computing is just a sophisticated form of outsourcing all or a part of your IT infrastructure. Instead of building your own datacenter or bying your own systems and software and managing it all yourself, you get along using someone else's datacenter. Or someone else's systems and software. Or someone else's people.

So while Cloud Computing <> Virtualization, VMs are the way that companies like BlueLock make infrastructure as a service and cloud computing a reality. You can do managed hosting without virtualization, but the economies of scale and the ability to decouple compute capacity from the underlying hardware that virtualization provides are what makes infrastrure "convenient", "on-demand" and "elastic" - thereby making elevating it from mere managed hosting to "cloud hosting". John Considine wrote a post on CloudSwitch's blog title, "Do VMs Still Matter in the Cloud". It's worth reading to understand one perspective of what virtualization and cloud computing do probably deserve to be joined at the hip.

SaaS Infrastructure Choices

Tuesday, July 27, 2010 by Bob Roudebush

Last week I attended Softletter's SaaS University in Washington, D.C. It was a great event aimed at helping SaaS companies learn how to better market, sell and deliver their cloud computing solutions using the Software-as-a-Service model. BlueLock was asked to deliver a session on the infrastructure choices that SaaS companies face when deciding how to host their application.

The numbers from the 2010 Softletter SaaS Survey revealed that SaaS companies have many infrastructure choices to make, from highly virtualized (Cloud) server farms to highly managed service systems and many variants in between. My session analyzed the choices available to SaaS providers and and gave some realistic numbers, checklists, and scenarios that hopefully helped them make the best choice for their operations and peace of mind. Infrastructure As A Service offerings can be a great benefits to SaaS companies in that they can help them move opex expenses to capex expenses, lower their overall costs, align their expenses with revenues, improve their speed-to-market and provide a competitive advantage.

Here's a link to the PPT and the presentation on SlideShare.

HPC - High(er) Performance Computing

Friday, July 16, 2010 by John Ellis

Recently the swell folks at The Register commented on AWS' latest cluster computing initiative centered around High Performance Computing. In a nutshell this differs from other EC2 instances by providing dedicated servers with two 2.93 GHz, quad-core Xeon X5570s and 23 GB of memory attached to a 10Gb switching layer. Previously you didn't have dedicated hardware... you floated in a pool of resources, hoping that today would be a good day. While the resulting performance gains from dedicated hardware may be significant over the floating-in-the-sea approach, in the end you are just getting a higher performance infrastructure and not a high performance infrastructure.

The annoncements and analysis made me chuckle a bit. For BlueLock to drop another slew of 144 GB blades into a chassis is standard operating procedure. Does that make us HPC as well? For us private clouds and dedicated hardware has always been the order of the day. I find it very telling that the decisions BlueLock made years ago are just now emerging as popular trends for Infrastructure as a Service today.

When evaluating managed IT hosting or cloud hosting providers, it's always good to look at performance not just in terms of "small," "medium" or "large." It's not even how much compute or memory you throw at the problem. Network and filesystem I/O (especially for cloud computing) is a huge factor in overall cluster performance, and one really needs to be at peace with your physical hardware to truly take advantage of your virtual solutions.

Breakout: The Costs of Traditional Computing

Tuesday, June 22, 2010 by Bob Roudebush

Many unfamiliar with Cloud Computing view it just a new flavor of colocation or traditional hosting solutions. The real advantage of Cloud Computing, especially when using an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offering which provides managed services as part of the solution, is that you're saving on more than just communications, power, cooling and facilities. You're moving hardware and (potentially) software costs to the service provider as well as the most expensive part, the staff-related costs.

What happens, then, to those IT professionals? Does the mass adoption of cloud computing mean that jobs will be eliminated? How are IT pros optimizing their time and talent to stay relevant in the new, cloud-dominated world? Matt Hunkler and Jake Robinson tackled this tough topic in a Whiteboard Wednesday two weeks ago. Check it out here.

Cloud computing could cost more than using your own systems | ZDNet
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/virtualization/cloud-computing-could-cost-more-than-using-your-own-systems/1862

Staff related costs often were 50% to 70% of the total cost over a period of three years. Cost of communications, power, cooling and facilities could add up to another 30% to 40% of the total. Hardware and software, when combined, usually represented somewhere between 20% and 25% of the costs.

Announcing the BlueLock vCloud Express Cloud Monkey Use Case Contest!

Wednesday, June 16, 2010 by Alicia Gaba

The BlueLock vCloud Express Cloud Monkeys Use Case contest begins today!

Former, current and new BlueLock vCloud Express Beta users will compete for these prizes:

The first ten submissions will receive a stuffed cloud monkey
The top five finalists will receive a FlipCam which they will use (and keep!) to create a recognition video for the application to compete for the Grand Prize - an Apple iPad!
The Grand Prize winner will receive the engraved Apple iPad!

Open for submissions by current, former and new Beta users, the contest runs from June 16 – September 6 and looks to surface the most innovative use cases of BlueLock’s vCloud Express.

During the 12-week contest, BlueLock vCloud Express developers enter by filling out a simple questionnaire on the BlueLock Web site between June 16 and July 7 2010 that includes a description of the BlueLock vCloud Express use case and why it deserves to win. Participants can promote their own use case through Twitter and other social media outlets. Submissions will be voted on by an open community of voters and judged by BlueLock and VMware on cloud applicability, creativity/innovation, time savings and cost savings to select the top five use cases. The first ten submissions will receive a BlueLock “Cloud Monkey” stuffed animal and the five finalists will receive FlipCams with the option to document their use cases in a two minute “Recognition Video.” Finalists who submit Recognition Videos will then be judged by BlueLock and VMware for the Grand Prize, with the winner receiving an engraved Apple iPad.

“The functionality of BlueLock vCloud Express has proven to be unique and of value to our clients, driving us to design some of the same features into our other solutions within BlueLock CloudSuite,” said Kim Graham Lee, Chief Marketing Officer, BlueLock. “We are excited to not only learn more about how developers have been using vCloud Express, but to also highlight the most unique and interesting use cases.”

“As a top VMware vCloud service provider partner, BlueLock has been able to help shape vCloud Express as it continues to demonstrate that they are ahead of the curve in understanding their clients’ needs in the evolving cloud computing space,” said Mathew Lodge, Senior Director-Cloud Product Marketing, VMware. “We are looking forward to learning about how beta users have taken advantage of the dynamic combination of the industry-leading VMware platform and BlueLock’s secure and reliable cloud hosting and infrastructure expertise.”

BlueLock vCloud Express is a reliable, on-demand, pay-as-you-go infrastructure solution that ensures compatibility with internal VMware environments and with VMware Virtualized™ services worldwide. The technology allows users to create virtual machines as needed and add compute capacity via an online interface. Users pay only for the compute and storage space they use. Since being selected by VMware as one of only five companies worldwide to offer vCloud Express and launching in September 2009, BlueLock has reached 1,100 beta users of the product.

Participants can be past, current or new BlueLock vCloud Express beta users and can submit more than one application. For additional contest details, visit www.bluelock.com.

On One Of The Hottest Memorial Day’s In History

Friday, June 4, 2010 by Jon Schackmuth

Track temperature was hovering around 120 degrees Fahrenheit, the crowd of almost 300,000 race fans were settled into their sets with stocked cooler chests, and on Memorial Day weekend, Americans did what they do best, they evoked their freedom of speech; they broke into a chant… U.S.A. - U.S.A. – U.S.A…

On one of the hottest Memorial Day’s in history, you could not pay me enough to leave the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, but for a fleeting moment I did think about work and how cool our server room is. When giving site tours to prospective clients and explaining the benefits of virtualization, I recalled stepping into the fully enclosed concrete room and getting hit with a blast of arctic air – man what a feeling. In a blink of an eye, all thoughts of work past by me at 224 mph, like a burst of light, as 33 Indy Cars roared through turn one.

Now that I am back in the office and out of the heat, I think back to Sunday and wonder how many business owners lost their servers on Memorial Day weekend due to lack of cooling. I have been in several prospective companies that have server rooms with little or no cooling and the concept of a server room is simply a new designation for an old broom closet. If your IT business plan does not call for raised floors, integrated connection of chillers, compressors, and air handlers, ask yourself this – Have I made the best investment in owning and operating my own equipment vs exploring the advantages of cloud computing? Ask yourself, when my service contract is up or my servers need upgrading, should I consider outsourcing to a VMware infrastructure company like BlueLock or make the financial investment on a total data center upgrade? These are not easy questions to answer and may involve stepping outside the comfort of what many of us have done for twenty of thirty years.

For more information on BlueLock, visit our website or call me directly at 888-402-1980 ex. 127

CloudCamp Nugget

Friday, June 4, 2010 by Bob Roudebush

I attended my first CloudCamp event last night as a BlueLock employee. I am thankful to have been about to participate in plenty of good discussions around cloud hosting, the advantages of virtualization and the benefits of cloud computing. During the Cloud Computing Security unconference session there were a lot of great ideas shared - one in particular from a CISSP (security) type who does security and compliance audits of companies.

If you're into IT security and compliance, you should really check out the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). They have a library of publications on a variety of topics - you can see them all here. You can narrow your search to specific topic areas like Computer Security, Information Technology or even Disaster Resilience. It's certainly worth bookmarking.

Throwback Thursday: Old world vs. The Cloud

Thursday, April 15, 2010 by Matt Hunckler

Do you remember how businesses handled their hosting needs five years ago -- the era before managed cloud hosting? Well, in this video, Jake and I do a little bit of a throwback to the dark ages to take a look at some of the advantages of virtualization and how far we've come.

More specifically, we look at the:

Hardware
Operating System
Platform
and Network

Here's how cloud technology has changed the game...

Application Scaling In The Cloud - Part III

Thursday, April 15, 2010 by Bob Roudebush

In this series of posts (see Part I and Part II), I'm looking at moving applications to the cloud and the scalability concerns around that. The interesting thing to notice is that these problems aren’t unique to cloud computing at all.

On one end of the spectrum, the promise of cloud computing and its expansive computing capacities has led customers to believe that simply moving their application to the cloud is going to solve all of these problems. On the other end, clients who have very important applications running on-premise are concerned that when they move their applications to the cloud they’ll have to share all that wonderful computational goodness with hundreds or thousands of other clients and their applications’ performance will suffer. Regardless of which perspective you may be coming from, there are two things to focus on when looking at moving to the cloud.

In the last post, I looked at the first issue - raw computing capacity. A second thing to consider is the application architecture itself. As Mr. Golden highlighted in the CIO.com article, one could even argue that this is more important than the scalability of the underlying cloud computing platform. The reason is that there is always a limit to the hardware (virtual or physical) that can be thrown at an application and a lot of applications aren’t even designed from the beginning to scale in this manner. With VMware a maximum of either 4 or 8 vCPUs (virtual CPUs) can be assigned to a VM depending on the version of ESX being used. There are even good reasons why arbitrarily assigning the max number of vCPUs to a VM isn’t the best course of action.

More importantly, if the application (and underlying OS) wasn’t built to support SMP and multi-threading, adding vCPUs will have no effect whatsoever. If scalability is a concern, ensure that all of the applications components can take advantage of a large number of CPUs and can address > 4GB of RAM. This is known as a “scale-up” model.

In highly scalable application deployments, though, a “scale-out” model is usually more appropriate. Applications that are designed to spread load across two or more hosts allow you to add compute capacity simply by adding additional servers. On the back-end, adding additional database servers and using horizontal scaling relational database tricks like database shards allow you to remedy DB bottlenecks without implementing huge SMP systems to accommodate query load. The added benefit of this “scale-out” approach is that you get higher availability of the application for free. You can take one application server offline for maintenance while not affecting the other servers in the application farm. In addition, if one application instance experiences a crash other users on other instances of the application continue to function normally.

In the on-premise, physical server world both the “scale-up” and “scale-out” approaches I’ve discussed was usually very costly. 4-way or 8-way servers with gobs and gobs of RAM are an expensive way to grow vertically and add performance and though smaller systems used as part of a horizontal scaling approach are less expensive initially, they add a whole new level of complexity and expense in terms of ongoing maintenance.   What’s more, during non-peak times all this compute infrastructure sat largely un(der)-utilized.

What is exciting about cloud computing IaaS – especially the 100% virtualized IaaS which BlueLock has built – is that this computing model is perfect for these kinds of scalability needs. For scale-up applications, clients can start small and grow into things. For scale-out applications, new VMs (running additional instances of the application) can be added and managed much more easily than they can in the on-premise world.

For more info on BlueLock or scaling your application in the cloud, contact us.

Is the Cloud Too Big for You?

Tuesday, March 30, 2010 by Katie LeGrand

Cloud computing has been getting a lot of media buzz lately. Words like virtualization, scalability, load balancing, and enterprise level solutions are hanging in the air. Sounds like something for big businesses, running huge databases with complex applications. How can cloud computing impact or be of value to the small business? Is cloud computing just for the big boys?

Absolutely not! Cloud computing is a dream come true for small business and start-ups. Small biz has some of the same IT issues as the big boys, and in some instances the need for cloud computing services is even more critical for small biz. Data loss could mean the death of your business. Security breaches might very well be the end of your enterprise. Controlling your cost structure is often a critical break-point.

First lets talk about scalability. What does this really mean for the small business? It means that you don't have to purchase and maintain excess capacity. The typical server utilizes about 20% of its resources. Can you afford any sort of capital investment that is only 20% utilized? Probably not. Why purchase a lot of computing fire power that you will not likely use? You can't afford the waste. Run your data and applications on a virtual machine, you will be utilizing on average 80% of the capacity you are paying for. If you think you are going to need greater capacity later, that's cool too. With Bluelock, you can scale up anytime you need to, for any increment you need, in hours, not weeks. Our cloud computing solutions allow you to respond to the real time demands of your business, lowering your investment risk, and giving you greater flexibility.

The flip side is also true--hit a dry patch in your business, or perhaps in response to expected seasonal fluctuations, you can scale down your capacity just as easily. No wasted investment. No capital commitment. No idle equipment. Total freedom in how much you use and when. In its essence, cloud computing offers a form of fiscal liquidity yielding a competitive advantage that your business just can't live without.

We do love a good disk expansion

Tuesday, January 19, 2010 by Greg Cripe

Having worked in IT for over 10 years, I've seen my share of ugliness. It generally has taken the form of botched configuration files or ill conceived program interfaces. Looking back, though, nothing could top the server hardware upgrade for sheer wretchedness. Coordinating the downtime necessary to start the upgrade required gargantuan effort and endless compromise. Finding the correct parts sent the technician through an endless maze of charts and arrays of compatibility. Performing the actual upgrade was at least interesting and sometimes fun. Praying for the server to power up without a hitch afterwards was not. And still, the job wasn't quite done. Little tweaks were needed here and there, then we had test to ensure the server was ready to reenter the world of the living. All told, a weekend was probably shot and a few gray hairs were earned in the process.

Welcome to the virtual world, where we have left most of that nonsense behind. Businesses can now rely on a well-trained team of engineers to build a thriving environment of servers, each capable of hosting dozens of virtual machines. It's not hard to tout the benefits of cloud computing. Just look at the ease of a disk expansion.

At BlueLock, we can turn around a non-system disk expansion request in minutes. When a client needs more space, the system administrators need only a few clicks to make it happen. No more downtime or worry about compatible parts. Even a system-disk (boot disk) expansion requires only a single reboot and a few extra minutes of work.

Having this kind of flexibility allows a client much more freedom in the planning process for a new server. The focus returns to the core function of the server rather than the hardware, which is Bluelock's concern. With full monitoring in place, our team of administrators and engineers strives to be proactive. A client may receive a call about a potential problem long before they would have noticed any performance degradation. It's about uptime and performance. And that's just the beginning.

The ease of expanding drive space barely scratches the surface of the benefits of working in the cloud. I plan to outline many of those benefits in subsequent posts. Communicating the advantages of virtualization is one of the easiest and most enjoyable jobs I've had since jumping into IT head-first a decade ago.

Our goals at BlueLock include staying in the vanguard of cloud hosting, so we work hard every day to set the bar higher. I hope this blog will help explain some of the nuances, many of the developments, and most of the benefits of life in the cloud.

Enterprise Computing in the Cloud

Sunday, January 17, 2010 by Alicia Gaba

So what is enterprise cloud computing? How is it so different from (regular) cloud computing?

Jill Tummler Singer explains that enterprise cloud computing is "a behind-the-firewalls use of commercial, Internet-based cloud technologies specifically focused on one company’s or one business environment’s computing needs."

It's a "a controlled, internal place that offers the rapid and flexible provisioning of compute power, storage, software, and security services to meet your mission’s demands. It combines the processes of a best in class ITIL organization with the agility of managed, global infrastructure to make your IT faster, better, cheaper, and safer. Enterprise cloud computing gives your business agility, survivability, sustainability, and security."

Many enterprises with highly secure data and strict up-time and performance needs feel that cloud computing is out of the question. Most of these companies questioning the abilities of cloud computing services are companies in the government, life sciences and financial services industries. Enterprise cloud computing is the answer for them. They need tailored, dedicated high performance environments to provide the benefits of cloud computing with the security and assurance of enterprise-class platforms.

BlueLock is a top VMware hosting provider - we use proven enterprise-class VMware virtualization technology to serve our clients no matter what industry or need level, but we are able to tailor and architect high performance, secure and compliant cloud computing environments specifically for our enterprise-level clients. BlueLock has been extremely successful serving clients in the government, life sciences and financial services, helping them to realize the advantages of cloud computing.

To learn more about BlueLock's enterprise cloud computing services contact us here.

SaaS Virtualization Innovation

Tuesday, December 22, 2009 by Matt Hunckler

SaaS virtualization is creating an ocean entrepreneurial opportunities, where small, nimble businesses can create real value by making creating more efficient ways of doing things.

One thing that James Urquhart points out in his Wisdom of Clouds blog post is that there is still a lot of opporutnity in the SaaS virtualization realm. Businesses that currently use enterprise apps need experts who can transition them to more robust and reliable SaaS apps. There is certainly plenty of room for experts like these to create value, while collecting strategic consulting and referral fees.

As more and more companies take on SaaS apps to manage their business processes, the need for consolidation will increase. Imagine the ability to pay for your campany's blogging platform, accounting system, email marketing platform, and CRM tool -- all on one bill. Now wouldn't that be nice? Urquart rightly points out that SaaS meter consolidatoin could craete a level of convenience for which some companies would be willing to pay.

It will be interesting to see how enrepreneurial companies take advantage of the small pockets of opoprtunity in the SaaS industry next year. It's hard to say which ideas will win, be you can be certain that speed and agility in deploying new business models will be key ingredients to success in SaaS virtualization innovation.

Advantages of Cloud Computing Meetups

Thursday, December 3, 2009 by Matt Hunckler

All schmoozing and business-card-swaping aside, there are some fantastic advantages of attending cloud computing conventions and expos. I've found meetups like Cloud Camps, ITEC, TechPoint Summits, and Cloud Users Groups to be a fuel source for both professional and personal growth.

Assimilation of knowledge through osmosis is simple.
There are usually tons of super-smart people at events like those listed above. Whether these people are cloud computing providers, vmware virtual server specialists, or others utilizing a cloud computing platform; just standing b and listening in on conversations can be a learning experience. Be curious, pay attention, and ask questions.

Networking -- the interpersonal relationships kind -- reaps rewards.
Meet some new people, nd expand your network. How can you help event attendees? I always make it a goal to make at least three connections that don't immediately benefit me in any way. While you should never help someone with the intent to gain something in return, the law of reciprocity always pays dividends.

Fluency increases competency.
The simple repetition of explaining the advantages of cloud computing has helped me build a certain level of confidence and competence around the benefits of virtualization, vmware hoted environments, and SaaS irtualization. Join in the conversation and learn to talk the talk. The act of speaking about cloud computing platforms, helps to organize thoughts, enhance comprehension, and vet new ideas.

Bottom line: get out of the office and learn somthing from somebody -- including yourself. Find the next cloud computing meetup in your area. Hope to see you there.

BlueLock Launches BlueLock vCloud Express Beta II Program

Wednesday, December 2, 2009 by Alicia Gaba

New integrated solution enables users to take advantage of a high availability,
truly scalable storage solution in the Cloud

(Indianapolis, IN – December 1, 2009) - Indianapolis-based BlueLock, provider of cloud computing and managed IT services, announces its second round of Beta testing with BlueLock vCloud Express Beta II. BlueLock was one of only five cloud computing hosting providers chosen by VMware to provide VMware vCloud Express services since its launch in September 2009.

BlueLock vCloud Express Beta II is a Compute-as-a-Service solution designed to support transient workloads by providing a high level of elasticity for faster turnaround time and future workload federation. BlueLock vCloud Express will compete with services such as Amazon EC2 and Windows Azure.

“BlueLock vCloud Express Beta I was an instant success,” said Pat O’Day, CTO, BlueLock. “We filled up our Beta I slots in less than two months. With the feedback we garnered from those early users we’ve been able to make some major changes and the offering will continue to get better as we prepare to launch the public offering early in 2010.”

BlueLock vCloud Express Beta II is a reliable, on-demand infrastructure solution that ensures compatibility with internal VMware environments and with VMware Virtualized™ services worldwide. The technology allows users to create virtual machines as needed and add compute capacity via an online interface. The beta services are currently free, but the public offering in the future will include a pay-as-you-go payment structure where users pay only for the compute and storage space they use.

BlueLock vCloud Express Beta II is available immediately. For additional information, visit http://vcloudexpress.bluelock.com.

Yes, Cloud Computing is Credible for Education.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009 by Alicia Gaba

What makes education different from any other business with hundreds or thousands of users? The economics are all the same, so why wouldn’t the education industry be able to benefit from the advantages of cloud computing like other organizations? A recent article in Campus Technology entitled, “Is Cloud Computing a Credible Solution for Education?” visits that subject.

Bruce Schneier points out that cloud computing is really nothing new. Hotmail and Gmail have been doing it for a long time; social networking sites, remote backup companies and remote email filtering companies have also been in on the game. Schneier says, “Any IT outsourcing—network infrastructure, security monitoring, remote hosting—is a form of cloud computing.”

Cloud Computing provides computer applications to users without the need to purchase, install or support those application. The software and data is hosted on a remote computer. Infrastructure-as-a-service providers such as BlueLock are able to provide substantial financial advantages as well as increased IT agility, improving collaboration and innovation within that organization. And we’ve done that for higher education organizations already.

Gartner Group blogger Thomas Bittman said this: "The Web, social software and cloud computing will definitely have an impact on enterprise IT--but the impact on our educational system will be astounding, and many in our educational system don't see it coming."

But the downside…

Schneier also cautioned that cloud computing forces reliance on a third party, which may not always be the best idea. Why? Because when the computer is outside your network, you’re not able to protect it with security systems like firewalls and IDSs. Not only that but you have to trust your vendor completely – its security, reliability, availability and business continuity.

That’s not a downside at BlueLock.

So yes, you’ll have to rely on us, a third party. But we install firewalls and IDSs and most likely take more security precautions than you are already taking. We are SAS 70 and PCI compliant. Not only that, but we provide SLA with promised uptimes of 99.99%, in case you’re worried about availability. As for business continuity, we’ve got that too, and at a fraction of the cost. You can click here to learn more about our virtual disaster recovery solutions. And most importantly, the trust issue. Our clients view us as a trusted advisor. We don’t want to be just another vendor; we want to be an extension of your organization, a partner. That’s our goal (and we tend to hit goals over here).

And when it comes right down to successes in the education industry, just click here to read our case study on Marian University. You could say they were more than pleased with what we were able to do for them.

Email Functions: The Big Cloud Consumer

Monday, November 16, 2009 by Alicia Gaba

A recent email industry survey shows how businesses are reacting to email infrastructure being migrated to the cloud. Osterman Research found that security-related email functions are dominating the software as a service market today and that the functions most likely to be outsourced in the future, if not already, include anti-spam, bulk email, anti-virus an anti-malware.

What factors are holding companies back from migrating to the cloud? Findings show that more companies haven’t migrated to the cloud because of privacy concerns, data retrieval concerns (will they be able to grab that data back once it’s in the cloud?), because of regulatory compliance issues and because some companies are just plain scared of losing control. However, upon a closer glance at cloud computing - a full-fledged look at what cloud hosting can do would show that cloud computing advantages include more choices, agility, control and protection than what a standard IT infrastructure environment can provide, which is why more than 20% of the users surveyed have outsourced their email functions to the cloud already.

Here are some of the results of the survey:

40% of companies surveyed are outsourcing some or part of their email infrastructure
Anti-spam (64%) and bulk email (46%) are being outsourced by most companies
Today:
- 20% of users are served by a SaaS solution
- 22% of email servers run as virtual servers
In two years:
- 38% of users will be served by a SaaS Solution
- 49% of email servers will run as virtual servers

I think the two year projections are somewhat low, but the general growth towards using cloud hosting for email functions and/or using virtual servers is evident. At BlueLock we’ve seen great success in migrating email to the cloud. For many companies it makes the most sense to get email off of their machines freeing up space for them internally and getting their IT people working on more strategic applications. Contact us today to learn more about migrating email to the cloud.

Read the original post about the survey.

My Favorite Virtualization Myths.

Wednesday, October 7, 2009 by Alicia Gaba

I'm sure you've heard a lot about the many advantages of virtualization, but what are the drawbacks? Can you believe everything you hear about the technology? Well, a recent post on Forbes dove into a number of virtualization myths, and debunked them.

Here are my favorites:

Virtualization is only for large companies.
False. Virtualization can be used in almost any company, as long as you have more than one server. In addition to workload consolidation, other benefits of virtualization include high availability, live migration, streamlined backups and fault tolerance – all of which can benefit any organization by simplifying maintenance and lowering infrastructure costs.

Virtualization is expensive.
Most likely false. Virtualization is somewhat expensive on the onset, but it will pay for itself. The cost savings come over time from using fewer servers, less power, cooling & operating system licensing and reduced maintenance. TIP: Do a ROI calculation from the beginning to see how much virtualization will really cost you.

Virtualization is not secure.
Any type of software can be found not secure. In every circumstance, virtualization included, it is always important to follow best practices for network, storage and operating system configurations to produce a secure environment. If your company has its own security requirements, it obviously smart to follow those as well. In short, security measures should be followed no matter what – virtualization is no less secure than any other technology.

Interested in learning more about virtualization? Read these other posts. Or contact us.

To read the full list of myths click here.

Are Private Clouds Just Another Form of “Server Hugging”?

Wednesday, August 12, 2009 by Brian Wolff

First things first, clouds can be anywhere. They aren’t just an external resource companies can tap into, cloud technology can be taken advantage of anywhere (i.e. inside the walls of your organization).

Private clouds exist and will continue to exist as the trend towards cloud computing continues. There are many organizations out there that can’t just up and move into a multi-tenant public cloud environment, but still want to reap the benefits of cloud computing. The only way to do this is by creating a private cloud, made possible with virtualization.

Companies are able to use the technologies and approaches associated with public clouds, just on a smaller scale, and still continue to own, operate and control their own IT infrastructure. Would some call this server-hugging? Of course. But at the same time, every organization has different needs and as stated before, they can’t just jump into a public cloud setting. Any IT infrastructure expert would probably tell those companies they’re doing the right thing. And some, like BlueLock, can even help to make that possible.

Definition of a private cloud.

For information about BlueLock’s private cloud solution, click here.