Attend Nimsoft's upcoming webcast (2 attendees will win an Amazon Kindle!) and get proven guidance that can boost your business’ chances for success in the cloud. Learn from three successful cloud computing service provider leaders (including BlueLock) who have already established successful cloud-based businesses. Get practical guidance based on the experiences of our expert panelists.  Find out what worked and what didn’t, and discover some of the key challenges and opportunities that service providers face when moving into cloud computing.

While some service providers tend to look at cloud computing as a threat, the reality is that the cloud is opening up myriad opportunities for businesses. Each of the panelists has taken a fundamentally different approach to cloud offerings, based on their unique business objectives and opportunities. In this interactive webcast, you can ask questions and get specific guidance into the directions that make most sense for your business.

Our Service Provider Expert Panelists Are:

    * Dave Durkee, CEO, ENKI
    * John Qualls, President and CEO, BlueLock
    * Brian Ritchie, SVP and GM, Support and Managed Services Division, GlassHouse Technologies

Attend And Get Answers To These Questions:

    * Is cloud computing an opportunity or threat to your business?
    * Which kinds of service providers will be well-equipped to succeed in the cloud, which won’t, and why?
    * What are some of the best tips for service providers looking to embrace the cloud?
    * What traditional managed services can an MSP leverage in cloud environments?
    * What are some of the keys to making cloud services robust enough for clients’ high stakes business services?

BlueLock has been named to Nine Lives Media Inc.’s third-annual MSPmentor 100, a
distinguished research report identifying the world’s most progressive managed service providers.

“We are honored to be recognized by MSPmentor as one of the world’s most progressive managed service providers," said John Qualls, President and CEO, BlueLock. “We believe our selection is recognition of our continued company growth over the past year and further validates our business plan and the market’s need for different classes of managed IT and cloud hosting services. Three years of cloud experience has allowed us to deliver true cloud computing services that enable developers to Fortune 500 enterprises to deploy and operate their applications on a highly available and scalable platform that is tailored to the
needs of their apps.”

The free MSPmentor 100 report, available at www.MSPmentor.net, is based on data from MSPmentor’s global online survey, conducted October through December 2009. The MSPmentor 100 report recognizes managed service providers based on a range of revenue and management metrics.

Founded three years ago, BlueLock was one of the country’s first providers of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), enabling companies to provision and manage their technology infrastructures more efficiently and cost-effectively. Delivering pre-configured, secure and resilient virtual IT environments which scale ondemand,

“Despite the challenging economy, MSPmentor 100 companies generated more than $700 million in combined recurring revenue and managed services revenue, up 31 percent from the companies’ combined results in 2008,” said Joe Panettieri, editorial director, MSPmentor. “Our report also reveals how MSPs are already profiting from SaaS and cloud services.”

MSPmentor, produced by Nine Lives Media Inc., is the ultimate guide to managed services. MSPmentor features the industry’s top-ranked blog, research, Webcasts, and FastChat videos. It is the number one online media destination for managed service providers in the world.

If you've been following the most recent BlueLock blog posts, you know that a good number of the BlueLock team members returned to Indianapolis this week after spending last week in Las Vegas for the VMware Partner Exchange. With milestone achievements like winning the VMware Cloud Service Provider of the Year and the launch of the BlueLock CloudSuite, there was a ton of excitement.

Luckily for you, the BlueLock marketing team was well-equipped with their Flip video cameras and documented the adventure. For your viewing pleasure, I created a quick video montage, complete with Fat Boy Slim conference-esque soundtrack.

My favorite quote is near the end of the video when, after the VMware Partner of the Year award is announced, John Qualls (our CEO) is asked, "What are you going to do next?" John's Resopnse: 

"Do it again next year."

Adam Stone over at Software CEO wrote a very timely article compiling the opinions of several respected industry experts into 15 tips for understanding cloud computing. 
I thought Adam’s article highlighted several ways that BlueLock thinks about the cloud differently (or the same in some instances).  I plan to break the 15 tips down into three blog posts providing my perspective on each point he makes.

Tip #1:  Be Careful how you use the term. 

Adam’s point is that “cloud is not cloud is not cloud” – so it’s best to think about what you need most for your applications and then look for cloud computing service(s) that solve those specific needs.  For example, if you need a better CRM system – you’re probably looking for a SaaS (software as a service) application.  If your developers are spending way too much time writing code for functionality that is not core to your software package – you’re probably looking for a PaaS (platform as a service) – an opportunity to use someone else’s code to extend your core software’s functionality (billing comes to mind).  If your developers or infrastructure team are spending too much time managing failed servers, network or patching OS’, or if they can’t keep up with the growth of your very successful company – you’re probably looking for IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service).

Tip #2:  Make the Trendy Pitch. 

The din of people talking about Cloud Computing is deafening, even Dilbert has gotten into the act.  No doubt, your CEO and CFO have even been thinking about the proposed advantages of cloud computing and how they might help the business.  There are ways for almost every company to leverage cloud computing.  There are most likely servers or processes in your company that could be improved by a provider of SaaS, PaaS or IaaS, so take a look around, find a business need and explore ways that a cloud provider might be able to help cut costs and increase efficiencies - this should make your CEO and CFO happy.

Tip #3: Take One Step at a Time. 

One misconception/mistake that I see over and over again is that companies evaluate sending their most mission critical systems to the cloud first.  You should think about your IT environments and applications plotted on a graph of concentric circles with your most critical environments/applications in the middle.  As the number of users goes down or the criticality of the applications or the amount of attention an application receives from your IT staff goes down, move those applications to the outer circles.  The applications in the outer rings should be the ones that are evaluated for cloud first.  There’s less risk, less integration (maybe) and a higher chance for success with these environments.  We’ve built a very crude tool (that will be refined over time) to help you evaluate your applications and where they fit on the “circle of risk."

Tip #4: Keep Your Eyes Wide Open. 

I agree, due diligence on the provider is key.  As the gold rush continues, there are many companies rushing into the space to claim their fortune.  Many will come up with sand and dirt when they realize there’s a huge difference between running a data center and running an entire infrastructure with many, many clients.  In addition to all the points that Adam made about the questions to ask, my experience tells me that time in the market as a cloud provider (not just a co-location provider) is one of the best indicators of stability and staying power.  You’ll want to choose a provider with minimum of three years of success as a cloud hosting provider.  It was around the 2-year mark when we really started to hit our stride around managing the scale of our cloud environment, stabilized implementation and refined the management of our capital effectively, proving we could run a profitable business in the cloud.

Tip #5:  Make sure to get live support.

We’re a live support kind of company – because it’s relationships with our clients that matter, however, I would take a slightly different angle on this.  This is where I’m back to the criticality of the environments/applications.  If you’ve chosen a system that is less critical to the business, it might be perfectly acceptable to use chat, email or other means to get support from your cloud vendor.  Of course, they have to be responsive, that goes without saying.  But if you’ve chosen wisely, you may not need to talk to someone in order to get your problem resolved.  One caveat of course is that if you’re going to run mission critical applications in the cloud – then live support is a must.

So that’s the first five points around understanding cloud computing – stay tuned for the next five.  If you’re interested in learning more about how we do things at BlueLock  - send us a note here.

Coming in future posts:

Tip #6:  To avoid vendor lock-in, stick to open standards
Tip #7:  Location, location, location
Tip #8:  Consider using a middleman
Tip #9:  Monitoring uptime isn’t enough, you need an action plan
Tip #10:  A clause may look good in the contract, but be useless in the real world
Tip #11:  Set financial penalties for downtime
Tip #12:  It takes time to see ROI on SaaS development
Tip #13:  Savings are not in the cloud, but in headcount
Tip #14:  Follow the cloud into new markets
Tip #15:  Let the cloud lead you to new innovations

*If you’d like to read the original post by Adam Stone go here.

BlueLock is poised to double workforce and revenue in 2010 as cloud computing continues to gain traction.

In 2009, BlueLock's workforce more than doubled and there are no plans to slow down.  Spurred by the growth of the cloud computing industry and combined with the continued need for IT expertise and infrastructure, BlueLock looks to capitalize on the growing shift toward cloud computing from on-premise IT with current and future product offerings, as well as bringing on top engineering, developer and sales talent in 2010.
 
"We are thrilled about BlueLock's growth over the past year and our recruitment of top talent, growing from eight employees in 2008 to 22 in 2009." said John Qualls, CEO, BlueLock. "We believe our 2009 growth is a testament to our innovative products and services and further validates our business plan and the market's demand for Infrastructure-as-a-Service. As cloud computing continues to grow, companies will continue to demand different classes of service for different tasks and BlueLock is perfectly positioned to make even bigger strides in 2010."

Topping Interactive Data Corp's (IDC) technology predictions for 2010, cloud computing is forecasted to see strong growth in the coming years. A recent IDC report found that the current worldwide revenue for IT cloud computing services stands at $17.4 billion, a number that will jump to $44.2 billion by 2013.

Interested in working for BlueLock? Contact us at jobs at bluelock.com

By 2015, ABI Research predicts that more than 240 million business customers will be leveraging cloud computing services through mobile devices, reaching revenues of $5.2 billion.  According to ABI Research, an evolving IT supply chain, business adoption of cloud platforms for IT services, and greater business use of handsets and smartphones are creating new revenue streams for both IT and mobile suppliers serving businesses.

ABI Research practice director Dan Shey said, "The immediate opportunity lies in leveraging cloud platforms to develop mobile applications, particularly mobile applications that leverage enterprise data. Directly and indirectly, Microsoft and Google are major players both influencing and enabling these developments. Mobile operators have the most to gain through offers of cloud services to the enterprise leveraging their networks, application enablement, and data centers."

I can think of many applications we use at BlueLock that would be great to be able to access on a mobile device.  We've also begun to see a number of clients asking for mobile cloud options.  I can definitely see this trend taking hold in a big way.  What do you think?

If you have questions about BlueLock's enterprise cloud computing options, please contact us.

Link to the original article.

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.

Security and compliance are hot topics in the cloud computing industry. PCI DSS is a set of requirements that, when adhered to, increase the level of security for payment cards transactions.

To become compliant with the PCI DSS, an organization must meet all of the security requirements and maybe even go through a formal auditing process, depending on the number of transactions processed each year. While these requirements may seem inconvenient,

But, can organizations really become PCI-compliant in a cloud computing hosting environment?

In searching for an answer to this question it's importnat to ask, "What kind of cloud computing service?" Many security experts have discussed the topic on panels and in the blogs, like this one. Most of my experience is with infrastrucutre as a service.

Just in working on small business virtualization projects with clients, here at BlueLock, I've had get educated on PCI DSS. The tricky thing for cloud computing hosting companies is that with standards like PCI, there are both application-side and infrastructure-side requirements for compliance.

So with IaaS, where does the responsiblity reside?

Ultimately, it's the responsibility of the company that is doing the payment card processing. The scope of PCI DSS goes beyond what infrastructure as a service companies provide. So, if a cloud computing service provider claims that they are "PCI compliant," it's important to remember that you must still assess your own organization outside of what the service provider manages.

At BlueLock, we use tools from our partners at Shavlik to run regular compliance scans of our clients' environments. If it's important for your organization to be in compliance with PCI DSS, then it's important for you to audit yourself regularly.

To find out more about PCI DSS, visit the PCI Security Standards Council website.

While reading a cool blog post on cloud computing communities by Reuven Cohen, creator of the Elastic Vapor blog, I was reminded of some of the reasons I love getting together with like-minded people:

Communities are fun.
What's could be better than hanging out with a bunch of folks with with common interests to eat, drink, and toss around ideas? At meetups, you're bound to meet at least a handful of interesting and inspiring people. It's fun to see things from new perspectives, challenge others, and allow others to challenge you.

Two (or more!) heads are better than one.
Simply put, there's power in numbers. Collaborating, brainstorming, and innovating are all natural byproducts of getting smart people toegther in the same space -- whether that space is physical or virtual. Platforms like Wordpress and Joomla are excellent examples of the power of collaboration, and how communities can work together to create something much more powerful than could have come from an individual or team.

Communities are everywhere
Whether cloud computing communities congregate in person -- like at CloudCamp -- or online, finding cloud computing communities is simple.

Don't know where to start? You might find these helpful:

• Cloud Futures Community for cloud computing services
• IMB's Cloud Computing Community
• BlueLock's community for its vCloud Express users

Hope to meet you out there.

Recently, a few articles have popped up with the accusation that cloud computing vendors and providers are ignoring IT pros' concerns.

Carl Brooks recently quoted: "The results of a new Forrester Research survey show that while awareness around cloud computing has grown by leaps and bounds, the concerns of potential adopters remain the same. But apparently vendors and cloud promoters didn't get the memo."

A Forrester survey entitled "State Of Emerging SMB Hardware: 2009 To 2010" questioned around 3,000 business respondents. Roughly 51% of those respondents named uncertainty about security in cloud environments the biggest obstacle to adoption.

The concepts of cloud computing and its many benefits and advantages are becoming widespread knowledge, but the accusation is that cloud computing service providers are not doing enough to alleviate concerns around security, namely by providing specifics about how they are securing data.

Let's be frank here, BlueLock is not going to give away our "secret sauce" about how exactly we go about securing our clients' data, but I can tell you that we are completely open with the security vendors we have chosen (IBM ISS, CheckPoint, and we've got a great relationship with Shavlik Technologies).

We have clients with PCI compliance needs, clients with HIPAA requirements and more.  While we aren't out shouting about our security, rest assured, we wouldn't have three successful years of providing IaaS cloud computing behind our belts without it.  Not with our clients, that's for sure.

One of the biggest reasons most providers are not out there telling security stories is because no one wants to make their data center a target.  Clients with high security needs won't talk about their story either, for the most part, because they don't want people to know where their data is or how its being protected (because that would make them a target too).  So just because providers aren't making a bunch of noise about cloud security doesn't mean we aren't doing anything about it.  Every decision BlueLock makes when it comes to our cloud architecture comes down to a question of security.  If our clients aren't secure they aren't happy and we are no longer providing a valuable service as their trusted partner.

If you've got questions about how we can secure your data, contact our sales team at info@bluelock.com.

Read about the secure and compliant environment we built for Right On Interactive here.

To see a full list of BlueLock's technology partners, go here.

Read Carl Brooks' original post.

This November 27th (Black) Friday most certainly means two things: crowded malls and crowded e-commerce sites.  Every year we hear about sites not being able to handle the rush of shoppers at their online venue.  Will the growth in cloud computing during 2009 make a difference in this year's Black Friday news?  I sure hope for my own shopping pleasure, companies like Sears, Saks and Kohl's learn from their lack of website performance on last year's "Cyber Black Friday."

In 2008, Black Friday Looked Grey Without Cloud Coverage.  There was news of e-commerce sites going down or simply being way too slow.  Nothing is more annoying to the online shopper (who shops on line for convenience, ease and quickness) than a slow website - except for a downed website... and in today's world, with cloud computing services that are there to make life for ecommerce sites so much easier come Black Friday with advantages like scalability, elasticity and pay-per-use, there's almost no excuse for an under performing website. 

Cloud computing is economical for any site that experiences peaks and valleys b/c the company no longer  has to purchase loads of IT capital that can meet that peak (which can easily be exceeded on a day like Black Friday anyway) all year long.  The site simply puts their website in the cloud and pays for whatever traffic they experience as they go which can amount to immense IT savings.  What e-commerce site would hesitate to experience the vast advantages of cloud computing? 

Guess we'll find out come Cyber Black Friday...

Rackspace recently released their growth numbers for their cloud computing services.  They are obviously very big and only hoping to get bigger like many other large clouds.  Large cloud hosting providers are great at what they do – offer cheap cloud hosting solutions with no frills and no customization.  When I say no customization, we’re talking McDonald’s cloud computing, not Burger King.

On the other hand, for those clients who don’t want McDonald’s cloud hosting, a big cloud computing company might not be better.  Let’s face it; Seth Godin really has something going in “Small is the New Big.”  Bigger companies tend to have lots of set processes, procedures, guidelines, systems and such that can get in the way of one big thing – the creation of client-specific solutions for even the most complex projects.  But there are some slightly smaller cloud hosting providers (with just as much stability, maybe more) who can better focus on the specific client's need to create just the right cloud solution.

A client with those complex needs for their important data and processing like higher up-time, disaster recovery, compliance and security, can’t go with the McDonald’s approach.  They need something more like Burger King.  Obviously Burger King doesn't offer cloud computing, but BlueLock does.  And we’re able to create cloud computing environments for our clients that fill their specific needs, not just the needs a "big" cloud computing company assumes they have.  So, if you’re an enterprise client, with big ole’ security and service requirements, you can still enjoy the wonderful benefits of cloud computing.  You just might not be able to do it with a huge cloud computing company.  But that’s why we’re here. 

Cloud computing providers like BlueLock know that it would make a lot of sense to pay for software the same way you bill your clients – per-usage or pay-as-you-go.  This pricing model is reflective of the utility-based model of cloud computing, the hottest trend in IT since the personal computer some say, where clients are charged each month based on the amount of infrastructure, power, compute, etc that they use.  So what about the software licenses?  Yes, cloud computing providers also lump that sum into the monthly cost, but it doesn’t cover the full upfront charge for the software because that wouldn’t be fair to the client.  One of the biggest benefits of cloud computing is the clients ability to pay only as they go, with no upfront capital costs, and in a good world that means they don't have to lay out costs for the software either.

Federal agencies who are now taking on the role of cloud service provider and other cloud service providers themselves are beginning to ask software vendors to price their products in a pay-per-use model so it makes more financial sense for them.  The current license agreement requires service providers to outlay the money upfront for the enterprise license. In a cloud model that means the provider has to take on all of the risk by paying the upfront cost. 

Do you think this is fair?  Would it make sense and be feasible for software providers to charge for their software on a per-usage monthly basis?

There’s a lot going on in cloud computing technology – lots of buzz marketing, companies popping up left and right, etc.  But overall, the technology continues to improve and enterprises are finding new ways to make the cloud better every day.  Among the hundreds and thousands of headlines you can find online about cloud computing, there have been some major advancements in cloud computing that everyone should be aware of.

Standardization.  This has been a topic of discussion since the beginning of 2009, but a couple weeks ago various standards organizations met in Washington, DC to devise a cloud computing strategy to get the related technologies working together (read: standardized) for better interoperability.

Cloud operating systems.  Google has been working on Chrome, Windows Azure is working on their own OS and VMware released their vSphere operating system for enterprise clients.  Overall, these three developments will prove as very important in the evolution of cloud computing.

Hybrid Clouds. BMC made an agreement with Amazon making it possible for IT departments to create self-service portals where internal developers and business units can request virtualized IT resources delivered from their own data centers or Amazon EC2 that can be configured and provisioned in minutes.

APIs. Rackspace has exposed its Cloud Servers API, and more cloud APIs are sure to follow.  Cloud APIs simplify processes which helps to speed up the development of new services and the creation of hybrid clouds by providing an interface between corporate data centers and public cloud services.

Personally, I think there’s no end in sight for more developments in cloud computing.  Discussions are transitioning from “when” to “how” in terms of implementation, showing that cloud adoption is on the rise.  As more companies begin to adopt it, more service providers will better hone their offerings to better the cloud market as a whole.  It will definitely be an exciting topic to follow.

The technology that makes cloud computing possible is virtualization.  The main objective in cloud computing is to improve resource utilization by sharing available resources to multiple on demand needs.  Virtualization abstracts the underlying resources such as the memory, storage, network so that multiple operating systems (Windows, Linux) can be run on a single physical system simultaneously.  This improves resource utilization – traditional servers utilize about 20% of its resources, whereas a virtual machine (these individual operating system instances we referred to above) uses an average of 80% of its resources.

The cloud is proving to be the future medium to deliver technology.  Today, cloud service companies are a dime a dozen – they’ve all spun up to capture some of the large cloud market.  The advantages of virtualization go beyond just resource utilization - virtualized servers consume less power, have lower cooling costs and require less space (all great things for the environment).  And virtualization is the underlying technology that allows for rapid provisioning, on demand resources, utility-based cost structure, and the reduction of capital expenditures.

To learn more about virtualization and cloud computing, click here.

BlueLock, a provider of cloud computing and managed IT services was featured in a July 23, 2009 Gartner report entitled Hype Cycle for Business Continuity Management, 2009 in the Cloud-Based Recovery Services section. 

The report features findings on the increasing costs and risks of business disruptions and how they continue to drive the importance of effective business continuity management operations for business and technology executives. BlueLock was featured as a cloud services company able to cost-effectively solve business continuity issues using cloud computing and virtualization technologies.

“BlueLock has worked hard over the years to build a cloud computing platform that enables businesses to easily and efficiently integrate a cost effective disaster recovery solution into their IT infrastructure,” said Pat O’Day, CTO of BlueLock.  “It’s nice to get this kind of recognition from a highly recognized and respected source such as Gartner.”

BlueLock’s disaster recovery solution is built on virtualized servers and uses virtualized storage.  The two solutions work together to provide rapid recovery and performance on demand enabling BlueLock to readily adjust to client needs and quickly provide production capacity should a disaster occur.   A couple of BlueLock’s local disaster recovery clients include Marian University and Wooden & McLaughlin, LLP.

“Using a combination of VMware and HP technology, we’re able to clone a bootable copy of a client’s production environment and move it hundreds of miles away to a disaster recovery site.  When they declare a disaster or want to test their recovery plan, we simply boot them into production.   You can’t do that without virtualization,” said O’Day.

1. It’s not all-or-nothing move, most will opt for a hybrid approach.
Cloud computing will not necessarily replace a company’s entire infrastructure or serve as a total outsourcing option for data center operations on-site.  Most companies will use the technology in addition to their resources, blending public and private clouds to maximize efficiencies and resources.  I would even argue that companies will begin to adopt different cloud providers for different business functions (i.e. test/dev vs. production environments) because of differing needs and requirements in addition to their on-site resources.

2. Workloads
Some argue that cloud computing is best used for pre-production workloads such as test/dev and storage rather than production.  I’m here to say that some providers are able to handle different workloads better than others.  For example, BlueLock offers 99.99% uptime in the cloud because our clients are enterprise-level companies with mission-critical production environment needs.  They can’t afford the downtime that would be threatened with a provider who can only promise 99.9% or 99.95% uptime.  But similarly, clients who only need test and development models don’t need to pay the premium for a 99.99% uptime cloud environment when they only require 99.9%.

3. One size doesn’t fit all in the cloud
Each company has its own needs and requirements when it comes to their computing environment.  A financial company cannot and should not use the same type of an environment a social media site does.  A cloud computing model or environment must be built to service the specific needs of that client.

4. It’s just a delivery model
Cloud computing isn’t a technology – it’s just a shift in the way the world does IT.  Cloud computing represents a combination of technologies such as SaaS, online storage, and grid or utility computing.

5. It’s for the big guys and the small
Many think cloud computing is just for the SMBs, but many large corporations have jumped on the bandwagon as well.  BlueLock has added on a number of large enterprise clients this year who are using the cloud because it makes the most business sense.  Outside of BlueLock, the market is seeing large companies consume a mix of cloud services – public, private and both.

6. Self-service
Self-service is one of the cornerstones of cloud infrastructure.  Some transactions just don’t require “people” to be there and the logical step was to remove that element in the service.  Therefore, the self-service aspect of cloud computing is a huge step in automation and cuts costs on both the buyer and seller sides of the hosting business.

7. Standardization
Cloud computing is highly touted for its ability to create efficiencies by cutting out the capital expenses and transferring those to lower operating expenses (subscription or pay-per-use model) and for its on-demand benefits.  But that’s not the big picture – cloud computing allows people all over the world to access, connect and work smarter, faster, better. 

It depends, but Gartner sure thinks it could get rid of a number of IT jobs.  The IDC predicts that worldwide IT spending on cloud services will grow almost threefold by 2012 to $42 billion (billion, not million).  Gartner also thinks that cloud computing is going to be as influential as e-business has been.

IT professionals may start to feel like they need to be on guard.  Virtualization, possible outsourcing, automation, hosted applications and utility computing have been threatening IT jobs, and now cloud computing comes along and poses a threat of its own (or so many think).  How is an IT professional to manage this crazy world of constantly changing technology?

Well, haven’t they been doing that all along?  If you aren’t staying up to date with new technologies and constantly finding ways to better your organization in terms of efficiency then why are you an IT professional?  A large-scale shift towards anything in the world of IT takes a while.  It will be at least a decade until a full-fledged shift towards cloud computing takes place anyway.  However, it’s making noise little by little for now and it’s in any IT professional’s best interest to stay on top of the emerging trend in technology.

Better yet, cloud computing isn’t totally replacing an IT department, especially not at this point.  Gartner analyst Ben Pring says, “For now, I look at software as a service and cloud computing as an extension of the company’s network, not a replacement.”  So for now, cloud computing might actually be creating new jobs because someone has to know about the infrastructure and handle planning and any problems that may arise.  Not only will companies need cloud and virtualization experts in-house, but cloud providers themselves will be hiring as well.  BlueLock has already hired two IT professionals this month (just following the hiring of two others a couple months ago).

Get virtualized and stay on top of your IT game.  And hey, if you’re an IT professional with virtualization experience, check out our job openings!

Cloud computing providers differ in two main ways: people and control.  No two cloud services are alike for that very reason and people and control are the two variables that differentiate cloud computing providers from one another.

The definition of cloud computing varies everywhere, but some main characteristics of “the cloud” are: virtualization, capacity on demand, shared resources and subscription-based pricing.  If you fit that bill you’re a cloud, but which segmentation of cloud?

It's either:

SaaS (Software as a Service) – The web-facing software that users interact with (i.e. SalesForce or Google Apps)
PaaS (Platform as a Service) – a platform that helps utilize cloud resources (i.e. RightScale or rPath)
Or IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) – the actual infrastructure behind the cloud, the virtualized servers and network (i.e. BlueLock, GoGrid or your internal cloud)

For purposes of this post, we’re going to focus on Infrastructure as a Service (makes sense because that’s what we’re experts at).  From here, there are also a few different type of IaaS clouds (surprise, surprise!) and their characteristics, to make things just a little more interesting.  Here they are:

Private internal cloud:
-    Limited Capacity
-    Expensive
-    Highly Secure
-    Enterprise Features
-    Self Managed

Public utility cloud
-    Limitless Capacity
-    Lower cost
-    Self Managed (DIY)
-    No/DIY SLA
-    No/DIY Security

Full-service public cloud
-    Large Capacity
-    Fully Managed
-    Customized Security
-    Enterprise Features
-    Enterprise Services
-    SLA

Back to IaaS cloud differentiation – again, all about people and control.  First, you have to decide how much control of the infrastructure you want, can manage or more importantly, can afford.  Then take a look at the other components that will affect your costs in the cloud (some of these you may already have):

-    Hardware & software
-    Licenses
-    People
-    Place

If you’re looking at a do-it-yourself platform like Amazon EC2, you’ll have to purchase your own people and they’ve have to monitor, control and manage the infrastructure.  With this option you’ve got a lot more control, but a much higher TCO – because those people are going to cost you lots of money.  But if you don’t have the people, or you want them to focus on something else, like your core business (i.e. your software solution) instead of the infrastructure then a trusted full-service cloud option like BlueLock makes a lot more sense and could save you about $50,000 a year. 

How’s that even possible?  When you purchase a BlueLock solution, you’re not only purchasing the infrastructure and place to house that infrastructure, you’re purchasing the people and expertise behind it – meaning less employee costs for you (or more beneficial employee costs).  Some would argue you lose a little control because your people, your team isn’t the one working on the infrastructure, but others think that a partner like BlueLock is just an extension of their own team – and a better use of their IT budget at that.  Take Projetech for instance – watch this video and you’ll see that they really see BlueLock as an extension of their company not just another vendor, and that’s the way we like to think about it too. 

The advantages of cloud computing include making IT more flexible, efficient and easier to use.  While the key benefits of cloud computing are the ability to pay as you go or pay per use, capacity on demand and rapid provisioning, some may say that the current lack of interoperability is a detriment to the growing cloud computing industry.  Many are asking for a set of standards that let cloud networks talk and work together.

The talks of interoperability open a can of worms for those companies who aren’t exactly “excited” about allowing that kind of technology to be incorporated into their offerings.  The main thing that cloud interoperability creates is an environment where vendor lock-in is basically obsolete.  If your clouds can talk – say your BlueLock, Amazon and Skytap environments – then there’s no reason that everything would have to say at the same space forever.  If you all of the sudden decided that BlueLock was perfect for your production environment and Skytap was all you needed for test/dev, you could just have your Amazon stuff “talk” to your other environments and just move everything to those two, no longer requiring any engagement with Amazon.  That is, in a perfect interoperable world.  So what that means is that you’re no longer locked in at Amazon, or any other firm.  This is perfect for a client, but not particularly for the vendor who doesn’t want to risk losing you or simply losing out on a chunk of money they’re already getting.

So where will the cloud computing industry go?  Ultimately, I believe that for anything to succeed you must follow what the users/buyers want and therefore we’ll see more and more interoperability technologies emerge.  Earlier this year, BlueLock partnered with rPath in a webinar focused on blending clouds with the rPath Management Console (formerly called the rBuilder) and in the webinar we demoed movement between Amazon EC2 and the BlueLock Cloud.  So I think the technology is getting there – at least there are some smart people out there working on it.

What exactly is cloud interoperability? John Brodkin recently wrote a post in Network World on cloud interoperability and discussed some of the goals on the subject:

• Moving virtual machines and workloads from one cloud compute service to another
• Single sign-on for users who access multiple cloud services
• Ability to deploy and provision resources from multiple cloud services with a single management tool
• Letting one application span multiple cloud services (such as a storage service from one cloud provider and compute capacity from another)
• Allowing data exchange between clouds
• Letting a private cloud application seamlessly obtain resources from a public cloud when excess capacity is needed

I think what rPath is working towards with their Management Console is addressing many of these things and in time we’ll see more and more of what “the people want.”