flexibility, security, & possibly reduced capital expenditure…

By Jon Schackmuth

Savvy business owners looking to get in the cloud are looking for flexibility, security and reduced cost.

The underlying question is:  Can small and medium sized businesses find what they are looking for in the cloud at a price they can afford?

Let’s start with flexibility in the cloud.  Simply put, this is what the cloud does best.  When the marketplace changes and we all know it does, the cloud allows business owners to turn the dial up or down as needed.  As an example, if a business jumps from 1,000 hits to 50,000 hits on their website and it’s positioned at a cloud hosting company like BlueLock, running on virtual machines, they can call the 24/7/365 operations staff and spin up more virtual servers – scalability on demand.  Conversely, if traffic slows in six months, simply turn the dial down and pay for the services being utilized – the beauty of metered usage…

Now that we have established that the cloud is flexible, the true objection of the cloud must be security.  Security is paramount when it comes to companies like BlueLock.  If in doubt, schedule a visit and see the layers of security BlueLock has to offer.  BlueLock’s privately owned building is made of poured concrete with a steel and concrete roof.  The actual servers are secured behind six levels of security and are accessed on a need-to-know basis. - TOUGH.

The use of Check Point firewalls and SAS 70 certification is the gold standard in the IT world and BlueLock utilizes both to protect its clients.  Ask yourself:  Where are my servers stored and who has access to them?  What if your servers crashed today?  What is your disaster recovery plan and how long could your servers be down before you start losing one customer?  What is the value of that customer?  These questions may be hard to answer, but the results could save your livelihood.  BlueLock has all of them answered for you, 24/7/365.

At this point, if I haven’t given you enough to think about with flexibility & security, you are probably in the mindset that it’s too costly!  Consider the amount you pay for your infrastructure.  Excessive CAPEX (capital expenditure) can bankrupt a company faster than a lack of customers.  What does it cost to build your own data center plus a back up site and then maintain it at the level that allows you to sleep at night?
 
Depending on the situation, the business may be a start-up or they may be upgrading existing servers. If you are a start-up, what do a full time IT employees cost?  If you build for today and you hit the home run you planned for, your company may be crippled.  If you spend too much CAPEX on IT infrastructure, you may not have enough left over for marketing and sales generating programs.  Once the original hardware purchase has been made, switching to outsourcing and OPEX (operating expenditure) is sometimes a difficult decision.   At some point, enough is enough when it comes to excessive CAPEX - you may need to go in a new direction and outsource – you may need to put your business in the cloud.

Having been a small business owner in the past, I can attest to each of these topics.  Flexibility is paramount in any business, security is critical when clients trust you with their personal data, and cost overruns will bankrupt even the well-informed business owner.  Having choices in the cloud is something that hasn’t been available in the past… Until now.

Fresh off center stage at VMware Partner Exchange 2010, BlueLock introduced its latest surprise, BlueLock CloudSuite.  After years of offering a robust enterprise-level service, businesses can now have the flexibility and price competitiveness of the newly introduced Bluelock vCloud Express.  For those who want managed services with varying levels of scale, security, and performance - choose between Virtual Cloud Professional and Virtual Cloud Enterprise.  A business that requires onsite control of their own isolated cloud can try the Virtual Private Cloud, you own it and BlueLock manages it.

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

In my last post, I tackled tips 1-5.  This week I’d like to take a look at the next five tips Adam Stone referred to in regards to "Making sense of the cloud: 15 tips for software CEOs" and provide you with the BlueLock perspective on what companies looking to migrate to cloud computing should be thinking about.

Tip #6:  To Avoid vendor Lock-in, stick to open standards. 
This one makes a lot of sense to me – in the end, you need to make sure that whatever you put in the cloud you can get back easily and intact.  While some may argue that deploying VMware technology locks you into VMware’s virtualization platform, I would argue that VMware is the defacto standard for virtualization technology for the enterprise, by virtue of their large market share.  Deploying VMware gives clients a lot of flexibility to move that server to another VMware host if they wish to move.  We even have cases where companies wish to protect themselves from something happening to BlueLock as a cloud provider.  In that instance, we’re replicating the entire virtual machines to a neutral third party, Iron Mountain.  If a triggering event were to occur, the company simply contacts Iron Mountain and receives immediate access to the virtual machines, which can immediately be loaded on servers running VMware.  That’s just one straight-forward example of how “portable” the environment is as a result of running in a VM ware-based virtualization platform.

Tip #7:  Location, Location, Location. 
Yes, indeed, it’s difficult to bend the laws of physics and the speed of light.  This tip talks about two real issues – the first is latency and the second deals with the laws that govern the location where the data center sits, in both cases, BlueLock has engineered solutions to address our client’s specific challenges.   We have clients that need to have the data closer to them than our data centers in Indianapolis, IN or in Salt Lake City, UT for speed or data privacy issues.  For these clients, we introduced our version of a private data center called The BlueLock Box in October 2007.  This private cloud solution entails installing an HP C3000 blade chassis with redundant SAN shelves behind the client’s firewall.  This solution provides them with the same benefits of BlueLock’s public cloud such as fault tolerance and scalability, but puts the data closer to them for speed and/or privacy issues. 

Tip #8:  Consider using a middleman. 
I agree with Adam – there is a huge opportunity for cloud brokers or companies that have expertise in helping clients make thoughtful decisions about what can and/or should go into the cloud and then to actually help architect and deliver the cloud solution.  We’ve worked closely with several partners who have trusted advisor relationships with large fortune 1000 clients that have chosen BlueLock as their cloud solution.  In fact, we’ve been asked to present next week in VMware’s Partner Exchange keynote on the topic of how partners can work with a cloud providers to deliver real value to their clients.  I will be sharing the stage with Carl Eschenbach, EVP of Worldwide Field Operations and Casey Watson, VP Business Development for Apparatus to talk about how BlueLock and Apparatus have built a sizable business delivering cloud integration services for large clients.

Tip #9:  Monitoring uptime isn’t enough, you need an action plan. 
We couldn’t agree more with Adam on this point.  From day one, we’ve had a resolution-based 99.99% uptime SLA in place for our clients.  This means that not only will we respond quickly to the issue, but we’ll promise resolution of that issue.  On top of that, we’ve also patented a portal that we call “the VITAL signs portal” that provides our clients with an overall view of the health of their environment, as well as an ability to drill into each aspect of their environment, to see what’s actually happening.  Finally, we have also built capabilities in the portal to send alerts and alarms when something goes wrong or when the environment has reached a pre-determined limit on things like CPU, RAM and storage.   If those measures aren’t enough, we’ve also built tailored metrics for some clients that wish to monitor additional key metrics in their environment.

Tip #10:  A clause may look good in the contract, but be useless in the real World.  Adam’s tip in this area covered a “useless” escrow agreement.  In tip number six, I shared how we’ve put an escrow agreement in place that can be tested and actually works.  Having said that, I agree that empty legal promises are not the way to make sure you’re protected.  Testing the system is the best way to insure what’s being set aside actually works.  In addition to the escrow agreement, we also have numerous disaster recovery clients that have performed successful tests of our geographic failover disaster recovery service.  In the end, you want the “promise” in writing, but then you want to do a test to make sure it performs as expected.  Reminds me of an old Reaganism – “trust but verify”.

Next week, I’ll take us down the homestretch and walk through the final five tips for migrating successfully to the cloud. 

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.

  Support - Done Well

The word 'support' has become cringe-worthy, much like 'Vista' or 'Millennium Edition.' Opinions seem to fall on one side or the other of a distinct dividing line - no vendor's 'support' is merely adequate these days. It's either phenomenal or terrible.

It's crazy to think that vendors strive for an utter lack of excellence. Still, many end users report just such an attitude in their communications with support personnel. Too often, customer support calls are considered unavoidable nuisances in an otherwise productive day. Of course, no one would ever admit they feel that way. But the attitude is pervasive, and it is all too easy for customers to detect, whether in voice inflection during phone calls or while reading hastily prepared e-mail responses. Worse still is getting no response at all.

BlueLock works very diligently to avoid falling into that trap. Working the front lines for a VMware hosting provider is a unique opportunity. Customers can contact us via e-mail or by telephone and all sorts of queries come in which keeps things interesting. Much of our work is generated automatically by our monitoring system. It's important for BlueLock Support personnel to be able to juggle several roles each day and we employ several tools that make it easier to provide top-level service. 

Don't Hesitate, Educate!

We understand that Cloud Computing is a fairly new concept, so one of the primary roles that we perform on the support desk is education. It takes time to become familiar with virtual servers, online disk expansions, and balloon drivers. At BlueLock, we can help make such concepts more clear - and it's as easy as calling the Support Desk.

The most popular topic for education at the BlueLock Support Desk is snapshots. Proper use of snapshots can make an administrator's job much easier. In a nutshell, each virtual machine on our environment is comprised of a file - that's right, the entire server is essentially a file running on a host system. Snapshots serve basically as restore points for those files. This is useful mainly when making major configuration changes or installing new software. When a snapshot is created, what really happens is that a 'change file' is generated. All subsequents changes to the virtual server are written to the change file. When testing is complete, the snapshot must be either committed or reverted. Committing the snapshot merges it with the original server file. This happens on the fly with no interruptions to service. Reverting essentially destroys the change file and returns the server to its state before the snapshot was taken.

The primary drawback of snapshots is that they tend to grow very quickly. Thus, BlueLock has a retention policy of 24-48 hours during which the snapshot must be committed or reverted.

VMware virtual servers are unique entities, especially when backing them up. Backups at BlueLock work much differently than with standard, physical hardware. We perform a combination of snapshots, disk-to-disk and tape backups to protect customer data. The current system is complex enough for its own blog posting, so I'll cover that in more detail at a later date.

BlueLock provided a cloud computing solution to Marian University as their aging hardware began putting a toll on IT efficiency within the organization.  Marian University needed the comfort of a virtual disaster recovery solution, greater uptime and better computing capabilities.  BlueLock's private cloud solution was able to meet those goals with virtualization storage, copmute stability and flexible growth capabilities without a large upfront investment.

With the BlueLock Box, essentially a private cloud solution, Marian replicates their systems from their LeftHand SAN to BlueLock's LeftHand SAN, allowing them to "talk" to each other in cases when Marian University needs more compute or storage space.  Watch this video to hear more about Marian's success with BlueLock.

Because we needed another "top" list, I'd love to go through David Linthicum's latest list, "Top 5 Cloud Computing Predictions for 2010."

Prediction #1: The rise of cloud computing standards

The whole theme of standards and interoperability was a big topic in 2009, but those discussions were very conceptual, and not really actionable.  Some organizations waited on the wayside before adopting a cloud computing solution because standards and interoperability would prevent them from experiencing vendor lock-in. On that note, some have said that BlueLock was a bad name choice because it has a connotation that we would "lock" our clients in.  I like to think that BlueLock would make someone think of security, but I guess not.  However, our cloud uses VMware virtualization technology, so you can take your VMware stuff and take it wherever you like (as long as it stays VMware) if you decide you aren't a big fan of us.  No vendor-lockin here.  Back to topic - I can already tell from listening in on some strategic meetings here that interoperability will take on a large role this year for us.  I can only guess that we aren't the only cloud computing provider with that on our mind.

Prediction #2: First Major Cloud Computing Outages

This one is only a matter of time.  Stuff happens in the cloud.  The cloud still involves real people and of course, real technology.  Although outages will happen, your provider should make sure that there is a sufficient backup plan in order that will help alleviate those pains.  And of course, the second a "big" provider has a "big" mishap, all aim will go to the cloud.  However, Linthicum reminds us, "Despite the outages, cloud computing providers will maintain an uptime record that far exceeds that of most on-premise systems, but you won't hear about that in the technology press."

Prediction #3: Microsoft will be relevant in the cloud

Most businesses run Microsoft, so to say that Microsoft will not become a larger cloud player would be silly.  Now that they've finally got going on the cloud front, we'll see just how much of an impact they'll make, but we're sure to see them make some sort of splash.  However, "Google will continue to dominate small to medium-sized businesses, using its free ad-driven model for delivery of Google Docs and Gmail, with a few larger enterprise deals thrown in."

Prediction #4: Rapid Consolidation of Existing Providers

As cloud computing continues to grow, many of the successful providers will want to expand even more, which will involve buying up the smaller guys.  Hence, there will be less small providers and more big - consolidation.

Prediction #5: Rise of Cloud Computing Startups

As if 2009 didn't see enough, there will be more in 2010 as the technology leaves the stage of early adoption and reaches the masses.  As consolidation occurs (see prediction #4), market value will increase and more VC-backed startups will sprout up.  Think you've seen a lot of "as a services" this year?  It won't be the end of it.

Read David's original post here.

Do you have a prediction for the cloud in 2010?

A recent survey of business leaders, conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit and commissioned by Accenture, revealed what those IT and business leaders are discussing in their closed-door budget meetings.  The results hint at one thing when it comes to IT: strategy. 

These IT and business leaders are the same people who worked to slash their IT expenses in 2009.  They may now be looking at IT as a strategic tool to reduce other business expenses, increase revenues and provide other kinds of value to the business.  Will this strategy correlate to the top IT strategies for 2010?

Accenture’s research shows that strategic areas for IT spending in 2010 will include server virtualization and consolidation, business analytics and intelligence, and more customer self-service e-business automation projects.  These are all good steps towards building a lean mean fighting IT machine.

Many are faithful that 2010 will bring about a recovery.  Most companies are approaching 2010 with conservative optimism in light of that "faith."  With lean IT that does its job, many companies could be in a good position to ride that recovery fruitfully.

What is your company planning to do in 2010 to make IT work better and harder?

Is your company planning to bring virtualization and/or cloud computing into their IT mix?

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.

By now everyone has heard about the T-Mobile Sidekick crash in one of Danger’s (a Microsoft subsidiary) cloud computing environments.  Just like every time Gmail goes down, there is a wide and broad brush of FUD painted across the cloud computing canvas. 

Stephen Foskett recently wrote a blog post that talks about the shocking “bubblegum and baling wire” approach that some companies take when delivering cloud computing storage.  I couldn’t agree with him more.  There are some hokey things going on in the world of cloud storage, otherwise these crashes wouldn’t happen and James Urquart wouldn’t be questioning the need for malpractice safeguards in cloud computing.

As the title of this blog post implies, this type of data loss that occurred at Microsoft is more common than many would admit.  The difference is that most times it’s not in a public cloud and it doesn’t affect thousands of people.  Why does it happen?  It happens because moving parts break and because human beings are involved.  Now, just because there are breaking parts and humans, that doesn’t mean there must be a disaster or data loss.  The question is really about whether your business is willing to pay for what it takes to insure that the data is protected or in the case of Microsoft Danger, take the extra step of providing a path to copying the data to another instance.  Data loss can be prevented; it’s just a matter of who’s willing to pay for it.  It would be wild speculation on my part to say what actually happened in the MS Danger data center - but what I can say with much confidence that an economic decision was at the heart of the loss. 

How do I know that?  Because at BlueLock we take data loss very seriously, so we have engineered redundancy into our cloud architecture and that kind of protection comes with a cost.  Some prospects choose to pay for it (we call them clients) and some don’t (we call them “lost deals”).  Go here to learn more about how we back our data up.   More often than not, the prospects that choose not to pay the cost do so because the data they are trying to protect is not worth the cost that I’m proposing to keep it safe.  Of course the converse is also true, our clients that accept the cost, do so because when they see all of  the engineering and services bundled into the price, the cost is in balance with the risk of the data loss.   

The bottom line…

Just as I discussed in a previous post about the TCO of an Infrastructure, there are many costs associated with protecting data and insuring that failing hardware or humans don’t take you down.  The bottom line is really about the risk of loss and a careful cost/benefit analysis of paying to protect the data….or not.  If you’d like help completing that analysis, send me a note or give me a call.  That’s what we do every day for companies just like yours.

Reference post by Stephen Fosket

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. 

BlueLock serves its clients by providing the people, expertise and IT infrastructure in a world-class, SAS 70 certified data center. The company provides Virtual Cloud Computing through Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) where clients subscribe monthly to just the right amount of computing, storage and bandwidth capacity needed today with the ability to grow “on demand” in the future. Their unique IT environments are ideal for Web-facing software applications (also known as software as a service) and IT environments that require high availability and the ability to expand and contract dynamically for production or disaster recovery.  Our rapid growth earned BlueLock the accolade of one of 50 Indiana “Companies to Watch” in 2009 by the Indiana Economic Development Corporation. BlueLock, a Collina Ventures company, is privately-held and headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Position Summary
BlueLock is looking for a Controller. This role will be vital to the Finance and Administration team and is being added due to explosive growth. 

The Controller would report directly to the Chief Financial Officer. This position is responsible for a variety of accounting, finance and treasury activities. Specific responsibilities will include directing the monthly reporting and daily accounting activities, budgeting, forecasting and planning of the company performance. This is a key position and the individual must have high energy, strong work ethic and experience in a fast paced entrepreneurial environment.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities
Oversee all aspects of the Company’s accounting functions. Some of these duties include general accounting, operational accounting, accounts payable, accounts receivable, taxes, internal controls and reconciliations.

Ideal Personal Profile:
To perform the job successfully, an individual should demonstrate the following competencies to perform the essential functions of this position.This position requires a bachelor’s degree preferably in accounting or finance, and 4 – 8 years of related accounting and financial experience.  Strong understanding of accounting and finance principles is required.  A CPA, MBA or other advance degree would be preferred.

Company Culture
If you’re a motivated self-starter that shares our commitment to building a world-class organization, you might be the right person for BlueLock. We believe that each employee who joins our staff is important to the success of our company, and that each and every employee makes a difference.  The key to our success lies in the hard work, dedication and commitment of our employees, whose accomplishments we recognize with personal acknowledgement, competitive compensation, excellent benefits, and opportunities for personal and professional growth and advancement.  We are committed to attracting new employees as we grow as a company, but believe that the key to our long-term success is the retention of current employees

The above statements are intended to describe the general nature of a level of work performed by people assigned to this classification.  They are not intended to be construed as an exhaustive list of all responsibilities, duties and skills required of employees so classified.  Management retains the discretion to add to or change the duties of the position at any time.

If you want to join one of Indiana’s best employment opportunities, please send your resume to Brian Modiano, CFO bmodiano@bluelock.com

With all of this hoopla about how awful cloud computing is because of the Microsoft/T-Mobile data loss incident, I’d say cloud computing isn’t just getting Sidekicked, its getting a round-house to the gut.  And I don’t know that all of the generalizations about the cloud (and how good or bad it is) are necessarily fair or accurate…

Yesterday I saw this status update on my Facebook Newsfeed (among many other similar updates who had experienced the same problem). 


It’s quite obvious users are not happy about their losses, nor can they be happy with cloud computing at this point.  This post in particular sheds no light of hope for the poor unfortunate Sidekick users like Lindsey who are out of luck with no access to their contacts or other services on their phones.  T-Mobile just published an official apology regarding the server error at Danger (a subsidiary of Microsoft) saying that the users may never see their precious data again.

And this begs the never-end question as to whether or not you can actually rely on cloud computing.

My answer – you get what you pay for, and what you pay for is the SLA.  If your data is sensitive and/or important, it’s not smart to use a cloud that has an SLA of only 99.9% (or less, or none) and no data recovery or data backup options.  If you don’t want to get Sidekicked like T-Mobile did, take a better look at what you’re storing in the cloud, what that means for the SLA and disaster recovery you need and what kind of people (and how much of their time) you need to run your cloud.

Not all clouds are alike – some are managed and some are DIY – some have high SLA’s like BlueLock (99.99% uptime), some have low SLAs and some are just dependent on the engineering your team is able to do. 

There is reason to trust cloud computing, but you can only trust your cloud if you’ve done your due diligence and made the right choices along the way.

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.

 

North Carolina based Consonus announced a cloud computing solution designed for businesses that have rigorous uptime requirements but don’t have the capital or time to build additional capacity themselves.  The Consonus Virtual Infrastructure Service (VIS) is hosted and managed in a fully-redundant and secure SAS 70 Type II data center and features an integrated disaster recovery solution.  Data center and managed service provider Consonus has partnered with Infrastructure-as-a-service provider BlueLock to offer the new VIS program.


BlueLock has been providing infrastructure as a service as a VMware hosting partner since 2006.  We're very excited to work with Consonus and help them add on to their service portfolio.

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.

There are a million reasons to go green these days and economic pressure to do so (or to hold back).  So here comes a great reason to go green in your data center (or data center provider): enter, cloud computing.  Enterprise IT accounts for up to 40% of a company’s energy requirements.  Cutting back in that area could lead to a huge decrease in your organizations “carbon footprint.”

According to Forrester, over 40% of people in IT departments believe energy efficiency and equipment recycling are important factors to consider (go Earth!) and about 65% believe that reduction of energy-related operating costs is the driving factor surrounding the implementation of green IT. 

In the traditional data center, large and small you’ve got servers requiring massive amounts of cooling power and electricity to keep them running properly.  More importantly, those servers are running at low utilization levels (20% or lower) but still require full power to cool them.  What’s that mean?  Lots of wasted energy, basically.  You’ve got redundant hardware, memory, network devices and power supplies to keep everything chugging along.  So how do we make this situation better?

MODERNIZE!  It’s all about cloud computing and virtualization.  And what’s it do?  Reduces the number of servers you need (i.e. reduces the amount of space, electricity & cooling required as well) or gets rid of almost all of your in-house data center requirements if you so decide to outsource everything (most people would keep some of their stuff in-house, and that’s recommended for the most part anyway).  And that’s a great step towards decreasing you energy needs and dependency, making your office green.

Lots of companies think going green sounds great, and trendy – same with their thoughts on cloud computing (very trendy and sounds pretty cool), but it’s not about being green, trendy or cool – it’s about saving money (and Mother Earth at the same time).  Virtualization allows you to partition physical hardware into multiple logical “boxes” each running on its own operating system and network connectivity in a “sandbox.”  Additional standby servers are redundant, thanks to the rapid provisioning capabilities in the cloud and best of all, you can host more application with less servers.  Higher utilization with lower costs!

With a cloud computing solution like BlueLock’s you can cut your infrastructure costs by $50,000 a year or more and disaster recovery, another added bonus, becomes just a fraction of the cost than in traditional DR environments (savings are usually about 40%). 

So what are you waiting for?  Go green and cut your IT costs.

In a time when companies are already looking for steps to reduce costs and overhead related to IT, (an obviously imperative business function) the economic outlook is calling for even more of a reality check.  Companies are going to have to do much more than simply shave costs by consolidating their applications and databases; they’ll have to focus on the infrastructure that supports those things as well.  Part of being financially savvy in the IT area means you must be continuously engaged in spending your IT dollars in the most effective ways.  Infrastructure is a great place to start that trend. 

Most organizations spend about 60-80% of their IT budget on maintain existing infrastructure.  So get rid of that.  One of the biggest advantages of cloud computing is that you don’t have to maintain the physical hardware related to the infrastructure. 

Not only that, but you get a pay-as-you-go, utility-based cost structure that transfers all of your infrastructure costs to operating rather than capital expenses.

Our clients are continually finding savings and cost benefits related to their switch to the cloud.  Take for instance, Marian University (formerly Marian College) whose aging infrastructure needed refreshed, they had no DR plan because of tight budgets and their SAN leases were coming due.  With no plan for their storage and compute moving forward, they were stuck in a rut.  BlueLock was able to create a private cloud (the BlueLock Box) located at their own office that communicates with the BlueLock Cloud for fail-over and excess compute when necessary and was even able to offer a state-of-the-art virtual disaster recovery plan at a fraction of the cost, something they weren’t even planning to be able to afford until later that year.  Talk about impressing your CFO! 

Another circumstance where a company was able to save big bucks on IT infrastructure was when Right On Interactive (ROI) chose to come to BlueLock.  ROI was a new company at the time, facing lots of high growth.  They either had to build their own SAS 70 compliant data center or outsource the work.  Building a facility of that nature is highly cost-prohibitive.  ROI decided to outsource their IT infrastructure and head to BlueLock.  After saving lots of money they were able to focus their smart IT people on maximizing their software product rather than dealing with infrastructure all day.

At BlueLock, we’ve got lots of stories like this…cloud computing makes perfect sense when you need to shave off costs.  Between the cost of the hardware and licenses, the warehouse to house the infrastructure and the people to manage it, IT surely isn’t cheap.  You can shave off a huge chunk of those costs with a full-service cloud computing solution.  We’ve got hundreds of clients already doing it.

Read the Marian University Case Study.

Read the Right On Interactive Case Study.

Early in May, BlueLock's video using LEGO bricks to explain virtualization and cloud computing went viral (we've got another LEGO video too, on virtual disaster recovery).  Our friends over at Cantaloupe TV wrote a nice little piece on how the video caught on. 


John Qualls, our President and CEO is now a cloud video sensation.  Sometimes it just takes something simple (and even juvenile) like LEGO bricks to explain complex ideas.  Have any other questions about virtual cloud computing or virtual disaster recovery and how it can lower your capital IT expenses?  Contact us or visit our site.

In recent weeks there are more and more conversations about the potential impact of the Pandemic Crisis on communities, schools and businesses.    In a recent post, Rich Miller presents a collection of resources written specifically for data centers.

Do you have a pandemic operating plan?  What happens to your business if a significant portion of your IT department is affected by the flu?  Just as you would plan for any other impending disaster, the World Health Organization is suggesting organizations activate their pandemic preparation plans.  Do you have one?   As you formulate your plans, the IT Pandemic Planning Checklist, created by Scott McPherson, CIO, Florida House of Representatives can help you get started. 

Interested in disaster recovery? Click here.

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In the last few months we have been working on a series of cloud computing case studies, documenting projects with clients like Wooden McLaughlin Law, WebLink and Marian College move some or their entire infrastructure to an environment comprised of virtual servers.  While each business and their applications presented unique challenges, there are several consistent themes which run through the cases studies: When they turn to BlueLock we worry about their infrastructure, so they don’t have to.  We manage the equipment, insure there is enough capacity available when they need it, configure the software, balance loads, and free them to work on their core product or service.

 In a recent post, Bob Warfield includes many of these same elements in his list of "10 Things You Don’t Need to Do In the Clouds."   His list includes:

1.    De-duping and backup;
2.    Server power consumption;
3.    Little iron vs. big iron ( what size server)
4.    MIPs ( how to make your system run faster)
5.    Bandwidth costs
6.    Load balancing;
7.    Hardware monitoring;
8.    Creating redundant data center;
9.    Configuring complex software;
10.  Engineering time spent on keeping the lights on.

While I am not sure I agree with his assessment that the cloud will completely replace traditional servers the way word processors and laser printers killed typewriters, liquid paper, and Linotype machines I do agree this business model will significantly reduce headaches for more and more companies in the years to come.