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.

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.

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.

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.

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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Over the last year, I have read a number of discussions about the advantages of cloud computing. While many of the discussions center on the ability to scale, manage costs, and the intrinsic disaster recovery aspects as the primary advantages of virtualization there are other benefits as well. 

One of the benefits often overlooked is the data portability and remote access.   Here are links to two articles with good overviews of the portability topic: 

• In January 2008 Benn Konsynski, a chaired professor of business administration for information systems and operations management at Emory University said:
  • One of the biggest advantages is that a user may no longer have to be tethered to a traditional computer to use an application, or have to buy a version that’s specifically configured for a phone, PDA [personal digital assistant] or other device. It’s likely that at some point any device that can access the Internet will be able to run a cloud-based application. Application services are available, independent of the user devices and network interfaces.
• In October of 2008, Brandon Wybenga argued the key advantage of cloud computing was not scalability, but portability.

As the discussion continues, how important is portability to your decision?

A recent post by EDL Consulting comments on what kind of an edge the first movers in the web-based hosted software solutions will have in regards to the cloud computing market.  Will they have an edge or will they be swept up by larger companies with large existing client bases like Microsoft?

With the advantages of virtualization becoming more and more widely known, companies are jumping on the cloud bandwagon quickly.  Reuters has suggested that even those cloud companies that got on the bus early will still face fierce competition from larger companies that will come in later with huge databases of trusting customers.

While the post is focused on the Software as a Service aspect of cloud computing, I think that the discussion rings true among cloud computing hosting providers as well.  BlueLock has been doing infrastructure-as-a-service for two years now, before the big cloud boom hit.  Suffice it to say, we definitely feel that we were one of the first movers and shakers when it comes to managed cloud hosting, especially considering the fact that when we first started talking about the value of virtualization our prospects looked at us like we were crazy.  Crazy or not, BlueLock was built around the value of virtualizing IT infrastructure to shift capital expenses to a monthly operating expense that's a fraction of the cost (plus we could throw in virtual disaster recovery for almost a 3rd of what it would cost in a traditional model).  So maybe we were crazy, but the idea has caught on.

In terms of advantages and disadvantages of being a beginning mover and shaker in the cloud computing arena, we'd have to say that BlueLock has definitely found some advantages.  We've seen our competition try to add on cloud services to their traditional hosting services, and in many cases its a difficult transition.  How do you know what to tell your salespeople?  Sell cloud or sell traditional colocation?  The companies had worked for years building a business on traditional hosting services and then virtualization comes along and shakes everything up - its less expensive, there's more space and compute to work with at a fraction of the cost, etc etc.  Your margins and MRC start to decrease, but you need to keep up with the cloud competition.  Not only that, but you don't really specialize in virtualization, the traditional way was your thing.

Well at BlueLock, we started with virtualization and that's what our engineers specialize in so its a no brainer for us what we should sell and its a no brainer for us on how to provide the biggest bang for our prospect's buck.  As for the bigger companies cramping our style - the Rackspaces and GoGrid's of the world aren't really our direct competition anyway. 

We surely feel we've got an edge.

In his annual founder’s letter, Sergey Brin, reflects on the past, discusses the current state of Google as well as a glimpse of where he expects his firm to go in the coming years. Generally upbeat, he sees a stronger company emerging as the economy recovers:  He says:

Nonetheless, I am optimistic about the future, because I believe scarcity breeds clarity: it focuses minds, forcing people to think creatively and rise to the challenge.

Featured in his discussion of their product categories were comments about Google Apps, which leverage cloud computing and a future with more computing power for less. Brin says:

The benefits of web-based services, also known as cloud computing, are clear. There is no installation. All data is stored safely in a data center (no worries if your hard drive crashes). It can be accessed anytime; anywhere there is a working web browser…

Given the tremendous pace of technology, it is impossible to predict far into the future. However, I think the past decade tells us some things to expect in the next. Computers will be 100 times faster still and storage will be 100 times cheaper.

While the full featured BlueLock Cloud offers a very different level of service for our clients, the core benefit, as outlined by Brin is very similar, no infrastructure costs, built-in disaster recovery and remote access are the same, and we share his perspective on the accelerated adoption of cloud computing.   The advantages of the platforms allow people to do more with less, focusing their resources on innovation, not infrastructure.

Around the world business leaders are making plans to manage the impact of the pandemic crisis on their business.  Contingency plans look at all areas of business operations from HR (will employees be paid if there is a forced shutdown, will they be compelled to come to work if the business stays open?) to communications Issues, travel and work at home plans, and of course IT.

Some of the key discussion points in an IT contingency plan include:

• Web capability for communications
• Staffing issues
• Data Center operations (lights out operation, automated patching)
• Remote Access
• Security
• Help Desk operations
• PC support for employee personal computers
• Ensuring security of access and data while dealing with employee personal computers
• Video-conferencing
• Recovering from cascading emergencies (flu combined with other crisis hurricanes, terrorism, etc.)

While a major outbreak is going to have an impact on every business, companies with a disaster recovery strategy which includes cloud computing, will see much less impacted of the crisis. At BlueLock, our clients supported by redundant data centers in Salt Lake City and Indianapolis, have 24/7 access to their data and applications.

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The first Indy Cloud Users Meeting was a success by all measures.  With about 30+ attendees, zero pizza left at the end and intense cloud discussions that could have kept flowing for hours, I’d say it was quite the success.

What you missed:

Ed Saipetch of Network Storage, Inc. led the meeting with introductions and a brief discussion on what ICU is all about and where we want it to go from here.  So what is Indy Cloud Users?

1.    It’s a platform to provide Indy and the surrounding areas with a forum for discussing and transferring knowledge about cloud computing.
2.    It’s a way to keep members informed.  We want everyone to be on top of this technology, stay ahead of the curve to learn from the experiences of your colleagues and friends.
3.    Networking.  That one is easy.

ICU is really about the members and where the members want to take the group.  From the discussions last night it looks like we may have to ramp up the frequency of the meetings as well as incorporate the high level business aspects of cloud with the nitty-gritty technical stuff.  We’ve got people interested in both.  The question is, should we do separate meetings for the two or keep them together?  I see the value in doing it either way so please let us know what you think.

Then, Brian took off with “Breaking Down the Cloud.”  He touched on what cloud is and isn’t and who all can refer to themselves as cloud (since so many are).  Basically anything from SaaS, IaaS to PaaS can be cloud.  Brian also talked about where cloud is going: blended clouds.  It’s going to be about having different clouds from different providers for different things (test/dev, production, DR), and the catch is the technology that allows those clouds to talk.   rPath has done this and VMware is juicing up their products to make it easier.  He had lots to say but I won’t try to cram it all in…

Following Brian’s presentation we were engaged by lots of question and discussion.  Ken Roe let the questioning with an inquiry regarding how one can leverage the benefits of cloud with existing applications – ones that weren’t built for the cloud or even on modern technology.  Is that possible without changing your application?  We had some folks chime in and it seemed to come full circle in that really leveraging all the benefits of cloud would come back to having an application structured in such a way that allows for the vertical and horizontal scaling you desire.  This was a question that was by no means answered, but will be a great topic for future events.

Some of the other questions asked were related to these topics:

-    What’s the difference between utility computing and cloud computing?  Are these two different things, the same thing or a natural progression? (Robby Slaughter would argue that the difference is 95% marketing – what do you think?)
-    Performance monitoring
-    Cloud security
-    vMotion experiences
-    Disaster Recovery

We also had a great discussion about the use of Amazon’s cloud.  Two of the attendees who made the trip from Cincinnati built their application on Amazon about 2 years ago – before it was even called a cloud.  Mike Babineau and his colleague from ShareThis led the discussion and fielded lots of questions, especially surrounding security, a big issue for many cloud users.  Mike admitted that it does take a “leap of faith” in some ways but since their application which allows users to share content over the web via a small button does not necessarily house sensitive data such as transaction information, the firewall system that Amazon has set up is definitely sufficient for them.  They also spoke about failover, stating that since they use data centers across the globe they have never experienced any downtime and even when problems do occur the failover happens so quickly that a user doesn’t experience it.  Great insight guys and thanks for making the trip!

Ed Saipetch brought up a great suggestion about the cloud security topic that seems to have everyone engaged:  bringing in the guys from IndySec and having a joint meeting with ICU.  This would broaden the scope of knowledge regarding security and would hopefully provide both parties with greater insight specifically into cloud security.  What do you think?

If you missed the meeting last night we’re very sorry!  Our next meeting is scheduled to be for the second Wednesday in June (June 10) but we had some requests to move the date around.  If anything changes we’ll be sure to let everyone know!

ICU Organizers:
Ed Saipetch – Network Storage, Inc
Brian Wolff – BlueLock
Alicia Glick – BlueLock
Scott Archer – Vmware
Ryan Birk – Apparatus
Tweets: @bluelock and @indycloudusers