I will admit that "Cloud Computing" terminology is becoming confused. People are mixing together the concepts of commodity hardware datacenters, the benefits of virtualization and massively parallel systems into a blender and calling it a "cloud." The truth is that these three concepts are very disparate practices that often do not entirely co-exist. Most service providers will pick one or two of the three for their managed cloud hosting.

For example: Amazon AWS is largely a traditional infrastructure provider that leverages a massive number of commodity hardware (well, not quite, but bear with me) to offer low-cost server hosting. This allows you to spin up elebenty kabillion instances on the cheap, but the price/performance ratio many times just isn't there. A great article was recently published showing how moving a conventional Drupal installation away from AWS provided much better performance, lowered response times and was much more cost effective, even when accounting for disaster recovery. This demonstrates not how physical hardware is more cost-effective, but instead shows how performance matters when calculating cost.

When architecting an application's infrastructure it pays to remember that performance does not increase by adding more servers into the mix. Diagonal scaling is the best way to handle increasing load on a cost-effective basis, as demonstrated by Flickr and Wikimedia. Increase your hardware until you become constrained by concurrency (such as context switching, thread contention or mutex waits) or I/O then consider scaling out horizontally. Unless you are talking about massively parallel algorithms you don't need to spin up an enormous number of machines; even if you do start talking about massively parallel computation, you cease talking about infrastructure as a service and virtualization and instead move towards deploying Hadoop clusters across many physical nodes.

I would agree that vertical scaling isn't a great strategy. I would also argue that horizontal scaling on its own isn't a great strategy either. Get your money's worth for each instance you start, then keep deploying as demand increases.

Last night's episode of This Week in Cloud Computing features BlueLock's CTO and Co-Founder Pat O'Day. In the episode the subject of application & virtual machine portability comes up several times and Pat discusses one aspect of VM deployment: allowing several virtual machines to be deployed together as a singular, orchestrated virtual application solution. In VMware parlance this kind of logical grouping is considered a vApp, or virtual application solution.

The distinction between vApps and VMs can get a bit foggy and unclear at times. Things become a bit clearer when you take a look at the Open Virtualization Format (OVF) specification, which outlines the metadata that describes a vApp. In a nutshell: vApps are ultimately not definied by the virtual machines that run within them, but instead is a way of telling your infrastructure how VMs can play nicely with each other. Should the exist within an isolated network? How should IP addresses be allocated? Do you start the database server before the application server? Where did that other sock go? The OVF format lets your cloud infrastructure know all the facts necessary during deployments, shutdowns and re-starts.

This can be especially handy for disaster recovery. Imagine a meteor strikes your primary cloud hosting facility. Even though your operations staff now has super-powers, your data center is toast. Luckily you had the presence of mind to keep your vApps in an off-site data center that automagically activates when the primary data center goes offline. Thanks to the vApp's metadata, the disaster recovery site knows how to start an entire n-tier web application in an orderly fashion so that dependent services don't start out-of-order.

This kind of virtual application meta-data is being continuously extended to include service levels and quality of service data so that vApps can be deployed or even migrate to the most ideal resource pool either based on cost, performance or a mix between the two. This specification is evolving, and so are the use cases and technology stack that supports it. As the cloud ecosystem matures we will continue to see innovative ways to focus on not just the virtual machine, but the entire virtual solution.

Every year during the months of June and July the Midwest gets hit with tremendous storms in the late afternoon to early evening.  If you have never experienced this type of weather pattern, it is quite alarming.  It can be sunny and ninety degrees while sitting at work or spending time at the pool with the kids when dark storm clouds roll in and strong winds blow across the hot blacktop.  If there were tumbleweed lying around, many suburban neighborhoods would look like an old western shootout.

Within moments, raindrops and hail the size of marbles are pelting down on anything and everyone in sight.  Lightning streams across the sky and the tornado horn sounds; Welcome to the Midwest.  Whether you experience this type of weather or any other extreme storms, you need to ask yourself, what kind of back-up generator do I need to keep my data center up and running?

Just last week, I was talking with a new client who is in the process of moving part of his infrastructure into the cloud. He had recently experienced a four hour power outage at his office, leaving their on-site systems inoperable.  When most businesses operate without a disaster recovery plan due to financial constrains, I always ask the question - what is your threshold for pain?  It may sound a bit dramatic, or maybe it’s the ex-military in me, but in the end, the question is valid.  Most companies can work though a few hours of power loss, but when the clock keeps ticking and trucks aren’t rolling or vendors can’t pay for days or weeks, the pain threshold is diminished and tensions rise.

Cloud hosting has become well accepted in every size business.  What most CEO’s/Owners may not realize is that they don’t need to put all their proverbial chips in the pot, they can do a hybrid approach to maximize their existing infrastructure or simply utilize the cloud as a pure disaster recovery solution without spending large amounts of their budget on collocation equipment.  I have never understood why companies buy equipment for disaster recovery and let their hard earned money depreciate, let a true cloud company flip the bill for the equipment and as the business owner or CEO, reinvest your CAPEX back into your business. 

Next time you hear the tornado horn sound, think about a company like BlueLock that is rated for an F5 and ask yourself, "Are We Still In Kansas?"

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

This is astute advice for disaster recovery planning folks.  When it comes to determining what events could lead to the loss of data or critical applications and services, the reality of life dictates that there are infinite possibilities.  It's therefore impossible to cover all your bases if that's your approach.  When counseling clients evaluating disaster recovery options, I usually proclaim the first step is to get the data out of the building.  Whether it's a site-specific outage or a more widespread event which simply prevents normal access to corporate systems, this approach ensures you have the flexibility to adjust as necessary.  Cloud Computing, whether it's wholesle outsourcing of IT systems using Infrastructure as a Service or application-specific outsourcing using Sofware as a Service solutions, provides a way to "get the data out of the building" without the huge capital expenditures associated with traditional disaster recovery scenarios.

Jake and I are at it again this week with another edition of Whiteboard Wednesday. Cloud computing enables a level of infrastructure uptime that simply can't be matched by traditional traditional physical servers or colocation services.

In this short video, the Kings of Cloud outline the engineering behind high availability (HA), disaster recovery, and the fully redundant cloud. We cover a wide range of topics — including cooling, power, storage, and other resources.

Feel free to ask questions in the comments or on twitter at http://twitter.com/bluelock. Here's the video:

I don't believe anyone really thinks all enterprise data centers will begin rushing to the clouds anytime soon (although there are a few that already have).  That's quite far-fetched.  However, that doesn't mean they won't begin testing out the waters (or the clouds). 

However, as EMC CEO Joe Tucci explained at EMC World, "IT infrastructure has gotten too complex, too inefficient, too inflexible, and too costly...You’re managing a lot more with the same or less resources.”

A recent article outlined the benefits of the enterprise data center alongside the benefits of cloud computing.

Today's data center benefits:

•  Trust
• Control
• Reliability
• Security

Cloud Computing benefits:

•  Dynamic
• Cost-efficient
• On-demand
• Flexible

“In a way, the attributes of one are the negative of the other,” Tucci said.

The question is - how does the enterprise access the best of both worlds?

The answer is simple, and it probably the same if you were to ask someone from EMC, VMware or BlueLock.  The answer is private cloud computing. 

What is private cloud computing? It refers to what some call internal cloud computing and describes an offering that emulates cloud computing on private networks which allows companies to access the advantages of cloud computing without the pitfalls, such as data security, corporate governance and reliability concerns.  Companies must still buy, build and manage the cloud, which isn't the case in the public cloud realm, but there are still many benefits.  One of those benefits that BlueLock clients have accessed, is the ability to connect their private cloud to the public cloud for bursting and/or disaster recovery.

Learn more about private cloud computing today.

BlueLock and LOGiQ3, a BPO service provider to life insurance and reinsurance companies, have been working together for a couple years now.  When LOGiQ3 came to BlueLock, they were looking for a secure, compliant and scalable cloud hosting solution.  The company had an aggressive go-to-market strategy and they had limited time to build and implement their IT infrastructure, let alone ensure it was compliance and bullet-proof. They didn't want to spend the capital on the equipment, labor and expertise needed to get to where the were going, so they chose to outsource their IT infrastructure needs.  

Why did the cloud (specifically BlueLock) make sense for LOGiQ3?

• No upfront costs or lengthy contracts
• The BlueLock Cloud is based on VMware virtualization technology
• BlueLock is well-equipped to handle their enterprise-level production needs
• The security is solid
• The data center is SAS 70 Type II
• 99.99% uptime guarantee
• Geographically diverse data centers for redundancy and disaster recovery needs

To learn more about the solution BlueLock put in place for LOGiQ3 download the case study.

BlueLock may be an experienced cloud hosting provider, but just because we're "in the cloud" doesn't mean we don't have a data center.  We actually have two.  The main cloud operations are in our our flagship facility in Indianapolis, IN.  We also have a sister facility in Salt Lake City, UT for replication and regional disaster recovery needs.

Mike Durham recently responded to some questions and concerns about preventative maintenance procedures in data centers.

He says administrators should have documented procedures for proper operation of equipment and ensure that they are followed. Procedures should also provide contact information for key personnel. Also, he adds, internal log data generated by the equipment should be used to alert personnel when equipment is not operating properly or when a potential problem exists. (via Processer.com)

Read the full article: Care & Keeping Of Power & Cooling

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.