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


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

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

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

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

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

This calls for a very special edition of Whiteboard Wednesday.

VMware Users' Group (VMUG) had their Demo Days in Indianapolis yesterday and set up Jake Robinson and me to do some cloud computing white boarding. We took questions from cloud experts, employees, and enthusiasts; then hit the white board. 

In this session, Jake and I take a look at connecting internal and external clouds -- the cloud with virtualized environments. Take a look:

 

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

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

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

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

Over the past two years, BlueLock and Apparatus have built a strong and dynamic partnership with their complimentary virtualization and data center expertise.  By joining forces, the teams are able to work together to wrap services around BlueLock's cloud hosting solutions to better serve clients.

Due to our great success together, VMware asked BlueLock (a VMware Hosting Provider) and Apparatus, to take the stage during the keynote session at this year's VMware Partner Exchange to share our story in front of 2500 conference attendees. The VMware Partner Exchange is an annual partner conference dedicated to educating and enabling partners for success with VMware. 

Brian Wolff, VP of Sales at BlueLock and Casey Watson, Chief Evangelist at Apparatus went on stage and showed the virtualization community at the Las Vegas conference what Indiana's technology Community is all about - innovation, trust and execution.  That's right, Indianapolis is a virtualization hot-bed.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Indianapolis-based BlueLock, provider of cloud computing and managed IT services, announced they will sponsor and host CloudCamp Indianapolis #2 on Tuesday, October 27th. CloudCamp events are free and follow an interactive, unscripted format as attendees suggest topics of discussion, before and during the event. Attracting IT professionals and non-technical business managers alike, the cloud computing event is designed to expand awareness of cloud computing, from both a technical and business integration perspective.

At a typical CloudCamp, activities include:

• Panels and discussions focused on different types of Cloud Computing technologies
• Identify and discuss challenges posed by Cloud Computing
• Exchange ideas with other Cloud Computing innovators
• Learn about business models and discover opportunities
• Networking between potential cloud clients and business partners
 

In response to the growing interest in cloud computing, these camps have been held in major tech centers around the world, such as San Francisco, Washington D.C., Atlanta and London. Upcoming events, in addition to the Indy event, include: Silicon Valley, Munich, Germany, Phoenix, AZ and Tel Aviv.

"We are excited to host and sponsor another CloudCamp event in Indianapolis,'" said Brian Wolff, VP Sales and Marketing for BlueLock. “We had an amazing crowd of more than 100 people, who brought an abundance of questions, knowledge and ideas about cloud computing back in February at the first CloudCamp Indianapolis. We’re hoping to attract even more participants to share more ideas and knowledge about the current and always-changing cloud landscape.”

The unique unconference will be held from 4 – 8:30 pm at BlueLock, 6325 Morenci Trail, Indianapolis, IN. CloudCamp is a free event, but space is limited so you must register.

Virtual pre-conference discussions can be found at www.cloudcamp.com and on Twitter at http://twitter.com/cloudcamp.

For more information or to register for this event go to www.cloudcamp.com/indianapolis.
 

BlueLock's CTO, Pat O'Day has been asked to speak on the cloud computing panel at "New Economy New Rules" on August 7th here in Indianapolis. To register and to get more information click here.  The event lasts from 8 am - 9:30 am and is hosted at Barnes & Thornburg, LLP.

Cloud Computing Panel Discussion Details:
More and more companies are jettisoning their servers in favor of a virtual IT infrastructure – ‘cloud computing’ allows these firms to tap into software and data storage resources delivered via the Internet.  For companies hoping to avoid capital investment in IT and meet software needs while paying for usage, not licensing, cloud computing can be a perfect solution.  But what about security concerns and the limitations of the cloud provider?

Learn more about the ins and outs of the cloud computing trend, and how Indiana’s technology industry is taking advantage of the opportunities it brings.

SearchSecurity.com just released an article about a recent Forrester report.  The report advises a cautious approach to cloud computing or cloud-based services.  The study found that early adopters ran into some roadblocks such as not knowing where their data is located or what happens to the data if they want to change services and even not knowing specifically how the service provider protects customer privacy.

Forrester advises that companies who are considering cloud-based services gain a clear understanding of security, privacy and legal consequences of contracting with a service provider.  At BlueLock, we like to make it as easy for you as possible to learn about our practices and procedures and match those up against other cloud computing providers.  In our opinion, the last thing we want is to have clients come in and sign on unaware of how their security, privacy and data will be handled.

In regards to security, Forrester recommends that organizations create a checklist of data security and compliance priorities.  This is great advice.  The more you can elaborate on your needs, the better able BlueLock is to provide you exactly what you need.

We’ve had lots of requests for highly compliant IT environments.  The beauty of cloud computing is that BlueLock is able to build your company a compliant environment at a fraction of the cost of building an entire IT system and infrastructure on your own.  Right On Interactive chose BlueLock as their SaaS hosting provider for that precise reason.  Their 5Buckets solution (integrated marketing automation software) needed to be highly compliant in order to be able to integrate with companies such as ExactTarget (email marketing) and SalesForce.com. 

They turned to BlueLock, laid out their needs and wants in regards to security and compliance, decided where they wanted their data stored (Indianapolis facility) and off BlueLock went designing a VMware virtualized IT environment.  They now pay for IT infrastructure as a monthly operational expense; their compliant and secure environment can scale on demand and its environment if fully managed by virtualization experts 24/7/365.  What more could a growing software company ask for?

In case you missed the originaly article about BlueLock in the Indianapolis Business Journal, the same story was picked up this week by CIO Today!

What BlueLock does is complicated: It provides what is known as "virtual cloud computing." So when Vice President Brian Wolff explains the concept, he simplifies it...

Some other places you might have seen it:
Sci-Tech Today
VoIP In Detail
Tech News - REALHS

VMware has finally released vSphere, the long-awaited overhaul of its core virtualization platform designed to aggregate the virtual resources in the data center into one centrally managed computing pool.

VMware continues to push the private cloud in its hopes that IT centers will build highly virtualized, fault-tolerant, self-service data centers that exist within the firewall for the benefit of the company’s users.  A future upgrade will allow private clouds to connect to commercial cloud services such as those provided by BlueLock.

According to Jon Brodkin of NetworkWorld, “Compared to VMware Infrastructure 3, vSphere will double the processors available to VMs, more than double the network interface cards available to VMs, quadruple memory, triple network throughput, and double maximum I/O operations per second more than 200,000.”

BlueLock will be hosting a product preview this Thursday 4/23 in collaboration with the Indianapolis VMware User Group.  For more information regarding the event and to register, click here.

BlueLock is a vCloud hosting partner with VMware.

Related articles on the vSphere launch can be found here:

NetworkWorld

Yahoo Personal Finance

Marketwatch

ChannelInsider

Opensource.sys-con.com

MSN Money

PCWorld

Cloud Computing Journal

VMware

Related Blog Posts:

Bmighty.com

Thevirtualblackhole.com

A friend of mine is getting ready to move into a condo. The contents of his current home are being divided into three categories, things he will move, things he will give away, and things he will store in case one of his kids needs it later. 

He is going to rent a physical storage large enough to contain all the items he thinks his kids might want.  His rent will be determined by how much storage he needs. He expects it to be secure from theft, protected from destruction and accessible so he can reclaim his belongings whenever he wants.  As he gives away items or accumulates he can move to a smaller or larger storage unit.

In a nutshell, customers coming to BlueLock are looking many of the same items.  Our VMware virtual storage allows our customers to scale on demand; increasing or decreasing the size of the cloud to match their needs.

My friend expects a secure environment and so do our clients. This need for high levels of security is why we include the Shavlik Security Suite as part of our comprehensive cloud computing solution.

Partnering with Shavlik a recognized leader in the security software market allows us to deliver a proven solution for our customers which address the patch management and compliance challenges inherent in highly distributed physical and virtual environments.

For more on BlueLock’s cloud computing security, check out these posts:

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BlueLock is excited to host the first Indy Cloud Users event tomorrow evening (4/8/09) from 6-8pm at the BlueLock office (6325 Morenci Trail).

The goal of the group is to provide a forum for the proliferation of knowledge surrounding cloud computing and virtualization.  After a successful bout at hosting CloudCamp Indy, it was very obvious that Indianapolis and the surrounding areas have a great interest and knowledge regarding these topics.  We're hoping to resurface those discussion from CloudCamp tomorrow and during future events.

If you are interested in attending but have not yet RSVP'd please contact me at aglick at bluelock dot com.

BlueLock was recently featured in the Indianapolis Business Journal. The Small Business Profile explains BlueLock's Infrastructure-as-a-Service model and the virtual cloud computing offerings that have made BlueLock the success that it is today.

The writer explains the benefits of BlueLock's cloud computing technology:

Read what else they had to say.

According to an article on Data Center Knowledge, many companies are turning to the cloud to reduce their capital requirements, others are evaluating co-location and leased space in data centers.

At our data centers in Indianapolis and SaltLake city, BlueLock can offer clients either alternative; traditional collocation or cloud computing solutions.

In 2006 AFCOM  produced a report based on extensive research including five very bold predictions for the future of data centers.   This week, Rich Miller took a closer look at the original predictions three years later. 

I was most intrigued by Prediction #4: By 2010, nearly 70 percent of all data centers will utilize some form of grid computing or other virtual processing.

Virtualization has been adopted even faster than expected by the DCI 2006 findings. AFCOM’s survey from November 2008 found that 86 percent of data centers expect to increase the use of virtualization. The enthusiasm for virtualization hasn’t yet translated into a shift towards cloud computing. More than 77 percent of AFCOM respondents said they were not planning to increase their use of cloud computing.

With one year left before the clock runs out on this prediction, what do you think?  Will the current economic crisis drive the change faster?

A new report by KPMG states that as the credit crisis looms, a new rush towards outsourcing IT services will begin - with a number of new locations worldwide emerging as viable Business Process Outsourcings (BPO) hubs.  Among those, are Indianapolis, one of two United States locations chosen.  As traditional outsourcing locations begin to reach a saturation point, the 31 cities chosen are expected to see quite a boom in IT services traffic. 


BlueLock, a matured Infrastructure-as-a-Service company has already started to feel this rush and believes it will only get more powerful.  Companies are forced to really take a look at their spending in times like these.  Outsourcing managed IT services is one way for many companies to take advantage of the cost savings and high ROI associated with cloud computing and virtualization.

At CloudCamp Indianapolis BlueLock CTO, Pat O’Day kicked off the Lightning Talks with an overview of how, and more importantly why, BlueLock evolved from a traditional data center offering standard managed services to our current model providing Infrastructure-as-a-Service model. In this short video you will see how we solve client challenges with our virtual cloud computing platform. 

What do we have to look forward to in 2009 and beyond?   Most industry leaders agree Cloud Computing – moving from traditional data centers to virtual servers is the future.   In a post on New Years Day Jeff Kaplan offered his predictions for 2009.  Leading his list: On-Demand Services Move From Why To How.  He said:
 
“Now that SaaS has achieved widespread market penetration and the idea of cloud computing has become popularized in the business as well as trade press, the discussion will shift in 2009 from why organizations should adopt SaaS/cloud computing services to how to do it effectively.”
 
As BlueLock heads into our third year in existence, we are certainly seeing this transition as we engage in more conversations about the implementation of Cloud Computing and virtual solutions.  Cloud Computing is not a cookie-cutter process and we encourage conversations about the best ways to adopt managed services to optimize IT operations.
 
It is important for IT/business decision-makers to evaluate the functionality and financial viability of the various solutions.  They should be asking questions about the integration and security requirements; performance monitoring, disaster recovery capability, and service level compliance.  Ultimately they must have a means to measure the economic impact and business benefits of these services.
 
This need to make informed decisions was the driving factor behind our decision to host a CloudCamp here in Indianapolis.  We hope to bring together business leaders and technologists for a lively discussion on both the technical and business applications of Cloud Computing.