Cloud Computing For the Small and Medium Business

1 unsmooth Google Apps deployment at LAPD

2011-10-19T16:41:00.000-04:00

Read the story reported Mark Weingerger at TalkingCloud

New guide for selecting Hosted Data Center

2011-10-19T16:32:00.001-04:00

Bell Canada, the major Canadian phone company is now providing Cloud services ranging from Google Apps to Hosting. They just published a guide for selecting Hosting Data Denters.
The questions to ask they raise are worth discussing with a candidate Hosted Service Provider.

The guide divides the process of assessing a data centre service provider into five key criteria:

Power

Scalability of infrastructure and services

Certification

Security

Service level agreements

Each section includes a series of key questions we recommend you ask about the offerings of hosted data centre providers. Answering these questions will help you more fully evaluate potential service providers by gaining insights into their levels of service and support.

Requires registration: GuideHostedDataCentres_EN.pdf

Mobile SaaS Set to Boom among SMB Customers

2011-10-18T12:53:00.002-04:00

There is room for the small player and Managed Software Provides in the Mobile Saas field. Our key advantages are proximity to the client, and understanding of their culture and practices.

"Strategy Analytics recommends that mobile operators take advantage of SMBs’ growing interest in mobile SaaS. But why should giant telcos have such a potentially lucrative market to themselves, especially when they typically serve the hosted technology needs of much larger customers?
MSPs with an SMB specialty have numerous advantages over telcos, including faster response time to problems, more individualized attention to clients, a better understanding of SMB culture and business practices, and a scale of operations generally more conducive to working with a smaller client."

From : http://www.mspmentor.net/2011/10/17/mobile-saas-set-to-boom-among-smb-customers

Top Ten File Management Mistakes

2011-10-18T12:48:00.002-04:00

From Syncplicity, Cloud Storage provider. Their solution integrates well with Google Apps.

"For all the things that computers allow us to get done faster, document management and file management – or more precisely, the lack thereof – is one aspect of computer use that can really slow you down, especially without the right file management software solution in place."

Complete blog: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Syncplicity/~3/ql0z4DXG6V8/top-ten-file-management-mistakes.html

Five Best Practices for Successful Cloud Deployments and Pitfalls to Avoid

2011-10-17T12:41:00.001-04:00

In summary, the five best practices for successful cloud deployments include:
Understand what you want from the cloud.
Realize that success or failure in the cloud isn't measured by SLAs.

Focus on the end-user experience on the other side of the cloud.
Ensure the cloud can deliver high-quality experiences in key geographies.
Manage the cloud as part of a fully integrated, "front-to-back" approach that identifies and fixes faulty components in the application delivery chain, before end users are even aware a problem exists.

Source: Five Best Practices for Successful Cloud Deployments and Pitfalls to Avoid from

New OpenNebula Screencast Series | Cloud Computing Journal

2011-10-17T06:45:00.001-04:00

http://cloudcomputing.sys-con.com/node/2019863

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Microsoft Study Suggests Office 365 Brings 300 Percent ROI

2011-10-15T09:29:00.001-04:00

Excerpt:
"The study, conducted by respected research firm Forrester, interviewed seven SMBs who made the Office 365 switch and used that data to "[create] a composite midsize organization based on the experience of these organizations," according to the Microsoft blog entry. "

From Microsoft Study Suggests Office 365 Brings 300 Percent ROI via TalkinCloud by Matthew Weinberger on 10/14/11

4 Reasons You Can Entrust Your Business Data to Google Apps

2011-10-15T06:33:00.001-04:00

Sent to you by Francois R via Google Reader:

4 Reasons You Can Entrust Your Business Data to Google Apps

via Backupify by Kristin on 9/16/11

With over three million businesses currently using Google Apps, and five thousand of them (and counting) using Backupify since our launch of Google Apps backup, two things are clear – businesses trust Google with their data and are simultaneously implementing IT best practices by ensuing they have a backup plan.

Why, you may wonder, have three million businesses chosen Google Apps? Aside from their impeccable management of large volumes of data, there are several other highlights. Last month, Google outlined the top ten reasons why their customers trust them.

Below, we've expanded on four of the top reasons which seem to be the most prominent when thinking of Google Apps:

1. Advanced administration tools give domain owners control of their data

Whether managing a five- or 500-person domain, you know it's always important to have the right management tools for documents, services and access rights. Google Apps administrators recently upgraded to powerful tools to manage and maintain their account, including multi-domain support, SSL enforcement, mobile device security controls, user policy controls and customized delegated admin privileges. These enhanced features provide admins the control they need when overseeing that much data. Administrators rest assured that their data is safe and protected at all times.

Backupify doubles-down on these enhanced controls with full domain searches, the Notifications tab, and the Admin Dashboard. With Backupify, Google Apps administrators can closely monitor the backup status of every account under their care, ensuring that both frontline and backup data are secure and available.

2. Two-Step Authentication

Google Apps offers two-step verification, adding extra security for all your data. As explained by PCMag.com, "When enabled, users will have to enter their passwords as well as a separate code that will be sent to mobile devices before gaining access to products like Gmail or Google Docs." When talking with many customers of ours, they've expressed the comfort and security they feel knowing Google is taking their data privacy very seriously.

3. High availability

The benefit of cloud services in general is the 24/7 access you can acheive from essentially anywhere with an Internet connection. Google Apps is the poster child for cloud productivity. Do you have an employee working remotely in another country? No worries – they can still receive emails in real time, collaborate on Google Docs and and schedule events easily. If you have night owls working at your company, they can access Google Apps anytime, day or night.

The same goes for Backupify. We realize people love the complete access to their data at all times so we provide the same functionality to all our customers. More importantly, with Backupify, you can access data even in the rare event Google Apps is offline, or a user error or security breach has destroyed the original information in Google Apps.

4. Information security expertise

As explained by Google itself, "We employ an information security team of over 250 people with a wealth of expertise not found in most organizations." Simply put – they hire the best of the best that work tirelessly to ensure your data is safe, secure and available at all times.

You can read the wealth of information they provide on the multitude of Google help forums, and for paid Google Apps accounts, there is a direct support line you can call for any issues or questions you have. It is evident Google Apps customers come here both to consult with Google experts themselves as well as the vast community willing to help each other out.

By now, if you are already familiar with Google Apps, you are probably aware of at least a few of these main advantages. The extensive growth in the line of Google Apps features and their continued improvements to the platform shows the true strength and expertise of the Google Apps team – both in engineering and marketing.

Google Apps is a clear leader in both cloud SaaS solutions and data management and we can only foresee this emergence continuing. What are some other ways you've seen Google Apps mature to fit the enterprise market?

Google is dedicated to continuing to educate the market as to why businesses trust them with their data. In their blog post quoted earlier, they finish off by stating, "Over the next few weeks we're going to dive deeper into each one of these areas to provide more details why Google Apps customers trust us with their business data." Be sure to subscribe to their blog for these updates and feel free to share your thoughts on them with us!

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Microsoft and HP: SQL Server Appliance Counters Oracle

2011-10-15T06:28:00.001-04:00

Sent to you by Francois R via Google Reader:

Microsoft and HP: SQL Server Appliance Counters Oracle

via The VAR Guy by The VAR Guy on 10/13/11

Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard plan to ship a SQL Server database appliance in November. The Microsoft-HP database appliance, announced at PASS Summit, sounds a lot like a recent Oracle Database Appliance launch. Is The VAR Guy imagining this database appliance feud or is it real? Here's the update.

At the PASS Summit today, Microsoft and HP promised to deliver a HP Enterprise Database Consolidation Appliance optimized for SQL Server. Microsoft claimed the SQL Server database appliance will:

help customers deploy databases in minutes instead of weeks;
reduce operation costs up to 75 percent through savings of floor space, energy and infrastructure;
require no application or database changes when consolidating databases.

Countering Oracle?

The VAR Guy didn't spot any architecture or pricing information for the HP Enterprise Database Consolidation Appliance. But our resident blogger suspects the appliance is a Microsoft-HP response to the new Oracle Database Appliance.

The Oracle Database Appliance runs Oracle Linux and Oracle's database on up to 24 Intel cores. Partners and customers can activate or deactivate Intel cores based on an application's scalability needs. Avnet Technology Solutions, the value-added distributor, has ordered 100 of the Oracle Database Appliances for its channel partners, and expects to receive shipments within days.

In some ways, the Oracle Database Appliance is positioned to help customers migrate away from Microsoft SQL Server while consolidating physical hardware onto Oracle's design. Now, the Microsoft-HP database appliance seems like a response to Oracle's efforts.

Longer term, Microsoft is preparing SQL Server 2012 (formerly code-named Denali), a major database upgrade that's expected to arrive in the first half of 2012, notes SQL Server Magazine.

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Microsoft Highlights Cloud Features of SQL Server 2012 | TalkinCloud

2011-10-15T06:01:00.001-04:00

Microsoft pursues integration between SQL 2010 & SQL Azure:

- Synchronization, replication and backup to Azure DB.

Read the complete article : Microsoft Highlights Cloud Features of SQL Server 2012 | TalkinCloud

The Disruptive Shifts: Calling Out Social Business Amongst Mobile, Cloud, Co...

2011-10-14T13:04:00.004-04:00

Great perspective on the future of social Business by Dion Hinchcliffe.Excerpts:
...There's a sense of profound change in the air in the large companies..
...The rapidly changing consumer technology world, along with a huge helping hand from the Web, is fundamentally changing how business gets done.
... the cloud is rapidly becoming the way we deliver and receive virtually every meaningful service today, from music, TV, applications, news, phone calls, social media, etc. Even our data centers are beginning to move out of our organizations. This year I hear story after story from large company CIOs partially — or even in some cases almost completely, moving their IT outside the firewall, something almost unthinkable even a year or two ago.
...The world of CoIT is moving and innovating far faster than the business technology world.
...Right behind this is the big data movement, which is making sense of and creating real value out of the deepening streams of information pouring forth from our applications, devices, and connected social ecosystems.
Dion describes High-Impact Social Business Stories from Bloomberg, to Intuit, to Siemens, uTest, MIT Climate Co-Lab.

Source: The Disruptive Shifts: Calling Out Social Business Amongst Mobile, Cloud, Consumerization, and Big Data via Enterprise Irregulars by Dion Hinchcliffe on 10/5/11

Who needs an IT dept anymore?

2011-10-14T12:51:00.001-04:00

...cloud, it seems, will transform IT more than most people dare imagine.
...cloud development allows much more frequent interaction between developers and the business people they're developing for.

...Why not instead have the developers sit in the line-of-business department, where they can be better tuned-in to the day-to-day needs of their business colleagues?
...Developers would have dotted-line reporting into that function, and could interact with other developers across the organisation using social media and other collaboration tools. But the bulk of the developer resource would be sited exactly where they need to focus their attentions, in the line-of-business operations.
...As infrastructure migrates off-premise into third-party clouds, enterprise IT has much less need of practitioners in what someone called the "dark code" skills of infrastructure development. Instead the expertise that's more highly prized will be in business analysis, delivering value at the level of process automation and streamlining.

Read the complete Source article @ Software as Services Blog RSS | ZDNet

Symantec Cloud Survey 2011: Security a goal and a concern

2011-10-05T17:41:00.001-04:00

Symantec published the 2011 State of the cloud report. results which highlights 4 findings:

1.Cloud security is top goal and top concern
2.IT staff not ready for move to cloud
3.With cloud, there is more talk than action
4.Reality not meeting expectation

Recommendations include setting application in tiers based, asses risk and set appropriate policies.

Cloud Computing For the Small and Medium Business

1 unsmooth Google Apps deployment at LAPD

New guide for selecting Hosted Data Center

Mobile SaaS Set to Boom among SMB Customers

Top Ten File Management Mistakes

Five Best Practices for Successful Cloud Deployments and Pitfalls to Avoid

New OpenNebula Screencast Series | Cloud Computing Journal

Microsoft Study Suggests Office 365 Brings 300 Percent ROI

4 Reasons You Can Entrust Your Business Data to Google Apps

Sent to you by Francois R via Google Reader:

4 Reasons You Can Entrust Your Business Data to Google Apps

Things you can do from here:

Microsoft and HP: SQL Server Appliance Counters Oracle

Sent to you by Francois R via Google Reader:

Microsoft and HP: SQL Server Appliance Counters Oracle

Countering Oracle?

Read More About This Topic

Things you can do from here:

Microsoft Highlights Cloud Features of SQL Server 2012 | TalkinCloud

The Disruptive Shifts: Calling Out Social Business Amongst Mobile, Cloud, Co...

Who needs an IT dept anymore?

Symantec Cloud Survey 2011: Security a goal and a concern