This trial has no restrictions, it is open to companies or organizations of any size and located in any country. The trial is truly a free trial, there are no contracts to sign, we will not collect financial details, and you can cancel at any time with no penalty.

So, what are you waiting for? Check if you are eligible here.

The 29^th July will be a long day for North East based IT enthusiasts. There are three events planned during the day starting at 13:00 and ending at 23:30!

1. CloudSeminar
2. CloudCamp
3. Wii are the Champions

CloudSeminar — Discover how ‘the cloud’ can help your IT operation
Venue: Newcastle University
Cost: £10 (or free to Codeworks Connect members)

Make no mistake, ‘the cloud’ is going to be disruptive to IT. It offers significant threats to market incumbents but huge opportunities to new entrants and established companies that respond quickly. Delegates will leave the seminar with a clear view of the compelling reasons for using cloud computing – and how to do it.

Confirmed speakers include

Simon Davies, architect at Microsoft
An. Other from Amazon Web Services
Ian Clarke (UK R&D Director at Sage)
Stuart Lynn (R&D Mid Market Division at Sage)
Steve Caughey, CEO of Arjuna Technologies
Ross Cooney, managing director of Rozmic

CloudCamp
Venue: Newcastle University
Cost: Free

CloudCamp is an unconference where early adopters and industry leaders of Cloud Computing technologies exchange ideas. With the rapid change occurring in the industry, we need a place we can meet to share our experiences, challenges and solutions. At CloudCamp, you have the opportunity to share your thoughts in several open discussions, as we strive for the advancement of Cloud Computing. End users, IT professionals and vendors are all encouraged to participate.

Speakers will include:

Stewart Townsend — SUN
Ross Cooney — Rozmic
Tony Lucas — Flexiscale
Steve Caughey — Arjuna

Wii Are the Champions
Venue: Black Swan Bar, Newcastle Arts Centre, 67 Westgate Road, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, NE1 1SG

After a long day spouting shite with technical boffins you can relax and have a drink watching a fun-filled but competitive team tournament in which teams of up to five members will compete against each other at selected games from the Wii sports package.

A bus will be on hand to bring you to the venue after CloudCamp.

While the organisers of these events are working together very closely it is necessary to register for each event separately using the following links:

1. CloudSeminar
2. CloudCamp
3. Wii are the Champions

I hope to see everybody there!

Our emailcloud protection system filters spam and viruses from email. Over the past few years we have seen rates of spam increasing from around 50% a few years ago to an average of 95%…but yesterday was special….we reached 99% spam on one of our spam clusters!

This graph represents the traffic at our Liverpool facility yesterday, Monday 29th June 2009. This shows the number of simultaneous SMTP connections on the cluster every five minutes. The black line is legit email, the others graph different types of spam.

Interesting points:

• The rate of spam is rather constant through the day at around 2,000 simultaneous connections
• the rate of legit email is very low through the day but spikes to 3,000 simultaneous connections on seven times through the day
• Spikes are unpredictable!
• Traffic peeked on the cluster at around 23:00 with nearly 7,000 simultaneous connections

We have been watching traffic over the past few years and while the volume of legit email is increasing every month it is being out paced by the growth of spam. If you are having spam problems contact us!

My idea was a really basic system, at a basic price. The system would initially only allow PHP and mysql sites.

Over the past year I have been buying massive amounts of hardware and with my most recent purchase (a massive SAN) I think that we finally have enough hardware to start the system development work.

The kit I have set asside for the initial launch is:

1. Two Cisco Netscaler load balancers in HA mode
2. Three beefy mysql servers for a cluster
3. Three beefy web app servers (I can add to this as necessary)
4. My new SAN
5. My new Foundry switch

The plan is to put all this equipment into one of our datacenter cabinets and then back it up onto the local SAN every hour.

I was thinking of a fixed monthly fee of around £250 which would give:

1. Unlimited number of domain names and web sites
2. 1Tb of disk space
3. Basic apache and PHP config tweeks
4. As many mysql databases as you want (perhaps give command line access as well as PHPMyAdmin)
5. Bandwidth is charged at £0.15 per Gb in and £0.10 out.
6. Outbound email relay
7. Two full days development time to help move to the new system
8. Access to a fully secure memcached daemon
9. As many IP’s as you need
10. SSL certificates (at a nominal extra fee)

The system would not do the following:

1. Anything other than PHP and mysql (initially). I am looking at either perl or Windows hosting next.
2. Log files (you would need to use something like the Google Analytics service)
3. Domain registration

In return, we would guarantee uptime, throughput and system stability….basically…you upload your websites and we will guarantee that the site stays up even if the traffic peeks significantly. I am going to try to launch this in BETA before the end of July…anybody interested in trying it out?

Rozmic’s software-as-a-service offering, emailcloud, is a fully managed email service that scans and removes unwanted email before it reaches the customer network, saving bandwidth, time and eliminating the irritation of personal spam management.

emailcloud was originally built using Amazon Web Services and deployed on EC2 to create a highly scalable infrastructure. This early design allowed Rozmic to immediately roll-out a powerful offering that could scale in line with customer demand without the need for capital spend on hardware requirements. The service, launched in 2007, grew beyond all expectations and within 18 months had over 900 customers and 5 trade partners. Indeed, as emailcloud ’s popularity grew, a standard baseline of demand became established and the fundamental economics of outsourcing the infrastructure to EC2 began to change.

Rozmic soon realised that it would be more cost-effective in the long run, to support the base load using in-house infrastructure and use EC2 to accommodate demand spikes. The company therefore transitioned to internal infrastructure in late 2008 with two data centres in Newcastle and Liverpool housing over 50 servers. Managing this new infrastructure was initially achieved using a cloud platform developed in-house.

However, as demand continued to climb through early 2009 and Rozmic announced its intentions to add new datacentres in Dublin, Edinburgh and Texas, the company considered alternative solutions for the management of its cloud based infrastructure and chose Agility. Agility, is a non-invasive, ‘Federated Cloud Computing Platform’ that delivers the benefits of Cloud Computing through a truly novel design. Agility enabled Rozmic to transform its internal infrastructure into a Private Cloud of resources and to seamlessly integrate with EC2. Agility ’s container-based model delivers automated deployment and life-cycle management for Rozmic’s whole application stack. Business policy, which is now centralised and automated, is used to specify business requirements in the form of service agreements. Agility then monitors all service agreements, dynamically adapting the system to satisfy any changes in demand and ensuring all business requirements are constantly met.

Rozmic CEO Ross Cooney says: “We’re amazed at the flexibility and cost advantage that Agility has given us. We’re now able to offer our services to larger customers, without any provisioning concerns, knowing that we can elastically scale and shrink capacity to cope with demand and guarantee that service levels are met through Agility.”

The infrastructure makeover will also deliver future benefits for Rozmic. Agility’s federation capabilities will allow Rozmic to federate multiple cloud providers at the touch of a button. This will create further opportunities for the company to improve its value proposition to customers as operating costs and service levels can be improved by switching between cloud providers with the most compelling offer. It also combats the threat of cloud vendor lock-in.

Ross is convinced that Agility will help to keep Rozmic ahead of the game. “It’s a game-changing technology. Not only does it address the technical issues which enable system flexibility but it also ensures that the system is controlled by business level decisions. So, you benefit through reduced cost, increased flexibility and centralised control. You get an automated system that can dynamically respond to change but you also get to retain very fine grained control over how your specific service is delivered.”

We all know that the phrase Cloud Computing is heavily abused by technology companies. Due to its broad definition it can be applied to a huge array of technology products and services. Many companies have simply re-invented themselves as ‘cloud’ providers by adding the badge to their existing services in the same way that whole industries have jumped on the ‘green’ bandwagon. Cloud Computing can be used to describe a very wide area of activity from SaaS to IaaS through PaaS, a huge array of activity.

While it is very easy to hitch a ride on the cloud computing bandwagon, it is almost impossible to use the Private Cloud badge properly. Private Clouds are a completely new area of computing that only existed in the IT departments of extremely large IT departments until recently.

A Private Cloud is a proprietary computing architecture that provides hosted services to a limited number of people behind a corporate firewall. It is an infrastructure that allows IT and datacenter administrators to effectively become service providers that meet the needs of their “customers” within the corporation.

Private Clouds are a new area of computing science where the application is treated as a service and is provided under an SLA and managed by an automated management system that adds and subtracts resources in a truly dynamic way. This same management system manages all the IT resources in the cloud ( routers, firewalls and servers) in such a way that they can be manipulated dynamically to ensure applications achieve their SLA.

True Private cloud deployments will allow IT departments to deploy applications and monitor usage and performance according to an SLA. Once the SLA is under threat the system should alter the environment to fit. This gets very complicated when you extend it to the network of a typical enterprise user. Suddenly the wheels fall off when you have to manage five departments and perhaps 100 internal applications!

Companies like Arjuna in Newcastle are pushing the bounds of this technology but it’s going to take a long time for this area to mature enough to become commoditised properly so that it can be used by SME’s. Rozmic is working with Arjuna to build a truly innovative Private Cloud for our usage and I hope that we will be able to release some of our research findings at the future CloudSeminar and CloudCamp events on 29^th July.

[ I found the image used in this post on the Liquefying IT blog by The Enterprise Strategy Group]

]]> http://www.spoutingshite.com/2009/06/25/private-clouds-a-new-area-of-computing-science/feed/ http://www.spoutingshite.com/2009/06/25/private-clouds-a-new-area-of-computing-science/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/spoutingshite/bTOj/~3/-Ed9OtfJ5hI/ http://www.spoutingshite.com/2009/06/02/initial-thoughts-on-google-wave/#comments Tue, 02 Jun 2009 10:26:09 +0000 Ross Cooney http://www.spoutingshite.com/?p=264 Google have announced the imminent release of a new communication and collaborate tool called Google Wave (http://wave.google.com). This is a technology that was developed by Lars & Hans Rasmussen and a team of Google developers in Sidney Australia. I watched the 80 minute demo of the tool that Lars Rasmussen gave at the Google IO conference in San Francisco and I have been asking myself a few questions over the past few days…

1. What are my initial reactions?
   As with all Google products or services…I am extremely impressed. I have not decided if I will ever use this service, but I see a value for it and I see that it will probably become very popular.
2. Is this truly unique or new?
   It’s not often that people invent a completely new product or service. Most new products of services are re-implemented versions of their forbearers or results of UAOTATC (unique assembly of tried and tested components). After much thought, I believe that Google Wave is both. It has remarkable similarities to Microsoft Groove and Microsoft Sharepoint while also looking like a Frankenstein version of email, IM, Google Docs and wiki.
3. Is this a replacement to traditional email?
   Firstly, I don’t think that it would be possible to replace traditional email. While I believe that email is deeply flawed in its current guise, I feel that it is too deeply integrated into our lives to be washed away by this technology. With that said, I can see a world where email and wave work alongside. Wave can become a welcome addition to our communication tool set which already includes email, IM, blogs, Twitter, social media sites (Linkedin, Facebook etc) and Wiki.

   Mass adoption would be helped if it was built into normal SME mail servers (such as Mdaemon or even Microsoft Exchange) and traditional email clients such as Thunderbird and Outlook. That way you could read emails and ride waves from the one client. I can’t see integration into MS products any time soon but due to the open-source status of the code I would be surprised if modules aren’t released for other products soon.

4. Will this be the end of spam?
   Well…we have been predicting a technology that would herald the end of spam for almost a decade. Ending spam is the ‘holy grail’ of email and many companies have set their sights on this and failed.

   Research around this area has focused upon the reciprocity of the email sender or server. This is a theoretical value that quantifies the persons online reputation. If we can quantify this properly then we could disregard the emails of people with bad scores. RBL’s and DCC try to work in this area. This research has also been built into most social media services, but while it is very useful for personal relationships online, I believe that this sort of analysis fails once you bring it into the business community because:

   a) Businesses want to receive emails from un-know people…they could be from potential clients
   and
   b) Just because you have a good reputation online does not mean that I want to communicate with you.

   This is the reason why email spam has not been wiped out yet….we want to stop spam but allow unsolicited emails.

   To partake in a Google Wave it seems that you need to be invited…so it would seem that it is very unlikely that spam could be sent using waves…but you could be spammed by people inviting you to join waves in much the same way that you are spammed by invites to Linkedin and Facebook.

5. Will this aid Google’s domination of the world?
   No…Google is not trying to dominate the world…but they are a commercial company and they are trying to make their products and services ubiquitous. Google Wave will help with this goal…this is neither wrong or evil.
6. Why did Google make the code and protocol open source?
   I guess that Google want to get a higher presence in the business community. This is where all the money is. Most of the existing Google services are fully hosted services…the user has little access to the data and has very little control over it….this is one if the big stumbling blocks that this community has is data protection and data persistence. Giving the business community the ability to host their own server breaks down some of these barriers.

So, in conclusion, I guess that Google Wave is going to be very popular…but I cant see in what markets it will succeed and I dont believe that it will make email redundant.

Today we would like to announce a new partnership between Rozmic (the developers of emailcloud) and Identity Automation (a Texas based technology services company).

• You can find more information on Identity Automation here:
  http://www.identityautomation.com/
• You can read about the Identity Automation Email Scan service here:
  http://www.identityautomation.com/solutions/email-scan
• You can see the custom branded interface to emailcloud here:
  https://secure.identityautomationmailscan.com/

In these times spare a thought for David and Jane Alexander, the unfortunate directors of Crome Internet Limited. Crome Internet employed 8 staff in the Kendal area and had been trading in the design and hosting market for many years. Unfortunately, Crome Internet was placed into liquidation in March of this year. After nine profitable years the Alexanders called in Tenon Recovery to close the company and liquidate the assets. In performing a liquidation the directors are supposed to raise funds with which to secure payment of the creditors. The creditor list was rather long and included Rozmic Wireless to the tune of over £6,000.

A true entrepreneur deals with failure by defying it, and Dave and Jane are keeping this in mind. Rather than languish in failure they used their entrepreneurial flair and have gotten up off the floor to go on and setup two new businesses. Jane now runs the rather similarly named design agency Crome New Media Ltd and Dave runs a sole trading concern called Host and Promote.

Usually I would encourage any business owner get up and move on after failure, but I feel that the Alexanders have not played the game fairly here. I am not concerned that Jane has setup a similarly named company without the permission of the court (pursuant to section 216 of the Insolvency Act). I am not angry that David continued to consume our company’s resources during the period of January (when he setup Host and Promote) and March when he placed Crome Internet into liquidation. I am not even angry that they didn’t have good manners to call and explain and apologise before the liquidation. What drives me mad is that I have been recently contacted by a company who claim to have bought the customer base of Crome Internet Ltd in a deal which was done before the company was placed into liquidation (contrary to section 213 of the Insolvency Act).

It seems that entrepreneurial standards are not high in the county of Cumbria.

UPDATE (11th May 2009):
After only a few hours this article is now listed in the number one place on Goolge for the following search terms:

• Crome Internet Ltd
• Crome Internet Limited
• Crome New Media

UPDATE (12th May 2009):
This article is now listed as number one place on Google for the following additional search terms:

• David and Jane Alexander
• entrepreneurial standards are not high in the county of Cumbria

Still owe money dating back to August 2008.

It seems that the Alexanders have run out of luck.

The service will be sold at £8.50 per user per month and includes:

• Exchange 2007 Mailbox
• 2GB Total Diskspace per user (optional upgrade to 4Gb)
• 1 x Public Folder per user
• Full Outlook functionality
• Full support for iPhone
• Windows Mobile support
• Unlimited Contacts
• Shared Contacts, Calendars and Tasks
• Outlook Web Access
• IMAP/POP3, Outlook Anywhere and ActiveSync
• 1 x copy of Outlook 2007 or Entourage 2008 per user
• Continuous Backups

The Rozmic Hosted Exchange service is a hosted enterprise messaging solution based on Microsoft

Exchange Server 2007. Hosted Exchange helps give your business the email security it demands, your employees the email access they want, and your IT staff the operational efficiency it needs. The service uses our knowledge of Microsoft products, best practices developed with Microsoft’s customers and partners, and our infrastructure to deliver a world-class, mission-critical service.

You can find out more about this service here:
http://www.emailcloud.com/hosted_exchange.html