Archive for March, 2010

Foray into the clouds

Wednesday, March 24th, 2010

I’m sitting on cloud 9. Hey you, get off of my cloud. I don’t want to come back down from this cloud. For years, we’ve seen the clouds as a happy, safe place and to me it is an interesting paradox that the term has been used to describe Internet based computing as I rarely consider the Internet to be safe! However, Cloud Computing is obviously here to stay and, furthermore, the small business market has shown interest into migrating into it as fast as possible. There are a many reasons for this shift, but the two that really stand out are cost and functionality. In short, cloud computing enables a small business to have a Fortune 500 IT infrastructure for a small business budget.

What is cloud computing?
Wikipedia says that “cloud computing is Internet based computing, whereby shared resources, software and information are provided to computers and other devices on-demand, like a public utility.” This mouthful of buzzwords means that you are renting space and power on someone else’s computer systems. Think of cloud computing like renting an apartment. You have all the rights and responsibilities of owning the place, but ultimately, someone else is charged with making sure the building stays up and things get fixed. Another benefit is that you can rent a drawer, a room, an apartment or a building. You can even share with another company.

What can you do with it?
Anything you do with a server on-site can be done with a virtual server in the cloud. For example, most people already used a shared cloud service for SPAM prevention. Postini and SpamSoap are both cloud services that scan all incoming email for SPAM and viruses, then send it to your mail server. Because they are Internet based, they can also hold mail for you if the mail server goes down. Because they are a “highly available” web service, the servers are actually copied to several redundant servers so that the application is always available. This is an entry level cloud service.

Taken to the other extreme, you could theoretically rent an apartment building in a cloud and migrate all of your servers into an Internet based environment. You could then use dumb terminals to access the cloud-based resources. Instead of having expensive servers and workstations, you pay a monthly fee for your entire setup. In this example, there is no data in your offices; it’s all on the Internet. There are no backups to send away, it’s all handled by the cloud provider. There are no remote connectivity issues because it is ALL remote connectivity. You could be on your home computer and access your work desktop – just as if you were sitting at your desk. Believe it or not, this IS the future of computing and CNS is working toward making it a reality for our customers.

Where are the Fortune 500 features?
What happens when your server goes down? How about your Internet connection? Does your business suffer? Do your users sit around not doing important work? The Fortune 500 cannot afford that. Can Citibank allow a card processing server to be offline? Can Dell allow their ordering site to be down? While your company may not lose millions of dollars for every minute of downtime, apply some ratios and you begin to see some correlations. Software companies have spent billions on research and development to develop solutions for the Fortune 500, and now that they are a saturated market, they have set their sights on SMB’s. Pricing has come down across the board and SMB’s are now able to afford investing in this area. Can you imagine a solution that guards again a single component failure, a fire and a major natural disaster? It exists today and now SMB’s can take part in it.

How much does it cost again?
I wish I could stand here and give you a cost, but the reality is that every solution is different. What you can do it figure out what you want to test in the cloud and give me a call. I’m happy to work with you to move one or all services into the cloud. Will there be some costs, yes! There will be setup fees and monthly fees. You’ll probably spend as much as you would have by keeping it in-house, but think of all the benefits you get by moving it into the cloud. Imagine a world with no downtime. It could be yours!

Tags: ,
Posted by in Hot Topics | No Comments »

Customer Service – does it really still exist?

Wednesday, March 24th, 2010

I’m old enough to remember when service meant something. Even fast food vendors cared about your experience with them. Certainly there are entities who still excel in that area, and we know who they are – Disney, Nordstrom’s and The Four Seasons Hotel chain, to name a few. But I recently had a great experience with a company who average Americans can better relate to – Target.

I love shopping at Target. Every Target store I’ve ever shopped in is clean and neat, with specific areas clearly marked. Now I do encounter the occasional grumpy cashier, but for the most part, employees seem to enjoy what they’re doing – which is always a sign of how a company treats their employees. I didn’t think it could get any better, but I was wrong. Last weekend, I was shopping in Target looking for a baby gift. The baby registry machine was very easy to use and printed me 3 pages of items. I always find it hard to locate specific items because there are a thousand bibs, hundreds of onesies and countless blankets to choose from. But wait – the Target registry tells you exactly what aisle to go to. Perfect! The only thing better would have been a personal shopper waiting for me in aisle 3.

I found the items I wanted and proceeded to checkout. As I approached the cashier, I had pen in hand ready to mark off the items I was purchasing so that I could return to the registry machine and update it. But wait – after the cashier rang up my items he asked if I’d like him to scan them into the registry. How simple and convenient is that?? What in the past has taken me an hour to do, took me about 10 minutes.

Target made the shopping experience easy and enjoyable. Isn’t that really what we’re all looking for? How nice would it be if we didn’t have to sit in an endless voicemail cycle for 20 minutes waiting to talk to our internet provider only to be told their system is down, or if we could see our doctor within 10 minutes of our appointed time? I think many businesses lack basic courtesy, and consumers have lowered their expectations to match the level of service they receive. Service providers don’t value our time and over time, have come to believe that it’s just the price you pay for being in their club. I work every day with a group of great professionals and we strive to make every interaction with us easy and enjoyable. We do have our share of bumps along the way, but just having that as our main objective is a great place to start.

Posted by in Customer Service | No Comments »

Business Continuity – Would you survive?

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

Last week I presented a seminar on Business Continuity from a real world perspective (check out the slides here). Some of you may remember that CNS suffered a major disaster in our server room last fall and we were able to test our Business Continuity Plan and learn quite a few things from the experience. One thing that I cannot get past is that when I asked the install poll question only ONE PERSON raised their hand admitting that they have a business continuity plan in place! Only a single person! That is simply not good enough.

Studies have shown that 20% of small businesses will have a major disaster every five years. Of those companies, 50% will close their doors as an immediate response. That means that five years from now, 1 in 10 small businesses will no longer be around, simply because they relied on IT and did not properly safeguard their investment. That sounds to me like not being able to take that free trip around the world because you don’t have a passport – it’s not a valid excuse. Go get a passport – I mean go get a reliable business continuity plan.

When thinking about continuity, think about process and technology. Not just where will your people work when the building burns down, but how can I build my infrastructure so that it doesn’t go down in the first place? Can I leverage cloud-based or virtualization technologies? How about my backup solution? Finally, get that plan written down. The most important thing we learned was to have the document printed. When your servers are offline, it’s hard to access the plan!

Tags: , ,
Posted by in Business Strategy | No Comments »