The way IT has changed the way we do business is a testament to the creative innovation and intelligence that we are capable of achieving and have yet to discover. With each new development, IT has transformed how a business provides service and how they develop. IT has not only increased computing efficiency, but also the efficiency of the workplace. One of the latest IT frontiers that has been playing a big role in the shift from how traditional business applications are programmed and services are delivered is cloud computing.

Although some could argue that the concept of cloud computing has been in existence for years, what users associate with the idea of a “cloud” platform is the flexibility and application accessibility from multiple devices, and that is relatively new, and it is exciting.

The Information Technology Laboratory of the National Institute of Standards has published a draft working definition and starts off with a broad top-level definition:

Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.

Cloud computing offers three different layers that each offer specific services for IT systems. When getting started, it’s important to understand the differences in functionality to make an informed decision on which would best serve your company:

• Software as a Service (SaaS): Accessible from various client devices through a thin client interface such as a Web browser.
• Platform as a Service (PaaS): Ability to deploy consumer-created applications using programming languages and tools supported by the provider onto the cloud infrastructure.
• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): Provides processing and storage capabilities, networks, and other fundamental computing resources. Consumer is able to deploy and run software, which can include operating systems and applications, and has control over storage and possibly select networking components. ReliaCloud, an enterprise-class IT IaaS cloud solution, is available through VISI, which provides scalability and high performance data management for use in public, private, and hybrid cloud configurations.

Cloud computing has multiple layers and different models that might require further clarification as to how each one would benefit you. We have put together a white paper on cloud computing that explains its many components and goes into detail about evaluation criteria to verify that the solution you select meets your particular needs.

Tweet

As technology and the Internet continue to evolve and advance, so does the business world.  Successful companies understand the power of technology and how to use the Internet to their advantage.  As a result, cloud computing has become an integral part of today’s business world— and that of the future.

What is Cloud Computing?

Cloud computing is a broad term used for any type of computing work that is hosted on the Internet.  Cloud computing is a combination of tools and solutions that all work together to more effectively deliver and distribute data.  This “cloud of technology” offers a secure, streamlined management solution via the Internet for many different services like:

• Website hosting
• File storage and sharing
• File backup
• Cloud databases
• Email
• E-Commerce
• Office productivity tools
• Customer relationship management (CRM) 

Cloud Computing = Convenience

Unlike the long delays of traditional IT, cloud computing enables on-demand access to a shared pool of resources like networks, servers, applications, services and storage.  Also, broad network access allows services to be accessed via a variety of platforms, such as desktop, laptop, mobile and other devices.

Cloud customers span multiple industries including healthcare, financial, retail and government.  Since the cloud is a broad collection of services, organizations can choose where, when, and how they use these tools.  However, it’s not just about accessibility and mobility. Cloud computing can also optimize business by increasing efficiency and flexibility in the work place.  Some of the benefits include:

• Reduce spending on technology infrastructure: Get easy access to your information with minimal upfront spending.
• Maximize security, confidentiality and integrity: Benefit from the physical and electronic security practices of your cloud provider to keep your critical data safe and secure. 
• Achieve economies of scale: Increase the volume of output or productivity with fewer people.
• Increase data accessibility: Access your data anytime from anywhere for your convenience.
• Improve flexibility and agility: Change direction or quickly adapt to new realities with faster response times.
• Scale as needed: As your applications grow, you can access additional capacity on demand as needed.
• Focus on your core competencies: Your cloud service provider manages the associated costs and risks of delivering the service, so you can focus on your core responsibilities.

Cloud computing platforms like ReliaCloud™, a product of TDS Hosted & Managed Services, LLC collaborate with companies to provide some or all of these benefits.

As technology and the Internet continue to advance, so does the business world.  There are a multitude of reasons to move to the cloud, but those reasons will vary for each company. With the proper planning and approach, the cloud can provide the perfect dynamic infrastructure for your organization.

Tweet

I’m excited to announce the latest customer utilizing our ReliaCloud cloud computing platform — Curenci.  Curenci is an online payment platform processor based in Bloomington, Minn.  Curenci was looking for a cloud computing provider that guarantees reliability, security, and provides an overall robust infrastructure.

“As an online payment processor, we need to rapidly scale as our customers’ needs change,” says Bill Whalen, director of sales for Curenci. “It is critical that we can do it quickly without a lot of capital investment. VISI’s ReliaCloud allows us to provide uptime guarantees to our customers and supports our mission-critical applications.”

Read the full press release to learn more about how Curenci is leveraging ReliaCloud.

Tweet

I recently had the opportunity to present a keynote session at the Enterprise Cloud Summit hosted by VISI at the Minneapolis Institute of the Arts.   Based on the attendance, you could tell that enterprise cloud computing is still a hot topic for IT leadership.  Thanks to everyone that came up to me with additional questions after the event – I enjoyed the conversations.  If you missed my presentation, you can view my slide deck on slideshare.  From my perspective, there are a couple of key takeaways:

• There is a lot of attention to the problems and issues with the cloud but not enough attention on the benefits and enablers. These include:
  • Matching usage requirements with infrastructure capacity, e.g. buying only what you need
  • Having infrastructure capacity available for growth without paying for it, e.g. no stranded dedicated infrastructure
  • Being able to scale up (and scale down) capacity as business conditions warrant
  • Rapid provisioning of infrastructure (days vs. months)
  • Access to enterprise-class technology without having an enterprise budget
• There continues to be dogma about what a cloud is and what a cloud is not.   If a “cloud” meets your business and technology needs, do the definitions really matter?
• While the cloud has many benefits, it is not a panacea. You still have to manage security, applications (IaaS or PaaS), access, sourcing, and other IT operations.   Or partner with a managed services provider.

The bottom line is:  cloud is a great tool for making IT a leaner and more responsive and innovative support department for your business.  It can help you be more relevant.  And that is the best goal for IT.  Right?

Tweet

Cloud security is about leveraging everything we’ve learned over decades of computer security, centuries of information security and millennia of physical security. It is about applying those practices to deliver a transparent and inclusive control model that protects your information and ensures its availability, confidentiality and integrity regardless of where it resides.

We’ve drawn from our experience as both data center operators and members of a Fortune 500 telecommunications organization to design products for our customers.

While many organizations are out there insisting that the cloud changes everything, we’ve been focused on ensuring ReliaCloud’s security framework is built on a combination of administrative, physical and technical controls.   We understand that a successful cloud partnership comes from shifting some of the operational challenges of IT management to a cloud service provider, while still retaining the correct oversight to ensure risks are managed correctly.

Let’s look at a few of the key controls we’ve incorporated in to ReliaCloud to ensure the security of the information assets you place in our care.  From an administrative control perspective, our:

• Security policy and procedure practice draws from a collection of:  common industry practices, regulations and governance frameworks (e.g. ISO 27001/27002, NIST 800-53)
• Network elements and systems undergo regular security patching to address software vulnerabilities as they are discovered based on the severity of potential exposure.
• Periodic audits, including our SSAE 16 SOC1, ensure the effectiveness of the controls we’ve implemented to protect your information
• Ongoing assessments of our security practices identify opportunities for continuous improvement as well as emerging threats
• Contractual terms include:
  • Confidentiality clauses for the sharing of information between organizations
  • Protocols for communication in the event of a suspected security breach
  • Liability implications for our organization in the event of a breach
  • Mechanisms for disposal of data at the termination of business
  • Commitment on the geographical placement of your information

What would you like to see in the future when it comes to helping your business scale safely with the help of cloud computing?  Share your insight in a comment below.  If you would like to learn more or have some questions answered, feel free to contact us today.

Tweet

Thanks to everyone who attended and participated in the Enterprise Cloud Summit yesterday. It was great to see the high level of engagement during the interactive panel session. I put together a summary of the event below using Storify and the @VISIHOSTING Twitter feed.

The Star Tribune featured both of the keynote presenters in a story on cloud computing yesterday. If you missed the story in the paper, you can read it online.

Tweet

In addition to the many perks of being a local provider, ReliaCloud also offers solutions for enterprise-grade applications. What does this mean?

Enterprise-grade means our cloud computing solution is based on enterprise-class technologies from the leading technology providers: Cisco Nexus and UCS, EMC VMAX (not VNX) and RecoverPoint, VMware vSphere and vCloud Director.

Enterprise-grade means ReliaCloud was deployed to be utilized as mid-market or enterprise companies would prefer. Companies can purchase a pool of resources and deploy them across multiple data centers, or deploy the services into their dedicated physical environment. A true “hybrid” cloud solution. ReliaCloud can be provisioned as a full solution (a managed ReliaCloud server) or provisioned a la carte (for example, 3 TB deployed to six customer-owned and colocated servers delivered via fiber channel). This is a powerful capability. It allows customers to try certain capabilities but not be locked into an all-cloud model if their business needs change.

Enterprise-grade means that customers can utilize existing investments in these same mainline technologies for higher reliability when integrating into ReliaCloud resources. For example, our near-term product roadmap calls for “federation” of compatible customer dedicated vCloud Director environments with a customer dedicated ReliaCloud vCloud Director. In this case, a customer would be able to control their private cloud resources and their provisioned ReliaCloud resources from a single control point.

Learn more about the enterprise applications ReliaCloud supports by heading to www.ReliaCloud.com

Tweet

When your product is offering 100% availability, your testing had better be bulletproof.  Anyone involved in a significant IT project can attest to the amount of work involved in testing new systems.  The hours, the challenges, and the late nights that invariably accompany the one entry that appears on the project tracking document that says, in one way or another, ‘Testing: 100% Complete’.  For those outside the engineering and development circles it can be hard to understand all that has gone into getting ReliaCloud up and running.

As the Product Manager for the ReliaCloud product, I want to give a big thanks to the team of seasoned professionals at VISI, Vital Support Systems and TDS Hosted and Managed Services who worked long hours the last few months to design and test the ReliaCloud platform.  The team included systems architects, engineers, product managers, project management, and many others who designed, documented, and executed on the test plans.  It is this team that gets the credit for putting the ‘Reliable’ in ReliaCloud.

We tested several complex cloud computing use cases covering three cloud types: Public, Hybrid, and Private Cloud.  Each of the test cases within these was designed to validate different areas of functionality.  Each component and function was put through comprehensive test plans including provisioning, integration, patching, fail-over, recovery, and more.

And we aren’t done.  We understand that offering 100% uptime means we continue to develop, test and improve our cloud computing platform continuously to ensure that ReliaCloud will perform 100% of the time.

You can learn more about the ReliaCloud offering at www.reliacloud.com.

Tweet

Companies can choose from a wide variety of cloud computing providers.   I am often asked what makes ReliaCloud different from Amazon, Rackspace or [name your cloud computing provider here].

This is the first in a series of three posts that will cover the key points that differentiate ReliaCloud from all the other cloud computing providers and why these features matter.  It is important to reiterate that ReliaCloud is ideally suited for back office production applications (ERP, financial systems, accounting systems, line of business applications, mail systems, Sharepoint, Active Directory, voice and call control, etc.).

ReliaCloud is Local

Local means companies can get cost-effective, high-speed, low-latency connectivity directly to ReliaCloud. Many cloud offerings do not offer a direct connectivity option, and for those that do, often times it is a longer distance connection that can be cost-prohibitive.

Local means local account management. It also means local engineering and support resources.

Local means that people that are less comfortable with cloud based solutions can “see and touch” their cloud and cross connect into colocated infrastructure.

Local means that customers will always know where their data resides and under which jurisdictions it is protected.

Hopefully that was helpful in providing background on how being “local” makes ReliaCloud different.   Stay tuned to hear what it means for ReliaCloud to be  enterprise-grade and secure.

P.S.  If you’re interested in how cloud services can work with enterprise applications, join me at the Enterprise Cloud Summit on October 16^th, 2012 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.  I’ll be giving a presentation that I’ve entitled Cloud Services and Enterprise IT Applications: Are They a Match?.   Event details and free registration are at www.visi.com/cloudsummit.

Tweet

Over 100 IT professionals in the Twin Cities have already registered for the Enterprise Cloud Summit on October 16. Are you coming?  RSVP today.

Tweet

Our product team talks with a lot of companies each year.  During these conversations we try to learn from them about their future needs, as well as, their current pain points.  One area that we identified was the need for a local, enterprise level cloud service.   The kind of service that would give piece of mind to IT directors by keeping them close to their data, without putting it in a cloud so far away they couldn’t “touch it”.    So we built ReliCloud™.   In fact, we just introduced it to our customers in Iowa last month, and now we are set to launch it in Minnesota and Wisconsin this week.

ReliaCloud is an enterprise-grade cloud infrastructure able to serve the security, compliance, and availability requirements of the most mission critical IT applications. From ERP and financial systems to resource intensive databases and data warehouses, ReliaCloud was designed from the “ground up” to meet the demanding availability and performance features required to keep critical IT available, high performing, and comprehensively secure. Based on the enterprise class network, server, storage, and virtualization technologies and product lines from Cisco, EMC, and VMware, ReliaCloud eases the transition of mission critical IT to a cloud-based solution and integrates into existing IT infrastructure.

In our sessions with customers we also uncovered a need for better disaster protection choices, so we built a Midwest-based interconnected cloud infrastructure to fulfill this need.

ReliaCloud is now hosted in each of our Tier III data centers (Madison, Wis., Des Moines, Iowa and Eden Prairie, Minn.), and each ReliaCloud installation is connected to the others with high speed, low latency, private connectivity. This interconnectivity allows the distribution of IT applications across multiple physical locations, enabling advanced disaster resiliency directly into production IT infrastructure. The locality of ReliaCloud resources enables direct connectivity to ReliaCloud with dedicated high speed network connections at cost-effective pricing. Additionally, the local nature of ReliaCloud allows a measured migration to cloud-based services by co-locating existing IT and utilizing cloud-based services on an as-needed basis.

ReliaCloud undergoes extensive and stringent failure and fail-over testing, including powering down all components, before accepting production IT workload.

ReliaCloud is ready in Des Moines and final testing is currently underway in Madison and Eden Prairie.  Contact our cloud experts if you’d like to learn more about how ReliaCloud can help your business.

Tweet

We are proud to present the Enterprise Cloud Summit, a chance for IT leaders and business executives to hear from technology experts on the topic of enterprise cloud computing.

The event will be held on October 16, 2012, at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts in Minneapolis, Minnesota. You won’t want to miss the opportunity to hear Bill Martorelli from Forrester Research talk about the second wave of cloud computing.

Bill Martorelli, a Principal Analyst with Forrester Research, will present on the topic of “Navigating the Second Wave of Cloud Computing.” Bill will illustrate how mid-sized enterprises are migrating to the cloud, review key selection criteria when moving traditional IT production workload to cloud services, and illustrate potential performance and financial benefits of cloud-based IT delivery.

Clint Harder, Vice President of Product Strategy for TDS HMS, will present a session on “Cloud Services and Enterprise IT Applications: Are They a Match?” Clint will take the audience through key decision points in selecting cloud services for enterprise applications. He will also provide an overview of ReliaCloud, including insights into the thought processes that went into the design, engineering, and competitive positioning.

More details about the Enterprise Cloud Summit as well as registration information can be found at visi.com/cloudsummit. Registration is free and includes a complimentary hot breakfast from D’Amico Catering and the chance to win a Nexus 7 tablet from Google.

Tweet

Businesses can purchase enterprise cloud infrastructure from dozens of service providers in the marketplace today. While many providers classify their cloud platforms as “enterprise ready”, no two enterprise cloud providers are exactly alike. Businesses need to take a reasoned approach to evaluating the capabilities of potential enterprise cloud vendors. In this seminar, Jason Baker, Chief Technology Officer of VISI, will cover a recommended three step approach when contracting services from an enterprise cloud provider:

1. Identify the business IT stakeholder requirements.

2. Map the business requirements to the enterprise cloud provider’s capabilities

3. Create a cloud service agreement

The breakfast seminar Navigate into the Enterprise Cloud will be held on May 30^th from 7:30-9:00am at our Eden Prairie Data Center. Stick around afterwards for a tour of our Tier III data center.

Register today at www.visi.com/events

Tweet

As I discussed application monitoring with VISI staff this past week, I recalled an interesting presentation I attended last year at GlueCon – a next-generation cloud computing conference held each year in Boulder, Colorado. The presenter was Paul Guth, an operations engineer from a young start-up company called Cloud Scaling. Paul’s presentation focused on the evolving nature of application monitoring, and how cloud computing was impacting the way organizations monitor their application services.

Traditional IT organizations use a myriad of application monitoring platforms to collect infrastructure, application, and service metrics. IT leadership and operations staff members use this information to make IT planning decisions and troubleshoot service issues.

Monitoring platforms are becoming more sophisticated every year. These platforms can pull a wide assortment of  data from nearly any device and application. In some cases, a monitoring platform might pull hundreds or thousands of individual metrics from a single device! IT organizations find themselves awash in a sea of telemetry data today. How do you know which metrics make sense for your organization to display in reports? And what impact does cloud computing have on your service reporting? Let me offer some general thoughts regarding these questions.

During his presentation, Guth made an interesting observation regarding the ideal monitoring dashboard for corporate CIO’s. He suggested that corporate CIO’s should be concerned about two things: 1) service availability, and 2) IT service expenses and revenue. The ideal monitoring dashboard would display a big green circle if all IT services were available and performing nominally. The dashboard would also display a small table with two rows: revenue generated by IT in dollars-per-second, and expenses generated by IT in dollars-per-second. In other words, the organization would monitor the flow of capital going in and out of the organization as a result of delivering IT services.

Now, it’s easy to ask for these sorts of financial metrics, but a completely different thing to actually deliver. I mean, how many organizations understand what their IT services cost per second? Regardless of whether IT organizations can deliver these sorts of real-time financial metrics, Guth’s point is that IT organizations need to be driven by actionable metrics today. CIO’s don’t care if a server is down; they care if a service is down. CFO’s evaluate IT operations based on the revenue impact of IT incidents and infrastructure changes. Businesses don’t need more metrics — they need fewer, more relevant metrics. It’s a matter of quality over quantity.

In my perfect world, IT organizations would look at only two components on their monitoring dashboards: a service availability report showing the current health of major IT services, and an SLA report measuring the success of IT operational efforts. Sure, it ought to be possible to drill into these areas to get more details regarding specific IT incidents. But at the end of the day, none of the other metrics are really actionable. Businesses care about how their IT organization is performing today, and how the organization has performed recently. Everything else is just noise.

Most businesses underestimate the impact that cloud computing is having on service monitoring. Look at traditional applications that live in an enterprise cloud environment. In the past, we would set infrastructure and application capacity thresholds in our monitoring systems. If CPU or memory utilization became too high on a server, the monitoring system would start firing off alert messages.

But what purpose do capacity thresholds serve in an elastic computing environment? Why should an IT organization care if a cloud server is using 100% of available CPU? Isn’t that actually a good thing from an efficiency standpoint? Cloud computing platforms and service automation technologies are allowing companies to fully utilize allocated computing resources, and spin up additional resources on-demand.

IT industrialization, realized through cloud computing, changes the relevancy of the service metrics we monitor. We are no longer so worried about CPU utilization or disk queue lengths — or even failed workloads. Now we are concerned about service availability and service dependencies. We are more focused on service inputs and outputs.

So you see, the evolution of IT towards cloud computing is the reason that service monitoring dashboards will evolve towards the simple dashboard envisioned by Paul Guth. The cloud will abstract underlying IT infrastructure and diminish the value of service metrics associated with it. At the same time, IT organizations will begin to focus their attention on the metrics which drive business growth and customer satisfaction. And that sounds like a good thing to me.

Tweet

“Look before you leap”, is the operative phrase I tell IT leaders when I hear they are planning to move business applications into the cloud.

Businesses oftentimes make the decision to move their applications to the cloud without performing the necessary due diligence to ensure a successful transition. Their lack of planning can lead to application performance issues, disgruntled IT staff, and increased scrutiny from business leadership. If you are thinking about moving your enterprise applications to the cloud, here are a number of things you need to consider.

Application selection

The fact is that newer applications are easier to move to the cloud than older applications — in most cases. Generally, cloud-based infrastructure relies on virtualization, and newer applications have been developed and tested within virtualized environments. Newer applications typically have fewer dependencies than older applications. It’s these dependencies which oftentimes determine whether or not an application can live in the cloud. For example, a legacy application may be dependent on a specific operating system, hardware driver, or network location. These dependencies may be difficult, if not impossible, to replicate in a cloud environment.

Many business applications are developed and licensed by 3rd-party software vendors. You need to make sure that your application vendors licensing models are supported in the cloud, and that vendors can properly maintain your cloud-based applications. You don’t want to move your applications to the cloud, only to find that your trusted software vendor won’t answer your support calls anymore.

Cloud application performance

Businesses move their applications to the cloud to reduce IT spending and increase the reliability of their application services. But, all too often, they start thinking about application performance after the cloud transition is completed. And by then, it may be too late to address any application performance issues.

Moving your applications to the cloud will not necessarily improve application performance. Staff accessing a cloud application may find performance to be the same, or a little less snappy, than applications previously hosted onsite. Whereas, mobile staff members might see a significant performance increase when accessing newly transitioned cloud applications. You should test your applications in the cloud first, and use performance benchmarking to preset staff members’ expectations.

Some business applications simply are not designed for the cloud. These applications may be sensitive to network latency or may require significant amounts of bandwidth –negating  the cost savings of cloud infrastructure. You should leave these applications alone or seek out cloud-friendly alternatives.

IT staff impact

Someone once told me that technology is easy, and people are hard. Figuring out the technical nuances of moving applications to the cloud is pretty straightforward. Whereas, realigning the thinking and processes of your IT organization can present a tremendous challenge. Moving applications to the cloud will represent a major change for your IT operation. In the past, they were responsible for managing application infrastructure, troubleshooting, monitoring the health of applications, and backing up the application data. A service provider may provide some, or all, of these capabilities once applications are transitioned to the cloud. Your team members may experience anxiety due to changing roles. Your goal is to temper this anxiety, and refocus the energies of your team.

It’s best to address IT organization strategy and team alignment before the applications are transitioned. You need everyone on-board and buying into the cloud strategy before you begin. Your talented IT staff members are crucial to ensuring a successful application transition. If they walk out the door, you lose all the tribal knowledge they carry with them.

Test your apps

I’ve noted several planning steps that you should consider before transitioning your applications to the cloud. One more thing you should consider is engaging a cloud provider like VISI during your planning process. We can help you setup a cloud testing and staging environment which you can use for process development and performance benchmarking. It’s an easy, cost-effective way to kick start your journey to the cloud.

To learn more about moving into the cloud, you can attend a seminar I’m presenting at entitled Navigate into the Enterprise Cloud on May 30th. There are still seats available.

Tweet