GMO Cloud

Do You Need Hand-holding When Embracing Cloud Infrastructure?

This is exactly the type of question a small business owner or a start-up is likely to ask. The answer is yes. There are some critical situations when hand-holding is imperative while in some circumstances it may be optional. Here are the inflexion points where a newbie to the cloud infrastructure needs to pay attention.

Setting up the cloud instances

In my opinion this is the most important situation when you need assistance. Now many of you would have heard that setting up cloud instances is a simple affair. This cannot be farther than the truth. I vividly remember the first time I tried migrating to the Amazon EC2 cloud. Believe me when I say that I was totally bewildered and I am a tech guy myself. I had problems with my database which somehow did not respond to my commands. The pricing itself was a tricky issue. Of course things have changed over the years but I suppose that grasping the technicalities of cloud infrastructure takes time. If an entrepreneur with a brilliant business idea decides to do it by himself, the task of setting up cloud instances can be daunting and frustrating. In the case of big cloud vendors like Rackspace and Amazon EC2, you need a consultant who knows the ropes well. Windows Azure can be equally challenging. No doubt independent cloud consultants are having a merry time setting up cloud infrastructure for their clients.

Running, updating and maintaining cloud infrastructure

In a cloud the more things remain the same more they change. The operational environment is highly dynamic. Fluctuating demand, requirement of other services like load balancing can be tough to manage without technical knowhow. This fact is not fully appreciated till you are already knee deep in operations. Grappling with emergency situations should not be left to fate. Remember that your business suffers when your website or web based services are down. Getting someone who knows the technicalities is a good practice.

Managed services

But if you have to maintain in-house technical staff, the very purpose of cloud infrastructure is lost. Ideally I would like to handover all maintenance to the cloud infrastructure provider. Unfortunately big cloud vendors don’t provide you that option. You have to hire an outside consultant to manage the daily and emergency tasks.

Managed services including setting up cloud instances are provided by some cloud vendors. Identifying these providers can save you a good amount of time and money in the long run. The cost of such services should be factored in when calculating your expenditure on infrastructure.

There are three types of Professional Managed Services that GMO Cloud America, Inc. offers. These are for security, monitoring and restoration, and setup services. These services are designed to reduce the burden of server administration, cut costs, and increase your business efficiency.

Conclusion

The truth is that you still need technical knowledge to setup and run cloud instances. It is advisable to choose a cloud vendor who can hold your hand while you take the perilous journey into the cloud. In my view, there is no point ignoring the basic fact that cloud infrastructure is after all based on technology and requires technical knowledge to manage. There are numerous other issues including routine maintenance which you must entrust to a reliable technical person. It would be ideal if your cloud vendor can act as a facilitator in this regard.

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Our articles are written to provide you with tools and information to meet your IT and cloud solution needs. Join us on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.

About the Guest Author:

Sankarambadi Srinivasan, ‘Srini’, is a maverick writer, technopreneur, geek and online marketing enthusiast rolled into one. He began his career as a Naval weapon specialist. Later, he sold his maiden venture and became head of an offshore Database administration company in Mumbai. He moved on as Chief Technology Officer of one of the largest online entities, where he led consolidation of 300 online servers and introduced several Web 2.0 initiatives. He holds a Master’s degree in Electronics and Telecommunication.

Cloud-Based Services are Changing the Face of the Media

In the media industry information changes at a rapid pace. Breaking news and hot stories are delivered to readers at lightning speeds. So media agencies need to implement agile business solutions that can scale quickly. Sensing the potential of cloud computing technology, media agencies are rapidly moving to the cloud, using new cloud-based services.

How does the cloud benefit media agencies?

Media encompasses a wide range of information services including: journalists, reporters, editors, advertising agencies, print material, audio/video and online content, and much more. Media is another important industry, after IT and video gaming, which requires automatic scaling features.

For instance: a popular newspaper publishes a breaking story. If the story goes viral, the news website starts receiving huge traffic within minutes. Similarly, media agencies receive sudden traffic when they publish a lucrative advertisement. People start bombarding the site to take advantage of that exciting offer. There have been several instances where websites have crashed due to such an overload. It is not feasible for media agencies to set up huge resources to handle sudden traffic surges.

When the media website is hosted on the cloud, resources are automatically scaled up during peak traffic hours. At the same time, resources are automatically scaled down to accommodate slower traffic trends. GMO Cloud calls this the high availability feature where the cloud becomes reliable, possesses fault tolerance characteristics and performs automatic scaling. At the end of the day, media agencies pay for only the resources used.

Faster performance

Another benefit of cloud-based services is faster performance. Consider the same instance where a media agency has published a breaking story. As soon as traffic surges, the performance of the site goes down. But with a cloud solution, when traffic surges the resources are scaled up. At the same time, the performance of the website does not change at all. You can still enjoy faster performance and 99.9% uptime. Broadcasters and visual art agencies can publish rich audio/video streaming.

Business process integration

Media agencies need a greater level of collaboration among their employees. When there is a breaking story, the reporter needs to report it to the agency. The publisher has to create the story and the editor must next finalize the content. When the story is about to get published, there might be additional incidents that need to be added. The head office may need to collaborate with many regional offices to incorporate these changes. Cloud-based services integrate business processes to provide access to every employee involved in that business process. By providing quick access to the required data, cloud technology allows employees the flexibility to dynamically update news and improve the performance of the agency. In addition, the increased use of smartphones allows media agencies to create mobile solutions that boost the SLAs of the company.

Cloud computing concerns

The major concern for media people to move to the cloud is data integrity. News agencies deal with critical information that requires higher levels of confidentiality. Data security is crucial. However, cloud-based services offer secure, resilient, and scalable data management solutions. When every industry is benefiting from the cloud, why should the media lag behind? It is important that the media industry join the cloud to stay ahead of competition.

Be Part of Our Cloud Conversation

Our articles are written to provide you with tools and information to meet your IT and cloud solution needs. Join us on Facebook and Twitter.

About the Guest Author:

Kaushik Das is an engineer, research analyst and a technical writer in the areas wireless, IT, enterprise software, next-generation hosting, storage and renewable energy. He specializes in competitive analysis, market research, industry insights, white paper and actionable web content development.

How Progressive is the Gaming Industry When it Comes to the Cloud?

While cloud computing has revolutionized the IT segment as a whole, the gaming industry specifically has reaped enormous benefits from innovative cloud technology. High scalability and low latency are the two important requirements for gaming. As the cloud offers highly scalable solutions with lower levels of latency, the gaming industry has quickly embraced this innovation, and the future of the sector definitely lies in the cloud.

The most recent E3 Expo, which would normally showcase innovation in gaming hardware, ended up offering nothing significant to gamers. The absence of new consoles underscores that the industry is looking at fully utilizing the resources of the cloud. Also significant in the cloud gaming segment is the acquisition of Gaikai by Sony. Gaikai has been a pioneer in the cloud gaming, and the acquisition will allow Sony to tap into that as well.

Another key player is Microsoft. And to add cloud-based power to its Xbox infrastructure, the company is recruiting some of the former staff of OnLive, one of the leading companies that made cloud gaming a reality. After Sony’s acquisition of Gaikai, many people felt that Microsoft would counter by acquiring OnLive and adding its services to its Xbox 720. However, this acquisition did not materialize.

Why is everyone moving to the cloud?

There are several advantages of cloud-based gaming services. For instance, competitive prices offered by the OnLive cloud gaming site enable users to enjoy amazing games. Users need not download 10GB of data before playing a game, but can simple save the game and access it again from another computer. They can buy daily passes or monthly subscriptions to play hundreds of titles. The automatic scaling feature augmented with low latency makes cloud games the ultimate choice for gaming lovers. All this is not possible with a traditional gaming setup.

Cloud gaming concerns

Current gaming infrastructure is not efficient enough to provide a rich gaming experience to users. However, gaming technology is changing gears. The new GeForce grid processor from Nvidia is specifically designed to improve the performance of cloud games. It combines the power of GPU virtualization and low-latency to provide the best platform for game developers.

Another important concern for the cloud gaming sector is speed. Every gamer does not have the required high speed broadband network to enjoy live streaming of audio and video. However rapid advancement in  telecommunication is sure to deliver high speed internet connections to everyone soon.

On the developer’s end – pertinent to scalability and low-latency features – they will need a reliable infrastructure partner, especially in key areas like security, fault tolerance, and support. To gain a better idea of these concepts, check out GMO Cloud’s High Availability Features section.

The amazing benefits of cloud computing technologies offer a perfect platform for game developers to unleash their creativity. With changing technologies, it is important to stay ahead of the competition.

Cloud-based gaming services are definitely the future of the gaming industry.

Be Part of Our Cloud Conversation

Our articles are written to provide you with tools and information to meet your IT and cloud solution needs. Join us on Facebook and Twitter.

About the Guest Author:

Kaushik Das is an engineer, research analyst and a technical writer in the areas wireless, IT, enterprise software, next-generation hosting, storage and renewable energy. He specializes in competitive analysis, market research, industry insights, white paper and actionable web content development.

Why Game Development is Better in a Hybrid Environment

Game development is a complex process. The life cycle of a game can extend for years and some may go on for decades. Some of the game development processes can be easily moved to the cloud whereas others seem to hit a roadblock. This is the main reason why development in a hybrid environment is growing at a rapid pace instead of comprehensive migration to the cloud.

Understanding the game development process

To understand the game development process, we have to divide it into several blocks.

Pre-Production

Storyboarding

This is the conceptual stage, in which writers and artists are primarily involved. Modern storyboarding can often involve people from various parts of the world, and such collaborative work requires robust tools which speed up decision making and enhance productivity. A cloud-based offering is best suited for this stage. We require an enterprise collaborative environment to enrich the process.

Creating a 2D Prototype

This stage is critical especially when game developers are seeking funding for their project. One must realize that 3D animation is both labor and infrastructure intensive, calling for an infusion of large investment. At the same time, 2D prototyping does not consume as much processing power or memory. For a startup prototyping in a cloud environment is ideal, and typically game developers work on several prototypes simultaneously and then pitch to investors. The cost of developing prototypes can be dramatically reduced in the cloud.

Production

Full Scale Game Development

One must remember that not all prototypes pass the test to reach the 3D development stage. At this juncture the need for extensive infrastructure becomes important. Game development by itself can be divided into several smaller processes: modeling, texture mapping, lighting effects, animation and finally rendering. Executing these processes requires extensive resources which can be accessed in a cloud environment. Rendering farms in the cloud can be very cost effective especially when the demand for the resources is elastic and fluctuating.

The main limitation in adopting cloud technology for rendering is the transfer of data. Since the amount of data transferred is usually in the terabytes, and the time required for this can sometimes negate some of the benefits derived from cloud infrastructure.

Post Production

Compositing and special effects are part of the post-production process, and here there is sufficient scope for using cloud-based infrastructure. The problem of data transfer through internet pipelines can be negated to some extent, since the rendering process is already completed.

Testing

Testing may seem like a tertiary process but in game development, this step is crucial. Game developers utilize the expertise of seasoned gamers, often scattered all over the globe. A cloud-based environment is perfectly suited for testing, mainly because of its multi-location features. You can read more about this on GMO Cloud’s Locations page.

Conclusion

As you can see, it’s pretty clear that some 3D game development processes are a great fit for the cloud environment while others are better suited for in-house infrastructure. Rendering farms in the cloud can only be effectively utilized if the data pipeline is robust. For this reason, game development may be perfectly  suited for a hybrid environment, rather than completely migrated all processes to the cloud.

Be Part of Our Cloud Conversation

Our articles are written to provide you with tools and information to meet your IT and cloud solution needs. Join us on Facebook and Twitter.

About the Guest Author:

Sankarambadi Srinivasan, ‘Srini’, is a maverick writer, technopreneur, geek and online marketing enthusiast rolled into one. He began his career as a Naval weapon specialist. Later, he sold his maiden venture and became head of an offshore Database administration company in Mumbai. He moved on as Chief Technology Officer of one of the largest online entities, where he led consolidation of 300 online servers and introduced several Web 2.0 initiatives. He holds a Master’s degree in Electronics and Telecommunication.

This Week in the Cloud [February 22, 2013]

In case you missed it, here are a few notable stories posted on our GMO Cloud blog this past week. As always, you can follow us on Twitter or Facebook, or sign up for our newsletter updates here.

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