GMO Cloud

What lies behind the Cloud?

It started as an academic pastime for me. Is there a standard definition of cloud computing? You would be surprised to know that I did not get a clear answer even though I tried all kinds of search with different keywords. The conclusion I have reached is that cloud technology means different things to different people.

More about boasting about great people running great cloud companies

I don’t want to seem like a man on a mission to criticize others, but the feeling I get is that cloud computing is made to look like it’s for big players, huge diversified companies and for those who visualize thousands of servers churning out their zillion of bits of data.

What I found on the net was that Salesforce has grown leaps and bound because of the visionary owners who started off from their garage. Doesn’t this look familiar? I thought even Microsoft began their humble career from a garage. But what does that tell me about cloud computing? Nothing, I tried to search with other smart keywords and landed up with the great Jeff Bezos and Amazon. It seems that Amazon leapt into the cloud straight from their bookstore (which is what Amazon started off as). There are praises galore about Jeff competing with software giant like Microsoft and search master like Google and beating them both. Good for Amazon, I will say. But what’s in it for me? I mean, I am a small fry, trying to made do with meagre resources and running a Pop and Mom store online. Why should I go for the Amazons and Googles of this world?

The hype around big clouds is frightening

The conclusion I have reached is that there is too much of hype about Amazon, Azure and Salesforce. I don’t want to belittle anyone, but it’s a question of scale. Amazon Web Services and others of its ilk have made it big because they have mastered the art of big numbers. They are big, very big and that’s their major advantage. But for me such a large scale is meaningless. When I go to AWS, I get a feeling that I am about to scale the Great Wall of China. But what I want is a humble cloud where I can put my meagre belongings and web pages and do it at a reasonable cost. I don’t want overheads and technical staff eating into my profits. With cloud providers like Amazon, I get a feeling that I need some expert technical guy who would cost a bomb to look after my website on the cloud. The whole thing is frustrating. I am told that I will save money if I move into a cloud but it looks otherwise. Is there a cloud provider who would show me the savings and still reduce my overheads?

Is small beautiful?

It may come as a surprise but the internet is swamped by big cloud players and their triumphs. It’s tough to get hold of a small cloud vendor. I should blame Google search for this because it seems to favour large cloud providers. I always knew that Google search is biased but this is simply absurd.

Conclusion

In my next post I will dwell on the search for small but efficient cloud vendors like GMO Cloud that offers one of the highest-performing, standards-based, flexible, and robust cloud solutions in the market. By then I would have done my bit of research on this phenomenon.

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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.

Some Interesting News On Cloud Infrastructure And Computing

While trawling the net I found some interesting news on cloud infrastructure and computing other than the usual cost saving mantra which we keep hearing. The first concerns comparison of top public cloud vendors and the other on the competence or rather incompetence of technical staff in handling cloud infrastructure. Both have important lessons embedded in them. So here goes.

It is interesting to note that the revenue for all the vendors is increasing at a fast clip, which only goes to show that the cloud is here to stay and is not drifting away any time soon.

Small as it may seem, GMO Cloud America, Inc compared to these big cloud players have very competitive offerings with regard to cost-saving and flexibility solutions. It stays as the unbeatable and most affordable cloud hosting solution in the market compared to other cloud vendors, big or small.

43 per cent of UK IT professionals rate their knowledge of Cloud computing as poor

Isn’t this interesting? When you consider that the entire digital/online community is agog with cloud infrastructure, this is a surprising confession. And according to the survey, 54 %   had not undergone training in the past 12 months, and 53 per cent don’t plan to do so. This is startling news. Now how in the heavens (I mean the cloud) are they going to survive? As I have said time and again, few technical staff is enthusiastic about the cloud because they would become redundant in that environment and would lose their current job. This puts the brake on management plans to move into the cloud. There is tremendous opposition to the move simply because of the catch-22 situation.

If the technical staff is retrained to manage other operational matters, the shift to the cloud may be more palatable.  Moreover the organization would benefit from better efficiency and productivity. The point I want to make is that a company must rejig or reorganize the entire management structure to accommodate concerns of technical staff before deciding on the changeover to cloud.

Conclusion

IaaS is going to grow at a very fast clip. It is advisable to holistically look at the changes required in organizational structure rather than treat migration to cloud infrastructure as a routine technical issue.

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, 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.

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.

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, 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.

Revamping Business Processes To Align With The Cloud

They say that history repeats itself. There was a time when every software tool was developed in-house. The IT department dictated how organizations worked and then we saw the big boys of ERP step into the business turf. I remember the confusion and chaos which accompanied adaptation of ERP packages like SAP and Baan. Most of the ERP implementations were massive failures because the employees who were used to the old ways were reluctant to learn the new ways of doing business.  In a way the cloud has ushered in the old by challenging existing business processes. Organizations are now learning that migrating to the cloud is not as simple as toggling a switch. Every successful cloud implementation will have to undergo painful pangs of business transformation. Business processes and cloud adoption must happen simultaneously in order to be effective.

Will the CIO become redundant?

This is a Catch 22 situation. The IT department has to work hard to achieve successful migration to the cloud which will in turn make them redundant. The tech guys, in a way, are working to sack themselves. I know that these things are talked about in whispers but the fact remains that this is not an ideal situation.

The question is how to manage an IT workforce with such a huge dilemma? I have no simple answers. One possible solution is to transform hitherto purely IT assets into business process enablers. By doing this you will at least ensure that the IT staff doesn’t face a bleak future. A few redundancies will be inevitable, but then we are all used to downsizing.

Coming to the question of CIO, there are two distinct possibilities. One is that such a position will no longer exist in future. The information stream of an organization will simply merge into management processes. Another view is that whatever may be the state of affairs, a CIO will be required to manage the new order of things. Software will not disappear, nor will the infrastructure requirement, only the color and shape of technology will change. Outsourcing of software as a service and Infrastructure as a service in the cloud will certainly require extreme adaptation by the new CIO.

 Will the cloud lead to flatter organizational structure?

The deduction is easier in this case. Of course organization structures will dramatically flatten and fold up. Multi-disciplinary managers will appear on the scene and will need to multi-task various functions within an organization.  An HR boss may eventually handle IT infrastructure by outsourcing to a cloud vendor. Managed cloud services will be both effective and economical. The same HR boss would also manage software using Saas providers.

Conclusion

Ultimately, in-house staff of an organization will deal purely with business processes and core management activities. The focus will be on sales and margins. Rest everything will be left to the cloud to handle. This ideal situation will emerge only when present day business owners will be ready to face challenges in the way they work and organize themselves.

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, 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.

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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.