Archive for the ‘Articles’ Category
How to Reassure Your President About the Cloud
If you’re a CIO or IT manager and you’re using the cloud for data storage and apps, here are three great pieces of advice that I recently saw in an article for you to use and reassure your senior executives about what you’re doing:
1. Show them you’re on top of the game. Executives want proof that you’re assessing your cloud vendor relationship on an ongoing basis. One great proof you can show them, reports showing results of 24/7 monitoring. They should be easy to read, such as from a dashboard that includes plenty of graphics.
2. Tell them how you know that the cloud provider is protecting your data — and include information on your back-up plan. One good way to reassure executives is by answering questions about where your data is stored, who has the right to access it and what back-up procedures you employ. Monitoring tools provide instant notification of outages and can help you be more confident about letting go of control of your data.
3. Be upfront about the investment. Everybody says cloud computing cuts costs. Well, maybe in the long run. Tell your executives that it takes time and money to assess providers to ensure their security system is top-notch, and that, once you take your data out from behind the firewall, you’ve got to replicate security controls — in some fashion — within the service provider’s environment. Yet, in the long-run, your maintenance, hardware and other costs will drop because you’re not managing servers anymore. Even your monitoring solutions can be low-cost…even free.
Want to Clock Your Website Speed?
How Fast is Your Site?
Studies have proven that the faster the functionality of your site, the more you increase page views and thus conversions and sales.
That’s why we offer a number of services to help you improve the performance of your site. For one, Monitis Website Check allows users to instantly check the availability of a website and web page load speed (via HTTP requests) from multiple locations worldwide. Enterprises use Monitis Website Check tool to instantly check their web server from outside their server’s network. We’ve even made widgets so users can put our tool in their blog or website administration areas.
Our Full Page Load Check also allows users to check how fast their sites fully load, as well as up-time and response time. We also help companies determine how well their sites can handle sudden spikes in traffic via Web Load Test.
Data Center Managers Love the Cloud
A new survey of data center managers says that almost 72% have either adopted Cloud technology or are seriously considering it.
AFCOM, a data center association, polled nearly 400 managers and found a huge shift in attitudes about the Cloud. When the association conducted their poll in 2010, it found that only 15% of organizations had adopted a cloud infrastructure. This year, however, more than 36% of respondents implemented cloud computing and another 35% were seriously considering it.
Another major finding in the survey, which I read about in an article online, is that over 86% saw an increase in cloud-based applications versus three years ago. Interestingly, among other findings, 50% have no plans in place to replace damaged backup facilities onsite, for example, in the event of a disaster.
Virtual Desktop Advice from Monitis
One of the great Cloud trends today is the growth of desktop mobility — the ability for your company’s employees to access their desktop from anywhere in the world. That promotes efficiency and reduces corporate costs.
But should you assume that because you’ve made all your desktops mobile or virtual that that’s the end of your IT challenges? I guess you’ve figured out that the answer to that question is “no.”
Consider first the issue of connectivity. Does your cloud service provider have a good record of providing consistent up-time? It’s a pretty tough spot to be in when your employees start calling into IT saying: “Hey, my cloud desktop just went poof!”
News: Beantown a Cloud Hub
Boston: a New Cloud Hub
Boston, in the U.S. region of New England, is getting quite a reputation as a Cloud hub and resource center.
Apart from Silicon Valley in California, there are a growing number of cloud-related companies based now in Massachusetts, for example, EMC Corp. and Akamai Technologies. Other West Coast companies, like Box.net (a cloud content management company) and Cisco Systems, have offices in the Boston area.
“These things start with everybody talking about it, and nobody knows what it is,” said Larry Bohn, managing director of Boston’s General Catalyst Partners, in an article that I read. “But it’s no longer a collective hallucination. People know what it is, and it works.”
The Yankee Group predicts cloud services sold to corporate customers will grow from $9.2 billion to $22.3 billion in 2014.
Need a Cloud Advisor?
Need a Cloud advisor?
No, that’s not some alternative name for a meteorologist. Rather, it describes a new breed of “Cloud Brokers” that is emerging to take the place of systems integrators (SIs) and value-added resellers (VARs) — which used to play the role of “trusted advisor” to guide end users and help them select products as well as deploy and manage the technology.
A lot of the time, these companies were in reality channel partners for hardware and software vendors — acting on their behalf to sell and support products.
$7 Billion From IBM’s Cloud
$7 billion dollars! That’s a lot of money, and that’s what IBM plans to reap from its cloud investments by 2015. Good news for shareholders, and good news for the rest of our industry, too!
In 2007, IBM launched its “Blue Cloud” strategy, and the growing demand for cloud services is expected to increase the need for its servers, software and other services.
Palmisano Talks Big Money
IBM CEO Sam Palmisano, at an investor conference, said that the cloud is “the next technical shift in the enterprise.”
Like many cloud enterprises, IBM says much of its growth will come from the developing world — including China and India. In fact, according to an article I read about Palmisano’s statements, IBM is expecting 30% of its revenue to come from these emerging areas — up from an earlier estimation of 25%.
IBM is certainly a major force in the development and growth of the cloud, and that’s good news for us all because, with IBM’s success, more companies will come to trust cloud services and see the value that they represent — savings and IT efficiencies.
Beware of Using Cascade Delete in Cloud Monitoring
One day in late February, Cloudkick, the server management and monitoring company had a serious problem: critical data for 178 of its 10,000-plus customers was deleted for 16 hours. Ouch!
What was the source of this error and massive inconvenience? It was a bug that caused cascade deletes across “key models” within Cloudkick’s system, according to the company’s blog.
What is a cascade delete? Wikipedia defines it this way: “In the context of relational databases, a foreign key is a referential constraint between two tables. The foreign key identifies a column or a set of columns in one (referencing) table that refers to a set of columns in another (referenced) table.
“The columns in the referencing table must be the primary key or other candidate key in the referenced table…. Whenever rows in the master (referenced) table are deleted, the respective rows of the child (referencing) table with a matching foreign key column will get deleted as well. This is called a cascade delete.”
Medicine for IT Chiefs: Copy MDs When Giving CEOs Bad News
Requests for IT Dollars Can be Hard Medicine to Swallow
I recently read about a blog post in the Harvard Business Review that gives CIOs advice on giving unpleasant news to their CEOs — such as: “We need $1 million to move our enterprise to the Cloud.”
Basically, it’s sound advice, and urges CIOs to copy doctors who must give patients, such as terminally ill people, the bad news about their condition. Yes, there are plenty of people out there who have had the misfortune of hooking up with insensitive doctors with bad bedside manners, but hold your judgment for a minute while you read about this college professor’s advice.
I didn’t know this, but apparently medical students are taught to deliver bad news through a system called SPIKES, which is a process designed to assess and help a patient’s reaction to negative medical news. Only then can an effective treatment strategy be offered. Here are three out of seven steps:
Top 2011 Trends for IT in Higher Ed
We at Monitis recently introduced a handy Android app that you can download for monitoring servers and networks. Perhaps you saw the news?
Well, because one of our most important customer bases is academia, I was recently reading about top IT trends that higher-ed IT pros are predicting for 2011, and lo and behold there was something about Android devices and tablet technologies (the iPad) and how important they are for the new generation of students who rely on mobile devices in the classroom (no more notebooks…I mean the old-fashioned kind you write in with a pen!).
Rasmussen Has Big IT Development Plans for 2011
In the article, Hap Aziz, director for the school of technology and design at Rasmussen College in Wisconsin, said he plans this year to integrate more tablet technologies into his school’s classrooms in 2011. Aside from the iPad, Aziz sees the new slew of Android tablets as potential tools for students and educators.
“These Android devices are still somewhat pricey,” said Aziz, in the article, “but definitely show the democratization of technology (beyond just Apple products) and prove how portable and accessible innovation is becoming for college students.”
And on the Cloud front, the school will implement virtual labs and other Web-based classroom support tools. For example, it is looking to digitize its library, and give students remote access to the data. Aziz acknowledged that many universities revere traditional libraries, but he noted that non-traditional students need state-of-the-art resources that go beyond the “traditional four walls and a roof.”
The IT initiatives will help the school save money, and also give students a “consistent view of the curriculum matter and materials across the board,” said Aziz, and provide for simpler classroom management. “This consistency would be [impossible] to achieve in the traditional classroom environment, where students are geographically dispersed and working on different pieces of equipment with multiple software versions.”
Boy, campus life sure is different than when I went to school. I’m glad today’s generation is getting the full benefit of remote access to technology, and at the same time, enjoy the comfort and security of affordable server, network, cloud platform and other types of monitoring.
