Monitis: Cloud Monitoring Blog

A new report released on November 20^th by the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) outlines the benefits and potential pitfalls of cloud computing. The 123-page report, “Cloud Computing: Benefits, Risks and Recommendations for Information Security,” offers recommendations to businesses on how to minimize the security risks of trusing their data to a cloud provider.

This report seems right on time, as more companies turn to the cloud to do business, drawn by lower maintenance and costs. Analysts IDC expects worldwide spending on cloud services to hit $17.4 billion, climbing to $44.2 billion by 2013.

The ENISA report spells out the risks of, well, risk, on cloud computing. While cloud-service providers offer 24/7 availability, data centers can go down. And customers relinquish security – which they previously handled on their own – to providers.

It also discusses the dangers of customers becoming dependent on a single provider, facing challenges if they want to move data and apps to a different provider. Further, companies could face risks from regulatory audits on the data they keep on the cloud, the report said. And, because we all know that tasks lists tend to be bigger than what we actually get done, some cloud providers may not fully or properly delete data when a customer requests it.

In its report, ENISA outlines measures that companies can take to safeguard their security when dealing with cloud-service providers.

It recommends that firms perform risk assessments, essentially comparing the potential risks of storing data in the cloud against keeping files in an internal data center. It’s a good idea to also compare different cloud providers to narrow the list and then obtain service-level assurances from selected providers. It says, too, that customers should clearly specify which services and tasks are to be handled by internal IT and which by its cloud provider.

I recommend, too, that companies making the leap to the cloud employ 24/7
website and server monitoring services that can warn customers if cyber crooks are attempting unauthorized access to data or trying to breach firewalls.

ENISA even provides a checklist and detailed questions that customers can use when shopping for a cloud provider.

This is a great read; I encourage you to take a look at the full report on cloud security.

One of the great things about cloud computing is its “pay for what you need” model. In these difficult economic times, that’s a huge appeal for cost-conscious companies.

And it seems that, more and more, cloud service providers are recognizing that appeal. For example, AT&T recently said it will unveil a product by year’s end called Synaptic Compute as a Service, which lets businesses buy more computing capacity when they need it.

According to a story about the offering on Cnet.com, AT&T designed it to enable IT people to store and maintain internal applications and data via AT&T’s cloud. “Capacity and availability can be ramped up when needed, especially if a company’s own data center resources become taxed,” AT&T said in the story.

“The service is designed is to help businesses save money by not having to maintain full network capacity year-round if demand only shoots up during certain times of the year,” according to the story.

One other development that caught my eye here: With Synaptic Compute, AT&T’s customers can seamlessly access software and content they need – whether stored internally or on AT&T’s network cloud.

That ability to help companies who have one foot in its internal servers and another out on the cloud is tremendously valuable. I think this is a huge differentiator for cloud services companies these days.

Take monitoring services. Some firms can only monitor and report on transactions, servers , networks, databases and other metrics over companies’ internal servers. Others, like our company, have the ability to be a watchdog for companies on both their internal servers and cloud-based infrastructure.

If you’re one of those people that balk at or doubt the rosy forecasts of cloud computing growth and revenue by analysts, perhaps you should pay more attention to the evidence, for example, cloud tech company earnings.

I just read that Rackspace Hosting, a San Antonio, TX-based provider of enterprise-level hosting services, posted better-than-expected profits of $162.4 million for the third quarter, a rise of 17.4% year-over-year. Earnings grew by 45.3% year-over-year to $7.6 million, or six cents a share.

The numbers were higher than during the second quarter, too.

But most telling of all was its growing cloud hosting business. Managed hosting revenue increased to $147.1 million, up 6% from the second quarter. And of that, cloud revenue grew to $15.3 million, up 17% from the previous quarter.

Rackspace Hosting’s cloud business now makes up 10% of its total net revenues, up from 5% this time last year.

Read more about Rackspace Hosting’s good fortune – fed increasingly by cloud computing – in this article.

The industry seems to be swimming in new research about cloud computing these days. Every time I turn around I find something new to read about the explosion of provider services, bandwidth or database capacity and cloud services, for example, site and server monitoring on the cloud.

Found another with a slight twist this time: a research report on how cloud computing will affect tech stocks.

Next Inning Technology Research, an online investment newsletter focused on semiconductor and technology stocks, said it published a special report on the emerging cloud computing trend covering companies including Amazon, Microsoft, Yahoo, Oracle and Motorola.

Apparently, the report covers questions such as:

– How does cloud computing, now the domain of companies like Google, have its roots in technology trends going back 40 years?

– Why do smartphones, netbooks, and other mobile, internet-connected devices represent a potential paradigm shift in the cloud computing trend?

– Where do companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Yahoo, Oracle, and Motorola fit into the cloud computing trend and how are they likely to benefit from it?

Unfortunately, to get a look at the report, you’ll have to visit Next Inning’s site, and enter into a trial service. But from what I read about the investment researcher and advisor, it might be worth it. “Next Inning Editor Paul McWilliams draws on his more than twenty years of experience in the technology industry to alert subscribers to companies and technologies that are poised for explosive growth,” the site says.

It also adds that McWilliams and the Next Inning staff “spend hundreds of hours each month speaking with industry contacts, analyzing data and company conference calls, and combing through financial statements looking for investment ideas.”

If you try out the service, I’d appreciate a head’s up to let me know where to invest.

The Wall Street Journal reports that, during its first week on store shelves, Microsoft Corp.’s Windows 7 operating system sold like hotcakes. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was vague about the details, but was quoted as saying that sales have been “fantastic” since it launched October 22^nd.

However, research firm NPD Group, which tracks retail sales, uncovered that unit sales of boxed Windows 7 in U.S. stores were 234% higher during the software’s availability in its first few days than they were for Windows Vista, which debuted in 2007. While NPD’s figures don’t account for business sales, the article quoted a tech reseller that caters to business, education and government customers, saying the firm has seen a “strong uptick” in demand for PCs and Windows 7 since the product debuted.

Other experts in the piece sited a mixed picture of hardware sales tied to Windows 7, and October is traditionally a weak period for PC sales – too late for back-to-school and too early for the holidays.

Microsoft remains hopeful: It’s waiting for the sales data from partners in the hardware and retail businesses, but a spokesman noted that the NPD figures are “in line with the anecdotal stories we’ve heard about excitement people have for Windows 7.”

Of course, my interest in Windows 7 sales has nothing to do with any stock positions or holdings that I may (or may not) have in Microsoft. LOL. Rather, it’s in 7’s features designed to work within the cloud computing framework. And, given the amount of PC users out there – in both homes and offices – I’m watching with great interest the adoption rate and subsequent exposure to the cloud.

And, of course, the more cloud users there are, the more companies will come to understand the critical need to keep their businesses running smoothly via website, network, app transaction, server, cloud storage – and even cloud – monitoring.

Lastly, I’m happy that people and businesses are buying again. Sick of this recession; time to let go of some of that money everybody’s hoarding.

IDC has come out with its cloud industry forecast for 2009-2013. The basic message, over five major enterprise IT segments (Application Software, Application Development and Deployment Software, Systems Infrastructure Software, and Server and Disk Storage capacity) the five-year revenue growth outlook remains strong, at 26% – over six times the rate of traditional IT.

When I read this, I thought, ‘This outlook turns the recession on its head’ because, as IDC says: ” In spite of the challenging economy – or more accurately, because of it – this growth rate advantage expanded from last year’s forecast, in which cloud services were forecast to grow at over five times traditional offerings.”

So how do the individual IT segments stack up in IDC’s forecast:

App delivery and development, servers and storage are seen to benefit the most from growth. In 2009, App delivery holds 10% of the market, while in 2013 it’ll grow to 13%. Meanwhile, storage will grow from the current 9% to 14%, while servers will grow from 12% to 15%. Applications, meanwhile, will drop from 49% this year to 38% in 2013. While Infrastructure software will remain the same – at 20% of the pie.

Yet, despite the spectacular growth rate predicted, cloud will only be a fraction of overall (cloud and on-premise) IT spend, says IDC. Cloud spend is only 5% of the total this year, destined to double to only 10% of overall IT spend.

Clearly, despite the hype, cloud versus on-premise spend is still miniscule. But, spending is forecast to grow at double-digit number, and in this rough economy, that’s damn good news. Yes? My prediction, if I may be so humble to put forth one, is that the more spend that’s invested in cloud development, the more attraction it’ll generate – like bees to honey.

Amazon Web Services in late October introduced the Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS), making it easier for customers to “set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the cloud,” according to the announcement on its blog. “We are always looking for ways to make it faster, simpler, and more fun to develop applications of all types,” said the blog. “Every hour that you don’t spend fiddling with hardware, tracing cables, installing operating systems or managing databases is an hour that you can spend on the unique and value-added aspects of your application.”

Amazon RDS gives its customers direct database access – without having to set up infrastructure, maintain software or manage a common database.

Using the RDS APIs or the command-line tools, Amazon said customers can access the full capabilities of a complete, self-contained MySQL 5.1 database instance in just minutes. “You can scale the processing power and storage space as needed with a single API call and you can initiate fully consistent database snapshots at any time.”

The blog took great pains to show how easy it is to use RDS, featuring step-by-step instructions to create a database instance, for example. It noted how complementary RDS would be to its Amazon SimpleDB. Amazon said that a number of its early adopters planned to use both of the services in their AWS applications.

Amazon also said it had a number of features planned for the coming months. Here’s another example of the wide-open field in developing apps for the cloud. I know that I, for one, will be looking out for future enhancements…as well as for any buzz and feedback from users.

Check out the full article on Amazon’s new cloud database service.

Wufoo is an online HTML form builder that helps people create contact forms, online surveys and event registrations – including people who don’t know how to write a single line of code.

So, if you design a Wufoo form, it basically does all the heavy-lifting for you and builds the database, backend and all of the scripts needed to collect and understand data (also hosted by Wufoo). So, when you build a form, you can either embed the code on your website or blog or you can provide access to the form via a Wufoo link.

As another example of the explosion of cloud-based apps, Wufoo has now launched a feature that lets users collect money.

Now, Wufoo has entered the world of payments, and the new feature lets users create forms with payment collection options, including PayPal Payments Pro and USA ePay. Many web shoppers are familiar with being taken to a different page of a merchant site for payment — after depositing items in a shopping cart. But with Wufoo, there’s a seamless transition from data submission to payment collection. No journey to a new page necessary.

That’s a good thing for both consumers and website owners.

For website administrators, Wufoo provides payment summary pages, lists of shipping addresses, and can ensure that all users receive an invoice or receipt of the transaction for their records, among other services.

I’m surprised that, with a useful and innovative product like this, Wufoo so far seems to have flown under the radar. But I’m always intrigued to read and hear about more and varied apps being developed for the cloud – and ultimately making cloud computing easier for both consumers and businesses.

Read more about Wufoo’s integrated payment application for the cloud.

The City of Los Angeles is adopting web-based Google Apps productivity software for its 30,000 employees to use.

The 12-member L.A. City Council voted unanimously on October 27th to migrate to the cloud, hiring systems integrator Computer Services Corporation. The move could save the city up to $5 million over the life of the five-year contract.

This decision places L.A. among top public sector operations using the cloud for productivity software. Yet the decision by the council also reflects some ambivalence over security issues and the possibility of data loss: the group voted to include a penalty provision in the contract holding CSC liable if there is a breach of service or the city’s data is stolen.

Recently, Google has had some widely publicized security and availability issues around its email and applications.

Yet, increasingly, despite concerns about outages and data loss, major government agencies are signing up for Google Apps. For example, the City of Washington D.C., the New Mexico Attorney General’s Office, and the Prince George County School District in Maryland are all customers. “Many more were watching L.A. closely, and we look forward to working with them,” said Google spokesperson Andrew Kovacs in a recent E-Commerce Times story.

L.A.’s experience with Google Apps is worth watching. I think a lot of municipalities and government agencies now considering the cloud will base their decision on whether to jump or not. And I’m sure that an uneventful record on security and data breaches for L.A. will help them decide.

Press Release

Monitis, the leading provider of 100% Cloud-based application performance, server and network monitoring solutions, today announced that it has been invited to participate in The 451 Group’s 2009 Innovators’ Showcase at its Fourth Annual Client Conference on November 3-4 at Boston’s Marriott Longwharf Hotel. In addition to announcing its new vision and roadmap at the conference, Monitis plans a series of major new network and cloud monitoring announcements during the week that will continue to cement its lead over conventional, software-based monitoring technologies.

San Jose, CA October 28, 2009 – Monitis, the leading provider of 100% Cloud-based application and IT infrastructure monitoring solutions, is one of only 6 companies selected by The 451 Group, a respected technology industry analyst firm, to present its vision: “Monitoring in the Cloud: Monitor Anything from Anywhere”, to more than 300 top executives from leading US enterprises.

The 451 Group, with its focus on analyzing the business of enterprise IT innovation, covers hundreds of stealth and early-stage companies. The 451 Group’s Innovators’ Showcase, a regular part of the company’s Client Conference since the inception of the event in 2006, showcases some of the best and brightest of these young companies.

Participants, who are nominated by 451 Group analysts, present their business plans and demos of their technologies to The 451 Group Client Conference attendees, who include venture capitalists, investment bankers, enterprise IT end users, software and hardware vendors and system integrators. Attendees are given 451 Group scrip to “invest” in the Innovators Showcase companies. The company that receives the most scrip is honored at the end of the conference.

“The cloud is the next frontier of IT operations management,” said Dennis Callaghan, enterprise software analyst at The 451 Group. “With its ability to do performance monitoring, testing and configuration management in the Cloud, and of workloads running in the Cloud, at an affordable price, we believe Monitis is a company to watch in the nascent Cloud management space.”

In addition to announcing its new vision and roadmap at the conference, Monitis plans a series of major new announcements during the week that will continue to cement its lead over conventional, software-based monitoring technologies.

According to Hovhannes Avoyan, Monitis’ Founder and CEO “Our success to-date comes from the insight that launched the company in the first place. Back then, when a few of us experienced just too many late nights stuck in the office due to inefficient monitoring and management tools, we began to look around and see that many of our counterparts were exasperated by the same issues. The Cloud was offering a better way, and we jumped at the chance to change the game.”

One of Monitis’ early customers, Schoolwires will also be joining Monitis during its presentation to discuss the impact Monitis’ Cloud-based solutions has had on his business. Schoolwires has been using Monitis’ all-in-one suite of monitoring tools for more than 2 years. “Utilizing the Cloud, has led to major advances at Schoolwires!” stated Rick Stivers, Director of Network & IT Services at Schoolwires, Inc. “We’ve been able to gain efficiencies, while reducing costs and the net result is an increase in SLA. Monitis is a critical tool we utilize to quickly respond to downtime for the 1,200 plus web sites we manage.”

What:    The 451 Group’s Fourth Annual Client Conference Innovators’ Showcase
When:    Nov 3-4, 2009
Where:    Boston’s Marriott Longwharf Hotel

For more information on The 451 Group’s 4th Annual Client Event, please visit: Innovators Showcase Webpage.

About Monitis All-in-One Monitoring Platform
Monitis is a 100% Cloud-based, complete, and flexible IT monitoring solution which consolidates back-end, application, and cloud monitoring in an all-in-one, central monitoring service. The platform is easily customizable and may be used for managing of all kinds of IT assets such as websites, servers, routers, switches, VoIP devices, DNS, databases, processes and any other IP devices. Monitis provides users with a comprehensive view of their system’s health and performance.

About Monitis
Monitis believes that the Cloud is the biggest thing to happen in IT management since IT management. Having seen this vision early, Monitis is now the global leader in developing this market. It is the first affordable network and systems monitoring solution based 100% in the Cloud. More than 50,000 customers from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies to government agencies and educational institutions have chosen Monitis to reduce system downtime, improve the productivity of their IT staff, and reduce operational expenditures.

Monitis was founded in 2005 by a team of seasoned entrepreneurs and fed-up and worn-out developers who were tired of complaining about the limits of software-based tools, while inspired by the promise of the Cloud. Headquartered in San Jose, CA, Monitis is lead by a team of IT professionals with deep experience running enterprise-grade IT businesses, as well as starting and selling several IT start-ups. Using a global workforce, particularly its R&D team based in Yerevan, Armenia, Monitis is poised to move from strength to strength. At present, it has a loyal and enthusiastic user community of 50,000, and an average month-on-month revenue growth of over 10%.

About The 451 Group
The 451 Group is an independent technology-industry analyst company focused on the business of enterprise IT innovation. The company’s analysts provide critical and timely insight into the market and competitive dynamics of innovation in emerging technology segments. Clients of the company – at vendor, investor, service-provider and end-user organizations – rely on The 451 Group’s insight to support both strategic and tactical decision-making for competitive advantage.

The 451 Group also operates Tier1 Research – an independent division of The 451 Group – which analyzes the financial and industry implications of developments impacting public and private companies within the hosting, communications and Internet infrastructure sectors. The 451 Group is headquartered in New York, with offices in key locations, including San Francisco, Washington, D.C., London and Boston.

About Schoolwires, Inc.
Schoolwires Inc. is headquartered in Pennsylvania, USA.

Schoolwires provides strategic online communication, community-management and productivity solutions to the K-12 education market. The company’s core product is SchoolwiresCentricityTM, which brings together robust and flexible website management, community management and web 2.0/social network capabilities in a single, user-centric solution. Schoolwires also delivers SchoolwiresSynergyTM, a digital file sharing solution, Schoolwires AssistTM, a service request solution, and SchoolwiresShare(TM), an exclusive online client community and support center.

Schoolwires is recognized in the Inc. 500 List as one of the fastest growing private companies in the nation. The company’s on-demand solutions are deployed at nearly 4,000 schools serving an estimated four million students, parents, teachers and administrators throughout North America.

Contact:
Monitis Inc.
Sales & Marketing Department
info@monitis.com
http://www.monitis.com
US & Canada Toll Free: +1-800-657-7949
UK + International: +44-845-527-3346
France + International: +33-48-607-9035
2880 Zanker Road Suite 203
San Jose, CA-95134
USA