Social, mobile and the cloud are the future of collaboration | memeburn

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By Michelle Atagana: Managing Ed.

Companies are looking for easier and more cost-effective ways to collaborate within their organisations. The death of Google Wave left room for more innovative ways of collaborating. The future of collaboration seems to lie in the convergence of mobile, social and the cloud.

“By 2014, all smartphones will transparently synchronise local data with at least one cloud service. By 2014, most organisations will deliver mobile applications to workers through private application stores”, says vice president of Gartner Research Monica Basso.

The Gartner Symposium/ITxpo Africa 2011 kicked off in Cape Town on Tuesday 23 August with a heavy focus on cloud computing. Analysts are convinced that “our future lies in the cloud” and that mobile technology seems to be best way to get there.

Basso’s presentation focused on collaboration via mobile devices with cloud capabilities and how they will drive innovation in the workplace. Her argument was heavily leveraged on the convergence of social media and emerging mobile technologies.

Basso sums up mobility’s move to using the cloud for consumer services including social network communities, microblogs, app stores and cloud synchronisation and file sharing.

“By 2014, social networking will replace email as the primary vehicle for interpersonal communications for 20 percent of business users”, she adds.

This takeover of email by social networks is important because, according to Basso, there is a new paradigm of collaboration in business. Social networks which were originally consumer oriented, for instance, are now being adopted by organisations.

This convergence of mobility and cloud in various consumer spaces leads to synchronisation of data:
“Cloud synchronisation enables mobile devices to synchronise local information and applications with a web-based, in-the-cloud service automatically and transparently. Information spans contacts, calendars, email and text messages, as well as pictures, videos, music, documents and other media. Service offerings include data backup, federation of social networking information into a single application, and so forth.”

Basso suggests that organisations integrate mircoblogging platforms such as Twitter, SocialCast and Yammer into corporate collaboration environments such as Microsoft SharePoint. She believes that such integration encourages employees to share ideas with each other as well as source ideas.

This type of mobile collaboration relies heavily on social tools that enables users to create one-to-one or one-to-many associations within or across timelines and is cost-effective.

“Convergence is developing on the device, bringing simplicity of use to people and letting them focus on messaging content only. Different messaging and social capabilities are converging into a single client application — integrating a variety of cloud services from multiple providers”, says Basso.

Basso also warns that organisations are losing control of data with consumer mobile cloud. She stresses the importance for businesses to be alert and provide more secure alternatives. Security is recurring theme in the cloud. Daryl Plummer, another Garnter analyst, says that 70 percent of companies with more than 1 000 employees are yet to start a cloud initiative because of the security risk.

“Cloud computing carries specific risks that are slowing corporate adoption. For example, cloud providers that serve a large number of customers generally cannot tailor contracts to address the individual needs of a given customer. As a result, most public cloud services operate the same way for all customers, with only minor differences”, says Plummer.

Basso suggests that organisations put policies in place for a more secure service. She also emphasises that investing in mobile device management is important to ensuring a secure mobile cloud service.
Plummer predicts, however, that security issues will persist in the cloud through to 2013 but “80 percent of cloud security incidents will be due to administrative error by cloud service providers or user management of cloud services.”

Ultimately it is up to the organisations who rely on the cloud heavily for collaboration to take the necessary steps to secure their servers and carefully choose their providers.

BBC News - Cloud computing after Amazon and Sony: ready for primetime?

By Tim Weber Business editor, BBC News website
 

 
Cloud computing is more secure than on-premise solutions, say its fans

Cloud computing may be the hottest thing in corporate computing right now, but two IT disasters - at Amazon and Sony - beg the question: Is cloud computing ready for primetime business?

It's a nightmare moment. You are under pressure - to meet customer orders, finish a project, execute a deal - and nothing. Your computers, servers or network are down. If you are lucky, a few nail biting hours and a reboot or three later, you and your IT team have restored services.

But what if your IT infrastructure goes down and there's nothing you can do because your computing power sits in the cloud, provided over the internet by another company? When a key part of Amazon's EC2 cloud service collapsed, many of the firm's customers were reduced to publishing apologies on their websites, and click "refresh" on Amazon's service health dashboard.

Two of Sony's online gaming services, meanwhile, were hacked, compromising confidential data of more than 100 million customers.

The twin worries of cloud computing, security and resilience, are back, just as the promise of huge cost savings persuaded many companies to make the jump. 2011, experts said, would be the year when companies would get their business ready for the cloud.

According to a new global study by IBM, more than 60% of organisations plan to "embrace cloud computing over the next five years" to boost their "competitive advantage."

Marc Benioff, chief executive of Salesforce.com and one of the pioneers of cloud computing, speaks of a "fundamental shift, the move of computing resources into the cloud [that] gives small and large companies access to the same resources."

Jay Heiser at technology consultancy Gartner lists the benefits: easily obtained and highly reliable services, delivered quickly, conveniently and at a relatively low cost.

Until something goes wrong, of course.

Time for a rethink?

"A cloud is not a cloud is not a cloud," says John Engates, chief technology officer at cloud services provider Rackspace. Every kind of cloud service requires a different risk assessment.

There are cloud services for consumers holding masses of customer data. Sony had to take its service offline for four weeks. A nasty bump for the global consumer electronics giant, potentially lethal had it happened to a smaller business.

Then there are infrastructure and platform services for companies that provide cheap storage, raw computing power, or software as a service. When a software upgrade at Amazon's data centre in North Virginia went wrong, many companies using the service disappeared from the face of the online world for a full four days.

"How long does it take to reboot a cloud," asks Mr Heiser and argues that many companies focus too much on the operational process of integrating the cloud into their business, but do not pay enough "attention to architectural and build issues" of their cloud strategy.

So is it time for chief information officers and chief technology officers to rethink the cloud?

'No computer is perfect'

Not so, cloud fans protest.

"Most companies have had major outages, that's the nature of computing" argues Marc Benioff. The cloud just makes these problems more visible - and less frequent.

"Traditionally, companies were running both their own business and an IT business," says Mr Benioff. Going into the cloud shifts the computing to the experts "who do this for a living".

"No computer is perfect, but if you look at the history of cloud computing, it's more secure and reliable than traditional on-premise computing," insists Mr Benioff.

Rackspace's John Engates believes that cloud outages can actually be beneficial. "(They) make us better, they force us to repair and bolster the service, they even help competitors to see the challenges that other folks faced," he said.

Stuck with one provider?

Customers have to sharpen up, though.

Cloud computing may be cheap, but robust back-up solutions cost money. Cloud users will have to re-examine how many copies of their data they need, and where to keep them, says Mr Engates.

"If you build a robust infrastructure across geographies, you can sustain an outage," he says and points to video-on-demand provider Netflix, one of the Amazon customers that dodged the outage without obvious problems.

Companies have to make a risk assessment: Do they need parallel infrastructures, multiple cloud service providers, even a hybrid cloud where the data is shared and synced between the cloud and the company's own servers?

"People will want to bulk up their cloud strategy," says Paul Maritz, chief executive of virtualisation software company VMware. "It's unlikely that they will want to depend on a single [cloud] provider."

While companies may be able to switch suppliers or spread the risk, consumers may find themselves stuck.

Once you have settled on a cloud-based service - whether it is Flickr, Playstation Network, Facebook, Gmail or Hotmail - it is tricky to switch, unless you are prepared to sacrifice your content and social network.

Security questions

"Yes, the cloud is a concentration of risk," says Mr Engates, but people are attacking the customer, not the cloud. "It is easier to defend the cloud, because it has more resources and bandwidth".

Kurt DelBene, in charge of Microsoft's Business division, says Amazon's and Sony's problems "haven't dampened the enthusiasm of our customers for the cloud." The advantages - both cost savings and the ease of integrating diverse systems, for example after mergers and acquisitions - are just too great, he says.

And anyway, says Mr Benioff, Sony's massive data loss "is not a cloud computing issue, it's a cybersecurity issue."

Indeed, Verizon's 2011 Data Breach Investigations Report found that cloud computing played no role in security breaches: "We are often asked whether 'the Cloud' factors into many of the breaches we investigate.

The easy answer is 'No - not really.' It's more about giving up control of our assets and data (and not controlling the associated risk) than any technology specific to the Cloud."

Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at internet security firm F-Secure, warns both consumers and companies that when they "move into the cloud, you get lots of benefits, but at the same time you lose control of your data... you have to blindly trust the vendor."

Consumers can help by playing it safe. When answering security questions "don't use your mother's real maiden name; don't give out your real birthday; answer with a number, or a street name or deliberately misspell."

Keeping online email accounts safe is key to cloud security, says Mr Hypponen, because it's here that criminals will find all the registration emails for financial services, it's here that they intercept requests for a password reset.

"Whether we like it or not, cloud is here to stay, because the benefits are clearly larger than the risks," says Mr Hypponen. "During the first years of this major shift [to the cloud] we will see more problems, but we will also learn, and the systems will get more secure."

Back to IT basics

When cloud services fail, the data is likely to get lost, and recovery is slow at best.
After Google's cloud-based email service crashed, says Joe Heiser, "it took Google four days to restore [the data of] 0.02% of the users of a single service."

"What is not in the least bit clear is the relative ability of any cloud service provider to restore your data into their services," Mr Heiser warnings cloud customers.

"We do not believe that the cloud is ready for everything yet," admits Rackspace's John Engates, but believes that cloud services can be part of the solution.

Companies that had a mail server outage can take "days and weeks to recover data from back-up tapes," he says. Putting the back-up into the cloud, with a different provider in a different locations, could speed up recovery.

It's back to IT basics: One concept "that should never be lost in the cloud," says Mr Heiser, "is the need for contingency planning."

BBC News - Consumerisation driving IT policy, says SAP information chief

 
Oliver Bussman of SAP says his biggest technology problem is the consumerisation of IT.

Each week we ask high-profile technology decision-makers three questions. This week it is Oliver Bussman, chief information officer (CIO) of SAP AG.

SAP aims to help companies of all sizes and industries run better through the use of its enterprise application software.

The German company has more than 170,000 customers globally using the company's applications and services, and had revenue of 12.5bn euros in 2010. SAP employs nearly 54,000 people in 50 countries.

What's your biggest technology problem right now?

In my opinion it is the consumerisation of IT.

By this I mean that technology trends are driving technology adoption, I tend to say "lifestyle is becoming work style", end-user demands are shaping the IT strategy.

As CIO it is my job to make sure our employees can take advantage of new technology quickly. I have to stay ahead of the trends. We were one of the first larger companies to adopt the iPad, which had made us a major player in the mobile industry.

Because mobile is changing the market rapidly I have to implement this new device quickly. SAP has a device agnostic approach, meaning we can run pretty much any mobile device on our infrastructure. Today it is the iPad but the next big thing is just around the corner.

During customer meetings I am frequently being asked how to leverage massive amounts of customer data for a competitive advantage, which leads me into question number 2.

What's the next big tech thing in your industry?

Actually, I can give my opinion as CIO of SAP and as an SAP Customer.

Big data - in other words real real-time decision making for enterprises.

At SAP we see three new technologies driving the business IT innovation circle, namely mobility, in-memory and cloud computing.

SAP In-Memory Computing is enabling a new reality of amazing new applications, breakthrough analytics and simplified IT landscapes. We are bringing together in-memory, mobile and cloud-computing technologies to help customers form real-time business networks.

Enterprise mobility will enable completely new business scenarios. In-memory computing will enable the merger of transactional systems and analytical landscapes, enabling real-time insights and reducing TCO (total cost of ownership).

I am an SAP customer in the form of SAP Runs SAP.

SAP Runs SAP means partnering with our development and sales organisation as an early adopter of emerging technologies and solution enhancements - in many cases we are our own first customer.
We can use the technology and give feedback to the development and sales organization to make our software run even better.

What's the biggest technology mistake you've ever made - either at work or in your own life?

In 1990 I had a chance to develop applications on touch screens to navigate through to self-service applications for banking customers for IBM.

They were huge screens, by the way, and weighed half a ton.

I saw the potential, but really the biggest mistake was over time, to underestimate the benefits or in other
words miss the opportunity that Apple took in putting this together with the iPhone smartphone and tablet, which opened a huge market field.

It shows sometimes that you think there is something new, and it takes 20 years to really become a consumer product.

Apple iCloud launched / My Broadband

Gadget Web Site - Tablets, take two

16 May 2011 by Arthur Goldstuck | Filed in Goldstuck on Gadgets

The Africa launch of the new Samsung Galaxy tablet range and the South African unveiling of the RIM PlayBook, weeks after the arrival of the Apple iPad 2, finally brings the tablet wars out in the open. ARTHUR GOLDSTUCK discovers a serious iPad rival.

The tablet computer invasion this column has been heralding for most of the year has finally broken through the defensive lines that protect South African consumers from the threat of owning the world’s most up-to-date technology.

It is the moment that computer and laptop vendors have dreaded. In the space of a few weeks, three of the major contendors will have joined battle on the shop shelves.

First came the heir apparent to the computing throne, the Apple iPad 2. So much praise has been heaped on it, it’s a miracle it hasn’t become the focal point of a new religion. Oh, wait…

The truth is, it’s a delightful device. It boasts unparalleled design and performance. But sooner or later, it will cease to be heresy to point out that it is designed to trap users in a world of Apple’s making. Generally, you still need to link it to another device to get the most out of it, and that device still needs to be running Apple’s iTunes.

Where the iPad wins hands-down is on price. The basic model hit the SA shelves at R4400, with the top of the range going for about R7500.

The next entrant, in the past few days, was the PlayBook from Research In Motion, makers of the BlackBerry. Smaller than the iPad, it is also a beautiful device, and one that many will love to own. But it is even more dependent on other devices: to use its online and e-mail functionality, you’re expected to "tether" or link it to a BlackBerry phone.

Having an entrance qualification like that for owning a completely different device is like weighing soldiers down with bricks to ensure they keep their feet on the ground. If you’re a believer, you will be happy to suffer.

Meanwhile, a new champion emerged last week. At a launch event in Nairobi on Wednesday, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 was unveiled. Almost anything the iPad has on offer, the Galaxy promises to equal or better.
The screen size, as the name suggest, is 10.1", crossing the gulf that existed between the iPad and the first Galaxy, a puny 7" contendor. The 10.1’s weight, 595g, and thickness, at 8.6mm, is almost absurd. It takes firm aim at the "lighter, thinner" credentials of the iPad.

And then there is its strategic edge: it incorporates Flash, essential for viewing certain video formats, animations and web sites, whereas Apple expressly blocks it from the iPad; it includes a microSD slot, which allows files like photos, documents and presentations to be copied directly onto the device without a need for adaptors or synchronisation; and it operates as an independent unit, making it the first tablet I’ve seen that could potentially replace a laptop completely.

Samsung have also released a Galaxy 8.9, event thinner and lighter, but that is targeted more directly at the PlayBook. It suggests a war of two formats: one in the laptop replacement arena, and one in the ultra-small, pretending-to-double-as-a-phone market. At both ends, though, the screen is not optimal for some, either too small or too large, depending on the need. However, Samsung also announced its intentions to roll out the device in a range of sizes that would address such unmet needs.

My greatest fear for the Galaxy 10.1 had been that that it wouldn’t live up to my expectations for being a laptop replacement. But after having it in my hands for a few minutes, I feel confident enough to make this statement: there is a new contendor in the tablet war.


* Arthur Goldstuck heads up the World Wide Worx market research organisation and is editor-in-chief of Gadget. You can follow him on Twitter on @art2gee

Cloud Computing Definitions – SaaS – PaaS – IaaS

By Michael Hanson

Marketing isn’t just about branding, creative, etc. – marketing accounts for the rise in global technology usage and stands poised to embrace the “Cloud”. The Cloud is a virtual environment that precludes the purchase of servers and other technology components to deploy websites, social media sites, etc. Amazon, Rackspace, Microsoft and Google have offerings in this space and there are three acronyms that marketers need to understand when deploying future marketing strategies – no matter which vendor you utilize. The three most typical deployment models are:

SaaS – Software As A Service. Pronounced “SASS”. Simplest deployment method which allows software to be tapped from a cloud computing resource rather than relying on software installations and implementations.

PaaS – Platform As A Service. Pronounced “PASS”. Intermediate deployment that steps away from simply renting applications from the cloud by leveraging the cloud as an operating system (platform). This also eliminates expensive network upkeep as most service providers provide routine maintenance and upgrades as a part of their SLA (service level offering).

IaaS – Infrastructure As A Service. Pronounced “I-AS”. The holy grail of cloud computing! You access / rent everything from the cloud … this means servers, storage space, routers, and other hardware, networking capabilities, operating systems, and applications. This allows for the ultimate degree of scaling as your projects (and customers) dictate.

EOH’s Bohbot downplays telecoms threat

by Duncan McLeod, TechCentral

Asher Bohbot, CEO of fast-growing JSE-listed IT group EOH, has downplayed the potential threat posed by telecommunications operators wanting to muscle into the business technology services market.

As convergence between traditional IT services and telecoms gathers pace, telephone companies are keen to expand their portfolios in the business IT services market.

This was evidenced a few years ago when Telkom tried (and failed) to buy Business Connexion. Since then, companies such as Vodacom and MTN have launched business divisions aimed at serving the corporate market with converged solutions.

But Bohbot says telecoms operators will struggle to move up the value chain and begin providing advanced IT services to corporate SA, especially in applications and middleware.

He says they will enjoy some success in the small and medium enterprise market, but will struggle to break into the corporate IT services space.

“One mustn’t underestimate them, but where they come from they have a consumer and connectivity mindset.”

Bohbot says over time operators may be able to build IT services businesses, but “we don’t see them as competition for now”.

“Operators that acquire IT services companies will take a battering,” he predicts. “It’s just a different business. It would be like me buying a meat company. Would we enhance their value? Probably not.”

He admits that cash-flush telecoms operators could easily afford to buy IT services companies — EOH’s market capitalisation is R1,6bn against MTN’s R255bn and Vodacom’s R115bn. “But what happens the morning after? By the time a transaction takes place, there will be nothing left.”

Bohbot describes operators as “process and technology businesses” and IT services companies as “people businesses”.

“EOH looks like a technology business, but we’re actually a people business. That gives us protection against a hostile takeover. I don’t mind it happening to our competitors because it would be more an advantage to us that a threat.”

IT services is a “complex” field, and “becoming more so”, Bohbot says. “It’s not a field that telecoms companies understand.”

As more IT services are delivered in the “cloud” (through online and centrally managed data centres), the line between technology services companies and operators is beginning to blur.

EOH has invested in its own network and data centres, and has established facilities at data centre operator Teraco. But Bohbot says this is not EOH’s core focus.

Cloud Security: It's No Myth

By Blake Lindsay, CISSP, Bell Canada

There has been a lot of talk about cloud services, but inevitably one major point of concern that's raised during almost any discussion about the cloud is security, which is natural given the fact that the cloud often relies on the public Internet, and resources are hosted off-site. Whether you are discussing Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) or Software as a Service (SaaS), they all have security risks, but there are things that can be done by network administrators and architects to reduce the risks in the cloud.

Carriers will most likely deploy IaaS type services, which give the customer some freedom to configure the systems for their use. IaaS would most likely be deployed as a shared infrastructure to achieve costs savings and get the most out of the hardware. This is where the security issues start. Proper planning and proven security practices are still critical to helping secure cloud infrastructure.

The services that are being provided are much like the ASP type services that were deployed in the past. One of the key differentiators is that customers can configure and set up the hardware to their specifications. There are things that carriers can and should do to ensure the security of the cloud, such as performing penetration tests before the service is implemented, using two-factor authentication for login and administration and proactively monitoring systems for misuse will ensure that the level of risk is reduced.

Proactively ensuring that maintenance patches are applied in a timely manner as well as strong access control are also important for cloud security as is only using secure protocols (HTTPS, TLS, SSH) and VPN tunnels for the customer administration of IaaS.

The customer may ask how they can ensure that their data is secure even with all of these measures in place. While the carrier provides the infrastructure for these services, the customer will have some responsibility for the security of the platform, including implementing a token-based system or encrypting sensitive data on the system. Cloud infrastructure is not yet at the point where putting mission-critical applications that have personally identifiable information (PII), Sarbanes-Oxley or key components of the business makes sense yet. Of course, this kind of data is always under the scrutiny of auditors and third-party external audits, so carriers will need to work with customers to provide this information.

Audits and security tests will have to be a regular occurrence and will have to be done in such a way that they meet the standards of the carrier, yet still have the ability to share that information with the customer. The customer may have to share that information with a third or fourth party. The carriers and customers, in effect, become partners for the IaaS service that is being provided, with both parties having a responsibility to ensure the security of the overall platform.

Policies and procedures are a key component to the security of the cloud. Carriers must ensure that processes for data breaches are in place; backup and restore policies should be well thought out as there could be issues where you may need to restore a previous configuration. There should be policies for data destruction, particularly when it comes to the backup media. The application configuration information should be secured for both the carrier and the customer, and data loss prevention should be on everybody's mind. All of this ties together to raise questions in the customers' mind. The security risks do not change; they only shift somewhat in responsibility.

The cloud and security are not mutually exclusive. Rather, through a combination of proven security practices, planning and a new paradigm of cooperation between the carriers and customers, security and integrity of the cloud can become a reality.

PBX in the Cloud or in the Closet?

Bryan Johns January 26th, 2011

In advance of a planned panel discussion on this topic at IT Expo in Miami next month, I decided to take a moment to formalize my thoughts on the merits of both the hosted and premises PBX deployment models. At risk of coming off as indecisive, I am going to go ahead and say that there are arguments both for and against hosted and premises solutions that depend heavily upon customer size, needs, network infrastructure, planned use and growth forecasts. Generally, the way in which these variables come together supplies the best determination as to which deployment model makes the most sense and why.

Let’s take a minute to look at that assumption in more detail.

First I want to say that over the course of my career I have designed, implemented and supported VoIP network solutions in both hosted and premises architectures. I hold no specific bias one way or the other but I believe that one strategy has advantage over the other based upon attributes of the company proposing to utilize the solution and their specific needs. In my experience, the following factors weigh most heavily in determining whether a company should consider a hosted or a premises solution:

Company size (count of end users to be supported)

Very small companies (fewer than 20 users) almost invariably find a better value in a hosted architecture than a premises deployment. This due to the fact that the recurring monthly expense of a hosted solution in these quantities is typically digestible and (assuming the availability of quality bandwidth) they can typically be purchased without an extended contract term which leaves the door open to change providers if needed. In a range from 20 to 50 users, the economies of a hosted solution are dictated by a combination of bandwidth cost / availability and anticipated monthly maintenance expense for telephony platform. Above 50 users, the economies of hosted solution typically collapse and higher recurring monthly expense overshoots the potential savings in operation, maintenance and upgrades.

Number of physical facilities (count of company locations to be supported)

The count of branch facilities to be supported also plays heavily in determining the value of hosted solutions versus premises solutions. For companies with a single facility that has 50 to 100+ users, a premises deployment will be both architecturally and financially more attractive. For companies with up to 3 branch facilities, a premises installation in each facility linked together via SIP or IAX2 trunks provides both financial efficiency and site isolation from bandwidth or machine failures. Above 3 branch facilities, the potential redundant expenses in each location begin to make the argument for a centralized, hosted design for purposes of ease of management / maintenance, price efficiency and disaster recovery.

Amount of daily or monthly PBX maintenance anticipated

Many companies shopping VoIP infrastructure are anticipating some ability to handle daily maintenance activities inside of their own doors. The “point and click” simplicity of solutions such as Digium’s SwitchVox appliance puts much of the day-to-day configuration and management within the technical capabilities of the average IT guy and reduces the necessity of outside maintenance assistance. Still, those companies that anticipate a high amount of monthly management requirements can benefit from the inclusive support provided by many hosted operations. Essentially, where a customer can receive significant value from inclusive support in a hosted configuration, this deployment design has distinct advantages.

Condition of WAN and associated carrier contracts

One of the more compelling ROI opportunities available in a conversion to a VoIP infrastructure is powered by cost savings through disconnection of conventional TDM service connections and replacing them with public or private data connections.

However, if a company is under contract for telecommunication services, the cost to break these contracts can have a significant impact on available monthly savings. Customers in fresh telecommunications contracts are stronger candidates for premises deployments while those who are not encumbered by contracts are typically better candidates for a potential conversion to a hosted or co-located solution where their other attributes make them a strong candidate for this design.

Up time requirements

There has been a heavy focus on business continuity and disaster recovery for all aspects of IT infrastructure in recent years. While conventional PBX solutions have not historically provided any measurable level of redundancy, the migration of these technologies into IP network environments has raised the bar for availability in business telecommunications solutions. If business continuity is a high priority, the advantage can go to a hosted design. This is not to say that a premises deployment cannot be engineered for high availability, but the costs to supply this ability can slant the value proposition toward a hosted or co-located solution design.

The third option: Hybrid or “Co-located”

There is a third, hybrid deployment design that is best described as “co-located” that supplies the efficiency and assurances of a hosted design with a financial structure more akin to a premises deployment. This structure includes customer-owned equipment running in a data center with private network connectivity to both the customer facility and VoIP carrier networks. A co-located design raises the bar for quality and performance on the company WAN but can be far more economical than the higher recurring expense associated with hosted solutions above the previously-mentioned economic tipping-point of 50 seats or so. A co-located design is preferred in most instances where a hosted solution is preferred but where the user count is above 30 seats and where the customer is comfortable handling the majority of their maintenance needs in-house.

So in summary, for a company with fewer than 20 seats and with fewer than 3 facilities the advantage most frequently goes to hosted. Between 20 and 50 seats there are a other variables that need to be considered before one can say whether a premises, hosted or co-located design is best. Above 50 seats the advantage usually goes to a premises deployment unless the customer has more than 3 locations which slants the preference to co-located.

Please remember that the information in this article is opinion gathered from 10 years of implementing VoIP solutions and is not backed up by scientific data. Still, I hope that it provides you insight as you consider VoIP technologies for your business. Happy implementing!

US government adopts ‘cloud-first’ policy - SmartPlanet

By Joe McKendrick
Nov 30, 2010

The Washington Post’s Marjorie Censer reports that US federal agencies are now required to adopt a “cloud-first” policy when considering new information technology purchases. The policy is the result of an overhaul of the government’s IT procurement process:

“Jeffrey Zients, the federal government’s first chief performance officer, announced… that the Office of Management and Budget will now require federal agencies to default to cloud-based solutions ‘whenever a secure, reliable, cost-effective cloud option exists.’”

This is a dramatic sea-change in acceptance of the cloud technology approach, which was fairly new and radical just a couple of years ago — and still is fraught with misgivings about information security.

Still, the financial benefits are too compelling to pass up, espcially for an $80-billion-a-year IT operation such as that of the US federal government. The cloud-first initiative may help the government in its efforts to reduce and consolidate its stable of 2,100 data centers. The government is moving to reduce that total by at least 40% by 2015.

There are other “smarter” IT approaches already in place. The General Services Administration maintains a government “app store,” Apps.Gov, which provides agencies with access to various cloud platforms and applications.

Federal CIO Kundra Vivek has vowed to reign in and streamline the government’s IT budget by at least by five percent a year through aggressive and pro-active actions such as cloud computing, virtualization and data center consolidation. And, as a result, enable agencies across the board to better streamline their own programs.

Microsoft OCS update promises to replace PBX

By Denise Dubie, Network World
March 24

Microsoft unveiled its updated unified communications software that the company says will help customers move off PBX systems, but industry watchers wonder if the previewed Communications Server "14" will integrate with more than just Microsoft-approved software and hardware.

"Obviously this release has been much-anticipated. The industry was waiting for the release when OCS became a full PBX replacement," says Zeus Kerravala, an analyst at Yankee Group. "Microsoft has a good vision of where they want to take this industry, and it is similar to other vendors like Cisco, except Microsoft will argue they don't make the hardware. Yet the company does dictate with which hardware the unified communications software will work, and it's only a handful like Polycom."

Microsoft Wednesday introduced its updated Office Communications Server – code-named Communications Server "14" -- at VoiceCon Orlando 2010, and company executives demonstrated during a keynote presentation there how the next version of Microsoft Office Communication Server integrates with applications such as SharePoint, Exchange and Office. Gurdeep Singh Pall, corporate vice president of Microsoft's Unified Communications Group said during the keynote address that the company's updated unified communications software, Communications Server "14," will provide IT organizations with the next-generation platform on which to collaborate with voice and video applications as well as a simple, cost-effective alternative to aging PBX systems.

"This system works with the communications systems you have in place, and it will sit next to it and work well with it, because you may not want to throw away the PBX," Pall said. "But this product, when ready to move, will be ready to carry the entire load that your PBX is carrying."

According to Pall, in the next three years more than 75% of new business applications will include embedded unified communications and standard business calls today will become outdated with more than 50% of VoIP calls incorporating more than just voice. Industry watchers agree companies and consumers are moving away from traditional voice systems and embracing collaboration tools that are tied to social media and other technologies. But the transition might not be as quick.

"People are using other forms of communications, that's true, but the move away from voice won't happen as quickly as Microsoft thinks it will, but then Microsoft doesn't make money on phones," Kerravala says.

Microsoft's demonstration at VoiceCon lacked a few things for Kerravala. The company didn't go into great detail about branch office survivability solutions or 911 services, for instance, but Microsoft also didn't explain how it would work with third-party systems. Polycom, HP and NET, and several others, announced earlier in the week that they would separately be expanding relationships with Microsoft to better integrate with OCS and the company's UC products.

Competing with Cisco, Avaya, Siemens and IBM, Microsoft will need to differentiate itself, Kerravala suggests, with customer examples of how the Communications Server "14" changed the way they worked and helped them to cut costs in the process.
"Cisco and Microsoft will compete most directly because they are both trying to do everything, going after the whole suite, they both have e-mail packages, but Microsoft will say it doesn't do hardware, it just dictates the hardware specifications," Kerravala says. "If Microsoft is going to win in this market, it will have to depend on developers, they are what makes the company successful."

Cloud computing still risky / ITWEB

By Nicola Mawson, ITWeb senior journalist.
Johannesburg, 31 Aug 2010

A move to cloud computing is seen as an inevitable shift in the future, but many large organisations are reluctant to take the plunge, says Gartner.

Cloud computing is expected to grow from being a $58.6 billion industry last year to one that will be worth more than $148.8 billion in 2014, according to Gartner research. Companies will invest $112 billion in the cloud in the next five years.

Daryl Plummer, managing VP and Gartner Fellow, says the move to cloud computing is inevitable. However, there are still concerns around the safety of outsourcing key functions to a cloud provider, he adds.

Among the benefits of moving to computing in the cloud is the fact that companies do not need to invest in infrastructure or software, says Plummer. He says this allows firms to retire IT equipment, which typically depreciates rapidly. “It's not an investment opportunity to buy technology.”

Plummer explains that, although moving to cloud computing may require the same expenditure as owning equipment, there is a clear line of sight as to where this spend is going. Software as a service, for example, is often a pay-per-use purchase.

Risky business

Despite the apparent benefits of moving into a virtual environment, 70% of the companies Gartner surveyed, with 1 000 or more staff, have not developed a cloud initiative yet, says Plummer.

The reasons cited by these companies include security concerns over having information stored somewhere that is out of their control. In addition, firms are worried that there is no compliance reporting or audit trails once information is stored in the cloud.

Plummer adds that companies are also concerned about the quality and predictability of services provided in the cloud. In addition, if the company hosting the information folds, then that data will be lost, he says.

“Whose responsibility is it for your business when the failure happened three steps down the chain?”

Plummer points out, however, that CIOs cannot ignore the move to cloud computing. He explains that staff at companies are already making use of cloud computing, without CIOs even being aware of the shift.

“People are in the cloud for real, they aren't going back, it's not a fad,” says Plummer.

As a result, he says CIOs need to put a plan in place to manage the risks of moving into the cloud environment.

* Nicola Mawson was being hosted courtesy of Gartner.