Cumulus Global Launches Google Apps for Franchises

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Delivers Integrated Email and Collaboration Services to
Franchisers and Their Franchisees

WESTBOROUGH, MA – August 08, 2011 – Cumulus Global is pleased to announce the launch of Google Apps for Franchises, an integrated product and service packages designed to improve communication and collaboration between franchisers and their franchisees.  With Google Apps for Business at its core, Google Apps for Franchises gives franchisers control over their domain and their brand while providing Franchisees with best-in-class email, communication, and collaboration tools.

“Google Apps for Franchises goes beyond providing domain-branded email service to Franchisees,” stated Allen Falcon, CEO of Cumulus Global.  “The package gives franchisers the ability to move documents and training materials out of the 3-ring binder and into secure portals, without having to buy and build an expensive infrastructure.”

Google Apps for Franchises includes creation of a secure franchisee portal that may be used to share documents, create on-online policy and procedure models, deliver training videos, and post announcements.  Using Google Docs and Google Sites, franchisers can setup systems for improved reporting and rolling up numbers.  The package also includes Cumulus Global’s Premium Support offering, including tier 2 end user support.

“We understand that franchisers have unique business issues when providing services to franchisees,” notes Falcon.  “Franchisers, for example, can direct us to invoice them centrally or invoice each franchisee.”

Franchisers interested in Google Apps for Franchises can get more information at Cumulus Global’s website directly or through the Google Apps Marketplace.

About Cumulus Global
Cumulus Global, formerly Horizon Info Services, helps small and mid-size businesses, non-profits, governments, and educational institutions thrive by delivering cloud computing solutions.  Serving clients from 1 to more than 1000 employees across numerous industries, we align technology with our clients’ goals, objectives, and bottom lines. We leverage our expertise, vendor relationships, and a diversified range of best-of-breed cloud services to create custom solutions with tangible value.

Google Apps for Franchises is the first in a series of industry specific cloud computing solutions from Cumulus Global.

Friday Thought: 3 More Reasons Google Apps is Secure

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In addition to SAS 70 Type II Certification, here are 3 more reasons Google Apps is secure.

  1. Custom Operating System. Google Apps runs on a custom version of the LINUX operating system (OS).  Services and ports that are not needed, a common entry point for hackers, are not simply disabled, they have been removed.  As important, hackers cannot buy a copy of Google’s custom OS and use it to find vulnerabilities.
  2. Data is Unreadable, at least by humans.  When you save data in Google Apps, it is broken into little pieces that are each saved in different servers across multiple data centers.  Each piece is then obfuscated using encryption and other methods.  Even if somebody was able to break in, or a Google employee gained access to your data, they would first need to find all of the pieces and then figure out how to decrypt each piece. In comparison, your MS Exchange administrator can read every email in the system.
  3. Google is the second largest target for Hackers. Only the US Department of Defense has more attacks by hackers.  Google, therefore, has built an extremely robust defense against hackers.  With a security team of thousands on the job, led by some of the foremost security experts in the world, Google has built protection from hackers that greatly exceeds what most businesses can technically do, or even afford to do.

Does this mean your data is perfectly secure?  No!  Security can never be perfect.  It does mean that your chances of losing data in Google Apps is negligible when compared to most businesses’ network security and the actions of their employees (sharing passwords, stolen laptops, lost USB drives, and so on…..).

Cumulus Global CEO discusses economic impact with CRN

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As reported by Computer Reseller News (CRN),

The stock market has dropped precipitously the last two weeks, but several solution providers said they’re not worried about a substantial economic relapse impacting their businesses. At least not yet.

Click here to see what Allen Falcon, our CEO, and other resellers have to say.

Tuesday Take-Away: Your Backup System is (sort of) Irrelevant

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As you may know, I participate in several on-line IT discussion forums.  Every few weeks, a new member will post a question like “I have an xyz server, what should I use for backups?”.  Seemingly helpful forum members quickly jump in and start throwing out vendor names, do-it-yourself solutions, discussions about NAS versus SAN and disk-to-disk versus disk-to-tape, and so on.

It makes me want to SCREAM?  Why?  Because …

What you use for backup is irrelevant unless you know what you are backing up, why, and how quickly you need to restore!

Said another way, before you pick ANY backup solution, you should know:

  • What you need to restore
  • Why you expect you will need to restore or recover it
  • How quickly you will need to restore or recover it

Note that the answers you provide may vary for the different types of data.  For example, you may be able to live without your accounting system for two days, so long as you can ship orders within 4 hours.   You may need current project files immediately, but could wait a week for projects completed more than a year ago.

Understanding your “Why”

When considering why you might need to restore or recovery information or systems, think of the full spectrum of activities that can go wrong.  As an informal set of definitions:

  • Restore operations are usually performed on individual files or small sets of data, often resulting from accidental overwrites, deletions, or component (disk) failures.
  • Recovery operations are usually geared for large data loss, such as a drive array failure or server loss due to a disaster.

The key difference, restore operations bring back select data from a specific point in time while recovery operations bring back entire systems or data environments.

For example, you might restore email messages accidentally deleted from a user’s account on an MS Exchange server.  If the disk array dies, however, you would need to recover the entire mailbox store for the server.

Backup/Recovery protects you from disaster; Backup/Restore protects you from component failures and user errors (or intentional misconduct).

How you backup for recovery will often differ than how you backup for  restore.

Backup solutions that efficiently restore data, are not optimized for recovery.  Most backup solutions designed for fast recovery, such as image snapshots, lack the ability to restore individual elements.  For the Exchange server, above, we would recommend running two backups — one designed for recovery and one for individual mailbox and message restores.

Additionally, backups for restore generally give you more retention points than backups for recovery.  Being able to select a specific time or version of data is a key feature for backup/restore solutions.

Understanding you “How Quickly”

How quickly you need your data depends on the data and your business.  Keep in mind that you do not need all of your data all at once.  Generally speaking, however, when you need to restore an active file or two, you want to be able to do this quickly.  While you want quick recovery as well, you are more likely to be bound by factors beyond your backup/recovery solution, such as purchasing new hardware or moving to temporary office space.

Focus first on how quickly you need to Return To Operations.  Your RTO will drive your selection and investment in backup/recovery solutions.  Once you have your RTO, identity the critical data and systems you need to get your business up and running.  Your RTO will be shorter than your window for full recovery, and includes only the critical subset you need to get up and running.

The shorter your RTO, the more expensive the solution.  A realistic RTO will prevent you from over-buying.

First Steps First

By first understanding your requirements — the what, why, and how fast — of your restore and recovery needs, you can select backup solutions that accurately match your needs and effectively protect your data and your business.  By defining your needs, your solution will be relevant and your investment well-made.

 

What Might Your Browser Say About Your Intelligence?

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In an online poll of over 100,000 people, AptiQuant, a Canadian firm that provides online employment assessments found a relationship between IQ and browser choice.  In the report, AptiQuant finds that individuals with lower IQ scores are more likely to use Internet Explorer than other browsers, such as Google Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.

The authors of the study note that “Although observational findings linking resistance to change/upgrade software to scores on cognitive tests maybe distorted by a lot of factors, it has been suggested that individuals on the lower end of the IQ scale tend to keep using outdated versions of antique web browsers.”  They extend this observation to their hypothesis:

“Because cognitive scores are related to tech savviness, we hypothesized that choice of web browser is related to cognitive ability of an individual.”

What the study found is that:

  • A significant number of individuals with a low score on the cognitive test were found to be using Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) versions 6.0 to 9.0.
  • There was no significant difference in the IQ scores between individuals using Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Apple’s Safari; however, it was on an average higher than IE users.
  • Individuals using Opera, Camino and IE with Chrome Frame scored a little higher on an average than others.

From this, the study concludes that “… the IQ score and the choice of web browser are related.”

While interesting, the study does not establish browser choice as an indicator of IQ.  Rather, it does seem to support the general notion that intelligence relates to willingness to change and adopt new tools (in this case, software).

And, before you tease your IE-using friends, remember that this survey was far from scientific, with self-selecting users who responded to web advertisements for a free IQ test.

 

Friday Thought: What does SAS 70 really mean?

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When talking about security of cloud solutions, we often mention that Google Apps is SAS 70 Type II certified.  While it sounds impressive, what does it really mean.

SAS 70 is an accounting audit standard for operational policies and procedures.  To achieve certification, you …

  1. Must have best-practice policies and procedures in place
  2. Must be able to prove that you follow policies and procedures
  3. Must have an independent 3rd party audit your operations on a regular basis to validate the policies and procedures and verify that they are followed.

SAS 70 Type II reflects a level of certification for data center and IT operations that includes:

  • Physical security of buildings and data centers
  • Logical security (network, systems, data, etc)
  • Privacy
  • Incident management and availability
  • Change management
  • Organization (roles and responsibilities)
  • Administration (personnel, documentation, funding, etc.)

So while it sounds impressive, SAS 70 Type II certification really is impressive!

Most businesses cannot or choose not to incur the cost and effort to achieve SAS 70 Type II certification for their internal systems.  With the certification, Google is confirming the security and safety of your data continuously at a level that likely exceeds the security of your in-house networks and systems.

Good News for EDUs

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We have some good news for educational institutions using Google Apps.  Google has increased the inbox size from 7.5GB to 25GB per user, giving your users the same level of service as businesses.

In addition, Cumulus Global can now offer Google’s famous educational discounts for all Postini services, including Google Message Security and Message Archive & Discovery services.  These discounts are valid if you use Google Postini services with your in-house email servers or Google Apps for Education.

Contact us for more information and pricing.

I Love My New Chromebook, but …

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As we prepare to offer Chromebooks to schools and SMEs, our first unit has arrived.  Never has setting up a new computing device been so simple.  Once you power up, the OS walks you through connecting to your wireless network and downloading the latest Chrome OS updates.

Enter your Google Apps username and password, and you are up and running.

We are using the Samsung 5 WiFi edition.  The keyboard is fine, but compact.  Performance is superb as is screen, audio, and video quality (through the built-in camera).  Boot up takes ~8 seconds and coming out of sleep is instant.  A far cry from the coffee break required when returning from Standby on my Windows laptop.

I love it, but ….  it does take some adjustment.

ChromeOS is an OS in a browser.  There is no “closing” the browser to see your desktop.  Your “desktop” is the new tab screen, with your applications listed in a logical order.

There is local storage, about 50GB, and the ability to use USB and SD cards for more space.  The local storage is not like a traditional hard drive.  There is no letter, it is simply accessed through the browser.

Google could make moving to Chromebooks easier with a few changes to Google Apps and Gmail in particular.   When composing emails, Gmail has an “Attach File” link that assumes you are loading a file from local storage.  I suggest that Gmail should also have a “Share Doc” link that lets you browse your Google Docs collections and select links to include/attach in the message.  If I am moving to the cloud, make sharing content from the cloud the default.

Aside from that, I find the Chromebook more useful for working on the go than my iPad, as I prefer the Chrome browser interface to the mail, calendar, and ‘mini browser’ interfaces on the iPad.

Let me know what you think.
–Allen

Paul Drotch Joins Cumulus Global as CFO

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WESTBOROUGH, MA – July 20, 2011 – Cumulus Global is pleased to announce that Paul Drotch has joined the company in the role of Chief Financial Officer.  As CFO, Paul will manage all accounting functions and will lead several strategic initiatives in support of the company’s rapid growth. 

“We are honored that Paul has decided to join our team,” stated Allen Falcon, CEO of Cumulus Global.  “With more than 15 years in the finance industry, Paul brings expertise in finance, analysis, strategic planning, and funding.  Paul is the right person to help us continue growing.”

Paul DrotchPrior to joining Cumulus Global, Paul served as a Senior Investment Officer at Liberty Mutual.  During his tenure at Liberty Mutual, Paul tracked a $3.0 billion portfolio over several vertical industries, providing critical and timely analysis and recommendations to fund managers.  Paul previously served as a Senior High Yield Analyst for Federated Investors.

Paul holds a Bachelors of Arts with Honors from the University of Rochester and Master of Business Administration in Finance and Strategy from the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University.  Paul is a Chartered Financial Analyst.

Paul lives in Central Massachusetts with his wife and three children.  He is currently a Board Member at the Epilepsy Foundation Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire & Maine and has served in leadership positions on the boards of several area non-profits.

Protect Your Data in the Cloud

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When IT pros plan backup and recovery solutions for in-house systems, they start with the big events, such as server failures and disk crashes.  In reality, most restores are not as a result of a catastrophic loss.  Most restores are for individual files that were accidentally overwritten, deleted, or otherwise corrupted.

How is this relevant when your files are in the cloud?

Most cloud file services provide sufficient redundancy and resilience to prevent data loss due to hardware or software failure.  These services, however, cannot protect your data from the users.  Files stored in the cloud remain susceptible to deletion and accidental overwrites.    In addition, new desktop utilities that let users work locally and sync files between desktop and cloud increase your risk of file corruption.

What to do?

You do have some protections available.

Version History:  If your cloud file service has version history features, take the time to understand how and when the service saves versions.  Some services only save documents uploaded via their web interface or client, and not when documents are updated via drive mapping or folder desktop sync applications.

Cloud File backup tools:  Consider adding a backup tool to your cloud ecosystem.  A cloud backup tool will periodically move content from your cloud file service to another location periodically or continuously.  The data is stored in a format that facilitates restores to your cloud file service, and many backup tools let you download the backup set.

If you have concerns about your cloud-based data, or have questions about backing up your data in the cloud, please contact us.