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Last Chance to Register for Google Apps … Live! in NYC on Oct 7th

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Registration for Google Apps — Live! in New York City on October 7, 2010 closes on September 30th.  The event, at in Google’s Chelsea Market offices, gives businesses a unique opportunity to discuss and see demos of Google Apps while networking with other business leaders moving to cloud computing solutions.

“The event is unique,” notes Allen Falcon, CEO of Horizon Info Services, “because it is not just a bunch of talking heads at the front of the room.”  In addition to case studies from IT experts and an Emmy-winning production firm, attendees will have one-to-one access to Google Apps experts.  According to Falcon, “Businesses will get an assessment of their unique needs and get answers to their specific questions.”

Beyond features and capabilities, presentations will discuss deployment issues and other factors businesses should consider before starting their move to cloud-based solutions.  “We want attendees to leave with an understanding of if, when, and how they should move to Google Apps and other cloud computing services,” notes Falcon.

Google Apps … Live! is scheduled for October 7, 2010 from 3:00 to 6:00 pm at Google’s offices in Chelsea Market, NYC.  As seating is limited, advanced registration is required before September 30th.  Full event details and the registration form are available at http://events.horizoninfoservices.com.

Horizon’s CEO to Speak at Small Business Technology Tour in Boston

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Allen Falcon, CEO of Horizon Info Services (www.horizoninfoservices.com) has been selected to speak at the Small Business Technology Tour in Boston on October 25th (hashtag #smallbiztechtour). Sharing the stage with Laurie McCabe from the SMG Group, Raju Vegesna of Zoho, and Shahab Kaviani from HyperOffice, the panel will focus on Online Collaboration and Communication: How to LISTEN Inside Your Company.

“We’re excited that small businesses and entrepreneurs can hear from experts who can help them use technology to grow their businesses,” says Ramon Ray, Executive Producer of the Tour and Editor and Technology Evangelist for Smallbiztechnology.com. “Our events have grown each year and the loyal following of attendees and sponsors reinforces that we are resonating with businesses. Attendees should expect to learn, laugh, network and win tech goodies.”

The all day event features America’s leading experts on small business and technology, who will share their insight, lead discussions and show attendees how they can harness technology to save time, save money, boost productivity, increase revenue and better serve customers.

“The conference has a unique focus on emerging technologies that can help small and mid-size businesses grow,” noted Falcon. “The event is a unique opportunity for business owners to learn and network.”

Other sessions include: Six Rules for Strategically Using Technology to GROW Your Business; Your Mobile Business: How to Manage Your Business and Boost Customer Service through Mobile Technology; From CDs and Hard Disks To Browsers: Migrating To A Cloud Computing World; New Media. Old Rules. Why The Rules Of Old School Marketing Still Apply; Why Email Marketing, Blogs and Web Sites are NOT Dead; and Technology Watch: Top New Technology Solution Trends and How They Can Help Your Small Business.

The event is scheduled for October 25th at Microsoft’s New England Research and Development (NERD) center in Cambridge, MA. Early Bird (before October 18th) registrants will pay $49 for the all-day event. For more information visit http://www.smallbiztechtour.com.

Is this how your IT department spends its time?

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As reported today in ZDnet, Microsoft’s August Patch Tuesday is the largest ever, with 14 major patches, 8 of which are critical.

Why do you care?

Because if your IT dept is good, they are first going to spend time evaluating your business’ risk and will try to determine if any of these updates will break anything running on your network.  This means time and money that could be better spent on IT activities that improve business efficiency and profitability.

One of the advantages of cloud computing, and Google Apps in particular, is that updates can happen at anytime without disrupting users.  Critical updates can be deployed globally to all customers within hours.

Cloud computing is a more efficient means of managing the infrastructure underlying your applications and your business.

Economy is Ripe for Cloud Computing

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A recent article in the New York Times reported that in the current economy, businesses are spending capital rather than hiring additional employees.  As reported in the article, the Commerce Department noted that

“The equipment and software category alone grew at an annual rate of 21.9 percent, the fastest pace in 12 years.”

When we look  at the stats and trends, we see businesses moving forward with project that have been put on hold.  And, we question whether or not this is a wise move.  Is moving forward with a project that’s been on hold for 12 to 24 months still the best way to go? In many cases, the answer is “No!”.

Many businesses are facing upgrades to core systems and infrastructure — desktop operating systems, office productivity tools, email servers — and are looking to finally move forward implementing collaboration systems.  Much of this demand is driven by aging hardware and software that is reaching end of life and vendor support.

Before moving forward with existing plans, businesses would do well to reassess their planned directions.  The past 24 months has seen a dramatic improvement and expansion of cloud-based services.  During that time, for example, Google has added over 200 major features to the Google Apps Premier Edition suite of services.  And, the rate of innovation and adoption for cloud computing solutions continues to accelerate.

If businesses do not take a fresh look, they stand to miss the improved integration between Google Apps and Windows desktops — Outlook and MS Office; support for enterprise features such as delegation of email and calendars and mobile device management tools; and improve security and management tools.

In short, what was leading edge is quickly moving mainstream.  Reactivating projects without reassessing options means potentially missing better solutions and lowering costs.  And, wouldn’t most businesses rather spend money on people and projects with greater returns than on their infrastructure and email?

If your business would benefit from a free email and collaboration assessment, please let us know.

IT’s Mission Should Be IS

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Cloud computing, and other technologies, do enable users to do more with less IT involvement. These architectural shifts should also shift resources from commodity infrastructure to high-value work.

If Cloud Computing is changing an IT group’s mission, than the mission has been wrong.  Even the name IT puts the emphasis on “Technology”.

IT should (and will) continue to evolve into IS — Information Services — which focuses on meeting the informational and operational needs of the users (i.e. the business) rather than on the technology used to deliver the services.

If it weren’t for the customers …

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… the job would be easy.

Earlier this week, Ning (a service that creates networking-based private communities) announced that it was rapidly terminating its free services.  Making real the fears of many users of free services, Ning is hoping that keep its revenue stream in tact knowing that 80% of revenues come from 20% of its users that pay for services.

Ning’s mistake is not forcing users from a free model to a paid service.  Ning’s mistake is in how it communicated and is managing the change.  Rather than a migration to paid services, Ning’s free service users heard: “Pay or Leave! And, Ning will help you leave!”

If the 80/20 rule is true, maybe Ning will really be happy shrinking its customer base by 80% in order to keep 80% of its revenue.  How may of the paying customers are also in free communities and will leave because of the treatment?  I wonder.

When Google wanted to boost paid usage of Google Apps among SMBs, they cut off free services at 50 users and rapidly added new features to the paid versions.  For many businesses forced to go from free to paid, the carrot of better features and functions mitigated the pain of the stick.

It will be interesting to see if “We don’t want you” is a good business model for Ning.

Horizon Joins Google in Push to Bring Cloud Computing to SMBs

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Horizon Info Services is partnering with Google to offer webinars for small and mid-size businesses.  The webinars, scheduled at multiple times on May 6, 2010 and May 12, 2010, will focus on how businesses can save 30% or more on IT costs while improving productivity and reducing their ecological footprints.

More information and registration links are available by clicking here.

We Need a New Term

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What do you call an image of a file server that runs in an environment in which it exists across multiple processors, pools of memory, and disk that in now way correlate to any specific pieces of hardware?

We cannot call it cloud computing, as this term means just about anything to just about anyone these days.  While the denotation of virtual server is correct, the connation is server image hosted on a physical server, exclusively or as one of several virtual servers sharing resources.  Granted, the “virtual server” may be hosted on multiple servers for redundancy, but any given instance of the server image only exists and runs on one host at any point in time.  The same seems to hold true for the meaning of cluster.

So, what do we call a server – an operating system that uses processors, memory, network access, disk, et cetera abstracted from a pool of resources?

File Server or File Service?

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Most organizations store and share files by setting up one or more file servers.  They used to be referred to as “File and Print Servers”, but as most printers include direct network connectivity, spooling, and job management features, the need to have print spooling and drivers running on a server has nearly disappeared.

File servers seem to be heading in the same direction.

Disk space no longer needs a physical connection to a server with a full operating system. Disk drive control, security, access rights, and I/O management can be delivered directly by storage area networks (SANs), network attached storage (NAS), and cloud storage solutions.

What happens when storage is further abstracted?

Gladinet (http://www.gladinet.com) has a series of tools that lets you attaché multiple, independent cloud storage systems and accounts and presents them as top level folders on a mapped drive. OffiSync gives you access to Google Docs and Google Sites storage from toolbars/ribbons in the MS Office applications (avoiding mapped drives and windows explorer altogether). While Gladinet extends the model of OS-based storage management, OffiSync moves storage management directly into the application.

In its infancy, cloud storage services are giving us the opportunity to rethink the positioning and role of storage within operational architectures – in the cloud and in our data centers. File servers feel nearly obsolete as storage becomes a commodity and access control migrates from the operating system to the applications themselves.

Microsoft BPOS Outages: Cloud vs. Hosted Server

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Last week, Microsoft experienced several outages of its Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS).   As ZDNet noted, with so few users, nobody really noticed (as opposed to every Google performance  or service issue making headlines).

In our opinion, the outage tells a much more important story — the difference between a hosted server and a cloud-based solution.  MS BPOS runs as hosted servers on shared physical servers.  In effect, Microsoft is installing their servers on hardware the same way you would install them as virtual servers on shared hardware.  Microsoft is honest in that none of the services run in a replicated or redundant way.  With the exception of email, for which users should be able to send, receive and access 30 days history, if your virtual server or physical server has troubles, you are out of luck.

The implications are serious.  Without redundant services or data, any failure puts you, the customer, at risk for data loss.  Imagine a server failure that corrupts an underlying SharePoint database.  Access to documents, wiki’s, and other content can easily be lost.  As Microsoft offers no clear mechanism for backing up data, data you place in BPOS is likely at greater risk than keeping it on in-house systems.

Granted, Microsoft’s big customers (like Coca Cola) can negotiate for special services.  For the rest of the user community, at $120 per user per year, you would just be out of luck.

Here is a blog posting praising the virtues of BPOS and possible backup strategies.  Clearly, the author does not get it.  Why would you trust your data on a service, like Sharepoint, where after a disaster impacting your servers hosted by Microsoft, you are likely to wait 6 days to get data that is 7 days old from the point of failure?  That is effectively a 13 day gap in information.

Fundamentally, MS BPOS misses the mark.  Either Microsoft doesn’t understand the needs of businesses or they are unable of providing the level of service smart businesses require.