With more and more organizations opting to store their data on cloud computing systems rather than under their own roofs, outsourcing data centres are springing up like mushrooms to answer the demand. That development, say the folks at this Colorado-based thinktank, spins off into all kinds of good stuff, including savings in manpower, savings in money and—here’s where the world’s interests kick in—savings in energy. Indeed, say the analysts behind the research, this cloud business could help reduce the world’s energy costs by almost a third over the next decade.

First up, the stuff that lines the pockets.

Revenue from these proliferating data centres, predicts the new research, will inflate to a compound annual growth rate over the next decade of 29%. In hard numbers, that means a revenue climb from $46 billion in 2009 to $210.3 billion in 2015. More than that, says the report—titled “Cloud Computing Energy Efficiency”—new investments in the stuff will continue to spur greater efficiency for those dollars spent.

Indeed, Pike Research’s analysis suggests that, absent the cloud, only the very largest commercial or governmental organizations would have the capital and expertise required to achieve the same kind of efficiency at a comparable cost.

Green Shoots

But it’s the trending transformation of another kind of green, says Pike’s senior analyst Eric Woods, that’s even more impressive.

“Cloud computing revenue will grow strongly over the next decade,” Woods says. “But the reduction in energy consumption will be even more significant.”

Pike forecasts that, if the world continues along its current cloud-computing adoption curve, overall data centre energy consumption will be slashed by a dramatic 31% in the period between 2010 and 2020.

This news comes on the heels of other publicly stated initiatives that acknowledge the wasteful footprint of the globe’s infinite IT goings on. Facebook, for one, recently announced that it intends to make public the details of its data centres such that others might benefit from this massive operation’s evolving understanding of energy efficiency. According to the social media giant, the servers in its refurbished data house—which apparently took two years and tens of millions of dollars to complete—run 38% more efficiently, and 24% less expensively, than those in their comparable peers.

One Centre, Less Energy

Simply put, goes the report, clouds are better utilized and less expensive to operate than traditional, siloed data repositories are. The more disparate operations they take in under their generous eaves, the more efficiently is this channel of energy expended.

And all signs point to a continued drift in this direction. As increasingly more of the work that was conventionally performed in internal data centres is consigned to the cloud, the world’s basket of energy consumption, associated energy expenses and greenhouse gas emissions suffers ever fewer hands dipping into its bounty.

If you’re thinking “Big deal, I already use Citrix!” that means you also pay Citrix Contract Support fee, Licensing fee and Citrix Software on top of Microsoft TS CAL. Microsoft RDS can do 95% of what you may need with less cost. It is also blazing fast using RDC7 client challenging Citrix’s ICA protocol performance – which is a big deal! For many years, the ICA protocol was the reason many large companies stayed away from Microsoft’s RDP connection-oriented protocol as it wasn’t as efficient or as fast as ICA was at presenting data. Application Virtualization was also previously an extremely expensive application solution that cost serious ducks in licensing, support and software purchases and contracts on top of consulting. However, with recent developments at Microsoft it would seem they have been in the lab working on these issues for some time. Their hosted platform solution called RemoteApp is the ’secret weapon’ for Network Administrators; its features, applications and low cost make it a valuable solution for many of our clients and may just be a great solution for your business too!

What is RemoteApp?

As part of the RDS Server role, it works by utilizing Microsoft Terminal Services and RDP to host applications installed on the server in user profiles. Applications are launched by RDC shortcut or .MSI file at the client PC, accessing server files in a remote session managed by the TS server with secure connections if needed. It is then presented through your built-in remote client in Windows XP and 7. Your application is hosted at the server and shows up on your desktop as a managed app run from either a shortcut distributed or an installer package that can create file associations for your users. It can also be accessed by a configured web portal with customizable access for users. By using Group Policy and RemoteApp Manager, you can string multiple servers together in Server farms with the same configuration and load balance the sessions. Another previously expensive enterprise solution! These services can also be hosted via an internally hosted setup in a secure IIS intranet site for even more value for sprawled employees on the road with access to a VPN. All this with integrated windows Active Directory security and you can setup to save your account info.

The Dance of IT Admin

With RemoteApp you’re able to go from a bare bones laptop – to having applications up and running in less than 30 seconds for each user, by distributing shortcuts to each PC. If updates are needed, a phased approach can be used to make this happen with less impact to your users.

Let’s say you had to roll out an application that was hosted on a RDS Server farm, with 4 servers, for 100 users. You can take one server down and the connections will automatically be load balanced to one of the other servers. Once it is updated, place it back into production and move to the next.

Pushing out apps using Group Policy is a good idea and a new machine can have a Start menu folder automatically created for launching the app. Centralized printing is also available for this solution, and works with any local printer no matter where the remote access takes place.

Who Would Benefit?

The possibilities for who would benefit from RemoteApp are endless; Hotel Clerk and Desks, Presentation Kiosks, Law Firms, Dental Offices, Government, Manufacturing and Health Care, just to name a few! Microsoft has done a fantastic job of packaging RemoteApp with the small and mid-size business in mind.

Imagine you are testing an accounting package that will virtualize and manage all the updates and deployment for your finance division. You can roll out RemoteAPP and test it with existing or new data with no impact to your users. Or perhaps you have a time logging application for a group of lawyers that timestamps your calls and conferences with clients. Lawyers can’t afford to waste 30 minutes to install a custom application with lots of add-ons and configuring with reboots; RemoteAPP helps keep time down and value up.

What if you work for a manufacturer of goods that needs a kiosk setup for factory stations – essentially a “set and forget” scenario with little configuration. RemoteAPP would be perfect for enabling a centralized configuration for Kiosk applications and touch screens.

If you are a salesman and need access to applications for critical contact information that you can’t do without, even if Viruses or malware attack, suddenly in almost any situation you can access the application from your web browser over the VPN. This can be done in a hotel, a client site, or even from home. You save your files in your network home directory safely on the RDS server.

It is easy to see the potential for RemoteApp’s added value and how it’s resolved multiple problems in the enterprise. With the proper planning this take on Application Virtualization can save you time, money and support downtime.

The future of cloud computing and the cornerstone of a successful and efficient IT practice is in creating scenarios where the application is separated from the PC desktop. The next time someone says to you “My Application does not work – can you reinstall it for me??” Remember RDS and let 360 Visibility help you plan for it so you can work smarter not harder!

Will the Dropbox privacy storm abate?

The storm began not in a teacup, but in a Dropbox, and it was a doozy.

The Web-based file-hosting service that allows users to share files and photos across the Internet courtesy of cloud computing is still sweeping up from a summer squall that was set off with nothing more spectacular than some poorly chosen words.

Dropbox set the leaves in motion in June when it sought to tweak its terms of service to better explain its position on a range of platforms, including the thorny business of its ownership of the data it hosts. But its reworked explanation just served to muddy the scene, arguably further damaging cloud computing technology’s more widespread adoption.

Dropbox wrote, “By submitting your stuff to the services, you grant us (and those we work with to provide the services) worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable rights to use, copy, distribute, prepare derivative works (such as translations or format conversions) of, perform, or publicly display that stuff to the extent reasonably necessary for the service.”

Not surprisingly, the revised text sent users into a panic for its suggestion that they relinquish ownership rights as a condition of use.

Dropbox: Dropping the Ball?

Dropbox, whose first cloud-data-ownership scandal was an authentication bug that left its 25 million users’ accounts wide open in June, scrambled to address the misunderstanding, offering apologies along with yet another attempt at clarification. “When we announced an upcoming revision to our Terms of Service last week, we aimed to explain the key changes in plain language to make all our legal docs much clearer,” the company, which burst on the scene four years ago, wrote. “It’s important to us that these terms are easy to understand, and your feedback has told us that we still have work to do.

“You retain ownership of your stuff. You are solely responsible for your conduct, the content of your files and folders, and your communications with others while using the services.” The blog adds that users only grant Dropbox license to use customer data “solely to enable us to technically administer, display and operate the services.”

A few days later, the Dropbox founders followed up with more cris de coeur, presumably worried about the negative impact on cloud technologies: “We want to be 100 percent clear that you own what you put in your Dropbox,” company principals Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi. “We don’t own your stuff. And the license you give us is really limited. It only allows us to provide the service to you. Nothing else.”

Cloud Forming?

This Dropbox incident, along with a recent spate of high-profile cloud failings, might seem unfortunate for the way they undermine an emerging technology shift that promises dramatic savings, in both expenses and efficiency, to a corporate landscape hungry for both. But it may all be for the best, in the end, for the spotlight it shines on a prominent cloud operator’s pledge to the world regarding the fuzzy and emerging subject of cloud computing. “What’s yours is yours.”

Let’s take a temperature reading.

Public Cloud

The public cloud is the model that’s been getting most of the press. This communal environment, in which IT systems are shared by multiple users, is accessible to anyone, applauded for its easy access and cost-effectiveness.

But data protection is sketchy here, given that any number of people and enterprises are sharing the IT systems on which your stuff sits, and that its exact location is unknown.

Trusted Cloud

Trusted clouds offer the next level of security — with limitations imposed on the number of users drawing from the same cloud — while maintaining the economies of scale that are among cloud computing’s greatest virtues. Virtual LANs provide the only access to the virtual servers and storage systems in play here; each enterprise enjoys its own.

Private Cloud

With the private cloud—the equivalent of public cloud computing on a private network — entitlement increases again, with each enterprise aligning itself with a single, dedicated cloud to which it alone can gain entry.

Unlike in the public model, the data and processes that take place in a private cloud environment are located separately from those of other businesses, whether in a third-party datacentre or an organization’s own infrastructure.

Accenture’s High Performance Institute recently released a study that reported that the instances of corporations developing private clouds for their own use, whether or not in conjunction with public clouds, is on the climb. Particularly in situations where organizations possess a large number of servers.

Some 60% of the executives Accenture surveyed already use a private cloud and, the report predicts, by the end of 2012 private cloud use will permeate 77% of enterprises.

Hybrid Cloud

A hybrid cloud is a combination of private and trusted or public architectures, with associated data and applications organized according to well-defined parameters. Internal and external IT services are at play in this version, and its offer of integrating a company’s existing IT environment into the skies makes it an attractive entrée to the concept overall.

Among other benefits, hybrid clouds come with a feature that reallocates resources from an overloaded public cloud to another, if need be. This model, in which private enterprises essentially extend their resources to public clouds, is the current darling of cloud watchers.

Enterprise Cloud

Finally, the enterprise cloud is a closed shop. Housed in an organization’s own data centre, this cloud is the property of the enterprise in question alone. Indeed, it’s only a cloud at all in terms of its divided configuration for internal workers in discreet departments.

Workbook Simplifies the Cloud

All of this cloud business can be busted into sense by the likes of 360 Visibility. Professional services organizations are well-served by this provider, thanks in no small part to its recent alignment with a comprehensive project management and financial management software solution, at www.workbook.net.

360 just became the North American distributor for this miraculous bit of software, which delivers a complete and rapid implementation template. It provides a detailed account of all business activity within a market segment via an intuitive web interface built in Microsoft Silverlight and based on the Microsoft SQL Server.

360 will be building a partner channel shortly and the company will make sure that the easy availability of WorkBook for professional services firms is a prominent feature of it.

The Wheel In The Sky Keep On Turning

It’s an extraordinary statement, but so too is the idea Microsoft is pitching. Cloud computing is nothing short of a revolution in the sky, and the company has taken it to the masses with a heavyweight of an advertising campaign designed to pique the interest of consumers and small business operators alike with its dead-simple promise of life-altering renewal.

But there is a middle step here, before the world at large can meaningfully occupy this cloud — and it’s got opportunity written all over it.

It is one thing, after all, to be intrigued by a catchy television ad in which good looking people make swift and effective use of some nifty new idea in their own edited-for-public-consumption lives. But it’s quite another to find practical application for the stuff in your own technologically beleaguered existence.

VARS are the Real Superheroes

Enter the clever VARs (Value-Added Resellers), with their hot air balloons, jet packs and telescopic ladders to bridge the gap; the knowledge and powers of explanation that will facilitate customers’ ascension to this next level of productivity and deliver to them the same ease of use their picture-perfect TV counterparts apparently enjoy.

With the suppliers having introduced the promise then, our job as VARs is to help the consumer realize its potential, to offer a hand up to the cloud and an introduction to the myriad possibilities that await her there.

Microsoft Has Their Head in The Cloud

Microsoft released another “To the Cloud” commercial last week, this one featuring a Christmas scenario in which a grandfather is allowed easy access to a video resident on his grandkids’ remote computer. This is the fourth such cozy, mass-media-powered assault in which Microsoft takes direct aim at a television audience that is presumably intrigued, but somewhat confused by what is apparently yet another layer of complexity requiring its mastery in this computer-driven world.

The software giant’s multipronged advertising campaign, which follows the introduction of its Office 365 service, also employs print, outdoor, online and radio initiatives. Throughout, the message sings of the triple threat that is public cloud, private cloud and cloud productivity.

VARs Take Flight to Deliver The Cloud

But the impressive and apparently expensive initiative (it’s expected to cost Microsoft several hundred million dollars), which will feature three of Microsoft’s core cloud computing technologies—Office 365, Windows Azure and Windows Server Hyper-V—hovers in a state of potential incompletion without VARs’ meaningful participation in driving the point home.

To these middle folks falls the job of exposition, explanation, erudition. Ever mindful of the kneejerk assumption of many consumers that “cloud computing” is just one more buzz phrase, VARS must take under wing these would-be customers with dedicated counsel on this notion of web-based computing that promises much to the enhancement of their lives.

In other words, without a flock of VARs taking committed flight now, on the downdraft of the advertising campaign Microsoft has so masterfully given wings, consumers will be denied full ascendency into the clouds. 

Progress, it turns out, does not always make the world better. In some cases, it just makes it more bloody complicated.

Complexity Breeds Disaster

Such is the apparent case, says Symantec—a security, storage and systems management solutions firm—in today’s disaster recovery scene. Many organizations are struggling to sustain the effectiveness of their security efforts in the face of an ever-more-complex technological landscape, reports Symantec in their recently released Disaster Recovery Study.

The report—Symantec’s sixth annual, undertaken to highlight business trends regarding disaster-recovery planning and preparedness—explains that disparate virtual, physical and cloud resources create an environment in which mission-critical applications and the data they house are in peril of becoming damaged, delayed or irretrievably lost. With nearly 60% of respondents using multiple tools to manage and protect applications and data in virtual environments today, it’s no surprise that security problems are rampant or that organizations are struggling, quite simply, with system overload.

Failing to Have a Back Up

Users, says the report, which polled IT managers of 1,700 large enterprises in 18 countries, are failing to back up a full 44% of data housed on virtual systems. Similarly, only 20% of respondents report employing replication and failover technologies to protect their virtual environments.

Respondents say that they conduct 82% of their backups on a weekly—at best—rate of frequency. And three-fifths of virtualized servers out there are not covered in respondents’ current disaster-recovery plans, up significantly from 45% in 2009.

Virtual Applications Causing Real Problems

In parsing its findings, the study uncovered a state of sincere confusion among data centre managers, suddenly charged with responsibility for managing and protecting a whole new slew of virtual applications and data. Some 58% of respondents cited protecting mission-critical applications in virtual and physical environments as a significant challenge their organization faces.

And so, while virtualizing servers and storage arrays are serious forces in today’s IT world, the means to adequately protect this new universe has not bloomed at the same pace. For the myriad of benefits virtualization and cloud offer the data centre organization, there’s no denying the heap of new concerns in whose company they travel.

Mastering the Cloud

The trick, then, is to master the management of this complex new reality responsibly, and with confidence. A better appreciation for the nuances of becoming a virtualized shop, a dedicated commitment to cloud computing and all that this brave new world entails, and an enhanced stream of information regarding how to properly back up data are critical to today’s companies, as they make the bridge into tomorrow.

Simply and Standardize

In the recommendations section of the study, Symantec’s director of its storage and availability management group, Dan Lamorena, says, “Data centre managers should simplify and standardize so they can focus on fundamental best practices that help reduce downtime.”

To that end, businesses need to review their data recovery plans with IT professionals, like those on offer through 360 Visibility. With these experts’ help, organizations can take the pains necessary to ensure the continuation of all their business-critical, IT-related systems—whether they be virtual, cloud or physical.

According to the Journal, and Gartner Inc.’s technology conference in Orlando, Fla., upon which the story was reporting, virtualization is enjoying attention from the business world for the way it offers managers the means to stretch their dollars further by employing existing resources more profitably. Our studies demonstrate that companies that virtualized increased the utilization of their existing hardware to 80%, a remarkable spike from 10-15%.

Virtualization, strictly speaking, describes the creation of a virtual (rather than an actual) version of something like, say, an operating system or a server. In computerspeak, we’re talking about a layer of software providing the illusion of an actual machine, where none in fact exists.

The technology first made a splash decades ago in the mainframe game, furnishing administrators with new command over their costly processing power. Today, virtualization is making serious inroads in the network, storage and server virtualization realms.

Virtualization can help companies to reduce their IT management expenses and shrink their dependence on the human resources that would otherwise have been tied up with the administration of multiple applications and operating systems on multiple servers.

With virtualization, users can tap a single phantom server to run multiple applications and operating systems independently. On top of that, administrators can use virtualization to shift workloads from one virtual workstation to another.

It’s also a boon to a company’s ability to prioritize its business activities and maximize server resources by facilitating the fluid transfer of tasks from one virtual workstation to another.

But above all, virtualization aids business owners to do more with less.

Network virtualization is probably the biggest site of activity in this field. Just as adding a partition to your hard drive effectively gives you two discrete hard drives, network virtualization splits the network’s available bandwidth into independent channels, each of which is affiliated with a particular server or device.

With storage virtualization, multiple network storage devices join forces (or at least appear to), and offer a central point of control.

And server virtualization just means performing a clever bit of trompe l’oeil on all your servers to make them appear a single, simple one.

At 360, we’ve helped countless businesses clients take lucrative control of their IT infrastructure and reach their full potential with virtualization. We’ve showed them how to streamline those businesses processes that are adjacent but often disconnected, and to reduce the downtime that plagues systems marked by a tangle of different inputs. And, more than that, we’ve slashed company hardware and operating costs by up to 50% and saved more than $3,000 annually for every server workload virtualized.

The Journal article reports that, last year, there were 5.8 million virtualized servers in the United States; Gartner predicts that number to rise ten-fold by 2012. As for us at 360 and our readiness to service this onslaught, well, we’re already there. Virtually.