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Thursday 25 June 2009, 6:34 PM
Cloud computing for SMEs? Don't make me laugh...
Storage in the cloud. Has a nice cosy feel to it doesn't it? And it could save you money, they say. But is it real?
If you're a small business, it could just mean that you keep your backups on a simple storage service -- there's a number of them differentiated mainly on price.
Alternatively, you could think about going for a more managed service, such as the one that's launched: ThinkGrid. The pitch is that it's a "cloud storage service for organisations that need to retain ever-increasing amounts of data, but lack the capital to invest in high-cost, on-site storage", all paid for "on a pay-as-you-go basis".
ThinkGrid uses its own servers and MezeoCloud's software to provide the service. You can ship encrypted files, manage them, back them up and so on. It's being sold as a way of saving on file server hardware and management, as well as gaining you backup and disaster recovery services.
All well and good, and just what a small business often needs. In fact, you could argue that small to medium-sized businesses can garner greater benefit from the cloud than larger ones, although there are still other issues to take into account..
The problem is reaching the cloud. Most small business' connectivity uses the same technology as that of most homes and individuals. Yes, it's good old ADSL. For most folk, this means an upload speed of, at most, around 400kbit/s.
That's maybe in the morning before the US wakes up and the kiddies start downloading torrents of videos. By the end of the day, at a time when you might do your backups, you'll be lucky to see an upload speed of more than a quarter of the booked data rate. And while local loop unbundled connections can reach the giddy heights of 1.3Mbit/s or even more, but they're still rare.
What does it all mean? It means that, with a well-performing ADSL connection, you could upload a CD's worth of data in well under four hours, while a DVD would take over 24 hours -- assuming nothing else is using the connection during the transfer. With more than a couple of PCs to back up, those sorts of times will start to look forbidding.
Cloud is all the rage. But what helped to kill a similar industry movement, then dubbed ASP or application service provision, at the height of the dotcom boom almost ten years ago was a lack of bandwidth. The problem is, for the SME, that problem has yet to be addressed.
So is the cloud a working SME solution? Given the volumes of data even the smallest businesses now generate, I suggest that it's not yet there yet. Roll on universal fibre...
If you're a small business, it could just mean that you keep your backups on a simple storage service -- there's a number of them differentiated mainly on price.
Alternatively, you could think about going for a more managed service, such as the one that's launched: ThinkGrid. The pitch is that it's a "cloud storage service for organisations that need to retain ever-increasing amounts of data, but lack the capital to invest in high-cost, on-site storage", all paid for "on a pay-as-you-go basis".
ThinkGrid uses its own servers and MezeoCloud's software to provide the service. You can ship encrypted files, manage them, back them up and so on. It's being sold as a way of saving on file server hardware and management, as well as gaining you backup and disaster recovery services.
All well and good, and just what a small business often needs. In fact, you could argue that small to medium-sized businesses can garner greater benefit from the cloud than larger ones, although there are still other issues to take into account..
The problem is reaching the cloud. Most small business' connectivity uses the same technology as that of most homes and individuals. Yes, it's good old ADSL. For most folk, this means an upload speed of, at most, around 400kbit/s.
That's maybe in the morning before the US wakes up and the kiddies start downloading torrents of videos. By the end of the day, at a time when you might do your backups, you'll be lucky to see an upload speed of more than a quarter of the booked data rate. And while local loop unbundled connections can reach the giddy heights of 1.3Mbit/s or even more, but they're still rare.
What does it all mean? It means that, with a well-performing ADSL connection, you could upload a CD's worth of data in well under four hours, while a DVD would take over 24 hours -- assuming nothing else is using the connection during the transfer. With more than a couple of PCs to back up, those sorts of times will start to look forbidding.
Cloud is all the rage. But what helped to kill a similar industry movement, then dubbed ASP or application service provision, at the height of the dotcom boom almost ten years ago was a lack of bandwidth. The problem is, for the SME, that problem has yet to be addressed.
So is the cloud a working SME solution? Given the volumes of data even the smallest businesses now generate, I suggest that it's not yet there yet. Roll on universal fibre...
Tuesday 16 June 2009, 6:57 PM
New wave of real-time collaboration arrives?
When it comes to document collaboration, things can only get better. We've seen Google Wave make a splash (sorry) and, together with collaboration tool Google Docs, you could live and work without ever loading any software. Ever.
But this approach has limitations, not least of which is that you can only use the Google-hosted applications, you don't get to choose your applications, and you really only get the full benefit when all your data is hosted by Google.
Scary? For some -- especially financial and similar enterprises encircled by legislative constraints and cautious customers -- yes. Even the rest of us might not feel entirely comfortable about it.
One new startup, oneDrum, reckons it's got an answer: keep the applications and documents you use every day and collaborate with colleagues and others in real time using its Java-based (and so platform-independent) platform.
oneDrum is a British company that's most of the way towards launching a serious competitor to Google Wave and Google Docs. CEO Jasper Westaway welcomes Wave because, you guessed, it helps educate the market and validate the concept. "Without them, we wouldn't have gone to the market with this", CEO Jasper Westaway told me.
Westaway says that what he likes about Wave is the way that it blurs the lines between conventional email, IM chat and so on; oneDrum does the same but you can use any application you like. oneDrum's eponymous platform is set to launch by the end of July.
I tried it. While the software is a bit flaky -- it's still a private beta -- it allows users of Microsoft Office applications to open applications and share documents. If you share a spreadsheet, for example, you can each edit the same sheet transparently, with changes appearing instantly on a cell-by-cell basis as if you had made them locally.
An example scenario could involve a sales manager who sees a presentation being opened up by a junior member of his sales team, and changes being made that aren't relevant for the client the junior exec is about to visit. The boss can step in and make further changes in real time; he or she could also embed comments along the way, effectively using the application as a chat interface.
It works in Office via the Windows COM interface, which is redirected by the Java sandbox across the collaborative medium -- in my case it was the Internet but could be a private network -- so that the applications running at either end are unaware that they're collaborating across the globe. "We use the automation API and detect changes and push them out to open copies", says Westaway.
The underlying mechanism is a Skype-like peer-to-peer system: there's no central repository. "The overlap with Google Wave is that we use the same operational transformation algorithms", the benefit of which is that "the algorithm works at whatever level is appropriate for the content, whether bytes or paragraphs, for example," says Westaway.
And if you go offline, will any changes that happen to be stored on that machine be replicated? Westaway reckons that it depends: "As long as someone is online, you can pick up the changes, it'll work."
You could imagine too that there might be problems with security -- in some organisations, they'll want to know exactly where the data is going, for example. "Next year, we'll offer enterprises the possibility of hosting a central repository for compliance reasons," says Westaway. "We'll roll out features that will be attractive to organisations such as banks who want compliance-ready applications. We say to them that we will be ready for you soon -- but not yet."
To start with, the service will be free, but oneDrum will eventually be releasing a subscription model that will include features such as the ability to backup all changes.
Westaway reckons the business is easy to scale, and that that it's fairly easy to add new applications to the roster. So Westaway reckons that by the end of 2009, support for OpenOffice, for Office for Mac, and Google Docs will be cooked and ready to go, with more in the pipeline.
We'll have to wait and see how this early promise holds true but, for the moment, the peer-to-peer service, which will be free, could form the basis of a new wave of collaboration without tears.
But this approach has limitations, not least of which is that you can only use the Google-hosted applications, you don't get to choose your applications, and you really only get the full benefit when all your data is hosted by Google.
Scary? For some -- especially financial and similar enterprises encircled by legislative constraints and cautious customers -- yes. Even the rest of us might not feel entirely comfortable about it.
One new startup, oneDrum, reckons it's got an answer: keep the applications and documents you use every day and collaborate with colleagues and others in real time using its Java-based (and so platform-independent) platform.
oneDrum is a British company that's most of the way towards launching a serious competitor to Google Wave and Google Docs. CEO Jasper Westaway welcomes Wave because, you guessed, it helps educate the market and validate the concept. "Without them, we wouldn't have gone to the market with this", CEO Jasper Westaway told me.
Westaway says that what he likes about Wave is the way that it blurs the lines between conventional email, IM chat and so on; oneDrum does the same but you can use any application you like. oneDrum's eponymous platform is set to launch by the end of July.
I tried it. While the software is a bit flaky -- it's still a private beta -- it allows users of Microsoft Office applications to open applications and share documents. If you share a spreadsheet, for example, you can each edit the same sheet transparently, with changes appearing instantly on a cell-by-cell basis as if you had made them locally.
An example scenario could involve a sales manager who sees a presentation being opened up by a junior member of his sales team, and changes being made that aren't relevant for the client the junior exec is about to visit. The boss can step in and make further changes in real time; he or she could also embed comments along the way, effectively using the application as a chat interface.
It works in Office via the Windows COM interface, which is redirected by the Java sandbox across the collaborative medium -- in my case it was the Internet but could be a private network -- so that the applications running at either end are unaware that they're collaborating across the globe. "We use the automation API and detect changes and push them out to open copies", says Westaway.
The underlying mechanism is a Skype-like peer-to-peer system: there's no central repository. "The overlap with Google Wave is that we use the same operational transformation algorithms", the benefit of which is that "the algorithm works at whatever level is appropriate for the content, whether bytes or paragraphs, for example," says Westaway.
And if you go offline, will any changes that happen to be stored on that machine be replicated? Westaway reckons that it depends: "As long as someone is online, you can pick up the changes, it'll work."
You could imagine too that there might be problems with security -- in some organisations, they'll want to know exactly where the data is going, for example. "Next year, we'll offer enterprises the possibility of hosting a central repository for compliance reasons," says Westaway. "We'll roll out features that will be attractive to organisations such as banks who want compliance-ready applications. We say to them that we will be ready for you soon -- but not yet."
To start with, the service will be free, but oneDrum will eventually be releasing a subscription model that will include features such as the ability to backup all changes.
Westaway reckons the business is easy to scale, and that that it's fairly easy to add new applications to the roster. So Westaway reckons that by the end of 2009, support for OpenOffice, for Office for Mac, and Google Docs will be cooked and ready to go, with more in the pipeline.
We'll have to wait and see how this early promise holds true but, for the moment, the peer-to-peer service, which will be free, could form the basis of a new wave of collaboration without tears.
Tuesday 9 June 2009, 2:32 PM
Dell trundles into deduping
I spent some time talking to Dell recently about data deduping: it appears the company is moving into that market.
Backing up has always been hard to do. Copying stuff from one place to another, whether you're an individual or a huge enterprise, it never gets any easier. Part of the problem is the huge and growing volume of data that needs to be stored: keeping up with it all is the problem, and buying more storage is like pushing more wardrobes into your house to store a collection of clothes that grows by a new suit every day. Sooner or later, you start to lose track, and wonder if there isn't a better way.
Data deduping is among the storage industry's latest wheezes to reduce that volume of data -- Dell infrastructure consultant Paul Kaeley reckons you can reduce the volume of data to be backed up by up to 20:1.
The process works by checking whether a block of data has already been backed up and, if so, doesn't back it up again. Imagine a room full of people running Windows. Each PC's hard disk contains an identical copy of the software. Rather than backing up each one, you backup one copy and save pointers to that data where the backup would otherwise be.
Dell's consulting services are now offering this service -- and the company is also selling a custom version of one of its backup servers, in the shape of the PowerVault DL2000, which is powered by Simpana 8.0, made by deduping specialist CommVault.
Be assured of one thing: hardware vendor Dell is unlikely to be offering it as a virtual appliance...
Backing up has always been hard to do. Copying stuff from one place to another, whether you're an individual or a huge enterprise, it never gets any easier. Part of the problem is the huge and growing volume of data that needs to be stored: keeping up with it all is the problem, and buying more storage is like pushing more wardrobes into your house to store a collection of clothes that grows by a new suit every day. Sooner or later, you start to lose track, and wonder if there isn't a better way.
Data deduping is among the storage industry's latest wheezes to reduce that volume of data -- Dell infrastructure consultant Paul Kaeley reckons you can reduce the volume of data to be backed up by up to 20:1.
The process works by checking whether a block of data has already been backed up and, if so, doesn't back it up again. Imagine a room full of people running Windows. Each PC's hard disk contains an identical copy of the software. Rather than backing up each one, you backup one copy and save pointers to that data where the backup would otherwise be.
Dell's consulting services are now offering this service -- and the company is also selling a custom version of one of its backup servers, in the shape of the PowerVault DL2000, which is powered by Simpana 8.0, made by deduping specialist CommVault.
Be assured of one thing: hardware vendor Dell is unlikely to be offering it as a virtual appliance...
Thursday 4 June 2009, 6:07 PM
More low-energy datacentres reach planning stage
I've noted in a previous blog that no-one has yet appeared to have built the nirvana of data centres: a totally automated, virtualised system where the top level of management is the data centre rather than the server.
However, if cutting energy is the end-game, there's a couple of initiatives that are worth noting: according to this story, IBM is reportedly building what's described as one of the greenest datacentres that will use 50 percent less energy than a typical datacentre. And there's a company in Wiltshire that's seeking planning permission to build a data centre powered entirely by renewable energy supplies.
IBM's 6,000-sq. foot data centre, to be built in NY state, will cost US$12.4 million, and is to feature its own tri-generation electrical system, as well as including the latest generation of power-efficient server and cooling systems. And in Wilts, the 2,4000 sq. foot facility, by Worldbackups.net will be offer backup services, and will be able to shut down server and storage when not in use. Company boss Roland Scott said the company has "a duty to make use of renewable and clean energy when we can, and also to be ready for the arrival of future environmental and compliance laws".
Not quite the fully automated whizz-bang, but it's getting there.
Meanwhile, Microsoft is building a new data centre is Umbria, among the most attractive areas of Italy, and is hoping to use virtualisation to boost the average utilisation of its 250k servers from its current abysmal level of seven percent -- although to be fair, that's likely to be typical of most enterprises. Some 25 percent of Microsoft's servers are virtualised, and the plan is to boost it to 50 percent.
However, if cutting energy is the end-game, there's a couple of initiatives that are worth noting: according to this story, IBM is reportedly building what's described as one of the greenest datacentres that will use 50 percent less energy than a typical datacentre. And there's a company in Wiltshire that's seeking planning permission to build a data centre powered entirely by renewable energy supplies.
IBM's 6,000-sq. foot data centre, to be built in NY state, will cost US$12.4 million, and is to feature its own tri-generation electrical system, as well as including the latest generation of power-efficient server and cooling systems. And in Wilts, the 2,4000 sq. foot facility, by Worldbackups.net will be offer backup services, and will be able to shut down server and storage when not in use. Company boss Roland Scott said the company has "a duty to make use of renewable and clean energy when we can, and also to be ready for the arrival of future environmental and compliance laws".
Not quite the fully automated whizz-bang, but it's getting there.
Meanwhile, Microsoft is building a new data centre is Umbria, among the most attractive areas of Italy, and is hoping to use virtualisation to boost the average utilisation of its 250k servers from its current abysmal level of seven percent -- although to be fair, that's likely to be typical of most enterprises. Some 25 percent of Microsoft's servers are virtualised, and the plan is to boost it to 50 percent.
Tuesday 2 June 2009, 1:49 PM
Can Google Wave conquer the enterprise?
Google Wave, the all-in-one browser-based communications technology, looks like it could revolutionise communications. The company's clearly thought about what needs to be done to bring the whole mish-mash of email, IM, and other daily comms systems under a single roof. And it makes a huge amount of sense.
Email conversations where people join the thread after others, making meetings happen, discussing the latest project, all happen over email now but Google's new approach shows how much the system needs an overhaul. And it's likely that only an organisation with a footprint the size of Google's – or Microsoft's, were it even slightly in Redmond's interests to do so – could propose such a change with a view, realistically, to having it adopted.
Google's engineers demonstrated the system at Google IO, the company's recent devcon, using personal communications, such as organising a shopping trip, and dropping shared photos into a common bucket. But make no mistake: the market that Google will want to attack is the enterprise. And enterprises have proved remarkably leaky when it comes to web-based technologies, such as IM, Facebook, Twitter et al, so the longer-term prospects are propitious.
One key problem is that increasing use of Google Wave will give already over-stretched employees yet another location where they need to check their emails and other comms, in addition to the ones they have already. Because, mark my words, enterprises are not going to give up email anytime soon. What's more they'll want to retain control of that information, not least for compliance reasons in many sectors, which implies internally not externally hosted systems.
So for control and for productivity reasons, despite its initial attractions, I suspect we'll see large organisations taking a long time evaluating the technology before making a decision. The problem is that, by this time, employees might well have voted with their fingers and be using it anyway – just as happened with IM and is happening now with Twitter.
Email conversations where people join the thread after others, making meetings happen, discussing the latest project, all happen over email now but Google's new approach shows how much the system needs an overhaul. And it's likely that only an organisation with a footprint the size of Google's – or Microsoft's, were it even slightly in Redmond's interests to do so – could propose such a change with a view, realistically, to having it adopted.
Google's engineers demonstrated the system at Google IO, the company's recent devcon, using personal communications, such as organising a shopping trip, and dropping shared photos into a common bucket. But make no mistake: the market that Google will want to attack is the enterprise. And enterprises have proved remarkably leaky when it comes to web-based technologies, such as IM, Facebook, Twitter et al, so the longer-term prospects are propitious.
One key problem is that increasing use of Google Wave will give already over-stretched employees yet another location where they need to check their emails and other comms, in addition to the ones they have already. Because, mark my words, enterprises are not going to give up email anytime soon. What's more they'll want to retain control of that information, not least for compliance reasons in many sectors, which implies internally not externally hosted systems.
So for control and for productivity reasons, despite its initial attractions, I suspect we'll see large organisations taking a long time evaluating the technology before making a decision. The problem is that, by this time, employees might well have voted with their fingers and be using it anyway – just as happened with IM and is happening now with Twitter.
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