A bit of Microsoft Partner-sponsored research makes that partner's services looks both good and bad. Azaleos sells Microsoft apps to run on premise in a traditional way or on a private cloud. The company wanted to find out how its costs compared to a pure Microsoft cloud Office 365 play.
Taking Microsoft's recent 20% cost cuts fully into the calculations, the company hired a research firm to run the numbers. For small shops, Office 365 turns out about a fifth cheaper. Advantage Redmond.
Go up the ladder a bit to where the shop needs all the Office 365 apps such as SharePoint and Lync, then the private cloud is one fifth cheaper. This is because the highest level version of Office 365 in the cloud costs more than running that same software on your own commodity servers. Interesting. More
Posted by Doug Barney on 04/03/2012 at 12:47 PM0 comments
After decades of the Price is Right, Bob Barker knows a thing or two about what things cost. But even he would be flummoxed when it comes to many cloud services. It seems that cloud providers purposely obscure their prices. Perhaps like good real estate brokers, they hope to sell for whatever the market will bear.
Author David Davis learned this firsthand trying to get some simple pricing for putting 10 virtual machines in the cloud. One vendor even wanted him to sign an NDA before they'd spill the beans. More
Posted by Doug Barney on 03/27/2012 at 12:47 PM2 comments
I reported these finding on Redmondmag.com, another site I write for, and the IT readers went nuts. Here's the skinny. The Gartner Group, more eager for attention than Madonna, recently announced that it believes that by 2014 the PC won't really matter. It will be just another client, no more important than a mobile phone or tablet. And your corporate servers won't mean a damn thing, either. Apps and data will rest comfortably in personal clouds. In fact, you could mix and match these clients depending upon mood or where you are. More
Posted by Doug Barney on 03/27/2012 at 12:47 PM3 comments
Lots of items aren't clearly marked. Expensive restaurants take pride in not listing prices, car prices never bear much relation to actual cost, how the heck can you ever find out what the eBay reserve price is unless you bid all the way up to it?
High-end software, such as ERP, is often the same, with the bottom line as fluid as a government contract.
Cloud services, it seems, are just as bad. For something, like Office 365, you know exactly how hard you'll be hit. Platform and infrastructure services are murkier than a pina colada.
Fortunately there are tools that can help you nail this piece of cloud jello, which author David Davis brought to our attention. And you needn't fret about the cost; the tools we're talking about are absolutely free. More
Posted by Doug Barney on 03/20/2012 at 4:59 PM1 comments
Facing competition from Google Apps for Business, Microsoft just cut the cost of Office 365 by 20 percent.
I think Microsoft is looking for more market share. The company, though, argues increased efficiency and more customers led to better economics.
The software, which is as full-featured as the on-premise counterparts, now costs between $8 and $22 a month per user.
If you are curious as to how Office 365 stacks up to Google, check this out. This story is based on actual users, who gave the edge to Microsoft for more features, better manageability, and less training, while Google ruled on price and was a better fit for smaller organizations.
Posted by Doug Barney on 03/20/2012 at 12:47 PM4 comments
Backup has always been a problem. The biggest problem is not backing up and most of us have felt that (Doh!).
Even when you back up it doesn't always equal restore. Sometimes the backup is corrupted, and just not usable. Other times it is out of date, so the recent data you really need was never duplicated to begin with. And in the best of cases, your restore can take precious business hours or days.
The cloud may, and I mean may, change that. If backup and hopefully restore are all that vendor does, they ought to be good at it. And all that data should be resting comfortably in the ether waiting for you to call it up.
My guess is that cloud backup should be your last tier and one should have a backup of the cloud backup that is nearer to your data center.
For me, I use Carbonite for personal backup and it is nice to know that so long as the company is in business, all my files are a click or two away.
For more on the changing world of backup, check out this report.
Posted by Doug Barney on 03/13/2012 at 4:59 PM1 comments
If you think you can run your cloud operations the way that many data centers are managed, your head really is in the cloud. IT shops have spent years adding this and decommissioning that. The result is often a hodge-podge, and managing all this is like corralling a bunch of wet cats.
As operations move to the cloud, it is time for a fresh start. And author Jaydeep Marfatia believes this is the time to, from the very beginning, create a cohesive set of management tools and policies.
I think Jaydeep is right. If your internal data center is a mess, at least you can walk in there and fix it. How do you fix problems that may be a half country away?
The trick is to prevent problems and when they occur, have clear procedures to resolve them. That is what management is all about.
Posted by Doug Barney on 03/13/2012 at 12:47 PM2 comments
Many in IT are being asked -- or are asking themselves -- if their shops should move apps to the cloud. There are two main choices: Google Apps for Business and Office 365.
Google Apps is actually older, at least in the online world. Google Docs, a bare-bones Web-based word processor, came out in 2006, and is going on 6 years old. Meanwhile, Office 365's predecessor, Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS), came out worldwide about three years ago. But Office, which is the core of Office 365 client apps, itself is now more than 21 years old (it debuted November 1990). That legacy means that Office 365 has far, far more features than Google Apps. For some, that is important. Others, particularly startups and smaller shops, may appreciate a leaner, simpler set of offerings. More
Posted by Doug Barney on 02/28/2012 at 12:47 PM10 comments
Top technical execs from six cloud and virtualization vendors talked to Virtualization Review Editor in Chief Bruce Hoard about what it'll take to get the cloud to really take off.
Virsto CTO Alex Miroshnichenko was first up. Miroshnichenko thinks one issue is the term "cloud" itself. He argues that the lack of a standard definition is one impediment. He also sees IT's nervousness about cloud security as another major stumbling block, though Miroshnichenko thinks this is more paranoia than reality. There is one other issue the cloud needs to deal with, he says: Storage hasn't kept pace with cloud apps and services. For now, high-end storage is simply too expensive. More
Posted by Doug Barney on 02/21/2012 at 12:47 PM0 comments
Longtime Microsoft watcher Mary Jo Foley has just penned (or at least keyed) a new column, "Can Microsoft Save Azure?" I didn't know Azure was nearly toes up, but have learned over the years to never doubt the word of Mary Jo.
Here's her thinking: Azure, as it exists today, is really aimed at developers who build new apps that reside in the Microsoft cloud. The notion of simply moving in-house apps to Azure has not yet been realized. And here Microsoft has been quiet, maybe too quiet. The company has simply not provided a detailed Azure roadmap. Foley also wonders how many customers are on Azure, and here again Microsoft is more mum than Nadya Suleman.
While Foley's headline is provocative, her conclusions are more moderate. She sees Microsoft opening Azure to non-Microsoft development tools, and the company is moving to host more apps natively, such as SharePoint, in the Azure cloud.
This, on the surface, is a bit confusing. Let me think out loud to sort it out. Azure is a platform, so it is inherently more flexible than Office 365, which is a set of applications. Yet the platform is there to support apps. In the case of Azure, the goal is to support new apps and custom apps, and eventually do more of what Office 365 does. The only thing I need to understand better is why one would want to run standard Microsoft apps on Azure versus the pre-built and ready-to-roll Office 365. It must be the level of customization. Help me sort this out at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 02/14/2012 at 12:47 PM2 comments
E-mail archiving is a massive undertaking for little gain. It really doesn't produce anything. What it does is protect your shop from data loss. It drives less revenue than a chain-link fence, but you have to have it.
Archiving on the cloud takes away all IT archiving chores. So long as you truly trust your archiver, a huge load is taken off the staff. The market is taking off, and will nearly double from 2011's revenue of $191 million to $336 million next year. That's not a crazy amount of money, but it is a healthy, growing market that's taking off fast. For more details on the market and your options, click here.
Not sure if you can trust a cloud archivist? I get it. But look at it this way: That is their core business, so they ought to be good at it. Ask yourself this -- do you trust a dedicated cloud archivist or your own shop, where e-mail archiving is just one of the things you do? Answers welcome at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 02/14/2012 at 12:47 PM3 comments
Redmond magazine contributor Don Jones just finished moving from Google Apps for Business to Office 365 and the man couldn't be happier. The cloud software is now running and running well. Here are some of Jones' conclusions:
The setup required a bit too much PowerShell scripting, and could do with more tasks being handled by the GUI.
For internal users, it is smooth sailing. For outsiders to connect to Jones' SharePoint, they have to authenticate through Hotmail. I guess that's because Hotmail uses Passport authentication and Microsoft reckons it is easy and cheap enough to set up a Hotmail account.
Jones detailed the migration in a three-part series you can find here.
I recently interviewed over a dozen readers about Google Apps and Office 365. Serious Microsoft IT types vastly preferred Office 365, while smaller shops such as nonprofits liked the slimmed-down approach of Google. I'll report on all my findings in the coming weeks.
Have you used either? If so, let me know at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 02/07/2012 at 12:47 PM5 comments