Collection of Cloud related links #2

(Stephen Parker, Head of Cloud Strategy, NewLease)

Part 2 of what I am planning to be an ongoing series of posts.  This is a simple summary of posts from around the web that I have come across over the past few weeks that caught my eye.  My value add?:

• Hopefully finding the interesting from the not (subjective)
• Cloud centric
• A focus on posts of interest to service providers
• A short reason why it may be of interest.

So see what you think:

Article	My comments…
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/features/371962/top-10-stupid-security-stories-of-2011	Security is important (period).  However the media and so called experts are using this real issue to deliver some pretty lazy reporting.
http://softwarestrategiesblog.com/2012/01/17/roundup-of-cloud-computing-forecasts-and-market-estimates-2012/	It’s the start of the year so as usual there are lots of forecasts.  This is a comprehensive collection of cloud related forecasts and market estimates in one place.
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/tech-manager/office-365-and-the-future-of-cloud/7244?tag=nl.e101	Interesting view about the business value of Office 365 from the experience of a small consulting firm deploying for their own use.
http://www.microsoft.com/online/office365tools/advisor/office-365-advisor.aspx	Tool provided by Microsoft to help select the correct O365 plan and estimate costs.  For our Australian friends this is in USD so pricing part not so helpful, but the plan selector still valid
http://www.talkincloud.com/jetblue-embraces-microsoft-office-365-for-cloud-computing-applications/	A high profile O365 win
http://www.talkincloud.com/ibm-docs-a-google-docs-microsoft-office-365-cloud-rival/	It is a foolish person that ignores IBM, but will they be able to compete against Microsoft Office 365 and Google Apps?
http://www.zdnet.com.au/symantec-buys-liveoffice-for-us115m-339329918.htm	Symantec join the big spending by traditional vendors to support a Hybrid story linking their on-prem offerings to a cloud world
http://www.zdnet.com.au/amazon-offers-free-windows-in-its-cloud-339329812.htm	If you are in the IaaS world make sure you have a great differentiator as price points are getting very aggressive!!!
http://www.zdnet.com.au/2012-mega-predictions-round-up-339329368.htm	Another round up of 2012 predictions.  This time grouped by Analysts, telco experts, enterprise experts and security experts.
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/london/how-the-new-european-data-law-will-affect-us-companies/2608?tag=nl.e550	Data sovereignty is another real issue that has risked been over-hyped to offer easy reporting.  However there are efforts occurring at national and international levels to establish legal frameworks for the new information age.  Whether these are right or not time will tell, but hear is a view on the recent moves in Europe
http://www.thecloudinfographic.com/2012/01/25/the-move-to-private-cloud.html	Infographic from Microsoft “The Private Cloud Gets Real”.  With all of the efforts Microsoft are making to promote their public cloud offerings it is easy to overlook their huge and growing base of partner hosted and private cloud offerings.
http://www.thecloudinfographic.com/2012/01/27/privacy-and-security-in-the-cloud.html	Another infographic commissioned by Microsoft this time highlighting their security credentials
http://trust.office365.com	Microsoft site laying out what they are doing to address the concerns around security etc in the cloud
http://www.thecloudinfographic.com/2012/01/20/music-in-the-cloud.html	If you don’t believe there can be significant and disruptive shifts then juts consider the music industry.  Change has created the opportunity for new players to challenge the established order.
http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/calculator/	Another pricing calculator/estimator, this time for Azure.  How does USD140/month for fully managed, totally flexible pricing for 1TB sound?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16625725	On the 19th January 2012 Eastman Kodak filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.  How did this happen to a company that invented the hand held camera, at one time sold 90% of the film used in the US and ironically was one of the pioneers in creating the digital camera and holds some of the key digital imaging patents? In short they are a victim of their own inability to transform in the face of the rise of digital photography.
http://www.inc.com/matthew-swyers/4-traits-of-great-leaders.html	Business change and transformation takes strong leadership.  Are you able to Aspire, Plan, Inspire and Execute?
http://www.whymicrosoft.com	This will help you understand how Microsoft’s marketing efforts are position them against the competition.
http://www.boxfreeit.com.au/Blog/sharepoint-is-not-a-file-system.html	An impassioned plea by a leading Office 365 partner to think beyond document management when it comes to sharepoint.
http://www.inc.com/eric-schurenberg/the-best-definition-of-entepreneurship.html	An interesting definition of entrepreneurship “Entrepreneurship is the pursuit of opportunity without regard to resources currently controlled”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16354076	Asks “Is 2012 the year for India’s internet?”  Looks like mobile is going to be a major play.
http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2010-05-28/news/27630634_1_global-cloud-cloud-services-zinnov-management-consulting	From 2010, but Steve Ballmer claims that India will be a world leader in cloud computing
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/google/internet-access-isnt-a-human-right-says-google-vp/3534?tag=nl.e539	Should access to the internet be considered a “basic human right” Google VP and Internet evangelist Dr. Vinton Cerf argues that it is not.
http://www.thecloudinfographic.com/2011/12/19/cloud-computing-adoption-trends-in-australia.html	Infographic highlighting Australia’s leading position in cloud adoption
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp0HIF3SfI4	The TED video with Simon Sinek explaining how great leaders inspire with his focus on the “WHY” rather than how or what. (you may remember this from the workshops)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc	Dan Pink explaining what motivates people with the help of a sketch graphic overlay to reinforce the story.  (you may remember this from the workshops)
http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html	I’ll finish on this truly inspiring TED video, the URL title says it all.  I have watched this many times and still find it great.

Is there profit in the Cloud?

(Stephen Parker, Head of Cloud Strategy, NewLease.)

Oscar Trimboli at Microsoft posed this question in a recent blog post(http://oscartr.wordpress.com/2012/01/17/profitability/).  I started to craft a short response which ended up a little larger (!!), so I decided to post it here.

———————

Oscar,

Like you I have worked with and talked to lots (hundreds) of partners across APAC over the past few years in relation to business transformation and the Cloud (whatever that means!!). My experience is:

• There is an increasing awareness that the Cloud is something that cannot be ignored.
• However change is difficult and understandably they are looking for some comfort and assurance that they will still be in business.

On the one hand this is still an immature market and there are not 20 years of successful cloud businesses to model yourself upon. On the other, many of the skills required will already be in place (especially technically) and if we look at the world outside IT there is all the evidence we could need to provide examples of annuity revenue, managed service provision etc.

To the direct question “Is there profit in the Cloud?” I would answer most definitely YES.

The more interesting question is “Where will this profit come from?”. Will it be from the same things you do today? “Yes but different” is probably the shortest answer.

• Will you still sell hardware? YES. Will you sell as many servers? NO. The Cloud will offer the opportunity for many different device types (laptops, tablets, smartphones etc), provisioned to a wider group of users, with connections and usage occurring almost anywhere.
• Will you still do installation and configuration services? YES. Will it be based around traditional server setup? NO. The wider device usage will require remote management and setup, integration to services potentially in multiple locations and more complex identity management. Network services are likely to increase with improved routers and broadband connectivity in offices, setup of home offices or access to remote sites and provisioning of mobile networking.
• Will you still do consulting? YES. Will it be around traditional infrastructure? NO. Business owners are tired of paying money every 3+ years to refresh physical hardware and software and still be left with the promise rather than the realisation of the business benefits. The reduction in CAPEX spend will free up funds to deliver training, to implement business process improvement and in general deliver the promise of the IT capability.
• Will revenue increasingly come from annuity based fees and managed service offerings? YES. Will this mean no more project work? NO. Although a move to managed services and standardised periodic fees is the trend, it is highly likely that you will still deliver specific projects. In fact evidence from a number of early adopting partners is that they have more predictable project revenue from customers they have managed service agreements with.
• Will you have more dealings with the line of business management? YES. Will this mean bypassing the IT staff? NO. Although more time will be spent with the business lines delivering the promised benefits, it will be important to work with IT to ensure their support and engagement.

There are many more examples, but in summary:

• “Is there profit in the Cloud?” YES.
• Will you be to able to build on existing skills? YES
• However where this profit comes from will be different and it will require commitment and creativity to overcome the challenges of change.

Collection of Cloud related links #1

(Stephen Parker, Head of Cloud Strategy, NewLease)

I read lots of articles from various media sources every day and whilst most of it goes straight into the “do not file” bucket, there are some that I at least find interesting.  Of course my definition of interesting is biased, but I trust that for some people, some of the time the following links to articles may have value. 

There is no particular order to these articles, however I have put a short explanation of why I think they have interest.

So here we go:

Article	My comments…
5 Essential technologies for small business	You may agree or disagree, but it will add to your understanding of where your customers may be thinking .
5 reasons cyber-security matters to small businesses	Point 1 especially caught my eye.  Despite the concerns about security in the Cloud, could it in reality provide a quality of security that is better than the small business can provide directly?
2011: the cloud has landed	Further evidence to support the fact that the Cloud is mainstream.  Just before Christmas I was explaining what I do to the owner of a boat yard trying to avoid jargon.  After a few minutes he said “Oh you mean Cloud”!!!
2011: the year the cloud went mainstream
Cloud Computing: A shift in the way IT departments work	Ignoring the sales pitch in the middle (US based anyway) a simple summary of some of the key benefits and blockers.  “IT can shift from an operational cost centre to a true partner and enabler of business success”
Gartner Hype cycle for Cloud Computing 2011	When Gartner start reporting something the chances are “we” have already been doing it for years, but always nice to see they are now reporting!!!!!!!! Note SaaS is now considered to be on the “Slope of Enlightenment”
How has Cloud Computing changed Business	(I like the visual inpact of the infographic approach.  Some interesting take outs: few companies downsize IT after cloud adoption, business save money with cloud, but savings are small, access from multiple devices is the top driver, less workforce resistance in small businesses.
How mobile affected the datacentre	Mobile has changed the way many organisations do business, this is affecting internal and external businesses processes and with this IT
Small Businesses and the Cloud	This one is from the O365 team
Microsoft could be the “comeback kid” in 2012	Nice to see someone being positive about a friendly vendor, although odd that not more said about the move to the Cloud

Why “Cloud” will stick

(Stephen Parker, Head of Cloud Strategy, NewLease)

Despite the efforts of the IT industry to differentiate by trying to define increasingly focused language (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, DaaS, TaaS etc etc) it will as always be customers who decide the language that finally lands in our long term vocabulary.  Experience shows us that in general they pick something so simple that to many in the world of technology it is too generic and hence meaningless. This is why (IMHO) there is a counter-intuitive logic that ensures the use of “Cloud” will stick.

We can all get excited about trying to provide a detailed and exacting definition of “Cloud” however for the end user it works for the simple reason that they can understand it as “business services that I need that are accessed via the internet and are looked after by somebody else”. The fact that IT experts then need to ask about geo-redundancy, data ownership in diverse geo-political deployments, degrees of elasticity required, flexibility to customize or simply configure, desired billing models, multi or single tenant, if a finished service or infrastructure building blocks are needed etc etc is irrelevant to their core use of “Cloud”.

We do not have to go too far back in time to find a similarly meaningless term that resonated with users – Desktop Computing. For the user it was simple: We used to have mainframes in the data centre and now I have a computer on my desk, so it must be Desktop Computing. The experts would of course clarify this by asking what was the OS, was it connected to a network, how big was the hard disk etc etc. But for the user none of this mattered, they knew what they had, the new flexibility it provided and could just get on with their job.

And it is exactly the same today. People want to get on with their jobs and not have to become IT experts to understand how to do this. Cloud will stick because it has meaning to the users and if that means the IT expert has to interpret this “meaning” to deliver the appropriate flavour of Cloud then all the better because this is where we can use our experience to add value and hence get paid.

Windows Home Server 2011, Launchpad offline and “net.tcp port sharing service” timeout

(Stephen Parker, Head of Cloud Strategy)

This is off topic from service provider licensing, however on the basis that it is possible our partner community may be the type of people who could have Windows Home Server and may therefore have encountered this issue I thought I would post here. (and if you are here just for this article then maybe you could look around a bit further )

Problem Summary:

Time lost that I will never get back, knowledge gained that I can only hope in some future life has some advantage!!!!

1. Have Windows Home Server 2011 – love it
2. Lots of home machines and no previous (major) issues
3. Get new Lenovo X220, setup with everything I need
4. Install the WHS Connector works fine, however after the first reboot I am told that “The server appears to be offline. Do you want to sign in to offline mode”
5. Backups will not work and alerts fail

Research:

After much searching etc I finally got to the bottom of the problem:

1. Windows Home Server installs a number of additional services, “Windows Server….” on the client machine (Start, type services, click on “view local service” scroll to the bottom)
2. These are all set to “startup type” of Automatic
3. However not all of them are started
4. The 2 critical ones are “Windows Server Client Computer Backup Provider Service” and “Windows Server Health Service”
5. Looking in the service descriptions I tracked down the dependencies:
1. Backup and Health depend on “Windows Server Service Provider Registry”
2. “Windows Server Service Provider Registry” depends on “Net.Tcp Port Sharing Service”
6. And when I looked in the Event Viewer (System) I found that “Net.Tcp Port Sharing Service” is failing with an error “A timeout was reached (30000 milliseconds) while waiting for the Net.Tcp Port Sharing Service service to connect”
7. This then has a cascade event on the “Windows Server….” Services
8. If you check “Net.Tcp Port Sharing Service” in the Local services list it has probably gone through its recovery process and started up, however the “Windows Server…” services are left in stopped state

Solution Options:

1. You can just go to the View Local Services after each boot and manually start the “Windows Server Client Computer Backup Provider Service” and “Windows Server Health Service” services and all will be good
2. OR the solution that I chose was to increase the timeout limit for services in the registry:
1. Fire up regedit (disclaimer – make sure you have done a registry backup)
2. In Registry Editor, locate, and then click the following registry subkey:
1. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control
3. By default there should be no “ServicesPipeTimeout” so you need to create it:
1. Point to Edit/New, and then click DWORD Value.
2. In the right pane of Registry Editor, notice that New Value #1 (the name of a new registry entry) is selected for editing.
3. Type ServicesPipeTimeout to replace New Value #1, and then press ENTER.
4. Now to modify the timeout value:
1. Right-click the ServicesPipeTimeout registry entry that you created (or was already there) and then click Modify. The Edit DWORD Value dialog box appears.
2. Click “Decimal” under Base
3. Type in 50000 in the “Value data” text box and then click OK (Note the default value for this is 30,000 milli-seconds. I initially set to 100,000 and then reduced to 50,000. You may need to alter this to suit your situation)
5. Restart the computer. You must restart the computer for Service Control Manager to apply this change.

Everything is now good…..

Offline access with Citrix Desktop as a Service

(Stephen Parker, Head of Cloud Strategy, NewLease)

Remote desktop technology has been around for years, but I have to be honest until recently I saw it as something for “special” requirements. However things have progressed rapidly and having been on a number of roadshows with the guys from Citrix recently, I am starting to be converted.  The whole any device capability is a great way to offer a quality of service without having to retain control of the device itself e.g. for the digital natives and the iPad carrying execs in our organisations.

But the question of “what happens when I am offline?” has been the final blocker in the way of my full embrace.  I spend a reasonable amount of time travelling and a plane at 30,000 feet is not the best place for internet access!!!

So I mentioned this “blocker” the other day to Chris Nixon, Citrix Distribution Channel Manager ANZ and to my surprise he advised that offline desktop is indeed now available.  There are some caveats such as “currently only compatible Windows devices” (although I hear that they are working closely with Apple for iPads), but I am now struggling to see why people would not at least look at the Desktop as a Service capability within their organisations.

Rather than rewrite the official wording from Citrix here it is, with a couple of links to resources on the subject.

“XenApp is unique in that it is a complete system for application delivery, offering both online and offline application access through a combination of application hosting and application streaming directly to user devices. When users request an application, XenApp determines if their device is compatible and capable of running the application in question. The minimum requirements of a target device are a compatible Windows® operating system and appropriate Citrix client software. If the user device meets minimum requirements, then XenApp initiates application virtualization via application streaming directly into an isolated environment on the user’s device. In the event that the user device is not capable of running a particular application, XenApp initiates session virtualization.”

http://www.citrix.com/English/ps2/products/subfeature.asp?contentID=1683975

http://www.citrix.com/English/ps2/products/feature.asp?contentID=2300348

Poor Wireless at airports unacceptable

(Stephen Parker, Head of Cloud Strategy, NewLease)

I am doing a lot of international travelling at the moment (too much if you ask my family, but that is another story) and I can say with confidence and frustration, that access to the internet in airports (on a global level) is unacceptable.  And lets be clear, I am not talking about free public access in overcrowded areas, where to be honest I can understand the payoff between access speed and cost.

I am fortunate, one of the perks of the “too much” travel is that I get to enjoy the frequent traveller lounges.  The food is OK and sometimes great (Sydney Qantas First Class as an example) and the staff are normally very helpful.  And yet too often I am left feeling that the internet access, a basic requirement for the modern traveller is a long lost after-thought.  I can head to my plane having being feed and topped with almost more alcohol that is advisable as part of the “service” and yet I cannot get decent internet access.

The frequent flyer lounges are supposed to be a haven for those who spend too much time travelling and a place to relax before the inevitable next flight.  Being out of the office so much makes regular and speedy access to the internet (and hence to the office) a critical part of this “relaxation”.  Where this fails it is not just the frustration in the lounge, but the knowledge that the one hours work on the plane that can clear the decks must now be replaced with an hour in the hotel after arrival or worse a hour at home that should spent with the family.

To name and shame I offer you the One World lounge in LAX.  After over an hour trying to connect to download a 1MB file, including the help of the staff who tried to log me into non-public networks I left for my LAX-Sydney flight so far from relaxed it is not true (my apologies to the flight crew for my clearly unhappy demeanour upon boarding!!!).

Seriously, airlines around the world, access to the internet is a basic requirement for the modern traveller, you can do better.

(ironic ps – was typing this in an airport lounge and when I tried to post was told that I could not connect to the internet so writing this on the QF1!!!!)