BaldwinTel

What are the Benefits of Connecting Your Business to "the Cloud"? How should you choose a business cloud consultant?

By Dan Baldwin

In the 20+ years I've been helping Southern California multi-location business customers choose telecom and technology solutions I've never had a customer call and say, "I need some cloud" or "Connect me to the cloud" or simply, "Cloud me, baby!"

When I have suggested to clients that their next technology solution can be provided to them from "the cloud" though some have asked, "What the heck are you talking about!"

Following is the simplest answer that I've ever come up with for the question "what's the cloud?"

"The cloud is actually a windowless building someplace that's built for the comfort of computers instead of people. One of the comfortable computers in the cloud is the computer that makes the 'call waiting' feature on your phone work. The cloud can accommodate almost any business computer that can help your business do almost anything."

 

What Parts of Your Business Benefit from a "Cloud Connection"?

Maybe some, maybe none, maybe all.  The decision really boils down to your your thoughts as a business owner around "convenience, cost and security".

Convenience - Can you conveniently access your business email account from any computer or

Should You Backup Your Critical Business Data in "the Cloud"? Can you afford a cheap solution?

By Dan Baldwin

As a telecom consultant and "VAR" (value added reseller), I'm always on the lookout for new technology solutions I can offer my business customers.

By examining everything that comes along, I'm also in a position to consult with my customers when they get an offer from someone else that seems way too good to be true -- like what appears to be an almost unlimited amount of cloud backup storage for next to nothing.

 

Who Does the Backup & How It's Tested is More Important than Price

I recently ran across an interesting opportunity to resell "unlimited" cloud backup storage to my business customers for just $59 per month.  Now this seems like a pretty killer deal at face value.  For just $59 per month I could give all my telecom consulting business clients "free data backup".

Or could I?

Hardrives "in the cloud" must be pretty cheap. I know this because big companies like Google sell me an extra 20 Gigs of storage a year for my Google Apps email storage for just $5 per year.

I'm pretty happy having 6 years and 60,000 old emails stored with Google because Google's a pretty big company and I'm fairly confident they know how to build and manage a data server farm. (And on top of that, backing up one user's email is fairly simple.)

But what about backing up "all the data" for "all your users"?

The biggest expense in cloud backup is not the cost of the actual hardrive sitting in a cloud somewhere.  The biggest expense is making sure a human that knows what they're doing is backing up your critical business data properly (and not overwriting good backups with bad backups) so that when you need to restore your data, your backup data set is not corrupted. 

 

So Who Are You Going to Trust?

While it appears that I can do it for you for practically free as we learned above, I'm thinking that

Will "Desktop-as-a-Service" or the "Virtual Desktop" Eliminate Your Need to Ever Buy Another Server?

By Dan Baldwin

For over the past twenty years I've been a business consultant helping my Southern California based multi-location business clients with their telecom decisions. For the majority of these two decades that's meant choosing the best business phone system or the right local phone service provider.  For the past decade I've focused on helping my clients choose the right wide area data networks (WANs) like MPLS or metro Ethernet to connect multiple office locations across the country.

Now that many of my clients have robust data networks in place they are discovering that they no longer need to keep all their computer network servers in their own office spaces - often the most dangerous place for them to be.

With ample bandwidth and network security in place, many of my clients are looking to place their application critical servers in a public or private colocation or data center facility that better protects the servers from a multitude of dangers.

Still other clients are looking to entirely eliminate their need to even own servers. For them, computing is seen as a utility much in the same way as their electric lights or dial-tone.  They don't need to own a phone company to make a phone call, nor do they need to own a power plant to illuminate their office. So many are now asking, "Why am I owning and maintaining all these servers when all I want to do is 'compute'"?

They wonder, "My business CRM runs on Salesforce but I don't own the computers that Salesforce runs on. I trust my online banking partners without having to own the bank's computers. Are my other applications so different?"

While pushing ANY business application to the cloud once seemed far-fetched, now many businesses are asking "So which of my applications CAN NOT go to the cloud"?

Looking for a Really "Big Cloud" to Host Your Most Important Business Applications? Here it is...

By Dan Baldwin

When it comes to choosing a Southern California based colocation or "cloud" data center to safeguard off-site the most important business applications your multi-location business runs, how big is "big enough"? Are there some data centers that are just too small to get a decent computing job done? Can a data center be too big?

These are just three of the many questions that crossed my mind as I toured the cavernous, two story, 50,000 square foot new data center "purpose build" by three data center entreprenuers at San Diego's ScaleMatrix during the grand opening of their new facility.

I have to admit, over the past decade of touring data centers I guess I've just not given them much respect.  Most of the one's I've seen have been squeezed into fairly tight quarters in a basement somewhere with a lot of chain link fencing and freezing cold air.  Yesterday I was in a new type of data center big enough to park a 737 passenger jet in surrounded by almost 600 invited guests including the San Diego Chamber of Commerce for ScaleMatrix' grand opening. A new data center experience indeed.

 

Is Bigger Better for Colocation Data Centers?

But back to my question, "Is bigger better or too big?"  I honestly don't know. I've put the question to a couple business associates I know that make a living selling colocation services to businesses. (I'll be sure and let you know what they say.)

In every conversation I've ever had with a colocation broker only three things seemed to matter, power costs, power costs & power costs. (There was also the matter of security and redundant network access - but it was mostly about power costs).

If you're interested in why several data center pros would build a new data center from scratch for their clients, then check out this lengthy interview of the major players at ScaleMatrix.  You should likely focus on the "cradle to grave" comments about a data center customer's life cycle on page one of the interview.  

On the last page of the interview they talk about how customers looking at a $200,000 IT equipment upgrade can skip buying all the new gear and simply use ScaleMatrix' cloud for a couple grand a month. They also mentioned how enterprise businesses (and smaller) can put all their business phone system equipment in their facility to create their own hybrid hosted VoIP solution.

 

The "Real Reason" to Colocate in San Diego

In theory a business can have their colo space anywhere on the planet that has reliable access to fast Internet. Of course a good reason to have it in San Diego is it creates a nice "business reason" to go out to the facility as often as possible to make sure the computer racks are all at the right temperature.

Will Your Office Computer Network Fail When the Internet Switches to IPv6 in 2012

By Dan Baldwin

I count on the public Internet to work in my day-to-day business dealings. If the public Internet stops working, so does my business.  But who even owns the public Internet and who's doing what to make sure it keeps working? Is it really Al Gore?

So when I was recently invited to listen to a webinar about the implications of the pending "Internet switch to IPv6" I said to myself, "Huh, that sounds kind of important."

I'm glad I got the information. Ten minutes into the presentation I'm thinking to myself, "This seems like a pretty big deal and it might start affecting my business this year or next!"

Following is what I think I've learned about the whole issue and what I'm sharing with my clients about what it means for their office computer network's ability to communicate over the public Internet next year and beyond after the public Internet "converts to IPv6".

Executive Summary: IPv6 is not the 2012 Mayan apocalypse some predict, but it is "something".

 

What Business Owners Need to Know About How IPv6 Will Affect Their IT Costs

1. What's IPv6?

IPv6 refers the the new "IP" ("Internet protocol") naming convention for any piece of gear on the Internet (computers, routers, switches, smart phones, tablets, security cameras, etc.) that needs to be found by any other piece of gear.  The older naming convention is IPv4.

 

2. What's the IPv4/IPv6 problem?

Just as every telephone on the planet needs it's own telephone number to receive calls from other telephones, every piece of equipment on the Internet needs it's own IP address so other equipment can find it.

Currently, most every piece of equipment has an IPv4 IP address.  "The people in charge" of handing our new IP addresses have informed "us" that they are pretty much completely out of IPv4 IP addresses.

Not to worry though because "they" have a whole bunch of the new IPv6 addresses.

 

3. Can't computer gear with a mix of IPv4 and IPv6 addresses find each other on the Internet?

Since I'm a business owner myself and not a computer geek I investigated the question by asking around among other business owners and by searching the Internet and came up with the following four answers, "Sure they can. Maybe they can. I don't know. Probably not."

Want a 100% Wind Powered Website? How About Green IT? Call Us...

By Dan Baldwin

Does it make a difference to you if the hotels you stay in while travelling have a strong "save the planet" policy regarding towels, linens, etc.?

Do you or your customers care if your website and any or all of the rest of your IT infrastructure is hurting or helping the Earth?  

If you want to do something about that let, us introduce you to Green House Data, an "economically responsible data center" whose claim to fame is providing colocation, cloud and managed hosting services that use 40% less energy than their traditional data center competitors - all while being powered 100% through renewable wind energy (wind farms in Wyoming).

For many customers not in the hospitality or manufacturing sector, their IT ("information technology") applications use up the greatest percentage of energy for the business.

While telecom agents primarily introduce businesses to alternative choices for business phone systems and services, telecom agents are equally adept at introducing you to alternative sources of energy for powering your business phone systems, services ans wide area data networks.

While the services and vendors we introduce you to may be "alternative", the reliability and security of solutions are first rate.  No amount of "planet saving" can make up for putting your business technology systems at risk by selecting a sub-standard vendor.

Watch the short video below to see one of the many data hosting and colocation companies we can introduce you to.