August 2nd, 2011 — 8:00am
Some think so, including GreenPages Technology Solutions CEO Ron Dupler. Monday he was the first speaker at their annual technology summit. He urged the 100+ CIOs and CTOs that the time is now to seize upon cloud technologies.
“Cloud is here now!” affirmed Dupler in keynote address starting the conference, which has become a summer tradition for information technology (IT) professionals trying to keep their heads above waters in the rapidly changing world of IT. “It is real. It is happening. And we all need to seize the day and deal with it.”
Dupler said IT officers who did not embrace the cloud would be left behind, and said they were similar to doomsayers of old.
Dupler, for his part, said that IT professionals who dismiss the cloud are “trying to perpetuate the past” and ultimately are either going to “change their mind” or find themselves “working in new fields.”
The Kittery, Maine-headquartered GreenPages was an early cloud adopter and has been at the front of the cloud computing services paradigm shift advising customers to move to a fully virtualized IT environment in preparation for the cloud computing services era.
Technology research, Gartner, has projected that global cloud computing services revenue will hit $148.8 billion in 2014.
Dupler counseled IT executives attending the summit to look at cloud computing as an “opportunity” instead of a “threat.”
“In the future this is about integrating service platforms,” said Dupler. “It is helping you turn internal IT into a service platform itself and integrating various service platforms.”
http://www.greenpages.com
Comment » | Cloud Computing, future, IT Predictions
February 14th, 2011 — 9:19am
Fall In Love With The Cloud and Microsoft 365
February is the month of love, and it might be time for you to be introduced to a new partner: Microsoft 365. Let’s examine some of the key benefits, and you can decide if you love for it is as intense as many peoples.
3 Reasons Your Workplace Should Get on the Cloud with Microsoft 365
Cloud computing is all the rage these days, and in the workplace, it is increasingly becoming a de-facto standard. The ability to access your key data, and documents, from anywhere, and collaborate with team members seamlessly and securely provides great benefits to businesses as they seek to become more streamlined and efficient. Microsoft 365, the latest Office product from Microsoft, helps businesses in these ways by letting you work “on the cloud”.
The Agility to Work Anywhere
With Microsoft 365 you can access your key data and documents anywhere that you have an internet connection. Data hosted “on the cloud” isn’t stored on your local machine. It is stored in a central repository, remote from your location. This means you will be able to, for example, access key Excel spreadsheets anywhere, anytime, even from your smart phone. Whenever you can access the internet, you can access your information.
Team Collaboration on Steroids
With the addition of Sharepoint, collaboration between team members becomes a breeze. You can easily keep team documents, lists, and calendars synced, in addition to staying up to date on key business updates, news and events. Real-time communication with colleagues can be enabled directly and easily. Instantly respond to challenges in a team-based environment with Microsoft 365.
Enterprise-Class, Robust Security
One benefit of the cloud is that it makes enterprise level security and reliability available to smaller businesses with tighter budgets. The simplicity of the cloud models simplifies IT management, allowing you to have more control over your data, and confidence that it is being kept safe.
Summary
In this era, businesses need every edge they can get to remain competitive. Microsoft 365 helps your business in this by allowing you to use enterprise level technology, even on a small budget.
Microsoft 365 promises to be a boon to business of all sizes, but especially small and midsized ones. With Microsoft 365 you can be “on the cloud”, with increased business agility, enhanced ability to collaborate, and peace of mind knowing your critical data is safe and secure.
Comment » | Cloud Computing, IT Predictions, small business
January 24th, 2011 — 4:20pm
Well, it’s not quite going to blow up. Perhaps you remember Y2k…no big deal right? Well this potential disaster will probably be averted, but it might not be as easy this time around.
Basics
Every device on the Internet is assigned an “IP Address” (IP stands for Internet Protocol). You know, those series of 4 numbers that identify who you are when communicating with the outside world. According to some sources, about 1 million of these are newly assigned per hour, which means that sometime in early February we will be fresh out!
To remedy this problem, a similar scheme will be employed (using numbers to identify machines), but it will, in essence, simply allow for larger numbers (actually letters will also be allowed into these “numbers”), thus allowing more potential addresses. This is known as IPv6.
So if you hear fear mongering about a potential catastrophe, like 11 years ago, don’t worry. The situation is well in hand.
Comment » | General, Internet, IT Predictions
January 14th, 2011 — 12:41pm
Lately, there has been an up-tick in the outsourcing of IT services. Let’s examine why:
1) In tough economic times (even when things are improving, as now), it is simply cheaper to have these functions managed by an outside firm.
Case in point. An expert full time IT professional, with all of the proper certifications may well demand $80K/year. Those same IT support credentials can be brought to your organization for much less. There are always trade-off, of course. In this case a slight delay in response time. However, 1 IT guy has to sleep sometimes. An outsource IT solution is 24/7.
2) More technical knowledge than 1 IT guy can possibly amass.
With a full team of network engineering professionals, the combined knowledge will dwarf what any one individual may have.
3) Accountability
An organization must maintain its reputation through years of consistent, high quality work. With a single IT guy, the accountability factor does not come in to play nearly as much.
Comment » | IT Predictions, IT Support
November 8th, 2010 — 11:23am
It is possible for your business to profit even in an economic slump. You can use this time to re-evaluate your company’s organizational structure and streamline your business operations. Part of this should involve consideration of outsourcing your non-core work. Finding a trusted, experienced professional organization to do this non-core work for you is critical.
What is Non-Core Work?
Things like managing your payroll, keeping your office space tidy with janitorial services, or managing your IT infrastructure are examples of “non-core” work. These are things that must be done, but do not directly involve your company’s goals, missions, or primary focus. They do not typically help you grow your business, they support your business growth.
Outsourcing Your IT Managed Services Makes Sense
In today’s economic client, it is a sound decision to off-load your non-core IT management to another company that specializes in such services. Often this type of work can be done more efficiently by an outside organization, and more cheaply, than from an internal IT department. Your internal IT department should focus on leveraging technologies that help you grow, and not spend time simply keeping you afloat.
In addition, having the expertise at-the-ready of a dedicated IT Management Provider enables you to keep an eye on the future. You can lower costs by allowing research and development of new technology methodologies be outsourced as well.
Conclusion
With recent shifts overseas of jobs, and Obama’s recent trip to India, sometimes the word definition of the word “outsourcing” gets muddled. You can “outsource” in America too. For our purposes it simply means offloading non-core work to an organization that is expert at handling such matters. In economic times like these, the “outsource” option is something to consider – it doesn’t have to be a dirty word.
If you would like to learn more about our Dallas-Fort Worth based Managed Services, please contact us.
Comment » | IT Predictions, small business
October 26th, 2010 — 1:41pm
One of the ironic things about the shift in cloud is that it isn’t automating enough tasks that the IT support profession is losing any demand for personnel. What, instead, is occurring is that these professionals will be needed at a different organizational level. Instead of companies having permanent IT personnel on staff, these persons will instead work for dedicated, managed solutions organization that can provide Cloud Computing Infrastructure and Cloud Computing Services to businesses.
In other words, generic IT functions, like security, data migration/backup/restoration, and the like, which provide no general competitive advantage, and which every serious business requires will be outsourced. However, things specific to an organization, such as technical knowledge of business rules, and implementation at database and logic levels of software will need to be kept in house for maximum productivity.
With the addition of a Managed IT Solution provider, critical IT functions needed to allow a business to run efficiently and compliantly can be out-sourced. IT departments can be streamlined to only keep “in-house” personnel that have technical knowledge critical to your specific organizational processes.
Comment » | Cloud Computing, IT Predictions
