George Reese had a great mind map for those looking to make the move to cloud computing. He does a good job of breaking out all the elements that one should consider before doing anything.
The link to the article is here and here for the cloud computing mind map.
Get a current analysis of your environment to see if you can move a portion or all of your computing assets to the cloud. Fill out our form here to get started.
One of the most technical talks I’ve watched in long time but it was actually interesting, helpful and entertaining all at the same time. Bryan Cantrill and Brendan Gregg of Joyent discuss Cloud Analytics and performance engineering.
Although ColoAdvisor is an agnostic consultant for all things Cloud, we just had to share this talk.
Just wanted to wish all our fans, partners and clients a Happy New Year and a hope that we all gain and prosper in the next few months. We plan to increase the level of service another notch and be even more responsive than before.
If you have any hosting, cloud or colocation needs please drop us a quick line and we’ll take care of it!
-Shirin
The term cloud is used so often that it’s getting a lot of folks confused. Many managers are being encouraged to push applications to the cloud. If you ever find yourself trying to explain the implications to a quasi-technical audience check out the Big Switch by Nicholas Carr.
Although the book’s been out for awhile it’s still really relevant content based on the amount of movement to outsourcing applications to the cloud.
Carr explains how early American power generation during the industrial revolution was done mainly in-house by setting up factories on rivers which enabled manufacturing equipment to operate on water power using a complex network of gears and belts. These gear and belt driven systems were managed by technicians that were critical to the operation of the business. If the network of belts and gears were to go down, the factory couldn’t produce widgets.
Over time, local utility power became reliable so motors and other equipment could be plugged into the AC outlets installed in the factory rather than managing a complex network of gears and belts. If you think of electrical grids they are networks as well.
The comparison is excellent and definitely a good read for anyone that has to explain this technology to a non-IT or quasi IT person. I used this analogy when giving a talk to a group about virtualization and the cloud and it was well understood based on feedback I received afterwards.
We’ve been engaged with our clients on deals that are complex after a long stint of simpler colocation only deals. As we engage and do our “datacenter locating” I still haven’t figured out how our clients source complex IT services on their own.
Even with an RFP, NO ONE will answer in a manner that is easy to compare. It takes one of our consultants here quite a bit of time on the phone with the vendors to get the exact scope of what a “managed server” is and where that demarcation of client vs. vendor responsibilities really lie.
If you are seeking hosting and colocation services on your own and you insist on doing it yourself then at least use some of our guides to help you out here:
Simple Guide to Choosing a Managed Hosting Provider
Cloud Computing Simply Explained
Understanding Cloud and the IaaS Market
If you’d like to know how we operate you can watch our datacenter locator video or you can get a bit more detail from our How We Work Part 2.
Datacenter Knowledge had a good article yesterday about Dell Retooling Its Supply Chain for the Cloud.
Up until recently, I’d watch countless datacenter deployments miss deadlines and budgets. Racks coming from one vendor, waiting for power and then structured cabling by a 3rd party. It’s typically a herculean task that goes awry without the oversight of a dedicated project manager, many meetings and some elaborate spreadsheets.
This article eludes to something I’ve been waiting for which is the modularization of these components like other industries have done well. Take for instance residential construction, most of the frame and trusses come pre-fabricated as do the railings and other woodwork. Some folks are even ordering the entire house as a prefab kit which is built in a factory where power and waste can be better managed. The components are shipped to the final build site and the setup is very fast and efficient.
Typically the setup of the network and hardware is purely done on paper until the actual hardware reaches the datacenter site and then the real work begins.
Check out the article as this will help set the ground work for easier datacenter deployments.
We’ve been doing some internal housekeeping which has resulted in the launch of 2 new services which are sure to be of great use to our clients.
First Service is our Datacenter Consolidation and Migration Service. This is a service that allows clients to size up their environment and see which applications and hardware are being utilized to what extent. We also added to this a migration service in case your consolidation efforts require any system moving. Have a discussion with us about your needs. Lots of firms are offering a move service but coupled with our datacenter locator service this will be a powerful offering.
The second service is our Datacenter Contract Renewal Services. If you are up for renewal at your datacenter (cloud, colocation or hosting) let us know and we can help negotiate your new contract and get you favorable terms and pricing based on competitive market rates.
Chris Anderson brings a fantastic point of view on how video is raising the bar on knowledge daily. He presents something in opposition to the theories linking short video clips to attention deficit disorder and similar side effects.
The video is 18:53 and completely worth the watch. Makes you happy to be in the media, datacenter and computing industry.
I’ve been communing much lately with fellow entrepreneurs and it seems that we have similar challenges in the marketplace.
Here are some of the things we realized:
- We run focused firms, customer focused and highly ethical.
- We’re established yet have small marketing budgets.
- We lack the man power to fully pull off SEO or any technical aspects of SEO and Ad-word management.
- We are slammed like other entrepreneurs with sales, operations, finance and legal issues.
So as a way to vet my feelings, I decided I would share how our marketing operations run here at ColoAdvisor. This is certainly not “by the book” or even efficient but we run a (small) tight ship here. This article is very specific to our marketing efforts and not our technical expertise or other operational aspects.
Blogs – Done by anyone at the firm, the majority of the blogs are directly related to our industry but we post non-datacenter blogs which we file under musings. (Like this post!) Anything added to the blog automatically generates a tweet, linkedin and facebook entry courtesy of Hootsuite. Some use the WordPress web panel to publish work but I personally love Marsedit as I can work off line and see what the article looks like before I publish.
Twitter – Anyone in the firm can more or less tweet, but generally this is maintained by one person setup with a second monitor running Hootsuite to track our tweets and our network (especially for direct replies or mentions). Additionally, we utilize the Hootlet from Hootsuite to tweet about interesting things we run across. We track many industry blogs but also use Alltop to find good articles to repost.
Facebook – Also done by our “marketing guy” our Hootsuite pushes our comments to the Facebook page, Twitter and Linkedin. We haven’t developed the potential of Facebook yet but I’m of the opinion that for the consumer markets they are a force. We sell mainly to businesses so we haven’t fully developed our FB strategy.
Email marketing – This function is really handled by our sales team and not marketing. We utilize a 3rd party that attaches to our CRM implementation of Highrise. For small personal emailings our sales team uses a great piece of software called Directmail for Mac. Actually, unless web-based everyone here is on a Mac.
SEO – General Work. Currently outsourced to a firm that handles 12 keywords that we want to be highly ranked on. Our marketing person handles an additional 40 phrases that we do in house utilizing a variety of practices:
SEO – Message clarity – We check all meta data and descriptions on our website to ensure our message is very clear and understandable in 1 sentence. W
SEO – Website – We are never quite happy with the website and tweak the language and the look constantly. We are currently working on a large revision that it makes it easy for client to use our service and get the process started automatically. Language, flow and keyword use are things we consider daily. As an FYI we had the site completely built in WordPress which limits our design freedom a bit but we feel it’s one of the best decisions we’ve ever made.
SEO – Backlinking – We are always looking to have our site listed in directories, forums and resources for folks looking for colocation, hosting and cloud computing.
SEO – Press releases – We’ll push the occasional press release at about $80 a pop. This helps our SEO quite a bit and gets us some recognition but has never yielded us any direct sales. Not a real big fan of press releases unless looking at it from an SEO perspective.
SEO – Media – This is the term we use for any multi-media stuff. For instance we have a video that outlines how we work. Youtube, Vimeo, Slideshare are some of the platforms we use in this regard.
SEO – PR – This is where we reach out to industry insiders, luminaries, trade magazines and try to offer value through writing articles, providing interviews or giving our opinion on the cloud, colocation or hosting community. We love to present to large audiences and be interviewed by publications when applicable.
SEO – other social networking – we are always exploring new avenues to get the word out. We haven’t gotten deep outside of Twitter, Facebook, our Blog and Youtube but we’d like to. Buzz, FourSquare and other avenues we just haven’t been able to tap yet.
Pay Per Click Advertising – We are still wading through this, we have a minimal budget that we commit every month. Ideally, we’ll get this developed soon and see how things pan out.
I’ve recently gotten addicted to books written by H. Rider Haggard, especially the Allan Quatermain series. The character of Quatermain spends most of his time in Southern Africa with stories that consist of time spent in Zululand interacting with natives as he hunted and traded to earn his living.
Allan was given the name “Watcher By Night” or Macumazahn as he tended to watch his flocks at night and avoided being ambushed several times by keeping an eye out while he slept. As I began to read other books I found that the natives would tend to name folks based on their impressions of the person. Other names that I read in the different Haggard stories:
Sad Eyes – speaking about a depressed young lady in one of the novels who had an alcoholic father.
Light in the Darkness – Allan’s faithful servant who saved Allan and his companions in a battle by burning down half the town (sending the attacking army to their demise).
Vulture – Given to a rather cowardly character who had a large nose and bald head who was harsh with the natives.
The Groan Maker – The name given to a particularly amazing axe yielded by Allan’s friend Umslopogaas (due to his ability to fight well and cause the death of his enemies quickly which resulted in many groans)
Lord Igeza – Allan’s friend Lord Ragnall who was given this name because he was handsome. Literally translated “Lord Handsome”
Bena – Given to an up-tight English Servant which meant to “push out the breast” possibly referring to his posture
Frequently in the book series, Allan (Macumazahn) is also referred to by these names:
The white man whose heart is as white as his is – Referring to his honesty even when it landed him in hot water on some occasions
Inkoosi – Which means Chief.
Baba – Meaning Father as a sign of respect and stature.
So the question that I’ve started asking myself daily, if I were to bump into a Zulu, what would he call me?
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