Coleman Technologies Blog

Uses for the Cloud

No matter what your business needs, there is likely a cloud solution for it. Hosted VoIP and email are great communication tools. Infrastructure and Platform as a Service solutions empower organizations to leverage more flexible computing power. Software as a Service and hosted storage are available for all of your organization’s needs.

In the end, you can get just as much done with cloud infrastructure as you can with onsite hardware.

The cloud allows for functionality and redundancy, no matter what the industry is or the kind of workforce it contains. These services can be utilized as needed and deployed quickly.

The Drawbacks

Cloud computing isn’t perfect. Businesses can create a private cloud system that can create large costs for their bottom line while also maintaining the control, management, and accessibility… but again, a lot of thought needs to be invested into this kind of solution. Environments that are hosted outside of a service provider can be difficult to control, since your organization doesn’t have control over the hardware it’s hosted on.

A major drawback of cloud computing can actually be the cost. Since the IT infrastructure used to run the solutions is managed by the service provider, the price is adjusted accordingly. If your business needs a certain number of cloud licenses, you could see the cost of your solution rise. Plus, if you don’t cancel accounts when employees leave, you could be paying more for services that aren’t being utilized.

Furthermore, imagine if your organization has teams assembled that need to use three or four cloud-based applications to complete a project. Think about all of the money that’s spent just providing access to the appropriate software solutions. If it’s not properly managed, your return on investment could be put in jeopardy.

Coleman Technologies can help you keep track of your cloud-based resources, whether you’re just hitting the cloud environment, or you have an established presence in the cloud. To learn more about how we can help you manage cloud applications, reach out to us at (604) 513-9428.

For this experiment, we’re going to assume that we are starting from scratch. The optimism and cautious excitement that goes into starting a new business endeavor is palpable. Let's assume for our purposes that you’ve determined that you need to support the following applications:

• Email
• Voice over Internet Protocol
• Line of business applications
• Productivity applications
• HR and operations software
• Storage (enough to support above)
• File sharing
• Backup

It’s not hard to ascertain the surface costs of implementing these technologies, but when trying to figure out the total cost of ownership, it may be a little more difficult. Objective comparison of the two platforms has to begin at their core needs. On one hand, In-house computing comes with several, including power, maintenance, management, and redundancy (and the management and maintenance of that platform), while cloud computing may need enhanced bandwidth and redundancy to work for a business. These costs have to be figured in when trying to plan your next steps.

Then there is the question of who is going to use your data, and what kind of protections need to be put in place as a result of that qualification. What compliance regulations does your organization have to meet? How many users does the network and infrastructure have to support? What software do you need to run? There are literally dozens of questions you have to ask before making any definitive decisions about what kind of hardware you are going to need, let alone what kind of hardware solutions you plan on using.

Once you’ve ironed out the particulars, you will then have to make the big choice. Do you want to buy physical hardware, cloud-based hardware, or some combination of both? Let’s analyze all three options:

In-House Computing

The first thing you have to be cognizant of is that once you decide that your organization needs in-house server infrastructure, you have to know that it is going to cost you a pretty penny. In order to support a full-scale communications solution, all the applications your business uses to do business, email, and backup you are looking at a seriously hefty price tag. Not only are you looking at a few thousand dollars per server, costs that are incurred in configuring the servers, warranties, and maintenance to that server could push the cost into untenable territory, especially if there isn’t a good deal of upfront capital available.

Beyond all that there are HVAC and security costs that need to addressed the first time around. The biggest expense, by far, is the cost of management. If you outsource your IT services management to a company like Coleman Technologies, you may be able to mitigate some of the recurring costs and get expert management, but ultimately the facts point to on-premise hardware rollouts costing a substantial amount more than utilizing cloud, especially with today’s IaaS costs.

Implementing an in-house server room does provide you with some pretty stark benefits, however. They include complete management over the systems within, the resulting comprehensive data security, and access to data without an Internet connection. It also front-loads the costs associated with the environment, so if the big capital expenses don’t cut into your operational budget considerations, you will be paying less per month. The infrastructure costs (which are fixed costs) and the management and maintenance of it, and operational costs (that are very often variable), all have to be taken into consideration, as does your organization’s regulatory compliance needs.

Cloud Computing

For the start-up that doesn’t have any overreaching data compliance issues, utilizing cloud computing is a no-brainer. Not only are there limited set up costs, there are so many different service-based computing plans that it is now possible to strictly use the cloud for all of your organization's central computing.

For the established company, it may be a little more difficult, so before we go “all hail the cloud!” on you, we have to admit that there are plenty of considerations you have to make if you were to go ahead with a completely virtualized computing infrastructure for your business. Here are a few:

• Migration Time and Cost: Getting started with cloud computing may not come with the enormous capital costs that an inhouse server would, but there is cost, especially if you are migrating data. For an established business to move from physical servers to cloud infrastructure there is a substantial investment. It takes a lot of bandwidth and time to move all if an organization’s data over, and in doing so, you will likely incur a fair amount of cost.
• Dependability and What Uptime Really Means: Cloud providers like to measure their effectiveness in uptime; and, in doing so, don’t properly represent what customers want from their cloud provider. Businesses need ubiquitous access to data and applications stored on a cloud construct, and sometimes that can be a problem. The VM running the server may be up, but if there isn’t access to critical information and applications, a business deals with their own downtime, which is a major problem.
• Problems Estimating Costs: The cloud’s cost to a business seems simple enough, but a lot of business owners do a poor job of estimating the true cost of the service. With cloud computing pricing costing businesses so many cents-per-service-unit, they often fail to multiply this cost over months and years. By moving the least utilized applications over first, a company can save more money than just moving it all over at once.
• Trusting Your Architect: Well before cloud implementation, a company would have a cloud architect make them a map (of sorts) so that decision makers can see how the data flows. A problem arises when you’ve trusted the plan and mid-implementation, the migration team wants to change everything. To avoid a complete cloud migration failure, your best bet is to consult with the architect to make certain that everything goes to plan.
• Cloud security: For companies that migrate over to the cloud, they will have to know beforehand that all of the solutions they had deployed to protect their systems from threats are probably not going to be deployed by the cloud provider. As a result, it may initially feel as if the cloud construct is lacking security. Hiring a third-party to test your security will go a long way toward alleviating (or reaffirming) the concerns you may have about your cloud’s security.

As costs go, it’s pretty evident after considering all the factors, that deploying new infrastructure is always going to be costly. An organization can save money by moving to the cloud as long as the migration is done properly and meets all the file sharing, data security, and deployment needs that an organization has. In fact, most organizations have some sort of cloud project on the books for this very reason. The benefits outweigh the detriments for a lot of what companies do.

The Hybrid Approach

Nowadays, the Hybrid Cloud approach is becoming more popular. As data regulations increase and legacy software is still mightily functional, the best option is often to deploy both a cloud platform and keep an on premise server. Essentially, finding ways for the two to work in unison is called a hybrid cloud. While this seems like a match for nearly every business, it comes with a great deal of design and implementation headaches, and can cause significant cost overruns.

In order to design and deploy an effective hybrid cloud, you first have to know what the potential pitfalls can be. Two include:

• Utilization uncertainty: When moving part of an organization’s data and infrastructure to the cloud, there should be a baseline of utilization that is acceptable. If you overplanned for cloud utilization, you could be looking a pretty hefty bill in the face for computing resources your organization will never use.
• Development costs: The two computing constructs often won’t “play nice” and as a result you may be looking at substantial development costs during the integration. These costs are variable and are difficult to plan for, so like everything else IT, plan to spend more than you will and you won’t be left disappointed.

To solve the challenges that come with significant hybrid cloud costs, many organizations will abandon the idea, but really it’s about simplifying the whole process. New strategies, practices, and products are being formed that will simplify the hybrid cloud process, while allowing an organization to get the most out of their IT infrastructure. It won’t be long before there will be hybrid cloud services that will marry the two ends into one secure and dynamic IT infrastructure. Until then, however, controlling your computing costs, no matter the platform, will take careful consideration and thoughtful planning.

At Coleman Technologies, we have years of experience designing, implementing, managing, and supporting powerful IT infrastructures for businesses of all sizes. To learn more about cloud computing, including hybrid cloud implementations, reach out to us today.

Public vs Private

The public cloud is typically used by businesses that don’t have the infrastructure, or the budget to acquire said infrastructure, for hosting cloud-based applications or services. Public cloud solutions are those which are hosted by the provider and accessed remotely through an Internet browser, mobile client, and associated account. They are particularly valuable for businesses that don’t have the means to reliably host their own solutions.

On the other hand, a private cloud solution is used by small businesses that have a means of affording and maintaining the solution. This means administering maintenance to the software and hardware associated with the system, as well as monitoring it for security purposes. Basically, when you go with a private cloud solution, it’s much more involved than a simple public cloud system, so you should be prepared to deal with plenty of issues that wouldn’t be an issue if the solution was hosted elsewhere.

What to Consider

When considering the implementation of a private cloud infrastructure, be sure to consider the following:

• Security: You’ll have more control over your solution if you host it privately onsite, but you’ll also need to adequately protect it.
• Access: Will employees have access to your organization’s cloud solution while out of the office? Hint: They better, otherwise there isn’t a reason to have a cloud. Since your cloud-based applications are stored on your in-house infrastructure, you’ll need to make sure accounts are set up properly and protected.
• Management: Managing a cloud solution is no joke, and since you’re hosting it on your own private server, it comes with all the annoyances and benefits. You can customize your cloud solution to suit your needs, so be sure to understand what you need beforehand so you can leverage it to the best of your ability.
• Maintenance: Taking care of a cloud solution is also a major responsibility, so expect any in-house IT technicians to have a lot more on their plate than they already do.

Coleman Technologies can help you mitigate the issues of a private cloud infrastructure by hosting your private cloud on our own servers, thereby removing the burden it places on your organization. To learn more about this cloud strategy, reach out to us at (604) 513-9428.

Costs
A lot of business owners don’t realize that creating cloud platforms has been completely possible for a long time. It wasn’t until public cloud offerings like SaaS or IaaS were made available that the business world really turned an eye toward these virtualized computing constructs. The reason was, of course cost. As cost goes down, options get more viable. One problem that businesses that have jumped into public cloud computing with both feet have found is that they haven't properly accounted for the risk inherent in hosting their business’ data and infrastructure with someone else. These risks can significantly reduce (or in some cases decimate) the ROI of a cloud computing initiative.

One of the major risks, loss of data security, has driven many organizations toward a more private cloud strategy. Building a private cloud can be complicated as it involves calculating both fixed and recurring costs over a pertinent time frame. Since with a private cloud platform, an organization will be responsible for the hardware systems, management, and control, variables such as usage (forecasted/actual), system and data redundancy, and the general specifications of the machines used to run the virtualized infrastructure have to be taken into account.

So, while it’s true that public cloud costs are also difficult to determine, when settling in on a private cloud solution, you need to dot your i’s and cross your t’s at every turn to ensure that you are properly forecasting what the private cloud will cost your company in both migration and operation.

Integration
Chances are your business already uses several public cloud applications, and some of those applications function better, and more cost-effectively, if left there. You see, if you utilize public cloud resources to host non-critical infrastructure or applications, you will likely want to consider setting up a hybrid cloud system, where your private cloud and your public cloud resources are integrated.

This hybrid cloud platform will absolutely have its difficulties, but once it is up and running, your business’ computing will be accessible through one single access portal. If you so choose to reinforce this strategy with secure access control systems you can do that, but know that it requires a lot of effort to include security provisions and configurations to allow workloads to be run anywhere.

Time
One big problem many businesses have when deciding to move a portion of their IT out of the public cloud and into their own private cloud is just the time it will take to get this finished. These virtualized computing environments are more robust than ever and can facilitate a lot of organizational flexibility, but operational issues and hardware management of on-premise hardware is time consuming and costly.

Not only does your IT admin (and team) need time to configure and migrate all relevant data, they will be on the hook for all the maintenance and management of the virtual machines and the underlying hardware, making it problematic for small IT teams.

At Coleman Technologies, we know how important collaborative work environments are, we also know how crucial data security is. As a result, we are in a great position to help you. Our technicians can work with you to find the right balance between public and private cloud resources, while having the technical expertise to help manage and maintain any computing environment or infrastructure. If you would like more information about hosted solutions, whether they be on the web or in your server room, our technicians can help. Call us today at (604) 513-9428.

It goes without saying that having a comprehensive communications strategy is critical for the functionality of your business. Many businesses use traditional phone systems, and they pay handsomely for them. VoIP is a great way to utilize the bandwidth you already pay for to facilitate a business phone solution.

A VoIP system works by transferring sounds into data packets and then transferring them in real-time over an Internet connection. The sound is simply unpacking the data packets. The reason so many small businesses are switching to a VoIP system is that it allows an organization to manage their telephone system cost more effectively.

Nowadays there are hosted VoIP options that present companies with a virtual call center of sorts. Essentially, instead of hosting a stand-alone server at your place of business, the telephone system is hosted in the cloud and accessed through a web client.

Before you can consider either VoIP platform, you’ll have to determine what type of control you need over the technology. If you are someone that wants to play with settings and configurations, hosting your own PBX phone server may be the way to go, but if you are someone that doesn’t mind spending a little more per month to have these systems managed for you, a cloud-based VoIP solution should be right for you.

Your average VoIP solution provides your business with a path to cut the often-substantial capital costs of buying, housing, and maintaining an onsite telephony server. Since the provider will absorb the costs of maintenance and the outward reliability of the platform, you can spend less time focusing on managing your telephone system and more time relying on it.

Since VoIP downtime is not an option for the average business, you’ll want to consult with Coleman Technologies IT professionals to help you find the right solution to fit your business’ needs. Our staff are experts at designing, implementing, and managing computing networks that work for the modern business, so relying on us to help you deploy the right communications platform makes a lot of sense.

For more information about hosted VoIP or any other communication used to improve employee productivity and customer satisfaction, call Coleman Technologies today at (604) 513-9428.

There are a few kinds of vendors, offering various things to businesses like assorted supplies, equipment, and services. One kind of vendor that has grown increasingly crucial in particular, is that which delivers cloud services to businesses. Due to the expansion of the cloud’s utility in all kinds of business purposes, the choice of a vendor has also expanded in importance.

How to Select the Right Vendor, for Cloud Services and Otherwise
This is going to require some preemptive research and consideration of your own goals. Once you’ve determined your priorities in both the short and long-term, you and your IT resources should examine your available options to see which vendor is most compatible - and that’s in more ways than one.

Not only should your vendor offer what you need at a reasonable rate, there should be some consistency in the goals that your organization and theirs have. You also need to be able to trust your vendor to attend to the services agreed upon, whether that’s a managed agreement or a simple equipment procurement.

How Cloud Services are Different
However, your vendors for your cloud services should be held to a somewhat higher standard - after all, your data is going to be at stake. Therefore, it is important that they be graded differently than your other vendors would be.

Before committing to a cloud service provider; or a cloud strategy in earnest, there are two considerations that must be examined. First, what data is your vendor going to be able to access, and second, what applications can your vendor access as well?

After this initial consideration, you need to also take other factors into account, like how business-critical a said process is, how compliant they are to certain policies, and how much risk is involved in a given action. From there, you can establish if a particular cloud vendor is a good fit or not.

At Coleman Technologies, we can technically be considered a vendor ourselves, as we provide our managed services to other businesses. As such, we’d like you to consider us a candidate for your IT needs. Give us a call at (604) 513-9428 for more information.

Applications
Applications, or “apps,” are pieces of software that can be used for specific purposes in the workplace--but you probably already knew that. If used properly, they can streamline specific processes within your organization. Some apps don’t use connectivity, but there are countless others that utilize it to connect all kinds of workers from the professional spectrum together. These kinds of connected apps are generally found in the cloud, and their wide range of use is one of the defining things about them.

The Cloud
You can think of the cloud like a big data center that gives you access to all sorts of software, processing, and storage options through your Internet connection. Computing resources tend to be made available to users through an “as a service” model, in which users secure access to it by paying a monthly fee rather than purchasing a license outright. Apps deployed through the cloud are slightly more expensive as a result, but the flexibility offered by being able to cancel at any time or add new users makes it a valuable opportunity to save money in the long run. Basically, it creates a situation where you transfer your capital costs of purchasing licenses to an operational cost.

Public, Private, Hybrid
There are several different ways that a cloud solution can be constructed. For example, most of the Software as a Service (SaaS) apps are offered as a public cloud solution, which means that the application and any processing or storage associated with it is on shared hardware. It’s made available through the browser or dedicated app, and for this purpose, its costs are generally lower than more private solutions.

In comparison, a private cloud that’s hosted in-house on a network or server unit is much more secure and customizable, as you’re controlling all of the maintenance and management of the system. For this specific reason, however, we recommend private cloud systems only for businesses that have the assets to take care of them; this includes those who outsource IT maintenance or those who have an in-house IT department who can provide the necessary management and oversight of the system.

For the best of both worlds, a hybrid approach can work. After all, some data is more sensitive than other data is, so anytime-anywhere access to it might not be in your business’ best interests. By combining the cost-effective public cloud model with the security of the private cloud, you can maintain adequate accessibility and data security.

Cloud Services
Just like there are many different types of clouds, there are many different cloud services, all for both businesses and individual users. There are generally three major categories that these cloud services are split into:

• Software as a Service: Software delivery is the name of the game here, including communications (like telephone and email), productivity (Office 365), and even security.
• Platform as a Service: Development is the main reason to go this route. This lets users create applications, collaborate on projects, and test new software without purchasing or paying for hardware.
• Infrastructure as a Service: Virtualized environments that can be used for processing, storage, software, and so much more, are what a user gets from Infrastructure as a Service.

To learn more about how the cloud can help your business, reach out to Coleman Technologies at (604) 513-9428.