How’s Your “Pandemic Contingency” Plan?

Do more with less. That seems to be a recurring theme in this economic climate. Budgets are being trimmed and workforces are downsized. Fewer resources are tasked with accomplishing enterprise objectives.

Let’s throw one more curve in the mix…swine flu. There is much buzz about the illness and what it means for business (Companies Plan for a Possible Swine Flu Pandemic). Large tech companies such as Sprint, Microsoft, General Electric, IBM, and Dell already have pandemic contingency plans in place. They include restricting travel, sanitizing call centers, limiting face-to-face meetings, and enabling employees to work from home. These measures may seem somewhat restricting, but swine flu or not, business must go on.

Look for an increase in alternative communication methods. Video conferencing jumps to mind. New advancements in HD video conferencing enable “just like being there” interactions. And for those without the latest HD solutions, video calling is a quality, cost effective, plug and play alternative. Video calling plans are available for around $30 per month.

And web conferencing could play a huge role, too. These always on solutions offer application and document sharing, whiteboarding, chat messaging, and meeting recording in a cross-platform environment - affordable and effective.

So, for those companies without the resources to plan ahead for the “what if” scenario, look to simple and productive ways to keep your business in tip top shape in the face of a possible worldwide health scare.


Erika Moskal

My Glasses Have X-Ray Vision

I often listen to what people like Tim O'Reilly (computer manual publisher/icon) and Sir Tim Berners-Lee (father of the World Wide Web) have to say about the future of computing. Last night, I watched a recent interview with Tim O'Reilly speak about the continued advancement of the Web. Back in 2004, Tim O'Reilly and two of his colleagues coined the phrase Web 2.0. Where are we going and what might we expect from the future of the web. Both O'Reilly and Berners-Lee expect a heavy advancement in the semantic web. But before explaining more on the semantic web and its impact, look at some subtle changes to current computing. Instead of just relying on a keyboard and mouse to input text, we are now beginning to see other tools used, not by geeks, but everyday consusmers. The use of a GPS and an accelerometer, as it is built into the iPhone, for example, allows the device to be used in manners other than just typing. The new Google App for the iPhone allows a user to get information, such as movie times, just by talking into the phone. The GPS allows for the search to be local to your location, while the accellerometer intuitively understands you are placing the phone to your ear to begin talking. This is a small example of the beginning of new human/computer interactions.

O'Reilly makes reference to the user interface (UI) of the near future. Imagine your glasses acting as your UI, offering updated information, such as biography information on that person across the room. What? Impossible? Probably not. There are rudimentary glasses on the market right now that act as your monitor. The current version of iPhoto has facial recognition built in. Add to this a beefed up wireless internet connection, combined with your Outlook database on steroids. Instead of having 5000 people in your database, you might subscribe to an enhanced Facebook or LinkedIn that has facial recognition and bios on millions of people. Now, as you walk down the street and look up at an interesting building, the building's tenant list pops up on your UI. Community tagging protocols alllow for immediate general information on the public space. Across the street is the grocery store. Walk in and start checking health guide information on that piece of produce as you pick it up. Your glasses have a scanner on them, picking up information such as harvest date, location and use/non-use of pesticides in the production of the crop.

Although these are just my examples of potential future computing, they are based on current technology that will continue to evolve as the semantic web (and the social semantic web) come to fruition. There are many skeptics of the semantic web, based on worries of privacy and censorship, as well as whether it will actually happen. In my optimistic mindset, I believe there is enough potential good from a semantic web to march forward. What is the semantic web? My definition is a modification of the one found in Wikipedia. Semantic web is the combined evolution of information services for deeper interaction of people and machines to use web content in a more precise manner. While semantic web enables integration of business processing with precise automatic logic, the social semantic web is more about the deeper evolution of people using computers.

Ten years ago, Sir Tim Berners-Lee stated his vision for the future of the Web. "I have a dream for the Web [in which computers] become capable of analyzing all the data on the Web – the content, links, and transactions between people and computers. A ‘Semantic Web’, which should make this possible, has yet to emerge, but when it does, the day-to-day mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy and our daily lives will be handled by machines talking to machines. The ‘intelligent agents’ people have touted for ages will finally materialize."

My imagination continues to run. I see the future of public and private clouds that offer various services that are immediately available. All you need to do is ask. My voice activated microphone, which is built into my sunglasses, picks up my request to scan the grocery aisles. Since my diet is recorded by my personal agent (semantic web), I am reminded that it is time to eat some more fiber. My agent remembers the ingredients for that special cauliflower recipe and begins to point out items that I need to purchase for the meal. I did not have to sit in front of a computer to get this information. Instead, it is with me, on my mobile computing device and agent.

However, the most important future for computing still revolves around how I keep track of my sunglasses. I keep on losing them. I can't wait to hear what O'Reilly or Berners-Lee does for keeping track of their glasses.



Scott Charter












interview with Tim O'Reilly

Broadband Access and Availability

A peer-reviewed journal, First Monday released an intriguing analysis on the current state of US and worldwide broadband connectivity. Any developed nation can easily point to the necessities of Internet connectivity and access to broadband in order to drive social, commercial, and governmental innovation. Over the years Internet technology has fostered a new golden area of information and instant access to applications and services delivered at the speed of light. The initial boom of the Internet was brought on by intense investment by the US government to establish networks that then gave way to private corporations with independent regulation.

The US still has one of the most robust and built out backbones in the world but we are quickly falling behind in fiber connections while still focusing on copper lines. Compared to other developed nations the US ranks 15th in broadband penetration with limited service options in most parts of the country by local oligopolistic telecoms. Tax breaks and rate increases for the various bells promised a larger investment in "fiber-to-the-curb" and upgrade existing 100-year old copper infrastructure with fiber networks that have to this date failed to be fully delivered. As referenced in the article "… in the early 1990’s … every Bell company … made commitments to rewire America, state by state ... By 2006, 86 million households should have had a service capable of 45 Mbps in both directions ... The phone companies collected over $200 billion in higher phone rates and tax perks, about $2,000 per household.”

The majority of US homes and business only have access to one or two options for broadband connectivity and rural communities are typically only served with satellite. Federal regulation has been subject to intense political and lobbying pressures from private interests that discourage a truly openly competitive market. Former Chairman of the FCC William Kennard typified the issues of these influences remarking that regulation is “too often used as a shield, to protect the status quo from new competition — often in the form of smaller, hungrier competitors — and too infrequently as a sword — to cut a pathway for new competitors to compete by creating new networks and services.”

Not with-standing the incredible capital investment required to lay down fiber networks and associated signaling equipment the solution may lie within local municipalities. The issue is that we have capacity in the nations fiber backbone but that the US has extremely limited access line capacity. As noted above, the claims in the early 1990's by bells that symmetrical service in excess of 45Mbps is just not the reality of today due to limited access to infrastructure that connects fiber last mile to consumer premises. Large regulatory changes must be made in order to increase competition and bring millions of potential consumers reliable, fast, and fairly priced access to broadband. Intense competition spurs innovation and brings the market in line with true consumer sentiment and demand. With large blocks of wireless spectrum being freed up by the impending FCC mandate to switch to all digital broadcasts perhaps one solution will be large wireless mesh networks connected to curb-side access points. Another solution may be to encourage customer-owned fiber and ownership of access networks to home and building owners.

It is without question that Internet and broadband connectivity has developed into a national and worldwide necessity. It has driven large economic progress and fostered the creation of entirely new industries and will continue to be a large contributing force to our society. Encouraging more competition for access providers to broadband networks and fostering more local based efforts to fix the lack of fiber access line capacity are issues that we must find solutions to. Demand for multimedia and streaming applications will only continue to increase at an exponential rate. Without strong innovation on the delivery of services to the customer premises the nation that birthed a worldwide information revolution will continue to be far behind the leaders and that is simply unacceptable.



Danny Kim

Dont do your own IT at all

Great article by Eric Novikoff from Enki consulting.

http://www.enkiconsulting.net/blog/dont-do-your-own-it-at-all.html

EarthLink Could Have Benefitted from a Cloudy Earth Day

In light of the Earthlink outage that occurred on Earth Day (hmm… what an unfortunate coincidence), I’d be willing to bet scores of companies are taking a good look at their business continuation and disaster recovery plans – or are looking to create one (yikes). With the current economic climate, those plans need to provide the right amount of data insurance without putting an undue burden on capital resources.

Moving your disaster recovery to the cloud is a great way to accomplish both. WBS Connect offers cloud computing that enables a cost-effective way to backup complete server arrays. And your data is readily available if disaster strikes (or you lose power!)

Since cloud computing is utility-billed, you pay for only as much computing power and storage as you need, as a monthly operating expense. Do away with large capital outlays to purchase server infrastructure “just in case”. How about management? With cloud, we manage your network for you. No need to hire additional IT staff, train them, and fork over salary and benefits. Sounds like a good deal to me.

May I suggest a new industry acronym…DRaaS…Disaster Recovery as a Service!

Erika Moskal
WBS Connect










Prima Cloud

Great Article on ZD Net

Joe McKendrick wrote a very nice article in ZD Net on the pressures enterprise clients are feeling from their software clients. Enjoy...

James Governor calls it enterprise software sales a “pathology.” ZDNet colleague Michael Krigsman calls it “ugly enterprise software sales tactics.” Either way, both are calling enterprise software vendors on the carpet for foisting expensive solutions on customers that may not need all that application power.

The instigator in this thread is Forrester’s Ray Wang, who admonished vendors to “stop pushing products that clients don’t need.” At a time when businesses need to wring as much value as possible out of their IT investments, Wang says vendors are instead are getting obnoxious with their sales approaches::

“At this point in time, clients really need their vendors to propose options to help theme save money. Clients seek assistance in reducing their cost basis of running their software. Though in some cases, new products may help clients create operational efficiency or meet regulatory requirements, clients increasingly report their sales people pushing a number and not a product that meets their needs.”

The feeling seems to be that vendor sales reps are under a lot of pressure to make their numbers, and are riding roughshod over customers to get there. “Aggressive tactics are the norm,” Governor says.

Here’s how “good” enterprise software vendors should act, Wang says:

“Despite the pressures to meet unrealistic revenue forecasts, clients should expect their vendor sales teams to take a solution selling approach to identifying options to reduce costs. Those that fail to do so will face a wrath of rebellion when clients have the opportunity to take action. The good news, vendors who understand how to craft real solutions that provide ROI and immediate impact, have already implemented programs to provide assistance. Examples include improving existing peer forums, renegotiating existing terms, offering more entry points to support and maintenance options, assisting with vendor financing, and lowering cost of usage and ownership. Kudos to those vendors!”

Of course, as the economy recovers, enterprise customers will hold a special place in their hearts for vendors that act as mutual partners, versus aggressive panhandlers.

Governor says enterprise customers should get aggressive as well. They can pay more attention what their developers are says, to avoid buying software that will end up as shelfware. Also, many open source solutions may be just as good as their commercial counterparts. And take advantage of the cloud. “Focus more on work and less on dog and pony shows. If its going to take 18 months to decide what platform to adopt you’re doing it wrong.”


ZD Net

What Does 5 Nines Mean to Your Business?

So… what does 5 nines of reliability mean, anyway? It means your unplanned downtime would only be up to 5.26 minutes per year (yes, YEAR). Here’s a quick look at what your SLA really indicates for your business.
























Prima Cloud

Is Social Media Helping or Hurting Productivity?

If used correctly social media can be used as one of the most effective marketing tools available. In the old days entrepreneurs would have to drive their business the old fashioned way, through pure hustle.

I have a neighbor who was a very good networker even before social media. In fact we can't go anywhere without him knowing at least someone. Brian Hart owns Frame de art and has really created a nice business which grew through word of mouth. The interesting part of Brian's booming framing company is that he is consistently selling frames in any economic environment. His product speaks for itself and his store is gaining in popularity by the day. He has complimented his networking skills with facebook and a few other sites he uses to stay in front of the majority of the Denver Metro Area. This is a great example of someone working very hard to market their business through social networking. But the key here is the hard work he puts in.

An article in the USA Today has a different take on social media. The article points out that social media might be distracting to students. (As if we needed an article to point this out)

Students who said they used Facebook reported grade-point averages between 3.0 and 3.5; those who don't use it said they average 3.5 to 4.0. Also, Facebook users said they studied one to five hours a week, vs. non-users' 11 hours or more.

To narrowly stereotype students might be a stretch, it can be distracting to adults as well. I'll admit, I try to keep my facebook closed down during the day for fear it will absorb hours of my work day.

I am sure this is true for many adults. An article in UPI.com it said, Facebook's popularity is growing most quickly among women over 55, says Inside Facebook, which tracks Facebook's growth.

There are about 1.5 million female users older than 55 on the Web site, a 550 percent increase over six months ago. By comparison, membership among people younger than 25 grew by less than 20 percent during the same period, the site says.

Facebook and Twitter although seem to be similar, I approach them very differently. I make sure to keep my Twiiter up all day. I make a point to find new people to add to my Twitter every day. Twitter is not something to be worked passively. It is certainly a useful marketing tool. But the key here is it takes work to make it useful.

Bottom line is although social media does allow people to reach whole other nations of people they would not have had access to ten years ago, the fundamentals of business still apply. It is important to put in the work, to execute, to focus and to stay sharp, because in today's business world if you lose any one of these it could be deadly.

Deploying your SaaS application with PaaS versus Infrastructure as a Service

PaaS, or Platform-as-a-Service, is increasingly being proposed as a way for startups to get to market quickly. But is it economical and practical? I read an excellent blog post today about that, which raised questions about cost of deploying with PaaS, though it didn't answer the hard question, which is what it costs to run a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) without PaaS. (Which is actually really hard to answer!) But in keeping with the topic of discussion, I think the article missed some significant downsides of PaaS that have kept successful SaaS providers from using it so far.
I think the article's analysis is based on a false premise: that hosting/infrastructure/"the messy stuff" should somehow be free or close to it. It's a misconception that is catered to by a lot of vendors whose marketing revolves around getting people to spend money on their PaaS or hosting offering, and the ubiquitous free open-source software that makes the road to SaaS success seem like it's paved with gold. I've seen quite a different story with my customer base, who have had to dot their i's and cross their t's to realize the profits that SaaS can provide.
If you look around at the successful SaaS companies out there, they aren't using PaaS. And, they're paying a lot more than the 13% the article mentioned for a worst-case cost of operations. (Recent studies on successful highly-respected - by analysts - SaaS providers show they pay between 14-34% on operations, which includes staff expenses) Why is that?

Of course, one of the standard answers could be "well, they were founded before PaaS was popular or usable." This may be true, but there are other structural reasons that I think drive their spending more than 13% on their operations:
1. Flexibility: each PaaS vendor has limitations and things they can't do. Combining one or more PaaS services is a very powerful way to get started with your SaaS offering. But, when you combine them, you find that your business ends up missing the mark because you don't have control over all the functional pieces you need in order to move with your market. Most of my customers chose to use open-source software to handle the PaaS features (billing, execution environment, provisioning, metering, etc.) and if they don't want to do the administration that goes with it, ENKI handles that.
2. Scalability: Many (but not all) programmers can write software that will scale. However, when you tie your system to someone else's hosted software, you no longer have control over scalability. This can be a problem with any deployment, but if you stick with Infrastructure-as-a-Service, at least you have more control since you can hack everything you're running.
3. Transparency: I was recently at a conference where 5 startups talked about their experiences with EC2: each had hired employees to figure out what Amazon was doing and adapt their code to work with it (and keep working with it despite performance issues and hidden changes to the infrastructure). If you are on a PaaS platform, this gets more complex.

This brings me to wonder if the 13% in the article includes staff time, since the industry figures do. Similarly, as I mentioned above, the cost of deploying to EC2 is typically much higher than just the cost of a minimum sized instance as the article assumed, because n-tier applications need multiple instances, you will need staff to manage the Amazon interface, and let's face it, the minimum-sized instance has minimum performance: for the type of 15-seat deployments the article mentioned, my customers typically use a lot more resources.

Like the posting, I sing the praises of multi-tenancy, both because I used to work at NetSuite where we made it work well, and now I find myself going through these kinds of cost analyses with my customers over and over, and am only able to really make the costs work out nicely with multi-tenancy OR with a pseudo-virtualization scheme like OpenVZ/Virtuozzo - unless each end-customer deployment is very resource-heavy. Pseudo-virtualization on top of virtualization? Yes: there can be real cost benefits. However, one has to remember that by hiding the provisioning inside a multi-tenant system, it is almost impossible to outsource it to a PaaS, SaaS or infrastructure provider.






Written by Eric Novikoff, ENKI Consulting

Qwest Puts Long Distance Network up for Sale

Qwest Communications Inc. burdened with a heavy $14 Billion dollars in debt will look to sell it's long distance network. This network terminates long distance phone calls along with other advanced telecom services to businesses and government agencies.

According to The Wall Street Journal a sale, which could raise between $2 billion to $3 billion, these people said, would largely leave Denver-based Qwest as a regional provider of telephone and Internet services to consumers.

Potential bidders include companies with similar networks, such as Qwest's larger rivals, AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc., and smaller players like Level 3 Communications Inc. and TW Telecom Inc.

It seems the long distance market has finally caught up with Qwest and they must sever the arm to save the body. The regulated Qwest side of the company still hold value as the incumbent local exchange carrier. It seems the unregulated side of the company, might very well be a deteriorating asset.

Qwest operates a tier one internet backbone where the demand for the services is continuing to increase and the pricing is dropping fairly regularly over the past few years.

If the long distance business has already dropped and the internet services is seeming to slide, Qwest should probably look to make a move rather quickly.

Right now Qwest has a market cap of $6.5 Billion and it has $565 million in cash on hand.

If the pricing is going to trend downward, even with the sale of $3 billion, the ocean of debt they are swimming in may make their share holders a little nervous.

The good thing is the asset is not going anywhere, it just may change the color of the sign the lights up the Denver skyline.