RingCube made their mark in the technology industry when they gave a dramatic performance at the Demo show. (Demo is where start-ups get just 6 minutes to showcase their products and technology.) CTO Michael Larkin appeared to knock his laptop on the floor sending the stage screens dark. He then casually plugged in his iPod into the port of a colleague’s laptop and his desktop loaded into the machine’s memory.

RingCube’s innovative technology takes virtual desktop adoption to the next level by eliminating the trade off between user personalisation and centralised IT management. When combined with a desktop virtualisation product like Citrix XenDesktop, RingCube makes it easier for IT to give each user a personalised virtual desktop. This includes a full operating system and user profile settings, plus all of the applications users require — whether local or streamed.

What does this mean for consumers?

• Dramatically reduced cost of storage
• Simplified transition from physical to virtual desktops.
• Gives end users all the personalisation benefits of a ‘dedicated’ VDI desktop
• Offers IT administrators all the cost benefits of a ‘pooled’ VDI desktop
• Increases deployment of virtual desktops to every user companywide

To learn more about RingCube, you can visit www.ringcube.com.

“The acquisition of RingCube underscores our chief goal of enabling users to access their desktops and applications on any device, and making virtual desktops simple and affordable for IT. As customers take on enterprise-wide desktop transformation initiatives, Citrix is in the best position to provide a broad range of technology delivering multiple types of virtual desktops that satisfy every user in the enterprise. RingCube technology adds a significant capability to provide users and IT flexible, personal VDI desktops at a much lower cost.”
Bob Schults, Group Vice President, Enterprise Desktops and Applications at Citrix

Microsoft has the Answer – Office 365 The Cloud Solution – gives you anywhere, anytime access to the Office apps and competencies you so heavily rely on:

• SharePoint site – This platform facilitates the creation, access and sharing of files from a single point. Your customised SharePoint site can be easily created and monitored by you, with password protection where needed.
• Office web apps – Access, view, and edit documents directly in your web browser through online versions of Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.
• Email and calendar - Email, calendar, and contacts are readily available from virtually anywhere, at any time, on desktops, laptops, and mobile devices, while protecting you from viruses and spam. All you need is an internet connection.
• Instant Messaging and Online Meetings – Microsoft Lync Online enables you to find and connect with the right person through instant messaging, Lync video calls, or online meetings. Utilise modern conferencing through sharing your desktop with colleagues and partners.

In recent years the browser market has become more competitive and products such as Firefox and Chrome have really been giving Microsoft a run for their money! This has prompted the release of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 9 web browser.

Along with increased speed of 35% the application has 3 key features that Microsoft has brought to our attention:

• Tracking protection – A new tool that prevents users from being tracked as they move from site to site. This will prevent commercial firms from tailoring adds and reduce spam emails
• It keeps a close eye on any downloads to prevent any Trojans or other viruses from sneaking through
• IE9 also has hardware acceleration built in so it can call on the power of a PC’s graphics card to display sites in more detail.

An estimate has come in from the web analysis firm Net Applications that suggests IE has about a 56% share of the global market, with Firefox on their tail with about 22%, Chrome 11% and Safari 6%.

Multi-nationals such as Kraft, Citrix and Microsoft have all adopted the scheme where employees in the US are given a subsidy to allow them to purchase their own hardware. Mick Hollison, vice president of Marketing for Citrix said that as well as this being a money saving solution, it is good for the staff, saying “employees love having the freedom to choose whatever they like”. The Citrix employees and users of their software, in effect, use their computer purely as a viewer as they log onto their virtual desktop via a Citrix portal. The rest of their computer can be filled up with whatever they want from games to photos. The system can be configured so that no data from within the Citrix Portal can be stored locally on the computer but only in a remote data centre, removing the risk of lost data due to viruses or hardware failure.

For Citrix, Mick Hollison, said the scheme has saved them average savings of 15-20% versus a traditional desktop deployment.

Sounds perfect, doesn’t it? … However the one drawback for the employee would be maintenance and repairs. Under these schemes in the US, the purchase of the computer is subsidised but the maintenance (including anti-virus software etc) is the sole responsibility of the employee.

What do you think of this scheme? Would you take up the offer to BYOC (bring you own computer) if your company offered it to you?

  Why managed services are critical
 to the success of your Cloud investment
by Mitesh Patel,
managing director, Fifosys Limited

When a business owner or director comes to me for help with their IT strategy, the first thing I want to know is: how do you make money?  To me, understanding where that company is profitable, or why it isn’t, is the key to being able to recommend the IT solutions and services that will really work for the business.  Many years of that type of direct relationship with clients across many different types of industry means I can really say that we understand our clients’ businesses.  Why is that important?  It’s because I know that the biggest concern for any CEO considering managed services options is “How much of my business do you understand?”

   
Understanding the client’s business isn’t a one-off exercise either.  Becoming a trusted advisor means making sure that their IT strategy keeps pace with their business strategy, supports peaks and troughs in  demand and enables them to integrate new products and applications as their business grows or changes.  It also means understanding the role the directors want to take in respect of their IT environment.

 
I meet with Boards of Directors who will tell me: “IT isn’t our business. We don’t want to know the detail because we’re not technical. We want to engage the experts who DO know about it. We want you to take charge of it and make it your problem, not ours. That’s why you’re here.”

 
And I meet with other Boards of Directors who say: “We want to know all about our IT. Teach us everything about it.  Bring in your experts and teach our people. That’s why you’re here.”

  
Of course we are happy to support both those positions and, while they might seem to be contrasting, they have a consistent underlying theme: the right IT solutions are the ones that support their business in a flexible, low-risk, scalable and cost-effective manner.  This goes to the heart of managed services and why they are so important to helping you derive maximum benefits from your Cloud investment.

Simply put, whether you’re investing in a Cloud-based environment or a full on-premise solution, you still need to manage those services.  The critical success factors are, from the IT perspective, managing the environment so that it provides a robust and resilient infrastructure and then, from the business viewpoint, enabling and supporting change. 
Step one is determining your strategy for an IT and applications infrastructure that will support where you want your business to go.  Once you know that, how much do you want (or need) to resource, train and maintain an in-house IT team?  And once you know that, how many different suppliers, service contracts and integration arrangements do you want to deal with?

     
Your company may be at Step One and want help there.  Or you may be further down the line, with service and applications infrastructures built up and enhanced over many years, but now find you have disparate systems, each with its own security, integrity and capacity planning implications. Regardless of the complexity or maturity of your IT environment, Cloud-based managed services can deliver significant benefits.  The key is to work with a trusted advisor and to be realistic about your options.

 
As one business advisor said to us recently, “The Cloud can only help to optimise the IT spend for many companies once they recognise the standardisation and commoditisation of basic IT infrastructure – and therefore appreciate the value of managed services to their business.  The main problem we are seeing is where companies are taking the rubbish they have in their business and sending it to a hosting facility in the hope that it will suddenly be better…”  This is where domain knowledge and industry insight comes to the fore in being able to carry out detailed assessments of business information before we would recommend a managed services solution.

We also find a few misconceptions arising time and again:

All or nothing?

 
Firstly, some business owners and IT managers believe that managed services demands an ‘all or nothing’ commitment, where moving to the Cloud means handing over everything they are doing and dispensing with all their IT skills.  Let’s debunk that straightaway.  Certainly if you want to hand over all your systems and applications, we can arrange that for you, and if you’d like to get shot of your people, that’s up to you too – but neither of those are pre-requisites of the Cloud or a managed services environment!

 
You can take any level of hosted and managed environment you want, from a single piece of software through to a fully outsourced service.  And even that doesn’t have to mean there’s nothing left within your own business.  Depending on your business needs, a hybrid solution may be the most appropriate, combining both on-premise and cloud-based strategies.

Suitability

Secondly, some early assessments of the Cloud as a hosting environment may have created the inaccurate impression that it is primarily of benefit only for non-critical applications. Again we can debunk that: many companies have moved highly business-critical applications into the Cloud.  CRM, for example, in different forms can be business-critical and works well in a Cloud environment, as have back-office, supply chain management or production management applications. 

Shock of the new? Not any more

Thirdly, we think a Cloud-based managed services environment gives you more choice, not less.  We’ve looked at the benefits and the risks in our previous articles in this series, and we’ve discussed some of the concerns about outsourcing such as perceived lack of control.  However, the majority of companies outsource part of their IT already, even if they don’t think of it in that way, for example in the purchase of software that in the past would have been custom-built.  Nowadays, your first thought wouldn’t be to look for a programmer: you would research what the market has ready-made and customise it to your business.  The same approach should apply to managed services, appreciating that the Cloud has simply enabled additional flexibility and scalability in that environment.

  
In particular, if your company has a catalyst for change, such as moving offices or buying another company, Cloud-based solutions can play an important role in managing and enabling those transitions.  Trusted providers should be able to compare and contrast both on-premise and cloud-based solutions, with ROI and implementation analysis so you know the range of options.

   
All things considered: our view

From the simplest hardware solution, where a basic managed environment will give you access to “a server in a rack” or some dedicated space in a data centre, if that’s all you need that’s fine – but are you deriving real business benefit from that arrangement?  Whatever you have still needs an element of managing, unless you are completely happy with the product exactly as it came out of the box or you have the range of in-house skills available to customise and adapt what you’ve bought.  With each element of your infrastructure you can have a separate Buyer Support Agreement and deal individually with vendors or resellers, or you can find a company that takes care of everything for you.

 As a trusted advisor to many companies, after assessing the type of business they do and the type and volumes of data they use, transfer, store and archive, we will say what we believe are the best (and best value) options. Ultimately the decision comes down to how much day-to-day management responsibility you can – and want – to maintain in-house.

As Elliot Zissman, our marketing director, says:  “In my view, managed services in a Cloud-based environment is basically what the Internet was invented for.  It gives us an enhanced delivery model to offer our customers and they in turn have an improved cost and flexibility model which can help them become more competitive.  Surely that way everyone benefits.”

And finally, always remember the question I’m coming to ask you: how do you make money? From your answers, we can show you how managed services can support where your business is – or can be – most successful.

  The risks

Are there risks in the Cloud approach –
and what’s the risk for your business if you ignore the Cloud altogether?  
by Mitesh Patel,
managing director, Fifosys Limited

In part one of our series, we looked at the many benefits of the Cloud approach for your business.  We like the benefits – but what about any downside risks, where does the industry see the Cloud going in the next few years and should you ignore the Cloud for now? 

  
You may have seen suppliers emphasising cost-reduction as the primary driver for a Cloud environment. Now of course we’ll all vote for lower costs, but in our view there’s a caveat here: if a supplier is only focused on cost measures, we think that’s a risk in itself.  We consider the Cloud’s benefits as significantly more wide-ranging, but we also appreciate the perceived risks from an approach that some have dismissed as merely “IT resource-sharing”.  Obviously your confidential business information, your intellectual property, your client lists – effectively your competitive edge – are not resources you would want to share!

So can a Cloud environment deliver the protection you want for your confidential business data?  Certainly it can – and we appreciate it’s important for you to be certain that you retain ownership of your data and that it will always be encrypted ‘for your eyes only’.  Your supplier should be able to demonstrate how their servers and applications are compartmentalised for your data.

The key message for protecting your business information, however, is that no matter where your data sits, whether it’s on your own computers in the office next to you or in a data centre miles away, all these machines need to be connected to the Internet and all need appropriate access security and firewalls.  The proximity of hardware to your business’s physical location will not of itself improve the safety or integrity of your data.  In fact, given the level of specialised physical security and access controls in the data centres we work with, we’d contend that data is probably safer there than anywhere else.

What about “access-anywhere”?  The concept sounds great for your business, enabling you and your employees to access your systems from any office, on the road or at home.  Is there a risk, though, that providing such ‘open’ access options can compromise the security of your systems or increase pressure on firewalls?  As with the previous point about data confidentiality, access-anywhere also depends on Internet connectivity. Therefore the speed and quality of the service depends on that final line connection into the offices where your computers are housed.  That’s your weakest link!  Realistically, delivering the bandwidth you need into your office could be a lot more expensive for your business than tapping into the comms infrastructures of a data centre that is custom-designed from the outset to handle significant levels of two-way data traffic.

Lastly, does a Cloud environment risk compromising visibility – literally knowing where your data is as well as being able to maintain a view across all of it?  When it comes to physical location, we appreciate that business owners want to know where their data is held and many will be required to know, for regulatory reasons.  We are always able to tell our clients where their data is stored.  It may be a Cloud environment, but it’s grounded on terra firma as far as we are concerned….. Moreover, all our clients are hosted in one of two centres in Maidenhead or Milton Keynes, which delivers the additional reassurance that our computers are based in the UK.

   
Far from restricting data views, we believe the Cloud approach can in fact enhance end-to-end visibility across your business data operations and performance, which in turn can help you improve customer service and quality at minimal cost.

So is the Cloud the future….?

 
Looks like it….a recent EU report into the opportunities for European Cloud Computing says that the Cloud has proven to be a major commercial success over recent years and will play a major role in the ICT domain over the next 10 years or more.  The report concludes that “future systems will exploit the capabilities of managed services and resource provisioning further”.

Analyst reports include forecasts that that the worldwide market for Cloud services in 2013 will be $44.2bn, with the European market ranging from €971m in 2008 to €6,005m in 2013 and 12% of the worldwide software market going to the Cloud.

 
… or should we watch from a distance and ultimately ignore?

The industry has clearly taken to the Cloud so what, then, are the risks of sitting this one out? When we assess the impacts for our clients of ignoring the Cloud, key factors include the continuing requirements for localised maintenance, sustaining power and bandwidth levels and keeping systems and skills up to date.  Most significant, though, is the growing demand for remote access to support the flexible working patterns and distributed mode of business operations that characterise the 24×7 global village.  For your business, this means being able to provide the right level of access for your employees in a secure, controlled (and controllable) manner.

Operationally, there are risks for you as a business in maintaining a single-site IT infrastructure.  You have the costs involved in protecting the environment locally.  You need to maintain arrangements with local engineers to ensure stability of your environment or maintain and develop the skills of your own in-house technical team. Having your own teams responsible for managing the infrastructure, application updates and all appropriate licensing arrangements means your in-house support specialists effectively represent a further single point of failure risk that you need to manage and mitigate.  Contracting other local suppliers can reduce your resourcing risk but means you need to manage multiple relationships and service level agreements.

 
Keith Foster, a business consultant who advises across a wide range of sectors, sums it up when he says “If companies ignore Cloud computing, a major risk is that they forego opportunities that their competitors take advantage of.  Moreover, there are no end of risks associated with small to medium sized companies trying to run their own computing services, particularly lack of security and lack of skills.”

All things considered – our view

Our experience shows that businesses have accepted risks unknowingly or knowingly simply as a result of the investment they have put into their IT environments. The bigger question, we believe, is why would anyone want the responsibility of running a non-core service in-house for something that they will struggle to manage, update and control?

 
So we say: don’t ignore the Cloud!  If you do, your IT will cost you more than it needs to – and you will have to continue accepting the risks of failure, limiting the operational efficiency for your staff and limiting the expansion potential for your business. Those risks, in our view, are the ones not worth taking…

 
Moreover, with a range of suppliers for different aspects of your IT services, who manages the growth and expansion of your data with all the associated security, integrity and capacity planning implications? In that disparate environment, who helps you develop a coherent strategy going forward?  We’ll examine the strategy approach of managed services and managed hosting environments in more depth in the next article in our series….

On our new and improved site you will find much more information on who we are and what we do. As well as articles, FAQs and our White Paper. There are also several case studies of our previous projects with more to come!

In the next couple of months there will be further improvements such as the addition of our technology page, further thought pieces and some tools to help manage your IT.

We would love to get some feedback, so please have a look, let us know what you think and also how we can make it even better.

One way of getting around this is to adjust and enforce your company’s IT Policy, specifically the sites that employees are allowed to visit. By blocking the main video streaming websites so employees will not be able stream content, however this runs the risk of employees then finding obscure free streaming sites which may have viruses or spyware. While this option does eradicate most of the problem, you may then be left with a bunch of disgruntled employees who may then decide to just not come in to work on the day of the match.

An alternative would be have a television in the office to screen important matches (such as England matches). This will enable employees to continue working, keep up to date with the games and will improve the sense of moral in your office. The other added benefit is that people who do not want to watch the match can carry on with their work without having to worry about bandwidth and network issues.
Let us know if your company doing anything for employees during the World Cup. It would be great to hear any innovative ideas.

One area of significant development is hosting core areas of the back end IT infrastructure and services.  Hosting solutions have been available for over 15 years but required the brand name of ‘Cloud Computing’ to suddenly be considered as a serious subject of discussion.

All of a sudden this brand name has turned into the so called new IT buzz word for 2010.

Whilst traditionally hosting was more considered an easy low investment option for SME’s, this is now applicable to all organisations due to the benefits that include: 

1. Consolidation of physical server hardware, leading to a reduction in warranty renewal costs, space and power
2. Software applications payable on a per user per month basis, thereby reducing the upfront CAPEX costs
3. Removes the risks associated with a single site failure
4. Reduces the investment required for Disaster Recovery
5. Allows systems to be easily restored in the event of a significant hardware and software failure 
6. Allows multiple sites to grow with ease
7. Central point of administration
8. Reduces the number of personnel in the IT team
9. Removes the need to up skill in house IT teams to manage an outsourced hosted environment
10. Puts the responsibility in the hands of the managed hosting provider

To ensure organisations make the right decision, IT must be thought about at a strategic level with clear business objectives defined at the outset. By failing to take IT seriously at a senior level,  organisations could miss out on the continual technology improvements that can deliver clear business benefit from a management, administration and collaboration perspective.

 Channel 4 have recommended you sit in a central position, around 1.5m from the TV and in a darkened room… or what I refer to as a Sunday night.

 Further details of Channels 4’s 3D week can be found here.