To Cloud or not To Cloud, that is the question...

I attended the IPExpo at Earls Court the other week. There were clearly three trends: Virtualisation, Storage and Cloud. Virtualisation and storage are relatively easy to understand and recognise whether you need them or not, but the cloud is still a bit nebulous and can mean many different things to many different people.

As the CEO of a growing company, how do you know whether the cloud is a good idea or to be avoided right now? Whether to get in to the cloud or not is not an easy decision, it's a fundamental shift in technology strategy and philosophy. To get the right answer you need to thoroughly examine your company to see if it's ready for the cloud. Only if the company is ready will the benefits be fully realised.

Moving to the cloud when it's not appropriate could result in a costly failure.
My company, GreenBOLD have just released a short, easily readable, white paper giving some basic advice and some simple questions to ask yourself before you take your company's IT in to the cloud. It's downloadable here.

However, ahead of downloading it, three things you should think about are:

• Where's my data and who has access to it? Your data will be moving from the confines of your own environment to the custody of a third party. How comfortable does that make you feel? Data Protection means different things in different countries.
• What security is in place? Cloud solutions are accessed via the internet so you are wholly reliant on the third party's security systems to prevent anyone accessing your systems. Is that a situation you can manage?
• What would you do if access to your cloud solution suddenly failed? It's not impossible that the third party hosting company could go off line, whether it's a technical or financial disaster. In those circumstances what would you do? How would you recover?

The white paper has more questions that you should think about before you dive in to the cloud. Feel free to contact us to discuss your thoughts around the Cloud in more detail. GreenBOLD have experienced senior IT leaders who have implemented cloud-based solutions before and could help you make the right decision.

The conundrum of Social Media and Time-shifting

Two things people like:

• TV time-shifting a la Tivo, BBC iPlayer or Sky+. It's brilliant, pause/rewind live TV, record a show whilst watching another, you know how it works, we wouldn't be without it.
• Social Networking during TV shows, twittering about X-Factor, facebooking on how bad they're dancing on Strictly, whatever, it really does add to the experience. Again, increasingly people wouldn't be without it.

Now, here's the kicker: These two things people love are fundamentally incompatible. If you're watching a time-shifted show then the web2.0 experience is impossible. Even a few minutes pause for a quick toilet trip means social networking moves from being a great part of the experience to becoming a source of irritating spoilers.

Is there any way the two can come together again once the viewer has done any kind of time-shift? I can see the idea of time-shifting web2.0 experiences alongside the time-shifted show, but that's going to be a one-way street - certainly it can no longer be an interactive opportunity.

Acknowledging that read-only is possible, can the web2.0 experience be linked to the time-shifted show itself? When you start to think about it, the scope of the problem gets very big, very quickly because of the variety of ways in which time-shifting now happens and the sources from which people get their time-shifting.

So, the question is: Will people go back to watching programmed TV rather than time-shifted TV so they can take part in social media associated with the programme? Maybe, if its worth it. If I was a TV channel exec I'd be driving hard at getting the social media element of the programme because it's the best way to retain an audience in these fragmented viewing times. What do you think?

A Cloud Explosion?

Today, Hexus published an article on SME adoption of the cloud. Apparently, it's going great guns and SMEs are gagging to use it and once they are using it they want to increase their use of it.

The research undertaken by CompTIA found that 18% of UK SMEs use cloud solutions with a further 30% planning implementations over the coming year. Those that had already adopted the cloud were very pleased with the experience and a whopping 81% planned to increase their usage.

Wow! I'm currently writing a white paper specifically for SMEs and whether they should join the cloud bang-wagon or not. It looks like it's well timed. It's not quite ready yet, so in the meantime, here's a few things to think about when you're considering the cloud for your company:

• Service: The internet is not a guaranteed service, there are no service levels associated with it. It could go down at any time and there'd be nothing you could do. Assuming that you're happy with this, you then need to understand and be happy with the service levels being offered by the hosting company, do they fit in with your company's own service requirements, and for that matter your customers?
• Where's my Data?: Knowing where your data is and who has access to it is something you should be absolutely certain of nailing down. In addition, what governmental data-protection legislation does it fall under? For instance, the US has far less stringent data protection requirements than the UK, particularly since the patriot act.
• Security: If you're accessing the service via the internet, it's only the security of the hosting company that stops anyone with internet access getting at your systems. Knowing this, you should be ensuring that the hosting company has security of your systems front and center.

Above all though, if you think the cloud is for you, investigate things first. Don't jump in and preferably use someone who has previous experience to make sure you get the service you require rather than one the hosting company decides you want. GreenBOLD can help with this through a part-time IT Project Manager with hosting/cloud experience.