Archive for the ‘SaaS’ Category

Cloud Computing Tops List for 2010: Gartner's Strategic Technology Trends

gartner-10-for-2010

Sonian is in the forefront of 5 out of 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2010.

Cloud computing, advanced analytics, green IT and virtualization are all poised to see tremendous growth in the next year because each of these trends ultimately helps customers “do more for less IT budget.”

1. Cloud Computing. Leverage on-demand CPU and storage to solve archival and information governance needs.

2. Advanced Analytics. The cloud is the best place to analyze your terabytes of “dark data” into actionable intelligence.

3. IT for Green. Lower electricity and cooling needs to save money and the planet.

4. Social Computing. Personal and work life as it relates to IT systems are more entwined now than ever before.

5. Virtualization for Availability. Use a “hybrid IT model” – keep some services on-premise and move ancillary to a virtualization layer in the cloud.

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Posted by Greg Arnette on October 22nd, 2009
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Wow…. "Cloud-compute Power" at it's Best. 50k CPU Launches a Day!

Our pioneering cloud-compute friends at RightScale published some very interesting observations about Amazon Web Services’ Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) daily CPU launches. They estimate a daily load factor of 50,000 CPU launches. The real potential of cloud computing (and I mean “true” cloud computing…. not legacy data centers masquerading as a “cloud”) is the ability to harness this on-demand “horsepower” in a scale-up and scale-down manner, embedding operational and infrastructure efficiency throughout the software stack.

Traditional enterprise software was not created to take advantage of the cloud’s ability to scale horizontally on-demand “up and down.” To truly embrace cloud computing new software stacks are required to break with the past constraints of fixed CPU to process more work for less costs. It’s the smart way and the right way to manage enterprise IT needs.

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Posted by Greg Arnette on October 14th, 2009

Cloud-powered SaaS and the age of "Hybrid IT"

Cape Cod Tech Council KeynoteRecently I have represented Sonian and cloud computing on a several panel discussions and conference keynotes. The number of questions from the engaged audience, as well as their in-depth thoughtful nature, are a leading indicator we are entering the era of “Hybrid IT.” This means more and more organizations will be strategically and tactically melding cloud-powered SaaS functions with on-premise servers.

The great economics and SaaS ease of use are driving this increased adoption curve. And SaaS powered by cloud infrastructure can be a virtual secure extension of your own data center. but running from reliable infrastructure maintained by experts whose only goal is to keep cloud servers and storage running 24×7x365.

It’s exciting and enormously fulfilling  to be at the beginning of this 4th wave of computing era.

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Posted by Greg Arnette on March 11th, 2009

Forrester predicts over half of enterprises will choose hosted services

Forrester released a very interesting messaging analysis report predicting trends and costs for hosted email versus on-premise.

For companies with less than 15,000 employees hosted had significant savings compared to installed software solutions.

But an even more interesting finding is that more than half of enterprises will blend hosted email services with on-premise email servers. Hosted security and email archiving services are the perfect compliment to an Exchange, GroupWise or Notes server.

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Posted by Greg Arnette on January 7th, 2009

Lessons Learned: Processing millions of messages in the cloud

Our cloud-compute powered hosted email archiving service is truly a marvel of efficiency and reliability. The system process millions of messages, and we have learned a great deal over the last eighteen months about scalability, parallel computing, and helping our customers do more with less IT budget dollars. The processing engine (see right*) indexes, encrypts and stores across an infinite pool of on-demand CPU resources. *(We jest about the mechanical engine, but if it were 1900 this is what our system would look like :) )

Cloud computing is also ushering in a new era of transparency and accountability between IT vendors and customers. The reliability of cloud computing has been a hot topic recently, partly because snafus in the cloud don’t happen behind closed doors as with traditional on-premises business solutions. When a cloud compute service has a problem, everyone knows. And let’s face facts: no IT (cloud or on-premise) solution is immune to problems, but cloud systems by their very nature recover more quickly and are built with true 24×7x365 design goals. Cloud-powered SaaS is the equivalent of a 24 hour news cable channel with millions of daily viewers. The iconic TV test pattern can’t display for very long without losing the audience.

We look forward to the competition from on-premise vendors and their reliability claims compared to cloud-powered SaaS. As a point of reference, according to the research firm Radicati Group, companies with on-premises email-related solutions averaged from 30 to 60 minutes of unscheduled downtime and an additional 36 to 90 minutes of planned downtime per month. Hosted services provide much better up time, on average, than software/appliance based solutions.

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Posted by Greg Arnette on November 8th, 2008

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