Cloud Myths...

No this isn't a tribute to Final Fantasy VII... ;)

The folks at Trend Micro put this out to my team the other day, and I wanted to share it with all of you too.  Cloud Computing has a lot of use to small & medium businesses...but uses never come without danger of misuse.  This article here, discusses the myths of Cloud Computing and what the realities are.  Now if you ignore the last couple of pages...the ad for TM...there's some insight in this article.  Let me discuss the first 3 now, and the rest in a followup post.

Myth #1: SMBs know they are using The Cloud.  - Do they?  I think a lot of companies who use Gmail, Yahoo mail, facebook, twitter, picasa, dropbox and other online tools forget that those are Cloud tools.  The Cloud is a nebulous thing that encompasses concepts of how technology is delivered to people, it is not a specific thing.

Myth #2: Paying for Cloud Services is more costly than buying hardware or software  - Have any of you bought and managed servers these days?  Do you think that a company that's struggling along and cannot afford a proper IT manager can take care of that?   It's a tough call for businesses.  While I think most people outside of work rely too heavily on one thing at a time (yes I have duplicate files spread out among Dropbox, Google Drive, Skydrive, and Copy.com...but I'm paranoid ;) ), a business needs to invest into protecting its data, and if they're too small...it's very difficult.

Myth #3: Cloud Computing slows processes down and reduces productivity - Wow that myth is so untrue it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.  Like I mentioned in #2, an SMB that isn't running their own servers and IT staff reduces expenses.  Shoot, we have a hosting service through PCM for your Exchange and servers...and for what it costs, it can take a lot of pressure off of your company to maintain its own servers and pay someone to do it for them...including repair bills.

More to come! :)

It's The End Of The Year As We Know It...

And I feel fine...

Here's  a little tech year in review for you from the  folks at Engadget. :)  Really though, I don't get to toot the Meraki horn enough on this blog...but I get to say in IT this was definitely the year of Meraki and real Cloud Computing.

The notion of Cloud Computing isn't new, and a lot of the stuff we're seeing now are actually better envisioned things of the past.  As far back as 1968, developers were talking about a shared data experience...but they had no idea what would occur just over 3o years later.  Many of us now in our daily lives store documents, music and photos in a form of online storage.  (Heck I use Box.net, Dropbox AND SkyDrive!  What can I say, I've got consolidation issues.)

But with Meraki's Cloud Networking model taking off 4  years ago, and then exploding all over the scene in 2011 with their Wireless Cloud Networking, and then expanding into switches and security appliances in 2012...they had hit on something that wasn't just forward thinking.  You see, Forward Thinking will either put yourself out of business, or get you laughed at until the idea actually catches on.  What they did was to make less work for IT people...a natural way to get a product adopted.  With that mantra of less time spent managing routers, switches and the wireless routers...early adopters of Meraki became its advocates as much as we salespeople are.

Now here they stand, being purchased by Cisco (who wants to maintain their leadership of the IT World by having the best technologies available) for $1.26 Billion dollars...and in all honesty, Cisco is going to make that money back in a year.  Everybody wins.

So this little company that I took a chance on (thanks to my now good friend at Meraki, James Enston) has grabbed the brass ring and held on tightly.  The reason is because through them we can see a glimpse of the future where things were just a bit easier on IT personnel...and they could run things smarter.

I may not be right all of the time...but when I'm right, I hit it on the head with a 10lb sledgehammer. :)

Happy New Year!