Cloud Outages - What People are Saying

The recent Microsoft and Google Cloud outages recently, have people chatting about the cloud on different blogs, groups, and LinkedIn. 

We came across an interesting discussion and thought we'd share and get your thoughts on today's blog post.  [NOTICE: All posts are confidential and users comments and anonymity are protected]

These are just a few of the comments of the conversation going on.  What are your thoughts?  We'd love to hear them.  Comment below or contact us on our website: http://www.issupport.com/

The Cloud on CNN!

Some of the Cloud leaders top experts weight in on what direction cloud computing is heading on CNN. Enjoy!



And remember, if you want utilize this growing technology, our consultants will work WITH you to find cloud solutions that are personalized best for your business! Contact us at 866-370-7142 or visit www.issupport.com.

Using the Cloud Effectively!

A great video by VMware shows how to effectively use the cloud. Enjoy!

Top Ten Benefits of the Cloud: #5 - Fast Response Time

Cloud computing accomplishes a better response time than a standard server and hardware in most cases.

As IT infrastructures have become increasingly complex, less is focused on support. In fact, about 70% of IT investment is focused on maintenance, leaving less time to support strategic business projects. Companies are demanding faster response times and lower costs.

Cloud computing helps reduces IT complexity by leveraging the efficient pooling of on-demand, self-managed virtual infrastructure, consumed as a service. Cloud computing is central to that strategy.

Many IT organizations, faced with decling resources and increasing business needs, are leveraging to cloud computing for delivering IT to business: IT as a Service.  IS Support's Cloud Cumulus follows this model to provide a more efficient, flexible and cost-effective model to our clients. 


While cloud computing provides the approach, IS Support delivers a pragmatic path and solutions that allow businesses to preserve existing technology investments, while achieving the goal of enabling IT as a Service and of course, faster response times. 

For more information how you can increase your response times and all the other benefits cloud computing can bring, contact IS Support by visiting our website or calling 866-370-7142

Top Ten Benefits of the Cloud: #4 - Remote Access



When you switch to the Cloud, employees, clients, and partners can access and update information whereever they are, rather than having to run back to the office.  People everywhere use their smartphones, laptops, tablets to access their work away from the office.  In today's business climate, staying in touch and in control of your responsibilities is essential, whereever you are.

 Systems like Yahoo Mail, Skype, Twitter and Facebook all use the cloud to some degree.  Your company can do the same.  The cloud gives us freedom to enjoy vacations, work from home, and be mobile while honoring our obligations.

This excellent video by salesforce.com provides a neat illustration of cloud computing through the years.  See if you can pick up on remote access.

Contact IS Support for more information on taking your business to the next level on the Cloud!

Top Ten Benefits of the Cloud: #3 - Disaster Recovery

Many small businesses that incur a significant data loss have often found themselves bankrupt within six months.  In Houston, we know firsthand that disasters such as hurricanes or floods can do irreparable damage to your company.  If you don't have a disaster recovery plan in place, you need one. If you haven't reviewed your plan in the past year, don't wait - But don't go it alone either.  IS Support can help.



Our cloud-based, IS RapidRestore is one of our premier services that is installed on your network to back up your server every 15 minutes on your company's site, then move it safely to an offsite location each evening.

Even in a catastrophic event your data can be restored with RapidRestore in less than an hour. In the event of a full server crash, RapidRestore creates a virtual replica to act as a standby server allowing business operations no interruption during timely server rebuilds. 

Features:

• 15-minute snapshots of server
• Offsite replication in the event of a total property loss
• Restores a full server or at the file level
• Back to business in less than one hour
• No expensive backup software or tape drives eliminating the risk of forgetting to change tapes or not take them offsite

If you're interested in more details on how IS Support can help give your business the peace of mind with a solid, redundant backup recovery plan, contact us today at 866-370-7142 or visit our website!

Top Ten Benefits of the Cloud: #2 - Scalability

(This is part two of a ten part series on cloud computing benefits)

When your business is on the cloud, you can "scale" your business' storage needs seamlessly, rather than purchasing individual expensive programs or hardware. 

Businesses can leverage certain projects and pay for all the cloud apps they need to create, implement and market certain projects on a month to month basis rather than purchasing pieces of hardware, worry about overloading their servers or buying various software licenses. 

For more information on how our IS Cumulus cloud options can help your business, visit our website or call us at 866-370-7142

Top Ten Benefits of the Cloud: #1 - Reduced Costs

When analyzing cloud computing for your business IT solutions, one of the most important reasons the cloud can help is to reduce IT expenses.

Cloud computing reduces your hardware (computers, software, downloaded programs), networking management and overall IT expenses.  To go more in depth, here is a brief, yet detailed summary of other ways directly reduces costs:

1. Pay only for what you use – IS Support's Cloud Cumulus solution operates on a pay-as-you-use model, or in different terms, a demand-only model. With IS Cumulus, you only pay for the services you require and use. This works out to be much cheaper than acquiring barely used equipment.



2. Running costs – In addition to usage, running costs comprise a significant portion of the annual IT budget. By shifting to cloud computing, your company is free of those expenses such as upgrades, physical maintenance, personnel salaries, etc.

3. Economies of scale – Cloud computing can utilize economies of scale to offer cheaper rates to your business. In other words, the service providers can buy IT equipment in bulk to lower unit acquisition costs, and part of the cost savings are passed on to their consumers. Consequently, this price is much lower than what you would pay to buy similar equipment from the retail market

4. Investment costs vs Operational costs - Acquiring expensive equipment is considered a capital expenditure, which can be costly. As the equipment ages, this acquisition depreciates over time. With cloud computing, a one-time expense is spread across several operational cycles, becoming part of operational costs providing a much better alternative. Factor in the time value of money, and the balance shifts even more towards cloud computing.

If you would like to learn more, or find out exactly how our IS Cumulus solution can provide your company all of the above benefits and more, contact us for a free consulting session!

Stay tuned for the next part of Cloud Computing benefits: Scalability

Top Ten Benefits of the Cloud!

Some IT Professionals will often talk about how cloud computing can help your business without getting very specific on exactly "how."  Well, we would like to change that.  In this upcoming blog series, we at IS Support have listed our ten favorite ways that Small-Medium sized businesses utilize the cloud.  We have listed them below (in no particular order)

1. Reduced Costs
2. Scalability
3. Disaster Recovery
4. Remote Access
5. Fast Response Time
6. Automatic Updates
7. Implementation
8. Level Playing Field
9. Mobility
10. Experienced Vendor

For the next ten blog posts, we will take each one above and briefly summarize it and how it can effect your business and help you evolve with technology to take your company to the next level. 

Stay tuned and in the meantime, check out our website...we'd be happy to put you on "the cloud!"

Do you trust your bank? Then trust the Cloud!

Many businesses have concerns about Cloud security, especially with recent headlines such as Amazon’s cloud outage.   Issues such as privacy and data breach issues are significant worries when a company considers switching to the Cloud and it’s easy to understand why – Cloud computing means moving some or most of your data to a third party location outside of your servers or hard drives. 

But the fact is that Cloud Computing is not a new trend in IT world.  In fact, you probably are using elements of cloud computing in your everyday life.  If you use e-mails services such as G-Mail or Yahoo Mail, you are already in the cloud. All your e-mails (data) are saved in servers outside your home or business and you need a web browser and internet connection to access your data, and this is what cloud computing is all about: storing your data and application in a remote server which you can access via web.

Your online banking is also a form of cloud computing, you need to log on a remote server, via your bank website to access your account information which contains your banking data.  Almost everyone uses some form of online banking, without even realizing that such concepts are forms of cloud computing.  Online banking or mobile apps are a safe and secure way of making banking easy and accessible; so is cloud computing for your company.

So cloud computing is not entirely new technology, we just have more applications now taking advantage of this technology.  If you feel secure to trust your online banking, then consider IS Support’s Cloud Cumulus solutions for your business. To learn more about how we can put your company on the cloud and all that our cloud solutions can provide your business, visit our website. We look forward to hearing from you!

If only it was this easy

Getting on the cloud is not this easy:

Our friends and partners at VMWare shared this hilarious video of an IT engineer trying to put his data center in the cloud.  If you're still wondering what all the chatter is about Cloud Computing, we can help your business find cloud solutions with our designed-for-you, Cloud Cumulus services.  We can make it look....almost this easy.

If  you would like a FREE consultation to see if cloud computing is right for your company: click here

You're Invited: Disaster Recovery

Disaster Recovery: a Lunch and Learn

In Houston, summertime brings about two unpleasantries: heat and hurricanes.

While heat is no fun, we've learned to tolerate it - but hurricanes can be much worse and for businesses they can cause damage, lost productivity and at worst, lost memory and sales.  That's why we at IS Support and our partners at iland Cloud Infrastructure would like to invite you to our free Lunch and Learn on June 15th.

Whether it's a hurricane or a simple power outage, don't let a disaster of any kind set your company back!  Learn how you can use Cloud Computing to make your company disaster-proof to give your business peace of mind so you can spend this summer worrying about the heat instead of hurricanes.

Don't wait! Register now below:

HP Memorial Day Sale!

For most of us here in Houston, the Memorial Day weekend will be spent with our families, perhaps some barbeques, or some needed rest.  Our friends at HP, though, will be just as busy as ever, especially with their Memorial Day Weekend Sale with some amazing deals.

We thought we would share them with you here: http://bit.ly/jIhRiK

Lastly, we hope you remember to think of our men and women in uniform, who have paid the ultimate sacrifice.  Happy Memorial Day!

Join us for a free event on May 25th

 

 

IS Support presents: "Hyper-V and how it will impact your business"

 

You’ve probably been hearing about cloud computing. But when you get beyond the hype, most cloud solutions offer little more than an alternate place to store your data.

 

 

 

 

Join us for a cloud power event and we’ll show you how our expertise and Microsoft cloud solutions can help you to:

• Reduce your capital expenses
• Save money by paying only for the computing power you  need
• Get to market faster by leveraging your existing IT skill investments.

Register today and see how cloud power can help your business move forward.

Flying on "The Cloud"

 

Everyone remembers their first flight.  Whether you were 5 years old or 30, there was always a tinge of nervousness and dread.  Your mind may have flashed back to images of the news, or Die Hard 2 – a plane hurtling, uncontrollably to the ground.  However, after all of that anxiety, you ended up safely at your destination, on time, and received a free juice out of the ordeal.  Despite all the nervousness and in-flight turbulence, flying turned out to be a safe and fast way to reach your destination.

If you have doubts and skepticism about switching to cloud technology, you are not alone.  Certainly there have been bouts of bad publicity and concerns about security such as the most recent fiasco with Amazon.  But like flying on a plane, when all the hyped media coverage is removed, cloud technology is simply the most efficient and reliable way to deliver technology for your business.  Just like the truth: “You’re more likely to crash on the way to the airport, than to crash on the plane flight,” the same can be said about the reliability of the cloud: “You’re more likely to lose data with your traditional IT methods, than on the cloud.”  

IS Support is committed to providing your companies technology needs and as a small business in Houston, we are experts in helping local businesses make technology an asset, not an expense.  Since partnering with iland Cloud Infrastructure in 2010, IS Support is dedicated to becoming a leader in cloud technology for your business.  Iland offers partners a fully redundant private or public environment and have an amazing business continuity service that we allow clients to leverage.

If doubts about Cloud technology makes you feel like flying for the first time, let IS Support help ease those reservations. Contact us today, for more information on how Cloud technology can help take your business to the next level