[Fredslist] Contango IT - article on Cloud Computing

[Danny Mizrahi]

Hi Everyone!

My business partner Brian Radford was asked to write a short but sweet
article on Cloud Computing for a publication and wanted to send it out here
as well.  It's really hard to sum up Cloud Computing in this amount of
space, but we gave it a shot!

Brian is the sole reason why I'm able to hang out with Gotham folks as much
as I can.  While I'm out in the field telling people our story, Brian is
handling all of our operations, including dispatching and accounting.
There's no chance Contango IT would be as successful as we've been thus far
without Brian and I hope to be able to get him out of the office to meet you
soon.

Of course, any other questions on Cloud Computing - please feel free to let
me know.  You know I love chatting about this stuff =)

Hope to see you soon!

*Get Your Head in the Clouds:  Why Small Businesses need to evaluate Cloud
Computing for their IT Infrastructure*

        “Cloud Computing” is a hot topic today in business, both big and
small.  It is still relatively new, somewhat unknown, and can be confusing.
 But with the economy still struggling, it is paramount to grasp what cloud
computing means to the business landscape and how you can leverage it to
your advantage.

        Having been in the Information Technology for many years, and worked
with both traditional and cloud infrastructures, I’ve seen the pros and cons
of both.  My conclusion is that for most small business, they can't ignore
the benefits of moving to the cloud.  Cloud Computing offers both
scalability and cost savings, while almost always being highly available and
extremely stable.

        Many people have heard the term, but aren't sure what it means.  For
the purpose of this article, I will keep it pretty simple, and not get into
the finer nuances of the Cloud.  Cloud Computing refers to paying a third
party company to host, store, or process your data.  Some examples of
popular Cloud solution providers are Google, Amazon, SalesNexus, and
Rackspace.  This is an alternative to having an internal infrastructure of
servers or appliances to perform these functions.  I call environments with
servers that are maintained internally “traditional infrastructures”.  For
small business’s specifically, the cost associated with acquiring and
maintaining a traditional infrastructure is very expensive, and can be one
of the largest expenses in a small business budget.  While this type of
infrastructure does have its merits, and Contango IT still installs and
supports these systems, for most cases, it is not the best solution for
small businesses.

        What are some of these advantages?  There is no hardware needed,
which is a major expense related with traditional infrastructures.  The
maintenance is minimal with cloud technologies, and a proactive approach is
going to be much more cost effective than a reactive action plan, which is
typical of traditional server based environments.  This proactive approach
is much more cost effective and less problematic.  Another advantage is that
cloud technologies are accessible from anywhere that you have internet
access, making it a truly mobile solution.  This is very beneficial to small
business and mobile workforces.

        An example of how a small business can benefit is a project we
recently finished for a company in Connecticut.  They had 2 servers
in-house; their Email Server, and their File Server.  They also had a VPN
and FTP site for remote work, which was critical to them because the
majority of the office was in the field almost every day.  They had
approximately 209 GB’s of data between the two servers, and had that backing
up with offiste backup that was running more than $100/month.  They reached
out to us because they wanted to grow their business to different cities and
the current infrastructure was not going allow them to do that efficiently,
or effectively.

        Their solution included migrating from Exchange to Google Apps for
business, including all historical emails.  Also, moving all of the files
and data to Amazon S3, and using S3 in conjuction with Cloudberry.  The
savings was easily $100/month in backup, but more importantly, an invaluable
amount of savings in other areas.  They saved on server maintenance,
licensing costs, hardware refreshes, and other costly price tags that come
along with traditional infrastructures.  They are also now able to work in
the field seamlessly with wireless broadband cards and have 99.99% uptime.
Now they can create offices in different locations without worrying about
any physical hardware.

        We have many clients who's entire business is running on the cloud,
and that includes our own business.  Our business applications are not tied
to any hardware or software.  As long as we have internet connection, we can
run our business.  If we lose a laptop, it doesn't matter nearly as much as
if you had software and files on that same laptop.  If you're leveraging the
cloud, you can get any machine that has a web browser, and continue
working.

        These are just small examples of Cloud Computing.  If you'd like to
learn more, and how YOU can use Cloud Computing to increase productivity,
while lowering costs, please reach out to Contango IT.  You can contact us
from our website *www.contangoit.com, or by emailing info at contangoit.com.*

*-Brian Radford, Partner/COO of Contango IT*





 Danny Mizrahi

 p:  (212) 737-0608
 m: (516) 606-4326
 f:   (877) 737-2282
 www.contangoit.com
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