The cloud and the fallout

SBS MVPs Calvin McLennan and Boon Tee, MVP Kerry Brown, SBS MVP Kevin Royalty and marketing guru Matt Makowicz

Back in the McCarthy era when atomic proliferation was on the minds of most politicians, the looming threat of mushroom clouds and nuclear fallout from potential first or second strikes scared the living daylights of most reasonable people. It became a matter of life or death to get everyone to think about life under the constant threat of nuclear annihilation and how to prepare for the inevitable. In the IT professional world, the newest threat and challenge to its business model is the amorphous "cloud," the term used to include all services, monitoring and threat management being sent to the Internet. In reality several corporations whose services live in the cloud are a direct threat to those who have traditional business models or offer managed services for clients on a local basis. There are potential problems of fallout with these companies due to legal liabilities or lack of failsafe methods being employed that can directly impact clients. Such scenarios include servers that may reside side-by-side with enterprises that are not legitimate, which could then get impounded by law enforcement officials or changes in H.I.P.P.A. laws which now put the physicians at risk should a breach of data occur, for example. This fallout can mean real costs to IT professionals and can lead to clients losing trust in them because of shortsightedness on the IT firms' parts. It is essential that everyone in the IT industry know of their legal responsibilities and that they inform their clients of how moving their data to the cloud can lead to future problems. What happens if the company they choose fails? How do they get their data back or, if they decide to leave the firm, at what cost will that firm charge them for the data? And, if the data is recoverable, in what form will they send it back? If the client wants to look at costs, how do we explain that the upfront costs may be miniscule compared to the overall cost of liabilities that may arise later? These cases are critical to the future of the IT industry and will be of prime import as more business move to the cloud and current managed services firms grapple with how to stay afloat with the burgeoning threat of the cloud. Today's panel discussion included several Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals who gave their take on what to look for and what to look out for. Also, Matt Makowicz, a former IT firm owner who now deals solely as an author and marketing guru, lent his own suggestions and warning to IT professionals. It was agreed by everyone on the panel that change is coming and all of those in the IT industry will have to change with it or lose viability in the next few years. Once again, thanks to Jeff Middleton for an impressive three-day event.

The first day of the IT Pro Conference 2010

Jeff Middleton, Matt Makowicz, Karl Palachuk and George Serchio

The IT Pro Conference 2010 sponsored by Jeff Middleton's SBS Migration.com got underway with a plethora of IT professionals gathering to inform each other of some of the best ways to maintain and grow their businesses. Much of the fear from industry insiders has involved thinking about how "the cloud" will affect the market and impact IT firms, who previously have offered services on a local basis. Much of the early panels discussed how to determine strengths within IT businesses and how to mitigate problems with cash flow and liability management. Later discussions revolved about servers and ramifications of data servers hosted remotely ("the cloud") as well as real answers to questions about how to brand Small Business Server and other Windows Servers to clients. The best of the later sessions was done by Ofer Shimrat, the San Diego guru whose SoundOff is about to launch its first Managed Services platform in July. It will be interesting to see how they make the transition from advanced client support to full unified threat management and monitoring of clients through the cloud. Sessions tomorrow will deal with an alternative mail server to Microsoft Exchange, VPN firewalls and monitoring alternatives as well as virtualization tips and best techniques.

It's that SBS Migration time again

Jeff Middleton, "Old Betsy" and Tim Laughlin

Tireless Microsoft Small Business Server Most Valuable Player Jeff Middleton hunkered down at the Astor Crowne Plaza Hotel tonight with a mission. He is hosting his third annual SBS Migration.com IT Professional Conference there, welcoming a gaggle of geeks from across the globe to his own beloved New Orleans. In order to appreciate the charms and joys of New Orleans, he has summoned up a number of special events for evening time and started the three-day event with Tim Laughlin's band performing before a crowd of nearly 80. Laughlin, who is the premiere New Orleans clarinetist played "Old Betsy," Pete Fountain's fabled clarinet which he presented to him some time back. It was a pleasant kickoff to what should be several days of impressive panels of IT gurus who, along with Middleton, will impart knowledge and answer questions about Microsoft Windows servers and how to best implement effective solutions in the business arena. Some of the presentation team members have come from as far away as Germany, the Netherlands and Australia. A number of major players from the IT industry will be on hand to pitch their products as well like eFolder, Storagecraft, BackupAssist, Cloud Services Depot, Own, Cloud, Autotask and Kerio. My own eports will emanate from the hotel throughout most of what remains for this holiday weekend. Middleton definitely knows how to show off his own beloved New Orleans and the cuisine, drinks and music will reflect that. After the conference concludes on Sunday, there will be an opportunity for many of the visitors to leave New Orleans for a short cruise to exotic ports of call.

Telephonation for a nascent telephony

Captain Harry Brelsford steering the Telephonation ship

So many of you may be wondering what is this strange thing called VoIP? It's pronounced VOYP and like orange and purple I have yet to find a rhyme for it in English. VoIP stands for "voice over IP" (as in Internet Protocol) and it is a technology in which the Internet is married to present phone technology to permit transmission of telephony over the Internet. It is an opportunity to add voice to the computing mix and has limitless possibilities for businesses who look to save on the cost of existing phone lines by replacing them with individual IP phones. These IP phones have been making great incursions into the marketplace and for small and medium businesses in the Enterprise looking to replace outdated systems VoIP is a prime consideration. Because of its many features like integrated voice and e-mails and the fact that most businesses now maintain "fat pipes to the cloud" (high speed Internet access), VoIP is fast becoming one of the greatest cost-saving measures to be implemented over a local area network. At SMB Nation, CEO Harry Brelsford just announced the launch of Telephonation. With Microsoft's Response Point coming on strong now, VoIP technology is becoming a viable option even for the small business owner who needs to put in a simple telephone system. Imagine saving on the cost of inside wiring and renting phone systems from typical vendors like AT&T or cable systems. No longer does a business owner have to pay a substantially higher cost for phones or deal with mediocre bandwidth utilization. It may surprise some to learn that the largest number of vendors appearing at SMB Nation this year are voice sponsors. VoIP solutions have been available for a number of years from vendors like Cisco, but business owners were not endeared to the high cost of licenses per seat that could send the cost well over $300 per phone. At that rate, AT&T and cable seemed reasonable. However, as more players have jumped into the telephony game, costs and licensing have come spiraling downward. It now makes sense to examine the IP phone as a cost-effective business solution. With SMB Nation CEO Harry Brelsford taking the wheel of the Telephonation ship, will VoIP steer into clear waters or is the channel already too crowded with other worthy vessels? Only time and a steady hand at the tiller will tell.

Experts SBS Diva Susan Bradley and the legendary Ofer Shimrat

Yesterday's general session with SBS Diva Susan Bradley and Ofer Shimrat on the "gotchas" associated with implementing Windows SBS 2008 was a perfect wedding of the best of practices for software (from Bradley) and for hardware (from Shimrat). Bradley's SBS Diva blog has been a font of extremely useful information, while Shimrat has long cultivated a reputation as a master of building well-designed hardware solutions. While the two of them offer very high levels of knowledge about SBS 2003 R2 (not shipping from Microsoft as of October 1), there were a number of questions about implementing SBS 2008 that gave these two experts much to consider. Bradley and Shimrat both pointed to huge memory utilization by the OS that required a minimum of 4GB of RAM to adequately allow the server to idle properly. Microsoft officials in fairly small numbers at this year's SMB Nation (as opposed to previous years when the event was held in Redmond) might well have cringed over many of the problems they both saw with the long awaited OS in addition to migration guru Jeff Middleton's alarming notes on migration paths and potential pitfalls in an earlier morning session. Then again, there was the quote from a Microsoft worker in the convention hall who said yesterday "I'm from Microsoft. I'm here to help." Makes me feel so warm and fuzzy.

SMB Nation in Seattle

Jeff Middleton prepares his presentation as SMB Nation CEO Harry Brelsford introduces him

The sixth annual SMB Nation conference presided over by business support guru Harry Brelsford started up this morning in Seattle, the major city closest to the elephant of the computing industry, Microsoft. Previous SMB Nation conferences have been held in Indianapolis and in nearby Redmond, the real location of Microsoft world headquarters. This event is a "must do" for many of the small and medium support network of computer administrators and network engineers who are looking to find out the best way to support their clients and get themselves more business in the process. The first keynote presentation was by David Brown of Intel, who focuses on the concerns of businesses and computer support administrators who are interested in finding the cheapest, most energy efficient and easiest to maintain products available. Intel's Core 2 products were discussed as well as innovative new solutions that promise better integration for professional offices and businesses in the marketplace. ONe of their products supports as many as 14 2.5 inch hot-swapable hard drives with up to six server blade components. It was quite impressive, especially as Intel designed it to work with existing software solutions that make it a workable solution practically out of the box. New Orleans's own Jeff Middleton had a talk on "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly" of server migration under the just-released 2008 Microsoft SBS (Small Business Server). Suffice it to say that much of what existed before has gone away and many of the best methods used to deploy servers in the marketplace have been replaced by new methods or no longer exist. It's a muddled field right now, but if anyone can figure it out, Jeff Middleton, whose SBSmigration.com stages its own annual conference, will definitely do it. Meanwhile, a great number of other speakers are heading to the conference over the course of the next few days in overcast and moist Seattle.

The IT Pro 2008 Conference

The last three days have been a bit of a blur. Much of the daytime has been spent watching experts make other experts more informed and better equipped to work in the IT field as Small and Medium Business (SMB) consultants. SMB consultants have been gathering here in New Orleans under the heading of the IT Pro 2008 Conference invented and piloted by IT guru Jeff Middleton. Middleton's SBSmigration.com website (http://www.sbsmigration.com) has all of the information about this year's conference, so I won't bore you with all of the details. However, it has been an eye-opening experience. One of the biggest topics is on "managed services," an all-encompassing opportunity for IT professionals to offer their abilities to monitor businesses and do preventive maintenance through a full spectrum of services and products. Small IT firms and sole proprietors have different concepts about how many managed services they should offer or even if they should offer any. The most productive IT consultants have been raising the ante in terms of minimal requirements for SMB clients. It is not unusual for them to turn down business from small offices with only five or fewer clients in a peer-to-peer system. Some of them will require at least one server or a minimum of 10 clients. Whatever criteria they use -- whether it's retainers or service contracts -- these IT firms are exploring new ways to increase their profitability and extend their productivity all the while while learning the best practices in an industry that is constantly reinventing itself with new products from Microsoft and other industry giants. These are some of the best and brightest minds in IT who are down in New Orleans to enjoy themselves, but to roll up their sleeves and learn what others are doing in other parts of the country and the world to hold onto their present clients, gain more clients, and to become more productive and profitable in the computer consulting field. In the end building customer trust is of paramount concern to all of them, but how to do that is the big question. Does learning a new skill set like that required for deployment of Windows SBS Server 2008 (due out in release in the fall) guarantee that these IT firms will be a leg up on their competition? Is virtualization, which allows for legacy applications to work on new operating system platforms, the future of the industry for SMB consulting? Where are the tools and technologies that exist today that will help IT professionals make their businesses stronger and increase trust among their clients? While many of these questions have been answered throughout the conference, there are nearly as many questions that continue to be raised on other items of interest. It is a process and IT professionals are continually asking themselves are they where they should be every few years as technology changes explode exponentially. So in a nutshell, the future is here and success is looming if only these IT professionals can take advantage of what is available. For three days we have all been in learning mode. The good news is that we have all benefited from this conference and I plan to be back here again next year.