Out Of The Recession, Into The Cloud

In the midst of the Great Recession, a huge business transformation has been underway. The way companies do business in the next decade will be far different from the processes they employed in the decades up till now. The new normal will be far more agile and driven by everything in the cloud.

Why the cloud? Think of the cloud as the new data center, the new machine shop, the new steam engine, the new printing press. It will be the heart of heart of many businesses and an essential process tool for others.

There are two prime needs that are driving this shift to cloud solutions. One is the desire to reduce costs, both capital expenses and operation expenses, and tie the level of expenditures more closely with the level of business. The other need is closely related. It is the need for agility to survive and prosper within any business climate.

Both of these needs have risen to prominence in this protracted downturn. Business cycles are normal. Companies are accustomed to going with the flow. You expand when things are booming and contract or at least hold your own when things slow. In a few months or a year business picks up again.

Well, that’s how it was for decades. What’s different this time is both the depth and the duration of the pull back. Companies that found themselves locked into expenses based on normal business levels are in a pickle. Some have been unable to weather the storm and have had to fold their tents. Others, in better shape, have taken notice and are making moves to prevent getting caught in an untenable situation themselves.

This is where the cloud is starting to look attractive. Cloud services that were once only available to large companies with massive processing needs have been scaled down to suit smaller and medium size businesses. The more important computers and/or the Internet are to running your business, the more useful the cloud can be. If you use PCs, tablets, smartphones, or business telephones, there are cloud solutions that are right for you.

What moves to the cloud? Servers, of course. You replace racks full of servers in the back room or a environmentally controlled data center with virtual servers that you run remotely. Those servers run your business applications, often in the form of Software as a Service (SaaS). Accounting, marketing, customer service, sales, inventory control, team collaboration, project management, billing and invoicing, ecommerce, human resources, and transaction processing are examples of what can be done in the cloud. Specialized servers power your business phones from the cloud.

Your cloud servers, storage and public facing bandwidth replace similar IT resources within your company. There difference is that you are now renting these resources rather than owning and operating them. You no longer have to make the equipment investment or perform the maintenance, upgrades and repairs. You don’t have to be concerned about data backups because these can be setup to run automatically within the cloud.

The other thing that you have with cloud solutions is the agility to scale your operations up or down at will. The physical cloud has more resources than you can ever use yourself. You can add and subtract servers and drives, often immediately with online control. You pay only for what you use while you are using it. When business slows, you back off to meet your new needs. When things pick up, you add resources as you need to and can afford to pay for from an increasing revenue stream.

Do you feel that your company would be better able to deal with uncertain business conditions if you could easily adjust technical resources and expenses? If so, you should consider taking advantage of cloud computing and communications services on a scale that makes sense for your business.

Bandwidth Cost Reduction Ideas

It’s not all about cost these days, but getting the best deal you can on everything you buy is important for the viability of the business. Bandwidth is no exception. Telecom costs can be a major line item expense. Fortunately, there are ways to save without having to pick a service that degrades your productivity.

The most basic step you can take is one that might come as a surprise. It works for any technical requirement, can be accomplished in a matter of minutes, and won’t cost you a thing. Guess what it is yet?

The simplest solution is sometimes the most effective. Get a fresh set of competitive quotes. Honestly, if you haven’t been in the market for telephone line or data bandwidth prices lately, the numbers you have in mind are almost certainly obsolete. Things are changing that fast.

So how can you do this in minutes when last time it took a week to find 3 to 6 providers, discuss your needs with each of them, and then wait and wait for formal quotes? Put the power of automation to work. There’s an online application for this and it’s called GeoQuote by Telarus. This is an automated pricing engine that connects with dozens of service providers and aggregates their price quotes. For wireline services like T1 lines, ISDN PRI telephone, DS3 and even Ethernet connections to 1 Gbps, the process runs automatically and gives you budgetary pricing on your computer screen in a minute or so. Other services, like SONET fiber optic lines or MPLS networks need some human intervention, so you’ll probably wait a few hours to a day or so for these quotes.

Now that you have service pricing, you can start working tradeoffs. For instance, if you’ve got the newer Ethernet over Copper available for your business location or locations, you’ll likely find that you can get twice the bandwidth of a T1 line for the same price. Or replace a bonded T1 solution with 3x3 Mbps EoC and cut your monthly line cost in half.

You’ll find the same it true for higher bandwidth services, such as DS3 or OC-3 fiber. Ethernet likely comes-in much cheaper for the same line speed and service level agreement.

How about telephone? There’s a fairly simple tradeoff between multiple analog phone lines and a digital trunk like IDSN PRI. Anywhere between 6 and 12 lines is the tipping point to move to a trunking solution. Did you know that there’s another good choice if you are using 6 outside lines or less? It’s SIP Trunking. With a SIP Trunk, your provider gives you both telephone lines and broadband Internet service over the same trunk. This isn’t like the issues you see with broadband phone because the telephone and Internet packets are kept from interfering. The way it works is that voice packets have priority at all times. Any bandwidth not needed for phone calls is automatically reassigned to the broadband pool.

Multiple business locations present their own challenges. Many companies start hooking up private lines from headquarters to satellite offices only to find after a few years that they have a slew of lines and an enormous bandwidth bill. Now would be a good time to re-evaluate. A MPLS network can likely replace that rat’s nest of dedicated point to point lines for a lot less cost, while protecting your security and providing new options like mesh any-to-any networking.

Here are two critical point to remember. In the last few years, prices have gone down and options have gone up. Both of those work in your favor. Why not let them? Get new bandwidth options and pricing quotes now.

Preserve Your IT Budget

It's a new year and a new budget cycle. You may be flush with capital and operating expense funding, but before you rush out and start placing orders think about how you can stretch that budget beyond what you've planned. With the economy still on the rocks, you may be asked to cut line items. There may even be a freeze on spending at some point during the year. If so, you'll be glad you were able to get more value while spending less.

So how can an IT manager preserve the budget while under pressure for upgrades, maintenance and new projects? One of the easiest ways is to simply get more for the same expenditure, or pay less for the service you've planned. During boom times, that might seem a bit fanciful. When resources are in short supply, you'll have to take your place in line and pay whatever is asked or do without. But we're in the opposite part of the economic cycle now. Most companies are anxious to make any sale they can. Your requests to get more for less will be taken seriously this year.

Good strong purchasing negotiation always makes sense. But instead of just going through the motions, you now have an excellent chance of working every contract to your advantage. In some cases, new players hungry to build a significant market presence will fall all over themselves to wrench your business away from staid and unresponsive incumbents.

A perfect example is voice and data bandwidth. Not so long ago you had one carrier to deal with and pricing was pretty much take it or leave it. Not any more. You may be shocked to find that there could be a dozen or more competitive carriers anxious to vie for your business. You can pick the one that offers the most capacity for the least amount of money or negotiate for extras such as a free router.

Telecom carriers are more numerous due to deregulation and the mere presence of aggressive competitors has been driving down service pricing. There has also been something of a glut of excess capacity from the boom times of the late 90's that has needed to be worked off. But perhaps the biggest advantage to businesses has been the recent development of new search tools that can quickly locate a plethora of services that meet your exact criteria. These tools are a family of online search engines under the name "GeoQuote (tm)."

GeoQuote is the patented software that connects to carrier databases and calculates near-exact line prices within seconds. If you need T1 lines, ISDN PRI telephone trunks, or DS3 bandwidth, GeoQuote can return results to you in a matter of seconds for an online query. The Ethernet GeoQuote will show you maps of where nearby "lit" facilities are for fiber optic bandwidth services such as 10 Mbps Ethernet, 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet, and Gigabit Ethernet. There are also versions of GeoQuote specifically for SIP Trunking for enterprise VoIP and MPLS networks for connecting multiple business locations.

Beyond your WAN connectivity needs, there are plenty of opportunities to get better deals on your hardware purchases and installation and maintenance services. For that, there is another online tool called the VAR Network search engine. This free service lets you specify exactly the equipment and services you want. That request will go out to qualified VARs or Value Added Resellers in your area that wish to bid on your business. You can then negotiate your best pricing and perhaps save a significant percentage over your budgeted amounts.