NaviSite

Selecting the Right Cloud Provider: What You Need to Know

NaviSite — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:30:02 +0000

During the next five years, as organizations substantially increase their investment in cloud computing technologies, they will look to service providers for solutions that address their organizational and business needs. But, with cloud computing evolving at such a fast pace, and a rapidly growing number of cloud providers – each offering different services, pricing, delivery, and support capabilities – organizations will need clear strategies and strong selection criteria to leverage this transformational IT trend. While cost, scalability, expertise, and operational stability are obvious criteria, there are other important factors you must consider when choosing a cloud service provider for your enterprise.

Define Your Requirements

You must clearly define your cloud needs. Are you looking to augment your IT internal capabilities, or are you planning to migrate your non-strategic business applications to a hosted cloud? Once you have a clear understanding of your requirements, look for a partner that can help you execute. After all, if you don’t understand what you need, how can you expect to choose the right provider. Also, keep in mind – a provider that can address your current need may not be able to accommodate changes in your strategy. So, look for a provider with the stability, resources and long-term vision to adapt to your changes. And, don’t treat your strategy as a static plan. You’ll likely need to adapt, to meet changing business needs, or to leverage new, unforeseen cloud technologies. Build in periodic reviews of your cloud strategy and your provider.

Select Your Cloud Services

There are multiple cloud-enabled service offerings in the market – including infrastructure as a service, platform as a service, software as a service (SaaS), applications hosted in the cloud, information services, business process services, security services, and other enabling technologies. Each offering is unique both to the business needs it caters to and in the way it is delivered. So, the first question to ask a service provider is: “Can you deliver the exact cloud services I need?” If the answer is ‘yes’ (would you expect a different answer?), look for proof points, such as years of experience and customer portfolio.

Assess Overall Security

One of the biggest cloud concerns is the security of your sensitive, mission-critical infrastructure and data. You need assurances that your systems and data are in secure hands. When choosing a cloud service provider, take stock of your security requirements and the issues that need to be addressed, such as data movement, storage, access control, and network security. Then, determine if the provider has the security technologies and compliance mechanisms in place to meet those needs. Ask these questions:

How does the provider protect data – during transit and in storage?
Is the cloud’s virtualized infrastructure secure?
Does the service provider have the appropriate technology and processes in place, such as content encryption and decryption; disaster recovery; restricted access; intrusion protection; and firewall services.

Be sure to go through the provider’s security documentation and certifications, and pay an on-site visit to the provider to see how it operates behind the cloud. And last, but not the least, consider the worst-case scenario when evaluating the security levels so that you can select a provider that can better protect your business should the unthinkable happen.

Evaluate Service and Support

Cloud computing is a service-based computing model. Look for a service partner that instills confidence and trust – one that guarantees infrastructure, as well as measurable business results. Make sure the service provider offers high levels of reactive support (e.g. quick response to operational problems) and proactive support (e.g. account management, preventive maintenance, and alerts for resource allocation and upgrades – available only in case of a managed solution). Though customized contracts are not common in the cloud computing model, look for defined, enterprise-class service-level agreements (SLAs) – for performance, availability, provisioning time, and issue resolution – with formal escalation policies and defined penalties. Take your evaluation one step further – investigate the service provider’s track record of meeting SLAs.

Look For A Flexible Provider

While there is heightened interest around the cloud, no business is ready to move fully to the cloud. The reality is most businesses are looking at building a hybrid IT ecosystem that comprises a mix of cloud infrastructure and on-premises data center solutions. So, be sure to confirm that the provider can seamlessly integrate and manage hybrid environments, which will allow you to leverage their cloud services while augmenting your internal IT capabilities.

Understand The Billing Model

Usage-based billing is one of the most appealing features of cloud computing. Organizations can eliminate the capital expenses associated with procurement, and build predictable operational cost models. Keep in mind, however, that each cloud service provider has its own way of pricing services. While some charge per-instance by the hour/month, others may charge based on resource usage. Some providers may ask for up-front payment or for a base commit. And in some cases, you may need to pay for customer support. Bottom line: Understand the billing models to avoid surprises later and, when possible, negotiate a custom price.

As the cloud environment evolves, so do the cloud providers and their service offerings. The best way to ensure that you acquire the cloud services you need is to be clear in your selection process. Know exactly what your cloud criteria are today and try to anticipate what they may be tomorrow. At NaviSite, we leverage our years of virtualization and hosting experience to offer services that help customers realize the full potential of cloud computing. Our enterprise-hosting and application-management services – enabled by a robust enterprise-class cloud-computing platform – can transform your organization into a leaner, more agile, and more secure business.

If you would like to learn more about how NaviSite’s cloud-enabled services can benefit your business, please visit www.navicloudmcs.com.

Tips for Coping with Smaller IT Budgets

NaviSite Quarterly — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 16:36:26 +0000

Cutting costs is the top agenda of enterprises in the current economic backdrop. However, cost trims are not synonymous with trimming business efficiency. Some near-term cost-saving initiatives, if chosen carefully, can surely help you execute your long-term vision.

Here are a few smart IT tips on how to run a lean business while gaining efficiencies and a flexible IT environment:

Streamline your technology portfolio

Move towards newer, cost-effective, and energy-efficient technologies such as infrastructure virtualization, cloud computing, utility platforms, voice-over-Internet protocol, and web 2.0 that save operational and capital expenditures as well as energy costs.
Integrate and standardize business processes with a smart SOA strategy to make your enterprise leaner.
Rationalize your applications portfolio, especially if you’ve been through mergers and acquisitions, to identify overlaps and make more efficient use of what you already own.

Leverage the strengths of your IT service provider

Outsource to eliminate the need to invest in your own IT infrastructure or tools. Reach out to an IT service provider for managed services to monitor and manage your critical IT components.
Negotiate with your main IT vendors to get the best pricing, and watch out for any hidden costs and risks.
Put your IT dollars in “high impact” business areas and buy only what you need. For example, you can go for reduced SLAs for non-critical IT components.
Consolidate multi-vendor environments to a single service provider to take advantage of economies of scale and skill.

Improve internal IT operations

Prioritize IT projects – Look at which project can be monetized first, and pull out of or defer projects that have lost their sponsor.
Keep new hardware purchases on hold – Put Moore’s Law to work for you: hardware will be cheaper in six months, if you can hold on. Leverage the existing resources to the maximum.
Cut waste in office – Use what you’ve got more effectively – Put laptops/printers/copiers in “sleep” mode when not in use. Avoid printing documents or emails unnecessarily.
Audit the invoices you pay – You may be paying maintenance for software you no longer use or is used by only a few employees rarely.
Manage your assets smartly – Implement various supply chain initiatives, quality management programs, and Total Productive Maintenance methods.
Optimize your IT workforce – Recognize the strengths and vulnerabilities; identify and secure the right talent, and focus on improving their performance and productivity towards common goals.

So, get ready to get the maximum value from your limited IT spend. Begin with creating a structured cost-saving plan – go for quick hits as well as long-term measures, and keep your business afloat in the downturn.

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NaviSite Marches Ahead with Modernized CDN Services

NaviSite Quarterly — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 16:35:54 +0000

Did you know that the live coverage of Barack Obama’s presidential inauguration was watched by 21.3 million over the Web, with more than 7.7 million streams flowing concurrently at peak time?

The soaring popularity of the Internet has opened up vast opportunities to deliver your content to your globally dispersed audience. And with democratization of the net, there is no limit to the volume or formats of content that are delivered online. This has created a demand for newer, better Content Delivery Network (CDN) solutions that tap into the power of Internet to deliver a jitter-free user experience, without increasing costs associated with the delivery of content that could include software, games, audio/video, CAD/CAM images, blueprints, and much more.

NaviSite takes content delivery outsourcing to a new level with the latest CDN portfolio that offers faster, reliable, and secure content delivery. NaviSite’s content delivery services break all the barriers of traditional content delivery where organizations had to worry about what they were delivering, to whom, and how – and most of the times were not sure if the content was delivered securely to the right audience.

NaviSite’s CDN solutions leverage the modern CDN technologies of our partner EdgeCast to deliver any kind of content, anytime, anywhere without investing the time, effort, and money required to set up and manage an IT infrastructure, yet offering all the flexibility, functionality, and support that such an infrastructure would provide. NaviSite’s CDN spans a full range of services from Electronic File Delivery (EFD) to content streaming to online video publishing services.

25% Faster and More Efficient Delivery of Your Electronic Content

Content providers succeed and fail by delivery times. A globally dispersed user base, larger file sizes and heavy costs are the key challenges faced by content providers. NaviSite has devised a low-cost alternative to traditional CDNs with 25% faster and more efficient delivery of your electronic content.

Millions of Streams Delivered Per Day

Slow downloading of rich media content can turn your audience off. NaviSite’s scalable content streaming services enable fast, hiccup-free delivery of speeches, podcasts, audio, video, news feeds and live performances. NaviSite supports the latest technologies like Adobe Flash (including FMS3), Windows Media and Microsoft Silverlight, for quicker delivery, high-speed streaming, and secure transfer for various content formats.

High Quality Video on Demand with Vidavee Technology
Consumers expect access to high-quality video on demand. As IP-based video traffic grows, the cost, quality, and operational issues associated with maintaining effective delivery continue to present a challenge to content owners. NaviSite’s Online Video Publishing Platform leverages Vidavee’s proprietary technology, so you don’t have to pay for outside transcoding and editing services or other licenses. The platform provides a web interface to edit, publish, upload, manage and distribute videos, insert ads into the videos, and analyze video usage patterns. Built from the ground up, the Online Video Publishing Platform empowers content providers to be successful in the era of omnipresent videos.

Real-time Insight into Content Delivery Trends

A key challenge in optimizing content delivery is the ability to analyze content usage, network performance, and delivery status. You need powerful reporting tools for adequate monitoring and reporting to have the real-time insights into content delivery trends. NaviSite’s advanced reporting tools provide real-time monitoring and historical reporting capabilities. These reports turn raw data into actionable information, allowing you to evaluate and maintain the effectiveness and performance of your content delivery initiatives.

Promise of Complete Content Security

In the race to meet the “anywhere, anytime” demand from consumers, a merely speedy content delivery is not sufficient. Delivering the content in secure manner has become an equally important priority. NaviSite provides complete security for your content – right from uploading to the time it reaches the hands of your audience. NaviSite’s full support of encrypted and authenticated HTTPS connections protects data in transit across the web. Moreover, NaviSite’s geo-filtering technology can control the access to your content by various geographic regions.

24×7 Access to High-availability Data Center

NaviSite’s Content Delivery Network spans 16 state-of-the-art data centers across different geographic locations, accelerating content delivery from any part of the world. Through strategically located high-capacity data centers, NaviSite supports the complete Content Delivery chain – from hosting, transcoding, streaming, to content publishing, delivery, and reporting. So you get the cost benefits and flexibility of controlling your own CDN while liberating yourself from ISP contracts, capital investments, and operational hassles.

There has never been a more exciting time to be part of the CDN revolution. NaviSite is a partner able to ensure lightning-fast, secure content delivery without worrying about the format, media, or distance. You can access the most complete range of CDN services to meet your needs of large digital assets delivery.

For more information on NaviSite’s CDN solutions, please email the author of this article at content@navisite.com.

Recession Proof Your Business with Hosted and Enterprise Email & Collaboration from NaviSite

Tony Rorai — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 16:35:16 +0000

In the current economic climate, IT Directors have to balance costs with the continuing march of technology more than ever. Prudent organizations know that standing still is the worst thing they can do, so the discussion becomes how to offload critical but non-strategic functions to free up resources and focus on core business priorities. The first of these functions that should be migrated to a hosting provider like NaviSite is Enterprise Email and Collaboration.

Get enterprise class email with minimal investment

Cost pressures are the top challenge IT managers are contending with in 2009. Personnel represent the largest ongoing cost associated with supporting an email and collaboration infrastructure, followed closely by hardware and software in terms of both capital expenditures and ongoing maintenance. Many organizations running Exchange 2003 are contending with the ongoing personnel costs for email, but have made a choice to defer hardware and software purchases in 2009, which may be a premature decision as Microsoft is retiring mainstream support for Exchange 2003 on April 14, 2009. On that date, organizations still on Exchange 2003 will have to make a choice of either staying on a legacy platform that will no longer receive updates outside of security, or upgrading to Exchange 2007. Upgrading from Exchange 2003 to 2007 requires new hardware, so that decision would include a large capital expenditure, something organizations would not like to carry out right now. Outsourcing e-mail needs allows organizations to upgrade to the new system for a predictable monthly fee, with no upfront hardware costs, and provides organizations with access to the latest hardware and software in the market without additional investments and without the risk of obsolescence.

Free up your time and resources with a secure inbox

Security threats are another key challenge for organizations. According to a Sophos press release from June 2008, the level of spam rose from 92.3% to 92.6% in the first three months of 2008, and corporations are facing the fact that only one in 28 emails are legitimate. Not only does this amount of unwanted email become a burden to your network in the form of higher bandwidth needs, it forces IT departments into a cycle of diagnosing and fixing problems with spam software and appliances instead of focusing on core business priorities. By outsourcing to NaviSite, this problem completely goes away.

NaviSite’s email hosting and collaboration solutions include:

Firewalls custom-configured for your environment and fully monitored and maintained round-the-clock by NaviSite’s security engineers.
Spam Filtering, so instead of wasting resources by paying for the bandwidth to receive spam, hard drives to store it, and staff time to manage it, our service stems the tide of junk email.
Email Virus Protection, where NaviSite scans all message parts for the latest viruses and quarantines infected messages for review and disposal before they have an opportunity to invade your environment.
Enhanced monitoring, where NaviSite proactively monitors messaging environments 24×7 to make sure applications, operating systems, and servers are all running properly by blocking invalid connection attempts and immediately detecting and responding to Directory Harvest Attacks and other threats before they can damage your environment.

Stay in touch with your business, anytime, anywhere

Although there are numerous other challenges when it comes to managing an email environment, the final key challenge we see is higher user expectations and limited resources. Unlike the recent past where email was strictly a communication tool, email now contains urgent customer orders, shipment notices, and other critical documents. Because of this, users require constant “dial-tone” availability and reliability, and expect email to be available all the time, day or night from their desktops, from the web, from mobile devices, from across towns, or across an ocean. 100% uptime isn’t an achievement anymore; it’s the expectation. NaviSite’s email and collaboration solutions are built on a world-class Enterprise Hosting platform with industry experts at each layer starting with the network, security and OS. NaviSite’s Messaging Engineers bring a combination of expertise and operational excellence that has been demonstrated over 15 years of providing managed messaging services. This allows us to confidently offer uptime SLA’s that are among the highest in the industry, giving your users the dial-tone access they require while allowing your IT department to focus on core business priorities.

Reap the benefits of Hosted and Enterprise Email

Hosted and Enterprise email and collaboration with NaviSite makes good business sense today. Email continues to grow in size and complexity, and it continues to hold more and more information, requiring more and more bandwidth and storage. Spam shows no signs of slowing anytime soon, and security threats continue to jeopardize the safety of enterprise information. Combine these with the current economic climate, which deprives even the best IT departments of adequate resources to maintain service levels, and Hosted and Enterprise email and collaboration becomes the smart choice. The costs are lower, the headaches go away, service quality improves, security tightens, and perhaps most importantly, IT can focus on the strategic, higher profile projects that will help contribute to the bottom line success of their core business.

If you have any questions or need more information on NaviSite’s email hosting solutions, then contact the author of this article at trorai@navisite.com.

Dynamic Scaling of IT Environments On-Demand with AppStructure

NaviSite Quarterly — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 16:34:02 +0000

ConnectEDU connects students, educators, and employers with higher education and career opportunities through its innovative, web-based solutions. They use AppStructure, NaviSite’s dynamic computing platform, to create a robust foundation for connecting hundreds of thousands to a successful future.

ConnectEDU provides comprehensive web-based tools for college and career planning that are currently deployed in 2,000 high schools and over 300 colleges nationwide. They face continual challenges intrinsic to the nature of their business, like seasonal computing fluctuations and growing technology requirements. To prepare for business surprises and growth, ConnectEDU needed to develop a hybrid technology environment with Dedicated and Virtual Machines so that they could quickly and cost-effectively scale their IT environment up or down on demand, without compromising on the performance of their web-based solutions.

The company approached NaviSite in 2008 for help with leveraging technology in a manner that would improve their efficiencies and prepare them to handle growing market demands. ConnectEDU had worked with NaviSite as a trusted technology partner in the past and that positive experience made NaviSite the ideal choice.

NaviSite supported ConnectEDU’s laudable mission of democratizing access to higher education and career exploration for all students. NaviSite suggested a customized solution that included the agile computing platform AppStructure, supported by dedicated hosting services, database administration, and storage management services to help them architect and run their web-based solutions smoothly.

AppStructure provided a cost-effective, tightly integrated and highly adaptive virtualized environment that allowed ConnectEDU to easily scale their computing resources up or down to meet their changing infrastructure needs. It also helped them integrate their entire application portfolio onto a single platform, and added Web 2.0 capabilities to their web-based solutions to ensure seamless collaboration between students, educators, employers. NaviSite deployed the AppStructure platform much faster than a dedicated server environment, with a greater alignment in revenue and cost.

The relationship between NaviSite and ConnectEDU has moved from strength to strength seamlessly. NaviSite has provided ConnectEDU with a reliable technology base on which they can scale their business. They chose NaviSite because of service excellence, flexible service offerings, and customized solutions. Winning ConnectEDU’s confidence by delivering on our promise has created a long-lasting, business partnership.

If you have any queries, or need more information about NaviSite’s AppStructure and Managed Hosting Services, contact the author of this article at content@navisite.com.

The Cloud of Business Efficiency Amidst a Slowdown

NaviSite Quarterly — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 16:31:49 +0000

Imagine a scenario where you buy costly servers and other IT hardware, and then spend too much of your precious time and money managing, upgrading, and running them. Is it worth the hassle, especially today when you would like to focus on surviving the slowdown rather than worrying about the operational hiccups of your IT environment? Cloud computing has unlocked a new generation of IT that promises agility within your business without stretching your IT spend. The current economic crisis is the right environment for this new revolution to grow in.

Today is the time to do more with less, and get the flexibility to scale your IT to meet your needs. Cloud computing is a solution that lets you do this swiftly and cost-effectively. This saves you from needing to raise huge amounts of capital to build and operate your own data center, which might be a tough proposition in this challenging market. What’s more, you save money, reach global audiences, gain web-scale efficiencies, and get more time on hand to focus on solving your critical business issues, while your IT environment continues to meet growing business demands.

The “What” of Cloud

The question “what is cloud computing” leaves many confused. As with any new technology buzzword, there are multiple definitions for cloud computing circling the IT world. Some call it “evolved hosting,” some “virtualized environment,” and still others refer to it as “platform as a service, infrastructure as a service, or software as a service.” Surprisingly, all of them are true!

Cloud computing is an emerging on-demand development, deployment, and delivery model that delivers off-site IT components, including infrastructure, applications, and services over the net on a pay per use basis. The key features of cloud computing worth noting are:

It is on-demand, which means the resources are provisioned or de-provisioned quickly using technologies such as virtualization.
It is off-site, which means you do not own the IT resources; they belong to the provider and you use them when needed. It also means lower costs, since you do not require any software or hardware.
It is “pay per use” model, which means that you pay for what you need, saving costs on unnecessary hardware software purchases.
It is over the net, which means that the computing infrastructure or applications and their associated data reside on a central web-based server rather than on an end user’s desktop (including servers, network, and storage). This gives users the mobility to access the information that they need any time, anywhere, from any device with an Internet connection—including mobile and handheld phones.

The “Where” of Cloud

The cloud can be deployed anywhere across the computing stack, and can expand or contract based on business needs. The cloud computing landscape of organizations can be a mix of various clouds, including:

Cloud Infrastructure or “Hardware-as-a-Service”: It includes providing shared/reusable hardware computing hardware – such as servers, storage network, and managed services for a specific time and usage-based fee. Virtualization, grid computing, and para-virtualization are all examples of Cloud Infrastructure.
Cloud Application or “Software-as-a-Service”: It involves offering specialized software that is installed, run, and maintained on a Cloud Infrastructure somewhere and can be accessed by the end users over the net. You pay based on number of application users or seats.
Cloud Platform: This refers to a unified platform that dynamically provisions, configures, reconfigures, de-provisions, and manages hardware and software as needed.
Cloud Service: This is independent software that can be used in conjunction with other services to achieve an interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over the network.
Cloud Desktop: This includes desktop applications that run from the cloud hardware via the Internet.
Cloud Storage: In this type of cloud, the data is separated from the place where it is processed, and stored remotely.

The “Why” of Cloud

No matter which cloud you find yourself on, its silver lining is common across, which is why more and more businesses are transitioning to the cloud. One of its key advantages is that it is a cost-effective way for businesses to acquire and use IT – a proposition that is magnified in the economic crisis. This makes it a valuable solution for small and medium businesses that need to maximize productivity without spending too much on IT resources or hardware, and now even for large enterprises who are striving to stay afloat in the downturn.

Another compelling reason to consider cloud computing is that it adds responsiveness and flexibility to your business and is ideal for businesses that experience frequent spikes in usage. The on-demand model lets you re-size or right-size your IT environment and eliminates the need for planning computing demand in advance, which further saves the surprises or costs inherent in computer capacity planning.

The Cloud entails no upfront capital costs and low operational costs. What’s more, it helps enterprises to seek and deploy new technology innovations without worrying about procuring and managing resources to enable it – so that they can compete better in the market. You do not need to build in-house expertise for IT components and technologies, as your cloud computing provider deals with all this and more. Remote access, effective resource utilization, portability, real-time collaboration capabilities, and speed to market are some of the other propositions driving the shift to cloud, especially when information has become more and more on-demand and mobile.

The Future of the Cloud

Cloud is here to stay and will continue to expand. Gartner estimates that by 2012, one in every three dollars spent on enterprise software will be a service subscription rather than a product license, and that early adopters will purchase as much as 40 percent of their hardware infrastructure as a service rather than as equipment. In another 2008 survey, IDC predicted that spending on IT cloud services will reach US$42 billion by 2012, which makes it 23% of total IT spending in 2012. While strategic business processes like finance will take longer to reach the cloud, non-critical business services and applications accessed outside the firewall like information or entertainment-oriented services such as video on demand are fast moving to the cloud.

The real foundation for cloud computing is not just Internet, it is trust. Technology providers need to build the trust that the servers, applications, and business information of their customers are secure. The provider who understands specific business needs as well as various technologies and delivery models can help you leverage cloud in the best possible way and achieve maximum business value from IT spend.

So, if you need scalable, affordable, and flexible IT infrastructure, then Cloud is the way to go. And if you choose a provider who is able to align it well with enterprise IT management, security, governance, and visibility, then you are ready to accomplish more and succeed in the Cloud.

NaviSite is a leading technology provider with extensive experience in cloud computing. Their dynamic cloud computing platform, AppStructure, which combines Virtualization, SOA, and Web 2.0 across infrastructure, application, and service layers, can help organizations build clouds and manage them, adding agility and cost-effectiveness within businesses. With deep knowledge of both enterprise and cloud data centers as well as vast capabilities across all layers of the Cloud stack, including infrastructure, applications, operating systems, databases, platform, and virtualization, NaviSite can help design creative, hybrid delivery solutions that leverage the best of both worlds.

If you have any questions or need more information about NaviSite’s cloud computing solutions, then contact the author of this article at content@navisite.com.

NaviSite’s SAP Infrastructure Capabilities Turn Market Challenges into Revenue Building Blocks

NaviSite Quarterly — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 16:29:54 +0000

SAP applications dominate the enterprise IT landscape today. NaviSite has designed an end-to-end SAP infrastructure management portfolio that offloads all the worries of running a mission-critical SAP environment and aligns infrastructure strategy with business needs.

NaviSite has partnered with oXya, a leader in developing, deploying and managing SAP landscapes, to provide a gamut of SAP infrastructure and operation services that lower the total cost of ownership and deliver fully managed, scalable infrastructure for optimal application performance. The services include Managed Hosting Solutions, Operation Monitoring and Basis Administration Services, and Technical Consulting Services for various SAP technologies such as SAP R/3 to ECC 6, BW 3.x to BI 7 and NetWeaver.

NaviSite’s SAP capabilities extend to complete infrastructure lifecycle management – including technical professional services, infrastructure performance analysis, and optimization services that enable rapid, cost-effective SAP deployments, upgrades and migrations, and help drive current business objectives.

Enterprise customers worldwide want high availability, seamless performance and complete security of mission-critical SAP infrastructure. The all-inclusive hosting and support SLAs coupled with comprehensive SAP Basis services meet the SAP demands of organizations of all sizes, ranging from small and mid-size businesses to global enterprises. Customers can leverage NaviSite’s enterprise-class, SAS 70 Type II data center facilities to ensure an optimal SAP environment, and get access to 24×7 support by SAP functional and technical experts.

One key challenge of SAP is to quickly adapt SAP infrastructure to support new business functions while controlling costs. NaviSite’s rich experience in hosting and managing various ERP, CRM and BI applications, and state-of-the-art SAS 70 Type II data center facilities ensures that the infrastructure quickly scales to business requirements without impacting the application performance or availability.

With NaviSite, customers get the best of both worlds – best-in-class infrastructure and vast application expertise – to derive maximum value from their SAP solutions.

For more information on NaviSite’s SAP Infrastructure Management solutions, please contact the author of this article at content@navisite.com.

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Data Center Economics

NaviSite Quarterly — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 16:28:27 +0000

NaviSite Bridges the Gap between High-Performance Data Centers and Reduced Costs

Downtime, Disruption, Cost, and Compliance – companies are continuously faced with these IT challenges. Gartner believes that during the 2009–2014 period, delivery of IT infrastructure services will become highly automated. Considering the current economic environment, it is the right time to leverage the IT infrastructure of tomorrow to gain a competitive advantage in the future. However, with infrastructure costs soaring, companies are exploring solutions and providers that can help them keep their data center costs to a minimum without compromising on the performance and availability of IT resources.

NaviSite’s enterprise-class, SAS 70 Type II certified data center solutions give you the dual advantage of reduced costs and next-generation infrastructure solutions – ensuring you get to market faster and stay ahead of the competition.

Power of High Speed Networks for 100% Uptime
As the world becomes more and more interconnected, networks provide more value. In an increasingly bandwidth-driven IT environment, NaviSite’s data centers provide High Speed OC3-Internet Connection Services to provide faster and more reliable network performance with 100% uptime, network reliability, and redundancy.

Virtualized IT Infrastructure that Scales with Your Business
Complex business application ecosystems demand large numbers of servers, which further consume a tremendous amount of energy, time, and costs. NaviSite’s data centers use virtualization technologies, which eliminates server sprawl, and gives you the flexibility to scale based on your business needs. NaviSite’s innovative, cloud computing platform AppStructure virtualizes your IT environment quickly, while allowing you to integrate your applications and build a collaborative web 2.0-centric environment for your business.

Flexible, Energy Efficient Environment
While the need for more storage and speed is omnipresent, those things can gobble up huge amounts of power, adding to data center costs. NaviSite has built a power-efficient environment with diverse power routes and a redundant switching infrastructure that ensures uninterrupted power with minimal waste. As a member of THE GREEN GRID, NaviSite ensures that our data centers are designed to minimize power consumption through the use of energy-efficient hardware and technologies (like virtualization). NaviSite’s data centers offer Supermicro’s SuperBlade® servers that consume less power but deliver premium performance and high availability, offering you high computing density, storage flexibility, and easy scalability.

Near Real-time, Business-driven IT Management
Customers today need monitoring and management tools that help them improve the performance of their entire IT system remotely, allowing just-in-time responses to issues and enhanced cost savings. NaviSite’s IT Management Portal NaviView, with a secure web interface, provides a complete, unified view of IT assets, helping business reduce costs and optimize their processes. All NaviSite data center solutions are monitored ‘round the clock’ by the Network Operations Center (NOC) and are supported by 24×7 customer service to resolve problems and queries quickly.

NaviSite focuses on simplifying technology experiences for all of its customers. With over 1400 customers globally, NaviSite understands the issues NaviSite’s customers are facing and has developed the solutions you need to grow your business.

For more information on NaviSite’s data center solutions, please email the author of this article at content@navisite.com.

Cloud Computing: What’s all the buzz about?

Rathin Sinha — Fri, 01 May 2009 18:22:17 +0000

The IT world is abuzz with “cloud computing.” If one performs a Google search for the word, almost 20 million results show up now compared to just a few barely two years ago. The number of news references to cloud computing today is several times that of the term “web-hosting”. Pundits and practitioners keep on speculating over the promise of cloud computing and if it might one day allow companies to move all of their data and applications into “the cloud” and out of data centers.But where exactly is this mysterious cloud? And what really is cloud computing? In the simplest terms, the cloud is just some form of network connection to an IT infrastructure, and cloud computing refers to using distant, interconnected servers and hardware to store data and run applications, over the internet. The connected infrastructure allows users to perform a variety of functions that their own company’s infrastructure might not be able to offer on its own.

Cloud computing is actually a generic term that encompasses a few different services, all working on the idea of connecting to some kind of IT infrastructure via a network connection. There is virtualization, which is optimized sharing of computing and storage in servers located in data centers that one doesn’t have to own or manage; Software as a Service (SaaS), which uses a browser based software instead of the traditional procedure of purchasing, installing and maintaing that software on one’s own computer; and Platform as a Service, which allows access to a browser-based computing Platform via a network connection.

A simple example of cloud computing, which combines virtualization and SaaS, is free online e-mail service such as Gmail or Yahoo mail. Users can log in to their account, and work on e-mails without ever really knowing where the computing, application and storage coming from. If one gets more e-mail, more space is used. If one deletes some e-mail, less space is used. The same goes for the e-mail browsing application. Users don’t actually install a program on their computer to browse through their e-mail. The application is stored and runs in the cloud, and the computer just uses it as it is needed.

Because cloud computing allows to easily scale up or down the services, the pricing model changes from traditional IT support. Users pay a monthly fee for whatever service they need, and only pay for what they use. And because the costs of the cloud servers, applications and staff are distributed among all of the customers using that product (something called multi-tenancy), users wind up paying much less in the end than by purchasing an IT infrastructure and hosting it on their own. The only hardware users need to buy is a computer and an internet connection. The rest exists in the cloud.

For a company, a major advantage of “cloud computing” is the ability to have immediate access to computing and storage without upfront capital expenses. It helps companies scale up or down based on market conditions without designing for peak capacity. The flexibility that “Cloud Computing” offers to a business is especially advantageous for start-ups or small companies for who cash might be tight or demand unpredictable.

However, it is not so clear if larger enterprises will reap the same benefits from “Cloud Computing” as small and medium business are expected to. It is believed that security and reliability concerns of the general public cloud as well as the price points may lead them to instead opt for ‘Private Cloud Computing” where enterprises could create their own cloud ecosystem for internal consumption.

No matter what, “Cloud Computing” is definitely something we at NaviSite are going to be closely involved with. It is a highly efficient alternative to traditional IT resources, and many companies are exploring its potential. Though the ideas aren’t necessarily brand new for NaviSite, this will be interesting to watch and participate in.