Disaster Recovery Service Checklist for MSP

1. Can you take transactionally-correct Hot/Live bare-metal image backups?
2. Can you recover to anything? Dissimilar hardware, recover virtual to physical, vice versa?
3. Backup to Local Device, Network, and Cloud?
4. RPO (Recovery Point Objective) for Images of 15 minutes (local and in the Cloud)
5. RPO for data of <1 minute
6. RTO (Recovery Time Objective) <1 hour for entire server
7. Can you restore individual files instead of the entire server?
8. Can you restore Exchange mail items in addition to Exchange?
9. Cross platform – Windows, Mac, Linux
10. Physical or Virtual — Physical, VMware, Hyper-V, Xen, Virtual Box
11. Do you have a product designed for desktops/laptops?
12. Can it be setup, download, installed, and configured in 5 minutes or less?
13. Do you have a web-services API to integrate with anything we desire?
14. Can we do bulk/push installs?
15. Can we manage everything online, or do we have to remote-in to change backup schedules?
16. Does the software auto-update or do we have to install upgrades?
17. Are ALL your Data Centers SAS-70 Type-II Audited?
18. Do you store ALL my data in 2 or more data centers located at least 100 miles apart?
19. Do you offer 24×7 Support? Does that cost extra?
20. Where is your support team located?
21. Do you sell Directly to Businesses?
22. Priced for Small and Midsize Business (S in SMB), under $20/month for starters?
23. Do I have to buy software or storage in blocks or is it pay as you go?
24. What are you monthly/annual minimums as a partner?
25. Is there any hardware required?

 

Managed Service Providers and IT Resellers interested in Servosity’s Backup and Disaster Recovery services can visit http://www.servosity.com 

-Cheers

Autonomics and Machine Learning

•Unless ITIL standardization is done, Automation becomes extremely difficult

•Best way to get automation going is to off-shore - If it can be done at off-shore, it can be automated!

•Segregating work in  L1-L2-L3 makes it easier to use both Autonomics and Expert system

•Scale is important to realize benefits of autonomics – like Private cloud

•Outsourcing to largely Autonomic based service provider will increase by fortune 500 customers

•Large service Providers will be the one who will use the Autonomics and Expert system

 

It is easier for machines to understand and accumulate knowledge which is explicit e.g. concept, process, procedure, principles etc. but difficult to understand implicit knowledge like experience, insight or procedural knowledge

Next.... Cognitive Technology and Knowledge Representation (AI).

-Cheers

Look - Where are they now!!!!

 

 

Visit Aryaka - On my list for Wan Optimization and Application Accelaration

WAN Optimization as-a-Service

• Application Performance
• Bandwidth Reduction
• Last Mile Acceleration
• Data Protection
• Global Network
• MyAryaka Visibility
• How to Connect
• Technology Features
• The Aryaka Difference

Network as-a-Service

• Global Network
• MyAryaka Visibility
• How to Connect

Application Delivery as-a Service

• For Web Applications
• For SSL VPN
• For Large File Transfers
• Global Network
• MyAryaka Visibility
• How to Connect

Cloud Acceleration

• Cloud Application Performance
• MyAryaka Cloud Visibility

 

-Cheers

The Elephant Catchers

Book by Subroto Bagchi

 

The Elephant Catchers is due to make its debut on August 24th 2013, published by Hachette India.

 

The book is arranged in six Parts.

Part I, The need to build comfort with the idea of scale.

Part II is about scaling business by getting large deals, about the need to stay away from certain customer engagements and business models that could prevent growth and the subject of mergers and acquisitions

Part III, the conversation shifts to scaling your intellect; after all, the enterprise is an intellect game. The capacity to get to the next level often depends on a leader’s ability to augment the organizational intellect by tapping into external expertise. Not everyone knows how to do it.

Part IV deals with the idea of scaling reputation. Reputation is a form of capital and growing it right, beyond just good public relations (PR), helps an organization get to the next level.

Part V focus on scaling  people because the modern enterprise is all about people.

Part VI deals with the aspect of scaling adversity. Here it talks about the need to focus on doing ordinary things extraordinarily well when extraordinary events overtake the enterprise.

 

Would love to hear your comments after you had a chance to read it.

 

-Cheers

Managed Crowdsourcing

Enterprise needs to provide right tools to channelize the power of crowdsourcing in a true sense.

Social media are the grate tools for connect, instant update, share and to some extent communicate.

What crowdsourcing would need is more harmonized collaboration, idea generation, problem solving, directing and harnessing efforts towards a goal etc.

The very nature of trying to get this structure to the social media will negate the essence of its extemporaneous nature.

Any Views?

Regards

Back in Action - almost after 500 days...!

Hi,

Focus for next 500 days... SMAC-W.

Social	Twitter, Facebook, Google, Context, Web3.0
Mobile	BYOD - anytime any where
Analytics	Insight and Big data
Cloud	SaaS - hosted and available
Workflow	Workflow and automation

Discussion 1:

The Bandwagon Effect:

People tend to go along with what other members of a group are doing. (Also known as the Herd Mentality.)

The In-group Bias:

People naturally polarize into groups. This bias means people tend to view “their” group as better, while outsiders are collectively viewed as inferior.

  

Is this driving change decision? Or decision are driven based on DATA and ANALYSIS - Business benefits, Quality and productivity. 

Regards

Wipro is evaluating options to sell data centers

India's third biggest software exporter Wipro is evaluating options to sell data centers and other computer hardware assets of its US subsidiary Infocrossing to unlock value from what the company now calls 'non-core' business.

Wipro has already received initial offers from several medium to large US telcos, and the company is deliberating to carve out five data centres owned by Infocrossing for a potential sale estimated to be worth anywhere between $300 million and $400 million.

Wipro’s thought process –

·         This part of Infocrossing (datacenters) is not a game changer over next three-five years.

·         The idea is more about unlocking value from non-strategic part than giving up the entire Infocrossing unit.

·         Customers do not make decisions based on whether a vendor owns datacenters or not.

-Cheers

Indian IT sector - tighten the belt

Are we moving towards another recession?

The global economic developments after Standard & Poor's (S&P) downgraded the U.S. credit rating, point towards the advent of a global economic meltdown. S&P for the first-time downgraded its long-term sovereign credit rating on the U.S. from 'AAA' to 'AA+' and kept a negative outlook.

The debt ceiling could not prevent the S&P downgrading. The historical downgrading also worsened the word economy which is already on the brink of a recession driven by the weakened U.S. financial recovery and the debt-ridden European economy.

While the debt crisis is likely to hit banking, manufacturing, real-estate and pharmaceutical sectors in the U.S., the crisis is said to cause impact to IT Sector and sectors depending on exports.

It will also result in less capital flow to the Indian economy and capital markets may face more volatility head.

Indian IT sector has also started tightening the belt and getting ready to respond to this unprecedented situation.

-Cheers

Enterprise-class cloud-based data protection : Vaultize

Vaultize  from Anoosmar Tech is an enterprise-class cloud-based data protection that not only provide all the benefits of a typical cloud-based backup over traditional on-premise backup, but also provides numerous other benefits making it superior to any plain cloud-based backup solution.

Vaultize provides flexibility to enterprises in terms of deployment and how to store their data.

·         Cloud — they can choose to deploy Vaultize ―as-is— with no or little modifications — using the secure, scalable and reliable Vaultize cloud

·         Cloud option

·         Cloud Provider — they can choose cloud provider (e.g. AWS, Rackspace) which can be different from Vaultize’s preferred provider

·         Cloud Location — they can choose geographical location of cloud storage from many locations

·         Cloud Storage — they can choose to completely control storage whether it is in Vaultize cloud or cloud of its own

·         Virtual Private Cloud — they can choose to a deployment where the server and storage are dedicated to them and are completely isolated from other customers by making a virtual private cloud

·         On-premise/Hybrid

·         Private Cloud — they can choose to deploy Vaultize within a private cloud that would combine the benefits of high-speed on-premise backup with the advanced features of Vaultize

·         Appliance — they can choose to deploy Vaultize appliance to backup the data which otherwise cannot be moved to cloud for compliance to regulations or legal requirements.

Vaultize pricing is very simple: you pay just a flat fee per GB of backup storage.

·         NO Tier-based charging

·         NO Licensing cost — No additional fee for every device/user in your organization

·         NO Quota per user

-Cheers

Key cloud roadblock – Fear of Change

Key findings from a Study  –

Key cloud roadblock –  Fear of Change

·         Fear of change tends to be underestimated when companies decide to mix things up and take new approaches to tried-and-true ways of doing things. It's not just changing what people do all day in terms of how they use software, like moving to SaaS, but it's also about infrastructure and about application developers and how they think about developing an application.

·         Additional cloud roadblocks

o   Up-front costs

o    Security

Justification for cloud implementation on the other hand still remains the same-

·         Cost reduction

·         Increased flexibility/scalability

·         Reduced complexity

Again as discussed earlier in previous blog- Majority have virtualized their cloud servers, but few have implemented the Core management, Automation and Orchestration or Self-service functionality to use the cloud to its full potential.

-Cheers

High and automated Virtulization is same as Private Cloud?

Many companies have  implemented virtualization in various shapes and forms into existing computing environment.

They have followed the path of standardization of environments, Consolidating servers and datacenters, implementing Virtual servers for Development and Test and DR environments, implementing Virtualization for Production as P2V etc.  are all benefits of having virtualization.

Some also run highly virtualized IT with automation provided by system management solutions. One can imagine that many have already reaped the benefits of virtualization including increased utilization of servers, power savings, reduced server footprint, etc.

The question now comes up - “Is High Virtualization the same as Private Cloud?” or “We are already running a highly virtualized computing today, do we still need private cloud?”

And in many scenarios the answer is  still YES. And it really depends on if the attributes delivered by private cloud are in place already or still needed. This point is that virtualization and private cloud are not the same! There is no question that virtualization is an enabler.

Private cloud is a cloud dedicated to an organization. On premises or hosted by a 3^rd party, private cloud must exhibit the characteristics of cloud computing -  else it is not the CLOUD.  

Specifically, private cloud is expected to deliver 3 key attributes: Automation, Elasticity, and Self-service to differentiate itself from a highly virtualized or automated environment.

You will notice that I do not include ubiquitous access and pay-as-you-go model as key attributes for Private Cloud. These two are not considered as essential due to: for private cloud IT may want more control, instead of allowing ubiquitous access; and the pay-as-you-go or charge-back model simply may not be feasible to implement in an organization.

Without having virtualization in place, cloud will be more a concept than an implementable solution. Nonetheless, without self-service and automatic deployment, it may become cost-prohibitive to implement private cloud. These 3 key attributes convert a virtualization solution into a cloud setting.

-Cheers