Introduction to managed services

A managed service is the practice of transferring day-to-day operations and responsibility to a third party, such as a managed services provider. This is a strategic method of improved, effective and efficient operation of the IT infrastructure of any company or organization.A managed services provider (MSP), is typically an information technology (IT) services provider, who manages and assumes responsibility for providing a defined set of services to their clients either proactively or as they determine that the services are needed. Most MSPs bill a flat or near-fixed monthly fee, which benefits their clients by providing them with predictable IT support costs.

Advantages

1. Access to new technology: Using managed services, you are eligible for all the updates and upgrades of the software and applications that you are using. Also with a click of a button you can use any new application that is provided by the MSP (Managed Service Provider).
2. Lower cost of ownership: Instead of investing in IT equipment, bandwidth and IT staff, companies can take advantage of the Web-based applications through managed services and focus on core activities. The technology is owned and managed by the service provider, and is therefore constantly updated and maintained, in consequence, saving companies many of the unpredictable costs and risks that are related with upgrades, patches and maintaining the Information Technology staff to run the software. Total Costof Ownership (TCO) is much lower compared to premise-based solutions since hardware and software costs are reduced signifigantly.
3. Improved service and support: Organizations using managed services, can deploy by themselves any application, anytime without waiting from an IT person to respond to their request since all the applications are offered as a service and on-demand.
4. Flexibility: With managed services technology, organizations have the flexibility to grow without the need of altering their inhouse equipment. Everything is offered on-demand.
5. No maintenance costs: All the costs in relation with maintenance and support, do not apply when you are using managed services. The maintenance and supprot costs are included in the monthly flat-rate.
6. Backup: Backup Service is fully available from every MSP. There is no need to worry about your backups. The MSP is doingt his for you based on the agreement that you have.

Avgoustinos Constantinides
IT Consultant
IBSAC Intelligent Business Solutions Ltd
http://www.ibs.com.cy

Advantages and disadvantages of cloud computing

Introduction
Cloud computing is one of the latest technologies that is already used by a vast amount of companies and organizations worldwide. For an introduction of cloud computing you can read one of our articles “Introduction to cloud computing”.
Even though there are many advantages when you are using this technology, doesn’t make it the best thing for everyone. When is the best solution for your company or organization? In order to answer this question, we have to examine the advantages and disadvantages of cloud computing. After reading the below pages, you will be able to decide if cloud computing is the right solution for you or not.

Advantages
· Lower-cost computers for users: This point is one of the financial advantages of cloud computing. There is no need to purchase powerful and expensive equipment to use cloud computing since all the processing is not at your local computer but in the cloud. Since the application runs in the cloud, not on the desktop PC, that desktop PC does not need the processing power or hard disk space demanded by traditional desktop software.
· Better performance: Due to the fact that no programs or files are loaded on the local PC, users will not experience delays when switching on/off their computers and also the internal network will be much faster since no internal traffic will occur.
· Less IT infrastructure costs: The IT department of large organizations could experience decreasing on the expenses in regards with infrastructure with the adoption of the cloud computing technology. Instead of investing in larger numbers of more powerful servers, the IT staff can use the computing power of the cloud to supplement or replace internal computing resources.
· Less maintenance costs: Maintenance costs also will be reduced using cloud computing since both hardware and software maintenance for organizations of all sizes will be much less. For example, fewer servers are necessary in the organization which means that maintenance costs are immediately lowered. As to software maintenance, there is no software on the organization’s computers for the IT staff to maintain.
· Lower software costs: Using cloud computing there is no need to purchase software packages for each computer in the organization, only those employees actually using an application need access to that application in the cloud.
· Automatic software updates: All the software’s need update and the great thing with cloud computing is that you do not have to worry for any updates and also your organization will not have any additional expenses when a new upgrade or update is necessary.
· Increased computing power: When using cloud computing, you can use the cloud computing power since you are no longer limited to what a single desktop computer can do.
· Unlimited storage capacity: The cloud offers virtually limitless storage capacity but at any time you can expand your storage capacity with a small additional charge on your monthly fee.
· Increased data safety: There is no point to worry for disk failures or a disaster at your office. All the data is stored in the cloud.
· Anywhere access to your documents: When you are in the cloud, there is no need to take your documents with you. Instead, you can access your actual PC from anywhere that there is Internet access available.
· Latest version availability: One more thing in relation with documents is that when you edit one document at the office and then you go somewhere else and open it, the latest version will be displayed since as I already aforementioned all the work is done centrally in the cloud.
· Use your computer from anywhere: This is one of the biggest advantages of cloud computing. Basically, when you use this technology, you are not limited to work on a single PC. You just use your “cloud PC” from anywhere and any PC and your existing applications and documents follow you through the cloud. Move to a portable device, and your applications and documents are still available.


Disadvantages
· Internet connection is required: It is impossible to work if your Internet connection is down. Since you are using Internet to connect to your “cloud PC”, if there is no Internet connection simply you cannot connect.
· Low-speed connections are not recommended: This is not a very important disadvantage since everybody today has at least 1 Mbps connection at work and at home. However, it is important to mention that cloud computing cannot work with slow Internet connections such as dial-up since web-based applications often require a lot of bandwidth to download, as do large documents.
· Sometimes is slow: Also, with fast connections, sometimes you might experience delays since web-based applications can sometimes be slower than accessing a similar software program on your desktop PC. The reasons for that are because of the demanding upload and download bandwidth that web applications need.
· Stored data might not be secure: Data is stored “in the cloud”. However, where exactly is the cloud and is it really secure? These are questions arising for users that have confidential data.
· Your data is 100% in the cloud: All the data that you had until now on your local PC, it is stored in the cloud. Theoretically, data stored in the cloud is safe since a cloud hosting company uses several ways of backup in order ensure that on any case the data will not be lost. However, if your data is missing (even one in a million), you have no physical or local backup of your data.



Avgoustinos Constantinides
IT Consultant
http://www.ibs.com.cy

Why to virtualize your IT infrastructure

Overview
For the last two years, virtualization came into play from a poorly understood concept to a hyped industry buzzword. Even though other technologies are expensive and cannot be used by small businesses, virtualization is a mature technology which provides a layer of hardware abstraction that every organization can benefit.
Virtualization refers to virtualizing Operating systems. Wikipedia uses the term “platform virtualization” since the main concept of virtualization is to run an abstraction layer on a computer that emulates the hardware itself. With the combination of abstraction and emulation, a virtual machine is created, which is a full “workable” computer with the same facilities and functionality as a dedicated machine has.
However, the main advantage of virtualization is to have many virtual machines (full “workable”) into one physical machine. As Dan Chu said, vice president of emerging products and markets at VMWare, “Virtualization enables one server or computer to act as many”.

Advantages
Any size of business can benefit from any kind or scale of virualization. Some of these benefits are the following:
Reducing power consumption: IT virtualization has the ability to reduce significantly power consumption hence is considered as a “green” technology. It is considered as a “reducing consumption technology” since instead of have several dedicated machines running one operating system each, you can have many machines reside on one physical.
Cost reductions: This is one of the main advantages of virtualization since it is the main reason that companies migrating to virtual devices. Minimizing the costs of purchasing expensive hardware and avoiding the running expenses of several server machine, we can now deploy more systems at a lower cost per system.
Ease of provisioning: Installing and configuring a new server on a new piece of hardware it is a very time consuming process, hence, using virtualization it is a matter of minutes to install and configure new servers.
Reduce operating expenses: Maintenance and administration costs are reduced since there is less hardware to maintain. Instead of having many physical servers to maintain, one physical server hosts many virtual which correspods to less administration.
More responsive IT staff: Especially for large organizations, IT staff can be more responsive since virtualization simplifies the IT infrastructure of the organization. IT staff is able to help the organization in a more business oriented IT strategy and not to keep the current systems up and running since with using virtualization, all the day-to-day operations are more simplified.
Standardization: All the virtualization software runs on any AMD and Intel platforms, no matter what operating system you use.
Resource accesibility: Using virtualization technology, all the physical resources are used including CPU, memory, storage, etc. However, virtualization helps your organization to use all the available hardware resources.
Efficiency: Since multiple machines are running on a single physical server, your hardware is fully utilized.
Mobility: Virtual machines can be provisioned, backed up and restored very easily with the minimum downtime.
Flexibility: The IT team of your organization can continue and support older but mission-critical applications using virtual machines.


Avgoustinos Constantinides
IT Consultant
IBSAC Intelligent Business Solutions Ltd
http://www.ibs.com.cy/