Micro Support Group

Cloud Computing at MSG for 2012

Dayna Morton — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 04:22:52 +0000

Happy New Year

2012 has arrived and we at Micro Support Group are planning how to best provide for the information technology needs of our clients for the future. Over the past year we have seen our “Cloud” business grow significantly. We are now offering various versions of private cloud technologies hosted in our Earthlink housed data center. We are providing hosting for client owned servers, we are hosting virtual machines for client servers, we are hosting individual applications, and we are hosting DR for clients. Along with those sophisticated services we continue to host email and online backup.

To meet the growing demand for our cloud services, in 2011 we increased our available bandwidth, we added more storage capacity for our on-line backup, we added Dell IDRAC to give us the ability to manage servers more fully remotely and our final investment in 2011 was an additional cabinet to house additional infrastructure. MSG also invested in additional hardware that will make our hosted servers run much cooler and thus reducing our demand for power. Because on top of all of the cost, reliability, and service benefits Cloud computing provides our clients, it is also a very “green” alternative to the on-premise data center.

For 2012 we will continue to invest in our “Cloud” capabilities. Micro Support Group is certainly not the largest provider of cloud services in the industry but anyone would be hard pressed to find another provider with a more cost effective alternative with a better track record of reliability or more responsive service. If you are thinking that “Cloud” is in your organizations future and have any questions what-so-ever, please give me a call. Whether you host with us or not, I would be pleased to discuss cloud technologies with you.

Regards,

Bruce Billingham

Creating a forum for cloud computing discussion

Dayna Morton — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 03:43:31 +0000

It has been a while since my last blog entry, over a year. I have been unfocused regarding blogging but I have also been trying to determine how best to use this tool to the benefit of our clients, potential clients, and others who might have an interest in visiting our website. After looking other blogs I believe that I have a format that will be of value to our visitors.

I was surprised when I discovered that there were over 800 responses to my last entry. It struck me that people are interested in the cloud and cloud technology. So I am thinking that this blog, among other uses, can be a great forum for cloud dscussion. The cloud is revolutionizing the computer industry but it is in it’s infancy. This blog can be a place on the Internet for users to come together and share ideas, successes, failures, technologies and techniques.

MSG is totally committed to advancing cloud technologies to our clients. I personally believe that the hybrid cloud will become the dominate computing environment within in the next five years. MSG plans to take a significant role in rolling out cloud services to business and organizational clients with local area networks of 20 to 1000 seats.

So I hope you will join me in this discussion. I intend to publish responses and comments that relate to cloud computing and make them part of the blog. I look forward to your comments and am excited by the potential sharing of ideas and knowledge.

Bruce Billingham

Beverly MA

11/15/11

Cloud Computing – What You Need to Know to Improve Your Business

Dayna Morton — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 18:18:10 +0000

There is a growing awareness and interest in the business community, from small enterprises to fortune 500 companies, in the concept of “cloud computing”. Put simply, it’s a style of computing where software (applications), information technology infrastructure, and computing “platforms” are delivered to an organization as a service. Using this model, organizations that use technology can better balance their technology needs and costs. They can purchase only the amount of computing capacity required to run their operation, saving money and personnel resources. Cloud computing facilitates the outsourcing of hardware, infrastructure, software, and management so that the organization can concentrate on its core business strategy. Information technology then becomes an operational expense as opposed to a capital expense.

The movement to cloud computing has been made possible by the ever increasing power of computers and servers and the increasing speed and ubiquity of the Internet. Most areas of the country are now able to purchase bandwidth in the range of 10 to 50 megabits (mb) for less than $200 per month. Contrast that with the old reliable T1, which was the gold standard of Internet access just a few years ago, that has a speed of just 1.544 mb and costs around $500.00 per month. Cloud computing would not have the advantages and popularity at that rate of data transfer and cost.

Similarly, computers that act as servers are now significantly more powerful than their predecessors. With the capabilities of these servers and the emergence and stability of virtualization, a single server computer can host several virtual servers. This one piece of hardware can now do the job which used to require many machines. A single virtual server might hold a company’s SQL engine, its applications, its email server and even its “file and print” server. In the past that would require four physical machines. In addition, these virtual servers resemble files in a traditional server environment so they are easily moved from one physical server to another allowing for increased portability and redundancy. This technology, therefore, has the ability to significantly improve reliability and reduce cost. Were an organization to move this virtual server to a hosting facility (think “cloud”) energy consumption and hardware maintenance costs could also be reduced.

The implementation of the corporate cloud can come in many forms, from a completely corporate- owned private cloud to a model where the organization owns none of its infrastructure and is computing on outsourced, public resources. The implementation of the private cloud is simply an aggregation of computing resources into a single privately managed data center. The other extreme occurs when the organization outsources applications, data, backup, and support to companies specializing in the cloud. There are many hybrid versions which are now the most common implementations.

Micro Support Group has been offering cloud solutions for more than 5 years, is fully committed to the concept, and is very experienced in moving organizations to the cloud. In upcoming posts I will discuss various forms of cloud computing and how organizations can avail themselves of resources and savings.

Bruce Billingham

Welcome to Our New Website!

Dayna Morton — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 14:11:48 +0000

Hi and welcome to Micro Support Group, Inc’s new website! We have spent the last few months working with website designer Mike Sperling to develop a more modern and functional website for you, our customers.

Please take a minute to take a look around and let us know if you think there is anything we can do to improve the look or functionality.

One of our favorite new additions is this blog section. Here we hope to post and comment on interesting events or new technologies that might help to better serve you and your business. Please feel free to comment on anything you see here and tell us what’s going on in your world.

Well stay tuned for now and have a great day!