Why is Managed Networks blogging about theatre reviews I hear you ask?
The reason why is that we actively sponsor a charity called Stage One. Stage One’s Startup Fund helps young producers and directors put on their first show; enter Birdsong.
It is really great to see that the critics are raving and we can only hope that our contribution to the Startup Fund has contributed a little to the success of the show and we hope the show achieves yet more critical acclaim.

Recent news that HP and McCartney Productions Limited (MPL) had agreed to digitally convert and deliver the music library of ex-Beatle, Paul McCartney via a private cloud, may be seen as representing a very public statement, vindicating belief in and acceptance of the shift towards cloud technology as the future of comprehensive, universal data storage and access.

The McCartney library collection includes a wealth of images, artwork, paintings, film and videos, and in addition to changing how music fans and artists will interact, the digitization of McCartney’s library is intended to help preserve the iconic, musical history and its legacy for future generations.

Whilst SMEs have been quicker to see the accelerated capability for data and resource applications to be easily obtained independently of location, say via DesktopLive, for many traditional businesses, Cloud computing – where services are no longer tied to dedicated hardware – is still viewed as a major departure from the understood IT service delivery model and indigenous network security.

Servers, network devices, and storage can be considered ‘virtualised’ resources. By abstracting from the hardware, they move freely about an infrastructure, delivering services when and where they are needed. Implementation of cloud computing does not mean a complete reinvention of a company’s entire IT arrangements. IT support for industries underpins essential IT services continuity.

For proactive IT cloud providers, the imperatives of delivering structural IT support are intrinsic to assured, service delivery. The key planks being the achievement of extreme agility in responding to tailored business demands, the driving down of service delivery costs, and the minimisation of risk.

Inevitably, understandable concerns over security of releasing sensitive/highly confidential information from behind their own secured firewall is more likely to lead to companies adopting the private cloud. This means that the physical hardware remains within a company’s own premises, for daily system operation, maintenance, and security to be run in house.

However, more confident enterprises have embraced cloud computing by augmenting the private cloud with the possibilities offered from public cloud providers. The hybrid cloud approach consists of a private and public cloud which however, remains separate but work together to provide infinite data and application portability.

The hybrid cloud approach also has a stringent service management requirement to achieve the necessary performance, security, and compliance. Consequently, it’s important to choose a reliable IT supplier of public cloud, that can extend service management capabilities to an organisation.

The future predicted by many proactive IT professionals has to be Cloud shaped. The entire Web will be completely transformed into one endless storage cloud where data is constantly uploaded and downloaded and thus, the concept of data ownership will become meaningless in a virtual world where everyone will have access to everything.

Data storage and remote access are becoming ever more urgent issues as emergent technology platforms and channels for instant, interactive message and media exchange accelerate demand for capacity. From SMEs to Corporates, the challenge for information storage space is unending. Simplistic solutions like stockpiles of DVDs, data sticks, larger hard drives or wholesale deletion of old files are now no longer tenable.

Cloud storage, or the saving of data to an off-site storage system maintained by a third party, or cloud provider, is now the only realistic way forward in the 21st century. Essentially, this means no longer storing information on a computer’s own hard drive or another local storage device, but instead saves to a remote database and the Internet provides the connection between the two. A cloud storage system simply needs just one data server connected to the Internet.

Data can then be accessed from any location with Internet access without the need of a physical storage device or using the same computer to save and retrieve information. In addition, cloud storage is a supremely efficient method to create data backups for a company’s own computer system. Customising the right storage system, for example, with a DesktopLive system, allows for multiple, remote access for collaborative work.

The transformation of traditional business environments into virtual, interactive hubs across geographically dispersed locations is constantly attended by 24/7 monitoring with national IT support at regional level, e.g. IT support London or IT support Manchester.

Although Cloud storage systems generally rely on hundreds of data servers to store the same information on multiple machines using different power supplies, there are still mostly unwarranted concerns over reliability, security and ability to access information. The resistance against the relinquishing of onsite company data, applications and servers is a further area of contention, which the urgent necessities of growing storage requirement will ultimately resolve.

The predominating issue of accelerated climate change due to human activity drives today’s urgent necessity to reduce carbon emissions, coupled with the rising costs of energy. Both are rapidly shaping our attitude to the active development of green technology.

Addressing energy consumption is a central concern influencing the emerging concept of the ‘green cloud’ data centre. As a result, proactive IT takes responsibility to focus decision making and the planning of infrastructure around energy cost reduction and dynamic, resource allocation strategies. The provision of eco aware economics underpinning IT support is equally important to energy efficient usage within SME or larger organisations.

The focus by public cloud providers on supplying a critical, innovative response to delivering efficient resource usage extends well beyond electricity usage to also include key issues of water recycling and disposal in equipment recycling.

As a result, the importance of location for cloud provider data centres will crucially, factor in bandwidth, cheap energy, an abundant water cooling supply, and closest proximity to user markets.

By purchasing super energy efficient server/equipment technology, means national cloud providers offer an immediate practical benefit to the end user, at local level, by reducing their non-computing energy overheads and maximising their utilisation rates through the dynamic allocation of computing resources.

The intrinsic, uniform benefit is most readily seen at a localised, regional level, hence an IT support London application is comparable to an IT support Manchester or IT support Midlands service.

In other words, cloud suppliers can successfully provide computing services far more efficiently with a much smaller energy and carbon footprint. Large scale cloud providers can be better placed to obtain efficiency rates and server utilisation rates that are unachievable in even large corporate data centre operations.

The imperatives of the environment and climate change debate are driving radical change and cloud computing plays an increasingly important role. By not only providing attractive and essential business cost savings to SMEs and other companies struggling in today’s current uncertain economy, cloud can also contribute considerably to the ‘big society’ objectives of energy efficiency, environmental protection and sustainable development.

According to a recent report, the first half of 2010 saw a significant increase in the number of SMEs taking up cloud computing as the answer to their burgeoning storage and access needs.

The study, which revealed that 14 percent of SMEs were using cloud computing services with a further 10 percent planning to utilise the technology, comes hot on the heels of a global survey of 1,500 small to medium business IT professionals, which found they were the more open to and likely to adopt cloud services, such as DesktopLive, than larger organisations.

The findings seem to suggest that it was the smaller, agile and flexible operating companies with little existing infrastructure or previously outsourced IT, who are moving most quickly to embrace the opportunity to increase competitive efficiency by utilising the benefits of the cloud. In addition, they can take advantage of a cloud service providers integration of straightforward hybrid on-premise systems, with guaranteed high quality IT support.

Conversely, larger businesses would traditionally take more cautious, measured steps, as a result of longer term strategy planning and investments into onsite IT technology.

However, it is the SMEs in emerging markets which are leading the way in cloud computing deployment, with between 35 to 41 percent of SMEs across Latin American and Asia/Pacific regions adopting cloud services. This is around double the 19 per cent figure for Europe and still above the 24 percent for SMEs in North America.

Adoption of cloud, seen as the next natural step towards streamlining company communications and data in a more virtualised business environment, is unsurprisingly, at a considerably faster pace by technology companies, with over a third in the planning phase. Companies operating in the services sector such as finance, HR and consulting, comprise the next fastest growing vertical segment, with around a quarter using or planning to deploy cloud solutions, whilst most other industries trail closely behind with 20 percent adoption rates.

The most stated reason for a reluctance to adopt cloud centres around the issues of security and technology operation, which may be only partially understood. There is still some misgiving and misapprehension focused on relinquishing traditional areas of storage control. Highlighted are the core sectors of manufacturing, aerospace, engineering and social services, e.g. government, education, healthcare and the typically, medium size companies employing 20 plus with one full-time IT staff.

It is the SMEs who show a forward thinking approach to virtualised system networking, that enables a pace of service delivery which so often seizes the competitive edge from the larger brands in their market niche.