Cloud Based Data Storage is a pretty simple concept really – pay some money to store your “digital stuff” on an off-premise hard-drive managed and backed up by someone else.  Just like the thousands of self-serve storage facilities built across the US in the last 30 years, where we pay someone to store our “tangible property stuff”.  Doesn’t matter what your stuff is, how much you have, nor how valuable it is – or isn’t.  All that matters is you want to put it somewhere other than where you have been keeping it, the reason(s) why are varied and many.

With “digital data storage” the reasons become more complex and varied – so also do the variety of solutions.  This is true because Digital Stuff (data) differs in a distinct and major way from Tangible Stuff (physical property).  Namely it can be altered, transported and duplicated instantly, silently and virtually invisibly.  This characteristic has a major domino effect on what we can and want to do with digital data.

I offer that the impact and significance of Synced Cloud Based Data Storage goes well beyond “cost savings or convenience”.  Remember the days of “dial up” internet?  It got the job done, linking you to the WEB and giving access to its many features – but re-establishing the connection was tedious, slow and annoying.  It’s commonly thought the value of Broadband Internet connections (T1, DSL, Cable, Wireless etc) was added speed and lower per megabit cost.  But the really significant factor that radically expanded people’s use of the WEB was the “ALWAYS ON” connection.

When people no longer had to constantly repeat the “connection routine” they were far more inclined to use the Internet.  This was true on both ends, when people knew a recipient would receive and see an email or chat message shortly after it was sent, they tended to send a lot more messages.  Today virtually no one even thinks about “connecting” to the Internet, at least not after they sign a contract for service with an ISP (Internet Service Provider).

In the last year Cloud Based Data Storage has gone through radical change.  Products such as Dropbox, SugarSync and Box.Net have introduced the concept of automatic syncing of data files across multiple and varied computing devices.  As of April 2012, the Big 3 consumer service providers, are offering FREE and PAID versions of Synced Cloud Based Data Storage.

1. Apple / iCloud
2. Google Drive
3. Microsoft / SkyDrive

Hundreds of articles will be found discussing the pros and cons of each service.  Yet the truly important element is the common denominator of having and coming to expect ALWAYS ON access to ALWAYS CURRENT data regardless of your location or device, including smart phones.  Like the “Dail-up to Broadband” transition, this evolution in digital data storage will further fuse our lives to the WEB, and continue to bring new offerings in applications and technology’s role in our lives.

I will discuss some of the specific and fundamental differences between the various services in subsequent blog posts.  Until then, if you are looking for additional information on Google Drive or Google Apps provided Cloud based Data Storage, call me at 303-932-8146.

As of March 2012, these states begin sharing another common attribute – use of the Cloud computing resource known as  Google Apps for Government..   Official Google Enterprise Blog, March 8, 2012.

Colorado announced today (March 8, 2012) it will migrate more than 26,000 Executive Branch state employees to Google Apps for Government, joining its neighbors as one of the first states to make the move.

Under the leadership of Secretary of Technology and State Chief Information Officer Kristin D. Russell, Colorado’s Office of Information Technology (OIT) has six priorities: customer success, innovation, information security, people, service excellence, and trusted partnership. The decision to migrate to Google Apps is closely aligned with these priorities.

Is there inherent common thinking of those governing these land locked states?  Maybe – but regardless it is interesting to note similarities between “No Natural GEOGRAPHIC Boundaries” and “No Natural COMPUTING RESOURCE Boundaries”.

Legacy computing architectures (Mainframes, Mini-computers and Local Area Network PC’s) by definition have very rigid and specific resource sharing borders.  Much like states with “natural river borders”  such as MI, IA, MO, AR and LA that need to build costly bridges to “share” automobile traffic, these computing systems incur high added expenses to be able to effectively share their resources while retaining appropriate security.

Cloud computing and in particular, Internet based Cloud computing used by Google not only AVOIDS added expense for sharing, it actually makes shared resources fundamental  in its design.  Through the magic of the Internet’s world wide recognized DNS (Domain Name System) controls, it is possible to “logically” declare appropriate legal and resource borders.  Just as Latitude/Longitude are used to formally declare the legal borders of surface land and associated underground resources.

There is nothing inherently wrong with “Natural” bounded computing systems, but issues arise regarding flexibility and ability to interoperate.  Consider this quote from Kristin D. Russell (CO Secretary of Technology and State Chief Information Officer) Wall Street Journal / CIO Journal – Clinton Bolton March 26, 2012

Russell said the current 15 e-mail systems are walled off from each other, which means employees can’t efficiently work together. For example, users on Exchange e-mail can’t find users on GroupWise e-mails and vice versa, making it challenging for employees to share information. Moveover, employees calendars cannot be synchronized in this system.

Just as Latitude/Longitude (a logical vs physical boundary) is used to establish state land boundaries for legal purposes, use of Internet Domain Names (a logical vs physical computing boundary) is used to create resource and legal segmentation of cloud computing resources WITHOUT imposing rigid physical  limitations.  This can radically alter (reducing cost and increasing flexibility) a government’s ability to carry on everyday electronic communication both within the state as well as with other states.

These same benefits can be realized today by any SMB organization: tiny, small or medium businesses. To learn more on how Google Apps will help Colorado improve customer service to citizens while eliminating $2.5M from their budget contact me at 303-932-8146. To get Cloud computing NO Natural Boundary benefits for your Private Company Domain (XYZcompany.com) check out – GAFYD.net (Google Apps For Your Domain).

Giant Movers in the Cloud  By QUENTIN HARDY  | March 24, 2012, 4:26 PM | The New York Times / Bits

The three companies are I.B.M., EMC, and Hewlett-Packard, which have a collective annual revenue of about $250 billion. (EMC is by far the smallest, about one-fifth the size of the other two.) All three of them got very big by selling hardware. All of them have, at different times, sought ways to cope with the immense changes wrought by the Internet, cloud computing and mobile computing.      …     Disruptive as those three things were to the hardware business, the later changes in both business behavior and the amount of data in the world have affected things even more. I.B.M. is thinking about very big projects to help cut down on the world’s largest expenses. EMC is positioning itself as an enabler of future disruption, by making cloud computing more pervasive. H.P. hopes to leverage its business relationships to provide the hardware for the new world.

Cloud Computing Stocks Now Up 23% In 1Q 2012  by Joe Panettieri on 3.25.12 in Talkin’ Cloud    

Cloud computing stocks continued their stunning winning streak during the week ending March 23, 2012. Indeed, our Talkin’ Cloud Stocks Index — which tracks 20 SaaS, cloud services and cloud computing companies — jumped another 1.89 percent for the week ending March 23. With one week to go in Q1, 2012, cloud services and cloud computing stocks are up nearly 25 percent this year.   (As a reminder: Talkin’ Cloud does not make buy, sell or hold recommendations. Rather, the Talkin’ Cloud Stocks Index strives to offer readers a weekly reality check vs. cloud computing hype).

These articles primarily refer to the larger providers of equipment and systems that enable Cloud Computing to take place.  But they demonstrate just how large the investment is to provide current and future Cloud services that address every size of business.

Today, Google is one of the top 3 for providing Cloud based SAAS (Software As A Service) offerings that keep companies running on a day to day basis.  To learn more about Google Apps for Business check out GAFYD.net (Google Apps For Your Domain), available for any company – as small as 2 people or with 100′s of employees.

The article goes on to list 10 statistical facts that clearly illustrate Cloud Computing is no fad.  Click the  article title to view all 10 facts, below I highlight what I think are a Top 3

• 90 percent of Microsoft’s 2011 R&D budget was spent on cloud computing strategy and products.
• 48 percent of U.S. government agencies moved at least one workflow to the cloud following the new requirement that federal agencies adopt a “cloud-first” policy.
• Cloud providers have increased personnel from nil in 2007 to over 550,000 in 2010.

The above stats illustrate that “denial” of  Cloud Computing is not really possible by even its most entrenched opponents.  Yet as a individual  that has been promoting the value and benfits of the cloud since 2006, I think the article overlooks some of the most obvious facts that illustrate the omnipresence of cloud computing.  And the fact it is now a fundamental architecture and method that will be used for giving mass access to software technology.

• Think for a minute – what product/service do you hear about over and over again these days because it has amassed 850 Million Users?  Answer: Facebook, an offering that could not even exist without Cloud Computing.
• Ask yourself – what two companies together did more to alter consumer commerce in the late 1990’s than any other?  Answer: Amazon.com (1995) / eBay (1995) – Cloud Computing was the fundamental enabling force for these companies to come into existence.
• And what about the company that basically re-wrote the music/entertainment commerce industry?  Answer:  Apple iTunes (2003), now almost a decade old has evolved to inlcude all the Apple Apps – and also could not exist without the use of  Cloud Computing.

To me the real question to ask is: Why should the value, spoils and benefits of Cloud Computing be the exclusive property of  the giants of industry?  Answer: it doesn’t have to be, and that is why it’s future is now a foregone conclusion.

In 1928 “a chicken in every pot” was the famous campaign slogan of President Herbet Hoover.  About 1977 “a computer on every desk and every home”,  was identified as the vision of Microsoft founder Bill Gates.  It was late 2006 that Google announced it’s idea to commercialize part of it’s cloud offerings (today known as Google Apps For Business).  Now, some 35 years since Bill’s stated vision, Google has given life to the  vision of ” a cloud of apps available on every IP device” (Desktop PC, laptop PC, tablet, iPhone, iPad, Android-phone etc.).  And Google is one of the top 3 Cloud Computing Vendors (see Amazon is No. 1. Who’s next in cloud computing?)

Computing technology always has been complex and continues to become more complex.  Business of every size is finding it harder and harder to maintain their own internal systems and afford the cost of qualified IT staff to keep everything running.  Conversely the economy of scale that can be created by combining huge data centers and the inherent global reach of the Internet has allowed Cloud computing to change the “ownership paradigm” of computing capacity.

At a time when one person may own 4 computing devices (desktop PC, laptop PC, Smart phone and a Tablet/Pad) it becomes an expensive nightmare of time and effort to keep one’s software current and data equally available. Moving to “subscription based” use of applications and storage available from a central data center versus trying to have “on premise control of everything” becomes far more advantageous, and that is what the cloud is very good at providing.

Marketing – meaning promotion, advertising, educating, selling etc –the wide variety of tasks and functions related to getting your PRODUCT or SERVICE actually converted into a stream of incoming revenue.  We all know the WEB, and Internet technology have radically redefined how companies market and execute the process of carrying out business commerce.

Operations – reference to daily ongoing tasks and functions responsible for keeping the business in motion.  Boring but critical things like email, calendar and file management systems, enable timely and affordable delivery of product.  Web and Internet capabilities can also redefine and enhance company operations in positive ways for those that know how to leverage it.

Software programs (applications) are used extensively to enable and support getting the work done throughout an organization.  Google Inc, at its heart is one thing – a technology and software company, yet interestingly many business owners only associate Google services with marketing. But software by definition is 100% apathetic (indifferent, uncaring, unconcerned) to who uses it, when they use it or what they use it for – the computer program works just as hard regardless of the situation.

All Google services are actually just one or more computer applications running in massive data centers located around the world, so I want to go on the record proclaiming – Google services can be as valuable for enabling and supporting Operations as they are for Marketing,  that includes Google+.

Tech giants like IBM, Oracle, CISCO, Salesforce.com know “social networking” is a valuable tool for supporting internal operations, but can not afford to pass company data in public systems (i.e. Facebook and Twitter).  They’ve invested millions to build proprietary “walled garden” systems to gain the privacy and data protection they want.

Google+ and Google Apps For Business (2 different Google offerings) when properly combined make a “walled garden” possible for any size businesse.  When properly deployed (i.e. GAFYD.net) the wealth of Google+ “social networking” features can be used to support company internal (Operations) tasks as well as external (Marketing) tasks. Here is why:

• the company issues and controls the Google+ Accounts under their domain.
• these accounts get immediate access to GOOGLE+ collaboration technology (Video Hangouts, Screen sharing etc) without major capital investment
• data content shared via company issued user accounts is linked to the company domain, thus the company retains all legal rights to the content
• The company can monitor, measure and report on use of Google+ pages
• You leverage the inherent protections afforded by having a private domain

Policy and procedures should be established to fully protect the company content.  In the same manner that employees are mandated not to share SSN’s, passwords or other company confidential / proprietary data in emails that leave the business domain.  All communication systems (telephone, fax, email and now “social networking”) need appropriate usage guidelines to make them most effective.

“Google Apps for Business” has been known to produce some of the quickest and most significant positive ROI (Return on Investment) of any Google offerings.  As a managed service GAFYD.net can provide the benefits of Internet based Cloud Computing for both the Operations and Marketing sides of their organization that are under Private Domain  control.  Call 303-932-8146 for additional information.

Bloomberg News / Business Report -Thursday, December 29, 2011

So as an authorized SMB “Google Apps For Business” Reseller we’re often asked the question, “Is Google+ a personal (consumer) social networking tool or a business marketing / social networking tool?”  Honestly it works very well for both.  Here are 3 core reasons why;

1. It has “social networking” at its heart.  People familiar with Facebook and other social networking tools quickly understand its primary purpose – to execute genuine 2-way sharing of content.
2. The primary feature that makes it uniquely different from Facebook and other social networking systems is “how you manage your audience”.  Personal and business audiences have very different needs.  The Circles concept used in Google+ is a simple to understand yet elegant solution for handling those differences.
3. Google+ is Simple, Free and works as part of any Google Account.  It is also Scalable, Flexible and can cross the boundaries of other services in the Google Universe.

Here is an entertaining 2 min animated video about “What is Google+”. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hC_M6PzXS9g

The “Circles concept” is what allows managing our connections in a way that makes our “virtual cyber life” more closely mirror our “everyday real life”, just as described in the video.   In Facebook and Twitter connections are more black and white, a person is either a Friend (Facebook), a Follower (Twitter) or not. It’s more of an all-or-nothing approach, where everyone that is connected sees everything – and those not connected see nothing (some filtering is available but it takes some real learning to figure out).

Item 3 is not referenced in the video but in my opinion is where the real power and future opportunity of Google+ lies.  Lets face it, Simple and Free will initially make (and keep) this offering attractive to the consumer world.  Scalable and Flexible help win over the business world – so it works whether you are a 2 employee/20 client company or a 10,000 employee/million client company. But the ultimate value that benefits all markets is how transparently it can integrate with Google’s powerful cloud services.  I’ll explain what I mean by “transparently” using Google Search.

Google Search can be thought of as stand alone simple service – namely the fastest and leading way to locate Web site pages.  But their Search technology is actually a feature in virtually all major Google offerings (Gmail, Maps, Docs, YouTube, News, Calendar, Books etc.).  So Search is specific in task (just does search) but generic in use (can search any kind of content).  When we use a feature routinely across many products we tend to stop consciously thinking of it as a service, we just “search”.  The Search service as such, becomes transparent as we focus on getting work done, we simply don’t worry about the details of how the process happens.

As Google+ integrates with Google’s other major cloud services (gmail, calendar, docs etc.) it will eventually become something we don’t think about – we just “Google +”.  The issue of sharing mobile phone photos is a good example.  Today, the amount of learning and plodding through steps required to share a mobile phone picture to specific individuals keeps many from doing it.  First you need to load all the right apps, transfer the picture to some computer, upload it to personal Web storage area, link to the storage area, download to the Facebook album etc.  How about this technique instead:

1. Snap a picture using the mobile smart-phone
2. use Google+ mobile to select the Circle (audience of people) to share with
3. Done, that’s it.

This can happen because behind the scenes Google data services have been integrated (programmed) to automatically do the busy and boring work. The Android phone knows a picture was taken, it knows who you are and it has a live connection to the Internet.  So it automatically transports the picture to a private Picasa account (Google cloud service for storing pictures). It knows you share pics on Google+ so it automatically links your Picasa picture library storage and then serves up only the necessary picture(s) to the audience (Circle) you selected.

The tedium tasks (upload, file, label, lookup, address, download etc) are instantly and automatically taken care of – don’t think about it, just “Google+”.  This is just one example of how Google+ could become as prevalent in everyday use as “search”.  This opportunity to leverage the  collection of Google services has tremendous potential value for business market users.

In a followup post I’ll discuss how any company can gain all the features of Google+ and ALSO gain DOMAIN PRIVACY for Proprietary / Confidential company information. GAFYD.net (Google Apps For Your Domain) has the potential to really differentiate how Google+ is used within the business marketplace.

Google+

As announced this week on their Google+ page, Monday 1/30/12 President Obama will join a special Google+ Hangout from the West Wing of the White House.  This is a natural extension of President Obama creating his own personal Google+ page during Nov 2011.

Social networking has become extremely influential in the world of politics.  Likely the most cost effective alternative ever for reaching literally millions of people.  However it is not always about the largest number of people, often there is a need to focus or limit your audience.  This is what Google+ does a fantastic job of via “Circles” and will make it very popular at the White House.

A circle is a specific limited audience that has been defined by you.  With Google+ you gain the benefit of a social network tool (simplicity, flexibility, and power) while retaining type control of who participates in a specific circle.  Google+’s real potential for the White House lies in the ability of staff, committee members, cabinet personnel etc to have mini internal social networks where they share and discuss, but keep certain things limited to and confined within a pre-defined audience.

Lets face it, anything that improves the effectiveness and frequency of how our elected officials and their staff communicate amongst each another and the world is a plus.  Partisan politics is at an all time high and that has to change.  Instead of building fences between people we need to build gates, pathways for communication and transparency.  The Google+ service is a great enabler of this, as any group – be it 2 people or 2000 people, can now have the immediacy of shared rich media exchange.  And do it without any more cost than having an internet connected device.

Hang on because things are just getting rolling for social networking that suits Personal AND Business situations. If you have not yet considered how your company can benefit from Google Apps For Business (cloud computing / social networking) please give us a call 303-932-8146.

—–UPDATE 2/6/12 ——  Very often first-time technology events encounter unknown problems, but nothing major went wrong in the near 50 minute long  first Google+ Hangout from the White House with the President of the US on 1/30/12.

• 228,102 people submitted 133,153 questions in advance of the night
• Then 1,630,067 votes were cast to select which questions would be addressed
• And approximately 250,000 viewers saw the 7 participant Hangout live via a Youtube Livestream broadcast

With only a slight technical difficulty at the beginning (speaker button was not turned on), the event (CLICK to see entire playback) went off flawlessly.  Viewers of the livestream watched the Hangout screen which had one large picture and seven small pictures at the bottom of the computer screen. One for the moderator, five for the individual Americans invited to participate, and the seventh box showing the president.

All Livestream viewers could see the 7 live participants which displayed equally.  The larger image on the upper screen would then change and focus on which ever of the 7 participants was speaking.  This was a proud moment for the Google+ team, and so liked by the White House they are holding another Hangout today 2/6/12  White House Takes To Google+ Hangout Again To Speak To Entrepreneurs (And Us) About Startup America

Reading about SOPA helped me learn about something I was not aware existed, the  ”Creative Commons License“.  The group’s mission statement says:  “Creative Commons develops, supports, and stewards legal and technical  infrastructure that maximizes digital creativity, sharing, and innovation.” Essentially they’ve developed tools that allow artists, authors and creators multiple levels of copyright restriction regarding their content on the Internet.  Instead of applying the single traditional Copyright standard of “All Rights Reserved” – these tools give everyone (from individual creators to companies and institutions) a simple, standardized way to retain their copyright while allowing certain uses of their work — a “some rights reserved” approach to copyright.

The Info-graphic viewable by clicking on the image to the right contains very useful “How To” steps for Google search users.  This creative work was established and copyrighted by a university using this “some rights reserved” approach.

Of the 6 different licenses available it is being shared under the  Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license, the details of which are explained here.   So while the future of Copyright law regarding Internet content continues to be determined by politicians, click on the image to access a very useful Info-graphic about “Getting More Out Of Google”.  And after you seek out the details via Google – be sure to contact your elected representative and express your opinion of how the Internet should be governed.

• Cloud Computing – using the internet to access remote based computing resources that include the server computers, all storage and software applications.
• SAAS – Software As A Service – a business model that allows “pay as you go, only for what you use” versus large capital costs to purchase capacity in advance.
• Google Apps  For Business – Google’s bundled group of “cloud based computing services” offered for Private Domains via SAAS business model.  Highly affordable and available for all desktop or mobile devices and comes with a 99.9% uptime SLA.

We hear others say these terms, we see them in articles and even use versions of them (often without knowing it) but people still wonder. Who is this stuff for ?  How does it work?  Answer to Ques 1 is;  “this stuff is for anyone that needs affordable, flexible, available from anywhere reliable computing capacity”.  Answer to Ques 2 is “you don’t need to know how it works to get the benefit”.

Below are 3 recent adopters of Google Apps.  Highly diverse in their location, users and needs – ranging from government to education to private business.  But all using the same solution to meet their needs, it illustrates how adaptable this new form of computing is. It may help to think of Google Apps (SAAS/Cloud computing) as buying electricity from an Electric Power Utility company.  Every customer gets the same kind of electricity, but how they put it to work to meet their unique requirements is what makes them different. The same is true with cloud computing.

Lake Havasu AZ (city known as the American home of the historic London Bridge) Police Department dedicates itself to creating a safe and secure local resort, business and residential community. Most officers are primarily on the road of water doing patrol – being mobile is critical.

However staff could only check email before they started a shift or after they returned. Mobile computing demands combined with a need for easy fluid information exchange between 24×7 work shift people and typical 8 hour day shift office personnel drove them to look for new solutions.   Regarding the question “is data secure in the cloud” which the Police Chief was asked repeatedly, he response is “By moving our data to the Google cloud, we are able to take advantage of Google’s FISMA certified security infrastructure. A far more robust system than most mid to small agencies (like ours) are able to build and maintain.

Utah K-12 Schools in all  Districts is being encouraged by the Utah State Board of Education to offer support for Google Apps (for Education edition) to all K-12 schools across 42 state school districts, with  full support of the Utah Technology Coordinators Council (TCC).  Terms were worked out with Google for providing Google Apps to over 575,000 students and 25,000 teachers statewide.

Utah joins eight other states with statewide support for Google Apps for Education: Colorado (was state #3), Iowa, Maryland, Missouri, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin.

This for-profit company sets-up, manages and promotes over 300,000 events annually. While based in Harlowton, Montana, their teams are distributed across North America and Argentina plus have fulfillment partners in Australia and the U.K.

They develop and built their proprietary LOB (Line of Business) software to be used from “the cloud” but they didn’t want to build their own email system.   Their Microsoft® Exchange system was becoming more of a constraint and expense, by having to maintain their own systems.  As a relatively small business with teams spread across six countries on three continents, Google Apps enabled them to be much more efficient in communicating across time zones and continents

Employees now have easy access to email on Androids, iPhones and iPads allowing them to be on top of important issues regardless of location with little or no IT support.  It gave a 38% reduction in the average number of responses needed to resolve a customer issue, decreased the IT operating budget by about 28%.

This image of the new left panel reflects some of the obvious cosmetic changes in appearance. But one image can hardly show the new dynamic functional changes. Google is making too many changes, and making them to quickly for my liking but alas there is a sound reason behind them.  Automatic “Device Adaptation” is one of the most core reasons

New computing devices – desktop, mobile and everything inbetween are being introduced to market with unprecidented speed and variety.  Given that AAA computing (Anywhere, Anytime, Any device) is a basic objective for Gmail and all other Google Apps services, the software must be designed to work effectively on a large variety of devices and form factors.

It is no small effort to design a single program and user interface that makes  sense and is useable on everything from a big 24” wide screen PC monitor to a 10” tablet screen to a 3.5” mobile phone screen.  But these changes are an effort to move in that direction.

The list of changes is rather extensive, some very obvious, others so subtle you’ll never notice them.  The navigation panel is a critical part of Gmail so I thought it useful to highlight its functional changes -best explained in this Google gmailBlog Post which closes saying;

“The end result is a system that is more flexible, more responsive, and always keeps your chat contacts and unread count visible without adding a lot of complexity or requiring too much clicking around.”

Hopefully you agree and the changes aren’t making you as cranky as they make me sometimes.  I know we all have our “limits for change” and I’m reaching my limit, but things will settle down.  Overall my time and learning investment will have a big payoff, I’ll be able to access my data on a wide variety of devices without relearning the app to do so.