Learning the Cloud Way – Part II

April 12th, 2013 | Posted by Lisa Avvocato in Cloud Services | Education - (0 Comments)

As cloud services pick up speed in the private sector, questions about security, cost savings, implementation and best-practice models have emerged in concert with its rapid growth and adoption. But are institutions of higher learning following suit? Cambridge, MA-based Forrester Consulting turned their focus on 12 universities in the U.S., the U.K., Australia, India, and New Zealand, surveying CIOs and IT directors for their July 2012 report “Cloud Bursts Into Higher Education.”

They found out how and why these schools are employing the cloud; plus they give some suggestions as to where the partnership between higher education and the cloud is headed.

So, how do schools who adopt the cloud compare with businesses?

A Forrester survey from 2011 asked 920 companies which were the most important factors in choosing to deploy SaaS. The top 4 were:

  1. Improved business agility (72%);
  2. Allows us to focus resources on more important projects (66%):
  3. Speed of implementation and deployment (64%);
  4. Faster delivery of new features and functions from SaaS/as-a-service providers (60%).*

*“Lower overall costs” actually tied for 4th place with 60%

As previously noted, Forrester found that universities were adopting cloud services to boost productivity. Plus, speed, budget and scalability were the top three features universities valued most about the cloud. When it comes to the cloud, universities are aligned very closely with businesses.

Forrester also found that cloud-forward schools have three commonalities. First, a common corporate-to-education talent migration means schools’ CIO or IT directors often have firsthand experience of successful cloud implementation, and are endeavoring to bring knowledge and practices up-to-date at their universities. Second, schools with big technology components—academic programs that need and/or can get the most use out of cloud services, like IT training, animation, and fashion—are the most enthusiastic about adopting cloud technology.

Third, U.S. schools are ahead of the pack, with, Forrester estimates, international universities lagging behind by about 12 months. Forrester cites “lack of knowledge and understanding” as the biggest barriers to cloud adoption, noting the while these universities are turning more to the cloud, they’re doing so much slower and more carefully than their U.S. counterparts.

In the future, expect to see more inter-departmental collaboration between IT and academic departments. Additionally, funding will move from IT to academic departments as those departments take on more IT autonomy, and team up on projects.

“New realities are driving more direct control of technology by leaders of non-IT organizations, internal users, and customers—empowered by their own technology use. These changes herald an IT organization in which CIOs build agile and nimble teams that enable empowered employees and customers to be successful directly using technology for education.” – Head of Information Technology at a New Zealand University

Related Articles:
Learning the Cloud Way – Part I

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Come See Video Conferencing Hit Legal Age

April 1st, 2013 | Posted by Lisa Avvocato in IVCi | Video Conferencing - (0 Comments)

The ABA TECHSHOW is taking place April 4-6, 2013 in the Windy City (Chicago, IL). Visit us at booth #614!

IVCi is partnering with Blue Jeans Network to showcase how video collaboration solutions can help law firms meet today’s legal challenges, such as geographically dispersed clients and timely access to subject matter experts, while helping minimize expenses.

In a previous article, we discussed how firms can use video to build client relationships, as well as, manage their ever growing case load by keeping in touch with traveling clients effortlessly through video enabled smartphones or tablets. Additionally, firms can use video conferencing to depose remote witnesses or interview difficult to reach subject matter experts without the time and cost associated with business travel.

Firms can also use video conferencing solutions to attract and retain top associates. Partners can interview potential candidates remotely so that only the most qualified candidates are brought in for further discussion. Plus, law firms can help differentiate themselves by utilizing the latest technology and making the firm more attractive to new recruits.

Additionally, partners and associates can attend meetings with remote offices and confer on any range of topics that would typically be discussed in a face-to-face environment.  Plus, attorneys can attend classes and seminars over video as part of distance learning courses to satisfy CLE requirements. This frees up valuable time and resources by avoiding travel to various firm or seminar locations.

Stop by our booth at ABA TECHSHOW for a demonstration and learn how video collaboration solutions can help your firm. Click here for registration information.

Additional Resources:
Video Conferencing Hits Legal Age

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Learning the Cloud Way – Part I

March 4th, 2013 | Posted by Adam Kaiser in Cloud Services | Education - (0 Comments)

As cloud services pick up speed in the private sector, questions about security, cost savings, implementation and best-practice models have emerged in concert with its rapid growth and adoption. But are institutions of higher learning following suit? Cambridge, MA-based Forrester Consulting turned their focus on 12 universities in the U.S., the U.K., Australia, India, and New Zealand, surveying CIOs and IT directors for their July 2012 report “Cloud Bursts Into Higher Education.”

They found out how and why these schools are employing the cloud; plus they give some suggestions as to where the partnership between higher education and the cloud is headed.

So, how is Higher Ed approaching cloud services?

The Forrester study found that universities are adopting cloud services to boost productivity, and speed, budget, and scalability were the top three features university interviewees valued most about cloud services. But the study uncovered an interesting dynamic: professors and department staff are leading the way with cloud services at their universities, implementing cloud applications as needed, and circumventing the IT department. One side benefit of this autonomy is that IT departments can then focus their resources on other, critical IT tasks.

Echoing concerns coming from the private sector, universities are concerned about security. In fact, the report states “security is the No. 1 roadblock to cloud service adoption.” For schools, the two primary concerns are keeping research (intellectual property) and private student information confidential and secure.

The most common cloud adoption right now is the private cloud, with many of these schools keeping private information, like emails and research, on their private cloud, and “student-related information” on the schools’ servers. The report does note, however, that hybrid clouds are in use, and expected to increase. Additionally, as academic institutions partner up to offer expanded learning experiences, often online, expect to see a growth in the use of community clouds for sharing research and course materials.

Lastly, schools are looking to the cloud for cost savings; however, as cloud usage goes up so do costs. While several interviewees claimed significant cost savings with adoption of various cloud models, in one example the “expanded use of the services over three to seven years raised the cost of SaaS to nearly even with the cost of a perpetual license and on-premises deployment.” In other words, as academic staff and students become more familiar and comfortable with using cloud services, related costs increase, thereby erasing some of the gains.

Related Articles:
Learning the Cloud Way – Part II

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Video Conferencing Gets Elastic

January 8th, 2013 | Posted by Adam Kaiser in Industry News | Video Conferencing - (0 Comments)

As cloud computing and cloud based services continue their meteoric rise to the top of IT strategies everywhere, an interesting convergence of these new technologies with video conferencing is occurring. Over the last few years countless services and organizations have focused on providing computing power in the cloud. Several of these services have achieved notoriety including Amazon’s Web Services and Microsoft’s Azure.

The previous model for hosting computing power was to enable users to “rent” a server in a provider’s data center or to buy shared space on an existing machine. Web hosting and other hosting services used this model for several years. However, with the advent of virtualization (the ability to simulate multiple servers on one server with software) the model is rapidly changing. Hosting providers are now offering users the ability to launch server instances at will and pay only for the time in which that instance is used.

This new model is significant for several reasons. First, it essentially allows an organization to only pay for what they use; as opposed to absorbing the full expense of servers that might not be fully utilized. Second, the ability to quickly scale and add on additional server resources has gone from a multiple day or week process to a simple software setup that can happen in minutes.

This “elastic” server model allows for infinite scalability at a fraction of the cost and resources required. Additionally, many of these cloud computing providers offer a simple web-based interface to easily monitor and manage all of a customer’s server instances.

So what does all of this mean for video conferencing? With the continued shift of video conferencing infrastructure and services from hardware based appliances to software applications that run on standard servers, a whole new world is opening to video.

Previously, when an organization required additional “ports” to bridge large groups of callers, a significant hardware purchase would be required and the device installed into current infrastructure. Now, as more and more software based products become available, it will be as simple as purchasing a software license and simply adding additional cloud computing power. Even better, when these additional licenses are not in use, there will be no need to pay for the additional server power.

In the last few months several products have been announced that will be able to take advantage of this new model of deployment. Polycom announced its RealPresence ® Collaboration Server 800s, Virtual Edition. This software based bridge (or MCU) will be compatible with virtualized platforms and allow organizations to quickly and easily deploy and scale implementations.

Another notable product launch from last year was Vidyo’s VidyoRouter Virtual Edition. Vidyo is an entirely software based video conferencing platform that runs on standard servers. This new virtualized edition allows for deployment on elastic cloud services like those mentioned above.

As the power of the cloud continues to grow and be leveraged in new and exciting ways, video conferencing will benefit and become more agile for both deployment and management. The growth of elastic cloud services and the move to video conferencing to software based platforms is perfectly aligned to create new and exciting offerings for organizations of any size.

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Cloud Services Aid Business Continuity

November 12th, 2012 | Posted by Lisa Avvocato in Cloud Services | Unified Communications - (0 Comments)

In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, now dubbed Superstorm Sandy, many organizations are taking a second look at their business continuity plan. This storm knocked out power to over 90% of Long Island and all of lower Manhattan leaving many businesses vulnerable. New York is a major hub, as well as a headquarters for many corporations so losing power for an extended period of time can have drastic effects throughout an entire corporation.

For example, if an organization’s video conferencing and unified communications infrastructure was hosted at a site with zero power, the entire organization would have been unable to use the tools. In New York, contingency plans failed as backup generators were destroyed due to unprecedented flooding; plus a gas shortage left many without the fuel necessary to run their generators.

The results can be damaging for any organization. While customers in the surrounding area will be more than sympathetic, customers located thousands of miles away may not be as understanding. Why should a natural disaster in New York affect customer service in California or Tokyo? Therefore, it extremely important to have multiple layers of redundancy built in to an organization’s platform.

With our headquarters on Long Island, IVCi faced several challenges from flooding and impassable roads to neighborhood destruction and more downed power lines than one should ever see. However, multiple contingency plans prevented our Managed Video Experience (MVE) customers from missing a single meeting. Temporary operations centers were set up and customers were able to communicate with our MVE team via public IM or an alternate telephone number until power was restored to our headquarters location.

Cloud services provide an additional layer of security as infrastructure is typically hosted in multiple state-of-the-art data centers in multiple locations. If one data center goes down, there are still several others to handle the load of video meetings. IVCi hosts the infrastructure for MVE across the country and the world. Data centers are designed to withstand storms and power outages like those presented with Sandy. As a result of this, IVCi was able to immediately move into redundancy mode and continue to serve our customers.

Additionally, the MVE team proactively reached out to sites that were located in the North East and offered free use of our Mobility Experience which allowed individuals affected by a loss of power to connect to a video conference via their smartphone or tablet. As a result, every single meeting scheduled since Sandy terrorized our town continued as originally planned.

If your organization was in the path of Sandy, did your video conferencing go down? Were you able to continue business operations despite the storm? Bottom line, IVCi’s MVE provides a consistent, uninterrupted experience. Video conferencing has become a mission critical application within organizations and cloud services can ensure continuity no matter what the circumstances may be.

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