MSP Cloud

Geography Matters: The Proximity Paradox of the Cloud

By Erin Harrison
Executive Editor, Strategic Initiatives

Due to government regulations in countries around the world, an enterprise’s data needs to reside in the region where it is produced – the “proximity paradox” is important for businesses to understand as they shift toward a cloud computing infrastructure.

The upcoming ITEXPO (News - Alert) session, “Where is the Cloud? Why Geography Matters” will explore the competitive advantage in having data closer to end users, better performance, less latency in applications; latency threshold and bandwidth issues of specific vertical markets; and why distributed computing is the best way to go since it provides cost savings.  

TMC CEO Rich Tehrani recently had the opportunity to catch up with Darryl Brown (News - Alert), general manager of Cloud and Digital Media at Telx, who will serve as a panelist in this session. He shared his insights on the impact geography has on the cloud computing movement, and talks about whether cloud-based communications will expedite the end of the premises-based PBX (News - Alert) market. Their full exchange follows below.

RT: What was the most significant technological advancement in the past 12 months and why?

DB: I see cloud software platforms maturing to be delivered as integrated offerings combined with the hardware and all the business tools to deliver turnkey ‘cloud’ solutions to enterprises and service providers alike. Examples of this came to market in 2011 by companies such as Appcore, hexagrid and Morph Labs who ‘shrink wrapped’ the cloud forming the equivalent of an appliance/cloud machine.

RT: What has been the biggest trend in your market segment and how is it impacting your customers?

DB: IT departments embracing cloud technology to deliver automated services to their user bases and achieve economies of scale. The largest impact here is that these platforms are now being deployed on dedicated infrastructures in datacenters connected into the WAN for performance and security reasons vs. leveraging the Internet. In other areas MSPs are leveraging turnkey cloud solutions to turn-up cloud offerings in a few weeks versus investing months of time and resources developing, building and integrating cloud technologies to achieve the same. They realize the savings and money are in the applications and services they offer versus trying to recreate the wheel and build the underlying cloud platforms themselves.

RT: What is the biggest challenge facing your customers today and how is your company helping address that challenge?

DB: The biggest challenges I see today is still understand “what cloud is,” this really is a perspective issue for example if I am a software vendor with a cloudOS to sell – then I’d sell clouds. However if I am a service provider of enterprise IT department – I USE Cloud Technology to deliver services. Cloud as a term does not meant he same to every audience, hence causes confusion and leads to technical investigations into the technology versus understanding how it can be used. Telx is helping to address problem by working with Cloud solutions providers that offer “shrink wrapped” dedicated private cloud solutions to address a variety of markets ranging from service providers to enterprise IT – in short we are encouraging customers to think of the turnkey cloud offerings in much the same way they think of a managed router today. The partners we are aligned with manage everything from a CloudOS down to the hardware so all the end-customer has to think about is the delivery of their services (server images, products, databases, email etc.) on the platform in much the same way they do today – but benefit from the automation, economies of scale and redundancy an integrated dedicated cloud platform can give them,

RT: How has cloud impacted your business? How has it impacted your customers?

DB: Being in the data center business, Telx Cloud Connection Centers are the locations where clouds are deployed, meet each other and connect to all the networks they serve. Cloud is driving business for Telx as Enterprise IT embraces the technology and deploys dedicated private clouds in Telx facilities – basically putting their clouds “in the WAN” versus at the edge (on site) and create cloud hubs where users, partners and applications all meet. This improves performance, delivers security and enables the enterprises to leverage QoS/CoS on their WAN infrastructures to prioritize cloud bound application traffic.

RT: Will cloud-based communications expedite the end of the premises-based PBX market?

DB: Due to the versatility of cloud technologies and the ability to automate everything from application deployment, replication, redundancy and provisioning I do believe there will be an impact as more enterprise see their cloud deployments as the applications and communications HUB. However, that said in reality what is a PBX ? Its software running on hardware, so therefore it’ll be more of an evolution whereby the PBX software will run inside a cloud platform and this platform could still have nodes deployed on-premise as well as in a data center – yet still function as a seamless UNIT.

RT: What approach has your business taken to social media?  If you have implemented a social media program, have you been able to evaluate your program’s success?

DB: Telx leverages social media for communications purposes with customers, such as promoting events, engagements and announcements. Also we are in the process of evolving our customer portal tools to create more of a marketplace like environment for customers to interact with each other as well as Telx employees – this leverages social media technologies and hooks as needed.

RT: Does every business need a social media presence? Why or why not?

DB: I believe the majority of businesses need some kind of social media presence, however a successful social media program to build and maintain customer relationships requires experience management so has to be carefully planned and executed. Some business “can/package” the social media content too tightly – other risk exposure by having very limited oversight. In reality a successful so it is a careful balancing act to ensure it works for your business and customers.

RT: With Microsoft (News - Alert) touting tight integration between its mobile and desktop OS, can it become a major competitor in the enterprise mobile market?

DB: As Microsoft currently has the larger deployments of desktop OS there is that potential, however in todays market it seems end users like variety and more IT departments are embracing the fact that end-users are more productive using devices and OS they are familiar with so this could cause and issue for Microsoft.

RT: What can attendees expect from your company at ITEXPO?

DB: Myself, GM cloud and digital media.

RT: Make one technology prediction for 2012 and consider its impact.

DB: Shrink-wrapped integrated private dedicated cloud appliances will accelerate cloud adoption by enterprise IT and service providers, as enterprise IT leverages these ‘boxed solutions’ we’ll see the deployment of compatible burst clouds to allow customers to burst certain applications into those clouds be it for web facing or private facing.

The clouds will become the WAN/Network hubs for enterprises forming bridges between networks, applications, the Internet and other clouds, which will allow users and business partners to leverage devices they are familiar with to access those applications securely. I also anticipate and increased use of VDI running on cloud platform where enterprise IT wants to maintain control of “desktop data” and prevent it from leaving the IT environment – this require multiple distributed cloud nodes to be deployed in proximity to the end-users and the access networks.

The ITEXPO session, “Where is the Cloud? Why Geography Matters” will take place on Feb. 1 from 11-11:45 a.m. at the Miami Beach Convention Center. To register, click here.