» Is The Cloud Real? currentedtech.com:

Published in July 18th, 2008

It seems everything is going to the cloud. Email is going to google or exchange offsite. The web is being hosted by whatever company you choose, and many other cloud hosts are available: moodle rooms, mosso or whatever you choose. I even noticed that Blackbaud is now going to the cloud… kind of. Senior Systems has been there for years. Will file servers be a thing of the past? I doubt anytime very soon, but as ISP’s increase speeds so will the need for off site file hosts. Is the server room a thing of the past?

Adopting the cloud mentality might be hard if you’ve held a server room for some time. It is hard to deny that the savings will happen with the cloud, and it is inevitable that this will happen as ISP speeds increase. Backup and maintenance are very costly and can be easily done by an outsourced cloud company. This might sound threatening to a Network Admin, but I don’t believe will change the need for a position to maintain and control these servers. As more people connect to a network, the need for technicians increases. Even with the cloud Network Admins are needed! The role will change slightly as servers go offsite. The minutia of server maintenance will be gone. I hope this only helps Network Admins understand their role in the future. That time is soon!

So the big question - How is your institution respond to increased demand for speed? Fiber is the obvious choice. If you have it, love it. You can probably turn up your speed with a phone call (and a lot of $$$). For others, this might be a problem. You are probably looking at a multiple T1 situation over copper. This gets expensive and frustrating because the speed is not what you want for the price. Towerstream just offered our school a great deal for and 8Mbps symetrical speed for an excellent price. This is not to say this is the only provider you should go with. A backup is always a good way to go. We went with a Time Warner Business backup solution and used Promenet to provide the failover solution for both ISP’s. I’m keeping my fingers crossed, but so far Towerstream is super fast.

Increasing bandwidth is really the most important institutional decision in the coming years. The cloud is growing….

4 users responded in " Is The Cloud Real? "

popshobby said, in July 19th, 2008 at 11:31 am

Can you tell me more about your Towerstream experience? I am a small investor who likes this company and I want to know more about how they do business.
Did they contact you? Or did you call them?
Did you make the choice on price alone?
How is their customer service?
Have you had any downtime?
Where are you?
When did you get connected?
Thanks.
I am going to post a link to this blog on the Yahoo investor board for twer. Thanks again.

Steve Kinney said, in July 20th, 2008 at 12:41 pm

The cloud has its good and its bad points; admittedly, it has more good than bad. The good is that someone else is maintaing the equipment. In fact, many people are maintaining the equipment – each one focused on a particular service. The biggest advantage is that the network administrator no longer has to focus on replacing and updating the physical hardware. The biggest disadvantage is that if that connection to the cloud goes down, it takes everything with it – but that can also be said for certain parts of the server room.

Server rooms clearly aren’t a thing of the past in general – but they might be on a local level. Schools and enterprises will have to evaluate if the cost of increasing connection speeds outweighs the cost of maintaining their server room (it probably won’t) and what needs the cloud fills or could fill that their existing equipment might not (most likely, lots).

I think that there will be a grey area for some time. The network administrator will still play an important role either way. Someone needs to manage the myriads of service subscriptions necessary to run a full-fledge operation (be it a school or a corporate enterprise). Someone is going to have to be on the cutting edge of new services and be able to provide an insightful analysis of the pros and cons of each service. Someone is going to have to make sure that the services all play nicely together.

This will not be a difficult transition, most network admins already understand all of these factors. It is easy to forget that outside a small clique of professionals, not many people have the same grasp of what the cloud does and does not have to offer.

Aaron Grill said, in July 27th, 2008 at 4:47 pm

Hi popshobby. We just signed up with Towerstream so I don’t have much experience with them. So far customer service has been very good. We also signed up with Time Warner as a failover ISP as I wouldn’t feel comfortable signing up with any ISP without redundancy.

I contacted them after finding out our area isn’t “Lit” according to Verizon. Without fiber to our building, the options for speed were limited. I then looked at the NYCIST data collection wiki (http://schoolcomputing.wikia.com/wiki/NYCIST_Data_Collection) to compare what other schools in the New York area were using. I found Towerstream listed there and made contact with them. Price and speed were both taken into consideration. Also, in New York City, Verizon controls all of the copper and fiber in the streets, so going with another company is risky because if Internet in your area goes out, Verizon fixes there customers first. Verizon offered 4.5 Mbps for 1500, and at the time Towerstream offered 8 Mbps up and down for 999 and free installation. It was a no brainer.

Aaron Grill said, in July 27th, 2008 at 4:59 pm

@Steve. You are totally right about the grey area we are in right now between the cloud the local server room. From the “client side” of things everything is the cloud already:) I don’t think any faculty or students, if anyone at the school will know that I will not have 4 servers in or Network Office this coming school year due to moving to the cloud. Network Admins will always have a role in controlling these services whether they are local or in the cloud. It’s fun watching the transition.

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