The Sky is Calling
My big post contrasting full blown Microsoft Exchange Server with cloud-based Gmail drew a couple of comments from friends in Seattle. Jon Stahl of One/Northwest pointed out, helpfully, that MS sells it's Small Business Server product to companies with a maximum of 50 employees, and that greatly simplifies and reduces cost for Exchange. After that, Patrick Shaw of NPower Seattle took it a step further, pointing out that MS Small Business Server, with a support arrangement from a great company like NPower (the "great" is my addition - I'm a big fan), can cost as little as $4000 a year and provide Windows Server, Email, Backup and other functions, simplifying a small office's technology and outsourcing the support. This goes a long way towards making the chaos I described affordable and attainable for cash and resource strapped orgs.
What I assume Npower knows, though, and hope that other nonprofit technical support providers are aware of, is that this is the outdated approach. Nonprofits should be looking to simplify technology maintenance and reduce cost, and the cloud is a more effective platform for that. As ReadWriteWeb points out, most small businesses -- and this can safely be assumed to include nonprofits -- are completely unaware of the benefits of cloud computing and virtualization. If your support arrangement is for dedicated, outsourced management of technology that is housed at your offices, then you still have to purchase that hardware and pay someone to set it up. The benefits of virtualization and fast, ubiquitous Internet access offer a new model that is far more flexible and affordable.
One example of a company that gets this is MyGenii. They offer virtualized desktops to nonprofits and other small businesses. As I came close to explaining in my Lean, Green, Virtualized Machine post, virtualization is technology that allows you to, basically, run many computers on one computer. The environmental and financial benefits of doing what you used to do on multiple systems all on one system are obvious, but there are also huge gains in manageability. When a PC is a file that can be copied and modified, building new and customized PCs becomes a trivial function. Take that one step further - that this virtual PC is stored on someone else's property, and you, as a user, can load it up and run it from your home PC, laptop, or (possibly) your smartphone, and you now have flexible, accessible computing without the servers to support.
For the tech support service, they either run large servers with virtualization software (there are many powerful commercial and open source systems available), or they use an outsourced storage platform like Amazon's EC2 service. In addition to your servers, they also house your desktop operating systems. Running multiple servers and desktops on single servers is far more economical; it better utilizes the available server power, reducing electricity costs and helping the environment; and backups and maintenance are simplified. The cost savings of this approach should benefit both the provider and the client.
In your office, you still need networked PCs with internet access. But all you need on those computers is a basic operating system that can boot up and connect to the hosted, virtualized desktop. Once connected, that desktop will recognize your printers and USB devices. If you make changes, such as changing your desktop wallpaper or adding an Outlook plugin, those changes will be retained. The user experience is pretty standard. But here's a key benefit -- if you want to work from home, or a hotel, or a cafe, then you connect to the exact same desktop as the one at work. It's like carrying your computer everywhere you go, only without the carrying part required.
So, it's great that there are mission focused providers out there who will affordably support our servers. But they could be even more affordable, and more effective, as cloud providers, freeing us from having to own and manage any servers in the first place.
What I assume Npower knows, though, and hope that other nonprofit technical support providers are aware of, is that this is the outdated approach. Nonprofits should be looking to simplify technology maintenance and reduce cost, and the cloud is a more effective platform for that. As ReadWriteWeb points out, most small businesses -- and this can safely be assumed to include nonprofits -- are completely unaware of the benefits of cloud computing and virtualization. If your support arrangement is for dedicated, outsourced management of technology that is housed at your offices, then you still have to purchase that hardware and pay someone to set it up. The benefits of virtualization and fast, ubiquitous Internet access offer a new model that is far more flexible and affordable.
One example of a company that gets this is MyGenii. They offer virtualized desktops to nonprofits and other small businesses. As I came close to explaining in my Lean, Green, Virtualized Machine post, virtualization is technology that allows you to, basically, run many computers on one computer. The environmental and financial benefits of doing what you used to do on multiple systems all on one system are obvious, but there are also huge gains in manageability. When a PC is a file that can be copied and modified, building new and customized PCs becomes a trivial function. Take that one step further - that this virtual PC is stored on someone else's property, and you, as a user, can load it up and run it from your home PC, laptop, or (possibly) your smartphone, and you now have flexible, accessible computing without the servers to support.
For the tech support service, they either run large servers with virtualization software (there are many powerful commercial and open source systems available), or they use an outsourced storage platform like Amazon's EC2 service. In addition to your servers, they also house your desktop operating systems. Running multiple servers and desktops on single servers is far more economical; it better utilizes the available server power, reducing electricity costs and helping the environment; and backups and maintenance are simplified. The cost savings of this approach should benefit both the provider and the client.
In your office, you still need networked PCs with internet access. But all you need on those computers is a basic operating system that can boot up and connect to the hosted, virtualized desktop. Once connected, that desktop will recognize your printers and USB devices. If you make changes, such as changing your desktop wallpaper or adding an Outlook plugin, those changes will be retained. The user experience is pretty standard. But here's a key benefit -- if you want to work from home, or a hotel, or a cafe, then you connect to the exact same desktop as the one at work. It's like carrying your computer everywhere you go, only without the carrying part required.
So, it's great that there are mission focused providers out there who will affordably support our servers. But they could be even more affordable, and more effective, as cloud providers, freeing us from having to own and manage any servers in the first place.
Labels: budgeting, Cloud Computing, GMail, microsoft, software, tech planning, Tech Support
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5 Comments:
Peter, when you say "outdated" I think you actually mean "proven", "mature" and "low-risk." ;-)
Cloud-based solutions (which we definitely use sometimes!) have advantages to be sure, but also disadvantages and risks. What to do in-house, what to outsource the consulting for, and what to outsource completely to the cloud is not "one right answer" kind of question. As in all things, there are tradeoffs, and there are many "right" answers.
For example...
What happens when MyGenii runs out of VC cash and shuts down? I doubt Google and Amazon are going anywhere, but a lot of "cloud" apps are startups that are very risk at the bottom of the business cycle.
What about orgs that handle sensitive health information that must be HIPAA compliant?
What about organizations that have legal requirements to preserve and archive data?
I'm surprised that you're not presenting a more balanced analysis here.
Peter - thanks for the nice words. I'm bullish about the could, too - between Salesforce and Plone - a lot of our work is in the cloud (or at least cloudlike). I expect that we're going to see a middle ware solution before we see email and file storage headed exclusively to the cloud - some sort of hybrid that gets us part way, but not all. Microsoft is betting on software PLUS service, while Salesforce is betting on the "now software" and "friends don't let friends buy servers". I think they both have some of it right, and it will be interesting to see where it all lands.
Well, Jon, to give a somewhat flip reply, why should I report on all of that? From where I sit, there are four pieces here: The old way of doing it, the new way of doing it, the risks inherent in doing it the old way, and the risks inherent in doing it the new way. And, while I understand and appreciate a healthy skepticism toward new trends, I think our industry suffers from a lack of skepticism toward the old ones.
Of course, I'm not knocking One/Northwest or NPower here, but my personal experience with other outsourced tech support companies has been far from rosy. In fact, I have a stack of sad stories and one killer disaster tale that I might just have to relate here someday.
To your points, well, of course, you shouldn't enter any kind of vendor agreement without insuring that, in the case that they go broke, your infrastructure won't disappear. Just as you shouldn't buy hardware and software that is warrantied by a vendor who might similarly disappear without assurances.
What about HIPAA? Plenty of outsourced solutions are HIPAA compliant. Goodwill sells a case management system that's SaaS and HIPAA compliant to any member who wants it, and I've seen other products that manage it as well.
And I'm not advocating that anyone have an arrangement that doesn't allow for local backups. But, again, one of the strengths of virtualization is that your vendor agreement could include weekly tape or DVD backups of your Virtual Machines, which, in the case of their disappearance, could be booted up on pretty much any hardware that could be scraped up.
I work for a law firm with ediscovery needs, and I can see plenty of ways to accomplish that in a Saas environment.
These aren't trivial matters, but part of what drives me in this direction is my concern that many orgs doing it the traditional way are at far more risk of breaking regulatory requirements and facing severe data loss. That might be worse for orgs that have minimal in-house IT expertise and no outside relationships than it is for the ones working with smart third parties, of course. A server room provided as a service should have appropriate firewalls, virus protection and other things that small NPO's have a hard time managing.
But, again, to my point, nobody is freaking out about the true fact that many NPO's still send around donor credit card numbers on post-its and via unencrypted email. They are far more susceptible to viruses and spyware than larger operations. And a lot of them aren't even using qualified support services, instead trusting their tech maintenance to either well-meaning volunteers or executive's kids. Or, even more the case, the office's accidental techie who will get their on the job training and then take it somewhere else that will pay them for it.
Done correctly, a cloud service can provide more protection and capacity than the outsourced support model, at a lower price, thereby widening the value proposition and the net of small NPOs that will buy into it. That's what I'm pitching. And I'm pointing at the orgs I mentioned in my post as good companies to jump on the bandwagon, because I have faith that they'll do it well and ethically.
Peter-
I agree with most of what you say, but there is a glaring error:
Goodwill does use Softscape's WorkforcePlus SaaS case management tool, BUT:
1. The software is not HIPAA compliant, as Covered Organizations (COs), not software, are HIPAA compliant or not. Furthermore, Softscape makes no claims of HIPAA-compliance on its website, and
2. Goodwill is not a CO, and therefore HIPAA does not apply to Goodwill in the first place.
HIPAA is a law that covers data collected by those in the business of providing healthcare or paying for healthcare. Goodwill may have medical data in its database, but that data is no more covered by HIPAA than medical information discussed in a casual conversation.
David - my claim is about Goodtrack, the system that Goodwill International developed and started selling to members in the early 2000's. It was still widely in use when I left Goodwill in 2007. The Goodwill that was with (San Francisco) evaluated it. We had two programs that tracked medical information and we were subject to HIPAA. When we looked into Goodtrack, we asked if it met the standards for HIPAA compliance and were told that it did. So, we were either misled, or perhaps we''re talking about two different systems? I know that Goodtrack is a derivative of a commercial product, but I can't recall which one. But I'm referring to the application that GII provides as a SaaS service, not any other app that another Goodwill might use.
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