Just Bijns

Companies considering cloud computing say it is the cost that drives them to the cloud. But when you do the math, it’s not cheap but right on. The flexibility to pay as you g(r)o(w) is what makes the total cost lower. It’s not easy however to compare, some costs are always taken out of the equation. Simply because they are too hard to predict. If you take a look at flexible computing power from Amazon EC2 for example, you need to pay for I/O on Elastic Block Storage (EBS). The base cost however is simple: € 631 per month for an 8 core 2.45 GHz machine and 7 GB memory. But this adds up to around € 852 when you add 800 GB of EBS with some I/O and snapshot storage. This gives you some idea of flexibility of cost, but it gets even bigger when you decide to shutdown your development server at night. To run the same server 5x10hrs instead of 7×24 it saves you over 50%. When you choose to have a little less flexibility by giving 1 year commitment, the price drops another 45% to as low as € 226 per month.

So far, this is just compared to buying hardware. But the EC2 server goes from noting to Windows 2008 R2 64-bit, patched up to the latest service and security level with IIS and SQL in only 4 minutes. Also, the firewall is set up and there is no mounting or whatever handling to do.

This is no science fiction, this is now!

So to get some feeling of quality I have set up this blog on my own EC2 server. Not the SP2010 requirement like I just mentioned, but a small Ubuntu image. Well, the only hickup I have spotted so far was 25 minutes on March 23. The server didn’t go down, but there was a connectivity glitch. So still over three nines (99.9%), which is not bad at all for € 23 per month!

Companies moving to the cloud tend to choose for either Microsoft Online (aka BPOS), Google Apps Premier Edition (aka GAPE), IBM LotusLive or some alternative from smaller SaaS vendors like ourselves at e-office. But when choosing, it’s more relevant to go all the way or go for the hybrid solution and keep some applications on premise. These days, the trigger for moving to the cloud is cost. And for a good reason, since it is quite expensive to run a high available 24/7 collaborative suite on premise. The biggest cost is having the skilled administrators on-site and that cost drops when you push it all into the cloud. Off course all major SaaS vendors are offering very low suite prices, but it is still very interesting to look at the possibilities to mix and match the components in these suites. When deciding what should go to the cloud and what is kept on premise, the option to mix technologies can help you to go all the way!

So for example if you want to go for Google Apps Premier Edition but you are considering to keep your BlackBerry users on premise on Exchange because they want the BES experience, you can also mix the hosted Google BES from e-office with full GAPE and save the coexistence hassle. Or if you want to integrate telephony to your collaborative suite, but don’t want to wait for BPOS to add it you can add the full hosted OCS from e-office to your BPOS suite. So don’t focus on one option, but mix and match when moving to the cloud.

Did you make a mix? I would like to hear from you!

The best thing I like in Lotusphere is the demo part. This year IBM didn’t broadcast the Opening General Session live, but it has been put up today after all. I regret the lousy 125 kbps, but you still get an impression of the demo material which was presented. You can sit for the entire 2h30 to see the entire OGS, but you can also skip through the demo’s using the index below.

1. ls10_ron_part1 1:02:40 Sametime Unified Telephony / Connections in Notes / Quickr DnD in Notes / Quickr for Domino / Quickr Calendar in Notes (5:30)
2. ls10_ron_part2 1:11:10 Traveler Companion (1:35)
3. ls10_ron_part3 1:15:35 xPages in Notes / OpenNTF: Twitter status updater (2:39)
4. ls10_ron_part4 1:20:10 Connections Next (2:39)
5. ls10_ron_part5 1:23:49 New Accelerators for WebSphere Portal / LiveText, Widgets, SUT in Notes (4:44)
6. ls10_ron_part6 1:30:58 Sametime Meetings with RADVision multi-point HD video (2:58)
7. ls10_ron_part7 1:34:52 LotusLive Engage (1:30)
8. ls10_ron_part8 1:39:35 LotusLive Labs (1:32)

Do you want more? Lotusphere Comes To You! March 20, 2010 in Houten (NL). Click here to register.

My 2010 favorite is Sametime Meetings 8.5. We don’t have RADVision, but we do can show you great video performance in the browser with nothing else installed. Be there!