Microsoft may have been a bit slow to wake up to the threat that the Cloud and more importantly Google posed to their desktop based empire, but they are not holding back now. Microsoft has taken an “all-in” approach this year to Cloud being the future.

Office 365 is a re-branding of the previous Business Productivity Online Suite which offered businesses Exchange, SharePoint, Live Meeting, etc. for a low per user cost. The downside of Business Productivity Online Suite was the unlike Google Apps they had to have a full version of Microsoft Office to work with the Cloud offering. Now with Office 365 and the online office suite you can truly consider it a full Cloud based suite for businesses.

It is that time of year already. For those that don't know the InnoTech Conference is a conference focused on Business Information Technology. They have the normal exhibits, speakers, sessions, and much more focused on information technology.

They also have good informative sessions and awards for the area's top CIO's. It is a great place to network, see new technology and services, and most importantly learn.

vAusTek is happy to announce that we are now offering Speaking Engagement services for conferences, user groups, technology fairs, team meetings, etc.

We have industry experience in both sides of Information Technology including IT Architecture, Systems Engineers, and Product Marketing. We have 1,000+ hours of speaking experience and are comfortable in front of System Administrators to C-level or Technical to Non-Technical.

One of the most over looked areas in Small Business Information Systems is data backup and more importantly recovery.

For many it is a complete afterthought with no system in place what so ever.  This is extremely dangerous as hard drives are one of the most common things to fail in a server. Not to mention many of the lower end servers have relatively weak redundancy if any at all when it comes to hard drives.

Others get a small storage system or tape backup onsite unit thinking that should be enough. Now while there is generally a small chance of something catastrophic happening to the location where it is houses, do you really want to risk something as critical as your business data?

Losing important business data can be a costly blow!

Making the right decisions for your business is critical for the future. Making the right decisions on technology solutions for your business are no different. Technology is often the very infrastructure that supports your business not just a tool.

So why would you go to a salesman for advice?

When looking at technology products over the last decade you see many big name products from vendors that fit a major need at the right time. VMware is a great example of hitting the market with a product that fit a big need, consolidation and slowing down server sprawl, at the right time. They were not the first to have virtualization, which can be traced back decades. However they were in the right place and the right time.

I was reading a white paper about “when is it time for your business to get its first server?”

Now do not get me wrong there are very valid reasons to get a first server for even the smallest of businesses. Microsoft’s Small Business Server (SBS)  and a number of open source alternatives generally setup fairly easily and provide sharing, communication (email, instant messaging), database, etc.

Far too often when businesses budget for technology they forget the not so obvious, but critical pieces of the infrastructure. The obvious pieces like hardware, software, and maybe even some install services are put right into the budget. However maintenance, support, backup, and disaster recovery seem to be an afterthought. I have also seen many times where they did not even plan for power and cooling. Nothing like getting everything in, hooked up, and oops the power just overloaded.

One of the mistakes that many start-ups make is they do not realize they are not building their business on solid ground. Why? Mainly because they do not have all of the information they need to see that the ground below is nothing but sand.

Ok, I will step away from the engineering ramble and put it more into start-up logic. When you are starting up a new business you are taught to make sure you have finances, competition information, marketing, etc. set up properly. While all of this is critical to your business, so is technology an area that often overlooked.

VMware announce that with their new version of vSphere 4.1 they are lowering the price and adding the enhanced features live vMotion, which allows you to move a running server from one physical server to another.

Microsoft made sure that everyone knew their intentions of ruling the Cloud. They see serious threat that a Cloud infrastructure could bring to their business model. It was either jump on the bus or get left behind. Microsoft, as always, is not content to just get on the bus, they want to drive it.

There are a few things that came out of the way Microsoft entered the Cloud…

1. This will validate the capability of the Cloud as well as its longevity. Let’s face it, Microsoft may be a necessary evil to some, but they still have the ability to drive people to a technology and have ruled the data center for many years.
2. Microsoft just brought the Linux versus Windows platform to a whole new level. However in this game the Linux based platforms have a sizable lead.
3. Most important to Small and Medium Businesses, this will bring more innovation. Not just from Microsoft, but all of the other Cloud vendors whose primary purpose was to get their technology out. User friendly was not the primary goal. Although there are several systems that are.

I have mentioned the great benefits before of the Cloud (article) and how it can help businesses start up and keep up. Cloud is the future and it is here now. It is not for everyone and/or everything. There are still many things I would not put on the Cloud just yet. However it can no longer be ignored.

Looks like the future is Cloudy!

One of the hottest technologies around right now is Cloud computing. You think about how Google has been able to turn the tables on traditional office and email applications like Microsoft Office, Exchange, etc. Granted they are still just a small percentage you see the impact and realization from the giants that they are now changing their models to match.

Traditionally when starting a business, one of the complexities and major cost was getting the technical infrastructure setup to support your type of business.

Well this is the first official post on the blog. Nothing much at this time. We will be posting everything from ideas, best practices, events, news, and other information that pertains to what we do.

So the next question is probably, what does vAusTek do?