1. The “cloud computing” concept is not new.

Before it was “cloud” we called it “on demand”, before that “utility computing”, before that “network centric computing”, and way back we called it “time-sharing”. The term “cloud” was first used in the 1970’s (some sources will say 1960’s).

2. “Cloud” is a marketing term, used for almost anything accessible over the Internet

And every vendor defines their “cloud” solution in a way that they think helps them the most.

3. Three reasons why “cloud computing” is important.

• Over the past 5-7 years, there has been an explosion of new services available that can produce reliability and productivity gains for organizations of all sizes.
• While this has been happening, the cost of these services is being driven lower and lower (both by technology innovations and market competition).
• And many more services are being developed every day. Forrester estimates the cloud market to be $40B market in 2011 and grow to $240B by 2020, representing a 20% YOY growth rate.

4. (I think I skipped this one)

5. Five key elements of a cloud solution

This is my definition of “cloud”, one that speaks to the business—not technical—aspects of the solution:

• Use it over the internet (or wi-fi, or 3G)
• No (or low) upfront capital costs
• Use the provider’s infrastructure
• Maintained by the provider
• Easily add or remove users (or increase or decrease storage, etc.)

6. Six reasons to care—the benefits

Basically, less work, lower cost, higher reliability and security, for example:

Use on internet = access from office, home, hotel
No upfront capital cost = preserve capital budget
Use provider’s infrastructure =  nothing for us to buy, build, or maintain
Easily add/remove users  =  pay only for what we use
Better reliability than an in-house solution at a similar price point (usually!)
Better fail-over/recovery (again, usually, see next item)

7. Seven dirty secrets about the cloud—things to watch out for and investigate

I believe businesses need to “check out” their cloud service providers. Larger organizations conduct formal risk assessments of their providers. Smaller organizations need to take some basic steps, like:

• Privacy Policy (read it, and make sure you’re comfortable with it)
• Terms of Service (ditto)
• Acceptable Use Policy (ditto)
• Security (understand what the provider is committing to offer, and what your responsibilities might be)
• Availability/Reliability (ditto)
• Failover/Disaster Recovery (ditto)
• Termination—what happens when you want to leave

8. Eight great cloud services to investigate, for almost any organization

• E-mail & Calendars
• E-mail continuity
• File sharing & collaboration
• Offsite Backup and Disaster Recovery
• Desktop & server management & monitoring
• CRM
• Accounting
• Virtual Desktops

Google has taken several important steps in securing and safe-guarding the information stored on Google Wallet.

• Google Wallet requires that a pin number is entered before each transaction – think of it as a debit card and a good first step in limiting access to an unwanted user.  For more information on selecting the best password, check out our helpful infographic.
• Google Wallet stores payment info in a special chip called Secure Element which is isolated from the phone’s main operating system and only accessible by Google Wallet.
• Google Wallet cannot read or write data, an important system feature to ensure that information is safe within the application.
• Google Wallet allows users to add/remove credit cards in the settings menu. If you decide to embark on that annual vacation and only plan on using one credit card (or none!), why not just remove the others and play it safe?

With more advanced mobile devices, the traditional wallet is set for departure and Google Wallet is determined to make that happen.  This should be interesting to watch as it unfolds.

This poses a serious risk to companies hoping to maintain and preserve the integrity and credibility of their brand. What if a Google search yielded both your company and a pornographic website with the same name? What kind of association would your potential visitors make?

Not a good one, that’s for sure.

If you’re worried about this, there is one thing to do: register your company’s .xxx domain name before someone else does. This is the only way to keep it clean and safe from abuse.

Despite criticism, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has noted several favorable features regarding their recent legislation. The .xxx extension will help to create a clearer distinction among the purposes behind domain extensions. In addition, this will make it easier to keep underage browsers away from adult materials.

In the end, however, we are advising our clients that the cost of registering an .xxx domain extension is negligible when compared to the long-term effects that a compromised brand may feel. Check out Pragmatix public service announcement for more information on this topic http://www.prweb.com/releases/pragmatix-it-outsourcing/domain-protection/prweb8964426.htm

Microsoft users have coined the second Tuesday of each month as “Patch Tuesday” because it is the day that Microsoft releases all of its patches or security updates accumulated from the previous month.

Why do Patches matter?

Patches are important for a number of reasons. They keep your computer and software as up-to-date as possible and fix any current or potential bugs in your system. Patches also help to limit and prevent malicious attacks, maintain stability, and increase overall uptime.

However, sometimes the patches themselves can present unintended inconveniences like inability to access-or causing problems with–certain older programs.  At Pragmatix, we test patches in-house before installing them on our client’s computers to mitigate any potential problems.  This is a big investment of time, energy and money for us, but that goes to show just how important we believe it is!

People often aren’t mindful of how much information they actually store on their personal and work computers. Finding a reliable backup solution is important.

Take the following into consideration as you decide which method to use:

• The number of computers or servers you have
• Are you backing up files, or are you backing up the programs as well
• Size and complexity of data
• How fast you need to get your data back (for instance Mosy  takes several days for them to send you DVD’s and they charge extra for it)
• How “hands on” you want the solution to be
• Ability to store data backup device in a different location from desktop/server
• Your organization’s computer savvy

I have included some information about common backup solutions. The key here is to get something that is understandable, simple to use and, of course, gets the job done reliably and cost effectively.

Hardware: There a lot of different hardware options on the market that range in price and purpose. DVD/CD/Blu-Ray discs are great for small backups and extremely affordable. They work best for storing audio, video, and picture files. The USB flash drive is also great for small backups and especially for transferring or carrying around files. If you’re looking for something a little more stationary, the USB connected external drive comes in a variety of sizes and capacities. For personal use, one would be hard pressed to fill up all of the drive’s space. They’re compact, easy to store and dramatically decreasing in price.

Now on to the more complex solutions:  An external server provides a physical location for shared disk access by many workstations. Another option, Network attached storage (NAS) functions as a specialized file server and sits on a network outside of your PC but can be connected through Wi-Fi or a wired network.  These solutions can get expensive and it is important to consider online managed backups for you data.

Online managed backups: This storage method can be the most cost-effective for backing up large amounts of data with little effort. This increasingly popular method is also known as backing up in “the cloud” which we have previously explored in several of my posts and with this informative infographic. There are literally thousands of vendors; some of the most popular include Rackspace, Barracuda, StoreGrid, Godaddy.com, and Carbonite. Check out this link for great feature and price comparisons here the comparisons can be tricky, make sure you are comparing apples to apples.

Now that you have a basic understanding of different methods for backing up data, actually remember to do it! Too often people schedule their backups but ignore the reminder when the time comes.   It’s way to easy to click the “remind me later” button.

Here are the steps:

1. Save your presentation on your PC or laptop as you normally would.
2. Choose “Save As” and select Save As Type “JPEG File Interchange Format (*.jpg)”
3. Choose “Every Slide” (assuming you want the whole presentation)
4. Create an email to yourself (to an email account you receive on your iPad, of course).  Attach all the slides to this email.
5. Open the email on your iPad.
6. Hold your finger down on the first slide, you will get a pop-up box where you can choose “Save all images”.
7. Go to the iPad Photos app, your presentation will be there, one slide per “photo”

While this is simple to do and takes only a minute, it does have a limitation: any “builds”, animations, or sounds embedded in the presentation will not appear.

Let  me know if this works for you, or if you have a method you like better.