If you are a SharePoint shop (and who isn’t) you should really check out http://cloudshare.com – They recently launched CloudShare Pro as an enhancement to an already great service and they revamped there website for easier navigation and a SharePoint showcase http://cloudshare.com/solutions/showcase
Sync SharePoint with Box
SharePoint 2010 Server Farm (3-server config w/RepliWeb Replication)
Innovative-e Program Management and Information System (PMIS)
Also cloudPWR has published its TimeLine View on FaceBook and updated several trade show events where you can find us. Click the cloudPWR link below for more details about the following events:
ABA Tech Show – Chicago
AIIM 2012 – San Francisco
CloudFair 2012 – Seattle
cloudPWR <– Link to our FaceBook page with event details
Q: “Can you convince me to buy something from Microsoft v. Apple?” Did I mention we are going to sell 350M Windows devices. We aren’t going anywhere we are winning, winning, winning. – paraphrasing
Except I have been buying, selling and integrating PC’s and Windows for 20yrs. 2 months ago I switched from a PC laptop to a MacBook Air, so maybe its only 349M devices, plus I am not buying a Windows phone. I may be forced to buy a new Xbox 360 because my kids like it but the hardware doesn’t last. Every Xbox I have every owned has ended in the red ring of death. As a consumer that makes me feel ripped off. That is interesting because that’s one of the main reasons I bought an Apple over a PC. I wanted something that would last and make me feel like I made a smart investment. When I listened to the video Steve made me feel like I have to buy Microsoft because he says so and that turned me off. Then he touts SharePoint as a $2B chunk of revenue. SharePoint its free, at least WSS is free but if you really want to use SharePoint in the enterprise here is our price list, take a while sit back and try and figure it out. Because it takes a full time position just to understand how to license Microsoft products in the enterprise. Then you will need to buy several third party software products to actually make SharePoint do all the great things the pinwheel says it can do. I am not saying this isn’t smart business because obviously it is, $2B can’t be wrong. Developers love it and the partners and ISV’s who focus exclusively on Microsoft love it. Do all the customers love it?
I sat in front of the Microsoft Store for 30 minutes a few months ago and nothing made me want to go in, the only thing that looked exciting or fun was a kid playing with Xbox connect. Everyone else in the store looked like they were trying to be the guys at the Apple store but they weren’t very stoked about it. Then I went down to the Apple store and it was filled with genuine joy and excitement about technology. I guess as a consumer and a technology professional I just don’t feel joy and excitement when I think about Microsoft.
I am not trying to hate on Microsoft, I am just sharing my POV. Microsoft will be a dominate player for many years to come and I will admit that I did buy Office for my Mac.
Q: What would it take for Microsoft to put joy and excitement back into the mix?
Hermes wore winged boots to run in the clouds, serving as the personal agent and herald to Zeus. Today many companies are exploring the benefits and challenges of cloud based platforms, services and technologies. I had the chance to visit with Chris Riley at CloudShare. My objective was to uncover some real world knowledge that could be applied immediately to help you find your wings.
CloudShare offers a free 14 day trial, using the QuickStart guide you can be up and running in the cloud in under 15 minutes. When reviewing the site you initially see a strong focus on SharePoint with several pre-built templates. It is very simple to spin up a SharePoint instance and start configuring document libraries, collaboration sites or start testing custom developed web parts. This can give an organization a great sandbox for implementing test cases to eliminate some of the risks associated with deploying SharePoint. A great post outlining ways to avoid things like SharePoint sprawl can be found in an AIIM blog recently posted by Nick Inglis
As you dig deeper you find that many applications or platforms that you need to spin up for Testing, QA or Development purposes can be supported by CloudShare. Imagine all the costs associated with hardware, product licensing and labor you could save. Several use cases have been very successful for Independent Software Vendors (ISV’s), Training organizations and Enterprise class customers.
ISV’s are using this for fast and affordable customer test sites. This gives them an immediate, template driven method for creating ‘Try & Buy’ virtual work spaces to showcase their software. An ISV can setup repeatable templates with completed software install, configuration test data, site content and user access in minutes. It is so straightforward most software product sales professionals could spin up virtual work spaces for customer prospects without a sales engineer.
Professional training organizations are setting up pre-built environments complete with training labs. A trainer can share a copy of an environment with a class and provide ‘over-the-shoulder’ instruction without actually being over the students shoulder. This type of collaboration usage portends some of the exciting new features you can expect to see from CloudShare in the very near future.
Enterprise customers are leveraging the benefits of this solution to augment the expenses of providing physical server farms for software development QA and testing. The ability to roll this solution out to support near shore and off shore development teams is another area to be considered. With hardware, software licensing and labor a business could easily spend $20K to setup a SharePoint 2010 development environment. With CloudShare ProPlus this could be done for as little as $49 per month. Ready. Set. Cloud.
I setup a Microsoft Office 2010 machine as my first virtual machine (VM).
Screenshot of CloudShare
As part of the CloudShare ProPlus offering you get a single login with up to 6 VM’s 10GB RAM, 300GB HD, 10 CPU’s. Currently a single login is tied to a single environment, in the future the ability to have multiple environments accessible from a single login will be provided. Chris eluded to several really hot new features that are planned and you will need to keep a close eye on CloudShare, they use an agile development methodology so new updates are often made bi-weekly.
You can access your environment and VM’s using either a remote desktop plug-in (RDP) or a fully web-based VNC Console. The RDP requires a java runtime that you will need to plug-in to your browser. I am using Chrome and found no issues and the speed of the RDP was very nice, hardly any lag in cursor movement. I experienced more lag with the Console interface, switching back and forth between RDP and VNC was seamless.
Overall the user experience is very straightforward and the time that it can save an IT department, Sales Engineers and Training professionals is substantial. With a little upfront planning and work to create your own templates the return on your initial investment is substantial. As an ISV the benefits to the sales cycle are clear, this is a killer app that will put you in position to close more sales with less technical effort.
Some things to think about using CloudShare ProPlus for:
Educating yourself or employees on what the Cloud is and how it can be used
Application development and testing
Server Hosting to reduce upfront hardware investments
Training / Classroom virtual work space and labs
Personal PC in the Cloud – Microsoft Office
Applications to consider hosting:
Mail Server – Exchange
Collaboration sites – SharePoint
Database farms – SQL / Oracle / MySQL
Ruby on Rails
IBM
SAP
Lots of other useful business applications like: Document / Knowledge management | Social software in enterprise | Storage, backup/recovery, archival | Website (external) Enterprise search | Intranet portal Custom app/Web part development | Business Intelligence/reporting solution | Migration from Sharepoint 2007 to Sharepoint 2010 | Enterprise CRM – Sales/Marketing | Packaged app/Web part | HR / Legal compliance solution | Integration with Exchange/Office365
The current state of content management software is in flux. A transformation is taking shape in the form of innovation, specificity to function and the technology used to process and share content. While stalwarts of the industry continue to add layers of complexity, upstarts have begun to make their mark advocating simplicity of design.
The fundamental needs for managing unstructured information that exists outside of traditional line of business or structured data systems has not changed. What is changing are the ways in which we want to use content, the devices that access content and the demographics of the workforce. ECM software is now considered by many as an IT Platform. As a Platform, the software is required to meet a laundry list of features and capabilities regardless of operational business or user benefit. Industry analyst and consultants have cavorted with software companies in order to create a quadrant of magic features that every ECM buyer must evaluate, or face certain failure. I will not even mention that whole Sarbanes Oxley mess.
I have been fortunate to work with a tremendously talented group of ECM professionals in my career. I have been involved at every level of solution design for each of the various defined disciplines in the industry. Using ECM technology to enhance business productivity has given me the experience to know the difference between necessary functions and unnecessary features. By working in technical engineering, project management and user roles in hundreds of ECM use cases, I have come to the conclusion that most legacy software packages are way too complicated and unnecessarily expensive.
While many lauded the arrival of SharePoint as the coup de grâce for legacy vendors, many acknowledge that the platform is so broad and requires so much customization that it fails to deliver key business productivity functions as quickly and easily as the Microsoft marketing team would have you believe. Meanwhile, the other legacy vendors continues to layer newer e2.0 features on top of already bloated product suites. Legacy ECM solutions get the job done, and they will meet any diligent RFP coordinators mandatory requirements including most if not all of the evaluation committee’s checklist criteria. However, if you are evaluating ECM software today you should take a step back and ask yourself; “Do I really need all those buttons, commands and features?”
Many longstanding ECM professionals are in a catch twenty two. While many might agree with me, how many of them are willing to stand up and say so. If you currently sell, integrate, consult or work in this industry you likely work with legacy ECM vendors to put the proverbial food on the table. The history of technology teaches us that change is inevitable. As we look to the future, we should all know that the next generation ECM technology will not be what it has been or what it is today.
