Archive for the ‘Cloud’ Category

Musings from the Gartner Security Summit

Wednesday, June 30th, 2010

Last week I joined over 1,000 IT professionals at the 2010 Gartner Security and Risk Management Summit in the Washington DC metro area.

Security in the cloud was a major theme during the conference. Interestingly while security was identified in recent Gartner surveys as the number one concern for companies moving to cloud computing, it isn’t stopping people moving to the cloud. The large majority of corporations surveyed expected to have systems running in the cloud very soon.  It seems the benefits are so compelling there is little foot-dragging on this score.

Another interesting topic raised during the conference was that despite all the millions of dollars invested in securing corporate networks and assets, it is often the non-technological leak that causes damage; typically an inadvertent mistake by an insider.  The example discussed was the security hazards of using removable media ie a thumb drive, to move files. Now that example really hit home.

All in all it was a good conference – so thanks Gartner for putting together a good program.

Gary Rogers

Senior VP Worldwide Sales

Posted in Accellion, Cloud, Data Security | No Comments »

Accellion Cloud beats the Volcanic Ash Cloud

Monday, May 17th, 2010

Yet again, ash clouds from the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland are seriously affecting airline traffic, with Heathrow airport closed again this morning. Over the past few weeks millions of passengers - and important documents – have been stranded across Europe and the world.

Clyde & Co. LLP, a leading international law firm based in London, recently purchased the Accellion secure file transfer solution to ensure safe delivery of sensitive documents and avoid paying courier charges.  They had originally chosen an Accellion hardware appliances but then fate intervened: Clyde & Co. ran into problems thanks to the flight disruptions caused by the Icelandic volcano: it wasn’t only passengers that were struggling to get home, the Accellion appliance could not be delivered by FedEx either.

But it got worse than that. The continuing disruption also meant that courier companies couldn’t deliver legal documents to Clyde & Co’s clients either – a major disruption of service for a legal company.

Clyde & Co. IT manager, Phil Newnham, called Accellion for urgent help and while we couldn’t charter a plane, we set up a hosted Accellion cloud appliance and within minutes Clyde & Co. was able to send confidential legal documents. Clyde & Co. files were flying again.

Even volcanoes can’t stop Accellion.

Posted in Accellion, Cloud, Product, UK | No Comments »

Email in the Cloud

Thursday, March 25th, 2010

Email in the Cloud is forcing organizations to think more dynamically about email migrations.

Enterprises need to rethink their email migration strategies to respond to the growing reality of email deployments in the cloud. Business email is in transition. Traditionally, email vendors such as Microsoft and IBM have rolled out major releases every couple of years.  Each new release giving customers a new reason to migrate. However, there is a larger trend on the horizon – corporate email moving into the cloud.

Google Apps, Microsoft BPOS and IBM Lotus Live are making hosted business email a viable option for companies of all sizes and in all industries. As business email transitions to the cloud, email migration needs are changing as well. IT managers are now expected to respond to the new reality that email migrations are no longer a scheduled one-time project for the entire organization. Email migrations are becoming more dynamic.

What do organizations need to do to respond to this new dynamic migration environment?   Enterprises will need to be nimble, agile and flexible as the migration process is no longer a one-time project.  Going forward, email migrations can be tailored by department or group of users to accommodate specific needs.

Regardless of whether the email migration is for an entire organization or for a department, IT managers can turn the complex migration to simpler departmentalized tasks by implementing policies to limit the amount of data that flows through the email servers. Ask us how? http://www.accellion.com/solutions/it/email-migration

–Sunita Reddy

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Agility in the Cloud – I want my file transfer and I want it now.

Wednesday, March 24th, 2010

The Network Computing wrapup on the Cloud Connect conference last week was a refreshing read.  The role of cloud computing in providing business agility doesn’t seem to get as much air time as it deserves. The cost savings from increasing business agility can easily far outweigh the IT cost savings.

In the example from Network Computing – a business user earning $160,000/yr can cost an organization $1.20 per minute, once you factor in benefits, salary and overhead costs.  If deploying an application in the cloud enables an organization to quickly roll out timesaving apps to their business users then the cost savings add up quickly – 100 users, 1 minute saving per day = $40,000+ per year.

So which business apps are the best candidates for deployment in the cloud?  From the Network Computing article here are some interesting takeaways on the suitability of apps for migration to the cloud

1. If the app operates at close to capacity on on-premise servers – leave it alone.

2. New apps are a better bet for the cloud than legacy

3. Apps used only sporadically during the day are good candidates for the cloud

4. Apps whose use grows rapidly – eg a social networking site, good for the cloud

5. Apps with spikes in usage good for the cloud

These takeaways make sense based on our experience at Accellion.  It seems that organizations want to get their feet wet with deploying apps in the cloud and are looking for  good candidate apps that are well tested, new to the organization, are used sporadically during the day, and usage is expected to grow over time.  No wonder organizations are selecting Accellion file transfer for deployment in the cloud.

From our perspective the agility of the cloud leads to faster cost savings, making file transfer in the cloud a great choice.

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Seeds being sown for a different kind of IT

Friday, January 22nd, 2010

Interesting article this week in InfoWorld about 2010 CIO priorities. Nope, it wasn’t surprising to read that Virtualization and Cloud Computing top Gartner’s 2010 top ten CIO priorities.  But the article did provide a good read on the role Virtualization and Cloud Computing are playing in re-shaping IT.

At Accellion we see the “seeds being sown for a different kind of IT”. Over the past 12 – 18 months we’ve seen the significant and rapid shift in demand for managed file transfer deployments for Virtual and Cloud environments.  Yes, virtual and cloud deployments are  faster to deploy and scale, and lower cost. And yes it is interesting to read that CIOs and CFOs are getting excited in this shift to scalable technologies that get away from monster IT projects with huge upfront investments and long deployment timeframes.

We like this new kind of IT that allows organizations to quickly get  business solutions into the hands of business users.  With security and compliance regulations placing increasing demands on organizations it’s good to know that at least IT is making it easier and faster to deploy solutions.

Virtualization and Cloud Computing – bring it on.

Posted in Cloud, Virtualization | No Comments »