At the Crossroads of IT and Business

Submitted by guest blogger, Rob Schilperoort, vice president of cloud product management, Xerox Corp.

Network World’s Brandon Butler shares the story. We had quite a time.

But I’m not here to toot the horn of Xerox. I just know good work when I see it. Brandon hit the nail on the head.

He talked about our “Cloud Coming-Out Party.” He talked Xerox, IBM, HP and what the cloud market means to enterprise customers and small- and mid-sized businesses. My favorite portion of the article (no surprise here), is how Brandon wordsmithed the Xerox cloud position, then validates it with a Gartner analyst.  Here’s a portion of what Brandon wrote:

One reason Xerox’s cloud business up until now has been relatively stealthy is that the company works through a reseller and channel partner program to sell its “white labeled” cloud services. It’s a move aimed at appealing to smaller enterprise and SMB customers.

However, Xerox also does sell directly to large enterprises, which have made up the company’s traditional customer base.(Pricing is based on a metered rate based on the amount of compute resources used and duration of the instance. For more detailed pricing, Xerox has created a pricing calculator.)

Dane Anderson, who covers IT outsourcing for Gartner, says Xerox is one of many IT service providers and OEMs looking to tap into the cloud marketplace. One way major move by Xerox to diversify beyond its traditional document management business and into the cloud and IT management was its $6.4 billion acquisition in 2010 of Affiliated Computer Services (ACS), an ITO firm.

The bigger story is that cloud is slowly moving from hype to here-and-now. When it comes to Infrastructure as a Service and its related cloud services, Xerox has 85 customers, as reported in the article.

And the biggest story that’s most relevant to the enterprise and SMB market? Xerox is—and has been—well entrenched in both worlds for decades. Consider Xerox’s (formerly ACS) decades and depth of experience in Information Technology Outsourcing and Business Process Outsourcing, among a long list of IT services that don’t just claim superiority, market leadership and innovation. They’re all proven. And that’s good news for companies seeking a complete cloud they can depend on and trust in, just by knowing the presence and power of Xerox.

I’m not tooting our horn. I’m just proud. And glad the marketplace has a real leader with a real footprint in the world of IT services.

Follow us on the Xerox Cloud Twitter page.

Think Murtaugh & Riggs. Abbott & Costello. Batman & Robin. They’re all dynamic duos–real collaborators showing their stuff on the big screen.

In a strange sort of way, they represent teamwork and collaborators to accomplish a common cause.

And so it is among a plethora of cloud providers and the thousands of indirect channel parters spread across America and the globe. These partners—often called value-added resellers or VARs—specialize in market sectors, or geography, or even by company size—enterprise vs. small- and mid-sized businesses (SMBs).

Interesting insights:

• Computer Reseller News (CRN) reports that SMB spending in the cloud market in 2012 will be divided into hosted infrastructure, at $5.9 billion; Web presence services, with $2.7 billion; hosted communication and collaboration, including business e-mail and hosted PBX, at $2.2 billion; and business, or SaaS applications, at $4.3 billion, the report said. Small businesses without employees will spend another $1.6 billion … Small and medium-sized businesses are adopting cloud services as a business model at a rapid pace, fueling a U.S. market expected to reach $15.1 billion this year.
• The magazine also reports that “… Of jobs created by cloud computing, more than half will accrue to SMBs, and more than a million will occur in banking, communications and discrete manufacturing industries.”
• Consider the airlines industry—typically slow adopters of technology. One blogger says the airline industry has been a pioneer of Cloud Computing for a number of decades … “ One consulting firm shows research data saying that airlines reported three IT spending imperatives, in order: flight operations, followed by passenger and aircraft operations. The conclusion: Less cost, more speed. More competitive advantage.

Our point? Cloud is pervasively penetrating across company sectors and size, with VARs contributing significantly. A published study says there are dramatic increases in the uptake of the cloud by VARs. Eight in 10 VARs said they reaped post-sale integration work from cloud last year. Lastly, the report says “It’s a complete flip from last year (2010), when 42 percent said they were doing no cloud at all. This year, it’s 13 percent. Clearly the adoption rates went up significantly over the last 12 months.”

We share all of because we’re believers. Global providers interested in serving top-tier cloud services, yet ignore VARs and smaller companies, are blind. Over the last several months, as we’ve rolled out an entire suite of cloud services, we’ve understood the VAR imperative. VARs—the channel—are critical to cloud services. While they offer their own value and approach to key customers, they align with a world-class cloud provider to back them up and offer proof that cloud is secure, reliable and truly in the hands of global experts who know what they’re doing.

VARs and the cloud.

We see the value. The purpose. Collaboration proves what a VAR represents: Value-Added expertise.

VARs deliver it. We support it. Customers benefit from it.

Submitted by guest blogger, Rob Schilperoort, vice president of cloud product management, Xerox Corp.

He trips and falls down a snowy embankment and walks back to the airport with bulging eyes and freezing toes. The rental car died. He’s ready to kill. 

In “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” Steve Martin faces a customer-service nightmare—a chatty, perky agent who ignores him, then cops an attitude. Martin angrily demands another car, rattling off a stream of expletives that’d make Quentin Tarantino blush.

It’s poor customer service in action. And now the rental car has an enemy who will share his bad experience to hundreds, maybe thousands, thanks to social media.

So what’s this got to do with the cloud? A lot. Whether we talk cloud services, information technology outsourcing – even where we buy our groceries – one bad experience equals business disaster: lost customers.

Losing customers cost big money. BIG money. One report says: 

• Enterprises in the U.S. lose an estimated $83 billion each year due to defections and abandoned purchases as a direct result of a poor experience.
• Nearly two-thirds of consumers said they had ended a relationship due to customer service alone.
• The survey participants said that when they end a relationship, 61 percent of the time they take their business to a competitor.

Specific reasons customers leave, per the report (paraphrased by us):

• Self-service systems suck
• Self-service lags because it is not often intelligently integrated with assisted service.
• A rep repeats himself or herself
• Automated self-service puts then in an endless loop of choices and dead-ends
• Service takes too long. The wait seems infinite.
• When finally working with a rep, that person does not know the consumer’s history and value

It’s sobering for you and us, just to consider how front-liners are pouring billions of potential revenue down the drain. Customers have been on our minds a lot lately since we recently hosted a client symposium. These clients can’t waste time. They need real answers, so we continually sharpen our customer interaction. First, we listen and learn. These executives are the best focus group we could ever have. Then, we engage them with business cloud experts that understand operations and the technology.

Don’t get us wrong. This isn’t a BragFest. Rather, it’s a reminder for us—and you—that business success doesn’t really start with the customer but a back step that leads back to the customer. To be effective—and to plug up that money drain—we must recognize and revolutionize how we serve customers with employees. Sure, it takes time, training, tools and money to get them poised and prepared. The investment is likely less than the money lost on disgruntled customers and frazzled, unfriendly employees.

Bottom line: Good customer service = happy customers = increased revenue.

And most of all, a team who works for you with a smile.

It couldn’t be easier.

Really.

Note: Planes, Trains and Automobiles is a 1987 American comedy film released by Paramount Pictures. It was written, produced and directed by John Hughes.

Submitted by guest blogger, Kathy Sadden, senior vice president of operations, ITO sales and marketing, Xerox Corp.

It’s scary.

We’re talking IT departments. Those low-light cubicles where only shadows move through dark hallways, keypads click like Gatling guns and rays of blue-ish white shoot upward and outward from the caves of complexity.

It’s a subculture of technology programmers, network managers, technology configuration masters—those near geniuses who tinker and transform technology. They keep us live, connected and informed. They speak special languages all their own. They talk about N+1 redundancy, data center construction classifications, and virtualization. They grumble when notified of the SSA-16 Type II audit. Say what?

Then there’s the cloud, another slice of IT that comes with its own techno-garble. There’s SaaS, IaaS, MDM, HSC, PaaS, hypervisors, ISMs … Can we conquer it, understand it, and then implement? Who can keep up (We know who, but let’s resist self-promotion, shall we?)?

With all that said, we come to the spirited, smile-inducing video that Xerox created to shed some light on the mysteries within IT. You hear their words. Feel their pain. And laugh away that sour ‘tude you have from the hellish drive to the office.

THE VIDEO: What IT Guys Really Say. It’s relevant. Go ahead, view it.

It gives a glimpse into the business cloud. What you may face.

This is good stuff. Think of it this way. We’re helping you to avoid the IT 12-step program, starting with step one: Admit the problem. Then give it up to a Higher Power, perhaps a great cloud provider. We know of one. OK, so a little self-promotion did creep in. We do have the answers, clearly, succinctly and minus as much garble as possible.

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Submitted by guest blogger, Danny Nguyen, director of mobility services, IT Outsourcing, Xerox Corp.

You should play Marble Run. Kids love it. It goes like this: Place a handful of marbles in a cup atop the bright plastic pillars and then watch the marbles pour down like rocket-powered hail. The marbles sizzle down the chutes and pour to the floor in a mish-mash clattering collisions.

Now think of the IT department and your company. Think about Androids, iPhones, iPads, tablets and other mobile tools that might as well be a sack of hurling marbles pelting the IT group with every color, shade, size and type of mobile device on earth.

It’s seemingly impossible to keep up with mobile demands, but there are solutions. Staff up, outsource, work deep nights. Pray. Whatever works, but the better way is the business cloud. It’s transforming mobile device management from a conundrum to a restful journey akin to sailing the Caribbean isles.

OK, we exaggerate. But mobile device management (MDM) is certainly a corporate advantage, for the business and for technology reasons. The cloud is making it easier as mobile devices pervasively propagate in companies. Did you know that more than 140 million smartphones and tablets will be connected to the enterprise by 2013, as forecasted by IDC?  It also reports that almost half of mobile devices used in the workplace were employee owned in 2011.

Let’s stop the madness of marbles. When considering MDM, expect the following aspects.

• Easy for the Busy. MDM centralizes mobility management and keeps it simple. Complicated configurations go out the window. It’s simple to activate and manage mobility with agentless, configurable deployment systems.
• Certainly Secure. You deserve enterprise-class security. If a security breach occurs, expect MDM to quickly detect it, then immediately lock the mobile device at the operating-system level. A sophisticated MDM services also enforces company security policies across all kinds of mobile devices, even to the point where the device can be locked and all corporate data are wiped clean.
• Use It, Don’t Lose It. MDM requires business advantages, starting with cost. Using MDM means you don’t lose money. In fact, any reliable cloud provider offers a “pay as you go” model. 
   
• Clearly & Cloud-ly. Clarify the MDM services you can expect – and pay for. Not all MDM services are the same, nor are they priced the same. Does your MDM provider deliver:
  • All the hardware and software without additional expenses
  • Complete implementation services, directory services configuration, administration training, system management, service quality monitoring, incident and problem management, performance management, capacity and database management
  • Real-time, centralized control of all types of mobile devices, with compliance

No? Then re-consider. Figure out the right MDM provider and evaluate several of them. If not, go ahead, play Marble Run. Like an asteroid shower, these marbles soar hard and fast, ready to crash and crumble. Watch out.

Check out a new video, What IT Guys Say.

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Submitted by Guest Blogger, Becky Alexander, Director, cloud backup and disaster recovery product manager, IT Outsourcing, Xerox Corp.

Doomsayers are like stars in the sky. They always show up, and while they may shine, they’re always surrounded by darkness and gloom.

So when we talk disasters, we’re not pointing our fingers and telling you to stock up on canned goods, water and fuel. We’re just sharing a realistic truth: Disasters happen, often without warning.

For example, see what the National Fire Protection Association reported about 2010:

–U.S. fire departments responded to an estimated
   1.3 million fires in 2010.

–These fires resulted an estimated $11.6 billion in
  direct property loss

If you add flooding, hurricanes, earthquakes or something as seemingly benign as a power surge or transformer blow-out, then the business risk becomes real. Too real.

The answer is simple: Be prepared (See and hear the video story of one business owner who faced a hurricane and flood).

But, historically, the actual preparation hasn’t been so easy or inexpensive. Setting up redundancy services, keeping the pipelines clear isn’t just a budgeting line-item.

Well, it can be now. Cloud computing takes us one step further to making backup and disaster recovery services almost as easy as ordering a book from Amazon.

Backup and Disaster Recovery

What’s important to know?

• Many cloud providers – for enterprises or SMBs – do not support multiple operating systems, databases, legacy applications and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, all of which require backup and disaster recovery.
• The Xerox Cloud offers Infrastructure as a Service, plus complete backup and recovery of data, applications and operating systems– everything on the server can be restored in less than 24 hours.
• Affordability is a must from any cloud provider—for enterprises and SMBs. Monthly, utility-based price (customers pay for what they use) is the way to go.
• Avoid long-term contracts. They are not necessary.
• Know—really know—that data backup is replicated, secured, encrypted and conducted daily.

A key consideration, especially for SMBs evaluating the cloud: No matter the size, scope or location of a company, the common denominator is how to manage costs and risks. That means finding a cloud provider with a utility model approach, intense security controls, systems and data redundancy, even a customized company-wide disaster recovery plan.

We know exactly who that cloud provider is. And now, you do too.

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Submitted by Guest Blogger, Kathy Sadden, Senior Vice President of Operations, ITO Sales and Marketing, Xerox Corp.

If you want to talk high performance, let’s talk tunes.

We’ve got to go with classic rock: Bob Seger, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, The Stones … Oh yeah. Total high-performance (no pun intended). Now, think speed. Imagine traveling at 768 miles per hour, or 1,126 feet per second. Unimaginable, yet it’s a fundamental law of nature: It’s the speed of sound.

Pink Floyd

Now, consider this: Today, small- and mid-sized companies (SMBs) can share the stage with the headliners. There’s no disparity between large companies or small. And the Business Cloud is why.

SMBs now can tap high-performance technologies and services. No creating or upgrading data centers or added adding head count, no intensive network management and configuration, or endless software licensing management.. They get a high-performance provider that knows the enterprise and the SMBs.

Enter Xerox (Nasdaq: XRX) and Xerox Cloud Services. Today, we announced  a new SMBs focus for cloud services. We’re starting with Infrastructure as a Service and our Backup and Recovery Service, two essential ingredients to growing Xerox cloud services.

Our approach is an equation that benefits all. We’ve created a new channel of value-added resellers that offer business cloud services. They get a superior, reliable and global cloud services partner that makes them look good. SMBs get a trusted VAR that may be in their city, region or specific vertical market. And Xerox expands its cloud footprint beyond our global and enterprise customers.

Why serve enterprises and SMBs? Because the market demands it. Enterprises are seeking cost-cutting measures, increased efficiencies and less capital costs. They’re eying the business cloud for all of the above. SMBs are doing the same.

There’s no doubt that cloud “providers” will continue to cluster and clutter the marketplace. Reliability, trust, a proven track record and secure cloud coverage that cross every continent are critical. That’s what we believe. For the enterprise. And SMBs.

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Submitted by Guest Blogger, Becky Alexander, Director, Cloud Backup and DR Product Manager, ACS, a Xerox company

There’s nothing scarier than Sam Fisher lurking through the dark on his way to breach your fortified palace and wreak untold havoc. He’s an undergrounder, a man who knows the good, bad and ugly of break-ins and breakthroughs. He steals secrets. Covers his tracks. Then silently disappears. Mission accomplished.

For gamers, Sam is a hero in the video game series, Splinter Cell by Tom Clancy. For CIOs, the real-world Sam Fishers are the uber-villains who track down data and system vulnerabilities. The thought of software as a service or infrastructure as a service—laid bare in some vaporous cloud—strikes fear in hearts of CIOs, CTOS and IT directors used to the hardware being across the hall. 

And for good reason. In this golden era when the cloud is considered a nirvana of never-ending business advantages, securing corporate technologies and intellectual property is paramount.

Not to fear. We’ve assembled three primary questions to ask when evaluating the cloud and security. And we provide the answers too

1.  Security is just one of my top concerns. How do I identify a cloud provider that really knows what they’re doing? 
      a. Size. Whether you are a large corporation or small- to mid-sized business, the requirements are the same. The good news is that enterprise-level providers (like ACS) are also serving SMBs with all types of cloud services, at a price point that all can afford.
     b. The track record. Find out their expertise, size and scope. Are they global? How many data centers do they have? Who are their customers? Shop around just like you do for a car.
     c. The service quotient. Software and services are one thing. Getting the technical kinks out is another, but the real value—and critical element—is response time and availability of the cloud provider, especially in crisis.

2.   And security? What safeguards are required to go cloud?
It’s smart to dig deep into the real security structure and process, not just promises. Make sure the provider:
     a. Offers significant back-up and recovery. For example, ACS offers up to 18TB available space for backups/recovery, depending on specific requirements; It uses advanced compression and encryption de-duplication using something called a virtual appliance.
     b. Meets regulatory and compliance requirements, including Sarbanes-Oxley.
     c. Offers complete back-ups and disaster-recovery that allows you to go online and access your data immediately, even as the crisis occurs.
      d. Governs or supports your disaster-recovery plan; if there’s not one, confirm that your provider can create one with you.

3.   Our company has a stringent security policy –and management process. Does the cloud allow us to manage—or co-manage our infrastructure, applications and data?
     a. Yes. Any qualified and top-quality cloud provider should have systems, safeguards and access points to verify in-house security administrators and users.

Stay tuned in to ACS, a Xerox company, and more cloud coverage by following us on Twitter. Be looking for a cloud announcement, Jan. 31.

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Submitted by Guest Blogger, Kevin Lightfoot, Public Relations, ACS, a Xerox company

Oda Mae Brown’s world is turned upside down when Sam Wheat (Patrick Swayze) proves she does have “the gift”—psychic powers that can hear the dead and glean insights from “the other side.”

In the movie, “Ghost,” Sam turns Oda Mae (Whoopi Goldberg) from psychic to truth finder. She ends up delivering a pretty bright future for all. Sam reunites with Molly (Demi Moore), bad guys are taken away and the church gets a $1 million check. Not bad, really.

We like a good story and a happy ending, so we decided to look into what 2012 will look like for cloud computing. And we didn’t even have to look for Oda Mae or any other psychics, or salespeople. Instead, we’ve collected predictions and forecasts from a variety of experts—real leaders who know technology and business. Some are technologists, others are analysts. Ultimately, they are oft-quoted, well-respected and certainly experienced.

Read what these experts are saying about the cloud, and then tell us what you think.

• An InformationWeek written by Judith Hurwitz calls this “Big Trend #1”: Cloud Service Management becomes a requirement for adoption. It is becoming apparent that companies will not adopt a single cloud deployment model, but rather will use a combination of various public cloud services (including Software as a Service, Infrastructure as a Service, and Platform as a Service), private cloud services as well as their traditional computing environment. This is especially true for companies in the mid-market and even large enterprises. The ability to manage this hybrid environment will be the difference between success and failure. 2012 will be the year when customers start to plan and implement a service management strategy for the cloud.
• Forrester Research’s Andrew Bartel’s provides an interesting report: The United States tech market posted weaker growth in 2011 than we expected; the outlook for 2012 is for more of the same … Cloud and Smart Computing solution vendors will continue to outperform their industry baselines. Growth will be relatively balanced across industries, while government purchases will remain weak.
• Infoworld’s David Linthicum is spot on with his 2012 trends. Also, check out his cloud computing other blog posts.

And there’s always more to read about the latest and greatest on cloud computing. We recommend CIO, Computerworld, Data Center Knowledge, Infoworld, InformationWeek and ZDNet, among others.

Take our brief survey regarding cloud on our Managing Print Facebook page  that asks you where you’re most likely to get cloud computing news.

And lastly, take a couple of hours and watch “Ghost” again. Oda Mae’s psychic moment with Consella is funny, but is NOT our favorite scene, but that’s a whole other story.

In my previous post I discussed consumerization of IT and the emerging trend of Bring Your Own Device.  Security and device management are key when mixing both personal and business data. Managing multiple devices is a challenge for IT. Do you support multiple devices or ban them from your infrastructure?

Virtual desktops have created a platform that allows any device to access the same data and desktop environment, securely.  It also allows IT to manage access to sensitive company data regardless of device ownership.

Desktop virtualization shares resources and provides advantages over the traditional IT infrastructure, in which every computer operates as a completely self-contained unit with its own operating system, peripherals, and application programs. With VDI hardware costs will decrease as users can share resources on an as-needed basis. Virtualization can also improve the accuracy of user information because all data can be maintained and backed-up in the data center.

Potential advantages include:

• Increased agility and flexibility
• Improved operational and application availability
• Reduced total cost of IT ownership
• Improved business continuity

IDC proposes these nine points to successfully deploy virtual desktops:

• Determine where existing infrastructure can continue to deliver return on investment(ROI) now, and include virtualization in the future
• Create solid business cases desktop virtualization can address
• Gain buy-in from senior management
• Recognize both the technical limitations and the business value of available virtualization technologies
• Evaluate vendors with pilot programs
• Create proof of concept and define target user groups
• Begin deploying virtual desktop solutions to the selected user groups
• Stage deployment to maintain proper capacity management
• Scale deployment depending on the success of the initial deployment

Have you begun a virtual desktop deployment?  What are the challenges you are seeing? What are the advantages?  I would be interested to know.