FEBRUARY 2012 / vol.7 / no.2
Management Resource Shelf
Start Something New ...6
20 Questions With,
Ann Kahn, Kahn Mechanical ...26
>>
When To Stop Cutting
And Start Growing
By Ruth King 10
6 Lessons For The
Small Business Owner
By Terry Tanker 5
Tips For Helping
Older Employees Excel
By Jennifer FitzPatrick 8
How Writing A Book
Fulfilled My Dream
By Greg McAfee 24
Page 14
Commercial Service Agreements:
How To Write Proposals
Page 18
Plan Ahead For
T
he cloud. It’s all the rage. But as much attention as cloud computing gets, it seems not many people fully understand what it is. A recent market-sentiment survey conducted by The Small Business Authority found that 71% of the ap-proximate 1,800 surveyed small busi-ness owners have never heard of cloud computing.So what is this mysterious cloud, and why should you start looking toward the sky?
At its most basic level, “the cloud” refers to the Internet. When people say they’re working in the cloud, it means they’re accessing software services and files that reside on a server in a secured data center in another location — often multiple locations — rather than access-ing files that live directly on personal or in-house servers, or wireless devices.
A cloud product or service can be anything from software for word
processing, customer relationship man-agement, or accounting — to web-based e-mail services (think Yahoo, Hotmail, Google, AOL), website hosting, file stor-age, backup, and customizable and fully managed server solutions.
Traditionally, businesses have had servers on-site to which each employee’s computer is configured, running email through programs such as Microsoft Exchange. Each computer is set up
with a variety of applications, and then there is some kind of technology sup-port on a regular or contract basis, said Greg Pierce, Managing Director/Cloud Computing, Tribridge, an IT consulting company for businesses.
The problem, according to Pierce, is that this gets expensive and frustrating. With cloud computing, businesses pay a monthly fee and no longer have to worry about managing the cycle of buying new
equipment and upgrading software ev-ery 36 months. Also gone is the head-ache and expense that can come with hiring a contractor or team of experts to install, configure, secure, and maintain everything.
Working in the cloud
So how does it work? Think of the service agreement you offer to your cus-tomers. It involves a fixed investment for which the customer receives peace of mind knowing that a specially trained staff of experts will provide regular main-tenance and service on the equipment to maintain its life and troubleshoot poten-tial problems before they arise.
Similarly, a cloud-services provider will offer you the technology solutions that meet your needs. You’ll sign a ser-vice-level agreement in which you’ll agree to a subscription fee for those specified services: i.e., server space, ap-plications, file storage. The cloud service provider manages and maintains the
When people say they’re working in the cloud,
it means they’re accessing software services
and files that reside on a server in a secured
data center in another location — often
multiple locations.
Clearing Up
Cloud Confusion
BY
HEATHER OnORATi
How a
cloud-computing
model can save
money, increase
capability, and
relieve IT headaches
for HVACR
How To
Evaluate Cloud vendors
By HEATHER OnORATi
A good thing for business owners is that there are a number
of cloud service providers to choose from. The frustrating part
is how do you distinguish among them? How do you know
which will bring sunshine and which, the storms?
equipment and upgrades while you use your computer or any wireless device to access the server, files, and/or software over the Internet. There’s no installation, configuration, integration, or mainte-nance on your end.
Behind the scenes there are public clouds and private clouds. Public clouds are like condominiums, Pierce said. You share a certain amount of space, but you have a portion dedicated to you. On pub-lic clouds, thousands of customers with tens of thousands of users are connect-ing to the same resource. As the number of customers accessing one resource in-creases, this drives the price of that re-source down substantially for each cus-tomer. The down side of the public cloud is that, for the most part, the solutions are standard and can’t be customized
for every customer. An example would be Microsoft 365, which provides web-based email, access to online versions of Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote, as well as SharePoint intranet for sharing files and collaboratively cre-ating and managing documents.
Private cloud solutions offer more flexibility in that you gain access to the server space on which you can have a customized solution. For this reason, private clouds will cost a little more, but will still be less expensive long-term than maintaining all of the hardware and software yourself.
So, for example, a contractor can subscribe to a public or private cloud solution for access to industry-specific software services such as job costing,
inventory, quoting, mobile technician dispatching — all of which can be inte-grated, as well as business-side solutions for human resources, taxes, and payroll.
“Public is great for things that are commoditized,” Pierce said. “In other words, things like email that don’t have
a ton of customization. This is some-thing that you plug in and get to work. If you have an application, even if it’s e-mail, that needs to be heavily integrated with other applications, or it’s something that’s specific to your industry, then you’re going to be looking at a private cloud solution.”
A solution for contractors could be a
hybrid cloud, Pierce said.
“Let’s say you have an HVAC contrac-tor that has 10 employees that access data. You might want to put your email and SharePoint file storage within a public cloud and then maybe you have a system for dispatch and for maintenance of systems that’s more proprietary. It
As the number of customers accessing one
resource increases, this drives the price of that
resource down substantially for each customer.
Continued on page 16
Ask good questions to really
under-stand the service level agreement, said
Greg Pierce, Managing Director Cloud
Computing, Tribridge. And make sure
you clarify ahead of time data
owner-ship.
“If something happens, you want to be
able to get your data back no matter
what.”
The agreement should include
lan-guage that provides for a termination
event, and in which case, the cloud
provider will cooperate with
transition-ing the business’ information to a new
provider, said Brad Walz, a managing
associate at the law firm Winthrop &
Weinstine in Minneapolis, who
special-izes in intellectual property related to
cloud computing.
Another thing to look at from a security
standpoint, Walz said, is whether the
company has undergone an
informa-tion security audit. Find out whether
the company is SSAE16 compliant,
SAS70 compliant, or ISO compliant.
This tells you that they’ve undergone
testing to measure the security
proce-dures they have in place. It’s especially
important to know if you’re putting
anything confidential or proprietary on
the provider’s server, he said.
You should also look into service
avail-ability, he advised. Since you’re going to
be relying on the provider to make sure
the software and hardware services that
you signed up for are available, you want
to find out how often the company has
had downtime and for how long that
downtime occurred (where there was
no access to the services). Some of the
company’s statistical information may
be found in its annual report published
by the U.S. Securities and Exchange
Commission. You’ll have to ask smaller
companies for their details.
“Where the real investigation needs
to occur is what is meant by
avail-ability and when does downtime start
counting against that statistic,” Walz
said. Each cloud provider will define
downtime differently. Some might
measure on a collective rather than a
per-incident basis.
Here Comes
THE CloUD
doesn’t lend itself to a public cloud, so you put that part in a private cloud. The experience from the end user [your em-ployees] is exactly the same. They don’t know that they’re connecting here for public cloud and here for private cloud, but you’re leveraging the best of both worlds.”
Benefits of sharing space
Whether private or public, the cloud has numerous benefits worth consider-ing. Primarily, experts agree that it’s less expensive, it’s more secure, and it’s scal-able to meet your specific needs at any point.
It saves you money because you’re not purchasing the server, and you’re rent-ing hardware, software, and mainte-nance, said Barry Sloane, President and CEO of The Small Business Authority. Therefore, you don’t need the local IT contractor you may be paying up to $5,000 a month. And, most importantly,
you pay for what you use.
“If businesses set themselves up in the cloud, they will reduce their costs, and they’ll be more efficient,” Sloane said. “We’ve estimated that our cloud solu-tions can save business owners 30% to
40% minimum off of their IT costs.” The scalability aspect is a tremendous advantage, said Brad Walz, a managing associate at the law firm Winthrop & Weinstine in Minneapolis. He specializes in intellectual-property related to cloud computing.
“As a small business, you can really take control over your computing costs,” Walz said. “Let’s say when you need more space or you need more servers on-line because — let’s just say you’re in the retail industry and you’re expecting high volumes of sales and a lot of those sales
are being made on the Internet. You can request additional servers and then when that demand subsides, you can scale back and request fewer servers.”
Another benefit, Walz said, is that smaller businesses can take advantage of economies of scale that allow multiple parties to take advantage of a single soft-ware application.
“The ORACLE accounting software and other types of applications are re-ally expensive to purchase; so when ORACLE puts something like that in the cloud and allows multiple businesses to access that application, they can Continued from page 15
The experts agree there are certainly risks to
relinquishing your proprietary data for
storage in remote locations.
Whether you are moving to a cloud
model for your business or not, you
should get to know the cloud. Products
and services in all industries — including
HVACR — are starting to incorporate
cloud computing. Here are a few
examples:
Filters: FilterFetch from
Jackson Systems
This year Jackson Systems will roll
out FilterFetch, a cloud-based online
ordering system for filters and
filter-inventory management.
According to the company, benefits of
FilterFetch for contractors include:
•
Air filter inventory
management (i.e., ordering,
tracking, shipping, storage)
never has to be done by the
contractor as all they have to do is
give the customer/consumer the
code, which they then just enter
online to order new filters. The
filter is at the jobsite waiting for
the technician, and the contractor
receives commissions.
•
With the Contractor
Dashboard, the contractor can
see which customers/consumers are
purchasing filters and which field
techs offered it to them (helpful if
bonuses are paid on sales). And,
all of the financial tracking can
easily be seen for the contractors’
commissions from orders.
•
Reduced costs because
contractors no longer need to store
filters and take losses from missing,
damaged, or obsolete filters.
Thermostats: nest Labs Learning
Thermostat by nest Labs
From this technology start up staffed
by former Apple employees comes a
“learning” thermostat that runs on
a cloud-and-mobile-app model. The
thermostat is billed as having enough
intelligence to save energy through
climate-control automation.
This thermostat and others that use
wireless technology to connect to remote
servers are products within an emerging
category called the energy web.
GPS and fleet management:
SageQuest Mobile Control
Several GPS and fleet-management
services, such as SageQuest Mobile
Control, use cloud computing to power
their applications.
Building performance:
Optimum Energy
Optimum Energy LLC provides
commercial and institutional facilities
owners and managers with cloud-based
software and services that enable them
to optimize the energy efficiency of their
HVAC systems.
Boilers: The Smart Boiler
Control System by Ajax Boiler
The system uses the Ajax Management
System to provide real-time
charge a lower price. So as a small busi-ness owner, you can really get the befit of some of these very expensive en-terprise pieces of software that typically have been used only by large companies. From a technology perspective, a small business owner can really be on the same level as some of the largest Fortune 100 companies.”
Last but very important is the secu-rity aspect. According to Sloane, their survey also indicated that the majority of businesses they spoke with (78%) ad-mitted to having data or critical infor-mation, software or hardware in their offices such as such as a server, a tower, or a hard drive that may not be secure. And 71% also said that their data was not stored or backed up off-site, a figure he believes may be much higher because companies who said they did back-up files had very loose ways of conducting that backup.
“A complete backup solution should be one where the data transfers
automatically and is stored in a remote facility, in a different location — so you’re diversifying your natural disaster or weather-related risk — and is 100% secure,” Sloane describes.
The experts agree there are certainly risks to relinquishing your proprietary data for storage in remote locations. The reality though, Walz said, is that for cloud providers, data privacy and secu-rity is part of their business, so they are
likely to have in place vastly better meth-ods of protecting data than a business owner with a closet-side server.
The bottom line is that, for many business owners, the advantages far
out-weigh the risks.
A survey conducted of nearly 1,000 technology stakeholders and critics by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project and Elon University’s Imagining the Internet
Center, revealed that 71% expected that by 2020, most people would be working in Internet-based applications and accessing information through remote server networks from a variety of wireless devices. And although some respondents expressed concerns over security, control over data, and technology restrictions, most believed that cloud computing would continue to expand and come to dominate information transactions because it offers so many advantages.
It just may be that the sky is the limit. n
Heather Onorati is former editor of HVACR
Business and now works as a writer and
editor in business communications.
