Cloud or Managed Service : What is the difference?

February 15, 2013

Firstly, cloud computing is not managed hosting. They are two completely different service layers. One refers to a compute resource ie RAM, Chip set and a host, the other to a management resource

The term cloud computing refers to the actual computing layer at a resource level. Cloud computing is generically defined as an elastic and redundant computing resource usually in a multi-tenant environment. Cloud computing and Virtulisation are both very closely related

Managed hosting refers to the managed service layer that sits on top of the computing resource layer. This management layer is generally made up of two and sometimes 3 elements:

  1. Hardware & Network management
  2. OS management including basic service management i.e. Windows, Apache, IIS etc
  3. Application management i.e MS SQL, MS Exchange, MS Dynamics etc

Then there is an additional segment to the term ‘managed hosting’ being ‘complex managed hosting’ Complex managed hosting usually refers to more complex environments that may involve application management, v-lans, load balancing, complex SAN in our case 3PAR configurations and the configurations/management of these in addition to the regular inclusions of managed hosting. Complex managed hosting is typically referring to multiple server (per project) environments rather than single server environments

If you look at Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a good example of cloud computing, they do not provide any Layer 7 management services as standard inclusions. They provide simple compute instance and that’s pretty much it. You need to perform all your own systems administration including OS, services, applications etc.

C24 is a traditionally, managed service providers (MSP) that provides the management layer on top of dedicated servers and virtulisation layers. The recent explosion of ‘cloud computing’ or cloud instances has now seen these MSP’s offer a management layer on top of ‘cloud instances’.

While people require a compute resource they will also require a management resource. Some may perform the management in-house, while others may decide to outsource the management. Most MSP’s provide both the cloud compute layer and management as a combined service.

To put cloud computing into a really simple model, it essentially takes the focus off the physical hardware layer and places the focus on a computing as a resource. Virtulisation works pretty much the same except you still have a host node. The underlying technology that most cloud computing platforms reside on is no different to traditional virtulisation without the focus on the hardware resource. Many cloud compute platforms still use as an example Citrix Xen, VMWare or Parallels as the platform on which to provide their instances, yet the instances are spread over a number of clustered hardware nodes. Cloud computing and Virtulisation still deal with the deployment of instances or virtual machines as a compute resource with zero focus on the hardware.

Many people incorrectly define cloud computing and virtulisation. They are both very similar yet different enough to deserve different definitions. Additionally many refer to items such as SaaS as cloud computing. SaaS (Software As A Service) as an example may or not be delivered via a cloud computing model. A service provider may deliver SaaS via a dedicated hardware resource which would not qualify as a cloud computing service.

C24 is a complex managed service provider as we do the whole piece from design, implementation, network installation, full system monitoring that includes the hardware, software and comms stack and delivers applications at speed globally. We truly are a specialist provider.

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Posted by david ricketts

Why Predictive Analytics Will Transform B2B Sales & Marketing Execution

September 12, 2012

Consumer marketers have become adept at driving revenue based on predictive analytics. Potential customers are routinely scored on a wide variety of attributes from lifestyle to promotion receptiveness.  These scores allow consumers to be  segmented into groups based on shared interests, purchase likelihood, and total buying power. By starting with highly differentiated segments, marketers can design programs that are highly relevant and effective.

This is not the way that B2B sales and marketing works in most organizations today.

Yet, B2B is a ripe environment for predictive analytics: selling costs are high, sales probability is low, and resources are very expensive. While the language of B2B marketing and sales is full of references to probability — customer funnels, response rates, conversion rates, close rates, call-to-close ratios — it’s rare to see B2B organizations leverage prospect and customer data to score customer attributes, build discrete segments, and allocate resources to maximize the conversion and revenue.

But all of this is about to change. Over the next five years, common consumer marketing techniques will find a happy home in many B2B marketing and sales organizations.

Here are 6 reasons why:

  • Electronic sales processes are creating massive amounts of useful data: Today, B2B buyers spend more time interacting with companies online than they do with sales people in person or over the phone. For every successful sales call they attend, a typical prospect may spend hours interacting with content, reading forums and blogs, and testing sample products. In today’s world, every buyer action leaves a trail of digital clues that signal their context, needs, purpose, and intent.
  • Prospect attributes can be easily deduced from observable data:Most B2B organizations with CRM and content marketing capabilities have enough data to score prospects on purchase probability, likely problems or interests, and potential solution needs.
  • Relevancy matters: Even as the typical portfolio of products and solutions becomes more varied and complex, B2B sales and marketing messages tend to be narrow and simplistic. The patterns that work most consistently are destined to be forever repeated. For prospects, this means that they are often hit with messages and a pitch that ignore the nuance of their particular needs and segmentation. For many prospects, this is a turn-off that is difficult to reverse.
  • Sales & marketing funnels are based on probability: Typically, 2% of targets respond to a marketing campaign, 60% of leads are accepted by sales, 50% of accepted leads become opportunities, and 25% of opportunities close. When you look at the full marketing and sales funnel, a pathetic 1:667 targets becomes a closed deal. Using predictive analytics to improve any stage of the funnel has the potential to create incredible value.
  • Sales resources are expensive and easily tiered: It’s not uncommon to see a three-tier sales model with tele-prospecting/demand generation representatives, inside sales, and field sales. Typically, these teams are divided with the goal of aligning the highest cost resources to the highest value opportunities. Unfortunately, the allocation of accounts is typically very crude with simplistic measures like revenue or employee count determining which accounts go to a particular team. By using predictive analytics to allocate resources based on real-world potential, sales teams could increase revenues while reducing the cost of sales.
  • Marketing programs vary greatly in expense and effectiveness:If you have a stalled prospect that you want to move, a marketer has many choices. They could send an email, send a direct mail, invite them to an educational seminar, or bring them to a hospitality event. The continuum of marketing costs ranges from pennies to hundreds of dollars with corresponding variations in conversion rates. To maximize impact, marketers should save the big dollar investments for the highest probability and highest value segments. To do this, however, marketers need to use predictive analytics to score prospects based on their probability of purchase, their potential buying power, and the likely impact of a particular program or technique.

While smart organizations are beginning to put the foundation in place to better leverage data in the marketing and sales process, real obstacles still exist to efficient use of predictive science in most B2B organizations. First of all, one legacy of sales-sourced CRM data is a mess of information that is inconsistent and difficult to leverage. Second, the new art of data-driven marketing and sales requires a new set of skills that are hard to find in most B2B organizations.

But most critically, it’s hard to change both structure and behavior. The better use of data in the sales and marketing process requires changes to the way that people sell, the way that leads and accounts are allocated to sales people and territories, and the way that performance is measured. These type of changes can take a long time.

But with the current B2B shotgun marketing and sales techniques working just 1 out 667 times, the upside of change is immense.

Thanks to Paul J. D’Arcy is a CMO, entrepreneur, and writer based in Austin, Texas

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Posted by david ricketts

Understanding the Technology Hype Cycle

September 3, 2012

There are situations in your work life where you are in a meeting – your boss will always talk about cutting edge technologies and throw in few technology jargons like Cloud Computing , Social Media etc and will stress about how the company need to build competency in areas surrounding that.

But the question is how does your boss get to know abt these upcoming trends and start pushing the organisation in a direction so as to plan and leverage these technology in business ?

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Posted by david ricketts

C24 Sandbox Solutions : Worldwide Application Hosting Specialists

February 13, 2012

The team at C24 have been successfully delivering business applications and solutions from the cloud for many years.

Throughout this time, as with all forms of new technology, initially we were faced with resistance, questioning and caution around delivering applications in this way.

In order to address the concerns, C24 created areas for testing. These areas, commonly known as Sandboxes allowed clients to not only test the Cloud delivery model, but also to test the application before it is implemented. This service is now widely used on new deployments, and has many benefits for the end-user and also the software provider alike, which include:-

End User

• There are no large initial upfront costs, and ongoing costs are insignificant in comparison to purchasing equipment and spending time internally to configure it. This is particular important as and it is estimated that approximately 50% to 70% of the on site technology infrastructure earmarked for testing is underutilised.

• It provides the opportunity to either take the first steps into Cloud computing or to sample the suppliers service levels before a long-term commitment is made.

• The application can be available very quickly, thus allowing a longer period of time to sample the service and test and mould the application to make sure it provides the maximum benefits to a client’s organisation.

Software Provider

• A testing environment is provided quickly in a cost efficient way with minimum distribution in day to-day activities.

• The service is able to deployed quickly and changes can be made simply to meet on going and changing requirements.

• It act’s as an assistance to sales as Customer are able to sample the application quickly and the sales cycle isn’t extended while additional infrastructure is justified, procured and configured to allow a test to be carried out.

In addition to the above:-

• A Monthly payment model and contract period is available

• Standardised environments are used to deploy the systems

• Solutions run on the latest technology

C24 and clients alike have found this solution to be beneficial due to the factors listed above but also due to the fact that studies estimate that 30% of defects and poor deployments are attributed to inaccurate configuration of test environments, so highlighting the need for a simple and quickly available solution, which will then allow the focus to remain on the key testing areas.

C24 have extensive experience of operating such models and have taken countless SME’s from a cap-ex to an op-ex model allowing them to benefit from cost reductions and plugging them into a pool of resource that is usually not available to them from existing staff. We have also worked with numerous software developers that are testing their applications to see if they are cloud ready.

Finally C24 take the following areas very seriously:

Adherence to standards: We endeavour to work to the current best of breed standards including Prince 2

Security in the cloud: As a managed service provider that provides applications to some of the world’s largest IT companies we are totally aware of the security concerns around cloud based solutions. And we address them in a number of ways, which we discuss upon engagement.

SLA’s: We offer full SLA’s based around our sandbox solutions and takes into account numerous areas that are discussed at length during initial engagement.

Infrastructure: We operate out of a tier IV datacentre one of the best in the country and have invested significantly in the latest, physical, virtual, connectivity and storage.

Planning: We deliver a full plan that will enable you to fully understand what is involved in your environment and how this is affecting your solution.

Moving the testing to the cloud is viewed as a strategic initiative and the C24 sandbox solution gives you the confidence to create proof of concepts or to enable you as an organisation to understand fully the benefits of cloud solutions. This is delivered by an organisations that has decades of experience delivering such solutions.

C24 will establish the success criteria for pilots and testing with specific objectives in mind we work around you to give you total confidence of our solutions.

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Posted by david ricketts

C24 sets up private cloud for major UK client

May 6, 2011

C24 the application hosting and delivery specialists are pleased to announce that they have completed the build of a ‘private cloud ‘for a major UK wide client. The company which has a deep understanding of server, application delivery, virtualisation, storage, connectivity and security is very pleased with the overall solution.

Paul Hemming Managing Director C24 explains: “There is an amazing amount of noise about cloud technology, however we have created a private cloud where users are segregated securely, one that they can reach through a variety of means, one that can be audited and for which the data centre locations are known, ensuring compliance. It’s a cloud where we offer professional service level agreements and contracts are in place. The client can also decide whether they require virtual or physical hardware. We believe a totally better solution”

If anybody is interested in how C24 can help in the creation of a company wide private cloud please just drop us a line.

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Managed Hosted Solutions for Professional Service Companies.

March 15, 2011

C24 are now working with a number of professional service companies and so we thought it was about time to highlight the type of solutions that we offer. Below is an outline of Professional Service Hosting from C24.

Managed hosting is ideal for professional service organisations as the solutions that are now available fit well with the way you work. The choice of partner however is slightly more difficult as there are large and small organisations who can deliver services to SLA’s. Choosing the right business partner is difficult, and we at C24 understand the difficulty in making the right choice.

We are a hosting and application delivery specialists with deep professional services domain knowledge especially within the legal and accountancy sectors. We have invested heavily in our hosting infrastructure, IT management systems and people for the benefit of our existing and future client base to enable us to deliver on ‘our promise’ to be the very best solutions provider in our sector.

Business benefits for professional service companies when hosting with C24:

  • Remove certain business costs, overheads and waste
  • Benefit from flexible software licensing
  • Consultative approach to information life-cycle management
  • Operational expenditure to drive your IT development
  • Fixed cost monthly charges
  • Greater business flexibility
  • Adopt the latest green technology and cut your carbon footprint
  • IT strategy built around data security, application delivery and data management

When engaging with potential clients there are a number of business operational areas that we evaluate the following:

  • Deliver of business applications at speed to potentially multiple locations
  • Security of business data, machines and mobile users, taking into account ISO, PCI-DSS and potentially the Data Protection Act.
  • Data life-cycle management
  • Currently used suite of applications
  • Managed print solutions
  • C24 and client in-house expertise

The evaluation undertaken gives C24 a full understanding of the current situation and if required we could also run our information life-cycle management tools that would enable us to have a snap shot of your current data, when it was last opened, used, number of duplication, location on the network and if sensitive information is accessible by whom. This activity is a real eye opener for the professional services management teams as it clearly shows the current data situation.

Delivery of business applications at speed.

C24 prides itself on our ability to delivery your application at speed to multiple locations using various best of breed technologies. We deliver at present application to over 107 countries around the world for some of the world’s largest businesses, highlighting C24’s hosting and application delivery specialities. One of the biggest issues clients face with application delivery is latency, this we try to minimise by again using the correct technology and suppliers to try to remove this obstacle.

Full audits are done prior to any client being hosted in order for us to get a full understanding of the current infrastructure, communication suppliers and technologies being delivered.

Security of business data.

Security is paramount, from the fact that your solution would be hosted out of a Tier IV datacentre; the highest classification available, to network security and intrusion detection systems, intrusion prevention systems to finally having total data centre physical security, we have your data and systems secured.

Data life-cycle management

Data growth rate for businesses is around 32% year on year and data storage issues are becoming a major issue. Most organisations do not manage their data correctly and will have years of data stored on primary storage and backed-up continuously month after month. This is where C24’s data life-cycle management solution (DLM) enables professional service companies to manage their data properly.

Current applications

C24 understand most of the applications that Professional Services companies use and have delivered them over wide area networks for many clients. It is always important however to recognise how these applications work within a hosted environment with new server software technology etc. This is done as a matter of course by C24. C24 engineers are fully trained in most professional services applications and we carry accreditation from Citrix, VMWare, ProCurve, HP and Microsoft.

Managed Print Solutions

We have found from experience that when you deliver applications remotely that one of the major issues is the ability for clients to print when they need to. This may sound relatively simple but we know that this area is problematic. We bring the ability to overcome this issue when we engage with a client.

In-house experience

C24 is seen as an extension to our clients businesses, as we enable them to do what they do best. Solutions that are purchased from us apart from hosting are, 24/7 helpdesk, internal system monitoring, systems integration and information life-cycle management. These solutions enable C24 to offer complete piece of mind to potential clients.

  • Enjoy industry-class, 24/7 support of their applications with an expert team of product specialists on tap. Bring on stream new software and new functionality very quickly.
  • Focus exclusively on running their own business without the concerns of IT or IT people management.
  • Easily evaluate external performance through KPIs and SLAs.
  • Take advantage of trusted IT strategists to help drive IT and business planning.
  • Benefit from business continuity and disaster recovery.
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Expanding our footprint in the tier 4 datacentre

November 5, 2010

The application hosting business at C24 is gaining incredible momentum to such a level that we have had to increase our footprint within one of our datacentres. The business has decided to put further investment into a full POD at the site. This development is fantastic for C24 as we are seeing not only the hosting business but the systems integration side go from strength to strength. The increase in business has also seen us add three new heads within the business two on the helpdesk and one in the back office.

Unfortunately we are unable to show to many images due to the high level of security however i will attempt to get permission to show a few more of the C24 area from the owners of the centre.

 
 C24′s new POD is now ready.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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