Tag Archives: OPEX

Why BTL’s Cloud Backup Outperforms the Competition?

September 28, 2016 Callum Huddlestone

People in search of great cloud services are always asking the same questions and expecting to find new answers! There are no new questions. There are only new answers. Let us look at some of the common questions that are asked:

How does this new technology advantage me?
How is it different from the current technology I use?
Where will my data reside?
Will my data be secure?
How will I have control over my data?
What kind of tools will I have for managing my data?

Backup Technology Limited (BTL) has not been asked anything significantly different or new. But, it has a lot of new answers to tough questions that are frequently asked. BTL has created a cloud platform that addresses the most recalcitrant problems of customers and resolves them to their satisfaction! This speaks volumes on how BTL has been taking its mission seriously!

The cloud computing infrastructure proposed by BTL Cloud Backup is exciting. BTL is committed to the task it has undertaken. It has partnered with leading technology vendors to provide customer friendly solutions. The integration and interoperability of the product further delivers a combined solution to frequently encountered customer problems and provides a high level of data protection solutions. The methods of deployment, the virtualisation options, simplification of provisioning, application services, increased availability, reduced environmental impact, and business continuity are some, not all, of the compelling reasons for adopting this great technology from BTL.

BTL’s Cloud Backup is an affordable option. It delivers a number of financial advantages to its users. It brings, in its wake, cost advantages and flexibilities that are rarely enjoyed with other IT innovations. Customers signing up for the platform can replace CAPEX with OPEX as the infrastructure is rented not owned. This results in reduced hardware investment and maintenance costs, reduced capacity needs, reduced technology risks, increased productivity, and improved user experience. Furthermore, BTL’s innovative approach to IT supports green computing and accommodates the globalisation aspirations of enterprises.

BTL’s Cloud Backup is easy to deploy. The software almost configures itself and wizard screens guide the user over the humps and bumps of installing and commissioning the software and initiating the backup. Administrators can create, edit, run backup sets, restore and delete files or view user-activity logs from a central management console anywhere, anytime, using a web-browser-based interface that merely requires input parameters for authentication and authorisation. The easy to use dashboard comes with robust features and functionalities, smart defaults for effective and efficient management of your data. The data itself resides in an encrypted format on secure physical or virtual servers that are systematically and dynamically replicated/mirrored for high availability and disaster recovery.

BTL offers multi-level support to users of their cloud platform. Customer satisfaction is very important for BTL and it has shown its eagerness to help its customers by deploying dedicated service personnel.

Customers, who want to know more about how the service works or how they can optimise on the cloud storage platform, can take advantage of the elaborate knowledge base BTL has developed. Trial versions of the software can be downloaded and tested free of charge for a period of 30 days before any buying decisions need to be made!

BTL utilises 256-bit AES security and multiple data centres located on two continents to ensure data protection and availability. BTL offers IT service providers a secure data solution combined with a robust partner program, the efficiencies of full web-based account management, and an industry leading technical support team. Visit www.backup-technology.com

Factors Affecting Data Centre Transformation

December 2, 2015 Callum Huddlestone

Although the operational essentials in companies focus management attention on investment in CAPEX or OPEX, the service levels that are expected to be achieved usually take resultant assessment of transformation of data centre and storage. The data centre in this contest is simply a facility used to enclose computer systems and other associated components like storage systems, telecommunications and others. But, the exact driving force for the actual process in transformation is simply economics. Latest technologies — improved performance, accessibility or scalability, with enhanced use of the resources at cheaper costs prove to be very attractive.

It has been estimated that data centre requirements for growing business will double yearly. The budgets of the growth phase must be directed in the direction of growing outlays directly to information technology expenditure yearly. Conversely, there can be hurdles associated with investment in storage efficiency and optimization technologies in order to manage their increasing innovations, as well as requirements for data storage and also escalating the prevailing data centre resources use.

How do organisations achieve needed efficiency? This can only start with knowledge of the fact that there is increasing requirement for automation, but the prevailing tools for management are incompetent and inefficient operationally. More so, organisations will find out that the ongoing physical server investments as well as their maintenance will serve one purpose which is to increase the entire expenses for operation and investment in server visualization. This will restrain substantial server costs and promotes material gains by decreasing overall cost of operation. Integrated virtual servers will help contribute a lot in achieving a self-motivated, collective resource environment that makes well-organised Information Technology (IT) service management and transformation of data centre.

The benefits associated with right sizing are not to be rejected. Organisations will estimate the most advantageous service levels needed from applications for their business components. The service level objectives identified will be the determinant factors for data centre transformation. There will also be the need for integration of different kinds of tools with fundamental storage infrastructure and those tools will be performance, availability, and recovery of applications. In order to make sure there is a high level of coordination in the framework and in due course allow automation of the IT service for the organisation, management consoles or virtual machine specific storage tasks will need to be built-in. Consequently, this is going to form architecture for either private or public cloud that scale out data centre transformation and provides end-to-end workload provisioning, as well as storage against the service level delivery objectives.

As discussed above, data centre transformation is not going to be revolutionary; rather, it will be a slow and evolutionary process. There are lots of things that can result from data centre transformation, and some of them include: Management reorganization, considerations of cost model, highly developed scaling for both servers and storage and convergence and / or amalgamation of diverse technology area to benefit the organisation. The more there is advances in new technologies, the more emergence of other factors that can possibly influence data centre transformation.

Why Do Businesses Move to the Cloud? – Part I

April 17, 2015 Stewart Parkin

Small and medium businesses are transitioning to the Cloud in ever increasing numbers. In fact, according to Gartner Research, there has been an annual increase of over 18% in the number of subscribers to the Cloud. A variety of factors have led to this increase.

First of all, it appears that it is the soft savings that small and medium businesses receive that is the primary reason for this increase. When using the Cloud, companies do not have to invest in expensive infrastructure or software and this saves them money initially. They can access existing resources that are delivered ready-to-use by Cloud service providers.

For example, ease of use and functionality have a large role to play in the decision making process. All the pains of developing and maintaining the application is left to third parties while customers can enjoy the outcome of the efforts. The Cloud also brings other benefits, such as agility, high availability, efficiency, and mobility all of which you can not put a monetary value to. While you might incur additional expenses at the initial stages, CIOs are beginning to see that there is more to the Cloud than the eye can see in terms of infrastructure savings.

Thus far, many companies have decided to switch to the Cloud because of the savings in cost to them. It should be noted that Cloud related expensive could be claimed as operational costs, rather than capital expenses. Shifting from CAPEX to OPEX not only brings additional benefits to the balance sheet of the organisation, but also removes all of the complex accounting calculations, and gets you the approval of your CFO for making their job much easier.

If your sole reason to switch is to save money, then a thorough financial analysis should be performed. The analysis should clearly show the current and projected costs and savings. Estimating future expenses and savings might be difficult, but if it is done properly, it could get closer to actual figures. It is suggested that companies forecast for only a period of three years as technologies evolve much faster in the IT industry.

Backup Technology recommends that you test the waters by taking our trial before making a decision for yourself. Keep in mind that there is more to the Cloud than dollar savings alone. Count the intangibles and set a value to them, before you decide for or against the Cloud.

In Part II, we will further discuss the additional reasons why businesses move to the Cloud.

Functionality, Quality, Price—The Evaluation Parameters for the Cloud

April 10, 2015 Damien Garvey

IT budgets do not scale in proportion to IT needs. Data growth outstrips infrastructure and headcount growth. The CIO is forced to compromise.

What if the enterprise could become instantly IT enabled with very little investment in infrastructure, software or HR?

Utility computing in the cloud serves the enterprise with what they need, when they need it, through any channel and any kind of device. The technology integrates and automates the value chain, adapts easily and innovates constantly. Risk and environmental responsibilities are well orchestrated and everything is streamlined to deliver ‘best fit’ services. Functionality, quality and price are definitely attractive.

Cloud computing enhances the efficiency and functionality of the enterprise. Cloud storage systems are developed to support “on demand” utility computing models — SaaS, PaaS and IaaS — with intent to deliver IT as a service over the Internet. Users can scale up or scale down on infrastructure or space instantly and pay only for what they use. Mobile and remote computing technologies are made available for disparate parts of the business and mobile workers can synchronise their activities with that of the parent business from wherever they are. Employees can collaborate with each other or access business applications from the central server. User and usage management policies can be implemented by exploiting the functionality inbuilt into the cloud application.

Quality of service delivery is the unique selling point (USP) of cloud vendors. QOA distinguishes them from the competition and builds trust in business relationships with their customers. Cloud vendors are conscious that their services are evaluated on the basis qualitative factors, such as design and delivery of security systems, compression and de-duplication of data or speed of backup and recovery. The way the services are packaged together also makes a difference.

Economies of scale, deriving from multi-tenancy computing models, make the cloud attractive to cash strapped enterprises. The pay per use model, typical to the utility services sector enables small and medium enterprises with small budgets garner and use resources that were earlier only available to their larger brethren. Additionally, CAPEX vanishes and is replaced by OPEX. This makes it wholly attractive to managements who do not want to invest scarce resources in IT infrastructure to the detriment of other business activities.

Support services provided by the cloud shrinks IT expertise requirements within the enterprise. Hardware and software maintenance in the cloud is the responsibility of the cloud vendor. The vendor is also committed to ensuring high availability of customer information and 99.9% uptime. Responsibility for mirroring, replication, de-duplication, compression and secure storage of information is transferred to the cloud vendor. A single IT Administrator can manage the database and maintain offsite copies of the data for additional data availability.

We at Backup Technology, offer the best of the breed public, private and hybrid cloud services to our customers unfailingly. We anticipate customers’ every need and work towards providing them with the functionalities they require without compromising on quality. Our pay per use pricing model is economical and wholly affordable. For more information, please do visit our website: www.Backup-Technology.com.

Keeping Costs Under Control

April 8, 2015 Rob Mackle

The traditional ontology of costing and micro theories of costing may need to be redefined in the virtual world where value adding activities may be less visible except in areas of strategic alliance, information sharing or online payment mores. The theories may have to be generically deployed to achieve cost management irrespective of whether the enterprise belongs to the manufacturing or service sector. The criteria for evaluation may include generality, efficiency, perspicuity, transformability, extensibility, granularity, scalability and competence.

So, how does one keep costs under control? The process must logically begin, by recognising the characteristics of the cloud and identifying the appropriate / suitable costing methods for delivery and use of services.

• The cloud consolidates the distributed enterprise and shifts all activity–online–to the remote data centre in the cloud. This largely precludes the possibility of pinpointing
specific activities to specific cost centres.
• CAPEX vanishes with the cloud and is replaced by OPEX. Direct expenses suddenly assume the aspect of indirect expenses.
• Logistics costs and information management costs form a large chunk of the costs for the virtual enterprise.

Consequently, cloud vendors adopt use-based, granular costing methods for estimating the costs of maintaining a cloud and servicing the customer. There is a defined base cost and a top up cost for the service. While base costs are fixed, the top up costs vary in accordance with the level of usage of the services. The secret of cost control, in context, is simply to monitor the amount of base plus top up costs or to evaluate storage space or application use of the different participating departments and define limits of usage for budgeting purposes.

However, the process is not as simple as it seems. The implication is that enterprises will have to get more sophisticated about shaping the use of resources within the enterprise. They will have to recognise utilisation risks and the management will have to play a significant role in ensuring sufficiency of usage and financial viability of the use. Cost saving opportunities will involve using cloud based applications only where the use makes business sense and scaling up operations in the cloud only when there is a peak transaction load. Since pricing in the cloud is directly proportional to utilisation, IT financial talents must be made conscious that IT operations must become more business like in their dealings if costs are to be kept under control in the cloud. IT Administrators must lock step with business growth and success and optimise on use of cloud based IT resources to advantage the business.

We, at Backup Technology, are always ready to work with our customers in evaluating the economics of using the cloud. Our cloud services are designed to optimise resource use for our customers. Our customers remain informed on usage data and have the option to scale up or scale down usage on-demand. Alerts are generated when usage boundaries are reached. Compression, de-duplication and archiving technologies are used to help our customers achieve cost savings in the cloud.