What’s the weather forecast for the rest of 2011 and beyond? According to Microsoft it’s “cloudy”!

The 2011 Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) was earlier this month in Los Angeles. As you may know, WPC is the yearly event at which Microsoft lays out its new products and initiatives to its partners, who according to Microsoft, are responsible for 95% of their business. This is the seventh straight year that we have attended this important event.

As has been the theme for the last few years, only with increased importance to their business, market ready products and broader levels of commitment on the part of the partner community, “the cloud” is the centerpiece of both Microsoft’s current and long term plans.

Key products such as Office 365 and Azure will play a significant role in partner’s offerings related to network and development services. We continue to focus on Microsoft’s plans and products and use that knowledge to help our clients figure out if, when, how, and how much to leverage the cloud.

The term cloud computing is appearing more and more frequently in the press and advertising.  The idea of the cloud has floated beyond trade media and appears frequently in mainstream publications.  The inferred definition of the cloud, pieced together by the context of these appearances, isn’t very clear.  One might say that the exact definition of cloud computing is nebulous, or even, ahem, cloudy.

The most basic definition, that would apply to more detailed definitions, says that cloud computing is the provision of computing resources at a remote site, accessible from the internet.  This soft definition understandably creates strong positive responses in both IT marketers and IT consumers, since the basic ideas of cloud computing is very appealing.  Anyone who has had to worry about servers, and all of the baggage that comes along with them in our increasingly connected world, would find instant appeal in the basic idea of cloud computing.  It is appealing to be removed from some, or all of the technical minutiae that come with high demand servers and resources, like components, space, power, connectivity, backups, and redundancy.  But, what are you really removed from when trusting computing resources in the cloud?

Perhaps GigabyteTransferHours would replace KilowattHours in the utility computing paradigm.

The most progressive and technically impressive form of cloud computing is best described as utility computing. In this model, computing resources are billed as a metered service, similar to how public water and electric utilities are billed.  Utility computing vendors may offer many kinds of low-level computing resources that are each billed separately.  For example, Amazon’s AWS platform offers processing, storage, bandwidth, relational database, email, and load balancing as separately billed services. These resources may be enabled, disabled, or mixed depending on the needs of a particular project.  All of these resources are accessible to developers as an application programming interface.  So, specific development skills are required to develop and maintain programs within the cloud.   Applications must be coded to use this specialized platform, or existing applications must be retrofitted and then then migrated to the platform.  Some existing, proprietary applications may not run at all in this environment. Utility computing introduces new development and maintenance challenges for organizations, while offloading the older challenges of hardware and connectivity maintenance.

On the other end of the cloud computing spectrum is an offering called a Virtual Private Server or VPS.  A VPS is a hosted virtual server with dynamically allocatable resources.  This kind of solution shares more similarities with traditional computing than utility computing.  A familiar Windows Remote Desktop or Linux shell login may be provided.  Hosting fees may be billed monthly based on the amount of dedicated resources.  Processor, memory, disk space, and bandwidth are billed based on allocated space, rather than usage.  These resources, however, are dynamically allocatable on-the-fly.  Traditional applications may run on a VPS the same as they would on a traditional server.  No special retro-fitting is necessary for existing applications, making migrations simple.  Again, some older maintenance and hardware administration roles are offloaded to the service provider.

How portable are applications and data, in the cloud?

Cloud computing is not a magic bullet; not all responsibilities are outsourced to the vendor.  It is important that organizations moving to cloud computing solutions understand their own requirements, and who is responsible for these requirements.  High profile outages have occurred recently, including an Amazon AWS outage resulting in downtime for high traffic websites, and in some cases, permanent loss of data.  Amazon’s service agreement fine print may give little recourse to affected customers.  Microsoft’s cloud computing platform, Azure, had a similar issue during their Community Technology Preview in 2009.  Even the largest computing vendors are not immune to events causing significant downtime.

It is clear that, when moving to a cloud computing solution, many of the old administration and maintenance considerations still hold true in one way or another.  The organization must understand what services are provided by the hosting vendor, and what responsibilities remain.  Many familiar questions arise:

• Service Level Agreement – What service level is being promised by the cloud computing vendor?  How does this match up to the performance requirements of your organization?
• Backup and Retention – Are backups maintained by the vendor, and if so, how long are these backups retained?  What is the turnaround time for data restore requests?  Is this suitable for your organization?
• Security – What security mechanisms are in place, and how are they managed?  Who is responsible for patching, anti-virus, and other common computer sanitation problems?
• Disaster Recovery – What plans exist to restore availability in the event of a disaster?  Can resources be replicated to a geographically disparate data center?
• Portability – Can the hosted application and data be easily migrated to another provider, or in-house, if necessary?  Is the computing platform a widely-used format (for example, common virtual server disk images), or something more proprietary?

To be sure, the spectrum of cloud computing options is liberating.  The old, tedious responsibilities of hardware and (to some extent) software selection, administration, and maintenance is outsourced to a vendor.  Organizations may focus resources on their users, their applications, and their data.  But, cloud computing vendors are not infallible, and high profile cloud outages have occurred during their short tenures.  It is important that organizations choose the right computing platform for their needs, and always ask the old questions that still apply when a worst-case scenario plays out.

What’s the key to a successful association web site? It’s taking time to understand what the community wants from the web site, social media, and mobile access. Don’t do it because it’s cool; do it because you know members want it and will use it. Here at ATS, we specialize in user-centered web design, which produces sites geared to the needs of their audiences. Association web sites should reflect how members and other audiences think, not how the association staff thinks. Our design process begins with an in-depth discovery phase that results in a clear understanding of site users and the client’s strategic goals.

We use this phase to determine how the site will become an indispensible resource to the association and those it serves. A successful site redesign marries form and function, including features of the association management system (AMS). It’s more than just having a site that looks good. For those who only attend a couple of events a year, the web site may be the most important face of the organization. It needs to communicate, inform, and be a hub of interaction.

As many Gen Xers, I am intrigued by the latest technological gadgets and apps, but not always the first to adopt.  I like things that are informational, useful, and simple.  I enjoy the idea of having certain technology, but in the end I choose what works best for me – plus I’m a creature of habit. 

For example, I really wanted an Android.  I waited for the latest version to come out before I upgraded my mobile device.  In the end after playing with them and figuring out which apps I wanted first, I upgraded to a newer Blackberry.  Like I said, I am a creature of habit and like my red blinking light.

My newest gadget is the Kindle.  I really do love it, even though I was skeptical when they first came out.  However, there is something I miss about seeing and feeling how much paper I’ve gotten through.  Plus, I’m waiting for Amazon to tell me how I can look at the graph on page 64 when there aren’t page numbers.

The latest app I’m excited about is Google Goggles.  This app uses image recognition to give you information about landmarks and products by simply taking a picture of the landmark or product barcode with your Android or iPhone (handheld devices for the time being). Of course, since I stuck with my Blackberry I’ll have to wait for now.  Maybe by the time the app works on my Blackberry Google Goggles will be in full force and able to identify the bush I like in the local nature preserve.  I really want to plant one in my yard.

This is an older article about Content Migration, but still has some good information.  The article is especially relevant for organizations implementing a Content Management System for the first time.

One question that we (almost) always ask organizations that are considering our services is: Has money been budgeted for this project?  If so, how much has been budgeted?  As you can imagine, there are a number of different responses to the question; however, essentially there are two responses.  The more popular response goes something like this, “Well, um, yes, we have money in the budget for project XYZ.  No, I can’t reveal that amount to you.”  The less popular response sounds like this, “Yes, we have set aside money for the project in the budget.  While I can’t tell you how much has been set aside, our expectation is for proposals between $X and $Y.”

Why don’t organizations reveal how much they’ve budgeted for their project, or, at a minimum, what their expectation of how much the project will cost?  I can think of a couple of reasons.  They include:

• If we reveal our budget — let’s call it $X — to vendors, every last one of them will bid $X or $X – 1.
• It’s none of your business.
• We really don’t know what the project will cost and we’re using this RFP process to help us figure out how much to budget.

Let me address each of these reasons.

If we reveal our budget, every vendor will bid that amount (or close to it)

OK, I understand why someone would think this way; however, in today’s IT consulting marketplace, there is enough competition between far too many vendors chasing a limited number of clients and projects that I just don’t think it happens that often.  In an ideal world, we, as a IT consulting firm, would be able to convince you, the possible client, of the value of our services and justify the cost of our bid as a sound business decision.  The reality is that price does matter.  Organizations, especially those in our target markets — associations, non-profits, professional service firms, financial institutions — have a limited amount of money to deal with growing IT issues.

It’s none of your business

While I’ve never heard a possible client use these exact words, I’m sure there were more than a handful that were thinking it after hearing our request   Yes, you do have a right to reveal or not reveal information about your organization, your staff and your requirements.  However, the more transparent and open the process is, the more likely that (a) you are going to find a vendor that fits and (b) the project will be successful.  Yes, we are in the business of making money; however, the best way for us to make money and to succeed as a service organization is to develop solid, long-term relationships with our clients and work hard to deliver quality service at a fair price.

We don’t know how much the project should (or will cost)

As a vendor, I think this reason is the most frustrating one to deal with.  If you’re not willing to invest the time and energy to figure out how much you think the project will cost, why should I, as a vendor, spend time and resources to develop a good response to your RFP?  Instead of issuing an RFP, perhaps the better approach would be to issue a Request for Information (RFI) instead.

I’m sure there are many other reasons.  Send me your feedback via the comment feature and I’ll post them.

Please see Five Things Every RFP Should Contain for other comments, as well as my disclaimer.

As an IT consulting firm providing network integration, web design and software development services to small to medium sized clients in the D.C. area, we receive lots of RFPs (both solicited and unsolicited).  Please note that most of the RFPs I deal with are in the area of web design and development, so some of my comments may not apply to RFPs for different services or products; however, in general, I think my comments apply across many kinds of RFPs and other formal (or informal) solicitations for products and/or services.

The RFPs I review vary greatly in terms of quality and quantity.  I’ve seen good proposals that are no more than a couple of pages.  I’ve seen not-so-good proposals that go on for 20 to 30 pages.  Quantity (or the thud factor) does not necessarily correspond to quality.  Since most of the proposals I read are related to web development, the discussion points and examples below will be geared towards that particular kind of RFP.  Here’s what I think all good proposals should include:

• What are the critical success factors and key requirements for the project?
• Who’s involved in the decision-making process?
• What criteria is being used to select a vendor?
• What internal (or external) constraints affect the project?
• How much has been budgeted for the project?

As a general rule, the more time and energy that the proposer invests in the RFP, the more likely we can either (a) propose a solution that we believe meets their requirements or (b) help them find a vendor that is better suited for their project or (c) decline to bid, which saves everyone time.

Recently, a client asked us to review a report entitled “Web Site Optimization”.  The report was written by an SEO consultant and it reviewed a web site that we had recently redesigned for this client and provided a set of recommendations.  After I read the report and had a chance to reflect on its contents, it occurred to me that much of the search engine optimization landscape has changed in the past few years.  Recommendations that were appropriate a few years ago may not be useful anymore.

First and foremost, content is king.  Search engine and their spiders, crawlers, indexers, etc. are much more intelligent now that they were even a year or two ago.  Techniques such as keyword stuffing, cloaking and landing (or doorway) pages aren’t as effective and may actually penalize web sites.  Write quality content that your users will find beneficial.

Second, links to other high-quality web sites are good.  It’s the same advice that your parents gave you when you were younger.  If you hang out with good kids, chances are good that you’ll be pulled along with them.  If you decide to be friends with the “bad” kids, you’re also going to be dragged down with them.  Well, the same basic concept is true with SEO.  First, let me provide an brief explanation about Google’s PageRank and why high quality backlinks matter.  The concept of PageRank is a fundamental part of Google and its powerful search engine.  Basically, PageRank is a methodology which uses the basic concept of the internet, hyperlinks between documents, at the core of deciding what web sites and pages are most relevant when processing a search request.

Third, use tools (and techniques) provided by major search engines offer to allow your web site to be more easily indexed.  Since Google is the 800-pound search engine gorilla, I’ll focus on their Google Sitemaps tool for a moment.  A Google Sitemap file is an XML file that describes the structure of your web site.  There are other attributes that you can use to describe how content on your web site is structured, how frequently it updates, and what sections are more important than others.

Fourth, follow certain basic techniques or rules of thumb to insure that search engines can easily find, index and categorize your site.  All of you probably are familiar with these rules.  Don’t use frames.  Use META tags.  Make sure that all of your images have ALT tags.  Use a robots.txt file to indicate what should (and more importantly, what shouldn’t) be indexed by well-behaved spiders.

A discussion of SEO techniques would not be complete without a list of references for further reading.  Hyperlinking is the fundamental building block of the world wide web, right?  I find the following authors, web sites and pages helpful:

• Matt Cutts
• Google Webmaster Blog
• Pronet Advertising