Please contact us for more details on how we can save your business money.

Martin Robson
Robson Communications Inc.
604-576-8150 ext 2001
1-877-472-3425

—

Smart Outsourcing: More than just lower costs.

Dan Berg

Cost reduction is only one variable in the outsourcing equation. Customers also need to focus on process, flexibility, collaboration, and decision-making control to realize the potential of IT as a service. Sun Services CTO Dan Berg, vice president and CTO of Sun Services, explains.

Inner Circle (IC): Naturally, there is a lot of talk about outsourcing these days. As CTO of Sun Services, can you describe Sun’s take on outsourcing?

Dan Berg: Many companies are outsourcing simply to get a cost benefit by using lower cost personnel to perform functions that had previously been done within the organization. As far as how effective they’ve been, some companies are saying that outsourcing has been quite successful, while others say that it didn’t work like they wanted it to. In order to be successful, enterprises need to focus on the process that they’re trying to outsource. They cannot simply take a section of work and give it to another company. That doesn’t work out very well.

The way to do it is looking at the existing process and its related outcomes — and then asking the outsourcing partner how they would achieve the same or better outcome by leveraging their own established processes and best practices. The combination of process definition and process execution is crucial.

IC: How does Sun use outsourcing?

Berg: We seek to outsource processes that are not part of our core business. There are a couple of different outsourcing projects going on at Sun. For example, we’ve engaged companies to handle some of our HR functions, as well as IT development and maintenance.

IC: How does Sun work with its customers when it comes to outsourcing?

Berg: From a services perspective, what Sun is really focused on is delivering customer satisfaction by designing, deploying, and managing IT infrastructure — and, of course, doing all of that in a way where customers realize cost advantages. In fact, the benefit of working with Sun versus some of our competitors is that we bring flexibility to outsourcing.

At Sun Services, we don’t just take a data center — or whatever a customer is looking to outsource — and ship it off-site. Sun can actually help customers segment infrastructure and allow them to pick and choose the parts that make sense to outsource. Plus, Sun works with a number of partners to help facilitate that approach, from hosting to managed services. For example, we can look at a service or application and determine where our best practices and processes should be applied. At the same time, we allow the customer to retain control of the decision-making and other core functions.

IC: Can you give an example of how that might work?

Berg: A customer may choose to have its mail and messaging services managed by Sun. We have the expertise, 24/7 monitoring and management capability, and the best practices to deliver a cost-effective solution. But the company still wants to make the decisions about how it wants mail and messaging managed, as well as what sort of policies govern it. The Sun model grants that flexibility and allows customers to make those decisions.

IC: So, Sun encourages flexibility while allowing customers to retain decision-making authority?

Berg: Absolutely. What we’ve seen is that when outsourcing involves a “pack up the truck and move it off to another organization” approach, customers lose the connection to what they are outsourcing. They lose the advantage of looking for efficiencies and cost benefits, which is why they got into outsourcing in the first place. Keeping the customer engaged and letting them determine the right degree of granularity — whether that is at the service, application, or data center level — is very important.

IC: Do you have any general advice for IT managers or directors that are looking at outsourcing part of their environment?

Berg: Be wary of anyone who comes in and says: “Don’t worry about a thing — we’ll take care of it.” We’ve found success for both customers and for Sun comes when we sit down and figure out the details together. What makes sense to move and when? How is it going to be managed and monitored? Where are the efficiencies that are going to be extracted? Where does automation make sense? We fundamentally believe in delivering IT as a service. If you think about the mail and messaging example as a service provided to employees, then the goal is to get to a level where it doesn’t matter where that service is run or how it’s run. All that matters is that a quality service is being provided and the value is being realized. That is what delivering IT as a service is all about.

IC: When does offshoring make sense as part of an outsourcing project?

Berg: When people say offshoring, I always ask: “If you want to go offshore, what do you consider onshore?” Everything is distributed and accessible on a network. So, what do people mean when they say “offshore?” When you begin to examine that question, most people mean labor arbitrage — lower labor rates. But the biggest advantage of driving things via the network — which is also Sun’s significant value-add — is that the services and applications can be provisioned, managed, and operated from anywhere.

With Sun, the perceived labor arbitrage becomes less of a “let’s move this to a particular location” decision and more of a discussion about the processes and policies that can be managed by someone else. When our customers leverage the network and our best practices they get all the benefit of labor arbitrage without having to constantly move people around.

IC: What are Sun’s advantages vis-à-vis the network? What kind of technologies is Sun working with?

Berg: Sun is working with technologies that drive automation and process efficiency within an IT operations environment. Sun looks at the routines and processes that our customers are using within their data centers, as well as what we use in our data centers, to establish best practices. Then we try to inject technology everywhere we possibly can. We don’t do that because we think it’s cool. Rather, we believe that when it comes down to people versus technology, in the end, technology wins — both from an efficiency standpoint and cost perspective. Therefore, if we can find ways to automate processes, the customer wins. We’re not looking to remove all human interaction, of course, but rather to bring more consistency to processes that exist and where possible leverage the network to extract efficiencies.

IC: And what types of technologies are involved in automation?

Berg: We are leveraging traditional networking technology in some unique ways. Primarily, we are focused on the capability to monitor, manage, operate, touch, and understand existing states and conditions within a hardware and software environments — and, of course, that includes heterogeneous environments. So the technologies we use can be leveraged across almost anything that runs on an IP-based infrastructure. We have the capability to reach out into heterogeneous environments, and we’re doing so today via our managed services, offerings.

IC: How does this address customer needs?

Berg: This does two things for our customers. One, it significantly lowers costs because we can leverage the network to do remote monitoring and management. Second, when we use engineering practices to look at environments and treat things in a similar way, we can drive greater consistency. And consistency drives efficiency. So if we discover deficiencies within a given infrastructure, we can rapidly fix them by leveraging the network. In many cases, the fix can happen before a problem is even discovered by the customer.

IC: What has the acquisition of SevenSpace brought to Sun’s remote management and monitoring capabilities?

Berg: Sun has been doing remote monitoring, managed operations, and managed services at the enterprise level for some time. With the acquisition of SevenSpace we’ve added the capability to do this much more effectively for our small- to mid-sized customers as well as our enterprise customers. Plus, the acquisition of SevenSpace significantly enhances our capability to work within heterogeneous environments.

Several years ago, Sun changed its managed services strategy so that we now have capabilities to manage heterogeneous environments and remain agnostic as far as the specific technology that a customer may use. As long as the technology is network-based — and what isn’t these days? — we have the capabilities to provide services to those customers. Since few data center or IT environments are entirely Sun product-based, we have the capability to delivery services and the related value to any customer regardless of the products used and across their entire enterprise.

IC: Can you give an example of when Sun Services has been able to help a customer manage a heterogeneous environment?

Berg: In one case, we were monitoring and managing a Microsoft Exchange mail and messaging cluster for a customer, which is very much a non-traditional Sun environment. This customer was seeing a fault about once a month, but everything seemed to be normal from the data streams we were monitoring. Then we started looking at correlations and interactions of the telemetry data over time, and we found some interesting information. The method we used in this case was Holt Winters forecasting, which is a mechanism for performing time series-based forecasting which can predict future observations via trend analysis and cyclical coefficients. Using that technique, we could actually predict when the environment would crash.

We called the customer and said: “Look, we don’t know what the problem is, but we can identify when it is going to happen again.” Needless to say, they didn’t believe us. Sure enough, about a week later, it crashed, just as we predicted. So, they called us back and said: OK, keep that from happening again. As an interim step, when we saw those conditions happening again, we were able to restart the machines before the crash instead of having to recover the system afterwards. Ultimately, we were able to work with Microsoft to identify the core problem and get it fixed.

IC: What distinguishes Sun remote managing and monitoring from the competition?

Berg: Pretty much everyone has the capability to leverage the network in ways to reach out to an environment. Sun is bringing the R&D innovation that takes place in our hardware and software groups to the services arena, so that we can begin troubleshooting and diagnosing on a proactive basis. We spend a lot of time looking at the telemetry that comes back from customer environments and using that to build knowledge and operational models. The idea is to identify a set of conditions and events that trigger (or have the potential to trigger) an unwanted outcome. Then, we can begin to build the knowledge base and event model to proactively keep the unwanted event from happening again.

By instituting a learning system, when we see new situations, we can learn from them, and then we can look for similar situations to prevent the problems from happening again. Remote management should be more than just reacting remotely; it should involve being proactive and discovering issues before systems break. By contrast, our competitors wait for things to break and then try to automatically patch or fix the issue.

IC: Specifically, how do you build that proactiveness?

Berg: In some cases we’re doing that through very high-end statistical techniques, as well as technologies that are somewhat of a “special sauce.” I can’t go into too much detail. But we’re applying some of our best engineering to look at customer issues differently and proactively. And we have services today that are specifically tuned for proactive resolution, such as Sun Preventative Services. These services are designed to collect data, understand environments, comprehend the associated risks, and mitigate those risks just like you would with a financial portfolio.

IC: Haven’t we heard that before, connecting and getting information from customers?

Berg: Yeah, and that’s a good point. We have been working on telemetry-based services for some time now. We have learned a lot in working with our customers and improving the value they receive. We now have a connection capability that is non-intrusive, secure, and flexible that allows us to receive telemetry and to deliver significant value back to our customers. These days, as soon as a customer plugs in a machine or turns on software, it has the capability to connect to us. Customers can opt out, but the advantage of connecting to us is that we can provide value back to the customer. For example, using the telemetry we can immediately recommend security patches to deploy or provide information about operating system tweaks that would improve system performance. And if the customer permits us, we can reach out over the network and perform those tasks for them.

IC: What advantages might customers expect if they connect to Sun? Can you give us some examples of what they get?

Berg: It opens a new channel for service capabilities. When Sun knows more about how our software and hardware are being used, we can provide higher value services back to our customers. We can begin to use real data to provide real service value. For example, customers that are using Sun Connection will be able to automate patch downloads and patching within their environments. They will be able to automate security services. They will be able to take advantage of our best practices and knowledge. And there are many other benefits.

The point is that customers that use Sun Connection will be able to take advantage of a continuous stream of new intellectual property from Sun (software, knowledge, tips, tricks, and more) to create real differentiation for them. That’s just one example of how Sun is delivering IT as a service.

Article Reference: http://www.sun.com/emrkt/innercircle/newsletter/0106cto.html

When we decided to get in to the Managed and Dedicated Hosting market we did not want our clients to have to sacrifice in either performance or support. We focused on investing in not only our infrastructure but also the hardware we provided our clients.

• We don’t use white label servers. No generic systems that were once PC’s or sold at a discount because they don’t have the same enterprise class components seen in brands such as Dell, HP or Sun.

You will also find that our entire network is Cisco Based. Why does it matter? Because they’re the industry leading providers of residential (Linksys) and commercial network hardware. They also have some of the best support a vendor can provide, which translates in making sure your systems and networks are online and available.

Did you know most datacenters, collocation included cannot provide enough power to service their clients. It’s a common problem and one that gets worse as systems become thinner and more compact with physically smaller disks and increase performance.

• Every one of our Dedicated and Managed Hosting racks in our Tier1 Datacenter has redundant power. This means that we’re able to not only provide enough power for our systems and infrastructure, but we also ensure that the same total power required is mirrored in the same rack. If there was a power interruption, the secondary power source on a completely different UPS and backup diesel generator would take over and keep everything running. In most cases providers provide primary and secondary power from the same source. Scary isn’t it?

Here is brief list of what we provide above and beyond the obvious:

• Every rack has IP Enabled and Managed PDU’s. We’re able to graph and monitor all power used in each rack and guarantee existing circuits are never overloaded.

• Every one of our systems has a Remote Access Card for console access and physical reboots. By us or by you!

• Every system is setup with SNMP Hardware monitoring. We know instantly when things like the ambient temperature increases or when a disk fails.

• Every system is proactively monitored. This includes all the services running on the system. If anything were to happen with a website, database or custom application that needed to be online then we respond and fix the problem. Typically before you realize the problem has occurred.

• Performance Graphs included, and free. We can tell you how your system or systems are performing and forecast utilization based on previous metrics such as CPU, Disk Capacity and Memory Utilization. If making sure you’re systems are online and you continue to have the right solution as your business grows then it makes sense to know what you’ll for the future.

These are just some of the benefits of choosing a provider like Robson Communications Inc, but don’t just take my word for it. Our clients are so happy with our service that we have over a 98% client retention rate. That’s right, 98%!

Our pricing is market competitive but our solution exceeds what everyone else is capable of providing. Don’t be fooled by providers who lower costs so they can base revenue on volume, choose a provider that puts your needs and your business first.

Our entry level Enterprise Servers start at $98.00 CAD Per Month!

Give us a call today to find out why so many others have chosen Robson Communications Inc.

Martin

]]> http://blog.robsoninc.com/admin/technology-and-rd/cheap-managed-hosting/feed http://blog.robsoninc.com/admin/sales-and-marketing/gartner-recommends-20-ways-to-cut-it-costs http://blog.robsoninc.com/admin/sales-and-marketing/gartner-recommends-20-ways-to-cut-it-costs#comments Tue, 21 Oct 2008 18:44:31 +0000 admin http://blog.robsoninc.com/?p=21 When it comes to saving money, being able to reduce your IT infrastructure costs is a big part of the equation. So many businesses are looking to outsourced solutions to lower operational and capital expenses.

A recent report from Gartner outlines their top 20 recommended ways to lower your IT costs. The message is the same, consolidate, streamline and outsource where ever possible.

Gartner Recommends 20 Ways to cut IT Costs

By Neil Weinberg , Network World , 10/15/2008

ORLANDO - In tough economic times, all enterprise departments are required to tighten their belts. To help IT execs navigate through the cost-cutting maze, Gartner analysts Wednesday presented a list of 20 ways that IT execs can slash expenses.

1. The most obvious place to start is people costs. Gartner estimates that 37% of the average IT budget is dedicated to personnel, so this represents a major opportunity to save money. Gartner recommends a blend of hiring freezes, reducing or eliminating special bonuses, cutting back on outside contractors. Also, global companies that have opened offices in remote areas should consider bringing those workers back home

2. Flatten the organization. Instead of having one person manage six or seven employees, trim some of that middle management and have your IT execs manage more like 20 people. A flat organization not only saves money but also can lead to more efficiency.

3. Move to shared services. In other words, consolidate things like help desk into one group that services the entire company.

4. Even if you have to borrow somebody from another part of the company, bring a finance person into your leadership team so that person can analyze your budget and find ways to help you trim costs.

5. Don’t ignore “unmanaged” costs like printers or data center power.

6. Go back and check your invoices to make sure your vendors are charging you what your contract specifies. An example would be if your wireless vendor agreed to give you free shipping when it sends new cell phones to remote workers. A few months later, shipping charges might start appearing on your cell phone bill, and if you don’t check, you’ll never know.

7. Eliminate unused software and modules.

8. Get tougher with vendors when it comes to negotiating contracts. Don’t be afraid to switch vendors, or at least go the first step of determining what it would cost to switch.

9. Buy a telecom expense-management service. It pays for itself and more.

10. Deploy a corporate wide plan for buying cell phones. Then, buy a cell phone plan that optimizes expenses. This will be cheaper than letting employees buy phones and plans and then expense them.

11. If there are places where you don’t need five nines of availability, settle for three nines. It will save you money when you negotiate with your vendor.

12. Consider buying a videoconferencing unit rather than constantly renting.

13. Where possible, use the Internet as a replacement for expensive WAN transport services.

14. Defer moving to Vista. If your PC hardware is holding up, consider sticking with it another year.

15. Use commodity products wherever possible, and skip best of breed in cases where “best of need” will suffice.

16. Consolidate and virtualize servers.

17. Reduce storage costs via data deduplication and other methods.

18. Use better processes and policy to make better use of existing tools.

19. Deploy IP telephony and VoIP as a way of cutting costs for moves, adds and changes.

20. Harvest unused software licenses and reuse them when a new employee makes a request.

Article References: Network World , 10/15/2008

Wait, what? Why would we recommend you challenge your current vendor to meet your current business needs, as they grow or as they need to be consolidated? Because at Robson Communications Inc. we specialize in helping businesses lower their IT infrastructure costs by providing the right solution that enables them to outsource solutions that were previously managed internally. Robson solutions omit large capital expenditures and existing operating costs and trades them for one low, cost affective monthly fee  that looks after all your your dedicated and managed hosting needs. Everything from Web Applications, CRM Applications, Accounting/ERP and SaaS solutions.

Give us a call today to see how we can help your business save money.

David Brekke
Sr. Sales Account Executive

Robson Communications Inc.
http://www.robsoninc.com

(604) 576-8150 Ext 2005
david@robsoninc.com

Email is a big part of any company’s infrastructure. In order for a company to be successful, it is critical that they manage their resources and focus on what they do best….that is, running their company. If a company can minimize their expenses and maximize their efforts in doing what they do best, they can reduce costs and free up staff for other tasks related to running the business.

Microsoft Exchange is the most popular mail server platform in the industry. It also has the reputation for being rather complex. Smaller companies have the ability to consolidate the entire organizations email onto a single server, although this can be risky because of security and reliability issues. There are also performance problems that can arise in a single server environment as well as scalability issues and a lack of redundancy in case of failure.

Even a simple Exchange Server deployment is complicated. With that complexity comes cost. Firstly, training your administrative staff to design, deploy and maintain and effective Exchange Server organization. Secondly, there are the costs that come with the number of servers required to host Exchange Server 2007 in a secure and reliable manner.

With each server come hardware costs, software costs (Windows and Exchange Server licenses paid to Microsoft) including anti-virus, anti-spam and client access licenses. You need to keep spare parts on hand to keep the hardware in tip top shape, overtime for your administration staff if you hope to keep everything running 24/7 and other maintenance related expenses. More often than not costs associated with maintaining the server far outweigh the costs of buying the server in the first place.

Outsourcing not only allows you to avoid the initial startup costs, but it also allows you to lower the ongoing costs as well. Why? Typically, hosting companies divide server resources among multiple clients. Several clients are sharing the expense of the hardware, software and monitoring and maintenance costs.

There are other benefits as well. Availability is usually guaranteed in writing using an SLA (service level agreement). Another benefit is disaster recovery. Most companies use backups for their Exchange Server, but few companies thoroughly test their backups on a regular basis. Hosting companies test their backups regularly and often provide guarantees for speed of service for backup restoration.

If you are considering switching to a hosting company, you need to be aware of a number of questions you should ask before signing a contract with the hosting company you have chosen. Some companies initially appear to be a bargain (you get what you pay for!), but you might end up sacrificing reliability and support. If the company you have chosen doesn’t have a redundant infrastructure, or doesn’t have robust backups you might want to rethink your decision. If they tend to tack on extra fees for service or use dodgy tactics to keep customers from leaving, this is a sign that you might want to think before you sign anything.

One of the most important questions is whether the hosting company provides a managed solution. In a managed environment, the hosting company takes care of all server maintenance. They backup the data, apply security patches and handle any other server maintenance issues that come up. Many non-managed hosts simply allow you to rent a server in their data centre. Maintenance and management of the server is left up to you. This usually defeats the purpose of outsourcing in the first place.

With the ever increasing complexity of Exchange Server, it is becoming far too expensive for companies to host their own mail servers. The outsourcing of Exchange Server is becoming a necessity for any company that wants to eliminate the costs of deploying and maintaining an Exchange Server environment. It is also essential to eliminating costly down time. If you decide to move forward with Managed Hosting, you will start to see the benefits almost immediately. You will now be able to focus on the essentials - running your company.

If you have any questions at all or would like to talk to me about a custom solution for your business, please give me a call or send me an email.

David Brekke

Sr. Sales Account Executive

(604) 576-8150 Ext 2005

Robson Communications Inc.

david@robsoninc.com
www.robsoninc.com

It’s simple, who doesn’t love great customer service. How often do we hear, it’s not a problem and I’ll take care of it for you. The simple things that make all the difference in providing great customer service are missed and you the client end up paying the price. Ask yourself, when was the last time you were blown away by someone who was in a customer service roll who was just doing their job?

It’s this approach to customer service that makes Robson Communications Inc. different, and why we have over a 99% client retention rate. Taking care of our clients is the driving factor of our success, and we don’t take it lightly.

So the next time you find yourself in a position to evaluate your current managed and dedicated hosting provider; ask yourself, do you think they’ve gone the extra mile at making sure you and your business are being taken care of?

Sometimes it’s just not enough to keep the lights on. We believe it takes a lot more to be great.

It’s what makes us your dedicated and managed hosting provider.

Tamara

VP, Business and Client Development
Robson Communications Inc.
www.robsoninc.com

We provide an enterprise level solution for all your server based IT solutions, such as web based applications like a CRM, Website, Point of Sale, Data Store and Disaster Recovery, Microsoft Exchange and other email solutions just to name a few.

What companies are realizing now is that the cost to hire the right IT staff to maintain their IT infrastructure is different from the IT staffing required to grow their IT infrastructure, which is different than the right staff who are specialized in performance and solution architecture. That is on top of needing to purchase the data center, servers, backup solution, network infrastructure and security appliances. It can soon all add up very quickly and may end up providing a false level of security if it wasn’t done correctly.

Robson Communications Inc. specializes in all these areas of managed and dedicated hosting. Our team not only makes sure your application, sites, network and IT infrastructure is being maintained and is secure but we also make sure it’s a scalable solution that will allow your business to grow. We take the worrying away.

Our Managed Hosting solutions are backed by the industry’s top server and network hardware vendors, such as Cisco, HP, Dell and Sun Microsystems. We design every solution for our clients like it was a solution for our business, and it’s this approach to technology and our solutions that makes the Robson Communications Inc. approach different than our competitors.

If you’re interested in hearing more about what we have to offer and about our approach, please give me a call at 1-877-472-3425.

Take Care,

Martin Robson
President / CEO
Robson Communications Inc.

We have also just setup our second data center. This will allow us to increase capacity and provide a wide range of additional services I’m bursting to tell you about, but not just yet!

Keep on checking back on our Blog for more information as we continue to provide the best dedicated and managed hosting solutions in Canada and the United States.

Take care,

Martin Robson
President / CEO
Robson Communications Inc.