Why Choose Nimbo for your Cloud Computing?

The cloud computing market is competitive. Here are the main reasons to choose a dedicated, tailored and attentive IT company to service your current business needs:

  1. Assessment. Nimbo will first offer a tailored assessment of your company’s IT needs. This is a review to decide where and how cloud computing can best improve your business. For example, you may need to update your network links prior to assessing the cloud (to attract even more clients); you may need to have a stronger firewall, given you’ll now be connected to far more business entities. Part of this assessment is understanding your current needs in terms of infrastructure: do you host your servers on-premise? What kind and capacity do you use at the moment? What kind of systems does your business use that sit on the infrastructure? How is the integration between the back end databases and the front end systems? What kind of applications does your business primarily use?
  2. Implemetation. Nimbo will then proceed to implementation. This is the restructuring of your current needs with an eye to the IT and business, networking and security needs of the future. One of Nimbo’s expert services is in Microsoft BizTalk, in which they are a Microsoft Gold Partner. Meanwhile, a new invoice-scanning and approval workflow system that he just rolled out uses Microsoft’s BizTalk Server to route information to and from the company’s various on- and off-premise systems. Nimbo can implement these services. BizTalk will manage data that different cloud applications process in different formats, including FTP, various Web services and custom APIs.
  3. Delivery. Nimbo has a proven track record of IT service – specializing in bringing your business comfortably into the cloud on time and on budget. For more information please contact Nimbo at info@Nimbo.com or visit the website at www.Nimbo.com.

- Ira Bell

Summary of Microsoft Coud Computing Offerings (Azure Platform, BPOS, etc.)

  1. Azure Services Platform is a Microsoft application built ‘in the cloud.’ It allows applications to be hosted and run at Microsoft datacenters. It provides a cloud operating system called Windows Azure that serves as a runtime for the applications and provides a set of services that allows development, management and hosting of applications off-premises. All Azure Services and applications built using them run on top of Windows Azure.
  2. BPOS is a range of Microsoft products that work and integrate well in the cloud. BPOS stands for Business Productivity Online Standard Suite (BPOS) and consists of Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Office Communications Online and Office Live Meeting. Taken together, all four products are a great way to integrate your business in the cloud with proven technology. Many cloud service providers specialize in these products, such as Nimbo (www.nimbo.com).
  3. The future of the cloud. The intercloud is an interconnected global “cloud of clouds” and an extension of the Internet “network of networks” on which it is based. The term was first used in the context of cloud computing in 2007 when Kevin Kelly opined that “eventually we’ll have the intercloud, the cloud of clouds. This Intercloud will have the dimensions of one machine comprising all servers and attendant cloudbooks on the planet.” It became popular in 2009 and has also been used to describe the datacenter of the future.

What might the intercloud look like?

The Intercloud scenario is based on the idea that individual clouds do not have infinitive physical resources. If a cloud saturates the storage resources of its virtualization infrastructure, it could not be able to satisfy further requests for service allocations from clients. The Intercloud aims to address this situation – here, each cloud can use the computational and storage resources of the virtualization infrastructures of other clouds. Such form of pay-for-use introduces new business opportunities for cloud providers. Nevertheless, the Intercloud raises many challenges concerning cloud federation, security, interoperability, QoS, monitoring and billing.

For more information about how to integrate your business in the cloud, please contact Nimbo at info@Nimbo.com or visit the website at www.Nimbo.com.

- John Shaw

Microsoft Online Services Links

I’m doing this blog to remind myself of where the downloads are for Microsoft Online Services, Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS). For some reason these aren’t listed in MSDN… hopefully this is helpful to others!

- John Shaw