Cloudyn helps service providers with cloud offerings

Cloudyn's CEO, Sharon Wagner, reached out to discuss Cloudyn's cloud optimization tools could help managed service providers (MSPs) introduce a new set of cloud computing products. Cloudyn believes this represents a major shift for the industry.

Cloudyn has released a new platform called Cloudyn MSP that enables Managed Service Providers to create new revenue stream, increase profit margin and round-out their cloud offerings by adding Amazon Web Services broker to their portfolio of services.

Cloudyn points out that its tools make it possible for MSPs, system integrators and cloud resellers to analyze and visualize their customers' cost and usage profiles to discover ways to find savings and increase their profits. To accomplish that goal, Cloudyn’s offering  enables accurate cost allocation and calculation of profit margins for each and every customer.

The challenge MSPs face today is staying relevant in the face of an ever-growing list of cloud services. Cloudyn believes that its monitoring and optimization tools enable MSPs to be the cloud hero for their customers.

Wagner points out that its Cloudyn MSP supports any type of AWS deployment with the ability to manage standalone clients, as well as multiple sets of consolidated billing environments. Set-up can be done in minutes, with MSPs able to view the high-level, aggregated deployment as well as individual customer views. MSPs can easily match AWS accounts with relevant customers and define permission levels for users so access can be shared in a controlled manner.

Managed Service Providers have often been important partners as companies examine their IT operations to find cost savings. Their approach was to offer to take over the management and operations of the customer's own on-site systems, software, storage and networking.

If the customer wanted to pursue even greater savings and flexibility, the next obvious step is to relocate those workloads to a cloud service provider's data center to reduce the costs introduced by owning those systems, software licenses, storage systems and networking hardware. This often meant that the MSP lost a customer to a service provider, such as Amazon.

Cloudyn believes that by becoming a cloud service broker and helping customers move workloads off-premise is a better choice that if the MSP chose to built its own data center and rolled out a set of cloud service offerings. Cloudyn would point out that the MSP could take part in the movement towards cloud computing quickly and inexpensively.

While the concept seems sound, it is not at all clear that Amazon is the best choice for all of the MSP's customers' business critical workloads. If the MSP's customers' would prefer a different service provider to achieve higher levels of performance, scalability, reliability or security, Cloudyn's current product wouldn't help.

Cloudyn, however, is on to something here. MSP's have long provided customers a well-managed, safe and reliable on-premise It environment and could find a nice path forward by becoming cloud services offered by others and then providing the same level of management as it previously offered using the customer's own equipment. Later, if necessary, the MSP could chose to deploy its own cloud services.

The challenge MSPs have faced is staying relevant. Being a broker for a cloud service provider appears to be a nice path forward. Cloudyn, however, only offers AWS services to MSPs. Is that enough of an offering? MSPs will have to evaluate their own customers' needs to learn if another cloud service provider's offerings would be better

Updates on tap for two email marketing service providers

Email marketing continues to be one of the most widely used methods for small-business owners to connect with existing customers, and with prospects. Research from the Radicati Group pegs revenue for this market at approximately $12 billion, and it's expected to surpass $16 billion by 2016.

One of the best-known companies among these service providers, Constant Contact, this week made two significant changes to its platform.

The first big update centers on contact management: essentially, Constant Contact is embedding a much richer set of reporting features into its native contact manager so that small businesses can more closely track relevant interaction information in context.

For example, you can see click-throughs, newsletter opens or event attendance figures within the contact. There's even a new "did not open" reporting capabilities. (Yes, the service is starting to look and sound sort of like a customer relationship management application.)

The other big change is focused on the MyLibrary component of Constant Contact, which is the place where subscribers store images and documents.

This feature now supports Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel document uploads (in addition to PDFs and images). What's more, you can drag and drop images directly from a computer desktop or from within Facebook or Instagram profiles.

There's also a new version of the Quickview mobile app for interacting with MyLibrary; it runs on both Android and Apple iOS. Despite its name, this isn't just a viewer": you can upload documents, edit files names, copy file URLS and so on.

The entry-level version of Constant Contact's email service starts at $15 per month for up to 500 contacts. The company, based in Waltham, Mass., has been around since 1998. It counts more than 500,000 small-business customers.

Constant Contact isn't the only game in town, of course. As I was reading up on these updates, I was pinged by Montreal-based CakeMail, which also offers a service for managing email marketing campaigns. Its offering, called CakeMail 4 is a far slimmer service, with a focus on simplicity and ease of use: it allows contact management and personalized campaigns that can be generated using templates. The service starts at $8 per month, although you can use a sponsored version (you'll have to put up with ads) for free if you have fewer than 2,000 contacts.

CakeMail's private label version is used by more than 350 brands in 40 countries. The Montreal-based company was launched in 2007. 

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New Dell service aims to mainstream desktop virtualization projects

Summary: The 360 Integrated Design approach focuses on back-end integration changes that are integral to successful virtual desktop infrastructure rollouts.

As more desktop virtualization solutions (DVS) projects move (or attempt to move) from pilot phase into full-fledged deployments, the Dell services team is introducing an integrated design approach that it believes will help more of them arrive successfully.

The service, called DVS 360 Integrated Design (or 360 Integrated Design), focuses on the work that organizations need to do behind the scenes with existing infrastructure to better integrate virtual desktop infrastructure with existing systems and processes, said Jefferson Raley, porfolio director with the Dell End-User Computing Strategic Consulting Practice. 

"When customers adopt desktop virtualization, they know they need servers, networking gear and storage to make this work," Raley said. "Where some have been blind, however, is when it comes to considering the integration changes that need to work in order to make desktop virtualization work." Those considerations include:

Active Directory design changes or modificationsThe effect on printing processesThe implications of persistent virtual machines across an enterprise infrastructureCertificatesUser data storage policitesApplication compatibilityApplication entitlementNetwork capacity and bandwidthVideo and audio streamingWeb accessOperating sytem and application licensing policiesUSB connections and lock-down measuresData migration

The Dell 360 Integrated Design approach is a roadmap methodology designed to "reveal the blind spots" that might exist within an organization. "The reason we built this service is because we saw a lot of implementations that weren't going that well," Raley said.

Over a period of approximately eight weeks (depending on the size of the company), the Dell services team gathers a comprehensive series of information from desktops targeted for virtualization and then uses that information to create an integration plan focused on the foundational changes that might be necessary within existing environments.

The service is just getting off the ground: so far, Dell has worked closely with one major automotive company to help get its desktop virtualization effort back on track, Raley said. 

Heather Clancy is an award-winning business journalist specializing in transformative technology and innovation

Zenoss, service level management and Hadoop

Summary: Zenoss has been known for using big data and predictive analytics tools to gain a deep understanding of operational systems. It is now expanding the reach of its products to be able to handle huge amounts of data. It is also working to focus on service level management from its current focus on unified performance management..

Alan Conley, CTO of Zenoss, dropped by the other day to bring me up to date on the company. Zenoss, like a number of competitors gathers a large amount of operational data from workloads, application frameworks, virtualization tools, databases, storage systems, networking equipment and systems. Then the company uses "preditive analytics" to gain a deep understanding of performance, user experience and to detect potential and actual issues.

While the company has developed tools allowing a unified view of all of the operational data that is collected, its customers demanded the ability to manage larger amounts of data quickly and easily. So, Conley said, the company's newest version of its software will use Apache Hadoop. This, he pointed out, will also allow customers to develop their own uses of this operational database using both tools supplied by Zenoss and other Hadoop-oriented tools. The move to Hadoop should allow the next generation of Zenoss' products to manage five times the operational data.

Zenoss customers that I've spoken with almost always comment on the usefulness and timeliness of the information they get from Zenoss' products. I expect the broad expansion in scope and product performance will be of great interest for them. I hope to speak with one of them in the future.

Daniel Kusnetzky is a distinguished analyst and the founder of the Kusnetzky Group LLC. He's also the managing partner of Lux Sonus LLC, an investment firm.