Cloud Computing

Backup Options for Small Business Owners

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You’ve heard it a thousand times: backup your data. But I still find it rather amazing to walk into a client’s environment and ask, “so what do you do for backup?” and get a blank stare or “oh, we are doing ok”.

The “it will never happen to us” syndrome is prevalent in the small business environment. The result is a constant break-fix scenario that ultimately turns out to be very costly.

The cost of hard drives has fallen so dramatically that it is inexcusable for a small business owner not to have at least, a removable USB drive for backing up critical data. There are even “cloud” offerings that are pretty reasonable, although they tend to be very slow especially if you have multi-gigabyte files to backup.

For example, Carbonite will back up any amount of data you have for about $55 a year, while Mozy (owned by Iomega/EMC) offers 2 gigabytes of free storage for those who purchase an Iomega external drive.

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I know where you are!: Mobile devices and GPS

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The other day I was in Houston for a seminar and as usual, got lost, despite the fact that I had a printed map and directions to the venue. I called the hotel I was going to stay at for help and they hung up on me. Oh well. After taking a few more wrong turns, I suddenly remembered that my G1 has a built-in GPS. I pulled over and opened the “Maps” application hoping to use it get new directions. The menu had an entry called “My Location” so I tapped on it and lo and behold, it brought up a street map of my exact location.

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Windows Backup 2008: Another Royal Mess

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I am always baffled by the constant ability of Microsoft to take something that was working very well and turn it upside down all in the name of trying to improve the product. The list is long so we won’t even bother. The latest in this list is the supposedly new and improved Windows Server Backup 2008. In my opinion, this is one of the most frustrating thing the company has done to small business owners in terms of backing up files. Don’t get me wrong, the concept behind the product makes sense – for those who can afford it. It has:

  • Faster backup technology.
  • Simplified restoration.
  • Simplified recovery of your operating system.
  • Ability to recover applications.
  • Improved scheduling.
  • Offsite removal of backups for disaster protection.
  • Remote administration.
  • Automatic disk usage management.
  • Extensive command-line support.
  • Support for optical media drives and removable media.

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Oracle, Sun and the SMB Market

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With the announcement today of the multi-billion dollar acquisition of Sun Microsystems by Oracle, the database market has suddenly been thrown into a state of flux. The earlier rumor was that IBM was interested in buying Sun.

This is especially significant because of the myriad of products owned by the merged company.

Sun has over the years positioned itself as a systems company and has expanded its sphere of influence in that arena. So what is the driving force behind this purchase? Some have argued that is is driven by the new move toward integration. According to CNet, this idea dates back to a concept called Raw Iron. In other words, it is an attempt to move Oracle from the horizontal market space it has been stuck in into a vertical market where Sun has made its mark, kind of.

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Cloud Services and Virtualization Benefit Small Businesses

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The benefits and Pitfall of moving resources and infrastructure to the cloud, and the impact of service outages for the small business owner is a topic that is sometimes avoided by promoters of cloud services. The buzz right now is cloud services and a cursory read of the high-octane promotions paints a very rosy picture … Read more

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