Cloud computing in education market grows as schools see benefits

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As the benefits of cloud computing become increasingly obvious, a growing number of industries are beginning to embrace it. The newest sector adopting cloud services is education, as they offer students and teachers the ability to access a variety of applications and resources easily and economically. Added security, cost-effectiveness and ease-of-use are also driving the adoption of cloud computing in educational institutions of all levels and sizes, as well as disaster recovery services and the promise of stronger communication and collaboration between students.

Due to the increase in adoption of cloud technology by schools, the global cloud computing in education market is growing at a rapid pace. MarketsandMarkets recently released a report projecting the global market will grow to more than $12 billion by 2019, an increase of $7 billion over five years. The study found that reduced costs, increased flexibility and enhanced infrastructure scalability were major market drivers, as was the growing need for schools to be technologically advanced. 

"The significant production of inexpensive computers, Internet broadband connectivity, and loaded learning content has created a worldwide trend in which Information and Communication Technology is being used to alter the education process," the report stated. "Cloud computing is beginning to play a key role in this revolution."

The report went on to say that North America is expected to remain the leader of the market, but the Asia-Pacific and European regions are projected to show the most significant traction.

A separate survey from a technology provider found that almost 50 percent of respondents in higher education made adopting cloud computing a priority because their employees were increasingly utilizing cloud applications and mobile devices in their work. The study also found that IT professionals in higher education expect to save an average of 20 percent over the next three years due to the implementation of cloud services.

Schools see multiple benefits with cloud 
​A major reason many schools are adopting cloud technology is the ability to cut spending, not just with the cloud services themselves but through the ability to reduce the costs of office supplies like paper and ink. With cloud-based services, teachers are able to make lesson plans, homework and reading available online instead of having to print and copy hundreds of pages each semester.

Another major benefit of the cloud is that disaster recovery and online backup services are built right in to the infrastructure, which comes in very handy as students increasingly complete work electronically. Schools are also benefiting from the large amounts of cloud storage services available. Student records can be kept in the cloud and then encrypted, making them easy to share with necessary parties while at the same time improving security.

With the cloud, students are able to collaborate more easily and effectively as they can work on and edit documents simultaneously. Sharing and transmitting documents is also made easier which improves the ability to receive feedback and improve work. The increased accessibility offered by the cloud also allows students to work on assignments from anywhere with an Internet connection.

Asheville, NC moves disaster recovery to the cloud

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Jonathan Feldman, the CIO for the city of Asheville, North Carolina, made a big splash recently when he decided to migrate the city's disaster recovery operations to the cloud.

When Feldman took over as CIO, he was dismayed to find out that Asheville's disaster recovery facility was located two blocks away from City Hall. The city had already started using the cloud to host some geographic applications, as well as IT development and testing environments, and Feldman was interested in finding a way to expand the use of their cloud infrastructure. Using a cloud disaster recovery platform, Feldman was able to use a pre-built automation tool that would essentially run the city's disaster recovery program on its own and ensure business continuity.

"I was not comfortable with us coming up with a home-brewed automation system to do something as critical as disaster recovery," said Feldman in an interview with SaaS In The Enterprise. "We don't do it enough to be a core competency for us."

With Asheville's disaster recovery operations off site and in the cloud, the city no longer has to worry about losing both primary systems and their backups at the same time if a storm were to knock out power. Utilizing a cloud-based platform also allows the city to only pay for disaster recovery when they need it, instead of paying around the clock for a physical facility.

Feldman started small with the migration to the cloud, transitioning only important but non-essential applications first with plans to grow capacity once the platform has been proven. The new disaster recovery system was designed to test one system each quarter, with each test taking between one and four hours to complete.

"We're able to failover pretty quickly, and failover very inexpensively, and have a high degree of confidence because of automation," said Feldman. "When we do disaster recovery, we know it's actually going to work. Between that and the geographic dispersion, that's huge." 

Using colocation in the era of the cloud

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Colocation facilities have long been vital resources for organizations that require high-performing data centers but prefer to entrust infrastructure management to a third-party provider. In addition to sparing IT departments the headaches of maintaining servers, switches and other equipment, colocation produces tangible benefits such as:

  • Redundant power supplies: Individual endpoint failures or even natural disasters won’t compromise uptime.
  • Streamlined IT costs: Colocation removes many of IT’s considerable expenditures on equipment and personnel
  • Cutting-edge performance: A colo facility typically has access to best of breed IP services and equipment, more often than not enabling better speed and reliability than the client could achieve strictly in-house.

Accordingly, in North America, the colocation and managed hosting services market is primed for strong expansion. TechNavio recently projected that it would increase at a 13.6 percent compound annual growth rate from 2013 to 2018.

Reduction of capital and operating expenditures is expected to be a key driver of colocation uptake. But what is colocation’s place in an IT landscape increasingly dominated by cloud services?

Finding the right colocation provider in the era of cloud computing
Cloud computing has fundamentally changed IT by giving developers, testers and operations teams access to unprecedented amounts of on-demand resources. Organizations have more options than ever for scaling their businesses, and the cloud has already enabled the success of blockbluster services such as Netflix and Instagram.

Colocation can play an important part as companies modernize their infrastructure and take advantage of remote infrastructure. Many IT departments are in the midst of migrating some on-premises systems to the cloud, creating mixed environments known as hybrid clouds. Colocation providers can step to the plate and supply the security, flexibility and know-how needed for evolving IT for the cloud age.

To that end, buyers should look for experienced managed services providers adept at handling a variety of infrastructure. Although colocation has been around since before the cloud entered the mainstream, cutting-edge offerings may offer a level of usability on par with public cloud, via top-flight service management.

“[C]olocation providers need to offer more than just remote hands,” wrote Keao Caindec, chief marketing officer at 365 Data Centers, for Data Center Knowledge. “They need to offer basic managed services such as firewall management, server management, backup and recovery services as well as other managed IT operations services for the dedicated infrastructure of each client.”

Colocation increasingly popular among banks and other enterprises

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Many companies are deciding to forgo building and maintaining their own data centers in favor of colocation options offered by third-party providers. There are numerous advantages to this approach, especially now that organizations are crafting their own applications, many of them mission-critical, designed to scale for many users.

What can be accomplished through colocation? Key benefits include:

  • Physical and data security: Colocation providers typically manage highly secure facilities that feature closed-circuit cameras, biometric scanners and alarm systems. Furthermore, actual server cabinets may be locked and full-time security staff may be on site. With an in-house data center, the costs of such measures would be exorbitant, but they are included in many colocation plans.
  • Scalability: Keeping up with evolving requirements and user demand can be tricky with an in-house data center. When a change is needed, extra equipment may need to purchased and additional staff hired. With colocation, upgrading is a much simpler matter of simply changing the service plan.
  • Redundancy and reliability: Colocation facilities are often decked out with environmental monitoring to ensure that conditions are optimal, plus they usually feature redundant power supplies. Similarly, top-flight equipment enables high network reliability. Clients can worry less about the fallout from natural disasters, power outages or downtime that would more acutely affect a self-run data center than a colo site.
  • Performance: Building on the last point, colocation data centers have strong, consistent performance as a result of redundancies, as well as optimal power and networking arrangements.
  • Support: Colocation packages feature around-the-clock client support. Rather than having to troubleshoot an issue in the middle of the night on their own, IT personnel can contact a representative for technical assistance.

Taken together, these perks facilitate economical and reliable utilization of data centers. Colocation helps enterprises keep pace with the emergence of cloud computing and new requirements for application development and data processing, all while controlling costs. Unsurprisingly, colocation providers have been ramping up their budgets to serve the growing number of organizations interested in their services.

Colocation spending surges as enterprises spend less on in-house data centers
Rising interest in colocation has forced providers to expand capacity and services. An Uptime Institute study found that almost 90 percent of surveyed colocation companies had increased their budgets year-over-year.

Similar growth hasn’t occurred within enterprises, with only half of them (excepting financial institutions) reporting larger budgets than the year before. However, more than 60 percent of banks and other financial services providers saw gains.

Across the board, though, more resources are being moved off premises and into colocation data centers or cloud computing environments. The study found that:

  • One quarter of respondents’ capacity was running in colocation facilities, while seven percent was tied to public cloud.
  • Almost 40 percent of companies using at least 5,000 servers – most of them in finance – relied on more than five providers.
  • Availability, geographic scalability and capital cost reduction were primary drivers of colocation adoption.

These findings give a good cross-section of where enterprises are at as they try to deal with the expanding roles of software and cloud computing. Colocation gives institutions in verticals such as finance a leg up in controlling costs and improving reliability.

How data center backup helps with business continuity

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Backing up data should be standard operating procedure for everyone by now. It’s not worth the risk of losing important documents, photos and videos, especially now that there are so many options for stashing these assets in redundant cloud storage services or on an external hard drive.

But while consumers may have only a few gigabytes of data to back up, organizations have a much more extensive undertaking when it comes to ensuring the safety of mission-critical information. With the ongoing shift to data centers, colocation and cloud computing, companies have to be conscious of how and where their massive data stores are kept.

Back up data center assets to guard against loss
Data center backup plans are increasingly important hedges against disaster. A Unisonius Consulting study of Turkish data centers noted that many sites are still vulnerable to threats such as:

  • Flooding: Some data centers are located in low-elevation locales or in cellars.
  • Power outage: Having only a single electricity supplier means that a facility cannot easily accommodate redundancy.
  • Earthquakes: Depending on their locations, data centers may be subject to seismic activity.

While the report examined data centers in Turkey, similar conditions exist around the world, endangering data that is properly housed or protected by backup. Frequent outages underscore what could happen to data and business continuity in a worst-case scenario.

“There is always a data center outage in the U.S. It’s whether you have invested in backup services or not that will determine whether your services are affected,” Jordan Lowe, CEO at ServerCentral told DatacenterDynamics. “As a business you make an active decision whether to invest into backup sites. It is a lot of time, a lot of effort and a lot of money but, if you don’t want a service affected that’s a bullet you have to bite.”

Features to look for in data center backup
For organizations in sectors such as finance, it is worth having peace of mind when it comes to data backup and restoration. Here are some specific features that make for a good backup solution:

  • Secure, automatic multi-site backup: Having just one backup isn’t enough. It is better to use a service that automatically and securely (using encryption) relays backup data from one site to another.
  • Disaster recovery: It may be beneficial to migrate assets to a secure off-site location to mitigate risk from flooding, hurricanes and fires.
  • Easy administration: A Web-based, graphical interface protected by a virtual private network is valuable for managing backup policies and workflows from anywhere.

These capabilities contribute to the ongoing safety and integrity of data. Even in the event of a natural disaster or outage, key assets are preserved and business continuity is sustained.

3 advantages of server virtualization

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Server virtualization is quickly becoming the preferred deployment model for corporate data centers, as companies look to tap into the benefits of managing servers on a software level. Switching to virtualization means that the workloads happening on servers are not tied to a specific piece of physical hardware and that multiple virtual workloads can occur simultaneously on the same piece of machinery. The immediate benefits of virtualization include higher server utilization rates in the data center and lower costs, but there are more sophisticated advantages as well. Three of these are:

1. Improved disaster recovery and business continuity: With virtualization, the information on a server is not contained to a specific piece of hardware, which means a hardware failure doesn’t have to be catastrophic. Instead, data and software are backed up to multiple machines, and it’s easier to reboot systems at a new location, a recent Firmology article explained. The result is faster recovery times. Also, since virtual machines can be run on a wide variety underlying hardware, it’s possible for companies to use older machines for their recovery systems to reduce costs.

2. Easier IT management: With virtualization, IT employees are saved much of the grueling maintenance and provisioning work that physical servers require, a recent VMWare white paper noted. Considering that routine tasks like adding new server workloads and launching new applications account for at least half of employees’ time in nine out of 10 IT departments, the potential productivity gains are substantial. Adding new servers and carrying out maintenance can be done with a few clicks of a mouse.

“These tools eliminate the need for IT workers to manually perform routine maintenance and troubleshooting on multiple physical machines,” the white paper stated. “In fact, these tools not only make it easy to pinpoint IT issues, but they can also proactively detect and resolve these issues without intervention.”

3. More agile business processes: The business world changes fast, and companies need to be able to respond accordingly. As opposed to traditional deployment schedules, which required planning for hardware purchases and installation, virtual infrastructure allows companies to scale rapidly, adding new virtual servers on demand, the white paper said. Additionally, it’s much easier to change how virtual resources are allocated, giving businesses the ability to shift strategies on the go.

For companies looking to tap into the advantages of a virtual infrastructure, it can be valuable to work with a managed services provider that has a background in server virtualization deployments. With this external expertise, businesses can move toward a computing model that’s more disaster resilient, more agile and easier to manage.

How can companies improve the disaster resilience of their data center infrastructure?

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According to a recent benchmark survey by the Disaster Recovery Preparedness Council, nearly three quarters of companies worldwide are failing in terms of disaster readiness, with struggles in downtime for specific critical applications or even entire data center environments. Close to 20 percent of companies reported losses of over $50,000 stemming from outages. Companies can protect themselves against this possibility by investing in resilient data center solutions from a colocation provider focused on business continuity.

"Reliability starts with high industry standards in a checklist of requirements: climate-controlled environments, intelligent security structure and state-of-the-art equipment, technologies and design," BizTimes.com contributor Kevin Knuese wrote in a recent article.

He noted that companies should look for data center solutions with redundant networking and power supplies, as well as redundant cooling systems and all-around state-of-the-art technology. Additional data center features such as 24/7 monitoring and physical security safeguards meant to withstand both break-ins and natural disasters such as floods and earthquakes are important as well. A hosting provider based in the Midwest can be particularly reliable due to the reduced likelihood of certain natural disasters like earthquakes, hurricanes and mudslides that are more common on the coasts.

A provider that offers backup and business continuity services is also important, Knuese wrote. Executives can sometimes be skeptical of "disaster recovery," seeing it as an alarmist term and frustrating cost driver, according to industry expert Steve Kahan. However, the argument for a reliable data center and backup solution is more clear-cut, as such technology solves the problem of many IT headaches. As a result, a colocation provider with business continuity services can be key for maintaining brand credibility from an IT side.

"Some audiences are more responsive when the conversation is focused on the crucial role that IT plays in ensuring 'business continuity' or the operational costs triggered by an 'extended outage,'" Kahan wrote for DRBenchmark.org. "Here's one more suggestion: think of disaster preparedness as 'an investment in brand security,' a way to protect your company's reputation."

Moving toward the virtual data center

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Virtualization – the process of abstracting hardware functions to a software level – is one of the signature advancements of modern computing, allowing companies to consolidate their server footprints and increase the flexibility of their infrastructure. With virtualization, businesses can quickly create new virtual servers and move workloads from one physical location to another on a software level. As server virtualization becomes increasingly standard in the data center, companies are beginning to look at other forms of virtualization that can also be applied to increase flexibility, such as storage virtualization and network virtualization. With virtualization in all its forms becoming more important for managing a data center, companies are turning to managed services partners to help.

InformationWeek’s 2013 Virtualization Management Survey found that 72 percent of companies reported extensive use of server virtualization, and just 4 percent had no plans for use. In comparison, only 22 percent reported extensive use of storage virtualization, with 28 percent saying they had no plans for use, and a mere 11 percent reported extensive network virtualization, with 44 percent saying they had no plans for use. The main drivers for virtualization included operational flexibility and agility (56 percent) and business continuity (55 percent).

“Undoubtedly, a fully virtualized data operation offers many advantages,” ITBusinessEdge’s Arthur Cole wrote in a recent column. “Aside from the lower capital and operating costs, it will be much easier to support mobile communications, collaboration, social networking and many of the other trends that are driving the knowledge workforce to new levels of productivity.”

The evolving virtual data center
At the same time, Cole cautioned, much of the virtual technology that extends beyond server virtualization is still in its early phases. As a result, companies may encounter challenges as they look to enjoy the management benefits of abstracting elements of their data centers. A trusted data center partner can help businesses evaluate and implement emerging technologies, and even oversee transitions such as server virtualization and consolidation.

The standard for what counts as a virtualized data center is set to evolve in the coming years as more physical components are virtualized, and businesses will want to be at the cutting edge of whatever emerges. By outsourcing some infrastructure management tasks to a trusted third-party provider, they can ensure they are adopting these innovations even if they do not have the in-house technical expertise or capital to make the changes. To keep close tabs on the move toward the virtual data center, a managed services and IT consulting partnership is essential.

Data center construction increases, driven by demand for colocation services

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As more companies shift to an increasingly digital business model, the demand for colocation services is growing. In turn, data center construction is set to increase at a steady rate in the coming years, according to a recent study from Research and Markets. With new, state-of-the-art infrastructure coming online and the industry gravitating toward large-scale data center deployments, companies may want to reconsider how these trends can simplify their own IT strategies.

According to the Research and Markets study, the global data center construction market is set to grow at a compound annual rate of 21 percent through 2018. This trend is largely being driven by the increasing challenge of managing a data center as new demands in terms of efficient energy use, alternative power sources and industry regulations complicate the logistics of building and running an enterprise facility. Additionally, the growing complexity of network infrastructure is proving a challenge for many companies to handle internally, prompting them to look for outsourced solutions.

In addition to new construction, many existing facilities are also being forced to retrofit with new server, power and cooling equipment to absorb the challenges of the contemporary tech landscape, ITBusinessEdge's Arthur Cole noted in a recent column. The result is a change in the profile of the average data center.

"Going forward, infrastructure will be leaner and meaner, but the individual pieces will be more powerful and flexible," Cole wrote. "And the [data centers themselves] will be fewer in number, but much, much bigger."

Rather than try to weather these changes themselves, companies may find it expedient to embrace the trend toward colocation and instead look for a trusted third-party data center provider. With the right partner, companies can position themselves to transition smoothly into the future.

Recognize the business advantages of data colocation

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For many companies, it can be tempting to approach data storage in a fairly insular manner, keeping files on-premise so they can be easily accessed and IT can maintain absolute control. But businesses are increasingly jettisoning their expensive storage and server infrastructure in favor of switching to an outsourced colocation model. By making IT a fixed operational expenditure rather than a massive capital expenditure, companies can remain more flexible. Colocation data centers also provide numerous IT benefits in terms of disaster resilience and collaboration.

"Hosting your own infrastructure can require significant capital investment in real estate," IT executive James Carnie told ComputerWeekly in a recent feature about the merits of different spending models.

In addition to real estate costs, companies investing in their own infrastructure face massive hardware expenses, and they also must accurately anticipate future expansion to know how much equipment to buy during purchase cycles. Additionally, ownership includes the need to pay for their own ongoing maintenance, which leads to unexpected costs as companies deal with issues that arise. In contrast, a colocation model shifts businesses to a planning approach built around fixed monthly costs, IT executive Akshay Kalle wrote in a recent column for the Globe & Mail.

"Managed services models reduce the considerable costs of storage, upgrades, data recovery, converting big capital outlays and unpredictable maintenance costs in time and materials, into predictable monthly fees with clear expectations and guarantees," Kalle explained.

Colocation also simplifies the challenge of dealing with disasters by moving data off-site to a resilient facility, and, by centralizing business information, it enables easier audits, Kalle added. Centralization and virtualization also foster collaboration: By moving data to shared resources in a data center rather than letting it languish on desktops, companies can simplify file sharing and other collaborative processes among their employees.