I was happy to see that during the blackout Office 365 services for WitzEnd Computing and our clients who use Office 365, remained online. However, for some people the nearest cell phone tower was down and their internet was down so they weren’t able to access their new emails or SharePoint files on their phones or wireless mobile devices. My Verizon phone stayed online so I was able to access and respond to emails throughout the power outage. I talked to a few people who continued working through until 7 pm instead of sitting on the freeway. They had Verizon mobile cards and the majority of their data is in the cloud.

I suspect Blackouts in Southern California will be few and far between, so I’m not sure that’s the best reason to move to Office 365, although it’s not a bad reason. I noticed there was a run on Universal Power Supplies the next day. Most companies already have a UPS system for their onsite servers to protect against power sags, outages, surges and to safely shut the server down in the event of an extended outage (longer than 30 minutes). What a UPS can’t protect against is a server that is randomly shutdown and then doesn’t come back online correctly. We had a few that didn’t start correctly the next day, but we were able to get them all back online without issue. IT service providers, like WitzEnd Computing, usually recommend nightly server images, virtual backup images and online backups as a failsafe for an unexpected crash. These are all good ideas and required if you have the liability of an onsite Exchange or file server.

I think a better option, especially for Exchange, is to move your data to Microsoft’s Office 365 geo-redundant data centers. Here is Microsoft’s promise to their clients regarding uptime and security:

• Financially-backed, guaranteed 99.9% uptime Service Level Agreement (SLA)
• Always-up-to-date antivirus and anti-spam solutions to protect email
• Safeguarded data with geo-redundant, enterprise-grade reliability and disaster recovery with multiple datacenters and automatic failovers
• Best-of-breed data centers with SAS 70 and ISO 27001 certification

Even with this guarantee some of you may have heard about recent Office 365 outages. For our clients there were two of them recently. One was on September 8th from 8pm – 11:30pm and another one on August 18th from 11:30am to 2:40pm. After both incidents Microsoft sent us an email describing what happened and explaining that a 25% credit will be added to the next invoice.

We understand that any disruption in service may result in a disruption to your business. As a gesture of our commitment to ensuring the highest quality service experience Microsoft is proactively providing your organization a credit equal to 25% of your monthly invoice.

Here’s a link to the entire email at Technocliq.

I was willing to chalk the first outage up as “growing pains.” The next outage was disappointing, however my disappointed didn’t last long, when everything came back online and our Exchange data was all there. Both our clients and WitzEnd Computing had some emails sent to us bounce and for that we definitely deserve compensation. Microsoft sent the email about the credit on the same day, 8/18 for the 8/18 loss and on 9/12, after the weekend, for the 9/8 loss. I haven’t received any credits from Cox or SDG&E after the blackout yet.

Microsoft gained my trust by issuing the credit and bringing everything back online without data loss. Even with a few brief outages, I trust my Exchange and SharePoint data in their SAS 70, geo-redundant datacenters more than I believe in the reliability of an onsite Exchange server with a UPS.

Steve Fink
Systems Consultant
WitzEnd Computing

The cloud is the accumulation of world-wide data centers housing servers, running applications, which hold data that is accessible, usually securely, via the internet. The majority of us use the cloud every day when we access the internet. Here are some examples of the cloud, Facebook, Linked-in, Online banking, Twitter, Skype, Dropbox, Carbonite, Salesforce, Groupon, Google Docs, Icloud, Sky Drive, YouTube, Gmail, Hosted Exchange, Quickbooks Online, Gotomypc, Dynamics CRM Online and Office 365 to list a few.

When I talk to people about the cloud their first reaction is often fear of putting their data “up there.” This is understandable. Like your money, having it in your hands may seem like the safest place and unlike money putting it in the cloud doesn’t cause it to potentially grow (or shrink). So why put your data in the cloud?

#1 Because it’s Clustered

From an IT perspective, we ask the question from a different angle. You have data, where should you put it? The worst thing that could happen to your data is that you could lose it in a crash. Some of you may have already experienced this. On a server level this can mean tens of thousands of dollars in recovery fees and even at that it’s not guaranteed that your data can be retrieved.

So the obvious solution is to back up your data. Actually, that’s an old idea. It’s not invaluable to back it up but it’s better to have it mirrored or even better clustered. A backup can only restore your data to the latest successful backup, but if your data is mirrored or clustered across servers or even across datacenters, if one server or datacenter goes offline you’ll be able to continue to access your data, because the other server or datacenter holds a real-time mirror or copy of your data. When it works correctly, you won’t even notice that one of the possibly many server clusters or clustered datacenters is offline. Cloud applications like SharePoint Online and Exchange Online, include a recycle bin which allows you to retrieve data that was accidentally deleted.
If instead, you have your data on your computer’s hard drive and your computer crashes then you’re at the mercy of recovery or the last backup, which hopefully will work.

Cloud applications, like Exchange Online that include caching services allow you to continue working even while you’re offline. When you’re reconnected to the internet, the changes you made while you were offline synchronize back to the cluster servers. With caching, if, for some reason, a datacenter actually lost your data, you have it cached on your computer as an extra layer of backup.

#2 Because it’s more secure

In the San Jose datacenter, where we house our online backup service, we don’t even have a key to our server enclosures. We can’t get in the door without the front desk taking a photo of us and matching it against the photo on file. That’s just the first layer of authorization. Once we’re authorized they walk us down a variety of corridors past racks and racks of enclosures and then unlock the door to our enclosure and take the key. If I accidentally shut the door, I need another escort from the front desk to open it. All this is done under careful surveillance. This level of security coupled with multiple firewalls, authentication, encryption, gateway antivirus protection, strong passwords and 24/7 monitoring beats your home internet router or small business network security hands down.

#3 Because it’s accessible anytime, anywhere

Although there are many ways to access your computer remotely the bottleneck is your computer, if it’s off, you can’t access it. Even though cloud applications and servers have been known to go offline also, I believe that your home PC or Small Business server has a greater chance of going offline than clustered datacenters. Because clouds services are offered through the internet and aren’t dependent on any particular computer, you can access your cloud app from anywhere, on your phone, at the office, at home or at your friend’s home.

Where is the cloud at now?

Even though online services have been around for a long time, the cloud is still in its infancy. For that reason, I’m not necessarily recommending that small businesses move their entire infrastructure to the cloud now. I do recommend that small businesses make a thorough analysis of their infrastructure, especially before they upgrade to new software and servers and consider the benefits of moving to the cloud and the risks of keeping everything in house.

WitzEnd Computing’s OfficeAxsys team offers free Office 365 consultations and trials. Call 619-301-3501 to learn more about Office 365 and the cloud today.