Cloud – Jacobs and Company B.I.T.S.

IaaS stands for Infrastructure as a Service, which is a fancy way of saying your servers are being stored and run by some host off-site. Microsoft has been running full steam ahead into the cloud and shows no signs of stopping. Azure is a platform Microsoft is building a set of hosted services on similar to the Amazon Web Services that run in Microsoft datacenters, which are some of the top datacenters in the world. Azure includes web site hosting, Virtual Machine hosting, SQL Server database hosting, Virtual Networks and VPN, and the new Windows Azure Active Directory. All of these services are accessible 24/7 from the internet and backed up and maintained by engineers at Microsoft’s data centers.

Azure services integrate with on-site Active Directory databases in order to allow administrators to manage services and access in one place. The new Azure Active Directory is not a replacement for having a server for log in in your office. It is designed so that applications and services built within the Azure infrastructure as well as other 3rd party cloud services can authenticate users with a single-sign-on that is integrated with users Windows logon. Azure can be used to build or install enterprise applications to the cloud so users can access business data and services from anywhere, while reducing the overall cost in support and maintenance over having it all onsite. Azure can be used to backup virtual machines and run them in the event of a disaster. Azure can be used to store backup files off-site and restore from those backups. Virtual machines can be spun up in a matter of minutes and backups restored to these virtual machines in the event of a disaster. Azure allows companies to create secure virtual networks for applications and connect them to their onsite networks via VPN. SQL databases can be created directly on the Azure platform and accessed via an application built on Azure services.

All of these services are considered infrastructure because solutions can be built on them. This technology is great and opens up doors to some fantastic cost savings and innovation; however, if you are thinking of moving your entire network out to Microsoft’s cloud we just aren’t there yet. Today, most of what Azure does is geared towards developers; however, as more of the pieces fall into place products built using Azure services will be available to just drop in to fill the needs of businesses with minimal IT required. The IaaS over the Internet, Azure in particular, is not quite ready for businesses to move in fulltime yet, but based on what I have been reading and what vendors like Microsoft, Apple, and Cisco are saying the move is right around the corner…so get ready.

Microsoft Office got an upgrade in January — Office 2013. To say that Microsoft has its “head in the clouds” is an understatement. The new cloud-connected, cloud-delivered, cloud-centric Office is a testament to Microsoft’s dedication to moving to the cloud. Available right now, Microsoft Office 365 Home Premium is all about the cloud. This new Office is a subscription-based service, available to home users for $9.99/month or $99.00/year. In addition to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, the subscription gives users access to Outlook, OneNote, Publisher, and Access. Microsoft throws in free with the subscription an extra 20GB of cloud storage on their SkyDrive service and 60 Skype world minutes a month. Because the Home Premium subscription is a site license, you can install office on up to 5 PCs or Macs.

What makes this new version of Office so “in the cloud?” All of the documents you create default to being stored on your SkyDrive in the cloud. The latest updates to the applications, which are expected to roll out several times a year now, are available for subscribers to install as soon as they are released, so you always have the latest version. Not using one of the 5 computers covered by the subscription? Don’t worry! All of the Microsoft Office apps can be “streamed” to the computer you are using, and when you are done automatically removed, leaving almost no trace of their ever being on the system. You can also choose to use more fully-featured Office web apps directly in your browser. There are a lot of features missing from the web apps; however, new features are being added and updated all the time, allowing you to work fully in the cloud.

Also available is a subscription for college and university students, faculty, and staff. The subscription is only $79.99 for 4 years of use and allows you to install the applications on 2 PCs or Macs. Besides these 2 differences, the University subscription has the same features as the Home Premium subscription.

Students and home users are not the only ones to get a new Office subscription service. On February 27, the Office Small Business Premium subscription will be made available. This subscription gives users access to several apps and services not available to the home and educational users. Small Business Premium adds Microsoft Lync and InfoPath, as well as video conferencing, online document sharing, shared calendars, 25GB of email storage, 10GB of shared document storage, and 500MB of personal storage per user. The Small Business Premium Subscription also differs from the Home and University subscriptions in that it is a per user subscription, so for each user in your business it will cost either $12.50 per month or $149.99 annually per user.

Not interested in jumping on one of Microsoft’s new subscriptions? Microsoft has also released perpetual license versions of their Office suites and individual applications. These perpetual licenses are what we are used to seeing and buying preinstalled on our computers; however, they do not benefit from many of the extra cloud features or services associated with the new subscriptions. My guess is that over a relatively short period of time, Microsoft will begin retiring these perpetual licenses and in a few years the only choice will be one of their cloud subscriptions for Office. Personally, I think this is the way to go though I do look to Microsoft to reduce the cost of the Home Premium subscription just a little more before it becomes as attractive to home users as this model is to large corporations.