Life on Mars

On a clear night you can look up into the sky and see a little red planet — the ninth from the sun — called Mars.  Somewhere up there, are two explorer machines, called rovers, sent up by NASA.

Unless you work for NASA (or you have a really, really powerful telescope that the rest of the world needs to know about), you can’t see the rovers.   Nor will you see that the space agency is now using Amazon Web Services to power the vehicles — that is, to run custom software to plan the rovers’ daily activities.

How cool! The cloud comes to Mars.

An article I read said NASA’s The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which developed the software (called Maestro), was motivated to move to the cloud because of the cloud’s pay-as-you-go structure.

Another factor was the success that other NASA departments have had experimenting with using the cloud. For example, NASA has developed its own internal cloud, Nebula, and will soon make the platform available for all federal agencies to use via its NASA Cloud Services.

I found it kind of ironic reading about NASA’s rover project and its embrace of the cloud. Ironic meaning that there seems to be less reticence about using the cloud in outer space than there sometimes is on earth.

The other thought I had was that for such an important application, I  hope that NASA is using some sort of  method to monitor the performance of its cloud provider!

We’ve been hard at work adding commonly requested features to Monitis. These most recent updates include enhanced notification, reporting, and API features.
1. URL Callback – Until now you could add an email address, phone number or IM screen name to receive alerts. Now you can provide a custom callback URL which will be called when there are failures. You can analyze the alert on your side or make it interface with your ticketing system.

2. Outage Reports – A single view that shows all your downtimes during within a specified interval. It basically shows the hourly status of a monitor in any time period. Very useful. It can be added at Add Report->Outage Report.

3. Data export – Now you can export data from Transaction and Full Page monitors in CSV and PDF formats. Simply go into the settings view for the corresponding monitor by clicking the pen icon, select the format and click Export.

4. Search in tab menu – If you have many tabs in your account, you can now easily search for them instead of sifting through all of them to find one.

5. Tweet your uptime – If you’ve got it, flaunt it. Wise words. Now you can share your site’s daily or weekly uptime performance in Twitter by clicking the ‘t’ icon in the header of your monitor.

6. Snapshots for internal Ping and HTTP – See the current status of all you internal pings and HTTP tests in a single view. Add them from Snapshot menu.

7. At least option changes – Until now you could receive alerts when all locations failed or at least 1. Now you can specify the minimum number of locations to be failed in order to receive alerts, e.g. at least 3 or 5.

8. Basic Authentication support – You can check the content of web pages that are behind basic authentication. Simply enable content matching and basic authentication options will appear when adding a new external monitor.

9. Monitis API – The API has been improved with more read and write functionality and and improved documentation.

To take full advantage of these features sign up for a free trial of Monitis.

Korea Ambitiously Builds Cloud Infrastructure

It’s clear that governments around the world are not going to be content with providing and keeping safe public computing infrastructures based on old-fashioned ideas and methods.

Did you know, for example, that Korea (South, that is), has a “Smart Work” initiative going that aims to create a networked work environment that allows people to conduct tasks from anywhere, at anytime and through any device? Looks like this could be an opportunity-maker for cloud providers, no?

According to the plan, as mentioned in an article in The Korea Times, the government aims to have about one-third of public employees work from home or nearby “Smart Work” centers — in about five year’s time. They’ll use laptops, smartphones and other mobile web devices. The government’s goals? to boost productivity and minimize carbon emissions.

The need for cloud computing solutions are heating up all around Asia, and much of the demand is expected to come from governments. But both small and large companies, too, are keenly interested in the cloud. And one thing that makes them more comfortable about taking data off their internal servers and putting it on the cloud is the ability to monitor the performance of cloud platforms 24/7.

Increasingly, I’ve been seeing companies go for it, but also taking the very prudent move to make sure their investment is safe through monitoring. For more information on the benefits of monitoring, visit: Monitis.

Looks like the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), America’s space agency, is getting behind the idea of using the Cloud as a data center management tool.

This makes perfect sense to me. I’m in the business of using the cloud to monitor companies’ servers, networks and apps. But I am not in the telecommunications business. For that, I subscribe to phone services. Likewise, isn’t NASA in the business of sending probes, satellites and other craft up into the universe? They’re not in the data management business, although you’d think they were (right now NASA spends $1 billion per year on IT infrastructure).

Yet, in an article that I read in ComputerWorld, NASA’s CTO Chris Kemp talked about how the agency has developed cloud computing technology that it aims to commercialize. After creating its own cloud platform, Nebula, and made it open-source under an Apache 2.0 license, NASA got together with hosting provider Rackspace and developed OpenStack.  NASA’s Nebula cloud software management stack is now part of the OpenStack technology.

“This furthers our objective of having off-the-shelf products that meet our requirements — less custom development [and] less proprietary systems,” said Kemp, in the article.  Over the next 10 to 20 years, NASA — which is not now officially using any public cloud services — plans to increase its reliance from internal servers to cloud technology.

Kemp also said that NASA’s “mandate is to commercialize technology,” referring to Nebula’s link to the OpenStack technology. “That could be one of the most important pieces of technology that NASA has commercialized in a long time,” he said, in the article.

So, perhaps, someday, “made by NASA” will be as ubiquitous in cloud services as the motionless flag on the moon that was planted by NASA astronauts all those years ago.

San Jose, CA – October 20, 2010 – Monitis, the leading provider of the world’s first Cloud-based network and application monitoring suite, today announced a significant new product launch – the Monitis Logs, on-demand system events log monitoring and analysis service. Monitis Logs enables IT managers and system administrators to be alerted when critical issues arise during the course of standard system and application level processes.

Monitis Logs is a web-based, real-time universal log analyzer which can collect, analyze and report any type of log files:

• event logs from distributed Windows machines,
• system logs from distributed Unix machines,
• routers, switches, and other network devices,
• application logs from Apache and IIS web server,
• FTP servers,
• MS SQL and Oracle database servers,
• DHCP servers.

Monitis Logs is highly customizable, enabling IT managers and system administrators to centrally manage notifications for events that are important to them.

At present, there is no comparable system on the market that can monitor each and every aspect of application and network performance from the Cloud.

Monitis Logs helps monitor threats to the enterprise IT resources and tightens security policies in the enterprise. Thus, it helps organizations comply with various regulations such as Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), and Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI), as well as archives logs for the purpose of network auditing and forensic analysis.

Monitis Logs’ on-demand log analyzer service also reduces system downtime, and increases network performance in the enterprise in a cost efficient way. It greatly improves visibility and saves hours of work for system administrators to troubleshoot problems on servers, applications, and the network.

Monitis Logs utilizes Syslog-ng and Rsyslog – the most widely-used open source tools for aggregating logs from multiple sources. They are already deployed in many server environments to consolidate logs across multiple machines on a LAN. In order to deal with massive amount of data, Monitis Logs uses a Casandra database, a highly scalable second-generation distributed database used by companies like Facebook, Twitter, Rackspace, and Digg.

With Monitis Logs, you can collect logs from any number of Syslog-ng or Rsyslog instances. “The benefits are clear.” Said Monitis Founder and CEO, Hovhannes Avoyan, “You already have tons of installed application and servers that you need to keep running and up-to-date. So why install more just for network management and why provision new costly servers. Take advantage of what you already have to consolidate and manage all of your logs from the Cloud! Talk about saving time!”

About Monitis All-in-One Monitoring Platform

Monitis is the only service that provides Systems Monitoring from the Cloud.  It is leading a new era of systems management tools – the Cloud generation.  Monitis is a 100% Cloud-based, complete, and flexible IT monitoring solution, offered on a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model.

Monitis consolidates back-end monitoring, application monitoring, website monitoring, and cloud monitoring in an all-in-one, hosted monitoring service. The platform is easily customizable and may be used for managing of all kinds of IT assets such as websites, servers, routers, switches, VoIP devices, DNS, databases, processes and any other IP devices.  Monitis provides users with a comprehensive view of their system’s health and performance.

About Monitis

Monitis believes that the Cloud is the biggest thing to happen in IT management since IT management. Having seen this vision early, Monitis is now the global leader in developing this market.  It is the first affordable network and systems monitoring solution based 100% in the Cloud.

Besides Monitis’ enthusiastic and loyal user base of 50,000 customers from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies to government agencies and educational institutions, Monitis has won rave reviews from the technology analyst community. These accolades include:

• Being named as the “Most Innovative Start-Up for 2009″ by industry analyst The 451 Group at their annual client conference in December 2009.
• Being ranked among the 2010 OnDemand 100 in April 2010. The OnDemand 100 is a ranking by Morgan Stanley, KPMG, and AlwaysOn of the world’s top 100 private companies.

Headquartered in San Jose, CA, Monitis is lead by a team of IT professionals with deep experience running enterprise-grade IT businesses, as well as starting and selling several IT start-ups.  Using a global workforce, particularly its R&D team based in Yerevan, Armenia, Monitis is poised to move from strength to strength.  At present, it has a loyal and enthusiastic user community of 50,000, and an average month-on-month growth of over 10%.

Contact:

Monitis Inc.

Sales & Marketing Department

info@monitis.com

http://www.monitis.com

US & Canada Toll Free: +1-800-657-7949

UK + International: +44-845-527-3346

France + International: +33-48-607-9035

2880 Zanker Road Suite 203

San Jose, CA-95134

USA

Amid the daily news about the Cloud industry, comes one headline with potentially huge ramifications: Japan’s NEC will enter into a joint venture with China’s giant IT outsourcing provider, Neusoft, and offer cloud computing services in China. Not only is it NEC’s first move to offer services outside its home base, but the venture is inspiring hope among other outsourcing vendors that China will become a large market for them, as well.

NEC is by no means alone in China. IBM has about a 6%  market share there, followed by lesser-ranked providers HP, Digital China, network equipment provider Huawei in China and global services firm Accenture. Neusoft ranked 7th.

According to an article in the Financial Times, NEC expects cloud computing in China to grow to $2.3bn by 2012, growing at an average pace of 30% each year. And analysts IDC said that the Chinese IT services market had revenues of $10.6bn in 2009 and will grow to $20.6bn in 2014.

Not only is cloud computing activity heating up in China, but we at Monitis are seeing incredible demand for 100% cloud-based monitoring all over Asia, as companies there increasingly migrate to cloud-hosted data storage and apps.   In fact, we just deployed another monitoring node (in addition to one we already have in China) in the region — this time in Singapore. The new node will

Singapore Skyline

be managed by Singapore-based En Technologies (www.en.com.sg).  Along with a new node we recently added in Spain, this brings to 12 the number of Monitis monitoring nodes available worldwide. And, of course, Monitis enables IT managers to create nodes from custom locations of their choosing.

Why are these global nodes so important? We’re unique in the industry because each of our 12 nodes monitors a client’s website every 60 seconds. That sets us apart from the competition, which typically only monitor once a minute from a single, individual location (not from all their nodes).  You could sign up with a monitoring service that offers more nodes, say, 100, but in reality that only means each one is activated once every 100 minutes. That’s just too much time to let go by before monitoring.

If you have a lot of customers in Asia or you’re thinking of expanding there, take the growth ride along with Monitis as your IT partner!

I came across an article about cloud computing and virtualization that was like a shot in the arm, and should be a sharp message to enterprises considering adopting cloud computing — or virtualization…but not necessarily both.

If that sounds confusing, so is the perception among many about what virtualization and cloud computing actually mean, according to the blog writer.

R Chandras

In a recent news story from Reuters, a major media outlet, virtualization and cloud computing are linked together. The story said: “International Business Machines Corp has been expanding its services business, as have other rivals like Hewlett-Packard Co and Oracle Corp. Such companies have also been stepping up investment in cloud computing, or “virtualization,” a technology that enables users to access data and software over the Internet and corporate networks.”

Yes, virtualization and cloud computing are related — but they’re entirely different concepts. There’s a word to explain virtualization, and that is: simulation. Virtualization — whether it be of memory, storage, OS services or anything else — is request fulfillment simulated to behave like real. Since the premier benefit of virtualization is to do more yet save on costs, “several make-believes can be produced from one “real,” according to the piece I read.

I like the way that was put.

But cloud computing is entirely a different animal. It’s literally computing over the Internet. Whether you’re talking about apps, databases, data feeds or anything else, they’re typically dispersed across the web and made available in the form of services. Those services can then be virtualized. I also like the notion that the cloud enables us to do more (not just with fewer resources, but more just by the very nature of the technology).

Despite the differences, one of the great things out there for companies using both virtualization and the cloud is that there are miracle services, such as 24/7 monitoring, that can help enterprises manage both. For example, Monitis’s independent cloud platform monitoring can keep you notified when your provider is falling back on your service level agreement. Perhaps your provider isn’t quite objective enough to give you accurate reports on uptime and downtime?

For companies using virtualized services, Monitis offers automation such as continual monitoring of virtualized servers.

Check us out at Monitis.

I read in a new survey of small business owners that they’re not very confident about an economic recovery and that considerable numbers are going to be exercising fiscally conservative strategies to get through expected tough times. For example, 62% see the current state of the U.S. economy as “poor,” while an equal number believe the economy is getting worse.  What’s more, over half are experiencing cash flow issues and about the same number expect to decrease business development spending over the next six months.

Source: Discover Card

What struck me most when reading these survey results was how small businesses are stuck between that proverbial rock and hard place. Yeah, they want to grow and be prosperous, but the resources just aren’t there to fund the growth.

Well, in at least one area of small business operations, IT, the beautiful thing about the cloud is that it allows you to avoid spending tons of internal resources for computing needs because, if it’s a public cloud,  there are multiple tenants to share costs.  And small businesses pay for whatever data storage or app usage they use — nothing more. And when it comes to monitoring the website that you put on the cloud, there are very low-cost solutions, too. Take the free tools offered by Mon.itor.us. To name a few, there’s external monitoring (websites and network devices), internal monitoring (CPU, memory, hard disk, and Intranet) and web load testing (making sure your site can handle an attack before it happens).

If you’re a small business and funds are tight, you can still make sure your public face, meaning your website, is running smoothly and, if not, learn about it quickly via notifications — in time to take action.  It doesn’t have to cost much.

I’ve been writing a lot lately about schools taking up cloud computing and virtual technology to save money, produce new efficiencies and boost services to students.  It’s remarkable to me how the pace of migration is picking up, and so I thought I’d add another note to the list of schools migrating.

Seems the University of North Texas Dallas — with some ambitious 10-year growth plans in mind (It wants to educate 30,000 students by then from the current 3,000) — has begun investing in the development of a data center to support a virtual desktop environment running Pano Logic gear.

Without getting into too much detail, the devices, which resemble small boxes, work like this: they connect peripheral devices operated by the user–such as the keyboard, mouse, display, and audio–to a virtualized Windows desktop that runs on a server in the school’s data center. A hypervisor hosts drivers and the operating system for those users, and that taps into the server’s memory, processors, and storage.

It costs the university about $1,000 each for new computers, and the school’s decision to move to virtual desktops has allowed IT there to redirect funds to bolster the data center. With the money it would have spent on desktops, the school deployed a storage area network and licensed 300 Pano Logic seats at $300 each for an equal number of virtual desktops.

One neat thing about the new setup that I read about is that the school will build digital kiosks running virtual desktops around campus and sees itself outfitting small collaboration rooms with the software and other hardware for team projects.

As I’ve said many times in this blog, virtualization and/or the cloud is a blessing for organizations, especially schools, looking to grow — yet save.  But you’ve got to have the right tool in place, such as 100% cloud-based monitoring of servers, to keep an eye on performance, track issues and then receive good information via notifications that will help you prevent disasters. Then you can pretty much guarantee better service to students and faculty and save money, too.

Pro-Clouders to Debate with Skeptics

Know any cloud skeptics in your circle of friends and professional associates that would be okay with sharing their views with the world?

Cloud expert and fellow blogger Phil Wainewright is staging something called the “Summer Slam 2010,” a webcast in which organizer Appirio, a cloud integrator, Wainewright and others will debate  the future of the public cloud. Some questions they’ll consider: “Will companies move 100% to the public cloud?  How will companies handle SaaS silos? Are hybrid cloud environments the end game? What is the public cloud’s biggest limitation to widespread adoption?”

This event is a follow-up to Waineright’s Forecasting Fisticuffs webinar that was held last January and was apparently a huge success, as 2,000 people either attended or listened to the webinar replay. But what Waineright and his buddies are looking for is someone who is a complete skeptic on the promise of the cloud and what it can deliver in terms of revolutionary efficiencies and savings to businesses of all sizes. Do you know someone like that? Well, they’re invited to participate in the webinar debate — which will take place Thursday, Aug. 19th at 10 am Pacific time. Hurry, though, nominations for the biggest cloud skeptic in your life will only be accepted until this Friday, August 8th. Send your nomination via Twitter (Tweet about it using the hashtag #SSLAM2010 or post to Appirio’s Facebook page.

You can also use this link to register for the webinar.

Personally, I’m definitely going to try to attend this, or at least watch the replay. Because, as you can probably guess what I’m about to say: I am surely a cloud enthusiast…not a skeptic, having seen my cloud-based monitoring business take off in leaps and bounds, and listening to the growing din of enthusiasm of my client base for moving apps and data onto the cloud — not just to save money but also (for smaller clients) to gain greater IT resources than they could ever leverage themselves. So, I’m anxious to hear the latest negative viewpoints and dark visions.

Frankly, this optimism among my client base is one of the reasons we keep innovating and enhancing our monitoring tools.  For example, Monitis just now this week is rolling out new video tutorials to guide users through setting up each type of monitor. The videos are located under the Resources tab of our homepage.  One of the videos is for Full Page Load monitoring, which has been a huge hit since we added it to our services a few weeks ago. It allows users to analyze how objects in their webpage are loading in real browsers in different parts of the world and identify bottlenecks. This is an extremely important measure for understanding user experience, as studies have shown that even a slight lag in load time can cause a noticeable drop in viewership and sales.

So, if cloud-based services, such as full-page load monitoring, can help companies reduce leakage in viewership and sales, and we can prove it, I find it hard to swallow skepticism about that!