Archive for the ‘Michael Emrich’ Category

Outsourced Hosting: SharePoint in the Cloud

September 22nd, 2011
Posted by: Michael Emrich

By Michael Emrich – Associate, Marketing & Sales.

Undoubtedly, cloud computing is the future. According to the “2010 IMB Tech Trends Survey” published in October 2010, 91% of 2,000 IT professionals surveyed across 87 countries expect that cloud computing will overtake on-premise computing as the primary means that organizations acquire IT over the next five years.

Cloud computing has emerged only within the last few years and is rapidly gaining acceptance by organizations of all sizes due to its inherent flexibility in both price and capacity. Cloud hosting providers essentially offer customers convenient, on-demand access to a shared pool of computing resources such as network connectivity, servers, storage, applications, servers, and more. These resources are rapidly provisioned with minimal management effort.

Cloud computing solves numerous technical problems that on-premise dedicated servers create. First, it removes the need for organizations to keep their own internal data centers, which require office space, power, cooling, bandwidth, high levels of maintenance, networks, servers, and storage – not to mention the applications that are run on them.

With cloud hosting, companies are placing their applications on servers that reside in fully staffed, purpose-built data centers; have redundant power supplies and internet connections and are fortified against an array of natural or man-made failures. This cannot easily be replicated in an on-premise environment. Cloud customers have anywhere-access to their data as long as they have a compatible device with an internet connection. In the end, the deployment model choice depends upon the organization and its unique requirements.

To read more about the cloud, check out AIS Network’s white paper here.

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SharePoint Hosting White Paper Rolling Out on Thursday

August 10th, 2011
Posted by: Michael Emrich

SharePoint White Paper

AIS Network has released a new white paper, "To Cloud or Not to Cloud: SharePoint 2010 Hosting Options...and Which One Is Right for You."

By Michael Emrich – Associate, Marketing & Sales

This Thursday will be a big day for AIS Network. Not only will it be the first day of SharePoint Saturday in Northern Virginia, an event we will be attending for the first time, but we will also be rolling out our first-ever white paper. Entitled, “To Cloud or Not to Cloud: SharePoint 2010 Hosting Options…and Which One is Right for You,” the white paper will serve as both a guide to SharePoint and its hosting and an in-depth analysis of the rapidly-growing cloud-based hosting platform for SharePoint.

The paper will serve as a guide to the many hosting options that SharePoint users have available to them. Some of the questions addressed in the paper include:

  • What are your SharePoint hosting options?
  • What are the pros and cons of each option?
  • In what situations would each be preferable?
  • What does each method need from you in order to work?

Selecting a hosting method needs to be a very educated decision, and this white paper is your text book.

The cloud-based hosting method will be discussed in great length, chronicling the explosive growth of hosting SharePoint in the cloud and what kind of options you’ll have available to you. The whole concept of cloud computing is still a relatively new one, so this white paper will hopefully educate you and clear up any misconceptions that you might have about the cloud.

So, if you’re going to be at SharePoint Saturday in Northern Virginia, stop by Booth #419 and pick up a copy. Or, if you’re more interested in an electronic copy, keep an eye out for the white paper’s pdf release on the company Web site.

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Need SharePoint, but Do Not Need a High Level of Flexibility? Microsoft Now Has You Covered.

June 28th, 2011
Posted by: Michael Emrich

By Michael Emrich – Associate, Marketing & Sales

Today, Microsoft is rolling out its latest service package, Office 365. In what is essentially Microsoft’s follow-up to its Business Productivity Online Services lineup, Microsoft is now offering, in the cloud, its lineup of desktop applications and server products in one virtual box. One of the more prominent offerings in this package is SharePoint 2010. With Office 365, businesses now have the opportunity to purchase an out-of-the-box version of SharePoint, ready to go – without having to shoulder the capital expenditures of hosting SharePoint themselves.

This is great news for lower-level SharePoint users – the ones who just need a basic version of it for their needs. Not much customization or personalization, just the basic meat and potatoes of SharePoint. Office 365’s SharePoint-powered web apps allow you to collaborate on the creation of documents in real-time over the Internet, access SharePoint on your mobile device, and ensures a consistent format that guarantees documents will be readable on any computer and any edition of Microsoft Office. Those abilities will improve both the effectiveness and efficiency of content creation.

However, for the high-end SharePoint users who need SharePoint tailored to them like a fine Italian suit, Office 365’s offering is just too constricted to meet their highly-dynamic and fluid needs. That’s where SharePoint Foundation and SharePoint Server add significant value and flexibility, whether you choose to host it yourself or contract with a SharePoint hosting services provider.  While self-hosting may seem attractive initially, the high capital expenditures associated with it make the use of third party companies an extremely appealing option.

Ultimately, SharePoint hosting depends on the need of the business. Office 365 is very convenient if just a basic level SharePoint platform is needed and you don’t mind writing a monthly check to Microsoft.  Self-hosting may be ideal if you’re set up for “build-it-yourself” — which is to say you’ve already invested in an IT infrastructure, training and staff, and have limited scalability requirements. In between, however, is SharePoint hosting outsourced to a third party, which preserves your capital dollars and keeps your infrastructure costs variable.  It also allows you to customize to the hilt, scale rapidly, and sleep well knowing that your servers are in a secure data center with 24x7x365 oversight.  Plus, you get access to significant resources, namely a talented staff of SharePoint hosting experts.

So, with self-hosting and Microsoft Office 365 available, you’ll find a good fit if your flexibility needs are at either of the extremes on the flexibility spectrum. However, for those who find themselves in between two extremes, hosted SharePoint Foundation and SharePoint Server are still the perfect match.

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