So I haven't posted for way too long due to a massive new initiative which I have been involved in, namely setting up a hosting solution provider called VirtualBox. This has been a very enlightening experience in terms of many new skills which I have learnt and a much deeper understanding of the products I worked with. So as a personal outcome from that investment I have written a series on what I have learnt.
This series is kinda different from my normal blog posts, for a number of reasons. Firstly this is one of the few times I have written the posts out long before posting them (normally I post as I think). This has given me the chance to re-read them and change them so hopefully the quality of this is higher (as a side I used Microsoft OneNote to write this). The length of each post in this series is also MUCH longer than my normal (average of 450 words per post) and lastly this is one of the few times I actually blog about what I doing at work and mention some of the exact products, customers and technologies I am involved with. The reason for this is not because normally I am not proud of what I do or who I do it with, but because I like to keep things separate, but this time I am so excited (kid on xmas eve type) that I really can't not share what has been accomplished by the small team who I feel privileged to work with on this.
Firstly what is a hosting solution provider? Well traditionally when you have wanted an application, like Microsoft Exchange you would go out buy a server, buy the licenses, get an IT Pro in to do the install and configuration. Well a hosting solution provider (HSP) changes the entire game by removing the buying from the traditional way. So you want Microsoft Exchange and you have it, instantly!
Why would anyone go this route? Well there is a couple of benefits for anyone such as turn around time of minutes from needing it to having it ready, getting proven systems in place from day one or having a guide on how your environment is setup which means as you bring on staff you just give them the guide and in a few days of reading and asking questions (and lots of googling) they have a wealth of understanding of the environment from the package (better yet if you can afford a few lab machines and run Hyper-V or Virtual Server they could even do the deployment of the environment to really understand it). But if you are a point haired boss type there is one very important business factor... MONEY.
So for the SME market the significant cost benefits come from them as paying for only what you consume. Licensing for Exchange for instance lets you purchase mail boxes with no support for calendars or tasks (i.e. Just mail) if that's all you need for just a few dollars per month. The HSP also will invest far more in hardware and staff thus providing faster, bigger, better (insert your favourite positive adjective here) that what the SME company could get themselves.
For the enterprise customer an HSP can be a very different route in that it allows an IT dept to move away from the traditional model and allows them to set themselves up as an HSP for the rest of the business. This means that they can lower cost of licensing, properly manage budgets between them and other departments, react quicker to business needs, and lastly once they have moved through the life cycle of setting this could actually allow them to start to offer the services outside the business allowing them to stop being a cost centre and start to become a revenue centre.
That's enough from me sounding like a business expert, so what can you expect in the series coming up? Well we will next tackle the overviews of the system, and then start to dive into some of the cooler technologies.
Robert MacLean
2 June 2008