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Azure Backup:
Simple and reliable cloud integrated backup as a service
What is Azure Backup?
Azure Backup is a simple and cost-effective backup-as-a-service solution that extends tried-and-trusted tools on-premises with rich and powerful tools in the cloud. It delivers protection for customers’ data no matter where it resides: in the enterprise data center, in remote and branch offices, or in the public cloud; while being sensitive to the unique requirements these scenarios pose. Azure Backup, now in a seamless portal experience with Azure Site Recovery, offers minimal maintenance and cost-efficiency, consistent tools for offsite backups and operational recovery, and unified application availability and data protection.
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Unified solution to protect data on-premises and in the cloud
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99.9% availability guaranteed
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Reliable offsite backup target
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Efficient incremental backups
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Secure—data is encrypted in transit and at rest
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Geo-replicated backup store
Protect your critical assets wherever they are
Your data and applications are everywhere—on servers, clients, and in the cloud. Backup can protect your critical applications, including SharePoint, Exchange, and SQL Server; files and folders; Windows servers and clients; and Azure infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) virtual machines.
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Compelling cloud-based backup alternative to tape
Due to business or compliance requirements, organizations are required to protect their data for years, and over time this data grows exponentially. Traditionally, tape has been used for long-term retention. Backup provides a compelling alternative to tape with significant cost savings, shorter recovery times, and up to 99 years of retention.
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Secure and reliable backup as a service
Your backup data is secure over the wire and at rest. The backup data is stored in geo-replicated storage which maintains 6 copies of your data across two Azure datacenters. With 99.9% service availability, Backup provides operational peace of mind.
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Efficient and flexible online backup services
Backup is efficient over the network and on your disk. Once the initial seeding is complete, only incremental changes are sent at a defined frequency. Built-in features, such as compression, encryption, longer retention, and bandwidth throttling, help boost IT efficiency.
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Managed Solution is a full-service technology firm that empowers business by delivering, maintaining and forecasting the technologies they’ll need to stay competitive in their market place. Founded in 2002, the company quickly grew into a market leader and is recognized as one of the fastest growing IT Companies in Southern California.
We specialize in providing full Microsoft solutions to businesses of every size, industry, and need.
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Case Study: UniKey
“I’ve never been a fan of traditional keys,” says UniKey founder Dumas, an electrical engineer with a background in biometrics security. “Keys literally, in their current form, have more or less been around for 1,100 years, and I just felt a passion for unlocking things in new and unique ways.”
In April, UniKey raised $10 million in a Series A round of venture capital funding to propel additional products to market. That was nearly two years after UniKey and its first residential lock partner, Kwikset, launched Kevo. Kevo is a secure, one-step, Bluetooth-enabled smart lock, now available for resale in five countries.
“That one step is touching your door, which is about as simple as it gets,” says Dumas.
BizSpark helped UniKey save money in its early days, and now Azure is helping UniKey expand into new markets. The company uses Azure Cloud Services, Service Bus, Redis and Linux Virtual Machines, which hosts UniKey’s Ruby on Rails MyKevo.com site.
“Microsoft Azure affords UniKey the information and flexibility to immediately respond to ever-growing customer demand,” says Dumas.
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Autry Museum improves support, reduces costs with cloud solutions
If you’re fascinated by the American West, you can’t do better than a visit to Autry Museum. Through exhibitions, lectures, events, film, research and educational outreach programs, the Autry tells the stories of the diverse people, art, history and cultures of the region.
The Autry welcomes more than 200,000 visitors each year to its three sites in and around Los Angeles, a main campus in Griffith Park, the historic Southwest Museum in Mt. Washington, and a research and education facility in Burbank. When Autry staff work to manage exhibitions, special events or outreach programs, they need mobile tools to coordinate efforts across museum facilities.
“With public events throughout our campuses, we rely heavily on laptops, tablets and smartphones,” says Maren Dougherty, director of Communications and Marketing at the Autry Museum.
Prior to deploying Office 365 in 2014, the organization had been using Microsoft Office, and employees liked the Microsoft Outlook on the web app for email. But they couldn’t download attachments, share calendars or reserve campus event space easily on their mobile devices, which made it harder to coordinate events efficiently or collaborate on the fly. At the same time, the museum’s on-premises Microsoft Exchange Server was costing more to maintain while limiting inbox capacity—and staff productivity.
The right tools for the job
To provide museumgoers with the best possible experience, enhance employee collaboration and reduce IT maintenance, the Autry initially compared cloud-based Office 365 and Google Apps, ultimately deciding on Office 365. “We chose Office 365 for consistency, but also because employees use it to search and sort information in a variety of ways that are very useful for organizing their work,” says Rebecca Menendez, director of Information Services and Technology at Autry Museum.
In November 2014, the Autry IT team migrated 130 staff email accounts to Office 365. They started on Friday and completed the move by the time employees returned to work on Monday morning. “The transition was so smooth that I think a lot of people barely noticed the difference,” says Dougherty.
A mobile-productivity roundup
Since the Autry adopted Office 365, more staff have been responding to email, retrieving attachments, scheduling meetings and managing their calendars remotely. “Once we got to Office 365, everyone was thrilled to see that the calendars work seamlessly on mobile devices,” says Menendez.
Now employees can maintain their productivity whether they’re on the main museum campus, staffing special events or working from off-campus locations. They use Office 365 calendar features to help manage events and venue rentals, designate event rooms and assign permissions so users can view the calendar and make reservations. “It is much easier now to set up remotely with an outside table and a couple of laptops,” says Dougherty. “Employees just send an email to add people to the guest list.”
Using OneDrive for Business for file storage and Skype for Business Online for calls and teleconferencing, Autry employees can communicate more easily, from sharing files with colleagues to responding to press requests for high-resolution images. “Sending files was difficult for my team because it took a lot of time,” says Dougherty. “Now we don’t have those kinds of restrictions.”
Fewer headaches, better collaboration, easier growth
With Office 365, the Autry IT team no longer suffers the headaches of server maintenance and email support, and the museum is saving 85 percent in monthly IT maintenance costs. “Anytime I can take money away from back-end administrative costs to put toward the way we communicate, it’s a real positive for the organization as a whole,” says Menendez.
Transitioning to Office 365 has helped the Autry increase mobile productivity, improve collaboration and reduce IT costs. The museum is now better equipped to meet the needs of visitors—and continue to grow.
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Microsoft's Solair acquisition could expand its IoT services
By Blair Hanley Frank as written on infoworld.com
Microsoft dove deeper into Internet of things technology with the acquisition of Solair, an Italian company that operates a cloud-based IoT platform.
According to a Microsoft blog post, Solair's technology will be used to upgrade the company's Azure IoT Suite, a collection of cloud services meant to help companies use the Internet of Things.
Microsoft and Solair didn't disclose the financial terms of their deal.
Solair's technology, which already uses Microsoft's Azure cloud services, offers IoT services focused on a variety of markets, including home automation, smart metering, remote maintenance and inventory management.
Microsoft didn't say specifically what it will get out of Solair's technology, but it promised to release more details on the integration of the two companies later.
Microsoft acquired Solair for its technology, not its customer base, MachNation analyst Dima Tokar wrote in a commentary. Sam George, the partner director for Azure IoT, said in a blog post that Microsoft is excited about the technology and talent that will come with the acquisition.
Azure is a key part of Microsoft's corporate strategy. The company is betting big on getting more customers to use its cloud offerings, and acquisitions like this one are aimed at getting more companies to buy into the Azure ecosystem, especially for new workloads like those driven by IoT.
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Dell and Microsoft announce 'Azure in a box' for $9,000 a month at Dell World
By James Niccolai as written on pcworld.com
Dell and Microsoft have teamed up to sell a converged system that combines servers, storage and software in an integrated box which they say can connect easily to Microsoft's Azure cloud services.Called the Cloud Platform System Standard, it's aimed at customers building out a hybrid cloud environment, one in which on-premises equipment is linked to the public cloud for services like backup and recovery, or to provide more compute and storage capacity when it's needed.It's a model most of the big IT vendors are pushing, including Hewlett-Packard, Cisco and Oracle. Dell and Microsoft claim their system is different because it runs basically the same software stack that Microsoft uses in its public cloud, making it easy for the on-premises and cloud components to work together, although that's a claim Oracle is making too.
Cloud Platform System Standard is actually a smaller version of a similar product the companies introduced a year ago, called Cloud Platform System Premium. But while the first product occupied basically an entire server rack, with a minimum buy-in of 32 compute nodes, the standard edition starts with four nodes, scaling to a maximum of 16.
That lowers the entry point and makes it feasible for smaller companies to deploy, and Dell says it's come up with a novel subscription pricing model to reduce the investment risk for companies trying to set up a hybrid cloud for the first time.
Customers can rent Cloud Platform System Standard from Dell for US$9,000 a month. That "starter pack" includes a Dell PowerEdge C6320 Rack Server, two top of rack switches and 64TB of storage. The system comes loaded with Windows Server 2012 R2, System Center 2012 R2, and the Windows Azure Pack.
The basic configuration is enough to run about 100 virtual machines, and the system can scale to support about 400, according to Glenn Keels, Dell's executive director for cloud, HPC and integrated systems.
After six months, customers can buy the system outright, return it, or extend the same payment scheme for another six months, he said. They can also move to a new payment model Dell is offering where they rent the system and pay only for the capacity they use.
Michael Dell announced the system at the Dell World conference Wednesday morning, joined on stage by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Dell has also joined Microsoft's Cloud Solution Provider Program, which means it can act as a reseller of Azure services, the Microsoft Enterprise Mobility Suite and Office 365.
Vendors are pushing the hybrid model hard, but the complexity of putting the software and hardware together has been a barrier. Having a system from two close partners like Dell and Microsoft, with a flexible pricing model, could make the new system appealing.
"The pricing model is pretty incredible; you only get charged for what you use, which basically removes every objection from a financing perspective," said Patrick Moorhead, principal at Moor Insights & Strategy.
Customers can put together their own system using OpenStack, but having Dell and Microsoft do the work for them is appealing, he said.
Ryan O’Hara, director of program management for Microsoft Private Cloud Solutions, told reporters in a briefing that customers can get the product from a bare metal state to running a basic set of Azure services in as little as three hours.
Dell provides support for the entire system, he said, so customers don't have to figure out which vendor they need to call if something goes wrong.
How we’re putting the Microsoft Cloud to work for the public good
By Brad Smith as written on blogs.microsoft.com
As Satya Nadella announced today, we’re committed to putting the Microsoft Cloud to work for the public good. That’s why Microsoft Philanthropies, with support from Microsoft Research and Microsoft Business Development, will donate $1 billion in Microsoft cloud services to nonprofits and university researchers over the next three years. Our goal is to support 70,000 nonprofits through this initiative during that time. I wanted to provide some more detail on what we’re doing and the commitments we are making today.
Our rationale for today’s announcement is simple. Cloud computing has emerged as a vital resource for addressing the world’s problems. Cloud services can unlock the secrets held by data in ways that create new insights and lead to breakthroughs, not just for science and technology, but for addressing the full range of economic and social challenges and the delivery of better human services. They can also improve communications and problem-solving and can help organizations work in a more productive and efficient manner.
We believe that each of us in the tech sector has a role to play, and we should each do our part. As we at Microsoft seek to play our part, we’re launching today three concrete initiatives that are designed to ensure that cloud services are easily accessible to nonprofit organizations, faculty researchers in universities and people who today lack affordable broadband access.
Here’s what we are doing:
- Serving the broad needs of the nonprofit community.
Through our new Microsoft Philanthropies arm of the company, founded last month and headed by Mary Snapp, we will build on our longstanding global software donation programs to create a comprehensive and industry-leading donations program to provide cloud services to nonprofit organizations worldwide. This will ensure that nonprofits have access to the full suite of Microsoft’s cloud services. Specifically, we’ll include:
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Microsoft Azure, so NGOs can access our data centers around the world to develop and run their applications and make use of our computing and storage power;
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Enterprise Mobility Suite (EMS), so nonprofits can manage all of their devices, applications, and data on a cross-platform basis based on industry-leading security and identity management services;
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CRM Online, so nonprofits can use our new cloud solution for managing relationships with donors and beneficiaries;
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The expansion of our Office 365 Nonprofit program, which currently includes the cloud-based versions of Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and will now include Microsoft’s Power BI, so nonprofit groups can make use of our newest business intelligence and data analytics.
The full Microsoft Cloud nonprofit program will begin rolling out this spring. We’ve been providing Office 365 services to nonprofits the past two years, and we will apply to this new and broader effort everything we have learned from this experience. We are setting today the goal of serving 70,000 NGOs through one or more of these offerings by the end of 2017, and then we’ll focus on serving even more nonprofit groups each year. We expect that in 2016 alone we’ll donate to nonprofits through these offerings cloud services with a fair market value of close to $350 million.
- Expanding access to cloud resources for faculty research in universities.
Through Microsoft Research and Microsoft Philanthropies, we will significantly expand our Microsoft Azure for Research program, which grants free Azure storage and computing resources to help faculty accelerate their research. Harry Shum, our executive vice president for Technology and Research, has been a passionate advocate for the potential of cloud computing to be transformational when in the hands of passionate research teams committed to understanding and addressing big challenges. To date this program has provided free cloud computing resources for over 600 research projects on six continents. We will build on what works and will expand our donations program by 50 percent, with a focus on reaching important new research initiatives around the world.
We know from experience that this program can make a critical difference for researchers in universities, and our increased funding for this effort therefore builds on a successful formula. As a company we have supported and witnessed compelling examples of the breakthroughs that can be achieved when university faculty harness the unprecedented power of the cloud is used to analyze data, unlock insights and predict outcomes. From protecting forests in Brazil to fighting wildfires in Greece, and from developing new medicines in the United Kingdom to modeling flood risks in Texas, dedicated university researchers have used Microsoft Azure to advance their cutting-edge research projects. The expansion of funding for these grants will enable faculty around the world to accomplish even more.
- Reaching new communities with last-mile connectivity and cloud services.
Finally, we will pursue new initiatives that bring together Microsoft Business Development and Microsoft Philanthropies to combine investments in innovative new technologies for last-mile connectivity access with donated access to our cloud services. Just last month, Peggy Johnson, our Executive Vice President for Business Development, announced in the Philippines part of our new focus on funding new connectivity access for underserved communities, building on such work as our TV White Spaces project to bring low cost connectivity to rural Kenya through the Mawingu project.
We’re enthusiastic about the potential for TV White Spaces to bring broadband connectivity at a low cost to more communities around the world – and to do so in 2016, without waiting for the arrival of the next decade. That’s why we’re going to grow this connectivity initiative by growing our financial investment and combining it with cloud services donations and community training programs that we’ll pursue in partnerships with local governments and nonprofit groups. By combining connectivity with cloud services and training focusing on new public-private partnerships, we are setting a goal of pursuing and supporting at least 20 of these projects in at least 15 countries around the world by the end of 2017.
Taken together we believe these steps will ensure that nonprofit organizations and university researchers around the world obtain the access they need to pursue cutting-edge solutions to the world’s most pressing problems.
Our approach reflects the unmet need we see in communities around the world, the confidence we have in the ability of nonprofits and researchers to solve these challenges, and the ambition we have for Microsoft Philanthropies to drive digital inclusion and empowerment programs around the world.
All this also reflects a cross-company commitment to help respond to the question Satya raised: How can we make sure the cloud truly serves the public good? Today is a step on that journey. We are committed to doing more, and in the coming months we will launch additional programs through Microsoft Philanthropies to address this opportunity. We’re committed to being part of a broad discussion and a comprehensive response, built on partnerships across civil society and around the world.
If your data lives with you on-site, it’s vulnerable to natural disasters. Keeping your data in the cloud, or using the cloud as a backup, helps protect your data from local events.
Most cloud services offer geo-redundant data centers. This means that they back up your data to more than one location. Here are four scenarios where the cloud makes a difference to your business continuity:
Hurricanes and tornadoes
If your business is in a hurricane or tornado zone, you might use ‘hardening’ to protect your servers. A hardened data center has hurricane shields for all windows and doors. The data center is on an upper floor and equipped with flood precautions such as pumps.
But, as Hurricane Sandy proved in 2012, even the best facility designs do little for protection when in the storm’s direct path. The storm tested the value of cloud services, colocation, and redundant facilities, proving that data is more secure when not tied to a single location.
Earthquakes
Data center providers know how to protect infrastructure. “Racks need to be bolted down and use seismic restraints. The facility must have multiple layers of redundancy,” writes Jason Verge for Data Center Knowledge.
“While the facility may navigate through an earthquake, it’s the outside infrastructure that poses the biggest threat,” writes Verge.
Even if the data center provider is well-prepared, damage due to unexpected disasters can put data at risk. Verge recommends that data center customers have a second deployment outside of known fault zones.
Solar flares
One threat you might not think of is solar flares. During a solar the sun flings large amounts of energy and particles into space. If this discharge hits the earth, it can damage and destroy electrical systems. It is like an electromagnetic pulse (EMP).
Precautions for geomagnetic storms are the same as for other disasters. This includes backup power supplies and a disaster recovery plan.
Floods
The most common reason for floods is sudden and unexpected rainstorms. And with the rise in sea levels, there is even more risk of floods in our future. If a data center is in the wrong place, even the best-made plan might not be enough to keep it online.
Companies outside of regular flood zones should also take note. Even dry Phoenix experienced record-breaking flash flooding following the largest single day’s rain ever.
Surviving disaster
According to Tony Surma, CTO of Microsoft Disaster Response, “Information is a basic need in disaster response. It's right up there with food, water, and shelter. That is driving use of the cloud.”
When data is stored in the cloud, companies can “rapidly deploy resources on demand and accommodate large spikes in traffic. This is regardless of local conditions,” says Surma.
Source: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/business/articles/hurricanes-water-earthquakes-and-flares-How-the-cloud-protects-your-data
Nationwide Senior Living Facility Saves $250,000 with Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure & Improves Employees IT Experience
Industry: Healthcare/Senior Living
Business Needs:
A large, nationwide Senior Living Facility with over 24 offices and more than 1200 employees needed to reduce IT capital and operational expenses while improving employee collaboration. The organization needed to focus on implementing new and innovative ideas to upgrade their IT infrastructure, move the business forward, and address HIPPA & PCI compliance issues. They also needed a partner that would ensure their infrastructure was running properly so they didn't need to focus on IT support.
Solution:
Managed Solution partnered with the firms IT department to create a hybrid cloud solution to virtualize more of their servers and move beyond virtualization to a private and public cloud environment. The hybrid cloud environment provided a solution for some applications to run on-premise in a Microsoft-based private cloud environment and others to run in Windows Azure, the Microsoft public cloud development, hosting, and management environment. Delivering IT as a Service provided the Senior Living facility with a solution that was able to provide reliable IT services that supported growth, reduced costs and improved the end user experience. Managed Solution implemented this strategy by performing a thorough network assessment of their existing infrastructure and understanding the firm’s business objectives.
Success:
By building a hybrid cloud infrastructure, the organization has dramatically reduced its IT spend by over $250,000 in the first year. This model supports business growth, addresses compliance issues and provides critical data back-up and disaster preparedness at an affordable price. The savings come from server consolidation, power and cooling, datacenter real estate, and management costs. Additionally, by standardizing, virtualizing, and cloud-enabling its IT assets, the firm reduced IT costs, enhanced end user experience, upgraded infrastructure and addressed HIPPA & PCI compliance concerns.
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