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Working together How cloud is helping the RNLI save lives

An efficient option Why cloud is the smart choice for your business

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CLOUD COMPUTING

No 1 / Febr ’10

Looking forward: Your comprehensive guide to effectively implementing

and developing cloud computing in 2010.

make your business

work for you security matters

get better data

protection for your

business

trade secrets

Industry leaders

give their advice

your questions

answered

Hear from the top

experts in cloud

flexible business

How to scale up

your capacity now

5

StepS to

makiNg the moSt

oF cLoud

An independent supplement distributed within the dAily telegrAph

2 · februAry 2010

Why cloud makes good

business sense for 2010

The cloud is an evolution in computing technology which offers companies an

opportunity to run applications beyond their own server rooms but businesses

still need to take responsibility for their data.

Although ‘cloud

com-puting’ is relatively

new, the concept of

sharing computer

services has been

around for decades,

and the technologies that enable the

cloud such as virtualisation, hosting

and software as a service (SaaS) have

been available for some time

Cloud computing refers to the

de-livery of computer services over the

Internet, as an alternative to

run-ning software on your own computer

or data centre

Within the IT industry this topic is

complicated by too much jargon and

too many vendors with differing

def-initions to help categorise their

par-ticular implementation as cloud

The BASDA trade group is trying

to look beyond terminology to focus

on examples of how our members are

helping real businesses transform

the way they work with this

technol-ogy

What is ‘cloud’?

The cloud gives users the flex-ibility of mixing and matching the most appropriate services from their service providers They can be accessed 24/7 from any Internet con-nected PC or mobile device, making collaboration with customers and business partners that much easier

Cloud providers share capacity and support resources across a

communi-ty of users, and economies of scale re-sult in lower cost of ownership com-pared to traditional systems

Servic-es are usually provided on a monthly subscription basis, and can be easily scaled up or down as necessary

The IT headaches of managing the infrastructure or keeping software versions up to date are all handled for you

Cloud providers gear themselves

up for continuous operation and will offer a comprehensive service level agreement, with guaranteed levels of availability in advance of the typical

in house IT set-up

Taking responsibility

While the cloud offers sig-nificant advantages over on-premise it does carry potential risks

to be considered You must carry out due diligence to ensure steps are

tak-en to safeguard your data in terms of availability, security, privacy as well

as legislation like the data protection act

Customers need to consider data ownership, and access rights for mi-gration if anything goes wrong at the supplier

It is important to realise that cloud computing is a natural evolution of technology, rather than some new thing to be avoided out of hand

Although some organisations will embrace the cloud, others will adopt

a ‘hybrid’ approach using these serv-ices to extend rather than replace ex-isting systems

The shared data centres of the cloud can also offer a greener ap-proach to IT

“this technology is already a proven life saver.”

Put to work

how developments

in cloud computing are helping the rnli

to save lives.

We recommend

pAge 10

1 the top things you need to consider before adopting cloud.

2 make your business safe before taking

it global.

cloud computing, february 2010

Country Manager: Willem de geer Business Developer: darren clarke Sub-editor: danielle Stagg

responsible for this issue

Project Manager: christopher emberson Phone: 0207 6654410

E-mail: christopher.emberson@

mediaplanet.com

Distributed with: the daily telegraph

february 2010

Print: the telegrah media group

Mediaplanet contact information: Phone: 02076654400

E-mail: info.uk@mediaplanet.com With special thanks to:

we make our readers succeed!

Jairo Rojas, director general, business Application software developers Association

Use it to your advantage

1 Think of Cloud solutions as

“hybrid” or as extensions of your existing systems rather than

as replacements

Define a strategy

2 Organisations should

consid-er working through industry bodies and trade associations to in-fluence the agenda on a sector basis rather than as individuals - demys-tify the cloud topic to avoid some of the current market confusion

my beSt tipS

Challenges

3

an independent supplement distributed within the daily telegraph

Moving applications and data

be-yond the confines of the corporate

server room and in to the cloud

af-fords massive financial savings,

of-fers previously unimaginable

flexi-bility and brings the type of

applica-tions that were once the preserve of

enterprises in to reach of more

mod-est SME budgets

This is not to say that keeping

mis-sion critical applications in the

cor-porate server room or within a

trust-ed host’s guardtrust-ed network will come

to an end However, a new age of

com-puting is emerging where web sites

and applications can be launched in

minutes on the cloud on servers that

can be rented for weeks or months,

rather than bought up front

Flexible scale

This is one of major advantages

which Mark Taylor, Director of

Mi-crosoft’s Developer and Platform

Group, believes is of most appeal to

business that are already using cloud computing

“The cloud lets you set up a pres-ence all around the world for very little cost compared to the huge ex-pense of setting up servers and infra-structure yourself in multiple data centres,” he says

“It’s giving SMEs global geographic dispersion for a cost they could only have dreamed of previously Plus you can scale your presence up and down

so you can add extra capacity for a particularly busy time, such as when year end accounts are announced, you can increase capacity and then take it down afterwards

“It’s all on a pay as you consume model and saves a fortune compared

to increasing capacity

permanent-ly in your own data centre Although you need to anticipate and reserve that extra capacity in the cloud at the moment, I believe we’re moving

to a stage where services will just be

elastic and expand as they’re needed with people just paying for extra ca-pacity automatically as it happens.”

Standards needed

The main hurdle which cloud oper-ators will need to overcome, though, Taylor believes, is opening up rival operators’ systems so the cloud runs along the same principles and busi-ness models no matter who is man-aging the hosting

“It’s very early days but there needs

to be a lot of work done on standardi-sation,” Taylor points out

“There are not only different offer-ings out there around pricing but

al-so people are going to wonder what happens if they want to move their data There are different cloud serv-ices and you can’t just pick up your application or data and just move it around between them

“I think this area of standardisa-tion and portability is a huge issue where the service providers have to improve and it’s also an area of op-portunity for third parties to provide platforms which allow the same ap-plication to work with more than one cloud service.”

4 · February 2010

Mark Taylor

director, development and platform group, microsoft

Scale up your

capacity in an

inStant

sean hargrave

info.uk@mediaplanet.com

See The poSSibiliTieS

1STep

Question:

■

offer my business today?

Answer:

■

which can be turned on and off

is available now and standards

to allow data to operate in rival

hosts’ clouds will come soon

february 2010 · 5

an independent supplement distributed within the daily telegraph

It is not only businesses that are be-ing attracted to the flexibility and cost savings of cloud computing, the Government has given the new ap-proach a major role in its new ICT strategy it believes will save more than £3.2bn

Trials of a Government Applica-tion Store started early this month which, it is hoped, will lead to a com-mon platform for civil servants to ac-cess applications that could eventu-ally be hosted, alongside other soft-ware tools, in the cloud The apps store, it is believed, could save the Government £500m by 2020

The proposed cloud service, or G Cloud as it is being referred to, is ex-pected to account for around half of the proposed £3.2bn total savings

The massive cost reduction should come mainly through drastically re-ducing the number of servers and supporting infrastructure the

Gov-ernment requires

Ian Osborne, Director of the

Digit-al Systems Knowledge Transfer Net-work at Intellect UK, is one of a large team of volunteer experts who are advising the Cabinet Office on the G Cloud He believes the next five years

or so will see some very interesting initiatives as officials decide what the final service should look like

“Ordinance Survey has already shown how it uses cloud to service a peak of 9m users,” he says

“So it’s going to be a very useful tool for departments to manage peaks in traffic, such as HMRC at the end of January

“A lot of sensitive data may not be suitable for the cloud, because of se-curity concerns and different depart-ments would have to still keep their records separate to comply with data protection and privacy laws

“Nevertheless, the G Cloud is a very exciting opportunity to save the Gov-ernment a huge amount of budget.”

For citizens, Osborne believes, one of the biggest advantages of the

G Cloud could be allowing different departments to share non-sensitive data so paper work is reduced and processes sped up – rather like an ex-isting service which allows stored passport photos to be used for driv-ing licences

Ian Osborne

director of the digital systems Knowledge transfer network at intellect

The Cabinet Office is investi-gating how the cloud be used

to cut ICT costs and simplify and speed up online interac-tion between government and citizens.

sub news

G Cloud could save

Know what to consider, when

Before putting a service up

■

■

in the cloud businesses must consider the regulatory frame-work which their data must ad-here to If it needs to be stored within geographic boundaries, this can be accommodated, but

it needs to be stipulated and will almost certainly increase costs The same goes for security

■

■

Never assume you are being

giv-en a secure server, insist on se-curity and service level agree-ments (SLAs) if these are impor-tant to you It will push up the cost

of the service but is better than hoping or assuming you have the level of protection you require Always remember that if you

■

■

are in the public cloud you will nor-mally not have control over whose information is stored on the same server If this is a big issue, and se-curity is a prime concern, you may wish to discuss private cloud solu-tions with vendors

! Read more

on the web:

www.intellectuk.org/saas2009

How do you keep your head above the Cloud?

As with all innovations in technology there are disparate views about the benefits to be gained and the risks involved.

Boxwood are ideally placed to draw out the issues that face companies moving to cloud computing.

Our people work closely with people like you People who care deeply about business performance People who have the spirit to challenge and the openness to change.

For more information about how Boxwood can help turn your business vision into reality, call 020 3170 7240 or visit

www.boxwoodgroup.com

nO bOunds

Cloud computing allows for great flexibilty and offers businesses a truly global presence.

Photo: istock Photo

6 · february 2010 an independent supplement distributed within the daily telegraph

Get safe on the cloud with

the right service mix

If there is one concern that all

busi-nesses should be fully aware of

be-fore they consider taking advantage

of the cloud, it is security

Corporate server rooms are

nor-mally encased by a strong firewall to

ensure that only the people who are

supposed to have access to data and

let in and the remainder are locked

out This is the mainstay of

busi-ness computing and so the

sugges-tion that the corporate server room

should be slimmed down, or even

re-placed, by a move in to cloud servers

raises serious security issues

Pick a level

As with any computing

infrastruc-ture there are several options

availa-ble to companies and security is

cen-tral to the eventual decision an

or-ganisation opts for

At the simplest extreme, the speed

of renting space on a server within

just a few minutes and a few clicks of

a mouse is normally the most prone

route to the cloud It is typically

tak-en by companies that want to do

de-velopment new applications in the cloud without the delay of commis-sioning their own server or who want

to host public information, such as a website Here there is a clear trade off between low cost, instant access to server space and the level of

securi-ty on offer

At the other extreme, however, there are IT specialists who can

ad-vise on bespoke security measures as well as cloud providers who can offer varying levels of security on servers

in the cloud but, of course, this will increase the cost of a project

Standard metric

As ever with the cloud, though, there

is little standardisation and so a group of consultancies, regulators,

cloud providers and security busi-nesses have came together at the start of the month to work on a global Common Assurance Metric (CAM)

This resulting system of security scores is hoping to get around the problem that most measures of secu-rity protection are normally linked

to particular bespoke products and

so can make rating applications time consuming and offer a result which cannot be easily compared to other products

The group of experts is expected to have the outline of the CAM ready by the end of the year When it is com-plete it will allow security vendors and cloud operators to have their services rated so potential clients can make informed decisions based

on an industry-wide standard

According to Giles Hogben, Net-works Security Policy Expert at the EU’s information security agency, ENISA, the global standard is a wel-come move

“The CAM work is essential,” he says The number one barrier to adop-tion of cloud computing is assurance – “how can I know if it’s safe to trust the cloud provider?” This is a prob-lem for providers too - answering a different security questionnaire for every customer is a huge drain on re-sources.”

“the number one barrier to adoption of cloud computing is assurance.”

Giles Hogben

networks security policy expert, enisa.

sean HarGrave

info.uk@mediaplanet.com

Question:

■

do business in?

Answer:

■

added to cloud services and

operators are working on a

common metric for measuring

security

2

1

3

Secure your dAtA

1 & 2 By ensuring the right people are getting

in or staying out, your business is more secure.

3 cloud provides great opportunities for improving productivity.

Photos: istock Photo

news

news

conSider Security

2SteP

Facts

94% of more than 1000 security

pro-■

■

fessional recently told trade show Infose-curity europe that the one reason they or their clients were not committing to the cloud are concerns over levels of security

3 in 4 companies also revealed in a

■

■

survey run by Infosecurity europe that they intend to spend more budget in the year ahead securing cloud services as well as applications run through a soft-ware as a service model

the nHs certainly believes cloud

■

■

services can be secured It has just signed a five year cloud security deal thought to be worth around £6m Hence the latest advice given out at

■

■

the recent westminster eForum on the cloud by the Information security Profes-sionals Organisation is to switch from la-belling the cloud as not safe to making it secure because the technology is being adopted regardless of individual mem-ber’s concerns

can business trust the cloud?

■

■

! The benefits are numerous but arguably the biggest bar-rier to adoption is security con-cerns, so unfortunately, it would seem that businesses don’t trust the cloud

There’s no reason for this if or-ganisations have the correct rity solutions in place And by secu-rity solutions, I don’t mean ‘lock-down’; I mean a security solution which is flexible and tailored to the specific demands of each busi-ness, something which gives or-ganisations the confidence to em-brace the benefits of cloud-based solutions

The key issue is not security of the cloud itself but ensuring the exit and entry points between your business and cloud-based services are watertight

Are security and regulation

■

■

driving private clouds?

! Without a doubt, I would say that data security and regula-tion is a key focus for private cloud providers

Perhaps what has made the cloud security debate rage so fiercely is the fact that potential issues or breaches could be poten-tially catastrophic Plus relying on highly centralised cloud solutions, with data being stored in a differ-ent country, creates significant challenges for business as they struggle to comply with additional legislation

Local solutions can help busi-nesses overcome these challenges, along with private clouds

What comeback does a

busi-■

■

ness have if there is a security breach in the cloud?

! The protection businesses can call upon in case of a breach is all down to the contracts

it has in place with their cloud pro-vider

The service level agreements, the course of action they will take, the level of information about

breach-es and ability to invbreach-estigate varibreach-es greatly on the provider

I would strongly encourage busi-nesses to obtain the service

lev-el agreements they require before committing to a cloud provider

QuestIOn & answer

Jesper Frederiksen

Vice president of worldwide sales, Clearswift

7

An independent supplement distributed within the dAily telegrAph februAry 2010 · 9

Question: How can companies encourage their IT departments to be more flexible at the

same time as offering budgetary savings?

Answer: Talk of the cloud has moved beyond rousing conferences speeches and is now a

major issue in the board room.

A couple of years ago businesses were

talking about the cloud before carrying

out limited ‘toe dipping’ pilots last year

Now, this year, is going to be one where

real life projects are going to be launched

and, in Emma Taylor’s words, the cloud is

going to start to be used widely as well as

talked about

Hence at the end of last year The Cloud

Circle was set up as an independent

members’ organisation for potential

cli-ents and experts to network and discuss

best practice

One of the big issues overhanging the

industry is that people are not sure yet

whether the cloud is as transformational

as computing experts believe it to be In

fact, when the Cloud Circle surveyed more

than 200 leading businesses at the end of

last year, one in five felt it was just hype,

a quarter believed it be ‘the real deal’ and

just over a half were yet to decide

Real experience

As more businesses take to the cloud and

take advantage of its speed, flexibility and

low cost, Taylor is convinced the benefits will become clearer for all to see

“The people who are using the cloud today tend to be using it as toe dipping, they’re seeing how they get along with using it before they do anything more major,” she says

“It’s very hard to get people to talk about projects they’re working on be-cause things are sometimes a little bit sensitive A lot of companies see their early pilots on the cloud as giving them a competitive edge and so they don’t want

to shout about it

“This year, though, I think we’re going

to get a lot more real life use of the cloud which will lead to a lot more case studies which will convince people that it really can live up to the hype.”

Little and large

So far, in Taylor’s experience, it has been companies at either end of the spectrum who have adopted cloud computing, or

at least used it for specific projects to see what they can learn

“We’re seeing mass adoption by start-ups, particularly in e-commerce, where

they can instantly see the attraction of having a large, flexible infrastructure which can expand or contract with their needs,” she says

“At the same time, large enterprises are using it, not across the entire company but on a department by department basis for specific projects

“One of the big attractions for them is that it’s so much quicker and more flex-ible It can take months within a large enterprise to requisition a development server but with the cloud you can be up and running in minutes

“Also companies that need to expand for a particular event, or which have sea-sonal peaks - such as the travel or insur-ance industries - they’re starting to ex-periment with the cloud because they want to scale up and down in response to market demand.”

Security key

Of course there are still legitimate con-cerns over regulation and security in the cloud, although Taylor believes some of these will start to be addressed as more companies, of all sizes, take to the cloud

“Security is an obvious concern for companies but we’re finding that busi-nesses are looking in to setting up private clouds for sensitive material,” she says

“Many are also looking into a public

or even hybrid offering so they can pick what information is public and which is protected better

“When you’ve got huge companies like Glaxo Smith Kline and, of course, the Gov-ernment looking into and starting to use the cloud, it should make companies re-alise that security concerns can be ad-dressed.”

Hence, with a strong push from the board room for IT to make savings wher-ever possible, the drive to move more projects into the cloud is going to build

up considerable momentum in the year ahead, Taylor believes

Companies are looking to IT to become more agile and cost effective and this is exactly what the cloud offers and deliv-ers

Cloud can turn talk into action

SEAN HARGRAVE

info.uk@mediaplanet.com

leader to leader

“they can see the attraction

of having a large, flexible infrastructure which can expand or contract with their needs.”

Emma Taylor The Cloud Circle

inspiration

CApTuRE hEAdLinE

A leading advisor for the Cloud Circle, Richard belives in researching the cloud before you jump.

Photo: the cloud circle

cloud circle’s best tips 3

do your research

1 Be careful who you deal with I’d suggest that companies should work with people with a track record and when they’re looking for an operator to host their services and applications in the cloud they go for somebody that’s put a billion in to it rather than a couple of million The big operators are likely to have a better service and offer greater scale

Be prepared

2 Be sure you know what you are getting Many companies may buy a cloud service without realising that they have very little

in the way of security or a guaran-tee of service These can be

provid-ed with the right partners

plan ahead

4 For new projects, give the cloud serious consideration because it is so much simpler and quicker to set up than the formal process inside large companies of requesting a server This usually means nothing can happen on new projects for a couple of months or more

uSE iT To youR AdvAnTAgE

3STEp

Richard hall

ceo, cloud origin and cloud circle advisor

If you are looking for the next Skype, Google or eBay, then turn your attention to London-based EGS

The company recently followed these three power-houses into the Red Herring Top 100 after being named among Europe’s top private technology enterprises

EGS is one of the Cloud’s quiet success stories

But, while it lacks the glitz of some dotcom busi-nesses, the company has generated headline news by making multi-million-pound savings for large organisations

Put simply, EGS reduces its customers’ operating costs dramatically by automating back-office business processes via the Cloud

In areas such as corporate purchasing and invoice processing, EGS replaces inefficient and

expensive manual processes with Cloud-based alternatives enabling technology to do the work

in a fraction of the time and for a fraction of the cost It’s known as ‘Business Process Automation’

or BPA

EGS teams with trade bodies and partners, such

as BT and Capita, to help ambitious organisa-tions achieve multi-million pound savings In some cases, the end-to-end processing of a single ‘transaction’ can be reduced from £50-60

to just pennies As an example, one of EGS’s customers will save £2.5 million by 2012 through the automated management of hundreds

of thousands of supplier invoices using EGS’s Cloud-based tools

“We automated our first transaction in 2001

Several billion pounds worth of transactions later, we feel as though we really understand Business Process Automation,” says Peter Whent,

Chief Executive at EGS “We have accrued decades of experience in our field It’s that exper-tise that goes into our award-winning Cloud-based platform that 40,000 users across more than 120 organisations rely on to help them save millions of pounds a year.”

The urgency for businesses to make savings during the economic downturn has meant

a surge in interest in EGS For some, it’s their first foray into Cloud-based business process automation For others, it’s about overcoming stubborn obstacles that have derailed previous attempts

“With our approach, companies do more than save costs,” adds Peter Whent “They accelerate performance and create stronger relationships with suppliers and partners, while delivering

a better service to their customers Everyone benefits.”

– the cloud with a golden lining

COMPANY FACTFILE

Private Equity owned EGS Group Ltd was

started in 2000

Services: e-Marketplace, e-Purchasing,

e-Invoicing, Automated e-Invoice approval, Automated e-Invoice workflow, Electronic

data capture for paper invoices The company owns its technology

Contact: 020 7539 2828,

email info@egsgroup.com

Web: www.egsgroup.com Address: EGS Group Limited, Baird House,

15-17 St Cross Street, London, EC1N 8UW

An independent supplement distributed within the dAily telegrAph

10 · februAry 2010

Cloud’s scalability

saves lives for less

Many people can talk with

author-ity on how the cloud can transform

a business but very few can tell you

have they are using it to save lives

However, at the RNLI the cloud is

currently being used to run a system

that warns when a person has

fall-en off a small fishing boat or has an

emergency situation The Man Over

Board Guardian (MOB Guardian) is

being trialed in the cloud, on

Micro-soft’s Azure service, in addition to

being hosted in a conventional

da-ta centre The ultimate aim, when

it has proven resolute enough, is to

switch the data centre to act as a back

up to the cloud service and then

po-tentially switch off the data centre

service altogether

How it works

The MOB Guardian system works

through a fisherman wearing a

pen-dant that is in Bluetooth, wireless

contact with a sensor on the boat As

soon as the person goes underwater,

and contact with the sensor is lost, an alarm is raised via satellite and the stricken sailor’s position is tracked via the on board GPS (satnav) This of-fers crucial protection for lone fisher-men

“Longer fishing vessels are already monitored and have safety systems installed by law,” explains Peter Brad-ley, Operations Manager at the RNLI

“This technology is already a

prov-en life saver because it not only alerts

us to an incident, it tells the rescue crews where to find the person, so they can go straight to them.”

Bradley explains that the purpose

of mirroring the service in the cloud, before hopefully migrating it fully,

is to reduce the cost of “on premise”

servers and offer greater scale for

less money

“At the moment it’s run tradition-ally on servers in a data centre and has a capacity of 10,000 boats,” he says

“The problem is to add an extra one boat above that, we’d need to add the same infrastructure again and double up, with capacity for another 10,000 boats That’s very expensive,

so by putting this service in the cloud we’re going to be able to save a lot of money at the outset but then also we’ll be able to scale up without huge upfront costs.”

Cost is very important for the RNLI because of its charitable status The MOB Guardian service is

current-ly heavicurrent-ly subsidised and the emer-gency service needs to be able to offer

it to fishermen (and perhaps other small boats in the future) at an af-fordable price as possible

The recession has hit fishermen hard and, as Bradley surmises, “if a fisherman’s going to put their hand

in their pocket for anything at the moment, it’s going to be to mend their nets”

Hence, to save lives, it is imperative the service can be run as

efficient-ly as possible so the final cost can be brought down

“this technology

is already a proven life saver”

Peter Bradley

Operations manager, rnli

sean hargrave

info.uk@mediaplanet.com

Question:

■

prove robust enough to host

emergency services?

Answer:

■

certain-ly hoping so it is testing a cloud

service to see if it could help save

lives at sea

to tHe rescue

cloud-based technology is helping the rNLI react to emergencies even faster

Photo: RNLI InspIratIon

Facts on the mob guardian

the man over board guardian (mob

■

■

guardian) system is primarily targeted

at fishermen in boats shorter than 15m

Longer boats are already covered by leg-islation that requires they carry similar emergency equipment

aside from revealing when a person

■

■

has fallen in to the water, the system also has an emergency button which can alert the rnLi one boat recently, for example, used the facility to warn it had an engine fire and needed assistance

each mob guardian system on a boat

■

■

can work with up to four pendants how-ever, most fishing boats under 15 metres are normally crewed by a single person, two at the most

the system is only activated when the

■

■

boats go out of port and sends back reg-ular positioning information if an update

is not received the system flags up the anomaly which could mean, in the worst case scenario, the boat has turned over

or sunk

how we made it

Are there any data concerns

■

■

with rescue information in the cloud?

! One of the potential problems with the cloud is that fisher-men might not want their rivals to know where they are via a public cloud system, so we ensure they are identified as a number that

on-ly our system can identify them by

Does the cloud help data

con-■

■

cerns?

! Actually, it does As the sys-tem hopefully rolls out to new countries there is the poten-tial for problems over where data is hosted A lot of authorities require data about their citizens, compa-nies or authorities to be kept

with-in their country With the cloud we can set up the services with serv-ers in specific countries or conti-nents so we do not have any regula-tory issues

It was the ability of Azure to of-fer a choice of tying where data is stored and the application hosted

to geographic regions that

attract-ed us to the platform

Why place the service in the

■

■

cloud?

! By using the cloud, we’re far more flexible We can take ex-tra capacity as and when we need

it and we can make sure that extra capacity is in the right part of the world If we were going down the traditional route we’d need to keep

on putting in place a series of infra-structures, in each territory, that could take 10,000 users With the cloud we can do this a bit at a time

as we need to It’s a lot more effi-cient and affordable

What if the cloud were to fail?

■

■

! We’re testing the service now

to show that it can be as ro-bust and reliable any alternative because this is obviously a huge concern for an emergency safety device such as the MOB Guardian, you can’t have it failing In fact, we think, if anything, the cloud could

be more robust because it could be set up so if one server goes down another cloud server could take over This kind of back up would be far cheaper in the cloud than locat-ing the service in more than one traditional data centre

Question & answer

richard Prodger

technical director

at Aws, the company behind the mOb guardian

PusH tHe

BouNDArIes

4steP

an independent supplement distributed within the daily telegraph february 2010 · 11

a leap forward

1 a boat is launched after the alarm is raised.

2 fishermen wearing pendants can rest easy knowing their locations are being logged.

3 The rNlI team can remotely monitor GpS signals with off-site servers.

Following developments in

cloud, the Man Over Board

Guardian (MOB Guardian)

system not only notifies the

RNLI of an incident, but allows

them to pinpoint someone’s

location

The GPS-based technology

is saving lives as well as cutting

costs, a vital aid to the

charity-based organisation

raISING The Bar

Making waves

Tips

InspIratIon