I continue to think about the HP MicroServer Gen8 as an excellent opportunity to bridge the gap between the physical and cloud/virtual world, as my cloud offline local cache. The vehicle for Cloud services to be hosted and streamed through whether its for email, analytics or collaboration.
I tell you what I mean. This is what I want as a reseller, a fix IT guy, a nonsense removal device for all those SMB’s where they have their own Exchange server, their own file server, their own everything in a box when they have five employees on site and a few people working remotely on their own pc. They’re not sure quite why they have that, but that’s what the nice independent server sales man said they needed.
I want a Cloud in a box like the WEDG but with the backing of enterprise grade applications and possibilities to hook into market standard Cloud applications and service providers.
I want to switch on a HP MicroServer or similar device. Then a wizard appear. Click next (to define any network specific values) then it say right you want to setup a cloud caching device it then talks me through:
A new existence means, I choose the domain name, I choose the services I want with a tick box and then enter my credit card and purchase information then it creates everything for me:
Then it needs to:
Close the wizard and let me work. When I want a new share or new email account, all I need to do is go to the cloud and click new account, it will then sync with my cloud server so that everything is in sync.
This could be based on Linux with Google Apps, or with a version of Windows and Microsoft’s Cloud. But the key is, it’s a cloud maintained headless user experience, I don’t need a server admin or server grade licenses. This device is an offline cache and distribution node for cloud based services, a place for example to store my pst files offline without using up all my data or store my temp files but not necessarily connect every device or every folder to the cloud. How cool would it be if I logged into my cloud account to shut my server down before there’s work done on the building without messing about with ILO, vpn or needing to know any of that.
There will be scenarios where having your own applications, your own services like SharePoint or Exchange make sense, for the SMB which thinks they need a server or wants what a server can bring them, increasingly I wonder if this hybrid model might not only fulfill the immediate requirement but create revenue positions and opportunities for Google, Microsoft and others alike.
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