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Up and Away How Cloud Computing Changed My Life by George Landau, founder of NewsEngin Inc. jorge@newsengin.com. Does Not Compute Why it used to take months to get a newsroom up and running. Technology decision makers settle on a solution and seek approval from the IT department.
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Up and AwayHow Cloud Computing Changed My Lifeby George Landau, founder of NewsEngin Inc.jorge@newsengin.com
Does Not ComputeWhy it used to take months to get a newsroom up and running • Technology decision makers settle on a solution and seek approval from the IT department. • Top management approves a hefty capital purchase to cover server hardware and a traditional software license (the kind that never expires). • Lawyers haggle over contract terms and payment schedules. • The contract gets signed. • IT staff has to purchase and configure hardware. • Solution vendor has to install and configure its software. • Users start doing actual work. TOTAL ELAPSED TIME: anywhere from about two to 18 months.
A Better WayHow the cloud lets us move faster and charge a lot less • Any newsroom, existing or startup, decides to use a cloud-based service. • Because it’s a month-to-month service whose total annual expense is about 10% of what it would cost to run the same software on-site, there’s no need to win approval of a capital outlay. • The cloud solution requires no on-site administration apart from maintaining an Internet connection, so the IT staff says it’s okay. • With no long-term commitments, the contract gets signed a lot faster. • The cloud service provider can have a virtual server ready for use in as little as 20 minutes. • Users can start doing actual work. TOTAL ELAPSED TIME: anywhere from one day to a couple of weeks.
A Couple of ExamplesNewsrooms old and new can make rain from cloud services • MedPage Today • A profitable digital news service for medical practitioners, MedPage Today also provides coverage to mainstream media outlets like ABC News. • A far-flung staff of 25 medical journalists use NewsEngin’s cloud service for all aspects of content production. • The cloud service replaced a chaotic, email-based system with an efficient workflow. • Within days of deployment, the service had reduced production errors and saved time for all involved -- writers, editors, physician reviewers and web production staff.
A Couple of Examples (cont.)Newsrooms old and new can make rain from cloud services • The Topeka Capital-Journal • A daily newspaper founded 151 years ago, its 40 journalists use NewsEngin’s cloud-based service for planning, assigning, writing, editing, messaging, packaging, and delivery of content to the web and to print. • What used to require rooms full of flowing lead, and later closets full of server hardware, now gets done on a small puff of computing resources within Amazon’s computing cloud, somewhere east of the Mississippi River. • The cloud-based service costs less or the same as the maintenance of the on-site system ours replaces. • The newsroom gained extensive capabilities for continuous publication to a limitless range of digital outlets.
The Doggie Bagsome lessons to take home • The cloud can provide an organization with mission-critical services at a far lower cost than in-house IT solutions. • The cloud offers workgroups in larger organizations more choice and control over the computer systems they rely on. • Vendors who provide cloud-based services are likely to be more attentive to your needs than your own overstretched IT staff. • The cloud supports an ecosystem that accelerates technological growth. Your own comfort with the cloud can make it easier for you to spot opportunities that might drift by. • An important cloud caveat: If your organization stores valuable data in the cloud, make sure your contract lets you download your data in case you want to switch to a different service. • One more caveat: Clouds are subject to Internet weather. When you rely on a cloud service all day long, every day, you’re more likely to notice occasional slowdowns from network problems.