Good morning everybody. This is your chance with Tsi, Turley shank innovations. Today I’d like to talk a little bit about IT Services Bartlesville and cloud services. So cloud is a loaded term as I’ve mentioned before, that encompasses anything realistically not on site. So that could be um, like back up. Backing up has uh, two types. Typically you have onsite backups and you have a cloud backups, which is to be more specific. It would be backed up to a, a data center. Um, the cloud is usually a data center owned by like for instance, apple, Apple’s Itunes, all the music, you know, you can sync everything to the cloud and uh, that’s really controlled on in their data centers. So another example of cloud services, our office three 65, so that’s, they’ve pushed everybody towards for the most part in monthly fee model for um, access to Microsoft office. And whenever you log in, you go to office.com and you put it in your email and your password, excuse me.
And that takes you to hosted versions of office. I’m a fan of the desktop version, but it’s nice to have that fun, that functionality. And the capability to access it from anywhere. And it’s your stuff. It’s not, you’re not using somebody else’s email. It’s, it’s your instance of office. So the cloud is, uh, it’s an interesting concept that, um, I mean it’s, it’s been around for awhile now, so it’s not really even, um, it’s, it’s not poorly understood. I think it’s typically misunderstood. And we do offer some cloud services. We, um, use a lot of them through a vendor called Pax Eight, which is cloud services specifically that we work with. And they offer quite a bit as far as capabilities. It’s like, so I’ve, I taught myself how to program and code and kind of build websites and a little bit of Java. And the biggest hurdle initially was, okay, what language do I want to learn? Well, within, not only are there, they’re a myriad of languages, you also have, um, frameworks within those languages that kind of make it easier to, uh, utilize that language. For example, um, javascript was a big mystery to me when I first started this because I just couldn’t wrap my head around how you could scroll over something or, um, and it would do something good before CSS animations were really am, uh, implemented.
So I started looking into that. And then the next thing that book I read was, um, javascript and jquery. I have, I can’t think of the guys, the author, but he also wrote a book called html and CSS. And that one really helped me understand. Then I jumped to the next one to learn Java script and it provided a good foundation but, and then it jumped right into jquery, which provides a lot more functionality. Just it’s, the syntax was a lot easier just, um, not as, I guess it was more user friendly for, especially for me at that point in my, um, path to learning. But we, um, so it, it’s kind of the same deal. All the, the, all of the services that are out there, like for instance, you have productivity, you have the right, right now they’re really two options. You have office three 65 and g suite, which is Google’s, um, foray into the cloud services and hosted productivity apps like docs, sheets and whatnot.
Um, that one’s a little easier, but once you get into like office three 65 backup, you’ve probably have about seven different vendors who all offer the same thing. And there might be slight differences than they all probably don’t price the same. So that’s one of the things that can get you is why not knowing what questions to ask when it comes to whether the cloud, whether you’re a, this cloud service is going to help you achieve what it is you want to achieve. Um, and it’s, it’s definitely something that my, uh, business owners need to be aware of because it, sometimes it makes sense to put something in the clouds, sometimes it doesn’t. And we’re experiencing that right now because we can, we can get a and host, we can install the SCP and g for open source, um, virtual vms. So no licensing involved. Um, and they offer, they only paid aspect of that would be if we want to professional support. But that’s kind of the fun of being an it and understanding technologies that you, you can play and figure things out. So that’s, that’s our goal with that. And, um, I lost my train of thought.
I need some coffee this morning. It’s all right. I can edit this part out. Um, so typically you can virtualize your server infrastructure and put it up into the cloud. And most services like, uh, Azure, AWS and Google compute, they all charge so much per a minute. So you can have like micro is just an instance you would only need for a little bit. It’s a, it’s a good alternative than to spend the money up front to get a full server. And I’m, I’m still trying to wrap my head around the um, server licensing. I do know that the smallest license you can get for windows server is two core or I’m sorry, two processor, eight core up eight cores of processor. So you’re paying for 16, um, cores and that’s the minimum. And, uh, I’m looking at pricing and licensing overview for windows server 19 and they have here is a nine 72.
I believe that I’ll have to dig into that pricing a little bit more. It’s, it’s very rarely that up front, but maybe, maybe I’m wrong, maybe that’s it. But in any IT Services Bartlesville case, um, have us having our uh, servers and we’re wanting to run our own software off of these virtual instances. It’s one, it brings down the overhead after, uh, I mean we were entrepreneurs, you know, we, we work for free so we can spend, I use our skills and our knowledge to get these, um, these instances stood up so that we can, um, avoid having to use hosted versions on the cloud. And that’s not for everybody. Obviously, um, accountants, you probably would prefer to use quickbooks online as opposed to, well, smaller accounts using quickbooks online as opposed to a hosted version but, or an onsite version with a server and everything. It’s a lot.
There’s a lot less overhead initially. But keep in mind that that monthly price will more than likely never change it. In fact, it might go up, like right now g suites prices are going up from $5 a user to six and then 10 to 12 for the business. And I didn’t see anything by the enterprise, but I’m sure it’s the case too. But in any case, the uh, questions that you need to ask if cloud services are right for you, is will the monthly price, at what point is the break even? And that’s one of the things I’m really trying to figure out with the server prices is at what point, at what point will the server essentially pay for itself in when compared to a virtual instance, which uh, Azure does offer that as an option. So if you go with this, um, uh, how long would the monthly costs catch up to the cost of a server and how long do you play on the server to be in cycle?
I think typically it’s five years by that I don’t think unless there’s a large it element in place, that’s usually very rarely the case that they stick to that. So in any case, the, that’s another question to consider is pricing, is that how long do we want this server? And in, in production, that’s typically a five year time. You take the initial cost and licensing costs, you, you really need to license it unless you get business essentials. And I, from my research, that’s not typically the way you want to go. Um, but it can work if it’s set up correctly. But as far as, um, using hosted versions of software, you will, you are paying for that company to essentially spin up a server for you or an instance or a docker image. That’s another technology that’s, it’s kind of like a, it’s like a v m but little less overhead because I think most everything is, it’s an include, I think it includes the operating system and the, uh, run instruction like pulling PHP.
Anyway, I digress. So, um, do you’re paying for that as opposed to having to install it yourself? So, sir, uh, support can most certainly be easier if you don’t have staff on site who, well dedicated staff for support purposes, which is what we help with as an MSP. You know, we are essentially a, uh, an external it department and our costless certainly reflects that because, uh, we’re less than typically we are less than half the cost of or less than. I think we’re about a third. The cost of a part time employee or half the cost. Well that Bert that bears further research. So cloud services, um, you getting it at a working instance up it right from the get go is it’s very nice and it’s a turnkey model, which is very nice for a applying it to like, like I said, whenever you sign up with a hosted version, they just kind of spin up a however they provision that and then you log in and you’re good to go, um, servers a little more overhead.
Um, you have the licensing costs and that might still be the case with cloud services. But, um, as far as windows servers go, um, it’s, it’s definitely, uh, there’s, there’s a big discrepancy, especially the barrier of entry because for, you know, for a windows server you probably, you can pay, I think the prices for the, the, uh, instances on Azure are you still have to pay for the license. That’s, there’s no way around that that I’ve seen in my, um, short research time. But you, you have the licenses and then you get the instance and then you’re paying, you pay for the license and then for the instance you pay so much, like 30 cents. I think some of the instances we’re about 30 cents per instance and I think that was vms and its licensing for windows is, it’s not terribly intuitive. So you have to keep that in mind too.
I mean, that’s why you usually pay a professional to do the licensing for you. So, um, with the instances you just pay so much per day for the thing to run or hour or a minute and that’s it. Very low barrier of entry. Um, server, you have to pay for the hardware and everything that goes into it. The server, the hard drives and you know, at Nasser saying, depending on how much you want to see a store locally, um, and then you have the networking aspect that needs to happen. Typically those are connected with fiber. So, uh, it’s just that there’s the, it’s a larger, a higher barrier of entry, but, uh, we’re looking at a server that surround, it’s, it’s not, it’s nothing spectacular, but it will let us spin up quite a few, uh, Linux instances for, um, some open source software we’re looking to use.
And I think our costs, it was the, the quote, uh, it’s got to find it, but basically it’s enough for us to also do some proof of concepts because we can evaluate, you can’t evaluate server a windows servers for or for like 30 days, I think. And it’s, it’s really just to understand it and get a feel for if it’s right for the environment, for your environment. But, so our quote was for, let’s see, that’s not it. Our, uh, so we’re going to have, uh, two CPS. Um, both eight core set of 16 cores with 64 gigs of memory that are 64 gigs of Ram. That’s not, uh, that’s not a law, especially for a server, but it’s, it’s enough for us to spin up these vms and eh, we, we would actually have to put in extra for, uh, this is without hard drives.
So this is a, an HP proliant DL, three 60 p gen eight, so eight ports, um, eight hardrive spots. So it, there’s, there’s a little bit of overhead there because we, uh, we wouldn’t be having the monthly cost and the server would basically pay for itself for taking those monthly costs for those other, um, those hosted services that we would be using otherwise and we can pay for itself that much quicker. So cloud services are definitely a good thing though, because you know that low barrier of entry and set up time, but you, you sign up, you have an instance ready to go. So it’s also very, a very important part of staying compliant for such as HIPPA and PCI. A lot of times those vendors that you would use for like if you purchased a gateway for, um, credit card payments, they have already done the legwork of because of making that at that piece compliant and working with compliant vendors.
So you from a compliance standpoint other than your local inhouse practices, which I mean if you’re not touching the data then there’s, um, your liability is pretty low or your ear. Yeah. And these, these vendors have given you, uh, they, they, they clearly, they typically clearly stay whether they are a PCI compliant or not. And I mean if they’re taking credit card payments for you, then, um, it says, I wouldn’t assume, but it’s likely that they are, it’s definitely a question to ask. But, um, same thing with HIPAA compliance. If you’re using office three 65, I know the, that that is Hipaa compliant, um, on their side. Granted that doesn’t assume that that doesn’t automatically mean that you are compliant. So don’t, don’t mistake what I’m saying there because there is a difference of IT Services Bartlesville. Um, but it’s, it’s a very strong piece that works in really any kind of business stack as far as the um, technology stack that you use, whether you’re aware of it or not.
Some, a lot of backup solutions are to the cloud that are turnkey that a lot of MSPs use. And we are offering these as a service because it, it makes sense. I mean, if, say we have a client for, you know this, if, uh, if there’s some misunderstanding of that might be for three months and we would like to have them forever, but it’s things happen. So if we haven’t invest w we don’t want to, uh, have a sticker shock for us. Like, okay, you want, you want email, let’s get you an exchange server, a windows server, and then we’ll put it in and you’re looking at, you know, I just like $2,500 for a very small one, I guess. Uh, not, not a, not realistic, but in any case as opposed to, okay, well let’s get, you have 10 people in the office. Let’s get everybody and office three, six, five license at this level.
They’re 10, $15 a piece. So you’re looking at 150 a month to make sure that everybody has access to email no matter where they are. A great uptimes all that good stuff. So it’s, it’s a very helpful for especially small businesses, there’s really no reason not to look at cloud as a very serious aspect of how you do business. So it’s, it’s been around for a while and it is most certainly a loaded term. There are a lot of, a lot of services out there that are cloud base, which if you want, if you’re a visual person, it’s, you can imagine like a Google data center as a cloud that’s the big cloud and it’s, it’s tangible. It’s not an actual, it’s not, not anything, it’s just out of sight and it’s very light as far as it’s, um, how it interfaces with your business.
It’s easy to get, it’s easy to interface with and get started. So, um, that’s really the, the main aspect of cloud is just the ease of use. And you know, you’re, you’re paying for access to the services that exist and it’s a low barrier of entry. So it’s if you’re ever on the fence about going on, so having an onsite deal now regarding compliance, look at that first. If you do onsite, make sure you’re compliant. And there are a few resources. I know high tech, uh, H, I, t, e, c h, um, that’s, uh, I think, I think that’s either a framework or guidelines for, uh, being compliant. And it might be a standards. I know that, um, HIPAA compliance, there should really be, it’s they allow you to, they allow exceptions based on feasibility for your, uh, for the size of that Pr, uh, of a practice or a hospital or, um, anything in between.
But you have to show good faith that you’ve attempted to meet those, that, that standard. And with cloud, with the cloud, uh, options out there, there’s, I mean, it’s pretty, it’s not a unnecessarily burdensome usually to leverage that into your compliance plan. So just keep in mind that the cloud is very, very feasible. It’s cheap, it’s a low operating costs for you and it’s cheaper initially than hardware. And like I said, there, there will come a time after so long that the hardware would have been the best investment, but it’s, you can, it’s just feel it. It’s seeing if that’s right for you. And it, whenever you contact a, an MSP or an IT service provider or it support if it’s out, if it’s not internal, you can start that dialogue of, okay, would it make sense to go into the cloud with this service or would onsite be more feasible? Or would it be more cost effective? Or, uh, you don’t want to, you don’t want to base anything off of price alone, but it’s an eye. It’s realistically, it’s a factor. So keep that in mind. And uh, that’s, that’s called services everybody. So thank you for joining me. This is rants Turley with Turley shank innovations and I hope you all have a good day.