Cobweb Solutions Blog - The UK's Leading Cloud Provider

Our vision – Cobweb 15 years on…

When I joined Cobweb we were a young, ambitious and exciting company with lots of ideas and energy. Although the team here in Fareham were quite small we were all hungry for the business to grow and succeed and for us to be the main provider of core hosted messaging in the UK.

Our vision and the ambition of the company were critical to our success as our investors at the time needed to fully believe that we were investable. We had demanding partners such as Telewest, and being new to the market meant that we were faced with technical challenges. At the start we had a huge amount of ideas but thin on hard facts – few had attempted to supply Microsoft Exchange 2003 as a Service before. We needed to practise what we preached and build the technology that we talked about.

Our original vision to become a successful provider of core hosted messaging and to be a significant provider in our own right has been met. We’re fortunate that when we started competition from Google and Microsoft didn’t exist. That allowed us to build premium services, and attract a niche audience for our offering.  Refining and scaling this approach over the last 10 years now allow us to rationalise and deliver a true utility service as an attractive alternative to the internet giants.

Over the past year or so we have seen the entrance of the giants, such as Office365, into the Cloud market, pushing IT Cloud services on to the agenda of most businesses. We have experienced tremendous growth in adoption not just from small business, the notion that collaborative messaging services are possible to consume as a cloud service appeals strongly to the midmarket also. Paying per seat per month, with no CapEx is compelling enough but now, with utility pricing it’s becoming an accepted option. Established niche providers such as Cobweb need to excel at service delivery, product differentiation and an expert understanding of a customer’s needs for low risk and strong security alongside the Cloud service delivery model.

The shift in how IT is consumed has only just begun; we expect business to move to a full Cloud provided model for most of their basic IT requirements. Mobility between Cloud providers is also a given, Cloud Provider lock-in is difficult to achieve when providing messaging services. Migrations from other Cloud service providers are already a reasonably common occurrence for Cobweb. In fact migrations from Google or Office365 are often quicker and lower risk, than many on premise migrations. Customers have the power of choice, and the specialist, with enough scale and agility will compete.

The next few years are all about strengthening our capability to deliver, with differentiated services focused on the needs of security conscious business in both the public and private sectors. Increasing choice within our portfolio, both to the direct customer and partners. Enabling the established brands and new disruptive cloud services to deliver via our aggregation platform. Product wise we are broadening our Unified Communications Platform to include full voice and to prepare for Wave 15 launches from Microsoft.

Technology changes and customer demands are shaping the way we offer Cloud services to the business market. I absolutely believe that we have the people, technology, flexibility and scalability to meet the demand and dynamic growth within this exciting market place.

Roll on another 15 years

By Julian Dyer, Chief Technical Officer, Cobweb

Microsoft Hosting Summit 2010

Last week was the fifth Microsoft Hosting Summit in Bellevue, Seattle and once again I was lucky enough to attend for Cobweb.   For me this is one of the most useful events of the year.  It's a good opportunity to learn about the market, new developments and offerings from other partners.  Most importantly though, it's a networking opportunity and a good chance to develop relationships with Microsoft and leading hosting companies from around the world.

 

The were 330 attendees at the summit, the largest so far, and it was said that the summit room contained the "World think-tank for hosting and cloud services."  Maybe, let's remember there's life outside of the Microsoft world too.   There was a very strong representation from the UK as ever - did you know that the UK is the #2 hosting market for Microsoft?  It's second only to the US.

 

It's a critical time for Microsoft as they continue to push their Microsoft Online/BPOS platform to partners.  It's tough as most of the audience here will run their own platforms and services in one way or another.   Naturally, from a technology point of view the tracks and sessions had a focus on Exchange 2010 and SharePoint 2010, plus the usual push for the Microsoft virtualisation technology - Dynamic Data Centre.  It was clear that SharePoint is becoming a real opportunity for partners now, it's more than an advanced web hosting offering now.

 

Austen Mulinder heads the Microsoft Hosting business now and he led the keynotes with Bob Muglia.  A picture of the future was painted;

There are approximately 30 million servers running in the world today

In 10 years time this is estimated to be 50 million servers

Potentially 50% of these servers will run in the cloud in 10 years time

That's 25 million servers in the cloud - that's changing the world of IT

 

Even though everything is "cloud" today, this is a long-term journey.  If this is likened to an industrial revolution, or the evolution of services and systems such as telephones or the national electricity grid, then this is a long journey.   The move to cloud computing will take many years, maybe 10, maybe 25.

So, even though there's furious activity and product launches every week at the moment, this is an industry that's growing, changing and will evolve many times yet.   The services we see today, take simple storage-as-a-service for example, may not exist in 15 years time.   Imagine how the iPhone and mobile communications look today compared to those first telephony services that ran on wires alongside the railways.

 

Austen also reinforced the message that the Communications Sector within Microsoft sees hosting partners as "critical" to their business.  97% of all revenue across the whole of Microsoft comes through partners.   Hosting partners drove 30% growth last year.  Remember that recession?... Hosting grew by 30% last year.

 

As ever, we're seeing massive change in the hosting industry.   Steve Ballmer recently said (shouted): "if you didn't want to be in an industry with change, you shouldn't have picked IT!"

 

Dan

http://twitter.com/dan_germain

www.nolatency.co.uk

SharePoint 2010 Mac/Linux Compatibility

 

On Friday I presented at Cobweb’s Connected Solutions event, hosted at Microsoft in London Victoria.  The audience was made up of Cobweb’s existing customers and those interested in finding out more about our services, and what we can do.   During the sessions, I was asked a few times about compatibility of Mac and Linux with SharePoint, and wanted to share my response:

 

Historically, SharePoint has not easily combined with Firefox, Safari or other browsers – even when run on a Windows platform – and has diminished its use on those platforms.  Users of SharePoint 2, Windows SharePoint Services (WSS3) or Office SharePoint 2007 Server (MOSS) with non-IE browsers – for example Firefox – may have experienced this incompatibility in the form of occasional incorrectly formatted, “mashed” or out-of-position content.  I am happy to say that developments to address this in SharePoint 3 have been further enhanced in SharePoint 2010.

 

Notable improvements to Apple Mac and Linux experience include support of non-IE browsers in SharePoint 2010 and some bespoke code now exists such as “Document Connection for Mac” (within Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac SP2+) making it easier to work with files on SharePoint sites.  Even if you’re on a Windows platform and prefer Firefox or Safari, you will no longer (or at very worst, hardly ever) need to switch browsers to use all features; especially if your design accommodates a mixed client base.

 

While this is great, there is a notable exclusion of SharePoint 2010 Workspace (an offline and collaborative tool - read more here) though it is reported that Microsoft are currently developing a Mac-specific tool.
 
Specifically regarding browsers, Microsoft have written SharePoint 2010 for standards-based browsers (XHTML 1.0 compliant) which includes Internet Explorer 7, Internet Explorer 8, Safari 3.x+ and Firefox 3.x.  These browsers running on Windows Operating Systems are compatible, and enjoy an ‘increased level’ of compatibility on non-Windows Operating Systems.  These links detail the official support:
 
SharePoint 2010 Server - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263526(office.14).aspx
SharePoint 2010 Foundation - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc288142(office.14).aspx
Office SharePoint 2007 Server - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263526.aspx
Windows SharePoint Services - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc288142.aspx

 

Finally, to put some of my assertions to the test, I have successfully been able to carry out all elements of my SharePoint 2010 demo (as given at the Connected Solutions event) on both Firefox (3.6.3) and Safari (4.0.5) running from a Windows Vista client.

 

In summary, the support for Mac and Linux is not 100%, but getting closer and – depending on your content – you may never even notice.

 

Cobweb Solutions launches a new managed service for Dedicated Exchange 2010 with Active Directory integration

I'm very pleased to announce Cobweb have completed development and testing of a new managed service for Dedicated Exchange 2010 which includes integration into a customers' existing Active Directory.

We've built this messaging and collaboration solution based on Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, and we're also able to offer integration with Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2. Once again, Cobweb has been part of the TAP (Technology Adoption Programme) for Microsoft Exchange 2010, as we were for Exchange 2003 and Exchange 2007, and we have nothing but praise for the Exchange 2010 product.

We also taken advantage of being an Authorised VMware Hosting Provider to develop this solution on a VMware vSphere 4 platform. As such, Cobweb are now a listed Partner for Virtualizing Exchange. The vSphere 4 platform offers flexibility and solution options that we previously very difficult for us to achieve for customers in a cost effective manner.

I believe that this service will allow organisations, from 500 seats and upwards, to consolidate their messaging and collaboration environments, improve business productivity and reduce operational costs. With no capital expenditure and predictable costs, this private-cloud service provides scalability and performance for organisations to meet their ever changing technology demands.

Integration with an established on-premise Active Directory is an important development for Cobweb and provides customers with single sign-on for users, unified user management, and wider application support. The fragmentation of user management can often be a barrier to the adoption of cloud services for enterprise organisations. When moving to any cloud service, it's important that the experience is risk free for the organisation and painless for the end-user. In the majority of deployments, it's now possible to move from on-premise Microsoft Exchange servers to our Dedicated Exchange service with no end-user disruption – settings, user name and passwords remain the same.

For further details visit www.cobweb.com/DedicatedExchange2010 and if you're interesting in talking to us about this service please talk to our Sales Team on 0845 2239000.

Dan - http://twitter.com/dan_germain

A new data centre for Cobweb and some new technology to go in it...

Friday was a big day for us technical guys at Cobweb as we hit the first milestone in a project that will deliver the next generation of technical platform for us.

We've just signed the deal to take some data centre space in a leading data centre that's not in central/east London. Good data centres are hard to come by outside of Docklands, but we found one in the Equinix LD4 facility. It's a leading data centre, one of the latest generation (with which only opened fully in 2008. Importantly for Cobweb, this location has connectivity to the internet and peering networks that is diverse from the data centre hub of Docklands, giving independence and resilience from any major London DC incident.

Also on Friday, we announced that the BIG-IP solutions from F5 Networks will become our platform of choice for load-balancing and application management. This is a big step forward for us and we'll develop beyond simple load-balancing of HTTP/S connection to improve performance and responsiveness for our Managed Services, especially for connection-critical applications such as Hosted Exchange and Hosted SharePoint

All in all, this is a very significant investment by Cobweb and one we are certainly going to make the most of!

Dan - http://twitter.com/dan_germain