Everyone is talking about "the cloud." It is not often that we see a game-changing paradigm that is so misunderstood in the market. Cloud computing is certainly emerging technology that is getting a lot of hype. Before deciding what makes sense for your organization, it is first important to understand the key differences between the various types of hosted offerings.

1. What Nonprofits and Governments
need to know about “The Cloud”

2. CPE Credit
• In order to receive CPE credit for this session, you must be present for
the entire session.
– Session Code: C-0365B
– Recommended CPE Credit = 1
– Delivery Method = Group Live
– Field of Study = Specialized Knowledge and Applications
• Visit the Sage Summit Connect kiosks to enter CPE credit during the
conference.

3. Your Partner in Dialogue
Grant Howe
• Vice President of R&D w/Sage
• 15+ years in Software Development
• Favorite food: Italian (anything with Alfredo sauce)
• @geekbyte if you want to tweet nice things
• @darthvader if you want to use the dark side

4. Confused by “weather”
or not to go to the cloud?
You're not alone!

5. A Cloud Primer
• What is the Cloud?
• Where is my server?
• What is virtualization?
• What is metered use?
• Why should I care?

6. Everyone Is Talking About It

7. What is the Cloud?
• Shared computing
resources across many
virtualized servers
• Gains economy of scale
by sharing those
resources
• Benefits:
– Scalability, flexibility, and
fault tolerance

8. Where is my server?
• You just can’t hug a cloud
server
Example of “blackbox” server
“I am the cloud”
Inside a server container
Image courtesy of tomshardware.com

9. “Trailer Park” Roofless Cloud
Datacenter Concept
Where is my server?
Image courtesy of tomshardware.com

10. Container o’ servers!

11. Cloud Primer
WHAT IS VIRTUALIZATION

12. Before Virtualization
• 1:1 relationship
between servers /
hardware
• Memory / disk space /
CPU tied to single
server
• Lots of servers….
• Lots of wasted
resources…

13. After Virtualization
• Many:1 relationship between servers / hardware
• Memory / disk space / CPU shared across sets of servers
• Fewer and bigger servers to manage….
• Resource optimization…
• Dell PowerEdge Blade
Enclosure
• 16 Hardware “blades”
• Up to 8 CPU “cores” each
• Its possible to run 128 servers
in several square feet of
space…..

14. What Magic is this?
• How do we fool many servers in to using the same hardware?
• How do we assure they play nice and the resources are
allocated appropriately?
• Introducing the magic of the
“Hyper-Visor”

15. What is a Hyper-Visor
• A thin layer of magic software paint
• Fools the operating system (Windows, etc.)
• Manages allocation of resources
• Manages fault tolerance
• Provides a management interface to create and manage virtual
servers
Magic Paint ->

16. How did we get to Cloud from Virtualization?
• Traditional virtualization still required in house
servers
• People saw the value of having more small
servers
• We all began buying bigger hardware
• But the number of virtual servers
skyrocketed….
Server sprawl,
• So we bought more hardware....
you will!
• A vicious cycle!
• Now we have more hardware than ever before
to manage and its even more critical than it
used to be!

17. The Cloud is Born
• Amazon had built their own Private massive
virtualized environment
• They figured out how to build a massive
hypervisor network that spanned their data
centers
• It was a key business need for their growth to be
able to scale quickly and efficiently on a massive
scale
• Whoa, we could “rent” our computing power to
other companies! $$$$$
• Amazon EC2 and S3 were born as metered use
offerings to the general Public

18. The Cloud is Born

19. Different Types of Clouds
PRIVATE CLOUD

20. Private Clouds
• Pool of resources that are solely yours to allocate
• Most like the “Family Plan” we all know
– No one outside your family can share that pool of minutes, but
you don’t get to use more than your total pool of minutes.
• Best for: servers that have stable resource usage
• Can be expensive if not fully utilizing resources

21. Private Cloud Providers
• Infrastructure as a service
(IaaS)
• Offer dedicated hardware
• Sage Nonprofit partners
with Rackspace on Sage
Nonprofit Online

22. Different Types of Clouds
PUBLIC CLOUD

23. Public Clouds
• Shared resources and/or bandwidth
• Like a phone plan where you share minutes with your entire
city, a “Neighborhood Plan”
• Best for: when you need to scale internet facing servers, like
web servers
• Pay premium for flexibility and
burst capacity
• Example: “The Oprah Effect”

24. Public Cloud Providers
• Infrastructure as a service
(IaaS)
• Platform as a Service
(PaaS)
• Shared hardware only
• Saleslogix and Sage One
hosted on Amazon EC2
• Watch for new Sage
offerings on Windows
Azure

25. Different Types of Clouds
HYBRID CLOUD

26. Hybrid Clouds
• Creating a link between both a Public and Private Cloud so
they can work together
• If you could have a “Family Plan” and “Neighborhood Plan” on
your phone and choose to which plan to charge the minutes
– You could be more conservative with your dedicated minutes and
more generous with the shared ones.
• Best for: when you need to scale some services (web,
fundraising) but not others (reporting, backend database)
• “Buy the base, rent the spike”

27. NOW FOR SOME
ACCOUNTING!

28. Accounting in the Cloud
What are my options?
• Managed, hosted applications
• Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
• Licensed vs. subscription solutions
• Flexibility and choice

29. Accounting in The Cloud: What are the options?
HOSTED APPLICATIONS

30. Hosted applications in the cloud
Pros Cons
• Offers remote access via • Many hosted application
the web providers require you to
own the software license
• Eliminates need to have up front and don’t offer
in-house servers subscription pricing
• Updates and backups
managed by the provider
automatically
• Cloud-based data
protected from local
server crashes, fire or
flood disasters

31. Accounting in The Cloud: What are the options?
SOFTWARE-AS-A-SERVICE
(SAAS)

32. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
Pros Cons
• Generally offered to • Many SaaS providers
customers by the only offer subscription
software developer with no option for
purchasing a license
• Almost always web-
based • No ability to access data
if discontinue subscription
• Constantly evolve and
– Be sure to understand the
add new features potential costs of future
data conversion if you need
to migrate to another
solution

33. Accounting in The Cloud: What are the options?
LICENSED VS. SUBSCRIPTION
SOLUTIONS

34. Licensed vs. Subscription
Licensed solutions Subscription pricing
• May require a larger up- • Predictable, regular
front cost expense schedule
• Retain ownership of the • Attractive for
software license asset organizations with a low
– Choose to install it in any tolerance for unexpected
compatible environment IT costs or large capital
you choose purchases
Example: Buy or lease a new car

35. Accounting in The Cloud: What are the options?
FLEXIBILITY AND CHOICE

36. Flexibility and choice
• Look for solutions that offer the best of both worlds:
– Hosted and accessed remotely online
– Installed locally on your own server
• Select your system first
– Then choose implementation that work best for your
organization
• Needs grow and change
– Options to change your implementation in the future—without
the expense of having to switch your core accounting system

37. Top questions to consider before you implement
BEFORE YOU FLY…

38. Questions to ask yourself
• What application(s) do we need hosted?
• How do these applications interact with us and other
applications?
• How many man hours are spent each month maintaining
servers, workstations, connectivity, software updates?
• Have we ever lost data?
• Do our users need remote access when working from home or
traveling?
• What type of compliance do we need? (PCI, HIPAA, etc…)

39. IS SAGE NONPROFIT IN THE
CLOUD?

40. www.SageNonprofit.com/SageNonprofitOnline

41. QUESTIONS / DISCUSSION

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• Session code for this session: C-0365B

43. Contact Us
• Presenter Contact Information:
– Grant Howe
– grant.howe@sage.com
– @geekbyte
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Thank you for your participation.