By Andrew R. Hickey, CRN

Company: Exoprise
Tech Sector: Cloud Computing
Key Product: CloudReady

Waltham, Mass.-based Exoprise wants to take the fear out of making the leap to the cloud. With its CloudReady flagship offering, the company looks to determine if a company is, well, cloud ready. CloudReady uses company data to provide detailed insight into a user’s readiness, the TCO of existing on-premise applications and evaluation and recommendation of different cloud options. Exoprise was founded in 2009 and says its goal is to deliver the insight and controls needed to make an informed decision about moving to the cloud. With cloud-based assessment, migration and monitoring offerings, Exoprise wants to guide companies of all sizes to the cloud.

The last big company I worked for, Citrix Systems, is lead by a very smart CEO, Mark Templeton, who constantly focused on the application delivery experience and was one of the first users of the term ‘Consumerization of IT’. Citrix was prescient to focus on the overall end-user application experience. Enterprise application delivery impacts the way end-users interact with and consume their information (the applications), the way they collaborate, can be directly correlated to productivity, agility, security, and total-cost-of-ownership.

Today, there are a plethora of options for delivering apps & information available to IT leaders and vast demands being placed on the IT  infrastructure and budget. The 'Consumerization of IT' is forcing IT to deal with more sophisticated, more mobile users who demand access to information systems and collaboration 24x7.

HTML5, the Web and scalable cloud infrastructures are ushering in a new era of application delivery for corporate IT. Finally, there is a way to deliver rich application experiences to every device and user all-the-time, and it can be more agile, secure, and cost-effective. The old model of thick client applications based on expensive desktops with legacy stacks of management, patching and licensing won't cut it anymore; end-users won't stand for it. IT executives better get ready.

Preparing for the Application Delivery Revolution

The transformation of application delivery brought about by the cloud is forcing every IT department to take stock of their environment, to figure out which apps can be replaced with more efficient cloud alternatives and determine which machines and OSs can be replaced by lean, web-optimized platforms like iPads, smartphones and Chromebooks. Every IT leader I speak with wants to know:

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• How much money your organization would save versus the current way of doing things?
• How many applications like MS Office and other legacy applications are really being used in the enterprise?
• How can I get off of this desktop upgrade and maintenance treadmill?

And that's why we built CloudReady Insight for Desktops. We want to enable enterprises of all sizes to answer these questions quickly and easily, without big professional services engagements or heavy software installs. Want to enable companies to adopt HTML5 and cloud-based apps with the confidence they're going to save money as well as meet or exceed user expectations. Its an important mission - and we're quite passionate about it. In fact, you can try CloudReady Insight for Desktops for free.

Agent-free, cloud-driven solution identifies suitability and benefits of migrating to Google Apps for Business and Google Chromebook

Waltham, MA, October 19, 2011 – Exoprise Systems, today announced the availability of CloudReady Insight for Desktops, an automated assessment solution built specifically to identify which users, applications and machines in an organization can easily migrate to cloud-based alternatives including Google Chromebooks and Google Apps for Business. CloudReady’s next-generation approach requires no client-side agents, is deployable in minutes and delivers deep insights into key “Post-PC Era” decision factors such as total cost of ownership, actual application usage, productivity and performance.

Measuring the Fit and Benefits of Enterprise Chromebook Deployments with Data-Driven Insights

Recently made available to businesses, the Google Chromebook is a web-optimized, secure computer designed to help organizations seize the advantages of cloud-based alternatives to on-premises applications. Exoprise created CloudReady Insight for Desktops to help organizations determine the fit and benefits of Chromebooks through an automated, data-driven assessment of key environment, cost and application usage factors.

CloudReady Insight for Desktops helps organizations prioritize their IT investments and transform their application delivery strategy. Faced with an increasing number of alternatives to Windows PC-based environments including Virtual Desktop solutions like Citrix XenDesktop, VMware View or Microsoft Remote Desktop Services and cloud-enabled solutions like Google Apps, IT leaders require new technologies that help determine which approach is most viable and cost effective for their enterprise.

“Having detailed knowledge of application usage and TCO across an environment is critical to making decisions about which alternative platforms are best for an organization.” said Jason Lieblich, Exoprise Founder and CEO. “As companies investigate more productive and cost-effective alternatives to the traditional Windows PC, IT leaders need the insights and tools to properly plan, deploy and manage these changes.”

Application Analytics without the Need for Heavy Agent Deployment

Unlike traditional systems management tools that require appliances and distribution of client-side agents to every desktop, CloudReady Insight for Desktops is deployable in minutes and delivers results previously unobtainable through agent-free technologies. Some of the analytics delivered include:

- Application usage and distribution across every desktop and laptop
- Data-driven cost analytics comparing PCs to Chromebook and Virtual Desktop alternatives
- Automatic identification of web-based equivalent applications for pre-deployment planning
- Segmentation of Web-workers vs. Office-workers

Google Partners Look to Satisfy Demand for Chromebooks in the Enterprise

Top-tier Google partners are enthusiastic about adding Chromebooks to their suite of offerings. With customers on the leading edge of cloud adoption, Google partners are ideally positioned to help enterprises determine how much of a traditional desktop environment can be replaced by Chromebooks. “Interest in Chromebooks is extremely high among our customers and prospects,” said Tony Safoian, CEO of SADA Systems, a premiere Google partner. “CloudReady will allow us to quickly meet this interest with assessment and planning tools to guide their deployments. The service offers value to any organization contemplating the impact of the cloud on their business.”

About Exoprise Systems, Inc.

Exoprise enables organizations to migrate existing on-premises applications to agile and cost-effective cloud-based alternatives with confidence. CloudReady, Exoprise’s flagship offering, is a cloud-based, data-driven solution that provides detailed insights into user readiness, TCO of existing on-premises applications as well as evaluation and recommendation of different cloud options. Cloud technology is ushering in a new era in IT. Exoprise delivers the insight and controls necessary to make informed decisions and to accelerate success in the cloud.

For more information:

Jamie Watt
VP, Sales and Marketing
Exoprise Systems, Inc.
781-209-5653 x400
jwatt@exoprise.com
http://www.exoprise.com

But what about the Cloud?

With cloud e-mail finally getting traction in the enterprise, the decision making gets considerably more complex. Enterprises can upgrade on premises email, Exchange 2003 – 2007 for example; they can move to the cloud and stick with Microsoft (Office 365 of Hosted Exchange); they can move to Google Apps; and they can create a custom hybrid environment. They can also do nothing and wait it out a little longer.

As with any strategic investment decisions, gathering data and comparing options is a critical part of the process. And it’s not easy to sift through the piles of marketing literature, analyst reports, whitepapers and case studies – the usual suspects in the world of enterprise software buying.

To make the process just a little bit easier, Exoprise would like to allow IT leaders to answer an important question – is their current Exchange environment faster and/or more reliable than available cloud alternatives? To be clear, answering this question in the affirmative doesn’t mean passing on the cloud and all the goodness it has to offer. Likewise, identifying latency or up-time issues on the Exchange server are not proof that the cloud is the way to go. But it’s hard to argue against having a solid, data-driven understanding of how the existing environment stacks up against proposed alternatives.

Exoprise is pleased to combine two of its solutions into an efficient, easy to execute offering that gives IT leaders answers to some of the most important and challenging questions. Using the advanced synthetic transaction capabilities of CloudReady Monitor, and the deep analytics of CloudReady Insight, this unique program can quickly and easily help IT leaders advance their understanding of their options, and make the right decisions.

Register to view a live demonstration on September 27 or contact me directly jwatt(at)exoprise.com

The outages last week at Office 365 and Google Docs weren’t the end of the world. Honest, straightforward vendor notification came relatively quickly and the public response was refreshingly measured. Cloud based solutions will have service interruptions, but that doesn’t mean they’re any riskier or less reliable than the on-premises solutions they replaced.

At the same time, these outages shine a light on the fact that IT departments rely on their cloud vendor for up-time and performance monitoring – an unfortunate imbalance of power. Vendor dashboards and independent, ping-based monitors offer some oversight, but true end-to-end monitoring of enterprise applications can suffer when they are moved to the cloud. Surely Googling “Is Office 365 down?” isn’t a viable long term solution for organizations that have moved to Office 365?!

Exoprise has been working hard on CloudReady Monitor, an innovative solution that puts real performance monitoring back in the hands of the enterprise. Now in beta for Office 365 and Google Apps, Cloudready Monitor gives IT leaders visibility and control over their new IT infrastructure, some of which now lives in the cloud. CloudReady Monitor uses on-premises sensors and synthetic transactions to enable full end-to-end performance monitoring, as well as comparison against peers. This is good for the enterprise as well as for the cloud vendor, as performance issues may lie in the last mile, on-premises.

We’d welcome your participation in the CloudReady Monitor for Office 365 beta test. It takes just minutes to initiate a sensor and start monitoring the performance of your Office 365 environment.

Beta participants can:

• Monitor average logon time, and compare it against other Office 365 customers.
• Track the speed of mail delivery, including the last mile, through Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) performance statistics.
• Set up custom alerts to be notified of issues before users call support.

You can read more about CloudReady Monitor at http://www.exoprise.com/cloudready/monitor/.

If you have questions about or would like to join the beta program, please contact me directly at jwatt(at)exoprise.com.

Some writers praised Google for their quick and honest communication about the incident. Others noted that “no system is perfect” and that the cloud is still likely to be more reliable than the on-premises enterprise systems we all grew up on.

It’s refreshing to see a more measured response to the recent outages, and I’m definitely all-in as far as the future of cloud computing. But the repeated disruptions (and there will be more) of such widely-used SaaS apps as Google Docs and Office 365 does raise some questions, particularly around monitoring and notification.

Surely Googling “Is Office 365 Down?” isn’t an optimal solution for an enterprise IT manager with thousands of unhappy users idling at their desks. And while a ping-based up-time monitoring service can verify that a SaaS app is having issues – we’re still asking enterprise IT departments to take a pretty big leap of faith in terms of performance monitoring. In some cases they’re moving from a robust “single pane of glass” view of their enterprise to a new “trust us – we’ll let you know if we’re having issues” paradigm.

Exoprise believes that IT departments needn’t rely on their cloud vendor for performance monitoring, and that even in the best cases, this arrangement creates an unnecessary imbalance of power. CloudReady Monitor, now in beta for Office 365 and Google Apps, puts monitoring back in the hands of the enterprise, giving them visibility and control of their new IT infrastructure, some of which now lives in the cloud. As important, CloudReady Monitor uses on-premises sensors and synthetic transaction monitoring to enable full end-to-end performance monitoring and comparison against peers. This is good for the enterprise, as well as the cloud vendor, as performance issues are not always the vendors fault.

Check it out at http://www.exoprise.com/cloudready/monitor/, join the beta program, give us your feedback. As always, Exoprise is in the business of accelerating cloud adoption. In this case, we want to give enterprises the confidence and controls to manage their performance once they get there.

by Joe Panettieri, Talkin’ Cloud on 8.15.11

Exoprise Systems Inc., which helps businesses to evaluate their cloud readiness, is taking a very close look at the Office 365 and Google Apps marketplaces. Among the key inflection points that Exoprise has been studying: Will legacy on-premise Exchange customers upgrade to on-premise Exchange 2010 — or will those customers move to Google Apps or Microsoft Office 365?

Back in April, more than 500 IT professionals participated in an Exoprise survey about cloud computing. Among the survey outcomes worth noting:

• 25 percent of survey participants say they are considering a move to a new email platform within the next 12 months. Another 26 percent say they may consider such a move.
• For those that are considering cloud-based email, the top anticipated benefits include (1) less management overhead (2) cost savings and (3) scalability and agility. However, one-third of survey participants are not convinced that the cloud offers cost benefits vs. on-premise e-mail. But the biggest lingering concern involves security.
• Only 17 percent of survey participants are extremely confident that cloud-based email can meet anticipated needs, though 41 percent of participants are somewhat confident that cloud-based email can meet anticipated needs.
• After email, the applications that survey participants will consider moving to the cloud include desktop applications, storage, content management, SharePoint, VoIP and complete VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure).
• Of the 517 survey participants, most currently run Exchange on-premise. Nearly 300 would consider Google Apps as a potential replacement, while roughly 225 would consider Office 365 as a replacement — though Office 365 didn’t debut until June 28 — roughly two months after the survey was conducted.

Making the Move

Armed with that survey data, Exoprise is helping customers to assess their on-premises applications, infrastructure and end-user readiness for cloud computing. Much of the effort involves CloudReady, a SaaS application suite that evaluates the readiness of on-premises systems and assists with cloud migrations. “Next up for us is the launch of our cloud monitoring solution, which
I’m really excited about,” said Jason Lieblich, CEO and founder of Exoprise. ” We’re introducing a new angle on cloud
performance monitoring that fills an important gap in the market. We’ll be saying more about that in the coming months.”

In the meantime, Lieblich says, Exoprise is getting “great traction” with Exchange assessments in state government organizations, higher education, and well-known consumer companies. He notes that Exoprise has also partnered up successfully withDaston Corp. and Cloud Sherpas.

Of course, it’s difficult to truly measure Exoprise’s momentum, since the company essentially is a privately held startup. Still, cloud email migration services are a hot commodity at the moment. Instead of getting up in price-per-user inbox wars, Exoprise seems focused on the more lucrative  assessment, consulting and migration services.

Limited time offer will help IT decision makers evaluate enterprise readiness, best-fit cloud alternatives to on-premises Exchange

Waltham, MA, June 27, 2011 – In response to Microsoft’s release of Office 365 and the growing interest in cloud-based alternatives to on-premises Exchange, Exoprise Systems, Inc. announced today that it will offer CloudReady, the company’s automated Exchange assessment solution, at no charge for the month of July. Delivering insights into key decision factors such as cost, end-user readiness, and reliability the limited time offer will arm IT decision-makers with a better, data-driven understanding of their existing Exchange environments and an unbiased, quantitative comparison of today’s cloud alternatives, including Office 365 and Google Apps.

Cloud Adoption Today: Increasing Options + High Expectations + Lack of Clarity

The Microsoft Office 365 release introduces a new chapter in the battle for enterprise messaging that will drive even more organizations to consider moving email and desktop applications to the cloud.

While most agree that cloud computing promises significant cost-savings and productivity enhancements, Exoprise research has found that many IT and business decision-makers are not entirely confident in making the decision to move to the cloud. A recent Exoprise survey of 180 organizations found that half of the respondents are considering a new email platform in the next 12 months, but only 14% are extremely confident that cloud-based email services will meet their needs.

“The heated battle for enterprise messaging is certainly driving innovation and value for organizations of all sizes,” said Jamie Watt, Exoprise VP of Sales and Marketing. “But the competition is also driving some uncertainty among decision-makers. Our aim at Exoprise is to give IT professionals the insights necessary to seize these benefits and to choose the right path to meet their needs. By offering CloudReady at no charge for this limited time we can help organizations better evaluate the potential benefits of Office 365, and other cloud-based alternatives to on-premises Exchange.”

Experts Agree: Success in the Cloud Begins On-Premises

Jeffrey M. Kaplan, Managing Director of THINKstrategies, a strategic consulting company focused on cloud computing and founder of the Cloud Computing Showplace, also sees the need for unbiased, data-driven insights in a heated marketplace. “Corporate decision-makers need to fully understand their existing system and software capabilities, usage levels, cost structures, integrations and other dependencies to select the right cloud solution provider. Gathering these insights in an automated manner is a smart, easy first step towards developing a successful cloud strategy.”

Additional information and access to the free CloudReady Exchange Assessment program is available at www.exoprise.com/freetrial.

About Exoprise Systems, Inc.

Exoprise enables organizations to migrate existing on-premises applications to agile and cost-effective cloud-based alternatives with confidence. CloudReady, Exoprise’s flagship offering, is a cloud-based, data-driven solution that provides detailed insights into user readiness, TCO of existing on-premises applications as well as evaluation and recommendation of different cloud options. Cloud technology is ushering in a new era in IT. Exoprise delivers the insight and controls necessary to make informed decisions and to accelerate success in the cloud.

For more information:

Jamie Watt
VP, Sales and Marketing
Exoprise Systems, Inc.
781-209-5653 x400
jwatt@exoprise.com
http://www.exoprise.com

Exoprise whitepaper articulates the value of data-driven assessment in cloud strategy development.

Most agree that cloud computing will fundamentally change how information technology systems and enterprise software are delivered and consumed by organizations large and small.  Nevertheless, many IT and business decision makers considering cloud computing are uncertain about where to begin and how to identify their first cloud initiative. After all, most organizations have many years of experience and investments in traditional, on-premises applications.

This whitepaper, published in June 2011, explores the critical components of a comprehensive cloud assessment and how data-driven analysis of on-premises systems reduces risk and paves the way to faster and more successful adoption of cloud services.

Please fill out the form to the right to download the PDF.
 

By Beth Schultz, Network World

4. Company Name: Exoprise Systems

Headquarters: Waltham, Mass.

What it offers: CloudReady, a SaaS application suite for evaluating the readiness of on-premises systems, orchestrating cloud migrations and providing real-time performance monitoring for cloud-based applications.

Why it’s worth watching: Exoprise is among a number of SaaS providers helping companies make sense of all the stuff they have out in the cloud. The idea is to give IT professionals a way to “seize the benefits of the cloud quickly and confidently,” as Exoprise founder and CEO Jason Lieblich put it at the company’s March launch. ThinkStrategies’ Kaplan says he likes what he sees of the company’s strategy so far: “It’s starting by letting you take an inventory of e-mail usage so you can determine which of a growing array of Web-based or cloud e-mail services might be the best fit for your company. But really it’s setting up to do the same thing for any migration to the cloud.”

How it works: In a five-step process, users first tap into the CloudReady service and download ExoShell, a secure Web service application that lets Exoprise analyze the enterprise infrastructure without need for complex database and Web servers. They then configure, adjust and schedule their assessments. At the appointed time, ExoShell scans the messaging environment, gathering information on cost, reliability and end-user usage that it then securely uploads to CloudReady for analysis. Finally, users can use the customizable analysis results to help determine the right cloud offering for their organizations, Exoprise says.

Where it resides: Rackspace hosted data center.

How much it costs: Per-mailbox pricing for CloudReady Insight, available now, with pricing bands between $10 and $2 per mailbox, depending on the size of the total assessment; free trial available. CloudReady Monitor, in beta, also is available for free trial. (The third piece of the suite, CloudReady Control, is slated for availability later this year.)

Who’s using it: A mix of commercial, government and education institutions have run assessments, ExoPrise says, but has no names to share at this time.