Best Day to Blog Experiment – The Results

Last week I did a little experiment to determine what is the best day of the week to blog, Monday thru Friday, that is.  I’ve come across many stories about when is the best day/time to get the most readership exposure from a blog post and I posted a blog entry every day last week to conduct my own little brief, non-scientific experiment.  So what is the best day to blog?  Depends.  Monday, Wednesday or Thursday all had the best results but in some cases, it depended on the post location.  I even waited until mid-week to post these results, based on last week’s experiment.   My primary blog is on F5’s DevCentral community site but I also push content out to WordPress, Blogger, Posterous, PodBean and Ulitzer.  I usually track through Google analytics but some sites have their own statistical reporting.  So let’s get to the charts.

 

This first one shows the results of my DevCentral blog from Subtext, a popular open source blogging platform.  Here, Thursday was easily the winner but Monday also drew a good crowd.  I also think Thursday might have been higher due to folks checking out the previous days they may have missed.  I’ve noticed that when doing a blog series, if you include the previous entries as reference, those get good traction days after their initial post.

 

 

Next is the Google Analytics results of the same DevCentral blog.  They count slightly differently but you can see that Thursday was still the most popular day by a smidgen, with the rest of the week holding it’s own along with the expected Friday drop.  That’s one thing I can say with certainty is that Friday wasn’t the best day to blog.  My weekly visits were up 22% which was somewhat expected and bounce rate down.  One benefit of blogging every day.

 

This chart is from my Wordpress blog and as you can see, mid-week were all equal and contradicted the rest of the locations and my previous paragraph about Friday being slow.  Here, Friday was the most attended day.  It seemed people were catching up since there were reads on Friday of the previous day’s entries.

 

These are the numbers from Ulitzer (sys-con) and they keep the same trend – Monday and Thursday doing well with Tuesday sneaking in the middle.  Historically I’ve done most of my posts on Tuesday or Wednesday but am now thinking that more like Wednesday or Thursday might be slightly better.  I’m going to keep looking at these over the next few months.

 

This chart is from Podbean, yet another location that I syndicate to.  I also host my Audio Whitepapers on Podbean.  Once again, Thursday wins with Wednesday and Monday following.  Seeing a trend yet?

 

And finally Posterous – which is actually a pretty cool blogging platform and also hosts a bunch of Audio, Video and other multimedia types.  This one bucks the trend but these are overall views rather than just the daily, which might explain Monday being on top since it had been out there longer.

Conclusion?  For me, during this very limited experiment it is clear that Thursday or Monday receive the most reads with Tuesday and Wednesday holding their own.  I’d probably have to watch over weeks and months to clearly say which day is the best but this is a start.  I’m not sure if the content was any better or worse for each day but next time, I’m going to try posting every day with various topics, not a ‘This is a Test’ blog every day.  Regardless, I got some interesting data and hope this helps you when determining when to post.  You might be wondering why I’m not waiting until tomorrow (Thursday) to post this since the data indicates I’ll have more traffic.  One, I didn’t want to wait; two, this was ready to go today and; three, one of the main things I came away with is that it if you have interesting, timely, engaging content, it really doesn’t matter when you post.  We blog because we enjoy it.  We blog because want to share something interesting.  We blog to provide insight about the latest news, whatever that might be.  We blog to engage in a conversation with our social community.  We blog because it is kinda fun – and having fun in life, no matter what day of the week is important to our existence.  Thanks for playing along and participating in my first annual ‘Best Day to Blog Experiment.’  You, the readers, make this blog enjoyable.

ps

Related:

• The Best Day to Blog Experiment - Day 1
• The Best Day to Blog Experiment - Day 2
• The Best Day to Blog Experiment - Day 3
• The Best Day to Blog Experiment - Day 4
• The Best Day to Blog Experiment - Day 5

twitter: @psilvas

Technorati Tags: blog,social media,monday,music,statistics,blog traffic,web traffic,best day to blog,best day to publish,analytics,silva

The Best Day to Blog Experiment - Day 5

This is a test of the Emergency Blogcast System. The blogger in your area has developed this test to keep you informed in the event of a blog abnormality.  If this had been an actual blog emergency, you would have been offered a highlighted link to click for further instructions. This concludes this test of the Emergency Blogcast System.

If you missed the past week, welcome to The Best Day to Blog Experiment and thanks for your participation, I do appreciate it.  I’m conducting a brief, non-scientific experiment.  The idea was to blog everyday this week, track the results and report back.  This is Day 5, the last day of the experiment and so far Day 1 (Monday) got some good traction, Day 2 (Tuesday) grew with a 6.5% jump in visits over Monday, Day 3 (Wednesday) was down 4% from Tuesday but still had a decent showing and Day 4 (Thursday) was up 5% over Wednesday.  It pretty much follows the same pattern as other ‘best day’ studies have shown.

Friday, the end of the school and work week in many countries and even has it’s own catch phrase – TGIF.  For those superstitious folks, there’s an interesting anomaly about Friday according to Wikipedia, ‘The use of the Gregorian calendar and its leap year system results in a small statistical anomaly, that the 13th of any month is slightly more likely to fall on a Friday than any of the other six days. The figures are 688/4800 (43/300) which is .1433333..., being greater than 1 in 7 by just 0.3%.’  Friday blog entries still get attention and statistically get about the same as a Monday post.  What I did find interesting, is this study (pdf) from Carnegie Mellon which found that if efficiency is your goal, the very best day to read a blog is Friday.  They say that the logic might be that since bloggers tend to blog less often on Friday, the content that is posted might be more focused and informative – either that or there is less to choose from and you find the really good ones.

Since it is Friday, I’m not going to babble on about blog traffic and just get right to the ‘Songs about the Day,’ a recurring theme for this blog experiment.  All week, I’ve used The Y! Radish’s blog about ‘songs with days in the title’ and he has a decent Top 10 list for every day, including Friday.  But for today, I found another list from PopCultureMadness which lists a bunch of Friday songs.

• Another Friday Night - Chris Knight
• Another Friday Night - Embrace Today
• Black Friday - Steely Dan
• Every Friday Afternoon - Craig Morgan
• Every Other Friday At Five - Trace Adkins
• Freaky Friday - Aqua
• Freaky Friday Baby One More Time - Bowling For Soup
• Friday - Autograph
• Friday - Bowling For Soup
• Friday - Daniel Bedingfield
• Friday - Ice Cube
• Friday - J.J. Cale
• Friday - Joe Jackson
• Friday Child - Nancy Sinatra
• Friday Face - Richie Spice
• Friday Fun - The Donnas
• Friday I'm In Love - The Cure
• Friday Night - Click Five
• Friday Night - The Darkness
• Friday Night - Kids From Fame
• Friday Night - Lily Allen
• Friday Night - McFly
• Friday Night - The Monarchs
• Friday Night Blues - John Conlee
• Friday Night In Dixie - Rhett Atkins
• Friday Night On A Dollar Bill - Huelyn Duvall
• Friday Night Saturday Morning - The Specials
• Friday On My Mind - David Bowie
• Friday On My Mind - Easybeats
• Friday On My Mind - Gary Moore
• Friday Street - Paul Weller
• Friday You Said Goodbye - Jerry Cox
• Friday's Angels - Generation X
• Get 'Em Out By Friday - Genesis
• Good Friday - Guttermouth
• Good Mourning/Black Friday - Megadeth
• It's Finally Friday - George Jones
• Keep Their Heads Ringin' (It's Friday) - Dr Dre
• Living It Up (Friday Night) - Bell and James
• Monday Like A Friday - Andre Nickatino & Equipto
• Mr. Friday Night - DJ Cally
• One February Friday - Frankie Goes To Hollywood
• Party People... Friday Night - 911
• She Left Me On Friday - Shed Seven
• Thank God It's Friday - R. Kelly

ps

Related:

• The Best Day to Blog Experiment - Day 1
• The Best Day to Blog Experiment - Day 2
• The Best Day to Blog Experiment - Day 3
• The Best Day to Blog Experiment - Day 4
• Friday is the Best Day to Read Blogs

twitter: @psilvas

Technorati Tags: blog,social media,monday,music,statistics,blog traffic,web traffic,best day to blog,best day to publish,analytics,silva

The Best Day to Blog Experiment - Day 4

If you missed the past three days, welcome to The Best Day to Blog Experiment; you are now a participant.  If you are a returning reader, thanks for your participation and for the first time readers, I’ve come across many stories about when is the best day/time to get the most readership exposure from a blog post and I’m doing my own little brief, non-scientific experiment.  The idea was to blog everyday this week, track the results and report back.  Mahalo for becoming a statistic, and I mean that in the most gracious way.  This is Day 4 of the experiment and so far Day 1 (Monday) got some good traction, Day 2 (Tuesday) grew with a 6.5% jump in visits over Monday while Day 3 (Wednesday) is down 4% from Tuesday but still a decent showing – plus my week is up 37% over the previous. 

Thursday, is the day before Friday and NBC’s ‘Must See TV’ for many years.  As with Wednesday, the name comes from the Anglo-Saxons to signify that this is Thunor's or Thor’s day.  Both gods are derived from Thunaraz, god of thunder.  Supposedly, Thursday is the best day to post a blog entry.  This article (different from the last link) also says that, ‘between 1pm and 3pm PST (after lunch) or between 5pm and 7pm PST (after work) are the best times…and the worst time to post is between 3 and 5 PM PST on the weekends.’  Those articles have a bunch of charts showing traffic patterns to indicate that this is the day.  There is some wonder about this, however.  Yesterday I mentioned that it might not be the actual day at all, but about knowing when your audience is visiting and making sure content is available before they arrive.  Also, if you are only worried about traffic stats and how many subscribers you have, rather than timely engaging content, then you would worry about dropping words on a certain day.  If you are creating insightful material, then the readers will find you no matter what day you post.  Danny Brown points out that with social media tools like Digg, Stumbleupon and Reddit, and sharing sites like Facebook and Twitter, the blog post can live much longer than the initial push. 

There’s also a distinction between a personal and business blog.  With a personal blog, much of the focus is sharing ideas or writing about some recent personal experience.  I realize that’s an oversimplification and there’s much more to it than that, but the day you post might not really matter.  With a business blog, often you are covering a new feature of a product, how some new-fangled thing impacts a business, reporting on a press release and basically extending the company’s message.  In this case, timely blogs are important since your audience might be looking for just that – how to solve something today or to understand the ramifications of some new regulation or other areas of interest.  It’s important for a company to get a jump on these stories and show thought leadership.  Also, depending on your industry, most of your colleagues will also be on the Mon-Fri work schedule and you want to catch them when they are digging for answers.  Of course, this is not set in stone but is the prevailing notion of those who cover ‘blogging.’  Personally, I only write what would be considered a business blog for F5 Networks with a focus on Security, Cloud Computing and a bit about Social Media but cover just about whatever I feel is appropriate, including pop culture.  As a writer and a human, my experiences are gathered over time and influenced by both my upbringing and professional endeavors.  I try to bring a bit of who I am rather than what I do to my posts and typically write when inspiration hits. 

Going back to Danny Brown for a moment, he notes that it’s the writer who makes the blog and we do it because we like it.  Communicate with your readers, share with the community and write engaging content and you’ll have visitors and readers no matter what day of the week it gets posted.

If you’ve followed this mini-series, you’ll know that ‘Songs about the Day’ is a recurring theme during this blog experiment.  All week, I’ve used The Y! Radish’s blog about ‘songs with days in the title’ and for the 4th time in as many days, I’m ‘lifting’ his list for songs about Thursday. 

Top 10 Songs About Thursday

   1. Thursday - Asobi Seksu 
   2. Thursday - Morphine
   3. Thursday - Country Joe & The Fish
   4. Thursday The 12th - Charlie Hunter
   5. Thursday's Child - Eartha Kitt
   6. Thursday - Jim Croce
   7. Thursday's Child - David Bowie
   8. (Thursday) Here's Why I Did Not Go To Work Today - Harry Nilsson
   9. Sweet Thursday - Pizzicato Five
   10. Jersey Thursday - Donovan

I know it’s a stretch but my favorite Thursday song is God of Thunder – KISS.

ps

Related:

• The Best Day to Blog Experiment - Day 1
• The Best Day to Blog Experiment - Day 2
• The Best Day to Blog Experiment - Day 3
• The History and Meaning of Thursday
• The Best Day for Blogging is Thursday
• What is the Best Day to Blog?
• Want That Post to Go Popular? Here's The Best and Worst Times to Post It
• What is the Ideal Post Frequency for a Blog?
• Easy Content Scheduling for Bloggers

twitter: @psilvas

Technorati Tags: blog,social media,monday,music,statistics,blog traffic,web traffic,best day to blog,best day to publish,analytics,silva

The Best Day to Blog Experiment - Day 3

If you missed the past two days, welcome to The Best Day to Blog Experiment; you are now a participant.  For the first time readers, I’ve come across many stories about when is the best day/time to get the most readership exposure from a blog post and I figured I’d do my own little brief, non-scientific experiment.  The idea is to blog everyday this week, track the results and report back next week.  Thanks for becoming a statistic.  Yesterday, I noted that it was important to have a good opening line to grab your readers, yet I’ve repeated this exact opening 3 days in a row.  I’m wondering if this will have any influence on the results.  I guess that’s part of the test – follow the rules, break the rules and see what happens.  I’m now on Day 3 of the experiment and so far Day 1 (Monday) actually got some good traction and Day 2 (Tuesday) is trending well with a 6.5% jump in visits over Monday.  Bounce Rate and Time on Site are also in the positive day over day.  I’m tweeting the post(s) a couple times a day to catch folks all over.  I do this sometimes, especially if I post late in the day – I’ll tweet the link out early the next morning hoping to catch readers who might have missed it the previous afternoon or re-tweet late in the day if I’ve posted very early.  Oh and by the way, I really want to thank those of you who are playing along at home – without you, I’d have no data. 

Welcome to Wednesday, hump-day, mid-week and originally Woden’s Day, for the Anglo-Saxon god Woden.  Wednesday is also a very good day to post a blog according to a few reports and it happens to be one of the more likely days that a reader would comment.  Like Tuesday, posting mid-week allows readers to find the entry even if they miss the initial syndication.  I’ve read that both Tuesday and Thursday are the best days to post a blog, so sitting in the middle of the two should garner results, right?  Lorelle VanFossen, who writes about blogging says that sometimes it isn’t about when you post but it’s about when the most people visit your blog.  She notes that while certain days do draw more viewers in general, knowing when the best day/time to post is more about understanding which day of the week your traffic levels will be highest and making sure content is available during those times or; post your ‘most poignant’ content during that window.  Another interesting angle is that we train our audience when to show up, so the actual day might not matter.  If you blog every day and your readers have been trained to watch for it daily, when you miss a few days without notice, folks wonder what happened.  I’ve mentioned that I usually post either on Tuesday or Wednesday and I’m guessing that is when my readers ‘look’ for content.  It makes sense then, that a post on Friday probably won’t (and it hasn’t) gain views since my regular readers are not looking for it then.  If they do come across it, it might not get the depth or engagement since the weekend is right around the corner.  I’ll be watching for that 2 days from now.  It’s interesting so far that what started as a simple test to determine the best day to blog, has generated more observations and additional questions along the way – meaning, things I didn’t consider at the start are becoming interesting to watch as this moves along.

The recurring part that’s also been fun is adding ‘Songs about the Day’ as a theme during this blog experiment – thinking it might be the one consistent part that ties this series together.  All week, I’ve used The Y! Radish’s blog about ‘songs with days in the title’ and am going to once again ‘lift’ his list for songs about Wednesday. 

Top 10 Songs About Wednesday

   1. Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. - Simon & Garfunkel
   2. Ash Wednesday - Elvis Perkins
   3. Wednesday - Tori Amos
   4. Wednesday Week - The Undertones
   5. Wednesday - Drive-By Truckers
   6. Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting - Charles Mingus
   7. Wednesday Morning - America
   8. (April) Spring, Summer, And Wednesdays - Status Quo
   9. Wednesday Night Waltz - Chet Atkins
   10. Wednesday Week - Elvis Costello

and my favorite Wednesday song: It's Only Wednesday – Crash Kings

ps

Related:

• The Best Day to Blog Experiment - Day 1
• The Best Day to Blog Experiment - Day 2
• Business Blog: What Is The Best Time Of Day To Post?
• When is the Best Time and Day to Publish a Blog Post (2008 update)

twitter: @psilvas

Technorati Tags: blog,social media,monday,music,statistics,blog traffic,web traffic,best day to blog,best day to publish,analytics,silva

The Best Day to Blog Experiment - Day 2

If you missed yesterday’s blog entry, welcome to The Best Day to Blog Experiment; you are now a participant.  As I mentioned just one day ago, I’ve come across many stories about when is the best day/time to get the most readership exposure from a blog post and I figured I’d do my own little brief, non-scientific experiment to see.  The idea is to blog everyday this week, track the results and report back next week.  Thanks for becoming a statistic.  

Tuesday, which can feel like a Monday to some folks – just read those Facebook entries – is typically a good day to blog and gain readership.  The Monday blues are gone and folks are really getting into their work week.  The day that you post can have a big impact on how many folks will read it.  Tuesday is the day I usually post since I read that Tuesday is the best day to post a blog.  It wasn’t in that linked article but I couldn’t find the original story claiming such.  I can say that I’ve had good success posting on Tuesdays.  I try to get it up early enough in the day to catch East coast readers and usually no later than 2pm PST.  Posting on Tuesday allows readers an entire week to catch/find it along with time to bookmark, comment and respond to comments before the weekend – when traffic drops off.  Depending on your blog topic, the weekend is usually a very slow time for blog readership, except for sports and other ‘weekend’ related events.  The one advantage, as noted by Darren Rowse, is that it might be easier to crack the front page of Digg since there is less competition.  Tuesday is also the most active day for RSS feeds, according to this story, which is a few years old.  I looked for more recent stats regarding RSS with limited success but the notion (at least in 2005) is that since RSS is busy, then blogs are getting read – either a perusal or full engagement.

I alluded on Day 1, that the topic and content needs to be interesting, engaging and timely.  You need a good title as a hook along with an inviting opening to draw your readers deeper.  Not sure I’m accomplishing that with this test since the titles will be identical throughout the week, except for the ‘day’ notation.  That’ll be interesting to watch – if similar titles still draw viewers or they’ll think that it’s the one they read the day before.  Maybe they’ll just think I’m lazy but I do believe I’ve had some decent titles over the years.  Who can complain about, The New Certificate 2048 My Performance, A is for Application, J is for Jacked, Dumpster Diving vs. The Bit Bucket or Yelling ‘WebApp Firewall’ in a Crowded Data Center.  Blogs also need a point – why else would you read it?  A good title and opening line with junk after, only makes your bounce rate jump.  I usually try to include some bit of info that the reader can use today or relate it to a common scenario we’ve all faced.  When writing about information security, sometimes it’s beneficial or easier to understand when explained in a manner that everyone, not just IT admins, would understand.  I guess that’s it for today’s inclusion since it is 9:30am PST and I want to get this out.  Day 1 got posted around 12:30pm PST and I want to stagger the times over the week to test that too.

Many radio stations around the country use Tuesday to play double-shots of our favorite artists and dub it ‘Two-for-Tuesday.’  I’ve somehow shoved ‘Songs about the Day’ as a theme during this blog experiment – thinking it might be the one consistent part that ties them together.  We’ll see.  Yesterday I used The Y! Radish’s blog about Monday songs and am going to ‘lift’ his list again for songs about Tuesday.

Top 10 Songs About Tuesday

   1. Ruby Tuesday - The Rolling Stones
   2. Tuesday's Gone - Lynyrd Skynyrd
   3. Tuesday Afternoon (Forever Afternoon) - The Moody Blues
   4. They Call It Stormy Monday (But Tuesday's Just As Bad) - T-Bone Walker
   5. On A Tuesday In Amsterdam Long Ago - Counting Crows
   6. Tuesday Heartbreak - Stevie Wonder
   7. Tuesday's Dead - Cat Stevens
   8. Tuesday Morning - Michelle Branch
   9. Tuesday Morning - The Pogues
   10. Tuesday At Ten - Count Basie

ps

Related:

• The Best Day to Blog Experiment - Day 1
• When to Publish Blog Posts – Timing Considerations
• How to Craft a Blog Post – 10 Crucial Points to Pause
• "Pheed Read" No. 1 - RSS Usage Revealed.

twitter: @psilvas

Technorati Tags: blog,social media,monday,music,statistics,blog traffic,web traffic,best day to blog,best day to publish,analytics,silva

The Best Day to Blog Experiment–Day 1

Welcome to Monday, typically the day most workers dread but with that extra hour of sleep yesterday, you’re amazingly refreshed aren’t you?  I don’t mind the ‘practice Sunday’ for the spring forward event but wonder with the fall back, what if you waited and changed the clocks on Sunday eve – how early everyone would be for work!  But I digress.  Also, Welcome to The Best Day to Blog Experiment; you are now a participant.  I toyed with The Great Blog Experiment, but ‘great’ might be stretching it.  Nevertheless - I do hope to get some decent data to report back next week.  I’ve read various stories about when is the best time and day to get the most readership exposure from a blog post.  Now of course, content plays a big role in what readers are interested in but, as I’ve mentioned before, I’ve found that something I think is awesome, sometimes doesn’t always translate to a huge pick up in the blogosphere.  So I figured I’d do my own little brief, non-scientific experiment to see.  I’m curious that way.  I’ll probably just use Google Analytics to track trends.  The idea is to blog everyday this week and track the results.  I normally only blog once or twice a week so this will be interesting – not like Mrs. MacVittie who can crank out 9 or 10.  You go Lori!  Maybe I’ll ask her to compare data when this is done since she does have a wide readership.  We participate in a lot of social media activities here at F5 and like most SM conscious companies, we analyze our content and look to ways for increasing our reach.

Statistically speaking, Monday is not a bad day to post a blog.  I would have thought that Monday might be challenging to get an audience since folks are focusing on the work week, catching up on things that got left behind the previous week and going through email.  It might also be a time when people are looking for stories or solutions to the things they need to complete that week.  You might also be checking your favorite blogger, one that you read often or subscribe to since it is part of your weekly reading anyway.  As far as times, some feel that after lunch (Pacific Zone) is one of the best times to post.  It’s toward the end of the day out East and maybe those West-coasters need some reading dessert before cranking out the afternoon.  The other thing about Monday is depending on your worldwide audience, Monday might be their 2nd day of work for that week since some countries start the work week on Sunday.

Well, that’s about it for Day 1 and I’m really not sure yet what I’ll write tomorrow, except that I was thinking of including the best songs about the particular post day – yeah, maybe that’ll generate traffic.  So, here are the top 10 songs about Monday according to The Y! Radish, who also says that the average person will experience 4040 Mondays in their life.

• I Don't Like Mondays - The Boomtown Rats
• Blue Monday - New Order
• Monday Monday - The Mamas & The Papas
• New Moon On Monday - Duran Duran
• Monday – Wilco
• Long Monday - John Prine
• Manic Monday - The Bangles
• Monday Monday Monday - Tegan and Sara
• Blue Monday - Little Milton
• They Call It Stormy Monday (But Tuesday's Just As Bad) - T-Bone Walker
• and my addition, Monday Morning – Fleetwood Mac

ps

Related:

• When is the Best Time and Day to Post on Your Blog?
• Best Day to Blog
• Bit.ly, Twitter, Security & You
• The State of My Blog Address

twitter: @psilvas

Technorati Tags: blog,social media,monday,music,statistics,blog traffic,web traffic,best day to blog,best day to publish,analytics,macvittie,silva

CloudFucius Closes This Cloud Canon

Well, this is the 27th entry (26 not counting the intro) in the CloudFucius Series and what an interesting ride!  What started out as a cloud version of the 26 Short Topics about Security series, soon turned into an exploration of the numerous cloud computing surveys, reports, statistics and other feelings about the technology.  I also intended to investigate areas of cloud computing that I was not so familiar with and there were a few areas that I was able to dig further – like Radio and the NFL.  Readers really seemed to like the ‘CloudFucius’ notion and while this is the last of this series, CloudFucius is not retired.  We’ll bring him back from time to time to help decipher some of those cloud surveys.  Another interesting tid-bit is that a few weeks into the series, someone from the Pacific Northwest actually created a twitter handle @cloudfucius.  It wasn’t me but I had great interest in that, as you can imagine.  I tried contacting them several times and then within the last week or so, the account disappeared.  If you are out there, give me a shout!!  Lastly, I included a real Confucius quote in each entry since his words seem to resonate when it comes to cloud computing.

What did I learn?  While I would notice various cloud surveys during my weekly perusal of the internet, I didn’t realize that there are/were so many, so frequently.  Some weeks, literally 4-5 surveys would be released covering some aspect of cloud computing – adoption, budget, compliance, deployment, effectiveness, fears, guests, hijacking, insiders, justification, PKI, litigation, management, networks, open standards, public vs. private, questions, reliability, social media, IPv6, user experience, virtualization, gaming, control, vendors and security just to name 26.  Security is cited as the biggest hurdle in almost 90% of the surveys but I also found that availability, control and a general lack of understanding are also drivers in challenges to cloud adoption.  I also wondered if ‘security’ is the real culprit or are IT professionals just answering with that to keep the assets in-house and under their control.  I bet a little of both.  The ease of shoving stuff to the cloud has made anyone with a office cube an instant IT administrator.  That has brought challenges too.  Those who have touched the clouds, clearly see and recognize the benefits and continue to move more assets to the cloud.  Those who haven’t, are hesitant or risk averse.  And then there’s the group who are either testing or investigating ways to take advantage of the flexibility, scalability, cost savings and agility.

This final entry wouldn’t be complete without some reporting on the most recent cloud surveys.  Hubspan reported that 64% said that 'moving to the cloud for applications, infrastructure, integration and other solutions is a strategic direction for their organization and department.'  Main reasons for not moving to the cloud are lack of understanding the benefits and IT having their own way of doing things.  Finally some honesty.

CA Technologies recently found in their Mainframe - The Ultimate Cloud Platform? survey that '79% of IT organizations consider the mainframe to be an essential component of their cloud computing strategy.'  The kicker is that they are having trouble finding and retaining skilled mainframe professionals.  44% of surveyed companies said they are "grappling" with staffing issues to manage and maintain their production systems.
A new TechTarget survey of more than 800 IT pros found that SMBs are not convinced that Private Clouds are beneficial.  Virtualization Decisions 2010 survey shows that while large organizations might be building and experimenting with cloud technologies, almost two-thirds  said they have no plans to try the private cloud model.  They have enough to do and with smaller budgets, they don’t have the luxury of experimenting with  new technologies.  Also, unlike most surveys, security was not the major barrier.  The number 1 reason was that they really didn't need a couple key components – metered usage and department chargeback – 35% said so.  Complexity and skilled staff also keep them from adopting.

And just to magnify the TechTarget survey, a new Harris Interactive poll of more than 200 IT pros at large enterprises indicates a 'much broader adoption of cloud computing, and shows accelerating momentum behind developing private cloud infrastructures.'  89% said that private clouds are the next logical step for organizations already implementing virtualization.  With this one, we’re also back to citing Security as the main barrier – 91% are concerned about security issues in the public cloud, with 50 percent indicating security as the primary barrier to implementation.

So the survey results are in and more will arrive this week, next week, next month and into the foreseeable future as long as there are questions surrounding the cloud.  I do think I covered a good portion of the survey data available over the last couple months so if you need to research cloud statistics or if you missed any CloudFucius columns, here they are in order:

The CloudFucius Series

• CloudFucius Has: Déjà Vu and Amnesia…
• CloudFucius Councils: Cloud’s Love/Hate Relationship
• CloudFucius’ Road Trip: Oracle Open World
• CloudFucius Confused: Cloud Costing Companies?
• CloudFucius Is: Ready for Some Football
• CloudFucius Goes Off…to VMworld
• CloudFucius Repeats: Money (Really) Moving to the Cloud
• CloudFucius’ Money: Trickles to the Cloud
• CloudFucius Counts: Cloud Outages
• CloudFucius Corners: The Coin Operated Cloud
• CloudFucius Investigates: The Comeback Cloud
• CloudFucius Asks: Will Open Source Open Doors for Cloud Computing?
• CloudFucius Tunes into Radio KCloud
• CloudFucius Dials Up the Cloud
• 99 Blog Posts on the Wall...
• Connecting to a Cloud while Flying thru the Clouds
• CloudFucius Shares: Cloud Research and Stats
• CloudFucius Listens: F5’s Cloud Computing Solutions
• CloudFucius Combines: Security and Acceleration
• CloudFucius Inspects: Hosts in the Cloud
• CloudFucius Wants: An Optimized Cloud
• CloudFucius Ponders: High-Availability in the Cloud
• CloudFucius Hollers: Read All About, F5’s On-Demand IT
• CloudFucius Wonders: Can Cloud, Confidentiality and The Constitution Coexist?
• CloudFucius Says: AAA Important to the Cloud
• CloudFucius Says: Blog Series, Good Idea

And one from Confucius: The superior man, when resting in safety, does not forget that danger may come. When in a state of security he does not forget the possibility of ruin. When all is orderly, he does not forget that disorder may come. Thus his person is not endangered, and his States and all their clans are preserved.

ps

The CloudFucius Series: Intro, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25

Resources:

• Survey Shows Cloud Is a Strategic Direction for Most Companies
• Mainframes Essential to Cloud Computing: Survey
• SMBs still unsold on private cloud
• Businesses will migrate to the cloud for IT delivery over the next five years, a survey indicates
• Cloud Computing Survey Reveals Widespread and Accelerating Enterprise Adoption of Private Clouds
• Mobile, cloud computing to dominate software apps, IT deliveries in next 5 yrs, says survey
• Security still an issue for cloud customers

Technorati Tags: F5, infrastructure 2.0, integration, cloud computing, Pete Silva, security, business, education, technology, application delivery, cloud, context-aware, infrastructure 2.0, web, internet
twitter: @psilvas

CloudFucius Goes Off…to VMworld

The collective we (F5 Networks) will be at Moscone Center in San Francisco next week for VMworld 2010.  If you are in town and attending, visit F5’s booth #1131.  We’ll have giveaways, demos, exciting announcements, video interviews and other fun & informative activities all week, in addition to participating in several breakout sessions during the show. 

I’ll be handling a lot of our social media activities during the show, specifically tweeting (or follow F5) and conducting some video interviews of F5 partners and customers.  I’ll also probably grab an F5er or two to talk about our VMware partnership along with some technical folks to capture some interesting whiteboard discussions.  You can catch all the video posts here in my blog, or you can subscribe to F5’s YouTube Channel to be alerted when new content gets posted.  We’ve grown our video content tremendously over the last year with more than 100 videos covering a range of topics: Tech Demos, In 5 Minutes or Less, Interviews, Case Studies, White Board Discussions, Cool Solutions, Product Info, Partner Spotlights, Life at F5 and of course some fun ones with my own brand of humor.

There is no Breakout Session pre-registration this year which will allow you to choose the sessions that are interesting at the moment rather than sticking to a plan you built weeks ago.  Breakout Sessions that might be of interest include (links take you to main VMworld site):

• SP9723 Designing Optimal Networks for Virtual Apps – Why It Makes All The Difference   Tue 8/31: 11:00 AM
• PC6940 Networking Best Practices for vCloud   Wed 9/1: 12:00 PM & Thu 9/2: 1:30 PM
• PC7754 Leveraging an Enterprise-Ready vCloud Service to Regain IT Control Format   Tue 8/31: 3:30 PM & Thu 9/2: 12:00 PM

Hope to see you there, here or somewhere in the clouds.

And one from Confucius: Ability will never catch up with the demand for it.

ps

The CloudFucius Series: Intro, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19

Technorati Tags: F5, infrastructure 2.0, integration, Pete Silva, security, business, education, technology, application delivery, cloud, virtualization, vmware

twitter: @psilvas

CloudFucius Repeats: Money (Really) Moving to the Cloud

Ever wish you saved a blog title for that ‘perfect’ eye-catcher?  Well, I do.  Last week I wrote about some cloud surveys talking about how financial institutions are using cloud services titled: CloudFucius’ Money: Trickles to the Cloud.  I get to this week’s weekly entry and Ka-Chow (with apologies to Lightning McQueen) that would have been the perfect title to this entry.  Oh well, as to not be included in the Department of Redundancy Department Hall of Fame, I had to be a little creative with something slightly different.  And for all of you looking at the title and wondering, ‘Did this guy just copy his last blog entry?’  I can assure you, this is all new material so let’s get to it.

Have you seen the news?  Cloud Computing Ranks High on Fujitsu's M&A Shopping List; HP, Dell in Bidding War for Cloud Computing Provider; 6fusion is hiring after raising $3 million; and Nimbula raises $15M to expand cloud service.  I guess we’ve moved slightly past the ‘early adopter’ stage and right into the ‘gimmie more’ stage.  Throughout the CloudFucius series, we’ve tried to investigate the various surveys showing cloud computing movement and hindrances along with learning about areas we were not so knowledgeable.  It’s almost following the same pattern as 26 Short Topics About Security where I filled the entries with stats, surveys, stories, suggestions and as Don MacVittie commented, ‘a link fest’ of articles.  I tried to present multiple sides of the story, especially with surveys virtually contradicting themselves when it comes to cloud computing.  They want it, they are hesitant; looking into it, waiting until it’s mature; cost saver, virtual sprawl; we’ve deployed, what the heck is it? 

What is intriguing to me, errr CloudFucius, is that I had always thought – both my impression and what analysts have said – that cloud computing will never take over the world but is simply another option for IT with various benefits.  Right now, that’s exactly what it is.  With the announcements above, it sure seems like a lot of providers and investors feel that it’ll be a much larger force within the technology industry.  Almost every technology company, including F5, are providing some sort of services that ‘play’ in the cloud.  Many of us have also been to trade shows where the vendor booth is touting some ‘cloud’ connection and you look at them and go, ‘huh?’  How does that ‘enable’ cloud computing?  ‘Ummm, we use the cloud to do this, that or the other thing.’

How will it all turn out?  Who knows at this point.  Did you expect the level of technology we have today, 10 years ago?  Did you expect RF chips in the underwear you are purchasing?  Did you expect common thieves going to a cloud to steal your info?  Did you think you’d be able to surf the net on an airplane?  Maybe we thought it *might* happen at some point, but we are living it now.  ♫ Meet George Jetson……♫

And one from Confucius: Fine words and an insinuating appearance are seldom associated with true virtue.

ps

The CloudFucius Series: Intro, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18

Related:

• Nimbula raises $15M to expand cloud service
• HP, Dell in Bidding War for Cloud Computing Provider
• Cloud Computing Ranks High on Fujitsu's M&A Shopping List
• Cloud Acquisitions Change Competitive Landscape
• Storm's A-Comin': 10 High-Profile Cloud Acquisitions And What They Mean
• Report: Cloud IT Ideal for Testing Innovative Ideas
• The future cloud should fend for itself
• Ready or not, cloud is coming
• 4 out of 5 Folks Not Quite Sure What the Cloud Is
• Connecting to a Cloud while Flying thru the Clouds

Technorati Tags: F5, infrastructure 2.0, integration, cloud connect, Pete Silva, security, business, education, technology, application delivery, intercloud, cloud, context-aware, infrastructure 2.0, automation, web, internet, blog

twitter: @psilvas

CloudFucius Dials Up the Cloud

According to IDC, the worldwide mobile worker population is set to increase from 919.4 million in 2008, accounting for 29% of the worldwide workforce, to 1.19 billion in 2013, accounting for 34.9% of the workforce.  The United States has the highest percentage of mobile workers in its workforce, with 72.2% of the workforce mobile in 2008.  This will grow to 75.5% by the end of the forecast period to 119.7 million mobile workers.  The U.S. will remain the most highly concentrated market for mobile workers with three-quarters of the workforce being mobile by 2013 and Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) represents the largest total number of mobile workers throughout the forecast, with 546.4 million mobile workers in 2008 and 734.5 million in 2013.  This means more workers will be using mobile devices, not being tied to an office cube and will need to have access back to the corporate network or applications hosted in the Cloud.

Enterprises and management are faced with a potential contradictory business situation.  The level of employee collaboration is on the rise; yet at the same time, the locations and work hours are changing and growing.  Additionally, companies understand the importance of providing access to their critical systems, even during a disaster; and that doesn’t necessarily mean a major tornado, flood, hurricane, earthquake or other natural phenomenon.  What does an enterprise do when it’s so cold and snowy that employees can’t get to the office?  Declare a “snow day” and close their doors?  Certainly not.  What does an employee do when they are sick, injured or their child is home from school?  Depending on the severity, they might be able to work from home.  As for the users, it's not just a bunch of office employees and road warriors accessing shared files; but it’s also consultants, contractors, telecommuters, partners and customers using home computers and mobile devices to get our job done.  Squeezed in the middle are the IT guys facing the demands of both management and users, along with the ever expanding and evolving security requirements.

SSL VPN has become the mainstream technology of choice for remote access and Infonetics reports that the Worldwide SSL VPN gateway revenue increased 13.9% to $116.8M in 4Q09 and will grow 19% to $138.7M by 4Q10.  Traditionally, corporate VPN controllers have been deployed in-house or in the corporate data center since the needed resources were also located there.  Management and control over that VPN has been critical since it’s the gateway to the corporate network along with much of the sensitive info that resides ‘on-the-inside.’  Plus, *most* VPN controllers are full appliances – dedicated/branded hardware with the vendor’s code baked in.  Finally, the advancement of cloud computing has become an enticing choice for IT departments looking to deploy corporate systems and sensitive resources for user and customer access. 

Enter FirePass SSL VPN Virtual Edition.

A couple weeks ago F5 released FirePass v7, improving SSL VPN functionality, scalability, third-party integration, and offering new flexible deployment options including a virtual appliance.   Virtualization as a technology, has reached a point of widespread adoption and many customers have requested the option of running FirePass as a virtual appliance.  Providing a virtual edition of FirePass allows customers to potentially save money by allowing them add SSL VPN functionality to their existing virtual infrastructure.   With FirePass VE, you get better scalability & flexibility due to the ability of being able to spin up and spin down virtual FirePass instances across the globe, in much the same way we talk about the BIG-IP appliances managing virtualized environments around the world.

FirePass Virtual Edition is the full fledged, full featured FirePass code and currently runs on VMware ESX* and ESXi 4.0*.  It’s vMotion enabled and you can cluster for config-sync, load balance VMs and service providers can have multiple VMs running on one system for a hosted VPN service.  FirePass VE provides flexibility, scalability, context, and control particularly for Small & Medium Enterprises whose budgets might still be tight but need a remote access solution.  It’s also a perfect solution for Enterprises who need a remote access business continuity solution.

*Asterisk alert: If you are like me, and see a little * after something, I immediately drop to the bottom fine print to find the catch.  FirePass VE is sold & supported just like FirePass hardware and is fully supported on the VMware products listed above.  VMware also has a link off their website about the FirePass VE/VMware interoperability.  As with any piece of software, there are minimum hardware and configuration requirements along with recommended VM provisioning but actual performance may vary depending on the target system.  The FirePass v7 VE release notes (logon may be required) does provide the VMware system minimum characteristics.  Just want to properly set expectations, especially with that pesky asterisk.  :-)

And one from Confucius: A man who has committed a mistake and doesn't correct it, is committing another mistake. 

ps

 

The CloudFucius Series: Intro, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11

 

Technorati Tags: F5, infrastructure 2.0, integration, cloud connect, Pete Silva, security, business, education, technology, application delivery, cloud, context-aware, infrastructure 2.0, automation, web, internet, blog, vmware, ssl vpn

 

twitter: @psilvas

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