digital business with Greg Searle, Anypoint
The Deploy - ing Ok, so what does this mean? To deploy is ‘to spread out or arrange strategically’. Long used in the context of military strategy, it has gained currency in information technology. In context, deployment encompasses all the processes involved in getting new software or hardware up and running properly in its environment. The time has come; you’ve built your digital business solution and are ready to let it loose on the market. Hopefully most of the decisions you needed to make have already been made and you have your ‘go-live’ plan firmly in place. Just in case there are some items you might have missed, let’s look at what it takes to deploy your solution. Domain Names You can register this yourself, however it is generally done through your ISP, or developer. The domain registrar holds the information about where your DNS is located. Even if you engage someone else to do this for you, invest at least 30 minutes trying combinations that you like. The ‘.com’ is generally the most accepted, but nothing wrong with ‘.com.au’ or ‘.co’.
This brings us to two key questions: 1. Will your digital business and the associated data acquired be located in Australia? 2. Can you get a copy of all of your data so that you can duplicate the system on a local server? Operational Support Have you got a realistic estimate of visitors to your site? Who will be responsible for system administration including backup and recovery? Can your product or service SCALE quickly and easily? Have you created a Google account and set-up Google Analytics? Is your website optimal for SEO? How will you advertise your new website? There’s a lot to think about. And is leading to the next wave of digital service products like Management As A Service (MaaS) and Administration As A Service (AaaS).
DNS This stands for Domain Name Server and holds the information about where your domain (website) is hosted. Without access to the DNS, you cannot change this information, and without access to the domain registrar you cannot change where it’s located. Trademark Many businesses miss this fundamental task. You can trademark your domain name with a little effort through www.ipaustralia. gov.au. Often I have the trademark site and the domain registrar site open to find a name I can trademark at the same time. Platform The platform that hosts your domain depends almost entirely on the development framework you used to build your digital product. Broadly it falls into two camps; you’re a Unix (in whatever form), Apache, MySQL and PHP devotee, or a Windows, IIS, dotNET evangelist. There are some interesting hybrids but that’s it. The Windows environment has traditionally been more expensive to build and maintain, but this is changing with the emergence of cloud providers. If you know what you are doing you can provision your own virtual servers with Telstra, Microsoft Azure, Amazon, Rackspace and many more. You can have your own physical server ‘in-house’ or ‘co-located’. The trend however is to purchase Infrastructure As A Service (IaaS) and now Software As A Service (SaaS).
Anypoint are specialists in developing Digital Business Solutions. We will build your Proof of Concept and support you with our management expertise to bring your product to market, and we will do this for an initial investment of only $5,000. Contact Greg Searle directly on 04 7352 5945 or email gregs@anypoint.com.au. ca 1300 932 277 // www.anypoint.com.au
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