Recently, most conversations with clients and prospects revolve around cloud services and how it can work for their particular situation. If they have dedicated or co-located servers, they want to get rid of them. Afterall, there are very few people in the ‘server’ business. The servers are just a delivery tool. Once you understand that, you can see how using a high availability cloud infrastructure is the obvious choice.
Benefits of Cloud Computing
Cloud based servers allow you to run your applications without the worry of setting up new servers, upgrading processors, adding memory, or replacing worn out fans or hard drives. You can also add, change, or remove resources on the fly. If you need more processing power to handle seasonal traffic or more storage space, all you have to do is add it from the control panel. This type of service also allows you to only pay for what you need and use, so when the peak time is over, you can release the resources.
Hybrid Solutions
There are specific applications and regulatory compliance issues that limit your ability to use a cloud server, but we have a solution for that too. Hybrid data center services allows you to combine cloud servers with your own ‘dedicated’ servers enabling you to combine economical platform as a service (PaaS) for the main ‘server’ functions and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) for specific functions such as secure storage, firewall and VPN (virtual private network) services, etc.
Here is an example: HIPAA and PCI (Payment Card Industry) compliance regulations dictate that you should use a separate hardware based firewall to protect your customers’ data (as well as many other things such as data encryption, regular software testings, access procedures, access audit trails, etc.). We can offer a Cisco ASA that will allow you to set up a site to site VPN (virtual private network) for secure data communications between your office network & data entry computers and the server where the data is stored and processed.
Economics – Every Situation is Different
You need to look at the economics of each server setup. If your system requires extensive resources (multiple servers setup in a cluster, with multiple processors, many GB of ram, etc.), it might be more economical to run your own equipment in a colo or dedicated environment vs using cloud resources. There are also technical limitations and considerations that might require you to have your servers.
If you have questions or want to know more about how we can help, email sales@cera.net or give us a call.