What is Cloud Computing?

Cloud computing is a general term for anything that involves delivering hosted services over the Internet or via a private network such as Multi Protocol Label Switching (MPLS). These services are broadly divided into three categories: Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). Put simply, cloud computing is IT-as-a-Service. Instead of building your own IT infrastructure to host databases or software, a third party hosts them in its large server farms or data centres.

With TheCloud hosting model, high availability is simple and affordable, and disaster recovery and resilience are dramatically cheaper. The ability to use computing services without need for infrastructure provides businesses with many benefits, over and above the cost of capital expenditure, including:

• Greatly reduced costs. In our cloud delivery model the majority of the capital cost is converted to operational expenditure reducing the barrier to entry.
• Easily scale up or down each month as needed
• Tiered reseller support options including 24/7 and cloned
• On-demand licensing model
• Software and application needs tailored and managed on a user by user basis
• Easier management in terms of central updates with instantaneous roll-outs of software
• Proactively manage and monitor performance and user experience
Business continuity through secure off site back up and disaster recovery
• Secure access option via private MPLS network or https
• Control of corporate data to protect against internal and external data theft
• Access anywhere. Businesses can keep running off site – even if it snows, there’s a fire on the motorway or there is a shut down of a major city

If you can answer yes to any of the below then your customers are ready for TheCloud:

• Are phone and data systems limiting business?
• Are your customers looking to reduce costs?
• Is their hardware dated and slow?
• Are they running illegal software versions?
• Are they hungry to use new technology, gain a competitive advantage?
• Are they in need of flexibility to support growth?
• Do employees need to work away from the office, e.g. at home, at client sites or whilst on the road?
• Do they control their data, can they protect their company from internal theft?
• Do they have a proven backup or disaster recovery solution in place?
• What would happen if business critical systems were stolen or damaged?
• Can they control their internet access and are they compliant?