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Why the Cloud?

There are many reasons to take a look at subscribing to services in the Cloud, chief among them are accessibility and resiliency. Many talk about the cloud as if its some exotic destination in some far off place, in fact its a computer (server) in a data center somewhere. Some people refer to these servers as ‘Bare Metal’ because they are the physical machines that cloud applications run on.

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The 900 lb gorillas in the cloud service market are Amazon Web Services (AWS). Google, and Microsoft. There are a lot of other players but these are the big 3 when it comes to price, performance, and security. When you use an application on the Cloud, it’s likely inside one of these big 3 cloud provider’s data centers. It’s not magical, but the service seems like it could be. These cloud providers have huge teams of people making sure the service is secure and running all the time, literally 99.999% of the time.

Now you know what the cloud is, why do so many companies use cloud services? There are many good reasons, here are some of the most common:

  1. Data protection: in the cloud, as soon as data is uploaded it is protected and automatically backed up.
  2. Ransomware: when in the cloud, the data is not subject to ransomware attacks on any one system. If one computer is infected and files and accessible networked drives are encrypted, none of the files in the TrenLot cloud are susceptible to be encrypted.
  3. Administration Cost: The TenLot cloud is built on Google’s App engine where Google is responsible for managing and maintaining all security updates and ensuring compatibility with TrenLot as part of the cloud service. You/We do not have to hire a person dedicated to managing Linus/Unix servers to manage infrastructure. Good server operations technicians cost roughly $150K/year for their expertise.
  4. Scalability: Google’s App Engine will scale to meet the needs of all users on the system at the same time, gated only by the connection of the end user to the Internet. No additional configuration is required.
  5. Internal hosting: if we host data from a private network, scalability is dependent on the Internet connection, firewall configuration and performance, VPN client configuration, single server performance, single database performance, local network physical security, local network integrity, attacks from within the network, attacks from a vpn connected compromised system, public denial of service attacks, and others.
  6. Accessibility: access services anytime anywhere there is an internet connection, and work offline when there is not.
  7. Collaboration: connect and communicate with customers (portal) and subs without the liability of having outsiders in your network.
  8. Disaster recovery: data located and backed up in different physical locations.
  9. Capital Expenditures: Lower your hardware costs.
  10. Employee document control: docs and data are on the cloud, not silo-ed on an employee’s laptop that could be lost or stolen.

Utilizing cloud services can save a ton of money by not having to manage serious IT infrastructure yourself. Instead, be strategic on what makes the best business sense for your company. There are compelling reasons to host a private solution internally that may be worth the price. We would be happy to have a discussion with you, give us a call or contact us.