12 Advantages of Outsource Hosting vs. In House Hosting

Often in the world of SaaS, servers and cloud, the big question a company may ask themselves is this: Do I outsource my hosting or build it myself in house?

Often times on the surface the idea of building, buying your own gear, and running it on your own may appear to be the more cost effective option. However, if you consider the big picture including the emergence of the managed cloud then outsourcing is not only more cost effective, it makes the most sense. Consider these factors when comparing outsourcing vs. building it yourself.

1. Capital Depreciation

Outsourcing is considered an OPEX. There is no hardware to have depreciated over time. When hosting internally you have expensive equipment to purchase as a CAPEX plus maintenance agreements, collocation or utility costs, and other “surprise” investments. Outsourcing presents a predictable monthly recurring expense.

2. Employee Turnover

Employee turnover can happen at any time for many reasons. If key people running your internal environment leave the company, you could be left trying to pick up and maintain critical pieces. Outsourcing removes this risk as you’re under contract with a business that provides and guarantees these services with complete documentation and continuity.

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Not All Clouds Are Created Equal: Which One is Right for You?

Happy New Year to all of our blog readers! Start the year of right by learning about cloud providers. On December 8th 2011, The INetU IT Expert Series presented the webinar: Not All Clouds Are Created Equal: Which One is Right for You? You’ll learn what the cloud is and how you can utilize the cloud. You will also learn about major cloud players and what they provide their clients.

During the webinar we held a live question and answer session. Since you are listening to the archived version feel to email your questions to blog@inetu.net We will be sure to answer them for you. Happy listening!

What Happens When the Server Underneath My Cloud Fails?

When many people think of the Cloud, they think that their application is running on a nebulous collection of resources that’s impervious to hardware failures.  Despite a lot of the marketing material in the industry, this just isn’t the case.  Beneath every Cloud there is hardware, and when that hardware fails, the results to some Clouds can be devastating.

When every server is an island

Many Clouds (like Rackspace’s) use local storage on each server in the Cloud.  When a server in this kind of Cloud fails, your virtual machine goes down with it.  Your VM can only be brought back online when the physical server is up and running again (or it’s restored from a backup).  If you’re using Amazon’s EC2 Cloud without Elastic Block Storage, your VM’s data is gone forever  if the physical server fails!  In both cases, this can mean a whole lot of downtime for you and your application.

Enter Shared Storage

Thankfully, there’s a solution to this problem.  The INetU Gated Community Cloud™ does things a bit differently.  We store all of the data from your virtual machine on an enterprise-grade SAN that can be accessed by other physical servers in the Cloud.  If the physical server that your VM is on fails, your VM is powered up on a different physical host in minutes.  To your virtual machine and application, it simply looks like a reboot.

That begs the question—why isn’t everyone doing this?  Before I answer that, I want to point out that many enterprises with internal Clouds do use a SAN to store their critical virtual machines.  Like most good things, enterprise grade SANs don’t come cheap, and many Cloud providers decide to cut this corner in order to save a few dollars.  Can your business afford to cut this corner?  For a mission critical site or application, the answer is very often a resounding “No”!

Now PCI DSS Certified- The INetU Gated Community Cloud™

The INetU Gated Community Cloud has passed the test! The Gated Community Cloud is now confirmed as a PCI DSS 2.0 Level 1 compliant solution.

INetU received the Report on Compliance (ROC) from our Qualified Security Assessor (QSA). In the report they evaluated our Allentown, Amsterdam and Virginia locations, including physical dedicated server hosting and the Clouds in Allentown and Amsterdam. We know how important security is to you, and we use our PCI DSS, SSAE 16 and SOC audits as an opportunity to verify that we are doing our part to provide your servers and applications in a secure environment.

INetU is able to offer a fully PCI compliant solution in our Gated Community Cloud. In addition to being certified as PCI compliant, we offer the security services needed to address the 12 requirements of PCI compliance. We can place IDS/IPS, a Web Application Firewall and Security Incident and Event Management into your Cloud environment. We can also provide vulnerability scanning and File Integrity Monitoring solutions on the Gated Community Cloud.

For more information on PCI compliance, check out some of our previous blog posts.

The Gated Community Cloud™- Now in Europe!

Three months after the launch of the INetU Gated Community Cloud, we are successfully up and running in Europe!

The new Gated Community Cloud node in Europe is perfect for clients who need to have a configuration closer in proximity to them. It offers the same benefits as our Gated Community Cloud in Allentown, but also allows clients to address certain issues such as data privacy laws and localization of client data. The new cloud node in Europe can also provide an excellent location for disaster recovery and restoration.

We are excited with our recent launch. At INetU we want our clients to get the most from their hosting provider! For more information on the INetU Gated Community Cloud visit: The INetU Gated Community Cloud

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