Essentially, cloud computing has revolutionized the way businesses and individuals store, manage, and access their data and applications. Rather then relying on physical hardware to store and run their programs, you are able to access your resources and services over the internet.

In this blog post, we’ll explore the basics of cloud computing and how it can benefit you or your business.

What are Cloud Computing Basics?

Cloud computing is the delivery of resources and services over the internet. This can include storage, servers, databases, software, and more. Instead of buying and maintaining physical hardware, you can access these resources on-demand and pay only for what they use.

Cloud computing is made possible by a network of servers that are owned and managed by service providers. These servers can be located in various data centers around the world that you can access from anywhere with an internet connection.

Types of Cloud Computing

There are three main types of cloud computing: Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS).

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

IaaS provides you with access to virtualized computing resources such as servers, storage, and networks. Additionally, you can configure and manage these resources to run their applications.

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

PaaS provides you with a platform for developing, testing, and deploying their applications. This platform includes the necessary hardware and software to run the application, as well as tools for building and testing the application.

Software as a Service (SaaS)

SaaS provides you with access to software applications that are hosted by the cloud provider. These applications can be accessed through a web browser or an API, and the provider is responsible for maintaining the software and ensuring that it is always up to date.

Benefits of Cloud Computing

Cloud computing offers many benefits for you and your and business. Here are some of the key advantages:

Scalability: Resources can be scaled up or down to meet changing demand. This means that businesses can quickly add or remove resources as needed, without the need to invest in expensive hardware.

Cost Savings: You only pay for the resources you use, rather than investing in and maintaining your own hardware. This can result in significant cost savings for businesses of all sizes.

Flexibility: You are able to access resources and applications from anywhere with an internet connection. This can be particularly beneficial for remote workers or businesses with multiple locations.

Reliability: Cloud service providers typically offer high levels of uptime and reliability, thanks to their redundant infrastructure and multiple data centers.

Security: Cloud service providers often have dedicated security teams and implement strict security protocols to protect user data.

Conclusion

Cloud computing has changed the way we access and manage our data and applications. By providing on-demand access to computing resources and services it has become easier and more cost-effective for businesses to store, manage, and access their data. As technology continues to evolve, cloud computing will likely become even more ubiquitous and essential for businesses of all sizes.

If you would like to learn more about cloud computing to determine if it is the right move for your company, you can contact us today to learn more!

The post Cloud Computing Basics and How it Benefits your Business appeared first on Wowrack Blog.

There are three other types of cloud computing service available other than IaaS which is service-as-a-service (SaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS), and serverless.

There are many advantages in considering using or migrating workload into IaaS. For example, users of IaaS can use any kind of operating system or application disregarding the maintenance and operational cost.

IaaS service also provides access to servers throughout the world and a service-level agreement (SLA) regarding the uptime and performance of the service. This allows businesses to eliminate the need to manage and provision their data center manually.

How to Implement IaaS in Business

IaaS represents the general purpose of computing resources, thus it is capable of supporting all use cases of all types. The question of “how to implement IaaS” then becomes insignificant. However, there are 5 ways of implementing IaaS that are commonly used by businesses.

• Lift-and-Shift Migration

Lift-and-Shift Migration is the fastest and least expensive migration business can take when migrating into IaaS service. It allows businesses to scale the size, enhance the performance, and reduce the cost without many works.

• Test and Development

IaaS is also useful a field of test and development. Users can quickly set up and scale environments suitable for the need of the test, thus bringing results faster and better.

• Storage, Backup, and Recovery

In-house IT infrastructure often requires a huge amount of investment and cost to maintain. Employing an IaaS service will help businesses in handling the growing need for space for storage and simplify the process of backup and recovery data.

• Web Apps

IaaS can also be used to support web apps needs, from the networking resources, storage, and the web and application itself. The ease of scaling the IaaS service also means users can simply scale the service according to demand.

• High-Performance Computing

Completing the calculation of complex variables or analyzing large data can also be achieved using IaaS. IaaS flexibility allows focusing computing capability into one single demanding task or workload.

Wowrack’s IaaS Service

Wowrack is a global leader in various IaaS services. Our service include Disaster Recovery, Private & Hybrid Cloud solutions, Colocation, Backup Services, Managed AWS & Azure, SD-WAN services and more.  All of these can optionally be co-managed or fully managed by Wowrack 24/7/365 team of experts.  With a workforce that is 80% engineering, you can rest assured that no matter what challenges you face. Wowrack is by your side to help.

Get in contact today to schedule your no-obligation consultation!

The post How to Implement IaaS into Your Business? appeared first on Wowrack Blog.

In order to get a brief, meaningful snapshot of the benefits that IaaS poses for the retail industry, we have compiled a few of the key benefits of using an IaaS for your organization.  It is hard to appropriately rank these benefits, as they are all very important, so pay no attention to the listing order.

1. Enhanced Availability

Your organization can’t afford downtime, no matter if that means the website, ERP systems, accounting software, or other corporate applications.  IaaS helps maximize uptime from within your environment to having multiple layers of power, network and cooling redundancies on the physical level.

2. IaaS and Efficiency

Refocus your resources on more revenue generating functions by utilizing a Managed Private Cloud.  With a proactively-managed environment, Wowrack’s team of 24/7/365 in-house experts monitor, remediate and maintain your environment, freeing up your time to focus on other tasks.

3. Managed Security

Cybersecurity is one of the biggest factors with going with an IaaS as is business continuity.  By utilizing an IaaS such as Wowrack, you can rest assured that your environment is constantly evolving as new emerging threats come out on all facets of the infrastructure.

4. Reduced Overhead

CAPEX can be a huge unexpected burden.  With an Iaas, you will have a steady, predictable bill without having to worry about things like UPS or generator purchases and maintenance, physical security, HVAC/Cooling maintenance, network build-out as well as personnel since Wowrack is staffed 24/7/365 in all engineering aspects (networking, system admins, NOC, data center technicians etc.).

5. IaaS Creates Customer Delight

IaaS helps facilitate big data analytics so that you know who your buyer is along with providing a fast, simple and secure buying online buying process for organizations with a high focus on e-commerce.  Make it easier for your buyer to do business with you by utilizing an IaaS who can optimize your environment for performance with maximum uptime.

How can Wowrack help?

Wowrack is a global leader in various services including Disaster Recovery, Private & Hybrid Cloud solutions, Colocation, Backup Services, Managed AWS & Azure, SD-WAN services and more.  All of these can optionally be co-managed or fully managed by Wowrack 24/7/365 team of experts.  With a workforce that is 80% engineering, you can rest assured that no matter what challenges you face, Wowrack is by your side to help.

Contact us today to schedule your no-obligation consultation!

The post IaaS and the 5 Key Benefits it provides for Retailers appeared first on Wowrack Blog.

1) “Am I giving IT too many responsibilities?”

Regardless of whether or not you outsource your IT, your in-house team has a lot on their plate no matter what. Because of this, companies generally choose to have an in-house IT team working alongside managed services to make sure their network is constantly at the top of its game. If you are giving IT too many jobs to do, then they are going to have a hard time making sure all the roles are being met. So, if your IT person or team has already expressed this to you, then it’s time to hand over some of those responsibilities to a managed cloud hosting provider.

2) “What happens if there is a data breach?”

If a data breach is one of your biggest concerns right now (and, it should be), then that’s a good enough reason as any to begin outsourcing your IT. There’s no sense in taking any risk at all with how far your company has come. Why take any chances? A managed hosting provider can take this worry off your hands. In addition, they can come up with a disaster recovery solution just for your company, while also helping you pass compliance standards if you’re dealing with sensitive information from your customers.

3) “Is my business expanding at a rapid rate, but support isn’t measuring up?”

Perhaps when you first started, you just had a website, hosted by one of those generic providers. But, now, things have changed (for the better). Now, your website has consistent traffic 24/7 a day, and you cannot risk a potential traffic jam slowing down your business. If you require a network that can support what you’re dealing with, then don’t stress. Just hand it over to a managed hosting provider and let them deal with the rest.

Wowrack can help you answer all your questions about hiring a managed cloud hosting provider. Contact us today to learn more.

4) “Does my network require a specific infrastructure?”

Speaking of expanding your business, are you even set-up to do something like that in the first place? This has probably got you thinking. If you’re not sure how all the stuff works behind the scenes — a cloud architecture, different types of products, etc. — then don’t sit around trying to do it by yourself. It’s time to talk to a professional about the best options available.

5) “Am I too busy to worry about any of this?”

If any of the previous questions have come up at all, then you’ve probably dismissed them with a, “Wow, I’m too busy to even be concerned with this right now.” We get you. You shouldn’t have to be concerned with managing your your network on this scale. While that doesn’t mean you’re excused from all responsibilities, you have other things you need to take care of in the office. Let someone else do the worrying.

It’s hard to know when is the right time to finally move your network over to a managed service provider. If you’ve been asking yourself any of these questions, then you know what it is you need to do!

The post If You’re Asking Yourself These Questions, It’s Time to Outsource Your IT appeared first on Wowrack Blog.

If you’ve weighed all your options and you’re still not satisfied, then we have one more type of managed service for you. Could a Platform as a Service what you need for your company?

What is The Difference Between IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS?

When it comes to managed services, you can essentially separate the main types into three tiers.

If we’re going from the first tier up, we’ll start with IaaS, which as you know, stands for “Infrastructure as a Service.” This is considered the lowest level, as it provides the basics in order for a company to get itself off the ground.  An IaaS provider will deliver cloud computing infrastructure such as storage and a server. The rest, like managing applications and data, is completely up to the user. Think of it as hiring a party planner to give you tips about a planning a party.

Next up the pyramid is Platform as a Service. A Platform as a Service is a type of managed service that may seem very similar to a Software as a Service. But, there are some key differences that would make a company lean more towards one than the other. PaaS uses different platforms to allow users to build, develop, and run applications and services over the Internet, without needing to develop their own infrastructure to match it. Companies can choose what functions they want to utilize and deploy, in an environment, or “platform” that suits them best. This one can be thought as hiring a venue to book your party with some features included, but the rest is up to you.

Last is SaaS, and is the highest level of managed service functions. Unlike PaaS, SaaS already has ready-to-use applications in place so you can do whatever you need to do for your business, such as email marketing,  which is all managed by the vendor. If we use our party analogy one more time, this would be if you booked a venue that provided absolutely everything you’d need for your party, from the food right down to the confetti. All you have to do is tell them what you like, and show up.

Which Companies PaaS Would Be Good For?

As you can see, PaaS falls in the middle of IaaS and SaaS. It is ideal for web developers, software developers, and businesses who essentially want to have more flexibility with the applications and software they want to deploy, but wouldn’t mind someone helping them along the way. You’re given leverage from that platform you’re using to build what you want, while the vendor, or MSP, manages the rest.

Iaas might be good for a start-up business that wants to build but doesn’t have the budget to invest in additional tools. Likewise, Saas is good for a company who wants complete functionality to deploy apps that are already built in.

If you think PaaS is the right managed service for you, then take a look at our Wowrack PaaS package.

What You Can Expect with Platform as a Service?

If you choose to go with PaaS, then you’ve made a good choice. PaaS has a lot of great benefits. First of all, you get to choose what you pay for. Based on what kinds of perks you’re looking for with your PaaS, will determine what price you pay for the package.

One platform that’s often used with PaaS is Microsoft Office 365. However, instead of just getting what the platform itself would offer, you’d be getting much more than that when you take it as a Platform as a Service. That’s because the managed service provider will include system administration expertise and support on top of those platform functions; and,  at no extra cost.

With Platform as a Service, you really get the best of both worlds. Contact us today if you would like to learn more about PaaS.

The post Comparing PaaS to Other Types of Managed Services and Choosing the Right One appeared first on Wowrack Blog.

It’s no shocker that forward-thinking organizations want to be very fast and as 2016 is nearly over we figured it was time to recap on some of the important trends this year has brought to the cloud industry, but most importantly to the consumer cloud experience.

Based on the survey Computer Economics performed in their 2015/2016 report, many organizations find themselves “increasing their operational IT budget” this year.

With cloud infrastructures on the rise and data center infrastructure spending declining, we’ll be covering what some of the major benefits of going “off-premise” and into the cloud brings to the table.

If you have your own “on-premise” data center, you know that you have to buy your own servers, take care of them, and to replace them once they reach their end-of-life. Let’s get this out of the way: hardware is expensive; to buy, maintain, and operate. Not every business can support having a dedicated IT team to manage all that.

And if any hardware breaks down, enough can be said. So instead, an IaaS approach or Infrastructure as a Service takes the infrastructure out of your IT, literally. By renting out IaaS, you end up paying a monthly subscription to have all your servers taken care of, patched with the latest updates and maintained daily to keep performance stabilized.

How does this relay to a common problem?

Maybe you want to do a migration to update an SQL server for a month in order to test out applications to see if they work properly. With an IaaS approach, you can provision a server for a month and then de-provision it when you don’t need it anymore.

Think of it this way, ever needed to just make one super-important phone call to someone but your own phone wasn’t working for whatever reason? Your options are:

• Borrow a friend’s phone (with the risk of private information on the line? Next.)
• Email or chat with technical support and hope to reach your provider over the dozens of other support tickets they may be currently dealing with.
• Since you can’t call them, run to the nearest vendor to get technical support in-person and wait until your problem is resolved.
• Figure out how to fix the problem yourself by following wikiHow DIY guides online.
• Buy a prepaid burner phone.

Wait, prepaid burner phones still exist? Yes exactly, who wants to get caught making a shady phone call on some early 2000s flip phone that is too often associated with criminal TV shows…

“If IaaS was a cell phone plan, your provider would already have been alerted that your phone wasn’t working and would send you an immediate working phone before you even became aware a problem existed.”

Oh, if only that plan existed in real life! But alas, this is just relaying a simple example of telecommunications. In a more realistic setting with actual business functions hanging on the balance, you can’t really compare a cell phone going down to a server meltdown. Those differences are slightly more grave.

A reliable infrastructure is not cheap. A reliable 24/7 infrastructure is not easy

Remember that IaaS is a core business for providers, which means they will be extremely focused on their infrastructure’s reliability. If a client isn’t satisfied with the infrastructure, that provider will likely go out of business.

Dependable infrastructure is much harder to accomplish internally and in-house because it’s so expensive and time-consuming to maintain. Sometimes when workloads suddenly expand, your IT department might not have the resources to cover the immediate expenses that happen so quickly on the fly and this can cause major downtime. This will not happen with Infrastructure as a Service since everything you need is readily available and with N+1 redundancy, you can be sure backup components are also on standby to provide true around-the-clock resilience.

Infrastructure as a Service needs to be flexible in order to handle customer requests for more infrastructure or computing power; something akin to “Anything as a Service” or XaaS. Having technical expertise on your side is never a bad perk in any industry. Whether you need more storage or don’t even know how much storage you need, IaaS providers can give you adjustable volumes because the infrastructure is entirely scalable so nothing is ever wasted.  Maybe you simply start with a few gigabytes of files and eventually that size grows into a few petabytes over the next few days, you simply pay for exactly what you use right then and there.

It’s important to note that not all providers come with the luxury where you can cherry-pick your solution. Many large providers may have cookie-cutter packages etched in stone, while other smaller ones operate on a niche. Many times it could be all up to you and your team to navigate your own way through a maze of decisions and XYZ outcomes from packages A, B, or C. When all you really needed was some insurance to know your data would be protected if “worse came to worst.”

The need for market speed

The provisioning of a server can become a matter of minutes to deploy, instead of days and hours, or sometimes even months. With an IaaS approach:

• No more having to buy an order of servers online while interrupting your business flow waiting for them to be delivered to your doorstep.
• Eliminate the time it takes to install the operating system and then secure them into a proper cabinet with all the correct settings for bandwidth, cooling, and ventilation.
• Reduce spending vital resources to perform daily or weekly maintenance on your servers to check if they are working optimally.

Instead, if you need a server, IaaS providers can grant the entire provisioning process in a matter of minutes, instead of days or weeks.

Finally, the à la carte suite of options for that extra oomph

Critical features such as Disaster Recovery and Backup solutions are also quick and painless to arrange as well since a provider’s infrastructure is designed to deliver seamless integrations to their native solutions. If you have a DRaaS solution in place and the data center burns down, then that data just switches to another data center, automatically. If an accident happens to your data and you need a specific file version, regular backups can quickly recover your lost files. As great as these options sound, they are not for everyone, and that’s okay.

What matters most is to select the right solutions that directly solves your current and foreseeable problems, but more importantly, it also depends on the people you choose to entrust your data with.

Our advice: find a Business Associate’s Agreement or a BAA that you can live with

In the end, you can get all the bells and whistles to create a redundant and secure infrastructure straight from the source of any one provider. Or you can just get the bells separately and whistle your own tune if so desired. There’s more than one way to skin a cat just as there are more ways to design a cloud. That’s where the strength of IaaS shines; it gives you options.

The post Driving Businesses Forward With Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) appeared first on Wowrack Blog.

What is it you might ask? It’s cloud IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service), the invisible right hand behind many successful companies.

The ever-expanding frontier of this old yet frequently progressive industry is expected to grow rapidly within the next few years, hopefully gaining some much-needed limelight. The International Data Corporation (IDC) determined that businesses have spent $96.5 billion on just the public cloud this year alone. With a little over 20 percent compound annual growth rate on the horizon in the next five years, IaaS as well as PaaS (Platform as a Service) are estimated to rake in over $195 billion and expected to outpace its SaaS (Software as a Service) counterpart by 2020.

How Businesses Will Be Affected

The future space that IaaS brings to digital workplace environments can be summed up through the lens of many young digital natives today. In particular, children that have become fans of the popular “Minecraft” video game. A particular feature allows players in the game to generate servers that allow access with any other player from around the world and invite them into their own worlds to collaborate and create the impressive monuments you may have seen scattered across social media. Young millennials are witnessing firsthand at how practical data stored in the cloud can provide meaning to their playtime now, but while in a few years could just be how they’re digital workplace might look like in the future.

With the immediacy of information culminating from multiple communities within communities, the ways in which we integrate similar forms of cooperation and teamwork will one day escalate to how new Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) will work. Resulting in more efficient and innovative ways to provide international partnerships and project management in a globalized economy.

The Best Of Both Worlds

If the idea of sharing your critical data in a public space sounds a little too risky, there’s always a flexible cloud befitting your specific needs. With hybrid clouds becoming the easier transition of hosting data in an off-premise environment (rather than going fully private), creating an agile platform with less cost is realistically within reach today. Unlike the public cloud, hybrid cloud IaaS can use existing infrastructure (so you don’t have to shell out deep pockets) to cost-effectively deploy services to external customers, while providing more security that comes with a single-tenant dedicated server.

As computing costs have gone down dramatically, along with storage costs, the “as a Service” model has helped to revitalize the way businesses and organizations collaborate together. It has lowered the barriers for everyone, big or small, to gain equal footing with their IT environment.

Many startups today are also living in a golden age of affordable scalability and data interoperability. Most importantly is the amount of availability or uptime featured in these supersonic models of data management. With quicker internet connections rising, now is truly the time to be getting into the cloud for any retailer in almost any industry looking to expand and evolve their current existing infrastructure.

One of the more practical benefits of cloud IaaS results in simpler hardware to manage. With a single central located data center or “server farm,” the physical hardware maintenance can be easily adaptable to market trends and changes—overnight. As simple as upgrading your applications in the cloud, you can essentially roll out new implementations and upgrades in less than 24 hours, instead of a half-a-year long phase.

What About Failure In The Cloud?

Failure is merely about uptime. With the ability to monitor and predict when exactly your hardware reaches its “end-of-life” or begin showing patterns of wear and tear, you can dispatch technicians very early on to ensure problems never become more than annual checkups. With IT fatigue reduced to a dedicated provider, you can focus less on the technical hardware and more on your passion.

Ultimately, with the predictive analytics to foresee trends happening in big data, the cloud has proven to be the most lucrative in terms of a maintenance point of view. The total cost of ownership becomes much more achievable due to the ability to optimize your network to spin the right resources at the right time and avoid bottlenecking.

Leveraging cloud technology today can help you make sharper decisions that can carry the weight of your business or organization forward in a lighter and more flexible framework in the future.

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