How to Choose a Cloud Hosting Provider

I’d like to say it’s as simple as visiting the EarthLink Cloud Hosting website and choosing your plan.

But we all know important decisions are not that simple. There are other great cloud hosting companies out there and you should choose the one that’s right for your business.

So how do you decide?

Of course there will be unique variables for most businesses, but here are six important categories to consider when choosing a cloud hosting provider:

1. Company Stability – Bottom line: you can’t afford to worry whether a company that you may be entrusting with your company’s and your customer’s data is going to be around tomorrow. And the next day…and the next. You have to look for a rock-solid cloud hosting company with resources for the long haul. And look for a company, such as EarthLink, that has stood the test of time.

2. Company & Service Reputation – Often a good reputation often goes along with #1 (since companies with good reputations stick around longer than those with bad reputations), but it’s best to consider these separately. We all know some businesses that seem to thrive (or at least persist) without good customer service. So ask around. Look at companies’ client lists, read their customer testimonials and case studies. Make sure you really know the company you may be partnering with. It’s not a relationship you’ll want to change often.

3. Service Fit – Kind of a no-brainer, but early on you should flesh out in detail the kind of services you’ll need and make sure the companies you are considering can deliver. You may simply need a basic cloud hosting service or you may need enterprise-level VMware vCloud hosting. And make sure that the cloud company you’re considering offers the level of managed services your organization needs.

4. Pricing Structure & Details – Not as simple as it looks. With cloud hosting services, make sure you know what is included and what isn’t in the featured price you see. Managed services can obviously increase your costs but less obvious is the considerable cost of bandwidth from some cloud providers. That’s why bandwidth is included in EarthLink Cloud’s flat-rate pricing: we want you to know what you’re going to pay each month (and we know you want to know too). So there are no hidden fees or surprise charges. (See our recent blog post about cloud bandwidth pricing.)

5. Security – Don’t be fooled into thinking an official-looking security logo on a website necessarily means anything more than the company paid to look secure. Look closer at how and where the cloud hosting company stores your data, and what their security policies and systems are. First, make sure you know where your data is. Cloud companies that use datacenters in other countries can introduce security and legal jurisdiction risks. Also, know how secure the datacenter is. Our Rochester, NY, datacenter is a state-of-the-art facility which earned an SAS 70 Type II certification and has virtually every kind of redundancy, backup, failover, and security feature you could ask for. Learn all the details about our datacenter security features. You may also wish to look at our datacenter services checklist.

6. SLAs – Make sure your cloud hosting provider is willing to meet the service levels you require. EarthLink Cloud offers an industry-leading network and facility uptime guarantee. Our datacenter offers a 100% uptime guarantee and 24/7/365 monitoring. Available bandwidth is sustained at 2x utilization. Need something you don’t see on our site? Call 1-800-957-4872 to speak with a Cloud Hosting engineer who can answer all your questions. Or use this online contact form.

Good luck choosing your cloud hosting provider!

Survey Says…Young People’s Heads in the Cloud

How do we know cloud computing is the wave of the future? Ask some young people.

Just like Cisco did.

According to the recently published 2011 Cisco Connected World Technology Report, almost half of college students and recent college grads consider

the Internet to be “as important as air, water, food, and shelter.” And almost 2/3 of students would choose the Internet over a car if they had to choose.

Connectivity to the younger generation is also equated with mobility. According to the poll, just over 2/3 of students (66%) and more than 1/2 of employees (58%) cited a mobile device such as a laptop, smartphone, or tablet as “the most important technology in their lives.” In fact, virtually as many young people in the survey reported that their smartphone was their most important device used daily (19%) as named their desktop computer (20%).

This generation will be very shortly influencing corporate hiring, business structure, IT decisions, and more.

How so? Sixty percent of respondents last year said it was unnecessary to be in the office to be productive. Two-thirds (66%) expect IT to let them use any personal or company-issued device to access corporate networks, apps, and data anywhere, any time.

But don’t worry that this desire for mobility and freedom from the workplace means less work – about 45% said they worked 2-3 hours extra per day when they could access corporate networks outside the office. And 66% said they would take a lower-paying job with more flexibility in device usage, access to social media, and mobility than a higher-paying job without this flexibility.

Cloud computing, which facilitates remote and mobile access, fits perfectly with the strong technology trends reported by the Cisco surveys. Companies that don’t embrace it are likely to fall behind in their ability to attract and retain the best young talent.

Just one more reason to head for the cloud: EarthLink Cloud. We’ll be waiting for you.

Cloud Law: Data Ownership in the Cloud

Companies considering a transition to cloud hosting will often have questions about more than pricing and the process of switching over…they’ll want to know what happens to their data once it’s housed on a cloud providers servers.

Once confident their data is secure, companies will wonder: “Will we retain ownership of our data even though it’s housed on outside servers?”

Luckily, as long as you chose a trusted and experienced provider like EarthLink Cloud, the answer is…

YES!

Cloud hosting exists to make business operations smoother, not to hinder them.  A provider that took ownership of its hosted data wouldn’t stay in business very long!

Specific wording will vary depending on the provider, but it’s common to find phrasing like that in EarthLink Cloud’s terms: “[the provider] exercises no control whatsoever over the content of the information passing through its network.”

After all, your data is your data…the cloud just makes hosting it more convenient.

(If you’re considering transferring to the cloud, contact an EarthLink Cloud representative at 1-800-957-4872)

Datacenter Certification – SAS 70 Type II

Choosing the right cloud hosting provider can be a difficult task for companies. There is no overarching regulatory agency overseeing the cloud computing industry. There are few objective standards or industry-specific certifications look for.

One important standard to look for in a cloud hosting or colocation provider is a SAS70 Type II Certified Datacenter.

SAS 70 Type II is an auditing statement issued to service providers, such as cloud hosting providers and datacenter colocation operators, by the Auditing Standards Board of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA).

What is SAS 70 and why should it matter to your company?

SAS 70 simply means “Statement of Auditing Standards Number 70”. An SAS 70 report demonstrates that a service organization has implemented effective control objects and activities.

For cloud hosting, web hosting, and colocation service providers such as EarthLink Cloud, SAS 70 certification means we can offer our business customers a SAS 70 report to use to assist their financial reporting. EarthLink Cloud also prepared a description of controls to help our assess their own internal controls over financial reporting in accordance with Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board’s (PCAOB) Auditing Standard No. 5 (AS 5).

Make sure you look for Type II certification when selecting a datacenter for hosting or colocation. Type I certification only states that policies and procedures exist, although there is no audit to ensure that the organization adheres to these procedures. Type II certification comes only after a lengthy and rigorous in-person audit that ensures the service provider adheres to their procedures.

EarthLink Cloud’s SAS 70 Type II certification is especially important to our clients who are larger institutions and publicly traded companies who must comply with security requirements such as Sarbanex-Oxley. Those clients can use our audit report for their specific security and reporting requirements.

Type II certification shows that we are following industry best practices, are operating in a transparent way, and can be trusted with your data. Learn more about SAS 70 certification guidelines.

Learn more about our secure EarthLink Cloud colocation and hosting datacenter.

VMWare vCloud Director Upgrade – version 1.5

EarthlinkCloud is always working hard to provide the latest tools to make managing your cloud servers as easy and full-featured as possible. EarthLink Cloud has upgraded to VMWare’s vCloud version 1.5. Some of the key new features are outlined below:

Expanded Firewall Functionality
You will now be able to have 5-tuple firewall rules, allowing for the specification of Source IP Address, Source Port, Destination IP Address, Destination Port, and Protocol (TCP/UDP)

The ability to create and manage Site-to-Site VPNs from the vCloud Director interface
While the ability already exists to have site-to-site VPNs with your vCloud organization, the creation and management had to be done underneath the vCloud Director level by an Earthlink Cloud employee. With the upgrade to vCloud Director 1.5, all the settings for a site-to-site VPN are now exposed to the vCloud interface.

Static Routes
Static routes can now be configured for organization networks.

Cloud Computing – A Brief History

Cloud computing may be the future of computing, a future where people won’t compute on their own local computers, but rather on remote, centralized cloud-based facilities. But what about its past? Where did the terminology and concept of cloud computing come from?

Lets take a quick look.

The term cloud as applied to technology (not weather) predates cloud computing. It was originally a metaphor used to describe the telephone network generally. The same metaphor was then used to describe the network infrastructure powering the Internet. Cloud computing is simply extending this pre-existing metaphor.

When people use the term “cloud computing” today, they are referring to the use of servers, software, storage, or other computing resources out in that same Internet “cloud,” rather than local computers. In addition, these cloud computing resources are being delivered not as a product, but as a service, just as telephone service and Internet services have been.

So that’s where the term comes from. How about the concept?

The introduction of the concept of cloud computing is most often attributed to computer scientist John McCarthy, who in 1961 gave a speech where he considered the possibility that computing power and applications may some day be provided remotely and accessed as a utility, just as we do with water and electricity.

Canadian technologist Douglas Parkhill fleshed out this idea in his 1966 book The Challenge of the Computer Utility. Most of the characteristics of today’s cloud computing – elastic provisioning, providing service as a utility, the illusion of infinite supply, etc. – were explored in his book.

This utility/cloud computing idea of McCarthy and Parkhill (and others) was popular in the late 1960s but never took off because it was an idea ahead of its time. The level of technology needed to fully support this idea (hardware, software, bandwidth) was simply not sufficiently available prior to the late 1990s or early 2000s.

Salesforce.com is the company widely given credit as the first major player in cloud computing, though they didn’t use that term. In 1999 it introduced the business model of delivering enterprise software as an online service. The next big launches that brought attention to cloud computing were Amazon Web Service and Google Docs.

Today’s growth in cloud computing can be largely attributed to the availability of low cost computing and bandwidth which allows cloud hosting providers like EarthLink Cloud to offer robust cloud services that help businesses save money.

The other major factor facilitating the growth of cloud computing is the current level of sophistication of virtualization.

With today’s VMware technology, it’s now simple to launch a full virtual server or even an entire Virtual Datacenter (or VDC).

EarthLink Cloud started using VMWare internally in 2006-2007 (when we were LogicalSolutions). In 2008, we started offering it as a cloud service to businesses. Today EarthLink Cloud is a provider of vCloud enterprise cloud hosting, VMware’s newest customer-managed Cloud infrastructure.

What about the future of cloud computing? It certainly looks bright. According to the Pew Research Center’s Future of the Internet survey:

“…by 2020 most people will access software applications online and share and access information through the use of remote server networks, rather than depending primarily on tools and information housed on their individual, personal computers … cloud computing will become more dominant than the desktop in the next decade. In other words, most users will perform most computing and communicating activities through connections to servers operated by outside firms.”

Is Cloud Computing A Fad or the Future?

With all the hype surrounding the too- rarely-explained concept of “cloud computing,” it’s easy to assume it’s just a new marketing buzzword and write it off as a fad.

But it’s not.  Cloud computing is the future.

Cloud computing will alter the way we access personal content, and forever change the way businesses structure IT.  We can know this because, like every technical advancement that sticks around (cell phones, personal computers…the list goes on), cloud computing is too convenient to ever go away.

Specifically, there are three reasons:

1. We Compute Everywhere. We’re no longer tied to our desktop computers: we have cell phones, laptops, tablets…and we want all of them to access the same personal and business content.  Limiting applications to one device isn’t just old-fashioned, it’s inconvenient.  Any cloud hosted content or program be accessed from any internet-connected device.
2. Cloud Computing is Cheaper. It costs more to run computers than it does to buy them. Why would a company manage on-site servers when they can use a secure cloud hosting service?  Why would an individual spend money installing a program on multiple devices when they could access it through the cloud?
3. Companies Can Experiment in the Cloud. Without the cost of maintaining a physical environment, and computing capacity that can change to fit demand, companies are free to experiment with new ideas.

The arrival of “the cloud” is a fundamental change in computing.  Even if the hype surrounding it seems overwhelming, let’s not throw the innovation baby out with the cloud buzz bathwater.

Cloud Hosting Security: Don’t Be Afraid of the Cloud

Cloud hosting is growing rapidly and the cloud is widely considered the future of IT.

According to Gartner’s 2011 CIO Agenda survey, 43% of CIOs say that most of their IT should be running in the cloud in just four years.

As fast as cloud computing services are growing, that growth could be even faster given the substantial benefits in terms of cost, scalability and flexibility. So what’s holding some organizations back?

Fear.

On one level, CIOs and other IT decision-makers are simply fearful of losing control over their world that they have always controlled so completely. Outsourcing IT to a 3^rd party cloud hosting provider can feel like a loss of control.

That’s why it’s important to seek out a cloud hosting company like EarthLink Cloud with a proven track record that you can trust, a company that’s also going to give you the access and tools – such as our Cloud Control Panel – to stay in control even though your new cloud servers are remote and virtual.

At a higher level, the fear is about security in the cloud. Will our data be secure? Can customer privacy be maintained? What about hackers? What about power loss, fires, natural disasters?

Of course, those are all valid questions. So what do the experts say about cloud security? According to the Cloud Security Alliance:

“If architected and configured properly, utilizing security best practices both a private or public cloud can securely host and protect your information system and sensitive data.”

The CSA advises that the same security best practices that IT professionals have traditionally used in their dedicated standalone information systems should also be used in cloud-based architecture with virtual machines (VMs).

Specifically, they recommend that cloud customers isolate their VMs on their own network to keep them isolated from other customers in the same data center and to implement firewalls in front of their VMs just as they would on their dedicated in-house networks.

To allow this level of cloud security and control, EarthLink Cloud’s cloud architecture gives you root access to the Xen hypervisor running your VM.

Other forms of cloud hosting security are delivered by our state-of-the-art SAS70 Type II Certified Enterprise Class Data Center with a 100% uptime guarantee and 24/7/365 monitoring. Some of the security features of our cloud hosting data center include an automatic IP-based Surveillance System, Biometric Security access, employee background checks, dual diesel generators, redundant 200 Ton Liebert Cooling Units, hot aisle/cold aisle containment, a fiber network with 6 diverse underground fiber paths, Multiple Gigabit Backbone Providers, 100% redundant routers and switches, FM 200 Inert Gas fire suppression system, redundant 300KVA UPS, instant power failover, and more.

For most businesses, the level of security provided by a top-tier cloud hosting company such as EarthLink Cloud is a big step up, not something to worry about.

Even for the largest, most technologically sophisticated companies, cloud servers can be made just as secure as dedicated in-house servers by implementing the right architecture, using the same best practices, and choosing a trusted cloud provider with a fully secure data center.

Cloud Hosting Pricing: Simple and Predictable Is a Winning Formula

The InfoWorld Cloud Computing channel recently published a well-written post by Savio Rodrigues that caught our attention: Beware the bait and switch in the public cloud.

The first part of the post was about Google App Engine and how Google had announced new pricing that was both very confusing and also raised prices from 50% to more than 2,800%. That’s right, a 28 fold increase.

Needless to say it hasn’t gone over well with customers.

But Rodrigues’ point isn’t that people don’t like higher prices. Of course they don’t—no news there.

It’s about how complex and unpredictable pricing are barriers for enterprises as they move into cloud hosting.

And everybody over here at EarthLink Cloud is nodding in agreement.

That’s because a simple, predictable, low-cost pricing structure has been one of our goals for all our cloud hosting services.

We know that some companies have been burned by confusing pricing structures, hidden fees and charges, and unfortunate surprises when they get their cloud hosting bills from other providers. We know because we’ve heard from them.

EarthLink Cloud offers simple pay-as-you grow, flat-rate pricing for our cloud hosting. No hidden fees, no surprises. No bait, no switch.

So it’s easy to budget for and plan for. (And you don’t have to be a CFO to like that.)

When you are trying to manage and grow your business, you have enough to worry about without worrying whether your cloud hosting bill will bust your budget.

You may like your comedians to be wild and unpredictable, but we’re pretty sure that’s not true for billing.

For cloud service billing, we have a deep-seated faith that…you’re looking for boring. And, predictably, we’re ready to offer it to you.

Month after month after month.

If you’re interested, compare the pricing for our cloud server hosting plans.

Is Cloud Computing for Business or Personal Use?

Though cloud computing is still relatively new, it’s already been advertised in so many ways that it can be difficult to know if it should be used as a tool for business or personal use.  The answer is simple: it can (and should) be used for both!

The Wall Street Journal recently polled a small group of their online readers to see if they were using cloud computing, and, if they did, whether they used it for business or personal purposes.

Practically half of the people responded saying they used the cloud for both, with the next largest group saying they don’t use either.  Perhaps it’s because they aren’t aware of the benefits…

Cloud computing is, in simple terms, using the internet to access everything you need (with applications, operating systems, and data housed on an outside server) instead of using your computer’s storage (with applications, operating systems, and the like installed/housed on your computer directly).

In your personal life, the cloud can be used to store photos, music, movies, documents (and practically anything else you can think of), meaning you can access them from anywhere that has an internet connection.  Imagine being able to browse your music collection from any device without having top physically “synch” a device (like your iPod).  Check out upcoming services like iCloud or the already-available cloud storage service DropBox (which is FREE!) to learn more.

For business, the benefits of using cloud are many and varied (being cloud hosted is a green way to run your business, it’s often a cheaper way to operate, you don’t have to house your own servers), but the largest benefit is flexibility.  A business with cloud hosted operations can adapt to changes faster than a “traditionally hosted” one.  Scaling computing/hosting resources to fit fluctuations in demand, instant growth to support the development of new ideas, and quick data transfers (to a different portion of the cloud if a server acts up, instead of buying new servers) are all possible, headache-free, with cloud computing.

Check out EarthLink Cloud (either online or at 1-800-957-4872) if you’re interested in finding out more about benefiting from moving your business to the cloud.