Dude, where’s my datacentre?

Hello and welcome to another exciting rollercoaster ride through the World of Infuse.

Whilst driving into the office today, my mind drifted through the usual whimsical thoughts of a modern-day man (I’m really glad turtlenecks came back into fashion. If two people on opposite sides of the world each drop a piece of bread, does the Earth briefly becomes a sandwich? Why do we say, “tuna fish” but not “beef mammal”?)

And then BAM, my neurons really came to life, fizzing about like a mento in a bottle of Coca-Cola (check YouTube).

DATA – of course!

It’s in the cloud! But wait, where is the cloud?

The term ‘it’s in the cloud’ is so prevalent now but still misunderstood and potentially over trusted.

So, it got me thinking – how much do people know about their own data? Or the cloud for that matter? Do they even know where it is? Or where the backups are? Or who holds the keys to all their files?

In layman’s terms, the server that used to be housed in your office is now much more resilient and is housed with its server buddies in large warehouses which themselves have multiple layers of protection for power, cooling and internet connections. This is ‘the cloud’.

That said ‘it’s in the cloud’ could mean, it’s on a server in Jane and Martins House, 123 Letsby Avenue, Winchester. It may have no resilience, no redundant cooling, no multiple internet connections. This service may act the same or similar to others and without paying attention your data could be there (this is not relevant to Office 365, AWS, Azure or GSuite).

Choosing the right cloud service provider for you

Services such as https://owncloud.org/ allow techies to setup their own services based on whatever hardware they choose. A quick google of cloud-based services, and you will see text such as this:

“Reliable Data Center – instead of running the service out of an ordinary office, we use a data center that provides a 100% uptime guarantee. To maintain this uptime, the data center has multiple redundant internet connections, redundant routers, and power generators.”

All seems great but reading further into the text finds the datacenters to be in China.

Not ideal certainly if you ever need to visit the datacentre for compliance reasons.

And we get it. Finding a suitable cloud service provide can take more time and effort. But you can be sure that by choosing the right, you will save time and resources in the long term.

To help, the main things that we suggest you consider when deciding to use a cloud service provider are:

• Location – where are they based? The EU, the UK?
• GDPR considerations
• Two Factor Authentication

We’ve all heard of the Cloud, but knowing what to do, where it is, how it works, who can access it and even moving to it can all be a daunting prospect.

Here at Infuse, we can cut through all those complexities to put together a Cloud Solution that not only works for you but meets any criteria you have, helping to take your business to the next level.

To hear more, get in touch today.