The Cloud

What is the cloud?

The cloud is essentially a server farm which is maintained by a group rather than your company and IT Professionals.  This company maintains the equipment (hardware and software) and depending on the contract type, could also be performing RFMS updates and maintaining         the DB.  Wow, this sounds too good, right.  Well as with anything, you want to do research on this. Here are some examples, but are certainly not limited to these:

• How long have they been maintaining hardware or how long have they been in business? 
• What references do thy have? 
• Where is your data and how can you access a copy of it (do they have to send it to you or can you configure a Cloud backup of your own to get a copy of this db)?
• What about guaranteed up-time
• Backups
• Security of system and ultimately your data
• What do they do for the price paid?

Where is the cloud? 

As mention before, it’s in a server farm. This could be in a single building or spread across multiple locations for redundancy. While the cloud is relatively a new topic, remember it is only as scary as you make it. If you research all options and have fail safes in place, it actually isn’t as scary as you would think.

Is the cloud for me? 

This depends on a variety of variables.  Cloud Hosting does eliminate Server Maintenance and Upgrade Costs.  Most still retain a technician to maintain local equipment, network environment and of course Internet/WAN traffic as this will be needed for communication to the Cloud Server. One important question to ask concerning the cloud would be, “Does running the servers in the cloud prove cost effective for me and my technician?” 

Do you have full access to you backups?

This is a very important question to ask the Cloud Hosting Company.  Are your backups strictly hosted there and performed via a Solution that does not give you access to your backups or do they allow for download of or installation of a third party backup solution to make or pull these backups to a location of your choosing?

 What about other RFMS Programs and Cloud (Measure)

Measure by default is not meant to operate in the cloud.  We recommend that it be installed and operated locally on a PC or laptop.  With Measure Cloud Storage, you can now save your projects in the cloud with access to all projects saved by other users in your company and ac

What if I want to keep my equipment, but want cloud backups?

For those that want to have cloud backup and keep their hardware, there are several options.  We recommend researching to find the best package for you.  These could range from programs that perform SQL Backups and push to offsite location (FTP, Drop Box, hosted server, etc...) to programs that simply do a file copy from your Server to an offsite location.