What is the CLOUD?

This question is asked plenty, but hardly ever answered well. We’re going to break it down so you can actually understand it.

The cloud is a broad term that means: Any type of remote server or storage that is accessible over the internet. It’s someone else’s computer that your stuff sits in. Simple, right?

In our case it’s highly secure data-centers.

You might ask if storing your data in the cloud is safer than storing it at your office. The answer is usually yes.

Physically, data-centers have strict access policies with state of the art security. The data-center business IS a security business. In fact, some have armed guards. Considering most offices have their server in a broom closet, yes, it is more secure.

The data-centers we use are georedundant. That means there are multiple data-centers storing duplicate data across multiple geographic regions to mitigate natural disasters. For our Canadian data-centers, this might mean that your data is stored in Vancouver, Saskatchewan, and Montreal. If, say, a storm downs the internet lines at the Vancouver data-enter, you can still access your data from the other two.

Data-centers also have much more expensive and robust firewalls and have huge teams working around the clock to make sure the network is secure. Some firewalls can cost north of $20,000. And I know your office doesn’t have an IT security team of 30 people watching over your server day and night.

Hopefully this clears it up for you. Please leave a comment below with any questions regarding the ever so mystical cloud!