Not a day goes by that we don’t get asked ‘What is cloud computing?’ – as well as lots of other questions!

In short, there are lots and lots of definitions, but the simplest one we like of the general term is;

“Technology delivered as a service over the internet”.

This covers everything from SAAS (software as a service) like Facebook, Google Apps, Salesforce, to IAAS or Infrastructure as a Service (like the service provided by Dediserve) and lots of things in between.

We define ‘our’ Cloud Service as;

“low-cost, enterprise cloud infrastructure as a platform for secure, compliant IT services and applications”

In other words, we’ve taken over ten years experience in building hosting platforms for websites, ecommerce, applications and data, as well as more than three years experience in building and running an enterprise cloud platform, and applied it to a low cost, super easy to use solution that small business can readily adopt and run with. Leave the complexity, need to change how you work and unpredictable costs at the door, we’re all about easy!

Here’s a few more things we’ve been asked in the last few months!

Where is my data stored? What about privacy and data protection?
Dediserve are based in Ireland and the UK and all data is safely stored in Dublin, Ireland,home to ebay, amazon, google and more. By being an Irish company and holding our data in Ireland in the EU, you can be assured of complete privacy of your data, without being subject to the Patriot acts or similar US or UK based legislation. We are registered with the Data Protection commission.

Isn’t cloud computing billing hard to predict? Will my bills fluctuate?
No. Dediserve are all about simplifying the cloud experience for small business. With our cloud platform you pay a simple fixed amount every month, but can still flex up and down any time you require, the change is simply reflected in your next bill. Complete control, complete predictability, complete visibility. Never stress about your next cloud bill again!

Is dedicated hosting or colocation cheaper in the long run?
Dediserve cloud hosting is designed to be more cost effective than any alternative. With no capital expenditure or maintenance to worry about, no charges for power, cooling, connectivity, transit and everything you need including for a simple, low monthly fee, you can realise significant savings by migrating your dedicated servers, collocated infrastructure, virtual servers and even shared hosting accounts to the dediserve cloud.

Is this very technical or hard to use?
Our easy to use control panels have been designed specifically with small business users in mind. We have API’s and more ‘complicated’ cloud stuff for the techies, but you can do absolutely everything you need via an extremely simple, yet powerful, web interface. Backed up by our 24/7 availability and friendly support, you don’t have to be technical to make the savings in the cloud!

Do I have to contract for an extended period to get these prices?
Absolutely not. Dediserve is all about simplicity. We believe our services, service and price to be good enough to retain your business month after month. There are no contracts, no commitments beyond what you pay for each month and you can change or leave at any time. Unlike other cloud solutions, we don’t lock you in, or put your data in propriety  formats to lock you in technically either.

Are the resources guaranteed? I have a ‘Burstable’ VPS at the moment?
We use the industry leading Xen virtualisation platform, the most common platform in cloud environments. With Xen, there is no overselling, so when we allocate 1GB of ram to a customer, we can’t sell that ram to anyone else. This means that you get exactly what you are paying for, and those resources are guaranteed to you at all times. There is no contention nor competition for resources on the server, ensuring at all times a predictable performance level from your cloud machine.

Have another question? We’re on livechat, at the end of the phone or email around the clock. We’re also happy to meet you, at our place or yours, and have a conversation around how moving to dediserve can save you a significant amount of your IT and hosting budget, while hugely improving the service you receive.

We recently did an article for a magazine outlining what exactly all the Jargon means with regards Cloud computing and SaaS. So we have decided to put those details onto a site which can be found here http://jargonbuster.dediserve.com/

We hope to grow this site depending on feedback , so feel free to ask what something means which we will then add to the site, or provide an explanation yourself and we’ll be happy to add to the list.