Cloud computing

[emily]

Hey,

We're moving to a cloud-based system and are currently reviewing options. Is anyone's office on the cloud? Does anyone have opinions on systems? We are moving to google apps for business for mail, but we still need a cloud-based server company. Rackspace and Cubespace are both touted as options, but I wondered if y'all might have ideas on what works or doesn't.

[Charley Mann]

We use OnTheNetOffice for our cloud server, but it's a windows based cloud computing system that basically creates a cloud desktop that you access by remote server.  It's more than just a server though, so it may exceed your needs (which is fine - no need to overspend on unneeded services).

[emily]

Thanks! I'm going to look into them.

We have cloud storage with icloud, dropbox, google drive, and apps like evernote, so I don't know that duplicating the desktop via the cloud is necessary. I'm chatting with our IT guy today about what we need and don't need. But I think OnTheNetOffice is a good idea - what about secure document storage? do y'all have a backup system in case the cloud goes down?

[Charley Mann]

If the cloud goes down, our documents and everything will be fine (and secure), but we don't have any onsite backups or anything like that if there were a long-term outage.  We had a lot of outages with our onsite servers in the past, and OnTheNetOffice has actually had far better uptime for us (though there have been a couple of temporary outages).