Our cloud services

Working in the cloud guarantees maximum availability of your applications, reliable security and a transparent cost structure. In addition, your IT infrastructure can be adapted quickly and flexibly to your specific needs. You can work in the cloud in different ways.

Public, private or hybrid cloud: which option should you choose?

Each option offers specific possibilities. We help you choose the system that is best suited to your organisation and implement the chosen solution.

CLOUD:
a strategic
choice

Are you looking for a cloud service provider who can not only provide you with perfect technical support, but also think along with you and provide strategic advice?

Our experts can advise you on the right choices, offer solutions, show you how to keep cloud costs down, how to balance performance and security, how to best manage increasingly complex environments, and work with you to develop a detailed cloud roadmap. This is how we work:

Assessment

We’ll review your specific business case with you and see what the cloud can mean for your organisation. By the end of this session, you will have a clear view of your cloud readiness and the next steps you can take.

Workshop and strategic choice

For our multi-day interactive workshops, we come to your office and work with your team. At the end of the workshop, you will have a plan for a complete architecture, our cloud recommendation and a roadmap with the next steps for installation and implementation.

Private Cloud

A private cloud can be a good solution if you want more control over where your data is stored, if you don’t want to or can’t run some applications in the public cloud, or if regulations require you to have a private cloud environment.

 

What can we
offer you?

Private Cloud

If you need to implement a private cloud within your organisation, you can rely on the expertise of Arxus, another member of the Cronos group. Arxus has a fully redundant private cloud in Belgium: the Arxus Cloud. We use our own space and infrastructure in three Belgian Tier 3 data centres, which are connected to each other by a state-of-the-art fibre optic network.

Data centres in Belgium

Our private cloud is based on a fully redundant data centre architecture, offering high availability and having no single point of failure.

Thanks to this architecture, you as our customer can be sure that all the data centres you use will always be connected with dual point-to-point DWDM technology. This enables us to seamlessly and securely integrate all data centres in a redundant cloud environment into a single, logical virtual data centre architecture.

In all cases, the different data centres are geographically distributed, so that the rules and regulations regarding business continuity and disaster recovery can be observed.

Servers

Our sister company Arxus standardises its physical infrastructure in each data centre with carefully selected components. This means that the infrastructure installed in each data centre is an exact copy of the others. Arxus relies on leading and reliable suppliers such as Cisco and NetApp. In this way, they can largely automate the deployment and management of their core infrastructure.

Storage

The physical computing and storage infrastructure is based on a Cisco / NetApp FlexPod reference architecture. It is a pre-validated platform based on Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS), Cisco Nexus and NetApp data management solutions.

This architecture provides an agile platform with high availability and scalable storage. The compute clusters and SAN fabrics are linked to the data centres and are not distributed across the data centres, with each component in an N+N configuration. This ensures that you, the customer, have access to highly available and fault-tolerant flash/SSD storage per data centre.

Public Cloud

If you opt for the public cloud, we suggest Microsoft Azure. This name covers all Microsoft cloud services offered through a global network of Microsoft data centres. Microsoft Azure is Microsoft’s public hyperscale cloud platform. It includes a wide range of cloud services, both in the form of infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS).

You can of course use all Microsoft applications via this public cloud, but you can also use or create your own applications. You benefit from a reliable and high-performance cloud environment, with clear guarantees in terms of performance, availability, security, compliance and redundancy.

microsoft-azure

Why Microsoft Azure?

Because Microsoft Azure offers an incredibly powerful and secure cloud platform, which has many advantages. Microsoft is also fully committed to Azure, which means that new components and services are being launched for the cloud platform at an incredible rate.

As a result, in 2019, Microsoft’s cloud segment generated more quarterly revenue than the Office and Windows segments for the first time in more than three years.

But perhaps most importantly, Microsoft is currently the most popular cloud provider and continues to gain market share against major competitors such as Amazon (AWS) and Google (Google Cloud).

The strengths of Microsoft Azure

IaaS and PaaS

Azure offers a full range of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) features. With IaaS, you can run your entire infrastructure on Azure and only pay for what you use. With PaaS, you can quickly and easily build your own cloud applications without having to manage the underlying layers.

Hybrid compatible

Azure also enables you to build unique hybrid clouds. You can manage your entire environment (on-premise, other clouds, and the Azure Public Cloud) thanks to the reliable Azure Arc tool. Azure also offers a wider range of hybrid connections, such as virtual private networks (VPNs), caches, content distribution networks (CDNs) and ExpressRoute connections.

Flexibility

Microsoft Azure is a very powerful platform which offers great flexibility and scalability. Applications, infrastructure, storage, etc. can be scaled easily, quickly and in a user-friendly way, from 10 to 10 million users. Thanks to the platform, you will always have a tailor-made solution.

Reliability

Microsoft Azure is hosted in Microsoft data centres spread over the different regions. There are at least two data centres in each region. This guarantees maximum availability of your applications and data, while offering a solution for business continuity and disaster recovery.

Cloud Security

Azure is based on the Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) process. This means that security is considered from the drawing board for each service or component and that security is implemented at the core of the application. In this way, Microsoft guarantees the best possible security for all operations and data within the Azure Cloud.

Data privacy

Microsoft Azure was also the first cloud platform to adopt the international ISO 27018 standard for protecting personal information in the cloud. In addition, Microsoft does not move data outside of the chosen region. As a customer, you can determine exactly where – in which region – Microsoft should store each type of data, which also enables you to comply with your GDPR obligations.

Intelligence

Azure offers you integrated support to drill down into data and uncover key insights to improve your business processes and decision making. Azure offers options for Blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS), machine learning, bots and cognitive APIs.

Innovation

Microsoft is investing heavily in Microsoft Azure, not only to keep the platform running efficiently, but also to constantly renew and improve it. The amount of new services and components and the rate at which they are launched are significantly higher than that of the competition.

Transparency

Microsoft uses a “pay per use” approach for Azure. In practice, this means that only your actual consumption per minute is charged. For example, if you choose to reduce your number of servers in the middle of a month, you will pay less at the end of that month.

Learning curve

Microsoft uses trusted tools such as Visual Studio, ASP.NET and well-known programming languages to develop cloud-native applications. This makes it easier for developers to develop cloud-based applications.

Hybrid Cloud

You don’t need to move all your infrastructure or applications to the public cloud at once: a combination of a private and a public cloud is often a good solution or a well thought-out pragmatic intermediate step.

Together, we will examine what is possible in the public cloud and what is better suited to the private cloud. We will always choose the solution that best suits your needs.

At Uptime ICT, our experts will be happy to help your organisation analyse, identify and implement the cloud solution that best suits the specificities of your business.

Want to know more?