Overview

 

Castle Cloud Computing – Frequently Asked Questions

 

What is Castle Cloud Computing?

In essence it is the delivery of hosted IT services over the internet, meaning a business ‘consumes’ the services it needs, as and when they are needed. A company doesn’t need to invest heavily in hardware and software to get the IT services that its success and growth depend upon. Castle provides a Private Cloud Service, which means that you know where your data is stored and can be secure in the knowledge of the many measures that are in place to protect it.

What are the benefits of Cloud Computing?

In financial terms it switches IT from capital cost to operational cost. The Castle Cloud Computing Hosting model provides a full corporate infrastructure normally unaffordable to SME organisations. There are many practical benefits, which are wide-ranging and listed below.

1. High performance and secure computing infrastructure, safe and fast.
2. Business Continuity built in, if server goes down, VMware HA (High Availability) kicks in for uninterrupted service.
3. Scalable, more resource can be added in minutes without server upgrades or downtime.
4. High availability, proven uptime 99.85%+ (excluding planned maintenance).
5. Data back-ups are the responsibility of Castle, reducing client IT management time and effort. Data replicated off-site therefore absolute minimum risk of any loss of a data.
6. Resilience built-in throughout every aspect of the solution. Castle employs world leading data centre infrastructure, utilising highly resilient Blade Centre and VMware infrastructure with no single point of failure
7. No server power required at the client site representing a saving of approximately £350+ p.a. per server.
8. In case of emergency at the customer’s site, the data and systems can be accessed from another office or home office immediately suffering no loss of data with the business up and running in minutes not days/weeks.
9. Remote and mobile access available to all users, where permitted, for remote, home or mobile workers via Citrix infrastructure.
10. No hardware maintenance or depreciation as all costs of equipment, maintenance, technical support and operating system upgrades covered in a predictable monthly fee, which is treated as an operational cost not a capital expenditure.
11. Latest revisions and upgrades to all Microsoft software available at the data centre.

 

Castle Cloud Computing is a fully managed service = Better performance, maximum uptime, minimum hassle and less risk.

 

Is it easy to move from a traditional on-premise IT infrastructure to Castle’s Cloud computing environment?

Yes, using proven virtualisation software, Castle can transfer all of your computing needs to our Data Centre in a timely manner with minimum, if any, downtime. Castle has both well trained application and technical resources to help make the switch painlessly, whether that is a complete move to Cloud Computing or a hybrid between on-premise and cloud, depending on your business objectives. Castle’s Cloud Computing Readiness Assessments provide all of the required information in advance of planning a transfer to Cloud computing.

Where would my Company data be located?

Castle has invested in Two Data Centres located in Livingston and Newbridge, near Edinburgh where all customer data will be stored. Hosted solutions and data in one data centre is replicated to the second data centre each night for business continuity purposes in the event of a disaster. This service is known as a ‘Private Cloud’ solution as it’s configured and set-up only for your organisation and you know exactly where the data is stored. Castle can also provide Microsoft cloud solutions, such as Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint & CRM.

What Business Continuity plans or processes are in place?

One of the main benefits of utilising a Castle Cloud solution is the inherent business continuity capability built in to our solutions, such as instant failover if a physical server fails and having no single point of failure built in to our infrastructure. In addition, both data centre facilities offer unprecedented business continuity facilities to ensure maximum uptime, including smooth power supply, backup power generators, key card security entrance, internal and external CCTV, multiple communications connections with leading communication providers, resilient cooling equipment, high spec fire retardant capability, etc.

All of our customers’ systems are replicated either nightly or hourly (subject to agreement and the results of the Readiness Assessment) to our secondary data centre to ensure that if a catastrophic incident happened at our production data centre, a full system copy would be operational within hours from our secondary data centre. All of our Cloud solutions offer secure remote access to the applications, which can be accessed from any location with an internet connection.

Disasters come in many forms and don’t need to start as a big incident to quickly turn into a disaster. Whether it’s a full scale building fire or a power cut, it’s important you have a Business Continuity plan that can be put into action should a disaster occur. A simple burst pipe in a bathroom seeping under the floor can sometimes mean the electricity supply needs to be switched off in a hurry! This quickly leads to lost productivity and reduced customer service. With Cloud computing all systems can be accessed from another location, office or home instantly with no loss of data. Castle can provide a full consultation service to help build an appropriate Business Continuity Plan for your organisation.

Why should I use Castle Computer Services?

Castle has been supporting application and technical customers since 1983 and has evolved over those years to introduce the latest technology when we believe they will add value and benefit our customers. Our Cloud solutions utilise all the elements we have been supporting in over 500 customers, including Microsoft operating systems & products (server and desktop), VMware virtualisation, storage area networks (SAN’s), remote access software and systems management and monitoring tools. Castle has invested in data centres and cloud solutions since 2009 and we have built and fine-tuned our solutions, tools and processes over this time. Our unique mix of application and technical capabilities and experience together with our own multi-site data centre IT infrastructure managed by our own people, makes Castle a single source of supply and support for all your IT needs.

Is Cloud Computing really the future of IT?

Castle Cloud computing offers a share in a resilient IT infrastructure providing unprecedented flexibility, scalability, performance and business continuity facilities that makes it affordable to SME organisations that previously only large corporations could afford.

What are the risks associated with not having a Business Continuity plan?

• 6% of all PCs will suffer an episode of data loss in any given year. (The Cost Of Lost Data, David M. Smith)
• 30% of all businesses that have a major fire go out of business within a year. 70% fail within five years. (Home Office Computing Magazine)
• 93% of companies that lost IT infrastructure for 10 days or more due to a disaster filed for bankruptcy within one year of the disaster. 50% of businesses that found themselves without data access for this same time period filed for bankruptcy immediately. (National Archives & Records Administration in Washington)
• Companies that aren’t able to resume operations within ten days (of a disaster hit) are not likely to survive. (Strategic Research Institute)

How often to disasters occur in businesses

• The average number of systems failure or data corruption incidents per year per company was as follows:
  • 4 in large companies (50+ Employees)
  • 2 in small companies (less than 50 employees)

• 70% of large companies suffered systems failure or data corruption
• 58% of small companies suffered systems failure or data corruption

The biggest cause of systems failure and data corruption is still hardware failure. (61% of all incidents are due to hardware failure)

To find out more email us at info@castle-cs.com