Cloud & Virtualization

Sarum offers a wide range of cloud solutions to fit our customers' needs. We have our own in-house community cloud solution (V-Oasis), which is designed for small-medium sized businesses that wish to outsource the majority of their computing and telephony needs. We also have the experience and ability to create hybrid community clouds (i.e. to meet HIPAA requirements), or design and create private clouds that can either be hosted and managed by us in a state-of-the-art datacenter, or on the customer's site as required.

Q: What is different about Sarum's Cloud Services?

A: Security and Transparency

Sarum was originally a cloud customer, before it was a provider. Our two biggest concerns when moving all our corporate data and applications to the cloud, was first knowing if our data was adequately being protected and second was knowing where our data was being stored, who was accessing it, and wondering how easy it was going to be to get our data back if we decided to change providers.

Security: Sarum's security division provides a wide range of information and cyber security services to the US Government, including defense and intelligence organizations. As a result of our unique experience, we have blended our security knowledge, processes and proven tools into our cloud solution offerings to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of our customer's data and resources.

Transparency: To ensure a trusting and hopefully long lasting relationship, Sarum follows the following Cloud Computing Bill of Rights:

1. Customers own their data
2. Customers have the right to know where their data is at all times
3. Customers have a right to know who will or may have access to their data
4. Customers have a right to constant access to their data
5. Customers have a right to their backups and to know where those backups are being stored
6. Customers have a right to their data if the provider goes out of business
7. Customers have a right to know how their data is stored
8. Customers have a right to know immediately of a data breach or security incident that affects or potentially affects their data

What is Cloud Computing?

If you Google the term, "Cloud Computing" it will likely return you over 83 million results. So to keep it as industry standard as possible, we use the explanation given by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Special Publication 800-145 (draft), which states, "Cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction."

Cloud computing is basically internet-based computing, where all your software, applications and data resources (i.e. processing, storage, etc.) is hosted away from your physical location and into a virtual, "cloud." This allows you to access your hosted desktop, servers, applications, storage, and other IT assets from any device (i.e. PC, Mac, iPad, Android, phone, etc.) and from anywhere you can get an internet connection. The advantages of cloud computing include:

~ Green IT (substantial energy savings)
~ Increased Security (enterprise-level security devices and monitoring)
~ Reduced Costs (fewer upfront and lifecycle costs)
~ Utility Based (Pay only for what you need)
~ Rapid Scalability (increase or decrease resources as needed)
~ Offers Flexibility (access from anywhere with internet connectivity)
~ Supports IT Diversity (any device, employer or employee owned)