Cloud computing and the need for certifications

In recent years, cloud computing has become one of the most important and in-demand services for businesses and public administrations. In addition to the convenience inherent in this choice, the advantage is considerable savings in management costs and hardware. In fact, in addition to eliminating machine obsolescence, the virtual facility can be set up and configured according to the company’s needs. System upgrades are also handled by the provider without the customer having to purchase new licenses. Then consider the convenience of being able to access cloud services via a browser from any location with an Internet connection. There are mainly three types of cloud services referred to by acronyms: SaaS (Software as a Service), PaaS (Platform as a Service) and IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service). The latter represents the most comprehensive offering and is what we will discuss next.

IaaS services

Infrastructure as a Service: i.e., cloud services that make virtualized hardware resources available to customers so they can “assemble” and manage the infrastructure according to their needs. Businesses and governments can add virtual machines, storage sizes, accredit or remove users, and manage firewalls and other options so that the IT structure is flexible and responsive with simple and inexpensive operations.

How to choose a cloud service?

The benefits of cloud computing are obvious, but choosing a provider to entrust the company’s business to requires care. Cloud services can vary considerably in the options they offer and the platform on which they run, and to be certain that the business or public entity is in good hands, it is a priority to check for certifications. For example, the yCloud service is one of the flagships of Hypergrid, which has obtained AGID (Agency for Digital Italy) certification as a CSP that allows it to work not only with companies but also to provide Cloud infrastructure to the public administration. This is a certification that few companies can currently boast and joins ISO 9001 certifications for IT security management and monitoring services and ISO 27001 for the design and delivery of Cloud Computing services. yCloud is also reported in the Cloud Marketplace on AGID’s website and is an IasS service built on HyperGrid’s Cloudstack-based enterprise facilities with Cisco ASA-X firewalling architecture. For those unfamiliar with Apache CloudStack, it is an open source software designed to deploy and manage large virtual machine networks, supports popular hypervisors such as VMware, KVM, Citrix XenServer, Xen Cloud Platform (XCP), Oracle VM servers and Microsoft Hyper-V.

A virtual CED

In fact, yCloud is a real virtual CED (Data Processing Center) in which multiple virtual machines and services can be managed and configured. From its convenient interface it is possible to manage CPU, storage space, services, public addresses, firewalls, user and account management. As always with Hypergrid services, there is a focus on data security, and yCloud can be configured for access via VPN with two-factor authentication. In addition, Hypergrid guarantees fast activation and deactivation times, and in case of problems, support is guaranteed every day, 24 hours a day. Hypergrid’s team of experts will then be able to evaluate the solution best suited to the needs of customers and public administrations.

For more information contact us at: info@hypergrid.it