Online Tech's Managed Cloud Serves Up Private Security at Public Price

Ann Arbor-based Online Tech Inc. Tuesday announced the availability of secure, fully managed cloud hosting.

The new managed cloud infrastructure is built on the same high availability, private cloud architecture that has helped other clients meet PCI and HIPAA compliance. The result is a highly available, SAS 70 compliant, managed cloud computing infrastructure at a public cloud price point.

One of Online Tech's first managed cloud clients, Timothy Buttram of Advenware, builds e-commerce Web sites. He was told repeatedly that meeting compliance without a private dedicated environment was impossible, until Online Tech's fully managed cloud passed Level 3 PCI DSS penetration testing by an independent third party auditor.

"Everyone I talked with said that it was impossible to achieve PCI and HIPPA compliance without a private cloud. Then they would try and sell me a $3,000-a-year dedicated service," Buttram said. "But then I discovered that Online Tech had broken the barrier in achieving PCI compliance on a cloud server."

Online Tech chose to prioritize high availability and security for its managed cloud computing services. This gives clients options for secure, redundant cloud computing that can't be found in the public cloud computing model where a down server means lost data and applications.

"It was clear that we didn't want to compete in the commodity public cloud utility market against Amazon and Rackspace – where they charge for computing by the hour and design to minimize their costs," said Mike Klein, president of Online Tech. "We chose to stick with what we understand best -- delivering highly available, secure cloud computing."

Online Tech's fully managed cloud is standardized on enterprise level hardware and software for reliability. From the selection of VMware Enterprise Edition over open source solutions, to the selection of Dell EqualLogic SANs for virtual storage, Online Tech chose reliability over cost savings. Protected by fully redundant, high-availability power and network firewall systems, Online Tech's managed cloud remains fully operational despite a host, drive, or network component failure or upgrade.

"We use the same high availability architecture for our shared cloud servers that we have developed for our secure private clouds," said Yan Ness, CEO of Online Tech. "Our own entire infrastructure has run on this same platform for the last 18 months, so we are confident in the reliability and security of the architecture."

More at www.OnlineTech.com.