Many companies are thinking about obtaining some of these services from the cloud in the future. Well-known providers include Amazon, Microsoft, Google etc. The advantages for the company are
- Lower hardware costs per location
- More security against failures
- Smaller ecological footprint
- Easier step-by-step scaling if required
Large players from the USA have dominated the cloud from the public sector. Many companies appreciate the ability to conveniently obtain cloud services, regardless of where the associated data centre is located. However, the move to the cloud is not only being driven by the big tech giants. Swiss providers are in an extremely favourable position to offer their customers greater security. Private cloud providers can dispel many cloud concerns.
Let’s take data protection. Not all companies want their data to be stored on US or Chinese servers. Public cloud customers have no say in the location. What if a secret service asks the provider, for whatever reason, to hand over your customer’s data? This is a particularly sensitive issue when it comes to sensitive data. This is precisely where Swiss cloud providers stand out from foreign providers.
Cloud providers that offer their services from a private, Swiss cloud infrastructure use the «Swissness factor» to assert themselves against international tech giants. With a Swiss provider, customers can be sure that their data will remain in Switzerland. This is a decisive factor for many companies.
BrokerStar is also operated in a Swiss private cloud. Most customers use this service. The Swiss Hosting label ensures that the data remains exclusively in Switzerland.
Cloud providers require a data centre from which the services offered, such as Software-as-a-Service, are provided. This requires the following components.
- Virtualised storage
Storage capacity is pooled from several physical systems and offered to users as individual, centrally controllable storage. The physical storage is copied and made available as a virtual «Storage Attached Network» (vSAN) pool. The applications used from this pool run on virtual machines (VMs).
- Virtualised server
With server virtualisation, CPU power is virtualised instead of memory. Physical servers are divided into several separate virtual server environments using virtualisation software. The users work independently on each virtual server.
- Virtualised network
Network virtualisation ensures that physical networks in several virtual environments are managed independently of each other. Routers or switches are managed centrally.
- ICT security
And then you need all kinds of security devices, from firewalls with DMZs to virus protection, intrusion detection and other measures to protect devices, software and data from malicious attacks