INTRUST GROUP continuously searches for the best solutions for our clients. By keeping ourselves up to date with the best solutions available, we help our clients make the best strategic decisions with their business information technology.
On this page you will find some of the more popular solutions we are helping our clients implement on a daily basis.
THE CLOUD
Have you seen those "To the Cloud!" commercials on TV and thought "To the what?" Well, you aren't alone. A lot of people have been wondering what exactly Microsoft is selling in those commercials. "The Cloud" has been around since 2006, when Amazon first started selling excess computing and storage capacity, but only recently have companies started marketing it to consumers. The problem is that most people don't know what "The Cloud" is.
Everyone understands the concept of renting a hotel room. You go to a building that some company owns and maintains and you use your credit card to purchase a certain sized room or rooms for a certain length of time. The room has electricity, television, water, maid service, etc. While you are in the room you expect a certain level of privacy to do whatever you came to do. When you are done you take what you brought with you and check out.
The cloud is very similar to a hotel room. Some company owns and maintains a data center somewhere. You use a form of payment, which is usually your credit card, to purchase storage or computing power at that data center for a certain length of time. Depending upon the service, it could be a minute of time, a day, a month or even longer. You are purchasing a service which could just be raw storage and computing power, or it could be a full software application like Salesforce. Some other services in "The Cloud" are Facebook, Dropbox, Flickr, Carbonite, IdeaScale and Gmail.
"The Cloud", much like hotels, also offers convenience. It is nice to go to a city and be able to know you can check into a room and have everything you need provided for you. Many cloud services are the same way – you just setup an account and get started right away.
Another similarity between hotels and "The Cloud" is how control of the environment works. When you stay in a hotel you can't change the décor or even re-arrange the furniture. You sure wouldn't remodel the bathroom because you didn't like how it was laid out. The same goes for many cloud services. The cloud provider gives you a certain template or environment to use, and that's what you have to work with. If you want to change things drastically, you will probably be charged a fee, if you are even allowed make the change to begin with.
Speaking of fees, one big difference between a hotel and "The Cloud" is that a lot of cloud services are free. Some are free because they want to entice you with the trial version, which has some limitations, in hopes that you will purchase the full version with more features. Or the service is free because they make money through advertising running on the site.
Hopefully, now you can join the masses in rushing "To the Cloud" and actually know where you are going. Keep in mind that offering services hosted in large data centers isn't exactly a new idea. It's just an idea with a cool new name.
Just like it wouldn't be cost effective to live all the time in a hotel, some aspects of a company's IT infrastructure still aren't cost effective to move to the cloud. Instead, a company can choose to build a virtual infrastructure, or private company cloud. There are many different options and blends between the "private cloud" and "public cloud."
INTRUST is well versed in dozens of cloud solutions and can help you navigate all of the options. We always make sure that, going into any cloud solution, there is an exit plan because the cloud, or your business, can change quickly. You don't want your data or business process held hostage by a cloud service provider.
VIRTUALIZATION
The foundation for all technology infrastructures these days is virtualization. Simply stated, virtualization is the ability to make the applications and operating system independent from the underlying hardware. This allows for multiple virtual servers to run on a single server, and allows those virtual servers to be moved at will between physical servers located in the same room, or across the country.
Virtualization saves money by reducing the number of physical servers required, which saves on acquisition costs, power, and space. It also provides an amazing amount of flexibility for high-availability, backup, and disaster recovery.
Before virtualization, it took days or weeks to purchase and install a new server. Now, with virtualization, a new server can be provisioned in a matter of minutes.
There are many other types of virtualization, including storage and desktop virtualization. Those solutions can also be considered, but server virtualization has so many benefits it would be silly to NOT do it.
INTRUST has experience and is certified to install the three most popular server virtualization solutions available: VMware, Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix XenServer. We can assist your company in determining the most appropriate solution for your situation.
STORAGE AREA NETWORK (SAN)
Most server virtualization solutions require a storage area network, or SAN. This is a piece of hardware that pools a bunch of hard-drives together to form a consolidated storage system that multiple servers can share. This provides better resource utilization, better performance, better availability, and more flexible backup options.
INTRUST has experience and is certified to install many of the popular storage area networks on the market. We can assist your company in determining the most appropriate solution for your situation.
CITRIX XENAPP AND REMOTE DESKTOP SERVICES (RDS)
Recently Microsoft renamed its Terminal Services to Remote Desktop Services, or RDS, and Citrix renamed Presentation Server to XenApp. Not only have the names changed, but a lot of features have been added to both solutions. If you currently use Terminal Services, you should really take a look at all of the new features that have been added recently. If you currently have Citrix and are wondering if you need to continue using that solution, INTRUST can help you evaluate your needs.
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, or VDI, is another great alternative to the legacy PC environment. With VDI, the user's desktop runs out of the data center, taking full advantage of the centralized power of a virtualized infrastructure. The user can then access their applications from any device via almost any connection, anywhere they chose. INTRUST has experience with VDI, and we are careful to implement it only when it makes sense, rather than just because it is the newest option available.
