[This is a guest post written and contributed by CloudFlare for Netcetera]

CloudFlare makes it easy for any site to be as fast and secure as the Internet giants.

CloudFlare, a web performance and security company, is excited to announce our partnership with Netcetera! If you haven’t heard about CloudFlare before, our value proposition is simple: we’ll make any website twice as fast and protect it from a broad range of web threats.

Today, hundreds of thousands of websites—ranging from individual blogs to e-commerce sites to the websites of Fortune 500 companies to national governments—use CloudFlare to make their sites faster and more secure. We power more than 65 billion monthly page views—more than Amazon, Wikipedia, Twitter, Zynga, AOL, Apple, Bing, eBay, PayPal and Instagram combined—and over 25% of the Internet’s population regularly passes through our network.

Faster web performance

CloudFlare is designed to take a great hosting platform like Netcetera and make it even better.

We run 23 data centers strategically located around the world. When you sign up for CloudFlare, we begin routing your traffic to the nearest data center.

As your traffic passes through the data centers, we intelligently determine what parts of your website are static versus dynamic. The static portions are cached on our servers for a short period of time, typically less than 2 hours before we check to see if they’ve been updated. By automatically moving the static parts of your site closer to your visitors, the overall performance of your site improves significantly.

CloudFlare’s intelligent caching system also means you save bandwidth, which means saving money, and decreases the load on your servers, which means your web application will run faster and more efficiently than ever. On average, CloudFlare customers see a 60% decrease in bandwidth usage, and a 65% in total requests to their servers. The overall effect is that CloudFlare will typically cut the load time for pages on your site by 50% which means higher engagement and happier visitors.

Broad web security

Over the course of 2011, CloudFlare identified a 700% increase in the number of distributed denial of service attacks  (DDoS) we track on the Internet. As attacks like these increase, CloudFlare is stepping up to protect sites.

CloudFlare’s security protections offer a broad range of protections against attacks such as DDoS, hacking or spam submitted to a blog or comment form. What is powerful about our approach is that the system gets smarter the more sites that are part of the CloudFlare community. We analyze the traffic patterns of hundreds of millions of visitors in real time and adapt the security systems to ensure good traffic gets through and bad traffic is stopped.

In time, our goal is nothing short of making attacks against websites a relic of history. And, given our scale and the billions of different attacks we see and adapt to every year, we’re well on our way to achieving that for sites on the CloudFlare network.

Signing up

Any website can deploy CloudFlare, regardless of your underlying platform. By integrating closely with Netcetera, we make the process of setting up CloudFlare “1 click easy” through your existing Netcetera control panel.

We’ve kept the price as low as possible and plans offered through Netcetera are FREE. Moreover, we never charge you for bandwidth or storage, therefore saving you tons via reduced bandwidth costs.

For site owners who would like to take advantage of CloudFlare’s advanced offerings, we also offer a ‘Pro’ tier of service for $20/month. The ‘Pro’ tier includes all of the ‘Free’ tier’s offerings, as well as extra features like SSL, full web application firewall and faster analytics.

We’re proud that every day more than a thousand new sites, including some of the largest on the web, join the CloudFlare community. If you’re looking for a faster, safer website, you’ve got a good start with Netcetera but the next step is to join the CloudFlare community .

Questions? Let us help!

To speak to one of our Sales Consultants about what our services can do for you, or for any other queries, please fill out our Enquiry Form or call 0800 061 2801 or click our Live Chat

Netcetera are proud to announce the launch of our new Managed Window Cloud Server 2012 to bring  you a faster, more reliable, scalable and easy to use hosting solution!

Whether you are a developer building Web applications or writing core server-based system services, our Managed Windows Cloud Servers can be easily and quickly configured and deployed to meet your specific requirements.
The Managed Windows Cloud Server 2012 is:

• Scalable
• Resilient
• Flexible
• Very easy to use

Netcetera Managed Cloud Servers comes pre-installed with an easy to use web-based control panel called WebSitePanel. With WebsitePanel you can easily manage all your web sites, FTP accounts, EMail Accounts, databases and other resources from a single place.

The Managed Windows Cloud Server is offered, for only £47.98/pm, with the Essential Server Management Pack, 1vCPU, 2GB, vRAM, 40GB HDD, 200GB Bandwidth, MS SQL 2012 Express and Smarter Tools Professional Bundle.

Clients share the hardware resources of the servers but each client has their own operating system providing the application flexibility of a dedicated solution but with the cost savings of a cloud Hosting environment.

Questions? Let us help!

To speak to one of our Sales Consultants about what our services can do for you, or for any other queries, please fill out our Enquiry Form or call 0800 061 2801 or click our Live Chat

After analysing what Cloud computing is, the advantages as well as differences from Dedicated Servers, we should say something about how Cloud Computing will evolve in the future.

Cloud and Social
The convergence of mobile technology, cloud and social networking will accelerate, and by the end of 2012, cloud apps that are not “socially aware” and without mobile support will be looked down on, as “legacy apps”. We will see more and more application vendors bringing feature parity into their apps for different mobile applications. Towards the end of 2012, mobile web apps will dominate over native apps.

Value-added services enter the competitive arena
After the past few years of building underlying platforms and placing data centers around the world, it’s time for the cloud service providers to face-off on higher levels of services – competition will be around Quality of Service, but also managed cloud offerings and professional services.

Cloud Brokerage and Computing Consulting will grow dramatically
Clouds are becoming more prevalent with more options, configurations, and services are cluttering the marketplace. To that end, companies will need to understand these options and how it can benefit their organisations. Cloud companies will further develop their own professional services in order to assist companies navigate and design their custom solutions (unless of course these cloud providers are extremely commoditised and only offer DIY solutions). Consultancies will continue to evolve and new ones form, leveraging and implementing the best practices of multiple cloud services.

Networking
Complex networking will emerge as a critical success factor: Somewhat in the background till now, the need to provide full configurability for networking in the hybrid model is rising in the list of cloud “must-haves.” Many early cloud service models have flattened the network and prevented enterprise control and flexibility. New and better options will continue to emerge.

More Private Cloud
After spending the last few years testing the public cloud for point projects, enterprise users will start to utilise private cloud for mission critical and data-sensitive applications. Heavy virtualisation users will start augmenting high-availability virtual infrastructure by creating private clouds to reap the benefits of resource pooling, self-service and elasticity on top of their existing virtual infrastructure.

Cloud Hosted DesktopsWhat’s good for the server, may be good for the desktop. With the success of Google Docs, DropBox and other mobile productivity tools it sets the stage for greater virtual desktop adoption. Look for more virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) solutions paired with data-as-a-service allowing users to take their desktop computing everywhere (think iPad) without requiring a wholesale migration.

Private Cloud solutions will continue to lead the way as organisations continue to look for further efficiencies and increased agility to complement their initial server virtualisation investments, combined with deploying “capable” applications and some new workloads to public cloud services.

Netcetera offer Cloud Solutions from as little as £14.99/pm for Windows and £14.00/pm for Linux.

Previous Posts

• Q1 – What is Cloud Computing?
• Q2 – What are Cloud Services?
• Q3 – What are the Benefits of Cloud Computing?
• Q4 – When Should I Use a Cloud Server rather than a Dedicated Server?

Questions? Let us help!

To speak to one of our Sales Consultants about what our services can do for you, or for any other queries, please fill out our Enquiry Form or call 0800 061 2801 or click our Live Chat

Cloud servers and dedicated servers both have their own advantages. The differences between a Dedicated Server vs Cloud Computing are significant and the selection between the two should be based upon individual needs. For those who are expanding into a web-based market, one should research the options carefully before making a commitment.

The major difference between the two is that a dedicated server is a physical piece of equipment housed in a room somewhere. Cloud computing, on the other hand, is a virtual server which allows customization, load balancing, and storage.

Structure
A dedicated server is a structure that works on a specified website that has been rented from a host. It has the advantage of providing services without the competition generally associated when multiple servers share a single site. Additionally, the monthly fee is always the same, regardless of how much navigation or space is used. Cloud computing, on the other hand, is capable of allowing for spikes in traffic, offers a broader range of exposure, and provides many amenities not available in the other option. Although it is a shared server, it can balance a higher load, easily expand websites based on individual needs, and provide hardware upgrades on a regular basis.

Scalability
Cloud servers enable vertical scaling by selecting the desired resources as and when required. Cloud servers also give you the capacity to add or remove memory, computing power, and hard drive space within a short span of time. However with dedicated servers, you are able to re size your hosting platform but it may take some time to add or remove the resources; this is because it involves the tasks like establishing a new server, upgrading software, and installing new software.

Reliability
Most people seem to like the idea that in the event of a Dedicated Server located in a  datacentre failing, someone will immediately run to fix it. The difference with the Cloud is that its’ providers have many data centres located all over the world, so if your instance goes down, or even an entire datacentre goes down, you simply start up a new instance somewhere else. The problem is solved in a matter of minutes.

Deployment Time
It is very easy to deploy a ready to use server in the cloud server framework. All that you have to do is select a package and the software. Your server will be configured within a short span of time, and it will be ready for use. In case of dedicated server, everything has to be done manually such as selecting and installing the hardware and installing the operating system.

Costs
This is the major point of difference between cloud servers and dedicated servers. In terms of cloud server hosting, the payment only has to made for the resources used and no extra payment is involved. Whereas in terms of dedicated server hosting, payment has to be made for all the resources that are provided even if not fully utilised.

Netcetera offer Cloud Solutions from as little as £14.99/pm for Windows and £14.00/pm for Linux.

Previous Post

• Q1 – What is Cloud Computing?
• Q2 – What are Cloud Services?
• Q3 – What are the Benefits of Cloud Computing?

• Q5 – What is the Future of Cloud Services?

Questions? Let us help!

To speak to one of our Sales Consultants about what our services can do for you, or for any other queries, please fill out our Enquiry Form or call 0800 061 2801 or click our Live Chat

There are lots of benefits in using cloud computing for companies.

Remote Access
Cloud computing means that staff can access the files and data that they need even when they’re working remotely and/or outside office hours. As long as they can get on the Internet, staff can access information from home, on the road, from clients’ offices or even from a smartphone such as a BlackBerry or iPhone. Staff can also work collaboratively on files and documents, even when they’re not physically together. Documents can simultaneously be viewed and edited from multiple locations.

Reduced costs
Cloud computing is often cheaper and less labour-intensive for companies too. There is no need to buy and install expensive software because it’s already installed online remotely and you run it from there, not to mention the fact that many cloud computing applications are offered free of charge. The need to pay for extensive disk space is also removed. With cloud computing, you subscribe to the software, rather than buying it outright. This means that you only need to pay for it when you need it, and it also offers flexibility, in that it can be quickly and easily scaled up and down according to demand. This can be particularly advantageous when there are temporary peaks in demand, such as at Christmas or in the summer, for example.

Highly Automated
IT personnel no longer need to worry about keeping software up to date. There is no need for IT to worry about paying for your future updates in terms of software and hardware.

Easy set up
Cloud computing can be very quick and easy to set up and run. Consider, for example, how quickly you can set up a Gmail or Hotmail account and start emailing – it takes minutes and all you need is a computer and the Internet. Downloading and installing software, on the other hand, takes much longer.

Storage
A major advantage of using cloud computing for many companies is that because it’s online, it offers virtually unlimited storage compared to server and hard drive limits. Needing more storage space does not cause issues with server upgrades and equipment – usually all you need to do is increase your monthly fee slightly for more data storage.

Resiliency and Redundancy
One of the benefits of a private cloud deployment is that you can get automatic failover between hardware platforms and disaster recovery services, to bring up your server set in a separate data center should your primary data center experience an outage.

Netcetera offer Cloud Solutions from as little as £14.99/pm for Windows and £14.00/pm for Linux.

Previous Posts

• Q1 – What is Cloud Computing?
• Q2 – What are Cloud Services?

• Q4 – When Should I Use a Cloud Server rather Than a Dedicated Server?
• Q5 – What is the Future of Cloud Services?

Questions? Let us help!

To speak to one of our Sales Consultants about what our services can do for you, or for any other queries, please fill out our Enquiry Form or call 0800 061 2801 or click our Live Chat