What happened to the massive server room? The one filled with black boxes and a variety of colored lights (hopefully, not too many red ones)? That room—freezing cold, the sound of a blaring alarm if the temperature changed—can’t be found in too many places anymore.
Enter hosting on the cloud.
We’ve come a long way since J.C.R. Licklider and ARPANET network’s advent of the Internet. From the 1960s to today, technology has hugely evolved, and now we can connect with people and data anytime, anywhere. We can now benefit from advanced cloud-hosting environments such as AWS and Microsoft Azure for our software.
Okay, what is intranet?
Having a way to connect to friends and family and knowing what is going on with our favorite celebrity is possible with the internet. The intranet allows us to do the same thing with our organization and coworkers, whether you’re a health organization or a financial institution.
(Still confused? We have an entire blog post on what intranet technology actually is.)
In the tech world, the acronym SaaS does not describe someone being cheeky or bold—it means “Software as a Service.” As a member of IC Thrive’s sales team and someone who has had to learn to speak that language, I like to think of our private cloud hosting solution—called Source, after the way it helps you centralize all your needs in one place—as a way to help IT professionals focus on other things and shift hardware and software maintenance responsibilities to us. Just like residential living, you get to enjoy your backyard while we cut your grass!
The pandemic forced us to adjust our working habits and rely on remote network access. It’s time to optimize your hosting, even if it means abandoning your loyal in-house server room.
What’s the difference between shared hosting & SaaS?
IC Thrive’s private cloud is a shared hosting virtual server with separate installations of Source intranets. Think of it like an apartment building with different units, each with its own unique lock and key. As the landlord, we take care of the building maintenance.
In contrast with a SaaS platform, working with the cloud gives you a furnished room, and the landlord takes care of the building maintenance.
Having your Source intranet hosted on a private cloud server means you don’t need to worry about hardware and software maintenance. You can focus on managing your home page and keeping the content engaging for your team. We notify you ahead of time before we apply an update or a patch.
Server maintenance and Windows updates no longer need to be your IT Team’s responsibility. Instead, they can focus on security and make sure employees are given the proper access to sites, pages, or apps. Best of all, your IT team is no longer on the hook if the site goes down.
Save money & resources with a private cloud intranet
Who likes to go to the office on the weekend? Nobody. I remember working with a colleague in IT who told me that he had to come to our office on a Saturday afternoon because he was notified that the server room temperature was too hot. This type of old-school story still happens too often when you’re working with an on-premise server environment.
With an on-premise setting, additional resources and cost must be considered for:
- Server maintenance and hardware replacement
- Electricity and cooling systems
- Backups and storage
- Windows updates, security, and anti-virus software
- Downtime and disaster recovery plans
But here’s where we come in again: with a private cloud intranet, these factors are effectively outsourced to IC Thrive as part of our service’s cost, saving you precious time and resources.
Now that you know why your in-house server might be holding you back, the difference between shared hosting and SaaS, and the hidden costs you can erase with our Source intranet—are you ready to let us become your loyal server room?
If you’re itching to learn more before you make the leap into the future, our customer experience team will guide you through the benefits and considerations to cloud intranets in our recorded webinar on the topic. And if you’re ready to dive in, you can book a demo—our product specialists will customize it to your unique needs so that you’ll immediately see the value of what our solution has to offer.
