<a href="http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/cover_107885k.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-8431" alt="cloud" src="http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/cover_107885k-300x199.jpg" width="300" height="199" /></a>

Say you wanted to buy a house from me. We agree on a price and a delivery date. That day, I show up to your empty lot with a load of lumber, several buckets of paint, and everything else you need to build an entire house. I give you a pep talk and a slap on the back and leave you to build your own house. You would probably not be a huge fan of my residence-as-a-service (RaaS) offering.

Many cloud service providers behave in a similar fashion when you were expecting a ready-to-go agile cloud hosting solution. In reality, you find yourself staring at a customer portal wondering how much memory to give to your first virtual server.

I was reading <a href="http://www.crn.com/blogs-op-ed/the-final-cut/240155886/a-cloud-services-culture-war-dimension-data-vs-aws.htm">this article</a> by Steve Burke and it reinforced to me that the same criteria the City of New York used to select a cloud services provider after Hurricane Sandy hit should be used by all cloud customers even when the skies are clear.

<strong>Technology + Talent trumps Technology alone</strong>.

At eGroup, we believe cloud hosting is supposed to work <span style="text-decoration: underline;">for you</span>, not give you something else <span style="text-decoration: underline;">to do</span>. We can work with you to identify applications which are ready to run in the cloud and help you architect robust and resilient application architectures. We can architect cloud-based solutions that enable your business to run faster and more efficiently with greater peace of mind than traditional datacenter hosting.

Here’s a few of the flexible solutions we’ve designed solving customer pain points:

<strong>Remote workforce enablement</strong>
<ul>
	<li>Leveraging our Citrix, SharePoint, and end-user computing expertise, we’ve designed solutions that let businesses (both large and small) bring a global workforce together for real-time collaboration and knowledge sharing. Remote workers are empowered to connect with laptops, tablets, and smartphones.</li>
</ul>
<strong>DR to the eCloud</strong>
<ul>
	<li>Through our partnership with Veeam, a virtual “DR site” just got a lot more affordable. Offering VM replication at a schedule that fits around your needs, we can offer customers the ability to recover in minutes from total site failure and recover their critical applications in the eCloud.</li>
</ul>
<strong>Hybrid cloud solutions</strong>
<ul>
	<li>If your business is rapidly growing - congratulations! Unfortunately, IT needs to grow along too which can present challenges in finding datacenter grade space in which to host servers. We’ve engineered hybrid clouds for customers to allow new servers and workloads to run in the eCloud transparently to end-users while taking advantage of fully redundant power, cooling, and network connections for critical applications.</li>
</ul>
By now you're probably asking, who runs the eCloud? Well, our proven Professional Services team, that's who! The eCloud is managed by the same award-winning eGroup professional services team that has been supporting customers across the southeast since 1999. Experienced in all IT disciplines from server virtualization to business intelligence solutions and big data, eCloud hosted servers come with access to knowledgeable engineers who can architect, deliver, and support the solutions you need.

And, yes, we can absolutely support your critical applications. Sure, you <i>can</i> run your mission-critical applications in any cloud provider you choose, but be sure you know where the demarcation lies for support. Does your Infrastructure-as-a-service provider support your Exchange installation or your critical SQL databases? One of the traditional benefits of partnering with a traditional services provider has always been access to a fast track when you need vendor support and the eCloud is no different. Our partnerships with numerous vendors get our customers the answers they need in a timely fashion.

So, as you consider the cloud offerings available today, remember to ask yourself, “Does this solution look more like a house, or more like a pile of lumber?”