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Sidus provides a wide range of hosting, design, marketing and consulting solutions.
Blog
Cloud Hosting
Wednesday, 30 June 2010 14:20
Last week's Chesapeake Regional Tech Council BBQ on the Bay was a great venue for Sidus to not only market their cutting edge Cloud Hosting services but also hear what local business leaders are saying about the future of Cloud Computing. 350+ attendees were focused on business (small/medium/large) and all seemingly curious as to how technology impacts the success or failure of those businesses.
Outsource Solutions for HIPAA Compliance
Wednesday, 19 May 2010 14:13
Last February, President Obama signed into law the $19.2 billion Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act to accelerate the process of digitizing electronic health records (EHR) in the United States. Under this law, hospitals and healthcare professionals who demonstrate “meaningful use” of a certified EHR by the year 2015 will become eligible to receive millions of federal dollars in incentive payments, and those who do not comply could be penalized. In addition, healthcare organizations must comply with related security and privacy requirements. This has proven both a powerful motivator and source of great concern for many healthcare professionals across the country.
Considering a Cloud Based Solution? Join the club...
Wednesday, 07 April 2010 13:31
Gartner has come up with an interesting prediction saying “a fifth of enterprises will hold no IT assets by 2012 as cloud computing and virtualization become commonplace.”
Obviously Gartner benefits from making controversial pronouncements... still we wonder.
Read more: Considering a Cloud Based Solution? Join the club...
10 year Flashback!
Wednesday, 07 April 2010 13:24
Sidus celebrating its first 10 years has really got me thinking about the rapid progression of the internet and computing power over the past decade. A couple of then vs. now scenarios:
The New Year
Friday, 08 January 2010 20:08
Data, Data, Data! This is the mantra for 2010. The best part is the cost to manage this data has fallen drastically over the past 5 years.
Cloud Computing will accelerate the effective and efficient management of data for the coming years.
Sidus Cloud Hosting – More Green for Less Green
Thursday, 12 November 2009 00:00
While most organizations either have or are planning a “green initiative”, most technology companies’ efforts grind to a halt when it comes to environmentally conscious hosting infrastructures. Traditionally there has been a perception that Green Technology must be expensive or require a major compromise in the price to performance factor. Sidus Cloud hosting, however, is Green Hosting without the expense or compromise.
The Sidus Cloud Green Hosting infrastructure starts with ultra-efficient Dell PowerEdge blade servers. The Sidus blade infrastructure provides the first building block of a Green hosting initiative Take a look at the table below for a comparison.
Colo versus Cloud…
Thursday, 12 November 2009 00:00
With cloud computing growing in popularity, SMBs (and others) are questioning whether it is more practical to colocate their data centers or complet
ely bypass that option and head into the cloud? First, let’s briefly clarify the two:
Data center co-location: Typically provided as a commercial service, this option allows SMBs to rent data center space from a third party facility that provides necessary pipe (network connectivity to the Internet) and ping (network response). Space is usually leased as individual rack units, cabinets, cages, suites, rooms and facilities
Cloud computing: By moving to the ‘cloud,’ SMBs have the ability to store and process data over the Internet. For clarity, Gartner defines cloud computing as “a style of computing where scalable and elastic IT capabilities are provided as a service to multiple customers using Internet technologies”
Colocation addresses data center facilities needs. Cloud computing includes IT infrastructure as well as data center facilities, all delivered as a service. Both options provide network and cost-saving benefits, and SMBs can benefit greatly from either solution.
From the Cloud - Going Forward with Backup
Thursday, 09 July 2009 18:42
While many in the hosting industry are still wed to cumbersome and tape based systems for their disaster recovery plan, Sidus has taken a different route. Understanding that for most dedicated server and colocation clients, unless they need to meet certain compliance guidelines like HIPPA or SARBOX, managed disk-base server image backup is the far superior route for rapid data recovery. Tape systems should be used only in the role of long term data archiving.
Consider this scenario that recently occurred to a moderately sized e-commerce client of Sidus Group:
Tom’s Online Widgets and More is no Amazon.com, but does a fairly brisk business of 85 orders per hour with an average ticket of $35 per order. This means on average, Tom pulls in $2975 per hour in widgets sold off of his eCommerce dedicated server. Additionally, Tom’s orders are split into 60 orders from new shoppers and 25 from returning shoppers.
Tom’s server crashed due to a corruption of the file system.
In a traditional Tape + Incremental backup scenario, Tom’s would have had experienced six hours of downtime. This time is required to reinstall the operating system on the server, configure it and retrieve the data off of the tape system.
For Tom, this means $17,850 in lost revenue, 510 widgets that were destined for a new home are still sitting on the shelves and 360 committed new customers as well as 150 loyal repeat customers have been turned away with money in hand.
Luckily, it didn’t turn out this way!
By utilizing Sidus Host’s Acronis True Image backup program backed up onto our disk-based SAN, Sidus engineers were able to restore Tom’s online store within 30 minutes of the failure. Our Image-based backup negated any need to reinstall server operating systems and applications, and the rapid accessibility of Tom’s data on our Storage Array Network allowed us to recover his server image in mere minutes.
For Tom, this means that he saved $16362.50 in lost revenue and earned the business of 468 shoppers. The best part is the amount of money saved in this one incident paid for Tom’s Sidus provided managed backup solution for nine years…That’s a lot of widgets!
Integrated Approach
Monday, 06 July 2009 12:47
The web is so pervasive that it is necessary for all companies and organizations to have a fully developed strategy to utilize the strength of this medium. When a company seeks to develop an effective strategy for the web, it should look at multiple facets.
- What are the desired outcomes for this project? Are you driving sales, leads, providing customer support, dispersing information or other.
- What image are you attempting to create?
- Are you dependent upon search engine traffic?
- How will this project integrate with your current business model?
- Who will manage content? Content should change often which gives users a reason to return.
- Many other considerations
Since 1999, Sidus has executed hundreds of web projects. We have a vertical structure that allows our customers to have a streamlined and integrated approach for design, hosting, application development and marketing.
We understand that each project is unique, but shared characteristics with other organizations. We have the experience to make this process very efficient and always focus on driving the positive outcomes.
Collaboration
Friday, 03 July 2009 10:05
The true genius of innovation is the ability for people and companies to work together. For the past five years, Sidus has worked very closely with a number of application companies for the development and deployment of their applications. Our ability to create a hosted solution that works, allows our clients to focus on their software.
By collaborating, we are able to focus on our strengths, hosting, network efficiency, data management and security. Our partner can then focus on the creation and distribution of applications.
This has been a winning formula for us and our partners.
Save Money! Outsource Hosting
Thursday, 25 June 2009 15:18
The economy today is a very challenging time for many businesses. Sidus is receiving more requests for hosting than ever, due to the costs saving element of our hosting services. The following are many reason why companies and organizations are using providers like Sidus for their hosting needs:
1) Owning servers is more expensive, especially in the short run, than having a server provided for you. You do not have to worry about managing the Operating Systems, Firewalls, Backup and other required elements. Equipment refresh is done without incurring the high costs of purchasing new equipment every two or three years.
2) Virtualization optimizes equipment utilization, minimizing costs
3) By utilizing the powerful infrastructure of the Sidus Datacenter, your investment in power, electrical backup (batteries & generator), bandwidth, redundancy and support will be substantially less.
4) We know technology and will be a resource for you to stay current.
5) YOU CAN FOCUS ON YOUR BUSINESS.
We will make your system run 24/7 and save you money in the process. After ten years, we know our business and that will enable you to focus on yours and not have the burden and cost of providing a top tier hosting solution for you.