When we do demos, questions about ‘the cloud’ invariably arise. Many people assume that our SLA performance measuring and reporting portal, OcularIP™, utilizes the cloud, but this is not the case. OcularIP is a Software as a Service (SaaS) application that utilizes a private, hosted environment.

We utilize a private computing environment because keeping your company’s performance metrics data in a shared cloud computing environment may not be as secure as the Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) or Software as a Service (SaaS) application vendors portray.

About Shared Cloud Environments

In shared cloud computing environments, virtual machines are utilized to run and partition one virtual server from another virtual server. You can think of them as computing containers that run on the same physical server hardware, sharing and contending for computing and memory space.

There are benefits to cloud environments, such as:

• The initial start up costs are lower
• The system is more elastic
• No IT management is required at the computing layer

However, the long-term disadvantages, such as security and performance issues, often outweigh those advantages.

The Risks of a Shared Cloud Environment

Security vulnerabilities often arise in shared cloud computing environments, such as:

• Security implications when IP is stored on shared SAN’s with other customers’ data
• Shared resources may cause application performance degradation
• Security vulnerabilities which affect millions of virtualized servers in cloud environments

In fact, a recent potential security vulnerability was found that could enable a shared virtual machine to interface and read the data of another virtual machine on the same physical host. The malicious system could also potentially crash the server hosting the virtual machines. This means your performance metric data could be accessible by a foreign virtual machine.

This presents a real challenge to SaaS application vendors as it presents another layer of security vulnerabilities that could put your confidential data at risk.

The Benefits of a Private Hosted Environment

With a private computing environment like OcularIP, you own 100% of the infrastructure, meaning you don’t have the risk of sharing your customer data with others. OcularIP leverages the benefits of an IaaS model which keeps SaaS application costs down.

And, OcularIP continues to expand its SaaS application within their own private hosted computing environments.

“We maintain our own computing environment for both physical and virtual servers and content storage to ensure the security of our customer’s data.”

– Tyler Rucker, Director of OcularIP

Schedule a Demo to Learn More

Ready to check out the private hosted environment offered by OcularIP? Schedule a demo of the most intuitive, integrative, comprehensive and affordable monitoring, reporting and customer portal solution in the industry.