Business - Private Cloud
Private Cloud is a name given to computer services that are privately owned and hosted by a company normally with in their own LAN
Dropbox, One Drive and Google Workspace (Google Drive is part of those services) are all public cloud services (normally shortened to "The Cloud")
Services installed and used privately are generally functionally identical to the public cloud based offerings
The main benefits include no rental fees, total, secure control of your data and your insurance company generally is way happier as your clients data is totally protected.
Here at GRIFFCOMM we only sell private cloud services and solutions
This episode is a very brief overview of:
- Email, WiFi, phone systems, voice text and collaboration services, file sharing and VPN
Private Cloud services are used both in and outside the office, such as at home or while on vacation
Use outside the office is secure as you control and own the complete connection methods, including the SSL certificates and (if used) the VPN connection to the office.
The office internet connection requires at least 1 static IP address
ISP's (Internet Service Providers) in Canada generally will not provide a statis IP address on residential accounts
We have a static DNS service for when the internet facing IP address changes, some of our clients use this service.
Email server is a main product most of our clients own, its runs inside the office LAN
Use is via a URL such as mail.yourcompany.com both inside and outside the office
Supporting connectivity of on all devices including tablets, mobile devices, webpage and software email clients (such as Outlook)
Owning the server every email sent or received is something we found clients prefer when given the choice
WiFi systems have on-premise antennas, however the set up and control is normally always via the use of internet cloud based process
our solutions are totally onsite, no internet is required in any way, thereby removing any possibility of data leakage to the cloud while in use
They work very well in remote locations and are a good replacement for rental systems requiring monthly fees such as mobile phone provider offerings
We have live projects in both Tanzania and the Maldives for multi building resorts, island beaches and sea or air ports facilitating connection to staff and clients before they arrive
The episode (business Wifi) we covered the history, benefits and usage in a bit more depth.
Phones and voice i have always found interesting, again we have appliances that would be completely inside your office
supporting connection to existing old style analog phone lines or internet based VoIP services
The onsite appliance hosts connections for all devices including desk phones, DECT and WiFi mobiles
Phones and devices in remote offices and outside the office connect via secure VPN
We found most clients who have a phone system installed were told the phone controller (known as the PBX) is onsite
on checking we found this generally isnt correct, most seem to be using a small credit card size appliance such as the Raspberry Pi
that connects back to their public cloud service making it an on-premise proxy bridge for the cloud based service.
Hard such as the Raspberry Pi was never design for this sort of long term usage (might do another podcast about this hardware)
Our phone server appliance supports both traditional voice desk phones and has a collaboration system to replace social apps like whats-app and skype.
It use secures all your text, files, voice and video calls both inside and outside your office
I plan on doing another episode exploring its use in more depth another time
Outside file sharing the same as Dropbox and One drive is something more clients are happy to use now its privately controlled.
A dedicated set of files and folders on office and remote laptop files are then synchronized back to your private office host server
The hardware appliance we supply has a bespoke service operating identically to public cloud file syncing type services
the major benefits over being secure are no rental fees or process restructuring
we are currently migrating a client away from Google Drive to there own private hosted service, they are using laptops and VPN while outside the office.
VPN is an acronym for Virtual Private Network
Its a service that creates a secure connecting tunnel between the office firewall and device or other sites
Our firewalls have free VPN built in supporting both OpenVPN for mobile devices and IKE for site to site connections
We also assist other IT companies via consultancy to setup their client firewalls ready for VPN use.
We use all of the above services in our offices.
We have started to expand some of the above services for use in countries outside Canada
also some projects that will give back to the community via the use of these services
