Large-scale cloud services like Microsoft Azure supply public clouds with industrial strength technology infrastructure and sophisticated administration tools. The issue with Azure for SMB websites is that there’s very little in the way of support and security responsibility is often left in the hands of the user.
A few years ago, Microsoft decided to bundle their cloud infrastructure and tool set and make it available to hosting providers as a way for them to deliver Azure-based clouds to their customers. I was intimately aware of these developments because Microsoft tapped me to consult on the project. Applied Innovations had been a Certified Microsoft Hosting partner for over a decade and they knew that we had strong business relationships with our SMB customers. We were immersed in both the Microsoft technologies and the business needs of our clients.
Microsoft branded this bundle of technology infrastructure and administration tools as Windows Azure Pack (WAP). I saw the opportunity to take a quantum leap beyond the traditional shared hosting that we (and everybody else) had been offering. I thought, “Why not take the power and the value of this large scale cloud environment, get rid of the frustrating parts that make it difficult to use, and roll it all up in a web hosting service package custom-designed for our SMB clientele?”
Windows Azure Pack, Managed for SMBs
So we developed a product aimed at small and medium-sized enterprises that need enterprise-level availability without the high cost. We call it Managed Azure Pack (MAP) – an elastic cloud hosting platform that provides what Azure plus Windows Azure Pack deliver, but in a more agile and responsive package with superior managed support and expertise not usually seen in standard hosting packages.
Windows Azure Pack allows us to combine the functionality and value of the Azure cloud with our high performance servers and network infrastructure, and deliver it in a fashion where SMBs can take advantage of it from a price point aspect and an ease of use aspect.
Major corporations use the public Azure cloud for many reasons such as development and testing of new applications. That works for them because they have highly trained software engineers on staff. SMBs just want a stable, high uptime, secure website where they can conduct business and serve their customers.
Shared Hosting Limitations
As I’m sure you’ve experienced, shared web hosting has some limitations:
- There can be performance issues related to multiple sites sharing the same resources.
- The shared service is a black box to users – there’s no transparency into resource usage, so you may be paying for more than you need.
- There’s no quick and easy way to add resources to accommodate peaks in traffic.
- Shared hosting servers can be vulnerable to attacks by hackers.
Managed Azure Pack enables our SMB customers to easily manage their website from wherever they are. In the event that they have questions or technical issues, we have assembled a team of highly trained support professionals who are available around the clock, 365 days a year and there are no hand-offs. The support technician who responds to your query (by chat, email or phone) is the same person who will solve your problem. No need to explain your issue more than once.
100% uptime, high performance and reliable security
We are excited about Managed Azure Pack, and we’re confident that once you try it for yourself, you’ll be excited about it too. You can rest assured your site will be up 100% of the time, and that performance and security issues will no longer be a concern.
To learn more about Managed Azure Pack and how it solves all the drawbacks of shared hosting, please click here to download our whitepaper, ‘The Six Big Advantages That Managed Azure Pack Hosting Has Over Standard Shared Hosting’.
Here’s to 100% uptime.
Best,
Jess Coburn, CEO
Applied Innovations
