Cbeyond has launched the Certified Application Servers (CAS) service for helping the small- and mid-sized business market migrate their business productivity applications to the cloud securely, with the goal that the performance and operation of that application in the cloud will mirror companies’ on-premise server experience.
The CAS certification aims to include programs most commonly used across the SMB spectrum, with plans to support an additional six to 12 applications each quarter. So far, it supports Intuit QuickBooks (Pro, Premiere and Enterprise versions), Sage ACT!, Sage Peachtree Accounting, Sage 50 Accounting, Abacus Law 2012, Amazing Charts 6.0 and Microsoft Office.
Cbeyond’s December 2012 Business Leader Snapshot Survey found that 91 percent of SMB owners believe applications will be critical to their business in 2013, highlighting the need for safe, universal access to essential business productivity programs and relevant data.
“Our goal is to provide SMBs with a superior cloud experience that is no different than what they experience on a local desktop,” said Chris Ortbals, senior vice president of product management at Cbeyond. “As the only cloud provider tailoring and supporting applications for specific SMB use cases, Cbeyond further serves as the technology ally to small and mid-sized businesses, helping them drive efficiency by truly aligning both cloud and network capabilities.”
To certify an application, Cbeyond’s engineers perform operational, load and impairment testing across a range of network technologies to ensure compatibility with various network access points.
Cbeyond engineers begin this process by simulating a production cloud architecture for many common SMB desktop applications and operating systems. An application’s performance is then tested for error rates, latency and circuit outages to determine the minimum symmetrical bandwidth commitment and network thresholds needed before deterioration in performance occurs, with testing for some edge cases. Testing is performed at 1 – 100Mbps across various network access technologies under normal operating conditions (T1, T3, EFM, MPLS, and Fiber), first at on-premise equipment and then along the network all the way to servers hosted in a cloud data center.
Finally, cloud servers are sized, configured and packaged for optimal application access and performance across a number of concurrent users.
Cbeyond gives customers access to their applications in the cloud over dedicated, symmetrical bandwidth that directly links their premise to a secure data center utilizing Cbeyond’s privately-owned, premise-to-cloud TotalNetwork architecture. So, the data never touches the public Internet.
