🕒 Reading Time: 2 minutes We are thrilled to announce our latest cloud offering today check out our press release. Built around Microsoft’s Cloud platform. CARIcloud features the best of breed across compute, storage, and networking to provide a cloud service that is unrivaled in terms of performance. Where some cloud providers deal with scale by purchasing white box, unbranded solutions, CARIcloud has opted for high-performance compute, storage, and networking infrastructure. The result is a set of cloud services with exceptional performance along all three axes: compute horsepower, storage I/O, and network performance. But for companies exploring cloud services, the future is about more than just performance. Strategy and IT for technology-oriented companies are inextricably linked. You simply cannot plot a strategic course without understanding the underlying implications on the IT infrastructure that supports the business. And one of the immutable facts of operating in a constantly shifting corporate landscape is that the strategy must be adaptive, capable of adjusting to account for competitive pressures, market changes, and technology breakthroughs.  But how can your business adjust if your infrastructure is immovable? While Amazon is the most recognized public cloud service in the world, the challenge is that once you are in an Amazon environment, you are in an Amazon environment. Everything that you need to make your cloud services work is specified as an Amazon Machine Image (AMI), a proprietary Amazon unit of deployment. The problem? Once you are dependent on Amazon’s AMI, there is no portability to other clouds. This means that changing cloud service providers to a faster, cheaper, or even more local option (where proximity to user matters) is not possible. Worse yet, trying to transition your service to your own premises if you outgrow Amazon (if the economics of hosting a private cloud are more favorable than staying with a public cloud service), you are out of luck. CARIcloud is built on the foundational principle that flexibility matters. One of Microsoft’s major advantages is that they are offering a Cloud platform that can run not only on Microsoft’s own clouds but also in other cloud environments. What CARIcloud represents is proof that there is no lock-in with this solution. We are running our own version of an Azure cloud, which proves that non-Microsoft entities can run clouds using this infrastructure. This provides a measure of freedom that simply doesn’t exist with Amazon. Yes, CARIcloud is faster than other public cloud services. But the real story here is that CARIcloud provides a flexible alternative to what has become an increasingly lock-in-oriented cloud landscape. If your business requires cloud services, maintaining control means that you can evolve your infrastructure as your business evolves. If you need to bring services in-house for cost, security, or compliance reasons, you can. If you need to move to another cloud service due to pricing or performance breakthroughs, you can. This does two things: first, you maintain control of your own destiny rather than tying it to the decisions of your service provider, and second, knowing that there is no lock-in forces CARIcloud to not just be the fastest now but to maintain that performance advantage over time. The CARIcloud team is committed to our mission of providing the absolute best price-performance in the market. We believe that our unique ability to blend best-of-breed technology with industry-leading customer control brings value to our customers. And we fundamentally believe that value—not lock-in—is what ought to drive customer loyalty. CARIcloud reflects these values, and we are thrilled to add it to our portfolio of services.