IT security pioneer Avira recently acquired the Dutch group, CleanPort, to form Avira Managed Security Services (AMSS) as part of its 'Security as Service' strategy. While cloud computing is still in its infancy, far-sighted providers recognise that this is a long-term trend with significant appeal.
The challenge for IT remains the same - balancing increasing demand for capacity and new capabilities against investment in infrastructure, training and software licensing.
Cloud computing represents an attractive solution from storage services and spam filtering to full-function robust applications.
Managed services are a tried and tested component of cloud computing, particularly where an application is exposed to IT rather than to end-users, such as the virus scanning or anti-spam services, data centre infrastructure services and corresponding Web development services, all offered within the CleanPort group.
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