Swiss-Based Hidora Makes Migrating to Cloud Hosting Easier by Offering Automation, Consulting, and Pay-Per-Use Pricing

TL; DR: Managed hosting company Hidora wants to make migrating to the cloud too desirable for Swiss businesses to resist. Hidora recognizes that many IT executives may be reluctant to make the move toward digital transformation because of their comfort level with on-prem infrastructure. But Hidora is changing their minds by providing reliable cloud-based automation that simplifies and streamlines app creation and deployment. The company also offers flexible plans, so businesses only pay for what they use, rather than a flat monthly or yearly fee.

Though cloud computing is the future of IT, many companies remain hesitant to migrate away from on-prem infrastructure. One reason for that is the fear of cloud server performance problems. In one survey of IT executives, 73% of respondents said they think cloud vendors are hiding performance issues.

While performance problems may be overblown, the fears can be a real barrier to entry. Hidora, a managed cloud-based hosting platform, wants to allay those fears.

“It is difficult to change minds to move from on-premises to the cloud,” said Matthieu Robin, CEO of Hidora, a managed cloud-based hosting platform with its headquarters in Switzerland

But changing the minds of IT professionals and companies — especially those based in Switzerland — is precisely what Hidora set out to do. Matthieu understands that Swiss companies are more likely to try regional cloud hosting solutions rather than seek out web hosting companies in the United States or Europe.

“It takes a long time to change the market,” he said. “People want to find local clouds because they trust them more than those in other countries.”

That is why all of Hidora’s servers are located in Switzerland. And the company uses Jelastic, a trusted cloud computing platform, to set up a variety of hosting environments to efficiently deploy applications and meet the unique needs of its clients.

Hidora’s efforts to create an appealing cloud hosting platform resonate with a wide variety of customers — from small web agencies to enterprises. While between 50% and 60% of the company’s clientele are small-to-medium sized businesses, they run the industry gamut, and come from disparate verticals, including finance and medicine, among others.

“We are not focused on a market; we are focused on technology,” Matthieu said.

One of the critical benefits of Hidora is its automated cloud hosting platform for common stacks like PHP, Java, Python, Go, .Net, and Docker.

“We try to follow our customer. We move applications to the cloud and host websites and applications,” Matthieu said.

Hidora’s interface is also simple, intuitive, and interacts with any platform. That can be especially heartening for ecommerce businesses moving from legacy infrastructure.

“We’re a young company, but we are trying to teach our customers the philosophy of the cloud and extoll its benefits,” Matthieu said. “Eventually, we want to be known around the world.”

Another useful function is Hidora’s auto-scalability. One worry that many companies have in migrating to a managed cloud is that they’ll lose — or have no control over — their performance reliability.

Hidora relieves these worries by allowing developers to set minimum and maximum resource parameters, add clusters, and easily create staging and testing environments. These features provide nervous customers with valuable peace of mind.

“A highly automated cloud solution is always a benefit, especially for companies early on in the growth process,” Matthieu said.

Automatic scaling is a crucial reason that companies with on-prem hardware may find a managed cloud so useful.

Matthieu said that when a company needs a new server, it can take up to three weeks to add that hardware to its infrastructure. With Hidora, that company could have the same resources available in a matter of seconds.

To further differentiate itself from other hosting companies, Hidora created solutions that provided value for clients. Hidora accomplishes that by offering a pricing structure based on use instead of charging a flat fee. Matthieu said that approach helps customers save up to 74% on their hosting costs.

Fixed plans ask customers to predict how much they’ll use in a set period. On a fixed plan, if a company buys a 2GB server, it will have to pay for a 2GB server whether it uses all of the space or not.

Alternately, Hidora customers pay for what they use. So, even if a business plans to use more, but ends up using less, it only pays for what its applications actually require.

“You pay for only what you consume,” Matthieu said. “If you run an application for one hour, you only pay for one hour. If you use one gigabyte, you pay for one gigabyte. It’s not fair otherwise.”

Customers can also use the cost estimator to determine how much they could pay based on a variety of factors — including RAM per server, CPU per server, and SSD Storage.

In addition to addressing pricing problems, Hidora also considers the security pain points that often stand in the way of companies migrating to the cloud. Specifically, Hidora has created datacenters with high-level security features like fault-tolerant servers and storage.

Another significant benefit of a Hidora ecommerce cloud migration is its 99.95% uptime guarantee — a level that even the most reliable on-prem hardware can’t match.

Further, Hidora creates a fully-secure backup system that secures new files and critical business files daily, and all files every five days.

Though Hidora is a young company, it offers solutions that larger hosting companies can’t — especially in Switzerland. The company aims to help companies warm to the cloud by developing solutions that add value, as well as providing 24/7 customer support.

“We offer professional IT, support for consistency, and services to help consumers move to the cloud anytime,” Matthieu said.

In addition to its managed web and application hosting, the Hidora team also provides consulting services for companies aiming to make a move to the cloud.

One of Hidora’s areas of consulting expertise is DevOps, a set of software development practices that focus on business goals. Its consultants offer advice about changing company culture to embrace DevOps philosophies, rather than just implementing these wide-scale changes in a piecemeal fashion.

Hidora is also knowledgeable on Kubernetes, an automated application management system that Matthieu said will be the future of cloud consulting. The team offers advice about Kubernetes deployment, onboarding, architecture, and infrastructure assessment, among other capacities.

“We are fairly different because we do Kubernetes hosting and consulting,” Matthieu said. “Not a lot of cloud hosting providers have the capacity for this kind of consulting.”

Hidora’s wealth of benefits often prove persuasive to companies that aren’t entirely sold on migrating to cloud. With robust automation, competitive pricing, and security promises, Hidora demonstrates the reliability of cloud migration on a large scale.