30% of Aussie business are already in the clouds – and more are to head north soon.

The country’s biggest cloud provider has just launched its secure Symantec.cloud service pushing business further up.
Symantec, who have changed their name to reflect their pure cloud service is its latest bid to get in on the remote data act. 

Cloud systems, which witnessed a meteoric rise in 2010, along with growth of data centres is set to be the next big thing in computing with Google recently revealing that it was among the top 10 tech searches in 2010. 

The secure service is the company’s first step towards making the power of the cloud more accessible and are now providing a full suite of cloud solutions to Australian business from SME’s upwards. 

30 percent of Australian businesses are currently operating some services- mostly e-mail-from the cloud but more solutions are moving up all the time, says Chris Russell from Symantec.cloud’s Business Development unit.

And it seems, the service provider should know as it currently supplies 70 percent of all business solutions here.

 “Some organisations are reluctant to jump on to the cloud immediately,” admits Russell 

The major impediment is security concerns, he says, and to counter this Symantec.cloud guarantees against all threats and viruses to e-mail – both known and unknown – and will cover all costs if a virus is incurred, however unlikely.          

Other benefits attached to using the cloud include encryption, web filtering, archiving and also gives an organisation the ability to enable remote users.

This is all very well, but what are the costs involved in making the move up?

The pricing model is a monthly one and each cloud solution is customized for the client to suit their needs.

In other words no two services will be identical so precise pricing is difficult to call, says Mr Russell, but the service can generally be acquired for under the $10,000 mark.

This involves a full service, without the need for hardware, storage costs and eschewing the need for Data managers and other in-house IT experts. 

“This new brand emphasises the importance of the cloud within the Symantec portfolio, and enables us to show the market the strength of Symantec’s entire solutions suite,” say the company.