Hostway, an infrastructure-as-a-service provider, says the biggest obstacle to getting SMBs in the cloud is the cost of security. So to lower its prices, the company has partnered with StillSecure.
Superior, Colo.-based StillSecure sells a security appliance for the cloud that's capable of hosting services for multiple companies. As a result, Hostway can lower the cost of security for its customers by leveraging StillSecure's multi-tenant capabilities, Aaron Hollobaugh, vice president of marketing, said.
Before the StillSecure partnership announced Wednesday, Hostway customers had to pay for security deployed on the servers they rented from the Chicago-based managed services provider. The cost: $800 a month, which covered all of a customer's servers.
Because SMBs may rent only one or two servers to run their Web applications and database, the security cost was too high, particularly since it was in addition to the $250 to $600 a month fee for each server. "(Security costs) is the number one reason why companies choose not to use a managed service provider," Hollobaugh says.
By providing security for multiple customers on a single StillSecure appliance, Hostway has lowered the price to $149 a month per server for the same security options in the $800 a month package, Hollobaugh says.
Hostway is selling several SMB packages starting at $39 a month. The introductory package includes a network firewall, VPN data encryption, patch management and vulnerability scanning. Other packages include various combinations of intrusion detection and prevention, log management, a Web application firewall and file integrity monitoring to ensure nothing has been modified without authorization.
Hostway is also selling StillSecure's PCI Complete service, which manages security and policies to ensure that transactions meet requirements set by the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS).
