The race from the corporate data center to cloud environments has been going steady for nearly 20 years. It is hard to believe that it was 1999 when Salesforce pioneered the model and 2002 when Amazon rolled out AWS. And Gartner suggests that by 2020, cloud deployment of corporate systems will be the default, not the exception.

That doesn't mean that there aren't still good reasons for hosting software internally and many folks will continue to do so. Recognizing that different people have different needs, we offer three different models for our customers who want to adopt eFrontPro as a corporate training platform.

1. We have a shared cloud environment. This is very much like Salesforce or Gmail in that we have a environment where we host multiple customers, while giving them each a secure environment. This is perfect if you want to get up and running quickly and if you have reasonably minor custom requirements.
2. We allow our customers to host eFrontPro in their own corporate data centers. For many customers, especially those with very high data security and regulatory concerns, this is still the prefered method. Having eFrontPro in your own data center also allows you to control updates and to access the database directly for custom reporting. This model also makes it easy to customize eFrontPro as much as you like, by adding functionality or integrating with other applications such as an HRIS or CRM platform.
3. Finally, we offer our customers a personalized cloud environment in which they are the only tenant. Such an environment allows us to customize the environment for each customer, so that they can specify network configurations, geographical footprint, encryption settings, etc. It also offers some of the same advantages of having eFrontPro in your data center. Specifically, you can control upgrades, access the database directly and customize the application as much as you like.

As we stated above, the world is definitely trending toward the cloud and toward multi-tenant SaaS applications such as Salesforce and Gmail. At DHx, we embrace that trend. But, we also are glad to work with our customers who need other options.

If you would like more information or to discuss our hosting options, please reach out to us at efront@dhxsoftware.com.