ThinkGrid's Software on Demand is backed by SLAs guaranteeing 99.99% availability. In the simplest possible terms, this means that we have to make sure they’re available to you 99.99% of the time, otherwise we are penalised.

Absolutely. For customers with an existing IT infrastructure, our Software on Demand is designed to be a seamless extension of your network. The ThinkGrid model is based around being able to deploy our services on the size and scale you want, whether all of your infrastructure is hosted, or only a tiny part of it.

You can access our on demand software from pretty much any computer with internet connectivity - be it a desktop PC, laptop or Hosted Desktop.

Yes, but only to the extent that you want to. In terms of management, our model is based on allowing you to be as hands-on or as hands-off as you choose. We can either take away all the headaches of application management or allow customers full control via an easy to use control panel.

Your applications will run faster than if installed on a local PC (unless you have an exceptionally powerful PC) because all the processing takes place on our high performance servers rather than local hardware.

New applications (provided they are either on our list of available apps or, if they're a customer app, that they're already being used by other users) can be deployed more or less instantaneously. Billing for additional users is equally seamless, and they are simply added onto your monthly bill for the period in which you use them.

Yes, although for applications not on our list this will require a period of consultation with our engineers as we would need to virtualise them on the Grid. Typically, we will consult closely with a customer before implementing any such solution to ensure it is indeed the best available model for the customer. However, once this has been done, this application could then be seamlessly deployed to additional users on demand.

Yes, it's possible to take advantage of any existing licences and for this to be reflected in the price of the service. For our standard set of applications we get licences at a low, bulk cost and so there will be a limit to how much using your existing licences can save us (and therefore in the saving that we can pass on to you). However, for any bespoke applications that you chose to host with us, the cost savings generated by your existing licences would be more significant.

If you are concerned about being unable to access your applications because of internet failure, a number of different options are available to militate against downtime. In particular, customers with a large number of users may wish to consider getting a leased line connection and/or load balanced ADSL, if they don't already have one. It's also possible to set up a second Internet connection (ADSL, SDSL, DSL or other) that will automatically be used in the unlikely event that the main connection goes down. Applications can be also accessed using a 3G USB stick, or of course from any computer elsewhere that does have internet connectivity. If connection to your hosted application is lost, your application itself is completely unharmed and continues to run on our servers as before, meaning you'll find it exactly as you left it when you return.

In short, hosted applications offer unparalleled safety and security, though this question of security covers a number of different areas. Firstly, because all data resides in our data centres rather than on local machines, it cannot be lost or stolen, nor is it subject to individual hardware failure. Similarly, because the applications are constantly backed up, data cannot be accidentally erased or corrupted. Secondly, the data is transmitted using industry-standard SSL encryption, as used for online banking and by the likes of Amazon and Tesco.com. This means that it's impossible for outside parties to view the data being streamed from our data centres to you. Finally, we run multiple data centres on a highly available, fully resilient, constantly mirrored, Grid computing model to ensure 99.99% availability even in the unlikely event of a disaster at one of our data centres.

Our data centres are totally secure, in all respects. In terms of power, all data centres have multiple power feeds from separate substations, primary and secondary power distribution units and standby power generators onsite. Heating, ventilation and air-conditioning requirements are met with 3,350 tons total refrigeration capacity with N+2 redundancy (5 chillers at 670 tons each), together with seven 30-ton CRAC (Computer Room Air Conditioner) units inside our data rooms. In terms of physical security, all data centres have extensive CCTV, card reader access on all interior and exterior doors and are staffed 24/7/365.

All data is continuously mirrored across our data centres to ensure it can be easily retrieved in the event of files being deleted or written over. Additional backups and snapshots of data can also be configured according to your requirements.

Yes - graphics intensive applications, or those requiring video streaming, are not well suited to this model and, as such, we would not recommend it for any users needing to do heavy graphics work or watching videos.