Secure24 is a Michigan-based cloud provider that offers regulatory compliant hosting for mission critical applications. Sean Donaldson, the company’s chief architect, discussed his company and the cloud ecosystem in an interview on theCube at VMworld 2013.

The term cloud computing means different things for different people. For Secure24’s customers, it means a secure environment that combines the transparency of on-premise infrastructure with the cost benefits of outsourcing. According to Donaldson, his company tailors SLAs to individual clients and measures downtime in impact on day to day operations rather than system availability. As a result, customers have a much bigger safety net than Amazon Web Services (AWS) users.

Donaldson says that virtualization transitioned from a consolidation product to an availability solution with the release of vSphere 5, which introduced increased VM size and an array of enterprise features that were not previously available in virtualized environments. Secure24 uses VMware’s software to deliver high availability, failover over across multiple data centers, other capabilities that organizations require for their tier-one applications.

Asked to elaborate on Secure24’s network infrastructure, Donaldson details that each client deployment has a private MPLS network. He adds that his company is considering to implement SDN through VMware’s newly announced NSX network virtualization too, which offers automated management and simplified security.

The executive admits that AWS is a leader in the latter field, but highlights that his company has caught up by aligning itself with Cisco, EMC and VMware. Secure24’s value proposition also includes full visibility, which he says is essential for large organizations that get audited on a regular basis.

Click the video below for the full highlights from the interview, including Donaldson’s insights into the challenges of scaling IT infrastructure.