This week, we’re at Interop Las Vegas, and the show floor is buzzing with new announcements from exhibiting companies – CloudSigma included! Today, we announced the launch of SigSTORE; the industry’s first SLA-backed distributed SSD storage solution, for our public cloud IaaS.
The performance, cost and reliability of cloud storage solutions have traditionally been major barriers to companies’ cloud adoption. But, with SigSTORE, we are effectively removing these concerns by guaranteeing the performance and reliability of the storage for companies’ critical systems and applications. Now, without these concerns, companies can readily more core systems onto cloud infrastructure with performance protected under SLA and be able to realize everything the cloud has promised, including greater flexibility, scalability and cost-savings.
The scene here at the 2012 NAB Show in Las Vegas is stirring up a lot of excitement. All around the exhibition hall, one can catch glimpses of how rapidly new technologies are reshaping the media and entertainment industries. Hundreds of innovative vendors are showcasing and unveiling innovative new and disruptive offerings that are helping to usher in the next generation of media production and distribution. This looks to be a great view on the intersections between media and cutting edge tech.
Here at booth N3222H, we are making our own major announcement: the official launch of the CloudSigma Media Services Ecosystem. That may sound like a mouthful, but the idea is actually quite simple and elegant. Our Media Services Ecosystem is a public cloud environment in which service providers and production companies working in the film, music and other media industries can easily collaborate and share data, with access to CloudSigma’s powerful compute and storage capabilities. We’re basically giving media companies one roof under which to work together more efficiently, regardless of their geographic location, eliminating the long waits and high costs that plague most productions.
The overused cliché “one size fits all” hardly applies to anything these days, including cloud platforms. Some utilize the cloud to sustain the high storage requirements needed to process huge amounts of research data efficiently and accurately. Others need the flexibility and high-performance computing the cloud allows for work with some of the largest high-res, long-form content files in the media industry.
In today’s changing IT landscape, having the option to hop from one provider to another in order to fulfill a company’s varying IT needs, is essential. It seems odd, then, that some cloud providers still standby the mantra “one size fits all” and impose vendor lock-in constraints, making it challenging for companies to take advantage of the full breadth of innovation in the cloud space.
Mankind is currently engaged in some of the most important scientific research of our age: the search for the elusive Higgs particle to validate our modern understanding of physics; genomic sequencing to enrich our understanding of life on Earth; and the global monitoring and hopefully prediction of natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanoes to better defend us from catastrophes.
These monumental scientific undertakings have very different goals, but one important thing in common: the huge amounts of data that must be processed efficiently in order to yield accurate results. Unfortunately, the advanced computer infrastructure required to handle this Big Data is expensive and requirements are growing rapidly. International organizations such as CERN, the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and the European Space Agency (ESA) that are engaging in scientific research need constant expansion in their infrasturcture to keep delivering the processing capacity they rely on. Without access to the right resources, researchers within these organizations are potentially held back.
A lot goes into making a Blockbuster hit that tops box office charts. Movies like Titanic, Star Wars, Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings don’t just come together over night. Steep requirements are imposed on everything from production, staff and equipment, to location, music and editing; but, one of the most hefty requirements often goes overlooked – IT. Technology is fundamental to the media industry’s ability to successfully create that next Avatar or Toy Story film; especially as the IT requirements for such an endeavor are inordinately robust.
Media professionals regularly work with some of the largest high-res, long-form content files, which can reach hundreds of GBs if not TBs on a single project. As a result, the upload and download times and transcoding process can become very lengthy, delaying both productivity and production. Even the most successful media companies grapple with finding the ideal environment that’s capable of handling such high performance computing requirements.
Recently, I was featured on GigaOM, discussing the pros and cons of in-house data center ownership for public cloud infrastructure-as-a-service providers. With the widespread media attention dedicated to recent outages, including Amazon’s latest downtime, it’s evident that maintaining consistent data center uptime can be a real challenge. So, the question remains, are IaaS providers equipped to deliver resilient data center facilities in addition to their public cloud infrastructure offerings?
At a high level, the article describes that, while there are certain advantages for cloud providers operating data centers in-house, including greater control, capacity, power and security, the challenges, such as geographic expansion, connectivity, location, cost and lower-tier facilities often outweigh the benefits.
Recently, I was featured in VM Blog and Data Center Knowledge offering my predictions for cloud computing in 2012. One theme, in particular, resonated throughout both articles: flexibility. According to Gartner, the worldwide cloud IaaS market will grow from an estimated $3.7 billion in 2011 to $10.5 billion by 2014. In order for this tremendous growth to be sustained, however, cloud platforms must become more flexible, particularly in terms of user control, resources and deployments:
- User Control – Today, most IaaS providers closely manage companies’ cloud deployments and data, locking them into agreements that limit their data access and placing restrictions on their software and networking. With flexibility demands on the rise, in 2012, providers will have to accommodate companies’ desire for complete data portability where they have access to and control over all of their data.
- Resources – Unlike today’s typical bundled resources, in 2012, customers will increasingly demand the purchasing efficiencies of unbundled resources, allowing the purchasing of CPU, RAM and storage in the exact quantities required. With such a system in place, companies can customize their resource purchasing without concerns of over provisioning.
- Deployments – Currently, when migrating to the cloud, many companies are forced to change their operating system or software to accommodate the provider’s restrictions. In 2012, lifting restrictions on operating systems and application deployments will be something many customers will look for as this will gives enterprises not only the flexibility, but the confidence to move away from their proprietary infrastructure and into the cloud.
The cloud was initially conceived to be a more flexible, scalable and accessible IT environment. In order to stay aligned with that model in 2012 and beyond, restrictive cloud providers will need to strip away their limitations on resources, deployments and user control. Achieving a completely customizable and flexible IaaS platform will be a necessity in order to remain a viable public cloud option and meet customer demand.
American poker legend Doyle Brunson once said, “A man with money is no match against a man on a mission.” Logically, then, one with money and a mission should be unstoppable! With today’s funding announcement, at CloudSigma, we are effectively fueling our mission to provide the most flexible, user-centric public cloud in today’s infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) market.
The investment comes on the heels of our successful U.S. launch and from none other than our own Chairman Anthony Foy, and Director Phil Collerton, both of whom have strong backgrounds in data centers, enterprise software, cloud and managed services, and are well-positioned to help strategically shape and foster CloudSigma’s growth – growth that is already in the works! Indeed, plans are already underway for this influx of cash, some of which include:
This week, we’re at the 2011 Cloud Computing Expo in Santa Clara, California, experiencing a touch of nostalgia mixed with anticipation. For it seems like only yesterday that the idea of cloud computing was just becoming a reality, yet, here we stand, already experiencing the benefits of much more tangible cloud platforms and on the brink of some substantial advancements.
Once such advancement, we’re pleased to announce today from the show floor, is the incorporation of a new solid-state drive (SSD) storage solution into our public cloud infrastructure that helps eliminate one of the largest challenges and deterrents companies still face with the cloud – storage bottlenecks.
Greek philosopher Heraclitus is accredited with saying, “The only constant is change.” But, what if you don’t want to change? What then?
Many public cloud providers may follow Heraclitus’ philosophy as they impose restrictions on software and operating system deployments in their cloud infrastructure, forcing companies to change, but this is not CloudSigma’s strategy. Why should enterprises have to change their preferred infrastructure when they move to a public cloud? To make the transition as seamless and effective as possible, shouldn’t the cloud infrastructure mimic the physical, hardware-based data center to the best of its ability?
Jan Hedström of Techworld (www.techworld.se) recently interviewed CloudSigma CEO Patrick Baillie about our company's technology strategy and choices. A full transcript of the interview is included below
You use KVM virtualisation, while some other providers have chosen Xen. What factors were important when you made the decision to use KVM?
KVM forms part of the mainstream Linux kernel and for that reason has the full weight of the Linux developer community behind it. For virtualisation, stability and security are two critical elements, elements which open source software has time and again proven to be the best at delivering over the long term. Although a relatively late entrant into the hypervisor space, KVM has been gaining in momentum over time to the point where it is now overtaking other hypervisors like Xen in terms of performance and core functionality. It is no coincidence that companies like IBM, HP and Intel are fellow members of the Open Virtualisation Alliance whose aim is to promote uptake of KVM. Since making the choice of KVM early on we believe we've seen our choice validated. We fully expect KVM to continue to iterate faster than other alternatives and create a widening technological lead.
This week a location for the EC2 product of Amazon Web Services suffered a major extended outage. Predictably there has been a lot of hand wringing, proclamations that the cloud is unreliable etc. Actually this event should focus everyone's minds on what problems a move to the cloud solves and those that it doesn't. The cloud does solve many problems but not all.
There are some clear lessons to be learned from this latest outage, not just relating to the cloud but relating to how to build resilient infrastructure set-ups that can keep delivering when things go wrong (because they eventually will). In this post I'll examine what this outage tells us about the cloud and data centre based computing in general and how customers might best respond and adapt.
A couple of weeks ago CloudSigma launched its Cloud Affiliate Program. Now you are able to join the success of CloudSigma and create for yourself a significant source of revenue by promoting CloudSigma through the Affiliate Channel. You can earn up to 20% lifetime provision out of every sale which is referred through your affiliate link. Alternatively you earn up to 27.5% per Sale and up to 2€ per lead as one time payments if you choose to promote the Standard Provision Offer.
This is part 1 of a How To Promote the CloudSigma Affiliate Program blog series. In this first part we mainly cover the basics and some easy methods to get started. If you want to read more general information on Affiliate Marketing I recommend this Wikipedia article.
In part 1 we saw how the changing strategy of many public IaaS clouds has been to increasingly offer PaaS style services on top of their core product offering. It is easy to see why public IaaS cloud vendors might wish to do this in order to increase their revenues but is it in customers' real interests?
One impact is to have a lock-in effect on the customer base (using PaaS) to the particular cloud which is something customers might want to think about carefully. There are some even more worrying problems associated with the move to PaaS as the IaaS provider increasingly widens their role and comes into conflict with users of their own cloud. As I outlined below, a IaaS cloud vendor offering PaaS has a significant long term impact on choice for customers and the role of a cloud vendor as an independent provider of computing resources.
Over the last few months it has become clear that many of the largest Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) public clouds are increasingly morphing into more like Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) operators. In other words, these clouds are moving from providing pure computing resources to providing services running on top of those computing resources. That may seem like a pretty innocuous change but as I'll outline in this and the next part of this post, it has a pretty profound effect on the role of the IaaS cloud vendor and their interests vis-a-vis their customers. Moving from infrastructure to offering software based services IS A BIG DEAL that customers should take note and be aware of when choosing an IaaS vendor.
Understandably, many customers using cloud services, particularly at the infrastructure level, are also interested in other tools that may add convenience. These are usually service driven; things such as email services, content distribution networks, DNS services etc. etc. So the debate here really is who is best positioned to provide those services and how should they be offered/delivered to end customers? It’s my opinion that an IaaS public cloud vendor is not the best entity to be trying to deliver and manage all those different services, particularly as they often require quite different skill sets. Likewise one size fits all services are never going to be optimal. So are many public IaaS vendors going in the wrong direction, chasing ever expanding service offerings?
I've aimed to outline over the previous three security posts to show how to secure your Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud computing and how we as a vendor approach the various aspects to deliver our part of that solution. In this the final part I outline how we feel IaaS should be approached and how that has profound implications for the concerns currently dominating the cloud computing debate
Personally and as a company we very much believe that the concerns with public clouds currently are more vendor created than fundamental problems related to the concept. The issues of control and security stem from the fact that the large incumbent vendors are mixing the infrastructure and software/networking layers. With these platforms, a customer is forced to accept:
One of the greatest challenges in running an Infrastructure-as-a-Service cloud is how to deliver performance at a cost effective rate. The key metric behind this is the utilisation rate of hardware used in the cloud; too high and performance suffers, too low and prices inevitably rise. How can a cloud provider deliver performance and value for money in this case?
An IaaS vendor such as ourselves is a utility company. In the short term we have a fixed capacity so it is a classic yield management issue. Over-commitment is an old model deployed in a traditional shared hosting setting to keep utilisation high; that doesn't translate well to the cloud.
So far we've looked at securing the network and securing access to cloud infrastructure. In part 3 we look at how to ensure your data storage is robust, secure and kept private in IaaS clouds. Keeping data private and secure is a key concern of many looking to move to a public cloud. Its important to separate real dangers and how to avoid them from natural psychological reactions to moving data away from in-house provision.
We see data storage in the cloud breaking down into three distinct areas; keeping data private/secure, vendor transparency and data portability.
Delivering robust yet high performing storage in the cloud has been one of the greatest hardware and software challenges in the explosion of cloud computing. Poor storage performance from many leading Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) clouds is one of the most cited complaints by users. In this post I will outline the dominant approach to storage currently, our current approach and what the future holds for cloud storage. The great news is that a revolution in how data is stored and accessed is right around the corner!
As I outlined in my recent post on how to benchmark cloud servers, along with networking performance, storage performance is one of the key differentiating factors between different IaaS clouds. Storage performance varies widely across different clouds and even within the same cloud over time. While managing CPU, RAM and networking securely and reliably has been largely solved, delivery of secure reliable storage clearly hasn't.
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