One of the questions we asked ourselves when we decided to bring our VoxCLOUD technologies together in a Private Cloud offering, was why would a enterprise or service provider (our target customers for the offering) want to buy a Private Cloud solution from an infrastructure and hosting company vs. a pure software company? Our “amateur” market research had told us that customers who wanted private cloud were primarily interested in:
- Service delivery model – Customers love the delivery model of cloud computing: robust APIs, near-instant server provisioning and consistent hosting environments across server roles or hardware.
- Cost savings – If the company had either a large investment in existing hardware or had the CAPEX budget to make a large investment in equipment, they wanted to realize cost savings of running their applications on a fixed asset, as opposed to the hourly surcharged equipment cost of a public cloud.
- Compliance – Industry or internal compliance requirements or security policies might make it impossible or very difficult to deploy in a public cloud or 3rd party datacenter. Deploying cloud technology in one’s own datacenter environment is often a requirement.
What we didn’t find was that customers were begging and pleading to support the entire infrastructure or technology stack with their own operations team (not necessarily a huge surprise – internal IT teams are overworked as it is!). So for most customers, opting for a Private Cloud installation is being driven more from financial analysis and hardware choice/location than internal support for all aspects of the solution.
So why Voxel?
As a leader in managed services across the infrastructure landscape, Voxel provides 24 x 7 expert support to our clients from our New York and Singapore support centers. Engineers skilled in complex Internet routing, OS and application support and hardware troubleshooting are always on hand, well informed and ready to assist in both proactive and reactive situations.
We’ve extended these support options to our Private Cloud implementations — allowing clients to take advantage of our global NOC and support team to monitor and proactively address issues in Voxel or non-Voxel hosted infrastructure, as well as monitor usage and performance patterns.
The other key advantage that an active service provider such as Voxel has in servicing the needs of a hybrid or private cloud customer is our global IP backbone and network, now available in nearly 20 key Internet hubs around the world. Voxel can act as an on-ramp to the Internet for a private cloud installation or provide more complex inter-connections, such as layer 2 extensions into our public VoxCLOUD (including announcement of shared IP address space, for example), or multi-location Private VoxCLOUD locations for disaster recovery. Network flexibilities (and just plain abilities!) are key to a successful hybrid cloud environment and Voxel’s 10 years of experience in interconnection, and existing network footprint, are what enable us to deliver cloud solutions with unrivaled depth and flexibility.
So far, we think that hosted infrastructure companies such as Voxel offer a clear value proposition for the implementation, on-going support and maintenance of Private or Hybrid Cloud installations. The technologies are “battle proven” in our demanding and successful public cloud, fully supported by qualified engineers 24 hours a day and are constantly innovated to meet the needs of the marketplace.
We look forward to working with our clients and partners on Private Cloud opportunities in the months ahead.
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