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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Voxel announced today, via a Press Release, that it has selected Equinix for many of its global expansion nodes, including Equinix Amsterdam, Equinix Singapore and Equinix Dallas.  These locations add to our already extensive footprint with Equinix in the following markets:  New York Metro, Chicago, Ashburn and San Jose.

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Lot’s of chatter about virtualization, and cloud (oh how I loath that overexposed word) computing. It’s definitely interesting to watch this stuff happen around us..

Voxel, like a lot of our peers and competition, has constantly pushed the edge of “On Demand IT”. The entire Managed Hosting industry has been focused making IT more of a utility, supposedly.

It is ‘what we do’, as they say.

Only it took a company that sells books online to drive it home, and accelerate what we were supposed to be doing all along.

Talk about industry myopia.

Or is it really that simple?

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We booked some tickets today, to Singapore. Since the entire country and government is purpose built for business, it has earned the nickname “Singapore Inc”.

We’ll be setting up a regional headquarters there over the next several weeks.
At the end of the month, Mike V (our VP of Development) and Dr. Beevers (Development Lead on VoxCAST), as well as yours truly will be headed out there. We’ll join Anthony W (Singapore employee number zero), who has been doing a great job getting up to speed on all things Voxel the last couple weeks.

While we’re not looking forward to the 24 hour flight (especially since we’re not flying Singapore Airlines), we are very much excited about getting Voxel Singapore off the ground.

Singapore Skyline

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Green computing is hot Voxel has been slow to get on the bandwagon. The rest of the competition has clamored on.

What used to be about sensible business practices (saving money on power by being more efficient, reducing the amount of boxes that need to be unpacked and disposed) is now relabeled ‘green’ for maximum fun, spin potential, hype, and profit.

It’s high time we got on board and hyped it up like the best of them. Given a virtually unlimited budget, our best and brightest systems engineers have been hard at work, pushing the envelope of green computing. The results have been impressive.

Chris, one of our Senior Engineers, led the global team that has created the ultimate, most cost effective solution for both our customers and ourselves. It has both the build quality customers demand and the impact on waste that is required to ensure the planet’s survival. Ladies and Gentlemen, Voxel is proud to present the Corrugated Computing Chassis.

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Re-published from ISP-Planet.com

A Managed Hosting Contrarian – Let’s start telling it like it is! (Unlikely.)

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Published in Online Media Daily

Managed hosting is loosely defined as a service where a customer’s Internet infrastructure is maintained and cared for by a Web hosting company. It can also be the ultimate smokescreen. Who knows what really goes on in the world of dark fiber and datacenters? The confusion surrounding the inner workings of this industry gives hosting companies the opportunity to dupe customers with fake promises. Unfortunately, this is common within the industry.

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Looking Glass Networks, Inc., a facilities-based provider of metropolitan data transport services, announced today it has entered into a multi-year agreement with Voxel Dot Net, a privately held New York-based managed services provider, for Looking Glass’ DarkGLASS dark fiber services, EtherGLASS Ethernet transport services and CentraGLASS collocation services.

Voxel Dot Net chose Looking Glass for its diverse dark fiber transport capabilities, allowing for virtually unlimited scalability for its high bandwidth clients. “Given the rapid growth of our network, our own dark fiber ring was the only real option,” says Raj Dutt

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