Cloud Hosting Series, Part 5: Do You Sell Cloud?

As a hosting company we hear this question all the time, but it usually misses the mark of what hosting consumers are actually asking for. And a misunderstanding about what hosted Cloud services are and do can lead to solutions that might not fit the problems customers are trying to solve. So what do consumers actually mean when they ask, “Do you sell Cloud?”

Due to the server-centric types of products that hosting companies have typically offered, when traditional hosting consumers ask if a hosting provider “sells Cloud,” they are likely asking if that provider offers a Cloud IaaS solution when, in fact, their needs might be better served with a PaaS or even SaaS solution. Confused yet? Don’t worry, you’re not alone. Let’s take a minute to look at these terms to try to understand a little better just what Cloud has to offer the hosting consumer.

IaaS
IaaS—or Infrastructure as a Service—refers to the now ubiquitous “server in the Cloud” concept. With an IaaS solution, you receive a virtualized server OS and a generalized application stack on top of it (such as a LAMP). This basic unit of hosted Cloud IaaS is known as an instance, and it can be delivered on top of virtualization technologies such as Xen, KVM, or even Virtuozzo Containers. With IaaS, everything beneath the OS installation and the virtual networking provided with it (i.e. the virtualization software, the hardware, and the physical network build-out) is a “black box” to the end user, which is fine because few users have a real need to interact directly with the server hardware.

PaaS
Platform as a Service is a conceptually higher layer than IaaS. In PaaS the operating system joins the hardware and virtualization as part of the black box that users cannot see into. The end user simply interfaces with a programming language such as php, Java or Ruby. PaaS offers this programming environment—the platform—to the user.

Anyone familiar with these terms knows that this is something of a simplification of the IaaS/PaaS relationship. After all, the definitions of these terms are somewhat of a moving target in the industry right now. For an interesting article that illustrates some of the nuance of why simple definitions do not always suffice, click here.

SaaS
There’s another higher-order layer that is important to mention and will come up again later in our discussion: Software as a Service. In SaaS, a single application such as WordPress is exposed to the end user. The functioning application itself is the service while everything beneath it that makes it run is hidden from the end user. WordPress is a great example of SaaS when hosted on wordpress.com.

So, if you’re wondering if you can buy a highly scalable virtualized Cloud instance to move your server into, the question is not Do you sell Cloud? but Do you offer a hosted Cloud IaaS solution? But is asking whether you can move a server into the Cloud, really the right question?

To be clear, one -aaS is not better than another, each just targets different levels in the technology chain to solve problems. In fact, SaaS and PaaS solutions are most likely delivered on top of IaaS—and SaaS may be delivered on top of PaaS. The key is to know what you’re looking for and shop accordingly. Do you need a turn-key solution for a single application that stresses ease-of-use and low maintenance? Look at SaaS for that particular application. Or do you need a highly-customizable environment from which you can build one-off applications? Look to PaaS for a single programming environment. Or look to IaaS for the ultimate in flexibility to design your solution.

Some of you may remember in Part 2 of our Cloud Series I discussed some of the truly awesome new possibilities with Cloud hosting technology, and the associated learning curve: the ability to divorce the application from the OS and the hardware and have many instances working in tandem to accomplish a greater goal, each instantaneously scalable and clonable to meet traffic demands on the fly. This is where Cloud IaaS shines.

To be sure, individual applications can be custom built on top of IaaS server instances and tap into the incredible scaling some Cloud solutions offer, but being able to leverage a PaaS or SaaS solution allows you to skip some of the complexity of having to build a one-off solution in an IaaS environment. As the future of Cloud unfolds PaaS solutions that are specifically tailored to languages like Java, Ruby and PHP as well as SaaS solutions that offer turn-key application environments like WordPress, phpBB, and Magento will become the norm.

So, back to the original question, “Do you sell Cloud?” The answer you receive to that question may not provide you with the information that you really need when choosing a provider. However, you will quickly be able to home in on the right answer and provider if you know what you’re looking for, or if you find a provider who is willing to work with you to help you determine the optimal solution for your requirement.

Photo by Liber

Hurricane Irene and Disaster Preparedness at ServInt

With Hurricane Irene projected to make landfall on the east coast of the United States in just a few days, many customers have been asking about what ServInt is doing to prepare for this potentially severe storm.

During any extraordinary event, ServInt operates under a set of Major Event procedures that have been crafted and refined over the last 16 years. These procedures include augmenting facility staff through overtime and multiple levels of on-call, assignment of task forces to deal with any contingencies that arise, and opening and maintaining lines of communication with our customers and vendors to ensure smooth operation throughout the event.

These procedures are important for making sure we’re always ready to provide our normal level of customer care in abnormal situations.  But the bulk of our preparation for any given event takes place months to years earlier as we design and build our datacenters, choose our network providers and make our staffing decisions.

By choosing data center facilities that are expected to withstand any rationally conceivable event; by designing our network to quickly recover from the loss of any provider; and by making sure the staff we hire are reliable and steady in the face of the unexpected, we are able to work through most natural disasters without missing a beat.

In its 16 years, ServInt has weathered hurricanes, blizzards, tornadoes and—yes—even earthquakes. During Hurricane Isabel in 2003, while most businesses in the Washington DC metro area saw major disruptions, ServInt operated without customer interruption through the entire storm.

Frankly, our biggest concern during any natural disaster is making sure our employees can get to and from our facilities for their shifts. During any major event we roll out the cots and sleeping bags and stock the fridges. While we already run a 24/7 ship, we have to be prepared in the event that on-duty staff cannot make it home from a facility. Waiting for streets to be plowed or trees to be cleared is often our biggest concern.

Any web host’s true value is put to the test when extraordinary events occur, be it the explosion of traffic on a customer website, a hack or DDOS attack, or a natural disaster. These events and the host’s response are what customers remember. So as Hurricane Irene bears down on the eastern United States, rest assured that we are watching the weather carefully, unpacking our rain coats and dry-running all our disaster procedures. Our generators are fueled up and capable of powering your servers for a long time.  Our cupboards are filled to bursting with cans of soup and stew.  Our employees are ready.  Your sites are as safe as any hosting company could possibly make them, and we’ll do everything we can to keep them up and running, no matter what mother nature throws at us.

Photo by NASA Goddard Photo and Video

ServInt opens the Doors on its Newest Data Center

It’s been a hectic first quarter here at ServInt. We’re in the middle of a lot of very exciting improvements and new services slated to launch in 2011. And today marks the first. We have just completed build-out and opened the doors of our newest datacenter.

The Northern Virginia facility joins our Downtown DC and McLean data centers as part of the greater ServInt DC infrastructure. Not only does this new facility provide the room to grow that we require as we continue to expand our customer base and product lines, but its location along the area’s primary fiber routes augments our network infrastructure and connectivity at the same time.

If you’re interested in more of the specifics of our newest data center, take minute to check out our press release. And if you’re a current customer and want to know a little bit more about what this new facility means to you visit your customer portal for more details.

Business Means Solving Hard Problems

When I first came to ServInt, our newly promoted CTO Matt Loschert told me something that stuck with me.

“We’re still in business because we solve hard problems.”

It’s a pretty simplistic sentence when you look at it, it deals with the fundamentals of capitalism and why it’s integral that we constantly innovate to beat back the law of diminishing returns. It’s an ethos that has pulled ServInt through some very tough times and helped us emerge as a leader in this space.

I want to see how our customers, partners, and friends solve hard problems in their business everyday and I’m announcing an opportunity to those who read this blog, are fans on Facebook, or to those who follow us on Twitter and Friendfeed to have a post published right here on this blog.

Tell us in about 300-500 words what your business is and how it solves a hard problem. We’ll post them here on The ServInt Source and promote them throughout the web.  We’ll even throw in a T-Shirt for the effort!

The rules are as follows:

• Your post may be edited by our editorial staff for grammatical errors, flow, and length.
• The post will be licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License .

There’s no deadline as of right now, I’d like to see what the community can come up with and I’ll post new submissions as I get them.

Now get cracking!

Submissions can be sent to busdev@servint.com.

Photo by godzillante.

Did you get the memo?