Cloud services full description

Cloud Computing Services

IT Authorities, Inc.
12/15/2010

Cloud Computing

Who is IT IT Authorities is a cloud services provider headquartered in Tampa, Florida. We
Authorities? designed, invested in and built the world’s most advanced and sophisticated
cloud platform.
 IT Authorities Voted #1 Best Company to work for in the state of Florida
- Florida Trend 100 Best Companies to Work For in Florida - 2010
 Ranked 801st on Inc. Magazine's 5000 fastest Growing Private
Companies in America in 2010
 Ranked Best Place to Work in Tampa in 2008, 2009 & 2010 by the
Tampa Bay Business Journal
 Ranked 35th of the Top 100 Managed service providers in the World by
MSP Mentor

What is Cloud Cloud computing is Internet-based computing, whereby shared resources,
Computing? software, and information are provided to computers and other devices on
demand, as with the electricity grid. Cloud computing is a natural evolution of
the widespread adoption of virtualization, Service-oriented architecture and
utility computing. Details are abstracted from consumers, who no longer have
need for expertise in, or control over, the technology infrastructure "in the cloud"
that supports them. Cloud computing describes a new supplement, consumption,
and delivery model for IT services based on the Internet, and it typically involves
over-the-Internet provision of dynamically scalable and often virtualized
resources. It is a byproduct and consequence of the ease-of-access to remote
computing sites provided by the Internet.

continued on next page

Dissemination of any information contained in this document to sources outside of the company to which it is submitted requires written consent of IT Authorities, Inc.
Copyright 2010 IT Authorities, Inc.
2 of 13

Cloud Computing, Continued

Top 15 Advantages 1. Low Monthly Payment as an Operating Expense versus a Capital
of the Cloud Expenditure.
Computing 2. No hardware replacement, system software upgrade costs, maintenance or
warranty renewals expenses.
3. 99.999% Uptime!
4. Reduced utility costs – Eliminate outrageous cooling & electric bills
5. Reduced floor space - No real estate needed for equipment
6. Tax Benefit - Operating Expense vs. Capital Expense. Realize tax
reduction the moment you use it!
7. Lower Total Cost of Ownership – Faster Return on Investment
8. No more license purchases or management!
9. Green approach to I.T.
10. FREE Microsoft Version Upgrades (Exchange, Windows OS, SharePoint,
SQL, etc.)
11. High availability plan as all systems are redundant
12. No need to worry about securing hardware during a disaster
13. Availability – Login from anywhere in the world
14. Predictable cost of growth
15. Scalable up or down


3 of 13

Cloud Computing, Continued

The Case for Cloud Simplified Cost and Consumption Model - Cloud computing allows companies to
Computing better control the capital expenditure and operating expense associated with non-core
activities.

Enterprise Grade Services and Management - Typically, 70 to 80 percent of IT
budgets are devoted to maintenance of existing infrastructure – a massive overhead.
Cloud computing offloads this burden from the shoulders of companies, freeing core IT
resources to focus on initiatives that drive revenue growth.

Faster Provisioning of Systems and Applications - Traditional methods to buy and
configure hardware and software are time consuming. Cloud computing provides a rapid
deployment model that enables applications to grow quickly to match increasing usage
requirements. It can accommodate ―peak times‖ where a company needs to scale up
dramatically, such as a holiday season or special event.

Size Adjustments to Address Business Changes - Clouds are elastic. They can contract
if necessary to meet changing business needs. With an in-house data center, if a company
over-provisions, it can’t scale back. In a cloud, an organization can quickly and easily re-
size its environment if necessary.
Ease of Integration - An increasing number of enterprise applications require integration
with third-party applications that are often hosted outside the enterprise firewall. The
cloud, with its configuration flexibility, integrated security and choice of access
mechanisms, has a natural advantage for serving as a core platform and integration fabric
for these emerging applications.
Highly Secure Infrastructure - By taking a system-based – not point-based – approach,
cloud environments can perform security at all levels (applications, middleware,
operating system, computer/store/network). This will safely support highly mobile users
that need a variety of connection options – coming into the cloud from secure and non-
secure networks.
Compliant Facilities and Processes - Many companies don’t have the resources needed
to manage audit and certification processes for internal data centers. Compliance
standards cut horizontally – like Sarbanes-Oxley – and vertically, such as PCI DSS and
HIPAA. Cloud facilities and processes that address both areas can help companies
address regulatory and compliance processes.
Flexibility and Resilience with Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery - Managing
business continuity and recovery internally require a dedicated focus so companies
typically concentrate only on the most critical applications. Utilizing cloud environments
allows organizations to safeguard their full IT infrastructure because the cloud’s inherent
scalability integrates disaster recovery capabilities.


4 of 13

Cloud Infrastructure & Technology

Servers Powered by fully redundant Cisco® Unified Computing Systems clusters.

We set out with the primary objective to build an enterprise class cloud
environment, so we leveraged the partnership between Cisco, VMware and
NetApp to develop a fabric integrated server and storage infrastructure. As a
result, we are able to offer unparalleled performance and flexibility in our cloud
service offerings. Our world class design provides sophisticated awareness:
 The Cisco Nexus switches are aware of the storage traffic
 The NetApp storage is aware of the dynamic nature of a hosted
environment
 The Cisco UCS servers are aware of the available fabric and storage
resources
Together, this best in breed approach creates a highly secure, fully redundant and
self-healing cloud infrastructure. Ultimately, a single resource is never left to
handle a task on its own, as intended by Cisco’s brilliant vision.
The value and the benefit to our customer is a true enterprise class, fully
redundant and secure private cloud infrastructure at a fraction of the cost
compared to developing, implementing and maintaining an in-house solution.


5 of 13

Cloud Infrastructure & Technology, Continued

Server Software VMware vSphere Virtualized Infrastructure

95% of the Fortune Global 500 is using VMware including:
 50 out of top 50 Banks: Commercial & Savings
 10 out of the top 10 Aerospace and Defense Companies
 5 out of the 5 Global Airlines
 9 of the top 10 Chemical Companies
 5 of the top 5 Diversified Financial Companies
 5 of the top 5 Energy Companies
 4 of the top 4 Entertainment Companies s
 10 out of the 10 Pharmaceutical Companies
 4 of the top 4 Securities Companies
VMware affords us the ability to provide a highly available, completely
redundant, high performing, and totally integrated cloud platform to our clients.
It is simply the best of the best when it comes to virtualization and cloud
platforms.


6 of 13


Network Fueled by a fully redundant core of Cisco Nexus Fabric Switches.
Infrastructure

We chose the Cisco Nexus platform for the absolute, unparalleled performance.
The available backplane speeds of the nexus switching platform aren’t available
from any other core switches from any other manufacturer and it allows us to
create a more flexible, highly available solution.
This allows us to do things like not worrying about or having to put speed
limitations on access to storage resources and external traffic reaching resources
that are hosted inside the cloud. Typically you’d have to limit the amount of
storage traffic that is going to and from hosts in order to make available those
resources to other hosted clients. We have over powered our cloud infrastructure
to the point where we no longer have to worry about these limitations. Therefore
the demands for disk access and other resources inside of your cloud are able to
be dynamically allocated as needed. Our resources will always be greater than
the demand from our clients. Because of this design and the technology behind
it, we will never reach a resource limitation with regard to switching that will
demand us to start putting limitations on clients.


7 of 13


Storage Fully Redundant and Infinitely Scalable NetApp SAN’s

The reason we went with the NetApp Storage is really similar to the reason that
we went with the Nexus switching platform. NetApp allows us flexibility in the
types of connectivity that our customers can have to the storage system. Our
clients are not limited to just have fiber channel for instance, or to just have fiber
channel over Ethernet, or to just have iSCSI targets on this device. NetApp
allows us to organize our cloud storage technology in such a way that we can
maintain our investments in such a way to make costs reasonable for our clients.
By doing that you can say it’s a connectivity agnostic storage system, in that we
can have a mix of fiber channel, fiber channel over Ethernet and iSCSI.
If our clients bring up a hosted server in our environment, the type of disk access
they need might work better over iSCSI or it might work better over fiber
channel over Ethernet than it would over fiber channel. Additionally, fast access
database applications may require the speed that comes from fiber channel and
the redundancy and multi-paths storage access that that allows. So as opposed to
paying for features that our clients may not need, we are able to cater it
specifically to their needs regardless of the requirements. We also able to custom
build a new solution to fit individual needs.
NetApp is also integrated into the VMware vSphere console making it possible to
do rapid restore features without impacting performance of the SAN and also
without having to pull tapes. Rapid restores allows us to provide unprecedented
speed in which a single file can be restored or a single email can be restored into
an inbox, or when a user accidently deletes a file. These files can be restored to a
file server and it is no longer an operation of pulling a tape from off site, or even
pulling a tape form a backup library. We can simply go into the snapshot of that
file system and we can drag and drop basically any file that we would like to
restore on a ―per file per hosted server‖ basis. Then again, that doesn’t impact the
performance of the SAN itself.


8 of 13


Security Cisco ASA 5500 Series Adaptive Security Appliances

We invested in the Cisco® ASA 5500 Series Adaptive Security Appliances to
deliver a robust suite of highly integrated, enterprise class, market-leading
security services for our mission-critical private cloud. This platform provides
unprecedented services flexibility, modular scalability, and feature extensibility.
We went with the Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) line of security
appliances because it provides enterprise level redundancy and fault tolerance to
create a self-healing, self defending edge. It is also considered a Carrier Class
edge network technology. Having flexibility to create separate virtual
infrastructure environments that can be treated as true separate entities was a
major requirement for us so that we could differentiate from the commodity
players such as Rackspace and Amazon.
For example, when we bring a new server online for you, you are not just getting
a shared IP space on the interface of your server that you have control over. You
are actually getting your own subnet that lives behind our redundant Cisco
ASA’s firewall. What the ASA does that’s unique is it allow us to create virtual
interfaces behind our firewall for however many hosted servers that we have
behind it. This means your servers can talk to each other and being that we give
you a virtual interface on a ―real firewall‖ appliance instead of a virtual firewall
or software firewall, you actually get physical separation from the rest of the
clients we have in our cloud. This approach allows flexibility and creativity that
others simply do not provide such as being able to connect your virtual
infrastructure / your subnet in our cloud environment which can then be
connected via point-to-point VPN’s to your offices.


9 of 13


Security, Continued You can have remote access VPN users get into your network and access your
resources and then of course you can do a site-to-multisite setup where you can
have your one cloud environment and say ten offices that all have individual
VPN’s back to our cloud.
In summary, IT Authorities creates the look and feel of having your own rack in
a data center, with your own switches, your own firewall, your own address
space and the availability to do with it what you like.


10 of 13


IT Authorities
Cloud Facilities

Facility (Brandon, Florida):
 96,000 square foot operation - 22,000 square foot raised floor space
 Raised floor facilitates cable management and uniform cooling distribution
 Category 5e cabling throughout the facility
 OC-48 SONET ring for redundancy
 Remedy®*—problem tracking, trouble ticketing and change management tool
 Advanced pre-action fire suppression system
 VESDA®* fire alarm system
 14 megavolt amps power service
 Server racks or cages available (full, half and quarter racks)
 Security
Security:
 24x7x365 onsite hosting system, network monitoring and facility customer support
 24x7x365 security staff
 Strictly enforced security procedures
 Photo ID required for building access
 Sophisticated, computerized access control system
 Card key and biometrics scan required for collocation space access
 Video surveillance at all entrances and every aisle (60 day, onsite tape retention)
 Locked racks and cabinets with local key management
Power Conditioning:
 Five 1,250 KVA Generator Systems; N+1 to assure uninterruptible power supply (UPS)
 Fully redundant UPS Bank
HVAC Temperature Controlled Environment:
 Temperature and humidity controlled environment
 150 BTUs per square foot
 Four 400 ton chillers


11 of 13


Case Study Company
Lewis & Clark is a multi-year Frost and Sullivan "Best Practices" Award
recipient and was founded in 1986 with a clear mission to provide all electronic
companies with an alternative to the high cost of new capital equipment and
associated services. After more than 20 years, they have shipped thousands of
quality test and manufacturing systems worldwide; saving their clients many
millions of dollars. Additionally, their related services capabilities provide cost
effective solutions focused on properly maintaining the equipment and keeping it
operating at maximum productivity levels. They are headquartered in Nashua,
New Hampshire, USA., with additional US offices in the Southeast, Midwest and
West Coast. International offices are located in the United Kingdom and Latin
America with strategic relationships in Asia.

Their services include matching buyers and sellers of previously-owned
equipment, asset management of excess systems, reconditioning, field service
and training, repair/exchange and repair, as well as equipment consignment and
providing assistance with leasing and financing. They also have available an
extensive inventory of spare parts and retrofits. Their asset management services
have also been expanded to include intra-company asset visibility and auction
coordination.

Existing Infrastructure:
Their infrastructure consisted of ten physical servers, high speed switches, and
battery backups.

Challenges:
 Server and networking equipment out of warranty and outdated
 System software reaching end of life
 Limited internet speed availability in facilities
 No redundant systems for high availability
 No internal data center
 Extensive international mobile workforce


12 of 13


Case Study, Solution 1 Overview –Co-location and New Equipment
Continued
The first investigated option was to build out their office to be a suitable data
center or move to a co-location facility and purchase required hardware,
software, systems and professional services to build and migrate. They elected
not to build their own data center and use a colocation instead. They also
selected VMware with shared storage as the solution for high availability.

One Time Costs:
Description Estimated Cost
Server / Storage Hardware (2 physical servers) $14,000
Software (Windows Servers, SQL & Exchange) $12,000
Storage Area Network (SAN) $20,000
Virtualization Software (VMware Enterprise) $15,000
Switch Upgrade $5,000
Implementation $24,800
Total One Time Costs $90,800

Annual Recurring Costs:
1 Rack in colocation with power & internet $16,800
VMware annual software support $3000
Switch Support $900
SAN Maintenance $4000
Maintenance and Support of Equipment $7,440

Option 1 Summary:
Description Amount
One Time Costs $90,800
First Year Annual Costs $24,240
Remaining Years Annual Costs $64,280
Total of Three Year Costs $179,320

13 of 13


Case Study, Solution 2 Overview – IT Authorities Cloud
Continued
The second investigated option was to move into the IT Authorities Cloud.

One Time Costs:
Migration and Implementation $9,300

Annual Recurring Costs:
Cloud Services $29,220
Total Annual Costs $29,220

Option 2 Summary:
Description Amount
One Time Costs $9,300
First Year Annual Costs $29,220
Remaining Years Annual Costs $58,440
Total of Three Year Costs $96,960

Overall Summary and Conclusion:
Description Amount
Option 1 - Colocation & VMware $179,320
Option 2 - IT Authorities Cloud $96,960
Savings from using Option 2 $82,360

14 of 13

Cloud services full description

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

What's hot

What's hot (14)

Similar to Cloud services full description

Similar to Cloud services full description (20)

Cloud services full description