iomart cloud services

'behind every cloud there's a silver server'

There can be no doubt that the term 'cloud computing' is the buzz word of the moment but what exactly does it mean?

There are many definitions applied to cloud computing/hosting, but the one which resonates with the iomart Group's ethos is the following from the US National Institute of Standards & Technology.

"Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g. networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction".

Cloud is of course a metaphor for internet and it's all about delivery of services over the internet. Using our long experience of delivering services across the web, the iomart Group is now launching a set of 'cloud services' into the hosting market using our unique position as a provider of both physical and virtual resources.

It is important to understand and appreciate that our biggest USP is the completeness of that physical and virtual resource from data centre through network to switches, routers, servers and software, and that it's our ability to manage it all as a single trusted supplier under one service level agreement (SLA) that will help us succeed in the sales process.

Cloud services - it's all about availability

In recent times virtualisation has become both associated with, and confused with cloud services. Cloud services can of course be deployed using physical resource only, without any virtualisation technology involved. The reason virtualisation has an impact is that it adds another 'layer of reliability'. This further layer, on top of the physical layers of reliability that we have become used to mitigates the risk factor associated with purchasing cloud services

Most buying decisions are made on the basis of some kind of risk analysis. "Do I trust this vendor and the solution as described?" "Can I risk putting my critical services on these platforms?" The layers of reliability the Group provides all add up to minimising its customer's risks and giving them the comfort that it has successfully eliminated any single points of failure, that the Group has full control of every deliverable in the solution and that it is constantly monitoring and managing the end to end infrastructure on the customers behalf.

The Group has now developed and deployed a virtual layer that is built on top of multiple layers of physical reliability and resilience. Using only the best in hardware and software and with the 'cloud control' operability that is unique to the iomart Group we can now deliver on this virtual layer.

This virtual layer can be deployed using single components in an architecture i.e. one web server, one database server etc., with the knowledge that there is a 'back up' component in the virtual layer, albeit not immediately available but coming to life in the event of failure. By their very nature virtual platforms also have the advantage of speed around deployment, provisioning etc.

If we then take this architecture a stage further and use the traditional physical resource policy of doubling up components i.e. two web servers, two database servers etc. then that eliminates another set of single points of failure. This adds a further layer of reliability which is we would describe as 'high availability'

If we then add in dual geography where there are two separate platforms across the Group's estate of UK wide data centres, again adding another layer of reliability then we can begin to envisage 'absolute or total availability'.

This is the direction that the iomart Group is taking with its cloud computing and services platforms.

The Group has the advantage of owning and controlling every aspect of service delivery and it will work hard to educate the market to ensure that it understands the advantages this provides.