VPS and Beyond: Why Moving to an IaaS Offering will Pay Dividends. Part 1: VPS versus IaaS, the definitions, differences and market opportunity

Transcription

1 VPS and Beyond: Why Moving to an IaaS Offering will Pay Dividends Part 1: VPS versus IaaS, the definitions, differences and market opportunity

2 contents Introduction 3 IaaS Market Opportunity 4 Overview VPS versus IaaS 4 VPS versus IaaS In Depth 5 VPS versus IaaS at a Glance 7 About Us 8 Summary 8 02 VPS and Beyond: Why Moving to an

3 INTRODUCTION A large proportion of the service provider market has not yet developed a true cloud offering. In fact, 83% of end user companies are frustrated with having to cut through marketing hype to find out which solutions are genuine cloud offerings and which are merely conventional hosting services with the word cloud added to the title 1. Instead, these organisations remain at the virtualised level with virtual private servers (VPS) masquerading as cloud services. As a result, these service providers are not in a position to benefit internally from the efficiency savings of a cloud platform or to deliver the value of true cloud services to their customers. Part of this problem is that many do not realize or recognise the difference between VPS and cloud and therefore do not understand the benefits or uses possible with IaaS. As part of a three paper series, ALVEA Services aims to clearly demonstrate a journey service providers can take as they move from VPS to cloud services. The three part series will cover: VPS versus Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): The definitions, differences and market opportunity Why IaaS: How IaaS can solve service providers and customers VPS problems and the capabilities necessary to reap these benefits Transitioning from VPS services to IaaS: Why IaaS is the starting point from which to grow PaaS and SaaS services and a roadmap for delivery Attempting to grow a service provider business by providing VPS will not offer the future-proofing and revenue opportunities available with the cloud. Instead, service providers must look to deliver a cloud platform that is more beneficial than VPS technologies. There are nine main benefits of moving to IaaS that, listed together, almost spell cucumber. For a service provider, these nine benefits should be argument enough for adopting technology that will support business growth. While we are highlighting the market opportunity and benefits of moving to a cloud offering in this series, we are not criticising VPS. Instead, we are offering service providers a path to capture a significant market opportunity. Benefits of Moving to IaaS Cost Effective: More cost-effective than a custom deployment Utility: Paid on a utility basis, pay-as-youuse model Commodity: Provisioned at scale Universality: Homogenous service components Multi-tenancy: Enabling more than one user of the same resources abstraction: Virtual resources abstracted from physical resources Elasticity: Rapid provision and deprovision Reliability: Failure proof 1 Survey results consisted of 200 IT directors from businesses across the UK and was conducted by independent research company Vanson Bourne, 03 VPS and Beyond: Why Moving to an

4 IaaS Market Opportunity Whereas VPS market sizing is no longer relevant, IaaS presents a huge market opportunity under watch by many analyst firms. Gartner released figures early in 2013 that show the public cloud services market is forecasted to grow 18.5 percent in 2013 to total $131 billion worldwide, up from $111 billion in IaaS continued as the fastest growing segment of the market, growing 42.4 percent in 2012 to $6.1 billion and expected to grow 47.3 percent in 2013 to $9 billion 2. Another analyst group echoed the predictions from Gartner. Synergy Research Group showed that service provider revenues from IaaS and PaaS topped $2.75 billion in the first half of 2012, having grown by 65% from the same period last year 3. This multi-billion dollar industry is where service providers and hosters will see growth. Understanding the difference between VPS and IaaS is a first step in the journey to becoming a true cloud service provider. Overview VPS versus IaaS As the successor to VPS services, IaaS is the next step in moving towards a cloud offering, be it at the most basic cloud service level. To better understand VPS versus IaaS, consider how a motel versus a hotel delivers services. VPS Providers and Motels Motels are great if you want low cost options, but they are less flexible in terms of how they can be used. You will have limited room choices and no real additional services such as conference rooms, business services etc. You may not even have an in-house restaurant. That said, the price makes them very useful for long term stays that may be too expensive in hotels. Traditional VPS providers fall into this category, as they provide low cost services that typically get used for long periods of time (paid for by the month or year) but tend to not offer significant added value in terms of flexibility or added services that can be used in conjunction with the VPS. For users wanting low cost solutions for fairly simple or static demands, this can be a great choice. However, for users wanting increased flexibility or added value, not so much. Standard Hotel and Self Service IaaS Standard hotels (think 3 stars) provide flexible options in terms of rooms available and a wide range of business options such as meeting rooms, business services etc. All of this is great for when you temporarily need more space or are hosting an event. The value-added services they deliver will be comprehensive, but without the hand holding of a luxury hotel. Now apply this to self-service IaaS where customers can get the standard features required of their infrastructure, but can also flex up or down when required. 2 Gartner, Gartner Says Worldwide Public Cloud Services Market to Total $131 Billion, February 2013, 3 Synergy Research Group, IaaS and PaaS Revenues Growing at 65% per Year per-year htm 04 VPS and Beyond: Why Moving to an

5 Luxury Hotel and Managed IaaS At the top end in terms of cost, you have luxury hotels, think Waldorf Astoria or the Ritz. Nothing is too much trouble for these hotel chains to arrange, and they will take care of everything for you. It comes with a considerable price tag though. High end managed service providers are trying to achieve the same level of customer service, satisfaction and comfort, but unfortunately, that also comes with a cost. The flip side of this of course is that if you want to do something simple and standard, it may still come at a disproportionate cost. For example, in a hotel s case, if all you want for breakfast is a slice of toast and a coffee, it will cost 15 or more. In a managed service provider s case, a simple configuration change that a user could do themselves will still take time and money to achieve. Many service providers are positioning themselves incorrectly to offer their customers the benefits of IaaS which include: less wasted time on managing and monitoring IT resources, increased scalability, utility model, flexibility and lower total cost of ownership, among others. VPS versus IaaS in Depth In this comparison we are looking at true IaaS platforms versus traditional VPS solutions used by many suppliers and customers over the past decade. Some modern VPS platforms do have some more advanced features, moving them more towards a service type model. Pricing VPS services are typically priced by month and IaaS services are typically metered on a per hour basis. That said, pricing differences are not as simple as the billing period. VPS services tend to be sold in fairly rigid packages. If you want to upgrade to more CPU/RAM, you get more disk and data transfer as well. If you didn t require that disk or data, you get it anyway. IaaS platforms in general offer more flexibility in this area. Although some parts of the configuration may be fixed depending on the provider, there is usually the ability to adapt resources independently. Flexibility One of the reasons for not having pricing flexibility with VPS is that the underlying platform does not have the flexibility or agility that is required of a service provider. The usage that IaaS enables can be dramatically different from typical VPS usage, and the biggest reason for that is the flexibility offered by IaaS around provisioning of resources. Provisioning Time It isn t unusual for VPS providers to take anywhere from 15 minutes to four hours to provision infrastructure, whereas IaaS providers typically provision between 15 seconds and three minutes. This capability is required to support customers needing to scale up or down on resources quickly. Consider where a customer needs to run an extra 10 virtual machines (VM) for an hour. With a VPS provider, having to wait two hours for these machines to be available is simply not viable. IaaS providers alternatively can process customer requests at a faster magnitude. 05 VPS and Beyond: Why Moving to an

6 Similarly, the ability to just as easily de-provision resources and not be charged for them when not in use is just as important. This capability is not available through a VPS provider. API Access End user API access from VPS providers is extremely rare indeed, although not unknown. IaaS as standard delivers a publically available API, although the flexibility and coverage of the APIs can vary. Self-Service Typical VPS solutions have limited self-service capabilities mainly due to the lack of overall flexibility available in the platform. The capabilities will be limited to normal housekeeping such as rebooting or remote console. Alternatively, IaaS platforms will have full self-service capabilities including provisioning and managing all types of virtual resources, including disks, firewalls, networks etc. OS Availability While there are some exceptions, most VPS providers will limit the choice of available operating systems to one or two. Some providers using Type 2 Hypervisors (where there is a shared kernel), will be extremely limited in choice. This is because Type 2 Hypervisors using shared kernels usually have only one OS available and are less configurable by the end user. IaaS providers typically provide a wide range of operating systems with all common Linux and Windows distributions available for customers to choose. Own Images The ability for end users to upload their own images to be used by a VPS provider is almost unheard of, whereas it is extremely common (although not ubiquitous at present) with IaaS providers. It is a key enabler for customers wishing to build or move existing internal applications into the cloud. Rapid Scalability From day to day or even hour to hour, customers may need to vary their usage significantly depending on workload. Being able to rapidly scale up and down resources (CPU, RAM, bandwidth, servers, snapshots, firewalls, images etc.) is absolutely key to being able to meet customer expectations. This is another essential benefit of consuming IaaS: the ability to rapidly change the resources being used depending on business requirements. VPS providers typically have no concept of this type of rapid scalability or the use cases that demand it. Additional Services VPS solutions tend to offer limited or no additional services provided with the platform. IaaS platforms are still an evolving in this area, and as such, additional services can vary wildly. However, it is not uncommon to find a wide range of additional as a service offerings, such as databases, object storage or configuration management. Capacity VPS solutions tend to focus mainly on providing the equivalent of cut down physical servers. As a result, memory and CPU options tend to have a maximum reach of up to 8GB of RAM and 2-4 CPUs, even on the extreme high end and as little as 256MB RAM on the low end. IaaS providers offer memory and CPU options from a low of 512MB, all the way up to GB RAM; far more than even the typical host servers on a VPS platform. Configuration Tools Run time configuration tools, such as Chef or Puppet and cloud management tools such as those offered by Rightscale, Enstratius or others, are widely available with IaaS platforms. VPS providers typically cannot take advantage of tools like this easily because they do not offer API or metadata services. This reduces the scope of use cases for the VPS provider. 06 VPS and Beyond: Why Moving to an

7 Hardware Architecture VPS solutions were designed to act like cut down physical servers as their primary use. As a result, these solutions are usually built using traditional siloed architectures. Each VM is allocated to a specific physical server and uses local storage. There is little to no capability to deliver high availability or resiliency between physical servers. If a physical server was to fail, it would need to be recovered manually before the VMs could be brought back online. This is different to an IaaS platform that has various and different ways to deal with high availability. The majority of IaaS vendors offer the ability to automatically restart VMs on different physical servers if a failure occurs by using separated storage that spans multiple servers. VPS versus IaaS at a glance Pricing VPS Priced monthly Rigid packages IaaS Metered per hour Flexible packages and configuration Flexibility Platform does not support flexibility Offers flexible provisioning of resources Provisioning Time Time ranges from 15 minutes to four hours Time ranges from 15 seconds to three minutes Provisioning Scale Can only scale up Can scale up and down API Access Rare Standard, public API Self-Service Limited capabilities rebooting, remote console Full self-service capabilities provisioning and managing virtual resources including disks, firewalls, networks etc. OS Availability Limited to one or two Offers all common Linux and Windows operating systems Upload Own Images Capability unlikely Capability extremely common Rapid Scalability None Scale daily/hourly Additional Services None Varies, but likely to offer a wide range of additional as a service offerings such as databases, object storage or configuration management etc. Capacity Memory and CPU insufficient Memory and CPU wide range of options Configuration Tools None Run time configuration tools and cloud management tools widely available Hardware Architecture No capability to deliver high availability or resiliency between physical servers Various ways to deal with high availability 07 VPS and Beyond: Why Moving to an

8 about us This white paper is brought to you by ALVEA Services and Flexiant. ALVEA Services selected Flexiant s cloud orchestration software for its ALVEA Infrastructure Service. Flexiant provides ALVEA Infrastructure with an on-demand, fully automated cloud services provisioning solution which includes comprehensive billing, white-labelling and a single pane of glass infrastructure control. ALVEA Services ALVEA Services offers a suite of cloud and managed solutions across security, infrastructure and resilience. Available exclusively via the channel and delivered through one easy-to-use platform, the ALVEA range offers its partners a one-stop shop for a multitude of services. ALVEA Security, ALVEA Infrastructure and ALVEA Resilience & Continuity currently offer eight distinct services across the portfolio: Managed Network Security, Cloud Based Infrastructure, Managed Content & Application Delivery, Cloud Attached Storage, Satellite Broadband, DNS, Authentication & Anti-Virus. The ALVEA brand is an independent services offering for the channel backed,managed, and supported by technical expertise and infrastructure from COMPUTERLINKS. The suite will continue to be developed by COMPUTERLINKS to enable its partners to provide expertly delivered services to their customers. ALVEA Infrastructure ALVEA Infrastructure offers virtualised on-demand servers, designed to behave just like physical servers. Via the easy-to-use web control panel, enterprise class cloud infrastructure can be deployed in minutes - including the ability to provision cloud system, servers, and networks and then to only pay for what is used, whilst at the same time being assured that data is secure and always accessible. Designed to bring the full benefits of secure IT on demand to organisations of any size, ALVEA s cloud architecture gives access to IT infrastructure resource when it s needed, without all the expense and fuss associated with traditional solutions. Once finished, it s simply turned off until the next time it s needed. Flexiant Flexiant is a leading international provider of cloud orchestration software for on-demand, fully automated provisioning of cloud services. Headquartered in Europe, Flexiant s software gives cloud service providers business agility, freedom and flexibility to scale, deploy and configure cloud services, simply and cost-effectively. Vendor agnostic and supporting multiple hypervisors, Flexiant Cloud Orchestrator is a software suite that is service provider ready, enabling cloud service provisioning through to granular metering, billing and reseller management. Used by over one hundred organisations worldwide, from small hosters to large Managed Service Providers (MSPs) and Enterprises, Flexiant Cloud Orchestrator is simple to understand, simple to deploy and simple to use. Flexiant customers include Cartika, FP7 Consortium, IS Group, ITEX, and NetGroup. Summary This paper has outlined the definitions, differences and market opportunities of VPS and IaaS. In the next paper in this series, we will address the problems IaaS is solving beyond VPS and what this means for the service provider. 08 VPS and Beyond: Why Moving to an

9 THIS WHITE PAPER IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY AND MAY CONTAIN TYPOGRAPHICAL ERRORS AND TECHNICAL INACCURACIES. THE CONTENT IS PROVIDED AS IS, WITHOUT EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND. COMPUTERLINKS UK LTD Contact ALVEA w: e: t: +44 (0)