(11/10/2008) An Interview with HostReview and John Pozadzides, VP & CMO of Layered Tech
John Pozadzides, CMO, LT
Recently Layered Tech announced it is the first hosting company to give enterprise customers the option of transferring their Microsoft Windows operating system (Windows OS) environment to an AppLogic-based cloud computing solution. Layered Tech will use 3Tera’s AppLogic 2.4 to enable customers to run their Windows OS platform in a virtual computing environment, which the company said will allow customers to have the same high-availability as their dedicated physical servers but with far more scalability, all for a fraction of the cost. Read Press Release >>
HostReview contacted the company to get more information about this development. In this executive interview, we talk to Mr. John Pozadzides, VP & CMO of Layered Tech >>
Does Layered Tech’s new offering — transfer to Windows OS environments to an AppLogic-based cloud computing platform, support the entire range of Microsoft server software?
Currently, the AppLogic platform will support 32 bit versions of Windows 2003 and 2008. 64 bit support is planned for future releases.
How do virtualization solutions from Layered Tech help enterprises cut costs?
Simplicity is one of keys to cost savings for our customers. Running enterprise applications on The Grid Layer is actually far simpler than using traditional hardware because you do not need to deploy, configure or maintain actual physical or software resources.
When you run an application in the cloud on The Grid Layer, all of the infrastructure resources needed are assembled and configured automatically on demand. When additional performance is required, it takes just minutes to increase the resources available to your application, resulting in optimum control and flexibility. Accelerating application availability drives cost efficiencies.
In a more fundamental way, The Grid Layer eliminates the upfront server costs associated with traditional clustered server environments. This server consolidation is a powerful driver of cost reduction for our customers, as well as the more traditional capital expense elimination achieved through our hosted virtualization environment.
Are there other benefits in term of security and scalability?
On both the security and scalability fronts, our cloud computing offering, The Grid Layer, solves many of the early challenges faced by virtualization providers. We have a powerful graphical configuration interface which enables users to create entire virtual infrastructures within the Grid, comprised of a wide range of devices including firewalls, load balancers and servers. Switching, routing and monitoring are all built into the Grid as well as complete physical redundancy and RAID 1 network duplication of data across physical nodes.
Therefore, our approach provides complete redundancy within the system, with built-in monitoring and self-healing capabilities. The Grid will restart any application running on a physical node that fails by moving it to a separate node within minutes.
The proven ability to scale a single client grid to well over 100 physical nodes means that even extremely large clients can obtain incredible resource density if required. For example, a 100-node grid with quad core, dual processor nodes, each containing 1TB hard drives and 32GB of RAM would equate to 800 processor cores, 3.2TB of RAM and 100TB of storage space.
What are AppLogic’s strong points over other cloud computing solutions?
3tera’s breakthrough AppLogic technology packages the entire multi-tier application or service into a logical entity and manages it as a single system. AppLogic is the first grid operating system that is designed for web applications and is optimized for transactional and I/O-intensive workloads. It uses advanced virtualization technologies to ensure complete compatibility with existing operating systems, middleware and applications. Additionally, off-the-shelf OS and applications are fully compatible within The Grid Layer (based on AppLogic).
Can you share with our readers some details about the hardware side of Layered Tech’s grid, such as number of datacenters and their geographic distribution?
Certainly. We maintain a global presence with our data centers and network, serving thousands of clients internationally. We currently have 8 purpose-built facilities located in the U.S., Amsterdam, Tokyo, and other locations. These top-tier data centers are the cornerstones of our worldwide hosting capabilities and offer unparalleled security, network availability, capacity, processing power, and operations management.
What is the Early Adopter Program?
For our customers who are interested in migrating to a Windows environment on our Grid, we are offering special pricing and close support to incent and facilitate migration. We intend to offer this program through Q1 2009. Contact us for details >>
Do you plan further developments in the areas of virtualization and cloud computing?
Listening to our customers means that we are constantly innovating new virtualization features and expanded cloud computing functionality. We are committed to staying on the forefront of virtualization innovation, and make ongoing investments in research and development. This is an exciting time in the hosted cloud computing industry, and we anticipate many more advances in how we provide enterprise-grade virtualization solutions.
