Archive for the 'Grid Computing' Category

CA Announces AppLogic 3.0

Published on July 27, 2011 in Cloud Computing, Grid Computing, Hosting Industry, Industry Events, Infrastructure and Strategic Partners. Closed
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This week CA Technologies announced Applogic 3.0. This comes after VMware announced vCloud Director 1.5 and Citrix acquired Cloud.com. This was an exciting month of events for the leading Cloud OS platforms. This is interesting to Layered Tech and our customers because this illustrates the rapid maturing of cloud platform technologies. It exemplifies that these technologies initially targeted to service providers like Layered Tech are also adopting many of the capabilities enterprises are looking for to build out private, hybrid and secure multi-tenant cloud environments.

Today, Layered Tech utilizes both CA Technologies AppLogic and VMware vSphere to provide unique multitenant and private cloud services to our customers. We have long standing relationships with both companies and are one of the original adopters of 3Tera AppLogic before server virtualization, orchestration and automation was called Cloud.  As one of the early adopters of the AppLogic 1.0 platform, we have a unique insight and relationship with CA Technologies. I would like to share a few thoughts regarding the latest release.

The CA AppLogic 3.0 cloud computing platform continues its focus to innovate on the application deployment layer with its intuitive drag and drop application deployment interface. The visual interface, which is the hallmark of AppLogic, continues to differentiate this platform from the others. AppLogic enables complete deployment of entire application environments including virtual load balancers, firewalls, web servers, application server and databases in a single motion.

Among significant new enhancements, AppLogic has added the capability to support:

1)      vLAN tagging to further enable private networking and VPN;

2)      Role-based user access to further separate observers, operators, admins and owners access levels and to improve security;

3)      Support of OVF (Open Virtualization Format) standard to facilitate the import of Xen and VMware workloads from outside the Cloud;

4)      Enhanced cloud operation with the global fabric controller to further automate the maintenance and addition of resources and the enrichment of usage metering capabilities

These are interesting enhancements, and enable a broader set of use cases for our customers with privacy requirement and who want to migrate VMware and Xen environments to the cloud.

Our broad portfolio of managed hosting services includes on-demand multi-tenant cloud services, dedicated virtual and physical environment, and compliance services. With the AppLogic platform we offer Virtual Private Servers (VPS) which is a multi-tenant public cloud with on-demand user portal, and Virtual Private Data Centers (VPDC), which are dedicated cloud environments and give you complete customization and admin access.  In addition, we offer additional cloud services to meet enterprise high availability and compliance challenges.

Layered Tech applauds the advancements by CA Technologies, VMware and Citrix and we remain dedicate to offering the latest best of breed technologies with excellent service and support.

Kevin Van Mondfrans, VP of Product ManagementAbout the Author: As Vice President of Product Management at Layered Tech, Kevin Van Mondfrans (@VANMONDFRANS | +Kevin Van Mondfrans) is responsible for driving the Layered Tech portfolio of infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and managed service offerings. With more than 20 years of experience product development and marketing, Kevin has been delivering innovative computing, storage, cloud and service offering with companies such as HP, Dell, and Savvis.

Your Own Private Data Center

Published on January 15, 2010 in Dedicated Server Hosting, Grid Computing, Layered Technologies, LT News, Virtual Private Datacenter, Virtualization and Virtualization Hosting. Closed
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It’s undeniable – cloud computing and virtualized environments have evolved into enterprise-worthy infrastructure solutions.  But for enterprises, putting their data at risk on shared public servers still presents a security challenge they can’t overlook.  From our experiences working with enterprises of all sizes, we know that while they all have different business goals, they all have the same cloud environment needs: enterprise-class security, choice and flexibility.

To address enterprises’ concerns and strengthen cloud security, Layered Tech has developed a new Virtual Private Data Center (VPDC) platform that delivers a virtualized environment on servers dedicated to individual enterprise customers – in other words, customers aren’t sharing resources, which reduces their risk profile.  Our customers using the new platform will receive levels of managed services, security and flexibility via a proprietary API previously unavailable in an integrated offering.

While putting everything on the cloud might not necessarily be the best option, companies still want the cloud’s benefits, which is why we created this platform to offer enterprises a hybrid cloud computing approach that delivers the best of both worlds – traditional dedicated hosting and cloud computing.  To meet constantly changing enterprise needs, the virtualized platform gives customers the reliability and security of dedicated servers with the flexibility and scalability of virtual machines.

But what can this platform really do for your business?  Let’s break it down:

RELIABILITY:  You get the reliability and control of dedicated servers from your VPDC platform that operates exclusively within Layered Tech data centers.

CHOICE:  You can choose the virtualization platform that best suits your needs, including 3Tera’s AppLogic, VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V, because our VPDC offering is technology-agnostic.

FLEXIBILITY:  With our automated server provisioning system, enterprise customers can design, order and deploy a secure virtualized environment within an hour, instead of the weeks or months it can take many on-premise data centers to provision a similar solution.

CUSTOMIZATION:  Developers will have more than 100 applications immediately available to them through the new API; those developers then have access to the API for customizing additional applications of their choice.

SUPPORT SERVICES:  You can choose from a range of support options with the new VPDC platform’s tiered managed services, which lets you focus on managing your business, not your VPDC.  Support ranges from fully managed by Layered Tech to self-managed options with varying levels in between.

To learn more about the new VPDC platform, which will be available later in Q1 2010, click here!

Welcome to 2010!

Published on January 7, 2010 in Grid Computing, Hosting Industry, Layered Technologies, LT News, Virtual Private Datacenter, Virtualization and Virtualization Hosting. Closed
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Let’s kick off the New Year by sharing some industry insight about expected IT trends and the initiatives most likely to dominate IT budgets in 2010, according to Enterprise Systems Journal.  Their first newsletter of 2010 says businesses will increasingly adopt cloud computing and virtualization as viable and cost-effective infrastructure strategies.  It also weighs public vs. private clouds and discusses which meets business needs best.  And along with new technologies and strategies comes the need to adjust security practices to keep mission-critical data secure, while managing applications to meet end-user’s performance standards.

To highlight the private cloud trend, the Enterprise Systems’ newsletter includes an article authored by Layered Tech President and Founder Todd Abrams, called “Clouds in 2010: Will Yours Be Lined With Silver or Filled with Coal Dust?”  Todd shares his 2010 predictions for cloud computing’s growth and enterprise usage, all fueled by operational and financial improvements.  He discusses the advantages of private clouds for enterprise control and security and explains the value created by managed private cloud services.  For enterprises looking to better align IT solutions with overall corporate business needs, Todd advocates custom migration plans and says that successful enterprises will take a more holistic approach to their infrastructure.  Check out the entire article here!

Other interesting articles include:

Layered Tech Brings 3Tera’s AppLogic for Windows to the Grid

Published on November 4, 2008 in LT News, LT's The GRID Layer, Utility Computing, Utility Hosting and Virtual Private Datacenter. Closed Tags: , , , .
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Plano, TX – Layered Technologies, Inc. (Layered Tech), a leading worldwide provider of on-demand IT infrastructure, today announced that 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 means customers will have the same high-availability as their dedicated physical servers but with far more scalability, all for a fraction of the cost. Learn more >>

Virtualization creates profound cost savings for the Windows OS environment for several reasons, including that customers:

>> No longer have to buy and maintain hardware including servers, load balancers and SANs.

>> Save money because virtualization enables them to reduce the complexity of their operating environment by consolidating multiple physical servers onto a handful of virtual machines.

>> Save time when setting up new servers because virtualization software’s templating and snapshot capabilities can replicate entire OS and application set-ups in 10% of the time it takes with physical dedicated servers.

>> Eliminates the cost and complexity of maintaining and installing their OS because The Grid Layer® solution from Layered Tech means that management of virtual machines is handled by Layered Tech data center employees.

“In the current economic conditions where everyone is looking to spend less but still achieve their business objectives and profitability, Layered Tech is presenting customers with a particularly compelling opportunity to significantly cut costs by consolidating their Windows OS server operations onto our virtualization platform,” said Jack Finlayson, CEO of Layered Tech. “By bringing Windows OS onto The Grid Layer, we are literally creating a market that didn’t have a place before. To achieve virtualization’s high-availability, scalability and replication in a physical server environment would cost customers millions, yet with Layered Tech their cost is a tiny fraction of that.”

In conjunction with its new Windows OS/virtualization offering, Layered Tech has launched an Early Adopter Program (Request info) so that existing customers can transfer some of their Windows OS servers to Layered Tech’s grid to evaluate cost saving opportunities, as well as operational and performance improvements that come with Layered Tech’s virtualization solutions.

“We’re very excited to bring this offering to the market because our customers have been asking for Windows OS virtualization support, and now we’re making that possible by being the first to provide AppLogic 2.4,” said Layered Tech Chief Marketing Officer John Pozadzides. “Even in this tough economy we still have many customers who need to rapidly scale their computing capabilities because they’re experiencing explosive growth, are bringing on new customers or even that they’re expanding R&D. Having their Windows OS servers on a virtualization platform means they can consolidate servers with Layered Tech and have the scalability and redundancy they need, all while still operating within a fairly lean IT budget.”

In addition to the Windows OS environment, Layered Tech continues to offer The Grid Layer to enterprises and companies that use other operating systems, such as Linux and Unix. Customers of Layered Tech’s Grid Layer, including those operating on Windows OS, are now available to take advantage of its DEFCON managed services, enabling enterprises to scale the level of data center and server management that best fits their individual needs. 

To learn more, visit www.layeredtech.com or www.thegridlayer.com >>

HostingCon'08: Something Old, Something New…

Published on July 25, 2008 in Hosting Industry, Layered Technologies, LT News, LT's The GRID Layer, Utility Computing and Utility Hosting. Closed Tags: , , , , , .
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Visit BOOTH 301 for Live GRID/Cloud Computing DEMOS

This year “Booth #301″ will be stocked with something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.

Something OLD, Something NEW…

Returning to HostingCon for the 4th year in a row (OLD) will be some familiar faces from FastServers.Net. However, they will have a new-found image and a glitzy new booth sporting the (NEW) LayeredTech brand. Combined, you’ll see the latest “hosting vendor of choice” providing both self-managed and fully-managed hosting solutions as well as innovative virtualization and utility-based offerings.

Something BORROWED, Something BLUE…

Leading the way in technology innovation focused on virtualization (BORROWED term) is LayeredTech’s primary focus. In conjunction with our standard hosting solutions, we’ve been deemed the pioneers in on-demand virtualization offerings including Grid computing, Hyper-V, Citrix, Sun Solaris, as well as many others. All this taken into account, LayeredTech’s recent rebranding efforts include a new (Yes, BLUE) logo which reflects the layers of products, services and innovation being offered today. So stop by and CHECK IT OUT!

Witness the power of the GRID with a live demo!

Booth 301: The Grid is ready. Are you?

Stop by Booth 301 and learn more about LayeredTech’s unique “GRID/CLOUD” computing solution, the ultra reliable multi-server configuration that is scalable, affordable, reliable and yes, simple to use. Come by, ask questions, see a live demo and let’s talk about the technology that can enable your organization to offer GRID/CLOUD Computing.

Wed 8:30am Presentation: “Every Cloud has a Silver Lining” by John Pozadzides, CMO, Layered Tech

Have you ever wondered how Cloud Computing is going to change this industry? If yes, then grab your coffee and come listen to John Pozadzides, CMO of LayeredTech, who will be presenting WEDNESDAY from 8:30am to 9:15am. He will bring to light key trends in hosting virtualization. After this AM session, you’ll walk away smarter and more stimulated (ahhh coffee!). If you miss it, stop by Booth 301. We’ll be happy to answer your questions.

We’re looking forward to this event – seeing friends old and new. If nothing else, stop by, say hi and pick-up some of our cool free schwag.

If you are not attending HostingCon 2008 and want educate yourself on GRID/CLOUD computing you can schedule a web demo and one of our highly trained GRID Experts will walk you through the features and benefits.

Schedule a GRID DEMO NOW!