John Pozadzides

Recently Layered Tech announced it is the first hosting company to giveenterprise customers the option of transferring their Microsoft Windowsoperating system (Windows OS) environment to an AppLogic-based cloud computingsolution. Layered Tech will use 3Tera's AppLogic 2.4 to enable customers to runtheir Windows OS platform in a virtual computing environment, which the company said will allow customers to have the same high-availability as their dedicatedphysical servers but with far more scalability, all for a fraction ofthe cost.

HostReview contacted the company to get more information about this development. In this executive interview, we talk to Mr. John John Pozadzides, VP and VP & CMO of Layered Technologies.

John served inexecutive level positions for Cable & Wireless and SAVVIS Communications,including positions as Vice President of Sales and Vice President of StrategicAlliances.  He has lectured on topics including Web hosting, Internetarchitecture, Internet security, professional selling and accountmanagement.  In addition to a wide variety of corporate management programs,John studied finance and economics at the University of Texas at Dallas andcompleted programs at the Harvard Graduate School of Business, Harvard LawSchool and the Disney Institute.

Does LayeredTech's new offering -- transfer to Windows OS environments to an AppLogic-basedcloud computing platform, support the entire range of Microsoft serversoftware?

Currently, theAppLogic platform will support 32 bit versions of Windows 2003 and 2008. 64 bit support is planned for future releases.

How do virtualizationsolutions from Layered Tech help enterprises cut costs?

Simplicity is one ofkeys to cost savings for our customers.  Running enterprise applicationson The Grid Layer is actually far simpler than using traditional hardwarebecause you do not need to deploy, configure or maintain actual physical orsoftware resources.

When you run anapplication in the cloud on The Grid Layer, all of the infrastructure resourcesneeded are assembled and configured automatically on demand.  Whenadditional performance is required, it takes just minutes to increase theresources available to your application, resulting in optimum control andflexibility.  Accelerating application availability drives costefficiencies.

In a morefundamental way, The Grid Layer eliminates the upfront server costs associatedwith traditional clustered server environments.  This server consolidationis a powerful driver of cost reduction for our customers, as well as the moretraditional capital expense elimination achieved through our hostedvirtualization environment.   

Are there otherbenefits in term of security and scalability?

On both the securityand scalability fronts, our cloud computing offering, The Grid Layer, solvesmany of the early challenges faced by virtualization providers.  We have apowerful graphical configuration interface which enables users to create entirevirtual infrastructures within the Grid, comprised of a wide range of devicesincluding firewalls, load balancers and servers.  Switching, routing and monitoringare all built into the Grid as well as complete physical redundancy and RAID 1network duplication of data across physical nodes.

Therefore, ourapproach provides complete redundancy within the system, with built-inmonitoring and self-healing capabilities.  The Grid will restart anyapplication running on a physical node that fails by moving it to a separatenode within minutes.

The proven abilityto scale a single client grid to well over 100 physical nodes means that evenextremely large clients can obtain incredible resource density if required. For example, a 100-node grid with quad core, dual processor nodes, eachcontaining 1TB hard drives and 32GB of RAM would equate to 800 processor cores,3.2TB of RAM and 100TB of storage space.

What areAppLogic's strong points over other cloud computing solutions?

3tera’s breakthroughAppLogic technology packages the entire multi-tier application or service intoa logical entity and manages it as a single system.  AppLogic is the firstgrid operating system that is designed for web applications and is optimizedfor transactional and I/O-intensive workloads.  It uses advancedvirtualization technologies to ensure complete compatibility with existingoperating systems, middleware and applications.  Additionally,off-the-shelf OS and applications are fully compatible within The Grid Layer(based on AppLogic).

Can you sharewith our readers some details about the hardware side of Layered Tech’s grid,such as number of datacenters and their geographic distribution?

Certainly.  Wemaintain a global presence with our data centers and network, serving thousandsof clients internationally.  We currently have 8 purpose-built facilitieslocated in the U.S., Amsterdam, Tokyo, and other locations.  Thesetop-tier data centers are the cornerstones of our worldwide hostingcapabilities and offer unparalleled security, network availability, capacity,processing power, and operations management.

What is the EarlyAdopter Program?

For our customerswho are interested in migrating to a Windows environment on our Grid, we areoffering special pricing and close support to incent and facilitate migration. We intend to offer this program through Q1 2009.

Do you planfurther developments in the areas of virtualization and cloud computing?

Listening to ourcustomers means that we are constantly innovating new virtualization featuresand expanded cloud computing functionality.  We are committed to stayingon the forefront of virtualization innovation, and make ongoing investments inresearch and development.  This is an exciting time in the hosted cloudcomputing industry, and we anticipate many more advances in how we provideenterprise-grade virtualization solutions.