HostReview.com Web Hosting Interviews

An Interview with
Barry X Lynn, Chairman and CEO, and Peter Nickolov, President, COO and CTO of 3Tera,

September 15, 2008

In this exclusive interview, HostReview asks 3Tera's Barry Lynn and Peter Nickolov questions about their company's cloud computing platform and general internet technology trends.

1.       The "cloud" is attracting much attention these days. How would you explain the term to an audience without a significant technology background?

Cloud Computing is massively scalable (both up and down) information technology for general purpose computing, available as a utility.  Like other utilities, Cloud Computing enables anyone to access to world class technology on a pay-for-what-you-use basis.

2.       Which new technologies and practices do you think make storage and computing in the cloud possible?

This is a good question, because cloud data centers obviously aren’t run like traditional data centers. There are a few basic technical underpinnings:

First is storage. Unlike traditional deployments where specific servers are dedicated to an application, servers in a cloud data center can become part of any application. Therefore each server must be able to access any data. This requires rethinking storage, because traditional SANs don’t provide sufficient bandwidth.

Second is security. Cloud users by definition share infrastructure, but the question is at what level. Some services share servers between users, but at 3tera we chose to temporarily dedicate servers to users for improved security.

Third is infrastructure. Most online applications aren’t comprised of a single piece of software, but an integration of software and infrastructure like storage, networking, and middleware. Cloud providers have to determine how to provide that infrastructure. At 3tera, we’ve developed technology that enables users to define infrastructure for applications themselves. Our infrastructure editor is one of the defining characteristics of our AppLogic system.

3.       Some people say computing in the cloud is simply a return to the time of big iron and terminals. How would you comment such a view?

The only thing “big iron and terminals” has in common with Cloud Computing is that computing resources are accessed remotely.  But Cloud Computing is far from only about access.   It’s about deployment – the ability to put together an application and have it ready to run immediately without going through the steps of hardware provisioning, infrastructure configuring, etc.  The difference, in short, is like the difference between having to engineer a custom solution for every phone call you make vs. just picking up the phone, getting a dial tone, and calling.

4.       Please tell us about 3Tera's joint work with Layered Tech.

Too many companies are trying to be both technology developer and service operator, but these are really very different skillsets. Therefore, in order to provide the best service to users, we decided to partner with companies that like Layered Technologies that specialize in building data centers and operating thousands of servers. We now have partners in eight countries on four continents, but Layered was our first data center partner, and still operates more AppLogic resources than anyone else.

5.       What benefits does your Cloud Computing solution provide?  What payment options do you offer?

A great deal of what’s written about Cloud Computing focuses on getting servers on-demand because it’s simple to understand. However, this is just the proverbial tip of the iceberg.

As I mentioned above, AppLogic users can integrate distributed application into portable, scalable systems while retaining all their existing code and middleware. The result is the application becomes packaged, and can be operated as a unit. Users can start, stop, backup, scale or even migrate an application with a single command. Therefore, in addition to the capital expense saved for servers, running systems this way obviously creates enormous savings in labor as well.

More importantly, though, these complex operations are no longer risky. If they need to double resources, they simply do. If they need presence in Europe or Asia they simply migrate a copy of the app there. As the task teams and six month project plans vanish, operations becomes much more flexible and adaptable to business needs.

6.       What differentiates 3Tera's offering from existing solutions?

A few questions back I brought up the issue of how Cloud Computing providers deal with infrastructure beyond the simple virtual server. Some vendors have simply chosen to ignore the need. Others have pre-provisioned certain elements of infrastructure like security zones or load balancers and provide users an API to access them. Only 3tera has tackled the more fundamental issue of packaging infrastructure with the application. It’s this core technical difference that simplifies operations and makes them more flexible.

On the business side, while most vendors are trying to build their own cloud, 3tera is in the business of enabling Cloud Computing. We partner with data center operators throughout the world. Our partners can offer standard AppLogic “virtual private data centers,” virtual private servers, storage services, hosted software stacks like Ruby on Rails, and other services. Some have used AppLogic as the foundation for other services, from voice over IP to SaaS. In essence, different cloud providers address different customer needs and AppLogic helps them build on a robust platform rather than building yet another cloud from scratch.

We also offer enterprise licenses for AppLogic so users can have the same services in their data centers as well as in the cloud. Whether they choose to design and test applications in the cloud and then run them in their data centers, or are looking for the ability to burst out of their data center when needs exceed capacity, Cloud Computing enables more flexible operations.

7.       There have been a few notable glitches in cloud services, for example in Amazon's S3. In the same time, stability is essential to the enterprise; how does your offering ensure uptime?

Cloud Computing isn’t a substitute for good architecture. We’ve designed our system to offer full redundancy and work with data center operators in different geographical areas to make it easier for users to architect their systems for maximum availability. We’ve also introduced our disaster recovery suite of appliance to make the task of business continuity a simple drag and drop operation.

It’s human nature to perceive isolated failures of one “brand” of a certain technology to be inherent in that technology.  But this should not be the case, especially, for or against Cloud Computing.  Actually, common sense dictates that the very nature of Cloud Computing exhibits much higher availability potential than traditional data center infrastructure.  It enables simple distribution of whole applications and the ability to copy applications and their resources in full state and store them, move them, recover them as easy as it is to do that with simple files in a more traditional environment.  But regardless of the nature of Cloud Computing, this only will be true of a “Cloud done right”.  If the architecture of the Cloud platform is flawed, then the Cloud will be flawed.

8.       Can smaller companies with a limited amount of technical knowledge use your service to setup their own servers and sites?

Of course.  AppLogic includes an ever expanding set of ready pre-configured software stacks like LAMP, .NET, Ruby on Rails, SugarCRM, and others that make it easier to deploy scalable applications.

9.       Finally, do you foresee wide adoption of Cloud Computing offerings?

Yes.  However, while Cloud Computing is revolutionary technologically, its adoption, over time, will be evolutionary.  While the transition started with companies running web based services in the cloud to take advantage of the scalability, more and more users turning to Cloud Computing both in the public web and behind their firewalls because it offers improved time to market and complete disaster recovery.  Eventually, Cloud Computing’s economics will lead folks to develop new applications and deploy existing applications in Clouds.  As Cloud storage services evolve, that same migration will happen to the data.  At that point, the “owned” data center has no more purpose.

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