Evaluating Public Cloud Computing Performance with CloudHarmony

October 27, 2011 Leave a Comment

With dozens of public cloud service providers on the market, offering a wide variety of services, standards, SLAs, and options, how does an IT manager make an informed decision on which provider to use?  Is it time in business? Location? Cost? Performance?

Pacific-Tier Communications met up with Jason Read, owner of CloudHarmony, a company specializing in benchmarking the cloud, at Studio City, California, on 25 October.  Read understands how confusing and difficult it is to evaluate different service providers without an industry-standard benchmark.  In fact, Read started CloudHarmony based on his own frustrations as a consultant helping a client choose a public cloud service provider, while attempting to sort through vague cloud resource and service terms used by industry vendors.

“Cloud is so different. Vendors describe resources using vague terminology like 1 virtual CPU, 50 GB storage. I think cloud makes it much easier for providers to mislead. Not all virtual CPUs and 50 GB storage volumes are equal, not by a long shot, but providers often talk and compare as if they are. It was this frustration that led me to create CloudHarmony” explained Read.

So, Read went to work creating a platform for not only his client, but also other consultants and IT managers that would give a single point of testing public cloud services not only within the US, but around the world.    Input to the testing platform came from aggregating more than 100 testing benchmarks and methodologies available to the public.  However CloudHarmony standardized on CentOS/RHEL Linux as an operating system  which all cloud vendors support, “to provide as close to an apples to apples comparison as possible” said Read.

Customizing a CloudHarmony Benchmark Test

Cloud harmony Configuration

Setting up a test is simple.  You go to the CloudHarmony Benchmarks page, select the benchmarks you would like to run, the service providers you would like to test, configurations of virtual options within those service providers, geographic location, and the format of your report.

Figure 1.  Benchmark Configuration shows a sample report setup.

“CloudHarmony is a starting point for narrowing the search for a public cloud provider” advised Read.  “We provide data that can facilitate and narrow the selection process. We don’t have all of the data necessary to make a decision related to vendor selection, but I think it is a really good starting point.

Read continued “for example, if a company is considering cloud for a very CPU intensive application, using the CPU performance metrics we provide, they’d quickly be able to eliminate vendors that utilize homogenous infrastructure with very little CPU scaling capabilities from small to larger sized instance.”

Cloud vendors listed in the benchmark directory are surprisingly open to CoudHarmony testing.  “We don’t require or accept payment from vendors to be listed on the site and included in the performance analysis” mentioned Read.  “We do, however, ask that vendors provide resources to allow us to conduct periodic compute benchmarking, continual uptime monitoring, and network testing.”

When asked if cloud service providers contest or object to CloudHarmony’s methodology or reports, Read replied “not frequently. We try to be open and fair about the performance analysis. We don’t recommend one vendor over another. I’d like CloudHarmony to simply be a source of reliable, objective data. The CloudHarmony performance analysis is just a piece of the puzzle, users should also consider other factors such as pricing, support, scalability, etc.”

Cloud Harmony Benchmark Report

During an independent trial of CloudHarmony’s testing tool, Pacific-Tier Communications selected the following parameters to complete a sample CPU benchmark:

  • CPU Benchmark (Single Threaded CPU)
  • GMPbench math library
  • Cloud Vendor – AirVM (MO/USA)
  • Cloud Vendor – Amazon EC2 (CA/USA)
  • Cloud Vendor – Bit Refinery Cloud Hosting (CO/USA)
  • 1/2/4 CPUs
  • Small/Medium/Large configs
  • Bar Chart and Sortable Table report

The result, shown above in Figure 2., shows a test result including performance measured against each of the above parameters.  Individual tests for each parameter are available, allowing a deeper look into the resources used and test results based on those resources.

In addition, as shown in Figure 3., CloudHarmony provides a view providing uptime statistics of dozens of cloud service providers over a period of one year.  Uptime statistics showed a range (at the time of this article) between 98.678% availability to 100% availability, with 100% current uptime (27 October).

Cloud Service Provider Status

Who Uses CloudHarmony Benchmark Testing?

While the average user today may be in the cloud computing industry, likely vendors eager to see how their product compares against competitors, Read targets CloudHarmony’s product to “persons responsible for making decisions related to cloud adoption.”  Although he admits that today most users of the site lean towards the technical side of the cloud service provider industry.

Running test reports on cloud harmony is based on a system of purchasing credits.  Read explained “we have a system in place now where the data we provide is accessible via the website or web services – both of which rely on web service credits to provide the data. Currently, the system is set up to allow 5 free requests daily. For additional requests, we sell web service credits where we provide a token that authorizes you to access the data in addition to the 5 free daily requests.”

The Bottom Line

“Cloud is in many ways a black box” noted Read.  “Vendors describe the resources they sell using sometimes similar and sometimes very different terminology. It is very difficult to compare providers and to determine performance expectations. Virtualization and multi-tenancy further complicates this issue by introducing performance variability. I decided to build CloudHarmony to provide greater transparency to the cloud.”

And to both vendors and potential cloud service customers, provide an objective, honest, transparent analysis of commercially available public cloud services.

Check out CloudHarmony and their directory of services at cloudharmony.com.

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Filed under Cloud Computing, Entrepreneurs, startup business Tagged with , ,

Hunter Newby on Communications in America – Net Neutrality

July 10, 2011 8 Comments

This is Part 3 in a series of interviews with Hunter Newby, Founder and CEO of Allied Fiber

Hunter Newby, Founder and CEO of Allied Fiber believes most people do not fully understand the meaning of “Net Neutrality.”  There is a perception that “Net Neutrality is about the Internet,” says Newby.  “It is not, it is about physical access to the Internet.”

HunterNewbyAnd this is a combination of controlling the end points (users, computers, and applications), controlling what data or content the end points can access, and what other distant end point destinations are available.  Internet gatekeepers, including Internet Service Providers, telecom carriers, and governments, control “who can connect, what they can connect to, and how they connect” claims Newby.

“They are (the gatekeepers) going to have the ability to determine what we can or cannot see” Newby adds, “and that is what scares me the most.”

Newby is quick to point out the government states they will protect the rights of people to connect to “legal” content.  But who makes the decision what legal content is?  He uses the example of WikiLeaks.  While some may find the information scary, embarrassing, inappropriate, or unethical, the question is whether or not the data contained within a WikiLeaks website should be blocked from end points (users), and who is in a position to make that content-access decision?

If the gatekeeper is given that authority, and there no other access options available to end points, then the concept of Net Neutrality becomes a tool for the gatekeepers to control access to global Internet-enabled information resources.

For Newby, that presents a challenge and opportunity

The Neutral Connectivity Buss

Newby is an American, a patriot, and wants to ensure America’s economy and society remains strong, and stays in a global leadership role.  However he still acknowledges America has shortfalls in delivering broadband to all end points within the country.  His own company, Allied Fiber, “is created to address America’s need for more broadband access, wireless backhaul, data center distribution and lower latency communications services.”

And here is the problem.  Long haul fiber optic cables represent the physical means of not only connecting cities and regions to the global Internet (as one network among many levels of communications and connectivity), but also provide a means for end points to connect with other end points around the world.  In the United States nearly all telecom carriers operating long haul or long distance fiber also directly support end points.

This means that each long haul fiber operator has a direct interest in containing as many end points within their network as possible.  This includes moving up the OSI Stack to provide end points with additional value-added services to end points, in addition to physical access.  The carrier then may include everything from applications to content distribution within their own suite of services, either limiting access to competitive sources of similar services – or Newby points out in a worst case outright blocking those services making end points “hostages behind the gatekeeper.”  telecom-tower-at-sunrise

Newby promotes the concept of building neutral connectivity busses on the long haul networks, connecting competitive regional, metro, and local networks to the buss without concern of needing a traditional long haul carrier to provide that service – a carrier which may wish to restrict the local companies to those services or content available through the carrier’s own content or value-added services.

The closer a neutral long haul connectivity buss can get to local access providers, the easier it will become for new access providers to emerge, as they will have more options for global interconnection, free from the legacy of a single long haul provider with a monopoly on access and transit connectivity.

Newby’s idea of a neutral connectivity buss is not limited to copper or fiber to the end point.  In rural areas it is clear wireless technologies may provide better and faster connectivity options than physical cable.  Thus, in Allied’s case, Newby promotes the idea of building neutral towers at each in-line amplifier or signal regeneration site.

“We can promote this due to our multi-duct design by using the short haul duct/cable for splicing in towers, etc. It is not limited to just the amp sites” continues Newby.

This would further allow multiple wireless providers to emerge, serve, and compete in areas where only large carriers had the means to operate in the past.

Interconnection, Bypass, and Competition

Carrying a pedigree which includes the legacy of building one of the world’s largest carrier interconnection facilities (60 Hudson’s Telx Meet-Me-Room), Newby is one of the few people around the industry with a core understanding of carrier bypass and interconnections.  The “carrier hotel” industry was born to address the need of competitive communications companies to bypass traditional incumbent, or monopoly carriers to directly interconnect without the burden of buying transit connections.

In the United States, this may have been a requirement (in the old days) for Sprint to connect with MCI, without requiring a transit connection through AT&T to make the link.  As we added international carriers, such as British Telecom or France Telecom, and they were given the opportunity to own end-to-end circuit capacity on submarine fiber cables or satellites, they were also given the ability to directly connect with Sprint, MCI, or other emerging carriers at a neutral carrier hotel without the need for transit connections.

The concept of neutral Internet Exchange Points, Carrier Ethernet Exchanges, and neutral tandem telephony switches are all a continuation of the need for bypassing individual or monopoly carriers.

Newby now wants to take that several steps further.  “At Allied Fiber we want to be able to provide (any service provider or carrier) multiple paths of connectivity.  If they (the service provider) can connect to us, then they are free to do (or connect to) what they wish.”

A strong advocate of distributed interconnect and peering, Newby also sees Allied Fiber’s infrastructure as a giant, neutral carrier interconnection point.  As each in line amplifier or regeneration site requires a physical support facility, and as noted will also support antenna towers, it is also reasonable to extend the site to include neutral carrier colocation and neutral interconnection both within the site, as well as along the Allied Fiber route to other similar interconnection points.

As Allied Fiber also intends to extend their fiber to existing major and second tier carrier hotels (such as 60 Hudson, etc), this will give connecting service providers the ability to interconnect with other service providers throughout the United States and international locations through a neutral connectivity system – further relieving themselves of monopoly pricing and service restriction potentially imposed by incumbent or transit carriers.

And the product of this exercise is greater competition.  Newby is in the business of providing the “connectivity buss,”  and openly states Allied Fiber’s policy is “come one, come all.”  Regional and local networks/service providers can then take the transit carrier factor out of their list of business risk, with an outcome of better broadband and Internet access to end points throughout America.  A more competitive America.

Read other posts in this series, including:

Filed under Entrepreneurs, International ICT, International Relations, Internet and Telecom, Net Neutrality Tagged with , ,

Hunter Newby on Communications in America – Are We Competitive?

June 25, 2011 5 Comments

This is Part 1 in a series highlighting Hunter Newby’s thoughts and visions of communications in America.  Part 1 will highlight Newby’s impressions of America’s competitiveness in the global telecom-enabled community.  Additional articles will touch on net neutrality, the “ying and yang” of the telecom industry, as well as  the dilemma of supporting telecom “end points.”

HunterNewbyMembers and guests of the Internet Society gathered at Sentry Center in New York on 14 June for the regional INET Conference.  The topic, “It’s your call, What kind of Internet do you want?” attracted Internet legends including Vint Cerf and Sir Timothy John “Tim” Berners-Lee, as well as a number of distinguished speakers and panelists representing a wide range of industry sectors.

Hunter Newby, Founder and CEO of Allied Fiber, joined the panel “Pushing Technology Boundaries” to discuss the future of Internet-enabled innovation.  The panel had robust discussions on many topics including net neutrality, infrastructure, telecom law, regulation, and the role of service providers.

Pacific-Tier Communications caught up with Newby on 22 June to learn more about his views on communications in America.

Are We Competitive?

Newby believes America lags behind other nations in developing the infrastructure needed to compete in a rapidly developing global community.  Much of the shortfall is related to physical telecommunications infrastructure needed to connect networks, people, content, and machines at the same level as other countries in Asia and Europe.

“The US lacks an appreciation for the need to understand physical (telecom) infrastructure” said Newby.  He went on to describe the lack of standard terms in the US, such as “Broadband Communications.” Newby continued “In some locations, such as North Carolina, broadband communications are considered anything over 128Kbps (Kilobits per second).”

Newby note there is considerable disinformation in the media related to the US communications infrastructure.  Although the US does have a national broadband plan, in reality the infrastructure is being built by companies with a priority to meet the needs of shareholders. Those priorities do not necessarily reflect the overall needs the American people.

While some companies have made great progress bringing high performance telecom and Internet access to individual cities and towns, Newby is quick to remind us that “we cannot solve telecom problems in a single  city or location, and (use that success) to declare victory as a country.”  Without having a national high performance broadband and network infrastructure, the US will find it difficult to continue attracting the best talent to our research labs and companies, eroding our competitiveness not only in communications, but also as a country and economy.

Newby returns to a recurring theme in his discussions on communications.  There are no connectivity “clouds” as commonly shown in presentations and documents related to the space between end points in the Internet (an end point being users, servers, applications, etc.).  The connectivity between end points happens on physical “patch panels,” telecom switches, and routers.  This happens in the street, at the data center, carrier hotel, central office, or exchange point.

Bringing it All Down to Layer 1 – Optical Fiber

Newby believes the basis of all discussions related to communications infrastructure starts at the right of way.  When access to a ground or aerial right of way (or easement) is secured, then install fiber optic cable.  Lots of fiber optic cable.  Long haul fiber, metro fiber, and transoceanic submarine fiber.  Fiber optic cable allows tremendous amounts of information to travel from end points to other end points, whether in a local area, or across wide geographies.

Long distance and submarine fiber optic cable are essential in providing the infrastructure needed to move massive amounts of information and data throughout the US and the world.  While there is still a large amount of communications provided via satellite and microwave, only fiber optic cable has the resources and capacity needed to move data supporting communications within the network or Internet-enabled community.

Newby makes a point that in the US, very few companies operate long haul fiber networks, and those companies control access to their communications infrastructure with tariffs based on location, distance, traffic volumes (bandwidth/ports), and types of traffic.  Much of the existing fiber optic infrastructure crossing the US is old, and cannot support emerging communication transmission rates and technologies, limiting choices and competitiveness to a handful of companies – none of which provide fiber as a utility or as a neutral tariffed product.

As the cost of long distance or long haul fiber is extremely high, most carriers do not want to carry the expense of building their own new fiber optic infrastructure, and prefer to lease capacity from other carriers.  However, the carriers owning long haul fiber do not want to lease or sell their capacity to potentially competitive communications carriers.

Most US communications carriers operating their own long haul fiber optic networks also provide additional value-added services to their markets.  This might include voice services, cable or IP television, virtual private networks, and Internet access.  Thus the carrier is reluctant to lease their capacity to other competitive or virtual carriers who may compete with them in individual or global  markets.

Thus a dilemma – how do we build the American fiber backbone infrastructure to a level needed to provide a competitive, high capacity national infrastructure without aggressive investment in new fiber routes?

Newby has responded to the dilemma and challenge with his company Allied Fiber, and advises “the only way to properly build the physical infrastructure required to support all of this (infrastructure need) is to have a unique model at the fiber layer similar to what Allied (Allied Fiber) has, but not solely look at fiber as the only source of revenue.”

For example, Newby advises revenue can be supplemented by offering interconnecting carriers and other network or content providers space in facilities adjacent to the backbone fiber traditionally used for only in-line-amplifiers (ILAs) and fiber optic signal regeneration.  The ILA facility itself “could be an additional source of recurring revenue,” while allowing the fiber provider to remain a neutral utility.

Or in short, Newby explains “we need to put a 60 Hudson or One Wilshire every 60 miles” to allow unrestricted interconnection between carriers, networks, and content providers at a location closest to the infrastructure supporting end points.

The Backbone

America can compete, and break the long distance dilemma.  Newby is certain this is possible, and has a plan to bring the US infrastructure up to his highest standards.  The idea is really pretty simple.

  1. Build a high capacity fiber optic backbone passing through all major markets within the US.
  2. Connect the backbone to local metro fiber networks (reference the Dark Fiber Community)
  3. Connect the backbone to wireless networks and towers (and provide the access location)
  4. Connect the backbone to all major physical interconnection points, carrier hotels, and Internet Exchange Points (IXPs)
  5. Make access to the backbone available to all as a neutral, infrastructure utility

Newby strongly advises “If you do not understand the root of the issue, you are not solving the real problems.”

And the root of the issue is to ensure everybody in America has unrestricted access to unrestricted communications resources.

Hunter Newby, a 15-year veteran of the telecom networking industry, is the Founder and CEO of Allied Fiber.

Read other articles in this series, including:

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A Look Into Moldova’s ICT Spirit with Grigore Raileanu

February 5, 2011 1 Comment

Moldova has a lot of entrepreneurs.  As you walk along the streets in Chisinau, the capital city, you constantly pass signs advertising software development companies, data centers, and computer sales.  As citizens of a “developing” country, young people know they need to work smarter, harder, and more creatively to compete with not only each other, but also others countries in Europe and the world.

Grigore Raileanu is one of those aggressive young people.  And an entrepreneur with a successful company named Remsys.  In fact, you may not even know Remsys is a Moldovan company, possibly believing it is based in the US!

Grigore met with us on 4 Feb 2011 to talk about ICT, innovation, and Moldova.  You can listen to the audio file HERE

John Savageau: Today with have with us, Mr. Gigore Raileanu, who does business development with a Moldovan company called Remsys.  Good afternoon Grigore!

RaileanuGrigore Raileanu: Good afternoon John and everyone!

John Savageau: So, please start us off and give us a little background on yourself, and give us a little background on Remsys.

RaileanuGrigore Raileanu: I’m actually doing business development for my first company Remsys.  This company has successfully grown to thousands of systems, managed systems, and heterogeneous infrastructure.  We are positioning ourselves as a managed solutions provider for small and medium businesses.

We are also doing 24 hours (a day) custom technical solutions for our clients, and we are designing and managing complex infrastructures, networks, fighting SPAM, and building clouds.

John Savageau: That’s exciting.  I believe that Remsys has roots based in web hosting and managed services, are you expanding on the initial concept of the company?

Grigore Raileanu: At first our customers were mainly hosting companies, but as I said we have repositioned as a managed solutions provider for small and medium business.  So it’s not only hosting and the like, but our customers quite big, and we even have video-on-demand providers and medical companies.  So it’s not only hosting.

John Savageau: And you are not just limited to Moldovan companies, you also go outside of Moldova?

Grigore Raileanu: Well our companies (clients) are mostly out of Moldova.  A lot of the Moldovan companies we are working for, are actually subsidiaries of foreign companies.

John Savageau: So let’s move on and talk a little about Moldovan ICT.  We’re curious, (you) being an entrepreneur and running your companies.  How do you feel about the ability of Moldovan companies, not only to compete in Moldova against foreign companies, but also within global markets?

Grigore Raileanu: In my opinion Moldovan companies are highly competitive.  Firstly because of costs.  Our teams are delivering full project lifecycle from development and testing, to technical support, and hosting.

ICT companies in Moldova are mostly oriented to business process outsourcing, like software development, testing, or eCommerce.

Many private companies are opening and operating their offices here in Moldova.  This way our companies can be considered as competing on the global market.

John Savageau: Do you have any significant strategies, or ideas you use to make your company – or other Moldovan companies competitive in a global market?

Grigore Raileanu: Actually we are working to improve our technical team skills, our procedures, training, participate in different expositions in order to get more skilled people.

John Savageau: Do you believe the academic community, or education system,… are they preparing workers well enough to compete in the workforce, or to meet your needs with technical or management-level talent?

Grigore Raileanu: I think that our academic community can do it better.  Actually, the universities are not able to satisfy the demand.  Most importantly the quality of studies has to be improved a lot.

Companies spend a lot of resources and money in order to educate and graduate students, as the university’s programs are outdated and need to be revised.

John Savageau: And how about the teachers and instructors,… are they prepared to teach students what they need, or do the instructors also need to increase their capacity?

Grigore Raileanu: Yes, as far as I know, our teachers are also working in ICT companies, so mostly they are involved in the continual process of education.

John Savageau: As far as the students, do the students also have an opportunity to have internships or participation with priovate companies while they are in university?

Grigore Raileanu: Yes, even the ICT Association has such programs, and are running internships, and Moldovan students are participating and gaining knowledge – they are even getting to know the companies they may work with in the future.

John Savageau: Outside of Chisinau, Chisinau being the largest city, with obviously the most resources available – how about the countryside – what is the future of children in the countryside for participating in ICT?

Grigore Raileanu: I think we need to consider that people should not orient towards Chisinau only.  We have a lot of great place like Balti, Cahul, Tiraspol, and we must build our IT development centers there as well.

John Savageau: Is there a  partnership opportunity between private companies and the academic community, or private companies and the government for that matter?

Grigore Raileanu: Actually, yes.  Our association of private IT companies is doing that.  They are doing a lot to improve the situation, and also to change the educational programs and curriculum for our universities.  Also, work with the government to get better conditions for taxes.

Up until this year there was no tax for programmer’s or software engineer’s income.

John Savageau: Let me move on to a different topic, that is cloud computing.  This is a big buzzword.  Everybody around the world talks about cloud computing.  Is cloud computing important to your company, or to Moldova?

Grigore Raileanu: I think yes.  Actually, like you said, cloud is a buzzword, every speaks about cloud, but people understand different things about this.

In my opinion, the cloud is infrastructure able to scale on demand, it is highly secure, and able to decrease IT costs.  Cloud computing will have a significant impact on Moldova, but there is still no market for this in my opinion.

We have to create, and stimulate this market somehow.

I’ve also heard that our government is going to launch, or already launched, a Moldavian cloud project.  It is looking to improve the government, and its subsidiary state corporations by owning the highest available and scalable IT infrastructure.

John Savageau: How about Software as a Service (SaaS).  There are a lot of software companies, specifically in Chisinau.  Do Moldovan companies have an opportunity to develop SaaS applications on a global scale?

Grigore Raileanu: Well, yes, and we are already doing it.  But it is not for internal use, I mean it is not for the Moldavian market.

John Savageau: Is that still an opportunity to learn those skills and be prepared once cloud computing is a factor in Moldova?

Grigore Raileanu: I thin kwe have many things to learn, and improve, in order to create and launch this market.  But yes, there is a place for this market here in Moldova.

John Savageau: How do you believe that Moldovan companies should approach the global market?  Again, we know there is business inside Moldova, but there is also a very large world outside of Moldova – how do you approach that global market?

Grigore Raileanu: Moldova has a lot of companies that are subsidiaries and offices of global companies.  Moldova has to deliver something better in order to compete with countries like India, the Philippines, and so on.  So I think that we will lead by our cultural approach, we are more closed to the occident compared to the Indians or Philippines.

John Savageau: For people who are adults, or have not grown up in the Internet age from childhood accessing Facebook, Skype, and things like that where it is normal, how does the 25~40 age group – how do you think they are going to globalization of communications, and societies and things – are they ready for it?

Grigore Raileanu: Yeah, I am sure they are, it’s not really hard.  From my experience I have talked with people who have never seen a computer.  And if that person is young, has elementary skills, they can work it out and improve their skills.

John Savageau: What so you see as a future for Moldova?  I mean if you have a white board, and you have any idea that you want to put on the white board, what should Moldova do to make itself more competitive, and become a factor in the global economy or in the global marketplace?

Grigore Raileanu: I think Moldova has to orient on mobile services, startups, and even why not build centers for startups to meet investors, governments, and work together to launch some new companies with new ideas.

Maybe the next Facebook will be launched right here in Moldova!

John Savageau: If the Moldova cloud, the government cloud, actually moves forward as aggressively as it does (is planned), that might be one of the first successful cloud projects in the world (government clouds), which means that Moldovan companies that participate would be able to replicate that process in other developing countries in Africa, eastern Europe, Asia,..

How do you feel about that?  Are you ready to go there?

Grigore Raileanu: Of course, being a patriot, I would be very happy because my country is one of the first countries able to launch this project and to give a good example for different countries.

John Savageau: Any other ideas you would like to pass on to the global ICT community, about Moldova, your company, yourself?

Grigore Raileanu: Well my company, we are starting some nation-wide programs, and we are very present on the Moldavian market, and maybe we will have some meetings this year, and bring our services into the (global) market, and if there is no demand for some kinds services we will try to create it, so everyone can benefit.

John Savageau: Thank you very much for taking the time this afternoon.  I wish you and Remsys, and Moldova the best of luck.

Filed under Cloud Computing, Entrepreneurs, Government Regulatory, International ICT, Internet and Telecom, Social Issues, Social Networking Tagged with , ,

How Moldova’s Academic Community Prepares Students for the Internet Age – An Interview with Dr. Victor Besliu

February 4, 2011 Leave a Comment

On 2 Feb 2011 we met with Dr. Victor Besliu, Chairman of the of Automation and Information Technology faculty at Moldova Technical University.  Dr. Besliu is a graduate of the Moscow Technical University, and has many strong ideas and recommendations for how Moldova can make students and graduates more competitive not only in the Moldova ICT community, but also the global community.

The interview was conducted mainly in Romanian language, with translation done by Ion Stanciu.  You can listen to the entire audio recording of the interview in Romanian HERE.

Main topics discussed during the interview included;

1.  His opinions on Moldova’s eReadiness

  • He conducted extensive research on the topic during 2005 and 2009
  • Moldova still has only a couple of universities with curriculum focusing on ICT (information and communications technologies)
  • Moldova Technical University (MTU) does offer a major in computer science
  • MTU has around 500 graduates from the program each year
  • Moldova currently has approximately 1500 professional, qualified ICTR specialists working in government and private industry
  • He considers the quality of Moldovan graduates quite high, as most are actually being recruited to work in foreign countries following university

2.  His opinions on how well Moldova is meeting the needs of children, preparing them to function and succeed in an Internet and computer-enabled world.

  • Children at a young age need access to ICT tools, and are able to quickly absorb the technology
  • If children are given access to computers and Internet too early, they could run a risk of slipping into a virtual world, and not being able to function correctly in social environments

3.  On distance education and eLearning

  • Moldova currently has no legal framework for eLearning, meaning formal credits towards degree programs are not available through online education
  • The academic community has begun discussion and planning to consider the question of incorporating eLearning into the curriculum, however that is still an open topic
  • There has not historically been a culture of lifelong learning in Moldova
  • Historically paper (degrees and diplomas) has been given higher status and more respect than experience or knowledge
  • Some face-to-face interaction in the education process is important

4.  On adult education

  • In the old days of the Soviet Union, there were age restrictions on persons entering degree programs (35)
  • Today, in Moldova, there are no age restrictions, allowing any person with prerequisite qualifications to apply for formal university programs
  • Many students from foreign countries apply to, and are accepted, into Moldova’s university system

5.  On how to make the Moldova education system more capable in meeting the needs of all students

  • Politicians must understand the role of communications, computers, and ICT education in the future of Moldova
  • Increase educator salaries and benefits to the level being a teacher in Moldova is an attractive profession
  • Many instructors are already working in private companies part time, allowing them to not only increase their income to the point of survival, but also to keep on top of new and emerging technologies
  • They are changing the university curriculum every 2~3 years based on technology and emerging ICT trends
  • Provide more opportunities for student internships in local companies to give them more practical knowledge of the concepts and theory learned in classrooms
  • Continue tracks within the ICT faculty that allow students to take courses to the degree level taught entirely in a foreign language, including French and English
  • Continue to emphasize beginning Internet and computer exposure into education system from the beginning – young students need to develop tacit knowledge of this technology and become computer/Internet literate not only to function in the workplace, but also in normal society

On a positive note, Dr. Besliu acknowledged many of MTU’s graduates are now well-positioned in Moldova companies, and that trend is expected to continue.  In addition, Many Moldovan expatriates are now returning home, further reinforcing Moldova’s ability to support development of a knowledge economy.


Please check Moldova technical University’s website for more information on their programs and activities.

Audio file for entire interview (in Romanian language) HERE

Filed under Entrepreneurs, International ICT, Internet and Telecom, Social Issues, Social Networking Tagged with , , ,

A Look into Moldova’s ICT Community with Ana Chirita

February 3, 2011 Leave a Comment

We first met Ana Chirita while surveying ICT companies in Moldova for a national cloud computing project.  As Executive Director of the Moldovan Association of Private ICT Companies, Ana provided introductions to local companies, industry background, and aggressive follow-on support to our project.  As an advocate and evangelist for her community, Ana plays an important role in developing Moldova’s ICT industry.  You can listen to the entire interview on audio here.

John Savageau: This morning we have Ms. Ana Chirita who is the Executive Director of the Moldovan Association of Private ICT (information and communications technology) Companies. Good morning Ana!

What I’d like to do is just have you start out and describe the purpose and the role of the Moldovan Association of Private ICT Companies. What is it?

Ana Chirita: It is an association formed of 29 companies, and we are comfortably growing. The main reason to have this group of companies come together is in a way, to have a common vision of how the ICT sector should be developed. And, in a way achieve the main goal up front, which is growing the ICT sector and having it be the main driver for the whole economy of the country.

So basically what we do is represent our company’s interests through constructive dialog. With government we also do promotion of our companies. We try to reach certain levels of education and HR development that can help our companies grow. Because, one of the key issues they have put in their strategy is to help out the industry through investments in education and having good specialists that can work for them (the member companies).

We also focus on opening markets, market development – both locally and internationally. So we do a whole range of activities that help our companies get more visible, grow their revenues, and become viable partners.

John Savageau: And how did you find your way into the association?

Ana Chirita: it was very interesting in a way… I received an email from the current deputy minister (Dona Scola, Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Information, Technology, and Communications). By then, Dona was working at Chemonics on a project. That was about a year and a half ago.

I just received an email, “would you like to apply for a job?” “Please send me your CV.”

I did not know Dona by then, so I did not know what the job was for, what it was about, what should be done, what I was supposed to do, … So I just send my CV in and said “OK.” The I called for an interview, not even know for what kind of a job! That was quite fun.

I entered the room and there were six men, the current board of directors of the association, and Dona helping out the board.

Then they started asking a lot of questions. I was like, “what?…” The interview took about one hour, I’d say, or an hour and a half. In three, four languages or so. Everybody talking their own language – Romanian, French, English… Then I got out of there and said “oh my gosh… what was that? I didn’t know what I was coming for… I didn’t know what I was supposed to do – just so many questions. ”

In two hours I received a call, “we want to hire you.” So basically that’s how it started. I had my first meeting, we signed a contract, and that was my way into the ICT Association.

John Savageau: It seems like you’ve done pretty good getting 29 companies into the association. Do you have any examples of specific benefits the ICT community members have gained from participating in the association?

Ana Chirita: Yes, I’d say the first thing is they get exposure with, and get dialog with the government. Which means they will know everything that is going around that is in the ICT sector, and what the government wants to do. That is strategy, it means different laws, it means different aspects of that kind of which they can benefit from.

For example, let’s say the fiscal policy. The government was changing the fiscal policy last year, and they got an intervention. Like author rights. The government was changing the law on author rights – we got an intervention.

So basically it is exposure, information, and being able to contribute, to a certain extent, for the benefit of the companies.

Other things that I would like to mention are they (members) get various possibilities to work in a consolidated model. For example if we have campaigns with the universities, or training, or seminars, they get to work as a group, which means lowering their internal resources (costs), because when you do something alone it is one amount, when you do things in a group it is a completely different amount. Basically it is lowering the expenses.

The other thing is that all the training and certifications they get, they get with discounts through the association, which is up to 50% discount. For example, CMMI, for certifications and training in project management, human resource development – whatever it is they always get it for a discount.

All the initiatives on expert promotions. Many companies participate either for free or at reduced costs. (including) various events and business missions, which is considerable for those who are considering export.

Other things, what we are launching now and what we are trying to kind of change within the association is to create new services as a cluster approach that the companies can benefit from, the companies that are in the association can participate, and at the same time benefit.

There are several projects in the concept phase, which in mid-March may be launched or find partners, and be able to get on the market.

So even if we are not able to act as a service provider, we will try to foster that, anyway. So besides lobby, discount – we started the discount program again now. Like 29 companies, that’s about 2000 employees, maybe more. And they can get better prices, lowering their budgets (OPEX/CAPEX) and internal costs by participating in a group.

That makes it reasonable why to pay membership fees (to the association), if they pay, because in a way (paying the fees) it helps in reducing your budget, and makes it less expensive (to operate).

But the main thing of course, lobby and dialog with the government, which can enable the business environment for them to make business or do business easier.

John Savageau: Do you have any major success stories from association members?

Ana Chirita: Depends on which side…

If we talk about the certification side we have six companies certified in IT Mark, basic IT Mark, going for CMMI Level 2.

If we talk about exports we have companies that through the activities we do have gained contracts. If we talk about lobbying we are present in at least five or six working groups in various ministries and agencies and we have been able to get into the position where our opinion is being taken into consideration.

For example with the fiscal policy, or with the author rights. So, we’re working on that now as well. And we hope that within 2011 we’ll achieve those results that we’ve worked for and made studies for.

So basically there are achievements that can be taken into consideration. If you like I can send the report of 2010.

John Savageau: Another question,… With Moldovan ICT companies is how competitive they are within Moldova. What is going to make Moldovan ICT companies more competitive in the global marketplace?

Ana Chirita: Better exposure. (Using) International standards, and because competitiveness is about the human resources, it is about the processes you have inside, it is about the things you follow, and how you follow, maybe a country positioning paper to understand where we’re heading to will help them do better.

But now I think that through those processes they are improving inside, like for some of the companies pursuing certain standards, they are already able to compete. Because many of them do export and compete in international markets.

John Savageau: Is there a role the Moldova government should play in making companies more competitive or to give them greater exposure to the international marketplace?

Ana Chirita: Definitely. I think the government should, first of all the government should identify its priorities in this area, and it will be able to enable. Because without the support of the government it’s like a “one man show.”

Many of the companies have developed themselves (independently) in a way without having certain benefits up to let’s say 2005, 2006 from the government.

The government should play a big role, such as to enable better education , better access to the markets, better positioning, better exposure.

The government is very important to have as a partner.

John Savageau: On import tariffs for things like ICT equipment, is the government supporting the ICT community with tax holidays or anything like that on (equipment) imports?

Ana Chirita: We are trying to work on that now., That’s one of the results we want to achieve, like we want to get a preferential rate on the import of equipment, on ICT goods.

And there is one thing we have in Moldova that we have never promoted in a way, is we have a fiscal facility for software development companies, from 2005. Which is an exemption from income tax. And it depends, up to 18% on physical persons – programmers mainly. And we want to keep that. It gives them a competitive advantage on the regional market for Moldova.

Otherwise we get to the same level as Romania, Bulgaria, and other countries in the region.

So for us it is important to keep these kinds of things (tax breaks), like a preferential regime for ICT, would be able to enable and help out (our competitiveness).

John Savageau: How about the education community in Moldova? Is the academic community adequately preparing graduates to enter the workforce or participate in ICT?

Ana Chirita: According to our studies, and the studies that certain USAID projects have delivered, for example the “Competitiveness Project,” the quantity (of graduates) that Moldova delivers is quite good – by numbers is enough. But the quality (of graduates) is still lagging behind in a way.

So there is a big need for investing in, and promoting, certain technical and soft skills. Because the company has to invest up to 3, 4 times more than the universities or the government gives to the students.

So in a way certain initiatives have taken place contributing vendor-based curricula, or in schools and universities they are trying to update the curricula, or there are private companies that actually hold classes within the universities. Like software engineering classes or quality assurance or something like that as optional or mandatory courses.

But that is a big effort, and that is not enough. There is a need to do more.

John Savageau: That’s an interesting statement you made, do you believe there is a space for private companies and the academic community to work as partners in developing a better ICT capacity?

Ana Chirita: We, as the ICT association are trying to do that in a way, but yes I think there is enough space to have more companies, with educational companies or other types of companies – or even ICT companies trying to work back-to-back with academia in order to reach the (required) level.

Because it’s not only the university level, it’s about the (primary) school level. Because a career in IT is not pursued as a nice thing. The people are not aware that a career in IT has a future. So actually you do not have to go out of the country, or emigrate. You can stay in the country, and have a decent salary.

John Savageau: I agree. And when you compare, perhaps people who are living in the countryside in Moldova, with students who are in Chisinau, or even comparing them to London or Los Angeles,… The ability of children who are growing up in the Internet age possibly could be different based on how much exposure they have to ICT tools that are available at a very young age.

Do you believe there is a risk in Moldova of not being able to compete in the digital community if children today are not rapidly given exposure to that type of environment?

Ana Chirita: it depends. Maybe yes, maybe no. it depends on what is our strategy.

I think we need to invest, and need to encourage getting children more and more involved in technical things and Internet. And being able to know how to use it wisely, and being to have various programs and different types of teaching – not only the traditional one (teaching method) to acquire the skills which are already not (just) a luxury, but a “must have” in the future.

So it’s knowing the basic things, like working with a computer is not a luxury like it would have been 10 years ago.

John Savageau: It’s part of life now.

Any last words you would like to give us on either the association, ICT in Moldova, or any other topics that are of interest to the community?

Ana Chirita: Let me think! You’ve been asking a lot of questions!

Basically I think that we, and I, am very thankful for what is happening now in Moldova. I think with common efforts we can reach better exposure, a more competitive country, and more competitive industry.

As an association we will work and hope the government will be more supportive. We’ll see that steps are undertaken in that sense.

So, that’s it!

John Savageau: That’s a very positive outlook, and we all certainly look forward to seeing how it is going to develop in the future. Thank you very much for taking the time this morning.

MICTMission, Vision, Goals

Mission:  Moldovan Association of Private ICT Companies promotes the development of the ICT sector in the Republic of Moldova through viable partnerships between the private companies, similar organizations, state institutions, international organizations in order to enhance the competitiveness and development of the sector and company capacities, enlarge the market, attract investments in the country and participate in the decision making and regulatory process on the national and international level.

Vision: The ICT sector will become an enabler of the Moldovan economy, and Moldovan Association of Private ICT Companies( further ATIC) will contribute to this process through its consultancy means in creating a better life and a better environment in terms of business and social needs. ATIC will get involved into the spheres of education, export, capacity building, competitiveness enhancement to have ICT lead the industry and become a part of any system and process to ensure its development.

Objectives:

  1. To raise the Moldovan ICT industry’s profile and image within the country and on International markets.
  2. To raise the level of co-operation and collaboration amongst members of the Moldovan ICT business community.
  3. To work with Government to improve the business context, legal framework and overall prospects for the sector.
  4. To collaborate with Moldovan Educational institutions to improve over time the quality and quantity of ICT trained graduates.
  5. To help improved levels of professional & management skills within ICT companies.
  6. To improve all aspects of investment opportunities for ICT enterprises in Moldova.

Filed under Cloud Computing, Entrepreneurs, Government Regulatory, International ICT, Internet and Telecom, Social Issues Tagged with , ,

Communities in the Cloud

May 8, 2010 Leave a Comment

In the 1990s community of interest networks (COINs) emerged to take advantage of rapidly developing Internet protocol technologies. A small startup named BizNet on London’s Chiswell Street developed an idea to build a secure, closed network to support only companies operating within the securities and financial industries.

BizNet had some reasonable traction in London, with more than 100 individual companies connecting within the secure COIN. Somewhat revolutionary at the time, and it did serve the needs of their target market. Management was also simple, using software from a small company called IPSwitch and their soon to be globally popular “What’s Up” network management and monitoring utility.

However simplicity was the strength of BizNet. While other companies favored strong marketing campaigns and a lot of flash to attract companies to the Internet age, BizNet’s thought leaders (Jez Lloyd and Nick Holland) relied on a strong commitment to service delivery and excellence, and their success became viral within the financial community based on the confidence they built among COIN members.

As networks go, so did BizNet, which was purchased by Level 3 Communications in 1999 and subsequently the COIN network was dismantled in favor of integrating the individual customers into the Level 3 community.

Cloud Communities

Cloud computing supports the idea of a COIN, as companies can not only build their “virtual data center” within a Platform as a Service/PaaS model, but also develop secure virtual interconnections among companies within a business community – not only within the same cloud service provider (CSP), but also among cloud service providers.

In the “BizNet” version of a COIN, dedicated connections (circuits) were needed to connect routers and switches to a central exchange point run by BizNet. BizNet monitored all connections, reinforcing internal operations centers run by individual companies, and added an additional layer of confidence that helped a “viral” growth of their community.

Gerard Briscoe and Alexandros Marinos delivered a paper in 2009 entitled “Digital Ecosystems in the Clouds: Towards Community Cloud Computing.” In addition to discussing the idea of using cloud computing to support an outsourced model of the COIN, the paper also drills deeper into additional areas such as the environmental sustainability of a cloud community.

As each member of the cloud community COIN begins to outsource their virtual data center into the cloud, they are able to begin shutting down inefficient servers while migrating processing requirements into a managed virtual architecture. Even the requirement for managing high performance switching equipment supporting fiber channel and SAN systems is eliminated, with the overall result allowing a significant percentage of costs associated with equipment purchase, software licenses, and support agreements to be rechanneled to customer or business-facing activities.

Perhaps the most compelling potential feature of community clouds is the idea that we can bring processing between business or trading partners within the COIN to near zero, as the interaction between members is on the same system, and will not lose any velocity due to delays induced by going through switching, routing, or short/long distance transmission through the Internet or dedicated circuits.

Standards and a Community Applications Library

Most trading communities and supply chains have a common standard for data representation, process, and interconnection between systems. This may be a system such as RosettaNet for the manufacturing industry, or other similar industry specifications. Within the COIN there should also be a central function that provides the APIs, specifications, and other configurations such as security and web services/interconnection interface specs.

As a function of developing a virtual data center within the PaaS model, standard components supporting the COIN such as firewalls, APIs, and other common applications should be easily accessible for any member, ensuring from the point of implementation that joining the community is a painless experience, and a very rapid method of becoming a full member of the community.

A Marriage of Community GRIDs and Cloud Computing?

Many people are very familiar with project such as Seti At Home, and the World Community GRID. Your desktop computer, servers, or even storage equipment can contribute idle compute and storage capacity to batch jobs supporting everything from searching for extraterrestrial life to AIDS research. You simply register your computer with the target project, download a bit of client software, and the client communicates with a project site to coordinate batch processing of work units/packets.

Now we know our COIN is trying to relieve members from the burden of operating their own data centers – at least those portions of the data center focusing on support of a supply chain or trading community of interest. And some companies are more suited to outsourcing their data center requirements than others. So if we have a mix of companies still operating large data centers with potential sources of unused capacity, and other members in the community cloud with little or no onsite data center capacity, maybe there is a way the community can support itself further by developing the concept of processing capacity as a currency.

As all individual data centers and office LAN/MAN/WANs will have physical connections to the cloud service provider (IaaS provider) through an Internet service provider or dedicated metro Ethernet connection, the virtual data centers being produced within the PaaS portion of the CSP’s will be inherently connectable to any user, or any facility within the COIN. Of course that is accepting that security management will protect non-COIN connected portions of the community.

Virtually, those members of the community with excess capacity within their own networks could then easily further contribute their spare capacity to the community for use as non-time critical compute resource, or for supporting “batch” processing. Some CSPs may even consider buying that capacity to provide members either in the COIN, or outside of the COIN, and additional resource available to their virtual customers as low cost, low performance, batch capacity much like SETI at Home or the Protein Folding Project uses spare capacity on an as-available basis. Much like selling your locally produced energy back into a power GRID.

We Have a New, Blank Cloud White Board to Play With

The BizNet COIN was good. Eleven years after BizNet was dissolved, the concept remains valid, and we now have additional infrastructure that will support COINs through community clouds, with enabling features that extend far beyond the initial vision of BizNet. CSPs such as ScaleUp have built IaaS and PaaS empowerment for COINs within their data center.

Cloud computing is an infant. Well, maybe in Internet years it is rapidly heading to adolescence, but it is still pretty young. Like an adolescent, we know it is powerful, getting more powerful by the day, but few people have the vision to wrap their head around what broadband, cloud computing, diffusion of network-enabled knowledge into the basic education system, and the continuation of Moore’s, Metcalf’s, and other laws of industry and physics.

COINs and community clouds may not have been in the initial discussions of cloud computing, but they are here now. Watching a Slingbox feed in a Jakarta hotel room connected to a television in Burbank was probably not a vision shared by the early adopters of the Internet – and cloud computing will make similar un-thought of leaps in utility and capabilities over the next few years.

However, in the near term, do not be surprised if you see the entire membership of the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ operating from a shared cloud COIN. It will work.

Filed under Cloud Computing, Entrepreneurs, Internet and Telecom, Virtualization Tagged with , , , , , ,

Developing Disaster Recovery Models with Cloud Computing

February 27, 2010 Leave a Comment

How does a small or medium business ensure it can meet the basic needs for disaster recovery and business continuity? Whether it be Internet-facing applications, or Enterprise-facing applications and data, one of the most important issues faced by small companies is the potential loss of information and applications needed to run their operations.

Disaster Recovery Point and Time ObjectivesDisaster recovery and business continuity. Recovery point objectives and recovery time objectives. Backing up data to offsite locations, and potentially running mirrored processing sites – it is an expensive business requirement to fulfill. Particularly for budget conscious small and medium-sized companies.

Christoph Streit, founder of Hamburg-based ScaleUp Technologies, believes cloud computing may offer a very cost-effective, powerful solution for companies needing not only to protect their company’s data, but also reduce their recovery point objectives to near zero.

“In a traditional disaster recovery model the organization must have an exact duplicate of their hardware, applications, and data in the disaster recovery location” explains Christoph. “With cloud computing models it is possible to replicate applications virtually, spinning up capacity as needed to meet the processing requirements of the organization in the event a primary processing location becomes unavailable.”

ScaleUp did in fact demonstrate their ability to replicate databases between data centers in an October 2009 test with Cari.net, where ScaleUp was able to bring up a VPN appliance and replicate data and applications between Germany and Cari.net’s data center in San Diego, California.

While there may be issues with personal data being in compliance with European Data Protection Laws, nearly every company and organization around the world participates in a global market place. This means applications and data serving the global market cannot be considered local, and the next logical step is to extend access and presentation of the company’s network presence as close to the network edge (customers) as possible.

Some companies may have physical network capacity in multiple geographies, others may look to companies such as ScaleUp to develop relationships with other cloud service providers to allow “federated” relationships.

Until a true industry standard is determined to define data structures and protocols to use between cloud infrastructure and platform providers, it is probably easiest for relationships to develop between companies using the same cloud platform as a service (PaaS) application. Such is the case with ScaleUp and Cari.net, who used a common platform provided by 3Tera’s AppLogic.

The cloud service provider industry will provide a tremendous service to small and medium businesses which normally cannot afford near zero recovery time and recovery point objectives. Whether it is real-time replication of entire data bases, subsets of data bases, or simply parsing correlated data from edge locations at regular intervals, disaster recovery modeling is changing.

A backup location can be made in some cases by logging into a cloud service provider and opening an account with a credit card – or through a very fast negotiation with the service provider. Certainly not without cost, but potentially at a much lower cost of operation than in models requiring physical data center space, hardware, and operations staff at each location.

The important lesson for small companies is that both disaster recovery and a company’s ability to recover from either a physical disaster such as a fire in their data center, or data corruption, may limit or prevent a company’s ability to continue operations. Adding cloud services to the disaster recovery model may provide a very powerful, simplified, and cost-effective model to protect your business.

Filed under Cloud Computing, Entrepreneurs, Internet and Telecom, Virtualization Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

3tera and AppLogic SWAG Moves to the Cloud Computing Retro Collection

February 24, 2010 Leave a Comment

CA and 3tera have announced CA’s acquisition of the innovative cloud computing Infrastructure as a Service vendor. This is a great thing for Computer Associates, and perhaps a bit sad for the cloud community in general. Why? It is hard to fit the energy and enthusiasm felt when walking into 3Tera’s Aliso Veijo office into words. A tight group of committed entrepreneurs and innovators, with a bit of cockiness due to the unique stature they held in the cloud computing community.

Not that Computer Associates is a bad company. In fact, they have always been one of the best kept secrets in business and enterprise software. Rock solid systems, professional sales and engineering – just not as well known to the broader community as other large enterprise systems vendors.

AppLogic brought the cloud community many firsts. The first to integrate IPv6 into their provisioning system. The first to really simplify the drag and drop provisioning process. Perhaps the first to really test and prove the concept of globally distributed processing and disaster recovery models. And they are really great guys.

Bert, Peter, Sean, and the rest of 3tera’s public face spent a tremendous amount of time supporting the community through participation in training events, community organizations such as the Convergence Technology Council of California, the Any2 Exchange Community – all with not only good community spirit, but also providing strong thought leadership to motivate the community into learning more about cloud computing and the future of information technology.

We will deeply miss 3tera, and hope the team will eventually regroup with a new set of ideas, and lead us into another generation of technology that will further enhance the industry’s ability to deliver a true, global, massively distributed cloud computing reality.

Computer Associates will bring value to the cloud community as well. With the power of CA’s organization behind recent acquisitions such as 3tera, Oblicore, NetQoS, Orchestria, Platinum Technology, Netreon, and others related to process, database and large data set management, the stage is set for increased competition in the cloud service industry. CA has the ability to provide a broad understanding of all aspects of enterprise and Internet-facing tools equal or better than IBM, Microsoft, or any other full-service integrator.

We will look forward to seeing the product of 3tera integration into the CA family, and hope the innovation and enthusiasm 3tera’s team brought to the cloud community is not swallowed up into a large company bureaucracy.

Filed under Cloud Computing, Entrepreneurs, International ICT, Internet and Telecom, startup business, Virtualization Tagged with , , ,

Martin Levy Looks into the Future of Hurricane Electric and the Internet

February 14, 2010 Leave a Comment

This is the third part in an interview series with Martin Levy, Director of IPv6 Strategy at Hurricane Electric. In this segment Martin discusses the future of Hurricane Electric, IPv6, bandwidth, and global Internet development.

_____________________________________

Pacific-Tier: Can you cite one defining moment that really makes Hurricane Electric stand out as a company within the Internet industry?

Martin Levy: There are a couple of different moments.

From an internal operations point of view the company was able to migrate to a new IP backbone about four years ago. That took us from the pre-IPv6 native mode, into pure IPv6. That fundamental point done well in advance of a lot of other companies.

It may well have gone unnoticed in the industry (at the time). But it is not unnoticed at this time.

We have taken that base, taken that moment and have been able to run this extremely stable, and extremely reliable IP backbone for v4 (IPv4) and v6 (IPv6) support.

So you go back to that point in time, and you (think) of having a ceremony and a toast at that point. As quiet as it was, and a very engineering moment as it was, it really redefined Hurricane Electric. That was an event really about four years ago.

The second one is a totally different measure. The second one which will be talked about at just an anonymous level for obvious reasons was when we brought in our first core v6 customer at a major wholesale level, and the details are (they were) a much larger company (than Hurricane Electric).

We were able to do that because the customer requirement was v6. The customer purchase was for v4, paying 99% of the bill, v6 maybe 1% of the bill. That’s the reality. We have no way of saying v6, from a bandwidth point of view is a massive issue at the moment.

But when that occurred, that was the moment that we knew it wasn’t at the bandwidth levels v6 was operating at, it wasn’t about the number of eyeballs that were enabled, or the number of servers, it was about the fact the enterprise and the wholesale market had realized why v6 was so important.

When that event occurred, which is now a couple of years ago, we knew that we had the right product at the right time for the marketplace. And the test of time has proven that since then.

Pacific-Tier: One final question. Anything you would like to share with us about Hurricane’s vision for the future, or where Hurricane may be going this year, next year, or after?

Martin Levy: We have a plate full!

We have expansion in Europe. We have additional bandwidth into Asia, because there is nothing slowing down in Asia whatsoever.

We have a new data center that we’ve opened in California, a new phase of a data center we’ve opened in California about two or three months ago. And it is quickly filling up.

So I would say it is growth in most measurable directions. The geography is an obvious one. We are looking as we did last year at additional cities in Europe – that’s an ongoing project. In Asia it’s more about more bandwidth into the same cities, and on the network we are just looking at more and more customers who take v6 seriously and are looking for a provider that has that solution at hand without it being a special.

Pacific-Tier: Any final points?

Martin Levy: This Internet thing – it may catch on!

Its not that we are going to see a new Internet. It’s that we are going to see with v6 an Internet that has truly matured, and we’re going to see even more accelerated growth. Whether it be within the mobile wireless world, or other worlds, we’re going to see enormous growth.

If we have this interview again in five years we are going to laugh at how little bandwidth was available in 2010. And we are just going to blow the roof off bandwidth-wise.

Pacific-Tier: Thank you for your great counsel!

Previous segments of Martin’s Interview:

  • Part 1 – Martin levy Discusses the Global Urgency to Deploy IPv6
  • Part 2 – Martin Levy Explains Hurricane Electric’s Success in a Tough Economy

Filed under Entrepreneurs, International ICT, Internet and Telecom Tagged with , ,

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