VMware has long been a favorite with businesses. But there's evidence that with the advent of second generation cloud many companies are considering a move away from VMware to a more flexible option that gives them better control over configuration and costs.
IaaS specialist ProfitBricks is helping businesses migrate their systems from VMware to the cloud and has a lot of experience in the field.
Enterprises may be nervous about some aspects of moving to the cloud, in particular how their data is going to be secured. ProfitBricks uses double redundant storage with data stored on two synchronised sub units in separate geographical locations. Customers have the option to ensure that machines aren't hosted on the same physical server if required and are free to make their own additional backup arrangements.
Achim Weiss CEO and co-founder of ProfitBricks says, "You can have the same level of security set up on our cloud systems as you can on your own servers. We're also able to attract a team of good security staff thanks to the size of the business and a varied workload".
ProfitBricks has a Data Center Designer tool which makes it easy to set up complex scenarios via a graphical interface. Customers can run any type of OS that works on an x86 architecture, this makes it very easy to migrate existing systems. Hyper-V and VMware configurations can be automatically converted too. "Once they're on the cloud then they can start optimizing their setups," says Weiss. "It's very easy to scale, for example the core size of a server can be increased while it’s running."
Web hosting company ComSite runs 200 virtual servers on behalf of clients and has switched from using VMware systems in data centers to using the cloud with ProfitBricks, it has seen a 20 percent reduction in its costs as a result.
Sean Burchell ComSite's CEO says, "ProfitBricks eliminates the need to worry about infrastructure. We can spin up a new server in five minutes and we only pay for the time we're using". The switch has helped the company to grow because it can concentrate on sales and spend less time on maintaining systems.
When customers buy a core and RAM on ProfitBricks it's dedicated to them and not shared with anyone else, and customers are free to adopt their own standards for encryption of data in transit. The company is also in the process of gaining ISO 27K certification for security management standards.
"Customers have 100 percent control of their data and applications on the cloud," adds Weiss. "The same thing you can do with your hardware at home you can do with us. There are no restrictions on what kind of network protocols you use or how you set up your networks. It's painless cloud".
You can find more information on the benefits of running IT infrastructure in the cloud on the ProfitBricks site.
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