Cloud services full description

IT Authorities, Inc.

12/15/2010

Cloud Computing Services

Dissemination of any information contained in this document to sources outside of the company to which it is submitted requires written consent of IT Authorities, Inc.

Copyright 2010 IT Authorities, Inc.

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Cloud Computing

IT Authorities is a cloud services provider headquartered in Tampa, Florida. We

designed, invested in and built the world’s most advanced and sophisticated

cloud platform.

IT Authorities Voted #1 Best Company to work for in the state of Florida

- Florida Trend 100 Best Companies to Work For in Florida - 2010

Ranked 801st on Inc. Magazine's 5000 fastest Growing Private

Companies in America in 2010

Ranked Best Place to Work in Tampa in 2008, 2009 & 2010 by the

Tampa Bay Business Journal

Ranked 35th of the Top 100 Managed service providers in the World by

MSP Mentor

Cloud computing is Internet-based computing, whereby shared resources,

software, and information are provided to computers and other devices on

demand, as with the electricity grid. Cloud computing is a natural evolution of

the widespread adoption of virtualization, Service-oriented architecture and

utility computing. Details are abstracted from consumers, who no longer have

need for expertise in, or control over, the technology infrastructure "in the cloud"

that supports them. Cloud computing describes a new supplement, consumption,

and delivery model for IT services based on the Internet, and it typically involves

over-the-Internet provision of dynamically scalable and often virtualized

resources. It is a byproduct and consequence of the ease-of-access to remote

computing sites provided by the Internet.

continued on next page

Who is IT

Authorities?

What is Cloud

Computing?



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Cloud Computing, Continued

1. Low Monthly Payment as an Operating Expense versus a Capital

Expenditure.

2. No hardware replacement, system software upgrade costs, maintenance or warranty renewals expenses.

3. 99.999% Uptime!

4. Reduced utility costs – Eliminate outrageous cooling & electric bills

5. Reduced floor space - No real estate needed for equipment

6. Tax Benefit - Operating Expense vs. Capital Expense. Realize tax reduction the moment you use it!

7. Lower Total Cost of Ownership – Faster Return on Investment

8. No more license purchases or management!

9. Green approach to I.T.

10. FREE Microsoft Version Upgrades (Exchange, Windows OS, SharePoint, SQL, etc.)

11. High availability plan as all systems are redundant

12. No need to worry about securing hardware during a disaster

13. Availability – Login from anywhere in the world

14. Predictable cost of growth

15. Scalable up or down


Top 15 Advantages

of the Cloud

Computing



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Cloud Computing, Continued

Simplified Cost and Consumption Model - Cloud computing allows companies to

better control the capital expenditure and operating expense associated with non-core

activities.

Enterprise Grade Services and Management - Typically, 70 to 80 percent of IT

budgets are devoted to maintenance of existing infrastructure – a massive overhead.

Cloud computing offloads this burden from the shoulders of companies, freeing core IT

resources to focus on initiatives that drive revenue growth.

Faster Provisioning of Systems and Applications - Traditional methods to buy and

configure hardware and software are time consuming. Cloud computing provides a rapid

deployment model that enables applications to grow quickly to match increasing usage

requirements. It can accommodate ―peak times‖ where a company needs to scale up

dramatically, such as a holiday season or special event.

Size Adjustments to Address Business Changes - Clouds are elastic. They can contract

if necessary to meet changing business needs. With an in-house data center, if a company

over-provisions, it can’t scale back. In a cloud, an organization can quickly and easily re-

size its environment if necessary.

Ease of Integration - An increasing number of enterprise applications require integration

with third-party applications that are often hosted outside the enterprise firewall. The

cloud, with its configuration flexibility, integrated security and choice of access

mechanisms, has a natural advantage for serving as a core platform and integration fabric

for these emerging applications.

Highly Secure Infrastructure - By taking a system-based – not point-based – approach,

cloud environments can perform security at all levels (applications, middleware,

operating system, computer/store/network). This will safely support highly mobile users

that need a variety of connection options – coming into the cloud from secure and non-

secure networks.

Compliant Facilities and Processes - Many companies don’t have the resources needed

to manage audit and certification processes for internal data centers. Compliance

standards cut horizontally – like Sarbanes-Oxley – and vertically, such as PCI DSS and

HIPAA. Cloud facilities and processes that address both areas can help companies

address regulatory and compliance processes.

Flexibility and Resilience with Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery - Managing

business continuity and recovery internally require a dedicated focus so companies

typically concentrate only on the most critical applications. Utilizing cloud environments

allows organizations to safeguard their full IT infrastructure because the cloud’s inherent

scalability integrates disaster recovery capabilities.


The Case for Cloud

Computing



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Cloud Infrastructure & Technology

Powered by fully redundant Cisco® Unified Computing Systems clusters.

We set out with the primary objective to build an enterprise class cloud

environment, so we leveraged the partnership between Cisco, VMware and

NetApp to develop a fabric integrated server and storage infrastructure. As a

result, we are able to offer unparalleled performance and flexibility in our cloud

service offerings. Our world class design provides sophisticated awareness:

The Cisco Nexus switches are aware of the storage traffic

The NetApp storage is aware of the dynamic nature of a hosted

environment

The Cisco UCS servers are aware of the available fabric and storage

resources

Together, this best in breed approach creates a highly secure, fully redundant and

self-healing cloud infrastructure. Ultimately, a single resource is never left to

handle a task on its own, as intended by Cisco’s brilliant vision.

The value and the benefit to our customer is a true enterprise class, fully

redundant and secure private cloud infrastructure at a fraction of the cost

compared to developing, implementing and maintaining an in-house solution.


Servers



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Cloud Infrastructure & Technology, Continued

VMware vSphere Virtualized Infrastructure

95% of the Fortune Global 500 is using VMware including:

50 out of top 50 Banks: Commercial & Savings

10 out of the top 10 Aerospace and Defense Companies

5 out of the 5 Global Airlines

9 of the top 10 Chemical Companies

5 of the top 5 Diversified Financial Companies

5 of the top 5 Energy Companies

4 of the top 4 Entertainment Companies s

10 out of the 10 Pharmaceutical Companies

4 of the top 4 Securities Companies

VMware affords us the ability to provide a highly available, completely

redundant, high performing, and totally integrated cloud platform to our clients.

It is simply the best of the best when it comes to virtualization and cloud

platforms.


Server Software



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Fueled by a fully redundant core of Cisco Nexus Fabric Switches.

We chose the Cisco Nexus platform for the absolute, unparalleled performance.

The available backplane speeds of the nexus switching platform aren’t available

from any other core switches from any other manufacturer and it allows us to

create a more flexible, highly available solution.

This allows us to do things like not worrying about or having to put speed

limitations on access to storage resources and external traffic reaching resources

that are hosted inside the cloud. Typically you’d have to limit the amount of

storage traffic that is going to and from hosts in order to make available those

resources to other hosted clients. We have over powered our cloud infrastructure

to the point where we no longer have to worry about these limitations. Therefore

the demands for disk access and other resources inside of your cloud are able to

be dynamically allocated as needed. Our resources will always be greater than

the demand from our clients. Because of this design and the technology behind

it, we will never reach a resource limitation with regard to switching that will

demand us to start putting limitations on clients.


Network

Infrastructure



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Fully Redundant and Infinitely Scalable NetApp SAN’s

The reason we went with the NetApp Storage is really similar to the reason that

we went with the Nexus switching platform. NetApp allows us flexibility in the

types of connectivity that our customers can have to the storage system. Our

clients are not limited to just have fiber channel for instance, or to just have fiber

channel over Ethernet, or to just have iSCSI targets on this device. NetApp

allows us to organize our cloud storage technology in such a way that we can

maintain our investments in such a way to make costs reasonable for our clients.

By doing that you can say it’s a connectivity agnostic storage system, in that we

can have a mix of fiber channel, fiber channel over Ethernet and iSCSI.

If our clients bring up a hosted server in our environment, the type of disk access

they need might work better over iSCSI or it might work better over fiber

channel over Ethernet than it would over fiber channel. Additionally, fast access

database applications may require the speed that comes from fiber channel and

the redundancy and multi-paths storage access that that allows. So as opposed to

paying for features that our clients may not need, we are able to cater it

specifically to their needs regardless of the requirements. We also able to custom

build a new solution to fit individual needs.

NetApp is also integrated into the VMware vSphere console making it possible to

do rapid restore features without impacting performance of the SAN and also

without having to pull tapes. Rapid restores allows us to provide unprecedented

speed in which a single file can be restored or a single email can be restored into

an inbox, or when a user accidently deletes a file. These files can be restored to a

file server and it is no longer an operation of pulling a tape from off site, or even

pulling a tape form a backup library. We can simply go into the snapshot of that

file system and we can drag and drop basically any file that we would like to

restore on a ―per file per hosted server‖ basis. Then again, that doesn’t impact the

performance of the SAN itself.


Storage



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Cisco ASA 5500 Series Adaptive Security Appliances

We invested in the Cisco® ASA 5500 Series Adaptive Security Appliances to

deliver a robust suite of highly integrated, enterprise class, market-leading

security services for our mission-critical private cloud. This platform provides

unprecedented services flexibility, modular scalability, and feature extensibility.

We went with the Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) line of security

appliances because it provides enterprise level redundancy and fault tolerance to

create a self-healing, self defending edge. It is also considered a Carrier Class

edge network technology. Having flexibility to create separate virtual

infrastructure environments that can be treated as true separate entities was a

major requirement for us so that we could differentiate from the commodity

players such as Rackspace and Amazon.

For example, when we bring a new server online for you, you are not just getting

a shared IP space on the interface of your server that you have control over. You

are actually getting your own subnet that lives behind our redundant Cisco

ASA’s firewall. What the ASA does that’s unique is it allow us to create virtual

interfaces behind our firewall for however many hosted servers that we have

behind it. This means your servers can talk to each other and being that we give

you a virtual interface on a ―real firewall‖ appliance instead of a virtual firewall

or software firewall, you actually get physical separation from the rest of the

clients we have in our cloud. This approach allows flexibility and creativity that

others simply do not provide such as being able to connect your virtual

infrastructure / your subnet in our cloud environment which can then be

connected via point-to-point VPN’s to your offices.


Security



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You can have remote access VPN users get into your network and access your

resources and then of course you can do a site-to-multisite setup where you can

have your one cloud environment and say ten offices that all have individual

VPN’s back to our cloud.

In summary, IT Authorities creates the look and feel of having your own rack in

a data center, with your own switches, your own firewall, your own address

space and the availability to do with it what you like.


Security, Continued



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Facility (Brandon, Florida):

96,000 square foot operation - 22,000 square foot raised floor space

Raised floor facilitates cable management and uniform cooling distribution

Category 5e cabling throughout the facility

OC-48 SONET ring for redundancy

Remedy®*—problem tracking, trouble ticketing and change management tool

Advanced pre-action fire suppression system

VESDA®* fire alarm system

14 megavolt amps power service

Server racks or cages available (full, half and quarter racks)

Security

Security:

24x7x365 onsite hosting system, network monitoring and facility customer support

24x7x365 security staff

Strictly enforced security procedures

Photo ID required for building access

Sophisticated, computerized access control system

Card key and biometrics scan required for collocation space access

Video surveillance at all entrances and every aisle (60 day, onsite tape retention)

Locked racks and cabinets with local key management

Power Conditioning:

Five 1,250 KVA Generator Systems; N+1 to assure uninterruptible power supply (UPS)

Fully redundant UPS Bank

HVAC Temperature Controlled Environment:

Temperature and humidity controlled environment

150 BTUs per square foot

Four 400 ton chillers


IT Authorities

Cloud Facilities



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Company

Lewis & Clark is a multi-year Frost and Sullivan "Best Practices" Award

recipient and was founded in 1986 with a clear mission to provide all electronic

companies with an alternative to the high cost of new capital equipment and

associated services. After more than 20 years, they have shipped thousands of

quality test and manufacturing systems worldwide; saving their clients many

millions of dollars. Additionally, their related services capabilities provide cost

effective solutions focused on properly maintaining the equipment and keeping it

operating at maximum productivity levels. They are headquartered in Nashua,

New Hampshire, USA., with additional US offices in the Southeast, Midwest and

West Coast. International offices are located in the United Kingdom and Latin

America with strategic relationships in Asia.

Their services include matching buyers and sellers of previously-owned

equipment, asset management of excess systems, reconditioning, field service

and training, repair/exchange and repair, as well as equipment consignment and

providing assistance with leasing and financing. They also have available an

extensive inventory of spare parts and retrofits. Their asset management services

have also been expanded to include intra-company asset visibility and auction

coordination.

Existing Infrastructure:

Their infrastructure consisted of ten physical servers, high speed switches, and

battery backups.

Challenges:

Server and networking equipment out of warranty and outdated

System software reaching end of life

Limited internet speed availability in facilities

No redundant systems for high availability

No internal data center

Extensive international mobile workforce


Case Study



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Solution 1 Overview –Co-location and New Equipment

The first investigated option was to build out their office to be a suitable data

center or move to a co-location facility and purchase required hardware,

software, systems and professional services to build and migrate. They elected

not to build their own data center and use a colocation instead. They also

selected VMware with shared storage as the solution for high availability.

One Time Costs:

Description Estimated Cost

Server / Storage Hardware (2 physical servers) $14,000

Software (Windows Servers, SQL & Exchange) $12,000

Storage Area Network (SAN) $20,000

Virtualization Software (VMware Enterprise) $15,000

Switch Upgrade $5,000

Implementation $24,800

Total One Time Costs $90,800

Annual Recurring Costs:


1 Rack in colocation with power & internet $16,800

VMware annual software support $3000

Switch Support $900

SAN Maintenance $4000

Maintenance and Support of Equipment $7,440


Option 1 Summary:

Description Amount

One Time Costs $90,800

First Year Annual Costs $24,240

Remaining Years Annual Costs $64,280

Total of Three Year Costs $179,320


Case Study,

Continued



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Solution 2 Overview – IT Authorities Cloud

The second investigated option was to move into the IT Authorities Cloud.

One Time Costs:


Migration and Implementation $9,300


Annual Recurring Costs:


Cloud Services $29,220

Total Annual Costs $29,220

Option 2 Summary:

Description Amount

One Time Costs $9,300

First Year Annual Costs $29,220

Remaining Years Annual Costs $58,440

Total of Three Year Costs $96,960

Overall Summary and Conclusion:

Description Amount

Option 1 - Colocation & VMware $179,320

Option 2 - IT Authorities Cloud $96,960

Savings from using Option 2 $82,360

Case Study,

Continued

Documents

Cloud services full description