Australia lost in the cloud

Ultra Serve CEO Samuel Yates

Cloud computing’s flexibility and scalability makes it an increasingly attractive prospect for IT managers, but Australia is somewhat behind the eight-ball when it comes to locally-based services.

That is starting to change, however, with the launch of a new infrastructure cloud orchestration system, Rejila by Australian managed hosting company, Ultra Serve.

Rejila, which provisions and manages computing, network and storage resources, was built from scratch in Australia. It is built on the Cisco network and uses VMware for virtualisation and Zeus load balancers. It supports instant provisioning of Linux, Windows 2003 and Windows 2008 servers via a simple drag and drop Web-based interface so that businesses can build their own virtual datacentre.

The platform also includes high availability application load balancing for each customer, so clients manage their own loads. Load balancing can cost thousands per month under a traditional managed hosting model but is offered as part of the Rejila service.

“Once a client creates a server, it’s available to use in 5-10 minutes,” said Ultra Serve CEO, Samuel Yeats.

The service is ideal for IT environments that are punctuated by changing demands or who need a temporary burst of more resources for a specific event.

“Its key uses are for setting up a scalable environment to respond to load and for development environments,” said Yeats. “The client can deploy an environment similar to the production environment to conduct test development.”

The service can also be useful for large-enterprise teams which would otherwise have to wait long periods for resource provision. The waiting period can be transformed from weeks to mere hours.

“You could allocate a number of hours for development, spin up a server in minutes and delete it when you finish testing.”

And, because it is hosted locally, it can provide peace of mind to IT managers.

Industry analyst Longhaus recently called Rejila the only ‘true public cloud’ computing service currently available in Australia and one of a handful of Australian-based infrastructure as a service (IaaS) providers.

Some would argue the point of cloud computing is it doesn’t matter where that service is located. Like it or not, however, the hosting location can often be the key consideration.

“Organisations with sensitive data need to be able to store it locally,” said Yeats. “That has been a huge issue in the transition to cloud computing in this country.”

Rejila is particularly accessible for small to medium businesses with existing infrastructure — there are no contracts and a pay by the hour pricing structure.

Rejila at a glance:

• Pay per hour - pay only for the time used
• No contracts
• Free Load Balancing included
• 100% Australian Cloud Hosting

• Bookmark this page
• Share this article
  •  
  • facebook
  • slashdot
  • digg
  • Reddit
  • stumbleupon
  • linkedin
  • twitter
• Got more on this story? Email Computerworld
• Follow Computerworld on twitter

• Share
  Share this article

  •  google+
  • facebookfacebook
  • slashdotslashdot
  • diggdigg
  • RedditReddit
  • stumbleuponstumbleupon
  • linkedinlinkedin
  • twittertwitter
• print
• email
• Bookmark