For CloudCamp London today, we are sharing an overview of “How clouds can and will differ”.
We believe that even within cloud infrastructure there are significant differences between providers, based on:
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Physical location: Location of infrastructure determines network speed of users and data jurisdiction
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Target users: Target users determine features and services offered in addition to raw virtual servers
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SLA: Whether they offer a SLA with financial penalties if broken, level of SLA determines redundancy of infrastructure and hence price of product
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Server config: Whether they offer a full range of operating system images, with flexibility to instantly rescale server sizes and total capacity to any level
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Web UI and API: Whether they offer infrastructure management via both intuitive web interface, and API (fitting standards when they emerge)
ElasticHosts will be the second UK-based cloud infrastructure provider to launch — and we believe that our UK physical location will make us extremely attractive for UK-based customers, due to:
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Much better network latency and bandwidth if cloud infrastructure is on the same continent as users (<3 vs. >50 milliseconds)
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No legal conflicts if single legal jurisdiction covers host and buyer (e.g. US Patriot Act investigations, overseas data limits imposed by EU Directive on Personal Data Protection)
CloudCamp London, on 16th July 2008, will be the second in a series of community-driven “unconferences” on cloud computing. The first CloudCamp unconference took place in San Francisco on 25 June 2008 and was attended by over 300 cloud computing enthusiasts, practitioners and visionaries. 200 plus are expected to attend the London event, which is being organised to provide a common ground for the introduction and advancement of cloud computing.
We will be at CloudCamp London, and we encourage all of our readers to register and attend this great event!
ElasticHosts makes flexible virtualization easy. You configure our sophisticated infrastructure to match your needs with any web browser, giving you an unmatched combination of instant flexibility, peace of mind and cost efficiency, all backed by our personal support.
We were inspired to found ElasticHosts by the enormous impact of virtualization on every aspect of server technology, but realized that our customers sometimes find it a challenge to achieve the scale and expertise necessary to exploit this alone. We provide easy-to-use web hosting solutions, offering all the power and control of a traditional hosted server, but managed from any web browser to expose all of the additional benefits of virtualization.
We are a carbon neutral company and believe that widespread use of virtualization is key to revolutionize data centre energy efficiency and to avoid projections that the worldwide data centre carbon footprint will surpass even airlines by 2020.
Our founders, Chris Webb and Richard Davies, have more than a decade of collaboration and experience in the web hosting industry behind them. They first met in 1995 when they were both medallists at the International Physics Olympiad, representing Britain. In 1998, whilst studying Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, they founded their first web hosting company Arachsys Internet Services Ltd, and started the development of many of the technologies applied by ElasticHosts today.
Richard Davies, CEO
Richard joined ElasticHosts from the leading global management consultancy McKinsey & Company, where he advised senior management at a large number of global high-tech and telecoms clients. Prior to McKinsey, he was one of the founding software engineers of Forbidden Technologies plc, a leader in web-based video tools. He is a published author from the early days of Java development.
Chris Webb, CTO
As well as designing and developing the Arachsys platform upon which the ElasticHosts technology is based, Chris has consulted on technical infrastructure and internet systems for a wide range of UK internet startups and investors. He has a deep technical understanding of all layers of the virtualization and hosting stack and has contributed to the development of a number of the software packages used by ElasticHosts.
