AppLogic in the Enterprise

• By The WHIR, August 31, 2007

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AppLogic in the EnterpriseBy Liam Eagle, theWHIR.com

August 31, 2007 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Since stepping into the spotlight about a year ago, utility computing platform developer 3Tera (3tera.com) has been working to establish its AppLogic technology within the hosting business.

As is sometimes the case with cutting-edge technology, the company has seen a great deal of interest across the hosting business, along with some success in seeing the platform deployed.

Throughout, 3tera has played an important role in convincing the potential customers of those hosts deploying its platform of the value of grid-based utility computing as a means of hosting their applications.

In a somewhat unexpected turn, the company announced a further extension of those efforts this week, saying that AppLogic is now available for enterprises to deploy in-house.

Bert Armijo, VP of product management at 3Tera says the move into the new market doesn't reflect a loss of confidence in the company's hosting partners.

"This is a new licensing model for us, and obviously we have been working with a lot of hosting providers over the last year and a half since we first took AppLogic into beta," he says. "This is just another step in bringing new customers into the hosting market. And as these customers build up their internal capabilities, the ability for them to very quickly leverage our hosting partners to cover resource needs in the short term will allow a new relationship between these customers and the hosting providers"

Packaging AppLogic for enterprise deployment didn't require substantial alterations to the way the product operates, says Armijo. The company intentionally kept things similar to encourage that additional relationship with service providers.

"The user experience is exactly the same," he says. "Quite frankly, you don't want there to be any difference. We want people to be able to use hosted and internal resources just as easily. There are some differences in how they'll deploy it internally, but that's about it."

Many large enterprises actually employ internal "hosting" divisions, he says, which makes even the administration of AppLogic similar to the process used by a hosting provider - including subscribers, security requirements and domains. For more traditional enterprise deployments security may be handled differently, but the product itself will remain the same.

Likewise, pricing for the platform is almost the same for enterprises as it is for hosting partners.

"AppLogic is utility priced," says Armijo. "We charge based on the amount of resources in the grid. And that is a monthly charge. The one delta between enterprises and the hosting providers is that with the hosting providers we have to make sure that they can resell it and make money. With the enterprise, we don't have that same situation. And the support is considerably different between the two environments, because hosting providers have end users that are on the system. We need to be responsive to their end users as well as to them, whereas with an enterprise, there is no end user per se. So our support is directed to the hosting group, or whoever is maintaining the grid."

3Tera will provide enterprises deploying AppLogic with access to the same resources it makes available to its hosting provider partners as they deploy the platform - a process that often includes WebEx meetings, and other hands-on vehicles for education.

Once deployed, says Armijo, AppLogic's presence in enterprise facilities will encourage these customers to use more hosted services.

"As these companies begin to build out their utility computing services," he says, "we'll see that they will actually be using more hosted resources as well. It will be natural for them to extend their capabilities by pulling in resources from outside, since they'll have the capability of moving applications between them very easily. This gives them a natural way to be very efficient in operating their own data center, and gives the hosting industry a new customer base to draw business from."

Tags:  security  utility computing  Domains  3Tera  EDS  Iona  TS Host 

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