Q&A: Kevin Mahon, KEMP Technologies

• By Liam Eagle, November 03, 2008

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(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Load balancing is one of those technologies that has become a more or less essential part of network design, particularly as web-based applications become more advanced and reliant on more advanced architecture.

KEMP Technologies (www.kemptechnologies.com) is a company competing against the very large players in the networking space with its load balancing products, on price, along with a couple other attractive qualities. And it has identified the hosting market as one of the areas that may be key to its success, being among the surest channels to IT for small and medium-sized businesses.

Aspiring to work with hosting providers has brought KEMP Technologies to hosting industry events and, in one case, to an appearance on WHIR tv.

In an email interview with the WHIR, founder and CEO Kevin Mahon discusses how load balancing figures into application development and into the hosting business model, as well as how he sees his company's relationship with hosting providers.

Can you describe the role that load balancing plays in the design of a back-end system for delivering an application and how that might change as an application grows more complex?

Kevin Mahon: From XML to SOAP to SOA, almost all the core building blocks of multi-tier, scalable applications have been shaped by the move to load-balanced http/https as the transport of choice. The design of any back-end system is of course strongly determined by the tools available to build it. Here are two best practices when planning for scalable multi-tier application delivery:

1) Load balance at multiple tiers. Bottlenecks in complex applications can be harder to anticipate than those in simpler ones. Load balancing at deeper tiers (in addition to the web front end) can mitigate unwelcome post-deployment surprises.

2) Consider storing state deep in the back tiers whenever possible. Highly stateful applications with absolute dependence on host persistence can be brittle, because a single host failure will leave all dependent sessions orphaned. The deeper state can be maintained, the more seamless the user experience will be in the event of host failures and the more easily you can accomplish horizontal scaling of the front tiers.

How much do you find load and service delivery issues tend to figure into the design of applications, and do those considerations differ for a service provider as opposed to a small-business designing its own infrastructure?

KM: There is a classic set of risk management tradeoffs to sort through when load and service delivery issues impact application design. A well-factored application development effort, resulting in an architecture best poised to exploit the shifting economics of CDNs, ADCs, and virtualization over the app lifecycle, will of necessity lengthen time-to-market and increase launch costs. In these tough times, that can be a hard sell. A small business has it tougher because of the difficulties in quantifying the downstream uncertainties. For service providers, some of that uncertainty has been "shrink-wrapped" away; as just one example, Microsoft's Hosted Exchange program comes complete with a step-by-step scaling roadmap.

Is load balancing a potential stream of revenue for a hosting provider or is it more like a necessary part of the package?

KM: Load balancing is a necessary part of the package that potentially represents a steady stream of revenue. It is a value-add that a hosting provider can offer and generate revenue streams. Say a hosting provider advertises 99.999 percent network availability. Good, the customer needs that. However, network is half the requirement of the customer.

The customer needs 99.999 availability of the application that generates his revenue stream. To get the application's availability the hosting provider's customer must purchase his own load balancer or purchase the high availability service - through to the server and application - from the hosting provider. KEMP's load balancers are priced so that the hosting provider can pay less for the value add tool. Once the hosting provider offers the load balancer he can then offer additional value-added services which he can charge for individually or as packages.

How do service providers figure into KEMP's overall approach to distributing its technology? And can you describe the company's service provider program and the sort of relationship you look to foster there?

KM: KEMP views service providers as essential to our success. Our focus on the SMB market mandates that we must satisfy the service provider's requirements since roughly half of the SMBs we target will partner with a service provider. We view service providers as partners. Our pricing strategy enables providers the ability to decrease its infrastructure investments, add significant value to its customers which then results in more recurring revenue and reduces the overall total cost of ownership. KEMP offers excellent discounts for volume purchases, free training and free (first year) outstanding support.

How does KEMP, in your opinion, figure into the scope of possible load balancing products a hosting provider is going to consider? What kind of challenges do you face in approaching hosting providers?

KM: We believe that KEMP has three challenges approaching hosting providers - perception, credibility and viability.

KEMP's challenge is getting the opportunity to meet the service provider and show off our product and dedication to making the hosting provider successful by offering very affordable, very functional application delivery solutions to their customers. Once we have this opportunity, it is quick and easy to see why our solution is the far better choice for load balancing compared to our competitors that cost much more to implement and support.

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