3Tera Adds Features with AppLogic 2.0By Liam Eagle, theWHIR.com
May 25, 2007 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — The hosting business is still catching on to the idea of a utility-based grid as the foundation for the services it provides, but the technology behind that model is advancing persistently. This week, 3Tera (3tera.com), developer of the AppLogic platform for grid-based utility computing, released version 2.0 of that platform on Friday.
Vendors working with Web hosting providers are working these days to convince those that Web 2.0 and hosted applications are the future of their business. Bert Armijo, VP of product management at 3Tera says his company is working to convince hosting customers that the utility platform is the best way to host those Web 2.0 and SaaS applications.
Key to the new version of AppLogic, he says are several new features. First among those is support for multiple-CPU appliances within the grid cluster.
“The current version of AppLogic has a limitation of one CPU per appliance,” says Armijo, “and obviously that’s not a problem for load balancers and VPNs and Web servers. But when you get into the database tier, people have asked for more than one CPU in a database. So we’ll be supporting up to four CPUs in an appliance. They still have to be on the same physical resource; we’re not trying to join CPUs from multiple physical devices. But if you do want to get four CPUs in your database, or say in your JVM, AppLogic will support that.”
Another key addition to AppLogic 2.0 is the inclusion of monitoring. 3Tera, says Armijo, has designed a monitoring solution that will allow customers to assemble their own monitoring dashboards out of hundreds of counters monitoring specific elements of their applications.
“In just a couple of minutes,” he says, “you can configure a dashboard for your application that shows you the CPU in eight different appliances, the traffic on different interfaces and, say, free memory. And you can start to very easily visualize performance tuning or service degradation or user experience in a very simple way. If you think about it, this is a capability that has until now required whole toolsets. There are whole companies dedicated to building monitoring tools. And this is going to be integrated into AppLogic and all AppLogic users will have access to it.”
Also interesting, he says, is he fact that an admin doesn’t have to be logged into AppLogic to see these dashboards. They can be accessed through a secure Internet interface using a Web browser.
Armijo says that while AppLogic is advancing in its technology, the company is working to spread the implementation of resources on the platform among end customers.
3Tera’s business model, he says, is not the same as a control panel developer, for instance, which would look to have its solution implemented across as many hosting providers as possible. 3Tera’s revenue is based on the amount of resources deployed on its platform, so the challenge for the company is helping a comparatively small number of partners execute the service as well as possible.
Deploying AppLogic means partnering with 3Tera to a fairly deep extent, says Armijo, and the relationship between companies goes well past the deployment phase.
“The process of partnering with us on offering virtual private data centers,” he says “really takes about three to four months go get into production. It does require the dedication of a few people, usually at least one support person, one or two operators full time. At least one sales person. At that point we provide training to the support and the operators.”
As the partner installs the grid, 3Tera works with them directly, doing much of the work. The partner will run an application on the grid to acquaint itself with the system. 3Tera helps the partner build out a grid backbone, from which they can begin selling services, and will test it out from a customer perspective.
3Tera helps partners with the marketing, messaging, and pricing, helping partners put together an offer and figure out to whom they are going to sell it. The company trains sales people. The whole process takes several months. And getting customers online takes another few weeks.
Armijo says 3Tera doesn’t rush its partners. Its goal is not to get the service out as fast as possible, but to get it done right. It’s a long-term business, he says.
“This isn’t something where you need to get out there tomorrow because there are going to be 20 people,” he says. “That’s not the way this works. Get out there with a good product, train people and be able to engage the customers.”
