OnApp lets both enterprises and cloud service providers build and run public, private and hybrid clouds, content delivery networks, and perform infrastructure management and disaster recovery. Over 30% of public clouds run on OnApp, as do a whopping one million+ virtual servers. Rather than bore you with a list of the general benefits of cloud computing or a generic OnApp sales pitch, we’ve looked at what’s really behind those impressive market-share figures. Here we discuss what OnApp does better than other cloud management platforms.
1. Sophisticated content delivery networks
A key strength to OnApp is its content delivery network (CDN) technology, which launched in 2011. Because OnApp gives service providers access to a CDN with many points of presence (PoPs) around the world, those offering IaaS can also provide a CDN and locally-hosted presence option.
OnApp boasts one of the highest number of PoPs, with 170+ dispersed around the globe. With an OnApp private CDN, you get all the benefits of hosting locally by being in control of:
- How bandwidth is shared
- The location of edge servers
- How pricing is calculated for different bands of customers and partners
- How traffic moves across your infrastructure
And, because OnApp is a fully supported turnkey CDN software stack, users don’t have to suffer the usual deployment headaches.
For organisations without the willingness or technical expertise to exploit in-house infrastructure, OnApp is also a virtual CDN service provider, allowing you to create customised services for different markets by obtaining the capacity they need from the OnApp Federation – an integrated feature of the OnApp cloud platform that gives access to an on-demand global network of CDN infrastructure.
2. Rapid deployments
Independent IT research firm, Neovise, notes in their cloud management platform report that, because of OnApp’s hosting mindset, their platform has been built from the ground up to meet the needs of hosting providers. As such, the tool is turnkey – it’s quick and simple to deploy and highly scalable. Service providers don’t need to develop any code, and the platform is low-maintenance.
While cloud deployment using comparable solutions can take weeks, if not months, OnApp private clouds are typically installed in less than a day. But how are these rapid deployments achieved?
Well, for starters, OnApp uses a PXEboot mechanism that automates the whole process of server discovery and compute node/hypervisor installation. If the time comes when a business needs to scale up, the process of adding more appliances or nodes is also drastically simplified.
Provisioning is very straightforward, as users can self-serve IT resources from the platform. For example, bare metal servers, fixed cloud instances, applications, and containers can all be quickly set up within the tool.
Ultimately, OnApp’s lightning deployments mean a lightning time to market for their customers. In a marketplace crowded with stiff competition, getting products out first (and then being able to easily refine them over and over) is a powerful advantage.
3. Low cost
This ease of deployment also makes OnApp a cheap cloud management platform. As mentioned, time-to-cloud is often less than a day – a stark contrast to the weeks/months of other offerings. Professional support services are optional with OnApp, and, as a low maintenance solution, support-time is usually minimal – which is reflected in the price. Unlike with other offerings, companies using OnApp don’t need to hire a legion of specialists to build and administer an ultra-involved "cloud project".
What's more, with the support of private and hybrid clouds, organisations that can make use of existing infrastructure and run workloads in-house don’t have to bear the full extent of public cloud spend. The same applies to the setup of OnApp’s CDN, which lets you become a CDN provider in your own right. Rather than be a passenger of managed or licensed CDNs from legacy vendors, OnApp enables you to build your own from existing hardware. Few solutions will let you do this.
4. Ease of use
Functionality is a resource that all users crave. Administering systems is rarely a walk in the park, but OnApp simplifies IT procurement and management, and allows you to easily run workloads in locations that meet your cost, performance and compliance requirements.
With OnApp, you can manage all of your IT through a single pane of glass: orchestration, management, scaling, backups, DR, RBAC, governance, metering, chargeback and provisioning – for VMs, containers, apps and bare metal – across multiple sites, in one UI. In short, OnApp provides a platform that is easy to use and learn as well as providing the functionality to manage multiple datacenters and clouds in one place. This is not a universal trait among different platforms and another reason why OnApp stands out from its competitors.
Final thoughts
In 2013, Carl Brooks, an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and cloud market research analyst at 451 Research, said:
OnApp [are] everywhere... they've been wildly successful but nobody really knows about them
To date, they've continued to quietly but rapidly grow, emerging as one of the big cloud management success stories.
At DediServe, we've grown with them and are proud to now be known as the world's largest OnApp provider. With a total of 17 strategically placed locations across the globe, 8000+ registered users and 5000+ virtual machines, we're perfectly placed to get you started – join the production-ready cloud today.
