A-Server Wins Cloud/SaaS Service of the Year at TechWorld 2009 Awards
A-Server scoops top prize in new 'Cloud category' as editors of leading IDG technology publication honour Datacenter-As-A-Service (DAAS.com)
A-Server, a specialist in Cloud Computing, today announced that its Datacenter-As-A-Service solution has scooped "Cloud/SaaS Service of the Year" at the TechWorld 2009 awards. A-Server is the first vendor to win the award which is a new category created to recognise the growing demand for cloud computing.
TechWorld, an IDG publication, has been running the awards in the UK for 15 years and rewards industry vendors and service providers who have delivered excellent products and solutions over the course of each year. Previously known as the Network Industry Awards, the program's independent panel of esteemed judges includes professionals from leading associations, top consultancies, private and public sector organizations and key technology editors from Techworld.com. The awards assess each product on set criteria including features, functionality, innovation, performance, resilience, ease-of-use, fitness for purpose, price and market position.
Arvid Fossen, Director of Product Management and Marketing for A-Server said, "It is a great achievement for us to win this award and highlights both the technical strength of our Datacenter-As-A-Service concept and our partners who are using DAAS to help real world customers benefit from cloud computing." A-Server is currently showcasing its DAAS.com solution at Network Interop in New York as part of an expansion into the US market planned for 2010.
A-Server Datacentre-As-A-Service is a turnkey solution including Hardware, Cloud OS, Control Panels and integration tools. The DAAS solution is installed in a service provider's datacenter to allow them to offer flexible and highly scalable computing capacity for application hosting and corporate datacenter consolidation of server, storage and application infrastructure. DAAS.com technology provides an "off the shelf" solution with a delivery, install and test cycle of 6 to 8 weeks to enable service providers to offer private cloud via a single web interface with the benefit from true utility based computing and usage based billing.
Technical Backgrounder:
The DAAS cloud is built using industry standard, high performance hardware from SUN, Cisco and Voltaire and integration and provisioning software from SUN and A-Server. Each DAAS.com powered cloud supports a large number of guest operating systems, both 32- and 64-bit, including but not limited to Windows (NT 4.0, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Server 2008, Vista), DOS/Windows 3.x, Linux (2.4 and 2.6), Solaris and OpenSolaris, and OpenBSD.
DAAS includes a management interface that allows both service providers and end-users to access a terminal screen as if inside the datacenter. This Console method is called in the cloud KVM (Keyboard Video Mouse) and allows access from the moment of booting even without Terminal Services activated. Through the web-portal, service providers can control all the machines, disks and network in your cloud. The portal is a powerful environment that allows service providers to quickly add, remove, start and stop virtual machines and change individual characteristics including CPU, disk size and network connectivity. A subset of the same portal can be used by the end customer to allow them to customise their own private datacenter in a secure, self-service environment.
Each initial DAAS hardware and software configuration is identical at installation using a pre-defined, tested and supported framework. However, with the Cloud API, developers can integrate the DAAS-portal into their own tools with full support for a growing range of interfaces including XML/RPC, REST (JSON) and Q-shell (Python bindings).
About A-Server NV
A-Server specializes in ready to go Cloud Computing products. Today's datacenter vendors deliver hardware or software per piece where services to obtain a higher service model are often missing. Building a cloud solution therefore requires a long and complex integration path. More than any other company, A-Server focuses with DAAS.com on providing turnkey solutions, including hardware, cloud computing software and monitoring services, delivered in their customers' datacenters worldwide. The DAAS.com product line helps customers that are looking to launch a cloud-computing offering to speed up their go to market and provide them a very complete set of cloud features from day one.
Alongside its innovations within cloud computing, A-Server is also active in providing Backup and Disaster Recovery Appliances for channel partners across Europe. The A-Server Backup Appliance is installed at an end user site by the channel partner and includes virtualization to bring live backup servers instantly. The Backup & Disaster Recovery Appliance uses a monthly cost model for channel partners, including 24/7 support, monitoring and NOC. For more information, visit www.aserver.com