Internet Unie, a service provider in the Netherlands, has recently deployed an innovative hybrid cloud service, combining Cloudian object storage in their data center together with Amazon S3 storage.
The new service allows their colocation customers to employ local S3 storage in their data center, with additional capacity available in the AWS public cloud.
Why would a service provider launch a service that employs another service provider (in this case Amazon)?
The answer is simple: it fills a real business need and gives Internet Unie a competitive advantage.
By offering their customers this hybrid service, Internet Unie meets multiple possible requirements:
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- Performance: Local storage provides cloud-compatible capacity without the latency of a long network hop
- Data governance: Locally stored data does not leave the data center
- Capacity flexibility: Data can be tiered off to the cloud when desired, meaning capacity is always there
- Disaster recovery: Backup information can be moved off site at any time
- Cost: Locally stored information costs nothing to access, meaning that cloud storage invoices become far more predictable
- Archival storage: Cloud archival services are very cost effective for rarely accessed information
- Business simplicity: One invoice for both on prem and cloud storage, thanks to the Amazon Marketplace metered-by-use program
Internet Unie summed it up this way:
“This hybrid service opens up enormous possibilities for those using the AWS service cloud offerings and need to store certain data types in a private cloud, for reasons such as data governance policies. With Cloudian’s new offering on AWS, our customers can point their applications to either cloud storage or on-premises storage, and it’s completely transparent,” said Arvid Cauwels, Sales Director at Internet Unie. “With AWS metering now available for Cloudian storage, customers get one AWS invoice for both their public and private cloud storage usage.”
Cloudian is a natural fit due to our native support for the Amazon S3 API, which makes it easy to tier between a Cloudian storage system in the Internet Unie data center and AWS cloud storage. Additionally, Cloudian supports AWS metering, which pulls all usage and billing (for both public and private cloud) into a single monthly AWS invoice.
Hybrid cloud represents a ‘best of both worlds’ solution, giving customers extra flexibility and control while providing limitless scalability. Read our blog post to learn more about why you should consider a hybrid cloud solution.