Equinix, Tier 3 Tackle Public Cloud Worries

An infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) provider, Tier 3, is partnering with data center services provider Equinix to enable enterprises to run a private cloud computing environment on a public cloud service. The idea is to help customers take advantage of the cost efficiency and flexibility offered by public cloud computing, while protecting them from worries about multitenancy and security that give so many enterprises pause.

Equinix brings to the table its Platform Equinix services portfolio that delivers security, scalability, application performance optimization and support of multiple options for connections to Tier 1, 2 or 3 networks, as well as to mobile, Ethernet and fiber-optic networks, says Chris Sharp, general manager of the cloud and content division at Equinix.

"We’re a network-neutral colocation provider and, essentially, what that means to the enterprise customer is that we provide an environment where they can pick and choose different types of cloud service providers such as Tier 3" or Amazon Web Services (AWS), he says.

Equinix has a total 6 million square feet of data center capacity to serve enterprise customers in 38 markets in 13 countries spanning five continents, Sharp says. "So what that means to the enterprise customer is that they can access cloud services in the market that’s most important for them."

What Tier 3 brings to the table are public cloud must-haves such as high availability and business continuity. At the same time, it offers security features in isolated environments for each customer. Its IaaS offerings are delivered from within Equinix’s data centers, says Adam Wray, president and CEO of Tier 3.

"Equinix brings us the performance and security on their platform within their data centers,” Wray says. “By partnering up with Equinix, we get the best of all worlds for enterprises to be able to take advantage of our private cloud experience, even though they're doing it in a multitenant environment that is actually a shared [public cloud] environment."

Tier 3 was placed in the Niche Players quadrant in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant report for Public Cloud Infrastructure as a Service vendors, released Dec. 8, 2011. It is in a very crowded field, with eight other smaller players including Carpathia Hosting, Datapipe and Tata Communications. The Leaders quadrant, with more established, larger players, includes AWS, Terremark (now part of Verizon), Savvis and CSC.

Gartner says Tier 3 has "a good set of features and a well-engineered platform" and that it supports VMware vCloud Director from the market-leading virtualization vendor. Gartner also says it "is continuously releasing new capabilities."On the downside, Gartner notes, Tier 3 doesn’t support all the capabilities of vCloud Director and, because the company is small, "it has limited brand awareness, marketing budget and sales capacity."

However, market momentum may be on Tier 3’s side. Enterprises have been reluctant to move to a public cloud out of concern for security and access to their data. Not too long ago, prospective customers were still trying to understand the cloud, but that’s changing, says Wendy White, VP of marketing for Tier 3. "I've been out on the trade show floor talking to customers, ... and I think the conversation eight months ago was. 'What is [cloud]?'" she says. "Now, I think customers have some kind of mandate from their executive management team or a goal to dip their toe into the cloud."

Earlier this month, The Fifth Annual State of the Network Global Study by Network Instruments found that top challenges to adoption of cloud computing include security, compliance issues, bandwidth capacity and a lack of interoperability with existing applications. The No. 1 concern about cloud adoption is the security of corporate data, expressed as a challenge by 74% of respondents. Other concerns pale in comparison but are still significant. The lack of ability to monitor the end user experience was raised by 37% of respondents, followed by compliance issues (33%), the impact on network bandwidth (32%), cost increases (29%) and a lack of interoperability standards (25%).

In February, an InformationWeek report, Fundamentals: Cloud vs. In-House IT: Spend Smart in 2012, stated that when adopting a cloud service, enterprise IT organizations frequently make the assumption that the provider's security will be an improvement over the security of their own on-premise systems. Verifying that this is true, however, is tricky, and, in the end, there are no guarantees.

According to Jeff Kaplan, managing director of THINKstrategies, there are three key ways that cloud providers are trying to address customer security concerns. First, they get certified with independent security audits with SAS70, SSAE16, Payment Card Industry (PCI) and others, all of which demonstrate that they've sought to meet industry standard security practices. Depending on the nature of the service being provided, they also put their money where their mouth is with SLAs. (For instance, Amazon's SLA promises 99.95% service uptime.) Finally, vendors document the specific technologies they're using to ensure security and take measures to record problems and response times, which they then provide to potential customers for scrutiny to ensure they meet minimum requirements.

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