The use of the OnApp management layer is credited with enabling Dublin cloud-hosting provider Dediserve to build a €1m UK and Ireland cloud-hosting business within a two-year period.
Since the company launched in February 2009, it has grown to a €1m business with cloud-hosting operations in Ireland and the UK.
OnApp is the management layer in Dediserve’s cloud. It handles cloud deployment, server and storage management, user management, automatic failover and billing.
“OnApp has entirely enabled our business – it simply wouldn’t be possible to do what we do without it,” explained Aidan McCarron, managing director of Dediserve. “Our growth has been entirely powered by OnApp.”
Dediserve offers two main types of cloud hosting service. Dediserve Cloud Machines are a straightforward way to move from traditional dedicated servers to a more flexible, pay-per-use hosting system. Customers can deploy a single virtual machine in the Dediserve cloud with flexible RAM, storage and bandwidth. Dediserve also offers an extensive cloud IT service, which gives customers their own virtual data centre – a private cloud, with a scalable pool of resources they can use as they wish.
“We built an enterprise-class hosting infrastructure using high availability HP, EVA and Cisco kit,” McCarron added.
“On top of that we have OnApp, which lets us configure these resources as a cloud, with the ability to flex resources for the whole cloud or for individual customers,” McCarron said.
Cloud business benefits
This flexibility enables Dediserve to target different segments of the market with different cloud services. About 70pc of Dediserve customers are businesses in the UK and Ireland; the remainder are based in the US and elsewhere in the EU.
“Our Cloud Machines tend to be used by smaller businesses and web design or development houses, who move to cloud hosting to replace their own legacy IT, a previous-generation VPS or co-location hosting service,” McCarron continued.
“Our cloud IT service tends to attract larger enterprises, who face a simple choice: to invest heavily in the hardware and skills they’d need to build equivalent functionality in their own data centre, or to buy the resources they need from us for a low monthly fee.
“With OnApp, we can deploy virtual machines while customers are on the phone or in live chat, which never ceases to impress,” McCarron explained.
Photo: Aidan McCarron, managing director, Dediserve
