This cloud computing offering has lots to offer, both from Concentric and from its parent company, XO Communications.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [November 12, 2008]

You may remember Concentric as a dialup provider or as an early provider of DSL. Today, the company is part of XO Communications, where it specializes in delivering applications that could increase the value of XO's network.

Many service providers are starting with the basic services and plan to add advanced services next year. Concentric is no exception. The company is announcing a Managed Server product today. Features include:

• Remote management
  
• Windows or Linux OS
• Powerful control panel
• Channel support
• 99.9 percent SLA on power, network, and server availability
• Network and OS-based firewall options
• Monitoring and reporting

The product will be sold direct and also through the channel programs of XO and Concentric. Bill Uyeki, senior product line manager at Concentric, says that target market is businesses of all sizes, and also service providers of all sizes. "XO is a business ISP, targeting the SMB and larger customers. XO has 400 representatives in 75 major markets nationwide, and XO and Concentric both have channel programs and resellers."

The solution is build on a cloud, "stacks of Intel servers," with data backed up to a NAS storage farm that uses RAID 61 for ultra high integrity. The virtualization is "Xen, with our proprietary work on top of that."

Compared to the single box model, the regular dedicated server, Uyeki says that the cloud wins with reliability, scalability, security, and price.

"In house servers are overheated and under-maintained. Move them into the cloud, and your customer gets to focus on their own business."

Obviously, services like disaster recovery are easier in the cloud. Uyeki points out that the cloud has an additional advantage for companies with a second site. Instead of having lots of hardware standing idle, he says, the customer can have a baseline config that can ramp up fast in a mayday scenario.

The company sells several levels of server management: Silver, Gold, and Platinum. Everyone gets patch updates and monitoring, but higher levels can choose when the patches are applied and obtain higher quality network monitoring. Platinum customers get backup and restore and also a firewall service in which Concentric configures the firewall for the customer instead of asking them to do it themselves.

Lessons learned
Uyeki says the cloud has been available to customers for some time. It's not a brand new, untested product. But in its current iteration, the company has deployed lessons learned in the past by Concentric and other cloud providers.

A key advantage of the Concentric cloud, he believes, is its pricing. "Enterprise administrators need to manage not just availability, but also budget and risk," he says. "If I'm being charged by CPU usage, that shifts the risk from the provider to me. The customer wants and needs a predictable monthly cost, and can put in a buffer for additional resources if they choose."

Another key advantage, Uyeki says, is the XO backbone. "But you don't have to be in the XO network footprint to use this, of course."

Pricing and availability
The Managed Server from Concentric is available now from Concentric and through the channel programs of XO and Concentric. Pricing starts at $195 per month for a Linux server and $295 per month for a Windows server.

There are a wide variety of options available.

The company encourages long term contracts with discounts starting at 10 percent for a one year contract.

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