50% reductions on Cloud servers

Cloud server provider, ElasticHosts is expanding its white-label reseller program to include disruptive new Elastic Containers - the first cloud servers to be billed based purely on consumption, rather than capacity, delivering substantial cost savings. Elastic Containers provide the channel with a totally unique offering in today’s crowded cloud marketplace, helping partners to differentiate, without the need for significant upfront investment or a dedicated skillset.

Launched in 2012, the ElasticHosts’ white-label program allows channel partners to immediately offer ElasticHosts’ cloud services under their own branding with 30% share of recurring revenues; partners can be up and running, selling to customers, with a full cloud service within hours. With very low cost for entry, ElasticHosts white-label program presents very little risk to partners, while creating an opportunity to create a brand and identity to help foster closer customer relationships and deliver higher revenues. The reseller has full control over the cloud environment, enabling them to offer a range of management and customer support services.

The addition of Elastic Containers strengthens the program even further, by offering the channel a truly unique solution. It will help partners wrestle customers from incumbent providers, like Amazon, that have inflexible offerings, but operate with much greater economies of scale. By offering a genuinely elastic service whereby capacity is always available, but price is based on consumption, partners can reduce prices and effectively compete with much larger providers.

Elastic Containers are suitable for all Linux users, backed by ElasticHosts’ Solid State Drive (SSD) storage for added performance, and can be hosted from any of ElasticHosts’ global datacentres. Elastic Containers offer 50% savings, compared with standard virtual machines (VMs) from other large IaaS providers. Key selling points for customers include:
· The industry’s first and only usage-based billing system: Traditional capacity-based IaaS billing is focused on provisioning capacity in blocks; yet concerns over performance and availability force companies to pay for a buffer of excess space that they are not actually using. By billing for actual usage, rather than available capacity, customers can run their servers with space continuously available for immediate scaling at no additional cost; they only pay for what they actually use, right down to the MB.
· Auto-scaling for continuous high performance availability: The cost of a website or application failure can run into the millions of pounds; therefore servers need to be running with sufficient capacity at all times. By using Elastic Containers, companies can now handle all their usage peaks and troughs effortlessly, automatically scaling each container up to 64GB RAM. This provides peace of mind that capacity will be instantly available when needed, ensuring continuity of service without downtime.
· Self-managing infrastructure: Currently, aside from deploying complex software to automate the process, companies are forced to provision and adjust capacity manually, which can be costly, time consuming and inaccurate. ElasticHosts’ auto-scaling, elastic infrastructure expands and contracts automatically, completely removing the need for manual management or provisioning; companies can simply turn on the service and forget about it.

Richard Davies, CEO and Co-Founder of ElasticHosts, comments: “We've analysed hundreds of servers from some of our largest customers and noticed two major differences: firstly, a server running a typical workload will see 50% cost saving versus other major IaaS clouds, since typically less than 50% of total capacity is used through a full weekly cycle. Secondly, a server which frequently runs below its peak capacity, either due to idle periods or because it only occasionally needs to handle a large load, can save 75% or more. We are also billing in 15 minute intervals based on usage, as opposed to the common industry practice of hourly billing based on available capacity. These are compelling stats for partners to use to start conversations with customers. Essentially, Elastic Containers are completely unique; by white-labelling this solution, the channel can open up a number of new opportunities and really set themselves apart from the competition."

Through the updated white-label reseller program, ElasticHosts is also allowing partners to drive margins in new specialist areas, like disaster recovery. Current disaster recovery solutions are very expensive, with companies replicating 50-100% of their servers as ‘hot spares’ and constantly provisioning at full capacity at all times. By offering customers Elastic Containers, resellers can strip out 80% or more of these costs, as a fully configured version of the primary server – commonly known as the ‘hot spare’ – can be running continuously. This version is ready for action if needed, but runs at a minimal cost, since actual usage is very low on the idle ‘hot spare’. As such, the channel can offer disaster recovery solutions to customers at a significantly reduced price point to compete with current leading Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS) providers and succeed in this growing market.

Davies continues: “The new white-label program allows partners to be first to market with another pioneering technology. Elastic Containers are a breakthrough next-generation technology that the channel can now deliver to its customers, with the added flexibility and performance of running on SSD storage at all instance sizes. This is the first and only cloud offering that can provide truly elastic, intelligent auto-scaling. From opening up entirely new sectors like disaster recovery, or targeting new sets of customers, the updated white-label program provides partners with a unique and simple way to get one over on the competition.”