We are proud to announce to you, our loyal clients, that Crucial has become the first company in the world to offer its clients guaranteed performance levels in the cloud, thanks to a ground-breaking solution we have developed with our technology partners, SolidFire (www.solidfire.com) and OnApp (www.onapp.com).

Crucial’s Blaze cloud, which utilises the SolidFire all-SSD (Solid State Drive) SAN (Storage Area Network) and OnApp Cloud Management Platform and control panel, has now put control of application performance into the hands of you, our customers.  In addition to offering unprecedented application control, we are also able to deliver guaranteed levels of performance, availability and scalability.

“For the first time, cloud computing is a viable option for I/O intensive applications or databases that until now have relied on dedicated servers to ensure disk performance,” said Managing Director, Aaron Weller.  “Online retailers and digital agencies can also achieve significant cost savings by scaling up or down their high performance environments for different promotions or as their business needs change.

“Instead of server performance being dependent on the number of customers using the infrastructure at any given time, Crucial’s Blaze platform allows customers to specify the number of IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second) they require.

“The combination of SolidFire’s all-SSD storage systems and the OnApp Cloud Management Platform allows us to provision storage with guaranteed performance levels, all backed by our proven commitment to the highest levels of security, service and technical expertise. Customers have complete control over their cloud environment and can use the OnApp control panel to change the configuration of their server in real-time,” he said.

Responding to the Market

We went looking for a high performance solution after identifying a need amongst our customer base. After failing to find anything that met all our requirements, we approached two leading players to collaborate with us on a product offering.

“We’d been watching SolidFire for some time because we already knew their SAN technology was ahead of the game. OnApp had the best control panel on the market so we worked with them to create an integration module that addressed our requirements for a range of key performance measures,” Mr Weller said.

“By putting control into the hands of our customers, we are empowering them to scale their disk performance to match their changing requirements. This capability will be available to all our cloud customers, regardless of whether they use a VPS (virtual private server) or pay-as-you-go public cloud.”

SolidFire CEO, Dave Wright said, “Guaranteeing application performance puts Crucial at a distinct advantage among other cloud service providers.

“Crucial continues to demonstrate their commitment to broadening their customers’ use of the cloud. They are evolving their infrastructure to include guaranteed performance and meeting the growing demand to run performance-sensitive and mission-critical applications in the cloud,” he said.

OnApp CEO, Ditlev Bredahl commented, “Not all clouds are created equal. Crucial’s Blaze solution hasn’t cut corners. It has incredible usability, control and performance. Today’s applications need to be fast and available, no matter what the demand – and that is exactly what Crucial’s new cloud makes possible.”

Although developed initially for Crucial, Mr Weller said that Blaze be available to other cloud hosting providers.

“While we’ve been the first to see this opportunity and bring it to market, we believe this is something the industry needs and which will help to drive the evolution of cloud business solutions,” Mr Weller said.