Tier 3 Launches Global Cloud Object Storage
New Service, Powered by Riak CS Enterprise, Delivers High Availability and “Geo-Data Locality” via Automatic and Instant Replication
BELLEVUE, WA — June 19, 2013 ― Tier 3, a provider of public cloud infrastructure and cloud management tools, today announced the general availability of a new, distributed object storage service with automated data center redundancy. Powered by Riak’s Riak CS Enterprise, this service offers enterprises flexible, scalable cloud storage for files of any type and any size. Files – or “objects” – stored in Tier 3’s cloud are automatically replicated to a secondary in-country data center. This unique feature provides native “high availability” that improves performance, reliability, and ensures that critical data will never vanish into the ether.
By contrast, most existing cloud-based object storage systems require additional engineering work to enable this automated capability, a burden that many IT professionals and developers would rather not carry.
“Object storage in the cloud has proven to be a best practice for real-time data backups and archiving. With the launch of this service, Tier 3 has added a layer of enterprise-grade capabilities on object storage, with automatic redundancy to a second geographic location,” said Jared Wray, founder and CTO of Tier 3. “Partnering with Riak has allowed us to provide enterprises with a simple, scalable storage platform for their applications and data. Furthermore, this service will support data sovereignty scenarios for sensitive data.”
Tier 3 offers the complete enterprise cloud – a growing collection of integrated services that includes virtual servers running in the public cloud, cloud management functions like automation and orchestration, as well as Web Fabric, a platform as a service offering based on Cloud Foundry. The company operates nine data centers worldwide.
Object storage from Tier 3 is available immediately in its two Canadian data centers, with additional locations in the U.S. scheduled for next quarter. Rollout will extend to Tier 3 data centers in the U.K. and mainland Europe thereafter. Users simply pay monthly for the amount of storage allocated on Tier 3’s federated cloud data centers, and may scale storage up or down as desired.
The automatic replication of data to separate data center also delivers on a growing requirement for enterprise cloud deployments – geo-data locality. This feature allows enterprises to pre-determine the physical locations of specific data. This can be used not only to address regulatory compliance, but also to improve the end-customer experience through ultra low latency.
To help deliver this new service, Tier 3 chose Riak CS Enterprise from Riak Technologies. This advanced cloud storage software runs on top of Riak, a sophisticated open-source distributed database that provides extreme high availability, fault tolerance, and operational simplicity.
“Businesses are increasingly asking for options to meet their rapidly growing and diverse object storage requirements,” said Justin Sheehy, CTO of Riak. “Tier 3’s offering is powerful as it emphasizes enterprise requirements for security and resiliency while also providing the flexibility users expect from a public cloud. Riak is excited to see Riak CS’ unique multi-data center replication perform as a core component underlying Tier 3’s new global cloud object storage offering.”
Customer Demand Fuels Development of Object Storage
As cloud adoption continues apace, so too does the demand for cloud storage. In a recent research note, Gartner predicts worldwide Cloud System Infrastructure Services (IaaS) Storage for end-user spending to grow at a 31% Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR), from an estimated $1.7B in 2013 to a forecast $4.9B in 2017(1).
Object storage is fueling much of this growth, since it is ideal for many enterprise scenarios, including hosting of multimedia files, data back-ups, archives, transfer of large files, and much more.
Product Overview
Highlights of the new object storage service from Tier 3 include:
- Storage for Large Objects. Users may store any type of file in the Tier 3 cloud – images, videos, documents, database backups, archives, and more. The service supports direct uploads for files up to 5 GB, while larger files may be stored using multipart file uploads.
- Storage for Public Files, Plus Permissions to Keep Objects Private. Users may host public files with object storage – for example, images used in web applications or downloadable multimedia content. For additional security, files stored in Tier 3 are flagged as private by default.
- Geographic Redundancy & High Availability. Object storage from Tier 3 offers multi-datacenter replication natively, with high availability already built-in.
- S3 Compatibility. Users familiar with S3 may re-use existing code assets with the Tier 3 object storage service. The company’s API supports service, bucket, and object-level operations. In addition, object storage from Tier 3 is compatible with many S3 file management utilities.
- Enterprise-Grade Security, with Key-Pair Permissions. System administrators may store collections of files in buckets that are protected with unique key-pairs. Admins can simply point-and-click to assign permissions to other users as needed.
- Scalability. Object storage from Tier 3 can easily scale to any size desired.
Additional information on Tier 3’s object storage may be found at: http://www.tier3.com/products/object-storage.
(1) Gartner [Forecast: Public Cloud Services, Worldwide, 2011-2017, 1Q13 Update], [Anderson, E., Bell, W. and others] and [2013, March 26]
About Tier 3
Tier 3 is a complete cloud management platform for mid-tier to large enterprises, as well as SaaS providers. To bring even more value to customers, Tier 3 has combined elements of the traditional enterprise cloud market with those of cloud management platforms. Tier 3’s suite of cloud products and services include advanced management and orchestration enabling our customers to run workloads ranging from simple development and test environments to the most complex and demanding enterprise applications. The Company is based in Bellevue, WA, with regional presence in multiple locations in North America and Europe. www.tier3.com.
About Riak Technologies
Riak is a distributed systems company dedicated to making software that is highly available, fault-tolerant and easy-to-operate at scale. Riak’s distributed database, Riak and Riak’s cloud storage software, Riak CS, are used by fast growing Web businesses and by over 25 percent of the Fortune 50 to power their critical Web, mobile and social applications and their public and private cloud platforms.
Riak and Riak CS are available open source. Riak Enterprise and Riak CS Enterprise offer enhanced multi-datacenter replication and 24×7 Riak support. For more information, visit riak.com. Riak is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts and has offices in London, San Francisco, Tokyo and Washington DC.
