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OnApp is here to help service providers grow and thrive.
Right now most service providers are getting a serious beating by the megahosters (AWS/GCE/etc).
Features is part of the problem, but scale and geographical footprint is even a bigger issue. And service providers just have no chance to compete in their own.
We are here to help them do that...any service provider participating in the federation would have pretty much unlimited scale and geographical reach - without having to spend millions on world wide infrastructure.
I totally understand that large parts of the LET crowd does not compete directly with AWS though...
D
Most ~ Some, depends where you are in the chain I guess.
Debatable > LowEndSpirit is a timely fit, was it 11 locations last time I checked.
At the sacrifice of control.
A large part of the world doesn't have any interest in AWS. I get your looking at bigger than just LET hosts towards corporate levels but I think there are kinks to work out. (Curious to what the responses are to the points of mine you missed.)
Sure, but is Solus just being merged in with OnApp or what, as this addition looks like a major change like you mentioned may be coming in v2 but seems to just be a half self hosted Solus now.
I suppose this is the bit that I don't understand, please don't take offence at this, I really do not mean any.
The larger solusvm segment is on WHT I would say, having just refreshed my memory as I stopped looking at other hosts offerings on WHT some time ago really nothing even comes close to the buy price so that still makes no sense.
I could understand the comparison to AWS, GCE or Azure however having been a cloud.net customer I don't think that is a fair comparison either, what I got was fairly old hardware, certainly generations older than the hardware I use for $7 p/month stuff here, the feature set is narrow at best, the one I used was on Xen 3.4.3 and had memory ballooning imposed from the dom0, the interface was a little buggy and really did not even offer half of what solusvm did a year ago and certainly not even in the same ball park as AWS.
However I have had a few hours to consider this, I am sure you planned it for a lot longer and know your market way better than I do, but from my perspective there is little sense in it as a business model to introduce to my clients when I could resell DO at a fraction of the price with more features, better performance and a great set of locations if I wanted to go down that route.
I am genuinely interested to see how this turns out though, and I suppose it is worth keeping in mind it is not really having a huge cost for you to do this so any extra revenue is a bonus, maybe when solusvm v2 is available everything will become clear.
Guys, I absolutely understand your points. And I thank you for taking time to give your input.
We had +100 interested asking for more info via the form, and xx already signed up. Not a huge conversion out of the SolusVM clientbase that we sent out to, but also not too bad.
I guess that reinforces your points - that the general SolusVM clientbase is not the typical segment that would jump on something like this; that being said, I would have loved to have had something like this when I was in the hosting business.
Buying servers was just a pain, and even though we were +$50m of revenue, I sometimes only had $1-200k in the bank. Running a fast growing hosting business is very cash intensive and super scary. With this initiative I want to make it possible for anyone to compete with the megahosts out there.
Any of you guys should be able to submit RFP's at enterprise level, with the federation you'd be empowered to match any requirements and AWS should have nothing on you!
Most of the market is not at all as price sensitive as you guys outline. I know Lowendtalk is obviously the most price focused hosting site in the world - no doubt about that. But if price was key overall, AWS, Azure or GCE would not be around and growing 50-100% YoY.
Thanks again guys!
D
Pretty cheap cloud software, but id rather test before buying.
Having to fill a form to ask for information is meh. Consider documenting it well and make the documentation easily accessible. You might get more people interested then.
Unfortunately, I may be interested into this product, however have a lot of concern about reliability of the other host, maintenance, ToS, etc. This can cause a lot of issue if the host is not reliable......
That is first major step SolusVM has taken forward since the acquisition by OnApp. Hope to see more in future.
This isn't a SolusVM step forward at all...this is OnAPP pushing it's already established Federation to VPS providers to get more to signup.
So what you;re saying is if I host my client here, and the server/network/power goes out for any reason...providers and clients just have to bite the bullet and act like it never happened?
That right there is going to turn off all informed clients who like to have their service online. I'm placing the data, not into my hands, not into their hands, but some random third party, which is backed by 0 guarantee that it will stay online.
I also have no care in the world for the uptime the previous 20 months, I/My client would only care about the uptime AFTER signup, and theres nothing saying it will be.
What will we say when a node goes down? "Sorry we have no SLA on these precepts and have no clue on when this other company we lease your VM from will get the problem fixed? We are praying for you though!". I don't think that is going to cut it when talking with clients who are paying the premium OnAPP cloud price.
It has lot of advantages for providers like they can offer enterprise level cloud services without having to invest in infrastructure. I know lot of people are confused regarding its technicalities & legal aspects but lets hope for the best & wish that it will make things easier for providers as they would be able to offer services even in those parts of the world where they don't have their own/leased infrastructure.
You don't have to do that even as @HostNun would be exclusively hired to do it for everyone
I think its that the providers have different priorities, sure you can expand fast, but what quality are you getting. I'd rather not expand if some host halfway around the world causes my customers issues and they tarnish my brand.
e.g. what happens when (not if, as it will happen) failures occur.
My queries about the system in its present state have not even been addressed apart from its the sellers (not infrastructure owners) responsibility to notify clients.
I agree its part of the firsts steps of the v2 product...
SolusOA, oaSolus something maybe? When its ready add the number 2 and its good to go.
@wych I agree with what you've said above & there should be detailed documentation explaining how it would all work & explaining concerns raised by people here.
Security is my biggest concern here. What would happen if for example someone stole web-shop data of my client and post CC number all over the internet.
Logically i am getting sued, then who i sue after that ? OnAPP ? You will have to make really fat insurance policy, otherwise i don't see how this will work.
Performance wise problem is even greater. What works great with 10 clients most of the time is having issues with 50 clients.
Due cloud nature, storage array overselling is getting to extremes. Who and how can control this, and what will happen later when performance goes super slow.
And as you are inviting absolutely everybody to jump in that train, what will happen when some of hosts in your reselling program dead pool and run with money, or simply don't pay his server provider bill.
As you can tell i am paranoid about data security, and that is what scares me most, second would be performance aspect of whole story, and 3rd would be who is responsible and what security (your insurance policy) are you providing when damage is done.
There is no way that this will work with no issues, so i am concerned how will issues be solved financially.
OnApp should be lawyers themselves. I'm seeing a lot of pointed questions not being answered, and the ones that are answered- marketing, marketing, marketing.
Wow - tough crowd
Listen, nothing is being forced upon you - or SolusVM clients - if you are doing fine, growthing fast enough and having sufficient cash in the bank to keep competing with AWS ... cool. Happy days
If not, then we are here to help with an alternative route to world wide infrastructure scale.
It's free, easy to use and totally transparent. Take it or leave it - we all have different business plans and for some of you this may make a bit of sense, for others it may not
I feel I've replied to all the questions asked me in this thread, though if here is something you'd like more info around feel free to email me directly: [email protected].
D
Have they Started to DDoS your site yet? If not then it will get tougher :P
Pretty sure all my queries about being able to contact whoever is in charge of the server we are leasing has been ignored, and how downtime notices etc are handled.
Is that your personal mission?
Technically no, but at least for me its signs of what direction its going in.
When you buy a reseller server from Hostgator, it's generally hosted with Softlayer. This is the same situation. You have no direct engagement with SoftLayer...so if they are down, you are down, but you would be dealing with Hostgator as they are the seller to you. And your resellers would have to do with you, even though you may be 3-4 tiers down in the chain. This is the same situation.
Same goes for all other related situations, if SoftLayer is hacked or have data leaks, Hostgator and hence your reseller account, your clients and potential resellers, are impacted - but you only deal with Hostgator.
However, since all supply is running OnApp we are actually able to monitor he performance of the services sold in the federation marketplace - so we can see when things fail, when bottlenecks appear and we alert suppliers and even go and fix things when needed.
Makes sense?
OnApp's - and my - personal mission is to help our industry to fight back against the megahosters.
I've felt the pain myself when I was a hoster and I see how our clients are getting squeezed on a daily basis - so it is very much my personal mission to arm service providers so they can fight back, yes!
Again, if you guys are not feeling business pressure, then cool - obviously you are doing fine without us - but I can see a lot of our clients and partners are going through tough times, and together we can fight back!
D
Same goes for all other related situations, if SoftLayer is hacked or have data leaks, Hostgator and hence your reseller account, your clients and potential resellers, are impacted - but you only deal with Hostgator.
See that makes sense, but hostgator will have a clear line of communication with softlayer for updates. I am cool with that process you just haven't said if you have built the system with the contact methods in place or really discussed this.
I really wish you would stop saying that though, this is no way competes with AWS if cloud.net is the leading example.
Happy to expand on that if you want, but I really don't think I need to?
OnApp acts as an intermediary, as both the buyer & seller contracts are with OnApp. If you have questions however, you can still contact cloud provider directly through email or phone. Remember, full transparency, so you will always know who is the seller to OnApp, providing the infrastructure you're using.
In a situation where there is maintenance, sellers are able to post notifications to buyers through the OnApp UI, which the buyer can then forward to end users.
But your also a seller with cloud.net and in some cases sell at a lower rate than you sell to these new resellers, and on average only a few percent discount leaving no meat on the bone.
We use Zendesk to channel tickets directly from the buyer to the seller if required. Its quite an elegant way of doing it, Zendesk is awesome at that.
Where do i see that on cloud.net? My NO VPS is hosted inside Host1 Network but sold by something called "Uptime Alliance" and no contact for them is anywhere.
It seem there is some sort of confusion here, this is not a cloud.net offer, or anything to do with cloud.net, this is a federation offer, you would in essence have the same access that cloud.net and others like it have.
Yes, as a federation member you can raise a problem notice with a VM that goes direct to the cloud provider and we are always expanding the messaging system for good comms between provider of infrastructure and the host consuming it, we are just creating technology to facilitate the market of infrastructure between providers, in no way we wish to be a roadblock between them.
What happens when you become AWS? Should someone else "fight back" against you?
Still not very transparent then.