Interview of TAdviser with the deputy director of department of computing systems on the innovative solutions Croc Valentin Gubarev

Valentin Gubarev: First of all, I would note that recently customers ask about the equipment as such more and more seldom, whether it be servers or storage systems. They first of all are interested in solutions in a binding to business challenges where the equipment is only the tool for their implementation. For our customers now tasks of cost optimization, effective storage and data protection, ensuring business continuity and creation of private clouds are the most relevant. Eventually, all this is implemented in the classical solutions connected with supply of equipment, but at the same time requirements to it are formulated in terms of effective implementation of ultimate goals, and the share of related services considerably increases.

Among trends in the market it is possible to observe gradual shift towards the software-defined systems — data warehouses, networks and even the whole data centers. Also we see rapid growth of interest in hyper convergent solutions. They appeared in the market relatively recently, but already very loudly declare themselves, and it also emphasizes the general shift towards the concept of Web Scale IT which means economy, flexibility, simplicity of service, controllability.

Also the failure trend from expensive business and critical systems based on RISC architecture processors in advantage h86 is traced: there is a number of interesting solutions which can entrust the critical systems and to receive at the same time noticeable economy of means. Also put here not only in the price. Intel very much grew lately from the technology point of view: systems which leave in this class can provide fault tolerance, comparable with RISC solutions, and performance now.

In addition, the number of solutions of the Russian and other producers not of North American origin considerably increased that was promoted substantially by the law on import substitution.

Valentin Gubarev: Speak about universal import substitution, in my opinion, prematurely, but to some extent it is present. Some vendors became more active in the market, their steel to discuss, test more their solutions. From Asian suppliers the greatest attention is drawn by Huawei, Lenovo, Quanta, Inspur, Sugon. We see that using products of these vendors we in many cases can propose to our customers effective solutions with an attractive ratio "price/quality". At the same time some of vendors offer even unique products: for example, servers with maximum of all existing storage capacity.

The Russian players on this background strengthened the positions too. Among them, for example, decision makers for data storage of Raidix and Rcntec. The Russian producers do not cover Segment of the equipment Enterprise yet, but in a mid-range segment at them interesting developments are of a number of scenarios at the level. By the way, at Croc there are too own products which we developed in response to escalating needs of our customers - it is a hardware and software system for backup "Croc Backup Appliance" and a storage system Croc Cyberia.

Import substitution gave a strong impetus and for development and application of open source of solutions in the corporate sector. It is KVM for virtualization, OpenStack as a cloud platform, Zabbix for monitoring of IT infrastructure, CEPH and GlusterFS for creation of software-defined storages and also many other solutions.

Valentin Gubarev: The market of cloud services shows very good dynamics: analysts provide data on growth by tens of percent a year. The direction of cloud services Croc grows, and I would tell that here we even advance the market – in 2015 the direction grew by two and a half times. Partly it turned out to be consequence of the law on a personal data storage in the territory of the Russian Federation.

It is more and more customers show interest in transition to cloud computing, and for obtaining the expected effect of such transition they push providers to providing more and more customized services. Croc renders cloud services, based on technologies at once of three producers — Red Hat (KVM), VMware (ESXi), Microsoft (Hyper-V). It allows us to propose to customers the best market solution under any business challenge which is integrated organically in the available infrastructure.

The hypervisor of KVM (the Cloud Croc), for example, is ideal for exacting scenarios to performance because this platform provides the guaranteed performance by several parameters at once. Besides this most flexible solution: it is own development Croc, provides high computing potential and freely is improved under needs of the specific customer.

In turn, Microsoft Hyper-V is ideal for placement of Microsoft - the focused customers and also for a personal data storage according to the federal law: Microsoft independently initiates certification of new versions of the products according to relevant requirements in this direction. If to speak about VMware, its software is ideal for implementation of infrastructure services Cisco and Avaya.

Still It should be noted that today Croc is the only company in the market which offers in lease computing powers based on the Power servers. Thus, we can select an ideal cloud landscape for each specific objective. Somewhere this Cloud Croc, somewhere – Microsoft or VMware, somewhere – Power, and all this, in any hybrid combinations, the customer receives from the uniform supplier. In such context it is possible to call our cloud project unique.

Valentin Gubarev: The areas of network of data centers Croc are filled practically for 100% now, but it does not mean that the direction does not develop. DPCs are a live organism with a set of parameters, and we try to support our data centers in the best form. In particular, we apply the solutions allowing to optimize costs for their contents or to offer customers new services. For example, recently we could reduce significantly energy consumption of one of subsystems of data center, and it gave serious economic effect.

Also we constantly improve operation and management system of our network of data centers. Based on this experience, Croc offers service in the organization of service of large DPCs for the customers now. Actually we can act as the operator on service of large commercial DPCs. We can calculate rates, build processes and work of service of operation (to select and train personnel), to organize more effective use of the platform and many other things.

The fact that based on the DPCs we offer not just lease of the platform, and full range of services over lease of racks is important. It and providing in lease of computing powers, and services of administration and hardware maintenance, backup and so on.

If to say about trends in outsourcing market of DPC, one may say, that they are positive. More and more customers want to use such service. And that the main thing – now these services can satisfy practically any requirement: from the simplest lease of the platform in DPC before ensuring business continuity as service (Disaster Recovery as a Service).

Valentin Gubarev: During crisis this direction traditionally grows. Customers do not hurry to make investments in purchase of the new equipment, so, their attention to already existing park of the equipment increases. Efforts are directed to prolongation of life of this equipment, to receiving the maximum return. It concerns both service of the equipment, and services in its optimization.

We actively develop this direction. For example, recently started new service - Service Assistant. I will tell what it consists in. Customers who operate the multivendor park of the equipment face a large number of routine tasks of maintenance of a set of agreements, on tracking of terms of life of the equipment, guaranty periods, observance of SLA and so on. Within service Service Assistant "Croc" undertakes all this work and provides uniform point of entry according to all service contracts with different vendors. Service Assistant allows to close the problems existing on a joint of different products and technologies.

This service can also give to the customer a certain economy due to alignment and flexible use of those tools which are available for them. The prize is reached due to decrease in service risks. Is uniform responsible which is responsible for quality of service. Also our examination gives the chance to quickly solve such problems as replacement of the legacy equipment modern, more compact and less power-intensive — already one it allows to reduce service costs for ten percent. We offer customers and such option as audit of infrastructure. We have examples of how due to only one optimization of settings of the available equipment it was possible to raise performance of systems on a third. At the same time costs in comparison with purchases of the new equipment are insignificant.

Valentin Gubarev: There is a lot of new solutions and services. For example, as I mentioned earlier, it is lease of computing powers based on the Power servers. In many cases it is "lifesaver" for customers because capital costs of infrastructure at them are reduced, and volumes of tasks at the same time grow. Removal of a part of systems at leased capacities in this case is solution.

One more interesting product – our own unique development based on the Zabbix platform for monitoring of infrastructure of data storage. We developed modules which allow to trace its status, performance and utilization. Key advantage of this product is that it is developed based on open source of solutions. Now customers solve these problems, purchasing proprietary utilities at producers of storage systems. Their main shortcoming is high cost, and often it keeps customers from acquisition of such tool. As a result customers face falling of performance of some system, but, without having the good instrument of monitoring, they cannot see in what a problem.

Besides that the price of our solution many times differs from similar vendor tools, it also is expected practically all infrastructure from different producers. This development is capable to increase performance of infrastructure of our customers considerably. In case of an incident we can quickly deploy this solution from a cloud.

The universal storage system Croc Cyberia became one more new product which Croc began to offer in 2016: as a hardware platform in it the servers not of North American origin having the high density of data storage are used. At the same time a system has the profitable cost of storage on terabyte. This solution does not replace the Enterprise system of level where flash memory is usually used, but for systems where it is required to store large volumes of data, our new product gives very high efficiency in terms of storage cost for terabyte.

Separately I would select service of Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service based on a cloud Croc in which the whole stack of technologies is involved. This solution allows to organize quickly for the customer the reserve platform — ready reserve DPC in a cloud as the flexible service excluding need of the capital investments.

Also Croc traditionally increases competences in the field of the innovative technologies, expanding the portfolio at the expense of new hyper convergent solutions, the software-defined systems, a large number of developments based on open source. These directions at us very actively develop in 2016. To speak about high-profile projects here so far early, but we see great interest to these technologies, there are many preseyl, interesting cases.

Valentin Gubarev: We actively prepare for start of new service "Croc Disk". And already we implement it in the company. First of all, it is a convenient and qualitative service. Croc Disk actually represents corporate Dropbox the Cloud service of file sharing. It is possible to store corporate files in it and to exchange them, to use a disk from different devices, including mobile devices, there is also an opportunity access offline. The main difference from other similar services is the ability to integrate with corporate systems. Besides, it will be possible to use a disk or from a cloud Croc, or to unroll it on the platform of the customer.

When using similar public services corporate data of users are, as a rule, stored it is unknown where. It does not correspond to security policies of the companies. And we solve this problem with ease.

Besides, as I already spoke earlier, the increasing number of customers is interested in opportunities of use of private clouds, more and more big customers think of transition to servisnooriyentirovanny model, and here to us is too what to offer. These are different cloud platforms and a number of products around them. We actively work in this direction and we will be able to show a lot of things in the fall and to tell customers.

And as the additional announcement: in the fall our joint action practical work with Huawei will take place. We are going to provide the KunLun server hardware – it will be not only the presentations, but also evident demonstration of the procedure of migration from RISC architecture on x86 without prejudice to fault tolerance and reliability of the business and critical systems. We invite all interested – it will be really unique action.