3Tera, a company based in California, has announced what
it calls a breakthrough technology - "disposable infrastructure". This technology is the
foundation of their product AppLogic,
which they say is the "first grid operating system that runs and scales existing web
applications." It almost takes a Comp Sci PhD from Stanford to read 3Tera's press
release, but in a nutshell what AppLogic does is allow Web companies to manage - and
scale - all their applications, servers and storage with just a browser. Here's more from
the press release:
"The system enables existing software to be packaged into completely self-contained, portable applications that can be easily deployed and scaled to dozens of servers on demand on any AppLogic grid, anywhere in the world. As a result, open source developers, Web 2.0 and SaaS companies can rapidly deploy Web applications without owning and operating hardware infrastructure, and pay only for the resources they actually use."
The term for this is 'utility computing', aka 'on-demand computing'. It means that a service provider makes available computer resources to their clients and charges them for the usage rather than the hardware. Kind of like a public utility such as your electricity company. Read/WriteWeb contributer Alex Iskold called this 'Compute Services' in his recent Web Platform Primer post.
This extract from 3Tera's About page gives some background on the problems of scaling:
"Successful online services have millions of users. Serving that many users means scaling the application to hundreds and often thousands of servers. But scaling online applications is an enormously difficult problem. It took companies like Google, Yahoo, eBay and Amazon 10 years to learn how to do this well. This knowledge is among their most closely guarded secrets. It is not by accident thatGoogle has more patents on load balancing than on search.
3Tera has solved this problem. Our product, AppLogic, is the first grid operating system that runs and scales existing real-world web applications on grids of commodity servers. The breakthrough technology that enables this is called disposable infrastructure."
So what do they mean by 'disposable infrastructure'? In the press release Vlad Miloushev, president & CEO, notes:
"3Tera is working with hosting providers to offer reliable self-serve utility computing services that make Web applications easy to deploy, manage and scale. In the next decade, only the largest enterprises will be able to justify owning and operating their own servers."
(emphasis mine)
Interesting comment that in the near future only "the largest enterprises" will own and operate their own servers. I imagine in the future specialist companies like 3Tera, along with the big Internet companies like Google, Microsoft and Amazon, will operate 'server farms' that become too cost efficient for other companies not to utilize.
3Tera strikes me as a company to keep an eye on - they're tackling a complex problem and they have a lot of potential customers out there. Look at all the 'web 2.0' startups that have popped up over the past year or so - most of them have big dreams of scaling up to hundreds of thousands, or millions, of users. 3Tera could be just the solution they turn to.
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: 3Tera Brings Utility Computing To Web Apps.
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Richard: I totally agree with this vision, actually you can already see it from the traction that Amazon's S3 and EC2 are getting. I think I know what it means to manage a web infrastructure from the point of view of the minimum effort, expertise and expense needed. To me, a grid where I and my clients can securely deploy and scale storage and services is a dream come true. Let's see how the other big players will respond to Amazon.
Posted by: Cristian Vidmar | September 19, 2006 6:39 AMWhy are those links going to SiteKreator.com?
Posted by: Jeffrey | September 19, 2006 8:09 AMJeffrey,
SiteKreator is a service offered by a partner of ours, Netclime. It's a website authoring and hosting service. SiteKreator is quite innovative and we're using it both to make posting our information simple as well as to help them stress the system so they can learn where enhancement is needed.
Bert Armijo,
Posted by: Bert Armijo | September 19, 2006 9:25 AM3tera
>>>3Tera strikes me as a company to keep an eye on
Yes indeed 100%. I almost fell out of my chair reading their site. I can state first hand that it only takes one person to create and run a Web service, but as soon as you start to grow - the hardware, network and load issues become huge obstacles.
1. you need cash
2. you need hardware
3. you need network/harware skills
4. you need bandwidth
5. you need more people or you stop sleeping
If 3Tera can offer a solution that addresses those needs as an affordable and dependable service, then they will do very well. According to the information on their site, it seems this is exactly what they are addressing.
One thing I didn't see in Richard's initial blog post, was a mention on how the service is going to be offered. After digging around their site a bit, I found that they've recently changed their strategic direction - here's a quote from Bert on their site:
[quote]
"We've decided upon a change of strategic direction and will be working with hosting providers to offer online access to AppLogic instead of offering it directly ourselves.
The first provider to go live was UtilityServe in San Francisco. They're at www.utilityserve.com."
[/quote]
When you hit Utilityserver.com - you can see the pricing: http://www.utilityserve.com/packages.htm
Thanks for the info Richard,
Gideon
Posted by: Gideon Marken | September 19, 2006 10:20 AMhttp://gideonmarken.com
http://www.artistserver.com
Amazon is definitely a player in this too. There are alternatives if you want to own the infrastructure: http://www.datasynapse.com with their FabricServer product.
Disclaimer: I was the Chief Architect of the first version of fabric server.
Alex
Posted by: Alex Iskold | September 19, 2006 2:25 PMThanks for the extra info Gideon!
Posted by: Richard MacManus | September 19, 2006 4:48 PMI would like to clarify the 3Tera business model. Unlike Amazon, Sun, etc. we believe that existing hosting providers already have all the hardware they need to offer utility computing for everyone - all they need is the software that ties a bunch of commodity servers into a grid that can run and scale we apps. We are currently working with several large hosting providers; expect to see AppLogic widely available in 3-4 months.
For those who already own the servers, but are fed up with managing, provisioning, configuring, clustering and all other black arts of running a datacenter, you can get AppLogic and use it on your existing hardware. Get in touch with Bert Armijo at 3Tera and he will make it happen.
Posted by: Vlad Miloushev | September 22, 2006 8:51 PM