An Alternative Platform for Cloud-Native Applications

Today’s application developers are turning to cloud platforms to create cloud-native SaaS solutions, however, finding the right one is increasingly challenging. Does it provide comprehensive application and database development, testing and hosting services? Is it secure and compliant with data protection and privacy regulations? Is it scalable and affordable? And last, but not least, is it robust and reliable enough to deliver continuous access to users?

In an effort to give European application developers simple, scalable, yet affordable cloud infrastructure services from secure and GDPR-compliant locations, Exoscale developed its cloud platform on Platform Equinix® as an alternative to hyperscale provider solutions.

Delivering an alternative robust and scalable cloud platform

Launched in Geneva, Switzerland in 2013, Exoscale (a subsidiary of the Telekom Austria Group) is a team of IT operations veterans turned cloud enthusiasts. Seeing cloud-native applications as the wave of the future, the company delivers its expanding base of Swiss and European enterprises and managed service providers a comprehensive, high-performance, yet affordable cloud hosting platform for B2B applications. Exoscale’s platform provides infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), storage-as-a-service (SaaS) and Domain Name System (DNS) services. It also offers its own Kubernetes-as-a service platform, database and S3-compatible object storage services, and compute instances (e.g., GPU and GPU3 computing capabilities).

Wanting to grow quickly and expand its solutions for application developers across Europe, Exoscale sought out a data center and interconnection partner that had broad European reach, data protection, high-performance connectivity, and a high level of reliability and scalability. According to Antoine Coetsier, Exoscale’s chief operating officer (COO) and co-founder, “As a European cloud provider, we are based on three values: simplicity, scalability and safety. Everything we design must abide by those values.”

Expanding and scaling in European markets

Exoscale expanded its market presence throughout Europe by leveraging Equinix International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data centers in Geneva, Zurich, Munich and Frankfurt. Equinix Fabric™ software-defined interconnection and Exoscale Private Connect gave its customers direct access to the Exoscale cloud platform over the public internet with ultra-low latency and greater security.

Exoscale customers can privately access cloud hosting services using scalable performance (either 1G or 10G) at a more cost-effective entry point and with greater flexibility, security and resiliency (no downtime).

On Platform Equinix, Exoscale has also made storage even simpler and more scalable for its customers, where they can leverage Exoscale’s object storage platform (SOS) in each IBX data center—storing up to three copies of their data in or between each supported metro zone as required. Equinix Smart Hands® 7×24 operational support service also provided Exoscale with the ability to put hardware into production without having to go on site to install it or maintain it, a critical capability during the global pandemic.

Consistently meeting customer SLAs

On Platform Equinix, Exoscale consistently achieves customers’ SLA goals. The company delivers continuous uptime to its enterprise and service provider cloud hosting customers, along with greater performance, security and scalability at an affordable price.

• Trusted security, compliance and sustainability: Having built its cloud platform with security in mind, Exoscale relies on Equinix for its outstanding operations policies and trusted physical systems and data security to meet industry and government compliance regulations (e.g., GDPR) and standards, including using 100% clean and renewable energy in its IBX data centers throughout Europe.
• Outstanding performance and visibility: Exoscale leverages low-latency, high-performance 1G and 10G connections from Equinix Fabric throughout Europe and provides easy to access performance metrics to its customers.
• Continuous uptime: Exoscale’s reliability is measured by the up time of its virtual machines/workloads. For the last eight years, Equinix has enabled Exoscale to deliver zero downtime, delivering a high level of customer satisfaction.

Customer Use Case: How Exoscale scales OCRE projects

The Open Clouds for Research Environment (OCRE) Project enables research institutions, labs and universities across Europe to browse, select, purchase and consume a wide variety of cloud services tailored to their specific use cases. Exoscale currently hosts several OCRE projects on Platform Equinix, delivering full GDPR compliance, along with outstanding price/performance for the OCRE community. On Platform Equinix, the cloud hosting provider offers multiple 1G or 10 G connections per metro zone to the GEANT Cloud Network, in addition to free ingress/egress network charges that provide users with “next-hop” low-latency performance. For example, the Exoscale platform enabled CERN to scale up to 10,000 cores.

Exoscale continues to develop its services on Platform Equinix, adding and scaling more capabilities for small and large customers alike. Partnering with Equinix has given Exoscale the speed and agility it requires to serve new European customers that need scalable, secure and reliable cloud hosting services. And according to Antoine Coetsier, “We are now able to progressively move from being an IaaS provider to providing more services that are a level above, such as platform-as-a-service.”

For more information, read the Exoscale customer case study.