We spoke with
Saroosh Zahid of RapidCompute about how they not only provides companies with data and network security that meets global standards, they are also the first and only local Cloud Service provider in Pakistan that is PCIDSS3.2 and ISO 27001:2013 certified, as well as being GDPR Compliant. With their intuitive self-service portal, customers can comfortably operate and manage their Virtual Machines, quickly scale up and down as per their business needs and get the true cloud experience. Their pay-as-you-go model also ensures you’re only paying for what you consume.
What type of Hosting plans do you offer?
RapidCompute provides multi-hypervisor support for both Citrix and VMware on its IaaS cloud. Users can enjoy the best of both worlds with a centralized and customized portal for complete SDDC visibility.
All plans include:
- 99% Uptime SLA
- Dedicated server
- 24/7 call and ticket support
- 10 Mbps CIR bandwidth
- 50 GB free storage
- Self-service portal
Hosting plans with both environments can be found below:
Basic Hosting Plans on Citrix
Email Hosting-Starting from $0.1/hour
- Centralized control panel
- Web statistics
- Robust site & server security
- Unlimited email accounts
- Mailing list management
Web Hosting with SSL- Starting from $0.11/hour
- 99.9% uptime guarantee
- One Click Application install
- SSL support
- DNS Zone management
- EFA- Email Filtering Appliance – Starting from $0.12/hour
- Anti-Spam, Anti-Mail Bombing & Anti-Phishing
- Automatic updates and system monitoring
- Option to enable as an email server
- Easy to use web interface
- Highly configurable and scalable
- After sales managed services
- SMTP- Starting from $0.16/hour
- IP based authentication for 100 IP addresses
- Customizable anti-spam and anti-virus settings
- IP and domain reputation management
- 90-day log availability of all emails
- Customizable mail and attachment size
DRaaS (Disaster Recovery as a Service)- Starting from $0.08/hour
- Free trial
- Minimal downtime with dependable recovery
- Documented and structured support
- Multiple geo-redundant sites available
- Database RPO as low as 15 minutes
Custom Plans
Easily customizable plans that are best suited to the needs of a particular business are available. Simply get in touch with one of our account managers.
Basic Hosting Plans on VMware
Email Hosting- Starting from $0.14/hour
Centralized control panel
- Web statistics
- Robust site & server security
- Unlimited email accounts
- Mailing list management
Web Hosting- Starting from $0.15/hour
- 99.9% uptime guarantee
- One Click Application install
- SSL support
- DNS Zone management
EFA- Starting from $0.2/hour
- Anti-Spam, Anti-Mail Bombing & Anti-Phishing
- Automatic updates and system monitoring
- Option to enable as an email server
- Easy to use web interface
- Highly configurable and scalable
- After sales managed services
SMTP- Starting from $0.2/hour
- IP based authentication for 100 IP addresses
- Customizable anti-spam and anti-virus settings
- IP and domain reputation management
- 90-day log availability of all emails
- Customizable mail and attachment size
DRaaS- Starting from $0.08/hour
- Free trial
- Minimal downtime with dependable recovery
- Documented and structured support
- Multiple geo-redundant sites available
- Database RPO as low as 15 minutes
Custom
Easily customizable plans that are best suited to the needs of a particular business are available. Simply get in touch with one of our account managers.
What are the advantages to Cloud Computing?
Cost efficiency: One major myth surrounding the cloud is that it is more expensive than an on-prem setup. Cost saving is in fact one the biggest benefits of the cloud. It helps organizations save substantial capital cost because there is no investment on physical hardware. Plus, all the hassle and upkeep of buying and managing equipment is the responsibility of the cloud service provider.
The cloud’s pay-as-you-go model also ensures you are only paying for the server and infrastructure capacity you consume. More capacity can be provisioned for peak times and then de-provisioned when no longer needed. Traditional computing requires buying capacity sufficient for peak times and allowing it to sit idle the rest of the time.
Flexibility & Scalability: All businesses have only a finite amount of resources to focus and divide amongst all responsibilities. The cloud allows users to manage their workloads in a very flexible manner compared to a local server. You can scale your resources on demand to support fluctuating workloads. Features like Auto Scaling allow for even greater optimization as they automatically and intelligently scale machines up and down according to traffic.
Security: Many companies still have security concerns regarding cloud adoption. For one thing, one of the major tasks for a cloud service provider is meticulously monitor and protect all data on its cloud. From transfer of encrypted data, to firewalls, DDoS protection, API keys and more, your data is more secure on the cloud than on your own premises.
Additionally, providers like RapidCompute, are also ISO:27001, PCIDSS and GDPR certified which ensures that their enhanced infrastructure supports regulatory compliance and protects consumers’ personal and financial data.
Disaster Recovery: A failure to provide the required services at the right time can mean the difference between winning new business and losing your existing one. Cloud based disaster recovery plans provide a robust architecture for applications and critical data by providing a cost-effective solution that does not compromise on availability, performance or security.
A valuable strategy for DR is geo redundancy. Most cloud providers replicate data across multiple regions so your assets are protected even if one site becomes unavailable, thereby providing at least 99.99% availability.
Please tell us about your Data Centers
RapidCompute operates 4 data centers in Pakistan, 3 in Karachi and 1 in Lahore; each with redundant power, networking and connectivity, housed in separate facilities. All our pods are TIA 942 compliant with ISO 27001:2013 and PCIDSS 3.2 certification
Our data centers are built on a decoupled architecture where compute, storage and networking is optimized separately with a N+1 fail over mechanism. Each datacenter is completely isolated from another data center that allows greatest possible fault tolerance and stability, while connected through low-latency links.
What e-commerce solutions do you offer?
RapidCompute offers advanced solutions that can create transformative digital experiences that drive revenue.
High Traffic Website Hosting: E-commerce websites can be very demanding with thousands of customers accessing the website every minute and with rich, dynamic and high quality content being displayed to the user all the time. Since these visitors are potential buyers and reflect a possible revenue stream, it is all the more important to have a website that is reliable and runs efficiently 100% of the time to give the customer the best experience possible.
Auto scaling: Imagine you’re an e-commerce store about to put up a flash sale, and your timely and effective ad suddenly brings a 100x spike in traffic to your site. If you are not prepared to handle this increase in load, everything will come to a screeching halt. Orders will not be filled and some orders won’t even be made because your servers were not ready to handle this surge. The end result is loss in revenue and disappointed customers.
Auto Scaling is central to the cloud and offers customers a cost effective and reliable method to use their cloud resources efficiently and in real-time. The feature helps applications gracefully handle increase in traffic, allowing for greater uptime and more availability
SSD storage: Running high performance applications can take a big bite out of bandwidth and creates IOPs overheads. In these situations, nothing can compare to the performance of self-healing all-flash disk arrays with built in, preventive maintenance. When you make use of the all-flash storage array on the RapidCompute Cloud, you optimize application performance across all your IT resources and accelerate service delivery. Applications that use the SSD volumes experience high IOPs, more throughput and great responsiveness.
Security: RapidCompute’s security suite of services, Titanium
TM provides premium class security products that help you meet your policy, regulatory, and business requirements. Our deep dive expertise in leading security platforms helps protect your mission critical website for safer, faster and smoother operations. We’ve partnered with leading solution providers worldwide like Cloudflare, Akamai, DOSArrest, LogRhythm etc to provide cutting edge security solutions including WAF, DDoS and SIEM.
CDN: Customers can leverage our partnership with Cloudflare and go beyond a traditional content delivery network. Cloudflare goes beyond a traditional content delivery network (CDN) both locating your content closer to your site’s visitors but optimizing it for their device, browser and bandwidth needs.
Do you have backup and recovery services?
Yes, RapidCompute provides DRaaS (Disaster Recovery as a Service). At RapidCompute, we understand that your mission-critical systems, applications and files are your most valuable assets. Our DRaaS provides a robust architecture for your applications and critical data by providing you with a cost-effective solution that does not compromise on availability, performance or security.
RapidCompute’s flexible and hands-on approach to disaster recovery ensures your businesses have complete confidence in their system’s availability and data protection so that your IT teams can focus on other business initiatives.
What is Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and what are its advantages?
The Infrastructure-as-a-Service model of the cloud is where the cloud service provider hosts the infrastructure with itself and is responsible for virtualization, servers, storage and networking. The user is free to choose the scope of the services required and how much computing power and network structure to consume.
The resources can be scaled up and down according to the needs of the services being run. The IaaS provider also offers additional services to compliment the infrastructure components. These include transparent billing and monitoring, logs, enhanced security, auto scaling, open APIs, load balancers and replication and recovery. These services enable IaaS users to apply greater levels of automation and orchestration for imperative infrastructure tasks.
Advantages
- Managed Services
- No investment on hardware required
- Scalable
- Pay-as-you-go
- Cost effective
- Self Service Portal
- Enhanced security
- Disaster Recovery
Do you offer data storage solutions?
Yes, we offer Object storage for archiving and dumping at $0.15/GB
Can you assist companies looking to transition to the Cloud?
Yes. RapidCompute provides customers with FOC database migration services that helps them migrate databases easily and securely, as well as aiding them with application migration. The service supports homogenous migrations as well as heterogeneous migrations.
What security measures are in place to protect against hackers and other cyber threats?
Security in the cloud is much like security in your on-premises data centers – only without the costs of maintaining facilities and hardware. Cloud security is the highest priority at RapidCompute and we strive to meet the requirements of the most security-sensitive organizations.
RapidCompute provides software-based security tools to monitor and protect the flow of information in and out of cloud resources. We allow customers to scale and innovate, while maintaining a secure environment and paying only for the services they use.
Customers inherit all the best practices of RapidCompute policies when they sign up. All our architecture and operational processes are built to satisfy the requirements of our most security-sensitive customers.
Data Access Security
- RapidCompute provides each customer with a unique VLAN, which makes it virtually impossible for potential attackers to snoop on our customers’ data. Important account information is stored externally in a secure billing platform. RapidCompute does not store any customer credit card or bank account information anywhere on its system.
- RapidCompute provides network management tools through its customer portal to help customers configure remote access to their RapidMachines. Internet access to RapidCompute may be obtained through any ISP (and internet connection through Cybernet is not necessary). However, the security controls related to internet traffic in such a case are covered under the contracted ISP’s own domain.
- The hypervisors used by RapidCompute are secure, trusted and highly supported commercial platforms. Furthermore, RapidCompute administrators, with decades of experience managing and securing data of Cybernet customers, follow best practices to protect customer access information such as user accounts, passwords and admin user IDs.
- The RapidCompute network is also protected by a state-of-the-art Unified Threat Management (UTM) firewall cluster that provides effective protection from a multitude of threats emanating from the internet.
Physical Security
All RapidCompute data centers have the following features:
- Two-layer physical security comprising armed guards on each floor and the entrance to the building available around the clock to restrict access to authorized users only.
- Three-layer Digital Identity check mechanism in place before reaching the actual facility to ensure restricted and authorized access.
- 24/7 monitoring through CCTV cameras monitored locally and remotely. Each aisle and corner of the inside facility is monitored whereas all entry and exit points outside are also observed.
- World’s leading fire suppression system Inergen in N+1 configuration and intelligent smoke detectors
Security Certifications
- PCIDSS 3.2 Certified
- ISO 27001:2013 Certified
- GDPR Compliant
- TIA 942 Compliant
- Cloud Security Alliance- Star Member
In addition to these measures, RapidCompute also has a security suite of services called Titanium which provides cyber security solutions that combine people, processes and technology to assess and effectively respond to the increasingly sophisticated cyber landscape in the country. We have also partnered with leading solution providers worldwide to create a comprehensive portfolio of solutions to keep organizations secure and help them meet their policy and regulatory requirements.
What support is available to your customers?
RapidCompute houses a 24×7 support team comprising of industry certified engineers with one or more technical expertise (RHCE, MySQL, OCP, MCITP and SAP and etc.)
A designated Technical Account Manager is your primary point of contact who provides guidance, architectural review, and ongoing communication to keep you informed and well prepared as you plan, deploy, and proactively optimize your solutions.
- 24/7/365 Phone/ Email Support 1 Support
- Business Hours level 2 support
- Customer Portal
- Virtualization Layer
- RapidMachine Provisioning on demand
- 99% Network uptime guaranteed
- Data center 99.9% HVAC/ Power Uptime Guaranteed
- Account Manager
- Server OS and Application Infrastructure Support
- Technical Guidance
Why Choose RapidCompute?
Flexible Use the programming model, operating system, databases, and architectures you are already familiar with. In addition, this flexibility helps companies mix and match architectures in order to serve their diverse business needs.
Cost effective Pay only for what they use, with no upfront commitments or long term commitments
Scalable and Elastic Quickly add and subtract RapidCompute resources to their applications in order to meet customer demand and manage costs.
Secure We provide end to end security and end to end privacy, with services built in accordance with security best practices, provide appropriate security features in those services, and document how to use those features.
Experienced With the best in class human resource in regards with technical expertise and service support, you can trust RapidCompute not only as your infrastructure vendor, but as your business partner.
