Customer Success Story
Cloud South embarks on its next growth phase with Virtuozzo Hybrid Infrastructure
Dedicated server specialist launches cloud-ready clusters powered by Virtuozzo, making cloud easy to adopt for service providers and enterprises.
Frank Caruso,
Based in West Palm Beach, Florida, Cloud South was founded in 2011 by CEO Frank Caruso, and started life as a colocation specialist.
By 2013 Cloud South had diversified into dedicated servers and the nascent cloud space. Today it owns two Tier 4 datacenters and manages some 3,500 servers for customers across the Americas, and as far afield as India, Romania and Vietnam.
Cloud South customers range from smaller companies hosting websites and business applications, cloud providers who virtualize and resell Cloud South servers, and some much larger organizations. One of America’s largest cable companies hosts its South Florida cable TV, telephony and Internet infrastructure with Cloud South, and a leading U.S. University uses Cloud South servers for High Performance Computing projects.
“Our value proposition is essentially providing bare metal, dedicated server capacity at prices that the mainstream customer can afford,” says CEO Frank Caruso.
“A lot of companies in our space try to compete by selling a wide range of services. We tend to focus on one thing and try to do it excellently. We’ve had great success – and now we’re prepared for the next hockey stick growth chart, by building on our core service with cloud-ready clusters powered by Virtuozzo.”
From software-defined storage to cloud
Cloud South first discovered Virtuozzo when the team needed to create a software-defined storage network to support its dedicated server array.
“Storage was our initial focus, but when we got into the specifics and the details of the Virtuozzo product, it was really solid, so we decided to adopt the whole platform for our own operational purposes,” Frank says.
“That was the start of a partnership that’s taken us into more of a pure cloud play today. We looked at a number of different platforms but just kept coming back to the Virtuozzo stack – it’s perfect for all of our use cases. Combining our expertise in dedicated servers, with Virtuozzo, is a really exciting proposition for us.”
Frank Caruso,
Frank Caruso,
Cloud-ready clusters, powered by Virtuozzo
Cloud South now uses Virtuozzo to offer ready-to-go cloud infrastructure for enterprises, and for other service providers that want to sell cloud. For Frank, one of the key benefits of Virtuozzo is making life easy.
“We find that the vast majority of businesses just want to run their businesses. They don’t want to be IT managers. The Virtuozzo platform makes that easy,” he says. “The value proposition to those folks is, they come in, they can buy a pre-built cluster, we can just hand them a username and password and the only thing they really need the skill to do is be able to make a VPS from a template.”
“There are low-end cloud platforms where you have to manage networking and other complex functions by hand,” Frank adds. “Even with VMware you have the same challenge – customers have to focus on managing the IT, not using IT to benefit their business. This complexity is what causes people to abandon their cloud initiatives, or go to one of the hyperscalers and pay the exhorbitant prices. With Virtuozzo we solve that problem. Virtuozzo hits the sweet spot in terms of functionality, ease of use and value.”
Scale and resilience
With thousands of servers across two facilities, ease of use wasn’t Cloud South’s only requirement. For its internal operations and for customer projects, Virtuozzo had to deliver rock-solid reliability too.
“We tend to do things at scale – we’re not just putting two or three servers in to build this out. Virtuozzo gives us that scale, it allows us to manage very large clusters – and stability has been great, too. We’ve been running Virtuozzo for a couple of years now with zero issues.”
Frank Caruso,
The importance of partnership
Outside of the technology, how has Frank found the working relationship with Virtuozzo?
“It’s been the best. From day-to-day interactions with Sasha and Dave, right up to Alex, your CEO,” says Frank. “If you want to move the ball down the field you need to have a good relationship with your partner.
We found that with companies the size of VMware and Microsoft, you’re just a cog in the wheel – there is no relationship. The personal touch from Virtuozzo has really been a driving force in this whole project.”
