Customer Success Story
Prov.net Launches Alpha3 Cloud, Powered by Virtuozzo Hybrid Infrastructure
Alpha3 Cloud, the latest innovation from Prov.net, offers a better alternative to hyperscale cloud for MSPs, CSPs, ISV, enterprise and telco customers – reducing virtualization costs, optimizing cloud spend, improving productivity and decreasing time-to-market.
Ron Sacks,
Prov.net is a well-known and trusted brand in the hosting industry
From its launch in 2008 as a colocation specialist, with a single datacentre in Providence, Rhode Island, Prov.net has continuously expanded its facilities, networks and services for MSPs, CSPs and enterprise clients.
Now the company is poised for accelerated growth with a new cloud service: Alpha3 Cloud launched in October 2021 to provide flexible, high-performance OpenStack cloud services using Virtuozzo Hybrid Infrastructure – a best-of-breed, born-in-the-cloud platform.
“We’ve been working with MSPs, CSPs and enterprises for 15 years, and Alpha3 Cloud completes the ecosystem we’ve been building with our clients and partners.”
“Our customers rely on Prov.net to underpin their winning cloud strategies. We provide everything from hybrid on and off-premises cloud, and complementary colocation services, to cloud on-ramp capabilities, connectivity, managed services and professional services,” says Prov.net CTO, John Chenard.
Rapid cloud growth
Alpha3 Cloud launched in October 2021 with two availability zones in North America. The team is ready to expand nationally and globally, working with Virtuozzo to add coverage in Europe and Asia-Pacific – delivering a radically simplified cloud experience, with a portfolio of offerings available with flexible “as-a-Service” consumption.
Since launch, Prov.net has experienced significant demand. Inside of a week, Alpha3 Cloud was onboarding a multi-national customer looking to consolidate hundreds of VDI seats for its regional subsidiaries and reduce its spend on Microsoft Azure.
Virtuozzo: platform and partnership
The Prov.net team initially looked at Virtuozzo as a shared storage solution that leveraged OpenStack, but quickly saw the potential of the full hyperconverged Virtuozzo platform for multi-tenant and private cloud services.
Working with Virtuozzo, the Prov.net team has used Virtuozzo Hybrid Infrastructure to build its new Alpha3 Cloud service, as well as establishing a reseller partnership so they can enable service provider and enterprise customers to build their own OpenStack-based Hybrid Infrastructure clouds.
According to CEO Ron Sacks, this partnership approach is at least as important as the technology stack:
“Partnering with Virtuozzo enables us to go to market much faster with cloud services, but it also makes us part of the whole ecosystem that Virtuozzo is building with MSPs and CSPs across the world,” he says.
“We went from thinking of Virtuozzo as a technology or an architecture, to a business opportunity – a very large business opportunity – and not just for us, but also for our MSP, CSP, ISV, Telco and enterprise clients.”
Ron Sacks,
Other technologies considered
The team investigated several different cloud stacks before choosing Virtuozzo. According to CTO, John Chenard, being able to influence technical direction was another important factor in that decision.
“We looked at a few different approaches, trying to find a platform that had the technical and commercial model that worked,“ he says. “Partnering with VMware and becoming just another VMware vendor was never very interesting to us – it’s costly, complex, and not designed for a CSP.
Partnering with Microsoft, or other stack providers – we even looked at AWS Outposts – nothing was compelling enough for us to invest. We wanted an OpenStack-based solution – and then we discovered Virtuozzo.”
Working with Virtuozzo we can help mold the future cloud stack of technologies, as they offer a complete ecosystem that truly competes with the giants out there,” John adds. “From Virtuozzo’s leadership team, all the way through the company, we are true partners working together to deliver modern cloud services that are simple, stable, and affordable.
“We went from thinking of Virtuozzo as a technology or an architecture, to a business opportunity – a very large business opportunity – and not just for us, but also for our MSP, CSP, ISV, Telco and enterprise clients.”
John Chenard,
MSP cloud challenges
Virtuozzo’s mission is to build a true Alternative Cloud with partners like Prov.net and Alpha3 Cloud: enabling the global ecosystem of MSPs and CSPs to offer an alternative to hyperscale cloud that is easier to deploy, easier to sell, easier to use and more cost-effective.
For Prov.net CEO, Ron Sacks, this is especially important for the hard-pressed MSP market.
“There’s just a tidal wave of demand for cloud services, but there are a number of segments that are severely underserved at this time, particularly by the hyperscalers,” he says. “That includes the small and medium-sized MSP business – anything from the traditional mom and pop MSP, to large MSPs that are driving 500 million, maybe even a billion dollars of services.”
“There are two things causing consternation for these segments. One is margin compression. The reason we’re seeing the whole MSP industry consolidating is that the only way to sustain a business is to get economies of scale. The other thing MSPs lose sleep over is being disintermediated by the hyperscalers, losing control of their customers.”
Making cloud simple for MSPs
For Ron, the solution is simple: again, it comes down to relationships and partnerships, and having a partner that makes cloud simple and commercially effective for MSPs and their customers.
“Companies don’t buy from companies. People buy from people, and customers buy from MSPs because it’s their MSP. In that small and medium business market it’s the MSP who still has control of the customer relationship, and that is a powerful position to be in.” he says.
“From a customer perspective, all infrastructure is software. Customers don’t care about datacenters and air conditioners and UPSs and generators. They just want a portal, a simple solution. That’s the experience you get with Alpha3 Cloud.”
“Whether you want it turnkey, in a box, or you want to build it yourself, or you need some professional services help to build it yourself – we enable that better cloud alternative for you, anywhere on that continuum. With Alpha3 Cloud, and our relationship with Virtuozzo, we make it easy for MSPs to take control of their own destiny with cloud.”
Accelerating growth
For Ron and John, their Virtuozzo partnership is going to play a key role in the growth of the Prov.net business, and the Alpha3 Cloud brand.
“When we diversified from our colocation roots, to add connectivity and bare metal private cloud to our services in 2015, that was what we considered to be Prov.net 2.0,” Ron says.
“Virtuozzo has provided the bridge from Prov.net 2.0 to Prov.net 3.0. Our partnership with Virtuozzo accelerates growth for us, and for our MSP, CSP, ISV, enterprise and Telco customers – we’re super excited about the future!”
Ron Sacks,
