Many organizations are intrigued by the benefits of cloud

computing but need help cloud-enabling applications

and supporting them in a cloud environment. Most

organizations are used to the level of managed

application services provided by legacy hosting

providers and are looking for a similar level of service

for applications on the cloud. Cloud providers such as

Amazon do not see managed application services as

part of their business model so there is a gap in the full

service provisioning of cloud computing to organizations.

To fill this gap, we provide complete application and

cloud environment support through our Managed

Cloud Application Services (MCAS). We offer clients a

dedicated operations center, complete with the latest

monitoring and management tools to enable, test,

deploy, scale, and proactively manage applications on

the cloud. With MCAS, Optaros is currently managing

applications for organizations such as McKesson, New

England Patriots and Swisscom on highly trafficked

websites such as Facebook and AOL.

www.optaros.com

Managed Cloud Application Services (MCAS)

Cloud enablement

Applications must be architected to leverage key components of the cloud such as dynamic provisioning and

activation, horizontal scaling, and regionalized deployments. These aspects provide the key advantages to

be gained by the cloud, but if the application does not take advantage of these capabilities much of the value

of the cloud is lost. We include cloud enablement as part of our Blueprint phase when architecture of the

system is defined.

Proactively manage

Most managed service providers have little to no understanding of the application and can only react to

performance and access control issues. Many times this results in servers being reset as a hardware

response to an undiagnosed application issue. Since we assembled the application and are now managing

it and the environment, we have a unique perspective to identify anomalous CPU usage based on traffic, time

of day, etc. and diagnose potential application issues before they result in a degradation or termination of

service. Each quarter we will do a thorough review of the application and environment health and utilization

and provide recommendations for tuning the system and improving performance.

Auto-scaling

Cloud enabled applications can take advantage of trigger-driven, auto-scaling to activate additional

application instances to meet spiky demand. Through proper parameter settings for load-based thresholds/

Key Elements of MCAS

We provide complete application and cloud environment support for clients, including:

“ Optaros has provided excellent

support for our assembled solu-

tion and we will continue to rely

on them for support. There has

only been one issue, and that was

addressed quickly and resolved

completely in the first response. ”

Pekka Näf, Project Manager

Swisscom Labs Operations

Contact us

scheduled scaling/number of jobs in a queue, and automated server configuration templates we are able

to ensure auto-scaling properly responds to spiky demand and also de-activates to ensure no unnecessary

charges.

True production environment testing

An often overlooked benefit of the cloud is the ability to efficiently provision the exact, full production

environment for testing before go-live. Before the cloud, it was nearly always too costly to fully provision

a test environment and too many IT managers have horror stories of systems that ran fine on the QA

environment only to fail when going onto production. As part of MCAS, we setup the full environment on the

cloud and test on that to eliminate any surprises from the environment change from QA to production. This

also helps to speed the deployment to production from QA.

Integration with behind the firewall applications

We work with your IT team to ensure compliance with all data privacy requirements, policies and procedures.

Generally, we recommend a centralized, monitor-able gateway for secure data flow between applications in

your VPN and applications in the cloud.

No mark-ups

All underlying cloud charges are passed through at cost. You get the same price as if you went direct to the

cloud provider (e.g. Amazon). If the cloud provider lowers the price, as they have been doing, that reduction

will be passed on to you.

Future proofing

The cloud computing world is moving very quickly with advancements, new entrants and price changes

happening frequently. We will track and evaluate all new advancements in the market and make

recommendations on any changes to our clients’ environments.

Load-balancing services

Through real-time monitoring services that are used to gauge current server load, we can trigger the creation

of new virtual servers that can work to handle increased load during peak times.

Firewall services

We provide a complete firewall service that restricts traffic by protocol, by service port, as well as by source

IP address (individual IP or CIDR block). We customize firewall settings by instance groups and require an

X.509 certificate and key to authorize changes, thus adding an extra layer of security. We also leverage host-

based firewalls to restrict inbound and outbound traffic on each instance.

Backup services

We provide system backups in a virtual environment with copies being created for longer term usage in non-

volatile storage.

Disaster recovery

Should an unfortunate event occur that requires a system to be restored from backup, or restore an

environment, we rapidly redeploy in different geographies much faster than with traditional hosting services.

Core Services of MCAS

To learn more, contact us.

OptarosCorporate Headquarters www.optaros.com

10 Milk St P (617) 227-185511th Floor F (617) 224-5388Boston, MA 02108 E info@optaros.com

System monitoring

We monitor server load, processor usage, disk usage, network traffic and other metrics and respond to a

system as needs require. We set triggers for the provisioning of new servers into the environment as needs

require.

Provisioning services

Servers are provisioned in an automated fashion based on set triggers and configurations. Multiple server

configurations can be provisioned depending on demand and requirements.

Decommissioning services

Decommissioning can be scheduled, triggered or accomplished on-demand. This set of services also insures

that any information a server contains that may not be shared with other servers in the environment is com-

municated to servers that will remain online.

Optaros offers three support levels to meet the varied needs of our clients: Silver, Gold, and Platinum. All

three options provide for an unlimited number of reported incidents that address all severity levels: Critical

(0), Severe (1), and Moderate (2). All support levels have 7x24 access to reach us via our Open Ticket

Response System (OTRS).

Support Levels

Silver Gold

Platinum

Manager Pooled Coordinator Primary

Initial Issue Notification OTRS OTRS Phone / OTRS

Hours 5x8 5x12 7x24

Initial Response - Top Severity (0) 1 Day 4 Hours 2 Hours

Incidents Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited

Severity level 0-2 0-2 0-2

IAE access 7x24 7x24 7x24

Silver provides a base level of support

for non mission-critical applications.

The cost is contained by making effec-

tive use of pooled resources, internet

communication, business hour access,

and one-day response times. Even at

this constrained level of support there

is no limit to the number of incidents

that can be reported.

Gold provides 5x12 support for

mission-critical applications. Coverage

hours are increased, response time is

dramatically reduced, and a coordinator

is provided to manage all communi-

cations and efforts to address and

respond to an incident.

Platinum provides the highest level of

support for mission-critical applications.

Coverage hours are 7x24, response

time is reduced, logging of incidents

via phone is provided, and a primary

individual is assigned to handle all sup-

port concerns.