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Three scenarios how Virtual Datacenter makes software companies more successful

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Software companies use their products to simplify the lives of countless business and private users. So why should the IT infrastructure not just simplify the life of software companies? Thanks to our Swiss Virtual Datacenter (VDC), you can increase your flexibility with little effort, reduce IT infrastructure costs and optimize DevOps processes. Using three scenarios, VDC’s capabilities and benefits to software companies will be highlighted, with software developers, software integrators, and software consultants alike addressed.

The IT infrastructure of software companies is used for test environments, demo systems, productive customer systems, SaaS services and internal IT systems. All applications have completely different requirements and require a great deal of flexibility to ensure cost-effective operation.

• Test environment: Fast deployment, often the same basic configuration, heavily fluctuating utilization, failures are not fatal
• Demo systems: low utilization, only needed at predefined times, homogeneous environment, failures are not fatal
• Productive customer systems: Low utilization outside of office hours, often billing to end customers, data security particularly important, high availability requirements
• SaaS services: High scalability, homogeneous environment, tends to complex architecture, great damage in total failure
• Internal IT systems: Low utilization outside office hours, high availability requirements

Virtual Datacenter is the perfect platform to address all these needs while providing the flexibility in terms of performance, cost and security. The increased focus on core competencies gives software companies room for new ideas and enables them to react faster to changes in the market and to continue to be successful in the future. But what does the added value of VDC actually look like?

On-demand test environment

The utilization of the test environment varies widely and depends on the work of the developers and integrators, the size of individual projects and the number of parallel projects. Resources and configurations must be available quickly, but then only for a limited time in use and can then be released again. The procurement of the necessary server hardware is tedious, the provision of the necessary configurations tedious and the average utilization low with high load peaks.

Virtual Datacenter reduces the average cost of a test environment per project and speeds project completion time.

• Faster Deployment Time: VDC templates allow you to define common configurations of individual VMs or entire VMs, and deploy those in your VDC as needed with just a few clicks. So you have a functional test environment available in a few minutes and save on staff costs.
• Lower cost of ownership: Only start and pay for the VMs when you really need them. This prevents expensive hardware from being used only for a fraction of the time. The VMs can be started and stopped manually in the web interface or automatically via the API.
• No resource limit: If you need to run certain tests on very powerful VMs, allocate the resources you need for the required time and then remove them immediately. You are no longer limited by your hardware and pay the extra power only for the required time.

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Productive customer systems

Hosting customer systems allows software companies to better control the runtime environment of the software and is an attractive additional service with recurring revenues. The Virtual Datacenter is white-labeled and does not allow conclusions about ServerBase, so you can buy the service from us and pass it on to the end customer with a margin. It is easy to map simple systems based on a VM up to complex architectures. You configure the infrastructure of large customers in their own subnet, and the systems for smaller customers put them together in a generic subnet, which you separate at the network adapter level with the Distributed Firewall VDC feature. The integration of the systems in the on-premises customer environment is done via IPSec-VPN. If a customer wants access to his systems in VDC, create a new user as admin and authorize this to the desired VMs and VDC objects.

The flexibility makes Virtual Datacenter a hosting platform for all end user sizes and needs. Your customers will appreciate the services offered from a single source.

• Quick Preparation: Work with VDC templates to provide common base configurations in the shortest possible time. In some cases, they significantly reduce the cost of onboarding new customers.
• High data security: Our data centers and employees meet the highest security requirements. Veeam’s VDC-integrated, web-based backup solution also ensures high data security and allows transaction log backups of Microsoft SQL and Oracle databases.
• Recurring Returns: Hosting your customer systems continues to charge you with your own margin and can offer additional options such as monitoring and patch management. Costs can be further optimized by, for example, using the Virtual Datacenter API to reduce customer system resources outside office hours.
• High availability: The entire VDC infrastructure is redundantly designed several times. The power supply, the Internet connection and all hardware components are at least twice available and a failover takes place without interruption. As of Q3, 2019, VDC will be expanded with vCloud Availability, allowing for geo-redundant operation of VMs with replication and automatic failover to our second data center.

SaaS Services

Standard software solutions are increasingly being offered web-based as a Saas service. All end customers use the same runtime environment and are managed as separate clients within the SaaS application. Onboarding can be completely automated, the costs for end customers are significantly lower and the service can be financed by recurring income. Synergy effects lead to a more even utilization of the entire system and thus to lower costs per user. In Virtual Datacenter, the API dynamically adjusts the performance of the SaaS platform to its effective usage and optimizes operational costs. If necessary, add more vCPUs and RAM to a VM, or start additional VMs to distribute the load to other systems through VDC-integrated load balancing based on VMware NSX.

For SaaS services, Virtual Datacenter is the ideal basis, ensuring flexibility, scalability, operational and data security.

• Scalability: As workload changes, resources and number of operational VMs can be adjusted within minutes. The VDC API automates these operations.
• Smoother Utilization: The synergy of operating multiple customers on the same infrastructure results in a more consistent utilization of infrastructure and reduces operating costs.
• High data security: Our data centers and employees meet the highest security requirements. Veeam’s VDC-integrated, web-based backup solution also ensures high data security and allows transaction log backups of Microsoft SQL and Oracle databases.
• High availability: The entire VDC infrastructure is redundantly designed several times. The power supply, the Internet connection and all hardware components are at least twice available and a failover takes place without interruption. As of Q3, 2019, VDC will be expanded with vCloud Availability, allowing for geo-redundant operation of VMs with replication and automatic failover to our second data center.

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