Tier 3 Expands Enterprise Cloud Platform with Multi-Framework Web Fabric and Data Fabric

BELLEVUE, Wash., May 8, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Tier 3, Inc., the enterprise cloud platform company, today announced the next release of the Tier 3 Enterprise Cloud Platform, now with the industry's most comprehensive set of enterprise-grade cloud services in a single consolidated platform. The Tier 3 cloud now features Web Fabric, a multi-framework enterprise platform as a service (PaaS) and Data Fabric, a high availability database as a service (DbaaS).  These services join the company's existing enterprise-grade infrastructure services for a powerful, first-of-a-kind combination that enables businesses to accelerate "greenfield" application development and deliver critical legacy business systems in one cloud platform.

Businesses around the world today rely on Tier 3's Enterprise Cloud ― a VMware vCloud® Powered Service ―  to run their back office and line of business applications in a secure virtual private cloud, counting on the platform's availability, security, performance and built-in disaster recovery capabilities. Now with Tier 3's multi-language ("polyglot") Web Fabric, businesses gain the application development and deployment agility of cloud-based on-demand runtime environments, enabling developers to focus on business innovation without sacrificing stringent enterprise security requirements.  Tier 3 Web Fabric also gives customers the ability to:

• Leverage Cloud Foundry™ and Iron Foundry to support the broadest set of languages and frameworks (including .NET, Java, Node.js, Ruby, PHP, and Python) while ensuring interoperability across clouds. 
  
• Directly deploy and scale any web application while automatically tapping into enterprise-grade capabilities such as high availability, disaster recovery as well as advanced application monitoring from New Relic.
  
• Deploy Web Fabric in a secure environment ensuring no risk of "shared" access from other customers and enabling it to run side-by-side with Tier 3's infrastructure services (IaaS) in private VLANs to better support direct integration with business applications and systems.

"The needs of the enterprises are diverse as they expect not only superior performance and reliability but also enterprise-grade security. While commodity clouds are well suited for greenfield applications, they are not ready to meet the enterprise demands with mixed environments," said Krishnan Subramanian, principal analyst, Rishidot Research. "With a multi-pronged approach to infrastructure, platform and data, Tier 3 can enable enterprises to take advantage of the cloud without any disruption to their existing processes. In this context, this announcement is a significant as it represents a step forward in cloud services designed specifically to meet the needs of modern enterprises."

To further enhance IT agility, Tier 3 is also introducing the first in a series of fabric services, the Tier 3 Data Fabric. Delivering enterprise-grade database services (DbaaS), Data Fabric can be called by Tier 3 virtual machines or Web Fabric or even external applications, and works with a broad set of databases including Redis, MongoDB, Microsoft SQL Server, My SQL, and VMware vFabric™ Postgres.  Data Fabric features a high availability mode, auto-scaling, and high performance with automated built-in backups to help reduce the burden of operational task management.  Tier 3 will release other fabric services such as messaging, queuing, and caching throughout 2012.

"We are seeing a fundamental shift in the industry to multi-service clouds systems.  Enterprise IT departments are rapidly adopting enterprise-class hybrid cloud platforms for business-critical legacy applications, but true PaaS adoption has been stalled due to stringent requirements for security without sacrificing HA, performance and scale as well as management complexity," said Jared Wray, Tier 3 founder chief technology officer. "The Tier 3 Enterprise Cloud Platform with Web Fabric and Data Fabric is game changing for mid-size to large enterprises.  They can now leverage the flexibility of a complete set of enterprise-grade public cloud services together in the same service and from behind the corporate firewall ― standard virtual machine capabilities for enhanced agility and a services fabric to streamline the rapid development of new features."  

"The Tier 3 Enterprise Cloud Platform's new capabilities of Web Fabric, based on VMware vCloud, Cloud Foundry™, and Data Fabric can provide robust and flexible cloud services to a wide range of enterprises," said Jerry Chen, vice president, Cloud and Application Services, VMware. "By using Tier 3's Enterprise Cloud Platform, underpinned by VMware's cloud infrastructure, organizations can realize the benefits and value of multi-cloud services."

Availability
Tier 3 Web Fabric is generally available May 8 and Data Fabric is in beta until June 1.  Tier 3 is demonstrating its Enterprise Cloud Platform including Web Fabric and Data Fabric May 8-10 at Interop Vegas booth 615.

Resources

• Whitepaper: Realizing IT as a Service through Comprehensive Cloud Services 
• Tier 3 Enterprise Cloud Platform Technical Datasheet

Supporting Quotes

• "Users of cloud systems-infrastructure services (IaaS) are increasingly looking for more "cloudiness" in their services and turn to cloud application-infrastructure services (PaaS) for automated application elasticity, multi-tenancy and higher-function self-service," commented Yefim Natis, VP Distinguished Analyst at Gartner, Inc. "To meet this requirement many IaaS providers add middleware capability to their offering (IaaS+) and some develop a native PaaS offering.  Both approaches will find some demand in the market in the short term, though the native PaaS will emerge as the definitive cloud platform service in the long term."
  
• "Infrastructure services ease the transition from legacy client-server computing, while cloud platform services like Tier 3's Web and Data Fabrics are the natural evolution of cloud computing, freeing developers to concentrate on the applications rather than the supporting infrastructure," said Chris Sharp, general manager, cloud and content for Equinix. "Platform Equinix offers customers a rich environment to build and integrate private, public, and hybrid cloud solutions. Customers now have access to Tier 3's infrastructure and platform services via dedicated private connections from Equinix data centers and over the Internet via multiple carriers."
  
• "The Tier 3 Web Fabric with Iron Foundry offers a unique value to organizations by providing unparalleled choice in development frameworks," said Richard Seroter, InfoQ editor and Microsoft MVP. "Enterprises can now leverage one of the best possible platform-as-a-service frameworks while taking advantage of Tier 3's top notch infrastructure offering." 
  
• "As enterprises rapidly embrace cloud services, they want to ensure their cloud-based apps are delivering the highest standard of performance and availability," says Bill Lapcevic, vice president of business development, New Relic. "With our application monitoring as a standard feature in Web Fabric, together Tier 3 and New Relic are providing our customers with the best tools for identifying and resolving potential performance issues in their business-critical applications." 

About Tier 3
Tier 3 delivers enterprise-class cloud services to businesses globally via its federated Enterprise Cloud Platform.  The Bellevue, WA-based company provides a comprehensive set of enterprise-grade virtual private cloud services enhanced by a framework-agnostic cloud orchestration and automation to enable IT agility. Architected for security, performance and high availability ― with 99.999% SLA at all layers and disaster recovery in every deployment — the Tier 3 Cloud is ideal for the entire business application portfolio from development to production environments and mission-critical applications. For more information, visit www.tier3.com

VMware, VMware vFabric and Cloud Foundry are registered trademarks and/or trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. The use of the word "partner" or "partnership" does not imply a legal partnership relationship between VMware and any other company.

SOURCE Tier 3, Inc.