Vision Net Brings Cutting-edge Cloud Technology to Northwest Region

Vision Net http://www.vision.net/ , a Montana-based communications technology solutions provider, announced today that it will begin offering customers Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) based on Cisco’s CloudVerse® cloud delivery framework. The move places Vision Net at the forefront of cloud computing service providers in the Northwest region.

"It’s absolutely the way of the future and we’re thrilled to partner with Cisco and Datalink to bring this technology to Montana."

Vision Net CEO Rob Ferris says there is significant demand for the technology. "As more companies seek out cloud computing to meet their data storage and other needs, we’re seeing an increased demand for faster, more user-friendly programs," he says. "With IaaS businesses can go online and in a matter of minutes build the cloud experience that best meets their needs, while still having the full support and service of the Vision Net team and the testing of Cisco CloudVerse behind them."

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Vision Net’s new Cisco partnership

Montana-based Vision Net http://www.vision.net/about/ is a similar organization to SDN in that it is owned by nine rural telcos and operates a statewide fiber network. In addition, Vision Net has had a lot of success offering customer support http://connectedplanetonline.com/independent/news/small_business_bands_together_090201/index.html and network troubleshooting on a wholesale basis to ISPs as far away as Maine.

As Vision Net CEO Rob Ferris explained, the company’s customer support service is offered on a white label basis. ISP customers like the fact that Vision Net personnel appear to be part of the ISP’s own operations by, for example, answering the phone with the ISP’s name.

For a number of years, the Vision Net network has been anchored by two geographically disperse data centers that also support services such as server hosting — and the company’s customer support resources have been a key differentiator in that market as well.

“Some [data centers] are very automated and there’s no one you can talk to at three in the morning,” observed Ferris.

Recently Vision Net expanded its data centers to support a new infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offering based on Cisco’s CloudVerse http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/permalink/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsLang=en&newsId=20120620005230&div=-1063439563 platform announced this week.

The IaaS offering will enable end user organizations to minimize their investment in computing resources by using virtualized equipment housed in Vision Net’s data centers. But for many clients, cost savings will not be the key motivator for using an IaaS approach, said Ferris.

“What they’re interested in is getting applications off their site,” he said.

For that reason, Vision Net — like SDN — sees its location as a key selling point for end user organizations based in metro areas in more populous areas of the U.S.

A key reason for using the Cisco solution is that it supports “the ability to silo customers in a multi-tenant fashion so they can be white labeled,” Ferris said.

Ferris expects that Vision Net’s nine rural telco owners will resell the IaaS service. Vision Net also may offer that capability to ISP customers and others, but Ferris said the company will be “very selective” about who it works with on that basis. In addition, Vision Net expects to deal directly with large enterprise clients based outside of Montana.

The Cisco CloudVerse solution will replace a previous IaaS platform and Vision Net Network Operations Manager Ed Hassell said the Cisco solution will have a key advantage over the previous offering.

“What Cisco brings to the table is automated high-speed fiber optic backup capability that’s all automated in the background,” explained Hassell. Previously that task, which enables the two data centers to back each other up, was completed manually.

“We were at about a two-hour turnaround on the old system,” said Hassell. “That will be less than a minute now.”

Vision Net enlisted the help of data center specialist Datalink with the conversion of its IaaS platform to the Cisco CloudVerse solution. Moving forward, Vision Net also may use the Cisco platform to support software-as-a-service offerings tailored for specific markets.

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