Public Cloud Road Test: BlueLock, Rackspace and Teremark

As cloud computing evolves and interest grows expect to see more side-by-side comparisons and benchmarks across the various flavors of cloud-based services.

Tom Henderson and Brendan Allen, both researchers at ExtremeLabs, reported their findings in NetworkWorld after running through common use cases with three enterprise clouds: BlueLock, Rackspace, and Terremark. (Amazon was also on the docket but for undisclosed reasons didn't move forward.)

On to the report. First, they chose to benchmark "enterprise cloud" offerings from BlueLock, Rackspace and Terremark because they felt this is the sweet-spot for CIOs and IT execs looking to get familiar with cloud computing, while incorporating it into their overall IT strategy. They define an enterprise cloud as "an extension of data center resources into the cloud with the same security, audit, and management/administrative components that are best practices within the enterprise."

Secondly, they follow the same protocol and test plan for each service. Overall, the report is well-balanced and includes detail on pricing, as well as, a summary scorecard that covered areas such as mangement/administration, processes and provisioning (with the highest score = 5.0).

When the finally scores were tallied by Henderson and Allen Terremark (4.1) came out on top, followed by Rackspace (3.9) and BlueLock (3.8). While the overall scores were fairly close, looking at the individual areas provides more insight into what one provider did better than another. For example, Terremark scored the highest with management/administration and was very consistent across the other ears like processes, provisioning and cost/value. Rackspace left something to be desired in teh area of processes, but was consistent across the other areas. Whereas, BlueLock scored the highest in the areas of processes and provisioning compared to the other vendors.

Some of the key findings included:

Overall, BlueLock's negotiation process is good, and its security components were well-managed. The BlueLock administrative method had applications that feel like separate products. Nothing is really connected together, most portals launch in another browser window, some even require a separate login/password combo. Administration is unnecessarily confusing using these tools. And since BlueLock controls changes to the operating systems deployed, the time between ticket submission and a change could be considerable. We wanted to occasionally use our root account just to get things done.

We liked Rackspace and were it not for its slowness, we'd have liked the product much better, even though we know we were exceptions to their normal sales/fulfillment process. Rackspace's portal is useful, although with fewer choices than Terremark's and with a bit less functionality. As we seemed to have hurried them, we didn't get the full customer experience we were hoping for. Nonetheless, they were in the mid-range of pricing, and performed very well.

Overall, we liked Terremark's management app, and its speed to delivery. Provisioning was simple — even though we did all of the virtual machines from the pool allocation allotted to us, and integration with our non-standard router was painless. We don't mind pain for gain, but it wasn't necessary with Terremark.

Again, this is something that should be welcomed and anticipated as cloud computing gets more mainstream. We may be a ways from formalized or standardized benchmarks but real-world experience and reporting is just as valuable. I applaud Henderson and Allen for taking the time to get their hands dirty and describing their experience in clear, objective terms. It's good stuff for all of us.

Read the complete article: Enterprise cloud put to the test