GigaCloud is a cloud provider for businesses. It has more than 1.3 thousand clients and 500 partner companies. It provides IaaS services
Virtual infrastructure for hosting IT services and software. and PaaS servicesA cloud environment where applications are developed and managed.. In 2021, GigaCloud began reporting publicly to customers.
In the partner material, we tell what GigaCloud talked about in the first report and what successes it has achieved in the past year. Affiliate material?
Why did you decide to report to customers?
Now there are 1.3 thousand companies in GigaCloud clients: Kernel, Porsche Ukraine, ProZorro, Diya and others. He takes on the risks associated with their IT infrastructure and online services, which are used by many Ukrainians.
“MWe will sum up the results every year – this will show what GigaCloud has “under the hood”. So our existing customers will know that they can continue to sleep peacefully, and potential ones – that Ukrainian cloud technologies can be trusted”, – says Artem Kokhanevich, CEO of GigaCloud.
In the first public report the company told how it launched new products, opened a fourth data center, created a “customer happiness” department, and more.
Upgraded Servers
In 2020, GigaCloud entered the private cloud market with the PRO Cloud service and began to grow even faster. A year ago, more investments were made in equipment than in 2016-2019. This year the operator has invested even more – almost $2 million was spent on the purchase of hardware. Thanks to GigaCloud clients, it became the largest client of Lenovo and Intel in Ukraine in the field of servers and data storage systems.
The GigaCloud hardware and software system now provides almost 7,000 virtual machines, and its storage stores 8 petabytes of client data.
Now the amount of RAM of the company’s infrastructure equals 103 TB. “Ethere are thousands of clients and services used by many Ukrainians”, – they say in the company.
Launched in the fourth data center
In order to get closer to clients from Western Ukraine and develop local business, in 2019 the company opened a regional office in Lviv. And in 2021, she built a new cloud cluster there. Now the operator’s specialists create projects based on four data centers.
Thanks to this, customers from all over Ukraine can place their services in a full-fledged geographically distributed cloud cluster. “It works like accident insurance. If something happened in one city, the system will work from the part that is located in another city“, – explain in the company.
The first major service that started working on this model was the Lviv single electronic ticket project.
Top 3 cloud solutions created at the request of customers
In 2021, GigaCloud has new products, the ideas of which were submitted by customers themselves.
- VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) – virtual desktops for secure remote work based on the private PRO Cloud, where the data is processed. Client employees will be able to connect to corporate resources and desktop from any device and from any place where there is an Internet connection. The peculiarity of the service is that the customer’s data does not leave the private cloud.
- Cloud with graphics cores (GPU) for clients who are engaged in 3D modeling, AI / ML, work remotely with graphics. For these types of workloads, the company advises using a GPUGPU., not CPUCPU.. The information will be processed simultaneously in several threads, thanks to which the work can go faster in 10-14 times.
- PaaS platform – public cloud based on OpenStack with a hypervisorA technology for deploying software on physical hardware using virtualization.KVM. OpenStack allows you to add new features using individual modules and provide them in a PaaS modelPlatform as a Service, platform as a service.. This means that the operator can provide the client with not just virtual machines, but ready-made pre-configured environments. For example, it can be a Kubernetes cluster, object storage, and so on.
A new level of data protection
In the spring of 2021, the operator received a certificate of compliance with the PCI DSS information security standard. Now GigaCloud is still the only Ukrainian cloud operator that has such a certificate.
Now its cloud can be used by companies that accept, transmit or store international bank card data.
Service, technical support and the first “happiness service”
By the end of the year, the technical support department had doubled in size. The operator strives to ensure that customers wait as little as possible for a response from a specialist, and that written requests are processed within 20 minutes. And since 2022, GigaCloud has been operating in this mode 24/7.
The operator also launched a CSM departmentCustomer Success Management, customer success management., which the company calls the “customer happiness” department. Specialists solve potential customer problems before they even appear, and also help to avoid mistakes and understand the product.
For example, an employee anticipates situations when a client needs to increase capacity, and reminds him of this. “So, on the eve of major sales, some companies forget about the infrastructure or do not perform load testing. As a result, they cannot withstand the influx of visitors, lose profits and money spent on advertising.“, – they say in GigaCloud.
More Certified Engineers
Not only the operator’s own teams have grown, but also the number of certified specialists. In 2021, a specialist with a VCAP (VMware Certified Advanced Professional) certificate appeared in GigaCloud. Another four employees received VCP (VMware Certified Professional) certification.
Partnerships with global vendors
In the fall, GigaCloud received the status of a CCSP partner of Red Hat in UkraineA software manufacturer based on the Linux operating system.. Now he can provide customers with Red Hat virtualization solutions, licenses to use Red Hat solutions: Openshift, Ceph and Gluster. At the same time, the company provides full vendor support.
At the end of the year, GigaCloud successfully passed an audit by SAP and received the SAP Certified Provider of Cloud and Infrastructure Operations certificate. Now customers who host their SAP systems in the GigaCloud cloud will receive good service and full support from SAP.
GigaCloud also reaffirmed its status as a major VMware partner. In 2021, the company became an Advanced partner – the fourth out of five. And in January 2022, he plans to receive the maximum status – Principal. On the basis of the VMware platform, a public cloud E-Cloud, a private cloud PRO Cloud, a cloud for banks B-Cloud, a VDI virtual desktop service and more were built.
Top 3 Most Challenging Architecture Projects of the Year
Private Cloud for Data Science and Remote Desktop (VDI) for Fozzy Group
As part of the solution, two clusters were built. The client uses one of them for Data Science to research markets and make forecasts, and the second – to deploy Remote Desktop (VDI). The peculiarity of the project is that the solutions are integrated into the client’s services, which are already in their own data center. As a result, the company has expanded its infrastructure and can flexibly grow further.
Solution for the portal “Diya”, which allows you to withstand heavy loads
Solution powered by GigaCloud started as a back-up site, and now operates as the main one. She became part of a large project that is used by more than 6 million Ukrainians. Technologies, equipment and a flexible approach to the client made it possible to build a special project that can withstand heavy loads.
Moved services to a private cloud with downtime of up to 5 minutes
SAT provides transportation services, usually associated with round-the-clock operation. Even if the services are unavailable for 30 minutes, this will result in financial losses for the company. Therefore, in order to transfer SAT services to a private cloud, the combined team of specialists from the operator and the client developed a minute-by-minute work plan.
The specialists migrated the virtual machines step by step, and also carried out a full backup of all migrated systems. The project was implemented without errors – all services were transferred with a downtime of less than 5 minutes.
Key figures for 2021 for GigaCloud
- 300 new companies have chosen GigaCloud to host their IT services.
- GigaCloud has built 13 private clouds for customers.
- The number of new projects in the SMB segment has grown by 2.5 times compared to 2020.
- The number of partner deals doubled in 2021. 105 new partners, developers and integrators, signed agreements with the operator to offer their customers GigaCloud clouds for hosting IT projects.
“2022 will be a year of interesting and breakthrough projects, cool experiments with our clients and partners. Courage, freedom and clouds are what businesses need today. And GigaCloud can give it all”, – says Artem Kokhanevich.
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