September 20, 2021
The best businesses in the world today are driven by data. It is no longer limited to just tech companies. It is valued by all businesses from hotels to hospitals, from pharmaceutical to logistics, from agriculture to automobiles and beyond. Everyone seeks good data for making better strategies, improving customer experience and understanding global trends. It helps businesses draw useful insights and gives them tremendous power to growth opportunities. Eventually, that power brings about more power and bigger profit.
Naturally, these digital activities need computers and other networking equipment and hence a physical space or a structure is required that is called a Data Center. In simple words, it’s where all the IT magic happens. A Data Center ensures that computer servers and networks run uninterruptedly, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
NEED FOR DATA CENTER VIRTUALIZATION
The modern business demands have gone way ahead with abundant data storage capacity and processing. Consequently, the role of data centers has also transformed significantly. Thanks to the evolution of Data Center Virtualization which helps solve the performance, cost and access issues of traditional Data Centers.
Over the last two years, everyone has now become familiar with the word Virtual which means ‘sharing the attributes of something without its physical form’. Similarly, the act of taking away the physical form of the Data Center while preserving and performing the same actions is called Virtualization.
A Virtual Data Center hosts a Data Center virtually by using cloud computing technology. It eliminates the need for underlying physical hardware that makes them run. It consolidates each resource into a virtual resource pool. Not only that, it also integrates and coordinates each virtual pool with the other pools so that the organizations can go beyond virtualization ‘silos’. This process results in multiplied benefits and greater collaborations.
HOW DOES IT HELP BUSINESSES?
A Virtual Data Centre is a product of the ‘Infrastructure as a Service’ (IaaS) delivery model of cloud computing. It can provide on-demand computing services such as storage, networking, as well as applications. All these services can be seamlessly integrated into an organization’s existing IT infrastructure. With a Virtual Data Centre, organizations get the option of adding capacity or installing a new IT infrastructure without the need to buy or install costly hardware. Typically, installing new hardware takes up additional power, manpower, and space. On the contrary, the whole Data Centre infrastructure is provided over cloud with a virtualized Data Center.
With virtualization, Data Centers can be compatible with more applications, get them implemented quicker, and stick to higher levels of service. Instead of physical servers, you now have virtual servers. It ensures that the organizations have the ability to be flexible and to scale up as needed. In essence, an organization can have as many virtual servers as they will ever need and without the obligation to invest in purchasing, provisioning, housing and maintaining a physical machine. They also get IT (managers and admins) powerful new tools for scheduling, protection and recovery.
One of the greatest advantages of a Virtual Data Center is that it allows comparatively small organizations to access IT infrastructure without spending millions of Omani Rials to construct an actual Data Centre. They only need to pay for the resources that they use, which allows great flexibility and scalability.
Now that you know what Virtual Data Centers are, let us understand about Nebula.
HERE COMES NEBULA BY ODP
Nebula is Oman’s first Virtual Data Centre (VDC) that offers a full spectrum of Data Center facilities on-demand, such as computing, storage, networking, and network security services. Nebula is a cloud-based service that enables businesses to create their own private clouds from a pool of servers and resources. It is also known as Virtual Data Centre as a Service (VDCaaS). Hosted locally, Nebula offers self-service capabilities for complete operational visibility and control over the infrastructure. It gives great emphasis to network security as well as scalability and automation.
MORE ABOUT NEBULA
Nebula implements the principles of pooling, abstraction and automation to enable the operational-ready infrastructure without worrying about the physical configuration of the hardware. It makes various resources available in a simplified way to both local and international organizations. It also allows total self-care to organizations so that they have complete operational visibility and control over the infrastructure, network security, scalability, and automation. It provides Data Center services that are ready for consumption in a matter of minutes.
Speed and agility to change serve as a key competitive advantage when it is about unlocking new business opportunities. Nebula helps business operations to adapt as per the changing needs of the industry. From ensuring on-demand resource facility to trying new business models and preventing IT operations to become a bottleneck during these changes.
Moreover, the Data Center infrastructure and facilities are provided by ODP on rent or lease which removes the need for any OPEX costs from an organization. Thereafter, customers can increase their usage requirements on demand.
TOP 8 ADVANTAGES OF NEBULA VIRTUAL DATA CENTER
1. GREATER AGILITY
Nebula enables organizations to control their own CPU, memory and storage levels as well. It equips them with load balancers, micro balancers, switches, routers, etc. add to their network. This enables the organization to be agile and respond to their market needs without having the burden of CAPEX. Furthermore, all these benefits are enabled with real-time metering so that the organization is aware of its own VDC (computing, storage, networking, and security) usage.
2. COST EFFICIENT
Nebula offers a choice of pricing models along with ODP’s long-standing 24×7 Managed Services. From Allocation to Pay-As-You-Go or reservation-based subscriptions, Nebula is perfect for different kinds of workloads such as critical production, backup and disaster recovery or for simply test and development. Whatever the need may be, this service is at par with international Virtual Data Centers. On top of that it has one unique selling point that Nebula services are offered locally. That is why it meets all local government regulations around customer data security and sovereignty. It is accompanied by strong ICT skillsets that are available natively.
3. OPERATIONAL VISIBILITY AND INSIGHTS
IT teams can have a centralized view with a dynamic dashboard. They can leverage and optimize their operations based on advanced analytics, chargeback and native integration straight into their Virtual Machines and applications for a clear visibility.
4. FASTER DEPLOYMENT
Server hardware failure is one of the most common issues that can disrupt business and their operations. Especially in case of an outage, a physical server may cease to function. It takes a significant amount of time to reboot and redeploy which depends on a number of factors. The Higher the idle time means lower will be the productivity of the operations. This is why, with the power of a virtual data center, Nebula helps reload and redeploy a new server within a few clicks. IT teams can ensure that the virtual machines get back to running in minutes. When you are prepared for such inevitable instances, you can ensure less downtime and more productivity for your business.
5. MAXIMIZE SCALABILITY
Businesses can easily manage workloads while scaling horizontally and vertically in terms of adding/ removing new servers and resources. Any business experiencing growth should consider implementing Nebula. It helps them maximize the ability to scale and meet the increased demands with the just-in-time allocation of bandwidth, storage capacity, and other IT resources. It can also be beneficial for businesses that experience seasonal increases in activity. For example, during peak times, virtualized memory and storage can be added. It will happen much faster at a reduced cost than completely buying and installing components on a new hardware. As and when demand slows down, the virtual resources can be scaled down, which helps remove redundant expenses.
6. SAFE AND SECURE ENVIRONMENT
When businesses choose to go with cloud services, safety is one of their top priorities. That is why Nebula comes with state-of-the-art security services operated over TIA 942 Rating 3 certified Data Centres which Oman Data Park (ODP) is known for. Supported by a highly qualified and professionally certified team of experts, this unique service is a testament to ODP’s continued efforts.
Nebula is designed with industry-leading security that allows organizations to meet ongoing infrastructure requirements along with their compliance and security requirements. Organizations opting for Nebula will also be able to avail Cyber Security Centre’s self-service-based continuous risk management, forensics and compliance services.
ODP aims at helping and guiding customers towards their agile and digital transformation towards the fourth industrial revolution and Gig economy.
7. CATALOGUE
Multi-Tier Applications can be provisioned and consumed as pre-configured virtual appliances containing VMs, Operating Systems, images and other media with the click of a button. This enables IT standardization, simplified troubleshooting, patching and change management.
8. METERING
Nebula delivers cost transparency and accountability that help IT leaders to understand and optimize the costs of their virtual Data Centre’s infrastructure required to seamlessly support business services.
- Easy and generous pricing on both reservation and allocation Models
- Support of a wide range of changing business objectives
- Greater flexibility in new solutions design
- Acceleration of time to market
- Improved cost efficiency, quality of service and business agility
- Maintain security and control with policy-based user controls
- Full suite of additional managed security services features
- Additional Veeam Backup and DR to 2nd Data Centre (More than 500km away)
- 98% Uptime commitment
- 24/7 proactive server monitoring and technical support
THE BOTTOMLINE
Data Centers have always been critical to the success of businesses. And that won’t change. With the radical shift in technology, Virtualized Data Centers have emerged to offer several advantages to businesses of all sizes, which also include predictable costs, increased productivity, and enterprise-level security. These are the reasons why more and more companies and businesses are migrating to Cloud. And for a good reason. The advent of IoT and interconnectivity will have a greater impact on the way we work and do business. It will completely revolutionize the behavior of the consumers and thus it is important to build the right infrastructure and be prepared for the e-transformation in all possible sectors and industries. Businesses that accelerate that shift today are the ones who will gain the advantage in the near future. Those that don’t will likely stick around for a while but will become increasingly less important.
Contact us today for more information about how we can help you migrate to a virtual data center solution.
To know more, reach out to us via phone at +968 24171195 or email sales@omandatapark.com
