Intel Joins Forces with Cloud Service Providers Around the World to Reveal What’s Inside Their Datacenters

To help IT organizations make better, more informed purchasing decisions and ensure optimal performance for their cloud applications, Intel Corporation is teaming with 16 leading cloud service providers (CSPs) around the world to introduce the “Intel® Cloud Technology” program. This first-of-its-kind initiative will provide cloud users with a clear view into the technology powering a CSP’s infrastructure before they purchase any services or instances.
With infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) revenue expected to increase 41 percent annually by 2016 and more companies considering outsourcing their IT services, the technology that powers cloud-based services and applications matters more than ever. CSPs participating in the new Intel program will be recognized by using the “Powered by Intel Cloud Technology” badge to distinguish their Intel-based instances where the performance and security capabilities of the underlying hardware become transparent to the end user.
The Intel Cloud Technology program builds on the collaboration announced last September between Amazon Web Services* (AWS) and Intel to communicate to customers the specifications, performance, quality, and security benefits of the Intel technology used in AWS instances.
“Much like when choosing a car, the type of engine that runs a cloud service dramatically affects performance and efficiency,” said Jason Waxman, vice president, Data Center Group and general manager, Cloud Platform Group, at Intel. “Cloud customers want to know what technology their applications are running on because it has direct impact to their business. For the first time, users will have the transparency to select the technologies that are optimal for running their applications in the cloud.”
It has been reported that a heterogeneous cloud infrastructure environment may result in 40 to 60 percent performance variation. Therefore, end users are increasingly looking for more insight into the performance, capabilities and cost trade-offs of the many instances that CSPs offer so they can get the right size and type of performance matched to their specific workloads.
“The key to unlocking flexibility, productivity and cost trade-offs when using the public cloud is choosing a quality provider with platform performance and capabilities that meet our specific needs,” said Don Whittington, CIO of Florida Crystals (owner of Domino Sugar and C&H Sugar). “With our CSP Virtustream participating in Intel Cloud Technology program, we are now aware of the underlying hardware powering the services we buy and we can make better choices to ensure we have the optimal workload performance for our investment.”
In addition to Virtustream (U.S.); Canopy*, an ATOS* company (U.K.); Cloud4com* (Czech Republic); CloudWatt* (France); Expedient* (U.S.); KIO Networks* (Mexico); KT* (Korea); Locaweb* (Brazil); NxtGen* (India); Online.net* (France); OVH* (France); Rackspace* (U.S.); Savvis*, a company of CenturyLink* (US); Selectel* (Russia); and UOLDIVEO* / UOL Host* (Brazil) have committed to participating in the program.

Behind the Program: When Seconds Count
Even a slight change in cloud instance performance can impact sales on e-commerce sites. For example, Shopzilla* increased its revenue by up to 12 percent by accelerating its page load times from seven to two seconds. For enterprise and other IT buyers evaluating hybrid or public cloud services, CSPs participating in the Intel® Cloud Technology program will provide detailed information about available CPUs, hardware acceleration features, storage, software and network capabilities – all of which can have a have significant impact on applications, costs and experiences for end users.
CSPs will promote the users’ benefits of Intel cloud technologies powering their services through multiple channels. The capabilities available today from participating CSPs aim to significantly increase performance of applications and security of end users’ data and include Intel® Turbo Boost Technology, Intel® Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX), Intel® Data Protection Technology with Advanced Encryption Standard New Instructions (AES-NI), and Intel® Virtualization Technology (VT).
Additionally, Intel will drive direct marketing campaigns and participate in co-marketing activities with CSP partners in the program to educate customers about underlying technologies, their impact on applications performance, user experience and ultimately the business. Understanding service capabilities helps the cloud user make better choices, which can lead to significant cost savings.
For example, Novartis Pharmaceuticals* performed an extensive analysis of instances to find that choosing a premium high-performing one would provide the company up to 65 percent cost savings over the lower cost, lower performing options when matching available capabilities with specific requirements of its workloads. It also allowed the company to significantly reduce the time spent on processing, creating faster turnaround of projects.
“Rackspace has customers around the world that trust us to fulfill their cloud infrastructure needs,” said Rajeev Shrivastava, vice president of product marketing at Rackspace. “Our participation in the Intel Cloud Technology program strengthens our ability to deliver a broader range of hybrid cloud solutions to optimize application performance, and helps assure current and potential customers that Rackspace will run their business critical services on a cloud developed with the best available technology.”

Intel® Cloud Finder Helps to Find the Right CSP for the Job
It’s the Intel Cloud Finder tool, which helps end users cut through the complexity of identifying the optimal cloud service by providing comparison guidance across more than 50 CSPs for 80 end-user requirements, will be integrated with the Intel® Cloud Technology program. A new feature will allow end users to select a “trial” option for these services. The ability to “test drive” services prior to purchase will help IT decision makers better understand the underlying technologies and ensure that the services are the right fit for their workload before purchase.