Cloud Solutions

Cloud Platform and Service

Shift’s cloud platform and service allows its customers to transition their existing technology infrastructure and data center assets to a secure, geographically distributed and virtualized environment. The company’s underlying technology is built on years of industry experience and patent pending innovations that defend the customer’s systems from failure, ensure secure data storage and enhance information processing integrity.

NIST, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, defines cloud computing as:

A model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g. networks, servers, storage, applications and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. This cloud model promotes availability and is comprised of 5 essential characteristics, 3 service models and 4 deployment models.

While Shift embraces this definition of the model, we believe it omits discussion of one critical point of differentiation - security.

Shift delivers the essential characteristics of cloud computing by assembling the key components and technological expertise to meet a specific need. Customer needs determine the relevant Service and Deployment models for that individual situation. Generally, delivering the basics of cloud computing is relatively easy for an experienced industry player. However, most players cannot offer the full spectrum of service and deployment models. Further, they stop at simply offering a subset of security and management tools, which does not make for a complete and secure cloud solution. Without such a solution, a customer is left at risk from external threats and is left to cobble together their own security solution. Shift’s approach does not abandon the customer to handle this problem alone.

Shift takes a “defense-in-depth” strategy to securing the networks, infrastructure, and software that our customers rely upon when deploying and using our platform. This approach goes far beyond simple perimeter-based security and dives down to monitor each virtual machine for signs of suspicious activity. For customers that require an extra level of separation or where regulation demands, Shift offers separate single-tenant solutions, which quarantine a customer’s machines and data away from other customers.

Shift’s vision of a complete could computing offering must also include the following things:

• Globally manageable perimeter security
• Unified threat management (UTM) built in to the networking core
• Resource priority management tools
• APIs for automatic scaling of provisioned resources
• Federated identity architecture support
• Authentication, authorization and accounting (AAA) systems
• Granular, ACL-backed storage encryption for data-at-rest
• Deeply integrated cross-service trusted computing, storage and communication environments

Shift Service APIs

Often, both existing cloud service providers and proprietary in-house solutions lack scalable and automated monitoring capabilities. Without deeply integrated monitoring and scaling, corporate IT must manually manage frequent scaling and provisioning of resources as usage loads grow and shrink. Provisioning too few resources can result in service outages and slower responsiveness to users. Provisioning too many resources can lead to cost overruns that can mirror those that cloud computing was supposed to eliminate from the beginning.

Shift Service APIs enable enterprise customers to monitor and assess their system performance while simultaneously managing cyber security threats across the entirety of a global infrastructure. The Shift platform provides a suite of tools that layer on top of our cloud infrastructure as well as software that manages virtual machine configurations. Together they proactively distribute data, alert and defend on attacks and report system failures. Shift’s cloud management services provide comprehensive tools to inventory, assess, test, and monitor critical infrastructure assets. We internally maintain the cutting-edge knowledge and expertise to ensure compliance with relevant state and federal regulations and requirements.

Shift Hybrid Cloud

When considering the various deployment models for a distributed, cloud-based solution, companies must consider the solution options that best meet their needs. Each deployment model decision comes with a specific set of trade-offs. For example, a private (on-premise) cloud can deliver the highest level of security and availability, but comes with the trade-off of a higher price and more security than is required for certain types of data. On the flip side, a public (off-premise) cloud can deliver the flexible scalability and accessibility that companies demand, but, by moving certain highly critical data to a less secure, public distributed environment, they are more likely to encounter security and or compliance challenges. Community and hybrid cloud deployment models can help companies to manage some of the inherent trade-offs in the public or private models, and help companies optimize their individual solution.

Shift’s secure cloud platform enables enterprise IT administrators to build unified cloud architecture across multiple facility locations and environments. The platform provides both real-time visibility into a customer’s distributed infrastructure and flexible management of computing, storage and communications resources. When coupled with Shift services that enable scalable Internet provisioning and intelligent, network-aware cyber security, enterprises can enable continuous resource availability while remaining defended against DDoS attacks and rapid surges in resource demand, ending the need to over-provision capacity. Shift’s platform also enables the ability of a private cloud to push data (or “burst”) to off-premise clouds, while still remaining protected by the Shift security protocols.