Providing IT on demand: working at Cloud speed

Q Please can you provide a little bit of background on the

evolution of CenturyLink?
A CenturyLink is already one of the largest communications companies in the world and has, over the course of five years, evolved from a regional U.S. telco into a global IT services and cloud infrastructure service provider.
We’ve been delivering solutions in EMEA for many years, previously under the Savvis brand, but now everything is being pulled together under the CenturyLink banner, which gives customers a single destination for cloud, network, data centre and managed IT infrastructure.
To give you an idea of scale, we now have 58 data centres around the world that we leverage across a variety of service models. We have a cloud management platform for public and private cloud that runs in many of those facilities and a global network that connects them all together, which we own and manage. We have an entire managed services and solutions portfolio team that can deliver combined solutions across all these assets.
Ultimately, we deliver innovation that allows our customers to focus on their core business. Our customers can explore new market opportunities while optimising their legacy environments, by offloading to the CenturyLink service platform. We’re positioning ourselves as the partner of choice for enterprises that are embracing hybrid IT strategies.
Q What are the key milestones to date?
A A big one from the EMEA standpoint was the acquisition and subsequent integration and rebranding of Savvis: a well-known entity in EMEA for its IT services.
Another major milestone was the 2013 acquisition of Tier 3, an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), platform and advanced cloud management company. Tier 3 provided the foundation for what is today’s CenturyLink Cloud: an all-in-one platform that delivers high-performance, secure, reliable and scalable cloud for workloads across our global network and datacentre footprint.
Most recently, we opened a Cloud Development Centre in Bellevue, WA, designed specifically to accommodate DevOps-style collaboration and agile software development. Our Cloud Development Centre has become a centre of excellence across the company, achieving a dramatic increase in product release frequency. In December, 2014 we announced the acquisition of Cognilytics, an advanced predictive analytics and big data solutions firm, and also the acquisition of DataGardens, a Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS) provider that gives our customers a cost-effective and innovative way to mirror physical or virtual machine data to a highly available cloud environment.
Q Who are the key personnel?
A The most well-known in terms of press exposure is Jared Wray, the founder and CTO of Tier 3 who is now SVP of Platform for CenturyLink. Jared built Tier 3 into an industry-recognised cloud innovation and performance leader but also pioneered key open source projects such as the Iron foundry open Platform as a Service (PaaS) project, part of the Cloud Foundry ecosystem.
Since he joined CenturyLink, in November 2013, Jared has continued to drive significant cloud advancements, including the global launch of Private Cloud in any of our 58 data centres, overseeing new cloud pricing and product updates, and launching cloud-based managed services on CenturyLink Cloud in the UK.
Q How does CenturyLink seek to distinguish itself in what is quite
a crowded marketplace?
A We’re more focused on what our customers care about than what our competition is doing, but that being said, customers who are looking at hybrid scenarios and comprehensive IT transformation are ideally suited for CenturyLink services. We’re continuously striving to add and advance automation that simplifies IT. We want to add services that our customers are asking for, so we are extremely competitive in our response to customer feedback.
The model for consuming infrastructure as a service has evolved significantly in a short amount of time. The reality is that the old definition of cloud (a virtual server running a hypervisor) is no longer a unique delivery model. Today, the on-demand characteristics of cloud need to be infused in all elements of the service delivery model. From the bedrock of IT infrastructure, data centre and network services, to the server and application infrastructure that enable runtime, the need to consume IT as a true service is an expectation of businesses today.
These are reasonable, if not expected demands from the enterprise. Vendors that only provide infrastructure in the form of compute power in an on-demand model will find that they are only delivering a fraction of the value that enterprises require today.
We have an acute awareness of this need and are continuously investing to bring the on-demand model to all services that we deliver to clients. It’s more than just “cloudifying” infrastructure – it’s expanding the cloud delivery model across our entire infrastructure base with the objective of providing a zero-barrier entry for clients to tap into infrastructure and management expertise, as they need it, on demand.
Q In more detail, what does the company offer around cloud
services?
A CenturyLink Cloud is a globally-distributed platform that integrates a series of cloud IaaS and PaaS services into a common, easy-to-use management interface. A single API and management framework extends across all elements of the CenturyLink Cloud platform worldwide – allowing customers to manage their services consistently in any location. The CenturyLink global cloud infrastructure is optimised across the stack for high network and application performance: we optimise hardware distribution using our orchestration system, and we minimize risk using specialised provisioning algorithms.
Our cloud platform includes many enterprise-oriented features you’d normally have to patch together from multiple providers. CenturyLink Cloud provides the speed and performance, enterprise-level security and global availability with built-in automation, orchestration and management controls that realise lower total cost of ownership (TCO) in the cloud.
Q What’s CenturyLink’s play in the colo space?
A CenturyLink delivers highly reliable infrastructure for many of the largest enterprises and financial institutions in the world, including one-third of all Fortune 100 companies. Our data centres are built and operated to the most exacting specification to provide 100 per cent uptime.
One of the elements that truly differentiates CenturyLink in the colo space is our data centre staff. It’s common for data centre providers to outsource the running of the facilities to outside companies, but all our data centre staff are permanent. They know they can make a serious difference and maintain accountability for their facilities. If they can think of a better way of doing something, they’re empowered to implement process optimisations and drive them into our global operations. There is an important distinction between specialised real estate and professional data centre operation and that is, more often than not, the people.
Q How does the company’s Managed Hosting offering differ from
cloud and colo above?

A We are one of only a small number of cloud service providers that have made the substantial investment in people, process and operation to deliver managed capabilities in our own global cloud platform.

All CenturyLink products and services are complemented by a robust Advanced Services portfolio. These teams bring significant industry expertise to clients to help businesses transition to new, more flexible and cost efficient environments. We don’t respond to a business challenge by simply “throwing product at it”, we engineer our solutions by starting with our client’s objective and building a solution based on what the client is trying to achieve.

Q CenturyLink also offers services around the network?

A We own and manage one of the world’s largest MPLS networks. Our network infrastructure is significant in that it allows businesses to prioritise applications across their network, optimise the configuration of their network, and have this solution managed for them globally.
We have an expansive international fibre footprint and a best in class MPLS network that is agile, reliable and secure. It is designed to be the backbone of a hybrid IT infrastructure that leverages virtualisation to handle the demands of forward thinking IT organisations.
Our Metro Ethernet solutions can complement the MPLS network or stand alone as a lower cost, high performance option for local and regional customers who want to maintain routing control. Because the needs of true enterprise size organisations are unique, CenturyLink works with customers to design a network solution that meets their business demands and geographical requirements.
Our VPort pricing model and bursting capabilities allow customers to access bandwidth on demand while paying for aggregate usage across all ports.
Q And security – becoming increasingly important?
A It’s always been important and new threats emerge every day. We work with and are trusted by some of the world’s largest financial institutions. We deliver security at customers’ sites, at our global data centres, within our virtual hosting platform, and over the Internet in the cloud: perimeter protection, enhanced authentication and Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Mitigation. We can consult with our clients around network security, policy architecture and implementation of controls.
Q And storage?
A We have a proven track record of providing high-performance cloud storage environments in terms of performance and scalability, with over 20 PB of storage under management. Our storage services can be delivered in a fully-automated model upon CenturyLink Cloud, or in a directly-provisioned model within our cloud data centres.
Within CenturyLink Cloud, we have the ability to provision block storage and object storage on-demand, billed on a consumption basis and provisionable to data centres around the world.
Within the data centres, CenturyLink Unified Storage provides enterprise grade storage without the need for dedicated hardware. Unified Storage includes quick provisioning for SAN or NAS protocols and includes performance SLAs across tiers of service.
Unified Storage is a fully managed 24/7/365 solution that uses snapshots and replication features to protect against physical disaster.
Q Any gaps in this portfolio that CenturyLink is looking to fill?
A CenturyLink Cloud has an agile, 21-day release cycle into which we fit feature releases that are aligned to customer input. We manage a feature-request queue with our customers and partners to help shape the platform.
Our overall roadmap in 2015 will include focus around the following key areas:
 Expanding our locations around the world
 Offering new compute models that drive performance and scalability
 Advancing our network virtualisation and feature set
 Enhancing our white-label features that allow CenturyLink Cloud to be consumed by value-add partners and re-sellers
 Integrating further managed services into the CenturyLink Cloud platform including those from our cloud ecosystem
Q Does CenturyLink offer solutions targeted at specific issues,
such as Big Data?
A We offer CenturyLink Cognilytics, which helps clients to monetise data as a strategic asset through a combination of big data management, cutting edge visualisation, and decision science innovation.
CenturyLink Cognilytics provide consulting services, implementation services and run-time services for big data (Hadoop) and SAP HANA. We solve key business problems for our customers by combining the power of predictive analytics with enterprise scalability and provide “what-if” orchestration through the Decision Analyser platform.
CenturyLink Cloud has a growing ecosystem of Big Data technologies that are pre-integrated as CenturyLink Cloud Blueprints and instantly provisionable by any customer. Technologies such as Cloudera, XtremeData, MongoDB and the Pivotal Big Data Suite are already integrated with our platform.
(http://www.centurylinkcloud.com/knowledge-base/ecosystem-partners)
Q And Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery?
A It’s all about workload portability. If you have workload portability and flexibility then that’s risk mitigation, and that risk mitigation is ultimately what disaster recovery and continuity of operations is all about.
Disaster recovery (DR), more and more in the cloud age, is about architecture and design to mitigate against the need to invoke disaster recovery. DR-as-a-Service (DRaaS) is a great way to start a conversation, but I think we’re increasingly getting to the point where disaster recovery declarations are not really what the industry needs to hear.
The new wave of application development and architectures – the applications redesigned to be resilient in the age of cloud – are what people need to hear about instead of hard luck stories.
At the end of last year, we acquired DataGardens, who were already part of our cloud ecosystem with its SafeHaven technology, but now we plan to accelerate a product roadmap to bring cloud-based disaster recovery that works between public clouds, as well as between public clouds and private OpenStack-based clouds.
Q What about the latest buzz topic – the Internet of Things?
A The primary challenge of the Internet of Things is the density of sensors and the reach of the networks that are collecting their telemetry. Our platform vision extends from the data centre, through the core of our network, out to various physical locations around the world. The ability to aggregate and operate upon these data streams will be a key differentiator for CenturyLink as our network takes us places that other clouds simply can’t go.
Q Presumably, CenturyLink offers some kind of consultancy to
help customers work out what it is they want to do/need?!
A CenturyLink’s Solutions Consulting delivers customised application-orientated infrastructure transformation that aligns the strategic objectives of IT with business goals.
Certified consultants work with teams to reduce costs, enhance flexibility and minimise risk; apply proven methodologies and tools to design; and leverage the next generation IT infrastructure required to fuel growth.
Q For example, infrastructure optimisation is an area that is not
easy to understand/implement?
A The future of infrastructure optimisation is progressive refinement of cloud infrastructure – in a truly agile model, infrastructure profiles get tuned and optimised as code.
Q The whole outsourcing debate – whether Cloud, Colo, Managed
Hosting – needs a fair amount of knowledge and understanding
before any decisions are made?
A This debate is fundamentally one around transformation – how to effectively align resources within the company and how to build sustainable innovation models within the enterprise. Our consultative approach is focused on this transformation cycle: how our customers can adopt modes of operation which allow them to sustain, improve and experiment to meet the needs of their business.
Q With virtually all of the above, Service Provision/Management is
key to ensuring that you keep your customers happy?
A Automation is the only service provisioning strategy that delights customers in the long term.
Q Are you able to provide one or two examples of how you have
helped customers – whether small or larger projects?
A Cancer Research UK raises money through high-profile events such as the Race for Life. The Race for Life website ranges from low levels of activity to major spikes, ahead of the race. Cancer Research UK wanted to move management in-house to control costs during those swings. But moving hosting in-house was quite expensive due to need for 24/7 support.
Cancer Research UK and CenturyLink built a hybrid solution that mixed development oriented and customer facing applications in a colocation environment. Cancer Research UK met the race deadline and reduced costs so that more of its funds could be dedicated to research.
Q What can we expect from CenturyLink in the next 12-18 months?
A We’re in the model now where 12 months to us is an eternity because we’re releasing new products constantly. When you’re working at cloud speed and delivering in the cloud world to the customer, you need to be making continuous improvements to your platform. Outside of the cloud team, we’ll continue to transform the rest of CenturyLink to work at the same speed. At CenturyLink, from a core business of running and managing networks for companies, we’re really starting to drive, synthesise and unify our cloud computing software development and engineering strategy with our network computing and engineering strategy in what we’re calling “Platform CenturyLink”. This is where we apply the same cloud discipline to delivering new features in an agile way to other areas of the business.