CenturyLink Cloud Launches Advanced Self-Service Cloud Networking Capabilities

Leading Public Cloud Provider Expands Product Catalog with More Automation for Load Balancers, VLANs, and Firewalls

BELLEVUE, Wash. — August 14, 2013Tier 3, a provider of public cloud infrastructure and cloud management tools, today announced the general availability of several new self-service cloud networking features across Tier 3’s federated network of nine data centers around the world. The new services help enterprises manage cloud deployments more efficiently, with less manual effort. Self-service capabilities are essential to unlocking the promise of cloud computing. Without them, IT remains a barrier to projects and new corporate initiatives. But when coupled with on-demand and scalable resources, self-service functions empower developers and other users to create and manage their own workloads.

With the new enhancements from Tier 3, users can architect expansive network configurations in the public cloud that closely mirror the enterprise-class networking common to internal data centers. Consequently, a wider range of enterprise applications can be moved to the cloud without compromising security or compliance. The new capabilities include the self-service creation and management of load balancers for web applications, virtual LANs (VLANs) for building secure n-tier systems, site-to-site VPNs, and custom IP ports for edge firewalls.

“We all read about ‘the cloud price wars,’ but precious little focus is given to the human cost of IT. The time and expense of highly skilled workers performing mundane tasks consumes far more budget than public cloud services for most enterprises today,” said Jared Wray, founder and CTO of Tier 3. “That’s why self-service features and the removal of these tedious functions are so important to our customers. These self-service networking tools will help them increase business agility, and more importantly, re-allocate human capital more effectively within their organizations.”

The new features are a boon to Tier 3’s white-label and reseller partners as well. With an increase in self-service functions comes a corresponding decrease in support tickets for their operations teams. Servicing customers becomes far more economical.

The new features are available immediately to all Tier 3 customers, and may be deployed across the company’s network of nine federated data centers around the world.

Overview of New Features

Users may configure these enterprise-grade networking functions with Tier 3’s intuitive Control Portal interface. Previously, these features were only available upon request, and required manual effort to enable. Highlights of the new networking services include:

  • Self-service Shared Load Balancers. Customers may create load balancer configurations that use either “least connection” or “round robin” routing policies, and either standard or sticky persistence. The service supports up to 10Mbps of managed traffic and 10 VMs for a single virtual IP address (VIP). The load balancer is delivered as a virtual appliance using Citrix NetScaler®. Dedicated load balancers are available for more advanced deployments.
  • Self-service Site-to-Site VPNs. Create persistent, secure tunnels across a public network. Two types of connections are supported: between networks (“gateway to gateway”), and between users on untrusted networks and their secure applications (“host to gateway”).
  • Self-service virtual LANs (VLANs). Customers may build multi-tier network security using VLANs. When combined with Tier 3’s existing self-service firewall policy management, users are empowered to construct and manage enterprise-grade security protections for infrastructure and mission-critical deployments.
  • Custom Public IP Ports & Ranges for Edge Firewalls. Customers may now specify custom ports or port ranges for their public IP addresses, instead of being constrained to the most common ports for the public firewall.

Pricing for these services is available at www.tier3.com.

About Tier 3

Tier 3 is a complete cloud management platform for mid-tier to large enterprises, as well as SaaS providers. To bring even more value to customers, Tier 3 has combined elements of the traditional enterprise cloud market with those of cloud management platforms. Tier 3’s suite of cloud products and services include advanced management and orchestration enabling our customers to run workloads ranging from simple development and test environments to the most complex and demanding enterprise applications. The Company is based in Bellevue, WA, with regional presence in multiple locations in North America and Europe. www.tier3.com.

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