The Planet Storage Cloud Service Available

The Planet, in IT hosting, announced the general availability of its new Storage Cloud service. The company offers globally dispersed locations to meet their customers’ requirements, wherever they are located around the world. Customers can choose from an on-premise local node in The Planet’s Dallas D2 data center, or from locations on the East or West Coasts, Europe or Asia, through its partnership with Nirvanix. The company also offers Storage Cloud options for organizations that do not require hosting solutions.

Coupled with a server hosted at The Planet, customers combine the speed and flexibility of on-premise Network Attached Storage (NAS) with the global access and usage-based billing capabilities of its Storage Cloud solution. All Storage Cloud customers with servers hosted at The Planet are connected through its world-class network, which provides unprecedented performance. Customers eliminate the hassle of managing two separate invoices, one for high-performance on-premise file storage and another for cloud-based offerings. The Planet Storage Cloud provides both services in a single account, which offers a simple method for tracking and understanding file-based storage usage.

"We conducted extensive testing and evaluated multiple cloud storage options for price and performance, reliability and scalability, and The Planet provided us with the best solution," said Bill Robertson, Founder and CEO of Q Point Technology. "Our customers choose TrueSafe because it enables them to offer their own Online Backup service. They want a reliable system that is instantly deployed, scales with adoption and offers straightforward, no-surprises billing. Across the board, The Planet delivers the best value, return on investment and service for our customers."

"With other cloud storage platforms, we hear time and again from customers that invoices are dramatically inflated due to unexpected and hidden transactional fees," said Rob Walters, general manager for The Planet’s Storage and Data Protection business. "Our no-surprises philosophy removes the uncertainty. In addition, other companies by contrast offer a one-city cloud storage option, typically resident in their city of operation. Our customers can choose options from multiple replicated global or domestic nodes. With three access methods included with every Storage Cloud account – including API, Nirvanix CloudNAS’ or Nirvanix FTP Proxy’ – customers can eliminate the development requirements typically associated with other platforms. From early customer evaluations, we’ve heard first-hand that they appreciate the scalability, exceptional performance, simple integration and competitive pricing that are The Planet’s industry-recognized hallmarks."

The Planet Storage Cloud Benefits
With its usage-based billing and simple integration, customers can take advantage of unlimited storage options, available on-demand around-the-clock:

• Fast, on-premise storage, great rates: Pricing starts at 25 cents per Gigabyte, with discounts as customers use more, while other hosting companies routinely charge between 60 cents and $1 for equivalent NAS-type products. On-premise storage is accessible via the cloud, which reduces server resource utilization and requirements for a separate cloud account. Bandwidth charges are incurred only for outbound-transactions, and all uploads to The Planet Storage Cloud node are free.
• Data closer to customers: The Planet offers the industry’s only geographically distributed Storage Cloud platform. For companies with storage-intensive businesses or Web sites, data transfer speeds are dramatically improved by storing data closer to their users. Storage nodes are located in three domestic and two international locations, making it easier than ever to take advantage of cloud storage options.
• Simple management and integration: The Planet provides customers a single account for managing both their hosted environment and storage cloud platform. This integrated account is unmatched by other hosting or cloud storage providers. The standards-based Storage Cloud platform is accessible through CIFS, NFS, FTP and HTTP, as well as an extensible API streamlining integration. Unlike other cloud storage providers, The Planet bundles free-access software that enables faster integration and eliminates the purchase of third-party integration products.
• Cost-effective disaster recovery, backup and archiving repository: By removing data from servers and into the Storage Cloud, customers can protect against all types of disasters, whether it’s human error, loss of network connectivity or malicious intent.