Terremark: Clavister customer spotlight

Scalability, flexibility and impeccable security are the foundation stones of Terremark’s offering in the
managed services arena. That is why it has attracted an impressive portfolio of clients from the government, enterprise and Web 2.0 sectors.

“Implementing Clavister security in our data centres not only protects our clients’ business critical systems but it also makes good financial sense because the rich feature set can be installed on just one device then easily scaled as traffic grows. That makes our offering very attractive to customers and ultimately grows our business.”
-Kurt Glazemakers, Chief Technical Officer (CTO), Terremark, Europe

"The type of customers who come to us, are those who need high availability and will lose business if their IT systems, corporate web sites or e-commerce sites go down," says Kurt Glazemakers, Chief Technical Officer for Terremark Europe, headquartered in Dendermonde, Belgium.

Reduction of total cost

In Europe, Terremark runs its own state-of-the-art data centre in Madrid and leases data centre premises in London and the Benelux countries to provide both managed and data centre services. To ensure vital security for its customers' mission-critical systems at these locations, Terremark Europe uses the Clavister Security Services Platform (SSP), a unique combination of systems and services that deliver high performance, precise control, efficient administration and seamless scalability.

"One of the most important strategies behind our hosting business is to continuously reduce the total cost of ownership of our equipment," adds Glazemakers. "What attracted us to Clavister's security is that we can use it as a software solution which runs on a standard server in a rack. That means we can use the same server as a Web server or a firewall which really reduces the number of spare servers we need in the data centre."

Among the features that placed the Clavister platform ahead of the competition were its small footprint and the fact that it can be used as a software solution at the core with no need to first install an operating system.

Scalable flexibility

Clavister's proven track record of leading and developing new technologies enables it to be acutely responsive to customer needs and fine-tune solutions to fit them. Incorporating meticulous Swedish design, the feature rich Clavister platform offers managed service providers the flexibility to choose functionality that meets their Service Level Agreements (SLA) with customers. Terremark currently uses Firewalling, VPN, Intrusion Detection and Prevention, Traffic Management and Quality of Service, IP Routing, Address Translation, High Availability, Load Balancing and Security Socket Layer (SSL) offloading.

The ability to run Clavister security on any standard open server platform reduces our dependency on hardware. Should an individual server component fail, security can simply be switched to another server; availability of the client system is not compromised while we wait for vendor support. It also makes sound financial sense for new customers, as Glazemakers explains: "Customers can start small and grow as their traffic grows. With the software on a server approach, we only need to raise new licences and they can grow as much as they want without ever losing their initial investment."

Virtualized security

Terremark has implemented advanced virtualization techniques on its Infinistructure utility computing platform to increase hardware utilization and bring the environmental benefits of lower power consumption and reduced carbon emissions. To meet the specialised needs of security in a virtualized environment, it has been using Clavister's Virtual Security Gateway (VSG). This runs as an integrated part inside the environment and can therefore be managed in the same way as any other virtualized application. "This Clavister virtualized solution makes it much easier to actually deploy firewalls inside the virtual environment," says Glazemakers. "It is very easy to build custom networks without doing any changes on the network itself. Everything can be virtualized and what is so nice about the Clavister virtualization security is that is has a very low footprint. With a couple of megabytes and a limited amount of CPU, you can achieve a very high bandwidth."

Challenge

• The success of Terremark's managed services business depends on delivering effective security to protect its clients' business critical systems.
• In addition, Terremark aims to lower Total Cost of Ownership with truly scalable systems that can be economically implemented then easily grow as customer traffic increases.
• It also needs to provide security for its virtualized environment.

Solution

• Clavister's Security Services Platform (SSP) has been implemented.
• Terremark has also implemented Clavister's Virtual Security Gateway to protect its virtualized environment.

Benefits

• Economical implementation and future scalability produce a compelling customer offering that gives Terremark an advantage in its highly competitive market.
• Clavister SSP provides a single kernel so effective security can be developed in line with requirements and budgets by purchasing supplementary licences.
• Virtualization enables Terremark to reduce power consumption and lower its carbon emissions.

About Terremark

Terremark Worldwide (NASDAQ:TMRK) is a leading global provider of IT infrastructure services delivered on the industry's most robust and advanced operations platform. Leveraging purpose-built data centers in the United States, Europe and Latin America and access to massive and diverse network connectivity from more than 160 global carriers, Terremark delivers a comprehensive suite of managed solutions including managed hosting, co-location, network and security services. Terremark's acclaimed Infinistructure utility computing architecture has redefined industry standards for scalable and flexible computing infrastructure and its digitalOps service delivery platform combines end-to-end systems management workflow with a comprehensive customer portal.

www.terremark.com