New VPN-Cubed Version and The Cloud Connectivity Market

Just when you've stuffed yourself silly with cloud computing news, acronyms that start with V, and debates over nebulous semantics...we at CohesiveFT top you off right before the weekend. That's right, strap-in for a YACLA (Yet Another Cloud-Laden Announcement). We'll also address some industry news that came out this week.

First a Little About Us
Today we are releasing our VPN-Cubed IPsec to EC2 Free Edition, a zero cost AMI available through Amazon DevPay. The VPN-Cubed IPsec to EC2 Free Edition allows users to create a five-machine VPN-Cubed overlay network in EC2 and connect that overlay network to their datacenter using a secure IPsec VPN tunnel. The free edition is a limited version of our IPsec Enterprise Solution that gives you a powerful cloud connectivity solution at a retail on-demand price.

Remember, normally when you launch machines in the cloud you give up control over your addressing, your topology, your protocols, and communications to your deployments are done over the public internet. With VPN-Cubed you take control with static addressing for your EC2 devices using VPN-Cubed managers as virtual routers/switches, allowing use of popular enterprise protocols like UDP Multicast for service discovery, and encrypting all communications between your devices in EC2 and between your datacenter & EC2 - using your existing extranet device (Cisco ASA, Cisco Pix, Fortinet, Juniper, etc.).

The people we encounter looking to leverage cloud computing come in all shapes and sizes. Some are large enterprises with massive deployments, others are just looking to deploy a frontend and one database. Clearly one size doesn't fit all, so why should we only offer one IPsec-to-cloud solution? Our Free Edition is a direct response to our users looking for a less costly solution to join the movement to cloud security and control. Those users now have an excellent opportunity to start extending operations into the public cloud without a large initial cash outlay. (Rule 76: No excuses, cloud compute like a champion.)

Get Cubed Now
Start up your VPN-Cubed IPsec to EC2 Manager at no additional fees beyond EC2 costs for compute usage and data transfer fees + a $0.30 monthly charge to cover Amazon's Monthly Transaction Fee. Visit the DevPay Free Edition product page, subscribe, and launch the AMI (US region AMI ID: ami-c9fe1ea0 or EU region AMI ID: ami-6c6a4118) in YOUR EC2 account. Setup your VPN-Cubed overlay network and IPsec tunnel by following our comprehensive Setup Instructions. Customer controlled secure cloud computing couldn't be easier. Like what you're seeing? Tell us about it at feedback(@)cohesiveft.com or tell others using #vpncubed or @elasticserver.

The Cloud Connectivity Market is Now Open
Cloud vendors, in this instance Amazon Web Services, have realized there is not going to be wholesale migration of data centers to clouds. The recent release of Amazon Web Service's Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) helps to move the conversation of security and control in the cloud forward. Having a major player join us in the ever evolving Cloud connectivity market is extremely exciting! There is no better validation of our original idea, VPN-Cubed, than a complementary offering from AWS. So in the spirit of friendly competition, we would like to explore some of the similarities and differences between our two offerings.

While the AWS VPC is somewhat similar in basic approach and feature set to our VPN-Cubed offering, Amazon's VPC beta does not target key areas of customer control and market interoperability (see our comparison matrix below).

What does it all mean?
Clearly, we will overlap in some segment of the market, but there is a major difference in our approaches. We are a software company and have created VPN-Cubed using software virtual appliances. AWS are raised-floor gurus, they use hardware expertise to provide connectivity solutions.

With out knowing much more about Amazon's implementation we won't make any assumptions about future capabilities and limitations. But it is safe to assume AWS VPC will emerge from beta with a broader feature set than it currently enjoys. Below is a "what's available today" comparison. Enjoy it.

Create a Virtual Private Cloud on AWS’s scalable infrastructure, and specify its private IP address range from any block you choose. Divide your VPC’s private IP address range into one or more subnets in a manner convenient for managing applications and services you run in your VPC. Bridge together your VPC and your IT infrastructure via an encrypted IPSEC connection. Add AWS resources, such as Amazon EC2 instances, to your VPC. Route traffic between your VPC and the Internet over the VPN connection so that it can be examined by your existing security and networking assets before heading to the public Internet. Windows and Linux device support Features available in all zones of EC2 US and EU today. Features integrated to EC2 existing security lattice (EC2 Security groups) Can use EC2 Elastic IP Addresses Can ASSIGN SPECIFIC addresses to specific servers in my "VPC" Private IP Address Range Shared across Mutiple Clouds and/or Virtual Infrastructures Customer gateway address can be dynamic and behind a device performing NAT Can use UDP multicast in my EC2 subnets and between EC2 Regions Support to and between Multiple Clouds/Infrastructures and EC2 (Eucalyptus, vCloud, GoGrid, Mosso, Rackspace, ElasticHosts, Citrix, Parallels, KVM, and VMware) Let other AWS accounts (Partners, ISVs) launch instances to talk to VPC owner's instances directly Common abstraction model/interface across all clouds and virtual infrastructures

Again, kudos to the Amazon team for realizing and addressing the key adoption hurdles for cloud computing: security and control. We look forward to integrating our VPN-Cubed Manager into the VPC infrastructure and collaborating to bring the most comprehensive set of features to cloud bound customers.

two is a crowd.