As more companies migrate applications to the cloud to enjoy the promised benefits, they often rely on companies like eApps Hosting to pave the way. Using OnApp cloud management software,  eApps has grown its own cloud business and enabled its customers to migrate from traditional VPS and dedicated hosting to the cloud.

According to this case study, the eApps team first tried to build cloud infrastructure using a generic cloud framework from another vendor. This approach proved to be less than successful, as eApps struggled to bolt on the cloud provisioning and billing systems needed to offer public cloud services to paying customers. “There were a lot of frustrations with that system,” says Richard A. Lingsch, president of eApps, referring to live before OnApp. “There was nothing on the billing side, for example. We encountered many issues and limitations that were critical in a hosting business, and we had to overcome them ourselves. In hindsight, it was just too time-consuming to build on something not designed for hosts. Then we were introduced to OnApp.”

eApps switched to OnApp’s cloud management software, and was able to quickly launch a new cloud hosting service powered by OnApp. The new eApps cloud hosting service launched on March 2, 2011 after a rapid OnApp implementation and a thorough cloud testing process internally and with its customers. OnApp cloud management software includes a user-friendly Web control panel that makes it easy for customers to configure their CPU, disk, RAM (News - Alert) and other cloud resources. Many cloud providers, however, prefer to develop their own, and OnApp makes this easy with a comprehensive API.

eApps built its own Create-A-Cloud tool, which provides a branded interface to the OnApp platform for cloud provisioning. Create-A-Cloud allows clients to choose preconfigured cloud packages, or scale up with the precise amount of cloud capacity they need. OnApp handles all pricing, cloud resource management, user management, limits and failover functionality in the back end.

 eApps does a lot of business with clients who need middleware application servers to support mission-critical websites, and it is these customers who are making the move to the cloud. Just a few weeks after launching its cloud management software platform, existing VPS users and new customers were making the move to the new eApps cloud. “Our customers include developers using Ruby, Java, Drupal and so on,” says Lingsch. “We have companies working in application middleware, like JBoss, Tomcat and Liferay Portal. And we have larger business customers who need extensive infrastructure and applications hosting. The interesting thing is that they all share the same basic needs. Top of the list are uptime, flexibility, and predictable pricing – and these are the things we deliver with OnApp.”

OnApp is a self-healing, highly resilient cloud management platform that enables the cloud service to recover automatically if a server fails, and eApps runs its OnApp cloud in leading-edge QTS (News - Alert) data centers. Combined with the flexibility and resilience of the OnApp cloud management software, this gives eApps clients an efficient and effective platform for their cloud applications.