ScaleMatrix is a multi-tenant datacenter (MTDC) provider that offers colocation, cloud services, professional services and managed services, including disaster recovery/business continuity (DR/BC). The company owns and operates a datacenter facility in San Diego and is a tenant in a Houston-based wholesale datacenter facility. ScaleMatrix was one of the three vendors Dell chose as outsource partners for its North American cloud services business.
The company is SSAE 16 SOC 1 Type 2 and AT101 SOC2 audited and can support customers with security compliance requirements related to Payment Card Industry - Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS), Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). In addition, ScaleMatrix is supporting customers governed by FDA Title 21-11. ScaleMatrix follows the National Institute of Standards and Technology guidelines for its security framework and information handling/data privacy policies, and its operating procedures are based on the COBIT 4.1 framework.
Context
San Diego-based ScaleMatrix was founded in 2010 and offers datacenter services including colocation, private and public cloud, high-performance storage services, managed and professional services, and DR/BC serving customers in biomedical, pharmaceutical, e-commerce companies, banking and financial industries, among others. The company opened is first company-owned datacenter in August 2011 in San Diego and in March 2012 it expanded the campus, adding an additional 46,000 gross square foot building.
ScaleMatrix is a tenant in a multi-pod datacenter in Katy, Texas, operated by StratITsphere. This second datacenter location is used to support customers that need to house equipment in the Central US and to enable geographic diversity for DR needs. ScaleMatrix also has partnerships with CoreSite, Interxion, Level 3 Communications and Global Switch to support customer data backup needs in other global locations. The company operates a private and diverse 10Gig ring between its San Diego and Houston facilities, and provides storage, traffic management, cloud, and colocation services from both locations.
The Texas datacenter
ScaleMatrix is expanding into a fully secure, branded data hall at the StratITsphere facility, which will have private security, private entrance, dedicated network (IP transit and routing), cloud, storage and support services. The company reported that the facility has additional data halls available that provide an additional 20,000 square feet of expansion space if needed.
ScaleMatrix will be deploying its patented Dynamic Density Control cabinet technology in the new data hall. The cabinet is a 45-rack unit, 19-inch enclosure with the following features:
- Closed loop, low-pressure chilled water cooling system.
- Support for IT loads up to 25kW in its V1 cabinet, and 45kW in its V2 High Density version.
- Biometric access control to cabinet.
- FM200 fire suppression system.
- Environmental monitoring and control system.
Cloud and managed services
ScaleMatrix entered the cloud services with a private cloud offering on dedicated physical infrastructure and virtual hosting services. The initial cloud platform was based on CA Technologies' AppLogic and the company later added a VMware-based platform to meet the demand from enterprise customers. ScaleMatrix continues to support customers with AppLogic requirements, while the majority of all new customers are deployed on the VMware platform. The company leveraged internal technical personnel to deploy the AppLogic and VMware platforms.
The company's cloud offering includes public, hybrid, private and True-Core (dedicated CPU) configuration options. The public cloud is a multi-tenant public cloud with a VMware vCloud suite implementation. The private cloud platform consists of dedicated hardware up to and including the network switches. The hybrid cloud integrates physical colocation infrastructure with both public and private cloud infrastructure.
The TrueCore cloud implementation uses shared infrastructure with dedicated compute resources determined by the customer. The company also offers a secure cloud offering that is implemented on a private cloud configuration. The secure cloud can also be deployed on shared infrastructure configured to support security audit requirements including SOX, PCI-DSS and HIPAA.
The company reported that it has roughly 400 cloud customers that comprise 68% of its recurring revenue and expects the cloud business segment to continue to grow. The company has an on-boarding process for a new cloud customer that includes education and training on the VMware customer management portal from a VMware-certified technician.
ScaleMatrix has a 24/7 network operations staff dedicated to support customers. The team is comprised of staff certified on VMware and Microsoft products and with security and audit certifications including CISSP, CISA and CRISC.
ScaleMatrix's cloud infrastructure
The cloud platform uses VMware vCloud Director to manage the virtual server environment and its physical infrastructure includes the following:
- Dell servers for physical servers
- F5 Networks appliances for load balancing
- Cisco physical firewalls
- Arbor Networks DDoS appliance platform
- Juniper Networks with software-defined network API support for network switching
- Nexenta storage products, including SAN and solid state devices (SSD)
- Dell's NetVault product to support data backup and restore.
ScaleMatrix's infrastructure refresh strategy is to deploy new products into the prime production environments and to move the older infrastructure to lower tier environments that have less demanding performance requirements. The company strategy provides for a complete technology refresh of its production environment every three to four years, with the exception of network and storage infrastructure that may be upgraded on a different cycle to take advantage of new technology features.
Managed services
ScaleMatrix offers customers cloud-based DR as a service that has four recovery options to choose from. The recovery options are based upon pre-negotiated resource and include a recovery time objective (RTO) of 48 hours using a recovery point objective (RPO) of 24 hours using existing data backups, an RTO of 48 hours with an RPO of 24 hours using daily snapshots, an RTO of 12 hours with an RTO of 4 hours from 6 daily snapshots, and an RTO of 4 hours with an RTO of 1 to 2 hours from hourly snapshots.
The company also offers virtual desktop as a service through a partnership with Dell that leverages Dell's Cloud Client Manager desktop virtualization offering. Additionally, ScaleMatrix offers hosted Microsoft Exchange as a service and will be adding hosted Microsoft SharePoint as a service later this year.
The company opened a BC Center next to its campus in San Diego. The facility features high-speed, multi-homed Internet connectivity and direct interconnection to its colocation environment and cloud infrastructure. Customer amenities include a shared kitchen space with coffee service and vending machines.
Competition
During our research of the San Diego market in 2012, we identified 9 MTDC providers with a total of 14 active datacenters. Local competition for colocation services comes from regional providers American Internet Services (AIS) and redIT. ScaleMatrix also sees Rackspace and Amazon as competitors in this evolving landscape. The company aims to target clients on a national basis with a combination of traditional colocation services, cloud-based hosting and a growing managed service portfolio.
The 451 Take
ScaleMatrix is a relatively young regional MTDC colocation player; however, it is seeing rapid growth in its cloud services business. The Dell partnership and influx of cloud customers quickly doubled the company's current cloud business. ScaleMatrix was able to leverage internal talent to build out its cloud infrastructure quickly without having to hire and train a team to develop and deploy the platform. We expect that ScaleMatrix will continue to expand and grow its cloud business and we expect to see it expand its footprint nationally in the future.
