National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Partners with Fujitsu for Private Cloud

For large companies, cloud computing provides important redundancy and solution scalability. But when a custom environment becomes necessary, it may be time to transfer from a public cloud solution to either a dedicated hosting environment or a private cloud.

A Public Cloud is a hosted cloud computing environment that does not rely on hardware or datacenter infrastructure owned by the company. The company typically pays a monthly fee to a third party provider based on resource usage. This is the most familiar type of cloud computing. Public cloud offerings are available from companies such as Rackspace, Amazon EC2 and Google (News - Alert) Apps.

A private cloud is internalized within a company. The underlying technology that allows IT systems to obtain and use resources on demand is still in place, but the company is typically the only user of the resources, and it is hosted in the company's own datacenter. Before launching data into the cloud, companies – especially governmental agencies – would be wise to research potential vendors on such key issues as reliability, control and support.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) recently implemented a multi-node regional fiber optic network in partnership with Fujitsu (News - Alert). It allows researchers to access and share critical data residing in remote datacenters using the Fujitsu FLASHWAVE 7420 Metro/Enterprise WDM Platform, NETSMART 1500 Management System and professional services.

This infrastructure will ensure the agency benefits from tunable bandwidths reaching 40Gb per second performance; sub-microsecond latency; multi-protocol, multi-application support; remote monitoring and management; and valuable training.

“Many organizations today are not looking for a vendor, they’re looking for a partner,” said Paul Fagan, senior vice president of sales at Fujitsu Network Communications (News - Alert). “Our work with NIAID is a prime example. We are working side-by-side to architect the network, implement the technology – both hardware and software – and train staff. Our commitment is to ensure NIAID’s fiber optic infrastructure fully supports the critical work being done there.”

It’s important to research the provider that will host a company’s infrastructure and to understand their current and long term strategy for their cloud offerings. In the case of NIAID, it appears they have done their homework in regard to choosing Fujitsu.