CohesiveFT Announces Security for Cloud-Computing Environments

VPN-Cubed(TM) Is the First Commercial Offering That Enables Customer-Controlled Security in and Across Clouds


CHICAGO, IL--(Marketwire - October 28, 2008) - CohesiveFT, the leader in automated software assembly, today introduced VPN-Cubed™ (www.cohesiveft.com/vpncubed), an encrypted virtual private network (VPN) enabling customer-controlled security inside a single cloud, across multiple clouds, and between clouds and private infrastructure. By creating a secure bridge between the customer's data center, as well as between multiple cloud-computing providers, CohesiveFT helps customers establish their own security perimeter for cloud-based assets, thereby solving a critical obstacle to cloud-computing adoption. With VPN-Cubed, companies can confidently leverage the cloud for redundancy, failover and scalability during critical transitions; whether scaling up to grow the business or scaling down to cut costs.

"In the same way an Enterprise maintains control of sensitive data in a physical data center, VPN-Cubed offers security and control in the cloud," said Patrick Kerpan, chief technology officer at CohesiveFT. "VPN-Cubed acts as an encrypted LAN in a single cloud and as an encrypted WAN across multiple clouds, allowing cloud-based clusters to appear to be part of one physical network. Enterprises can grow their services horizontally and achieve better risk reduction and fault tolerance at the same time."

VPN-Cubed is based on trusted, open standards and technologies including the open source software project OpenVPN. Unlike the VPN approaches commonly used to connect remote employees and offices, CohesiveFT's VPN-Cubed product runs inside cloud-computing facilities with failover capability that keeps cloud clusters running reliably even in the event of a VPN server failure. The company has offered a precursor to the VPN-Cubed product in production for more than a year via the Open Source VcubeV® project.

"CohesiveFT has not only paved the way for OOI to leverage dynamic assembly and on-the-fly virtual server creation, but they have anticipated the security needs of the Enterprise and delivered a simple and elegant solution," said Matthew Arrott, Ocean Observatories Institute (OOI) Cyberinfrastructure Program Manager at the University of California San Diego. "By giving customers this additional layer of control, VPN-Cubed removes one of the final barriers preventing companies from realizing the cost and efficiency benefits of cloud-computing."

Cloud computing is highly scalable access to computing, storage and network resources delivered via the Internet as a pay-per-use service. According to IDC, a global provider of market intelligence, cloud computing is poised to capture 25% of IT growth spend by 2012. Yet, in a recent IDC survey, 74% of IT executives/CIOs cited security as the top challenge preventing their adoption of the cloud services model. Today, clouds are secured by their providers; CohesiveFT's VPN-Cubed gives customers the confidence to utilize cloud computing by offering a layer of security that the customer controls.

VPN-Cubed features and specifications:

--  Customer-controlled security using an encrypted LAN in a single cloud
    and an encrypted WAN across multiple clouds
--  Enhanced security via VPN-Cubed, in addition to customer's cloud
    vendor VLAN, and individual virtual server firewalls
--  Multicast support in the cloud enables seamless software compatibility
    without costly changes
--  Customer-controlled network addresses for their devices in a cloud or
    across multiple clouds
--  Enables failover strategies from one cloud vendor to another
--  Customer-controlled encryption of the communication between devices in
    the cloud VPN
--  Available for use with most operating systems, virtual environments
    and third-party cloud offerings including Amazon EC2 and Flexiscale
--  Patent-pending solution
    

CohesiveFT's new VPN-Cubed product is a complement to the company's award-winning Elastic Server® platform (www.elasticserver.com) for real-time, automated assembly of virtual servers and custom application stacks. Users choose from a component library consisting of open source, third-party, and proprietary customer code, and assemble cloud- or virtual environment-destined servers in minutes. The automated assembly process dramatically improves the quality and consistency of application stack builds at the same time that it reduces the time to market.

VPN-Cubed is a packaged service offering available now. To learn more, visit www.cohesiveft.com/vpncubed or contact a CohesiveFT account representative at sales(at)cohesiveft.com.

About CohesiveFT

CohesiveFT enables customers to dynamically define and deploy servers for virtual environments and clouds. The company's flagship platform, Elastic Server®, is a web-based "factory" for creating, deploying and managing custom, multi-sourced assemblies comprised of horizontal, open source and third-party software components. Elastic Servers can be saved as templates, updated, augmented, or redeployed in minutes. In addition to the self-service platform, the company offers packaged solutions for custom cloud implementations. CohesiveFT was founded in 2006 by principals with deep backgrounds in Enterprise IT, Commercial ISVs and multiple successful startups. CohesiveFT was listed among InformationWeek's "top cloud computing startups you should know." The company has offices in London, Chicago and Palo Alto. For more information, visit www.cohesiveft.com.

Elastic Server is a registered trademark of CohesiveFT. Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a trademark of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates in the United States and/or other countries. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies.

Source: IDC, "IT Cloud Services User Survey, pt. 2: Top Benefits & Challenges," Oct. 2008 and IDC, "IT Cloud Services Spending: 2008-2012," 2008.

Contact Information: Contact: Traci Hailpern marketing(at)cohesiveft.com 312.924.1051