India Inc is now witnessing a wide selection in terms of cloud computing service providers,
with, an upgrade to its earlier cloud offering. This service comprises of various components such
as Cloud Serve for disposable server resources, CloudNet (complete IT infrastructure), private
clouds, and the Petavault cloud (for disaster recovery and critical online backups).
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Netmagic Cloud 2.0's pricing model is divided into two
plans. These consist of fixed and elastic plans, wherein the latter will actually enable hourly
billing. The base plan starts at Rs 4000. In requirements that involve substantial usage, Netmagic
claims Cloud 2.0 pricing for the fixed plan works up to 40 per cent cheaper than the elastic model.
The payment can be made online as well.
Charges for Netmagic Cloud 2.0's elastic plan start at Rs 10 per CPU and Rs 6 for per GB of RAM
respectively. In this plan, every aspect (other than storage) is a variable component measured on
an hourly usage basis. Bandwidth is charged at Rs 120 per GB. Organizations which are existing
users of Netmagic's initial cloud offering will have to bear an extra charge for upgrading to Cloud
2.0.
When it comes to operating system (OS) licensing, the organization can go for its own licensing or
licenses provided by Netmagic. Currently, Netmagic Cloud 2.0 pricing models offer OS licensing
options for Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008—enterprise as well as standard editions.
These selections can be made online from the portal while configuring the server. When it comes to
Linux, Netmagic Cloud 2.0 offers Ubuntu and Redhat flavors. However, the Linux options cannot be
enabled online only by June 2010. When it comes to security assurance for Cloud 2.0, Netmagic is an
ISO 27001 and SAS 70 Type 2 certified organization.
According to Netmagic, Cloud 2.0 has many upgraded features compared to its predecessor:
- Service level agreement (SLA) will be in virtual machine as against 1 grid.
- Persistent storage is default.
- Postpaid offline payment options for enterprises.
- No customization required on application. In the case of certain cloud service providers,
applications may have to be rewritten to reap maximum scalability benefits. That's not the case
with Netmagic Cloud 2.0.
- Vertical scaling of resources is possible (apart from horizontal scaling capabilities).