GigaSpaces XAP, a cloud-enabled application server for demanding applications, is fully integrated with GoGrid, a leading cloud hosting service which offers a hardened, secured, customizable environment for the enterprise. Together, GoGrid and XAP provide the most robust Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) for Java and .NET, allowing enterprise customers to deliver all their mission critical applications, in production, on the public cloud.

View recorded webinar: Enterprise-Grade Cloud Platform with XAP and GoGrid

More in this page: Solution Overview | Enterprise Cloud Feature List | Usage Scenarios 

Solution Overview

GigaSpaces offers a Platform as a Service (PaaS) solution which allows enterprises to deploy and massively scale existing applications on the cloud, and easily build new enterprise applications on the cloud. GigaSpaces PaaS is designed to support everything from mission-critical applications demanding extreme performance, to large-scale web applications based on popular frameworks like Java EE, .NET, Spring Framework and Jetty. The PaaS solution is composed of two elements:

• GigaSpaces XAP, a high-end application server used by customers such as Dow Jones, Virgin Mobile and Sempra Energy. XAP provides a complete environment for deploying and running enterprise applications, including multi-tenancy, enterprise-grade middleware and auto scaling – either on or off the cloud. XAP’s architecture enables organizations to flexibly move between their data centers and the cloud, or use both simultaneously, offering a clear migration path from a hosted or on-premise environment to the public cloud.

• GoGrid, a leading cloud hosting service, provides the underlying hardware infrastructure. ServePath, the providers of GoGrid, offers dedicated hosting for the enterprise market. GoGrid leverages ServePath’s 10+ years of experience in enterprise-level data center hosting, applying its understanding of uptime, security, and service level agreements to the public cloud offering.

GigaSpaces XAP is fully integrated with GoGrid, and together they offer the only Platform as a Service (PaaS) on the market designed from the ground up for enterprise applications with demanding performance and resiliency requirements

Enterprise Cloud Feature List

The combined GoGrid-XAP solution is the only Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering that provides everything enterprise customers need to deploy their production applications on the cloud.

• Enterprise-Grade, Production-Ready

• The solution brings the benefits of the cloud to the most demanding, mission-critical enterprise applications:

• Comprehensive enterprise cloud platform: multi-tenancy, auto scaling, data grid, messaging and grid processing services with enterprise-grade security
• 100% money-back uptime guarantee
• Define SLA on GoGrid hardware, use XAP’s application-level SLA to to automatically scale up at peak load times and scale back down when the load decreases
• Automatic failover and self-healing of failed services
• Ability to create, save, and deploy customer server images
• Fully tested and highly optimized GoGrid images for GigaSpaces XAP
• The same middleware platform used for Fortune 100 mission-critical systems
• Infinitely scalable, mountable cloud storage

• Reduced Ramp Up Time, Broad Range of Applications

The solution reduces the investment required to migrate and set up applications on the cloud, allowing you to use the cloud for standard web apps as well mission critical enterprise apps:

• Preconfigured GoGrid images for GigaSpaces XAP provide single-click setup of a full-blown application cluster
• Native support for standard Java EE- and Spring-based applications
• Support for scalable applications (extreme OLTP, analytics, other mission critical scenarios) based on Java and .NET
• High performance interoperability between Java, .NET and C++
• Standard, fully customizable Windows and Linux images

• Run the Same Applications on Less Cloud Resources

The solution saves you money on the cloud by running applications and middleware much more efficiently – typical customers save over 80% of cloud machine hours:

• Application-level SLA for automatically scaling up at peak load times and back down when the load decreases
• Memory-based data access and messaging for sub-millisecond performance
• Asynchronous persistence for faster response times
• Grid-based processing services (such as Map/Reduce) to fully utilize the available processing capacity

• Supports Hybrid Infrastructure

The solution reduces risk and increases flexibility, by allowing organizations to move applications between a hosted or on-premise environment and the public cloud:

• Full connectivity between the GoGrid cloud and ServePath’s dedicated hosting
• The same application can be deployed on or off the cloud with no code changes
•  “Cloud bursting” – scale on-premise apps onto the cloud in peak load times
• Ability to run some components of an application on the cloud (e.g. web tier) and run others on-premises (e.g. database).
• Full support for VMware by ServePath’s dedicated hosting facility and GigaSpaces XAP

Usage Scenarios

• Enterprise Users – Deploying Production Applications on the Cloud
• The GigaSpaces-GoGrid PaaS solution allows enterprises to deploy mission-critical applications on the cloud, in production, ensuring the highest levels of performance and resiliency and enterprise-grade security for sensitive data. GigaSpaces XAP is already used by Fortune 500 companies to deploy production applications. These customers report that the cloud offers much faster time-to-market, with no need to procure machines for the reference, test and development environment; near-zero upfront costs; and the ability to test the application on a large scale to validate its robustness very early on.
• Enterprise Users – Testing as a Service and Benchmark as a Service
• The GigaSpaces-GoGrid PaaS solution allowing enterprises to conduct testing, proof of concepts and benchmarks of complex enterprise software on the cloud – in many cases this can save over 1/3 of on-premise hardware, dedicated to testing and staging environments, not to mention the effort involved in provisioning and setting up these environments. GigaSpaces PaaS is ideal for organizations which are not yet ready to use the cloud for production systems, but would like to realize its potential for pre-production stages. GigaSpaces XAP makes it possible to conduct testing and benchmarks on the cloud, by creating an identical, portable environment which runs on the cloud and in your local testing site. You develop locally, and then deploy an identical system on the cloud, with the ability to scale up to hundreds of machines and simulate extreme load scenarios. You can use external services such as Jmeter and Tomcat servers, run custom scripts when a machine is launched, and manage and monitor your test deployment using the most comprehensive administration tools in the industry.

• Enterprise Users – Prototyping with No Upfront Investment
• The GigaSpaces-GoGrid PaaS solution helps enterprises get projects off the ground with no upfront investment, by enabling quick-and-dirty prototypes of enterprise software on the cloud. There’s no need to provision hardware or set up complex staging environments. As soon as a basic version is running on the local site, it can be deployed instantly on the cloud, allowing management, partners and customers to try it out and provide feedback. This provides unprecedented IT agility, extremely important in today’s volatile economy, while saving significant cost.

• ISVs and Service Providers – SaaS Enablement
• The GigaSpaces-GoGrid PaaS solution allows ISVs and service providers to deploy their existing systems on the cloud for instant SaaS enablement, and provides automatic scalability, guaranteed performance (including eXtreme Transaction Processing if needed), continuous high availability, and portability of applications, enabling vendors to deploy the same cloud-based application on customer premises.

• ISVs and Service Providers – Demo as a Service
• The GigaSpaces-GoGrid PaaS solution allows ISVs and service providers to deliver demo services on the cloud, with no upfront investment, no installation of the demonstrated products, continuous version upgrades, deployment of the entire demo environment on demand (to conserve cloud resources), and continuous availability even in case of Internet connection failure. Most importantly, the cloud allows vendors to demonstrate non-functional requirements such as performance and scalability, simulating a production environment with a large numbers of machines and extreme loads.

• Integrators and Solution Providers – Turn-Key Solutions on the Cloud
• The GigaSpaces-GoGrid PaaS solution allows integrators and solution providers to offer turn-key solutions on the cloud with unprecedented robustness, resilience, high availability and performance. Customers want cloud-based projects because they offer faster time to market, more flexibility and better scalability. Integrators benefit from dramatically reducing the total cost of projects, particularly the hardware and setup components, which can translate into improved profit margins or more competitive prices.