In today’s increasingly virtual world, there is a heightened need for high-performance, secure, stable infrastructure to support digital acceleration across industries. Businesses of all sizes are looking to scale their digital operations quickly and deploy and maintain data securely, often across multiple global locations. End users are expecting services to be delivered in a real-time, seamless way. Even a short disruption in service caused by an outage or performance or security issue can result in significant revenue impact and loss of customer satisfaction.
This is where Maxihost steps in. Our powerful, reliable Bare Metal Cloud platform allows customers to focus on core business growth and innovation and spend less time provisioning, managing and scaling infrastructure. The control and flexibility provided by the platform ensures companies can be agile in the face of evolving market conditions and opportunities.
Can you share a brief overview of the company and its goals?
Maxihost is a Brazil-based global bare metal cloud provider with roots in web hosting. It all started with the purchase of a single server from the United States in 2001. By 2005 we had purchased our own physical servers in Brazil and made the decision to shift our focus from web hosting to bare metal. Since those early years, the company has been on a steady growth trajectory. By 2013, we decided to invest in building our own data center in São Paulo as a way to provide enhanced service quality. Since 2014, Maxihost has focused on developing its exceptional technology stack. Our full-fledged automated cloud platform launched in 2017. Since 2019, we have been focusing on expanding our global reach.
We are a customer-centric company and as such, are fiercely committed to a few interrelated goals: To provide high-performance compute that is secure, scalable and reliable, to make it easy for customers to deploy, maintain and scale their infrastructure so that they can focus on their core business and remain agile, and to provide an optimal end user experience.
Which industries does Maxihost currently serve and who are your current customers?
Maxihost is known for supporting the gaming industry but we also serve a range of other clients who benefit from the power of bare metal cloud. That includes companies involved in telecommunications, media/streaming, content delivery networks (CDNs), and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) companies.
Are you targeting any new industries moving forward?
There is a lot of exciting software development happening right now and we want to help support that type of innovation. We have therefore invested in high-end processors to support new types of applications and use cases that require high-performance such as AI, IoT, smart city, fintech, telemedicine, and other Edge and SaaS applications. So, financial services, healthcare, and government are all in our target mix as these industries typically also require the type of security that Bare Metal provides.
What exactly is a Bare Metal Server and what advantages does it provide over cloud computing?
A bare metal server is a physical computer server that is used by a single tenant and offers high levels of performance and security without the challenges and costs of hardware ownership. Maxihost’s powerful, rock-solid hardware with advanced processors provides the raw processing power and security needed for processor- and disk I/O intensive workloads.
Because resources are dedicated and not shared (no virtualization is used), bare metal offers full control of the hardware environment and greater performance and security than cloud options provide. Bare Metal is also highly customizable so it can support custom deployments built to specifications required by a particular application or workload.
Bare Metal Cloud is a relatively new term and capability. What exactly does it refer to?
Bare Metal Cloud is an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) offering that incorporates bare metal servers with cloud-like management functionality that enables easy, rapid provisioning, management, scaling and optimization.
As such, Bare Metal Cloud offers the best of two worlds. Customers enjoy the control, performance and security of enterprise-scale dedicated hardware along with the financial and operational flexibility of cloud. Bare Metal Cloud is sold as an Operational Expense (OpEx) basis, allowing for easy scaling.
Could you share a view of the functionality and advantages of the Maxihost Bare Metal Cloud platform? Given the As-a-Service aspect of the platform, how much control can a user have? What variables can they control using the platform?
Maxihost’s Bare Metal Cloud platform takes the complexities and delays out of deployment and maintenance of bare metal servers so that fast-moving companies can easily manage their infrastructure in an agile and integrated way.
- The platform supports global Go-to-Market activities by enabling companies to quickly deploy one or hundreds of servers across different geographic locations. Customers can easily scale their infrastructure up or down to meet evolving business demands and do so without making commitments.
- The platform is easy to use. Adjustments to configurations can be made in seconds using our highly intuitive cloud management dashboard. An easy-to-use control panel allows IT teams to view and make changes in real time.
- From a financial perspective, activities can be billed by the minute so that customers know exactly where they stand.
- The flexible API allows customers to seamlessly adapt Maxihost solutions to their environment. The API provides programmatic access to all resources available on the platform. With full control over the entire Maxihost platform, customers can easily build integrations and custom dashboards. Our API v2 conforms to the JSON:API specification. As JSON:API is a shared convention, customers can take advantage of generalized tooling, and focus on what matters: their application. v2 also includes built-in sorting and filtering capabilities to help teams make sense of their infrastructure.
- The platform offers many other features including automatic alerts for internal maintenance schedules, which offers customers peace of mind.
Historically, bare metal deployment can take up to twenty-four hours. How quickly can a customer deploy a Maxihost bare metal server?
The beauty of our fully automated bare metal platform is that it allows a customer to deploy a server practically instantaneously. A new customer can obtain credentials and have a server up and running in under 10 minutes. Without the cloud platform, companies often face frustratingly long deployment times of 24 hours or even longer.
Infrastructure is critical but only a piece of the puzzle. Why are low-latency networks critical to your customers? What interconnection capabilities does Maxihost offer in its various facilities?
Low latency is essential for optimizing user experience in real-time which is why Maxihost has focused not only on its bare metal compute offering but also on offering powerful interconnection capabilities. To meet customers’ low-latency requirements, Maxihost connects exclusively to Tier 1 providers and we do so directly, by designing and managing our network in every region in which we have a presence, and using our own ASN to connect to these providers, rather than relying on third parties.
Furthermore, in order to support Cloud and Edge deployments and provide maximum connectivity options for customers, each of our global locations is situated within or close to highly connected interconnection hubs that offer access to key domestic and international Internet Exchanges, Tier 1 carriers, and SDNs, to allow for quick and seamless distribution of digital services in a given region and beyond.
We are living in a volatile time in which companies routinely face security threats. What does Maxihost offer customers in the way of protection against DDoS attacks?
Maxihost has over a decade of experience supporting industries that are constantly under attack, such as the gaming industry. We therefore have developed highly effective DDoS Mitigation solutions to protect businesses from disruption.
This includes true mitigation vs. simply re-routing, which is the solution often offered by providers who do not have enough capacity. With 2 Tbps of capacity, Maxihost’s scrubbing centers in Brazil and the U.S. are equipped to handle any distributed attack, no matter what shape or form it takes. Because we take security so seriously, all Maxihost servers offer mitigation of DDoS attacks at no extra cost, so you’ll always be protected. Customers can choose to upgrade to more robust plans at any time.
What types of managed services does Maxihost provide for its customers?
We help customers with custom deployments in all our locations—covering everything from hardware procurement to network connectivity. We partner with our customers, taking the time to fully understand their pain points and goals. This could involve, for example, supporting a company’s need to deliver thousands of custom servers quickly in multiple geographies while attaining significant cost reductions, or many other requirements of comparable complexity.
Maxihost has a significant geographic footprint. Where is Maxihost currently operating, and what global expansion plans does the company have?
Maxihost currently operates in Latin America (São Paulo-Brazil, Santiago-Chile, Mexico City), North America (New York, Miami, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles), Australia (Sydney) and Japan (Tokyo). The company has plans to expand to Europe in 2022.
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