Rapid Space is a new generation, high performance, low-cost cloud company.
Rapid Space delivers reliable cloud service at 4 to 20 times lower price than cloud companies in the USA or China, and 33% to 66% than cloud companies in Europe. Rapid.Space cloud services also provide higher security and flexibility than existing low cost cloud companies in Europe.
Its infrastructure is based on so-called open source hardware which is the result of international cooperation between companies in China, Europe, Japan and USA. This means that the hardware design of Rapid Space follows the current best practices and can be produced in any country without costly licence fee and without the risk of trade sanctions.
The cloud management software of Rapid Space is entirely open source. It is developed by an international team of developers in Asia, America and Europe with more than 10 nationalities. It was originally designed by Nexedi, Europe's largest open source / Free Software publisher. It was taught for the first time in 2011 at Hangzhou Dianzi University (China) and has been taught since then every year at Telecom ParisTech university (France).
The combination of open source hardware and open source software provides lower price, higher trust, more flexibility and better security by design in an international context.
Open Source Hardware
In Europe, servers are produced by ITRenew based on circular economy, a business model and technology that can save up to 87% CO2 emissions but which does not exist yet in some countries (China, Brazil, Turkey, etc.). Servers used in Shanxi (China) data centre are based on original design from Facebook (USA) which was then been improved by MITAC (Taiwan) and produced in Shunde (Guangdong). The same type of server is used by Yahoo! Japan.
Networking equipment used by Rapid Space is designed by Edge-core, part Accton group in Taiwan and produced in Shenzen (China). The same type of equipment if used by Tencent, JD, Microsoft or Tesla all over the world. For Europe, we are considering networking equipment made in the European Union by Stordis.
Open Source / Free Software
Rapid Space cloud operation management is based on SlapOS software. In 2009, SlapOS was the first general purpose edge computing software. Edge computing is a key technology for 5G and Industry 4.0 which SlapOS has already been supporting for many years through deployments in the automotive industry and telecommunication's virtual radio access networks (VRAN).
Rapid Space networking is based on re6st and babel, two technologies that can circumvent network congestion and reduce latency on a distributed infrastructure. Congestion and latency are two major challenges in countries such as China with dense population or in global cloud infrastructures.
Features
Key features of Rapid.Space are:
- Big data performance
- Database performance
- Open Source platform
Rapid.Space is a very good choice for any organization willing to deploy a big data platform (including AI) or run high performance database applications (including ERP). All servers provide at least 256 GB of RAM, 4 TB of SSD storage, 20 CPU core, 10 Gbps local area network (LAN) and 1 Gbps shared Internet access.
Rapid Space cloud platform is entirely open source. A company willing to create their own type of cloud service can thus rely on Rapid Space infrastructure (servers, networking, operation management, billing) and extend it with their own technology without any limitation or risk. This can reduce the time to market of new cloud services without any compromise on technical quality or commercial control.
Advantages
Rapid Space has 8 unique advantages that virtually no other cloud provider in the world can offer:
- Price
- Flexibility
- Security
- Resiliency
- Reversibility
- Auditability
- International
- Low latency
Rapid Space is 4 to 20 times cheaper than equivalent cloud services from cloud provides in China, Japan or USA. It is 30% to 66% cheaper than equivalent services from cloud providers in Europe (cloud in Europe is much cheaper than cloud in China, Japan or USA).
Rapid Space can adapt its service to complex requirement of government or large corporations, especially for networking and security.
Rapid Space's Zero Knowledge technology means that Rapid Space has no backdoors by design. Encryption is implemented under direct control of Rapid Space customers in accordance to local legislation. Rapid Space has no possible remote access to customer data.
Rapid Space is designed for resiliency with built-in daily disaster recovery test directly under the control of customers.
Rapid Space is designed for reversibility, a requirement for long term trust. Rapid Space customers can leave Rapid Space at any time without any hurdle. Rapid Space offers managed, on-premise infrastructure. Customers may also decide to replicate Rapid Space infrastructure by themselves since everything in Rapid Space is open source.
Auditability is another requirement for long term trust. All source code of Rapid Space is public and can be audited. All specification and source code of Rapid Space hardware is public and can be audited.
Rapid Space is International with a global presence and strict enforcement of local legislation without foreign interference. In France, it is French. In China, it is Chinese. In Germany, it is German. French Law does not apply in China. Chinese Law does not apply in Germany. German Law does not apply in France.
Rapid Space provides low latency accelerated networking for business applications. This means that applications hosted in China can be accessed from Europe, Japan or USA with nearly the same performance as from China. Applications hosted in Europe and registered in China (ICP license) can be accessed from China with nearly the same performance as from Europe.
Why is it cheaper?
Rapid Space price is cheaper for multiple reasons:
- Rapid Space gets the best price of hardware by purchasing directly from ODM vendors or cicular economy the same type of open source hardware as Facebook, Microsoft, Tencent, Yahoo! Japan, etc.
- Rapid Space gets very good prices on data centre and Internet through partnerships in China (Shanxi), Europe (Sweden), etc. in regions with less population
- Rapid Space can rely on an open source cloud operation management platform with 10 years of experience and very wide feature coverage
- Rapid Space architecture is based on minimalism ("less is more") to save costs, just like some large Web companies do
In addition, Rapid Space acts as an active market player. A recent book by Stern School economist Thomas Philippon published at Harvard University Press introduces "The Great Reversal : How America Gave up on Free Markets".
Many industries in the United-Staves are no longer acting in a competitive market. Instead, capital consolidation and the formation of oligopolies has lead to price increase that can now be 3 times higher than their counterpart in Europe. This explains why the price of cloud computing in the United States is much more expensive than in Europe. Because China and Japan have followed until now the same approach for cloud computing as the United States, price are also equally high China and Japan.
Through its European experience, Rapid Space intends to bring in China, Japan and USA the lowest European price based on the best open source technologies.
Customers
Rapid Space customers are companies that care primarily about trust, reliability, performance and price and do not care so much about brand. For now, those companies are mainly in Europe.
However, with the growing importance of artificial intelligence (AI) and its high operating costs, companies in China and in the USA are looking for lower cost alternatives to traditional cloud providers in order to protect their investment and profits in AI.
In Japan, after the recent failure of some Amazon data centres, companies are looking for more reliable alternatives.
Preventing cloud migration failures
According to a recent study by Fortinet, 74% of cloud migrations tend to fail due to performance or security reasons. In addition to this, many customers are losing confidence in cloud computing because some US-based cloud platforms were used to collect sensitive data from European companies and handover a copy to the Department of Justice (DOJ) and thus to their competitor. Recent international legislation on cybersecurity may also be a threat to trade secret if legacy technologies are used by cloud platforms. Last but not least, some customers find out that traditional cloud providers can be more expensive and less reliable than on-premise.
The goal of Rapid Space is to provide a different platform cloud in a way that:
- prevents cloud migration failures by addressing performance and security by design;
- prevents leaking trade secrets thanks to Zero Knowledge technology;
- gives customers the freedom to benefit from the best of both worlds (hosted or on-premise);
- brings tremendous cost savings through open source hardware and open source software.
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