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Back10 Years of cloudscale
Let's go back to 2014 when there were already clouds, but we were missing a user friendly option with a data location in Switzerland. This is why, after the idea had been floating around in various people's minds for a while, we founded cloudscale.ch AG in 2014. We embarked on our journey properly when we started work in our first office in Zurich Oerlikon at 09:09 h on 09/09 (there was no way we were going to leave such a memorable moment to chance!). A lot has happened since then and, as is fitting for a tenth anniversary, we would like to use this opportunity to review some of the highlights.
2015: The first weeks after the founding of the company were spent preparing the main tools for our work. Once this was complete, product development itself started. Based on OpenStack and Ceph (open source was important to us from the outset), we built a cloud setup where virtual servers could be created and deleted in a fully automated manner within seconds. We programmed the corresponding control panel ourselves to ensure that using it remained as simple and intuitive as we had imagined – our beta phase users were impressed.
2016: The big moment arrived in early January when we celebrated general availability, aka our grand opening. It was finally possible for anyone to create an account with cloudscale using self-service and start using our virtual servers immediately. It goes without saying that we did not stop there and with a growing team, we prepared the technical basis of our control panel for upcoming further development and added features such as IPv6, private networks and bulk storage to our cloud.
2017: Storage and tooling were two of the main topics of 2017. We progressively added S3-compatible object storage to our cloud offer in order to do justice to a growing need for scalable storage space with purely use-based costs. The switch to NVMe disks resulted in enhanced performance for our SSD volumes. And users of widespread DevOps tools, such as Ansible and Terraform, were now able to manage their infrastructure "as code" and thus automatically provision whole server landscapes in a reproducible manner.
2018: "Meltdown" and "Spectre" made the general public aware of the fact that security vulnerabilities can not only occur in software, but also in hardware. Further CPU vulnerabilities were to follow and at cloudscale, we paid particular attention to always taking the necessary countermeasures quickly. This is why, for example, SMT or Hyper-Threading has been deactivated on all our compute hosts since 2019 in order to pre-empt attacks based on these elements. It goes without saying that our move to a new, considerably more spacious office location was a true highlight of 2018.
2019: The highlights continued into 2019, with many of them coming under the heading of "information security". Among other things, we achieved ISO/IEC 27001, 27017 and 27018 certification, and with the opening of our second cloud location in Lupfig (Canton Aargau), we created the basis for geo-redundant setups. In addition, a good level of power was provided with the introduction of a new generation of compute hosts based on AMD and the launch of our "Plus" flavors, which ensure that dedicated computing power of up to 112 physical CPU cores is permanently available to a virtual server.
2020: Although we were already set up for mobile work, it took a while for the pandemic-enforced model of working from home 24/7 to establish itself. Today we are extremely grateful for the hybrid model we developed, and on Mondays we all meet in person in the office, but other than that everyone can decide for themselves. However, offshoring and nearshoring are not considerations for us. With cloudscale being a completely Swiss cloud provider, you can rely on the fact that the infrastructure is not only located in Switzerland, but that it is also administered from here. In line with this, we have been a partner of the "swiss hosting" label since it was launched in 2020.
2021: The comprehensive redesign of our cloud control panel was a long-awaited milestone for everyone who uses their cloud resources collaboratively. Organizations, projects, teams and various collaboration features support work in the cloud, irrespective of how it is "organized". Single sign-on with GitHub or one's own IDP make logging in simpler and more secure. The collaboration features have also made cloudscale into an ideal partner for larger organizations, too, as well as for everyone looking after projects for their own customers in the cloud.
2022: We can hardly be more central after our 2022 move into our current office right by the main railway station in Zurich – with a team that has grown to more than ten people. A lot happened in terms of our cloud offer, too, with e.g. the expansion of the collaboration features, more flexible management of custom images, and many new compute flavors, which means that you also always have the appropriate infrastructure for CPU- or RAM-heavy workloads. The new completely linear price model means that the price for a certain quantity of CPU and memory resources does not depend on whether it is a single large virtual server or several small virtual servers. In addition, an ISAE 3000 report has been available every year since 2022, if required.
2023: In line with our focus on availability, we provided our customers with a load balancer service as a further feature to enable the creation of resilient setups. While our services continue to be billed to the second, we have fundamentally simplified the underlying mechanism. We have also started accepting payments using the popular Swiss TWINT payment solution. And we prepared for SCION, the network architecture of the next generation that promises enhanced reliability, confidentiality and control of communication in critical areas such as the finance and healthcare sectors.
2024: With enhanced transmission capacity between our cloud locations, increased flexibility when using Kubernetes setups thanks to CCM, an improved overview of costs and private networks, we are continuously improving and expanding the cloud services for our customers in the current year, too. Our new, fresh appearance is particularly eye-catching. We not only completely redesigned and expanded our website, but also subtly adjusted the control panel and API documentation in line with the new design. The clear lines reflect our unambiguous claim: at cloudscale, you are in best hands.
Which further highlights will we encounter on our journey? Let's find out – together with a strong team and, of course, our customers who will be able to continue to count on us as a close and approachable partner in future, too. Speaking of our team: if you think you are a good match for us, please let us know!
On the journey with you,
Your cloudscale team