Engineering in the Open - How We Built American Cloud

At American Cloud, we support sustainable innovations that allow everyone from an MNC to the small business next door to harness the power of cloud technology equally. Our mission towards building a better and more transparent cloud services platform began with a bleak yet significant realization — the internet is no longer what it used to be!

When it was first introduced in 2006, cloud computing was a revolutionary technology for businesses worldwide. The adoption of cloud-based technology has grown exponentially since. What was once a luxury is now the norm, with 84% of all mid-to-large-sized global businesses having multi-cloud strategies in place.

Curiously, however, the number of major cloud service providers in the game has more or less remained stagnant. As American Cloud CEO and co-founder Aron Wagner puts it, "Cloud computing has seen a tragic shift from being a utility-based solution to a mass-produced product that doesn't quite help anyone." For Wagner and co-founder Dane Nakamura, this represents a rot in the global cloud services industry.

The American Cloud Renaissance

Wagner and Nakamura's idea was simple yet pioneering. Together, the duo set out to build a full-fledged cloud services platform that was not just independent of Big Tech servers, but also significantly more flexible and affordable.

"We needed to build a cloud provider that was going to be industry agnostic and truly a utility for people to harness the power of the cloud," says Nakamura.

Today, American Cloud soldiers on as one of the very few independent cloud service providers that are truly committed to serving each client holistically. Their most radical disruption of the traditional cloud infrastructure is the use of open-source technology to build the underlying framework of the platform.

"All we're selling is the convenience of having it configured and managed by a team of experienced industry professionals," Wagner explains.

"All the underlying technologies we use are reliable, open-source frameworks that our team has been working with for a long time. We've built them resiliently, and there's no reason that a customer or somebody else couldn't build something very similar. It just comes down to the fact that clients want the ease of use and do not need to worry about managing all of the backend infrastructure aspects of a cloud."

Building the American Cloud Way

When it came to designing our infrastructure for core services, there were several IaaS open source projects available. "We had a lot of options to choose from. There was the vastly popular OpenStack Project, the newer contender OpenNebula, and some others like Vanillastack."

Instead, we chose Apache Cloudstack — an extremely reliable project that is highly available, offers multi-tenancy, and is scalable and purely API-driven. It's perfect as far as accessibility and ease of use is concerned.

Apache Cloudstack is one of the four key open-source projects that underpin the orchestration of our customer's infrastructure at American Cloud:

• Zabbix — to enable our auto scale feature on load balancers and show monitoring graphics for Virtual Machines
• PDNS — for reliable authoritative DNS
• Ceph — for a resilient distributed storage
• Apache Cloudstack — for a robust cloud infrastructure

What Sets American Cloud Apart

Flexibility

At American Cloud, we craft 100% customizable and flexible solutions that can be configured according to your business and its cloud goals. Most solutions from large providers are mass-produced for worldwide markets, making it difficult for businesses to find services tailored to their specific needs.

Adaptability

American Cloud is structured in a way that makes innovative decision-making and development easier. Our teams don't have to wait for approval from a long chain of executives. We can respond to market changes quickly without navigating the bureaucracy of a large corporation.

Affordability

"One of the biggest benefits I see us providing right out of the gate is that we're not charging network egress fees. It's a fixed cost for us and a fixed cost for our customers. That means customers don't have to worry about some crazy usage hike on their bill at the end of the month," Wagner clarifies.

Portability

We take special efforts to ensure that the technology and data provided to clients remains portable. This is to encourage businesses to take full ownership of their environments and their data.

Our Company Philosophy

American Cloud's business philosophy is centered around a commitment to upholding the core values of the internet: transparency, accessibility, and democratization. We believe the internet was built on these American values, so we work hard to ensure they continue to be the driving force behind the online world.

By offering better pricing than Big Tech companies, American Cloud is helping to make cloud computing more accessible and affordable for everyone. Whether you're a small business owner or manage a large corporation, American Cloud is committed to providing high-quality cloud computing services that are reliable, secure, and affordable.