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Savvis, Inc. is a global leader in cloud infrastructure and hosted IT solutions for

enterprises that helps its clients reduce capital expenses, improve service levels and

harness the latest advances in cloud computing. A leader in Gartners MagicQuadrantTM for Infrastructure as a Service and Web Hosting, Savvis has a 15-year

history of providing scalable, reliable and secure infrastructure services in more than

45 countries worldwide.

Savvis latest managed service offering, Symphony Virtual Private Data Center

(VPDC), is aimed at enterprises that want the control and security benefits of a

private network, while enjoying the cost advantages of a multi-tenanted cloud

environment. Starting with VPDC, Savvis is automating their order processing and

fulfillment capabilities, allowing customers to utilize APIs in order to provision

compute instances, multiple tiers of storage, networking, redundant bandwidth, load

balancers, firewalls, and more. The APIs expose select middleware functions to

customers for programmatic use over the Internet or through private-line access.

The Technical ChallengeThe VPDC APIs allow customers to simplify how they integrate their internal IT processes with their outsourced

private cloud managed by Savvis. Using the APIs, enterprises can automate how they provision, manage and

operate compute services in VPDC just as if the private cloud was located within their own organization.

However, no two customers employ the VPDC APIs in exactly the same way. Each enterprise has different

capabilities, as well as different requirements, necessitating the ability to adapt to different customer needs

without rewriting the APIs. At the same time, Savvis needs to manage the API lifecycle across versions, and tailor

throughput to reflect the service level of each customer. Additionally, because the APIs are exposed to the outsideworld, there is a critical need to ensure that APIs remain available and uncompromised despite the threat of attack

by bad actors, or misuse by inexperienced customers. To provide for adaptation, security and management of their

VPDC APIs, Savvis knew they needed a solution that would govern how the APIs are exposed and consumed.

The Cloud Gateway Solution

Layer 7s CloudSpan CloudControl Gateway is deployed as an API proxy to abstract and intermediate the publicly

exposed VPDC REST-based API, transforming, providing federation for, and rerouting requests without impacting

the underlying API. Using the Gateway, Savvis can accommodate different API consumers with different credential

types.

As a SOA Governance solution, the Gateway also simplifies the API lifecycle, allowing Savvis to more easily versiontheir APIs while ensuring backward compatibility and continuity across revisions. As a policy enforcement point,

the Gateway lets Savvis define and apply control policies to specific APIs, including SLA policies around throttling,

metering and prioritization. And as a security solution, the Gateway provides Savvis a simple way to protect their

APIs against Denial of Service (DoS) attacks, application layer attacks, and unauthorized access.

Savvis by the Numbers

$933M revenue (2010)

2,200 employees

2500 unique customers worldwide

32 customers in the Fortune 100

45 countries with operations

32 data centers

22,000 fully managed private

circuits

>17,000 miles of fiber

SavvisEnabling Public/Private Hybrid Clouds with Cloud Gateways

8/2/2019 Savvis - Hybrid Clouds

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Savvis Case Study

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With Layer 7s CloudControl Gateway in place, when Savvis enterprise customers send requests to the VPDC API,

the message is intercepted by Layer 7 and authenticated against Savvis LDAP. If the request originated from a

valid customer, Layer 7 then queries Savvis entitlements database to determine which product APIs the customer

is entitled to invoke; what level of service they have purchased for each product; and then dynamically sets quotas

and throughput limits in the appropriate Layer 7 policies.

The message is then passed to the VPDC API where it is processed in conjunction with Savvis business process

engine and configuration database in order to instantiate the requested private cloud infrastructure, including

storage, network devices, managed security services, virtual machines, and more.

The Layer 7 Gateway allows Savvis to leverage policy in order to easily create virtual endpoints for differentpurposes. For example, the same backend API can be exposed as either a production endpoint for customer use, or

else as a trial endpoint that offers only limited usage.

The Results

With the vast majority of Savvis cloud customers looking to create hybrid deployments that straddle enterprise-

based and hosted deployments, Symphony VPDC is on track to become a key competitive differentiator for Savvis.

In this context, Layer 7 plays a critical role in providing Savvis with a streamlined, API-driven way to onboard

customers to the cloud, while delivering API protection and management without coding.

By centrally configuring security in the Layer 7 CloudSpan CloudControl Gateway rather than in API code, Savvis

has sped up deployment, eliminating the API security development/test/deploy cycle. Centralization also gives

Savvis a single point from which to push out API policies and policy updates to all of Savvis data centers, thereby

lowering administration costs. Layer 7 also addresses Savvis service provider operational requirements, including

helping to ensure that customer quality of service obligations conform to contractual limits.