DoubleHorn® entered the public cloud broker business with a mission is to advise customers on the best ways to utilize cloud resources, ensuring that each customer’s individual needs are met as they embark on their cloud journey. In order to do that, they began gathering data on the cloud industry, enabling the DoubleHorn Professional Services team to make informed, data-driven recommendations. That was the birth of Liftr® Cloud InsightsSM. Eventually, this grew to encompass the near-daily deluge of new features and technologies surrounding cloud in the form of our new branding, weekly news video, Liftr Cloud Look AheadTM, formerly the Liftr Cloud Round-Up.
In addition to our recent coat of paint and new look, we continue to provide meticulously collected data and data-driven insights to our customers. With the launch of this new service, we now offer more packages of this valuable data to customers who need to stay current with the latest developments in cloud at a glance. We also offer free and premium weekly emails, summarizing our findings from the previous week and packed with information about the following week.
As a service of DoubleHorn, Liftr Cloud Insights is run separately from the brokerage part of the business. DoubleHorn provides management oversight, directional planning, and funding for Liftr Cloud Insights. DoubleHorn does not promote any cloud provider over another with its offerings, and Liftr Cloud Insights treats all public cloud service providers (CSPs) the same, regardless of DoubleHorn’s partnership status with that provider. Liftr Cloud Insights does not use any of DoubleHorn’s customer data, and is therefore not influenced by the brokerage arm of the company.
One of the methods that Liftr Cloud Insights uses to analyze cloud provider services is the Liftr Cloud Distiller™. The Cloud Distiller is a matrix for comparing the offerings of cloud service providers in a one-to-one, feature by feature basis. By analyzing the data around individual features across multiple providers, Liftr Cloud Insights is able to draw unique conclusions about the cloud industry and about individual provider status.
Another tool created and utilized by the Liftr Cloud team is the Liftr Cloud Regions Map™, a visual indicator of the global presence of a cloud provider. In addition to displaying the geographic locations of regions and zone across tracked providers, the Cloud Regions Map also allows users to segment by instance type or other details, cross-referenced inside of the map. This adds a layer of functionality that both free and premium users will find valuable as they endeavor to plan their cloud strategy.
The Liftr Cloud Index™ has also undergone some changes as we have repackaged our offerings, however, daily provider values are still available as they always have been. The daily values for each provider as well as the overall industry values can give insight to viewers into the current state of cloud. Doublehorn also utilizes the data gathered for the Liftr Cloud Index to help inform DoubleHorn’s Professional Services.
Liftr Cloud Insights seeks to be as unbiased as possible when comparing and assessing cloud providers in our many attributes, utilizing automated systems whenever possible to help reduce human error or bias. Our insights are based on historical context and data. DoubleHorn provides the stability and backbone necessary to grow Liftr Cloud Insights, but Liftr Cloud Insights’ value is in its ability to observe and process data about cloud providers independent of DoubleHorn’s partnerships. For this reason, no cloud provider can pay to improve their overall Liftr score, alter attribute scores, or to alter the overall Liftr Cloud Index values.
Looking towards the future, Liftr Cloud Insights will be offering retrospectives on 2018’s Cloud Index scores coming early in the new year, as well as new monthly, quarterly, and annual summaries as they become available in 2019. We hope that you’ll join us as we embark on this new journey towards a more data-driven cloud insights platform.