A peek under the Stage2Data hood with Kirill Izvekov, Vice-President of Network and Cloud Services

In a recent interview with Kirill Izvekov, Vice-President of Network and Cloud Services, he gave us a peek under the hood of Stage2Data Inc. 's data centers and #cloudsolutions. He offered some valuable insights into what differentiates Stage2Data Inc. from other cloud service providers and #disasterrecovery and #cloudbackup providers.?

Stage2Data Inc. is one of North America’s fastest growing and most trusted cloud solutions providers (CSPs), with data centers residing on Canadian and US soil. As a CSP and certified, carrier-grade Internet Solutions Provider (ISP), we deliver enterprise-quality #SaaS solutions to a customer base ranging from SMBs to enterprise.

Kirill Izvekov has played and continues to play a pivotal role at Stage2Data Inc. :

Building cross-continent and enterprise-grade systems, networks, and cloud-based infrastructure

Kirill originally comes from a network engineering background. During his studies and after obtaining two degrees, one in Internet Communications Technology and one in Telecommunications Engineering, he started working for a globalized ISP. The ISP provided global internet service with a specific focus on North America, Europe and the Middle East. In this role, he progressed up to director level, single-handedly building cross-continent and enterprise-grade systems, networks, and cloud-based infrastructure designed to support ever-growing client needs.

Joining Stage2Data as Vice-President, Vice-President of Network and Cloud Services

Kirill joined Stage2Data Inc. in 2019? as Vice-President of Network and Cloud Services. At the time, Stage2Data Inc. was looking for someone with expert network and #VMware knowledge. Kirill was the obvious choice. Initially, after joining Stage2Data Inc. , the bulk of Kirill’s efforts were geared toward migrating from Stage2Data Inc. ’s old legacy infrastructure and establishing an up-and-running, state-of-the-art computing and #cloudinfrastructure while training and managing the infrastructure team responsible for it. He furthermore expanded network point of presence locations across Canada and partnered with network engineering and network operations to rapidly resolve customer issues. In this role, he also spearheads technical operations with full accountability for strategic initiatives while consistently ensuring high availability networks across multiple global locations. Kirill also played a pivotal role in Stage2Data Inc. registering as an ISP.

During our interview with Kirill, we asked him 5 questions

1. Why change from being a CSP to also becoming an independent ISP??

“The idea has always been to become an independent ISP. Traditionally, your IP addresses belong to a single carrier, which means you are tied down to one carrier, one data center, one of everything, and you are non-redundant and limited to non-enterprise gear. Ultimately you are left without any real ability of any kind while also being charged exorbitant prices. Registering as an ISP set that right. We also added multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) layer 2 connectivity enabling both enterprises and service providers to construct intelligent, next-generation networks that can deliver advanced and value-added services using a single #infrastructure.”?

2. What differentiates Stage2Data from other CSPs?

“Definitely the fact that we are both a CSP and an ISP, offer high-performance S3-compatible object storage, and of course, our unique Network Recovery-as-a-Service (NRaaS?) solution. We have a superb team of network engineers who look after our clients’ environment and are on standby to give support. We don’t offer any cookie-cutter solutions – we cater to our clients’ needs and budgets. This combined with the fact that we don’t charge ingress or #egressfees make it an absolutely winning combination.”?

3. What would you say are the key benefits of being a cloud backup, disaster recovery and private CSP and a fully-fledged ISP?

“I would highlight 3 very specific benefits:

Stage2Data’s flagship NRaaS? solution has taken DR as we know it to the next level. It is an entirely unique offering to the market, which can be implemented for the entire network infrastructure. #NRaaS? functions as an organization’s business continuity plan by ensuring the restoration of network services following a disruptive event or disaster to minimize downtime.

Furthermore, as an ISP and by using MPLS, Stage2Data Inc. ensures its clients’ IP addresses remain constant in the event of a complete network failure. The local network will fail over on the Stage2Data Inc. backend, and the network will be recovered using exactly the same public-facing IP address as before. I should, however, point out that even though public IP #failover is an ideal scenario, we also support solutions that don't require us to be the customer’s ISP. We can still failover the complete compute and network infrastructure and make sure there is continuity and reachability via the Internet or otherwise to the customer's live DR infrastructure.?

It's this continuity of network and compute that we offer that no one seems to understand or offer.

Stage2Data Inc. , in partnership with MinIO , furthermore offers a cost-effective #S3storage solution, available on the public cloud and private cloud, in its own secure data centers located across Canada and the USA.“??

4. If you are not at the data center or dreaming about your next hardware tech shipment to arrive, what do you geek out on?

Unsurprisingly, I don’t only geek out on tech at work but also in my free time. I find drone technology fascinating and enjoy drone photography and videography and creating short video reels of my experiences. Drone photography is a particular favorite of mine as it allows me to capture scenes and activities that were previously difficult and expensive to photograph or record with conventional equipment.?

5. Describe your ideal future for Stage2Data

In an ideal world where there are no tech or budgetary constraints, I would like to see Stage2Data Inc. build more #datacenters and secure more global coverage. I believe that achieving high availability geo-redundancy will see the spread of mission-critical infrastructures, such as servers, across multiple data centers that reside in different geographic locations. Finally, I would invest in hyperscale service tier to facilitate highly scalable storage and compute performance.