In this article you will read about

• the use cases for which the Open Telekom Cloud at its Amsterdam location is particularly worthwhile,
• how a neutral benchmark determined the price/performance ratio of the hyperscalers in the region,
• and why cloud services from the Open Telekom Cloud are the best in class.

To improve the customer experience in the online store or to evaluate large volumes of data in research: While undergoing digitalization, companies are seeing an increasing need for secure, reliable, and scalable computing and storage resources from the cloud. The Open Telekom Cloud in Amsterdam offers customers the IT resources they need for their use cases. For example, to provide their branches in the Benelux countries or in Scandinavia with high-performance cloud services – because the Open Telekom Cloud’s data centers in Amsterdam are located at one of the world's largest Internet hubs. The Dutch location also ensures geo-redundancy and increases the reliability of the Open Telekom Cloud, as it is thus possible to mirror the cloud infrastructure of the Biere site near Magdeburg, which is more than 500 kilometers away. This is in line with the recommendation for so-called critical infrastructures (CRITIS) of the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI): It stipulates a minimum distance of 200 kilometers between data centers so that data and IT infrastructure are still available if one of the sites fails, for example due to natural disasters.

The cloud services from the Open Telekom Cloud's twin-core data center in Amsterdam are particularly suitable for companies with sensitive or critical data that want to use cloud computing that is compliant with the GDPR and other regulations. Another advantage is that customers looking for a sustainable cloud solution will find exactly that here. The energy-efficient data center operation reduces energy consumption, while at the same time all computing and storage resources are powered 100 percent by electricity from renewable sources.

It didn’t just start with the energy crisis and inflation: Anyone who operates workloads in the public cloud must also keep an eye on the costs. Depending on the cloud provider, however, these can vary greatly, as a new benchmark study shows. Commissioned by T-Systems, the independent cloud analysts at Cloud Mercato compared hyperscalers’ cloud offerings for the Dutch market.

Why is it so interesting to look at hyperscalers in the Netherlands? Its location at one of the world's largest Internet hubs makes Amsterdam a major cloud center. No wonder many providers deliver their cloud services to Europe from this location. Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure have a presence there, as does Open Telekom Cloud. One exception is AWS. The provider delivers its cloud services for the Dutch market from Frankfurt and Paris. Based on the July 2022 list prices and the performance results achieved, the analysts calculated the price/performance ratio for the IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) offerings. Their focus was on the following questions:

• What is the price/performance ratio of the cloud services offered?
• How much performance do companies get for their money?

The benchmark focused on virtual machines (VM, flavors) with 16 vCPU. The analysts developed three test panels. One panel for general virtual machines (with a CPU/GB RAM ratio of 1:4, i.e., 64 GB) and one panel each for compute-optimized (1:2, 32 GB) and memory-optimized machines (1:8, 128 GB). AWS and Google Cloud were rated at eight VMs, while Azure and Open Telekom Cloud were rated at six VMs each. While the US hyperscalers offer AMD and Intel CPUs, Open Telekom Cloud exclusively uses processors from Intel.

To measure the computing power of the virtual machines, Cloud Mercato used the standard benchmark suite Geekbench 5. Based on the results, the analysts determined both a single score for CPU performance and a multi-score for the overall system performance. Since the latter is the more realistic scenario for cloud use, this was what the analysts focused on.

The multi-score results revealed the following performance picture: Intel-based machines performed better than AMD-based machines in all test fields. Sometimes even with a clear lead: The general virtual machines at AWS, for example, only achieved around 57 percent of the performance of Intel despite the latest AMD EPYC processors. The Open Telekom Cloud was quite different: The virtual machines of the Open Telekom Cloud were at the top of the Geekbench ranking in all three panels and clearly offered the best performance in the compute-optimized and memory-optimized VMs, according to Cloud Mercato. In further test series, the analysts also examined the respective performance for specific parameters such as data throughput and bandwidth.

Do powerful virtual machines have to be expensive? Are low-cost VMs the better choice when it comes to getting the best value for money? In summary: The Infrastructure as a Service offerings on the Dutch market differ significantly. The Cloud Mercato benchmark identified huge differences in its test panels with comparable VMs for general, compute-optimized, and memory-optimized workloads in terms of performance and – even more so – in terms of the price/performance ratio.

Whether pure computing power or storage: According to the analysts, the Open Telekom Cloud Netherlands is one of the most powerful and cost-effective offerings. At the same time, the Open Telekom Cloud services deliver consistently reliable performance for every use case. These results are not surprising, as they are in line with an earlier Cloud Mercato benchmark for the German market: With its standard Intel machines, the Open Telekom Cloud offers consistently good performance and price/performance ratios in all regions served, which benefits companies when it comes to all cloud services, but especially when handling large and long-term workloads.