Acronym: 
CloudFerro

CloudFerro – IT solutions for land, air and space

CloudFerro sp. z o.o. is a Polish technological company that was established in 2015 by Maciej Krzyżanowski, Stanisław Dałek and Michał Kasprzak. Based on their experience and access to modern technology, the trio decided to form a startup that would offer Big Data processing solutions to the European market based on cloud services and dedicated servers.

CloudFerro team began to provide cloud services in 2012 under the 24admins logo. In 2015 this growing activity was transformed into dedicated company (CloudFerro Sp z o.o.) and its initial team was joined by experienced business developers and managers.

CloudFerro provides public and private cloud and dedicated server services for businesses, public institutions and other IT operators. CloudFerro services are based on a consistent model of cloud and servers that utilizes OpenStack - an open source cloud and virtualization platform. CloudFerro products include:

  • Private clouds based on the OpenStack framework
  • The specialized public cloud for Earth Observation data processing - EO Cloud & CREODIAS
  • Dedicated bare metal servers

Cloud services include:

  1. Virtual machines (VMs)
  2. Block data storage - storage volumes
  3. Object data storage
  4. Virtual networks connecting VMs, bare metal servers and private clouds.
  5. Additional virtual appliance services like firewalls, load-balancers, antiDDoS protection etc.

CloudFerro infrastructure is placed in two Tier III data centers in Warsaw, Poland. The data centers are ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 certified. They are connected via redundant dark fibers with Nx 10G transmission capacity. The data centers are connected to the internet via physically and logically independent uplinks to Tier I and Tier II operators. The uplinks are additionally protected against DDoS attacks.

CloudFerro, the success story – CREODIAS:

CREODIAS platform is a cloud infrastructure adapted to the processing of big amounts of EO data, including an EO Data storage cluster and a dedicated IaaS cloud infrastructure for the platform’s Users. The EO Data repository contains Sentinel-1, 2 and 3, Landsat-5, 7, 8, Envisat and many Copernicus Services data. The infrastructure and the services offered are optimized for use of Earth Observation data and support scientific, operational and commercial applications.

CREODIAS processing covers full set of virtual resources available in the solution: VM – Virtual Machines (or virtual computing servers) with several operating systems available (both free like CentOS, Ubuntu, Debian, Scientific Linux, and commercial like RedHat, SUSE, Microsoft Windows Server), virtual storage volumes that can be easily mounted to the VMs together with object storage solution, virtual networks, virtual appliances like firewalls (FWaaS) and VPN concentrators (VPNaaS), physical servers (baremetal) that can be integrated to the virtual world, Single Server VMs – full physical server with a single VM and very fast passthrough NVMe storage – a combination of advantages of a dedicated server and a cloud VM (high capacity, storage speed, no noisy neighbor problem). A common authorization and authentication solution can be used to provide single-sign-on capability to CREODIAS services.

Today processing resources consist of around 2 500 vCores (virtual CPUs) together with some 14 TByte of RAM. Local storage is based on a Ceph solution with around 1,5 PByte capacity. Resources are connected with 100 GBit/s SDN network switching.

The CREODIAS data discovery, indexing and processing solution is an element of the platform. The Finder tool allows finding data products stored in the repository, obtained or processed at selected times with selected cloud coverage levels and with other selection criteria. The Browser allows visualization and basic processing of selected data collections (like Sentinel-1 L1 GRD or Sentinel-2 L1C). The SPARQL interface provides extended search capabilities linking metadata of all products stored in the repository with various information from the Internet.

Key personnel

  • Maciej Krzyżanowski – CEO of CloudFerro

Graduate of Physics Faculty at the University of Warsaw (1989) and PhD in particle physics (University of Warsaw, 1995). Scientific researcher at Warsaw University and Deutsches Elektronen Synchrotron in Hamburg within the frames of multinational scientific teams.

Maciej Krzyżanowski is also a co-author of a few dozens of scientific publications in the field of particle physics. He has been working in the telecom industry for 20 years.

Between 2002 and 2014 he was managing telecom activities at ATM S.A., where as Vice-President (2009 – 2012) and then President (2012 – 2014), he led the company to a dynamic development of services based on data centers and to the achievement of a leading position on the Polish market of data centers, as well as a position of a significant operator in Central and Eastern Europe. Prior to that Maciej Krzyżanowski was Director of Telecom Services Division (2206 – 2009) and Director of Sales (2004 – 2006) at ATM S.A.

Between 2001 and 2002 he was an acting director for networks at TDC Internet Polska. Before that, between 1998 and 2001 he was a member of the board at Internet Data Systems S.A., while between 1994 and 1996 he worked as a network specialist at NASK.

Maciej Krzyżanowski has the experience of a network engineer at one of the first Polish Internet and data transmission suppliers. He is also a co-founder of one of the first Internet Service Provider companies in Poland, where he performed managing functions, especially in sales management.

  • Stanisław Dałek – VP and CTO of CloudFerro

Graduate of Computing Science at the University of Warsaw and MBA Program in consulting at Institut Superieur de Gestion in Paris.

He has competence supported with successes and over 20 years of experience in the field of building and sales of IT and hosting services and outsourcing solutions for B2B sector. He is an expert in managing complex ICT projects and using technology in business.

Between 2011 and 2014 as a Project Manager at ATM S.A. he built and successfully managed a portfolio of automated services in the IaaS model, which over the last 3 years have become the fastest growing product line of this ICT operator, achieving also a significant position on the market  of IaaS solutions.

In the years 2000 – 2007 Stanisław Dałek as a co-owner, Technology Director, and later also Chairman of the Supervisory Board, co-founded Exorigo sp. z o.o., which after 7 years was employing 200 people and had over 30 million PLN turnover. At that time Stanisław Dałek was responsible for the strategy of technological development, team of specialists and programmers, as well as supervision over key accounts projects.

  • Alek Cesarz – Project Manager at CloudFerro

Graduate of Faculty of Electronics and Information Technology at Warsaw University of Technology, and MBA Program at Leon Koźminski Academy of Entrepreneurship and Management.

With vast experience in leading complex projects in telecommunications and new media, Alek is responsible for the assessment and planning of future development of the CREODIAS platform and services. Among his other tasks, he is charge of coordinating service delivery and customer requests.

At CloudFerro since 2016, his earlier experience consists of being the business development director at Solutions for Technology (S4Tech), where for 3 years he was responsible for building relations with key customers, developing of product portfolio, as well as conducting research of new markets and technology opportunities. He was also Director of Network Design and Development Bureau at TP EmiTel (part of Orange group).

Consortium

CANDELA team is a well-balanced consortium, consisting of seven partners from five European countries, and with strong participation from the industry as encouraged by the Call, being half of the partners well positioned SME’s.