Opsani is a startup in the cloud optimization space. The company uses AI to automatically adjust resources and parameters across the full application stack to continuously maximize efficiency and deliver a better customer experience.  It reports savings up to 70 percent on their cloud spend and more than 200 percent increases in performance in a matter of days.  The company just announced a program for healthcare organizations, research centers and first responders, offering a one-year free subscription to the Opsani cloud optimization service in an effort to help those fighting against COVID lower their cloud bills and make the patient experience easier. 

VMblog talked to Patrick Conte, Opsani chief commercial officer, about the program and their cloud optimization service.

VMblog:  First of all, congrats on making this program happen.  What do you see out there in the healthcare market and what is the motivation behind this project?

Patrick Conte:  We are still in the middle of the pandemic, although a lot of progress has been made since last year. However, healthcare organizations and first responders' cloud apps can be crushed under the weight of heavy loads, given the number of patients seeking treatment.  And with new variants of the virus emerging, there is still a massive focus on healthcare research. Many research pharmaceutical companies are relying on their cloud applications to help accelerate the discovery process and to collaborate internally and with partners in understanding this disease and helping save lives. With this type of research, reliability and consistent user experience are essential. We want to help accelerate the research process by ensuring cloud applications stay fast and reliable. That is why Opsani launched a program offering the use of our software to healthcare organizations, first responders and research centers for free for one year to assist in this effort.

VMblog:  How exactly can Opsani help?

Conte:  We developed an AI-based technology that can continuously tune cloud applications for optimal performance, lowest cloud spend, and highest reliability. We use AI and machine learning to adjust all of the key elements of the cloud apps simultaneously. While this particular program that we are announcing is specific to the healthcare industry, Opsani's Continuous Optimization as a Service (COaaS) is already being used by companies in highly regulated industries from financial services to healthcare to transportation.

VMblog:  What about HIPAA compliance?  It's the first question that comes to mind.

Conte:  Our software supports HIPAA compliance - we don't touch the customers' PHI, PII or any other data.  With such valuable research, it is important for us to note our software is safe for you to engage with from the beginning. Our onboarding process is very easy to get up and run quickly. The Opsani software will also not interfere with the applications' security.

VMblog:  Let's get deeper into this, beyond the program details, because we have a very technical audience here at the VMblog.  Tell us more about your cloud optimization platform.

Conte:  Opsani's cloud optimization platform has two key components: the servo and the Opsani continuous optimization (AI) SaaS backend.

The servo is a small, open source container deployed alongside the cloud applications. The servo communicates securely with the SaaS backend via https on port 443, making it easily deployable in nearly all environments without having to reconfigure any firewall settings. Because of its narrow and well-defined functionality, the servo is lightweight and with nearly no system overhead. The servo is responsible for reading system measurements from the monitoring platform and reporting them back to Opsani's ML engines in the cloud. Once the ML backend analyzes the results, it replies to the servo with a set of runtime configuration adjustments. The servo then makes those changes and, again, reports monitoring system measurements back to the Opsani ML backend. I want to highlight the fact that Opsani is a closed-loop system. The feedback loop between the servo and the ML backend creates an autonomous AIOps platform that takes new system feedback and makes the appropriate, intelligent adjustments.

The Opsani backend service is a modern SaaS microservices architecture. Core to this service is a set of ML engines that reinforce each other's learning, thereby accelerating the discovery of optimized settings for applications monitored and controlled by the servo.  Opsani uses other algorithms to filter and provide highest quality data to the ML engines, again in pursuit of accelerating the discovery of optimal settings. Other important services as part of the Opsani's SaaS service include a cost analysis engine and a performance predictor.

The cost analysis engine works concurrently with performance optimization. The result is a range of system configuration settings that favor performance maximization or cost minimization. The platform then discovers the optimal efficiency setting - best performance- cost point - and recommends it as the operational system setting.

VMblog:  Thank you so much for sharing the healthcare program details with us, as well as this deep dive into your cloud optimization technology.

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ABOUT PATRICK CONTE

Patrick Conte is the chief commercial officer at Opsani.  In this role, Pat is leading the company's go-to-market operations in the areas of sales, marketing and strategic alliances.  Pat has been a part of a number of groundbreaking startups, including 3Dlabs (NVidia), Cobalt Networks (Oracle), Topspin (Cisco), Azul Systems, HyTrust, and Fortanix.  He is a believer in the role that young, innovative companies have in solving new problems for global enterprises in cloud and data center environments.