“We initially considered using our own physical machines to support the new analytics platform. However, we quickly realized that a cloud-based service would be more efficient, both in terms of cost and operation,” says Chu. “We already knew that the AWS Cloud could support the rapid development and launch of new products and services, so it was always clear to us that we would use it to support our analytics platform.”

Building on AWS allowed QNAP to access resources as needed without affecting performance. “We were also reassured by the integration of strong security features into the AWS platform’s architecture,” says Chu. “We knew we could build on that to encrypt data and protect our network.”

Chu and his team were also impressed by the ability to connect different branch offices and datacenters across the globe with consistent upload and download speeds using AWS. Most importantly, during QNAP’s four years of using AWS to support the myQNAPcloud service, Chu has found the company to be trustworthy, customer-focused, and quick. “AWS offers straightforward management interfaces and a comprehensive software development kit,” says Chu. “We’ve also been impressed by the company’s prestigious reputation and customer support.”

Working independently, QNAP spent six months implementing its new platform on AWS, which went live in March 2014. The company now runs its analytics platform in Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC), allowing it to use security groups to control access to the platform, and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud

(Amazon EC2) for scalable compute capacity. With around 200 million log entries (equivalent to 10GB of log data) generated per day, QNAP uses between six and 10 Amazon EC2 instances for data analysis, scaling them according to demand. “We add more instances if we need to process extra data or extract more information,” says Chu. The company uses Amazon S3 for data storage, and Elastic Load Balancing for performance and stability.

QNAP also encourages its NAS customers to back up their data. Initially, the company used Amazon S3. Today, it uses Amazon Glacier, which—for QNAP’s purposes—is comparatively inexpensive. By using Amazon Glacier for its archiving needs, QNAP is able to provide its customers with a simple and cost-effective solution for backup, disaster recovery, and long-term archiving.

Customers can also access their data and files wherever they are by using myQNAPcloud, or take advantage of QNAP’s mobile apps to access and manage their devices using myQNAPcloud CloudLink. Figure 1 shows the architecture for the analytics platform on the AWS Cloud.