L3C Limited

L3C GPU / AI Deep Learning Cloud (IaaS)

Cloud infrastructure with GPU technology for AI, machine learning and deep learning. Develop your models and Proof of Concepts with our GPU based cloud environment then decide on the most appropriate deployment model. Built with NVIDIA v100 Tesla GPUs optimised for image processing (xrays, scans etc) and large data models.

Features

  • Integrated deep learning frameworks and libraries
  • Optimised for processing images
  • Optimised for large data models
  • Scale without performance degradation
  • 24 hour SLA
  • Easy on boarding
  • At least 20% cheaper than AWS
  • Support and guidance from experienced technical team

Benefits

  • Easy start for your AI projects
  • No need to purchase expensive infrastructure
  • Process larger matrices, higher definition images and larger batch sizes
  • Access latest technology
  • Fully supported 24x7
  • On boarding assistance and guidance
  • Highly cost effective solution compared to public clouds

Pricing

£315 a unit a week

Service documents

Framework

G-Cloud 12

Service ID

7 0 6 6 3 2 2 0 0 2 9 6 8 7 4

Contact

L3C Limited L3C
Telephone: 02035987407
Email: jerry@l3c.cloud

Service scope

Service constraints
No
System requirements
Linux - provided by L3C as part of the service

User support

Email or online ticketing support
Email or online ticketing
Support response times
Priority 1: 30 minutes
Priority 2: 120 minutes
Priority 3: 8 hours

These can be adjusted on request. Priority 1 is available 24x7, priority 2 and 3 are 0800-1700 Monday to Friday excluding UK national holidays.
User can manage status and priority of support tickets
Yes
Online ticketing support accessibility
WCAG 2.1 A
Phone support
Yes
Phone support availability
24 hours, 7 days a week
Web chat support
No
Onsite support
Yes, at extra cost
Support levels
L3C provide a 24x7 SLA even for Proof of Concept environments.

Priority 1 response time is 30 mins;
Priority 2 response time is 120 mins;
Priority 3 response time is 8 hours.

Telephone support is available 24x7

The Cloud service SLA is to exceed 99.5% availability
Support available to third parties
Yes

Onboarding and offboarding

Getting started
Online web/conference call is used to enable users to access the service.
Service documentation
Yes
Documentation formats
PDF
End-of-contract data extraction
User has full access so can download relevant data and then delete from the service and destroy the Linux container. L3C can also delete the data on customer request and we will provide a certificate to confirm deletion.
End-of-contract process
At the end of the contract the user can copy their files and libraries and any data to physical media and request L3C to send to them (no charge).
They can also copy their files, libraries and data and download to their own systems and delete on the L3C Cloud environment.
They can also request that L3C store the data for a period of time for later retrieval or for use on say the next phase of the development project (Additional charge)

Using the service

Web browser interface
Yes
Using the web interface
Using the OpenStack interface users can; launch an instance, boot from image or snapshot, connect to the instance using SSH, track usage of the instance, resize, pause or terminate the instance.
Web interface accessibility standard
WCAG 2.1 A
Web interface accessibility testing
We use OpenStack technology which has been extensively tested by the community
API
Yes
What users can and can't do using the API
We use OpenStack APIs. Based on currently available OpenStack APIs, users can launch instances, create images and assign metadata.
API automation tools
OpenStack
API documentation
Yes
API documentation formats
HTML
Command line interface
Yes
Command line interface compatibility
Linux or Unix
Using the command line interface
We use the OpenStack command line. Installation and usage instructions are current provide at: https://docs.openstack.org/mitaka/user-guide/common/cli_install_openstack_command_line_clients.html

Scaling

Scaling available
Yes
Scaling type
Manual
Independence of resources
We use technologies such as Linux Containers to use a high degree of separation. Additionally physical resources such as GPU resources are assigned to the container, so that container can only use the physical GPU resource.
Usage notifications
Yes
Usage reporting
  • Email
  • SMS

Analytics

Infrastructure or application metrics
Yes
Metrics types
  • CPU
  • Disk
  • HTTP request and response status
  • Memory
  • Network
  • Number of active instances
Reporting types
Regular reports

Resellers

Supplier type
Not a reseller

Staff security

Staff security clearance
Conforms to BS7858:2012
Government security clearance
Up to Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS)

Asset protection

Knowledge of data storage and processing locations
Yes
Data storage and processing locations
United Kingdom
User control over data storage and processing locations
No
Datacentre security standards
Complies with a recognised standard (for example CSA CCM version 3.0)
Penetration testing frequency
At least once a year
Penetration testing approach
‘IT Health Check’ performed by a Tigerscheme qualified provider or a CREST-approved service provider
Protecting data at rest
  • Physical access control, complying with another standard
  • Encryption of all physical media
  • Scale, obfuscating techniques, or data storage sharding
Data sanitisation process
Yes
Data sanitisation type
  • Explicit overwriting of storage before reallocation
  • Deleted data can’t be directly accessed
  • Hardware containing data is completely destroyed
Equipment disposal approach
A third-party destruction service

Backup and recovery

Backup and recovery
Yes
What’s backed up
  • Files, databases, virtual machines
  • Configurations
  • Entire System
Backup controls
L3C provide a standard backup schedule within the pricing model. A custom backup schedule can be agreed for an additional charge.
Datacentre setup
Multiple datacentres with disaster recovery
Scheduling backups
Supplier controls the whole backup schedule
Backup recovery
Users contact the support team

Data-in-transit protection

Data protection between buyer and supplier networks
  • Private network or public sector network
  • IPsec or TLS VPN gateway
Data protection within supplier network
IPsec or TLS VPN gateway

Availability and resilience

Guaranteed availability
Minimum 99.5 % availability. If this is not met in a given month users are refunded 20% of the service charges for that month.
Approach to resilience
This is available on request
Outage reporting
Email alerts to users

Identity and authentication

User authentication
  • 2-factor authentication
  • Username or password
Access restrictions in management interfaces and support channels
The user provides a list of authorised users to contact support / service desk and to receive service reports.
Access restriction testing frequency
At least once a year
Management access authentication
2-factor authentication
Devices users manage the service through
  • Dedicated device on a segregated network (providers own provision)
  • Dedicated device over multiple services or networks
  • Directly from any device which may also be used for normal business (for example web browsing or viewing external email)

Audit information for users

Access to user activity audit information
Users contact the support team to get audit information
How long user audit data is stored for
User-defined
Access to supplier activity audit information
Users contact the support team to get audit information
How long supplier audit data is stored for
User-defined
How long system logs are stored for
User-defined

Standards and certifications

ISO/IEC 27001 certification
Yes
Who accredited the ISO/IEC 27001
Transpacific Certifications Limited
ISO/IEC 27001 accreditation date
29/11/2019
What the ISO/IEC 27001 doesn’t cover
N/a
ISO 28000:2007 certification
No
CSA STAR certification
No
PCI certification
Yes
Who accredited the PCI DSS certification
Our data centre provider Virtus is PCI compliant
PCI DSS accreditation date
Can be provided on request
What the PCI DSS doesn’t cover
We do not currently accept credit card payments for our cloud transactions. Our clients have preferred to control user access and therefore we invoice in arrears based on usage of the service (see pricing model)
Other security certifications
Yes
Any other security certifications
Cyber Essentials

Security governance

Named board-level person responsible for service security
Yes
Security governance certified
Yes
Security governance standards
ISO/IEC 27001
Information security policies and processes
L3C are ISO 27001:2013 Information Security Management certified.

On a general basis the governance framework is based on:
• Understanding the criticality of information and information security to L3C and our clients
• Reviewing investment in information security in relation to our business strategy and risk profile
• At a Board level endorsing continued development and implementation of a comprehensive information security programme
• Regular reporting of the programme’s relevance and effectiveness:
Consequently, we:
• Define and review the policies and best practices
• Define a systematic approach to identify any risks
• Assign ownership and a Plan-Do-Check-Act model that analyses and assesses risk, identifies possible alternatives to mitigate and implement the solution

Information security is reviewed at Board level and considered a Board level responsibility.

L3C has a dedicated policy for risk assessment, which includes:
• Methodologies to calculate risk impact
• Plans for risk mitigation
• Risk treatment
L3C Information security team holds regular meetings to review security processes, risks, weaknesses and incidents. Items are raised at Board level as required.

Any actions are assigned owners and tracked to completion.

Operational security

Configuration and change management standard
Conforms to a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v3.0 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
Configuration and change management approach
All the assets that make up the AI Cloud service are described and their configuration status held in our CMDB. Any configuration change is subjected to change management and the CMDB is audited every 6 months for discrepancies. We cover the lifecycle of all our assets from onboarding to offboarding and recycling.
A Change Advisory Board (CAB) supervises changes which are categorised as standard or emergency. The change process includes; steps to implement the change including order and dependencies; responsibilities; timelines and escalation procedures. Standard changes are proven and low risk, emergency changes are implemented asap.
Vulnerability management type
Conforms to a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v3.0 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
Vulnerability management approach
L3C utilises an annual penetration test performed by an external body CREST Approve body (BSI) and holds the Cyber Essentials certification. Additionally our Internal services are scanned and tested regularly for compliance with the security policies in the company to ensure we retain our ISO 27001:2013 certification.
Critical patches are deployed within 24 hours but our cloud infrastructure runs on IBM Power9 servers which are amongst the most secure on the commercial market place. Therefore we receive our information about potential threats from vendors such as IBM, NVIDIA as well as Linux vendors such as RedHat.
Protective monitoring type
Undisclosed
Protective monitoring approach
We can provide our protective monitoring process on request to a potential user. If we find a compromise we implement our incident management procedure as described earlier. The response time will depend on the priority assigned to the incident and the associated change management procedure.
Incident management type
Conforms to a recognised standard, for example, CSA CCM v3.0 or ISO/IEC 27035:2011 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
Incident management approach
We have pre-defined processes for security events, hardware failures and problems reported by our clients. Users can report incidents using a Priority Classification (1,2 and 3) to our service desk and each is responded to within a strict SLA. Incidents can be reported electronically via a service desk tool or by phone (24x7). Incident reports are provided to the user on an agreed basis (the standard is monthly but the frequency can be tailored on request). Our proactive monitoring may also identify incidents and similarly we will assign a priority to them and address accordingly.

Secure development

Approach to secure software development best practice
Independent review of processes (for example CESG CPA Build Standard, ISO/IEC 27034, ISO/IEC 27001 or CSA CCM v3.0)

Separation between users

Virtualisation technology used to keep applications and users sharing the same infrastructure apart
Yes
Who implements virtualisation
Supplier
Virtualisation technologies used
Other
Other virtualisation technology used
Our Machine Learning/AI Cloud infrastructure is built on underlying NVIDIA Tesla v100 GPUs and IBM Power9 and PowerAI technology. This uses Linux Containers as the virtualisation method.
How shared infrastructure is kept separate
Production deployments will be on dedicated/private cloud environments. Proof of Concept or dev/test workloads are likely to be in a shared model. We use technologies such as Docker Containers to ensure separation. In addition each container has a physical resources assigned to it such as GPU cards.

Energy efficiency

Energy-efficient datacentres
Yes
Description of energy efficient datacentres
Our data centres follow the BREEAM standard and are BREEAM certified as VERY GOOD

Pricing

Price
£315 a unit a week
Discount for educational organisations
Yes
Free trial available
Yes
Description of free trial
We provide the first week free of charge with support from our team to ensure the AI model is operational and the Proof of Concept or development or production deployment can begin.
Link to free trial
https://l3c.cloud/gcloudlp/reg_form/

Service documents