Prime Strategy, the developer and marketer of ultra-fast CMS execution environment KUSANAGI, provides KUSANAGI Stack, a website acceleration solution based on KUSANAGI and designed for use in public cloud and VPS (Virtual Private Server) environments. From 2021, they ventured into the licensing business by licensing KUSANAGI Stack for use on shared rental servers. Currently, two companies have licensed the technology in Japan, and now Prime Strategy is looking to the North American market.
KUSANAGI Improves Application Performance, WEXAL and DAVID Improve Rendering Performance
“When determining search rankings, Google places an emphasis on Core Web Vitals, so improving page rendering and response times is crucial for server providers. This is true not only in Japan, but throughout the world,” said Chieko Aihara, Executive Director of Prime Strategy’s Planning and Development Department, talking about the state of the CMS environment in recent years.
Developed and provided by Prime Strategy, KUSANAGI is a free virtual machine image that is available on 28 platforms, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). As of September 2022, the total number of deployments was in excess of 65,000.
KUSANAGI is virtual machine image built on a Linux base that has been fine tuned for speed. It includes software components such as Linux, HTTP servers (nginx, Apache), scripting languages (PHP, Ruby), relational databases (MariaDB, PostgreSQL), and CMS software (WordPress). The current versions are KUSANAGI 8 (Linux with CentOS 7) and KUSANAGI 9 (Linux with CentOS Stream 8, AlmaLinux OS 8), both of which are available in a Free Edition, Business Edition, and Premium Edition.
Of these three, the Premium Edition comes with KUSANAGI Stack, which incorporates WEXAL Page Speed Technology (WEXAL) and AI David (David). WEXAL looks after the source code from the HTTP server (HTML, CSS, scripts), image compression, and browser rendering, while David creates the WEXAL optimization strategy for compressing and rendering each page in real-time.
KUSANAGI Stack optimizes pages by improving both upstream and downstream speeds. Specifically, KUSANAGI optimizes the speed of HTTP requests from the browser and backend response from the server. WEXAL then improves HTTP response speed and browser rendering performance.
The speed improvement offered by KUSANAGI/KUSANAGI Stack is substantial. “As pages render more quickly and backend processing is faster, Core Web Vitals are greatly improved,” said Ms. Aihara. In-house testing by Prime Strategy showed that page rendering speed with KUSANAGI 9 (one quad-core CPU machine) using caching was 2,330 times faster than LAMP (Linux-Apache-My SQL-Perl/PHP), and without caching was about 20 times faster. Aihara explained that backend processing capacity with caching was in excess of 23,000 requests per second, and without caching was in excess of 200.
Ultra-High Speed CMS Execution Environment Quickly Achieved Based on Existing Virtual Machine Image
The first KUSANAGI service was commenced in July 2015. Since that time, KUSANAGI has been offered as a virtual machine image for public clouds and VPS. When users want to create a new virtual machine, all they needed to do is select KUSANAGI from the menu. There is no need to install Linux, middleware or applications separately.
Although the procedure is slightly different for public clouds and VPS, basically the steps are as follows. (1) Select the computer type for the virtual machine, (2) Select KUSANAGI from the marketplace as the original image for the virtual machine, (3) Set the number of virtual CPUs and the amount of memory allocated to the virtual machine, (4) Set the other initial values for the virtual machine, and (5) Start up the virtual machine.
It is normal for those things to be carried out by the user company’s IT staff, but they can also be assigned to a systems integrator. It is also possible to seek advice and assistance from Prime Strategy’s specialist engineers. For the paid version of KUSANAGI, in addition to paying for the virtual machine, users pay a subscription directly to the company providing the public cloud or VPS (monthly/annual fee). Alternatively, a one-off fee can be paid to a systems integrator or a partner company for installation support work.
KUSANAGI Managed Services, where the company carries out operational management on behalf of users after the CMS is operational, is provided to clients who purchase the Business Edition or Premium Edition. The major feature of this service is integrated operational management of the server, middleware and applications layers. This entails ensuring the performance and reliability of the server, tuning of middleware such as WordPress, and integration of various services to secure WordPress, leaving users free to work on more important things, such as content creation.
KUSANAGI Managed Services, where the company carries out operational management on behalf of users after the CMS is operational, is provided to clients who purchase the Business Edition or Premium Edition. The major feature of this service is integrated operational management of the server, middleware and applications layers. This entails ensuring the performance and reliability of the server, tuning of middleware such as WordPress, and integration of various services to secure WordPress, leaving users free to work on more important things, such as content creation.
Fees are for a set amount, regardless of traffic, making it easy for IT System Departments to budget for running costs.
Two Share Hosting Providers in Japan Use KUSANAGI Webpage Acceleration Technology
KUSANAGI has many attractions, but not all companies that build websites have been able to enjoy its benefits. This was because virtual machine images could not be used in a shared hosting server environment where multiple users shared a single server (hosting services).
However, even in the world of rental servers, competition for users is intense, and businesses are always looking for a way to differentiate themselves from other businesses. “Originally, we had never considered releasing products for rental servers, but we were approached by numerous companies who wanted to improve rendering performance and response performance, so we decided to think about how we might respond to those needs,” says Ms. Aihara. The outcome was the KUSANAGI Stack technology licensing business.
The first stage was technical collaboration with Xserver. Based on this partnership, Xserver applied KUSANAGI to all their Xserver and wpX Shin Rental share hosting plans, resulting in an overall improvement in processing speed. KUSANAGI was also applied to all their wpX-Speed WordPress hosting cloud rental server plans.
Prime Strategy then licensed WEXAL to GMO Internet Group, which made WEXAL available to users of ConoHa WING by GMO and Onamae shared hosting servers.
The work involved in incorporating KUSANAGI Stack into their shared rental servers was carried out by Xserver and GMO Internet engineers. Prime Strategy provided additional platform-specific development and technical support. According to Ms. Aihara, neither company is charging additional fees to their customers for using KUSANGI or WEXAL.
Intellectual Property Business Development Overseas: First North America
Having succeeded in the licensing business in Japan, Prime Strategy has turned its sights to overseas markets, where it will be seeking to sign up server providers. Initially the target market will be North America, which is where the world’s greatest number of data centers are located.
“We’ve just made the announcement about licensing. The North American market is large with many users, so no doubt they’ll hear about it. Our aim is to sign up at least one company by next November,” said Ms. Aihara. Prime Strategy already has a subsidiary in New York, and their engineers will participate in negotiations.
“We’ve just made the announcement about licensing. The North American market is large with many users, so no doubt they’ll hear about it. Our aim is to sign up at least one company by next November,” said Ms. Aihara. Prime Strategy already has a subsidiary in New York, and their engineers will participate in negotiations.
Alongside efforts to grow the licensing business, the company will continue working to popularize KUSANAGI Stack for public cloud and VPS. The aim is to add two more platforms selling paid plans (Business Edition and Premium Edition) in Japan by November 2023. “I think we can probably secure contracts for public cloud and VPS while proceeding with licensing negotiations with North American rental server providers,” said Ms. Aihara.
As licensing involves the provision of technology, it can be applied not only to shared hosting servers but to SaaS, such as online shopping and CDN. WEXAL is an engine that can be provided in many forms. “We are dedicated to using our technology to solve the problems faced by platform operators and to help them grow their businesses for the future. Together with like-minded platform operators we will work to further expand the ecosystem and help make the world a better place through digital transformation and IT.”
Source: “Weekly BCN⁺,” November 4, 2022.
