CenturyLink Savvis Acquires PaaS Provider AppFog

CenturyLink has acquired Platform as a Service provider AppFog to enhance its Savvis Cloud Suite. Portland, Oregon based AppFog is specifically tailored for developers, counting more thank 100,000 customers who have deployed more than 150,000 applications. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

AppFog was previously available as a public cloud offering. Under CenturyLink's Savvis organization, it will remain available as a public cloud offering through the savvisdirect online channel, and Savvis will offer private, dedicated deployments to its enterprise clients.

AppFog started life out as PHP Fog, its namesake after its initial focus on PHP programming. Like many PaaS providers, it quickly expanded into multi-language support, first with ruby and node.js, followed by others. This multi-language support is part of the appeal of AppFog as a PaaS offering, making for an attractive, flexible enterprise platform.

The acquisition greatly enhances Savvis’ offerings on the PaaS front. More and more cloud providers are figuring ways to add value above and beyond raw compute and storage, and PaaS is a big way to do so. PaaS simplifies the development and deployment of applications and it gaining popularity in the enterprise, especially with the rise of DevOps.

“AppFog leads the way in Platform-as-a-Service capabilities and continues to see strong adoption in the developer community,” said Jeff Von Deylen, president of CenturyLink’s Savvis organization. “Combining AppFog’s market-leading Platform-as-a-Service capabilities with Savvis’ industry-leading Infrastructure-as-a-Service cloud services and CenturyLink’s global network will enable developers to securely and reliably operate and connect the applications they build and deploy.”

Under CenturyLink, AppFog has more of the resources it needs to enhance its platform compared to being a standalone company. Part of the apprehension of using a PaaS provider is that most are relatively young and standalone operations – so it’s hard to ensure they’ll stick around. This acquisition ensures AppFog isn’t going anywhere, giving enterprises a sort of ‘go-ahead’ to use it.

“We are excited to introduce the AppFog developer community to CenturyLink’s Savvis organization, which is recognized globally as an innovative cloud leader,” said Lucas Carlson, whose role prior to the acquisition was chief executive officer at AppFog and who now serves as vice president, cloud evangelist, at Savvis. “Developers can expect to see enhancements to our PaaS capabilities, and we look forward to making the full suite of AppFog services available to existing and prospective CenturyLink and Savvis clients.”