Bright Planet Tries EC2, But Opts for CoSentry's Cloud

Moving to the public cloud doesn't always work out. This week came news of an example of this, in which data center and cloud computing provider CoSentry won a customer requirement back from Amazon Web Services.

Bright Planet is a provider of web data analysis for government, pharmaceutical, and legal customers. Bright Planet had been a CoSentry customer for several years, hosting its physical switches and servers with them. Bright Planet decided to try out EC2 for a cloud application, but found that EC2 “did not live up to the standards,” according to a release, and moved its virtual platform onto CoSentry’s Secure Cloud offering.

“That companies like Bright Planet, who understand and use virtual systems at the highest level, have chosen CoSentry as their provider is all of the evidence we need to know that we made the right choice with our investment in high performance, high security virtual platforms,” said Kevin Dohrman of CoSentry.

“After years of using flexible framework, we decided that the path to further growth was to shift to a virtual platform,” said William Bushee, Vice President of Development for Bright Planet. “EC2 was our first attempt, but we found it was far too slow for our purposes. CoSentry’s virtual system, on the other hand, is comparable to their high quality physical system in terms of performance”.

The decision by Bright Planet - and the fact that CoSentry issued a release about it - reflects the competitive tensions created by the emergence of public cloud platforms, and the challenge this presents for hosting providers. As cloud computing has gained attention,  data center and managed services providers have added cloud offerings to the portfolio. CoSentry looks to serve as a one-source provider of data center, cloud computing, and managed technical services. Here, its ability to offer cloud extended its relationship with Bright Planet, rather than potentially losing that contract or that business to a cloud provider down the line.

CoSentry currently offers infrastructure supported by VCE’s Vblock technology. The company recently added 2 data centers, most recently in Lenexa, Kansas . It has facilities in Kansas City, MO, Lenexa, KS, Sioux Falls, SD, Papillion, NE and Omaha, NE.