Cloud News: Savvis, Rackspace, Piston Cloud

News from the cloud computing sector includes developments from Savvis, Rackspace and Piston Cloud:

Savvis launches Cloud Storage. Savvis, a CenturyLink (CTL) company, announced a limited release of Savvis Symphony Cloud Storage, which combines global accessibility and unlimited capacity with the reliability and protection businesses demand. With the new storage service existing Savvis clients who use a CenturyLink private network will not have to pay data transfer fees when downloading data. Features of Symphony Cloud Storage include simple replication choices with the flexibility to choose where data is stored, access data from anywhere, and unlimited and affordable storage with no term or capacity commitment requirement. The storage service is build on the EMC Atmost platform and is compatible with the EMC Atmos API framework. "Enterprises need flexible cloud services – like Savvis Symphony Cloud Storage – that they can easily integrate into their applications," said Daniel Patton, vice president and general manager of cloud services at Savvis. "Symphony Cloud Storage draws on our infrastructure expertise, global IT portfolio and robust network to provide developers with a secure and unlimited storage solution."

Rackspace enhances Open Cloud Platform. Rackspace Hosting (RAX) announced  new features and enhanced service offerings for open cloud platform customers. The new open cloud platform will be supported through Managed and Critical Application Services. To provide this service level, Rackspace uses a unique combination of web-scale engineers, on-going consultation, and performance monitoring. The service is backed by Fanatical Support, and by Rackspace’s 100 percent Production Platform Uptime Guarantee. “Rackspace’s reliability gives Acquity Group the freedom to focus on creating great apps and onboarding customers without worrying about infrastructure,” said Kevin Ellenwood, Vice President of Shared Services at Acquity Group, a leading e-commerce and digital marketing company. “It’s unacceptable for us to have any type of outage, and quite frankly, our support team at Rackspace has the same attitude. That’s why we’re here.”

Piston Cloud names Jim Morrisroe as CEO.  Piston Cloud announced that Jim Morrisroe has been named Chief Executive Officer of the company.  In a blog post Mr. Morrisroe said he was "thrilled to join the Piston Cloud founders, Joshua, Gretchen, and Christopher in the disruptive private cloud market that is transforming enterprise information technology for the better."  Morrisroe formerly held positions at Cabletron Systems, Lucent Technologies, Cereva Networks, IBM and Zimbra. Former CEO Joshua McKenty will become Chief Technology Officer.  McKenty is a co-founder of OpenStack, and launched Piston Cloud to commercially distribute a cloud OS that is based on OpenStack. Last summer McKenty was interviewed during the GigaOm’s Structure 2012 event.