QTS to Provide Managed AWS Cloud Services

QTS Realty Trust is planning to provide managed services for its data center customers who need help using Amazon’s cloud.

The data center service provider is planning to launch managed AWS cloud services in the fourth quarter, QTS CTO Jon Greaves, told Data Center Knowledge in an interview.

While its core business is providing data center space and power – both wholesale and retail colocation – the data center REIT’s business model consists of offering a mix of infrastructure outsourcing options, including cloud and managed services. Its managed services capability expanded greatly last year, when it acquired Carpathia Hosting, managed hosting firm, for $326 million.

Greaves, who was Carpathia’s CTO prior to the acquisition, was named CTO of QTS earlier this year.

See also: Why QTS Dished Out $326M on Carpathia Hosting

More and more managed hosting providers have been adding managed cloud capabilities to their tool chests in recent years, seeing rising demand for services like managed AWS cloud or managed Microsoft Azure. The top players in this space, which Gartner broadly describes as cloud-enabled managed hosting, are Rackspace and Datapipe, according to the market analyst firm.

Integrating the biggest cloud providers’ services with its own platform is a major strength in the managed hosting market, Gartner said in its 2015 Magic Quadrant report covering the space.

Carpathia has had a managed AWS cloud capability, but the capability is now being integrated with its new parent company’s services platform.

QTS also announced this week the launch of public and private cloud services built on OpenStack, the family of open source cloud infrastructure software. The company hopes this capability will put it in better position to attract companies with cloud-native applications and DevOps-oriented IT teams.

These customers, Greaves said, gravitate toward public cloud services like AWS, but often choose to also deploy private cloud infrastructure in addition to their public cloud environments. They generally prefer OpenStack for their private cloud needs to VMware-based private clouds, which is something QTS has been offering for some time now.

"If you’re building cloud-native apps, you want more AWS-centric, cloud-native interfaces," he said.

Read more: QTS Launches Public OpenStack Cloud