QTS and Amazon Package Hybrid Cloud as a Colo Service

Data center provider QTS today announced a new type of colocation service, where it pre-packages data center space and direct connectivity to Amazon Web Services.

Unlike the typical private connectivity services data center providers offer their clients, QTS has prepared data center infrastructure in multiple locations that’s set up to connect to AWS immediately. All the client has to do is buy the service through AWS Marketplace and get their hardware to one of the QTS data centers where it’s offered.

The announcement is sure to figure prominently in the investor-day presentation QTS executives were scheduled to hold Monday afternoon.

Hybrid cloud, where a company uses a combination of on-premises systems and public cloud services, is viewed as the setup of choice for most enterprise IT shops (as opposed to using just on-prem. or relying on public cloud for all IT infrastructure needs), and data center providers, cloud companies, and a whole universe of technology vendors are racing to come up with solutions for making this hybrid architecture easier to set up and use for clients.

“A growing number of our customers require colocation as part of their migration to the cloud,” Mike Clayville, an AWS VP for worldwide commercial sales, said in a statement. “QTS is a strategic colocation provider and provides customers industry leading customer support and as a Managed Service Partner has the ability to seamlessly integrate their solution with AWS.”

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With its new turnkey CloudRamp solution, QTS is aiming at customers that need to deploy a hybrid cloud infrastructure immediately and/or temporarily (for a cloud migration project, for example). The client gets a cabinet that’s set up in advance with redundant power and pre-wired for high-speed connectivity to AWS and to the internet.

Unlike most colocation contracts, the package also doesn’t require an annual commitment. A client can order it just for several months. Longer-term deployments are also possible, but QTS has an extensive managed services capability, including hybrid cloud, for long-term solutions, available in all 21 QTS data center locations.

CloudRamp is currently available at QTS facilities in Chicago; Richmond, Virginia; Piscataway, New Jersey; and Santa Clara, California.