Savvis Unveils Cloud Compute Service

clouds

Central to the new offering is an improved customer portal that gives users more control in provisioning virtual compute and storage capabilities, and the ability to purchase fractional compute resources on demand by the instance with flexible month-to-month business terms.

The new offering positions Savvis to compete in the emerging market for enterprise cloud computing, porting its existing utility computing operation to a cloud delivery and billing model.  

“Utility computing was the forerunner for what evolved into the enterprise cloud computing solutions we are seeing today,” said Bryan Doerr, Savvis Chief Technology Officer. “Savvis pioneered virtualized IT services in the network and the data center and is proud to continue expanding these capabilities with cloud-based IT infrastructure as a service. 

"Enterprises who previously outsourced some or very little of their IT Infrastructure will see this as an incredible opportunity to deliver a steep improvement in the efficiency of their spending on infrastructure, allowing them to deliver more with less,” Doerr added.

Savvis says the new service will target enterprise users that experience fluctuations in web traffic or processing load, including customers running SaaS applications, financial trading applications or experiencing heavy seasonal traffic at e-commerce sites. Other use cases for Savvis Cloud Compute include disaster recovery for back-office locations, and test and development environments.

Savvis' path to the cloud is similar to that followed by Terremark Worldwide (TMRK), which adapted its Infinistructure utility computing platform as the Enterprise Cloud, and has reported strong demand for the new model. Both Savvis and Terremark come to the cloud with an existing base of enterprise customers, differentiating them from newer players that have developed cloud platforms and are now seeking to penetrate the enterprise market.  

"Managed hosting and IT infrastructure service providers focused on virtualization and IT infrastructure-as-a-service are well-positioned to derive significant revenue from evolving cloud-based models,”  said Melanie Posey, Research Director at IDC. "“The new macro economic environment and the attendant budgetary constraints are forcing cost conscious enterprises of all sizes to take a closer look at more cost-effective operating-expenditure models. This, in turn, is increasing interest in outsourced, private cloud solutions that offer flexible resource allocation capabilities along with the security and performance guarantees that enterprises require."

IDC recently estimated that spending on IT cloud services will grow nearly threefold, from $16.2 billion in 2008 to $42 billion in 2012.