Roundup: Internap, C7 Data Centers, Oracle

Here’s a roundup of some of this week’s headlines from the data center and hosting industry:

Internap launches cloud compute service.  Internap (INAP) announced a new on-demand cloud compute service that delivers high-performance enterprise computing capacity. Based on the OpenStack cloud platform Internap's pay-as-you-go service provides on-demand provisioning and scaling of computing capacity to meet changing demands for web resources and applications. “The introduction of Internap’s new cloud compute service allows us to provide a complete range of intelligent IT Infrastructure solutions that effortlessly meet these demands – from cloud capacity and storage to managed hosting, colocation and a CDN – all delivered with unparalleled performance and availability to ensure mission-critical data arrives at the speed of business," said Paul Carmody, senior vice president of product management and business development at Internap. Internap will be at Interop Las Vegas and the cloud compute service is expected in the third quarter 2011.

C7 selected by Real Property Insight. C7 Data Centers announced today that Real Property Insight (RPI) has signed an agreement to become its newest data center client. Using C7’s data center services, RPI will host corporate applications and provide customers with access to the most current property and financial information available. "We were particularly impressed with the value proposition offered by C7—outstanding service and professionalism at a reasonable price,” said Kim Thompson, President, Real Property Insight. “We were also impressed by the relationship between the data center manager and the data center support team. There is a willingness to work with us and address our unique needs.”  C7 also recently announced the addition of Level 3 Communications to its portfolio of Tier 1 carriers.

Oracle says data centers are lagging.  Oracle released research Wednesday that reveals many businesses are lagging behind in their use of innovative technology in data centers, which means they are unable to meet industry demands and respond to change quickly. The Oracle Next Generation Data Centre Index showed organizations scoring an average of 5.28 on a scale of 0 to 10, with 10 being the most sophisticated data center strategy possible.  Companies are measured for flexibility, sustainability and supportability. The research showed that more than 50 percent of respondents stated that they will need a new data center within the next two years and approximately 1 in 14 (7 percent) already need a new data center.  “While there are clear leaders, innovators and evidence of an understanding of technology benefits, overall organizations are still missing tricks and failing to return proper business value from their IT,” said Dermot O’Kelly, Senior Vice President, EMEA Hardware Sales, Oracle. “Most enterprises have an IT architecture that is hugely complex, expensive to manage and difficult and costly to scale, all of which can prevent IT from returning value to the business. Without change, many organizations will continue to lack the agility to enable them to respond quickly to business need. Our research shows that there is still much work to be done.”  A fact sheet with additional data can be downloaded here.