This Week In The Cloud: Savvis Buys Ciber, AppFog Teams With Rackspace

Action Up And Down The Cloud Stack

The various technologies used to enable hosting services in the cloud, whether its infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS) or software-as-a-service (SaaS), are attracting a multitude of vendors getting in on the action.

Read on and check out who is stepping up this week in the cloud.

Savvis Buys Outsourcing Business Of Ciber

Savvis, a cloud infrastructure and hosted IT solutions provider, said it will purchase the IT outsourcing business of global IT consulting company Ciber for $7 million, plus future payments based on earnings through this year.

The assets purchased include infrastructure, client and vendor relationships, technology, and facilities in several countries. Savvis will also hire about 750 workers who currently support Ciber’s global outsourcing business.

Savvis, a division of telecommunications company CenturyLink, plans to provide outsourcing customers with support, including cloud services.

ePlus Unveils Cloud Assessment Service

EPlus, an integrator of private and hybrid clouds, unveiled eCloud Readiness Consultation, an assessment service to evaluate cloud execution, on-going managed services and security monitoring.

The eCloud Readiness Consultation offers an analysis of a customer's enterprise computing environment to evaluate its cloud potential for its existing IT architecture, business drivers and individual needs.

The eCloud Readiness Consultation is part of the ePlus eCloud enterprise platform that provides infrastructure components from vendors including FlexPod, HP CloudSystem and Vblock. It offers managed services, automation and management tools, security services, and support.

PaaS Provider AppFog Partners With Rackspace

AppFog, which offers a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) for cloud-based application deployment and management, said it is teaming with cloud provider Rackspace to allow its customers to deploy applications to Rackspace Cloud infrastructure. AppFog’s service will be available through the Rackspace Cloud Tools Marketplace.

AppFog will offer customers the ability to develop and deploy apps to the open Rackspace Cloud, as well as enable them to redeploy applications to Rackspace that are currently using infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offered by different providers.

In addition to Rackspace, cloud infrastructure providers with which AppFog offers deployment options include Amazon Web Services, Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft Azure.

Silver Springs Networks Rolls Out Cloud Services

Silver Spring Networks, a Redwood City, Calif.-based networking platform and solutions provider for smart energy networks, announced SilverLink cloud services for the energy industry. The services let users access real-time performance analytics, monitoring and alerts for their smart grid network and applications operations.

SilverLink’s cloud services include SilverLink Console, which provides real-time application and field network monitoring, alerts and performance data through a dashboard, and SilverLink Operations Center, which delivers real-time operations data so that customers can integrate Silver Spring alerts, configuration and performance information into their event management systems.

EPAM Selects Nimbula As Cloud Provider

EPAM Systems, a software engineering and IT consultancy, said it has implemented Nimbula Director cloud operating system to deliver its cloud-based services to worldwide customers.

EPAM Systems, with more than 7,300 IT professionals, said it selected Nimbula Director to create a geographically distributed community cloud to help it deliver services and project and infrastructure management.

EPAM said it tapped Nimbula Director as its cloud provider because it was easier to deploy, less costly and easier to manage.

The company said it will be able to take advantage of Nimbula features such as secure and scalable computing and storage capacity; high-performance and resiliency; elasticity and on-demand availability; federation with other clouds; and integration with EPAM's management suite.

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