Savvis, which telecommunications company CenturyLink bought last year for $2.5 billion, today announced the beta launch of Savvisdirect, aimed at mid-market enterprises as a public cloud service that includes an app marketplace. It's meant to complement enterprise-grade cloud and managed service offerings from Savvis, and it will operate as a new business unit within the company. Whereas Savvis is aimed at enterprises because of its focus on virtual private clouds and managed services, Savvisdirect is meant to provide easy on-board, swipe of the credit card access to public cloud resources.
To start, Savvisdirect's marketplace will include applications from a variety of vendors, including Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint and security programs from Symantec and McAfee, for example. "It's critical to have fluid, frictionless click-to-buy cloud services," says Andrew Higginbotham, president, Savvisdirect, noting that the Savvisdirect offering is aimed at IT administrators, developers and business users who want to rapidly onboard cloud-resources and commonly used enterprise applications, but have them hosted in a public cloud-like environment.
In addition to the app store, Savvis will also have virtual servers that can be rented by the hour, month or annually that can be used as a development platform for building new or customized applications, creating a platform as a service layer on top of the traditional Infrastructure-as-a-Service offering from Savvis.
Savvisdirect is announced as a public beta today and is expected to be rolled out in general availability in the fourth quarter of this year.
