Unisys, Rackspace Launch Private Cloud Services

Unisys and Rackspace rolled out private cloud offerings that combine cloud computing efficiencies, cost savings, and scalability, with the convenience and security of managed hosting services at the Gartner Data Center Conference at Las Vegas this week.

The integration differently

Rackspace approached the integration differently, as its Cloud Connect service is a private network that connects the customer's applications and systems running on the company's public cloud with the systems running on its managed hosting service. Cloud Connect in essence expands the managed hosting service by letting clients access cloud resources seamlessly, Rackspace said.

Organizations look at cloud computing for the "cost-efficiency" and flexibility of getting more IT resources, now prefer a private cloud for the "enhanced security and control," said Sam Gross, vice-president of global IT outsourcing at Unisys.

The Unisys private cloud

On the Unisys private cloud, computing, storage, network and middleware resources are dedicated to each customer, however customers can use automation tools to add virtual and physical hosts on-demand to their private cloud, according to the company.

While clients have to pay for the whole server when requesting additional computing power, just as CPU and memory, storage is treated differently, said Bender. Unisys will provide additional storage in slices on-demand and charge only for that storage segment, he said.

The scalability

Rackspace's Cloud Connect service combines the "scalability and cost benefits of Rackspace Cloud" with the "security and configurability" of a dedicated managed host over a private network, according to the company.

As a "connection between traditional hosting and cloud," Cloud Connect is a high-speed, low latency network that allows clients to access both services, said John Endgates, CTO of Rackspace, to eWEEK. A customer may currently have a dedicated hosting service with databases, Web server, and a storage area network, he said. Earlier, clients couldn't take advantage of the Rackspace cloud unless they moved everything to the cloud, which might not be an option because of compliance or security issues, he said.

The Web server

If they moved just the Web server, they were forced to move the data between the database in the dedicated server environment to the Web server in the cloud over the public Internet, which was slow, generated expensive bandwidth costs and was "potentially insecure," according to Endgates. Cloud Connect allows the environments to "blend at the same time seamlessly," he said.