Concentric Looks to the Clouds

• By Justin Lee, November 12, 2008

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(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Hindered by limited operating budgets and resources, many small and medium-sized businesses have made the move to hosted IT solutions in the past couple years.

These companies have come to accept the old argument that hosted services provide them with fault-tolerance, availability, scalability and security capabilities without the IT expertise or costs that are involved in deploying a traditional data center infrastructure.

And while many SMBs have still not switched to hosted services, research shows that many of these companies are at the very least considering it. A recent Microsoft survey revealed that 65 percent of small businesses would consider buying IT services on a subscription basis.

Addressing this demand, XO Communications unit Concentric Hosting (www.concentric.com) launched its Managed Server service this week, a hosted service providing on-demand processing power, bandwidth and storage capacity, in a cloud computing environment.

Concentric says the cloud-based offering increases reliability and availability.

"When we realized that when we combine these cloud-based offerings with XO's nationwide network, with all the bandwidth, we can have all this power in the cloud," says Bill Uyeki, senior product line manager at Concentric. "It certainly benefits the people who already have XO bandwidth or connectivity services, but you don't have to have them to benefit from this.

According to Uyeki, the service has been in development for "a little less than a year, leveraging a lot of things from [XO's] existing clustered platform."

Managed Server offers full administrator control for both Windows and Linux operating systems, which are accessed using Remote Desktop and Secure Shell, respectively. It can also be accessed with third party tools, including VPNs for secure connections.

The solution, he says, is also ideal for multi-server configurations as well as variable loads where customers may be required to upgrade servers. For Concentric, the malleability of a customer solution hosted in the cloud means added opportunity for new services.

"Now all of your computing power and data is in the cloud and you're not tied to a single box or a single data center," says Uyeki, "We're really looking at this offering as an enabler. There will be lots of other products to follow."

The Managed Server product delivers dynamic real-time resource allocation with close to no downtime, fast failover, network and hardware redundancies with daily backups, both network and OS-based firewalls, and a centralized console for delivering status and management of all servers.

"A lot of the [competitor] offerings are available on a metered basis only," says Uyeki. "I think we provide a very predictable cost model, while letting [customers] know that should they exceed the service level or the package that they thought they needed they'll have the flexibility to grow, but it's not going to be a complete blank check that they write."

The Managed Server is priced from $195 a month, and includes complete maintenance of hardware, operating systems, pre-installed applications, and 24-hour phone-based technical support.

Concentric, of course, is just one of a long list of providers trotting out cloud-based hosted offerings into a market excited about the cloud computing idea. But that list includes heavyweights such as Microsoft, Google and Amazon. Uyeki says Concentric's connection to a major carrier gives it a unique edge.

"There are some big players in this space, but I don't think there are many that have the capability that [Concentric] has, combining that with XO's network reach," says Uyeki. "I know Verizon has got something, but I don't think their target is at all who [Concentric] is going after, which is anywhere from small medium-sized businesses to small enterprises. Those are people that need it more because they don't have a lot of resources and they're the ones with the beige servers in their closets."

Tags:  new products  IT services  Software as a service  cloud computing  Concentric  XO Communications  storage 

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