Logicworks is launching a public cloud offering that can be linked to its existing managed hosting service.
Like other infrastructure-as-a-service offerings from companies like Amazon, anyone will be able to sign up to use the infiniCloud compute services and pay for only what they use.
But Logicworks has what it hopes will be an edge over competitors, for its ability to tie its traditional managed hosting offering with the public cloud services.
That capability is something Logicworks’ customers, who include media and financial companies, have asked for, said Kenneth Ziegler, president and chief operating officer of Logicworks. For instance, gossip news sites Radar Online and the National Enquirer use Logicworks’ managed hosting services. “When Mel Gibson says something crazy or Charlie Sheen rips up a hotel room, traffic on those sites can go from 60 million page views to 100 million,” he said. “Now the client can just spill over into this shared dynamic compute environment.”
While companies may find a shared public cloud well-suited to handling such traffic spikes, they may not want to run all of their business in the public cloud. Content websites may use applications like Drupal or Joomla to manage their content. Those applications are so critical to maintaining their services that the companies often want them hosted on dedicated systems like Logicworks’ managed hosting service, Ziegler said. With Logicworks, those companies can keep such critical applications on the managed servers but offload read-only traffic on the public infiniCloud.
While some cloud providers use the simplest, most low-end hardware, Logicworks says it built infiniCloud with reliable servers based on hardware including Xeon Westmere processors, 40G bps storage networking and the option for SATA or 15k SAS RAID 10 disk arrays.
Logicworks also hopes to attract customers with its support services. InfiniCloud customers can use application monitoring, firewall security, intrusion detection, load balancing and disaster recovery from Logicworks.
Some public cloud services, like those from Amazon, offer little in the way of support services, but others, typically those that cater to industry verticals, do offer such value added services.
Pricing for infiniCloud is designed to be competitive with that of Amazon, Ziegler said. The service is available now in beta, with a full release scheduled for January.