“The experience that we’ve had with Jim serving as interim CEO over the past two months has led the board to conclude that we already have the ideal candidate in the chief executive role,” said Dr. James P. Pellow, chairman of the board’s corporate governance committee. “The same confidence in Jim that caused us to put him in the leadership position during the management transition has led us to ask him to take on the role on a regular, full-time basis, and we are very pleased that he has accepted. Jim has demonstrated a strong ability to work with the management team and has already exhibited the strategic vision and tactical sense required to effectively implement Savvis’ plans for the future and to aid in the company’s ability to grow and expand.”

“I’m excited about this new chapter in my career and pleased with the confidence the board of directors has shown in my ability to lead Savvis,” said Jim Ousley, chief executive officer. “As Savvis’ new CEO, I’m looking forward to building on our strong foundation and providing increased value to our customers, employees and shareholders.”

Ousley had served as non-executive chairman of Savvis since May 2006 and as a director since April 2002. In 2001, he was a founder of Vytek Wireless Corporation and was president, chief executive officer and a director until 2004. In addition, Ousley previously served as CEO and president of Syntegra Inc. and Control Data Systems.

Savvis also announced that it will expand its Savvis Symphony Open cloud infrastructure services to its Singapore data center later this month.

Many cloud computing providers are private, and don’t disclose their revenue. Most of the leading publicly-held companies see cloud computing as a promising source of future growth, though perhaps not a large percentage of current revenue. And there’s some significant differences between companies providing software as a service (SaaS) and those offering infrastructure as a service (IaaS). Here’s a look at some of the public companies and their cloud computing revenues:

SERVICE PROVIDERS

Salesforce.com
In February 2009, chairman and CEO Marc Benioff boasted that Salesforce.com (CRM) was the “first billion-dollar cloud computing company,” when the company announced 2009 year-end revenue of $1.077 billion, a 44 percent increase from 2008. All eyes will be on Salesforce.com on Feb. 24 to see if the SaaS provider will maintain its $1 billion revenue status when it reports its fiscal year end results.

“At a time when capital is precious, big-ticket software purchases just don’t make sense,” said Benioff at the time.

Subscription and support, which accounts for around 92% of Salesforce.com’s total revenue was $984.5 million in fiscal year 09, with professional services contributing $92.2 million. Gross profit was $856.3 million, compared to $577.1 million for 2008, and $378.2 million in 2007. Net paying customers rose 14,400 during fiscal 2009 at 55,400. In November, the company raised its full year revenue guidance to $1.294 billion. (SaaS)

Amazon Web Services
Online retailing behemoth Amazon (AMZN) has been touting cloud computing since August 2006. Despite the ongoing publicity and a sizable ecosystem of third-party management and monitoring services around Amazon Web Services, cloud computing represents a small portion of Amazon’s financials. On its balance sheet, Amazon includes AWS under “Other,” which represented just 3 percent ($735 million) of Amazon’s $24.5 billion total revenue in 2009. “Other” also represented 3 percent of Amazon’s 2008 financials in which it reported total revenue of $19.2 billion. Until Amazon provides more detailed reporting on AWS revenues, the best guesstimate of its annual cloud revenues is “less than $735 million.” (IaaS)

Rackspace Hosting
Rackspace (RAX) increased its cloud revenue 124.8% for its fiscal 2009 to $56.4 million, compared to $25.1 million for 2008. Cloud revenue contributed about 8% of its total net revenue for the year ($629.0 million). Rackspace finished the year with 71,621 cloud customers, compared to 34,820 cloud users in 2008. The 2009 customer count includes SaaS customers for Rackspace’s Jungle Disk online backup offering using Rackspace storage. Jungle Disk customers using third-party storage are excluded. Rackspace acquired Jungle Disk in October 2008, the same month in which it announced its cloud business. (IaaS, SaaS)

Savvis
Cloud computing revenue contributed $7.4 million to Savvis’ full-year 2009 revenue, a 93% increase from 2008 for the colocation and managed hosting provider. However, that’s less than 1 percent of Savvis’ total revenue of $874.4 million, which increased 2 percent from 2008. Hosting remained the biggest part of Savvis’ business, raking in a total revenue of $607.3 million in 2009, an 8 percent increase from 2008. During the company’s year-end financials announcement,  CFO Greg Freiberg said Savvis (SVVS) experienced churn in its flagship colocation business late in Q4. Savvis announced its first foray into cloud computing in February 2009. (IaaS, PaaS)

Terremark Worldwide
This Miami-based managed hosting and colocation specialist increased its annualized cloud computing run rate to $17.2 million during the third quarter, a 30% increase from the previous quarter. Back in November, Terremark (TMRK) attributed the majority of its then annual run rate of $13.2 million to customers in the federal government. At that time, Terremark said it had booked $3 million in additional business from existing customers and expanded into additional space at its campus in Santa Clara, Calif. Terremark launched its Enterprise Cloud in June 2008. (IaaS)

NetSuite (N), which provides on-demand CRM and ERP applications through a Software as a Service model, reported revenue of $166 million in 2009, an increase of 9 percent from a year earlier. The company reported a net loss of $6.5 million for the fourth quarter and $23.3 million for the year. “In a year that saw many of our ERP competitors’ sales decline, NetSuite achieved record financial results,” said Zach Nelson, CEO of NetSuite. (SaaS)

HARDWARE VENDORS

3PAR
A leading global provider of utility storage, 3PAR (PAR) reported a 4 percent increase in its fiscal third quarter revenue ending Dec. 31 to $50.1 million. This represented a 9 percent uptick to its revenue in the prior quarter, which ended Sept. 30. The company enables customers to deliver software and hardware as a service through server and storage virtualization.

Cisco Systems
As well as provide networking infrastructure equipment to service providers to build out cloud platforms, Cisco (CSCO) is also a SaaS provider through its $3.2 billion acquisition of WebEx in March 2007, and its $215 million purchase of PostPath in August 2008. The acquisitions are part of Cisco’s Advanced Technologies division, which also houses cable set-top box maker Scientific Atlanta and Cisco’s Linksys home networking unit.

For Cisco’s fiscal second quarter results for 2010, Advanced Technology contributed 24.3 percent ($2.4 billion) of the company’s total net sales of $9.8 billion. That share of the pie was slightly down from the 25.2 percent revenue share that Advanced Technology contributed in Q110. In comparision, Cisco’s largest revenue-generating division in Q210 was Switches, which accounted for 34.9 percent ($3.4 billion) of revenue.

Oracle
The headlines that appeared after Oracle (ORCL) won European regulatory go-ahead to swallow Sun read as though Oracle wants nothing to do with cloud computing. While Oracle has stated that it does not plan to be in the rent-by-minute computer business, thus leaving Sun Cloud in the cold, Oracle is a SaaS provider. Among its products include Oracle CRM On Demand, and Oracle Beehive On Demand, a set of collaboration services. It also provides the Oracle Platform for SaaS, which includes the Oracle Database, Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle Enterprise Manager, and Oracle VM, all aimed at ISVs to build SaaS and cloud-based applications.

In terms of financials, Oracle’s On Demand portfolio stayed more or less level to contribute $188 million in revenue for its Q210, compared to $189 million in Q209. For its 2009 year end, On Demand contributed $779 million (a 12 percent increase from 2008) to Oracle’s total revenue of $23.3 billion.

This graphic from the Savvis earning release shows the revenue-to-floor space impact of its managed hosting offering (left), as well a a shift in its colo customer base (at right).

Savvis (SVVS) is in building mode, and may be going shopping as well. The managed hosting provider plans to build additional data center space in the northern Virginia and London markets, in addition to the expansion announced today in Chicago. The company estimates that it will spend about $55 million on its current data center projects, which also includes an expansion in Weehwaken, New Jersey.

Savvis also detailed improving results in its cloud computing operation, and predicted further growth ahead as companies shift to a pay-as-you-go model..

Savvis executives said the company is also “selectively exploring expansion opportunities” that would increase the company’s geographic data center footprint or service offerings. Interim CEO Jim Ousley said the company sees good growth prospects in Europe and Asia. Savvis said it is contemplating data center expansions in Hong Kong and Sydney, but has not yet included that in its capital expenditures as yet. 

Savvis reported a net loss for the fourth quarter of $5.4 million (10 cents a share) on revenue of $219.8 million. Analysts were expecting a loss of 17 cents a share, on revenue of $215.4 million, according to Thomson Reuters. Savvis’ revenue was boosted by an early termination fee of $2.2 million from a managed hosting customer.

The company is planning to add 6,000 square feet of space to its DC4 data center in Sterling, Virginia, which currently houses about 30,000 square feet of raised floor. Savvis’ largest expansion will be in Slough, England, where it will build out an additional floor in an existing facility, adding 22,000 square feet of space in the greater London market.

“This expansion is very much demand-driven,” said Bill Fathers, the global head of sales and marketing for Savvis. ”There’s a definitely an improvement in demand, especially from the financial sector.”

Savvis also outlined progress on its suite of cloud computing products, which will now be combined under the Savvis Symphony brand. Savvis reported cloud computing revenue of $7.4 million for 2009, up 93 percent year-over-year, and fourth quarter revenue of $2.5 million. A third of the companies’ cloud deals involve new customers, according to CTO Bryan Doerr.   

Savvis said the growth of its cloud computing business was helping stabilize revenue in its network services business, where revenues had been trending lower. “We do see a high pull-through rate,” said Fathers. “When we sell cloud hosting, they usually want network services as well.”

The expansion will support growing demand from financial customers interested in hosting their trading applications in close proximity to major derivatives markets based in Chicago. Savvis ‘ facility at 350 East Cermak will now encompass approximately 30,000 square feet of raised floor and provide access to key trading venues, including the CME Group. It will also serve as one of the global delivery points for the Thomson Reuters Hosting Solution announced last year, which is being offered in six Savvis data centers around the globe.

“Chicago is an important financial center, and we are pleased to meet existing demand and expand our proximity hosting and IT infrastructure services on East Cermak,” said Varghese Thomas, global head of financial services for Savvis. “The financial services industry is increasingly moving toward converged solutions featuring high-availability application hosting and world-class network access for the leading global trading venues and liquidity pools across all asset classes.”

Savvis currently operates 28 data centers globally, with more than 1.4 million square feet of high-quality, raised floor space, which is designed to support enterprise IT operations.

In a morning conference call, Ousley said Koen’s departure was a “joint decision” by Koen and the board of directors. ”We’ve been talking for some time,” said Ousley. “We came to a mutual agreement that it was time for Phil to look for other opportunities. … The first of the year is always a good time to make these transitions.” 

Savvis (SVVS) also affirmed its 2009 guidance, apparently in a sign to investors that Koen’s sudden departure is not linked to any material change in the company’s performance. The current guidance calls for adjusted EBITDA of $215 to $220 million, and adjusted free cash flow of $40 to $50 million.

Ousley cited the company’s successes, and said the fourth quarter saw thew best bookings in 18 months. He also noted the progress under Koen in shifting the company’s colocation base toward enterprise customers, the growth of its proximity hosting business for financial traders,  and the company’s entrance into the cloud computing market.

But he also said Savvis hopes to launch a ”more aggressive pursuit of expanding our growth,” and said the company would take a “fresh look” at its sales and marketing efforts.

“I joined Savvis in 2006, with the objective to build a better company and to develop a world class team dedicated to meeting and exceeding our customers’ diverse requirements for IT infrastructure services,” said Koen. “In consultation with our board of directors – and knowing we have a very strong leadership team in place – this is an excellent time for me to move on to a new opportunity and to watch Savvis continue to grow and excel.”

“The board is grateful to Phil for his service to the company, particularly during these challenging economic times,” said Jim Ousley, interim CEO of Savvis. “Phil built a solid foundation for Savvis, as he transformed it into an IT infrastructure services company with a dedicated focus on cloud computing. He helped put in place a strong, experienced and stable management team and a strategic vision for the future, which we plan to expand on in 2010.”

Ousley founded Vytek Wireless Corporation in 2001 and was president, chief executive officer and a director until 2004. In addition, Ousley previously served as CEO and president of Syntegra Inc. (USA) and as president and CEO of Control Data Systems.

• Private clouds from Cisco and Savvis.  Savvis (SVVS) and Cisco (CSCO) announced an expanded relationship Monday that will focus on the development of private clouds for the enterprise. Formerly dubbed Project Spirit, the Savvis Symphony private cloud platform will integrate the Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS). This new platform will power the industry’s first enterprise-class Virtual Private Data Center (VPDC) with multi-tiered security and quality of service capabilities.  Savvis learned the benefits of the Cisco UCS solution early as they worked with Cisco to develop a reference architecture that will enable enterprise customers to take advantage of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) benefits available in Savvis Symphony.
• Axxana Enterprise Data Recorder to be available through EMC Select. Data protection startup Axxana announced that its Phoenix System RP Enterprise Data Recorder will be available in January 2010 through EMC Select. The Phoenix System RP is a black box solution that was developed in cooperation with EMC’s RecoverPoint and delivers asynchronous data protection over any distance. ”Axxana’s Phoenix System will allow customers using RecoverPoint and CLARiiON networked storage to utilize replication over any distance, while maintaining the ability to recover data without data loss,” said Matt Mainstruck, manager of EMC SelectLast month Axxana secured $9 million in series B funding, led by Israel based Carmel Ventures.
• Enomaly launches cloud service provider edition. Cloud computing provider Enomaly announced the launch of 10 new global cloud computing service providers who have standardized and are powered by Enomaly’s Elastic Computing Platform (ECP), Service Provider Edition.  Called a “cloud in a box” solution for service providers, the ECP service provider edition is designed for carriers and hosting providers looking to build a line of business offering Infrastructure-on-Demand or Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) to customers.  The platform delivers a self-service dashboard and web-based API to manage virtual servers in whatever quantity needed.  Platform features include a multi-tenant, carrier class cloud platform with support for KVM, Xen and VMware hypervisors, detailed resource metering and accounting, tiered classes of service, a hard quota system and easy integration with back-office provisioning and billing systems.
• ColoHouse completes SAS70 audit. Miami data center and colocation provider announced completion of a SAS70 audit.  The audit focused on control environment, risk assessment, monitoring, control activities and information and communication systems. ”Obtaining our SAS 70 certification allows ColoHouse customers to rest easy knowing that we are following through on our commitment to provide the very best in Miami Data Center and Miami Colocation services, with a 3rd party validation to ensure our customers ultra secure access with a 100% uptime guarantee,” said Chief Operating Officer Alan P. Sabourin.

European data centre revenue set to double
A report published by Tariff Consultancy Ltd notes that European data centre revenue is “set to more than double over the five year period from 2010 to 2015, with net raised floor space to increase by 70%, driven primarily by price increases.” The report gives pricing and forecasts for 19 of the EU25 countries and analyzes pricing of a standard 19″ rack, a small cage space and a 50 KVA suite of space for each of the countries.  It also dives into trends impacting data centres such as raised floor capacity in markets, revenue per square meter forecasts, electricity pricing, pricing per rack and cage, and the most expensive data centre countries.

Savvis received EuroFIT award
Financial technology publication Waters published their innagural EuroFIT awards earlier in the month, to recognize Europe’s hottest financial IT products and services.  In the category of Best Datacenter Hosting Provider, Savvis (SVVS) took the award as a company capitalizing on the rising demand for data center services.  Equinix was listed as an honorable mention in the category. A little over a year ago Savvis marked the completion of a global data center expansion by opening a 37,500 square foot facility on the outskirts of London in Slough. The award also noted that Savvis services seven of the top ten Fortune 500 financial services and banking firms. Amazon (AMZN) won the Best Cloud Provider award as an “overwhelming leader in the field.”

The Bunker selected by Cimar
The Bunker announced that it was selected by Cimar (UK) Limited to provide managed ultra secure hosting of its radiology image sharing web service. The Bunker delivered a scalable platform to Cimar built on Microsoft technology.  Howard Jenkinson, managing director of Cimar said “absolute information security is a pre-requisite for any digital service carrying sensitive patient information.”  Click here for a video of ‘The Bunker’ and details of a July 2009 130,000 square foot expansion.

Tata Communications London outage
Several reports came in late last week regarding an outage experienced at Tata Communications’ London data center.  Apparently a power cut followed by generator and UPS failures caused the two hour outage Thursday evening in the Stratford facility.  Grid power was restored around 7:30pm that day as servers came back online.  Colocation provider C4L posted a detailed timeline of the Stratford Tata outage. The Register also reported on the outage. They mention that a Tata spokeswoman was still looking into what caused the outage and the subsequent failure of backup power.

Node4 plans fourth data center
Data centre and communications specialists Node4 announced plans for their next data centre site, to be located in Northampton. Plans are being finalized for the facility and customers are expected to move in by the end of 2010.  The DC4 data centre will house up to 600 racks and will feature N+1 or N+N UPS, generators and climate controls. The DC3 facility in Wakefield opened in July 2009.

Investment Forum for Data Centres
Broad Group will host the 3rd annual International Finance and Investment forum for data centres December 3rd in King’s Place, London. In this forum financiers, investors, private equity firms and others will come together to discuss data centre geographic location choices, data storage infrastructure investment and other critical issues, as well as generate new ideas and opportunities for future development.

• Savvis Selected by BATS Global Markets.  Savvis announced Monday that BATS Global Markets is expanding its hosting space in Savvis’ Weehawken data center to support business growth and its second U.S. equities exchange (BYX).  Expansion in the Savvis Docklands data center in London will also take place to support the BATS Europe multilateral trading facility.  BATS is a global financial markets technology company in Kansas City, Missouri and has been a Savvis customer since they were founded in 2005.  Savvis announced major expansion to the NJ2 data center in Weekhawken, New Jersey in July 2009, citing strong customer demand for proximity hosting and low latency connectivity to major financial exchanges.
• Raritan Introduces Intelligent Inline-meter Rack PDUs. Raritan introduced the new Dominion PX-3000 series Monday to its portfolio of intelligent rack power distribution and energy management products.  The new series of power meters are designed to be used in conjunction with dumb rack PDUs (Power Distribution Units) to provide strip-level metering and environmental monitoring.  The Dominion PX-3000 gathers a variety of power and environmental statistics and this real-time information can been seen with a local display or from a remote graphical user interface via a web browser.

• NaviSite Selected by Farmer Mac for DR. Navisite announced Monday that it has been selected by the Federal Agricultural Mortgage Corporation (commonly known as Farmer Mac) as its Disaster Recovery solution.  Selecting NaviSite addressed scalability and SAS-70 audit requirements as well as Sarbanes-Oxley for Farmer Mac.  NaviSite chief revenue officer R. Brooks Borcherding said “Our disaster recovery solutions address the complete disaster recovery life cycle – from initial planning and implementation to ongoing management, and, if necessary, solution support for disaster scenarios.”
• Active Power Reports 3rd quarter 2009 Results.  Critical power systems company Active Power (ACPW) announced the results for its third quarter ending September 30, 2009.  Revenue for the quarter increased 29% to $8.5 million from the previous quarter and decreased 31% from $12.4 million in the same period last year.  More than $15 million in bookings since July 2009 were recorded, including additional orders for its PowerHouse container solution. PowerHouse revenues represented approximately 22% of revenue for the third quarter.  Active Power expects 4th quarter 2009 revenue to be between $12 and $15 million; above analysts’ estimates.  Active Power’s Martin Olsen recently provided a tour of the PowerHouse at the HP Technology Forum in Las Vegas.

The global network will operate from Savvis data centers in New York, Chicago, London, Frankfurt, Tokyo, and Singapore and offer customers access to low latency market data, analytics and data management platform. “This launch is part of a significant investment to support customers as they respond to the rapidly evolving market environment,” said Jon Robson, the President, Enterprise for Thomson Reuters. “This is a natural step that will enable our clients to gain ubiquitous connectivity and access to industry leading, high performance, managed solutions for evolving sell-side and buy-side business needs.”

Here’s the interesting wrinkle: Savvis doesn’t currently have a data center in Frankfurt, a key European financial hub. Savvis says it is currently “evaluating options” for operations in Frankfurt. The company works closely with Digital Realty Trust, from whom it leases 1.7 million square feet of space in 17 sites. But Digital Realty doesn’t currently own properties in Frankfurt.

“The new data center will give our customers faster results and greater peace of mind,” said Darryl Lemecha, Vertafore’s CIO. “Savvis’ facility allows us to better accommodate the rapid growth of our SaaS offerings, and our customers will benefit both from Savvis’ dedication to data center infrastructure and from continued product innovation from Vertafore. This move will allow us to focus on what we do best: creating, delivering and supporting our suite of industry-leading products.”

“Savvis’ experience in providing a full range of hosting and SaaS services makes us uniquely qualified to support Vertafore as its needs grow and change,” said Bryan Doerr, chief technology officer, Savvis. “We are excited to support such a fast-growing company and help it benefit from new services that will help transform its business.”

The move, which should be completed by May 2010, will be accomplished using remote data replication and duplicate hardware to avoid the need for any disruption to service during the transition. Savvis operates 28 data centers globally, encompassing more than 1.4 million square feet of raised floor space designed to support enterprise IT operations.