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Savvis Previews Next-Gen Cloud Offering
September 1st, 2009 : Rich Miller
Cloud computing for the enterprise is becoming more stratified. Savvis Inc. sees the breadth of approaches to the cloud as an opportunity, and is crafting its new infrastructure as a service (IaaS) offering with three tiers of pricing and features - all powered by the latest technology from Cisco and VMware.The new platform, known as “Project Spirit,” is being announced today at VMworld 2009 in San Francisco. Savvis will launch a beta in the fourth quarter of this year, with general availability in 2010. The service is being billed as a”virtual private data center” that is a leap forward from Savvis’ initial foray into the cloud in February.
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The new platform will be powered by Cisco’s Nexxus 5000 and 7000 switches and use a unified network fabric running over Fiber Channel over Ethernet (FCoE). Savvis, which was an early adopter of Cisco’s Nexxus line, will also use VMware’s vSphere hypervisor and Cisco Nexxus 1000 virtual switches.Although high-end hardware and software will power Project Spirit, Savvis is offering three levels of plans, ranging from a top tier for the most stringent enterprise requirements to a bottom tier with pricing and features optimized for testing and development projects - the types of services currently being run on Amazon Web Services. The company is describing the service levels as being defined by quality-of-service (QoS).
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Roundup: Energy-Aware Routing, Savvis, XO, Juniper
August 18th, 2009 : John RathHere’s a roundup of some of some of this week’s headlines from the data center and hosting industry:
- Energy-Aware Internet Routing. An energy reduction of as much as 40% could be seen by rerouting data to locations where electricity prices are lowest on a particular day. This was according to a study from MIT, Carnegie Mellon University, and Akamai. MIT PhD student Asfandyar Qureshi first outlined the idea of a smart routing algorithm in October 2008 and he then approached researchers at Akamai to obtain the real-world routing data needed to test the idea. ”The researchers first analyzed 39 months of electricity price data collected for 29 major US cities. The team then devised a routing scheme to take advantage of daily and hourly fluctuations in electricity costs across the country”. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory staff scientist Jonathan Koomey said “the trick is to be able to control these systems well enough to create controls that are cheap enough to be able to take advantage of the arbitrage opportunity available from different electricity prices, without effecting reliability or latency.” The research paper, to be presented at SIGCOMM 2009 can be found here.
- Tradebeam selects Savvis to support IT infrastructure. Savvis announced Monday an agreement to provide hosting services to TradeBeam, a software-as-a-service provider for global trade management (GTM). TradeBeam’s solutions facilitate billions of dollars of global trade. TradeBeam Vice President of IT said “Savvis is an industry leader offering a global footprint of high performance SAS 70 certified data centers integrated with one of the world’s largest Tier 1 networks”.
- XO Communications embarks on third nationwide network capacity upgrade. The XO inter-city transport network will more than double in capacity with the latest upgrade, to be completed later this year. XO Communications again chose Infinera products to deploy the ultra-long-haul network, this time using Infinera’s ILS2 line and delivering 160 wavelengths on a single fiber. The 1.6 Terabits/second optical capacity will service carriers, service providers and enterprise customers as well as XO’s Carrier Services network transport offerings. The current Infinera DTN system is the only DWDM system with 160 wavelengths in the C-band and is scalable to 8 Tb/s in the future.
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Major Expansion for Savvis’ NJ Trading Hub
July 29th, 2009 : Rich MillerSavvis, Inc. (SVVS) announced plans for a significant expansion to its Savvis NJ2 data center in Weehawken, N.J., citing growing customer demand for proximity hosting and low latency connectivity to major financial exchanges. Savvis has leased space adjacent to Savvis NJ2 that will add approximately 105,000 square feet of raised floor for the deployment of high-performance hosting for the financial services industry. Savvis said the expanded facility “creates a powerful financial data center complex” in its most active market.
“The demand in the marketplace for financial IT infrastructure continues to grow as companies outsource to trusted providers,” said Phil Koen, Chief Executive Officer of Savvis. “Today’s news creates a strong financial data center complex with two of our state-of-the-art facilities making Savvis the destination of choice for financial services companies.”
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Savvis Extends Deal with Thomson Reuters
May 21st, 2009 : Rich MillerSavvis Communications (SVVS) will continue to provide managed hosting and network services for Thomson Reuters, which has signed a three-year extension of its master services agreement, the companies announced today. Savvis’ relationship with Reuters has been of interest to securities analysts following the media company’s acquisition last year by Thomson.
At the time of the merger, Reuters was a $50 million contract for Savvis. Thomson Reuters announced a one-year extension with Savvis in June 2008, and today’s renewal adds another three years.
“Thomson Reuters has a longstanding relationship with Savvis and this newly extended agreement allows us to continue to create exciting new opportunities for customers worldwide,” said Bill Fathers, Savvis Senior Vice President, and Managing Director U.S. “As an important provider of IT infrastructure to Thomson Reuters across three continents, we are committed to delivering best-in-class solutions to its growing customer base.”
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Savvis Shares Soar on Improved Earnings
April 30th, 2009 : Rich Miller
Source: Savvis Inc.
Shares of Savvis Inc. (SVVS) were sharply higher Wednesday after the managed hosting specialist raised its financial guidance for Wall Street on several key metrics, saying its free cash flow and EBITDA would be stronger than the company’s previous estimates. The improved outlook was announced as Savvis posted solid earnings, adding a major new customer as several large accounts departed.
On Wall Street, Savvis shares gained $2.61 to $11.59 a share, a one-day gain of 29 percent. The company raised its guidance on 2009 free cash flow by $5 million to a range of $20 million to $35 million, while also boosting its projected EBITDA by $5 million to a range of $190 million to $200 million.
CEO Phil Koen said the company’s focus on managed hosting is paying off, citing improved bottom-line financial performance. Savvis executives said their numbers are likely to improve further as they fill space in a Chicago data center recently vacated by a large customer paying below-market rates.
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Inside A Savvis Financial Data Center
March 9th, 2009 : Rich Miller
Much of Wall Street’s trading is executed in microseconds, powered by low-latency electronic trading platforms housed in some of the world’s most connected data centers. Wall Street & Technology recently offered a glimpse inside one of these facilities with a photo gallery of a Savvis Inc. data center that houses the company’s Proximity Trading operation in the New York market. The building houses servers for five major exchanges, including the American Stock Exchange, Philadelphia Stock Exchange, and BATS Trading.The Savvis data center features tight security, including an array of access restrictions using passkeys and several types of biometrics (including hand scanners and facial recognition). It also features one of the coolest man-traps we’ve seen, a glass security portal (pictured at left) controlled by a biometric scanner, complete with a weight sensor that can detect if a visitor’s weight changes while they are in the data center, indicating an attempt to remove equipment. Check out the photo gallery for more.
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Savvis Sees Planets Aligning for Cloud
February 16th, 2009 : Rich MillerBryan Doerr has been having lots of discussions with enterporise IT managers about cloud computing. Doerr, the chief technology officer for managed hosting specialist Savvis Inc. (SVVS), says the notion that enterprises are nervous about cloud computing is overblown.
“What we are increasingly hearing is that customers really liked the flexibility and purchasing model (for cloud computing),” said Doerr. “We feel very good from our customer conversations that uptake of these services will be good.”
Doerr spoke with us about reaction to Savvis Cloud Compute, a new service that moves its utility computing service into the cloud, providing enterprise customers more flexibility in how they provision, manage and pay for services running in Savvis data centers. Central to the new offering is an improved customer portal that gives users more control in provisioning virtual compute and storage capabilities.
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Savvis Unveils Cloud Compute Service
February 12th, 2009 : Rich MillerManaged hosting specialist Savvis, Inc.(SVVS) today unveiled Savvis Cloud Compute, a new service that moves its utility computing service into the cloud, providing enterprise customers more flexibility in how they provision, manage and pay for services running in Savvis data centers.Central to the new offering is an improved customer portal that gives users more control in provisioning virtual compute and storage capabilities, and the ability to purchase fractional compute resources on demand by the instance with flexible month-to-month business terms.
The new offering positions Savvis to compete in the emerging market for enterprise cloud computing, porting its existing utility computing operation to a cloud delivery and billing model.
“Utility computing was the forerunner for what evolved into the enterprise cloud computing solutions we are seeing today,” said Bryan Doerr, Savvis Chief Technology Officer. “Savvis pioneered virtualized IT services in the network and the data center and is proud to continue expanding these capabilities with cloud-based IT infrastructure as a service.
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Strong Colocation Growth Boosts Savvis
February 4th, 2009 : Rich MillerThe colocation market continues its strong performance, but growth in managed hosting is much harder to predict, according to Savvis Inc. The IT infrastructure specialist reported results that met Wall Street’s expectations, but sees challenges in 2009 as a key contract draws to a close and prospects in its key managed hosting business remain difficult to predict.
Savvis reported earnings of 6 cents per share this morning, while analysts had been expecting a loss of 5 cents a share. Shares of Savvis (SVVS) rose 8 percent in morning trading, gaining 53 cents to $6.93 a share. But company executives said they were cautious about the coming year.
“In 2009, we expect to face a difficult economic environment and, as a result, have factored a cautious view into our guidance,” said Jeff Von Deylen, chief financial officer of Savvis. “We expect our network business to remain under pressure, modest hosting growth, industry-wide IT spending to be down for the year, and that the sales cycle will remain elongated.”
Savvis’ contract with the American Stock Exchange, which generated $27 million in revenue in 20087, is expected to end when the AMEX consolidates its IT operations with NYSE Euronext this year. On the upside, Savvis sees opportunities in cloud computing, and will launch a cloud platform in the first quarter of 2009.
The company is also assessing the impact of the economic crisis, particularly for customers in the financial industry, which account for 20 percent of Savvis’ revenue. CEO Phil Koen said Savvis has seen increased inquiries for managed hosting services during the past 30 days, suggesting that enterprise customers are weighing new approaches to their data center infrastructure.
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