Two startups and one existing provider are prepping new utility computing services, joining the growing market for scalable on-demand infrastructure. Here's a look at the new players:
- SaaSGrid is a service from Apprenda that is currently in private beta. Company founders Sinclair Schuller and Matt Ammerman are blogging about their approach at SaaS Blogs.
- Nirvanix is a startup with an on-demand storage solution similar in concept to Amazon's S3. The company launched this year, has raised $12 million in venture capital and has 40 beta customers on its service. Read the Nirvanix blog for more.
- Scottish hosting provider XCalibre Communications is about to unveil a grid hosting service, according to Om Malik, who says the company has built its own platform atop F5 load balancers, Dell servers, Virtual Iron and NetApp storage. XCalibre will focus on the European market. UPDATE: The service, known as FlexiScale, is now live.
Amazon (AMZN) is one of the best-known players in the utility computing market, but IBM, Sun (JAVA) Savvis (SVVS) and Terremark (TMRK) have platforms as well. In the past two years we've also seen the emergence of grid services from hosting specialists, with Rackspace/Mosso, Concentric and media temple building their own solutions, while 3Tera's "grid OS" software is in use at ServePath and Layered Technologies, among others.
