CenturyLink Strengthens Cloud Offerings With AppFog Buy

"Our platform is very much oriented toward the needs of developers in terms of user experience, ease of use and customizability," said AppFog CEO Lucas Carlson. "We can also support a wide variety of languages, including Java, Ruby, Node, Python and PHP. Our platform also enables developers to choose which infrastructure they want to use, whether that be private cloud, public cloud, hybrid cloud or any variation of the three."

According to Carlson, applications can be deployed within 30 seconds of logging into the system. Small deployments can be done at no cost, but a fee structure that starts at $20 per month becomes engaged as the scale increases.

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"Being able to combine Platform-as-a-Service with Infrastructure-as-a-Service and the network is a unique opportunity to leverage the fact that we live in a heterogeneous world of data centers," Carlson added. "When you own the pipes that connect those data centers, you get a unique opportunity to deliver cloud services in a way that breaks down the silos of clouds that exist today."

The AppFog offerings will be made available through CenturyLink's Savvis organization and listed in the Savvis cloud product catalog.

"We have very deep co-location and Infrastructure-as-a-Service capabilities," said Jonathan King, vice president of cloud strategy at Savvis. "Customers of all sizes are working with developers to build mobile applications, e-commerce applications, line-of-business applications and consumer-facing website applications. The AppFog capabilities, coupled with our infrastructure service as well as the rest our managed services, security, consulting and networking offerings, establishes an increasingly valuable portfolio."

The services also are available through a wide variety of partners, including Avnet, CDW, Ingram Micro and Tech Data.

"The AppFog addition is a great extension of their private cloud Platform-as-a-Service capability to now address public Platform-as-a-Service, and increase the strength of that offering," said Tim FitzGerald, vice president of cloud solutions at Avnet Services. "We see this as a logical extension of the channel ecosystem work that Avnet is doing with Savvis today."

Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

PUBLISHED JUNE 17, 2013