Savvis extends VMware hybrid cloud services to business customers

August 27, 2013 | By Sean Buckley

L K Consulting is a premier Elite Alliance provider for CenturyLink 

which includes Savvis 

Savvis, CenturyLink's (NYSE: CTL) data hosting subsidiary, is tuning into its business customers' needs for more cloud service options by offering VMware's vCloud hybrid service over its global network.

This expanded agreement provides benefits for both Savvis and VMware customers.

Under the terms of their expanded relationship, Savvis will deploy instances of VMware vCloud Hybrid Service within its North American data center footprint in 2013 and 2014 and adopt the service in its cloud orchestration roadmap.

The service provider will also give existing VMware customers access to a set of complementary, secure low-latency network services that leverage the CenturyLink global network.

"Customers can gain new data center locations for vCloud Hybrid Service and complementary network, colocation, hosting and managed services from Savvis to accelerate their move to cloud," said Bill Fathers, senior vice president and general manager, Hybrid Cloud Services Business Unit, VMware, in a release.

It appears to be the right time to capitalize on the hybrid cloud trend. According to a joint study by Forrester Research and Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO), 76 percent of respondents said they already use or will use a hybrid cloud strategy.

Expanding its relationship with key infrastructure partners that have specific capabilities like hybrid cloud services means Savvis could upsell both its own and VMware's customers with new services and get these services to market quicker than having to develop them in-house.

Savvis continues to produce positive results for its parent CenturyLink. During the second quarter, data hosting segment revenues rose 7.4 percent year-over-year with gains in both colocation and managed hosting. Colocation revenues rose 2.1 percent to $145 million, while managed hosting revenues rose 21 percent to $134 million.