RightScale Sees Significant Growth in Cloud Adoption

RightScale, a provider of cloud management solutions, has seen significant growth in customers choosing cloud technology and an increasing importance in the role cloud management plays today.

"More forward-thinking companies than ever are embracing the cloud as an enabler for agility and scalability," said Michael Crandell, CEO of RightScale. "From improving your time-to-market for delivering new products and services to driving more revenue, RightScale's cloud management provides a powerful platform to help you achieve business goals leveraging new approaches to IT."

The Santa Barbara, Calif.-based company added more than 250 clients over the past year. RightScale’s clients includes Caltech, Care Innovations , Citrix Online, Conde Nast, Coty, Equinix, Fox Digital Media, Inmobi, JWT, Leo Burnett, Softbank Technology, Telepictures Productions, Tibco and Zurich Insurance.

RightScale supports a number of major cloud architectures, supporting 15 public and private cloud providers. The company just expanded a deal with Rackspace, integrating with Rackspace’s Open Cloud, which is powered by OpenStack. RightScale also supports Google Compute Engine, Windows Azure and Amazon Web Services.

RightScale is also gaining recognition internationally. The World Economic Forum named the company a 2013 Technology Pioneer.

The company expects to see more companies running multiple clouds in the upcoming year for several reasons. One of the reasons for multiples clouds is to have computing reasons closer to customers in an attempt to improve performance, or that offer different features, such as compliance with laws like Dodd-Frank and HIPAA or different performance characteristics.

More and more companies will also be pursuing a “cloud-first” strategy, moving more essential business functions to the cloud, rather than only using the cloud for special projects. RightScale believes it can provide IT departments with a way to make the management of clouds smoother and more consistent.

The rise in the adoption of cloud architectures has led RightScale to believe that it will spark a “gold rush” of Managed Service Providers (MSPs). More of these organizations will embrace the cloud to increase value and keep their customers.