CenturyLink Makes Eight Managed Services Available on its Cloud Platform

On-demand, cloud-based managed services will be available on the CenturyLink Cloud platform at the end of the month. Customers will be able to take advantage of a self-service model through which they can pay bythe hour for services like middleware, applications and web services.

The new offerings marry the cloud and managed services business models, something that CenturyLink has steadily been working to achieve. The company plans to eventually integrate its entire portfolio of managed hosting services into its cloud platform, providing customers with agility and freedom as they choose the managed solutions that best meet their core business needs.

For now, eight managed services are available through the cloud. These include the Windows and Red Hat Enterprise Linux managed operating systems, Active Directory, Apache HTTP Server, Apache Tomcat, Microsoft IIS and SQL Server and MySQL. Solutions are being provided through the company’s cloud nodes in Santa Clara, CA and Sterling, VA with additional locations in Europe and Asia slated to be added later in the year.

"As cloud adoption evolves and enterprises pursue new and easier ways to manage their IT infrastructure, the time is right in the industry for an optimized experience that brings cloud together with expert managed services," said Jared Wray, chief technology officer, CenturyLink Cloud.

Wray was the founder and CTO of Seattle IaaS platform and public cloud services company Tier 3, which CenturyLink acquired last year as a major part of its cloud strategy. In fact, the CenturyLink Cloud is based on Tier 3’s public, multi-tenant cloud and caters to complex enterprise workloads. The self-service utility-based pricing model certainly meshes well with the company’s core initiatives.

CenturyLink also scooped up Portland, OR-based PaaS provider AppFog last year, building the foundation for its cloud offering. The startup company had already deployed more than 150,000 cloud applications across multiple cloud environments, letting developers pick the infrastructure of their choice to run their apps on. The company also specialized in delivering production-grade private PaaS solutions to large enterprises.