New cloud-hosting platform launches in SA

Local internet service provider (ISP), RSAWEB, has launched a new cloud-hosting platform, allowing users to deploy and provision fully operational servers in minutes.

The new hosting service, True Cloud Servers, is apparently “the first of its kind in South Africa”. RSAWEB says the two key differences between their new cloud service and what’s currently available in the local market are the speed at which servers can be deployed and provisioned, and the flexibility and scalability of their solution.

The ISP says new server resources can be allocated on-demand to cater for resource-hungry applications or sudden website traffic spikes.

Similar to traditional hosting offerings, RSAWEB’s new service gives users control and administrator access to their server, allowing selection of operating system, applications and configuration.

Mark Slingsby, Technical Director of RSAWEB says, “Hosting in the Cloud is rapidly becoming a commercially viable alternative for companies in search of cost-effective storage and hosting solutions. This is further substantiated by Gartner who predicts that by 2012, 80 percent of Fortune 1000 enterprises will be paying for Cloud computing services, and 30 percent will be paying for Cloud computer infrastructure services.”

“With the dynamic provisioning of resources, RSAWEB True Cloud Server users never have to worry about scalability in the case of increased traffic demands or traffic spikes. Hosting with True Cloud Servers allows users to instantly react to high demands by adding required resources at the click of a mouse.”

“Hosting with an internationally based ISP leads to latency in transferring data, and other South African ISPs who claim to host in the Cloud take up to one week to deploy. With True Cloud Servers, we‘ll have our customers up and running in minutes.”

The service is available at various monthly charge rates, although Slingsby told Memeburn that they intend to launch an Amazon-like pay-per-use version and that the system has been “designed with the model in mind already”.

“The next release will also feature exciting tools to allow you to easily clone, create your own templates and snapshot your servers,” adds Slingsby.

Slingsby says that the recent increases in available bandwidth and the resulting decreases in bandwidth costs is further motivation for businesses looking at a local cloud hosting solution.

The company is offering a “99,99%-uptime guarantee”, promising to refund users for any downtime experienced. RSAWEB is also offering a free trial, until the end of May, to users wanting to give the service a test run.