cloud luminaries Can you simplify the buying and managing of services for your customers? We enable IT on demand and provide a very easy way to buy all kinds of products and services from servers, storage, and applications. We ve worked hard to make buying the service very simple. Andrew Higginbotham President, savvisdirect
Businesses can improve their development time and whole lifecycle of launching applications. About savvisdirect A division of CenturyLink A premier managed hosting and co-location provider for outsourced IT and cloud services Provides Platform-as-a-Service, Software-as-a-Service and Infrastructure-as-a-Service Offers enterprise grade cloud solutions, private cloud and managed cloud Serves customers around the world with more than 50 data centers, over two million square feet of raised floor, and with all the cores connected by over 200,000 miles of fibers For more information, visit savvisdirect.com
Cloud LUMINARY / Andrew Higginbotham / president / SavvisDIRECT Career Highlights Joined CenturyLink in 2001 For the past 4 years, has focused on finding growth opportunities for CenturyLink Played a crucial role in CenturyLink s acquisition of Savvis Personal interests: spending time with his 3 children & running the New York Marathon Andrew Higginbotham President, savvisdirect Tell us about CenturyLink and the acquisition of Savvis. With our AppGrid service, from beginning to end, we can have development teams up and running in just a matter of days. CenturyLink is the third largest communications service provider in the U.S., with services ranging from telephone and video to broadband, business and high-speed internet. In order to expand into the IT services market, CenturyLink acquired Savvis, a worldwide leader in cloud infrastructure and hosted IT solutions for enterprises. And from that acquisition, savvisdirect was born. Traditionally, the process of evaluating, purchasing and managing cloud services has been quite complex. What is unique about savvisdirect is that we make it simple and affordable to buy a wide range of products and services, from servers to storage and applications. We call it frictionless, and we ve worked hard to make it as easy as possible to buy and manage cloud services. What kind of cloud services do you offer? We offer a private cloud service based on the CA AppLogic cloud platform, called AppGrid, which provides our customers with an environment where they can develop and launch their business applications in a very efficient way. We ve focused on two things with our AppGrid service. First, we ve made it a dedicated private cloud environment.
Second, we focus on speed and the ability to provide these environments extremely fast. Typically, it is a very lengthy process to develop an architecture and stand up a private cloud. With our AppGrid service, from beginning to end, we can have development teams up and running in just a matter of days. The key benefits of the CA AppLogic cloud platform and our AppGrid service are convenience and speed to market. What are the main benefits of your AppGrid service? The key benefits of the CA AppLogic cloud platform and our AppGrid service are convenience and speed to market. CA AppLogic has a really innovative interface that receives a tremendous amount of accolades for its ease-of-use and how simple it is for developers to create and launch their own applications. While cloud isn t everybody s panacea, it is something most businesses are leveraging to realize significant value. And in the case of our AppGrid service and CA AppLogic, it s a really awesome way for businesses to accelerate their development time and improve the whole application lifecycle. What do you think are the major internal and external obstacles for cloud adoption? To learn more about savvisdirect, visit savvisdirect.com Two or three years ago, the biggest obstacle customers raised was security and every customer brought it up. It reflected a general discomfort level with the cloud. Today, customers still bring up security, but it s a more nuanced conversation. There are some customers who raise legitimate security concerns and we work with them to overcome those concerns. But there are still some customers who are simply insecure with the cloud in general and use security as an excuse not to move to the cloud. Over time, as more and more people become comfortable with cloud services, I expect that the general security concerns will be overcome. From an internal perspective, the obstacles to cloud adoption have to do with interoperability between the legacy in-house infrastructure and applications, and external cloud services. The fortunate businesses that started after the introduction of cloud likely began using it from the very beginning. And you see those businesses taking advantage of the cloud from day one, without the legacy issue. But the rest of us have the challenge of interoperability when trying to migrate to the cloud. And that can be a bitter pill for businesses to swallow when they have to say, The only way I can get to the cloud is a technology change and a significant one at that.
How is cloud transforming the role of the CIO and what new challenges does it bring? I think the role of the CIO is transformed from where it was ten years ago. Back then, they were more like a service provider to the business. Now, they are the business and are moving into more of a business development function. Their applications and infrastructure are often the fabric of the business itself, so it s a different role. To learn more from cloud thought leaders working with CA Technologies, visit ca.com/cloudluminaries The cloud is also creating new challenges for the CIO as it relates to rogue services. We hear this issue come up a lot when we talk to CIOs that use our services. And they tell us there is an emerging shadow IT that is using public cloud services outside of their governance. And there is clearly a need for these services, otherwise it wouldn t be happening. So CIOs need to find a way to let those same customers try their services in a more transactional way, while fitting within their governance model. Copyright 2013 CA. All rights reserved. All trademarks, trade names, service marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies. This document is for your informational purposes only. CA assumes no responsibility for the accuracy or completeness of the information. To the extent permitted by applicable law, CA provides this document as is without warranty of any kind, including, without limitation, any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement. In no event will CA be liable for any loss or damage, direct or indirect, from the use of this document, including, without limitation, lost profits, business interruption, goodwill or lost data, even if CA is expressly advised in advance of the possibility of such damages. The information and results illustrated here are based upon the customer s experiences with the referenced software product in a variety of environments, which may include production and nonproduction environments. Past performance of the software products in such environments is not necessarily indicative of the future performance of such software products in identical, similar or different environments. Services not available everywhere. Business customers only. CenturyLink may change or cancel services or substitute similar services at its sole discretion without notice. 2013 CenturyLink, Inc. All Rights Reserved. The CenturyLink mark, pathways logo and certain CenturyLink product names are the property of CenturyLink, Inc. All other marks are the property of their respective owners.