Savvis Cloud Computing
...building a strategy to reconstruct IT environments and application platforms to take advantage of the cloud environment requires more than flipping a switch in the data center.
--Savvis
Founded in 1995 and publicly traded since February 2000, Savvis Inc., is one of the largest IP network and hosting providers in the world. They manage 29 data centers located in the United States, Europe, and Asia with approximately 1.43 million square feet. They run a Tier 1 Internet backbone ranked #4 in the US. They focus on the financial industry which provides 27% of their business. The company is a leader in virtualized, utility-based IP VPN and hosting services for industries that require low-latency, high performance, near-perfect reliability and integrated security. Savvis is listed as a leader in the upper right of Gartner's December 2010 Cloud Provider Magic Quadrant.
From their Q2 2009 10-Q report, Savvis has built a cloud offering to focus on the intersection of virtualization and cloud computing for large enterprises. Their cloud service offering will "be focused on our core markets, specifically infrastructure solutions for enterprise applications. To that end, we will continue to invest in and develop on-demand, customer provisioned infrastructure services on multi-tenant platforms that utilize usage-based billing, and as a market differentiator will offer multiple service grades within the shared platforms."
In 2010, Savvis released two cloud offerings. The first is their multi-tenant "Symphony"-brand enterprise-class Virtual Private Data Center (VPDC) with multi-tiered Quality of Service (QoS) capabilities. Cisco® Nexus 5000 and 7000 Series switches serve as the virtualized network backbone, and VMware vSphere™ 4 serves as the virtualization platform. The second is their "Symphony"-brand dedicated cloud, focused on connected/hybrid cloud solutions. Each are fully scalable and configurable from the Savvis control portal.
“In terms of cloud services for the enterprise, we are moving from a world of limited user controls, to a world of complete virtual data center provisioning with advanced user design in the portal,” said Bryan Doerr, chief technology officer of Savvis. “Our next generation cloud services and resulting virtual private data center ... enable push button web application hosting for the enterprise.”
Savvis provides their own consulting services group to take clients from assessment through deployment of cloud projects.
Customers include 4200 global enterprises and government agencies as well as 30 of the Fortune 100. Their Hallmark case study is worth a read.
FY 2009 revenue was $874 million. EBITDA was $220 million. There has been little revenue growth since Q4, 2008. They have assets of about $1 billion and liabilities of $750 million. In 2010, they financed $550 million over 6 years at base rate plus 4-5% margin giving them a competitive advantage over Terremark who financed $420 million in 2009 at 12% interest.
