CSC To Offer New ‘Cloud-In-A-Box’
SAN FRANCISCO (Dow Jones)–Computer Sciences Corp. (CSC) wants to grow its small cloud-computing business by building cloud systems at its customers’ offices.
On Feb. 2, the Falls Church, Va.-based IT consultancy plans to unveil BizCloud, cloud-computing hardware and software it will assemble in about 10 weeks at a client’s facility. Like data-center-based cloud services, BizCloud allows customers to contract for a desired amount of usage per month and pay for additional use on a metered basis.
BizCloud will move CSC further into “cloud computing,” the buzzword for an increasingly popular technology that enables companies to access servers and storage over the Internet or internal networks. The technology allows them to lower data costs and move content more nimbly.
CSC hopes BizCloud will spur adoption of cloud-computing because it addresses one of the biggest obstacles to growth of the technology: customer concerns over the security of their data. BizCloud customers have control over security because the technology is on their facilities.
“You can protect your intellectual property, your data a lot better,” Siki Giunta, who runs CSC’s cloud products, says of BizCloud. Giunta says CSC’s product, which she calls a “cloud-in-a-box,” provides scalability in addition to security and privacy. If the workload grows, clients can quickly add components to accommodate the increase.
How quickly CSC, which has seen its share price nearly double over the past two years, can carve out a space in the field is an open question. The company’s cloud business is small–it isn’t broken out in its financial statements.
And CSC has big competitors. Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) and Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), among others, have sunk millions of dollars into their products and are making progress luring big customers. Google Inc. (GOOG) sells Web-accessed programs, called Google Apps, and has had success scoring contracts with local governments, a target of CSC’s.
Here are some related posts:
Category: Acquisition, Cloud Computing News, Cool Stuff, CSC, New Products, Resources, Strategy
