Verizon said today it acquired CloudSwitch, a company whose software eases the transition between using software that runs on a company's own servers and running it on a cloud-computing infrastructure.
The technology is helpful as companies try to strike the right balance between the two approaches to IT--sometimes in very short time frames when sudden spikes in computing demand occur. "With CloudSwitch, applications remain tightly integrated with enterprise data center tools and policies, and can be moved easily between different cloud environments and back into the data center based on the requirements of the business," Verizon said.
Cloud computing moves tasks that businesses or individuals run on their own computers so that shared servers on the Internet run them instead, sometimes on a flexible foundation such as Amazon Web Services and sometimes on task-specific services such as Salesforce.com or Google Docs. The option can increase scale and flexibility, but often requires that companies cede control to a third party operating the cloud service.
Verizon said it'll combine the CloudSwitch operation with its Terremark subsidiary that offers IT services.
Terms of the deal weren't disclosed.