Surgient looks to fast track cloud computing

Back in the dark ages (circa 2001) when server virtualization was as mystifying to IT administrators as fire must have been to the caveman, Surgient’s software solution quietly entered the scene. The early startup company was quick to identify the value that virtualization offered businesses, and it was one of the first companies to build an application stack and provide added value on top of the hypervisor platform.

At the company’s beginnings, its software initially provided a hosted solution for sales and marketing groups to perform Internet-based demonstrations to potential clients. Shortly after, the software was architected to also include a hosted training solution, and from there, the company added an on-premise QA offering for software engineering developers and testers. But as the virtualization market matured and adapted, so did the company’s product — ultimately becoming a more comprehensive, self-service, virtual automation platform.

In addition to being an early adopter of virtualization, Surgient was also an early adopter of cloud technology. You might even go so far as to say the company was cloud, before cloud was cool. Between its hosted offerings and its on-premise software installations, the company boasts successfully deploying and supporting more than 150 enterprise clouds.

Adapting to the market once again, Surgient is now taking that cloud expertise it has gained over these last few years and bundled it up into a new program offering that it calls the Surgient Cloud Express. According to the company, the Surgient Cloud Express program combines the best of cloud computing technology and implementation services to help organizations deploy their own fully functional, enterprise-class private cloud with measurable ROI. It also claims to do so within a 30-day time window.

Priced at $50,000, the Surgient offering includes:

• The core Surgient Platform, licensed for 30 managed CPUs
• Implementation with professional services
• Documentation and Surgient best practices
• Administrator training
• A client-specific private cloud architecture
• One year of standard support

Surgient knows that organizations are still a bit leery of jumping into a private cloud, so much like the company’s original software did for virtualization, this new cloud offering will also allow organizations to take the next step into cloud technology by making that initial entry a much easier pill to swallow — holding the client’s hand throughout the entire process and providing automation tools to simplify management.

But Surgient isn’t backing away from what brought it to the dance.  The company is still providing demo, training, and QA solutions to clients.

“The power of Cloud Express is that it can be used for any of these use cases — demo, training, QA — and much more,” said Brian Wilson, Surgient VP of services and support. “The core Surgient Platform was originally designed as a licensed, on-premise automation platform that very efficiently manages and delivers virtualized infrastructure. Our clients have had great success over the past seven years using the technology to create their own private clouds for demo, training, and QA, and we’re now offering that same technology to a broader audience — it’s basically use-case agnostic.”

Cloud Express is available now, and it covers both the VMware hypervisor technology as well as Microsoft Hyper-V.

This story, “Surgient looks to fast-track cloud computing,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the latest developments in cloud computing and virtualization at InfoWorld.com.