Carpathia Launches InstantOn Cloud Platform

Carpatia Hosting is putting a new twist on cloud computing, pushing beyond managed hosting and colocation services. Specifically, the company has introduced InstantOn -- a cloud platform apparently designed with corporate compliance and security in mind. Here are some quick details.

Carpathia in 2009 acquired ServerVault, a Virginia-based provider of super-secure, under-armed-guard data centers and services. ServerVault's portfolio was exactly what the hosting provider needed to enter the secure cloud services market, says Carpathia Hosting VP and Chief Marketing Officer Brian Winter. InstantOn isn't Carpathia's first cloud offering, but it's their biggest push. While Carpathia prefers to host it out of their own infrastructure, they do support hybrid and on-premises installations.

So what makes InstantOn so much better than Amazon EC2 or Windows Azure for enterprises? For starters, says Carpathia VP and CTO Jon Greaves, it provides real invoices rather than just charge a credit card every billing cycle. InstantOn also supports Xen as its VM monitor in partnership - somewhat of a stand-out in a field usually dominated by VMware products.

More importantly, though, Greaves says, InstantOn can provide services providers with a Federal-compliant, top-to-bottom, A-list infrastructure to ensure stability and security that also supports role-based multi-user access. And if an MSP is rolling their own applications, InstantOn supports limited-use, time-locked trials, so a customer can give a product a shot for 30 days.

InstantOn sounds like a fine solution, sight unseen. What's really of note here is that more and more industry observers are seeing a need for greater security in the cloud. We're watching the RSA Security Conference over at The VAR Guy, and what we're seeing is a lot of companies moving in to fill that need.

So I leave you with a question: What will it take for MSPs to decide the benefits of the cloud outweigh the security risk?