Image via Wikipedia

Savvis, an established market leader in the managed hosting market, made an entry into the enterprise cloud computing market, by announcing the first of its several other cloud computing initiatives this year, called Savvis Cloud Compute. As I emphasized in my 2009 predictions, this is going to be the year of enterprise cloud computing.

In short, this year is going to be the beginning of a big time adaption of Cloud Computing by the enterprises.

Whether it is IBM’s Blue Cloud Initiative or their teaming up with Amazon Web Services, we are already seeing a trend towards the “private clouds” in the enterprise segment. This move by Savvis only consolidates this existing trend. Late last year, Savvis tried to lure ISVs with their scalable managed hosting initiatives. At that time, they also formed a strategic partnership with Skytap, a Seattle based Cloud testbed provider. With today’s announcement, they have put their foothold firmly into the Cloud Computing marketplace.

Savvis Cloud Compute offers virtual data center hosting and private cloud solutions targeted towards enterprises. They try to differentiate themselves from other providers like Amazon by claiming that they offer an opportunity to cut costs without having to sacrifice the security or performance. One of the biggest worries of enterprise customers in using Amazon EC2 is about its security. Savvis is trying to position themselves as someone who could offer better security based on their extensive experience in the managed hosting in the past.

Savvis Cloud Compute comes with two different versions. One is the dedicated private clouds based hosting and the other is the multi tenant hosting that can be tapped for peak bursts. Enterprises can just rent resources during the peak times like holiday shopping, major events, etc.. and, since it is on a month to month basis, these excess resources can be tapped on an as per the need basis. This will save tons of money for the already cash starved enterprises.

These offerings are tied to the new SavvisStation portal, released as a part of their cloud initiative, from which customers can add/remove servers and storage capacity automatically and in minutes. The portal also comes with a reporting tool that can help enterprise customers optimize their IT spending by anticipating the demands and acting on it. Earlier, all these things were managed manually by the Savvis tech personnel and they couldn’t offer the near instantaneous addition or removal process of this new dashboard. Since any delay in the deployment of resources costs money to the enterprises, this portal is a great value addition.

IDC estimates a $42 billion Cloud Computing market by 2012 and companies like IBM, Amazon, Savvis, etc. are positioning themselves for the land grab. These are interesting times in the Cloud Computing market even though the rest of the world is struggling under the grave economic crisis.