CloudSwitch offers free beta for cloud computing migration

Article

CloudSwitch offers free beta for cloud computing migration

SearchCloudComputing.com Staff

Looking to migrate to AWS? Contact CloudSwitch
VMware-centric cloud enabler CloudSwitch has announced a tantalizing test program for toe-dippers, CloudSwitch Explorer, which will let users migrate a virtualized

    Requires Free Membership to View

    Login

    When you register, my team of editors will also send you alerts about public, private and hybrid cloud computing as well as other related technologies.

    Cathleen A. Gagne, Senior Editorial Director

    By submitting your registration information to SearchCloudComputing.com you agree to receive email communications from TechTarget and TechTarget partners. We encourage you to read our Privacy Policy which contains important disclosures about how we collect and use your registration and other information. If you reside outside of the United States, by submitting this registration information you consent to having your personal data transferred to and processed in the United States. Your use of SearchCloudComputing.com is governed by our Terms of Use. You may contact us at webmaster@TechTarget.com.

application stack (a bunch of servers that work together or one server that does a bunch of stuff) into Amazon Web Services with the click of a mouse.

A free version of the company's existing CloudSwitch Enterprise product, CloudSwitch Explorer will let users migrate up to five virtual machines into Amazon EC2 to see if it's right for them. The move is aimed at enticing enterprises into the cloud, where they will hopefully fall all over themselves to pay CloudSwitch's $25,000 fee for the real deal. "Try before you buy" has got to be enticing for the IT manager who has to re-up on servers, and if we've proved anything yet this year, shiny, enterprise-ready point-and-click cloud tools are popular.

Engine Yard drops subscription fees
Platform as a Service provider Engine Yard is reshuffling its pricing to be more in line with cloud computing's pay-as-you-go ideals.

Previously, users were required to pony up a whopping $25 minimum (OMG) to use Engine Yard's Ruby on Rails environment, plus additional costs more when they used capacity above that purchased with the initial "investment." Product manager Abheek Anand said in a blog post that Engine Yard had cut prices three times in a month and could do so because it didn't have to worry about its own infrastructure costs.

Engine Yard hosts its Ruby service platform on Amazon EC2 instances and sells those to users. Anand said that meant if AWS made it easier or cheaper to use EC2, the effect trickled down.

"[Engine Yard is] taking advantage of Amazon's just-released consolidated billing feature to get reduced costs for these instances," he said.

NYC to consolidate data centers for city IT, go cloud
Rich Miller reports that New York City is planning a massive data center consolidation. He reports that city officials still make unintentional puns, since "cloud computing is being explored at a high level," which is where real clouds are normally found, get it? It's meta.