8x8 Acquires Cloud-Based Server Provider Zerigo

By Laura Stotler, TMCnet Contributing Editor

Cloud computing solution provider 8x8 (News - Alert), Inc. has acquired Zerigo, Inc., a Colorado-based server provider. Zerigo offers cloud-based server operations, virtual private servers, managed DNS services and monitoring tools. The financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed.

8x8 is broadening its cloud-based portfolio through organic and inorganic activities, and the Zerigo acquisition is in line with this strategy. The company previously purchased Central Host, Inc. in May of 2010. The Zerigo purchase broadens 8x8’s managed server solution offerings for small to medium-sized businesses. The company has been active in this market with cloud-based communication offerings since 2004.

The Zerigo acquisition gives 8x8 expanded cloud computing power specifically tailored to helping businesses lower their IT infrastructure costs and management requirements, while also improving performance and flexibility. The company already works with Heroku, a Salesforce.com (News - Alert) subsidiary that offers platform as a service (PaaS) solutions.

Zerigo’s strategy is to provision virtual private servers on a monthly basis and cloud servers on an hourly basis, using internally produced virtualization technologies. Zerigo supports IPv6 connectivity as well as 32- and 64-bit versions of operating systems along with RAID-10 storage and self-service server provisioning. Upgrades and downgrades are provided in real time, and the company’s hosted DNS service enables automatic management of virtualized server resources throughout the world. The geographically-aware service offers support for all common DNS records as well as importing/exporting capabilities for DNS name server records.

The Zerigo Watchdog service offers 24x7 monitoring for provisioned services with a central dashboard, pre-configured and customizable monitoring parameters and an array of monitoring service checks. The company’s cloud services are hosted in Denver, Dallas, Washington, DC, London, Amsterdam and Singapore.

8x8 plans to showcase its solutions with Zerigo cloud communications and hosting services incorporated at the Structure 2011 event on June 22 and 23. The GigaOM conference is taking place at the Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco.

“Zerigo’s software technologies will greatly enhance the capabilities of 8x8’s cloud hosting services by providing real-time provisioning and elasticity of our compute services,” said Bryan Martin (News - Alert), chairman and CEO of 8x8, Inc. “We are excited to make Zerigo’s existing technologies available to our customers and plan to extend them to our enterprise-class private cloud and VMware offerings. The Zerigo acquisition will significantly advance our research and development activities in this area.”

“Zerigo is thrilled to join the 8x8 team,” said Tom Morgan, founder and CEO of Zerigo and now 8x8 Cloud Architect. “8x8 is one of the leading cloud communications companies in the world and has developed a world-class operations and support infrastructure which will enable Zerigo to focus on research and development activities toward new 8x8 services and offerings.”

Want to learn more about cloud communications? Then be sure to attend the Cloud Communications Summit, collocated with TMC’s (News - Alert) ITEXPO West 2011, taking place Sept. 13-15, 2011, in Austin, Texas. The Cloud Communications Summit will address a growing need of businesses to integrate and leverage cloud based communications applications, process enhancement techniques, and network based communications interfaces and architectures. To register, click here.

Edited by Jennifer Russell

(source: http://www.mspnews.com/channels/cloud/articles/188024-8x8-acquires-cloud-based-server-provider-zerigo.htm)

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