Some customers, Stevenson said, feel uneasy about using shared resources, but they still want to take advantage of the benefits an off-site cloud deployment gives them. Latisys has announced an expansion of its off-site private cloud offerings aimed at enterprise customers. "We've found that customers really want to go with a provider that they see as an extension of their IT staff," Stevenson says.

AWS MAKES OPEN SOURCE PLAY:

SECURING THE CLOUD:

Latisys works with users to customize their off-site operations, whether it is for colocation of data and services for disaster recovery plans, or as part of a managed hosting or private-cloud deployment. By customizing the setup, users can bring their own security controls, such as encryption and firewalls, into the data center with them, but not have the costs that come along with managing the infrastructure on their site. This allows customers to maintain security compliances, such as those from the Payment Card Industry, while still taking advantage of the benefits of cloud.

In addition to security, Stevenson says customers are also concerned about latency. To accommodate both needs, Latisys announced today a 72,000-square-foot expansion of its data center space at four locations across the country, including a new data center in Denver. The expansion will add to the company's existing 500,000 square feet of data centers in Southern California, Northern Virginia and Chicago.