CenturyLink Acquring AppFog To Move Into Platform-As-A-Service Market

According to a source within the company, CenturyLink is acquiring AppFog, a platform-as-a-service company. Terms of the deal were not revealed. AppFog will become part of Savvis, a Century Link company that offers cloud infrastructure and hosted IT services. Savvis did not reply to requests for comment about the acquisition. AppFog Co-Founder and CEO Lucas Carlson would also not comment about the deal. AppFog is a Platform as a Service that can be integrated on-premise into a company’s data center. It is also available as a public service. The company was originally founded as PHPFog before changing its name early in 2011 after receiving $8 million in funding. In August of last year, AppFog acquired Nodester, a Node.js platform. Since last year, the company began focusing more on a private PaaS strategy. AppFog competes in a crowded market that includes Pivotal’s Cloud Foundry, Red Hat’s OpenShift, ActiveState’s Stackato and Apprenda. Heroku and Engine Yard are two of the leaders in the public PaaS market. For Savvis, the AppFog deal is a move to extend beyond being a pure infrastructure play. AppFog will help the company move its offerings higher up the stack, differentiating by appealing to enterprise developer teams who have increasing buying power in the booming app economy. The deal makes sense, considering that earlier this week, a Savvis spokeperson sent me a pitch asserting that Savvis would be making a major PaaS announcement next week at GigaOm’s Structure conference. The email from the spokesperson said the news would “shake up the cloud industry.” I’m not so certain about that shake up. AppFog is a smaller PaaS player and Savvis faces tough competition from Amazon Web Services, Windows Azure and a number of other companies including AT&T, Terremark and Sungard.
appfog

According to a source within the company, CenturyLink is acquiring AppFog, a platform-as-a-service company. Terms of the deal were not revealed.

AppFog will become part of Savvis, a Century Link company that offers cloud infrastructure and hosted IT services.  Savvis did not reply to requests for comment about the acquisition. AppFog Co-Founder and CEO Lucas Carlson would also not comment about the deal.

AppFog is a Platform as a Service that can be integrated on-premise into a company’s data center. It is also available as a public service. The company was originally founded as PHPFog before changing its name early in 2011 after receiving $8 million in funding.  In August of last year, AppFog acquired Nodester, a Node.js platform. Since last year, the company began focusing more on a private PaaS strategy. AppFog competes in a crowded market that includes Pivotal’s Cloud Foundry, Red Hat’s OpenShift, ActiveState’s Stackato and Apprenda.  Heroku and Engine Yard are two of the leaders in the public PaaS market.

For Savvis, the AppFog deal is a move to extend beyond being a pure infrastructure play. AppFog will help the company move its offerings higher up the stack, differentiating by appealing to enterprise developer teams who have increasing buying power in the booming app economy.

The deal makes sense, considering that earlier this week, a Savvis spokeperson sent me a pitch asserting that Savvis would be making a major PaaS announcement next week at GigaOm’s Structure conference. The email from the spokesperson said the news would “shake up the cloud industry.”

I’m not so certain about that shake up.  AppFog is a smaller PaaS player and Savvis faces tough competition from Amazon Web Services, Windows Azure and a number of other companies including AT&T, Terremark and Sungard.


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