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One of the fundamental notions behind all Cloud services is that users can get the level of service they require when they need them, and that is what Colt and TIBCO are aiming at providing with a couple of new developments in the Platform as a Service and Infrastructure as a Service areas.

Colt, best known as a telecoms company but already gaining traction as a datacentre services and co-location operator, is working with TIBCO to add a cloud services platform that can support grid computing services for high performance financial services applications.

It is also launching a new managed applications service that can run customer applications to a prescribe performance level. This is achieved by scaling in and scaling out infrastructure based on business performance criteria rather than availability and metrics.

The Financial services market is the initial target, and particularly the Grid services side, because both Colt and TIBCO already have a good market foothold there. Colt is using TIBCO’s Data Synapse Grid system to manage the Grid service, and it’s Fabric Server for the managed applications service.

The Grid service will allow users to securely attach significant external resources to their existing infrastructure using its own datacentre services as an external resource. "Customers are now saying they no longer see a strategic advantage in owning `tin’," said Colt’s CMS Product Manager, Steve Hughes, "though of course there will always be a requirement for customers to want to keep some applications within their own walls."

There is the other side of this coin however, and Colt is already finding communities of trading businesses building within its datacentre network, where they can take advantage of the speed and performance available, or like-minded companies that simply want to pool resources.

It is the coupling of Grid services with the new In-Life Managed Applications service that is likely to have the most interest for many users – and not just those in the financial sector - as flexible scaling up and scaling down is a core part of the plan.

The service allows customers to specify the performance level required for an application and the number of users expected to work with it, and Colt will then scale the service to meet that performance level. The customer no longer needs to worry about the number of servers or much of the day-to-day capacity planning processes.

"We will be taking it steady to begin with," said Colt’s CMS Product Manager, Steve Hughes. "We will be offering banded services to start with, where each customer has a set of predetermined performance levels and can opt to switch between them for periods of time."

Typical examples of this would be the classic Christmas marketing push where the customer knows they will require more resources until Christmas Eve at the latest.

According to Hughes the bands will be fairly broad, and customers will be able to fluctuate up to the maximum service level within their current band. "They will be paying for that service level rather than paying for servers that they are not using. They will contract with us to run an application at a performance level. How we do it is up to us," he said.

TIBCO’s Data Synapse software provides not only the ability to manage the commitment of resources required but also set up the rules that govern the delivery of the service. The rules in question are comprehensive, ranging from detailed management requirements through to business, governance and compliance policies and beyond. For example, it is now common in the financial world for the location of systems used in certain transactions to be a fixed requirement as certain data is not allowed to leave the country. This can be specified as a rule within Synapse, which then manages the execution of the process according to that policy.

According to Ram Menon, TIBCO’s Execuitve VP, Worldwide Marketing, one thing Colt is trying to achieve with Synapse is provide the high performance computing environment where users don’t have to worry about the servers. "It can then take them to the next level up which takes into account specific business rules. TIBCO is conversant with those rules, such as data not leaving countries. There are also business policy and Governance issues that have to be considered, which is where Fabric Server has a role."

The Grid service is already in use by a few customers but is now being formally launched. The In-Life Managed Applications service will get a less of an immediate `launch’, however. "This is because in practice it is a bit like a consultancy service, we have to work with each individual customer to determine what their service level requirements and performance levels are likely to be," Hughes said.

This does beg the question as to whether it becomes a service that can be delivered by channel partners in the future. According to Hughes, the answer is a qualified `probably’.

"There are a variety of models we are working on," he said. "Yes, we are obviously working with larger enterprises already but you’d be surprised how many are not that large. If a business has a datacentre it will have this issue, so it is not just global businesses.

"We see it developing in stages. For example, we have already on-boarded Microsoft Exchange services for several customers, and we have identified the key levers you can pull to expand and contract it. So we can already go to customers and say `here is a package that can manage Exchange to this service level’. But most will respond that theirs is `slightly different’."

So he does expect to be able to start offering packaged solutions, but they will need to allow for a degree of tailoring in order to meet individual needs. There is, he suggests, going to be a need to understand the environment in which the customers operate, which does suggest that channel partners with market domain knowledge could be in a good position to exploit it. Over time he does envisage that a range of standard building blocks will be developed which can be used by third party service providers.

Hughes also indicated Colt has had a number of conversations with Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) looking to use the service as a means of providing their software in a Cloud environment. Here he sees the service becoming a platform for a SaaS-based delivery model for the software vendors. "But it will take time to develop," he observed, "and we have to give them time to trust what we can do for them."

"The important factor here is trust," Menon confirmed. "Deep down, financial service providers are very careful about who they work with, and trust plays a big part."

Colt is also looking to develop the relationship with TIBCO to include the latter’s Silver, which is aimed at large enterprises looking to make the transition into the Cloud.