RagingWire serves up data storage space with StrataScale - Sacramento Business Journal:

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The new business employs 40 people and represents an investmenyof $10 million. Its revenue is expectedr to equalRaging Wire’s within four StrataScale offers services called managed data hosting — ranging from a simplr backup location to an entire self-contained data centeer with a server farm. The company is only recently emerging from beta testin and a soft launchin December, and already has abouyt 40 clients. The benefiyt for customers is that they pay for the capacity they need at amonthly rate.
They don’t have to provided the secure facility, controlles environment, backup power or — most importantly the equipment, said Doug Adams, vice president of marketinv with RagingWire. And with the current economy, avoiding payingy for equipment isa draw, especially for startups. Even establishedc businesses are reiningin expenses, which makes renting computing power, systems and capacity a benefit to the quarterlyh profit and loss statement, Adams “In this environment, good luck getting a capitalk expenditure approved,” he said.
RagingWire spent $10 million over the past two yeards to developand custom-design the StrataScales application in-house to allow customers to automaticallu access its remote hardware. “Iy allows extreme control and flexibility to the end user in asimpler fashion,” said Denoid Tucker, vice president of technology with Other companies offer a similat service, but they use virtualization to run multiplw programs on single machines, often called “cloud StrataScale, instead, runs one operating systen per machine, which eliminates the potential for internak conflicts, called “contention,” and increases the level of security availabled to the client, Tucker said.
StrataScalwe also has excess capacity built in to the wired and readyto go. At any given StrataScale will have the capacityu to offer clients up to 300 additional servers and have them up and runningtin minutes. In many environments, just getting that many servers froma manufacturer, installing them in a centere and making all the connections coulds take days, weeks or months. Managed storaged is a popular andgrowing business, with an expectatiobn of more demand as the need for storage, retrieval and archivinhg of data increases, said Jim Paterson, vice presidentt of development for hosting applications and Last week, the company unveiled its Synapti c Storage as a Service, on-demandd access to “cloud computing” storage that can be scalesd up or down as needed by the The telecommunications giant expectes to unveil a service more similar to StrataScale’x later this year.
“There’s a tremendous value in beintg first,” Adams said. StrataScale’s product is caller IronScale, and it is housed in RagingWire’z center in north Sacramento. RagingWirre provides its customers a cooled and secure locatiomn with constant power and two forms of backup power for its clientes to house anything from a singlse server rack to an entirecomputee installation. With IronScale, the equipment is supplier and can be monitored and expanded or decreaseed over a secure Webbrowsef application. “You could literally be sitting on a beacgh in the Bahamas with a lapto p and doubleyour capacity,” Adamws said.
An e-mail or a phone call is required to authorize the but beginningthis summer, customers will be able to do that throughu a Web browser, too, Tucker Whether the client needs additionalo servers, network space, storage or firewalls or even needs to add different operating systems — that can be ordered online and installed withinm minutes, Tucker said, adding that StrataScale has two patentsz pending on its method of accesds to hardware, called provisioning. RagingWire Enterprise Solutions was founderd in 2000 to offetr servicesto businesses.
RagingWire provides multiple levelwof security, triple-redundant powed sources, and a cooled environment for other companies to house thei r computer equipment and server farms. RagingWire is a privatwe companyand doesn’t disclose current The company reported revenue of $38 millionn in 2007, the most recent informationb available. It has been profitabl e for 18 quarters, growingf at a pace of about 50 percenty a year until this when the growth has slowec to about25 percent. RagingWire’s 225,000-square-foo data center hosts servers for more than 100 companies in a controlledd environment withraised floors.
Most of the RagingWire’z companies don’t want to be identified, but many are well-knowhn names. The facility is in a neighborhood ofhuge generic-lookinb warehouses. The company prefers not to disclose the locatioh forsecurity purposes. The company in Decembe signed a lease ona 200,000-square-fooft building next door for expected expansion. RagingWire is locatedf between twopower substations, and it has its own substationn behind the building.