CSC Launches Cloud Collaboration, SaaS

CSC, one of the few remaining independent outsourcing vendors in the United States, is launching CloudLab and CloudExchange as services available through its global network of data centers. The services will be available within 30 days, said Siki Giunta, VP of cloud computing.

Falls Church, Va.-based CSC, also known as Computer Sciences Corp., has 94,000 employees, revenue in fiscal 2010 of $16.1 billion, and seven data centers around the world. These data centers pre-dated the cloud products but are now "cloud-enabled" to offer CloudLab and CloudExchange, Giunta said in an interview. In the United States, CSC has data centers in Chantilly, Va., Newark, Del., and Chicago, Ill. The others are found in Sydney, Australia; Copenhagen, Denmark; New Kent Complex, U.K.; and Luxembourg.

CloudLab is software-as-a-service providing a scalable software development, testing, and quality assurance facility. It allows for precisely configured test environments, while providing a secure, controlled-access environment in which to conduct new software development and testing. CloudLab can also be used by sales force members for producing software product demonstrations, Giunta said.

CloudExchange is an e-mail and collaboration service featuring Microsoft Exchange 2010 as a service, providing for large-scale e-mail services with instant messaging, video, calendar, document sharing, and spreadsheets. Distributed employees can collaborate on a document while discussing it on video, Giunta said. The mail applications are available globally, accessed through any standard browser window. CSC data centers can provision collaboration applications to meet a varying level of demand.

Also announced June 14 was CSC Gateway, an e-commerce portal that provides a virtual environment for user self-provisioning and self-management, user access management, pay-per-use billing, reporting, and electronic purchase orders. It also includes a catalogue of CSC Trusted Cloud and Hosting applications and services.

Giunta said CSC has "a trusted adviser role" with its clients and is frequently called on to assess what business applications need to remain on premises and which might be moved into a hosted setting, whether in CSC's managed IT service or a user-controlled cloud. Many companies want advice on how cloud computing can "future proof" the business, she said. CSC offers services aimed at helping businesses transform some IT infrastructure into the cloud versus what should remain in on-premises legacy systems.

In 10 years, CSC expects half of a company's computing facilities to be on premises and the other half in the cloud. "You'd be amazed at the cloud demand," she said.

CSC also announced a three-year plan, the Trusted Cloud Services roadmap. This summer CSC will bring out an approach to virtual desktop implementations, a security solution for e-mail and software-as-a-service applications.