Cloud Computing: RightScale Makes Its First Acquisition

Grazed from Sys Con Media. Author: Maureen O’Gara.

RightScale has made its very first acquisition.

It’s bought the free Scottish cloud cost forecasting web site ShopForCloud and renamed it PlanForCloud, fleshing out its management portfolio to help those struggling with cloud costs, which are always, as anyone will attest, complex. Terms were not disclosed.

The widgetry will help companies budget their cloud costs by giving them tools to model various architectures and usage patterns, access up-to-date pricing from cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services, Google Compute Engine (GCE), Microsoft Azure and Rackspace, and produce detailed cost reports in just a few minutes…

RightScale CEO Michael Crandell says, "Knowing the cost of cloud services is critical whether companies are making their first foray into cloud computing, planning to deploy additional resources or managing their overall budget for cloud spending. With our cloud management customers, we have seen firsthand that they need a better way to forecast cloud costs in order to predict spending and choose the right cloud strategies and providers. PlanForCloud provides users a forward-looking view of costs and perfectly complements our existing cost reporting and tracking features in the RightScale Cloud Management Platform. The combination will allow businesses to manage their current and past cloud spending as well as their future cloud budgets."

PlanForCloud enables sophisticated modeling of cloud deployment components, including servers, storage, database and data transfer, as well as "what if" usage scenarios that incorporate growth, seasonality and other variables.

It lets users forecast costs on any supported cloud, save the forecasts, and update them as cloud prices fluctuate. It also automatically runs a simulation on planned deployments and generates detailed three-year reports so companies can budget for future usage.

A RightScale survey of 600 companies found that 68% of respondents are pursuing a multi-cloud strategy. Anyway, new cloud providers continue to emerge and existing providers change their pricing, which RightScale says makes it difficult to keep manual spreadsheets up-to-date. Clouds are also claiming an increasing part of corporate budgets.

Anybody can use PlanForCloud, not just RightScale customers or users of cloud services. No cloud provider accounts or current cloud deployments are required to use the site or calculate cloud costs.

Crandell says the widgetry will remain free. While remaining separate, it will also be integrated into RightScale.

While there’s other widgetry that calculates cloud costs, Crandell says, the rivals won’t forecast.

One of the two brothers who started the company was an intern at RightScale and wrote his doctoral dissertation on stuff so RightScale is keeping it in the family. It hopes to use PlanForCloud’s offices in Silicon Glen to attract more personnel.