RALEIGH, NC, November 17, 2009 – Hosted Solutions, the East Coast’s premier provider of IT infrastructure as a service (IaaS), today expanded the range of its Stratus Trusted Cloud™ offering, introducing the availability of a hybrid option giving companies the industry’s widest range of options on how and where to more effectively host their IT infrastructures.

Stratus, a robust, enterprise-class cloud solution, was first introduced earlier this year as a massively scalable, multi-tenant infrastructure that enables customers to access a secure, enterprise-class cloud environment with built-in high availability and automated resource balancing. Since then, two versions of Stratus have been offered to the market – a multi-tenant, enterprise cloud and a private/dedicated cloud.

Responding to customer requests, the Stratus hybrid cloud option essentially blends and maximizes the best of a multi-tenant cloud and a dedicated environment. Customers are able to cross-connect their existing back-end resources such as databases and other supporting applications to the Stratus Trusted Cloud, providing them with greater flexibility.

The hybrid option allows customers to leverage the Stratus Trusted Cloud for web front-end computing power and other resources like network, firewall, load balancing and web servers. In addition, customers can cross connect Stratus cloud computing resources directly into their environment to handle overflow situations such as seasonal spikes that require excess compute capacity.

Jeff Kramer, recently named VP, Technology at Hosted Solutions commented, “As a former SVP of Engineering with a leading online publishing firm, the hybrid cloud is something that would have been incredibly valuable to me. The ability to provision additional compute resources on the fly to supplement my existing production capacity would have allowed me to significantly improve time to market. Any company with a virtualized environment can take advantage of this – it eliminates the need to procure hardware and VMware licenses, and also reduces time on configuration and system administration work. The end result is faster time to market which is critical for most businesses today.”

Companies can use the hybrid version of the Stratus Trusted Cloud to take advantage of rapid and elastic deployment and usage, with the ability to add or subtract resources depending on changing requirements. For instance, clients can increase their compute capacity in minutes versus the weeks usually needed to deploy the same type of infrastructure. As a result, fewer physical and staffing assets are required, resulting in significant Capital Expenditure (CapEx) cost savings.

“We’ve seen tremendous interest in the hybrid approach,” said Christopher “Kip” Turco, Hosted Solutions’ Chief Operating Officer. “Many customers want to take advantage of the benefits of cloud, but they are not ready to move their entire environment to the cloud. The Stratus hybrid option enables them to do just that – leveraging the benefits of cloud without reconfiguring their entire environment.”

“Our goal is to provide flexible options to our customer,” Turco said. “In this business, we know that one size never fits all. Coupled with our ‘Hi-Touch’ service approach, our full range of cloud options gives us the ability to design custom configurations that meet a customer’s specific requirements or budget.”

Multiple companies have already begun taking advantage of the hybrid cloud, including BrandPort, Belk, Rollover Systems, VMware, Knowledge Point 360, Cleveland Cavaliers, Baylor School and NRCCUA.

Hosted Solutions has partnered with market leaders VMware, Sun, EMC, Cisco, F5 and Juniper to deliver the complete range of Stratus Trusted Cloud offerings. Since it is built on the industry’s most robust, scalable, fully redundant architecture, Stratus delivers unmatched performance, availability and security with 99.99% SLAs. By making this service available, Hosted Solutions is leveraging its proven experience in hosting production environments for more than 80 percent of its nearly 1,000 customers, including household names and market leaders such as Belk, Atlanta Falcons, Channel Advisor, Lowe's Motor Speedway, Lance, Motricity, and more.

About Hosted Solutions
Hosted Solutions’ high quality Data Center and Managed Hosting services maintain and protect customers’ mission-critical IT systems and applications, enabling them to reduce operating costs, lower the risk of downtime, focus on core competencies, and achieve their top business objectives. The company operates SAS 70 Type II Certified facilities in Boston MA, Charlotte NC, Raleigh NC, and Cary NC, providing best-of-breed data center operations with hardened physical infrastructure, the highest level of security, and a complete managed services portfolio. Hosted Solutions was acquired by Boston-based private equity firm ABRY Partners in April 2008 for $144 million. For more information, please visit www.hostedsolutions.com.