Corus360 Builds Power Systems Cloud In Atlanta

May 13, 2013 Dan Burger

Corus360, an Atlanta, Georgia-based value added reseller (VAR) with a 30,000-square-foot data center, is expanding its services with an application hosting business for companies using IBM i, AIX, and Linux apps. It calls its new, on-demand, allocation of resources venture PowerCloud360. Companies looking to reduce IT capital expenditures and expenses are the target market.

Behind the PowerCloud360 name is IBM Power Systems’ proven virtualization capabilities–virtualized processors, memory, network, and storage. Of course, disaster recovery and high availability are part of the design. More than likely it will be the biggest portion of the business. And in true, cloud-like fashion, customers with production environments can add temporary, additional resources during peak month-end or year-end processes.

Currently, Corus360 is working with nine IBM i shops with a variety of environments, including production, development and testing, high availability, and archiving. There’s a mix of customer-owned boxes and Corus-owned boxes that range from Power5 through Power7 systems. Some are dedicated to a customer, while others are partitioned and shared. Services range from hosting hardware and software to simply maintaining an archive on disk.

Mitigating risk due to unforeseen disasters is one reason companies might look at systems and technologies that prevent any business interruption, but companies are also considering whether to reduce their management of IT assets and resources. In either scenario, Corus360 is joining the growing ranks of managed service providers such as Abacus, Connectria, and Sirius.

There is a primary 30,000-square-foot data center in suburban Atlanta and business partnerships with other data centers where it makes better sense for its customers.

Contracts are based on expected use of processor, disk, and memory, with additional resources on a temporary on-demand basis.

Corus360 describes itself as a technology consulting and solutions company that specializes in best of breed infrastructure solutions, IT management consulting, application development, data center technologies, disaster recovery, managed services, IT staffing, and enterprise applications.

It operates a subsidiary called RES-Q that provides a range of DR and business continuity services, including: hot site, warm site, and drop-ship services; data vaulting, data replication, and HA management; and workgroup services (including temporary office space, call center facilities, and temporary and permanent staffing).

The company earned a reputation by helping Fortune 100 and midsize corporations recover after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated the Gulf Coast in 2005. It drop-shipped servers for recovery and testing and converted a former data center to a hot or warm site where it could “stand up gear at a moment’s notice,” according to business continuity manager Steve Gruber in an interview with IT Jungle.

The company’s $100 million inventory in servers, storage, and other IT gear is one of the factors that distinguishes Corus360. Clients can make use of that inventory and also bring in additional equipment to test and experiment while addressing issues they’re dealing with offsite.

In addition to being a value added reseller and business partner with IBM, Corus360 has VAR relationships with all the tier-one systems manufacturers, including Hewlett-Packard, EMC, Dell, and Hitachi.