CSC Acquires ServiceMesh to Orchestrate the Cloud

Debunking Five Misconceptions About Cloud-Based Services

To ensure that it can provide management of cloud computing in any form it takes, CSC this week acquired ServiceMesh, a provider of cloud orchestration software.

According to CSC CTO Dan Hushon, customers are moving past the debate over public versus private instances of cloud computing. They want to be able to deploy application workloads on the cloud computing platform that makes the most economic sense. To effectively accomplish that goal, Hushon says customers need access to cloud orchestration technology that allows them to apply policies to certain classes of workloads to deploy an application workload on the cloud platform that makes the most sense.

ServiceMesh, says Hushon, allows organizations to manage that process at a higher level of abstraction without having to firmly commit to running a particular application workload on a specific cloud platform forever. Instead, Hushon says IT organizations will be able to have maximum flexibility in terms of the types of cloud platforms they need, while retaining control over the extended enterprise computing environment.

The challenge that most organizations are working through now is the complicated economics of deciding which application workloads to run where. Applications that don’t have many users are candidates for either being moved to the cloud or being replaced by a software as a service (SaaS) application. But other issues relating to compliance may affect where that application can actually run. In addition, many existing applications have not been designed to run in a cloud environment, which means moving them to the cloud may require some re-engineering.

The end result, says Hushon, is going to be a landscape of cloud applications—running inside and outside of the enterprise data center—that all need to be orchestrated. Most organizations don’t have enough people or skills to manage enterprise computing at that scale, which is why Hushon says CSC moved to acquire ServiceMesh: to provide cost-effective management of distributed cloud computing environments. In fact, ServiceMesh represents the second major cloud acquisition that CSC has recently made under the leadership of CEO Mike Lawrie. Earlier this year, CSC acquired InfoChimps, which provides infrastructure that is optimized for running Big Data applications in the cloud.

Naturally, when it comes to cloud orchestration, just about every provider of IT integration services is moving down the same path. The challenge CSC is facing is leveraging the actual ownership of cloud orchestration technology into something that represents a material competitive advantage.