Xerox's ACS Rolls Out Public, Private Cloud Service

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Xerox-owned Affiliated Computer Services this week became the latest IT services company to debut an enterprise service that blends both private and public cloud services though an on-demand delivery model.

ACS Enterprise Cloud is designed to support the Vblock infrastructure package, a pre-integrated and pre-tested virtualized data center offering developed by Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO), EMC (NYSE: EMC) and VMware (NYSE: VMW).

As more and more companies transition away from traditional on-premise software implementations for either pure on-demand or hybrid options, IT service providers are racing to develop Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offerings that give enterprise customers the flexibility to add and delete apps on the fly without paying huge upfront installation fees and recurring service and maintenance fees.

According to Gartner, worldwide cloud computing services revenue will grow from just over $56 billion last year to more than $150 billion by 2013.

“This service takes the fog out of cloud computing,” Ken Stephens, ACS’ senior vice president of global strategy and service management, said in a statement. “They will know exactly what they are purchasing, when they are buying it and how much it is costing them.”

The ACS Enterprise Cloud can be integrated into the company’s ITIL-compliant ACS Management Platform to speed the deployment of standardized business applications from the cloud.

Xerox said the ACS Enterprise Cloud solution extends the ACS Management Platform (AMP v1.0) delivered through a partnership with Novell that utilizes its Intelligent Workload Management solutions. The ACS Management Platform adds cloud-centered functionality such as self-service provisioning, role-based access controls, automated OS and middleware configuration.

Xerox (NYSE: XRX) announced its blockbuster $6.4 billion purchase of Dallas-based ACS last September. ACS, which became an independent “Xerox company” after the acquisition, bills itself as the world’s largest business-process outsourcing (BPO) firm.

Larry Barrett is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of Internet.com, the network for technology professionals.