MSP Cloud

Demand for Private Cloud Drives Growth of Hosting Company AISN

By Erin Harrison
Executive Editor, Strategic Initiatives

As more companies shift from on-premise computing to cloud-based services, cloud providers are reaching sales goals earlier than expected as demand drives unprecedented growth. In fact, Forrester Research (News - Alert) analysts are predicting that the private cloud market will double to more than $15 billion in 2020.

As an example of such growth, cloud-based hosting company AISN announced it has doubled the size of its public cloud several months earlier than anticipated.

Last year, the Inverness, Ill.-based company reported three record sales quarters, and brought on more new customers in one year than in any single year of the company’s 19-year history, according to AISN CEO Jay Atkinson. New cloud customers are outpacing more traditional managed hosting customers by three to one, he said.

“Private cloud demand is driving much of the enterprise growth we’re seeing currently, but public cloud demand has been an even stronger influence on sales,” Atkinson said.

Less than two months into 2012, Atkinson said AISN has made a strong market for itself in hosting Microsoft (News - Alert) SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint for Internet Sites (SharePoint FIS) as well as other applications. The company also attributed its growth record to the launch of the AISN partner program last March, which resulted in the company adding numerous new enterprise-class customers, including the hosting of high-end SaaS (News - Alert) applications.

“The AISN public cloud is a great, economical option for online storage customers and the many small and mid-size businesses that we serve. Our enterprise customers are trying to get greater flexibility out of their IT resources while still preserving data security and controls, so they are gravitating toward our private cloud and hybrid cloud options,” Atkinson added.

AISN cloud hosting services cater to enterprises as well as high-traffic Web businesses – with healthcare and financial industries making up the bulk of customers that host their data with AISN, company officials said.

In January, AISN started hosting SharePoint 2010 for Internet sites, offering SharePoint FIS among several products and services in the cloud to digital content creators, MSP News™ reported.

Including SharePoint FIS hosting among its product offerings represented the first of several steps that AIS Network has taken to expand its cloud hosting services for professionals working in digital content creation fields such as Web development, design, publishing, film, architecture, advertising, marketing and public relations, according to a recent company blog post.