Most enterprises today want to get out of the data center business — meaning they want to outsource the maintenance of the data center and infrastructure to focus on innovative software and applications that help them make money. The public cloud, with its inexpensive, full-service management, is alluring to many. Yet some businesses have cold feet about charging to the public cloud right away due to regulatory concerns, security issues or attachment to IT personnel. One company wants to offer a self-paced on-ramp that lets them outsource their data center but keep remote control of it.

David Mettler, VP of Sales, Market Director US at IO, spoke about questions facing companies with on-prem data centers who are considering the cloud. “For a lot of companies, they don’t know what that means for their legacy environments,” he told John Furrier (@furrier) and Peter Burris (@plburris), cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, during the IO Conversation – The Data Center as a Platform event.

Long-distance relationship

Mettler said that IO allows customers to set up a data center in one of its facilities, of which there are four in the U.S., as well as one in Singapore and one in London. So their data center moves off-prem, as it does with public cloud, but the difference is they maintain a measure of control over it.

From this middle ground, they can then decide on their own time what they want to move to public cloud, when, and how. “Having the connectivity from the data center to the public cloud — it provides optionality. It gives them that flexibility — they could have certain workloads go to the cloud,” Mettler stated.

Software-hardware mesh

Mettler said he believes IO’s software level will allow customers increasing control of their data center through a simpler interface.

“That’s the vision down the road — right? To be able to actually operate and control the data center through the software level,” he said.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of The IO Conversation – The Data Center as a Platform event.

Photo by SiliconANGLE