Internap Network Services has introduced new ‘cloudy colo’ capabilities it said deliver cloud-like remote visibility and management benefits to colocation customers and enable on-demand hybridization of cloud and colocation footprints within the data center, through a universal customer portal.

While cloud adoption is growing, colocation remains a critical IT Infrastructure solution for organizations that desire to retain ownership and control of the compute, storage and network equipment.

But Internap said traditional colocation typically lacks the transparency and automation inherent in cloud services, making it difficult to gain a holistic view of the environment.

In addition, colocated enterprises increasingly require more flexibility to quickly and easily address a wide range of use cases – such as scale-out Web applications or ‘bursty’ and unpredictable workloads – resulting in the need to access a mix of infrastructure options.

451 Research analyst Carl Brooks said based on growing comfort with the automation offered by cloud services, organizations are seeking easier and faster access to their infrastructure.

“As a result, there’s a strong opportunity for service providers to give customers access to elastic, on-demand resources with new kinds of controls, agility, ease-of-use, and infrastructure hybridization.”

Internap said its new ‘cloudy colo’ capabilities address these emerging demands via a universal customer portal.

The portal will be provided as a standard part of Internap’s offering and will deliver cloud-like granular visibility and management of the colocation environment – increasing control while reducing costly visits to the data center or the use of remote hands services.

The portal will initially include the following colocation management features:

• Inventory management with integrated support tracking: Customers can review their entire colocated footprint; check device power status and create alerts; deploy stencils for device-level inventory tracking and management; and open support tickets instantly and receive feedback directly from Internap’s NOC.
  
  Power utilization monitoring and management: Customers can view circuit-level power utilization trends; remotely reboot or power down any configured device without incurring charges; and easily access and view log files of all initiated power actions.
  
  Environmental and bandwidth monitoring: Customers can view rack-level temperature and humidity conditions; track IP traffic and conduct trend analyses; and capture and analyze device health and usage stats.
  
  On-demand provisioning of hybrid services: Customers can integrate management of colocation – typically a “siloed” environment – with on-demand provisioning and scaling of cloud compute, bare metal and cloud storage assets to rapidly align their infrastructure portfolio with changing business and application needs.
  
  Internap’s on-demand hybridization is made possible by its Platform Connect service, which provides private network connectivity between multiple Internap services – including colocation, managed hosting and cloud – within the same data center.
  
  It said this allows customers to hybridize application environments as needed via the universal customer portal within minutes, versus the industry average of days or even weeks.
  
  Internap SVP of technology Raj Dutt said both cloud and colocation will continue to play critical roles in meeting organizations’ diverse application requirements.
  
  “The universal customer portal bridges these typically distinct worlds with ‘cloudy colo’ capabilities, providing remote visibility into the colocation environment and enabling the on-demand integration of colocation, cloud and other infrastructure with the simplicity of one trusted network, one contract and one support team.”
  
  The universal customer portal is currently in limited release for Internap Labs customers.
  
  It will be generally available at the end of Q2 for the company’s Los Angeles, Santa Clara and Dallas data centers and further expanded across its geographically distributed footprint by the end of 2013.