Cloud Cruiser Launches Company with Announcement of Free 'Test Drive' of the Industry's First Cost Optimization Solution Across Legacy, Private, Hybrid and Public Cloud Computing Environments

ROSEVILLE, Calif., March 1, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Cloud Cruiser™, a cloud computing software company, today announced its corporate launch and an opportunity to 'test drive' a SaaS based demo that optimizes costs across legacy, private, hybrid, and public cloud environments. The customizable tools, called Cloud Optimizer™, provide end-to-end cost transparency, benchmarking, next generation chargeback and business intelligence (BI) analytics that will enable organizations to migrate to the cloud with confidence regardless of where their data resides.

"As more and more customers consider moving to the cloud, end-to-end cost and chargeback transparency is essential," stated Mark Hindsbo, Vice President of US Developer and Platform Evangelism Group, Microsoft. "Together, the public cloud offering of the Windows Azure Platform and Cloud Cruiser play an important role in winning customer confidence and increasing speed to market."

Cloud Cruiser is offering a free test drive of a customer-defined experience, importing real customer usage data into the Cloud Cruiser SaaS environment. The demo provides IT organizations complete transparency with a single-lens granular view of cost information across their legacy and cloud workloads. To sign up for the offer, visit Cloud Cruiser at www.cloudcruiser.com or at the Cloud Connect Conference in the Santa Clara Convention Center, Booth 616.

"Accurate and transparent chargeback is a key requirement in this age of cloud computing," noted Jay Pultz, Vice President and Distinguished Analyst at Gartner. "By 2015, we forecast more than 50% of the Global 2000 will charge back most IT costs using service-based pricing, up from less than 10% today. New integrated tools will be needed to implement IT service-based chargeback."(1)

"At its core, cloud computing is fundamentally about lowering costs. Cloud Cruiser was founded to enable companies to realize those cost savings," said Dave Zabrowski, Founder and CEO. "Cost optimization is moving mainstream and Cloud Cruiser is the first to deliver a uniquely architected solution to meet the needs of the market."

About Cloud Cruiser:

Founded in 2010 by a seasoned executive team of datacenter experts, Cloud Cruiser is a venture-backed firm led by Wavepoint Ventures, a Silicon Valley-based early stage investor. Cloud Cruiser's cost optimization tools are designed specifically for Global 2000 companies transitioning from legacy architecture to multi-tenant cloud environments. With Cloud Cruiser, the Federal Government, large providers such as Microsoft, HP, Dell, Amazon, Google, Savvis, Rackspace and Nimbula will be able to cost optimize their entire extended infrastructures. For more information visit: www.cloudcruiser.com.

The Cloud Cruiser logo, product names and logos and combinations thereof, are trademarks of Cloud Cruiser Corporation, Inc. All other names are for informational purposes and may be trademarks of their respective owners.

About Cloud Connect:

Cloud Connect, produced by UBM TechWeb, is the defining event of the cloud computing industry. As both a conference and an exhibition, Cloud Connect's goal is to chart the course of cloud computing's development by bringing together enterprise IT professionals, developers, infrastructure providers and cloud computing innovators. UBM TechWeb has produced cloud events that define and frame cloud computing discussions since June 2008, including Cloud Summit Executive and Enterprise Cloud Summit at Interop. Cloud Connect is a one-of-a-kind event that encompasses the entire cloud computing ecosystem featuring a Launch Pad program, IT & Developer workshops and a full conference program. Cloud Connect will take place March 7-10, 2011 at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA. For more information visit: www.cloudconnectevent.com.

(1) Gartner Presentation "Chargeback and Allocation: Required in the Age of Cloud Computing and Virtualization!" by Jay Pultz. November 17-19, 2010.

SOURCE Cloud Cruiser