StratoGen Brings Cloud Platform Stateside

After launching its SHARP cloud platform just about a year ago, U.K.-based cloud hosting provider StratoGen (a service provider partner of VMware) is coming to America.

The SHARP platform enables users to create virtual data centers from a Web-based portal, which includes firewalls, networks and virtual machines.

The big move was actually initially mentioned on the company's blog in October, where StratoGen mentioned a "significant interest" in U.S. customers. A big driving force behind this interest was a considerable number of U.S.-based customers who were uncomfortable having their data hosted outside of the country.

In addition to its data center in London, StratoGen will now be deploying clusters (each of which comes with Cisco firewall service and a 100 percent uptime guarantee) in a new center in Denver, Colorado. The company says that this dedicated layer 2 connectivity between U.S. and U.K. clouds "will provide transatlantic data replication for disaster recovery purposes."

"We are bringing some real innovations to shake up the cloud hosting market in the U.S.," says the company's sales director, Karl Robinson.

Through January 31, StratoGen is offering a 25 percent discount on cloud hosting for intrigued customers.