Daily Camera

Boulder-based Standing Cloud offers software and development platform deployment and management to business owners and developers.

The company recently announced that its application layer solution will now be available to customers of SoftLayer through the SoftLayer Technology Partners Marketplace.

Users of Standing Cloud can deploy, develop and manage Web applications using SoftLayer’s on-demand cloud hosting platform.

Standing Cloud CEO David J. Jilk spoke to the Camera about “the cloud,” the company’s benefits for business owners and developers, as well as Standing Cloud’s plans for the future.

1.What is “the cloud?”

“The cloud” refers to the idea that the Internet is not just a communication medium; it also is a way that computing and storage can be performed remotely rather than locally. It’s powerful because it means your work is not tied to a particular computing device, and companies are not tied to a particular physical data center.

2.What service does Standing Cloud provide to business users and developers?

The Standing Cloud service makes it easy for both business users and developers to make use of IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service) without the assistance of a system administrator. In particular, a user can deploy an application from our catalog with just a couple of clicks. Our system takes care of creating the server, installing the required technology, installing the application and then backing it up and monitoring it.

3.How is Standing Cloud different from traditional shared hosting?

There are many differences, but I would emphasize flexibility and control. With shared hosting, your software and data are located on a particular physical computer with fixed resources. If you want to change the resources available, or change to another provider or data center, you have to manually move everything. With Standing Cloud, all this can be handled with a few clicks.

4.What does the launch of the SoftLayer Technology Partners Marketplace mean for Standing Cloud?

I think it is a strong endorsement of the Standing Cloud service and our approach. SoftLayer is a strong player in the IaaS marketplace and their inclusion of Standing Cloud as the only PaaS (Platform as a Service) provider in their Partner Marketplace says a lot. Operationally it means that it will be easier for SoftLayer customers to deploy and manage a wide variety of application software efficiently.

5.What are the company’s plans for the future?

Although we already support 10 different IaaS cloud providers, look for us to continue to increase that number, as well as establish enhanced relationships with these providers. Also, we are working to increase the number of commercial applications available.

— Erin Dooley