Gravitant appeals to 'just in time' mindset

Cloud broker Gravitant, the company behind the cloudMatrix platform for hybrid cloud management, has expanded its ability to offer "just in time" cloud infrastructure.

The focus of the new offering is on organizations and businesses that might need to switch on excess processing capacity at certain times of the year and then throttle it back after a relatively short period of time.

One example involves the state of Texas, which used cloud infrastructure services to help handle excess Web site activity during election season. Visitor demand on the Web site increased more than 1,000 percent, reaching 5 million hits on the voting site by noon on Election Day in 2012, Gravitant reports.

Another scenario could involve an e-commerce provider, which might need to handle a spike in visitors during a promotion or during certain seasonal sales spikes but that doesn't necessarily need all that excess capacity during different times of the year.

The thing that makes this difficult is, of course, the need to manage these resources in conjunction with existing solutions -- whether they are in the cloud or on site. 

Notes Wayne Pauley, senior analyst for Enterprise Strategy Group:

"Cloud provides on-demand functionality but doesn't include the controls needed to assure usage of the right resources at the right time and cost. Gravitant's Just in Time I.T. strategy solves this problem with real-time governance controls and automated adjustment to resource utilization."

Gravitant's experience in helping tie cloud resources with an organization's legacy, on-premises infrastructure -- managing hybrid implementations -- definitely makes this a logical extension of its services.