IBM’s SoftLayer has launched a bare metal server range, which it claims can be deployed in less than 30 minutes and billed by the hour.
In addition to offering raw performance of physical servers with reduced commitments, the new hourly bare metal servers can either be stand alone or completely incorporated with other bare metal, virtual, storage, and networking services.
SoftLayer CTO Marc Jones said: "We have always focused on providing customers the right balance of performance, commitment, and cost.
"As businesses deploy more powerful workloads in the cloud, there is increased demand for performance with even shorter demand cycles.
SoftLayer’s bare metal servers are linked to the company’s private global network, which will allow integration between data centres without further networking fees, unlimited inter-data centre bandwidth, in addition to improved performance and security.
IDC Research VP Melanie Posey said: "Since business challenges vary on both a company-by-company and day-to-day basis, true cloud solutions must feature flexibility, diversity, and integration."
The severs are offered in four base configurations with CentOS, Red Hat, FreeBSD, or Ubuntu OS and the base configuration could be deployed within 30 minutes.
SoftLayer confirmed plans to offer additional base configurations for the new server range to be offered in the following months.
