Cloud Host Linode Adds Professional Services Support Option

As SSD cloud hosting and storage provider Linode continues to redefine itself, its latest move is the introduction of a “Professional Services” option that adds full deployment and management off-loading to the company’s customer service offerings.

Professional Services is a fee-for-service support option designed to allow enterprises to hire Linode staff to perform work on their clouds. “Should a customer not have the time, expertise, inclination or staff-bandwidth to tackle essential sysAdmin duties, Linode can be enlisted to implement them,” the company said.

Linode envisions those duties including site migrations and web-, database- and email-server installations, as well as control-panel deployments during a Linode build, it said in a statement. The services are available at the rate of $100 per hour for regular Linode customers, or $75 per hour for those subscribing to the Linode Managed plan.

The company hopes the new offering will help draw business from enterprises that lack the resources or in-house expertise to take full advantage of the cloud efficiently. “Installing a customized LAMP stack or configuring a specialized website can be risky,” said Linode CEO Christopher S. Aker. “The Professional Services team is well-trained to handle these sysadmin tasks. Our expertise can reduce build time, ensure a build’s integrity, free up the customer’s time and staff to attend to other matters, and deliver a solid return on the investment.”

The move follows Linode’s announcement earlier this summer that it would slash cloud-hosting prices and introduce high-end hardware to its storage and computing infrastructure, which transformed the company from a cloud host focused on providing Linux-based infrastructure that would appeal to a technically savvy crowd committed to open source hardware, to one that now offers broader hosting options and is seeking to stand out from the crowd through high-end infrastructure and sophisticated support solutions.