CenturyLink enters PaaS market with AppFog acquisition, report says

CenturyLink (NYSE: CTL) is purchasing AppFog, a Platform as a Service (PaaS) provider, according to a report in Tech Crunch citing an unnamed source at the telco.

The service provider did not reveal the financial details of the acquisition.

When the deal is completed, AppFog will become part of Savvis, CenturyLink's data center and cloud services subsidiary. Neither Savvis nor AppFog would provide a comment to Tech Crunch about the deal.

Later in the morning, CenturyLink confirmed that they did acquire AppFog, a purchase that adds its PaaS capabilities, which are tailored to software developers, to Savvis' Cloud product catalog. AppFog will extend its by adding its public cloud PaaS to the savvisdirect online channel and offering private, dedicated deployments to Savvis' enterprise clients.

"Combining AppFog's market-leading Platform-as-a-Service capabilities with Savvis' industry-leading Infrastructure-as-a-Service cloud services and CenturyLink's global network will enable developers to securely and reliably operate and connect the applications they build and deploy," said Jeff Von Deylen, president of CenturyLink's Savvis organization, in a release.

Lucas Carlson, who served as AppFog's CEO, has joined Savvis as its vice president, cloud evangelist.

AppFog's PaaS solution can be integrated into a company's data center or accessed as a public service. Over the past year, AppFog has been focusing its efforts on developing a private PaaS strategy.

Similar to its acquisition of Ciber, the AppFog deal is another example of how CenturyLink's Savvis wants to move up the stack to help clients manage various applications.

Expanding its PaaS presence will be another element that Savvis can offer from its growing base of data centers. In May, Savvis announced that it is increasing its data center footprint by adding capacity in eight existing sites and lighting up two new data centers in Hong Kong and London.

For more:
- Tech Crunch has this article
- see the release

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Updated article on June 14 with confirmation of deal and information about executive changes.