Savvis launched its Symphony cloud based database platform into Europe which it claims will cut the complexity of hosting databases and subsequently cost 75% less than a dedicated service.

Clients can scale up to the entire bandwidth of a data center if needed and can process 30 megabytes of data per second, claimed Jonathan Vincenzo, Savvis’ director of product engineering.

The key to this easy management is scalability, said Vincenzo. The service can scale up from one to 16 cores in one day and back down the next with no other costs than the day of usage, in a transaction that take five minutes online, he said.

Symphony brings the advantages of cloud computing to Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server environments without long-term licensing or server provisioning, claimed the vendor, which promised a complete, secure system within a few clicks. The simplicity does not compromise its versatility, said Savvis's MD for EMEA Neil Cresswell, as the database maintains the flexibility to ramp up performance levels as required, without interrupting operations.

Unlike Pure SQL based databases that preceded it, Symphony can provide performance guarantees at much lower cost than clients are used to from hosted databases, he said.

"It's a quickly available, pay-as-you-go model and its instant scalability reduces database expenses and complexity," said Cresswell. "We bring Savvis' mission-critical expertise to the Symphony Database, providing performance levels and availability on par with your traditional data center."

Users can select from Oracle Enterprise 11G RAC or Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 for the underlying technology. The service is available to European clients through Savvis' UK. data centre in Slough. Symphony Database complements the VMware-based Savvis Symphony suite of enterprise cloud solutions.

The European launch of Symphony Database follows the recent opening of Savvis' Frankfurt data center in Germany.