ReadWriteWeb

There's a very rapidly emerging class of smaller cloud service providers whose business model is to lease cloud services to a handful of customers. Imagine a small-town CSP that provides infrastructure to local banks and businesses, and who's close enough to its customer to shake hands. These smaller CSPs are leasing cloud services from larger, upstream providers and reselling them to their nucleus of customers. With a cloud service model - presumably - these new businesses only pay for the quantity of service they've already sold.

That's an intriguing business model, and one you might even be considering for yourself. But if the cloud were made up entirely of compute power and storage, it would indeed be just that easy. There are network availability services to think about as well, and up until very recently these services could only be provided through appliances. This morning, an early-stage, Santa Clara-based startup called Embrane announced immediate availability of cloud-based, virtual network appliances: specifically, virtual firewalls and load balancers to which CSPs may subscribe without purchase.

WiFi service aggregator Boingo will offer a free VPN as part of its access service, beginning now in beta and rolled out gradually over the next several months. If you are looking for a reason to purchase the service, this is a good one. Of course, you can always run your own personal VPN when you are roaming the halls of airports and sitting at coffee bars, but this seems like a good deal for the added security involved.

If your remote users are complaining that their corporate connection is too slow, what if you could just wave a magic wand and speed up their remote apps? Furthermore, what if you could do it without buying any hardware devices and using their existing Internet access, and just for a few dollars per user per month? Sounds incredible, but that is what Virtela's Enterprise Service Cloud (ESC) promises, and delivers.

Set to launch tomorrow, if the homepage can be believed, IPREDator is a new virtual private networking service (VPN) created by those behind The Pirate Bay. And if you don't know what The Pirate Bay is, well, you must be new to the Internet. (Welcome, it's crazy here.)

With IPREDator's VPN, you can stay anonymous on the net. Your internet traffic will be encrypted and protected - even beyond what a typical VPN offers. This way, law enforcement can't catch you when you download the latest episode of your favorite TV show...or when you get involved in other criminal activity, for that matter. And it's that last bit which is a bit troubling, we have to admit.