UK telco and IT services provider BT has unveiled its cloud computing offering, the Virtual Data Centre (VDC).

The service allows businesses to provision servers, storage, networks and security via an online portal. BT will charge for these services on an on-demand basis.

"BT VDC will deliver a new and enhanced customer experience,” said Hanif Lalani, chief executive of BT Global Services. “Having the click-to-build and buy facility will give them flexibility and ease of provisioning. Deployment times will also be reduced from months to weeks, resulting in further cost savings and efficiencies.”

Meanwhile, middleware vendor TIBCO also joined the cloud rush with the recent launch of TIBCO Silver, a management console that it says will help enterprise IT shops make better use of cloud services.

The product includes such features as ‘self-aware elasticity’, meaning that extra capacity can be automatically provisioned from cloud services as demand for applications grows, and governance functionality.

“With cloud computing, governance is the elephant in the room,” said TIBCO vice president Ram Menon at a press conference last week.

TIBCO has launched Silver for beta testing, but has yet to decide how it will charge customers for usage.