Hosted Dev / Test Environments

[MarillionFan]

Ok. I know for some of you this is going to be a dumb ass question but for others maybe not.

I admit I don't have experience of obtaining these services or using them.

I would like to know where I can access shared services/environments for a host of software packages. For example. Business Objects, or SAP, or SAS or SQL 2008 with associated BI solutions, or a .NET Development environment etc etc

I want these hosted and prebuilt, and I want to buy their services for a period of time, I want to be able to VPN into dedicated virtualized environments (for use as a sand pit/training etc), when I am interested.

Does anyone have any experience of any companies which offer these shared cloud type services & the types of costs for being able to learn/license these?

[Zippy]

I take it you've looked at the standard hosting companies and they don't do what you want?

[minestrone]

Amazon have set costings for hundreds of pre built instances. I think most technology stacks are there already.

I think the deal is that you just pay for the software when your instance is up, I don't know much about that being an open source type of guy.

Been using the amazon cloud for a couple of years and it is a very good quality product, but of course some people will not take them seriously as they are amazon.

[d000hg]

Was also going to suggest Amazon, they're the recognised leaders in cloud stuff (despite being Amazon . You need to make sure your data is safe though, if you stop paying they claim to immediately delete all data when a virtual PC is culled.

[minestrone]

Was also at a meeting last year with an IB who had used Eucalyptus to build their own cloud. Because everything was internal (test & dev servers really) it suited them fine.

I think with the scale they were doing it at it made sense. Was told told any numbers though.