Loudcloud Signs USA Today

Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Loudcloud (Nasdaq: LDCL), the much-hyped Internet infrastructure services provider from Netscape founder Marc Andreessen, today announced that USATODAY.com will outsource its Internet operations to Loudcloud.

The announcement comes just hours after Loudcloud went public with a rather lethargic IPO.

As per the new deal, USATODAY.com will now be deployed, scaled, managed and monitored using Loudcloud service and its flagship Opsware automation technology, a proprietary software environment for provisioning, managing, and scaling complex software environments. As Andreessen himself often describes it, Opsware automates the process of building and operating large-scale software environments for “all the different infrastructure services Loudcloud provides.”

“USATODAY experiences large “spikes” in traffic during major news events like most popular news sites,” said Adriaan Bouten, VP of Technology and Business Development at USATODAY.com, which registers tens of millions of page views per month. “To more effectively handle the traffic load, we selected Loudcloud to provide and manage the supporting infrastructure for the site because of its ability to scale on demand.”

Bouten said implementing Loudcloud’s Opsware technology means USATODAY.com no longer needs to handle the complexities of operating Internet infrastructure and can focus on providing content to its readers.