– Peder Ulander, Chief Marketing Officer at Cloud.com (www.cloud.com), says:
Today, enterprises and service providers that are interested in launching cloud computing services face the difficult task of integrating complex software and hardware components from multiple vendors. The resulting system could end up being expensive to build and hard to operate, minimizing the original motives and benefits of moving to this new model. Cloud.com’s focus is on enabling enterprises to quickly architect, configure and deploy highly reliable, highly scalable and cost-effective cloud environments and operate in a far more flexible and cost-efficient way.
Cloud.com CloudStack is an infrastructure as a service (IaaS) platform that helps IT managers quickly and easily build, manage and deploy private and public clouds. By integrating all of the key components, CloudStack removes the complexity of cloud infrastructure for IT managers and the data center and enables users to realize instant efficiencies without the overhead of integration, professional services, and complex deployment schedules. This means that IT managers can focus on more strategic projects while becoming more efficient in how they manage and deploy IT services.
Where should CloudStack rank in terms of overall priority in the data center?
For companies turning to cloud computing models as a key priority in their IT staff (the category itself has ranked in the top 3 priorities for the past couple of years), CloudStack should rank high as one of the fastest and easiest methods for deploying private clouds in the enterprise. CloudStack is the foundation to effectively building and managing a private or public cloud. For enterprises looking to build a cloud, this IaaS platform is crucial to extend their existing IT investment and enables them to quickly realize the benefits of increased agility and cost savings that are expected with a cloud service rollout.
The biggest challenge/concern for IT managers with an IaaS cloud platform is getting locked into a specific vendor’s technology. IT managers are still getting accustomed to the latest cloud technology and they need a platform that can easily integrate with their existing data centers technologies.
There are many different IaaS platforms on the market right now and IT managers need to choose one that offers flexibility and freedom. CloudStack supports the common cloud frameworks in user data centers like the Amazon Web Services AP, the Citrix Cloud Center (C3) API and the fast growing OpenStack initiative, and it provides an open environment that interoperates with a user’s existing cloud initiatives.
The advice I would give to the users and IT managers deciding on an IaaS solution is to make sure they choose the solution that fits in with their specific environment, tailored to meet their needs. It often happens that enterprises choose to deploy a solution where they need to make their preexisting environment now fit in with the new one. This often leads to a lot of time and money wasted. Enterprises should select a solution that gives them the freedom and flexibility to choose from various hardware components, virtualization technologies, storage architectures, and deployment models. Choose the right components for specific needs, whether that involves commodity and open source solutions or advanced enterprise grade systems in order to meet security, availability, and manageability requirements.
Currently, Cloud.com counts over 50 large-scale production clouds in deployment that have been built on its market-leading open source cloud computing solution, including leading social gaming companies, global telecommunications companies, managed hosting providers and Fortune 1000 enterprises. The software is deployed both on premise and as a hosted environment.
