I blogged on Tuesday on how public cloud services will represent a $15 billion revenue opportunity through 2015. I also discussed how cloud service providers should start to see a clearer path for revenue growth if they adapt to the emergent demand of the enterprise customer.
Today I want to focus on the eight reasons why anyone launching commercial cloud services needs cloud orchestration. It’s not just our view, but the market’s view. Most of the commonly encountered vendors in the cloud orchestration arena parade their solutions on the enterprise catwalk. The Flexiant difference is that our solution is focused on delivering the additional capability required to build cloud service businesses that customers love.
The jobs to be done are different if you are in the business of selling cloud services rather than just building internally owned private clouds. Functional requirements therefore, are different. Here are just eight reasons why anyone building a commercial cloud services business needs a fit for purpose, service provider ready cloud orchestration solution:
As with the ever-elusive single definition of the ‘cloud’, there seem to be just as many definitions of cloud orchestration. This is part of the fun of being in a young industry. As innovation builds on innovation, the goal posts and definitions move. Cloud orchestration is no exception. Since cloud orchestration is effectively the glue that binds the cloud together and enables it to deliver on its promises, its definition is intrinsically linked to that of cloud computing. As people’s expectations and realisations evolve of what cloud computing should do, the definition of cloud orchestration will also.
To kick things off, here’s a few definitions that have been bandied about:
“automation, allowing public private, and hybrid clouds to operate with elasticity, scale, and efficiency to move at the ‘Speed of the Cloud’” (Source: Zenoss)
Or:
“simply facilitating the programmatic provisioning and de-provisioning of resources necessary for a cloud infrastructure” (Source: O’Reilly)
Flexiant today announced a partnership with CloudWork and Parallels to integrate Flexiant’s cloud orchestration software for on-demand, fully automated provisioning of cloud services with Parallels Virtuozzo Containers, the market leading virtualization solution for hosting and cloud service providers. CloudWork, a Netherlands based provider of cloud solutions hardware and software, and existing partner of both Flexiant and Parallels, will perform the integration of Flexiant’s software into Parallels Virtuozzo Containers.
Customer require agile provisioning of cloud services from their suppliers to stay competitive while controlling costs. Flexiant solves this challenge for service providers by providing a unique cloud orchestration platform to immediately control, build and monitor cloud services. By extending their platform to include virtualization based on Parallels Virtuozzo Containers, Flexiant will meet existing and future customer requirements for both capability and cost-effectiveness.
“Parallels Virtuozzo Containers is uniquely suited to for cloud virtualization, enabling rapid provisioning and real time dynamic scaling,” said John Zanni, Vice president of Service Provider Marketing and Alliances at Parallels. “Extending Flexiant’s cloud orchestration solution to support Parallels Virtuozzo Containers will be a benefit to service providers who seek the agility, freedom and flexibility to scale, deploy and configure cloud services simply and cost-effectively.”
George Knox, CEO of Flexiant, said, “This partnership benefits all businesses involved ensuring that customers have access to a cloud orchestration solution that can provide instant benefit. With access to Parallels existing and future customers, the benefits of our orchestration software will enable a true cloud platform as customers can meet server capacity requirements on-demand.”
“This is a huge opportunity for current and future Parallels customers,” said Victor Schmedding, Commercial Director Cloudwork. “With the integration between Parallels and Flexiant, hosters and service providers will get a unique cloud orchestration service that enables them to expand managed hosting with a fully automated best-in-class user interface.”
Able to provision cloud servers within seconds versus days, Flexiant’s end-to-end orchestration suite includes a fully integrated metering and billing engine enabling companies to monetise their services, whilst ensuring internal service providers have full charge-back capability.
About Flexiant
Flexiant is a leading European provider of cloud orchestration software for on-demand, fully automated provisioning of cloud services. Flexiant’s software gives cloud service providers’ business agility, freedom and flexibility to scale, deploy and configure cloud services, simply and cost-effectively. Vendor agnostic and supporting multiple hypervisors, Flexiant’s proven cloud orchestration solution is a full business process automation suite from provisioning through to granular metering and billing of resources. Flexiant’s Cloud Orchestration suite is simple to understand, simple to deploy and simple to use. Visit www.flexiant.com.
About Cloudwork
Cloudwork is a Netherlands based cloud services integrator who help service providers and their channels to go to market effectively. End-user and reseller adoption are key in successfully selling and delivering cloud services to the market. Cloudwork has made it their business to offer end-to-end frontend solutions for cloud services. For more information visit http://www.cloudwork.nl/
I spent last week out in Santa Clara at the Cloud Connect conference. It was clear that there is a dramatic transformation occurring within the maturing industry. At the exhibition stands, attendees were having in-depth discussions around the real business issues the cloud can address. Conversations are now focused on how real cloud computing, not ‘cloud washing’ is going to change business models enabling, for example, the ability to launch new products. Business models will change and cloud computing will effect that change.
One area of particular interest was in creating a ‘Spot Market’ for cloud computing. Companies are looking to establish a market place to allow service providers to bid for managing and processing work. This type of progressive development only means good things for the industry – from innovation to cost-effective solutions.
