Providing a Sophisticated, Self-Managed Public Cloud

There are hundreds of public clouds out there, with more coming every day. Most of them are not truly clouds, just a hosted service with “cloud” stamped on the website and no real changes to the offering. And the offerings that do have self-service are often klunky or ugly or both. Just because the user is IT, rather than a business unit, doesn’t mean that it’s ok to serve up the red-headed stepchild of technology.

As you might have already seen, Abiquo places a high value on both form and function. In fact, we strongly believe that it should look great AND work better than you could ever hope for. So when we see a customer apply our product and our philosophy to their own in a really sophisticated or interesting way, we think everyone should pay attention.

Claranet’s recently announced Virtual Data Centre offering is the first integrated self-service cloud offering available to the European market. The offering combines self-service,  governance, resiliency, network integration, and migration in a single service. Claranet Virtual Data Centre customers manage their own resources and users through a simple, yet powerful, online interface.

To learn more about the Claranet cloud offering, visit: http://www.claranet.co.uk/virtual-data-centre.html

To learn more about how Abiquo made Claranet’s offering possible, read more in this press release: http://www.abiquo.com/news-and-events/abiquo-powers-claranets-virtual-data-centre.php

 

 

 

Cloud Expo Keynote Opens Doors to Townhall Feedback

Join the Conversation!

Abstract

Implementing a successful Enterprise Cloud requires that the needs of all stakeholders be balanced and in harmony. Without this balance, it simply doesn’t work, leading to failed projects – as a number of early cloud adopters have already discovered to their cost. Balance is not just about consultation, it’s about selecting technology that works to address the needs of each stakeholder. In my upcoming keynote, I will demonstrate that not only is balance possible, but that with it, the Enterprise Cloud actually becomes greater than the sum of its parts, truly achieving both the individual goals of each stakeholder, and the collective goal of the organization.

Read the whole story at www.petemalcolm.com — post a comment there, then join us at Cloud Expo Silicon Valley, Wednesday, Nov 9th at 1:30 for the General Session.   We will open the floor to answer questions and bring some followers on stage to join us for a community panel.  Tell your friends through twitter with #tightrope or #cloudexpo.

 

Hello, I Must Be Going!

11/07/11

To be honest, I really wanted my first Abiquo blog to appear on 11/11/11 – how cool would that be!  But before I get too ahead of myself, an introduction is probably in order.

My blog will generally cover all things Abiquo but with a higher dose of products, cloud trends and competitive news.   And while this is not my personal blog, I will try to keep it light, fun and informative.

I run product management for Abiquo.  This boils down to two big responsibilities

• First, I translate (or most often anticipate) what our customers and the market would want up to 12 months in advance
• Second, I drive the engineering team crazy by making them commit to ridiculous product delivery deadlines.

OK, the above is not 100% true but what I would say if I ever ended up at a speed dating session.  The reality is the end product is a result of a tremendous amount of collaboration within the Abiquo team…but engineering still blames me for the ridiculous deadlines.

The big news today is the release of Abiquo 2.0 – this is the major release that the team has been working on since late summer.   You can learn more about Abiquo 2.0 here.  We’ll be demonstrating this new release at Cloud Expo this week – which has historically been “the show” for Abiquo – so it’ll be a super busy week for us.

I’ll post an update of the week’s highlights on 11/11/11 (yes!).  Stay tuned.

“Small agile beats big slow–big agile beats everything” – CIO’s Weigh in on Top 10 priorities

I recently came across an interesting article on InformationWeek by Rob Preston.  He covers the top 10 technology priorities for US CIOs.  A lot of the article was the usual buzzword bingo of “big data, consumerization of IT, and social media.” Of course cloud computing was mentioned, but interestingly enough he makes a point on #9 that it’s the “exploration of cloud computing” not the “embracing.”  Specifically he states, “But rather than migrate whole hog to public cloud services, most U.S. companies are looking to build hybrid clouds, capitalizing on the flexibility of cloud architectures while keeping their most sensitive or critical workloads behind their own firewalls.”  We’ve heard many people talking about the idea of the “enterprise cloud restart.”  This concept is built from the premise that many enterprises have built “something” but it didn’t accomplish the goal, or worse yet, there was no specific goal.   So in additon to evaluating which type of cloud, many firms are also re-evaluating what cloud success looks like and what is realistic.

 

So you might be asking, what were the top 3 priorities? I think these points can be summarized as faster, cheaper, and easier.

• #3: Stop spending 70-80% on maintenance
• #2: Align IT and the business
• #1: Make IT faster

First the scary part, just in time for Halloween.  Point #3 highlights that cost issues aren’t shifting out of IT, even with virtualization.  Specifically, Mr. Preston states, “As represented by our annual InformationWeek 500 ranking, even the most innovative IT users spend 63% of their IT budgets on ongoing operations as opposed to new initiatives–a percentage that has barely budged in a decade.” Considering how fast cloud computing and new application development is moving, it’s hard to believe this is still an issue.  When you compound the costs with the anticipated efficiencies hoped for from virtualization, we see both elements have remained relatively constant.  For example, customers that expected 70% server utilization are really only seeing 30%.

Points 1 and 2 are refreshing that they came up as points 1 and 2.  We all call this revolution “cloud computing,” but these two points get to the reality that we need efficiencies in IT, in real terms.  Specifically, by adding automation, governance, self service and management to many aspects, IT teams can have the agility they need, even on a large scale.  As stated in the article, “As the American Express CIO Toby Redshaw looks at the challenge in a positive light, stating in a recent presentation to the company’s board: “Small agile beats big slow–big agile beats everything.”"  2012 needs to be the year that IT teams find a project (start small), set some goals on efficiency in order to best serve the business and start to test the waters.  Don’t try to boil the ocean, pick something to be successful with, learn from it and show success.

A week of VMworld news- As I see it.

Well VMworld is over for another year.  The much anticipated event for many high tech fans means networking, new technology and of course parties.   That said, we saw some interesting news come from VMworld this week and here’s a short recap and my thoughts.

1) Microsoft announces they offer a private cloud that is 4 times cheaper than VMware, but more importantly they roll out some hilarious marketing that smacks VMware while they recover from the recent pricing snafu.

2) Dell announces they will offer a public cloud leveraging vCloud Director, only weeks after announcing they will make OpenStack commercially available.  Makes you wonder why they would choose vCloud for their public offering, but encourage an open source stack for everyone else to figure out?

3) Eucalyptus announces High Availability in version 3.0 and the confirmation that they aren’t dying.  Mr. Micko’s, glad to see that you’re still in the game.  By the way, in case you missed it, Abiquo announced High Availability in version 1.8 a few months ago.

4) Citrix decides to give Cloud.com away for free via Open Source, or loss leader or proliferation strategy, what ever you want to call it.  Will this be their winning hand against VMware for cloud penetration or will it end up like their other open source offering?  Oddly, this report sites that while it’s claiming open source, the price is still $995 per 2-core host- but doesn’t state if that’s for support or what you’re getting for that price.

5) Lastly, VMware announced a ton of stuff, but the interesting part was vCloud Global Connect, which seems to be a partnership “hug” around working with a few providers looking for some airtime from VMware.  I agree with Gartner’s Lydia Leong on this one. I’m not sure VMware can execute on this promise and if they did, do people really want this?

We also saw lots of nice stories  that summarize what’s happening and who to see at VMworld- so if you’re looking at private cloud solutions, this short list  from The VirtualizationPractice might make it easy to create your own short list when you get back to work.  Or if you want more detail, this report from Forrester gets to the heart of it all.

We can all take a breather now and wait for the next cloud wave in November, when Cloud Computing Expo hits the Bay Area. See ya there.

GigaOm Panel Addresses the Challenges of Enterprise Clouds

In San Francisco on June 22, 2011 a panel of experts came together to look at issues challenging enterprise cloud adoption.  The GigaOm Structure conference featured many great speakers and was the lollapalooza of cloud events.  Every member of the clouderati was there and all cloud vendors big and small seemed to be exhibiting.

At this who’s who event, Abiquo sponsored a break out session panel moderated by Jo Maitland of SearchCloudComputing.com, on the topic of ” Addressing the Challenges of Enterprise Clouds.”  The panel featured industry experts including: NetApp Cloud Czar, Val  Bercovici, Director of Deloitte Consulting, Chris Weitz, and Abiquo CEO, Pete Malcolm.

 

According to the event organizers, the session got rave reviews as being non-vendor focused and really delivering industry insight on the challenges. The ~35  minute session was recorded and can now be seen online.

Commericalization of OpenStack

This week’s news from OsCon reveals another vendor looking for ways to take money off the table leveraging OpenStack.  A recent post from GigaOm analyst, Paul Miller, highlights the fact that although open source is gaining traction, companies are still looking for commercial solutions.  One reason sited includes the need for a “single throat to choke” on support and development of new functionality.  This begs the question of success for open source as a cloud platform in the enterprise, and what unique value these commercial solutions will offer.   Interestingly enough, Paul asks users to respond to a polling question “In which areas are users willing to adopt open source solution’s on their own?”  The results to this research will be interesting for many.

Some of the media articles are making reference to open source stacks, like OpenStack, being equivalent to tomorrow’s Linux.  Maybe that’s true and everyone will have a flavor of OpenStack, customized internally or commercialized?  That said, we can also look at other open source offerings like Xen and see the impact it had on virtualization.  You may equate Xen to Amazon and the beginning of the cloud, or you may equate Xen as a failed attempt by Citrix to be where VMware is today?   The facts are open source solutions may be good for some, but not others. Given OpenStack is a group of commercial vendors, including Citrix, Cisco, Dell, newly added HP, Abiquo and many others, that are all looking for an easier way to sell a cloud solution to service providers and businesses, will it be the answer customers are looking for?  Stay tuned as we explore this option with analysts, customers and vendors– or join the cloud management linkedin group to be part of the discussion.

CEO View: A Word from Pete Malcolm

 

See how industry thought-leader and Abiquo CEO, Pete Malcolm, views the cloud industry with his blog: “Cloud Computing Straight Talk”

www.petemalcolm.com

Citrix acquires Cloud.com, while VMware rolls out vSphere 5

It’s been a busy week in the world of clouds.  Following on the heels of our the newest Abiquo release ( v1.8), VMware rolls out the newest version of vSphere or Cloud Infrastructure as they are calling it, and Citrix makes a play to be a real cloud player by acquiring Cloud.com.   It’s interesting to watch Citrix figure out how to compete with VMware in the cloud wars.  By aligning themselves with OpenStack  through their commercial offering, Project Olympus, and the most recent buy they seem to be positioning to target lots of regional service providers with a low end offering to compete directly with the likes of Amazon.  Ironically, as they compete to go head to head with VMware on being “the” cloud platform- they are building out offerings that compete with other Xen users.

On the other hand, we are delighted to see Citrix buy cloud.com, as it validates the need for cloud management as part of any cloud infrastructure stack.  Another study recently published by Evolven shows that over 60% of companies have or plan to have private cloud projects this year.  These two proof points show that cloud plans are materializing and cloud management is the lynch-pin in moving businesses beyond virtualization and onto cloud environments.

With the Microsoft partner event this week, we see that they now allow for a portal to mange hyper-v environments, assuming you only want manage a single environment- this might be good news for you.  Stay tuned to see how this 3-legged battle for the cloud platform plays out and what it means for vendors like, Abiquo, but also for the traditional hardware folks like Cisco, EMC, NetApp, IBM and HP- there seems to be even more musical chairs at play.

A few good blogs on this topic:

James Staten, Forrester: http://blogs.forrester.com/james_staten

Krishnan Subramanian: http://krishworld.com/blog

Abiquo joins NetApp to deliver Storage as a Service

Today NetApp rolled out an announcement around new technologies and a partner ecosystem to deliver enterprise clouds.  Abiquo has been working closely with the NetApp team to enable enterprise customers to deliver Storage as a Service across many hypervisor platforms and datacenter locations.   Given the need to store and access big data, and the ever increasing amount of that data, this problem will get worse without the right solutions implemented. This is why we see Storage as a Service as an huge market opportunity across the enterprise and service provider space.   As a cloud service provider, you can easily see how many mid-market organizations might use storage as a service.  But how do you build it quickly, enable multi-tenant self-service,  and deliver various “tiers” of storage to offer the right service at the right price to your customers?  As an enterprise, how do you enable departments to access the storage they need when they need it, alone or with the rest of your IaaS offering?

This NetApp/Abiquo solution brief reveals how Abiquo and NetApp make storage management and automation simple, yet robust. Additionally, there’s an upcoming set of webcasts that may help users see how to set up Storage as a Service or learn more about managing and automating storage.

A tech demo webcast was recorded and can be accessible here: June Tech Thursday: Focus on NetApp Storage.

Then later on July 28th at 10AM,  joint speakers from NetApp and Abiquo discuss “The basics of automating a cloud storage service”.

To see how the NetApp cloud czar, Val sees this news, you can find his blog here.  Abiquo is committed to delivering support for compute, networking and storage across multiple data centers, and will continue to innovate with partners like NetApp to deliver more value to enterprises and service providers worldwide.