Abiquo grows a Mo
Here at Abiquo towers, the team has decided to take part in ‘Movember’ 2012, the annual charity that creates awareness and raises funds for men’s health. We started clean shaven on November 1st and by now we’re all sporting questionable moustaches.
So far growth has varied throughout the team with some members (including myself) proudly displaying fully fledged ‘Mo’s’ and others trying their best to sprout some stubble (but at least they’re taking part!).
We will be posting weekly updates on Twitter and you can see photo updates of our efforts on our Facebook page.
To find out more and to donate to a good cause, please click here.
We are the (cloud) champions
Abiquo has been named as a cloud computing champion in a recent assessment of the top global cloud management services by Info-Tech. Info-Tech is an independent global leader in providing IT research and advice on the best IT solutions out there. Abiquo was credited in the top tier category of ‘champion’ as a leading vendor with a leading product, above Eucalyptus, CA Technologies and OpenStack out of the top nine cloud management solutions analysed.
To determine how strong the cloud management service is, both product and vendor offerings were analysed against set criteria. The cloud product was assessed Info-Tech highlighted three core areas of Abiquo’s platform which make it so strong and unique compared to other platforms.against its features, usability, affordability and architecture. Vendors were weighed against four factors, the first being their viability, which looked at how profitable, knowledgeable and long-term they are. The second was the vendor’s strategy; how committed are they to the space and if they have a future product. The third was the vendors reach; how much support they are able to offer customers post sale and if it is worldwide. Finally, vendors were assessed on their channel strategy and the channel’s strength. Abiquo scored highly in both product and vendor categories with 87% of their offering being above sufficient requirements and 47% being exemplary.
Our support for multiple hypervisors, providing our customers with flexibility and avoiding vendor lock-in was noted as being a champion area as many are yet to provide this as an option. In addition, our extensive and fully-integrated self service capabilities, with stand out “show-forward pricing” enabling customers to see what resources will cost before they are provisioned, was noted as being a strong point.
For more information on the Info-Tech report please click here
Rocking the cloud at VMworld
Last week we showcased Abiquo at VMworld in Barcelona. The event was a great opportunity for everyone in the industry to come together in the name of cloud. The Abiquo stand was a success receiving lots of visitors. Many were tempted to the stand by our ‘AC/DC’ style T-shirts which were hugely popular- we know what we’ll be taking with us next year!
To get to know customers of Abiquo better we held a drinks reception with a twist. We hired a yacht and set sail for a two hour cruise with Barcelona as our backdrop, it was great to see our customers and prospects having such a relaxed evening.
As well as introducing ourselves and having a great time, we got down to business and conducted a survey at VMworld where we made some intriguing discoveries.
After interviewing 68 industry professionals we found that out of 75% of delegates questioned, who stated that their company offered private, public or hybrid cloud services to customers just 15% of these provide a self- service interface. A self- service interface for the provision of services is a key component of any cloud strategy! Customers were also seen to have to wait for a long time to bring their cloud services online, with the average being three days as a standard waiting time for requests to deliver a new service in the cloud. Just 15% of those questioned committed to providing their cloud services to customers within three hours. We have to face the facts- technology has moved on and how we provide it has to move with it in order for cloud to reach its full potential. The delivery of a private Cloud has numerous benefits, at the very basic level it can be the delivery of a more efficient infrastructure….but its more…much more if the ultimate consumer of the services in the Cloud and be provided with great services in faster timeframes. The days of IT services built by engineers for engineers are gone- we can see that in every aspect of technology today. It is time to adopt a different mindset and put the power of IT in the hands of users, only this way will the full potential of cloud be realised.
We thoroughly enjoyed all the VMworld activities and look forward to being there again next year. Thanks to all the Abiquo team for making this year a success.
Abiquo is nominated for UP cloud awards – vote for us!
We are delighted to announce that Abiquo has been nominated in the ‘Best Industry Application’ category at the third annual UP cloud awards. This is a great achievement for us and we are privileged to be in a category with some of the best in the business such as Dell. You can vote for us here: bit.ly/T877jf
The awards follow the UP cloud conference which takes place on the 12th December 2012 in San Francisco. This conference is one of the biggest and oldest cloud events with a world class line-up of speakers, so it’s great to be a part of it. The event welcomes new comers to the cloud as well as those who have been working within the cloud for some time, to come and learn about the latest technology in this area. There will be discussions on all areas of cloud including Enterprise Automation and DevOps., Infrastructure and Operations, Business Agility and Continuity, Cloud Mobility and cloud adoption.
Abiquo 2.2 launches this week
This week, Abiquo is launching Abiquo Enterprise Edition 2.2, our most enhanced software platform to date; but what does it all mean for businesses considering a cloud platform or for those currently using Abiquo?
As Abiquo’s customers extend their deployments into more datacenters and geographies they need a greater level of control over the administration rights that will be delegated to the local teams. Abiquo 2.2′s administration feature allows customers to control delegated administration to parts of the physical infrastructure. The same feature also provides greater control over customer administration, allowing enterprises to better delegate user and customer administration and allowing service providers to support a better reseller model.
Abqiuo 2.2’s pluggable storage architecture extends Abiquo’s self service storage capabilities beyond NetApp, Nexenta and Linux LVM to any iSCSi based storage with a compatible API. The architecture allows for a new plugin to easily be created with a full API, sample code, and documentation. Enterprises or service providers will then be able to add additional value or new revenue streams to their platform by adding multiple storage tiers, from high end, high speed (and expensive) storage to more cost effective commodity storage.
In 2.2 Abiquo continues to extend its hypervisor agnostic approach. There is improved support for VMWware vCenter/ESX features (including vMotion and DRS), that allows customers to seamlessly add Abiquo as a management layer to their existing VMWare deployment without having to compromise on functionality. Abiquo 2.2 also includes support for the KVM hypervisor on CentoS 6, allowing customers to take advantage of improvements in the community hypervisor.
Abiquo 2.2 has been built specifically with the customer in mind, with features designed to enhance the usability of the user interface, increase simplicity and improve overall efficiency. The open architecture of the Abiquo cloud management platform is purpose built to integrate with any infrastructure which supports all hypervisors. Customers can use existing hardware, avoiding a major challenge that many face when moving to the cloud and any unnecessary investment in hardware.
To find out more about Abiquo 2.2 please join our webinar on Thursday 25th of October at 3pm (BST). Click here to register for this event.
Abiquo is packed and ready for VMworld 2012, are you?
Abiquo will be attending VMworld in Barcelona from the 9th- 11th October 2012. This is the largest virtualisation specific event around and I’m really excited to be there rubbing shoulders with the top technology providers in the cloud. The team and I are looking forward to meeting current users of our platform as well introducing new customers to Abiquo.
VMworld is an important milestone for Abiquo as we will be releasing Abiquo 2.2; an updated version of the platform with added features to make the cloud orchestration experience even easier for our customers. The upgraded platform will also enable complete choice over the cloud storage volumes that can be managed through our software. Customers get to reuse their existing hardware and carve their own path into the cloud without any unnecessary infrastructure investment.
After a tech-filled second day of VMworld, we’re going to heading off into the sunset, hosting a drinks reception with a twist! We’re going to be aboard the Southern Cross looking back over Barcelona from the Mediterranean on a couple of hours sailing. I’m hoping to get to know our customers and meet the customers we don’t yet know in a pleasant evening environment.
If you’re heading to VMworld next week, you can find Abiquo at booth N100- Drop by and find out how to make your cloud life easy!
Step back to the cloud
I’m Steve Rushen, Sr. Director, Services and Support at Abiquo. Over the next few weeks I want to use this blog to share some of the experience that I’ve gained during the last two years at Abiquo, helping our customers to create award winning cloud services.
As an introduction I want to define what companies need from a cloud service. It may sound obvious, but some companies rarely think about what they want their ‘cloud’ to do and tend to jump straight into a service without thinking of the business’ needs and requirements. I’ve seen many organisations run trials with one product after another, while they explore the cloud market. They are simply treading water and delaying the launch of any service while they try to understand what it is they want. This can build an ever-increasing list of requirements that makes projects delayed, or even doomed to failure, before they have even started.
Before companies run at full speed towards the cloud they should take a step back and think about what is required from the service. Organisations need to think about the essential characteristics of the cloud they want to build. NIST lists these as; on-demand self- service, broad network access, resource pooling, rapid elasticity and a measured service. For some businesses this isn’t going to be a complete list but it’s a great starting point for most.
Once the broad list of characteristics is complete, and with the knowledge of the business environment (i.e. the hardware, storage, networking and hypervisors that will define the service), companies will be ready to start building a list of requirements. That list of requirements is what should shape any discussion that is had with hardware and software vendors that are ready to talk cloud; without it the vendor be working to their own agenda without the customer in mind. If businesses are serious about creating cloud services then a little bit of upfront work will help define success. When choosing a cloud service many customers forget or are unaware about checking their cloud’s compatibility. Organisations need to identify cloud vendors that won’t be constrained by the hardware or the hypervisors that they are either using today or in the future.
If you’re a business that already has that list of requirements and wants to see what Abiquo can do, then get in touch. I’m always happy to have that conversation.
Enter stage left for me; exit stage right for cloud complexity
Hello. I’m Jim Darragh, Chief Executive at Abiquo. You can read a bit more about me here, but what’s important is that I’m a week into the job and very excited to be here. The cloud is a great market to be in and this is an early stage company that is going places.
I’m a firm believer in our ethos at Abiquo and that’s why I wanted to be a part of our future. We are here to solve complexity for our customers so that they can make the choices they want to make in the cloud.
Let me explain my motivation. You know when as an enterprise or a service provider, you try to take a step forwards by finding a simplified way to manage and serve cloud infrastructure, only to find yourself two steps further backwards, looking down the stack at necessary hardware changes, hypervisor alternatives or interoperability issues that won’t be solved without mass change?
It’s just a nonsensical situation. Why should you have to rethink your entire IT strategy to make it happen? The cloud wasn’t meant to be this challenging. It’s meant to make the lives of IT folks simpler to deliver services and easy, immediate and efficient for end users to access them.
I believe Abiquo has the answers for private cloud and for moving towards hybrid cloud management. Over the next few days and weeks you can expect to see a lot more from Abiquo, and you might even get sick of hearing what I have to say about any number of things in our market! Don’t say you haven’t been warned.
What you can expect from me though is a desire to challenge the status quo – not for its own sake, but to make life in the cloud less complicated for all of us. If you like the sound of this; if there’s something bothering you, or an on-going niggle you can’t seem to fix, drop me a line and I’ll do my best to respond in this blog.
Thanks for taking the time to read this and I look forward to hearing from you.
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.