For the past several months the team at 6fusion has been working directly with a select group of customers using a prototype software tool called the UC6 Profiler.  The UC6 Profiler is an agent we created that uses our patent-pending algorithm for measuring utility computing consumption.  The UC6 Profiler meters live client applications running in their own offices or data centers, recording resource usage as though the applications were all running within 6fusion’s federated cloud infrastructure. The report output paints a clear cost picture, application by application, giving the customer an unprecedented set of data to guide and support their decision to migrate any or all applications to the cloud.   We’ve provided an example of the output report here.  It’s early stages yet for this, so the info is pretty raw. We’ll ‘gloss it up’ when it goes into production later in the year.

In our experience, the number one customer question about the cloud is “what does it cost.“  Like others in the field, we see the ability to profile consumption and report running costs to be one of the missing links to cloud computing adoption.  As you can see in the sample report provided, this customer can identify that the application called “CUSTMAIL02″ would cost the ‘most’ to run in the cloud.  Conversely, the application called “CUSTAAC001″ would cost the least.

Going beyond the customer implications, the UC6 Profiler could also be the missing link for the IT Service Provider community to truly take the reins of the cloud and leverage it to build significant new revenue opportunities.  But the implications don’t stop there.  Profiling can play a huge role for ISVs looking to plan and price SaaS offerings.  I’ll elaborate on this in another blog post.  We’ll focus on moving one mountain at a time!

Here are a few other tidbits we can share with you for now:

• The Profiler agents will work with both virtualized an non virtualized applications
• Users can profile web applications or traditional client/server applications
• There are no significant O/S limitations
• The Profiler will be a completely free download for registered 6fusion partners.

Stay tuned for more to come regarding the UC6 Profiler in the coming weeks!