Richard Davies wrote: The UK has a good crop of technology pioneers in cloud computing - for example ElasticHosts, FlexiScale, Flexiant, OnApp - and also some strong government initiatives such as G-Cloud.
We will have to see whether this kind of technical leadership converts into swift mass-market adoption or not.
Started in 2006 by the serial entrepreneur who sold Gluecode Software to IBM, Blue's only open source acquisition, Morphlabs is bringing its packaged cloud technology to the states after early adopters tested it in Japan.
The mCloud product suite is targeted at MSPs and enterprise data centers and consists of mCloud Controller and mCloud Server.
mCloud is advertised as an all-in-one Infrastructure-as-a-Service, Platform-as-a-Service and Software-as-a-Service with built-in necessities like multi-tenancy, application version tracking, self-healing, load balancing, on-demand scaling as well as billing, automated graphing, monitoring and notifications for every aspect of the application and virtualization layers.
The Controller is a plug-and-play appliance for data centers that want to implement their own cloud using their existing hardware. Powered by redundant 1U servers, the service includes the company's Morph Cloud Manager and virtualization tools.
The Server, on the other hand, is a miniature fully contained "Cloud Environment in a Box" powered by a pre-configured IBM BladeCenter S platform. Virtual Machines are already resident on the system with provisions for modular expansion. The widgetry includes the Controller and the cloud management and provisioning platform leverages the Amazon AWS API. Entry-level solutions begin with 100 ready-to-deploy VMs.
Since the widgetry is compatible with Amazon's cloud, its users can do hybrid clouds.
CEO Winston Damarillo said the widgetry makes use of either Eucalyptus or OpenNebula, two open source cloud infrastructures, and is based on the Morph Application Platform (MAP), a cloud computing technology that automates the process of provisioning resources for hosted applications.
The object of the game is to virtualize commodity hardware while simplifying system administration and application management.
"What we provide is a high-availability cloud platform at a minimum investment to enable the transformation of data center resources into an easy-to-manage, instantly scalable and highly available cloud," Damarillo says, "even without your IT staff needing to understand the ins and outs of virtualization.
"Our goal is to simplify and accelerate the adoption of cloud computing by placing actual technology into the evaluators' hands. The Morph CloudServer starter kits are optimized to provide IT organizations with a secure way to test their model implementations based on open standard cloud environments."
An mCloud Server Trial Kit starts at $800 a month for a minimum of three months and includes 10 Virtual Machines and the Controller withMorph Cloud Manager; Eucalyptus; Xen; CentOS; Beast, Tracks, Substruct, Magnolia, Radiant CMS and El Dorado all pre-installed; pre-built support for Java, Ruby on Rails and PHP and PostgreSQL and MySQL database servers out-of-the-box.
About Maureen O'Gara Maureen O'Gara the most read technology reporter for the past 20 years, is the Cloud Computing and Virtualization News Desk editor of SYS-CON Media. She is the publisher of famous "Billygrams" and the editor-in-chief of "Client/Server News" for more than a decade. One of the most respected technology reporters in the business, Maureen can be reached by email at maureen(at)sys-con.com or paperboy(at)g2news.com, and by phone at 516 759-7025. Twitter: @MaureenOGara
Reader Feedback: Page 1 of 1
#1
CloudNinja commented on 27 Jun 2010
I found a great video on this topic which gives a framework of questions to evaluate if you should go to the Cloud and how to assess whether to go IaaS, or PaaS, have a public cloud, a private cloud or a hybrid solution [regardless of who is providing the cloud i.e. Amazon, SalesForce, Windows Azure, etc.]
“Bridging the Gap from On-Premises to the Cloud” by Yousef Khalidi:
thoughts?
hope that helps,
-cn
Subscribe to the World's Most Powerful Newsletters
Subscribe to Our Rss Feeds & Get Your SYS-CON News Live!
Click to Add our RSS Feeds to the Service of Your Choice: