London – October 09, 2012 – Abiquo, the most advanced cloud software platform for enterprise and service providers, today launches Abiquo Enterprise Edition 2.2 at VMWorld Europe 2012 in Barcelona, introducing pluggable architecture for storage integration with all major vendors.

The open architecture of the Abiquo cloud management platform is purpose built to integrate with any infrastructure, supporting all hypervisors and now provides iSCSI storage plugins that allow enterprise and service providers customers, third parties and storage vendors to create their own storage volumes.

Jim Darragh, CEO at Abiquo comments: “We are the only software provider that allows customers to build private clouds on their terms – and this applies to any hypervisor, any infrastructure and any storage through the pluggable iSCSI architecture. It means our customers can reuse existing hardware and take their own path to the cloud without risking the straightjacket of vendor lock-in or unnecessary investment in new infrastructure.”

The Abiquo 2.2 release also includes a range of customer-led features designed to enhance the award-winning usability of the user interface, reduce complexity and improve the operational efficiency of running a private cloud environment. Highlight features of Abiquo version 2.2 include:

• Pluggable Storage: Abiquo has exposed its iSCSi storage architecture enabling users to create plugins for their iSCSi storage.
• Controlled infrastructure: Abiquo’s delegated administration capabilities can include one or more physical datacenters. This allows for controlled delegation of the physical infrastructure. It can include one or more Abiquo Enterprises allowing for the improved delegation of user or customer administration.
• Support for KVM on Centos 6: The Abiquo platform allows the use of Centos 6 on KVM cloud nodes. This version will use KVM 0.13 which allows customers to take advantage of improved features relating to IP throttling and security.
• Customisable design: The design of the Abiquo platform is customisable through its Branding Web Application which can create new branding themes for service providers or enterprises offering white label services. The application allows for a new branding theme to be created in minutes.
• Improved ESX integration: Abiquo support with VMWare technology includes:

Improved ESX deployment efficiency

Non-default port for vCenter communications

Improved support for VMWare DRS and vMotion

Support for DVD virtual hardware allowing for easy installation or upgrade of VMWare tools

Selectable VNC keyboard mapping

System disk resizing

• Improved reporting and billing: Abiquo has improved efficiency in how accounting data is stored to ensure faster and scalable billing and chargeback reporting.

Abiquo 2.2 is now compatible with jClouds , the open source library for developing clouds. The jClouds API allows businesses to create integrations that may be portable between cloud providers and cloud software stacks. The java based API is already allowing Abiquo customers to create their own self service cloud portals.