Download the December issue of Microscope for a full round up of activity in the channel industry during 2013 and a forward look to 2014 with a summary of predictions for the year ahead.
Download the Microscope end of year round up
This post has been co-authored with SixSq.
Important events from 2013
After their switch to cloud, some businesses have been disappointed as the promised operational cost savings and simplified procedures have not always materialized.
This is explained, in part, by the widespread confusion between virtualized resources and cloud, especially in the private cloud sector. Disappointed businesses deploy machines into a cloud haphazardly, losing the opportunity to truly manage their service infrastructure.
An increase in users directly provisioning machines via their Amazon AWS accounts independently of the IT department further exacerbates the problem. As a result, we have seen a demand from IT departments to gain back control through the adoption of management tools. The IT departments have also started to direct their attention to spending in the cloud and therefore, are looking to acquire and to use systems which include comprehensive reporting and billing features.
Security has been another big talking point in 2013. In light of the NSA security issues highlighted by the Snowden Report, data location issues have become critically important. We have seen a backlash within the tech community around data security and privacy questions which we expect to spread to the general public.
The challenge will be for service providers and authorities to address these security and privacy concerns.
This ultimately, comes down to trust. Trust is the foundation of business and always will be. Customers want to trust the person or provider from whom they are buying a service. The more they trust a provider, the more critical the applications they will be willing to outsource, and the more they will be prepared to spend. Therefore, service providers will have to up their game in building that trust by being transparent and more closely meeting the customer’s business needs.
Future predictions
The European cloud – The development of a European Cloud will offer challenges and opportunities to European cloud providers which will also have a significant impact on improvements in data security and sovereignty.
Creating an app store for cloud – 2014 will see Managed Service Providers (MSPs) and enterprise customers shift to an application deployment model, relieving them from the confusion of which cloud to choose. They will be able to choose an application from a self-service portal, which will run on a similar provisioning model for MSPs and enterprise customers.
The evolving channel industry – the channel has undergone a number of changes in the past few years and they have made a good business from selling hardware and related services. However, they now have to rethink their business models to accommodate cloud-based services, which their end users are increasingly using. In order to avoid losing revenue and to turn this issue into an opportunity, they have three options in 2014: become a cloud builder, cloud distributor or ultimately become a specialised service provider.
Contributing Authors
Dr. Charles Loomis is a founding partner of SixSq Sàrl in Switzerland. He has worked in European computing technology projects, notably the European DataGrid and EGEE projects, precursors to the large-scale, European scientific grid, EGI. As the Project Coordinator for the StratusLab project, he guided its production of a complete open-source Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud distribution. Within SixSq, he is a key architect and developer of its SlipStream product–a service that allows automated, full-scale software systems tests to improve the reliability of those systems.
Click here to learn more about SixSq.
Ian Finlay is VP of Products at Abiquo, specifically focussing on product development and management.
Ian brings unique insight to Abiquo having implemented the software whilst at Claranet, where he held the role of Chief Information Officer, Claranet Group – Western Europe’s largest independent Managed services provider.
Prior to joining Claranet, Ian was CTO of ControlCircle, leading a team of 50 to design, develop, deliver and support a range of networking and managed hosting services and maintaining data centre facilities across Europe and in Singapore.
Before that, he held the position of Vice President of IT and Business Systems at Interoute Communications, where he led a worldwide organisation of more than 60 staff to drive business agility, productivity and customer service through innovative technology solutions focused on business priorities.
Abiquo has rolled out support for IPV6 and it is possible to easily create Abiquo private, public, external and unmanaged IPV6 networks using only the Abiquo API. Once created, the networks will appear to end users in the Abiquo user interface. Abiquo have made using IPV6 simple for customers, who will be able to use the networks exactly as the IPV4 networks are used. i.e. addresses will appear and be selected through the user interface.
Users also have the option to use the DHCPV6 server to assign addresses, IPV6 will require a separate DHCPV6 server for each datacenter. i.e. Remote Services will require both an IPV4 and IPV6 DHCP Server running.
Easily and create remote services with Abiquo IPV6
The implementation covers any IPV6 valid address format (short or long). It also covers the creation of IP addresses with most of the transitional IPV6 technologies: IPV4-mapped, IPV4-compatible, Teredo and ISATAP.
What can I use Abiquo IPV6 for?
Download now to use Abiquo IPV6, or to learn more about how you can benefit from Abiquo IPV6 visit the Abiquo wiki for more information.
Abiquo offer software defined networking with CohesiveFT‘s VNS3
With CohesiveFT their VNS3 product is available to all Abiquo customers through the default Abiquo repository. VNS3 is a hybrid overlay networking appliance built for Abiquo integrated cloud deployments
VNS3 acts as 6 devices in one: router, switch, firewall, VPN concentrator, protocol redistributor and scriptable SDN. It’s different from other SDN and network function virtualization (NFV) solutions because of the customer-controlled overlay network built on top of the underlying cloud network.
The inclusion of VNS3 means that you can easily create secure overlay networks to allow our customers to:
1. Use VNS3 to create overlay networks between your Abiquo private cloud and public clouds such as Amazon AWS
2. Use VNS3 to create overlay networks between Virtual Datacenters within your Abiquo cloud. Perhaps you have virtual datacenters in different physical locations, or even countries?
3. Use VNS3 to create overlay networks between Virtual Datacenters hosted by our Service Provider customers
In each case the use of VNS3 means that you configure your application network once. Even if you move that application between the three use cases or move between private, public and hybrid Cloud configurations.
You can find out more about VNS3 here, including technical information and pricing.
Easily Create Secure Networks Between Private Cloud, Hosted Virtual Data Centres, and Public Cloud Infrastructures.
LONDON, UK – 4 December 2013 – Abiquo, a leading cloud management platform vendor, has announced the addition of CohesiveFT’s VNS3 Software Defined Networking (SDN) product to its cloud solution portfolio. With the deployment of VNS3, service provider customers using Abiquo’s award-winning platform will be able to offer their cloud tenants a new way to easily create secure networks between their private, hosted virtual data centers, and public cloud infrastructures.
The integration of VNS3 with Abiquo’s platform also allows users to control SDN capabilities, and provide flexibility and additional security within the rigor and management of the service provider’s standard offers.
Abiquo users deploying VNS3 reap the following benefits:
Ian Finlay, VP of Products at Abiquo, said, “Our global customers can now use VNS3 combined with our IaaS offering to solve common use cases such as securely connecting data centres to cloud application deployments, encrypting data-in-motion within and between virtual data centres, complying with security standards such as HIPPA and PCI, and extending their existing networks into their cloud offering.”
Ryan Koop, Director of Products and Marketing of CohesiveFT, added, “We are very pleased to work with Abiquo and make their innovative cloud IaaS even more dynamic. Customers can use our over-the-top network controls to do even more in their Abiquo deployments.”
VNS3 user-controlled network capabilities offer Abiquo customers the ability to control IP addresses, use normally unsupported protocols, and offer broader end-to-end data encryption.
AVAILABILITY
VNS3 is now available for Abiquo customers to try on a limited license or “bring your own license” basis.
VNS3 images are ready for use in Abiquo’s image repository allowing them to be quickly provisioned into Abiquo virtual data centres running multiple hypervisors.
ABOUT ABIQUO
Abiquo delivers the industry’s most advanced cloud management software solution, allowing service providers to quickly build and monetise cloud services, whilst managing hybrid, private or public cloud infrastructure from one intuitive portal. Abiquo adds value through greater efficiency and control.
Founded in 2006, Abiquo is one of the original pioneers of cloud. This early start, and over 75 man-years of engineering effort, has allowed us to build the broadest and deepest solution available on the market today.
Designed from the ground-up as a strategic solution to meet the needs of service providers and their customers, unlike other solutions, Abiquo was specifically architected to be hardware and hypervisor independent from the start – a tremendous advantage in today’s heterogeneous environments. By focusing on the needs of all major stakeholders, and employing many breakthrough techniques to manage and secure the cloud, Abiquo delivers a unified solution, which is truly greater than the sum of its component parts.
Abiquo’s mission is to deliver the richest and most flexible cloud technology to customers, allowing them to attain the greatest levels of agility and cost-saving, through automation, management efficiency and unrivalled self-service. Operating across even the most complex new and existing environments, striving to provide all customers with the highest levels of service, value and ROI. With its solution deployed by customers across the globe, in a wide variety of industry sectors, Abiquo is among the fastest growing cloud companies. Abiquo is privately held, and operates from headquarters in the UK with offices in Europe, and through its extensive global partner network. For more information, visit abiquo.com.
ABOUT COHESIVEFT
CohesiveFT enables enterprises to run business operations in the cloud. Our solutions help migrate, transform and extend both customer facing systems and internal operational platforms. CohesiveFT lets enterprises build on existing IT resources, save money on a single, upfront migration and focus on an application-centric view of integration, governance and security.
Our solutions provide cloud infrastructure products and services allowing enterprises to safely migrate through a logical set of steps. CohesiveFT products allow enterprises to use existing resources, software components and operating systems to target public, private, and hybrid clouds.
CohesiveFT is a leader in enterprise application-to-cloud migration and provides more application-controlled software defined networking than all competitors combined. The CohesiveFT team has decades of experience in enterprise solution-oriented cloud brokerage. To find out more, visit www.cohesiveft.com
Located in Chicago, London, Palo Alto and Belo Horizonte.
——————————————————-
###
Abiquo Media Contact:
Aanya Ali,
Abiquo
[email protected]
CohesiveFT Sales Contact:
Chris Purrington
CohesiveFT, Ltd. UK
19 Eastbourne Terrace
Paddington,
London
W2 1BA
Tel: +44 208 144 0156
Abiquo’s technology agnostic approach means more choice and flexibility and with the latest edition of the Abiquo software; Abiquo v2.6 we now support more compute and storage than ever before. Allowing cloud providers to get maximum value from their existing investments, or tailor services for their customers.
More choice with Abiquo v2.6
Abiquo v2.6 supports:
Public Cloud
AWS EC2 with VPC
Hypervisors (Compute)
VMWare vSphere 5.0, 5.1, 5.5
Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2012
Citrix XenServer 6.2.0
KVM CentOS/RHEL 6.4
Oracle VM Server for x86 V3.2.1
Storage
ANY hypervisor datastore
ANY NFS storage for self service storage (external volumes and persistent VM’s)
generic iSCSi supports ANY iSCSi storage
integrated iSCSi (for more storage self service) supports
NetApp ONTAP 7, ONTAP 8.1.3, ONTAP 8.2
Nexenta NexentStor 3.0.4, 3.1.3
LVM CentOS/RHEL 5 or 6
Download Abiquo v2.6 and see how much choice you have with Abiquo.
