The Cloud has a way of bringing people together, even competitors.
The OpenStack Project is a great example of this. To date, more than 200 companies have put their support behind OpenStack, including Cisco, EMC, HP, IBM, Intel, Oracle, RedHat and VMware. And with supporters like that, the odds are stacked in OpenStack’s favor to become the new standard for building cloud solutions.
OpenStack is a free software-computing platform with a set of standalone software modules that can be pieced together to create and customize a standards-based cloud solution. Although the modules themselves can get pretty complex, the idea behind OpenStack is simple: to create an open cloud architecture that allows different clouds to cooperate and integrate together. Cloud integration will be very important to enterprises in the future as hybrid cloud environments and cloudbursting become more commonplace.
Each module in the OpenStack architecture is focused on a particular task. There is a module to manage compute resources (Nova), another module to manage networking (Neutron), different modules for storing data objects (Swift) and blocks of data (Cinder), etc. Each module is designed to work together; enterprises can pick and choose which modules they want to use based on the functionality their cloud environment needs to support. The idea behind OpenStack (or any open source initiative) is that, when everybody follows the same processes (e.g., storing and addressing data in the same way), those processes can interwork harmoniously when brought together from different systems.
OpenStack does simplify the process of building a private cloud environment, yet it can still be a daunting process for IT teams. HP has made the process simpler for businesses by releasing its own pre-packaged OpenStack solution, HP Helion. Although Helion isn’t free, there are some clear benefits to purchasing HP’s commercial OpenStack solution:
- You’ll have access to expert technical advice and support from day one;
- You know you’ll have a secure cloud environment that will actually work;
- You’ll cut down your deployment time with a pre-configured, pre-validated solution;
- You’re getting a solution built by a “leader” in the private cloud provider market (according to Forrester Research);
- You can build your cloud infrastructure on HP’s ConvergedSystems for a complete cloud solution from a single vendor.
Rolta AdvizeX has built a Cloud Advizer methodology in order to guide customers toward the correct cloud for their applications. That cloud could be private, public or a mix of the two and Openstack is one component of that discussion.
For more information on Rolta Advizex’ Cloud Advizer methodology, contact us at 216-901-1818 and click here to learn more. ▪