- Image via CrunchBase
Scaleup Technologies (see previous CloudAve coverage), the Germany based Cloud infrastructure provider, is planning to announce support for federation across multiple cloud providers from within their Cloud management platform. This is particularly exciting to me because I have been advocating open federated cloud ecosystem in this blog for a long time and I have mentioned Scaleup in the context of the idea of federated clouds. ScaleUp joins a small group of platform providers who are focussing on enabling a more federated cloud ecosystem. Unlike some of them, ScaleUp is planning to act as an enabler of cloud marketplaces at the “point of purchase”, the junction where the providers and consumers meet.
It all starts with the ScaleUp Cloud Management Platform and they are releasing a new version, Ver 1.5, which will support the federation across multiple providers. In fact, the platform has already left the development labs at ScaleUp with certain participants it out. Whether certain pundits who are aligned with the old fashioned economic thinking agree with me or not, we are not going to see a monopoly of few cloud providers anytime in the future. Federation is here to stay and we will only be seeing more and more providers joining the game. With this release and their unique focus on being an enabler of cloud federation, ScaleUp Technologies has taken the right step at the right time.
To start with ScaleUp platform will support organizations and service providers using CA’s Applogic or OpenStack for the cloud. Over a period of time, they will support other platforms based on the interest. I haven’t heard much about Applogic’s penetration after CA bought 3Tera (CA: if you are reading this, brief me) but OpenStack is waiting to break open this year. So, I consider ScaleUp’s embrace of OpenStack as a right pick to enter the federation game. There are many other providers interested in tapping the “OpenStack future” too. Clearly, Applogic and OpenStack are not the only cloud platforms present in this world right now but this is a good start for ScaleUp.
Meh, what is the big deal? Enomaly is already doing it with SpotCloud
Nope. There is a clear distinction between what SpotCloud is doing and what ScaleUp is planning to do. SpotCloud is a clearing house of excess or unused capacity whereas ScaleUp is trying to create a marketplace where service providers can offer their services. There is a clear distinction between the two. In fact, when Enomaly announced SpotCloud, I tweeted about SpotCloud not taking any responsibility regarding SLAs, etc.. ScaleUp’s marketplace is expected to solve this pain point.
More importantly, ScaleUp is not creating one marketplace for service providers to participate. Rather, they want to be an enabler of marketplaces which, in turn, will help service providers to offer their services. With their platform, many marketplaces can emerge giving users more options. Let us say, for example, a government wants to enable a marketplace for different departments and local governments to buy resources from various cloud providers, they can easily do it with ScaleUp’s platform. Similarly, one could have a marketplace for a vertical with SLAs fine tuned for their regulatory needs. In short, they are creating a federation of federated cloud marketplaces (pardon me if the usage is wrong but I want to make a distinction here).
This is definitely a great move by ScaleUp. Along with the above mentioned federation of marketplaces, this move is interesting in other ways too. It not only solves the scaling problems faced by regional cloud providers, it also helps users choose geographical locations based on their needs. 2010 was the beginning of regional cloud providers and 2011 is going to be a year of federated clouds. Be ready for more excitement on the federated cloud front in the coming months. Open Federated Clouds FTW.
Interesting post on ScaleBase, and it could have some promise. It’s a bit early for cloud federation to start taking place. Probably 1-2 years. Too many clouds that are too immature, and too few that are on any one platform. There’s also a big issue with SLAs in a federated environment. Something crashes – who is responsible?
In the long-run federation will be a very interesting phenomenon, but there is a huge amount of infrastructure that needs to be put in place in the meantime.
Thanks John. re: SLAs, I think ScaleUp is trying to address this pain point. Scott or Kevin or Christoph can address it better than me.
Re: too early. I may agree that it is too early to claim that federation is here. I am only trying to say that “federated clouds” are forming in the sky. I have heard from few other cloud platform providers who are planning to stitch federation into their platform. Based on that, I am predicting it to happen sooner than what many of us expect.
Re: SLA’s, The need or value of SLA’s doesn’t magically go away because you’re buying resources in a marketplace, in fact we believe the need becomes stronger. We expect that as different horizontal/vertical/regional cloud markets are built that they will each tackle the SLA issue in a different way to best suit their customers. Our goal is to enable the market, not to run it – so we’ve made sure the platform is flexible enough to handle a wide range of situations.
To be clear, SpotCloud.com IS a marketplace where service providers can offer their services to make a profit. We agree SLA’s are important and SpotCloud will offer them when we have the critical mass to support them. In the mean time we do have functional QoS rating system and access to an extensive global pool of capacity providers who are online today.
Since we announced SpotCloud, we’ve had huge amount of interest from both the buy and sell side, one of the more interesting stats is more then 40% of our providers see SpotCloud potentially as a primary revenue source. We’ve created a SpotCloud Provider pricing guide to help illustrate the opportunity see > http://ruv.net/a/ht
I for one would like to welcome scaleup to the party
One additional insight from the ScaleUp perspective… We began this development initiative with a long history as an MSP + 2 years as a regional cloud provider in Europe. We needed a way to power the partnerships we were building with other providers around the world so we could offer a global footprint to our customers.
To John’s comment, re: business relationships & SLA support, we agree this is an absolutely critical role and one that can only be partially solved by enabling technology. One approach is the trend in growth of the equivalent to a VAD in the non-cloud world, what Matt Richards at CA refers to as the MSP Aggregator – a group who stands in the middle of a collective of providers & ensure support, SLA assurance, etc. The ScaleUp platform offers a mechanism for that connecting organization to live & easily manage those business relationships. Matt’s article here: http://bit.ly/fvi9sI
Re: @ruv & SpotCloud – we are excited to join the party and see huge opportunities as we begin to connect. It is a step toward removing technology barriers & allowing business needs to dictate required solutions.
[...] service providers tap into the resources of other smaller providers elsewhere. ScaleUp’s own Cloud Management Platform and companies like Zimory and SpotCloud are well positioned to enable such resource pooling among [...]
[...] in the cloud world. Some like SpotCloud offer a marketplace for unused capacity and others like ScaleUp want to enable marketplaces where cloud providers can sell their services. As we move towards a more open and federated cloud [...]