Cloupia Gets Flexpod Validation As They Push Hard Into Converged Infrastructure Space

Picture Credit: eweek

Cloupia (previous CloudAve coverage), the Santa Clara based startup offering automation and orchestration solutions, today announced that their FlexPod Management and Automation solution is validated by Cisco and NetApp. This is a big boost for the startup taking a different route compared to the other cloud management players. Unlike companies like Rightscale which are solely focussed on Cloud, Cloupia’s Unified Infrastructure Controller (CUIC) offers a comprehensive orchestration and automation solution that spans everything from physical to virtual to public cloud services.

While we are ecstatic about cloud computing gaining traction among the enterprise customers, we often overlook the traction gained by converged infrastructure solutions in the market. Among this segment, Flexpod is seeing considerable traction both in US and elsewhere in the world. Flexpod is the result of a partnership between Cisco and NetApp combining Cisco Unified Computing System servers and Cisco Nexus switches with NetApp unified storage systems. Cloupia’s solution has been supporting Flexpod for sometime now and they are also a member of NetApp alliance partner program. FlexPod’s achilles heel has been the management to really go head to head with EMC’s vBlock because vBlock has management solution (UIM). Cloupia’s management really provided that missing piece. Therefore, Flexpod validation is the next big step in this partnership pushing Cloupia’s solution deep into the Flexpod market while also offering Flexpod a powerful management option.

With the Flexpod integration, CUIC can offer Flexpod customers

A solution that can be installed on Flexpod within few hours
Single click infrastructure provisioning
Automated, non-disruptive scaling of Flexpod to meet the demands
Single pane of glass management and monitoring for each infrastructure component in FlexPod which including Cisco UCS, Cisco Nexus 5000, and NetApp FAS storage systems

along with the other features that are part of Cloupia’s solution like self service portal, service catalog, chargeback, etc..

I had a chance to talk to one of the Flexpod customers, Waltz Group, who is using Cloupia for their management needs. They told me that they considered many other solutions including VMware, BMC, etc. and decided to go with Cloupia because

Extremely cost effective
Very simple compared to the other solutions considered
They should get the software on their hands and test it out without any need to attend multiple webinars and sales calls before understanding how it works
Installs in hours and without any need for expensive professional services

I have been seeing their progress for quite some time through their briefings. There are few aspects of their platform that stands out in my opinion. They are:

Their biggest strength is Cloupia is a model driven architecture unlike many others which force users to use their pre-configured templates. This easily fits into out of the box workflows meeting the needs of many enterprises
Another interesting feature is the smart resource provisioning with adaptive provisioning.
In 2010, I was talking extensively about how enterprise IT departments are embracing iPads left and right. When I watched the video of Cloupia’s iPad app, CloudGenie for Flexpod, I completely fell in love. They have a very clear tablet and smartphone strategy, fitting the needs of the modern IT.

As we go further along, the very notion of cloud computing will morph into just computing. Depending on their needs, both enterprises and service providers will use different types of infrastructure services for their workloads. The coming few years will be dominated by the dynamic provisioning of infrastructure services ranging from physical to cloud. Cloupia has a pretty comprehensive support offering a single pane of glass view across physical, virtual, private and public clouds. Even though they are the first management player to get official validation for Flexpod, they have their focus set to become a multi-vendor infrastructure management and orchestration platform. If you are someone in focussing on the infrastructure side, you should keep a tab on Cloupia.

Disclaimer: I have given some suggestions to them on their roadmap and go to market strategy without any financial compensation