Internap Takes OpenStack Public Cloud To The People
The Open Public Cloud offers high-performance, on-demand provisioning and scaling of cloud compute capacity for the enterprise. That, coupled with Internap's existing cloud offerings based on VMware vCloud Director, gives cloud providers and VARs two different flavors with which to attack the growing cloud market.
"They can sell it all," said Paul Carmody, senior vice president of business development and product management at Internap, adding that the channel can offer the Open Public Cloud, VMware public and private clouds, and Internap's portfolio of co-location, managed hosting and other plays.
Carmody said by leveraging the OpenStack platform cloud providers and VARs get a set of standardized APIs that let customers use the cloud without the fear of vendor lock-in. The Open Public Cloud is integrated with Internap's global Performance IP network, offering a 100 percent uptime SLA.
Now, Internap and its partners have two distinct public cloud offerings for customers. The OpenStack-based Open Public Cloud is a scalable public cloud with an easy management interface and APIs to meet capacity needs. It leverages the open-source Xen Cloud Platform and is integrated with Internap's OpenStack-based cloud storage play, which Internap launched earlier this year. And the Custom Public Cloud, a pay-as-you-go multitenant public cloud leveraging VMware's platform, eliminates the need to rearchitect applications that have already been virtualized internally. With the Custom Public Cloud users can architect tailored cloud configurations and create customized network configurations on demand through VMware's vCloud Director portal, Carmody said.
Having two distinct cloud offerings gives Internap and its partners the ability to target two different types of cloud buyers. With the Open Public Cloud, solution providers can target CTOs looking for programmatic and rapid provisioning who want to engineer apps and construct them. The VMware cloud helps partners target CIOs who are already using VMware to virtualize their infrastructure and have invested in VMware technologies, Carmody said.
Carmody added that Atlanta-based Internap is a committed member of the now 15-month-old OpenStack initiative, an open-source cloud stack launched by Rackspace and NASA. OpenStack is now in its fourth release, called Diablo. Since its launch in July 2010, OpenStack has drawn more than 120 participating companies, including Cisco, Citrix, Dell and other household names into its community. HP too, has vowed a major commitment to OpenStack. The initiative has more than 1,700 participants and roughly 300 active developers, and has experienced more than 50,000 downloads from its code repository, which doesn't take into account downloads from other sources.
Rackspace recently revealed that it will soon launch the OpenStack Foundation and turn over project governance and trademark and copyright ownership for the OpenStack cloud to the foundation.