Accelerite Introduces Dell Hardware To Its Rovius Cloud

Accelerite started shipping Tuesday its Rovius Cloud pre-installed on validated Dell hardware, the startup's first integrated solution for private cloud deployment.

The "lightweight OEM relationship with Dell" simplifies the acquisition process for customers looking to deploy a low-cost, easily scalable private cloud, Rajesh Ramchandani, general manager of the company's cloud division, told CRN.

"We were saying you could bring your own hardware and we can validate. Now we are pre-validating the hardware from Dell, and customers can buy with hardware or not," Ramchandani told CRN.

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Accelerite, headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif., is the product arm of Indian software developer Persistent Systems. The company has made a business out of acquiring lower-profile technologies from large vendors, then building upon them to solve shortcomings and add value.

Last year Accelerite bought CloudPlatform from Citrix Systems—a productized version of the open source CloudStack technology that became the backbone of Rovius.

With Rovius, Accelerite looks to challenge existing hybrid offerings by supplying all components necessary for a private and hybrid cloud in an easy-to-use, quick-to-deploy and scalable package at a price that undercuts most of its competition.

"It's very complex to run private or hybrid cloud from [the standpoint of] integration of compute, storage, virtualization, networking and operating the cloud. Depending on the type of technology, takes enterprises between a few months to a year to build a cloud, then stabilizing and operating the cloud is more complex," Ramchandani said.

Rovius was partly Accelerite's answer to the challenges of deploying OpenStack, which required highly skilled engineers to deploy and operate those open source clouds.

Rovius delivers compute, storage, and virtualization in a single stack controlled by an operations management tool for automation ns telemetry. Engineering upgrades on the original Citrix product added software-defined storage through an OEM deal with Datera, as well as an operations management console that can be either delivered through software-as-a-service or installed on-premises.

The comprehensive solution comes as Accelerite is building out its channel.

With a Dell server as an OEM component of the solution, new channel opportunities are emerging, Ramchandani said.

"What is interesting, Dell's channel partners, resellers, they become our channel, because they can sell not only Dell boxes but an integrated cloud solution," he said. "That gives a new opportunity for channel partners already selling Dell."

The relationship with Dell hasn't reached a volume that would motivate the hardware giant to assist Accelerite in channel recruitment, and Accelerite is reaching out to Dell partners independently. But the company hopes as it ramps Rovius sales and builds momentum with Dell's partners, Dell will choose to get more involved in its channel expansion efforts.

Redapt, an Accelerite partner, found in Rovius a solution well-suited for solving its customer's cloud migration challenges.

"Rovius Cloud gives them the visibility, flexibility and workload federation automation they need to ease cloud migration. It lays a strong foundation for enterprise cloud strategies using any mix of on-premises infrastructure and public cloud providers," said Mark Williams, CTO of Redapt, a solutions provider based in Redmond, Wash.

Customers consistently cite cloud migration as one of their most pressing business concerns, but few have the expertise to take on those challenges alone. Rovius is an attractive solution in part because its total cost of ownership is much lower than comparable solutions, Williams said.

"There is no magic bullet for cloud migration, but Rovius Cloud, in all of its deployment variations, comes pretty close," Williams told CRN.

Accelerite's portfolio also includes Radia, an endpoint security product purchased initially from Hewlett-Packard; as well as Aepona, an API management platform acquired from Intel.