This Week In The Cloud: Dell Expands Services, Appcara Integrates With Eucalyptus

Cloud Speeds And Feeds

Enhancements, new technologies and management features are being blended into cloud stacks at a rapid pace.

With all this activity, partners are gaining more opportunities to move their clients to the cloud and new alignments are simplifying cloud access.

Continue on to see the latest developments.

Dell Expands Cloud Services

Dell on Thursday launched Dell Cloud Dedicated, a private cloud infrastructure-as-a-service to complement its public and hybrid cloud platforms. The Plano, Texas-based company said the offering provides managed private cloud IaaS from Dell data centers and offers self-service, rapid deployment, scalability and metered usage.

In addition, Dell plans the U.S. launch of the Dell Cloud portal in the coming weeks to simplify the ordering and on boarding of cloud services. Through the portal, customers can select from pre-configured bundles or use on-demand compute capacity.

Earlier this month, Dell allowed channel partners to offer Dell cloud services in the U.S. and Canada as part of the PartnerDirect Program. The program allows partners to offer products and services to help them build, access and integrate Dell cloud services.

Dell also said that in September it'll expand Dell Cloud with VMware vCloud Datacenter Services, now available in the U.S. and Canada, to France, the U.K., Mexico and Ireland.

Appcara Speeds Apps With AWS Integration

Appcara, a Milpitas, Calif.-based cloud application platform provider, announced integration with Eucalyptus’ infrastructure-as-a-service cloud software designed to speed application delivery.

The integration takes advantage of Eucalyptus’ compatibility with the Amazon Web Services (AWS) API and lets customers port applications between Eucalyptus on-premise environments and AWS public clouds.

Using Appcara’s AppStack cloud application lifecycle and portability platform, service providers and enterprises can deploy cloud apps that can be managed across their lifecycle, and they can port across Eucalyptus and Amazon Web Services (AWS) public clouds.

Skytap Intros Virtual Private Cloud

Skytap, a provider of cloud automation tools, launched its Virtual Private Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS).

The Private PaaS integrates in Skytap clouds with Cloud Foundry's open-source cloud computing PaaS so that enterprises users can deploy virtual private PaaS environments, access Cloud Foundry environments in Skytap Cloud remotely and scale resources, including memory, storage, CPU and networks on-demand.

Skytap also unveiled hybrid cloud capabilities to help enterprises adopt Skytap Cloud as a complement to their use of on-premise VMware technology. The offerings include ESXi Multi-Machine Templates for ESX 4.1 and ESXi 5.0 and a virtual machine (VM) API that automates movement of existing VMs between on-premise infrastructure and Skytap Cloud.

Gigamon Extends Traffic Visibility Offerings

Network visibility specialist Gigamon said it is extending its Traffic Visibility Fabric offerings with GigaVUE Fabric Manager (GigaVUE-FM) to provide managers with a view of traffic across physical and virtual networks so they can be better managed and secured. GigaVUE-FM enhances management of network visibility capabilities and provides a platform to manage GigaVUE-VM, which extends network traffic visibility into virtualized environments.

“Within today’s highly virtualized and dynamic IT infrastructures, organizations are looking for a single-pane-of-glass [for network traffic visibility] that is accurate, real time and relevant,” Patrick Leong, CTO of Gigamon, said in a statement.

Embotics Updates V-Commander

Virtualization and cloud management software provider Embotics released an enhanced version of its Embotics V-Commander, which offers cloud-based provisioning, self-service, workflow automation, resource optimization and lifecycle management capabilities.

Embotics V-Commander offers a comprehensive solution that monitors the virtual data center to optimize the automation, deployment and configuration of IT services within both private and public clouds.

With the update, users of Ottawa, Canada-based Embotics V-Commander can request the provisioning of virtual and physical assets from within a single self-service catalog, streamlining the cloud management process.