In The Zone: 10 Cloud Vendors To See At Interop

Get In The Zone

For the first time, Interop Las Vegas played host to the Cloud Computing Zone, a corner of the expansive show floor to showcase the up and comers in the cloud. Yes, some of these are established players in other areas, others are brand new to the scene, but they all have one thing in common: They're looking to leverage cloud computing.



So step right up to the Interop Cloud Computing Zone and get your head in the clouds. Here are 10 cloud players to see as the cloud sits on the tip of Interop attendees' tongues.

CloudOptix MeghaWare

CloudOptix showed off its MeghaWare family of software that includes a CloudTop Application, Private Cloud Appliances and Content Management Engines.



Getting top billing at Interop was the MeghaConcierge CloudTop Application, a unified cloud management app that can be installed on any Internet-enabled compute device to create a virtual CloudTop. Like a desktop on a PC, users can select, connect and unify public and private clouds into a multi-vendor, hybrid cloud solution with Windows-like point and click and drag and drop operations. The application unlocks data access from anywhere on any device without the need to buy high-end hardware.

AirWatch

Evolving out of its Wi-Fi hotspot roots, AirWatch showcased its cloud-based mobile device monitoring and management solution that works across nearly any mobile platform.



AirWatch offers Web-based, or cloud-based, mobile device and WLAN management software to secure, monitor, manage and support all enterprise mobile devices from iPhones to advanced handhelds, using a single, integrated real-time view of corporate mobile assets.

The Rackspace Cloud

If it involves cloud computing, Rackspace is there. The hosting vendor has made a name for itself with its Rackspace Cloud offerings and took to Interop's Cloud Computing Zone to get the message out.



Rackspace offers a trio of cloud offerings which let users build a cloud server using a credit card; run exactly what they need on the server, whether it's an application, database or other solutions; and scale to meet demand, letting users resize the server instantly or add high availability and failover.



Rackspace's cloud offerings include Cloud Servers, which offer on-demand server instances starting at 1.5 cents per hour; Cloud Files, which offers Web storage starting at 15 cents per Gigabyte; and Cloud Sites, which puts sites, blogs, databases and emails into the cloud, which is offered as a 30-day free trial.

Morph mCloud

It may be an appliance, but Morph's mCloud offering lets users create a fully-automated cloud computing environment in their existing data center using their existing gear. Essentially, mCloud virtualizes hardware and configures virtual machines according to their purpose; sets up automated monitoring and self-healing, along with management tools; automates the process of deploying, monitoring and backing up applications; and lets users focus on business.



The software appliance enables clouds in existing infrastructure and users can basically drag and drop what they want to move to the cloud for both test and production environments.

Terremark Enterprise Cloud

Terremark took the Cloud Computing Zone at Interop Las Vegas 2010 by storm, showcasing its Enterprise Cloud offering, which combines the three necessary components of any enterprise cloud infrastructure: security, scale and performance.



Terremark's Enterprise Cloud combines infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) with security and availability. Terremark leverages a Web-based management interface that gives users control over a cloud-based resource pool of compute, storage and network resources built on a fully clustered enterprise-class computing architecture that features VMware virtualization technology and is housed in Terremark's secure data centers.



Terremark's offering is based on resources, not server units, allowing precise and dynamic allocation of computing resources.

IBM

IBM, which likely had the largest presence in the Cloud Computing Zone at Interop, highlighted its varying line of cloud offerings, including the IBM Smart Business Development and Test on the IBM Cloud and IBM LotusLive Engage.



IBM Smart Business Development and Test on the IBM Cloud lets users access cloud computing from IBM to set up and maintain application development and testing. It offers quick access and reduces capital and operating costs while supporting faster time to market due to swift setup and development. IBM LotusLive Engage, meanwhile, is an integrated suite of cloud-based collaboration and business networking offerings that includes online meetings, events, files, activities, instant messaging and other cloud-based tools.

Hosting.com Cloud Hosting

Hosting.com highlighted its Cloud Hosting portfolio, which includes various cloud computing offerings to suit different needs. The portfolio includes Cloud VPS, vCloud Express, Cloud Enterprise and Cloud Dedicated, offering various flavors of cloud computing based on different requirements. Cloud VPS, for example, offers low-cost, high availability in 64- or 32-bit Windows and Linux plans with same day deployment, while Cloud Enterprise delivers complete isolation of virtual, clustered environments, high availability compute and disc and online and rapid provisioning.

Certeon aCelera

WAN acceleration in the cloud? Huh. Certeon showed off its aCelera virtual application acceleration appliance that can be cloud-based and is hypervisor agnostic. The aCelera virtual appliance can accelerate all types of Web applications, such as HTTP, HTTPS, WebDAV and other TCP connections, while also accelerating general traffic like any TCP/IP, CIFS and MAPI traffic.



aCelera software can be deployed onto any industry standard server running a VM operating system or in a remote location by loading it onto a stand-alone server to be treated as a virtualized application. It is also available in prepackaged hardware.

SitScape

At Interop, SitScape showed off its Situational Monitoring Console, a cloud-based offering that enables an on-demand view of components from various disparate internal and external applications within seconds. The company also highlighted its Documents Visual Publishing offering, which lets users publish documents and files like Word, PowerPoint, Excel or PDF files as objects viewable in a Web browser. From there, users can track audience interaction with the published content.

Novel Cloud Manager

Another big boy when it comes to the cloud, Novell offered a glimpse of its Cloud Manager in the Cloud Computing Zone on the Interop show floor.



Novell Cloud Manager isn't expected to be released for the next couple of months -- August, most likely. But at Interop, attendees got a look at the offering that provides automated workload provisioning tools for cloud-computing environments, a sort of cloud-in-a-box play.