Since VMware vSphere and vCloud have been making the news discussing the future of the private cloud, I thought I would find out more about this cloud from a company who has been developing it and providing it to customers for many years now -- a company called Surgient.
To spotlight Surgient's forward thinking on the subject, not only has it been offering customers a private cloud solution for years, but it also holds an awarded patent that goes back to 2005 for the "virtualized logical server cloud." To find out more, I was fortunate to get a chance to speak with Surgient's CTO, Dave Malcolm.
[ Learn how early adopters of cloud computing have used the technology and the lessons they have learned. | See how Amazon, Google, and other cloud platforms stack up in the InfoWorld Test Center's comparison. ]
InfoWorld: It seems that a number of companies are now bringing cloud computing solutions to market. Where do you see Surgient in this market?
Malcolm: When talking about "cloud-based infrastructure," it is important to understand what is meant by that. The wide variation of definitions of cloud-based infrastructure has caused significant confusion in the industry. Here at Surgient, we define cloud-based infrastructure as a pool of abstracted, scalable, and self-managed infrastructure capable of running end-customer applications and billed or charged by consumption. These cloud infrastructures can be located internally to an organization or hosted externally by a third party.
We've actually long recognized how our technology can be used to create an internal, private cloud and were awarded a patent in 2005 for a "virtualized logical server cloud." Our technology optimizes the IT service delivery process through dynamic resource provisioning and heterogeneous infrastructure management and automation. We essentially create a cloud of internal virtual resources, which users access in a self-service manner, to configure specific computing environments for varied business tasks.
As you point out, there a number of companies coming to market with cloud solutions being delivered as a service, much like Amazon EC2, Google Apps, Microsoft Windows Azure, etc. Surgient, with our Virtual Automation Platform, enables Global 2000 corporations and managed service providers' operations teams to implement internal private clouds by providing the automated management, orchestration, and self-service of business services for their users.
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