If you’re a software-as-a-service company you are probably thinking about how cloud computing can save you money and time. The same thing is true for departments in the enterprise that wants to spin up a new service for customers.
We had a chance to sit down with BlueLock, one of the leaders in cloud-based infrastructure providers. Their solutions range from quick provisioning using an online form, to becoming your infrastructure team for mission-critical applications. BlueLock represents a part of the trend in virtualization that not only extends physical servers, but allows companies to leverage infrastructure investments to meet the needs of application developers.
One of the benefits of cloud computing is the ability to optimize the experience of experts and save money in hosting applications. However, one of the areas that is terminally difficult in the enterprise is configuration management in between the layers of OS, storage, security and network. This is getting more and more focus from the biggest providers in IT – Cisco, Microsoft, EMC, NetApp – but where the rubber hits the road, IT leaders are doing a majority of the work tuning configurations to find the right mix of infrastructure to meet their needs.
Custom is King
Fully outsourced configuration management of the infrastructure is one of the areas that BlueLock offers. One benefit of this service is the opportunity for an enterprise to configure a cloud to be both production ready, and also have a mirror environment for testing and development. Not all applications are created equally and it is a key part of the job to optimize across layers.
This area seems ripe for change and the future is unknown in the sense that today it is unclear which traditional infrastructure tools will evolve into the holy grail of “one click” deploy-and-customize solutions. So, if you want a solution that is cloud hosted today and configurable, it’s worth giving BlueLock a look.
This week at VMware Partner Exchange announced the BlueLock CloudSuite. One key feature in the mix is a tailored selection of infrastructure environments.
Instead of just cloning infrastructure, BlueLock focuses on tailoring it around the successful patterns we’ve seen in the enterprise. Additionally, its offerings are based on VMware virtualization technology.
The mix of cloud computing with customization seem like an ideal marriage for IT managers looking to build towards the cloud.
Is customization a key capability that you look for in a cloud hosting provider for your applications?
Photo credits: thebestofmyself & Phillip Pessar
