VMOps Blog

Cloud.com launches, announces funding, open source

It is a big day for VMOps, as we are launching our new brand, Cloud.com, announcing a preview of our 2.0 CloudStack open source release and our recent $17 million in funding.

When we started VMOps back in 2008, we were eager for a chance to work with leading companies to build both public clouds for service providers and private clouds inside the enterprise. We've spent the last two years doing exactly that, and building a product that we are incredibly proud of.

Now we're getting ready to launch the 2.0 version of our cloud, which builds on all of this knowledge to make by far the most feature rich, scalable and complete cloud stack on the market today. On top of that we've made the core platform Open Source under GPLv3 at open.cloud.com, and we're really looking to see what the community will do with it.

If you've got feedback or questions about the big news, let us know by email info@cloud.com, or  follow-us on twitter.  Best of all, take a few minutes and download the new open source version.

VMOps Speaking at Cloud Expo in New York

Next week we're taking the VMOps show on the road to New York for the Cloud Expo conference at the Javits Center, April 19-21st. Our session "Rolling your own cloud in 30 days" is scheduled for Wednesday the 21st at 1:45 pm.  If you're planning to attend the conference and would like to grab a coffee at some point to talk cloud, shoot an email to info@vmops.com, and introduce yourself! :)

GigaOm: More Cash for Hot New Cloud Startup, VMOps

Om Malik, Founder of GigaOm, recently published an article on our recent  round of funding and the addition of Mike Volpi to our board.  Needless to say that we are thrilled about the addition of Mike and  Index Partners to our team.  The expertise and global reach that Redpoint, Nexus and Index bring will further accelerate VMOps’s position as the leading provider of private and public cloud infrastructure solutions. 

Read the article

Enterprise Systems Journal: Q&A on Building Private Clouds

Recently, the Enterprise Systems Journal did an extensive interview with VMOps CEO Sheng Liang on the opportunity for enterprise IT departments to leverage cloud platforms to build private clouds.

I wanted to reprint one question, because it is a common question I hear from journalists, analysts and customers alike.

Enterprise Strategies: What are some of the common uses of a private infrastructure cloud?

Sheng Liang: At its core, an infrastructure cloud enables enterprises to manage computing resources more efficiently. Let me give you some examples of how people are using infrastructure clouds today.

• Some companies are leveraging the self-service and automated provisioning features of a private cloud to make it much easier for developers, researchers, IT, and even business units to get access to computing resources. With an infrastructure cloud, a researcher can request and have provisioned a private network with dedicated storage and five VMs in less than 10 minutes.
• Because infrastructure clouds track utilization and allow users to elastically add and destroy resources as needed, companies are using private clouds to easily account for resource consumption at a project or department level, simplify chargeback, and reclaim resources that are no longer in use.
• Infrastructure clouds also are very effective a managing large workloads and scheduling resources so that companies can utilize computing, storage, and networking resources more efficiently.
• Finally, the automation and configuration management built into an infrastructure cloud makes it possible for companies to reduce the need to manually administer their computing infrastructure.

You can read more of the interview here.

Replay - Building a Computing Cloud Webinar

The Web Host Industry Review recently hosted a webinar with VMOps and one of our customers ReliaCloud on how service providers could deploy a computing cloud using the VMOps cloud platform.  We've made a replay of the webinar available here for you to review.  Feel free to send an email to info@vmops.com if you have any questions, or would like to learn more about how VMOps can help you build your own cloud.

The WHIR: VMOps Helps Web Hosts Build Clouds

Liam Eagle, the editor of the Web Host Industry Review posted a feature this week about VMOps and how our solution helps web hosting companies transform their business from shared VPS and dedicated server hosting to a cloud computing platform.

It is a great article and one that really highlights some of the interesting options web hosts face as they consider how to adapt their businesses to an industry that is changing radically.

Read the Article

VMOps Webinar: "Build Your Own Cloud" January 21st

January 21st, VMOps is hosting a webinar with The WHIR on how to turn your hosting company into a cloud computing provider.

Cloud computing is changing everything about the hosting industry, and if you aren’t adapting to this reality, your business is at risk.  Recently, the largest computing clouds have been adding hundreds of new physical servers every month, as customers embrace pay-as-you-go plans, virtualization and elasticity.

Luckily, building a computing cloud is not as difficult as it sounds, because new tools like the VMOps Cloud Stack are making it as easy to host a cloud as it is to offer VPS or shared hosting services. This webinar will give you the knowledge you need to add cloud computing to your hosting business today.

This webinar will cover:

• How to build a computing cloud using commodity servers, networking and storage.
• Why customers prefer an HA-enabled Cloud Server to a traditional VPS.
• How open source software is at the heart of the cloud revolution.
• Different business models being leveraged for infrastructure clouds.
• Options for reselling cloud computing services.

The webinar will be January 21st at 2:00 eastern and will include a hands-on demonstration of how to implement an elastic computing cloud, as well as a case study from Jason Baker, CTO of VISI on how they implemented their new Reliacloud service by leveraging the VMOps platform.

Sign up now!

Cloud Predictions for 2010

The future of cloud computing is something we talk about quite a bit around here, so I was eager to read some of the new year predictions that tend to pop up right between Christmas and New Years. I read one written by Matt Asay who writes the Open Road column over at CNET. He argues that it will be a good year for technology consolidation, as enterprises begin to "dip their toes" into building private clouds.

I think 2010 is going to be the year when creating a cloud becomes dramatically easier. Up until now, creating an infrastructure cloud took lots of specialized hardware, software and integration.  That is changing quickly, as tools like VMOps make it easy to download and install a small test cloud on a single machine.  By the end of the year, I think most IT admins will be able to set up a working cloud for their own for development, testing, and virtualization projects, and scale it as they need to.

I'd love to hear what you think the new year has in store for cloud computing.

Cloud Central launches in Australia using VMOps

This month another computing cloud went online using the VMOps platform. Cloud Central has begun its public beta, and is now available for customers to sign up and try out the service.

Cloud Central is focused on delivering scalable cloud computing to customer's in Australia, and is providing local support, high performance infrastructure, high availability and dozens of other great features.

Kristoffer Sheather, the founder and CEO of Cloud Central began working with VMOps for more than six months, and has been a fantastic partner. He has provided great feedback on product requirements, and has always been an active participant in our Beta processes.

Great job Kris, the site looks great.

ReliaCloud Begins Public Beta on VMOps platform

Last week, one of the first public clouds built on VMOps began their public beta. The company is called ReliaCloud, and is offering a public IaaS cloud with hourly billing, high availability, instant deployment and persistent disks. ReliaCloud is the cloud brand of VISI, a well known managed services and hosting provider in the US. 

The team over at VISI has been working with VMOps since we began our beta program, and have been fantastic to work with on improving the VMOps Cloud Stack. Take a look at their cloud and sign up for an account. http://www.reliacloud.com