Appliance Deployment Featured Article

As more and more businesses turn to the cloud, managing a variety of applications has become a herculean task for cloud service providers and IT managers alike. To help small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) address the complexities associated with deploying and managing applications in the cloud, Appcara (News - Alert), a provider of cloud application management solutions, has just deployed its integrated appliance solution called AppStack Express Appliance.

Launched at Citrix Synergy (News - Alert) Los Angeles, AppStack Express Appliance enables businesses to benefit from on-demand app deployment– without the need to hire specialist employees or consultants to make it happen. The offering is also significant for enabling SMEs to have faster and simpler point-and-click management of those applications over their lifespan. Now, IT managers can quickly deploy and manage pre-packaged software applications into private and public clouds, with total app portability between them.

The AppStack Express appliance incorporates a dynamic model-based approach that captures and defines important application states and components, such as the tiers they occupy, relationships and dependencies between components and configuration parameters, and then automatically maintains these specifications over time in a configuration repository.

The product includes AppStack Express software license, with support for app deployments in the integrated Citrix CloudPlatform cloud. AppStack is Citrix Ready Cloud Verified and comes with app deployments in the Amazon Web Services (News - Alert) (AWS) public cloud as well as the Xen hypervisor virtualization layer.

Thanks to the integrated App Marketplace, IT managers can choose from over 85 packaged software applications and deploy them in minutes, saving time and cutting costs.

IMPEX Technologies, one of the early adopters of the new cloud management appliance, says the AppStack Express Appliance is a powerful way to free IT managers from the time-consuming tasks of integrating cloud components so they can focus on their application users instead.

“Our customers are leveraging AppStack on top of Citrix CloudPlatform to eliminate scripting,” said Sameer Dholakia, group VP and GM, Cloud Platforms Group, Citrix. “In doing so, they immediately gain more productivity in provisioning and automated management of a library of internal applications. That is the type of time- and cost-saving gain that causes IT managers in organizations of all sizes to sit up and take notice.”

The AppStack Express Appliance will be available in Q2 2013 and is sold by certified resellers including IMPEX Technologies in the U.S. along with other channel partners in EMEA and Asia Pacific.