Abiquo Talks Management Experience and 'Nirvana' Surrounding Cloud

By Carrie Schmelkin, TMCnet Web Editor

Cloud management solution leader Abiquo (News - Alert) knows a thing or two about the importance of providing security in the cloud.

Prior to working at Abiquo, a majority of Abiquo’s management team came from a previous startup company called Orchestria (News - Alert) Corporation, which did Web and email monitoring for 47 of the largest Wall Street banks. The job had them managing over 100 million emails a day and security was of the utmost importance.

“If our system broke, we would have brought down Wall Street,” Pete Malcolm (News - Alert), CEO of Abiquo, told TMCnet at Cloud Expo East 2011 Wednesday.

“We understand security issues, which is something that is present in the cloud,” he added.

The current Abiquo management team took this experience in securities and compliances and used it to found Abiquo, a company that embraces an open-source model where both community users and commercial organizations can fully benefit from the cloud revolution. Founded in 2006, Abiquo offers a number of breakthrough techniques to manage and secure cloud computing.

The company currently offers solutions for both public and private clouds and helps prospective and current clients decide which route is better to take. Moreover, all of the Abiquo systems are modular so cloud hypervisors can be added at any time.

Abiquo touts its solutions as being “really convenient to use,” as they present a usable interface for different roles in the organization from people on the infrastructure side to the virtual side to the guy setting the policies.

“It’s the completeness of the solution, both the breadth and depth, that sets us apart,” Malcolm said.

While at Cloud Expo East, which took place in New York City this week, Malcolm delivered a keynote speech entitled “Ops or Apps –Who’ll own the Data Center of Tomorrow?” The session explored how there is one known fact in the data centers – that application groups always need more. However, until recently, apps have been at the mercy of IT operations to feed their need, according to Malcolm. With advances in public cloud offerings, apps can bypass ops entirely and get the resources they need with just a few clicks and a credit card. The session explored what this means for the future of IT Ops.

“There is a change to the way IT infrastructure has been managed for the last 30 years,” Malcolm told TMCnet. “In the traditional model, IT organizations tried to keep their arms around everything because they didn’t want anything messed up but this is a model that is not sustainable because IT budgets are now frozen.”

The answer as to who should manage the data center of tomorrow, according to Malcolm, is self service models.

In addition to delivering his keynote speech, Malcolm also found the time to discuss with TMCnet what the cloud space can see from Abiquo during the remainder of the year.

Abiquo will continue to improve its products and add more functionality and also encourage people to think deeper about the cloud.

“There is great nirvana about what the cloud can do… but there are a bunch of steps you need to take to make sure you get there,” he said. “We are trying to educate the market about what else you need.”

(source: http://it.tmcnet.com/channels/cloud-communications/articles/184095-abiquo-talks-management-experience-nirvana-surrounding-cloud.htm)