Cloud News: VMware, Hostway, HP

Here’s a roundup of some of this week’s headlines from the cloud computing sector:

VMware vCloud Integration Manager.  VMware (VMW) introduced VMware vCloud Integration Manager, a new solution designed to help service providers automate the delivery and operations of VMware vCloud Director-based clouds. The new software enables service providers to easily create and deploy cloud service offerings in a repeatable and cost-effective manner. vCloud Integration Manager will provide a REST-based API to integrate with a provider's back office system such as CRM or billing. It will also include web-based portals to streamline and automate service plan, customer lifecycle and reseller management. "Service providers are looking to get high-margin cloud services to market as quickly as possible," said Mathew Lodge, senior director of cloud services, VMware. "Until now that involved wrangling manual processes, diverting scarce development resources onto writing glue code and portals, or choosing to implement complex and expensive third-party systems. With VMware vCloud Integration Manager, providers of VMware vCloud services will have the tools they need to automatically provision services, enable reseller partners and speed customer on-boarding." VMware vCloud Integration Manager is expected to be available in the first quarter of 2012 and will be priced on a usage-based subscription model familiar to vCloud Service Providers.

Hostway introduces FlexLink for Hybrid clouds. Hostway Corporation announced the expansion of its portfolio of enterprise hosting solutions with FlexLink to enable hybrid cloud deployments.  The new hybrid solutions allow for managed hosting or colocation services to be combined with a managed public cloud infrastructure - Hostway's FlexCloud. Hostway's FlexLink creates a Microsoft Hyper-V based hybrid cloud available in the hosting marketplace. "The market is clearly moving to a hybrid compute model, with analysts predicting that most cloud adoptions in the future will consist of combined private/public cloud configurations," said John Martis, President, at Hostway. "Our FlexLink solution addresses this need with the ability to blend both our FlexCloud solution and managed server resources in any combination to build a secure, flexible and dynamically scalable infrastructure."

HP Tests Apps in the cloud.  HP (HPQ) launched a new offering that allows partners to provide a branded solution for application performance testing in the cloud, helping their customers to rapidly and cost-effectively deliver high-quality applications. Qualified partners can use HP's new LoadRunner-in-the-Cloud offering to deliver consumption-based performance testing of Web 2.0, AJAX, mobile and other applications to their customers. When combined with a partner's cloud infrastructure the new offering will enable customers to simplify performance testing of complex applications, gain a comprehensive view of system performance, and accelerate time-to-market with access to the resources required to conduct application performance testing anytime, anywhere. “Organizations that do not have robust performance testing may face application delivery delays or risk performance bottlenecks if they are unable to get timely access to testing resources,” said Matthew Morgan, senior director, Product and Solution Marketing, Software, HP. “The HP LoadRunner-in-the-Cloud offering allows partners to deliver cost-effective, on-demand access to leading performance testing in the cloud.”