Storage giant EMC is making bold moves in the hybrid cloud market, acquiring three companies in the space and announcing that it has “redefined” the hybrid cloud for the enterprise with the roll out of the Enterprise Hybrid Cloud Solution.
First, the acquisitions. EMC grabbed The Cloudscaling Group, Maginatics, and Spanning Cloud Apps for undisclosed amounts. The company said these acquisitions help forward its hybrid cloud vision across cloud infrastructure, storage and data protection.
Cloudscaling provides OpenStack-powered infrastructure-as-a-service for private and hybrid cloud solutions, and is a founding member of the OpenStack Foundation. Maginatics is a cloud technology provider that offers a global namespace accessible from any device or location. Spanning offers a subscription-based backup and recovery for “born in the cloud” applications and data.
“What we have here is a trifecta of customer choice for hybrid cloud environments,” said David Goulden, Chief Executive Officer of EMC Information Infrastructure. “Each company offers unique technology for delivering cloud abstraction and flexibility for customers.”
Best of Both Worlds
Meanwhile, the new Enterprise Hybrid Cloud Solution integrates hardware, software and services from EMC and VMware to unite the strengths of private and public clouds. The idea is to pave the way for IT-as-a-service within 28 days so organizations can avoid the compromise between the security and control of private cloud infrastructures and the speed and ability of public cloud services.
“Enterprise adoption of OpenStack is accelerating, and OpenStack has emerged as the preferred open source cloud software platform,” said Jonathan Bryce, Executive Director of the OpenStack Foundation. “From automotive manufacturing to financial services and government to research and development, organizations are finding OpenStack the ideal platform for deploying the infrastructure services required to meet the needs of today’s application developers.”
Laura DuBois a program vice president at IDC, said the hybrid cloud gives businesses and their IT organizations flexibility in where they host their many and varied workloads. A well-run hybrid cloud must allow enterprises to seamlessly offer services and apps to their users from the devices of their choice, whether they originate from on-premise data centers or from public cloud sources, she said.
“Hybrid cloud offerings like the EMC Enterprise Hybrid Cloud Solution allow enterprises to retain security and control by enabling IT organizations to become a broker of apps and services and to do so via user self-service and automation that correspond to organizational policies,” DuBois said.
Cornering Hybrid Cloud
We caught up with Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group, at the EMC analyst event in Boston, to get his reaction to the news. He told us this is a huge move by EMC to try to corner the hybrid cloud market.
“EMC recognizes that companies will need a blend of public and private cloud resources and that this blend will need to be incredibly flexible as budgets, capabilities, policies, and corporate goals change,” Enderle said.
“EMC is making a big push to be the one firm that can provide a unique set of capabilities focused on giving customers choice and not locking them in to any vendor’s proprietary solution — even their own. They feel it is better to hold customers by assuring loyalty than it is by locking them in,” he added.
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