Abiquo Talks Version 2.0, Balancing the Tight Rope at Cloud Expo

From networking to exhibiting to participating in a keynote address to unveiling a new product release, enterprise cloud software solutions provider Abiquo (News - Alert) certainly has kicked off Cloud Expo in Santa Clara, Calif., with a bang.

Yesterday, Abiquo introduced a major new version of its award-winning software solution that allows customers to build and manage global, robust, fully automated and governed self-service clouds. The latest release, Version 2.0, is being demonstrated live at Abiquo’s booth at Cloud Expo, taking place this week from Nov. 7-10.

“With the new version, we kind of stepped back and looked at our experience in the market over the last 18 months and stopped and asked how is our product working for our customers, what do we need to add, and what are their issues with our product and in general with the cloud,” Pete Malcolm (News - Alert), CEO of Abiquo, told TMCnet at Cloud Expo Tuesday. “What it came down to was we needed to make sure we were balancing the needs of all the stakeholders.”

And those stakeholders include the IT operations teams, the consumers of the cloud and the CIOs.  According to Malcolm, most cloud solutions in the market only focus on one or two of those areas.

“No one is producing a product that works for all three,” Malcolm said. “Unless you can have balance and meet the needs of all the stakeholders, then really your cloud doesn’t work; that’s what we have gone back and focused the product on.”

Abiquo officials are touting version 2.0 for being able to offer an unlimited number of pricing models in any international currency and with any combination of individually defined resources, application and standing charges, which can also vary by storage tier and physical data center. Pricing models are used not only for chargeback, but additionally allow users to be fully informed and optionally notified of the exact cost of each virtual appliance before it is deployed, according to company officials. 

Another benefit of version 2.0 is that because of its integration with Opscode Chef, users can individually customize virtual machines at deployment time. Abiquo presents available Chef “recipe” options, and then passes the selected machine configuration to the Chef server for seamless customization to the user’s exact requirements – all from within the Abiquo GUI.

Version 2.0 and its ability to speak to the needs of all stakeholders when it comes to cloud were discussed during a keynote session by Malcolm Tuesday morning titled “The Enterprise Cloud Tightrope - Balancing for Success.” The keynote highlighted the fact that you have to look after all the stakeholders.

“We call it balancing the tight rope and if you haven’t got that balance the clown will fall off the tight rope,” Malcolm said.

In addition to spreading the word about the balancing act, Abiquo also used its session opportunities to discuss other advances with regards to cloud.

So where are we at with cloud adoption, according to Malcolm?

“We are still in the very early stages, the cloud is only adopted by enterprises a small percent, and that’s the market we are addressing,” he said. “We are still very early on in the cycle; there is a long way to go. People have had failures because they haven’t seen the balance and they haven’t had products out there that can give them this balance.”

“We really listen to the needs of our customers and that’s what version 2.0 is all about,” he added. “… We have the broadest and deepest product in the market but this isn’t just a technology issue; it’s about understanding what the customer wants and delivering it.”